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zydrateacademy · 1 month ago

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A Character Study: Dibbe

Some of my discord channels have "writing prompts" to help people drum up deeper thoughts about their characters and who they are on a baseline, day to day. So I googled some and found something... on Tumblr, no less. I removed some of the more milktoast "what would your character's favorite ice cream be". I frankly hate those kinds of questions because people read way too much into incredibly basic thoughts. Or no thoughts at all; "What kind of chair would you be?" Fuck off, we do deep thoughts here.

With that, let's begin.

The formatting is a bit fucky (the numbers aren't numbering) because I've copied both from a Doc and some Discord posts.

This photo: The first of Dib in Argo-form after I racechanged my old main. This costume was the first RPable outfit I had in my early days of ESO.

What is the primary source of inspiration of your character and what work have you put into changing things up and making it your own?

Dibbe is a culmination, a love letter to my favored gameplay style across my gaming life. I found that sneaking around gave me more time to absorb the world, and I usually end missions with more resources because I spent more time casing the nooks and crannies, not just going door by door and stealing everyone's pillows.

At the end of the day, when this topic is brought up my brain goes to Splinter Cell: Conviction, and how Sam Fisher was depicted throughout that game makes me think of Dibbe pretty often. In that game you can seamlessly switch between lethal and nonlethal depending on a second-by-second decision and pragmatism.

Beyond that she's a pretty original concept, and is really just my magnum opus for how I've operated in stealth games over the years. She represents the 'final lessons learned', while still being her own character with emotional outbursts. She's not infallible, but she's still a result of 20 years of rogue-ing gameplay experience.

What's a lie (or two) your character says most often?

Generally in public Dibbe will advertise herself as a scout. She doesn’t subscribe to the banner alliances, especially since Argonians are shacked up with Dunmer when the alliance comes along which she doesn’t agree with so her services are typically hired out to anyone. However she is rarely hired on in that regard as her albinism has really forced her to remain unseen to begin with. It’s very difficult to sneak around as an Albino, as when things go wrong people are quick to point to the one odd ‘creature’ skulking around the area, so she has trained herself to remain unseen in most circumstances.

She has to lie about other things as well, obviously she can’t just tell people outright she’s a thief. So obscuring that fact is probably the most common coverup.

How loosely or strictly does your character use the word 'friend'? How loose is your character’s use of the phrase ‘I love you’?

Friendship and love are interesting concepts for Dibbe. She shares a similar loneliness I do in real life, in that she sees a lot of her fellows as coworkers. I am not a thief in real life but I am a laborer who finds it difficult to find true friendship. Really, how many people at my grocery store would come help me move a couch? Who in my online circles would let me come roommate with them if I was to fall on hard times? Dibbe struggles with a similar issue, as very few people actually speak to her like a regular joe, but more of a kiosk for work and payment.

The matter of love works the very same way and is also a concept she struggles with. In her backstory she’s had exactly one true “lover” which ended badly. She’s currently dating someone via another player ICly, but she’s made it very clear that her experience with actual relationships is minimal compared to her other skill sets, social or otherwise. Even at her age, it’s still a ‘new’ thing to her.

How often do they show their genuine emotions to others versus just other players knowing?

Dibbe’s become more emotional in recent years regarding certain topics. A lot of her is actively true, she doesn’t lie terribly much to fellows in the underground as she usually feels that she’s among kindred spirits. So what she shows is typically fairly sincere, she only goes full mask up (personality-wise) when she’s out in public.

What is a dramatic change you’ve done to your character since you roleplayed them first? Minor retcons, personality shifts? Not in the way RP may have affected them over time, but what did you change because something didn’t quite ‘click’, and you felt the need to adjust?

Well for one, Dibbe was originally supposed to just be an Albino. When I started roleplaying her and attending some meet and greets, THREE separate characters meta’d her paleness and eyes and went with “I see that you’re afflicted”... I was still kind of on the fence about it but I was never contacted OOCly, people just kept assuming. I went with it, and frankly I don’t mind it overly much as it gave me more years/centuries to work with in terms of a wide open background. I’ve also been complimented at how well I hide it, but that’s baked in, because her vampirism was only ever a footnote to her complexity anyway.

Originally I had made her both a Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild member until I was rightfully informed that DB assassins don’t really go on “sabbaticals” or “vacations”, and in some fashion they will always be called upon to do some work. As Dib is my love letter to stealth gameplay over the years, I wanted to implement both of the franchises main stealth operations. Instead I split that concept off to the ex-lover she once had that turned her into a vampire to begin with, as well as a different alt, Sleeps-Under-Skies, my DB assassin character. Sleeps' name was also one of Dibbe's workshopped names before I went with "Honors-Silent-Steps".

Another thing that comes to mind is she’s a bit more emotional than I originally planned for her. In her earliest days of conception I wanted her to be a smooth, unflappable and suave Aragorn-type ranger (but a thief) but ultimately I think having her own occasional emotional outburst regarding some specific topics has given her more depth.

This photo: The beginning of a "vibe" I've maintained on her for years thereafter.

What’s an attribute of your character that is currently impossible to be presented with in-game resources? Be it looks, equipment, mannerisms. In other terms, what can’t you do ingame that has you resort to artist renditions, profile specifications, or verbose introductory emotes?

I try to keep my game visuals as close as possible so people don’t have to stretch their suspension of belief. I don’t typically RP any hefty use of scars or heavily variable body types. I once interacted with an Argonian player that was actually a behemoth, but that’s very difficult to keep in mind when they were emoting normally. Since it was an open event, I completely missed their original intro emote that had them duck and squeeze through the doorframe so for like an hour I thought I was interacting with a normal argonian. So I actively try to avoid that kind of problem.

So for Dibbe, what people don’t typically get to see very often is her tattoos. I like to think she has some nordic tribal body art across most of her body and tail. Sometimes you can catch it with the ingame overlays but the vamp skin “dulls” them much more than I’d like, and none of them really quite capture what I see in my own mind’s eye.

What's a hobby your character used to have that they miss?

For Dib this is heavily music related. I like to imagine she’s a decent throat-singer, and might have some experience with the lute. She just kind of fell off of it, is out of practice, but if I ever emote such a thing again I would make a note that she ‘recovers’ pretty quickly, implying that she once had some decent skill.

She’s also done poetry and songwriting in the past. A lot of her music hobbies have gone on the wayside as she’s delved deeper in the thieving lifestyle. She might still do some basic lute-plucking but it’s not a focus anymore.

Does your character give tough love and harsh truths or sugar-coat their advice? Which do they prefer to receive?

I imagine I might have the same answer as many other people here: It depends. I imagine Dibbe being able to read the room. Recently in her Guild, someone was wounded harshly -after- making some crucial mistake (not following the guildmaster’s orders). His wounds were not his fault, some magical item backfired on him. Instead of raking him over the coals right away she had the presence of mind to wait until he was lucid enough to actually hear her words.

So ultimately, she is a fan of tough love but will also try to gauge the situation so she can have a measured response.

What fact does your character excitedly tell everyone about at every opportunity?

The “opportunity” is usually when asked about it directly. Dibbe introduces herself as Dibbe and also touts some alternatives like “Dib” or even “Debra” because it’s “not my real name anyway”. So right out of the gate people know it’s an alias. But what’s it from?

As a toddler, trying to take toys or things away from her fellow hatchlings, her first word was a combination of attempting to say “Dibs” and “gimme”, turning into a childish “dib-ee”. With little grabby hands and all. It’s a story she’s fond of, relayed to her by her mother when she was old enough to hear it.

If someone was impersonating your character, what would friends / family ask or do to tell the difference?

This question is very interesting to take on and took some contemplation. My first thought was her Nocturnal worship. In ESO’s timeline, she may not be the TG benefactor she would later become, but she’s still a very logical deity for career thieves to have so I’m sure an imposter could just hedge their bets and make an accurate assumption.

If any of her friends or loved ones caught any real oddities and decided to make inquiries, Dibbe is thinking ahead and has plans regarding her ‘fate’ in Coldharbour that only very, VERY few people know about at all. If asked about it, the imposter is sure to stumble and make up some bullshit that her mates will catch onto.

(As of this Tumblr post that plotline has been resolved but it's still something she keeps close to the chest in the event someone wishes to exploit it somehow. So it's still something an imposter would find trouble "knowing' outright.)

What's something that makes your character laugh every single time? Be specific!

Kids falling down. Dibbe could watch your kids fall over all goddamn day she doesn’t give a shit about your kids.

What’s the most obvious difference between your character’s behavior at home, at work, with friends, and when they're alone?

Dibbe lives and breathes the thief life so even her home life is dedicated to keeping up with said style. She doesn’t actually change all that much when she’s alone. She might draw up some schematics, maybe try her hand at songwriting again, or pluck at a lute. Nothing that nobody hasn’t seen her do, it’s just rare.

What does your character notice first in the mirror versus what most people first notice looking at them?

Most people note Dibbe’s albinism. Pale-scales are a thing, they’re just rare. A fellow Saxhleel once noted to her, “I didn’t realize our people came in stark white”.

I like to imagine she looks at her mouth. She maintains some wishful thinking that her face had more expression on it like humanoids do. In lore, Argonians have a stereotype for being “emotionless” because their face doesn’t move and contort as much as more human faces do. Dibbe likes being an Argonian just fine, she just kind of wishes her face was a little flatter, maybe.

Who or what does your character love truly, 100% unconditionally (if anyone or anything)?

Dibbe’s mother comes to mind. Succumbed to wounds during their owner’s house war, so she didn’t live long enough to end up disappointing Dibbe in any way, so all of her memories of her mother are wholesome and positive.

I like to imagine had she lived, she’d probably still remain a positive force in her life. Would probably even support Dibbe’s then-burgeoning lifestyle as a thief as a way to ‘get back’ at the elves. The woman was probably a stealth operative or scout before capture anyway so her daughter getting into crime would likely not have been a stretch.

On a less heavy note, Guar. But similar to her mother, she has no bad memories of Guar, and becomes annoyed when she learns that any meats or broth were derived from the adorable beasts.

What would your character do if stuck in a room with the person they've been avoiding?

Hoping the room is large enough, Dibbe would just prefer to seethe in the corner and not interact with them. Generally, she’d keep her distance as much as possible. Depending on the situation she’d prefer not to be noticed by said person. But if they were alone together then Dibbe would not be the one to speak first.

What common etiquette does your character disagree with? Do they still follow it?

(No answer yet, I need to put more thought into it)

What simple activity that most people do / can do that confounds, or scares your character?

(No answer yet, I need to put more thought into it)

What subject / topic does your character know a lot about that’s completely useless in most circumstances?

Dibbe’s lifestyle is very specific but she is semi-secretly a poet (not that she holds it as a secret, it’s just not a topic that ever comes up and thus doesn’t volunteer the information) and sometimes quotes fictional (self-created) in-universe poets, especially of the Bretonese kind. In my mind, Dibbe is well versed in a few race’s history with poetry and how their poems have evolved over the last few centuries… But this topic never comes up.

How would your character respond to being fired by a boss?

In her current situation, absolutely heartbroken. This comes from two angles. She has a benefactor, a mysterious background mastermind type. But they’ve been forged in plotlines that few people will ever hear about, and exist as an alt of mine. I don’t really see any kind of scenario where the two would ‘have’ to part ways.

The other… I mean, I can’t tell the future so maybe I’d OOCly fuck up in some way that would have the guildmaster ask me to remove myself from the Guild but being exiled from the Illiac Bay Thieves Guild would be very disheartening. And ICly, highly demoralizing.

How does your character respond when someone doesn’t believe them?

Depends on the situation. By Dibbe’s own lifestyle, she is a career thief. If she’s in persona-mode then she actively expects people to be at least one little level of suspicious. However in more protected environments, she’s actually a pretty truthful person overall. So if she gets argued with about something she knows she knows, her response is: Annoyance and slight aggression in her wording.

When your character makes a mistake and feels bad, does the guilt differ when it’s personal versus when it’s professional?

I’d say Dibbe would respond about equally. Nearly, anyway. Personal mistakes she’d take in stride, but she takes pride in her professional work so any mistakes she’d take more problems with because she should have ‘been better’.

When does your character feel the most guilt? How do they respond to it?

In some ways it comes down to vampires. There’s been plenty of lore precedence despite the origins of the curse, that vampires can be sane and moral. All your PC’s across the franchise can be vampires and you can be as helpful or harmful as you please, and there’s the whole Ravenwatch arc (which I know is under some debate).

So some of Dib’s guilt comes from how she knows, for a fact, that vampires can be good and moral and suffers some secondhand guilt when one after the other just let themselves succumb to the inherent madness of the curse. She was mentored through her own, and is currently assisting another player in dealing with being recently turned. She wishes everyone had someone, anyone, to walk them through the process in a sane and measured manner but knows that would require a complete societal shift and maybe even require murdering a god to do it. She sure can’t, so she also has a fair bit of realism that a grand majority of vampires will continue to be the world’s enemy.

If your character committed one petty crime / misdemeanor, what would it be? Why?

I’m almost voided out of this prompt as I play a career thief. If she were to ever do something literally petty, she’d knock over some market stalls. She’s not a petty person though, but it’s something of a daydream to give herself a giggle, not something she’d actually do.

How do they greet someone they dislike / hate? How do they greet someone they like / love?

Dibbe more or less just does the shun method. If she absolutely has to be in the same room as someone she actively dislikes, she elects not to speak to them when at all possible. But, she also can’t keep her mouth shut and will be compelled to correct anything she deems incorrect about the target’s thoughts, plans, and opinions. Just to make sure nearby compatriots aren’t tempted to engage in dumb ideas.

Obviously it’s basically the opposite on the other end. For acquaintances she’s fond of flicking her hood in greeting. She doesn’t make a show of greeting others so usually opts for a simple “Hey there”.

What is the smallest, morally questionable choice your character has made?

I had a hard time answering this one at all. The prompt that I ripped off google says “smallest” but I can’t think of anything THAT petty that Dibbe would have wasted her time doing. I can only think of the bigger stuff, like how Dibbe has certainly killed some people in cold blood. I imagine some Telvanni magister on his knees begging for his life and Dibbe just finished the job anyway.

I’ve said in a previous answer she likes seeing kids falling down but I don’t see her being so petty as to put her foot in front of them herself.

Who does your character keep in their life for professional gain? Is it for malicious intent?

First thought is any fellows in her Thieves Guild, but it’s not malicious. She likes surrounding herself with skilled operatives to further feed into her lifestyle as a career thief.

What’s a secret your character hasn't told serious romantic partners and doesn't plan to tell?

Nothing at all. She has about three major secrets that she’s fine with informing her partners about. Just not right away, naturally.

How does your character respond to a handshake or otherwise seemingly required cultural gesture of greeting? What goes through their head?

Dibbe doesn’t mind doing it unless it’s absolutely so alien to be offensive, which isn’t really a thing that she knows of. From handshakes, salutes, bowing… Dibbe will learn them all. Even having the knowledge of how to do various curtsy might help when she adopts under-cover personas when she attends noble gatherings.

What phrases, pronunciations, or mannerisms did your character pick up from someone / somewhere else?

Dibbe is effectively an immigrant to Skyrim and she’s perfectly proud of that. She doesn’t pretend to be a Nord outright (I have another palescale non-vamp who’s all-in with Nord culture vastly moreso than Dib is), but she has adopted their accent and learned their language to the point of even figuring out some Thu’um (just a couple, she’s had time). She’s pretty quick to defend against the “nord dumb book hard” stereotype. All of that ultimately stops there. She doesn’t attend Nord meetings or browse their mead halls, more or less keeps to herself in Skyrim while dealing with the criminal network that she hosts. She still has plenty of love for her adopted country.

If invited to a TED Talk, what topic could your character present on? What would the title of their presentation be?

I have actually considered doing criminal-related sermon RP for my guild. Dibbe could absolutely host a two hour speech about her life as a criminal and her philosophies around it. It would be titled “My life as a Master Thief” or something.

What does your character commonly misinterpret because of their own upbringing / environment / biases? How do they respond when realizing the misunderstanding?

