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itoshi-s · 2 years ago

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@mejxmemkodofoof requested: yandere!rin + "I want to keep you all to myself" // no lukewarm love v-day event !

cw: suggestive, dark content, yandere, implied noncon. mdni

rin has never put much thought into how intense he experiences things.

if anything, it only ever helped and brought him so much praise - enough to make it feel like he's about to choke on it. hardworking, passionate. he'll get far in life - in football, or anything else he puts his mind into. (bold of them to think he's ever going to quit. not happening, until he climbs his way to the very top - he's not a quitter, never has been.) he can and will achieve everything his heart desires. that's how he is - calculated and controlled, focused and rapt. yet underneath, his heart thumps and blood boils, every nerve sparks as passion runs rampage in every cell and flickers behind turquoise irises, that perhaps look all too crazed all too often.

rin never really paid attention to his instinctive yet driven nature - not unless it was on the field and devoured every single player in his path.

not until he's met you.

one look at your face - bright and inviting, eerily familiar and nostalgic, as if he's been longing to see you for his entire life and then some - and it's like something awakens, splinters deep inside and pulls at his heart until it swells against his ribcage.

it's only natural you end up in the passenger seat of his aston martin later that night, all smiles and gentle laughter. a saccharine melody that still sounds so, so sweet, despite the booze you've been sipping on the past few hours, concealed in bright, blue syrups.

rin feels it's ironic. perhaps, there might be something just equally bitter laced underneath the vibrant teal of his eyes, too.

something to knock you off your feet, creep up on you - hit it's high when you willingly, stupidly take, take, take even more. something so honeyed, sugary sweet - all until it makes you hurl.

if everything rin's ever felt was intense, then your presence must be an entire tidal wave. it steals his breath away, brings his hands to a tremble when he laces his fingers with your own, holding you down and urging the highest pitches from your swollen, glossed lips. it eats away at his insides, dismantles any illusion of control, and throws him off the edge - right into your warm embrace.

you want to take things slow - that much he grasps from the convo you share next morning, sipping on some brazilian blend that suddenly tastes sweeter than ever when shared with you. rin watches you, teal eyes observant, and if the way his gaze follows your every notion is anything to go by, the must not be tired at all; not even from how he's had you pressed into the sheets until the sun started bleeding through the blinds.

he can take things slow. he can, for you. rin understands - he really does - when your eyes widen a bit upon his casual comment on how he has practice later today and therefore cannot take you to dinner like he wishes he could. he understands when you sheepishly admit that you have recognized his face from somewhere, but couldn't quite place it.

he doesn't mind. if anything, he's grateful he's barely a blank page to you. and fine, maybe the suddenly timid behavior of yours makes something deep inside him corrode into something ugly and possessive - but again, rin pays no mind to it.

to you, he can be anything and everything you want him to be. not just the national team's captain, not the star striker, not a name plastered with all the possible titles one could dream of. for you, rin can be anything your heart desires - you just have to let him.

and it's a tough, bumpy road to make you love him as much as he loves you. a reality check of sorts, one that suddenly rips off any bandage rin has tried to slap on the sweltering passion, seeping out the jagged wounds his adoration for you inflicts. it's an endless cycle, but he can make it just fine.

rin can take it.

he can see some more of the gentle smiles when you bid him goodbye at your doorstep, hair still disheveled and eyes hazy with sleep that he knows you'll get right back to as soon as he walks out. you need your rest after all - you're going out later that night, for one of your friends birthday - dressed up like his eyes on you are not enough, as if you've got someone else to impress.

he can force himself to nod and even offer a rare, small smile when you insist that he doesn't need to come and pick you up. don't be silly, rin. i'll text you when i'm home if that makes you feel better? it won't - but he appreciates the effort and deludes himself that you honestly, truly want to ease his worries away, even the ones you're the very reason for.

he can push the sour ache that rips its way through his chest when you turn down his offer to take you out - again. he's not throwing you on deep waters, doesn't push or nag. and yet, your eyes refuse to meet his own - perhaps fearful he'll find the uncertainty simmering behind them - when he suggests you attend one of his teammate's party together. as casual as it gets, but still not enough to not scare you away. rin, don't get me wrong, it's just... you said we don't need to rush, and it's a lot. everyone will know.

it irks something, he has to give you that. for a second, it seems like you want to make him feel dumber than he is. of course everyone will know - that's the point. it annoys him that you keep acting as if you're delusional, not noticing the not-so-subtle signs. but it's okay.

it's you, so for now, it's okay.

it's okay, until it isn't. rin has it under control until you force it right out of his hands, smooth the creases in his knuckles out with saccharine words that bleed into the humid midnight air and bounce off the egyptian cotton sheets.

"you're not telling me enough," you whisper into his bare chest, and maybe if it wasn't for the sleep overcoming your senses, you would've heard - felt - the erratic beat of his poor, poor heart. "y' need to talk to me, rin."

and talk he does. it spills out, all of it - all the passion he's so well known for, that floods the field and soaks into the turf, leaving no spot unsoiled by this overwhelming dedication of his. but this time, it seeps into you - something far more fragile, perhaps naive for thinking that you can handle it - handle the entirety of him.

clammy hands find their place on either side of your face, cupping the soft plush of your cheeks with utter care - a distinction to the sharp, overwhelming desire ripping through the turquoise eyes you thought you knew.

"i want to keep you all to myself," rin confesses at last and feels his chest hollow at the way your body tenses up - almost jerks away from the sheer force behind his words. "and it scares me. i want you, and i love you. you just need to let me."

perhaps, he was delusional.

almost childishly, foolishly so, for thinking that it wouldn't scare you, too.

but he held onto it, tight until it broke skin and stung. as if you were a storm and the remnant of hope was his lifeline, something to cling to as he continues to wish the greed eventually dies down. but it never does, instead feeds from the confusion and sheer panic that arises when days pass by and you grace him with less attention than he's used to - that you've gotten him hooked on.

it's unfair. it's scary and intimidating and unlike anything he's ever felt before - and he's felt a lot.

and when rin feels something, it hits him full force and knocks the airout of his lungs. when he loves, it's until you're choking on it, inhaling his devotion with every desperate breath - you might not know it yet. maybe he doesn't, either - but his instincts has never failed him yet. right now, they're louder as ever and tint his vision red - the color of passion, the very thing that clings to him every step of the way, and makes him who he is.

rin feels a lot, but he's learnt to live with it. wild and impulsive, yet collected and steady - two sides of one coin that he knows how to balance just fine, but somehow, when your face comes to mind, he cannot bring himself to do it.

he can keep it together for a little longer, and maybe smile a bit while he's at it, too. you're just a smidge too reckless, forget about the lost pair of keys far too quick than he'd like you to. they were never lost in the first place, instead safely tucked into the pocket of his jacket - a fucked up souvenir of sorts, maybe - but that you're unaware of. and yet, you still don't pay it much mind anymore. who would even want to break in here, rinnie? - then, a laugh, one that he doesn't reciprocate - c'mon, it's not a big deal.

he wishes you could keep the same attitude until a couple nights later, for when you stir awake in the dark, only to meet his frenzied eyes - but you don't, and perhaps he pushes his palm against your mouth a bit too rough, yeah, but it's what he has to do.

rin hopes you understand - just like he understood you.

as he licks the tears off your warm cheek and forces his other hand between your trembling thighs, for a split second he thinks that it's the least you owe him.

#୨୧ 𝑁𝑂 𝐿𝑈𝐾𝐸𝑊𝐴𝑅𝑀 𝐿𝑂𝑉𝐸 #✧.* zaria writes #alSO thank u for ur kind words when requesting < 33 I’m glad u enjoy my silly lil writing abshsjssk #rin itoshi x reader #itoshi rin x reader #blue lock x reader #bllk x reader #rin x reader #itoshi rin x you #rin itoshi x you #blue lock x you #bllk x you #blue lock #bllk #itoshi rin #rin itoshi #yandere blue lock #yandere bllk #rin my love

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maydaymadier · 3 years ago

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Time

[Disclaimer: I’m currently slightly more than halfway through the c2 finale and I’m going to try and avoid spoilers since well, there’s still like 3hrs of content to get spoiled on. Will likely crosspost to my ao3]

“Time, it takes time, not days or weeks or years. Time.”

Caleb Widogast was right, though to be precise it takes 100 consecutive days of inscribing a teleportation circle in the same place to make it permanent. Nicodranas was the first teleportation circle Essek Thelyss finished. 100 days of pounding sun and coastal heat felt fitting to start his time. He had his trepidations about better acquainting himself with Yussa, less so with Ms. Lavorre. The Nein asked why he needed to make a teleportation circle in Nicodranas, they already had access to Tidepeak Tower’s. ‘Yes, however, we will not have to give anyone advance notice to use our own.’

Jester made something of a habit of bringing him a new parasol or sunhat each time she visited, even brought him tinted glasses she found once. If he knew she was coming he’d make sure to wear one of them.

Each time he ran out of chalk he’d wrap himself in illusion and teleport himself to Zadash. Meanwhile, the stores in his towers grew dust-laden, his absence from the Dynasty more suspicious, and he bought his chalk from Enchanter Sol. The Mighty Nein were a family, regardless of any distance, and he had the means to make distance mean nothing. So Essek Thelyss carried on. And on the hundredth day, he stepped into a circle in Nicodranas and stepped out in the Blooming Grove.

He was invited in for tea, as expected, and accepted as was polite. The next day he found the spot behind the temple where the grass had been flattened by the circle delivering him and started his next hundred days. He ‘compensated’ for his intrusion with his floating meditative guard each night. Caduceus seemed to pick up on what he was doing faster than Jester had, by a thin margin. The remaining Clay children would poke their noses in once and a while, curious about their drow visitor they’d only met briefly before but they remembered him helping garden after Ikithon set the temple ablaze. They would offer him a plate at meals, he insisted on using his own rations in a strange dance of hospitality and being a polite guest.

At one point, after finishing the day’s circle he considered venturing through the Savalirwood to Glory Run Road, find Mollymauk’s grave. But it felt disrespectful to Kingsley somehow in a way he couldn’t articulate. If he were to be more dramatic it felt like an invasion of privacy to the rest of the Nein as a whole, intruding on a moment on a place where they were unknowing adversaries. So he kept inscribing circles in the grass and sometimes he found fresh chalk in his component pouch. On occasion, Caduceus found saplings and cuttings of Xorhasian plants on his windowsill.

On the hundredth day he stepped into the circle in the Blooming Grove and came out under Caduceus’s tree in the Xorhaus. He was far more careful with this one. The Xorhaus was sparsely used, bordering on abandoned at this point, more than ready for the Nein to inhabit it once again. Beauregard, oft accompanied by Yasha, used it the most for when they visited Rosohna on Cobalt Soul business. The Bright Queen had been more than amenable to working with the Soul once she knew they were dismantling the organization that had stolen the beacons.

Though it took three days before Beau realized he was working on making a circle on the roof, pruning away his extra time by trying to tame the garden, clad in his rose-patterned gardening gloves, what with his lackluster previous experience. She offered to go bring him chalk from his towers, anything else he might need that he’d left behind when he was posted in Eiselcross. He accepted the offer, to eschew suspicion, asking for some simple components that filled any wizard’s pouch. Sooner than later, soon enough Beau couldn’t knock the truth out of him (not that she needed to do that or would, he was growing increasingly susceptible to disappointed stares from his friends) he stepped into the circle in Rosohna and stepped out in Rexxentrum.

His skin crawled and felt like it would slough off with each passing day. He wasn’t so bold at this point to attempt and make a circle on Soltryce’s grounds but he did take pleasure in chipping away the next hundred days in the courtyard of Trent Ikithon’s now abandoned tower. It was a joy, absolutely cathartic tearing apart what little remained hidden away of the bastard’s stores. The most valuable and precious artifacts and components were hidden in ways only an archmage would even know about or know how to unlock. Malicious clumsiness might have gotten him to break an important, now inert, magical tool or two as he rummaged through the tower for chalk.

Though one day, he noticed an owl perched in a tree, watch him for an hour, disappear for a few minutes, reappear, so on and so forth for the whole day. He had a good idea who the owl was but she never watched him again after that. If she wanted to know what he was doing here, fine. It wasn’t like either could rat out the other without drawing unwanted attention to them both. So on the hundredth day, what little remained of Trent Ikithon’s personal study even more thoroughly destroyed, he stepped into the circle in Rosohna and stepped out.

Essek chipped away at the for now final circle under the watchful light of Pelor. Passively, the part of him that absorbed every ounce of knowledge, regardless if he cared or not, wondered what the connection may be between whatever the Luxon is and the Dawnfather. Just a fun little thought experiment to occupy him while he worked through the next hundred days.

By the end of Brussendar, with Highsummer fast approaching, he’d decided that he ought to have brought at least one of Jester’s hats. Though more importantly he’d decided that the thought was silly and any connection between the two deities must be entirely aesthetic. Nothing he didn’t already know but what else can a wizard do but overthink?

It wasn’t the same level of festivities he’d heard about with Harvest’s Close but Highsummer seemed to be the close second in Blumenthal. He sat, disguised in the shade of an oak probably as old as he was and simply watched from afar. Somewhere in the crowd, he saw a flash of copper. Tried not to think to much of it. Red hair seemed slightly more common in this corner of the empire. He caught the sweeping arc of a long, striped scarf being tossed over a shoulder. A leather coat dusting at the ground (though he had looked so good in purple).

Caleb Widogast stepped out of the crowd and sat under the oak with him, “I suppose a criminal always returns to the scene of the crime.” “I suppose I have,” Essek stared at his feet. Caleb offered him some sort of sweet roll wrapped in paper, “I was not talking about you.” He ignored the comment, “How long has it been? Since we last spoke.” “Four hundred and eighty-six days. About a year and a half to be informal,” he just set down the roll next to his hand when he didn’t move to take it. “I keep thinking one day it will have been enough time.” “Looking for the specific number will drive you mad. Are you just going to keep making circles across Wildemount until you feel that you’ve atoned?” Essek took the roll but only held it, “I know that I cannot make up for everything. What are you doing here, anyways?” “I have been trying to convince myself to visit. Maybe try to pay my respects if I can stomach it. The others had already told me what you were doing, but Astrid told me where you were going. Figured now was good a time as any,” his expression darkened, the reality beyond the afterglow of a hard-won victory whispering into both their ears. “I-,” Essek started. “Did you know I was from here before you picked it or did you just want to taunt Rexxentrum by hiding in their breadbasket for a while?” Caleb stared him down. “I knew.” “Alright then.” “I hope I have not intruded in some way by coming here.” “I suppose we were both curious about the echo. It’s right up your alley, prodigious dunamancer and whatnot,” Caleb glanced back up at the revelers before turning his attention back to him “I would not discount your own skill, you’ve picked up dunamancy quite quickly and with a level of skill I have rarely seen.” Maybe they can just talk about magic. “Danke.” There was an uncomfortable pause in the conversation.

“When do you think-?” Essek tried asking. “I don’t. I will not pretend to know when enough time will have passed for the past not to hurt us anymore, Essek. And counting it in teleportation circles will not make it go any faster,” he said, though with the crushing sadness to his eyes of a man who wished he were wrong. “I am trying to make it easier for us to see each other,” he said with easy authority. “It is much easier to see each other when we don’t run off to the four corners,” Caleb added on with a tired chuckle. “What are you implying?” Something caught between excitement and unease hit him. “I can stay. Help you finish the circle here, we can leave, make another. As many circles as we want. We can have the continent at our fingertips. Maybe even go back to what remains of Aeor in Eiselcross. Devexian couldn’t have been the only mechanical inhabitant. For all we know there is a city of automatons underneath the ice now,” Caleb got more excited and dreamy as he went on, the unbridled excitement of a mage faced with knowledge. “That sounds...nice...,” Essek trailed off, trying to sound as neutral as he could manage. “Do you want that, Essek?”

It felt like the word was tearing its way out of him, “Yes.”

#my post #critical role #mighty nein #cr fic #cr fanfic #essek thelyss #shadowgast #just a sprinkling of shadowgast there at the end #post-canon #Essek is Coping

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itsclydebitches · 3 years ago

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YYH Recaps: Episode 4 “Requirements for Lovers”

Hello, everyone! It's been quite a while, huh? Ah, the endless cycle of wanting to write and yet, astoundingly, not writing. I know it well.

Good ol' writer's block has skedaddled for a time though, so let's make good use of that and dive into Episode Four: "Requirements for Lovers."

Ohhh, YYH getting spicy with its titles 😏

Actually wait, I shouldn't be making dumb jokes just yet. First I want to acknowledge a slight change to future recaps: YYH, RWBY, and anything else I might try my hand at. Namely, a lack of pictures moving forward. A few weeks ago — months? I honestly can't keep track — tumblr implemented a new limitation where no post can have more than ten images in it. It's a move that, while I'm sure has its justifications, makes sharing analyses of visually-based media all the more difficult. I'll be doing my best moving forward to describe scenes as needed, as well as combining connected images together to stretch out my limit, but I'm not going to pretend that it'll be the same as getting the visual play-by-play we’re used to.

Tumblr certainly is a website, huh?

Anyway, we open on Yusuke once again lamenting the difficulty of hatching a spirit beast that doesn't immediately devour him from the head down. On the one hand this is an admittedly easy way to reset the story over the course of this arc — the storytelling equivalent of waking your character up each morning — yet I cannot deny that if I were undergoing a resurrection test, it would consume my every thought too. Can't really blame Yusuke for endlessly bringing the conflict up when the conflict is this deadly.

Well, deadly for a ghost, anyway.

Specifically, he's worried about how embarrassing it would be to get eaten by something that came out of an egg this tiny. I'm torn between reminding a fictional character that things grow — a pissed off chicken could kick my ass and it started out in an egg too — and just shaking my head over the absurdity of worrying about embarrassment when, you know, you would cease to exist. It's not even a matter of, "What if I die and then I'm embarrassed about it in the afterlife :( " Yusuke is already IN the afterlife. He's got nowhere to go but oblivion!

Luckily, Botan takes a more practical approach to these worries, pointing out that he'll be just fine provided he does some good deeds. Yusuke starts a rant about how do-gooders are only ever out for themselves.

Yusuke, you dumb-dumb, you're a do-gooder now. What was all that help for Kuwabara, hmm? As said, these early episodes exist in a semi-reset loop, where Yusuke needs to stew in his main character flaws for a while before any real growth starts to stick. Those flaws being, primarily, "I'm a pessimist" and "also I hate myself."

Case in point, Botan accuses him of always seeing the glass as half empty. Which, while true enough (outside of his confidence in fighting, anyway), by now we've got a pretty good sense of where Yusuke developed this attitude. He affirms this by talking about how Koenma's got him by the balls, "just another idiot abusing his power!" With an alcoholic mother and those teachers from last episode, it's no wonder Yusuke thinks this way. Mr. Takenaka's interest and Keiko's care aren't enough to combat the rest of Yusuke's experience, not when Takenaka is an outlier and Keiko is Yusuke's peer. Her desire to keep him on the right track reads only as an inevitability at best (the downside of having a perfect childhood friend), or a legitimate annoyance at worst. Or, as we'll continue to see in this episode, a way for them to flirt.

Is it any wonder Yusuke would sneer at Koenma's offer then, expecting the worst? The fact that Yusuke is still undergoing the challenge at all, no matter what he says, speaks volumes to me.

However, Botan is less than comfortable with his criticisms. She panics a bit at Yusuke insulting the (junior) ruler of the underworld so blithely. That, and the fact that he's carelessly tossing his egg around.

(Yes we’re using precious picture space for memes are you SURPRISED?)

Anyway, Botan isn't just concerned for the sake of concern. She cautions Yusuke against speaking too freely because there may be investigators checking in on his progress. No sooner does he ask what those investigators look like than one appears.

Thunder! Lighting! An energy so intense that Yusuke is briefly blinded! It is, as he says, quite the entrance. What kind of being could possibly be at the heart of such an astounding show?

Why, this teeny-tiny cutie, of course.

Remember, few appearances in YYH coincide with the character's true self. Would you ever assume this is the all-powerful investigator who holds Yusuke's future in her hands? Of course not. That's the point.

The investigator introduces herself as Sayaka and immediately demonstrates that she has no more patience for Yusuke's attitude than Botan does. "These damn kids," he mutters and my brain briefly blue screens because Yusuke. You're fourteen.

Plus, Sayaka and Botan clearly have some sort of eternal youth situation going on, so there's that too.

Sayaka is, in a word, fantastic. She pulls no punches with Yusuke, teleporting away from him with what can only be described as a shit-eating smile, all while refusing to tell him what exactly she's investigating. “I’m sorry, but that’s a secret!” However, Keiko is clearly at the forefront of her interest. She refers to her as Yusuke's "girlfriend."

Botan is more than happy to point Keiko out — because of course they're still following her around! — and pulls a Et tu, Brute? on Yususke, leading Sayaka right to her. Like most of the Underworld, Sayaka is rather shocked that the pretty, popular, scholarly girl is supposedly into the delinquent. It's the power of childhood friendship, you fools! Specifically, Sayaka references the "positive markings" that Keiko has accumulated, but the audience already knows by now that such markings are suspect at best. Yusuke himself is proof of that. So if his terrible marks don't preclude him from being a young kid's savior, should we really view Keiko's as proof of superiority?

I mean, Keiko is fantastic, but that's not really the point here.

