#but the thing is icarus didn't fall because he was too arrogant or selfish or stupid

[thereareeyesinsidethetrees]

anyway another eyetrees secret

on the subject of names i like vs names that are mine

icarus actually falls into the second category. except gravity falls (show fandom both i have no idea) turned it a bit sour

still a good name though

[divorcedfiddleford]

You made a post saying “it has been zero days since our last alex hirsch hates ford so much bullshit” and i know it was mostly hyperbole, but you have some really good takes that I would love to be elaborated on in terms of how ford is written

it really wasn't hyperbolic. over the years he's just really shown a lot of hatred towards this one character.

content warning: discussion of abuse

i want to start with this clip from the commentary which i think of as a microcosm for how the writers and especially alex think about ford.

transcript:

rob renzetti: i mean he [mcgucket] should've basically knocked ford out, and... and destroyed the... you know, tied him up, and, destroyed... and... alex hirsch, speaking over him: yeah he should've beat ford with a wrench and taken this thing apart piece by piece! he's the one who understood how to built [sic] it, but...

... so that seems like a pretty violent course of action. shall we unpack that?

ford is a character who's pretty explicitly written as a victim of abuse, and who now has c-ptsd as a direct result of the abuse he experienced. alex hirsch believes that ford deserved everything bad that happened to him, that it's ford's own fault, and that he also deserved worse things to happen to him. this is why, given every narrative chance, alex hirsch has piled more suffering onto ford's plate. the biggest example of this i can think of is in the journal, when he wrote that fiddleford was actively erasing ford's memory (despite this being a massive timeline contradiction which i still refuse to accept). because god forbid ford even have one remotely healthy relationship with somebody. that would be too good for him. ford was manipulated and lied to by bill, but alex repeatedly compares him to icarus, a teenager whose demise was the result of his own ignorance. this comparison is still so fucking offensive to me. the sun did not lie to icarus, did not guarantee icarus all of the happiness and success and sense of belonging which he had been denied all his life, did not actively shut out the voices of those around him who would try to help him.

alex in general has a very strange relationship with abuse. he seems to get really upset when people read his characters as victims of abuse. the strongest instance of this is actually not with ford, it's with pacifica - especially in the nwmm episode commentary. the episode says "pacifica's parents have conditioned her to respond to a bell" and alex says people got "the wrong idea" about it. like. dude. what the fuck. you wrote abuse. even if you didn't mean to, that's what you wrote. you can't say people got "the wrong idea" just because you didn't think about the subtext of what you were writing. anyway, back to ford: i believe this extends to him as well. alex wanted to write a character who's a foil to stan and who was a selfish unlikable victim of his own arrogance. however that's not what he wrote. he somehow seemingly accidentally wrote a really compelling and relatable awesome autistic guy who had to fight for every good thing he he ever had in his life only for it to be taken from him every single time. but alex can't let go of seeing ford as just "the opposite of stan". when he talks about "how someone as smart as ford could fall for bill's tricks", he refuses to realize he wrote a situation in which a man was being psychologically manipulated and tortured.

it goes back further, too. people repeatedly theorized that filbrick was... not a very good father, to say the least. on top of the very explicit and canon fact that he threw one of his children out on the street (seriously, there is no defense for this), people pointed out that stan would flinch at filbrick, that ford seemed upset by things filbrick said but dared not talk back, that filbrick was mad at stan not for hurting his brother, but for "costing the family potential millions". but alex can't have people seeing ford as sympathetic. ford can't have it bad like stan did. ford had to have everything and he lost it all because he sucks so much. so he wrote the graphic novel story where ford is filbrick's favorite child and filbrick also is not even a bad parent you guys he's just stoic. ignore the whole thing in dreamscaperers where stan perpetuates the abuse that filbrick did to him. ignore the fact that ford was shouting at stan and then completely shut up as soon as filbrick entered the room and did not say another word for the rest of the night. ignore all that because i just made up this story where he cries at a present from stan. filbrick loved his boys for sure you guys!!!

i'm not even touching on how alex repeatedly villainizes traits commonly associated with mental illness and neurodivergence. ford's hypervigilance becomes arrogance. his passion for knowledge means he's a know-it-all. his difficulty socializing and making friends means he's a misanthrope. his lingering resentment for the way he was raised means he hates his brother and is the worst human being to ever have lived. i could go on, go even further into how the finale reaffirms this, but i feel weird talking about this too much.

