#i finally uploaded some analysis for once

[miwiheroes]

An Underrated Byler Proof

A lot of people say that the biggest byler proof is the painting, maybe the last shot of season 4 or something like that, but for me, one of the biggest is literally THIS ^^^

This scene is straight after Will calls Jancy 'gross'

Jancy is a canonical couple

Joyce then describes Jancy's relationship as 'in love'

Will denies that he will 'fall in love', meaning he does not think he will have a relationship like Jancy

He is in love with Mike and does not believe that he loves him back.

It would not be satisfying for Will's hopelessness to come true. (Mike rejecting him)

ERGO.....

This doesn't just foreshadow that Will's going to fall in love with Mike, it foreshadows that he'll be in a relationship.

I don't think that Joyce or Will here is referring to the simple action of falling in love with someone or having feelings for them, I think that they are both referring to falling in love together and acting like a couple, like Jancy does.

Will has these two core beliefs:

That Mike won't love him back.

That he isn't allowed to have a relationship because he's gay.

In this scene:

I think it not only makes sense for him to be sad about being left behind and being in love with Mike while El's with him, I think he's also sad about: A) the fact that he wants to do these relationship-y things with Mike and can't and B) the fact that because he's gay, he likely won't even be able to have a public relationship at all.

So when Will says he isn’t going to fall in love in the previous scene, he is saying this because he believes that his feelings are not going to be reciprocated, rather than feeling like he won't have feelings for anyone. He’s saying that it’s impossible for those feelings to be mutual.

In this season as well, (s3) we see that Will is coming to terms with being gay, as in season 4 he has kind of accepted it, seeing that he made the painting for Mike, which is a stand-in for his feelings.

He's struggling with his childhood rather than the mindflayer this time, his friends are getting girlfriends while he just wants to play games with them instead. The real reason for him wanting to play games is so he doesn't have to feel left out from the fact he can never have a relationship like them.

Also: he's falling in love with mike and uhhh very much struggling with that-

In season 4, he's accepted that he's not going to 'fall in love with' Mike, as in he won't have his relationship with him, and so instead of using his painting to tell him his true feelings, he uses it instead to make him feel better and try and make him happy in an act of self-sabotage.

Now, going back to the original scene.

It would make no sense for the writers on a show about outsiders and overcoming obstacles in a marginalising society to have will, a boy who has always believed he'd never be able to have a normal relationship, let alone with the person he loves, to end up dead or have those beliefs be true.

They set up the fact that he's so hopeless about never being in a relationship so that it's even more satisfying when he does.

[alien-girl-21]

The Käärijä Research Paper (tm)

aka: Error Analysis of the Use of English Articles in Jere Pöyhönen Interviews in 2023

(Before we start, a couple of clarifications: firstly, I am a linguistics student and this research was my final project for my psycholinguistics course, secondly, this was a group research and I have gotten permission from my friends to share these results with y'all so tysm to them, and lastly, the og work is LONG, 50 pages long, so I'm condensing it into the important bits)

Findings and explanations under the cut <3

Before sharing the actual research, i'm going to share some important terms for you guys to understand the overall layout of this work.

Error analysis: kind of self explanatory, it's the process of analyzing errors, specifically in one's speech, more on how we did this later.

Omission: The alienation of a linguistic form in speech (i.e. I go to (the) supermarket.).

Addition: The opposite of omission, putting an unnecessary linguistic form in a sentence (i.e. It's the maybe half and half.).

Substitution: Exchanging a linguistic form for another one (i.e. He admitted to have stolen a wallet. Instead of: He admitted to having stolen a wallet.).

Overgeneralization: Looking at a grammatical rule and thinking it applies to every case with no exceptions (i.e. finding out verbs conjugated in the past end in -ed and creating conjugations like writted instead of written). Also known as intralingual transfer.

Negative transfer: When your mother tongue (L1) seeps into your second/foreign language (L2) (in this case it's foreign language, but I'll still call it an L2 for simplicity's sake), if we're talking about Spanish negative transfer it can look like: the car red (Spanish adjectives go after the noun, unlike in English). Also known as interlingual transfer.

Local error: An error that does not affect the overall meaning of the sentence, making it still understandable.

Global error: An error that affects the overall meaning of the sentence, making it difficult to understand without clarifications.

Okay, with that out of the way, let me explain what we did:

We decided to make an error analysis on how Jere utilized articles (the, a/an) throughout 2023, for this we considered 2 interviews and 1 Instagram live, the interviews were: KÄÄRIJÄ TRIES LITHUANIAN FOOD (uploaded on 12/04/23) and Episode 3: Käärijä and friends (uploaded on 26/12/23), the ig live was the one he did to promote the release of Huhhahhei on 19/10/23, the dates are important for later.

Now, to do the error analysis in itself we followed Rod Ellis’ proposal for error analysis which follows four main steps:

Identifying errors: Self-explanatory, you see what errors one has committed.

Describing errors: Once you see the errors, you describe what exactly the error is, it can be with grammatical categories, or with omission, misinformation, addition, misordering, and substitution.

Explaining errors: After describing the error you need to explain why this error was committed, the two main ways are through overgeneralization and negative transfer.

Error evaluation: After all this, you identify how the error affected the overall message of the sentence being spoken, was it local or global?

We put these steps into a chart and listened to the interviews and identified the errors we found, it’s a really long chart, so if you want to see it fully you can find it here (hopefully). After identifying all the errors and doing our own error analysis we… well, analyzed the data, duh, according to the objectives we set up for the research.

Our first objective was to identify errors Jere has committed regarding articles in the three videos I mentioned. What we analyzed was more grammatical, so what grammatical structure he used the most. He usually omits an article before a noun and with adjectives, like in: “We go to bar with my producer…”, or “Käärijä goes to boat.”, or “I am fine, uh… little bit tired.”. Obviously, this is kind of expected because Finnish does not have articles, but he also adds articles when it is not necessary, like in: “I have the one festival.” Here are the charts of the grammatical trends:

Then we focused on the describing errors part of our analysis. In this part, we found out that he usually finds himself committing omission errors, with 67 in total across the three videos, like I said before, expected, however, the second most common error is addition, this means he adds an unnecessary article in a sentence, and what’s interesting is that he usually does it with the article “the”. Since this is not an actual academic article I will speculate with a full chest: I think he does this because people are usually taught that “the” is the only article in English (only definite one, but not the only one), and that nouns usually have an article accompanying them, so I think that he adds the when he is unsure if an article needs to go there or not. Finally, there was only one case of substitution: “This is the lovely story.”, not really sure why he did this, but it’s interesting that it only happened once. Have the charts and graphs:

We moved to the next step: explaining errors. When we started this research, we thought that we would only have negative transfers since, ya know, Finnish grammar and all, and we were kind of right? He has committed negative transfer errors the most, with 66 in total, but he also had 23 overgeneralization errors, which I didn’t really expect to happen with articles that much. Not much else to say here, have charts:

Lastly, error evaluation. He made mostly local errors, which is what mainly characterizes his speech, we know what he’s saying, he just usually lacks some grammatical form that doesn’t affect his overall meaning. He did have 15 global errors that unless you have the context, it can be a little confusing to understand what he’s trying to say (like in the ig live he said “here tour” when he wanted to say “here in the tour”). Charts!