Starting her own investigation into Yusuke's life, Sayaka begins with one hell of a bombshell: "There's no point in doing [the resurrection] if the people closest to you don't care." WOW. Not only is that a harsh assessment, it's one I don't think I can personally get behind. The offer to restore Yusuke to life is built on the acknowledgment that their system is flawed (even if there's no work to change or dismantle that system): they thought he was worthless, his sacrificial death seems to have proven them wrong, and now they want further evidence, in the form of this trial, that Yusuke is a good person at heart. The whole point of this challenge is to give him a second chance, with testimonies like Mr. Takenaka's emphasizing that Yusuke has always been capable of more, so long as he applies himself. This, as we'll see throughout the series, applies to relationships too. The Yusuke with one friend he play-fights with, a distant mother, and a school worth of kids who are terrified of his very name is not the future Yusuke they expect him to become, so... why base his resurrection on what he's already (not) accomplished? Granted, the show is very unclear about what, if anything, Sayaka will do if she decides that Yusuke doesn't have a life worth going back to (even if I have my own theory discussed at the end), but the fact that this is suddenly a factor at all seems grossly unfair, not entirely unlike Kuwabara's rigged promise. We as the audience know that people love Yusuke. Yusuke himself is beginning to acknowledge that. But if this fourteen year old delinquent truly had no one that wanted him back from the dead... isn't that all the more reason to allow a resurrection and give him the chance to build a life where he would be missed?

This stupid shonen got me thinking too much istg.

Yusuke, ever the self-deprecating pessimist, bypasses all of the above thoughts and jumps straight to, "It's clear if [Keiko] had any sense she'd want me gone." I'd find that attitude incredibly sad if I wasn't distracted by how cute Botan and Sayaka are, sitting on the oar together. The spirit girls who fly together, thrive together!

Botan starts teasing Yusuke about having a crush, which just feeds his temper and Sayaka's confusion. Deciding that she needs to gather more info, they follow along for an average day of school because these earlier episodes are, apparently, ghost-stalk Keiko hours.

We see her reading aloud in class from Heart of Darkness (not the easiest book for some middle schoolers), scoring a point during volleyball practice, refusing to let one girl cheat off her homework, but happily helping another who runs up with a question. So she's pretty, athletic, and academically successful, the trifecta for any good love interest. Sayaka is impressed not just with her "nearly perfect" scores, but also the maturity that Keiko demonstrates, such as maintaining her morals about cheating while remaining compassionate.

Actually, I really love the contrast this provides for us, the viewer. Meaning, Keiko is shown to be at her least mature when in Yusuke's presence. Not that her responses aren't justified, but watching her dramatically snatch gum from his mouth, slap him across the face, or pull crazed expressions as she yells at him is a far cry from this calm, poised, soft-spoken Keiko. It's a way to visually show us that she's comfortable in his presence, despite the suspect humor attached. Not that the Keiko we see at school is faking or anything — she is legitimately that kind and articulate — but we see that being with Yusuke allows her to relax in a way she doesn't with others. School!Keiko is, as Sayaka says, pretty much perfect, 24/7. Yusuke's Keiko is a little rougher around the edges, in a way that implies a multifaceted personality shining through.

However, the only conclusion our trio draws is that, given Keiko's accomplishments, any attraction must be one-sided.

Poor Yusuke lol.

In a plot move that is so ridiculously contrived, just as Yusuke is grappling with the accusation that Keiko couldn't possibly like him back, a "handsome boy" arrives to ask Keiko out. He says that he couldn't bear it when she stopped reading Heart of Darkness because he's fallen in love with her voice. "Will you be my girlfriend?"

Please excuse me while I lose my shit over how ridiculous this is. I legitimately straight up cackled when I watched this scene.

Luckily for Mr. Absurd, Keiko takes him seriously — and lets him down easy. She says she can't be his girlfriend and when he presses the "Why?", asking if she already likes someone else, Keiko confirms that she does. This is done through a shot of her feet. Not a POV shot given the angle, but close enough that it feels like we're stepping into Keiko's shoes (haha), shyly staring down at the floor in embarrassment and regret.

Rejection complete? The guy screams.

I mean he screams.

I mean this nobody we're never gonna see again unhinges his jaw and lets out an unholy shriek the likes of which makes me shriek in utter GLEE.

It's insane. It's wonderful. I'm going to use one of my coveted image spots to show you his face:

Look at that and tell me this show isn't amazing.

Okay, I'm focusing again. As Keiko runs off Botan and Sayaka start dragging Yusuke, teasing him about how Keiko chose him over that "charming handsome boy."

...Please scroll up and look at that image again. I find YYH's definition of "charming" and "handsome" to be hilariously wrong.

Yusuke, as per usual, throws himself into damage control, claiming that Keiko didn't say who she liked, so really it could be anyone. They're not buying it. “'I like Keiko' is written all over your face!” Botan crows. Meanwhile, Sayaka is scribbling in her little investigator's journal that feelings on both side are severely misunderstood. "Suggest serious counseling."

Fantastic idea, Sayaka. I'd personally suggest counseling for the whole dying/best friend getting resurrected thing... but relationship woes work too!

We cut to later when school is out and Keiko has gone over to Yusuke's. To say that Atsuko has done a poor job of keeping the house clean lately would be a serious understatement.

Keiko points out the old food and broken glass specifically, cluing us in that this isn't just a messy environment, but a dangerous one as well. This is proven when she accidentally knocks a stack of books over and a used bowl falls onto Yusuke's face. What's interesting is that Keiko says that things are "back to normal" now, though I'm not sure if that's in reference to the state of the house, or just the note Atsuko left behind, asking Keiko to take care of Yusuke while she's out. I'm inclined towards thinking it's just the note, partly because of Keiko's shock when she first arrives, because the house wasn't shown to be in this state prior to Yusuke's death (first image above), and because the note is accompanied by a great voiceover that makes Atsuko sound quite sloshed when she left. That's what's normal, the drinking and carefree attitude, not the state of her home. If we buy that reading, it allows for another fantastic look into Atsuko's mental state. If she's already an alcoholic, the trauma of her son's death and the following revelation that he's coming back might make her struggle in other ways. Like finding cleaning to be an impossible task.

She's depressed. It doesn't excuse the state she's left Yusuke in and, as previously acknowledged, YYH is definitely not a show interested in this nuance, but I still find it fun to take what little we've gotten and run with it.

However, Keiko is firmly on team "WTF Atsuko." She hurries to make sure Yusuke wasn't hurt by the falling bowl, bemoans him being "covered in garbage," and says that leaving him in this state should be considered a felony. Knowing it's far beyond her power to fix Atsuko's failings, Keiko swears to come here after school every day until Yusuke regains his body. It's as she's cleaning him of the dust that's gathered that Keiko becomes entranced with Yusuke’s features. Particularly his lips. The soft lighting returns, their theme song swells, and Keiko gets thiiiis close to kissing Yusuke for the first time.

Which is a little weird, right? I mean, we know why Yusuke is freaking out. Beyond the embarrassment of a middle schooler receiving his first kiss while two ghost girls eagerly watch on, he's made a hobby of denouncing his interest in Keiko to anyone who will listen. But for the average viewer — for Keiko herself — don't we care the he's, you know, dead? Or if not technically dead, very unconscious? Don't get me wrong, I fully understand the appeal of this situation in a generalized, cultural sense (with the side disclaimer that I'm reading a Japanese product through an American lens). Sleeping Beauty exists for a reason and there's definitely an element of that here: a gender-reversed setup where Keiko’s kills may break the "curse" of Yusuke's untimely death. Even his in-between state of being mirrors the "death like sleep" of the fairy tale. But when you strip away those Disney-esque thoughts, we're left with a girl about to kiss an unresponsive body, not as a common gesture of care (the parent who kisses their child while they sleep), but as a first time, romantic milestone.

It's a little weird lol.

But embrace the romance! As well as its inevitable interruption. Just as Keiko is about to land a peck, the neighborhood watch committee announces a heat and fire warning, startling Keiko out of her thoughts about Yusuke's "beautiful face." (There's another gender reversal for ya.) She gasps at her almost-action, conveniently remembers that her mom wanted her to do some shopping, and hightails it out of there before embarrassment can really kill them both.

So she runs off for food... in a sweater? The outfit is cute and all, but I wonder what the animators were thinking, putting Keiko in a puffy pullover during an episode all about a heat wave.

It's about at this point that the plot goes from cute romance to absolutely buck wild. The fires the neighborhood watch committee mentioned are not, in fact, due to the overwhelming heat, but an arsonist that's going around tossing molotov cocktails through open windows. Why is he doing such a thing? I don't know. Arsonists be doing arson, I guess. The important bit is that Yusuke's place is his next target, considering that Atsuko forgot to lock the windows when she went out. Within seconds all that garbage is set ablaze, quite obviously putting Yusuke's resurrection chances at an all time low.

"Wake up, stupid!" he shouts at his unconscious body. Mood, Yusuke. That's me every morning.

So this is a full scale emergency now and everyone is scrambling trying to think of something to do. Yusuke comes up with the idea to possess himself like he did Kuwabara — nice attempt at a loophole there — but since it would technically count as his resurrection, no dice. Botan decides to go get Kuwabara himself, even though he's too far away to do anything. It's still worth a shot. Sayaka, meanwhile, watches all this unfold with a somewhat clinical detachment. She's not quite indifferent and she's definitely not cruel... she’s just not as emotionally invested in this as the other two. Which not only re-emphasizes her purpose here, as an observer judging Yusuke, but also highlights the bond Botan is forming with him. As mentioned before in regards to her hanging out with Yusuke rather than ferrying souls, Botan is well past someone assisting Yusuke simply because it's a part of her job. He's her friend.

We get some shots of the growing fire which includes a hazy texture to the animation I quite like and then we cut to Keiko several blocks away, shopping bag in hand. Word of the new fire spreads, with one bystander mentioning that it's the twelfth today.

"This is eerie.”

“Yeah, I can’t help feeling we’re under attack.”

That's because you are! Someone stop that man!

Sadly, I don't think the arsonist is mentioned again, let alone captured. We'll just have to relegate that to my incredibly niche fic wishlist.

Keiko also overhears that the latest fire is on fourth avenue, which of course is where Yusuke lives. Recognizing that he might be in trouble, she takes off at a run.

Meanwhile, Botan finds Kuwabara practicing his kicks against a Yusuke dummy. Amazing resemblance, right?

Watching for the purpose of recapping, I'm picking up on a lot of details in the animation I quite enjoy. I don't think anyone would claim that YYH, at this point in time, has the most impressive or flashy animation (the fight scenes later are another matter entirely), but there's a clear love for the product that shines through. The scared expression on Kuwabara's dummy. His unexpectedly dainty kick, complete with pointed toes. Botan's more translucent coloring to emphasize her supernatural status compared to Kuwabara. There are a lot of nice touches despite the overall simplicity.

Plus, you can't forget the lovely irony of Kuwabara fighting a defenseless "Yusuke" while the real guy actually lies defenseless amidst a fire. We already know that despite his tough talk, Kuwabara would be horrified to learn that his friend rival had died (again) in such a manner.

Capitalizing on that transparency, Botan runs a hand through Kuwabara's back to catch his attention. He gets his "tickle feeling" and instinctively looks around towards Yusuke's house, seeing the smoke. "Something tells me I should go that way." Gotta love a guy who drops everything to chase a vague, supernaturally induced hunch.

As Kuwabara leaves we cut back to Keiko arriving at the house, staring in horror at the blaze. We get an audio flashback to her talk with Yusuke where she promised to take care of his body until he got back. So she tries to run in, only for a couple of the onlookers to snag her, quite correctly keeping her from undergoing a suicide mission. We learn later that Keiko absolutely would have died without Yusuke's sacrifice, so her "You cowards!" is born more of emotion than justified accusations. It's not cowardly to look at the raging inferno in a small apartment and realize that recklessly running in will only result in two dead teens, not one.

I mean, the flames are already right there, licking the door. Even if Keiko somehow managed to avoid burns, the smoke alone would do her in. Still, Keiko tries to mitigate the damage by dumping a bucket of water over her head. As a kid I remember thinking this was the smartest thing ever. Utterly inspired. Keep that in the back of your mind, kid Clyde, for future reference. As an adult... I have no idea whether this would actually help or not lol. Any firefighters doubling as YYH fans?

Recklessness and iffy precautions aside, I can't express how much I appreciate the story giving Keiko things to do. Yusuke recognizes that she's the only one with the maturity and open-mindedness to believe in his resurrection. She's the one picking up Atsuko's slack regarding his day-to-day needs. She never hesitates for a moment, heroically throwing herself into this blaze for Yusuke's benefit. Yeah, a lot of that still falls into the emotional/domestic sphere — what we expect of the love interest in a 90s anime — but too often action stories don't have a clue what to do with their non-action characters, not even when it comes to just supporting the fighters. They're simply... there. Keiko, however, isn't window dressing. Whether it's helping Botan survive an upcoming, supernatural plague, or cheering the team on at the Dark Tournament, Keiko is an important part of the story, despite lacking the fighting prowess of the rest of the cast.

Just as important, this episode establishes a core equality between her and Yusuke. We just watched Keiko reject a (presumably) accomplished guy for him, telling the audience that these surface differences — academics, power levels, popularity, looks — don't matter to them. Yusuke is not Keiko's lesser just because he doesn't have the same scores in Sayaka's book and Keiko won't become Yusuke's lesser just because she doesn't have spiritual power like he does. The only important thing here is that they love each other and they're both willing to sacrifice everything for the other. In the span of about ten minutes, Keiko nearly gives up her life for Yusuke and, in turn, Yusuke gives up his resurrection for her. The level of care they show towards one another is balanced, despite those differences.

They’re a good ship, y'all. Even if this recapping's got me noticing Yusuke/Kuwabara potential lol.

To get back to the plot, a drenched Keiko charges into the fire, yelling Yusuke's name for the drama of it because we all know he can't respond. Despite the audience (hopefully) recognizing Keiko and Yusuke's equality, that memo hasn't reached Yusuke yet. "You're a lot more important to this world than I am!" he yells, hammering home that despite everything — knowing he instinctively saved a child, watching his loved ones grieve for him, helping Kuwabara just because he can — Yusuke still, deep down, believes that he doesn't deserve to come back; that he doesn't measure up to those around him. The self-sacrificial nature this insecurity produces shocks Sayaka. She points out that if Keiko doesn't save his body, he's not coming back. "What's the point of being alive if Keiko has to get killed for it?"

Keiko means more to Yusuke than the rest of his living existence. Jot that down in your notebook, Sayaka!

Kuwabara arrives and runs into one of his friends who informs him that Keiko just went inside. “Yusuke’s girl? The one we saved from those thugs?”

BOY does that tell us a lot about their rivalry! I mean yeah, we've already established several times over that Kuwabara — just like Yusuke himself — is not the cruel street thug he'd like to present himself as. If these characters actually wanted to hurt each other outside of a martial arts challenge, don't you think Kuwabara would capitalize on the "Yusuke's girl" bit? Everyone seems to know that they have feelings for each other, but Kuwabara never once wields that as ammunition against Yusuke. There are no taunts about him not being good enough. Or rather, I should clarify there are no serious taunts — Kuwabara is well known for his teasing. There's also no attempt to steal Keiko out from under him, the common treatment of the love interest as a "prize" that many stories fall into. Indeed, later this episode YYH will deconstruct this a bit. Yusuke sees Kuwabara grab Keiko's hand and yells that he better not be getting "fresh" with her. But it's purely Yusuke's worries shining through. The audience gets a crystal clear picture of the situation and knows, categorically, that Kuwabara has only the most innocent of intentions in holding Keiko's hand.

(Well, running from the police isn't innocent, but...)

I keep getting sidetracked. Plot! Keiko makes it to Yusuke's room and finds that he is already on fire. She then proceeds to try and put it out by patting it with her hands. I take back what I said about Keiko's smarts in this scene. Now we know where that supposed recklessness comes from though. Apparently they're both immune to fire! Nothing to worry about here, folks.

JK she's actually in danger, despite the animation choices. By this point everyone, including Keiko, realizes that there's no way out: the fire has blocked the door. Sayaka then reveals that there is one way to save her. If Yusuke throws his egg into the fire, the energy of the spirit beast will release and guide her to safety. The catch? Hatch the egg early and it won't complete its intended function of guiding him back to his body. This beast is gonna guide one person and that is it.

Cue Yusuke's near immediate decision to sacrifice his life for Keiko's. Granted, it's not precisely one life for another. Yusuke's resurrection was always contingent upon the beast not devouring him whole — something Koenma claims would have happened at the end of the episode — meaning that it's not technically a fair trade. Yusuke might have sacrificed Keiko's life for his own... only to fail to get that life back anyway. (There's a tragedy for ya.) To say nothing of how Yusuke is currently dead and has been for at least a couple of days, whereas Keiko very much is not. There's some sort of philosophical discussion there about potential being pit against current reality.

BUT that's not the point! The emotional point is that he sacrificed his life for hers — the potential of his resurrection, the potential of that life he might have led — all technicalities aside. And I, for one, think that's very neat of him.

A blue light shines as the egg's energy is released, providing a lovely contrast to the fire surrounding them. A path forms to the door and Keiko, recognizing Yusuke's presence, follows it. "We'll make it, Yusuke," Keiko says, which is one hell of a sucker-punch now that we know she's just carrying a corpse. Unbeknownst to Keiko, Yusuke is very much not making it. That's the only reason why she is.

Kuwabara appears to help them the rest of the way which is also a pretty awesome thing considering that, from everyone else's perspective, the fire is still raging and blocking the door. Despite his spiritual awareness, Kuwabara gives no indication that he noticed this strange light, or Yusuke's hand in the rescue. Which basically means he lunged into a bunch of deadly fire for Keiko and doesn't question how in the world he isn't burned.

Keiko's hands are fine, Kuwabara's whole body is fine... fire immunity must run in the friend group!

Yusuke has another rare moment of vulnerability — "They're both okay" — and I cackle happily at the "both" because see. You love Kuwabara too, Yusuke! All this bluster about hating him and finding him annoying. The second he rushed into that fire you were crawling up the walls.

Except then that happiness gives way to something that sounds a little more shocked. Devastated. "Well, I sure am... relieved..." Kudos to Cook's voice acting. You can hear the exact moment Yusuke realizes what he's done. Not that he regrets it, but the consequences are finally sinking in. He's relieved that they're safe, yes, but now he's never going to be able to rejoin them.

As Yusuke has an(other) existential crisis, Kuwabara peels back the blanket Keiko had wrapped Yusuke in, revealing his face. “What are you doing with Yusuke’s body?! Are you some type of sick grave robber?” he shouts. God I love when a story actually keeps track of who knows what. Kuwabara, for all his recent involvement in the plot, doesn't actually know what's going on. From his perspective Yusuke died, he made a scene at the wake, he saved "his girl" from a bunch of thugs, lost a huge chunk of time only to wake up with her randomly hugging him (then slapping him), participated in a bet with his awful teacher and had a couple weird, Yusuke related dreams while studying, and has felt the presence of ghosts perhaps a little more frequently than usual. Now he's trying to help save Keiko from a fire only for her to reveal she risked her own life for Yusuke's body. Of course he's freaking out! What's she doing with that?

What's utterly fantastic though is that Kuwabara takes all of five seconds to process this and then enters immediate Ride or Die mode for Keiko. She's been hoarding Yusuke's body for undetermined reasons? Well, who is he to judge? The important thing here is that people are arrested for keeping bodies, so they've gotta skedaddle before the firefighters show up.

Hence, hand-holding and avoiding arrest.

As Yusuke starts threatening Kuwabara not to get "fresh" with her, Botan sadly reminds him that he no longer has a say in who Keiko does or does not fall in love with. The switch in tone is jarring. Whereas before Botan would have teased him mercilessly for the crush, now she knows that nothing can come of that — and it would be cruel not to remind Yusuke of that too.

"Oh no. I didn't think..." Yusuke whispers, further establishing that he knew the risks of using his egg, but hadn't allowed them to sink in yet. Now they have.

He gives a fake little laugh with, "Just when it was getting good" and I cry at the development in the span of just four episodes. Despite what I said at the beginning about the show resetting each week, there has been a lot of change thus far. Yusuke wants to live now! He wants to be there for Keiko! He looks down on his tiny family and screams at the unfairness of it all! They're talking about how they can't wait for him to come back and now that's never gonna happen!!

It hurts, friends. It hurts a whole lot.

During this conversation between Keiko, Atsuko, and Kuwabara, we see that a couple of hours have passed (it's nighttime now, the fire is out) and Atsuko is apologizing for putting them all in danger like that. And by that I mean yes, she does technically apologize with an "I'm sorry" and everything, but it's also a one sentence apology pit against... well, near death for the three people standing (and sitting) before her. Atsuko seems just as concerned by Keiko losing her hair as she does Keiko nearly burning to death and she kneels by Yusuke's wheelchair, baby-talking to him about how he forgives her, right? I love Atsuko, she's great, but objectively speaking she is not a good mother. Not right now, anyway.

Oh yeah, and just to reiterate that: Keiko's hands are fine after patting down Yusuke's on-fire body, but her hair, which I'm pretty sure never catches, has to be cut short. Ah, anime logic. Funny thing is, YYH isn't the only story to take the love interest and give her a cool, short cut thanks to a traumatic event. Anyone read Ranma 1/2?

During this conversation we also learn that, sometime between the fire and now, Keiko filled Kuwabara in on everything that's happening with Yusuke. Makes sense. He kneels beside the wheelchair, joining the others in telling Yusuke that they'll wait patiently for his return. Yusuke, above them, continues yelling about how they're waiting on a dead man.

“It can’t be helped. He made this decision on his own."

Except it can, in fact, be helped!

Just as all hope is truly lost, Koenma appears and announces that Yusuke will be returned to life. Why? Because sacrificing his egg for Keiko is a better indicator of his worth than the egg itself could have been. Despite feeding on his negative outlook and heading towards biting Yusuke's head off — something the animation backs up by showing us teeth during the fire

— Yusuke's act demonstrates a tendency towards being a "decent human being" that is "so rare." Wow. That's depressing. Still, yay that Yusuke has those qualities! And this, to my mind, helps explain Sayaka's presence. Koenma recognized that judging Yusuke couldn't be left to the egg alone and indeed, Sayaka took note of his worth before he ever threw the egg into the fire. First it was questioning why someone as amazing as Keiko would go for him, then it was solidified through the shock of Yusuke announcing that coming back to life was meaningless if she wasn't in it. Even if Keiko had somehow, miraculously escaped the fire before Yusuke's sacrifice, I bet Sayaka's report would have tipped him in resurrection's favor anyway.

