#literally what I wrote my honours thesis on

[lilystyles]

when not in rome.

a @lilystyles blurb!

my masterlist & no strings attached masterlist & blurbs masterlist

authors note idk this was a random thing i wrote at 2AM because i just missed them, i am still working on style so don't worry that should be out soon. also this is set way before no strings, i love writing about them in their previous moments!

brief description harry surprises y/n at her graduation (also listen to love of my life by h whilst readinggg)

warnings! angsty? fluffy? drunk y/n and harry (2.1k)

younger!lhh!nostrings!h x reader

* * * * *

SIX YEARS BEFORE

University has a funny way of making you feel like you might never cross the finish line. Y/n like everyone else had multiple days where she would just sob and scream from the stress of it all. Exams were totally a torture device.

When Y/n graduated with her first degree before deciding to write her thesis Harry surprised her.

He’d been touring the world with One Direction for months now and she hadn’t seen him since Paris the year before, when he’d surprised her by flying her to join them in their Paris show and they’d had a wild few drunken nights that she felt blurred the lines of friendship into something more.

But after their few days, when the champagne ran out, and she came back home, she sobered and realised that nothing would ever happen between them. And if you spent a few nights with Harry in a limo drinking champagne and dealing with his wandering hands you too would fall for him. Just a bit. It's only natural.

She missed him, though, loads. He was one of her best friends after all.

Around a month ago they phoned each other, it was late for her and the morning for him, she’d been studying and they talked for hours catching up till the sky turned bright for her and her eyes drooped shut. The time between their phone calls had grown longer and longer now, and she missed him. She’d mentioned that she was graduating soon and that they were both supposed to be graduating if he’d stayed in Uni. She remembers them staying up late at parties discussing their futures and how post-graduation Harry was insistent that they’d still be roommates. She realised now that their dream definitely wasn’t a possibility anymore.

He’d told her that instead of being there graduating like they’d suspected he was going to be, he was in Rome at some fashion show gala thing, and his date was this sexy model named Rosalie who had her sex tape leaked a couple of months ago. She was happy for him, but a part of her couldn’t help but be disappointed. She felt like he was drifting away from her every day, but she couldn’t find in herself to be cross with him. He was swept up by the fame of it all, and how on earth could she be mad that he was literally a rockstar? She knew that he was still Harry and she was still Y/n but they weren’t Harry and Y/n anymore. Not like before.

And honestly, she’d probably leave everything and everyone behind, party all night, and sleep with sexy models too if she had the chance to be famous. But she couldn’t sing for shit. So instead she did what she was doing, and shoved her nose in a book rather than in lines off a bathroom sink, and she was rather content with the peacefulness of it all.

All thoughts of Harry were swept away from her mind when she walked across the stage in the grande hall. She was finally graduating! Thank god! She thought. She had a sash that showed she was an honours student, and she was blooming with pride, when they called her name her list of achievements was longer than the four painful years she’d spent studying in their grande libraries. She was so glad to shake the hand of one of her favourite professors and leave, the next year ahead she planned to travel and work overseas, she was excited about that.

But honestly, she was even more excited to get absolutely shit-faced at the graduation after-ball party. She found herself a few pints down, sitting by the edge of one of the fountains, when she nearly fell in at the absolutely shocking sight in front of her.

There was just no way it could be true. I mean he was in Rome, and she was drunk in London. She’d seen photos on her Twitter of him wrapping his tattooed arms around that Rosalie model girl, so how could he be here in London just like that? It was not real, surely. She must be hallucinating and the second-hand smoke of all the spliffs had finally got to her brain. But suddenly the man turned around and Jesus Christ it was him. It was Harry. His eyes were pinched as he searched the crowd and when he finally saw her they lit up, all green like a forest, and his mouth kicked up into that devilish grin of his.

He saw her dumb-struck expression and laughed softly walking toward his best friend. He was dressed in a suit jacket like everyone else, and since they were all drunk none of them noticed it was the Harry Styles of the One Direction AKA the biggest band in the world. To them, he was just some random twat who just graduated too.

His hair had grown all long and curly, and he just looked so much more like a man than when he’d left. Had he gotten taller? More strong? The arms of his jacket strained and Y/n sighed at the sight of him.

She didn't think she'd changed much, but Harry thought she looked even more beautiful than before, if possible.

When he stood right in front of her, her mouth was still wide in utter shock. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

He laughed. “Is that all you hafta’ say? Come on, hug your best friend!”

She sprang up from her seat and the silky long dress, which was a teal blue colour. All smooth and tight on her skin was hiked up slightly. Her gown and cap were long gone, as she wrapped her arms around his neck and shoulders. He lifted her up off the floor and spun them around. 

She smelt like peaches and sweetness, and God, he could've stayed holding her for weeks.

She giggled and felt her face hurt from smiling so big. “Oh my God, I can’t believe you!”

When he placed her down, his hands did not leave the curve of her waist. “Surprise, babe.”

“What the- shit- I thought you were in Rome! How’d you even get here?” She asked 

He smiled. “I was, got a flight this afternoon. It was the only one coming home, sorry for missing the graduation part.”

She just smiled up at him. “You’re crazy.”

He shook his head landing a hand on her shoulder. “I knew how important it was to you, and I missed you. Sue me.”

She laughed, eyes welling with slight tears. Maybe he wasn’t drifting too far from her after all. “Oh, god, don’t make me cry, you know how I get after a few pints, H.”

He laughed, arms outstretched for her to cuddle him. “Aw, pet, c’mere.”

She smacked his chest playfully but cuddled him nonetheless. “Let’s go get royally fucked, mate,” She whispered and they pulled apart, hands interlocking as she lead him off to one of the pubs where everyone was buying drinks.

It was called The Ducks Nuts.

A few of her mates were inside. Ones Harry didn’t know, but she’d already spent a good portion of the night with them. So she told them her old friend had surprised her and they’d be here and there.

Harry ordered them some shots and eventually the night was just a blur of hands touching each other, as they got so drunk Y/n felt her world spinning. They’d hopped around multiple different pubs and bars and Y/n was so tired. Her heels itched her feet with pain and she ripped them off, along with her bag. As they walked with little purpose she threw her things at him and began to dance in the middle of the road.

Harry was holding her things as she danced in the street showing her best Elton John impression, and he silently decided that was what made her so perfect. She was just herself. And he loved that about her, he loved everything about her.

He laughed and told her what a realistic impression it was, and how they’d met at some award show to back up that comment. She was infinitely jealous, she loved Elton.

On her way back toward him she landed in his arms after losing her footing he shook his head at her.

“You are very drunk, Lovie. Aren't ya'?" He said, in a soft tone one that made her tummy turn in flips.

She sighed as they walked in a direction with no destination in mind. “You aren’t drunk enough, you need to get on my level.”

He noticed her shiver under his arm and quickly ripped his coat off. It swallowed her form and she smiled gratefully hugging the coat around herself. It felt like a warm embrace, and that smell filled her nose and suddenly she was home in her old flat with him, home in Holmes Chapel, home with him. Just home.