Our final objective was to see the evolution of these errors, has he made more or less as time went on? Well, since we all can see and hear, he has made a great improvement! You already have the charts above to understand that, but I just have to explain it. In the first interview, in April, he made 50 mistakes in total, by the ig live he had cut those in half, and by the latest interview he gave in English he had cut the mistakes in half again! Have the graphs to accurately see this:

He has improved so much in such a short amount of time! Even more impressive when he hasn’t really taken any formal English classes, just by talking to Bojan and Alessandra. There’s a difference between language learning and language acquisition that was proposed by Stephen Krashen (cool dude, if you’re interested in language learning, go check him out). He says that people usually learn more by acquiring (unconscious) rather than learning (conscious), and you can see that Jere has learnt so much by acquiring English through his friends and his own experiences! And this is just looking at how he uses articles, there is also a distinctive change in how he uses other grammatical forms (but that was too much work for just 2 weeks, maybe I’ll do it later, no promises on anything, though). Even if we’re not talking about his grammatical and syntactical forms, his pronunciation has improved as well! My friends were fascinated by how his accent seemed to develop from video to video, which was very sweet because his accent is one of my favorite things about his speech, but that’s off topic.

The general takeaway from this research is: Jere still has a lot of Finnish tendencies in his English, he has developed his own grammatical structures to communicate in English, and how much he improved in an 8-month period is kind of insane, especially for an adult (who are the age group who have the most trouble learning languages). He’s the it-girl of blowing off a linguist’s mind (me, I’m the linguist)

That would be all!! If you have any other questions, feel free to ask! I'm more than glad to answer them

[compacflt]

YOU'RE ALIVE??? - my reaction upon seeing your most recent reblog

Anyway, your fic and blog single-handedly kickstarted my U.S. military history obsession <3

im alive!!!! yeah I've been away for a while. it, ah... has not been a grrrreat time to be a military historian or a Big Fan of military propaganda pieces like Top Gun for the last year or so...

lmfao I just saw that the second trump admin plans to haul up all the commanders in charge of the Afghanistan withdrawal (which HE negotiated btw) in front of congress with the plan to charge them all with TREASON per the UCMJ (good fucking luck dude)

but um in my timeline... that includes navy secretary 2021-2022 tom iceman kazansky, bro... so in case you're wondering what these characters are up to in the present day apparently the answer is "getting investigated for treason." sorry to bring down the mood. my happy ending's a little sour now.

mostly I've been insanely busy. I graduate university in may & have to have a journalism capstone, an English research thesis (my paper on military commanding officers in fiction inspired by my top gun fics tbh) and a creative writing capstone (novel) done by march. plus job applications, work for the place where im currently freelancing, apartment hunting... so im a wee bit crunched lately.

some minor updates for anyone who still cares: I am, extremely slowly, still editing WWGATTAI & the other stories. I've finished a complete overhaul of the Carole-dies chapter, chapter 7, but have yet to post it because I'd like to sync a logistical change in the story across the other pieces. and I'm mostly done with a COMPLETE overhaul of chapter 6 (aka "the nineties" chapter where ice & mav move in together & build their family) which goes into much more detail about how... emotionally and logistically... they could pull that off. + a lot more baseball stuff + the Clinton sex scandal. which leaves just chapter 10 left to do. ugh, my least favorite, which is why im putting it off... and then debriefing etc. which won't take as long because I don't honestly care about debriefing at all and I just have very minor changes to make to it. slider doesn't need editing and idgaf about the other pieces.

once I finish with the edits, which will happen eventually I swear because more than anything I just want to hold the updated edited final thing in my hands the way I did with the first draft, I'll upload my pdf (with meta analysis and notes that go back to mid-2022) for u guys to do with as you wish

also for the m:i doubleheaders I am planning on editing my m:i fic pre-m:i8 next year and pending ilsa life status will write much much more

[liongoatsnake]

It has come up as of late, yet again, regarding the use of the term phantom limbs while referring to the experiences some alterhumans have where they feel traits on their bodies that are not physically there.  

While I could go into the long, long history of the term being used in the alterhuman communities going back into the 1990s, as this debate’s key sticking point is in regard to phantom limb being a medical term specific to the experiences of amputees or instead a general term that can be used for non-amputees as well, I’m going to strictly be pulling from academic sources below.   

To put it succinctly, the use of the term phantom limbs for alterhuman experiences has been recognized by multiple researchers and in other academic settings over the years. Ergo, no it isn’t a term specific to amputees that doesn't apply to alterhuman experiences. - Academic references below cut-

Examples:

The research done by a multidisciplinary team of researchers focusing on the study of the furry fandom called the International Anthropomorphic Research Project, uses the term phantom limb while referring the experiences of therians and otherkin. In their book, FurScience! A Summary of Five Years of Research from the International Anthropomorphic Research Project, which is a summary of five years of continuous research into the furry fandom, a section simply named “Phantom Limb,” touches on the topic of phantom limbs among furries, therians, and otherkin. [1] They go into the presence of “phantom limbs” among furries, therians, and otherkin again in their piece “Furries, Therians, and Otherkin, Oh My! What Do All Those Words Mean, Anyway?” which was part of the book, Furries Among Us 2: More Essays on Furries by Furries. Further, in 2019, the team published an academic article which shared their results where they used the previously mentioned Rubber Hand Illusion experiment on furries and therians. Once again, when bringing up the existence of experiences among therians and otherkin, the researchers use the term “phantom limbs.” [2] 

Devin Proctor’s 2019 dissertation, On Being Non-Human: Otherkin Identification and Virtual Space includes, along with dozens of mentions of the term throughout the work, a section on Phantom Shifting and in which he uses the term “phantom limbs.” [3]

For yet another example, the article, “An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of Identity in the Therian Community” also goes into quite some detail regarding the experience of “phantom limbs” among therians. [4]

A final example includes Nat Bricker’s 2016 thesis, Life Stories of Therianthropes: An Analysis of Nonhuman Identity in a Narrative Identity Model. [5]

…

This is NOT an exhaustive list in the slightest, but I think I’ve made my point clear enough (and I have other things I need to do today other than keep searching through my archive...).

TL;DR - Researchers who have studied therians and otherkin ALSO use the term phantom limbs to describe our experiences. This isn’t appropriation or otherwise misuse of medical terminology. This is using a word for what it means.   Citations:

[1] Plante, Courtney N., Stephen Reysen, Sharon E. Roberts, & Kathleen C. Gerbasi. FurScience! A Summary of Five Years of Research from the International Anthropomorphic Research Project. Waterloo, Ontario: FurScience, 2016. https://furscience.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/FurScience-Final-pdf-for-Website_2017_10_18.pdf, page 116.

[2] Kranjec, Alexander, Louis Lamanna, Erick Guzman, Courtney N. Plante, Stephen Reysen, Kathy Gerbasi, Sharon Roberts and Elizabeth Fein. “Illusory Body Perception and Experience in Furries.” CogSci (July 2019): Page 596-602.

