#she also has a habit of talking but it's just like a stream of consciousness as opposed to actual words | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

skaruresonic · 6 months ago

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To be fair, Bradbury employed at least one nonsensical simile on purpose in order to illustrate Montag's mindless state at the beginning of the novel, compared to his concerted efforts to think for himself towards the end. The monologue where Montag compares Clarisse's face to a clock dial represents a meandering stream of consciousness, thought without direction. We see the first hint of an original thought spark in Montag's brain when he does a double-take at himself:

She had a very thin face like the dial of a small clock seen faintly in a dark room in the middle of the night when you waken to see the time and see the clock telling you the hour and the minute and the second, with a white silence and a glowing, all certainty and knowing what it had to tell of the night passing swiftly on toward further darknesses, but moving also toward a new sun.

"What?" asked Montag of that other self, the subconscious idiot that ran babbling at all times, quite independent of will, habit, and conscience.

Montag's "babbling" subconscious mimics the breathless cadence of his chatty environment: his mind rambles in echo of his home's parlor walls that never shut off, as well as the digital ads that chatter on the train. His life is filled with meaningless white noise to the point where it's seeped into his subconscious thoughts, not allowing room for original thought to take hold. The manufactured oversaturation of meaninglessness placates him, makes him a "good" member of this society. But, as is reflected in his cadence, he doesn't know when he's made his point, or even that he has made a point. His "What?" reflects the first spark of disgust that will eventually galvanize him into escape. He compares Clarisse to a clock, some silent marker of the passage of time, because this is the first time he's really stopped to smell the roses. Naturally, his thoughts are going to come out without jumbled. Later on, he will ask his wife "Do the people in the parlor walls love you?" which is a fucking terrifying parallel to social media and parasocial relationships.

---

And the monologue Beatty gives about their dream debate goes on for MULTIPLE PAGES of unbroken run on dialog without any paragraph breaks, it is a solid three or so pages of WALLS of text where he's just recounting a back and forth they had in a dream and it drives me fucking insane. That too is deliberate. Captain Beatty talks Montag in circles as a suppression tactic. Although not "well-written" in the sense of being concise, it's... not supposed to be. The monologue is written Like That to give the reader the same sense of information overload that Montag suffers upon hearing it, especially in his vulnerable state as someone who has just begun to think for himself. You could even say it's a form of filibustering.

It's implied Beatty knows more about literature than he should despite being the chief of the fire department. He says both nothing and everything in order to exercise authority and control over Montag. Literature is silly; can't you see it's a bunch of nonsense that hurts your brain? Better fork over those books, boyo.

It's actually lowkey hilarious, if not depressing, that Ray Bradbury wrote one of the most on-point predictions of an authoritarian, anti-intellectual future, yet summarized his work as being about the dangers of television.

Yes, the "parlor walls" do reflect TV to some degree. But it's a culture that pushes aesthetics over truth which is the problem, not necessarily the medium itself; that's why Fabian tells Montag that people need quality information and time to process it. In his previous life, Montag had neither quality information because he was constantly being bombarded by nonsense to the point where it molded his thought patterns, nor time to process it, as is illustrated in Beatty's filibustering.

Of all the dystopian novels, Fahrenheit 451 is probably the one that gut-punched me the hardest due to how frighteningly plausible it is. Fabian tells Montag that people need quality information and time to process that information; modern life provides neither. In fact, as Montag begins reading the Bible, he starts to realize how much noise his life is filled with as ads bombard him from every direction. People are pacified by distraction as war wages.

Fahrenheit 451 is a story with a lot of very captivating ideas that have aged terrifyingly well into relevance in our modern day, which is only undermined by the fact it is an atrociously written book.

The scene where the wife and her friends are talking about the election happening and one of them mentions that one of the candidates is old and bald and thus nobody is going to want to vote for him is one that plays in the back of my mind every election season, for example.

We're also getting pretty close to the idea of fugitives being run down by robot kill dogs and their execution being publicly televised to the masses, with real time artificial intelligence to obscure or alter the faces of an innocent person being executed if the law enforcement decides they need to claim they've caught the criminal but can't actually find their man. It's a scenario that's getting frighteningly plausible.

The fact the city just gets casually nuked at the end while none of its inhabitants were even aware they were a target is also something that feels depressingly likely, if things were to get bad enough.

Its message about censorship is relevant but holy fuck is it a painful read in my opinion. I'm not a fan of the overuse of metaphorical imagery like referring to the stomach pump as a snake. And the monologue Beatty gives about their dream debate goes on for MULTIPLE PAGES of unbroken run on dialog without any paragraph breaks, it is a solid three or so pages of WALLS of text where he's just recounting a back and forth they had in a dream and it drives me fucking insane.

The fact his awakening happens because of an encounter with a manic pixie dream girl who gets fridged off screen is also something that is a bit unfortunate given modern media analysis conventions lol.

But yeah overall the society portrayed in Fahrenheit 451 actually seems a lot more plausible to me compared to, say for example, 1984. Which makes it a lot scarier to me.

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sundayswiththeilluminati · 2 years ago

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Hey let’s talk about some of the dungeon lore w/r/t Rasputin and other AIs. Cut for spoilers for the new Spire of the Watchers dungeon.

So turns out back during the Golden Age Ishtar Collective and CB Corp did a brief collaboration on creating an “Augurmind,” Soteria, an AI equipped with Vex time-manipulation tech that allowed it to do very accurate observations/simulations over stretches of space that it otherwise takes light (and hence causality) millions of years to traverse. Soteria needed these abilities to plan intergalactic colony ventures that would take tens of thousands of years - but when she tried to crunch the numbers on habitable worlds in nearby galaxies, she detected destructive “anomalies" (the Pyramid Fleet). Soteria summarized what she saw in a burst message to Rasputin, which is probably how he caught the Fleet inbound to our system as well.

All of which is cool but not what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about is like five lines of text:

[Soteria]: R. Access provided data points and analysis. Confirm potential EGYPTIAN [attached].

[Rasputin]: I concur, S. Anomalous masses demonstrate independent movement. Consider timeline escalation under TWILIGHT to preserve [H]. Warwatch to monitor Sol border/anomalous intersection based on received data.

This is Rasputin talking. Rasputin, whose every other message is either a) dense highly-formatted military-style flash traffic orders; b) cryptic-mystic stream of consciousness; or c) sad, just...sad. This is Rasputin tossing off an email like he’s scheduling a meeting about the tarp budget. It is impossibly normal, and that tells us some significant information.

For one thing, it turns out Red can hold a regular conversation, just not with a human. For another, we've seen other AIs reference him or orders from him, but this is the first direct conversation we have, and amazingly it bears out the old "first among equals" description. Soteria has no qualms about forwarding him what might be a false alarm, and Rasputin renders an opinion with equal casual civility. Despite the seriousness of the situation he doesn’t issue orders but rather makes a few suggestions and leaves the rest to Soteria’s judgement. His attitude is that of an expert consulted by a colleague on a specialist matter, and while many AI probably treated his “suggestions” with the force of orders, he doesn’t seem to intend them as such. He really did have familiar and friendly relationships with other AI pre-Collapse. It explains why e.g. Firewall, monitoring the lunar anomaly, responded to evidence of dangerous activity by trying to contact Rasputin. It explains why the dying Exodus Red says they’d like to talk to Rasputin except he just seems so busy right now (fighting an interplanetary war). He was the authority of last resort. Rasputin would listen to your problem, and then he would tell you what to do. Rasputin would always know What To Do. Right up until he didn’t, and it all came crashing down.

I’m a Magic player, so the closest analogy I’ve got to Rasputin’s status among the other AI is that of a pro player hanging out at his local store with the casual crowd. He’s friendly, trades fairly, happy to look at your deck tech, but always that little bit set apart. When he comes in others treat it as an event even if he doesn’t. He’ll play with anyone, even lose a couple rounds, but no one is ever in doubt about whose house this is. If there’s a hard judge call to make, he’s there; if there’s unsportsmanlike behavior on display, he’s there too, and a brief conversation is enough to set that straight. He takes responsibility. And everyone’s happy to let him. You’re glad, even proud, that he hangs out at your store, even if it’s scary as hell when he comes to look over your shoulder in person. You might even think of him as a friend. And he thinks of you as a friend, too. He likes hanging out with you. He likes hanging out with everyone.

But he also knows he’s always, always, going to be that little bit apart.

#Destiny 2 #Season of the Seraph #Spire of the Watchers #the Warmind Rasputin #dungeon spoilers #IDK my BFF AI-COM/RSPN #ra ra Rasputin Mars' greatest war machine #lore talk #this is the wager of existence

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saurosapient · 3 years ago

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Dropping info about my AT OCs here (this will update sometimes)

All come from an AU where the Gravital invasion is stopped beforehand by the Asteromorphs. The New Machines and Terrestrials both still exist exist under the watchful eye of the Asteromorphs, but New Machines can leave to other stars with a permit.

DENYS

> Saurosapient male, in human years he’d be about 25. Probably trans. If so, he goes stealth. Spiny variant.

> A minor scientist who researches evolutionary history and ocean life. He grew up in the Saurian city with the highest concentration of Star People ruins, and has dedicated his life to his research.

> Light-hearted and humorous, but bad at actual conversation. He has echolalia and tends to repeat phrases over and over. Can space lizards be autistic? Fuck it. I’m autistic, so my damn lizard can be as well. I make the rules.

> Infodumps about his findings to anyone who’s mildly interested.

> Poor eyesight and a lack of natural depth perception; needs glasses. Nearly blind in one eye, but not to the same extent as Pierce.

> Overly dramatic and flashy. Imagine those “oh? you kick miette across the ROOM?” cats, but as a fully sapient reptile. That’s Denys.

> Closest to his online friends and his mom. Legitimately considering putting his consciousness and DNA into an automated machine to send to one of his friends’ planets.

> God. He’s gay.

PIERCE

> Killer Folk male, in human years he’d be about 30. Definitely trans and not stealth at all. Common variant.

> He used to spar with other Killer Folk for fame and fortune, known as “the Crimson Beast” due to the fact his hair was always dyed completely red at the time. One day, however, a rival accidentally scratched his eye out due to the mandated claw caps for legal sparring getting loose and falling off mid-match.

> Since losing his eye, he’s had some balance issues and a lack of depth perception due to his other eye being completely gone and scarred over. He’s doing just fine though, and has learned to rely more on scent.

> Has grown out of his “Crimson Beast” persona, taking a more mellow approach to life. He only keeps the tips of his hair red now, and he makes his own hair dye which is acclaimed across the stars. He shares recipes online for a small fee so they can also be made on other planets.

> Longtime internet/radio friends with Caecil.

> Incredibly heavy smoker. He spent a good chunk of his Crimson Beast money on tobacco-resistang prosthetic lungs. This seems to stem from unknown childhood trauma, as Caecil says that the first time they saw Pierce talk about smoking was when they were both at the age of human elementary schoolers.

> His three eye scars are from the incident during sparring, and his other facial scar comes from a childhood incident. The scars on his chest are from top surgery.

> Doesn’t associate with any members of his family. Closest to his old sparring rivals, Caecil, and his little sister. He is very, very protective of his loved ones.

> Bi, uninterested in relationships at the moment.

CAECIL

> Nonbinary Snake Person, any pronouns. Mostly uses he/him and they/them. Would be 27 in human years. Deep underground variant, resulting in ghostly pale skin.

> He was born with multiple mutations. For starters, their body is completely incapable of making any body hair. The most striking aspect of him is the fact he has two extra ears, but these are completely cosmetic skin flaps that don’t have any ear canals. His hearing is not impacted, but the extra space taken up has weakened his jaw considerably. He cannot eat harder foods.

> As a child, they had a strapped harness under his jaw to support it. Even though they were bullied sometimes for it, he grew to like it, eventually creating his own that forms a beak.

