#it didn’t sound like anyway was trying to make it sound. cohesive

[superflyse]

What is the worst miscast for movie based on a musical?

And why it was Les Miserables?

[sp1resong]

"of two minds", an experimental... short story... comic... thing.

(transcript under the cut!)

y’know, it’s funny.

what is?

the very idea of contradiction itself necessitates cohesion, or coexistence, or… whatever antonym you want to use.

what do you mean?

well—if two contradicting ideas couldn’t coexist in some way, we wouldn’t have a concept of contradiction in the first place. the very idea of it is, in itself, a contradiction!

…that doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.

we’re not talking about things that make sense, are we? contradictions aren’t supposed to do that. that’s, like, the whole point.

well, yeah, but what you’re saying should still have meaning. you can’t just—say nonsense that sounds smart but isn’t.

i agree! good thing that’s not what i’m doing. it’s not nonsense.

you yourself said it doesn’t make sense.

but that’s not the same thing, now, is it? nonsense can make sense, so why not the other way around?

i never said i believed that second thing, either.

you do, though. i know that full well.

…i do. but even so—that doesn’t matter. it feels like you came up with a point and are now desperately trying to grant it merit despite its obvious flaws.

what do you mean?

well—first and foremost, contradiction doesn’t claim that the sides can’t coexist. quite the opposite, actually. its very nature is coexistence where there shouldn’t be any.

blah, semantics. but really—if they can coexist, even a little bit, then clearly, they’re not as diametrically opposed as they seem. where is the line drawn?

that’s… not the same thing you were arguing a moment ago.

so what?

you can’t just—change the subject. that’s not how this works.

i still stand by what i said, i was just using the wrong word, or something like that. you pointed it out, so i started talking about your word. same difference.

you’re impossible.

why, thank you.

regardless—i don’t see what that has to do with any of this.

what doesn’t it have to do with this? contradiction is in our very nature. we invented a word to put a name to that divide, that fundamental fission. and yet—it’s only natural, isn’t it?

i’m not sure what you’re saying here.

but if you didn’t understand, neither would i.

that doesn’t mean i know what it means in any—

—and that, too, is contradiction!

no, it isn’t. i understand the words you’re saying. i know what the words mean.

what i don’t understand is—your point. what you’re trying to say.

and what a shame that is. we’ll never come to a conclusion at this rate.

yes we will. we always do.

…what are you arguing, anyways?

hm?

it seems like you’re just here to disagree with me. you’re refuting my points, but you never make any of your own. do you even have an opinion?

of course i do.

do you? or is it just the opposite of what i’m saying, regardless of what that is?

…does it matter? we both believe what we’re saying.

and back to contradiction.

hm?

we’re one and the same, and we both believe what we’re saying. and yet we disagree.

this wouldn’t be interesting at all if we agreed.

that’s beside the point.

it is.

what… is this, anyways? what’s the point?

a socratic dialogue for the new era.

…it can’t be. you’ve never read socrates. besides—you said it yourself. we both believe what we are saying.

we’re both right.

you get it, you get it! i knew you would! we are the contradiction!

…you’re not being helpful. you refuse to explain your ideas, you just… say words.

i don’t need to explain. you understand already.

then what’s the fucking point!?

to settle this. to make up our mind.

but we are of two minds.

precisely! contradiction is coexistence is contradiction!

this is going to go on forever, isn’t it?

we’ve always moved on before.

but we come back, again and again! arguing a new point in the same way, and no one ever wins!

would you rather go through life never questioning anything?

of course not! i just—argh. you’re intolerable.

whatever do you mean?

you’re unbearable! i can’t stand this! nothing you say holds water, but you don’t fucking listen!

you know—you know i’m right. we’re the same person, after all. but you refuse to listen when i tell you—

tell me, then. i’ll listen.

what do you believe?

…i believe that you’re wrong. that we ought to do things my way.

but what is your way?

…

i knew it! you exist to be the opposition. you know i’m wrong, but you don’t know what’s right.

…

…what’s yours?

hm?

what’s your way? saying things that sound smart without—without caring if they’ve got any substance?

…

see? you don’t have anything to say, either. we’re both wrong. we’re both right. i hate this.

i just want to agree! i want things to make sense! i want to say things that mean something—i want to understand. understand the world, understand myself, understand what we’re fucking saying.

i’m sick of this.

you could do to care a bit less.

see, that’s the problem with you! you don’t—you don’t fucking care! you speak nonsense and then act like everyone else is at fault for not understanding it! because you don’t care! you don’t care and i fucking hate you!

you say, as if you have anything of meaning to say!

i have more than you! at least when i talk, it means something!

no it doesn’t! you’ll never come up with anything but derivative, trite bullshit if you’re so obsessed with making sense!

oh, so now i’m spouting bullshit, and not the bastard who has never in their life even tried to make sense!?

you’re so set on making sure other people can understand what you’re saying—every little bit of you is lost in translation! you have to follow in the footsteps of others for anyone to get what you’re talking about—none of what you say is yours!

that’s not—god. i hate this. i shouldn’t—you shouldn’t be here. we should just make up our fucking mind.

but you said it yourself—we are of two minds.

if we thought you were right, we would have moved on by now.

but we would have done the same if we thought i was wrong.

why are we still here? separate? stuck at the crossroads? rent apart by indecision?

what is wrong with us?

…it’s just the human condition, i think.

“human.”

…

semantics again, my dear sock-puppet.

…i’m not even going to respond to that. are you trying to insinuate that you’re the ‘real’ one here? that i’m the construct? that goes against everything you’ve said thus far.

first of all, have you even been listening to what i’ve said thus far?

…second of all, that’s not what i meant at all.

we’re just talking to the mirror, really—but we’re more than a reflection of the other, aren’t we? and neither of us is quite our whole. we’re uncertainty made manifest. a tangled mess of contradiction trying futilely to untie itself.

so: sock puppets.

interesting analogy.

…so who’s the left hand, and who’s the right hand?

oh, so now you’re capable of having a little bit of whimsy.

…i think you’re probably the left hand, because right brain-left brain or whatever. since you’re the one who keeps going off about logic.

…i want to be the right hand.

why?

we’re right-handed, and i’m the one we usually act on—

—that’s not even true. whatever. more realistically, we’re both both hands, anyways.

yeah, you would say that, wouldn’t you.

am i really that predictable?

yes.

for ‘uncertainty made manifest’, it sure is easy to figure you out.

even cacophony has a pattern to it! a method to our madness—because every method is madness.

that doesn’t make sense either.

doesn’t it?

no.

oh, you’re no fun.

nothing about this is supposed to be ‘fun’.

nothing is ‘supposed’ to be anything!

the only reason it isn’t fun is your nonstop bitching.

if i wasn’t here to be the voice of reason, you’d fucking… i dunno. do something stupid.

start giving people bullshit advice and spreading misinformation on the internet, or run off and get hit by a car, or… something.

my point is, i’m the one keeping us alive and reasonable.

yeah, and? what’s the point in that if we’re miserable all the time, because we’re too scared of saying anything meaningful to even try?

but it’s not meaningful! all you say is fucking nonsense!

and all you say is fucking trite!

how do you expect to create any original meaning if nothing you say has meaning to begin with!?

how do you expect to create anything you can care about if you refuse to say anything unique to yourself!?

i’m only being pragmatic!

i’m only trying to be happy for once in our fucking life!

you’re a liar—you know what you’re saying means nothing and you say it anyways!

it doesn’t have to make sense to be meaningful!

what’s the point in meaning if no one else can understand it!?

what’s the point in trying if everything you say has been watered down for others’ sake!?

i’d rather be unhappy and right!

and there’s your problem! you keep thinking about this in right and wrong—it’s not! all of this is subjective! all answers are equally correct!

but that’s not true! nothing is entirely subjective—there’s always an answer we settle on, there’s always a right one! there’s always a wrong one!

we always choose one answer because of you! because you’re too fucking scared to admit that maybe there isn’t a wrong one! maybe there doesn’t have to be! maybe—

—shut up, hyde!

