#his eyes are fucked up???? As a metaphor for how his worldview is fucked up????

[citrusscale-remastered]

very fast zero and laura wip inspired by this sick ass m*cbeth poster

[intosnarkness]

List 5 topics you can talk on for an hour without preparing any material.

Tagged by @dreamtigress

Musical Theatre. You want history starring my boyfriend Inigo Jones and his designs for Masques? You want actors in the last 20 years who I think should kiss me on the mouth? (Raúl Esparza is first, I will fight all of you.) You wanna talk about my theory about how the OBCR of Rent changed the way cast recordings were engineered? You wanna hear about Sondheim and recitative? Wanna talk about shows I’ve seen in NY and elsewhere and why I think the staging for the 2005 revival of Sweeney Todd starring Michael Ceveris and Patti Lapone was some of the worst garbage I’ve ever seen outside of the opening and closing vignettes that framed it as Toby’s memory? Wanna talk about opera and minstrel shows and ballet and the American Musical? I got you.

Magical Realism. I have been thinking about Pedro Paramo again recently and how it changed the way I write and conceptualize stories, but also how Latin American literature in general is so underrated and I will gladly do a dissertation on memory and lost documents as a motif in Like Water for Chocolate and Chronicle of a Death Foretold as a metaphor for colonialism and erasure of culture.

Adult education and instructional design with an eye towards technology in training. This is my job, and if you want to know how I decide what ideas we pursue in terms of VR modules, I will gladly tell you.

Judaism, specifically the kind I grew up on (American, Conservative) and how it grants a unique worldview that you can understand perfectly by answering the question of “why are Aziraphale and Crowley the protagonists of Good Omens when they literally thwart God, which is not what a Christian Protagonist should ever ever do.”

Literature in general. My undergrad was in stage management and creative writing, and I will talk your fucking ear off about any number of niche topics like “what is that painting in the inn in Moly Dick about and is she really offering them cod or clam chowder as a joke about their genitals” or “Telemachus Sneezed: a line that haunts me” or “Why Jane Eyre is a realistic woman and Daisy Miller is an ideal woman” or my niche theory “Hamlet and MacBeth are a duology about how neither a warrior nor a poet can handle cosmic horror.”

This was much harder than I thought it would be. Most of my long discussions with Nat tend to be improv runs on things like what the birds are putting in Pip Weekly, the fictional newsletter the cardinals in our neighborhood are writing, and “nonsense” didn’t seem like a good faith answer.

Tagging anyone who wants to play.

[dsknsk]

Analysis of ‘Traffic Jam’ by Niru Kajitsu

‘Traffic Jam’ is a song written by Niru Kajitsu utilizing v flower. It struck me first as a funky and cool song, but when I made my own MV of it, I realized that this song is actually a scathing commentary on the society as how it is now. Unlike all English songs I know that fall under that same descriptor, it’s brought more subtle but is increasingly obvious for those who see it.

I’ll be using the translation from bluepenguin for this analysis. I’ve both included the original MV and my MV of it, the latter using the cover from Aohi Rame (I feel like she really carries over the emotion in this song). The original MV does have some flashing in it, mine doesn’t have it.

Intro

So before the singing even starts, we get this short bit of a car driving, and then crashing, with the appropriate ‘crash’ sound accompanying it. The background is dotted with eyes, which are initially all looking at the viewer (or at the car, same general direction). When the ‘crash’ happens, they all look towards the direction the car drove in.

They are the eyes of the public. A crash has evidently happened, and everyone’s looking at it.

First verse

We are introduced to our two main characters. The song is sung in their perspective. Meet Flurry and Welter. They fit entirely within the aesthetic of the song with their entirely yellow and black color pallettes.

Then, we switch to the first verse.

Oh no, oh no, it’s a collision! Who’s at fault? Click, click, the flash went off — well, it’s kind of pathetic Would hanging yourself be a good apology? Would your parents forgive you for dying before them? Or not? Are you cornered? Can you run away like the coward you are?

This sets up the rest of the song. Instead of caring about anyone that may be involved in the crash, the first question that rises up immediately searches for someone whom they can put the blame on.

I’ve included the image of these two people, because they’ll be important for later.

The collision is immediately noticed, as we saw at the beginning. However, instead of asking ‘Is the driver alright?’ or ‘How severe is the damage?’ or anything else that shows concern for the people involved, the very first question is ‘Who’s at fault?’

And the blame is immediately put on this man. The collision is treated as something so serious, that hanging himself is the first apology that’s proposed (with him once again being looked at by the public). This does suggest that the collision itself may be a further metaphor for more ‘serious’ things.

He does follow up on the suggestion, and immediately, Flurry and Welter appear, Flurry wielding a net and Welter with a pair of scissors in his hand. They have ‘caught’ him, and now he’s going to pay.

The man tries running away, for which the lyrics call him out for. You can quickly see two monstrous figures that represent our two main characters when he runs away.

