#i could write so many essays on this it is UNREAL

[bodhrancomedy]

Being a kid who loved police procedurals and cop dramas and crime shows, even the flashy American ones, who grew up to be anti-authoritarian, pro-defunding the police, ACAB makes trying to watch films you liked when you were eleven really weird.

[unexpectedbrickattack]

Hiding the rest of this HUGE comic behind a readmore for ur sanity

Hes got the keenest eye for these things!

Now that this is hiding behind a readmore i can justify writing an essay in here. Nothing big tho i am just very chatty :)!

Postgame where Peppino still gets visits every now and again from the bosses of the tower. I already drew one for the noise (lmao) but i wanted to draw each of the main four interacting with him in some way.

Pepperman is a refined and well renowned artist. His art is highly sought after and his advice is not taken lightly. He has many MANY fortunes to pull from to make his visions a reality and to influence anyone to do anything. Except for Peppino.

From the very first fight, Pepperman is immediately, overwhelmingly obsessed with this stout little brawler. He is much much more than what meets the eyes. He is initially extremely offput and annoyed that a human so boldly decided to waltz into his domain, and he expects to be able to steamroll and bully this…beast…out of his place of work. He is refined when he wants to be, but he is quick to use his brute strength to get what he wants if only bc he knows he can do it

And so when he decides to fully charge and thrash this little trembling human, expecting him to skitter away the second he gets struck, he is completely unprepared for when he gets launched to the other end of this room. The human looks so incredibly PISSED, like a bull seeing red, and suddenly this little altercation suddenly became a real actual ‘knock your teeth out’ brawl. This human is only like half his height, but his punches and bashes fucking knock the wind out of him.

And like ! To add insult to injury!!! After he wins the fight! He visibly deflates, the adrenaline seemingly wearing off. Hes just this trembling fuckin whelp again !!! Whimpering as he fucking runs back out through the portal to do god knows what. And Pepperman could not be any more fucking intrigued. Like this no name came in, whooped his fuckin ass, and went about his day. Its unreal

While Peppino is running around climbing the tower, Pepperman is in his room losing his mind. Hes obsessed. No one has challenged him in this way. No one has fought him and WON. He is ALWAYS able to bully people into submission either through brute force or with money, and he got his ass handed to him !! He needs to know more. Its quite literally consuming him.

Cut to the final fight, set up for a rematch; and he knows he is going to get steamrolled again but it is SO exhilarating to get another chance to see this humans form up close again. This time he can try to commit everything to memory. Its all such a blur though, and in a quarter of the time it took to end their first fight, its over. He gets to watch the human fight the gunslinger with his bare hands, no gun necessary, and he doesnt even bat an eye at what looks to be a clone of himself. He is a force of nature tearing through every single defense, and when Pepperman watches the actual final fight with the bizarre little pizza man, its like hes caught in a movie. The rain, the storm, the atmosphere. He wishes he could burn the entire scene into his mind.

So when everything returns to normal, he takes the time to travel for days to come and find this little human named Peppino. The memory is still strong and vivid but eventually, details will start to slip his mind. He needs to find this human, convince him to sit and do some still life sessions with him to help cement the humans appearance in his head. He hasnt had to resort to…asking for permission for anything in a loooong time…he bullies people into doing what he wants but Peppino is not your average person, and if he wants something from this man, he’ll have to meet him at his level.

He...can make an exception for Peppino...he supposes.

[asurrogateblog]

what makes me lose my mind about the wall is that I could write up so many pretentious essays like "ah yes the concert is clearly a representation of antonin artaud's concept of the theatre of cruelty in its fostering of an atmosphere of unreality that forces the audience into an abject sense of collusion with violence". but the problem is I highly doubt that roger or anyone else involved in its production were thinking about it that hard. I'm obviously not denying that that they were conscious of their storytelling and staging choices but like, when they had the idea for the surrogate band they were not thinking about its deeply fucked ontological implications. they were thinking "haha remember that time you said you wished a fake band could play all the songs so you could go play golf instead let's do that" and all those ideas just organically snowballed into what is genuinely one of the most narratively complex musical performances ever conceived. how did that happen

[pardonmydelays]

(I'm the anon who said/asked about Lin not disappointing with 'Warriors') I felt iffy about 'Hamilton' with one reason being I don't really listen to hip-hop, but my God, was I wrong and, unfortunately, late to the game. I downloaded most of the songs while watching it on D+! 😂 But I honestly don't know about 'Warriors'... Do you have any song recommendations?

omg anon, i hope you don't mind me writing a fucking essay again (well, maybe not essay but this will be a long answer), this ask made me so happy!

i never really listened to hip-hop music either (which is ironic if you think about my favourite artists... but this is like a totally different type of music and we call it gangster poetry here, right?). however, if you love hamilton, i'm pretty sure you would fall in love with warriors as well!

so let's start with the fact that this album is like... SOOOOO LIN. full of hip-hop music but also other genres, every character has their own musical theme (my favourite thing about musicals, also as someone who has never seen the movie and has absolutely no intentions to change that, i was afraid i could have problems with following the plot, there are so many characters, but hey, once again, lin made it so easy for us cause he's a fantastic songwriter and storyteller). honestly, the more i listen to it, the more things i notice. i remember there was a rumour some time ago about "major pop stars" being on the album and i obviously thought "taylor swift and beyonce???" lmao. i'm so glad it turned out to be false, cause we have pippa soo, jazzy jones and amber gray instead (and i would die for them!!!). also, if you're familiar with freestyle love supreme, you would probably recognize aneesa folds, as well as utkarsh ambudkar (oh my fucking god i was so excited when he was announced because i love this dude so much it's unreal!!!). so basically, once again, we have lin manuel miranda and friends (tick tick boom, i'm talking about you). and this just makes me so happy!!! anyway...

if you're still not sure if you wanna listen to the whole album, i will just give you my favourite songs that you should definitely check out (with a little explanation) and then you can decide if you wanna hear the rest of it!

survive the night - it's the first song on the album and it's just so damn catchy, it kinda shows you what you can expect and as much as i wasn't really convinced before the album came out, after hearing this song i was really hyped, so i would recommend to start with this one!

going down - this song should be 10 hours long and i'm not even kidding... ok, so luther is the villain in our story and this is his first song, when i heard it for the first time my jaw literally dropped to the floor, i still can't believe this is a song from lin's musical lmao, i can't stop listening to it, NOW I WOULD PAY SO MUCH MONEY TO SEE IT ON BROADWAY (also i think it makes so much sense to give this particular genre to the villain but i don't want to spoil anything for you so i'm not saying anything else, please just listen to it hdebjfe)

orphan town - when utk was announced before the album came out i was thinking that he would probably have a rap verse or something... cause that would make sense, right (fls!)? well, i was wrong. but i would recognize his voice anywhere. oh my fucking god, this is, for me, the funniest song on the album and it's all because of him. you should see my face when i heard it for the first time. i fucking love this dude!!!

call me mercy - this is the "i want" song from warriors and i usually love those so fucking much ("how far i'll go" and "waiting on a miracle" i'm talking about you), it's just so good and i find myself singing this one at least a few times a day now lmao

still breathin' - i need you to check this one out because it's so damn emotional and i think aneesa is such an amazing rapper and the "what do you do when they kill everything you believe in?" has been stuck in my head ever since i heard it for the first time ughh

quiet girls - not much to say about this one except that it's just so damn catchy and the production on this track is probably my favourite from the entire album, so it has to be on the list

sick of runnin' - AMBER FUCKING GRAY (ajax is my wife, back off everyone)!!! this is such a fun song, i've been in love with amber's voice ever since i listened to hadestown for the first time so no surprise there, but also: 96,000 🤝 non-stop 🤝 we don't talk about bruno 🤝 sick of runnin' (YOU KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT! classic lin, i can already see myself trying to sing EVERY PART OF THE SONG AT ONCE AND BEING ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED THAT I CAN DO THIS LMAO).

a light or something - this is so gayyyyyyy and jazzy jones is there, do i need to say more?

somewhere in the city - this song gives me shivers and honestly i started crying when i heard it for the first time but i don't know if you're gonna get emotional if you don't really know the plot, however, it's an amazing song and i have a feeling you may like it

reunion square - this is definitely one of my faves (especially the last part of the song and phillipa soo as fox, you know i love her), once again, i don't know if it's something you should listen to if you know nothing about the plot but fuck, i was crying like a baby on this one and "when you woke up today you didn't think you could die, neither did i" and and and I'M FUCKING SOBBING

same train home - i recommend it if you wanna cry

one thing i also need to mention is that i absolutely love the transitions on this album, they are cool as fuck!!! and i think that's it for now because it's already longer than i wanted it to be, oh my god. i'm sorry. i'm really sorry. if you made it to the end, i love you. thanks for reading. and also please let me know once you check them all out, i really need to know your opinion!

[tolkiens-middleearth]

Topics & Themes in Tolkien’s Legendarium

The Perilous Realm

“Stories that are actually concerned primarily with ‘fairies,’ that is with creatures that might also in modern English be called ‘elves,’ are relatively rare, and as a rule not very interesting. Most good ‘fairy-stories’ are about the adventures of men in the Perilous Realm or upon its shadowy marches.” – J. R. R. Tolkien. On Fairy Stories.

