#something in that is just so bleak. in terms of how I think kind humans react. it just makes me so utterly horribly gut-wrenchingly sad

[laesas]

Fucking hell. In what universe is it appropriate to compare real life allegations of abuse to an entertainment reality show. Unreal.

[ghoulish-yellowcake]

When I first got into Fallout and was delightfully babbling to my friends about all the fucked up vault experiments and such they looked at me like I was crazy and asked why the hell I liked it so much. At the time I didn’t really have an answer other than I liked the contrast of how silly it could get compared to the darker qualities—how it bounced between the two or combined them into a wonderful satire on capitalism.

After watching and rewatching the show, logging hundreds of hours across multiple games, and several posters up on my wall later, I think I finally understand why.

The games are set up for you to be the hero, to make your slice of the wasteland a better place, but unlike a lot of other media, being the hero is an active choice that you have to make over and over again. You are presented with a cruel, violent world that brings out the worst in humanity, and yet these games ask you to be kind, to help out an NPC with a small favor, or sacrifice something important for the greater good. It isn’t easy. A lot of times the best choice isn’t going to be perfect either, with many ethical decisions boiling down to harm reduction or the lesser of two evils—whatever gives the wasteland the best chance at survival. Sometimes you need to bloody your hands, but other times the better outcome results in maybe not forgiveness but refusing to act on revenge. Heroism is often challenging and morally grey at times.

Sure, you could choose to be evil, but it’s almost too easy—I find it so much more satisfying to be empathetic, to surprise characters with hope that the world doesn’t have to be so bleak. I guess in many ways it’s a type of Superman fantasy, having not only the desire to be kind but the power to be so in a world filled with darkness.

And it’s not just the player character vs the world, there are plenty of companions and other NPCs surviving and working to make things better. Here you are at the end of the world, yet people endure and life goes on. People grow crops, tend to livestock, and set up trade. They build communities and carve out homes in the ruins of the old world.

I guess in simpler terms, I like Fallout because it’s a hopeful display of humanity persevering. War may never change, but men can. I think a light in the dark is always going to get me, especially when that light is a spark trying to illuminate an entire sea of darkness. That spark may be hard to find, but goddamn how impressive is it that it’s trying so hard against all odds.

[whompthatsucker1981]

real actual nonhostile question with a preamble: i think a lot of artists consider NN-generated images as an existential threat to their ability to use art as a tool to survive under capitalism, and it's frequently kind of disheartening to think about what this is going to do to artists who rely on commissions / freelance storyboarding / etc. i don't really care whether or not nn-generated images are "true art" because like, that's not really important or worth pursuing as a philosophical question, but i also don't understand how (under capitalism) the rise of it is anything except a bleak portent for the future of artists

thanks for asking! i feel like it's good addressing the idea of the existential threat, the fears and feelings that artists have as to being replaced are real, but personally i am cynical as to the extent that people make it out to be a threat. and also i wanna say my piece in defense of discussions about art and meaning.

the threat of automation, and implementation of technologies that make certain jobs obsolete is not something new at all in labor history and in art labor history. industrial printing, stock photography, art assets, cgi, digital art programs, etc, are all technologies that have cut down on the number of art jobs that weren't something you could cut corners and labor off at one point. so why do neural networks feel like more of a threat? one thing is that they do what the metaphorical "make an image" button that has been used countless times in arguments on digital art programs does, so if the fake button that was made up to win an argument on the validity of digital art exists, then what will become of digital art? so people panic.

but i think that we need to be realistic as to what neural net image generation does. no matter how insanely huge the data pool they pull from is, the medium is, in the simplest terms, limited as to the arrangement of pixels that are statistically likely to be together given certain keywords, and we only recognize the output as symbols because of pattern recognition. a neural net doesn't know about gestalt, visual appeal, continuity, form, composition, etc. there are whole areas of the art industry that ai art serves especially badly, like sequential arts, scientific illustration, drafting, graphic design, etc. and regardless, neural nets are tools. they need human oversight to work, and to deal with the products generated. and because of the medium's limitations and inherent jankiness, it's less work to hire a human professional to just do a full job than to try and wrangle a neural net.

as to the areas of the art industry that are at risk of losing job opportunities to ai like freelance illustration and concept art, they are seen as replaceable to an industry that already overworks, underpays, and treats them as disposable. with or without ai, artists work in precarized conditions without protections of organized labor, even moreso in case of freelancers. the fault is not of ai in itself, but in how it's yielded as a tool by capital to threaten workers. the current entertainment industry strikes are in part because of this, and if the new wga contract says anything, it's that a favorable outcome is possible. pressure capital to let go of the tools and question everyone who proposes increased copyright enforcement as the solution. intellectual property serves capital and not the working artist.

however, automation and ai implementation is not unique to the art industry. service jobs, manufacturing workers and many others are also at risk at losing out jobs to further automation due to capital's interest in maximizing profits at the cost of human lives, but you don't see as much online outrage because they are seen as unskilled and uncreative. the artist is seen as having a prestige position in society, if creativity is what makes us human, the artist symbolizes this belief - so if automation comes for the artist then people feel like all is lost. but art is an industry like any other and artists are not of more intrinsic value than any manual laborer. the prestige position of artist also makes artists act against class interest by cooperating with corporations and promoting ip law (which is a bad thing. take the shitshow of the music industry for example), and artists feel owed upward social mobility for the perceived merits of creativity and artistic genius.

as an artist and a marxist i say we need to exercise thinking about art, meaning and the role of the artist. the average prompt writer churning out big titty thomas kinkade paintings posting on twitter on how human made art will become obsolete doesnt know how to think about art. art isn't about making pretty pictures, but is about communication. the average fanartist underselling their work doesn't know that either. discussions on art and meaning may look circular and frustrating if you come in bad faith, but it's what exercises critical thinking and nuance.

[artbyblastweave]

So on balance I generally do enjoy Mark Millar, and a big part of why I enjoy Mark Millar is that a lot of his superhero stuff demonstrates the same awareness about the genre that Worm does- the sense of an unstable equilibrium, that the center cannot hold in the superhero universe as typically presented. Jupiter's Legacy, Super Crooks, Old Man Logan, Wanted, The Ultimates. Arguably Civil War. I have a whole other post buried in my drafts about how that bleak throughline keeps cropping up in his cape work. Specifically in his cape work, also- the man has written a lot of lighthearted, at times almost cloyingly sincere and optimistic one-off miniseries in other genres. Starlight: The Return Of Duke McQueen, Huck, Chrononauts, Beyond. In tension with this cynicism about the capes is the fact that he also clearly believes that superheroes are really cool, and on some fundamental level a really deeply noble and empowering idea. Even Wanted, which is probably the most thoroughly tasteless thing of his that I've read all the way through, I recall as having had this interesting subtext of anger over the fact that there's an audience for a superhero work as cynical and grotesque as Wanted. ("Fine. We took all the whimsy and wonder and derring-do you claim to have outgrown out back and shot it. The corpse is cooling. Are you happy yet? Dark enough yet? Mature enough yet? This is what you wanted right?") Anyway, I think Kick-Ass the comic suffers gigantically from a failure to break in one direction or another, in regard to that tension. It gets very, very close to saying useful and interesting things about the genre at several points but keeps undercutting itself by transforming back into the object of its own attack. There's this initial line of questioning, right, which is, "what kind of person, in real life, might actually try this? How would it go?" And the comic has some compellingly miserable answers to that question! Everyone in costume is chasing the same power fantasy, clinging to the idea of being somebody. Dave is, in his own words, motivated by "the right combination of loneliness and despair," and he's not competent. He alternates between minor wins and brutal hospitalizations, the first two issues and change is just the world punishing him for being dumb enough to try this, and for the most part he's a LARPer, a self-identified asshole. Red Mist is a rich kid playing with his father's money. Big Daddy and Hit-girl are framed as the "real deal", genuinely competent in their ability to dish out violence, and the comic to some extent has the self-awareness to recognize that people who were actually any good at this would be even more horrifying than the LARPers. The Reveal that Big Daddy was an accountant- that he made up a tragic backstory and made his daughter a human weapon in order to pursue an escapist fantasy- genuinely lands like a meteor! But it fucks it up, because it also needs to be cool, cool enough to keep our attention, and so it pulls an about face. The horror of Hit-girl gets subsumed by the realization that she's also the coolest thing in the whole book, almost loadbearing in terms of having actually cool and interesting things happen on-panel, and so the end of the book turns into the exact kind of superviolent revenge story it was initially skewering as unrealistic and disconnected from the much more grounded grief and loss Dave is experiencing at the start of the book. Dave's costumed escapades goes from being an obviously stupid and egotistical attempt to claw back control of his life to... an actual method by which he claws back control of his life, and not in a way that feels terribly well-earned!

