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fizzigigsimmer · 2 years ago

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The power of narrative empathy.

This is kind of a strange post about Billy, but I’m just gonna let it flow. I’m gonna start with this, I am a Billy Hargrove fan. I am a black, queer, female abuse survivor and I make no apologies about loving this character. Also, none of what I just said matters, I just think it’s important to note that we are out here. Even if I wasn’t those things I would still have the liberty and hopefuly the empathy to feel for his character. Today I want to talk about how Billy was written, why I think that’s dead wrong and damaging to those of us who survive abuse without a halo, and I am going to use another beloved fictional victim to do it. He also happens to be one of the world’s most iconic and well known villains. Yes I am going to talk about Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker, and how his story is real. How it happened to me and it’s happening to someone else right now, and how I see evidence of the same societal failure shown in the films playing out in real time every damn day in the Stranger Things Fandom when it comes to Billy Hargrove. So here we go.

For a highly condensed slightly satirical recap: The genocidal tyrant formerly known as Darth Vader started out as Anakin Skywalker. A gifted child slave whose only living family was his mother. If the words child slave didn’t clue you in, let me just tell you that my ravenous consuming of any and all Star Wars companion novels confirmed that Anakin regularly suffered abuse and was put into life threatening danger by a greedy master because he was a protege pilot. As a result, Anakin learned from a pretty early age that how he used his gifts might literally be the difference between whether he and his mom survived. Fun shit like that.

Despite all, Anakin was a good person. Yeah he was a little rash and a little angry sometimes, but he was also kind, brave, and loyal and had all the makings of a great person - in other words he was an ordinary child who just happened to have a special power that gave his FEELINGS agency in the world.

Enter the Jedi Knights, literal space Knights, and fellow feelings practitioners. They’ve developed a truly insane way of dealing with the fact that their feelings are a literal force in the world, by forming a kind of religion around not allowing themselves to feel very much at all and keeping the peace. They’re the ultimate good guys whose reputation proceeds them and our enslaved child instantly looks up to and idolizes them as heroes. He’s willing to put his life in danger to help them even when there’s literally no gain in it for him and then they happily use him in order to get some parts they need to get off the planet. He’s 9 by the way.

But Anakin isn’t risking his life for nothing nothing. Jedi master Qui-Gon Jin has seen Anakin is a fellow feelings user and immediately thinks he’s the prophesied “Chosen One”, who is supposed to bring BALANCE TO THE FORCE THAT GUIDES THE UNIVERSE. Based on literally nothing nothing and possibly an immaculate conception. Anyway, he’s convinced. Even though he already has an apprentice/surrogate son, he immediately starts love bombing this slave child and filling his head with promises that he’s gonna be freed from his horrible life and trained to be this great Jedi - promises he has no idea whether he’ll be able to keep by the way. So Qui-Gon buys a child and calls it a rescue, and tells him he’s going to have to leave his mother in bondage and cut off all emotional ties to her. Like he can never see her again or even feel too strongly about never seeing her again because Jedi’s aren’t supposed to love. Love is too strong a feeling and it leads to all the other BAD FEELINGS. So the nine year old child slave is told to be brave and start acting like a Jedi already and stop with the whole being scared/guilty about leaving his mother thing.

The nine year-old child slave who has just been separated from his mother for life, does not do that. In a turn of events that should really shock no one, instead he immediately trauma imprints on the first girl who shows him empathy after he opens up about his EMOTIONAL PAIN. He then spends the next decade fixated on this girl and crying out for help because he can not just turn off his emotions. He is constantly criticized, demeaned, and treated like a pariah for not just being able to magically rise above his trauma or control his trauma responses, in order to become the white knight he’s supposed to be for the republic. Side note, when I say dude was erratic AF and crying out for help AF, I mean that. There are several Youtube Psychologists who have done reactions to this character and an interesting theme throughout all of them is how Anakin displays all of the typical indicators for Bipolar Disorder and Reactive Attachment Disorder. It’s interesting, and I’ve linked a favorite.

So back to this child slave who is either the victim of a three movie long mental health crisis or the Worst Writing Syndrome (I’ll take both for 300 Alex). Obi-Wan, Anakin’s big brother/father figure has no idea what the hell he is doing or how to help him, because he hasn’t processed his own trauma. Time for a side note about Obi-Wan’s former master Qui-Gon. He was an overly critical and emotionally unavailable teacher/father whose teaching style was essentially to give out tiny scraps of approval every now and again just so Obi-wan didn’t decide to swallow his light saber.

So there was Obi-wan, 25 years old, still out here trying to get daddy’s stamp of approval so that he can be a real man who has MASTERED HIS FEELINGS, but he’s being told he’s not ready and reminded of all of his short comings on the regular. It’s Tuesday in other words. But then dad finds this new kid and literally just stops caring about training Obi-wan. He tells Obi-wan it’s time he moved out and got a job with zero notice.

Qui-Gon announces to the Jedi Council that he wants Anakin as his apprentice. Which is super awkward because his actual apprentice is standing right there. When they point out that he’s already got one, he’s suddenly all ‘oh Obi-wan is ready to be a big boy now’. Obi-wan was rightly jealous, hurt, and low-key pissed off, but Jedi’s aren’t supposed to let FEELINGS get the better of them so he swallows sadness.

Qui-Gon might be a bit of a dick but he is still dad, so when he tragically dies right in Obi-wan’s arms and uses his very last breathes to beg him to train Anakin, this fresh as fuck Jedi-Knight suddenly becomes a father figure to a traumatized slave child. And the saddest thing is Obi-wan is a better man than Qui-Gon. He has every reason in the world to hate this little twerp, but he tries so hard to break the cycle and he be the father figure Anakin needs.