Given Dibbe’s advanced age she’s mostly grown out of this. Early on she had a very specific image of Dunmer and their culture but the further away from Morrowind she moved, the more her assumptions were disproven (and sometimes maintained). She has been under the impression that pretty much every Dunmer falls into one of the several main Houses, when in reality they have houseless farmers and laborers like anyone else. Dibbe is generally pretty open to new information.

Recently in her guild, there was a bit of controversy regarding the smuggling job they performed. Illegal courier work and rooftop hopping was one of the first things she did as a fledgling criminal, long before she started working up the ranks. To her perception, you don’t dig into a client’s goods because that’s a quick way to get a bounty on your head from various crime lords.

However, through some errant magic detection, the crew discovered that the crates they were smuggling had a lot more in them than just tax-evading ore. Half of the crew was incensed that nobody thought to crack the boxes open to look. Some people did smuggling work in the past and got arrested because they ended up “accidentally” smuggling Skooma or some other hot-ticket item. Eventually Dibbe relented, and recognized that her experiences are not universal. Live and learn. Dibbe’s typically smart enough to absorb other information while still holding onto her own opinions (that opinion being people need to relax more).

What’s something unimportant / frivolous that your character hates passionately?

(No answer yet, I need to put more thought into it)

Is your character a listener or a talker? If they’re a listener, what makes them talk? If they’re a talker, what makes them listen?

I imagine I might have a similar answer as everyone else. Both, depending on the flow of the conversation. Dibbe has plenty to say, but knows when she doesn’t, so she doesn’t.

What gets her to talk? Things she disagrees with. She’s been a thief for a long time so when she hears some kind of bullrush plan, or if lethal force gets tossed in the air as an idea, she’ll typically spin a whole yarn and shut that shit down. If there’s something she knows a fair bit about, she will make that fact known in one way or another.

What gets her to shut up? Anything regarding scholarly pursuits. Dibbe is plenty intelligent regarding several topics, but one thing that boggles her mind is how mages can wax poetically with theories of magic and aether. It’s basically the “reverse the polarity!” science meme, that’s basically what she hears when some mage-affluent people start talking to each other. It becomes jargon to her, and Dibbe is quick to shut up and let the mages hash it out.

What belief / moral / personality trait does your character stand by that you (the player) personally don’t agree with?

I mean, I’m not a criminal in real life. Dibbe sort of represents my wishful thinking of the age-old days with gentleman rogues and highwaymen in fantasy. In real life, criminals are thugs and brutes and probably really never have been “romantic” beyond the occasional, old-timey anecdote. So generally as the player, I disagree with her all-in attitude with treading thief life like a sport. But that’s who she is, and I enjoy playing her very much.

What’s a phrase your character says a lot, and why? Is there a deeper meaning behind their consistent use of it?

“Shadows hide you” or its variants “Shadows guide your steps” has a few meanings for her. It’s not just literally saying “don’t get caught” as some may thing but it’s also her subtle way of wishing Nocturnal’s influence to assist in your endeavors. This is basically like saying “god bless you” to an atheist but she doesn’t care. It’s not just a thief’s calling card, it’s an actual religious dog whistle.

Does your character act on their immediate emotions, or do they wait for the facts before acting?

Another prompt where the answer is “both kinda”. Dibbe is very emotional, and shows that when situations end up directly affecting her somehow. But if she’s on the outside of a situation able to look in without any problems, she can generally absorb information before making her thoughts on the situation known. During an op, though, foolish actions will cause her to snap a bit and act against the perceived aggressor.

Who would your character believe and trust without question?

Right now this really amounts to nobody. Even if her lover came to her with problems or scenarios, Dibbe will absolutely ask some questions, but it’s more out of getting all the details rather than a matter of distrust. If her lover kicked down her door and went “We need to get out of town NOW”, Dibbe would certainly walk and talk with her, but there would be many, many questions.

What’s something your character is expected to enjoy based on their hobbies / profession that they actually dislike / hate? In another way of looking at this question, what kinds of stereotypes do they actively attempt to defy based on their hobbies and profession?

Oh this is a good one for Dibbe.

She tries to uphold the “honor among thieves” class of work. This is an interesting question because Dibbe is semi-secretly not all that concerned with lethality, but in order to maintain the “gentleman thief” reputation that she may have as well as other coworkers, she has to constantly butt against the more lethal members of her crew.

She does not like alleyway cutthroats and dumb, basic thuggery. She much more prefers the higher class of organized crime. Art theft, breaking into nobles castles and stealing their busts. Things that get the attention of the rich, so they know that they are not as untouchable as they think.

Unfortunately a lot of crime is more on the desperate side, and opportunistic. Some people just have personality types where crime is just the path of least resistance towards wealth. It’s a very common and typically very correct perception of criminals, and one that annoys Dibbe to no end. It’s why she pushes back so hard when her crew are too quick to draw blades on jobs.

It’s also why she dresses well and bathes. She put forth some effort to learn an Armory Golem spell so she could quickly ‘correct’ any blood or mud related activities, so that when people look at her they don’t see some dirty thug. Generally to the outer world she just wants to look like some kind of ‘scout’, dressing in browns to blend in with trees rather than something gray to blend in with the stonework of cities. When she’s in underground-friendly places, she wants to be looked at as a representative for a higher class of thief. In a weird way, she wants to be trusted in a lifestyle where trust is in short supply.

How many hobbies has your character attempted to have over their lifetime? Is there a common theme?

Dibbe is kind of like me in this. If she doesn’t have fun doing something, she won’t do it. In the spirit of that thought, I don’t think she has actively attempted much. In earlier prompts I’ve talked about how a lot of her hobbies are related to music, because she enjoys it. So she hasn’t really been given many opportunities to operate outside her comfort zone and I’m not really sure she’d enjoy basic walks in the park or kite-flying.

She might have tried some art, but again like me, probably only accomplishes abstract stuff. While very interesting and neat, it’s not something she really pushes forward with much.

#Elder Scrolls #Argonian #ESO #Elder Scrolls Online #The Elder Scrolls #TES #Bethesda #Zenimax #Gaming #PC Gaming #RP #Roleplay #Roleplaying

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tryingtryingtryingtryingg · 7 months ago

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Hi this was a really interesting post to me and while I am with you 100% on many points you brought up here I just did have a slightly different outlook regarding art museums if I may share.

The words “museum” and “gallery” are words that are ill-defined and that might be contributing to some of the generalizations about how museum shows are being curated? I would argue that most major public institutions of art *do* put together a lot of great exhibitions (these will be your Mets and your National Galleries and the like) with the explicit goal of educating a non-expert public. Id compare them to textbooks.

Where the waters get muddied might be the existence of private museums (built around one persons private collection, e.g. Crystal Bridges), which, depending on your outlook on life, may or may not be described as vanity projects for the very wealthy to flaunt their personal collections and also dodge taxes. This would be the equivalent of like a celebrity memoir. (The line between this and the textbook variety of museum can get blurry sometimes though. A lot of textbook museums began their lives as celebrity memoirs.)

These are different from commercial galleries, which have the primary goal of selling artwork to collectors. They might have some educational content but generally only as far as the information makes the artwork seem more desirable for a certain type of person to buy. Sometimes they style themselves like museums to borrow legitimacy. These commercial galleries often have a rota of artists that they represent. (What “representing an artist” means differs gallery to gallery, but i worked as an assistant to an artist for a while and for her it basically meant that the gallery pays for production of new work, they promote and market the artist to collectors, and if any work sells the gallery recoups the cost of production and then takes a cut of the profits. I think 50% is standard.) This would be the equivalent of like… a fashion week runway show.

And commercial galleries are different from non-profit and artist-run galleries, which mainly showcase young or emerging artists not yet established in their field, who might not have had the opportunity to show in (or have been intentionally excluded from) major institutions, and may not (yet?) have representation from a commercial gallery. (The artists here also tend to be more local to the area so these are the best places to go if you want to support your local art scene.) The audience for these spaces are mostly other artists and their friends and people on the street accidentally stumbling in. Nobody is making any real money here. They don’t really have a super educational angle because everyone involved probably has like 3 other survival jobs. This would be the equivalent of like a small-print-run poetry chapbook hand-bound by a small press.

There are also university galleries and resale galleries, house museums, art fairs, art book fairs, festivals, biennales, immersive experiences, foundations, and probably more that I can’t think of right now, not to mention there’s a difference between museums specifically for art and something like the British Museum which also collects a bunch of other crap with a more anthropological slant (bones etc). But basically, this is all to say, not all spaces containing art are the same or have the same agendas.

I fully agree that the concept of “the collection” is something that is sometimes taken too far but I don’t think major museums are the biggest culprits here. I DO however think private collectors sometimes use their art collections as a way to historicise themselves and basically write themselves into art history. The Art Institute of Chicago received a major donation of post-war modern art like 10 years ago from a collector who stipulated in the terms of their donation that their sizable collection had to be on view at the museum in its *entirety* for at least 50 years. This basically means that a large chunk of the museum’s limited real estate is going to be dedicated to this one collector for the next half-century, and what art this one collector thought was important to them when they bought it. Which, yeah, is frankly a terrible way to put together an exhibit in a museum. Iirc there was some controversy when the museum accepted.

However I don’t think most art museums are treating their collections with the same sort of reverence. Museums loan artwork all the time. When a curator working on a show thinks that including a work outside the museum collection would be important to provide context, they will (if possible) arrange a loan. Loans like this are great because it also makes it possible for people who might not be able to travel to an artwork’s home museum to see it too. Ofc there will be some treasures (Mona Lisa isn’t going anywhere) that a museum will never part with but for the most part museums try to be good about lending work because they might need to borrow something else in the future. (Though there is a very real problem of different museums having different negotiating power depending on their size). Sometimes if a loan is not possible they might include a thumbnail of it in the wall text or something, because curators are also massive nerds who want to see their faves come together. (Now might be a good time to mention that museums have both permanent and temporary exhibitions.)

There’s also the definition of “research” here. I don’t think most museum shows are going to be about scraping samples off paintings to chemically analyse them, but I’d absolutely argue that art exhibitions are still products of research. The research is just more along the lines like, “how did these artists end up working in such similar themes despite being from different cultures and different eras” or “how did [historical event] affect the way artists made work”, or “how do all these artists use [this colour] in their work differently”, or, “which artists have been historically ignored by institutions and how can we attempt to correct that,” or even more simply, “how did this one artist’s work evolve throughout their career”

I think outside of very specific contexts most curators will fundamentally disagree with the idea of printing out a replica of an artwork to hang alongside other art because 1. It’s taking up space in an art museum where an actual artwork could be, and 2. It implies that the replica is somehow a sufficient stand-in for the original? I don’t want to get too philosophical here but i really don’t think that would work as an exhibition concept. That being said I have seen museums create replicas of sculptures intended for audiences to touch, and also 3D printed scans of painting surfaces so people can feel the paint textures and stuff, which I find really neat! I’ve also seen fantastically low-res pictures of objects left as placeholders in display cases when the originals have been sent on loan somewhere else.

Also Re: Duchamp’s urinal, this might just have been brought up to illustrate how far out modern art can be without the necessary context but I want to say I have never, ever seen that work shown without accompanying info explaining exactly why it came about (the feeling that art could no longer just be a beautiful thing passively hanging on the wall after witnessing the brutality and senselessness of WW1), the movement it was part of (Dada), and how it changed the course of art history (opened the doors to incorporating readymade objects in art). I don’t think the problem is that the information is not being made available, I think the problem is that museums are not doing enough to make people want to read it. (Although, to briefly go back to the subject of replicas, any version of the urinal you see today is in fact a replica because the original urinal was destroyed shortly after it was shown.)

I’m not saying that people have to enjoy this kind of art, or that they have to automatically “get it”, or that they’re ignorant because they don’t. And museums relying on wall text to do the heavy lifting is a flawed system. I definitely agree that some things can be a hard sell and museums need to do more to reach out to people (beyond wall text) to get them interested in art, and an interdisciplinary approach is definitely the way to go here. Maybe collaborating with non-art institutions? Like, art can say so much when shown in the context of history, or even science, like you mentioned. One bit of trivia I love is that the reason why the Impressionists were able to go outside and paint plein air was because paint tubes had just been invented and they didn’t need to be in their studios grinding down their own pigments anymore!

But there’s also another issue when it comes to contemporary art (and when I say contemporary art here I’m referring to like, the artist is still alive) being shown by museums which is that role of the museum is kind of to define what is worth looking at? Museums are basically trying to write history here, and it can be very difficult to determine what is important when you’re so close to it. We’re all just symptoms trying to find the cure.

Museum curators need to be very careful about who they show and how they talk about them, because there can be a bit of an observer effect in action here. Museum shows are statements made by the institution, and you can’t make a statement about contemporary art without also affecting what contemporary artists are responding to. Idk if that makes sense.

It’s a delicate balance and I don’t envy curators in this position. You can’t curate a show about the renaissance the same way you’d curate a show about abstract expressionism, and you can’t curate a show about abstract expressionism the same way you’d curate a show about contemporary artists who are still working, and who can still go on to make batshit decisions you’ll regret associating with, especially when you have the power of an institution behind you.

Artists make work because they want to say something. They might not always succeed, but most of them start with that goal at least. I do find that in general, if an artist is making use of any cool new unexpected technologies, that shit is going in the write-up (I can’t remember how many times I read the word “blockchain” in 2019 smh), but yeah it doesn’t always happen and it can suck to feel like you’re out of the loop, or that you’re missing a key piece to unlock your enjoyment of something.

I overlook work all the time and only later find out that it was apparently “significant”, and then I kick myself for not getting it, or not seeing it. And I do have a background in art so… oops I guess. I absolutely hated Mike Kelley’s work the first time I saw it. I thought it was tacky and weird and disturbing for no reason. Then a few years later I learned more about his work and I changed my mind.

I love a scientific analysis as much as the next person—I too go nuts whenever museum conservators scan artworks and find something completely different underneath, getting to appreciate something old in a new way. I love looking into the history of pigments—but this isn’t really an approach that can be applied to newer artworks by artists who are still working, who maybe want people to be more interested in the work they made rather than what kind of paintbrush or software or camera that they used to make it. (Not to mention the implications of trying to dissect art through an “anthropological” lens when the artist is, say, part of a minority group, or working outside the western canon.)

And incidentally if you *are* interested in peeling back the curtain to see the process a lot of artists are often contractually obligated to give lectures and talks for this very purpose!! Many museums have public lecture series that they post online on youtube and some of them only get like triple digit views it is criminal! There’s a lot of bullshit and some can get jargon-heavy don’t get me wrong, but there are a lot of great ones too! I’ve recently been binging the MFA Boston’s lecture series on Sargent, they are wonderful! Louisiana Channel does lovely interviews with artists, architects and writers about their creative process and why they do what they do it’s an amazing resource. Art21 is also free i think but only if you’re in the US(?). One thing I’ve learnt listening to these is that you don’t need to like someone’s work to like the way they talk about art, and vice versa.

Most museum exhibitions also have accompanying monographs with essays and pictures that go in-depth into all the history and info you could possibly want to know, they’re great and I can spend hours in a museum bookstore just browsing through them. Because exhibitions are necessarily ephemeral these publications are ways for them to live on.

Don’t get me wrong art institutions are extremely flawed in myriad ways, and criticism is 100% deserved especially wrt accessibility and provenance and questionable funding sources. They can and should do better. I just feel like we should give museum curators a bit more credit here, and not pin entirely onto them the failures of a public education system that does not value art.

Fully agree about the benches and lack of snack options tho wtf is up with that.

(Also i just have to mention one of my favourite museums that I’ve ever been in which is the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford?It’s like walking into an old school wunderkammer it’s amazing and I love it. Objects are organized by type of object rather than any culture or era which leads to some lovely combinations of things.)

