#i think genuine analysis of “bad” art in an attempt to find the good in it is good for the soul

[arcaneyouth]

you should try to be friends with people whose art you think is "bad". nothing makes you appreciate "bad" art more than knowing the person behind it and knowing no matter what you think of it, they put so much love and effort into it. you find a genuine appreciation for things in "bad" art you may not have before. makes you a lil bit more free as a person to realize bad art isnt real

[thanksjro]

More Than Meets the Eye #30 - The Cybertronian Judicial System is a Friggin’ Joke

Have I mentioned that I’m not a huge fan of court case stories? I think they’re pretty boring, on average, so the last couple of issues have been slightly dragging for me.

Anyway, back to Megatron’s trial. 

Our issue opens up with a full back shot of Ultra Magnus.

Artists take note, he really is built like a capital T.

As Magnus reads out Megatron’s statement retracting his “guilty” plea, we get some decent points as to why. See, telling a guy that you’ll stab him in the brain, so his trial can be over as quickly as possible, maybe isn’t such a hot idea. Megatron wasn’t a huge fan of that, or of how those memories they would’ve yanked outta him would have been used to fuel the Autobot propaganda machine. Why, you may ask?

Well, I don’t know if you knew this or not, but Megatron… doesn’t particularly care for the Autobots, nor the rhetoric they uphold.

I know, I was surprised too!

There’s also the fact that Optimus Prime is the judge on this whole thing. You know. Optimus Prime. Off and on leader of the Autobots, whenever it suits him. The guy who fucked off into space for a year after the war. The guy who threw a hissy fit when someone pointed out that he was compromised the last time they did something like this with Megatron. This guy:

Yeah, there might be a slight conflict of interests here. Remind me again why this had to be a military trial?

Anyway, enough of that, it’s time for a fight scene.

A swarm of Decepticons storm the arena, going after Megatron so they can help him escape. Magnus, though acting as Megatron’s defense, cannot abide by this disorder in the court.

Wild to think there’s a tiny little Pringles man with anxiety in there, isn’t it?

Optimus joins the fray, because there really are, just, so many guys to deal with here. A dude goes to collect Megatron, stating that they brought teleport packs for this little shindig. Megatron isn’t super jazzed about that though, not bothering to grab on before the dude gets shot to death. There’s a brief recess, I guess so the janitorial staff can deal with the mess of corpses littering the courtroom.

Meanwhile, in the present day, Rung’s building a model spaceship in Swerve’s, which is a very brave thing to be doing, seeing how sticky and gross bars can be. Brainstorm’s brought a flask to the bar, and proceeds to pour the contents into a funnel sticking out of his arm.

Our bartender for the evening- I’m assuming it’s evening, but I doubt the concept of time has any real weight in space- is Bluestreak. Bluestreak was stationed on Earth for a while, which is some Phase One stuff, and took a liking to human media while he was there. He’s the guy who handles movie night these days, seeing as Rewind’s too busy being dead to do it, and I doubt Chromedome has the emotional bandwidth to take over for his late spouse.

Bluestreak’s favorite movie is Zulu, a film glorifying the colonialism of the English over the native populace of an African kingdom. Make of that what you will.

Whirl wants to watch À Bout de Soufflé, or Breathless, as it was translated for the English-speaking world, which is a French New Wave film about a criminal who shoots a cop, hides from the police in a journalist’s home, who he seduces and likely impregnates. She eventually finds out what he did, reports him to the police, but then has a change of heart and lets him know what she’s done. He runs, but is shot, and dies in the street. The film is notable for its final scene, in which the following dialogue happens, between the dying criminal Michael, his lover Patricia, and an officer.

Of course, any poignancy would almost certainly be lost on the average comic book reader, and is also somewhat nullified by Whirl praising the film with internet lingo.

Then again, I suppose Whirl would be the type to dismantle any deeper reading of his interest in such a film, lest he be subjected to the horrifying ordeal of being known.

Over with Skids and Riptide, it’s revealed that Megatron’s been teaching classes on the Lost Light, specifically on the Knights of Cybertron. Riptide’s getting an education, because he’s been feeling pretty lost since the war ended- we’ll get to the potential whys of that later on. Swerve isn’t a fan of this community college thing that’s going on, stating that Megatron’s using it as a distraction, so he can devise plots most foul.

Back in the past, Autobot high command is having a talk about what Megatron’s demanding, and man is it a doozy— turns out, since the trial’s happening on Luna 2, the trial proceedings are subject to the laws of the moon. One of these moon laws is the right to request being judged by the Knights of Cybertron. Now, this is a problem, seeing as the Knights of Cybertron have been AWOL for the last several million years, but the law is the law, and you can’t just go ignoring it when someone’s pointed it out.

Bro, your SIC just suggested y’all pull the trial so you could slap it on Cybertron, thus negating any need to pay attention to the Knight law. That’s such a gross miscarrying of justice, it’s genuinely baffling. You’ve got bigger issues going on than flouting. My god, Optimus, you were a cop—

Oh wait, that’s right. Carry on, then.

Back on the Lost Light, First Aid’s checking to make sure that the coffin Rodimus they revealed last issue is true and proper dead. Now, this may seem like a given, but you’ve got to remember that Brainstorm was mostly dead for over a year and a half, and nobody fucking noticed, so it’s probably for the best that they’re checking.

First Aid’s been pretty withdrawn since Ambulon died, so this autopsy is really good for him, since it got him out of his room. Pretty fucked up that it would take a dead body to get him out and about. Has Rung checked in on his poor son of a gun, or has he been spending the last six months getting his professional rocks off psychoanalyzing a genocidal warlord?

Our coffin Rodimus died from having parts of his brain removed, and potentially died screaming.

Yes, that is a Furmanism, thank you peanut gallery, moving on—

Ratchet hands the phone over to Ultra Magnus, saying that a call has to be made, and it can’t be by him, because the callee is mighty upset with Ratchet at the moment.

Oh, I guess he’s fine after all. This must be where the sci-fi bullshit really starts kicking in for the series.

Because seeing your own dead body is likely very traumatic and awful, Rodimus is taking a while to string together his thoughts on the matter. Megatron doesn’t particularly care, because he’s not terribly sympathetic to this sort of thing, and the two get into a spat, where it’s revealed that they’re co-captaining the Lost Light.

Because things weren’t chaotic enough on this fucking ship. Need to mix in some peacocking between the McDonalds twunk and the man who killed half of Beijing.

Back in the past, Optimus Prime visited Megatron in prison to have a little chat. It’s not about that little rescue attempt, though the fact that those Decepticons may have been released from the Lost Light’s brig is certainly interesting. No, Optimus is here to sit way too close to his mortal nemesis on the floor of his room and talk about how Megatron is a sneaky bastard.

You remember the Hellraiser puzzle box from a couple issues back? Yeah, that was a communicube, one that was passed to Optimus to suggest that the trial be held on the moon, so the arena there would be able to hold all the people wronged by Megatron. This seems pretty damn convenient in hindsight, but Megatron swears that the legal loophole wasn’t his only intent when he sent the cube.

Because it’s all about you, isn’t it, Megatron? It’s all about how you’re perceived by future generations. Fuck the guys who had to actually deal with what your personal choices caused to happen.

Megatron wants to make amends with all those who were wronged by him. This doesn’t include being acquitted of his crimes, which, y’know, good- at least he’s being slightly realistic about how this is going to turn out for him.

What he wants to do is find Cyberutopia, so the Cybertronians have a replacement planet, since Cybertron kind of sucks now.

Oh, sorry, did I say realistic? I take it back.

In the present, Rodimus is still bummed out about being dead. Still, the day doesn’t stop just because it’s a bad one, and he calls in the experts.

CHROMEDOME YOU PROMISED TO STOP THIS SHIT

Yeah, no, Chromedome’s fallen off the wagon again, and does his thing on the coffin Rodimus. As he does, Megatron suddenly gets squeamish, Brainstorm pulls out his early early-warning device to lean on the fourth wall, and it’s revealed that the coffin that coffin Rodimus was in was built in the fashion of the Spectralist faith.

All Chromedome can suss out of coffin Rodimus’ memories is the really big important stuff, which includes the speech at Rivet’s Field inviting folks to come join the Knight Quest. Aww, that’s sweet.

With the analysis of the innermost energon complete, the results are in— the coffin Rodimus is a Rodimus. A real one, from the near future. Bummer.

I suppose denial is one of the seven stages of grief, isn’t it?

As everyone argues over whether or not Rodimus is going to die, Nightbeat brings up a good point— there aren’t any numbers carved into the coffin Rodimus’ hand. Rodimus is about to reveal some Ratchet-original wisdom, when things start getting really weird; whole sections of the Lost Light are disappearing.

Over at Swerve’s, Tailgate is regaling his peers with the story of his derring-do against Chief Justice Tyrest. Everyone is very impressed, and this includes our good buddy Getaway.

Jeez, think you’ve got enough antagonist shadows on this guy? It’s almost as if the art’s trying to tell us something about him.

Getaway lays it on real thick, saying that Tailgate could totally be the next Prime, with how courageous and awesome he is, all while completely ignoring Tailgate’s personal space and having a weirdly tiny hand. This seems to seriously bother Cyclonus, who is watching this shit go down from the doorway. Our purple space jet leaves once the drinks start being poured and conversation starts happening. God knows he hates talking about his insecurities.

Then the Pipes is Friggin’ Dead alarm goes off. But Pipes has been dead for a while now, so that must mean something else awful is happening.

Back during the trial, I guess because Optimus has a soft spot for Megatron, he allows him to join the Lost Light’s Knight Quest… even as he says that he could keep the guy locked up until Rodimus and pals find the Knights. However, there are rules to this, and one of the rules is that Megatron must publicly denounce the Decepticon cause.

It is a slow and painful experience for everyone involved, as he reads the statement he was given. It’s an immediate call to action- or rather, inaction.

Geez, think they could’ve made it any more obvious that this was being ghostwritten? I can’t wait to see how long it takes for “Megatron was blackmailed into saying this by the Autobots” to be a plotpoint.

Outside the prison, Ratchet and Rodimus are taking in the brand new Rod Pod, which is genuinely ridiculous in how large it is. Rodimus admits to having taken Atomizer’s list, though he knows that trying to use it to keep those who voted him off would be a pretty shitty thing to do.

Also, no one’s told him about Megatron coming along on the trip. As captain.

Or you could, I dunno, lock him up from the start. Or, if you want to give him a chance to prove himself, slap him into a bottom-rung role, like bilge cleaner, or sewage mucker, or whatever the equivalent would be on a spaceship full of giant gay robots. We don’t have to give the guy any power to hold him to scrutiny— any minimum wage worker will tell you that scrutiny comes far harsher for those who actually carry out orders than those who give them.

But what do I know? I’ve never fought in a several million year war, and I don’t plan to.

Getting back to the list, it seems as if Ratchet and Rodimus are on the same wavelength, in that both agree it’s only going to cause trouble and hurt feelings to keep the thing around. Rodimus destroys it with his usual flare, only to be blindsided by the fact that it was fake this entire time. How does Ratchet know this?

Because his name wasn’t on it.

...Man, that’s gotta sting. No wonder Rodimus was upset enough to not take his calls.

In the present, everyone’s in a panic, as they all bolt for the shuttle bay and start pouring into shuttles. The Lost Light is disintegrating around them, which is sort of a problem. Despite this nightmare scenario happening, Rodimus and Megatron still find the time to be assholes to each other. That’s dedication right there.

As the two bicker, multiple shuttles zip away from the rapidly disappearing ship, including the Rod Pod.

Man, now it really is the Lost Light.

[scripttorture]

Do you have any advice for self-care to use specifically when you are angry and frustrated by torture apologia? Or even more so when being dismissed when confronting others because they think you are not smart, too emotional, not having enough applicable background, etc. I wanted to keep this general. I know you posted about taking breaks and keeping up your mental health but I could not find anything about ways to deal with anger that don’t involve confronting others, especially if it is culturally frowned upon. Thank you for your hard work with this blog.

Well duck, I uh mostly deal with anger by running this blog.

 I’m honestly not sure that I deal with anger well. I try and I’m working on it but I know I struggle to stay calm and polite when something infuriates me. I’m also a lot better at communicating in a helpful, patient and articulate fashion in writing then I am in person.

 Keep in mind that you do not have to have these conversations every time someone is spouting torture apologia.

 Spreading awareness is great! Educating others is great!

 But (and I really can not stress this enough) it is not your job to correct everyone. It is not your job to ‘fix’ people. It is not your job to persuade others they should care.

 Pick your battles. Engage with people who you think you can have a genuine conversation with. Remember that when you’re talking politics (and torture is political) then the aim is not to convert the people on the extreme ends: it’s to persuade the people who are on the fence.

 And if you really want to engage with people engage about the things they care about. If you’re talking to someone who believes in law and order or justice as retribution then talk about how torture puts police at risk and how it leads to innocent people landing in jail. If you’re talking to people who are concerned with safety in their neighbourhoods talk about how torture can serve as a recruiting factor for extremist groups and gangs. If they’re concerned about public health and the treatment of the mentally ill talk about how torture causes life long health problems and how that takes away from the economy.

 Aim at the level where people are willing to engage with you.

 If people take issue with your level of education or subject and question how you can know this stuff; act like an academic would. Cite your sources.

 ‘Well Rejali who studied this for years and created one of the most detailed analysis of global torture we have-’ ‘O’Mara, who studies the brain and how trauma impacts it,’ ‘Morgan, who put US marines through a mock interrogation with mild levels of stress and found-’ ‘Shalev who studies solitary confinement-’ ‘Sironi who is a psychologist and has interviewed hundreds of torturers-’ ‘Kara who produced the largest data base of interviews with modern slaves-’

 Repressing your anger, tapping it down, is not a good idea. As with most negative emotions it’s healthier to let yourself feel them and work through them.

 It’s also important to recognise that while there are real reasons for your feelings you can not always do anything about them. And there comes a point where you have to deal with that. The things that anger us and hurt us are not always things we can actually personally effect. Changing public opinion takes decades and is the work of thousands of people, not one individual.

 I feel like those of us who are not from the West have a bit of an advantage here, because sitting with that anger and learning when and how to put it aside is something you grow up with.

 Having support helps a lot. Having people you can talk to about this stuff is incredibly important. And I am so grateful to all of the people I know who support me in this: the court journalists, philosophers, writers and researchers who I can discuss this with. I also get a lot from reading about the successes around the world, modern or historical. They’re out there.

 Martial arts have also helped me a lot over the years. Capoeira helped me a lot but given the pandemic it isn’t a great idea right now. But a pair of boxing pads and a willing house mate are definitely a good way to get out some anger. Thumb on the outside of your fist, never inside your fingers. Keep it close to your body, fist at your hip, thumb upwards. Twist as you punch so your thumb faces down as you connect with the pad. Make sure to move your hips.

 Don’t do what I did at uni and try to use a pillow instead of proper pads. You’ll end up bruised.

 Right now, without a decent capoeira group and a lockdown in place, I do push ups.

 If you have a garden dig. Plant young trees, if you’re in the northern hemisphere (it’s the wrong time in the southern hemisphere.) Dig a vegetable patch. Make an area of wild flowers by cutting and tearing out the grass, raking the ground and scattering native plant seeds in the mud.

 Take all the electric whisks out of the kitchen and make a cake. Cream the butter until it feels like your arm will fall off.

 Make a curry from scratch without a blender. I use a granite pestle and mortar and it takes several batches and several hours to grind a proper paste. I’m a big fan of Matar Paneer and it freezes well giving some tasty work lunches for a week or so.

 Make bread. I’m not very good at this but the kneading, layering and mixing all take a lot of work. Which can be a very good outlet. I wish I could give you a paratha recipe but the truth is my skill level is no where near high enough to attempt the best breads. (I buy mine frozen.)

 The advantage I’ve found from all of these outlets is they’re constructive. Boxing and push ups will make you stronger, whatever skill level you start at. Gardening will give you fruit, vegetables or wonderful flowers in a few months time. It’ll give you new knowledge of plants. Cooking any of the things I’ve suggested will give you wonderful food and more skills.

 I always try to find something constructive to do with my anger. I think there’s a tendency to portray anger as bad in and of itself rather then having a conversation about how we act on our anger.

