#can... someone explain to me - scientifically - why it always seems easier to write for characters

[revasserium]

i’m CRAVING a sanji fic rn 🤤🤤

maybe something on showing affection with him? cause i feel like he’s kinda superficial with his affection when first trying to get with u, but then as the relationship progresses the affection becomes so much more.

well ur in luck bc i do have a sanji fic cookin currently but who knows how long it'll take me to actually finish... in the meantime... here are some sanji domestic/affectionate!headcanons bc why not

in the beginning, it would be the grand gestures -- always waking you up with a kiss and coffee (or tea, if you're sick, or just don't feel like coffee that day) and your favorite foods; a bouquet of fresh flowers (do not ask him how he obtains these in the middle of the ocean; he will not tell you and robin remarks loftily one day that you might not like the answer)

in the beginning, he'd tell you he loves you every single hour, lest you forget for even a minute, even though it's only been like... a week and you're not entirely sure what "love" means quite yet

and then, it'd taper off, not because the 'honeymoon phase' is over, but because he'd find other ways to show you -- other ways of tellin you he loves you without telling you in so many words

there's still breakfast, but sometimes instead of coffee or tea, there's a book that you mentioned you'd been wanting to read, there's an origami crane folded out of the napkin with such excruciating care it almost breaks your heart, there's a note written in his sloppy, slanted handwriting that he dreamt of you last night and couldn't figure out if he wanted to wake up to tell you or keep sleeping not to break the fragile dream

and the "i love you"s become something else too -- they become "how did you sleep, love?" and "i knew you'd be craving that" and "c'mon, drink up -- there's more where that came from" and "tell me about your dreams" and "funny, those sound an awful lot like my dreams too".

it'd solidify, this kind of love -- his kind of love -- into something much quieter than anyone might suspect. this kind of love that simmers, the kind of love that curls around you like a hot bath, that draws you in

it's the way he always saves the wishbone whenver he cooks up any kind of bird, how he always waits till everything is done and the kitchen's all cleaned up before pulling you toward the counter, to the tiny little bone with it's winged flanges, him holding one end, the other offered out like a promise (or a wish)

you've pulled so many between you that you've lost count of how many wishes you've made, until you're laughing and complaining that you're running out of things to wish for

"what do you wish for?" you ask one day, when you've tugged and sanji gets the wish, to which he only looks at you and says, "always the same thing, actually. always... just another day with you."

[bakuhoes-dumbass]

Aberration - Chapter 1

MHA!Various x Fem!Reader

Thriller/Horror/Drama

Criminal!AU

Words: 2.3k

A/N: Yay, here’s the first chapter of my new AU! It might be a little slower at first but it’ll pick up the further we get into it. So I hope you like this!

Warnings: Yandere Themes, Mentions of murder, blood, felonies, bullying, swearing.

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of MHA, just this story. In no way does this reflect the characters, writers or VAs of the show/manga. MINORS DNI.

~~~

Aberration Masterlist/Character profiles

~~~

In this world, mutations, renamed as ‘Quirks’, are abnormal. Only about 5%-8% of the world population are known to have these so called ‘Quirks’. You are a graduate of one of the most prestigious science tech schools in the country. You’ve been selected to work for a secret scientific research facility that houses some of the most notorious criminals in the nation. Besides their crimes, what makes these individuals incredibly dangerous are their mutations. After meeting these individuals, they seem to have taking a liking to you. That should make your research and search for the cure all that much easier…

Right?

~~~

Before you stands one of the largest facilities you have ever seen. You take a deep breath, attempting to calm your rapidly beating heart. Adjusting the strap on your bag, you make your way into the research center.

Upon entering, you gasp in wonder. The inside is huge, tall pure white walls that meet at a double paned glass ceiling. In front of you is a wall of security, stretching to accommodate the vast interior of the lobby. You walk up to the nearest security officer and give them your information. Thankfully, you were on a list and after checking you over, you're granted entrance to the building.

That's where you meet a man and a woman, both dressed in white lab coats and carrying clipboards. You bow your head to the two of them and they return the gesture.

"Ms. Y/N, I presume? My name is Shota Aizawa and this is my assistant, Momo Yaoyorozu." The older of the two speak.

You smile at the two. "Yes, nice to meet you. I'm Y/N, L/N, graduate of UA science tech. I am so happy to be here and look forward to working with the two of you."

The younger girl nods and smiles, gesturing behind the two of them. "If you would kindly follow us, we can get started."

~~~

"Ms. Y/N, here's the list of the inmates you will be working with from this point on."

Momo hands you a clipboard containing pictures and descriptions of each individual. Your eyes scan the information on the page in front of you, your brow raising with each word you read. "There is… quite a bit of information on these individuals."

Aizawa nods. "Considering how dangerous the subjects are, it's best to have every detail we can."

You internally cringed at the term 'subject'. These were criminals, yes, but they were still living breathing people. Noone deserves to be dehumanized, no matter the reason.

Shaking your head of those thoughts, you continue to look over the notes in your hands. One in particular catches your eye. " 'Multiple counts of 3rd degree murder by reason of insanity' and yet he's only deemed as a level 4 danger?"

The doctor looks over your shoulder at the character profile. "Ah, yes. Fumikage Tokoyami. He's an interesting one, to say the least." You wait for him to continue, but seeing as it doesn't seem like he will, you gesture for him to elaborate. "Tokoyami himself is actually fairly harmless and incredibly cooperating, which is why he gets a level 4 only. However…" Aizawa looks down the hall of the facility to a door near the end. "Dark Shadow is deemed a level 9."

Your eyes shoot up in shock. "Dark Shadow? A level 9? Explain."

"Dark Shadow is his mutation. It's a completely sentient being that he harbors inside of him. Highly dangerous, more so if there is darkness." He looks back at you. "I'll let him explain the reason why he was instituted. He always prefers to explain the story himself."

The more Aizawa explains Tokoyami's situation, the more your excitement builds up, wanting desperately to meet this man. This was such an interesting mutation and you couldn't wait to hear everything he had to tell you. You take a breath to calm your childish manner and clear your throat.

"If it's alright with you, sir, I'd like-" You look down at your clipboard once again. "'Inmate 06' to be the first one I meet with."

Aizawa nods and writes something down in his notebook. "Very well. Follow me this way please."

You follow the doctor down the long white hallway, your excitement growing with each step. Along the way, you notice each door on the facility that lines either side of the stretched hall. Each door had a narrow window towards the top and a small number engraved underneath. You don't take too much notice and keep following the doctor to your destination. However, an eerie feeling makes you freeze in your tracks.

You slowly rotate your head and look at the inmate's door you stopped next to. The color drains from your face as you see two ice blue eyes peering right into yours. It felt like your breath was stolen, a hint of fear and anxiety built up within you from this intense gaze. After what felt like hours, you snap your gaze back to Aizawa and Momo, who were standing in front of a door you were also supposed to be at.

"I would highly advise you to keep cautious while you are in this facility. While we keep all inmates in cuffs that neutralize their mutations, the technology has not been 100% perfected yet and parts of their powers may leak out. That is why we have additional precautionary measures in place for each inmate." Aizawa gives you an impartial look as you walk over. "Now. The only special precaution with Inmate 06 is the lights must stay on at all times. There are no light switches in his cell, so nothing should go wrong. But like I said, always stay cautious."

You nod your head at the doctor's words and turn to face the door. Aizawa places a hand onto the keypad next to the door, scanning his prints before buzzing and opening the door. You give the man one last nod before making your way inside the room. The room itself is bare. White floors, white walls and an equally white ceiling. Nothing was in there except a desk with a chair and a bed.

On top of that bed sat a young man with the body of a human and the head of a crow. Your eyes widen in awe at the beautiful being in front of you. Tokoyami tilts his head and gives you a curious look.

"Oh. Hello, there. I've never seen you before."

The deep voice of the man shocks you. You bow your head and give the bird man a smile. "Hello, Tokoyami. My name is Y/N. I'm the new scientist at this facility. I'm here to get to know and observe you all to help further our findings for a cure. I hope we can be friends."

Tokoyami blinks. "You want to be… friends? With us?"

"Yeah, of course. Why not?" Your smile never leaves your face.

"Well, maybe because we're all… felons? The greater majority of us being murderers?"

"I truly believe everyone deserves a second chance." You gesture to the desk chair, silently asking if you could sit. The man nods and you greatly take your seat. "Now, would you ever be so kind as to answer a few questions for me, Tokoyami? I would like to get to know you a little better." You take out your pen and notebook, opening to a fresh page.

Tokoyami nods again and you give him a smile. "Just a few standard questions first. Can you please state your full name, age and date of birth?"

"Fumikage Tokoyami, age 22, October 30th."

"What is the name of your quirk and how does it work?"

Tokoyami fiddles with the quirk-cancelling cuffs around his wrists at the mention of his quirk but answers anyway. "It's called Dark Shadow. It's a fully sentient shadow that resides inside my body. It can come out when I call call it or it can show itself on it's own. But it's always connected to me and cannot be separated. It…" Tokoyami takes a breath. "It gets stronger the darker my surroundings are. So the less light, the less control I have over it. If it gets too dark, it completely takes over me, no longer under my control."

The longer you listen to him, the wider your eyes get and the more they shine in wonder. "That is incredible! To have that kind of quirk is truly fascinating!"

Hearing your words of praise would have made Tokoyami blush, if he could. He clears his throat in embarrassment. "Why, thank you for those kind words. Though, I doubt having this...quirk, as you say, is all to be impressed about."

You shake your head. "You may not think so, but really, I've never seen anything like it." You excitedly write a few things down before making eye contact with him again. "Now onto my final question of the day. Can you please tell me the reason why you are here?"

Tokoyami stays silent for a moment, staring at nothing in particular, residing in his thoughts. You clear your throat and he looks up to you. You give him a small, comforting smile and it causes Tokoyami's heart to beat harder. For some unknown reason, he suddenly feels like he can trust you with anything.

"I've been charged with multiple counts of 3rd degree murder." He sighs, recalling that day. "I was invited to a college party on a date, by someone whom I had grown quite infatuated with. I never really was one to socialize and never really had any friends. But I really liked this person, so I went. At first it was going okay, nothing too out of the ordinary. Then, the host decided that playing truth or dare was the way to go.

 So my date dragged me to sit down and join them. Every time I was asked, I always chose truth. And everytime, their questions were about my appearance, my mutation. Laughing at all my answers, mocking my looks, talking about how unnatural I was. The more they asked, the more my anxiety and anger built up. But my stubbornness didn't want to show any weakness, so I stayed. 

Finally, I decided to just choose dare instead. At that point, I decided that nothing could be more humiliating than what they've already done." His sharp, red eyes flickered to yours. "Oh, how wrong I was. They dared me to go into the closet with my so-called 'date'. We were shut in and from then, they decided to tell me how this whole thing was a set up, just to humiliate me. That anyone with mutations like myself should just disappear because of how disgusting we are." He spits out that word like it was rotten food. "Remember how I said Dark Shadow gains control in the dark? Well, with my anger rising and the fact that it was almost pitch black in that closet, I lost control of myself and Dark Shadow took control of me. Next thing I remember, I was standing in the middle of the college dorm party, blood painting the floors, the walls, and the entirety of my class slaughtered."

You almost dropped your pen in shock but regained your composure. You give the poor young man a sad smile. He sighs and finishes off his explanation. "I was arrested and charged with multiple counts of 3rd degree murder by reason of insanity, considering I was technically not in my right state of mind at the time."

The two of you sit there in silence, basking in all this new-found information. You close your notebook and set your pen down, facing Tokoyami directly. "Listen to me. There is nothing wrong with the way you look or your quirk. Just because it isn't the societal norm, doesn't mean it's disgusting or wrong. Remember that."

Tokoyami blinks in surprise."Um, thank you." Those were the only words he could say, as how shocked he was at what you said.

You tilt your head and stare at him. "If I may ask, would I be able to feel your head? I'm very curious as to what your feathers feel like. It would greatly help my research as well."

"Oh. U-um, yeah. Sure."

You move to gently sit next to Tokoyami, so as to not startle him too much. You slowly lift your hand and place it on his head, eyes lighting up as you card your fingers through his feathers. "Oh wow, they're so soft!"

Tokoyami's heart speeds up, his feathers ruffling at your touch. He gazes at you with something akin to admiration. No one was ever gentle with him like this before. After another few seconds, you retreat your hand, Tokoyami almost whimpering at the absence.

"Well, I better get going. I have quite a few more things to do today before my shift is over." You gather up your things and bow your head at the half bird boy. "I greatly appreciate your time and look forward to our future sessions. Have a good rest of your day!" You smile at Tokoyami before heading back to the door and signaling Aizawa to open it.

"Goodbye, Ms. Y/N. I look forward to meeting with you again." Tokoyami watches you leave his room. Once you're gone, he runs his hand through his feathers, imagining they were your fingers.

As the door closes, you turn to Aizawa who gives you a disappointed look.

"What?"

"You touched the inmate. Why in the hell would you do that?"

You place your hand on your hip and give the doctor a stern look. "I was curious about his mutation and wanted to see how it felt."

He sighs and runs a hand down his face. "We try to avoid any physical contact with any of the inmates, as it may trigger something deep within them. Remember, Y/N. Every single one of these individuals are dangerous and unstable. Any abnormal behavior could result in catastrophic consequences."

You sigh and shake your head, giving him a chaste nod. "Yes, Sir. You're right. I promise to heed your warning and modify how I work."

The doctor looks satisfied as he turns on his heel and walks further down the long hallway. You quickly follow to keep up. "Now, on to your next subject. Inmate 04, Eijiro Kirishima." You flip the page of your inmate profiles to see a picture of a red-haired man. "He is of a higher danger level, so make sure to keep your guard up. And for the love of God, under any circumstances…