Everyone is, of course, overjoyed and my heart swells at the intense gratitude Yusuke displays. My favorite part though is when Koenma cryptically says that “Your added experience with death could make you very useful" (a nod towards future events that goes right over Yusuke's head) and his response to this is a yelled, "YOU THINK I'M USEFUL?" This poor kid. The God of everything ever is chucking out revelations left and right, about resurrections and spirit beasts, but the only thing that really penetrates is the realization that someone thinks he's useful. Talk about relatable.

You know, I've been thinking about why this moment works so well. I mean, there are a lot of other stories where undermining the consequences our hero faces — either with humor, or by erasing them completely — can feel like the audience was cheated. I think YYH dodged that with a couple of crucial factors. First, Yusuke's consequence isn't something new that he's now avoided, it's just a permanent extension of something he was already dealing with. We did get to watch him inhabit the space between life and death, grappling with whether he'd ever be able to return. The story didn't deny us that growth, it just confirmed something we all instinctively knew: this tale won't end here with Yusuke permanently going to some afterlife. Second, the Deus ex Machina fix doesn't happen too soon. Yeah, it's only a couple of minutes in a single episode, but we (and Yusuke) still get to sit with that outcome for a while, soaking it in before its removal. Finally, there's no doubt that Yusuke earned this reprieve. Koenma's timing might be sudden and (if you're not genre savvy) unexpected, but looking back at the series as a whole thus far, we're able to agree absolutely that Yusuke deserves this. Far from feeling like we were cheated, this solution invites just as much celebration as we're seeing on screen, for the simple reason that we can buy into Koenma's reasoning. We know now that Yusuke is a good person. We saw him selflessly sacrifice his future for Keiko. We agree that he deserves a second chance.

Thus, the episode ends with Yusuke flying up to fill the screen in his joy, a far better, final shot than Harry Potter and The Prison of Azkaban managed 😰

And that's it for Episode 4, folks! See you later for Episode 5 💕

#YYH #Yu Yu Hakusho #YYH Recaps #mymetas

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shihalyfie · 4 years ago

Note

Out of curiosity, I’ve noticed you don’t touch on tri, any particular reason? I know a lot of fans myself included don’t care for it but I don’t wanna assume that’s the case

I had a feeling I was going to get this question eventually, and I tussled with myself for quite a while on whether I should answer it publicly or privately, since this is a blog I’d like to mostly dedicate to appreciating the nuances and themes within Adventure and 02 and how carefully they handled all of the topics within, and I’d like to hold back on negativity for the most part (just because I talk about there being a meaningful reason behind most creative decisions in Adventure and 02 doesn’t mean I necessarily like all of them, I just don’t feel like this is the place to be adding those kinds of personal sentiments, because this is meant to be an analysis blog, not a review blog). That said, my meta has been getting a lot of traction lately (thank you so much! I really appreciate it!) and I do feel like this question must have crossed people’s minds at some point since it is a bit of an elephant in the room, so I think people have the right to know the answer.

To those of you reading this who are fans of tri., I sincerely apologize, since some less than kind things are going to be in this answer (although I do hope that maybe the tag would have successfully caught in some blacklists for those trying to avoid this kind of negativity).

The short version of the answer is that “I couldn’t get it to work, and I don’t have the energy to do it.” The long version of the answer is that I did actually try to analyze and pick apart tri. in detail a year ago, but unlike with Adventure and 02, where looking at it deeply and trying to extract details out of it revealed that a lot of it did make sense or at least have a reason behind it, looking at tri. with this level of depth made it fall apart even more. The contradictions and things that don’t make sense aren’t just one or two things you could safely ignore like with, say, Armor Evolution to the Unknown or Tag Tamers or Hurricane Touchdown, but practically permeate the entire text of it (and this is especially the case when you bring 02 into play, but even if you were to isolate Adventure into a vacuum, there are too many things that still don’t make sense), and it’s on every level as well; not just plot and worldbuilding, but also meaningful theme.

In the end, I don’t think this is just something that can be chalked up to mere happenstance, and I think the core of the problem is something that can be accurately summarized in the story of the two tri. scriptwriters who were fans of the original series, but kept getting their scripts rejected because it wasn’t “mature” enough. It’s not limited to just this incident, and it permeates a lot of the sentiments behind what you hear in tri. staff testimony -- a constant sentiment that the original series was a “kids’ show” that didn’t go into any kind of meaningful depth, and that the new series was meant to be “mature” in comparison. This is very, very painful for me to read, as someone who adores the original series because it had a significant level of depth and nuance that so many kids’ shows at the time wouldn’t even dare (and sometimes even to its detriment, since I’ve often complained how the series was too subtle for its own good, or kept going into things that would go over its target audience’s heads) -- contrast the statement about 02 that they wanted it to be a lighter series at first, but felt that it would be wrong to shy away from important things they wanted to say.

The entire premise of the series doesn’t work if you take even a single Adventure episode into account (45, which singlehandedly dismantles most of how tri. is even supposed to work), and there’s this thread of acting like the morality of killing/the morality of friendly fire was somehow new to this series when it comprised a whole quarter of Adventure and nearly the entirety of 02, and with so many other sentiments like this, the only conclusion I can reach is that they cared so much about that “maturity” that actually paying any mind to the series it was meant to be a sequel to was that low on the priority list. For me, who's mainly here to pay respect to the level of detail and thought and depth that the original Adventure and 02 staff put into their series, it just feels unfair to expect me to bend over backwards and compromise the integrity of the analysis just to make it “comply” with a series that never intended to be consistent or make sense in the first place.

Even if you do selectively include tri. elements, the more you try to involve, the more all of the contradictory facts and themes between Adventure/02 and tri. come into conflict like two magnets with the wrong sides facing each other, and you are repeatedly going to come into crossroads where you will have to commit to one over the other. At that point, the sheer level of speculation and workarounds to make it happen, and the things you'd have to toss out or modify from what was originally meant to be a comprehensive analysis, make it into less of an analysis and more headcanon and fanfiction. Which is perfectly fine if you want to go that route, I mean -- it's just that this isn't what this blog is for, because I'm trying to analyze and inspect what (the very uniformly consistent) Adventure and 02 were trying to say before another series (one that clearly had zero fundamental interest in maintaining any of that) came around fifteen years later. I include Kizuna mainly because it is incredibly easy to fit in comparison, given that it not only had original staff, but also is clearly made with just as much attention to detail and focus on meaningful theme as the original series was, and so it’s fairly easy to integrate it into an Adventure/02 analysis without much trouble -- in fact, Kizuna additions conversely often enhance and further elaborate on things that were already in the original series, so the helpful additions it adds far outweigh the work it takes to include it -- but that’s not the case for tri. at all.

Nevertheless, as I said, this is not a blog meant to focus on negativity. There are people who found something in tri. that spoke to them, or don’t really put so much weight into what the staff said or thought, and would like to see it in a way that works for them. I personally encourage this sentiment; just because I happen to be someone who treasures Adventure and 02′s integrity so much that I refuse to compromise does not mean I should inflict these feelings on others who don’t see it the same way. Because of that, I personally felt it was better to simply not cover it, rather than derailing every single analysis to make an aside about everything about tri. that doesn’t make sense, because that’s also going to be hurtful to anyone who does like one or more of the series and wants to make it work. But, after all, this blog is my personal analysis and way of seeing the series, and I cannot see it in a way that makes it work (and especially don’t have the energy to make an attempt for something I do in my free time), and so I would rather just pass the baton to those who feel more up to it instead; in other words, I’m not trying to invalidate tri.’s existence for those who want to make it work, and rather my stance is “I can’t figure out a way to make it work myself, so I will leave the reasoning to you.” Moreover, I’ve implied this a few times, but a lot of the ideas on this blog or in any of my analyses are not things I came up with on my own, but from sharing ideas and having discussions with friends in my private time, and I feel like I would be doing them a disservice by weaponizing all of the insightful things they’ve given me to dunk on something else. I love 02 a lot, and one of its major themes was trying to make the most positively productive thing you can out of what you have, and advocating for people to maybe appreciate something they may not have thought about before feels like a better use of my time.

If you are interested in my analysis of tri. from last year, I still keep it on hand mainly because -- well, to be frank about it, nearly every tri. diehard fan I’ve had a personal encounter with has said some very nasty things to me about how I’m not “smart” enough to appreciate the series, or how I’m being “unfair” about it, or how I’m not a “real fan” for not singing its praises, and so I mainly put this together as a collected document and proof of how I (and the few others who helped me put it together) did actually make due diligence and put proper scrutiny into trying to make it work (and couldn’t). (If you happen to identify as a tri. diehard fan and have not said this kind of thing to people, I sincerely apologize and want to make clear that I don’t want to pin the entire tri. fanbase as this kind of person; this was just my personal experience.) I wrote it mainly as catharsis and for the sake of other people who were interested in a detailed analysis, and also for the sake of other people who might have gotten these kinds of dismissive insults and wanted confirmation that their feelings weren’t baseless, or for bridging the gap between people who did like the series but want to understand why there are people who don’t (this apparently was a testimony from a few people who read it). That’s also why I’m linking it right now, since I imagine that there might be people curious about said aforementioned analysis after I’d just brought it up. However, I do warn that there is a lot of frustrated negativity, and that there is a sense of bias in that I wrote this “going in with doubt” instead of the more positive attitude I have with Adventure or 02 in that I assume there was a good reason for everything, and, frankly, if you like tri., I don’t actually suggest reading it or bringing that kind of negativity about something you like into your view. I also ask that people understand that the linked document is where I dumped all of my feelings cathartically and I do not enjoy dwelling on it further, nor bringing up this document when it doesn’t feel necessary, so I apologize, and I hope the stance I just expressed won’t taint anyone’s opinion of me too much...^^

#tri negativity #jollyshitshow #long post #digimon adventure tri (tagging this to catch filters but please don't put it in the main tag)#shiha's ask box

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dracothedeatheatingcupcake-ao3 · 3 years ago

Text

TPWP Introspective

Hey guys!! So, as you noticed, there was no update today either, like I had commented that I may try and do if possible. The reason I didn’t post today, though, is because I remembered that I wrote a little introspective thing about TPWP a few days ago that I wanted to post before the next chapter, if possible. I spent the last hour and a half intermittently touching it up (while also talking to friends, ha). I wrote this after waking up at five in the morning and not being able to go back to sleep, so I was fairly tired and rambley when writing it, ha.

Anyway, this is pretty long discussion about something that’s bugged me about TPWP for a little while, which is why I’ve made Taka so sexual despite not really thinking he would be like that in canon. In my attempt to write about that, my exhausted self also went into another problem I have with TPWP, which is the fact that neither Taka nor Mondo are really like their canon selves anymore. And while that was a purposeful thing, I never could pinpoint why, and I think I managed to in this post, so there’s that, ha.

Now, it’s getting late and I’m very tired, so I’ll add my introspective thingy in a read more. It’s about 5k words and goes over a lot about Taka and Mondo’s interpretation in TPWP.

Hey all! So, I wanted to go over something that’s been bugging me for a while in TPWP, though no one else seems annoyed by it. But I kind of am, so I just wanted to… I don’t know. Discuss it in case anyone else also has problems with it, but just isn’t bringing it up in comments. And the thing that I wanted to talk about is the fact that I’ve made Taka and Mondo so sexual in this story, despite this not really striking me as something Taka, in particular, would be like. In order to discuss all that, though, I have to go through a bunch of other explanations about what my main goal in this story has always been, as a kind of backstory. So, buckle up, my friends. This is a doozy.

See, while I didn’t have much of an idea when I started writing, the one thing I knew I wanted to play around with was the idea of dismantling Taka and everything that makes him tick. In the game, he is shown as a strict, passionate, highly motivated character, spending so much time studying and trying to better himself that he lost sight of who he is other than that. He doesn’t have friends and confesses to Makoto that he doesn’t even understand how people make friends through connecting over things like television, since he’s so detached from anything other than his goals. The writers even comment on how he is almost mad with his passion and righteousness.

That whole persona seems so unattainable to me. I’m someone who seeks ‘perfection,’ right? I’m a perfectionist and it burns me so much to know that no matter what I do, there will always, ALWAYS be faults in the things I create. I put myself and my creations against others and always find myself lacking. It burns me and makes me feel so… I don’t even know. Unhappy. Upset. Things like that. And I’ve gotten much better with this over the years, right? I accept that my work will not be perfect, and that anything I can create is enough since I created it and I enjoyed creating it. But the feeling is still there. The unhappiness. The discontent.

So, when I saw Taka and his madness to become better, I wanted to take that and see if I could deconstruct it. If I could break Taka down to his core, expose all of the secret little things inside of him that he must be hiding to present such a ‘perfect’ front, and turn it on its side. To give Taka reasons for his madness to better himself and then take it apart. Or, in other words, the entire premise I had for this story was to take Taka and break him down. And then, then I would build him back up. Into something less ‘perfect,’ less rules oriented, but a hell of a lot happier. Because in canon… Taka didn’t really strike me as happy. Not based on the things he would say to Makoto in both free time events and the school mode.

In order to do that, of course, I had to completely break apart the things that made him so rule oriented in the first place. And to someone who has spent almost their entire life building up this one persona, that sort of thing can be terrifying and uncomfortable. And it can lead to a lot of confusion and scrambling afterwards.

Chapter 17 was where I made the biggest break for Taka. I’d been chipping away at him for the first 16 chapters, and then 17 was the one where I took my sledgehammer and went to town. That chapter was the one in which Taka realized just how unhappy and discontent he had been growing up. He’d always stuffed that down and ignored it in order to keep going, forcing himself to ignore his pain so that he could become all that he wanted to be. He wasn’t even conscious of doing this since it was so deeply engrained in him by that point. Like I said in the very first chapter, Taka would run so fast and so fervently from his insecurities growing up that he didn’t even notice that they were occurring within him. Or if he did, he ignored them until it all went away.

In chapter 17, Taka stopped being able to run. His feelings for Mondo created a huge rift inside him and he didn’t know how to handle it. And then, after his conversion with his father, he realized that he’d been forcing everything down for all of his life, to the point that he didn’t know who he was. He wanted to be an upright, moral individual, but how could he be if he is in love with a man? How can he be when he can feel such impure, base desire for someone, a man especially? And I’m not saying that there is anything wrong with a man loving a man, not at all! Just… it went against the carefully constructed morality Taka, personally, had spent his entire life forcing himself to abide by, and that was a huge blow to him. He couldn’t comprehend it and he just… fell apart.

But he didn’t fall apart alone. Mondo was there to catch him as he fell, was there to help gather the pieces, and Taka latched onto that. He didn’t know what was happening or why, but he knew that Mondo was a vital component to all of it. In a way… Mondo was everything to him.

The main point is that I wanted to break Taka’s character apart, mostly because I cannot imagine someone being that moral and upright while not being completely miserable (or without actually being completely immoral, like all those people who preach righteousness while actually doing horrible things behind the scenes without care). There’s a sort of misery in enforced righteousness, especially considering how horrible the world can be. I liked Taka and I wanted him to be happy. And I couldn’t, for the life of me, imagine him being the way he was portrayed in the game and also being happy. Maybe that’s just me projecting, but… I don’t know.

But deconstructing years of a carefully constructed persona is— like I said— terrifying. And for someone like Taka, whose entire life plan was crafted around a certain image? I can only imagine that would be like jumping off a plane into a black, inky darkness, no idea where you’re going to land. But Taka did that, because the only other option was to continue living with intense unhappiness, lying to himself to keep his sanity. But the problem with lying to yourself is that it gets so much harder once you know the truth. It can be done, of course, but it leads to even more unhappiness and pain and Taka… Taka realized that he didn’t want that. He didn’t want to be in pain anymore. He… he wanted to be happy. Which is an incredibly hard thing to accept when you’ve spent years silently accepting your own unhappiness as a fact of life.

As such, everything that has occurred since chapter 17 has been Taka’s attempt at constructing a new personality, in a way. A personality that marries the beliefs and goals he has always had while also combining them with a new sense of happiness and contentment in his life that before now he’s never felt. And this… this is so, so hard for him to do.

And it gets harder when his and Mondo’s relationship shifts. When he gets a taste of something he’d previously not allowed himself to ever, ever feel. Which brings us to the questions of why, exactly, I put so much sexual content into this story, despite it not seeming like something Taka would really want to do in canon.

Because… it’s not about pleasure. Right? It was never about pleasure or desire. It was about Taka allowing himself to feel something that every human feels (or, you know. Not every human. But a lot). It was about making Taka acknowledge that he is feeling these ‘impure,’ ‘sinful’ desires and allowing him to feel it. And, of course, this can be overwhelming. Taka has never allowed himself to feel these sorts of things before, had always pushed them so far down he couldn’t even see them. So far down he could pretend they weren’t there.

But they were. They always were. Taka can feel desire and attraction. He can feel them just fine. The whole point of the sexual content was to show Taka that it is okay to feel like that and that it’s not wrong or immoral. That Taka can feel attracted to someone, a man especially, and not feel ashamed. But more than that, it’s about allowing Taka to acknowledge that can be who is he in general without shame. That he doesn’t always have to be ‘perfect’ or infallible. That he can just be… Taka.

The biggest problem in all of this, however, is the fact that Taka is not the only character in this story. He’s not the only one going through a metamorphosis. Because Mondo? Oh, you can bet your sweet behind I was making Mondo go through his own metamorphosis, too.

Because everything I said about Taka up until now? I also feel about Mondo. I view Mondo’s tough guy, biker persona just like I view Taka’s upright, moral one. It’s a facade. Something that is hiding what is truly going on under the surface. It protects their soft, gooey innards, keeping them both safe whilst also providing them a sense of being. Of belonging.

But it’s not healthy. Hiding behind a persona, not letting your true emotions show. It’s unhealthy and leads to, you know… pain and unhappiness. And Mondo… Mondo also strikes me as a somewhat unhappy character. His disconnect in the game is less towards other people, however, and more towards himself. Makoto acknowledges many times after speaking with Mondo during free time events that he has a hidden side to him. A softer, ‘cuter’ side that he tries (and fails, ha) to keep hidden.

Like with Taka, I wanted to break Mondo’s carefully constructed persona and remove this hidden person inside him. I wanted to bring that person to the surface, finally allowing Mondo to stop feeling like he has to hide behind anger and rage and being ‘strong’. I wanted… I don’t know. To allow Mondo to not feel so ashamed of his weaker side, I guess.

This was a lot harder to do than with Taka, though, for a couple reasons. One, I was not writing from Mondo’s perspective in TPWP, which means all of his metamorphosis was being seen through the eyes of another. Which is not always easy to portray, sadly. For another, Mondo has a huge reason to keep his inner self hidden and locked away. Taka’s reason is shame and a desire to prove himself, right? This, in my eyes, is fairly simple to deconstruct. All you have to do is find a way to remove the shame and realize that it’s okay to feel what you feel. And yes, this is challenging, but… it’s not impossible.

Mondo, though? What’s keeping Mondo back isn’t just shame and a desire to prove himself. No. What’s holding Mondo back is guilt. Mondo feels guilty for his weakness. He feels guilty that his supposed ‘weakness’ killed his brother. He feels guilty that this same ‘weakness’ is preventing him from telling the truth, from accepting the responsibility for his supposed crime. Mondo, in many ways, hates himself. In this story, at least. And guilt is a much, much harder emotion to deconstruct than shame. There’s also the fact that I made Mondo an abuse survivor, which adds another element into this all that I won’t get into since this whole thing is already much longer than I’d initially intended, oof.

Anyway. The point here is that both Taka and Mondo are going through this metamorphosis at the same time. And I did this purposely since I wanted to have them help each other grow. Right? Because I view Taka and Mondo as very similar characters. They both have a need to prove themselves and a sense of inner righteousness that guides them in what they do. They just took opposite paths in their expression of these things. But ultimately, at their core, Taka and Mondo are very similar in my eyes.

Honestly, that’s part of why I had them hate one another in the beginning (on top of the fact that they didn’t get along in the game at first either, ha). That was each of them seeing themself in the other, and absolutely hating what they saw. Because they hate themselves. Because they cannot stand the persona they’ve created. Because it’s such a painfully false front that it’s almost offensive to them to see it on another.

Chapter ten was my way of letting them acknowledge a sense of self love for the first time. By accepting the other as flawed, but still fundamentally good, it allowed them to see themselves in a somewhat positive light for the first time. To accept that this person they once hated with all of their heart is… not that bad when it comes down to it. And not only are they not that bad, but they’re actually kind of amazing, really.

I… hm. I don’t really know where I’m going with this. I am very tired and am kind of just rambling at this point. I guess I just… I wanted to acknowledge that I’ve changed both of these characters a lot from canon, Taka especially. And this change has been expressed in a great way in Taka’s increased sexuality. And that I know this, that I know this isn’t really what canon Taka would act like, but that’s kind of the point. As much as I love Taka as a character, he’s kind of one dimensional. All of the characters in Danganronpa are. I think, in a way, they’re meant to be. But when you spend time with them, during the free time events and the school mode, you begin to see a slightly more well-rounded picture.

But it… it still feels a little flat to me. A little hollow. So, in this story, I just… wanted to flesh out these characters that I like and see so much potential in. I wanted to take them, give them tragic backstories, and see if I could find a way to give them balance. To keep them somewhat the same as they once were, to not fully remove their canon aspects, but not have that be their sole, defining characteristic anymore. Taka is still the Ultimate Moral Compass, and Mondo is still the Ultimate Biker Gang Leader. But that’s not all they are. Not by the end of the story.

Now, did I succeed in my plan? I… honestly, I don’t know. This entire thing was never something I consciously thought of while writing. It was more… a desire of mine, which might be why I’m having such a hard time describing it here, ha. It’s up to all of you to determine if I succeeded in writing these characters in a way that respects their canon characterization, while also adding a sense of balance within them.

