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camilliar · 5 years ago

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undercutting v. undermining

You can now file this under “things to think about for the podcast” --

Something that’s undercut the success of OMGCP for me, at least in Y3 and Y4, is that it often plays the serious parts too light, and takes too seriously the parts that should have been funny, or should have had their gravity undercut.

Jack’s proposal, for example, is a moment that falls hugely short for me. I like Zimbits, okay, I’m Zimbits-neutral; I like it when it’s well-executed and what puts me off of it in fandom is the generic way it’s handled -- and how seriously it’s taken -- by most of the fandom, or at least a certain segment of Zimbits fans. But I like this pairing and think it has potential! I like to write about them! I like other people’s fics about them! Their early flirting was charming and their first kiss was a show-stopper that got me and many other people hooked on this story for good reason. The problem, to me, is that the author seems to have forgotten (or maybe no longer cares?) that these are cartoon characters, not real people. Jack is, canonically, an awkward fucking weirdo. Bitty is a walking stereotype. The endearing things about them is that they’re cartoonish exaggerations playing against their own type. For Jack to play a proposal seriously is severely out of character. He’s not smooth. Dating Bitty for two years shouldn’t have made him smooth. They’ve known each other for a while, so they get each other, and that’s different than being smooth.

Jack’s proposal needed something to undercut the weight of the moment -- he forgets what he wants to say and reverts to hockey cliches? He gets nervous and Bitty takes over? One of their friends screams something inappropriate from the sidelines? The problem isn’t just that it’s OOC; lots of things are OOC, and part of what makes comics and cartoons fun fandoms to be in is that they’re not pegged to the real world as such so they can be character-breaking for entertainment purposes. This is merely a bland speech about how he loves his boyfriend. The sentiment should be implied in all of this, not textual.

Good writing would give these characters a proposal -- if they must have one -- that couldn’t fit in any other piece of media. If I copied and pasted this one into a Stan/Kyle fanfic, it would work equally well. “My life started when I met you” is so completely unspecific to this particular story! Maybe Jack really believes that? Bitty’s response could be, “That’s sweet but it’s very cliche” and Jack is like “I Googled ‘how to propose’?” See, that’s very dorky, that’s an endearing way to undercut the schlock that’s both true to the comic and something that, at the end, has encumbered it to the point of indifference, for me.

I feel like the author knows this; it seems like, in the most halfhearted possible way, she’s trying to be a little lololol goofy here, but she’s unwilling to take her own set up any way other than too seriously. But, it’s not working. Bitty faints? Also cliche. It turns out all their friends were there? Also cliche. And then, they’re all just like “yaaaaaaay” -- you need something to cut the treacle here. It’s so easy to project onto this that it means nothing for Jack and Bitty!

This is a comic where Bitty starts out in strip one as a little ingenue who walks into the Haus with a pie and is horrified at what happens next. His expectations are cut down and his world expands -- the end of this story has been bent to his will, not the other way around. It’s not working for me. Weirdly enough, that moment just got replayed in the last strip, and it retcons the thing that was charming about it in the first place -- Bitty wasn’t a shaky mess, he was overconfident and affronted, a fish-out-of-water who barged his way into the Haus and started making pies in the kitchen a few strips later. Maybe, mayyyyybe, you can reach in here and extract the possibility that Bitty was on-camera in that first strip, and now that he’s a grown-up adult man we’re finally peeling back the flawed narrative device of his vlog--but I don’t think so? I think it’s just the goal and tone of this story having mutated over the years into ... something else, something that’s unwilling to piss off its own fans by daring to treat its own characters as anything other than real people whose feelings might be hurt.

I mentioned that first Jack/Bitty kiss, over 2.18-19. Please look at this in sequence:

The text at the end makes this work -- it cuts the tension! It severs BItty’s attention, and the reader’s attention, calling both back from the brink of a daze and into the realm of the real-world, where time moves and gestures have weight. There’s a cinematic quality to this that feels unreal -- it is unreal! This doesn’t happen for fucking anybody! It only happens to fictional characters. You need something to disrupt that. You’re in a shitty room with crappy blinds and bare lightbulbs in a decrepit frat house, the exact place this should not be happening. The moment is being punctured to stave off contrivance.

Further to my point, this moment is itself undermined in the Chirpbook, where it’s revealed what Jack texted: something totally banal, totally mundane. I guess people wanted to know. Why? It ruins this, ruins what makes it an affective and effective moment. Who cares what Jack wrote? It’s so much better to imagine -- but this moment, which worked great before, is being weighted down by over-mythologizing it. The reader knows what just happened. They know how Jack and Bitty relate to each other. The whole thing is being rewritten as a banal romance.

Again, any character in any media could have the text exchange that Jack and Bitty are shown having in the Chirpbook, and it destroys the meaning of this moment by robbing it of its specificity: the dingy room, the Sharks sweatshirt discarded on the armchair, the college-issue desk chair Bitty falls into, which has those slanty safety legs on the back so you can’t fall over. That is specific to the house -- the Haus!!! “I didn’t realize how much I was going to miss you until I said goodbye” is something anyone could say, and it’s already implied in the comic. You don’t have to reinforce it over and over, unless you’re buying into your own legacy, reiterating it to lesser and lesser impact.

#meta

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nebris · 5 years ago

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How the Ballpoint Pen Killed Cursive

In 2015, Bic launched a campaign to “save handwriting.” Named “Fight for Your Write,” it includes a pledge to “encourage the act of handwriting” in the pledge-taker’s home and community, and emphasizes putting more of the company’s ballpoints into classrooms.

As a teacher, I couldn’t help but wonder how anyone could think there’s a shortage. I find ballpoint pens all over the place: on classroom floors, behind desks. Dozens of castaways collect in cups on every teacher’s desk. They’re so ubiquitous that the word “ballpoint” is rarely used; they’re just “pens.” But despite its popularity, the ballpoint pen is relatively new in the history of handwriting, and its influence on popular handwriting is more complicated than the Bic campaign would imply.

The creation story of the ballpoint pen tends to highlight a few key individuals, most notably the Hungarian journalist László Bíró, who is credited with inventing it. But as with most stories of individual genius, this take obscures a much longer history of iterative engineering and marketing successes. In fact, Bíró wasn’t the first to develop the idea: The ballpoint pen was originally patented in 1888 by an American leather tanner named John Loud, but his idea never went any further. Over the next few decades, dozens of other patents were issued for pens that used a ballpoint tip of some kind, but none of them made it to market.

These early pens failed not in their mechanical design, but in their choice of ink. The ink used in a fountain pen, the ballpoint’s predecessor, is thinner to facilitate better flow through the nib—but put that thinner ink inside a ballpoint pen, and you’ll end up with a leaky mess. Ink is where László Bíró, working with his chemist brother György, made the crucial changes: They experimented with thicker, quick-drying inks, starting with the ink used in newsprint presses. Eventually, they refined both the ink and the ball-tip design to create a pen that didn’t leak badly. (This was an era in which a pen could be a huge hit because it only leaked ink sometimes.)

The Bírós lived in a troubled time, however. The Hungarian author Gyoergy Moldova writes in his book Ballpoint about László’s flight from Europe to Argentina to avoid Nazi persecution. While his business deals in Europe were in disarray, he patented the design in Argentina in 1943 and began production. His big break came later that year, when the British Air Force, in search of a pen that would work at high altitudes, purchased 30,000 of them. Soon, patents were filed and sold to various companies in Europe and North America, and the ballpoint pen began to spread across the world.

Businessmen made significant fortunes by purchasing the rights to manufacture the ballpoint pen in their country, but one is especially noteworthy: Marcel Bich, the man who bought the patent rights in France. Bich didn’t just profit from the ballpoint; he won the race to make it cheap. When it first hit the market in 1946, a ballpoint pen sold for around $10, roughly equivalent to $100 today. Competition brought that price steadily down, but Bich’s design drove it into the ground. When the Bic Cristal hit American markets in 1959, the price was down to 19 cents a pen. Today the Cristal sells for about the same amount, despite inflation.

The ballpoint’s universal success has changed how most people experience ink. Its thicker ink was less likely to leak than that of its predecessors. For most purposes, this was a win—no more ink-stained shirts, no need for those stereotypically geeky pocket protectors. However, thicker ink also changes the physical experience of writing, not necessarily all for the better.

I wouldn’t have noticed the difference if it weren’t for my affection for unusual pens, which brought me to my first good fountain pen. A lifetime writing with the ballpoint and minor variations on the concept (gel pens, rollerballs) left me unprepared for how completely different a fountain pen would feel. Its thin ink immediately leaves a mark on paper with even the slightest, pressure-free touch to the surface. My writing suddenly grew extra lines, appearing between what used to be separate pen strokes. My hand, trained by the ballpoint, expected that lessening the pressure from the pen was enough to stop writing, but I found I had to lift it clear off the paper entirely. Once I started to adjust to this change, however, it felt like a godsend; a less-firm press on the page also meant less strain on my hand.

My fountain pen is a modern one, and probably not a great representation of the typical pens of the 1940s—but it still has some of the troubles that plagued the fountain pens and quills of old. I have to be careful where I rest my hand on the paper, or risk smudging my last still-wet line into an illegible blur. And since the thin ink flows more quickly, I have to refill the pen frequently. The ballpoint solved these problems, giving writers a long-lasting pen and a smudge-free paper for the low cost of some extra hand pressure.

As a teacher whose kids are usually working with numbers and computers, handwriting isn’t as immediate a concern to me as it is to many of my colleagues. But every so often I come across another story about the decline of handwriting. Inevitably, these articles focus on how writing has been supplanted by newer, digital forms of communication—typing, texting, Facebook, Snapchat. They discuss the loss of class time for handwriting practice that is instead devoted to typing lessons. Last year, a New York Times article—one that’s since been highlighted by the Bic’s “Fight for your Write” campaign—brought up an fMRI study suggesting that writing by hand may be better for kids’ learning than using a computer.

I can’t recall the last time I saw students passing actual paper notes in class, but I clearly remember students checking their phones (recently and often). In his history of handwriting, The Missing Ink, the author Philip Hensher recalls the moment he realized that he had no idea what his good friend’s handwriting looked like. “It never struck me as strange before… We could have gone on like this forever, hardly noticing that we had no need of handwriting anymore.”

No need of handwriting? Surely there must be some reason I keep finding pens everywhere.

Of course, the meaning of “handwriting” can vary. Handwriting romantics aren’t usually referring to any crude letterform created from pen and ink. They’re picturing the fluid, joined-up letters of the Palmer method, which dominated first- and second-grade pedagogy for much of the 20th century. (Or perhaps they’re longing for a past they never actually experienced, envisioning the sharply angled Spencerian script of the 1800s.) Despite the proliferation of handwriting eulogies, it seems that no one is really arguing against the fact that everyone still writes—we just tend to use unjoined print rather than a fluid Palmerian style, and we use it less often.

I have mixed feelings about this state of affairs. It pained me when I came across a student who was unable to read script handwriting at all. But my own writing morphed from Palmerian script into mostly print shortly after starting college. Like most gradual changes of habit, I can’t recall exactly why this happened, although I remember the change occurred at a time when I regularly had to copy down reams of notes for mathematics and engineering lectures.

In her book Teach Yourself Better Handwriting, the handwriting expert and type designer Rosemary Sassoon notes that “most of us need a flexible way of writing—fast, almost a scribble for ourselves to read, and progressively slower and more legible for other purposes.” Comparing unjoined print to joined writing, she points out that “separate letters can seldom be as fast as joined ones.” So if joined handwriting is supposed to be faster, why would I switch away from it at a time when I most needed to write quickly? Given the amount of time I spend on computers, it would be easy for an opinionated observer to count my handwriting as another victim of computer technology. But I knew script, I used it throughout high school, and I shifted away from it during the time when I was writing most.

My experience with fountain pens suggests a new answer. Perhaps it’s not digital technology that hindered my handwriting, but the technology that I was holding as I put pen to paper. Fountain pens want to connect letters. Ballpoint pens need to be convinced to write, need to be pushed into the paper rather than merely touch it. The No.2 pencils I used for math notes weren’t much of a break either, requiring pressure similar to that of a ballpoint pen.

Moreover, digital technology didn’t really take off until the fountain pen had already begin its decline, and the ballpoint its rise. The ballpoint became popular at roughly the same time as mainframe computers. Articles about the decline of handwriting date back to at least the 1960s—long after the typewriter, but a full decade before the rise of the home computer.

