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1moreff-creator · 9 months ago

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Corrigendum - Literature Girl Insane Analysis

Updates After CH2 PT2

More than a year ago, the entire DRDT fandom was thrown on its head when the Literature Girl Insane David MV dropped. And with the help of DRDT Tumblr for mystery finding and interpretations, about a year ago I made “A Full Vivisection of the David MV,” a two and a half hour video going over everything I could. While I still think the video mostly holds up even after CH2 PT2, there’s quite a few things that require an update. Let’s go over them, shall we?

(Is this a correct use of the word "corrigendum"? I don't know, but it's close enough for me to use given the connection to the book theme we got going on :v)

As a warning, though, this post will more or less assume that you’ve watched Vivisection, as some sections might be complete gibberish without the context of my previous interpretations of this thing.

Spoilers up to CH2. CW: Suicide, murder, hanging, CH2 execution, gun violence, blood

I’ll go through the recontextualizations in order of appearance in the MV, though first:

Footnote 14 Solution, Tally 5 Correction

So these two things aren’t related to Part 2, but instead codes already in LGI. Since Vivisection came out, the footnote 14/Roman numeral I code got solved, and I’ve been informed that the solution for tally 5 I hinted at in the video was, while not wrong in the sense that you could arrive at the code using it, not the actually intended solution. Basically I said to pay attention to line breaks, when you’re actually supposed to ignore them, and that meant that one character had to be ignored when in reality the real solution works perfectly fine without ignoring it. Sorry, the line break thing was just commonly repeated advice given on Tumblr at the time and I don’t know why I never double checked how accurate it was :v

The proper solutions can be found in my Secrets Masterpost, so I won’t repeat them here. The Roman numeral I code, attached to Xander via crosswords, returned “I have always looked up to you,” which is perfectly in line with both the things David states in 2-12 and the conclusions drawn about how he feels towards Xander from the MV. As for tally 5, that will be addressed later.

Yoidore Shirazu Lyrics

Another thing that happened was the release of the Elliot MV, Yoidore Shirazu. While the MV itself is not particularly for our purposes, I'm bringing it up to double check a thing with the lyrics.

You might remember that a big chunk of Vivisection was informed by "Language Theory," the idea that some lyrics' translations were specifically changed to fit better with David. This was supported by footnote 5, "As the translation has been intentionally botched in many parts, it should not be considered accurate," as well as the fact that Coleena Wu was listed in the credits, meaning her translation was used as a base for the David MV even though there were many differences between the David MV's lyrics and her version.

Thus, when I saw that Yoidore Shirazu credited Magenetra for the English lyrics, I figured I'd check if it happened again. And yes, there are a few lines here and there where the Elliot version is slightly different from the original translation. While I won't get into all of them in this post, a particularly notable change is "my muddy, obstructed and broken vision of the future, it's not half bad" in the original changing to "my muddy, obstructed, broken future, it's not half bad" in the Elliot MV, for example.

What does this tell us about the David MV? Well, I would argue that if dev decided to change a few lyrics in an MV where word placement isn't as important as in LGI, presumably just to make them fit better with Elliot or because dev just prefers certain wording (I don't see any other reasons the translation would be different), then it's very possible that they also consciously changed a few LGI lines to fit better with David. Maybe. In other words, I believe this is an extra argument to the validity of Language Theory, though I could also see it as an argument against ("maybe dev just doesn't care about sticking so close to the translations they use") :v

Now let’s actually go from the start of the MV to the end, shall we?

Color Connection Theory: Orange

In Vivisection, I said (words more words less) that while in a vacuum orange would probably go to Ace, the context of some of the lines seemed to fit Xander better, with the argument that the trailer for the series assigns orange as the color of the first letter of Xander’s name in a hypothetical class trial. The main argument was that Orange “that guy” appeared next to Green “this guy” (Hu/Teruko, leaning Hu) and Black “you” (possibly Mai), and lumping Ace in with characters who seemed much more important than him at the time seemed… strange.

Since then, Ace has gained a notable amount of importance to this particular part of the story, given the whole blackened thing. As a result, I would argue his inclusion as Orange is now more likely than Xander’s. Take a look at the start of the first chorus, for example, and you’ll see that putting Xander as red (which would be redundant if he’s also orange) makes for a nice, neat reading in the context of this trial.

[Literature Girl Insane] Even if you cry, make noise, shout, go mad the world won’t change!

Arei: “Even if you cry about hurting Eden, you’ll still always be a horrible person.”

Hu: “Even if you make noise to make yourself useful, you’re still the same hopeless child who attempted suicide three times.”

Ace: “Even if you shout, you’ll always be a coward.”

Xander: “Even if you go mad, you’ll always be a good person at heart.”

“No matter what, you people (the world) won’t change.”

What a lovely worldview David has!

There’s also this instance, "let's play!":

[Literature Girl Insane] With anonymous hopes let's play!

Which makes sense given Ace is “playing the killing game” by… killing in the game. Foreshadowing or am I insane? These are not mutually exclusive.

Hand Holding

dev why /affectionate

So, yeah. Arei holds David’s hand the same way Ideal Country Woman does. At least we’ve got near 100% confirmation that the weird line of white pixels is not a glove or anything, but rather a bend of the wrist as expected.

Now we have to ask what Arei’s connection to this mess is. Thankfully, I can at least draw a connection between Arei and the surrounding context of the scene, so we’re not going in completely blind. As a reminder, here’s the interpretation I arrived at for the “tunnel scene” that directly precedes Miss Hand Holding’s appearance.

[Extract from Vivisection] David gives Xander the order to "escape the tunnel," so open himself up to love others. However, "but," loving David is a bad idea, because he's a monster who's better off dead. His opinion, right? So he asks himself, where should Xander escape? "Where to?" In other words, who should Xander like and be friends with?

The connection to Arei should be more or less clear, provided you replace Xander's name with her. There’s two ways to take it. Arei opened herself up to David, “escaped the tunnel on his direction” per say. And given what happened directly after, you could say it led to a “disastrous scene.” Alternatively, if David genuinely wanted to accept Arei’s proposal to be “less shitty together,” if he “escaped the tunnel in Arei’s direction,” that too could be considered a “disastrous scene” because Arei died. That one’s admittedly a pretty big if, butconsidering some of the stuff David says…

David [2-10]: Unless, of course, you were Arei. That girl wanted desperately to prove herself as a "friend" to Eden. And yet she completely lacked any experience with what "friends" were actually like. [...] What could she know about "friendship," after all? Someone like her, who had not once experienced kindness in her entire life up until now? [...] [Breaking down] It's... It's so... Ahaha. It's just so foolish. For someone to take advantage of Arei like that... It's absolutely unforgivable. All she wanted was to change. What a reprehensible person this killer is. I look forward to seeing their painful execution.

Yeah he might have cared.

So, okay, Arei can be connected to the surrounding context so this isn’t completely out of left field, but we still have the possibility of a further connection to the Mystery Girl. As you might recall, this girl is either Diana Chiem (based on certain similarities with David and because revealing Ms Naegi like this would be weird) or Ms Naegi (because Diana isn’t in the Cast List, while Naegi is). I don’t see any immediate connections to Naegi, so we’re left with Diana, who also has little connection.

Of course, the number one takeaway is that Arei reminds David of Diana (or Ms Naegi) in some way, so we can infer Mystery Girl might have supported David despite knowing about his manipulative nature, especially possible since she's positioned in the MV in a way where she's the "(so-called) ideal country." I'm about to ramble a whole lot more about other possibilities, but this is probably what we're meant to get from this.

If we’re allowing a small amount of unhingedness, another connection that could be drawn is between Arei’s family situation and David’s. Arei also had sisters, but they treated her horribly until Arei ruined their lives. Translated to Diana, this could mean that David treated her badly, that she did something to harm him, or both. If their relationship turned bad during Hope’s Peak time, it could explain why Footnote David, presumed to be David before losing his memories, claims she doesn’t exist, when Killing Game David speaks about her openly. Did he try to cut ties with her or something, and tries to pretend she doesn’t exist? Again, unhinged and probably not what the takeaway is meant to be, but we know less than zero about Diana, so it's not impossible.

Alternatively, though, it's worth noting that Mystery Girl and Arei tilt their heads in opposite directions, which could symbolize they're opposites in a way. Taken with the previous interpretations, this could mean either Mystery Girl supported David without knowing about his motive secret (opposite of interpretation 1), or that Arei's family situation is opposite Diana's, aka David had a good relationship with his sister (opposite of interpretation 2).

But speaking of insane, would you believe me if I told you that this visual similarity could, alternatively, be evidence for literally the most unhinged theory in the entire Vivisection? That is, the ridiculous deduction which is arrived at by analyzing the objects in the “suspicious gaps” attached to footnote 11, “I admit to lying. There is no one named OOOOO OOOOO. I am, and always have been, an only child," as well as the Catch-22 quote that comes directly after. Full explanation in Vivisection, but here’s the theory.

[Extract from Vivisection] So, first, I think the footnote is a double lie. David's lying about lying. He does actually have a sister but, for some reason, he's trying to deny it. He's pulling an Arturo: something happened with his sister, and he's trying to distance himself from it. That's where the snake with the blood and the safe come in, with the rope possibly implying a suicide. Remember the family history of depression? [...] So, it's possible Diana died. [...] It's also possible that whatever happened to Diana would have been hinted at in David's motive video. [...] Yeah, that's my explanation for the TV. But, why would this bad thing which happened to Diana be in David's motive video? That would imply David doesn't remember it. That's what the Snowden line could mean. [...]

Yeah remember that insane thing? Well, Arei died by hanging, so it’s possible Diana also died by hanging, aka suicide. This connection doesn’t make the theory any less unhinged, but it’s there.

I hate the things I love, and I love the things I hate

As a refresher, this screen is about Xander, indicated mainly by the references to electrocution literally framing the scene. Nothing’s actually changed here, mind you, I just wanted to point out that it’s interesting that so far, we’ve only seen David talk about Xander with love, and we haven’t really seen the whole “I hate” part yet. Curious to see how that will develop later.

suspicious gaps

Still zero clue, I’m just putting it here because it’s still killing me.

V. Right now, why do you go insane? [Ace's numeral]

We should’ve known, guys… Ace’s numeral is literally right next to Arei’s (IV), not just in song position, but numerically. Incidentally, that means both killers so far have been in multiples of five (Min with X, Ace with V), so, uh, Whit (XV), anything you wanna tell us about CH3?

(I don’t think he’ll be the CH3 killer I’m just being silly :p)

Anyways, the big update here is related to the background text, “a cat has 9 additional lives.” This was already pointed out by treescanfly, and that is that Thanatophobia, Ace’s execution, featured 9 different execution methods (scythe - illness - fire - falling - murder - drowning - lightning - firing squad (execution)). Looks like horseboy really was a catboy all along!

XIII. or [not to be?] [Teruko's numeral]

The interpretation of the quote itself, that it’s a reference to Teruko’s suicidal tendencies, hasn’t changed. It’s only gotten more explicit.

Teruko [2-16]: Killed? I doubt it. As if something so kind could happen to me.