But the thing about breaking cycles is someone has to teach you how to do it. The Jedi Council is not out here encouraging Obi-Wan to be emotionally present and empathetic to Anakin’s unique struggles and challenges. And LOLS do he have them. In fact Obi-Wan is constantly in the council room defending Anakin against their prejudice for shit Anakin can’t control, and is often being criticized himself for being too soft with his apprentice. Like they would literally sit him down and essentially tell him to stop being an Anakin defender and apologist 😂.

So the end result was Obi-wan landed somewhere in the messy middle between the dad he promised himself he wouldn’t be and the one he wanted to be, and the child slave’s mental health continued to decline (surprise surprise) until he finally met a creepy groomer who manipulated him by VALIDATING HIS EMOTIONAL PAIN. Nobody intervened, although there was ample opportunities to do so. Anakin was literally as well as figuratively crying out for help the whole time. He didn’t get it. He was told to just stop being afraid. Just stop being angry. Just stop loving your mother and don’t think about what may or may have happened to her. Just stop and do the savior thing okay? JUST GET OVER YOUR FEELINGS ANAKIN.

And the rest is just tragic history.

I took the time to write all that because I have been in Anakin’s and Billy’s figurative shoes. I was abused more ways than I want to recount here, and I’ll just say it. It messed me the fuck up. I know what it’s like to cry for help, over and over again and never get it. I know what it’s like to be blamed for blowing the whistle the same day you’re blamed for behavior that stems from the rage of utter helplessness. I know what it’s like to break shit and hurt people who don’t deserve it because that’s what you know. And I know what it’s like to be told I have to break the cycle somehow, even though you wouldn’t know the first place to begin even if you were in a place safe enough to start.

I aged out of my abuse. Nobody rescued me. The systems failed me. I simply got old enough to move away from my abusers and then after considerable self harming behavior I got lucky and broke good. I reached my lowest low and realized I did want to live and that I had to fix my shit in order to do that. I started going to therapy and working to build the life I wanted. And in case this isn’t clear enough I will spell it out. The world did not look at me, an abuse survivor and empathize. There was not a reliable support system, no heroes in capes. I’m here, stable, loved and in a good place because I survived long enough to buy the help I needed. That’s it. It’s fucking tragic and as a society we have a lot to be ashamed for. We fail.

I empathize with Billy Hargrove because his story is my story. Right down to societies response, and the way his writers decided to condemn him from conception.

As terrible a writer as George Lucas may be that is the one thing he did not do. He could have condemned the character of Darth Vader with his narrative, but instead he wrote what is essentially a redemptive six part epic about an abuse survivor that the ENTIRE GALAXY FAILED. Anakin’s story is a text book case for why it is fucking awful to look at an abuse survivor and put the burden of healing on them. Like they’re just supposed to be organically “resilient” to the shit that you claim you wouldn’t even know how to survive, in order to be some virtuous example to others about how to “stay good”.

People expect that of characters like Billy Hargrove because that’s what people expect of real victims too. You’re only worthy of empathy if you somehow survive the unsurvivable mentally and emotionally intact. That’s how the Duffer brothers related to Billy’s trauma. In their own words, he’s not written as what he is (an abused child) he’s a villain whom they wanted to look like a real boy so they gave him trauma. He’s written to be judged, hated for his inability to just magically STOP, and then die so that the story can plod forward.

And just in case you don’t yet see why that matters, just stop and think about how people are more accepting of the character who literally decimated planets and slaughtered children, than the teen who was abused and then possessed. Anakin is allowed to have fans who empathize with his struggles, who dream of the better life he might have had. Anakin’s sacrificial death is allowed to be the redemptive moment that it was, and he’s literally allowed to shed the name of Darth Vader and be remembered as the friend and brother that Obi-wan loved within his own narrative. Because he’s written with empathy.

And society responds to that empathy. I have never, not once, been shamed, ridiculed, or called a child murder apologists (or what the fuck ever) for loving his character.

Billy isn’t real, but the people who empathize with and see themselves in his character are real. Nobody’s required to like him, love him, or even want to think about him for that matter but this drive some people have to blanket judge other fans and start calling people weirdos and monsters for feeling anything for him that isn’t disgust - that’s what can stop. You can literally just stop. Back away from the keyboard and take a deep breath. Agree to disagree. Feel how you feel. But don’t go fucking far out of your way to tear strangers down over the internet.There’s no justification in the world for it. I promise.

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#Billy hargrove #looooong meta #I really had to get this off my chest #feelings have bee brewing for awhile #maybe it will resonate with someone else #Youtube

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charlotteswebbbbb · 11 days ago

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What's the vibe #75

News:

Peter Do left Helmut Lang. Is this a case of people love the archive more than the newness? How can a brand shine through when its USP was taken in its absence?

Burberry is trouble but with new CEO, Joshua Schulman (former Coach Brand President) they are trying to rein it back. Focusing more on outerwear and creating a 'scarf bar' (like they did in 2015) at their NYC store for customisation opportunities.

"But outerwear and scarves currently contribute around 40-50% of Burberry's revenues, and would not alone move the needle for a brand turnaround, Morningstar analyst Jelena Sokolova said." in this Reuters article. There's also this other info on moving away from seasonal cycles and going back to the brand but who knows what that means. The prices of product were too high for what Burberry was known for so possibly they're angling for the British Coach? The British Hermes?

See you IRL?