“Smells good.” She giggled as she sniffed the shoulder pad, her cheek brushing against the soft material all dog-like. “N’ soft too.”

“Why thanks, it’s Gucci.” He replied. 

She rolled her eyes. “Come on then, money-bags, let’s get you as drunk as me.”

They strolled into a tavern near her flat and drank so much tequila that they had to practically carry each other home.

As Harry looked up at the stars and moon, feeling the cool air nip her skin he sighed. He hadn’t gotten this drunk, and been this happy in such a long time. He was giggling contently, as she leaned into him and he silently wished that the night would never end.

He never wanted his time with her to end either. He loved spending time with her, whether they were on an adventure or doing nothing at all. Y/n made it worthwhile.

When they reached the shitbox of a flat she lived in Harry followed calmly behind her, and when one of her neighbours spat a comment about drunken youths he sighed, “I wish you would’ve taken up my offer,”

She looked up at him as she played with the jammy door that never seemed to open on the first try. Shoving her shoulder into it as she managed to finally wedge it open, stumbling inside ungracefully.

And with a roll of her eyes, she ushered him inside. “There is zero chance I’d let my all-of-sudden bazillionaire rockstar friend buy me a flat, just cause he can afford shoes worth more than my entire life savings. Anyway, how could I ever pay it back? I have two p to my name and a packet of noodles in my possessions, Harry.”

He laughed. “Think of it as a graduation present then,”

She sighed. “Just shut up and sit down, and I’ll get some wine.”

It was almost 4AM now, and neither cared. They were beyond drunk, but Y/n missed him and if force-feeding him wine would get him to spend a whole 24 hours with her, she totally would.

When she sat down with two mugs spilling with a cherry red wine, that was the cheapest shit she’d ever bought, Harry laughed. Her wobbly legs forced her to land awkwardly on one thigh practically on top of his. He smiled, one that showed his kind eyes. 

Green pools of emerald she wished to swim in for eternity. She laughed at the thought, she really got poetic when she was drunk, huh?

“God, remind me to get you drunk more often.” He whispered.

She sighed. “Oh shut up, and fill me in on life then. Who are you shagging?”

He looked at her pointedly. “Who are you shagging?”

A blush crept up her neck, and suddenly the only secret she had kept from him was threatening to slip past her drunken red-stained lips.

“None of your business, but there’s this hot guy in my physics who I would totally shag,”

He laughed, but underneath it, he felt a jealousy creep up his spine, he knew he had no right since he’d been balls deep in two Italian models this morning, turns out threesomes are a really good cure for hangovers by the way. But despite that, he felt an itch he couldn’t scratch that resembled something pretty close to jealousy.

“What’s he like?” Harry asked.

She shrugged. “Dunno, tall, glasses, got that whole nerdy silent thing going for him.”

“That’s what you like then, silent types?” He asked, running a hand through his long curls, and she reached out to play with one.

She shook her head, and said distractedly, “I don’t know.”

“Makes sense why you never dated me then.” 

During primary school, Harry dated every girl in their class including Daisy and Penny, except Y/n who told him she didn’t fancy him. It was an ongoing topic of discussion between them. Why wasn't he good enough? He always asked.

She laughed at that comment. “I know you too well for that, and I get the unfiltered you, and I lived with you which was basically like being married to you. We bickered too much to ever date, Haz.”

He looked at her with hooded eyes, and for some reason that stung, but trying to be light-hearted he said. “Never say never, what if we needed to repopulate the earth?”

She looked over at him and placed a hand on his and kissed his cheek, all soft and slow, and for a moment he thought she might actually kiss him for real but instead, she said. “There’ll be no hope for humanity then.”

He sighed, fake pouting before a couple of minutes of silence passed and he turned to her and said. “Come with me to Brazil.”

Her eyes widened, “What?"

“I leave tomorrow night, come with me.” He said.

She frowned. “What? Come with you? You can't be serious.”

He nodded. “Please? I miss you! And we can party for a whole week together, or sleep, or do whatever the fuck you want! Just come, pack a bikini and something sparkly, and I’ll take care of the rest.”

Y/n and Harry did end up going to Brazil but that’s a story for another time.

She stood up from the couch holding her hand out to him, and he slid his into hers. Cool rings grazing the soft skin of her palm.

“Let’s just go to sleep, you're talking like a crazy person.” She said, softly pushing a lock of his hair away from his eyes.

He sighed at her, “But m’ serious, Love.”

“Alright, ask me again tomorrow. That is if you even remember...now come on, let’s listen to Fleetwood Mac and sleep until tomorrow evening.”

Y/n's room was cosy and welcoming. Harry felt his eyes droop at the sight. A tiny lamp shining over them in an orange glow, her cot-like bed covered in blankets and the scent of her likely covering those sheets.

That night they slept in Y/n’s twin bed, cuddling, with Stevie Nicks serenading them to sleep. Cheeks plump and pink from too much alcohol, hands wandering scandalously, and the love in air was thick and obvious.

Before Y/n fell asleep she pecked his lips, in a quick kiss, one that it barely even touched him and said, “Night, mate,”

His lips burned like wildfire, and from that night on, he did think humanity had a chance if it was up to them. Whether or not she believed that.

“Night, Love.”

i have been a bit slack with updates lately...second year of uni is crazy and im already soooo busy, but i missed them and i wanted to write a lil sum for y'all until my next proper update :) BIG LOVEEEE

[not-poignant]

Just saw your post about Ghibli + elements of grotesque with the Nausicaa gifset and how you wrote an essay comparing it to Shinto philosophy and I had to ask - you didn't happen to write that for an IB film class did you?? Cause that would be a WILD coincidence if so, bc I'm doing IB film rn and one of our extended essay examples was literally exactly that; an analysis/comparison of Ghibli movies and Shinto philosophy/religion and it was really really good.

Even if not, that's so cool!! I adore Ghibli and totally agree with the points you left in the tags of that post. Ghibli is about confronting the uncomfortable and ugly and grotesque and scary and acknowledging it as a valid and necessary part of life. Everything in balance!! Sure there are some more cutesy kiddy films which I feel have become more mainstream but especially films like Nausicaa have very real and important messages that often get overlooked :( I was really scared of Nausicaa when I was a child and now it's one of my favourite films!!

Anyway, you're awesome, I agree with your takes and Ghibli rocks 💪

Hi anon!

So this is going to be a wild journey, strap in.

I don't know what IB Film is. I did my thesis in a final year university unit specifically where we all developed our own thesis subject, had a supervisor, and it was basically a test run to do first class Honours (which lets you bypass a Masters degree and go straight to the PhD, which I then intended to do). It was a limited class that only had about 10 people in it, I believe. My supervisor was the head of the film department.

Now, this was back in about 2004. Shit I'm old. Ghibli wasn't a household name. It wasn't streaming anywhere. You couldn't get DVDs easily, and if you wanted them you had to make sure you had a region unlocked DVD player to deal with the DRM and then buy them from overseas. Most people were only getting exposed to these films if they were regular cinema-goers, or if they were an aggressive pirate via downloading torrents (which I was). The only place you could get Ghibli merch pretty much was Japan. It absolutely did not have the kind of traction it has now, no one could do a class on it outside of Japan because the majority of students would have no idea what you were talking about.

