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starhvney · 3 months ago

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𝐒𝐔𝐁𝐉𝐄𝐂𝐓 𝟑 | 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝟏𝟏: 𝐑𝐔𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐒

𝐂𝐖: story is beginning to diverge from canon, teenage girls being mean asf, corny teenage drama, lucinda insults someone for having a crooked nose hahahahhdha(i also have a crooked nose, do not take offense my crooked nosed sisters!!!)

𝐀/𝐍: I wrote in some unimportant characters that very much fit the “mean popular cheerleader girl” stereotype, cause… plot. if you happen to be a cheerleader: ily, you’re awesome, and i do not think you’re a bitch! i just cannot resist the 2000s stereotype undertones that are littered in PDH, and had to do it to em. ok cool enjoy the reading guys!

𝐖𝐂: 5,900+

𝐄𝐃𝐈𝐓𝐎𝐑: @arienic

𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐓 ☆ 𝐍𝐄𝐗𝐓 | 𝐀𝐎𝟑 | 𝐅𝐈𝐂 𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓 | 𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐊𝐒

the tension you felt for the next few weeks was truly nerve-wracking. as the days grew colder, aphmau raved to you every morning in her warm coat and scarf about how she couldn’t wait for the snow—and while you were excited too, a little buzzing noise in the back of your head bothered you like a mosquito trapped in your bedroom.

when was her next move?

it’s not like you were scared, per se. you have a good strong network of people now, who you were pretty sure would defend you 'til their last breath if anything were to happen. no, you weren’t scared of ivy anymore. but damn, would she not let go of the spot she’s earned in your brain.

was she plotting something that would be harder to refute than just some measly rumors? was she smart enough to do something like that? or was she taking so long for her next move just to reopen your scab just as soon as you thought it had healed over?

honestly, you haven’t seen much of her if at all since the sports festival. which was shocking, because all of your friends—including garroth—had been glued to your side for most of the day, and you’d think maybe she’d at least try to talk to the boy in some of your classes. but now she merely was in and out of the classrooms like a ghost, her two little ducklings following after her.

maybe you scared her off when you threatened her in the bathroom, and she decided to back down for good! that would be the best-case scenario, right? she thought long and hard about her actions, realized her immaturity, and decided to make a change for the better.

“can i talk to you?”

…

how is it that every single time you decide to venture out in the hallways alone, this guy manages to find you?

“what do you want, gene?”

there’s no mocking laughter, or offended scoff, or a wrinkle of his nose. honestly, you hadn’t seen much of him, either. his little trio have continued on in their ways without much care for you or aphmau, and honestly, you kind of respect it. kind of.

once you told him to—more or less—fuck off, he did. unlike ivy, there wasn’t any shit-talking or catty comments or disgusted glares. he truly did leave you alone, as did sasha and zenix. while you still weren’t their biggest fan, it definitely put them on a higher pedestal than ivy in your eyes. they were not the greatest, for sure, but they were at least open about it. and the amount of fucks they didn’t give was honestly a bit entertaining—as long as you weren’t on the receiving end of their antics.

this was the first time you’d talked to gene or even made eye contact with him in what was way over a month by now. so while a part of you was saying to just ignore him, the unsettling calmness in the way he approached you had you curious… and honestly a bit concerned.

“i don’t want anything.” he rolls his eyes with a sigh, looking around. “i just have something to tell you.”

“really?” your disbelief is evident in your tone, arms crossed and eyebrow raised. “don’t want to threaten me with those pictures again?”

“i don’t have the pictures anymore.” he pulls out what looked like a burner phone, a stark downgrade from what he had before. “don’t even have your number anymore, my old phone shattered and i haven’t been able to buy a new one yet.”

“wow.” you deadpan. “all that blackmailing and evidence down the drain, huh?”

he wrinkles his nose in distaste. “yeah, well. i wasn’t the one who broke it.”

“oh? finally pissed the wrong person off, huh?”

he rolls his eyes. “how it broke doesn’t matter. i’m actually trying to help you out here, so can you just shut up?”

you open your mouth to shoot something else his way, but honestly, you find yourself at a loss for words and snap your mouth closed again.

there’s a pause like he was expecting a different reaction, before his eyebrows lift in surprise.

“ivy is up to something, but i’m letting you know that i don’t have shit to do with it. i'm not entirely clear on what since she doesn’t have those pictures anymore, but she’s plotting on your downfall.”

“what, you two aren’t buddy-buddy anymore? i thought you would be on the same side.”

he scoffs, genuine offense wrinkling his features. “that is insulting as fuck. of course we’re not “buddies”. i fucking hate preps, the little pricks.”

amusement threatens to quirk at your lips, but you bite down the urge. gene was a prick too, but at least he was funny.

“look,” he sighs. “i know we didn’t have the best end to our friendship—”

“that’s putting it lightly.”

“—but,” he shoots you a look of annoyance, “ivy annoys me more than you, and i hate her style.”

“pink hair not your thing?”

“oh my fucking—” he groans into one of his hands. “i mean i don’t like the way she goes about being an asshole. at least i’m open about it, and it’s funny bad. she’s just… bad in an annoying-bitchy-backstabbing-way. i’m not a fan.”

“so… why are you telling me this?” you shrug. “i definitely haven’t given you any reason to help me out.”

he presses his lips together, straightening his back. “honestly, you’ve earned my respect. i still kinda like you. plus, you’re friends with my little brother, so. you get extra little brownie points from me. don’t you feel honored?”

“not particularly.”

gene opens his mouth to quip something back, though instead flicks his eyes up to something behind you, suddenly looking annoyed. following his line of sight, you look back to see two girls lingering by a turn into another hallway, standing close together and whispering like journalists who had just heard the juiciest gossip. when they notice you both looking their way they scurry off down the hall, whispering excitedly and giggling.

the hell?

“…i’m not trying to get involved in this one, as shocking as that sounds. just thought i’d warn you that you’re not in the clear. and… i’m not the reason for it this time.” he starts stepping back, hands shoved in his disheveled blazer pockets and lazily turning away from you with a wave. “bye.”

…that’s it?

“…thanks?” you call out, lip curled in confusion.

“you’re welcome, kitty.”

…

“i take it back.”

☆

gene’s warning floated in your head for the next few weeks, and you couldn’t let it go. if he of all people reached out, then your paranoia about the situation surely wasn’t for nothing

and it. sure. wasn’t.

it started with a few nasty looks in the hall, mainly from the cheerleaders. it made sense, since ivy was on the team surely they would go with what she said over some rando new girl.

on top of it, ivy was still… unnervingly quiet about it all. and as the days went on, she seemed to behave more and more… depressed. whether she was faking it or truly felt that way, honestly you couldn’t tell.

more weeks go by with more and more weird looks. more people leaning to whisper to their friends as you walked by. honestly, you’d been tempted to stop one of them and ask what the problem was. after all, if a rumor had started, how is it that none of your friends or you have heard?

it progressed to a few cryptic notes left in your locker, from scribbles of random insults to things like ‘everyone knows what you are’ and ‘we know what you did’. honestly, it was more irritating than nerve-wracking like you’re sure the senders intended for it to be, and all you did was scoff and throw the scraps of paper when you saw them. every once in a while someone would “accidentally” knock into your shoulder with theirs in the halls. at first, you didn’t pay it much mind, but once your binder had clattered to the floor for the fourth time, you’d be stupid not to catch on.

it wasn’t until nearly winter break that you finally got your answer.

everything about the day felt off. from waking up to icy sidewalks and walking to school alone (aphmau went to school early for tutoring), to—for once in the past month—finding yourself alone as you walked through the halls to class. it wasn’t bad, but you felt a strange sense of nervousness.

when you open. the bathroom door to see not one, not two, but five girls from the cheerleading team by the mirrors, you almost consider spinning around and waiting until after homeroom.

instead, you walk into one of the stalls with (metaphorical) balls of steel, not sparing a glance at their pointed stares as you pass by. you take your time, too, hoping they’d be gone by the time you came back out.

silly, shouldn’t you know your luck by now?

once again, you consider just leaving when the girls are still crowded around the sinks taking their sweet time giggling under their breath and typing on their phones. you squeeze your way to the open sink by the furthest wall from the door, stuck between them and your nearest escape.

spider-lashed eyes darted up and down your figure—quite obviously—and a few beats passed like this of you washing your hands while they stared like you were in their way.

your name falling from one of their lips genuinely startles you, however, and you nearly jump in your skin as the sound. you’d expected them to simply stare and whisper like they had for the past few months, so the fact someone was finally speaking up both drove a cold spoke of anxiety into your veins and made you a little eager at the same time.

“…yeah?”

the girl who said your name was one of the seniors, and was model tall. a lot of the cheerleaders were either around your height or taller, but she made you feel short in comparison. it was—truthfully—really intimidating to be specifically called out by her, especially knowing ivy definitely twisted the truth to get all of these girls on her side. she could be really kind for all you knew, but that didn’t matter if ivy had the first say.

she steps forward, a perfectly manicured hand tosses her hair over her shoulder before getting placed on her hip. looking down at you from her tall nose, she fixes her lips in a way that said maybe she wasn’t all that nice.

you should stop giving people at this school the benefit of the doubt.

“that’s your name, right?”

“…yeah.”

“well, i was just wondering about something. you must think you’re pretty sneaky, huh?”

“i don’t.” you raise your eyebrow. “i can’t say i’m following.”

she scoffs, the other girls rolling their eyes and giving each other looks, like they were all in on an inside joke that you weren’t a part of.

“dating both laurance and garroth at the same time? acting like just an innocent friend but playing them behind their backs? we heard everything.” she lets out a short, mockingly dry laugh. “how you’re just trying to add them to your already long body count?”

so she went ahead with that narrative, did she?

“that’s what you heard, huh?”

another girl steps forward, and you vaguely register hearing the late bell to homeroom ring.

“you seem pretty shameless about it. especially now that you’re dating gene. trying to get the best of both worlds, huh?”

“huh?” you respond dumbly, face wrinkling in confusion.

“still trying to play dumb?” she pulls out her phone, tapping on the screen and turning it towards you. “we have the evidence.”

there’s a picture of you and gene leaving the school, and by the looks of his outfit it was the day you went to go meet his mom. she slides her finger on the screen to show another picture, this one your recent conversation with him just a few weeks ago.

damn. no one in this school knows how to mind their business, huh?

it makes you wonder though. did gene purposely stop you in the hall so those girls could get that picture? was he lying to you after all?

no. gene would have no reason to be a part of this. while you didn’t trust him, you believe he meant it when he said he had nothing to do with this.

“okay? those are two pictures of us talking. are you and i going to be dating the next time you talk to me?”

“ew.”

you throw up your hands with a deadpan expression, looking back over to the first girl. “my point proven. so, now that we’ve established you’re stupid enough to fall for amateur level gossip, what else would you like to accuse me of?”

“excuse me?” she scoffs.

“you’re just saying that to get out of the fact that you’ve been caught.” another girl starts. “we’ve seen how ivy’s been acting lately. you’ve been bullying her because of her crush on garroth, cause you want him all to yourself. like you didn’t already have enough attention.”

you narrow your eyes. it is a little over eight in the morning. you’d barely woken up an hour ago, and there’s currently not enough fucks in your head for you to give.

when you fought ivy towards the beginning of school, you told mrs. hwit you wouldn’t get into one again. you’d hate to see the disappointment on her face, but a quick crack to the nose would honestly be less trouble than trying to understand the scattered reasoning they were giving you.

very suddenly you find yourself… at a loss for words. they wouldn’t listen to you anyways even if you did give a solid argument. they just wanted more fuel for their gossip, and whatever energy you had to defend yourself dissipates at the thought.

just as you’re about to try and shimmy away from the group, the bathroom door squeaks on its hinges as it swings open. it reveals a familiar face, the daughter of the very teacher you’d just been thinking about mere seconds prior. she’s boredly looking down at her phone while walking in, half humming half sighing as she twirls a finger curl around her finger…

you expect her to maybe stutter in her steps or seem surprised when she looks up, but as soon as her red irises flick up to the scene in front of her, she saunters right around the group and up to your side without even a flicker of a change in her expression.

“oh, there you are. what’s going on?” she says, leaning between you and the cheerleading group to reapply her lip gloss in the mirror.

“we’re just talking to her,” the senior says, suddenly sounding much more casual than she had been before.

lucinda very softly scoffs under her breath, standing to her full height and spinning on her heeled mary janes to fully face the group and—whether meaningful or not—cuts you off from the girls.

“oh, really? what about? i love a little gossip in the bathroom.”

the girls look at each other with very minuscule grimaces on their faces, like a pest has just run over the tiles in front of them. it was quite obvious they were doing it in a way to single her out—which honestly would’ve worked on a shy or quieter kid—but lucinda’s complete nonchalance and total patience for a reply just made them appear… humorously awkward.

“about how she’s been bullying one of our cheerleaders. she even beat her up!” one finally speaks up.

“oh, did she? that sounds very unlike her.”

“yeah, she did—!”

“can i see the proof?”

they collectively stare at lucinda dumbly for a second.

“uh, well ivy has the pictures and screenshots, so.”

“but none of you do…?” lucinda crosses her arms and curls her lips judgingly, like they had all just told her two plus two was three.

the senior scoffs. “no—”

“so you don’t have proof. have you seen any of this proof?”

“no, not yet.” the girls suddenly look defensive and a bit embarrassed. “ivy was going to report it to a teacher before she showed it to everyone else.”

“so, you haven’t even seen this “proof”? i’ve heard girls whispering about this for a month, and you’re still believing her with no proof? are you serious?” lucinda deadpans, the sultry valley girl rasp in her voice the cherry on top to her total 1 v 5 take down.

“well, obviously we believe ivy over a slut who hangs out with delinquents and dates guys like gene!” the one who had the pictures of you on her phone argues, her face red.

“well i’ve heard the football boys whisper some real interesting things about you.” lucinda reaches back to grab onto your hand, pulling you into her side. “you’re quite the one to be making slut allegations, slut.”

the girl gasps, and lucinda pulls you with her to walk around the group. you think that’s the end, but she seems to have a few more snide remarks up her sleeve as she slows down again, red eyes judgingly piercing into the group.