 I also can’t stress enough how writing can help. Fiction is an excellent way to process our feelings and express why we feel the way we do.

 The piece of fanfiction I’m currently writing has one of the characters dealing with a traumatic brain injury. Writing this character struggling to communicate what he’s going through and trying to come to terms with his limits while the people around him are looking at him and saying ‘well you don’t look disabled-’ It’s helped me process a lot of my anger over how I’m treated because of my mental health problems and the dumb, unnecessary barriers that make my life more difficult.

 What’s the root of the anger here? When you know that, you can address it with words. You can construct a story that will explore it. You can see it through the lense of different characters. And that really helps process it.

 I hope that helps :)

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[balioc]

This is a complicated thought that deserves a complicated exploration, but right now it’s getting a scattered throwaway Tumblr post.

Superstimulus is always a failure mode of invention.  Sometimes it turns out that getting what we want is hard, but exploiting a glitch in our desire-fulfillment sensors is much easier.  This is very bad.  It means that you land in an equilibrium where you’re perpetually unsatisfied, but it’s very hard to do anything about it, because casual analysis will always suggest that the only promising paths away from dissatisfaction are...the ones that get you yet more superstimulus.  Which doesn’t actually help. 

(I think it’s important to frame this as a disconnect between desire and satisfaction.  A lot of superstimulus discussion tends to suggest that superstimulus indulgence is actually Desire-Fulfillment Run Amok, and that the thing being sacrificed is some other, higher, nobler value.  Which tends to result in people saying “what if that other value is actually bogus and I should just get what I want?”  Which is usually fair.  Those who go around clucking about their pet higher nobler values...well, they rarely do a good job of meta-ethical outreach.  But this all misses the point in a serious way.  If your superstimulus is leaving you feeling like you’re thriving and fulfilled, then sure, it’s presumptively fine, don’t worry about it.  The reason that superstimuli so often aren’t fine is that they prevent you from getting what you want, and make it difficult to fix that.)

************

I am deeply scared of artificial celebrity.  I think it is a superstimulus for an aspect of human well-being that matters deeply, which we don’t understand very well and never have, and it is capable of wreaking havoc on us before we have any cultural defenses at all. 

We’ve had partial hybrid artificial celebrities for a long time.  On the one hand, it’s been true for ages that Hollywood stars and Japanese idols etc. have their “personal lives” managed, edited, and publicized to the point that they’re as much like fictional characters as they are like flesh-and-blood humans.  On the other hand, it’s also been true for ages that fandom and comparable social structures have encouraged particularly-obsessive particularly-susceptible people to develop parasocial relationships with actual fictional characters. 

These social technologies are...not bad, not exactly, but scary.  But their techno-social limitations limit how much they can act as superstimuli, at least to some extent.  We all know that actors and idols are ultimately real people we don’t know, with real lives and real thoughts of their own, and that limits the extent to which we can direct our thoughts and our feelings towards them.  Inversely, society ultimately doesn’t provide very much support at all for caring deeply about fake humans from art and media (outside a few narrow social environments), and that also limits the damage here.

But we’re starting to combine these things.  We’re starting to say “here are some fictional people, they’re going to be presented as though they were real people, we encourage you to think of them as real people and to care about them in the way you’d care about real people.”  Vtubers and ascended-mascots like Hatsune Miko are the beginning of it, although I’m sure we’re not too far from the first genuine artificial musicians and/or artificial actors. 

************

What’s the problem?  Why should we think of this as a superstimulus?

It really matters to [most] humans that they been seen, that they be understood, that they be cared about for what they truly are (...or for what they believe themselves to be, the interaction between those things is complicated).  That they be validated, if you want to use that lingo.  This is a lot of what’s going on at the top of the Maslow hierarchy.  

((IN BEFORE CERTAIN GRIPES: Yes, there’s a certain kind of iron-minded sagacity that allows you to validate yourself and tell the rest of the world to go hang.  This is a very good thing to cultivate, if you can, especially if you’re the sort of person with a deep and expansive need for validation.  But that is a difficult skill, it is always going to be as specialized and rare as any other form of mental discipline, and for social-engineering purposes it doesn’t matter.))

There are ways in which validating each other, in that sense, often turns out to be hard and counterintuitive.  We are creatures of limited powers, who so often fail to live up to the ideals and narratives and personal myths that we want others to recognize and glorify.  Our lives so often fail to provide any real scope for our dreams and aspirations, which makes it difficult to see and honor those things in ourselves, let alone in the people around us.  Etc.

Finding a good way to deal with this is, I posit, a proper tentpole psycho-social project for a civilization that is rapidly overcoming the limits of material hardship.  It’s an exciting challenge! 

But our attempts to meet that need, for each other, can be hijacked by superstimulus.  Just like our attempts to eat, to have sex with each other, etc. 

Celebrity is a partial superstimulus.  Celebrities essentially get a psychic force-multiplier from their fame.  They are orders of magnitude more influential and more socially-powerful than any “real” people whom we know.  So they seem like they matter more, to our social-politics algorithms.  So their traits and quirks seem more defining and more noteworthy, and their stories seem more relevant. 

Unreality is also, potentially, a partial superstimulus.  Fictional people can make for much better objects-of-validation than real people, because they are subject to fewer limitations.  They’re always on-brand.  They interact with their environments only in ways that emphasize who and what they’re supposed to be.  They can keep having moments of incredible poignancy and symbolism, because some author can just make those up. 

Unreal celebrities might constitute a full superstimulus.  Unreal celebrities might be a lot better at getting us to care about them than we are ourselves. 

I have nightmare visions of a world in which we toil endlessly at tasks that don’t matter to us, feeling irrelevant and empty and mostly-unreal ourselves, while we lavish all the psychological validation we crave on fictional constructs designed to suck up all that energy without benefiting in any way from it. 

[doshmanziari]

Architectural Criticism in 2021/2022 || Part 1.5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[leeknow-bestboy]

If You Close One Eye - Chapter One

Ships: Han Jisung | Han/Lee Minho | Lee Know, Bang Chan/Yang Jeongin | I.N, If you really squint you can notice Lix is into Binnie, Hyunjin was into everyone once

Characters: All the kids, The ex kid isn't here I edited him out, Other Character Tags to Be Added

Trigger warnings: panic attack, ptsd, original character death, homophobia, original character cheating, descriptive imagery.

Word count: 5277

Chapter: 1/?

Next chapter 

Tags: Murder Mystery, amateur detective minho, Soulmates, not your typical soulmate AU, Alternate Universe - College/University, Slow Burn, Slow Build, good things take time let it slowburn, minho is singlehandedly responsible for the slow burn so blame him, no soulmates in this universe only they are, criminology student minho, art student jisung, POV Third Person, chan deserves better and he does indeed get better don't worry, art references please look stuff up, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, best sibling bond ever.

"If you close one eye, you can see what your soulmate sees"

Born with one eye an unnatural golden color, Minho and Jisung have been forced to cover them up with colored lenses in order to blend into society.

The magic to their eyes? Even they still didn't know.

This is the story of how criminology major and dance minor Lee Minho found himself hopelessly in love with the serial killer, local artist Han.

[Alternatively, let's see how long I can make these two dumbasses pine without one of them snapping. Edit: they finally did]

[Also WARNING: a HUGE amount of Jeongchan ahead, it's not subtle at all! So much fluff--]

As per usual, the playground was packed; children of all ages ran wild, squalling and laughing like the little menaces they were- all of them avoiding a short kid who couldn't be older than five, seated at the very end of the sandbox and holding back tears of offense and loneliness.

It's not that he got bullied, he wasn't. His mom raised a tough kid who'd bite back when he's bit, but no one would play with him now. Not with how he looks, they'd rather scream and run.

Five year olds shouldn't worry about that.

Rubbing his left eye- the good one, he could see a woman's shoulder and hair. Her smile, bright and comforting, wording out a song with no sound.

"Jisung!" His mother's voice rang aloud, recognizable and warm in the hostile environment.

"Baby," She called again, finding him and wrapping her son in her arms. For the moment, there was no strange woman- only his own mother.

Jisung sniffled. "I hate people." -These words that shouldn't be said by a child flowed so easily from his lips, as if it was the only reasonable conclusion.

"We need to talk about something" his mother's voice, once excited and lively sounded utterly defeated. Little did he know, it was the last time. Years of telling him he's perfect just the way he is, special and unique in a good way, definitely- have ended up making no difference in the end.

That day, he learned to put on contact lenses.

.

"I know you're upset about the divorce, but you have to accept that it happened."

The woman's voice, high pitched and unpleasant, drove Minho ever so slightly closer to the edge. By now he knew no adult in the world would ever take him seriously, so what was the point in sitting here and listening to her talk?

The woman pursed her lips, plump and telling of the many times they went under the scalpel. Tapping her foot, she hazily reminded Minho of his own mother when scolding was due.

"If you don't talk to me, that's fine. Nothing's going to change. I get paid by the hour you know, I can do this all day."

That being said, she was probably stressed- no therapist had ever gotten Minho to talk, he's been changing doctors since his hallucinations began, which adds to a little over three years now.

"Minho, I can't help you like this. Tell your mother I give up."

A sense of dread spread over the eight years old. Again, another adult doesn't get it. Another one giving up on him, leaving, and suddenly he wanted her to stay. Pretty badly he did, at the time.

"I don't care that my parents broke up, I've been seeing monsters all day"

The woman blinked, stunned into silence. At the tinge of tears he rubbed his right eye- and there it was, certain as ever; drawn with a sharpie, people with horns. In a moment, a pair of hands that weren't his took the drawing away and pulled out a new one, drawing harshly a sad smiley face.

Although he was a big boy, he cried right then, scared out of his mind and very confused. He cried so hard it almost slipped off- the contact lens hiding his mother's disgrace.

Looking up, the woman made no effort to comfort or dissolve his fright. Rather, she was scribbling down the whole ordeal. Taking notes, furiously assessing and picking him apart, she finished her analysis smugly and said,

"It's time we get you a prescription, my dear"

And that was definitely not the last of it.

.

"Oppa"

Minho groaned lowly, alerting the speaker to the fact he's been woken from sleep.

"Minho oppa!" the voice persisted. Fully intent on hanging up, Minho side glanced at the caller id to make sure it wasn't important.

"Motherfucker!" the voice on the other end rose. From the corner of the bed Doongie meowed, alarmed.

"Freaking shrimp, what do you think you're calling your oppa?" He blurted. This isn't a call he should skip.

"Egg laying bastard! Answer me when I call you!" His sister's comforting voice trickled out.

"Gremlin twarp!"

"ballerina!"

"Whiny child!"

"Prune old man!"

"spoiled princess!"

"Mean hoe!"

"-!" Wheeze.

"I got you, you horrible gay bitch"

"We're both gay, Ryu" He threw back.

It's been a while since she last called.

"Well, you live alone, so I assume you're doing much gayer things than I can do at home."

Minho started, failing to hold back his horrified gasp. "Ryujin, you're eighteen!" He exclaimed. It seemed like yesterday she was still following him around, like some baby duckling.

"She's being mean Doongie, like you three don't count." He added, Ryujin electing to ignore his comment.

"How's dance going?" her tone changed, turning softer. For all their differences, dance for sure has always been something both loved and loved together. From copying idols on TV, to taking ballet and hiphop together, Jazz too.

"I'm not in college for dance and you know it" He groaned, immediately softening as well.

"I miss it a lot. I wish I could do more than minor in it.." On the other side of the call Ryujin hummed, understanding. She has always known his passion best.

"You're good at what you do too. You'd make a kickass detective." She claimed.

"I'm not taking criminology to be a detective." Why she had to be reminded was beyond him. If anything he aimed to be an officer, someone to tell kids off if they mess with the neighborhood cats.

"I'm just saying you could be!" She defended- which wasn't wrong, if he played job openings right. He did have a knack for picking apart mystery books too, but that was nothing out of the usual.

"How's grad life?" He asked with genuine interest. Nothing could ever matter to him more.

"I asked Chelle out, finally." She said, and Minho couldn't help but notice the edge evident in her voice.

"What happened? Did she let you down? Should I come over?" The questions left his lips before he could consider them, worry clouding over him.

"No, it's nothing like that. She said yes, but.. Yeah, oppa, I really wish you were here. I need to talk to you, face to face. Mom misses you too." She ended lamely. It was so unlike her, Minho couldn't find it in him to correct the fact that it was only Ryu's mom and not his.

"Tell her I'll be visiting tonight then, I'll go get ready." He said, fully intent on making the sudden drive over. It was only a two hour ride over to his father's, where Ryujin and his step mother lived too. If he headed out now, he could make it before dinner.

"Really? You don't have to, I know you hate it here-" Her attempts of taking it back wouldn't work once he set his mind to do something.

"Really really. I miss my stinky troll sister too," He insisted. No way was he leaving her be. The moment something felt off with her, he knew he had to go make sure she's fine; there aren't many things as precious in his life as she is.

"Dumbass," she relented, voice worryingly relieved. "I'll go tell mom."

He smiled, tapping his nail on the headboard, now sitting up at his bed. "Bye"

She huffed, pausing for a moment before giving her last reply. "Goodbye, oppa. I love you."

.

Minho sighed, leaning his forehead against the steering wheel.

For what little time he spent at his father's place, a surprising amount of bad memories were made. Up until his teen years he wouldn't even enter, and every time after that made for a rich history; first panic attack, first time breaking a leg falling down the stairs, coming out, taking Ryu to junior prom- door shut in his face that time, claiming she was grounded for beating up the neighbor's son. First time stung by a bee, and that weekend when his father's doberman puppy bit him in play, tore open his front lip and got sent to a dog pound despite his protest.

'Come on,' he thought. 'You can do this. Count to three-' and at three he did, opened his car door and walked up through the front gate.

"Minho! How lovely to see you." Smiled his step mom, a warm, if not a tad unnerving woman.

"Nice to so see you too. How have you been?" He asked, clean-cut manners kicking in. Dal and Byul had meanwhile made their way running over to the door, immediately rubbing against him with some level of desperation. He leaned down, rubbing Dal's small head.

"I've been well, your father too- that's right! Honey, come say hi to Minho." The short, lean woman called, still blocking the entrance to the oversized house and keeping Minho at the door. Whether this was on purpose shall forever remain a mystery- she did it every time.

"That brat has nothing to do in this house" His father's voice warmed over.

"Hi dad." He tried still, calling over the woman's shoulder. "Can I come in?"

Said obstacle smiled, moving aside at last. "Of course sweetie, Ryujin will be right over."

Taking that exchange for what it was, he made fast pace towards the kitchen. Avoiding his father has become a praised skill by now, a crucial one by all means.

"Dallie, Byulie, psps" he tried, pleased when both ran on over towards his outstretched hand. Two more allies at the ready.

Light steps cleared the remaining discomfort sullying his mood in short moments. "You!" A pair of arms tightened around his shoulders, prompting Minho to lift his little sister in a piggyback.

"You too!" He answered, relieved at feeling welcomed at last.

"I can't believe you actually came. Did you tell your mother you're over?" She asked, tactless as ever. He loves her a whole lot for that, too.

"She's not the boss of me, I'm twenty one" He announced, eyes closed in a content smile as his sister gently pet his hair like a cat.

"What about me? I'm almost nineteen, I wish I was free like you, Lino!" Exclaimed Ryujin, but really she didn't. There was a certain freedom gained from nobody caring about you that no one should be jealous of.

Letting her hop back onto the ground, Minho kept the smile on his face. She seemed fine, but he could tell better. Still, they couldn't talk before dinner- the pots and pans at the stovetop smelled just about ready, after all.

Instead he turned to face her, petting her head lovingly like she had his. "What's this? This tiny Ryuddaeng's nineteen? No way."

"Almost!" she growled. "Next month I'll be."

"Where have the times gone?" he questioned, shoving her playfully at the comments of "old man".

.

Dinner went as uncomfortably as expected, his father and he had behaved remarkably well- hadn't spoken a word to each other throughout. Minho ate neatly, made sure to compliment his step mother for every dish, and Ryujin helped by washing them after. All in all, it was successful unlike many dinners before.

Making way to the guest bedroom, Minho paused at the sight of his sister's door left slightly open. Right, yes- this would be a good time.