I think Disney/Lasseter had picked up the option to do dubs, but for the most part, if we were seeing these at the cinema, they were subbed.

So that's the context! That was in an era where I was the one directly getting all of my friends on Livejournal and in person, into Studio Ghibli. I went to the Ghibli film festival back before Spirited Away came out, and that got me hooked years previous.

In 2004 I did my thesis. At the time I was the only person in the English speaking world to do a thesis specifically on my thesis subject. It had been covered briefly in sentences like 'Miyazaki practices Shinto' etc. and there was one other unpublished thesis I was able to find that talked about concepts of Shinto and some of Miyazaki's films which helped me a lot with my thesis.

I went on a deep dive into Shinto. Because it was a thesis, I had to research a lot into the difference between folk and shrine Shinto (Ghibli films lean very 'folk' but there are moments of shrine Shinto), and ended up with a pretty baller reference list. But many, many, many more resources online and off have come out since. I'd find the thesis very easy to do if I was doing it now.

Because I was the first to kind of present my findings in a thesis like this, the thesis ended up getting published in a book on animism and then journeyed further on because it was of interest to people who are interested in representations of animism in mass media, especially popular mass media.

The specific focus of my thesis statement was the difference between the black and white puritanical morality of Disney, the most popular animation studio for children and adults at the time, versus Miyazaki's mixed morality and more nuanced explorations of good and evil, villains, heroes and antiheroes in Ghibli animations, and how that was at least partly founded in the difference between a more Christianised versus Shinto mindset in relation to nature and intersections with humanity.

Idk, something like that.

The thesis did well! I got my high distinction, got my invitation into first class Honours, and then was too sick to go on and get the PhD and teach about these things, which was what I fully intended to do!

My thesis got some traction over the years, published in a few places both online and in at least two books (one that I own, the other I forget because it's been oh my god like 20 years), so the idea got around!

Anon, there is actually a chance - a small chance - that the only reason you're getting this essay subject in a more standardised curriculum is because my thesis made its way into the public eye 20 years ago and got quite popular. It was never peer reviewed or anything, it wasn't a PhD thesis and didn't need to be, it was mostly just a very well-researched (if I do say so myself) collation of thoughts on the subject as someone is also a practicing animist. In retrospect I really wish I'd incorporated more of Zipe's teachings but he was in a completely different field to media studies and my supervisor didn't know about him to suggest him.

Discussions of Ghibli, Miyazaki and Shinto became a lot more popularised as Ghibli got more popular and people in the western world discovered that there were already a published essay (at the time people could read it without paying for it as I'd put it up online for folks to access) that linked to other sources and the unpublished essay I'd found. So...

Um, yeah, that's wild, because I know that this wasn't a thing in universities 20 years ago, because I was so desperate for resources I was emailing around and asking universities so I didn't have to figure so much out myself. 😅

[metawatts]

Justice League x RWBY: Super Heroes and Huntsmen Part One

I've been workshopping this review for a week it is 9 fucking pages but anyway: It's dangerous to go alone! Take this!

Table of Contents

#1. Introduction: Not for DC Fans

#2. Starting off: “The Good-

#3. Propping Up RWBY over the Justice League

#4. The Texas Character Massacre

#5. Oh boy lets talk about the writing

#6. Other General Notes: -The Bad, and The Ugly”

#7. Final Scores!!

TL:DR- They better not make the 'part 2'. Let's get into it.

#1. Introduction: Not for DC Fans

Let’s get this out of the way: this is a movie made for RWBY fans. It’s made for people who are familiar with RWBY, with the characters, with the worldbuilding, and it’s made with the idea that the people watching are RWBY fans, with DC fans as the backburner. The first reason why I think this? The DC characters get a lot more exposition on who and what they are, while the RWBY characters get to exist and be ‘cool’.

The second reason? This movie is, lets face it, mean-spirited towards DC. And yeah whatever, a DC comic writer wrote this, but to be fair with the state of comics nowadays that says absolutely nothing about respect given to the characters that are popular and well-known (hint: it’s not RWBY). This movie is drenched in schoolyard meanness. It’s all about pointing and laughing at the DC characters. Our introductory scene to this film involves Superman being systematically humiliated in his first scene (unable to use his powers, having his hero codename be mocked, etc.), and that sets the tone.

Meanwhile, the RWBY characters are introduced with action set pieces and knowing about the world they are in. The DC characters are the ones who are comedic relief, who need to be ‘taken down a peg’, who must struggle and prove themselves to RWBY to get the ‘honour’ of working with them, while RWBY doesn’t have to struggle and instead gets to just be ‘cool’. And that’s detrimental to the RWBY characters as well too, by the way, so don’t think I’m being unfair. No one in this film has a character arc, except Jessica, supposedly, and Batman, unfortunately, and you would think that coming off the back of volume 9, often called the ‘character development’ volume, people would be complaining that RWBY and JNR are quite flat, in how they progress through the film.

Basically: The RWBY characters are set dressing; the Justice League are punching bags. With that as our thesis, let’s review this movie. (warning for spoilers)

#2. Starting Off: “The Good-

Now, I won’t pretend this movie was enjoyable for me by any means, but I’m not unreasonable, it had its positives. Four, specifically.

The first one is obvious: the Spectacle Fight Scenes. This movie had a bunch of fights packed away in it, and the overall quality of them was on the whole, in the higher tier of rwby’s Maya fight scenes. Bar a few bits of wonkiness and the general writing surrounding the fights, they were fun. A particular shout-out to my favourite one at the end, Hacked!Flash vs Everyone, that one was fun and fast and highly enjoyable.

Number 2: Batman’s semblance. I’ll fully admit that I’m pretty sure my enjoyment of this power implementation was purely because I like Batman: Arkham Asylum, and this is literally just ripped right from that down to the aesthetics, but, well- I like Batman: Arkham Asylum, and therefore I like Bruce’s Detective Vision semblance and how it was used pretty creatively compared to most other semblances.

Third times the charm: Superman was my shining light, my beacon of hope in this film. He was kind, he was polite, he was supportive and brave and friendly and also, surprisingly for RWBY, managed to do all this without being spineless, he was willing to stand up for himself when he thought he was being treated unfairly (at least, 80% of the time). I wouldn’t even normally consider myself a massive Superman fan, I like when he’s well-written and I notice when he isn’t, but this movie had me actively rooting for any time where he was on screen, he was my absolute highlight in this film, love him even if his fit is fuckin ATROCIOUS. (and his voice acting was, by and large, one of the strongest performances, beyond Kilg%re and Hacked!Barry, who were just clearly having a delightful time villain monologuing)

Number four: the idea of Grimm absorbing dust. It’s a brilliant idea that really ups the stakes in RWBY fights, considering dust is their go-to offensive weapon and literally powers all their bullets, and, amazingly, it was also a cool idea that was carried throughout most of the film. Every Grimm in this film had the ability, more or less, and they used it often and to great effect. Very nicely implemented.