[3] Proctor, Devin. On Being Non-Human: Otherkin Identification and Virtual Space. The George Washington University. May 2019. pages 172, 203-209, & 255.

[4] Grivell, Timothy, Helen Clegg & Elizabeth C. Roxburgh. “An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of Identity in the Therian Community.” Identity: An International Journal of Theory and Research. Volume 14, Number 2 (May 2014): pages 119-120, 124, 128-129.

[5] Bricker, Nat. Life Stories of Therianthropes: An Analysis of Nonhuman Identity in a Narrative Identity Model, Lake Forest College, April 2016, pages. 10, 14-15, 39-41, 60.

[tornoleander]

men whimpering pt 3 still hasnt met the goal!!! do you still plan on continuing the series??

Ah shit someone remembered I made those LMAO

I probably will eventually the clip gathering is a pain but the comments are the best thing ever and it’s quite fun to edit but I have other projects first my YouTube upload plan right now is:

1. Skybound Video

Really the accumulation of my S6 Fixation will talk about everything that I love in skybound but also FINALLY lay out all horrors. Skybound discomfort explained. Trying to see all sides and be as objective as possible emphasizing canon/implications/theory Will be voice reveal also I guess lol. The episode summary’s at the beginning should be funny.

2. Animatic

Been working on since December. I’m like, Half done. Posted some bits. Very angsty keeping it for the adult audience only. Won’t talk to much here unless I get asks. But I will post what can be enjoyed separately here disconnected. Cause I trust YouTube more at keeping out the kids.

3. Ninjago but only when men are whimpering.

Yes my channel’s tone is… eh not what I want but that’s not new. (I’m two lazy for two Ninjago accounts to organize my madness)

Once I’m done with the first two I will likely change the goal to 666 likes which we are close too. The only way I would prioritize 3 is if it was getting close to my ridiculous like goal.

I did collect and edit down clips from just Skybound already because I was rewatching it for other reasons and oof. The tone 😭 it’s so funny in a dark humor way like… Jay after learning he’s adopted. I- won’t say more but it’s a lot.

I need to finish this very important analysis of ninja over the seasons. I am very confident in my accuracy and standards.

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 23/02/2024

Through the F​-​F​-​Fire and the F​-​F​-​Flames

Season 5 Featured on: SiIvaGunner's Highest Quality Rips: Volume D

Ripped by R.L.99

In my excitement leading up to February 22nd and to finally get to write more in-depth about Kara's Flowers' meaning to the SiIvaGunner channel...it dawned on me a bit too late that I was ignoring another meaning to the very date before it. I'm still very proud of how the post on As Miku Collides connects together with Collision Clouds, but there was something far more important to remember from February 21st. The birthday of late ripper R.L.99.

R.L.99 is the second known SiIvaGunner team member to have left us in tragedy, and its always going to be a very difficult topic for someone like me, effectively an outsider, to approach. The first was Marrow, who I've written about thrice now with Telling Fish Tales, Turnabout Fishters and 8​-​bit Fish With Dreams - a true friend to the SiIvaGunner team whose contributions are too many to list, but had been present since the very early days of Season 1. I can't claim to have known the guy, nor ever claim to have felt the same grief that his friends did upon his passing - yet althesame, through how recognizable and frequent his contributions were, losing him did hurt. Yet with R.L.99, my heart sank for a somewhat different reason. I'd barely had the time to truly appreciate him before he was gone.

As a ripper, R.L.99's most defining trait lay in his ambition - he was always seeking to outdo his last work, always shooting higher, yet higher. Joining the team early into Season 5, his twenty-one contributions across the year, ambitious or not, all feel crafted to a sheen. In a Season that already had some of the strongest output in the channel's life, his rips often still managed to impress beyond those expectations. I described one instance of this occurring on my one prior post on the ripper, One Winged PSYcho - V​.​S. Sepsyrop, but it needs to be reiterated that this was effectively standard procedure for each of his big projects. But despite the reverence I hold for him now, I'd chosen the worst possible timeframe to begin distancing myself from SiIvaGunner - during Season 5, I was at my most disinterested in the channel's goings-on, and thus paid far too little mind to the incredible efforts the entire team were making during the year. I'd check in, add some rips to playlists, and check out.

When the news of R.L.99 broke early in Season 6, I didn't know what to think, because...I didn't know R.L.99. But as I looked through my own playlists, looked through his list of contributions - I realized that just about everything he had ever made had found its way into my list of all-time favorite rips. I'd loved his work without ever truly acknowledging or understanding who made it. Without ever having had the chance to truly show my appreciation, until it was too late.

Linked under his username credit at the start of this post, you'll find a Twitter thread I made two years ago now, the day the announcement was made. I wasn't able to appreciate him during his time, but on that day I wanted more than anything else for other people still like what I once was, people far too blind to the talent and care individual rippers put into their work, to know exactly what kind of legacy he left. And so, I put the thread together as one of my first-ever forms of written SiIvaGunner analysis, trying to concisely convey all the ways that R.L.99's work truly was unique - in all the ways I'd failed to pick up on before it was all too late. There was, of course, a lot missing from that thread - notably the as-of-then unreleased rips he'd made that would be uploaded the day after in his memory, culminating in the downright breathtaking Dancing Masked. Yet, I still want to dedicate todays post to a rip I'd heard from before that day, one of those rips I'd loved for so long without knowing the man behind it. A rip like Through the F​-​F​-​Fire and the F​-​F​-​Flames.

A hugely ambitious project, it feels difficult to find one rip that quite so concisely encapsulates all the qualities of R.L.99's work. A distinct love for the MOTHER series, a love for rip arrangements of popular music, a love for Rock music, and the aforementioned scope - it all culminates in a nearly 8-minute long tribute to the legendary Through the Fire and Flames by Dragonforce. Althewhile, it adheres incredibly well to the expected restrictions of a Game Boy Advance game, each of the shredding guitar samples used being from MOTHER 3 itself, with vocals authentically bit-crushed to match. It manages to rock out incredibly on its own, and that's without mentioning the insane details strewn throughout, such as the song's occasional bumps in tempo to match other boss music within MOTHER 3, or the other songs from MOTHER 3 that become referenced throughout the arrangement. Released on the date of MOTHER 3's birthday, much like Jesus of the Underground - it's a beyond impressive tribute, with love shown in every second of its runtime.

The fact remains, though, that I never knew R.L.99, and never knew Marrow either for that matter. There's far, far too many rippers that I've still not been able to express my full gratitude and affection toward, and many of which I'll likely never be able to reach. But that's part of why I want to run this blog in the first place - to give myself, and other SiIvaGunner fans that chance to show genuine, outspoken love for rips and the people behind them while we all can.

Rest well, R.L.99.

[ghostflowerhotpotch]

I KNEW I WASN'T CRAZY

THERE ARE DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF THE MOVIE FLOATING AROUND.

I NOTICE THIS AND I WASN'T SURE WHAT TO THINK.