The sequels double down on this- alternating between "in real life this would be cheap and stupid and tinged with anticlimax" and "woooo! Let's ape Tarantino until something cool happens!" and honestly, that feels less worthy of analysis because what I'm pretty sure happened there is that the movie blew up and created A Demand For More Kick-Ass. In general what it feels like fundamentally happened here is that you ask, "what if superheroes were real," you land on the answer of "they'd look stupid, be stupid and die badly," but what does that leave you with? It's not like that wasn't the obvious answer already and it's definitely not eight issues of material. He can't pull the trigger on having everyone involved die badly in meanspirited ways to drive the point home, and he never quite threads the needle back to the reconstructive middle ground he badly wants the book to inhabit, the "real heroes work in soup kitchens and look out for their neighbors" area. Things just happen.

That said, the gag about the astroturfed swear-word "Tunk" is fantastic. 10/10, no notes

[ichangedmymind2]

This is Lily Orchard's world. And every day we suffer the consequences

I've been thinking. I think why I can't stop thinking about her is that what kind of person would Lily be if she wasn't abused as a child. There is tons of reasons to dislike or even hate this woman. But what I can't shake is how the more you learn about this person the more you understand how fundamentally broken they have been for a very very very very long time. There is hardly any 'person' there so much as the collective projected angst of a very damaged individual who is doomed to relitigate the terms of her despair in public for the rest of her life.

Some observations I would note in regards to her and how people react to her is that:

She wants to be hated. This is her way of controlling. This is her 'one weird trick' to regain any semblance of power in any situation. One could note how her entire persona is designed like a series of landmines to trip over rather than something cultivated in a constructive manner to define her as a person so much as new arms to bear to cudgel others. Or, they just end up that way even if loosely/entitely justified.

She lies a lot, but the lies from asserted ignorance and just plain stupid lies blend together. Its one of the strangest things about her is that all her lies are not even creative or specifically pernicious to her financial benefit so much as tools to 'protect herself' psychologically. Her lies about the creator of Steven Universe is a great example, its not enough that she hates the show for an obviously intense personal reason (She simply cannot accept that people like Steven exist, even in fiction) it also has to have been made by a literal racist nazi worst person ever. She is quite frankly, really bad a lying and at grifting or even plagerism. But I think its more coincidental to her as a person, not that she is incapable of it. Probably one of the stranger possible examples being her lifting ideas from incest writers for her own work

Speaking of which, I think the way she handles her own kinks/fetishes are interesting. She could just be honest about it? But why would she, its a double bind. Hiding it, dancing around it, lying about it, turning the weakness into a strength by lying about it. It all makes sense given how she is stigmatized. I think her having kinks is the least interesting thing about her, but how she has to manage it, becoming this weird dance over the years and lying about it is pretty bleak. She can have it both ways, but because of who she is as a person, this will never be.

She is quite possibly the 'most online' (negative) a person can be. To her the internet as a space is nothing more than a pallate/medium to express herself with and we are here to suffer the consequences. But the dark twist being is that she is OLD internet, she is eldritch tier internet user thats been here for so long that her infamy outpaces the reality of her as a human being. She seen it all! Yet she is still relentlessly unchanged, perfected even! The same exact problems, the same exact person.

Why do I care so much? I was nice to her, and treated much the same as any other person who she would easily discard in her rueful conquest. But also I feel like a lot of folks do not really understand her at all. They just see an exceptionally toxic hateable person. Which she is, but when I keep asking "If she wasnt like this, what kind of person would she be" and it made me realize that so many are brought low by this huge defensive reactionary facade she has built over the years. We are all in a way made victim of her as she simply refuses to grow and change as a person, yet she keeps existing and causing the same exact frictions over so many years.

As such here are the main mistakes I think people make in dealing with her:

Treating her as a larger threat than she actually is. I think this is a big issue, as it only serves to bury the reality of how pathetic she actually is.

She is really good at bringing the worst in others. This is probably one of the more concise patterns, but its by design. But a very good example of how broken and anti-social she is. Making other people writhe in negativity bringing others down to her level is her perfected artform to an extent.

She hates herself more than any single person could possibly imagine. Its not uncommon for abused people, they can become the penultimate version of a 'hurt person hurting people' in so many ways. But the types of abuse and the affect can create all manner of intense and strange anti-social behaviors.

Its more that last one is why I think I am skeptical of the hate campaigns when Lily is the one upping the stakes when she could simply not. She knows how the 'internet works'. She did the copyright strikes because she wants to be hated, to cause conflict on purpose. Is why I dislike Sai and her approach to Lily because its what Lily wants, to be hated in that way, to be monstered and othered so she has no reason to grow or change.

I think the dynamic between her and Courtney and her family is a bit too low a blow to articulate on. But! the main question that would solve any question about what happened is: Is Lily lying about the sexual abuse from Courtney?

But thats it really. I guess this is more of an errant stream of conciousness on my part. Mostly because what is Lily really? Just a boring nerd. I think?