Not much else here, though it seems Teruko might start rejecting the suffering associated with being the Omelas child given her talk with DefaultTV, so that’s fun.

Footnote 6, “[Prayer]”

So what I’m about to say is technically a connection that existed since LGI’s realease, but was just a bit too insane for me to even think about back then.��

Basically, you know how Mai is referred to as a “God” in this video, because of her numeral and the arrow? Well… what if that’s connected to this footnote? And, I don’t know, Min is praying to Mai?

Again, unhinged even for my standards, but with the confirmation that XF-Ture Tech is in some form behind the killing game… anything that puts Min in a weirdly plot relevant position (such as inexplicably having a Mai connection beyond what we saw in Bonus Episode 1) should be at least written down for posterity, if nothing else.

That's my way of saying- Please write about Min, guys. I miss her :(

Footnote 12

“Majority rule” is known to be the fairest method of making decisions for a group. That's why murderers never complained when we voted for them to die.

In Vivisection, I primarily argued the meaning of this footnote through the lens that David may have genuinely believed he had driven Arei to suicide, and thus believed he was the blackened. This turned out to be horribly wrong, so we course correct.

Instead, this simply seems to be what David was hoping would happen when he pulled out the magical girl transformation, albeit stylized with an impossible 16 people vote. The screen that flashes after just seems to reflect what David thinks would actually happen if a blackened won, or just what will happen by the end of the killing game no matter what: “Everyone will be executed.” That’s based on this line:

David [2-12]: 15 lives. Some of them are very dear to you. And your own life as well. Is there anything at all that could be more important to you than those 16 human lives?

Where David talks about sacrificing the full 16 lives of the participants, seemingly without taking into account that the blackened wouldn’t actually die in his plan. Because of that, it’s inferred that David doesn’t actually think the blackened would survive even if they won the trial.

Other than that, the footnote seems to just be a direct reference to what Teruko says in the trial:

Teruko [2-15]: We determine who lives and who dies by a majority vote. In other words, the opinion of everyone who *isn't* you.

Which, uh... makes things easier, so I'm not gonna read into it much further :v

“What is the most important thing?” / Mistaken alphabet

Still no idea what these two things are about, that’s why I’m bringing them up :v

Original

[Extract from Vivisection] So, what I think is the best idea is that all the characters [referring to Color Theory] got the word. [...] I think it makes more sense to relate them to the meaning of "original style" under my interpretation, where "original style" means a change of heart.

The interpretation from Vivisection seems to hold strong, as MonoTV did actually have a “change of heart” of sorts, albeit brief. Hey we take the Ws where we can get them >:D

Two Eyed Xander

The theory discussed in Vivisection that David might hold memories from Hope’s Peak times was seemingly debunked by a tweet from the dev, even if the thread referenced in the link was later deleted. I did say in Vivisection that I didn’t believe the theory even if it was cool, so… we’re chilling.

Of course, though, we did get confirmation that David knew about Xander before Hope's Peak, so the appearance of Xander with two eyes was meaningful! Cool!

Correct/Incorrect (Tally 5)

This is going to discuss the unlisted video linked in the footnotes of Vivisection, which I am well aware most of you probably didn’t watch given the view count. In any case, the thing I said there, which I also said in my Mai post, was that tally 5 could imply David had been involved in the weird revolution against Hope’s Peak that Xander and Mai had going on. While this is still certainly possible, given what was said in 2-12, it seems more plausible that tally 5 actually references David taking on Xander’s dream during the killing game.

David [2-12]: I don't care how low I'll sink, or how despicable I'll have to become. I'll do anything to carry on Xander's ideals by ending this killing game, even if it means I have to dirty my hands.

Yeah, the dream of killing everyone, that one. I say this not only because we know David “threw away his humanity” for it, but also because the image itself shows David holding Xander’s jacket, which would imply this is being said after Xander’s death. Thus, during the killing game.

Numeral IX - Look, aside from that, give me the usual medicine [Levi's numeral]

Well, he sure needs medicine alright! Yeah that’s the best answer I currently have about what in the hell this numeral means, so we’re going with this.

That said, points to Vivisection me, because the “Levi is Jupiter protecting Earth from asteroids” interpretation ended up being pretty solid.

Clock Fork

You know, the theory that Eden was the one to rip out Xander’s eye based on the clock in LGI existed before I made Vivisection, I just… didn’t invlude it. The one unhinged theory I don’t mention ends up being true, huh? Well, there’s that. Not much else to say, if you're deep into DRDT lore you already know the implications of a bloody fork.

And… that’s about that! Although I had quite a few comments to make and things to add, actual corrections were few and far between, which I’m happy about! Mind you, there's probably a few Vivisection statements here and there I'm forgetting about, but still. Hope you enjoyed this little corrigendum, and if you made it this far, you deserve your own Jupiter-Levi to defend you in your time of need! See you later!

#drdt #danganronpa despair time #drdt spoilers #drdt theory #david chiem #arei nageishi #ace markey #i think those are the characters i talked about the most #lgi mv

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beardedmrbean · 2 months ago

Note

[Huey Zoomer Anon]

Hi everyone, I one of the person that give Nunya a lot of tweets he make for posts. And sent that one about how despite our education on the holocaust where we should be able to spot fascism. It A-Okay for South African politicians to make hundreds of people sing “Kill the Boer!” because apartheid and such

*Warning: Passive aggressive sarcastic rant that been building up due to so called “allies” DISGUSTING low standards towards people of African Descent I been noticing as a child and piss me off on tumblr a lot*

Don’t you know? Western education on the Holocaust is meant to teach us about 2D dimensional cartoonist villains of unique white people that targeted marginalized groups!

It not like say you could do your own research beyond what the marxists that control the education systems shows you that the Nazis follow Conflict Theory like many progressive organizations of today do.

Or that Hitler had a victim mentality where he solely blame Jewish who were “well off” during the Great Depression and established a “Eat the Rich” idea among the German population

Wait that sound like something I been hearing since the womb-OH RIGHT!(also I’m not talking about my parents, I meant the black community at large) African Americans been using the “White people oppressed us that why we can’t be better!(let kill them all!)” narrative for decades hence the current anti white black supremacy issues we been dealing with.

They just change “Kill the Jews!” to “Kill the white man!” In their rants

Also…everyone knows black supremacy don’t benefit all black people like how white supremacy don’t benefit all white people right?

I done more for the black community by giving skin care samples (have an aunt who a dermatologist nurse) to inner city kids than BLM EVER don’t for them.

I recall older black Americans pointing out inner city blacks talks about white people the same way Nazis talk about Jews

Even at 13 I was disgusted and felt ashamed for being African American for the extreme racism so many black people have towards white people online.

If not for blogs run by Black people like ChesireintheMiddle and Siryouarebeingmocked. I would think Margot Sanders and other white supremacists saying people of African descent should be exterminated was right given the current state the African American community is in

Sorry for another essay anon everyone…even as a child I never understand people in their late 20’s-50’s have such genocidal hatred towards white people? Do you want to built a better world or continue the cycle of hatred and violence people of African descent?

Don’t you know? Western education on the Holocaust is meant to teach us about 2D dimensional cartoonist villains of unique white people that targeted marginalized groups! It not like say you could do your own research beyond what the marxists that control the education systems shows you that the Nazis follow Conflict Theory like many progressive organizations of today do.

not sure it goes that far, but ya there's been a whole lot of things that get left out of the standard education that should be included.

We get to hear about germanys medical experiments and such in ww2 but Unit 731 over in Japan barely rates a mention if that, Nanking massacre you'd think that just by the name we'd get to hear about it more since massacre, most everything I've learned about the pacific theatre I learned on my own.

Again only so much time, but barely touching on that stuff on top of the shit stalin pulled while he was in power, it all deserves to be more than a footnote.

Also…everyone knows black supremacy don’t benefit all black people like how white supremacy don’t benefit all white people right?

I do wonder how many people grasp this one sometimes, got things like the SPLC saying groups that want to segregate people by race are only bad if the group is white people wanting to get away from non white people that makes that one a thinker.

Even at 13 I was disgusted and felt ashamed for being African American for the extreme racism so many black people have towards white people online. If not for blogs run by Black people like ChesireintheMiddle and Siryouarebeingmocked. I would think Margot Sanders and other white supremacists saying people of African descent should be exterminated was right given the current state the African American community is in

It blows you felt that way, nobody should have to deal with that, we're not responsible for what other people say or do just because we share a skin tone.

Also I think you meant Margret Sanger, but that's not too important, she was awful tho.

It's good to vent and your tag is unique so if folks want to filter it out they can so no need to apologize for that.

I've never understood that kind of hate myself,

#zoomer huey anon

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hometown-angel · 3 months ago

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act i - notes from hometown.angel

here is some extra information on the story. these are not super analytical and don't contain much of my own interpretation - i do have other posts like that, but this is more just providing footnotes - some clarifications to alleviate potential confusions but also just some fun little facts.

some reminders:

i refer to the protagonists by buda (yj) and toto (bg) in all my posts to emphasise that all i say is fiction and not at all about any real people

msaahba stands for madsummer - an adaptation by hometown.angel. when i quote other shit i will reference it directly below (not using formal academic conventions tho, not sorry)

i've uploaded a timeline of act i here just bc i know that it can be hard to stay on top of chronology sometimes, especially as the story goes on (there were times i rearranged the story a little in order to provide clarity on the order in which things occured - i'll state when these points happened)

also just want to warn you that the actual story of my madsummer adaptation is like the only space in this whole project where i'm going to be eloquent. on my tumblr (including this post lol) n on twitter i will probably be very stream of consciousness n longwinded n unconcise n informal n laidback, but still coherent. pls don't let any of my casual posts deter you from reading the story itself - i promise how i type on my tumblr is not a good example of the writing i'm really capable of. in real life i am incredibly unfunny and cringe and while i hope that doesn't pollute my madsummer adaptation it most certainly will contaminate this page. i also cannot spell.

as always i have so much admiration for kyrie and the amount of detail and nuance and symbolism she packed into this story. there are things she very clearly researched in great depth and only alluded to in the narrative itself so that only people who are mad enough (i.e. me n the other sweet summer children who are madsummer fanatics) to look further into the most seemingly mundane will be rewarded by the finding of deeper meaning (pretentious but i'm typing this late at night)

buckle up!

♱ bôa's duvet is the song that kyrie linked with the first part of mad summer. as i've mentioned ni other places, i've titled all three of my acts after the songs that kyrie linked at the end of each chapter.

♱ one aspect that contributes towards any raw translation of madsummer so unreadable is that the pronouns of the protagonists and whether the story is being told from a firstperson or thirdperson perspective kept changing - further confused by the linguistic issue of how in many third-person queer narratives, the fact that both protagonists often use the same pronouns makes it difficult to tell which of the charactesr is being referred to when the author says 'she', 'he', or 'them' (here is a youtube short that explains this more eloquently than i ever could). my adaptation is told primarily through buda's firstperson perspective as a semi-omniscient narrator, and then each act begins with a prologue from toto told in thirdperson. this decision helps make the narrative intelligible, makes the most sense and also serves the symbolic purpose of letting you to see how both characters change or grow up - buda's internal monologue gradually becomes less cocky and more vulnerable and toto learns to open up and be honest about what he's experienced

♱ i was very deliberate about the names and nicknames that toto is addressed by throughout this story - pay attention to how this changes :)

♱ according to kyrie the beach that buda and toto meet is malecón, cuba (check out the locations in the navigation panel)

♱ the story starts on the 29.09.2019, meaning that toto's first day on the beach was 20.09.2019.