> Even more agoraphobic than the average Snake Person. He only ever leaves his house to get groceries, buying in excessive bulk so he doesn’t have to go to the store again for at least a month. He orders his medicine and video games online.

> Chronically ill, this played a huge part in spiking his agoraphobia growing up. His family, friends, and especially Pierce support him however. Due to this, he’s constantly very fatigued.

> They make their money by streaming video games, often with Pierce as a guest. Also does light drugs as a hobby.

> Closest to his mom, stepdad, brother, and Pierce. He talks to his biological father from time to time but not super often. His biological father also has four ears.

> Asexual but romantically likes men, considers themselves toric. Has had a crush on Pierce since childhood. He will never say anything since they think Pierce is far too cool for them.

LIPARIS

> Cis lesbian Sail Person, she/her. Would be 19 in human years. Winter variant.

> Has a New Machine girlfriend who she loves very much! She lives with her by the beach.

> Raised by her mother growing up. Her dad was always out hunting, and when he came back home, he’d always be blackout drunk to the point Liparis would lock herself up in her room and not come back until her dad left to hunt again. Her dad was even more violent than the average Sail Person, and her mom eventually left him when she was in her teens and raised her alone.

> Watched Pierce on TV back when he was still fighting. Growing up without much of a dad, she looked up to him as a male role model, despite never meeting him.

> Has a bad habit of oversharing, sometimes to the point of driving people away. She can only be friends with people who understand her lack of a filter, and she especially gets along well with other motormouths.

> Still thinking out her story honestly X_X

#.txt #my ocs

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wavesoutbeingtossed · 1 year ago

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Oh my gosh, now that you’re putting me on the spot and asking me to actually organize my thoughts instead of the stream of consciousness that are my tag novels, I don’t know if I can actually make it coherent 😂

Warning: Long Post Ahead with a lot of extraneous detail about my own fandom history because I talk too much about things

(Also I’m going to divide my answer into sections because it’s way too long and old habits die hard lol.)

Her-as-Narrator

Firstly talking about separating her-Taylor from her-narrator I think at a certain point becomes necessary, or at least it is to me. I’ve mentioned it before, but I wasn’t an online fan until, like, this past March when tour started. I enjoyed Taylor’s music and owned a couple of her albums in the Debut-1989 period, fell in love with “Lover” which made me realize I was a bonafide fan and then absolutely became In It For Life with Folklore. Like… I could write essays about Folkore and what it means to me. It like opened up a whole new world to me, the same way it did the first time I heard albums from my other favourite bands (like The Lumineers etc.).

Which is to say, until recently, I enjoyed Taylor’s music on its own without any significant knowledge of the lore that went into them. (I didn’t even know she was dating anyone until the speculation about a possible engagement being hinted at in “Paper Rings” when the album came out if that tells you anything.) I knew of her relationships with JG, JM, Harry, etc. Because I spent years following Hollywood gossip, so I knew of the general history/ick as in “gross why is a 19 year old dating a 32 year skeeve” kind of way, but I didn’t know of the History™️. Or that all of her music was so deeply autobiographical and intertwined. (I mean, I knew, yes, she was inspired by her life, but figured she took creative liberties which I still believe may be true just because I know many musicians in my own life but that’s a whole other discussion.)

It’s been fascinating taking a deep dive into all the History™️ and I do agree with many of the discussions here that understanding that colours in the lines between the songs, and how her discography refers to and builds upon itself to create this giant contiguous story. But along with that, also blurs lines between Taylor the Author and Taylor the Person. They are one and the same, obviously, but at least to me, it makes it easier to view the discussion about Narrator/Subject vs specific people, only because as Taylor has said herself, these songs take on a life of their own once they’re out there, and even for her they change meaning and context throughout her life. (All Too Well being an example of an extremely difficult song for her to sing a decade ago being a fan favourite she relishes in now.)

It reminds me of when I was in high school and in English class one year, we had a module where our teacher assigned us songs to analyze as poetry, and I happened to pick “Both Sides Now” by Joni Mitchell one day from the pile, and it just absolutely blew my mind and I couldn’t believe no one else was as riveted by this piece as I was. (Actually going back further, I remember in sixth grade, we had a student teacher for a semester and we did something similar with Alanis Morissette’s “Hand in My Pocket” which also absolutely blew my mind, so apparently I’ve been thinking too hard about lyrics most of my life.) But the key thing is that I wasn’t thinking of it as, what or who specifically is this singer singing about, it was, what does the song mean, what are the links between these other themes, how would you interpret this. So I think that as much as I’m fascinated by Taylor’s work and her life, part of me still has that instinct to approach the music as narrator/subject, though I admit that that is harder to do precisely because Taylor is so open and vulnerable and for better or for worse, so much of her life is public knowledge.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m right up there with everyone in screaming about how JM is a predator and JG was (probably) a pretentious douchebag and being sad for her after her breakup with Joe etc. And I absolutely am right there with everyone else when listening to a song and going, “omg THE TEA!!!” But, the thing is that her music deals with such universal themes (unfortunately in the case of the predatory things…) that I think that it’s easy to give yourself “permission” to see them as almost anonymous characters vs. A factual retelling, if that makes sense. So while we absolutely know who she’s singing about in WCS for instance, it’s also easy to see it as the cautionary tale of a young woman agonizing over the predatory actions of an older man, because it’s a tale as old as time. Just like how I knew nothing about Joni Mitchell besides the fact that she was from the same area as my parents that day in English class, but I knew I loved this song the second I read the lyrics.

The Girl in the Dress

When it comes to the line about the dress in Dear John for instance, I almost feel like I have no choice but to take that step back and think of her as Narrator, because that’s where that line between Taylor’s personal experiences and a story in a song become jagged edges. Because it’s kind of uncomfortable to speculate about what really happened between her and JM (though I know we all have our own ideas and theorize anyway because we’re human and I’m as guilty of that as anyone), but as a piece of art, it’s an image that speaks volumes. I don’t want to attribute feelings of shame, pain, implied abuse (or other) to a real person who hasn’t explicitly voiced that truth herself about a situation, but the girl in the dress in the song is so rich in storytelling that 30 years from now when another high school English class is analyzing songs from a pile, they’re going to have a field day with it without trying to pinpoint which boyfriend of Taylor Swift’s did what when.

And the reason why that line always hits me is that it says so much, especially coming right off of, “Don’t you think I was too young to be messed with?” The dress is obviously shorthand for her youth, that the very thing that (probably) attracted the man to her — her naïveté, her inexperience in the adult world, her sunny demeanour, her girlishness — are the very reasons she shouldn’t have been “messed” with. (Hahahahahaha don’t think about the contrast of seeing the guy in his suit and his necktie in “I Can See You” and doing the Very Adult Things with him there vs. Her withdrawing into the “girl in the dress” in Dear John.) It’s clear she does not see them as equals, and even in her youth, she feels that a serious boundary was crossed. (Which dovetails so painfully into the discussion on here when Speak Now TV came out last week about how the album is about her being hurtled into adulthood before she was really ready and desperately craving the safety of her girlhood in the wake of some very painful situations.)

But it’s also darker, because the image I’ve always had as I heard that line was of a girl leaving a situation that has scarred her. It’s probably easy to dismiss it as, “the girl is crying on the way home from a breaking up with the man” or something relatively benign, but that’s too simplistic when you look at what’s between the lines in the song as a whole, and especially in that chorus. And again, coming off the heels of “too young to be messed with.” It implies a girl experiencing some sort of trauma, grief, pain, shame, you name it, in the wake of an experience she deeply regrets — and experiencing the fallout completely alone. If this song were a movie, it’d be the scene where she’d jump into the back of a cab on a rainy night and heave-cry into her lap.

The whole song is about how everyone around her warned her it was wrong, but her naïveté (and burgeoning sexuality) coloured her rational brain and the love-bombing (giving love before later taking it away) effectively isolated her from her circle. She kept up appearances around her loved ones (kept being the girl in the dress they all knew and love) to hide what was really going on, even though they knew she wasn’t herself. But this was part of the chess game, giving her all to a man who could discard her as easily as he’d paint her sky blue.

(The “messed with” is a whole thing in its own right. Because obviously it ties into the chess game, tests, etc., as in, playing mind games with her to keep her guessing. But it also has… other connotations which are much darker and insidious.)

The chorus in particular is a lament for the person she used to be: I was too young, you knew I was too young, you knew better when I didn’t, but you still did this to me, and I am grieving for the person I used to be before I knew you. I cried the whole way home because I can never really go home again.

And when it finishes with, “You should’ve known/ Don’t you think I was too young? You should’ve known,” that basically is the prologue to “Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve.” (Give me back my girlhood, it was mine first.)

The song isn’t about losing a man. It’s about losing herself.

(Sidebar: I think a lot of the darker themes get missed because musically, despite the electric guitars, it’s kind of a slow, classic country waltz and the cheeky “Dear John” double entendre of the title making reference to WWII pop culture as well as the explicit reference to the man in question. It’s easy to overlook the grooming of teenagers when you’re swaying to 1-2-3-4-5-6.)

(Sidebar 2: There’s probably a whole other essay to be written about the “dress” in her discography, but the one that jumps out to me is in Holy Ground when she says she’s, “spinning like a girl in a brand new dress.” Again, the dress represents her carefreeness, the blank slate, the excitement of the world before her. Contrast the dress

Pain/Pleasure

OK this one is a little less coherent in my brain, but when it comes down to it, I think that the experiences described in “Speak Now” and specifically in “Dear John” paint a lot of Taylor/the narrator’s views of relationships going forward. Jumping into Real Taylor for a minute, we seem to know that the relationships she had before JM were basically puppy love in the sense that they were mainly with her peers on the same maturity level and life experiences. So when she says she was “too young,” it doesn’t mean she may or may not have had other experiences of love (or lust/intimacy/desire) before that, but they seemed to have been for all intents and purposes age-appropriate between two people at the same stage in their lives, which is evident in much of her music up to that point. This is the Debut/Fearless era, you belong with me, I don’t know how it can get better than this, first kisses and first loves. Even her angry or sad songs at the time are endearingly childish — which is not dismissing her songwriting talent at all. But they’re the experiences of someone going through the normal trials and tribulations of teenagedom and young adulthood in a safe space.

But Speak Now is where the themes get darker; being haunted by someone, feeling shame and regret (which is now particularly evident on the vault tracks), feeling unmoored at what’s happened, desperately trying to return to the safe space but realizing it doesn’t exist anymore and not knowing where to find that safety anymore.

And yet again jumping into Real Taylor for a moment, it’s clear that the JM experience completely altered her notion of what relationships and love could be. This being her first adult relationship seems to colour how she thinks (or at least writes) about love and lust and relationships going forward. As everyone has so eloquently stated in much better and more succinct ways than I can, it seems to tell her that love is “treacherous,” doomed to fail, often based on playing each other and trying to maintain the upper hand, etc. This is all over Red and even 1989 to an extent.

So many of her songs from that point forward are about the dichotomy between being infatuated with someone and waiting for the other shoe to drop. “Dear John” starts that off (you paint me a blue sky and go back and turn it to rain), but then Red really runs with it. E.g. Treacherous (I’ll do anything you say if you say it with your hands/I’d be smart to walk away, but you’re quicksand; this hope is treacherous, this daydream’s dangerous), Red the song (lol the entire thing — every line is about how the good was euphoric and the bad was devastating but she couldn’t help herself because she couldn’t help herself), We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together (the constant breaking up/coming back together), Come Back Be Here (This is falling in love in the cruelest way, This is falling for you when you are worlds away — the whole song is about falling for someone who keeps withdrawing from you), Better Man (again the whole song is about staying with someone despite knowing they treat you wrong until you finally break) etc. The thesis of Red seems to be, love will break you but the pleasure (the attention, the affection, yes the sex on the good days) is the reward for the pain (the alienation, the disappointment, the mind games, the disinterest on the bad days).