Sorry for this hunk of text I just had stuff on my mind. It’s very late where I am I hope everything made sense

I would be very interested in hearing the museum design rant

by popular demand: Guy That Took One (1) Museum Studies Class Focused On Science Museums Rants About Art Museums. thank u for coming please have a seat

so. background. the concept of the "science museum" grew out of 1) the wunderkammer (cabinet of curiosities), also known as "hey check out all this weird cool shit i have", and 2) academic collections of natural history specimens (usually taxidermied) -- pre-photography these were super important for biological research (see also). early science museums usually grew out of university collections or bequests of some guy's Weird Shit Collection or both, and were focused on utility to researchers rather than educational value to the layperson (picture a room just, full of taxidermy birds with little labels on them and not a lot of curation outside that). eventually i guess they figured they could make more on admission by aiming for a mass audience? or maybe it was the cultural influence of all the world's fairs and shit (many of which also caused science museums to exist), which were aimed at a mass audience. or maybe it was because the research function became much more divorced from the museum function over time. i dunno. ANYWAY, science and technology museums nowadays have basically zero research function; the exhibits are designed more or less solely for educating the layperson (and very frequently the layperson is assumed to be a child, which does honestly irritate me, as an adult who likes to go to science museums). the collections are still there in case someone does need some DNA from one of the preserved bird skins, but items from the collections that are exhibited typically exist in service of the exhibit's conceptual message, rather than the other way around.

meanwhile at art museums they kind of haven't moved on from the "here is my pile of weird shit" paradigm, except it's "here is my pile of Fine Art". as far as i can tell, the thing that curators (and donors!) care about above all is The Collection. what artists are represented in The Collection? rich fucks derive personal prestige from donating their shit to The Collection. in big art museums usually something like 3-5% of the collection is ever on exhibit -- and sometimes they rotate stuff from the vault in and out, but let's be real, only a fraction of an art museum's square footage is temporary exhibits. they're not going to take the scream off display when it's like the only reason anyone who's not a giant nerd ever visits the norwegian national museum of art. most of the stuff in the vault just sits in the vault forever. like -- art museum curators, my dudes, do you think the general public gives a SINGLE FUCK what's in The Collection that isn't on display? no!! but i guarantee you it will never occur, ever, to an art museum curator that they could print-to-scale high-res images of artworks that are NOT in The Collection in order to contextualize the art in an exhibit, because items that are not in The Collection functionally do not exist to them. (and of course there's the deaccessioning discourse -- tumblr collectively has some level of awareness that repatriation is A Whole Kettle of Worms but even just garden-variety selling off parts of The Collection is a huge hairy fucking deal. check out deaccessioning and its discontents; it's a banger read if you're into This Kind Of Thing.)

with the contents of The Collection foregrounded like this, what you wind up with is art museum exhibits where the exhibit's message is kind of downstream of what shit you've got in the collection. often the message is just "here is some art from [century] [location]", or, if someone felt like doing a little exhibit design one fine morning, "here is some art from [century] [location] which is interesting for [reason]". the displays are SOOOOO bad by science museum standards -- if you're lucky you get a little explanatory placard in tiny font relating the art to an art movement or to its historical context or to the artist's career. if you're unlucky you get artist name, date, and medium. fucker most of the people who visit your museum know Jack Shit about art history why are you doing them dirty like this

(if you don't get it you're just not Cultured enough. fuck you, we're the art museum!)

i think i've talked about this before on this blog but the best-exhibited art exhibit i've ever been to was actually at the boston museum of science, in this traveling leonardo da vinci exhibit where they'd done a bunch of historical reconstructions of inventions out of his notebooks, and that was the main Thing, but also they had a whole little exhibit devoted to the mona lisa. obviously they didn't even have the real fucking mona lisa, but they went into a lot of detail on like -- here's some X-ray and UV photos of it, and here's how art experts interpret them. here's a (photo of a) contemporary study of the finished painting, which we've cleaned the yellowed varnish off of, so you can see what the colors looked like before the varnish yellowed. here's why we can't clean the varnish off the actual painting (da vinci used multiple varnish layers and thinned paints to translucency with varnish to create the illusion of depth, which means we now can't remove the yellowed varnish without stripping paint).

even if you don't go into that level of depth about every painting (and how could you? there absolutely wouldn't be space), you could at least talk a little about, like, pigment availability -- pigment availability is an INCREDIBLY useful lens for looking at historical paintings and, unbelievably, never once have i seen an art museum exhibit discuss it (and i've been to a lot of art museums). you know how medieval european religious paintings often have funky skin tones? THEY HADN'T INVENTED CADMIUM PIGMENTS YET. for red pigments you had like... red ochre (a muted earth-based pigment, like all ochres and umbers), vermilion (ESPENSIVE), alizarin crimson (aka madder -- this is one of my favorite reds, but it's cool-toned and NOT good for mixing most skintones), carmine/cochineal (ALSO ESPENSIVE, and purple-ish so you wouldn't want to use it for skintones anyway), red lead/minium (cheaper than vermilion), indian red/various other iron oxide reds, and apparently fucking realgar? sure. whatever. what the hell was i talking about.

oh yeah -- anyway, i'd kill for an art exhibit that's just, like, one or two oil paintings from each century for six centuries, with sample palettes of the pigments they used. but no! if an art museum curator has to put in any level of effort beyond writing up a little placard and maybe a room-level text block, they'll literally keel over and die. dude, every piece of art was made in a material context for a social purpose! it's completely deranged to divorce it from its material context and only mention the social purpose insofar as it matters to art history the field. for god's sake half the time the placard doesn't even tell you if the thing was a commission or not. there's a lot to be said about edo period woodblock prints and mass culture driven by the growing merchant class! the met has a fuckton of edo period prints; they could get a hell of an exhibit out of that!

or, tying back to an earlier thread -- the detroit institute of arts has got a solid like eight picasso paintings. when i went, they were kind of just... hanging out in a room. fuck it, let's make this an exhibit! picasso's an artist who pretty famously had Periods, right? why don't you group the paintings by period, and if you've only got one or two (or even zero!) from a particular period, pad it out with some decent life-size prints so i can compare them and get a better sense for the overarching similarities? and then arrange them all in a timeline, with little summaries of what each Period was ~about~? that'd teach me a hell of a lot more about picasso -- but you'd have to admit you don't have Every Cool Painting Ever in The Collection, which is illegalé.

also thinking about the mit museum temporary exhibit i saw briefly (sorry, i was only there for like 10 minutes because i arrived early for a meeting and didn't get a chance to go through it super thoroughly) of a bunch of ship technical drawings from the Hart nautical collection. if you handed this shit to an art museum curator they'd just stick it on the wall and tell you to stand around and look at it until you Understood. so anyway the mit museum had this enormous room-sized diorama of various hull shapes and how they sat in the water and their benefits and drawbacks, placed below the relevant technical drawings.

tbh i think the main problem is that art museum people and science museum people are completely different sets of people, trained in completely different curatorial traditions. it would not occur to an art museum curator to do anything like this because they're probably from the ~art world~ -- maybe they have experience working at an art gallery, or working as an art buyer for a rich collector, neither of which is in any way pedagogical. nobody thinks an exhibit of historical clothing should work like a clothing store but it's fine when it's art, i guess?

also the experience of going to an art museum is pretty user-hostile, i have to say. there's never enough benches, and if you want a backrest, fuck you. fuck you if going up stairs is painful; use our shitty elevator in the corner that we begrudgingly have for wheelchair accessibility, if you can find it. fuck you if you can't see very well, and need to be closer to the art. fuck you if you need to hydrate or eat food regularly; go to our stupid little overpriced cafeteria, and fuck you if we don't actually sell any food you can eat. (obviously you don't want someone accidentally spilling a smoothie on the art, but there's no reason you couldn't provide little Safe For Eating Rooms where people could just duck in and monch a protein bar, except that then you couldn't sell them a $30 salad at the cafe.) fuck you if you're overwhelmed by noise in echoing rooms with hard surfaces and a lot of people in them. fuck you if you are TOO SHORT and so our overhead illumination generates BRIGHT REFLECTIONS ON THE SHINY VARNISH. we're the art museum! we don't give a shit!!!

#art

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anthonybialy · 13 days ago

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Ballots That Should Be Kept Secret

I didn’t vote for him. Or her. I’m bipartisan all by myself. Despising both options is my gesture toward unity. There’d be amity if everyone agreed with me. Until all the stupid jerks realize I’m right about everything, I’ll have to settle for the small comfort of knowing only people who hate the same things as me are coherent and appealing.

Most chose to go with one of two hideous possibilities. You got to ride with either the game show host given an undeserved second chance by a handful of sucker primary voters or the jabbering borderline commie representing the party that confirmed its tendency to boss by telling their side who their candidate would be. There was a third way even if one of the monstrous two was going to blight the next four years.

Living as a punk with nothing but integrity is worth about zero dollars. Refusing to sell out is worthless. Wait: there must be a different word for that. Getting no financial reward for remaining a defiant outsider is still a greater prize than hoping your savior will remember how you cast and accordingly dispense a quasi-legal bribe.

I don’t mean to preen. But supporters of the rather destructive final battle participants sure do, so make a show out of what you believe in their honor. And refusing to align with mainstream characters comes in genuine dissent, which makes showiness slightly less obnoxious.

Declining to enroll in a contemporary political faction offers longterm effects beyond ignoring the border in the preferred way of the selector. A Trump win means a couple trillion more dollars shredded just like if he lost, so the consequences of assisting either disagreeable fiend are meaningless aside from shame provided by functioning qualms.

Writing in candidates is amusing, and we should strive to find entertainment in a most humorless process. You can tell politics is horrifying by how the funniest person it churns out is Donald Trump. The thorough lack of quality options should serve as the truest indicator that this should be condemned and minimized. Ordering off the menu has been condemned as not taking dinnertime seriously when it’s exactly what a race between two unappetizing specimens deserve. Marvel movies are soulless messes, note people watching Star Wars series.

A marked oval fills in an individual statement. That’s what you’re supposed to be doing, since horde members seem to have forgotten. The only thing worse than attention sluts on tickets who demand compliance are cultish goons who lustily enforce diktats issued by said indifferent worshiper harvesters.

I voted for winners. I’m not talking about some stupid vote tally. Finding the most awesome people I could support was a nice distraction from the doom ahead. I’m not going to heed some heinous primary. Instead, I made it a real choice by writing in full-time campaigner plus occasional rocker Alice Cooper, eternal candidate Dave Barry, and Iowa’s finest export David Burge for my last three dream presidents. It’s not to brag, but I’m a consummate chooser.

Any of my personal hopefuls would be infinitely more competent and fun president than the ones with whom we’ve been burdened. I know I’d rather have pizza with any of those great Americans. Can fans of the semifinalists do the same? Neither Donald nor Kamala carry cash, but I’m sure they’ll find your PayPal just like they promised. That tricky part about knowing and utilizing free will is why particularly moronic mobs prevail. Anyone offended should check the list of recent presidents.

Trying to organize mavericks makes each of them ruefully smirk. Coordinating writing in remains a counterintuitive goal. It’s same reason libertarians can’t win elections on account of despising government. But at least there’s something to giggle about on the trip to face doom.

It doesn’t matter and only matters. The maxim that your one vote could make a difference is both the silliest thing ever uttered and personally valid. Paradoxical contradictions spur smoking synapses in the type of people who felt inspired by looming federal overreach. As with so many things about the entirely dreadful procedure of concluding who’s going to be in our faces gloating about getting more electoral votes, it’s all about context. You’re unlikely to break a tie. But you will decide how you perceive yourself.

Two candidates want to limit options. Thinking government is going to encourage progress is why we should avoid having one. Okay: maybe we can have some cops, firefighters, and firefighters with pepper spray. But emergency services differ from an unwieldy government that defies the Constitution as it fails to defy economics. Frame tariffs jingoistically, as we’ll all be screwed equally.

I neither voted for the professional clown who commandeered a party once occasionally known for restraint nor the embodiment of vapidness who believes only that her empty head should be making your decisions. Backing one in an attempt to sideline the other put the nation on injured reserve. The best strategy is to let the bums in the fight tire themselves out before deciding to view a less sleazy bout.

A clear conscience is the most valuable item. That’s especially true in the era of presidents carefully molding the economy into flaming trash. The only way to cope with cleared-out bank accounts is internal awareness of not joining in on a fad more damaging to psyches than Members Only jackets.

Your secret is safe with me. You’ll always know what you did behind the closed curtain. Whisper it to me if you need a cathartic unburdening. I survived Catholic school and am thus qualified to provide such confessions. Behavior when nobody’s looking constitutes character. A lack of it leads to results a respectable country should be ashamed to go public.

#Donald Trump #Kamala Harris #president #election #2024 presidential election #write-in candidate #dissent #none of the above

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kjack89 · 2 years ago

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Play in Peoria

For @themiserablesmonth Day 30: Smile.

Modern E/R, US Politics AU.

Read on AO3.

“Congressman Enjolras!” the gaggle of reporters called, swarming him as soon as he stepped foot outside of the Capitol Building. “Congressman, can you answer a few questions?”

Enjolras hesitated. “My staff will probably kill me for stopping to talk to you,” he said, just a little ruefully, before shrugging, “but fire away.”

He wasn’t wrong – Combeferre would probably throttle him – but Enjolras liked to get a little bit of facetime with the press corps in hopes that they might just decide to slip some actual leftist ideas in among the regurgitated right-wing talking points.

He nodded at one of the reporters, who held up his phone, clearly recording. “Congressman, you don’t have an election this November—”

“Everyone in the U.S. House of Representatives has an election this November,” Enjolras interrupted.

The reporter made a face. “Sorry, I meant, you don’t have an opponent this November, so your win is guaranteed.”

Enjolras shrugged. “That is correct, though as you may recall, I did manage to fend off a fairly well-funded establishment opponent during the primary.”

Not that almost any of their papers had chosen to cover it at the time. They’d written more than their fair share of think pieces about how one of the most socialist members of House of Representatives was being challenged from the right of his party, and how that clearly spelled the destruction of leftist policies, but not one single publication had printed anything about Enjolras’s win.

“Since you don’t have to worry about your own election,” the reporter continued, “have you been working to support any other candidates?”

Enjolras nodded. “Sure, I’ve endorsed some candidates who I support, though only when I thought my endorsement would help and not hurt.”

“So you think your endorsement might do more harm than good in some places?” a different reporter asked, jumping on Enjolras’s statement.

“With blatant gerrymandering throughout much of the country?” Enjolras asked wryly. “I recognize that some of my colleagues are in tight races.” He shrugged again. “Personally, I don’t think that moving to the middle accomplishes as much as they think it does, but their job is to represent their districts, just like mine is to represent my constituents to the best of my ability.”

A third reporter stepped in, and Enjolras vaguely recognized her as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, not one of the more sympathetic outlets to his political views. “But Congressman,” she stared, “don’t you agree that what might be good for your constituents doesn’t play well in some of the more conservative-leaning districts in the country?”

Enjolras huffed a light laugh. “Doesn’t play in Peoria, in other words?”

“So to speak.”

Enjolras picked his words carefully as he responded. “What’s good for my constituents is this: respect and dignity for all people, regardless of race, color, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, and anything else that Republicans use to divide us; wages and workplace protections that allow everyone to earn enough to live a good life; and government that’s more focused on helping the least among us than on ensuring that the rich continue to get richer.” He looked directly at the reporter as if daring her to contradict him as he added, “If those values don’t play in Peoria, then I think it says a lot more about the fine people of Peoria than it does about the rest of the country.”

“Congressman, any thoughts on the Brazil runoff?” someone else asked.

“Just that I hope the people of Brazil elect the president that will work best for them,” Enjolras said. He’d been yelled at many times over for wading too far into politics in other countries, so hoped that response would suffice.

Judging by the follow-up, it hadn’t. “And do you think that’s Lula or Bolsanaro?”

Enjolras paused. “That’s for the people of Brazil to decide, but I don’t think anyone’s going to be surprised to find out I’m not Bolsonaro’s biggest fan, and I certainly hope the Brazilian people recognize that they have a better choice available.”

It seemed neutral enough to not cause an uproar, and luckily, the reporters moved on. “Congressman, what would you say to people who are discouraged by the ‘just vote’ or ‘vote blue no matter who’ messaging surrounding this election?” one asked. “To those who voted and feel like nothing has changed or that their vote doesn’t matter?”