Also— not to sound pretentious (though I know I am, oof. I always am when dead tired, sorry)— but in a way, this whole story was a metaphor for self-acceptance and self-love. And allowing yourself to find peace in who and what you are, no matter what. I made Taka and Mondo literary parallels in this story for a reason, giving them similar backstories (Taka was abused by bullies and neglected by his father; Mondo was abused by his father and neglected by his mother. Mondo’s brother died, leaving a hole in his heart; Taka’s mother died, leaving a hole in his heart. Taka watched his grandfather fall from grace and used that as a catalyst to ‘better’ himself, thus hiding all the unpleasant and unsavory aspects about himself; Mondo watched his brother die and used that as a catalyst to ‘better’ himself, thus hiding all the unpleasant and unsavory aspects about himself… etc.) to showcase this metaphor, in a way.

And it… it was to show that them helping the other grow symbolizes allowing yourself to grow, too. It symbolizes taking all the harsh and ugly parts of yourself that you hate, seeing it in another person, and realizing you actually love them, really. It symbolizes showing kindness to yourself for your faults, something I personally struggle with. By having Taka and Mondo love one another so fiercely, even without fully knowing why… it symbolizes, in my mind, letting you love yourself.

And, like… I know how pretentious this sounds, ha. And I don’t think I really succeeded in portraying all of this, unfortunately. But I just… I don’t know. I love the idea of Taka and Mondo and I wanted to write a story where they love one another unconditionally, while at the same time learning to love themselves too.

In many ways, I wish I had made this story take place over the span of a longer amount of time. Three months is just… it’s too quick to do everything I wanted to do in this story. Like I’ve said before, this story was never meant to be so long, word count wise. And a lot of what I wrote about here was not really planned when I started writing. While I wanted to deconstruct Taka, I didn’t really realize how long that would take, oof. Or what it all would entail. I thought three months would be plenty of time in universe, but then more and more things started happening, and by the time I realized it would need more time to progress naturally, I had passed the point of no return, pretty much.

If I could do this story all over again, I think I’d make it take place over the span of a year instead. I’d start the school year in April, like it’s supposed to be in Japan, and extend the amount of time Taka and Mondo were enemies. I’d have them become friends shortly before summer break and when they come back, have them go through the beginnings of their friendship like I had it in the story, but allowing it more time to progress. Taka and Mondo would still have their fight on Halloween, since that’s kind of an important aspect of that chapter, but they’d have had a longer time to be friends before that occurred. And then, after that, they’d have their physical relationship progress a lot more naturally and less hurriedly, the relationship spanning from perhaps right before winter break begins to the end of the school year in Japan, which is March. It would give them more time to come to terms with everything and accept themselves.

Part of me honestly kind of does want to change around TPWP to do this, but it would change a lot of fundamental parts of the story, which would be a lot of work. And if I was planning on publishing this story, I’d definitely do it since I think it would fix a lot of the problems that I have with how this story progresses. Three months is not long enough to completely deconstruct your entire personality, really. A year is a lot better and makes more sense to me. But, as it stands, I… I like TPWP. Is it perfect? No. But… that’s kind of the point? Nothing is perfect and if I allow myself, I’ll keep digging myself into more and more holes with this story, and at some point, I just… have to acknowledge I did the best I could and move on. Also, I do think that having it take place over three months isn’t completely unrealistic. Not with how unhappy both Taka and Mondo already had been. And there are some things that would be unrealistic if it took place over a year, too, so… eh.

I really don’t know where I’m going with this anymore, dear god. I’m going to go back to my original point real quick and hopefully finish this now hour long, rambling rant I’ve for some reason been going on. Jeez.

So. The purpose of the sexual content in this story. It— like a lot of other things in this story— was more meant as kind of like… a metaphor. It’s not about the sex, it’s about self-acceptance. Taka spent so many years denying himself and his sexuality, fearing it and feeling ashamed of it. By allowing himself to be sexual and intimate with Mondo, he’s accepting that aspect of himself and embracing it. But, because he spent so long denying it, he doesn’t quite know when it’s too much. He’s spent his life pushing down his discontent and discomfort to become what other people want him to be, and as such, he doesn’t quite know where his own boundaries lie.

And I’m going to be quite honest with y’all: Taka doesn’t enjoy the sexual acts quite as much as he thinks he does. No, I’m not saying that Mondo is taking advantage of Taka, or that Taka hates what they’re doing, not at all! Just… Taka feels uncomfortable with the things he and Mondo are doing, but because he enjoys the sensation and enjoys being close to Mondo, he pushes down the feeling of discontent, like he’s done all of his life. He just… doesn’t know what else to do. He knows he likes being close to Mondo, knows he enjoys the things they do together, but can’t quite put his finger on the fact that he doesn’t really enjoy being sexual. That he only likes the sexual acts because it’s the only way he can be close to Mondo in the way he wants, both physically and— in a way— emotionally.

And part of Taka does realize this, right? The deep, deep, hidden part of himself that only comes out at night when everything else is silent. I call this the ‘introspective’ part. But this is a hard part of yourself to access and acknowledge. Especially when you’re young. I, personally, am a very introspective person. It’s why I can write about emotions and feelings decently, and why I am currently writing this little introspective about TPWP. But it was a lot harder for me when I was a teen to realize what that introspection meant. It’s why I didn’t realize I had undiagnosed anxiety until I was eighteen and in college, which was ironically a lot easier for me than high school was. It took me being out of the situation I was in to look at myself and realize exactly why I felt what I felt, even though I knew I felt that stuff much earlier.

Taka’s still in his bad situation, though. He’s still struggling with the desire of what he wants and what he’s forcing himself to settle for. And, basically, he doesn’t understand why he’s unhappy at being sexual. He knows on a base level that he is, but he can’t quite place his finger on the why. Which is, as I’ve said, because it’s not really what he wants. He’s settling for having Mondo in whatever way he can because he thinks he has to. But it’s not what he wants, and it’s honestly killing him inside to be so close to his desired outcome, but not have it. He hates that the only way he can have Mondo is in such a shallow, debased way, but he’s forced himself to believe that this is all he will ever have, and that he must be happy with it or else he will lose it, like he’s lost every good thing in his life before that point. And the thought of losing what he and Mondo have is just… it’s too much for him. He’s still figuring himself out, still building his new personality from the ruins of the old, and he kind of needs Mondo to help prop him up as he does this.

(Which is, by the way, unhealthy in a relationship. It’s very codependent and can lead to some negative outcomes in its own right. But this rant of mine has been going on for almost two hours, so I’m not going to get into this right now. Just know that I know, and that it’s not intended to be portrayed as a good thing. None of Taka’s coping mechanisms are, which is why they all fail in the end, leaving him discontent. But as of now, Taka kind of needs Mondo, so he’s overlooking the potential negative outcome and is just allowing himself to have Mondo. Make sense?)

In the end, the only way for Taka to fully come to terms with everything that is swirling within him is to have Mondo acknowledge the love they share for each other, since he can’t accept everything about himself until Mondo does. He needs Mondo to look at him, look at his flaws, and say ‘I love you no matter what. You are not perfect, but I still love you.’ And while Mondo has done this to some degree, it’s not the love Taka not-so-secretly desires. But, like I said earlier, Mondo is going through his own metamorphosis and isn’t quite at that stage yet.

All of this comes to a head in the last three chapters of TPWP. Does everything get resolved by the end? No. Of course not. There’s just not enough time for that. Discovering yourself takes years, really. And you never finish. Even if I had elongated the amount of time this story takes place to a year, there still would be things unresolved when the story ended.

That being said, the main problems both Taka and Mondo are going through reach a conclusion. I don’t want to go too much into this to prevent spoilers, but just know that everything I brought up here? Gets some form of acknowledgment in the last chapters and gets some manner of resolution. And everything else was initially intended to be resolved in sequels, which may or may not be written, who knows. But TPWP ends in a way that even without further writing from my part, I firmly believe that all of y’all can see where Mondo and Taka will go from here. That it won’t be easy, but that they will eventually figure themselves out.

So… yeah. That insanely long and complicated rant boils down to this: Taka and Mondo being sexual is not really about them being sexual but is about them understanding and accepting their love not just for one another, but for themselves, too. It’s a catalyst. And I didn’t go over Mondo’s views on this all, and I won’t since this has gone on so long (plus I’ve not written Mondo’s perspective on those chapters yet, so even I don’t fully know, though I have ideas), but believe me when I say it’s more than just sex for him, too. That’s one of the reasons why I didn’t really want to categorize this story as explicit at first, since it’s never been about the sex to me. It’s… more than that.

I don’t know if any of this made any sense, but I think I’m going to stop now. Maybe I’ll go back when I’m less tired and expand on this (and I’ll let y’all know if I do, writing after this break if I added anything or not) (I added a little to some parts and took out a couple of parts, but mostly this is the same thing I wrote between 5 and 7 am when I couldn’t sleep, ha), but for now, I’ll leave it.

And— final thing (that I added after trying to fall back asleep and failing, ha)— maybe I’m being more pretentious about my writing than it deserves. Maybe I’m saying all of this to try and excuse the flaws in my writing, like I always do internally. But… I don’t know. This is legitimately the sort of thing that went through my head whilst writing. I knew I wanted to put these elements in my story, even if I wasn’t consciously thinking about it, but trying to do all of that is just… hard. And I’m limited as a writer, I’ll acknowledge that. My thoughts are too big for my head and trying to write them all down is complicated for me. It’s why this little introspective is so long and rambling. It’s my way of trying to not just get you all to figure out what I mean, but also get myself to understand it. Because, while I know what I mean on an abstract, metaphysical level, I don’t really understand it all myself in a concrete, definable level. And this rambling is me trying to make sense of that. Does… does that make any sense at all? Or is this just gibberish? I don’t know. I think I understand it, but I have no idea if anyone else will. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anyway. I hope this didn’t come across as too pretentious or like I’m trying to show off how ~~intellectual~~ I am. That’s not my intention at all. It’s just… it’s how I think. And it’s how I show myself to the world, in a way. My written work is always so personal to me. I put a lot of myself into my work, sometimes intentionally, but often unintentionally. And I’m not saying I went through any of what I put Mondo or Taka through. In fact, almost none of it relates to my life at all. I was never abused by anyone, nor was I bullied in school. I have a fairly good relationship with my parents and was well liked by my classmates, even when I didn’t really go to class often due to illness. I am not impoverished, nor have I ever really faced high expectations from family or the people around me. I’ve never really had to anguish over my sexuality, since I accepted myself as asexual pretty easily, though I still struggle to be open about it with everyone. And I’ve never lost a loved one.

So… no. It’s not that I’ve gone through what the characters have gone through. But… the emotions. The feeling. All of that… it’s me. Even if it’s imagined or created, I feel everything that I write and put down. It’s why angst comes more naturally to me, since I’ve felt a lot of negative emotions in my life. And most of it is self-inflicted. Like… I mentioned that I never had high expectations from family, but I did from myself. I expected so, so much from myself, and I still do. And while I was always well liked by my peers, I still felt alienated from them, like I… I don’t know. Didn’t really belong. And I feared that if they ever got to truly know me, THEN they’d hate me, and that was just… I don’t know. Too much for me. The thought that these things could happen. That I could have good things and then, through my own personal failings, lose them.

These fears are where I come from when writing. My fear of being hated and isolated. My fear of never being enough. My fear of letting everyone down. My fear of always being alone and losing the people I love. I write about it in my stories and I… I find a way to fix it. To show myself that even if something like that did happen, it… it can get better. You can still be loved even if you are flawed and kind of broken inside. And maybe I don’t believe that I ever will find love, maybe I can’t believe that anyone would look at me like that if they truly got to know me, but it’s still nice to read about it. To see my fears in characters I love and have them be okay in the end. It’s why I always like to have at least somewhat happy endings in my stories. I need to see that it’s okay. That even if the worst-case scenario happened… I’d still be okay.

(Also, I know people are going to ask this, but please know that yes, I am okay. I get like this sometimes, where I think a lot about stuff, and it can be overwhelming, which is why I write it down. It’s funny that I’ve never had a diary or journal, since it seems like something that would help me, but writing things down for my personal perusal never made sense to me. It’s why I always post things like this. It’s really personal, but it helps me feel better. Like I’m being understood in some way. So, just… know that I’m doing alright. I just wanted to try and explain something that has been bugging me in this story for a while now that I finally found the words for. And by letting it out into the world, I can remove it from my chest, I suppose. But introspection doesn’t really upset me much. It’s cathartic more than anything. Painful and confusing while going through it but relieving once it’s done. All I ask is to be heard, that’s all. And understood if possible. If you’re willing.)

(Also also, please know that I wrote this little introspective several days ago while very tired, and I’m over this burst of emotions by now mostly. So, again, I’m really okay. And I’m not pulling a Taka, trying to pretend I’m doing alright when I’m not. I do mean it, ha.)

(Also also also, but y’all can see where I get my writing style from when looking at this, ha. This is basically my thought process written down, which is why TPWP is written the way it is. I write like I think, which is long, rambling, and emotive. Just a little fun fact. ^-^)

#Random ramblings #TPWP introspective

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nnnnoooooooooooo · 3 years ago

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My Ballot for They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They?’s 25 Favourite Films Poll

The following is my ballot for They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They?’s poll for their readers’ 25 favourite films of all-time. It contains a dozen or so favourites, several compromises, and a handful of personally foundational texts.

Seven Chances (1925, Buster Keaton): It ain’t easy to only choose one Keaton. This is one of Keaton’s films with a racist blackface character, which gave me some reservations. Still, this is a solid contender as his funniest picture, and, more importantly, this is Buster as I love him the most. Keaton’s characters were always the most cerebral and lost, keen observers with no understanding. An inability to communicate one’s emotions drives the need to convert it into a physical experience; Keaton inevitably becomes the object that cannot be stopped. His full forced desperation and athleticism, he is a master of locomotion. Featuring the finalization of the chase gag, along with a generous serving of his brand of surreal.

City Lights (1931, Charles Chaplin): Comedically and emotionally devastating.

Trouble in Paradise (1932, Ernst Lubitsch): Lubtisch’s portrayal of Continental aristocracy on the cusp. Containing love, melancholy, desire, rivalry, loyalty, betrayal, criminals, and thieves-- all saved by his grace alone, achieving a rare bliss of comedy and romance. Normally, I’d say that, in a temporal world, perfection exists only as a process, but then how would I explain this?

La grande illusion (1937, Jean Renoir): In the best of Renoir’s films, I find a type of harmony I find lacking in the rest of the world.

La règle du jeu (1939, Jean Renoir): In making this list, I never doubted either of these Renoir films having a place. Now, trying to write about my list, I find myself becoming frustrated at not finding the words to explain why I chose them. I’ve never been a great communicator, and I doubt that’s Renoir’s fault. I think it’s best for me to move on before I start misplacing my frustrations with my inability to write onto the film itself.

How Green Was My Valley? (1941, John Ford): Possibly the greatest movie ever made under Hollywood’s Studio System, and perhaps the closest we’ll ever get to seeing what Hedy Lamarr might have seen in John Loder. More than any other actor, Sara Allgood carries this film, in her role as the matriarch of the Morgan household. This is chock full of great character actors and moments as you’d expect from Ford. It’s the magic of childhood, the safety of the womb, the cyclical nature of a town where nothing ever seems to change, and the devastation of entropy. I lost track of how many times I cried.

To Be or Not to Be (1942, Ernst Lubitsch): This is my choice for a comedy from the 1940s, despite stiff competition from Hellzapoppin’, and the 11 movies Preston Sturges released over the decade. I had the privilege of seeing this at my local Cinemateque with an introduction by Kevin McDonald. I was late, and the audience had already begun to talk back. He rolled, and we were soon laughing before the “projectionist” could hit ‘play’ on the Blu-Ray. My friend came later. It was a packed house, so we weren’t able to sit together. I enjoyed hearing the variances in people’s response*, and the timing of their laughter. Trying to pinpoint my friend’s laughter from the crowd, I couldn’t help but hear our host’s generous laughter throughout the film. What a joy it was for all of us to experience this film together. I guess I haven’t had a chance to share those other movies the way that I was with this one. *A nice change of pace, as this usually makes me self-conscious

Shadow of a Doubt (1943, Alfred Hitchcock): I find Hitchcock’s women’s pictures to be some of his richest texts. Besides which, any film asking me to sympathize with Theresa Wright already has a lot going for it. Alongside The Wrong Man as Hitchcock’s most tragic film.

Brief Encounter (1945, David Lean): My favourite romance, whatever that says about me. A passionate extramarital affair between Laura Jesson (Celia Johnson) and Dr. Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard), told in flashback. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this placed among noirs, but I think this could be an example of a women’s film noir. There’s a thick sense of transgression and fatalistic mise-en-scene, along with an inability to escape, which ends the film on an unconvincing return to safety. After the two lovers part for the final time, Johnson returns home. Her husband, Stanley Holloway, asks for nothing, and expresses gratitude for her return. However, for all of that loveliness, Johnson has learned that the world is far more fragile than she ever dreamt. The husband is portrayed as a bit childlike, and, coupled with the affably stiff upper-lipped nature of their marriage, Johnson is unable to confess what’s occurred, which only preserves her turmoil. Unable to consummate, sustain, or forsake her romance with Howard, she may find some refuge with her husband, but salvation eludes her.

Out of the Past (1947, Jacques Tourneur): RKO Pictures, film noir, Jacques Tourneur, and Robert Mitchum– These are a few of my favourite things. As a prude, I don’t care to admit that I love cigarette smoke in B&W pictures as much as I do, and it’s deployed here to its zenith, courtesy of Nicholas Musuraca’s cinematography. Daniel Mainwaring’s script, along with Tourneur and Mitchum, use underplay in order to create a heightened effect. Mitchum’s somnambulism grants his portrayal of Jeff Bailey an omniscient cool, which extends to his character’s bisexuality. There’s such delight in hearing Mitchum, one of the best voices in movies, deliver the film’s lyrical dialogue in his disaffected baritone.

The Big Heat (1953, Fritz Lang): Perhaps Lang’s most cynical film? The culmination of all his conspiracies. The law vs. criminals, no longer as separate from one another, but as sides of the same coin: the establishment. Sergeant Bannion (Glenn Ford) engages in total war against Lagana’s (Alexander Scourby) crime syndicate. Those caught in between end up as collateral damage, pawns in their game. Each dismantles the family unit, Lagana disposes of Bannion’s wife (Jocelyn Brando), and Bannion displaces his child, so that both sides can carry on unfettered. The happy ending finds Bannion happily back at work in the homicide department, where they’re informed of a grisly murder. Oh boy, here we go again! Gloria Grahame, a sister under the mink, reigns as my favourite actress in all of film noir.

The Sun Shines Bright (1953, John Ford): It’s not easy to film a miracle, a feat for which I’d pair this with Carl Th. Dreyer’s penultimate film, Ordet. Speaking of Dreyer, if you have 15 minutes to spare, here’s a great video of Jonathan Rosenbaum discussing this movie alongside Dreyer’s final film, Gertrud. The responsibilities and limitations of society. Communities are built through sacrifice, as we give of ourselves, which accounts for the film’s sometimes funereal tone. One’s resting spot as the place to make a stand, but what good is taking a stand if it doesn’t lead anywhere? Our redemption lies not in preserving ourselves, but in guiding the world to a place that no longer needs us. Thus, not a dying world to save, but an understanding that we must pass in order to bring about renewal. Funerals become parades, and parades become funerals, as we walk the strait and narrow path between tradition and progress. Don’t take a stand while the world marches on, but lead us into thy rest.

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953, Roy Rowland): This is a musical written and designed by Dr. Seuss, which is to say that I think you oughta see it. Still, it’s hard to justify why I chose this over The Band Wagon. I’d probably better enjoy watching The Band Wagon, which I’d wager is Hollywood’s greatest musical, but there’s something about The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T that gets under my skin. I saw it on television when I was very young. Old enough to remember seeing it, but too young to remember more than three details: twins joined at the beard, the nightmare-inducing elevator operator, and a large piano requiring an exponential amount of fingers. This forgotten foundation, along with its Seussian imagery, grants the film a dreamlike feeling. Just as every good boy deserves fudge, every Hans Conried deserves a role like the one he has here, playing the titular Dr. T.

The Night of the Hunter (1955, Charles Laughton): A kid’s film featuring the personification of evil, not in Mitchum’s portrayal of the preacher Harry Powell, but in Evelyn Varden’s Icey Spoon. This movie is so full of indelible images that I sometimes forget LOVE/HATE tattooed on Powell’s knuckles. There’s a dreadful unease from the inability to fully save or preserve Ben & Pearl within a society whose systems turn on them so easily. Their safety is drawn and quartered at every turn, and so Ben & Pearl flee society, finding a guardian out yonder. Still, there’s a limitation to their newfound guardian’s protection. Their angel and their demon sing in harmony; evil becomes instructive to the children’s growth. It’s a hard world for little things, but there is hope. Mrs. Cooper (Lillian Gish) manages to find her redemption in protecting these children while she can. Perhaps we need them as much as they need us. This was Charles Laughton’s only film as a director, as well as the final of James Agee’s two films as a screenwriter. It isn’t right.

Sweet Smell of Success (1957, Alexander Mackendrick): This is my favourite film noir, possibly the nastiest as well. Of course, I cackle throughout the entire picture. Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis at their bests; the tension between a malevolent god and his jester/would-be pretender played as flirtation, conducting assassinations as though they were composing poetry. Shot on location in New York by James Wong Howe, giving us a view of Babel from the gutters up. Also, I’m just a big ol’ softy for Emile Meyer, who plays Lt. Kello.