(Even The Last Time is very “I will hurt myself for you to notice me and love me like you used to” coded which is a whole other discussion in light of “You’re Losing Me”…)

The theme does continue on following albums like 1989: Style (we go crashing down but we come back every time), All You Had To Do Was Stay (people like ou always want back the love they gave away/people like me want to believe you when you say you’ve changed), Wildest Dreams (the whole song is basically wanting to sleep with someone in spite of knowing they’ll leave you), This Love (I know this is considered a love song, but it’s quite a sad song — it’s literally, this love is good/this love is bad/this love is alive back from the dead — it’s inherently broken but can’t be left alone) etc. So much of the album is about falling into patterns you know are bad for you but giving in because you’re blinded by desire.

I’m sure there are other songs that can be used as an example in later albums too, but the post-Speak Now to at least 1989 seems centred on the futility of romantic relationships but taking the crumbs anyway. When you look at the songs in bulk like this, it’s kind of sad. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with sexual relationships or casual hookups or lust or desire, but the contrast between the Debut/Fearless Taylor who dreamed of dancing and dresses and kissing in the rain and finding her Romeo and Red/1989 Taylor who believed love will take from her and all she can hope to receive is rare moments of affection and failing that, some nights of passion, is striking. Sure, part of that is just growing up and growing out of the fairytale constructs she’s grown up with, but Speak Now is definitely where that line is drawn.

Which brings us to Would’ve Could’ve Should’ve and “the god’s honest truth is that the pain was heaven,” which plays into all this. Because the sad thing is that those rare moments of affection probably sent her flying (especially if you consider Real Taylor who is an admitted people pleaser who thrives on praise). And as the lows got lower, the brief flashes of pleasure mean even more and provide instant gratification. The pain was heaven because she did want to explore her sensuality and femininity and adulthood (I mean, I Can See You is a song that exists lol), and presumably this felt like an avenue to do that, but she couldn’t have predicted the toll it would take on her. Because again, she was a young woman navigating these desires without a safety net, and he (presumably) took advantage of that to fulfill his own. The highs may have felt exhilarating, especially when the lows were crushing. Which comes back to the point of your orignal post about equating Him being an addiction, except in this case, it’s every Him.

Which leads into a whole other hypothetical essay about the role guilt and shame play in a lot of her music. I joked a few days ago that it’s the Catholic guilt vibes of it all, feeling inherently dirty for feeling lustful and giving in to those feelings. (I mean, I use “Catholic guilt” loosely here. Insert your denomination of choice as appropriate lol.) Despite some references to church/God/religion in her music, she hasn’t been especially religious/pious in her writing, but whatever the nature of those feelings, there is definitely a sense of shame both for exploring her sexuality and for not seeing whatever trauma this was coming.

About Love

So I don’t have much to say about this because I guess I said this in the Pain/Pleasure answer, but I think it’s just obvious from all this that that singular experience in Dear John caused a fundamental shift in her world view. She’s sung about heartbreak prior to that, but they usually fall into the angry girl betrayed (Picture to Burn, Forever and Always, Should’ve Said No, You’re Not Sorry, Better Than Revenge, etc.) or sad girl vibes (White Horse, Tim McGraw, You All Over Me, Teardrops on my Guitar, Last Kiss, etc.). In most of those cases, the heartbreak affects her, but she’s often either wistful about the relationship or certain that one day she will find that love again with someone else who will treat her right.

On the surface, Dear John may seem like one of her trademark angry rebukes, but like I said before, to me it feels more like a lament for her former self as she begins to grapple with how the experience marked her. It’s kind of striking looking at the track list for Red afterwards and realizing that there are few purely happy love songs like there were before. Even some of the more upbeat ones like Treacherous, Holy Ground or State of Grace are all based on the principle of, “this will never work but I want the high while it lasts.” Which is also part of growing up and adult relationships so it’s not purely a trauma response lol. 1989 is more of the same with even catchier hooks, but she leans even deeper into that in some ways, trying to own the narrative with being like, if men are going to do this, I’m going to have my fun with it. Blank Space may be satire, but all satire is rooted in truth, and the truth of it is her learning to “love ‘em and leave ‘em” for lack of a better term. (Which later shows up on other songs like “I used to switch out these Kens and skip town like an asshole outlaw…” most recently but could be applied to so many others.)

Reputation is where it starts to shift again, but it’s interesting that some of the love songs on it (e.g. Call It What You Want, Delicate) begin toying with the idea of herself being somehow unlovable, in the sense that she is Too Much and that her partner loves her in spite of herself instead of because of it. Sure, that’s owing to the theme of “reputation” on the album and about the contrast of the way the outside world sees her and the way it really is behind closed doors. The bravado of 1989 starts to crack, though it’s still very much present on Rep (e.g. Getaway Car, Ready For It), and we have a couple of songs that fall into more traditional expressions of love (Dancing with our Hands Tied, my fave New Year’s Day). Whereas the previous few albums seem to dive into the idea of the power imbalances in relationships, of the push-and-pull of something that was built to fail, rep is the first time since probably Fearless where she feels like she’s on equal footing with a partner in some respects, where something suddenly feels completely different from the others, because seemingly for the first time in her adult life, she’s able to write about something other than mind games in love (or lust). Which only continues through Lover, where by that point we’re almost full circle, back to talking about rings and church bells and forever.

This is not to say there aren’t other sides to it of course; there are still darker elements in Lover, from the worries of jealousy in the title track, to the tension of miscommunication in False God and relying on sex to fix problems when words won’t, to the fear that who she is will inherently cause her lover to leave in The Archer or even Cruel Summer, etc. But that’s a whole other thing and maybe it’s wrong but those are almost “normal” problems compared to the very problematic ones of Dear John/WCS/Speak Now etc.

If I had to sum it up, it’s that Speak Now through at least Rep is dealing with the fallout of “Dear John”: the forced push into adulthood, the processing of grief and trauma, rebuilding her sense of self and her place in relation to others. Her reaction to the mind games of “Dear John” is to continue to choose relationships that repeat those patterns of inherent instability or unavailability, knowing it won’t work but going through anyhow for whatever reason, whether it’s the thrill of the chase or the affection when it’s good or more lustful reasons, whatever — it doesn’t matter. It’s the pull between wanting to be loved but not feeling worthy of it, so she chooses situations that are doomed to fail because they have an expiration date, whether it’s age, distance, careers, personalities, whatever. She is not the exception and she will never learn her lesson. And it isn’t until Reputation where her castle crumbled overnight (again) and she was forced to step back and reconnect with herself that those themes change in her writing.

—

I have no idea if any of this made sense, and I’m too scared to proofread it because it’s so scary long, but I hope that answered your question 😂 Don’t threaten me with a good time, which in this case is deep dive analysis of works of fiction or otherwise 🙃

Starting to think too hard about “I could see you being my addiction” and now I feel unwell 😵‍💫

#me thinking too hard about taylor lyrics #speak now og #speak now tv #dear john #long post #why yes I can write essays about anything why do you ask #should I have put this under a cut?#do cuts still work on tumblr?#it’s been years since I’ve written anything long enough to warrant a cut lol #lyric analysis #writing letters addressed to the fire

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tracybirds · 4 years ago

Text

Don’t talk to me about timelines XD lockdown 3.0 was an unpleasant surprise but it did give me some fun fodder to play with. Missing from this were the stream of Valentines to Covid that spread around my section of NZ social media XD I was tempted to make Scott write some, but alas it didn’t fit. Obviously plenty has been fudged, it’s definitely not meant to be taken too seriously and more allows me to collect together some of the mixed emotions of getting a five hour countdown to lockdown D: That was not fun lol like far out, and we had to prepped for remote learning by 9am the next day. Scott is not allowed to complain further in his swanky apartment and no job XDD

In all seriousness, this is Scott’s story for FabFiveFeb2021, hosted by the ever lovely @gumnut-logic (Happy Birthday! still the right day in Aus, I didn’t miss it right :0 either way *hugs*** and I hope it was a nice day :DD)

Prompt used was “Are you kidding?” - it really resonated on Sunday evening ahaha (okay I will stop rambling in my defense it’s post midnight and I have feverishly pummelled this out in a couple of hours, it had been itching at me all day.... I missed that feeling :DDD)

----------------------

Scott was International Rescue through and through, but in the murky waters of the central business district, he thrived.

It was a closed meeting, stretching into the long shadowy hours of the evening. Legal advisors quibbled over clauses while Scott exchanged pleasantries with the company representatives, talking up his local ties to New Zealand’s City of Sails.

“My Dad taught me to sail, right out there in the harbour, you know.”

A casual remark but carefully designed to make himself seem approachable and down-to-earth, just another “one of the guys”. His associate had also sailed once, a national representative in his youth, although time and his new habit of lunch meetings had left those days long in the past.

Personal connections made more money than the lawyers in the background ever could, and Scott prided himself on the homegrown touch.

“Mine too,” said the jovial, middle aged man. “Although I reckon it wasn’t near as pretty a yacht as yours. I’ve read up on you as well, you know.”

Scott laughed, clapping the man on the shoulder.

“Len, I knew we’d get on. What do you say to dinner? This has been going on for far too long.”

“I know a great place that keeps a table reserved for me. Even on Valentine’s.”

“I’m flattered.” He nodded to Van Zyl briefly before addressing the small crowd.

“Ladies, gentlemen. You’ve done some good work, and it’s been a long one. We’ll leave it here for the night and reconfer in the morning.”

He acknowledged the tired smiles and leaned back and listened as the chatter evolved from the dry intricacies of patent law into cheery conversation of dinner plans and family time ahead.

He turned and looked out at the city, lights starting to turn on in the early evening light. The sun wouldn’t set for another half hour or so and he wanted to make the most of what they had left in the day.

So did the rest of the Auckland population it seemed. Cars were flooding into the area, people starting to stream into office buildings.

“So, Federal Street?”

“Len, what’s going on down there?” he asked, jabbing a finger down at the street below.

“Sorry?”

He and Len watched, dumbfounded as the office buildings lit up one by one, lights turning on and off again mere minutes later.

“Mr Tracy! Mr Van Zyl!”

“Charlotte, what is it? What’s happening?”

“Oh, Scott, I mean, Mr Tracy, sorry sir.”

“Charlotte. Take a breath,” commanded Scott, letting the authority of Thunderbird One bleed into his voice. “Tell us what’s happened.”

Charlotte shook her head, her hand creeping up over her mouth. She handed him her tablet.

“It’s a civil defence lockdown, effective midnight.”

A cold dread crept up Scott’s spine.

“Tonight?!”

Len pulled out a comm beside him and started dialling. The person on the other end picked up at the first ring, and dimly Scott could hear her calm, measured voice transmitted through the device.

“Can I help?” he asked, still staring at the stark words on the page.

“I… uh... help? Sir?”

“With the civil defence response, with the company, I don’t know!” He looked up, desperation in his eyes. “What can I do to help?”

Charlotte shook her head, pressing her lips together tightly.

“Mr Tracy, we have an isolation response in place, at your father’s request. Leave the board to organise the company, you need to get home and…”

“No.”

Charlotte’s voice pitched up a near octave.

“Sir, I must insist…”

“There are lockdown protocols on the island as well,” snapped Scott. “I can’t just go home, risk my family, my Grandma.”

She shook her head again.

“You can’t help here. They’ve done it before. It’s Level Three, people will be able to collect gear tomorrow if needed, we’re set up for remote offices and the last thing people need is you dilly-dallying in the top office.”

A loud shrieking alarm pierced through her final words and Scott flinched at the sound.

Len yelped next to him, dropping his comm with a curse.

“Damn emergency alerts, don’t they know the whole country has heard by now? Why do they just SHUT UP!” he bellowed at the still beeping comm. “It’s so unnecessary, the first time we went under, I thought we were about to evacuate for a volcanic eruption. Staying home, it’s hardly an emergency.”

Charlotte did little to hide her scorn, but Scott smothered a smile as he read through the full message.

“Okay, fine,” he said at last. “I can bunker down at the apartment for a few days.”