“all of you are fucking pathetic. pull your heads out of each other’s asses for once, and you may be able to breathe some fresh air instead of regurgitating ivy’s shit you swallowed.”

she turns to the tallest girl—the senior who had confronted you first.

“oh, and by the way, i heard you complaining in class the other day about that crooked ass nose of yours,” she says, hand squeezing around yours as she stares the girl down. “say anything about her again and i’ll break it. then you can get a nose job for free! on me, bitch.”

there’s a few offended protests that echo through the group, though they seem to be grasping for straws as no more insults come from their mouth other than reworded shouts of the same allegations from before. lucinda doesn’t bat an eye, walking right out the door and dragging you along with her into the hall without looking back.

“unbelievable.” she scoffs, ginger curls bouncing as she hastily walks with you down the hallway.

you stare at the tiles, listening to the clicking of her heels on the floor. it’s a while and a few more turns before she stops, and you snap out of your zoned out daze only to realize she hadn’t led you back to your homeroom door.

“why are you crying?”

where are you now…? mrs. hwit’s room?

you open your mouth to refute lucinda’s strange claim, though shock yourself into silence at the shaky uneven breath you draw in.

oh.

you were crying.

you guess that’s why the lines of the tiles were a blurred mess under your feet.

“i…don’t know,” you mutter, bringing your blazer’s sleeve to your face with a sniffle. “i don’t know.”

lucinda sighs softly, pulling you into a hug. she smells like a rich feminine perfume, her charm bracelet tinkling by your ear as she pats your hair.

“overwhelmed?”

nodding and gulping down the lump in your throat, you feel a bit embarrassed as you try to gather yourself. crying in the middle of your school’s hallway was not necessarily on your bucket list.

“you’ve had to put up with a lot this year—this semester. it’s okay.”

you’re not sure what it is about lucinda that makes your tears flow so freely in front of her. she wasn’t necessarily scary or heartless, but you definitely never expected to be breaking in front of her out of all your friends. maybe it was her calming voice, or the pure confidence she exuded—but either way, her casualness about it all helped you gather yourself within a few minutes.

“better?” she asks as you pull away, pulling up her sleeves to pat your cheeks dry.

“yeah,” you whisper.

“good. while we wait for your face to… not look like you’ve been crying,” she pulls your arm, walking into mrs. hwit’s empty classroom. “we’re telling my mom.”

“right now?”

“yep.” she pops the ‘p’ as she says it, marching you right up to her mother’s desk.

the gray-haired woman quirks a brow, slowly raising her eyes to the two of you with an almost knowing look on her face.

“can i help you, ladies?”

lucinda unpockets her phone, opening her camera roll and clicking play on a video. the screen is black and for a moment there’s nothing but rustling noise and faint voices.

“…you’ve been bullying… as if… attention…”

there’s a moment of quiet before the familiar squeak of the bathroom door clarifies the scene.

“oh, there you are. what’s going on?”

your eyes dart over to a very smug lucinda.

holy shit, she was recording?

the rest of the video plays as you stand in awe, barely registering hyria’s stern look as lucinda’s threats are replayed at the end. she spares you a wary glance, and after a few mutterings of explanations later, she finally looks over to you with full attention.

“i’m proud of you.”

“…what?”

“i am proud of you. for opening yourself up and confiding in your friends. i can see how close you’ve allowed yourself to get to, not just lucinda, but to quite a few friends. and good ones at that. compared to how… tense you were at the beginning of this year, i’m proud to see how far you’ve come.”

you swallow down the lump in your throat.

“thank you.”

she leans forward, narrowing her eyes. “and we can add on the fact that you didn’t rip any hair or clobber anyone’s faces this time… yes?”

sheepishly, you recall her stern warning from your first fight with ivy, shifting on your feet. “…yes ma’am…”

she taps her hands on her desk. “good. we will talk about this more later, but for now you both need to get to class. i have some reports to fill.”

once again, you find yourself being led in a daze back to homeroom, lucinda scoffing under her breath every few seconds and shaking her head while tapping on her phone. you don’t snap back until you walk through the doors and everyone’s eyes—including ivy’s flick up to you in

“well, there you are. i hope you have a good excuse for being twenty minutes late—”

“it’s excused. mrs. hwit sent you an email,” lucinda speaks up, just barely slowing in her steps as you both walk to your seats.

“…alright. thank you, miss hwit. these teacher’s kids…”

lucinda barely pays any mind to the last remark, her eyes held on ivy’s with a malignant smile curved up on her lips. you don’t even bother to check ivy’s face, watching the cracks in the tiles before sliding in your spot next to kate. you can hear lucinda take her seat in front of you,

there’s a very gentle pull on your hair, trying to get your attention.

“what happened?” katelyn whispers, and when you don’t immediately respond she whips her head to the ginger in front. “why are her eyes red?”

slowly the girl twists in her seat, tapping an acrylic nail with a wry look on her face. she offers no context to the concerned teens next to you, instead intentionally flicking her eyes to ivy before leaning closer. “oh, it’s on, bitches.”

☆

every class you went to after homeroom you were accompanied by at least two friends on either side of you, even ones you didn’t think knew of the situation from this morning. you had giggled about your formation of bodyguards and insisted you were fine, but whether they continued to ham up their protective act out of genuine concern or because you found it so amusing you weren’t sure.

while it was definitely entertaining, you had to draw the line when laurance nearly skipped one of his classes to sit with you in yours and travis tried to follow you in the bathroom when none of your girl friends were around.

now you practically had a circle formation around you, and both you and aphmau find yourself squished together between your friends while you all walked to lunch

“i don’t know what to do!” aphmau whines under her breath, tucked by your side. “i mean, why would anyone even spread a rumor that i’m dating aaron? and what does ivy gain from saying you’re dating gene?”

you lift a finger. “one, from what you said, it sounds like whatever… mark or scent or whatever that aaron left on you must be a part of werewolf dating culture. plus there’s the whole thing of everyone calling you the female alpha. you should talk to him about it—”

“i told you, i tried, but i didn’t even get to bring that part up! he was upset when i told him how lily was trying to use him and had the nerve to say he was disappointed in me! like i don’t even like you and i’m looking out for you! i mean… we both haven’t been very nice to each other, but—”

you hold up your other hand, groaning under your breath. “—everything leads back to those three girls. this is such a mess.”

her shoulders slump. “i know… i’m getting sick of it.”

you hold up a second finger.

“to answer the second question, ivy is doing this because she’s shallow and can’t comprehend why a boy would want to hang out with a girl unless it’s out of romantic interest. so she’s “sabotaging” our relationship with garroth so we’re not “competition”—in her eyes at least.”

“…that’s kind of sad.”

you let your hands fall while your mosh pit of a group makes it to a table, sighing as you take your seat.

“yeah, it is.”

“hi!” someone whispers excitedly next to you, and the higher pitch could mean nothing other than…

“oh! hey, nana.” you smile at the beaming meif’wa, who was holding something behind her back.

“oh, and hello, aph!” she says sheepishly, taking the seat next to you and giving a small wave to aph. “i just thought… i would make something for you since you helped me with making friends and i really look up to you. so… i wanted to give you this!”

she pulls out a small pink box with a clear top that had some winter themed cookies inside, and a bracelet with pink beads and a few bows decorated throughout.

“…this is for me?”

she nods, her fanged teeth poking out from her lips as she smiles. “i made some cookies for all of our friends, but i made a friendship bracelet for you and aphmau. i have the matching one, see?”

she lifts her wrist, showing off a bracelet with much more vivid pink hues than your muted one—a show of her consideration to preference despite the still super cutesie design. the amber doe eyed girl next to you leans forward, gasping excitedly when she’s handed a bracelet with purplish-pink tones.

“so… if you guys want them you can keep them.”

“of course i want it! thank you, nana!” aphmau squeals, leaning over to hug her and rounding you up in the embrace in the process.

“yeah, thank you. this is adorable, honestly it made my day.” you smile.

nana’s eyes light up, sparkles shining in the girl's eyes. “you do…? i’m so glad!”

aphmau looks like she’s going to say something else before the attention of the group is taken by lucinda, who rushes to sit at the table while giggling under her breath.

“what did you do?” teony deadpans.

there’s a sudden screech from a girl on the other end of the cafeteria, and after your heart jolts from the startle you quickly turn to look around, lucinda’s snickering growing a bit louder and obvious. a few of the cheerleaders are wiping away at their uniforms and backing away from a familiar head of carmine hair, who was standing in utter disgust and shock while staring down at her hands.

it takes you adjusting yourself in your seat, but you can see the food on her tray was no longer… food. instead it had melted into a pretty disgusting looking goo, almost like snail slime as it seemed to splatter all over ivy’s face and uniform. the girls who had previously been standing next to her were unfortunately subjected to being in the splash zone, the booger substance also smeared on their neat uniforms.

your eyes widen, jaw going slack as you turn back around to look at lucinda. “you… can do that?”

she quirks a brow, shrugging and looking smugly at the scene behind you as it unfolds.

“remind me never to piss you off,” laurance huffs, staring at the scene with a bit of a satisfied smirk tugging at his lips.

katelyn grits her teeth. “don’t tell her who you like either or she’ll turn them into a frog.”

“that was one time.”

“like, five months ago!”

“oh, whatever.”

garroth, who has been staring at the scene with equal shock to yours leans over, a bit of a grimaced smile on his face. “well, as much as this karma bit seems nice on the surface, i hope it doesn’t cause you more trouble.”

you blink, before slowly shaking your head and laughing under your breath. “honestly, i don’t even care if it does at this point.”

there’s a beat of him looking at you in surprise, before he also begins to laugh. “you know what? fair enough.”

☆

another week passed, and snow had begun to coat the ground. you had begun to wonder if taking the bus would be worth it to avoid the frigid air blowing in from the distant mountainside, a thought aphmau had also pondered with you after one too many slips on the sidewalk just in the past few days alone.

thankfully, pondering on the issue wasn’t something you had to do for long after you’d both mentioned it next to the one and only laurance zvahl.

“thank you so much again for driving us, cadenza!” aphmau beams, tapping her shoes on the floor of the blue volkswagen you both had eagerly scrambled into.

“yeah, of course! i couldn’t live with myself if i left two cute girls to freeze on the streets!” she dramatically declares, grabbing at her heart and clenching her fist.

laughter bubbles from both yours and aphmau’s lips.

“i see where laurance gets it from.” you raise your eyebrows.

“hey! i’m this charming on my own, thank you very much.” he scoffs, turning to face you two. “by the way, did you two hear?”

“hear what?”

he leans towards the backseat, elbows on the middle console. “ivy, lily, alex, and a few of the cheerleaders got busted for everything. they’re in iss until winter break.”

aphmau’s jaw drops. “they got suspended? for real?!”

cadenza nods her head, lips pursed at the juicy gossip. “even the seniors had started to hear all those rumors, but honestly most of us took your side over ivy’s. but the fact that everyone started to know about it means the school had to do something. i think it’s deserved.”

since the beginning of this week, you did notice the girls weren’t really around, constantly getting called out by administration with a gloomy look on their faces. you got called out once, just to give a rundown of everything that happened, but since then everything went… quiet.

turns out while you had been in the counselor’s office, the whole school had an assembly and was given a big talking-to about bullying and how if any teacher heard or got a report of a student spreading rumors, they’d get severe punishment.

that threat probably wouldn’t be taken too seriously, and would likely be ignored by next semester. but at least it worked as a public shaming that would hopefully deter ivy from messing with you again. not surprisingly, gene and his “gang” flew completely under the radar once again, fading into the background while everything else went to shit.

a part of you wanted to say the whole thing seemed like overkill, that it wasn’t that big of a deal. but honestly, the peace you’ve felt this week for the first time in months overrides your embarrassment that this all started over you—and aphmau too.

while cadenza turns up her music and laurance turns to stare out at the snow, you turn to aphmau with a small bit of curiosity in your eye. while one side of the issue had been resolved pretty outright… you’d noticed something really strange about the way aphmau very suddenly quit complaining about her issue with aaron. in fact, you’d noticed them walking very calmly together and even laughing–seeming to get along quite well considering their fiery past.

“so…” you start, narrowing your eyes and lowering your voice.

aphmau looks back, a bit unsettled at your sudden change in mood.

“yes…?”

“about that aaron guy.”

her face shifts to a strangely flustered expression, amber irises flicking away as she slowly shrugs. “what about him…?”

weird…

“you two seem to be getting along now. what happened?”

“uh, well!” she shifts in her seat. “it’s kind of a crazy story.”

you nod expectantly.

she deflates, eyes darting up to the front seat before back at you. “now..?”

you nod, eyebrows impatiently raising on your forehead.

“okay!” she groans under her breath. “so… you know that online friend i told you about? like, the one i’ve been friends with for years now? fc?”

you nod, face wrinkling in confusion.

“well, it turns out that fc… is aaron.”

…

“what?”

“yeah. it turns out we’ve actually been friends all this time… and enemies? without knowing it. so, we decided to give each other a try at being friends in real life and start over. turns out he’s pretty nice.”

“he’s pretty nice?”

she shrinks into her seat, looking a bit frightened by your demeanor. “yeah…? i mean, i was pretty mean to him too, so…”

“so… huh?! he’s pretty nice? he was a dick to you for the past five months, and now you’re friends in one week?”

she grins awkwardly, shrugging. “yes?”

cadenza whips her car into her spot, making laurance dramatically gasp and place his hands on the dash–saving aphmau from any further of your scrutiny. with two fingers, you motion from your eyes to hers, before slinging on your backpack and leaning in with a hissed whisper.

“you’re not off the hook, young lady.”

“okay, mom,” she sarcastically responds with an eye roll, slipping out from her side of the car with a dramatic huff. this conversation definitely wasn’t over, but at the very least you could be happy that the situation was… resolved. for now.

