#i could not in fact think up an intellectual caption oh well

[saltlickmp3]

@zombies-sold-cheap 's loki design :] she is a little bit doomed by the narrative

[asrisgratitudejournal]

Susah

Hello welcome back to my post, terakhir nulis apa ye lupa. Oh abis dari Southhampton. Itu nulis hari Senin pagi minggu ini ku mampir VHL dulu sebelum ke ofis. The rest of the week, there is nothing special happened, only me trying to work on co-authors’ comments on the ms revision. Sesungguhnya dari hari Senin udah tahu kalau harus nyiapin slide buat hari ini, and I even WROTE about it! In the tumblr post! Tapi ya being the usual procrastinator that is Asri Oktavioni that I am, tentu saja ku baru ended up mulai ngerjain jam 17pm Thursday (!) for a Friday morning meeting (???) What the hell was I even thinking sih??? Tapi yaudah ga guna juga if I beat myself up currently karena udah lewat.

Iya intinya meeting tadi pagi is… okay(?) I guess. It’s just that it could be better. It always could be better. Tamsin berulang-ulang kali emphasizing on determining what “scientific” question do I want to answer so that we could design better experiment. Terus untungnya banget Erdem jumped in langsung “iya nanti mingdep w di dept all the time, kita (as in me and Asri) bakal bahas data-data yang udah ada”. Phew. One of my postdoc juga tried to highlight and mention to the entire forum that what I’m doing is cool: that I’m covering the spectrum of whole “open system” vs “close system” of thermal maturation experiment (which is supposed to make me feel better I guess?). Kayanya w kelihatan helpless banget atau confused banget apa gimana gitu kali ya sampe dibilangin juga sama salah satu collaborator “don’t be discouraged, what you’re doing is very tedious complicated task and the fact that you managed to do all these experiments and collect data from it is a really good progress”. HUHU.

I don’t know, though. Betul-betul gatau ini apa yang w rasain sekarang. Definitely not relief. Fear? Anxious? Lebih ke… capek kali ya. Disclaimer: hari ini juga adalah 2 hari sebelum ku menstruasi jadi mungkin dipengaruhi oleh hormonal PMS-related mood swing juga. Beres meeting langsung ke ofis terus ngerasa PUSING BANGET. Tapi gatau pusingnya kenapa… Ya mostly karena mikir aja sih. Biasanya beres meeting gini w tu excited dan feeling intellectually challenged, tapi kali ini lebih ke… lelah aja. Bosen. Capek. Berusaha jawab pertanyaan yang sama selama hampir tiga tahun tapi ga maju-maju (well, that is not entirely true… karena maju sih dikit, dan pertanyaannya berubah juga setiap hari). Tapi tetep aja. Hebat banget orang-orang yang udah lulus PhD tu. FULL RESPECT DEH SAMA U SEMUA.

Berhubungan sama judul di atas juga. Jadi kan yaudah sesampainya ofis langsung apdet Instagram terus kumasukkin lah caption “Susah banget PhD mau muntah” ya along that line lah nuancenya. Terus tapi pas tadi lagi makan siang di Sasi’s ku jadi kepikiran lagi: “apa sih emangnya definisi ‘susah’ Non?” Susah buat siapa? Salah satu trigger kepikiran ini adalah karena kemarin sore pas lagi ngerjain slide I took a break terus lihat di storynya Ainna @untoldmind tentang dia pusing mikirin research idea. Storynya Ainna linked to an Instagram post of a book(¿) or report (¿). Bukunya bahas intinya pengalaman mereka volunteering dan gimana ditemukan interupsi dari industri (ya susu formula, ya makanan bayi instan) yang buruk untuk asupan gizi anak yang natural (well, at least itu yang kutangkep dari beberapa halaman foto buku itu). Dari satu postingan itu ku jadi went through the rabbit hole dan jadi mengunjungi akun-akun insta lain, ya dokter anak, ya ahli gizi sepertinya, ya nakes, yang bahas gimana susahnya lembaga bantuan internasional (WHO atau UNICEF) nge-assess bantuan apa yang harus/bisa dikasih ke ibu dan anak korban bencana alam misalnya, akibat ada intervensi dari big industries ini.

Anyhowwwww, this is really not the point I’m trying to say. Tapi paham kan jadinya ya sekarang gimana otakku bekerja? My mind just keeps interrupting one another!!! PUSING!!! HHHHHH.

Ok, gimana Non, pelan2. Iya tapi jadi intinya adalah. Kemarin ku menangis di ofis…. Jam 18.30pm-an. By myself. Gara-gara baca di salah satu part bukunya itu dibahas ada ibu muda yang anaknya ada 5(?) gitu? Tar aku link aja dah ye postingannya di sini.

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(Gambar ke 2 yang bikin nangis).

Terus jadi si ibu muda beranak banyak ini datang ke sesi penyuluhan oleh tim sukarelawan, tapi dia gamau duduk di dalem bareng ibu-ibu lainnya. Cuma berdiri aja di pintu masuk tenda gitu. Pas ditanya kenapa, dia bilang soalnya dia ga punya uang. Soalnya ibunya ngira itutuh promosi atau jualan susu formula gitu, padahal bukan. Which just shows… how many times she’s been experiencing those big companies promoting their products to vulnerable people like her (which they gave free samples too in the beginning ofc). Yang ujung-ujungnya ngerugiin dia juga karena bayinya jadi ketergantungan sama produknya lah, ASI-nya jadi ga keluar lah, dst. JUJUR tapi ku gatau banget hal ini sebelumnya, karena ku terlalu enak parkir di geologi juga sepertinya, dan ya being ignorant aja sama societal problems, tone deaf –  (WELL, banyak Non yang u gatau, u just know like what… 5% of total knowledge of the world??? Ga sampe 1% bahkan kalau menghitung semua hal yang di-experience orang lain di bumi ini).

Yaudah intinya pas baca ceritanya si ibu itu ku menangis aja gatau kenapa. Lebih karena prihatin sih. Sedih. “And here I am complaining about the fact that I have to prep a slide for tomorrow’s meeting”, that’s what I thought yesterday afternoon. Tapi tentu saja I can’t invalidate what I’m feeling. Bukan berarti rasa kesusahan-ku ngerjain riset ini jadi ga bermakna compared to rasa kesusahan yang dialamin oleh ibu muda yang di buku itu. Kita ga lagi mendang-mending-in siapa yang lebih suffering, siapa yang masalahnya lebih penting dari yang lain. We just have different battle, that’s it. Sedihnya aku kemarin kayanya juga lebih ke… tiba-tiba jadi sadar aja sih, the different reality that people are having in one so-called “nation”. Ku dan si ibu muda ini sama-sama hidup di “negara yang sama”, tapi we are experiencing VERY different life. Very different problems.

Yang paling funny though, I say it funny tapi sebetulnya satire, mungkin si ibu muda ini nggak sedih at all??? Dia mungkin bahagia-bahagia aja, mentally??? Ini w jadi kaya my own mom & dad yang sedih sendiri nangis sendiri ngeliat anaknya umur 30 kok ya belum nikah-nikah huhu kasian banget pasti dia kesepian ya, while I’m here thriving, flourishing. Jadi rada tragis aja sih, w di sini, di Oxford, nangis baca cerita ni orang, while dia sendiri di Palu sana might be feeling very blessed indeed, with her 5 kids and whatnot.

Ok, kembali ke topik awal. Susah. Iya. Kubilang “risetku susah banget kalau ku-spill even 10% di insta bakal muntah klen semua”(???) Lebay banget kenapasi Non. Jadi ku jadi mikir lagi kan: susah itu apa? Standarnya siapa? Kalau mau dibilang susah, dapet medali perak IESO wakilin Indonesia pas masih kelas 11 SMA ya susah (well, lebih susah seleksi kepilih jadi timnas di pelatnasnya sih, but anyway). Lulus dari ITB dengan TA A 10km x 10km dalam 4 tahun juga susah. Keterima PhD di Oxford fully funded juga susah. Berproses bisa jadi dosen di UI juga susah (lebih ke susah administratif sih, tapi tetep susah). Tapi Alhamdulillah semua hal di atas ternyata lewat-lewat aja sekarang. Pas waktu dihadepin emang “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA THIS IS THE HARDEST SHIT IM DOING IN MY LIFEEEE RASANYA MAU MUNTAHHHHHHHHH FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF”. Paling ngerasa kaya gitu pas di Karsam 2014 dan pas mapping TA sesungguhnya. Sekarang ini ngerasain lagi, 3rd year into my PhD. Rasanya selalu ingin quitting EVERY TIME. EVERY SECOND, EVERY MIN, EVERY HOUR, EVERY DAY, EVERY WEEK, EVERY MONTH. Cuma yang PhD ini ya emang maraton aja sih. Ups and downs juga. Ada masanya ku senang bangettt, ada masanya kaya sekarang ini yang jijik banget. DAN GA SELESAI-SELESAI MASALAHNYA TU.

Kayanya tapi yang bikin ku rada susah dengan dealing with “kesusahan” ini adalah kesulitanku buat memvalidate bahwa memang apa yang kulakukan adalah susah(?). Kayak... selama ini ku selalu mikir kalau aku yang emang terlalu bodoh dan tolol dan malas untuk mengerjakan projek besar that is this PhD, ya impostor syndrome aja. Apalagi dengan kultur ketimuran kita yang kalau ada masalah harus “toughen up!” “tidak boleh menjadi crybaby!”, mentalnya di-shift jadi “dari kesulitan-kesulitan inilah kita jadi bisa belajar!” lol sungguh mode TNI banget I HATE IT TO THE BONE. Umm, btw juga berhubungan dengan ini, kemarin baca tweet review K-Drama The Good Bad Mom (?), kayanya touching on this issue juga, jadi mungkin akan nyoba nonton.