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957, Frank Tashlin): As I see it, this is the best sex comedy of the ‘50s and ‘60s. Tashlin previously worked at Termite Terrace, making Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, and did a brief stop making Screen Gem cartoons over at Columbia in the middle. After having brought feature film techniques to his cartoons, he brought cartoon imagery into his live-action films. This is a vehicle for Jayne Mansfield, who may have been the most cartoonish of the era’s blonde bombshells, and so it is a happy marriage indeed.

Playtime (1967, Jacques Tati): This is cinema. Ah! Tati, Ah! Modernity

Out 1: noli me tangere (1971, Jacques Rivette & Suzanne Schiffman): Rivette’s movies feel alive in a way that I haven’t found anywhere else. The films I’ve seen are about conspiracy, games, and the development of theatre troupes: things that exist only in our minds, and are dependant on our cooperation with others. Things get so twisted that you wonder how they’ll ever untie it all, only for the shared illusions to be revealed as a complex series of false knots. I broke my rule with this film, in choosing a film that I’ve only seen once. I didn’t make the time to revisit this or Céline et Julie vont en bateau, my other favourite Rivette film, so I went with the larger labyrinth to lose myself in.

F for Fake (1973, Orson Welles): This is Orson Welles’s most playful film. I love Welles, the personality, almost as much as I love Welles, the director, so I chose a movie that features both.

Mikey and Nicky (1976, Elaine May): Perhaps the most tense and dark comedy I’ve ever seen. May reaches her highest levels of drama here, and does so without any cost to her usual standards for humour.

It’s a Wonderful Life (1946, Frank Capra): I wasn’t sure about including this, given that it’s not even my favourite James Stewart Christmas movie, but what can I do? It’s a Wonderful Life is an institution in my family, we’ve watched this every Christmas Eve since I was grade 6. There was a year or two in the early ‘10s where we might have missed it, but, otherwise, we’ve been devout. This is also one of four sources that laid the foundation for my love of movies, and, in particular, older movies. I hope to continue to watch this every year. It just wouldn’t be Christmas. Growing up, my brothers and I used to be allowed to open one gift the night of Christmas Eve, which evolved into my brothers and I exchanging our gifts for each other. The first year my brother’s and I exchanged gifts, we happened upon CBC playing It’s a Wonderful Life in a 3-hour timeslot. Filling in the gaps of my memory with ego, I’d say that I instigated our watching it. I was always the biggest sucker for holiday specials, as well as being the most drawn to B&W. It was an instant hit with all of us, and so two traditions were born that night. For those curious as to what year this took place, I gave my oldest brother a 3 Doors Down CD. My older brother got me the Beast Wars transmetal Terrosaur figure. And. It. Freakin’. Ruled. CBC continued to air It’s a Wonderful Life every Christmas Eve, and we continued to tune in. My brothers and I continued to exchange gifts on Christmas Eve for about another decade, but now my family has a better Christmas Eve tradition to pair with our holiday movie: Chinese food, and, less dogmatically, vegetable samosas. Leftovers become brunch. We’ve watched the movie, I think, twenty times now, which includes one viewing of the unfortunate colourized version, and once in theatres. It’s a great movie to come back to each year. There are lots of little moments, lines, and details to zero in on, and each year I get to internally test and brag to myself about naming and recognizing the various character actors and bit players that pop up. Still, I sometimes find myself resisting its charms. A couple of years ago, my view of Frank Capra changed. I no longer saw him as the director I had previously thought him to be*. I wondered whether this movie stood on its own merits, or if I was holding onto it for sentimental reasons. I have since settled on this film being a genuine classic. Another source of resistance is that I’ve never watched this on its own, there’s a lack of an individual foundation to my relationship with the film. I’m so accustomed to viewing films on my own, I think there’s a relief in a taking a private experience, and having it succeed in a public forum. The two support each other, which is part of why a couple of films ended up on this list. However, when it’s a film I’ve only seen in the company of others, I become suspicious of my experience. I believe in the power of cinema when it’s to my benefit, only to doubt it when I fear that it has the power betray me. I guess that I lack faith. *The director I once thought Frank Capra was, I now find Leo McCarey to be.

Doctor Who: The Lost in Time Collection (1963-69, various): This was a last minute decision that ended on a mistake. I ought to have chosen Daleks: The Early Years instead, which has the proper framing of a retrospective documentary. Daleks: The Early Years is a VHS release hosted by Peter Davison, featuring interviews with key people from ‘60s Dalek stories, cannibalizing clips from Dalekmania (another documentary on Daleks in the ‘60s), and orphan episodes and snippets from otherwise lost ‘60s Dalek serials. It’s also one of the VHS tapes that I grew up with, and my introduction to the fact that, at the time, over 100 episodes of ‘60s Doctor Who were missing and presumed lost. This was my introduction to the concept of lost media. Since then, a further 12 episodes have been found, and the number of missing episodes has dropped to 97. Instead, I chose The Lost in Time Collection, which is a 3-disc collection of orphan episodes and surviving clips from otherwise missing ‘60s serials, not actually a feature in itself. It’s a really nice sampling of the Doctor Who’s best era, and the episodes and clips are sometimes more interesting without the rest of their serial for context. While I didn’t get this collection until I was an adult, I had managed to see most or all of its contents growing up, mostly on various VHS compilations, as well as some clips online. As the deadline for submissions approached, I chose the one I enjoy more, rather than the one that first changed me. I suspect that Doctor Who was the first work of science-fiction that I got into, as it predates me in our household. My brothers and my getting into Transformers predates my memory, but it does not predate my being around. Doctor Who also served as my first exposure to B&W viewing. I was really into science-fiction growing up, and the genre was really my first interest in older films. The interest didn’t really bridge its way from my youth into my present. Heck, I wasn’t even particularly a movie person until into my twenties. In early adulthood, after fading for a bit, my fondness for science-fiction was more directed towards video games and books. So while it didn’t lead into my love of film and B&W, it laid a lot of the groundwork for what I’d eventually come to love. My oldest brother remembers staying up late with our parents to watch Doctor Who, and my older brother has memories of trying to stay up with them, but it was no longer airing on any of the stations we had by the time I was kicking. Loved, but unseen, it developed a sort of mythic reputation in my young mind. Over the years, we managed to see a bunch of serials on VHS through our local library system, and we eventually got 5 VHS releases of our own before the decade ended. We got a book, The Doctor Who Yearbook, which had listings and synopsises of every serial ever made. The classic Doctor Who series lasted 26 seasons, consisting of 153 serials, and just shy of 700 episodes. No matter how many episodes of Doctor Who I managed to see when I was growing up, it was only ever the tip of the iceberg. My younger self liked daydreaming about all of the adventures, planets, aliens, robots, and monsters, but that would begin to dissipate with age. While I loved Star Wars for the many of the same reasons as I did Doctor Who, the advent of more Star Wars wasn’t all that fulfilling, with Episode I: Racer for the N64 PC as a noted exception. More than the fact that I was caught up in the cultural backlash against George Lucas, the lack of a well defined characters and society in the original trilogy was a virtue. The toys and books really capitalized on this. I was the kid that wanted to know every weirdo and background character’s life story. I was such a mark. The more movies they made that added to the lore, the smaller their galaxy seemed to be, in opposition to an expanded universe. Each piece promising to add to the larger picture only seemed to reveal a smaller whole. More movies telling the same stories with different versions of the same characters. A galaxy that once seemed so vast now revealed to be comprised of maybe two dozen people, many of which are related or connected to each other in some tired and unnecessary way. Eventually, I got really into Jonathan Rosenbaum, and began to project my ego all over his preferences, to which Star Wars became a victim. I gave up on the series after sitting through a showing of Episode VII. Fires subside, and, these days, I’m mostly indifferent towards the series. Undergraduates can be a bit much, y’know? While the new Doctor Who series also fell out of favour with me, it was easier for me to divorce it from the original series. Having seen the series only in disparate pieces, rather than a linear narrative may have helped. I have no illusions that the original series is anything more than a silly kid’s show that mostly takes place in corridors, which is a fine thing to be. It’s enough to be a delight. The deceit of nostalgia is that I can return to these works I once loved with the same feelings and wonder that I had as a child. While I remain fond of Doctor Who, the whole of a serial is often less than the sum of its parts. After all, being a serial, half of the adventure is meant to take place in your head during the week between episodes. It’s the opposite of binge-watch material. It’s hard to commit to working your way through such a bulky series at a deliberately slow pace. Besides, even spacing the episodes out some, it’s still not going to capture my mind the way it would when I was a child. The virtue of the Lost in Time Collection is that you’re never seeing a serial as a whole, only as individual pieces. The collection consists of 18 complete episodes from 12 serials, with clips and bits from an additional 10 serials. Only one serial has more than two episodes featured, The Daleks’ Master Plan, a 12-part epic, which has its 3 known surviving episodes on the set. Freed from the responsibilities of being part of a larger story, you get to enjoy the pleasures of each episode as its own entity. Charm exists outside of context, and what may have been stretched and strained over half a dozen episodes can easily be sustained in the single episode or two that remains. A piece of Starburst may not keep its flavour any longer than a piece of Hubba Bubba, but at least it has the decency not to overstay its welcome. The less that remains of a serial, the more interesting it becomes. For some serials, the only surviving clips are the scenes that were cut by censors, and so you’re only seeing the juiciest bits. Protected by obscurity, just as recording in B&W protected this era of the series against its lack of budget, the childlike sense of wonder remains. Any missing serial could have been great. We lack evidence to prove otherwise. What little remains from these serials is enough to imagine what may have been, and it’s easy to give the benefit of the doubt to an old friend. No longer just a science-fiction adventure, the series has grown into a larger and more engaging adventure in film & television preservation. Thanks to its cultural status and following, questions as to how these stories were lost, why years of episodes were junked, how they were returned, in which disparate places were episodes found, who has been hunting for them, what were their methods, to what lengths did they go, what places remain to be searched, what remains to be found, what’s trapped in the hands of private collectors, and what has been lost forever have all been thoroughly explored, though some answers continue to elude us. For those interested, Youtuber Josh Snares has an extensive series of videos that breaks down many of these questions as best as one can with what’s publicly known, and, despite being on yotube, I don’t think he’s annoying. Doctor Who best represents my film lover’s sense of discovery, combining the joys of hearing about a film that piques my interest, trying to track a film down, discovering or rediscovering a new favourite, learning about film history, and the efforts of film preservation. Hearing about films I’d like to see can be nearly as rewarding as actually watching the films themselves. The more that I see, the more there is that I’d like to see. The harder something is to find, the more interesting it can become. Film is a physical object, so there is a battle against time for us to discover, recover, restore, and preserve works before they’re lost to time. The good news is that many efforts are being undertaken, both by professionals and by amateurs. The advent of crowdfunding has really helped to create more opportunities for completing these endeavours. Following an Indiegogo campaign, Netflix stepped in and completed Orson Welles’s The Other Side of the Wind. Many of Marion Davies’s silent films have been restored in recent years. Thanks to the efforts of Ben Model and his team, I will soon have the pleasure of seeing eight Edward Everett Horton shorts that haven’t been in circulation since the silent era. Steve Stanchfield (Thunderbean), Jerry Beck (Cartoon Research), Tommy Stathes (Cartoons On Film), and their cohorts are doing God’s work in finding and restoring old cartoons, and giving them an audience once more. I don’t think there’s ever been a more exciting time to be so out of touch.

The Muppet Movie (1979, James Frawley): The Muppets’ movies were a staple of our household growing up, and this ranks alongside The Great Muppet Caper as the best of them. This movie has a very self-aware humour to it, exemplified by the introduction. The camera wanders through a studio backlot, following a car carrying Statler & Waldorf, who provide us with the first dialogue of the film, announcing their intent to heckle the film. Inside, the Muppets are waiting for a private screening of The Muppet Movie to begin. It’s a disaster. A monster tears out one of the seats, the visibly deranged Crazy Harry blows up another, people are dancing in the aisles, and chickens are flying about. Objects being thrown include, but are not limited to, popcorn, Lew Zealand’s boomerang fish, and paper airplanes. A full-sized Muppet looms in the background, a giant colourful bird with enormous unblinking eyes, leaning a bit from side to side. An acknowledgement that somebody has let the animals in charge of the zoo. Still, a coziness remains amidst all of the chaos. Kermit attempts to introduce the movie to his peers, the lights go down, and he takes his seat. The movie opens in the heavens, where the credits and a rainbow appear. It clears onto a long, long shot of a swamp, slowly zooming in to reveal a frog on a log, playing a banjo, singing Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher’s The Rainbow Connection. We’re taken away. One of the most vital aspects of the Muppets is that they exist in our world, something that gets lost in their 90’s trend of literary adaptations. An entire world of Muppets isn’t much of a utopian vision, but the idea that these animals, monsters, and whatevers belong in society alongside ‘real’ people is. This trend was part of a larger regression throughout the years with the Muppets. What began as a self-aware humour turned into a self-depreciating humour, and, eventually, a self-loathing humour. The Muppets used to take on the world, but, in later years, they seemed unable to dream of anything more than getting back together once more, so that they could reaffirm their lack of success. Bring them back to life so they can take one more dying breath. This Muppet movie is filled with celebrity cameos, in part a tribute to their variety show, as well as to the vaudevillian origins of most of their shtick. Here, the cameos serve the Muppets. Later, the Muppets would take a backseat, and become vehicles for others, not even allowed to star in their own movies. I wish they were given better opportunities to shine. As good as this film is, I have to admit that this film’s treatment of Miss Piggy is embarrassingly sexist. While they don’t look like Presbyterians to me, at their best, I think the Muppets have almost as much hope to offer as any religion.

Transformers: The Movie (1986, Nelson Shin): Watching this movie gives me the feeling I always hope that I’ll feel whenever I’ve bought concert tickets. I don’t watch this so much as I sing along to it. I even knew Vince DiCola’s score down to a ‘T’. With all due respect to Storefront Hitchcock, this is my personal Stop Making Sense.

Air Alert V. 4 (late 2000’s, TMT Sports): First, and most importantly, I do not recommend Air Alert nor any other paid for vertical jump program. I cannot stress that enough. They’re not designed by people who really know what they’re doing, the marketing is predatory, they’re unjustly hard on your joints, and they’re methods are not in conjunction with their promises of wild vertical gains. While I hope to stop finding that people have also done Air Alert, I immediately feel a strong kinship with those I learn have also been misled. Air Alert is a 15-week vertical jump program that makes the dubious promises of adding 8-14 inches to yer vertical leap to everyone, regardless of their current physical condition. It promises to add explosiveness to yer hops, but its means are an exponentially increasing amount of jump exercise repetitions. This is to say that, in practice, Air Alert actually builds jumping endurance, which teaches yer muscles to conserve energy, rather than to expend it in an explosive manner. Like all jump programs, it also fails to address that much of your jumping’s height comes from a combination of your core and upper body strength, as well as technique. The version I got also came with an advertised-as-new Air Alert Advanced, a further 6 weeks of yet more intensive exercise routine to add another 3-6 inches to yer leap. I did the 15 weeks of Air Alert, and, like everybody else I’ve known, I got 2-3 inches added to my vertical. After the recovery week suggested following completion of the program, I tried dunking at the church. You had better believe that I told my dad to bring his digital camera, ’cause this was gonna be a big deal. Being able to dunk was surely going to usher in a whole new era in my life. Now, I had been wrong about these sorts of things before. I had become skinny, I got a couple of nice shirts, I listened to what I though was the right unpopular music, and I had stolen some jokes, but my life largely remained the same. It seemed as though my life couldn’t be redeemed by vanity and trivialities, J still wasn’t dating me, but this would be so much more. This was dunking. This was going to be different. We went to the church, and I had the same problems as before. I could get high enough, but I couldn’t throw down. The further you extend a limb from your core, the less strength it has at its disposal. I had little upper-body strength to begin with, and, fully extended, my hand is pretty far from my body. I’d always lose the ball on the way up, or lose height putting more of my strength onto the ball. Legs can only take you so far. At my best, I’ve brought the ball to the rim, lost it, and, thanks to momentum, had the ball go off of the backboard and in. A lay-up isn’t a dunk. My knees have been crunchy ever since. After a further month of letting my joints recover, I tried my hand at Air Alert Advanced. After the first week, which consisted of 3 days of 2000 individual jumps, some of my friends reunited to play soccer at our old high school. I was proud to see that the goals we had rescued were still on the field. However, I found that my joints were so worn down that I could only run at a steady pace in a straight line. Turning, accelerating, and decelerating were all, sadly, out of the picture. I decided not to continue onto the subsequent weeks. I was still a fatuous pauper, single, and working at a shoe store while friends had gone on to do other things, so what did I manage to accomplish? Well, for starters, I gained some athletic ability for the first time in my life, which was neat. I gained a lot of leg strength, endurance, and quickness, as well as the previously mentioned 2-3 inches to my vert, all of which I treasured. Despite being the skinniest guy on the court, my legs were strong enough to anchor me in the key, and contend with guys up to double my weight. I went from being a guy who showed up to Dunkball, to becoming a guy that people wanted on their team. While others got tired throughout the night, slowly losing their vertical, I managed to jump just as frequently and just as high in my last game of the night as I could during my first. As both the tallest and the lankiest guy at Dunkball, my height advantage now increased in the air. I’d let people box me out, only to jump and reach over them. I felt so free. I was, and remain, Dunkball’s most improved player. Of course, it helps to have the advantage of having started out lower than everybody else. Once, somebody brought a friend who was taller than me. It was awful. As for dunking? Well, I could dunk small balls at the church, if I could close my hand on them. I managed to dunk a flat soccer ball on an outdoor net at a school yard once, but I never verified its height. I could dunk at the Academy chapel with the rim fully raised, though that rim sags in the front, so I’m guessing that rim was about 9’10”. Still, that won me a game of H-O-R-S-E or two. Sometimes, when warming up for Dunkball, someone would instigate a dunk competition, and I managed to develop a trademark dunk which nobody could replicate or stomach: the underhanded dunk. Norm was the only person not to loathe it, bless his heart. While I never managed to dunk on a proper 10’ net, I was able to goaltend, which has no use outside of being a dick to a friend. I was smarmy enough to do it once. Even at Dunkball, I never became much of a dunker, except on turnovers or tip-ins, or unless I had a guard who could do the work of setting me up. I’m more opportunistic than aggressive, besides, who am I going to beat off of the dribble? On my worst nights, I was still a tall guy who could jump, so I always drew the interest of a defender. I’ve always preferred defence to offence, and my favourite offensive play is to box out their post-player, either to be in a better position to rebound, or in order to prevent them from goaltending. Defence is where Air Alert made the most difference for me. They either had to box me out in order to stop me from goaltending, or try banking it in. I could sit low enough to the ground to defend outside players without losing speed. With a lower net, some players didn’t arc their shots as much, allowing me to swat them away with ease. There was nothing better than blocking a dunk. Some people took it personally, and would try coming at you on the next play; we all loved blocking Joseph. Still, the best was blocking Norm’s dunks, even if it meant landing on my back. It was summertime, the final game of the night, with uneven teams and lopsided match-ups, but, somehow, it’s neck and neck. Not only are we still in it, we’ve had the lead. Will is shooting, Nathan is hustling, and I’m blocking everything. My greatest defensive game ends prematurely after I block one of Norm’s dunks, landing horizontally, with all of my weight squarely on my tailbone and elbows. I call it a night, and, in the morning, learned that we had lost immediately after I left. At this point, I had memorized Air Alert’s number of sets and routines, and so I lent the DVD to Graham. He promised to return it soon. This was in 2010. I learned how to juggle that August, but that didn’t save me either. I kept up my jumping exercises, doing week 4 as maintenance, losing consistency once I started university that fall. Dunkball slowly lost consistency, too, and so I eventually took up the reigns of organizing it. People changed wards, got married, moved, and started families. It was hard to motivate people to come out without a guarantee. At some point, I became one of the veterans. As Dunkball continued to lose consistency, and as I went through occasional bouts of burn-out withorganizing things, Dunkball changed from being year-round into seasons, and, later, patches, of activity. The benefit of being the one to organize Dunkball is that it allowed me to filter out the jerks between patches of activity. There aren’t a ton of rules, you can make a pass off the wall, you can charge, you can play it in the hall, and goaltending is a way of life, but life is too long to spend it with people who can’t play sports without yelling. We weren’t as athletic as we once were, but the new players were generally pretty skinny, so we were still able to push them around. I stopped buying bus passes after my first year of university, which helped me to maintain most of my leg strength. While I was in university, I managed to keep most of my vertical, but my confidence became precarious, which affected my intensity. I wasn’t soaking through my shirts anymore, I started to let people push me around. After I dropped out of university, I grew into a much more sedentary lifestyle. The leg strength I had used to define myself diminished. I’ve had a really hard coping with that. At times, the prospect of playing Dunkball felt more embarrassing than motivating. I felt lost out on the court. I didn’t feel strong enough to bump around in the key, and I felt sluggish trying to play on the outside. Still, I had now been around long enough that I was able to lead a team, if necessary. I’d hide from my refuge until I felt strong enough to return. Volunteering and winter each got me walking again. Collin organized a soccer team the summer before the pandemic, which got me running and jumping again. I felt more determined, and began to feel better. No longer trapped by where I was, or where I felt I should have been, I was content with making progress. �� I think that I handled the early months of the pandemic better than most people. With our usual routines in disarray, I stumbled out of the feedback loop I was caught in. Finding some self-compassion and focus, I created structure to my quarantine in order to work on some goals. I was going to come out of the quarantine dunking. I was joking this time, but I need to dream about something while exercising. Otherwise, I’m just jumping in place, staring at the door. I went through weeks 1-7 of Air Alert, ending with the rest week that marks the halfway point. After which, I returned to doing week 4 to maintain strength. With churches closed, activities cancelled, and others on lockdown, I started secretly meeting Nik on Saturdays to shoot the ball around. This was back when we were allowed to keep small circles of contacts. The benefit of having keys. The only downside was that the building didn’t have any air circulation outside of facilities management’s offices. Regarding the pandemic, our city still didn’t have any cases of community transmission. Two of us shooting the ball around became three, and soon we were playing 2-on-2. Dunkball was back, baby! Sans the titular Dunkball, which had gone missing, stolen by missionaries. I knew that it was only a matter of time before they got rid of the Academy chapel, so I was really motivated to play as much as we could while it was still safe. It took us a little bit before we managed to get six players out on the same day, and we still ended up playing 2’s some nights. We weren’t getting many guys out, but we always had good games. Everyone who came out hustled and was a solid atmosphere guy. We’d mostly play best-of-5 or 7 game series, maybe switching teams up for a final game or two. The series managed to stay pretty tight, with nobody ever reaching a dynasty. Facilities management leaves the building at 5:30, and, with nobody else around, our secret combination was free to schedule Dunkball whenever we pleased. We were playing twice some weeks. We were able to accommodate people’s schedule. Marvin, my favourite teammate, was able to come out. I hadn’t been able to play with him in years. A high percentage of our small group of players were relatively new to the game. It was really exciting to see them develop, even if Jason blocked me that one time. I had found my place again, having regained some of my leg strength and quickness. My core and upper-body strength, elusive at the best of times, had become memories, but I worked around that. My game is mostly designed with those absences in mind anyways. Consequently, my play became much more lateral, rather than vertical, after the 4th and, later, 5th game, as Collin noted. I also managed a new trick or two, like learning to bait people into banking their shot, and then blocking it off of the backboard for a quick turnover. My intensity was up, or at least the A/C was down. I was soaking through my shirts again, and I was happy. It was a hot and humid summer. I missed Jason’s birthday, so I brought some blackout chocolate banana bread to celebrate. As it turns out, a thick moist cake is not refreshing when you’re exhausted and sitting around in a hot and stuffy room you’ve spent the past 2-3 hours further heating up with yer friends. Collin became the MVP the following week when he brought a box of freezies with him. All my life, I had never seen their true worth or potential. I took them for granted in my youth, and turned my nose up at them as I grew older. Now I understood. I had Dunkball, I had friendly players who responded when I tried organizing things, we had freezies, and, as the Ward Clerk, I had convinced my Bishop that we should buy a new ball (despite the fact that playing at the Church was still verboten.) I was grateful, but I still longed for a day where we had more than 4-6 players, so that we could have subs between games. It’s nice to be able to switch up teams between games, rather than trying to push Arles all night. It’s even nicer to sit down every once in a while, especially after failing to push Arles around. Our province was still fairly safe, but that was beginning to change. Two regulars had at risk family members, and we began seeing community transmission. I planned to end what was to be the penultimate season of Dunkball after Labour Day. I was concerned what would happen once the school year started. Before then, we had eight* people come out to Dunkball one morning. Four pairs of family members, in fact. This gave us rotations between games, and a variety of playing styles, leading to more interesting match-ups and dynamics. Whoever loses would get to take a break; excitement was in the air! I questioned Collin’s choice of shoes. He reminded me that I’m solely responsible for their condition. I lend Collin my shoes. He likes the shoes, and I like his freezies. *the ideal amount is 8-9 people Shoot for teams: Graham, Collin, and I hit our shots. Collin has speed, Graham has range and strength, I have the height, and we all rebound. We win the first game easily, manage to survive the second, and win our third. Dynasty! Shoot for teams again, and I’m back on the floor with David and Marvin. David anchors the key, allowing me to cheat on defence, while Marvin generates offence and creates mismatches. We all defend. Three more wins, and it’s another dynasty! Marvin and I sit this time, and watch as Jacob (handles), Graham, and Jason (positioning) steal the game. Marvin and I go back on with Limhi, a guard heavy team playing an post-player’s game. They shoot and pass, drawing out the defence, while I set picks, prevent goaltending, and try to clean up on the boards. They cover the outside, while I guard the inside. When the other team goes to the inside, I make their post-player turn away from the net, where either Marvin or Limhi, cheating off of their man, are waiting to strip them of the ball. We win the first game, taking back the floor. They carry me through the second. Last game of the day, and the other team starts to fall apart. As per tradition, we extend the game, but only to to 15, because only Graham and I want to play to 21. We stumble as they regroup, but Jacob gets frustrated, and their chemistry falters. I assume that I’m to blame, become self-conscious, and begin calling fouls on myself whenever I make any contact with the other team. Of course, this happens on every play, because I’m trying to box out my brother. I get some weird looks as David sighs, he just wants it to be over. I get a clean stop, Limhi scores, and the day ends on a third dynasty. I remain undefeated. Freezies for everyone! That was the third to last time we played Dunkball. We had another night with six players, and ended the season with a morning of playing 2-on-2, after which we ran out of freezies. I was optimistic that we’d be back playing sometime in the New Year. We barely registered a first wave of the pandemic, but restrictions ended prematurely, and school started back up. Cases kept climbing. I was scared in October, but that was only the beginning. When we first started playing Dunkball that summer, our province was first in the country. By Christmas, we had become the worst. We began to curb the number of new cases, but restrictions were eased before hospitals finished dealing with the second wave. In May, we began transferring patients to other provinces. For some reason, the plan is to reopen in July. For some reason, a duo tried organizing ball in March. I declined. Our congregation was changing buildings, so Nik and I went over to grab some stuff. I found that our Dunkball had gone missing again, but I found the original Dunkball, which hasn’t held air since 2015, and brought it home. In April, facilities management began clearing out the Academy chapel, in anticipation of listing the building for sale. They didn’t inform our Bishop until later that week. He went over to pack anything worth keeping, only to have found that they had already junked everything belonging to our congregation, as well everything belonging to the Yazidi community group that had been meeting there prior to the pandemic. I don’t know the building’s current status. Nik and I kept our keys in the hopes of playing again, but it’s unlikely that things will be safe to go back to normal in time. Dunkball exists as a time and a place: Thursday nights after Institute class at Academy. Last fall, they moved institute classes over to the stake centre. The Academy building is being sold now, and Dunkball is over as we know it. As I previously mentioned, I lent Graham, the Gordie Howe of Dunkball, my Air Alert DVD and booklet back in 2010. For the past ten years now, he has meant to return it, only for it to slip his mind. I usually forget about it, myself, only for him to remind me when he apologizes. In the moment, I sorta feel guilty that he worries about it. I mean, it’s fine, I don’t need it. He’s put it on his desk, he’s placed it by the door, and though he’s either seen me or a member of my family at least once a week for the past decade, my copy of Air Alert still hasn’t made its way back to me. I’m not even sure that I want it back, but I appreciate his sincerity. It’s become tradition for him to maintain this false tension between us. At this point, I’d hate to see it go. What if this tension is what’s sustained our friendship throughout all these years? What if Graham’s only been coming out to Dunkball because he feels guilty? I won’t see him at Dunkball anymore, and, as of this week, he won’t be seeing me at church anymore. It’s things like this that keep us alive. I hope that Graham never returns my copy of Air Alert, but I hope that he always tries. ”There is no end to matter, There is no end to space, There is no end to Dunkball, There is no end to race.” - If You Could Hie to Kolob Dunkball, by W.W. Phelps.