©starhvney, 2024. please do not steal or repost my works as your own.

tag list: @orinlin @pain-in-the-ashe @youmake1mistake @arienic @wasting-away-on-the-internet @angelhyperfixates @remiechu @valentique @kalegrinch

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herinsectreflection · 1 year ago

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To Live So Close To The Spotlight (The Zeppo)

I have, in essays past, referred to Xander Harris as one of the most controversial characters in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. After spending more time in the current fandom landscape, I need to correct that statement. He’s simply one of the most disliked characters in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. A lot of people hate him, and given his appearances up until now, it’s not entirely difficult to see why. Xander is an archetypical example of what I will call the Mild Nerd Guy; a trope born out of the 1980s and its Revenge Of The Nerds-led championing of geek culture. A trope that unfortunately came to dominate genre television throughout the 1990s and 2000s.

This is a character who is defined in opposition to more typical Dashing Action Hero archetypes. Where the Action Hero is strong and muscle-bound, the Mild Nerd Guy is physically weedy. He is often shy and lacking in self-confidence. He will appear creepy when he means to be charming – but in an innocent way that encourages us to feel sympathy with this helplessly befuddled young man. He has interests coded as “nerdy” – comic books, science, maths, Dungeons and Dragons. He will be unsuccessful with women, and more often than not will concentrate all his sexual energy onto a single desired target: a popular and attractive woman. This woman will - at least at the beginning of the story – neglects his silent pining in favour of clearly undeserving Bad Boys and Popular Jocks. This is where you get is your Scott Pilgrims, your Ross Gellers, your Tom Hansens, your Every Character Anthony Michael Hall Ever Played… and yes, your Xander Harrises.

In essence, the Mild Nerd Guy is an alternate model of masculinity, one that certain types of men (shy, nerdy, physically weak) may relate to more than the Dashing Action Hero archetype. Unfortunately, while the trope often presents these men as more respectful towards women than their counterparts, the reality is that female autonomy is a secondary concern in both cases. These are competing models that men can use to Earn Women. Neither is actually concerned with the desires and goals of the women involved at all.

The Mild Nerd Guy has obvious parallels to the sociological concept of the Nice Guy, a term that most in feminist circles should be comfortably au fait with by now. The Nice Guy feels deserving of the attentions of women solely because of his lack of overt hostility towards them, and resents them when this “niceness” is not immediately rewarded with sexual favours. While the two concepts should not be conflated – one is a writing trope while the other is a social phenomenon – they are inextricably linked. Media informs the way we interact with the world, and the world informs the way we interact with media. Male entitlement engorges itself with stories of men winning women through inaction - the implication being that men deserve the attentions of women by default, and should be upset when it is not automatically bestowed upon them.

Meanwhile, women who have firsthand experience of this entitlement and the behaviour it encourages will naturally be fed up with it, and will bring that frustration into their consumption of media. They will take one look at a Scott Pilgrim or Xander Harris and be immediately, justifiably repulsed. While the more fantastical crimes of Angel or Spike can be easily forgiven, everyday crimes cannot. Most women have never met a serial killer. We’ve all met a creepy nerd.

This is not a criticism of viewers who have reacted in that way. The common accusation of Xander being a “Nice Guy” I believe an inaccurate read on his character and a misuse of a term meant for the analysis of reality and not fiction. However, I can’t blame anyone who makes that instinctive leap. In fact I would say that bringing one’s own experiences to the consumption of media is the only correct way to watch television. And yet, I can’t count myself truly among that crowd. Despite my distaste for the simpering entitlement this trope has encouraged in male nerd circles, and despite the times I have been disgusted by a line Nicholas Brendon has been made to deliver thus far, I can’t say that I don’t like Xander. In fact, I would say I like Xander, and this episode is a big reason why.

#the zeppo #s3 #btvs #buffy the vampire slayer #insect reflection #essay #meta #xander harris #theme:meta

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soyouareandrewdobson · 1 year ago

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Nintendo-vember Level 3: Dobson and his Toxic Nintendo Nostalgia

Nostalgia can be toxic. Now bear in mind, I did not say that it IS toxic, but that it can be toxic. This assumption that because we have pleasant memories of something, that it was always good all the time. A desire to get that back, ignores all the good that’s come since then. As well as all the bad stuff that was there too. And it poisons you. Making you more suggestible to deception and your own greed. Who is to say that your own past is more important than someone else’s future? And because you want something that may not have been real at all, the farther the goal post gets. Because you can’t really reclaim it. So it just gets worse and worse and you get greedier and more desperate for it, because what you really want is never going to come. Until in the very end, you become the thing you hated in the first place. Lewis Lovhaug – March 2018, Infinite Crisis

Everything I did for this month so far, was going to lead directly into today’s , actually long in the works, post. Cause today we go over the comic, that as far as I see it, may actually be Dobson’s most (in)famous one out there. The one that painted the public’s opinion of him more so than anything he would ever do when starting to draw “political comics” under Trump. The one that defined him for all of deviantart and kiwifarms from 2010 onward. A comic that will always show up, whenever someone online even remotely talks about him. The one that I have seen more times than any other being used for threads on /co/ for Dobson. A comic that is neither about politics, feminism or even part of any of his comic series. A comic that is truly centered around the concept of toxic nostalgia, rather than whatever Andrew Dobson was going for and that fits perfectly to the theme of this month.

Ladies, gentlemen and inbetween… I give you, the Localization one.

Released in 2010, a time when Dobson was still trying (and failing) to sell himself more on the image of just being a quirky nerd and Nintendo fanboy whose work you should support because he only wants to make others happy, this became a comic that genuinely cemented further in the eyes of others, how much of a self-indulgent and extremely manchildish prick with dumb taste he really was.

How, some here may ask who are a bit too young? Well, let me give you context…

For starters, by the time Dobson released the comic, he had already quite a bit of a reputation online for being a prick to other nerds. His infamous “West vs East” comic which he created “as a joke” to vent about the popularity of anime in the mid to late 2000s had been published three years prior and had, in combination with a lot of derogative journal entries and posts on deviantart and other pages, earned him the ire of many people. In addition, his failed or outright aborted “original” content had painted him as a quitter, who despite wanting all the fame someone could muster online, was not willing to put the necessary work in it.

Dobson was, for a lack of a better word, a bully among nerds who tried to use his platform to shame people for being “nerdier” than him or enjoying stuff he didn’t, while also playing the victim card for people not interested in purchasing his product or calling him out on his hypocrisies and flaws in opinions.

In that regard, Dobson was pretty much ahead of the curve to some “woke” companies. Insulting your customer and then being surprised when no one wants to buy your shit.

The other thing to be aware of, has to do with the history and popularity of Nintendo characters at least pre-1995 in America.

For the few not quite aware and as a quick reminder to everyone: Videogames back in the 80s and very early 90s (like 1990-92) did on average not necessarily have what we can call “complex” lore when it came to videogame stories and characters. At least not to a degree as we would get later in the mid-90s and onwards. Aside of (J)RPGs most games were simply focused on moving a character from one end of a level to the next and the story as to why we even bothered for Megaman to fight the Robo Masters and who the heck Dr. Wily was, was printed in the manual on a small page.

And Mario and Link were no exception to that. Mostly because they also had only very few genuine main titles under their name. By 1989, The Legend of Zelda had only two NES titles under its name, while Mario had (if we don’t account for non-jump n’run games in which he was shoved into because of his status as Nintendo’s mascot) the three main Mario Bros games for the NES, one game for the Game Boy, Mario Bros and the two Donkey Kong titles.

Lacking quite a bit in characterization game wise, Nintendo of America in order to sell the stuff had to partly make the characters appeal to the audience via localization done through merchandise and non-game related products. And early fans of these characters would obviously crave for it.

Enter The Super Mario Bros Super Show, a cartoon series produced on order of Nintendo of America by Haim Saban and DIC Enterprises (the same ones who would give us “The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog”, “Captain N” and “Inspector Gadget”) that ran from September 1989 till December of 1989. Using the first two Mario Bros games for the NES as basis for the character design of the show, the show itself had otherwise little to do with the games. Ignoring the live action segments, the actual animated episodes would have plots in which Mario, Luigi, Toad and Peach (the later going by the then American official name of Princess Toadstool) traveled into whatever territory and had to deal with Bowser (or King Koopa as he was known) in a plot that had elements of some book, movie or anything else to parody.

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In addition the show would later have Legend of Zelda based animated segments, of which 13 were produced. Those featured Link living in Hyrule castle with a more active “power woman” Princess Zelda and a fairy companion named Sprite and the two having to deal with Ganon, who was more of a dark wizard than a warrior based demon.

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Overall, the shows were not really all that great compared to other stuff that existed cartoon wise, with some aspects of the characters feeling jarring nowadays. But honestly, for the sake of this article, I watched some of them and frankly they were not that terrible. They were typical 80s cartoon fanfare, which among other things included some animation errors and dumb slapstick. Especially the Mario segments were very slapstick heavy and Mario and Luigi were mostly characterized by Luigi being a bit of a scaredy cat even before the games did show him like that, Mario being rougher than you would think and dumb jokes about Luigi and Mario loving pasta and other Italian dishes. Because you know, Italians are only known for their cuisine!

The Zelda segments also had a bit of an “odd” character dynamic imagined for Zelda and Link. Zelda was a bit of a jerkass commanding bitch and Link could be a horndog trying to always flirt with her or trying to get a kiss.

There is one moment in an episode for example, where Zelda sits on Links bed after just having stopped some condor from stealing a piece of the Triforce guarded in Link’s room. Right then Link enters the room, sees the Princess sitting there and immediately says “smooching time” and tries to jump her to make out.

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Minute 3:15 – 3:20 more or less Yeah, I think Pepe le Hyrulian would not really sell well with more modern audiences and sensitivities.

All that said, I can understand people having a soft spot for the show and enjoying it unironically. It is just that I think most of them would also be intelligent and understanding enough to see, that these shows did NOT give the ultimate interpretation of who or what these characters and their games were. Truth be told, even back then those things weren’t really acknowledged by Nintendo. Sure, Nintendo of America may have given the okay to do those things. But in Japan, global headquarters gave more or less a rat’s ass about it. They were busy making the NES and Gameboy profitable and worked on Mario Bros 3.

Truth be told, the most “characterization” Mario even got in Japan at the time was as followed: Shigeru Miyamoto thought he should be Italian and from New York. The former because he “looked” Italian to him (as a result of the mustache), the later because Donkey Kong, the game Mario originated from, was inspired in part by King Kong and King Kong is set in New York. Mario didn’t even have a name originally, having been known by Jumpman once. The origin of his Mario name is, that after Minoru Arakawa (president of Nintendo of America at the time) got into an argument with a real estate developer named Mario Segale, who Arakawa owned rent money, the game developers decided to name the character Mario. Which may or may not have been meant as a “take that” against Mr. Segale. But if so, it’s one that backfired.

But I digress. Point of that entire elongated history lesson is, that Mario and Link were in terms of characterization mostly defined to some 80s kids, by their depiction in the American cartoon, which had however very little in common with what the games were about. It was e.g. the cartoon who popularized heavily the entire idea of the brothers being from Brooklyn and having been transported via a magic pipe into the Mushroom Kingdom, while in the actual games, such a backstory was never really given. As evident by even the actual American instruction manuals for Super Mario Bros 1 and 3 I checked out online for this. Look them up.

And again, most people, even the kids, could accept that the animated show and what the games were, differed.

Then came the 90s, and with more titles under their belt, Nintendo of Japan decided to flesh out their mascots more to increase their popularity, resulting in Mario, Link and others getting “official” personalities as shown by their behavior in games and not just the inofficial ones via non-canon foreign material. And again, most kids and people were okay with that. After all, the games were what really mattered to them in the long run. Plus I think that as long as the games would simply “capture” the spirit of whatever they liked in the characters iand games n the first place, they would be okay with it.

But not Andrew Dobson.

Born in 1981 and likely not owning a NES up until the cartoon aired, he jumped onto the show as an eight year old and became a fan of it. In fact he enjoyed the Zelda cartoon so much, even as an adult he would draw fanart about it

Nothing at all wrong with that in my opinion. You like something, you have the ability to create fan content for it, go for it.

But as we more or less already established via the Howard and Nester comic, Dobson was as a person dead set that only the thing he liked or was first exposed to counts and not whatever others thought. Something that supposedly may explain why he genuine hates Bowser Jr and Yoshi, as evident by these tweets made a few years after the Localization comic was made.

And yeah sorry, but how can one hate Yoshi? Yoshi is an adorable pet dinosaur you can ride. You know how many kids would have loved someone like that in their life? Gues if Yoshi was less into vore and more into inflation, Dobson would have liked him more.

Speaking of the comic -and to finally get back to it- even Dobson admitted years later that the entire point of it is to simply piss all over Nintendo and that he was annoyed that his “beloved” American continuity got erased in favor of the “dirty Japanese” one. Despite the fact that the Japanese one is, as he himself admits, official.

And boy does he take the piss on it. To the point I want to call him R. Kelly.

So lets dissect how his stand is just the typicla strawman affair, unfunny and at times quite frankly outright homophobic, sexist, hypocritical and racist.

First, the art. As always, it is just “great” to see the degree in animation being fully utilized here. No background but skyblue, everyone looking more like a doodle, the use of the fillbucket, the director having 5 fingers on his hand in the second panel, but four in the fifth, getting the numbers of fingers on Mario completely wrong, missing out on Peach in the last panel and so on… brilliant! How come Disney would not hire someone who could draw like that! Oh right, because standards. Though those have gotten quite low over the years

Every single person working on this needs to be blacklisted.

But of course, the true brilliance comes through the writing. Starting with the strawman executive coming off as if what he does is something new. That he is the “evil soulless corporation” who doesn’t care for his employees and creations true personality and forces them to fit into some mold for the audience to enjoy. The “audience” and consumers also being more or less indirectly insulted by the way Dobson presents the entire affair, as he seemingly wants to blame “those damn kids” for ruining his favorite childhood characters.

But Dobson, I thought you loved corporations hating on fans.

Then we come to what the characters are supposedly changed into.

(warning, upload of the comic for the third time, so you cna always see what I refer to)

First, Mario being no longer from Brooklyn and that he is supposedly an Italian stereotype. As a non American, I have to ask: Why is it so important that Mario has to be from Brooklyn? I get the feeling the only reason people like Dobson or Moviebob care about it, is because they want to deep down culturally appropriate the character. Assure he is in some way of American culture and doesn’t belong to some “dirty, foreign country”, even if they have to go for a compromise and make him a dirty half blood Wop. I mean, I will say this: Yes, Mario has an accent that is stereotypical. And? I take a stereotypical accent and being otherwise a determined but friendly everyday hero over him being stereotypically obsessed with pasta and no personality conveyed through his actions aside of being a bit mean and bossy to his brother, as was the case in that dang cartoon.