Tapi yaudah ngeliat yang udah lewat-lewat… what did I do? Did I quit? No. Basically what I did is… holding on. Bracing myself. Having grit. Jadi…. Yaudah kayanya mah sekarang the best advice I could tell myself is to…. Hold on. I will thank myself later, I guess? WOW this whole post is just basically me talking to and nyemangatin myself in writing form. Amazing.

Iya, jadi gitu. Take home lesson penting dari sini juga adalah: everyone has their own battle. Jangan assume “oh dia hidupnya hepi banget ya kerjaannya ngonser terus dan belanja dan ke Bali”. HA. IF ONLY, IF ONLY I POSTED on insta what I posted here, ALL OF THESE scary insecure THOUGHTS, all hell would break loose. I could though… no one tells me what to do or NOT do. It’s just… too big of audience there. I’m not stripping for free.

Oot but I actually kinda am building this “fun” character on insta though, you should check it out: @oktavioni (if you have time, definitely, but if you’re reading this post through sampai sini, I’d assume you have quite some time to spare *wink and smile and kamsahamnida). My last note post on Pa Marty Natalegawa’s talk has gotten quite good responses and more than 10 people have been replying my stories with “bidet” and “jetwasher”, which was a good engagement turnout(?) I think.

Back to the topic. Iya. Udah sih tapi mau ngomong itu aja. Pusing habis meeting. Pusing karena ngerasa couldve performed better. Tapi it IS reassuring to know that I have a whole team backing me up. Semoga the rest of the month (and year) (and PhD project) could go well. AAMIIN.

Wishing all the best to all of my fellows here too. We sure have different battle, I don’t…. really read people’s posts here in tumblr (sorry) (but I do this too in insta) (I READ A LOT OF TWEETS tho… so maybe just tweet so I could read your story?). Tapi kembali lagi ke 2:286 “Allah does not burden any soul with more than it can bear”, jadi percaya saja InsyaAllah ada silver liningnya. Mantap ukhty banget gaktu, berhubung hari Jumat (emoji salim).

Byea. Wishing you all really good weekend!

VHL 16:12pm 16/06/2023 – ps. Rada sedih abis ngchat grup wasap ngajak orang main pingpong di dept tp apparently lagi ga pada di Ox ☹

[doshmanziari]

Architectural Criticism in 2021/2022 || Part 1.5

Before writing a fuller continuation of my previous essay on architectural criticism, I’m inserting a mini-essay that focuses on a particular piece of criticism. Let me be clear: I don’t see Kate Wagner, the person behind @mcmansionhell, as an enemy; I’m just using one of her articles as an example because I had, in my essay, already linked two articles of hers (more accurately, one article and an image from another), and I’d rather elaborate on what I mean when I write “...a vapid buildup to a politically convenient takeaway” than bring in an entirely different item. Wagner, in my view, represents a sort of destabilizing criticism that takes pleasure in tackling “dry” subject matter with breathless, Meme-heavy sarcasm. I find the tone off-putting, but I appreciate it as one attempt to invigorate and broaden the audiences of architectural appraisal. My issue is that by now the joke has overestimated its capacity for judgmental clarity. Really anything can be made fun of if you’re determined enough, and the more of an unquestioning audience you have the easier it is to believe everything you say is true or coherent.

The image was from this 2018 Vox article: “Betsy DeVos’ summer home deserves a special place in McMansion Hell” (a title likely devised by the editor; given the other residences Wagner has lambasted, I would be surprised if she truly believes this is among the worst). My observations won’t make sense unless anyone who is reading this reads her article as well, so please do that if you’d like to follow along. It should take only a couple of minutes.

What I’d first draw readers’ attention to is that Wagner spends the first four paragraphs on the United States’ beyond-vast inequality of wealth. Two of these paragraphs are the article’s largest, and the article is twelve-paragraphs-long, meaning that 1/3 of it is devoted to establishing a socio-economic context -- at least, that is the pretense. Once Wagner writes “...getting paid to make fun of DeVos’s tacky seaside decor is one of few ways to both feed myself and make myself feel better”, it is clear that her personal intent is a kind of vengeful mocking, and that her intent for readers is to prime them to associatively, knee-jerkingly despise anything which could come next with flat-affect “lmao”s. It’s hardly irrelevant to mention economic realities when examining luxury items (and what else is a mansion?), but Wagner’s subsequent analysis is not really architectural or even artistic: it is rather about looking at several photographs of a building, knowing who lives there and hating that person (and also imagining that they were responsible for all design decisions), and then mocking this-and-that in whatever ways one can devise. These grievances are understandable, but understandable grievances do not automatically lead to perceptive criticism.

Please look (perhaps again) at the first image. Note that only four, maybe, of the fourteen details Wagner chooses to focus on -- “no wry comment needed”, “these look like playdoh stamps”, “when you love consistency”, and “oh my god is this a shutter” -- approach anything vaguely resembling coherent criticism; and the other four images fare even worse (with the exception of the highlighting of an apparently absurd interior balcony). The rest are inane attempts at saying anything at all. Writing “hell portal” by an upper porch area may be funny for a moment, but what does it actually express? Well, nothing, except the author’s own irritation which will find whatever it can to announce its contemptuous sarcasm. Wagner’s captions will land only to the degree that the reader is humorously sympathetic.

The aforementioned remarks, excepting the one about the embedded chubby Tuscan columns’ Play-Doh-likeness, suggest that the worst thing a building can do is be formally heterogeneous. The implicative corollary here is that good architecture is eminently justifiable in all of its parts -- consistent, unified, rational. This is as fine a personal belief as anything else, but when it is wielded as dogma against architecture which has no interest in being a Petit Trianon it can only reveal its intellectual self-limitations. Wagner writes that “there is a difference between architectural complexity and a mess”, yet what that difference may be is hand-waved away. We just have to believe that thirteen different windows styles is too much. What’s the threshold? Does it depend on the size of the building? The types of styles used? Who knows.

Now of course bad architecture exists, and sometimes the failure indeed points to deficient editorial acumen; for architecture, like any other art, is as much about what’s included as what’s excluded. But in saying so little about the shingle style itself, Wagner seems to have given no thought to readers concluding that all shingle style houses are freakish -- more specifically, concluding that this freakishness is a damning transgression, and that no self-respecting, punching-up class-warrior would ever be caught dead sincerely enjoying their geometric, “exquisite corpse” escapades. In fact, the freakish tendencies of shingle style houses are just what make them such great fun to see, visit, or reside in. Wagner’s article, as far as I can tell, omits this possibility. When she writes, “Betsy likely went with this style because it is very popular in New England and in coastal enclaves of the rich and famous in general”, one is being pushed to presume that the only probable reason the shingle style exists or could be preferred over another style is to signal élite solidarity.

The photograph right above is of Kragsyde, a Massachusetts shingle style mansion, designed by the US-Northeast-oriented firm of Peabody & Stearns, completed in the 1880s. It was demolished almost a century ago, but the few exterior images of it which remain are, I think, fascinating -- maybe most of all for its enormous archway, possibly a porte-cochère, which has a thin, overextending keystone bizarrely driven into the top like a nail puncturing a petrified rainbow. I bring the building up because Wagner gives us no reason to consider why Kragsyde may have been a genuine architectonic accomplishment and not merely an oversized farce of contiguous pretensions. To the layperson hot off of the Vox piece, there may be no artistic difference between it and DeVos’ place, except that perhaps Kragsyde has a more consistent fenestrative application (would that make it better? if so, why?).

I appreciate that only so much can be said when you’re limited to less than a thousand words, especially when the issue is “complicated” (as the byline for Vox’s First-person series advertises). But the problem I keep coming back to is how DeVos’ mansion is treated as a stand-in for DeVos herself. This makes any architectural critique, no matter how pressed it is for size, flimsily presentist: its durability starts and ends with how alive the architecture’s resident(s) and political presence are. On some emotional level, this is pretty sensible: if we despise monarchical institution, we can find a sort of loophole to enjoying Versailles palace on the basis of it no longer being the residence of royalty. Our awe over its decadence and scope is intersectionally “admissible” on the basis of its having become a UNESCO World Heritage site. Similarly, one can imagine DeVos’ mansion being appreciated in a hundred years (should it still exist then) because the passage of time will have rendered DeVos’ person a historical fact, and perhaps more separable, and then tolerable, in that regard -- even if the building remains private.

But if architecture is, as a craft, critically whittled down to nothing more or less than inorganic expressions of social disparities, with every aesthetic decision a reflection of politically explicable taste, then we must assume that a great deal of the world’s most remarkable architecture is equally ridiculous and despicable, since so much of it was born out of great privilege and required specialized resources. I doubt Wagner actually believes this, because it would betray the entire premise of her McMansion Hell project, which is to demonstrate how so many modern day mansions are deeply unpleasant mounds of visual illiteracy, and cannot hold even a stump of a candle to the luminously learned and eclectic talents of prior great architects such as Mackintosh, Norman Shaw, Lutyens, or Ledoux. So what’s the takeaway here? As far as I can tell, it’s simply that if you hate Betsy DeVos, and if you care about class, you should hate her house too. And I do not think that that is architectural criticism.

