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dannypuro · 4 years ago

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You said your askbox was open so!! From Something Telling I am very invested in the mutual pining of Feuilly and Baz and just that individually they were like. Whispering their feels to their friends. I am parched for any details of. Them. If you are amenable. BYE <3

YOU!!! YOU UNDERSTAND!!!! YOU AND YOUR WONDERFUL ASKS AND GIANT COMMENTS UNDERSTAND THE IMPORTANT PARTS OF SOMETHING TELLING ma’am i owe you my life. i adore you. and yes, without further ado... A Very Long Post about the boys.

feuilly moves into bahorel’s apartment building when he first moves to france, like, five or six years before the start of Something Telling. and he doesn’t speak a lot of french at ALL, at first, because he wasn’t expecting to move, but he got an opportunity with a gallery kind of last minute and he only had time to panic and duolingo it up a little bit. but he moves into baz’s apartment building, all the way up in the tiny attic apartment, and he doesn’t hire any movers because he’s broke, and that would be fine, except the elevator breaks sometime between when he goes out to find some furniture and when he gets said furniture delivered to outside the building. and now he has to figure out how to get this stupid second-hand couch up five flights of stairs and he doesn’t even know anyone in the country he can call for help.

cue bahorel, coming back from the gym and all sweaty and gross. (nasty.) and he’s never seen feuilly before, but he is CERTAINLY seeing him now. 👁👁. and they have an awkward little conversation--all “hey, dude, do you, like, need a hand?” and poor feuilly desperately trying to remember his duolingo to figure out what the fuck this hot guy is saying to him. bahorel is instantly enamored--feuilly is fucking pretty, okay, and he’s funny and his accent is cute and baz just fucking knows feuilly’s smarter than him and he’s so fucking into it. just. he’s so into him.

and the thing is, baz is pretty sure feuilly’s maybe into him, too--he helps him drag the couch up the stairs, and they make conversation, and he thinks that he’s flirting, a little, and he’s definitely ogling baz up a bit. and, like, yeah, sure--he knows he’s hot, and feuilly’s smoking hot, in an overworked, tired, starving artist way, so... yeah. he’s totally gonna sleep with his brand-new hot neighbor.

only, then they start talking about why feuilly’s moving into the building--he tells baz that he’s new to paris, new to france, and he doesn’t know anybody, doesn’t even really speak french, and he moved for work but he doesn’t really know what he’ll do outside of that, and he’s just so! fucking! charming! and smart! and baz is like. right. well. 🥺, dude.

they get up to feuilly’s apartment (and HOOOO, feuilly’s pretty strong, actually 👁👁 wow 👁👁 what a coincidence bahorel is shredded as well👁👁 maybe we can hook up and be shredded together👁👁) and set the couch down. and bahorel looks around his empty little attic apartment and takes in his nearly-empty kitchen and his one beautiful houseplant in the middle of the room, because that’s where the most light is, and he can’t just LEAVE. not when feuilly doesn’t have any friends. feuilly’s awesome, baz already knows it! he should meet baz’s awesome friends!

only, feuilly’s kind of- feuilly’s kind of leaning in, a bit, and bahorel has hooked up with enough dudes to know when someone’s putting on the moves. and he’s SO into it, and he almost just kisses him, almost hooks up with him on the couch that they just hauled up five flights of stairs together, only-

only, if feuilly’s a one-night stand, he won’t want to meet baz’s awesome friends, and he seems so lonely. so bahorel takes one for the team. and instead of leaning in to make out with the hottest dude he’s ever met, he’s just like HEY MY FRIENDS ARE HAVING A GET-TOGETHER TONIGHT WANNA COME YOU CAN MEET THEM THEY’RE SUPER NICE AND COOL. (oh, god, he really hopes feuilly wants to.)

feuilly’s a little taken aback, for obvious reasons, but- but he does want to meet bahorel’s friends, and mostly, he wants to spend some more time with bahorel, and it’s a shame that he wasn’t reading the room right when he thought baz was into him, but, well, you can’t have everything. maybe he can’t get laid by his super-hot neighbor, but hey, if he can meet some people who don’t mind that he doesn’t actually speak french yet, and if he can get to know bahorel a little better, he’ll take it.

feuilly goes to the party. jehan adores him, obviously. feuilly doesn’t, like... get what’s up with them, yet, since he didn’t watch french media growing up and therefore missed all of their child-stardom, but he likes them just fine, anyways. jehan’s like 20 and is blazed out of their mind and is having a medieval phase (one of many). feuilly is confused, but also within 90 minutes realizes that he would INSTANTLY throw hands with ANYONE if it was for jehan’s sake. so.

jehan’s all like “go talk to grantaire! he knows all sorts of things about art! he’s working on painting me naked!” so feuilly goes to talk to the lump in the corner but like. listen. grantaire’s having a hard time. he doesn’t make an awesome first impression. not awful, just... he’s having a hard time. feuilly gets it. they become better friends a little later, mostly because bahorel keeps dragging feuilly around with him whenever he’s free. (not like feuilly minds)

but feuilly doesn’t make a move on bahorel again. because he must have misread the situation, right? otherwise they would have fucked. they’d BE fucking. too bad bahorel doesn’t like him like that. oh, well, at least they’re friends!

bahorel DOES like him like that. duh. feuilly’s awesome. but he hasn’t made a move on bahorel since that first afternoon. he’s probably just not that into bahorel, past the one-night-stand type stuff. oh, well, at least they’re friends!

life goes on. they hang out a lot. like, a LOT. they’re totally each other’s best friends. feuilly learns more french. (baz is actually super relieved when he can’t quite manage to get rid of the accent, even though he would never say so, because that would hurt feuilly’s feelings. baz tries not to act like a dick around feuilly, even though he kind of is one around other people, sometimes. he just... wants feuilly to like him.) feuilly gets absorbed into the group. he picks up another job, in addition to the work he’s doing for the gallery, and he’s making a little more money, which is good for both of them, because feuilly can afford meals that aren’t mostly rice, sometimes, and bahorel doesn’t have to spend all day every day wondering how he’s going to be able to get feuilly to let him pay for his food this time around. (if they were dating, baz thinks, if they were dating, he could take feuilly out for dinner and pay for it and pay for the wine and for the dessert, too, and feuilly wouldn’t be able to give him that look he shoots him whenever baz “accidentally” orders the wrong dish from the thai place down the road, so what if it always happens to be feuilly’s favorite, shut up, man, it’s a coincidence)

but feuilly’s making more money, so he decides to move out of his shitty attic apartment, because it kind of sucks, and it’s miniscule, and he’s an adult, damn it. he finds a new place that is marginally larger and marginally less shitty, and it’s not even that far away, just a couple blocks, and he tells baz he’ll be moving when his lease is up that year.

bahorel just wants to beg him to move in with him, but he only has the one bedroom, and feuilly’s not his fucking boyfriend. so he helps feuilly move, because he’s a good buddy, and he gets hammered with grantaire, after, because grantaire is lonely for someone he hasn’t met yet and bahorel is terrified that feuilly isn’t going to want to hang out with him now that they aren’t neighbors anymore.

feuilly, meanwhile, is across town at grantaire’s apartment (sans grantaire) getting blazed with jehan because he’s terrified that bahorel isn’t going to want to hang out with him now that they aren’t neighbors anymore. (jehan’s all 🥺You Are Always Welcome At My Humble Abode🥺 and feuilly’s very touched but he’s pretty sure he’s totally in love with bahorel and he’s scared and he’s also not sure that jehan even pays rent. so.)

they totally keep hanging out. obviously. (maybe a little bit less than they used to, but if baz thinks about that he’ll fucking cry.) bahorel feels a little bit like his heart is going to break, which is totally lame and which was not the plan when he agreed to help move a couch three years earlier. it’s just... there’s nobody like feuilly. there’s nobody even CLOSE to being like feuilly. and feuilly doesn’t like him. and so he spends a lot of time at grantaire’s place, and jehan finally gets their own apartment, so he’s free to cry into grantaire’s shoulder all he fucking wants.

feuilly goes on dates, sometimes. bahorel could totally treat him better than any of those dickheads. damn it.

bahorel hooks up with people, sometimes. feuilly could totally fuck him better than any of those dickheads. damn it.

and then grantaire gets a weird new roommate, or something. baz doesn’t know, fuck, nobody tells him jack shit. but he stops hearing from grantaire for a couple weeks, for the most part, and then he gets the party invite in the groupchat, and fuck, if there’s a housewarming party, he shall attend. feuilly mentions something to him about R’s new roomie being some philosopher, or something, but bahorel was kind of busy watching him fold up little origami flowers out of newspaper, so he missed all that. it’s cool, he’ll catch up.

apparently, grantaire’s roommate is from the 19th century. apparently, grantaire also has a massive fucking crush on him. huh.

when they first meet, feuilly and enjolras are kind of hilariously enamored by one another. not in a romantic way, just in a Very Intense Admiration type way. after they meet at the housewarming party, enjolras is like “I Must Find A Way To Speak With Feuilly Again, For He Is A Brilliant Mind And A Good Man” and combeferre is like... want me to invite him over? and enjy is like “No, I Must Pen Him A Letter. Yes. This Is A Good And Rational Plan.” (he spills coffee all over the letter right when he’s almost done and almost cries. ferre just invites feuilly over anyways.)

feuilly, of course, is freaking out about whether or not he can find a way to hang out with enjolras again. because! ahh!!! that’s François-Marie Enjolras, political revolutionary and philosopher!!!! feuilly’s read his essays like five times!!! what reason would he have to want to talk to feuilly? but also, like... he did want to talk to feuilly--at the party, he’d talked to feuilly for hours, and he’s so smart and a little funny and he’d listen to Feuilly go on and on about slavic history and he hadn’t looked bored once, and just- Ah!!!! and he’s trying to figure out if it would be weird if he asked enjolras if he’d want to meet over coffee when he gets combeferre’s text. (it’s something like, enjolras just composed a letter trying to ask you if you’d want to hang out with him do you want to come over before he uses up all of my printer paper? and then, also, don’t tell him i told you about the letter he’s kind of freaked about making a good impression) and feuilly’s just like. :o

and both grantaire and bahorel see enjolras and feuilly embarking on this sweet, awkward, smart person friendship and they’re like. Oh Shit. They’re In Love With Each Other. Shit. because of course feuilly would fall in love with enjolras--feuilly’s too smart for bahorel, anyways, baz has always known that, and it makes sense that he’d fall for someone who can keep up with him. and of course enjolras would fall in love with feuilly--feuilly is kind and super smart and he knows all sorts of things about modern philosophy and he’s hot, okay, and enjolras is too smart for grantaire, anyways. ugh. baz and R get hammered and cry about it together, but the shitty thing is that they can’t even be too angry, because it’s so obvious.