The thing here is, Dobson was genuinely convinced that Mario’s portrayal as given by Charles Martinet, Mario’s VA from the early 90s up until August of 2023, wasn’t just stereotypical, but also racist, harmful and culturally insensitive. Something he believed even back in 2017 and resulted in a minor twitter meltdown

Look, I will say this here: Yes, Martinet’s voice for Mario is kinda stereotypical. And I did my research. Unlike Martinet, Lou Albano, the original voice of Mario in the Mario Bros Super Show, was actually of Italian heritage. Born in 1933 in Rome, having immigrated to the USA shortly after he got baptized in the Vatican (you can’t get more Italian than that!), he certainly was more authentically Italian than Martinet, who was born in California. Heck, Martinet’s father is actually French and he spend more time in France in his youth than in America or Italy. The story of how Martinet got his gig as Mario is also well known and painted by a rather stereotypical joke involving Italian food.

But to paraphrase the twitter user Dobson argued with, I think that all things considered, Martinet gave Mario and all the other characters he voiced over the years just a certain warmth and fun to their personality with the way he delivered his lines, that he managed to convey and define the cartoonish true nature of Mario and Co for many generations to come. And even now that he has been retired from the role, he is still a name recognized for the character. A character no one, not even freaking nationalistic Italians, seem to have a problem with. So, mangia un cazzo, Dobson. You sound just like the assholes who tried to get rid of Speedy Gonzales and in doing so pissed off all of Mexico.

Next the way he talks about Peach. Okay first, the Popeye arms are again just something from the cartoons. Or at least he believes it cause…. Well

Does that look like Popeye arms?

Second, he is essentially saying that Princess Peach, unlike the cartoon version, is a bimbo. Why, because she is blonde and you have some sort of deep seated hatred for blond people? Also, Peach hasn’t fought with Mario together in really any NES videogame either, Dobson. Oh what, Mario Bros 2? Aka the reskinned version of Doki Doki Panic? The way he talks here about Princess Peach is just utterly sexist, as he essentially devalues Peach as a character, just because she plays a damsel in distress often times. Which doesn’t even necessarily mean, that she isn’t a badass in her own way, even in that role. I mean, she is still the sovereign ruler of an entire nation and in Super Princess Peach -which seems to be the game he references when it comes to her being “over emotionally”- she saves the day all on her own. Sure, she is emotional in the game, but the entire premise of the game is centered around everyone’s emotions going haywire along Vibe Island, including the villains. Bet Dobson hasn’t even played the game back in 2006 and just went off on some shitty rumor. Not to forget that this statement is utterly false. Peach has also been a great supporting character and fighter in games such as Super Mario RPG and Super Paper Mario, which were released BEFORE that comic. And nowadays she is also known as a great character in stuff like the Mario + Rabbids games plus she will get her own upcoming Princess Peach: Showtime game for the Switch. Lastly, let us not forget every game where, even if she played a damsel, was still important to the plot by defying the villain as best as she could. Not to forget the current movie, in which she still kicked ass while going out all in pink.

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So, after he has been racist towards Italians indirectly as well as sexist towards women embracing their brand feminity (boy, don’t want to know how 2011 Dobson would have then reacted to the Barbie movie of 2023), let Dobson be judgmental about anime fangirls and also rather homophobic, by the way how he tries to tear down “modern” Link.

There are four things I hate the most about the Link panel, which make it frankly in my eyes the one where Dobson’s hatred and own nastiness really shine through.

First, the accusation that the “changes” to Link’s design past “Link’s Awakening” can be attributed to anime fangirls. Showing both his true hatred for women when they don’t fall in line with his views and his stuck up shitty opinion about anime fans and combining it with latent misogyny. Look, I have seen thirst anime fangirls myself a lot over my lifetime. But they were not the demographic to “ruin” Link. If anything, I think that the popularity of Cloud Strife in general with others may have slightly influenced Link’s design for Ocarina of Time. Which in itself also had been in development at least since spring of 1996, till its release in November of 1998. And even then, that is a stretch I came up with, cause in my opinion someone in the development team likely just thought “Hey, what if we move on from the more cartoony look of the late 80s and early 90s and try some “darker” fantasy elements, without going full Berserk?” And that is how we got Link in that game. Because of some developers trying to appeal design wise to a general audience, not just a random group of made up strawmen. You want to see games pandering to actual Yaoi fangirls aesthetically? Play Enzai or Twisted Wonderland.

Second, again his hatred towards blond people. I really would like to know where that comes from, because I doubt it was only related to some random bully in school being blond.

Third, the way he uses the word effeminate and describes post Ocarina of Time Link essentially as “nonthreatening”.

For starters, considering Link rams his sword into Ganon’s skull in Ocarina of Time and slashes away at many of his enemies, which is way more threatening and violent than just poking them with a stick in 2D overhead view, I wouldn’t really consider him “non threatening”. I like to call him and many of his future incarnations, badass as fuck. Even the cartoonish, childlike Link from the Wind Waker continuity, who didn’t just stab Ganon in the head, but put his sword in there for good. It also is kinda laughable how Dobson uses the word “non threatening” in a negative manner, seeing how over the years ever since he sucked off Steven Universe, he would whine on twitter and other social plattforms again and again how males in media are always resolving conflict only via violence and are not in tune with their emotions. In other words, he once considered being more or less pacifistic a negative trait.

Also, “effeminate”? Okay first, Link looks like this in Ocarina of Time…

What exactly looks “effeminate” about male Link here, or at least let’s say more “effeminate” than for example in a character like this?

Second, we all know that if Link all off sudden looked more like Guts from Berserk or the protagonist of DarkSoul (you know, more “manly”), Dobson would throw enough of a hissy fit, he would likely come back from his sabbath and whine how Nintendo is embracing toxic masculine traits in his characters. All while also blaming PS3 games for some reason for that.

Third, how exactly would Dobson define effeminate here? I mean, the term is already defined as being derogatory, the most common definition I found by Merriam-Webter online being as followed

Effeminate: having feminine qualities untypical of a man : not manly in appearance or manner

Effeminate: marked by an unbecoming delicacy or overrefinement

So, Andrew “I hate all men” Dobson, has a problem with a character not being “typical” or stereotypical manly male? The same guy who praised the She-Ra reboot for its portrayal of Bow and fucking worships that fat fuck below as one of the best protagonists in a cartoon of the last decade…

Has actually deep down a problem with people embracing more female interests, qualities or just looking more feminine in appearance, even though the later may not be by choice but rather genetics? All while also having the audacity to say then this years later?

I find this just genuinely hate- and hurtful. Not just a simple complaint about a design choice regarding his supposed favorite fantasy game hero, but a “deep cut” towards people who just enjoy things not considered “stereotypically manly” or may feel not comfortable falling in line with gender expectations. I mean, what? Is a man now supposedly not manly in Dobson’s eyes because they like musicals, sweets are capable of showing empathy and other emotions or like to dress up in certain ways or take care of their appearance?

It is just disgusting to me, because I know people, both male and female, who had to deal with bullying and name calling a lot simple because they didn’t quite fall in line with expectations by others or struggle with their own identity partly because of expectations vs reality. And as evident by THIS comment TheHypocrisyofAndrewDobson received once it isn’t just “a joke” to people genuinely affected by that sort of mentality. And again, this derogatory use of the world and complaint towards “modern” Link comes from someone who years later would whine about toxic masculinity, put women on pedestals even if they are abusive, likely jerked it off to Link in Gerudo gear following Breath of the Wild and in the biggest ironic “twist”, loves the cartoon incarnation of Link, whose catchphrase is “Excuse me, Princess” and needs a restraining order as much as Warner Bros gave Pepe lePew.

And to finish this panel off (yes, we are still not at Samus), of course the next complain is how Zelda and Link are “no longer love interests” … now I apologize in advance towards any moderate shipper out here, but I am going full snarker mode now for this part. Okay?

Dobson… the fact that you cared so much about shipping two fictional characters in a series of children games, for a console primarily played by kids, while you were being in your 20s and above is pathetic as shit. I know that you have no one in life who genuinely loves you, because among other things you are incapable of either feeling or identifying true love while also being a selfish little shit, but to be so thirsty for affection that you project that need on some pieces of data or lines of color, makes you a bigger loser in my book than any republican who lost the primary against Donald Trump in 2015. The fact that you look at a piece of fiction and your immediate thought is “oohh, these two characters together would look very cute hugging, kissing and doing things I touch myself to at night”, while things such as plot progression and character development likely play second, third or fourth fiddle, only confirms to me that shippers (at least the once acting like you in that regard and other fields) are a fucking blight on any fandom and the world at large.

Now with that shit vented, I once again apologize for going that far, even for “comedic purpose” towards the people who actually can recognize when they go just a bit too far with shipping. But this isn’t just annoying in regard to this comic, it is annoying with Dobson in general. If you are even remotely aware of how he treats the LGBT subject for real as well as what he truly enjoys about Legend of Korra and Miraculous Ladybug, you know he is thirstier than someone stranded in the Gobi desert. Just look at his pic of Zelda and Linkle he made in honour of Hyrule Warriors.

I can kinda taste his urge to touch himself there.

To me it is just dumb to define any story out there and the characters in it by simply “are they getting together or not” because romance to me in storytelling is an additional flavor, not the main ingredient. It is one reason I really do not like Miraculous Ladybug for example. And the fact that Dobson seems to define Legend of Zelda a lot as a franchise by the “shipping potential” of Link and Zelda as implied by that panel, irks me in all the wrong ways.

I mean, for the most part the appeal of the Zelda games isn’t the “romance” between the two, it is traversing the land of Hyrule and saving it from evil while going on a big adventure. And let us be real here, Link and Zelda weren’t really an item pre-Ocarina of Time either. In the NES and SNES games they were essentially strangers to each other, with one filling the role of damsel in distress even a bit harder than Peach did. After all, Peach may be a princess, but she actually rules her kingdom. Zelda on the other hand is daddy’s little girl in those and other games post 1998. And the relationship they had in the cartoon, the one Dobson likes to call a “may they, won’t they” thing is in my opinion not cute, but toxic. She is a demanding bitch that calls him names at times, he is a horndog who needs a lecture by Sexual Harassment Panda and none of them improves character wise over the show.

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What a misogynistic piece of shit

There is a reason I consider Tetra, Zelda from Skyward Sword and the “Wild” Zelda the better interests, because not only do Link and Zelda here have better chemistry and are both nicer and more respectful to each other in a manner, they also support each other in very heroic ways. I mean, Zelda in Tears of the Kingdom willingly sacrificed her own conscious just so Link can have a shot at defeating Ganon and saving Hyrule in the future, while Link wants to do everything to save his friend. If that isn’t impactful, tragic and has so much romantic potential, I don’t know what else would count.

But hey, supposedly the cartoon is better. And the 365 Days Trilogy is a great love story with no unfortunate implications involving sexual relationships and abuse. *snark*

And then it is Samus turn. And I really have to wonder, if Dobson ever even played a Metroid Game before Other M anyway, as he hates games with scary elements and FPS.

Aside of once again whining about changing the hair color (Dobson seems to be something of a reverse Aryan enthusiast), he acts as if the addition of the Zero Suit in Metroid was a cardinal sin and “sexist crap”, to entice more men to playing her game.

Okay… for starters, the Metroid games were already enjoyed by a huge male demographic long before that or before even Metroid Prime. Samus wasn’t a “played by females thirsty for representation” only character, as that comic seems to imply. She was considered a female badass hero from the moment she first appeared and her design is deliberately inspired by Ripley from Alien. And skimpy? Again, Dobson doesn’t seem to know what certain words mean. Skimpy would be when the outfit would show more off her skin or was barely there. This is a skintight jumpsuit, that also has a function in the game as a less movement restricting suit compared to Samus armor. Heck, just watch this video, that guy gives some decent explanation on the suit itself.

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And yeah, I can agree that in certain cutscenes more so than the actual game, it does put quite a bit of emphasize on Samus “attributes” so to speak. But are we really trying to insinuate that the Zero Jumpsuit is more sexist than the character stripping off to her underwear as was the bonus ending content of the initial Metroid games?

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And if the issue is that the skinsuit makes Samus more “sexy” and that Dobson does not want to see sexy characters in Nintendo games…

He should reevaluate the fact that he enjoyed the above later.

There is also this little tweet I found after the fact, Dosbon would make later in 2015, where he actually more or less confirms the idea, that he thinks the Japanese only care for Samus in a “sexy skintight” manner, by making this dumbass “joke” comparison

Ignoring the fact btw, that the pic on the left was drawn by Samus original designer Hiroji Kiyotake. Again, Dobson trying to discredit the Japanese. And don't get me even started that he enjoys Other M or takes more offense to the shoedesign of Samus in Smash Bros than anything

Finally, and to wrap this thing up, we reach the final panel, showing the executive declaring that the “old” stuff shall from now on be brushed off like Dobson tried to brush off his fetish artist days, all while the “new and improved, but truly despicable” pretenders of his favorite childhood heroes are behind him. Mario lobotomized to say MAMA MIA while his eyes look like he is possessed by the retardation of Talus, Link being a “silly girl who makes silly movements with her hands and likely just wants to hang out with cute boys”, while Samus looks pissed and just wishes she was in something less degrading for her than this comic. Like Other M.

Honestly, this comic just stinks of loser entitlement and as stated prior, toxic nostalgia. Dobson has never really been a creator of decent stuff, only a consumer who demands the next product as soon as he hungers for it and will be utterly judgemental to petty and spiteful degrees, when he doesn’t get what he wants or suddenly thinks he sees something “problematic” to it. And to him, already the fact that stylistic choices and aesthetics changed over time, a natural progression of things if you ask me, is “problematic” in his eyes. Dobson would have rather had for Zelda, Link, Mario, Samus and Co to be undefined postholders he could have projected himself on, or outdated 80s stereotypes and toxic men, because that is the first thing he was ever exposed to when it came to those characters. Why not go even further, Dobson? Erase the Switch, the Wii and any other game console post 1989 from history, so that gaming itself never evolves past the 8-Bit era. Let’s destroy Pokemon, God of War, Kirby, Sonic and many other franchises and characters, because they are not the “true heroes of the Golden Age of gaming”. Let’s see how you will like that, when they come for your beloved Skyrim.