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

Marvel Team-Up Volume 4 #2 Thoughts

Things get a little better and a little worse this issue

 With the shakey set up out of the way Eve Ewing gets to dive into what she and fans were actually looking forward to from this arc, Freaky Friday with Spidey and Ms. Marvel.

 The results are again...mixed.

 The art work is again nice and the typical Freaky Friday tropes played with in the story, whilst modest and not explored nearly as much as they could be, are touched upon enough to illicit a laugh or two.

The best moment is probably seeing Peter in Kamala’s body appreciate seeing Kamala in his body have fun with his powers. The subtext is it gives him some perspective on how cool it is to be Spider-Man really.

Another area the book succeeded in was deciding to dedicate the whole issue to the 2 protagonists living through one another’s lives as opposed to having other stuff distract from that.

The positives kind of end there though.

Like last issue Ewing pulls the dirty trick of introducing us to some important information about Spider-Man’s life that’s never (to my recollection) been mentioned before.

As bad as it was to say Peter had an old friend we’d never heard of last issue, this issue establishes that he took precautions to never again have his body swapped like in Superior Spider-Man.

There are a few issues with this.

First of all, whilst it’s nice and would be in character for Peter to do that, it makes him look foolish and irresponsible in the main titles for seemingly never doing that. indeed I can all but guarantee this piece of information will be forgotten or ignored in the main titles if anything akin to a body swap occurred again. Prior to this issue we presumed Peter didn’t take precautions but also that he didn’t do that because there was no way for him to do so.

Second of all, it’s really, really disingenuous for something as important as that to have just happened off panel without a mention until now and a mention in a title that is neither a Spider-Man centric title and isn’t even edited by the Spidey office.

Third of all it doesn’t even make sense. Doc Ock never actually swapped his and Peter’s minds literally. He created copies of their minds, uploaded his into Peter’s body and vice versa. The implication from this story seems to be that in fact Peter and Kamala are literally having their consciousnesses transferred back and forth.

Speaking of which, maybe issue #3 will address this but the fact that Peter and Kamala are swapping back and forth seems...contrived; as does Kamala’s neighbours happening to be away for awhile and happening to give her a key.

It seems like a conceit of the story invented just so that Peter wouldn’t have to pretend to be Kamala in front of her parents.

On the one hand that robs us of a lot of potential comedy and shenanigans. On the other the idea that Kamala’s family will be able to deduce something is seriously wrong is very likely and needs to be addressed.

However rather than go that contrived route I don’t see why Ewing didn’t just cut out the middle man and either have the swap happen on the weekend when Kamala could more reasonably not have to spend a night at home or, if she really wanted to have Peter go back to school, have the swap happen after Kamala leaves home at the start of the day but before she gets to school.

Off the top of my head you could have it be that the explosion doesn’t immediately swap them but that they wake up or en route to school/work get hit with the swap. Or have Dr. Rosario’s lecture occur in Jersey thus giving Peter a reason to be there and then Peter as Kamala has to get back to school for the rest of the day.

Putting all this aside perhaps the biggest sin of the story is the fact that it does the Freaky Friday trope but doesn’t really explore much of the obvious issues in this specific scenario.

Typically the Freaky Friday trope occurs between people of the same genders, and somewhat less typically of the same race.

Here the focus is upon the different AGES of Peter compared to Kamala.

Okay sure that’s a dynamic in play in this scenario, but surely Peter reliving High school or Kamala being thrust into the adult world of bills and job interviews is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay less significant than Kamala reacting to how different it is being a white man with a penis or Peter reacting to how different it is being a Pakistani, Muslim girl with breasts and a vagina.

I’m not saying the story should be graphic about this but it’s really disingenuous and unrealistic to set up this scenario and then pretend either of these characters would be more focussed upon being younger/older than being different genders, races and how they get treated differently as a result.

I’m not asking for a sermon about racism, sexism, privilege etc, but just...I’m just asking the story to be believable and realistic. Realistically those issues would not just pop up but be much bigger concerns.

They don’t even try to raise the question of consent in this scenario. We focus more upon secret identities than even giving a throwaway line about Peter and Kamala consenting to let one another use their bodies to change clothes or go to the bathroom. That just happens and we don’t mention it.

Again, this doesn’t have to be graphic, it can even be funny without being crude, but like...just talk about it. Even that Ultimate Spider-Man arc with Wolverine and Spidey swapping bodies kind of touched on these topics a little and that was over 15 years ago.

The most we get is Peter noticing he got one racist comment and having a period, but it’s just glossed over a scene later. Peter meanwhile doesn’t get to teach Kamala about the perils of adult life, which is weird because at face value this is both their stories so you’d think Ewing would keep things ‘even’ in that way. More significantly really this is Kamala’s book but it leans towards Peter learning about being a girl of colour?????* Shouldn’t the focus be more on Kamala in this regard?**

What’s also weird is that the book tries and fails to give Kamala a taste of what being a man is like by painting the perils of shaving as the closest male equivalent to a period.

Let’s put a side a debate about whether that’s true, or indeed how the comparison is cliché.

My bigger question is...Kamala just...knows how to shave?

My even bigger question is...Kamala shaves incorrectly and it causes her to bleed...on a time delay?

Huh?

Yeah in the issue she starts bleeding during an interview because she cut herself shaving but that’s not how that works.

Yeah you can bleed AGAIN later if you cut yourself shaving but it’s written to imply she didn’t start bleeding until that moment when...surely she would’ve been bleeding beforehand when she initially cut herself.

Additionally there is this odd panel where Kamala is admiring Peter’s muscles in a mirror and being upbeat about being an adult...Maybe I’m being dense but how does that translate. I’ve got huge manly biceps...being an adult is awesome. What? It’s a twin of another panel on the same page where Peter as Kamala starts skipping for joy because...he’s young? And this is referred to as ‘the thing’?

Is that a thing?

Do teenagers typically skip for joy to school or anywhere for that matter?

I think the implication is that he’s relishing youthful energy as in an earlier panel he’s happy his knees aren’t aching. But that still doesn’t add up. As Spider-Man his powers afford him a lot of energy and that includes immense leaping abilities. Skipping isn’t something he couldn’t do or that would hurt him. it doesn’t even jive in the issue as Kamala never complains about aches and pains an clearly relishes her newfound acrobatic prowess.

Oh and on this same double page spread Kamala as Peter buys five scratchcards. What the Hell Kamala? When did Peter give you permission to waste his obviously limited funds? Like on the same two pages she took notice of his bills and his job interview.

There is also this weird characterization thing whenever Peter is in Kamala’s body where he suddenly becomes less like Spider-Man and more ‘the intellectual who speaks in a more high brow way but it’s funny because his appearance is at odds with that’. Like he puts his thumb on his chin as he thinks about and postulates about science stuff and talks about the nectar of the Gods when applying lip gloss. What gives?

Finally there is a bit of mischaracterization regarding one another’s secret identities.

Kamala in Spider-Man’s body immediately unmasks in spite of Peter’s protests, then he does the same against her protests to keep things fair.

Now not to be too harsh on Ewing in this scenario inevitably Kamala and Peter would need to unmask one another. In this sense you can cut Peter a little slack as he probably knows it’s going to be next to impossible to go about in Kamala’s body without seeing her real face.

But Kamala seems...rather out of character here. No expert on her character but given how she has her own secret identity would she really so cavalierly violate someone else’s...when they are asking her not to...and then she employs a double standard and asks them not to violate her own identity?

I really don’t buy this at all.

Again you could argue Peter’s actions were a little more justified but at face value it seems he was just being petty.

All in all...I guess this is worth a read for a few laughs and if you just wanna see some of the wackiness with this kind of scenario but over all it has a lot of problems.

P.S. Another issue with this...er...issue, as well as the last one was Ewing for some reason having dialogue that plainly should be though captions just spoken out loud. Why?

*Also is it just me or is it really weird that from now on its canon that Spider-Man knows what a period feels like and loves the taste of cotton candy flavoured lip gloss? If nothing else that’s gotta be something that will be on Spidey listicals in the future right?

**And yet in other ways the focus is more on Kamala, everything happens in Jersey City, it’s rooted in her status quo and supporting cast. Which again is a problem in one sense since this is at face value both her and Peter’s story but more realistically it’s her story, this is her secondary title.

[comicgeekscomicgeek]

Their Hero Academia, Chapter 14

Continuing my string of new viewpoint characters, we have Sora Iida!  This is the raw, unedited version, and will eventually be cleaned up a bit when it goes up on FF.net and Ao3. Chapters 0-12 can be found here

The unedited chapter 13 can be found here

Their Hero Academia – Chapter 14: Sora Iida Takes Off

“For the record,” Sora shouted after Kenta Sato and Kimiko Ojiro, “being unable to access the Wi-Fi does not constitute a “science emergency!��  I am not your tech support!”

Honestly!  All Ojiro had done was turn the Wi-Fi functionality off on her phone.  Hardly a science emergency and definitely not worth the urgency with which she and Sato had demanded that she come with them.  In fact, there was no reason why she should have had to leave the room in the first place.

Clearly, something was going on.  Shenanigans were afoot! But what?  With all respect to the two of them as her friends and future Heroes, neither Sato nor Ojiro were clever enough to be the primary suspect in anything.  But they were usually to be found in the company of Takuma Sero, who possessed the rather unique ability to be rather clever and rather stupid at the same time when it came to getting into trouble.   Perhaps he had spearheaded something while the other two distracted her?  But what? And why would they not distract her younger brother as well?