Knocking quietly, he waited for permission before entering and closing the door, waiting for Byul to enter alongside him. "Are you alright?"

Ryujin nodded, glancing up at him and back to the floor. He took that as a sign to take a seat down on her fancy dragon themed carpet.

"Are you really alright? Ryujin, I know we're not great communicators, but I'm still very worried. Is it dad?" At that his sister shook her head, taking a deep breath.

"Don't get mad, but I have a huge favor. You know Chelle, I swore I'll ask her out when I graduate and I did, but she…" Minho crossed and uncrossed his legs, chin finding its place resting on a knee. Byul purred, rubbing against it.

"She's missing. She's been missing for two weeks now, no one knows where she is." She explained, voice stern.

"I don't think she ran away, but her parents keep saying she did. She said nothing to me." She added, hoping he'd fill in the rest on his own.

"They're not filling in for missing person?" He asked, worry making his back stress and ace.

Ryujin nodded. "I know she's the bad girl type, but she wasn't into drugs and her friends seem fine. I keep trying to ask around but I can't, what if something serious happened?"

Minho nodded, realizing where he comes in. "You want me to investigate? See where that takes us?" He asked. For sure, that should be the police's job- but with her parents saying she ran away, would they even bother?

Ryujin kept quiet, eyes burning holes into Minho's. This was her crush, a big one- he's never liked Chelle, but now? If Ryujin cares that much… sure. It's not something he should be messing with legally, and a new project to be added atop his ever growing college work, but he'd do it for her. "Okay."

"Okay?" Ryujin asked back, relieved.

"Yes. I'll do it." He assured.

Ryujin's features softened farther, mouth breaking into a smile. "You're my new favorite person."

Minho smiled lightly, mind running full speed. "I need details. When and where she was last seen, and about her; exes, Instagram, friends and hangouts."

Ryujin's smile faded. Nonetheless she turned, pulling a notebook out of her bedside drawer.

Scribbling away the details he requested, she paused to ask a couple questions before turning back to her chore. "I know less than I thought." She admitted.

"That's fine, but I have a few more. How was her mental state, where did she study, was she on meds and did she mention any places?"

This kept on for a few hours, ending after they let an annoyed Byul out of the room - with Ryujin tiredly announcing that her brain is fried and he can ask the rest over chat when he's back in college. On his end, Minho learned one important thing:

This girl was not who she seemed to be.

.

Back at his apartment, Minho re-read all eleven papers of info they've gathered. On the way he's prepared a list of places to visit, only two of which stemmed from the info Ryujin herself had given him. Other than the school and family bistro down the street, it seemed the two have never gone out together, although Chelle was one to do so.

Good, he thought.

Scrolling through her Instagram, he noted which followers seemed to comment more, and who would show most often on highlights. Her latest post have been boring- it was landscape art of what he assumed to be a tall grass field on the outskirts of seoul. Around three months back he found a picture of some guy at the beach, shirt off and abs in clear view. Seeing as he looked nothing like Chelle, it would seem they weren't related.

Sorting through the packed comment section, someone's request to take it down stood out. Tapping on the person's icon, he realized that was probably the guy in the picture, although the account was made private. An ex? That would make a good trail.

Not having an account himself, by now Minho has used Ryujin's, but to follow guys it would seem he needs his own account.

Setting up all the necessities, he took a nice picture of Dori and made it his profile, sending the guy a follow request right away.

Now we wait.

.

"Oppa, if you have no photos or description and no followers, and he doesn't know you, did you really expect he'd approve your request?" Ryujin's laughter trickled through the speakers, as if it's been obvious. "You're going to have to find him." She pointed, before hesitantly adding, "Or I can-"

"No." Minho said, stern. "This guy could be Chelle's ex, he might be really dangerous! You don't get to follow his Instagram."

Ryujin sighed, and Minho got the sudden mental image of her rubbing the bridge of her nose as she did. "You have friends right? Ask one of them." She advised.

"I need to go, dad said I can't go out unless I finish these applications." She explained, hanging up after a round of goodbyes.

Right. He did! He has friends.

Picking his phone back up, Minho scrolled his contacts looking for either Felix or Hyunjin. The two weren't in his major, but they shared a dance class. Out of the student body, they were closest to his definition of friends.

A couple rings went by before the line picked up. "Hyung? Hello!" Felix's cheerful voice calmed the older's nerves ever so slightly.

"Felix, hi." He answered, trying to seem casual. "How are you?"

Felix took a moment before responding. "I'm great! I'm actually out with Chan hyung, is something up?"

"Who?" Minho asked, confused.

Felix took another moment. "Bang Chan. He's a fourth year in sociology, I don't think you'll know him."

Minho came close to a sob right then. "Can you pass him the phone?"

"Yeah sure." Felix agreed immediately, followed by ruttling sounds.

"Hello?" A voice sounded, accent similar to Felix's own.

"Hi! My name is Minho, I followed you on Instagram a couple days ago."

A short silence. "Oh my god." Chan exclaimed.

"No, never mind that, I need to talk to you." He rephrased.

"I have no idea who you are." Chan replied, confused.

"It's about Chelle." Minho added, hoping to learn anything from the other's reply.

"Oh." Was all he got. "Okay, I guess we should meet sometime then. How is she?"

The question caught Minho off guard.

"I, I'll tell you more when we meet. When are you free?" he asked, quickly seeking out a pen and scribbling the time and date on his wrist, phone squeezed between his ear and shoulder.

"Yeah, sounds great! See you then." He concluded, getting passed back to Felix and thanking him profoundly before hanging up.

"In my own college." He muttered after the phone found its place back on the table.

"Unbelievable."

.

Not many people occupied the café, despite its convenient location not far off the olympic park. For that reason Minho concluded, the coffee there probably sucked.

It wasn't his intention to show fifteen minutes early, but his nerves got the best of him, taking shape in miserable pacing until he deemed it late enough to leave his apartment already. Worst case scenarios running through his mind, he wasn't expecting it as someone took seat in the chair opposite of his.

"Hello. It's Minho, right?" Asked the stranger, dimples forming in an awkward smile.

"Ah." Minho voiced dumbly before quickly picking himself up adding,

"You're Chan?"

In the short time that passed between first learning of Chan's existence and actually seeing him, Minho's mind managed to fill with expectations and fears, all of which shattered right in that moment.

First of all, the guy in the picture had very defined abs and arm muscles, making it seem as if he'd be your average muscle-head, someone who could pull apart limbs off boys like Minho- a description that apparently had nothing in common with the hesitant and awkward person in front of him. Rather, he found that this Chan was a tad shorter than him, barely filling the light gray sweater he threw on.

Secondly, while the photo showed a man with straight dark brown hair, the man in front of him had soft blond curls that seemed so, so fluffy- invoking a primal urge to pet them in, Minho assumed, not only himself, but also every innocent bystander.

Lastly, by the amount of english in his Instagram description, one would expect an obvious accent, but that had been proven false on the phone call anyway. Regardless, Minho imagined a foreigner, so seeing his face up close had been a surprise on its own, especially considering the smile… he was, how would he put it? Cute.

"Yeah! Nice to meet you. I was worrying I'd be early, but it's good to see you are too." Minho could only half process the words, a glance at his phone telling him they both still had around ten minutes before the planned meetup time.

"Right! Right, I wanted to talk to you." Minho started, forcibly clearing his mind of any strange thoughts.

"You said it was about Chelle? I assume you're her new boyfriend?" Chan asked, voice a bit strained.

"No, It's not like that. I wanted to know if you've heard from her for the last couple weeks." Minho replied, quick to correct him so to not make things needlessly awkward. Right, he thought- Chan still might have had something to do with this girl's disappearance.

"Oh, well, I actually hadn't, I try not to do that anymore. We didn't end things on good terms." Chan confessed, picking Minho's interest.

"What happened?" He asked, worries picking back up.

Chan paused. "Are you her friend? This kind of thing is a little personal, I don't want it to affect your friendship."

Minho blinked, thinking up a smaller scale storm. "I live in her neighborhood. We're not very close, but some things happened that made me look for you."

Chan hesitated, saved by the waiter's interruption asking which drinks the two would have. Still suspicious, Minho only ordered a small iced americano, Chan matching with a small iced tea.

"You probably know we dated for around two months, it ended after I found she was cheating for a long time."

Minho's breath hitched, dangerously close to choking on his coffee. "She cheated on you?"

Chan's expression fluttered before he nodded, sheepish smile back on. "Kind of pathetic, isn't it? I couldn't hold her attention. At least, the others didn't know."

Minho gaped, unsure how to handle the new information. Chelle, the girl Ryujin asked him to look for. Was that her true nature? "What do you mean others?"

Chan's embarrassment grew, yet he didn't look away. "We were around.. five, I think.. that I know of. I followed her for a bit."

The awkwardness settled, leaving both speechless.

"Okay, I'm really sorry but I still need to ask you a couple more things." Minho was the first to break the silence.

"Go ahead." Chan smiled in relief.

"Were you mad? Wait, no- Can you think of anyone who could have held a grudge against her? More than, I guess, this."

Chan shook his head. "She's a really nice girl! She has some serious issues, but I liked her a lot at the time."

Minho bit his lip, ready to push on. "Chan, I'm going to be honest with you.. Chelle's been missing for over two weeks now."

If Chan was drinking at the moment, it would have been his turn to choke. "What?" he asked, voice steady.

"I got in touch with you because right now, nobody knows where she is. Or someone does know, but I don't" Minho explained, hoping his message went through alright.

"Are you sure she's not ghosting you? She might be." Chan offered. Minho stiffened. If Chelle was fine, if she was ghosting his sister- there will be hell to pay.

"I don't think so?" he continued anyway.

"I can't remember a specific person who would want to hurt her, but.. God, I'm worried. Chelle's gone? Like, kidnapped or.." Chan paused, taking deep breaths.

"If you have any information on where she could be, it would help a lot. I don't know her well, I'm not sure who else to ask either." Minho added.

"What do you want to know?" Chan asked, worry clouding his face in an unpleasant way. Minho almost felt, scratch that- he did feel really bad for the guy.

"Hangouts, friends, habits, names of other exes- mental state too, it's a little invasive but I can't find her otherwise." Chan stared, eye contact with Minho intensifying as neither averted their gaze.

"Okay." Chan replied after a while. "I don't really know you, but I guess it suits her. If anything happened, I wouldn't expect an officer anyway."

Slightly disturbed, Minho pulled his notes from his bag, offering Chan a big sheet of paper. Just like that, the two had begun- Just as Minho had with Ryujin before.

"I can't help with other Exes, I don't know any of their names. I do know where she hangs out usually." Chan supplied helpfully.

"Chelle, she's very into art. She thinks her art, only hers, is the best of the best. She considers herself an undiscovered gem, that kind of mentality. She'll do anything for exposure, and she likes compliments a lot." Chan bit his lip, pausing in his writing.

"She's not on good terms with her parents, and sometimes I remember, she said she wanted to run away. She has horrible mood swings, but when she's happy she can be the sweetest, most considerate person in the world. I think she had too much love in her, that's why…" Chan trailed off, sighing before shaking his head and writing down some more details.

"I'm not okay with that, you know? It's the worst kind of betrayal, but I'm still so worried. I never wanted anything to happen to her, I don't wish that for anyone." Minho hummed, recalling back on his previous suspicion, how ridiculous it seemed now to think that of this person.

So it went on, the two of them coming up with important details and question marks to jot down. Before they knew it the sky turned dark, an impatient barista politely asking them to leave.

"You have my number, right?" Chan asked.

"I don't." Minho replied, glad Chan remembered. The two exchanged phones, filling in their details with some hesitation.

"Call me if you need anything, or if you find her." Chan added, eyes glinting under the streetlights.

"You too, call me if you remember anything important." Minho replied, parting with a wave goodbye and heading towards the bus station.

It was only on his way back that he recalled their first exchange through the phone, and how stupid it had been to expect anything else from a friend of Felix's, of all people.

Groaning lowly, Minho moved his bag up, staring at the paper pile stuffed inside it neatly. Ahead was, he expected, a night full of reading- all 38 new pages of details about this girl, who he found himself liking less and less with every passing statement.

.

Over an extended time period Minho had found himself visiting many different places to no avail. He tried asking around, dropping Chelle's name here and there for good measures, but it seemed that the girl had vanished into thin air. Her only legacy had been the outrageous rumors surrounding her name, such as dating kids much younger than herself and having sex to get her way in the art world. Really, Minho should have stopped there- he wanted nothing to do with this girl anymore, was happy even; happy that she didn't get to lay her hands on his sister. Yet he couldn't stop thinking, this girl.. She was missing, it was real, and not one soul other than him have made a single attempt to locate her. How could he give up now?

It had been a long day- visiting a bar from the list in the morning before moving to a café nearby and finishing one of his assignments, Minho decided to follow up on Chelle's tracks. Twelve days have passed since his meeting with Chan, and although his anxiety kept getting worse, the list of things to check kept getting shorter with every lead he crossed out.

This one had honestly been a lame lead, but he wanted to make the most out of it- a short trip out of seoul, to a grass patch stretching a couple miles that was similar to the one he saw on her Instagram. If he couldn't find her with anyone's help, he thought- maybe he should try to think like her more. This girl, where would she go? Who would she meet? What would she do? And for that this practice was important, too.

The land stretched, tall grass for as far as the eye could see. He roamed around, looking at the tall buildings that made his home from afar. From here, definitely- he recognized the scenery as the one she drew that time. Stepping back through the grass, it didn't make much of a difference from how far he's already been, but the moment felt special somehow.

Minho breathed in, a strong breeze blowing from the front and carrying the dust and pollution of the city with it. Bad air, even this far back. At least it was silent, no cars, no birds either- it felt peaceful. Minho stepped back again, pulling out his phone, intending to take a photo. A couple more steps back, and he tripped- landing on his butt in the grass.

It was there that he found her.

.

Jisung stretched, back aching after sleeping in so late.

"Good morning, and good luck falling back asleep at a normal hour." Seungmin commented. True that, Jisung managed to mess his sleep schedule pretty badly. Good thing it was friday.

Standing up, he considered responding before giving up and making his way to the kitchen.

"Ji," Seungmin spoke up once more,

"At least brush your teeth. I'm your roommate, not your mom- I shouldn't have to tell you this!" His voice, although annoyed, remained calm. He did have a point.

"Okay mom." Jisung replied, deadpan. Without another word he turned, entering the bathroom and picking up his toothbrush to do as instructed.

Life as an art major was hard- he had so much work to do in little time, and the pressure made it feel a little like a job. Nowadays his minor in music made for the only stress reliever he could put time into without guilt, and he wondered if maybe he should have chosen it for major instead. Useless thinking about it now, anyway.

Jisung went on brushing, releasing a small whine at the thought of his next assignment. Whatever- he rolled his eyes, raising a hand to rub the remains of sleep away.

Tall grass, the clear view of seoul from afar- blurring, moving, fast as if he was struck by lightning.

The toothbrush clinked loudly against the sink as it dropped, leaving Jisung with the reflection of himself in the mirror, left hand raised. He made quick way, spitting the paste and powerwalking back to their room, brushing against Seungmin on his way there.

"Jisung? Jisung, you can't just leave this here." Seungmin bristled, pausing at the sight of Jisung pulling out his sketchbook with the craze of someone going through a revelation.

He sighed, recognizing the scene in front of him. "Inspiration struck?"

Jisung hummed, wiping his mouth and beginning to sketch. This happened every once in a while, it was one of the things that made Jisung… well, Jisung.

"I'll clean up. Should I order takeout?" Seungmin asked, affection sneaking into his voice. He's a bit weird, but sometimes he was cute too.

"Thank you, please." Jisung replied absentmindedly, focused on the paper.

"I will. Okay." Seungmin concluded, fishing his phone out to call his favorite fast food handler.

To them, after all, it was nothing more than an average friday night.

[authenticcadence18]

30 Questions About Me

THANKS FOR THE TAG @bugaboo-n-bananoir ILY!!!!

(Nick)name: Cadence

gender: cis female

Star sign: Pisces

Height: uhhhhh I am not sure, it’s taller than 5ft at least

Time: night! (Well I wrote most of this last night, but now it’s the evening of the next day!)

Birthday: well I’m a Pisces, so my birthday is between Feb 19th and march 20th!