Okay okay, I guess is time to give admit a couple of things; one of them is that as for now, I had watched this movie in theatres 5 times; and no it would not be all of them. I have no idea how much of the movie I had seen outside theatres because doing this analysis can make me watch a scene from three to ten times.

Another caveat to all of this is that I have ADHD, which means I can either miss something that was plainly on the screen because it wasn't too interesting to me, or, I would be picking on crap that no on else even thought about until I point it out but to me feels obvious.

Honestly one of the praises I have for this movie is being able to keep my attention for over two hours without me getting bored or restless; not to say every person with ADHD can't sit still watching movies, but for me personally is a challenge. I concentrate more on books.

I am getting sidetrack again, the thing is that I NOTICE THESE STUFF.

I watched the movie the day it came out, which meant I also watched the movie when the audio was a bit off. So I was expecting in sub sequence viewings to be different.

This may be just me, but in my first viewing I could had swore the presentation on the logos was different; they were fewer and there were more versions of Lord Miller's logos for what I recall.

There is also a difference when Lyla appears at first.

I noticed The Spot's dialogue, the Hobie Bubble, and Ben's different dialogue, but at first I just thought "Huh? That looks/sounds different, oh I may just be mixing up stuff."

Remember what I mentioned about my memory? It's quite funny, I can remember exact quotes from books I obsessed over a decade ago; but if you put me a picture of a client from my workplace, and ask me if this person came yesterday or on Monday, I may legit not know.

Rule of thumb if that is I am hyperfixating on it chances I will remember things correctly, but I also didn't think there would legit be different versions of a movie, so it seemed more feasible that I just didn't remember it right.

I also have some audio processing issues and the movie is hard to hear on certain parts unless you have headphones; so I thought perhaps I just heard wrong and my mind filled the blanks.

Gwen's dialogue? Oh that was the part where I thought for a hot minute I lost it.

Last time I went to the theatres I realized Gwen's dialogue while looking for Miles was missing, which of course I caught on because I am obsessed with them; and I notice right away that was missing.

When I went to check on with my friends, they were surprised to hear me say that because they also remembered it.

I will let out on a little secret; the post of "Please No!"? The second reason I put that video on that post, was in case I was right about things changing.

I am not sure how this movie will be distributed, and if the different versions may had to do with the audio mixing issues; meaning the first version could get lost eventually once this movie is properly on screening.

So, I got the video, uploaded on the post and linked to the original; because in case I am right and Gwen's dialogue gets cuts on that moment, I have proof that no, it was like that at one point, or in one version.

Sorry for the incredibly long ramble, I will come with an analysis soon. But I needed to share this here because 1) I am not crazy, and 2) If I discover parts of my analysis don't match the final version, well, I have proof that I wasn't making stuff up.

Thanks for reading!

[kouyuzu]

FIRE ESCAPE

* Sakusa x reader [content: fluff, pining] * 1236 words * Late Halloween upload!

October is too cold and not cold enough. Two sweaters is ridiculous to be wearing during the day, especially in his apartment but according to his extremely frugal roommates, it’s not cold enough to turn on the heat yet. The last night of October is definitely too cold to be wearing only a silk button down shirt and a suit jacket. The reason Sakusa is dressed like this— you asked him to match halloween costumes for the stupid party his roommates are throwing. He’s waiting at his window which has been cracked open a fraction because his roommates turned on the heat, but now it’s blasting and his room is overheating.

Unfortunately for him, his view of the back of the house is obscured by a rusted metal fire escape. He can’t see the sidewalk which is lit by only a single street light at the far corner of the block, so he sits on his bed with his bedroom door locked as the speakers thrum through the rest of the apartment and voices begin to fill the living room. After about ten more minutes of waiting his phone vibrates with a message, your name and text tone chiming to notify him that you’re outside of his room.

Sakusa has never invited you into his room before, although you’ve been in the apartment a few times. He’s had one of his teammates from his volleyball team in his room once, but that’s it for guests. His face heats up and he pulls his tie away from his neck to give himself some breathing room as you turn to him.

“You have a fire escape?” you ask him, bright red lips pulled into a smile.

Sakusa nods and tears his gaze away from how perfect an angel costume is for you, the neon yellow glow-stick atop your hair clashing with his overhead light.

“Can we sit on it?” you ask him.

Sakusa doesn’t mean to flinch at the question, and shoots you a questioning look that probably conveys too much disgust. “Why?”

“It’s cool!” You haven’t waited for him to answer you, and pushed open his window. “You even took the screen out— it’s perfect. Just grab a blanket and we can sit out here.”

Sakusa does not want to sit on rusted metal bars, suspended five meters from the ground, but you look so hopeful and there’s little he’d do to deny you.

Following your instructions, he joins you with a throw blanket from the foot of his bed. After draping it over both of you so that you’re covered, but not too close, he glances over at you. You’re holding a thermos and have finally opened it, a small stream of white steam wafting up from the lip of the container.

“What is that?” Sakusa asks.

“Hot chocolate! Since it’s so cold tonight, I thought it would be nice to have something warm to drink that wasn’t alcohol. Especially since we have our 8am Chem analysis tomorrow morning.”

Sakusa groans, “don’t remind me.”

You hum and lean your head closer to him as you inhale the chocolate scent. “I would offer you a sip but…” You tilt your head up to catch his grimace. “Yup, figured.”

“No… offense,” Sakusa says weakly.

“None taken,” you respond, giving him a smile. “More for me.” You gently nudge his arm, and Sakusa moves it so that he’s holding his arm in front of him.

“N-nice costume,” Sakusa says.

You turn to him and reach a hand between you to fix the devil horns on his head. “I like your suit. You look very handsome, Mr. Devil.”

“You look good too,” Sakusa compliments you back, maybe a little too quickly.

He cracks a small smile as you smile into the thermos and manage to take a small sip. He’s starting to miss the blasting heat from inside of the apartment, but at the same time you’re out here, and sitting next to you isn’t something that he gets to do a lot. Besides, he’s got his suit jacket. And even though it is chilly, it beats the noise that’s emanating through the thin walls. Here the noise is much more muffled.

“Your roommate tried to hit on me,” your voice breaks into his search.

“Ew,” Sakusa says immediately. “He’s such a sleaze.” Sakusa is not fond of being able to hear noise through the thin walls, and he's so thankful that he got the single because those noises would be much more frequent otherwise. For good measure, he stays away from the couch, though. 

“He wasn’t being sleazy,” you say softly. “He was… actually kind of funny about it. He asked if my clothes were ‘made in heaven’ and tried to check the tag.”

“That’s so laaaame,” Sakusa groans. “That shit works on you?”

You pout and look away from him. “No.”

Yes. A corny pick up line worked on you.

“I won’t sleep with your roommates,” you say. “I promised I wouldn’t.”

Sakusa scoffs lightly, but being as close to in his arms as he’s ever let anyone sit with him, you catch it. There's nothing to say though, because you've been honest with Sakusa the whole time.

“I won't!” you exclaim. “Seriously.”

“I know,” Sakusa answers. “But what you do is your business.”