Tolkien called it the Perilous Realm, Faery or Faërie, and for me these words represent one of the most fascinating theme in Tolkien’s Legendarium. It is both a narrative and a world-building element that can be found in all his major Middle-earth stories and is in a way essential for understanding Tolkien’s approach to his own created world.

Yet I feel it rarely gets talked about, so I want to briefly highlight what it is, how it functions in the narrative, and give a few examples from various stories. Unfortunately can’t go into a deep analysis because doing so would require me to write a book – which I would love to, but I don’t have the time or qualification). Quote sources and further reading recommendations are given at the end.

WANDERING INTO FAERY

 “It is common in Fairy tales for the entrance to the fairy world to be presented as a journey underground, into a hill or mountain or the like. [...] My symbol is not the underground, whether necrological and Orphic or pseudo-scientific in jargon, but the Forest […].” – J. R. R. Tolkien. “Smith of Wooton Major” essay.

The core of this theme is the mortal wanderer who comes to or crosses the borders of Faërie, the land of fairies or elves. This idea has been part of legends and myths for a long time, one of the most prominent examples probably being the island of Avalon in the Arthurian legend. Depending on the story, Faërie can occupy a different time and space than our own world, or share the same space or time “in different modes”. Getting into Faërie is not always possible and many things can stop someone from entering: it may be completely inaccessible, it may be hidden and people have to find it, or it may be accessible only to those who know the secret on how to enter it. Once you are there, it may be difficult to leave, or it may take some time. Being there could turn out to be dangerous, but it also doesn’t necessarily have to be. Tolkien wrote that “in it are pitfalls for the unwary and dungeons for the overbold”.

In The Lord of the Rings, there are many examples of such a realm, some barely noticeable and some very clear and detailed.

It starts subtle when Frodo, Sam and Pippin meet Gildor and his Elves near Woodhall. It is no specific realm that they enter, but just wandering with the Elves already lets the Hobbits experience something they are not used to. They have trouble finding words for it afterwards or remembering it clearly, with Tolkien describing it that for Pippin it felt like he was in a waking dream. The next example is then already more direct: the four Hobbits enter the Old Forest. This time it really is perilous for them, they get lost and cannot find a way out. Tolkien describes it as follows:

“They began to feel that all this country was unreal, and that they were stumbling through an ominous dream that led to no awakening.”

Frodo almost falls asleep near an enchanting river, Merry and Pippin almost die. Without the help of an unexpected inhabitant of this forest, they never would have gotten out.

Reaching Rivendell is another less clear example. Rivendell itself is easier accessible than the Old Forest and less perilous for the Hobbits. But reaching it also includes a river, a river that is under Elrond’s command and that rises “in anger when [Elrond] has great need to bar the Ford”.  And within Rivendell, Frodo experiences another kind of “Faërian Drama” as Tolkien calls it: the stories and songs told in Rivendell hold him “in a spell”, and “the enchantment became more and more dreamlike” until in the end Frodo falls asleep once more. Bilbo comments that it’s difficult to stay awake “until you get used to it”.

The most prominent example is of course Lothlórien, a land of Elves that is rarely visited by mortal beings and where the flow of time is indeed different than that in the outside world. It’s also well defended against wanderers, and both in the world and the narrative the fellowship has to pass through: there are guards at the boarders that have to be convinced, there is a river that has to be crossed, a hidden path that has to be taken blindfolded. Tolkien is in no rush to get the fellowship to Galadriel – the reader, together with the wanderers, have to experience this journey.

The purest form of this theme in The Lord of the Rings is, of course, Frodo and Bilbo leaving for the island Tol Eressëa at the end of the story. It is the longest journey into Faërie, a journey that only a few are allowed to take and that you won’t come back from. Tol Eressëa is no longer in the space of the human world, and it’s very telling that Tolkien named the haven on the eastern shore on the island Avallónë.

More examples can be found in Tolkien’s other stories, and I will mention them less detailed when talking about the actual centre of the theme:

THE MORTAL VISITOR

„It seemed to [Frodo] that he had stepped through a high window that looked on a vanished world. A light was upon it for which his language had no name. All that he saw was shapely, but the shapes seemed at once clear cut, as if they had been first conceived and drawn at the uncovering of his eyes, and ancient as if they had endured forever.” – J. R. R. Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings.

All of Tolkien’s major stories have one thing in common: they have someone human at the core who is unfamiliar with Faërie and able to experience it as new and from an outside perspective.

In The Hobbit it is Bilbo who stumbles into a world he is not prepared for at all, and while it is less clearly shown in the narrative of a children’s book, the journey of Bilbo and the Dwarves clearly show signs of this theme – a dangerous forest, an enchanted river, a white deer, and Elven fires that suddenly vanish.

For The Lord of the Rings I have shown above that all four Hobbits experience this in one way or another, although Frodo is probably the one given the most focus.

“This is a history in brief drawn from many older tales; for all the matters that it contains were of old, and still are among the Eldar of the West, recounted more fully in other histories and songs. But many of these were not recalled by Eriol, or men have again lost them since his day. This Account was composed first by Pengolod of Gondolin, and Aelfwine turned it into our speech as it was in his time, adding nothing, he said, save explanations of some few names.” – J. R. R. Tolkien. Quenta Silmarillion.

The Quenta Silmarillion is a different type of story, so here the theme also takes a different form: it’s not a narrative as The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings and more a historical chronicle in style. It’s written as such, but also given the corresponding context: when Tolkien was first writing the Book of Lost Tales and later the Quenta Silmarillion, the framework he had built for it was that of a mortal men coming to Tol Eressëa and learning of these past events. The one wandering into the Perilous Realm is Eriol or Ælfwine, listening to the stories of the Elves and writing them down for other humans to read. When Tolkien eventually started writing The Lord of the Rings, he was able to change his framing story. There was no longer a need for Ælfwine to reach Tol Eressëa to learn about these tales – now it’s Bilbo who wrote it down in three volumes called “Translations from the Elvish” that he had added to his private diary when he handed it over to Frodo.

This concept applies to the Quenta Silmarillion as a whole, but the main three stories within the Quenta Silmarillion still have a similar mortal visitor as The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. In Beren and Lúthien, it’s the mortal Beren who wanders into the Elven Kingdom Doriath and gets enchanted when he sees Lúthien dancing and singing. In the Children of Húrin, it’s Túrin who enters Doriath as well, but also the Elven Kingdom Nargothrond. Both times, Túrin is unable to find the entrance himself; he is lead there by Elven guides – first Beleg, then Gwindor. And in the Fall of Gondolin, Tuor is led by an Elven guide to through many gates under a mountain to the Elven Kingdom Gondolin – one of the rarer cases of a "journey underground, into a hill or mountain".

And even the Akallabêth incorporates this theme, although in a different way than the previous stories. The story of the Fall of Númenor is about wanting to go to Faërie, and not being allowed to. There are other aspects to this as well of course, but looking at it with this theme in mind, that is the core of the story. Ar-Pharazôn is the mortal man who desires to reach Faërie, but when he tries to get there by force it ends in his death.

The mortal visitor as the protagonist in their story is essential for this theme to work. To experience Faërie as a visitor, to enter a “dream that some other mind is weaving” in such a way, it is a uniquely mortal experience that the reader could imagine to have, but that the immortal Elves can almost never share – after all they create their realms, they are the creator of a dream that the mortal wanderer, Tolkien as the writer, and we as the reader are dreaming.

THE CREATOR OF THE DREAM

“Faërie contains many things besides elves and fays, and besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons: it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted.” – J. R. R. Tolkien. On Fairy Stories.

The immortal creators are not irrelevant of course, although they cannot be the centre of any story about wandering into the Perilous Realm. The outsider experience, essential for this theme, cannot come from the one living inside the Perilous Realm. The inhabitants in Tolkien’s stories are Elves most of the time – near Woodhall, in Rivendell, Lóthlorien, Mirkwood, Gondolin, Doriath and Nargothrond. But they are of course not the only creators of such realms. Dwarves come in and out of these stories, and in the case of the Old Forest the implication is that Old Man Willow is the main force behind the spell:

“His grey thirsty spirit drew power out of the earth and spread like fine root-threads in the ground, and invisible twig-fingers in the air, till it had under its dominion nearly all the trees of the Forest from the Hedge to the Downs.”

And of course the Valar and Maiar have their part in the story. Especially Tol Eressëa and Valinor are mainly built by the Valar, and in Middle-eath the magical boundaries of Doriath were set by Melian. In moments where Fëarie is not solely or not at all made by the Elves, they may enter the dream of another mind as well. It happened when the Elves first came to Valinor, and a more personal example is Thingol meeting Melian for the first time, where “an enchantment fell on him” in which he was caught for years without moving. This is only possible, however, when Elves meet someone with a creative power far greater than them – one of the Maia or above is required.  