Sassoon’s analysis of how we’re taught to hold pens makes a much stronger case for the role of the ballpoint in the decline of cursive. She explains that the type of pen grip taught in contemporary grade school is the same grip that’s been used for generations, long before everyone wrote with ballpoints. However, writing with ballpoints and other modern pens requires that they be placed at a greater, more upright angle to the paper—a position that’s generally uncomfortable with a traditional pen hold. Even before computer keyboards turned so many people into carpal-tunnel sufferers, the ballpoint pen was already straining hands and wrists. Here’s Sassoon:

We must find ways of holding modern pens that will enable us to write without pain. …We also need to encourage efficient letters suited to modern pens. Unless we begin to do something sensible about both letters and penholds we will contribute more to the demise of handwriting than the coming of the computer has done.

I wonder how many other mundane skills, shaped to accommodate outmoded objects, persist beyond their utility. It’s not news to anyone that students used to write with fountain pens, but knowing this isn’t the same as the tactile experience of writing with one. Without that experience, it’s easy to continue past practice without stopping to notice that the action no longer fits the tool. Perhaps “saving handwriting” is less a matter of invoking blind nostalgia and more a process of examining the historical use of ordinary technologies as a way to understand contemporary ones. Otherwise we may not realize which habits are worth passing on, and which are vestiges of circumstances long since past.

Josh Giesbrecht is a writer, artist, programmer, and public-school teacher based in British Columbia, Canada.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/how-the-ballpoint-pen-killed-cursive?utm_source=pocket-newtab

#handwriting

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queermediastudies · 5 years ago

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Sex, sex, sex and so much more in Blue is the Warmest Color

The French film, Blue is the Warmest Color was released in 2013 and directed by, Abdellatif Kechiche. It follows the story of a young woman named Adele who faces crises with her queer identity. The film begins with Adele facing pressure from her peers to have a relationship with a boy named Thomas. On her way to her first date with Thomas, Adele passes a young blue haired girl in the street and later has a sexual dream about her. This scene is the audience’s first glimpse into Adele’s queer identity. Later in the film when she officially meets the blue haired girl named Emma, an art student in university, at a gay bar the audience begins to see Adele’s queer identity unfold and come to life through their relationship. While this film does work to bring attention to queer elements that are so often missing from films, it also falls victim to heteronormative and hegemonic values in the way that it presents Emma and Adele’s relationship.

The relationship between Adele and Emma seems to follow a similar arc as any other romantic film. They first officially meet at a bar as some type of “meet cute” and Emma later seeks Adele out at her high school, and they have a romantic moment on a bench while Emma sketches Adele. Though unlike the heteronormative romantic films often seen, Blue is the Warmest Color also functions as a queer breakout film. Andre Cavalcante (2017) in his article “Breaking into Transgender Life: Transgender Audiences’ Experiences With “First of Its Kind” Visibility in Popular Media” defines breakout texts as “media that portrays “first of its kind” representation” to a marginalized group. While this film is not about Trans characters like the ones Cavalcante analyzes in his article, the film does work to represent queer women’s lives in a way that is not often presented in mainstream media. One of the ways that the film does this, is through its representation of Adele and Emma’s sexual relationship. While the sex scenes throughout this film are striking and even at times uncomfortably long, they give queer women a sexual visibility that is rarely seen.

The sex scenes that occur in the film not only occur in a queer context meaning that it is not prompted by a male third party, as we see in other hegemonic films, but the content is also extremely explicit. They show the female body in a realistic and raw way. They do not hesitate to show female genitalia, and in doing this they break patriarchal boundaries that demand modesty and concealment of the female body. The scenes also give visibility to queer women that is not through the Heteronormative male gaze. The sexual interactions are by women and for women and unlike the Canadian queer film, Below Her Mouth that also has female sex scenes, they are not all focused around a strap on.

While queer women can and do use strap ons in real life, the persistence of it in every sexual encounter in Below Her Mouth presents a binary and heteronormative view of female-female sexual relationships and re-enforces the idea that one of them is “the man.” The sex scenes in Blue is the Warmest Color also present a reciprocal sexual relationship, where in neither of the characters seem to be the “dominant” or “submissive,” and a power dynamic between the two, at least in this point of the film, is non-existent. This works against the heteronormative narratives that are so often portrayed in romantic films where one character (typically the man) has more control over the other character. The film also makes the sexual interactions between the two women appear to be consensual, and while this doesn’t happen in the form of either party asking or saying yes, the scene does include mutual participation unlike typical heteronormative sexual encounters seen in films where one party seems to be resisting for one reason or another, and the forcing of the sexual interaction somehow leads to consent.

Even though this film uses sex scenes to break patriarchal barriers and gives visibility to queer women, as Cavalcante also discusses in his article the short comings of breakout texts such as Blue is the Warmest Color come in their tendency to fall into hegemonic tropes and feed stereotypical narratives. To start, Adele and Emma externally fall into normative ideas of queer female couples. Adele is the innocent femme character and Emma is her butch lover. Later in the film, Adele pursues a career as a teacher and takes on the domestic role, while Emma is a rugged artist.

This depiction of the characters falls into binary and heteronormative values and reinforces the idea that a queer relationship needs to mimic straight ones by having a “man” or masculine partner and a feminine partner. In addition, the age gap between the two characters is also worth discussing. While without knowing that Emma was much older than Adele, the audience may assume their ages were similar, but the audience is explicitly told that Adele is 15 while Emma, in her fourth year of university, is assumedly around the age of 22. While, this age gap is not huge, it is still large enough that in contemporary western society it raises some red flags. Not only does this age gap seem strange to include, but it also reinforces narratives surrounding the idea that the queer community is filled with pedophiles and is out to corrupt the youth. This is also played out when Adele cheats on Emma with a man and throughout the rest of the film the audience never sees her have any interactions with any other women.

This is problematic because not only does it make Emma and Adele’s relationship seem like some sort of fad that Adele was seduced into by the older Emma, it also suggests that femme women are inherently straight. Adele’s lack of interactions or relationships with women other than Emma, and in contrast Emma’s multiple female relationships throughout the film suggest that feminine women like Adele are inherently straight and that to be truly queer you must be butch like Emma. Similarly, Adele never comes out to her family or friends and her being closeted is almost never mentioned, and even when she does eventually have Emma over to her parents’ house it is under the guise that Emma is just her friend. This is problematic because again it suggests that if you do not externally look queer, then it is easier to stay in the closet. While as discussed in Bonnie Dow’s (2010) article on the Ellen coming out episode, an individual’s coming out is not “taken to imply the success of the discourse” around queerness, it seems for a film such as this it would be important to include. To not include one of the main queer characters coming out at all suggests a shame around queerness that is perpetuated, and not addressed or corrected through Adele’s story.

Overall, Blue is the Warmest Color presents its audience with a raw version of queer female-female relationship, but the way that I experienced the film is probably much different from a queer identifying female. While I was watching the film I thought of Alexander Doty’s (1993) piece Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture, in which he describes that in the same way that “heterocentrist texts can contain queer elements […] heterosexual, straight-identifying people can experience queer moment(s).” While Doty discusses this in terms of queer readings of straight texts, it applied to my experience watching the film, because during the raw and unfiltered sex scenes I did experience queer moments. Though despite my queer moments, I do understand that my analysis is very skewed because despite being a feminist and having knowledge through gender studies classes, I have not had queer experiences. Therefore, for me to say that the film depicts “real” life queer female relationships and even queer female sex lives may be an over exaggeration. Especially the scenes where the women are “scissoring” stood out to me as being potentially stereotyped though again, I do not belong to the queer community, have not experienced a female-female relationship, and have not discussed female-female sexual relationships with queer women and can not speak to the accuracy. It is also notable that I have not seen an abundance of French films and so the nudity in the film that I describe as being liberating or forward may simply be part of French culture/films.

Sources:

Cavalcante, A. (2017). Breaking Into Transgender Life: Transgender Audiences Experiences With “First of Its Kind” Visibility in Popular Media. Communication, Culture & Critique, 10(3), 538–555. doi: 10.1111/cccr.12165

Doty, A. (1993). Making things perfectly queer: interpreting mass culture. Minneapolis u.a.: Univ. of Minnesota Press.

Dow, B. (2001). Ellen, Television, and the Politics of Gay and Lesbian Visibility. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 18(2), 123–140. doi: 10.1080/07393180128077

Kechiche A. (Producer), & Kechiche, A., Maraval V., Chioua B., Lemal G., Martin A. (Director).(2013). Blue Is the Warmest Color [Film]. France.

Mullen, A. (Producer), & Mullen, A. (Director). (2017). Below Her Mouth [Film]. Canada.

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#queer women breakout relationships #sexuality

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stopgenitalism · 5 years ago

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Text “Antigenitalism” by Zara Paz (Raw Version) for an Activism Mag in Vienna

Here is another super exciting political article about a phenomenon / movement called "Antigenitalism".

Berlin 2013 - A group of women who have been born with dicks, have experienced shit all their lives and continue to experience shit, fight, have depression, etc., came together. Previously into activism yet, like Antifa, Antipsychiatry, Anarchism, etc. We are thinking about what we want. Whom we still want. And what we are against. Quickly, now. after 15-20 years of activism and thinking about what and who we actually are, a term comes up: genitalism.

This is what has wanted to put us down all our lives long. Wanted to kill us. And what has killed and will still kill many of us: the claim that every human / baby with a penis would a man / boy / male / belonging to the male gender, while each person/ baby with a vagina would be a woman/ girl / female / belonging to the female gender.

As if that would be clear, self evident, natural or supported by us. No. It is not. This claim, this procedure ruined our lives.

Our families and friends are incited against us. Before, until 1994, we / our "sisters" were imprisoned if we started something with a man because of that (the German "gay paragraph" §175 that criminalised so called "homosexual sex amongst men").

For me it was like this: I have always positioned myself as a girl and recognized as soon as spoken out gender position were stated (parents and all people actually do this from birth on, nonverbally children internalize it, even without words / language, logically, right?), first I was allowed to express & dress myself as I wanted in the kindergarten (skirt, long hair, jewelry, etc), but at some point my grandparents got scared that I could "become gay",

because in the documents / following the official doctrine "I was a boy" and later "wpuld become a man", of course, a hetero, everything else was criminalised & tabooed in the 80s, was considered to be perverted, wrong and unacceptable.

Suddenly at one day they shaved my hair, I was put into boys clothes against my will and gradually my toys were exchanged. Suddenly I should be interested in "boy things". A shock that still sits in my bones today. Simply because I so suddenly felt the force of the normative system, had bad presages, which should later prove true.

So far, everything reads like a harmless, exaggerated mimimi. Only if you hit the bridge from there to the many murders of women with cocks and men with pussies, e.g. if the "they fooled" because they said to be, for example, a woman, had sex, gave a kiss to someone or just were flirted or desired by a stranger (without being able to change it), a stranger who then felt "injured in his honor," just because of genitalism (penis = man, vagina = Woman ideologies).

Or, think of teacher Lucy Meadows, who was personally bullied with newspaper articles by Daily Mail reporter Robert Littleton ("you men in a man's body," "stop harassing children, they'll lose their innocence soon enough,", "not in the wrong body, but especially in the wrong job", etc.), until she finally took her own life.

What is new is that someone speaks about it, mockery like that had always happened. In the 90s, the rainbow press liked to publish the private addresses of women who have been assigned a male gender (which is why they legally could not defend against it and then), so that many times such a house was then set on fire ("public disgrace", "something like this may not exist," "what if more people do something like that?").

I grew up with stereotypical, vicious fairy tales of "men in women's clothes" (the, in my ears, sick and exotic-sounding labels "transvestite" and "transsexual" were even sounding more respectful compared to the stuff that was usually said and written), for example in the movie "The Naked Cannon 33 1/3" Leslie Nielsen immediately puked into a tuba after discovering that his dream-woman, who had "something to confess" to him, shows to him that she has a huge tail, what was meant to be the biggest joke in that movie, while in "the silence of the Lambs", the psychopath is a bizarre, "female dressing", androgynous (surely male looking) being that hates women because they can "get" the men/sex he/she dreams of. (The murderer is always shown as a male, like all people with dicks / male assignments are shown in the 90s... except dragqueens because they always told to be male "in reality" in the mainstream media what made them less a danger for the gender security of those times).

In Amsterdam we met a pair of extremely glittery, sequined and extremely high heeled drag queens who became introduced to me as "men who want to be women" under the suggestive emphasis that they are "on the hunt of some men" tonight/in general.

It has always been said "if you have a penis but you do not behave as a man, do not wear menswear and / or are not satisfied with your body, then you are necessarily gay, perverted and disturbed, you have to be all that because you are then a danger and a serious nuisance for the society (well, that's what I always wanted to be anyways but thats another story) and something about you has to change, because that's just not the way how you and society can work together (soon more about that).