Sakusa likes how witty you are, how pretty your smile is, the way you sit in class to take notes, and how actively you participate in class discussion (yes, even 8am chem analysis). He's so horrendously down-bad for you that he gets a little jealous when you laugh at his roommates dumb pick-up lines— something he'd never attempt but is currently wishing he'd made.

You begin a convoluted explanation about why you think it’s better to keep feelings separate from sex. Sakusa doesn’t mind listening, but he’s heard it all before and it still makes him feel a little bad for the others. What's better though, friendzoning himself, or getting one (purely physical) chance and that's it?

“...And that’s why I only find people that I meet at parties, so I don’t have to worry about walking into Chem 241 and seeing them the next day.”

Sakusa smiles because that’s the class you met him in. Your head turns to catch his gaze on you, and you smile back at him, your cheeks and nose flushed red from the cool air.

Sakusa swallows, hoping you don’t notice the bob in his Adam's apple because your smile shouldn't look so… enticing. Enticing enough that his stomach flutters as his eyes take in your pretty lips and the small stream of white air clear in the deep blue of midnight. He can't remember the last time, if there even was one, that he wanted to kiss someone. But why did it have to be you?

“Kiyo-kun?” you ask him. “Did you hear me? Are you cold?”

“Hmm? No, why?” he says.

“We’ve been out here for almost an hour, and you look kind of pale.”

“I always look pale,” Sakusa says. Of course he’s cold. He’s wearing a silk button up shirt, a suit jacket, and sharing a thin throw blanket suspended 5 meters up on rusted metal bars— he’s been cold for probably 50 minutes. But he’s been sitting with you.

And now that you’ve scooted just a fraction closer—close enough that he can feel your arm pressing against his, he’s just that much warmer.

[practically-an-x-man]

6, 22, 23, 30, 35, 48 for the fanfic asks?

Thank you!!

Fanfiction Writing Asks

6. What’s the last line you wrote?

From what should be the last chapter of A Love Once New, once I actually get it written up:

“Eh. I was fourteen. Heard it had alcohol in it.” he said, “Doesn’t get you drunk, though, just gets you sick as all hell. Without the healing factor I’da probably gone to the hospital.”

(he's talking about vanilla extract lol)

22. Do you title your fics before, during, or after the writing process?  How do you come up with titles?

If it's a oneshot, it's usually after I've finished writing it. For a longfic, I'll usually write the first 3 chapters before I start posting it, and I come up with the title just before posting it. I'm not great with titles (though I'm trying to get better) so I don't really have a system - unless I'm going with song titles, which I do with a couple of my fics - and I just try to come up with whatever I can to get it posted lol

23. Is writing the beginning, middle, or end of the story easiest? Hardest?

The middle is usually the easiest, once I get rolling into the plot and can actually start writing the scenes I want to write. The ending is the hardest, partially because there's always more scenes I could write and it's hard to know when to end it, and partially because I struggle to pace out an ending without it either dragging on or feeling choppy.

30. How much do you edit your fics?  Do you edit as you write or wait until you finish the first draft?

I usually edit as I write - I start each writing session by rereading what I've already written and making tweaks. Then I give it one final scan as I'm getting it uploaded to AO3/tumblr (mostly bc I have to manually input my italics and things into AO3).

35. What’s your favorite fic you’ve posted?

Aw man, I love them all for different reasons!! I think Desert Song has some of the most unique character interactions, and I think Quinn is one of my most dynamic OCs. Taking Flight and WWFA? have some of my best stylistic writing, especially with the descriptions of magic. Heartstrings also has really fun emotional descriptions and character interactions, and some of my favorite dialogue. Smoke and Mirrors is about recovery and finding home, and I still adore its friends-to-lovers arc. Bolts and Blasters is a really fun slowburn and has strong themes of expectation vs. choice. Catch and Release deals with grief, and has some of the best fight scenes I've ever written. Eris' fics are fun because of their dynamic with Rick, and Nikoletta's I love because of the themes of physical and emotional healing.

That probably just sounds like I'm bragging on myself, and maybe I am a little, but I really do set out for something different in each of my fics and I think I strike on different strengths with every single one. I really can't choose!

48. Who is your favorite character to write for?  Has this changed since you’ve started writing for that fandom?

Agh man, this one is also impossible to choose between!! One of my favorite things in writing is character analysis and exploring different dynamics, so I love these characters all for different reasons too! I could ramble on again like I did in the last question, because I really do have something to love about every character I write for...

But for the sake of making a choice, I'll say this: Quinn is the most fun OC to write since she's such a total wild card, and Warren/Angel will always be my number one canon character to write for because he has such an interesting story and a lot of emotional depth to explore. Abner Krill has also become a recent favorite, since he's also got a lot of emotional trauma and depth to explore.

[alias-mike]

ok so. i feel like the term "video essay" has become very diluted. what people are calling "video essays" nowadays are just commentary videos. and the creators of the videos themselves are doing this, which annoys me because dude. youre making a 18 minute long video about like. "haha people on tiktok are soooo crazy look at them fight over stanley cups" and then have maybe like. a whole 3 minutes total of actual substance and the rest of the video is just pointless rambling about tangentially related opinions or basic surface level takes. THATS A COMMENTARY VIDEO !!!!!!!! JUST CALL IT A COMMENTARY VIDEO FOR THE LOVE OF. my sanity mostly

personally. what i consider a video essay is like. something along the lines of hbomberguy or philosophy tube. something with a clear topic, a thesis if you will, and supporting points with examples/proof and analysis explaining how those examples support the points and thesis. it doesnt have to be super structured and serious like a proper academic essay, but its clear that those videos are well thought out and edited so only the best parts make it into the final script. theres a reason channels like those only upload once every couple of months!! the quality clearly shows that they put a lot of time and effort into researching the topic and making an enjoyable video!!! so when commentary videos call themselves "video essays", i get really annoyed. hate to break it to you but your recap of the tiktok trend of the week is NOT an essay sorry

p.s. dont get me wrong i can totally understand/see the appeal of commentary videos. theyre lighthearted and about inconsequential stuff and you can just put one on for some background noise and thats totally cool! im just particular about how you label/classify stuff hfdjfdsh

[tal-vez-o-quizas]

I just found a video titled “why does mike wheeler get so much hate? || character analysis” on YouTube, that was uploaded 4 months ago.

I haven’t watch the video yet, but I read some comments and someone asked the owner of the YT channel, hey it's bekah, if she thinks Mike may reciprocate Will’s feelings and she said this:

Now, I must say once again that I haven't watched the video but notice how she's not a Byler but even she knows that Mike reciprocating Will's feelings is not impossible. She mentioned words like "unlikely" with a "probably", especially because there will be a time skip and EVERYONE knows that a lot can happen after that.

TV Shows and movies use time skips to represent how much some things have changed and people say that Byler is impossible? Nah.

I loved how she said "It would make for a pretty interesting storyline for him (Mike) though if it eventually does (Mike reciprocating Will's feelings)". I'm sure this is gonna be the default response from the GA when Byler happens, 100%.

Of course there will be haters, homophobes, people who think the show went "woke" and more but the general response may be that: people will find it fascinating!