[scullysflannel]

I really do think having to watch the Doctor host a happy little backyard dinner party hammered home how uninterested I am in emotional stability on Doctor Who. Donna is my favorite companion and the Tenth Doctor era was the peak of my obsession, but the idea that this should mean I want to see them “happy forever” is so boring as a tv fan and so insidious in the context of this specific show, which has been built on the inevitability of change for 60 years. the thing about Doctor Who is that it’s optimistic and aimed at children and endless and therefore full of loss. it has to be both. and not to be presumptuous, because I understand that Russell T. Davies is grieving his husband, but in the long run I would think anyone who’s grieving will get more out of watching the Doctor carry on and find new people to care about than they will out of watching a fantasy where the Doctor regresses to an old face and magically gets a second chance with a friend he once lost.

in the language of the show, this happiness isn’t just narratively cheap but also kind of terrifying. this is the kind of thing we see in dream sequences that are killing the characters slowly. watching the show do it for real (unless we're really in for a surprise) is unnerving. it also asks us to forget something fundamental about Tennant’s Doctor: that no matter how human he seemed, he wasn’t. the tragedy that energizes his story is that he’s so close to the life he thinks he wants and he can’t have it. and it’s a two-way tragedy, for both him and his companion, because at different points they both believe the lie he’s telling himself (that he’s basically human), only to be hit with the reminder that he’s still so alien. he wants to not have to watch his friends grow old and die without him. he doesn’t want a mortgage.

what makes Tennant’s Doctor interesting is that his humanity also comes with a god complex: cruelty, pettiness, callousness, cluelessness, ego. he loves Rose, but he likes the idea of settling down with her more because it’s unattainable. and Donna — she was going to travel with him forever! he took her away from a boring life. it’s nice that she’s happy with the life she has now, even if it undercuts the tragedy that made her original ending so visceral, but I think making her so settled that she even domesticates the Doctor is overcompensating. it’s sanding down that tension again — that great tension between romanticizing everyday things like getting a taxi home and romanticizing running away from a life that makes you feel unimportant. again, the show has to be both. all the best dynamics in Doctor Who, at least new Who, are the ones that treat traveling with the Doctor as a kind of addiction; you have to feel the intoxication of it in order for the pain to hit.

on that note, I don’t get the suggestion that Donna could have given up her metacrisis energy this whole time and that Tennant’s Doctor just doesn’t understand that because he’s male presenting. Donna is the one who didn’t give it up 15 years ago. if she always could have given up that power, then the only explanation for why she didn’t is that she couldn’t bear to go back to being “ordinary,” and of course the Tenth Doctor, who can't let anything go (“I don’t want to go”), would never think to let it go either. it’s about personality. the idea that it all comes down to the Doctor’s current gender presentation is a bleak vision of regeneration, where everything one regeneration experiences, in terms of how their body affects their privilege, is immediately forgotten once they change. Fourteen isn’t exactly Ten, but bringing back Tennant as the Doctor and treating him like Ten (who moved through the world with the privilege of a white man) meant that the show didn’t really get to explore the aftermath of the Doctor presenting as a woman. am I meant to believe that their experience taught them nothing? rude to Jodie! and does that imply that everything Ncuti’s Doctor is about to experience isn’t going to affect how future Doctors understand race at all? isn’t that sad?

all this in an episode that doesn’t even mention Martha! the show’s first Black companion is now the only Tenth Doctor companion who doesn’t get her own personal Doctor, and they can’t even say her name. it’s been said on here before, but this isn’t about whether Martha would “want” her own Doctor (he’s her friend! I think she’d want to see him, although as this post puts it, she’d “rehome him within a week”). she’s a fictional character. it’s worth asking why Martha Jones was written in such a way that when she gets ignored, people will rise up to defend it as a sign of her independence. 

and it's unfair that Ncuti didn't get the normal regeneration sequence. even his TARDIS is a duplicate. the bi-generation feels like it leaves the door open for people to treat Ncuti’s Doctor as less legitimate. granted, those people would probably take any excuse, so you can't write for them. but as fun as it was to see the two Doctors team up (they should kiss), and as much as Ncuti is serving already, he shouldn't have had to share the spotlight. at minimum the bi-generation should have resolved by the end of the episode. now David Tennant is just looming out there until who knows when. also, the thing about sending Fourteen off to “deal with his trauma” is that it implies that Fifteen already did that, and I don't want that. the Doctor has to be haunted. what is Doctor Who about if not running from your past at warp speed? yeah, Ncuti’s Doctor should be at the club, but regeneration always gives the Doctor enough of a fresh start to have fun for a few episodes before the horrors hit; I don’t think he needed to be fully healed before hitting the club. 

when Jodie’s era kicked off we spent every week waiting for her to snap. full disclosure, I haven’t seen the Flux season, which apparently put her through it, but I don’t think her Doctor was ever allowed access to the full range of personality flaws that other Doctors have, which was unfair to her and also less fun to watch. I don’t want to see that happen to Ncuti’s Doctor; he deserves to be burdened, prideful, angry, rude, whatever. we can’t let the Doctor fall victim to the therapy-speak epidemic on television. he should get to be alien, and I want to see him snap.

[drdemonprince]

Dear dr. Price,

A follower pointed out your book Unmasking Autism to me and said it was a life-saver. I have put in on my birthday wishes list.

According to lists on the net, I am supposed to reflect on whether I am behaving in a way that is aims at others' needs or my own and so on. This is precisely my problem. I am closer to 50 than to 40 and have probably been masking for over 40 years. How can I know what type of behaviour is learnt? What is ingrained? Is it possible that I have passed the window where I can still find natural conduct?

If you could see your way clear to answer my concern, I should be much obliged.

Kind regards,

Maarten

Hi Maarten!

Thank you so much for your question. While I understand deeply the desire to try and sort out which elements of yourself are naturally you and which elements are learned behaviors linked to a lifetime of trauma, in actuality there is no separating them. There is only one you. You have only lived one life, and it was the (at times very challenging and invalidating) life that you had. Humans are social beings, it almost makes as little sense to thing of humans in individual terms as it does to discuss ants without talking about colonies. Who we are is social, interpersonal, relational, and interactive.

The good news about that, however, is that who we are and how we feel can change, so long as our circumstances do. To some degree, masking and inhibition may always feel natural to you. I've been utterly fixated on unmasking both personally and professionally for years now, and while I've opened up a lot and learned many communication skills, my default mode of operating is still always to clench up. I will probably carry that reflex inside me for all of my life. That reflex has helped me. That reflex has saved me a great many times. It's just also hurt me and cost me a ton. And these days I try to accept all of that, and accept myself as the mutable, fragile, self-protective, sensitive being that I am.

I think it is far easier to focus on small behaviors and desires (and not-desires) than it is to worry too much about who we "really are" who we "would have been" in a completely alternate reality where we hadn't suffered the experiences that we have. Thinking about a fully liberated and unfiltered alternate self is enticing, I fantasize about who I'd have been in a better world all the time, but that person does not exist, and never did, and never ever would have.

Neurotypical are harmed by neuro-conformity pressures too. Capitalism, white supremacy, and the gender binary restrict how all people behave today pretty severely. Nobody lives fully free right now. This might sound bleak, but it's also a fact that unites us, and thinking about it gives me some hope. It helps me realize that I'm not uniquely boxed inside myself and separated from other people -- I'm suffering from the exact same forces that all people do, just in my own way.

I'm not uniquely broken. Neither are you. But we are irrevocably shaped by our life experiences. Instead of trying to change who we are, or find some inner true self, which is a daunting task, I think that instead, we can just practice saying no to things that make us uncomfortable, asking for the changes to our environment that we do need in order to feel comfortable, sharing what we feel, and taking time regularly to take stock of our lives and figure out what it is that we want and we wish for. It starts small.

Little phrases like "I don't like that," "I don't feel good," "I'm not interested in talking about that," "I'm going to go do something else," "Here's what i believe," "I don't agree with you," "I really need [thing]," and "I want to build a life with more room for [thing] in it" are some places to start. Truly, the more you get in the practice of saying such things, the better you get at noticing how you are feeling, and the more feelings and wants and not-wants you become able to self advocate for. It's not about becoming a new person, or throwing off the mask in one go. It's a skill, and anyone can develop a skill. You might as well make the rest of your life better. No amount of suffering in the past condemns you to needing to feel shitty about your desires forever.