Do not touch him."

~~~

Taglist: @theblueslytherin @sterassion @somechick30003 @meena-in-a-nutshell @justtj-andnonumberspls @zombieonna @amajikiwife @yulifee @atexansadventureintokinkandlife @ep-ip-ha-ny @hcneymilkks @pastelmoonwitche @stayarmytinyzenmoa-l @railmeddy @unlimitedfirepheonix @confaegion @drownedbytears @burntcrips @silverqueenie @the-lady-writes-what @awkward-confused 

[If your name is bolded, I was unable to tag you.]

[dogbearinggifts]

What are your thoughts on tua S2? Did you feel like the characters grew? What did you like? What did you not? I’m interested in your perspective. Your analysis are super thoughtful and interesting!

Aw, thanks, Anon!

Overall, I really enjoyed S2 and thought it was a solid follow-up to S1. I do have my quibbles about it, so I think (for ease of reference and because my thoughts are a little scattered today) I’ll list some of my personal highlights (in no particular order) before getting into what I didn’t like as much.

Big spoilers ahead.

Allison. I thought they handled her storyline especially well. Of all the siblings, I think she had the most difficult obstacles placed in her way (not only is she a Black woman landing in 1961 Dallas, but she’s a Black woman landing in 1961 Dallas who can’t even speak in her own defense for a year) and they sugarcoated exactly none of it. The writers pulled no punches when showing what civil rights protesters went through, which just made their nonviolent response all the more breathtaking. Allison’s fear and anger during those scenes were palpable even as she kept them hidden. But along with that horror, we see the kindness and warmth of the Dallas Black community, the women who take her in simply because she needs their help, and her love for Ray, perhaps heretofore THE most thoughtful husband ever portrayed on screen. I loved him, and I loved him and Allison together. While I understand and respect his choice to stay in 1963, I wish they’d gotten more time together. They both deserved it.

Vanya. We got to see how much the baggage from her past affected her by glimpsing what she might be like if it were taken away. It’s an interesting philosophical question, and it was explored well, in my opinion. She finds it easier to love and be loved, and she stands up for herself more readily—but she also doesn’t hesitate to use powers she can’t quite control and threatens Five without fully realizing how dire her threat is (or how it might dredge up traumatic memories she doesn’t know exist). The moment where Ben finds her curled up, fully convinced she’s a monster, was heartbreaking. I loved watching her find happiness with Sissy, even if that was fleeting (and dear god, Sissy deserved her happy ending with Vanya, dammit, I don’t care if it would fuck up the timeline). Her patience and sweetness with Harlan were just beautiful. And the way she used the confidence she gained during her amnesia to fully come into her own not to exact revenge on her siblings, but to save them, was fucking phenomenal.

The humor. There was a lot more humor this season, and it was awesome. So many iconic scenes—Olga Foroga, Luther babysitting two homicidal Fives, Elliot awkwardly lecturing his guests on the history of Jello, “NEW TIMELINE NEW ME,” “Your vagina needs glasses,” AJ the fish gobbling up the cigarette bubbles, Five getting to say “fuck”….this season was a lot funnier than the previous one, and I think that was one of its strengths.

Klaus’ cult. It was played for laughs, which I both expected and thought was the best way to handle it. He didn’t want to start a new religion with himself at the center; he just wanted to not get thrown out of any more diners, but Destiny’s Children had other ideas. The “I too am a fraud!” scene was hilarious and tickled the question of whether or not a religion founded on false pretenses can still help those within it find meaning.

Luther. Getting him away from his dad, his siblings, and the Academy was exactly what he needed to become the pure of heart and dumb of ass genius we always knew he was, but his first major step in that direction was heartbreaking. We all knew he’d be rejected once he got to the Academy. We all knew Reginald would rip his heart out and stomp on it in his admittedly fashionable shoes. It gets Luther out on his own and forces him to become his own person apart from his dad, but that doesn’t make it any easier to watch. He got the positive character development he needed, but the catalyst was tragic.

Diego. We see, for the first time, exactly how Reginald kept him in line—not with meds or with PTSD-inducing torture, but with words. Even when he knows Diego as little more than a stranger, Reginald is able to rip off his skin and fling it in his face with a single diatribe; and even at 30, with years away from his dad, Diego is left unable to speak, feeling as if all of his accomplishments up to that point were the work of a dumb kid who thought he was smarter and more capable than he actually was.

Luther and Diego sharing a braincell. Luther has bad ideas. Diego has bad ideas. When they put their bad ideas together, they get terrible ideas. I loved watching them work together as a team, rather than being at each others’ throats for most of the season, even if I’m left hoping Olga Foroga had a pleasant and quiet day after that phone call.

Reginald. At first glance, it may look like the writers were trying to make him likable so they could parade him around as your average abusive-parent-with-a-soft-side. But it’s more nuanced than that. Abusive parents (and abusers in general) often fly under the radar because they fool outsiders into thinking they’re good people. They’re active in their communities. They give to charity. They have friends who attest to their virtue, significant others who think they’re the greatest. And that’s what we see with Reginald. We see him as the rest of the world did: an intelligent, eccentric man with a sharp sense of humor who cared deeply about scientific advancement. That’s how he evaded suspicion—because there were stories from years past of lively parties at his mansion, of what a gentleman he was to Grace and of how he did everything he could to save little Pogo. But those stories would all have come from people he considered his equals. When he’s with people he considers his inferiors—aka, the Umbrella kids—he’s openly condescending and demeaning. We get to see how he fooled the world, and it is chilling.

Elliot. He deserved better, and you can ship him with any one of the Hargreeves kids and get the cutest thing ever. 

The Swedes. They said so much while speaking very little.

Ben. He got more personality and screen time, and it was glorious. His love of his family and resentment toward Klaus practically leapt off the screen. The way he says “I’ve missed you all…so much” once they’ve all left was one of those right-in-the-feels moments; and watching him get so much of what he’s wanted for years when he possesses Klaus was beautiful.

Now, as for things I took issue with….

Ben. I understand why they ended his arc the way they did. I get that they were probably afraid the Klaus/Ben dynamic would grow stale if they didn’t change it somehow and wanted to give him a larger role in S3. His death(???) was heartbreaking and extremely well-done. But it also wasn’t foreshadowed. We never got any sense of what ghosts in the TUA ‘verse are, so the fact they can be destroyed by a ton of sound-turned-energy or by going too far into someone’s psyche or whatever happened….it’s not that it doesn’t make sense so much as there’s not enough evidence to determine whether or not it makes sense. It feels like the writers just kinda made that up so they’d have a reason to change Ben’s relationship dynamics, but if that’s the case, couldn’t they have done it another way? Couldn’t they have made it so the immense energy or psychic woo-woo or whatever gave him a power-up instead of destroying him? Vanya transferred some of her energy into Harlan and brought him back to life. Couldn’t something similar have happened with Ben? And if it tied him to Vanya as well as to Klaus, great! More fodder for angst and humor! (”Vannyyyyyyyy, stop hogging Ben!” “You got him for 17 years, Klaus, you can part with him for 20 minutes.” “Guys, don’t I get a say in this?”) I’m glad they didn’t write him out of the series entirely, but I still wish they’d kept him and all the character development he’d gotten throughout S2.

Episode 10. It looks like they tried to cram half a season’s worth of developments into 45 minutes. Twenty minutes in, I’d already said “Wait what the fuck” half a dozen times. A lot of those moments were explained later on, and I was able to make enough inferences to fill in any lingering plot holes, but…still. Too much stuff, too little time. E9 was a perfectly satisfying ending to the season. Yes, it leaves the siblings stranded in 1963, but they could’ve tied up those loose ends in the S3 premiere.

Lila. She’s an incredibly fun character, but her arc is kind of a mess. Most of that is due to E10, and I do feel that more time to let her arc breathe would’ve worked wonders, but I’m left feeling like her turn from “Handler is the best mom ever and I lurve Diego too” to “KILL DIEGO AND HIS EVIL FAMILY” to “Handler is a bad mom and Diego is right” happened too quickly.

The Commission. Okay, so, the Handler announces the entire Board has been killed, and she’s stepping in as director even though everyone appears to know she’s been demoted (and demoted pretty severely—she went from having an office bigger than some apartments to being a case management drone). There’s suspicion and lots of it. But then, La Resistance is….ten or so people in a single room? And when she calls the temps agents to her side, thousands of them show up ready and willing to fight and die? I dunno. Just seems like there should’ve been more splintering going on there. Again, I think they needed more time to tie everything up.

Aside from those complaints, I loved the season. I set aside most of a day to binge it, and I do not regret that decision at all.

[thethirdwheel404]

Med Rewatch Series (#5)

S3 e3: Trust Your Gut. From what I remember this is a big one. I just remember this episode title honestly but we’ll see what happens.

-look at that! ava’s just casually in this scene, minding her own business, doing her job! you would never guess that this is a character who would later have a psychotic break and commit suicide.

-that’s really the point i’m trying to make. I hate all those posts where they’re like ‘i hated ava before, but season 4 has finally shown her true colors’ like not even?? no??? we’re trying to prove that that was never even a thing. i want to eliminate the possibility of s4 happening from your minds. nothing from s3 should ever be used as foreshadowing. that’s what the rewrite is about, ava being a good character. ava was never going to commit suicide. she was never gonna go psychotic. that should be ingrained in everyone’s minds.

-anyways, back to the episode.

-connor takes everything like a personal attack. relax

- i never realized how fun stoll was. like obviously not in the story but as a character he’s hilarious. unattached by everyone else’s drama

-awww. this maggie interaction is amazing. tapping sarah on the shoulder (neck actually but whatever) just to say hi. adorable. and sarah is already super jumpy. come on. her anxiety is already setting in. they really gave sarah two huge storylines in the same season.

-maggie... no one else would ever slash sarah’s tires. i mean honestly

-WHY DOES CONNOR HAVE TO CONTROL OF EVERYTHING - honestly ava was just reading off the chart and he can’t even let her do that he has to take over just to say the same things.

-and the way ava just takes it with her smug smile

-she is such a strong character there is no reason she would have gone crazy over connor she literally needs nothing from him.he has not ever had anything that she needed. 

- SHE’S JUST ROLLING HER EYES, SMIRKING, AND SHAKING HER HEAD AT THIS INSECURE MAN ava I love you.

-okay there’s no way i can explain it but after rolling her eyes at connor Ava turns and looks at the patient and instantly her face changes and you can see such pure concern in her eyes?? s4 ava could never (can someone please rb with a picture of what i’m talking about? it’s uncanny and so so sincere.)

- she’s in control of her emotions. she cares so much for her patients so don’t even try to play that card. the only thing connor has done literally since she got here is get in her way.

-AND CONNOR LOOKS AT HER WITH SUCH DISTRUST AND CONTEMPT. TELL ME HOW. this is insane. exasperating.

-and the way she smiles and comforts the patient. i mean come on. she’s just so amazing. AND COMFORTING. if ava really was as heartless as people say, she wouldn’t take the effort to do that. connor didn’t even do that, he just scowls at ava.

-which just proves my point, ava is only ever mean to people who she thinks deserve it. and, the more that I think about it, she’s never really actually mean. sure, she’s blunt and rude, but never cutting. she’s nice to her patients (and I know what you’re going to say, it’s not because she has to be. she’s a doctor, she still wants to help people). but when her patients are dicks, she’s not nice to them. she’s as snarky with as she’s professionally allowed to be.

-like, take this guy. he seems nice enough. he’s funny, polite, comes across charming, so ava is nice and is polite back to him.

-let’s move on.

-why is connor always so suspicious of ava. come on. he’s the one who should be sus. she literally said ‘Don’t worry, Ray, we’ll take good care of you’ and he’s giving her this weird side eye.

-ethan and will being in this board meeting is really adorable to me. like, just, bros.

-oh godddd sarah please relax. sweetie. please.

-sarah fucking tranqed him oh my god

-oh my god noah asking people for help literally shut the fuck up

-straight people are gross. not to hate but how does anyone sit through manstead

-connor literally needs to chill. I know this bit (they’re arguing over menial things in surgery) plays more to them just picking on each other, pulling each other’s pigtails on the playground if you will (i didn’t like that analogy but I used it anyway), but if you look at it, ava was only trying to help connor (suggesting a wider possible target and an easier to handle stitch) and connor took it wayyy to personally. sure the second bit of advise is just poking at him, but she suggested a better spot on the base and he shut her down without any thought.

-and then latham points out that there is no point in arguing, to which ava defers, then connor snidely says ‘Thank you, Doctor, Now, how about from here on out we keep the background noise to a minimum’ and ava just shakes her head, scoffing.

-at this point ava just likes annoying connor because its fun. it’s entertaining. he gets so upset. everyone’s done that, just be annoying for fun (its bad to say but i mean come on everyones done it)

-another point, ava immediately deferring to latham might read to some as her being a suck up but that’s not what it is.

-ava really likes seeing how close to the line she can get. she goes right up to it, but she never crosses it. the same is true with her interactions with other people outside of surgery.

-I really like this story of the girl who passed out and hit her head, and her brother’s a wreck, and her parents obviously think the brother’s a disappointment. and it was finals week so of course she wasn’t taking care of herself. and the brother knew that, and you can tell he cares so much and feels so bad. it’s nice

-complication on the surgery they were working on. ava comes in with a solution (off of connor’s mistake during surgery after not following her advice) but I have a sneaking suspicion that by the end connor will be back on top

-the effort it took connor to say ‘it’s a good idea’ come on man just fucking let it go

-i’m glad we’ve all agreed that connor’s just a dick

-aw look at that she even held the door for him. connor would never

-i don’t want to overly push the ‘med is sexist’ thing but how is it that in a storyline between nat and ethan, characters who have never been romantically involved, they still pull the woman thinks one thing, man refuses to believe it and is right dynamic. i mean come on med seriously. what the fuck is wrong with you.

-the look of annoyance and disbelief on ava’s face that connor hadn’t actually messed up. comedic, but also i get your pain.

-glad that latham sides with ava, ava advocating for a riskier procedure so they could ensure the blockage is removed)

-(something could be said about ava’s high-risk, high-reward ideals. you could even draw the parallel to events in s4 and s5, even though I really don’t want to. it’s an interesting and notable character trait to say the least)

-YOOOO I FORGOT HOW METAL THE PSYCH STORY GETS

-dude straight up cuts his abdomen open and his intestines spill out

-the fear and shock and emotion on sarah’s face make me feel so bad for her

-WAIT IS THIS THE EPISODE WHERE SHE LOSES THE END OF THE INSTRUMENT? IS THAT WHAT THIS IS? i am not prepared to watch an ava bekker breakdown rn.

-the shock on ava’s face when connor said nice job.

-ava actually tried to apologize to connor. well, not apologize but she feels a little bit bad for just how abrasive she’s been to connor. (connor didn’t necessarily have to make it super competitive). Ava said “Look, I know i have the tendency to step on toes. it’s nothing personal”

-and now they’re not arguing and are this close to actually working like a team

-and i cannot believe connor’s big one-liner is ‘Murphy’s law’

-the emotion on april’s face when the girl’s parents won’t even let her brother grieve for her. I feel it. astounding. its so painful omg

-ava: “your optimism is enchanting.” when i was writing earlier I was worried I wasn’t being accurate with her dialogue and making it sound too overly formal but i guess I nailed it. also, this line reinforces how much I love her (so does every other line)

-connor just refusing to give ava anything, no credit, no nothing. doesn’t even give her credit for earning the surgery saying “you may have elbowed your way onto the case, but he is still my patient” (I JUST TRANSITIONED INTO A QUOTE SO SMOOTHLY WHY CANT I DO THAT IN MY LANG RHETORICAL ANALYSIS ESSAYS YOU’RE KIDDING)

-hey it’s joey!

- i can appreciate him so much more when he’s not chasing after reese

-do you remember their first meeting? bickering over who gets the last splenda? (real meet cute amirite)

-dr. charles remarking how all the scientific advances can’t beat human instinct, nice little tie in to the episode title

-ava just smiling while connor waits for her to apologize. she. takes. no. shit.

-i literally hate connor’s face so much. it fucking looks predatory like stop looking at her like that. it’s almost like you were planning her psychotic break

-ava’s cunning, saying ‘we’ instead of ‘i’ when talking about the decisions being made. she’s smart. she knows what to do. She knows how to present herself. (and yeah, a little hypocritical that she said to connor ‘when you fail, I will make sure that it is noted that it was your fault and not mine,’ but like I said, she just knows how to present herself)

-latham: “Dr. Bekker seems to enjoy this discordance.”

-rhodes’ face when changing his mind and saying ‘maybe I do’ when asked if he enjoyed it too - he literally makes the dumbest faces. please. stop. (is it a straight people thing?)

Alright. Another episode down. 17 to go. This was actually a pretty good episode all around. Ava took none of connor’s shit and you’d have to squint to find any sort of romantic subtext in their interactions, which is huge win in my book. reese’s storyline wasn’t too bad, she didn’t go through too much trauma, which, the bar for watching med is incredibly low i guess. This was a really good episode for ava. like I said before, very little romantic subtext, and she had a redeeming quality in the way she obviously cared for her patient at the beginning of the episode.