However, this was never Tolkien’s focus. In Tolkien’s stories, the Perilous Realm is often a place inhabited by the Fair Folk – but I have also mentioned that sometimes Faërie exists in another mode. Throughout the examples given, dreams have been an important element of the experience of Faërie, and it’s one that Tolkien also thought a lot about. In our own world, we cannot reach Faërie in our space, but it may be approachable in another mode – through dreams. This becomes especially apparent in his texts The Lost Road and The Notion Club Papers, and it was also a part of how Tolkien saw his own relationship with his work: a mortal entering a dream of Faërie.  

ENDING THOUGHTS

There are many aspects of this that I haven’t touched on, and that I would love to explore or discuss. There is for example the case of Frodo, a mortal who has been in touch with something that belongs into the world of Faërie, that he cannot properly come back: when coming back to the Shire, Marry comments on how it feels like a dream is slowly fading, like he is waking up. Frodo however says: “To me it feels more like falling asleep again.” Already, it is clear he can never fully return.

Then there is the case of reversing the idea of Faërie in the case of Túrin – he is trying to bring Nargothrond closer to the outside world so that he can use its force in war. In return, he makes it accessible and the kingdom falls. In general, it’s a fascinating thing to see Túrin’s relationships with the Perilous Realms.  

Or if we talk about dreams, what about the nightmares? Is Mordor basically an anti-Faërie, inhabited by Orcs instead of Elves, where the path leads through a spider lair instead of over a river, and where any mortal being can only end up as a corrupted slave if they stay there for too long?

What about including such an essential theme in adaptations? In Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings movies, flawed as they may be at times, the experience of Faërie through the eyes of the Hobbits is notable – especially in Rivendell and Lóthlorien. Meanwhile in Amazon’s The Rings of Power, this theme is completely absent and the Elven realms in Middle-earth have no more mystery than a Harfoot camp or a random human village in the South.  

I hope I get to explore this theme more, I’ve been eager for month to write at least a tiny bit about it and it’s already way too long for tumblr again. But there are other themes that are also very interesting, so we’ll see how it’ll go…

If you have read up to here to the end I would like to thank you for your time and attention – both is much appreciated!

READ MORE ON THIS TOPIC

On Fairy Stories, an essay by J. R. R. Tolkien.

Smith of Wootton Major, by J. R. R. Tolkien.

The Lost Road, fragments by J. R. R. Tolkien.

The Notion Club Papers, fragments by J. R. R. Tolkien.

Faërie: Tolkien’s Perilous Land, an essay by Verlyn Flieger.

A Question of Time, by Verlyn Flieger.

QUOTE SOURCES

J. R. R. Tolkien. On Fairy Stories.

J. R. R. Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings.

J. R. R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien. The Silmarillion.

J. R. R. Tolkien; edited by Veflyn Flieger. Smith of Wootton Major ‘Extended Edition’, Smith of Wootton Major essay.

J. R. R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien. The Lost Road and other Writings, Quenta Silmarillion.

[steveharrington]

hi! do you have any recent horror book recommendations you've enjoyed?

hiii!! i do! okay im gonna cheat a little right off the bat and give you one i read like over a year ago idk if that still counts as recent BUT:

devolution by max brooks is my favorite book i’ve read in the last year or so. it’s about a small wealthy community in remote mt. rainier that’s touted to be the most technologically advanced and automated community and a Vision of the Future buttttttt things don’t go according to plan and also there are bigfoots ❤️ i found the humor so smart and cutting esp in the age of ai bullshit and having elon musk shoved in our faces, plus the characters were all very unique and really unlike other protagonists i’ve read in horror. just a really solid book AND it made me even more scared of monkeys

i also just read bunny by mona awad and it was a crazy and wild ride let me just say that. again very distinct and unlike anything i’ve ever really read before in terms of the plot…i fear even going into the plot too much because i truly think it’s hard to discuss what happens in this book without giving away elements that are more fun to discover as you’re reading. definitely some body horror elements in this so if that’s not your thing i would maybe steer clear (also mentioned animal death which i did find upsetting but it’s not in graphic detail). that post i rb’d recently about the joy of reading books you don’t completely understand really applied to bunny for me because there are parts where the narrative becomes so…unreal and jumbled that it’s hard to always know what’s happening, but i did have fun with that!

ALSO an extremely recent read that i just finished last night is my best friend’s exorcism by grady hendrix, and at first i was very unsure if i’d like it but i ended up finishing it in two nights so. it held my attention for sure. it’s set in the 80s and there’s a bit tooooo many constant references for my taste (and i say this as a stranger things enjoyer…i wish i could write an essay about how imo stranger things does 80s nostalgia better than so many that try to emulate their version of it) and it’s about bestie abby and bestie gretchen who unfortunately experience the horrors of demon possession. i really enjoy narratives where all the adults are useless idiots and only the kids/teenagers are in tune to The Truth, which this book sells really well. i was also admittedly very charmed by a lot of the humor (the exorcist maybe my new fav character ever) and how it didn’t take Satanism too seriously and kinda hammed it up

[petruchio]

LEAVING ASIDE the nonsense that was the marketing for these films, how do you feel about the songs Taylor released on the THG soundtrack?

oh i love them!! i actually think eyes open is the superior hunger games song of the two and i think it's a brilliant interpolation of taylor's own relationship with fame projected onto katniss in a way that i think highlights just how incisive the commentary of THG is -- like "everybody's waiting for you to break down/everybody's watching to see the fall out" could easily be on a track like the lucky one and it clearly reflects a lot of taylor's own anxieties about fame and celebrity -- but the fact that it maps so perfectly onto katniss is just like MWAH! perfection. and it's just proof that suzanne collins tapped into a VERY real set of feelings and ideas about fame and living under intense scrutiny. and the hunger games-y lyrics are SO GOOD bc they feel natural but also are so specific and cool: i love "keep your aim locked the night grows dark" like YES LOVE IT.

to expand on that honestly... i think that line eyes open in particular is proof to me that a lot of great songwriting comes out of using stories that are not your own. i think another great example of this is olivia rodrigo. like don't get me wrong: i LOVE deja vu. i think it's a pretty perfect pop song honestly. but "can't catch me now" is SUCH A GOOD SONG. it has imo a some of her best songwriting on it, because i feel like it gave her new metaphors to explore and made the lyrics and the music feel fresh -- like "there's snow falling over the city, you thought that it would wash away the bitter taste of my fury and all of the messes you made" is a BRILLIANT line! like to me, it's leagues above "i used to think i was smart but you made me look so naive" (i could write an essay on my feelings on vampire honestly but that's just one example) (like i really genuinely enjoyed guts a LOT -- but it did start to get repeptitive, only being about heartbreak and insecurity. yeah those feelings are rich and layered! but i also like the song about falling in love with a future fascist dictator and then disappearing into the woods a la wordsworth and existing in a perpetual state of unreality for the rest of time. like that one was really good too! (another side note is that she has that one unreleased song on her instagram inspired by twilight -- and it's also like, wonderfully written. like yes olivia, free yourself from the need to be a diaristic songwriter and just write insane fandom songs. PLEASE.)) (i felt the same way about "what was i made for?" -- like that song is PERFECTION in the way it maps so perfectly onto the metaphors and images of the barbie movie and yet it stands alone as a great song as well. low key i wished wwimf and ccmn had been released in two dif years because i wanted them both to get the best original song oscar. just incredible work by our gen z pop girlies.)

and to go on and on MORE... all of this is why i think the taylor swift effect in pop music has been like... honestly a net negative for a lot of artists honestly. like music doesn't NEED to be about gossipy personal details to be good! don't get me wrong, i love the way we get to dive into "taylor's diary" and i think it's the reason i still love so many of her personal songs -- bc they feel like various entries into the experience of growing up as a lonely little girl and trying to understand your place in the world. and exploring the evolution of her personal relationships over the years is really cool and makes for a fascinating body of work to dive into and analyze. but also... sometimes songs are still good even when they're NOT intrinsically tied to the personal life of the singer! like nobody cares if "toxic" is about justin timberlake or kevin federline or whatever -- it's just a great fucking song and it doesn't matter that it's britney singing it, except in that her vocal delivery and performance style lends itself to that banger of a track! (AND THIS IS TRUE FOR TAYLOR TOO! i've said often she does her best work when she's fantasizing -- "you belong with me" is inspired by a phone call. "august" is a completely pretend story. "death by a thousand cuts" is about a movie. like those are some of her best songs!! and it's at least in part because they feel expansive and fresh because they're NOT ABOUT HER!)

anyway my point is not to say that diaristic songwriting is bad or that i don't like it -- because i really DO, i love looking at the connections between taylor songs across albums and eras and analyzing how she ties certain images or phrases to certain muses and tracking the evolution of her relationship to life and love over the years. but i also just think she's a good songwriter -- so when she writes songs about other stuff... it's interesting and cool. i wish she'd do more of it haha

[nerves-nebula]

!!!!!!! IVE FINDALLY FOUND A FELLOW MANDELA CATALOG DISLIKER

I've been into the ARG/Unfiction genre since like. 2015. And literally I've understood the hype around almost every unfiction project to some degree, EXCEPT for Mandela catalogue. Like. I've never understood the hype. Maybe it's just because I found it to feel very formulaic but like. Some of the faces used for this that are meant to be slightly unsettling are just,, not perfectly proportional and are badly lit?? Like literally that's it. Like there are real people who look like that. Fix the lighting and it's just gonna look like your neighbor of something. It's not very scary

But also like, for real? On your points abt how the series itself gives off A Lot if proto-fascistic messaging,

when I first watched it I was like "oh! That's the point! This is abt how fascist governments use media like TV to influence and misinform the public in service to facism and paranoia. Like these doppelgangers aren't actually real! They're just made up boogiemen to incentivize the public to turn on their neighbors/to attack people who are disfigured or disabled" and I thought that I finally was maybe getting why people found it interesting and that I had judged it too harshly

And then it wasn't that and instead was like "yeah no. There IS a secret boogeyman group who aren't (side eye to that) who are gonna steal your children via television (even Bigger side eye), and nearly off of them are just like, slightly photoshopped pictures of Real People but now they're just disfigured/disabled/literally just slightly non proportional features

This series could be very cool, but its just a thematic mess and is (intentionally or not) communicating a lot of facistic/eugenic sentiments

Idk if this anon is well phrased but like. You're so right it's unreal

-Gonzo

HAHAHHHHH YESSSS. YESSSSS. ITS SUCH A MESSSS.