meanwhile, enjolras and feuilly are across town talking about their stupid crushes on their hot beefy friends. commiserating, yanno? feuilly’s all “sometimes i wish i just kissed him that first day i met him, sometimes i wish i hooked up with him at that party, maybe he would have started liking me after” and enjolras is all “why does he never wear shirts with SLEEVES, i do not know what to DO with myself!!!”

and then one day feuilly and baz are hanging out and baz is like “haha grantaire has the biggest crush on enjolras” (because he can’t keep a secret to save his life.) and feuilly’s like.... “grantaire likes enjolras?” and baz is like “uh YEAH dude. DUH” and feuilly’s like. “that can’t be right--enjolras told me grantaire doesn’t like him back” and baz is like... “bACK?” and then he’s like “WAIT ENJOLRAS DOESN’T LIKE YOU?” and feuilly is like... no?

they realize that their friends are idiots. and they try to help, really, they do--feuilly keeps suggesting that maybe, maybe, enjolras can’t know that grantaire doesn’t like him if he’s never actually asked, and he keeps pointing out things that grantaire does that nobody actually does if they’re not totally gone for somebody; bahorel is straight up just like “R bro enjolras wants to be your boy so bad” and R is like I Am Electing Not To Listen To You.

and then-

and then, they all go out to a bar together. they get hammered, etc. etc. and they’re laughing about how grantaire and enjolras are oblivious, how could they not know that they like each other, everybody keeps telling them to go for it, and then-

hold on.

hold on, because- because that’s what everybody tells bahorel about feuilly. that he should just go for it. that maybe it’s not as hopeless as he thinks. and feuilly’s just sitting there, and he’s so fucking pretty, sometimes, honestly, and bahorel loves him so much, and he’s drunk, and he can’t stand not knowing even a second longer.

#i'll post the bar scene later tonight hold yer horses #bahorel x feuilly #les miserables #les mis #kiaronna

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tigerdrop · 4 years ago

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hey i just wanna say the long posts genuinely make my day. also can you talk more about gordon freeman character because the way you write him makes me quake in my gay little boots

i would love to talk about gordon freeman. thank u for the opportunity

the first thing i need to communicate about gordon is that this dude sucks. and i say this in the fondest way possible. he is a bitch from the moment he drops into the world until the moment he goes out. if you dont believe me, give it another watch! gordons mouthy and rude for no real reason, at least so far as “being a regular dude on his way into work” goes, and this dude goes around calling his coworkers names with zero provocation. (of course, we all know that the reason is because its a funny guy improv stream that borrows a bit from freemans mind, but im talkin from a character sense.)

but my argument isnt just that gordon freeman sucks. its that he sucks in a very specific way that i find insanely endearing. i love this dude. i love to hate him. hes awful in a very mundane sense - weve all known a guy like this, at least if youve spent too much time online - and its cathartic to watch him suffer because of it.

gordons a smart guy. as written, hes gotta be - hes a recent MIT grad, on his way to work at a top-secret research facility to do weird shit with crystals and theoretical physics. but the thing about smart guys is that theyre often......selectively intelligent. we can see this in the way that he has a hard time navigating his surroundings, and needs the science crew to guide him through it and keep him alive.

this is one of those things that is a natural consequence of somebody going through the game for the first time, but that i am interpreting as “gordon is kind of stupid sometimes”. its uncharitable but its not like he doesnt deserve it. he likes to boss around the crew as if he knows what hes doing, when he often very much does not, and is fond of demeaning their intelligence. hes real bad about this with tommy in particular, treating him like hes a kid whos playing at being a scientist when tommy is actually a decade older than him. all i am saying is that gordon ought to stay humble. hes awful cocky when he perceives himself as better than others.

which, i think, tracks with how cocky he gets when he gives up on the whole “well-meaning citizen” thing and just unloads bullets into people. he puts up a front of being a Nice Guy, you know, just some dude caught in a bad situation who doesnt like seeing his companions obliterate every NPC they come across, but that doesnt stop him from cackling like a fucking madman and mowing down aliens (and soldiers) every once in awhile. when he stops seeing himself as helpless and starts seeing himself as the one in control, the gloves come off. he gets mean. and i think thats very sexy of him

this, among other things, is why i am insistent that gordon freeman is a control freak. he desperately wants to be in control of the situation at all times, shepherding around the science crew primarily by bitching at them, but its of limited success. its futile. sisyphean. tommy, coomer, bubby, and benrey exist almost to torment him with exactly the thing that would make him suffer the most: a gaggle of people running around causing problems for him, but he cant go anywhere without them b/c hes reliant on them to make it out alive.

its perpetual suffering, and its cathartic to watch. and funny, too. and if youre a little weirdo like me, its very, very enjoyable. how twisted up he gets when nobodys listening to him! how sweaty and frazzled he must look. its cute, and it also makes me want to reach through the screen and shake him and tell him to just be a little nicer. he wants control but he doesnt know how to attain it, he doesnt know how to play nice like a real leader. i think its a neat contrast to gordon freeman as we know him in HL2, where he literally is the leader of the resistance and has to live up to it. this is gordon freeman but if he was moe through helplessness.

“helpless” is, i think, a great way to describe him. a core bit of imagery in half life is this sense of railroadedness and helplessness, with gordon freeman being put into play like a chess piece and having no choice but to move forward. and this iteration of gordon leans into that by being totally dependent on the science crew in order to make progress and Not Die. and hes also subject to the whims of benrey, local eldritch weirdo who has basically made it his life mission to fuck with gordon.

gordons anxieties dont help with that. if he wasnt so fun to stress out and fuck with, the science crew probably wouldnt do it so much! too bad for him that they like fucking with him so much that he was driven into a panic attack (multiple times, even, depending on your interpretation). hes got that real neurotic mindset. always worrying about shit that could go wrong, and attempting to exert control over his surroundings in an effort to control the anxiety.

IMO the real way to nail the Neurotic Gordon Freeman Experience is to combine the ever-present anxiety with his pervasive sense of self-loathing. he openly states that he has no friends and nobody seems to like him, and to that, i really gotta say, i wonder why. he doesnt really seem to factor in that hes kind of a bitch, and has way too high an estimation of his own intelligence relative to everybody elses. its really one of the worst ways to be: aware that people dont like you, but unaware of exactly why. if he was like, 10% nicer, he probably wouldnt have had half as many issues getting through black mesa, but also, its funny to see him squawking his way through the game. so, you know.

its stuff like that that makes me headcanon him as a dude with low self-esteem in general. convinced that hes not likable, not attractive, out of his element......impostor syndrome, except that theres some truth to it. this is a guy who truly does not realize how good he has it: he really is just an average shitty dude, and yet, somehow, benrey took a shine to him. some poor motherfucker out there actually likes him and wants to suck his dick. thats dedication

also, i keep bringing up “repression” when i talk about gordon. and hopefully, what ive been talking about helps explain why. he has a strong desire to be a regular dude, not just murdering his way through black mesa, but if hes pushed hard enough he leans into it. gets bossy. picks up a cigar off a dead soldier and takes a long drag, before smacking forzen around with a pistol and ordering him around. gordon freeman is a regular, kind of anxious guy who likes competitive swimming and streaming on justin.tv and making anime references, and he is also a guy who takes a filthy pleasure in making a trained soldier his bitch. and i didnt make up any of this shit - this is purestrain canon, baby. this is a guy with problems

to me, this screams the kind of guy who represses a lot of shit b/c he doesnt feel like its morally decent. you run into this guy a lot online: the wokeboy, the online leftist, the guy who spends too much time on social media websites. (like reddit. i think he would actively use reddit and he would never get any appreciable amount of karma but he never stops posting. its sisyphean! cathartic.) from the way he talks about “bootboys”, i think it tracks. he knows about imperialism, he knows about feminism, but at the end of the day hes your average american white dude who struggles with internalizing it.

a lot of those dudes struggle with sex and gender issues. (dont we all.) when youre trying to be a Good Person(tm), you spend a lot of time thinking about your own relationship to sex and kink and all that shit. and i maintain that a too-online dude who buries a lot of his control freak tendencies would also try to bury a lot of weird sexual shit in an attempt to seem Normal and Well-Adjusted and not like a little freak. i justify this by the sheer number of times gordon blurts out weird sex shit as a joke. there are only two outcomes to making that many piss jokes: either youre secretly a piss guy, or you lathe-of-heaven yourself into becoming one. i will stand by this

ive talked a lot about why this dude sucks. now, let me talk to you about what makes gordon so much fun to write. first things first: hes funny! a subjective evaluation, yeah, but both in- and out-of-character, hes aiming to be funny. and being the straight man to everybody else plays into that whole “helplessness” thing.

secondly: underneath it all, there is a good dude under there. gordon worries when his companions get hurt, he tries to clean them off and patch them up, and hes got his lil leftist heart in the right place. you could even read a lot of his bossy, bitchy demeanor as him wanting to make sure everyone gets out okay and doesnt hurt themselves. when it comes to animals and anti-imperialist sentiment, gordons a pretty good guy.

hes the kind of guy who would probably see a dog on the street and get excited and play with it, but would get really prickly about the correct way to put dishes in the dishwasher. control freak tendencies.

finally, subjecting such a miserable, tormented guy to even more psychological anguish is really, really fun. you feel a little bad for him, but he kind of deserves it. so many problems he goes through are purely of his own making, and if gordon would just relax and quit trying to hard to maintain control - of himself, of the people around him - and own up to having Problems and Issues, he would be a happier guy. but thats why its fun to bend him until he breaks. being a little control freak myself, putting gordon freeman thru psychosexual torment is cathartic.

when it comes to writing his thought processes, the fact that he is canonically some kind of psychotic (yes, i am boldly claiming this. suck me) and i am also canonically some kind of psychotic makes it easier to write what i think his thought processes are. i just give him my brain issues of “getting lost in thought” and “overthinking fucking everything”. a touch of paranoia helps. even if i dont explicitly label him as schizophrenic please know that i am writing him as a paranoid little nutcase at all times because, uh, you write what you know.

paranoid. anxious. of the mindset that everyones out to get him (which isnt helpful when everyone is out to get him). repressed and deeply Not Normal but trying so very fucking hard to be normal and well-adjusted. a control freak with sadistic tendencies who also really, really likes getting bullied by his best frenemy. a hapless little nerd who sounds really cute when his voice starts to break from nerves. and, most importantly, a dumb jock. do not ever forget this.

thats gordon freeman, babey. hope that helps

#asky #careposting

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tgsofu · 4 years ago

Text

Gonna do some game reviews!