[mobileleprechaun]

oubgh Tagged Game

I was kindly tagged by the eminent @femboty2k, thank you so much for tagging me!

This one is about introducing yourself with the following:

- One tv show

- One movie

- One album

- One game

However, she went the extra mile and did two each, so I'll do that as well!

TV Shows: Whatever Happened to Robot Jones and Making Fiends

I'm not entirely sure what it says about me that both of my picks here were ill-fated and obscure cartoons cancelled before their time, but I certainly hope it's nothing premonitory about the trajectory of my life!

Robot Jones was a full-on obsession for me when I was young. It's about a robot child having to attend junior high in the 1980s so he can understand humans better, and all the awkwardness that goes along with that. Something about it struck such a chord with me – probably the fact that the protagonist was a sheltered misfit who couldn't understand his peers. I was homeschooled until college, and all of my interactions with other kids were painfully awkward along those lines, so I guess I just felt seen?

It's a weird show, and the tone is pretty bleak. He's mercilessly bullied by both peers and authority figures alike, and episodes rarely ever end with anything working out for him. Maybe I felt seen by that too. It's kind of fucked up, and I'm 70% certain bits of it didn't age well, but for what it's worth, people still really enjoy the one episode where RJ comes to the conclusion that he's nonbinary. It's also lost media at this point, so there's an inherent rewarding feeling that comes with being able to find it at all.

Making Fiends is also pretty bleak, but in a very silly and fun way. It's about a town that lives in mortal terror of Vendetta, this extremely cruel grade-schooler who is able to make monsters (fiends) that can serve her every whim. However, her nasty little gangster baby life is turned upside down when a very dense friendly girl named Charlotte comes to town, and Vendetta finds herself terrorized for a change.

I was obsessed with this one too and was a young stan of its creator. I love that it's about two girls just being dumb as all hell and having weird and fucked up things happen to them. Nobody's boy-crazy, either – both of these little gremlins just get to be people. Neither of them are particularly deep in terms of characterization, but they're so much fun to have a romp with, and they get to fill that slapstick-heavy role that's usually only reserved for male characters. Also, the humor is super fucked up and morbid, but the way everything is delivered will just keep you hooting. It's definitely less emotionally exhausting than Robot Jones.

Movies: Chicken Run and The End of Evangelion

Weird pair, I know!

Chicken Run is another of my childhood obsessions that persists to this very day. It's a fun and surprisingly poignant tale of an insurrection on a farmyard and the brave hens (and one mostly useless rooster) who make it happen. Aardman just knocks it right out of the park with the quirky designs of their ensemble cast and just how rooted it feels in its 1950s setting. The villains are fun, the heroes are fun, somehow Mel Gibson doesn't completely ruin it, and I dunno, it's just very cozy. I could rewatch it over and over again. Also, Mac is best girl.

End of Evangelion is not cozy at all! It's the fucked up and horrifying ending to a fucked up and horrifying anime, and it pissed a lot of people off at how mean-spirited it felt, but like... it's a fucking masterpiece, like it goes incredibly hard. Every element of it – the music, the voice acting, the visuals – it's all stunning, like all the way through. Yes it's sad and upsetting and very strange, but that's just how the anime went. None of it feels out of place, either. I can go back and watch Episode 1 again and not feel like EoE mismatches tonally. I still think about it on the regular, and I still bop to Komm sußer Tod.

Albums: Spirit Phone and Act II: The Father of Death

I've picked these two because these are both albums I always feel the need to listen to as a whole rather than piecemeal. There's some other amazing albums that I feel dirty not including here, but these two are just the ones that hit me the hardest as albums, and I have to be fully honest with myself about that.

Spirit Phone came into my life when I desperately needed it. I had just lost my youngest brother and was trying to find my first apartment after years of being my parents' adult subject. It was such a heady and wonderful thing for me, all these skrunkly-ass songs about the occult and the inherently fucked up nature of American culture. I played it on repeat for almost a solid month, and it gave me the strength and optimism I needed to muscle through the most terrifying time of my life. It's still such a cozy and wonderful thing for me, and I thank Neil Cicirega from the bottom of my heart for putting it together.

The Protomen: Act II wasn't something that got me through a crisis, but it was a fucking crazy-ass bop and a solid goddamn chaser to their first album, which I also love listening to as a whole. The story of Thomas Light's descent into living as a pariah in his own city after his own friend turns on him is masterfully told by this band, and every track hits like a truck. The whole subplot with Joe was incredible, too, and that guy who sings as Wily is so fucking good, and Panther is ridiculously versatile... I still get goosebumps thinking about Breaking Out. Gorgeous album through and through.

Games: Sonic & Knuckles Collection and Cave Story

It might be cheating to include the whole collection as one game, but I don't give a phuck!!!!

I was like 7 or 8 when I got the Sonic & Knuckles collection on CD-ROM, and holy fuck, y'all. I knew I loved The Adventure of Sonic the Hedgehog on TV, but getting my hands on that game about spoiled me rotten. It just felt so perfect in every way. Having gone back and played earlier entries in the Sonic series really gives me an appreciation for how well they perfected the formula here, it's just so smooth and refined. Going back through each stage playing as Sonic, Tails or Knuckles is so good, too, like you really get a feel for how much there is to explore with their different styles of movement. I just love it so much, it's so cozy and so jammed to the brim with pure fun.

Cave Story was something I encountered later in life, and was pleasantly surprised to find as a free download. I was not adequately prepared for what a ride this humble-looking little platformer would be. God, it was such a wonderful challenge, sometimes frustrating, but always so compelling as to keep me coming back. And what a beautiful story, too, and what a gorgeous setting. I full-on cried at many points. Pixel just put his whole heart and soul into this game, and it's so sickening and unfair that he got fucked over by that shitty licensing deal. If you haven't already, please show this man's work some love. It went hard enough that when Undertale was first announced, I assumed it was going to be a Cave Story fangame. 😝

waow that's media!!! I must tag four people; @sammytoesis, @fetus-cakes, @johannesson and @badgrlebie. But if you wanna do it too, DO IT!!!!

[hero-israel]

The attack 100% will push Israeli society further right, further toward mistrust, trauma, and retribution. The attack will also 100% fail and have devastating repercussions for the people of Gaza. Maybe the Hamas losers know this, maybe they intended it to happen. A violent chaotic cathartic release with no real plan or attempt at achieving any kind of goals... were they that delusional? Did they think they would start the next Arab Israeli war and bring Israel down?

Or were they fully intending to fuel their own martyr complexes and to martyr hundreds of unwilling Palestinian civilians in a desperate attempt to make Israel lose the optics war? It's probably this one, and it only proves that they are LOSERS, they are sad pathetic losers and their greatest triumph is shooting grandmas and trying to capture Jewish sex slaves to prove what big manly men they are, while the women and children in their towns are being bombed to pieces. Disgusting pieces of shit.

But about that optics war... Mass executions and rapes and kidnappings by Hamas militants have done more to repair Israel's image in normal (I repeat and emphasize: NORMAL) people's eyes than any amount of sharing graphs and documents and educating people, or state sponsored tweets could ever have. This is the true Mask Off moment for Hamas and Gaza. Even antizionists are taking to social media to say "stop the violence innocent people are dying this is so bad we stand with the people of Israel." Like this is such an utter disaster for Gaza it boggles the mind how they greenlit this attack.