(Final tiny shout-out: the Justice League’s superhero outfits in their own world, that we regrettably only see in a few flashback images, looked GOOD. I wish they kept them instead of getting the outfits in the film proper)

But alas, this film really did have a lot more negatives than positives, so lets get into the first big flaw, and the one I would consider the movie’s biggest failing:

#3. Propping Up RWBY over the Justice League

I mentioned it in the intro, but this movie is consistent in how it utterly devalues the Justice League characters and does everything in its power to showcase RWBY and JNR as ‘better’ in every way. Now, the argument is that this is intentional, seeing as the villain deliberately nerfed the JL characters into being teenagers to weaken them. To which case I point at probably what is probably the most referenced episode of the Justice League cartoon in regards to this movie, the one where they’re turned into literal children, appropriately named ‘Kid Stuff’, and I’ll also point out the lesser known episode of Justice League Action called ‘Trick or Threat’, which had the added bonus of wiping the JL character’s memories of being superheroes.

Now, why am I bringing these up? Its because both of these episodes had the same villain idea as this movie: de-age the Justice League to weaken them, and both of these episodes also did something that the movie failed to do: keep the characters in-character and acting their age, and treat them with respect. I’ll get to the character issues in the next section, but the idea of treating characters respectfully is not done in this film.

Superman, as stated prior, is nerfed, his name is made fun of, he’s talked down to constantly, he’s insulted, he’s distrusted, and not just by team RWBY. But he is not the only one. Wonder Woman has a mishap when trying to get the hang of her new abilities and Blake and Yang laugh at her. Flash, Vixen, Cyborg, and Green Lantern spar against JNR and despite still maintaining most of their adult memories beyond the immediate, and supposedly their skills minus powers, end up on the defensive. Against JNR, not even against the main team RWBY or against Pyrrha. They are outclassed by the side-character team. Batman, the hand-to-hand specialist, is outclassed by Weiss in close-quarters and then a few random SDC guards, Wonder Woman and Superman mostly escape unscathed, beyond the new drawbacks of their semblances, but it’s telling that most of the fight scenes are more focused on the cool things RWBY and JNR do instead of the JL characters (bar the Big Three). Cyborg’s biggest combat moment that’s given any narrative weight is him powering up Nora. Vixen doesn’t even get a moment, and Flash’s only moments come when he’s being the Villain and not Flash. The JL characters are supporting characters in a movie that’s supposed to be about teamwork.

Second point: they really hype Grimm up as scary, even stating ‘Grimm aren’t like your normal monsters, they’re soulless beings that only care about destroying and killing’. And it’s treated as a big moment of internal revelation and horror for the Justice League. Let me say that again, the fact that monsters only care about destroying things, is played as horrifying. For the Justice League. The guys who faced down, canonically in this film: Vandal Savage, an immortal sadistic genius who literally just wants to destroy the world consistently, and Brainiac, a hyper-intelligent alien android who’s goals range from ‘destroyed krypton in some continuities’ to ‘hobbies include horrifically mind controlling people to do evil and shrinking Actual Cities for his snow-globe collection’.

But yes. Grimm are scary now. These are the same Grimm that basically act as cannon fodder in all of RWBY’s actual run time, bar one-offs, and exist just to give the protagonists something they can guilt-free rip their way through to show off. Those Grimm. Those are the scary ones now, supposedly. Despite this artificial attempt to make RWBY seem more badass then the league for fighting monsters, the Grimm are still cannon fodder, the movie doesn’t stray that far from RWBY’s conventions.

Finally, there’s a consistent running theme that ties into the leadership qualities of Ruby vs Clark, but mostly ends up as ‘the Justice League try to come up with ideas and plans, and team RWBY and JNR yell at them for daring to tell them what to do’. Most particularly, it’s Wonder Woman, Superman, and Batman who actually spark Team RWBY into realising that there’s a problem that needs solving. It’s them that comes up with 90% of the plans, and its them that put their money where their mouth is on being not only a good team and smart heroes, but also as friends (more on that later). But instead, whenever they come up with good ideas, it’s shut down, mostly by Nora, and also Yang, as ‘I’m not going to listen to you/don’t tell us what to do/you’re not the boss of me’.

There’s a very big sense of undeserved ego there, especially since the RWBY characters haven’t actually given a reason why they shouldn’t listen beyond general contrariness. But also, it’s a sentiment that does not work on a battlefield, and it does not work in a movie that tries to have a theme of ‘coming together’. Mostly because in a standard plotline about ‘working together’, the disagreements usually require resolving, or meeting in the middle. There is none of that here. The Justice League just bends the knee and goes with being mistreated by teenagers who have not shown their chops as heroes, but it’s still given the ending of ‘we’re all friends now’. The first of many character assassinations throughout this film.

#4. The Texas Character Massacre

This one’s a doozy. No one escapes. Not even Superman, who is almost entirely spared, even he gets a dose of a ‘RWBY Heroic Speech that is just Empty Token Hero Stuff’ (AKA the thing that’s been plaguing Ruby since vol4). But I’ve used Superman already a lot, and he’s probably the least egregious of what happens here, so let’s get into the meat of this topic.

Everyone and their mom on twitter has been commenting about how Batman does not feel like Batman in this. And it’s true. Batman, the self-admitted ‘I haven’t been a kid since I was eight’, the man who is so obsessed with Gotham City it will one day kill him, the man who, even if in this continuity is not a father of 4-8+ adopted children, still has Alfred who he would die for and would die for him, the man who in the current comics run of RWBY in the DC universe says with his mouth ‘I don’t want this semblance, relying on it is detrimental in the long-term’. This Batman. Wants to ditch Gotham because he has wings and powers now.

‘Batman getting powers’ is not new ground, by the way, but the absolute moping this version of Batman does is not only annoying and actively unlikable, it also makes no sense. In the span of ten seconds, in the same conversation, he goes from ‘I want to go home’ to ‘I want to stay where I have powers’. This isn’t presented as a conflict of interest either, by the way. He just completely switches his mind because Weiss said ‘hey stay here’. There’s no consistency, there’s no internal character motivation, it felt like they just wanted to have one character conflicted about leaving HoloRemnant and decided just to throw a dart at a board without caring who it fit. So yes, Batman? Massacred.

Wonder Woman also got severely screwed over too. I had this in my notes that Wonder Woman only acted in character when she was reuniting with the rest of the Justice League and was allowed to show kindness and compassion. The rest of the time, Wonder Woman, a character defined by her love for the world (and was created to showcase feminine power, btw), is a Strong Female Character, and I do mean that in the Negative Way. She’s literally got a Batman Growl on her voice for 99% of her lines, she talks about how tough she is, about the ‘warrior’s life’, and she’s the first character to get violent in a situation. Yes, even beating out Yang ‘punch first, talk later’ Xiao Long. This feels like a parody of Wonder Woman written by someone who read the Whedon Wonder Woman script and took ‘some crazy strong bitch in a tiara’ as their entire central concept for the character. It’s not a Wonder Woman who believes in anything, she’s just a sidekick for the bees to prop themselves up with as ‘warriors’. I could write a million thinkpieces on what makes Wonder Woman an excellent hero character, but all I’ll say is this film’s Wonder Woman would not count.