I could have gone on about my legs, honestly. Now, I only included those formative texts that I’m willing to admit are still a part of me. I did not include those works whose influences I feel that I have repented of, which is why the 1967 Patterson-Gimlin footage of Bigfoot from Bluff Creek, California, The Weezer Video Capture Device, Newsies, The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny, nor anything related to Dorm Life or MST3K are not included on my ballot. In any case, I’m sorry not to have found room for Johnny Guitar.

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swanlake1998 · 4 years ago

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Article: Dancing While Black: 8 Pros on How Ballet Can Work Toward Racial Equity

Date: January 18, 2021

By: Gabrielle Salvatto

For years, conversations around racism in ballet were typically held behind closed doors. They took place only between company leadership and diversity consultants, and were often met with empty signifiers and performative gestures. Consequently, the dominance of white, Eurocentric ideals and aesthetics have remained as prominent as ever. Tokenism, microaggressions, biased recruitment and prejudicial pedagogy have limited space for Black artists to succeed. But the current momentum to dismantle systemic racial injustice, inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, has empowered Black dancers to use their voices to demand change.

As a professional dancer myself, formerly with Dance Theatre of Harlem and Ballet West, and currently with the Tanzcompany Innsbruck in Austria, I understand the duality of being a Black face in a white space. I've had the great privilege to interview exquisite Black dancers from several different ballet companies to hear their stories as well as their insights on how ballet can work towards true equity and diversity.

Rachael Parini, BalletMet dancer and creator of the Chocolate and Tulle project

Invest in education: "Educate the board, the artistic and executive directors, and teachers about what is excluding Black artists. Also educate parents of young Black students on all it takes to become a professional. I remember my parents' shock over the high cost of pointe shoes. Equality is not equity. We don't just need the same opportunities—we need support, understanding and a place that is ensured."

Avoid tokenizing: "Being the star of the outreach performances and never used in main-company repertoire becomes internalized by the artist. They learn self-effacing behavior and want to quit."

Don't generalize: "You don't know someone's story until you ask them. Each of our experiences is different—we're not all the same just because we are Black. Everyone has a different struggle."

Lawrence Rines, Boston Ballet soloist

Make sure everyone belongs: "Tokenism begins at the educational level. Having only one or two Black students in the school leaves them feeling unsafe, and it also endorses to their white counterparts, even subconsciously, that 'These people are in our space.' True diversity ensures a sense of belonging, for everyone."

Take time for training: "Diversity and sensitivity training can work—we saw its effectiveness with the #MeToo movement. Accountability has been lacking for so long. The time is up for excuses. The current movements to demand racial justice and equality have been very inspiring. You see how many people actually care, and so many dancers are finding their voices. The human spirit is incredibly strong."

Erica Lall, American Ballet Theatre corps member

Hire Black leaders: "Microaggressions are incredibly discouraging. During my pre-professional training, I once had a teacher walk by me at barre and say, 'I just can't look at that anymore.' We can't address these issues because our voices are constantly silenced, the threat of termination looms or there is just a transfer of blame by the people in charge. We need more Black people in power for true equality to exist."

Promote all your artists: "It feels like there is a mentality in ballet where there cannot be too many Black artists succeeding in one company simultaneously. But promoting and supporting all the dancers of color is literally better for everyone."

Taylor Stanley, New York City Ballet principal

Listen and digest: "During my training I was often the only male and one of few dancers of color. I felt recognized and celebrated for my talent while my biracial identity was being simultaneously suppressed. Your perception of yourself begins to shift. It is important for schools and companies to honestly and authentically bring dancers of different experiences and identities to the forefront. There needs to be intention and purpose behind the daily interactions between administrators and educators and their dancers. Any non–person-of-color needs to understand that, within these conversations, our pain is not a result of their actions. Reconfigure your brain to not be defensive—just show up, listen, have sensitivity and digest the information. Allow time for Black artists to express how they feel about the work being done and make space on the other side to receive those feelings."

Boysie DiKobe, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo dancer

Train all body types: "I destroyed my body to adhere to the unrealistic standards of executing technique based on a certain anatomy. You can make great dancers without damaging them. Educators need to learn about the limitations and capabilities of all body types. The body is just a skeleton to build technique, and should be viewed as equal beyond the color of its skin."

Stop pancaking skin: "Pancaking yourself in roles for Giselle and Swan Lake is highly problematic. The characters are nonexistent. I just want to see talent and hard work onstage. Yes, it's possible to have someone in brown tights and pointe shoes onstage be the lead."

Lindsey Donnell, Dance Theatre of Harlem

Go there: "We need to have more open and honest conversations. Politically correct and coded language hinders real progress."

Recruit those without resources: "We need to broaden our definition of diversity. Race and skin tone isn't the only thing that needs to change—we also need to address financial opportunity. The ballet industry caters to the wealthy, from auditions to training to being a professional."

Alexandra Newkirk, freelance artist

Hire with integrity: "Honesty would be a great start for changing recruitment. Saying things like 'We just don't have a spot for you,' 'You're not a good fit' or 'Our diversity quota is filled' is less discouraging than making it all the way through an audition and hearing nothing. I feel like I have to fit a mold, or replace another Black girl just to be seen. When I see just one other Black dancer at my audition, I know it's either going to be her or me. She is the only one I am competing with because we will never be compared to the many white dancers in the room. This needs to change."

Kyle Davis, Tanzcompany Innsbruck dancer

Eliminate typecasting: "Destroy the stereotype of the Black body. Directors need to stop associating body types with roles. Audiences and artistic directors would be surprised by what a 'different body' can bring to the table, and it would simultaneously change their perception of what they think ballet should look like."

Jenelle Figgins, Aspen Santa Fe Ballet dancer and activist

Make ballet for everyone: "Because of ballet's elitism, Black dancers cannot see themselves being part of it. Ballet is still on reserve for the rich, but it should be for everyone."

Honor Black artistry: "There's no appreciation for the contributions and legacy of Black artistry until they're on a white body, and then they are erased. We see this when dancers' choreography is not credited, or it becomes restricted and then placed on a white principal dancer."

Appreciate the challenge: "Acknowledge the dual existence of your Black dancers. We are swallowing to survive and presenting to thrive. When we report micro-aggressions or instances of discrimination, we are gaslit and not heard. The trauma of being in a white space becomes expected."

#article #ballet #gabrielle salvatto #rachael parini #lawrence rines #erica lall #taylor stanley #boysie dikobe #lindsey donnell #alexandra newkirk #kyle davis #jenelle figgins #racism #anti black racism #ballerina #ballerino #dance magazine #abuse mention

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ashintheairlikesnow · 5 years ago

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He Imagines Going Home: Dex

Dex, your angst is killing my ability to write coat-smut and I hope you’re happy

CW: References to serious trauma and violence, broken bones, stitches, blood, etc. But no real violence here. Just some references/implications.

I made myself cry again with this one. Dex’s POV destroys me, every time. Read Dismantled, Insecurity by @spiffythespook, and Reconstruction for context. Oh my god I have to make a Wrex Master List and new moodboard don’t I.

When she wants him to brew the coffee, three days after she nearly killed him, he cannot stand. She comes into his room, into the warm darkness he's been sinking in and out of, and orders him to stand.

He tries.

He fails.

Instead he crumbles to the ground and lands in a graceless heap, barely managing to catch himself - wait wrong hand no no no too late - and he doesn't scream when his weight lands on the splints and broken fingers of his right hand.

He exhales, slow and deliberate, as agony blossoms up his arm and settles into his mind. There might be a whine - not quite a whimper - that laces the edges of the air as it leaves his lungs, but other than that… he doesn’t scream.

He tries to be silent.

He succeeds.

"Disgraceful. Three days of stubble, three days without a shower. You are an absolute fucking wretch." Her voice is low. “You should be dead. You don’t deserve the mercy I have given you.” She has done this to him, but it was his fault. He let her see that he is not her perfect masterpiece, after all. This is all his fault.

"You have lazed in bed long enough. I told you to stand up."

He tries.

He fails, again.

At least this time he manages to slump onto his knees. She has always liked them kneeling. She likes it now, he can feel the tension in the air shift and dissipate, just a little. After twenty years, Dex knows Karen Renford inside and out. He has made only a few mistakes.

He should have known better than to fight her, defy her insistence he not see Wright again. From the moment he signed why, he had been walking into her trap. She knew, she knew that he loved someone when he was not meant to have that feeling. He couldn’t keep that knowledge from her any longer.

All he can keep a secret, now, is that he wants to believe he isn’t the only one who feels it.

She stares down at him, and he can't bear to look up. Broken man, beaten and battered, my own fault. He keeps his eyes on the floor. She doesn’t command him to look, so he doesn’t. He is afraid if he looks, he won’t be able to hide how much he hates her any longer.

His face throbs, a pulse of pain along the stitches in time with his heartbeat. Disfigured. He had wondered if it would be enough to ruin him, in the eyes of the only person who called him beautiful when he was not bleeding.

Dex knows she sent him a photo of Dex's face to test the other man, to see how angry he would get.

Lovely work, darling.

Tears threaten again - hot and insistent, and he has cried so much in three days that his eyes feel worn and painful - and he fights them back. His message to Karen was a lie, Dex is sure of it. He is certain, and he breathes the message, in and out, like a heartbeat. Paradise Lost by the history section on a Tuesday.

Peter's voice but Wright's words - the words meant only for him. Dex clings to that message with what battered, cracked hope he has left. Sorry for what she did. He wants you to know that he called for you.

For you.

Not her.

Wright likes him as he is, has spent so long pushing apart the empty spaces to find what Dex had so carefully hidden inside, and he can’t keep going if it has been a lie all along.

Wright often compared him to Kintsukuroi, broken pottery where the cracks have been filled with gold. At first, Wright had suggested the gold came from Karen. Later, he had said - in Dex's ear, a breath and want against his skin - that Dex himself was the gold. Filling in her edges with the parts of his own true personality that Wright helped him to rediscover and bring to the light.

Outside, the sun has not yet risen - but Karen Renford has always been up before dawn, making use of the grayish half-light to take some time for herself.

My house is so full, She says with a smile to guests at parties, and her four Box Boys - three from the Facility and poor Henry, who never stood a chance once she got her claws in him - don’t speak a word of disagreement. Obedient, and any of them could walk right out the gate - except Henry - but they don’t.

They can’t.

In the present, Karen’s foot - bare, and it is so rare that he sees her without her red-soled heels, only in these soft gray hours of the morning - taps on the floor impatiently. He swallows, and manages, with a groan he bites back behind his teeth, to push back until he is sitting on his heels.

Everything hurts, and there is no part of him, inside or out, that isn’t begging for it to stop.

"If you can't stand," Karen says, her voice cold, "Then you will crawl. I trusted you, Dex, and you betrayed that trust. Go downstairs and make my coffee. I will be down when I am dressed. Don't dawdle. You will not appreciate my response if the coffee is not at least brewing when I am ready.”

He tries to be silent.

He succeeds.

He cradles his broken hand on his lap, and waits for her to leave. Watches her feet turn on a dime to walk lightly, nearly soundlessly, out of his room. Hears the sound of the hallway bathroom door opening and closing. The shower turns on.

He tries to stand.

He fails.

He crawls.

Bruised skin aches, cuts and welts are pulled back open - and Seb won’t like cleaning them again, Dex thinks dimly, as he crawls out into the hallway on the second floor. They will soak the loose, light-colored shirt and pants he was given with more drops of blood. The red will spread and spread and dry brown, and it’s been so long since Dex had to wash blood out of his own clothing, and he cannot even stand to scrub at the stains now.

His bones are screaming, as he navigates the stairs awkwardly, having to slide down like a child. Sit on the step, place your feet, balance with your good hand, pull yourself down.

Each thump to the next step, and the next, is an agony.

He grinds his teeth together as hard as he can, breathing harsh and fast through his nose, and keeps going.

He tries to stay silent.

He succeeds.

When he makes it to the bottom, to the landing, he can see the front door. There was never a time, in his life in this house, where Dex could have walked away. He is too broken, too bent to her will. He can’t walk out now.

But for the first time in more than fifteen years, Dex stares at the door and he dreams about it. He pictures himself, standing tall and unbeaten, with his hair sort of ruffled the way Wright likes it.

He thinks of himself, in the green sweater Wright gave him and a simple pair of black pants, turning the doorknob with an unbroken hand. He thinks about stepping outside to look at the grayish-pink sky, about walking with even steps to the front gate.

He fights the instant, conditioned fear (you’re only safe with a collar, the collar is how you know someone wants you) and imagines himself without a the band of leather and the tag, with his neck bare to the rising sun.

He imagines a car, waiting for him at the end of the street.

Someone to take him somewhere other than hell.

Someone to bring him home.

The tears are back, and this time he lets them fall, because there will never be a car, there will never be a rescue, and he taught himself so long ago not to dream like this.

Back up the stairs, there is a shuffle, Karen moving from the main hall bathroom to her bedroom, and he swallows. He can’t be sitting here when she’s dressed. He can’t be hurt any worse than this, he can’t. He has to heal, so he can get to the library.

Dex looks at the wall, just beside him, and then at the kitchen. If he steps with one heel to the other foot’s toes, it’s maybe thirty-five steps from here to the coffeemaker. Maybe twenty-five - he can’t remember right now.

If he can stand.

Upstairs, Karen is getting dressed and his time is running out. Sebastian is still asleep - Madam doesn’t need him to cook her breakfast on a workday, she gets moving too early for that. Peter will be asleep on Henry’s floor. Seb told Dex yesterday that Peter’s been sneaking in there after Karen goes to bed, bedding down on the floor, and then getting up before Henry does and sneaking back out again.

Henry had nightmares, the night after Karen hurt Dex. Since Peter has been sleeping on his floor, he hasn’t had any more.

Peter and Henry have secrets, too.

Dex puts his hand on the wall, bracing himself, and he tries to stand.

At first he fails.

He drops with a thump back to the floor, but he has to be able to stand because he will have to walk to the library on a Tuesday afternoon, to read Paradise Lost in the history section. It was the second half of the message Peter gave him, and if he can’t walk, he can’t go to the library without Karen’s knowledge.

Wright did not have to tell him to keep a secret.

No, Dex was a wealth of secrets when it came to Wright Farling. She had found out one of them - but she would not be given any more. He would die first.

He nearly had.

For Wright, he would speak - or stay silent - no matter the cost.

He slams the palm of his broken hand against the wall with a frustrated, strangled groan, tear tracks drying on his face as something other than grief and fear and despair settles underneath his skin.

He is… he is suddenly so angry.

He had exactly one thing, in the world, that belonged to him. And she has taken that, too, the way she took everything else. The way she took his life from him, when he had signed up for something else.

There were blows to his head, with the cane - the spark of white light, the agony without physical pain. Ever since, in the three days he has spent in bed, there are things breaking through. He signed up because he wanted to try and be better with his fears, his phobias. He wanted to be part of a program to mentor at-risk kids, he knew that much.

He signed up to try and save his relationship with Ben, too.

He doesn’t know who Ben is.

It’s not important.