Like I truly think if Bibi orders a ground invasion most people aside from internet leftists and Arab nationalists would be alright with it. I hope he doesn't, I think a measured and careful response is crucial right now, but that's how badly Hamas fucked up whatever goodwill they had today.

It will push Israeli society further toward the right in terms of military / security crackdown and generally bleak attitudes towards coexistence with Palestinians (moreso). I would like very much to believe that Israelis will notice that the current government of right-wing channer trolls is totally talentless and lazy and that their incompetence and unnecessary cultural divisionism directly made possible this tragedy, and will then replace the right-wing channer trolls with right-wing skilled leaders. Note that by "right-wing skilled leaders" I no longer include Netanyahu, who should be as permanently discredited as the rest of them. The structure of Israeli electoral politics has let me down before, and I don't think Netanyahu has enough human decency to resign when he so blatantly ought to.

We are going to see something in Gaza that we haven't seen before; there is really no choice. I'm just not sure what that "something" will be.

I've seen several posters on Jewish Reddit argue for a full land invasion and lasting re-occupation of Gaza. This would be a Carter-Iranian-hostage-rescue level catastrophe. Gaza has been prepping for an Israeli land invasion for 15+ years, it is the basis of multiple Hamas and PIJ battle plans, we can assume every street and alley is boobytrapped and every window can hold an RPG launcher and every room can become a hostage site. Lasting military incursion with boots on the ground seems doomed to fail - and then if it succeeded it might be even worse, Israel would have to bleed its military and economic resources into managing the day-to-day lives of 2 million Palestinians. Of the options for eliminating Hamas, that would be the one that was worst for Israel in the immediate term, so it is the one I don't expect. Other options are terrible too, but less so for Israel itself.

To be very frank, I'd almost rather they skip Hamas and launch a decapitating strike on Iran directly. Terrible repercussions of course, but it avoids the usual script, the obvious boobytrap aspects, and puts a final "bookmark" on the threats that both Hamas and Hezbollah could represent.

[dyvimwhitehart]

i gotta be the first to ask: ur wiz’s relationship w/ dyvim

send me an npc and i'll describe my wizard's relationship with them!

i never could have seen this coming tumblr user khrysalisposting...

with amber: to put it simply, dyvim is the second great love of amber's life and the one who restores her faith in the world/in her humanity. like many young wizard ocs, amber is at her lowest point when she enters khrysalis due to the fall of azteca. as if the loss of an entire world (and its denizens/culture) was not harrowing enough, amber's long-term boyfriend and arc 2 questing sidekick, a ravenwood classmate and master diviner named ethan, also perishes while trying to help aztecans escape. during a long, bleak break while the council of light finds a way to khrysalis, amber resigns herself to being alone forever. she resigns herself to, essentially, just becoming a weapon of war.

enter dyvim. the last thing she expects after saving him from roze is for him to stick around as an ally. she, in her isolation and grief, is simultaneously put off and intrigued by his loyalty, gregariousness, and charm. as they travel through the moon cliffs together, he slowly chips away at her walls, and they begin to realize how well they work together. when he is nearly killed by the broodmother, she forges on in his name. when he's able to be revived, she realizes she's in a lot deeper than she anticipated by how relieved she is to see him again. he isn't just another ally to her- as many before him ended up being.

cue amber burying any feelings she has for dyvim beyond gratefulness and friendship as much as she can for the sake of her mission. she can't afford to fail again, and she can't afford to lose another person. of course, this only half works... as they grow so devoted to one another that really anyone can see what's happening between them. still, they have an unspoken understanding not to push the envelope. amber isn't ready, and dyvim knows that. she may never be ready, and dyvim knows that.

before she leaves after morganthe's defeat, dyvim presents her a hand-crafted burrower's sword made with onyx. it's a token to remember him by, and one amber carries with her as her new wand for the future arcs. they keep up correspondence, which just gets more romantically charged with time, especially after they see each other again prior to karamelle. amber tries her hardest to shake her feelings for him, but finally admits to herself post-karamelle that she is in love with him.

she journeys to khrysalis prior to the discovery of lemuria for a burrower festival commemorating morganthe's defeat. during her stay, she and dyvim beat around the bush re: their feelings for a bit, but eventually have a conversation where they discuss what's between them (after amber grows jealous upon hearing he has been courted by others in her absence). amber remarks that, as long as she is embroiled in her work as scion, she cannot in good conscience begin anything. dyvim respects this, and offers to wait for her, which she tells him not to, not wanting to keep him from possible happiness. he waits anyway, even if only absentmindedly, and they keep up correspondence.

their feelings for each other become common knowledge to the denizens of bastion and those close to amber (such as mellori, bat, etc.). still, as of arc 4, they remain a bit more than friends. perhaps a reunion in selenopolis could change things, but that remains to be seen.

putting genevieve under a read more bc this got LONG...

with genevieve: if you're still here, now for something completely different. genevieve and dyvim are... fire-forged friends. to put it quite frankly, she wants to dislike him a lot upon meeting him. she thinks his constant good-natured attitude is annoying, and that he must be putting up some kind of front like everyone else. a lot of this stems from her own narrow worldview, as she believes that no one actually wants to be a hero, they just want the praise that comes with being one. she tries to shake him off in the beginning of their journey through bastion and the moon cliffs, and he makes it very clear that if she's the one that's been sent to save khrysalis, he is not going to leave her alone.

the irony of this is that they have pretty similar fighting strategies. while dyvim is a bit more dedicated/lawful than she, they're both very gung-ho and enjoy charging headfirst into battles. this is how they bond. when dyvim is poisoned, genevieve vows revenge on the bees because she wants to believe that he'd want to be avenged. she goes through the motions of saving him because, while she is self-centered, she knows he has good intel. the first thing he does upon seeing her again is tease her for taking the time to save him, which she thinks is... actually pretty funny.

they have a mutual respect and mutual annoyance of one another that leads to bickering and tag-teaming others alike. when they're in-sync, they're very in-sync. when they're out of sync, it's always a narrowly averted disaster. still, when she goes to leave khrysalis, she tells him that she thinks he should become king of the burrowers someday.

[rottingfern]

OMG EVIL FOLIO… please don’t stop…

For you and for the Stockholm Syndrome anon. pt. 1 here Okay yes because Evil Folio's basement apartment really was meant to be an apartment at first. When he bought the house, it was unfinished - just a whole floor of bare concrete, dust, and rubble - with a sad looking laundry space in the corner. He wouldn't even want to use it for storage in the state it was in, but it was affordable and the rest of the house suited him well enough, and he does love himself a home improvement project to work on when he's off tour.

But then he meets you.

He surprises himself when the first thought of it creeps into his mind. He'd always thought himself a pretty traditional guy in terms of sex and dating: meet pretty girl, court her like a 50s romance with flowers and dates and kindness, fall in love, live out a normal and comfortingly boring relationship. He'd never felt the urge to perform funny stuff in the bedroom, was a staunch advocate for mutual respect at every step of the relationship. But he can sense you're not fully on board with his advances, can feel the metaphorical feet kicking at his chest when his gestures toe the wrong line of friendship, can basically see a thought bubble thinking friend zone above your head; he knows he can never have you, and it breaks him just a bit, because you're what he sees when he pictures the perfect girl to spend the rest of his life with.

And then he takes you down there to show off the finished space, ready to be decorated, and sees you stood there all pretty in his house with only the door at his back to escape. He breaks.