LIKE. what is the POINT. half the "scary" ppl look like someone I'd see on the bus. the intruder looks like the homeless guy who asked me for bus fair a while back.

CRUCIALLY I don't think any of the bigotry was intentional, however it's SO thoroughly interwoven into Alex's worldview and the world he's created that it's like. at the fucking center of everything. it's insane to me how full grown adults analyze it on youtube and somehow manage to do that without comparing and compiling all the tropes it uses to make its point (whatever it's point even IS)

whenever me & my friend talk about it we somehow manage to keep tripping into different kinds of bigotry!! we'll be talking about ableism and how Adam's arc is very similar to many changeling tropes, which were (and to some extent still are, see: Star Children/Indigo Children) often used to abuse neurodivergent or mentally ill/disabled children. and we'll realize that Adam arc ALSO mirrors the Tragic Mulatto storyline too and it's like wow!! Two in one! you've done it so bad!!

a lot of the issues with it are small little things that could be excused as a coincidence- EXCEPT THERE'S SO MANY LITTLE THINGS THAT IT BECOMES IMPOSSIBLE TO IGNORE.

it's like- ok imagine this: you're having an interaction with someone and they do a microaggression at you, right? not outwardly bigoted, just kind of ignorant. and you're like, ok. fine. nobody is perfect, they probably didn't mean any harm. it's not worth kicking up a fuss about.

but if it keeps happening EVERY SINGLE TIME you talk to this person, it starts to build inside you and it's like. it's hard to even say why you hate them because you'd need to drag out every shitty tiny thing they've said and at that point you feel like maybe you're just being petty- BUT IT'S NOT PETTY IF IT HAPPENS EVERY SINGLE TIME AAA

ok sorry i started writing an essay again. i think my bud's gonna like this tho he's gonna be so happy other people did actually notice

[0pawprint0]

Fickle Fandom

Warning: crass language (I have no filter)

I need to rant about something I’ve noticed. Unfortunately, I deal with a person like those I’m about to talk about in real life and it’s not fun. This essay/rant is extremely informal and just me getting my thoughts out there, so please excuse the text talk, slang, shortcuts, etc. I am also very tired when typing this, so please cut me some slack if I don’t say what I’m wanting to in the most eloquent way!

I’m sure a lot of people have noticed that fandom spaces have become incredibly toxic. What used to be a fun place for weirdos (/pos) to feel safe and accepted is now being torn to shreds by people who can’t stand others having fun. TikTok is a great example of how a safe place for fandom behavior quickly became a cesspit of negativity. This post mostly focuses on cosplay. TikTok was basically built on cosplay. That used to be the main thing you’d find on the app! As more and more people started using it, it started to have different kinds of content, and now cosplay tends to get shoved down in favor of something more appealing to a wider demographic. Unfortunately, this means a lot of mean-spirited people have too much to say about a community they are not even part of.

The hate for cosplayers is unreal. Cosplayers aren’t doing anything wrong. We are dressing up as characters for fun. It is not hurting you. If you see something you don’t want to see, it is not hard to swipe past it. Ignore it. Interacting with it will ensure more content like it will reach your fyp. But some people just want to be mean and love the chance to get to do so. People make fun of cosplayers now like it’s their job. They insult them and throw fits like toddlers the moment they see them. Most hate for cosplayers is rooted in ableism, by the way! Fun fact! The word "cringey" has been twisted by sad people to target neurodivergent individuals. Many cosplayers (not all, but many) are neurodivergent. Many cosplayers are lgbt+, too. And you bet homophobia and transphobia is rampant in fandom spaces, too!

The hate doesn’t stop at people who don’t have nerdy interests, either. Oh no. Even people from fandoms are rude towards cosplayers! People will complain about "cringey" cosplayers "ruining" fandoms. Spoiler alert: there are cosplayers in every fandom. Kindly, get over it. People enjoy their fandoms in different ways! Some people write fanfiction and draw fanart, some consume fanfiction and fanart, some only interact with the original media, and some cosplay. All are valid ways to enjoy it! Hating on others for how they interact with their fandom is ridiculous, to say the least. The people ruining fandoms are the ones who can’t stand seeing others have fun. I’m sorry your life is so boring you can’t stand seeing others being creative and having a good time. However, that doesn’t give you the excuse to be a dickhead. Policing how someone expresses their love of something is not cool. Anyone who does this is actually a pathetic little weenie.

Let me get into my personal experience! Remember how I mentioned I have someone like this irl? Let me tell you about the interaction that spurred this rant! I am preparing for a con at this very moment. This weekend! Some context here: I am a cosplayer. I have been doing it for years and it’s a hobby that I love and don’t plan on giving up on anytime soon. I am also someone who is very inspired by drag and I enjoy doing my makeup inspired by cartoons and drag queens. This person absolutely cannot stand it when I decide to even put on a little makeup for the heck of it. Oops, I’m also someone who does my makeup occasionally outside of cosplay! The incognito nerd saw me carrying some of my makeup to my bag and stopped me to go, "You’re not gonna dress like a CLOWN, are you?" This could be taken literally, but I’m pretty sure it was meant to be an insult. This person insults my makeup often, claiming I don’t do it right (there is no right way to do makeup, btw). They also generally insult the way I dress. I told them no, but why would it matter?

"Because it’s embarrassing! Don’t embarrass me!" Babe, YOU embarrass ME tbh! I literally told them straight up, "This place is going to be filled with cosplayers and people like me. I don’t know what to tell you." If you are someone who gets embarrassed of cosplayers, a con probably isn’t the place for you. What used to be a safe space for cosplayers is now overrun by people who don’t know how to have fun. I should not have to worry about being harassed and made fun of at a place where people like me are supposed to thrive. Please, loosen the stick in your asshole ever so slightly so you can see that cons are meant to be fun! If you’re easily overloaded by "cringey" stuff, please stay home. You sour the mood and suck the life of everyone around you. Okay, sponge mop?

I can’t even get into how some other cosplayers treat cosplayers. That is a whole other can of worms I simply cannot get into right now. We will be here all night. Cosplay is not a clout contest. It is not about who is most accurate to the character. Cosplay is supposed to be FUN! And it is for everyone! No one is too old to cosplay. No one is too fat to cosplay. No one is too skinny to cosplay. No one should feel restricted because of skin color. No one should feel restricted because of gender. No one should feel restricted because of money. No one should feel bad about cosplaying, ever. People can stylize characters. People can make closet cosplays. Cosplay is for everyone. If I see any more cosplayers bringing other cosplayers down, I’m gonna lose it.

My point is, fandom spaces aren’t as fun as they used to be. I miss when I could walk into a con with a barely recognizable Juuzou Suzuya cosplay and still get complimented for trying (real experience! Those cosplayers were so kind!). I miss when I didn’t feel like I’d be judged for entering a space I should feel safe in. I miss when I could drag up my cosplay as much as I want without someone telling me the makeup is too much. I miss when fandom spaces were fun. If you can’t handle fandom activity in a fandom space, you should reflect on why you don’t like it. Most likely, it’s jealousy others can enjoy themselves so freely. Let others have fun. Just because you’re miserable doesn’t mean everyone else has to be.

[o0anapher0o]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

Thank you for tagging me @meraki-yao. I am very happy at the oportunity to shamelessly plug many, many of my fics :D Let’s do this!

How many works do you have on ao3?

47

What?! When did that happen? And how?

What’s your total ao3 word count?

502,199

Weirdly less surprising, even thought hat number is completely unreal.

What fandoms do you write for?

Interview with the vampire (2022)

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries

Red White and Royal Blue

Star trek: Deep Space Nine

And I have one teeny tiny Thunderbirds fic

Top 5 fics by kudos

Somewhere I have never travelled (ds9)

Petal by Petal (ds9)

Your most frail gesture (ds9)  

Watch that man (rwrb)

Personality (ds9)

I feel like I should count the first three as one, since it’s literally parts 1, 2 and 3 of a trilogy.