The main point is something I’ve been reiterating again and again. Ava cares about her patients. Ava is mean to connor because she knows someone needs to put him in his place, and she is glad that it is her.

All in all, this was a pretty good Ava episode. Very happy.

thanks for sticking with it.

-

read the rest here:

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 6 / Part 7 / Part 8 / Part 9 / Part 10 / Part 11 / Part 12 / Extra

[gweniala]

The Ultimate Sauce

15.1. is the day the triplets (Krevel, Nike and Nehmen) were created. To celebrated their birthday, I wrote this short fic.

A note to the writing: I’ve recently learned about two mistakes in my storytelling: 1) Overuse of adverbs and fancy dialogue tags. Readers do a lot of interpretation when reading a dialogue. For example, I know that in my case my inner voice reads the lines out loud without ever knowing what the author intended. So readers should be able to infer information about the tone, the reasoning and the gestures from the dialogue alone. There’s no need to sprinkle “Nehmen exclaimed vigorously, wide-eyed” on top of “Let’s play tag!”. The dialogue tag “said” should be used 90 % of the time. It’s the unobtrusive, invisible dialogue tag. Most readers don’t even read it and go straight to the core information - who’s currently speaking. Fancy dialogue tags should be used for imparting a strong emotion; if they are used indiscriminately, they lose their impact. 2) Assuming the reader is an idiot. My background is plasma physics and nuclear fusion. When I write a scientific article, I always take care to explain everything as clearly as possible. The subject is hard enough; the writer’s job is to make it easier to understand. This tendency carries over to my storytelling, where I drive the same point home three times because I’m not sure if the reader got it on the first two occasions. However, the average reader is much better equipped to understand complex character-driven storytelling than a nuclear fusion article. There is no need to lay things completely bare; in fact, such writing can be boring or downright insulting to the reader’s intelligence. Therefore, I need to learn leaving clues and letting the reader figure out the message/theme on their own. I know how much I love interpreting the work of others. I shouldn’t take that joy away from my readers.

I tried to employ these two lessons in The Ultimate Sauce. Let me know what you think; I always appreciate constructive critique.

Once upon a time, there was a powerful king. His name was Hoborg and his land was called the Neverhood. It was a small land, with only thirty-or-so inhabitants, but Hoborg loved it all the same. Every day he would gaze out the window and wonder how he could make his subjects happy.

Now, Hoborg was a creator. Making things out of nothing was his passion and his imagination was boundless. So, one day he thought:

“What if I made a sauce that made any food taste great?”

He set right to it. He created all kinds of flavours and seasonings, mixed every food which the Neverhood produced and tested the resulting blends. None of his creations met his expectations, however. Some were too sweet when eaten on their own, others turned sour when combined with fruits, and others yet left this strange aftertaste that Hoborg couldn’t quite pin down. But the king was nothing if not patient. After a painstaking month of research and experiment, he prevailed. By a stroke of luck, he was able to create the ultimate sauce which made any food taste absolutely fantastic.

Hoborg was very happy with his creation. He began singing and dancing with joy, and when his children asked what the matter was, he said:

“Tell this to everyone! Tomorrow there will be a great feast. Let everyone bring food and we shall eat the ultimate sauce!”

The news spread like wildfire and soon every Neverhoodian was giddy with anticipation. All kinds of food were gathered to go with the sauce: mulberries, sandwiches, fwasheep mush, potatoes, gravy; anything and everything that could be eaten. One of the Neverhoodians, called Nehmen, even convinced the rest that such a grand feast wouldn’t be complete without weasel meat. A weasel hunt was conducted an hour later and the mighty crab’s meat was added to the menu.

On the next day, however, the sauce was gone.

Immediately Hoborg thought of who the culprit could be. There was a Hoodian who would compulsively steal things and only return them weeks or months later. It was, in fact, the aforementioned Nehmen. Hoborg called him to the Throne Room for an audience. He wasn’t very surprised when Nehmen’s two brothers, Nike and Krevel, tagged along as well.

“So what did he do this time?” Nike asked.

“The sauce we were supposed to have today is gone,” Hoborg said. “And I was wondering who might have taken it.”

“I don’t have it,” Nehmen said immediately. “I know what you’re thinking, but I don’t have it. Maybe it got lost. A bird took it and dropped it into the void. Or maybe it disappeared on its own.”

“Sauces don’t just disappear,” Nike said.

“Never mind that,” Nehmen said. “Look Hoborg, maybe you should just create more of the sauce. I know what everyone’s thinking, but I don’t have the sauce and I can’t return it. Honest to all my dads!”

“Come on,” Krevel said, “you can tell us. No one’s going to know, it’s just the three of us and Hoborg. Dad, you haven’t told anyone yet, have you?”

Hoborg shook his head. “I thought I might go straight to the source.”

Krevel turned back to Nehmen. “See? It’s okay. You can just give the sauce back and we’ll all forget this ever happened.”

But Nehmen shook his head stubbornly. “I said I don’t have it! Why doesn’t anyone believe me?”

“Because,” Nike said, rolling his eyes, “every time something goes missing, it’s your fault! For Quater’s sake… Just stop making excuses and give the sauce back already!”

“I said, I don’t have it!” Nehmen shrieked. Tears sprang to his eyes and he began sniffling.

“Aww,” Krevel said and rubbed his brother’s back. “Don’t be so harsh on him, Nike. Come on, Nehmen. It’s not such big deal. It’s just a sauce. Hm… how about a trade? I’ll do you a middling favour in return for telling us where you hid the sauce. Two hours tops and no big probs.”

Nehmen just shook his head.

“A big favour then?”

“For Quater’s sake,” Nike said. “Don’t bribe him to do the right thing. Nehmen, stop being such a pushover over a bottle of sauce! Why are you being so troublesome?”

But Nehmen kept shaking his head and crying.

“I think it might be because he really doesn’t have the sauce,” Hoborg said. He heaved a sigh. “I’m sorry, Nehmen. I blamed you without any real proof. Just… you three, tell everyone that the feast will be delayed a little. I’ll try to create more of the sauce. It won’t be as good as the original batch, but it will have to do.”

“We’ll spread the news,” Nike said. All three bowed and left.

Thus Hoborg set to making the ultimate sauce again. The recipe he had previously used was so complicated that he couldn’t recall all its details. He remembered the main points, however, and that was enough. Two hours later, he had created another bottle of sauce. It was quite similar to the original sauce, he reckoned, though it wasn’t quite as good.

Hoborg brought his new creation to the South Plain, where the feast was taking place. Everyone welcomed him cheerfully and gathered around for his speech.

“This sauce,” Hoborg said, raising the bottle up high, “was created for all of you to enjoy. It was made out of love, so it will make almost anything taste great. Now, enjoy!”

His children cheered and clapped. Someone pressed a weasel sandwich into Hoborg’s hands. The king poured a bit of his sauce on the sandwich and passed the bottle on. When he bit into the meal, his mouth was filled with joy and wonder. The sauce wasn’t perfect… but it was still very, very good.

Happily Hoborg chewed and watched his children try the sauce. Every time someone dug in and their eyes lit up and they exclaimed something like “this is so good”, Hoborg’s heart skipped and rejoiced. Their smiles were what he lived for. And it didn’t seem like anyone was bothered by the fact that the sauce wasn’t perfect.

Gradually the feast turned into a laid-back picnic. Games were played and tales were told. A few Hoodians brought musical instruments and played them, others danced. Hoborg was watching them, enjoying a glass of mulberry juice, when someone tapped him on the shoulder.

“Hey, uh,” Nehmen said in a slightly anxious tone, “thanks for the sauce, dad! It’s really good. Not as good as the first one, but still really good.”

Hoborg gave him a look. “How would you know that?” he asked.

Nehmen twirled his stem around his fingers. “Well… I went to the library yesterday evening. When I was going through the Throne Room, I saw this bottle. I thought someone had left a drink there… and it smelled so nice… so I drank it. It tasted so good, I just drank it all. And when the bottle was empty, I thought… Wait… was this Hoborg’s new sauce?” He shrugged, embarrassed. “I’m sorry, dad. I didn’t mean to ruin your work like that.”

Hoborg patted Nehmen’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Everything turned out alright in the end. Thank you for telling me.”

Nehmen brightened up. “So you forgive me?”

“Yes,” Hoborg said, “I forgive you.”

“Yay!” Nehmen squealed and hugged him. “Thank you! And please don’t tell anyone.” He winked at him mischievously. “See you around!”

Hoborg waved goodbye to the boy, shaking his head. Sometimes Nehmen was nothing but trouble… but he still had a good heart.

Hoborg fumbled for his glass of juice. But it was gone.

“Nehmen…” he sighed.

[thatmudblood]

where did this come from. idk. drabble. for @chasingxprongs bc apparently i can’t write if it isn’t related to becky. dis sucks. you’ve been warned.

Dear imaginary psychologist:

I write this in an attempt to clear my mind and free my soul and all the metaphors you can find for finally taking this weight off my shoulders. Which is another metaphor. Why metaphors? Let’s deduce it’s because of my reticence to voice my thoughts out loud. A metaphor is half cowardice, half bravery. Deducing is less than asserting, so that’s another point to cowardice. I’m that much of a Gryffindor.I’m going to say this, and I hope, you, my imaginary psychologist are happy, bouncing on your left foot about this. Because I am not, and I don’t think this is helping anyone.

The thing is that I like him. Potter. And that sole fact makes me angry. With him. With me. Even with Michael Barratt and I do wonder sometimes why the bloody hell the news guy has anything to do with this. 

When did it happen? I don’t know. If I knew, I think it’d be easier, because human minds are made to comprehend finite phenomena-- things that have a beginning and end. What I feel about him, and please don’t make me name it, it feels more like a circle. A neverending circle of deep philosophical stuff about human nature and its comprehension of things, and deepless things about how I want to choke him with my pillow when I’m not thinking about wanting him laying on that said pillow, beside me.

See? It’s a mess. I’m a mess. Everything is a mess. 

They always say that things like love get the worse out of the mind Vs heart battle-- but this isn’t like they told me. This isn’t a battle, this is more like a ruleless war with heavy machineguns and grenades and spies on both sides. 

I’ll try to explain things. See, imaginary psychologist? I’m facing my turmoil and cavitation. By now you should be jumping on your sofa. 

He’s an idiot. He hexes people for the fun of it. He thinks he’s the coolest thing in the world just because he knows his way with the broom. And if there are two things in this world I don’t comprehend, it’s integral equations and quidditch. And I have a better shot at the equations. 

What kind of person I am if I accept that I like someone like that? As immature and as much of a jerk as Potter is? Can you begin to understand my problem?

Did you read Cyrano de Bergerac? There’s a girl in that story, Roxane, and she falls in love with a handsome man that writes her beautiful love letters. What she doesn’t know is that the one writing the letters is actually an ugly one, Cyrano. Why does everyone think Roxane is stupid enough to buy that, pardon my parseltongue, bulshit? Do they think she really didn’t notice, there, in the balcony, that it wasn’t Christian’s voice that read the letters out loud? Maybe, and MAYBE, she was far too embarrassed to admit that she liked the pretty, brainless one, rather than the brilliant, ugly one. 

This is not the case, anyway. Potter is neither brainless nor ugly. Does that make him less of a jerk? No. I mean, sometimes, but my hormones can speak for themselves, I refuse to be measured by what my sudden urges say.

The fact is that, if he matured, I’d give him a chance. I’d play hard to get. Why? I don’t know. I wanted to clear my mind and now I have more questions than answers. You, dear psychologist, must think this is progress, but I call it further torture on my pillow--- that seems to be a recurrent character on this letter.

I find everything he does disturbingly attractive. I hate how my stomach twists and twirls inside me when he makes a mess out of his hair, which is the best example for this fact. Love should be about butterflies fluttering around my tummy, and not about doxys. In heat. Making a rebellion. But when he does that, another example of how his ego is enlarged to a scientifically disturbing size, I feel something close to melting. He’s an idiot and the next second he’s prince charming, defending someone or being his usual prodigy in classes, and—what am I supposed to feel? Is there any way to sue him for mixed feelings?! Do I have a legal stand if I take him to court for that?

I hate liking him. I hate it when I see that he’s not the strutting, egoistical self he portrays sometimes—I hate to see there’s more because I am comfortable with this position. Of rejecting him. But do you want to know what I hate the most? Wanting him. Feeling an urge to sit on his lap during classes, to kiss him during his practice, to get his attention when other girls try to get it.

But  hey, I was right about one thing. This wasn’t a good idea.

love,

L. E.

[rpedia]

[Ask RPedia] Muse Controlling The Mun?

Anonymous asked: New reader! I have a question. My muse is a villain and sometimes I feel like they're more in-control of the blog than I, the Mun, am. Is that normal? 

This brings up some interesting questions, mostly, how much is the muse and how much is the mun? The issue is that with a lot of the things we see about writers and roleplayers, we commonly hear ‘I’m sorry! The muse made me do it!’ So it becomes something normal to expect: We’re going to lose control to what the muse wants. This can be truly awful if someone uses it as an excuse to let their character get away with everything up to and including murder. So let’s look at how much the muse is really taking over and what it means. (Spoiler: They aren’t really. You’re giving in to your knowledge of characterization and gut reactions and blaming it on them, and we’ll see how badly that can go.) As usual, read with the knowledge this is just one guy’s opinion, not an argument, or the end all be all of shit. Just what I’ve gathered over the years.

So as a writer it’s pretty normal to feel like the characters are writing themselves, this is true whether you play a side character, a villain, or a hero. There’s no one group of characters who take over the most, even if villains sound like they should. I mean. Evil overlords. It’s kind of their game right? But the truth is, there’s way more to it than the characters just seeming to have more control. 

Writers, that’s you and me babe, are essentially actors. Some very good writers are method actors. Method acting is when you put yourself in a character’s place, and ask yourself how the character would feel. You explore life as the character, expand your mind and sublimate your own emotions into that of the character. You essentially shelf yourself and live out their lives to get a more unhindered tap directly into their emotions and reactions.

This is instinctive, as a writer, and many people are not aware that they do it in quite so many words. They simply think of the Muse as a sort of half-alive being that talks to them, that they’re sharing space in your mind and memories. Sometimes people are afraid to voice or express that because it seems awkward, or out of touch. I mean, imaginary friends? That talk to you? Who has those as adults right? (Give or take some sensitive topics.) Surprise! It’s okay, you’re creating an identity within yourself for the purpose of acting, and will wear that persona to get in better touch with their goals and instincts. This is a normal human process. We do this. It happens.

So with method acting, or rather method writing in our cases, it almost feels like the roles have come alive. We understand the characters intuitively. We’ve harnessed our memories, our emotions, our knowledge of situations and growth as a character and allowed ourselves to live, or relive them as we write them. This can form extremely strong attachments and memories to those characters. I myself sort of wanna slug people who say they aren’t real because they feel so real. They feel so strongly there that they are my friends, and they are important to me as both a coping mechanism and as a way to write. Maybe don’t hit people, but it’s not going to hurt anything to love and appreciate your muses like I do.

In fact, treating them as their own people helps you create a compartmentalization box around them. You can define their ‘edges’ so to speak, to keep them from leaking into your own personality. Since you’ve invested so much time and effort into making sure they feel, breathe, and exist on a level that makes your writing so much better, of course they’ll fucking leak, dude. That’s like, it’s just a part of you you attributed to another name. It’s a persona you wear to act like that person. You remember the shit they do, not vice-versa, and what they do changes your approach in life however minutely. The thing is... they are never actually in control.

I know! It feels that way sometimes right? This unstoppable urge to do something because it feels so right for the character, so perfect as a reaction. The easiest way to put it into words, or to understand it, is to go ‘well the Muse feels in control’ but it’s okay. They aren’t, you just know the best course of action as that character. You understand the Muse’s point of view, and your development of this persona is so advanced that you can react as them without thinking about it. So you don’t think about it, why waste braincells on that, when you can begin creating something we like to call immersion instead? Immersion is important to get a really good depth to a character, and we experience it both as a writer, and as a consumer of media.

When we go to a movie, or read a book, we aren’t sitting there thinking about that movie or book from an outsider’s point of view unless we’re really trying or we aren’t that into books/movies. When you get a good one, you forget you exist. You fall into the suspension of disbelief and immerse yourself in it. You don’t think about your seat, you don’t think about your life. You adapt your empathy to the story being told, to characters onscreen. Your heart thrills with their victories, and falls with their loss. This is also part of the human ability to adapt to other points of view. Turns out, we got empathy up the ASS.