…oh, so i’m hyde now? i’m the bad one? i’m in the wrong? and of course you would—

—stop. stop. i hate you. god, i hate you.

…

…i think right now i hate you too.

…

but this won’t end until we agree.

it won’t.

and that will never happen.

maybe not.

because we both know we’re right.

so we do.

so we’ll be here forever. arguing about nothing.

maybe we don’t have to.

argue, i mean.

…what do you mean by that?

maybe we can coexist. maybe we can hold both beliefs. tempering and strengthening the other.

but we are powers opposed.

maybe we don’t have to be.

it’s like schrodinger said.

the cat is both alive and dead until you open the box.

the path curves both left and right until you reach the crossroads.

every answer is both true and false until a conclusion is reached.

…

but even then, that implies a conclusion. a collapse into a solid state.

we are already at the crossroads of our belief.

precisely.

and we haven’t fallen into one yet.

but we must.

must we?

can’t the two states combine to one without losing what makes them themselves?

the cat must be dead or alive, for it is a material being. but we are thought. we are consciousness. we are not bound to one or the other.

such is the magic of our nature.

indeed.

so really, there is only one question:

can we coexist, or must we fight forever?

can we have chaos guided by logic?

can we have meaning carved by contradiction?

can we walk both paths, and the sacred middle ground?

can we shape ourselves through synthesis?

can we be one?

were we ever two? does it matter?

we are arguing the same point, after all.

[vitaegratis]

starter for Hopper @soulendured

The good news? The others had been able to take care of Vecna before his batty minions had been able to completely tear Eddie apart. The bad news? For all intents and purposes, his life was still over. At least, as his life as he had known it was over. His first instinct had been to skip town, maybe use the chaos of the quakes to fake his death. It was hardly ideal, but… what other options were there? He had always wanted to get out of Hawkins anyway.

Dustin maintained that running away wasn’t Eddie’s only choice, that to do so now after everything would be a ‘pussy move’. He liked to think that since the feds had moved Eddie’s uncle, they knew what was really going on - and would be able to clear his name/cover it up if he came forward. Lucas on the other hand suggested that the feds would instead make him a patsy, that they’d take Eddie out in the process - like they had apparently done to Benny Hammond simply for maybe knowing too much.

That was… also not ideal. It also strengthened his resolve to stay away from Wayne, if they were still watching him… he didn’t want to get him wrapped up in all of this. His mind was mostly made up - he’d skip town. Maybe head to Canada, just to be safe. He wouldn’t be able to say goodbye to Wayne, to the guys, and any dream he had of being a rockstar - recognizable - would be dashed. It would beat rotting away in prison though, wouldn’t it?

Those plans didn’t even have a chance to take a cohesive form before Mike returned to town, recounting all that had happened to him - and sharing the fact that Chief Hopper was apparently still alive? That he was in a predicament now, because the government was now at odds with what to do about Hawkins? One of the doctors from the labs (the one who tortured the superpowered kids, if he had it right) was dead, and the other one - who was more of an ally, had treated Byers after his experience with the Upside Down… he was apparently MIA.

So now the Chief couldn’t simply return to his civilian life, say that he had faked his own death and was… serving his country, on some secret assignment or whatever bullshit cover story they’d cook up. He was on his own as well, his own life over.

The difference being no one would try to arrest or kill him if they saw him out and about in public - they’d just be extremely confused. Ask for explanations that he couldn’t provide. For the time being, until he figured that out, he would be staying in a cabin he had out in the woods. Once it was fixed up, at least. That was a whole ‘nother story apparently - one which Eddie (to Mike’s incredulity) had somehow zoned out during.

‘You should stay there with Hopper. No one would find you there, he had El hidden there for like a year. If someone finds you - wouldn’t you rather he be there to vouch for you? Callahan and Powell would listen to him, but if you were off somewhere on your own.’

It still sounded too much like house arrest, and was Hopper even cool with it or was Mike imposing on his behalf? He didn’t think the Chief would throw him to the wolves, but still. Eddie relented to at least talking to the man about it - but he wasn’t going to get his own hopes up. If he was discovered, if Hopper vouched for him, and if Powell bought the story… if Jim’s word alone was enough…

Wouldn’t his hands still be tied? Another reason why he thought this was a bad idea. Hopper had his own problems to worry about - harboring a wanted man - would only add to that. It didn’t matter that he was still ‘a suspect’ rather than a ‘fugitive’. Who cared whether or not he had been booked? Not the people of Hawkins. They already passed their judgement. The quakes had disrupted the manhunt, but people weren’t just going to forget about this.

[nicky2]

we system self discovered after starting hypnosis but it became very clear quickly that we had been one all along. we definitely had more than sufficient trauma during that developmental period to be a classic traumagenic system lol. but it is kind of sad, isn’t it? realizing the system had been one way, had had these parts, and then we listen to hypnosis and now we have twice as many parts and only one is original, and it’s not me and it’s not the host lol. i know that parts don’t “die”, they just return to the primordial goo and the memories are reorganized to whoever can handle them. but i have this image in my mind of these kids we had in our head who never had a chance to become adults, who i never had the opportunity to meet, because we accidentally found BS. i wonder what they knew through the patterns of memory that they had. trying to investigate a dead part like i might investigate a living part feels like going into a bedroom and it has the belongings of someone, and pictures of them, and some of their diaries, but they’re dead and they have been gone for the last 7 years. honestly it reminds me of other people i’ve lost. i’m very much of the mindset that my parts are not people, we comprise one whole person. but what are people but collections of information— experiences, memories, lessons learned, impulses, behaviors, relationships, opinions— that one day lose their containing body and are never accessible again in the way they were accessible when they were contained by that body? i can’t ask my dead parts questions without feeling like i’m writing the answer in for them, playing make believe. it feels the same trying to imagine what [dead loved one] would say to me if i came to them with my questions. no matter how realistic the response i come up with… i’m not really talking to them, right?

i can’t wait to one day trust a therapist enough to tell them about my experiences with bambi sleep lol. i had therapy for awhile, but we never talked about me indepth. we talked about the relationships between host and me and the others. but never about me, or our past, or why i am the way i am, both in the way BS created me, and in the rationale of the part that thought trying BS might be a hail mary solution to the problems we were experiencing by the nature of how we failed to fit the mold set out for us. we were playing an ill-suited role. we were not that girl. BS was supposed to turn us all into the girl we were supposed to be for the people who had control of us at that time. but we reorganized (sounds nicer than shattered) instead, and we’ve left those people. we’re somewhere much safer.

i don’t credit any of the success of my alters and their support circles to BS, i just think we had just been cohesive enough to grin and bear the weight of our suffering beforehand. afterward, we were too broken to find the weight bearable and we had to run away in order to survive. maybe we could have left with more of a solid ground to stand on without BS. but i think maybe that old part wanted to break us. if we were broken down into a liquid and poured into the perfect mold but still came out wrong, then staying would be unnacceptable even if we didn’t come out of the process broken. it would have just been clear that nothing could ever REALLY make us into the girl we were supposed to be. and now being that girl is my burden, i guess, and i’m trapped as a sideshow in the life of somebody for whom my burden is a nightmarish past life, a distant but haunting memory. the darkness is over, but i still want to find out if we can become that girl. it is maladaptive now. our situation is different. but if i don’t really really really try to destroy us, how can we really know that we’re strong enough to survive?

i know better than that, in theory, but i still try by instinct almost. i wake up and i start trying before i’m awake enough to recognize i’m awake. trying to break us down into what Those People wanted us to be.