“I would say I understand their sentiments,” Enjolras said honestly, not surprised when the reporters murmured amongst themselves in response. “When the Republican Party is increasingly willing to work outside of the democratic process and in some cases outright planning on throwing out any election results that they don’t like, it’s an extremely bleak situation. And the fact of the matter is that there are places in this country where some votes will not be counted, where some results will be dismissed or thrown out. Not to mention this election very well may only stave off the disintegration of our country, not stop it.”

“That’s a far cry from your usually more hopeful rhetoric,” the Wall Street Journal reporter said.

He just arched an eyebrow at her. “That’s because you didn’t let me finish. There are decisions happening now, still choices being made by those in power that can help stem the tide of fascism, that can bring about real change, and that can realign this country so that we are moving in a direction of liberty and justice for all. And the only way those decisions and choices do so is by electing people who will make the right choices. And the only way that happens is by voting.”

He surveyed the assembled reporters, hoping if they were going to take anything as a sound bite, it’d be this: “It’s not a perfect system by a long shot, and the time may be closer at hand than ever to figure out a better way. But until then, it’s what we’ve got, and the only thing sitting it out does is provide greater cover for the folks who want to destroy it altogether.”

The silence that met that was punctuated by someone from the very back of the scrum, who raised his voice to ask, “Congressman, one final question – can you give us a smile?”

Enjolras’s eyes narrowed, partially from the inanity of the question, and partially because he was pretty sure he knew that voice. “Excuse me?”

“Just, you know, flash us a quick glimpse of those pearly whites,” the voice said helpfully, and all the reporters turned to gawk at the questioner, who grinned at Enjolras.

It was a smile Enjolras couldn’t help but return, even as he rolled his eyes. “Ok, who decided to give my partner a press pass?” he asked, holding out his hand for Grantaire, who crossed over to him and took it.

“Don’t be mad at them,” he told Enjolras, leaning in to kiss his cheek. “They thought it would be funny, and they were right.”

Enjolras just shook his head affectionately. “Everyone, you know my better half, Grantaire.”

Grantaire gave the press corps a brief wave. “Salutations.”

“Mr., uh, Grantaire, can we ask you a few questions?” a reporter asked hopefully.

Enjolras glanced at Grantaire, who just shrugged. “Sure but I don’t think your editors are going to be thrilled you wasted your footage on me.”

“They’ll probably just use it as b-roll,” Enjolras told him in an undertone.

Grantaire winked at him. “That may be the most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me.”

Enjolras laughed as the reporter doggedly continued with her question. “The Congressman on occasion has referred to you as the more cynical between the two of you, so I have to ask: have you already voted, and if not, do you plan on voting?”

"Ok, not to actually sound as cynical as I’ve been accused of being, but if you think there’s a world where the significant other of a congressperson is going to say they aren’t planning on voting…” Grantaire trailed off before continuing, “I have voted, yes. I voted early this past weekend. I am lucky enough to live in a county in a state that makes it very easy for me to cast my ballot and make my voice heard.”

“And do you agree with your, uh, I mean, um, with the Congressman—”

The reporter floundered and Grantaire gave him a look. “With my partner?”

“Yes, sorry,” the reporter said, flushing. “Do you agree with him on the importance of voting?”

Grantaire considered it for a moment, and Enjolras tried not to hold his breath as he waited for his answer. “Enjolras has two quotes, both likely apocryphal in whomever they’re credited to, that he loves to say,” Grantaire said finally. “The first is this: ‘history is made by those who show up’. In this country, under this system, we show up by voting. Like he said, it’s not perfect system, but it’s the one we got.”

“And what’s the second one?”

“That every two years, we have the opportunity to peacefully overthrow our government through elections. Maybe it’s time some more folks took advantage of that.” Grantaire squeezed Enjolras hand before telling the reporters, “Now if you’ll excuse us, the congressman owes me a date.”

Enjolras gave them a wave as he let Grantaire pull him towards the waiting car. “You know, Combeferre doesn’t like when I use words like ‘overthrow the government’.”

Grantaire smirked. “That’s why I used them for you.”

Enjolras rolled his eyes. “Great, so the headline will just be ‘Congressman’s Partner Advocates for Overthrow of Government’, rather than ‘Congressman Advocates for Overthrow of Government’.”

“Disappointed?” Grantaire asked, opening the car door for him.

“Couldn’t be prouder,” Enjolras said, kissing his cheek before sliding into the car. “What was with asking me to smile?”

Grantaire slid in next to him. “You looked stressed, and very serious,” he said with a shrug. “And I figured it might make you smile for real once you realized it was me asking.”

“Well,” Enjolras said, feeling unexpectedly touched by that. “You weren’t wrong.”

“I know,” Grantaire said, a little smugly. “I so very rarely am.”

Enjolras just shook his head, but he still couldn’t stop his smile as he wrapped an arm around Grantaire’s shoulders and tugged him close to his side.

#enjolras x grantaire #exr #enjoltaire #enjolras #grantaire #les miserables #fanfiction #modern au #politics au #us politics au #congressman!Enjolras #did some canvassing and tbh it was very very bleak #so I wrote this to make myself feel better #as one does!!#also the Brazil election was called as I was finishing this up #but i decided to just leave it as it was #the miserables month 2022

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wolfprincesszola · 10 months ago

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all the tags and replies are honestly so weird because they’re saying it’s a site that promotes child pornography? it’s not, it’s an archive that anyone can post onto, so there’s obviously bound to be a lot of weird people, including those that fetishize incest, child pornography, and other topics that are generally not acceptable. if you’re finding that and not filtering it out, it says more about you than it does of ao3. if you’re classifying ao3 by the small proportion of weird fics instead of the other 11 million+ fics of writers putting their time and effort to making them, you’re a part of the problem.

the donation drive comes from ao3 being a nonprofit and it’s probably helped tons of people out of their struggles as both a reader and a writer. as a writer myself, i’ve honed my writing skills because i continuously posted on ao3. supporting ao3 means supporting ao3 writers by keeping their fics up, encouraging new writers to post, and it brings a small community together.

sure, it makes them look bad for not skipping a time to ask for donations when they have more than enough money to run the site, but you don’t have to donate to it and you definitely don’t have to shit on them asking for donations. just click dismiss and stop interacting with the site if you don’t agree with it. they use that money for other things and rest assured, they aren’t for-profit.

it would actually make them look worse if they were to not ask because people would notice and ask why they brought more importance to the genocide in gaza over the invasion of Ukraine and BLM. in all of those instances, they were tragedies because many lives were lost and many families had to grieve over someone, and before someone says that gaza was “worse”, no. A tragedy is a tragedy, no matter how many lives were lost. We can’t compare them together. That just divides us and keeps us from obtaining our goal of helping others.

if you donate to ao3 or interact with it, then you are not a bad person and you definitely aren’t immediately zionist. wanting to fund your entertainment does not mean that you want innocent people to die. it’s not bad to want to donate to your entertainment, especially when entertainment and helping donate to end the genocide are NOT mutually exclusive. you can donate to ao3 AND donate to helping people in gaza at the same time.

even if you don’t donate, it doesn’t make you a bad person. there are other ways to support innocent civilians that comes with boycotting for-profit organizations (i don’t even know how you’d boycott ao3), voting for someone who represents your views (especially in the u.s. with the upcoming primary election), educating yourself, spreading the word, and more.

there are more things that happen in the world than ao3 donations and palestine too. there are femicides still going on in mexico, collapsing systems in yemen, recovering citizens in congo from the war, and even police brutality still happening in the u.s. we can’t always focus on one particular issue but instead broaden our gaze to try and help everyone. that’s always been the case. we need to unite to help anyone.

and no. i don’t think ao3 should die because its asking for donations. and no. i don't believe ao3 should be babied and supported because it's "ao3" and it helped me through a lot (it did but that's not why this argument overall is wrong). and yes. i believe that ao3 should have some blame when there have been controversies surrounding people getting kicked off of the volunteering team for supporting palestine. and yes. i believe that this argument overall should be done and over with in a simple "donate to both".

i don’t think op is a bad person for being a hypocrite, but i do think op is ignorant. when you yell at people for donating to ao3 when you don’t know the full story and you don’t know whether or not they’re also donating to help gaza, it separates you from wanting to actually help and just being angry. encourage people to donate instead of pushing them down for giving money to something that’s made them happy.

anyways, attached below are links to donate to ao3, wikipedia, and help end the genocides around the world, and if you can’t donate, there’s also links to help palestine without any money involved:

ao3 donations

wikipedia donations

emergency: fund a movement-centered response in palestine

international rescue committee: matching gifts for gaza

anera: humanitarian aid to gaza

direct relief

world vision: middle east crisis response

gaza crisis emergency relief

NATAL: mental health aid for traumatized victims of war

unicef for gaza

mercy without limits: gaza tragedy

global women fund: to help femicide in mexico

save the children: help children in congo

yemen emergency fund

campaign zero: ending police brutality

email u.s. representative to cease fire

click a button to help (daily)

ROI petition: demand protection for civilians in gaza (UK)

NI petition: demand protection for civilians in gaza (UK)

brands / businesses to boycott (p.s. support local / mom-and-pop businesses instead!)

but most importantly, educate yourself! education is your best tool <3

can i be real? i think ao3 should die for doing a donation pool for themselves with everything going on

#the comments and replies on here are nasty #please just take a deep breath #i know what it’s like to be angry at the world #i think everyone does #don’t hurt others to showcase your anger #i’m so petty i’m tempted to say that i’ll donate the notes i’ll get to charities listed below and then match my donation to ao3 #but then i’d be out of money #don’t give hate to op just educate each other #free palestine #free gaza #ao3 #archive of our own #wolfprincesszola rants #wolfprincesszola

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canary3d-obsessed · 4 years ago

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Restless Rewatch: The Untamed, Episode 25, part one

(Masterpost) (Other Canary Stuff)

Warning: Spoilers for All 50 Episodes!

Holy crap, Episode 25! We’re halfway through! *Cue Bon Jovi*

Hunt Invitation

After taking a nice long break to watch Word of Honor pick lotus pods, Wei Wuxian and Jiang Yanli return to stressing over the shitshow that is the post-Sunshot cultivation world. Jin Zixuan has come to invite them to the Phoenix Mountain Hunt, with a special invitation from his mother to Jiang Yanli. Jiang Cheng reacts to this in a mature and reasonable manner, while Wei Wuxian...doesn't.

On the surface, Jiang Cheng has matured in recent months; much more than Wei Wuxian, with his secret burdens, has. But it's only on the surface, as we'll see later in the episode, when Jiang Cheng's insecurity will take the reins.

Jin Zixuan is adorably pleased by Jiang Yanli's acceptance of the invitation. Wei Wuxian is less pleased, but sort of tries to suck it up.

Jin Zixuan kind of undercuts the romance of his errand by asking Wei Wuxian for the Yin tiger amulet as soon as Jiang Yanli is out of earshot.

As always, Jin Zixuan makes an impression by being the best Jin currently in existence, but the Jins are terrible. JZX is working to advance his dad's ambitions, and as such he is currently Wei Wuxian's enemy.

(more after the cut)

Opening Ceremonies

There's a bunch of cultivators arranged for the opening ceremony. Later someone will say that this is more than 5 thousand people. Ok, sure.

As I've said before, it's best to think of it like a theatre production and assume the other 4,900 people are offstage or, you know, painted on the backdrop.

The young lead cultivators from the four main clans are standing together. Nie Huaisang is trying out some new body armor.

The clan leaders are seated up on the stage, along with Jin Furen and Jiang Yanli. Unfortunately Jin Furen doesn't seem to have a personal name that I can discover. Her title Fūrén ( 夫人) means she's the primary wife of the head of the family, according to this excellent meta.

So “Madame Jin” is a decent translation...if you're French? I feel like instead of English subtitles including borrowed words from French (”Marquis” in NIH), Greek (”Water of Lethe” in WOH), and other European languages, we could try borrowing Chinese words instead. Jin Zixuan's mom is titled, not named, Jin Furen. Since we don’t know her actual name, I'll call her that and abbreviate it JFR.

Wei Wuxian's childishness continues at the opening of the hunt, as does Jiang Yanli's encouragement of his childishness. I know she's had a rough couple of years, and it's understandable to want to baby her little brother out of a sense of nostalgia. But it's not good for him, and she shouldn't do it; she should encourage him to be more mature, just as she does with Jiang Cheng.

War Crimes Contest

Jin Guangyao says they're going to have an archery competition, and they're going to liven it up by endangering some prisoners. These prisoners are Wens in Wen cultivator uniforms, meaning they're not the noncombatants that were being hunted down earlier. But they’re still helpless people in chains.

There are three different reactions when the Wen prisoners are brought out. All the Jins are pleased, or neutral. All of the Jiangs, including Wei Wuxian, are upset.

The Nies and the Lans, what we see of them, are a little shocked, but not obviously upset. Based on those reactions, it seems like this is a maneuver that in-world is considered shocking and cruel, but not necessarily unethical or immoral. Shocking, cruel displays of power are pretty normal in this world; remember when Wen Chao lit a Lan cultivator on fire just to say hello, and nobody complained?

This whole scenario, of course, has been designed to provoke Wei Wuxian. One major goal of this event, and the whole reason for wanting Wei Wuxian to come, is to get the Yin Tiger amulet. Making him lose his shit in front of 100 5000 cultivators is a good step toward compelling him to hand the amulet over.

We see Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli both signaling Wei Wuxian to keep it together, and he takes a step back and tries to chill.

Meanwhile, Jin Zixuan seems annoyed by all this, and goes to take a shot at it, making it clear from his demeanor that this is easy and JGY is making a show of nothing.

He hovers in the air and makes a perfect shot, pleasing most of the crowd and impressing Jiang Yanli.

Then his cousin Jin Zixun taunts the crowd, challenging anyone to do better. This presents a bit of a problem for Wei Wuxian. For the sake of the Wen prisoners, Wei Wuxian should just take this taunting and let the contest end, if no-one else is willing to take a shot. But for the sake of the Jiang Clan’s status, and his continued control of the Yin Tiger amulet, he needs to put the Jins in their place.

Every Day is Blindfold Day

This moral dilemma is resolved with an abrupt tonal shift, where the humanitarian concerns of all parties seem to vanish. Wei Wuxian flirts embarrassingly with Lan Wangji and then goes as far over the top in besting Jin Zixuan as it's possible to go.

The flirting hits differently, incidentally, when you edit Jiang Cheng's annoyed reaction out of it:

Lan Wangji doesn't seem embarrassed by Wei Wuxian's request, despite it happening in front of 100 5000 of their fellow cultivators. He looks Wei Wuxian straight in the eye for longer than necessary before turning away; it’s not exactly stern disapproval. We’ll get very used to this look, in Wei Wuxian’s second life.

Fortunately, Wei Wuxian carries a blindfold with him wherever he goes, (gifset here), and he is such a good cultivator he can hit 5 parallel targets simultaneously without even holding his bow straight or tightening the string.

(OP fixed the angle of the bow for this gif, which is why everyone is standing on a hill in the background).

Everyone is pleased by this shot except Jins Guangyao and Zixun; even the Jin cultivators are clapping, and Madame Jin is presumably this happy any time Jin Guangyao’s plans go wrong.

With that they start the hunt. Jin Zixun challenges Wei Wuxian to do the whole hunt blindfolded. Wei Wuxian agrees, but the censorship committee said no, apparently, so we don’t get to see that.

Flute Hunting

We do get to see Wei Wuxian luring monsters into his nets by being too sexy for his robe, too sexy for his robe, and playing the flute.

We also get to see Jiang cultivators looking puzzled while random monster roars happen in the woods around them. We do not get to see any monsters, which is probably just as well.

Jiang Cheng is annoyed and concerned, muttering "I told you not to overdo it" which means he didn't, you know, tell Wei Wuxian NOT to do this, just not to do it quite so well. Jiang Cheng knows what Wei Wuxian’s abilities are and he is making use of him, as he should, but he doesn’t have the courage of his convictions.