Fave band/group: Pentatonix! Or For King and Country. Or the piano guys, the vitamin string quartet, Voctave.....also Phineas and the Ferbtones👌

Fave solo artists: I really like Lauren Daigle, and Jackie Evancho used to be my FAVE. Aaand idk if this counts but Michael Giacchino! love his scores, especially the score for Inside Out. There’s also this guy called Clay Kramer on YouTube who makes KK Slider covers of popular music, his stuff gives me so much seratonin😅

Song Stuck in my Head: Well I’m listening to music rn and “I’m Me” from Phineas and Ferb is on so I’ll say that! (I’ll revisit this one when I finish the list and update it with whatever song i’m listening to/is stuck in my head then) (ok the music has since been turned off and now I have “Status Quo” from High School Musical stuck in my head so! There ya go!) (now it is the next day, and I’ve got “when the party’s over” stuck in my head...i think these three songs are an accurate reflection of my taste in music🤣)

Last Movie: uhhhhh oh yeah, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice! It was SO GREAT because Jay Baruchel plays the main character (and the main character is super awkward), so I felt like I was watching Hiccup from the How To Train Your Dragon franchise learn magic and it was GLORIOUS. And also Nicholas Cage is great. And I liked the love interest in the movie as well!! She had a role to play in the story and felt authentic and genuine, which I appreciated!

Last Show: ok well the last show I watched by myself was Phineas and Ferb! Specifically, the episode with the Mardi Gras block party and then the one where Candace and Stacy compete in an obstacle course against Isabella and Ginger (omg wAIT ginger and Stacy are sisters and Isabella and Candace are GOING to be sisters mY HEART I—AH🥺). I hadn’t watched those episodes in forever, so they were really fun to revisit! I think the last actual show I watched was Kids Baking Championship or something, lol. (Those kids are AMAZING. So skilled!)

When i created this blog: November 2019! It was riiiight after the season 3 finale of miraculous aired and absolutely wrecked my emotions. I had some fanfic written that I’d never posted and had been thinking about making a tumblr/ao3 for awhile, and seeing the finale made me finally go, “.....you know what, yeah. The finale is aired, no more spoilers.....it’s time to make a blog.” So I did! And I posted my first fic! And I’m so happy i did :)

What Do I Post: a bunch of multi fandom stuff XD. This blog started off as 90% Miraculous, 10% other fandoms I like...but now it’s just kind of a hodgepoge of my favorite fandoms (with a focus on Phineas and Ferb, lol). I reblog a lot of posts, and then I post original stuff too! I write fanfic, nowadays for Phineas and Ferb but for Miraculous in the past (and probably in the future!), I draw art (mostly Phinabella art because I’ve been drawing them since i was 11 and it feels good to return to my roots), and OCCASIONALLY I will write an analysis post (I’ve got one in the works rn actually 👀), attempt to make a meme, or dip my toe into salt just SLIGHTLY before quickly backing away, lol. If I were to list the fandoms I post about in the order of how frequently I post about them, I’d probably say: Phineas and Ferb, Miraculous....and thennnnn everything else is pretty random and depends on the day, lol.

Last thing i googled: Jay Baruchel 😂. Couldn’t remember how to spell his last name!

Other blogs: this is my only blog! Sometimes I think about making a separate blog for my art and writing, but I am not sure if I should or not....maybe I will someday, but idk. I also have an AO3 for fanfic and an Instagram for art! All are under the name “authenticcadence18.”

Do I get asks: sometimes, yeah!! Sometimes I reblog ask games/prompts and get some asks for those (I’ve got so many prompts in my inbox I want to write/draw things for...ah it’s fine, I’ll get to it eventually😅), and sometimes lovely people will leave thoughts or nice messages in my inbox🥺💕. I’ve got a specific tag for all those nice messages so I can read back over them whenever I need a boost!

Why this url: it’s a music pun! When a song/section of a piece of music ends with a dominant chord resolving to a tonic chord (if you’ve read a certain fic of mine you should know allll about dominant and tonic chords👀🤣), it’s called an authentic cadence! There are different kinds of cadences, and authentic ones are my favorite. One example of this is “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” I also use this blog to be my authentic, fandom-loving self! So I like authentic cadences, and also, I’m Cadence and using this blog to be authentic! Woo! (And 18 is just my favorite number, lol) I’m glad I ended up choosing a name that doesn’t tie to a specific fandom becaaaaaause this ended up being a multi fandom blog!

Following: 232!!

Followers: 292!!! (THANKS SO MUCH Y’ALL ILY 💕)

Average amount of sleep: wellllll for the past week and a half I was sick so I was probably getting 9ish hours a night (because I would sleep in really late, lol). but NOW? In my immediate future? I suspect my average amount of sleep is going to go down because I’m really bad about staying up late even when I have to get up early😅. Hoping to be good about getting at least 7ish hours a night!

Lucky number: 18! But y’all probably already guessed that, lol.

Instruments: my voice, piano, ukulele, viola (but it’s been a HOT minute), aaaand i used to be able to play guitar but then I got a ukulele and forgot all the guitar chords. (I also dabble in songwriting! I primarily use voice and piano when writing music.)

What I’m wearing: my favorite sweatshirt (that was last night, rn I have on a tanktop), some leggings, and socks!

Dream job: I’m currently learning to be a teacher, and I LOVE teaching and working with kids so that is definitely a job I’m really excited about!!! I would also love to portray characters at Disney or something (well, maybe not at Disney because I hear they’re strict, but like....I want to be Rapunzel or Anna or something, that would be so fun). OR, I would LOVE to work in tv animation somehow, be it voice acting, writing scripts/music, and/or story boarding. basically if I could do what Dan and Swampy did for Phineas and Ferb/Milo Murphy’s Law, I would LOVE THAT. (Especially the writing music part. Getting to write music for established characters and get PAID for it would be SO COOL.!.!.!) Also I think it would be so fun to write Disney storybooks! Like, those books that are about Cinderella baking a cake or Ariel befriending a seahorse, stuff like that. Those brought me a ton of joy as a child!

Dream trip: I want to visit alllll the Disney parks someday😅. (Not right now because, ya know, Covid...but someday!)

Fave food: uhhh i really like pizza. And popcorn. Also hummus and guacamole!

nationality: American

Fave songs: “Times” by Tenth Avenue North; “Can’t Help Falling in Love” (I made an entire playlist of just this song when I first started writing my fic of the same name, so I like the original and a ton of covers of it!), “Show Yourself” from Frozen II, “What Might Have Been” from Phineas and Ferb (and lots of other songs from that show, i made a whole post about that once but I can’t find it, oof); “Rescue” by Lauren Daigle; “Thank You” by Pentatonix; “I See the Light” from Tangled; “Your Hands” by JJ Heller; “Perfect” by Ed Sheeran.....i like a loooot of songs so this is just the tip of the iceberg, but I think that’s good for now, LOL! (As soon as I post this I’m going to remember another song I love, lol)

last book: I got the book Unbirthday for Christmas! It’s basically Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, but if she’d never gone to wonderland and things went horribly wrong there. (I think, I’m not that far into it yet, lol)

Top 3 fictional universes I’d love to live in: 1. DANVILLE, PLS. Especially as a kid, I SO would’ve loved to hang out with Isabella and Phineas and the rest of the gang! Danville is so vibrant and unique and people are always randomly breaking into song there, that’s my kind of place! 2. Fairytopia (from the Barbie movies!) because I could be a fairy OR a mermaid OR BOTH and eat seeweed to breathe underwater even if I wasn’t a mermaid. Like, that’s the dream right there. (I’ve always loved mermaids and fairies, lol!) 3. Maybe San Fransokyo from Big Hero 6? All of the technology in that universe is really cool! And I would love to eat a noodle burger, lol .

Oh! That’s the last one! Wow! This was so FUN!!!!!!! Thanks again for the tag, Maddy!!!! :)

I’ll taaaag @sketchy-panda @macaronsforchat @simplynewyorkbound @inkjackets and anyone else who’d like to do this! (And pls don’t feel pressured to play at all, or answer all of the questions! I was definitely vague with a few of my answers, lol)

[generallypo]

“I heard your voice, so I came... Aoba-san.”

Hooo-boy, if that doesn’t get me emotional every single time. Call it my bias for eccentric bundles of sunshine and softness, or my crippling weakness for the secretly-handsome-and-devastatingly-earnest type, but you can’t change my mind: Clear is, hands down, DMMD’s best love interest. Character development-wise, thematically, romantically, he nails every trial thrown at him, gets his man,  and proceeds to break your heart in the tenderest, sincerest way possible. I am hopping with Huge Fan Energy, so this post is gonna be unapologetically long and self-indulgent and grossly enthusiastic. Yeeeee.

———— 

Look, DMMD meta analysis has been done to death, I get it. This game is old. But I think it stands as testament to its excellent production that it’s still a game worth revisiting years later — especially during these times when social contact is so hard pressed to come by and we all rabidly devour digital media like a horde of screeching feral gremlins. (Have you seen Netflix’s stock value now? The exploding MMO server populations? Astonishing.) It’s pure, simple human nature to want to connect, to cling to members of our network out of biological imperative and our psychological dependency on each other. As cold and primitive at that sounds, social contact also fulfills us on a higher level: the community is always stronger than the individual; genuine trust begets a mutually supportive relationship of exchange and evolution. People learn from each other, and grow into stronger, wiser, better versions of themselves.

Yeah, I’m being deliberately obtuse about this. Of course I’m talking about Clear. Clear, who is a robot. Clear, who is nearly childlike in his insatiable curiosity regarding the human condition.

And it’s a classic literary tactic, using non-human entities to question the intangible constructs of a concept like ‘humanity’ — think Frankenstein, or Tokyo Ghoul, or Detroit: Become Human, among so, so many works in various media — all tackling that question from countless angles, all with varying measures of success. What does it mean to be human? To be good? Who are we, and where do we stand in the grand scheme of things? Is there even a scheme to follow? … Wait, what?

Jokes aside, there are so many ways that the whole approaching-human-yet-not-quite-there schtick can be abused into edgy, joyless existential griping. Nothing wrong with that if it’s what you’re looking for, except that we’re talking about a boys’ love game here. But DMMD neatly, sweetly side steps that particular wrinkle, giving us a wonderfully grounded character to work with as a result. 

Character Design — a see-through secret

Let’s start small: Clear’s design and premise. Unlike so many other lost, clueless robo-lambs across media, Clear does have a small guiding presence early on in his life. It takes the form of his grandfather, who teaches Clear about the world while also sheltering him from his origins. It means he learns enough to blend sufficiently into society; it also means that Clear has even more questions that sprout from his limited understanding of the world.

Told that he must never remove his mask lest he expose his identity as a non-human, Clear’s perpetual fear of rejection for what he is drives much of his eccentricity and challenges him throughout much of his route. As for the player, the mystery of what lies underneath his mask is a carrot that the writers get to dangle until the peak moment of emotional payoff. Even if it’s not hard to guess that there’s probably a hottie of legendary proportions stuck under there, there’s still significance in waiting for that good moment to happen. And when it does, it feels great.

His upbringing contextualizes and affirms his odd choice of fashion: deliberately generic, bashfully covered from the public eye, and colored nearly in pure white - the quintessential signal of a blank slate, of innocence. Contrasted with the rest of DMMD’s flashy, colorful crew, Clear is probably the most difficult to read on a superficial scale, not falling into the fiery, bare-chest sex appeal of a womanizer, or the techno-nerd rebel aesthetic that Noiz somehow rocks. Goofy weirdo? Possibly a serial killer? Honestly, both seem plausible at the start.

And that’s the funny thing, because as damn hard as he tries to physically cover himself up from society, Clear is irrepressibly true to his name: transparent to a fault. He’s a walking, talking contradiction, and it’s not hard to realize that this mysterious, masked stranger… is really just an open book. By far the most effusive and straightforward of the entire cast, his actions are wildly unconventional and sometimes wholly inexplicable. But given time to explain himself, he is always, always sincere in his intentions — and unlike the rest of the love interests, naturally inclined to offer bits of himself to Aoba. It doesn’t take the entire character arc to figure out his big, bad secret — our main character gets an inkling about halfway through his route — and what’s even better is that he embraces it, understanding that his abilities also allow him to protect what he cherishes: Aoba. 

So what if he doesn’t fit into an easily recognizable box of daydream boyfriend material? He’s contradictory, and contradiction is interesting. Dons a gas mask, but isn’t an edgelord. Blandly dressed, but ridiculously charming. Unreadable and modestly intimidating — until he opens his mouth. Even without the benefit of traversing his route, there’s already so much good stuff to work with, and sure as hell, you’re kept guessing all the way to the end.

Character Development — from reckless devotion into complaisant subservience, complaisant subservience into mutual understanding. And then, of course: free will, and true love. 

At its core, DMMD is about a dude with magic mind-melding powers and his merry band of attractive men with — surprise! — crippling emotional baggage. Each route follows the same pattern, simply remixing the individual character interactions and the pace of the program: Aoba finds himself isolated with the love interest, faces various communication issues varying on the scale of frustrating to downright dangerous, wanders into a sketchy section of Platinum Jail, bonds with the love interest over shared duress, breaks into the Oval Tower, faces mental assault by the big bad — and finally, finally, destroys those internal demons plaguing the love interest, releasing the couple onto the path of a real heart-to-heart conversation. And then, you know, the lovey-dovey stuff. 

Here’s the thing: as far as romantic progression goes, it’s really not a bad structure. There’s room to bump heads, but also to bond. The Scrap scene is a thematically cohesive and clever way to squeeze in the full breadth of character backstory while simultaneously advancing the plot. In this part, Aoba must become the hero to each of his love interests and save them from themselves. Having become privy to each other’s deepest thoughts and reaching a mutual understanding of each other, their feelings afterwards slide much more naturally into romantic territory. They break free of Oval Tower, make their way home, and have hot, emotionally fulfilling sex or otherwise some variation on the last few steps. The end. 

That is, except for Clear. 

Clear’s route is refreshing in that he needs none of these things — the climax of his emotional arc actually comes a little after the halfway point of his route. When Clear’s true origins are revealed, he comes entirely clean to Aoba, fighting against his fear of rejection but also trusting that Aoba will listen. It’s a quiet, vulnerable moment, rather than the action-packed tension we normally experience during a Scrap scene. 

That doesn’t mean it’s prematurely written in — it simply means that he reaches his potential faster than the other characters. Because of that, he’s free to pursue the next level of his route’s development much, much sooner in the timeline: he overcomes his fears of his appearance, he confesses his love to Aoba, he leaves the confines of a largely dubious master-servant relationship and allows himself to be Aoba’s equal. Clear’s sprite art mirrors his emotional transformation all the way through, exposing him to the literal bone — and Aoba’s affection for him doesn’t change a single bit. Beautiful.

The whammy of incredible moments doesn’t just stop there, though. I don’t exactly recall the order the routes DMMD is ideally meant to be played in, but I believe Clear’s is meant to be last. And if you do, I can guarantee that it becomes a hugely delightful gameplay experience — in order to achieve his good ending, you must do absolutely nothing with Scrap. It doesn’t just subvert our player expectations of proactively clicking and interacting with our love interests; it grabs the story by its thematic reins and yanks it all back to the forefront of our scene. 

In every route besides Clear’s, Scrap is a tool used to insert Aoba’s influence into and interfere with his target’s mind. Using his powers of destruction, Aoba is able to prune whatever maligned thoughts are harming his target; in any conventional situation, using Scrap is the right choice. 

But one of the central problems in Clear’s route is his conflict between the impulses of his conditioning and his desire to live freely as a human would. Breaking free of Toue’s programming is what initially made him unique; growing beyond the rules imposed by his grandfather is what makes him human. In the final conflict scene, Clear’s decision to destroy his key-lock is an action of true autonomy, made with perfect understanding of the consequences and a sincere, selflessly selfish desire to protect someone he loves. In order to receive his good end, you have to respect his decision. It doesn’t matter which option you pick — by using Scrap, Aoba turns his back on every positive choice he made with Clear and attempts to exert his authority over him. This is Aoba becoming Toue; this is Aoba trying to reinstate himself as ‘Master’ right as he approved Clear as his equal. That’s blatant hypocrisy, and it doesn’t matter if Aoba is trying to do it for Clear’s ‘own good’ — that’s not Aoba’s call to make. If you truly wish to respect Clear’s free will, you will stand by. This is the truth of the moment: Clear has no emotional blockages that Aoba needs to fix. Believe in him, just as he believed in you.