You're unable to accept what Folio's done at first. It's just a prank, maybe something the two of you had joked about the night before. Any recollection of last night is in the wind - along with any context to what this means - with the wax you'd smoked. You always have been a bit of a lightweight with weed, and Folio has always been a stoner. When he comes downstairs a few minutes later, or maybe a few hours - you can't tell the time of day with those damn artificial sunlight panels you'd helped choose - and makes no move to assist.

It's not funny anymore, you try to tell him. He doesn't laugh. He only smiles a smile that twists his face something inhuman, shards of glass glinting in his eyes as he cocks his head, examining you, predator to prey. He does not speak.

The velocity with which you jolt between anger and bargaining gives you whiplash. You can't believe he's done this. It's been days and all he does is silently bring you food. When he looks at you, it's like he's looking through you, or perhaps at you but not at you; it's like he doesn't see you as human. You trusted him! when you trust hardly anyone. He was your best friend! He knew you were taking time off for yourself, that nobody would be searching for you - he planned this! All this time you were sleepwalking in sacrifice of your safety. But then the door rattles and his steps bound down the stairs and you drop to your knees, begging, pleading for release.

What do you want? I'll do anything, I'll stay in the house, just take this chain off! you plead.

He smiles that toothless, insensate smile again. It's so warm in the face of loneliness. I know you better than that. It's the only words he's spoken in a week.

He comes twice a day. You've learned to count that, now.

You contemplate breaking your ankle to free yourself of the cuff, and as much as you try, you only succeed in spraining it. You're craven to hurt yourself too much, even in crisis, even if it would save you.

It is a bleak resignation. What follows is perhaps worse. Or better. You can't decide; decisions take mental space that is currently preoccupied with how to live less.

If your best friend sees no more worth in you than to keep you chained like an animal, perhaps you are one. Perhaps if he's keeping you hidden from the world, then maybe you aren't deserving of the sunlight, aren't deserving of the freedom if he thinks you're only wasting it. You hadn't missed how he used to look at you like you're some prism reflected off a diamond in sunset. If, despite having the highest regard for you of anyone in your life, he thinks you're only worthy of imprisonment, then perhaps he's right. Perhaps you won't be missed.

It's all you think about for weeks, counting the faintly visible brush strokes on the wall across from you. Painting high together really was a bad decision - the wall needs to be repainted.

You don't cry for weeks, until you do: uncontrollable, hysterically heaving sobs that choke you with the effort before they can even be released.

The pressure in your ears must've distracted you because he's suddenly there, standing helplessly with a box of tissues. The couch dips beside you and through the glaze of salt-irritated eyes, you catch his arms outstretched towards you. You fall into his lap; he always was hesitant to touch first.

He wipes the snot from your face as you lie there, fingers brushing through your hair and smoothing it down, just like he always has done. Just like your Folio always did.

[swallowtailed]

palisade 33 !!

this episode fucking whips

so, first thing: labyrinths. the easy association is labyrinth as maze, a place to become lost. but labyrinths can be places to find, as well—paths to follow. you’re supposed to be able to find answers at the center of that kind of labyrinth. (it’s the origin of the term, technically.) which is very appropriate for dust/reflection: once helping people to find understanding, now setting them to wander without a destination. 

feels right that figure questions the dream immediately—of course they doubt their dreams, after clem. and thisbe believes the dream because it confirms her doubts, and cori believes it because it gives her what she wants… fucking heartbreaking.

the dreams all place the dreamers in community, but a hollow kind—community out of context. you’re never alone in a catacomb. (are the afflictions lonely?)

i’m curious in what way this has already happened, considering it’s false (according to gur). do they know that or believe it? (not that there’s historically been much of a difference for them.)

figure’s alternate future being one in which they drive their new life like a stolen car and somehow survive while their crew dies… immediately pulling gur and then cori into the dream with them… their life is so bound up with the blue channel. i’m glad they made it this far.

“gucci got a promotion, and then was assassinated” is so funny. i mean obviously bleak as hell. but hilarious

cori showing up in figure’s dream in their context instead of hers, as a zombie in a wrecked mech, would’ve been horrifying enough to break immersion so i get why the dream didn’t do that but like can you fucking imagine

very fun to see cori fight side by side with elle in her dream. i wonder what elle’s dreaming.

also i’m just obsessed with the way sylvi plays cori—the setup and the swing.

thisbe’s dream is essentially being in the “correct” context, right. she’s farming and working with other thisbes. which is something we know she wants, but it’s fascinating to see what holes exist in that dream—missing the blue channel, foremost.

gonna be interesting to see how brnine tries to break her out! very excited for whatever that scene looks like

biggest concern for the rest of this arc is that i don’t see a clear way out of the dust dreams, and the margin for error is pretty narrow. next ep (which… will be not this week?) is gonna be tense. on the other hand, i like that the clocks tick on character choices rather than rolls—feels like any failure will be earned.

eclectic this ep: brooding over your past mistakes is very noir sleuth. carrying around a first edition alise breka novel is not very classically noir but it is extremely good. also it’s definitely the one about leap

with everything else happening i almost forgot about integrity’s new, uh, hand. it’s probably human size, and it’ll probably grow a human size body, but i’m also imagining brnine returning to find a forty-foot black marble mech curled up in their room like a hermit crab. (also: integrity really does think of itself as a tool in a hand, huh.)

hey, if the train brain got a dust copy, does that mean it’s sentient? what is it dreaming??

i think the one human in muppet palisade should be cori, for the reason that i don’t want muppets to have blood. my secondary proposal would be routine rennari

so glad the flash nautilus is free <3

I Roll With Thisbe

[1indigoisles]

Chapter 1 - Excerpt 6

This one's in Jolene's POV :)

Nobody knows her.

Dear God, why had I said that? Not that it wasn’t true, in a sense. Saying that Scarlett Raynott didn’t trust easily was the understatement of a lifetime. Scarlett had been my best friend and loyal companion ever since we were kids, and even still, I constantly felt as though I didn’t really know all of her secrets; most of them, maybe, but not all.

I pushed that thought away. We, Rowan and I, had bigger things to think about.

Like how Lila and Kenneth Teigen had taken one look at freaking Bleak House and thought, this seems homely, why don’t we move in? Like how they now lived as close to Scarlett and endless danger as they possibly can get. Like how Kenneth had actually seen Scarlett, and recognized her.

Like how the Teigens knew that Knightville existed at all.

If I were normal, I would turn to Rowan, talk about what to do next, maybe even seek assurance that everything would not, in fact, go to hell.

But I was not normal, and you knew you weren’t normal when there was something fundamentally wrong with you and there was no term in psycholgy or any other science in existence that could describe it.

There had been a time when Rowan could bring me comfort and reassurance, with his simple, meaningful words and the thoughtful arch to his brow. But now, it was all I could do to smile and be playful and take up the role sisters should, to keep the pretense, to maintain what we had as siblings. No, Rowan was no longer my sanctuary, the sanctuary he had been when I was young and normal; he was someone who injured me everyday without even realising it, someone around whom I could never be myself, someone who would turn away with disgust if he knew the truth about me.