That’s why we anthropomorphize animals, we give them human traits to explain behaviors which are... probably not what we think, but it’s cute. You don’t have to stop, unless it might be harmful to the health of the animal, or causing issues in scientific explanations of these behaviors, but it shows we empathize so much with animals. Whoo boy, we see absolutely any animal and at least one human goes FRIEND! and bolts across the meadow to be besties. We see an animal in pain? We want to help it. We see an animal going hungry? We want to feed it. We see anything happening to something that isn’t even human, we understand that problem from the perspective of the animal, reflect that onto our own emotions, and act accordingly to either make it stronger (yes! You love tummy rubs don’t you!) or lesser (You poor thing! Here’s more water. You must be so thirsty.) in reaction to that empathy. We care. We as a species care. This is why we can look at a sagging chair and thing the poor thing is tired. It’s a fucking chair people, but hey, I guess that’s our superpower.

We do that for other humans to, of course, that’s why the sad eyed children in commercials were supposed to work. They function on the principle of battering your empathy and sympathy until you try to fix it. But the place they fall flat is giving us a tangible story we understand and connect with. This goes to show, thankfully, humans are also extremely limited in where we throw that empathy the strongest. We don’t like keeping other people’s stories in our head 24/7, or we get lost, unless they have a significant connection with us. 

We actually have something we like to call Dunbar’s Number, which is a proposed idea that there’s a limited number of close stable relationships we can maintain. We think it’s about 100-250 people we can comfortably hang out with at any given time without feeling out of touch with them. Cool right? We actually fuck with that number on Facebook, studies show we tend to only keep up with the lives of about 150-200 people comfortably and more than that stresses us out. Okay wait, I got a little side tracked with cool info.

The point is, we connect to people because as humans we are empathetic and stories make us relive things. We watch movies and read books and listen to our coworker’s funny story to connect to those emotions. Those emotions are at times connected to fictional characters. Once we start feeling a connection to someone else’s imaginary friends, what stops us from making our own imaginary friends so in depth, so real, that we feel a connection to them? Part of our ability to imitate others, to act, to understand their lives, to put ourselves in their shoes depends on our ability to assume that other points of view are people.

So, Muses are as far as our emotions and brains are concerned, people. Fictional people, yes, and we should always keep that line in mind. Once we stop seeing the line of fiction and reality, shit does downhill really fast. We start attributing things to the Muse rather than taking responsibility as a writer. Because they can force us to have a kneejerk emotional response when we’re currently letting ourselves occupy their space, we assume they can force anything. They are the tiny man at the controls, laughing evilly while they hurt someone else’s character.

I mean, you’re not mean right?

You’d never hurt someone on purpose, like your character is doing.

It must be them.

That’s where shit goes wrong really quickly. Once you compartmentalize and develop a distance between you, and the outcome of what you do, it becomes so much easier to blame ‘someone else’. But it is you, I’m so sorry if you are scared of what you are capable of, but it is you. There is no Muse who can actually take you over completely without it being part of a significantly atypical neural landscape that may need a form of psychological help. It’s easy to attribute the darker parts of yourself to ‘someone else’ in your head, but... you can’t. The thing that separates you here is your willingness to carry them out in reality verses fiction.

It is alright to have bad thoughts. I know, sometimes people can get a little obsessed with purity of the soul. This happens in religions, militaries, utopias and dystopias, this happens in any place with an ideal to strive for, this happens everywhere. People push for purity, because they imagine that if no one ever had a bad thought, that bad things could not exist. It’s not a functional way of living by any means, but let’s put that oft spoken of empathy and ability to see a Point of View to work here. It’s understandable that if you boil it down to the simplest answer, no one having any bad urges at all is the best one if somehow you could accomplish that. But it misses a lot of other factors, and it won’t work. 

It doesn’t take into account what people are. We are imaginative. We are complex. We need to understand what happens when we do something. We want to see things that are bad, or wrong, and develop problem solving methods for those situations, or similar situations. So we do think of bad things and it’s alright! That’s fine! The shit that is absolutely horrifying for another person, does not have to be horrifying for us. We are individuals, and so long as we respect the boundaries of others, and give fair warning when expressing ourselves, we have to go through the darkest, most disgusting underbelly of humanity to understand it. We cannot be satisfied with ‘it’s bad, don’t do it’ or our parents arguments of just doing what they say because it’s bad would have had a lot more weight. You cannot forbid another person from thinking of something you don’t like, because they do not have your experiences or limits within them. 

We are raised to question and explore limits for ourselves in a very personal fashion. Don’t be ashamed of that, don’t. It’s one of our greatest strengths. The ability to push empathy into fictional territory to explore problem solving methods and what if’s so we can develop further as a whole. We aren’t perfect, of course. When we imagine what we would do if we were scared, it rarely matches up with real life. As much as you yell at horror movies not to drop the weapon, how many of us might drop the weapon without thinking and be cursing ourselves while outrunning Chainsaw McStabby? But the fact that we understand that hanging onto that weapon is a good fucking idea, comes from us exploring things that no one wants to happen to them.

So you’re going to have ‘bad thoughts’. You’re going to think of situations which other people have experienced and been traumatized by. It happens. It exists. It’s okay. The point at which that becomes bad is when you inflict it on others without permission. Fictional scenarios have a level of permission to explore shit we wouldn’t. As a people exploring this medium, we’ve learned about squick (things that simply make us uncomfortable and feel icky that we aren’t ready to endure) and triggers (things that set off a response, in psychology usually relating to panic attacks or PTSD, or other forms of flashbacks). There are certain things that cause these squicks and triggers disproportionately to the rest of existence. We’ve decided to tag those, so people can explore them at their own speed.

This is an amazing healthy social growth thing honestly, as an aside. We have, through fictional works, developed a rather solid list of things that people like to be warned about, and have as a social unit, put those into play to make sure people are safe. There’s a few things that go wrong, sometimes people don’t understand the labels, sometimes people forget them, or don’t use them. Sometimes people have one that is pretty rare and unique, so no one knows to tag and it’s superfluous to the larger group. But as a big picture, we commonly hit the big shit with a nail on the head every time. This shows groupthink built to ID problems, and solve them in a way that allows people to actively continue empathetic troubleshooting and exploration, without damaging a portion of the group. We’re functioning as a single organism protecting the vulnerable already hurt parts of itself, while still continuing an action using the less experienced and worn down parts to push through and understand it more fully. It’s amazing.

So while we mutate the ideas a little this way or that way, we’re just exploring ways to understand it. People say ‘this is wrong’ and we auto-correct over the sizable population doing this. It’s okay to be wrong. It’s okay not to write thing perfectly, or to understand them if we’re exploring them. We may be exploring a related idea through a format we can apply it to, and get an entirely different lesson. That’s okay too. So don’t worry, you’re part of a much larger communal whole, and thinking of bad shit for you villain to do is helpful. So long as you know, people can opt in or opt out. We need forms of crisis to solve and grow, even if other people have faced those crisis and come out with a perspective of their own already. Limiting other people with your perspective damages their growth as a person, and everyone needs to make mistakes in order to learn from them. As long as those mistakes take steps to avoid hurting others, then don’t attack them, encourage them with changes and ways to alter their perception more towards a realistic goal, and remember their goals may be different. They might be taking a round-about or unused path to their destination and you have to respect that you don’t know everything even if you’ve experienced the path they took and came out with a different opinion, emotion, issue, goal, or story. 

Now that we have that caveat out of the way, and we understand it’s natural to mentally follow the path leading into the dark sometimes... Your ass better understand it ain’t the god damn Muse. It’s still you, and as a player you have a responsibility. You are in control of them, no matter how much it feels like you aren’t. You are the one who will have to deal with whatever comes of their actions. You have responsibility. The fallout of your actions while in-character fall squarely on your shoulders, with no respite. That’s it. Period. There is not “But--!” There is only you fucking did it. You wrote it, read it, and decided to hit send. Your character is not hitting send. Your character does not stop you from understanding what is written. Your character doesn’t grab you and throw you out of the way to do things. You make the choice to let it into the world.

You can write that thing they want! No matter what it is! But then you have to let yourself take on a sort of ‘Godhood’ in relation to your Muses. You are in full control of their lives, you can rip off their limbs in accidents. You can destroy their lives. Change their names. Curse or bless them. You can rewrite their histories, make them look different, swap their genitalia, and throw nasty wrenches into their games. So as far as your Muses and characters go, you’re their God. You have all the power.

And as usual, ‘Why would God let this happen?’ comes into play. We like to make anyone with the power to stop things, responsible for the things. If you see something bad or wrong or badong going on, you netted the job of editing it. Fix what they did. Create an alternate universe and smash the one that would have caused problems for your real life under your thumb. Make sure your character’s initial instincts about a situation and another person’s Muse, doesn’t hurt the second layer of their reality. That is, in other words, behind the 4th wall another player exists and you have to be aware of that. You get to make sure the other player is safe. Give them warnings and know their limits. As a narrator, explain what’s going on that your Muse doesn’t realize, and make sure they know what is going on is the character. Know yourself that it is a character, and you have control. 

Once you stop letting your character be the only voice on the keyboard, your writing will get that much better too. You can start playing against yourself, showing more details by cracking open things they say, and displaying the innards for the other player playing God with their own characters. The more they understand, the better they can respond. This give stories you can enjoy with them more depth and realism. Share. Share everything. Share the power, the story, the limelight, the details of your character’s soul. Bare them to each other, and then do like writers always do:

... Totally fuck with them. 

So in short after all that nattering: Yeah it is normal to feel like your Muse is in control. They aren’t, and you need to be aware of the consequences of your actions while wearing their skin, and be ready to alter shitty things or at least point out they’re fictional; but they do feel like it, right? It’s amazing how we can empathize with something we created, and I think it’s beautiful so long as we remember the line. We have to remember the difference between us and them. They can be erased over time or changed, but we have to live with what they’ve done and fix it or cherish it. There is a line, and that line is OOC/IC. The Muse is not you, and you are not your Muse. You just play one on TV. Have fun.

[jailbirdsonic]

Sides vs Egos

Hi! So, I decided to write this fanfiction because I would love to see an interaction between this characters. I tag @markired, a fellow Markiplier and Thomas Sanders lover and @ask-sadisticdark, since he’s one of the most interesting Dark blogs here on Tumblr. I also tag @liberalautisticnerd831 and @wolfinogotbored because they asked so nicely.  ❤ I also tag @reverseblackholeofwords because their one-shot about the Sides meeting the Egos really inspired me! ❤ Without further ado, let’s see how far down this rabbit hole goes…

It was the weekend of VidCon and Markiplier’s Egos, after the MarkiplierTV premiere, wanted another spotlight to show themselves to the fans. Sadly though, Mark, tired and stressed from his new Tour “You’re Welcome”, was running out of ideas on how to make that happened and the Egos, especially Dark, were becoming impatient each and every day. 

Wilford invited them all to a new meeting to brainstorm a few ideas for him, but after a few hours of discussions and insults at each other, they decided to take a break and relax a bit. While the Egos were chatting with each other, a sound of steps and a joyful tune could be heard coming towards the room, as all the men turned around, confused as hell.

A regal figure, followed by other three people with the same face as the first one but with different outifits, walked through the glass door, singing a tune that went more or less like this: 

♪ “We Are The Sanders Sides! We’ll always save the day! And if you think we can’t We’ll always find a way! That’s why the people on the Internet believe in…” ♪ “Roman!”, sang the first singing figure, now standing proudly with his arms open towards the Egos. “Virgil…”, mumbled the second figure who followed him, his arms crossed against his chest, glaring at the royal with a killing stare under the hood of his black sweatshirt. “And Logan,”, said the third, slower than the darker one and definitely out of tune. “AND PATTON!”, shouted the last one with a big smile on his face, taking a little jump on the spot.

The Egos were watching them like they were aliens from another world, except for The Host, who spoke up and explained who they were to his colleagues: “They are the Sanders Sides, the four different aspects of Thomas Sanders’, the famous Viner and now Youtuber, personality. Prince Roman represents Thomas’ creativity, hopes and dreams; Anxiety, or Virgil, represents Thomas’ anxiety, shame and fear; Logic, or Logan, is Thomas’ logical side; Morality, or Dad, or Patton, is his moral side and his sense of right and wrong.” The last one waved a hand at the crowded room, greeting everyone with a genuine smile to whom only Bim Trimmer greeted back.

“The Host is very pleased to finally meet them as fellow Internet personalities but at the same time he is wondering: what are they doing here?” Logan, adjusting his glasses and fixing his blue tie, responded: “We are here because apparently your meatsuit, Mark, asked Thomas to do a video with him because he was running out of ideas for a video. And which context is better than VidCon, where so many Youtube creators meet and shares ideas? Strangely, though, he didn’t said that we would have to work with…”, he gestured the room, “you.” While The Host was still narrating, Dark started walking from the blind Ego towards the Sides, politely smiling and offering them to sit to continue the interrupted meeting.

Anxiety flinched a bit when the darker persona came close to them so when all of the Sides and the Egos sat down to continue, he sat far away from him, as if he was scared by his powerful aura.

The first part of the meeting went as if the Sanders Sides never came: there was shouting around and arguing on which option was the best to take control over Mark’s channel, leaving a confused and heart-broken Patton who, at some point in the conversation, asked: “What do you mean that you want to take control over your Host? No pun intended, sorry.”, added the Dad character, embarrassingly smiling towards the Ego, who nodded back, “We take decisions together and even if sometimes we argue, we always find a solution with the help of our little guy.” Nobody paid attention to him except for Wilford, who eyed him since he first entered that meeting room. When the situation became too complicated to solve and the room too loud to think and talk decently in to, both parts of the Youtubers’ personas decided to take another break and quiet their nerves.