The path to his heart is, and always has been, clear. Scrap was never needed from the start.

While Aoba might be the main character, Clear is undeniably a hero in his own route just as much. Tirelessly earnest and always curious, he leaps headlong into the unknown and emerges with his newfound enlightenment. He’s unafraid of weathering trials, even to the point of accepting death, and returns anew from oblivion to a sweet, cathartic ending. That’s about as textbook hero’s journey as it gets — if that doesn’t make him unquestionably, certifiably, unconditionally human, then I will scream.

And only finally… there is the free end. The final CG is like a throwback to our first impression of him: indistinct, purposefully obscured from proper view. But this time, we know better — and so does Aoba. Looks were never what mattered in Clear’s route. If you were patient, and you were open-minded, and you listened… well, what we realize now is that Clear was doing the exact same thing for you, too.

From a carefree, aimless robot-man with only the gimmick of “eccentric ditz” to carry him forward, we get a supremely more interesting character by the end: a man who has graduated from the well-intentioned but claustrophobic conditioning of his childhood; a weapon who has defied the imperatives placed on him by his creator’s programming; a wanderer who has, through unconditional patience and empathy, discovered love, and striven to become a better person for it. Who was it that ever doubted Clear’s character? He’s the goddamn goodest boy that ever wanted to be a real boy. Of course Clear is human. And in fact, he does it better than every single one of the actually human love interests. You can’t change my mind.

The Romance — kindness is really fucking attractive, okay.

Like I’ve said earlier, I have my Big Fan Blinds stuck on pretty tight. I might be conjuring sparks from thin air. But I think every choice was a deliberate creative decision on the writers’ part, and they deserve all the kudos for it — I’m just the lucky player who gets to enjoy it. But aside from Noiz (who I also think is a perfect darling as well — I could go on and on about him), Clear’s route is a model example for consent and healthy relationships in VN storytelling. This is reciprocated on both sides: never does Aoba infringe on Clear’s boundaries, and neither does Clear. They’re sensitive to each other’s needs and concerns; they ask for permission and stop when it isn’t granted (and when it is, boy do they get frisky — I’m not complaining!) I don’t need to say much more, because I think that consent is both fantastic and yes, incredibly hot (the scene in DMMD is tons more sad, go play Re:connect!). Good writing shows off the massive erotic potential enthusiastic consent puts into intimacy, and Aoba’s and Clear’s relationship is honestly a dream playground. The point is, I think Aoba and Clear genuinely do find equal balance in their relationship by the end of his route (and certainly through Re:connect). If you follow through Re:connect’s storyline, there’s even more thematic richness that comes through in the form of Clear’s greatest asset: communication. The couple get to discuss the long-term implications of them being together; they both offer concerns, points, and assurances to the other, and it’s just a soft, honest moment not so unlike the worries of a real relationship. Hearing is kind of Clear’s motif sense, but it’s really great to see that Aoba also subtly picks it up, really flexes his own communication skills to better engage with Clear. 

Point is, Clear’s route spoke to me on a lot of little levels. Design-wise, he’s already got a ton going for him, and his story builds upon it rather than against it, enriching his development and grounding him a little more solidly in the DMMD universe (and in my heart). His route, aside from being emotionally ruinous, carries a pretty solid chunk of world-building (only beaten out by Mink’s and Ren’s, probably), and the romance feels organic, healthy, and realistic. He’s not the only one with an excellent route, but he’s my favorite. If you read through all of this, you’re a real trooper and I’m extremely impressed. Thanks for tuning in. Peace.

[high5nerd]

Vorfreude

Aay, my first (at the time) Pitch x Reader one-shot!

Don’t fook your professors, folks.

“When understanding the root words of our modern day languages, it can be daunting to fully comprehend the detail such a language as English can be intertwined with a multitude of other languages long forgotten,”

Dr. Pitchiner was certainly entrancing when he spoke at the podium, flourishing a hand at the list of most common prefixes and suffixes used in today’s modern English, along with a surprise list of obscure ones you knew you had to take note on. Dr. Pitchiner wasn’t one to give easy exams, the last exam was so gruelling someone almost passed out from a panic attack at the multitude of pages.

Despite enjoying writing yourself, you weren’t as invested in English as he was, which was a given, hence the reason his PhD in English as well as a degree in Latin Translation. Many times he’s journeyed to Italy to help assist scholars in finding new information on the lost civilizations of Rome, Sicily, and Pompeii, and that credit alone was the sole reason he got the job at this state college. He should have been employed at universities like Harvard or Yale, or even Oxford or Princeton, but yet here he was, teaching at your simple state college with an acceptance rate of 93% and the highest transferring stat in all of your state.

   Not a lot of students found him attractive like you did. Certainly there was more than a couple handfuls of girls, pockets of them, who’ve admired his lithe figure, his graceful movements and that firm ass that was way too snug in his black slacks. Most of them admired his physique from afar, some even daring others to get closer to flirt with him shamelessly, and usually that ended up with a bad memory for the attempted action, as well as the girl who tried to drop the class out of utter embarrassment at such a call out after class that could be heard around the hall.

   Dr. Kozmotis Pitchiner took no bullshit from anyone, and that’s the main reason your heart fluttered at the thought and sight of him. This class wasn’t the first time you two had met face to face either, shockingly. Quite hilariously, the first time you two met, you didn’t even like him.

Three years ago, you were an itty bitty freshman just like the ones that recently arrived this semester, and to the best of your luck, you scored almost five hours of total free time on Mondays and Wednesdays before your Intro to Biology class and Intro to Psychology course after lunch.

Why not explore the gorgeous campus during those five hours? It would get you more acquainted with your surroundings and in small cases, make new friends! Grabbing a can of fruit juice and a danish from the dining hall, you munched as you explored the massive quad before discovering where the art gallery was, venturing towards the art and theatre buildings you’d be in the next year for your art perspective requirements. You found yourself meandering in the photograph-covered walled hallway of the English department, unknowingly headed towards the campus’s own local newspaper headquarters when a voice startled you from your entrancement with your journey.

“Hey. Where do you think you’re going?” a voice matching the texture of velvet came.

You turn around, frowning at the sudden startling noise. There just feet away from you, emerged from his office was a man dressed in what you would consider funeral appropriate attire, a smooth black suit with a basic black tie, and shiny black dress shoes that looked like they could reflect sunlight and somehow cause a car accident if he walked outside.

“I’m exploring. Where do you think you’re going?” you shot back, taking a long sip of your fruit juice.

You were mildly surprised to see a smirk cross his devious lips, his silver-gold eyes narrowing at your sass. He almost looked amused at your attitude, even enough so that his tensed shoulders relaxed, but his arms still remained folded over his chest.

“At the moment, I’m going wherever you think you’re headed, which should be in the opposite direction you’re headed.”

Ooh, he likes playing word games. You took another sip and then took a big bite of your danish, not caring about how childish you were coming off to him. You pointed towards the hallway, “Why can’t I go down there?”

He gestured his head in the same direction, “It’s merely copy rooms and computer labs meant for the Daily Mascot Oracle. Nothing worth checking out.”

“Oh. That’s a shit title.” you commented.

He barked out a heartwarming laugh. You grin at him, glad he finally was capable of taking that stick out of his ass and be a decent human being. Almost three times so far in just two days you got two people to really dislike your presence and your sassy attitude, someone named Bunnymund and another elfish looking kid named Jack who’s definition of fun didn’t match yours at all.

“I certainly didn’t agree to it either, but the editor in chief made sure my vote was outnumbered,” he hesitated, thinking quickly before glancing at you, “Are you a freshman?”

You nodded, knowing what he would ask next, “Majoring in psychology with hopefully a minor in alternative medicine and therapy.”

He looked genuinely impressed, “I must say, it’s quite refreshing to have a new student under that field. Not a lot of freshmen choose that whilst entering for their first year. What makes you like that field of study so much?”

You shrugged with a smile, “I like the whole concept of the human mind and how it functions on an emotional state. It’s interesting how certain actions and emotions can create feelings inside us, and I especially love the study of dreams and fears and hopes. I want to do a project on dream therapy for my senior thesis when it comes time to that, but I doubt they’ll let me. Professor Oren didn’t like hearing me say that at orientation.”

Dr. Pitchiner nodded, “Oren doesn’t really believe in the science behind dreams, and certainly not the spirituality behind it if you believe in that sort of thing. I certainly do.”

“You do?” you were genuinely surprised, literally taken aback. You wouldn’t have considered such an eloquent, smooth and finely dressed man to believe in a spirituality. He reeked of realist to you, you certainly weren’t expecting that.

He nodded again, “Of course. It’s only natural for the human psyche to become understandable to a certain degree, and it’s been proven through many other cultures that such things exist, like the sixth sense or empathy or precognition. Why not in dream analyzation? It’s fascinating, I’m glad you’re interested in it. If I wasn’t an English professor I would immediately return to college to take advantage of that.”

That’s when you realized how gold his eyes were, how they sparkled like the richest coins ever discovered in the vastness of the sunken world of ships at the bottom of the ocean. His eyes gave away intense wisdom, feeling and intellect that you felt the need to learn from. You needed to unlock every part of him to see beyond that gaze he gave you with that strange upturn at the corner of his devilish mouth.

Sure enough, you eventually found yourself in his class a couple years later for your required English Analysis course, and the both of you took advantage of that. You found yourself wandering back to his office between classes and office hours, knowing full well no one visited him nor had the courage to due to his harshness in class and strict code he sticks to in not forming attachments to the student body. For you, somehow you were able to break that barrier and see a different kind of man than what people upfront knew him as.

Your friend Katherine is your first and only senior friend at the university, and from her story when you signed up for his course at the beginning of the year, he was known to be callous and strict, such a polar opposite to leniency that even if you were sick with proof of illness, he wouldn’t accept that as an excused absence unless you flourished a medical note from a doctor to him. Everyone feared him, but admired him from afar since he’s the only professor to actually cut down on the bullshitters and slackers in class, and is one of the most respected professors there because of his adventures in Italy as a historian as well as a translator.

You, however, knew him as a sarcastic, good humored intellect with an avid thirst for learning the unknown, and unlocking skills he’s never attempted. From the times you would visit his office or bump into each other in the hallways and have small talk, you learned that at one point in his life he was just as brash, brazen and impulsive as you are now. Before he considered becoming a professor, he was eager to study what you were studying in now, especially the study of phobias and humans’ reactions to certain fear-triggering events or objects. You were the only one that’s ever heard him snort at a god-awful joke you would attempt at, and the only one that’s ever seen him grin at you in such a way it made your stomach flip and flutter.

Perhaps you exposed yourself too much to him, or perhaps he was just so relatable you felt like you sometimes felt like you were talking to a part of yourself you’ve never discovered before. It slightly scared you how much he knew about you and it wasn’t even the end of the fall semester, but you trusted him in ways you’ve never trusted another before. He always promised you absolute confidentiality with your confessions to him, most out of pure merriment and in the goal of a strengthened friendship, like when you told him when you were fourteen you tried blending into the popular clique but still found yourself drawn to the nerds and theater kids once more. He once gave you such a dubious smirk at the notion of you once being the stereotypical geek, with what you claimed to be the unattractive flat hair, braces and awkward gait.

“I can hardly believe that of you.” he chuckled.

“Why? You can kinda tell, don’t lie.” you winked teasingly.

He tilted his head in his hand at you, looking your figure up and down so slowly and languidly that it made your face heat up with a sudden thrill you haven’t felt in a long time.

“Whoever you were before has grew into a fine young woman, that’s most of what I can see.” he looked at you seriously, his eyes hard with truth.

Ever since that you realized that the idea of him being closer than what you two already were was something else you wanted. You thirsted for it, like an obsession. Unhealthy, you weren’t sure, but you were careful not to give yourself away to him, in fear that it would destroy that friendship you two already had. Without anyone’s knowledge but his, you both called each other by your first names. You called him Koz, and he called you by the nickname you wanted him to call you.

Even just watching him write on the board, hearing his voice wrap you lovingly in it’s deep musical tones made your legs tighten in excitement. You furrowed your brows, trying to ignore the incoming thoughts of his voice saying your name like a mantra as you wrote down everything being scribbled on the board.

The guy next to you noticed your discomfort, and nudged his elbow with yours. You looked at him, affronted, “What?”

“You look pissed. You okay?” he looked suspicious.

“Shut up, I’m fine.”

“(y/n).”

Your blood froze, looking up at him in pure fear at being called out in front of class. His hands were folded behind his back, his eyes lingering on you and only you. The class stared at you, nearly a thousand eyes focused on your nervous leg bouncing and the pen in your hand being crushed by the amount of attention drawn onto you.

“I see you have already started to discuss with Stephen,” you could swear to the moon above he smirked ruefully, “Would you like to tell us what the definition of vorfreude is?”

You gulped quickly before looking down at your paper, noticing that the last couple notes were not even notes, they were sinful descriptions of what you wanted him to do to your mouth and in between your thighs. Your face grew incredibly red to the point it prickled your skin as you stood up. You never broke eye contact with him. You can’t be weak now.

“Vorfreude is a German word to define a type of intense anticipation of imagining future pleasures.”

He nodded, his smirk subsiding to something even darker at the moment you uttered the word ‘future’, “Excellent. Glad to see you’re still paying attention despite your distractions.”

Some people snickered at your red face deepening in color as you plopped back down in your seat. By now Koz was shuffling the exams collected last week, freshly graded and corrections that could leave someone in tears if not taken lightly.

As he passed around the graded exams going over the class’s weak points and what to look forward to for the next midterm, you doodled a bit more in your notebook and wrote more lines of absolute sin into a poetic verse, something E. E. Cummings would be absolutely proud of.

You read over your lines, admiring the visual rhymes as well as the absolute clear imagery of being locked into him, his arms like a vice as he would pull your hair and bite at the sensitive parts of your neck, and even now you squirmed at the daydream of such a carnal act going on in his office. More than anything, more than just impressing him with your knowledge and sharp tongue would be for him to pin you to the desk and make you cry out his name in ecstasy as your legs would quiver with release. You bit your lip as you tightened your grip on your sweatshirt, trying your damn hardest not to accidentally make a noise.

That’s when you noticed the shadow lurking over you.

You froze. Your entire body became still with horror and your blood turned cold as Koz read over your carnal poem and observed your lewd doodles with a casual eye as he handed you your exam. You reached out for it with a shaking hand and slowly placed it over the notebook page, knowing it was too late to hide the damage.

“Please see me after class about your note-taking.”

You nodded, trying to fight tears from the utter embarrassment as he finished handing out the exams. You close your notebook in disgust with yourself. Koz continues the class until 5:45, the usual time it ends when everyone wastes no time in dilly dallying and immediately leaving, most if not all heading to the dining hall for dinner. You, planning to indulge in just a minor dinner consisting of cereal or soup out of embarrassment and sadness, packed up slowly.

“(y/n), a word please.” he beckoned from his podium.

You refused to look at him as you stepped down from the lecture hall stairs to the podium, your backpack slung over your shoulder and your confidence crumbling even further as you waited with baited breath as he finished shutting off the projector and computer.

“You have quite a knack for poetry for someone who says English isn’t their forte, as well as for a psychology major.” he calmly noted, hardly glancing at you.

You couldn’t help it, you couldn’t hold it in anymore and let it burst from your chest, all your thoughts jumbled into a single rambling mess, “I swear I didn’t intend for you to see it, I just-I just-I don’t know why I did that and I know I messed up our friendship, it’s all my fault and I’m really really sorry, I seriously wasn’t thinking and I just can’t help but feel these things and it just makes it worse when I think about you, I don’t know what to do about it-”

A hand crept around the back of your neck and forced your head up, and without even a single warning you felt warm, wet lips enveloping yours, biting sweetly as well as fervently. You couldn’t help but make a noise of startlement at the sudden action, but before you could even have time to melt into the kiss, he pulled away, a smirk on his face.

“It’d be inappropriate for me to do such things, but more inappropriate for you to act on it as well. Yet, I know you are wise enough to not pursue it like you want to.” he stated, his eyes resembling molten gold.