Heya people!

I’ve been doing some mindfulness practices to get myself to become less of a socially withdrawn workaholic and more of a lazy nerd again, and one thing I wanna try doing is game reviews! I wanna share my thoughts and totally legit ratings for games I’ve played, on one hand to give myself a reason to play them, on another to make myself actually remember them!

When reviewing games I have played, I review these aspects:

Content

Story

Characters

World (in terms of worldbuilding and credibility of the world in-universe)

Visuals

Art direction

Graphics

Technical

Gameplay

Difficulty

Accessibility

Ingenuity

Gimmick

Originality

I use stars to give them ratings:

☆☆☆☆☆ Just overall shitty, broken, uninspired and boring - not even meme worthy. Waste of my time!

★☆☆☆☆ Broken, uninspired and boring. Possibly still meme worthy? So bad it’s good?

★★☆☆☆ Not really enjoyable, but might contain some noteworthy ideas and concepts, which it failed to deliver

★★★☆☆ It’s ok, though fails to stand out. I will probably forget about it.

★★★★☆ Overall enjoyable and memorable. It may have some aspects I don’t like or find inconvenient, but not enough to stain the big picture.

★★★★★ Does everything right to cater to my tastes and catch both my undivided attention and interest, and leaves a lasting impression. If it has any flaws, they are insignificant in my bold opinion.

And today... we start with!!!

I love birds, I love funny things with birds and I love birds in popular media. The Untitled Goose game is deffo up my alley in that sense.

CONTENT: ★★★★★

This game practices a minimalistic manner in its storytelling and where the core story is simple, it has a surprising amount of depth to it told through the interactive environment with its many little details and characters. A lot of love has been poured into the neighbourhood that the Goose explores throughout the game, with each character entering the frame with a ton of personality and details about their lives, passions and hobbies. No words are spoken throughout the entire experience, yet it is rare treat to see a world so lively and alive within such a simplistic game. It never needed this much detail to be a good game, yet my never-ending thirst for immersion and storytelling in a game makes me appreciate it on a whole different level thanks to the extra effort.

VISUALS: ★★★★☆

Visually the game is very cute and pleasing. Flat base colors with sharp cartoon esque cel-shading is what I live for and I am shamefully easy to win over just by taking this route with any game’s art style. Beyond this, the objects, people and environment are all skilfully crafted, making them a joy to behold while managing to be bold and unique enough to strengthen the game’s visual identity. However, though I admit this is entirely a matter of personal tastes, I am not awarding the game with full 5 stars for visuals. While cute, unique and aesthetically pleasing, I feel like the graphics could still have dared to gone a bit further to give its looks an extra punch and make it all the more memorable for them.

TECHNICAL: ★★★☆☆

I like how interactive the world is! You can bite and drag just about any object around and have fun with your ability to honk and flap. In terms of the Goose’s skillset, the game has a nice amount of complexity to keep the experience fresh without becoming overwhelming. However, the Goose can be a pain in the ass to control at times and the objects can be a chore to get to land in the right place. Furthermore, while the game’s mechanics definitely work and achieve what they were intended for, they don’t really strike me as anything phenomenal or new. You mostly work by carrying stuff around, and the Goose’s ability to drag, carry and drop is not really what I will be remembering this game so fondly for.

INGENUITY: ★★★★★

I get to play as a cute goose and make lovable npcs’ life a living hell? Hell yes. The concept is hilarious and ingenious in all its simplicity and has the power to bring a smile to your face throughout the entire gaming experience. Originally I was intending to award this section four out of five stars but while typing this I came to a realization I did not have really anything negative to say about the originality or the core gimmick of this game. I sure wouldn’t know how to improve it; the Untitled Goose game has secured its spot within the gaming community for a reason and, in my humble opinion, its ingenuity is to thank for it.

OVERALL: ★★★★☆

A fun, memorable low-effort game to get you both hooked and lift your rainy mood.

#game reviews #the untitled goose game

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mentalcurls · 6 years ago

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1. Sembri una pu***na

So I started the all-Skam Italia rewatch last Sunday and it turns out I have a lot to say about it. Like, four pages on Word of stuff to say. It took me three days to get evrything out and make it readable. So here, for you reading pleasure, my thoughts on ep.1 season 1 “Sembri una pu***ana”. There’s some kind of heavy stuff and I draw some parallels to my personal experience, since I was, unce upon a time, a teenager and a student at the same school all the highschoolers in SkamIT attend, and I’m also beginning to do the Bechdel test on the episodes!

The montage at the beginning is really powerful when you link the images from Giovanni and Eva’s class’s time at the Succursale to Gio’s essay, that Eva’s reading in the background, in particular the first part: LudoBesse is basically telling us how much of a waste Eva thinks her and Laura’s friendship is to Laura now

Something else about Gio’s essay (as someone who attended classico): it’s a YES from me because criticizing liceo classico is peak classico culture, it’s a HELL NO because classico is actually the best school in the world and I sincerely hope that if anyone else but himself said/wrote that kind of stuff about his school Gio would be at their throats

Eva has that “seeing someone outside the school gates and static fills your ears” moment just like Marti when he sees Niccolò for the first time! Hers is of course with Laura and Sara, who are with... Silvia and Fede! I like that they showed us a bit of this friendship that we didn’t really get to see in the og.

Martino and that iconic first “A zozzoni!” ❤️

Marti and Gio are competing for who got the best grades in the History test and I have a lot to say about this: we know Gio has really high grades (we are told he has an average of 9/10 in Latin and he got 8,5 in History) and that thing he does, bragging about it with his friend, the friendly competition between them, the actual talking about his grades without worrying who’s listening to him? That shit wouldn’t have flied for me, a once-upon-a-time student of liceo classico with an average of 8/10 in Latin, 8/10 in Ancient Greek and 9/10 in History and in part it was because I didn’t have the best classmates, but for the most part I couldn’t have done that because I am a girl (and my friends and classmates were 98% female)

girls are socialized to be humble about accomplishments, first and foremost, to avoid bragging AND humblebragging as well, and to always care about other people and their feelings; basically, whenever the topic of marks and grades came up while I was in high school, I had to try my best to avoid disclosing my own; if they were brought up directly, say them as dispassionately as possible and then try to change topic; I had be conscious of the fact I was talking someone who had much worse grades than me most of the time, so I had to keep into mind their experience of finding things I found doable (like translating from Latin) extremely hard, of disliking subjects I enjoyed (and most of the time the professor who taught them too, especially when they’d recently gotten a bad mark) and of being frustrated by their grades. I could never have competed with any of my friends about who got the highest marks (most of the time there was actually a sort of “gallows humor” competition over who got the lowest). I couldn’t show I was happy about my good grades, because I’d get negative comments from my friends (yes, even close friends, people I get on with and love to this day) who would dismiss my accomplishment as obvious, something that came easily to me because I was a nerd (the translation in Italian is “secchiona” and it doesn’t have any of the “cute” connotations pop culture gave its English counterpart) and something I shouldn’t “show off”. On top of that, if something was hard for me, it was whatever and what right did I have to complain when I had such high grades anyways, it wouldn’t be a problem in the long run.

So yeah, Martino and Giovanni, right now I kind of hate you for not having to take on any emotional labour in these kind of situations and society for socializing males and females in different ways when it comes to accomplishments and for accepting different behaviours from boys and girls.

QED Gio and Marti turn to Eva and ask her about her mark, she’s reticent but they get an answer out of her (that is not even the truth) and they mock her for it. Yes it’s all fun and games but Eva’s mark is really bad compared to Giovanni’s and Martino’s (especially her real mark) and grades are important for teens, no matter how much they deny it, if nothing else then because they influence their relationship with their parents

you can see Eva is hurt by their careless mocking, by Gio’s fake attempt at placating with “stuff she’s good at” (among which is re-heating pre-cooked food which is at the same time a way to have her “stay in the kitchen” and not even be able to properly cook) and by the way he and Marti underestimate her and laugh at her in the following exchange, when Marti shushes her and she calls him “asshole” with that annoyed face. It’s silly, “loving” mockery but it affects people anyways and it shows a lack of empathy only guys are allowed. She’s expected to take it with good grace (and this takes additional emotional labour) because it’s just for fun and they’re friends and they don’t mean it, but it’s not fair

“There are no secrets in a couple, but there aren’t between friends either.” THE WAY MARTINO PUTS HIMSELF ON THE SAME LEVEL AS EVA in Giovanni’s life, straight away! This boy. And Gio agrees! That shit must’ve been so frustrating, poor Eva.

This conversation between Gio, Eva and Marti: G: Today we’re going to Elia’s place to study. E: Oh, so that’s what you’re calling it now, studying. M: Oh c’mon, 6 minus, shhh. is the beginning of the reoccurring dynamic between them in the season that will make Eva paranoid and will bring her to confronting Laura and to cheating aka Giovanni keeping a secret, lying to Eva about where he goes and what he does, Martino enabling him by misdirecting or distracting her or Gio doing it himself, then either or both the guys calling her crazy or paranoid for doubting their words. You know what’s that? It’s called gaslighting.

[Gaslighting means manipulating a person by psychological means into questioning his or her own sanity. It’s the same technique that, according to some of his critics, Donald Trump used to get gain traction with voters (see Trump giving “alternative facts” and dubbing the media that fact checked and corrected him “fake news”).]

[I’M NOT SAYING THAT GIOVANNI IS THE SAME AS TRUMP, I DON’T THINK THEY’RE THE SAME, I only want to present an example of how this form of psychological manipulation is an actual thing in the real word and is really effective and dangerous.]

I am aware that Giovanni is just a dumb teenager trying to hide his weed habit from his girlfriend, that Martino is just being a good bro and covering for his best friend, that they’re doing this without any malicious intent towards Eva and that she’s insecure all by herself. Still, gaslighting is not a behaviour our societies should excuse, especially because it’s usually practiced by the usual suspects over women and minorities. I’d never seen it pointed out in the context of Skam Italia so I thought I’d bring it up, especially in light of S2 and of the “unproblematic” label Gio’s been given. He’s not perfect, he does shitty stuff too, then afterwards he simply grows up and becomes better. Let’s not forget about it and celebrate the person he’s become.