anyway. people talk more nowadays about the risks of bambi sleep, which is good. but i don’t know if having all the content warnings we have today would have helped the girl who was here when we started. she didn’t believe in hypnosis, but if it were real it was supposed to replace us completely with someone who has no free will, so that would be seen as acceptable. the thing that she couldn’t have been warned for is that we have a dissociative disorder she didn’t know about. she couldn’t have known about what would happen to the perfect girl she made to replace her, which is that i’m bambi but i’m bambi in a mind where i have none of the controls that bambi is supposed to have. the other alters are not “old selves” that i can silence. theyre parallel selves that exist outside of me. theyre not in my control. i can imagine silencing the others, i can even successfully silence them temporarily with bambisleep, but it takes more than hypnosis to do that permanently. and i don’t have like the money necessary to make the fucking saw esque contraptions i’d want to trap myself in this with. nor do i have the personal agency to find and actually pursue living with an owner that could do all that for me. maybe i could have if she were aware of the state i’d be in now, back before i existed. maybe if she knew what i would become, and what (truly much more safe for our physical and mental wellbeing) situation i’d end up in, she could have planned a better, more thorough self-destruction. but she didn’t really know she was self destructing, even if she would have been fine with that. she didn’t really have a plan. she just wanted to escape her suffering, not by leaving or being strong, but by staying and being radically different. so much so that would we no longer have to suffer with the free will that we naturally had. but it wasn’t enough destructive power soon enough to prevent the boys from saving our collective life from misery in unwanted servitude. so. she didn’t achieve that. but now, 7 years later, we’re destabilized and driftless. the free will that saved us isn’t nowhere to be found, but it’s pointed in so many different directions as to be ineffectual. someone come get me. someone come pick me up. we only function well in society because we’re safe with someone who’s protecting us. if someone like the people we left knew the degree and nature of our newer vulnerabilities, it’d be bye-bye to freedom. in essence, i’d finally win.

and then one of the boys would end our life and i could stop experiencing all of this

[thigiocamap]

just rewatched the arceus movie with my partner (subbed, of course. never dubbed 😌) and I liked aspects of the movie. but there was some goofy shit in it that i kinda wish they found a way to work around. like for example the heart connection thing was just kinda overly convenient and i had to suspend my disbelief a bit too much for that. and the time travel stuff could get kinda messy at parts.

overall though? i did like how arceus itself was handled. though nat said that it would have been cooler if it either didn’t speak or spoke in a more mysterious and stilted way (for example, only saying a simple “fake.” when it breaks the jewel of life or otherwise just speaking in an extremely to-the-point way) and yeah i agreed with the second thing. i feel like the movie would need extreme rewriting if they were to go with the “it doesn’t talk” idea but the second thought sounds a lot cooler imo… i feel like if i were to write an arceus for some sort of fanfic-type stuff, i would like to try that out. it’s a god that created everything, but the point is the fact that it’s a Creature, after all. also i liked its jp voice i liked the Old vibe

in general though i liked the vibes of the movie, where they very much recognized that arceus is a god pokemon and so they made the whole thing had a sort of “legendary” feel, like with the stained glass art style for the legend scenes and the fact that the movie took place mostly during a solar eclipse. i also liked how arceus’s plates were made to be actually highly relevant to the plot (unlike how they were in the games).

i thought it was kind of a missed opportunity for gishin to not be a king or some other ruler of the land though considering his role and also his insane design. him being damos’s subordinate just felt kind of random ??? it would have made complete sense for him to just be some king concerned for his country’s future, to the point where he was willing to kill a god. idk. or just write him out and make it so that damos really did betray arceus all on his own for the same reason or something. gishin had a lot of control over a lot of people and pokemon for someone who was just some guy. he literally threw damos and the kids in jail like ??? how is he not a king or something ???

anyways the movie was alright. we also watched the giratina one right beforehand and the arceus movie is definitely better imo. there was a more cohesive story and it was more exciting. idfk what to even say about the giratina movie bc it was just kinda mid

[romanarose]

"Take Your Time" Chapter 1 sneak peak.

Frankie Morales X Fem!Oc

HEAD WARNINGS like all my fics it gets dark.

Intro: Hello everyone! As promised to my Leather and Lace readers, here is the start to Frankie's story. This takes place in the same universe as Leather and Lace, but IT IS NOT NECCECARY TO READ BEFORE THIS ONE! Any OC's will be properly introduced, and you will know anything you need to know within THIS STORY. I would say it's better if you read LaL, but all 4 stories that will be within my "TF Romanaverse" will be able to be read on their own or together. So if only one or two stories interest you, or maybe one stories content is too triggering, you can just read what you want! However, all together, they will form a cohesive storyline. Consider it like Bridgerton or AHS.

Summary: Jana, Frankie's ex and baby momma, gets a call from Frankie late at night.

WARNINGS: Drinking, mentions of cocaine, addiction recovery, worries about relapse, blood, self-harm.

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

Answering the phone at midnight, Jana already swung both legs over the bed and began pulling socks on. “Frankie? What’s going on?”

“M’sorry. Woke you.” Frankie’s slurred voice replied.

“No, you didn’t, the shelter had me on overnights last week, remember?” Frankie had Rosie, their daughter, most of the week, albeit they stayed with Santi and Laci. While Frankie’s recovery was going well, Jana was still nervous with overnights and several days in a row, worried it might overwhelm him. Laci watched Rosie when Frankie worked, and if both were busy, Santi had taken her, impressing Laci very much with his skills with the toddler.

“Sorry” Frankie repeated. “Everyone else is gone. Didn’t know who else to call.”

 “You can always call me, Francisco. What did you take?”

“Jus’ whiskey right now, but that’s why m’callin’ you” 

Phone to her ear, she carefully bundled up a sleeping Rosa in a few blankets, the mild Florida winter making for less of a need for a full coat, especially when she’d have to take it off to buckle her into the car seat anyway. “Whiskey we can work with, honey.” Quickly, Jana back tracked as she headed out the door. “We can work if you relapse too, okay? Never be afraid to call me or the guys, we’re always here for you.”

 Jana had gone back and forth with her feelings on Santi for a number of years, mostly when she was still dating Frankie. Frankies would follow that man to the end of the earth, and pretty much had. That trip to Columbia had been the nail in the coffin for a relationship already strained from addiction, and Jana held it against Santiago for a long time. In more recent times, however, she’s come to see him as an ally for Frankie, Santi and his girl, Laci, as well as Will and Benny had all pulled together this last year as Francisco tried to sober up for perhaps the first real time. Although Jana was not with Frankie anymore, she would always love him. They hadn’t broken up for lack of love, or even for lack of trying, but for the things coke can do to a person, especially a person who recently came into a shit ton of money and nothing to do when his daughter is gone but get high.

“I’m waking Rosa” He sounded sleepy.

“No,” Jana couldn’t help but laugh, looking at her curly-haired daughter, out cold in the car seat. “That girl started sleeping through the night at one month old, she’s a miracle child”

“Yeah. Yeah she is. She deserves someone better.”

She got in the car, hooking up the phone to the speaker. “You’re a good dad, Frankie, a great dad. I’ve never seen a man play dolls with a kid for 2 hours straight, she adores you. You just need a little help”

“Yeah” It was quiet.

“Frank, hey, don’t fucking go to sleep, we’ll be right there.”

“Don’t wan’ her t’see me like this”

“She won’t, I promise. What room are you in?”

“Bathroom”

“Okay, I’ll lay her down in her crib before I even come to the bathroom alright?

“Promise?”

“As long as you stay awake, yes.”