♱ in my mind toto is wearing large ripped jeans, a holey shirt n a jacket (he's also barefoot)

♱ while coconuts are served to tourists in cuba, i honestly couldn't find much info on them being sold by children. (as someone who lives in a developing country, the petty bitch in me loves kyrie for presenting the american tourists as cringe and generally incompetent)

♱ i added this little bit about the pretending-to-drop-the-surfboard. we don't see the first meeting between buda and toto. i loved the image of toto daily pursuing something so out of reach (buda) purely because it is the only familiar thing to him and because it is the only thing that gives him any hope (keep track of hope and promise)

♱ the first person who read my translation (who i'll from hereon out refer to as parsley (i will be referring to parsley a lott)) started laughing when she read the line this was how it was when you were raised by the streets - she jsut said it felt very lego batman smh (parsley also sent me a seven minute voicenote crying as soon as she was finished reading the whole of madsummer haha)

♱ i'll talk about this more at a later time because it'll be much more relevant then, but cuba used to have two currencies - one used by locals/for local products and the other by foreigners/for foreign products (a gross simplification but again i'll go into more detail be patient)

♱ in a few chapters i mention that buda had previously sworn and screamed at toto to try and get him to go tf away. the reason that i count the could you please kill me?/what? discussion as their first interaction is because i specifically state that [these are the first words that they ever exchanged because these are the first words that buda has ever heard toto speak]

♱ many knetizens have created their own version of the wanted posters (click here to see a full list)

♱ let the dogxcat dynamic begin 🗣️❗ (feel like cinderella naega byeonhae)

♱ over the course of madsummer, buda will come to own two pistols, but the gun buda uses in this scene is his browning.

♱ TINNITUS MENTIONED 🗣️❗

♱ it was an eternal june/this was our first encounter - gagged when i first read that line (i fear i ate)

ii.

♱ hope that it's obvious enough, but this scene is buda retelling his own story, the things that have happened to him over the past few years.

♱ the hangul for yj's name (연준) directly translates to the fed. this led to so much confusion when i was reading the raw translation - at first i thought that buda was also nicknamed the fed and was waiting for this epithet to also be explained

♱ the maths in this story was also so confusing - i'm quite mathmatically challenged and so i struggled to calculate and keep track of these numbers lol, but i wanted to write them out in letter form for the vibes

♱ mojitos are the national drink of cuba, where alcoholism is quite prevalent (my country also has high rates of alcoholism and substance abuse rip)

♱ i had to do so much research on illicit substances for this story - to first understand the drugs this story speaks about in order to be able to translate passages on them appropriately. hopefully i've not done an awful job or made any mistakes that would be obvious to people knowledgable about drugs because i'm amusingly inexperienced when it comes to those things haha - the most out-there substance i've ever consumed (excluding prescribed antipsychotics/antidepressants and the egregious amount of caffeine i consume on a daily basis) was the one time i smoked weed on a holiday when i was eighteen, coughed for five minutes straight because i inhaled so deeply that i physically could not breathe, and didn't even get high.

♱ so irrelevant but trying to get the pronouns of the dog/bitch/bastard paragraph make it clear who said what and who beat up who had me losing my mind. it flows alright now, at least

♱ since buda lives in the backstreets santiago de cuba, the mountains where his father was buried are most likely the sierra maestra? but given that the geography for this story is kind of all over the place sometimes (that isn't a read, i promise) perhaps these mountains are more of a hypothetical or liminal (the friends we made along the way)

♱ diego maradona was a real football player (soccer not american football). however, i can't find any information about him declaring down with cocaine/abajo con cocaína. in one interview in 2018 he did denounce cocaine (the first link below), but the exact phrasing was never used. here's more information about the football player:

Diego Maradona opens up on cocaine hell when daughter woke him from coma as he’s unveiled as new manager of Mexican side Dorados | The Sun

Diego Maradona dead: 2018 World Cup, cocaine collapse

Diego Maradona says wine binge caused his collapse as picture sparks social media cocaine conspiracy theory following Argentina's dramatic World Cup 2018 win over Nigeria | The Sun

Maradona news: 'I was wasting away' - Argentina legend talks about cocaine addiction in Dorados introduction | Goal.com South Africa

iii.

♱ i like using words that linguistically make sense but aren't technically words - case in point - uncreasing and airplaning. many more curious words to come

♱ cuba's rainy season is from may-november, while its summer is from june-august

Cuba is rainiest in late spring and summer (May to November). It rarely rains all day long, however – you’re more likely to encounter heavy downpours in the hot, humid afternoons when travelling during the rainy season. June, July and August are usually the hottest months in Cuba. Although the temperature averages don’t look too high at first glance – Havana sits at 32°C all summer – the humidity can make it feel much, much hotter. Spend your mornings and evenings exploring and the hottest part of the day crashed out on a cooler coast. - Best time to visit Cuba

♱ buda owns an old red ford. there were little things that i changed throughout the story to make contemporary references to txt music or lore, and one of these was that i had at first decided i wanted buda's car to be a grey volvo like in the 0x1=lovesong era mvs. after a lot of research on knetizens posts i realised that there was a lot of sentimentality around the red lil car, so i changed it back. the car is featured on the front cover of mad summer's second edition

♱ i know nothing about cars or how they work (i failed my learner's test 7 times and my drivers test 3 times)

iv.

♱ okay logistically speaking this is one point where you need to suspend your disbelief in terms of geography. buda's house is located in the backstreets of santiago de cuba while malecón is in havana (for more info on both these places pls check out the locations tab in the navigation panel)

oh hold on let me scroll up a little...

yeah there's next to no way that buda and toto could walk 875km before the sun sets (that's around 545 miles for any americans who happen to be reading this (get on board with the metric system guys wtf))

♱ parsley (my friend, remember?) is also uncapable of smelling weed smh

♱ so the cigarettes mentioned in the quote below

A few years back a state-run tobacco company had started producing thin paper-white cigars marketed at women who didn’t normally smoke, which many men started purchasing under the claim that they were doing so to wean themselves off of nicotine. All of the seated men smoked languorously these very cigars. Some of the smokers rose to welcome me. - msaabha

these cigarettes are a reference to a real campaign where a tobacco manufacturers habanos launched cigarettes called julieta...the brand, who ha previously primarily produced cigars for men, is called romeo y julieta. boom. another romeo and juliet reference let's go

There are two different cigar brands called “Romeo y Julieta.” Originally, it was produced in Havana, Cuba, by Rodríguez, Argüelles y Cia. However, at the time of the Cuban revolution, the company and its brand moved to the Dominican Republic, and is now under the ownership of the Spanish firm, Altadis S.A. After the communists took over in Cuba, the Cuban government began producing a cigar using the same name – “Romeo y Julieta.” However, the U.S. copyright of the “Romeo y Julieta” cigar brand, which was originally owned by Rodriguez, Argüelles y Cia, now belongs to Altadis S.A. So, you cannot buy the Cuban knock-off in the U.S. - Where is the Romeo Y. Julieta cigar made in Cuba or Dominican?

The world of Habano smokers is predominantly male, but the island's largest cigar manufacturer has now set its sights on the other half of the world's population - women. Last year, the company Habanos - an arm of Cubatabaco, the country's national tobacco company - announced a mission to overcome perceptions among women that Cuban cigars are made up of "only strong tobacco for men". The result is the Julieta, a milder version of the renowned, strong-flavoured Romeo Y Julieta brand, which was founded in 1873. Until now, cigars marketed specifically at women have tended to be flavoured or extremely mild cigarellos - a short, narrow cigar. The Julieta is bigger, 4.75 inches (12cm) long, 0.5 inches (13mm) wide, and far more pungent. - BBCCaribbean.com | Cigar makers target Cuban women

^from wikipedia (guys your high school teachers lied to yo wikipedia really is a decent resource (perhaps not for work produced within higher academic instutions but its perfectly fine in causal contexts)). i'll explain the symbolism in the essay i'll eventuall write on madsummer and romeo snd juliet but argh it's crazy the attention to detail kyrie has, good lord - i mean even the fact that the julieta cigarettes were (re)released the year that buda was born

♱ kyrie's layout of buda's house looks like this:

^ however, i imagined buda's house to look different (learn more about buda's house under the locations tab in my navigation panel)

♱ buda smokes cloud 9 cigarettes. i'll speak more about this at a later stage when it's more relevant, but yeh for now just know cloud 9 is a korean brand of cigarettes.

♱ bingle bongle keep an eye out on park dongjae

♱ okay so the quote below describes buda's phone

In an era where people daily used smartphones that had fourty million pixels, I had bought the cheapest flip-phone available at the first corner store I’d walked into the day I arrived in Cuba. I’d never changed its preprogrammed ringtone - a greetingly genial tune, the first sixteen bars of an old lovesong.

this phone is talked about more specifically in a bonus scene that takes place in later reprints of the physical book (that i don't have access to ripp) so

One of the Fed's ancient relics, following the red Ford and the video tape. It was a feature phone with no Wi-Fi, and the model name was unknown. It was a Cyon, and the onyl specs were a 16-note phone and a 400,000-pixel camera. I don't know about the other two, but I heard that Xiaomi released a 100 million-pixel smartphone a while ago. It was exactly 250 times different from the Fed's. Beomgyu opened the Buddha's cell phone, which was 250 light years behind the lives of his peers in advanced countries. The small LCD was black and white, and even that was digital. -extract from a bonus scene in kyrie's mad summer reprint

♱ woah infodump get ready - buda's ringtone is said to be love greetings/salut d'amor.

i searched for "love greetings" and it turned out that the composer wrote this song for his fiancee. its about two people with completely different backgrounds who met and got engaged. -anonymous chatter on a madsummer public chat forum

2 old samsung phone models come with this ringtone built in - this phone is confirmed by kyrie to be a cyon. (source for video below here)

here is the story behind the tune:

Edward Elgar (1857-1934) composed Salut d’Amour as a love song to his future bride, Alice Roberts. In the summer of 1888 (age 31), Elgar decided to take a holiday with his dear friend Dr. Charles Buck. As Elgar departed Worcester for Dr. Buck’s Settle, Yorkshire estate, Alice gave him a poem she had written entitled Love’s Grace. While at Settle, Elgar, much taken with Alice’s poem, decided to reciprocate with a short piece of music especially for Alice. He titled the piece Liebesgruss (Love’s Greeting), dedicated “To Carice”, a mashup of Alice’s forenames Caroline Alice. Elgar presented the musical love poem to his future bride on his return from Settle. They were married the following year. At the birth of their daughter two years later, they named her Carice. - Salut d’amour, Op 12 – Program Notes – Clinton Symphony Orchestra

alice's poem sent in response to love's greeting, love's grace (initially entitled the wind at dawn, alice changed the name of her poem upon receiving the musical piece elgar dedicated to her), goes as follows -