Nonetheless, there will always be comments like this one:

"...canon straight"

I would like to know when has it ever been indicated that Mike is straight in Stranger Things. Because El is his girlfriend?!

C'mon now.

"... I really don't think he would out to be another sexuality now"

Pfff.

Mike's best friend, a guy (who's in love with him by the way) helped him finally say that he loves his girlfriend for the first time after 6 months, and nobody finds that odd?! That it took the boy who's in love with him and his most intimate friend to help him enunciate "I love you"? That doesn't seem sus?

[wildernessuntothemselves]

i feel like it’s going to end with me in actual tears and needing 2-3 business days to recompose myself but, i think emphasis on THINK that oc and beomgyu will not be living happily ever after regardless of how much i want them too. i am assuming oc will finally know the truth about the past lives and that will cause a shift between her and beomgyu but, with how crazy she is for him i don’t think it will but so much of a strain. I think something is going to happen to taehyun i fear 😭. like no way does he have like dreams of his past life and then she chooses beomgyu and he is just oh well lost my chance 🤷‍♀️and i think he has the capability to go full original YAMQN taehyun and due to that i feel like he ain’t going down without some sort of fight . like something has to happen right ? 😭 i hope not taehyun, baby run fast and never look back. as for oc and beomgyu i think that once she knows the truth about everything the gods are going to be like oh no look 👀 they happy! can’t have that and like fucking thanos with us infinity rings snaps them back to another lifetime and have the cycle start over again but that’s just my 2:35am brain thinking as i am indeed suffering from insomnia.

can’t wait to read the new chapter. I will be rereading both these 2 stories from start to finish once it’s uploaded. i am that insane. I wish i was lying but i love this story so much i can write my whole psychological dissertation on these character especially beomgyu and oc with the amount of times i have analyzed, thought, and read about them. i’m ready for the chaos and emotional battle i will be going through 😭😂

hahaahahaha discovering gyu killed and did unthinkable things to her in a past life but then it "not putting too much of a strain" on their relationship is peak oc 😂

tyun is unlikely to take it lying down but what can he do when he's a mortal young college student fighting a literal demon 😭 poor baby the fight had always been mismatched with gyu.

the gods switching up on them as soon as they're slightly happy together is canon at this point 😭

yeah oc and gyu's relationship is rife for analysis about manipulative and abusive relationships and how they get you to still love and be attached to them and excuse them for all they've done or even blame yourself for it :') tyun by comparison is way more tame but has always also been interesting to me as someone who relates to tyun's avoidant attachement style so much 😭

[no-where-new-hero]

Okay, time for the movie rant because Kilmeny needs more processing time—

So, a few weeks ago, I saw this movie called 비상 (Flight/Fly High), and it was one of those movies that was kind of mediocre but had just enough promise for good to stick irresistibly in my brain, because it was one of the most thematically rich movies I’ve seen in a while. Mind you, I saw it in about five pixels on someone’s YouTube upload because the movie is obscure and ancient, but analysis here we go (cw for discussing attempted suicide and death)

Plot: Boy meets Sad Girl. Boy falls in love with Sad Girl. Sad Girl attempts to kill herself because of some traumatic history with her parents that’s very poorly explained. Because Boy loves her, he makes himself responsible for her care as she recovers from her psychic break. Boy turns to a life in the underworld to get the money to support her, becomes a male escort, later joins a gang, and eventually becomes the Biggest Boss after a gratuitously long fistfight. He renounces his life of crime and resolves to build a life with Sad Girl (who is still Sad and suffering through reams of trauma that is never adequately resolved). As Boy and Girl flee in the middle of the night, a mysterious nobody jumps out of the shadows and stabs Boy to death. Exeunt dramatis personae, Finis.

Now, at like two a.m. when I finished watching this, I just kind of sat there for five minutes being like—what the fuck did I just watch? Is he really dead? And what was the point of crafting a hundred minute movie if it was going to end with him dying in the last two minutes of it?

But then the whole film kept haunting me, and I realized that the end really wasn’t random at all, that Boy had been doomed by the narrative from the start, and that this was, in fact, one of the better examples I’ve seen of that kind of tragedy. See, near the beginning, Boy—who wanted to become an actor before all the other things he was forced to do—acts out a scene in front of Girl that directly mirrors his actual death scene (getting stabbed and dying like a dog in the rain). Girl gets angry that he’s making light of death, as someone who was going to invite it herself, but already, Boy was taking the fall for her. He was the one knocking on the door asking for the devil, and finally, at the end, the devil decided to answer. The fact that it comes at the hands of someone unknown or invisible, only a shadow on the screen, makes it all the more symbolic: it’s anonymous, the striking force of fate. Once you walk into the darkness, the darkness will never let you go. Once you get your hands dirty, you can’t live clean again.

There was another suggestive scene about halfway through: while Boy was an escort, he befriended another sex worker who kind of shits on him for pretending he’s different from her and throws a glass of whiskey in his face. In defiance, he upends the entire bottle of whiskey over his head and flicks on a lighter, as though he was going to set himself on fire (yes, I was also like Sir Stop Being So Extra This is a Wendy’s.) “I have someone to protect,” he tells the worker. He has someone he’s willing to die for, as though Girl being an open flame in his hands would make him pure—as though having someone to be noble for would save him. He’s idealistic, stupidly idealistic for his life. Because nobility has no currency in this world. He makes bad choices for the right reason—love—but love is also insufficient here. Many characters tell him that, that love won’t be enough, and we see, repeatedly through side characters, that neither will friendship or loyalty. And they aren’t; true things can’t be. In this world, it’s the performance that’s important. It’s the illusion of violence and intimidation and power. The sex worker tells him this when she confesses her story to him early on. Even Boy lies to Girl about how he’s making his money in order to preserve her innocence or make himself look better. All of life is performance, and the performance is life. He was doomed to die as soon as he made a farce of it, before the whole weight of the story mowed him down.

There are other moments—the sex worker desperately wanting someone to love and being punished for it. Boy lying at the edge of the sea like Girl when she tried to die. The two actress who play the sex worker and Girl look eerily similar to each other, as though they represent parallel lives separated only by circumstance and bridged by Boy’s existence. The three of them are caught in a triangle of false hope and certain death. It’s incredibly potent and honestly some fabulous thematic structuring. There was almost a little too much theme and not enough else, in some ways, which is why some other aspects of the movie fell flat: it reduced motivation and character development, to have this insistent sense of fate and doom hanging over everyone. But as far as tragedies go, it was weirdly fulfilling.

[canmom]

Animation Night 136: The Zagreb School

Good afternoon everyone! Welcome back to my odd little... column I guess, in which I infodump about animated films (or topics only tangentially related to animated films, like the history of the samurai) and attempt to, in some sense, curate a big collection of all the great animation in the world that I can find? That’s kind of what this ended up being, huh.

Writing about animation is tricky. After avoiding some of the most obvious clichés - it’s so smooth! - you’re left with some slightly less cliché phrases like ‘strong key poses’, ‘graphical’, ‘sense of form’, ‘energetic’, ‘weighty’ ‘strong character acting’... or maybe you throw open your mental dictionary of production terminology and praise the ‘boards’ and ‘LO’ and ‘sakkan work’ and ‘genga’, which has the great advantage of making you sound like an industry insider even if you’ve never worked a day in animation (*cough*).