Green Lantern will get her own post on how this movie handled her so fucking badly because that would balloon this review to a massive size when it’s already a Longk Boi, but suffice to say: she was whitewashed, her anxiety was mishandled, and fucking HELL I miss Simon Baz, why are we erasing Jessica’s friendship with Simon for some screentime-sucking white boy. (Racism and islamophobia, the answer is racism and islamophobia)

Cyborg, Flash, and Vixen all aren’t really characters in this movie as much as they are there to fill out the cast, but suffice to say, they were handled badly. Flash was at his most interesting when being visibly possessed by the villain because beyond that he was just entirely forgettable to the point that you will not notice he has been written out of a fight scene until Vixen goes ‘where’s Flash’. Vixen herself literally is the most sidelined of all the characters in this film, she doesn’t even get a Cool Action Moment, and has just two character traits: Sassy and Vaguely Animalistic Sometimes, not just because she’s a faunus, but her first scene we’re introduced to her sniffing a paper plane for what is literally the only ‘plot point’ she’s involved in, namely, that Flash ‘smells wrong’. And Cyborg. Man, Cyborg. They literally handed the hacking plotline to Weiss with the excuse of ‘the tech here is weird’ and instead shoved Cyborg into some weird jealousy triangle where he was so disrespected by Ren and Nora that even his goodbye to them is met with disdain. Cyborg and Vixen deserve so much better, guys.

Now, onto team RWBY and JNR. Remember how I said they were flat characters? Yeah, this bit’s gonna be a bit shorter. Ruby had probably the most ‘characterisation’ in the film, in that they literally just took volume 9’s idea of ‘Ruby has self-doubts’, slapped it on her, explored nothing, and then Clark gave her a quick Friendship Speech and she’s all smiley again. Weiss has a bit of flirting with Batman, suddenly gained hacking abilities out of nowhere, and is mainly the ‘nice but snobby’ archetype she’s been in main RWBY for ages. Actually, Weiss, Blake, Yang, and Jaune all mainly exist to serve plot points in some way. Weiss and her little storyline with Batman is just designed to reveal the villain, Jaune is there to push Jessica’s storyline of getting her powers back by Literally Curing Her Panic Attacks, and Blake and Yang? Well, they get Wonder Woman to the places she needs to visit, first Beacon, then Atlas, and then Vale again. Oh, and they have Moments. Your mileage may vary on if that’s good or not, it’s mainly superfluous to the film overall. Ren and Nora don’t actually contribute anything, beyond Ren being jealous of Cyborg and Nora, and Nora getting mad at both of them for being overly protective (I think it’s meant to be pushback against misogyny but. It’s poorly handled).

Actually, I lie. Blake does have at least one big thing of characterisation. But I’m going to put it in the next section, because it’s more of a writing problem. The final other characters in the film are Kilg%re, our villain, who is laughable, and the simulated versions of Glynda, Kali, Jacques, Ozpin/Oscar, and Pyrrha. All of whom are there just to… show that it’s a simulation, or something. They don’t do anything beyond Pyrrha being so obviously a trap for Jaune and Jessica that of course only Jaune ignoring Jessica’s common sense could have made it worse. Now, Onwards!!

#5. Oh boy lets talk about the writing

So. The Faunus racism plotline. Listen. It’s bad. We all know its bad. I’m not going into it because there are a million people smarter then me who already have done elaborate and well-thought analyses on why its bad. Can we just accept the Faunus plotline is horrendous and go from there? Okay? Okay.

So: Blake introduces the concept of faunus by describing her own race as ‘humans with ears or a tail’. As I saw someone else put it when the movie dropped, ‘people don’t describe themselves as a white person with darker skin’. Anyway, the faunus plotline. It’s not really touched on in this film beyond Jacques being racist towards Bruce and Blake being generally weird about it, and the idea that ‘the animal-themed superheroes are faunus now’, but it’s a plotline that RWBY will never escape and therefore must be mentioned as having some impact.

So lets talk about the actual racism in the movie and mention how the black woman is a Sassy Side Character, the two men of colour are shoved into a jealousy plotline over a white girl (again, reiterating: Weiss and Bruce have the hacking plotline), and the Latina girl has a white boy solve her mental illness for her after her character design was whitewashed. While I don’t think it’s intentionally racist, it is a bit of a pattern for all of RWBY’s stuff that characters of colour are either written off, villainised, or sidelined. I also want to mention: Oscar shows up in this literally just to get slammed hard into a pillar by Wonder Woman. They really can’t go five minutes without beating up this kid). This movie is not kind to the characters of colour, whether its by Actively Fucking Whitewashing Them or by just making them non-characters, and it’s just, unfortunately, exactly what was expected from a piece of RWBY media.

The mention of Oscar above reminded me: the simulation characters are… handled oddly. Ozpin is the most obviously fake, even before he starts glitching between his old self and Ozpin. But what’s strange is that out of all the simulations, Jacques of all characters has the most personality of them. Kali was always a side character, Glynda just creates exposition and sets up a fight scene, Ozpin isn’t even given a character he’s just Creepy Hologram, and Pyrrha has about one minute of ‘no wait its totally me’ before she goes The Most Evil (sidenote, they keep bringing Pyrrha back just to be evil, I hope that’s not another pattern). It’s just… strange. The way the whole villain thing in this film works is strange. Which leads me to:

Kilg%re. When I found out who the villain of this film was I went on the mother of all rants on discord. And I will post it here for posterity, just so you know exactly what the gut reaction was.

As for why this reveal sucks: well. I mean, first of all, if you introduce the concept of your surprise villain as a joke earlier in the film, which they did, then it doesn’t really make them feel all that villainous. Sure enough, it gave Kilg%re a chip on the shoulder in his villain monologue, where he was whining about being ‘the one who finally trapped the Justice League’ (bestie they’re a superhero team from comics, they get trapped once a week and twice on Sundays, you’re not special, babe, sorry). And a character desperately yelling at the screen that ‘no I’m really cool trust me’ is not… fun. It’s just sort of awkward. Sorry, Kilg%re, they treated you badly. Also, they didn’t reveal the second villain on Remnant’s side beyond saying ‘he’, even when setting this during the Vol7 Montage, so I guess that’s a mystery for the next movie, if it’s ever made (personally I’m hoping for Dr Merlot, why not).

On the flipside of villains being written badly, this film also has romance written badly. It’s just jealousy and love triangles, jealousy and love triangles. Not even interesting love triangles either, just ‘character A shows interest in character B, which makes character C get really possessive and (in all but one case) mean to B’. The As: Cyborg, Yang, Bruce. The Bs: Nora, Diana, Weiss. The Cs: Ren, Blake, Diana (again). It’s not cute, and it’s especially not cute when it’s repeated three times in the same film. It’s just boring.