[duskpinelydearyou]

Coming Full Circle

There is an idiom known as coming full circle, and what it means is that through all of your trials and tribulations, you have come back to where it all started. For me, my coming full circle was the day I finally realized where I was meant to be, and it was in the one place I had never expected to return to. In order for me to talk about that today though, I figured I'd start from the beginning, go from there, and talk about the events leading up to that moment. It's a bit of a story that I've already covered previously in my blog post regarding a change in scenery, but it definitely helps to give you the full story as to why I found it best to talk about coming full circle, because sometimes in life, that's actually what you'll end up doing.

When I was on the cusp of graduating high school, I wanted to pursue opportunities outside of the state I lived in when it came to college, and convinced my parents as such. I was genuinely into the idea of just getting away and enjoying what freedom I could possibly gain from being outside of the grasp of my family. Sounds a little selfish, I know, but I was young and wanting the time to myself to enjoy every aspect of my life. I wanted to explore, be my own person for once in my life. I chose for my studies to be at Full Sail University in Florida in the Game Art and Design program. It was a fresh new chapter in life, and I felt like I owned the world with the freedom that I had, and the living expense checks that I got from the school for the purposes of just living off of them... but I was a heavy spender at first. I had no concept of how to finance effectively, and didn't have any opportunities to learn how to do so until I was a little older and understood that sometimes there are consequences to your actions.

I became Icarus and flew too close to the sun. I was arrogant, would never take no for an answer; but when I was faced with reality, I got burned and fell. Boy did I fall... HARD. I fell into a very deep depression and found comfort in both food and spending money on myself. I found my love for Final Fantasy XIV during that time and grew a dependence on the game itself, but had nobody to really play it with on account that a friend of mine stopped playing themselves. But what led to that depression? Well, it was a few reasons. I struggled hard to stay focused with crazy times to get up, got stressed easily, and I had instructors who criticized me and failed me every time I drew in the anime style. They tried to get me to try something else, but I was good at nothing else. One instructor even told me to just quit the class if I wasn't going to adapt and change my style, even when I was so fixated on just trying to do that. I got kicked down hard and didn't think I was any good at anything.

I only amounted to just one thing in that program, and it was a simple animation that I want to go back and do better on.

But what did I do to move forward? Well... for two years I didn't do anything except become a hermit, trapped in my own shell as I was afraid to get burned once again. I had given up and let the depression get the better of me. I gained weight because of my addiction with food. Though during that time, I rediscovered myself through the power of animation. I had lost inspiration for what I did, and my spark just vanished seemingly, but I have a series that helped me out of that funk and inspired me to pursue a new path in life.

And what helped me along this path? My father did. In some weird happenstance, he knew that I was in trouble in some way. Not with anyone else mind you, but mentally. I was not okay during this rough time. I didn't take care of myself well and embraced some form of being a hermit who only fed myself off of pizza and other greasy fast food. I never went out, never did anything whatsoever. I just laid in a chair and watched YouTube on my TV. Depression fed further into these habits of mine, and I was slowly killing myself with each passing day. He saw the condition I was living in the second to last time he visited me, and figured that something needed to be done. He saved me from myself and led me on a new path in life.