To get further you need to get very specific, and start pausing on specific frames and drawing bright red over things, and pull out your deck of animation principles and artist words - timing, spacing, arcs, line of action. This is the specialty of the Twitter account Frame by Frame. A useful type of analysis but also one that is very easy to parody...

‘course you might say this is less a parody and more a perfectly legit “animation” analysis with an unusual subject.

But the real reason for all of this is that animation is something you feel more than process in words. When you create an animation, you can plan it out carefully with keys and breakdowns and arcs and timing charts (a skill that was all the more necessary when you couldn’t hit a ‘play’ button in your software) and apply concepts you might know about like ‘hand accents’ and ‘overshoot and settle’ and so forth, but even with that you are going to spend a pretty long time flipping between drawings, erasing and redrawing bits, and shifting the timing to and fro until it just looks right. And then when you watch an animation, it evokes a feeling that can’t just be broken down into all those applications of technique. And describing feelings in words is its own entire art form...

Anyway, that’s a roundabout way of... partly self-reflection, because for a series of essays about animation I don’t do a ton of actual animation analysis so much as biographising, but also to say, today’s subject is a pretty tricky one to approach!

Tonight the plan is to look into the Zagreb School of Animation - not a literal institution but a (loosely defined) artistic tradition that began in the 50s in what was then the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, centered around (you’ll be shocked to learn) the city of Zagreb, capital of Croatia.

(Tumblr is only gonna let me post five videos in here so, I’m gonna have to spread them out a bit...)

The occasion for this is the appearance of the Zagreb Film channel on Youtube, which has been uploading clean, HD releases of dozens of old Czech films. But it’s also heavily indebted to the blog Animation Obsessive, who wrote about the Zagreb Film channel, and before that, a great deal about them and specific films made by artists associated with the Zagreb School.

OK, these guys are from Zagreb, but what makes them a big deal? We can say their influence is a unique graphical style influenced by the once-renowned UPA in America, all an overt and conscious break away from the ‘full animation’ of Disney. We could talk about their influence in Eastern European animation and worldwide. We can perhaps quote a certain manifesto, from an art show in 1968...

Animation is an animated film.

A protest against the stationary condition.

Animation transporting movement of nature directly cannot be creative animation.

Animation is a technical process in which the final result must always be creative.

To animate: to give life and soul to a design, not through the copying but through the transformation of reality.

But that doesn’t actually tell you very much, and also that’s where it gets trickier, because the Zagreb School - especially in their earlier years - were crazy varied in their output. As AniObsessive put it...

The Zagreb School is a tricky thing to pin down — scholar Ronald Holloway said it best when he called it “a loosely fitting group of artists in open competition with each other.” Many of its key figures were art-school graduates. Even more had a background at Kerempuh, something like Yugoslavia’s answer to MAD Magazine.

It was never just one thing. Zagreb School cartoons are wild and anarchic until they’re sad and serious. They’re cartoony and geometric until they’re loose and painterly. It’s less of a style and more of a “protest,” per a manifesto signed by some of the key members.

So to get more concrete, we’ll have to narrow our scope to particular artists and films. I’m not going to be able to do the Zagreb School anything like justice - there have been massive books written about them, and even when AniObsessive boil it down, that gives several long articles - so take this post more as a signpost, to explore further if you’re curious...

Here is Kod fotografa (At the Photographer’s) by Vatroslav Mimica, with lead animation by Vladimir Jutriša. I’m leading with this one because AniObsesive have written an extensive breakdown of the animation style, which is a great read. But here let me put in a little background...

Traditional animation is usually divided into two broad strands. To start with, there is the famous ‘full animation’ pursued by Disney, spreading to Warner and later carried on by Disney offshoots like Don Bluth and Dreamworks. It’s a style which really came into its own in 1937, with The Old Mill (1937) and Snow White. Inspired by studies of live action film using the rotoscope (see: Animation Night 65), ‘full animation’ pursues what Disney called ‘the illusion of life’, when the drawings cease to seem like drawings and appear as a living, breathing character.

To this end, ‘full animaton’ places drawings on 2s and 1s (12 or 24fps) - mostly on 2s, speeding up to 1s for rapid actions, and applies a body of techniques summarised by Disney’s ‘Twelve Principles of Animation’ to create a sense of continuous motion: arcs, overlapping action, overshoot and settle, lots of dangling bits to shake and wobble. A huge emphasis is placed on acting, with the animator conceived of as an actor inhabiting that character and lending them unique mannerisms, drawing initially on the ‘broad’ acting of vaudeville performers but later splintering into more reserved styles suitable for more dramatic stories.

‘Full animation’ traditionally avoids certain techniques that will break the ‘illusion’. It will rarely use hold frames, or shots that are just multiplane effects. The extreme of full animation is the work of Richard Williams (Animation Night 119).

Then there is ‘limited animation’. This is mostly associated with TV animation, both in the States and in Japan, where the need to make a lot more animation in a much shorter time necessitated production shortcuts. These include

animating at a reduced framerate anime will usually animate on 3s i.e. 8fps, or even 4s i.e. 6fps, and drop to 2s for fast action

hold frames the same drawing stays on screen for a long time

partial holds when most of a drawing stays still, but a small part is varied, e.g. a character’s mouth and maybe jaw moves to indicate speech while the rest of their face stays still

moving holds a single drawing is moved across the screen without changing. can be used to, for example, make a very cheap walking shot by shooting a character from the shoulders up and moving them up and down while scrolling the background

bank shots repeated footage that is reused, sometimes every episode - e.g. henshin (transformation) sequences in old-school magical girl and super robot anime

multiplane effects/animetism when animation consists of sliding ‘book’ layers passing over each other, without trying to create an appearance of 3D space

loops particularly for repetitive actions like walking, but also sometimes for background animation - a handful of frames can be cycled repeatedly

As anime envolved, animators like Yoshinori Kanada (AN 62) and directors like Osamu Dezaki (AN 95) appeared who found ways to make animation that turned these limitations into strengths. Anime started to emphasise the storyboard and layout, with increasingly elaborate camera moves and a very cinematic approach to the animated ‘camera’. And viewers got used to animation on mixed 2s and 3s, and even started to come to recognise the special value of its ‘snappy’ feel - which is incidentally part of the reason for animators’ loathing for AI interpolators.

It’s not strictly that one is the ‘Japanese style’ and one is the ‘American style’ mind you. Indeed, ‘full animation’ has mostly been practiced in just a handful of studios, mostly in America, and almost exclusively in films, because it is kind of insanely expensive.

Then we come to the slightly more obscure terms for ‘hybrid’ styles, such as the ‘full limited’ of Mitsuo Iso - although this is subject to many misconceptions as @why-animation noted for this translated interview. But to briefly summarise, ‘full limited’ refers to mixing the techniques of full animation - constant movement, strong sense of weight and overlapping motion - with the reduced framerates of anime (typically on 3s). The iconic example is Iso’s animation of Asuka fighting the Mass Production Evangelions in End of Evangelion.