Oh no, not again — another collision! The traffic light is blinking red Who’s at fault this time? It doesn’t matter who It’s, uh… that guy’s fault! Fuck compromises! It’s do or die, but don’t get carried away ‘S not our problem, right? The wholesaler won’t sell stuff like this

This verse makes it very clear that this song is from the perspective of Flurry and Welter. As another collision happens, the process starts all over again. They point to someone who’s to blame. It doesn’t even matter if he truly is, it’s just that someone needs to take the blame to satisfy the people. The line ‘It’s, uh…that guy’s fault!’ enforces some sort of randomness into the entire process.

Flurry quite literally points the finger to underline it even more.

Then the lines say ‘Fuck compromises, it’s do or die, but don’t get carried away’. The world of gossip is one with a black and white worldview overall, not satisfied with compromises. There is a word of warning here: don’t get carried away.

The last two lines of this verse mention the uncaringness of our duo. It doesn’t involve them on a personal level, they are just outsiders who happen to butt in. ‘The wholesaler’ is the media/social perception. If it isn’t sensational with a clear-cut answer as to who is at fault, then it simply doesn’t make for a good story.

Deuce Deuce Deuce! Til you die Til I die We won’t call off the fight due to injury Deuce Deuce Deuce! Til our veneers peel off, til morning comes Let’s you and me swap spit

Chorus

It’s been theorized to many as to what ‘deuce’ is. With the way it’s portrayed, I think it’s meant to be referencing ‘juice’, as in ‘the juicy details’. In our country you have what we call ‘juicekanalen’ (literally ‘juice channels’), youtube channels and the like that are dedicated to talking about gossip. These are controversial because it’s said that they don’t always verify their information that well and the way they get their information in the first place involves a complicated network of people. Sometimes they get the news before the official channels do.

These juice channels are coincidentally a very good representation as to what this song is about. Especially this chorus tells us about the mentality of Flurry and Welter, our two representatives of types of gossiping people like those who run the juice channels. It’s a sort of hedonistic mindset. As long as they can keep pretending to be who they show themselves as, they will be together and be ‘partners in gossip’, so to say.

The line ‘we won’t call off the fight due to injury’ also gives us a peek within their psyche. They are also unfettered: even if people genuinely get hurt as a result of their gossiping, whether that’s mentally or physically, they simply won’t stop, because as they stated before: it’s not their problem.

In the instrumental bit we see two object heads, both with fruit as their head. I think this is a pun on the word ‘juice’ since literal juice is most often fruit-based. This person in particular has another apple on their head and is bound (hearkening back on Wilhelm Tell) and they’re framed as the victim.

Picturing them as an object head, and that of an apple to boot, dehumanizes this person - there’s no care about who they are and how they feel, just that they’re appointed as the one to blame. Eventually, an arrow is shot through their apple head, not through the apple on their head.

Third verse

Oh, how sad — tragic things just keep happening, don’t they? It’s good that this truly selfish soul was given life, but… Constantly finding fault and poking holes is just human nature It’ll be healed by the flame ignited by claws

Funfact: the banana object head is also seen shortly after the chorus, here.

The beginning of the second verse marks the second time that Flurry pushes Welter away. They’re certainly not a perfect duo, but they do have the same goal in mind so in that way they are still like-minded.

Then there’s this line: ‘Constantly finding fault and poking holes is just human nature.’ This is their defense as to why it is like it is: they say that it’s down to human nature and there’s no helping it. Their acting is a result of something that just can’t be helped. It’s just so easy to do it. It’s also illustrated in a literal sense, as the ‘searching’ is made literal as in looking closely.

‘It’ll be healed by the flame ignited by claws’ is what I think cryptic for that once a ‘hole’ is found, it is ‘patched’ by everyone pointing it out and making a show of it. People will literally search for the tiniest mistakes in someone else to bring them down, whether it’s in the past or currently going on.

Wait a sec, in this town the night is bittersweet It just ends up with the tiny lights freezing over A weather-beaten distraction, a sacrifice of sophism Anyway, it’s gotten hard to live in this world, huh? Inferior moaning

The characters have lost their ‘heart’, their ‘empathy’ long ago. The world is a hard place to live, something that they even outright say in the last line. It encapsulates this song quite well, honestly. In order to not be the victim of others, they have lost their own empathy to be the one pointing the finger instead. You see Welter casually sipping the ‘juice’ (see the pun from before) and Flurry hanging another body again (refer to first verse).

Also, the ‘Inferior moaning’ is pronounced as ‘retsu shingin’, i.e ‘let’s singing’. An object head also appears with a mic as to hint at this pun.

Second chorus

Deuce Deuce Deuce! Til you die Til I die There’s no way a chain’s being put around my leg Deuce Deuce Deuce! Til we’re soaked and turn into fools Til we sober up Let’s do it in a coffin

Two points of translation. ‘A chain’s being put around my leg’ is a form of the term ‘someone’s leg is being caught’, meaning ‘they are found out/their act is up’. It’s also, less commonly, a term for getting married. There might be a double meaning here, as Flurry is seen disliking Welter.

‘Til we’re soaked and turn into fools’ is translated from ‘gushagusha’, which is normally an onomatopoeia for being soaked, but it’s written with the word for ‘fool’ twice.

My anxiety spikes and I’m unsteady Once you get there, there’s no going back We’re dead people from the cradle to the grave

This is the first sign of our look beneath the surface of the two. Inside, they are actually just normal people who feel normal things like anxiety, and they have realized that once you get into the gossip world, you can’t go back. Their nihilism speaks through the third line.