The Guardian left X (formerly Twitter), last week and with Elon's announcement to the office of "DOGE" (Department of Government Efficiency with Vivek Ramaswamy), this was a domino effect of many more leaving such as Crack Magazine, Gabrielle Union, Jamie Lee Curtis and just many more regular users.

How much influence can one man have: space, automobiles, social media, government? The latter of the two having real heavy consequences on global audiences.

From The Guardian's official post:

"This is something we have been considering for a while given the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism. The US presidential election campaign served only to underline what we have considered for a long time: that X is a toxic media platform and that its owner, Elon Musk, has been able to use its influence to shape political discourse."

We've gone through social media cycles of discovery before but the crux of what peoples needs are, are photo and text (Instagram). Text and photo (Twitter). The exception is really video (started with Vine and just became longer until you got to Music.ly and TikTok). If people wanted to have a phone convo they'd use FaceTime or WhatsApp. Which is why so many people have moved to BlueSky, which is owned by Jay Graeber and the Bluesky team, and founded by Jack Dorsey (former Twitter CEO) in 2021.

"Meta’s Threads is still outpacing Bluesky, having recently hit 275 million monthly users and growing at a rate of over a million signups per day. But Bluesky offers a very different experience. Both are ad-free (for now), but whereas Threads uses a single Meta-made algorithmic feed, Bluesky offers user-created algorithmic feeds in addition to its “Discover” and “Popular With Friends” ones" - from

People want to be able to curate their feeds without bots, without their posts being used to train AI or hatred. There's a real interest in peace and learning which was the internet during the early 2010s. One of the best accounts is just @hikingshawty who posts their walks in Northern England and her dinner. Simplicity is where we're going at the core of it all. People want to utilise social media to

We're getting to the heart of the issue here which is that the park, the majority of locations for these meet ups is the third space of the moment. For everyone truly. People don't want to pay money for an overpriced drink, they want to meet new people, have overarching things in common. See also: old Tumblr meet-ups.

Zora:

Zora could be interesting as they just sponsored a Lucky Jewel pop up at The Grotesque Archive which is "a shop specialising in vintage and contemporary garments primarily made in France and Italy by lesser known and rare designers."

"Zora is an onchain social network revealing new opportunities to create, connect, and earn from your life online." Again involving crypto, could it be more normalised again as people seek to move to more equitable social networks?

This could also be connected to the idea of sharing and having exclusivity. USB Club offers a "social file exchange" when you buy one of their USBs. An in club where you share with everyone one file a day to create an exclusive feed.

Louis Vuitton *pop-up* store opening 6 East 57th Street in NYC:

Trunks as scaffolding....this is Trump Tower no? No. It's Louis Vuitton's being refurbished. Their temporary space, seen below, is the biggest LV space in the US.

"On the fourth floor, Le Café Louis Vuitton proposes a truly unique experience. Conceived as a café cum library space, it features over 600 titles curated by editor Ian Luna, privileging New York artists. The culinary journey is an alliance of refinement and creativity, orchestrated by chefs Christophe Bellanca and Marie George under French chefs Arnaud Donckele and Maxime Frédéric for a distinctive "luxury snacking" concept."

Marketing Genius from Jacquemus London:

APOC pop up shop at the end of the month:

Chopova Lowena Sample Sale at the same time:

Chopova Lowena sample sale on 30th November at 9am at Paynes Wharf Studios, SE8 3GG. Sienna Cafe, located next to the studio, will host a CL takeover with delicious treats to keep the early birds warm, caffeinated and fed, open from 7am.

H&M is trying to assert it's dominance:

The Swedish fast fashion retailer has been nibbled at by Temu, Shein and vintage fashion alike. Right now, you can see it's many cultural activations and their upcoming collaboration with Glenn Martens, they're trying to attract the younger crowd who is interested in subculture - they're dodging the normies a little.

The events are "to celebrate the brand’s re-energised future." So what does that mean? I feel like they've studied that the club is a meeting space or they're copying similar attempts done by brands and people connected to luxury fashion. The artists themselves probably want to be seen as "accessible" also...

Unexpected Culture:

The best things this year were a part of the unexpected. The creator had an idea, put it out and wasn't worried too much about whether it would work. I'm thinking of brat, and it's green background black text album cover that Charli thought no one would care about, I'm talking Chromokopia by Tyler the Creator being his best selling album despite being released on a Monday, I'm talking The Substance. So much of these pieces of artwork are about the crisis of ageing, what to do at a crossroads, what to do when things that were previously available aren't.

Camp Flog Gnaw - Tyler's festival - celebrated it's 10 year anniversary.

And here was the style coverage.

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This also relates to H&M doing things because they were the sponsor for Charli's impromptu show in Times Square yesterday. Brat campaign sponsored by fast fashion?? But also Acne Studios?

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Key phrases for the next 4 years: truth (can be in the search for news or in identity, craft and skill (lack of it), cross-cultural collaboration (migration), accessibility culture (disability)

Is this truth? Or is this just another extremely smart popstar team? I think that the reference should never be too obvious.

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The top of the underground is seeping out and they're lapping up truthfulness. Image only.

