#autobiographical notes

[fred-leforgeur-baudelaire]

“Le coeur enclavé dans le jazz des nuits folles et les baisers humides troqués, je cherche l'amour disparu dans les rues brumeuses de la cité. Mais le silence de mon âme errante demeure captif d'une mélancolie inachevée.„

~•~

“With my heart locked in the jazz of wild nights and wet kisses exchanged, i search for lost love in the foggy streets of the city. But the silence of my wandering soul remains captive to an unfinished melancholy.„

~•~

— Fred Leforgeur-Baudelaire

Applied Visual Art : Yulia Luchkina “Full Moon"

[fishandshesmygills]

we need to STOP assuming songs are autobiographical. i would say it's the taylorswiftification of popular music but also like even taylor swift is like hey these songs are fictional narratives that aren't about me and then her entire fanbase still acts like they're her personal experience. man. treat songwriting like creative writing and dont make assumptions. this is what mitski is always talking about, devaluing women's art in particular by saying it's like a diary rather than an intentional craft. and art that is vulnerable and personal and like a diary is of course valuable but you have no way of knowing if that's the case if the artist doesnt share and frankly as a music listener its none of your business if it's "true" or not

[noisytenant]

pale fire is so fucking good. read the final 999 line poem where one of the greatest contemporary poets reflects on his life, inspirations, and relationship to death, as edited and annotated by his psychosexually obsessed neighbor who relates the poem to a conspiracy to assassinate an exiled european king... that might be said editor himself.

[remma-demma]

G'raha, clearly upset: Pls help me, N'ephele's been avoiding me and I don't know why

Some Scion: You mean you don't know...?

G'raha: What? Know what????

Scion: .

G'raha, realizing why this is upsetting him so much: Oooooh... I'm in love with him.

Scion, wincing: Oooooh..... so close.

[quicktimeeventfull]

22/29/30!

hello isa thank you!!

22. category you read the most of aus for sure, i am all about aus all the time. every so often i venture out of au territory and that is exciting but mostly i am All About AUs. within that i read almost exclusively realism and/or magical realism.

29. do you have any works that are required reading for (fandom?) wouldn't it be funny if i answered this for a fandom that wasn't death note. anyway. modern classics:

lacuna: canon divergence noir yearning. we both know and love this. required reading not just because it's good but because it tackles and builds upon the recurring themes within both death note itself and the fandom as a whole. i feel people who read this will walk away with a fuller understanding of both.

who shall be debased, and who exalted: mikalight hierophilia. i feel u may perhaps be aware of this one. required reading both because its good in and of itself and because religious imagery has become a staple part of the fandom; it is so rare and wonderful to see a fic that treats them with such gravity and care, and also does so outside of the christian hegemony.

a divine power: L has a magic dick. i feel fandom in general has kind of drifted away from 'stories that are fun and hot for the sake of it' and this captures the joy that a lot of stories are kind of afraid to embrace.

older classics:

the hinterland doctrine: light is a politician. idek how to describe this, it's just really really fucking good and also extremely influential within the death note fandom. i also feel it does a truly incredible job of interfacing with the misogyny in death note; a lot of fics kind of pay lip service that but the hinterland doctrine delves right in

just that and paper cranes: darkeyedwolf was an influential writer back in the day & 'just that and paper cranes' is perhaps the best fluff fic of all time. stellar characterization, deft balance of melancholy vs. hope, and as a bonus was written prior to the completion of death note so you can get a nice snapshot of the early fandom

poison apple: ok unlike everything else on this list, this isn't necessarily a rec because i don't feel time has been kind to it -- by which i don't mean that the fic is bad, but rather that it relies on a lot of tropes that have fallen out of popularity and therefore come across a bit poorly. this being said, poison apple was an incredibly popular fic that imo had a significant influence on how the fandom as a whole characterizes lawlight. it's also a really good example of how most early 2k fics were constructed both linguistically and narratively, so if you want a peek into early anime & death note fandom this is a good story to read. note that there is significant graphic noncon, which is not warned for (as was typical for the time.)

30. biggest surprise for you as a reader this year?

this kind of feels like the year of f/f genderswaps, which i am VERY here for. also i came back to the death note fandom after a long absence and i feel the general characterization of L has changed in a way i find a bit startling -- it kind of seems more common these days to characterize him as somewhat harsh and morally bankrupt. it isn't at all a bad thing, but it did surprise me. i have theories about what happened here but i'm not sure what the actual cause is.

readers asks

[sofipitch]

I saw a performance of the Crucible where the actor playing the main guy would yell his lines for dramatic emphasis, but he did it so much that once we got to the climax it kind of had no emotional resonance at all, because it was the same tone as the entire play had been conducted, this scene wasn't more emotional/powerful/impactful than the others. The whole play felt very blah and I got tired of that guy's yelling. Anyways that's how I feel about the lyrics in tortured poets department. It needs to be massively scaled back, don't use 5 metaphors, it dulls the impact of what one good one could do and makes everything sound the same.