Case in point is the whole 1.2 Online clip. This is conversation between Eva and Gio: G: My battery died. E: But you were on-line. G: No, I wasn’t, my phone died a couple of hours ago. E: But I saw you. G: Eva, I don’t know how it happened. There must be something wrong with my phone, I don’t know. Sometimes I see you online and you’re not, too. I mean, everyone knows it happens. We can Google it if you want. E: No, it’s okay. And where were you? G: At Elia’s. E: Till now? G: Yeah. E: That’s weird. I talked to Martino earlier and he said you guys left a while ago. G: Eva, what’s wrong? Martino left earlier and I stayed till now. What, you don’t believe? Don’t you trust me? Are you insane, uh? [G kisses E] Everything’s alright. Little koala? Little koala always works. [G carries E to her room, then they have sex.] Giovanni lies about his phone being dead, then tells Eva that her seeing him online is impossible or a fluke, that everyone knows those kind of flukes happen, then lies again about being at Elia, when she tries to expose him he adjusts and starts questioning why she doesn’t believe him, finally calling her crazy and distracting her with kisses and sex. This is gaslighting.

(I had actual chills as I watched the scene again and typed this.)

Those theatre kids are so awkward, but quoting weird passages from greek/latin/italian poetry by heart is peak liceo classico culture

unsupportive boyfriend Gio shows up again when Eva suggest they go to the Easter party: his first reaction is “What? Why? You don’t even like that”, so savage, but fair Eva reminds him he’s actually a loser who, at 16, plays card to have fun with his friends like a 60 year old

Gio is being an asshole, he only considers going with Eva’s suggestion in exchange for something, then guilts her into accepting his “deal” bringing up Marti’s difficult family situation and her grades, implicitly, by promising to volunteer for the philosophy oral test, plus he’s rude and insensitive af because he brings up her inviting a friends when he knows fully well that when they cheated on Laura she got completely cut off

this will show up again, but let me just start to say it in the first episode: how unfair is it for Eva to be suffering most of the consequences in her life for getting together with her best friend’s boyfriend, when Giovanni faces no consequences that we know of for cheating on his girlfrien? And how unfair it must feel, deep deep down, to Eva

then, when she agrees, he takes back his side of the deal and Eva has to say it’s fine, it’s nothing because he says sorry and that’s socialization kicking in, telling her not to be difficult, not to be needy and not to complain cause that’s annoying and girls guys want to date are not any of those things; honestly, the emotional labour Eva has to go through

that getting ready montage, Eva really goes full on revenge mode like Lady D and she’s fully feeling her oats

the first dress Eva tries on is the same we saw Laura wearing at the party, but Eva’s red while Laura’s blue: I put all my money o it being a dress they bought together and on it being kind of their go-to dress, Eva thought about wearing it to remind Laura of their friendship but in the end decided it would only make things harder

oh, the conversation with Laura at the bar. God, if the situation is this tense can you imagine being in the same class as her and as Gio six hours a day everyday? We’ve talked about how shit it must have felt for Niccolò to be in the same class as Marco Covitti in S2, but Eva’s situation is awful too. I wonder how much of that factors in her bad grades and troubles with school

how more people don’t ship Italian Evanora is beyond me, have you seen this interaction?

on the other hand, I wonder how much Eleonora thought about it later, about how she must have come on too strong, about how maybe Eva thought she was weird or hitting on her and how much that weighed on Eleonora not reaching out first again, cause she makes a face like she regrets her life the minute Eva walks away

it breaks my heart, honestly: Eva has just been told she’s a whore by someone she once considered a friend, but when she finds this person’s new friend, who she doesn’t know, crying in the bathroom she doesn’t bat an eyelash, reassures her and tries her best to help her (so much emotional labour that women “naturally” take on themselves because we’re taught to be empathetic and caretakers even when we’re ourselves in distress)

one question: if Federico Canegallo is as popular as the Villa crew seems to be, how the hell does nobody know him when Eva is looking for “Fede”? Besides, Silvia doesn’t even react to the fact that he’s a friend of Edoardo’s when she sees him in the bathroom!

the interaction between the two Fedes kills me in every version

ok fuck you Silvia for not even saying thanks for trying and looking at Eva like she’s a decerebrate

Bechdel test: the episodes passes the test because of the conversations between Eva and Laura (nice 😑), Eva and Eleonora (though they’re mostly talking shit about other girls, so still not very good) and Eva and Silvia (though we actually don’t know her name yet at this point, we can only guess it from context, so it’s borderline). So this is cute.

This post is part of my complete series of meta about Skam Italia season 1. If you’d like to read more of my thoughts about the other episodes, you can find the mastepost linked in the top bar on my blog under SKAMIT: EVA. Cheers!

#skam italia #skamit s1 #eva brighi #martino rametta #giovanni garau #laura pandakovic #federico canegallo #eleonora sava #silvia mirabella #skamit meta #1x01 sembri una pu***ana #a. writes

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moonmothmama · 6 years ago

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ok. so. The Princess Bride. i read it yesterday.

and right up front, before even a review, i’m gonna go ahead and list everything objectionable in the book that i can recall. please don’t take the length of the bullet pointed items to follow as an indication that the book was wildly problematic and offended me at every turn; it wasn’t and it didn’t. but there were some things that made me go: 😑 or 😒, and here it all is, presented with context, before anything else, because to be honest, i didn’t expect any of it. the film is relatively spotless, which is pretty rare for that era, and if any of you are thinking of reading it, you could do with being more prepared for this than i was.

first off, racism. two passing remarks. one isn’t even in the story proper; it’s in the first whole long intro bit from the author/narrator. that takes some explanation, i suppose: like in the film, the story is presented as a book having been written by “S. Morganstern,” except instead of a grandfather reading to his sick grandson, the narrator is interjecting with notes on the original text that he has abridged. the beginning is a whole long shpiel that, in my opinion, could have been significantly pared down with absolutely zero loss to the story (which! hey! the film did perfectly! go figure!). anyway, the first racist remark is an absolutely tasteless line in which the narrator pisses and moans about his fat son, making a crack about “painting him yellow” and making him a sumo wrestler. y i k e. the other passing remark is from Miracle Max (really, truly, the film version of this scene is miles better than the book version, but contains an important plot detail, so you should prob still read it, but i’ll give you the lowdown if you wanna skip). he refers to Iñigo as a sp*ck (rather bafflingly, i might add, bc Iñigo is a Spanish man... from Spain... not a Hispanic or Latino man from Latin America. so. i mean i’m certainly not an expert on slurs but... i have never in my life heard that term in reference to a person from Spain, and am virtually certain it was invented to refer to ppl from the americas) and in the same breath uses an objectionable term for a Polish person. sooo... again: y i k e. what gets me is that... these could’ve just been edited out? why weren’t they? i mean i know why but

fat shaming! see above. though to be honest, any true negativity about fatness is restricted to the author/narrator’s interjections; there are a few minor fat characters in the story and those depictions, without being too long-winded or spoilery, didn’t offend me (fyi: i’m fat). if you want the details, please feel free to message me about it.

if we can go back to the whole long beginning shpiel from the author/narrator, it’s just... eh. he comes off as kind of a jackass, tbh. not even halfway through it i found myself more than a little impatient for the story to begin, and that could be at least partly because the film spoiled me with a lovely, not annoying, not problematic scene of Granddad Columbo reading to Baby Fred Savage where no one made any racist remarks or ragged on fat kids. the basic gist, if you want to skip it, is that the author, as a kid, had this book read to HIM by his father, who was a Florinese immigrant, and nearly illiterate in English, but still labored over reading the English translation to his American-born son, who adored the book and requested it read to him dozens and dozens of times over the years, refusing to read it himself (though he read plenty of other books). as an adult, he buys his son the book, and is crushed when the son doesn’t like it. he then reads it for the first time, and realizes his father skipped over huge, boring blocks of text. he read his son only The Good Parts. so he decides to edit that shit out himself and release the abridged version he loves so much. add into that some complaining about his wife and some extra blah blah, and that’s pretty much it.

you remember the scene in the movie where The Man In Black/Westley almost slaps Buttercup for what he believes is lying? in the book he actually slaps her. not that his actions seem supported or endorsed by the text, but still, there you are. Buttercup does push him off a cliff soon after, though, so. i wouldn’t call that ‘even’ exactly but, shrug

Vizzini, in the book, has a fucky leg and his back isn’t quite straight, and he’s referred to repeatedly as a “humpback” or “hunchback” which needless to say is Not Kosher

that, as i recall, is it. i hope i’m not forgetting anything. now onto content/trigger warnings:

alcoholism. this shouldn’t be a surprise if you’ve seen the movie: Iñigo has some, shall we say, issues

Fezzik’s parents were... terrible. CPS would be all over them. spoiler: basically they emotionally blackmailed their son into fighting professionally, which they knew he hated, by telling him they’d abandon him if he didn’t

Buttercup has some kinda messed up (read: unsettling but in no way graphic) nightmares after leaving Westley when they’re found by Prince Humperdinck at the Fire Swamp, mostly involving bearing children to the Prince who she once again is set to marry

the slurs and whatnot i mentioned above

violence, obviously. nothing worse than the film as i recall.

that’s it i think.

okay. all that said. did i enjoy the book? yes i did. a lot.

now, you might be thinking: jesus, Kathleen, after all the shit you just listed? and to this i reply: listen. there is no Unproblematic Media, so you either enjoy some things that are flawed, or you enjoy nothing at all. there is plenty of objectionable shit in Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit! fucking plenty! and i love those books! and so do plenty of other people! in my own humble opinion, the good story is worth the shitty bits, because the shitty bits aren’t like, fundamental to the plotline. the story isn’t built on offensive humor or nasty, bigoted attitudes. and they’re also not the most egregious examples of Objectionable Content i’ve come across- not by a longshot. there are levels to offense. there are tiers of bullshit. this is on a far lower tier than a whole host of other things i could mention. but if any of this stuff i’ve listed crosses a line for you, i totally understand and respect that. that’s why i’ve bothered to list it at all. imo, how you respond to objectionable content is important: you don’t ignore it or excuse it, you acknowledge and criticize it. and if you still enjoy whatever the thing is, you allow yourself to enjoy it, without getting hissy or defensive with people for whom the objectionable content ruined the book/movie/whatever.

there you go, there’s my disclaimer for having enjoyed the book. your mileage may vary.

okay. so. review time.