I mention this because I’m about to talk about a very different sort of ‘full limited’. The ‘reduced animation’ - a term coined at UPA - practiced by the Zagreb School is a form of ‘limited animation’... yet one that paradoxically often involved extended sequences on 1s, as you can also see in this brief ad...

The way this is still ‘limited’ is that these ‘smooth’ sequences are one of two extremes. Characters slide with uncanny smoothness from pose to pose... or they remain perfectly still, moving our attention around the frame. As AniObsessive note, the spacing is very even, where conventional animation wisdom would say you should use a slow-in or slow-out, overshoot and settle. It’s consciously extremely unnatural, in an arresting way.

So returning to At the Photographer’s... (link, again) - this film builds on that into a fascinating string of visual gags, morphing pespective, playing with shapes... it feels in some ways like Flash animation, way ahead of its time. The film’s soundtrack is entirely musical, timed with the animation in a way resembling the ‘Mickey Mousing’ of Disney, but here used to create an uncanny distancing effect. The photographer struggles to get the boy to create a proper smile, an expression represented by hyperdistorted photo collages, a technique also used (along with painted elements) in the background.

I won’t try to itemise every gag, but I think it is cute how the kid’s mouth floats around his face like a little fish.

Czech animators at the time of this film, and honestly pretty much throughout the existence of the ‘school’, were working with truly limited resources. Pavao Štalter, director, background artist and lead animator of The Masque of the Red Death (1969) once described it...

All of our cameras are made from aircraft scrap from landfills. We are madmen who work with abnormal effort. Instead of making a film in three months, it takes us a year. Everything is done by hand. … Here in my little room in the studio, it is 45 degrees Celsius in the summer, and we work ten hours a day! I really don’t know how long we can say, “Tomorrow will be better!”

Masque shows a very different face of the Zagreb School, with the gloomy, textured, bleak world of expressionist paintings. Its animation is a mix of cutouts and traditional animation in paint. Its process was discovered experimentally, Poe’s story is presented without dialogue, though there are some really choice screams and there is a song with lyrics. But mostly it’s an incredible atmosphere piece.

Masque, writes AniObsessive, was also unusual in its funding: while Zagreb Film received funding from Tito’s government, in an unusually hands-off arrangement, it didn’t go very far. For Masque, a large part of the money instead came from the American company McGraw-Hill, primarily an educational publisher, a serendipitous connection made by a display of the film’s storyboards at MoMA. You can read more about its story here.

That is also the end of my video limit for this post, and I haven’t even begun to cover more than a fraction of the Zagreb school’s important films. So please hold on for part 2, where I’ll write about a few more in the next hour before we begin our film night...

[characterclassificationsystem]

Updates and Introductions

Hey guys! We’ve posted our final class to the blog and are now moving onto bigger and brighter things. We’re going to utilize all the information we’ve posted to upload analyses classifying characters in media, and why we believe they fit the criteria of a certain class!

When we post these, feel absolutely free to disagree with us on our verdicts! Just be prepared to provide your reasoning, we’ll be sure to ask. If after mutual consultation and review we agree with your claims, we will add an addendum to the post clarifying our new view. Contrarily, if you’d like to provide further evidence / participate in the discussion for why the classification fits, once again, feel free! Also be sure to recommend some characters you would like us to analyze! We’re always looking for fun and interesting characters to break down and theorize about.

Our post schedule will be changing, too. It would be a near-impossible feat to get an analysis up every single day, so while our team remains this size we will bring down the posts to twice a week (Mondays and Fridays at 12pm EST)! Our first analysis will go up on the following Monday.

Now finally, for a little insight to the people behind this system! Currently, we are a team of two, but we’re always looking to expand our partnership to make a brighter future for CCS. Here are mini-profiles of how we would classify ourselves to shed some light on our personalities.

Apollo (he/him 🏳️‍⚧️)

Yellow-Dominant Courier

Adaptable. I’d say I’m a solid 5/10 in terms of adaptability. There’s a fifty-fifty chance when I go into a situation that I’ll be able to really thrive or straight up book it out of there. No in between. 

Eccentric. My colleague says this should be higher but I disagree, I’m going with a 6/10 since I certainly have my moments but I’d die if I had to be “on” all the time. 

Encouraging. While I like being the one who pushes someone to be their best self, I also don’t like the idea of asking others to perform above realistic capabilities so… 6/10.

Idealistic. This is definitely one of my higher ones. I live for the light at the end of the tunnel, the reason to keep moving forward. Easy 8/10.

Passionate. At my best I am quite a passionate individual, but like eccentricity it cannot be my every waking minute. I’d rank this slightly higher though, so I’ll settle on a 7/10.

Philosophical. Let’s philosophize right here, right now, I am so ready! Let’s get into the weeds, asking the big questions about whether God or anything for that matter is even real. I love understanding the underlying reasons and motivations behind why people do the things that they do, and more than anything I want to nail down what we’re really here to do. Self proclaimed but well deserved 10/10.

Related Characteristics:

Ambitious (from Captain).

Creative (from Artist).

Inquisitive (from Inventor).

Introspective (from Merchant). 

Ash (he/him)

Green-Dominant Athlete

Bold. Perfect 10/10. If you wanna challenge it, come and face me. However, on a more realistic note, I like to take a lot of risks and jump into scenarios where other people may hesitate. It’s an ideal trait I’ve seen in many forms of media, and I aspire to use said boldness to help others to the best of my ability.

Capable. My ability to manage the situation and take control is something that has been forged into my very body from when I was young. I am the blade that will not quit in a fight. 8/10.

Disciplined. Apparently my colleague thinks I should rate this higher than I think I deserve. I'm lazy but I do follow a weekly routine and like to make a schedule. 6/10

Dynamic. While I love to be in motion and using my hands to do whatever, I do also love being lazy and in bed when I have nothing else to do. Action is my passion, but not being on the run is a lot of fun. 5/10.

Formidable. I’m only a 3/10. If you saw me in the streets, you would see the rats mugging me.

Keen. If this was One Piece, I’d specialize in Observational Haki. 9/10

Related Characteristics:

Attentive (from Inventor).

Dependable (from Warden).

Playful (from Bard).

Strategic (from Tactician).

[marx-junior]

Opening the blorbo's (Sanji) brain just like opening a can of sardines

It's been years since the last time I've even attempted to write anything (more specifically since Hetalia consumed my brain circa 2012) and finally against everyone's will and my own sanity I've dediced to come back by writing an exhaustive and nonsensical psychoanalysis of this loser (I'm really sorry).

I don't know how to upload this here without losing the freaking footnotes so I'm forced to just drop the drive link. This analysis only reaches Sabaody and does not have any time-skip reference since I'm already writing an additional one because I lack self-love. It also really needs to be revised and edited but I'll only do that once I'm feeling more sane.

It is preferable if you open this on pc or on the printable version or on the word app of drive because the straight up view of these documents through this app is terrible and it even erases some pictures and text.

First part: until Sabaody

Second part: from the beginning of the timeskip to the end of Dressrosa.