"Unfortunately" I was mainly attracted by women (whatever that was supposed to be), so I was automatically perceived as a man, although I (yet for that) took the freedom to put on make up, "behaved as femaie as I could" and did also everything I could not to be perceived as a man/male, but since my family had bullied and punished me for the girls name I had given myself in thekindergarten,

I was still scared to "completely go for it" or" to really claim honest respect to be a woman "(with intention I am writing this in a vague way, because I never could precisely define/find out what gender / a woman / not male should be exactly), how do you "do that" or "how do you get rid of that?", what do all of them want me to do and why do they stage this gender shit and then pretend me to be the only one who is actually trying to break out of it to be the one staging it??)

This led to many detours, at some point then came the phase where I realized I do not want to marry a man necessarily, but still I want to be allowed to use a women's toilet (instead of risking to go to jail for it), I would maybe also let my body " get modulated" so that everybody perceives me as a woman, always and everywhere, it would be easier for me because then I do not always have to discuss everything with everyone, especially not beeing exposed to any fomented homophobia of all people around me.

The big problems were starting in that phase. For psychologists have to approve the name change and the body modulations (even if you pay by yourself, which was the case with me in the end), you can get your arm amputated, if you're funny, make implants and tattoos, as much as you want , but taking hormones like estrogen or testosterone or altering the genitals or having breasts operated can only be done after 3 years of "therapy" that is supposed to "help", whether or not "this help" is needed or not. (To my point of view, "help" against my will is never help, but force and therefor violence, so the phase "forced therapy" I use to describe for the shit the state forced me into, is an intentional oxymoron if you look so close).

Furthermore you are forced to tell and subscribe you would be ("strongly feeling to be") "born in the wrong body", "hating your body" and wanting to modulate it (into the way the law defines a "male / female body", also here doesn´t matter if you really want this or not) and that you" feel like a woman / man " (NOT that you ARE a woman / man - notice the difference !)

and that you would be "into the sex change" towards the court, doctors, authorities, public representatives, the health insurance (always, even when paying yourself), offices and many other institutions then again and again) to be able/allowed to change your name/sex entry or get prescriptions/indications for hormones, surgery and epilations (the only way to do it legally and not having to take the risks that illegal hormones and surgery imply, to be said, a high risk that yet demanded and demands many death victims).

And you have to get and pass documents ("expertises") paid by yourself to many many strangers, institutions and doctors which include lots of very herrassing normative, sexist remarks about your body, the clothes you wear, your underwear, your voice, your hair, your genitals, and your lifestyle.

And, of course, depend on and have to deal with psychologists and psychiatrists who make such decisions (whether or not you are allowed to surgeries and legal name change) are often not casually into these jobs, but having a fetish, groping your body, asking you sexual and intimate questions, record you naked on video or ask you to try and report on certain sex practices with men / women. All around the world.

These laws that say that you are a man / boy when having a penis and you are a woman / girl when having a vagina and otherwise you have to beg for recognition to be "the opposite sex" exist everywhere in the world, in any state. We all had these experiences. We were all permanently bullied, insulted, laughed at, threatened, sexually harassed and / or looked at badly and hostile on the streets, regularly at the latest after psychiatrists forced us to their so-called "everyday test" asking us to wear the clothes that to their opinion "women have to wear" (skirt or dress, even at minus temperatures, shoes with heels, make-up, bra, even with small breasts, possibly tights, etc.). Each of us had had countless experiences of violence, each of us had been bullied, teased and persecuted, mostly by strangers,

been (sexually and otherwise) harassed, "even" by authorities and doctors, etc. everyone of us had been discriminated and mocked, so we decided that we now are fed up with this shit and that we want to do something against this damned madness that destroys our lives and seeks to erase our existences plus our stories, just as oppression always deals with the people it seeks to destroy and exploit.

So we developed a short, catchy concept: we want to fight for an area where the genitalist assignments ("penis = man, vagina = woman") are abolished and everything related to that (gender in documents, anywhere, nowhere) , no newspapers spread the lies of "gender changes" and "born as a boy", which in the end lead to hatred and violence, no transphobic, genitalist media, movies, documentaries, newspaper articles, books, diagnoses, court judgments that repeat and state only "their" viewings on us, strengthening their perspective, but never tells a word about how we perceive our selves, how we see and perceive gender, how we perceive bodies and their meanings. Also not a "biological gender" propaganda bullshit, no "trans" / "cis" / "inter" shit from the outside, which, if you look closely, is the same oppressive stuff.

Because If I am called a "trans woman" for beeing a woman with a dicj and the other woman gets called a "cis woman" because of her body/vagina, this is the same genitalistic procedure and leads in the end just to the same special treatments, discrimination and problems, as if you would directly talk of me as "a man" or a "fake women". Finally in both ways you just take some physical attributes and start emphasizing they would make a "very big difference between two human beeing to either have these or those

attributes". Then you start telling and repeating the claimed differences would be so big you would even have to make two categories of humans

along those body shapes/attributes.

This is also how the categories "trans (gender)", "cis (sexual)" and "inter (identity)" work that we deny, unless you call yourself like this.

No one has the right to impose such stamps on you / us / who ever. Etiquettes kill.

We want to fight for spaces free of all gender assignments, while every state presses us into a genderrole at birth, puts a gender stamp on, with devastating consequences, every newspaper writes about all people and their bodies in body shape related manners and this normative way of stamping and norming people and bodies is what we want to completely leave behind us and be free of, to create own channels, symbols, spaces, language, paroles, culture and stories that are free of all this bullshit,emancipative, not repressive and therefor to show that one can step out of the assigned genitalist sex cramp of all existing States, the media, the "oppressor´s language" and binary gender change lies fairy tales, with which they are trying to justify their violence against us and to legitimize their asshole laws against us, for which there can be no excuse, even if its seeming to be self evidently the dominant doctine and order for many after more than 4,000 years of genitalistic terror and permanent global states of murder, persecution, criminalization and stigmatization of us and our mates.

This is why we are here and standing up against our oppressors, stepping out of this hostile society and leaving its filthy body

normative corsets behind us to unite with our people to found and fight for our own territories free of majority terror, genitalistic

slavery and its hateful impact on our lives, health and possibilities to interact or be perceived as what we really are and may be.

#Antigenitalism #Zara Paz #Text #activism #storytelling #life #oppression #gender #entry #stamp #category #cis #inter #trans #state #mag #vienna

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psshaw · 7 years ago

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The Train/Murder Story

Uuuughhhh, fine I can’t stop thinking about it. FINE. Here it is, the absolute worst, dumbest, evilest Tucker story.

Here’s how someone like this eases you into his “criminal history”.

In addition to a bizarre (I’m now told nonsensical) cocktail of serious illnesses and psychiatric conditions and extremely disturbing abuse stories, he’s a petty criminal who’s never been caught doing anything. Here’s one from early on, testing my boundaries:

Admittedly, I tend to think lowly of shoplifters. But he’d removed any selfish elements, and I’m never ever going to stop someone from telling a cool story. Which will come in handy later.

It’s very “Jesus of Suburbia”. Stealing for charity, returning just for the thrill of it, never getting caught. Apparently in someone else’s RP, he once proposed that his self-insert would do good deeds that were somehow so good that someone would map them out and notice they made a pattern on the map. Gran. Di. OSITY. It’s interesting noticing how little I ask of him in our convos. If he ever truly liked anything about me, it was probably that I let him talk about himself for hours. Other people with, like, needs? Weren’t so lucky around him.

Plus he makes all these references to being super manipulative (but toward people who deserve it!!! For being bigoted or annoying or something!!!! You’re different and smart and pretty and you’re changing me for the better!!!!!!!!!!), and stuff like the lock-picking incident from the last post. Pretty classic delinquency. My life was nothing like that, but sure, some people just have issues.

But then he starts hinting at something darker. I think I texted something joking like “what, didja kill someone?” and he acted really ‘nervous’ and admitted it involved “taking a piece of someone” (paraphrasing, obvs). A physical piece? An emotional piece? My prevailing theory was someone’s prosthetic limb. Surely it wasn’t really murder, hahahaha. Ha ha. But eventually he told me... teeth.

The only proof of that I have of that is me teasing more later:

(He wrote posts about how great I was and would dramatically narrate the PAIN of writing them. I didn’t follow his blog at the time, so this was... very obviously a way to make sure I read them. I have shots of a few, but this post has enough digressions already.)

“Murder” has 162 CTRL+F matches in these logs, which actually seems low to me. Most of them come before this story. We talked about my serial killer characters, Tucker’s fantasies about being killed by them (I know, but I was used to people doing this already), and lots of horror movies and shows like Bates Motel and Dexter. We were so comfy with the subject that seconds before the story came up, we were talking about his hypothetical modus operandi.

VERY, VERY COMFY WITH THE SUBJECT.

And then of course, he has that classic Tucker Lightbulb Moment, like, “funny thing!-- This conversation reminds me of my dark, twisted past.”

Intrusive thoughts. Watch what he’s about to say he did because of intrusive thoughts. I don’t think he fully understands what that term means.

I don’t know if I’m more like a wide-eyed kid with a juice box, a mom telling him I’ll wuv him no matter what, or an overzealous drooly journalist. Back then, I had absolutely no fear. The internet was a beautiful place where I could read great or horrible things, enrich myself with other people’s articles and blog posts, and just... click away, and not have to engage with anyone on an emotional level. THIS... was like winning the Omegle lottery and chatting with Jeffrey Dahmer for a while. Even as I was reading this story come in line-by-line, my brain was screaming “holy crap fuck stay cool, this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, good thing I’m ready to ghost this messed-up dude when he runs out of stories.”

Which he has to do eventually, right? Nope. There was always a new one to string you along with.

So while we bonded over the fact that he trusted me with this confession he’d never made before (HUGE lie, check footnotes), this story actually backfired on him.

Because WHY WOULD YOU TELL SOMEONE YOU JUST WIG OUT AND HURT PEOPLE AT RANDOM? THAT YOU THOUGHT OF SOMEONE AS “PREY”? WORST CASE, IT’S TRUE. BEST CASE, IT’S WHAT YOU WRITE WHEN YOUR ONLY EXPERIENCE WITH MURDER IS... GOD, I EVEN THOUGHT PARTWAY THROUGH “THIS SOUNDS LIKE SOMETHING I READ ON DEVIANTART IN 2004”. But I decided this story was “not self-aggrandizing enough to be fake”. He adds this “pathetic” element to every story. It’s like a humblebrag, but for dark pasts one normally gives to their most goth Neopets.

Note that the guy getting his head bashed in is even more stereotypical than the guy from the bar fight, and the motive is just bare. He’s a prop, a cardboard standee Tucker flipped over. This story isn’t about a guy dying, it’s about Tucker, who conveniently wrestled with no horror or guilt at what he’d done, doesn’t feel haunted by taking a life or by being chased by the police or by the fact that he uncontrollably killed someone and could do it again, OR THAT I would tell someone with authority what he did. But no, the only emotion he apparently knows is “sweaty”.

It really felt like I was talking to a film character. A freshman film student-level one, at that. I had to convince myself these things were true, only because I couldn’t prove they weren’t, and I didn’t understand how he thought he was benefitting from these lies.

In retrospect, we think this version of the story was him trying to appeal on some level to my thing for evil characters. But he totally misunderstood that my focus is on charming, funny cartoon villains that like to break out in song, not “basically Johnny the Homicidal Maniac”.

So this story is scary as hell. People ask sometimes, “Why would you keep talking to a murderer?” Which is a fair question, but it implies that I would normally overlook a murder and become codependent on an obvious psychopath. Which, ew.

The thing was, he immediately went back to being a cutesy, relentlessly flirty guy worrying about nothing more serious than his day job and drawing furry commissions. Because... well, that’s what he really is. And the fact that I’d listened without saying “shut the hell up, freak” definitely endeared him to me further, so I got even MORE praise for being special and different and able to save his messy ass. And so the cycle of codependency continued, and we dug ourselves into a deeper hole.

He never really talked about being haunted by hurting another person, or worried that the police were onto him. He never wrestled with the fact that he could someday do this to someone he cared about. He didn’t even seem to feel guilty. He was about as nervous about this as I would be about stealing 20 dollars. The story was only made to give him faux pathos. That’s all.

I don’t think he’s hurt anyone without the help of a keyboard, honestly. Which, thank god.

To support that theory: there are OTHER versions of this story.

Memories are imperfect and tainted by emotion, but I saw enough crap like this that I believe the core of these testimonies are true. Individuals are designated by color.