And the wind, the wind went out to meet with the sun At the dawn when the night was done, And he racked the clouds in lofty disdain As they flocked in his airy train. And the earth was grey, and grey was the sky, In the hour when the stars must die; And the moon had fled with her sad, wan light, For her kingdom was gone with night. Then the sun upleapt in might and in power, And the worlds woke to hail the hour, And the sea stream’d red from the kiss of his brow, There was glory and light enow. To his tawny mane and tangle of flush Leapt the wind with a blast and a rush In his strength unseen, in triumph upborne Rode he out to meet with the morn! - The Wind at Dawn (Elgar, Edward) - IMSLP

alice roberts also wrote another poem about elgar, named love alone will stay -

Closely cling, for winds drive fast, Blossoms perish in the blast, Love alone will last. Closely let me hold thy hand, Storms are sweeping sea and land, Love alone will stand. Kiss my lips, and softly say, Joy may go and sunlit day, Love alone will stay. - Between Worlds: Lady Alice Elgar's poems

one article on the couple, their love and their artistry ends -

After Alice died in Elgar's arms in 1920, he wrote to a friend: "Bless her! You, who like some of my work, must thank her for all of it, not me. I should have destroyed it all and joined Job's wife in the congenial task of cursing God". - Between Worlds: Lady Alice Elgar's poems

anyway, very long winded but i think the kyrie's meticulousness is unmatched, good lord - buda's literal ringtone being a reference to timeless, profound, ineffable love? ingenious

♱ pay attention to the use of home/house

♱ most nights the streetlights blinked intermittently - -- --- … - / -. .. --. …. - … / - …. . / … - .-. . . - .-.. .. --. …. - … / -… .-.. .. -. -.- . -.. / .. -. - . .-. -- .. - - . -. - .-.. -.--

♱ pay attention to the use of okay ;)

vi.

♱ i've already made a massive point of emphasising this story's content warnings but i bet you weren't expecting the story to get so sad so quickly

♱ bananas are a massive part of the cuban agricultural output (i won't be sourcing this bc i know you don't care)

♱ was toto humming the salut d'amor or the lovesong at the center of this narrative? the world will never know

♱ argh okay so my adaptation says a good tree cannot bear bad fruit and that is obviously a reference to matthew 7:18 in the bible, but this was the result of so much trial and error around trying to find a proper way to translate the original thing. the raw translation says

They say that dead trees don’t bear fruit. Superstitions that would come out of a Joseon shaman’s mouth were believed even on the other side of the world. - raw translation a Dead trees are not open to fruit. On the other side of the world, the superstition that might come out of the mouth of a Joseon shaman was also believed. - raw translation b

so i had no clue at first how to make this make sense. it seemed like asaying or an idiom or a proveb, n the only one i could thtinko f was matthew 7:18 bc that's so close to what is beign said excpt that it says nothing about dead trees. it may have been a proverb from the joseon dynasty, but because i was also struggling with finding more context on that i went with matthew 7:18 n added more context n surroudign sentences.

A good tree cannot bear bad fruit. On the other side of the world, a lifetime ago, he had heard a pastor utter this sentiment. The banana tree hadn’t been able to hold him. Could a blameless tree bear dead fruit? - msaabha

♱ an excellent line from the raw translations:

I liked hanging myself to death, but I didn’t want to be beaten to death. I wanted to die, but I didn’t want to die even if they killed me. -raw translation a I liked to hang myself, but I didn't want to be beaten to death. I want to die, but I can't believe I don't want to kill you. -raw translation b

which i translated as

He had intended to kill himself, sure, but he hadn’t planned on being beaten to death. He wanted to die. He didn’t want to hurt. - msaabha

guys i enfdured so much translating this story but it was worth every second of it

vii.

♱ forgot to say earlier - a little chagne i made was turning the single bed with a pink bedspread (say that fast ten times in a row) into a pink fold-out-couch. there is an intended symbolism behind this that i'll explore during my act iii notes but i hope somebody picks up on the kind of metaphorical function this change serves

viii.

♱ woah it's time for the evident fact that i know nothing about drugs to be made even glaringly-ier evident. the things i had to google to even attempt to understand some of these passsages- if anybody without context opened my search history they'd probably be very concerned as to why i have been googling so much about cocaine - tbf tho, the actual context (that i have spent six months adapting a fanfiction in a language i don't actually speak that well about a gay pairing i don't actually romantically ship just bc i'm nosy) isn't much better

♱ argh guys ok so buda speaks korean with dongjae and toto only. i really tried to make the vibes come across through tone bc english doens't do honorifics

♱ getting into more semi-omniscent narration...

ix.

♱ so just to clarify, the list of things i know nothing about includes numbers, drugs and cars. luckily only one of these features as a massive plot point. unluckily that happens to be the same one i know the most nothing about

♱ flakka is a real drug. in the country where i'm from, it is a substance that concerningly is becoming increasingly more prevalent. there is a drug used in this story that kyrie invented for this story, which i'll acknowledge when we get there. from what i understand, kyrie has a fairly extensive interest and understanding of illicit substances.

lastly, let me talk about materials and research. although i am an engineering student with a minor in chemistry, i have always been interest in drugs, even if it was not my major. i like related documentaries and research a lot of materials. so i have never had a hard time or had any trouble finding materials. - kyrie responding to an anonymous user in a public chatroom, raw translation

she then recommended the following pieces of media in public chatrooms n anonymous ask forums -

약국에 없는 약 이야기 박성규 저자 - Park Sungkyu - Talking about drugs that aren't in the pharmacy - ISBN 9791190116121

Roberto Sabiano - Gamorrah - ISBN 978-0374165277

Qiu Miaojin - The Last Words of Montemarte - ISBN 9781590177259

Breaking Bad - a 2008-2013 tv show

Narcos - a 2015-2017 tv show

zerozerozero - a 2012 tv show

♱ on abysm - eyes are the windows to the soul oop

♱ guys i promise i'll write the whole post on the abysm soon bc that rabbithole goes deep but just know that the image of a bottomless pit lowkey is a massive point of contension when it comes to mad summer inspiring 0x1=lovesong

xi.

♱ recurring-nightmares parallel lets go

♱ okay so kyrie put this sickfic passage a little bit later (i'll say when) as a flashback that happens when toto and buda are driving to retrieve the suitcase. however i wanted tokeep the chronology of this story as linear as possible n there had already been two recent flashback scenes (buda explaining his past, then toto's nightmare) and flashbacks are one of my least favourite narrative tropes

♱ okay also i added the little bit about the rope scar myself. i wanted to create in buda more intruige/concern around what happened in toto's past, but also just bc realistically if toto had attempted to hang himself a only a few months back and also bc he had very almost succeeded and then fallen to the ground from the branch the rope was hanging from (good lord that was incoherent) he most certainly would have at least some kind of scar

♱ ooh i love talk about cleanliness in relation to love, beauty, morality and the religiously traumatised (pls allow me to feel proud of instances when my writing ate)

xii.

♱ in my timeline i use dj to refer to dongjae if that wasn't clear eek

xiii.

♱ guess which private new purpose buda will dedicate his life to?

♱ i also added this bit where buda attempts to feed toto when toto was sick. (justification for this retrospective passage - it feels more reflective than it feels like a flashback :P )

♱ chocolate is a large import in cuba. i also added this point in bc very rarely in the original text does it ever actually talk about eating food? i saw one knetizen ask if buda and toto ever ate anything at all because kyrie barely mentions food in the story which made me laugh

♱ this was categorically untrue - buda biting lore unlocked❗❗

♱ added in the detail about the dragon kites - guess which movie i'm talking about?

♱ such quirks made me more of a loser - a lover with a dollar sign❗❗

♱ i spent ages trying to figure out which kind of paper can be used to store coke (the fbi agent on the other side of my computer was probably judging me very hard)

♱ y'all the raw translations kept trying to tell me that the policemen snorted drugs using the syringes. which. um. even i know that that isn't really how things are done

xiii.

♱ so this is round about where the sickfic flashback occured in kyrie's version of mad summer, aroud about somewhere in between the first three paragraphs of this scene

♱ woah guys its anther point of similaritiy between madsummer and 0x1=lovesong - that the protagonist constantly compares his lvoer to an angel

♱ parsley had asked when she was reading madsummer the first time - butterfly jasmine, more commonly known as white mariposa flowers are the official national flower of cuba

♱ no clue which beach this takes place on. it might be omehwere near the sierra maestra mountain range where buda buried his dad, or it could be on one of the three main beaches that kyrie spoke of in that earlier menitoned anonmyous ask forum - malecón, varadero or playa ancon (if i can find the screenshot where this last beach is mentioned i'll put it in)

♱ i had rewrite some parts of this story when i did more research on the locations (look at rabbithole research spiral notes 1 and 2). the current description of the cave is different than it was at first. initially, i had pictured the cave as a large space that both buda and toto could sit in:

He finally stopped walking, turning to face me. The waves were more violent so far out from the beach. They tore at him, spat at him. He remained unfazed. I watched his lips move, but I couldn't hear a word over the roaring waves. He pointed at the cave and I nodded. In close enough pursuit, I came to see that this cave was much smaller than it appeared. I stepped through the cove's mouth and into the hollow in the cliffside, ducking down under the hanging lip just like he did, sitting next with my back against the cave’s wall while he foraged around purposefully in the stalagmites. The cave looked at the horizon from a slant and as it was around midday our surroundings were relatively well lit. Of course, the deeper you got into the cave, like where the he was crawling, visibility was low. I thought of Plato. I watched the boy emerge from the shadow struggling with a large rectangle-shaped shadow. A carrier bag, made from synthetic aluminum. He wrestled it to the ground. It hit the floor with a thunderous bang. - msaabha

♱ when i rewrote the passage above i put an insane amount of effort into trying to find synoynms for the word cave

♱ i still have no clue what 0313 symbolises i spent an embarrasingly long amount of time trying to figure out what 0313 represented only to realise that is toto's (n bg's) brithday

♱ toto is lying - there is only one suitcase

♱ the case still rattled each time its aluminium base hit the concrete of the boardwalk - he fought to meet my pace, fumbling over himself like a clumsy puppy. another instance of me tooting my own horn but the phonetic implciations? the onomatopoeiac imagery? i fear i cooked once more

xv.

♱ as someone from a developing country where the government is corrupt and constantly cutting our access to electricity? i feel that. (granted, within that devloping country i am considerably welloff given the centuriesold and racialised structures of abject poverty that still hold my country back in the present day and so on and so on)

♱ any guesses as to where toto got all that money?

♱ ik everyone has different versions of it but i learned this version of lord's prayer when i was five or six - glad it finally came in handy haha

♱ also pay attention to the word strange

xvi.

♱ 50000 korean won notes have the porrtrait of shin saimdang on them - more of shin saimdang here

there's another thing about the money that comes into play later - this revelation confused me a lot upon first reading and so i had to do so much research n feverish googling to understand, but lucky for you dear reader, i shall share with you what i have learned soon as the time is right

xvii.