The second the bell had rung, Kenneth had taken one look at his time-table, muttered a swift “sorry,” smiled apologetically as he did, and bolted. Rowan had looked thoughtfully at Kenneth’s back then, and I could not help but do the same. Kenneth was never meant to be so... human. He was never meant to have a kind undertone to his deep, forest-green eyes, he was never meant to have such a steady set to his face, the kind that would remain the same even if flames of the tallest heights danced on the water of oceans and turned the earth and everyone on it into ash.

I was never meant to like him in the 10 minutes that I knew him.

And as he went, I could not help but notice that he had disappeared around the same corner, where the classrooms began and the main hall ended, as Scarlett had, just moments ago.

I turned to Rowan with a fake smile plastered on my face. “Well, that went well.”

“Spectacularly,” Rowan said seriously, “your acting skills were truly flawless.”

I smiled winningly. I knew he was being sarcastic, but I also knew that going along with his sarcasm threw him. “Why, thank you, kind brother mine,” I said, adding a gallon of sugar to my smile and trying to ignore the sting of the word, ‘brother’.

Sure enough, Rowan narrowed his eyes, and I grinned triumphantly.

But of course, he just had to ask the million-dollar question. “What should we do about Kenneth?”

“No idea whatsoever,” I said cheerfully, as though I wasn’t losing my mind either. On a more serious note, I added, “maybe, for now, we should just keep tabs on Kenneth, what his classes are, where he comes and goes, and try and keep him away from Scarlett in general.”

“So basically stalk him,” Rowan said.

“Got any better ideas?” I asked.

Rowan brow suddenly cleared, and I knew what he was about to suggest. “I could always-”

“No,” I said immediately. “You could never go on for that long. It would drain you.”

And I don’t want to see you like that, I almost said, but held my tongue. It might reveal too much.

Unable to look at him any longer, I turned my gaze back to where Scarlett had disappeared, turning my attention to the issue at hand, and the reasons why the situation was this pressing.

Because everyone in this town knew the name 'Teigen.'

And we knew that name because of the two people who managed to get away.

Taglist: @mayaheronthorn, @jeahreading, @fantasyquinn, @damn-this-transgirl-hella-gay

Hope you like it!!

[electronickingdomfox]

"Dwellers in the Crucible" review

The crucible was for me...

Novel from 1985 by Margaret Wander Bonanno. I almost skimmed this one for mere completionist sake, but can't say I enjoyed it at all. There's nothing wrong with the writing, mind you; in fact, it's probably better than the average TOS novel in that regard. But the content... It's as if the author wanted to make a "darker and edgier" version of TOS, and I don't think it worked very well. Besides, I found it very, veeeery boring.

For starters, remember all those times Kirk tried to persuade some warring planet about the benefits of peace, because humankind, despite its violent past, had finally overcome its worst instincts? Well, it was all bullshit! As it turns out in the novel, the only reason the Federation planets aren't annihilating each other, it's because of the existence of some "Warrantors of Peace". These are close relatives of Federation higher-ups, that keep implanted in their hearts the codes for ultimate weapons. So if some politician wanted the codes for final destruction, he'd have to kill first his own loved one. Peace exists, but mainly thanks to this deterrent. Sounds bleak? There's more.

The main characters are Cleante (a human girl who's the Warrantor for Earth), and T'Shael (a shy, stoic Vulcan woman and the Warrantor for her planet). Together with other representatives, they're kidnapped in a joint Romulan/Klingon plot, to force the Federation into... something (I don't really know what the hell they wanted to accomplish with this kidnapping, or what were the terms for releasing the hostages; the novel isn't clear at all). The Enterprise crew has only cameo appearances, and they just send a spy into Romulan territory to learn where they keep the hostages. Well, Saavik is there (the story is set a bit before The Wrath of Kahn), who's half-Romulan and all that, so obviously, Kirk chooses for this mission... Sulu. Anyway, the spying amounts to nothing, since they don't really solve the problem in the end. And that's about it in regards to the usual crew. They're barely there, but even in those brief appearances, they somehow manage to act out-of-character. The Romulan Commander from The Enterprise Incident (isn't there ANY other commander in their whole empire?) makes also an appearance, and has in fact a greater role in rescuing the captives.

Apart from all this, there's something that really surprises me. Either Bonanno had powerful contacts at Pocket Books, or the editors fell asleep with this one, because I don't understand how it was published at all while the previous novel ("Killing Time") had such problems with censorship. There's a prevalent focus on sex, far more explicit than any other TOS novel before (save, perhaps, some of the worst Bantam titles), and lots and lots of rape attempts or sexual abuse in some form or another, to fairly disturbing levels. Cleante is also blackmailed into a sexual relationship with one of her Klingon captors, to save T'Sharel's life. And the novel (perhaps in an attempt to make it sound less dark) tells us that Cleante is actually kind of okay with this, and ended up liking her abuser a bit... And well, sorry, that makes it sound worse. The Deltans too, are hyper-sexualized, and we're told they need to have sex and maintain physical contact almost at all times (including, apparently, the Deltan child that's kidnapped with his grown-up cousins), lest they die. Now, there was something about Deltan pheromones in TMP but... the whole point was that they just made a celibate oath upon joining Starfleet? And that was no problem at all for them?? I'll also never be a fan of this idea that both male and female Vulcans go through pon-farr (regardless of what later series have established). It runs so, so counter to what's seen in Amok Time with T'Pring...

I'm not going to dissect the plot, since there's not much in the way of events. For most of the story, we just follow the prisoners as their Klingon captors torture or perform sadistic experiments on them. In-between, there are flashback scenes that show how Cleante met T'Sharel in Vulcan, learned many things about her culture, and developed a strong friendship with her. Those parts are perhaps the best, since they develop many things about Vulcan society (while details about Romulans and Klingons, instead, are borrowed from the novels "My Enemy, My Ally" and "The Final Reflection", respectively).

To summarize, this is at times a pretty dark, depressing story, and left a bad taste in my mouth. Above all, because this is the last place I'd have expected to find such content. Granted, TOS had its own "torture episodes" (The Empath and Plato's Stepchildren) but... I don't know, this story seemed to me far worse than those episodes, which I in fact liked. It may have been because of novels like this one, that Pocket Books got all Draconian with publishing rules in the 90's: no focus on original characters in detriment of the original crew, no explicit sex, no developments about the "Vulcan Way" beyond canon, etc.

Spirk Meter: 6/10*. There's a scene where Kirk invites Spock into his cabin, right after getting out of the shower, and having barely covered with a towel, as if that was a normal thing for them. Besides, Cleante and T'Sharel, with their close relationship, mentions of t'hy'la and sacrifices for each other, are obvious placeholders for Kirk and Spock. At the end, when Kirk and Spock give them advice about how to keep a relationship between a human and a Vulcan, it really sounds like an old married couple counseling some newlyweds. Moreover, the parallelism is made explicit by the narrative. Loses points, though, because using two throwaway characters to portray Spirk instead of the originals, feels like a safe screen, and not a very ballsy move. There's also this pervading "no homo" disclaimer, for both sets of characters; either by reminding us of how much Cleante likes men, or having Kirk lusting after Cleante just after meeting her... (you know, this girl who could be his daughter, and also just came out of a lot of abuse... ugh!).

*A 10 in this scale is the most obvious spirk moments in TOS. Think of the back massage, "You make me believe in miracles", or "Amok Time" for example.