Meanwhile, the visuals show us something interesting:

Which are the real selves of Flurry and Welter. This fits with the lyrics that give us our first glance as to who they really are.

Bridge

Ah, it’s the usual collision — who’s the victim this time? “Isn’t this pretty cruel?” That’s a good one There was never any end or any moral to begin with Dancing and being made to dance, the traffic jam’s getting worse But my pointless life has already reached a dead end I’ll pray faithfully every day That no one else will appreciate you

It’s a variation on the first verse, but with the information we have now. They never had any morals when they started doing this, never any true goal as what they tried to reach. They just want to gossip, want to feel better than the others and made up their own persona to show to the public. It’s all fake, hence ‘my pointless life’. They genuinely hate other people who are not themselves. Which is. Ironic.

The new bit shows them uploading another video online with gossip. But while they’re busy, they are spotted and as they turn around…

(Look at the patch of human skin on their faces.)

They’ve finally been caught by another couple that is just as disguised with a facade like them. Not even Flurry and Welter, who thought they were impervious, are immune to being victimized (and as it were, ‘replaced’) by others. Others who act exactly the same as they do.

Last chorus

Deuce Deuce Deuce! Til you die Til I die We won’t call off the fight due to injury Deuce Deuce Deuce! Til our veneers peel off, til morning comes Let’s you and me swap spit Deuce Deuce Deuce! Til a cough bursts out of me Til my throat hurts Let’s strip each other of our sighs If we stayed here like this forever I’d be able to get by without ever becoming human

Flurry’s disguise is melting away, see the grey tone of her skin melting away on her arm. She isn’t wearing her pointed hair accessory either. This is also shown during the line 'Til our veneers peel off'.

As the veneer is peeled off, so to say, by the new two that expose them (shown as them getting intimate) we finally see what they really look like. That’s right - the victims from the very first line. Note that their colors don’t fit within the color palette of the video.

Alternatively, this whole scene can also be interpreted as the real Flurry and Welter being confronted by their own fake selves, getting overwhelmed and being exposed.

The two try running away, in the same way as the nameless man from before. It ends in the same, predictable manner.

The line ‘I’ll be get by without ever becoming human’ points out that they don’t even care about being human. They just want to feel better, not feel human. The last line also underlines that, they won’t stop gossiping until there’s literally nothing left to gossip about:

Come on, let’s give up on life In this finished world, until the deuce runs out, Let’s do it, giving our flesh and bone unsparingly

At the end, the same man is stepping in the same car as the one at the start. Everything is starting all over again.

Conclusion

As I have put in the description of my MV, this song is about finger-pointing, gossip, and how our current society is obsessed with it. It’s about not even caring about the nuances in a situation and a pre-occupation with the shock that goes along with it.

[projectjasper]

ask game - top five favourite female characters :3

ok so we collectively decided that i will do top five from dramas and then top five from other forms of media, so this is gonna be a long post 😌

top five favourite female characters from dramas

number one. koh ae ri from the eighth sense

she is for real one of my favourite secondary characters of all time. she is so funny and i absolutely love the way she teases her friends, bullying IS a love language yes. i also love how confident and slightly over-the-top she is, she can really stand up for herself and other people as well, which is an admirable quality. also, i am side-eyeing her and her bestie. 🫵🏳️‍����⁉️ ykwim

number two. ink from bad buddy

we all know what i think about bad buddy but that doesn't mean there aren't any characters in that series who i still cherish, and ink is definitely one of them! i feel like everything in the world has already been said about her and i don't even have to explain myself. we all love her.

number three. hashimoto mio from kieta hatsukoi

she is an icon, she is a legend, etc. etc. she is so so sweet and wonderful but can also hit you across the face so hard that you fly away if you deserve it. i don't even think that's like dramatic effect exaggeration, she will kick your ass if you're acting like a fucking idiot and i love that about her.

number four. choi yu na from semantic error

true bicon of our generation. greatest fashion sense in the world. so very tired of your bullshit (and that's absolutely fair). a great friend. *bows fifty times in respect*

number five. sunny from our dating sim

she doesn't get too much screen time but i love everything about what we see of her. she is very no-nonsense and deadpan, but also very emotionally intelligent and compassionate (she literally helps lee wan figure out why he started drawing and why it's still important to him, like she literally changes his life with one small conversation). what a legend.

top five favourite female characters from other media

number one. brienne of tarth from game of thrones (tv show)

ok yeah yeah horrible tv show. ANYWAY. i am fucking obsessed with brienne. she is SO!!!! KDGJDFJGDFJGKDF. sorry. what am i even supposed to say. she is a warrior both metaphorically and literally. she is the most knight-coded character of all time. no man can compare to her in knightly qualities. she is noble, she is loyal, she is fair. she is fucking iconic.

number two. clementine from the walking dead games (video game series)

i grew up with clem, actually. i was just a couple of years older than her when i first watched a playthrough of twdg. i suppose we have to make some space for the fact that she is a protagonist in 2.5/4 games, meaning that every player kind of decides what kind of a person she is on their own. but i think overall, no matter what choices you make, she always remains a very strong and resilient person. despite everything she's lost, she doesn't lose her humanity and manages to take great care of her found family (and her adopted younger brother, shout out to our murder baby aj <3). i am very proud of her, almost like she is a literal person who grew up in front of my eyes.