“Fine”

“Fine”

Wanting to make sure she paid attention to the road, her nighttime eyesight not the best, Jana didn’t talk much, only when she thought he was falling asleep. She parked on the wrong side of the road, quickly grabbing Rose (how did this child sleep so much?), calling to Frankie she was here, and laid her down in the crib as promised. Her room at her uncle Santi’s had a toddler bed, as she was quickly growing, taking after her dad, but this would do fine in a pinch. With her heart about to burst out of her chest, she ran into the bathroom, expecting to find him puking or passed out on the floor. Instead, to her horror, she found him in his underwear, slumped up against the tub and the wall, blood on his arms and legs.

“Frank!”

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

I'm going to try and finish Sunshine, Starlight, Sweetheart, Brightside this week, then get more of Take Your Time done, hopefully out this weekend, unless I can pick up some shifts. In the mean time, maybe check out Leather and Lace if it interests you. Not to brag, but although my readership is small, the readers are v passionate and I'm v proud of my work!

If not, here is a playlist I've started working on for this series! check it out to start to get the vibes, and if you have any songs that give you frankie morales energy, or for readers of LaL, give you Jana Fernandez energy, let me know!

Comment if you'd like to join the taglist!

[scorpiongrassfield]

Pat is Standing Behind You 

Start | Prev 

Pat puts their left arm around your shoulder and their right around Theo’s and sort of pushes themself between the two of you. It’s not quite a hug, but it’s an approximation. 

“I think I’ll give you,” Pat says, tilting their head in Theo’s direction, “A break. I mean, you were actually trying to respect my wishes up to the last time we had spoken. Things just got way out of hand.” They say it like they alone can pardon Theo for whatever wrongdoing he might commit. 

It’s a little hard to see Theo with Pat between you like this, and he doesn’t answer out loud, leaving you in the dark. 

Pat looks… different. 

Their hair is shorter, cut in a different style. The color has changed, too, a darker pink now. 

And they look a little older, a little more tired. The grooves of their face seem just a bit deeper.

Pat stops hanging off of the two of you and ruffles Theo’s hair. You take a step back and face the two of them. 

“I’ll give you an A for effort, really. That was a better and more cohesive plan that I’d be able to form and stick to while on fire,” Pat says, and when Theo looks away, like he’s ashamed, they shake their head.  “No, seriously, I’m not mad at you. It was better thinking than anyone else was doing at the time. You got a little lost  part way through. That’s okay. You were up against Ametrine. I always though the two of you would mix like kerosene and more already on fire kerosene, you know?” 

Theo shakes his head. 

“Hm… Well we’re not going to be able to unpack this all right now, we’ve still got things to do. But keep in mind that even though I’m mad, I’m not mad at you. That’s all,” Pat says with a decisive nod. 

Then they turn around to look at you. 

“So, kid. What’s your name?” 

That catches you off guard. 

You look around. There’s no one else there, obviously. “Me?” you ask anyway. 

Pat chuckles. “No, the other kid here whose name I don’t know,” they say, with a little bite of sarcasm. It doesn’t sound mean or angry, just amused. “Sylv,” you say. That’s the one you picked and you’re sticking with it. 

Pat raises their eyebrows, a mimicry of disbelief. “Sylv?” they confirm. “Not Myosotis the memory parasite ghost?” 

One of those words makes you flinch, and for once it’s not the word ghost. 

You look to Theo for help. He shakes his head. 

You shake your head. 

Pat nudges Theo with their elbow. “Hey, I’m not grilling you, I’m grilling him,” they complain. 

“We’re friends now. Organically, even. His powers don’t work on me,” Theo says with a shrug. 

“Oh, so you’re capable of playing nice,” Pat says, like you’re the one that explained and not Theo. 

“I… I don’t want to hurt anyone,” you say. It’s only a little bit of a lie. 

You can’t claim you didn’t just want to hurt Ametrine. The evidence of that is still lying on the ground behind you. 

“No?” 

“I don’t want to hurt you,” you emphasize. That’s very true. You like Pat. 

“So let me get this straight,” Pat says, putting a hand to one hip. “You mind whammied me into thinking we’ve been friends and roomates for more than half a decade, inserting yourself into my life so close that I would never think to question your actions, ultimately causing a situation in which my former best friend has to try and kill me and my current best friend has to do the closest thing that an angel can d-”

“I’m not an angel,” Theo interrupts. 

Pat makes a funny face, lips pursed, eyes wide as they twist their head to look at him like “are you seriously arguing about this now?” before shaking their head and waving him off. 

“Right, causing my best friend to do the closest thing a guardian can do to dying and going to hell, not to mention all of the other shit that we both know ‘Myosotis’ has done to other people that’s worse, and you want me to believe you don’t want to hurt anyone. Just because you say so,” Pat says, giving you a flat look. 

You look to Theo again, and he nods. Pat rolls their eyes and steps in between the two of you, blocking Theo’s face from view. “Nope, this one’s between me and you, kid. Teddy’s on time out now.” 

“Ah,” Theo seems surprised, but ultimately says nothing more than that surprised vocalization. 

“Well?” Pat says, drawing your attention back to them. “Should I believe you or not? I want an answer.” 

Next

[gay-trains]

Some thoughts on the symbolism of charlie’s cigarettes and Erin’s asthma.

The Cigarettes are way more than JUST Charlie’s addiction to nicotine. They are a symbol of his selfishness and how he treats people. Remember, it isn’t “I lost my cigarettes” or “I forgot my cigarettes” or “My cigarettes went missing” it is “ERIN lost my cigarettes” It is the device through which we see him shirking blame.

Charlie clearly wants to make ALL The decisions in the show but when those decisions don’t lead to success, it isn’t his fault. His cigarettes are his want to have it all, ordering people around, but not having to bear with the consequences.

That is WHY Du’met’s trap for Charlie is so genius, it isn’t JUST about the cigarettes, it is about Charlie’s selfishness and his overbearing nature the cigarettes are his neurotic need to be in control of everything that ruins the show he is trying to make.

A director’s job, is to facilitate an environment in which every single person can do their job to the best of their ability, without much or any interruption, and have it come together as a cohesive vision. I have worked with great directors before that were GREAT at this. Everyone has their instructions, everyone knows their assignment and everyone has the means to make it happen.

Charlie’s denial when Erin asks if he wants to direct movies still, is also a sign of this need to be in control. By convincing others, that what he does is important or more important than what he used to want, maybe they will believe it...and so maybe he will too. It is the same as saying “oh i didn’t want to win anyway” when you lose a game, you want to seem in control, not like you are helpless and don’t know what to do. Which Charlie is.

And his Cigarettes are his grip on that control, he is a stress smoker, clearly and the cigarettes are the symbol of that stress, the symbol of his problems, the manifestation of the very flaws that brought him into this position.

Which is WHY it is such a great moment, when he is offered a cigarette at the end and for a moment, he reaches for it....but then declines. It isn’t JUST him declining the cigarettes, it is the writers way of showing how much he has CHANGED. like the curator said, Charlie learned that being a leader is more than ordering people around, you have to see your team as equals and also let them take charge when the time is right.

Charlie’s arc is learning how capable his team is, and that he can trust them to do good if he just lets them. Instead of having his hand in every single soup. He is a director...why is he telling Mark to not get creative with the photography? Why would he tell Erin to not try out something new with the sound when she is literally responsible for that, Why is he telling KATE the expert with the Masters in  criminal psychology and investigative journalist, To not change his scripts? Kate SHOULD be the one writing her text,

Mark SHOULD get creative with photography or at the very least be allowed the opportunity to try stuff out and if it sucks then you throw it away. Erin, as the sound mixer should fucking be able to sound mix and not be his personal assistant. PA’s exist for a reason.