Logan stood up from his chair, approaching the four Googles who were chatting with each other, properly presenting to them. As soon as the original Googleplier greeted him back, explaining that he and his three brothers were a real life version of the famous search engine, Thomas’ logical side went, quite literally, crazy, asking questions on questions on how such a big company as Google was able to transfer so many data into a human body, to which the Googles responded with pleasure, grateful to know that there was another smart being in the same room as them. Dr. Iplier, who was harassing Ed Edgar at the buffet table with his new medical discoveries, a bit envious to see that the smart ones were having fun, walked towards them, presenting himself with his famous line: “I’m Dr. Iplier. I’m sorry, you’re dying.” which was accepted with a confused expression by both Logan and Oliver, the yellow Google, and a emotionless expression by the other three. The doctor shook his head out of embarrassment, rephrasing his greeting into a more polite and less scary one, and started to talk with the other five about new scientific discoveries, geeking the heck out. While Logan was having fun with his new nerdy and emotionless friends, Virgil, too overwhelmed by the previous shouting from the meeting, was trying to regain his composture and the little sanity he had by standying in the less visible corner of the meeting room, hoping that no one would noticed and started talking to him. At the exact moment he was thinking to take his phone out and listen to some of his music to relax, Dark was immediately next to him, causing the Side to nearly have a stroke, flinching more into the wall. “N-Nice eyeliner, e-eh.”, spilled Virgil, the first thing that came into his mind. The Ego smiled politely, bowing towards Anxiety and saying: “Thank you, lovely. Your eyeshadow is not bad as well. Now now, where are my manners? It’s a pleasure to meet you, Virgil. I would have never expected Thomas Sanders to have a dark figment inside of him, considering his joyous personality, but here you are. I understood that you represent Thomas’ worries, am I correct? In that case, I can show a few tricks to make things easier to better control your vessel’s mind and make you feel heard and listened to, not only from Thomas himself but even by his lovely audience. What do you say?” The warm and charming voice of the darker character, along with the piercing sound who accompanied it, sent a shiver down Anxiety’s back, confusing his already tormented mind and making him want to throw up at the point that he could feel Thomas nearly having a panick attack. Sensing the discomfort coming from the younger trait, a feeling he knew very well, the Host quickly joined them, interrupting Dark’s speech and quietly saying to Virgil, trying to calm him down: “The Host is pleasured to meet Anxiety too and, as a lover of classical culture, he can’t help but notice that your name, and the other Sides’ name as well, perfectly represents the trait you are. Like Logan and Patton, which represents Aristotle’s rethorical appeals of Logos and Pathos and Thomas’ logical and moral side. Or Roman, whose name is based off Romanticism and its protagonists, who are often knights, and he represents Thomas’ fanciful and individual side. Even you, Virgil. Your name come off "Vigil” and you represent Thomas’ vigilancy and worries. Did you know that there is a Roman poet named Virgil, who pops up in Dante’s Inferno and escorts him through the underworld?“ Anxiety, releaved that the Host tried in some way to keep him away from having an attack, nodded and thanked him silently, watching him narrating about his library and his works, while Dark was trying to maintain his façade with a fake smile, irritated that the blind Ego interrupted his chance to take Anxiety to the Dark Side. As well as Virgil, Roman too felt uncomfortable in that room full of, for the most part, criminals. As he was eyeing his "friend” (Was he more than that? The fanciful Side wasn’t so sure about his feelings for him.) standing in the corner bewteen the Host and Dark a rush of feelings, which he failed to catalogue, hit him right in the guts as someone silently approached him. “You like him, uh?”, said the Ego abruptly, making Roman turn towards him, blushing like a red tomato. “What?! No, for the love of the Fairy Godmother, absolutely not! Why would I-”, spilled Princey, nearly screaming in frustration and risking Virgil to hear him. “You know, I’m not blind. I saw how you kept staring at him during the meeting. And I can recognize when someone has a crush like yours. I also had one like this in a episode of my show, but it didn’t end up so well as the other guy dumped me at the first chance…”, the other man whispered the last part, as if it was difficult to him to remember such a sensible topic: “I’m Bim Trimmer, by the way. I’m the host of Hire My Ass.”, he said with a big smile on his face and what it seems an Ego (again, no pun intended) as big as Roman’s one. “Nice to meet you, Bim.”, the fanciful side shook his hand with the other one’s, leaning close to whisper into his ear: “Please, don’t tell anyone about this…”, he sighed, “thing. I’m not sure about my feelings for him yet, unlike Patton and Logan who aknowledge them and now they’re in a happy and balanced relationship. Me and Hot Topic over there though, we keep fighting and getting back with each other so much I’m not so sure what we are, but even so, keep it for yourself.” Bim nodded solemnly, giving the Side a quick wink as an agreement; Silver Sheperd, interested that there was another Superhero other than him, joined them, explaining his story of how he wasn’t feeling the motivation to fight crimes anymore and reciving some good and motivational advices from Roman, and sharing stories about saving Princesses and common citizens from the horrible injustices that tormented their land. Patton, on the other hand, was having a great time. He endend up talking with a new Ego, who popped up randomly after everyone started chatting with each other, called King of The Squirrels whose chin and facial features were covered in peanut butter and who claimed that the squirrels of that part of the city obeyed only to him; he tried to have a chat with Ed Edgar too but when Morality understood that the Ego’s job was selling kids, he slowly retreated, too afraid and a bit angry that that man could so easily escape from the authorities and make those horrible actions to children. The weirdest thing Patton noticed, though, was that the Ego with the pink hair and moustache was staring at him wherever he went. That look was sure intimidating but at the same it fascinated him to the point that he found himself next to the Ego, who smiled at him and indicated him the chair in front of himself. The Side sat, hiding the uncomfortableness with a big smile, and noticed only after that there were a microphone and two cameras behind him and behind the other man. “Good evening ladies and gentlemen and other configurations of being! I’m Wilford Warfstache and tonight I’m here with mister Morality, known as Patton, who’s one of the four Sanders Sides of the famouse Youtuber and Viner Thomas Sanders! It’s a pleasure to meet you! Say, what’s yout job inside of your vessels’s mind?”, said the Ego, his pink moustache wriggiling as he spoke. “Hello everyone!”, answered Patton, waving happily towards the camera: “Uhm, I usually provide to Thomas and to the others Sides moral support when they need it and I help Thomas figuring out what’s the difference between right and wrong.” Wilford nodded, pretty interested in Patton’s answer: “Oh, good to hear, good to hear. And say, what are your hobbies or the things you like to do in your free time?” Morality didn’t hesitate and answered: “Well, I like eating mostly pizza, drawing and… oh, making puns! You know, I’d tell you a chemistry joke but I know I wouldn’t get a reaction.” The pink moustached Ego chuckled softly, nodding and adding: “Do you know why don’t programmers like nature? It has too many bugs.” Patton, catching his breath after laughing, claimed: “ Say, Wilford, do you know what is Beethoven’s favorite fruit? A ba-na-na-na.” The poor Warfstache couldn’t keep the laugh for himself and clapped his hands on his thighs, laughing like a child and managing to say between the giggles: “Hey, Mr. Patton! Want to hear a joke about a piece of paper? No? Never mind… it’s tearable.” The two of them kept telling each other horrible puns like this and laughing like children until Dark asked to all of them to gather again to finish the meeting.

Each Side sat down next to their new friends: Logan with the Googles and Dr. Iplier, Anxiety next to the Host and Dark, who was at the side of the table opposite to Wilford, who had Patton next to him and Roman between Bim Trimmer and Silver Sheperd. During the final part of the meeting, after setting the rule of not to talk over each other, everyone individually had the chance to talk about their plans to improve their meatsuit’s channels. Many different ideas were brought to the table, altough Dark seem to have a hard time dealing with Morality and Wilford’s constant Dad puns, one worse than the other before, his shell dangerously near to crack. After a very bad joke from Patton, that went more or less like this: “I once heard a joke about amnesia, but I forgot how it goes.”, Dark completely lost it. His shell was cracking and screaming like never before, the piercing noise louder than ever, as most of the Egos in the room lowered their eyes, terrified. “Try to make such a joke again, Mr. Patton, and I swear I’ll take you to a visit to the Persuasion Room.” Silence fell. No one dare to talk as Patton’s eyes immediately filled up with tears. Suddendly, Roman stood up and, out of nowhere, pulled his beloved samurai sword out of the sheath, eyeing Logan who headed dangerously close to the darker persona, surrounding him with fierce eyes, furious that he made Patton cry, as Dark watched them irritated, while  Anxiety was trying with Bim and Dr. Iplier to make Morality stop crying.

The braver Side poked at Dark’s neck with the sword as Logan leaned eye to eye with him, murmuring through his teeth: “Do not treathen my boyfriend like that anymore or, I swear to all the puzzles I’ve made in my life, I will not hesitate to defeat you.” Dark, as well as most of the other Egos, a bit shocked by the information that Logan and Patton were in a relationship, smiled politely raising his hands in yield: “I am sorry if I offended your fiancée, I promise you that it will not happen again.”

The two Sides death-glared him for a moment, then headed back to where Patton was sat, Logan lowering to his level and taking Morality’s hand between his. “Patton, like we’ve learned: breath in for four seconds; hold your breath for seven seconds; breath out for eight second. Keep it up, Patton.” The Moral Side did as his boyfriend told and after a few breaths, he did feel better. All of the other three sat next to him, to confort him and silently tell him that they were not going anywehere without him. Patton appreciated the gesture, squeezing Logan’s hand.

Everyone agreed that a collab between the Egos and the Sanders Sides was definitely postponed to another time because they realized that there were too many differences between them, but one thing was sure: both of the parts learned a lot of new things about their vessels’ mind.

BONUS:

While the Sanders Sides were saying their goodbyes to their friends, a glitch could be felt through the entire building by all presents. Dark, Wilford and the Four Googles turned around, visibly concerned, as the glitch grew stronger and came closer to the meeting room. Through the glass door that headed into the room, five figures could be seen: a man in a suit with a cat mask on his face, a boy with a backwards baseball hat, a Doctor, another Superhero and the leader of the group, a demon with black eyes, green hair, gauges, fangs, a dirty knife covered in blood in his hand and his neck stitched and covered in blood as well. The first one opened the door with an evil smirk and said, while happily glitching:

“D͙͚̫͈̦̘i̪̱̲͚͚̠d͈̩͎̘̣ ̙̖̭̰̲̖̬͘w̜̙e͚̦̫̭̫̬ ̷̟̝̟̼m̭̬̤̟̭͡ͅị̪̪̮͇͖̩s̮͎͕͟s̥̟̱͚͚̗͞ ̛͔̪͖s͙̯̣͇̼̖̯o͉̖̱̯̲̖̣m̝̰̤̘̼e̖͈̱̜t̙͎̺͙̻̮͠h͚͙̜̝i̹̻̙ṉg̶̹̗̻?̼̝̝͔ ҉͕͙͔̲͕”

[a-woman-apart]

Desperation

I wish that I had a goal in writing this. I should probably be in bed, since I get to bed so late every night and it really affects my ability to get up in the morning. The problem is that I feel somewhat disturbed underneath my haze of tiredness, and I want to get it out of my system before I try to go to sleep.

Today I slept until noon, so I really didn’t get up and get going until pretty late. Ideally I would go to sleep early and wake up early, as opposed to sleeping late and waking up very late, but that’s just one of the things that I’m bad about. I read about delayed sleep phase syndrome, and while I am not going to self-diagnose, I think that I would not be surprised if I had at least a mild form of that. If I don’t set any alarms or establish a strict bedtime, my natural sleep cycle has me waking up around 11am on average, and falling asleep at 1am or later. It is something that I have modified before, however, when responsibilities require me to do so. Changes have never been permanent, though.  

Apart from the late start, the day actually went pretty well. I was able to work on the song that I would be singing for the recital, and I went out for a few hours and shopped for things for my sister-in-law’s baby shower. Fortunately, I was able to get everything that I needed before the traffic really got too bad (even though I feel like I pretty much got stopped at every traffic light that there was). When I got home, I had a pretty low-key evening. I just finished a season of an anime that I had been watching. I did end up also watching some politically-themed and anti-capitalist videos on YouTube, but I don’t think that I “broke my brain” with “serious stuff.”

That being said, it is pretty depressing to think that the democratic system that we live under in this country really isn’t free and fair for everyone. Sometimes the alternatives aren’t very appealing either, but I know that something has to be done. I consider myself a socialist, in that I believe in more government regulation on corporations and that the government should care for the basic needs of its citizens. I will also admit that confronting the flaws in our government system is extremely daunting and overwhelming, and very often I complain without taking direct action against them. I was taught from an early age that capitalism was the best and most moral system that there was. Now I can see that in many ways that is wrong, but I couldn’t just quit my job and stop working. I’m forced to participate for my own survival, even if I don’t agree.

The lie that is pedaled in capitalist propaganda is that there are equal opportunities for everyone, and that as long as someone works hard they will gradually ascend to the top. The problem with this is that this also means that there is always going to be a hierarchy, with someone at the very top and other people below them. This also fails to take into account inequalities between people across geographical and racial divides, and the persistence of class in the capitalist system. It is often not the hardest working person who prevails, otherwise there would be no one who had to work two or three jobs and still struggle to make ends meet for them and their families. Also, while it is true that obtaining a good education helps to break the cycle of poverty, education is not freely available to all people in the U.S. and the ability to get a good education is still based upon those same geographical and class factors. In other words, very often the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, because the rich are in a position to obtain better education for themselves and their offspring, as well as already having more capital to invest into economic ventures. Additionally, those who are already better off financially can afford medical treatment that can give them increased ability to remain a part of the workforce.

Until we somehow put everyone on a level playing field by making education and healthcare accessible to everyone, we do not have a right to smugly criticize someone who is running into difficulty financially. The whole idea that someone is only as valuable as the work that they can put out is not something that I think that we want to propagate. No one should have to live on the streets, and no one should have to die of treatable illnesses because they cannot afford to be treated. No child should go hungry in this country, and every child deserves access to a good education. Without regulation, corporations would raise the prices of goods to whatever they desired, while at the same time lowering the wages of the people that work for them. It’s happened before, and it could easily happen again without government interference.

Maybe that is part of what bothers me on a daily basis. I have all of these new ideas taking up space in my head. A lot of the things that I once believed in are being challenged. I know that in the end it is something that is good, and that it is much better to be informed about things than not. For example, right now I am really hesitant about giving to charities that say they are helping people, because some “charities” have been shown to participate in unethical practices (I’m looking at you, Susan G. Komen and Salvation Army). Even charities that may have every intention to help, like charities for children in third world nations, sometimes destabilize the economies of those countries by flooding the economy with foreign goods. Sometimes someone panhandling on the side of the road is a crook. Ultimately, this doesn’t stop me from giving because it’s in my heart to help people, but I want to make sure that the help that I am offering isn’t causing harm instead.

Then there’s the ever-present matter of religion. There isn’t a doubt in my mind that Christianity has helped people, but it has also hurt a lot of people as well, especially with regards to sexuality. Also, the Christian teaching that wives are to be submissive to their husbands has been used by many men to justify horrific abuse and subjugation of their wives. The shame that people have regarding gender and sexuality in some Evangelical Christian circles is immense, to the point where people are unable to talk about their fears and concerns. LGBTQ+ people are unwelcome in church. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, addiction to pornography is rampant because individual sexuality is so repressed. It has actually become so prevalent that it is rising to the surface and there are many ministries and groups within the church for men dealing with pornography addiction and sexual deviance.

Christianity and science often butt heads, as well. Evangelical Christianity has very much been the enemy of the theory of evolution. Also, many Evangelicals are proponents of conversion therapy or some sort of spiritual “deliverance” for LGBT+ people, whereas science shows that sexuality is hard-wired into the brain. You cannot “cure” homosexuality through therapy or rituals. Christianity in general, including- if not especially- the Catholic Church has historically stood against scientific progress and technology.

God hasn’t personally failed me. If I am being honest, if I look at my life it actually seems like I have been experiencing divine protection over the years. Things have always fallen into place for me, even though I have my struggles. Maybe I do have the option to be angry at God that I have schizoaffective/bipolar disorder, or that I had such a miserable childhood, but I am not. My problem with the God of Christianity lies in the fact that I am supposed to believe that despite his infinite power, the only way that he could forgive my sins was to horrifically torture and kill his only son. This also requires me to believe that each human being is born in sin in the first place, that somehow things that you do- or in this case, didn’t do- somehow stain your soul beyond all hope of redemption. I am also expected to believe that this redemption was held back for thousands of years, all so that humanity could “learn its lesson” and “know how much they needed Christ.” I am also expected to believe that after this horrific death, Jesus was raised back to life and ascended in physical form to sit at the right hand of said all-powerful God in heaven. I am supposed to believe that unless I believe all of this I am going to go to a place that no one has any evidence of, a place of “utter darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth”, a place of fire where people will burn forever.

Finally, I am supposed to believe that despite 2000 years of being absent, Jesus will one day finally return in all of his glory and smite the wicked, killing so many unbelievers that “the blood reaches to the horse’s bridle”. Never mind that this is an action that seems in opposition to his previous character. The great part is that there are even more difficult things to believe than that, like stars falling from the sky, and a seven-headed dragon arising from the sea.

I don’t care if you say that most of it is allegorical. In my opinion, the things that I mainly have problems with are the basic tenants and concepts of the Christian faith. There is no way for me to get back to it, because the very basic concept of sin and redemption is one that is lost on me. I just don’t believe it anymore, pure and simple. I have not fully given up on the idea of God, however, and I still believe in miracles. I can’t explain why it seems like people get answers to prayer, but I know that for everyone who gets their answer, there are others to whom the heavens are silent. Either God plays favorites, he/she/it doesn’t have ultimate power, or there’s no God really listening and breakthroughs are coincidental.

I’m not going to lie and say that it’s easy, but it’s not. Sometimes I “want” to believe. It would certainly make things with my family so much easier. It would also give me comfort to think that I was specially created and that God has a special plan just for me. Whenever I think this, though, I just think of the incredible human suffering that exists in this world, suffering that cannot be explained away if God is both all-merciful and all-powerful. I think of how unlikely it is that the miracles in the Bible really happened, when there is no parallel for them today. Ross Blocher from the “Oh No Ross and Carrie” podcast described a “veil of time” that people create by thinking that fantastical things are more likely to have happened if they occurred a long time ago.