Tree Confession

Wei Wuxian sees Lan Wangji and starts to say hi, but then he has a desaturated flashback to Lan Xichen telling him to back off, so he stops himself. But then Lan Wangji comes over to talk to him.

Lan Wangji starts off talking to him about his latest anti-resentment musical discoveries, and Wei Wuxian pushes back, even calling him Lan Wangji, but gently. Wei Wuxian asks "who am I to you?" and Lan Wangji turns the question right back at him, then waits a looooooong time, eyes downcast, while Wei Wuxian thinks of a serious answer.

Wei Wuxian says "I used to treat you as my zhījǐ" --which, as we’ve discussed before, is variously translated soulmate, confidant, intimate friend--with a strong meaning of "the person who truly knows me." Lan Wangji says "I still am." Coming from Lan Wangji, who NEVER says how he feels about Wei Wuxian or about anything, really, this sounds a lot like a confession of love.

It definitely takes the form, visually, of a love confession, as Lan Wangji speaks, then gazes at Wei Wuxian while he waits for a reply. Wei Wuxian's reply is this:

I don't think Wei Wuxian is oblivious (I'm speaking strictly of CQL, not MZDS, as always with these posts; they are different works). I think he loves Lan Wangji back, and knows it. But Chenqing and everything it represents are between them.

Lan Wangji is quite literally NOT his zhījǐ any more, because he doesn't truly know Wei Wuxian right now. He loves him desperately, but he doesn't know about his core, and hasn't accepted his cultivation method. So Wei Wuxian answers his confession by showing him Chenqing, effectively declining to accept his still-conditional love.

Snake Measuring

Next we get terrible hetero courtship in the form of Jin Zixuan finding snake discharge on the ground and talking to Jiang Yanli about comparative snake measuring. Seriously: that is the actual conversation that they are having.

Jin Zixuan boasts for a bit, and then awkwardly tries to ask Jiang Yanli on a date. When she turns him down he gets mad, because he's a typical heterosexual dude even though he's secretly a delightful person...very, very secretly. Jiang Yanli, for her part, can't string a fucking sentence together to save her life whenever he's around, so she's not helping their mutual understanding.

Lan Wangji attempts to hold Wei Wuxian back from beating Jin Zixuan’s ass yet again, but eventually JYL wants to leave, JZX tells her to wait, and WWX intervenes. Why doesn't Jiang Yanli have a maid or Jiang cultivator with her while she's on a date, incidentally? These kids are confused about whether they're doing feudal patriarchy or whether they're doing modern social life.

Jin vs. Jiang

Wei Wuxian jumps in between Jiang Yanli and Jin Zixuan, which JZX objects to. Jin Zixuan has no fucking business objecting and Wei Wuxian is 100% right, at this point. As soon as WWX shows up JZX should hand her off to her Shidi, bow, and leave her the fuck alone. Instead, he draws his sword on Wei Wuxian, and kind of on Jiang Yanli since she's right behind Wei Wuxian. Fortunately, Lan Wangji blocks him.

This instantly blows up into a Jiang-Jin Clan conflict, with Jiang Cheng unfortunately absent since he let his unmarried sister go off in the woods alone with the son of the Cultivaton world's most famous lecher. It looks like it’s a personal conflict, but since Jin Zixuan already told Wei Wuxian directly that Jin Guangshan wants his amulet, any arguments between them are part of a larger power struggle.

Cousin Jin Zixun comes running up to start shit. Wei Wuxian pretends--I am SURE he's pretending--not to know who he is. The dude hassles Wei Wuxian every time he sees him; Wei Wuxian is a troll, and right now CJXZ is butting in to something that doesn't concern him. Rather than argue, Wei Wuxian insults him by telling him he’s not memorable.

Jin Furen shows up with several maids and cultivator dudes in tow, which is the proper way for a highborn woman to wander around in the woods. She also brings Clan Leader Yao, because if it's Wei Wuxian Blaming Hours, Yao is going to be there.

I initially found the deep friendship between superhot Yi Zuyuan and dumpy Jin Furen implausible, but then I remembered that my lifelong bestie is a smokin' hot redhead with impeccable fashion sense, while I am a roly-poly nerd. Friends don’t always match. Also, Jin Furen's actress, Hu Xiaoting, looks like this:

...so she is actually hot in real life. Not as hot as Zhang Jingtong (who plays Yu Ziyuan) but literally nobody is as hot as Zhang Jingtong. Don't @ me, you know I'm right.

This is a heck of a long scene, so we’ll pick it up in part two!

Soundtrack: Livin’ on a Prayer by Bon Jovi

Writing prompt: Newly-divorced, cold-hearted CEO Yu Ziyuan buys an apartment next door to newly-divorced, warm-hearted pastry chef ...uhh let's call her Jin Dàngāo (蛋糕), sure. She can name her business after herself.

They discover their daughter & son are in the same college class, and so they meet up over coffee....several times...trying to matchmake their hopeless, hapless kids, while bonding over their own terrible (former) taste in husbands. Who will Cupid strike first, the kids or the moms?

#the untamed #the untamed gifs #wangxian #restless rewatch the untamed #canary3d-original #my gifs

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cathedreal · 4 years ago

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𝔽𝕠𝕣𝕓𝕚𝕕𝕕𝕖𝕟 𝔽𝕣𝕦𝕚𝕥 ℂ𝕙𝕒𝕡𝕥𝕖𝕣 𝟙 ℂ.ℍ

ೄྀ࿐Corpse x Female Reader ೄྀ࿐Genre: Dark Academia ೄྀ࿐Warnings: Mention of: blood, knife + small wounds inflicted, alcohol, smoking/cigarettes, a toxic relationship (not with Corpse) ೄྀ࿐Word count: 3.1K+ ೄྀ࿐Summary: Willow Creek Academy is full of mysteries, or so you find out when you are unwillingly iniated into a secret society with none other than your boyfriend’s best friend, Corpse. Secrets are kept, tensions rise high, and you are in the middle of it all. Together with Corpse, you have to find a way to leave the society and make it out alive while staying under the radar when you find yourselves the primary suspects in a murder case.

Introduction and Masterlist | Playlist | Pinterest Board Request a fic/hc | Join my Discord server | Buy me a Ko-Fi

AUTUMN, SEMESTER 1

“Where the fuck am I?” you mumble, your voice loud in the silence of the room. Warm skin brushes against your own. It makes you shiver. A blindfold is tightly wound around your eyes and your arms are restrained in front of you, trying to move doesn’t help so you stay seated on your knees.

The air is stifling and you wonder if it’s because of your panicked state or because of the dustiness of the room itself. It smells like spilled wine, cigarette smoke, books collecting dust on the shelves. You wonder if you’re in the academy’s library but you doubt it. The librarian would have never agreed to holding hostages in there, the books were too precious to risk ruination.

Your boyfriend, James, had invited you to meet him under the big oak tree on the campus’ edge in the late evening. You often study there, a red pen between your teeth for taking notes, the grass pricking into your thighs familiarly. James rarely sits with you there to study; he finds the grass stains not worth the peacefulness of the rustling of the wind through the leaves, the birds happily chirping in the background to keep you company. He rather studies elsewhere and you wonder if this was the place he frequents.

You should have realised that when James asked you to meet him there, it was suspicious behaviour. But you had trusted him wholly and now you’re here, on your knees, another person next to you in probably the same position. You wonder if James had something to do with this. You don’t have to wonder for long. The blindfold is ripped away from your eyes and you blink rapidly to get rid of the spots that float in front of them. You don’t see much but hooded figures looming over you dangerously, objects in hand that you can’t quite make out. You glance to the side then and make out curly hair, a collared shirt with a chain dangling against the brown sweater layered above. It glints in the light of the candles surrounding you.

“Sol Omnia Regit.”

“What is happening?” you ask, thrashing around a little in your restraints. A hooded figure suddenly leans close and shushes you. There is a split second where you think you recognise the figure’s eyes but then the person is moving away again, leaving you with a pounding heart.

Someone leans forward again, sticking out a hand behind themselves to signal something. An object is pressed into their hand and then held out to you. For second, you think it’s a knife or a gun, something to kill you with. There was no other explanation for why you were here but some crazy ritual that you fell victim to. But then...

"Drink," the person tells you and a crystal glass filled with a dark liquid is pressed to your lips. Blood? you think but when it’s finally pushed past your lips and tilted so you can’t do anything but drink, it proves to be wine. The bitter taste doesn’t leave your mouth even though the glass does.

Another figure crouches down in front of you then, something long glinting in the candlelight. It takes you a few seconds to recognise the object but it’s unmistakably a knife and it’s inching closer to your bound hands. You look up to the hooded figure in panic and the familiar eyes are back, this time they’re closer than before and you can place them easily. “James?” you whisper, your voice hoarse and shaking. James would never hurt you, right? He is your boyfriend, he loves you…

Does he?

Did he ever?

Your mind races as your hands are tugged up so your wrists can rest in the familiar hand which you hold daily. It usually doesn’t feel quite as malicious, sometimes it does, never with other people around.

The person next to you, Corpse, you’re guessing, is holding his breath when you hold it. He can probably see the knife too, twisting expertly in James’ hand. Without deigning you with a response, James cuts into the palm of your hand and you hiss at the sting, You want to say that it is stupid to cut someone there, the palm of a hand has too many nerve endings and you could do a lot of damage but the deed has already been done.

Your palm is pressed against a sheet of paper with writing that you can’t quite make out and you realise that it is a contract. It’s unethical, you try to protest, you can’t make someone sign something they haven’t read, but you’re pushed back again and Corpse sucks in his breath next to you.

"Welcome to Sol Regnum, Y/N and Corpse. You have completed your initiation."

The lights are turned on and you squint against the sudden brightness blinding you. It takes you a few moments before you can finally look around again, the figures clad fully in black with golden threads running through the mantels they’re wearing finally take off their hoods and James is smirking down at you both.

“My girlfriend and best friend, finally initiated,” he says, opening his arms as if he has just won the greatest victory. It feels nothing like that.

You exchange a look with Corpse, one filled with confusion and worry, before you let your eyes wander around the room. Heavy curtains hang in front of the tall windows, blocking out every possible source of light from the outside. Even the moon can’t shine through. The room is cast in shadows from the now dulled lighting. Your eyes are used to the light again and it is not as bright as it was when someone had snapped them on. The lights have a yellow cast over them, making everyone look just a little bit sick. There are books strewn around the room, the bookcases, which run along one big wall, are all stuffed full so the makeshift piles of books in the corners are there not for aesthetic purposes, but for necessity. Broken busts sit on the floor sadly, some missing a nose, other half of their head. You wonder if it’s a metaphor for something, if the busts represent the brokenness of the secret society you were now initiated in.

Everything is starting to make sense now. How James had often disappeared at night, leaving you alone in his bed, wondering if he was with another girl. How there were whispers in the hallway wherever you went as of late, something you had blamed on your own insecurities haunting you rather than real people doing so. How James had looked at you in a way that sent shivers down your spine and not in a good way. It had felt malicious, like there was something waiting for you that you didn’t know anything about. But he did, he probably planned the whole thing.

Corpse is back up on his feet before you are and he rounds up on James, pulling him into a corner of the room with a firm hand. You blindly follow, avoiding the glances that the other members of this society throw you. It feels like they’re evaluating you even past your initiation. You want to scream at them that you never asked for this, that you didn’t even want to be initiated in a society that you know nothing about. You were forced here but you doubt they would care.

“No warning, nothing,” you hear from the corner. Corpse’s hand is still pressing into James’ shoulder, his other hand drumming restlessly on his thigh. There is a lone cigarette sticking out from Corpse’s curly hair, balancing dangerously on his ear. You step closer, take your place next to Corpse where it usually was next to James. You’re on Corpse’s side in this matter, though, and James can know that, no matter what the repercussions were.

You shake your head at James as he laughs good-naturedly. He is the star of the university, the golden boy, the popular guy everyone wants to either have or be friends with. After a year or so of being in a relationship with him, however, you know better than to trust his charismatic laugh, the crinkle in the skin next to his eyes that solidifies his position as the good guy. There was danger in his smile, a certain sense of disingenuousness in the sound of his laughter.

You step closer to Corpse.

“I agree, James. What were you thinking? You never even ask-”

“Why would I?” James asks and steps closer to you, the shadows casting over his face are making him look like he is the villain of a big play, ready to kill the main character.

Corpse, cast as the hero, places himself in front of you, half-shielding you with his body. Corpse’s hands are shaking next to his sides but he’s still there, back straight, shoulders down, his head raised which gives him the advantage of a few inches over James.

“She’s right, you should have asked if we even wanted this.”

“It’s the opportunity of a life-time! This society will ensure that you will have a good future, something to pass down to your children.”

You let a hollow laugh escape and the both of them turn to you. “We’re rich, James. All of us are. There was no need for a fucking society, we’re ensured a good future whether we even graduate or not.”

James shrugs and your hands clench into fists at his nonchalance. You gasp softly when you feel the wound in the palm of your hand. When you open it again, blood rolls from your fingers and drips onto the carpet, just barely missing your shoes. “I’m going back to the dorms,” you say, desperate to get away from the claustrophobic feeling this room gives you. James shakes his head, though, and you stay in place, waiting for him to come up with one good reason for you to stay.

“The party is just getting started,” he says and music begins playing. It sounds as if it is played from an old record, the scratchiness that you would appreciate in other situations doing nothing but grating your ears. James pushes past you and Corpse both and returns with three glasses of the same wine you were forced to drink just minutes ago. It’s pushed into your hands before you can protest. The other members raise their glasses, their eyes on you and Corpse who twitches uncomfortably next to you. It’s a toast but it feels more like a warning of what is to come.

“Come on, Y/N,” James says and wraps an arm around your waist. You shy away from the touch a little but his grip is hard, his fingertips possibly pressing bruises into your skin. “Corpse?” he adds, waiting for Corpse to hesitantly fall in line next to him. You briefly wish he was on your side instead of James’ but shake it off again. There were more important things to focus on.

James insists that they meet the others but every person you meet is not the type of person you would want to be friends with. Arrogance and coldness roll off of them in waves, sending you the clear message that you’re not wanted here. From the way Corpse barely answers the few questions they have for you both, you realise that he feels the same.

You met Corpse when you started dating James. He is James’ best friend after all, or was, depending on how Corpse feels about this all. He was a little shy when you met him, didn’t say a lot but when he opened up a little, he was charming, funny. Most notably, his voice is low, something that is whispered about in the hallways of Willow Creek Academy. Despite what others say about his voice, to you it’s not weird or unusual, it’s soothing, like melted chocolate. A balm for the soul.

Minutes pass by and as the alcohol flows freely, the inhibitions of people are lowered. There is a couple making out on the couch next to you, hands roaming each other’s body in a way that seems too private to be doing in front of a room full of people but nobody even bats an eye.

Corpse is nowhere to be found for a little while but eventually comes back to the loveseat you’re sitting on, pointedly taking James’s place next to you. “When can we leave?” he asks, sipping his wine. You wonder how many he had but you can’t fault him for drinking. You wish you could stomach it yourself.

“I don’t know, soon, I hope,” you answer and look around. There are people dancing to imaginary music that doesn’t match the one playing, people laughing in corners, hands pulling others behind furniture so they are just barely out of sight.

You hear Corpse curse and when your eyes meet his again, they look slightly panicked. There are manicured hands roaming down his chest for a second before Corpse is standing again, holding out his hand to you in a clear message that you happily read correctly.

Corpse helps you up and let’s go right away, something you unconsciously mourn. You would have liked to have Corpse’s hand in your own for a little bit longer. The touch of someone semi-familiar in a room filled with strange people would keep you from freaking out as you wade through the partying people.

Something in this all reminds you of a bacchanal; wine, freedom, ecstasy. It seems to live in the various people here, even James isn’t untouched as his tie is halfway down his chest when you find him, his body moving close with someone else.

You rarely get jealous but something about this leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

“We’re going,” Corpse announces and tries to pull away when James reaches out to catch his arm, he’s too slow. James whispers something to Corpse and you watch as his expression changes. You don’t dare to ask when you are led back outside. Corpse’s expression is thunderous and it only relaxes when he pulls out his cigarette from behind his ear with shaky fingers and lits it.