Surprising how fast my first rwrb fic got up there.

Do you respond to comments?

Always, usually a bit rambly. I love talking to people about my writing :D

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Puh, that’s a hard one. I’m such a happy endings girl. My instinct was one of my iwtv fics, but they’re more angry than angsty lol, so I’m saying it’s between Of all untruths the truest is you (iwtv) and Do no harm (ds9)

What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Your most frail gesture ends with a wedding, though actually I like the accepted proposal in Petal by Petal more.

Do you get hate on fics?

None so far (knock on wood).

Do you write smut?

No. A lot of my fics make it clear sex is happing but I don’t write it and I haven’t really any urge to.

Craziest crossover

My TayNick character crossover New Information. Also my only crossover so far, but that’s a side note.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of. Hopefully having all my stuff archivelocked will keep it that way.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

YES! Someone did a translation of Do no harm into Russian. Only one of the coolest things that ever happened to me (though I would have preferred to be asked beforehand rather than simply be presented with a link).

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

No. I’m not entirely sure how that would work, but I’d be open to it.

All time favourite ship?

Why do people insist you have to have one favourite over everything else? No, I’m an adult, I can have as many OTPs as I want.

What’s a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

Beneath Lucifer’s claws. I love this story so much, but I have it in me to finish it. I also have an old ATLA fic I love to bits, that has really neat bits but I was such a different person when I wrote it, it would need a complete rewrite and half of my favourite scenes don’t really work anymore.

What are your writing strengths?

I’ve been told my pacing is good. And I think I’m quite good at characters voices right when it comes to fanfic.

What are your writing weaknesses?

Punctuation. And I definitely suffer from ‘why use a period when I can use a comma’ disease XD. Scene transitions always feel clumsy to me, I don’t know if they read like it.

Thoughts on dialogue in another language?

Oh, there’s an essay. If I were to give general advice I’d say, avoid it. It’s fun to read when you speak the language and annoying if you don’t, having to look up stuff all the time interrupts the reading flow. It’s even more annoying when you speak the language and the author clearly didn’t.

I’ve seen it done well once, where it was used so the characters couldexchange information because that was the natural thing to do for them, while keeping it a secret from the reader. That was neat. 'But even that could be done by just saying 'he said something in [language]'.

First fandom you wrote in?

Published or not? My first published fic was Jack’s Desk for mfmm. But I also still have fifteen year old supernatural and vampire diaries fics in a notebook somewhere. The world wasn’t ready yet.

Favourite fic you’ve written?

Something unstoppable and Somewhere I have never travelled. Neither of them came out the way I thought they would but I love how they ended up so much.

tagging @sapphosewrites @xenobotanist and @nalyra-dreaming

[teresawilson1]

The Uncanny in Art

Giving Fear A Face: The Anxious Mind

A Personal Overview of the Theories around the Concept of the Uncanny in Art

                Paula Rego, Little Brides with Their Mother, 2009-10

The Uncanny is a type of anxiety, experienced by the viewer and triggered by the artist’s personal experience.

Elena Crippa

It may seem to be a paradox that the type of art that can be labelled ‘Uncanny’ and appears to be unreal, bizarre, incomplete, grotesque or in an 'in-between state', nevertheless conjures up feelings in the viewer that seem very 'real'.   As Francis Bacon (1909 – 1992) described, during an interview with the art critic David Sylvester in 1950, reality, to him, was nothing else but a ‘series of sensations and ideas that occur in the consciousness of each individual’. (Crippa, p83)

Paula Rego (1935-2022) was another artist who had lived through the period of post-World War II Europe marked by the anxiety that followed the war - concentration camps, suffocating dictator regimes and threat of nuclear war (Crippa).  She also produced paintings which have the uncanny elements that she has described as being an attempt to ‘give fear a face’ (Warner).  Marina Warner has written that Rego ‘expresses her own ambiguous states of uncertainties, mysteries and doubts into that territory, desisting from offering explanations or asking for any’.

Rego and Bacon are two examples of important 20th century artists whose work incorporated elements of the concept of the uncanny, a thread which works its way in and out of the work of figurative and non-figurative art.  I will go on to discuss many others in further posts, including my own practice and show how the uncanny reveals itself - its strange identity.  I will focus on the idea of the uncanny as it is revealed in the subject (and object) of the human body. 

But first, the question could be asked - how can this elusive concept of the uncanny be defined? Did it emerge only in the 1920’s in Europe, or has it always existed in the world?

It is nowadays the norm to hold the view that anxiety, fear, and concepts such as the uncanny (which express anxiety in a visual form) are experiences that occur to human beings in the site of the psyche (the mind).  However, it was not until the late 19th century that Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) came to believe that the symptoms of his patients were caused by conflict in the unconscious mind and with the ‘failure to deal with invisible, unconscious and primarily sexual psychological desires’ and not as had been thought previously, symptoms of a disease of the physical nervous system. (Freeman, p15)

Freud had come to Paris in 1885 to study ‘hysterics’ under Jean-Martin Charcot and became interested in the connection between the mind and body (Tomley,pviii).  It is largely a legacy of Freud’s work that anxiety has become so important in today’s psychological and psychiatric thinking (Freeman, p4).  Freud continues to be relevant today as more and more of his insights become proved by neuroscientific discoveries.  For example, as Eric Kandel has pointed out in ‘The Age of Insight’ (2012), ‘most of our mental life, including most of our emotional life, is unconscious at any given moment’.  Research also suggests that ‘images exert a much more powerful influence on emotions than do thoughts (Freeman, p27), which explains the power and effect on the viewer of uncanny art.

It is important to remember that although the uncanny did not exist as a theory until being written about by Freud in his essay ‘das Unheimlich’ in 1919, uncanny-like images had appeared in art through the centuries in both European and non-European cultures.  Connected with the supernatural, magic and religion it shows up in ‘primitive art’ for instance and through the history of the art of Catholicism.   Jane Neal, writing in ‘Uncanny Tales’, says that Freud tells us that ‘apparent death and re-animation of the dead have been represented as most uncanny themes.  She talks about the otherworldliness od Ana Maria Pacheco’s work which comes from the primitive ‘magic’ cultures of Brazil as well as the ritual and superstition running through the Catholicism that she experienced growing up.  The doll is the perfect example of an uncanny art form, connected as it is with ideas of witchcraft, religious statuary, and as an imaginative plaything/doll.

Thus, the uncanny has always been with us, just as dreams, imagination and fears have been expressed by humans in art.  In her essay ‘Dream Realism’, Marina Warner (Warner,p31) describes Paula Rego’s approach to art making as a ‘beautiful grotesque’ because she reflects the powerful mixed feelings she inspires, looking within herself as a site of ‘collective memory nourished by legends and fairy tales’.  

The Jungian feminist psychologist and ‘teller of the old stories’ Clarissa Pinkola Estes wrote in ‘Women Who run With the Wolves’ that in ‘…a single human being there are many other beings, all with their own value, motives, and desires…there is also within the psyche an innate contra naturam aspect, an ‘against nature’ force.  The contra naturam aspect opposes the positive: it is against development, against harmony…it is a derisive and murderous antagonist that is born within us.’ (Estes,p35,).  The first chapter of Este’s seminal work is devoted to recognizing this predator in the psyche for what it is, and from recognition comes the instinctive building of intuitive ‘muscle’ so that we learn to instinctively know when something ‘is not right’.  The uncanny lives in the realm of ‘not quite right’ and although its presence may leave the viewer with a sense of unease, it is a clue to a truth revealed or danger thwarted, a mirror reflecting something we may not want to look at too closely, but we must examine and take on board, or we cannot move on in our lives.

Alexandra Kokoli explores the nature of repression in the realm of domesticity in her book ‘The Feminist Uncanny: In Theory and Art Practice’ (2016).  She explains that the starting point for the ‘female uncanny’ is the ‘…deliberate unsettling quality that many cultural artefacts informed by feminism continue to possess…the fraught but fertile relationship between feminism and the uncanny and by extension Freudian psychoanalysis’ (Kokoli,p3).

Louise Bourgeois, Femme Maison, 1982, Plastic doll and clay.

Repression and entrapment in the unhomely domestic environment (‘unhomely’ are a literal translation of Freud’s das Unheimlich) is explored by Louise Bourgeois’ uncanny hybrids of women and house in her series of works entitled ‘Femme Maison’.  Her later ‘cells’ are also prison-like structures, within which the viewer is invited to look inside an uncanny alternative domestic room filled with fetishized and emotionally charged collections of objects, doors, and symbols of ‘hysteria’.

As a final note on this overview of the theories surrounding the uncanny, I would like to mention the concept of the ‘Abject’.  Connected to both the uncanny and feminism, the theory of ‘abjection’ has been defined by Julia Kristeva in ‘Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection’ (1982) as ‘… a massive and sudden emergence of uncanniness which familiar as it might have been, in an opaque and forgotten life, now harries me as radically separate, loathsome’ (Kristeva, p51).  This then, is the uncanny taken to an extreme of the visceral, violent, or disgusting.  The repressed memory, the uncanny starting point, can no longer be recognized in the abject.  It is closer to the grotesque and is indebted to Surrealism (Kokoli, p53).  At the heart of abjection is the in-between, the ambiguous, immoral, a sinister experiment gone wrong.