Buttercup is a far more interesting character in the book than the movie, for which the movie can’t be faulted all that much, because you can’t easily translate a character’s inner monologue/unspoken thoughts to the screen, especially not with the time limit that comes with the medium of film. but watching her struggle with her feelings and life choices (and... lack thereof, since her choice is between marrying the prince and being put to death, which isn’t much of a choice, even if she tries to reason it out later by telling herself she COULD have said no... and initially did) creates far more of a bond between her and the reader in the book than, personally, i felt watching the movie. also she has a great line after Westley calls her beautiful at their reunion- she says something like, ‘everyone’s always calling me beautiful, i have a mind too, why don’t you talk about that’

Both Westley and Buttercup are immature, naive, and foolish in the beginning, and if Westley strikes you as Extra Dickish, a) rewatch the film! he did act like a bit of a dick, there, didn’t he? b) remember that in the story he’s a young man between the ages of eighteen and twenty five, which in my considerable experience is the age at which young men are generally at their peak of Asshole. sorry dudes

and not that Buttercup herself is a complete peach! she deals very poorly with her emotions in general and acts kinda shitty herself once or twice. i won’t say too much lest i spoil everything that’s different between the film and the book.

Prince Humperdinck is also a more three dimensional character; still a rat bastard tho.

onto Fezzik and Iñigo.

as i have said in other blog posts, these boys are... pretty much the whole reason i sought out the book. and... jesus.

you get all the way into the tragic backstories that were only hinted at in the film. okay, Iñigo’s backstory was more than hinted- but of course you go so much deeper in the book- and Fezzik’s was less than hinted, reduced mostly to a peek at the insecurity that Vizzini exploits and preys upon to keep him in line. not that you’d have to expend a great effort to him to keep him in line; his personality is docile and non-confrontational. truly not the slightest bit aggressive by nature. he’s also kinda clingy and needy, which is a thousand percent understandable given his childhood, and tbqh doesn’t need to be browbeaten for Vizzini to keep him on his short, cruel leash. which makes it all the more painful! hurrah! 😭

also you actually get to meet Iñigo’s father, Domingo Montoya, in a flashback, aaaand... i kinda love him. probably predictable if you know me.

anyway. tragic backstories. which further illuminate the emotional and psychological issues that make them so dependent on Vizzini, and turn them to lives of crime in his employ. poor boys! oy gevalt. sympathy abounds; i honestly don’t know how you could go through the book and not fall at least a little bit in love with this duo, whose friendship is precious and adorable and a balm to the soul that is aching from their painful life stories and unhealthy coping mechanisms. they’re each, very plainly, the only friend the other has in the world, and are constantly helping and bolstering one another. it’s heartbreakingly sweet. i think those boys will be alright as long as they stick together.

and now, the repeated theme of the book, that is presented with far less intensity in the film: life isn’t fair. which, one supposes, is true. but while the narrator’s framing of that assertion may give you the same misgivings they gave me- bitching about his fat son and his less than ideal relationship with his wife- you can also step back and appreciate it as a wee pearl of wisdom. life is often unfair, but that doesn’t mean it’s altogether bad or that you can’t enjoy it. idk, that’s my attitude, man.

i could talk about the ending here, but i won’t. at least not too much. not to spoiler-ish-ly. if you don’t want to know anything about the book’s ending at all, feel free to not read the last bit here, except for the very last lines which are bolded.

ready? yes? no?

...

the ending to the book is different than the movie. there is a more philosophical, open ended conclusion than you could really get away with in a movie. at least this movie.

just throwing it out there: i believe in happy endings. ones in real life. but i kind of disagree with the author a little bit, in that i don’t think happy endings necessarily have to be perfect and unblemished to qualify as happy endings. that may be the way “happily ever after” is generally presented, but to me, “happily ever after” means, maybe some shit happened, but none of it was completely devastating, and in the final analysis, life was satisfying. that’s the kind of real life happy ending i’m aiming (and hoping) for. this might sound vague but i hope it’ll make sense if you read the book.

if you wanna do that, btw, i read it for free online at allnovel dot net.

#kathleen reads the book #the princess bride #william goldman #book review #ish? thing?#blogging on my blog

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redorblue · 7 years ago

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The Terranauts, by T. C. Boyle

There’s this one thing that I always found incredibly annoying about English books, and that German books thankfully don’t have (yet). I hate the bunch of review snippets all over the cover so. much. It screws up the cover design, it can get pretty crowded if the publishing house was really proud of this book, and it tells you absolutely nothing. Same thing on the backside: I’ve seen books that have three lines of quote from inside the book, and six quotes from reviews gushing about it. How is that supposed to help me, or make me buy it? Last time I looked, most people still buy books because they think the story or the setup is intriguing, or because they like the author, not because Person X, Author of YZA, said it’s a “triumph of the imagination”. German books don’t do that. German books have the author and the name of the book on the cover, nicely integrated into the cover art, and a synopsis and maybe a short quote on the back. Orderly. Informative. Very German, probably.

But I digress. The reason I got into this was my most recent read, The Terranauts, and not only did I find it terrible, I also have no idea which book those reviewers from the Guardian, the Times etc. read - I find it hard to believe it was the same I did. So let’s try something else and use those incredibly unhelpful literary critics to structure what I did not like about this book.

1. “Excruciatingly funny” - Times Literary Supplement

This one is the easiest: I have no idea what they are talking about. If this book was so funny, it wouldn’t have been too much to expect to laugh at least once, right? Well, I didn’t. I also didn’t chuckle, snort, giggle, smile or even lift one corner of my mouth in amusement. Because in my not so humble opinion, this book is not funny. Unless I’m supposed to laugh about this one guy lusting after whichever woman has the longest legs in the room, about this woman who falls for him nonetheless and keeps lying to herself about his shittiness, or her so-called “best friend” who takes a trip to Mexico and promptly gets diarrhea. Yeah, very funny. Not everybody has the same sense of humour and all that, but I think someone who can laugh about such things has a rather questionable one.

2. “Lord of the Flies meets Hunger Games” - The Times

With this one I at least get why they came to that conclusion. The story is the fictional continuation of a real-life experiment conducted some time in the 90s where eight people - four men, four women - were locked into a glass dome with a self-sustaining ecosystem inside, and basically told to see how many were still walking after two years. The first, real group broke closure (= was interrupted) after a few months because of a medical emergency, which is why the fictional second group is all the more fanatic determined to not open the airlock for the full two years, whatever happens. While they’re in there farming and supposedly conducting scientific experiments (although you never learn what it is exactly they’re testing, so if you want hard science, stay away), they get media coverage from all over the US (about what, one might ask... Must have been one hell of a silly season to send reports about people milking goats... Checking humidity... catching fish... Unheard of, right?).

So yeah, I can see where that one came from: a bunch of people locked in together at close quarters, becoming increasingly hateful towards each other = Lord of the Flies. Doing it all for the media coverage, completely with donations and the participants as celebrities and merchandise = The Hunger Games. Never mind that neither the characters from Lord of the Flies nor the candidates in the Hunger Games were there willingly, whereas in this book going under the glass with seven people you already can’t stand before you even go in, slowly starving yourself, slowly asphyxiating in the winter months, without pay or plan what to do afterwards, is somehow presented as being incredibly desirable (Really, the only lucid part this book has is when the characters call this enterprise a cult, or deny it being a cult - hey, at least they said the word, and self-denial is a serious Thing among all the characters). But okay, if you say so. The thing is, in my opinions it falls short in both comparisons.

I have to admit, I’ve never read Lord of the Flies, only watched the movie, and you shouldn’t judge a book by its adaptation. But I remember that (besides the survival part) it’s about group dynamics, how groups organize under pressure, how new leaders establish new orders, and the violence that ensues. Now I’m definitely not one of those people who need a body count to enjoy a book, but this one, I have to admit, was too... tame? for me to be credible. The highest tensions ever rose was a fistfight between two characters after almost two years of being locked in, when they were half starved already and there was barely any oxygen left in the air. Sure, the rest of the time they were constantly badmouthing each other, and venomous when they had to talk about something - but really, that’s your climax, your crisis? I already mentioned that most of the crew members didn’t like each other to begin with, and of course that didn’t get better over the course of the book, but it feels a bit lame to have your characters constantly emphasize how much they hate each other (and one even threatening to kill anyone who jeopardizes the mission! Talk about a Chekov’s gun that just... never went off I guess?), and then presenting a few punches as The Worst It Can Get. Let alone not resolving anything after they finally get out. Most of the crew just disappear into thin air, which is fitting because they weren’t much more than thin air with a name tag during the entire book, and the POVs just... get on with their lives I guess. The ending really feels a bit like the author just ran out of pages, and not in the good, open-ending kind of way. There is no resolution, no discernible character arc, no epiphany, nothing. It just ends. So take this as a vivid example of how structuring does NOT work.

As for the comparison with The Hunger Games... First of all, there’s the same problem of being too tame. The Hunger Games works partly (!!) because it’s suspenseful, what with fighting and hunting and figuring stuff out and action scenes in general. The Terranauts doesn’t have anything of the sort: no secret plots to unveil, no rivals to kill (and the moral dilemma that comes with it), very little, very drawn out struggle for survival... Again, I don’t need any of this to like a book, I can do without action, but it’s the Times that made the comparison, and I’m sorry but I think The Terranauts falls short. By a mile or so. Another thing that made The Hunger Games so interesting is the role the media plays: How the games are basically just entertainment for the rich, how public images are constructed and why, how public opinion and public sentiment is influenced etc. The Hunger Games were honest about how it’s all “just” for show. The Terranauts, however, tried to keep up its pretense of being oh so scientific, while the only thing that ever gets any screentime is not experiments or hard facts, but photo ops and interviews and presentations. Which would be fine if the book ever properly dealt with the fact that it was all just a huge media stunt. But it doesn’t, it never talks about the implications of the experiment being a big, expensive reality show, it never grants its characters a moment of epiphany or a personal crisis with regards to their sacrifices not being for science and the survival of the human race, but for money and money alone. The closest the characters ever get to realizing this and instrumentalizing it is when some of them threaten the CEO to talk to the press, but none of them ever go through with it (and there’s no reason why they wouldn’t besides this ominous cult mentality thing, because some of them have been treated really badly). Not even the crew member whose responsibility is PR management ever really tries to create a public image of himself that he can use to get what he wants and influence public opinion to the disadvantage of disliked crew mates or some such. It all feels very half-baked, and that from an author who’s famous for writing real adult novels. Talk about how naive and shallow YA novels are.