number three. lae'zel from baldur's gate 3 (video game)

ok, now this one was hard. not because i don't love lae'zel so much, but because there is an insanely long list of female characters from bg3 that i absolutely adore, and choosing just one was hard. in lae'zel's place, there could have been shadowheart or karlach or jaheira or either isobel or aylin from everyone's favourite divine lesbian duo or nine-fingers or or or. i can go on forever. but i picked lae'zel for this post. so, first thing you should know about her is that she can step on you and you will be thanking her for it if she does. she is just 21 years old, yet she goes through a completely worldview-shattering experience and comes out the other side not just alive, but with her head held high. her quote "what good this heart of stone, for it to be shattered?" absolutely kills me every time. i'm gonna stop here, but i could go on forever actually yes.

number four. josephine montilyet from dragon age inquisition (video game)

very similar situation with the dragon age games and the amount of characters i could choose. morrigan, isabela, and sera in particular were very strong contenders for this space. but i ended up choosing josie for this post. she is a very sweet and romantic character. she used to be a spy (and she actually got into it because she thought it sounded romantic - she's whimsical like that), but then she ended up killing someone she knew and that experience changed her forever. she is now a very successful diplomat, determined to deal with world's problems through any means other than violence. she is very open-minded, understanding, and just an absolutely lovely person overall.

number five. anne elliot from persuasion by jane austen (novel)

choosing a favourite jane austen herione is like choosing a favourite child, but here we are. the photos are from two different adaptations, and i appreciate both of them in different ways, though i don't think we have a 10/10 adaptation of persuasion just yet. anyway, anne is naturally a rather timid and people-pleasing person, which i think a lot of us can relate to, but throughout the book she really finds her own voice and stands her ground, while simultaneously not having to completely change her personality, which i really appreciate. not everyone can be sarcastic or witty or strong-willed and that's ok. she also definitely shines as the undeniably smartest austen herione, as she figures out all the secrets, decidedly does not trust clearly untrustworthy albeit charming gentlemen, and is overall incredibly sensible, which means it's very easy to read her inner dialogue, because you never find yourself sighing at how blind she is at something that's happening. she sees everything. being inside her head is a great time.

[goldenworldsabound]

✍️, 💪, 📊 YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

Essay Asks

KITTY THIS IS TOO MANY I WILL DIE- KJFHEWKJFHE

✍️ Describe some of the major themes or motifs apparent in your ship's story or relationship.

Rufus hours owo

Learning to see the world through the eyes of someone else. In a lot of ways, these two don't understand each other that well when they first meet, and it's only over time they come to understand better.

Aura only knows Rufus as the perfect VP (now President) of Shinra, powerful, cool and collected, handsome, flawless...and they figure out that there's more to him despite the way he hides behind those things relatively quickly. Sometimes his actions are odd to them - but they become explainable as they start to understand that his life wasn't as perfect as everyone thinks, and the kinds of things he experienced growing up, and the kinds of decisions and weight of responsibility that rests on him (thinking about the fighting with Weapon and the burden of needing to save an entire planet and not knowing how to do that).

And Rufus. Rufus does not understand a thing about Aura's view of the world despite watching them through security footage for years prior to speaking with them. He starts to get an understanding, but it's quite surface level. Aura's PTSD and grief over the plate dropping shocks him and forces him to really understand the level of impact his decisions (and his father's in this case) have on people. He thought he'd protected them sufficiently by having them move to a different neighborhood in advance - but that was not enough. Really just...everything that their life was before him and how it contributed to who they are, and how it reflects a very different worldview than he has.

💪 Describe a theme or other element of the original source material that you feel is strengthened or reinforced by the presence of your ship.

Sigma! A huuuuge theme of bsd is trauma. It's explicitly stated in one of the spin offs that abilities spawn from trauma. Which is??? terrifying

but it's also about overcoming that trauma specifically, I feel. Atsushi is a prime example of that. And in the cause of Sigma and Phlox, they both have significant and to some degree similar traumas, and it's together that they are able to begin working through those and healing.

Until some FUCKING SHIT HAPPENS but uh it's fine- in fact that to me is kind of a metaphor for the fact that regressions will happen. They will find their way back to each other and continue healing.

📊 Compare and contrast the personalities of the characters in your ship. Describe whether you feel it is their similarities or their differences that define the ship.

I wanna do Sigma again. Because the similarities coupled with the differences define the ship.

I mentioned above Phlox and Sigma have similar traumas, and they both have abilities that others want to use, and have been abused for it (Sigma much more than Phlox). They're both gentle at heart (though Sigma is much quicker to switch to taking a hard line if necessary).

A big difference between them is that Sigma has never had a relationship (friendship or otherwise) that wasn't transactional or abusive to him. In fact he's always been manipulated or used. So the way he sees things is...different. Phlox has had normal friendships and even romantic relationships. And so that's a very key difference that influences how they behave, and how gentle Phlox has to be with Sigma to ensure they don't go too fast and hurt/upset him. He's been through so fucking much. But they can relate to some of it - and that's what allows him to let himself be vulnerable with them, really.