            In the dark halls of the museum that is now what remains of Auschwitz, I see a heap of children’s shoes, or something like that, something I have already seen elsewhere, under a Christmas tree, for instance, dolls I believe.  The abjection of Nazi crime reaches its apex when death, which in any case, kills me, interferes with what, in my living universe, is supposed to save me from death: childhood, science, among other things.

Julia Kristeva Powers of Horror, (1982)

References

Crippa, E. ed., (2018). All Too Human: Bacon, Freud and a Century of Painting Life, exh.cat., Text by Elena Crippa. Tate, London.

Estés, C.P. Women who Run With the Wolves: contacting the Power of the Wild Woman. Rider, London. (1992)

Freeman, D and Freeman, J. Anxiety: A Very short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2012.

Kokoli, A.M. The feminist Uncanny in Theory and Art Practice. Bloomsbury, 2016.

Kristeva, J. Powers of Horror: an Essay on Abjection. Trans. By Leon. S. Roudiez. Colombia University Press. NY. 1982.

Neal, J. (Essay) in Uncanny Tales. Exhibition Catalogue. FWA, Foundation of Women Artists. 2005

Tomley, S. (Introduction) to the Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud. The Psychology Classic. Capstone. 2020

Warner, M. (Essay) Dream Realism, in Paula Rego, Exhibition Catalogue. Ed. By Elena Crippa. Tate. 2005.

[pineapplecatguy]

This is heartbreaking

Im literally bowling my eyes out about the whole LBP server shutdown. I didn't even play the ps4 versions, but lbp2 gave me so so SO many great memories. It's just so unreal to see that franchise go away. There will NEVER be a series with the same amount of creativity as LBP had. I could write an whole essay about the good memories I've had with my friends on random levels, from decorating our pods to playing Ao Oni recreations. Rest in peace LittleBigPlanet I will always miss you

[asexualzoro]

it’s my 22nd birthday today, and you know what that means... 

Lew Writes Wrapped 2022!

its virtually all third life this time, most of which have not been posted on main before. woe, the full weight of my third life obsession be upon ye

blood god, mortal red

(Jan, 1.2k, DSMP, oneshot) (link)

one of the Many minecraft execution fics i have written in my life, technoblade anvil edition

not to start this post off with making myself sad, but man, i miss him. 

i remember writing this one all in one sitting at work in january. i think i did a pretty good job with it from an artistic standpoint, and as an analytical piece, i think i hit the mark perfectly. that said, i don’t think i could reread it now. i do think it was fun as a writing exercise to force like, 5 seconds irl to stretch out into a thousand words

yes, the only way out is down

(April, 1.2k, 3L, oneshot) (link)

another minecraft execution fic, third life rendog edition! 

IM SO PROUD OF THIS ONE. im so fond of it it’s probably my favorite third life oneshot. ren’s execution makes me fucking rabid and this is just the most direct expression of that.

what’s funny is i actually remember being pretty dissatisfied with this fic when i finished it--there was a lot of stuff i wanted to hit on that i just couldnt swing around to--but when i stepped away from what i wanted it to be and looked at what it was, i realized i liked it a lot

the rhythm of cold fists

(May, 2.6k, 3L, onehsot) (link)

sometimes you get so worked up about the idea scar threw the finale of third life that you have to write a bunch of frenzied words on it

this one is funny bc i think its got the second most hits of any of my third life fic, but the comment number is really low comparatively. i mostly just had fun making the transcript of this scene and then fleshing that out into a full ‘novelization,’ it was a neat writing exercise! i don’t think anything in particular stands out about this one, but i’m happy with it overall

Wooden Mausoleum

(May, 3.8k, 3L, oneshot) (link)

Sometimes you get so worked up about the idea of the unactualized betrayal plotline of the most loyal man in the series that you have to write a bunch of frenzied words about it

okay this is going to sound bad but i keep forgetting i wrote this. i dont know why. i like this fic! one of my favorite paragraphs i wrote all year is in it! and yet??? i dunno.

id love to write a different martyn wins au where the betrayal isnt the sort of ‘mercy kill’ suggested in this fic, bc i still have not recovered from the unrealized betrayal plot. someday i’ll write a martyn wins au where he Means to win

i... still feel something is sort of off with the way this fic ends, but i think ive felt that about a lot of the fic/scene endings ive written of late. i think that ending scenes/fics is just ill have to work on this upcoming year! 

might be best to not look back

(Oct, 2.7k, 3L, oneshot) (link)

i’m starting to think all my oneshots are just me getting possessed by different parts of the third life. anyway i had a point to prove about scar throwing, and what might happen were he not being wildly unsubtle about throwing

i can write essays on this fic it makes me feel insane. i HAVE written an essay on it already just recently. tbh, this fic itself IS an essay written for the purpose of analyzing the penultimate third life scene. i have and could and will write more essays on the penultimate third life. this is all i have to say to avoid making this a 1k word post

i think i did what i wanted to pretty well? it was sort of confusing, by virtue of trying to talk about a point your viewpoint character won’t acknowledge, but it was a fun piece over all

missing or obstructed

(Oct-present, 6.3k, 3L, ongoing) (link) 

post third life fic but only grian and ren remember, featuring so many sleep/dreaming metaphors, because i lucid dream and have insomnia and it does a lot to me as a person

missing or obstructed has 14.7k words written but i havent fuckin posted most of it bc i got derailed by lamplight. missing i am so sorry i miss you so much but youve been obstructed. i am really excited for how the rest of this goes but i think i have to finish and completely exorcize lamplight from my head before i can go back to it in earnest. i DID post another chapter at 10pm yesterday so i had more of it to include in this wordcount tho,

missing or obstructed has been a lot of fun to write bc i lvoe stupid metaphors. it has sucked to write because it’s forced me to come up with worldbuilding shit for the watchers which has been so much more difficult than i thought. it’s been fun again cuz i love worldbuilding. it’ll be super fun when i finish the current scene i’m sitting and get to introduce martyn pov. i lvoe writing Martyn pov

Lamplight AU

(Nov-present, 20k, 3L/LL, series) (link)

renchanting dnd au. i put ren in a lantern. what else do you need

wadda hell. 

i cannot even begin to like--lamplight was literally supposed to be just 20 Questions and thats it, i wasn’t going to write more, but people liked it so much that i was like “sure, i’ll write a bit more” and you guys have been??? so kind. the amount of enthusiasm this fic has received thru kind tags/comments, asks and interest, and even art??? is equal parts deeply humbling and also incredibly likely to give me a god complex. this fic has been so much fun to write and my readers are the whole reason, i cant wait to show you what i have in store for the rest of it

six sentence sunday challenge

i also started a challenge back at the end of march of this year over on @driflew called Six Sentence Sunday. the rules are simple: every sunday, post six sentences you wrote that week.

i didn’t make it every week, but i made it a great deal of them. on occasion, i even posted 12 sentences the week after missing my six, meaning some weeks counted for two.

my six sentence sunday tag on that blog has 28 posts from the year! considering there’s only 52 weeks in a year, i started three months late, and a few of those weeks are actually two, i feel pretty good about the amount of weeks i made. not every week, but basically any week i didn’t have a good excuse not to complete my six sentences. it kept me writing all year, if only a little bit at a time, and i’ll be keeping up with it for sure!

to finish out,

i passed my writing amount from last year (25k) by over 10k words! my total number for this year doesnt even count the 7k or so from missing or obstructed i havent posted, plus an uncounted few hundred words of unposted snippets for lamplight. i’m really happy with everything i’ve done this year! 

which… this year i wrote and posted 37,800+ words! 

thank you to everyone who has supported my writing all year, as always, it means the world to me. happy birthday to me, and thank you to you for reading! 

(birthday wishes and/or reblogs appreciated!)

[zechleton]

A Brief and Depressing History of ESWC

Quick disclaimer. I originally started writing this as a script for some kind of video essay or something like that. I kinda chickened out in the end, and also I know very little about making videos, so here it is as 2.5k word essay instead.

Unless you’re old like me, you might not know that Esports World Cup is actually heading into its third decade of existence. Things have changed considerably in the 21 years since its first event in 2003, not least its ownership, but the entity known as ESWC is not, strictly speaking, new.

What I don’t want to do today is get into the sports washing issue. Plenty of others have covered that already and it’s too complicated a topic to try and squeeze into this piece. Suffice to say, while I’m undecided on where I stand, I fully understand why people many of you will be giving this event a miss.

Today I want to delve into the roller-coaster history of a tournament organiser that is near and dear to my heart. In 2005 I attended my first international event as a journalist – the third ever ESWC finals in Paris. I was awestruck by the entire week, from being in a foreign city alone for the first time to the fact that my nerdy hobby could really host an event of this size. Looking back at photos of the venue, the latter part of that seems particularly quaint. Although the stage was extremely cool, I reckon there were maybe a couple of thousand spectators at most.