These were questions that she clearly was going to get no answer to until she had additional data. On the other hand, she had multiple projects of her own to work on and there had been no sign of any damage to anything.  Perhaps she was better off ignoring it, so long as they did not cause any apparent disruptions?  It would mean a return to the designs she and Tensei were working on.

Yes, perhaps that was best.

Sora returned to the Common Room to find Tensei sitting at the table she had left him, looking up with the kind of grin that was usually reserved for a very serious breakthrough in design, one with only a very small number of explosions and minimal property damage.

“Brother?” she asked, tilting her head slightly.  “Did something happen while I was gone?  Did you figure out how to reduce the thrust multiplier to a manageable size?”

He continued staring ahead for a moment, though from the look in his eyes, she could tell his thoughts were moving quite rapidly.  Their mother got the same look fairly often and from what their father had said, so did she.  According to Father, the only trick to bringing one of them out of it was a sudden shock.

“Oh, younger brother,” she trilled.

That brought Tensei to attention, his eyes focusing on her.  “While that is factually correct, it is only a matter of minutes!  The data is statistically irrelevant under most circumstance!”

She offered him a somewhat apologetic nod.   He was easy to get riled up.  Not quite as easy as Father, but few people were.   Their mother could do it with just a slight change of expression.   “It was necessary.  You were quite clearly lost in thought and I did not wish to wait for you to come out of it on your own.”

“I was not…” Tensei trailed off, starting to stand.  Halfway though, he sat back down.  “Forgive me, Sister,” he said.  “I was indeed lost in thought.  Much has occurred since you left the room and I am still uncertain of how to process it all.”

“Elaborate,” she said. “Did Sero do something?  He was not with his usual collaborators.”

“It was Sero,” Tensei told her.  “He wished to thank me for saving his life earlier.”

That was perfectly logical, but it did not make sense with the deception.  “Commendable,” she said.  “But that does not explain why Ojiro and Sato felt the need to remove me from the room before he did.”

Tensei smiled again. “There was more.  He asked if I wished to engage in a one-on-one activity with him this weekend.  I accepted.”

“Oh, well then, that is…”

Wait.

She stopped and replayed the words he had just said in her mind. “Are you telling me, you have a date?”

More information assembled itself in her brain.  “With Sero?”

Tensei nodded.  “I do.”

“I am very happy for you, Brother,” Sora said.

She realized it was the first lie she had ever told him.

***

“Kirishima-Bakugo!” Sora shouted, arms flailing through the air as she entered Kirishima-Bakugo’s room. “I require advice!”

Kirishima-Bakugo looked up from her chair, where she was lifting small weights.  She gave Sora a long, penetrating stare.  Perhaps it was meant to be some form of communication?  Was it code?  She could crack that if she applied enough thought.

Somehow dissatisfied with Sora’s response, Kirishima-Bakugo finally spoke.  “…And you’re coming to me, why, exactly?  Isn’t this more Tokoyami’s bag?  Or Toshi?  Or Izzy? Besides, I thought you usually talked things through that brother of yours.”

Sora frowned. “Unfortunately, this concerns my brother, so I am unable to request his advice on the matter.”

“That still doesn’t explain why you came to me.  We ain’t exactly best friends or anything.  …And it’s not like I’m exactly known for making the best decisions.”

“Those are true statements,” Sora admitted.  “But Tokoyami, Todoroki, and Toshi are occupied with their study group with Shinso and Haimawari.  I did not wish to interrupt.  I know we are not close, but I would appreciate council all the same.”

Kirishima-Bakugo finally set down her weight.  “This have anything to do with your brother getting a date with Sero?”

Sora felt her eyes go wide. “How do you know that?  I only just learned moments ago!”

The blonde, muscular girl laughed at that.  “You do remember Ojiro was involved, right?  Once she knew it, assume everyone who exists, did exist, and will exist knows.”

She picked up her phone and called up a post from a social media site.  It showed a picture of a happy if somewhat shell-shocked Sero with the caption “My BFF (@Takuma_Sero) just scored himself a date with Tensei Iida! I’m so proud of him!  And Iida is such a hottie!  So jealous!”

Sora stared at it for a moment.  “That was fast.”

“So what’s up?” Kirishima-Bakugo asked.  “Just don’t tell me you were crushing on Sero.  Because that would have really been barking up the wrong tree.”

She shook her head. They had all known Sero was gay for some time; he made no secret of it.  She had known Tensei was as well, of course, though she was uncertain how many of the others did.  He did not really speak of romantic or lustful inclinations one way or the other. Like her, machines and intellectual challenges were typically his first priority.

“No, nothing like that. It is just…”  Sora trailed off, waving her hands in the air in awkward gestures.

“I’m gonna need words, Jetset.  My Quirk ain’t mind reading.”

Strange.  She could usually articulate her ideas quite clearly. Or at least, clearly enough that her brother and mother could understand.  Other people sometimes did have a hard time following her.  But words were not usually a problem.

She tried again.  “Tensei and I are twins.”

Kirishima-Bakugo raised an eyebrow.  “And water is wet.”

“It is just… I should be happy for him.  It is good that he has found someone to spend time with, someone he might like.  But for some reason, I am not.”

For a long moment, Kirishima-Bakugo stared at her again.  Then, a strange, amused grin finally crossed her face.  “I always wondered what would happen when one of you left the nest.”

She stood and rubbed Sora’s hair vigorously.  “You’re jealous, Jetset.”

Sora pulled back, running a hand over her blue-black hair to smooth it back down.  “I am sorry, but… what?”

Kirishima-Bakugo flopped back in her chair, still grinning.  “You,” she said, “are jealous. That someone who’s not you is getting to spend time with your brother.”

“No, that cannot be it,” Sora said, looking down.  And yet… The data point introduced by Kirishima-Bakugo completely recontextualized the data points she had already gathered about the situation.  Her reluctance to be happy about the situation, a nagging concern in the back of her mind that she could not name…

“We have always done everything together,” she went on.  “We have the same Quirk, we have the same interests, we understand each other well enough that we can practically read the other’s thoughts.  I cannot remember a time we have every spent more than a few hours apart.”

“You do know they’re not getting married or nothing, right?  This might not even work out.”

She was aware of that, wasn’t she?  And it was not realistic to expect that her brother spend his every second with her. He already did not do that; they had to sleep sometimes, after all.  Not at much as most people would probably prefer they do, but that was an argument for another time.  But they typically did spend the majority of their waking hours together.  Two minds and four hands made for lighter, smarter work, after all.

Sora was a woman of science. She had been taught from a young age to hypothesize, experiment, analyze the data, and come to a conclusion, even if the results were not the ones you wanted.  The walls of their home had several scorch marks that attested to that.

She became aware of Kirishima-Bakugo snapping her fingers in her face.  “You went away there for a little while, Jetset.”

“I am sorry,” Sora said. “But I think, Kirishima-Bakugo, you are right.”

“Say that again.”

“’You are right’?”

She grinned.  “I just wanted one of you eggheads to admit that for once.”

Kirishima-Bakugo went on, “Look.  My own personal life’s kind of a mess right now.  And I really ain’t the person with answers.  But the way I see it, being a little jealous ain’t terrible.  Letting it take over, letting it get in the way of you and your brother, that’d be terrible.  I know I’d hate it if I let something come between Tai and me.”

Sora nodded.  Her jealousy was an understandable factor. But one she could control.  There was no reason to deny her brother a chance at some happiness.  She would hope he would do the same for her.

“I…   Thank you,” she said.  “You have given me a lot to think about.”

Kirishima-Bakugo nodded. “Yeah, well, you’re not the only one who can use their head.  ‘sides... Just think of how he might feel when you find some guy to ask out.  Or girl.  Or whoever.  If that’s your thing.”

“Oh,” she said, “I suppose that would be rather hypocritical of me.  Especially as I like…”

Kirishima-Bakugo held up both hands.  “Nope, don’t wanna know.  I got enough going on without getting you even more sorted out.  I already know more about you than I needed to.”

“Still,” Sora said, “I must thank you.  This was a very clarifying discussion.”   She held up her arms, awkwardly.  “Social convention tells me I should hug you now.”

“…Let’s skip that, okay?”

***

When Sora went to find her brother, he was not in his room.  Thankfully, Shinso knew where he was and told her that he was on the roof.   She first went down to the Common Room to grab bottles of grape and apple juice from the fridge, then went up to join him.

Tensei was standing near the edge of the roof, looking up at the stars.    “Brother?” she asked.  “Are you nervous about your date? It is soon?  Where are you going?   I demand additional information!”

He turned and smiled, accepting the bottle of apple juice that she offered him, taking a long swig before he answered.  “I am filled with uncertainty. This is my first date ever and I feel incredibly unprepared.  But Sero has suggested this Saturday and going for a quick dinner and to the arcade downtown.  He seems experienced enough in these matters, so I agreed with his plans.”

She took a drink of her own apple juice.  “If I could offer you advice, I would,” she said, “but my dating experiences are no different than your own.”

“Do you suppose I should ask Father for advice?”

Sora shook her head. “I think we both know that would useless.  Mother always says that she had to get Aunt Mina and Aunt Toru to explain her interest in him to him before he understood.  Though he claims they were overly direct about it.”

This got a laugh out of him. “This is true.  Though I am uncertain as to what they could have said to fluster him so.”