[aethersea]

I think it's worth pointing out that there are two things kinda being conflated here, and also kinda overlapping – being perceived & perceiving. I'm saying this as someone who also hasn't watched these movies, so grain of salt lol, but Don't Look Up is basically "if you don't acknowledge the horror then it can't get you (yes it can)" while A Quiet Place is basically "if the horror can't find you then it can't get you."

(idk where Nope falls bc Jordan Peele is too good at his job so I've carefully avoided watching any clips or trailers. too scary. no idea where the nun thing falls either bc I haven't heard of it, though it sounds like a really interesting combo of these two.)

so first is the fear of being perceived, and I mean, we do live in the age of big data. fun little corporate panopticon we're all just marinating in. with that, plus the whole thing where we've known for an open fact the US government is spying on everyone to an egregious degree for, god, a decade now, and all that happened was Snowden had to go on the run for life – I feel it makes sense that we might have a pervasive society-wide anxiety about being noticed by a powerful force not entirely within our comprehension, which will devour us without a second thought.

and then the fear of perceiving, which I feel is more fatalistic/despairing. Don't Look Up is about how we're all fucking doomed and there's nothing we can do about it. feels like an unsubtle metaphor for climate change, though ofc I haven't watched it so I can't say for sure, but it applies really well to the pandemic too – there are all these problems that we're all aware of, but we feel powerless to do the slightest thing about them, and the people who do have power are using it on frivolous excess and/or saving only themselves. the movie's not even a horror story, except in the way that all satire is a form of horror.

(and like. as individuals, we are powerless. the solution™ to problems that affect the whole planet is to band together. but that's not something the american national psyche is really equipped for, conceptually – we're saturated in individualism so thoroughly that it's genuinely hard to apply any other philosophy to our own subjectivity.)

there's definitely an overlap between these two fears. part 1 of the overlap is maybe Bird Box – the fear that if you acknowledge the horror, it'll get you. this feels like the attitude behind all these loosened or absent covid restrictions even while people are still constantly dying – if we just act like there's no pandemic, then it's not real! it's the essence of your point about not facing up to things, like a child hiding under the blankets because if you can't see the monster then it can't see you.

the other part of the overlap might be the nun thing you mentioned – you keep your eyes fixed on something, don't look up, don't acknowledge the horror, and you're still fucking doomed because it's not actually up to you whether you're perceived. you can hold still and avert your eyes, you can run and you can hide, but it's all futile: the horror comes for us indiscriminately, impersonally, and there is no individualism really, we're all equally irrelevant in the face of the horror. we try to tell ourselves otherwise, we try to fool ourselves that we're special, but we all die just as easy no matter how we might struggle.

the one part I saw of Don't Look Up was the very end, as the meteor strikes. the movie cuts between moments of connection, courage, defiance, and love. we all die just as easy, that ending says, but that doesn't make the living any less meaningful. our connections to others transcend the banality of death – not only because we then live on in others, but because the connection itself is worthwhile, no matter how brief or how abrupt its end.

a beautiful ending, so much so that I almost watched the movie for it, and the avenue by which an individualist worldview usually aims for collectivism. and look, it is working. slowly, ponderously, but it is. if the horror is climate change, well, just a hundred years ago you couldn't see the sky in half the cities of the world because the pollution was a permanent cloud, rivers through major cities were too toxic for life, species around the world hurtled toward extinction and barely anyone cared (statistically speaking). but a hundred years of regulation and collective effort have slowly, painstakingly, cleared the skies and the waters, brought species back from the brink of extinction, and taught your average person on the street the importance of ecological preservation. if the horror is the pandemic, a hundred years ago the spanish flu killed more people than world war one, but we had covid vaccines within a year of the virus being identified. if the horror is the panopticon.....no actually that one's just worse. but we are fighting it, in a myriad ways, from all of us installing adblock to the US justice department suing google for monopoly. and I mean, look at all the unionizing that's been happening in the past few years, and the immense boom of them in just the last few months. we're getting better at collectivism. the fight for a better world is long and slow and full of stumbling, but it is ongoing. it spans far longer than a single human life.

I hope our children's children look back on us with sympathy, but I also hope they look back with that same detached uncertainty we feel about Victorian sexual mores or Cold War paranoia. I hope they don't quite get it, even when they understand intellectually. I hope ecological conservation is a foregone conclusion for them, the panopticon a thing of the barbaric past, public health an obvious priority. they'll have new fears, and new battles, but they'll be better at fighting them than we are. we're getting better at this. we just have to keep going.

changes and trends in horror-genre films are linked to the anxieties of the culture in its time and place. Vampires are the manifestation of grappling with sexuality; aliens, of foreign influence. Horror from the Cold War is about apathy and annihilation; classic Japanese horror is characterised by “nature’s revenge”; psychological horror plays with anxieties that absorbed its audience, like pregnancy/abortion, mental illness, femininity. Some horror presses on the bruise of being trapped in a situation with upsetting tasks to complete, especially ones that compromise you as a person - reflecting the horrors and anxieties of capitalism etc etc etc. Cosmic horror is slightly out of fashion because our culture is more comfortable with, even wistful for, “the unknown.” Monster horror now has to be aware of itself, as a contingent of people now live in the freedom and comfort of saying “I would willingly, gladly, even preferentially fuck that monster.” But I don’t know much about films or genres: that ground has been covered by cleverer people.