So yeah, there are a lot of heavy thoughts in the back of my mind at any given moment. Maybe getting older has helped me to put some things into perspective. I know I have a fairly high dose of naivete, but not when it comes to things like this. I think that people are generally good, but I do not think that it is religion that makes them so. My hope is that I can continue to be fortunate enough to see mainly the good side of humanity and experience mainly good things. I also hope that I will one day be able to use my knowledge of the dark side of things to help me stay on the path of good.

Okay, that’s it for my late-night rant.

[clauscrayon7-blog]

On Forgiveness: What It Is, When It Works, and How It Can Connect Us All

“For most of my life and career, I thought about people who disagreed with me in very black-and-white, simplistic terms,” says Sally Kohn. “I was good; they were bad. I was right; they were wrong. I was kind; they were mean. I was caring; they were hateful.”

It’s pretty understandable. Kohn’s life’s mission has been to fight for the underdog. The author and commentator has spearheaded social movements for the betterment of marginalized people. She’s been at the head of a leading women’s organization. So the temptation to paint her adversaries in a negative light was always there. And when she pivoted to media, she contributed to Fox News as a progressive pundit. There you’d find Kohn—a jovial, queer social justice activist—sharing camera shots with Sean Hannity and Megyn Kelly. As surprising a juxtaposition as it may have been, it also allowed Kohn to confront her own “imperfections, thoughts, and biases,” she says.

“I had this experience at Fox News, and ever since, of getting to interact with people who usually we don’t get to interact with in our hyperpolarized world,” she says. The more interaction she had, the more her binary outlook began to disintegrate as she “realized that they we’re not that simple.”

You could say Kohn’s time as a Fox contributor was a catalyst for how she moves through her career—and world—now. There’s no more black-and-white. In its place are endless shades of grey. In her book, The Opposite of Hate, Kohn writes with curiosity and empathy about what drives people to hate. (She traveled to Rwanda, Palestine, Israel, across the US, and elsewhere to gather stories.) If there is one lesson in the book (and there are far more than that), it is that we are all kaleidoscopes—and it’s up to us to recognize our complexities. As Kohn tells us, it’s “more emotionally enriching to see the world and to see people as they are.”

Of course, when you appreciate the nuances of a person, the dynamic details of their character, the complex narratives of someone’s life that eventually become their biography, it’s a whole lot easier to understand where they’re coming from. Kohn has met and interviewed hundreds of people and knows firsthand that we’re all “coming at life differently,” she says. And most fascinating of all, forgiveness isn’t just possible; according to Kohn, it might just be the “bridge that connects all of us.”

A Q&A with Sally Kohn

Q

How do you define forgiveness? And what makes for successful forgiveness?

A

I think of forgiveness as a measure of how much we value ourselves and how much we value others. Everyone makes mistakes. It’s one of the most common expressions of our humanity—our fallibility. So when we make mistakes or when others make mistakes, do we react with compassion or condemnation? I think which way we respond reflects our beliefs about one another. Someone says something that hurts us and we immediately write them off, though we would want them to understand if we did the same thing.

Or on a bigger scale, as a society, we overprosecute and overpenalize petty crimes, which are mostly committed by poor people, especially poor people of color. And we underprosecute and underpenalize so-called white-collar crimes, even though they actually cause greater harm to more people. And at the root, this tends to boil down to the ways in which we divide our world into us versus them and are socialized to think of ourselves and people like us as fundamentally good while those “others” are inherently less than. That takes lots of forms across race and class and nationality and religion, and even just neighborhoods. We’re more forgiving of people we think are like us. But it relies on these fictionalized divisions between us and, underneath, the myth that there are good people and bad people. So it’s only when “good people” do bad things that we grant them forgiveness.

It’s only when we understand that we all contain the capacity for good and bad that we start to comprehend forgiveness as a bridge that connects all of us, a lifeline we all depend on.

Q

What are the underlying human qualities of forgiveness?

A

Forgiveness involves what psychologists call perspective taking. Basically, where we imagine ourselves in the other person’s position. And that’s simply easier to do with people who are like us or people whose stories and lives we’ve been most exposed to through our media and culture. That’s why when a partner has an affair with some stranger, we’re quicker to forgive our partner but hold a grudge against the stranger. Or if our teenager does something bad, we almost reflexively blame their friends. Because forgiveness is necessary to human survival and cohesion. It’s how we stick together.

But then to broaden our forgiveness also requires curiosity. We have to be genuinely, generously curious about why someone did what they did—and try to give them as much of the benefit of the doubt as possible. And we also have to be curious about ourselves, interrogate our own thoughts and feelings, and acknowledge our own imperfections. Ultimately, the act of forgiving is recognizing that the other person isn’t just the bad thing they did. And you’re not just the good things you’ve done. Forgiveness honors that complexity.

Q

Is everyone capable of forgiveness?

A

I hope so. We live in a deeply unforgiving moment, in part because we’re so polarized but also because we’ve really attacked complexity and nuance in our media and politics and culture and social media. But we have to remember our common humanity and that no person is disposable. It was Sister Helen Prejean, the anti-death-penalty activist, who said, “We are all worth more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.” If we all want that to be true for us—and I think we all desperately do—then we have to believe it of others.

Q

What about for the most heinous offenders? For instance, in your book, you write about the Rwanda genocide. So many of the Tutsis were close to the Hutus who murdered their loved ones. Where does forgiveness play a role there, if at all?

A

Let’s be clear, these are the hardest of the hardest of cases. And in my book, I really wrestle with this. If someone killed my daughter, I don’t know that I could ever forgive them. For all the research and reflection and writing I’ve done on this, I’m not sure I could do it. I’m startled by and in awe of people who do. Like the Tutsi woman I met in Rwanda who invited me into her home to meet the Hutu man who’d murdered her husband and children, a man she now calls her friend. Whom she served tea to and laughed with. She says she’s forgiven him. In the middle of a whole country that went through the unimaginable and has tried to forgive and move on. Like I said, I don’t know that I could be that strong, that understanding. But it does make me think that I can be a hell of a lot more forgiving than I have been.

Q

Do we define unforgivable in the same way?

A

I’m not sure we know what that means anymore. I grew up in political movements that were fighting to reform our abusive, punitive criminal justice system based on the moral philosophy of forgiveness and the idea that all of us deserve a second chance—or sometimes even a third or fourth—even if we’ve committed heinous violence. And yet nowadays sometimes we want to throw people out because of something they tweet. That’s just antithetical to my understanding of humanity. To say people are unforgivable is to say that people can’t change. And I know people can change. That’s why we’re a fairer and more just and equitable world today than we were fifty years ago. And that’s why I believe we’ll be a better world still fifty years from now. Because change is possible for all of us.

Q

Are people who forgive happier? Do they find peace in forgiveness?

A

There is ample scientific evidence that, yes, forgiveness makes us happier. To pick just one example, spouses who report being more forgiving of their partners also report being happier in their marriages. But importantly, the opposite seems to be true: Holding a grudge not only makes you less happy but is bad for your health. So it turns out there are moral, societal, and spiritual benefits to forgiveness and personal wellness benefits, too. Plus, in general, we know there are overwhelming health benefits to doing things for others, and forgiveness is one of those things we do for others that makes us feel better, too.

Q

You recently said that “we only hate those we don’t believe we have the potential to forgive.” Can you explain that?

A

I’m not talking about the way we casually use the word “hate.” I mean real hate. And really when we truly, deeply hate someone or some group of people, we’ve decided they’re beyond redemption—that whatever reason we have for hating them is indelible and beyond repair. Within that, there are different kinds of hate. Maybe it’s something you did to me specifically and I’ve permanently written you off because of it. Or maybe it’s more of a categorical kind of hate, even an unconscious kind that’s based on my unexamined biases toward a whole group of people. Either way, in practice, this is like the sort of nonforgiveness of others extended out infinitely. Ultimately, hatred, especially explicit hatred, is the ossification of a sense that those others are unforgivable.

Q

What else is important to know about forgiveness?

A

It’s really important that we distinguish between anger and hate. Sometimes we conflate the ideas, but they’re fundamentally different. Anger is an active emotion: It motivates us to make change. Whereas hate is permanent resignation. So for instance, if I’m angry at my partner, that tells me I have to do something. Maybe I have to explain how I’m feeling, or maybe I have to apologize for something I did. Or probably both, right? Anger is a motivator to action; it tells me there’s some problem I have to solve. But if I hate my partner, if I really truly hate her, that’s it. I’m not bothering to work it out; I’m leaving. Hate means I’ve permanently given up on someone or some group of people, that I can never find the good, that I can never forgive. We tend to think hate and anger are related, but they’re almost polar opposites. Hate leads only to hate. Anger believes in the power of change, including the capacity for forgiveness.

Sally Kohn is an author, a columnist, an activist, and a TV commentator. Kohn previously worked for more than fifteen years as a community organizer, and she is the author of The Opposite of Hate: A Field Guide to Repairing Our Humanity. She received a joint degree in law and public administration from NYU. She received her undergrad degree from George Washington University.

Source: https://goop.com/wellness/mindfulness/defining-forgiveness/

[crossedbeams]

ROSE REVIEWS… THE X-FILES - S1.E8:  ICE

<< 1.6 The Ghost in the Machine ————————— 1.9 Space >>

What a week it has been! What a month in fact (because that’s how long ago I started this recap). Ice is one of my favourite early episodes which explains why this is longer than the combined beards of ZZ Top. Someone teach me self control? Please?

Go under the cut at your own peril, here there be worms.

The Plot

Some dudes playing with ice have gone radio silent and left a creepy message, Mulder and Scully get sent up to investigate with a ragtag team of socially inept scientists and then cut off by bad weather with some seriously suspect wormlike organisms, and more sexual tension than you can shake an oversized drillbit at.

My Stream of Semi-Consciousness

YAY! ICE!

I’m glad they start out with the dog just nommin on something spilled instead of one of the dead people. It makes it easier to root for him later which is good coz it’s a cute dog. Apparently it’s also Blue’s dad!

Then there’s what appears to be a disembodied limb in a box. Why I have no idea. but I am soon distracted by the entry of this dude who appears to have been scorched, stripped and then attacked in an incredibly symmetrical fashion by a pair of clawed ketchup bottles.

Like c'mon prop monkeys! Blood is NOT that colour and when did you last see someone with matching pectoral wounds (given it’s not sex related… probably). Also now I’ve been looking at it for too long and I feel like he has one nipple that is significantly bigger than the other and I’m having trouble moving past it.

And WHY is he shirtless. At what point in the whole fighting to the death in the ARCTIC was he like… wait mate… I need to take off this shirt off because #aesthetic.

Though to be fair I probably would.

Aaaaanyway

His radio makes more noises than the tardis.

We’re not who we are. Okay. We get it. But on a serious note do they ever actually discuss why he says this. Because I feel like grammatically it’s questionable and the space worms seem more into murdering each other than making dramatic speeches.

His assailant looks very heeeeere’s jack" and is wearing a shirt. I’m rooting  for him until they get into the worst duel ever. Don’t put your guns so close. This whole bit tbh. The worms seem to have very complicated motivations and choreography, Maybe they’re abstract prehistoric space worms. Am I making sense. I don’t think I’m making sense.

It’s okay though I can compose myself during the CREDITS.

This video from the dead science dudes is the dorkiest thing I have ever seen. There are quilted body warmers, pasted on smiles and overenthusiastic high fives. You can see why these guys are extras and not the series stars. But at least they were all having fun before they brutally killed one another.

Mulder and Scully are watching this video in a room with both a blackboard and a window. Where are they? Is the basement being cleaned? Is this Scully’s office? If so why does she have so many damn tables!

Why do people insist on digging into old ice/trenches/under the sea. It always ends badly. EVERY DAMN TIME. Cthulu is down there people. Or godzilla or some shit. Just leave it alone and make nachos. Much better.

Not to be pedantic (okay who am I kidding) but pretty sure the background here doesn’t match what was behind him in the scene.

It’s only 1993 goddamn and Gillian Anderson is already learning how to ruin us all with her exquisite face. We were all screwed from the first time someone pointed a camera at her. All her tiny facial nuances remind me of the queens of old Hollywood and the things they could do with a quirk of the lip.

Then Mulder squats down and grins at her and though he’s basically implying they’re being sent as sacrificial lambs he doesn’t seem too sad about the concept of being trapped in an igloo full of corpses with his partner. He goes from amused to gleeful when he tells his teeny partner to bring her mittens and I’m thinking Scully seems excessively perturbed at this stage… is she having a moment of forboding? Or does she just really hate Alaska? I mean this is pre Palin so there’s no good reason to be quite so down on it…

And heeeeere’s Denny

Not content with really loving rocks (geologist) and being called Denny he also likes to do this in public places.

Denny is not getting any.

I do miss cassettes though.

Enter small winterwear troll AKA Dana Scully in a jacket so big she may be wider than she is tall. Mulder in contrast appears to be wearing jammies, jeans and a jacket, which are - incidentally - my three style essentials. Well those three and a resting bitch face.

Mulder makes awkward chat about San Diego while Scully pulls a face like she didn’t used to live there and then the other scientists arrive and they engage in a charade worth of the Chuckle Brothers with IDs, “It’s me! It’s You!” Mulder even checks Scully in case, one assumes, somebody else was hiding in her coat and has leaped out to replace her since he introduced her to Denny less than 30 seconds ago. Possibly he just uses it as an opportunity to sniff her. He’s only human and I would… I also feel like at this point  the writers were overly concerned with linking back to “we’re not who we are” from earlier. Every single combination of the words “we”, “who”  and “are” is well and truly thrust in. And we’re only at 7.12.

Also hello Felicity Huffman.

“Two federal agents, a geologist, a medical doctor and a toxicologist” sounds like the beginning of the worst walked into a bar joke ever. It would have some incredibly scientific punchline probably involving the word ampule. I’d try and write it but… we I can’t be bothered!

Everyone is so weird and cagey. The script must have been full of side-eye instructions. A word to the wise - if you’re ever asked to go on a business trip where people are behaving like this, don’t go. It’s the start of a horror film and you will die.

Especially if someone else there is called Bear.

Bear could be Steven Tyler’s brother. Or maybe they just have the same surgeon. His car is the only car in the universe dirtier than mine.

And after Scully standing weirdly close to Huffman (I forget her character name) for way too long (like seriously? SO strange), Mulder trying to reassert his Scully monopoly with some unnecessary touching (DRINK!) we see some stock footage which can only mean we’re up, up and away.

Icy Point and the power’s off. Of course. Do they ever investigate why the second they arrive anywhere the lights stop working? That’s a damn X-File.

For guys who blew their on brains out these dudes are artfully arranged. And pretty sure one of them is tensing. You’re dead man. Nobody cares about your abs anymore.

Scully says ‘flashing’.  She means the camera. Epileptics on set can thank her but I can’t help being disappointed. Imagine if she meant her boobs…

Mulder comforts Felicity Huffman with his intimate knowledge of arctic research generator noises. Who knew Oxford university offered so many eclectic courses. Unfortunately they didn’t offer one in dog combat because Mulder goes down. Pretty sure Huffman falls over too but only out of shock or being knocked off balance by her coat.

Poor Bear is bleeding ketchup so we know he’s fucked. It’s fine though, Scully is a medical doctor and she finds some super gross disease beans in the doggo’s armpit which means she will also save the day. Standard.

Worm under skin, WORM UNDER SKIN! Ths grosses me out every time so drink every time we see unnecessary subdermal wriggling. *drinks*

Scully has completed five autopsies before anyone else has done more than get their coat off and get infected with a space worm, but ruins the effect by brandishing a used and  uncovered needle with gusto whilst doing her jargon spiel. She may just be trying work out how to rescue her hair from it’s current anti-gravity state, her fringe is levitating at a sweet 120 degrees from her forehead which has got to be upsetting when you’re as put together as Scully is. Regardless,  

Mulder seems unperturbed but may just be distracted by Bear wigging out about his own personal armpit beans.

There are some high quality knitwear/ winter neutrals going on in this episode. Maybe they were sponsored by fruits of the loom or some shit.

Mulder and Denny get all excited about satellite pics, apparently Mulder’s interpreting skills around some sort of bizarre geological scanning are rusty. TRY NON-EXISTENT MULDER. YOU DON’T KNOW SCHIST ABOUT GEOLOGY! Sorry. For the pun and the yelling. But seriously. If I made a list of all the things Mulder and Scully know that they shouldn’t…

DINOSPERM! Dinosperm. Does whatever a dinosperm does.

The second Mr Bodywarmer (I can never remember anyone’s names so tis is what I’m calling him) disses Scully’s autopsy skills you know that Mulder’s gonna disagree with him. Contagion be damned, suggesting Sculy has missed something is a no no - even in Season 1 - and especially when she’s pouting like this.