These are from the convo where I realized my experience wasn’t unique:

And from talking to a friend, one he’d devalued while getting obsessed with me, but not the one mentioned in the "Fake Ask” post:

The theme of trains is apparently common.

“Anika Harlson” is a fake name from when he would be high school age. Not being able to use your legs-- CLASSIC teen fib.

Ending this on a silly note: He still tells people he’s a murderer. Last I heard, he was still not denying it when asked, from the safety of private chats to all of 4chan. He would rather tell the whole internet he’s a murderer than admit he lies sometimes. That’s, haha… that’s the complete opposite of what a murderer would do.

God, this is the most fantastic mess. It’s just really freaking interesting, too.

And I really want to thoroughly illustrate how this stuff happens, cos I wish someone had told me! If I do another post, I’d love to touch on how someone like this serially creates codependent relationships, and the idealization > devaluation process.

#tucker #RECEIPTS #twistedteeth #ghost oakes #murder most faux #did I write more jokes in this one than usual?#I guess taking it seriously doesn't help anybody #testimonials

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thestarsdescend · 5 years ago

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Dealing with #problematic things

In today’s social and political climate, there are increasing conversations about ethics and criticism. I am by far not the first person to ask: is it okay to like this thing even though the creator or the process of creating it can be or is offensive or exploitative? In some cases, it is nearly impossible to avoid. Many clothing companies outsource their labor in factories that are unsafe and may even involve child labor. Many food companies treat their animals poorly or produce massive amounts of waste. We can try to not support it by researching who we buy from and what services we use, but sometimes this can be impossible due to things such as money or availability. A huge portion of media is created with actors and actresses being victimized and the content of the media can often rely on harmful stereotypes and generalizations. I don’t know the solution. Me not buying products from companies that exploit their workers won’t stop it from happening. I do what I can via things like voting for people I believe will advocate for safe working environments and stronger penalties for breaking these codes.

However, it can sometimes seem impossible to even enjoy anything without being reminded of how it is #problematic. What I do know is that there are levels to this. A film that shows the hero as a straight white man defeating the enemy who just happens to be a person of color is objectively not as bad as a food company that mass produces meat by overfeeding their animals, keeping them in too-small enclosures, and giving them lots of steroids to make them bigger. Both are problematic, but there is a “lesser of two evils”. So where do we draw the line between what’s acceptable problematic and what’s unacceptable? Well, that will differ from person to person and subject to subject. Someone might say that nothing that is even remotely problematic is acceptable and that everything you consume must be produced ethically. To which I say… that’s going to be near impossible to accomplish without maintaining an ignorance of how the thing is produced.

I am going to give an example of something that I have seen complaints about: homophobia and Good Omens. Specifically, Neil Gaiman and the relationship between the character Aziraphale and Crowley in the novel and television series Good Omens. Warning for possible spoilers for the book and show.

Good Omens is a novel written by Sir Terry Prachett and Neil Gaiman and publish in May 1990. It centers around two characters: Aziraphale, an Angel, and Crowley, a demon, and their efforts to stop Armageddon from ending the world. In 2019 it was adapted into a TV series of the same name with Neil Gaiman as the writer and showrunner and released through Amazon Prime. The plot of the TV series is basically the same as the novel. Both have been very popular and have received critical praise. However, both have also received criticism involving homophobia, sexism, racism, and blasphemy. I am going to focus on the homophobia critique. The main points appear to be as follows:

Many fans believe that Aziraphale and Crowley are in love with each other.

No explicit text in the book nor dialogue in the show makes this canon.

Gay slurs are used in the book and a euphemism is used in the show.

All evidence of a romance is either subtext or via specifically the acting of the stars Michael Sheen and David Tennant.

Some have interpreted this as queerbaiting.

*Queerbaiting is when the creators of entertainment hint at a same sex relationship between two characters, but never depict this romance, in order to attract LGBT+ audience members while not alienating other more homophobic members.

Furthermore, Neil Gaiman has made statements on social media that he never intended for there to be a romantic relationship between these two characters, then later contradicted himself by stating he wrote the scripts for the show as a love story.

*Despite the plausible deniability Neil Gaiman has maintained regarding the phrase “love story”, for the purposes of this essay, we are going to consider it as a statement that he intended the show to involve a romantic relationship.

So, let’s unpack.

First, let’s look at the use of slurs. Gay slurs/euphemisms are used both in the novel and show. That is a fact. From what I noted, they are used in the dialogue of the characters rather than an impartial narrator. I am not excusing the use of slurs because “that’s how this person is characterized”. Still, characters who are homophobic can and do use slurs in works of fiction.

Second, no Aziraphale and Crowley never kiss. There is no scene where they admit their feelings to each other or even hold hands. The acting in the show very very strongly implies romantic feelings between these characters, but never is it made explicitly clear. Neil Gaiman has stated that he did not intend for the characters to end up together romantically in the novel or show, then later appeared to backtrack in regard to the show once a huge portion of the audience responded with: No. No, Mr. Gaiman. I believe they are in love and I believe you would have to be blind to not see it. Or words to that extent.

Now here is the part where the individual has to start really considering and questioning their stance in regard to this situation as well as contextualize the circumstances of its creation.

LGBT+ rights and representation has come to the forefront of ethical debate in recent years. Yes, there have been activists and movements for decades, but it has only just started to be prevalent in mainstream media and entertainment. It was definitely not considered as much in 1990 as it is today. Hell, in middle school I remember one pretty devastating insult being “Get away from me you freaky gay person!” and I was born after Good Omens was published. The general public did not have as much entertainment featuring same sex relationships as today. This sort of makes the lack of a romantic relationship in the novel appear reasonable and contextualized the use of slurs. This… isn’t great. But it’s not unusual.

This same argument cannot be used for the TV show.

While the TV show also does not make their relationship officially romantic, it is hard to deny that it appears that Aziraphale and Crowley’s relationship is more than platonic. The only thing I can really say is that Neil Gaiman probably did not know a same sex relationship would be acclaimed as much as it ended up being. It was almost thirty years since the book came out and he was probably unaware or unsure of the response.

Sigh.

Yes. Good Omens and Neil Gaiman are #problematic. Is Neil Gaiman homophobic? I can’t read the man’s mind, but I’m inclined to say no. The novel is a product of its time and people are capable of change. I personally know people who have said homophobic things in the past, but now are active supporters of LGBT+ rights. Neil Gaiman is not beyond change. Do I wish he had from the start said that the show would be a love story instead of after its popularity among LGBT+ members? Yes. Was he afraid of alienating some of the homophobic audience members? Possibly, but he also had God voiced by a woman and made Adam and Eve black, which alienated certain members of religious groups [insert petition here]. I do give him credit for that.

Additionally, representation in mainstream media is still a process that has not reached complete equality for all races, sexes, genders, and identities. Even though this show isn’t perfect representation, it is miles beyond previous dominating TV shows such as Sherlock and Supernatural. Yes. Maybe he and people from Amazon wanted to be #woke without committing to it, but it is still a rather progressive show that I would not have expected to get as much praise as it has.

And now I have to make some judgement calls on a person I have never met and certainly don’t know beyond what he has presented to the public. I think that Neil Gaiman is a good person. Is he perfect? No. Neither I nor anyone else I know is. But I believe he wrote Good Omens to entertain people and make them happy. And it does. It makes me happy. It makes my friends happy. It makes a lot of people I’ve seen online happy.

#just to say #this is just to say

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girlreviewsgirlmovies · 6 years ago

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Sierra Burgess is a Loser

This movie could have been so much better, and that hurts more than if it was just bad.

It opens with Sierra getting ready for the day, which is honestly so common in these types of movies it could be a trope. She has a moment where she compliments herself in the mirror in this bit which I think was well-placed seeing what comes next: we do see a single hint that maybe she’s not as confident as she’s about to seem for the next bit of the movie. We head off to school with her and meet the Plastics-- I know, I know, but that’s what I’m calling them for now, because it has that cliche trio of alpha bitch and two worker bees that is so darn common in teen movies these days. Veronica is shown to target Sierra right from the start, but then we come to Sierra and the movie’s first big “could have been good but wasn’t” aspect comes up.

Sierra is shown as quite confident in the face of Veronica’s bullying. She puts on a face like it doesn’t hurt her. I loved that! I found it so refreshing because so many movies in this genre show unpopular people defining themselves by the popular people. Despite that first interaction and what happens later, this bit of the movie establishes Sierra as not one of those characters. Veronica is an annoyance in her life, but not one that she ever seems actively hurt by. I loved this... right up until we get told by the movie later on that Sierra is not that person. Of course, just like Veronica, she can have her game-face, she can pretend things don’t hurt her... but the movie isn’t nearly as clear about what’s real for Sierra as it should be. They needed to pick a direction, and they didn’t. They could have shown Sierra confident in the face of her bullies but breaking down after, but nothing like this ever happens.

And this is a huge problem in light of how the movie progresses. Veronica gives a guy Sierra’s number, they text all night, they start to like each other, they call... I can only just buy this in light of the person Sierra was shown to be, even despite that first little bit of the movie, but only because we didn’t see the conversation and I told myself, “Okay, Sierra must have not realized he thought he was texting someone in particular right away.” Then she figures out it’s Veronica he’s texting, and things go a little wonky.

Sierra enlists Veronica to help her, and I think this is the strongest aspect of the movie. Actually, this middle bit with Veronica is almost worth the pain of the bad bits. I won’t talk about the arc in detail, but I will just say that there’s nothing that’s done wrong. There are places it could have gone for tell don’t show, and it didn’t. Veronica and Sierra start to have a wonderful friendship while tricking this guy and it’s adorable. They both make each other better. The only character development in the whole movie rests in these bits. If it weren’t for the romantic window dressing of the situation that pretends to be the movie’s focus, this could’ve been an awesome movie just based around how a situation like this brought these two girls together.

There’s a lot of little things in this bit that are so good to me, mostly between the girls. Veronica’s home life was given the exact treatment I think it needed, and just un-cliche enough that it felt fresh (she’s not the first popular girl from a broken home but the trend does tend towards rich popular kids, especially since Mean Girls), and her mother is shown as living vicariously through her daughters’ youth in a way that really criticizes “beauty before brains” mindset as coming from parents raising their kids wrong. I dunno, I just really think this middle bit is the strongest part of the movie.

Eventually, Sierra starts calling Veronica “Ronnie”, it’s very sweet. They take lots of selfies, confess things to each other... this is the kind of content I really come to girly movies for, not the romance, not really.

And then we come to another problematic aspect of the movie: the kiss scene. I’ll be honest, I fast-forwarded through this bit because it was just so painful to watch. I haven’t mentioned this yet, but the catfishing came to a level where Veronica was faking a date with Sierra in the wings giving her lines, there’s a few good moments for their friendship where Veronica says that Jamie would like her Sierra and that Sierra’s presence in her life has made her finally consider her own future properly and says that Sierra should be a singer... and eventually Jamie leans in for a kiss. Instead of dealing with the catfishing problem-- we all knew that wasn’t going to happen-- the lines of consent are crossed and Ronnie asks Jamie to close his eyes, and Sierra kisses him. He tries to open them, and she shoves her hand on his face and tells him to keep them closed-- this was very uncomfortable and violent imo. Girl on guy consent-crossing is not any better than the opposite. I should have seen it coming with the catfish theme and the way things were progressing but I was not ready for such a violation from our “hero”. This is the first bit where I felt I was losing my suspension of disbelief regarding her being the “hero” of this story. Yes, even after all the catfishing, I was still with it. The circumstances were strange, but I could see this happening... you know how a lie gets bigger and bigger as you maintain it, that’s how I felt Sierra had progressed into this catfishing, and that was somewhat forgivable. I was on board for redemption for the bad things she was doing, but here I thought, “No. No way.”

Then we come to this party, Sierra gets drunk blah blah, Ronnie is told not to hang out with her blah blah... there’s this bit where Ronnie’s college boyfriend who she’s been studying to impress shows up. I definetly make a squeaking noise of excitement when he said, “I saw your post” and she just lit up and said “The Hamlet one?” Despite the fact her studying was driven out of impressing him, honestly I think that line sounded a whole lot like she was proud of herself for making that progress, that this is something she’s started to enjoy. Her character development is A+ here. Anyways, the guy takes advantage of her naiivity to sleep with her and dumps her over DM the next day, and Ronnie goes to Sierra for comfort (awww!)...

Eventually, we come to the third-act misunderstanding that everyone saw coming where the situation comes to a head. Well, I say everyone saw coming: everyone saw there would be a third-act misunderstanding, but the direction it takes manages to be both out of nowhere and unsurprising at the same time. The homecoming game (I assume) happens, Sierra is there with marching band, Veronica is here to be a cheerleader, and Jamie is there as the opposing team’s quarterback. Jamie obviously kisses Veronica when he sees her, she pushes him away but only after Sierra who was watching unbeknownst to them pushes Jamie away...