Still, in 2005 that was huge. The main competitor at the time, Cyber Athlete Professional League (CPL), pretty much just didn’t have an in-person spectatorship at all to begin with and when they did try to attract fans, results were mixed. Back then, Esports was a far cry from AR pop groups performing opening ceremonies for a stadium of thousands and a stream viewership in the millions. World Cyber Games (WCG), which is theoretically still in existence but hasn’t run a tournament since 2020,was the closest thing to a modern event. It had Olympics-style branding, an opening ceremony and even its own theme song, but its viewership paled in comparison to today’s events. ESWC, in the early 2000’s, was a moderately large fish in pretty small pond.

Despite many changes down the years, one thing that has remained the same about under the new regime is the multi-game format. When I went to Paris in 2005, I mostly covered Warcraft 3 despite being on GotFrag’s staff as a Counter-Strike writer at the time. There was also Quake 3, Unreal Tournament, Pro Evolution Soccer and more. CS was definitely The Main Event, but every game had its final played on the main stage. Every game had its moment in the spotlight. ESWC was even ahead of the curve in having a women’s CS tournament, and I remember my American colleagues being hyped for Girls Got Game making an American CS double, with Complexity winning the men’s event.

Looking back, I wonder how much of this was out of necessity. With so much less money coming into esports in its early days, perhaps it made more financial sense to host multiple games in one venue, in order to maximize both viewership and participation while only needing to pay for one venue. It’s no coincidence that most tournaments back in the day were attached to other attractions. Dreamhack, obviously, was always attached to a BYOC event, but other organises did similar things. Even as late as 2010, I remember wading through thousands of people, past the hundreds of booths that made up CeBIT to reach the ESL IEM stage.

Fun aside: this was the event where Azael became a “literal world champion,” after winning the World of Warcraft tournament with Evil Geniuses. I will never not cringe when I think about how inappropriately quickly I leapt on him and his teammates to ask for an interview after the game. I didn’t even wait for them to finish celebrating their victory. Azael, reasonably, told me to give them a minute. I have never watched any of my interviews from this event, and I don’t think SK’s site has them hosted any more – what a pity.

By the way, if this sounds weird now, that’s because it was. I had a press pass, sure, but I was sitting in the crowd of a couple of hundred people and simply wandered up to the stage without needing to show it to anyone.

I went back to ESWC in 2006, solely as a WC3 guy now. Ironically, I barely recall the WC3 final at all, but the MIBR vs Fnatic CS final turned out to be a banger. To those of us on the outside, ESWC seemed to be tootling along just nicely but capitalism demands growth and “tootling along” was never going to be enough in the long run.

That was my last in-person event for a few years. I left GotFrag a few months after it got bought by Major League Gaming in 2007. Similarly, ESWC soldiered on as-is for a while, but the organisers had to switch things up. They changed formats in 2008, moving to something closer to the IEM and Blast Pro series formats we know today but this would only last one year. In 2009, under the weight of a global financial crisis, ESWC closed its doors for, erm, like a year.

They weren’t the only casualty, and Counter-Strike’s love-hate relationship with CPL ended in early 2008. An official statement read “The current fragmentation of the sport, a crowded field of competing leagues, and the current economic climate have prompted the CPL to suspend its pro-tournament operations.” Matthieu Dallon, founder of ESWC, echoed this sentiment in an interview with Fragster.de (https://complexity.gg/matthieu-dallon-interviewed-on-eswc-bankruptcy/ not the og link): “We have contacted several dozen of potential partners, big and small brands. We always received the same answer: Our stock value is in free fall, the sales decline, we are going to lose money this quarter, nobody knows when all will restart, so we have to reduce all our marketing and communication budgets, we have to target our direct consumers, and we have to cut all special budgets as sponsoring or alternate advertising.”

Other leagues such as ESL and Dreamhack hung on, changed their models and adapted. They became hosts and organisers for the likes of Blizzard and Valve, eventually becoming more of a media company than a league. But when ESWC returned in 2010, it more-or-less picked up where it left off: multiple games (including WC3, surprisingly) and a spectacular venue in Disneyland Paris.

In 2011, my beloved WC3 was replaced by Starcraft II and ESWC attached itself to Paris Games Week. This meant a change of season. Until now, ESWC had always been a summer spectacle. Paris Games Week took place in late October – presumably to give Parisians something to do indoors during the miserable weather.

Still, the event continued to be a fairly important part of the esports calendar. We still hadn’t quite reached the era of The Major and there was plenty of room at the table for competition. Although my own interest in many of the included titles was waning during this period, ESWC looked to be going strong. They took the move to CS:GO and DOTA2 in their stride and added more and more -Mania games. ESWC had always been one of the strongest proponents of Trackmania, but they even added Shootmania for a few years towards the end. Remember Shootmania? Kinda? Yeah, same.

It wasn’t until 2014 that things started to get silly. Call of Duty gets top billing on the official ESWC page for that year. This is the first time that anything other than Counter-Strike sits atop the list of champions, which is a subtle but important change. But okay, people like COD, whatever. It made sense to add another popular FPS game.

Just Dance, though? I think this is where ESWC’s reliance on other parties started to become an issue. Just Dance is an Ubisoft game, developed by Ubisoft Paris specifically. ESWC always had strong ties to its home country of France and while Ubisoft’s Trackmania series made a lot of sense as a competitive game, dancing, just kinda doesn’t. Well, I guess it did go on to be part of the Olympic Series, so joke’s on me, right?

Okay, maybe that’s a bit rude. If you like Just Dance then that’s great. I watched the highlights for this video and everybody looked like they were having a great time. But after so many years of pining for mainstream acceptance, the fact that the Olympics chose a dancing game that a lot of esports fans had never even heard of (myself included), instead of CS or a MOBA of some kind was absurd. Viewers thought so, too – all 800 of them. Yeah, according to esports charts (https://escharts.com/tournaments/other/olympic-esport-series-finals-just-dance) the peak viewership for Just Dance at the Olympics was 777 people.

Look, I’m not suggesting that ESWC immediately shrunk in 2015 because of Just dance and Call of Duty, but they played their part. From the outside looking in, their seems to have been a lack of direction and these two games were part of that. Or rather, there was a direction, but that direction was advertising Ubisoft products. ESWC spread itself too thin at a time when single-title leagues and tournaments were quickly becoming the norm.

ESWC did try its hand at this in 2015, running a COD-only tournament in May and a CS-only event in July (though they do deserve credit for continuing to support female Counter-Strike), but in October they were back to their Olympics-style approach. The list of games at the final event of 2015 paints a picture: FIFA, Women’s LoL (but no men), Trackmania, Shootmania and Just Dance. You might generously call it an eclectic mix, but I’d argue it’s a collection of games nobody else wanted.

ESWC’s website lists a highlight for every year. Usually it’s an iconic moment of game play, sometimes it’s the first use of a game on such a big stage. Tellingly, in 2015, they list the creation of France Esports. Sure, this was a big deal (probably), and it was headed up by Matthieu Dallon of ESWC, but this comes across as a tacit admission that nothing important happened at their own tournaments during that whole year.

In 2016, the spiral into irrelevancy was well underway. Another COD tournament in May was followed by a downsized October tournament. CS was back on the menu, but the list of entrants paints an ugly picture. Alternate Attax beat LDLC in the final – two teams who, in 2016, had no business being in an international final. They did have players who would go onto bigger things, but Attax has never qualified for a Major, before or since. They earned their victory, but it came against a very weak field.

Even more damning, though, is the fourth and final game on the list for that year: Clash Royale. The shark had well and truly been jumped. You can never recover your credibility after you take money from mobile games.

ESWC stumbled on for a few more years after that, but the list of titles became more and more muddled while the CS tournament became populated by fewer and fewer big names. ESWC Africa took place in December of 2018 – a Counter-Strike only tournament that was the last thing ESWC ever ran. While it was cool to see organisers creating tournaments outside of the usual esports hotbeds, it’s no surprise that ESWC disappeared shortly after that.

But the universe had a different fate in mind for ESWC. In 2024, it is being brought back to life in a hideous experiment, worthy of any Gothic Horror. It will return as a shell of its former self, bathed in riches it never had in its previous life, but devoid of all the glory and all the good will it had created over the years.

And yet, ESWC being bought out is nothing new. Behind the scenes, ownership changed several times of the years. Even the name was switched to Esports World Convention at some point – a fact I only learned during my research for this piece. Starting out as an expansion of Ligarena’s domestic LAN tournaments in France, Games-Solution bought the brand in 2009. They passed things onto Oxent in 2011 until Oxent itself was bought out by Webedia in 2016.

What is particularly interesting here is that Matthieu Dallon was in charge of Oxent, too. Despite the bankruptcy of his previous company, he clearly wanted to make his dream of an esports Olympics a reality. He could have easily disappeared into some or other other mundane business and I assume he would have had offers to join other esports organisations, but we chose to resurrect ESWC instead.

And then he sold it to Webedia.