Finally: and this is the thing that truly, genuinely, made me want to write this whole thing because of how rage inducing it is, is this monologue given to us by Blake:

"They sound lucky. They've never had to worry they were gonna die just from going to school. To train like your life, or worse, your friends' lives depend on it. To have to live with the fact that there's a real chance you're gonna lose them. They had a childhood."

Lets count it down, people!!

Superman: literally an allegory for illegal immigrants, refugee orphans (an alien who was adopted and raised in America after his home was made unsafe) and in many case Jewish people, what with all the Moses Allegory. Had to hide the fact that he was an alien all his life, starting from childhood.

Batman: watched his parents get gunned down in front of him at age 8. This is so integral an event that it is a fulcrum point not only of his character, but also of most of the main Dc Universe that Bruce’s Parents Die.

Flash: his mother was murdered in front of him by a time-travelling speedster and his father was arrested for it. Barry grew up with the stigma of having a murderer for a father who he is generally seen as visiting constantly in jail.

Cyborg: he is a disabled black man whose father fused him with alien technology to keep him alive after a near-death experience that also completely replaced 90% of his body and meant he had to give up on his dreams of being a sports star. Usually also has a dead mom around there too.

Green Lantern: a Latina woman who had a decent childhood by most accounts in the comics, but had the unfortunate luck of witnessing gangsters hiding a body while out hiking with her friends. Watched her friends get gunned down around her, spent the next four years extremely agoraphobic to the point of never leaving her apartment because of her trauma and the fear that the gangsters would finish the job. Family’s alive, but that was only the start of the ‘Jessica Has A Bad Time’ train.

Vixen: Mari’s backstory is a bit more nebulous as long as the main points of ‘was born in an African village, got the tantu totem, moved to America and became a superhero and usually also a model’ is met, but she also tends to have a dead mom or dead parents floating around too most of the time, whether that’s by poachers, warlords, or some other awful human-caused tragedy.

Wonder Woman: raised on an island that was in comics literally called 'Paradise Island' by her loving mother, trained with all her Amazon family to become a warrior, the island is explicitly protected from all of the evil of Man’s World by magic, and willingly chose to leave to go do good and protect people.

So we have one princess raised on a paradisal island ethnostate with loving, caring parents telling another princess raised on a paradisal island ethnostate with loving caring parents that ‘yeah your friends have horrific backstories, but they were lucky because they didn’t do what we did and WILLINGLY sign up for a job as a monster killer where we get four years of training and preparation and also are paid well for our actions instead of freelance vigilante work for charity, so if you think about it, us RWBY kids are the real victims/warriors here’.

Just in case anyone was wondering why I think Wonder Woman’s OOC in this film.

Oh also this monologue is an allegory for gun violence and school shootings, as confirmed by the writer in this article and I am including the quote for posterity and also so people can’t say I made it up: https://animemojo.com/other/exclusive-interview-with-justice-league-x-rwby-super-heroes-huntsmen-writer-meghan-fitzmartin-a14773#gs.w1iou8

“These kids are warriors and these RWBY kids are a really good look at what we’re putting a lot of kids through today. There’s a statistic I saw recently that said 1-in-5 kids will die in gun violence in America. That sucks. That’s the level of warrior stuff we’re putting our kids through and it’s a good example of what’s happening to this current generation. I wanted to make a point of saying, ‘What does that do to us?’ Looking into the leadership or what these characters go through, it’s interesting to see what they have to give up to give future generations a chance. I think that resonates a lot with kids today.” - Meghan Fitzmartin

Just. In case anyone else wants to be angry about this with me. Hey, RWBY, you can’t have the actual tagline of your show be ‘it’s also a gun’ and then go ‘gun violence is bad tho’ because oh man then your main characters look like real monsters for all the times they pull guns on people (such as all the unarmed civilians or people who they pulled guns on first who then pulled out their own guns in self-defence). Also, if this is one of the themes of the movie, then this is also the only time it’s touched on. The concept of ‘being a warrior’ becomes instantly watered down to mean ‘badass fighter’ and not ‘person carrying constant fear of death by rising gun violence’, so it’s also a really shallow use of an actually serious theme, which is par for the course with RWBY but is also still very annoying when it happens.

#6. Other General Notes: - the Bad, and the Ugly”

The music in this film was very weak. No hate to the composer but it’s barely noticeable and doesn’t really have anything of note. Normally I find a lot of DC stuff has decent music and RWBY in particular is praised for it. This was disappointing, audio-wise

The designs: Listen, RWY and JNR were fine, the Beacon designs are serviceable even if they aren’t my favourites overall. But anyway, lets rank the Justice League, best to worst!

#1. Vixen: even, somehow, in the world that is RWBY modelling, Vixen slays. She simply cannot look bad, ever. The focus on black and orange contrast instead of a million eye-searing colours, the sleekness of the jumpsuit, the fact that it’s not overly complicated, and that she actually has hair with curls in it? If not for the tail and the fact that it is literally just Harriet’s model, top points. You cannot keep a bad bitch down.

#2. Cyborg: Listen. It could have been worse. It could have been. So much worse.

#3. Wonder Woman: girlypop’s gonna cut someone on that chin, and her arm muscles look like braided bread. The ponytail would be passable if not for the way they modelled her hair tendrils, and the outfit… also could have been worse.

#4. Superman: The babyface and the way his hair is plastered to his head does not work, but I like how expressive his eyes are. The outfit is an atrocity to god but they all are from this point so at least his boots are cute and the whole denim jeans and denim jacket would work if they didn’t have that massive gold S on the shirt or the Fake Cape.

#5. Batman: ugly as sin. He has No Hood, Cowl, or Mask, his hair is bad, the scar on the eyebrow is the one cool thing, his outfit is awful, and when it’s folded up it looks like Weiss is swinging around an empty pizza box. Gotta say, at least the ears in the comic were kinda cute, the bat wings are just bland in comparison.

#6. Flash: Sir your zipper is in the shape of a zigzag and it’s very cringefail of you. The one redeeming feature is the visor but like, the hair? No. The scarf? No. The way they placed the colours on his outfit? Yikes. Throw the whole man out, Kilg%re did.

#7. Green Lantern: they put her in a blender with Ben 10 and hit ‘emulsify’ (this is insulting to Ben 10 which I am very sorry for, Ben 10 didn’t deserve this but then again neither did Jess). Her long curly hair is gone, her melanin is gone, her cute jumpsuit is gone, her brown eyes are GONE like I had my issues with the comic designs but at least it was a design and not just Ugly Bad Wrong.  

Final note: they really want us to believe that Batman beat up a guy and stole his tuxedo to blend in but during the entire time he was changing out of his hero costume and into a suit he somehow didn’t notice a pair of big honking WINGS on his back. Yeah right.

#7. Final Scores!!!