You watch as the smoke bellows and floats up to the sky in figures you try to form recognisable shapes out of. Corpse passes his cigarette to you and you happily take it, feeling the pressure of an impending migraine disappear a little.

“That was… Something,” you say for a lack of better words. Corpse nods but doesn’t say more. He doesn’t need to. You both know that it was insane what happened, you’re both scared for what this secret society will bring in the future, you both worry about the contract you couldn’t read in the privacy of your own minds.

Corpse passes the house which holds the male dorms and keeps walking next to you to the other end of the campus. You thank him softly, he nods in recognition. No place is safe for a woman to walk alone and with Corpse you feel strangely safe.

The early autumn leaves crunch under your shoes when you walk, your footsteps loud in the quiet of the evening. Your pace matches Corpse’s, though you feel like he’s letting you set the pace so you can keep up with each other.

The building of the women’s dorm is becoming more and more visible the further you walk down the path. It’s sitting stately behind a lush garden you often tend to in your free time, as do the other girls in the building. It brings liveliness into the place which is made solely out of brick outside of it. It’s an old building, you don’t know for sure what it was before it became a campus but you think it must have been a guest house on the castle grounds.

Corpse walks you to the door and takes a step back when you retrieve your key. You almost invite him up to take care of his hand. Instead you make him promise to take care of it himself.

“What do we do about the society thing?” you ask, stalling a little. You’re scared to be left alone with your thoughts right now. Corpse seems to guess it and leans against the pillar that holds up the front of the house, making no movement to leave.

He shrugs a little and looks off into the distance. You follow his gaze but there is nothing there. “Not much we can do. The contract, though… We need to know what was on there. Maybe we can get out of it.” “I doubt it,” you laugh humourlessly but you nod anyways. “I’d rather see it first than give up immediately. I’m just not sure how to get to it.”

“We could ditch class,” Corpse suggests, a smirk now growing on his face. You know already that Corpse didn’t attend half of the classes that he should but you laugh a little anyways, this time it’s genuine.

“You’re an idiot,” you mumble and Corpse’s smirk grows wider, his eyes twinkling with amusement. “A smart one, though. I don’t think any of them will skip classes, even after a party like tonight.”

“What can I say? I’m a mastermind,” Corpse jokes and pulls out his phone, handing it to you demonstratively. You put in your number on automatic pilot. “Text me when you wake up, we’ll decide on a class together then.”

You accidentally leave a smear of blood behind on Corpse’s phone but he either hasn’t seen it or doesn’t care enough to mention it. “I’ll text you,” you promise and open the door fully now.

There is still laughter in the hallways, soft voices that make you relax a little. You suddenly feel bone tired now that you’re in a place that signifies comfort and rest. Corpse notices and waves you inside.

“Goodnight, Y/N. Take care of your wound.”

You watch Corpse walk away and become one with the darkness before you finally step inside. You sluggishly climb the stairs and make your way to your dorm room, an action that takes longer than it should have. You shrug off your coat and drop it somewhere, you’d care about the crinkles you put in it in the morning. You find your first aid kit in the bathroom and pour some alcohol on the wound. It makes tears spring in your eyes but it’s necessary so you get through it on pure willpower alone. After bandaging the wound, you shed most of your clothes and finally climb into bed. You don’t even have the energy to put out the light before you fall asleep, nightmares dragging you down with them.

𝕋𝔸𝔾𝕃𝕀𝕊𝕋 𝕆ℙ𝔼ℕ:

@headcannonsforlife @katyasrussianaccent @boiled-onionrings @satanhauntedourcats @ravennightingaleandavatempus

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savagenutella46 · 4 years ago

Text

Standing Here With You

A valentine’s day gift for @thecaptainhelm lm. (By the way, I love you so much and you’re amazing) I hope YOU have an awesome eventful day filled with lots of love because you’re such an amazing writer and I love you!!!!!!

Also, @eat0crow , who is moderating the gift exchange! Thank you for all you’ve done!

Everyone has a soulmate.

It's not a notable deal. Though it's something many people cherish and look forward to, it's just as much an ordinary fact as primary color mixing: that's just how the world works.

Blue and yellow mix correspond with each other to produce green; soulmate A and soulmate B each have tattoos to correspond with one another, completing either tattoo on the skin of their other half.

Marinette will be damned if she finds anyone to match her tattoo. She'd loved it as a child, sitting through boring classes with a pout and jittery knees so she could rush home and admire the strange tattoo that covered the length of her inner forearm.

But now, she couldn't find a single thing to be more ashamed about.

Even as she moves halfway across the world from taunting bullies and mind-controlling sociopaths, the damage is done.

Marinette Dupain-Cheng does not want a soulmate.

She does not want to disappoint, to never live up to her soulmates expectations, because, "Your soulmate wouldn't like those pigtails, Marinette." and, "How could someone want a bully like you?"

Marinette does not want to relive her lycée experience, covering her mark every chance she could get so that Lila Rossi wouldn't antagonize whoever was on the other end of her soul line.

She’d watch as other people’s—normal—soul marks started to glow, indicating the one thing soulmarks are responsible for. Marinette witnessed on the sidelines as everyone she knew and had learned to love and lose found their other half, and left her in the dark. Watching, seeing, but never to experience what it was like. To find your soulmate.

Her mark. A white rose hanging upside down at the epiphysis of her radius, petals spread wide against each other, some looked as though they were flowing freely in the air, and some looked as though they were stuck to one another.

A deep red liquid spurting out of the center, running down the limp rose and glazing its petals as it oozes from the center bottom and down the sides of her arm, creating for a unique, yet concerning mosaic upon her forearm.

"Is that blood?" They'd asked, some looking curious, and some looking downright disgusted at the mere sight of her mark. Something that was supposed to be naturally celebrated, not hated and sneered upon. They were convinced she'd be a menace to her soulmate, like soulmates were anything other than fate.

Marinette did not know if it was blood, obviously. There was no superior entity whispering to her at night, informing her of every single petal's weight in grams. Instead, it was easier to have a friend pick apart the dubious meaning of such a cryptic mark, unlike so many others, hers was not so simple.

Kagami, especially, had a great eye for these things. The meticulous thought that girl compartmentalizes for the sole topic is unbelievable at first glance. It's only when you see much more of her, do you understand why she even bothers with soulmarks.

"You wouldn't believe the meaning behind such marks, Marinette. It's only when you start to break the first barrier, do you know." Okay, so, Marinette had no such way with words as the world-class fencer, but she was pretty sure the girl was saying that marks represent people the way names represent their spices.

Salt, for example. You can just tell the flavor of salt by it’s damn name.

“You’re the epitome of innocence, Marinette,—“ Marinette begs to differ, she’s read fanfiction. “But it seems you’ve been hurt, aged more than what a white rose will represent for you. That’s where the blood paints over you, like a parasite.” Marinette furrows her eyebrows at Kagami, a reoccurring gesture that will give her wrinkles by the end of the year, she knows, but it’s Kagami.

They’re sitting in their apartment, high above the Gotham smog and litter they’ve learned to acquaint themselves with, and looking out over the city from their ratty second-hand couch.

—Because Marinette wants to live with someone who will break her finger and then call her stupid and put a cast on it for whatever reason, you feel?

Another twig, green leaves still growing out of it—though, probably not since the severance—blows by their window, spurred on by a lone gust and back down to the ground, plummeting to an unfortunately placed puddle on the pavement.

“Stop moping.” Marinette makes a face.

“I was not moping.”

“You were making that sad face you make when you see a puppy walking by itself on the street. You’re moping. Why?” Marinette huffs in annoyance, and turns to look at her friend, who’s already staring with an exasperated quirked eyebrow.

She flounders for words, making exuberant gestures with her hands as she tries not to look Kagami in the eye.

An audible exhale from the woman. “You’re worried about, what, your soulmate, for whatever reason?”

Marinette looks down at her mark, it’s entrancing rose petals glowing brightly against her skin, almost alike to the glittery sheen of highlighter she so often brushes onto her cheekbones.

“It started glowing last night, Kagami.” Marinette worries her lip and continues to stare at the now pulsing, almost obnoxious glow of her rose, the red liquid that spurts from its center taking on a glamorous shine.

“That’s wonderful. Right?” Kagami adds, when she fails to find a response.

It should be. She knows that. She should be joyous right now, jumping ecstatically and rejoicing at the fact that she might find her soulmate sooner than later, but the ever-impending doom of, ‘what if’ continuously pops up in her brain, muddling any chance of happiness she might’ve had.

Marinette’s psyche is aged. She’s been through things. A lot of things that most people haven’t been through. Deaths, loss of loved ones, reoccurring terrorist attacks, and so much more that puts a haunted look in her eye and a deep hunch in her shoulders. She couldn’t bear to see the look on her soulmate’s face.

Kagami seems to read her mind and makes a low noise in the back of her throat. “Let’s go to the zoo.” So spontaneous, it almost makes Marinette do a double take.

“You? Want to go to the zoo?” She stares at Kagami, the latter unwavering with a borderline determined look on her face that says, ‘Nope. No fighting me on this one.’

“Distraction.” Is all she says, and for once, Marinette agrees that, yes, maybe a distraction is in order.

The Gotham City Zoo proves to be a great distraction, in between the hippo exhibit and the jungle-themed building just for showcasing snakes, Marinette finds a rather warmth in her heart.

Marinette grins widely at the crocodiles lounging across various rocks, seemingly not a care in the world is thrown around in between her and the fenced crocodiles, and she harbors a sort of piece standing alone. (Kagami had ditched her at the zebras for the lions.)

Distantly, she hears what sounds like two people fighting—or, bickering.

“—over here, got bit by a crocodile.” An erupt of laughter from two different voices, one distinct with a low raspy laugh, and the other, who starts hacking nastily in the middle of it.

“Those cigarettes do not benefit you, Todd. This is not a laughable event.” A third voice juts in, and she has to turn her head, locate the source of whoever said that.

Three men, one looking younger than the other two, stand slightly to the right of her in front of the crocodile exhibit, the two older men seem to be laughing at the younger’s expense—how do you even get bitten by a crocodile? She decides to not judge. This is Gotham, after all.

And, oh.

The guy they seem to be laughing at has the brightest green eyes she’s ever seen. Ink black hair frames his face beautifully, as he sneers down at the other two. The stranger doesn’t seem to notice her stare, but it’s cut short anyway by the sudden immense throbbing of her forearm.

Marinette winces, and slowly pulls down her sleeve to see her soul mark is—

Finished. It’s glowing, glowing far more than it had been over the course of the past two days, glowing so much she can barely squint to see that buried deep in the middle of her rose, a pristine dagger.

Marinette’s eyes widen, and she can’t help but make an incoherent sound that fights its way up her throat.

A tap on her shoulder, and she turns around to see the boy she was shamelessly staring at is right in front of her, and, woah, he’s tall. Marinette cranes her head up to look at the boy who so quickly grabbed her attention.

He also has the prettiest blush on his face, his eyes darting in between her and his companions, who seem to be laughing even harder, and in the distance, she hears a crude nickname being thrown at him.

“Holy shit, Demon Brat actually has a soulmate—“ a sentence cut off by more wheezing laughter, so she turns her gaze back to the boy in front of her.

“I’m Damian, you’re...soulmate.” The last word comes out wonky, like he couldn’t believe his own words, but she understands. He’s staring at Marinette now, bright green gaze fixed so intently on her, and she can’t help but blush, herself.

“Marinette. I figured, actually, when my arm started to sting like a bitch.” She says, once her mouth finally aligns with her brain and she gets the courage to say something relevant to smart.

Damian cracks a small smile, and she finds herself following the gesture with her eyes. It’s a beautiful movement, one she can tell is foreign to him, a shame.

And she doesn’t feel jittery. More at peace, looking at the equally aged look deep in his eyes, and the mark right in the middle of her forearm, she can guess he’s been through a hell of a lot, maybe more than she has.

Marinette will spend a lifetime learning what lies behind his exterior, looking at him now.

She supposes this soulmate thing won’t be too hard, after all, even as the two men behind them keep bickering and laughing at their predicament in front of the crocodile exhibit.

#maribatdrabbleexchange #maribat #daminette #mlb x dc #damian x marinette #marinette dupain cheng #damian

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counterturn · 2 years ago

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Hello. I am the average American. That may or may not be true; I say it only because it represents the way I feel about myself. I am a good person. I know everyone says that, so I keep the worries of being a bad person away by performing gestures of societally-deemed good actions when opportune. I try to align myself with what those around me say is good, regardless of how little I understand it, and allow this social pressure to supercede any notion of my ‘own’ thoughts, as I would rather be flatly good than genuine. In my eyes, this saccharine facade is my true self. In spite of this, my primary drive is comfort, not good. On an adventurous day, I might order the mild sauce. No alarms and no surprises. My life is calm, I do my job, I pay my taxes, and when necessary (and rarely ever otherwise) I align myself with good. I do not have truly strong feelings in any direction about most polemics. I consider this lack of opinion to be level-headedness, and will espouse it as one of my virtues. In my real mind, things are good or bad in the degree to which they upset me, and I will not go out of my way to question from whence these feelings manifest. I support gay marriage because that’s what good people do. When pressed, I will buckle under pressure to avoid confrontation. I equate peace with calm. Conflict, being the opposite of calm, is what I view as evil. I view protests as universally negative regardless of why they are happening because they raise tension and upset peace. If asked by people who are good, I will admit that a given protest has good meaning behind it, but will always add that I disagree with the disruptive methods. I view Martin Luther King Jr. as a hero because he accomplished something I have come to understand as good through nonviolence. Malcolm X, if I have heard of him, is bad because he was not willing to commit to peace. These two sentences are the beginning and end of my understanding of the Civil Rights movements, and I have no problem with this, nor any desire to dig deeper. I like Biden, Obama, and Hillary Clinton. I agree with much of what Bernie Sanders has to say, as it seems to be along the lines of what is good, but I don’t like how often he says the word revolution. I support workers, but I don’t support striking. I dislike Trump because he is too aggressive and causes others to behave in the same way. If my family had voted for John McCain, I probably would have done so too. I have no personal problems with Lil Nas X, although I wish he wasn’t so provocative. Making people uncomfortable is bad regardless of who or for what reason. I don’t think there should be kink at pride, and if there were to be a straight pride parade (and I don’t see any reason why that shouldn’t be allowed), I also wouldn’t want for there to be any kink there. I support gay marriage, but I don’t understand why gay people can’t just dress normally.

When someone on the left gets mad at me for my opinions, I often don’t understand. I go out of my way not to make people angry, but that never seems to be enough for them. I avoid being racist. I don’t have a problem with gay people. I wouldn’t want my child to be trans, but I would accept them if they were. They still get angry and call me names, just like the Trump supporters do. I see both right-wing and left-wing extremism as equally bad because of the conflict they have with one another. Neither are content to leave well enough alone. I do not support the status quo. I think the world needs fixing. But it must be done without conflict. One step at a time, and following the rules. No alarms and no surprises, please. I see no problem with this worldview.

i like the wording of the question "do you think homosexuality is always justified, sometimes justified, etc..." who said, "i think homosexuality is sometimes justified"

#people are not so simple of course #but you might think this strawman was pinnochio #given how often you see him walking around

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lesbianflaghistory · 5 years ago

Photo

Seeing a lot of misinformation flying around regarding lesbian flags this year, particularly the pink one, so here’s my attempt to set the record straight!

FAQ/Common Misconceptions and Sources are listed below the cut - if anything in this post contradicts what you’ve heard, I’d encourage you to read through them before responding.

Please DO NOT promote flag redesigns on this post :)

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UPDATE 2 (2021):

First of all, a long-overdue note that @moral-autism kindly transcribed the bulk of this infographic here, for anyone looking for a text-only version!

Secondly, I have been contacted by @kiloueka, who created/uploaded the high resolution “Pink Flag” to the Pride-Flags DeviantArt account in 2015. They clarified that they did not independently leave out the lipstick mark to create a general lesbian flag, but had previously seen a kiss-less version in a tumblr post (likely one of the ones linked in the update below).