Sora shrugged.  “I am afraid I have no idea.”

She frowned.  The two of them had always been open and honest with each other.  Now was not time to change that.  Even if her opinion on the situation had changed, he deserved to know her full thoughts on the matter.

Tensei noticed.  “You seem preoccupied, Sister.”

She finished her juice before she spoke, feeling it fueling her body and her Quirk.   It was a warmth, spreading through the rest of her, concentrating itself in the jet engines on her back.  “I told you I was happy for you when you told me you had a date. And I am, now.  But when I told you that, I was lying.”

His eyes widened. “You were?  But why?”

“I was jealous,” she said. “I was afraid if you were spending time with Sero, we would have less time together.  And I realize that this is still true.  But that does not make it wrong.  We are twins and always will be.  But that does not mean we cannot have our own lives as well.”

“As if I could ever forget about you,” Tensei said.  “You are my sister.  I will always try to make time for you.  But I am also inexperienced in the requirements of other relationships.  So if I fail to achieve balance, I will be relying upon you to set things right.”

She nodded.  “Of course I will. Can you forgive me my jealousy?”

“Of course!”

“And,” Sora said, “you will do the same for me, should I ever pursue a romantic relationship?”

“Certainly,” he said. “Though as your brother, I am obliged to threaten any boy you might be interested in with bodily harm, should he be anything less than a gentleman to you.”

“And as your older sibling, I should remind you that the responsibilities of protecting the younger sibling from their romantic partner falls to me.  Perhaps I should be pre-emptively defending your honor with Sero with threats of violence!”

“You are older by only three minutes!  That is a statistical rounding error!”

“Nevertheless, it is still factual and precise!”

“I am not having this argument again!”

“Because you are losing!”

“I do not concede that!”

“The facts do not care about whether or not you accept them, they simply are!”

Tensei gave her a curious look, as he put data points together.  “For the sake of being prepared to defend your honor, is there anyone you have romantic interest in?”

He always shifted topics when he knew her logic had defeated him.  Well, she had already nearly told one person tonight, perhaps she ought to tell someone for real…

“Both of you go inside! It’s after curfew!”

Sora peered over the edge of the roof, spotting Aizawa down on the ground, patrolling the school grounds.

“How does he do that?” Tensei asked.  “His vision should not be that good.”

Sora shook her head.  “If I have learned anything so far this week, it is that Mister Aizawa is a statistically anomaly all his own.”

***

Sora returned Tensei to his room and was on her way back to hers when she saw Toshi coming from the stairwell.  Mostly likely, he had finished his study session with Tokoyami, Todoroki, and the rest. Even in his casual wear, his muscles were readily apparent.

“Oh, hey, Sora,” he said.  “How’re you taking being lab-banned?”

She frowned.  “It is going,” she said.  “A week is a long time to be away from the Support Workshop.”

“Well, you did kind of blow it up…”

“Only a little!  We put the fires out very quickly!”

Toshi put up his hands in an apologetic gesture.  “Okay, okay, just a little exploding.  I’m sure it was fine.”  

“It was,” Sora insisted.  “But Power Loader did not see it that way.  After he was done banning us, I saw him break into the bottle he keeps in his desk for “emergencies.”  Whatever that might be.”

Toshi blinked slowly for a moment, looking at though he might say something about that, then shrugged.  “Well, I’m sure it will pass pretty quick.  We’ve got plenty of Hero stuff to keep us busy.   We’re going out to the USJ next week, after all..  Uncle Kota says he’s got some really special stuff planned!”

“That is good,” she replied.  Though she was not completely without worry about it.  They all knew what had happened during their parents’ first visit to the USJ.  While they all knew the likelihood of anything like that happening to them was amazingly slim.  The various members of the League of Villains were either dead or in prison. Nevertheless between who they were and what else was going on in the world, the school was taking a great number of precautious.

He nodded.  “Yeah, I’m really excited for it.”

Indeed, she could see the excitement already in his green eyes.  It was an aesthetically pleasing look on him, especially when he smiled.  

“It promises to be an interesting experience,” she agreed.  “Though I am not as certain as to how well I will perform at rescue work.  I can certainly catch falling people, as my brother did for Sero earlier today, but much of it requires more delicate work than my Quirk allows.”

“That was a good catch,” Toshi agreed.  “But don’t sell yourself short either.  The right Quirk in the right place at the right time can make a big difference, sure.  But you and your brother are way more than just flying around.   You’re both crazy smart.  That’s important too.”

Sora felt her cheeks redden slightly.  “You are too kind, Toshi,” she said.

“Yeah, well,” he said, rubbing the back of his hair, messing up his green hair. “It’s true.”

“Thank you,” she said again.  Perhaps there were better words here.  But she still felt as though the time was not quite right.   Not when she was still battling down the last vestiges of jealousy. “I will keep that in mind.”

He smiled again.  “Good,” he said.  “See you in the morning then?”

She nodded.  “In the morning.  Good night, Toshi.”

“Good night, Sora.”

She headed back to the stairwell to head back to her own room.  She definitely required further data points before proceeding.   Perhaps she could interrogate Tokoyami or Todoroki for more information before she put a plan of action into effect…

[ask-svt-hearteu]

doctor! Wonwoo

Anon requested: “If you doing Requests can I have Wonwoo as a doctor? And y/n as a nurse there ❤️”

Genre: fluff

Word Count: 1189

tbh I see Wonwoo as a neurosurgeon

and can you imagine Wonwoo during medical school?

he’ll probs be studying in the library very often

to the point they have to tell him to leave sometimes lmao

always carries a book bag everywhere

and surprise surprise

always has a book to his face

cutie with his messy morning hair going to the cafe to get coffee

with his morning voice

and him in glasses!

you knew who Wonwoo was but you weren’t friends with him

but since you were a nursing student

you had a few classes with him sometimes

and wow he’s such a smartass

always answers all the questions right

and you’re just here like

???! Excuse me

nobody was surprised by the fact he graduated early

and sports science major Seungcheol was just like

“you’re younger than me stop”

 let’s get into doctor Wonwoo

 he got a new position at this hospital

 for their neurological expert

 and despite his cold looks

 he’s so caring towards his patients :’)

 also has a mini library in his office

 and when he’s not tending patients

 he’s reading books in his office

or playing with the kids awee

there’s this one grandma with a brain tumour

 that sees Wonwoo very often

 and she’s told him how her kids are all grown and too busy

 which makes him sad even though he doesn’t tell her

 but the grandma treats Wonwoo as if he’s her own grandson

and Wonwoo lends books from his library to her <3

you had just been transferred to a new hospital

and you were excited but at the same time scared

because you didn’t know anyone

but ended befriending a lot of the patients

like this one really nice old lady

 who always seems to have a book on her

 but you noticed she likes to dog ear the pages to bookmark them

 which annoys you a bit cause of your inner book worm

so you decided to make a bookmark for her <3

with her name and everything plus some other cute things

and your name at the bottom

the grandmas always tells you about this one cute doctor in her section

“I’m telling you, he’s such a cutie!!”

and when the grandma returns the book to Wonwoo

she forgets (deliberately) to take out the bookmark

so when Wonwoo opened the book he had noticed the bookmark

and how the pages weren’t folded on the top anymore

tbh the dog ears did bother him a bit but he didn’t have the heart to say anything to her

he decides to visit the grandma in her room

and you were in there sitting next to her and talking to each other before your next shift starts

“halmeonim! You left your bookmark”

and when Wonwoo notices you, he’s like

“Weren’t you from the same medical school as me?”

you’re just here like?? Jeon Wonwoo knows I exist¿

you couldn’t recognise him at first

because he wasn’t wearing his iconic glasses anymore :(

grandma was happily in her own world tho

because she’s happy her ship is starting to sail off lol

“you two kids will be so cute together!”

 from then on,

 you and Wonwoo were around each other pretty often

 and got to know each other despite being in the same school for years

 and he’s actually a pretty cool guy

 such a sweetheart too

 all the other nurses have crushes on him as well

which is honestly not a surprise

Also, Wonwoo’s mini library became yours as well

sometimes you both just sit and read together

in comfortable silence

 because somehow you two had gotten that close

 which makes you strike up a question

 “hey why don’t you wear your glasses anymore?”

 “idk I just don’t think they look good on me, I use contacts now”

 “lies, your glasses looked hella good on you”

 and the next day he comes in,

and he’s wearing his glasses!!

finally!!

you two banter a lot

with the occasional friendly flirting lmao

“hey Wonwoo”

“yeah?”

“Are you my appendix? Because I have a gut feeling I should take you out ;)”

“sure, you free on Saturday?”

and your just like wait what,,,

you meant it as a joke

but he took it seriously

but who would turn down a date with Wonwoo lmao

he picks you up and brings you to this museum

what an intellectual cutie awe

and you both just had fun wondering around the museum

learning new facts and just some more general knowledge

and reminiscing about the old school days

“I’m not sure if you were in my class, but do you remember when Seungcheol passed out?”