Accounts of the week:

https://www.instagram.com/whtmakesyou/

Belgian collective

https://www.instagram.com/espaceaygo/

#what's the vibe #vibe #parsed #Youtube

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coolnerdyandalone · 5 years ago

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on FIMQ deleting her content and COVID-19 (and a gratuitous larry fic rec)

@freddiesmyqueen first of all queen i hope you’re doing ok although i know some shit must have gone down for you to delete/private list all your videos and i hope you know that the larry community supports you always. Also your talent is TRULY unmatched in the world of video editing - no one makes edits quite like you and that’s why your loss impacts the community so profoundly.

secondly, i know at least i was hoping to turn to rewatching all of FIMQ’s videos while i’m being quarantined due to the coronavirus. and i’m willing to bet that i’m not the only one. this is a scary time and for people like me who feel profoundly alone right now, the only way for me to calm my nerves and fears is by reverting to the content and community that helped me feel not so alone when i was in middle and high school. For me, that looks like watching FIMQ videos and reading my favorite larry fanfics (which i will also link below). because of this i thought it might be helpful to repost some links that were posted by @bluemoonlarryandkaylor for a signal boost (if my teeny-tiny account can be called a signal boost).

link to a google drive with FIMQ videos: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ONwfLOd_IYvAL5OUDqDb_LLgQsDpd9il

link to an acct with some FIMQ re-uploads: https://www.youtube.com/user/Joana3961/videos

link to FIMQ vids with spanish subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIouodFhArMkQhOHxv2t2NgxTwl6KvXAT

and now if you want to look at some good old fashioned larry fics that are my ABSOLUTE faves and could 100% be actual novels/movies, keep reading:

And Then A Bit** by @infinitelymint aka the best fanfic ever written (basically larry fakes a relationship for publicity with each other and it could be cannon if you really wanted to hope upon hopes): https://archiveofourown.org/works/1415272/chapters/2972746 (159k)

“We’d like to give the fans what they want.” Magee states, placing his hand on the table in front of him and leaning forward. “We want to give them Larry Stylinson.”

Or, take a parallel universe where Louis and Harry were never together, mix in a two year hiatus and an impending comeback, pour in a dash of lost fans, two tablespoons of strong friendship and a Modest! employee with a good idea. Add a squeeze of pretending to be a couple, lots of kisses and a tattoo or two. Stir. Serve: the mother of all publicity stunts.

(aka Harry and Louis fake a relationship for publicity. Eventually it becomes a lot less fake and a lot more real.)

Escapade** by @haydolce aka the Jack McQueen fic: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4034197/chapters/9071932 (146k)

In the grand scheme of things, finding a date for a wedding should be no problem for Louis Tomlinson. He's rich. He's handsome. He's reasonably well behaved. But when the wedding is for his lifelong best friend (and former boyfriend), and is happening in under a month, finding a date for the ceremony and accompanying festivities becomes more of an adventure than he ever could have planned for.

California Sold** by @isthatyoularry : https://archiveofourown.org/works/5157680/chapters/11877494 (123k)

Notoriously closeted boyband member Harry Styles is famous on a global scale, meanwhile Louis, as his best friend, is back home in Manchester, living the typical life of a 24 year old. When Harry needs Louis with him in LA, a publicity stunt gone wrong changes their friendship forever.

A fake-relationship AU between two lifelong best friends.

Bring Your Body Baby (I Could Bring You Fame) by @theboyfriendstagram : https://archiveofourown.org/works/4263903/chapters/9652944 (84k)

Eighteen year old Harry Styles just graduated high school and landed a summer job as a waterboy for his favorite football team. His job description is simple: be ready to hand water and towels to players if needed. That didn’t seem to include Louis Tomlinson though, a twenty-three year old, recently transferred Paris Saint-German player, who seems to like making Harry’s job much more difficult than it has to be.

A self-indulgent AU that takes place over the summer of 2015. 18 year old Harry hates pining after people he can't have, and 23 year old footballer Louis loves flirting with people even though it never means anything.

Pull Me Under** by @zarah5 : https://archiveofourown.org/works/870766/chapters/1672104 (140k)

AU. As the first British footballer to come out at the prime of his career, it helps that Louis Tomlinson is in a long-term, committed relationship. Even if that relationship is fake. (Featuring Niall as Louis' favourite teammate, Liam as Louis' agent, and Zayn as Liam's boyfriend, who just happens to be good friends with one Harry Styles.)

You You You** by @isthatyoularry : https://archiveofourown.org/works/846690/chapters/1617212 (137k)

“Infamous boybander leaves club together with unknown,” read the headline. Underneath were pictures of a boy with dark curls, green eyes and very tight pants. They both studied the article for a moment, reading it through quickly. “Is that…?” Louis frowned. That guy almost looked exactly like... "HOLY FUCKING SHIT!" "Louis," Niall said, looking absolutely fucked over. "You just fucked the most wanted guy on earth. You just fucked Harry Styles of One Direction."

Or, the one where Harry and Louis meet at a club and Louis takes Harry home, only for him to realize that the boy who just made him breakfast half naked is Harry Styles from One Direction.

Like an Endless Summer by @horsegirlharry : https://archiveofourown.org/works/11365494/chapters/25442085 (87k)

“You just wanna go fawn over Styles as soon as possible,” Zayn grumbles.

“I do not. Plus, he probably got ugly this year. Eighteen is an awkward time...I bet he’s got acne and one of those terrible fuckboy haircuts all the hipsters are getting these days, with the shaved sides? Just watch, the first year we’re gonna get any time together is gonna be the first year I don’t have a stupid crush on him.”

---

Or, Louis is a riding instructor at a summer camp, and Harry is a fellow counselor who he’s been successfully managing his crush on for the last two summers. That is, until Harry shows up this year leveled up and lethal, and all Louis’s formerly perfected veneer of nonchalance melts like a popsicle in the sun.

Three French Hems by @100percentsassy and @gloriaandrews : https://archiveofourown.org/works/3064493 (20k)

In which Louis is a designer at Burberry and Harry spends December wearing Lanvin… and Lanvin… and Lanvin.