♱ bureau de change's are also known as currency or money exchanges. curiously txt lore references a money exchange in the loser=lover music video, which contains footage also used in an alternative 0x1=lovesong...will be discussing this in the post i'll eventually make on 0x1 and madsummer

♱ i'm assuming yk who jesus christ is. an asura tho is a mythical creature from hinduism, buddhism, as well as other religions that emerged in close proxemity to these.

Asuras have been featured in many cosmological theories and legends in Hinduism and Buddhism. In the oldest verses of the Samhita layer of Vedic texts, the Asuras are any spiritual, divine beings including those with good or bad intentions, and constructive or destructive inclinations or nature. In later verses of the Samhita layer of Vedic texts, Monier Williams states the Asuras are "evil spirits, demons and opponents of the gods". Asuras connote the chaos-creating evil, in Indo-Iranian mythology about the battle between good and evil. Scholars have disagreed on the nature and evolution of the Asura concept in ancient Indian literature. Kuiper calls Asuras a special group of gods in one of major Vedic theories of creation of the universe. Their role changes only during and after the earth, sky and living beings have been created. The sky world becomes that of Devas, the underworld becomes that of Asuras. The god Indra is the embodiment of good and represents the Devas, while the dragon Vrtra is the embodiment of evil and an Asura. During this battle between good and evil, creation and destruction, some powerful Asuras side with the good and are called Devas, other powerful Asuras side with the evil and thereafter called Asuras. This is the first major dualism to emerge in the nature of everything in the Universe. Many scholars describe Asuras to be "lords" with different specialized knowledge, magical powers and special abilities, which only later choose to deploy these for good, constructive reasons or for evil, destructive reasons. The former become known as Asura in the sense of Devas, the later as Asura in the sense of demons...Asuras are non-believers of God and can believe in their own powers. Asuras...are a type of supernatural beings (antigods, demigods, or titans) in traditional Buddhist cosmology and a realm of rebirth based on one's karma in current or past lives. They are described in Buddhist texts as creatures who live in lower levels of mount Sumeru, obsessed with sensuous aspects of existence, living with jealousy, and endlessly engaged in wars against the creatures who are Devas (gods). - extracts from -> Asura - Wikipedia

♱ knsl - i won't tell you what this means yet, as there is a more pivotal moment in the narrative where i want to reveal it. however, i have hidden a clue somewhere in the information i've put out around the first act - it shouldn't be too hard for you to find out ;) (i, however, spent literally two hours straight trying to figure out what this word meant - scoured dozens of posts from knetizens, obbsessively google translated) just know that it is a question

♱ pagafantas - literally meaning the guy who pays for fanta (pagar+fanta), this term has several meanings

a guy who buys things (like drinks) or goes to great lengths for their crush because of an ulterior motive - often in order to sleep with them. similarly, a boy who has reluctantly and bitterly been friendzoned (there's a famous spanish movie called pagafantas that has this premise) a boy who is willing to overextend himself and be the second option for a girl he likes - buying her things and treating her kindly, only for her to turn and get with another man in other words, the closest english translation would be simp or a nice guy however, it also has another less obvious or common meanings that comes from how the word translates over to korean. pagafantas -> 빨판 (ppalpan) -> sucker/loser 빠가판따스가 it's so hot tonto útil -> useful idiot/fool 호구 -> someone who is easily fooled or scammed, often someone is gets friendzoned / a pushover / danger extracts from the links below: pagafanta / pagafantas | WordReference Forums Spanish New Words Explored #02 Hokou : Naver Post 스페인어 신조어 탐구생활 #02 호구 : 네이버 포스트

xviii.

♱ tom and jerry type shit

xix.

♱ i added most of the things on this list ha - i think the original ones were teh tearoff calender, broom and dustpan only.

♱ the worker named k is a reference to the original madsummer's author kyrie

♱ when writing i really like inventing words that are linguistically and etymologically sound/plausible but don't really exist - aphroditean (a-fro-di-ee-shun) being one such word

♱ the paragraph that feaures the word aphroditean is the one i associate with bôa's duvet

♱ remember - buda left korea before graduating middle school, and so he would never have used melon

♱ this was a small detail i changed, but i loved the connotations n implications of buda's crucifix being made of glass - i was thinking of something like this (i am so aware that there are next to no similarities between these reference photos but pls humour me)-

xx.

♱ the cojimar pier is one of the most important locations in the story. located in havana, it stands close to the hemingway monument. (go to the locations tab whoopdoop)

xxi.

♱ boom. the beginnings of toto lore.

♱ i added in and emphasised the details around strawberries and the colours pink and red throughout madsummer, especially in relation to toto. in one thread a knetizen (if i find it i'll link it here) asked what colour best represents madsummer and a user responded with the colours pink and red. i'll talk about this inits own post, but the juxstaposed yet coexistent implications of love, danger, flesh, tenderness, blood, rage etc

♱ kyrie revealed that the book of korean poems that toto finds is called 문학동네시인선 038 - 오은시 집 우리는 분위기를 사랑해 (Literature Village Poet Selection 038 - Oh Eun-si's House We Love the Atmosphere).

^ a raw translation of one poem in the book

here is a poem from the book (all quotes from this book are from publically accessible samples). though they don't translate over well i still love the sentiment of them. the link to other translated samples from this collection is found here.

dopamine* (012-015) the mirror breaks i can't stand being alone because i'm not alone i can't stand it i need to tear this scene apart i need to scour this moment element breaks through the set i start building a black castle on a white piece of paper. too low to collapse. too thin to tumble. creation gives birth to another creation. the more you talk about it, the more you have to say. the complementary set penetrates the entire set. outside the black castle you are away from the scene away from the moment i drink coffee with you, you exchange glances with me, I sneak out and smoke a cigarette, and in the meantime you drop a drop of whiskey into your mug you help me, i pretend to help you, you imagine being helped by me, i think i helped you, and we feel good about eachother my heart is racing riding a sports car and sharing chocolate love your enemies! love your elements more! far-sighted and thin-eared people are startled we need a bigger stimulus to get closer, to get thicker to become a solid element to become a large set to become alone to become not only alone to be, come alone if you can't stand it, you can't stand the scene and the moment, you can't stand to tear the assembly apart, you can't stand to break the mirror hurry! more cheers, more applause my head hurts as if i've poured out too many words and have been rereading them one by one in the broken mirror my pieces shine sharply and shout, arthur! * it is a neurotransmitter that plays a role in transmitting the excitement of brain nerve cells. it affects movement, attention, learning, cognition, and motivation, and it is known that a deficiency can cause parkinson's disease, and an excess can cause bipolar disorder or schizophrenia

♱ another moment of artistic liscence, it wasn't mentioned in kyrie's ms but this is the colour i was imagining for the condom wrappers

xxii.

♱ similarly i just decided to make the pen look like a surfboard - i was thinking of smth kitsch like this, made of wood or like pseudo wood idk

♱ 토토 refers to mostly sports betting that occurs mostly over the internet

♱ toto - from this point on, this is mostly what buda calls the brat. toto is the real name of a parrot bg had (which most moa should know)

♱ at first i was trying to figure out whether purple was a reference to lean or to heroin, but the chatrooms came though for me - purple is a drug that kyrie inventing, describing it only as a narcotic (below is the raw translation of a discussion between two knetizens on a public forum)

♱ toto starting to curse - the more you know someone the more they become you

♱ in the standard edition of mad summer, the items on the bucket list are not revealed in this moment (two are mentioned at later points in the story though). however, from scouring knetizens chatrooms, i was able to find information about toto's full bucket list (more raw translation extracts yikes) which is featured in the reprints on mad summer

♱ i chose october 27th as toto's d-day because it was the day that baz luhrmann's 1996 film romeo and juliet first premiered (kyrie only mentioned a random date in ocotber)

xxiii.

♱ had to change this to be relevant to the avctual seasons of cuba lol

xxiv.

♱ the blue aloha shirt is another reference to romeo and juliet. i do love the cockiness and kitsch of buda loving this shirt so much

the official madsummer fanart that came with the physical copies of eacg book features buda in his blue hawaiin shirt and toto wearing the shirt in the photo abvoe the fanart photo

♱ to show how deranged i am, i spent literal hours trying to figure out which church kyrie had taken inspiration from, since all other landmark locations in the story were based off of real places - i learnt though that this chapel in particular is not a real location and more an amalgamation of several chapels, including the iglesia de santa ana. (said it once i'll say it again - check out my locations folder whoopdoop.) the church depicted below is from the official fanart that came with physical copies of the book - it's of a scene from act iii where buda visits the temple and hugs the statue of mother mary. again, he's wearing his hawaiin shirt here.

xxv.

♱ here are the stories i imagined to be on buda's shelf - Peter Pan, The Alchemaster’s Apprentice, The Little Prince, Coraline, The Time of the Fireflies, Through the Looking Glass, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. at some point i'll make a goodreads list of books to read if you liked madsummer, as well as all the media refernced in the story (clarifying whether it was me or kyrie who firt alluded to thst piece of media in our rendition)

♱ if it isn't obvious enough, the film toto watches is baz lurhman's 1996 romeo and juliet movie. this fiim is at thte centre of madsummer - narratively, thematically and symbolically

♱ i added a reference to shakespeare's romeo and juliet here.

A double suicide. A violent end. -msaabha

These violent delights have violent ends And in their triumph die, like fire and powder, Which as they kiss consume. The sweetest honey Is loathsome in his own deliciousness And in the taste confounds the appetite. Therefore love moderately; long love doth so; Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow. -william shakespeare romeo and juliet

woah is that foreshadowing?

♱ the song that played at the end of the movie is radiohead - exit music for a film

♱ there were times in the original narrative where kyrie refers to buda and toto as other animals, but i wanted to do my best not to mix metaphors - instead of ending the thoguht about the cocaine dog wehre kyrie did (toto laughing at the thoguht of buda being a cocaine dog) i made toto laugh at teh thoguht of buda being a cocaine sniffing cat (i would die for buda+toto's cat+dog dynamic)

♱ staring yearningly at your homie's back while you're sharing a bed at a sleepover is a core part of the queer experience i don't make the rules sorry

in closing

i will update this if i remember to add anything, if anybody has any questions or needs clarification on anything. at some point maybe i'll spellcheck this but maybe i won't. we'll have to see lol. here are three final points

♱ shit is about to ut

♱ the below fanart was comissioned for madsummer's printing, n postcards and postcards came with each purchase. i'll make a post on each of these fanarts maybe, going into more detail abbout each, as wel as the book covers

♱ remember that madsummer was set in 2019

this is what the person toto was based off looked like in 2019

this is what the person buda was based off of looked like in 2019

these are literal babies.

and i will leave you with that thought.

☀︎ with love - hometown.angel ☀︎

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polysprachig · 1 year ago

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Pardon me as I prepare to intrude my thoughts on language learning upon the public (again).