I don’t actually like horror or movies. What interests me at the moment is how horror of the 2020s has an element of perception and paying attention.

Multiple movies in one year discussed monsters that killed you if you perceived them. There are monsters you can’t look at; monsters that kill you instantly if you get their attention. Monsters where you have to be silent, look down, hold still: pray that they pass over you. M Zombies have changed from a hand-waved virus that covers extras in splashy gore, to insidious spores. A disaster film is called Don’t Look Up, a horror film is called Nope. Even trashy nun horror sets up strange premises of keeping your eyes fixed on something as the devil GETS you.

No idea if this is anything. (I haven’t seen any of these things because, unfortunately, I hate them.) Someone who understands better than me could say something clever here, and I hope they do.

But the thing I’m thinking about is what this will look like to the future, as the Victorian sex vampires and Cold War anxieties look to us. I think they’ll have a little sympathy, but they probably won’t. You poor little prey animals, the kids will say, you were awfully afraid of facing up to things, weren’t you?

[patrickmckinney]

Prev said something about how much we have to watch dukat torment kira and sisko is fucked up, which like, yeah, it is. But also, its so good.

Like aside from being someone who loves watching my blorbos get put through the ringer and come out bloodied but defiant, still swinging--dukat is fundamentally space hitler. And he's written/portrayed/acted in a way where he is often charming, unthreatening, or at least a bit ridiculous. Aside from the moments he breaks that mask (which he then dons again long enough to put the viewer at ease repeatedly), it is honestly easy to forget that he is not only a vile, creepy, rapey, genocidal megalomaniac, but also, and I cannot stress this enough--Space Hitler. He is the textbook facist.

But while sometimes we as the watcher roll our eyes at his bravado and absurdity, and get lulled into security when he occasionally allies with our buddies, Kira and Sisko never forget what and who he is. They never let us really forget. They demonstrate that the only acceptable approach to Dukat and his facism is extreme prejudice. While they can't, for various reasonable plot reasons, just punch him in his (extremely punchable) face every time, both of them never once let Dukat get away with his smiling facade. Not even for a second.

And he haaaaates that. These are, probably for the first time in his life, people he can't manipulate, con, charm, threaten, bully, or exile into participating in his worldview. Which is, of course, why he becomes increasingly obsessed with both of them--trying to force Kira to love him, and Sisko to be just like him. Because their unwavering hatred and disdain for all he is and will be does not mesh with his unhinged racist self-absorbed world view. And he absolutely cannot deal. Its fundamentally what sends him off the deep end eventually, especially joined with that same rejection of his world by Ziyal (and the lack of opportunity to undo that moment after she dies).

But getting to watch both of them (and especially Kira, who I adore always for getting to be both butch and femme, soft and also unapologetically sharp tongued and full of rage onscreen in a way women rarely get to be) fearlessly spit in Dukat's smarmy face (metaphorically and otherwise) over and over again brings me such joy.

Such a fundamental part of DS9 is exploring where the moral line is when a utopia has to go to war and break its values to protect those same values (for varying definitions of utopia, which the show also explores). And although there are places where the moral line gets greyed out, wibbly, or even crossed in ways that feel necessary if awful, Kira and Sisko keep us rooted in the truth that Dukat's smiling facism is never palatable or acceptable, or even ignorable. It must always be rejected, even when you're trapped, tired, exhausted, forced to live under its heel. You still have to say no whenever and however you possibly can.

STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE - S5E19 Ties of Blood and Water

[senespera4]

Spoilers below the cut again

Rappa makes me feel insane. how the fuck did they do it. Every time she rationalized the abuse she was undergoing as normal and necessary behavior that she simply needed to grit her teeth and get through, I was losing my goddamn mind.

It hit me really bad to the point where I was just livetweeting/liveposting and essentially Screaming at Master Kucha and Umbra Headmistress in the game because they are just So Vile. They're literally just IRL emotionally/physically abusive parents but tweaked to be just a little bit more absurd. God.

Like okay lemme just lay it out here for you because in my eyes the two main indicators of emotional abuse are emotional manipulation and social isolation.

The abuser needs control, so they use unreasonable demands, coercion, and destruction of the things that the person loves in order to control their emotions and their behavior

The abuser also needs to make sure that no one finds out and that the person they're abusing does not get exposed to an outside worldview that will lead the person to realize that what they're experiencing is abuse. IRL (for me lmfao) this manifests in the abuser either attempting to isolate you under threat of some vague "trouble" that it'll get the abuser into or just straight up gaslighting you into thinking it isn't abuse/guilt tripping you into keeping quiet. "Keep it in the family," "Our parenting style is just different, if you talk about it other people may want to get us in trouble," "You need us to survive, so you should never try to get us in a situation where we can no longer provide for you," "why are you claiming that we're abusing you? That's a strong word, that's not what we're doing," "That's just what you believe, we don't believe it's abuse," "You should trust your parents, why don't you trust us anymore?" In Rappa's case they can afford to get a little more extreme since she's a literal laboratory test subject, so they quite literally break her brain. She has no outside frame of reference, after all. They can tell her whatever the fuck they want and her mind will simply fill in the blanks, rationalizing everything that's being done to her as necessary.