The Dead of July aka the Marvel Fic by @whimsicule : https://archiveofourown.org/works/3594570/chapters/7928520 (117k)

Being an Avenger means continuing to be Captain America and smiling and being honorable for the public and Harry does his best. But it doesn’t give him time to figure out who he is supposed to be once he takes off his uniform and puts the shield to the side. Just being Harry had always involved Louis, and Harry fears he doesn’t know how to exist without him.

or: Harry is Captain America, and Louis’ been dead for 70 years.

Gods & Monsters by @mizzwilde : https://archiveofourown.org/works/2090982/chapters/4550871 (201k)

The instructions were simple: seduce and destroy Harry Styles. Not once did they discuss the option of Louis actually falling in love. So, naturally, that's exactly what he did.

Love is a Rebellious Bird aka LIARB aka the orchestra fic aka dont hum bolero by @100percentsassy and @gloriaandrews : https://archiveofourown.org/works/1162438/chapters/2362331 (135k)

AU in which the boys still make music. Louis is the concertmaster of the London Symphony Orchestra, Harry is the New! and Exciting! interim conductor/ex-cello prodigy who "has made Mozart cool again" according to Esquire Magazine (Louis hates him immediately, which is definitely why he internet stalked him in his dark bedroom late at night that one time), and Niall is the best. Zayn and Liam are around too.

Don't hum Bolero.

My English Love Affair** by @isthatyoularry : https://archiveofourown.org/works/1873962 (19k)

The thing about sleeping with a member of a famous indie band is that the inevitability of having a song written about you is most likely a hundred percent. The second thing is that in the end, nobody's supposed to find out it's about you.

The one where Harry writes a song about his English love affair and Louis sleeps with someone in White Eskimo and all he gets is a stupid song written about him.

Soft Hands, Fast Feet, Can’t Lose by @haydolce : https://archiveofourown.org/works/5799241/chapters/13366498 (113k)

American Uni AU. Harry Styles is a frat boy football star from the wealthy Styles Family athletic dynasty. A celebrity among football fans, he knows how to play, he knows how to party, and he knows how to fuck (all of which is well known among his legion of admirers).

Louis Tomlinson is a student and an athlete, but his similarities to Harry end there. Intelligent, focused, independent, and completely uninterested in Harry’s charms, Louis is an anomaly in a world ruled by football.

A bet about the pair, who might be more similar than they originally thought, brings them together. Shakespeare, ballet, Disney, football, library chats, running, accidental spooning, Daredevil and Domino’s Pizza all blend into one big friendship Frappucino, but who will win in the end?

Wild and Unruly aka the Cowboy fic by @100percentsassy and @gloriaandrews : https://archiveofourown.org/works/2723093/chapters/6099611 (124k)

Harry is a cowboy sitting on the biggest oil reservoir in Wyoming, and Louis is the paralegal assigned to pressure him into selling his land.

For As Long As I Can Remember (It’s Been December)** by @greenfeelings : https://archiveofourown.org/works/15051122/chapters/34892210 (128k)

After recovering from a severe accident that causes Harry to lose his memory of three years, he moves to London to start his life over as a star chef. Little does he know that when he falls in love with Louis at first sight, it’s not the first time they meet.

Featuring an unintentional game of hot and cold, Harry chasing memories that won’t come back, Louis burying himself in work to try and forget what he can’t forget, Liam being torn between two of his best friends, Zayn as a moral compass and Niall saving the day with good music and brutal honesty.

the boys of fall** aka the american football fic by @godgavemelou : https://archiveofourown.org/works/5443037 (21k)

“And everyone, this is Harry Styles. He’s going to be our starting quarterback this year.”

Louis looks at him, the tall and lanky Harry Styles, and takes it all in. He’s got hair to his shoulders that curls at the ends, tattoos all down his arms, and a bright smile on his face as the team cheers him on. He’s lean and fit, and absolutely beautiful, and Louis hates him to the core.

OR an american football au where the boys play for the university of tennessee, and harry and louis quite hate each other.

** indicates that the fic is a log-in required fic, but if you want the pdf i can send it to you

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bungoustraypups · 3 years ago

Note

NAME: Junji Ito

PARENTS: Unknown secondary parent, known only to be a son of Lucifer

AGE: Incomprehensible, possibly tens of thousands of years, appears to be in late 20s

BIRTHDAY + STAR SIGN: July 31, XXXX

GENDER + PRONOUNS: Xenogender + he/it/they

SEXUALITY: Gay

HEIGHT: 6'3" (191 cm)

WEIGHT: 190 lbs (86 kg)

TAROT CARD: The Emperor Reversed [No authority; no leadership; not planning, ruling and taking decisions; not a strong paternal figure; too flexible and without determination; no power over subordinates; no security or stability]

AFFILIATION: None, only affiliated with the Port Mafia through Ace

SIBLING(S): 22 unnamed siblings

SIGNIFICANT OTHER(S): Ace

NAMESAKE: Junji Ito

THEME SONG: Your Best Nightmare - Undertale

ABILITY: Black Paradox

ABILITY DESCRIPTION: An incredibly powerful, dangerous, and unstable ability which allows the user to rip holes in the fabric of space and time and create paradoxes of any size wherever and whenever they please. Luckily for most, Junji does not enjoy using its ability.

BRIEF OVERVIEW:

From the moment one meets it, it's clear that something is… wrong about Junji. It gives off an unsettling aura from the moment someone other than Ace approaches it, and one's greatest hope for survival when Junji encounters them is that it doesn't acknowledge their existence, or decides they are uninteresting and finds something else to "play" with. Junji's idea of "play" is incredibly terrifying and often fatal to the victim, however, as it loves to hunt down unwilling victims and either psychologically break them with horrors unknown, or if it doesn't like its victim, tearing them apart with its bare hands. Observing Junji for only a little bit reveals its demonic nature, as it has no fear of what would happen if it was discovered (and at the present point in time, anyone who has figured out that Junji is a demon has done nothing about it for fear of becoming it's next "plaything").