I could never forget the way I had become and endeavored to keep that from happening again. It was rough having to do a lot of my own cleaning by myself after I moved out to another city in my home state, but the classes I took were much more lenient with me and gave me plenty of opportunity to actually focus on what I wanted to do and how I should approach it. I had to stay attentive this time, focus more, but I did slowly end up slipping back into my old ways. My father helped me try to stay as attentive as can be with my own studies, even if I was being arrogant and believing I was holier than thou at the time. Yeah, parts of me were an asshole, I'll admit that, but that attitude soon changed as I kept moving further in my program of study, which was Media Arts and Animation at The Art Institute of Indianapolis.

Though things were a little stressful at first, I got into a habit of doing something and keeping attentive with everything... that is, until my dad died. I lost motivation a second time, but still managed to try my part to focus and do what I could to overcome the loss and stress I had. It all became constant and repetitive, but I somehow managed to overcome it, at the worst possible time. In 2018, The Art Institute of Indianapolis shut down, and I was to be transferred to The Art Institute of Pittsburgh Online Division. I started classes after I came back from our family trip to Cancun, Mexico. Like a fresh breath of air, I managed to stay focused on everything, as stressful as it was to have classes always being back to back. It was manageable at best, but it wouldn't last forever. In the spring of 2019, I lost yet another school to closing as AI Pittsburgh and its online division shut down in March.

With another school gone, I wasn't quite sure what to do moving forward. I could go to a different school and see if my credits would be accepted into the program, or I could try my luck with yet another Art Institute school on the other side of the country, just like Florida. I made some attempts to reconcile with everyone at Full Sail, but it didn't pan out as well as I had hoped it would. They just wouldn't accept up to a quarter of the credits I had received from AI, which would've left me with naught else but to start fresh yet again. When the decision came for me to leave home and try my luck elsewhere, I finally decided to continue pursuing the Art Institute.

In 2019, I moved to Houston, Texas to continue my education with the Art Institute of Houston. Things felt easy there, no stresses or whatnot, and I was able to stay on top of everything, even down to the animation assignments I was given, whether it be 2D or 3D animated, which was what I preferred above all else.

When all was said and done, it'd come to be 2020, and the pandemic was kicking into full gear. Everyone was stuck at home with either no job, remote working, or remote learning, which was what happened to me. Following that was struggles with overcoming myself as I was cooped up in my own home without anything to do other than video games, television, or doing schoolwork. It became repetitive, but I survived. Then on to graduating in the midst of the pandemic, where I wouldn't even get my Bachelors' until December of that year.

What followed was me trying to figure out what I wanted to do moving forward. How I wanted to approach the world of entertainment, because I wanted so much more than just one thing to tell me what I was good at, when I was good at so much more. I made the decision perhaps a year before I graduated, but it still resonated with me then and there: I wanted to go into film as well, to have my animation experience serve me well when I worked in film, and vice versa with film to animation.

The dream was real, but it was a struggle to figure out how to get there. My first choice was the Academy of Art, but I found out quickly that they weren't what I expected them to be. My second choice would've been ASU, but their program didn't offer what I wanted out of it. You could say after that I was close to giving up, but I didn't want my dreams to be shattered by rejection after rejection on my part. I wanted to find a way.

Then it came to me that it was time. I took a plunge and re-applied to Full Sail University. Upon my approval, I was placed in the Film Production program, back in the state where everything began to finish out my final chapters of college. I had grown from my youth as you could say, learned through my many trials and tribulations, and finally learned humility upon returning to the place where it all began. I had come full circle and had been better because of it.

In July of 2021, I returned to the place it all began; a year later, I had graduated from the program with high honors and became salutatorian of my class. The chapter of my life that was college ended after, and the next chapter of my life was beginning, not with a spark, but with an explosion. My graduating status instilled in me the final lesson I learned from college: You are you, not what you made yourself. My arrogance was replaced with humility, and unlike Icarus, I chose not to fly towards the sun with the freedom I had. I would never make the same mistake twice, now that the chapter has closed. Coming full circle means accepting the parts of you that weren't your best, and moving forward to learn for the rest of your life, and then returning to where it all started with the new life lessons you have learned. I'm happy to say that I myself am a living sentiment of those words.