Oh no! Mulder says they have to stay (my favourite trope), Scully pulls the doctor card to seal the deal and now there is no way they’re not having arctic sex right? Everyone gets some… well except Denny who kills the mood by opening up way too easily about his bowel movements. Poor Denny. High school can’t have been easy for you.

But it’s fine because Bear flips his shit, or more specifically flips out about a shit, and everyone has other things to worry about. After some arctic democracy which really draws a solid line between Mulder/Scully and Huffman/MrBodywarmer (in case you’d missed all the other clues) and emphasises the disposability of poor Denny, they pull a gun and shit gets real.

Down goes Mulder!

Down goes Scully!

Turns out big man Bear is no match for Macho Moose and Flying Squirrel. The others prove once again to be utterly useless, standing about and watching. Honestly, given how much Mulds and Sculls know about other science they should absolutely not know, the the rest of the cast seem kinda superfluous other than as human coathangers for knitted beige monstrosities.

WORM UNDER FLESH, DRINK.

Impromptu surgery always makes me squeamish so lets not talk about this. Suffice to say its gory and ends poorly for Bear. RIP buddy, you were kinda a douche and your hat was stupid but nobody likes a neck worm.

Just keep drinking till it’s over.

The woman on the radio is semi-peppy given she’s just told them they’re stuck. Maybe she’s drinking whatever Sarah Palin is on.

Sculy’s OCD hand washing is adorable and I want to pet her. And the others are all still just standing there though now with a corpse centrepiece. React people! Do something!

Top quality CGI right here! Wormeo is looking fine and definitely three dimensional.

The worm theory is all very plausible, except that the last bit makes no sense. The worm doesn’t want to kill it’s host, just the hosts with its pals in… so what is the worm’s end game? Last worm standing? Any thoughts?

I am all about the aesthetic of this next scene The half light the corrugated metal with shadows and the height difference all in silhouette. It’s even added to by Mulder’s signature monotone rant. But the problem is, I’m so MSR thirsty that when this happens…

I just want them to throw down and get it on on the floor. KISS! NOW! Corpses be damned. See, This is what this show has done to me. I used to have standards.

Denny is not down with all the tension so he retreats to baseball while Huffman and Bodywarmer, who bicker like Mulder and Scully but lack ANY sort of chemistry (this is the show we might have gotten if the Gillian/David alchemy  hadn’t happened) conspire like a pair of whiner babies. Bodywarmer is as paranoid as Muder, but he’s also an assclown.

Then Mulder and Scully take their coats off in a dramatic way and once again my mind is in the gutter. Which is actually appropriate as it’s naked spot check time and things are about to get a little homoerotic. Pretty sure Mulder lost some sort of bet when Scully was the one to suggest a naked group activity. Also pretty sure he was disappointed that it was just another spot check and that he wasn’t invited.

Leaving this here for science.

There are multiple documentations of the exceptionally sapphic encounter between Scully and Huffman, whoever decided to light them in red while the dudes got to strip off in a normally lit room was certainly only aided by the fact that Scully's jabby doctor hands from later series have not yet developed. 

My main takeaway other than this being basically the only scene in which Huffman doesn't irritate me (and I think I quite liked her in DH though I can't remember a damn thing that happened on that show), is that Gillian Anderson has more chemistry in a fraction of her lower lip than most people have in their whole body. I mean seriously: authority, vulnerability, comfort and a little sex all in one move. This little thing? 

She would probably have chemistry with a rock if she needed to. How is it so effective? How does one scene that lasts less than a minute have more relationship in it than all of Huffman and Bodywarmer's interactions combined? How is the entire world not worshipping at her tiny feet?

And the award for least comforting bedtime sendoff goes to Mulder, for both bringing up bugs biting (as if they're not already freaking over dinosperms getting all up in their spines) and then shooting down Scully's attempt to normalise things. "The spots on the dog went away". Really? She's lingering outside her room, and instead of being nice, or comforting, or taking her mind off things with some vigorous shagging you give her puppy eyes  and a shortcut to nightmare town?

Go to bed and think about what you've done Mulder. Leave Scully alone with your comforting words, ominous lighting and a dead man's half naked lady posters. 

Cue montage of nobody coping in different ways with Mark Snow blinky-blonkiness to up the tension.

As a an unapologetic Scully fangirl I do sometimes forget that at this stage, Duchovny was very much the star and focus. Scenes like this remind me, where we watch him get dressed (I am fine with lots of shirtless Mulder), wander about, do reacting, hang out a little with this cabinet that definitely looks like it has a face and could just have eaten Denny on it's own...

Anyway my point was that as much as Gillybean is growing as an actor and making herself felt in the episodes, studio intentions be damned, this is all DD, prowling about with drama and he does it well. Also you can see his nipples through his shirt. Clearly my priorities are straight. Well... mostly.

That said. Mulder is an idiot. When a cabinet is bleeding, what sensible person opens it while squatting in front of the spot where clearly a corpse is going to fall out. He didn't learn that brand of idiocy at the VCU.

Speaking of Scully asserting herself, Bodywarmer (I think his name is Hodge?) and Mulder get in to a sweaty macho shout off and teeny Sculls gets in the midde. Huffman just kinda floats about.

And we have a series first! Mulder and Scully hold each other at gunpoint! Loud noises! Angst! Betrayal! Delivery of the episodes motto which STILL makes no sense."You may not be who you are?"" Well no he is him, he just might have a worm in his brain But points for consistency. Shame it doesn't apply to the series overall plot arc!

Anyway, in the end it's fine because Mulder relents when it becomes exceptionally clear that for all that she's smol and mostly calm, Scully will shoot his ass, though she'll feel a bit bad about it. At this realisation Mulder goes full puppy and lets his owner put him in a pen. But he doesn't get shot. Yet. Little he knows...

So Mulder gets shut away. It's totes emosh. Like Celine Dion backing track emosh. Mark Snow step aside because this bish has spare time and windows moviemaker...

Moving on...

Pretty sure that fluffy!Scully striding in a plaid shirt with a gun is my spirit animal.

It's super convenient that both members of team non-MSR are sleeping in ridiculously uncomfortable positions, despite the recent excitement, so Scully can be forced to surrender her weapon. But hey - we only have 10 mins left and the plot must go on.

Bodywarmer decides the time has come for him to be alpha male but unfortunately, everyone still hates him, Scully doesn't want in on his shitty duet, especially when it's clear that he'd toss his partner in a second. Huffman finally grows enough balls to suggest Scully might have a point about not turning on each other and looking for treatment but his ego is out of control.

I really wish Bodywarmer had gotten eaten instead of Denny, Denny and Huffman could have been useless fuzzballs together and the only thing I ship Bodywarmer with is my booted foot making hard contact with his testicles after his misogynistic asshole moves in the lab. I'm starting to understand why Huffman has no personality. Scully starts to realise she got preeeety lucky that Mulder's just an alien obsessed puppy and not an utter fuckboy, before snapping back in to science mode for wormageddon.

I'm gonna take a moment here to shout out Lila (@startwreck for the following graphic). Theses two animated worms even have more tension than Bodywarmer and Huffman. So when we did the group rewatch we may have turned it into a fix that the worms were in love...

Me and the space worms have one thing in common. We do not like company.

WORM IN DOGGY EAR! DRINK!

Not sure how a stethoscope would prove the worms inside the dog were dead but I'm not a medical doctor. Either way, Mr Woofty is okay and lets be honest, aside from Mulder and Scully he's the only one I care about at this stage.

Tfw bae may have a brain worm but you wanna be sure and one of your companions is an asshole and the other one is actually the neck worm's host.

Poor Mulder isn't even allowed to accustom his poor little molerat eyes to the light before having to defend himself. Which got me thinking... the light switch is inside the room. We saw him turn it on earlier. So he's sitting in the dark of his own choice, just to make himself more tragic. Precious baby.

This face could have been avoided.

This scene though, this could not, There is now a section in the FBI handbook called, "Protocol for the investigation of possible parasitic space worms", this inspection is the example of how not to do it. Ably assisted by D'Angelo and my amazing video skills once again I give you - "this would be sexual harassment if they weren't both so into it - so don't try this in the workplace kids"

Scully comes out with Mulder in tow like the kid who came home from school with a friend who wasn't invited. "Mom I know you said no but look at him". After a quick round of, my partner is less infected than your partner, they get ambushed, Scully makes the squeakiest squeak of a no that is still audible to the human ear and finds herself in the sex cupboard.

Commence a struggle scene worthy of You've Been Framed, drink for Huffman's neck worms and also for this face.

In her struggle to escape a worming, Huffman pauses long enough to through some vials off a freezer shelf, that she has to open. Before she goes for the gun. Logical. And then they all have sex on the floor. I mean seriously. 

But it's all good coz she gets to gnaw on Mulder's pec while the worms do battle royale in her pituitary gland and everyone makes it. Well except Bear and Denny. Huzzah! Scully gives Huffman (whose name I have just discovered is Silver or Da Silva which I'm sure I knew when I started this but honestly that was weeks ago so...) a celebratory belly rub. 

I'd take it.

They finally escape, and Mulder of course wants another round trip to hell but hell has been torched. Scully does a good job of looking sympathetic in front of Bodywarmer, but as soon as they're alone she tells Mulder how she really feels. To paraphrase, no, she doesn't want to play with ice worms of death any more and yes she would rather be in Aruba. But she does wait for him. Maybe so they can finish what they started in the sex cupboard in the SUV. 

I hope,

And so it ends..

Quick Score (Full Deets in the top pic)

Story: Original, bold and pacy - 9/10

Mulder: Broody, ballsy, sexy - 8/10

Scully: Smart, sceptic foil to the crazy - 8/10

UST: The first suspense episode, creepy original goodness 5/5

Other Cast: Solid ensemble of misfits delivers - 8/10

Bonus Points: Hot damn sexy moments, extra gazing, partner doubting, memorable, my fave 5/5

TOTAL - 42/50 - Grade A and new topspot sitter!

Join us next time for more ridiculously overthought brain farts

<< Previous Episode || Next Episode >>

[ecotone99]

[SP] A.I. Miss You (Part One)

The twisted tragedy of one family’s use of technology to restore more than photos lost in a fire.

*****

i Public statement by Nathan da Costa, October 26, 2076:

The first time my sister died was in a fire with her family. I suppose it's only fitting it happened that way the second time around too.

ii It's a little known fact that Watson's Dispensary in Santa Carla, California was once known as Watson's Brothel and Opium Emporium. Marginally more relevant to the plot is the fact that Watson's also holds the record for "World's Largest Selection of Greeting Cards." Whether one wishes to offer gram-gram a half-assed birthday wish or whole-hearted support for another's full (or partial) conversion from innie to outie, Watson's is more than capable of selling you a piece of folded paper containing wholly unoriginal, utterly manufactured words that substitute genuine effort and emotion with convenience for only a modest fee. In fact, Nathan da Costa was so impressed by the sheer breadth and depth of modern greeting card technology that he hardly noticed the robot standing immediately to his right.

"What's the occasion?" the robot asked.

"My wife and I are on our way to visit my sister over in Hilldale," he said, glancing over to the robot. It was a petite thing, the robot. This lovely smile matched with an equally adorable bob cut and a drab, soul-sucking blue smock with a name tag that read: MARIA. "You're a Type-II."

"Correct," it chirped.

Nathan returned to the greeting cards, but continued talking anyway. "My sister had a Type-II. Total sweetheart."

"What was her name?"

"Rosie," he smiled.

"Where is Rosie now?"

Nathan considered this for a moment. "Not sure. Her fuel cell ruptured a few years back. Burned down half the house with the family still in it. So, probably the dump? Do they recycle--" He stopped himself, looked at Maria, and remembered what he was talking at. "I'm oversharing, aren't I?"

Maria processed this, determined it was most efficient to simply smile and nod, and did so.

"Yeah," Nathan said in that tone one tends to get when dismissed politely by a computer. "I guess they don't really make greeting cards for that sort of thing, do they?"

Maria searched and processed the results. "No."

"Yeah. Probably a bit too specific."

"Ready?" a voice asked.

Nathan turned to his left and found an equally petite woman waiting with a small brown bag in one hand, a cheap bouquet of daisies in the other, and, coincidentally, a similar bob and smock. But while she didn't have a name tag to remind him of her name, he was more or less sure that this woman was also his wife. "What's in the bag?"

"Flower for us, flowers for your sister," she said, looking past Nathan to Maria. "Cute dress."

"Thank you," Maria replied, smiling in that way only a Type-II can.

"So, you ready?"

Nathan sighed, then settled on a card that read: SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS. "Yeah. Let's go."

iii From A.I. Miss You: A Brother’s Final Words, by Nathan da Costa (Self-Published: 2078), pg. 37:

Darla and I were never close. I didn't even know she was married until Rosie called to tell me Darla and her wife were expecting their first child. And it wasn't that we didn't get along, or there was some bad blood between us--don't get me wrong. We were just always different souls, I guess. Darla was the quiet one, always reading, always focused on her schoolwork. But, me? Our mom was fond of telling people that I was "preoccupied being someone else's problem." And okay, fair enough. I don't think I've ever been shy about my predisposition to openly communicate my feelings at even the worst possible times. And it only got worse after Dad died, because of course it did. But thinking back on it now, I think Mom found my shoplifting and fights at school a Hell of a lot easier to deal with than her having to explain to a teacher why her ten-year old daughter was convinced she could take a hamster apart and put it back together.

iv For the sake of skipping past all the boring bits about a long, winding drive through the sort of gorgeous stretch of lush Californian California that would bring Steinbeck to frothy bliss (if he weren't inconsiderately stone-cold dead, of course) and lukewarm introspective spousal melodrama, we will. Those who might care about such careless dismissal of assingly trivial things like atmosphere and character development can rest assured that it wouldn't have been any good even if we had bothered with such things. And for those who might not give a shit either way, please know that you were, in fact, missing out on quite a lovely bit of writing. But we're beyond such things now, aren't we? No sense crying about it. Besides, we're doing it for you, you know. We wanted to do it, really. But we thought it best for all of us if we simply got to the damn point before we're all dead like Nathan's sister's family after that awful fire we casually expositioned about sometime back. You're welcome.

Anyway. Let's just say we've arrived at that point where Nathan and his wife stood waiting at the front door of Darla's eyesore of a luxury three-and-a-half story cottage nestled there at the ass-end of a dreamy, tree-laden hillside road. All by its lonesome, without a neighbor within screaming distance. Its not entirely not-ominous charcoal-black wood exterior contrasting with the absolutely batshit amount of scientific doodads, thingamabobs, and watchakerjiggers strung, jutting, bubbling, blinking, crawling, and threaded all about the place. And yet, beautifully complimented the way the setting sun set the silent, birdless sky ablaze so that it looked, more or less, exactly the way a house fire might burn. The fire, Nathan thought to himself as he stood there like some kind of jackass. Ah, yes - the fire. Very hot, fire. Burns things. Burning, hot fire.

Anyway. As we said, no time to waste. Nathan and Vulvian, front door, waiting.

(Also, that's his wife's name - Vulvian. We thought you might like to know that. You're welcome.)

"Jesus," Vulvian blasphemed. "I'm surprised this place didn't burn down sooner."

"It did," Nathan corrected.

"Oh, that's right."

"I'm more surprised she had them build it back the exact same way as before - even all the cables are in the same--"

You know what? Rosie just opens the door. Right now. Okay? I'm in a mood now. This is how it goes. Rosie's opened the door now. Rosie, alive and well. Well, not well. Or alive. She's a robot, of course. It might not even be Rosie, just a similar high-tech gyndroid that just almost reaches the other end of the seemingly inescapable uncanny valley, and picked up for a steal from the local discount store. Hm? Ever think of that? Of course not. That's stupid. Don't be stupid. That's a stupid, stupid idea. Ever come across a little phrase that sounds, reads, and smells precisely like, "A hat on a hat," maybe? It's just Rosie. Re-existing, somehow. Just go with it, okay? It can't possibly be for much longer. Otherwise, why all this nonsensical drivel? Hm? For fun? Well, I'll have you know, I'm not having any. Not one teensy-weensy bit.

So, again. Rosie, one side of the front door - the inside part, that is. And Nathan and his poorly named wife, the other, outside part of the same front door.

"Rosie?" Nathan asked like some understandably confused, shocked, and horrified person who has just seen a... well, not ghost - but some robot-equivalent of a ghost, I suppose.

"Mr. Nathan?" Rosie asked in the same faux, vaguely Latin-ish accent Nathan remembered having to talk to Darla about on more than one occasion.

"Rosie?" he asked again for no good reason, really.

Vulvian, meanwhile, pushed her way beyond this ill-conceived scene, and Nathan eventually followed.

Somewhere beyond the refabricated foyer, through the duplicated den and to the right of the replicated washroom, they eventually found Darla dining with her deceased - yet, also somehow not - family.

(See? Wasn't it worth skipping ahead?)

"What the shit is this?" Nathan asked, staring at his not-quite dead, not remotely close to alive niece and nephew on either side of his very much alive, clearly not well sister. His sister-in-law, Jennda, looked mostly the same, all things considered. And somehow this only made Nathan more uncomfortable. Imagine that.

"Dinner," Vulvian replied.