Its behavior only seems to change in any drastic matter when dealing with Ace and its offspring it has with him. While Junji is still a sadistic torture-killer at its core who ultimately feels the desire to destroy anything worth having, it views Ace in a much more… tender light. Ace and its children are the one thing it seems to actually treasure, and the quickest way to provoke Junji into an actual fight is to threaten its family or husband in any way, shape, or form. Of course, being that Ace is not well liked (for many good reasons), he does his best to keep Junji out of his work dealings, for fear of constantly invoking its demonic wrath. Despite not liking using its ability, Junji has been known to do it if it fears its family is under threat.

Junji fondly describes Ace as its "most treasured chew toy" and "the only human [it] truly [gets] along with", though it is unclear to others if Ace is completely aware of Junji's demonic nature, if he thinks it's a joke, or if he knows and simply doesn't care. So far, it is a mystery which none have managed to figure out, though their children are well aware of their parent's demonic nature. Junji, of course, nurtures any homicidal urge it can find in its children, and it is noted to be saddened when any one of them won't go out on "hunts" with it. According to other demonic entities, such as Shoufu (formerly Muramatsu) Kajii, Junji is actually considered the equivalent of a stay-at-home father and quite the family creature by demon standards, as it has not yet abandoned its family and has no plans to. To most humans, however, they cannot find anything enjoyable about Junji's personality.

#bsp #bsp profile #profile #bsp ask game #ask game #bsd #bsd oc #junji #junji ito

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text-to-speech-impediment · 6 years ago

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THE VAULT IN OUR STARS

An Opinion Piece on How Bethesda Survives (And How You Can Change Them!)

A/N: I wrote this op-ed for funsies. As you may know, I am known to warm myself at a corporate dumpster fire from time to time, but this one is especially close to my heart. I may replace with an actual edited version but for now, just enjoy it in its raw & unpolished glory. If you’re a Bethesda fan, you’re used to it anyway.

In the words of Todd Howard, “I read on the internet…that sometimes it doesn’t just work.”

Indeed, after just over two weeks since its 14 November release date, Bethesda Softworks’ release of survival multiplayer sandbox “Fallout 76” has more than merely failed to impress most of its players. The game has garnered an infamously low average score of only 54% on popular game journalism site, Metacritic. It fares no better on Youtube, with dozens of popular influencers obliterating the high expectations of even the most devoted fans of the Fallout franchise; but this will not be another essay to dishonor the multiple technical, immersion and storytelling woes that plague beleaguered “Fallout 76”. That’s for another essay.

This criticism is one that many previous public complaints have touched on, flirted with, but seldom fully explored while caught up in the disappointment they had in “Fallout 76.” Specifically, this essay is leveled broadly at Bethesda Softworks LLC, the video game publishing division responsible for “Fallout 76”, as well as ZeniMax Media Inc., the parent organization of Bethesda and many other well-known game developers such as Arkane Studios, id Software and more. The upper management of these companies is removed from all but the finances of their industry; they are abusing both their content creators and consumers to calculated effect, remaining foggy at best on the aim of the products their teams are producing and out of touch with the end user’s interest.

What more can we say against corporations of this staggering size? Corporations and mergers, time and again, continue to exploit art production and consumption then shrug off the backlash by driving screws into their overworked employees and letting them take the fall with the public. Unless we look at past events, this trend of blame shifting isn’t obvious. It’s hard at the moment to see that Bethesda Softworks’ colossal failure to recreate their previous endearing successes with fans in “Fallout 76” didn’t happen overnight.

It is for this reason that I sit on my soapbox today, somehow about to make an analogy of the gaming marketing industry by using Hazel and Gus from good ol’ John Green’s “The Fault in Our Stars.” Never did I imagine I’d see those concepts together, but here I am smashing them together like this is fanfiction(dot)net. Don’t get too excited, though, because none of the wholesome aspects of Hazel and Gus make it into this analogy; no, this essay is all about the essence of what happens when you take a beautiful thing and strip it to the bare bones. Being a gamer in today’s culture of parasitic marketing is roughly akin to being desperately in love with a dying cancer patient. With their pants down and tumors exposed, Bethesda is giving us a rare glimpse into exactly what has made them cancerous: a lack of Vision (not to be confused with Activision.)

You see, Bethesda doesn’t have a vision. If you asked Todd Howard today what Bethesda’s vision was, his response would essentially amount to “get bigger, bigger than we’ve ever seen before,” and you would never be quite sure if he meant to say it would be the games, the bugs, or the pocketbooks that would be getting “bigger.” Bethesda has no vision because they are blinded by what I like to refer to as the survivalist mindset, cancer that has spread through their higher management and public faces so quietly for so long that Bethesda has only just noticed it rearing its ugly head. They have ventured through the past 20 years producing games that fans would merely refrain from harshly criticizing. If only they had seen their culture of undiluted survivalism in time to integrate it into “Fallout 76.”