... and Sierra, who has shown very little cruel tendencies up to this point (besides the whole consent issue), decides to humiliate Veronica in front of everyone by hacking into her social media and showing the whole school Veronica got broken up with over DM. Nevermind the fact this would not be the social murder the movie portrays it as-- just humiliating for Veronica but I don’t think anyone else would have noticed... in the fallout, the fact that Veronica and Sierra have been playing with him is revealed to Jamie, and Veronica has this bit where she says to Sierra “you think I’m mean but you should look in a mirror” which seems to come from an earlier form of the script or something because it’s basically a rewording of Mean Girls’ “You Cady are a mean girl” and no movie attempting that theme will ever be as striking as the masterwork so they should stop trying. Besides the rip-offiness of it, it just doesn’t fit. The only mean thing Sierra has really done is the catfishing and the bad touch kiss, and she’s never really shown to hate Veronica for being mean and at this point they’ve been legitimate friends for half the movie. Where did Sierra’s cruelty come from?? Why is it getting this response? This scene just doesn’t fit the movie at all. It was like I’d switched channels into Mean Girls 2 or something, but I hadn’t.

And then she gets home and snaps at her parents for being beautiful in a move that has no previous indication throughout the movie she feels this way. This movie needs to know the difference between showing and telling, because in the climax, it tells us one thing about the characters even though it’s shown us another for 50 minutes or so.

And then comes my next complaint: Sierra writes her song (which was good, don’t get me wrong, if its use was terrible) and everyone suddenly goes “oh poor sierra she deserves forgiveness and a happy ending because her life is just so hard because she’s so ugly” (seriously, the song is about how she’s not conventionally beautiful and how hard that is for her and everyone just forgives her for playing with their lives), and gets off scott free. It wasn’t even a proper apology! Jamie takes her to the prom because Veronica explains on her behalf, and roll credits.

There are a few other miscellaneous complaints-- we have a gay black best friend (yeah, couldn’t just chose one stereotypical minority type of best friend for their one-dimensional support character!), for some reason Stanford is implied to not be interested in a white legacy girl who has near perfect SAT scores and parents with money to pay her tuition (like, I know maybe she wouldn’t get a scholarship with her amount of community involvement but seriously her dad is famous and a Stanford graduate, she just needs the minimal submission requirement and she’d fucking get in!) And I was also not impressed by the whole “why does everyone think I’m a lesbian” joke. Like... it just... wasn’t funny... and they hit it three or four times. She never does anything lesbian-y and I was sitting here like, “Are you saying lesbians are unattractive girls?”??? A few other details here and there in dialogue and the like were weaker too.

I did laugh so hard I spilled a glass of water over when she signed her name is “Shit Pizza” though. So there’s that.

There were so many individual aspects of this movie that I just loved, but as a whole it just didn’t work together. In my opinion, the whole movie needed refocusing to go from passable to actually good. Instead of the third-act misunderstanding going the way it did, I think the movie could have been saved by shifting the focus. Use the catfishing as a tool to connect the two girls and write a friendship plot. Let Sierra face the consequences of playing around with Jamie and have him not be interested in her because she hurt him, and let the real prize be the friendship she made along the way. And remove the whole “Sierra betrays Ronnie” bit because it came out of nowhere, have it be a more realistic confrontation between them for the kiss that doesn’t involve such an uncharacteristic behaviour, remove the Mean Girls shit, and then end on Ronnie and Sierra going stag together to homecoming. Or maybe turn it into a romance between them, because god knows we need more LGBTQA+ romances in film. Doing something that like that and doing another pass of the script for making sure what they show matches up with what they tell could have saved this movie.

But they didn’t, so it hurts to know that they almost made a good story but fell just short of doing anything truly noteworthy. Overall, the content was basically passable, but there were some problematic points that I think didn’t belong and the ending fell flat.

#sierra burgess is a loser #teen movies #romcoms #chick flicks #girl reviews girl movies #netflix movies #director: ian samuels #third-act misunderstandings #asshole main characters #plastics #bechdel test pass #ruling: passable but problematic

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ylla · 8 years ago

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Friday Night Gurus - Chapter 3

Series: JJBA Ships: josuyasu, koichi/yukako (others will eventually happen too, but im tagging as i go) Tags: au where theyre famous, modern au, pining, recreational drug use (smoking that wacky tabaccy), some angst in this one lads Rating: M (eventually there will be sex, so that rating will keep climbing)

AO3 link

i have never not been ready to be murdered by my own two hands.

“Oh fuck,” Josuke moaned, white knuckling his kitchen counter as he was thrust into over and over again. Rough hands were gripping his hips hard enough to leave bruises, and by God, Josuke hoped they did. He had always been way too loud during anything remotely sexual, and right now was no exception. The right spot was hit, Josuke felt like electricity was passing through his body, “God, right there, I’m close—“

One of the hands on his hip reached up for his hair, pulling up him with a gentle, yet firm grip, causing him to arch his back against the person behind him.

A mouth pressed against his ear, breath hot and voice harsh, “Beg me.”

“Please, please, please let me cum, please—“

Josuke’s earlobe got caught between teeth, while the hand tugging on his hair moved to his dick, roughly jerking him off. He was seeing stars, his voice going up a few octaves as he neared the edge, “Fuckfuckfuckfuck.” Josuke’s eyes rolled into the back of his head, inhaling sharply as he started to orgasm, “Oh fuck, Oku—“

“PEOPLE’S ELBOOOOW.”

Josuke woke up to a sudden, crushing elbow to his gut, shrieking in a totally manly way. It was completely dark in his room, but he could make out the black outline of a hulking man rolling around on his bed, snorting like the piggy bitch he was. “Man, I wish I would have turned on the light so I could have seen your face,” the big asshole wheezed, his laugh almost coming out in a stereotypical French ‘honhonhon’.

“JEAN PIERRE POLNAREFF, I’M GONNA LITERALLY MURDER YOU,” Josuke roared, struggling to sit up to push Polnareff’s muscly ass off of him.

Polnareff cackled like a witch, jumping up before Josuke could start punching him, “Up and at them, Josuke. It’s time for our run. I’ll be waiting downstairs.”

After Polnareff retreated, Josuke flopped back down, heart still racing. Waiting for his heart rate to return to normal, he grabbed his phone to check the time. It was 6 o’clock in the godforsaken morning. He regretted many things. He regretted giving Polnareff a key to his house. He especially regretted the dream he woke up from and the puddle of cum that had pooled in his underwear.

He put his pillow over his face and screamed. What a fuckin’ mess.

Three hours later, at a much more acceptable time to be awake, Josuke found himself sleepily watching Pol sashay around his kitchen while making omelets. Polnareff was a nutritionist, gym owner, fitness model, and Josuke’s personal trainer. He’d met Polnareff when he was introduced to his father’s side of the family so many years ago; he had been Jotaro’s roommate in college, and Holly, Josuke’s sister, basically considered Pol to be a second son (much to Jotaro’s chagrin and Polnareff’s delight). So not only did Polnareff wake him up at an ungodly hour twice a week, he got to nag and annoy Josuke at all other times as well.

“I have to say, I’m surprised that I didn’t see your friend in there with you this morning. You two are together a lot.”

Polnareff was keeping his tone casual, but Josuke knew exactly where this was headed, “Me and Oku don’t hang out all the time—“

“Josuke, this is the first morning in almost three months that I have walked into your room to wake you up and didn’t see him,” Polnareff pointed a spatula at him, “Can’t argue with the facts.”

He couldn’t, and Josuke despised it.

Ever since the first night he came over, Okuyasu had kept his word about making sure Josuke wasn’t lonely. Between Arrowhead slowing down their activities between their last tour and recording their next album, and Josuke taking a yearlong vacation, they both found themselves with a lot of free time. So, Okuyasu was stayed the night at least three or four times a week. They got high, played videogames, watched stupid movies, took late night drives together, ate food that was terrible for them. Slept in the same bed, and basically cuddled every night they watched a movie together. You know, normal friend stuff.

People like Okuyasu were so rare in Josuke’s life. He never put him on a pedestal like Josuke was some untouchable god or free ticket to fame. He was so grateful to have a friend that saw past all of his fame and fortune, and saw him as he was: just Josuke. It was wonderful and so refreshing.

However, there was one caveat.

Josuke had found himself head over heels in love with Okuyasu, and had to physically restrain himself from making any moves onto his friend. The better he got to know him, the worse it became. He had a sharp ache in his chest whenever he thought about his feelings, and his brain shrieked KISS HIM KISS HIM KISS HIM anytime Oku’s face got remotely near his, or whenever Oku would look at him with a shy smile, or even when Okuyasu cried over something like shelter animals or sad movies. It was all so endearing and Josuke couldn’t get enough of him. For all his flirtations, and for all of the content in his songs that implied that Josuke was some kind of suave, smooth talker, he couldn’t bring himself to risk the first real friendship he’d had in years.

“So what? We hang out a lot, it’s not a big deal,” Josuke forced his voice to remain neutral, “Didn’t you use to bitch and moan at me about never hanging out with anyone besides you assholes, Jolyne, and Koichi?”

“Ignoring your hurtful words, yes I did complain,” Polnareff flipped both omelets onto separate plates; he placed on in front of Josuke and then sat across in the table from him, resting his chin on the top of his water bottle, “But that’s not my point.”

“Then what is?” Josuke arched an eyebrow at him, daring Polnareff to say what he was thinking.

Polnareff was quiet for a few moments before answering, “You should tell him that you’re in love with him.”

Of course Polnareff knew how Josuke felt. He had been the one who had barged in on Josuke lovingly pushing stray hairs out of Okuyasu’s face while he slept one morning. Josuke blurted out everything in a panic while they went for their run, begging him to not speak of it to anyone, especially Okuyasu.

“Absolutely not,” Josuke said flatly.

“You are fucking up, my friend, but it’s your decision,” Polnareff sat up straight and pointed at the omelet in front of him, “Eat that before it gets cold.”

The rest of the conversation was Polnareff talking about some kind of nonsense, Josuke was only paying half-attention because he was still really tired, hungry, and slightly irritated at the earlier conversation. Yeah, like it was so easy to tell your best friend that he was hot and you wanted to kiss him all over, and you were in love with him, haha, full homo bro—

Josuke was pulled out his thoughts to the sound of his text notification going off. His heart did some weird somersault when he saw that Okuyasu had texted him (Josuke finally got his number when Oku put it in his phone for him):

Oku: mornin dude :D

Oku: u doin anythin tonight?

Josuke: nah I aint got anything going on, why?

Oku: were playin a secret show at echoes bar tonight. u wanna come?

He wants me to come see him play, Josuke wheezed inwardly. He responded immediately:

Josuke: HELL YES I DO

Oku: :D hell yeah dude

Oku: i think yukako is gonna invite koichi too, so ill let hazamada kno that yall are gonna be there. he’ll have ur backstages passes ready.

Oku: also word to the wise, wear shorts and a tanktop. the bar gets super hot during shows. ull die in anything else

The rest of their texts were directions, Josuke saying he was excited, and an abundance of smiley face emotes from Okuyasu.

“Oi! Josuke! Stop ignoring me!”

“Oh shit, sorry dude,” Josuke had completely forgotten Polnareff was there, “Did you ask me something?”

Polnareff pouted, “You are so rude to me. I was asking you if you wanted to get dinner with me, Noriaki, and Jolyne tonight. Jotaro is still out in the field and Mo is doing some college thing, so it’ll just be the four of us.”

Josuke couldn’t stop himself from breaking out into a huge grin, “Sorry, I got plans tonight.”

The upside to having a signature look was that if Josuke had his hair down or in a ponytail, no one recognized him. So when he stood in the very back of Echoes with Koichi, trying to not get trampled by the massive crowd, no one bothered him.

Not that they would’ve anyways. What was happening on stage was infinitely more interesting.

The music was so loud, Josuke could feel it vibrate into his chest. His ears were starting to ring a little, but he didn’t care. Oku’s voice was amazing when he recorded in a studio, but listening to him live was almost like an out of body experience. His voice just crashed over him like the tide, and Josuke wanted it to sweep him out to sea.

Oku hadn’t been lying when he said the club got too hot; all four members of Arrowhead were various states of undress. Josuke could only see half of Yuuya, but he looked like he was naked behind his drum kit. Yukako had her hair up in a high ponytail, wearing ass eating shorts and a cutoff tank top. Keicho was shirtless and in shorts, hair down out of his normal…whatever he had going on there. Oku was dressed more or less the same, but the difference was Okuyasu was infinitely more attractive. Josuke could see the band of his boxer briefs peak up over the waist of his shorts, and licked his lips unconsciously.