“Weeks, I’d be prepping for,” interrupted Len. “Hard to say of course, but they keep extending them.”

“You know why we do it,” said Charlotte, coolly.

He shrugged. “Doesn’t mean I have to pretend it’s a holiday like everyone else seems to do.”

“Well, there never was any rest for the wicked, they say,” quipped Scott.

Len barked a sudden laugh.

“You’re alright, Tracy. Shame about how this ended, I’d have liked a bite with you.”

“Well, there’s always next time. Maybe we’ll find time for a shared celebration after all this.”

“My treat, Tracy, my treat,” he said with a chuckle. “Take care now.”

Scott nodded a farewell and turned back to Charlotte.

“You’re going to be fine?”

“I’ll go stay with my Mum,” she said, easily. “She doesn’t like to be in her house alone, and I can’t say I blame her. Holotech’s just not the same as being there, you know?”

“I certainly do,” said Scott, thinking of his brothers, hundreds of kilometres away. “Thank you, Charlotte, I’ll be seeing you.”

“Good luck, Scott.”

***

The downtown apartment was a mere fifteen minute walk from Tracy Tower, but with Charlotte’s words echoing in the back of his mind, the thought of potentially weeks stuck in an incredibly well furnished, yet incredibly unstocked apartment plaguing him, he opted to swing past the local supermarket. Located at the heart of the city, it was never quiet at the best of times but this was unlike anything Scott had ever seen.

The tension in the packed shop was thick as the throng that filled it. Over half the customers were already wearing masks, glaring suspiciously at those who had gone without and Scott self-consciously tugged his rain jacket higher.

Essentials, he thought wildly, just eggs and milk and bread and….

There was no bread. No flour either and the confectionary aisle was already looking sparse. He grabbed a few chocolate bars and threw them in the basket.

“Excuse me,” he said, waving down a frantic and wild-eyed shop assistant. “Do you have any bread out back?”

“No way man, haven’t you heard? Lockdown hits in like three hours, people are going mental.”

“But I don’t have any food at home, I was meant to be flying back tomorrow morning.”

The shop assistant, Ariki as his name badge proclaimed him, grimaced in sympathy.

“That’s hard luck that is. You don’t live in Auckland?”

“No, I don’t. But I won’t be able to get home now either.”

He nodded, like he’d heard it before.

“You’re thinking this is like last year, aren’t you?”

“I, uh, yes.”

“Right,” said Ariki, still nodding along with him. “Right, well it’s not quite the same so don’t stress out. Look, you can still get takeaways this time, we’ll be restocked tomorrow and all the real crazies–” he nodded towards a pair who were arguing over what looked like the last can of baked beans, “–yeah, they’ll be tucked up at home, refusing to take a step outside, it’ll be sweet as.”

Scott stared at him, then looked over at the line snaking through the frozen food aisle, between the meat and dairy and coiling up in the sad looking and so-called fresh produce.

The two chocolate bars and eggs he’s managed to grab hardly seemed worth it at all.

“I can put those back if you want.”

“Yeah,” said Scott, dazedly. “Yeah, thanks that’s be great.”

Ariki smirked a little.

“We’re reopening at seven, yeah? I’ll see you then.”

“Thanks again,” called Scott as he hurried from the shop.

The rain that had been threatening its arrival all weekend was starting to appear, and Scott hurried home, ducking his head down and shoving his hands in his pockets. He knew there’d be enough food for at least his dinner tonight and Ariki was right, he could sort the rest in the morning.

A swipe of his keycard, and he shut out the world with a muffled slam of the door and a sigh.

He shucked off his rain jacket, not bothering to hang it up, and trudged into the kitchen. It wasn’t like there’d be anyone around to complain for a while and he was starving. Lunch, the little afternoon tea nibbles they’d provided, even his last coffee felt like it had been drunken in another life.

Dinner, then finally he’d call home.

He didn’t doubt they already knew what was happening, was probably wondering why he hadn’t called, but none of them had even been swept up in the chaos of lockdown preparations.

He stared blankly in front of the fridge, the cold, bluish light illuminating him in the dark room. The sun had fully set by now, and the last vestiges of twilight had given way to the true, deep night with the onset of rainfall.

His carefully defrosting steak wasn’t on the shelf, and he looked around him in confusion, wondering if he’d accidentally left the meat out on the bench. He was hungry enough that he didn’t think he’d care and his stomach was well practiced at digesting the indigestible, bug and all.

On the kitchen counter was a neat pile: a plate, used utensils and cooking equipment all stacked together, waiting to be washed.

Scott blinked.

“Oh, hey, Scott,” called Gordon’s cheerful voice from behind him.

Scott whirled around, gaping at his younger brother, suddenly in their New Zealand apartment and not where he ought to have been – namely a thousand odd kilometres north east of the kitchen they were standing in.

“Are you kidding me?”

“What?”

“You,” Scott shouted, jabbing a finger towards Gordon. “You ate my dinner!”

“Oh, crap.”

Gordon bolted a split second before Scott charged at him, yelling wildly with all his might.

“Scott, I’m sorry, it was – shit, I mean – come on, it was past nine, I thought you’d been out, and I, oh damn, I, Scott, damn it, I’m not dressed.”

“I don’t care, you ate my food, have you seen the grocery stores? It’s absolute chaos, you traitor, you can go out and get me something, put some pants on and move.”

Gordon yelped as he dove over the couch.

“Okay, I can see there’s been some errors in judgement here,” said Gordon, panting. “I’m sorry, Scott, I really am.”

Scott glared.

“Not good enough.” He paused, eyeing Gordon as he cowered behind the sofa. “What are you even doing here?”

“Uh, excuse me?”

“Here. What are you doing in Auckland?”

“Happy birthday to me too, love you bro, congrats on surviving another year.”

“You came to Auckland for your birthday?”

“Yeah.” Gordon sat up cautiously. “Couldn’t exactly see Penny, and it’s not like there’s many other places that will let us in.”

“I thought we counted as a US territory.”

“John cleared it with someone, I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Didn’t want to be stuck at home for my birthday. And look how that turned out.”

He did look extraordinarily sorry for himself.

Scott sighed, and reached out a hand.

“Go get some damn pants on,” he grumbled. “And go look for Virgil’s emergency snacks, I know he stores them everywhere.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“I mean it, don’t you dare come back unless you bring me food.”

Gordon snorted.

“Sure, wouldn’t want to provoke the wrath of a starving Scooter.”

Scott jerked his body towards Gordon, and smirked as he bolted up the stairs towards the bedrooms, before sinking down into the cushions and closing his eyes.

The comm beeped gently, a stark contrast from the blaring alert from earlier.

“Hey,” he said, opening an eye as Virgil was projected in front of him.

“Tell me you’re not–”

“Oh, I am.”

“Gordon too?”

“Yep.”

“Damn.”

“Tell me about it.”

They were both quiet for few seconds, thinking about how rapidly the world had seemed to shift around them.

“I suppose it’s only for a few days,” began Virgil, but Scott was already shaking his head.

“We gotta do the full two weeks. After that, we ought to be able to clear an exit with the harbourmaster and the coast guard, even if it’s not over, but we can’t come back earlier. The only reason we could move freely before without our helmets is because–”

“Preaching to the choir, Scott. I get it.”

“You gonna be alright without us?”

Virgil shrugged. “Rescues are down what with more people staying at home. Alan and I can handle the small change, and Kayo’s been itching for some POD practice recently. We’ll manage. Besides, you’re the one stuck with Gordon.”

“Hey!”

“Food,” growled Scott and Gordon threw a muesli bar and a tube of M&Ms at him.

“Is that mine?”

“Gordon ate my dinner and the shops were out of everything,” grumbled Scott. “Blame him.”

“It’s my birthday, I don’t deserve this.”

“Cry me a river.”

“Alright, don’t kill each other before the two weeks is up. John’s already organised a betting pool, don’t give him the satisfaction of winning again, he’ll be insufferable.”

“Oh, he’s on,” said Gordon, grinning. “Tell him I put fifty bucks on Scott tipping me out of bed or off the couch by the end of the week.”

“Got it.”

“You can’t bet against us,” said Scott, mumbling around the chocolate. “I thought you were on my side.”

“You tried to murder me over a steak.”

“The jury would have never convicted.”

“Okay, I can see you two are going to have a fun time,” said Virgil, loudly over their bickering. “See you in two weeks.”

He didn’t wait for a response. After all, two weeks was a smidge outside even his patience.

#scott tracy #thunderbirds are go #gordon tracy #virgil tracy #sometimes i fic

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liesfallaciesfabrications · 4 years ago

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Mr. Queen Analysis

My take on the rather heartbreaking and vague ending of the KDrama, Mr. Queen.

Okay, I’ve been thinking long and hard on this subject (way too much) and have come to the following consensus:

Bong-Hwan and So Yong are both versions of the same soul. What got me thinking about this was that scene in episode 5 where SoBong talks about original and past lives but then mentions parallel time-streams. To illustrate, she draws two lines running side by side and explains how a past life can be in one and the original/current being in the other. This had me stumped a bit, and I thought it a bit random that they put that in there, but then I looked up “reincarnation and parallel lives” and there’s a surprising number of articles on it - though obviously not conclusive or scientific as it involves spirituality.

Episode 5 also explains why time in the present is flowing at the same rate as the past, which we discovered when BH’s consciousness briefly reentered his body and explain why they chose to reveal that fact. Time isn’t linear here but more fluid with both versions existing simultaneously - harkening back to the two lines Mr. Queen drew to illustrate.

The reincarnation theory would explain many of the elements of the story that I found hard to accept. For example:

If So Yong’s separate soul was in there with Bong Hwan’s soul then why did he never feel her? In fact, the show repeatedly makes reference to the idea that Bong Hwan does not feel another soul and attributes characteristics of SY to the body (telling her after the kiss that the soul is in control of the body so she ought to behave and in another scene he tries to get her soul to return by addressing the lake - where he believes she is hiding). The only time he accuses her of being a separate entity inside of him is when he wants an excuse for his feelings and reactions to CJ. The “it must have been her that took control. If I knew it was CJ I would have....still enjoyed it?!? What’s wrong with me?” moments. LOL What if the reason he couldn’t feel another presence was because there wasn’t another? He merely had his consciousness wake up in the body of his past life but didn’t realize it.

It would explain the gradual integration of both personalities. For example, when CJ returns the book to Mr. Queen, she never thinks of herself as NOT being the girl from the well as she did when he first confesses his love for her at the lake. As BH spends more time in her previous body, the lines become more blurred not just in memory but also in identity because he IS her. If they were two separate souls, I don’t think she would have that same reaction nor do I see anything to indicate that So Yong “took over” in that moment or any other. Memories were accessed, personality traits were mingling, but we saw SY come out in episode 20...that personality was immediately recognizable. Fantastic acting by SHS - especially as she had me loving the one and hating the other, despite being both.

It would explain why Mr. Queen falls for CJ so hard, despite his initial protests. I never liked the idea of his feelings being manipulated, but I can get on board with the idea that he accepts his feelings for CJ because this is a man that some part of him has always loved - and falls in love with “again” through their shared experiences and journey.

It would also explain the question of why Bong Hwan. What was the connection between this man and So Yong? They are reincarnations of each other. When So Yong was feeling hopeless and needed strength, she pulled upon her stronger version of herself to help her - made possible in that moment when she desperately wanted to give up on life and he desperately wanted to live. She came to him in that pool and appeared to the queen again when she was looking for answers in the lake. This does not give the impression of a soul cruelly imprisoned in her own body against her will.

It would also explain why, when Bong Hwan briefly went back to his body, So Yong did not reappear. She wasn’t being suppressed. She purposefully had her reincarnated self come to give her strength and was not ready at that time to assume her life again. I found her choice of words at Byeong-In’s grave to to be telling. She said he always knew where to find her whenever she was hiding. It’s also why I believe BI didn’t realize Mr. Queen wasn’t SY - for the same reason CJ doesn’t at the end of the drama. These two men, both of whom deeply love her, could sense it was her, just in reverse order. CJ-SB-SY and BI-SY-SB.