To see the birth of this cancer that is killing Bethesda, we will travel back in time to 31 October 1998, when “The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard,” along with its related title “An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire,” were both resounding “commercial failures,” according to Stephan Janicki of Computer Gaming World. These two disappointments brought Bethesda to the edge of bankruptcy before ZeniMax Media swooped in and claimed them as a subsidiary in 1999. In the following years, Bethesda Softworks knew they had to succeed, or they were done in the eyes of both their corporate overlords and their fans. This is when the panicky, survivalist mindset set in. Feverishly they worked until, in 2002, they released “The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind,” and Todd Howard was relieved to find that “It just work[ed].” Upon the laurels of Morrowind, Bethesda skipped happily into the sunset, bringing us many more beloved titles like “Fallout 3,” “The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion,” “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim,” “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Legendary Edition,” and “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – Special Edition.”

But they never grew out of that survivalist panic. Like cancer, it festered in the background, that burning fear of “commercial failure,” which is a euphemism for rejection by their fans. Bethesda’s near-death experience had scared them. Their aversion to conflict and attempts to please every consumer instead of maintaining a focused design and lore quickly made them the endearing dweeb of game developers, merely slapped on the wrist for repeat performance flaws that would break the fans of other developers. “Cute” bugs in coding dating back several releases, consistently shipping products with technical difficulties unbecoming of a $60 price tag, multiple rerelease announcements and story-writing so poor that it’s common for players to joke about blatantly ignoring the main plot of the game, often for hundreds of hours, in favor of the things Bethesda did capture: exploration, immersion, and lore.

That brings us to the jokes. After Skyrim-related content pervaded their 2017 E3 press conference, it began to dawn on Bethesda’s corporate half that all those Bethesda memes were laughing at them, not with them. Shaken by flashbacks of Tiber Septim’s conquest of Hammerfell in “The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard,” Todd Howard and Bethesda’s upper management knew they couldn’t sit by idly and allow for history to repeat itself. They couldn’t accept hearing rejection from fans, even if it meant directly ignoring their feedback. Tunnel vision set in in the wake of more Skyrim jokes and criticism over their Creation Club microtransactions. The cancer was consuming them and the only way to heal their fracturing friendly persona and silence their critics was to get bigger, bigger than we’ve ever seen before; but at E3 2018, two decades after their initial “commercial failures,” their realization came many years too late and they didn’t snap out of their survivalist mindset in time.

Their bigger-than-we’ve-ever-seen-before came in the form of “Fallout 76”, not an ambitious venture objectively but very ambitious for Bethesda Game Studios Austin Branch, formerly known as BattleCry Studios LLC, who had never coded a project using Creation Engine, which Bethesda has been using exclusively since 2011.

But wait! say the studious fans of Bethesda. If Creation Engine has only existed since 2011, why does “Fallout 76” have bugs dating back as far as Morrowind? Creation is based off a much older engine called Gamebryo (known as NetImmerse until 2003). A much older engine that has successfully supported huge multiplayer games, most notably the critically acclaimed “Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.”

If the core of Bethesda’s Creation Engine is a game engine that can create an enjoyable multiplayer experience, then why can’t “Fallout 76” do the same? Well, spread this funny honey on a biscuit, baby, because the answer is more cancer!

The fact that Bethesda has recurring bugs dating back over multiple releases suggests that, rather than taking time to address technology advancements, Bethesda’s survivalist mindset has grown upon Creation Engine like a tumor, strapping framework on top in half-baked layers, as quickly as possible, reducing the flexibility and independence of asset files into a fragile, unstable, monstrous whole.

I genuinely do not believe that Bethesda Game Studio Austin’s game developers were incompetent or lazy. Since the “Fallout 76” announcement at E3 2018, many have suspected disorganization in Bethesda’s management as they encountered a truly new set of obstacles for the first time. No one knew what “Fallout 76” would become, not the end users and certainly not the management of Bethesda Studios that for years had ignored the desperate need for ease-of-use coding with conservative couplings (files dependent on other files). They threw BGS Austin, a relatively new team that was inexperienced with designing Creation Engine worlds, into a hyped AAA release with an enormous fanbase; and what it became was an unacceptable byproduct of that insidious culture of corporate survivalism. Bethesda officials became so concerned with what the public thought of them that they never thought to check. They fixated on getting bigger than we’ve ever seen before until their creation became confused and codependent. They obfuscated what brought fans to Bethesda in Morrowind and kept them coming back through every hiccup and every rerelease: the fun to be had in exploration, immersion, and lore, but most importantly, the Vision.

Oh, what a situation Bethesda finds itself in now! Even though they’ve finally seen a backlash from setting profit margins before considering their team’s capacity, many feel this call-to-god moment has come too late. Losing the reverent trust of large portions of their fanbase, they must either find a way to fix their cancerous, bloated Creation Engine or risk losing their Bethesda aesthetic by developing a costly new engine to proceed. Bethesda knows this, and they desperately hope that no one else does because they also realized that by promising not only a decade-anticipated new “Elder Scrolls” release but a new game franchise as well, they’ve already allocated most of their resources. They can’t go back on their promises now without a complete “commercial failure” from fans already stretched thin by “Fallout 76;” now more than ever they need all hands on deck. There is little time and money left to dedicate to the enormous undertaking of designing a new game engine from scratch, much less the even more arduous task of unscrambling Creation Engine, now so distorted that their employees don’t know how to fix it anymore or they would, just to stop seeing memes about Skyrim and floating Scorched Zombies. It’s hopeless. It’s arguable that they deserve help after insulting fans with the lack of focus and attention for “Fallout 76,” multiple buggy rereleases of a buggy title from 2011, and the general sense of not understanding what made a compelling story. They do not deserve sympathy for the vague unease of having to create your own purpose, a job which Bethesda has shifted to its fans to avoid facing its fears from 20 years of trying to please everyone for their own pride and not in the spirit of their consumers.