Ben doesn’t exist, in his life, any longer. But Wright does. And he has to stand, because he has to walk, because if he can’t walk he can’t get to the library and if he goes there, maybe…

He tries, one more time, to stand.

This time, he succeeds.

It’s a slog and it hurts and his legs are begging him to go back to his hands and knees, but he won’t do it. Not this time. He uses his brace against the wall to steady himself, pushes up onto his feet.

It hurts, it hurts so much, but the simmering anger underneath takes away a little of the pain.

Dex, breathing in pants, stares across the short entryway to the open doorway to the kitchen. Thirty-five - or twenty-five, please God if you’re real let there be less than thirty-five steps - to the coffeemaker. The bag of coffee is right next to it, sitting on the countertop, a special blend she has custom-made by a local roaster.

He can do this.

He has to do this.

He has to walk.

Dex looks down at his bare feet - even his feet are bruised, and he doesn’t remember her hitting them when he was curled up on her office floor but she must have - and then he looks back to the coffeemaker.

He moves his right foot first, testing its ability to hold his weight. His knee trembles, his thighs scream in pain, but it holds. So he takes one step, dragging his left foot behind him, trying not to force it to do any work it doesn’t have to do.

Once he has moved a single step, he picks up his left foot, and tests how well that one will hold. He manages, hissing through his teeth. He hurts so badly. There are so many pains that they run together into a constant refrain, water that will drag him under to drown. He fixes his eyes on the coffeemaker, lets them go distant, the awareness of his own body and the world around him sliding away.

In training, in the Facility, nearly everyone learns to do it sooner or later. When they won’t stop hurting you - when you can’t take another second - when there is nothing in your world but pain and cold and exhaustion and fear… you learn this.

His body hurts, but it is not his body. His heart is breaking, but it is not his heart. His fingers are broken, but they are not his fingers. He wants to collapse but he will not, not this time. All Dex is, and was, and will ever be, condenses to a singular goal of get through this.

All he is, now, is a determination not to fail again.

He tries to walk.

He succeeds.

His steps shuffle, and are impossibly slow. He keeps one hand on the wall for balance. Behind his distance and the careful soft fog he has wrapped himself in, he can feel the agony trying to break down the walls. It wants his attention, demands it.

You did this to yourself. This is your fault for asking why. This is your fault for what you’ve let yourself become. This is your fault for having a voice. This is your fault for letting her see the cracks he helped you remember how to fill in with gold. This is your fault for ever wanting them filled at all.

Each step punctuated with blame, responsibility, a twist of his heart. Another crack, breaking down the dam. He never takes his eyes off the coffeemaker, off his one single goal to survive the pain and the fear and keep moving, one foot in front of the other, until he is on the other side of this.

This is your fault for falling in love.

Dex chokes back a sob, forces it into the silent constriction of his voicebox, where all the words live until he is alone with the only person who ever truly listens to him. He keeps walking, step by slow step, until he is in the kitchen doorway, and the coffeemaker is so close, so close.

He has to stop.

He takes a break to breathe, panting through his mouth now, sweat broken out across his forehead and face. He can feel the blood sticking his clothing to his skin from reopened wounds. Opening his mouth even a little pulls slightly at the stitches Sebastian so carefully sewed into his face.

Disfigured. Disgraced. Imperfect. Broken. Brainless. Unwanted. Your own fault.

No.

He takes a deep breath through his teeth, feels the oxygen fill his lungs, and then he starts walking again. Step by slow step, feet dragging on the floor, feeling a trickle of sweat or blood down his back and he doesn’t know which and he doesn’t care, any longer.

He keeps his eyes on his goal, and lets his mind spiral outwards.

When Dex makes it to the countertop he has to hold himself up by his good hand with white-knuckled fingers, his broken hand hanging uselessly down at his side. Fingers splinted together with Peter’s imperfect, well-meaning movements, twisting constantly to check the tutorial video. He and Sebastian gave Dex the only medical care he would receive for this.

He loves them both, Dex realizes with a deep twist inside of him that is nearly a whole new pain. He has always held himself distant from the others, too afraid that if he got close he would give away his secret. He has always set himself apart, hidden in the office to work on Karen’s household management, played Chopin too long and too loud to give them the privacy to hide from him, too. He has been the informant, the one who would tell Karen anything and everything.

He had thought himself feared, distrusted, disliked.

He thought of Sebastian sitting by his bed, dabbing at the wounds as he laid there staring with dull eyes at the wall, saying softly, I’m so sorry, Dex. I’m so sorry she found out about this. I’m so sorry, we’ll figure something out, okay? I’m so sorry-

He thought of Peter holding him while he cried, whispering you’re a good boy, he called for you, not for her. It’s going to be okay, Dex, it has to be okay. Listen, he says go to the library when you can walk again. Go on a Tuesday and read Paradise Lost by the history section. Okay? He said that, he said, I’ll walk you myself if you can’t go alone yet, but we’ll get you there. I don’t care if she notices I’m gone, I’ll take the blame, it’s worth it. We’ll get you there. I’m so sorry-

He thought of Henry sneaking into his room when he thought Dex was asleep, setting up his mp3 player and speaker on the side table next to Dex’s bed, and the way a recording of Henry’s own first composition - he’d been sixteen years old and Dex had been so proud of him he had nearly broken his own rules to tell Henry so out loud - began to play. The way Henry had paused next to his bed, and whispered, I wish I knew how to help. I’m so sorry.

He loves his brothers, each and every one, and he wishes he could have been someone they could trust.

Tears drop onto Karen’s butcher-block countertops and Dex lets them fall, breathing in low soft moans of pain so he won’t open his mouth too much, leaning himself on the counter with his chest for balance so he can measure out the coffee with his good hand. The aches are back, but they are inside as well as out.

He’s wasted so much time, lost so much - more than half of his life under her thumb, and he doesn’t remember the first half at all.

He has so little left - but he has so much more than he thought he did.

Once he has shuffled along the counter to the sink, filled the carafe with water, and set the coffee to brewing, he waits. When Karen comes downstairs in a loose, figure-skimming sweater and tight black Ponte pants, she looks him over thoughtfully. He looks back.

He has more than she thinks he has.

He is more than she thinks he is.

He is not brainless. He is not disgraced. He is not disfigured he is not imperfect he is not broken - or if he is, he can fill the cracks in with gold. He can take what she made and remake himself, make something new.

He can be something new.

He is forty years old, but it’s not too late.

“Acceptable.” Karen gives him a slight smile - cold and unfeeling as every other expression. “Kneel.”

He tries to be silent.

He succeeds.

He doesn’t go to his knees gracefully. He simply drops with a crack to the floor, automatically, all at once. Puppet with strings cut, barely a man at all. He stays there while the coffee brews, while she pours herself a cup and adds a bit of cream. He stays there, right where he is on the floor by the counter, until she has gone to sit outside and watch the sun rise.

Only when she is gone does he raise his eyes, and stare out the sliding glass doors towards the garden. The sky is a brilliant blend of oranges, yellows, and pinks reflecting off a thin covering of clouds. The sun will burn the clouds away and the sky will be a brilliant blue soon enough.

Dex crawls on his knees to the glass door, to lean against it with one shoulder, to sit and watch the dawn.

He is not unwanted.

This is not his fault.

Paradise Lost, he mouths to himself, his eyes on the sky. By the history section on a Tuesday.

Dex imagines a car waiting, down the road. A door opening, a smile tipped up at him as he climbs inside the passenger seat and buckles himself in. Lips to press against the back of his hand, fingers wrapped around his, unbroken. A hand on his bared neck. Eyes that look into his, eyes that see him.

Eyes that always see him.

Are you ready to go? The man asks him, with a hint of a winsome smile.

I was ready five years ago, the Dex in his mind answers back, with the little teasing smile. You made me wait.

You have a point, Dex, darling. Aren’t I the lucky one that you are such a patient man? The tone is teasing, but the words are sincere. Dex feels a warmth, inside of himself, that begins to seep in and around and over the pain.

Gold, to shine through the cracks.

He imagines the car pulling away from the sidewalk, driving down the street, out of the neighborhood, the city, the state.

He imagines being driven away from hell.

He imagines that the man will one day take him home.

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thedragonslibrary · 5 years ago

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Is it possible to be blocked like magick or energy wise? I do not know how to put it in words but sometimes I feel like there is something that i should connect to or should be able to do but I am not. Maybe I am not idk well practiced enough but it sometimes feels like I am running against a glass wall. Maybe I Idk man. I am just really frustrated. I cant really give examples just everytime I do something magick related it feels like running against a wall and it makes me wanna cry. Sorry

Yes, of course it’s possible to be blocked!

To clarify, your first statement about feeling as though you should be able to “connect” to something is a common beginner issue. It may simply be that you haven’t found the thing you’re supposed to connect to yet - whether that’s opening your third eye and being able to talk to your guides, finding the deity and/or pantheon you connect most to in a religious manner, or simply opening your psychic awareness fully enough to feel the energies around you. The best advice I can give is to experiment. Try everything, and don’t hold yourself back!

When I was a beginner witch, I tried everything from Wicca to demonolatry to Christian witchery, from reiki to hexing and cursing, from psychopomp work and shadow work and light work and everything you can imagine. If you can think of it, I probably tried it in some way. Only by putting yourself out there in as many avenues and paths as you possibly can, will you find what works for you. If something doesn’t work, doesn’t fit or “feel right,” put it away and move on. Read everything you can - on Tumblr, in books, in every single resource you can find. It took me probably five or six years of exploration to figure out what generally “worked” for me, and I still feel like I’m learning and discovering new outlets for my magical expression.

An extra “something” is not for everyone. Often in magical practices, you are the source of your own power. Sure, crystals and herbs and grounding and gods help, but ultimately the magic is coming from you. You might not necessarily need an extra “thing.” Let your magic be intuitive, don’t let books or Tumblr bloggers tell you how to do your thing step-by-step. Take spells or rituals and modify them to fit your needs - that is how they’ll be most powerful and useful for you.

But back to the topic of blockages, if you have already had magical abilities previously: I have gone through blockages myself, and they are exactly what you described here: frustrating, like hitting a wall. Sometimes it feels as though all your “power” has been taken away, and you’re left without your previous magical agency. You might have the thought that perhaps you were just making everything up all along, that maybe you’ve been deluding yourself. Trust me, you didn’t, and things will get better!

In my experience, there are two general types of blocks you can have. I’ll outline them for you and how they can be worked through.

The first is a bit simpler, and is more like an art block. Lots of magic-users go through periods of this softer, mental blockage at some point or another on their path. It can be sometimes referred to as a Fallow Period, which comes from a similar phrase in farming used to refer to when a partition of soil is meant to rest for a season or two to regain its fertility.

A Fallow Period can arise from burnout, especially from outside sources creating stress in your life.

Magic, especially psychic and spirit work, is infinitely more difficult when you are stressed, going through a rough mental health period, or when you are physically ill.

Fallow Periods can also be caused through divine intervention - your spirit guides or deities may have decided that you need to take a break to focus on real life, or to focus on taking care of yourself for a little while.

Blockages of this nature eventually right themselves, but it can take time - it can last anywhere from a few months to over a year.

The best thing to do when you’re experiencing a fallow period like this is to not force it. You are only going to frustrate yourself if you continue to attempt to perform magically and have little to no results. Additionally, you’re going to create a deadly cycle of feeling disappointed in yourself, and eventually burn out so hard you won’t want to do magic at all anymore.

Instead, take some time to create: write poetry, draw, or paint. Write devotional poetry. If you want to do magical work, work on your grimoire or book of shadows. Focus on practical magic you can do with your hands - cooking, creating items with intent, cleansing and clearing your home.

Take time to meditate and perform self-care. Perform practical, easy meditations like the simple, free ones in the Headspace app, or find guided meditations for free on YouTube that bring you into fun, brightly colored astral spaces. Take baths and imagine all of your troubles washing away down the drain when you’re finished. Give yourself room to heal and just feel good about yourself.

When you feel ready to move out of your Fallow Period, it will come very naturally. Like an urge to pick up a witchcraft book or to astral travel suddenly. Don’t worry about easing back into it - while taking it slow might be good for some, it’s not for everyone. If you’re really excited to get back into magic, and you’re being urged to do it right now, go ahead and do it!

The other type of blockage is a physical, energetic blockage. These are usually sudden-onset conditions. If one day you are performing just fine magically, and the next you wake up and you can’t feel any of your sixth senses, and you are not physically sick or particularly more stressed out than normal, you probably have a physical energetic blockage.

Ensure first that it’s an energetic blockage. Perform a reading on yourself, check your energy centers, figure out how you’re feeling physically. Meditation goes a long way here, as well as visualizing your energy moving through your body. Does it seem to stop anywhere? Likewise, do you feel extremely hopeless and drained energetically for no discernible, tangible reason (i.e. depression or a recent traumatic experience)? Can you not even muster up the motivation to check yourself? Then you probably have an energetic blockage.

Find an energy healer in physical proximity to you. Trust me when I say that it is not enough to go to the local Hand & Stone and ask for a reiki massage (I have tried this for you already, and please believe me when I say it’s not going to solve your problems). Distance healings do work and are worth it, but in my personal experience physical healings tend to be much more powerful when it comes to dismantling blockages in this way.

Ask around at your local metaphysical stores. Find someone who is a reiki master or another type of energy healer, who has great reviews outside of what’s posted on their website and who has a great deal of experience. Ask them if they have unedited testimonials anywhere they can share with you (such as Google reviews).

Ask what their process is, ask to see their healing space, ask them what physical tools they use in their session. Ask them if they’d be willing to charge a small fee for them to examine you and figure out what’s going on (don’t expect them to do something like that for free). Remember that they should never suggest that they can heal physical ailments or claim that their services replace allopathic medicine - they should only focus on your energetic issues.

Explain to them that you feel blocked energetically and that this is exactly what you are looking to be treated for - psychics and healers are not mind readers, and they cannot help you if they’re not told what they need to fix.

Pay attention to your gut and what feels right. Even in a blocked state, you always have decent access to your intuition.

I won’t lie, you will likely need to shell out a good amount of money for this. A good healer worth their salt most likely won’t charge you less than $60 for an hour session.

If you don’t feel some kind of energetic release during your healing session, mention that to your healer. Since you’ve already told them about your issue, they may be able to give advice as to why you didn’t feel any specific change, as everyone’s process is different and the healer you’ve chosen to work with is going to have the best understanding over the situation, after you. Again, pay attention to your gut. Give the healing a couple of days to set in, and make sure to drink plenty of water and pay attention to how you feel.

When I personally dealt with my own physical energy blockage, when it was finally healed it felt like a dam breaking and all of my energy flowing back into my body. It felt like I had had one of my senses shut off, and for the switch to finally be turned back on. Not everyone is going to feel this way, but if you’ve been blocked for a particularly long time, it may feel very strong and overwhelming to have yourself be un-blocked.

Whatever your situation is, I hope this post was helpful! Good luck on finding your solution!

#witchcraft #energy work #fallow period #spirit work #blockages #energy blockages #energy blocks #healing #energy healing #energy healer #talymaly

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nightmare-chaser · 4 years ago

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Living In Interesting Times

Could everything stop happening for a few minutes?

There are riots on the street. They are in the right but they are being attacked and murdered, because in the power’s eyes there are no right riots. The police, those we are told swore to protect us from criminals, have in fact sworn no such thing. They wield power as a weapon against those minorities they cannot stand. They dress in disguises and start violence so they have a reason to attack the peaceful.

I saw a post where a black woman said she no longer allows people to say “They did that because you’re black,” and instead corrects them to “They did that because they’re bigots.” Before I had seen that post, it had not occurred to me the difference in wording, it had not occurred to me how the blame was shifted on the daily. There is something unflinching about the response, and while I am not being attacked, I flinch still. How had I not heard?

We have a facist in the white house, except the facist is too sensitive and thinks “facist” is a strong word. He tells us anti-fascist sentiments are treason, are terrorist ideas, as he puts families in cages and calls them illegal. The cages are filled with disinfectant, flooding the air and causing burns on the people, and somehow the people will not condemn it as gas chambers, because those should have died with Hitler. Those should have died with Hitler, not been dragged into the modern era out of spite for a condemnation of the poor conditions of the victims.

We have only a few months to get the fascist out of office, or else he stays for another four years. The fascist’s name is Donald Trump, and the idea that he would ever be president was so laughable that the simpsons made a gag over how terrible he would be. When he won the presidency, his campaign staff treated it like a funeral, for he did not want the job. Why did we give the job to a fascist who did not want it? We need him out. If we do not get him out, if we must live with him killing us for another four years, then we will have to live with him appointing two more justices to the supreme court, and he will continue to kill us for many, many more.

There is a country that is about to be extinct. It’s name is Yemen and I cannot point it out on a map. My geography, my history classes have failed me. It’s been in a civil war for six years and I did not hear a peep about it. I could not tell you it’s culture or it’s people or it’s language or it’s art, and it’s dying. It’s healthcare collapsed under the strain of the pandemic and the people are starving to death. An entire country is about to die, but I cannot even watch in horror because the news is silent on it.

Can we stop living in interesting times? I heard the Greeks used to wish interesting times on another as a curse, and I understand why. I live in helpless fear as things happen miles from me that I cannot effect. I live in fear as the things nearest to me are ruled by a powerful few. I do not know what tomorrow will bring, but it nearly certainly promises to be worse.

I am white. I am middle-classed. I do not fear for food or money, not right now. I am privileged and I am growing more aware of it by the day, and by the day I grow more ashamed of it. I did not make this system, but I profit from it with my mere existence and I do not know how to change it.

There was a black man shot dead by police in Atlanta, even though he was cooperative and polite. I do not know his name, and that is my own failing and a failing of the system. There was a black nurse shot dead in her own home by police, and her boyfriend is being charged for it. Her name is Breonna Taylor, but I do not know his name. There was a man named George whose last name I cannot spell whose neck was kneeled on by police until he suffocated. There are enough names of murdered black people to fill the back of a shirt in a dense paragraph of words, but I do not know them, and I do not know whether that is my personal failing or another of the system I find myself entangled in.

I learned in sociology class that society is more than the sum of it’s parts. I learned that even though we are all gears in society, society is also it’s own separate living organism. I did not understand it then, not fully. I understand it now, as I watch movements be born and gather members and fight to kill the rotten parts, as I watch things stay nearly the same anyway. Society has become a dragon to be defeated, but our knight is sickly or missing. The teeth are batons, it breathes tear gas, and it roars lies and “fake news” as it eats us alive.

There is a pandemic occurring, but the restrictions on movement and gatherings are being lifted. I wear a face mask to work to protect the customers from myself, hyperaware of how the customers do not care to protect me and will not cover their faces. Recovering from COVID-19 can leave you with conditions that you did not have before, ravaging your lungs and body until they never work quite right again. My grandmother texts me to complain that we should open faster and I’m struggling to explain to her why we cannot. The morgues in New York needed refrigerated trucks to hold the corpses in, and now we’re opening for the second wave. We did not flatten the curve, not enough. We are not prepared to open, but the facist leading us says we are and lies to our faces.

The fascist ordered teargas and swat teams used to remove peaceful protestors from in front of a church so he could have a photograph without them ruining it. He promised us a racist and xenophobic wall built on our border, and instead built it around the white house to protect himself. He removed the qualified specialists from their positions and replaced them with bigots, then worked to make listening to specialists a political opinion instead of common sense.

I am queer. There has been talk of how to remove gay marriage. It died quickly, at least I hope that’s what the silence means, but it existed. Poland is close to electing a leader who will outlaw queer ideaology in public places, as though love is an ideaology and not intrinsic to our being.

Is there any way we can skip this part? I’m tired and I’m scared. I’m ready for it to be tomorrow. The police defunded and public services grown, the pandemic gone and us healed, systematic racism dismantled and fascism erased. I wish I could wake up tomorrow and we’d’ve fixed everything.

That’s too simplistic. The riots have to happen. The protests, the petitions, the struggle. The deaths, the outrage, the fear. We must live through all of this if we wish to see that tomorrow, or else tomorrow is just another day to die in silence.

I am scared, though, and I am tired.

I am not doing anything. I do not know what to do. I do not know where the protests are, or when they are organized, and I do not know how to safely find out. I have no emergency contact I trust enough to tell if I go to a protest, and I am too scared to go without. I do not know how to protest, how to safely engage.

I am in college and I cannot imagine my future. I am told repeatedly that I need to decide, that every day gone is a day wasted. I am told repeatedly that I need to act, to take life by the horns and make something of myself. I am given resources to do so, but how can I? The world is going up in flames and I’m expected to choose a major and a career.

Society does not care for me. I am one more gear in it’s machine. I am one for snack for the dragon to eat. My mother tried to get me to ask for a raise at my job and did not understand that corporations do not value employees. I work minimum wage and I am disposable to the higher ups. The virus gave us extra business and I broke down crying from the stress twice. My coworkers have also cried and it is not a surprise. The corporations use us as gears and use us until we break, then they replace us with a newer model. Unions are still the bad guy in all the gossip. Our nation has a history of union busting that I am forcibly reminded of often.

The world is ending, somehow, someway. I cannot tell if what is dying is a free world, or a cage. I cannot tell if tomorrow will come with the dawn of a new golden age, or if we will all be silenced and in chains. We are living through history, and the generations after us are watching us now, and I do not know what they see. The victor will always write themself as the hero, and I don’t know what hero that distant future sees.

I saw a post by a school counselor. She said the teenagers are depressed. She said young people used to dream big, dream of being astronauts or movie stars or changing the world in a significant way. She said the teenagers of today are hesitant to say they might own a house. They are afraid to set even the lowest bar.

I should be doing more. The world is falling down around our ears, but I do nothing. The people scream in defiance and I whisper. I am afraid and I am helpless. I used to dream of being famous, when I was small. Today, I am scared of the future, and I feel small.