And yes I am laying the blame on Master Kucha too because while he did ultimately have a change of heart and regretted his actions it does not erase the fact that he Did Nothing and Actively Participated In the abuse. The goddamn ninja thing was a two-fold attempt to both make reality more palatable for her and socially isolate her so that she's psychologically incapable of understanding that life should not be like this. It ties back to the fucking BananAdvisors and shit again, it's all emotional manipulation and abuse and treating other humans like they are resources to be used up if they aren't contributing anything "meaningful." Get high enough up the ladder with this mindset and you'll break any moral code just to get what you want without breaking a sweat.

Actually, speaking of morality, the story explicitly pointed this out by having Umbra Headmistress rationalize that morality is just a construct and that she should throw it away entirely.

Like instead of being Fucking Normal about morality and realizing that morality Is Necessary And Plays An Important Role and isn't just a social construct that needs to be thrown away, she fucking just throws it away and makes everyone around her hate her because she will just hurt them no questions asked in her single-minded pursuit of knowledge

And so it was So Satisfying when Kucha finally pulled his head out of his goddamn ass and shot her. Enough.

Rappa fully embracing the ninja shit was also very cathartic, and I think it's because of how it functions as a metaphor for transforming your trauma into something empowering. Like, there's no getting rid of that past. It's stuck there, it's going to haunt you forever. The best you can do is recognize what happened for what it is and let that guide your moral compass and drive in the future. Your past informs your future, so why not let it inform your future joy and motivations? And Rappa is joyful. That's the one positive thing that Kucha was able to give her. And then she uses it to save everyone else falling into the mass Brainrot that Profnana was spreading, because she understands what it's like to be manipulated and have abuse hurled at you, and she is uniquely positioned to recognize this attempt to create an entirely false reality and snap people out of it so they can regain their drive and ability to fight for control of themselves.

So yeah my conclusion is that Dr. Primitive and every scientist that throws away ethical considerations in the pursuit of some self proclaimed greater good should be thrown into the sun post haste

This whole thing was just a near perfect depiction of the sheer callousness of a worldview that only considers humans in terms of their societal value before doing progressively more and more fucked up things in the pursuit of some ideal of erudition, wisdom, and knowledge

Head fully up ass type behavior

PhD holder bad ending

Addendum: I am also being reminded of another similar moment that fucking brain blasted me and it was CJ the X's rick and morty video where they show how the show directly and explicitly lambasts prioritization of intelligence over Basic Emotional Maturity, and I think a lot of the people working with Dr. Primitive fall into this category of emotionally stunted nihilistic Fuckasses with PhD's and an ego the size of jupiter

Addendum 2: I am invariably comparing Profnana/Dr. Primitive to Ruan Mei because they both have that "what are scientific ethics again?" attitude, but I wonder if the reason why I'm like "I support women's wrongs" with Ruan Mei is because she still demonstrates some level of understanding that other humans have their own dreams and thoughts and emotions and that they aren't just Resources that are either valuable or not. Her growing affection towards her dessert creations feels like an indicator that she has a level of emotional awareness that prevents her from diving headfirst into the intelligence abyss. Y'know despite the extremely dangerous shit she's doing lmao. Meanwhile Profnana/Dr. Primitive are straight up just Using People and transforming them irrevocably out of their misanthropic nihilism and I hate it and they should be tossed into the sun

I can't believe I have to post about this but the. The fucking-- Honkai Star Rail's writers are fucking insane and I have to write an analysis on the Literal Meme Update With The Funny Monkey Mascot

so uh spoilers for HSR version 2.6 Trailblaze Continuance, I swear I have an interesting angle with this (I'm only like halfway through the story too god fucking dammit)

This game has Opinions about educators and influencers and it is not afraid to be Extremely Blunt about how much they hate specific types of these "idea spreaders." I'm going to sort of work backwards from the point that I'm at (the reveal that Dr. Primitive is behind this) because I'm really just rambling right now and there's not much structure to this but I Need To Get My Thoughts Out

Dr. Primitive being involved in this isn't just an attempt to connect some tidbits from the Simulated Universe into the main story, I think they purposely chose him and this absurd and stupid banana theme because they wanted to comment on how when you have a bad "idea spreader" it's Bad bad. Dr. Primitive is positioned as an ultimate authority on knowledge by virtue of an Emanator, and yet his actions cause a reduction in knowledge because he is Actively causing people to regress back into monkeys.

This makes sense when you consider the two BananAdvisors you've fought up to this point in the story.

The first is a stubborn and close-minded art teacher, one that is clearly just attempting to spread their own propaganda about what art is truly worth something. They assign you a subject when the intent of the class is to paint something you want, they actively punish you for painting what you want, and instead of giving pointers on how to improve your art they will simply bash it and bash YOU until you have no motivation to continue. This fucking bitch did that shit to Chaletka Live and it was so infuriating to watch because you could just tell that he didn't care about her at all, all he wanted was Results. And if you can't produce results, you're a worthless piece of trash that shouldn't even exist in the first place.