Your gaze flattened, “Koz, what the fuck was that if you say you’re not ‘pursuing it’.”

He grinned, “Your confirmation of your feelings, as well as a promise of patience.”

“Patience?”

He smirked again, tilting his head and embracing the feel of superiority again, “You have nearly one more year left. I wonder if you have the patience to stick it out-”

That pissed you off. You grabbed his black tie and pulled him down, startling him as you kissed him hard. You pulled away just as quickly, enjoying the look of surprise on his face as well as slight bewilderment at being cut off from gloating.

You smiled innocently, smoothing down his tie as well as the front of his jacket, “Nice to know I’m not the only one enjoying the feeling of vorfreude from now on. Have a good day, Professor.”

Without a second backwards glance, you confidently strode out of the lecture hall, leaving Koz impressed as well as out of breath at your grand exit. He didn’t realize he’d be aching for you just as much as you ached for him.

It’s only a year, right? Not too long…

Boy were you two wrong.

[aelaer]

Compare/contrast Benedict Cumberbatch’s portrayal of Sherlock & Strange?

Ah ha ha anon, you understand my propensity to write essays regarding basically, uh, anything that interests me. And character analysis for my favorite characters is definitely one of those things I can ramble about.

I’m going to assume you specifically want me to compare the two character portrayals with each other as opposed to the source material, so that’s what I’m going to do. This write up assumes all four seasons of Sherlock and all MCU films with Stephen in them as canon.

This topic is something I especially considered when writing the both of them in a crossover as they had to be two distinct souls despite their similarities, beyond their abilities. The two characters are very similar to the point that some folks have difficulty in distinguishing the both of them as separate characters. I saw this a bit when Doctor Strange was first released. Some writers from the Sherlock fandom tried their hand at writing him, and there was a lot of Sherlock bleeding through in a handful of the attempts I read. It wasn’t until I was head-deep in the MCU that I really noticed this myself, which goes to show just how similar they can be.

The similarities are easy: both very intelligent, masters in their chosen fields, arrogant, not always personable, are vain when they’re in a good headspace, and went through large moments of growth that reshaped some of their personality to overall make them better human beings.

It’s the differences that may be harder to figure out, and these differences also vary depending on what point of time in canon you’re looking at the character as they both went through life-changing events. Still, there are some core personality points that remain:

Stephen’s primary drive for knowledge is to achieve a goal. Sherlock’s primary drive for knowledge is for the sake of knowledge. While there is definitely some overlap (such as Stephen’s library of music release albums and dates, and Sherlock’s research into solving a crime), it seems to me that Stephen’s whole learning structure is built upon achieving a goal. Studying for his PhD and MD at the same time was all to enter the field more quickly so he had more time to hone his craft and become the best, and prove it to everyone. Going to Nepal and beginning to learn magic were all for the sake of curing his hands. We haven’t seen much of him after he pivoted his goal into protecting Earth and reality, but all the spellwork we see from him in Ragnarok, IW, and Endgame certainly seem to have been learned with that idea in mind. Sherlock, on the other hand, clearly likes studying things for the sake of knowing things. Unlike Stephen who has an achievement in mind before starting to go for it, Sherlock starts studying things before it necessarily becomes something that he knows for certain he will deal with. Take categorizing the 243 types of tobacco ash. If he came across tobacco ash in a case, I imagine that he’d be more than able to compare ash to the top 20 brands and find a match 99% of the time. While he may claim it is for a future case, you don’t do that unless you genuinely enjoy the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. There is just no guarantee that it will be of any practical use in the future, while we know for certain Stephen’s research for his primary goals is to find solutions to problems both immediate (his hands) and imminent (bad things coming to bother Earth). (And this is one reason I consider Stephen a Slytherin and Sherlock a Ravenclaw, though both could have Ravenclaw and Slytherin as secondaries, respectively.)

Stephen is more interested in the praise, acceptance, and friendship of those he sees as peers and equals. Sherlock is decidedly less interested. This changes a bit through their character arcs, especially Sherlock’s, but let me see if I can explain this clearly. At the beginning of Doctor Strange, we see Stephen performing a surgery in front of residents (or med students, I don’t know), playing a music game with his assistant, and joking with his fellow surgeon. He asks Christine to join him at a dinner conference which is again, about his accolades. He likes getting the respect and admiration of his peers and those he considers friends, like Christine, straight from when we first meet him. When we first meet Sherlock, he doesn’t bother to explain why the ladder being green matters to Greg in the text. He asks for his name to be left out of the papers and definitely doesn’t do his work to impress the police force. If he was looking to get their admiration, he’d act a bit; we know that he can act. But he just doesn’t care what his peers (the police force) think of him at all. It’s not until John enters the picture that Sherlock starts showing off more by explaining his thought processes. Something about John intrigues him, and that grows exponentially when John saves his life at the end of the first episode. I’ve read fics where John’s described Sherlock as a peacock, but he really wasn’t like that until John came around, if the green ladder text and wanting to be kept out of the papers/public eye is any indication. Stephen, however, was most definitely the peacock. Stephen’s interest in acceptance pivots to the Masters of the Mystic Arts when he comes a student by his joking with Wong and Mordo. He’s interested in proving himself to them and gaining their praise and later on (I imagine) their friendship, though sadly we don’t have enough canon film time to see how his relationship with other sorcerers has grown since his first film. He’s likely conceded to the fact that his work is more secretive now, but for those in the know, he wants their acceptance and potential friendships. Sherlock’s bubble expands to wanting the acceptance and praise of maybe five people at most by the end of Season 4, but again, he’s not greatly interested in what his peers amongst the police force think. Wider praise and larger friendships has never been in the books for him. He’s completely content with the small group about him.

Stephen is on the extrovert side of the Myers-Briggs scale,  and Sherlock is on the introvert side. This slightly differs from his comic book self here; comic book Stephen is much more introverted. MCU Stephen isn’t a huge extrovert, but is obviously fully comfortable surrounded by people and being the star of the show, as seen by the beginning of the film. He’s fully content to do activities that are known as more “introverted” such as reading, but a love of reading doesn’t mean one is automatically an introvert. He doesn’t strike me as a personality that would get exhausted when needing to deal with people for longer amounts of time, as I’ve known the introverts in my life to be. Stephen is simply content both alone and with others, and when with others, he likes to show off from time to time. Sherlock, on the other hand, isn’t interested in the attention from the wider world and making friends. All of his preferred activities don’t involve other people and he definitely finds the idea of having to deal with people and societal norms tedious. If he’s showing off, it’s to impress a specific person as opposed to entertain a crowd. And unlike Stephen, I could see Sherlock being exhausted by parties and generally avoiding talking to most people, while Stephen, so long as he’s with a group with similar interests, could definitely talk about it for some time - whether it’s neuroscience or even the same music tastes.

Stephen is more sympathetic than Sherlock. This is not to say that Sherlock lacks sympathy, but as a detective he really has to have a cold detachment to the victims in order for emotions not to override his ability to do his job. This detachment is vital for surgeons as well when operating, and at the beginning of Doctor Strange Stephen could be considered too far in the cold detachment realm in selecting his patients, thinking about his record rather than if a procedure would be in the best interest of the patient due to health risks. This changes immensely with the loss of his career and his new path in life. I think the sympathetic tendencies of both characters can be best seen in how they deliver bad news to strangers:

The Sherlock screencap is from Season 4 Ep 1 (I wanted to select something after the hiatus and Magnusson so I had him after his growth). He’s telling a couple that their son tried to surprise them but ended up suffocating to death by accident. That look isn’t rude, but it’s very by-the-book, delivering the facts with very little emotion. Stephen is from Infinity War, before going through the Time Stone and whatever mess he dealt with in there. He’s telling Tony, not too long after meeting him, that the Time Stone comes above the lives of all of them, he and Peter included. The emotion that comes out on top is a grim determination, but even delivering this news, I would not say that it lacks sympathy. It’s a “this is how it has to happen; I’m sorry” type of emotion. The sympathy in his expression expands exponentially after the Time Stone, but canon hasn’t confirmed just how well he got to know the others. Was he just browsing through and pressing the “forward” button to view futures, or was he living through possible futures? The films haven’t told us yet. Hopefully we get clarification at some point. But that’s why I chose this screencap as opposed to the more obvious Time Stone scene. I think there’s further examples of their levels of sympathy such as Stephen’s reaction to the zealot he killed. One thing they are equal on in sympathy, though, is when it affects someone they care about. Sherlock is incredibly sympathetic to John after his loss, and the care Stephen shows to the Ancient One as she’s dying is very poignant.

Now there are also differences in their physicalities that Benedict does a fantastic job of portraying, such as the subtle shaking in Stephen’s hands in several scenes and Sherlock’s own hand gestures that vary completely from Stephen. They also move differently, and they move differently depending on their moods. He’s done a phenomenal job of distinguishing the two characters through physical motion alone.

Thanks for the interesting ask, anon.

[juliabohemian]

backhanded compliments & the art of commenting on other people’s creative content without being a complete twat waffle

WARNING: This is a long post.

I'm a word person. That's probably why, when I do find myself becoming irritated by someone else's unsolicited critique, it is almost always due to their choice of words. Words are important and very powerful. Words have different meaning to different people. Which is why we need to take care when choosing them.

Now, whenever possible, I will click on the profile of the person who left the unsolicited critique and try to get a feel for what type of person they are. Just so I can better understand why they might have left the comment in question. If it is clear they are not a native English speaker, I stop right there. Learning a foreign language is hard. English is one of the most ridiculous languages on the planet. So, mastering its nuances is a challenge for someone who may not have grown up using it. I’m sure I have offended at least one person with my Spanish, at some point. I’m working on it.

BACKHANDED COMPLIMENTS

When I say choice of words, I am implying almost exclusively to something known as a backhanded compliment. A backhanded compliment is a statement that seems, on the surface, to be positive, but is actually an insult. If you are not familiar with the backhanded compliment, I direct you to the mom from American Beauty who says to her teenage daughter "Honey, I'm so proud of you. I watched you very closely, and you didn't screw up once!"

There are a lot of reasons why people make such comments. It would be reductive to suggest they are all suffering from some form of insecurity, although many of them probably are. Some may genuinely believe that they are being helpful. Others may be jealous of the attention another person is receiving and want to either sabotage them or find a way to get in on the action. 

However, it is most likely that the type of person to give a backhanded compliment is either very young, very sheltered or very privileged. And thus, they may not realize that their opinion about something may not carry the same weight on the internet as it does in other venues. Or they may not realize that the world is filled with people who are more informed and more experienced than they are. They mistake their opinion for objective analysis and therefore, offer it freely and without hesitation.

Now, I would like to state that if you see something and you REALLY think it is problematic, you should absolutely offer your critique. Note: if you dislike or disagree with something, that does not make it problematic. Anything that promotes the maltreatment or marginalization of any living thing is problematic. Even so, you should stop and ask yourself whether your critique will accomplish anything or if it would be more worthwhile to simply report the post in question and move on.

That being said, here is MY analysis of some of the backhanded compliments I have received over the years (amalgamated for brevity), and a guide to leaving more constructive/supportive comments for the content creators in your life.

ARTWORK (including photography)

“Definitely not my style, but beautiful.” Do we need to know that it's not your style? If you think it's beautiful, just say that.

“This is so great, but it would have been better if you had used yellow instead of red!” Color choice is a creative choice and its value cannot be objectively measured. Just say it’s great and move on.

“Wow, this is way better than your old stuff.” Do I need to explain why this is bad? I hope not.

“Wow, you're really improving.” Slightly better than the previous one, but still bad. This is a really good example of something that might even feel like a compliment, but actually isn't. Saying that someone is improving is basically saying that it needed to improve. 

Unless you are speaking to your own student or a child, or a really close friend or family member who has openly shared with you their desire to improve as an artist, this is completely unnecessary.

It's important to remember that not everyone is doing things with the same objectives as you. Not every artist or photographer is aiming for technical mastery. If an artist creates something that is very personal and feels pleased with it, the last thing they want is for someone else to come along and tell them what’s “wrong” with it.

Really ANY comment that suggests that the piece of artwork in question would be improved if it were altered in some way is a no no. Unless you are an art teacher or someone has specifically asked for you to give them this information, or you are paying someone to make something especially for you.

FANFICTION (or really writing in general)

“Oh man...I was so excited when I saw your story summary, until I saw the pairing.” Do not comment on a story just to tell the author that you don't like their pairing. Ever. If you accidentally click on a story without seeing the pairing and you are disappointed, your feelings are valid. But there’s no need to let the author know.

"This was good but I don't think (character) would say (quoted dialogue)." Then, you should go and write a story with that character, but where they say different things.

"I noticed you used a semi-colon in the third paragraph. Semicolons are actually supposed to...." Critique grammar, punctuation, spelling and writing mechanics ONLY if you are the author's editor, the author's teacher, or if the author requested it. Period.

If you are commenting to point out what you believe to be a factual error, stop and ask yourself...is this really an error? Is the error intentional? Does the error represent the views of the author or the views of a specific character in a fictional work? Does this story have a reliable narrator? If not, might that narrator be misinformed or biased? And the most important question to ask yourself before correcting an author...do I actually know what the fuck I'm talking about?

Once, in a story, I referenced Copernicus and mentioned that he was imprisoned by the Catholic church. Which we know that he was. Someone commented to leave a long, bullet pointed explanation for how this is a common misconception and that the Catholic Church never mistreated Copernicus, along with many links to articles and videos as evidence. Guess who made all the articles and videos? The Catholic Church. SKIP!

When commenting on a fictional work, consider letting the author know how the story is making you feel. Speculate about what you think might happen next. Express excitement and anticipation. Ask a question for clarification about what you just read. And you can never go wrong by simply thanking the author for taking the time to provide you with free entertainment.

MEMES & JOKES

I love to make people laugh. I have been making people laugh since I learned to talk. This was actually bourne out of an inability to interpret facial expressions. I couldn't tell when people were angry or annoyed. But when they were laughing, I knew exactly how they felt.

That being said, people on the internet LOVE to tell me when something isn't funny. The only problem with this is that humor is very subjective and often very esoteric. I have made memes that I knew were esoteric and knew that not everyone would understand them. I have memes just for birdwatchers. Hell, I have made memes just for a dozen people who participated in a specific academic discussion. But it amazes me how people who don't get a joke are often most compelled to comment and let me know that it isn't funny. How can you know if you don't understand it? Is it so hard to imagine that things exist for which you are not the intended audience?

It's perfectly okay to comment and say you don't understand, and ask for an explanation. But if you look at something and think "I don't understand this, therefore it lacks value" you may have some growing up to do.

Before reblogging someone else's joke to add to the joke, stop and ask yourself whether your intention is to correct or improve upon the joke, or if you are attempting to laugh along WITH the OP.

We've all done this, I'm sure. I know I have. But it really inconsiderate to hijack someone's meme, meta or artwork with a completely unrelated discussion. I can't tell you how annoying it is to post something and check my inbox days later, only to find pages of notifications of people reblogging my shit over and over as part of some completely unrelated discussion.

Once again, if you're commenting to point out a factual error, ask yourself whether the error was intentional. I recently made a meme about the Star Trek films in which Data uses contractions. All of his dialogue is ridiculously out of character, in fact. Which is kind of part of the joke. But someone felt the need to reblog AND comment to let me know that Data wouldn't say that because he doesn't use contractions. Which I already know. Because, well, I’ve been a ST:TNG fan since the day it first aired on TV. I don't even know what to do with a comment that, to be honest. I kind of feel sorry for the other person for not grasping the joke.

So, how DO you compliment someone whose work you enjoy? Imagine yourself speaking to them in person. Imagine that they are emotionally invested in whatever they have created. Consider your objective. Are you expressing appreciation? Or is there something else going on.

And avoid qualifiers. 

When a compliment includes words like "if" or "but" then it's probably not a compliment. You would be so pretty IF you lost some weight is not a compliment.

Choose words that are unlikely to be misinterpreted. 

If someone's art or writing IS improving and you really want them to know, a good way to do that is to use the word evolving. Wow, I really like the way your art is evolving. This works because it implies that the art is changing over time, as the individual grows as a person.