UPDATE: New Information

@deadicateddeath brought my attention to the existence of this pride flag compilation post on Tumblr, published 8 December 2013. This is now, to my knowledge, the earliest record of the pink stripes featured without the kiss mark. The same blog made another post (10 January 2014) which featured the pink flag and claimed that it was seeing use at the time.

I am extremely interested to know if there is any evidence of pre-2015 use of the pink flag outside of this blog, as I was unable to find any during my research.

Additionally, some people feel I have downplayed the extent of the labrys’s usage. As above, I included a note to acknowledge the prevalence of the symbols used in the labrys flag (separately and in combination), but this post is specifically focussed on flag designs, and I can’t find any indication of a labrys flag itself (whether Sean Campbell’s design, or a separate design) seeing much use pre-2015.

I would be extremely interested to see any evidence of this flag being used pre-2012, something which I did hunt for but could not find.

If you have any sources regarding either of these issues, please send them my way! I am 100% open to correction and clarification, provided it can be factually backed up.

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FAQ/Common Misconceptions & Source Requests

So... what flag should we use?

My primary motivation in making this was to clear up misinformation, not to tell anyone what flag to use. Use your own judgement, even make your own if you want, just don’t get stressed out if your flag isn’t “the” flag and remember that flag colours are not the only avenue through which to show pride!

The lipstick lesbian flag is an edited version of the pink flag, which is the original.

There is no evidence to support this. The lipstick lesbian flag had been documented online for years prior to the pink flag, as explained above.

The lipstick mark was removed to make the flag more inclusive.

There’s no proof of this - as explained above, the first instance of the mark being “removed” (i.e. not included) was due to it being too complex to easily convert into a high resolution image.

The pink flag is, and has always been, “the” lesbian flag.

The pink flag has only been in semi-common usage since 2016, and its use is still mostly confined to younger online communities.

The rainbow flag is the gay (man) flag.

The rainbow flag [32] was created by Gilbert Baker in 1978 to represent the LGBT community as a whole (I used his original 8-stripe design in the final panel). It does not belong exclusively to gay men, and it does represent lesbians. Please stop framing it like this:

when it’s actually like this:

This doesn’t mean we can’t have a specific flag for the lesbian community, but it’s not the case that we need to scramble the fill the gap left by a “missing” flag. Stop reading malice into my words... lmao.

The creator of the the lipstick lesbian flag/the labrys flag is a TERF.

I can’t find any information on Sean Campbell that would suggest this, and while a cursory browse through Natalie McCray’s social media did turn up some casual cissexism, nothing indicates she was a TERF. If you have sources that show otherwise, please send them my way!

What is a “Lipstick Lesbian”?

A feminine lesbian, and by many definitions, one who only dates other feminine lesbians. Natalie McCray’s edits to the Lipstick Lesbian Wikipedia page under the name “Nmdesigns” [7] show that she subscribed to the femme4femme definition.

Why don’t you want people to promote flag redesigns on this post?

This post was created to dispell misinformation and explore the online trails of lesbian flags prior to 2017. I don’t want to tell other people what flag to use, nor do I want others to use this post as a platform to tell other people what flag to use, because that’s not the purpose of this post.

I’m not a lesbian, can I reblog this?

I don’t mind who shares this, but if you want to add commentary as someone ouside the lesbian community, please think carefully on whether or not it is relevant or appropriate.

Can I repost this on Twitter/Facebook/etc?

I don’t mind, but I’d strongly recommend including a link back to this post in order to preserve the sources.

Actually, there is an official/agreed upon flag! It’s ______.

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Sources

Scupham-Bilton, Tony. "Putting Out Sean Campbell’s Flags”. The Queerstory Files, 21 June 2012. [archive]

Bayley, Clare. “A Field Guide to Pride Flags”. Clare Bayley, 27 June 2013. [2014 archive] [2015 update archive]

@lovemystarfire. “LGBT Community Terminology and Flags”. DeviantArt, 18 April 2014. [archive]

Volcano, Del Lagrace. And the March Stops. 1988. Photograph. Lesbian Herstory Archives. London [archive]

McCray, Natalie. “Lipstick Lesbian Pride!!!”. This Lesbian Life, 28 July 2010. [archive]

File:Lipstick Lesbian Pride Flag.jpg @ Wikimedia Commons [archive]

Lipstick lesbian: Revision history @ Wikipedia [archive]

LGBT symbols: Revision history @ Wikipedia [archive]

@darciam. “Pride United - Button Set”. DeviantArt, 27 August 2012. [archive]

@LeiAndLove. “Ultimate LGBTQ Flag Guide”. DeviantArt, 17 July 2011. [archive]

McCray, Natalie. “The Official Lipstick Lesbian Flag”. This Lesbian Life, 4 August 2014. [archive]

McCray, Natalie. The Official Lipstick Lesbian Pride Flag, retrieved 1 June 2016. [archive]

@Pride-Flags @ DeviantArt [archive]

@Pride-Flags. “Pride-Flags’s DeviantArt Gallery (page 138)”. DeviantArt, retrieved 5 June 2019. [archive]

@Pride-Flags. “Lesbian”. DeviantArt, 7 October 2015. [archive]

@Pride-Flags. “Lesbian Labrys”. DeviantArt, 7 October 2015. [archive]

@Pride-Flags. “Lipstick Lesbian”. DeviantArt, 25 December 2016. [archive]

@emtmercy. “the lesbian flag is so cute...”. Tumblr, 11 March 2016. [archive]

@sappharah. “the lesbian flag is so cute...”. Tumblr, 27 March 2016. [archive]

@sappharah. “the lesbian flag is so pretty...”. Tumblr, 8 June 2016. [archive]

@allukazaoldyeck. “sorry this should be my last...”. Tumblr, 30 June 3017. [archive]

@allukazaoldyeck. “Lesbian Flag Poll Data Results”. Tumblr, 7 June 2018. [archive]

@which-lesbian-flag. “The Lesbian Flag Survey”. Tumblr, 21 July 2018. [archive]

@taqwomen. “Lesbian Flag Colors”. Tumblr, 26 July 2018. [archive]

@official-lesbian-flag. “Official Lesbian Flag Poll”. Tumblr, 30 June 2018. [archive]

@creatoroflesflagisracist. “Commercial Lesbian Flag Poll (please only lesbians vote)”. Tumblr, 14 December 2018. [archive]

Lydia. “A Lesbian Flag for Everyone”. Medium, 27 June 2018. [archive]

McCray, Natalie. “My Worst Date Ever”. This Lesbian Life, 18 July 2010. [original archive] [2018 updated archive]

@thislesbianlife. “The second season of the real l word has too many butches”. Twitter, 16 May 2011. [archive]

@thislesbianlife. “Why don’t butches shave their armpits!!! IT’S DISGUSTING! Even men trim it!”. Twitter, 8 January 2011. [archive]

McCray, Natalie. “The 10 Worst Things About Being A Lipstick Lesbian”. This Lesbian Life, 18 July 2010. [archive]

Baker, Gilbert. Rainbow Flag. 1978. Nylon. Museum of Modern Art. New York. [link]

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Credit

Font: Pixellari by Zacchary Dempsey-Plante [x]

Pile of Flags:

(NOTE: This is by no means an exhaustive list of recent redesigns, nor am I interested in curating such a list. I am having difficulty tracking down the original posts for 17 and 31, if you recognise them please get in touch!)

[x]

[x] *

[x]

[x] *

[x]

* Indicates that the original post has been deleted, and a reblogged version of it has been archived instead.

#lesbian flag #lesbian #lesbian history #lesbian pride #lesbiansafe

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kotokoharrow · 4 years ago

Text

Case Study 001: Haruka Sakurai

Note that this analysis is based around my own views. I do not present my way of interpreting Haruka as fact, and I am sharing this to see if others agree with me. If you disagree, you are more than welcome to say so and we can discuss it!

Content Warning: This analysis contains discussion of: Animal abuse and death, child abuse and death, emotional abuse, child neglect, murder, flashbacks and nightmares. Please proceed with caution if you are sensitive to any of these topics!

Evidence List:

Haruka’s Profile

Haruka’s Voice Drama

Undercover

Weakness

Two Breaths Walking

Voice Line

Timeline Convo

Character Analysis

A young male prisoner, quiet with downcast eyes. During Es’ early interrogations, he offered only a few constrained words in response. However, he has gradually become more talkative, forming an emotional bond over the course of his interviews. Once one begins to converse with him, his gentle pre-disposition is revealed.

He has a meek temperament and, even in Milgram, does not appear to be dissatisfied. Barely manages to communicate with Es and the other prisoners. However, during conversations, as if some meaning is lost along the way, there is a disconnect.

Haruka is a teenager with a very low opinion of himself, shown in his attitude in his voice drama and the lyrics of his song. When he appears in Undercover, he is shown wringing his hands together, avoiding looking at the camera, and when he finally does shows an unhappy expression. These pieces of his body language show that he is an anxious boy.

Haruka doesn’t appear to be very bright, with his song being written in hiragana, and he struggles to follow along with everything that Es says to him in his voice drama. He even says himself that he isn’t very bright. However, this is likely a result of his mother’s treatment of him, as he hasn’t been allowed to develop as he should have.

The shot in Undercover that shows his room shows young children’s toys on the floor. This, along with his speech patterns, show that he remains in a child’s mindset, despite being 17 years old. I believe that this is due to him becoming ‘stuck’ at an age where he experienced a traumatic event as a child - the event that revolved around fireworks and the girl in his MV.

Haruka’s primary motivation is love. He was neglected and emotionally abused by his mother his whole life, and so has been deprived of the love that most people receive from their parents. Despite love being his motivation, he shows in his interrogation questions that he doesn’t really understand what it is - he just knows that he wants it.

While his primary motivation is love, Haruka’s primary fear is abandonment. He is also afraid of being deceived, which again ties into his fear of abandonment. Haruka believes that everyone will leave him when they learn what he has done, and also believes that he will bring misfortune to others. This belief of bringing misfortune to others is likely a belief that his mother gave to him.

Haruka avoids situations and things that remind him of his trauma, such as animals and small children. This, as well as imagery in his MV, his mother’s treatment of him and his general personality, lead me to believe that he experiences PTSD.

The kanji in his given name means ‘far’ or ‘distant’, which likely references his personality, and the fact that he finds it difficult to get close to and communicate with others, due to having been deprived of connections for most of his life.

MV Analysis

I believe that Weakness takes place after Haruka has committed his crimes, and that it’s showing events from his past in the form of nightmares and flashbacks, which is why they appear distorted and there is heavy symbolism. As a result of this, even what we see in the MV is ambiguous as to whether it really happened, as dreams are not always literal and even with flashback-type nightmares, key facts can appear different to what happened in reality.

At the beginning of the MV, we see Haruka sitting in front of a dressing table, looking at himself in the mirror. The table is likely his mothers, as the perfume bottles on it seem to belong to a woman. Behind Haruka, we can see a window that shows that it’s daytime, but when his reflection in the mirror changes into his younger self, we can see that it is night-time outside (with red sky and a full moon). As the image changes, I believe this is Haruka experiencing a flashback, or perhaps a sign that he is having a nightmare.

I also believe that Haruka experiences PTSD as a result of his mother being emotionally abusive and neglectful towards him. I believe that this mistreatment when he was a young child explains a lot of his current personality - his behaviour fits in well with the behaviours of people who survive emotional abuse (doubting his own perception of things, a very strong negative opinion of himself, fear of abandonment).

There are many lyrics in Weakness that I believe point towards Haruka’s mother being emotionally abusive. The notable ones to me are: ‘Tell me, why are you drifting away from me? / Tell me, why do you say it’s my fault?’ and ‘If I tried and couldn’t say it / You would get angry at me and say “You’re hopeless”’. I believe that these lyrics are directed at Haruka’s mother.

As for imagery in the MV, when Haruka initially falls backwards from the dressing table, he falls into the liquid from his mother’s perfume, which shows how her treatment of him has surrounded him. Later, while he’s walking alongside her happily, she barely looks back down at him, and when adult Haruka pushes his younger self back, the following image is shown:

I believe the drawing in the background is meant to be Haruka’s mother, and his cruel treatment of his younger self is meant to show that he has internalised his mother’s abuse, going on to blame and punish himself for what he believes she would blame and punish him for.

Later, it shows Haruka as a child watching the fireworks with a girl his own age, whose face is blacked out like his mother’s. While it’s not clear what exactly happened, something bad happened to the girl, and she vanished from his life.

This is pure speculation, but I don’t think that Haruka killed the girl. I think something bad happened to her - possibly she even died - and that Haruka blames himself for what happened, whether fairly or unfairly. I believe that what happened was traumatic to Haruka, and he tried to avoid thinking about the bad part by focusing on his memory of the fireworks, which is a part of his denial.

Later, Haruka is petting a dog with his mother. Then, he goes outside to search for the dog, and comes across the dog’s body. Initially, I believed that Haruka had killed the dog, and I still think that this is a highly likely theory, as yellow roses are seen (which in flower language used to represent jealousy), and the lyrics that play during this point are ‘You praised me by saying “You’re crazy” / Thank you, I’ll do my best’ which, to me, alludes to children acting out for attention when they are being neglected, because due to the lack of positive attention they begin to see all forms of attention as a good thing, including negative attention.

However, in the timeline conversations, there is an exchange between Haruka and Shidou where Haruka has bloodied hands, and he tells a concerned Shidou that it comes from a bad habit of his, that when he’s tense he clenches his fists and his nails dig into his palms, causing them to appear bloodied.

Shidou: Sakurai-kun...? Could you show me your hand? Haruka: Hei!? No, this isn’t... it’s n-nothing... Shidou: Lend it to me. ...Your palm is covered in blood. Let’s have it disinfected. This... has it always been like this? Haruka: A-ah... I-it’s a habit... W-When I feel tense I grip my hands really tight, and my nails...

This detail has caused me to wonder if Haruka didn’t actually kill the dog. We see child Haruka looking for the dog nervously, and then appearing horrified when he finds the dogs corpse, then he looks down at his hands and sees blood on them. We also only see adult Haruka bludgeoning the dog. It’s common for people with PTSD to re-experience trauma from different perspectives, or with details changed, so it’s possible that Haruka did not kill the dog.

However, at this point, I think either explanation could be possible, so I’ll leave both of those theories here and move on.

Later, when it shows adult Haruka strangling child Haruka, I believe that this is when Haruka’s Milgram murder takes place. Before he begins strangling his child self, he is seen looking at a memory of himself being ignored by his mother, and becomes enraged, lashing out at his child self and strangling him, seemingly in an act of self-loathing.

However, I believe that Haruka is actually murdering his mother, having finally snapped and let out all of his repressed feelings. After the murder is over, I believe that Haruka was so horrified by what he did, he went into denial - which is something he has practice from doing his whole life - and the details of what he did became distorted.

In conclusion, I believe the following:

The MV takes the form of Haruka’s nightmares, which is why it’s ambiguous, unreliable and distorted

Haruka was emotionally abused and neglected by his mother since childhood

Haruka didn’t kill the girl, but he does blame himself for what happened to her

EITHER: Haruka killed the dog to try and get his mother to notice him, OR Haruka didn’t kill the dog but still in some way blames himself for the dog’s death

Haruka killed his mother directly due to his repressed feelings of anger towards her for abusing and neglecting him

Haruka is horrified by what he did, and on some level is in denial of the facts of what happened

Misc Analysis

Undercover

Haruka’s bedroom has toys that would be more appropriate in the bedroom of a young child. This shows that he is mentally stuck in a child-like state. Interestingly, there is also a drawing of a tree with two snakes that also appears during his MV. I don’t know what this means.

Haruka is shown strangling Es, which backs up the idea that Haruka’s murder happened when he was shown strangling his child self. Haruka’s mouth is wide open, showing that his murder involved heightened emotion on his part. This wasn’t a cold and calculated murder, this was a spur-of-the-moment response to something.

Interrogation Questions

I’m picking a few notable interrogation questions to analyse. In general, though, Haruka’s answers were much simpler than Yuno’s, which shows his child-like mindset and difficulty in understanding things.