Okuyasu was sweaty, loose hairs from his ponytail were falling his face, and looked like he was having a blast, giving all he had and then some. Josuke didn’t think it could’ve been possible, but he fell more in love with him as he watched. All he wanted was to find out what skin that stretched over his hip bones tasted like.

“Koichi, I’m gay.” Josuke moaned.

“What did you say? I can’t hear you,” Koichi called back.

“I said I’m gay!”

Koichi just gave him a very confused look, clearly not understanding what he was saying.

“I’M GAY!” Josuke hollered, grabbing Koichi by the shoulders and shaking him for emphasis.

“Agh! I get it, I get it! Stop!!!”

Yukako noticed them first. After they finished a song, and was in the process of swapping guitars out, Yukako grabbed Okuyasu by the bicep and whispered in his ear. He looked over to the corner Josuke and Koichi were in, and his face lit like the sun. He waved excitedly, which Josuke couldn’t help but wave back, matching his enthusiasm and smile. Okuyasu walked over to a short, sallow looking dude and pointed over towards them. A few minutes later, the roadie appeared beside them, “Here’s your passes, follow me.”

The backstage was kind of cramped, filled with at least a dozen good looking women. Josuke tried to stand away from them, half afraid of being recognized and half wanting to avoid hearing about which band members they wanted to fuck.

When the show ended, the groupies rushed at the bandmembers as they filed off stage. Yukako lips curled into a snarl and elbowed her way over to Koichi; when in front of him, the ice melted and she gave him a sweet smile before planting a kiss on his lips. Koichi froze momentarily before returning the smooch. Josuke had asked Koichi a few weeks ago what was up with him and Yukako. All he got in response was a shrug and a “We’re dating??”

Keicho and Yuuya were wrapped up in all the attention from the groupies, who were fawning over all over them (Yuuya wasn’t naked, and Josuke thanked his lucky stars he didn’t have to see Yuuya’s penis). Girls were too busy playing with Keicho’s hair and rubbing on Yuuya to notice that Okuyasu had quietly slipped in behind them. Good, Josuke sighed with relief, He’ll keep it lowkey.

Which he immediately ruined by shouting, “JOSUKE!” and pounding over to him, nearly knocking Josuke off of his feet with a hug, “YOU CAME!”

Okuyasu was too warm and sweaty, and if there was a god, he would prevent Okuyasu from feeling how hard Josuke was getting from feeling his bare chest press against him. Josuke returned the hug with ferocity, “Of course I did, I said I would.” He pulled back to look Okuyasu in the face, and also prevent his errant boner from rubbing up against him. “It were fantastic, I’m so blown away! You’re amazing, Okuyasu.” Josuke beamed at him, and the tears that filled Okuyasu’s eyes made his stomach flutter.

“You mean that?” he croaked.

“Yeah!”

“Pinky promise?”

Josuke hooked his pinky with Okuyasu’s, “Pinky promise.”

Okuyasu gave him a watery smile before hugging him again, “Thanks. That means a lot, coming from you,” Oku whispered against his shoulder.

If there wasn’t a million pairs of eyes on him, Josuke would have said ‘fuck it’ and kissed Okuyasu right then and there, but he was too chicken. “You’re welcome, Oku,” Josuke pulled away again, “Go shower and then we’ll get out of here.”

“Oh shit,” Okuyasu rubbed the back his neck, looking sheepish, “Sorry, I got like super sweaty and gross.”

Josuke gave him a friendly punch in the arm, “S’fine dude, I don’t care. I’m gonna go smoke, so just come outside when you’re done.” Okuyasu made an assenting noise before jogging off to go shower. Pointedly ignoring Yuuya’s waggling eyebrows and some indecipherable look from Keicho, Josuke swiveled on his heels and left.

It was late summer, but the air felt a 1000x times cooler than it did inside. Josuke had been enjoying his few minutes of peace and quiet while he sat the backdoor’s staircase when he heard someone walk out behind him. He almost greeted Okuyasu, but an unfamiliar voice spoke.

“Why are you here?”

That was not Okuyasu.

Josuke turned to find a still shirtless Keicho peering down at him, hair hanging in his face, unlit cigarette in his hand. “Oku invited me,” Josuke replied, not liking the look on Keicho’s face.

“Why?”

What fuckin’ kind of question is that?? “Because we’re friends? And I told him I wanted to see you guys perform sometime?”

Keicho lit his cigarette and took a drag, his eyes never leaving Josuke’s, “Why?”

Josuke was about .3 seconds away from losing his temper, “Why what?? What the fuck are you asking me, dude??”

“Why are you friends with him?”

It was a huge effort to not start shrieking into the night, “Because he’s a cool guy? And funny? And I enjoy his company? What fucking kind of question is that?” Josuke snubbed out his cigarette, drawing himself up to full height, “What exactly are you trying to say here?”

“Okuyasu doesn’t have friends, and I don’t trust you,” Keicho responded coldly, “I wanna know what you’re after.”

“I’m just after his friendship, you clown!” Josuke exclaimed, rapidly losing his patience, “Is that so fuckin’ hard to believe??”

Before Keicho could retort, the door banged open. “Keicho, you got girls here who wanna inflict terrible things upon your penis, you better get in here and give ‘em what they want,” Yuuya grinned, leaning against the door frame. Purple bruises marred his neck and Josuke could hear whining from behind him.

Without another word to Josuke, Keicho dropped his cigarette, ground it out with his heel, and shouldered past Yuuya. The door swung closed, and Josuke exploded, “What the fuck is his deal??”

Yuuya shrugged, “That’s just Keicho.”

Josuke pointed at Yuuya, “No, that’s just being a cock goblin. I’ve never done anything to that guy, why’s he being such a dickhead??”

“I’ve known Keicho and Okuyasu since I was about 12,” Yuuya started, “There’s a lot of reasons why they’re both the way they are. Good or bad, right or wrong.” He kicked an empty cigarette pack off of the stairs, “Keicho’s got this thing about controlling things and people,” Yuuya took a seat on the top step, “Oku being with you all the time prevents Keicho from having his brother under his thumb.”

“With the way Oku talks about him, it sounds like Keicho fuckin’ hates him.”

Yuuya shrugged again, “Keicho makes it a point to be an absolute bastard to Oku most of the time. Though, he did take a knife to the gut when Akira tried to stab Okuyasu, so that’s something.”

Josuke was thoroughly confused, “Why?”

“Obligation to their mom, I imagine. Keicho got really drunk once and told me that before she died, she made him promise that he would always look out for Okuyasu. So he does, in some way or another.” Yuuya sprung up to his feet, “I will say this, Josuke…it’s nice that Okuyasu’s got a friend not linked to his brother in one way or another. Good for him, ya? But,” He stared Josuke down, all friendliness gone, “I’m pretty perceptive on how you feel, so no need to try and deny it to me. It’s obvious to everyone save for Okuyasu himself and probably Keicho. So, this is a warning: Don’t hurt Oku, or I will find you and whoop your ass. We clear?”

I rather die than hurt him. “Crystal.”

Before either of them could say anything else, Okuyasu walked out of the backdoor with a bruised right cheek, bloody knuckles, and a nose dripping red, “Ready to bounce?”

“Dude, super fuck your brother.”

Okuyasu sat in Josuke’s kitchen while Josuke did his best to doctor him up. He waved a hand, “S’fine, we do this sometimes. He gets too mouthy and I gotta stand my ground,” Okuyasu hissed when Josuke sprayed antiseptic on his oozing knuckles.

“You still haven’t told me what he said.”

As he rarely did, Okuyasu evaded the question, “S’not important. What matters is that I shut ‘em up and he won’t be running that big, stupid mouth of his for a while.”

According to Oku, Keicho walked away from that scuffle with a split lip, black eyes, and probably bruises all over his chest. Not that would’ve deterred the groupies from trying to touch his dick anyways, Okuyasu had theorized on the way to Josuke’s house (Josuke had insisted on driving and went extra slow in fear that he would fuck up Oku’s baby), so Keicho couldn’t be too sore at him for long.

Instead of pushing the matter any further, Josuke took to wrapping Oku’s knuckles, “Tell me if I’m not doing this right.”

“Wrap it a little tighter, and you’ll be aces.”

After he finished, Josuke got up and took an ice gel pack out of his fridge. Thank God Polnareff had insisted he buy one a few months ago, “I’ve been in a fair amount of fights, but that’s the first time I’ve ever had to bandage someone else’s hands.”

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” Okuyasu flexed his fingers, pleased with how the bandages felt, “You did good kid, I used to wrap ‘em up like this when I did bare knuckle boxing matches.”

Josuke walked back over to him, cold compress wrapped in a dishtowel, “You used to box?”

Okuyasu winced as Josuke pressed it to his right cheek, “Yeah, I did underground fights for money. Helped rent out the studio when we recorded our first demo.”

“That’s unsurprising,” Josuke sat on the edge of his table so he could hold the pack to Oku’s face without getting too tired, “You still box?”

“Nah, not really. When I hit the gym, I just beat on the punching bag instead. Keicho’s good practice too,” he snorted. Josuke rolled his eyes; Okuyasu yawned and then gave him a lazy smile, “Josuke, why am I so sleepy right now?”

Josuke peered down at him, eyebrows raised, “Oh, I don’t know. Could it have been the fact that you just played a show in a cramped, hot bar, and then got into a fist fight with your older brother?”

“You may be onto something, boss.” Okuyasu exhaled, closing his eyes and pressing his face slightly into the cold pack. After a few minutes of quiet, he spoke softly, “I know I said this earlier, but m’really glad you came tonight…meant a lot to me…I ain’t never had a friend who actually cared enough to come to a show jus’ for me.” Okuyasu raised his bandaged right hand and placed it over the hand that held the compress to his face, rubbing circles into the skin, “Thanks.”

Josuke does the stupidest thing he has ever done in his entire 24 years of living: he leans over and kisses Okuyasu right on the mouth.

It feels like time stopped before Josuke pulls away. Okuyasu’s eyes are wide open, face glowing red like he has a sunburn. He stands up, startled, “I—I gotta go, I-“ he’s tripping over himself, the chair, and hightails it out of the front door.

Josuke’s brain takes a minute to grind back into motion, and he runs after Oku, “Wait! Dude I’m—“

By the time he gets outside, he can make out Oku’s taillights buzzing down the road.

He stands on his front porch for a long time, staring out into the street, hoping, begging to see Oku’s car return. For him to jump out of his car and holler, “IT’S JUST A PRANK, BRO” before bounding up the steps to return Josuke’s kiss with gusto.

Rain starts falling, and Josuke remains rooted the spot. Dimly, he registers that he is now soaked to the bone, and Okuyasu was not coming back. He did it. He ruined his friendship, because he couldn’t fucking help himself. He couldn’t just be satisfied with how things were.

In a numb haze, Josuke walks back inside, closing the door and locking it behind him with a soft click. He turns the shower on the hottest setting he could stand, sits in the floor as hot water pours all over him, and just trembles.

When the water runs cold, he finally steps out. Mechanically, Josuke pulled on some old sweats and his favorite t-shirt. He can’t bear to look at his bed, let alone sleep in it, knowing that it was bound to smell like Okuyasu, and that was something he couldn’t even begin to handle.

The couch it was. Josuke checked his phone, hoping to have missed a call or text from Oku, but nothing greeted him; he turned it off and threw it across the room. Curled up under a blanket, he listened to the rain pelt the windows, and finally allowed himself to cry.

Something was banging against the front door.

Josuke jerked awake, feeling awful. It took a few seconds for his brain to process where he was, and when he remembered, he had to quickly wipe his tears. He had to keep it together.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Josuke mumbled to no one, cocooning himself in his blanket. The banging was incessant; Josuke figured it was a drunk Tamami who had forgotten his key to Josuke’s front door back at his apartment. It was something that occurred more regularly than it should. As he passed the entrance to the kitchen, the oven’s clock blared the time: 3:24 am. He was going to murder whoever it was.

He unlocked the front door and jerked it open, ready to snarl something at whomever made the mistake of waking him up, when he came face to face with Okuyasu.

Oku looked fucking awful. Soaked to the bone with chattering teeth, red-rimmed puffy eyes; it made Josuke die a little on the inside to see him in such a sorry state, “Jesus Christ Oku, how long have you been out here??” Josuke reached to pull him inside, but Okuyasu smacked his hand away. Tears threatened, and anger rose up inside him like bile, “Why did you come back?” he asked, placing his head into his hands so Okuyasu couldn’t see his face. After what feels like an eternity stretches on, Josuke half-contemplates just slamming the door closed, so Okuyasu would be spared the trouble of having to devastate Josuke anymore.