I’m working on taking myself less seriously and getting over what I like to call *nonsensical, self-inflicted recording stress*. Hence the one-take and post method I’m trying to experiment with on tumblr dot com in which I read and comment on my ***polyglot journal***.

WIP, unbeta’d, off-the-cuff. 🧿💙

Transcript below (Orange = Speaking/commentary, Blue = Written commentary, White = Reading)

In the spring of 2020 I decided to write a detailed book on all of the language learning activities that I was doing. As I look here at page 27 of the book itself—it's pretty long; there are still blank pages—I can see several things. The one is a general overview, together with my own commentary about what I did wrong right from the off.

[Reads] In which I accidentally bite off far more than I can chew, determine to do too much, establish a routine check in system and throw organization to the wind. Includes: Irish, Greek, German and Middle English; the Merlin project in its infancy, plus voca; a note on colour-coded translation exercise; a start to translating authors whose work I know; and the initial return to reading historical verse, which means, generally speaking, [whispers] Chaucer. The overwhelming theme is to consider what core vocabulary and skills I will need to accomplish the activities described, with special emphasis on trying the first ... to first rely on my own language skills in a—in an in almost Test -Teach slash Test-Check manner.

Now let's see how it starts.

During the summer season I have decided to focus my language learning efforts on my productive skills, those being speaking, writing, translation and the creation of new materials. At the center of this decision burns the desire to spread the seeds of my knowledge of different languages to others and espouse the personality of fire to keep my learning active, invigorating, and all consuming. This trimester of learning—Yes, I can count, I just really like the word trimester (it's technically a semester) from May through to the end of August, is meant to prevent me from becoming too lethargic in my study habits. I shall focus predominantly on Irish, with approximately three lessons per week scheduled with various teachers—hilarious— in the hopes of levelling up within 3-6 or even 8 months—this timeline is still up to debate depending on various factors such as finances, travel, quarantine status and miscellaneous slash other. My secondary main languages are Greek, German and Middle English—[Laughs] Sorry, reading it now is hilarious to me because I already know what happens, and now I know where I am in my studies and we're ... we're basically back at this point, but in a better way. Okay, let's not jump ahead of ourselves—So, my secondary main languages are Greek, German and Middle English. In these languages I aim to create one to two significant works of translation—wow—and/or auditory material. My main goal is to drastically avoid using the Internet—best of luck with that—and other electronic digital tools to aid me, with the exception of the online Greek-English Dictionary (until I have purchased my own dictionary in Greek)—I should add a footnote here: I have got my grandfather’s print dictionary and Greek and it is from the 1920s and I need a ... updated one. Anyways—and the Middle English corpus as necessary. Moreover, I should hope to complete some written exercises and short writings in Hebrew, Italian and possibly even French.

Correct me if I'm wrong: too much is going on in this section, and as we'll see, it just gets worse.

Stay tuned next time to find out the mistakes I made, but also the benefits I experienced in trying to learn multiple languages at the same time and, especially, improving those levels at multiple times (???) without having the firm foundation necessary to actually complete that type of an activity. Ohh so many things to go over. I'm very excited. See you next time!

-polysprachig

#english #polyglot things #I'd be keen to hear what my accent sounds like at this point #langblr #language learning #the polyglot struggle #we sometimes do comedy here

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kunstmull · 2 years ago

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Captain Save-A-Hisashi rides again!

I don't know if the comment got eaten by the spam filter; or if it was another case of "did not understand my sense of humour"; or if the blogger has fallen into a black hole on the way to Andromeda, but I did actually save the text, and wanted to post it somewhere, in case anyone ever has any response.

{Comment followed a thread where a random googler had asked for explanation of the Greek letters in Buck-Tick's Nostalgia - Vita Mechanicalis. CP responded to the effect of, don't read too much into it, Imai is not very well educated and the whole thing was just a reference to some Steampunk phone game.}

((Further edited to add: yes, it's entirely possible that this is just a reference to a game, and Delta-Iota-Lambda-Xi refers to nothing more complicated than:

There is indeed both a Delta and a Xi in these characters))

The comment I left in response:

It’s true that Imai is an art school dropout, and his monotropic brain simply cannot hang on to information he doesn’t have an interest in, such as penmanship or random prefectures of Japan. It’s such a SHAME that there is literally no place on Earth or Andromeda where one can come across Greek symbols other than high school maths class!

Chapter 1: amidst the profusion of Imai interviews I’ve absorbed recently, I came across one where our boy mentioned reading James Gleick, so it’s clear he actually does read popular science. (Sorry I can’t footnote it for you, my monotropic brain has never got the hang of footnotes.) Something clicked, as to why the ill-fated tour for Cosmos was named CHAOS: it’s a pun, a synthesis of the “Anarchy” meaning (another long-term preoccupation of Imai, hence the most obvious) and the “complex, self-organising systems” meaning – manifesting in the post-Gleick mid-90s as a pop-science fascination with Fractals. On the chance Imai was fibbing about reading a big book about maths, the ideas popularised by Gleick were widely discussed and heavily used in the fields of Videogame design and Animation – fields Imai has well-known and documented Special Interests in. Knowledge absorbed from pop culture is still knowledge.

Chapter 2: Imai got online in the mid-90s, as documented in his seminal “log off and touch grass” song. What was he arguing about on Usenet? Same things as the rest of us early internet geeks: “Dinosaurs, CT scanners, love, that girl's tooth prints, Klein bottles etc.” Your translation of “いわゆる全てに共通する図形“ is lost, but Google misTranslate is giving me "So-called common-to-all shapes" something that looks suspiciously like set theory or platonic solids? The ~Science Side of Tumblr~. Imai was soaking in it!

Conclusion: living on the net, reading popular science books, imbibing sci-fi, it is not inconceivable that Imai either *does* know the common maths/physics meanings of the Greek symbols he chose; or he lifted them directly from someone who does. (Edited to add: this is the thing; even if he did just lift it from a game; games designers are notorious for adding esoteric references as Easter Eggs. Coming from a game does not mean that it is not meaningful.)

So let’s look at these symbols and see how they link to other common geography of Hisashiland

Δ Delta – this is the easiest one. Delta is the rate of change, usually over time. Everything changes. The only constant over time is change. (The second law of thermodynamics, entropy fans.) ((Edited to add: if I look through my Tumblr archives, I probably can find a long post I made about the relationship between the Second Law of Thermodynamics and Einstuerzende Neubauten's Sehnsucht.))

Ι Iota – the smallest possible amount. How often has Imai referenced scientific words for the concept of the most tiny? Atom Futurist No. 9 (Democritus theorised the Atom – indivisible – as the smallest, infinite, indestructible building block of nature before the Victorians smashed this to pieces with the discovery of the Electron.) Quantum I & II – quantum theory smashed the idea of the smallest building block of nature the way Rutherford smashed the indivisible atom. Iota is another science term for the same thing: the tiny indivisible.

Λ Lambda – the Cosmological Constant. Since the Big Bang, the Universe has been constantly expanding (see section Delta – change!) Lambda is a little mathematical fiddle that Einstein added to the Theory of Relativity to account for the fact that the expansion of the universe is always accelerating. Why? Dark Matter? Dark Energy? This is hotly debated in physics, but in Hisashiland the metaphor of Dark Matter or Dark Energy is repeatedly employed as a necessary corrective for the Blue Sky of conformity.

Ξ Xi – this one was the hardest to crack. At first I thought he’d mis-transliterated the Greek Chi which is the standard mathematical X of the unknown. Xi is the Riemann Function. What’s he about? He’s usually associated with non-Euclidean geometries, surfaces that are impossible outside of multidimensional spaces – moebius strips, Calabi-Yau manifolds (the working model for superstrings, another way of trying to understand where all the extra dark energy/matter is hiding in 10-dimensional space, see Lambda for what Dark Energy means in Hisashiland), and… Klein Bottles, which Imai was getting in flame wars over on the early internet. To understand the true scientific nature of reality, one has to think outside the mosquito net – outside the constraints of the human limitations of three-dimensional perception. In Riemannian maths, dark energy can fold up to hide inside extra dimensions within infinitesimally tiny spaces.

Now these letters may have been chosen stochastically, but all four of them refer to concepts that recur again and again in the hermeneutics of Hisashiland. And one of Gleick’s most profound insights is that randomness isn’t actually that random. Even chaos follows its own cosmological order. Imai may be dirty and strange, but he’s nowhere near as cute-and-dumb as he looks!

#imai mon amour #Nostalgia -Vita Mechanicalis-#things that were in my brain and they are better out of my brain #long post is long

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lino-know · 2 years ago

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heyyy seong

idek if you use tumblr anymore. personally i only used it in like 2020-2021 during my early kpop phases but maybe people still do

anyways i’ll start off by saying that i hope you’re doing good! (can’t believe it’s already 2023) i also hope you’re feeling better mentally, physically, spiritually, and in any other way possible. these past few years have really been tough. idk what it is but after covid everything’s just sped up. life is just going by so fast and let’s be honest, it’s incredibly overwhelming. that’s why i think it’s so important to take time for ourselves and really understand what’s going on in our minds.

i have no idea why i wrote this as if you know who i am and as if we’ve been friends for years. i just happen to come back onto tumblr today and remembered about your story misfits (which i absolutely adore btw it’s the literal embodiment of gold) and wanted to vomit my thoughts out to a stranger

in any case maybe you’ll see this maybe you won’t but thanks for having this page as an outlet for strangers to vent <3

— a random person who had a lot of her mind (and is also kinda wondering about an update regarding misfits now that she thinks about it)

heyyy!! I'm really sorry I haven't replied to this - I feel like I should've earlier lmao but I've been kind of gatekeeping this ask in my inbox because it made me feel warm and fuzzy all over :)

I hope you're doing well in all the ways possible too - covid really has turned the world upside down twice over and it hasn't been easy for any of us, I'm sure. a lot has happened in the time that passed and honestly I don't think I would've turned out the way that I am if it hasn't happened - but I don't regret it, tbh.

don't stress about suddenly popping into my inbox without warning - I've said multiple times that it's open for anything you want to send in and honestly your ask has made my day multiple times over when I log back onto tumblr to read it, whenever my mental health is hitting rock bottom again :)) I'm glad you decided to take time out of your day to send it in hehe. feel free to chat me up over dms, honestly, because I feel like having an extra friend makes our lives better - but I do want to say I'm using tumblr less and less nowadays

an update about my life? maybe? idk if anyone's interested but essentially I started this blog when I was 18 and now I'm nearly done with university. it's kind of insane thinking about how fast the years have gone by - it almost feels like yesterday when I started this blog in quarantine out of boredom, and now it's two years down the line haha

as for misfits, first of all, thank you for thinking about it and I'm really happy that you still remember the story :) I wrote it when I was chilling around and posted it after a tumblr mutual I made after I created this blog told me to - she's no longer on tumblr or skzblr(?) for personal reasons but I look back on that fondly

about updates, I do intend to continue the story just because so many people enjoyed it, even though I'd admit I don't think it's my best work. I still have my old notebook full of notes and ideas for future skz-centric works, but I guess the reason why I stopped was because I don't really pay attention to skz that much anymore. I admire them as a fledgling artist myself, but I haven't been keeping tabs on them now that I'm starting to explore my own artistic ventures (!!). that said, I still have the plot of misfits in my head, but I guess that having started and continued the story with numerous historical footnotes, I feel like I have to continue doing that and keeping everything as historically accurate as possible haha

but yeah, that's pretty much about it, if I'm posting works here, consider it as writing practice rather than excited squeals about skz. again, I really admire them as people, but it's also because of that that I feel kind of weird writing fanfiction about them. I'm not opposed to the idea of it or other people doing it, I personally just feel more comfortable writing filth about 2D characters (and I do have a sideblog for anime-centric works if you're interested!) I don't think I'll shut this blog down ever because I am proud of what I've created here - and I'm really happy that you view it safe enough to send in a ramble. my inbox is always open if you want to talk more :)) hope you're doing well!