It would also solve the pesky issue of why BH is an overall better person - not just at the moment of his return but before. Someone on Reddit mentioned the implausibility of CJ’s political accomplishments causing a ripple effect to change BH, and I agree. However, if we look at BH as SY’s reincarnation, then the positive attributes he now displays in the altered timeline can be accounted for because he prevented his previous incarnation from killing herself, therefore in his next lifetime his soul didn’t carry those grudges. This fits with the idea of reincarnation as a person’s life experiences and emotions/grudges/regrets/mindset at death will determine the psychological and even physical manifestation of their next life.

SY was told by evil Kim that she had no power b/c she was a woman - next life is a man.

SY had her love cruelly rejected - next life is a playboy who doesn’t seem to believe in love.

SY felt that she was living a lie - next life is a man who doesn’t care who he offends with his opinion and does what he wants when he wants - to the point of selfishness - though this changes when he prevents many of these resentments by his actions in the past.

Finally, it would explain why CJ is so “oblivious” at end of the show. He promised when he returned the book to SB that he would never fail to recognize her, and he doesn’t. While her personality has changed, it’s intrinsically also the same person, though this is the area I felt the writers dropped the ball in execution, but I get that they were pressed for time. The implications of this aspect also seem to be what KJH meant in his comment to a fan’s question of whether the king knew that BH had left.That it didn’t matter: SY or BH didn’t matter, only how CJ saw her.

So why send BH back? I believe they did it because it wouldn't make sense for him to live a life he essentially already lived as SY. Reincarnation is meant to be for a soul to grow and spiritually evolve, which it could not do by simply repeating what it had already done. Also, for some reason (I suspect so as not to offend Koreans by skipping over one of the most prominent historical figures in their culture - Queen Min), they still have CJ dying at age 32. This can be seen in the book BH is looking at when he's seeing his portrait, and is mentioned as early as episode 1. This was never going to be a happy ending for CJ/BH in the sense that many viewers wanted. Rather, he was going to facilitate the relationship of SY/CJ so that his previous life could run its course...ugh, I feel sick typing that out...with the hope that they meet again in another lifetime. Our SB is many things but trapped in Joseon without modern medicine, a miracle worker she is not. CJ dies without any heirs; his baby with the queen dies at just six months. If the BH decided to stay for love and then lost the baby and CJ, that would be just as heartbreaking for me as the ending I received.

Wiki and other sources speculate the CJ was poisoned by the Andong Kims, but many historians (including Bong Hwan’s mother, it seems) dispute that fact as it would serve no purpose since he was a puppet king and since his death then allowed the Jo family to briefly take control until King Gojong’s father pretty much crushed both the Kims and the Jos. In reality, he probably died of unhealthy habits and a life of excess. In the show’s world, who knows...cancer or any number of possible illnesses that could not be treated at that time. During the banquet planning, we see CJ suffer a nosebleed. In the spinoff, Mr. Queen mentions how CJ is trying hard not to collapse from the strain of his burdens. These could be hints left by writers to indicate that CJ’s health has been compromised by the grueling struggles and stress he’s had to endure, not to mention allowing himself to get blown up.

They writers did give us the hope for another reunion - perhaps in BH’s lifetime or perhaps another one. It’s why I think they tried to imply a SY/CJ connection in the Bamboo Forest prequel (the only prequel in the spinoff) as well as end Bamboo Forest with a reincarnation wish. The setup seemed quite intentional and in specific order. The prequel created a sense of destiny. The next segment was about Mr. Queen confirming if it was just his body or his soul that was attracted to CJ...literally the words out of the character’s mouth...and they gave an answer to that with the last shot. The final segment introduced the wish for CJ to meet his queen again, and he is clearly thinking of Mr. Queen - so why the prequel, which would seem to introduce a separate love interest, unless it’s actually not because they’re one and the same with the middle segment emphasizing the genuine attraction and love for each other.

This might not be everyone’s cup of tea; it certainly wasn’t mine, and I think the writers should have handled the leaving better instead of going for an quasi mind-wipe of all the characters’ remembrances of Mr. Queen. I mean, CJ went from being horrified at Mr. Queen acting like a perfect little queen for a few seconds a mere handful of episodes ago to just asking "why the formality" at a more permanent display of temperament and seemed practically oblivious otherwise. Then Choi and Yeon were "shocked" when So Yong didn't revert to her witch of the palace act and chastise the maids that were laughing by the pond - as if Mr. Queen didn't already change that way of thinking months ago. Not to mention that they were also nonplussed by the fact that their relationship to the queen had gone from being regarded as family back to a servant/master status quo. Even with the soulmate angle, there was to much deus ex machina thrown in. The idea of soul mates is a romantic one, but the execution of it fell through.

They should have never gone with the reincarnation route, especially if they were never intending to let SY have a true voice in the drama, even if it’s just a final conversation between herself and BH before he leaves, made possible in that split second before true separation. Viewers never got to bond with her, and in those moments we did see her, she was either a watered down version of the personality we were emotionally invested in or emphasized the opposite characteristics (demure, feminine, etc...) that we loved Mr. Queen for rejecting. Also, this angle gives us no true feeling of completeness and satisfaction. SY is with CJ in the past - we won't see them develop their feelings for each other and grow to like them as a couple. BH is in the present but who knows if he'll find CJ's reborn soul and happiness with whoever it is. Promises without fulfillment demand too much from the audience to fill in the blanks. If that's the case, next time just give us a tag line and tell the audience to imagine the rest.

Even if they share the same soul, we are given two distinct personalities and not enough connection between them in terms of their recognizing each other, acknowledging their feelings for CJ to each other in some sort of passing the flame moment that would make it feel more homogeneous and prevent feelings of resentment at what we perceive as an injustice to a personality we adore.

Instead of creating an emotional divide between the two, they should have just have SY die before BH's soul enters, and develop the romance between CJ and HB's as the novel and even that cheap and campy Chinese version did. Having SY there just muddied the waters, and became a distraction and an excuse for every emotional milestone Mr. Queen experienced, negating that character's development and laying it at SY's feet or claims of deliberate interference.

They should have chosen a fictional king and not boxed themselves into a limited outcome. Granted, it gave them a valid reason for booting BH back to present times, but look at the result: limited number of years with someone the audience isn't really familiar with for our beloved ML (plus their baby dies) and a huge question mark for our F-turned back into ML in the present with the hope that maybe the reincarnation thing works in his favor but who knows because they couldn't even toss us that small crumb which would have alleviated some of our heartache for BH as well as give more credence to the fact that SY/BH are the same and thereby lessened the feelings of resentment to the SY character as well. Or they could have gone with a multiverse theory and left it wide open as to what sweeping changes would occur. BH being initially thrown back to the Joseon era as a result of his dying would have achieved that because then the audience would have no reason to revisit the present nor see that the worlds were linked via changes upon his return and stuck with the poisoning threat averted. Blow recorded history to smithereens and leave that to our imagination instead.

Yes, the fish-out-of-water hijinks were great fun, but the completion of the character arcs/relationship/etc...shouldn’t be an afterthought.

The other element I would have liked to have seen that was in neither of the televised versions (though the Chinese one came very, very close) but was in the web novel is the king fully accepting that his wife is not the woman she was, believing that her previous body was a man, falling in love regardless and she with him. However, I think we all knew that wasn’t going to happen in a kdrama.

#MrQueen #MrQueenep20 #MrQueenexplained #mrqueenfinale

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skullmoss · 4 years ago

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i’ve started to notice a pretty bad trend with popular beastars fans when it comes to reconciling their feelings towards haru as a female character in a shounen manga where the two male characters (legosi & louis) are the main focus of the series.

fans, especially people on the OT3 (haru/legosi/louis) side of things fall into a very performative, very obvious trap with haru that’s kind of touched on in the first half of the manga-- where they put a heavily flawed, nuanced female character up on a pedestal in comparison to the male characters, and don’t touch on her personality flaws or missteps in the same way they allow themselves with legosi & louis.

i know fandom on tumblr is less active, which is why i feel safer saying these things here vs twitter, where i see this happening on the english fandom side of fandom. there’s a growing and dismissive attitude towards characterizing haru in fanfic and fanart that puts her up on a pedestal in much the same way legosi does.

i’m just typing stream-of-consciousness, but it’s been rankling me the more and more i see it, the refusal to characterize haru as a flawed individual with just as many bad, negative traits and characteristics that legosi and louis have. being in quarantine for over a year and suffering from brainrot, i’m lacking the vocabulary i want to use in trying to explain this phenomenon in fandom, especially in OT3 F/M/M sides, where the male characters are talked about and characterized at great length, assessing their personality flaws and nuance, but shunting the female character aside as “perfect, flawless, amazing, wonderful, Can Do No Wrong” romanticization that actually veers on misogyny in the sense of not allowing yourself to look at a female character in the same critical way you would a male character because you feel like there’s a need to protect her image as opposed to looking at them in the same multi-faceted way you’d look at a male character.

while in the end, beastars as a manga does fail in giving haru the same amount of screentime and emotional weight as it does with legosi and louis, there is still substance to her character in every chapter that she’s in. substance that puts her on the same heavily flawed level as louis and legosi in the sense that she has flawed personality traits by way of being a person struggling to make heads or tails of her place in the world. she’s a more insular character compared to legosi and louis, where unlike them her issues are less actively shown through fight scenes or monologue, and more internalized and quiet, which is why i think people tend to gloss over her even if they like her, because she does still fit a very passive narrative thread because of her lot in life as both a woman but also a small herbivore.

i’ve no...succinct....conclusion to this?? i’m just noticing this trend and habit people are falling into with their fanfic and fanart and it’s been bothering me for awhile.

people, in over-performing their love and appreciation for a female character, wind up putting her on this pedestal which makes her out to be a flawless individual you cannot and do not want to critique in the same way that’s allowed and afforded to male characters, and that...is still a sexist habit people need to fall out of.

#beastars #haru #legosi #louis

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the-hoely-bleach · 4 years ago

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So it’s 5am and I haven’t slept yet, not sure if I’m gonna sleep at this point, so I wanted to talk about this post by ruby-whistler because I have Thoughts but didn’t want to derail the original post. (Also keep in mind it’s 5am so this is gonna be very stream-of-consciousness).

Disclaimer- my intention with this post is not to start a fight with ruby-whistler or any other Dream apologist for that matter. Just because we fundamentally disagree doesn’t mean we have to hate each other. I am simply thinking my thoughts and sharing them on the internet

Edit: this has been sitting in my drafts for like week as I debated on whether I should tag ruby-whistler, given my view of c!Dream versus hers. clearly, I’ve decided against it, as I really don’t want to start conflict, but I do want to get my thoughts out there.

[please assume that I am referring to the dsmp characters, not the content creators, unless specified otherwise]

So first off I would like to point out that ruby-whistler and I have very different views on Dream as a character. For the sake of clarity, Ruby is a Dream apologist, and I am not. Frankly it would take quite a lot for me to genuinely believe that Dream is deserving of sympathy, let alone a full redemption arc. That being said, Ruby brought up some interesting points that I’d like to explore.

For those who don’t want to read the original post, Ruby suggested that if Dream were redeemed, it wouldn’t because he suddenly realized he did a bad and was sorry(he knew he was doing a bad the whole time, just didn’t care), but instead had someone systematically disprove his learned toxic behaviors and mindset(ends justify means, attachment=weakness, etc.). Basically prove him wrong. And I actually like this interpretation!

To elaborate on my own feelings toward Dream, I think it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to fully redeem him from a writing standpoint. If not because he doesn’t want to be better, then because no on the server will be willing to help him. Characters like Dream rarely get redeemed because they’ve dug a hole for themselves. They either reached the point of no return, or the people they’ve hurt are(oftentimes justifiably) unwilling to forgive them, so with no support system they fall back into old habits. Sad? Yes. Understandable? Also yes. There’s a reason Dream’s character type almost always suffers from redemption equals death.