The second is a fucking capitalist grifter-ass business professor who promotes extremely toxic "customer-first" paradigms that erode the worker and continuously consume them until there's nothing left. What's worse, his direct student is actively dragged into a similar mindset. Richie is Struggling, he is actively sacrificing his personal life for his business pursuits, believing that if he simply plays the capitalism game (and yes I am going to analyze this as anti-capitalist because I have an angle that HSR is an inherently anti-capitalist text I can't believe I'm fucking saying that that's such a stupid sentence) he will eventually reach success and happiness. As long as he pleases the customer, he will be successful. But the moment he outlives his usefulness, the moment he stops showing any sort of future promise to his employer, this is what happens

He is reduced to a mere resource sink, a mere datapoint on a spreadsheet which the accountant has decided is no longer producing enough profit to justify the costs. His humanity is stripped away, he is silenced, and worst of all he is coerced into doing so WILLINGLY because his employer and advisor and mentor manages to convince him that this is the right path for him, that he would be of more use to society as a speechless monkey than as a human with dreams and desires that are inconvenient for the business model.

This shit was the most infuriating thing to me. It reveals how the BananAdvisor knew EXACTLY what he was doing. He reduces Richie to something lesser, and acts surprised when you protest that he no longer has a voice because "things that are lesser naturally cannot speak." Because he made him that way. Because he purposely removed his ability to speak for himself.

I think the fact that the music continues to be the same goofy track throughout this entire scene of Abject Horrors contributes even further to that feeling of hostility that's made it so hard for me to get through this story quest without textually yelling at the characters. It feels like everything in the world is telling you that you're wrong for feeling this way, that your horror is laughable, mockable, even. Because this is the way the world works, and if you're horrified by it then you're simply too stupid to claw your way to the top, and you'd be better off as Literal Merchandise.

But also this is a lot of really serious analysis and I can't possibly ignore how this entire thing is themed in the most goofy, shitpost-y way imaginable. The monkeys are a deliberate choice, obviously, as a metaphor for regression of intelligence (and I think there's maybe something to be argued that it's a little bit too close to the "sheeple" trope but put a pin in that cuz I do think it's better executed than how that trope usually is), but they're also just like. Funny lmao. And really stupid. And it is also just multiple consecutive hours of banana jokes and I am going to clobber Dr. Primitive for making me endure this.

But I do think the shitpost factor is intentional. Because one of the main comments I've made about the banana visuals and shit is that I feel like HSR is doing some cocomelon shit to me.

And it's just like. The more I think about it the more the truth of that statement just smacks me in the face, cuz Cocomelon has been described as like visuoauditory crack for toddlers, and it's like. It's the numbing effect of how baldfacedly Stupid it is, you know. It's like the equivalent of jangling keys in front of a toddler, it is an overstimulating mess of colors and visuals that make no sense that's designed to just turn your brain off, and I think this is where HSRs criticism of "idea spreaders" extends from just educators in the case of the BananAdvisors to social media influencers in general. Like, I'm sure you've seen some of those tiktok livestreams that are just completely inexplicable reactions to viewer donations where the streamer is basically just entirely at the viewers' command, or the way AI generated Slop is all flashy bullshit and no substance. HSR, I feel, heavily dislikes this kind of stuff because they consider it to be "brainrot ideas" in that they actively turn your brain off because they actively prevent you from thinking about it.

HSR in general clearly has no respect for shitty educators or substanceless influencers because they show them as a Vile and Evil Force manipulating people into becoming speechless monkeys who have no thoughts of their own and simply indulge in meaningless """happiness"""

Back to the pin, this obviously has some connections to the "sheeple" trope, but I think HSR is being a little bit better about this because it does not place like. Any of the blame on the people actually being manipulated. Rappa and the rest of the Astral Express have a clear understanding that it is the fault of the people who benefit from the general public having their brains shut off at all times, and they're very sympathetic towards people who still end up in this kind of situation. It's not because they're stupid, it's because exploitative people and systems have tricked them there, and they have to be broken out of The Ooze

And that's why Rappa has so many indicators of rebellion and non-conformity. She's a graffiti-spraying rapper precisely because she is fighting against a homogenizing force of evil that wants to take away people's motivation and individuality to feed into the machine. Her song's major theme is about waking people up, getting them to see that the rules are purpose-built to suck them dry, and for them to rebel in their own personal way through personal expression. So it's really no surprise that they made her a cyberpunk aesthetic graffiti-spraying rapper ninja lmao

Tl;Dr this latest story is a commentary on how authority figures can purposely spread bad ideas in order to control the people they have authority over, and how this is a result of a system that actively sucks the people within it dry of all they're worth before tossing them aside. It's about capitalism, it's about toxic grifter culture, it's about social media brainrot, it's about breaking the rules when they're designed to hurt you, and hopefully once I finish it it ends up being about the importance of critical thinking and understanding what you want your place in the world to be, and to then defiantly carve out that little place no matter what stands in your way instead of just shutting your brain off and just going with what the people who are "qualified" say, no matter how insane and manipulative the things they say can be.