“Oh!! When we had to cut up the human body right?”

you never realised how great of a human being Wonwoo is

he’s so interesting and there’s so much more to him than what you expected

after finishing the museum date

you both spontaneously decided to go to an art gallery

and when you both arrived,

the art just awed both of y'all

but Wonwoo couldn’t really concentrate that much

because while you were admiring the art hung on the walls

he admired the artwork that was in front of him

which is you!!

because he thinks you’re the actual masterpiece :’)

and when you turned around to look at him

he thinks you’ve noticed him staring at you

and he just blushes up!

and just couldn’t get rid of this goofy grin on his face!!

and then he just asked you to be his girlfriend there and then

followed by taking a lot of cute couple pictures together

because you guys are gonna be that couple on instagram lmao

almost everyone in the hospital knows about your relationship with each other now

and jokes about how your relationship is a typical soap drama on tv lmao

but if anyone says anything bad about your relationship

grandma is ready to fight them

because she credits herself as why the two of you started dating lmao

your birthday was coming up

and Wonwoo wasn’t exactly sure what to get you

ends up going for a homemade gift

instead of something more materialistic

ends up making a book with all the moments you guys shared together!!

and when he gifts the book to you

you were speechless

you just couldn’t think of anything to say

even though you were ecstatic

“you don’t like it?”

“wHAT? No Wonwoo!! I love it so much!! I just can’t express myself well right now”

you were surprised by how much effort was put into it

with all the pictures of you two together and little captions written by him

followed by some pages with titles like

‘5 things I like about you’

‘I greatly appreciate you"

‘why I don’t deserve you’

and you just try to convince him that he was worth so much more than he thinks!

which really helps him and tbh he’s really thankful for your constant reassurance :’)))

“honestly, I didn’t think I could fill up this entire book. But I guess we were too occupied with having fun we didn’t realise we were making these amazing memories”

MASTERLIST

[unheavenlycreatures]

@song-of-the-moon-1025 happy birthday babe, im putting this under a read-more because otherwise it will spam peoples dashboards lol

So, lord knows im awful at writing odes detailing someone’s (many, many) positive traits, but i wanted to bless you on your birthday, so here we go. Please bear with me a few moments, and forgive me if this sounds super gay--well. More gay than the majority of what I say usually is.

Emily,

You are quite possibly the brightest person I’ve ever met--both in the intellectual sense, and the sense that you simply are so full of light that I would worry for my already bad eyesight were I to see you in person. Like, the first time I spoke with you, you popped into my messages to inform me that I was amazing and you were upset because you hadn’t spoken with me yet.

That’s, like, probably the most cheery and friendly thing I have ever seen. You’re like... supernaturally nice. I’m still not convinced that you’re not an angel. Or a puppy. Or both. (Puppy angel?!?! Oh my God?!?!)

Since I’ve met you, I’ve felt more comfortable talking to you than anyone else. You’re willing to listen, but you’re never passive, and you’re willing to tell me when something I’m saying is really shitty--but able to sympathize and show me compassion when I’m feeling too alone to ask for it anywhere else.

(You are, in fact, the first place I go when anything happens to me, good or bad--before I tell my mom, before I tell my siblings, before I tell any of the people I know outside of the internet, you’re the first place I turn. I imagine that if my house were to catch on fire, it would be first instinct to take a picture and send it to you with some stupid caption like “well damn my house is lit tonight” before leaving the house and calling 911. That’s how big that instinct is.)

You’re probably the person that knows me best, and are the only person i’m willing to embarrass myself and look like an idiot in front of--because I know you’ll make fun of me, but I’ve never felt any malice come from you.  Like, not once. I don’t think you have a malicious bone in your body. And if there is, it’s probably like... one of the bones in your ear, which are the smallest bones in the human body. So. Very little.

I remember once, several months ago, I was in a really bad place, and woke up at like... 2 or 3 in the morning from a nightmare. For whatever reason (no, i know the reason, it’s because you’re amazing), you stayed up with me, even though it was even later for you, until i was able to go back to sleep. I won’t be so dramatic as to say you saved my life with that act, but in that moment, I suddenly knew that I had someone I could rely on.

You give me hope for the world--you make me feel like I’m capable of loving someone, and not hurting them, and not getting hurt myself--and you give me hope for myself as well, like I’m worthy of being loved.

I’m not afraid of talking to you--when I’m panicking about something anyone else would be fine doing, or I’m sure that the people in my life all secretly hate me, or I feel completely worthless, I know that I can come to you, and I know that you’ll relate and be able to to bring me down.

I guess, what I’m trying to say, in a few words:

When you say “I love you” to me, I know you mean it, and I believe you. (And I hope you know how much that means to me)

And when I say “I love you too,” I hope you believe me, and know that, for you, I mean it. (And I hope you know how much that means to me)

My life became that much more beautiful when you entered it, and I thank God every day that I met you.

Love you, babe.

Sincerely,

Me

[tessatechaitea]

DC House of Horror #1, Part Two (AKA A Review of Netflix’s The Mist)

It looks like Batman is fucking Flash while Flash fucks Green Lantern while Green Lantern, covered in semen, jerks off a candle.

Here, a woman smells her fingers for some mysterious and sexy reason.

I'm sorry for that previous caption! The only reason I said it was probably sexy was because she is a woman and I'm objectifying her. I smell my fingers for decidedly non-sexy reasons all the time! If anybody is interested in my life away from my blog, you can visit me intellectually debating the guys at the weird science comic book review blog on their review of Deadman #1. I'd forgotten that they were supposed to be my nemeses! But I remembered! Oh how I remembered! The woman smelling her fingers has been possessed by Wonder Woman because she took part in a Milton Bradly sponsored seance.

See?! You probably thought I was being facetious about the chewing testicles part! It's a known fact!

It's too bad I just scanned two images so closely together because the next page contains a nipple and a bare butt! The nipple is in shadow but you can still see the shape of it! I don't know why I'm using an exclamation point for that revelation. Back in the pre-Internet days, it would have been a glorious find for a young kid. But now, it's as tame as if the panel depicted a basket of kittens. The girl possessed by Wonder Woman kills all of her friends and everybody she meets before getting home and killing her abusive father. She also says a bunch of stuff in Greek. I bet she's saying things like, "I'm here to kick ass and chew testicles! Mmm! So good!" Nope. I was wrong. The first thing Wonder Woman says after possessing the girl is "Where am I, witches?" Then she kills the witches. Later after her killing the girl's dad, she says, "The world of man is Hell. It is going to be a glorious war." Man's World Rating: Are these stories horrific? I guess so. Imagine if Superman were a confused toddler scared out of his wits when he arrived on Earth? He probably would kill everybody by accident in his fits of terror. And Wonder Woman suddenly coming to man's world without any context except what she's been told about why the Amazons can't leave the island? She'd be ready for some serious clean up! And she only killed the women at the beginning because they were obviously witches. Some women, you just can't trust. So you get what we had here in this story. I don't like it any more than you women.

[how2to18]

CARL SKOGGARD IS a writer who lives with his partner, Joe Holtzman, along with their dogs in a converted cow slaughterhouse outside of Hudson, New York. Picture a metal chain that dangles down into the kitchen foyer with a substantial hook and track that runs the length of the room, and a concrete floor with little grooves where blood was meant to pool and flow … 

But this is hardly the most eye-catching element of their home — which is more like a technicolored compound, with giant papier-mâché animal head busts mounted on the walls, furniture upholstered with prints of lily pads and rabbits giving birth, and everything from radiators to electric strips to ceiling panels painted in bright patterns, reds and yellows. Holtzman, the designer, was also the founder and editor-in-chief of Nest: A Quarterly of Interiors, the celebrated and now defunct design publication with a cult-like following. Throughout its run between 1997 and 2004, Carl penned much of the magazine’s singular copy and wrote many articles — often unattributed. 

More recently, Carl has turned to translation. Beginning in 2015, he published English versions of several lesser-known works by Walter Benjamin, including an obscure poetry collection, Sonnets (2015), which the philosopher wrote to a young man he was in love with. In October 2016, Carl published a translation of German film theorist, critic, and Frankfurt School essayist Siegfried Kracauer’s novel Georg (2016), and he’s nearly completed bringing the author’s second book, Ginster, into English as well. 

Last January, when he was out in Los Angeles, Carl and I sat down for a cocktail at the Langham Hotel in Pasadena, where we had a conversation about how he ended up spending his post-Nest days obsessing over early 20th-century German writing.

¤

CARL SKOGGARD: It was a chain of circumstances, really. I was 59 or 60 years old. I had finished working at a musicology day job — database work — where I had been for 30 years. I also had been working at Nest magazine, as a caption writer and, occasionally, I’d do a feature story. When all of that started coming to an end, people who knew a bit about my writing from Nest started coming at me with projects — not projects that I would have necessarily chosen. This was all back in the fall of 2007, when I was in Berlin. On the nightstand in my bedroom there was this book called Berliner Kindheit um neunzehnhundert — Berlin Childhood around 1900. I knew nothing about it. I knew who Walter Benjamin was, vaguely. So I read a bit of it, and thought it was fascinating. It was also very hard to understand, but I knew it was in some sense beautifully written.

PETER NOWOGRODZKI: What about it was fascinating?

It was somehow able to draw you in, but at the same time you didn’t really know exactly what you were reading. You know? It was just kind of incantatory. I decided to look it up, and I found out that there was an existing translation — which I looked at. The tone didn’t appeal to me. The tone that’s given to the persona — this kind of anonymous child who is really Walter Benjamin. He’s styling himself as this participant in an anonymous childhood in a certain place and time. So I thought, I’ll do a translation of this. That’s actually how this translation business started for me. Simple as that.

So you started with Berlin Childhood — and then how did you land on Georg?