"Dinner," Darla chewed in agreement. Her family, meanwhile, only poorly pantomimed eating. Not that they seemed to notice or care, what with the way they blindly stabbed themselves about the face and mouth with their forks, splattering cheap Chinese takeout everywhere without a second thought.

"Dinner?" Nathan repeated, only in the sense that it was a question.

"Dinner," everyone replied.

"You all realize how creepy that sounded just now, right?"

"Would you like some dinner?" Rosie asked, startling the weak, little man.

"Oh, thank god!" Nathan creamed. "We've been driving for hours! So much driving and talking and developing, but not at all enough eating."

"Nathan," Vulvian growled, unnecessarily and unconvincingly through what she thought was a smile.

"Fine," he pouted. "Darla, we need to talk."

"Can't it wait?"

Nathan considered this, then looked to Vulvian. Vulvian shook her head, No. Nathan sighed, "No, I guess it can't."

Darla ate for several more moments, then agreed. "Alright."

"Really?"

"Yeah, of course." Then, turning to a small box on the wall, "Pause program."

A cute little chirping sound later, everything went still - the candles, the lights, Rosie, Darla’s wife whose name I’ve already forgotten, the children with such silly names even I can’t be assed to remember. All of it. And at some point, Vulvian was almost certain that even the air had gone still.

"That was easy," Nathan said to Vulvian.

"How so?"

"Well, I just figured--"

"What? That there'd be some drawn out bickering before I inevitably concede to speak with you about me inviting you to my rebuilt house to see my rebuilt family?"

"Well, if you're going to take all the fun out of it..."

"I am."

"Well, wherever you're going, can I join?" Vulvian asked. "Your frozen animatronic family is creeping me out."

(Casio and RCA! That’s their names - the creepy robot kids. Even when they weren’t unalive monstrosities of yet-to-be-explained origins. I knew I had that scribbled down somewhere.)

Darla laughed. "Oh, my god. They're totally creepy, right?"

To be continued...

*****

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[angel-and-the-antelope-blog]

Laughed at by your family for wanting to follow your passion? Success is the best revenge. With David Horvath

Have you ever felt like you’re not getting the support you need to succeed, especially from the people closest to you? Then you need to read every word of this interview with David Horvath. Co-creator of the globally successful Uglydoll brand. This is one of my all time favorite interviews.

I have a lot of respect for how amazingly generous and open David is. He shares the struggles he faced and overcame to follow his childhood dream. A dream that, it seemed no one else wanted him to achieve. Read it, learn from it, take action on what you learn. And don’t ever let those who don’t have the courage to follow their own dreams, prevent you from following yours…

Uglydoll Kaiju

Angel: David, with the widespread success of the Uglydoll you are being hailed as one of the top character designers in the world, but did you have this passion for toys as a kid?

David: When I was 12 the class was going around discussing what they wanted for Xmas, etc. The boys wanted Atari, footballs, etc. I already had all of that in my garage so I said I wanted GOLION, a die cast metal Japanese robot. Many of the kids laughed until I explained that it said “ages 13 and up” on the box, meaning they weren’t old enough to play with it just yet. Then they kinda just stayed away. So in a way, the cool kids became the outsiders and I stayed put.

The Cool Kids Became Outsider And I Stayed Put

Angel: So it sounds like you chose to follow your own path from an early age. Did you get any support from the people around you?

David: My mother was a designer at Mattel for many years. I wish that had helped me some but the honest truth is, she wasn’t permitted to discuss her job with me and she stayed loyal to that golden requirement. The only way I knew she still worked there was through catalogs and purple He-Man errors brought home. But those catalogs were inspiring. I always knew that I wanted to tell stories through toys.

Bossy Bear

The resistance came from my father, who told me that surrounding myself with toys and quitting Art Center to go work at a toy store would never amount to me making my own toys. He would tell all his professional contacts and co-workers about his waste-of-life son locked up in his toy room, working at a toy shop. He made many a famous or well known professional in the art and design world shake their head at me (being told his version, not mine). So there was resistance. Luckily, I didn’t care. He wanted to be a photographer more than anything in the world, but went into advertising because it seemed more stable to him. Avoiding your life passion out of fear is a no-no in my book.

When he would freak out over why I had so many toys (over 40 of them!) I would ask him why science majors had beakers and slides all around their room. He didn’t get it. Anyway, when I was 19, I did indeed quit advertising at Art Center so that I could go work at a local boutique toy shop, to learn the ins and outs of non-mass market toy distribution and observe moms, dads, and kids buying toys in a retail environment. That job also got me into toy fair, and got me deep into the side of toys I knew would prove to be very important if I wanted to make my dreams come true and go at it on my own.

Making toys means nothing if you don’t have any clue what will happen to them once their done. Now I hear my father clips articles and such, but from my early teens until well after we started Uglydoll, he told me toys and those stuffed doo-dads were a waste. It’s easy to get behind your kid when he’s in the paper, but with our daughter I want to be sure to be there for her during the process, not the irrelevant outcome. I hope I can use my past run in with this resistance as a life lesson so that I can do better than he did when raising my own child.

Uglydoll Cinko

Angel: So your love of toys was a hard path to follow then, but what about your growth as an artist?

David: I didn’t set out to be an artist. I still draw the same way I did when I was 10. Is it art? I don’t really care but I did see a certain path I wanted to take as someone who spends their time working on their own toys and children’s books. It was mostly mental maybe? I knew this is how it was going to go, as I wouldn’t have it any other way. Many months on my sister’s floor in the early days, and skipping meals sometimes when things got serious at the start. But that stuff is always thrown in to test how dedicated you are. I always say if someone from the future travels back in time to tell you your life long dream will fail 100%, and you still go for it anyway, it will work.

Angel: You clearly had passion, did you set any specific goals from the beginning or did you wing it as you went along?

David: There was no winging it and the plan was always very specific. We get tons of emails asking how to do XYZ, which is great. I pretty much reply the same way each time, that in my experience, taking the same path someone else did results in getting close but never where you want to end up. Ignoring those paths and making up your own route leads you to where you really belong, wherever that may be.

I Use This Now Pretty Much Scientifically Proven Method By The Hour And It Works

Angel: Can you share any techniques you use to help you focus on achieving your goals?

David: Ugh I wish you asked before the “Secret” came out, but actually I have always believed in the law of attraction since I first read about it many years ago. I use this now pretty much scientifically proven method by the hour and it works. Your mind effects the universe, and it also creates it. Your thoughts absolutely determine your reality. How you generally feel inside and what thoughts you generally carry in your head is what’s going to keep coming at you. This is a huge part. The biggest. The rest is all minor detail, actually.

Uglydoll Wage Green Kaiju

Angel: What about the excuses many people have for not following their creative dreams; no money, time, credibility, support etc. Did you ever confront these same doubts?

David: Those aren’t excuses. Those are hurdles. Just need to jump. We had zero help. Zero cash. Ah but we had a needle, a scanner, a pen, an old borrowed digital camera, and a mac lap top which I got by selling my 2 older macs from when I had a job before. That first sewn doll sold for $30.00 And then the next one sold. Soon we had $3000!. So we used that to make more and keep it all growing. I had one design-ish art job after graduating from Parsons with Sun-Min. It didn’t last long. The first few weeks were great and I had a lot of fun animating in Flash until the boss told me to change a color to purple, and that was it for me. And I was super zapped by the end of the day anyway, too tired to work on my own stuff. Lesser paying jobs, be it retail stores or coffee houses, are great because you get so pissed off that your dream work comes out no matter what. But a “real” job with co-workers wanting to hang out and drink, late hours, weekends, and comfortable money coming in, is a dream killer.

When we decided to start for real, I slept on my sisters floor for 9 months eating not much more than cereal, plain white bread, and salads, and then moved to a tiny illegally erected bedroom within an industrial building in the then very scary DUMBO, Brooklyn, surviving on a daily menu of egg on a roll in the morning, a bagel and coffee for lunch, and really good $3.00 chicken legs from a local corner stand at night. Rent was a few hundred bucks, paid for by selling everything I owned in LA, keeping 5 days of clothes and not much else. I bought an air bed but had no table, so the computer was on the bed. $5.00 a day was the food limit. Laundry was once a week, and monthly subway passes were $80. I had nothing else and often went with out the coffee. A Japanese magazine shooting “famous artists” homes came to do a shoot, and elected to take photos of someone else’s much nicer room in the building just to avoid wasting a whole day. They even dressed it with our dolls. ( I tried to tell them.)

Uglydoll Babo

One Guy Called Me A Millionaire, On The Day I Had To Skip Lunch To Survive

I lived this way for the first 2 years of Uglydoll when everyone was calling me a millionaire. One guy called me just that on a day I had to skip lunch to survive. Then Sun-Min [my partner and co-designer] and I basically lived on the road when we went into full production and sales grew. Until we were married, we lived in hotels, traveling from trade show to trade show, driving across the US, stopping by small towns to find small shops.

Get As Much Input As You Can And Then Don’t Follow Any it

Angel: Did you ever go out and actively ask people for help and advice?

David: I realized when I was much younger after calling up Gary Baseman for some very good advice that I was getting great advice on how to do things a way they had already been done. The best advice I can give is to get as much input as you can, and then don’t follow any of it.

Angel: Now you’ve been in the industry for many years do you find it easier to call on your creativity at will? Do you have any tips for being more creative more often?

David: I just make what comes out. For the Ugly Guide books, there’s no sketches. I draw and write with a pen. No eraser, so it’s all a mistake. As for how to be more creative more often, sit down and work. Done deal. Even if crap comes out, sitting down and getting to work is what matters. Read “The War Of Art” by Steven Pressfield. That will help with the procrastination, if that’s the issue. That book was a great help and I am pretty sure the above is a quote from that book. It’s ingrained into my brain, so plagiarism not intended.

Icebat Kaiju

Angel: How do you keep your energy up with all the work required to make it in this business?

David: Meditation. Avoid all drugs and late week nights out. Basically be what losers call a “loser”. Stay home and make stuff for other people to go do. Avoid the “scene” and avoid hanging with the top artists in them. Scene-sters and others trying to “make it” like to keep each other in check and hold each other back, and they hate anyone who breaks away.

Angel: And your views on fitness?

David: Mental fitness is just as important as physical. Food is important. No soda. I quit all soda. But what’s most important is monitoring your daily, almost hourly mindset. Do you carry “Life is tough, life sucks” in your head all day? Then it will be. Careful, because the music, movies and games you repeat over and over too often can keep you in a certain mindset, good or bad.

Angel: What about the rock and roll lifestyle of being a hip artist and designer?

David: If you’re living a rock and roll life style, you get your photos in the backs of magazines only you and your buddies read and not much else.

My title is : Nerdy Japanese robot collector and strong believer in UFOs, ghosts, and the paranormal. The artist part is helping me save my pennies so I can switch over to UFO research full time. For real. See my blog for more on that. It’s boring though, so careful.

Angel: Ghost hunting aside, how often in your creative work do you find yourself doing things that you are afraid of?

David: My daily routine is wake up, do things that make me afraid, eat, sleep, draw, repeat. If you’re afraid, you’re on the right track. Keep at it! Just don’t discuss it or dwell on it.

Fear is fine but don’t use it as a way to not do what you need to do. Talking about your fear can lead to a weekly Friday night talk about your fears while drinking beer. Forget that. Do your work, then drink.

Angel: How often do you find yourself failing at something or abandoning a piece of work?

David: The real failure is not starting. So, never.

Angel: Isn’t it a shame they don’t teach that approach in school!

David: Math was my favorite art class. I used to fill in my test answers with UFO drawings. I got an F but was I wrong? That’s the key. But if you get all A’s in school, what does that mean? Good job little Johnny, you memorized what we told you to and filled in the blanks. Maybe it’s better to fail. I want to send our daughter to a school where they have a good balance of math, science, nutrition, financial planning, no tests, and David Icke. So basically home school.

Early on I taught a class, once a week, at Otis Art School for one year. It was supposed to be a flash animation class, but I turned it into a self help class. The class was called “quit, get your tuition back before the deadline, and use that money to make your dreams come true, because this place is simply training you to work for someone else”.

UMA (Unidentified Mysterious Animals)

Don’t Reveal Your Plan To Anyone

Angel: Are there any lessons you’ve learned about money that you’d like to pass on to other people just starting out?

David: Money! I’ll never forget our second year at Toy Fair. Many designer toy production houses set up booths after seeing how well we seemingly did the year before. As I passed the booths, one of the guys was rubbing his hands, literally, and told me “well, I’m ready to make a million dollars!” I looked back and said “You mean spend a million dollars, right?” He looked at me with a sort of ghost face, and sure enough, he didn’t set his booth up the following year. There’s nobody out there making instant cashola. There’s no “All you got to do is ________”. Even the guys you think hit it rich, did so well after you thought they did. A few smarty’s make it SEEM like they are making it big time, with hopes of selling their brand or company and its “perceived value” to larger companies looking to grab up a “hip, hot property/brand”, but no…its going to be a lot of work and nobody with some magic money wand is coming.

Hopefully. When the money comes in, save it! Or better, grow it. You’re going to need most of it to keep it all going. Making a lot of money costs a lot of money! And according to the music videos, when you make it big time, being a millionaire means buying nice cars and big houses, right? Well turns out, those are expensive!!! But the money is not as important as the “starting out” part… START! That’s all you have to do. Really. You’ll be surprised to find how few people do. Don’t tell ANYONE what you’re up to either. Don’t reveal your plan to ANYONE! Not because it’s a secret, but because something in the universe happens when you tell us what you’re going to do instead of just doing it. The universe takes it all away and you never start. Tell us what you did, not what you’re going to do. Then you’ll be fine.

Angel: With success comes more attention, is life in the public eye what you thought it would be when you set out?

David: Some kid posted a self made animated movie up on one of those movie sharing websites with characters that looked just like ours. So we made him take it down. Sad, because he was very talented and got a million hits. He called us evil and posted that we are evil all over the internet. Many fans of his movie called us evil too. Should we see him in person, who knows if there’s a danger. But the truth is, if a giant entertainment company or toy company is looking to rip us off (and they are) and sees a kid with imitations of our stuff, they copy THAT instead of ours…and when we go after the said big company, they claim that our stuff is not unique, using those copy cat works as examples. And if we don’t go after everyone, they can claim we are selective. And there’s a lot of copy cats. We work very hard to stop them. So we make a lot of enthusiastic kids with a lack of understanding in the copyright & trademark realm very upset. I don’t like that part. That kid was very talented and the animation was a college final. His professor should have told him way beforehand.

Angel: So how do you handle negative attention?

David: After an art show with Dehara at Giant Robot, a boyfriend of one of the employees, who was apparently helping out, came over to let me know that he hated my work, and that he believed my work missed an opportunity to “say something” to the viewer. (I made drawings of sad fat little kids raised on junk food emerging from video game packaging and internet browsers.)

I was fine with his comments, and after listening as intently as I do to the good comments, I started to move on with a sort of “Thanks for sharing your thoughts” polite kinda way.

Uh but he kept at it, sort of chasing me around and started to add insults such as “if someone gave one of these to me as a gift, I would throw it away” (which is a horrible thing to do, I think. A gift is a gift, good or bad.) Anyway I soon realized, sadly, that my first true live and in-person critic had turned out to be not much more than a drunkard heckler who only wanted to somehow lift himself up by trying to bring me down. I then realized he really was helping out there and his job was to take photos of anyone who bought the art. I always buy a few of Dehara’s pieces when he has a show so as he took my photo, he said stuff like “try to look like you care.” Etc to try to get a rise out of me. I didn’t say anything, and I thanked him for taking my photo. There’s no come back to drunken jealousy, so you should never try. It wastes your energy.

I’m human and a few things bring me down. But a joker like that never could. I felt embarrassed for him, because I know what makes people say such things. It’s the rot you feel when you don’t do your own work. When you don’t do your work and let fear take over for too long, you begin to hate seeing others get theirs done and up on the wall, page, screen, etc.

I only remember him because nobody before him or after him has said anything negative about my work to me in person. Uh, except for some of my past art teachers. If you do your work, and know you gave it your all, and if you live your life the way you really know you were born to, other people’s negativity seems to roll right off.

For news about David’s projects click here and go say hi on G+

Over to you