Bottom line, Dobson is a nostalgic pig, stuck in a past he looks at through rose tainted, grease covered glasses and this comic more than anything written before and after that embodies the mentality quite as well. And even though he tried to play it off as a joke, anyone with half a brain saw through what it was really about. And they made Dobson know, partly through less words than I used here, why they thought his opinion and by extension he, sucked.

Dobson wasn’t just playing the overzealous Nintendo fan for shit and giggles. He was, this overzealous, almost destructive and utterly disrespectful fan, who believed in the superiority of his favorite childhood toy over the consoles of others, even if that included pissing off his own “kin” or accussing Nintendo of being problematic dirty foreigners. Just look at anything he would type in regard of Super Smash Bros for the Switch, like how pissed he was at the fact he had to put effort into getting his favorite character to play as. Essentially insinuating, the game and people enjoying it were crap, just because he was biased towards fighting games to begin with. And look, being critical of aspects of a game, is one thing. But some of the things Dobson found to complain about? Pathetic, childish and utterly irrelevant in the bigger picture of anything

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I want to punch him in the throat for this voice alone...

And if you think Dobson being an opinionated Nintendo fanboy is cringe, wait till we get to him being an opinionated PS3 hater.

But before that, I want to tear at least one of his shitty Zelda opinions a new one…

#andrew dobson #syac #so you are a cartoonist #tom preston #adobsonartwork #webcomic #youtube #adobsoncomic #nintendo #super mario #legend of zelda #link #samus aran #metroid #nintendo vember #Youtube

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queen-simia · 8 months ago

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related to lrb and especially analog horror, I want to take a bit to bemoan a current popular and woefully anachronistic unfiction project: Welcome Home.

I cannot tell you how much Welcome Home disappoints me as an '80s child who grew up with several '60s and '70s-era hand-me-downs. I'm Fry in the "Whalers on the Moon" ride, unable to articulate fully how absurdly wrong everything is to the people too removed from the era depicted to know better.

for a series that wants to say its source material hails from the '60s, all its trappings look way too new and its stylistic choices are at least two and a half decades too young to be convincing to anyone but other twentysomethings. which, maybe that's your audience, but come on. the entirety of Sid and Marty Krofft's oeuvre has been documented relentlessly online and is much better suited to Welcome Home's horror aesthetic than the mid-80s-era Muppet stylings currently being used. H.R. Pufnstuf is the perfect reference for the puppet/fursuit combo performance WH's setting calls for. The Banana Splits is firmly in the '70s, but the aesthetic is close enough to earn a pass. hell, the old Krofft-plagiarizing McDonald's commercials set in a nightmare-fuel McDonaldland are right there.

please, twentysomethings who want to set anything before 2000, do proper research first. your projects will only benefit from it. don't sacrifice quality and immersion by just going on assumption/vibes. even if your work doesn't attract attention from people who either lived during the era you're writing or who are interested in that period, the lack of research still means your project is based on a shaky foundation. something will always be just slightly off about it, and you won't have the frame of reference to know why.

#personal blog #nostalgia #welcome home critical #analog horror #unfiction #it especially sucks for me because I can tell WH has a lot of passion and ambition behind it #but its glaring anachronism pulls me right out of it every single time

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itsybitsyadditions · 1 year ago

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[Addition] 📁 - (G)I-DLE - Park, Narae [Profile]

About: Narae was born in Orange County, California where she lived until the age of seven. Her father was a diplomat at the Korean embassy and currently works within the political field in South Korea though his exact job is unknown. She had always been involved in music from a young age, taking violin, piano, and vocal lessons along with jazz dance. She has 2 older brothers and a younger sister and brother who are twins. Narae was quite popular in school although not the best student grade-wise due to a lot of stress put on her by her mother, who can be a bit controlling and pushy. Her members describe her as being very disciplined, and shy but very friendly which earned her the nickname "Rae of Sunshine" because she often brings light to the darkest of times.

⇨ BASICS:

Name: Park, Narae

English Name: Natalie

Birthday: February 13th, 1999 (24)

Zodiac Sign: Leo

Hometown: Orange County, California, United States / Gyeonggi, South Korea

Ethnicity: Korean

Nationality: Korean-American

Instagram: @/RaeOfSunshine

⇨ CAREER:

Years Trained: 8 Years

Time Active: 3 Years

Label: Cube Entertainment

Group: (G)I-DLE

Group Position: Main Dancer, Lead Vocalist

Song Writing/Producing Credits:

"Tomboy"

"All Night"

"DARK (X-Files)"

"Pretty Psycho" by Purple Kiss

"Bye Bye Love" by Lightsum

"Rocksar" by xikers

"Bad Cupid" by younite

"가면무도회 (Animal Farm)" by Bibi

⇨ PHYSICAL:

Faceclaim: Jinny (Secret Number)

Voiceclaim: Wendy ( Red Velvet)

Height: 165 cm (5 ft 5 in)

Bloodtype: B

⇨ TRIVIA:

Narae was originally supposed to debut with Lightsum but Cube decided she wasn't a good fit and a staff member even commented that she was too old to debut. She trained with the girls for a very long time and is close to the members.

She's a lover of 90's and early 2000's pop/r&b and is also a huge fan of the girl group XG, which she makes obvious by her numerous tiktok and instagram posts dancing to their songs.

Paris Hilton is Naraes icon. She's always admired her for her confidence, determination and smarts despite the image that the public has of her in mind.

Her contract was due to be terminated until her Father stepped in and invested a large sum of money into the company under the condition that Narae would stay.

Her addition to the group was teased slowly and deliberately with Narae appearing as a background dancer during various performances including on Queendom. Eventually, she started appearing in members' Instagram posts before fans finally noticed her popping up with the girls in vlogs, practicing and interacting a lot with them.

She was officially announced as the newest member in May 2020. and debuted during the group's summer release "DUMDi DUMDi".

After Soojins scandal, Narae gathered a lot of anti-fans for a while, some claiming she conspired against her to have her kicked out or that Narae rich family bribed the company to defame Soojin so that Narae could get more attention.

Although the accusations and hate did get to Narae especially because she was close to Soojin and had known her for a very long time, both attending Waw Middle School and Korean Arts High School together. She looked up to her with both girls being into jazz dance and all. Naturally, netizens found this information out and became even more convinced that Narae was envious of Soojin and competing against her.

She looks up to Soyeon and often goes to her for advice and is constantly praising the leader, often commenting that Soyeon is like your favorite childhood teddy bear that you cling to for comfort. The two also have very cute interactions together with Soyeon almost appearing like a caring Mother figure to Narae and fans say she brings out the leader's cute and caring side.

She's become more popular within the last year and a half and now has far more supporters than haters. The girls have always been very supportive and welcoming towards her which has helped her cope over the past few years.

With the help of Soyeon, Narae learned how to produce music and takes part in writing and producing for the group and other ones under the name "Rae Rae". She often writes and produces songs for other groups and artists. She gets paid more by doing that.

Queen of the stank face. She's bad at hiding her feelings and when she doesn't like somebody or what they say or do, it's written all over her face. Fans like to make gifs of her funny facial expressions during awkward interviews or interactions. Some even like to compare her to Yoongi from BTS and even shipped the two.

Often comes up with the choreography for their songs.

⇨ ERAS RUNDOWN

DUMDi DUMDi | Lyric Video

I burn

I Never Die

I Love

I feel

The profile is a work-in progress...

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avelera · 11 months ago

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Impressions on Jujutsu Kaisen S1-S2

(In no particular order)

(Because I felt like it)

So I got up to date on the anime Jujutsu Kaisen, mostly for lack of something to watch, and found it interesting. Partially because of its popularity (#1 on Crunchyroll in Dec. 2023). S2 is just about complete at this time and as others have remarked, there's a pretty big tone shift between S1 and S2.

As someone who spent their teen and college years enjoying Shounen series like Naruto and Bleach, who used to be much deeper into anime from about 2000-2010, it's interesting to see the way the Shounen genre has "evolved" from what I knew when I was more a part of the teen/early 20s target audience.

(Cut for spoilers beyond this point.)

First of all, it might even be a misnomer to call JJK purely shounen. The tone shift in S2 takes it to some pretty violent places. Places that seem in excess of, say, Naruto's peak violence. That said, I'm not entirely sure JJK deserves the genre of "seinin" exactly, because its plot structure is still pretty grounded in Shounen action/adventure.

Thing is, for all of the increase in violence, I'm not sure the issues the show actually deals with earn it the "seinin" or more "adult" designation just yet. JJK, so far at least, to me seems to struggle with being "about" something more than its premise. For example, the magical powers gained by the girls in Puella Magi Madoka Magica are at least a little bit about the struggles of being a young woman, about growing up, about grief and loss and love. A magical girl "becoming" a witch plays into a larger theme of loss of innocence.

At least as of the end of S2, JJK doesn't exactly have a thing that being a jujutsu sorcerer is actually "about". It's not really a coming of age parallel. It's not really about coming to terms with death (though a lot of death happens). It's still very much about the big fights that are happening. Absorbing Sukuna for Yuji Itadori isn't a metaphor or even lending to a metaphor for anything else except absorbing Sukuna.

This is totally fine by the way! Not everything needs to be "about" something bigger. But, for me at least, the "not being about something bigger" is what's keeping JJK at an A- instead of an A+.

JJK is also strangely lacking in worldbuilding. And I say strangely because it almost feels like it skips the worldbuilding because it's derivatively leaning on the worldbuilding done by other shounen anime. Like, "We don't need to explain how people can randomly jump from tree to tree or hover in the air while fighting, because Naruto already did that. You don't really want us to stop the narrative to explain how Yuji leveled up all these basic magical fighting abilities, right? So don't worry about how he can suddenly do all this stuff."

Literally, Yuji will gain an ability like Black Flash within the course of a single battle. In Bleach or Inuyasha, gaining that sort of ability would take an entire arc and lots of trial and error. So I have mixed feelings about JJK kind of just skipping him struggling to learn Black Flash for any length of time because yeah, that beat can get kind of tiresome in anime. We know they're going to learn the ability, so it's just dragging the process out to make it an entire arc.

But on the other hand, making the gaining of a new ability into an arc lends a certain gravity to the story. A sense of stakes and achievement. Yuji never really struggles to learn any new ability. He picks them up in the course of any given battle (or Sukuna drops in and bails him out).

So in a way, JJK is innovating on the Shounen genre by just skipping a lot of the base level fighting ability arcs and challenges, in order to cut straight through the biggest, most epic battles. There is no little kid level ninja school, our Naruto is fighting Orochimaru-level threats in the middle of S1.

Now, the way the story also innovates on throwing endgame level threats at the hero right away, instead of a bunch of trash to slowly build them up, is by having the bad guys not die in the fight. Bad guys often escape the battle to fight another day. Yes, trash battles happen, but endgame level villains are taking part with surprising regularity for the genre. Aizen from Bleach wasn't showing up for every side character battle that Ichigo fought against him in the lead up to their confrontations. And characters who were defeated didn't really show up again as antagonists, at least not in the Soul Society or Hueco Mondo arcs. They either became allies or they died. So JJK is different in this regard, in a way that's rather refreshing actually.

Now, to go back to worldbuilding, JJK was interesting to me because it started out very authoritative about its genre. It was very paint by numbers standard shounen but so confidently executed that it didn't feel boring. We had lots of shounen genre cliches, like the plucky protagonist with tons of power potential, his dark haired team member who is brooding, the secretly powerful goofy teacher, etc.

But how the JJK universe fits into our world is strangely lacking. Part of it feels purposeful. It's very laser focused on moving the story along. It doesn't really care to answer questions like, "How are these people getting paid?" and "Why is a school tasked with saving the world?" Like, it's basically X-Men rules, so it's fine.

But by contrast, Naruto's ninja villages were an entire ecosystem, we knew how ninjas fit into society and why everyone was doing what they did. We know how Bleach's Soul Society fits into the fabric of the universe. We know how My Hero Academia's world views heroes, a ton of My Hero time is poured into explaining how this world works. JJK... doesn't really bother to say how the world works outside of how it impacts the characters in this moment. It's the thing I find most curiously lacking of all it, and I'm just not quite sure what to make of it.

A few other random thoughts: JJK is fairly refreshing in that it's not totally reductive anime nonsense with regards to women, like having tons of panty shots or whatever. Men still tend to be the most powerful, and it's still a pretty shounen-standard ratio of 2 plot-relevant guys for every 1 woman. But it does view women as people for the most part, so I appreciate that.

But JJK does have some anime nonsense in the sense of people just randomly going "over 9000" with their ability or pulling abilities that no one knew about before that moment out of their ass. I think the show is at its best when it plants its foreshadowing a liiittle further in advance, like when Mahito accidently "touched" Sukuna in that first fight. Everything we needed to know to realize what was going to happen was seeded in advance, and it was a crowning moment of awesome as a result. But besides moments like that, there's a LOT of "Well that didn't work, because I have this secret ability that I'm going to reveal and explain right now!" It's a bit like watching little kids play with action figures in that respect of just randomly having the right tool at the right time.

That said, that sort of "little did you know, I had this secret weapon that easily defeats you that I'm just revealing now!" seems in general more accepted in Japanese storytelling, whereas in Western storytelling the "rule" is more that you need to seed Checkov's gun a lot sooner before you can use it. You can't pull the gun off the mantlepiece to use at the same time you reveal it, it feels cheap. But, since there is a cultural divide between me and the writer, I'm just going to note it as something that pinged me, rather than saying it's good or bad as such. I like foreshadowing that's done further in advance, but that could be a culturally-based preference on my part.

I'm curious where JJK will go next. The violence escalation makes me think either it's going to continue to escalate, or there will be an endgame option to undo all the damage by some magical means at a later date. I'm more than 70/30 thinking it's just going to continue to escalate, but we'll see!