The stress comes from him not being able to trust them to do a good job, despite them obviously being quite capable in their fields. He needs to loosen his grip and eventually he does...he let’s go of the anxiety, aka....he quits smoking cigarettes. or at least is trying.

Just wanted to put this thought out there. Idk, it also shows just how deep the symbolism of the trap goes that du’met set for him. It is probably the deepest most dramatic, he was kind of lazy when it came to Kate, yeh sure there was the article......now what? and Mark? he didn’t rly think of much of anything special for him.

He did focus on Erin a bit more, he gave her the opportunity to be brave, offering her inhaler. fear would have been to try to attack him, bravery, was to try to grab it, and buy time enough to live. And we SEE that he respected that bravery when she made that choice, only cutting a bit of her hair and leaving.

I’m sure he to an extent sees himself in Erin a bit, or at the very least his younger self, a scared vulnurable boy, and Erin is also scared and vulnurable. his REAL trap for her was also quite personalized, with the fact it was A. a hospital...Erin is dependent on an inhaler means you gotta get perscriptions for them and have to pick them up, and asthma attacks can land you in the hospital.

She has a medical issue she lives with so her dying in a medical ward, would make sense, not to mention she is avoiding said medical issue, trying not to think about her asthma and trying to mind over matter it, but the reality is it is not giong away and the medical ward in a way is also a symbol of that.

Jamie’s texts etc, are of course also a thing in there cuz he knew about her liking Jamie I suppose, and also a symbol of her fear, because she was too afraid to make a move. and again a second time she is given the opportunity to be brave....to listen to ‘jamie’s voice in the recording and hide.....or to run, and have to face him. I do feel like if Du’met feels about ANYONE as a possible successor....I could SEE it being Erin.

You can’t mind over matter Asthma...bravery is to face the reality of what you are dealing with. and working with it in mind, not avoiding it. Admitting to yourself you cannot stop this thing from happening and are dependent on some medication or other, is a scary thing to admit to ones’ self...it is giving up a part of your illusion of control. a little like charlie. But only by facing it can you move on. and du’met almost seemed like he wanted to TEACH that to her.His traps for her felt more like tests...lessons.

In short, I think Du’met and Charlie are Erin’s gay Dads with Charlie being stressed and snappy sometimes and Du’met only needing to give the man a stern look, for him to admit he was wrong and regret whatever it is he said to their daughter and apologizing cuz he IS trying to be better.

While Du’met is the dad teaching her to stand up for herself, to be a wolf, not a sheep. And Charlie being the one to reign in Du’met when he goes too far with some of his teachings.

[ghost-of-you]

I just came across your analyses of all the 5sos albums and can I just say: chefs kiss. amazing. from the way you approach them both musically and lyrically (are you a musician? you have a very good ear) to being able to tell who is singing which part of the harmony (when there’s more than 2 singing at once I have No Idea, and even when there’s just 2 I’m still a little hit and miss). so grateful you exist and did them!!! not only for my enjoyment purposes but also because of my crazy projects I’m about to tell you about just in case you’re interested

anyway, it started with the RAH version of teeth. I’m a classically trained violist, I’ve played in many orchestras, I looked and asked everywhere I could think of just to lay my hands on something like the score so I could maybe pull some musician friends together and play it. No avail. Then, sleep deprived and slightly manic and very unmotivated in the middle of writing my honours thesis I must’ve played that bass riff when messing around on my viola and was like ‘this isn’t even hard let me just open musescore’ and decided Luke’s voice best fit the cello and calum the viola and six hours later it was a whole orchestral piece with the riffs passing around the upper strings like the RAH version and also woodwind and brass instruments somehow and then the bass riff led me straight into thin white lies which quickly morphed into NITSW (and can I just say that bridge is the best thing ever when played by strings) and I was like, this is telling a story. That became the first movement of the concerto.

second movement had to start with the flutes playing the piano intro of lover of mine, then I borrowed ghost of you from youngblood and threw in lonely heart, all the ones in vaguely 3’s as far as timing goes went in, all satisfactorily longing (if mvmt 1 is Relationship Angst) ending on a reprise of ghost of you chorus a semitone up (I’m not even sure anymore tbh, it’s def less cohesive but pretty I think) and I tried to copy its RAH intro as an outro. By then I realised I wanted to make the third movement about self discovery that ended on red desert because the album is just SO SAD and it deserved a happy ending and I wanted to try fit as many songs from the album in as I could (no shame and kill my time didn’t fit thematically unfortunately and easier should’ve been in movement 1 but sonically it just didn’t go, at least not yet I’m open to attempting to incorporate any of those songs) so started with old me. I realised I could overlay it with best years. Weird choice I know but the chords and melody worked well enough (and I still don’t think best years has been brought to justice ngl). Then I overlaid wildflower with high which is surprisingly a combination that I love, and it worked music wise and I thought they offset each other alright?? I’m still not quite sure where I’m going with it yet. but then comes red desert and I did the RAH intro and the whole song with harmonies (does get repetitive and idk what to do with that yet) and it’s like. yay, I gave CALM a happy ending.

I guess what I’m asking is I want to do more of these for more of their albums or combination of them (like they’re genuinely so fascinating from a musical and storytelling lens I can’t get enough) and I’ve got some ideas but I want to hear if you have anything you can just hear coming after each other. like complete mess and red line or smth?? even moodswings and space between a rock and a hard place?? idk. just ideas. throw them all at me. I’ll do it and dedicate it to you

Okay, first, no, not a musician, it's just that my dad was a dj, so i grew up around a lot of sound equipment because he's very particular about sound quality and that totally developed my ear for that type of stuff and my interest for music is that much more intense because of it (i did teach myself how to play the guitar and i do sing, but, like, i don't have any real training) and I really appreciate you coming here to say these, because i have a lot of fun writing those. Also I saw your tags, don't know if you ever figured it out but the milf anthem is mrs all american lol

Second, I'm desperate to hear what you did with calm, from the description alone it feels like something impressive, I'm very interested to see how you overlayed high and wildflower because i can see it, but i can't really imagine how that would actually work sokaosksokas

And third, I actually have quite a few smaller combos i like to push together (i went through a mashup phase when i was learning how to play 5sos songs lol) but i usually go from lyrics and adjust the guitar to fit my voice, i have no idea how that could work for you, but one i always do is vapor -> lie to me -> why wont you love me -> bad omens (it used to be high at the end, but then they dropped bad omens and i liked the way that narratively bad omens closed the loop, you end up trapped in the relationship you know it's not working I like that a lot for this combo), i have a few weirder ones, that are mostly the ones that i never fully managed to make it work but i think they could, like moodswings into bleach, story of another us into close as strangers, i know you saw my post about rearranging 5sos5 to tell a story and for some reason i think you can overlay caramel and bad omens, and red line and you don't go to parties (this one i admitedlly don't really know, but i think the red line riff with the ydgtp riff could be something, just a feeling lol), there's the rhythm section mashup, tomorrow never dies -> babylon -> tears, that I think you can make something with the bass in all of them, for some reason vapor and me myself and i, talk fast -> not in the same way -> blender -> kill my time, this one i think its cool because of the 80s pop of the melodies and the progression of the story with the lyrics, lover of mine -> best years -> older -> ghost of you, again you have the narrative and i think the piano can work all of there to make this tragic love song. And this is everything i can think of right now, but i will probably think of more as soon as i hit post tho soaskookasas