I spread the awareness posts to my few followers. I sign the petitions. I give donations, fives and tens to the various organizations. I play on the internet and try to forget the world outside of my room, just for a bit. The days fall through my hands like water, unused and wasted. It feels like dying.

I survive. I click another link. I watch a world die.

#covid19 #covid #blm #black lives matter #antifa #fascism #queer #fear #donald trump #my writing #interesting times and how i want them to stop

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nookishposts · 4 years ago

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Pause

It’s been awhile between blog posts.

There have been lots of things to write about but I have found myself really challenged to actually translate thoughts and feelings into words. I think a whole lot of people have. 2020 into 2021 has been a year of the steepest learning curve; when everything and everybody has had to shift through the prism filter of a pandemic. We have all stumbled forward, uncertain, confused, our senses and sensibilities tested by persistent alterations in such ordinary things as grocery shopping and haircuts. If we are honest, we know there will be no “going back”. We are not really at war with anything but our own assumptions..and perhaps understanding what a luxury it has been even to have them.

A child of the 1960s, beneficiary of post-vaccine development, I could never have dreamed of the day when a hug might be dangerous...and so much of daily routine would need to be at least 6 feet away, with a mask and a lot of hand sanitiser in the space in between. In the past year, the World has become both bigger and smaller. There’s a virus that doesn’t care about one bit about geography, infiltrating even the most remote of places, and yet forcibly uniting us in our vulnerability as well as our responsibility. Of course we will come out the other side, things will get better; we will see our families face to face and be able to travel again. Conspiracy theories aside, it should be an obvious and straightforward path through a shadowy forest. Except it’s not. We’ve been slowed down enough to see actual faces in the shadows; sometimes there are mirrors among the trees, reflecting back to us things we have managed to ignore, minute and momentous, not the least of which is the privilege of self-righteous indignation.

It is so seductively easy to settle into a personal groove of work and home, a schedule of self-determined priorities, to keep our heads down and our focus tight. Until something unexpected comes along that says we can’t do it our way any more; that our focus must become less about personal preference and more about collective safety, that we each have a role to play in a picture much bigger than our own. Cries of perceived personal rights violations have tried to drown out the soothing hum of rational and practical evidence-based sense. The World is sick. We have to help it heal. Here’s a mask, some soap and a few common sense guidelines. It’s really not asking too much, right? Unless you are an anti-masker, anti-vaxer, or person whose financial and political privilege has convinced you that you are beyond the scope of the rules.

We are more than a year in. Everybody is tired. Against the backdrop of a global pandemic precautions that dismantle small-business and independent livelihoods, that steals the actual lives of across-the-board good folks just trying to get from day to day, Life itself has had the audacity to persist; in births, deaths, violence, poverty, homelessness,hunger, celebration and sorrow. We can no longer ignore the festering issues we’ve been rushing past on our way through the forest. The strain of pandemic times has brought to a scalding boil the long-standing simmer of fear that manifests as anger. Like frustrated children we lash out and seek to blame somebody, anybody, for rousing us from a slumbering panacea of okay-ness into a grumpy, collective awakening toward how much community responsibility we have abandoned as we’ve been overwhelmed into sleep-walking.

Like every crisis, this one also brings opportunity. I think in fact we have surprised ourselves with certain kinds of resilience and creative solution. We are doing things the pols have said for years could not be done: working from home, reducing congestion, creating alternative education pathways, supporting local economy as we stay closer to home. The methods are flawed, but fascinating and full of potential. We’ve planted gardens; in yards and balconies and windowsills, reminding ourselves that we can coax bounty from barren-ness given the right seeds and a bit of effort. Can we not take those reminders of our innate survivalism and grow them too? Bigger gardens, plus more willing hands, equals feeding more people..in spirit as well as in body. Can we apply the same cooperative space and willingness to long-term care legislation, to local business incentives, to ensuring clean water and affordable housing, to mental health supports and sustainable infrastructure for the most vulnerable among us? Can we not recognise the everyday heroism of those front-line folk who cannot work from home and compensate them not just with financial fairness but also by investing in their personal and practical support ? We have been politically barn-stormed into apathetic compliance, into believing we have no influence left. But as we make our slow and stumbling way through this latest forest, what are we seeing in the shadows and the mirrors? We see that one road doesn’t bring enough light to really see by, that pathways need to be cleared all directions so we can reach those left in the shadows by the moneyed bulldozer that came through carving only the path of least resistance. We have always had the time and the resources. We must create the will to effect them. When a global tsunami hits and we are tested, we get resourceful, we learn how to tread water, then navigate through the shock waves to higher, drier ground from which the bigger view appears. We look back and see what needs to be done. We’ve been here before. The pandemic has given us the latest opportunity to seek higher ground and clearer perspective. What will it take to effect what we do with it?

I hope that you have kept your head above water and have what you need to stay healthy. I know you have committed many acts of kindness, large and small. I know you have kept an eye on your neighbour. I know you have suffered losses and carry new fears in your pocket. Mostly I know you are exhausted by where we find ourselves now. Me too. Amid the grand-standers and the angry shouting, the whisper of hope is comprised of many more voices, which means a groundswell of fertility and real, practical action is also within hearing. I can still call out to you from 6 feet away. I can also hear you, and the ones on either side, behind and ahead of us as well. We can encourage one another as we begin to plant better seeds in the ground right where we stand. We can step off the proscribed path and create a bit of light by not being so afraid of ineffectual energies that we fail to address the shadows. It’s okay to find yourself uncomfortable in the mirror, but look over your own shoulder and see that the rest of us are still reflected within your view. All of us. Surely we can make something out of that much.

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bothsandneithers · 4 years ago

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Day 3327

I need to hurry up and write this, because I am forgetting how miserable I was. This is not part of an effort to ensure that I don't repeat this process over again (perhaps as some may be tempted to do after childbirth). Instead, this exercise is consistent with my tendency to ask my friends to describe the most uncomfortable and unfortunate parts of their vacations. Who wants to hear a story that could more succinctly be conveyed within the narrow pages of a travel brochure? To adapt this question to the present situation: Who wants to hear a series of events that could be more adequately summarized by a few pages in a student handbook?

I’m sure that someone could have a field day by drawing parallels between giving birth to a child and writing a dissertation. While this is not my story to tell, I have described my experience by drawing upon the image of a mother who harnesses supernatural strength to lift a car off of her child. The listener is then immediately confused, and I then have to clarify that, in this metaphor, I am both the mother and the child, and that the dangerous, debilitating, threat of the car, is my dissertation.

It may be more effective if I am more direct: I want everyone to know that I (as the small child) was quite miserable, and I (as the mother) accomplished something that I thought was more than I could handle.

I imagine that if a car did end up on a small child, then the entire situation would invoke so much stress on the mother that she may not ever be able to recount exactly what happened during those subsequent moments. In a different way, of course, and for reasons I am still trying to understand, I too remember very little from the summer and early fall leading up to my defense.

In the place of memories, I find myself relying on artifacts to represent months and events that I cannot recall. One such set of artifacts are the six or so issues of The Atlantic magazine that have been set aside into a small pile; each one received a small verbal promise that I would open the pages after my defense. Now, as I review the covers, I imagine that they may never be read. Below are some of the stress-inducing cover stories of these abandoned issues:

How to destroy a government: The president is winning his war on American institutions.

How QAnon is warping reality and discrediting science.

The election that could break American.

How did it come to this? Why the virus won.

In the early days of lockdown, when the virus was beginning to take hold of its victory, I read this explanation for why most of us are not thriving right now: In order to flourish, one must be able to play several different human roles over the course of the day -- something that is arguably impossible when we rarely leave our dwellings.1

After reading this explanation, I starting clinging to the argument that the overwhelming reason why completing my dissertation had become so difficult was because of an absence of variability in my human roles. Even though none of my other typically played human roles were terribly interesting (commuter, friend, peer, coffee shop customer, gym patron), each one offered me respite from the singular human role that I was stuck with: The neurotic graduate student.

The neurotic graduate student human role was difficult to be around, because she was always worried about so many things: that her arguments weren't good enough, that there were errors in her code, that she should be able to understand certain concepts that were still evading her, that more time-intensive analyses were still required, and that overturning new stones would reveal that previous analyses or assumptions were wrong or incomplete. More simply, the neurotic graduate student human role was always worried that she was not good enough.

This persona can be debilitating, and I found that the act of writing a dissertation included a lot of time not actually writing, but rather, a substantial amount of time was devoted to sitting in paralyzing anxiety, not able to do anything.

Even though many of the weeks leading up to my due date were a blur, I do recall choosing this time to watch One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Perhaps I did this because misery loves company. I decided to view this odd movie choice in a particular odd format, whereby I watched the movie in 15 minute intervals, across several nights, as if savoring a segmented Toblerone.

I watched the first few segments in stoic sympathy with the characters, but I eventually found myself amused when Jack Nicholson realizes that almost all the residents are “voluntary”:

You can go home any time you want? You're bullshittin' me. He's bullshittin' me right? Cheswick, you're voluntary? Scanlon? Billy, for chrissakes you must be committed, right? I mean, you're just a young kid, what're you doin' here? … I mean, you guys do nothing but complain about how you can't stand it in this place here and then you haven't got the guts just to walk out?

I remember smiling for a few moments at this scene; it was a gentle reminder that I invited this stress into my life, and that I could, indeed, bring it all to an end if I really wanted to. The smile was fleeting, and felt similar to when you are crying, and your friend says something that is true and funny to try and make you feel better, and you laugh and it feels really good but it also reminds you of how bad you feel, and how far away you are from feeling like yourself.

Yet again, someone else might have a field day drawing parallels between today’s academic environment and a fictional mental institution from the 1970s. I can't do this, in part because, aside from that one scene, I don’t actually remember what happens in the movie.

I did, however, voluntarily lock myself in a hotel room to write, because the suffocating familiarity of my home was preventing me from generating any new sentences. A sticker had been placed between the room's door and its frame, denoting that the room had been thoroughly cleaned. Surely this was only intended to be a symbolic seal to provide some peace of mind that it was safe and acceptable to be outside of one's house.

Once inside the room (that seemed no cleaner than in the absence of a pandemic), I did not immediately initalize my plan to write incessantly. Instead, I desultorily found myself on a support group on reddit that was dedicated to "PhD stress." Feeling compelled to write anything that was not my dissertation, I made a post targeted at those who were also writing their dissertations during a pandemic:

What you are doing right now is really, really hard.

Under "normal" conditions, you would be facing a sheer amount of uncertainty with your work (e.g., not knowing how analyses will turn out, not knowing what your advisor will think of your progress, etc). Under these new conditions, you are dealing with the uncertainty of the state of the world (pandemic), the government (upcoming election -- if in the US), as well as your dissertation! These are absurd conditions, whereby any one of these things would undoubtedly have negative impacts on your well being.

For many, you went from having an entire support group of peers, to sitting in your bedroom, day in and day out, trying to come up with novel ideas and effective ways to communicate these ideas.

As such, I urge you to take care of yourself. I urge you to give yourself permission to ignore unwanted criticism that, while in other circumstances you may work hard to address. Now, in this current context, just don't. Give yourself permission to stop perpetuating the idea that your work and your psyche should not be impacted by the fact that nothing is the same right now.

Defend your ideas, yes. And do good work (-- nah, do good enough work). But know that you are defending your work under surreal circumstances. Account for this when you wake up tomorrow, move four feet from your bed to your desk, and try to do the same thing over again.

Overnight, this became the most popular post in the subreddit’s history. Admittedly, there aren’t a lot of members in this particular community (it should also be noted that this post was recently surpassed in popularity by a post entitled, “PhD has destroyed my mental health”). Still, several users responded with something along the lines of, “Thank you. I needed to hear this.”

I needed to hear those words too -- that is one reason why I wrote them. But I was also desperate to play another human role; one who ambiguously could have already made it to the other side of the dissertation defense, and was able to offer encouragement to those close to the finish line.

Soon after my hotel stay, where I eventually did find motivation to write, I was set to defend my dissertation. This was met with the opportunity to transform into another human role: someone who was nearing the end of her graduate student career, and had no choice but believe that her work was good enough.

The dissertation defense took place via video conferencing. I sat at my desk in my make-shift office in my bedroom.

Five kind and smart professors asked me kind questions that made me feel smart.

And that was it.

After the defense, the stress began to fade away. I recalled the wise words that my therapist once said, “It’s remarkable how, after the defense, people just won’t need anything from you anymore.” I made edits to my dissertation and submitted my final version. I dismantled my “home office” and replaced it with a reading chair and a plant. A new issue of The Atlantic arrived in the mail, and now with time, cognitive space, and optimism that this issue would not be as depressing as the others, I started to read.

I opened to an article about a historian who predicts that the United States is about to experience a terrible decade. He blames this on the overproduction of elites. ("There are still only 100 Senate seats, but more people than ever have enough money or degrees to think they should be running the country.") These elites find alternative ways to disrupt the status quo to influence people; the elite overproduction "creates counter-elites, and counter-elites look for allies among the commoners.”2

Although the article was compelling, it did not feel like appropriate material, as one does not work tirelessly through graduate school to then be compared to Steve Bannon.

I continued to the next article which was about young adults (or old children) who post things to a social media platform I’ve never used (TikTok). Not only do they create short videos that are viewed by millions of viewers, but there is an entire industry of these individuals, and they curate their content together in the mansions that they cohabitate (I am yet to grasp the monetization of this endeavor).3

I settled into my chair. Finding myself enjoying my new human role as a casual observer to an unknown world, I thought: What an absolutely absurd life pursuit.

xx,

Amy, PhD

https://nplusonemag.com/issue-37/the-intellectual-situation/epilogue-for-a-way-of-life/ ↩︎

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/12/can-history-predict-future/616993/ ↩︎

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/12/charli-damelio-tiktok-teens/616929/ ↩︎

#phd

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emathevampire · 4 years ago

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Compass for team chaotic good

Compass: who’s the moral compass? in general: what are your OCs’ morality like? do they have high morals, or not? are their morals self imposed, or do they base their morals on religion/family/influence of others? Well, considering that they’re called Team Chaotic Good, that should give you a pretty solid idea of what they’re about! But not everyone is ACTUALLY chaotic good. Some aren’t even Chaotic. Or Good, in fact! Funnily enough, about half of them are Lawful, actually. So here’s the breakdown. Team Chaotic Good has quite a few members, so I’ll put it under a cut, as it’s a bit long.

Kíhyué: The team leader. Is Actually Chaotic Good. Has a very strong moral core, and while he doesn’t expect everyone he associates with to actually BE good-aligned, he damn well expects them all to act like it. The society he was raised in was largely Lawful/Neutral, but his outlook ended up completely different as a result of the mistreatment he suffered at the hands of strict laws and “neutral” stances that did more harm than good. “No such thing as an innocent bystander. You stand by and do nothing, you do not want to get involved, fine. But do not call yourself innocent. Do not say you did no harm when you could have done good instead.”

Inimicia: Sort of like his second in command, she’s Exalted Lawful Good. Not something you’d expect from the infamous Assassin Queen, or a half-vampire, or someone whose name literally means “the enemy,” but she’s had a long hard crawl up from being born chaotic evil and like hell she’s going to give up the good fight now. Her morals are 100% self-imposed, and she goes out of her way to find others in need of similar impositions and help them learn how to use objectively evil powers for good. Her order of assassins is ironically mostly good aligned, and she works very hard to keep it that way, sending them on missions to slay demons and devils and other undeniable evils who’ve managed to blend into society. This often leads to them looking like the bad guys, of course... nobility who keep their sinister deeds well hidden suddenly drop dead murdered in their own homes, and no one understands why. No one, except the victims of their cruelty whose pleas Inimicia’s spies overhear. She’s especially wary of religion, and any religion that claims to serve “the greater good.” A deity, of course, has the power to decide just what they think the greater good actually is, and cannot be trusted not to be acting solely in their own self-interest, or to actually do good deeds at all. “Go ahead. Paint me as your enemy. The world can believe you all it wants to, I’ll be the villain if you make me. I’ll still know the truth... and so will you.” Xadrea Shadowborn: Is Exalted Chaotic Good out of sheer spite and determination. Unlike Kíhyué, she absolutely expects Good out of everyone, even if she has to drag them kicking and screaming into behaving like decent human beings. Arguably this is the result of outside influence, though it’s... complicated. Essentially, she and her companions in a different universe had been given these artifacts that would tempt them into corruption in exchange for power, ultimately transforming them into an avatar of one of the Archdukes of Hell if they succumbed to enough temptations to lose their souls. Xadrea watched this happen to SEVEN of her party members. She outright refused to fall, ended up hosting the deity Heironeous instead of an archfiend, and saved the universe, all thanks to pure fucking spite and refusing to do as she was told by the voice in her head. Her sense of justice and honour don’t always conform to what one would expect of a literal divine embodiment of Valor, but she argues that’s what makes her best for the job, since she absolutely will not get caught up over doing the lawful thing as opposed to the right thing... something she and Kíhyué both agree is what makes their approach to fighting evil the best one. Her morals, ultimately, come from the shitty little slothful voice in the back of her mind that wants her to lie down and accept defeat, protect herself and forget the world... “Oh, you wish I’d quit, don’t you? Well it’s not gonna happen. NEVER gonna happen. You want apathy from me? Get bent, devil. I’m going to CARE. I am going to care SO much, ON PURPOSE, about EVERYTHING but you, and you can’t fucking stop me.” Anaziah the Kind: A paladin of freedom, Anaziah is another actual Chaotic Good member. If her former epithet of “the Wrathful” isn’t enough of an indication, she certainly didn’t used to have a moral compass, and it’s a testament to her strength of will that she’s managed to change and become a better person. She’s still pretty new at this whole “being a good person” thing, and looks to Faendys and the others for guidance, very grateful to all of them for giving her a chance instead of judging the Drow book by its cover. “I was raised to hate everything that wasn’t like us. To hate, to subjugate, to destroy. But... I was never really like ‘us,’ was I? All they ever really taught me was how to hate myself. The surface world isn’t like that. I’m free here. I’m allowed to love instead. It’s not easy, but, doesn’t everyone deserve the chance to try?” Faendys: Neutral Good, Faendys is the very calm one, who’s never trying to make any sort of deep commentary on anything on purpose, but often ends up making unsettlingly wise comments anyway. They rarely have to say much, and rarely do say much when things get serious, but their small voice piping up with something profound is always what gets the rest of them to shut up and act reasonably when their opposing alignments cause conflict. Even if it’s just a simple “That’s... not okay,” Faendys trusts their gut when it comes to tough ethical dilemmas, and the others generally listen to them. “I know it sounds hard. And it’s probably going to make us a lot of enemies. Even if we get away with it. But... we haven’t been afraid of that before, have we? They need our help, and we know it. What makes this time any different?” Arekos Aidoneus: A dread necromancer who’s also the party healer, Arekos is Lawful Neutral, and the only thing preventing him from being Good is the fact that many of the spells he casts are technically evil (see: raising armies of undead). However, he’s very careful to only use these spells for good purposes, and also has a few spells from the Book of Exalted Deeds on his list... his moral fibre is rather complex. His approach to the subject is based very strongly on his culture and religion: keep the balance in all things, use your dark powers only to serve the light, and defend the cause of good for the cause of evil needs no help to prosper. This creed is how he stays lawful despite actively working towards arguably chaotic goals, because dismantling the government brick by brick is, in fact, something he is required by his social and religious obligations to do, provided that the government in question is evil. Kíhyué and Xadrea absolutely hate it when he brings this up. “The world would love to prove that we cannot be good, that we cannot be kind, that we cannot be anything but evil and should not exist. I should very much like to prove them all wrong.” Amanthos Panideios: Also Lawful Neutral, with a heavy emphasis on Lawful, this librarian monk knows full well that he does not really fit in here... so he follows the others’ lead more often than not, managing to stay lawful despite the chaotic things they get up to the same way Arekos does. He also just... avoids getting directly involved with anything that would involve breaking the law in ways he can’t rationalise. Amanthos is not Moral, he is Ethical, and this is both a good thing (he’s able to rationalise many of the chaotic things he engages with as actually complying with the code of ethics he is meant to follow) and a bad thing (not everything has an easy answer, and it’s very easy for him to potentially fall into Lawful Evil behaviour if someone else isn’t around to check his work). “Oh dear... we didn’t cover this in any of my moral philosophy lectures... Arekos? Arekos, do you know the answer to this one?” Psamion: The bard, the sea captain, the Chaotic Neutral (but good-leaning!) one. He did his time as the hero, and quite frankly he hated every second of it, it traumatised him thoroughly, and he never wants to speak of it again. He’s perfectly content to continue doing his best to help people, in his own way, but absolutely does not want to let himself get dragged into another high-stakes demon hunt to the Hells and back, because he barely came out of the last one alive. That being said, Kíhyué is his closest friend in the entire universe, and he would do anything for him... so, naturally, when Kíhyué says “We have to save the world again,” Psamion just sighs, packs his things, and says “Can’t it just stay saved for once?” as he follows Kíhyué out the door. “Look, I don’t much care for this whole ‘getting involved’ thing, but if Kíhyué says it’s time to put up a fight, and he needs my help, you’d best believe I’m pulling out my knives and hucking a flaming bottle wherever he points me to. The world’s in trouble, and damn it all, by some miracle I’m STILL one of the idiots who lives in it, thanks to him... If I’m gonna fight, it may as well be a good fight.” Eomer: Is a gryphon. Kíhyué raised him from a hatchling, and their moral cores are as such pretty much identical... though Eomer is much more empathetic and often needs to give Kíhyué a kick in a more compassionate direction. “I think you very brave for trying. Maybe we fail, yes, happen some times. But what if not! Any thing can happen! Good thing, even! You would not even try for good? For happy thing? Stupid. Go try. Come try with me. I will go by myself, yes? No? Good! Together, we stand a chance, always worth a chance.”

#rixa writes #team chaotic good #whew this ate a good several hours #sorry it got so long #but thanks for the ask!!!#romulan-raptorstar

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