#jjk #jjk meta #jjk spoilers #jujutsu kaisen

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justforbooks · 7 months ago

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Frank Stella

One of the most influential US abstract artists who started out as a minimalist but constantly reinvented his work

In February 2015, a pair of enormous stars, one in polished aluminium and the other unvarnished teak, appeared in the courtyard of the Royal Academy in London. These were by the American artist and honorary Academician Frank Stella, who has died aged 87.

For all their differences, the two stars were part of a single work called, with deadpan literalness, Inflated Star and Wooden Star. Given their size – each measured 7 metres in all dimensions – it seemed unlikely that these could have anything to hide. In 1966, in a dig at the mystical airs of abstract expressionism, Stella famously said: “What you see is what you see.”

It became the battle cry of a then newly emergent style known as minimalism – and also seemed to fit Inflated Star and Wooden Star to a T.

And yet Stella’s work raised many more questions than it answered. His stars were welded together by a tubular metal armature, as they were by their title. They seemed to be in orbit around each other, although which exerted gravitational pull on which was impossible to say.

Visually as materially, they were very different from each other. Inflated Star was plumped-up and cushiony, polished to a Jeff Koonsy high gloss; Wooden Star seemed austere and skeletal. It was impossible to read one without reference to the other, and yet the frame of that reference – before / after, older / newer, stronger / weaker – was left entirely to the viewer to decide.

Beyond this again was the question of puns. Both sets of Stella’s grandparents had arrived in the US as Sicilian immigrants at the turn of the 20th century. His parents, Frank Sr, a gynaecologist, and Constance (nee Santonelli), an artist turned housewife, spoke Italian to each other at home. Stella is Italian for “star”.

Stella’s engagement with the star form began early, and in two dimensions. By 1963, on a residency at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, he was making paintings on star-shaped canvases, such as Port Tampa City. These were joined by prints such as the 1967 Star of Persia series. In one form or another, Stella’s many hundreds of stars are to be found in galleries, plazas and sculpture parks all over the world. He remained testily insistent that the form was not his nominative calling card, and pointed out that the only person he knew who did not own a Stella star was himself.

Fame came to him early. The oldest of three children, Stella was born in Malden, an affluent suburb of Boston, Massachusetts, and was sent by his ambitious parents to Phillips Academy, Andover, a local equivalent of Eton and alma mater to both Presidents Bush. The art lessons he had there were the only ones he would receive. After graduating with a BA in history from Princeton in 1958, he moved to New York, where he rented a loft in West Broadway and earned his keep as a house painter.

In this he had been trained by his father, who, despite working a 60-hour week, insisted on doing painting jobs around the house with the help of his son. Stella’s early Copper Paintings (1961) used the barnacle-repellent gunk with which he had caulked his father’s sloop the summer before. Another series, begun in the same year, was named Benjamin Moore after the well-known brand of house paint in which they were made. Andy Warhol bought an entire set of the works from new, beginning his own Campbell’s Soup series shortly after.

Stella was no pop artist, however. He used household paints and brushes not to satirise popular culture but because they were familiar to him. “The first time I saw a Pollock,” he said in a 2000 interview with the NPR radio network, “I knew straightaway how it was done.”

The black paintings that he began in 1959 remain among his most famous, canvases such as Die Fahne Hoch!, in the Whitney Museum of American Art, powerful in part because of the domesticity of their darkness. Built up of parallel bands of black household enamel separated by narrow strips of raw canvas, they are popularly known as “pinstripe” paintings; a mode that Stella would use into the 1970s. So instantly successful were these early works that their 23-year-old maker was included in the show Sixteen Americans at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1959, alongside Jasper Johns and Ellsworth Kelly. In 1970, at 33, he became the youngest artist ever to be given a MoMA retrospective.

Stella’s early insistence that a painting was “a flat surface with paint on it – nothing more” seemed reductive, but it gave him a set of rules to battle with. An early way around the self-imposed strictures of his own form of minimalism was the production of shaped canvases – stars, and so-called “notched” paintings such as Newstead Abbey (1960), in which nicks cut from all four sides of a vertical canvas generate a rhythm of lines that suggest a rhombus in the middle of them. The feeling is of a flattened ziggurat, as though Stella’s two dimensional work might at any moment spring into three dimensions.

That was more or less what happened in the mid-80s. For the ensuing decade, Stella made works such as La Scienza della Fiacca (4x) (1984) that responded in a broad way to the novel Moby Dick. Where the black and pinstripe paintings had worked with and against their own insistent flatness, Stella’s paintings of the 80s and 90s suddenly broke free of the wall, pushing outwards in curls and swoops of moulded fibreglass and aluminium, often dappled with paint. (“They’re surfaces to paint on,” he said of the new works at the time. “So it’s still all about painting.”) It was a short step from there to sculptures such as the stars that appeared in the courtyard of Burlington House in 2015.

If this seemed like a shift from minimalism to maximalism, change was itself part of Stella’s story. Also in the mid-80s, the cigar-chomping artist had become fascinated by the idea of turning smoke rings into sculptures.

Over the next 20 years, these slowly morphed, as smoke rings will, into works with names such as Atalanta and Hippomenes (2017), some wall-based and some made for the floor. As with his stars, Stella’s intention seemed to be to see how far he could push representation before it disappeared in a puff of abstraction.

Change also meant his work moving back and forth between media, dimensions and decades. When the World Trade Center was destroyed in September 2001, the large diptych paintings by Stella that had hung in the lobby of one of the buildings went with it. In 2021, they were replaced in the plaza of the rebuilt WTC by the sculpture Jasper’s Split Star, named after his friend Johns. This was both an entirely new work and one whose roots went back 60 years, to the painting Jasper’s Dilemma (1962-63).

By the 21st century, Stella was unquestionably one of the grand old men of American art. In 2009, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama. In 2023, Delta, one of his earliest black paintings, went on sale at Art Basel Miami with a price tag of $45m.

Stella married the art historian and critic Barbara Rose in 1961. They had two children, Rachel and Michael, and divorced in 1969. He had a daughter, Laura, from a relationship with Shirley De Lemos Wyse. With the paediatrician Harriet McGurk, whom he married in 1973, Stella had two sons, Peter and Patrick. She and all five children, and five grandchildren, survive him.

🔔 Frank Philip Stella, artist, born 12 May 1936; died 4 May 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

#just for books #Frank Stella #in memoriam

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svnshowers · 5 months ago

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[ luca hollestelle , cis woman , she & her. ] ⸻ have you seen annabelle "annie" murphy? yes, the twenty-three year old senior that’s usually wandering around campus? they’re currently focused on psychology, so we’re sure they’ve been super busy with studying. according to rumors, they were michael’s study buddy and he knew they [ are a serial home wrecker ]. does it make sense considering they’re known for being passionate as well as two-faced? either way, the phantom is threatening to bring scary things to light, but let’s hope whatever they’re hiding stays in the dark.

basics

birth name: annabelle grace murphy nicknames: annie (preferred), anna date of birth: december 1st 2000 place of birth: san francisco, california residence: los angeles, california occupation: student, model sexual orientation: bisexual relationship status: single big three: sagittarius sun, aquarius moon, sagittarius rising mbti type: enfp positive traits: passionate, warm, adaptable, flirtatious, sociable, patient, determined, relaxed. negative traits: two-faced, insecure, indecisive, passive-aggressive, stubborn, hypersensitive, judgmental, self critical. aesthetics: the lingering smell of marijuana, late night drives, drug rugs, chipped black nail polish, the smell of dew late at night, deep conversations at 3 am, giggling uncontrollably when you're high, photoshoots with polaroid cameras. theme song(s): simpson wave 1995 - frankjavcee , kids - mgmt.

sparknotes

annabelle grace murphy was born to unknown parents, adopted by her moms at age two.

always complimented on her hair and freckles, annabelle was scouted to be a child model at the age of seven.

she started going by annie around age nine, inspired by the musical. annie would not respond when someone said 'annabelle' or 'anna.'

she was never particularly popular, but not considered unpopular. annie had a bunch of friends scattered over different groups of people.

her grades were above average throughout middle school and high school, she never participated in any sports or clubs.

annie found a solid group of friends by going to the skate park by her house.

after graduating, she took a gap year to focus on modeling. her parents insisted she go to college and offered to pay, so she decided to attend golden state.

currently, annie is still modeling to earn money. she can be found smoking weed in places she probably shouldn't or at the area's bars and clubs.

headcanons

annie is that cool stoner girl who everyone thinks is so chill and non judgmental but she will talk shit about you the second you leave.

she tends to sleep with married people or those in relationships because she just wants to see if she can do it. she'll always ghost them after.

she has no plans of going into the psychology field once she graduates, she plans on modeling for as long as she can.

she's mostly just getting her degree as a back up plan, plus she really wanted to experience college life.

annie started skateboarding at fourteen to impress a girl she liked, but ended up liking it so much that she continued to skateboard. she still does today.

she started smoking weed when she was sixteen, it's an embarrassingly large part of her personality.

wanted connections

skateboarding buddies!! one or two people who always go on little skating adventures with her.

a best friend!! her ride or die, one of the only people she's genuine to & they know it.

an ex best friend too!! someone who she was super fake towards a majority of their friendship, then they found out how much shit she was saying about them behind their back & they had a huge falling out.

late night sesh friend, another night owl stoner who annie thinks is cool. these two have deep philosophical conversations, annie enjoys their company.

a fwb, bonus points if these two have feelings for each other but are in denial because they think the other doesn't feel the same way.

anything & everything!!

#gsu:intro

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nyssabong · 1 year ago

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‘Is blogging still relevant in the age of TikTok and Instagram?’

What is a blog? I believe that most of the youngsters now do not know what it is. The word blog is a combined version of the words “web” and ‘log” (Weiner 2023). A blog is like an online diary or online journal, following a blog is like getting to know someone or watching their life just like watching a television series. There are many types of blogs, like food blogs, travel blogs, lifestyles blogs, health and fitness blogs, sports blogs, fashion and beauty blogs, and others.

Back to our topic, is blogging still relevant in the age of TikTok and Instagram? I would say yes, blogging is still relevant in the age of TikTok and Instagram. Granted that most people now are using TikTok and Instagram, but according to the research (van Dijck 2013) every single day, millions of individuals interact through social media. In December 2011, 1.2 billion users worldwide, 82 percent of the world’s Internet population over age 15 logged on to a social media site, up from 6 percent in 2007 (van Dijck 2013).

Nowadays, many people still use blogs, not only self-publishers, journalists, writers, marketers, and businesspeople also using blogs. Blogs are a powerful tool for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Businesses can post blogs with some keywords to help them grow the flow.

The length of the content we write is one of the most important SEO variables in 2020 for ranking highly. According to Rioja (2020), if we write a blog article that we want to rank, we need to make sure we are going into as much detail as possible. If we did not write at least 1500–2000 words per post, we would not rank. The ability to post long-form content is a benefit of blogging in this situation. The Instagram caption length restriction is 2200 characters, which is roughly 338 to 440 words. Instagram posts short-form information as compared to blogging, thus we are limited in how detailed we can make our captions. Because of the word limit of social media, users do not have enough space to introduce themselves in detail, whereas in blogs, users can present themselves more comprehensively. Therefore, blogs remain an indispensable platform.

The fact that blogging is still important in the era of TikToks and Instagram is also due to the wide range of content. Text, photos, videos, graphics interchange formats, and other types of media can all be included in blogs. We are limited to choosing between posting pictures or videos on Instagram and TikTok, though. Furthermore, we are only allowed to upload ten images in each Instagram post, and videos can only be one minute in duration. We may upload the video as a reel if it lasts longer than one minute, however, only one video can be posted for each reel post. Blogging also can be a digital diary. As we mentioned before, because of the word limit, we cannot express our emotions. In the age of TikToks and Instagram, many people use blogs to record their lives, just like a diary. Furthermore, there are many ways to earn money from our blogs. Some of the most popular ways to monetise include offering content by subscription, display advertisement, affiliate marketing, sponsorship, online courses, and eBooks (Shwake 2023). These monetised ways are quite easy compared to earning money on Instagram and TikToks. Instagrammers and TikTokers earn money in a few ways such as setting up an online shop, partnerships with other businesses, or live streaming. For me, we can earn money from blogs in a cosy and freedom style, as many people also earn money from their blogs, plogs, and vlogs. Instead of using Instagram or TikTok, most of them still choose to blog because it offers multiple monetisation avenues.

Lastly, despite TikTok and Instagram, blogging is still relevant today. Blogging is still vital even if many new social media platforms have grown up and may even be trying to mimic blogs. Additionally, a lot of people say that blogs are the ideal medium for expressing our emotions and making money. Also, I believe the blog is a great place for kids to improve themselves, as there is a lot of unhealthy content on TikTok and Instagram. I would not say there is not any toxic stuff on blogs, but as of right now, I have not seen any.

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List of References

Jill Walker Rettberg 2013, Blogging, 2nd Edition., John Wiley & Sons, viewed 1 October 2023 <https://swinburnesarawak.instructure.com/courses/839/files/73195/download?verifier=7BsJ2Kl9b5O6ujtXzoGnueJ327TJYLfniNv80uSO&wrap=1>. Rioja, A 2020, What is SEO? Learn the Basics of Search Engine Optimization [2020], alejandrorioja.com, viewed 29 September 2023, <https://alejandrorioja.com/what-is-seo/>. Shwake, E 2023, How To Monetize a Blog in 2023 in 7 Effective Steps, Wix Blog, viewed 30 September 2023, <https://www.wix.com/blog/how-to-monetize-blog#:~:text=There%20are%20many%20ways%20to>. van Dijck, J 2013, Engineering Sociality in a Culture of Connectivity, Oxford University Press, New York, viewed 29 September 2023, <https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=457be821-4029-3b2e-87da-72784dc1f978>. Weiner, A 2023, What is a blog? Definition, types, benefits and why you need one, Wix Blog, viewed 1 October 2023, <https://www.wix.com/blog/what-is-a-blog>.

#MDA20009 #week 4 #blogging #instagram #tiktok #Youtube

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natikoko · 1 year ago

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do you have any headcannons on the f1sh that is dead, sir/madam/[insert title here]

actually… I do..