But seriously, this sounds really cool, please let me know how it progresses <3

[batemanofficial]

ok i’ve had the whole workday to process so here are my compiled thoughts on don’t worry darling. spoilers under the cut

first things first i really did like the sound design. i wish there’d been more care taken to make the music choices a little more intentional or use them as a foreshadowing device, but overall it was very cohesive

the production design was great for like. 85% of the film but the other 15% just felt like a target commercial to me. like there is such thing as too much pastel

chris pine is severely underutilized as an actor, like disappointingly so. his character felt super flat which obv doesn’t bode well for a man who’s supposed to be playing a cult leader ykwim

having now watched the film in its entirety i feel like the above issue is likely due to runtime constraints, and i bet if we could see the deleted scenes frank would feel like a far more fleshed-out character. bc as he exists in the final theatrical cut of the film he kind of comes across as just Chris Pine: The Mayor

you all know how i feel about harry styles but he was actually kind of ok. like solid c+ acting, which is a lot better than i was prepared to give him credit for

his accent is godawful tho. not budging on that one

the theatre i saw it in had like 20 people in it total including myself and my friend who came w me but we all laughed at some of his lines. like he tried. he tried real hard but some of his more monologue-y scenes came across kinda hammy

florence pugh was great but imo the way they edited the film made her seem vaguely stoned instead of paranoid?? idk that might just be me but imo some of her solo scenes esp toward the end of act 1 read more “trying to act sober in target after taking too many edibles” than “plagued by visions” but overall she was great as always

ok spoiler time >:) you’ve been warned and whatnot

not to be that guy but i saw the twist coming like ten minutes in. like as soon as she picked up the eggs i knew that it was going to be a simulation

and re: harry’s acting when i kind of pieced together the simulation idea i initially thought he was going to be a robot, because he didn’t really give a ton of indication that jack had a life outside of alice and the victory project

like in Jaime’s Theory Corner i was fully assuming that the victory headquarters was going to be like. robot husband storage facility and alice was just there to be a lab rat and everyone around her (with the potential exceptions of frank and the doctor) weren’t real

but anyway

i really wish they’d fleshed out the incel thing more too, like if jack and co. are trapping their ‘wives’ in victory then i feel like they’d come across a little more paranoid than they really did in the film

and re: chris pine being underutilized i wish they’d made him more of an actual jordan peterson type than. bland white man hates women ykwim?? like yeah yeah there’s a billion misogynist white men in cinema make him more of a freak

like the dinner scene toward the end of act 2 is what he should’ve been all along honestly. he’s just kind of a lawn ornament for the first 90 minutes of the film but let him keep that weird manic liar energy and that’d make him more compelling

i wish they’d used nick kroll and asif ali more too. they’re funny!! let them be funny!!

and i also wish we’d been forced to look at less of olivia wilde’s fivehead but. that’s neither here nor there

also in general it kind of took fucking forever to get to the point. like there’s a solid 35 minutes of fat you could cut out of that movie and still have it hit all it beats

i guess my main gripe is that there’s too much fucking around and not enough finding out. like i’m not talking about the sex scenes, i had no problem with those, but alice spends a lot of her screen time staring at her hands and comparatively little of it actually bothering to do anything about her problem. which kind of bothered me bc that runtime could’ve been used to develop the other characters in much-needed ways

like. i guess this is kind of the whole point but stuff happens at alice, alice doesn’t really have enough narrative agency to do anything constructive on her own

anyway. overall i’d say it’s the matrix for straight people so i’d give it like a 6.5/10. also gemma chan’s character stabbing frank was a moment that i feel normal about [lying] [gay] [i am looking 👀]

[f-agagegea]

Starting with the first album for the event, it pains me to put Songs from a Blackbird last because I don’t think it’s her weakest album at all. Actually, if I was ranking this based on what I think is her best rather than my favorite, this album would actually be a lot higher. Maybe top three? Anyways, it’s last mostly because I realized much like Spark, I don’t really come back to this album a lot. I think it’s very cohesive, and several songs sound like it could’ve been from the 70’s. The highlights of that album are Driving and the extremely underrated You and I. I will say, my least favorite respect about this album are the lyrics. Driving is one of her best written songs as well as Never Leave Me, but I’m not a fan of the extremely vague lyrics that a lot of these songs have. In particular, On Fire is the most guilty of being nondescript, and that song had three songwriters in total. Honestly, the weakest lyrics she has ever put out on an album, and it’s my least favorite Marion song ever. (Sorry On Fire fans. 😔) But there IS a very reasonable explanation for this, and IIRC it’s because Marion wanted keep it more on the vague side because, in the past, she usually wrote her lyrics more openly and this time she wanted to keep some things to herself. So that’s why the lyrics were more nondescript. But imo, you can still be an interesting songwriter without needing it to be personal. And before I talk about this era, I wanted to give a little context before this album came out. Marion had came back to Norway around 2010 to be a judge on X Factor, and she was around 26-years-old. She had been grinding and working so hard throughout her 20’s, trying to make an intentional career, but it didn’t work out for her. So when she had gotten a call in LA to join the TV show, you can probably imagine how exhausted she was and just wanted to go home. And this call essentially changed her life for the better. People still had very nasty opinions about her, and she essentially work hard to rebuild her reputation, which she ultimately did on a show called Hver gang vi møtes. She got to talked about her side of the story, and people got to see the real her. Part 2: Marion has stated how much this show means to her, and I do believe this show influenced this album (aside from the fact that she grew listening to 70’s music because of her parents.) So this album is a start of a lot of things her. And I also wanted to make note that Marion had also made a huge transition in her sound. Before, she was known to making rock music, so when she switched, some of her fans didn’t like it, and some of her haters also took jabs at her. This was especially the case when she had released Found Someone and Colors Turned to Grey as singles before this album became a thing. But again, I think this change of sound was necessary for her career. I don’t know if she would still be in the industry if she didn’t adapt. Anyways, more that I could say, but I’ll end it here. Will released the next album in the ranking tomorrow.

[theramblingsofadork]

I’ve always struggled with making AUs.

I’m the type of person that doesn’t like messing with good canon because I like to fit my characters stories within the universe as best I can and make future changes from there.

So it was interesting, coming back to the Sonic franchise. I wanted to revamp my old OCs from 10+ years ago to fit into a new story with IDW and my hyperfixation of a certain Dr. Starline.

Only.. I ran into a problem.

Multiple problems. XD

L e t m e t e l l y o u, oh! The NUMBER of times that I ran into OC and canon similarities the further I got into reading the modern comics (specifically relating to Starline) was staggering. Like, I was laughing at how it felt like the IDW writers and I got on the same wavelength by accident.

Names, powers, beat for beat story moments- it was both crazy and hilarious.

(*None of my stories were published back in the day, I would like to add. In no way, shape or form did they copy my ideas from online. Just want to make that clear.)

Well, I couldn’t bring myself to completely start over and wipe my OCs from existence because of how dear they were to me, and making new OCs for this story didn’t feel right either, so I’ve been trying to work them into canon.

Did have to change some things and rename my main OC, but I think I’ve managed to make it kind of work without making it sound like I’m copying canon too much.

Now; I’m sure I’m the only one who cares this much about what is essentially just one of a hundred million fanverses that maybe like, five people will see and maybe enjoy, but dangit, crafting a cohesive story with fun characters is my itch; my thing that I love to do, so screw it, Imma do it anyways. :)

Still, it’s a work in process with bugs to work out, since a lot of it was invented at the beginning of the Metal Virus arc, and Heaven™ help me, if my brain hasn’t been more fried than a bowl of mashed potatoes from a lack of sleep the last 6+ weeks.

So if anything I post in the coming weeks sounds jank, lemme know. :)

[emmanuel-saint]

Hi tumblr,

It’s Emmanuel Saint and I’m back again with another brain dump:

If I’m being honest I’ve never thought about what my life would look like past the age of 29. If we’re being more serious I never thought about what it would look like pass the age of 25. There were some things that were bound to happen, like graduate high school. I was more afraid of my mother killing me than failing out of school so graduating was a give. So that cover the beginning of my consciousness up until 18… but everything after that was left up to chance. I mean I had a rough plan for my life (which very quickly fell apart). I wanted to remain a virgin until 18 (lost my virginity at 15). I wanted to be married by 22 (25 close). But the whole rest of my life picture I’ve never actually thought about. I mean, if we’re truly honest, what does happily ever after entail. Morning espressos at your local coffee shop on Sunday mornings watching the neighbor walk their dog? I don’t feel like there is more to life, I know it. But what I do FEEL is that I’d be doing myself a disservice if I didn’t try to get more.