Land on him … I did the three Benjamin’s that are primarily autobiographical. The last of those three was a book of sonnets, which no one had ever translated. So that felt good. I should add that all of these books have extensive, line-by-line commentary. They’re close interpretations. So a few years later I was again in Berlin. In the same person’s house where I came across Berlin Childhood. She’s a film student, finishing her doctorate, and she had been reading Siegfried Kracauer. She said to me, “You ought to think about translating this �� this is really funny. It’s never been translated” — referring to one of the two novels by Kracauer. I looked into it and saw that it was very quick paced and, as I came to think, cinematic; kind of satirical in a 1920s Otto Dix style. Like George Grosz, those people. It was just such a fine portrait of the tumult and confusion of the 1920s, seen through this subject who is basically anonymous.

That particular history — that tumult and confusion — feels oddly relevant right now.

Very much so. God, I can quote from my own blurb here:

Kracauer’s “Georg is a panorama of those years” — the post–World War I years in Germany — “as seen through the eyes of a rookie reporter working for the fictional Morgenbote (Morning Herald). In a defeated nation seething with extremism right and left, young Georg is looking for something to believe in. For him, the past has become unusable; for nearly everyone else he meets, paradise seems just around the corner. But which paradise? Kracauer’s grimly funny novel takes on a confused and dangerous time which can remind us of our own.

That’s about it, you know?

Maybe I was reading this into it, but it seemed as though the author had a certain contempt for Georg. If not contempt, then certainly a judgmental distance. Georg is portrayed as this naïve idealist.

He’s an everyman. People generally are confused, and can’t see around the corner too well …

Do you think Kracauer had empathy for the character? It seemed almost a satirical cartoon of that person.

Well, it’s strange. It’s very true, that it’s satirical. On the other hand, there’s a great deal of his own specific personal experience in the book. He might have felt that he wanted to distance himself from it. In the novel, Georg, who is in his 20s, would like to have a relationship with a young man, Fred, barely in his mid-teens. It’s interesting — there’s no prudery in this, but he has the character experience a denouement where he finally discovers that this boy is not interested in him in this way. Of course, the boy was very admiring of him as an older person who took an interest in him — but it has this sort of comic undoing. Georg and this boy go on a vacation together and that’s what happens, he realizes he’s built this kind of castle on the sand.

But the actual fact of the matter is that Kracauer himself had a relationship with none other than Theodor Adorno. He met Adorno when he was 14 or 15. Kracauer was 25 or so. And they used to read Kant every Sunday. And they stayed friends their whole lives — it was one of these sort of bitchy relationships, you know, prickly and with ego in it. I can actually identify with Kracauer. This younger Adorno, in later life, became very well established. At the center of their type of intellectual life. He would write letters to Kracauer and say things like, “Well there you go, you don’t need to be so defensive.” It was one of these things where I always identified with Kracauer. He was vulnerable.

So how do you think Kracauer would have regarded Georg, even if it is sort of a semi-autobiographical character for him?

He gives Georg many of his most important personal traits. His shyness, his wanting to withdraw. As he reached manhood, World War I ended, Kracauer was sort of casting about, and he ended up becoming a newspaper reporter, and then very quickly becoming a powerbroker in his position at the leading liberal paper of the time. He must have been very ambitious. And here at the beginning of the book, Georg is always saying he wants to make a mark on the world. But what’s more obvious is that Georg is tremendously shy, and he wants to flee situations all the time. And, you know, this is obviously autobiographical. Then on the other hand — again — he makes Georg into an ordinary person. Kracauer was clearly an extraordinary person. How could he have gone from walking into the equivalent of The New York Times and then three years later hiding out in a back room deciding whose essays and criticisms would get published. There must have been something remarkable about him.

Did you identify with Georg?

I just identified with his general ability to be wounded by the right sort of person.

But then his earnestness keeps getting sort of put to use by other people with more clear agendas or beliefs.

He’s actually attracted to Catholicism, and I think there’s another parallel with Kracauer there. Kracauer flirted with Catholicism. You know, after World War I, everyone was feeling like the world had fallen apart. Politically it was all in turmoil, particularly in Germany, but elsewhere, too. And there was a wide movement in intellectual life and in the arts to find a way of reestablishing order. You can see it if you go to the Norton Simon Museum and look at the Picassos from the 1920s — his neoclassical interest; the placid, simple forms. You can see that impulse. Kracauer was interested in what a religion could provide — something like Catholicism — in terms of getting you something you could live by.

In your personal commentary at the end of the book, you refer to Georg as a “divining rod.” What do you mean when you say he’s a divining rod? What is he leading us toward?

He’s looking for what holds promise. For getting us out of the mess we’re in. And, also, in his case, what he can seize on to become a person, to make a difference.

And he doesn’t find that. Isn’t that sort of the dysfunctional divining rod? Or do you think he does find what he’s looking for?

No, he doesn’t. The end of the book is so obvious. Professionally he’s a fool, because he is working at this sophisticated newspaper that’s using all kinds of tactical maneuvering to position itself in this turbulent world — and he’s writing articles that are unwittingly just the thing the paper wanted …

He keeps accidentally serving the agenda of these bureaucrats.

Without even thinking, “Oh, I’ve done it this time.” He comes in and they explain to him patiently why it was another stroke of genius on his part. But then at the end he gets a little carried away with his general critique of capitalism. And, of course, the newspaper is borrowing more funding from bankers at this point. The Frankfurter Zeitung actually did sell half of itself to I. G. Farben, the world’s largest chemical company, headquartered in Frankfurt. The company was broken up after the war because it had done so much to facilitate the war effort — made the gas that they used in the concentration camps, everything. It’s never discussed in the novel, but that’s in the background here. That’s why this Doktor Petri that you read about in the novel is in such a bind — he’s trying to pretend that he’s still such a good liberal democrat, and yet he’s taking money from these big industrial interests to keep the paper afloat. And Georg walks into that and makes a big mess of things by offering this big critique of capitalism at the bank director’s house. And then he finally speaks the truth in the most significant, general way, and gets fired for that.

Right, so we have Georg as fool professionally. And then Georg as failed divining rod — I guess I thought at the end there was meant to be something redemptive …

Kracauer wrote this book between 1930 and 1934, and in 1934 he had to leave Germany and set up in France, where he was trying to interest French publishers. In the précis, he says that Georg is “disillusioned but now he’s wise.” That’s what he wanted to think. I think it is a little more artistic than that. Sometimes you’re more artistic than you can be in your précis, when you’re trying to boil it down. Because I thought that Georg, first of all, could change his mind again. That’s the thing about him, he was never committed.

Right at the same time Kracauer wrote this novel, he wrote a well-known short book about the white-collar masses, which were a burgeoning sector of the economy at the time. And Kracauer was watching them — he was in Berlin at the time, from 1930 to 1933, working for the Berlin bureau of this paper. And he got this idea that the white-collar worker was ripe for being lured by fascism. Because they had this fragile status that could be disrupted at any moment, and they could be sent plunging toward a proletarian status, without even any unions to back them up or help them.

And he was right.

Yes. And this is Georg’s situation in the last chapter, when he’s moved to Berlin and he’s looking for work. He’s been fired by the paper. There’s that wonderful passage at the end where he’s just sort of flowing down the main boulevard of the western part of the city, the bourgeois part of the city, the Kurfuerstendamm. It’s just this sort of apocalyptic scene where he leaves the upper reaches that are still very sedate and quiet and firmly in control of the wealthy. He goes down and down and down, and then you’re in this river of office workers who are hungry and angry. Ants crawling on the street. You’ve got this lurid atmosphere, and the weather suddenly changes and becomes stormy. The book ends right there. There ceases to be any further mention of him in the last pages. And then there are two more pages of description but you feel he’s gone, lost. This all relates to that book that Kracauer wrote at the same time about the white-collar worker. Because Georg is a white-collar worker.

Now that you’ve had this kind of intimate relationship with Kracauer’s texts and writings, what are your feelings toward him?

Well, I’m not one of those people who, in translating, feel like they’re in direct contact with the author. I only feel in contact with his voice and literary rhythm, and his way of turning on a dime in sentences, his spoken and unspoken ironies. I feel in touch with him in that way, but I don’t feel like I know him as a person.

Do you lose track of yourself in that process?

No, you can’t. I came up with this idea for what translating is like. You’re in a certain place at a certain time and someone gives you a bucket. And it’s filled with water, but there’s a leak in the bottom of the pail. The further you walk with it, the more it leaks and the more water you lose. What are you going to do? You’re going to have to add some more water of your own to keep the bucket full.

Does that produce a sense of anxiety?

Well, I’m at peace with it now. I just think that’s what it amounts to. You’re actively participating in what comes out. You’re not faithfully registering. That’s not really what’s going on. When I first started translating, I thought that’s what I should be doing. And I thought I’d like to be particularly careful about preserving the syntax, mirroring syntax. What happens is that, you absorb the whole, and then you can selectively draw on it when you are faced with a problem.

Once you were in the position of choosing a creative pursuit, why did you go with translation instead of —

Writing myself? You’ve got to ask my doctor about that. It feels like there’s some fundamental act of making up a whole world and making up people that I guess I don’t like or I don’t feel able or entitled to do.

Interesting that you’re also saying the particular piece of the translation that’s the most exciting is the part where you take the liberty to sort of cut loose from the author and do your own thing.