3. “Heartbreakingly human” - The Guardian

God... I hope not. I think not. If this set of characters is supposed to provide us with a sample of human experiences and emotions, then it’s really time to pack my bags and go be a hermit somewhere. Also, everyone is white, with the exception of one Asian person, who coincidentally is also the only woman who is consistently described as being fat and plain and kinky-haired (fat and kinky-haired being used as decidedly denigrating terms here - god this book has so many issues). And a terrible person, but that’s true for everyone. There are two minor characters who seem to be alright, the crew physician and the crew leader, but every non-POV character is basically just walking cardboard with maybe one or two traits each (for some reason I absolutely can’t fathom, bitchy, scheming and promiscuous come to mind for every single female character). Besides that there are three POVs: one man inside, one woman inside, and one woman outside (the Asian one). They all have some common character traits: they’re hateful, spiteful, lying, scheming, unreflected, self-serving, egocentric assholes. But besides those lovely common traits, they have some others that make them loathsome in their very own way, and I can’t shake the feeling that the author took a lot of inspiration from some nasty gender stereotypes. (warning: from here on it gets spoilery)

Let’s start with the guy, Ramsay. He’s sex-obsessed in a way that he can’t form any coherent thought as soon as a pair of shapely legs and boobs with a woman attached enters the room. He’s incapable of fidelity, love, loyalty and commitment, although he constantly claims otherwise. Let me give you a few examples of his awfulness: After he breaks up with one of his crewmates (after maybe forcing himself on her? It’s not made clear. How can that not be clear.), he constantly complains how ugly and old and generally repulsive she is. That’s the only thing he has to say about her. He then starts an affair with another crewmate, and when she becomes pregnant, he blames it all on her for deceiving him and being irrational because she didn’t want to screw up her body with artificial hormones every day which apparently is to be expected from every woman. He then pressures her to have an abortion. She refuses, and he constantly thinks about how gross she is the further the pregnancy progresses. After the baby is born, he doesn’t help her whatsoever, and first chance he gets, he takes off on her although he has promised her otherwise. To top it all off, he restarts his affair with a woman from the outside crew about whom we only learn that she’s a snake with nice legs, while he’s still married to the mother of his child. I don’t think I need to add anything to that. The amount of misogyny, sexism, and patriarchal stereotypes about men as mindless sex machines (plus the corresponding view on women) all compressed into one character is baffling.

For the women there’s a bit more variation, but it doesn’t get any less nasty. Woman No. 1, Dawn, is the long-legged, full-breasted redhead beauty who gets one of the few spots inside the experiment and takes over responsibility for growing food in the fields and tending to the farmyard animals. She then gets together with Ramsay, gets pregnant and decides to carry the child against all common sense, considering that the experiment can barely produce enough calories for eight people, let alone nine, and is definitely not able to provide for the special needs of a pregnant woman or a newborn child. After Dawn’s two years are officially over, she refuses to leave the glass dome and decides to stay inside because she feels so close to nature inside, or something like that. Notice the symbolism at work here? The stereotype presented here is that of Mother Earth, fertile, providing, one with nature itself. It’s quite fitting that Dawn’s nickname, chosen by her fellow participants, is Eos (which literally means dawn). Both her names fit very well into this whole mantra that the organizers of the experiment have: to start anew, create a better world, one that sustains itself and doesn’t exploit resources but is fertile enough to to live independently (which, I’m sorry, is just not true. They rely on the local power plant to keep their ideal environment stable, they receive knowledge from the outside world, and after the two years the dome is in need of a thorough restocking because the crew killed all the farm animals and ate all the seed stocks because they were hungry.) Dawn is the archetypal woman, the one who nourishes others and gives life, is loving, beautiful and monogamous, but she also displays some negative traits that have been historically associated with women: She’s naive to the point that she doesn’t notice any negative feelings Ramsay has towards her; she’s self absorbed, like when she decides to go through with the pregnancy at the risk of the others starving; and she’s emotional in a way that’s constantly pointed out to be annoying and exaggerated (they call it weepy).

The other female POV, Linda, is presented as her foil. She’s also the only PoC character, which makes her negative portrayal doubly problematic, especially since she seems to stand in for two ethnicities: Asian (because of her Korean ancestry) and black (because of her kinky hair). We keep being told that Linda and Dawn are best friends, but there’s really no evidence in the text to support that since they’re constantly bitter, false and patronizing towards the other, in their thoughts and in their actions. Also, they mainly seem to talk about the men in their lives with each other, with Dawn as the one who has a way with men and Linda as the jealous, Fat Ugly Friend^TM. So yeah, great portrayal of a friendship between two women, since obviously men is the only thing we ever talk and care about. But besides being presented as an overall terrible person - false, needy, deceiving, the archetypal snake to Dawn’s Eve* - Linda herself also constantly emphasizes that she’s overweight and not conventionally attractive, which in her interior monologue tied together with her lack of success with men - and her race. The only valid point this book makes is that it damages your career and possibly your romantic chances, especially as the only PoC in an all-white environment. But since this point is filtered through the perspective of a character whose interior monologue is filled with constant nagging and delusions, it’s incredibly easy not to take it seriously and dismiss it as another figment of Linda’s imagination. This may not be racist in and of itself, although it definitely comes across as mocking racial awareness, but it sure starts to look like the real thing once you take all the negative comments into account that Linda makes about all her physical features that make her distinctly non-white. It also ties neatly into yet another issue this book has: body-shaming. Surprisingly (or not), this also mainly concerns the female characters and is filtered almost exclusively through the way men react to them. I got so, so tired reading about how Linda, the fat and ugly one, tries to get men to sleep with her (unsuccessfully, unless they are old and gross), while the thin, pretty women like Dawn have an entire parade of admirers (and successful careers). Also notice how personality doesn’t play any role at all in both women’s romantic success? That’s because women’s personalities don’t matter, simple as that. And it’s probably better that way, since they’re all naive and clingy or dishonest and needy anyway - in addition to being mean, which is something all characters in this book share.

The thing is, with books like this one that are just horrible with regards to sexism, racism, body-shaming and a whole host of other things, I always wonder how that happened. I don’t want to condemn the authors for all those things without having read some of their other books (which I generally don’t, because I value my time) or doing a thorough check on them (which I generally don’t do either, because I’m lazy. But I can’t help but ask myself whether these are the author’s actual views. Other options would include a critique of these issues gone wrong, or a misguided attempt to induce some historical accuracy, or ignorance. The problem is that I’m pretty sure I can exclude said other options. Historical accuracy in this case is not necessary since the book is set in the 1990s, not in the middle ages. Ignorance is a pretty weak excuse by itself, and one issue may slip under your (and your editor’s) radar, but so many...? The author of this book is a white guy, so he’s probably wearing privilege lenses, but still. Lastly, a critique would necessitate at least some attempt to contradict the views you have your characters expressing, either through the narrative or - even better - through a character themselves. I know that, and I’m a twenty-something amateur reader who sometimes tries her hand at literary critique. An author (and editor) who has been in the business for so long should definitely know that, and also how to work said critique into the story so that a casual reader would catch it. Which leaves us with option No. 1. And the reason why I regret having spent money on one of TC Boyle’s books, and why his name is another entry on my list of authors never to be read again.

*An afterthought that I’m too lazy to work in somewhere else: There is so much religious imagery in this book. It starts with the nicknames many characters in this book get, like God the Creator, Jesus, Judas, Eos etc., and culminates with this whole Garden of Eden theme that surrounds the experiment. Like with the cult thing, the book isn’t even shy to call itself out on it, but if this is not a prime example of lampshading, then I don’t know what is.

#2018 #the terranauts #tc boyle #book review

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onestowatch · 5 years ago

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Sigrid’s Excellence Hit Us Harder Than a ‘Sucker Punch’ [Q+A]

Photo Credit: Deanie Chen

Just like in the movies, it was love at first listen. There’s something otherworldly about electro-pop goddess Sigrid, which is probably just the fact that it doesn’t seem possible for someone to be as talented as her. There’s absolutely nothing “Basic” about Sigrid. Just click shuffle, and you’re in for an emotional rollercoaster. One moment you can be sobbing on the floor to ��Dynamite” and within three minutes, you are jumping around your room, screaming into your brush to not kill your vibe.

Right before our favorite Norwegian pop princess headlined a sold out Fonda Theatre in Hollywood, she sat down with us to discuss the important things in life: memes, the Sims, and cats.

OTW: So, you’re flying a lot, touring a lot, are we ever forgiving Air France?

Sigrid: Oh, nice one! Air France… I’m sure they’re nice people and doing their job good other times, but we were unlucky that one time which inspired me to do the song [“Sight Of You”], as you know. Haven’t forgiven them yet, no.

*if you don’t know the song, go listen, but the lyrics are “airline lost my luggage, still got all this weight”

OTW: Do you think they’ve heard “Sight Of You”?

Sigrid: Uh, no. I hope not. I’m sure they’re nice people. Thinking about it, I don’t know if we ever got our luggage actually. Maybe it’s still in Nairobi?

OTW: What?!

Sigrid: What happened was we were in France. It was a crazy weekend. We did three countries in three days, for summer festivals, and we played one gig somewhere in France. We were then going to Holland and then our luggage was sent to Nairobi! Never been there, I don’t know why they sent it there, and I don’t know if we ever got it back, maybe it’s still there. It’s an adventure for the luggage!

ugh accurate pic.twitter.com/MjoUvkZqkF

— sigrid (@thisissigrid) July 15, 2019

OTW: On tour, what’s in your tour survival kit? (That isn’t stuck in Nairobi)

Sigrid: Actually, Caspar’s luggage is still stuck in Europe. It keeps happening to us. But what I need… woolen socks. Very important to me to stay warm. I need my band. I need warm clothes. Jeans, t-shirts, Converse. That’s really all I need.

OTW: With all these festivals that you’ve been playing, you have been making so many fans’ summers. What has your favorite fan interaction been?

Sigrid: There’s been some tattoo stuff going on, where people have tattooed lyrics. I remember one time after a show someone came up to me like, “Can you sign this paper because I’m going to tattoo it?” and I’d already started and I have shitty handwriting, so I felt the pressure of that. And she actually tattooed it after! It’s incredible and really really cool that people tattoo it. No pressure! You don’t have to tattoo my lyrics!