Q: If one of your wishes could be granted, what would it be? A: I want to be loved.

Pretty straightforwards. This shows Haruka’s core motivation is to be loved.

Q: When was your first love? A: I don’t know.

Q: What’s the difference between romantic love and just love? A: Don’t they both mean that you like someone?

Q: What’s your ideal date plan? A: I don’t understand.

Despite his core motivation being wanting to be loved, Haruka doesn’t understand much about love, due to having been deprived of it his whole life.

Q: What kind of person is your father? A: I disappointed him.

This is the only time we hear of Haruka’s father. I’d guess that his mother blamed Haruka for his father leaving them, and that’s why he believes that he disappointed his father.

Q: Have you ever had a pet before? A: I have not.

Q: What is your favourite animal? A: I don’t like animals.

Q: What are some things you can’t deal with? A: Small children and animals.

Haruka denies any incident that was traumatic to him.

Q: What do you think of your family? A: I love them.

Despite having been deprived of love from his mother, he still says he loves them.

Q: Tell us what you enjoy doing. A: I like talking with the other prisoners.

Haruka talks about what he’s been doing since coming to Milgram, which implies that he didn’t have much he enjoyed doing beforehand.

Two Breaths Walking

A song about a boy meeting a girl. The girl tries to teach the boy about life, but due to the boy’s mother having taught him about life wrongly, he struggles to understand, and as a result ends up hurting the girl.

With Haruka as the boy, the girl in his MV as the girl, and his mother as the boy’s mother, this directly parallels Haruka’s MV. There isn’t much to talk about, because the parallels are pretty direct. It backs up the idea that Haruka’s mother was abusive, teaching him wrongly through her abuse and neglect.

Voice Drama

Es: Now, let’s begin the interrogation. Prisoner Number 1, Haruka. Haruka: O-Okay… I-I’m sorry… Es: Huh? Do you have something to apologise for? Haruka: U-uh, no… I’m sorry.

This shows us Haruka’s submissive personality. This kind of apologising for any perceived fault is very common in survivors of emotional abuse, because they learnt in the abusive environment that their abuser could find fault in anything, and to lower the severity of abuse, they would apologise. However, as this level of apologising isn’t needed or expected in regular situations, when it carries over it stands out.

Haruka: Ah, uh, um… I didn’t understand whatever it was you were saying. It was difficult. Es: Huh? Haruka: Uh, um… I’m sorry. I’m not that bright. Es: Haruka. What age are you? Haruka: Um… 17 years old, I think. Es: You think? Haruka: Uh, well… I have no interest in my age… I’m sorry.

Haruka isn’t used to having to think for himself, which is also common in survivors of emotional abuse. Abusers try to make their victims dependent on them, they may try to make decisions for their victims, or in the case of abusive parents may speak for them and deprive their children of the ability to develop. Taking into account Haruka’s cover song, I think it’s likely that this was the case with his mother.

Es: The only name left that hasn’t been said is Amane. Haruka: A-Amane. Es: What’s wrong? Haruka: I-I’m not good with them. Children at that age. A-Amane is a good girl, but she brings back b-bad memories.

This is most likely referring to whatever happened with the girl in Haruka’s MV. Haruka avoids thinking about traumatic incidents, even in his nightmares he avoids the details of them. Avoiding triggers of traumatic events is a symptom of PTSD.

Haruka: It’ll happen sometime. I… I… Even though I try to be normal, everything gets ruined. You, everyone, if you knew me… If you knew everything that I did… I’m… gonna be abandoned, that’s bound to happen. Because I’m a selfish killer.

Due to his abuse, Haruka solely blames himself for everything that happens. It’s likely that his mother blames him even for things that weren’t his fault, so this thought process stuck. Haruka’s primary motivation is love, and his biggest fear is abandonment.

Glitched Voice Line

Then what should I have done instead!? Tell me! Tell me so even I can understand!

I believe that this line from Haruka is addressed to his mother who he killed. He felt that he had no way to gain her love, and he is looking to her to tell him what to do.

Other Theories

Twin Theory

A theory I’ve seen says that the child in Haruka’s MV isn’t Haruka as a child, and is actually his twin. I don’t think we have any evidence to support this. I think that, given how much of Haruka’s MV is made up with abstract imagery, we should be careful with interpreting it too literally.

Autistic Haruka Theory

I have no issue with people seeing Haruka as being autistic, however, all of the theories about him being autistic seem to come from an outdated view of autism. I am autistic myself, and while I can recognise a lot of autistic traits in Haruka’s behaviour, I don’t think autism is what they were going for. I think that Haruka’s ‘autistic traits’ are, instead, supposed to show that he’s in a child-like mentality after a trauma that took place in his childhood, and that his behaviour has been strongly influenced by his abusive mother. I believe we have evidence that points towards this specifically, but no evidence that points specifically towards Haruka being autistic.

Unexplained

Why does Haruka say that his hands bleed when he’s nervous and what connection does that have to the blood on his hands in the MV?

What is the significance of the necklace that Haruka wears?

What is the significance of the girl in the MV?

What happened while watching the fireworks?

Did Haruka kill the girl?

What’s the significance of the tree and the snakes?

Final Verdict

My Verdict: Innocent.

I’m very glad that the popular vote determined that Haruka was innocent! My major reasons for this are:

1. His MV is the most abstract right now - it’s unclear exactly what happened, so any judgement based on his crime is going to be difficult. 2. For Haruka to open up more, I think he needs to be reassured that he will not be abandoned. I think that Haruka’s second MV will give us more details, because we have reassured him that he will not be abandoned.

Thank you for reading this ridiculously long thing! I hope to write these for all of the prisoners, and eventually catch up to where we currently are with the voting! If you enjoyed my analysis, please consider sharing so it can reach a wider audience!

#milgram #haruka sakurai #sakurai haruka #deco 27 #deco27 #analysis #mine

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shihalyfie · 3 years ago

Text

I’m a diehard 02 fan who does not want a reboot and never wanted a reboot, and here’s why

This is one of my few editorial-esque pieces, but this is something some friends and I have been discussing for a while, and given what’s going on right now, I feel like this needs to be said at some point.

Sometimes I feel like there’s a really massive gap between what 02 fans want (especially diehard ones) and what people think 02 fans want. I'm not saying that media should only be catering to hardcore fans, and if more casual fans of 02 or people who simply just happen to have a stake in the full franchise have their own opinions on what they wanted to see out of 02-related media, that’s perfectly fine, and they have a right to have those expectations. What I’m mainly writing this about is sentiments that talk about how Toei is apparently doing 02 a disservice or sweeping it under the bus by not rebooting it (which basically comes with an implication that giving it respect would mandate it being rebooted just because Adventure was), or talking about how doing a reboot would please 02 fans just by giving their favorite characters more rep. (Although, I suppose the simultaneous reveal of an actual 02-related movie kind of killed any grounds for claiming that the lack of a 02 reboot meant sidelining 02. You can’t really claim that they’re sidelining 02 when they’re making a whole movie, after all...)

Of course, I don’t claim to speak for every single 02 fan out there (so if you’re a 02 fan who doesn’t agree with anything I’m about to say, I apologize and hope I don’t sound presumptuous), and I highly doubt I represent the mainstream, but I felt I should input my perspective as a 02 fan who’s friends with a handful of other 02 fans, who have discussed this extensively and all have the same feelings on the topic, and why it’s kind of frustrating to keep hearing this kind of thing from people who assume that all fans of something should want to see more things that resemble them by default without any more nuance to it.

It won’t actually improve much that’s worth it

I’m going to be blunt about it: I think more people who supposedly want this 02 reboot are people who hate or dislike 02 than people who actually are fans of the series, because they’re doing this under the sentiment that “this was a bad series, so a redo would improve it.” You can especially tell because a lot of people acting like a reboot is in 02′s best interest are the same people being scathingly critical of the current Adventure: reboot right now, so you can see that this kind of mentality comes from people who clearly understand that a reboot won’t necessarily be something everyone likes all that much, and thus believe 02 is so unsalvageably bad that you couldn’t possibly make it worse. So you can probably understand why I’m not exactly patient with this kind of take.

If we are to be charitable, though -- if this sentiment comes out of a genuine feeling that 02 had missed potential that could be addressed by the reboot -- I want to ask everyone if they really believe that this theoretical reboot would be a net improvement, especially one that’s worth all the time and effort involved, and even more especially given the writing style that the current Adventure: reboot is employing. You don’t have to claim it’s a perfect series or anything to understand the sentiment that it held up enough by itself to not necessitate a whole anime series being made to do another take on it.

Something I would like to remind people who love to claim that 02 is such a despised series is that it made around 89% of Adventure’s revenue at the time it aired, and despite those who despise 02 being very vocal on the Internet, the actual mainstream tends to be very positive about it, especially in terms of anything to do with Ken (whom most reasonable people will agree had a character arc that deserves acclaim). So in other words, if you want to do a reboot, most likely you would want to do it without offending the base that likes the series already, right? (Especially since, you know, recent events have proven that upsetting the real-life 02 fanbase is actually a pretty inadvisable idea...)

Here’s the thing: Once you filter out most of the “scapegoat” reasons people tend to criticize 02, the one that’s generally the most agreed upon is how disorganized the plot gets in the second half. So this so-called ideal situation reboot would supposedly iron out all of the messy plot writing and make use of the “wasted potential” the series had -- but 02 was way more than just a narrative storyline with characters walking around in it, and when it comes to the reasons people were so drawn to it, they’re tied to the series themes about regrets and making up for the past, and about the unreasonable pressures that society places on children. That, and also the most important one, the central theme of human relationships, and the charismatic and well-developed (yes, really) characters. The so-called “messier” second half of 02 was full of payoff for a lot of what was set up in the first half in regards to its themes, and a lot of its subplots or character flairs are packed in really small nuances that are easy to miss on the first watch.

What this means is that 02 is a series that works off of a lot of delicate balances. Adventure could be “rebooted” because everything was very clear-cut and straightforward, which meant that you could change almost everything about the plot and still relatively adhere to the primary points of “kids gain self-awareness through a journey in another world”. (Like, I really hate to break it to those who put Adventure on a pedestal, but this is mainly possible because Adventure doesn’t really have much of a plot besides “defeat enemy” followed by “defeat bigger enemy”...) In the case of 02, everything regarding the story is, for better or for worse, much more deeply tied to the plot, the narrative behind the Kaiser and the traces of psychological horror laced into everything, and the second-half evolution mechanic, Jogress, has a lot to do with the developments related to the human relationships narrative. Moreover, a lot of the reasons that people call it “bad” for are deeply tied to the exact same reasons a lot of people like it -- that its takes on certain topics were heavily nuanced and unconventional, meaning it could cover ground that most media wouldn’t go anywhere near -- and so the series loses too much of its identity if those aspects are removed, even if it ostensibly seems like “streamlining” it.

So if you mess with one thing, a lot of it falls apart -- and in fact, considering the writing style that the Adventure: reboot is using right now, it’s hard to imagine that applying it to 02 would make it any better. Actually, it seems like it wouldn’t address any of the grievances anyone has with it to any substantial degree, and it’d be more likely to axe all of the stuff that were integral to 02′s identity, like the social commentary, or the heavy focus on human relationships, or the unusual sort of character nuance it employed, and...basically, we go back to the same question: is this actually worth it?

02 itself was about not having this kind of sentiment

The main reason most 02 fans get upset about the 02 characters not being included in Adventure canon-related things that should rightfully include them is that, quite simply, they’re part of the canon! In fact, most 02 fans like Adventure too, so they like the way 02 built on Adventure’s worldbuilding, and moreover they’re attached to the web of relationships between the Adventure and 02 groups -- 02′s additions to Adventure’s worldbuilding and the nature of what it established around the neighborhoods of Odaiba and Tamachi were not only added on but also deeply entangled with what was established before, so you can’t just act like none of it exists!

So this also means that once we’re talking about a completely different universe, absolutely none of this applies and there’s no expectations to adhere to any of this. The 02 quartet doesn’t exist in this universe? Cool.

Funny thing about 02: one of the biggest themes the story revolved around was “not getting caught up in the past, and moving forward with what you have instead,” so it’s probably pretty understandable that a lot of people who like 02 would be the type who wouldn’t be fond of rehashing stuff too much (and even more so it involves 02 itself), especially since being okay with 02 as a sequel likely means being okay with change in general. To make something really new out of it, you might as well...actually make something new out of it, or cover some truly new territory, instead of bothering with this whole reboot business, you know?

One thing you might notice about a lot of 02 fans is that they’re not actually all that fond of the idea of canon putting the group through more massive suffering or emotional ordeals after 02 compared to most. I mean, I think it’s pretty normal to enjoy your favorite characters going through emotional trouble, but the aversion to it often tends to be much stronger than usual, regardless of what country’s fanbase we’re talking, and even the official staff for Kizuna seems to have somewhat recognized that the 02 group is most in its element when in the context of fun and silliness. All things considered, this probably isn’t particularly surprising when you take into account the fact that “just being able to hang out with each other as casual friends at all” was considered such a blessing, and such a difficult goal to reach, that there’s a natural aversion to seeing them go through more emotional suffering again. The new trailer for the upcoming movie seems to have Daisuke in a relatively good mood (and even then, “please don’t make it too emotionally vicious for them” is a pretty common plea).

So if you want to talk about rehashing all of their old problems, seeing it all over again is just not very fun. It’s like holding Ken’s sins over his head again, even if it’s in a different universe; it just doesn’t feel right when the series itself endorsed the best possible outcome for these kids to be “to live happily and at peace with themselves, no matter what happened beforehand”. They worked so hard to get out of it, so to decide we have to do this entire rodeo again for the sake of doing it again, instead of trying something new is...well, it’s not that appealing of an idea, I have to say.

The real-life impact would be intolerable

It’s no secret that the 02 hatedom is a bit uncomfortably vocal about it, but what tends to be really frustrating about it is how many of them love to dunk on the series based on misremembering it. It’s fair that, if you don’t like a series, you probably wouldn’t want to watch it again, but as someone who’s spent a lot of years unpacking all the little details in the series and noticing that it’s much deeper than it initially seems on the surface, it’s honestly annoying to see “criticism” of the series that’s actually just dunking on it based on details that are genuinely factually incorrect (it’d be one thing if it were a question of subjectivity, but no, so many of the insults 02 often gets are based on things that legitimately did not happen in the series).

In the end, I admit that 02′s penchant for ridiculous subtlety probably worked against it a bit too much, and I’ve already covered its impact on how the series gets misread a lot. Thing is, this kind of subtlety was a thing in Adventure too, and it all leads to the unfortunate effect that a lot of people tend to forget what actually happened in Adventure if they haven’t seen it for more than a few years. With the current reboot right now, you’ll see people saying that certain characters are the same as they were in the original series, even though in most respects they’re actually the opposite -- because a lot of said people only remember them by the surface characteristics that seem to be similar.

So when you look at 02, and consider the fact that even official media -- including the official American English dub and V-Tamer -- has been a bit too prone to not handling Daisuke’s character tastefully and reducing him to traits that make him easy to dislike, you might realize that handling these characters improperly runs an extremely high risk of actually turning them into the flat, unlikeable characters that people tend to accuse them of being -- imagine Daisuke where his entire character is about fixating over Hikari and being impulsive, or Miyako being nothing but self-centered and selfish, or Iori being genuinely stoic and missing the nuances of constantly holding his emotions back. And making it worse is that this would basically solidify these negative perceptions of the characters even further -- because people, especially those inclined to hate the series, would take it as further evidence that the characters have always been like this, reflect it back on the original, and everything would really just become a miserable experience. (Those who are particularly inclined to be malicious against 02 would probably even claim a reboot to be “better than the original” no matter whatever it is, because of the belief that 02 is so incredibly terrible that literally anything would be better than it.)

It’s not my business to dictate other people’s opinions, but it’s already been a frustrating twenty years of dealing with this kind of thing, so of course I’m not going to be enthusiastic about the idea of putting up with more of it...

#digimon #digimon adventure 02

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