[orlaite]

And you best believe btw that I'm including every bit of homosexual implications I can find textual evidence for and using it in my thesis to support my arguments about autobiographical conventions and the paratextual context of Seven Pillars that should inform a historical analysis of the book. I'm not fucking around with that "person could read this text and walk away with the impression that it was about a heterosexual man" type of Academia

[knife-at-a-knife-fight]

the reason i need to get things published and have a successful career while i’m alive is so that i can leave things in my will to be published after my death. I don’t think I’m going straight O’Neill and making it 25 years after my death (and we know how that turned out for him); I think I’m fine with “published six months - a year after my death” Because there are some things that i don’t want to answer any questions about, you make of it what you will. 

And I think i should also have a companion book with any of these post mortis publications - but the companions are slated to be released notably after. give scholars 25 years to theorise first and come to their own conclusions, then drop the actual intention on them, see how they take it. well, i won’t see it. but i think it would make some young academics very happy to see their profs have to go “okay so i apparently was completely off on that. I was no where near close.”

“Death to the author” darling; that’s when my best work is coming out 

[fred-leforgeur-baudelaire]

“Dans l'antre du club de jazz, où l'obscurité se marie à l'ivresse, je m'enfonce dans l'ombre, isolé dans ma détresse. Le serveur, parfois messager discret des prémices concubines, me transmet, sur un voile, une écriture divine.

"Bonjour, Monsieur", alors, commence l'histoire de cette nouvelle vie ; une femme élégante, envoûtante mélodie. Elle désire être le chemin où nos pas se confondent, où nos empreintes tracent ensemble une autre ronde.

Dans l'attente fébrile, je pose ma plume sur le papier. "Bonjour, Madame," ma réponse, fragile pensée - peut-être, sur le chemin où je me suis égaré, nous croiserons-nous - vouée à découvrir nos affinités.

Le serveur, tel un oiseau portant mon émoi, la serviette en main, vers elle se déploie. Et ainsi, entre les harmonies et les murmures ensorcelants, s'ouvre l'étrange bal de deux amants au destin voluptueux et troublant.„

~•~

“In the den of the jazz club, where darkness blends with intoxication, i sink into the shadows, isolated in my distress. The waiter, sometimes the discreet messenger of concubine premices, transmits divine writing to me on a veil.

"Bonjour, Monsieur", then, begins the story of this new life ; an elegant woman, bewitching melody. She wants to be the path where our footsteps merge, where our footprints trace together another round.

In feverish anticipation, i put pen to paper. "Bonjour, Madame," my reply, a fragile thought - perhaps, on the path where i've lost my way, we'll cross paths - destined to discover our affinities.

The waiter, like a bird carrying my emotion, napkin in hand, towards her, unfurls. And so, between bewitching harmonies and murmurs, the strange dance of two lovers with a voluptuous and troubling destiny begins.„

~•~

— Fred Leforgeur-Baudelaire

Visual art applied : Watercolor, felt-tip pens and oil : FLB (Fred Leforgeur-Baudelaire)

[asmuchasidliketo]

#I thought it was fall trauma  #but it's clear the other demons have no such issues  #and now that we KNOW crowley was powerful and it's heavily implied he was an archangel  #the memory loss for him specifically makes sense  #especially how many times they emphasize it this season  tags by ⬆️

#The way they probably erased Crowley's memory of heaven. Also the way Crowley offered a hot chocolate to Gabriel just after even though he still hated him because he knew how it feels to remember nothing (insp from this post by @perpetualcontrolleddrowning)

[toscrollperchancetomeme]

Not to get too autobiographic, but some of you clearly didn't watch "Velvet Goldmine" and "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" in your late teens to early twenties and made it your whole personality and it's showing. xD If I have to read one more post saying that Rockstar Lestat / "Long Face" is cringe… it's CAMP. That's the word you're looking for! CAMP!!! Just like an 18th century bisexual blond french mentally unstable drama queen would be! <3

On a more serious note, I have seen a lot of people worrying about how the tonal shift will work and...

Watch those two movies! I beg you! Ten times so if you're a queer person! They are incredibly good and especially Hedwig will give you a very good idea of where they seem to be going with the storytelling!

It's a framing device! Dubai had a vastly different tone from New Orleans/Paris and yet the overall tone worked perfectly! Why should this not work in the same way - just with a bit more fun! Some parts of Lestat's story are truly and deeply horrific, we need a balance and this will do the job so well!

The tonal change is part of the experience! This is the same whiplash every book reader had when going from IwtV to TLV. Enjoy and embrace it! To quote Lestat: Now we're having fuuuuuuuuun!

[prokopetz]

i remember you writing a list of something in some fucking context (i remember nothing), and on that list there was a lesbian ttrpg that really stuck out to me that i didn't save. It was a real edgy one about being lesbian violent and mean (i think), which isn't really much to go off. Where i'm going to is, would you be interested in just listing every lesbain indie ttrpg you know of? Its fine if you dont wanna, of course.

You're probably thinking of this thread here, though you're quite correct that "mean violent lesbians" isn't sufficient to pick out a specific entry – several of the titles plugged in that thread would easily qualify!