Plot: 2/10

Characters: -100/10

Spectacle Fights: 4/10

Themes: 1/10

Overall score, not including the points for ‘characters’: 2.5/10

Do NOT make another fucking movie with this premise. (I will write up Jessica's personal meta in the future, keep an eye out).

[yournewfriendshouse]

what are you an expert in?

arguable expert, lmao.

but when I was art school and in my art practice spent a lot of time working within the area between sentimentality, kitsch, outsider or naive art, and art that makes you feel genuine emotion. and within that area of philosophy, the question of what is art comes up a lot.

when you get second guessed about how legitimate your art is because it’s testing these kinds of boundaries of things like kitsch and emotionality and making your art too pretty you do end up being like why do you think it’s not art because it’s pretty? or made you feel a positive emotion? who told you art can only make you feel negative emotions? and

then you ask does art need to make you feel anything at all?

and you end up doing a talk where you end up saying the the paintings elephants make are art, like literally just as much art as whatever the fuck picasso was doing, and making your lecturer chortle at the sheer gall of your thesis while the rest of your classmates stare boredly and snap their gum because it’s nine in the fucking morning (and they know I’m autistic weird and would thank the kitten like the kid in that post. of course I think the elephant’s art is art).

anyway as I got too sick to go on and do honours or a phd about it, I would never actually profess to be an expert on this topic anywhere except a rant on tumblr I wrote in the middle of a very bad pain episode, but it is a thing I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about and researching

…even if my memory issues mean I’ve forgotten most of it

[ellynneversweet]

U wrote on Dracula in yr Honours thesis? 👀 What was yr thesis (as in idea/position/argument)? How did Dracula play into it? I always love to hear what people research, as long as ur willing to share! 💙

I did! It was a while ago now, so I’m a little hazy on the arguments I made, but the topic was religious morality in fantasy (‘fantasy’ in this case referring to a broad category of fiction in which magical and miraculous stuff happens, rather than strictly Tolkien-y swords and scorcery). The basic argument, as I recall, was that truly miraculous events (leaned on David Hume’s philosophy for this bit) as distinct from ‘things science can explain’ (see: ‘sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic,’ soft-sci-fi) implied a conscious force behind them, which in turn may* imply an objective moral code, and usually has (‘god is, within religions, the origin of moral judgement’> ‘god performs miracles’> ‘miracles in a character’s favour prove the moral righteousness of their actions’). In the case of Dracula specifically, I think I made a case that the eventual defeat of Dracula the character though the power of crucifixes and typewriters inferred the objective moral righteousness of middle class British Victorian tech heads, among other things.

*One of the counterpoints to this was the treatment of religion in American Gods, which, uh…posits that gods (although literally real in the world of the book) arise from human belief, and it therefore followed that anything ostensibly endorsed by the gods in question was actually just a reflection of the subjective cultural mores of the people that created them with extra steps.

I was one of those unhappy fantasy-reading kids raised in a very religious environment who did the ‘I think my family’s religion is bullshit actually’> ‘nebulous new age religion’> ‘worried agnostic’> ‘slightly stroppy atheist’ thing over my late teens and uni years, which probably explains a lot.

[cicaklah]

the year in fic writing (& other pursuits) 2021

another year of committing to the best hobby unknown to men, writing romance stories on the internet! this was the 12th year since I decided to try and well, try at writing. Here's to another year of trying really hard.

In total this year I wrote 19 stories (this includes my yuletide, which hasn't been revealed yet). In total I published 138,614 words, which just...boggles my mind. This is literally more than double what I wrote in 2020, and when you consider I wrote a hell of a lot in 2020, this absolutely blows my mind. I had a proper job this year! I had a really horrible job that kicked me very hard! I'll never get over it.

In total the fics I published this year received a shade over 20,000 hits, which since officially half of those were just in hitman, and there's only 13 people in hitman fandom, and I published 10 stores, that means every one of you read each story 79 times, which is impressive and I am deeply honoured.

bad maths aside, writing in these fandoms has been the saving grace in a year that was pretty fucking awful, where if I had been logical I would have sacrificed fic so as to have more bandwidth to survive my shitty job, or finally finish my phd, but this year has proven that shitty jobs deserve to be left with prejudice, and like Lilith, I will always choose romance over thesis. Fandom was the good thing in my life this year, and I love you all so much, thank you for being the best.

Anyway I would detail everything I wrote but honestly, I have covid and am tired so I'm going to do a better meme in a minute instead. But thanks again, happy new year, lets do it again next one.

[thebloodofangrybabes]

What (some of) the amis wrote their thesis on

Bahorel: “Lice, lawyers and other things on L that I don’t like” (Law. Literally just a list of things beginning with the letter L that he dislikes. He failed.)

Grantaire: “Blue is the gayest colour – a study of Michelangelo’s homosexual colour choices” (Art)

Cosette: “Chicks before dicks – feminism and friendship in contemporary chick lit” (Literature)

Combeferre: “Leeches, anti-vaxxers and the myths of modern healthcare” (Medicine)

Eponine: “Grow some balls – a study in how many men I can kick in the balls without getting reported because men are scared they will be seen as weak if they do” (Gender studies)

Courfeyrac: “The Goblet of Bi-re – discovering the hidden sexuality of Cedric Diggory” (Literature)

Musichetta: “Whistled Wisdom – the physics behind the whistled languages of the world” (She’s doing a joint honours in music and physics, because it’s basically the same)

bonus Feuilly: “This is not so hard - an extensive study in how my friends complain way too much about their theses”

[jandjsalmon]

Okay so I love when we get Jandy the Professor lectures. I want to brew a pot of tea, put on a chunky-knit sweater and just, you know learn. Thank you for sharing! Also everyone should always watch the Clive Owen King Arthur, becuase Clive Owen and Ioan Gruffudd with swords! I concur! (Also the boy at the time, who I watched the movie with spent the entire second half of the movie concerned about Kiera Knightley being cold. Fun fact)

That is freaking hilarious. She was pretty naked throughout - despite the weather in Britain not being conducive to that kind of apparel. As for Professor Jandy. Don’t even get me started on the things I actually focused on in Uni. I wrote my Honours Thesis on the banality of the abdication of Edward the VIII so I have A LOT to say about the modern royal family based on truth and not People Magazine. I have literally spent hours talking about the various pedigrees during the War of the Roses - who did what/when and why Shakespearewas playing the propaganda game when it came to Richard II. I have repeatedly talked the ears off poor undeserving people regarding witches in Early Modern England and what that meant for feminism with a segue into ergot poisoning in 1690s Salem. Oooh or we could talk mad Bertha locked in the upper floors of Thornfield Hall and what was the underlying message of Jane Eyre. Wouldn’t want all those 19th Century British novel courses to be for naught. There are so many things we could talk about, curled up with tea and chunky sweaters. Lol.