“Kiss me again.”

Slowly, Josuke lowered his hands to look Oku in the face. He could see that Okuyasu was crying, tears running hot down his scared face. “I’m sorry for leavin’, I’m sorry for runnin’. I’m a fuckin’ idiot fool,” the words burst out of Okuyasu like a dam had broken, “You’re the most perfect thing on this stupid planet, I’ve been crazy over you ever since we first met. I didn’t know if you were makin’ fun of me or somethin’ when you kissed me, so I got scared and ran, but I just ended up making you upset, which is—“ His breath started hitching and he was crying even harder, “The last thing— I ever w-wanna do is hurt y-y-you. Y-you m-mean everyth-thing to me.”

Josuke also had tears running down his face; he pulled Oku into a tight hug and ran his fingers through his hair, shushing him softly, “It’s okay, don’t cry.”

“I’m sorry,” he wailed, face buried into Josuke’s neck, “Please forgive me, I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

“I forgive you, it’s okay. You came back.”

“It’s not okay,” Okuyasu pulled himself away to look Josuke in the eyes, “I hurt you.” Hesitantly, he wiped the tears off of Josuke’s face. Josuke couldn’t stop himself anymore; he pressed his lips against Okuyasu’s. This time, his kiss was returned enthusiastically, and it made Josuke’s very soul sing. Taking great care to not trip over something, Josuke lead Okuyasu into the house without breaking their kiss, closing the door behind him. Josuke couldn’t get enough of how Okuyasu tasted; the kisses were sweet, chaste, and everything Josuke imagined it would be like.

“Do you wanna stay the night?” Josuke murmured against Oku’s lips.

“Yeah, if that’s okay with you.”

Josuke pulled away and kissed the tip of Okuyasu’s nose, took his hand, and led him upstairs.

After Okuyasu’s quick shower, they found themselves tangled up in each other’s limbs, kissing just as slow and gently as before. “Hey Josuke,” Okuyasu’s whispered, voice raspy.

“Yeah?”

“M’really tired and stuff,” Oku stifled a yawn, “so I dunno if we should talk about this now or—“

Josuke brushed a thumb across Oku’s cheek, “I think we should wait until tomorrow morning, after we get some sleep. Okay?” He pressed a kiss onto Okuyasu’s forehead, which turns warm underneath his lips.

“’Kay,” he mumbled, pressing his hot face into Josuke’s neck, “Uhm, I do got one question though, and I don’t wanna wait to ask.”

Josuke pulled back to look him in the face, “Yeah, what’s up?”

Okuyasu was blood red, looking rather meek. “Are we boyfriends now?” he asked softly, as if he scared to hear a rejection.

Butterflies had taken up permanent residence in Josuke’s stomach, and it was taking everything in him to not start wiggling around like an excited puppy, “Do you want us to be boyfriends?”

He got an enthusiastic nod in reply; Oku was too shy to say it out loud, but he did grab one of Josuke’s hands so he could kiss his knuckles.

A grin spread across Josuke’s face, “I guess that makes us boyfriends then.”

The smile that lit up Okuyasu’s face would be one that Josuke wanted tattooed to the inside of his mind, so he could remember it forever.

The slow, lazy kisses they traded relaxed him enough that sleep was moments away. Faintly, before succumbing, Josuke was certain he heard “I love you” whispered into his ear.

#josuke higashikata #okuyasu nijimura #josuyasu #josuke x okuyasu #jjba

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mcdowellvelling3-blog · 6 years ago

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uwp01 · 7 years ago

Text

Literacy Narrative Draft 2

Cover Memo

Strengths:

I think some of my strengths include: good organization/format, good flow, decent blog conventions, clear main point.

Weaknesses:

I feel like my post is too essay-like and not personal enough. When reading others posts I could tell that theirs felt more personal and more engaging with their audience and realized that mine was not like that. I also feel like I’m not following the blog conventions much other that using a few pictures and breaking up the text into smaller paragraphs. I also didn’t have a hook in my first draft and I feel like the hook I added is very out of pocket.

Summary of feedback and revisions:

My peer reviewers told me that I had good flow, a clear main point, and good organization and format. Their main concern was that I had stiff writing and it needed to be more personal and expressive. To revise, I tried to incorporate more emotions related to the events that I described as well as made some diction and syntax changes to make it sound less formal and more casual.

Questions/comments/concerns:

What can I do to make the post look more like a blog post and less like an essay? How do I make my writing feel more personal and engaging with the audience? What can I add? Where? I am concerned that my essay doesn’t fit (or barely fits) the prompt that was given because I talk about someone who was important to my literacy development but in a negative way rather than a positive one.

My Literacy Background

What’s the deal with writing anyways? I hate it. Maybe I don’t hate it, but I extremely dislike it. I’ve never quite understood how to make my writing “good” or “better” so I’ve always found it super frustrating. Why do I need to take so many writing-based courses when I’m planning to pursue a STEM career anyways?

All my academic life, I’ve never particularly enjoyed English or writing classes. They’ve always been the classes that I was required to take or the class that everyone else took which inclined me to take them too. I’ve never been particularly bad at writing - I was always able to get something down on paper, turn it in, and get a relatively good grade on - but I never enjoyed it, either. I’ve always been envious of people who were able to crank out well-written, sophisticated essays like it was as easy as riding a bicycle.

Throughout my academic writing career, I learned - just as everyone else did - the typical formula for writing an essay. An introduction with a thesis, three body paragraphs to explain your thesis, and a conclusion to sum it all up is the method that stuck in my mind. Just like everyone else did, I learned and improved my syntax, grammar, and vocabulary. Writing was always the thing I had to get through and not the thing I was actually interested in pursuing or getting better at.

I’ve always felt that I’ve been an average, standard, textbook writer. Nothing more, nothing less. I’ve always done as much as it takes to get by. To this day, I still don’t know how to write a good intro and conclusion paragraph, how to tell if my essay “well written” or not, how to properly formulate an essay so that it has “good flow”, how to write a draft that’s actually a draft and not the final product I turn in, and many other things that comes with being a “good” writer.

There was never a teacher or person who made a huge positive impact on how I view writing and literacy. Never a person I’ve greatly admired because they drastically changed my perspective from disliking writing to liking it. And never someone I could honestly say, “after taking that class, I’m a changed person.” With that in mind, there was a teacher that I had in high school who impacted my literacy development; however, not in a particularly good way.

Mr. Campbell’s AP Lang Class

My teacher, Mr. Campbell, was one of my favorite high school teachers to this day. He was young at heart and did not conform to the standard teacher stereotype that was all about business, grades, and lesson plans. We often took class time to talk about current events and listen to him tell stories about his personal life.

Mr. Campbell was also known for having the highest amount of students to pass the AP Lang exam out of all the other teachers at my school. After being in his class for the year, I understood why.

Campbell’s method to getting his students on a passing route for the AP Lang exam involved two things: to capitalize on improving his student’s ability to write a good rhetorical analysis essay - the essay that students statistically struggle with the most on the exam; and to touch up on, but not focus heavily, on other aspects of the exam such as the multiple choice section and the other two essays. Since I wanted to do well on the test, I was super excited and glad that I was in his class.

However, because of the heavy focus on the rhetorical analysis essay, I became very mechanical in my writing style by the end of the year. What I mean by that is that he ingrained a very formatted essay structure which lead me to never stray from it.

We were constantly reading articles, watching videos, analyzing them, and filling out worksheets he created that helped guide us to writing a rhetorical analysis essay. This worksheet required us to find a thesis using a fill-in-the-blank thesis sentence maker, three rhetorical devices, three examples and elaborations of each device, and to conclude how the rhetorical devices used by the author affected the audience to help portray the author’s thesis.

At first, this may seem like a good way to help someone get a lot better at approaching this type of essay. While this it was useful in preparing for the exam, I realized that I didn’t learn how to “compose english” as the course title implies, but rather I learned how to pass an exam which proved to be detrimental to my later writing experiences.

My Literacy Reflection

Although the intense focus on becoming a better rhetorical analysis writer was helpful to me at the time, I have found that it caused me to be stuck in this specific essay style that became my only writing style. Writing became so mundane to me that I dreaded writing more than I already did before because it became something that I had to drag myself through and get done for a grade instead of an opportunity to freely express my thoughts onto paper.

As much as I appreciated and enjoyed Mr. Campbell’s class, I can’t deny that he caused me to conform to writing mechanical, structured, formatted essays which, in turn, limited my writing style. This writing style that I adopted from him restricts me from broadening my writing style from a typical “five paragraph essay” style into more complex and sophisticated style. To this day, I still try to fit my ideas into an intro, body paragraphs, and conclusion formatted essay instead of exploring new methods and patterns to writing. Like the reading, “Unteaching the Five Paragraph” assigned for class suggests, I feel that Mr. Campbell’s class structure encouraged me to alienate myself from creating authentic writing, neglect coherence by limiting my incentive to effectively connect ideas, and to think less when writing and instead conform to a cut-and-paste writing structure. After taking that class, I’ve found that I always view writing as a negative and stressful experience that I have to force myself to get through rather than want to do which takes away the motivation for me to become a better writer now.

My Current Literacy Experiences

Since getting to college, I feel that I’ve been forced to start taking steps to break out of this mindset and really push myself to become a better writer.

Taking the UWP 1 class that I’m currently in has already been useful in helping me to break free from the stiff, structured writing that I’m used to through reading and writing assignments. At first I was dreading taking this class because - as I explained before - I dread writing and I’d have to drag myself through a whole quarter of it. I took it so I could fulfil the University’s writing requirement, but so far it’s been more enjoyable and than I thought it would be.

I’m currently learning the value of the drafting process and this first writing assignment is proving to be a very beneficial assignment to start implementing what I have learned about drafting and put it to use. It is also helpful that this essay is loosely structured and greatly dependent on me to decide how I would like it to flow.

I’m hopeful that this assignment - and more importantly, this class - helps me realize what it means to be a good writer, what steps I need to take to get there, and how to always apply those concepts to my writing in the future.

#draft1 #uwp1 #literacy narrative

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comm106-blog · 7 years ago

Text

Commodity-Self (Midterm: Re-edited)

Clothing items we wear...

...books we read...

....and even the type of kitchen utensils we use are all commodities. We then brand ourselves with those commodities. They distinguish who we are from any other person. It works the same way as social media. The minute we make an account for a social media platform, let’s say Instagram for example, we are making an identity through that platform. Now, let’s say that we choose to use Instagram over Facebook. We are then endorsing Instagram instead of Facebook, showing that we like one platform over the other.

I know right? Crazy stuff.

Everyone has their own identity. Through this identity, they can portray themselves however they want. It works the same way for social media platforms and how you use them to portray yourself. You construct your own image through these social technologies and you can have people view you how you want to be seen as. What you post on said social media really then depicts how most others will see you as a person and then through that identity.

In reality, we are all trying to post an “illusional self” so we come off more as artsy...

or outgoing...

...things that everyday we may not be. Through this “illusional self” we represent ourselves in a false way to be seen as something we want to be but are not.

For instance, a lot of people post about how they are going to go workout at the gym. In reality, they only post that to seem athletic when in reality, they are sitting on their couch eating funyuns (for example, just go with it, you know?)

But what they post on and what they are posting about gives them this new “aesthetic” or image that is how they want to be seen as. “All images are subject to judgement about their qualities (such as beauty or coolness) and their capacity to have an impact on viewers. The criteria used to interpret and give value to images depend on cultural codes or shared concepts, concerning what makes an image pleasing or unpleasant, shocking or banal, interesting or boring… these qualities do not reside in the image or object but depend on the contexts in which it is viewed, on the codes that prevail in a society, and on the viewer who is making that judgement. All viewer interpretations involve two fundamental concepts of value-- aesthetics and taste” (Sturken and Cartwright, 56).

Each social media is a little different but they all convey the same point of connecting with friends.

All social media platforms focuses on a few focal points that separates their platform like any other. Snapchat is all about keeping a ‘streak’ with someone, snapchatting them at least once a day, everyday. The higher the number you have with someone shows loyalty.

Instagram is all about getting as many likes on the picture as you can. Having more followers means getting more likes on your picture.

Twitter is all about the ‘retweets’, posting something that is relatable enough that people are willing to repost it to their own page for their own followers to see as well.

They all have different ways of reeling you in and different styles.