[bigsleeps]

podcast notes

it is always so jarring to hear people call him "matt healy" and not "matty healy"

"i could live here" (about LA) "it's so optimistic and yet so bleak" "it's a really intense place; when i'm in new york for example, i don't feel this emotional tension push and pull. whereas in los angeles ive always felt a real kind of dissonance between how I feel and what the environment is like."

"i'm here because i'm working. i'm really lucky that so many people want me involved with their records [...] i've got SNL next week. i'm really trying to embrace being on the road. i've been on the road for 10 years, and i think it happened when we were so young and you can't really take it at face value and i just got in this way of touring. i've always ... just like a human, i wanted everything. i wanted a bit of a domestic life, i wanted a long term comfortable relationship, i wanted the touring business to be really good, i wanted our records to be successful. a decision for something is always a decision for something else."

this is an actual conversation between him + bret!! like you can tell matty is rly interested in what he has to say and it's like a proper back and forth!

"i remember getting into your work, for me, was the same as getting into velvet underground [...] the first time i'd seen a book that was cool was less than zero. i was a teenager, not able to put this book down. i didn't get that. i wanted to read that! and then bret easton ellis, those words were kind of naughty, i knew there was something in that that was subversive or irreverent or i wasn't supposed to be looking at and that was magical to me. [...] sure i'd heard of clockwork orange, things that felt quite similar to something punk, or something like that"

"there's an element of buying into the whole world we build [...] it's why we won't have a number one single, but we'll sell out like three nights at the garden. there's a completely different emotional exchange that's going on."

"i remember being struck in a similar way [about the stranger by camus]. there was something about the way that character operates, there's this deep existential dread that materializes in what feels like quite superficial stuff."

"did you feel any trepidation about appearing on podcasts? [...] what are your feelings about the interview?" “The longform context of podcasts allows you to have context, so you can say This is how I really, really feel. Give me a minute, give me some space. Doesn’t really work on Tiktok or Twitter, because they want the moment, or the condensed version of what you’ve said. There’s a couple of ways I think about this, because obviously this is presented to me as … this kind of desire to be authentic, and also just do what I love, but also be on a platform where certain things are expected of me. It’s difficult, because coming from punk — and when I say punk, I’m coming from middle class in the UK, my parents when I was growing up were like jobbing actors, not massively successful. Not hands to mouth, kind of a normal middle class upbringing just my parents were actors. So there’s that aspect of my life. And I always grew up around fame. I saw where some of the values were, where the benefits were. I saw where the trappings were. I wasn't interested in fame, I knew that. Because I started in like, punk bands and stuff like that — I think if you come from where we come from, you're taught in an alternative scene, if you're into records, into books, you should kind of relish transgression and be suspicious of conformity. So that's what I thought were the tenets of being young. Like, this is my opportunity now to be transgressive by proxy. Because I'm young, and I'm going to challenge the status quo and not do what grown ups are doing. That's just what I thought being a teenager was. That's kind of changed a bit now, it feels like conformity and all things that like, punk used to define have departed all left leaning spaces. what are regarded as left leaning spaces now are very very anodyne, very void of human context and human fallibility and all the things that make art, writing, really really interesting. and another strange shift, where we used to want artists to be cigarette smoking bohemians outsiders, and now we want them to be liberal academics. I'm not really interested in the politics of a person unless they're political — the idea of not listening to a record because they're right wing, it's a mad concept to me. we all know i don't like the post-woke, anti-woke thing because I think that with wokeness it's just an arm of progressivism and progressivism is trying to do the right thing. it's trying to deal with the stuff we need to deal with, racism, sexism, all the big issues. it's coming from the right place. so this is where i get in trouble, right. cause i operate as a really, really pop star now, and i suppose i don't think about my behavior but if i was to look back at the way i behave, i act more like ... a cult figure. like someone who has their audience, and it doesn't really matter otherwise. so when i'm, let's say, over the past year, getting myself in trouble, in air quotes, i'm literally realizing that in the moment. i'm forgetting that i'm really big. i'm forgetting that i'm, 34. and i'm into this and i'm into that, and these are my favorite movies and cultural references. and there's some 14 year old kid, who has just got the 1975 box tattooed in this really really big place. and i mention this because this goes into two different areas for me — being cancelled, we can look at it like this: if you do something criminal, and then loads and loads of people talk about it on twitter. which is where most people talk, that's just being found out to be a criminal. that's not being cancelled. [...] if you do something that's morally corrupt or wrong, not subjectively like objectively like normally criminal stuff, you'll get cancelled."

"when i was a child, i would go from a room where my parents were my parents, and then they'd leave to go to work and i'd go visit them at work and they'd be a different person with a different accent. [...] we can decide what reality is whenever we want."

"when the 1975 happened, i was like i don't want to be famous, but i am interested in all of these things and i think my meta-ness has gotten worse. you get to the third album and it starts to get very inward. i can't really help it. what is that shift, there was a desire in art, it was everywhere in the 90s. i don't know what counterculture looks like now."

[downwithpeople]

system shock remake

game was good, first and foremost.

it looks stellar. it's a proper immersive sim. the environments look great and are full of all kinds of goodies for you to pick up and subsequently vaporise into a scrap cube. my first encounter with this kind of game was bioshock, of course, but it's incredible how bleak the situation at citadel station has become. there were people still trying to get by in rapture (including the splicers!) but in citadel shodan is grinding up the last pockets of free humans by the time you wake up. the audio logs tell the same story again and again: once upon a time, someone was dying alone. it feels almost pointless to weigh in on system shock's story or theming because it's such a classic. you know shodan, you love shodan, everyone does.

i said that the game was clunky in a way that felt good and i'll stand by that for the most part. when you can fight on your terms combat settles into a fun rhythm of finding cover, shooting cyborg, ducking behind cover. you are not always fighting on your terms and sometimes you get bumrushed by a gorilla tiger. unfortunately part of the clunkiness is moving slow as shit in a way that does make things tense but only because of your rank clumsiness rather than any of the other things the game can do to amp up tension.

the boss fights blow. you fight diego twice and the cortex reaver three times. the solution to both enemies is the same: berserk patch, stamina patch, reaction patch if you're feeling nasty, run up and hit 3-4 times with the laser rapier. it doesn't feel very climactic.

the chronic lack of storage is frustrating. the cargo elevator has a piddling lack of space ensuring that you have to just dump the guns you pick up on the ground then go back to that specific floor if you want to play around with them again. it's not exciting, it's not dramatic, it doesn't build tension. it just means that i'm never gonna use the grenade launcher because it takes up space. the cargo elevator should have just been the size of your inventory, who gives a shit. resident evil did this for years then did it again for the remakes.

i have no idea if the set up for the endgame was in the original or not but jesus christ i hate it. the game takes a swan dive around the time you're poking around on the executive floor and you have to do all the groves. i felt like i was soft-locked on my first run because i didn't have enough batteries to do beta, so i started a new game and let me tell you, the groves don't become more fun on the second run. when it was revealed that i had to go to every single node room and copy down the stinking numbers i nearly uninstalled. what a chore. what a hassle!

cyberspace was fun the first few levels then became tedious every successive level, especially the one that would make my game crash (as i was playing a pirated copy that didn't have the patch). if i do another playthrough i'm just turning that shit off. the puzzles were fine.

in general i think i would have preferred more humanoid enemies rather than robots and more of them like the mantis that got up close and personal instead of hanging back looking for angles.

this was, of course, something that would change in system shock 2, so if and when nightdive gets that out it's gonna be a day 1 for me.