As for "listing every lesbian indie ttrpg [i] know of", that's a trickier demarcation problem than you might imagine. What is a lesbian tabletop RPG? Is it one where the player characters are obligatorily lesbians? (If so, we end up excluding games which are explicitly about the lesbian experience, but feature some other type of character.) Is it one written, at least in part, by lesbians? (If so, we bump into the problem that not all indie tabletop RPGs are autobiographical, the maunderings of certain self-appointed critics notwithstanding.) Is it one where the game itself is a lesbian? (Not an impossible brief, but now we're catering exclusively to folks who are into meta bullshit.)

Ultimately I'm going to pass the problem down the line and just ask folks in the notes to name the first game that comes to mind when they think of the phrase "lesbian indie ttrpg". Let's see what sort of consensus evolves.

[quicktimeeventfull]

this is my question. okay. if we can all pretty much agree that there’s no sensible way to interpret light as a straight man, why would one assume that ohba wrote him with the intention of creating a straight man? like ohba did not find him in a field. all the characteristics which make him read very clearly as queer were written by ohba. like yes there’s no way to be sure of authorial intent and to a large degree it doesn’t actually matter but also i truly do not understand the widespread reluctance to consider the possibility that this was done on purpose.

like i truly just do not think you could fuck up writing a straight person badly enough to create light. how would that even happen. how could that occur. is the assumption that o&o have never met a straight person in their entire life. what circumstances could have led them to the assumption that 'dislikes having sex with woman' is a standard straight male preference.

[doyoulikethissong-poll]

Chuck Berry - Johnny B. Goode 1958

"Johnny B. Goode" is a song by American musician Chuck Berry, written and sung by Berry in 1958. It peaked at number two on the Hot R&B Sides chart and number eight on its pre-Hot 100 chart. The song remains a staple of early and later rock music. "Johnny B. Goode" is considered one of the most recognizable songs in the history of popular music. Credited as "the first rock & roll hit about rock & roll stardom", it has been covered by various other artists and has received several honors and accolades. This includes being one of the 27 songs on the Voyager Golden Record, a collection of music, images, and sounds designed to serve as a record of humanity, that is travelling into deep space outside the solar system.

Berry acknowledged that the song is partly autobiographical and that the original lyrics referred to Johnny as a "colored boy", but he changed it to "country boy" to ensure radio play. As well as suggesting that the guitar player is good, the title hints at autobiographic elements, because Berry was born at 2520 Goode Avenue, in St. Louis. The song was initially inspired by Johnnie Johnson, the regular piano player in Berry's band, but developed into a song mainly about Berry himself. The opening guitar riff of "Johnny B. Goode" borrows from the opening single-note solo on Louis Jordan's "Ain't That Just Like a Woman" (1946), played by guitarist Carl Hogan. "Johnny B. Goode" received 86% total yes votes! The other 14% are just not ready for it yet…but their kids are gonna love it.

[dumbingofage]

You've mentioned a few times that Joyce is autobiographical for you, which comes off as pretty obvious in the pages because people who haven't been through her life wouldn't be giving her the grace or room to grow that she's gotten. Its entirely too common to just have her be another Mary and forget about her. And I really appreciate her a lot, I've been binging the comic for the first time this past week and I think I posted a couple dozen Joyce pages to my friends with various notes about how relatable to my own experience they are. So, y'know, thank you <3

P.S. I'm still catching up (hello from the past in Book 11) and I'm excited for her to stop being a Reddit Atheist

former fundies have all, sadly, had our own reddit atheist metamorphosis stage

just gotta make sure it's not our final form

though sometimes its hard not to slip back into when somebody mentions how noah successfully fit all the world's animals on the ark

[kaurwreck]

It's also a cute nod to irl Akutagawa's admiration for Kunikida Doppo. When irl Akutagawa began writing more autobiographical fiction, he, to some degree, emulated Kunikida Doppo, and made reference to him:

"He kept a “Diary without Self-Deceit” in imitation of the writer Kunikida Doppo; on its lined pages he recorded passages like this: 'I am unable to love my father and mother. No, this is not true. I do love them, but I am unable to love their outward appearance. A gentleman should be ashamed to judge people by their appearance. How much more so should he be ashamed to find fault with that of his own parents. Still, I am unable to love the outward appearance of my father and mother… . Doppo said he was in love with love. I am trying to hate hatred. I am trying to hate my hatred for poverty, for falsehood, for everything.'"

Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, Daidouji Shinsuke: The Early Years

(Note: Although Akutagawa wrote Daidouju Shinsuke to be an effigy of himself, it's unclear if Akutagawa actually kept a "Diary without Self Deceipt" when he was younger. Regardless, he clearly held Kunikida in high regard.)

I completely forgot that Akutagawa told Kunikida point blank that he believed he was “worthy” of Dazai. In the original Japanese, he says Kunikida was “worthy of being Dazai’s cover,” with how well he’d held his own in a fight against Rashoumon. In the English dub, he says Kunikida was “worthy of being Dazai’s partner.”

Knowing what we know about Dazai’s former partner, Chuuya—who is not only someone universally revered and respected as one of the deadliest weapons of the Port Mafia—as well as Akutagawa’s famous obsession with being enough for Dazai himself, that’s a huge fucking compliment.