Webedia is a lot of things. A kind of smorgasbord of “online stuff,” featuring typically, deliberately nebulous “Web3” concepts such as “Content Production,” “IP Development” and “Brand Partnership.” If you rolled your eyes at any or all of these phrases, you’re not alone. Essentially, their main role seems to be managing streamers and talent but their reach goes much wider than that. Indeed, esports is only the third entry on their “Webedia Networks” page, below Movies and Gaming. This is the company behind LFL’s broadcasts, however, so they do remain relevant in the esports community, at least in France.

Oh, and they shill NFTs because of course they do.

Is it a coincidence that the year ESWC became part of a larger media empire is the same year they moved into mobile gaming? Probably not. Mobile games, whatever you think of them, do make a lot of money. There’s an Always Sunny scene for every occasion, isn’t there? What do companies like Webedia make? Money, Charlie, they make money.

Still, it’s clear in retrospect that this was the beginning of the end for ESWC. What had started out in 2003 as a passion project based on a love of esports had turned into just another media asset. Viewed in that light, it’s almost sort of fitting that it has now become a sportswashing project – a sad but common arc in today’s hyper-capitalist world. Anything with positive emotional attachment can and will be commodified, either for money or PR, or, more commonly, both. Yes, I’m looking at you, football.

I remember when I first started writing about esports, people always talked about “going mainstream” as though it was a good thing. As though being popular and making money was what made something legitimate or worthwhile. The closer we got to that goal, the worse it seemed to me. ESWC’s fate – a once-loved institution of a small community turned into a heartless advertising entity for an oil state – is about as damning an indictment of that as you could wish to find. The delicious irony in all of this is that ESWC will lose money, and this is by design, but it will also lose the legitimacy it once had. Nobody who used to love ESWC in the early 2000’s will care about its new zombie form and many of them will boycott it, myself included.

ESWC died years ago as far as I’m concerned. The event by the same name later this year is nothing but the reanimated corpse of something that used to be great. The only DNA the two share is their scattergun approach to game selection, but even this is a perversion of the original goal. The old ESWC had to cast its net wide in order to make ends meet. The new monstrosity is just willing to throw money at anything that will buy its owners some positive publicity – a drop in the ocean of its owner’s obscene wealth.

[staroftheseablog]

There are so many things happening in my life lately. Some of them I still don’t’ understand because in one hand they feel so unreal to me, and in the other hand I feel really lucky and blessed that I achieved so many things. But…somehow I don’t feel satisfied with all of it.

I am 22 years old and there are so many things that I still want to do, feel, experience. For a year now I am working at the company I could only dream about when I was in high school. Now I am part of it and made it somehow my home - also my colleagues are just like my family. I’ve never in my life been less at home than this year. I have been to so many places and somehow I still found the time to work 12 hours shifts for whole year. Also, simultaneously I finished my 4th year of college successfully. Now, this October, I started my last year of masters.

Even all of this achievements, my mind is constantly messing with my nerves and make me question my entire existence, future, career, friendships.

I don’t know if somebody has noticed, but when you stared working on something you wanted your whole life, you ironically started also losing so many friends. There were so many moments this year when I felt lonely and sad, but again aware that this is, I guess, part of growing up. Yes, it did make me stronger, but sometimes I miss being just 18 year old student with no worries in this world.

At the beginning of the year I also had really tough times in my family. We faced death of our beloved family member who means the world to me and was/is/will be my forever guardian angel in Heaven. I miss him so much and I’ll always will. That experience taught me how to grief, but also how to be consistent with everything that was going on beside that tragic event. I survived, because I told myself I that had to.

At the beginning of next year I am about to start my whole new chapter in life called cultural exchange. I am moving to Spain for half of a year where I am going to study but also enjoy living in different country far away from home. I am excited, but also (not gonna lie) scared. That means that I am about to quit my job, pack my suitcases, left my friend, family and tell myself - “ you are on your own now”. Honestly, can’t wait. But, yes, it frightens me sometimes when I am thinking about it because this is one the hugest leaps of my comfort zone so far.

I also miss writing. I can’t even remember when was the last time I wrote something. I used to write songs, poems, essays. I feel like I used to be more creative back then than now. Also, I found myself being so lazy to read books. Maybe I wouldn’t call it lazy, but tired…or it was just a stupid excuse. Funny thing is that I actually bought a lot. New ones. Fresh ones. Expensive ones. They are still on the same shelf.

There is also one thing that bothers me since I started college. Actually this also bothers me in high school, but I didn’t care that much about that. I have terrible love life. When I say terrible I mean nonexistent love life. Yes, I would fall in this stupid kind of love with guys I met during summer or with someone that I would do my college project, but there would never be reverse reaction. I would just made it up in my head and used it for another one overthinking therapy before sleep. There was never a single person in my life who would really like me for who I am and who would see me as something more than a friend or a girl with her friends. I am really done with third wheeling because if I continue to do that, I feel like I would become a doctor or expert in field so I can write my master thesis on this topic. It is critical.

I really do need someone who is going to love me. I need a lover, a friend, someone who’s going to respect me, listen to me, hug me, someone who can be my emergency call when I couldn’t find strength to put my shit together.

Yes, I did pray and I know that God is working in my favor. That gives me hope and peace. I am not unhappy but I feel like I can be happier. Or at least I deserve to be.

Maybe I don’t, maybe that’s not the case. Maybe I have so many sins so I am obligate to wait until I eat myself alive. Maybe that is some kind of punishment. Maybe it isn’t right time yet. Maybe I am too desperate. Or I am too exaggerating.

I am confused. No one said that with 22 years old I have to know what I wanted to do with life, but sometimes I am really lost.

I want to do everything, but again I don’t have time to everything. I have to make sure that I am financially stable, because I don’t wanna take money from my parents. But…what if working just to stay alive takes from me the best years of my young student life?

It is hard to be young these days. Everyone would say they understand you, but the fact is that they actually don’t. I haven’t met a person who understands me better than myself. My mum is really close, but that woman on the other hand has super powers I wouldn’t never be able to understand properly. She is miracle maker. I want to be that for myself too.

I am sensitive, but I am also brave. Braver than before. Circumstances taught me so.

I know I can do whatever I put my mind to. There is 101% chance that I am going to survive every next battle that is about to face me. I already faced it before.

I am me and, besides everything that I have just said, that is the only thing I surely know no one can beat.

It is me against me.

And we love to cooperate.

10/10/2023

[crisalidaseason]

Mikasa with an ADHD partner

So, as an ADHD person I'd like to feel loved by someone that doesn't invalidate my condition based on stereotypes. Mikasa is my comfort character.

Also, can be considered a reader insert (I kept it as neutral as possible). And my portrayal of ADHD is based on my experiences. I am properly diagnosed.

When Mikasa first met her current partner she didn't notice anything specific. As an observant person, Mikasa is very aware that people are vastly different and always tries not to be judgmental of anybody. The next few times she talked to them Mikasa immediately noticed that some of their actions were rather similar to her brother's, Eren.

Like the notes written on their hands and arms (things such as "buy milk" "doc appointment at 5 today"). But she never assumed anything because it was appropriate, besides, there was nothing wrong with writing little reminders on your skin. Next thing she noticed were the sensibility to sounds. Sometimes they could listen to music, talk to friends, play with a portable videogame all at the same time. But sometimes the softest of sounds could make them loose focus completely and get super angry and frustrated. Yep, Mikasa had seen that before.

When Mikasa and them started dating she also noticed how forgetful they could be, specially with routines! More than once they forgot Mikasa was going to pick them up for school and ended up taking the bus. Or they would forget where Mikasa's classroom was even if they've been there multiple times before. One time they forgot a date and when Mikasa called asking "hey babe, where are you?" They immediately panicked and felt horrible!

At this point Mikasa knew something was a little different but didn't want to ask anything in fear of upsetting her lover. Mikasa just decided to help as best as she could whenever they needed.

She would always send a message in the mornings saying "I'll be picking you up soon, love 💕". She would sit on the bathroom floor with them when sounds were too much to handle. She would remind them to rest a little when they were feeling all over the place. Mikasa also gifted them a cute handmade calendar with important dates such as birthdays and appointments. The calendar was placed on a very visible area of the bedroom and Mikas would often go to their house and say "hey babe, came here to update your calendar". She would be awake with her partner when they forgot an essay and had to do it last minute, she would bring them snacks and water and make little shoulder massages.

Of course they noticed Mikasa's actions. Nobody ever cared and respected them so it made a huge difference when suddenly someone started to care. They were afraid though, scared actually, that Mikasa would get tired and realize dealing with them is not worth it. She heard that from many people who were supposed to care.

One day, they gathered courage and decided to ask why Mikasa did all those little things.

"I don't know babe, it just seemed to help you"

"I know, but you don't have to. I've lived chaotically my entire life and I don't want you to worry about my necessities all the time"

"If I don't worry about making you comfortable and respected what kind of girlfriend am I?"

They cried a lot. Feeling loved at that level almost seemed like a crime. To have your partner truly understand and care for your needs was something almost unreal. But Mikasa always seemed unreal, like a figment of somebody's imagination.

"Don't cry, love. I'll always listen to your needs and do my best to help you" Mikasa hugged them tightly.