I know what some of you might be thinking...ugh...it's like you can't say ANYTHING anymore! Aww...boo hoo, fam. As a person on the spectrum, I’ve spent my entire life dancing around other people’s feelings, navigating neurotypical subtext and struggling to say things without offending anyone. This is a cake walk compared to that. And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if actually thinking about how other people feel BEFORE you share your opinion would require a great deal of effort on your part, it's possible that you're just an asshole.

TL;DR

Creators of original content are actual human beings with feelings. Don’t offer them unsolicited advice or criticism. Think before you comment.

[ronnytherandom]

Accidental Animated Film Week, or Watch Me Continue To Know Nothing About Media Analysis While I Liberally Abuse The Semicolon In An Attempt To Sound Smart

18/1/2021: Hotel Transylvania Lots of fun but this is a weird one, varies drastically in some strange ways. The comedy takes hit and miss to extremes, simultaneously being laugh out loud hilarious and possessing moments of ungodly cringe. The pacing is unbalanced with the first half feeling awkward, taking a while to really get into; the latter much too fast and not taking the necessary time, some scenes seeming to serve their function as minimally as possible. This metronome of quality exists primarily in these respects and is quite noticeable, but doesn’t ruin the experience and I think that’s testament to just how good the rest of it can be, though there are still caveats. The animation is fantastic, incredibly expressive and creates truly hilarious physical comedy, and I feel this is to be expected of a Genndy Tartakovsky film, I grew up with and deeply appreciate his animated features. The emotional core of the story really begins to hit in the latter half and is very effective though the Zing concept I take issue with the name because it just sounds too silly without being humorous; its just a weird little gripe, the word zing annoys me. That said I was genuinely invested in this love story which is a feat, I’m not a romantic person at all. The acting is generally very good, I enjoy the expanded cast and Adam Sandler is excellent but Andy Samberg’s Johnny has an accent that gets on my nerves and feels like he’s being a bit too heavy handed with it. Again, just a little gripe. The message is clear and heartfelt, strange as it seems to make the message for the parents of the features target audience it still works and resembles in parts the “dadification” that’s been occurring in media (especially video games) over the past decade. Ultimately, it’s a good time so long as you can deal with a few groan inducing moments and a little strangeness.

19/1/2021: Princess Mononoke Holy shit, why haven’t I watched this sooner. Transcendentally good! My new favourite film, an absolutely incredible achievement. For fear of wading into sub v dub controversy the English dub is good though I’m definitely going to watch it subbed at some point. Its Studio Ghibli, everyone knows that Miyazaki runs a fantastic operation, thus the art and animation is faultless. There are moments where every single frame is a true work of art. Induces nostalgia though I’ve never seen it before, the art style and tone of the soundtrack are endemic to the late 90s and remind me of the animation from my childhood. The message is also wonderfully nuanced, focusing less on Humanity’s responsibility for the natural world but rather a reconciliation between the ambition of humanity and the life of our world through respect and veneration of that which we’re dependent on to survive. I love the world so much; I think one of this film’s pinnacle achievements is conveying the impression of a deep living world with relatively little worldbuilding. Just watch it aight, everyone needs to watch it. Fucking Incredible.

20/1/2021: The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (rewatch)

Very Fun. Powerful nostalgia, I think I saw this literally hundreds of times as a child, may have had the whole thing memorised, and have always been a huge fan of the SpongeBob series. Even despite that I think there’s a lot of quality here. Pretty much every aspect of the film is enjoyable and well done, even if I think the moments featuring real people are kind of awkward. The gags and humour mostly hold up but I don’t think they have aged so well as the original run of the series, but there’s not much as can live up to that standard. Has a little to say about being a goofball, but ultimately its all about the gags for me with this one.

21/1/2021: Nausicaa: Valley of The Wind

Magnificent. Meaningfully very similar to Princess Mononoke, not quite as good, but still very worthwhile. I really like the mid-century sci fi vibe going on here and think the worldbuilding is excellent, though some of the expository dialogue is a little clumsy. I imagine there’s a little bit of nuance lost in the dub but cannot be certain as I don’t understand Japanese. That said, the voice acting is generally good. The art is magnificent, as it is wont to be in Studio Ghibli films; or in this case the proto-studio-Ghibli-film. That every culture has its distinct style is one of my favourite things, amongst which rank the Ohmu, Nausicaas glider and most of all Teto. Look at his little tongue! Most of all I love the ecosystem that arises from the polluted earth, how the earth cleans itself, it is a spectacular thought. I have an interesting thought about the soundtrack, specifically during actions sequences. The musical quality is good, especially the main theme, but there are issues with the editing of the action sequences’ music which intrigue me. Because the edit is always jarring and I don’t think the style of music necessarily fits the film; but I think it is a technical limitation, that contemporary audio systems were not necessarily able to apply the soundtrack in a less jarring manner. Just an interesting thought I had and I may look into the history of sound software etc. to see if that’s right. I think it is a beautiful work and well worth watching, I enjoyed it greatly.

23/1/2021: Howl’s Moving Castle

Good. Far and away less impactful than Mononoke and Nausicaa but still very good. Standard Ghibli points: Its beautiful, well animated and full of character. I find all the lead characters quite charming and well performed; it is set in a very interesting world with lots of interesting quirks and cool magic. Further it is powerfully meaningful, with a clear statement on confidence and empowerment. There’s just something about this one where the vibe is slightly off and I could not fully explain why. It feels disjointed, as though all the parts of the world are not fully connected. I feel like if you were to list the plot points in order some would be labelled “??????? Make it happen” as some events and conclusions are reached without purpose or motivation. Only some though and I’m not trying to seriously say it doesn’t make sense that’s just how I feel in post. I enjoyed it but I feel like I don’t fully understand this one.

24/1/2021: Spirited Away

Beautiful. This one I think is the best showcase of Ghibli’s style: the art is beautiful; the water is viscous and the spirits are fantastically grotesque. There’s a vibrant world shown here with a lot of charming characters and expressive animation which I think creates the most visually stunning of the Ghibli films that I’ve seen so far, though I fear I’m a bit basic and unsophisticated as I still prefer what I recognise as more traditional fantasy and sci-fi worlds like Mononoke and Nausicaa. I feel the story is also a well nuanced coming of age tale as it balances between relying on your friends and standing up for yourself. I also really like Yubaba or more generally how antagonism is handled throughout this movie; and to an extent in the broader Ghibli canon. Rather than create comically evil villains who exist purely to do bad these features all showcase antagonists with genuine sensible motivations driving their action and the only thing defining them as antagonists is the framing and perspective. On that point you could argue that Yubaba is the closest to a genuine villain but I think the materialist-critical aspects are more of an aside than a genuine statement, as appreciable as they are.

[borisbubbles]

25. PORTUGAL

Elisa - “Medo de sentir”

We’ve finally crossed over into the “I like this” territory :-) Let’s celebrate by booting another ballad ^_^

Song Analysis

This will be short and sweet though, since there isn’t much to say. “Medo de sentir” basically the Marie Myriam of its national final: It is a cromulent ballad that did nothing wrong and is solidly good, but not great in all the relevant areas (vocals, composition, staging). 

I mean,

Even so, Elisa gave me a few small nuggets that warmed me to her, serving DRAMAFACE in the FdC Semi

and LOOKS in the Finale: 

Peach puffy sleeves that rival Leonor Andrade’s legendary shoulder pads as a fashion statement <3 (honestly, this is pretty subdued for FdC fashion even? Hold on until I get talk about Felipe in the NF Corner) 

Honestly, you may wonder why I like this more than “Répondez-moi”, but I don’t really have a reason  - unless you’re willing to accept “Medo de sentir is underrated, is performed by a Weird Indie Girl and is from a criminally overlooked Eurovision country” as valid argumentations. Oh and while I only *very* mildly like Elisa, it is a decision I made myself, completely free of the social pressure I feel whenever Gjon, or heaven forbid, Roxen or Diodato, pop up. 

Furthermore, the fact that I still like Elisa even after she won her NF also speaks greatly in her favour. I’m not sure if you were aware of how good FdC was this year? Well, sit down because you are about to witness it!

NF Corner

Remember how old Eesti Laul’s neck was snapped and its corpse was urinated on by the shit Estonians? Remember how the quirky indie weirdo entries had to find a safe haven elsewhere in Europe? The Portugese hallmark traits of “Not Giving A Fuck”, “Doing Our Own Thing No Matter What” and “What Do You Mean This Isn’t A Vimeo Showreel?” allowed for Festival da Canção to absorb Eesti Laul’s broken spirit and channel it from every (Ley-La-)Ley-Line.

and since this is the first *GREAT* 2020 NF I am covering, I will do HONORABLE MENTIONS before I actually review my four choices :o

Dubio - “Ceguiera”: Hamburglar-looking goddess <3333

MEERA - “Copo de gin”: Pure EL-style EDM *and* it’s about drinking gin, needless to say this song is basically *my anthem*.  Jimmy P - “Abensonhado”: Rap rarely is my thing, let alone three minutes of it non-stop. Having said that, this is genuine and dramatic and Jimmy is flanked by a GOSPEL CHOIR (dressed in chasubles!!!) who support him in ENGLISH... I am not made of stone.  JJaZZ - “Agora”: Totally slept on this weird indie anthem, but then they showed up looking like this:

and yes, it was even funnier in motion (sadly gif’ing rights are reserved to the Elite 4 soz) Elisa Rodrigues - “Não voltes mais”: a jolly tropical ballad in a genre I recognize but cannot name (some sort of pimba fado jazz? Does this work?) and was incomprehensibly hated by the Portuguese? Will I ever understand how this country operates? Probably never. Kady - “Diz so”: another pimba fado jazz sort of thing? My friend André (who is from Brazil) tells me it’s actively parodying Brazillian counterculture and leftist stereotypes which is such a random quirk to put in a Portuguese music comp <3

And before we move on, I’ll chuck in a very speclal DISHONORABLE mention for our good friends Blasted Mechanism.😈 I actually forgot to do my jury duties for ESCUnited here, so I’ll just let James (the person with the best taste on our team, including yours truly) do it for me: 

Fucking *TRUTH*. “Rebellion’”s problem  has always been a lack of motherfucking balls. Sure, these middle-aged steampunkers attempt to implement a genre shift between indie rock and fucking ORCHESTRAL METAL/HIP HOP and make it so underwhelming and pathetic? People blame the live, and yes it was *bad* (forever cackling at “REBELGIUM” tho), but it was the studio that failed to deliver on the promises it made.  It always surprises me when people (Sean and Roy I AM coming for you) slam "Verona” for being a “fanwank” and then fall for a Rebellion which is basically a fanwank for heterosexual snobs. #ShotsFired. 

Now, as for the actual Boris faves, LET US START WITH A LIBERAL DOSE OF ASKEW CUBISM

Judas - “Cubismo Enviesado” 

VÊS OU NÃO?  VÊS OU NÃO?  VÊS OU NÃO?  VÊS OU NÃO?  VÊS OU NÃO?   

VÊS OU NÃO?  VÊS OU NÃO?  VÊS OU NÃO?  VÊS OU NÃO?  VÊS OU NÃO?  

VÊS OU NÃO?  VÊS OU NÃO?  VÊS OU NÃO?  VÊS OU NÃO?  VÊS OU NÃO?   

VÊS OU NÃO?  VÊS OU NÃO?  VÊS OU NÃO?  VÊS OU NÃO?  VÊS OU NÃO?  

 WHAT A FUCKING SPANDEX CATASTROPHE. “Cubismo enviesado” is a horrible song, the choreography looks like it had been conjured up during a particularly drunk night of bedroom karaoke and Judas can’t hold a tune for the life of him. The lyrics don’t even make sense in Portuguese <33333 It is an art school project gone disastrously wrong. NEEDLESS TO SAY, I AM OBSESSED.😍

Filipe Sambado - “Gerbera Amarelo do Sul”

That look

The regal panache

Those... leather shorts?

IT IS SO QUEER I LOVES IT. As with Cubismo, I am fucking OBSESSED. However, unlike Cubismo, “Gerbera amarela do sul” is *legitimately* great, lol. In addition to having a KICK-ASS fado rhythm and the off-the-charts visual components (the jewellery! the hats! the throne! the hand choreography!), the lyrics are highly intelligent poetry geared at dismantling upper class snobism.😍 Rare to find an entry that kicks ass on SO MANY levels. Even harder to see it lose to Elisa Myriam - but I’m not sad it lost because, you know, it would have befallen the same fate as a “Telemóveis”. At least his existence makes the memory-holing of Achille Lauro’s ICONIC Virgin Queen Cosplay so much easier to stomach. 

Throes & The Shine - “Movimiento”

I mean, entries that open like THIS: 

are instantly iconic, ngl. The best FdC entries offer a great triple of great looks, unplugged stubborn artistry and fun quirky rhythmes. Throes + The Shine pass this with flying colours and I mean, THOSE sunglasses alone yank up the laugh-out-laugh factor to astronomical levels. add in a hilarious choreography, sound effects that seemingly imitate duck mating noises and three very attractive men (in 2020! the concept!) and it’s an instant fave right there. 

AND THEN MADE THEIR ENTRY EVEN BETTER BY ADDING MIDNIGHT GOLD/JOWST EFFECTS TO THEIR STAGING. 😍😍😍😍

MANCHAS DE LAMA NA SUA PELE  

HEROES. 😍😍😍

and of course, this wouldn’t be a 2020 NF without an obvious runaway fave losing at the last minute: 

Bárbara Tinoco - “Passe-partout”

SHE IS TINY <3333:

She’s like a human bonsai... or a personal attack chincilla.

Okay, so Portugal were *THIS close* to out-France’ing the French with this sassy Zazballad, served with a generous dollop of parisian accordion and stank reaction shots.

Yet another entry that shamelessly uses an attractive man as a boytoy prop <333 For a brief moment, Bàrbara and Tiago establish themselves as a pair of lovestruck La La Land idiots, gearing themselves towards the EPIC moment where she will dump him... and then this happens before the first chorus:

Barbara opens up a can of dancer carbs and it completely fucks up her no-bullshit keto diet. 

Those dancers man. They aren’t a *bad* addition in itself, but if your thing is “romance ballad but *plot twist* it’s actually an end of romance ballad get lost loser” do not burn the clou within the first minute of the performance to a group of dancers who don’t even dance *along with the beat of your song*. UGH.

(and also, more devastatingly, the reduce tiaGOD’s airtime how dare they grrr)

Fortunately though, I have learned to appreciate the wrecktitude of it all because it caused one of the funniest downfall narratives in recent ESC history. The Portuguese were, of course, foaming at the mouth with all the decisions Bárbara had made (not even for the points I raised, necessarily?) and Bárbara was having none of it. It went kinda like this

Juries: EWWW DANCERS AND CHOREOGRAPHY YOU ARE RAPING YOUR OWN SONG YOU PHILISTINE WHORE. Bárbara: 

Juries: WOW WHAT *ARROGANCE*!! YOU THINK YOU CAN WIN BUT BOY DO WE HAVE NEWS FOR YOU :-) 

and lo hand behold, the finale rolls on and Tinoco’s dancers are still there, and are even *MORE* present than they were in the semi (but also in sync with the beat) and Bárbara gets promptly jurydunked into third place. 😍 Even though she has the *ONLY* song in FdC that could have qualified in its semifinal. 😍  A woman who stands three apples tall trolling an entire nation and juries because she knew she had gold in her hands and then getting rigged out of the easiest nf victory out of pure SPITE 😍  WHAT AN ARC. 😍

Portugal 2020 vs Portugal 2021

Elisa probably would not have qualified. I’m not sure how popular of an opinion this is, but I prefer the semifinal performance of “Medo de sentir” and that wasn’t the staging they were going for. Not many people seemed to care either way, and that’s usually the death sentence for Portugal. 

Elisa won’t be back for 2021 or whenever Eurovision is rebooted. :sigh: Fuck you, Coronavirus. 

Freaky! Friday! Factor!

See: NF Corner:

Score: 4 Senhits out of 5. 

[fortunesfavours]

My Take On The Supernatural Ending and What’s Happened so Far

Note: I am not exactly part of this fandom. I’ve only begun to watch this show recently but I have some opinions that I want to get out there.

The driving force of me making this post is this twitter thread. If you don’t want to watch the video, here’s how Misha recaps in the replys.