Snapchat is more about real-time, what’s happening right now with all of your friends. Then, if you’re doing something fun, you post it so people see you do fun stuff like go to concerts, hockey games with friends, or going out to eat at a fancy resturaunt. You want to look fun and popular on Snapchat. Instagram is all about aesthetic and themed criteria. Most people post pictures all with the same filter so your instagram looks very artistically pleasing. Twitter is different. Since it is not a visually based app, it’s all about text and how that text comes across. If it connects with the audience, the following behind that is larger.

These apps rely strongly on the sense of ‘audience’ and who responds to what, how. That audience is where we (the person posting) gets the satisfaction of a following. When Stokes spoke of an audience, they used it interchangeably with “society” as well. “ But we also use the term [audience] to refer in a broader sense to people who are exposed to or who respond to media culture. Indeed, in its broadest sense, the term ‘audience’ is almost interchangeable with ‘society’, for it is used to refer to the many ways in which the media relate to the broader social world.”

Personally, I do fall in line with the ‘stereotypes’ of media platforms. My Instagram does have an aesthetic, I make relatable tweets to get more likes and retweets, and I have Snapchat streaks. All of these things that make these different platforms distinct from the other is why I am a part of them and why I stick with them. All media forms try to all spread news, entertainment and more, keeping the world up to date no matter what platform you use. “...media, the plural form of medium, refers to the group of communications industries and technologies that together produce and spread public news, entertainment, and information. When we refer to “the media” we usually mean a plurality of media forms (news, entertainment, radio, television, film, the Web, and so forth) and not one entirely unitary industry, though we may mean to imply that the members of the plurality produce a surprisingly homogenous set of messages” (Sturken and Cartwright, 229).

Out of all the media platforms I have signed up for and I am actively a part of, the commodities that make up my commodity self the most would be Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat.

I use Snapchat to show off the fun times I have with my friends. I love taking pictures and videos (hence me being a media studies emphasis), so this app is perfect for me.

Through what I am posting on Snapchat, those posts make up my identity. My identity is friends, laughing, and having amusing moments with some of the greatest people I’ve ever met. My identity on Snapchat is different from my identity on Instagram though.

On Snapchat, I might post several things to my story a day if I’m with friends and hanging out but on Instagram, I might only post once every few weeks or so. I don’t like to clutter that space and have my profile look messy and crammed with images.

The last commodity that makes up my commodity self would be YouTube. I personally think YouTube is the best way to post original content and also the best way to really see someone’s identity. YouTube has just about everything from DIY decor videos, videogaming, beauty tutorials, vlogs, comedy/skit videos, and videos for educational purposes. Weather you’re one of millions watching or making your own content, YouTube is where it is at. My identity through YouTube is constructed through the YouTube channels I follow. For example, I only follow 12 YouTube channels. Usually people follow several dozens but I’m quite picky. In those 12, I mainly watch ‘Rooster Teeth’ and ‘Let’s Play’, two gaming channels. My favorite channel though is ‘Watch Cut’, a YouTube channel that takes real people and breaks real barriers that most people choose to pretend that don’t exist. One of their top videos and one of my all time favorites is ‘People Guess Who Is A Sex Worker From A Group Of Strangers’.

Kind of a crazy title, I know, but it’s real; and I like to think that myself and my identity is real. It’s been roughly one month since the video has been out and it has 6.1 million views! That’s pretty insane. The concept of being confident and breaking barriers is something that I have in my personal identity so this channel that I am subscribed to shows my commodity self pretty clearly.

If you use social media, you most likely are a part of Instagram. Forbes says, “Instagram’s popularity has been growing steadily since it first debuted back in 2010. With more than 500 million active users, it’s currently the second most popular social media network in the world, behind only Facebook.” The question ‘why is Instagram so popular?’ can be answered with several factors. From its mobile functionality, visual aesthetic, original content material, and simple functions, it is easy to see why Instagram has such a huge following. Another question that can be posed is how is it advertised.

I thought back to why I, myself, found Instagram in the first place and why I am still actively a part in the social media platform. I looked at how I am a part of an audience even though sometimes I feel like I’m in my own world. I feel like Instagram is a planet where only I’m on and seeing everyone else is like they are on their own planet too.

Instagram feels personalized for the person using it since you can follow things you like specifically; like a band you like...

a celebrity you want to keep tabs on...

...or friends and family. No one has the same Instagram feed that someone else might have. It’s all different for everyone. Even the ads placed in your feed is personally selected for you. Instagram pairs up with advertisers to work together to make institutions out of its viewerships. Advertisements then use these institutions to target their customers. It interpellates the viewer, making it feel personal. “Interpellation [in the media sense] is the way images and media seem to call out to us, catching our attention” (Sturken & Cartwright, 50). These advertisements seem to “hail” viewers as individuals even though so many more people are seeing the same advertisement. This makes the viewers feel like the advertisement is “just for me” though it reaches a bigger audience.

Another commodity I am a fan of is Snapchat. I use Snapchat daily and I know I would be almost anxious being without it for a day. It made me question what was magnetizing me towards Snapchat everyday. I decided to take a look at what Snapchat was encoding within their advertising. Encoding is a process done by the advertisement makers while the viewers of the advertisement are the ones decoding the image, video, or text. The relationship between encoding and decoding are crucial to the financial gain of companies using commercials and advertisements to evoke a certain reaction in a consumer. When advertisers want cusumers to use their product (for instance, Snapchat), everything that they put in their advertisement is intentional. The producers want you to feel a certain way so they encode a certain “feeling” in their media. How someone reacts to what is encoded is called decoding. When decoding the messages a company has encoded in an advertisement, Stuart Hall describes three types of ways people can decode an advertisement. The first type of way we interpret media is the dominant type. This is the desired interpolation. This is when “the viewer takes the connotated meaning from a television newscast [or another type of media] and decodes the message in terms of the reference code in which it has been encoded” (Hall, 515). The second type of way is negotiated. This is when “the viewer acknowledges the legitimacy of the hegemonic definitions to make the grand significations while at a more restricted, situational level. It makes its own ground rules and operates with exceptions to the rule” (Hall, 516). The last type is oppositional. This is the type that advertisers want to avoid the viewer of feeling. The oppositional view is when “the viewer perfectly understands both the literal and the connotative inflection given by a discourse but to decode the message in a globally contrary way” (Hall 517).

With Snapchat, their advertisements show young adults having a good time and recording their experiences to show and share with friends. It’s encoding that with Snapchat, you can show off the good times that you’re having with your friends and family. With Snapchat in your phone, it means that you are a supporter of connecting with friends nationally and internationally and are capable of having a good time. A good enough time to post about it and let everyone know what you’re up to.

In conclusion, my commodity self is filled with YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat the most out of media commodities at least. Through these apps I use, my identity is being displayed to those friends and followers. Each platform is a little different and my “illusional-self” changes with each platform to satisfy those in my viewership. My identity is laughter, friends and fun and I express those within my social media platforms I am a part of.

#comm 106

0 notes

uwp01 · 7 years ago

Text

Literacy Narrative Draft 1

Cover Memo

Strengths:

I think one of my strengths is that I categorized my post into different sections that helps the reader easily get an idea of what that section will be about. I think the images also help with making the post feel more relatable and understandable.

Weaknesses:

I feel like the post is still visually clunky and text concentrated. I also feel like there’s not a good flow and that my ideas are very random and chaotic and don’t necessarily have a clear direction to them even though there’s a general categorization to them. Towards the end I feel like it gets repetitive as well. I also feel like the post sounds too formal to be a blog post. It sounds and looks more like an essay than a blog post.

Questions/comments/concerns:

What can I do to make the post look more like a blog post and less like an essay? How can I organize my thoughts so that the post flows better? I am concerned that my essay doesn’t fit (or barely fits) the prompt that was given because I talk about someone who was important to my literacy development but in a negative way rather than a positive one. Another thing to mention is that this is my second draft and not my first draft.

My Literacy Background

All my academic life, I have never particularly enjoyed English or writing classes. They’ve always been the classes that I was required to take or the class that everyone else took which inclined me to take them too. I have never been particularly bad at writing - I was always able to get something down on paper, turn it in, and get a relatively good grade on - but I never particularly enjoyed it, either.

I’ve always felt that I’ve been an average, standard writer. Nothing more, nothing less. I’ve always done as much as it takes to get by. To this day, I still don’t know how to write a good intro and conclusion paragraph, how to tell if my essay “well written” or not, how to properly formulate an essay so that it has “good flow”, how to write a draft that’s actually a draft and not the final product I turn in, and many other things that comes with being a “good” writer. There was never a teacher or person who made a huge impact on how I view writing and literacy. Never a person I’ve greatly admired because they drastically changed my perspective from disliking writing to liking it. And never someone I could honestly say, “after taking that class, I’m a changed person.” With that in mind, there was a teacher that I had in high school who impacted my literacy development; however, not in a particularly good way.

Mr. Campbell’s AP Lang Class

My junior year in high school, I took AP English Language and Composition because it was what everyone else my grade was taking their junior year and what was recommended to take to be “on schedule” for graduation. My teacher, Mr. Campbell, was one of my favorite high school teachers to this day. He was young at heart and did not conform to the standard teacher stereotype that was all about business, grades, and lesson plans. We often took class time to talk about current events and listen to him tell stories about his personal life. Mr. Campbell was also known for having the highest amount of students to pass the AP Lang exam out of all the other teachers at my school. After being in his class for the year, I understood why.

Campbell’s method to getting his students on a passing route for the AP Lang exam involved two things.The first was to capitalize on improving his student’s ability to write a good rhetorical analysis essay - the essay that students statistically struggle with the most on the exam. The second was to touch up on, but not focus heavily, on other aspects of the exam such as the multiple choice section and the other two essays. Because of the heavy focus on the rhetorical analysis essay, it caused me to become very mechanical in my writing style by the end of the year. What I mean by that is that he ingrained a very formatted essay structure which lead me to never stray from it. We were constantly reading articles, watching videos, analyzing them, and filling out worksheets he created that helped guide us to writing a rhetorical analysis essay. This worksheet required us to find a thesis using a fill-in-the-blank thesis sentence maker, three rhetorical devices, three examples and elaborations of each device, and to conclude how the rhetorical devices used by the author affected the audience to help portray the author’s thesis. At first, this may seem like a good way to help someone get a lot better at approaching this type of essay. While this is true and was useful in preparing for the exam, I have noticed that it was more detrimental to my literacy development than beneficial in the long term. Taking that class, I did not learn how to “compose english” as the course title implies, but rather I learned how to pass an exam which proved to be detrimental to my later writing experiences.

My Literacy Reflection

After so many exercises and worksheets that I did throughout the span of that class, I found that all of the essays I wrote ended up sounding the same as if I had an outlined template of a typical rhetorical analysis essay and I was just filling in the blanks according to what writing or video I was responding to. Although the intense focus on becoming a better rhetorical analysis writer was helpful to me at the time, I have found that it has caused me to be stuck in this specific essay style that has transcribed to my current writing style. Writing became so mundane to me that I dreaded writing more than I already did because it became something that I had to drag myself through and get done for a grade instead of an opportunity to freely express my thoughts onto paper.

As much as I appreciated and enjoyed Mr. Campbell’s class, I cannot deny that he has caused me to conform to writing mechanical, structured, formatted essays which, in turn, limited my writing style. This writing style that I adopted from him restricts me from broadening my writing style from a typical “five paragraph essay” style into more complex and sophisticated style. To this day, I still try to fit my ideas into an intro, body paragraphs, and conclusion formatted essay instead of exploring new methods and patterns to writing. Like the reading “Unteaching the Five Paragraph” assigned for class suggests, I feel that Mr. Campbell’s class structure encouraged me to alienate myself from creating authentic writing, neglect coherence by limiting my incentive to effectively connect ideas, and to think less when writing and instead conform to a cut-and-paste writing structure. After taking that class, I have found that I always view writing as a negative and stressful experience that I have to force myself to get through rather than want to do which takes away the motivation for me to become a better writer now.

My Current Literacy Reflection

Since getting to college, I feel that I have been forced to start taking steps to break out of this mindset and really push myself to become a better writer. Taking the UWP 1 class that I’m currently in has already been useful in helping me to break free from such stiff, structured writing through reading and writing assignments. I’m learning the value of the drafting process and this first writing assignment is proving to be a very beneficial assignment to start implementing what I have learned about drafting and put it to use. It is also helpful that this essay is loosely structured and greatly dependent on me to decide how I would like it to flow. I’m hopeful that this assignment - and more importantly, this class - helps me to realize what it means to be a good writer, what steps I need to take to get there, and how to always apply those concepts to my writing in the future.

#draft 1 #uwp1 #literacy narrative

0 notes