#asks #skz #seong speaks

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twinhood-2dot0 · 2 years ago

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A Shallow Dive into Sampling, Remixing, and Covering

Before we begin, I will define these words. My definitions are mine alone and there may be official ones, but I’m going to be sticking to mine.

Sampling: Taking a part of another song and using it in key elements of your songs.

Remixing: Taking a song and remaking elements such as melodies and basslines.

Covering: Recording of a song with minimal lyrical or musical changes.

So, I’m a huge fan of sampling, but many consider them copying. Hank made a video on it, which you probably have already watched but I will link it nonetheless.

youtube

I think of sampling as writing a love letter to a song. Take Avicii for example. I consider him a master of sampling. Yes, I know, I consider him a master of music, but my favourite things in his songs are his samples.

So, his first big hit and also the anthem of Tomorrowland, the biggest music festival, as voted by fans, Levels, is a song he made, just to sample Etta James’s Something’s Got a Hold On Me because he loved it so much. I don’t think you can get any closer to a love letter. (BTW you don’t have to listen to the whole songs, just the parts I link)

(Tumblr doesn't wanna abide by timespants so just use the link or listen to the whole song (highly recommended))

(Dumb rule apparently only 10 videos are allowed per post so I will use spotify where relevant)

Here’s Levels

youtube

And here’s SGHOM (this one works the sample is at the beginning)

youtube

My favourite song of all time, Dear Boy, samples Hymn by Jonas Knutsson Band, a jazz song. He made a prog house bop out of a jazz song.

Dear Boy (Timestamp)

youtube

Hymn (Beginning)

youtube

There’s a ton more examples, but listing them all would take a ton of time, but here’s one last one.

Kygo, Avicii, Sandro Cavazza - Forever Yours (Beginning)

youtube

Sting - Shape of My Heart

youtube

I don’t think this shows lack of creativity, I think it does the opposite. I never would have heard these songs if Avicii did not sample them so I got him to thank for that. Moving on, we have Daft Punk, one of Avicii’s biggest inspirations, no idea if he was inspired to sample by them too. (I’m sorry I circled back to Avicii but that’s just how it is with me, I’m sorry.)

Daft Punk samples lots. And I mean lots. I don’t think lack of creativity even applies here because the samples are creative in and of themselves. Here’s a 2 min video (I’m sorry but you need to see this):

youtube

Here’s a song I love that has been sampled a lot.

David Martin - Can’t Smile Without You:

youtube

It’s been covered by Barry Manilow and The Carpenters, but I want to focus on the samplers here.

Daft Punk - Instant Crush:

youtube

And also by Marshmello in Leave Before You Love Me:

Now, onto remixing. I don’t think I have much to say here, I think everyone knows what remixing is, but anyways, I’ll provide an example (Trying my best to not link an Avicii song but he does make the best remixes even if they’re very few). While in the process of writing this I was watching a video of Daft Punk samples and they even sampled the Apollo 16 and 17 missions apparently.

Okay let’s get back on track. Kygo in the space between his 2020 and 2022 albums released a lot of covers/remixes of 80s songs. Kygo, Whitney Houston - Higher Love:

Whitney Houston - Higher Love: https://youtu.be/DbmiyLe2OnY

I cannot for the life of me find Whitney Houston's cover on Spotify, so enjoy the original Steve Winwood one:

I call this a cover/remix because according to my definition it should be a remix but the naming of the track seems reminiscent of covers. If it had a different singer I’d classify it as a cover but no, it’s Whitney Houston with Kygo instrumentals so it’s a remix in my eyes. (Also footnote, Higher Love was originally performed by Steve Winwood, covered by Whitney Houston and remixed by Kygo.) Kygo also got big by posting his remixes of songs on Soundcloud, so here’s one of them, it’s an Ed Sheeran one:

Kygo's remix is an unofficial one he posted on Soundcloud so no Spotify :(

Ed Sheeran - I See Fire (Kygo Remix): https://youtu.be/F3o1izxjCkM

Ed Sheeran - I See Fire: https://youtu.be/2fngvQS_PmQ

Imho this is the third best remix ever made behind Avicii's best.

Anyways, moving on to covers. Jasmine Thompson is a famous cover artist, and made a cover of Ain’t Nobody. I guess Felix Jaehn liked it and made a backing track for it. Here there’s new instrumentals and new vocalist, but nothing else has changed.

Felix Jaehn ft. Jasmine Thompson - Ain’t Nobody: https://youtu.be/5j1RCys4R0g

Chaka Khan - Ain’t Nobody: https://youtu.be/-Ro8-ngA8gs

The next song is an ABBA one! This is a unique case in that I love both versions equally. Again, new instrumentals, new singer (I think?), same melody, same lyrics

ABBA - Gimme Gimme Gimme: https://youtu.be/XEjLoHdbVeE

GAMPER & DADONI - Gimme Gimme Gimme: https://youtu.be/OR5jsmDTUrc

I’ll sign off with a hilarious song I discovered. It’s a song about a girl who’s in utter denial about her breakup. I know I shouldn’t be laughing but holy hell the level of denial:

NOTD, Nina Nesbitt - Cry Dancing: https://youtu.be/Qp-UbtDVf7I

Okay, that’s it from me, I tend to ramble on, sorry, see you on thursday!

-Alia

(Oh wow I overshot by about 5 times damn, the shallow dive turned out to be pretty deep also this took a lot of effort please appreciate not the post it's pretty much a rant but the embeds took effort and also the last minute edits scrambling to somehow get this done by 12 even though I had most of the content ready days ago this is literally the only thing I can get done on time ok thank you bye i'll stop talking now see you)

#music #electronic music #remixes #cover song #dftba #Youtube #Spotify #SoundCloud

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ciceroprofacto · 3 years ago

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Well it's putting the cards on the table time apparently. I heard once about a rumor that basically said that you didn't do the research for soa, nor did your wife. That some Tumblr user(s) actually made ("an important") part of the research. I think the ones that told me that hate you or something.

So I just wanted to know - is that true? Because well, even i sometimes thought that it was almost impossible to make that amount of research by oneself. Or even two people. Both in so, so busy careers and being successful in those careers.

Look, it's not as if I believed it's completely impossible. I mean, I've been building a world with my bf for some years now, and just a month ago we discovered that its political laws are incredibly similar to spartan ones... without any of us having ever studied ancient politics before.

So anyways. Have a nice day!

ugh. I've seen this one (or a variation of it) before and I have some questions.

what's this 'important part' of the research that I didn't do?

and if not me...who's doing it?

seriously- who? I'd love to call them up. I was begging for help when I first started- what do y'all think that obnoxiously-long timeline post (made January 9th 2017) was? it's literally titled as a call to action...and it barely got feedback at the time. it took 6 chapters for @madtomedgar to pick me up and help with editing until I got my footing and then @denialandavoidance picked me up. if anyone can be credited with helping me, it's them- which is why they are credited on those chapters. but, I will say, and they could attest (though this is so far below worth our time...), the legwork was always there on the details. I just needed touch-ups, fact checks, and proofreading.

on that- did we just...scroll past the years of posts where I was discovering details for the timeline and sharing them...some of that process was pretty public? unfortunately, a lot of it was also just in my notes and on the chapter drafts because I was more worried about writing the story than showing my work...because it's a fanfic. I couldn't imagine anyone would need me to prove that I'd researched.

which- what is the bar here for citations? the closest thing I've done to a bibliography has been the recent meta posts I'm making on the reread, but the idea of including that on the work itself is nightmarish. even my meta post leaves a lot out, and you'd end up with ~2k words of notes on each chapter. that ruins the immersion, distracts from the plot, and worst- adds extra effort on my part. I just won't do it. sorry. I'm not making money off this, I'm not being graded on it. it's a fanfic.

even if I tried, a full-bibliography isn't going to have all the records for every nitty-gritty detail that's included in the story. I wasn't adding footnotes on my drafts as I went along. I just wasn't. my method was to keep it as simple as possible, and a bibliography wasn't the priority, just getting the information. I basically just had a timeline that was like an agenda for each day and I was backfilling it with details from all the books and journals and primary source documents I was reading. anytime a date would come up in a source, I'd add it to my notes. anytime there was a gap or I had specific questions, I'd dig around until I could fill it (or I’d make something up because it’s fiction). though most of my sources were publicly-accessible (we stan Wiki in this house), I don't even have access to everything I used back in 2015-18. I was in college and had access to academic databases, my library, and @john-laurens was also still in school with similar accesses, and towards the end of 2016, started helping me find specific details. google could get me 90% of the way there, but the really detailed day-to-day stuff was in letters and journal entries.

it seems a lot like how someone might research to write a biography, they'd just be more thorough about annotating their sources since their goal is to publish...I might not be doing it for the same reasons, but why is it so hard to believe I could?

anyway- no. that's not true. I've had contributors. the people I've mentioned above have helped me directly and they're credited in the work because of it- though I would still emphasize for the context of this question, their help has mostly been as editors, occasionally fielding specific questions or giving me source recommendations. any contributions other than theirs would come from posts that are public on this blog, but I truly, genuinely, can't think of any that have already been incorporated or would warrant recognition...

if someone feels like I've missed something they gave me, they're always welcome to take it up with me.

#my process feels so simple I don't understand the disbelief #it's just...read books. take notes #that's it #that's literally it.#anon #long post #answered

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redinkofshame · 4 years ago

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1. How many works do you have on AO3?

17! My favorite number.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

178,176. Dang!

3. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

@theDuckPond Solavellan slow burn? smlungst, 62,553 words

New Life papae!Solas with lots of smut, 6606 words

Marigolds in the Hanged Man Varrigold! :D Varric/Marigold, 43,527 words

(3.5 is Dreaming With You (Solas x Reader), but I’m only a partial writer on that one so I’m not counting it.)

Labor and Loss papae!Solas with lots of sad, 4097 words

Kirkwall Karaoke f!Fenhawke drunken shenanigans, 7023 words

Wow I wasn’t expecting my karaoke fic to be on this list! And you guys really like your papae!Solas :D

4. Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I do, yes, because when I leave comments it gives me anxiety that only seeing them reply fixes and I want to do that for other people. Unfortunately back when I updated every week (lol) I got in the habit of replying to comments when I posted something new... So now when I go a long time without posting a new chapter I leave the comments on read for a long time. Sorry guys!!

5. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Honestly? This Nonsense. (Link is to a long series of messages to @keturagh at 3am, no joke.)

But, since then, I’ve figured out an alternative ending that’s much happier. I can’t help it. I want happy endings.

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

As per #5, all of them lol. The first one that came to mind was Marigolds, but honestly my soulmate au Vhenaslin feels the fluffiest to me.

And, of course, there’s this one ;)

7. Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

I haven’t, not yet :( Like, I like the concept but no combination I’ve thought of has given me even the slightest bit of inspiration.

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Yep! I received one that was something like “Congrats! You’ve written the most insufferable OC I’ve ever read!!” and it was fucking hilarious because it was on, like, chapter 6? You read 6 chapters about a character you didn’t like and somehow it’s my fault?? lmao

There was another one I can’t remember, too, and twice people have called Elle a bitch. All of these happened to Elle from Duck Pond, so if that’s not a glowing recommendation~

9. Do you write smut? If so what kind?

ROFL yeah that’s why I’m here. Like literally why I joined the fandom.

Everyone I’ve written is m/f and not particularly kinky but pretty damn explicit. Sometimes I do fade-to-black or gloss over for pacing, but mostly... Yeah. There’s smut. let Solas nut

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of. Sure af hope not.

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope. At least, not that I know of!

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes! There was a Solas x Reader post on tumblr that people were reblogging and adding a little more too, and I guess that the foreplay went on too long because @keturagh sent it to me like ‘you’re the expert of getting the P in the V!’ and I’ve never written Reader fic before (or since) but who am I to disappoint!!

Then someone compiled it all and put it on AO3 here. I don’t have a damn clue where my writing begins -- other than I got the P in the V lol. Every once in a while I get a notification of a comment or kudos on it and every SINGLE time I’m like

13. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

Very clearly Solavellan. Though I’m also very into Opal/Nik from the Minimum Wage Magic books by Rachel Aaron. I listened to the audiobook because Patrick Weekes shared their reading list on twitter once and it was on there and I’m a HUGE sucker for juxtaposition. Gets me every time.

I’ve since read uuuhhhh almost everything Rachel Aaron/Bachs has read, and there’s lots of great stuff in there, but MWM is still my favorite series of hers by far. My own personal Couch AU.

14. What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Uuhhhh.... So many? Or more like I’m scared I never will, in any case. I started drafting a list of my WIPs and it got... long. I can’t think of any I made a deliberate choice to never finish. There’s only 1 fic that I wrote that I didn’t post.

15. What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue, pacing, and sex~

I consider my dialogue my biggest asset as a writer tbh

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

WRITING THE WORDS DOWN and also how do plot?

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

In the fandom there’s a tendency to write lines in elvhen and then put the translation at the end and yeah no it drives me bonkers. It completely destroys the immersion and pacing for no pay off. I’m not going to scroll down to understand your story. I just read it straight and try to figure out what’s going on based on context.

I stick with the well-known canon lines that most of us obsessed fans know by heart. I think sometimes I put a translation in there for newcomers, maybe? One time I used a feature on AO3 where you can hover your mouse over the work and it has like a footnote? that you can use to translate. But I immediately stopped bc #1 I don’t know how that works on mobile and #2 it really doesn’t seem like that’s going to work with screen readers. But otherwise I just say ‘they said in elven’ or have the narrator translate it themself for the reader.

Also, a lot of people use the elvhen translations from that BNF’s project and like... If you WANT him to say ‘I want to paint you with my cum’ then just have the courage to say it straight!

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

lmao Harvest Moon. Yeah. After that was Tamora Pierce (modern girl in Tortall yep). Then was like a 15 year gap until I got frustrated at the slow pace of the romance with this egg in this game so I wanted to see if there was smut... (Cue Googling: Is FanFiction.Net still a thing?)

19. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

Oh gosh. Hmm. I love all my girls, but Duck Pond was/is a major work of love. Unlike my short works I really had the chance to explore more in a full length fic, you know?

(Marigolds is also full length but it was my first fic and there’s some spots that I’m not too proud of.)

That’s all the questions but I’m adding:

20. What’s a fic you’re proud of that hasn’t gotten much attention?

because I want an excuse to mention how hard I worked on Kirkwall Noir and how I’m surprised how little readership it’s gotten. It’s Varric! It’s Marigold! It’s super short, unlike most my stuff. Maybe that’s why people don’t like it?

Hmm, I also used a AO3 pen name, but it would still show on my page, right?

Thank you for the tags, @roguelioness and @thevikingwoman !! Consider yourself re-tagged so you can answer #20. Also tagging: @blarfkey @broomclosetkink @elveny @bardinhightown @keturagh @luzial

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sineala · 4 years ago

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Hey! I know you've received asks about long distance relationships before but I hope you don't mind if I ask, too :) The thing is a bit complicated and I need some advice, and your story is just so beautiful I'm like, "please adopt me!!" There's this person on tumblr whom I have a crush on, sort of: we've never actually interacted because I don't have a tumblr account but she posts a lot of things I love and info on herself too, so I feel like I know her. 1/2

2/2 I'm ace and never dated, which is a problem because I don't really know what to do, and I'm also very shy, but... the question is... what can I do? i can't just send her a message and say, "I have a crush on you, but you don't know anything of me. Can we try to date?" But on the other hand I really don't know how to start talking to her... :( sorry, I'm just an awkward human being... and thank you for listening to my problems! But of course feel free to ignore me. Take care ❤️

Okay. Wow. This is a lot, anon. I had to think for a while about how to say this as nicely as I possibly can, but: I don't think you should do what you're asking me how to do. At all. I don't think your feelings are bad or wrong or invalid, and I get why you feel the way you do, but there's really not a good, kind, or fair way to get the outcome that you want. You can try to make friends with her if you legitimately want to be friends with her, but you can't be friends with her for the purpose of dating her.

I have more to say under the Read More.

You might find it helpful to read something about the concept of parasocial relationships. The tl;dr version is that parasocial relationships are relationships that an audience experiences with people like celebrities or performers. You, the audience member, don't actually interact personally with the person you have this parasocial relationship with -- everything you know about them is because you actually know the persona they are adopting for public consumption, rather than the person themselves -- but you feel like you know them anyway.

I'm not saying that parasocial relationships are bad. They can be good! They can be positive! I'm pretty sure we all have them. Heck, media fandom is basically us having massive numbers of parasocial relationships with fictional characters! Parasocial relationships can be great and inspiring! Having a favorite character or a favorite celebrity can make you really happy! Do I have parasocial relationships too? Yeah, sure, you bet. The Goodreads review I have that has garnered the most likes is the one that is approximately 50% me explaining that I have a giant crush on Rachel Maddow. I have never met Rachel Maddow. I obviously do not know the real Rachel Maddow, and I would not want to actually for-real date her even if both of us were single. I can just be happy reading her books and watching her TV show. There's a video game I like to play, Slay The Spire, and I have a favorite Slay The Spire streamer on Twitch, and at this point I have probably watched hundreds of hours of this dude playing video games, and because of that, I know a lot of random facts about this guy's life. Does he seem like he'd be cool to hang out with? Yeah, sure. Have I ever interacted with him in any way other than subscribing to his YouTube channel? Nope! I don't even have a Twitch account! Do I know him as a person? Absolutely not.

I'm saying all this because social media is a place you can have parasocial relationships, and the relationship you have with this Tumblr user is parasocial. (Incidentally, the relationship you have with me is also parasocial; I mention this because I feel like you should know that asking me to adopt you is coming on a little too strong, as an opening interaction. I don't mean to make you feel bad about this, and I'm sorry if I have, but since you're asking about how to interact with people you've never spoken to before, you should probably know that.)

It basically comes down to this: you don't actually know this person, but you feel like you do because you've read her Tumblr. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. That's not a criticism. That's not a value judgment. I mean, technically, you don't know me either. That's just not the kind of relationship that I have with you, or that you have with her. It's parasocial, not reciprocal. And you really need to keep that in mind.

Can you form reciprocal relationships with people you have parasocial relationships with? I mean, yeah, maybe, depending on the person. And the answer to how you do that is basically the answer to the question "how do you make friends with people?" -- and it seems like you might like advice about that, since you said you were shy, You talk to someone about mutual interests that you both enjoy. You hang out. Maybe in RL in Better Times you meet up and go get lunch together. These days on the internet I make most of my internet friends by (1) squeeing back and forth at them about whatever fic they wrote and clogging up their AO3 comments until we take it to email, (2) yelling about fandom on Discord until we mutually discover we are like-minded enough to start yelling at each other in DMs directly, and (3) murdering them in games of Among Us and then lying about it. (Games are a bonding experience.)

You listen well, you share some things about yourself because that's what friends do and if the other person wants to be your friend they will share things back -- or maybe they will share things first, if they decide they want to be friends first. This is how we humans like to bond with each other. I feel like I am not very good at this friend-making thing, so I am not sure I am the best person to ask for tips. But that is basically how it works.

Can you be friends with this person? Maybe. I don't know. You can try. But what I do know is that you absolutely should not try to be friends with her with the intention of dating her. People don't like when they think someone is friends with them because they want something from them, and, generally, people really really don't like when someone is friends with them when the thing they want from them is a romantic relationship. You know how you hear people (usually straight guys) talk about being "friendzoned?" They're upset because they're friends with a woman they want to date and the woman sees them as only a friend. That is the realm your proposed interaction is adjacent to, and that is not a good place to be. Don't be like one of those guys.

I think you should ask yourself if you would be happy being friends with this person if there were zero possibility of romance with her. If you would be happy being just friends. And be honest with yourself. If, after some soul-searching, you decide that, yeah, you would feel 100% satisfied just being her friend if nothing else ever happened (and you have to honestly believe this), then and only then should you try talking to her.

What should you talk about? I don't know; you must have something in common. I have made friends with people because we both enjoyed Avengers volume 3 and classic Star Trek. I made friends with a bunch of people in college because we all liked to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Smallville. I have made friends with people because I told them I liked the book they were reading or the pins on their backpack. I have made friends with people because we both were in the same science-fiction online roleplaying group as teenagers and it turned out twenty years later we were sharing a fandom, we now lived in the same state, and we also liked the same folk music! I made friends with my wife because I wanted to complain to her about a Due South fanfic I was reading and she didn't like it either and then I was translating a text for class that was in Ancient Egyptian and the footnotes were in German and I didn't know German (and still don't) but I knew she did. At that point I had absolutely no clue there would be any romance involved there; I just thought she was really cool and she seemed to think I was cool and then we just kept talking.

So, y'know, maybe, if you just want to be her friend, you can try to do that. You can find out if you actually like her as an actual, real person. But you have to want to just be friends.

But if you think you'd be unhappy if you were just friends with her, you absolutely should not try to be friends with her, because that would be misrepresenting what you want and it would also be very unfair to her.

(Edited to add: I guess the other option is that you could, in fact, just be like, “Hey, I have a crush on you,” which would be both honest and forthright -- but I feel like that has a very, very low chance of working. Hence all the other advice.)

I hope that helps.

#Anonymous #replies

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