I like to think that she left the testing facility sometime during the space between splat2 and 3 and somehow ended up fuzzed, but the sanitization canceled out the fuzziness and now she’s fine(?) (just play with me here)

Ends up sharing an apartment with the neo 3s. Hijinks and shenanigans ensue.

after years of longing for an average life, she finally has one. but, it’s so normal. she’s so completely normal that it comes across as strange

(well, as normal as a green, sickly looking person with red eyes is gonna appear. some people just assume that she’s a rare species of octopus, but for militarized octolings who’ve escaped from underground,, if you know you know)

she only has small problems. her life is plagued with minor inconveniences. like the matted patch of carpet in the living room, or the fact that makomart didn’t have any almond milk when she visited once

her memories before sanitization are fragmented and blurry. she doesn’t care too much. the past is the past. there’s no changing that

still makes music as a pretty popular DJ amongst the underground scene. her abstract approach to music has earned her thousands of loyal listeners, and they’ll be sorely disappointed when she becomes mainstream for some reason

- (errm, ackually, dedf1sh only appeals to those with a higher intellect, as it is the only way—) that’s how her worst fans talk

her voice is monotone but she occasionally speaks loudly when necessary. like. very unnecessarily loudly. she has trouble controlling the volume of her voice me thinks . screams “WANNA WATCH TV⁉️⁉️” when she meant to say it quietly

I also think she falls asleep easily. side effect of sanitization I guess. sits in a recliner chair and immediately falls asleep but still insists that she was simply “resting her eyes” despite the snoring

speaking of eyes, they’re piercing red and sensitive to light, so she prefers wearing sunglasses

is pretty talkative when she’s comfortable, but she’s usually reserved.

doesn’t care much for fashion. has twenty different variations of the typical early 2000s group hip hop style clothes

her real name is only reserved for the neo 3s (especially shelbie)

#anyways I think of the binkle often can u tell #edit: I. thought I posted this hours ago

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down-the-yaoi-hole · 2 years ago

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Lucid's comics are the gold standard of boys love and I will fight anyone who says otherwise: a review of Avialae

For all 2 of my friends who read this blog, I want you to know that I debated for weeks about which comic to review first. Should I start with the "classic" yaoi manga from the 2000s/10s that sparked my obsession with boys love media in high school? Maybe write about the current trends on popular sites like Lehzin and Tapas? Or perhaps just dive straight into monsterfucking with my one true love, HamletMachine? Well, my questions were answered when nearly $200 of @misslucid comics showed up at my door last week. Thanks, Mom & Dad, for letting me shop for my own Christmas presents and not asking ANY questions about my purchases. May you never learn that I spent all your hard-earned money on porno comics and Chinese boys love novels.

The reason I say Lucid serves the gold standard of boys love is because their work touches on all these factors: they draw on the comics language and visual humor of yaoi manga, publish on the popular webtoons sites on a weekly basis, and of course the crème de la crème: they've got monsterfucking in every. Single. Comic. Have I died and gone to heaven, or did I just fall asleep on my open copy of Avialae volume 4? They're really the epitome of porn WITH plot, my absolute favorite type of erotica. My friends who prefer one-shots laugh at my desire to be strung along by a story--sometimes for months on end if it's a weekly webcomic like some of Lucid's work--but I always say it's like emotional edging! When you've seen as many illustrated dicks as I have, you need a little extra somethin' to make it worth your while, a carrot and stick situation, to use an appropriately phallic metaphor. And let me tell you, Lucid's work is worth the wait. Ultimately, I'm starting with a review of Lucid's comics so you can get a sense of my taste--this is what an A+ perfect boys love comic looks like on this blog.

First, some links! Lucid has one completed webcomic, Avialae, that you can read for free on their compilation site, yaoi.biz (the funniest URL I have ever bookmarked). That's going to be the focus of this review, since I just re-read it in print. They're also posting weekly pages for The Hunt (the Sterek fan comic of my DREAMS) and River Street (vampire x grim reaper pretty boys in NOLA) on their site and all the buzzy webcomics sites. I would highly encourage subscribing to their Patreon and/or purchasing the print comics from their online store. I've done both, but I'm a real sucker for the print books and their printed editions are totally worth the splurge. Glittering foil letters on the covers, creamy heavyweight paper, and bonus comics printed in the back, not to mention the glow-in-the-dark details on the The Hunt: it's book nerd paradise.

OK, got all that? Gave them all your money because we pay artists for their craft around here? Great, now let's dive in.

ART: Even in the very earliest pages of Avialae, you can see that Lucid is a professionally trained comics artist whose attention to stylistic detail elevates the emotionality of this series. This image comes from the very first chapter, in which Gannet wakes up to discover he's sprouted bloody, shriveled bird wings overnight. The golden-hearted bird-watchin' boy next door, Bailey, helps him patch up his back and hide his wings in the early days of the comic, in which the characters are trying to hide this monstrosity (read: queerness) from others in their conservative, midwestern high school. Lucid wrote a wonderful note about their artistic journey with Avialae in the back of volume 6, explaining that this comic was a way of reconciling their formal art school training with their personal preference for the pure camp of boys love comics. The gray wash, they explain, was considered an acceptably artsy fartsy medium for an indie comics artist to work in, even though they could hear the siren's call of full color webcomics over the horizon, and would eventually return to color with The Hunt. They clearly had to make their own way with their art, to find a balance between high art and high camp, and you can watch this journey unfold throughout the Avialae books. They start with a lot of edgy concepts and painterly line work (as you can see in the background work above), but noting readers' responses they slowly started camping things up with more yaoi tropes and visual jokes that really punched up their 'comics language' (Scott McCloud, step aside-- there's a new game in town, and they understand that comics should involve manga gags and hole pics). Their anatomy is impeccable, their backgrounds are nuanced and diverse, and huge credit to them for drawing these elaborately detailed wings for years on end. I'm a huge fan of their other comic, The Hunt, as I am apparently stuck in the year 2012 and read Sterek fanfiction once a month at a minimum, but I think the art of Avialae is my favorite. From their personal writing, I sense that this art style might not have felt the most true to their webcomics origins, but I love the subtle beauty of the gray wash. You can really see the stroke of the artist's pen in this medium: ink blooms in the background around the characters, gestural line work creates movement and fuzz that makes it feel more handmade, and the lack of color focuses one's attention on the emotions of a scene. And just look at how their skill has grown over the years! From this first sketch of a bird boy having his wings wrapped by his offscreen boyfriend, to the refined intensity of this page from chapter 6 where Gannet saves Bailey from falling out of a tree, Lucid has really honed their craft and it's been a joy to watch.

2. STORY: While the art of Avialae is probably my favorite part, Lucid's writing certainly does not disappoint. Sometimes when someone is SO artistically talented I think, ah well their writing just isn't going to be as good, there's no way someone can be that perfect, but nope! They've got it all. They have a great sense of narrative pacing across individual pages, chapters, and the total collected work; their plots make SENSE; and their dialogue is both realistic AND fuckin' funny! I think the exchange between Gannet and Bailey around ~swapping roles~ in chapter 4 is some of my favorite writing, and Lucid so smartly invokes both dialogue and the language of comics to make their joke. When Gannet's question, "Have you ever thought about bottoming?" is following my the SCRRRCCH of the car skidding to a halt, I yelped with laughter! Later in bed, Bailey asks if he should be "feeling it" more since Gannet always looks like he's "melting" when he bottoms, Gannet's response of "Oh, that's because I'm a slut" is met with the perfect little aside-expression of Bailey's exasperation. It's a comedic beat pulled from the pages of BL manga, where showing a little chibi emotional reaction face is commonplace, and it made me CACKLE. In summary: suspense, humor, and compelling emotional moments between our two male leads make the writing un-put-down-able.

3. CHARACTERS: Well folks, as you might have guessed by now this is a no-holds-barred Lucid stan account, so yup, rest assured their characters are just as much as fun as the technical elements of their comics. First of all, I love a gay monster metaphor--you can never go wrong with a character struggling to discover literal monstrosity alongside their very gay feelings for a friend, as far as I'm concerned. Second, who doesn't enjoy a sassy slut and a boy-next-door pairing? It's as classic a combo as peanut butter and chocolate!

Our two leads, Gannet Sharpe and Bailey Gilbert, have a whirlwind romance (or should I say whirl-wing--get it? Oh you did but you're just not laughing? Alright BE that way) going from frenemies next door, to co-closeted monsterfucker high school classmates, to interspecies lovers exploring the hidden world of the Avialae bird people deep in the Appal-GAY-chain mountains (I'm not sorry and I will never stop). I assess characters based on writing, design, and pure n' simple fuckability, so here we go.

First up we have Gannet, who evolves from an angry gay teen stuck in a small town to a lovestruck fool who would do anything for his partner, even abandoning his title as long-lost prince of the bird people in later chapters! He's defined by his biting humor and indefatigable slutiness, and I absolutely adore him. His character design is gorgeous--he's a strawberry blonde covered in freckles that blend into the dappling on his wings. We watch his dyed black hair grow out through the series in a gesture of subtle realism that speaks to Lucid's incredibly patient and thorough artistic vision. He's got a splendid little collection of body piercings but I won't spoil the surprise for you here--you'll just have to read the books to see more. An incredibly fuckable character, indeed. Personally, I'd say I lean more into identifying with Gannet rather than wanting to fuck him myself, but that's just because I'm also an edgy strawberry blonde, and am not usually attracted to people who I think look too much like me. But I'll be honest, if I ever landed in the world of Avialae and saw this cutie in his angel costume, I might have to make an exception.

Bailey, on the other hand, makes me go absolutely FERAL. His BLUSH, his TEARS, his EMOTIONAL SINCERITY--god DAMN I am sprung. He's got this tight little track star body and an ass that Gannet is often admiring from afar, and wow do I get it. Not too tall, glasses, normcore in the streets and a begging bottom in the sheets: I love a man who can do it all. Bailey is funny in his own right, the naïve "straight man" (but gay) who is constantly comedically surprised by Gannet's outrageous advances. He's obsessed with birds despite an allergy that leaves him constantly sniffling in the first 2 chapters, but he gets new allergy meds and through it all supports Gannet in his trial of self-discovery. He's sweet and simple but also a raging monsterfucker, and I would absolutely DEMOLISH him in bed.

4. HORNINESS: Ah, the most important category on the list: how spank-bankable is this comic? Well, let me tell you: you're going to want to lock this one in the vault and throw away the key. Your sexuality will be forever changed for the better by these loving little twinks screwing each other 6 ways to Sunday. I'm not going to post any explicit pictures because Tumblr, ugh, but you should know: Lucid's artistic training really pays off. It's an uncensored salve to all the white-out lightsaber dicks splashed across Webtoons right now. Holes, poles, mouths, and feathers a' flyin'--you're gonna wanna see this.

Hands down, though, the best part of Gannet and Bailey's dynamic is that they SWAP ROLES. You almost never see this in boys love comics, and I think it's to the detriment of the genre as a whole. I say this as queer cis woman who identifies as an S&M switch--real gay people swap roles in bed all the time! Sure, plenty of folks identify as only a top OR bottom, or only ever play as a dom OR sub, but a lot of us live in shades of gray; it's all about the dynamic with a specific partner. When I first read this comic online about a year ago, I think I actually screamed out loud when I got to chapter 4 and realized that it wasn't just a joke in the car--Gannet was actually going to top Bailey after 3 chapters of the opposite dynamic! And holy shit was it hot. There's something so satisfying about watching a boy bottom for the first time, and adding the unexpected surprise of having a theretofore tomboy top confess to wanting to be controlled, dominated, entered by his far more femme partner? I was over the goddamn moon with giddy horniness.

The monsterfucking is also excellent, especially if you're more into light fantasy monster lovin'. Personally, I love me some wild ass monster dicks in my porn, but the human anatomy in Lucid's comics is so well done that I don't even mind if no one is getting gaped or cum-dumped! Gannet and Bailey have a really tender, loving sexuality that shines through all their kinky adventures, and I have happily jerked it to their beautifully realistic sexual exploits many, many times. Also, major points to Lucid for including condoms and lube in every single sex scene! This ain't your mother's magically pre-lubed yaoi hole, folks--this author actually knows how human buttholes work. Their characters speak openly about STD testing in the epilogue wedding, and when they finally do it RAW it's with full informed consent. I really loved this little condom PSA in a BL world that seems typified, these days, by buckets of cum spraying everywhere, on everyone, all the time. Don't get me wrong, I love a cum shot as much as the next pervert on the internet, but Lucid's subtle attention to reality makes their comics feel emotionally organic and satisfyingly original.

FINAL VERDICT/TLDR: 10's across the board, Lucid's Avialae has it all: great art, humorous writing, sexy & believable characters, and kinky ass sex scenes. Porn with plot made for all you sentimental monsterfuckers out there, this comic is sure to satisfy if you're looking for a longer read that'll really suck you into its fantasy world. Highlights include: a killer sense of humor, beautifully rendered bird wings, a swapping sexual dynamic, and an evergreen gay-monster-metaphor that feels familiar but still fresh!

I truly love all of Lucid's work and hope to write in more depth about their ongoing webcomic, The Hunt, in a future post. Monsterfuckers unite! Thanks for reading.

#boys love #humor writing #comics review #boys love comics #yaoi #manhwa #i don't know how tags work i'll be honest #lucid #avialae #just WINGING it get it #sorry not sorry #monster fucker #monsterfucking #swapping #bird people #i think that's enough right? just read the goddamn review #mine

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grandhotelabyss · 1 year ago

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The scottish musician and writer Momus said in 1991 that in the future "everyone will be famous for 15 people". Do you see literary fiction going in that kind of direction? What could be the motivation behind the mentally demanding task of writing? especially if one is resigned to a ultra niche audience? (aside from vagaries like "self-expression or catharsis"

Funny, I was just thinking about Momus the other day—about how much he'd hate the sight of Lost in Translation on my movie list! His online essays from the early 2000s were superb, models of the blog form, a definite influence on my online writing. And I like that quote too; I hadn't remembered it was his. Related to your question, I'm glad to see all his writing is still up and hasn't vanished into the ether.