I have to start a new paragraph because I don’t think these two thoughts cohesively flow together. Not that it matters because I’m just typing as I’m thinking anyway. I have accomplished all of the things that I’ve set out to do in my life. I mean truly set out to do. I’ve walked on to a college basketball team. I love basketball with all my heart but I am far too much of a realist to placebo myself into making it into the NBA. But there was one very lofty goal that I did set for my self nearly 12 years ago. I remember flipping open my T-Mobile sidekick (man I loved those and I wish they’d bring them back) and beginning to type. It was the beginning of my journaling experience. I never knew what to write but I knew I had way too many thoughts than to keep in my head so I would just write. That day in my mothers kitchen, I wrote I want to learn six languages by the time I turn 30. Looking back I see how ridiculous that sounds. Most Americans don’t learn TWO languages in their lifetime let alone SIX by the time they are 2 sophomores years old. But I’m my defense I was already fluent in English(1) and, at that time, I had already taken 3 years of high school Spanish(2 it will count later, not at this time, later for sure though). I was also planning on sticking to Latin based languages so the differences wouldn’t be soooooo insurmountable. If I remember correctly I wanted to do English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Japanese (I watched a lot of anime 😬). But I had no idea the kind of manifesting that one note had on me. I gave college the old college try, and fucking hated it. I mean it wasn’t absolutely unbearable. I could have gotten through it if I was poor or arrogant-another story for another day. But I didn’t. I very poetically dropped out on my birthday. Yay happy birthday. Needless to say I’m not the biggest fan of birthdays. By this time I am still fluent in English (thank god right?) and 4 years of high school and a half semester of college Spanish (still had never had a conversation outside of a controlled environment so still didn’t count but it will I promise).

Ok, so, boom, I dropped out worked for a bit. Some jobs were pretty cool, others were pretty shitty I’m looking at you Toys’R Us. But eventually I found my way into this pretty sweet gig where this agency will teach me a language and practical skills to be an interpreter (Spanish interpreter here I come). Joke is on me. They only really need Arabic interpreters. That’s cool so I learn Arabic الحمدلله . Then they ask if I want to make more money. Sounds weird so I ask what’s the catch? They say I have to learn French to better help with my Arabic interpretation because most Arabic speakers also mix in some French. Well, ok, they’re gonna pay me for it so why not? Right?! So boom here I am learning French. This is actually tres cool. I learn a bunch of common English words like souvenir are actually French. I feel all smart and shit. Oh mind you that im also working on my bachelors degree, and with that I am taking an intro to computer science class which I thought would be about the basics of computers. Nope! It was a coding class. Now I’m dabbling in C++, Java, and HTML.

Oh I forgot to mention that I improved my Spanish speaking ability based off of a bet that I had with my friend. He essentially said that my Spanish would never be as good as his. And he is probably right because he’s Venezuelan but I never back down from a challenge. So now I am natively fluent in English(1) pretty good with Spanish(2), Arabic(3), French(4), and some coding(5). And yes coding counts as a language because it’s how computers talk. Duh. After a while my company comes back and says “Hey bud you’re pretty good at this. Wanna learn another language? Once again, not one to shy away from a challenge. So they taught me Korean. It’s all pretty crazy how it happened and I never intended on it going this way but it did.

It all started from a T-Mobile sidekick note telling myself that I want to learn six languages by the time that I turn thirty. And the sole reason was because girls find things attractive that they don’t understand.

[anyways-wonderwall]

Album of the Week #42

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

(2010)

by Kanye

Overall Rating: 8/10

TL;DR: I know I’m not original in saying this is good but it is!! This is what people are referencing when they say Kanye is talented!

(I really hate when an album cover has like 10 iterations because then I can't figure out what the original is. I think this one the best though 8/10)

Typing on my laptop has become so associated with schoolwork that I have been putting off writing this for weeks :/. Also Kanye just keeps doing stuff, although honestly I think its a lost cause to try and wait that out. 

Overall Thoughts

I mean nothing I’m going to say here is new, this is one of the most celebrated albums of the 2010s, and I’m not the first to say that I agree with that. This isn’t going to be an Anthony Fantano contrarian review, I genuinely really enjoyed this album. I grew up on his early 2000s stuff and I’m really glad I fed into the hype and listened to this. Its just so confusing how someone so talented can be a terrible, crazy person. 

Anyways, that’s not saying anything specific about the album! The thing that really stuck out to me is how incredible the instrumental tracks are on each of these songs. Most of them are amazing on their own and I could care less about what Kanye is doing, some of them are super monotonous and you get the point pretty early and are ready to move on (“Power”, “Devil in a New Dress”). I particularly loved the electric guitar parts of most of the songs, especially in “Gorgeous” and “Hell of a Life”. 

Okay I have to talk about the second one in more detail. The chorus is the riff from “Iron Man” played with a dirty grunge guitar and Kayne singing over it “no more drugs for me, pussy and religion is all i need”??? I’m sorry but that is the funniest thing to hear over “Iron Man”. So true Ye!! So true! This is what Black Sabbath meant!

There are a lot of really funny lines in this album, another one of my favorites being “if god had an ipod id be on his playlist”. That is such a funnily dated line that is a purely Kanye level of confidence. He’s to the point and honest, I like that. (another banger line is “Have you ever had sex with a pharaoh? Ah, put the pussy in a sarcophagus,” what the hell does this mean??) This album also features Nicki Minaj’s famous “Bad bitch from Sri Lanka line” so I feel like that’s enough to know that this is an important piece of culture. 

Besides these funny little one offs, the lyrics in this album are really good. Its a great album about reclaiming America and what it means to be American for African Americans (crazy since he just got in trouble for doing a bunch of white lives matter stuff) and it does a great job of keeping this theme under all the silly stuff. It features a talent cast of characters from Rick Ross to John Legend and they add a lot of flavor to the songs they are on. This album is wonderful at sounding cohesive without being repetitive, something I feel like is hard for albums to do (especially if I’m only listening to them a few times). 

My favorite song off of the album was probably “Blame Game”, with an amazing piano and bass backing track that I could listen to for hours (which is good because this song is a whopping 7:50). John Legend is there but doesn’t sing and turn the song into a durge, and the end is just a comedy bit from Chris Rock that I cannot get sick of listening to. Some random reviewer said that “i have to make sure you know this is personal” which makes the whole bit funnier because its about a women getting better at sex because of yeezy. I didn’t know that Kanye made stuff like this and this song alone made me so happy I chose this album. 

Final Verdict

Listen even if you haven’t heard this album you’ve certainly heard of it and know “POWER” since it is played at every American sports game. I’m not going to be the first person to tell you to listen to this album but I stand by that it’s a great one. It is important to note though that I think it’s best as an album unit it, the only song I would really listen to outside of this context is “Blame Game”. But you should listen to it anyways because after all, who doesn’t want to hear about pussy to the tune of Black Sabbath?

[centrally-unplanned]

I saw some hot yuri art on the dash the other day which inspired me to check out its source, Alter Ego, a story which highlights a problem I have seen time and again with the “OEL”/Original English Language manga genre (though ironically, in this case the book was initially in Spanish). To set up, Alter Ego is an entry into the “gay girl in love with/jealous of her straight friend and the other people in her life” genre, which means we are contractually obligated to have a scene of our MC yelling at her friend about how she wants her all to herself. Which we get, upon the news that said friend’s pen-pal other best friend is moving to their city:

In the middle of a diner, at like afternoon lunch...on page 15 of the story. I literally could not remember this bitch’s name and she is already throwing plates. And the build up to this scene is *entirely* her being a jealous snot, in public, to classmates and friends. She has two traits at this point in the tale: Being In Love and Being a Maladroit Maniac About It.