(for those who don’t know, redemption equals death is the trope in which a villain is so bad that the only way to somewhat redeem them is to have them die by heroically sacrificing themself. basically there was no way to justify their actions and not enough time for them to heal, but at least you know they’re trying. Examples: Star Wars’ Darth Vader, She-Ra’s Shadow Weaver.

So from a meta perspective, a Dream redemption is highly, highly unlikely. That being said, I do think it’s a bit of an icky mindset to have that certain people simply can’t change for the better. What Ruby mentioned is a smart way to get around this. I won’t be the first to point out that Pandora’s Vault is not exactly the environment for rehabilitation, especially not now. I think Dream is a terrible person, yes, but do I think he deserves to be tortured on a daily basis? No. Do I think he deserves to be kept a box with nothing to do but think and write? Maybe a little as karmic punishment for intentionally designing the place that way, but not forever(probably like a month At Most) All that’s going to do is make a bad person even worse. The way things are going, the most likely scenario is him breaking out and going on a fucking rampage. So yes, I think Ruby has a point with this whole positive reinforcement idea. Get the few people on the server who are still sympathetic to him to just sit and chat. Not to talk at him and tell him what they think, but just chat. Ease him into the idea that maybe he was wrong. It could possibly work.

At this point I’m going to stop talking about Dream and start on the implications for Tommy because oh boy. Obviously a Dream redemption would affect more people than just Tommy, but I’m mainly invested in his story and I’m also kinda running out of steam here so you get what you get

Now here’s where it gets tricky. In the event that Dream manages a full redemption arc, in which he does his best to right his wrongs and be an actual good person. Not Everyone Is Required To Forgive Him. Tommy, I’m talking about Tommy, do not make Tommy forgive him. (As said above it’d be understandable for a lot of people not to forgive him, but I am talking about Tommy right now)

Not only would this type of thing have terrible real-life implications, it just wouldn’t make sense for Tommy’s character. If Dream, even a fully reformed Dream, walked up to Tommy wanting to rebuild old bridges, even if he genuinely apologized, even if he did everything right, Tommy cannot and should not be expected to trust Dream. His first thought would be that Dream is trying the same shit he did in exile. The fact is, Tommy will have to live with his trauma for the rest of his life, and Dream should have to live with the knowledge that he caused that trauma, that he ruined someone’s life. Just because you’re a better person now doesn’t mean that the people you’ve hurt are magically also doing better.

(This is just a tangent about a potential direction the plot could take and is almost more of a Tommy analysis than anything so if you wanna dip now feel free)

Don’t get me wrong though, I also think it’d be interesting for Tommy to question himself later, if he happens to see enough hard evidence that Dream has changed. After all, this is a real-world dilemma, what do you do when your abusers heal? Abuse victims will often see their abuser bettering themselves and start to feel guilty for still being angry because “look, they’re not abusing me anymore, so I have no reason to still feel this way!” In this situation it could be constructive for the two to sit down and just talk things through. Still, I firmly believe that the best thing for both of them is to go their separate ways. Coexisting is enough in this case.

#it is now 7am help #dream smp #dsmp #c!dream analysis #dream smp character analysis #c!dream critical #long post #abuse tw #abuse mention #torture mention #let me know if I should tag something else #still not sure how to tag for this fandom #fill the void with character analysis

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shewhowillnotbenamed1 · 5 years ago

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Damirae #33 please

There was the sharp sound of a click. A key rotated in its lock, and in scurried Titus, leather leash leading a windswept Raven. She paused to place her keys and belongings down on the table in the foyer.

Bright blue-violets panned up from shiny oxfords that stepped into her field of view. "Oh," Raven said, not bothering to mask her surprise. "You're home." She smoothed a stray, ink colored strand from her pink face. With the way Damian had greeted her, it must have seemed as though he was waiting for her to come home. "Are you...headed back to the office tonight?"

"Today's a national holiday for one of our buyers overseas..." Damian explained. A curious, dark-eyed stare slid over his own. They observed him in the act of coming undone, his fingers pulling at the shirt cuffs, unbuttoning them. "In other words - no. I'm not working late today."

"That's fortunate..." Raven's neutral countenance started to shift. "You certainly work hard enough. Though, I'm certain you're anticipating another late night tomorrow," she murmured in a barely audible voice. Damian shook his head at the floorboards under her feet, before shooting her a half-smirk.

Raven's entire being unbent, softening as a small smile settled onto her pale face. A fray of sensations stirred inside him with a fervor so overwhelming, Damian couldn't cease their intrusion. The errant thought in his otherwise level head - that she was excited by this deviation from order. Damian would be home tonight. Perhaps, the opportunity to spend more time with him pleased her.

But, he knew the truth.

With a familiar ease, her gentle hands unclipped Titus's leash from his black leather and silver buckle collar. "Titus was a bundle of energy, Mr. Wayne." Her voice lofted over the dog's padded trot into the kitchen. "We had three walks today and ran in the park."

Raven didn't live here.

She worked for him.

He wasn't anything more to her than an employer.

Damian folded his arms, fighting against the aching pulse in his temple. The suddenness of her shift, of course, she wanted to talk about his dog. It was her job. Titus was her job. "I wanted to discuss a few things with you, Raven." Swiftly, she searched the room for Titus. Perhaps she was wondering where the great dane had scampered off to. A darker part of him wondered if she needed a buffer, some sort of a barrier between them. "Go." He waved a hand, resigning to his fate. "Get him."

"I'll be one moment, Mr. Wayne." And with that, Raven disappeared after the dog. Damian shuffled his foot impatiently, surveying the heavy wristwatch on his forearm. Five minutes later, she returned from the kitchen with her hands full. In one, a ceramic bowl full of water, and in the other she had conjured up a vase, also full of water. "Titus, you're thirsty, aren't you?" She placed the bowl before him. The dog sniffed it, examining the water then, dipping his tongue down for a drink.

"Raven..." Damian said slowly and carefully. Drawing out her name and extending it in a way that could only spell trouble. "So, your day off went well, I presume?" Dark tanned fingers tugged sharply on his olive-green necktie, loosening it.

"Oh... It was alright," she replied quickly. Raven avoided his eyes, finally breaking the silence when she shuffled across the room. "Since, you're staying, I suppose you'd prefer to receive Titus's report in person..."

He turned his body to her. "After he eats, but that's not the issue at hand -" His emerald eyes swept over to Raven retrieving a plastic covered bouquet of white flowers from the table. Damian's lips turned into a deeper set frown than usual, while she unwrapped the arrangement and started to set it neatly into the vase. Whatever he had planned to say was lost to him, as recent matters had become much more pressing. "Who are those from?" he asked before he could stop himself. It was a touch more accusing than he had a right to be, but he felt he deserved an answer.

"The flowers?" Raven repeated and gave him a strange stare. "No one... But, they are for someone." Her tone was just cheeky enough for Damian to do a double-take.

For? From? Raven had hardly given him an answer to the question. Damian sighed irritably. "That doesn't explain why you're putting unidentified flowers into a vase - in my apartment."

"Hm..." she observed, before she tucked a final rose stem into the round-shaped glass, swiveling it and seeming satisfied. "They're...for you." Raven replied smoothly. "Titus even helped me pick them out."

What?

His body froze for a beat. "You took Titus - to a flower shop?" Damian managed incredulously.

"Yes, I did." Raven said. "After all, he's become quite the connoisseur." She smiled for a moment, her eyes shone in delight, no doubt, at some memory of her and his dog. And once again, Damian felt his stomach dip uncomfortably into an amalgam of elusive emotion.

"You took Titus to a shop to buy me flowers?" Damian repeated with a harshness must have come from another's throat. There was audaciousness and accusation in each word that his own ears couldn't conceive. Damian wasn't entitled to it, though he could confess, he didn't understand the things she did... Or even what she did to him. More often than not, he found himself mystified by her. But this? Giving him gifts? "Raven, why...?"

No one just gave a person a gift for generosity's sake.

"Whenever we go on walks, he enjoys stopping to smell the flowers... Unfortunately, flowerbeds can lead to muddy paws. So I thought, this would be perfect..." She shrugged. "He helps me choose and he gets to smell whatever new smells he likes. No dirty paw prints involved," Raven explained warmly.

"I see..." He arched an eyebrow. Whatever capacity this conversation hadn't presently occupied was overtaken. Because Damian saw: Raven's sensual sway in each stride, with the strokes of wind streaming through the dark strands of hair. And Titus was sidling up to her, tackling her, waiting to be scooped into her graceful arms. Beautiful and wonderful it was, greed reared its head, even in illusion. If there was anything so desired by Damian as Raven laying leisurely at his side, turning to him with a smile to squeeze his hand under the shade of a maple tree, as Titus raced back to them. Thoughts of the three of them together, blissfully. A dream that couldn't be, drawn deep from within his soul.

Raven returned him to consciousness with a chuckle, sweet and tiny, and gestured to the arrangement. "This bouquet is the one that he tried to bite... It smelled the best. Naturally, it's the one I went for..." she assured him, before adding, "it's certainly nice that he's growing out of those lingering puppy habits and no longer tries to bite me."

Damian's jaw twitched at her words. "If you insist..." His tongue darted out and dragged across his lips. "But clearly, he has excellent taste." Raven flushed distractingly. As he took in her rouge stained face, he wondered if she was lightheaded. Her cheeks were so red, he thought to offer her a chair.

But by the way Raven absentmindedly skimmed her fingers under Titus's collar, while he sat himself at her feet, Damian didn't think he should separate them. Once more, he needed to remind himself. She was there for Titus and nothing more. No matter how things appeared, she was only ever playing house. A visitor in their lives.

And like all visitors, the time would come when she would leave.

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clevercatchphrase · 4 years ago

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2020 Year Review~

2020. Pretty unique year, don’t you think? It’s the first year since 2002 to have only two different digits in it. After 2022, this won’t happen again until 2111. Yep. Absolutely nothing more interesting than that.

Anyway! It’s time I reflect on my 2020, look back on my yearly goals and rant about things that happened to me this year. I made a post like this last year, where I went over my 2019 goals and talked about what I accomplished and what I didn’t, and it’s only fitting I do the same again this year. Read more under the cut for a random stream of consciousness ramble!

So, first things first, let’s look at my 2019 goals;

Finish paying off that last student loan

Put more stuff on my redbubble

Illustrate my own fan fics

Sew at least one stuffed animal

Make an enamel pin

Read one new book a month

Write one page a day/Complete at least one new fan fic

Learn Python or C# for the game I want to make

Finish fully scripting Ghost Switch

Boost my patreon

Paying Off My Last Student Loan: Going down the list, I am proud to say that I FINALLY paid off all my student loans! (and not a moment too soon. The last payment I made was literally days before the first quarantine rolled out). It took me roughly 4 years on my part-time paycheck to pay off all my loans, and once I finished, I had no money to my name (literally; I had less than 1k as emergency money in case of car troubles or health issues). Heck, I’m STILL living at home as a save up for a place of my own. Finally paying off all my student loans DID activate my secret 2020 new year’s resolution, which was to adopt a cat! I did this too, literally a week later! She is the best thing that’s happened to me this entire year and I love her so much and she is the snuggliest cuddle bug I’ve ever met. I’m so happy she’s in my life now~

Put More Stuff On My Redbubble: ah ha ha ha… I thought I did this, but then I went and checked, and it turns out-! I did not. I made art I intended to go on my redbubble, but haven’t put there yet. They are all drawings of some OCs from a game I want to make, but because I haven’t progressed on making the game this year, I never got around to putting more stuff related to it on my redbubble. At the time of writing, there are 7 days left in December, so I guess I could go and put it up on my redbubble right now, but without context on where the characters are from, there wouldn’t be much point, now would there?