Continued under the cut

MISHA’S TWEET

“There was no conspiracy within the network, staff, or cast of #SPN to minimize or erase representation from the narrative & there was no alternate ending to 15.18. Dean was always too stunned in the moment to reply. (Apparently a rogue translator penned their own dialogue.)

Also, in my opinion Cas doesn't play into the "bury your gays" trope. His declaration of love saves Dean, enabling Sam & Dean to save all of humanity. And Cas doesn’t die! He actually goes on to rebuild heaven!

Was the show perfect? No. Could Cas’ departure have had more resonance in the final episodes? Sure. But I’m confident you guys can sort that part out as your writing, art, and imaginations play the story out past the last frames we filmed.

I’m proud to have spent more than a decade of my life telling a story where good consistently triumphs over evil...

And I’m especially proud that my character’s parting message was, “expressing your true self, letting yourself love who you truly want to love, openly & honestly, can literally save the world… For in the end, good things do happen — & they’re worth fighting for.” I love you all.

ANALYSIS

Now, there’s a lot to unpack here. I’ll go through each reply. I am going to take Misha’s word and not say that he’s lying or covering things up. Obviously, if he takes this statement back or something else comes out I’ll update this post.

I personally don’t think there was a conspiracy. I did, yes, but this changed my mind. I personally tend to believe conspiracies like this up until we have actual statements against it. Let’s break the first reply down:

“There was no conspiracy within the network, staff, or cast of #SPN to minimize or erase representation from the narrative”: The actors, including Misha and most likely Jared and Jensen were not in on any conspiracy to eliminate Dean and Cas’ relationship (representation of two men in love). As far as we know, none of the staff or network was in on anything either. At this moment, I will assume that the ending we saw was the ending that was written pre-Covid. Now, this doesn’t align with the hints about there being a different ending without Covid, but I will, for now, chalk that up to our fanbase being itself and a clumsy attempt from the CW to save face with a pissed-off fandom.

“& there was no alternate ending to 15.18. Dean was always too stunned in the moment to reply. (Apparently a rogue translator penned their own dialogue.)” I believe him, guys. It makes sense for Dean to be stunned. We know Dean loves him back. We have 15 years of Dean loving him back. I’ll get into why I would have liked a different ending, but not yet. I have no opinion on the rogue translator. We’re some weird fans.

“Also, in my opinion Cas doesn't play into the "bury your gays" trope. His declaration of love saves Dean, enabling Sam & Dean to save all of humanity. And Cas doesn’t die! He actually goes on to rebuild heaven!” Now, this is where I partially disagree with Misha. It does play into “bury your gays” because Cas is immediately killed and we don’t see him for the rest of the show. That seems pretty “bury your gays” to me. However, everything else he says about him is true! Cas is a brilliant character and Misha is a brilliant actor. He’s trying to please everyone, but he can’t. We shouldn’t be hating or attacking at all, though. He is a human being who has feelings, and we can’t forget that. He is trying his best, and that’s all we as a fandom can ask for.

“Was the show perfect? No. Could Cas’ departure have had more resonance in the final episodes? Sure. But I’m confident you guys can sort that part out as your writing, art, and imaginations play the story out past the last frames we filmed.” To me, this is a reminder that Misha didn’t control what happened, and he acknowledges that the ending was far from perfect. He clearly wants us to take these characters we so love and keep the fandom alive. I, for one, intend on continuing to be an active part of this fandom I’m quickly falling into. The ending was not what we wanted, and not what he wanted, but if he says he’s proud, I’m just satisfied being happy for him.

“I’m proud to have spent more than a decade of my life telling a story where good consistently triumphs over evil...And I’m especially proud that my character’s parting message was, “expressing your true self, letting yourself love who you truly want to love, openly & honestly, can literally save the world… For in the end, good things do happen — & they’re worth fighting for.” I love you all.” This simply backs up what I truly believe: Castiel is an amazing character, and Misha is a genuinely well-intentioned, kind person.

SUMMARY OF MY OPINION ON THE ENDING:

It was bad. Other people have gone into far more and better detail as to why, but in summary:

It kills the lore

It ruins 15 years of character development, mostly for Dean

It plays into homophobic and sexist tropes (bury your gays, blurry wife)

Castiel deserved to be seen as who he truly was, Dean deserved a chance at a free life, Sam deserved not to mourn the rest of his life.

MY FINAL THOUGHTS:

Deancas/Destiel is canon. Nothing can change me on that. Supernatural has many, many faults, most of which I am not well-educated enough to address. However, the sheer joy and friendship it has brought to so many of us is where we can truly find its worth. The actors and fandom are what makes this show great, and I’m so thankful to be able to contribute to it. I hope this fandom continues to exist for many years to come. The ending was bad, in my opinion, but our fanworks are meant to exist, encouraged by the actors. There’s more story to tell, and its on us now.

Thank you for clowning with me.

[bojokehorseman]

The Big BJ Meta

Part One: Analysis of Seasons 1 - 5

So Bojack is a show that is as much about morality and accountability as it is about dealing with existential loneliness and trauma. And bc Boj season six is the first part of an accumulation of a six season journey, we need to recap a little.

[major triggers for alcohol, drugs, parental abuse, sexual abuse and physical abuse]

Season 1 introduces us to this dissatisfied, overly-privileged, cynical narcissist. Boj, in my opinion, is prototypical of literally any male art teacher: a self-proclaimed worldly artist who’s given up on his dreams and tends to take it out on everyone else & self destruct despite his occasional moments of genuine wit. We briefly explore his neglectful childhood and his dysfunctional influence on his TV daughter, Sarah Lynn, that continues to present day.

Diane’s book—which, inexplicably, is clearly not written as a ghostwritten autobio but maybe this breach in contract is bc the penguin editor is so desperate—anyways, boj’s strong negativity to Diane’s book represents not only his self hatred but his inability to accept the way he’s perceived by others. He wants to disassociate from the bad parts of his personality as to avoid their consequences and continue the cycle anew. When Bojack asks Diane if he’s a good person “deep down”, Diane tells him he can only be a good person by doing good things. Looking back at the relationships he’s sabotaged: Herb, Todd, Diane, even Sarah Lynn, this depresses him. However, his tell-all book and his negative worldview are what get him his dream role. The season ends with him signing an autograph at the planetarium, subsequent to watching old Horsin Around DVDs. I suspect he visited the planetarium in an attempt to reconnect w Sarah Lynn (conscious or otherwise), meanwhile the autograph signifies that on a superficial level, he’s on top of the world.

Boj season 2 explores how he tries to “cure” his depression by pushing down his negative feelings and replacing them with new goals, new furniture, new podcasts. But as Kelsey Jennings says, people get stuck in a loop of arrested development when their emotional growth goes unchallenged, exemplified by the fact that Boj finds himself dating the one and only woman on Earth who’s mentally stuck in the eighties due to a twenty-year coma. This aggressive positivity to the point of delusion shows up especially when Bojack is unable to act out serious scenes in secretariat and is more comically exemplified in Princess Carolyn’s relationship to a ten year old in a trench coat.

Boj’s self-help attitude subsides when he receives a call from his emotionally vaulted mother and Herb dies of a peanut allergy. With the realisation that his dream job hasn’t fulfilled him, he seeks meaning in his old crush Charlotte who was once Herb’s beard. The reality that Charlotte’s settled down with a family in New Mexico, thus crushing his domestic fantasy of them living in a cottage in mane, spurs him further into escapism and destructive tendencies. He takes adavange of Charlotte’s teenaged daughter, having displaced his feelings toward Charlotte onto Penny. (Themes of sexual assault are also explored in the Hanky After Dark B plot.) Charlotte kicks him out and Bojack tries to mend his relationship with Todd by rescuing him from Scientologists an improv cult. Bojack then renames the Bojack Horseman Orphanage (funded by his horsin around money) in honour of Herb. The Jogging Baboon tells him, ‘Every day it gets easier. But you gotta do it everyday. That’s the hard part. But it gets easier.’ Despite his inappropriate bender with Penny, Bojack ends the season with small efforts to become a better person, through action rather than superficial notions of “deep down” or self help.

In s3, Boj spends the season promoting a movie he wasn’t actually in. During the award winning silent episode which makes the most use out of the series’ drowning metaphor (water as depression; swimming as the acceptance of accountability and the small daily acts that connect you with people and make life bearable), Bojack’s failed attempt to reconcile with Kelsey for getting her fired leads him instead into rescuing a baby seahorse separated from their father. Boj, however still has not found a sense of meaning in his life as he admits to Jill Pill that he wants to make work that “connects with people” and “lasts” and hopes that an Oscar win will afford him the legacy he craves. Bojack further sabotages his relationship with Todd when he sleeps w Todd’s high school sweetheart, Emily (notably after he’s sabotaged then saved a lesbian wedding). Shenanigans lead him to reminisce with Princess Carolyn, admitting that he loves her but ultimately refusing to be her client. Bojack loses his Oscar then spirals back into yet another season finale depressive episode, once more with Sarah Lynn. After Sarah Lynn dies, Bojack goes along with Ethan’s idea of a spinoff of Horsin Around but eventually leaves, scared he’ll recreate his destructive tendencies with (and possibly kill) his child actor co-star. After Todd burns their bridge, Boj is aimlessly driving his Tesla at suicidal speeds until he notices a group of horses racing in the desert, moved by the authenticity of what Secretariat merely imitates.

Season 4 has Bojack try to reconcile his mother’s trauma with the abuse she made him suffer all while Beatrice isn’t lucid enough to be cognitively present. Hollyhock, as his potential daughter, is symbolically aligned with Penny and Sarah Lynn: young women who faced the consequences of Bojack’s toxicity. This season’s twist, however, introduces the idea that Bojack is a part of a cycle of abuse. Hollyhock is his sister, conceived bc of his father’s affair with the maid. Her abandonment at birth isn’t Bojacks’s fault but rather Butterscotch’s infidelity and Beatrice’s obsession with class and appearances (which is admittedly a v pragmatic move in her point of view). Beatrice’s trauma w food disorder explains her abusive behaviour towards Hollyhock who herself becomes traumatised and physically ill from the diet pills Beatrice hid in Holly’s smoothies. Bojack finds hope in Hollyhock who stands as evidence that his legacy of trauma and abuse isn’t inherent, Hollyhock, however has to deal with the trauma of being secretly drugged.

Season five more explicitly explores themes of sexual abuse, previously only briefly touched upon with Penny and Hank’s characters. Bojack stars as a jaded street smart detective, an uncanny charicature of his own personality. This season has Bojack try in earnest to be sober. In Free Churro, another award winning experimental episode, Bojack nihilistically reflects on his relationship with his mother. With her death, all of his abusers will have gone to the other side, leaving him with the responsibility of continuing or abolishing the abuse cycle. When Boj develops an addiction to painkillers, he spirals down an addiction hole that compromises his relationship w co-star Gina and even his relationship to reality. Bojack physically assaults her onset. Gina decides not to go public to further her career. Diane discovers Bojack’s history with Penny and writes it into the story of Bojack’s show before confronting him about it directly at the premiere. Bojack admits to Diane that he feels victimised by the guilt his abuse causes him, signaling that Boj is still in denial and unable to accept the consequences of his actions. (“Fun” fact Boj hints at what he did to Sharona in this scene) Bojack later consfesses to Diane that he thinks he’s a bad person while Diane accuses him of using black and white morality to avoid his own sense of responsibility because there’s “no such thing as bad people” only “bad actions”. Diane decides that Bojack is a bad influence for her, Bojack admits he doesn’t know how to take responsibility for himself and Diane drives him to rehab.

TL ; DR

Season one was about accepting the dissonance between your self perception and your actions.

Season two asserts that trying to escape from yourself or finding purpose in superficial goals that aren’t oriented toward connection w others is futile. Meaning comes from bridging the gap through small acts of (empathetic) honesty and kindness, as The Jogging Baboon advises.

In season three, Boj tries but is not ultimately able to come to terms with the people he’s hurt, namely Sarah Lynn and Penny. The guilt consumes him and he copes once more through escapism and self-destruction until an epiphany in the form of running horses makes him realise what his life might look like if he was honest with himself.

Season four explores Bojack’s actions in the context of his childhood trauma as well as the trauma of his own abusers: his mother. His sister represents a fallacy in his fatalistic notion that all Horseman dna is toxic and offers him hope.

Season five however comes with the confession that Bojack doesn’t know how to properly take responsibility for his actions, as a celebrity he’s never truly held accountable and is enabled to continue to indulge in escapism and denial. This season marks the worst thing that he’s ever done on screen: choke his co-star. Second to that is how he enabled Sarah Lynn’s addiction, slept w her, and neglected her as her father figure. Finally Bojack tried to sleep with his crush’s seventeen year old daughter after getting her drunk at her own prom. All of which are brought up again in season five but almost never mentioned in season six (Part 1) outside the very beginning and very end. Diane takes Bojack to rehab as his first step toward true self-awareness.

Part Two: here

[perish-the-creator]

Ignore If You Want

I've been obsessed about the idea of suicide lately. The multitude of ways to go about doing it and what those ways represent.

I was listening to Bo En Pale Machine album and the thoughts came to mind. The fact of suicide can reveal a lot about a person to me.

For instance, a common form is to walk into police stations with a weapon, hoping the police are impulsive and shoot. I recalled that again when rereading the Outsiders in which Dally purposely robs a store and gets himself killed by the police.

There are other ways too, but often I think about how shoes are linked too. In Japan I've heard of people leaving shoes on top of buildings before jumping. I was always intrigued by that. Why leave the shoes? Are they reminders? Warnings?

No, again, I am not contemplating suicide. It's just a weird thing that I analysis as is mental disorders and trauma.

It's something people don't really talk about which is a shame. Just because someone mentions it doesn't mean they're gonna do it. Or maybe I'm just crazy.

More than likely the latter. I'm invested in slightly tragic stuff. Maybe it is because I myself am a tragic figure. I rarely see my own light even after people tell me how bright it is. There's this constant voice saying I'm nothing, and while it's gotten dull it has gotten deeper and more booming.

I try to distract myself from it. Porn mostly. Sex is animalistic and natural. Not much thought to it. It allows one to go blank even if just for a few minutes.

I distract too via harming characters I like. The negative on negative cancel each other out. If I get comments saying this story is bad, or it sucks, or it makes them uncomfortable than I'm not upset. That's the point. You're not supposed to like this traumatic fic.

There's this pull of wanting approval from peers and older figures. Hurts more when a person I genuinely liked blocks me than someone I despise. I seek validation because it's human and I can't validate myself. I grew up believing that feeling good about myself and my achievements were selfish and that I HAVE to feel bad and not admit I'm good. I can't say I'm a good writer, or artist, or that I'm attractive. I'm always tell myself I'm being annoying. That my voice is like nails on a chalk board. That my art and writing is the worst.

I never got rid of those thoughts. And I don't think I ever will.

I've grown addicted to beating myself up. I can't accept myself as anything but a horrible person who people tolerate. I feel bad for any community I fall into. I'm the curse people get worried about. I'm the reason fandoms die. And I try to accept that. I accept that everyone's smiles are temporary. That my friends are my friends out of pity. I'm not funny. I'm not smart or witty. I'm not worthy enough for my girlfriend.

I've become scared to talk to my girlfriend. I don't know what to say. I feel guilty for saying I love you so often. It's like I'm diluting the word. If she ever left me I don't know. But I'd understand. I want us to talk but I find myself unable to find the right words. I trust her, but I wouldn't blame her if the distance is too much and someone right there can love her better than me.

I broke off many friendships in the last few weeks. Er, atleast the friendship I valued the most. I found new friends/ actually made an effort to contact people I once thought didn't like me and while in comparison I am happy, there's still this numbness.

All in all, I find myself in this cycle. A cycle that I've been stuck in for years. While yes, I have imagined suicide before, I'm too much of a coward to do it or even attempt it. I find myself not wanting to eat at all to trying to swallow anything in sight. I'm envious and jealous and hateful; to myself and to the world.

Sometimes I do wonder how good it might be if I could just, disappear. Not death, no, just for a day exist outside reality and watch how much happier people would be.

But...if you actually read all this...thanks. Don't worry, I'm not gonna kill myself, I promise.