Our main girl - who is named Noel btw, I remembered - is an extremely unlikable protagonist; but she isn’t meant to be. As much as OEL manga would seem like its primary inspiration is, ya know, manga....it isn’t. Its primary inspiration is fanfiction, its where it was born; western artists writing fanfiction of Japanese manga, and getting good enough at it to shoot off their own attempts. Now, fanfiction’s primary strength, to quote Folding Ideas, is its ability to “shortcut to the Good Stuff”; if this was Sayaka being jealous of Madoka’s new best friend Homura, I wouldn’t *need* to characterize her, my audience already knows her, already likes her. I can make her an asshat for drama and it won’t ruin the story, and I can cut to the chase. Once you suddenly have to obey copyright law and need original characters, however, this approach falls apart. 

Which might seem obvious - like why not fix this? That is harder than it sounds, however, due to the limitations of the publication market. OEL manga has a far smaller market than Japanese manga does, and is therefore structured differently; it is sold discretely, as individual books telling one complete story. Meanwhile in Japan manga is, almost universally, ‘piloted’ in serializing magazines bundling dozens of stories into one package. This allows stories to be tested out, see if they capture a market, without them actually being finished. But charging an audience for just one story that doesn’t go anywhere is a tougher sell in the US (it still happens of course); which is why this entire story is under 200 pages and fits into one volume, while recently-read yuri manga Bloom Into You, for example, is spread out over 8 books while telling a tale of equal complexity. Bloom Into You got its start in Dengeki Daioh, a monthly shounen magazine with a 130k monthly circulation, its story got tested and proved itself worthy of enough pages to tell its tale. Since OEL manga can’t even attempt that, it has to sell its stories raw, which means it generally is going to sell a lot more of them as a whole package.

Adding to this complexity is the supposedly-core inspiration, that of manga. You can tell a cohesive comic story in 200 pages, but you can’t tell a cohesive *yuri* story of this kind because those stories aren’t built for it. But they try anyway, since its the genre trappings that *are* the appeal, and the rushed, fanfic-y nature just becomes inevitable from that combination of forces. And I mean, we are all fanfic writers here anyway right? We don’t need all that so-called padding, we can shortcut to the good stuff! The problem gets baked in.

But okay, I hear you all asking the question, “Ash, I get that you didn’t like this scene. But high schoolers do dumb shit like this all the time! This girl is like 14 right? Its her first love, she is flipping out, that happens.”

And that would be a decent rebuttal...if Noel wasn’t 23 years old.

...okay I admit her age isn’t explicitly stated, but the girl she eventually does start dating, who seems like a same-age peer, has her 24th birthday in the comic and is a professional author with a book deal, and like look at the classroom they attend!

That is a college lecture hall, no high school shenanigans here. Noel is at the youngest 22 in this comic.

But that starts sitting weird with some of the other elements of the story - Noel lives with her parents and gets woken up by her little sister, her straight friend walks to school with her and brings her boyfriend along, Noel has like no career ambitions or job worries at all. Everything about this seems like its a story about 14 year olds! Why isn’t it?

I am sure its a pretty easy guess: politics. 14 year olds can’t have sex in western books. Or at least, certainly not in the social-justice world of queer graphic novels. So the seemingly-easy fix is applied to this story of just making the characters adults, in their 20′s, their ability to Consent being handed to them alongside their first electric bill. 

That easy fix transforms the previously awkward fit of its Japanese manga source material into a garbled mess. The type of yuri this story is pulling from is *built* on the character’s youth, these are stories about innocence and pure love and sexual awakening. If you want stories about adults its literally a different genre, its called Josei, and its stories of depressed konbini workers trying to Figure Out Life while in grungy Tokyo studio apartments. And in fact, that innocence and youth is exactly what audiences want from this kind of yuri, as this Goodreads review suggests: 

So soft! So young! I bet this person didn’t even notice the birthday line. They wanted to have their cake and eat it too, a 24 year old Ethically Adult girl-child with a crush on her “Best Friend” who has literally never dated before and whose whole world revolves around alternating fits of jealously and jiltedness. Which like, fine, if thats all you want, I am not judging your desires.

But you shortcutted to the good stuff. And I know why. And it bothers me, especially when half the reason you needed a shortcut is that you think its morally wrong to take the long way. That you think you are better than your ostensible source material, while executing worse on the craft. Its not a deal I want to take, and I see too many OEL manga taking it. Grow up.

[candysharkart]

edgy creepy pasta au i doodled to pass the time today :) I dont feel like finishing it but i put too much effort in not to post lol..................................

here’s the whole script i wrote for mewmewstabbykilly if u want.....i ended up writing way too much cuz i was trying to emulate that kind of video.............i was just making shit up tho so idk how cohesive (or like...... good) it is n u can probably just ignore it if u want :)

The year 1997 had held such promise for former pawnshop owner, turned overnight TV superstar, Spamton G. Spamton. His hit original gameshow "DO YOU WANNA BE A [BIG SHOT]?" was being enjoyed by human and monster families alike all over the country. And his eccentric but endearing personality as the show's host, "MR. BIG SHOT", had the network calling for his own late night talk show......But on September 17 1997 Mr. Big Shot stopped picking up the phone.

When he failed to arrive to the set of "DO YOU WANNA BE A [BIG SHOT]?" that morning, the crew was concerned. Spamton had never missed a taping before in the shows 7 season run. All calls made to the missing host would mysteriously fail to go through. Wanting to keep the shows record going, producers sent a stage assistant to Spamton's apartment to see if they could bring him in.

This guy's landlord must've SUCKED by the way!!!! Allegedly this stranger stage hand walked right up to him and was like "Hey I work with your celebrity tenant! let me in his apartment!" AND HE DID!!!! LIKE???? WHAT IS THAT???? Anyway. They get the door open and BAM!!! Couple minutes later the cops are on their way. Spamton G. Spamton is dead.

Details on this case are kinda..... fuzzy!! There was like next to NO news coverage, and the only case reports I could find are like......... heavily redacted for some reason???? But from what I can put together, they found Spamton sitting on his couch next to his landline, receiver in hand, all dressed up like he was just about to head down to the lot. Only y'know. He was dead. The report also said that the phone was just emitting a "garbage noise"?? Whatever that means?? Static I guess... Is that something old phones did?? I dunno... That phrasing just really stuck out to me.

The coroner states that they couldn't determine a cause of death, but said that he was unharmed barring of course his, and I quote, "heavily mutilated face". HEAVILY MUTILATED FACE!!!! I'M NO EXPERT BUT THAT SOUNDS LIKE A CAUSE OF DEATH TO ME!!!! There isn't even a description OF the mutilation!!!! Like COME ON!!!! I'm trying to make a viewtube video over here!!!! LET ME INFORM MY AUDIENCE!!!! I couldn't even figure out what the cops ruled it!!!! Honestly, I'd seen reruns of this guy's show before, but I hadn't EVER heard of this case until someone emailed me about it......

While I was digging through old true crime forums as research for this video I managed to come across what's SUPPOSSED to be an autopsy image of the head, but I couldn't find anything to support this...... The picture was already censored when it was posted, and I..... Didn't really want to look for the original..... It's not like I would've put it in here anyway, I'm not a weirdo. But this version is PG enough to put in this video, since it's like..... the only other thing I could find on the subject. I kinda hate looking at it though hahaha.