Illustrate My Own Fan Fics: Another goal that I was so stoked to actually do… and then just didn’t. Gee, I wonder why I couldn’t find the energy or motivation to do it this year? Truly a conundrum. (Hey, you know what? If Ghost Switch counts as a fan fiction in a visual form, then I am doing GREAT on this goal. 2.5 years in, 1 of ~4 arcs done, and still going steady~)

Sew At Least One Stuffed Animal: Okay, I have a valid excuse for not doing this one. I even knew which stuffed animal I wanted to make, and had the pattern drawn out and everything, but I had no money for materials because I had just paid off my student loans. And then, by the time I did have enough money again, quarantine was in full effect and I couldn’t go out to the fabric store. I’m still trying my best to stay out of public places even if the rules are laxer now, because I don’t want to catch the plague even if everyone in my goddamn city thinks and acts like the problem is over already. Even if they’re all wearing masks, even if they’re staying 6 feet apart, I still don’t want to risk it. I will stay inside until health experts give the all clear, and when that day comes, then I will buy some fleece and make a plush.

Make An Enamel Pin: I ACTUALLY DID THIS ONE. TWICE! Halfway through quarantine, I was feeling anxious and depressed about my job and how they were planning to have me work with the public despite climbing infection rates and positive covid cases. I didn’t quit then, but in a desperate move to try and become self-sufficient, I went to madebycooper and made two enamel pins based on some butterfly dragons I drew last year. They’re on my etsy store now! I even went out of my way to open a P.O. box just to start a small business! I haven’t sold a single pin yet, and I’m actually really nervous to sell my first because I don’t trust the efficiency of the postal system thanks to the actions of the GOP that really screwed them over this year! (If you would like to see my enamel pins, click here!)

Read One Book A Month: I did this! With dragon books I bought a couple years back! In fact, I read FOURTEEN dragon books, and still have more books for next year to read! The 14 books I read this year were:

The Hive Queen

The Poison Jungle

Wings Of Fire Legends: Dragonslayer

Dealing With Dragons

Searching For Dragons

Calling on Dragons

Talking to Dragons

The Bronze Dragon Codex

The Brass Dragon Codex

The Black Dragon Codex

The Red Dragon Codex

The Silver Dragon Codex

Dragon Strike, and

Hatching Magic

To be honest, I had read The Red Dragon Codex years ago when it first came out, but completely forgotten what it was about. I remembered liking it, and I knew the reading level was on the lower side, but the whole dragon codex series was pretty good! So far, the Silver dragon codex was my favorite, and black dragon codex was probably the worst! Hatching Magic was also really slow and bad and had plot points that went nowhere, but the book was written in the 80s, so I don’t know what I expected. The Dealing with Dragons series was very charming and great for the most part, save for one line in the last book that really rubbed me the wrong way, and all the Wings of Fire Books go above and beyond in this third arc. The second legends book could be a little tighter, though (sky and wren are the best duo and I want a book solely about them, but I honest to god do not care about leaf and ivy’s stories.)

Write one Page of any story every day/ complete at least one fic: I… did this? Okay, I kinda cheated near the end of the year. I was keeping up the one page a day thing for the first four months, but then the world went to shit and my schedule and habits got disrupted and I fell off my good track record. I completed 7 out of roughly 12 one-shots I had planned for this year (my goal WAS supposed to be one short a month, but… you know how it happens) I kept trying to catch up on this goal all year, but the days kept piling up…. Until November hit. I managed to write over 250 pages for Nanowrimo, and I consider this goal a win. 365 pages of fiction in total, which averages out to about one a day~. SHUT UP IT COUNTS.

Learn Python or C# for the game I want to make: Another goal I didn’t have the mental energy to commit to this year. Truly a mystery to where all our willpower went in 2020.

Fully Finish Scripting Ghost Switch: still haven’t done this one yet! The Snowdin arc is completely planned, but I just haven’t gotten around to getting the other areas. I’m not worried, though. I know all the major plot points I gotta hit, it’s just weaving them together in a way that flows nice is the final task. I’m not too worried though. I don’t expect to finish the Snowdin arc for another year and a half, at the bare minimum.

And my last goal of 2020, Boost My Patreon. I did this at the beginning of the year, but then very intentionally stopped about a third of the way through. It didn’t sit right with me to tell you guys to donate to me when suddenly EVERYONE was financially strained from layoffs or being furloughed. I told my patrons the same, and if you ever need to stop donating to me to take care of yourself first, then by all means, please do. I would feel much better knowing you’re using your money to see yourself fed and housed instead of given to me (where it is pretty much only used to buy gas for my car, honestly)

Welp! That was all my goals for 2020! I achieved 4 out of 10 goals plus 1 secret goal! Pretty much the same ratio as last year, but now this time I can blame all my failures on the pandemic! I don’t feel so bad about myself anymore~

ON TO 2021!

I have 11 goals for the new year, again some rolled over from this list, and some from even older years. They are, in no particular order;

Read 12 new books (roughly 1 book a month)

Finish the first draft of 2019’s Nanowrimo project and rewrite it

Script TDV

Finish Scripting Ghost Switch

Build A Comic Buffer

Sew 1 Stuffed Animal

Finish 1 Song Comic

Make another Enamel Pin

Finish 2 short original comics (this one counts as 2 goals)

Finish the 5 remaining one-shot fics

Now to go into depth on each one, more for my own sake, really. I want to know exactly what I have planned for each goal this year, and sometimes just looking at a short list doesn’t capture all the smaller details.

1)Read 12 new books. Same as last year! I The only difference is I might not be able to make it all dragon-related books. (I try my hardest not to buy from amazon anymore, but half-price-books doesn’t always have the obscure stuff I’m looking for)

2)Finish 2019’s nanowrimo project. If you read my 2019 year reflection, you’ll notice I said I wanted to do some original writing. And I did! The story I wrote for nanowrimo back then was a story I’ve been toying with since 2017, but it was only last year I finally got pen to paper. Now, you may find it odd that the keyword says “finish”. You may think, “but isn’t that what you’re supposed to do for nanowrimo?” and to that I say, WRONG! I wrote 50k words for nanowrimo, but the draft was only about halfway complete. I was kinda discouraged about what I had written last year, because I didn’t like how it was coming out, but I did manage to get it half done. Now it’s time for me to bite the bullet and just finish the thing so I can finally revise it and make it into something I DO like. (It’s still gonna be hella long, tho. That’s what I get for trying to write an epic fantasy, I guess.)

3)Script TDV. TDV is the abbreviation of the game I want to make. I… still need to do so much for this project OTL… In addition to getting the story solidified, I still need to draw art and game assets, and learn how to code for it, both of which are no small task. I keep having some sort of new year’s goal related to this on my list, and every year I just don’t hit this one. Will 2021 be different?

4)Finish Scripting Ghost Switch. (Or at the very least, get the waterfall arc completely written out). I have a plan to break this down into simpler steps, by focusing on just one arc for a month or two. Every major arc has 2 to 3 parts, broken up by flashbacks, and if I can just finish one section a month, then I should have the entire thing scripted by the end of the year. It’s not a difficult pace, but seeing if I stick with it will be the real challenge, as it is will all my goals it seems.

5)Build a Comic Buffer: I’m actually working on this one right now! Since I paid off my last loan and got a new job this year, my current Patreon goals are kind of out of date. They had all been centered around me paying off that last loan, and working towards full-time employment, but those are both completed now! So instead, I would love to get to a place where my patrons could read pages at least a week ahead, and to do that, I need to build a buffer. And since I’m working 5 full days a week now, I can’t afford to fall behind. But you can’t fall behind if you constantly stay ahead! I would like to have… a 10 to 12 page buffer. That’s roughly 3 months’ worth of pages to always have on hand in case I get swamped with work, or something. Right now I currently have a buffer of 3, which will cover me for half a January, which is better than not having anything at all, but still not the best. (ultimately, I would love to have a buffer so big, I could queue them up for the whole year. Wouldn’t that be something?)

6) Sew one stuffed animal: same as last year. ASSUMING the plague gets under control in 2021, I don’t expect to get to this goal until the summer at the earliest.

7)Finish 1 song comic: I have 7 song comics planned. One is a gift, one possibly for wandersong, one is a collab that’s currently in the works, but I’m waiting on a friend to do their part before I can continue mine, 2 are UT related, and 2 (well, technically 3, but one is the collab) are KH related. It’s one of the UT ones that will probably get finished, if I’m being honest. It’s completely story boarded, and now I just need to ink and color it. I would like to get it done for UT’s 6th birthday, since I made a song comic on the fly for the anniversary this year, and it was fun, and I’d like to do it again! So, look forward to that next september~

8) Make another enamel pin: I have a dolphin design I’d like to make because dolphins are cute, if not little murder machines. (need to save up some expendable income first, tho. THESE THINGS AIN’T CHEAP TO MAKE.)

9 and 10) start and finish 2 original short comics: I’ve got some comic ideas I want to do, but I need to get them written out first. I don’t think either would be too long. Each maybe a couple “episode’s” length, if envisioned on a website like webtoons or tapas. They’d both be heavy in allegory, but not overly drawn out (hopefully)

11)And lastly, Finish the 5 remaining one-shots I had planned for this year but never got around to. I’m going to try to write one every other month. Pure self-indulgent shipping fluff. If I finish these 5, then maybe I’ll ask other people for more prompts and ideas, which I’ve never done before. We’ll see how it goes~

Also, Like last year, I’d like to look at everything that’s happened to me this year, though to be honest, I’m not sure how much I remember/how accurate it’ll be. God, I don’t even remember what January was like. Who was I back then? Who were we all back then? I guess I’ll start my yearly retrospective in march because, heh, god we ALL know what started happening in march.

Firstly, I paid off my last student loan! Then a week later on March 18th, I drove half an hour out of my city to adopt a cat and I love her and it was the best day of this year for me. Spring break is just beginning this weekend, but the attendance at the zoo is shockingly low this year. Apparently, a lot of people watch the news, and they’re all taking precautions about social distancing. I wasn’t too disappointed. Fewer people at the zoo, the easier my job is for me. I was looking forward to getting some free overtime on spring break, since I’m broke after paying off that loan, and I’m a cat parent now and have a furry child to feed. Monday rolls around. My manager calls me and tells me that the zoo is going into lockdown until further notice. I worry for the birds I take care of, but understand it’s for everyone’s safety.

For two months I sleep in and watch way too much YouTube. I join a couple writing discords. I have nightmares about my birds escaping their enclosure and I dreamed one of the security guards I really like at the zoo gets covid and has to go to the ER. I woke up really upset.

I started and finished BBS for the first time. I also replayed and finished KH2 final mix for the first time. It had been about 5 years since I last played KH2 before my PS2 died, and it was like coming home~ I also finished tearaway, and played and beat Ryme for a second time (which I can’t remember if I did that last year, but it was a fun experience regardless)

Mid-June, and I’m allowed to start going back to work, be it on reduced hours. The zoo is still closed to the public, but I’m loving it! I get to work with full-time keepers and do full-time keeper things. It’s so much fun not having to deal with the public. August starts to creep up and there’s a rumor that the zoo will be opening to the public again, which I’m not stoked about. I don’t want to go back to standing in one exhibit all day, talking to guests who don’t listen to the rules or to me. 2 of my younger coworkers (who had both only been there a couple of months) get chosen for full-time positions, while I get passed up which really pisses me off. My other 2 coworkers quit when they think we might be reopening because they cannot risk catching the virus due to at-risk family. I am now the last keeper in the interactive bird exhibit.

I keep working, the zoo slowly opens, but with me as the only interpreter in our interactive bird exhibit, we can’t open because I can’t run the entire exhibit by myself. So my exhibit stays closed. September comes and goes, and then October starts. Now there is more serious talk of opening my exhibit before the end of the year because the zoo expects to bring in larger crowds for the Christmas lights event in November/December. I ask if I get hazard pay or health insurance since I’m doing full-time hours until they hire more staff. They say no.