But then there’s Nina. When we played Glastonbury, she was front row, but I felt like the green Hulk that show. I didn’t even recognize myself and I think if someone tried to touch me, I probably would’ve snapped because I was so full of energy. I was just running around, and I completely blacked out in a way. I was having the best time. Nina was there in the first row, and I noticed her and thought she had such good energy that really reflected over the rest of the audience. I didn’t know she was being filmed that much because I can’t see the screens. When I got off the stage and saw that she was all over the place, it was really fun and exciting that she became a thing. We met up with her a few weeks later at another festival, and it was lovely to meet her and the family. They’re very cool and protective of her. It’s a lot when you’re that age and getting that much media attention. I hope she’s well now, she’s probably back in school now.

OTW: That’s such a cute story! How does it feel transitioning from festival season to playing your own headline shows?

Sigrid: Honestly, really fun. I’m a little bit nervous for tonight, but in a good way. I love being a little bit nervous before a show. This is the first headline show we’re doing in months. We just came from the last festival in Germany, four days ago.

OTW: Aren’t you exhausted?!

Sigrid: No, not really. I had a proper vacation before all of this.

OTW: With all the meme pictures! The best content.

Sigrid: Yes! Actually before we started this interview we had a five minute break of me and the team watching memes. We are a proper meme family.

basically i was on holiday and I got caught in the middle of a photoshoot with my sister by the other hotel guests and then I tried to sneak away from the crime scene. graceful as always. :-) now let's make some memes pic.twitter.com/N5KVneuJNM

— sigrid (@thisissigrid) September 6, 2019

OTW: What’s your all-time favorite meme?

Sigrid: Oh that one’s hard. I’m really into videos and just really good content. Have you seen that video of a guy who’s like “I’m just hugging him, man” and he’s cuddling with a cat and the cat goes crazy at him? So funny. I’m also really into the “Old Town Road” memes and definitely astrology memes.

OTW: What’s your sign?

Sigrid: Virgo, my birthday was last week!

OTW: Happy really late birthday! Is that why you were on vacation?

Sigrid: Yes! I was on vacation with my sister and getting some really good time off and I’m getting some time off after this too. Treating myself!

OTW: Revisiting that cat meme, if you had to live with only one of these things what would you choose: Sims or cats?

Sigrid: Oh my god! Hard hitting questions here. Whoo! I can’t live without cats. I just really like seeing them in the streets.

omg this happened one time with me and I freaked out https://t.co/YUzj0LqSQk

— sigrid (@thisissigrid) September 10, 2019

OTW: Speaking of Sims, we heard “Don’t Kill My Vibe” on there! What has been the craziest place you’ve heard your songs?

Sigrid: It was played on the radio in Japan, which I think is SO cool because that is one of my dream places to visit. That was really exciting to me and I really hope we get to travel there one day.

OTW: When you’re touring what do you miss the most from home?

Sigrid: Norwegian food. You know how it is when you’re traveling, you miss that one quirky food from home. There’s this one Norwegian cheese, Jarlsberg, it’s my favorite cheese. This is not an ad, I’m not sponsored by them. It’s just my favorite cheese. And all my family of course. And my friends, but I have my friends here with me, the band!

OTW: Have you had any good food here yet?

Sigrid: Tacos! I love the taco trucks, they’re great. Our band is obsessed with tacos. It’s been a lot of tacos now for a few days. It’s a taco rehab for me.

OTW: Do you find touring stressful?

Sigrid: It’s not too bad. The touring is a really nice thing to do. When I released the album in March I was on tour and I was nervous about touring at the same time as release week, but it turned out to be a really nice thing. You have the same rhythm, that I’m not used to otherwise. You play at the same time, you’re on the bus. I love the tour bus. I sleep so well on it and I have my friends there. You get into a proper rhythm and it turns into like going into your office. Obviously sometimes it’s a bit stressful, but I really love it. It can be brutal, but let’s talk after this tour is finished. Maybe I’ll be exhausted.

OTW: Hopefully not! To prevent that, what do you do for Sigrid self care?

Sigrid: Water, sleep, good food, chill. I don’t know those things. I hang out with the people I really love: my family, my friends, my band, my crew, my team. I try to chill as much as possible, and I love being in nature when I get the time.

OTW: Going back to your album, what is your favorite song off of Sucker Punch?

Sigrid: This is kind of a boring answer, but honestly “Sucker Punch.” It’s the title track and in a bigger picture the title really sums up all of my music, and all of my life. The past three years have been one big Sucker Punch, so that song really means a lot to me. I love the production on it, I love the lyrics, I love the melodies, and I had such a great time writing it. I think that means a lot to me. Every song is really personal to me and I connected with the memory of writing it. If I had a great time writing in the studio, it’ll automatically be a song that I love a lot.

youtube

OTW: What does the writing process look like for you?

Sigrid: It really differs from who I’m working with. It’s usually the same of playing on the guitar or piano, then you start singing, and sometimes I’ll start humming. It’s hard to explain because you’ll hum melodies that are a bit boring, but then you suddenly get something out of nowhere. Then you keep working with that and hum your way into a good melody. Sometimes I’ll sing some kidding lyrics, and if you stop thinking and take your brain out of the writing process and just sing whatever feels natural in that moment you get a good line. Sometimes you have to work a bit harder than that too. It is a really fascinating thing to me. This sounds so cheesy, but I feel really humbled to be doing this. Songwriting is the closest I get to magic. It’s a really cool environment because I only have very few people in there with me. It’s only me and one or two other people and you create something that hasn’t been made before. It’s weird to know that an hour ago you didn’t have this and then an hour goes by and you have a song that no one has ever heard, it hasn’t been written before, it’s completely new, and it’s probably inspired by so many songs out there, but this mix is completely new. Ugh! I love!

OTW: What’s the best spontaneous thing that’s happened in studio?

Sigrid: “Sucker Punch” was from a Google search! I write down ideas all the time and I found “Sucker Punch” randomly on Google. I thought it was a really cool word and could see it as a good title. I had it in my notes on my iPhone for months and I tried to bring it up in sessions like, “hey guys this is a good idea,” but no one liked it. Then suddenly we made a song out of it, with Martin Sjølieand and Emily Warren. It was cool because I had it in my notes, and knew what the word meant, but I didn’t know what it meant to me until something happened that felt like a sucker punch.

OTW: Not only are you writing your own music, but you featured on your brother’s album too! Do you think he’ll ever be featured on your music?

Sigrid: I don’t know. He’s a really busy guy. He’s doing a PhD at the moment on media sociology, so I don’t know. I don’t know how many hours he has every day. It’s incredible. He’s studying and working and doing a lot of other things, but he has a lot of fun making music. It’s been an honor to be on that album. We’re very close.

OTW: Besides your own, which albums have you had on repeat?

Sigrid: I’ve listened to a LOT of Post Malone, the new record that came out last week. I love it The track with SZA is amazing… whew that’s a good one. I really like Lewis Capaldi. He’s great. OH and The 1975’s A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships. Also, Lizzo’s Cuz I Love You. I LOVE Lizzo.

OTW: Taste! What’s your favorite Lizzo song?

Sigrid: I love “Good As Hell.” Also “Truth Hurts,” obviously.

OTW: Lastly, who are your Ones To Watch?

Sigrid: I’m listening a lot to Clairo at the moment. She’s really cool. There’s one song, “Bags,” that is so beautiful. Another one, Naaz. She’s from Holland and she has this song called “TAPED” and has worked with some of my really good friends from Bergen, where I lived before. She’s like pop music, but a bit indie. Then there’s this Norwegian band called Konradsen.

#sigrid #electronic #pop #interview

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pulpoddyssey · 6 years ago

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Seridian Multi-Global Lawsuit, Human Dicks, and Fire Asses

In 2810, we published an editorial by a contributing writer, Verr Drin regarding a very serious lawsuit involving Seridian Multi-Global Inc., and the lifespan of their “grow-your-own-pets” product. As a staff, we made a professional decision to not print this editorial in its entirety for a few reasons.

We deliberated about our decision and ultimately decided to share the piece in its entirety today. Let’s first go over the 4 major reasons we chose to hold back on most of this piece in 2810, just to be clear:

1. Confusion - This an opinion piece. It is not reporting. We didn’t want to confuse our readers by making them think it is anything but Mr. Drin’s opinion. To do so would be incredibly irresponsible.

2. Unsavory language - While we don’t have any specific rules for the content we publish, we do respect that others may not want to read the word “dick” 11 times or anywhere near the words “shit,” “piss,” and “gooey” alongside their morning coffee.

2. Human egos - Humans have amazingly enormous egos. Humans reading this are very likely to get offended and may, out of a combination of anger and negligence, destroy yet another important thing needed for their survival. We apologize if this article incites anything like that.

3. Limited space - it’s pretty long and unlike the apparent infinite expanse of Internet newsprint, as a physical newspaper, we do have to limit the amount of words we print. Every ink dot in every letter costs us.

NOTES ON A DEFECTIVE SPECIES

Verr Drin, Staff Contributor

I recently learned that Fred (an omnipotent dog-being that isn't god but also isn't not god, you know?) had purchased a packet of "grow-your-own pets" tablets from a prank magazine. It's like those kits kids buy with a couple of shrimps who hatch out of some eggs in a little container, but on a planetary scale. Planet equals container. Life equals shrimps.

Basically you drop them into water and then in a few billion years you get some species. Generally this is how all life in the universe was formed—all life but that of the everlasting, all-powerful Fred—it's just that there are different levels in quality of the beings that grow. The main problem with cheaper kits is that they are extremely fragile. If you forget to feed them, they die. If you overwater them, they die. If you feed them too much, they die. If you drop a rock into their habitat, they die. If you place the habitat too close to the light, they die. If you place it too far, they die. These cheap ones are usually a total rip-off, in my humble opinion.

Fred has filed a lawsuit against the "grow your own pets" manufacturer, Seridian Multi-Global, Inc. for misleading claims of how long their "pets" can live without literally killing themselves. Generally the packaging promotes claims of longevity and quality. If you didn't play with these little life-creation kits as a child, I honestly feel sorry for you but, if you have, you may know that threat species self-extinction should never be an issue. However, this product seems to have gone horribly awry on Earth.