[perfectchekov]

tagged by the lovely @lostdreamsanddeadroses

5 things you will find in my bag/backpack

school planner

anæmia medication (which i always fail to take)

pencil case

notebook and/or sketchbook

old receipts

5 things you will find in my bedroom

a lot of vinyl records

some cassette tapes

a shit ton of books

a pile of clothes on The Chair

band posters

5 things i’ve always wanted to do in life

write a book

have a pet

learn real magic (shhh it exists)

discover a historic ruin/artefact

be better than my parents’ friends’ children

5 things to on my to-do list

get an internship

apply to write my senior honours thesis (if they won’t let me i’ll fight them)

apply to take the gre exam

figure out what i am going to do after graduation

pay bills

5 things people may not know about me

i’m a published academic - museicbox and i wrote an essay on the history/evolution + significance of the vampire myth in europe

i wrote my college application essay (for the common application) on starfleet academy from star trek

i pick up languages very easily - as long as i am immersed in it for at least 5 hours a day, i can be competently comprehensive in less than 6 months

i’m a huge mongol empire/history nerd. especially mongol warfare. i literally will not shut up about the mongols and i stan chinggis khan so hard even though he’s terrible (also sorqaqtani beki is the most badass)

i want a motorbike but i don’t even know how to ride a regular bike so and i don’t want to kill innocent people, so that dream’s never comin’ true

tagging: @jimmriarty, @kyvber, @nbdraco, @txmhanks, @officialpavelchekov, @avoyagetoarcturus, and @digital-dryad but please don’t feel obligated to do this if you don’t want to or if you’ve done this before!!

[artofcompost]

Last day of my poetry workshop today. We ended on a sweet sad silly happy blue note, or several of them, everyone is feeling lots, and it’s all good. Delicate uncertain care. I’m honoured to be in the presence of so much true feeling. The texture of such a moment can’t always be got across – though, poets, we try – in words. Thank goodness there are for these occasions unwords!

Strained transition but man I’m blasted. Sometime when it’s over I’ll write why. Right now I want to share a few of their asemic compositions.

The exercise: Compose a page of asemic writing. The post I wrote round it here.

This first one is peacock. And bravery and has such boldness in its made mark. I love it for that and learn from it. Some of its sworls – that big blue swoop with the edge of a robin’s egg, e.g. – are not just proto-charactery but the prelim of true things.

Then there’s that centred square of no-sense going on as if it were all the order in the world – ain’t no thing, just move on. Five by five, or almost, like a Tang dynasty poem. But yet not. This poem is but yet not.

This one to me marks an opening for its author. Every crook and curve is of note, as if it belonged to a musical score. And her work after, it got smaller, sharper, every syllable counted (literally – she grooved to syllabics) and enjambments suddenly heartbreakingly present. 

Every student in this striking group had a breakthrough poem. I do think this was hers. Look how even as it proceeds it opens and bravens. 

This one touches the spirit of Oulipo, or something ‘Pataphysical, geometry of a universe soon to be invented. And of all the ones that came in, it took the most care with the page as a material object, which like a universe has more than one side, is all turnings.

My conversation with the poet of this one went something like

—Why does this work so well??! (me)

—I don’t know! (her)

—I don’t either but it does!

—I know!

It’s barely more than scriggles. But that it gave me a word, scriggles, totally for free, means lots. It’s second-order creative; it creates creativity; it’s generative. Those earth and vegetal tones are life-in-potential. (Even what colourblind I thinks to be purple, the chlorophyll of the low-light set.) Just as asemic writing itself is meaning-in-potential.

A student in my other class, damn but I love her ambition, and so see myself in it, wants to elicit from Marvell’s “A Dialogue Between the Soul and the Body” the whole mind-body problem, link back to the Buddha on that and connect forward to modern materialist theories positing mind as an emergent property of material systems. Had to say, that’s an MA thesis, not a ten-page critical research paper. But emergence is where it’s at, complexity, new reals irreducible. (Why the eff am I advisor to a journal called Occam’s Razor?) And I trust her to find a scope to make it work.

I do love this teaching thing. However good I am at it, it is better to me. I hope the overseers will let me keep doing my work as intuition says to. How do you say, though, to an EOO lawyer, I try to, because I want to, teach from prajna?

Some asemic writing by my students. Last day of my poetry workshop today. We ended on a sweet sad silly happy blue note, or several of them, everyone is feeling lots, and it's all good.

[megan-rambles]

November 7

I’m tired, I feel so crap about that exam this morning, even though I probably did did ok and really nervous about tmw. Its so hard forcing myself to study and focus when I just want to curl up and feel depressed about that exam and about my future. I know finishing uni is meant to be a celebration but I feel so terrified about not being a student anymore. I feel awful about not applying for masters even though I never planned to do masters next year. I never even planned on getting this far. I know that its ok to have a crappy exam considering how hard it was to get motivated to study, considering how much I’m falling apart from what ive been through this year. I remember how much of my uni work I did at the hospital and I get that sinking feeling. Yes ive made it but its like this...idk delayed depression. And usually when I have a crappy exam, or even if I have an that pretty went the same way as that one (guessing lots of questions) like once its over its over and everything is ok. I think that its like this weird tension between its my last two assessments and they are worth 4.5% of my overall honours mark so I dont give a shit and being like its my LAST ASSESSMENTS MAKE IT COUNTTT. I can’t do anything about the exam now. I think its because I knew I was underprepared so I’m just pissed at myself at that, even though I;m so tired that I would probably have detrimented myself studying harder. Like...there weren’t enough hours in the day to prepare properly. And yes I still went to work, but for like..an average of 10 hours a week except for a couple of weeks ago but I was basically in debt then and had to work. I don’t regret doing the RA shift last Tuesday nor do I regret going to ballet once a week every week this term. I actually had a uni-life balance because I needed to otherwise I would have burnt out even more. 

I have to put this all in perspective. I got into honours. I’ve already proven myself wrong about not being smart??? I still have imposter syndrome but like..this was my goal???  I wrote a thesis that I am proud of. I made amazing friends this year. I survived a really, really fucking hard time. In the grand scheme of things I may have lost like...2 marks this morning. I really can’t know until I get the results for the entire year. I have two jobs in my field. I’m literally never fucking satisfied. 

At least the content for this unit is interesting. 3 short answer questions, and short answer questions tend to be ok because I feel like if I can smash out something I tend to feel ok after an exam. I just hope I feel better tomorrow. 

[justanotherwastedyouth]

Reading peoples M.A. theses makes me have a whole range of emotion. From “how did this get accepted” to “I could never do this jesus” to “I’m going to find the person who wrote this and physically fight them.”  I’m reading one right now that was recommended to me by my supervisor for my wee baby honours thesis and the author states he wants to show how ‘the campers’ (unemployed workers, he never...ever...ever...uses unemployed workers even though that is explicitly what they called themselves) were active actors who sought to assert their autonomy in the camps despite pressure from three competing groups (private charities, communists, government) then literally two pages later states “This thesis argues that the unemployed in the camps exhibited the behaviour that those who held power over them desired to see.” Ah so unemployed workers were like pets, solid, nice. A+, love it, killing it dude. Maybe I’m not well versed in whatever theoretical framework he is using, but I don’t see “doing whatever is expected of you to get scraps” as asserting autonomy.