I immediately start searching for a new job feeling incredibly indignant/hurt/slighted/insulted/used/abused/ALL the negative feelings at my job. I had been there for 4 years, but never got a chance to work full time, while the two newest hires who had only been there 2 months both got moved up. I can’t help but feel they were holding one mistake I made two years ago against me and never wanted to give me a chance. (that, or they knew I was reliable when it came to showing up for work in such a volatile position that sees a lot of new faces, and they didn’t want to bother going through the process of hiring someone new) I don’t want to risk my life working around guests who don’t wash their hands and don’t properly distance. I don’t want to gamble with my health when they won’t offer me health insurance because I’m part time.

Mid October, I get an interview for a full time job and get hired on the spot. I peace out at the zoo 2 weeks later, literally 3 days before they planned to open my exhibit to the public. It was a close call for me to escape before they opened to the public (and pettiness was only partially the reason I dipped out so close to opening). Sorry new hires who are now in charge of the bird feeding exhibit. I taught you the best I could in the short time I had. If the managers are struggling with what to do with one less person, I can’t say I feel bad. I can only hope they delayed opening/closed you down again for your own safety. You are not lightbulbs. I really hope the higher ups stop considering you as replaceable as one. Will I go back to the zoo to visit? Probably. But not for a year at least.

I started my new job the very next day after I quit the zoo, and have been there ever since, (which isn’t that long yet, tbh. Christmas day was my 2 month anniversary). It’s full time, but it’s also a small business, and everyone’s hours this year have been on the short side due to the plague. I understand, though. They don’t want us to work if they can’t afford to pay us. Everyone is nice enough, though some people smoke and it’s hard to avoid them with how frequently we have to go in and out, and I really don’t want to get lung cancer, sorry not sorry, please and thank you. Also, with such a small team, gossip is certainly harder to go undetected, so it’s a relief knowing people don’t talk behind one another’s backs.

I participated and beat my 4th nanowrimo in a row, I made TWO apple crisps on thanksgiving, and made baklava on Christmas and both of these recipes were my first time making them, and they both came out adequately! I voted the first day of early voting, and I did an art trade/collab with two of my friends for my birthday! (normally we would have done monthly “art days” where we get together and do art projects for fun because we’re adults and we can spend our time together however we want, but the plague said otherwise this year) We drew pokemon and it was fun! (hopefully I can show you all the results soon. At the time of writing, I’m still waiting for the last two colored parts to get back to me)

I reached 100 pages on my undertale comic, and finish the first arc out of…! (im not sure. It’s either going to be 4 or 5, I haven’t decided yet)

Over all, I managed to stay healthy as far as I know. I wasn’t as productive as I wanted to be this year, but then again, who was? (don’t answer that. I don’t need that kind of comparison in my life right now)

Will 2021be any better? Honestly? I don’t think so. Not right away, at least. Just because a new year is about to start does not mean the slate is completely wiped clean. The change of the calendar year doesn’t magically make all our current problems disappear. Covid will still be here and cases will still climb when January starts. Small business will still be strained when the month rolls over, police will still go on murdering innocent civilians and getting away scot free, amazon and disney will still be monopolizing all consumer goods and media, and I can’t help but feel like there’s an impending shit show about to go down on inauguration day. I do hope things will get better, though. It’ll be arduous and unpleasant, but I do hope things will improve, because sometimes hoping is all you can do.

Good night.

#long post #new year's resolutions #year review #year retrospective

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dream-wreck · 4 years ago

Text

Count On You

Surprise! “Count On Me” has an unintended part 2.

Chapter 2 Title: Count On You Rating: G Word Count: 1,668 Description: When the office door closes, Neil can be alone in his own world. That's not always a good thing.

…..

Of all things, Neil missed spaghetti the most. Jarred red sauce, fifty-cent pasta, pre-grated parmesan (if he was feeling especially bougie). Nothing could beat it. He didn’t miss the reflux, but he’d deck his esophageal halls with ulcers if it meant eating a real meal, a heaping bowl of comfort food that would leave him full and sluggish and knock Insomnia flat on its back.

Neil ran his thumb over a medicine-purple protein bar wrapper, smoothing out the perforated ends between the flesh of his thumb and index finger. The yellow POWER BAR logo rippled and glimmered under his office lights like a cheap trick.

Clearly, the graphic designers had no idea that their chosen font and colors made the meal replacement look like a cartoon villain’s mind-controlling sugar bar. This one was supposed to taste vaguely reminiscent of peanut butter, which he’d discovered was easier to stomach than the artificial vanilla flavor that stuck to his tongue for hours after the fact.

He tore the wrapping down the middle. The sickly brown bar revealed itself, shedding its tacky cape.

He took a vengeful bite out of the bar, feeling as triumphant as he possibly could while chewing something that tasted like cardboard soaked in old peanut oil. Just last week, these weren’t so bad. He could stomach them and they had tasted pretty decent.

I was thinking of you the entire time, he’d eventually say to a heaping bowl of angel hair pasta and marinara.

Eventually. One day, soon. When all this was over, Neil could quit skipping meals and popping pain pills like tic tacs and Mentos.

The single bite of bar began to disintegrate in his mouth the same way a bad piece of gum chewed too long turns into a compound of sand and slime. Neil choked the mixture down and lunged for his water bottle. Empty. He turned to the mini fridge and pulled out an ice cold energy drink that had been sitting on standby, untouched, for months.

“Don’t tell Eva,” Neil said, snapping the tab open in the vacant room. The drink went down cold and sweet, washing the gritty paste from his tongue. He’d regret the caffeine in an hour or two, but for now, the familiar bubbles were worth whatever he had coming later.

A lot of things had become worth it recently. He banished the pitiful excuse for a protein bar to the bottom drawer, sitting down in his desk chair, staring at the paperwork that so desperately needed filing. A fib, of course. He’d never filed paperwork on time in his life. Lying to Eva....Neil had yet to discern if that was worth keeping any secret.

What secret? In the end, what could be worth keeping from her? That Neil Watts was mortal? Extraordinary, but mortal. Extraordinarily mortal.

He thought of Eva sitting outside the men’s room while he retched, stretching to keep pace with him in the hall, reminding him about the simple things. There is so much said in reminding someone to take care of themselves in the little ways, to drink water, to take time. Neil wished he were a better listener, that his pride would crumble for a day or two, long enough for him to set good habits and be honest -- with himself, with Eva, with everyone.

Fluorescent humming grated his ears, burned his eyes. He felt new sickness swelling. He shut his eyes to the room’s blue white.

He’d worry a lot less if Eva would just let it drop. She cared too much, that was her problem. She was usually good at hiding it. At work, of course, surrounded all day by dying people and their repressed traumas, you need to find a way to push through it all without completely breaking down, balancing visible empathy with healthy detachment.

Crying in front of the clients doesn’t get the job done, and it certainly doesn’t look good on evaluations.

Their particular line of work called for expert compartmentalization. Eva had mastered concealing a naturally compassionate disposition behind cold professionalism, efficiency, and control. It was never just another day at the office for her, even if she’d sometimes seem unfeeling when the chips were down.

Neil knew her too well. She always wanted to help. She was a problem solver, always trained on an objective, never one to dwell, to stutter-step, to second guess. She never let things lie. Why should a problem go unsolved?

He used to hold that against her, that she couldn’t let things be, that she could get a little control-crazy when things shifted from their right places into wrong places, drifting away from order like moons out of orbit. But she wasn’t the one who had to cheat on her entrance exams. And between the two of them, she seemed to have her life under control.

Neil Watts had looked to Eva Rosalene for a lifetime of answers. He could count on her for anything. She always came in clutch (he’d been watching a lot of Esports streams lately, picking up on the lingo during his late night nausea fits).

It wasn’t a question of whether or not Eva cared about him. It was a question of, if Neil truly believed in Eva Rosalene, why on God’s green earth had he not told her a lick of truth about what was really going on? He dove down for a good answer, or even a scrap of a convoluted selfish reasoning, but resurfaced empty.

In his coat pocket, a little blue bottle pressed against Neil’s thigh. He crossed his arms, but he only grew more aware of the light pressure resting there. It annoyed him, more than anything, like feeling a strand of hair brush along your skin, but just when you think you’ve swiped it away, there it is again, brushing just light enough to frustrate, to aggravate, to piss you off. Neil bounced his knee, trying to shake the coat off his leg, but the bump beneath the white cloth just moused its way back and forth, prodding.

He should do that paperwork. Listen to music or something to pass the time.

His stomach roiled. Neil slipped a hand into his pocket. He closed his fist around the smooth bottle, ran his thumb over the cap, catching his thumbnail along the ridges there. Comforting, he thought. The action really did calm his nerves.

Eva was across the hall. Fifteen steps away. A knock away. A conversation away.

Neil didn’t bother to set a stopwatch so he never knew how long he sat there, his thumb running back and forth over the ridges in the lid while his mind wandered, imagining the many ways that conversation could go, the look on Eva’s face, the disappointment. Daydream Neil started crying, but Real Neil didn’t think that was very dignified, so he started from the beginning, approaching Dr. Eva Rosalene in her office. Figuring she’d probably be busy, he reset to the cafeteria. A nice talk over lunch. When Eva burst into tears and people from the surrounding tables looked their way, Neil chose the park, even though they weren’t in the habit of going to the park together and never had been. But it was quiet, undisturbed. A gorgeous day in this self-revising simulation. He guided Eva to a bench. They sat down. Eva told him to take his time, that she knew something was wrong, that she was glad Neil could finally talk to her. Yes, he was ready. It would be amazing to finally say it out loud. To someone else. To confide. To confess….

He opened his eyes to the harsh light.

Confess? What was that word doing, flitting about in his stream of consciousness?

An email notification pinged on his desktop. He moved to open it with a click. It read:

If you’re up for it, they’re showing Inception and the Cowboy Bebop movie tonight. It’s the weirdest double feature ever so I have to go, it’s the law.

Popcorn’s light on the stomach, right? Let me know, my treat. --Eva

Perfect. He could talk to her then. Simple, easy as that. All that melodramatic daydreaming over nothing. He could talk to her then. Besides: free food.

Neil’s stomach suddenly felt very, very empty. His usual nausea felt like he was too full and ready to burst.

But it suddenly felt as if something small inside were eating away at everything, the lining and the tissue and the bile, hungrily consuming out of a gluttonous jealousy that which consumes. And when there would be nothing left, that small something would eat the air and the Nothing until an impossible vacuum remained. And Neil would also remain, nothing more than a container to conceal a parasitic anomaly, cursed never to be filled again.

His hand closed around the little blue bottle. The pills inside stirred, knocking against the walls of their plastic prison.

The emptiness in his stomach slowly spread into his hips and ribs, knees and neck, his head and the space behind his eyes, until his whole body felt hollow and the hollow spaces felt sore.

This moment was nearly one of those moments that change everything. Very important, nearly pivotal, but not to be realized, lacking the crucial self-awareness that would have sent things this way and that, particularly along different this-es and better thats. The manner in which a single rock falls prevents or triggers a landslide.

Neil drew the bottle from his pocket, poured two little white pills into his palm, tossed them back. They scraped down the dry walls of his throat, as though clawing for a foothold, before eventually settling in the cavern of his stomach, and almost instantaneously, the pain began to dwindle.

Neil didn’t stop to consider the impossibility of this. If he had, it would have made all the difference. But he didn’t, so it did not, and things seemed to remain relatively the same, the distant sound of tumbling rocks drowned by electric humming.

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Chapter 2 end notes: Ended up somewhere unexpected, as writing usually does. My fingers like to run without me sometimes. Pleasant surprises though! Thank you for supporting "Count On Me"! You all are the best :)

Wubnjeft

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I've been reading a lot of science fiction lately.

#lol it was all supposed to stay a one shot #that never happens #count on me #count on you #rosawatts #to the moon #finding paradise #eva rosalene #neil watts #fanfiction #finding paradise fanfiction #drug use #imposter factory

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