Earth is generally a nice value for $15 (earth readers, we use USD in space too, for some reason). The habitat has plate tectonics so it puts on a nice little show, it fits right into any standard star system, and it has potential for modification (moons, for example). Now, don't get me wrong, earth has a lot of dead pets, e.g. dinosaurs, dodo, wooly mammoth, and yes, there is often some collateral damage while cleaning out the habitat. But there is a new danger brewing: a recently developed species with minimal space travel technology have been showing signs of potential self-immolation, "humans."

So, why are humans trying to kill themselves? I have done the research and I think I can understand what went wrong in the product's programming. First, let's talk about how they have gotten to this point.

After spending 98% of their existence figuring out how to use fire, humans took their sweet time doing anything worthwhile amidst constant fighting over their dicks, worrying about their dicks, and making big sculptures of their warring, troubled dicks. They wondered why they and their dicks existed and built entire societies around trying to figure that out (joke's on them, it was just Fred). Eventually, they got around to space travel and built some exploding fire dicks that they would use to fuck the sky. Additionally, while handling all of their dick struggles, the humans have been awful roommates. They have managed to find a way to hassle every other species on the planet in one way or another. The other species on Earth are all trying to do their thing while all the humans were like, "fuck you, we're awesome as fuck. Get in this box, I'm drunk."

Additionally, their programming had clearly taken a turn for the worst very early on in human development. For the prior 200,000 years, their own shit and farts had kept them content. They were only content enough to curb the dick fighting for brief moments, but they were doing okay. They consumed some shit, pooped out some shit, consumed some shit, pooped out some shit, etc. There was plenty of shit around to keep everyone going. After some time, some assholes decided it was time to take more shits than they needed to take, thus consuming more shit and shitting more shit than ever before, and at a rapid pace. But that wasn't enough. Enter the most damaging development in their code, and the most damning bit of evidence for the defense: the Fire Asses.

The humans built the Fire Asses, primitive machines which not only consumed shit, but would also provide them with more, smellier shit. Humans would work long days inside of these fire asses in exchange for currency, and continue to work in the fire asses until this day. As they had always known, you can only get as much new shit as you have old shit. The cycle remained relatively closed and safe and the program still seemed relatively stable. This was all until the humans sunk their dicks deep into the planet, discovering flaming pet goo.

Flaming pet goo was a thick liquid made of other dead pets such as the dinosaurs. The humans then discovered something magical, they could set it on fire. It could work with the Fire Asses to produce more shit than they could before, more shit than they could ever need, and more shit than there had been. They could finally take out their dicks and fuck the planet. In a way it was their most ingenious dick nonsense yet.

Then, with their dicks covered in flaming gooey shit, fucking the Earth ad infinitum, the human pets built countless Fire Asses, all farting and shitting to no end. Their dependence on Fire Asses grew until they lived in them, transported themselves in them, and worked tirelessly inside of them in order to make and consume more shit.

This brings us to today: The humans live on Earth surrounded by endless piles of shit and massive fart clouds and not a single one of them is happy (I certainly wouldn't be if I were living in a pile of my own shit). The program is clearly defective at this point, in my opinion, the defense has no case. After all the dicks and assholes, farts and shit, fucking the planet and the sky, the humans are faced with a harsh truth. They are terrible roommates and the planet has told them that it is time for them to go fuck themselves. Firing flaming dicks at each other, they fuck themselves constantly. They've dropped enormous exploding fucking dicks, fucking thousands of humans at once. They've shat and farted so much that their habitat is breaking, the cooling system is fucked, the water is fucked, the dirt is fucked, the shit is fucked, and the humans are fucked.

It is absolutely clear to me the entire "grow-your-own-pets" product is literally a fucking disaster. However, through all of the humans' problems, it seems to all come back to one single problem in the program. The humans should have never tried to get more shit than they needed.

The company who manufactures this "grow-your-own-pet" product have been under fire for quite some time now as the media coverage ramps up. The parent company, Seridian Multi-Global, Inc. is accused of false marketing and for selling a fucked up product. They are due for their first hearing this Friday the 256th on Balkar-Deezy 9. They are lawyered up and ready to fight but, this really seems like a simple case of some cheap, shitty, fucked up sea monkeys to me.

#defective #species #growyourownpet #fred #dog #god #swears #editorial #seridianmultiglobal #seridian #humandicks #fireasses #pulpoddyssey #disappearingmedia

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theliterateape · 6 years ago

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American Shithole #26 — A Remarkable, Unremarkable Day

by Eric Wilson

Imagine you’re standing in the middle of a busy airport. Passengers crowd past you in every direction. Looking up at the arrivals and departures; all flights delayed. Suddenly, the entire board changes — rows and columns of numbers and letters flip with the familiar clickety-clack, clickety-clack of the old, analog displays — revealing only destinations on your bucket list, as the throngs of weary travelers part before you like the Red Sea.

That’s how I felt today.

“Oh, this is hopeful!” I had said to myself, hands on hips, staring down at my toes this morning, tapping in approval. The muscles, ligaments and tendons in my lower body that refused to function just weeks ago, quivered, but held.

“Nice job legs,” I whispered, “you too, feet.”

It’s been quite a remarkable, unremarkable day — here’s what happened:

It’s pretty nondescript really; I walked (back and forth between two rooms) in a way I haven’t been able to walk for years.

That’s it. Seems anticlimactic I’m sure, but I was told a very different story about how things were going to go for me and my shitty legs. In fact, my particular medical condition was expected to take a turn for the worse some time ago (it’s a degenerative condition, or so I’ve been told, repeatedly) with looming surgeries, recovery, blah, blah, blah; and yet today — here comes this ray of sunshine — slashing through dark clouds I once believed to be permanent fixtures on the shitty legs horizon.

It’s been so long, I had honestly — no hyperbole here — I’d forgotten what actual, bona fide, body-waves-of-joy, hope felt like.

So when I think back on my frustrating experiences with the privatized (read: for profit) healthcare system in America over the last 50 years, it finally occurs to me how thoroughly my generation has been brainwashed into believing we don’t deserve access to affordable, quality health care; unless it’s an absolute emergency.

“Walk it off, kid.” That was Boomer parenting mantra. We soaked it up. Instead, we should have been furious for decades.

Also, I trusted doctors; something I’ve likely been socialized to do, and that was a mistake. I foolishly thought they could all be held to the same level of excellence and accountability.

Sketchy medicos from Big Pharma funded pain clinics (they’re fucking everywhere now), or even just overworked physicians struggling to provide adequate care within an over-stressed system, are better met with a dose of skepticism, than blind faith — these are not the hometown general practitioners you grew up with that have a vested interest in your community, and have known you since you were in the womb.

Far too many doctors took bribes from pharmaceutical companies to push OxyContin and other opioids, while others in the medical community looked the other way, or did too little too late. We are buckling under the weight of an addiction crisis that runs roughshod in crippling waves across this nation, and those partially to blame swore an oath to never knowingly, willingly harm patients under their care.

Yet here we are.

I was lucky enough to sidestep an intentional effort on a medical professional’s part to hook me on painkillers (I suggest that a pain doctor instructing me not to see a specialist about my condition, and instead just doubling my prescription strength to be an intentional effort), but it was only one sidestep in what turned out to be a seemingly infinite number of dance maneuvers required to navigate a healthcare system indifferent to the effects of profit on human suffering.

It wasn’t a week or two later I decided to tackle this sans opioids after two months. That was three years ago.

The details since aren’t particularly noteworthy — I will spare you what would most assuredly devolve into a tedious slog through a medical info dump — suffice to say, I no longer believe the American healthcare system provides for a patient’s best interests. I am a bit embarrassed I believed it ever did. It’s a betrayal that cuts deeper than the Trump disaster; a harsh reminder that all humans are slaves to greed.

All I know is that I have to double my efforts. I have to trust my instincts and keep working the physical therapy regimen I’ve developed for myself, and somehow find a way to succeed with my diet (fuck you diet, you sandcastle bully from salad-hell beach).

I need my energy levels up; writing about horrible people is exhausting.

During this past spring I felt fairly well-armed tilting at the windmills of the Trump horde — lobbing flaming paragraphs of cynicism and derision from the parapets of American Shithole, with the Literate Ape banner flapping furiously in the wind — but over the summer I felt I’d emptied the armory, and I’d been scouring the castle for weeks, raiding the larder even; looking for any pots and pans I could throw in desperation at the filthy barbarians still gathering at the gates of democracy.

“Look my liege, here’s a social media post you wrote two years ago, shall I lobeth it at thine enemy?”

“Well, throw it down the murder hole already, knave!”

“It’s just harmlessly bouncing off them, my king.”

“Well trebuchet some memes, do we have any memes?”

“All we’ve got left in the Armory are a few pages of poetry you wrote when you were but a prince…”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake… okay, throw it at ‘em…what’d they do?”

“They’re mocking your shitty Haiku from freshman English, m’lord.”

My poetry from high school deserves to be mocked, by the way. It was fucking terrible. I’m not being faux self-deprecatory either, I am one of the worst young writers of poetry I have ever read. I’m tempted to track down the one that went into the senior-year program, which — if I remember correctly — lifted heavily if not entirely from Bono. I just don’t want to ever feel like I am phoning it in; and it’s not as if there’s a shortage of topics for this column, it’s just that the people I typically cover are revolting, and telling their stories makes me feel dirty and shitty and soulsick and grumpy — so some weeks I just want to make it easier on myself and not do that; which in turn, makes me feel like I’m copping out.

Then, today happened. I felt so focused; not only on the reemerging possibilities for a better quality of life, but on the awesome, terrifying power our failing health wields over us all — and the relative insignificance of other challenges we face.

Everything else I had been worried about faded into the woodwork this morning when I felt the weight of disability replaced with the possibility of recovery.

I am thankful, humbled, and hopeful.

I don’t know if this is some sort of medical “Indian Summer” I’m experiencing, and frankly, I don’t care — I could wake up hobbling my way to the coffeemaker tomorrow, just like I have for years now, and still be a mostly happy fellow. Either way, I am energized by the experience, and I wanted to share that with you. I don’t care about Kavanaugh, that rapist fuck; I’m glad I didn’t write about him this week. We’re going to get it all back, I can feel it. I walked twenty feet today without looking like an afterschool special. Fuck him. Fuck the lot of ‘em — greedy, old, crusty motherfuckers.

We’re going to get it all back, and then some.

#hope #writing #Big Pharma #for profit healthcare

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