To answer your question circuitously, I will return to another early influence of mine: a crumbling college anthology—Literature, second edition, ed. Hans P. Guth (1968)—I bought for a dollar at a library book sale when I was in middle school. (I wrote a little about it here and here.) In this book I had my first encounters with Keats, Blake, Eliot, Yeats, Kafka, Joyce, Hemingway, Faulkner, and more.

It also contains an essay from 1958 called "Dialogue with the Audience" by the poet John Ciardi, who's still remembered, I think, for his Dante translation if not for his own work. The essay is structured as a Platonic dialogue between Ciardi, the expert poet-critic, and the Citizen, a common reader who was inspired to buy a volume of Wallace Stevens by one of Ciardi's reviews and challenges Ciardi because he didn't understand its difficult modernism.

After explaining modern poetry's refusal of utilitarian sense-making to the stolid Citizen—

"Well, what do you mean by sense? Stevens does not write for factual-information sense. Why should he? He picks up a theme and orchestrates it. His 'sense' is a structure. The reader must keep the total structure in mind in order to grasp Stevens's kind of sense. He does not, moreover, 'mean' any one thing, but rather all the possibilities of all the relationships he is orchestrating."

—Ciardi further claims that a literary work has two audiences: the horizontal audience of its contemporaries and the vertical audience of those who come later. Some poets, he continues, have a massive horizontal audience but are not guaranteed a vertical audience, presumably because they are not open to overinterpretation, because they mean too little ("any one thing").

On the other hand, other poets have a very limited horizontal audience but a long and very substantial vertical one.

"All good poets write for the vertical audience. The vertical audience for Dante, for example, is now six centuries old. And it is growing. If the human race has any luck at all, part of Dante's audience is still thousands of years short of being born."

You earn your vertical audience by not being too transparent, not being too conventional, not being too didactic: "all good poets are difficult when their work is new," Ciardi says, echoing T. S. Eliot.

His example of the popular poet, the poet much more well-known and celebrated in the mid-20th-century than the recondite Wallace Stevens, is Edgar Guest. It's a perfectly chosen illustration of the point: while Ciardi couldn't have known this for certain in his own time, the once-inescapable Guest, with his radio and television shows, has been completely forgotten in our time, while Stevens remains in every anthology.

From this I concluded as a very young budding writer that you didn't need a lot of readers, you just needed the right readers (fit audience though few, as Milton said), and that the best readers of all might be those not yet born.

As for literary fiction in particular: I think it's been going that way for a long time. The proliferation of small presses and self-publishing, along with the waning charisma of mainstream publishers, just hastens the process. I also think, however, that this was the historical norm for serious literature—see the complaints of Hawthorne, Melville, and James in the 19th century; consider that Woolf, Joyce, and Eliot were for all intents and purposes self-publishing—and that the post-World-War-II period was an extraordinary historical exception, one made possible by broadcast media and a consequently greater degree of cultural centralization than we would (for better and for worse) now find tolerable.

While it's hard not to mourn the death of mass literacy, especially considering Ciardi's era of popular modernism when Eliot filled Williams Arena up the street from where I now type, I still prefer to emphasize the opportunities the present affords. For example, the fact that you and I are able to have this exchange, that the ability to get the word out is more widespread now than it's ever been, that there are podcasts, YouTube channels, Subtacks, etc. devoted to serious literature and criticism.

And even the contemporary ultra-niche audience is probably larger now than it ever was. Ciardi mentions that even Keats was thought too difficult or strange or pretentious by his contemporaries. To use an example I've used before, I've also read that Keats sold 200 books in his lifetime. Meanwhile, between Tumblr, Goodreads, Wordpress, Substack, and YouTube, I have over 1000 readers or listeners a day. I fill my stadium every week or two. Seen in that light, the present is really not so bad, nor the past so great.

And finally, forget self-expression and catharsis—I do it because it's fun to do!

#literature #literary fiction #john ciardi #literary criticism

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beevean · 1 year ago

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I finally unboxed the Sega Genesis Mini I’ve had for a while, and had the chance to try out Sonic the Hedgehog! It turns out there’s also Mega Man: The Wily Wars, which is essentially a compilation remake of Mega Man 1, 2, and 3, so I’ll try that out later, along with Castlevania: Bloodlines.

Also, the Genesis controller is beefier than I anticipated. It’s not bad, though! It’s nice to hold, and pressing the buttons feels nice. The d-pad is also very sensitive, and if I ever get around to playing any of the fighting games, I imagine the round shape will help with fighting games!

So far, Sonic the Hedgehog, along with what I’ve played of Mega Man and the Classicvanias, strikes me as a platformer that requires lots of precision. Except unlike Mega Man and Castlevania, you’re going at super fast speeds, so obstacles can be hard to anticipate if you don’t know the lay of the land. (I can only imagine how much tougher the Game Gear version is, what with the screen crunch I’ve heard about.)

The alternate pathways are really nice, though! It helps vary the gameplay experience, I imagine!

Also, why is Sonic 3 not on there? There’s a plastic Sonic and Knuckles cartridge, but Sonic 3 isn’t even there? That would have been cool. Oh well. That’s what hacking is for.

That's great!

I never held a real Genesis controller, but they look pretty solid lol.

The Classic games are not quite the other platformers of the time, especially not MM and CV. They are more momentum-based, most noticeably Sonic 1, which didn't have things like the Spin Dash yet so you had to earn all of your speed. The games are generally easier to beat, but you're encouraged to experiment with the level design to find shortcuts. But yes, the Genesis games were criticized for centering the camera on Sonic, causing some visibility issues. If you've played Sonic 2 and got to Chemical Plant, you must have experienced Sonic outrunning the camera :P (as for the Game Gear games, yes they can get very bad :') but they're ports of the games for Master System, so very different games! They're simpler and cute)

As for Sonic 3... oh boy. Let me carry you through a fascinating rabbit hole.

It's widely believed that S3&K could not be re-released for the longest time because of its music. Now, it was re-released in the 2000s, I personally played it on Sonic Mega Collection Plus for PS2, but in the 2010s it was no longer included. But let me explain with one example.

This is the theme of Ice Cap Zone in the Genesis version:

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In 1997, the game was ported on PC under the name of Sonic & Knuckles Collection. It used MIDI music, but most importantly, some tracks were replaced. These are Ice Cap's themes in the Collection:

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Pretty different, huh?

Since 1997, it was believed that the new tunes were hastly composed replacements either because the PCs of the time could not handle the vocal clips of certain tracks, or because, turns out, Michael Jackson and Brad Buxer composed some of the tracks. No, really.

This is Hard Times, composed by The Jetzons, of which Brad Buxer was a member of:

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I hear a couple of similarities with Ice Cap :) but yeah, this song became popular in the Sonic fandom... 7 years ago, I'd say? Not too long ago. It pretty much confirmed that some of the tracks in S3 were not composed by people at SEGA, and this is why they lost their copyrights on it.

Another shocking discovery was made in 2019. A beta of Sonic 3 was unearthed, one dated 4 months before the release of the game. It was still very rough, but again, what matters here is that it too had different tracks...

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The S&K Collection tracks were the originals??????

So... they composed these tracks... then they hired Michael Jackson and Brad Buxer to replace them... then they covered their involvement? Now, tbf, if you remember what scandals Jackson was involved in 1994 you can understand SEGA's decision to cut contacts with him, but still, what a loop.

(side note, Carnival Night Act 1 Beta is one of my favorite tracks in general lol. The official one can't compare)

During the 2010s, mobile ports of Sonic 1, 2 and CD were made by Christian Whitehead, the man who would eventually become the head of the team that made Sonic Mania. But even though he was more than ready to give the same treatment to 3&K, SEGA never gave the okay... until 2022.

That year, Sonic Origins was released, a compilation that is meant to be the definitive way to play the Classic games. In reality, they're mostly ports of the mobile ports. And guess which tracks they put in the shiny new remaster of S3&K.

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Fans were not happy, to say the least.

And this is the story of how Michael Jackson made porting S3&K nearly impossible without resorting to controversial beta themes :'D

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic 3 & knuckles

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undreaming-fanfiction · 2 years ago

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Get to know me

You know what guys? I've decided you're getting to know me (questions from this lovely post, please go give it some love), ready or not.

Tagging my moots (still thinking of Pingu going moot moot, sue me) if you'd like to exchange a few pieces of useless information :) No pressure. Also consider this a tag if you're not included, I love reading random info about you guys! @unclewaynemunson @steveshairychestychest @stevesbipanic @thelastwalkingsoul @skeliiix @strawberryspence @thefreakandthehair @henderdads @hoples

1. First celebrity crush *snorts* Um, okay. I will just say that Jerome Pradon's performance as Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar from 2000 made the young me weak in her knees. Also Toby Maguire as Spider-Man.

2. Do you work out/sport? Constantly trying. Starting a healthy regime, getting sick in 3-4 weeks because my immunity sucks and back to the round little old me. Do you know what happened during the last year I started frequently exercising? I broke my leg, then had a sinus infection, then had an inflammation in my heel and couldn't walk, now getting through another sinus infection. Heathy is my trademark. Not giving up though.

3. How popular were you in school? Ahahahahahahahahahahaha...let me say it this way: I fought well enough to earn respect. Had a few close friends. After primary school, I retained respect. And that's it.

4. Embarrassing moment My life before glasses was a constant embarrassing moment of waving back at people who waved at someone behind me.

5. Favorite actor and actress Apart from the obvious Stranger Things answers...I admire Keanu Reeves. Actress - Maggie Smith.

6. Little thing that makes you extremely happy Crazy pens. I have a massive collection of the craziest pens imaginable with bubble blowers, stamps, wobbly mermaid tails, boxing skeletons, you name it.

7. Song that made you cry because you related to it Remember Me from Coco. That one hit hard.

8. How often do you find yourself thinking about your life? A lot. Mostly to calm myself down. I'm in a better place than I've been for most of my life and I like to remind myself that things do get better. So let this be your reminder too.

9. Best toy you ever got as a kid This. I'd die for him. I still have him, although he's mostly fallen apart.

10. Do you express your emotions well? According to my friends, I'm quite transparent. People that don't know me find me scary, apparently I look very strict. My friends find it hilarious.

11. Are you happy with your height? I used to be unhappy, I'm fairly small (165 cm, my mom is 166 cm and that single missing cm HURTS), but now I'm making up for my lack of height with glaring at people. In words of a t-shirt I recently got - "Don't flatter yourself. I only look up to you because I'm short".

12. Are you a bottom or a top? I'm lazy, that's what I am. But switch, I guess?

13. Who makes you the happiest? There isn't a single person. My mom, my cats, my boyfriend, my wonderful friends (and that includes you, moots of mine). I'm very lucky.

14. Your nickname(s) Here? Undreaming. Most of my social media, Arakanga. At work, I'm The Mother of Ducks or The Duck Lady (apparently the nickname survived during the 19 months I worked another job).

15. Who do you feel completely comfortable with to be yourself? My boyfriend. He's just absolutely resistant to my bad moods. I tend to be very snappy and sarcastic when I'm tired. I remember exactly the moment I realized I didn't have to walk on eggshells with him - we were walking outside and he was speaking, but away from me (he was smoking and didn't want to blow smoke in my face). Instead of telling him politely to turn towards me, I snapped "BLAHBLAHBLAH WHAT????". He just smiled at me and said "you know, one of the things I love about you is that you never make me feel like an idiot". So there.

16. Does the way you laugh depends on who you’re with? Oh yup. I normally control myself quite well, but my friends can make me laugh so hard it sounds like I'm crying. Also if they surprise me with jokes I don't expect, I tend to snort/make a sound like a chicken clucking.

17. Secrets you told strangers, because you knew you’d never see them again. None. Because with my luck, that stranger would become my new boss or something.

18. Do you like or dislike surprises? Hm. Difficult. Small surprises, yes. Big surprises, not really. I'm always terrified I'll disappoint the person surprising me with my reaction.

19. In the evening, would you rather play a game, visit a relative, watch a movie, or read? Oooh. Shit. Difficult. Reading is always lovely and I have such a backlog of books. Gaming is a huge hobby of mine, so always. Watching movies is great and I always love visiting my mom. So maybe I can connect all 4 together. Visiting my mom and watching a movie with her, then reading or gaming before I go to sleep.

20. Pet peeves? SO MANY. People bouncing their legs. Loud chewing noises. Smacking lips. People who don't listen but just wait for their turn to speak. Monologues instead of dialogues. People who sit on the public transport and block the window seat. I'm a ray of fucking sunshine apparently.

21. Who would you want to be stranded with on a deserted island? Well, all the people I love I don't want to strand with me on a deserted island. My boyfriend sounds like a great choice though. He's domestic, loves gardening and cooks well. And he hasn't killed me in 5 years. So him I think, he needs the time off anyway.

22. Breakfast, lunch or dinner? Midnight snack.

23. You’re stranded on a deserted island and there’s a box, what’s in it? I hope a guide on how to survive on a deserted island, otherwise I'd be a) dead soon, b) very bored while dying.

24. What’s the best gift you got? There are a lot of thoughtful gifts I've got from my family and friends, but one of my favorite ones was a Sagittarius mug my dad got me. Also my amazing boyfriend and equally amazing friends got me a new recording microphone for my singing efforts.

25. Who do you buy random gifts for? Everyone. My boyfriend, my mom, my friends, my boss (who is also my friend), my co-workers. Always something tiny and silly. It's one of my love languages.

26. Do you sleep with a stuffed animal? Pffft. Yep. Lots. There's less space for me in my bed than for stuffed animals. My newest additions are two large dinosaurs, Steve (a T-Rex) and Eddie (a triceratops)

27. Have you had a secret admirer? No, thank god. It sounds nice, but I'm an anxious person and I like having clarity.

28. Are you a clean or messy person? On a range from 0 (clean) to 10 (messy), I'm about 28.

29. Shower or bath? Both, depending on the situation. Baths help my messed up back though, and one of my cats always stands guard so I don't drown. So...yup.

30. How would your friends describe you? Smart and the mom friend. Also dorky. Ask @hoples, she knows me IRL and the dorky part shows a lot. Oh, and also a menace. I'm the devil on your shoulder that says "buy it".

#undreaming answers #oversharing?#maybe #feeling guilty?#not at all

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