Correct. My own personal experience of it is that I’m sometimes quite miserable. These are not easy texts here. I should mention that I have one or two people in Germany who will help me with problems and difficult passages. They assure me that these Kracauer and Benjamin texts are very difficult. Kracauer in particular is very idiosyncratic, a hard nut to crack sometimes. So in the beginning, I’m always very unhappy. Do I really know what he’s trying to say? It’s like knocking on a wall looking for studs, and it’s hollow, hollow, hollow. I can tell when I don’t understand something. But then you become comfortable with it, because there’s nothing to find behind that wall. After that phase of not feeling too happy about it, you feel like you probably understand what there is to understand. And then you get to this phase of refining, and toward the end it’s as if you’re making it sing. I’m always very happy with that, when I get to that point. And then I always forget everything else. It’s like a car accident: you forget how bad it was once you’re over it.

¤

Peter Nowogrodzki lives in Los Angeles. He is an editor at FENCE. His work has appeared in the Guardian, The Paris Review, Triple Canopy, and elsewhere.

The post “You Ought to Think About Translating This”: A Conversation with Carl Skoggard appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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[chrisbransdon]

There is a sense of urgency which accompanies my belief that Jesus Christ is Lord. It undergirds everything I think, say and do. But it often gets me into trouble. My brand of urgency makes me volatile; I overreach. The bible warns against the passions of youth and I don’t think it’s just talking about sex. It’s talking about the youthful need to tear through everything like a hurricane. I wonder if and when I will outgrow this temperament. I’m nearly 30 and I don’t feel any less naïve, strong-willed, or convicted than I did when I was 20. So much for my flaws. But if I can salvage anything from this unfortunate personality profile it would be that, somehow, I find that I am able to make people believe in the things that I believe in. The only thing that saves me from being so insufferable that my friends would give up on me entirely, is the fact that I am so gosh darn earnest. I swear to you I could kill a man with my earnestness.

These days I don’t know how to best channel that earnestness. While the middle aged blogosphere continues to reel from the transition into exile, I feel that I have been preparing myself for it for years. I am afraid, but I am also oddly energised. I feel that I have a good read on the times, but I also feel that I could make a fool of myself. Whatever it is, I feel the need to write about it. If it all goes up in flames, so be it. But maybe it won’t even spark. I don’t know which would be worse.

I don’t write for the usual blogging suspects because I’m not sure we yet understand each other. You have the memory of a time before social media. You got to form as a person before post-modernism had infiltrated the school curriculum and convinced us all that truth was an elastic concept. I’m still trying to establish what I believe, while navigating the ideological whiplash facilitated by the constancy of my feeds. It’s exhausting, it’s chaotic. Certain leaders are required for times like these.

Jim Elliot once said that he wished men would turn one way or another on facing Christ in him. Such single-mindedness is a rarity online, because, well, that’s not really the purpose of blogging. I tend to think that anyone who blogs ought to have some degree of self-loathing for indulging in it. I say this because I am very self-conscious about the fact that the online world is not so much given to the work of evangelism or conversion as it is to endless discourse. I do hope and expect that what is happening offline is markedly different to what is happening online.

But if I only had the online world to go by, it seems pretty obvious to me why we are floundering when it comes to evangelism. My impression from the online world is not that we would force men to turn one way or another in facing Christ in us, but that we would have men think us reasonable and nuanced. I am told to offer people a coherent worldview, I am led to believe that it is time for us to revise our tactics for evangelism. At worst I watch leaders give ambiguous and open answers so that all of their bases are covered. In short, everyone is given over to a very middle-class intellectual bubble where ‘reasonableness’ is our gold standard. Ironically, ‘reasonableness’ is not necessarily defined by biblical truth, or scientific data, or you know, reason, but by how well your opinion is received. I consider this kind of intellectual climate disastrous for the continued growth of the church and especially for evangelism. It is a disaster because in prizing our ‘reasonableness’ above all things, we relinquish the very ground upon which conversion happens: the moment at which a man must deny himself and submit to the very unreasonable conclusion that Jesus Christ is his Lord and Saviour.

Oh, but why can’t we have both? The catch cry of the Christian intellectual: it’s both/and, Christine, you simple girl. I’m sure it is. I am just quesioning the insistence upon the both/and intellectualism which is popular throughout Christian media. What may be a charitable position in academia translates too easily to a lukewarm Christianity online. And because we have so thoroughly reinforced this kind of thought leadership in our blogs, articles and comments, we are dull in our voices, and we bar ourselves from ever making specific critiques.

Instead, we share Jordan Peterson clips and are careful to include apologetic captions, lest we upset the blogosphere equilbrium with too extreme a position. Am I the only one wondering why I need to look to men like Jordan Peterson (or friendlyjordies for goodness sake) to find someone who is willing to make a definite statement? I don’t even fully agree with everything that Peterson says, but the dude is saying something and in lieu of my own leaders who say nothing I fill the void where I can. And I know I’m not the only one! Tell me I’m wrong. We have all counted the cost and decided that to say what you really mean is too risky. To say what is truthful is too divisive. After all, why h8 wen u can equivocate?

You can’t be half in exile. You’re in or you’re out. That is the kind of black and white language that the rules of argument are suspicious of, but the gospel itself undermines logical fallacies and it bids me come and die. If you wanted one line on why I am not a feminist, this is it. Having died to the world, I die to its politics, to its ideologies. In this death I live, and in so doing I am able to offer life from the other side, with a conviction that I pray belies the magnitude and worth of the message I have been entrusted with. 

I am an exile for this position. I am a radical. And this is not a forgiving time for radicals.

That is where you, keeper of the blogging keys, come in. I’m not saying step aside. I’m not saying millennials don’t need you. I’m saying that it’s actually much better and much worse than you realise. It’s better than you realise because you don’t need to convince us that these are hostile times. To use a Batman related illustration: you are adjusting to the dark, but we were born into it. Our eyes have lighted and we can see the way forward but you guys are literally still asking ‘how did we get into the dark? What is the nature of the dark?’ It is almost comical to watch my leaders constantly fret over these questions. But now it is becoming more and more frustrating because what we need is for you to get on with leading us. And that’s where it gets much worse. What we need are men of character and conviction who are willing to live and die by the word of God. What we need are men who are willing to show us what it looks like to get smashed and get back up again. Part of me thinks that you spend so much time analysing the times because it means a delay on actually living in them. Once you finally come to grips with everything you are theorising over, there is nothing left but to get on with being hated.

And yes, I have deliberately addressed the men. Why? Because I have decided not to play by the rules of feminism or identity politics which would dictate to me what is the ‘right thing’ to say. And I say that with such confidence because I genuinely believe my theology. Christian men, I am looking to follow and work with you. But you are believing the lie that you ought to make yourself smaller. It is a tragedy. It is a tragedy for the women who are looking to follow you, and it is a tragedy for the young men in your churches. The complementarian women like myself are not always the most vocal online (ok maybe I’m the exception), or in your churches, or in your classrooms. But it doesn’t mean that we’re not with you. What’s the worst that could happen if you stop self-censoring? Julia Baird and her followers come for you? If Carmelina Read can survive it, you can. Stop speaking for the sake of potential critics, speak in order to give courage to your friends. Get smashed, get back up again. It’s not just in the blogosphere that we need to draw from our leaders’ courage. It’s in every sphere of life.

Billy Graham once said

Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.

He was extraordinarily courageous and yet I believe that the Christian men of our time need to display even more courage than that. I’m waiting for the first of them to stand. 

[ennaraw52]

Bloody Mary’s Debut: A Smashing, Sold-Out Show!

Congratulations! Congratulations! Congratulations! To the cast, crew, producer, and director of the Bloody Mary Interactive Murder Mystery Dinner Show! Oh, wait, that’s us, the performance troupe of Beijing Fringe Theatre…..yeah!!

Last Saturday, December 23rd, our debut show not only filled the house to capacity, but garnered such curiousity and interest, that people were pouring in during the show (much to the chagrin of the performing cast and the check-in host), many showing up at the door to see if they could enter into the already sold-out event. Some even agreed to stand, just so they could be a part of the entertainment and excitement, of this scandalously waggish, parody made extra zany by the acute and edgy repartee of our two detectives, Stiffy and Floppy, as they worked not-so-feverishly to find and arrest the killer responsible for the mounting deaths of the dinner guests.

With the constant flow of the savoury Middle Eastern cuisine, which comprised the 4-course dinner, combined with the unpedictability of a several willing participants, and peppered with our hidden talent amidst the crowd, our audience members ”were never bored,” to quote one member, and ”always on the edge of our (their) seat, wondering what will happen next.”

They came fallaciously, in all variety and popularity, from Madonna to Sgt Gray, and Lady Gaga to George Clooney and Michael Jackson, these gamey audience members were all eager to be subjected to the scrutiny and wild accusations thrown out by the detectives, as they pried, prodded, interrogated, and blatantly twisted clues in an effort to pin the crime onto one unwitting suspect.

What was there not to like? The fact that the evening had to come to an end? Ah , yes, that! Well the good news is that it is only the beginning. The Bloody Mary Interactive Murder Mystery Dinner show, last Saturday, was only the debut of this on-going series of fine dining, mystery, murder, and mayhem on the Beijing landscape…..Word from the poducer and director is that the show will go on!

Follow us to keep up with our events, and to be apprised of upcoming similar interactive mystery shows.  Use the scan code below to follow our wechat page, and subscribe to our blog to get all the news about our calendar of events, classes, and workshops. Hear it here first!

From all of us at Beijing Fringe Theatre, we wish you a wonderful holiday season, and a pleasant and prosperous new year.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, 2018!

      from Bloody Mary’s Debut: A Smashing, Sold-Out Show!