Bethesda may not deserve our help, but many still believe that The Elder Scrolls does, that Fallout does. If you’re one of those people, there is something you can do, and it’s to ignore the cries to boycott all Bethesda products “forever.”

Bethesda owns the intellectual property to The Elder Scrolls and Fallout; and while Bethesda is an abusive, frustrated company with—seemingly—a vision of self-destruction, they do still care what you think because of their all-consuming fear of the Redguard. But ZeniMax Media owns them, even the neurotic Todd Howard, and ZeniMax Media has only ever cared about your money. You cannot refuse to agree to buy the game you want Bethesda to make and still expect it to arrive, but you can refuse to pre-order their games and indulge in microtransactions for as long as it takes. The game industry’s security and stock values are heavily dependent on fan loyalty, digital merchandise sales and pre-orders. This money gives them their security blanket in case they create “Fallout 76.” Wrapped in their blankies, the management of Bethesda and ZeniMax Media will keep their narrow vision and continue to use their development teams as bad press sponges unless they experience some genuine fear of “commercial failure.” If consumers reject their vision, they will change their vision for money; because Truth is, the game was rigged from the start.

#my writing #bethesda #zenimax #fallout 76 #fallout #fo76 #fo76 beta #fallout 4 #skyrim #the elder scrolls #writeblr #writing #article #humor art #long post #vidya games

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mattallurgy · 7 years ago

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YouTube Oversaturation

It happened again today, and this time, I felt it was necessary to mention exactly what I’m talking about. I have been a user of the platform since early 2008, and an actual member of the YouTube community since its earlier days--June 30, 2009, to be precise, and have been a YouTube Red subscriber for at least the last year (I honestly forget when I first subscribed). I remember when there was a star system, and when the video description was on the right, and when people were afraid to click the “Subscribe” button because, before that time, that button was only associated with spam email feeds and recurring payment services. I remember the popularity of Fred and how annoyed I was by him. I remember when it was Jack and Kristin, the early days of Smosh, Game Theory before the intro song was written. I remember when everyone wanted to be like FreddyW (in fact, he inspired me to acquire a copy of AfterEffects for use on projects I never even ended up making), and when EpicMealTime acted as the jumping off point for me and two friends’ adventure into making 11 pounds of bacon cheeseburger macaroni and cheese.

These were the days when content creators produced content they wanted to make. When creators held themselves to a schedule that allowed them to make the content at the pace with which they felt comfortable. If Game Theory only came out every two weeks, we were happy to get that email notification because we knew the video would be in-depth, funny, and full of really interesting information. When JacksFilms uploaded a new PMS or YGS video, we clicked on that link so we could see the new Not Pants, WTF Blanket, or whatever. That all changed around my upperclassman years of high school, however.

Around this time is when the site formerly known as YouTube, now a Google/Alphabet advertisement behemoth, began tinkering with algorithms to maximize profit. I am, by no means, against this. I believe that a company hosting a service as large and as expensive as YouTube should do what it takes to turn a profit. I understand this in the same way I understand getting pelted with advertisements every time I download a free app. But what YouTube did, and has been doing since then, is tailor their algorithm so that content creators would only be able to reach a substantial following (i.e., make a living off this platform) if they are already established on the platform and/or already have the resources to run a reasonably sized production company. It’s no longer possible for someone in school to upload a video maybe once per week and expect to be able to do YouTube for a living, or as side-income, like they could have if they just started on the platform a few years earlier.

But that isn’t what I’m talking about. This article is about what I did today, and what I’ve been doing on a nearly monthly basis since all these changes began. That action is clicking the Unsubscribe button. The YouTube channels I once waited on every day to see when the uploads would come have begun to beleaguer me with near constant uploads. The content I once shared all over the place, showed friends, family, talked about with other people, no longer interested me. And it’s not that I am no longer interested in the content--it’s actually the opposite, since I am more interested in most of that content than ever. It’s that I cannot keep up without ruining my life. That, and the production quality may have gone up, but the actual quality, for the most part, has gone down.

In the past several months, I have unsubscribed from some of my favorite content creators--those who created videos and series I would watch religiously. On that list is The Game Theorists, Jacksfilms, Good Mythical Morning (et al), various gaming YouTubers, The King of Random, and many many other channels I once loved, and still do. But it became too much. Jacksfilms stopped doing creative content and just started posting YIAY (nearly) every day. The Game Theorists became too focused on following the popular trends and pumping out video after video on Five Night’s at Freddy’s (as of the writing of this article, a new FNAF video came out yesterday), and the content that does break trend is usually some sort of complaint about YouTube(rs), loot boxes, or a hit new internet controversy. The King of Random just came out with a video which was a glorified 20 minute advertisement on his new self-help seminar about becoming a better YouTuber, content creator, human being, or some other garbage. Good Mythical Morning began pumping out three videos per day just for the primary show, then following them up with Good Mythical More, and then some. I still seriously enjoyed this content, but it became too much to watch. Too much to keep up with. And most importantly, too watered down. So I did the only thing I knew I could: unsubscribe. Only seek out these videos when I truly wanted to see them.

I know my unsubscription means very little when the channels to which I am referring have millions, even tens of millions of subscribers. But I’m sure that of those millions, at least a few thousand feel the same as I do.

#youtube #gmm #game theory #jacksfilms #unsubscribe #subscribe

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blockheadbrands · 6 years ago

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How This Sommelier Pairs Cannabis with Wine and Cuisine

Elise McDonough of Leafly Reports:

When I rolled up at a stately purple Victorian whose address I’d only received hours before, Jamie Evans—better known as “the Herb Somm”—was waiting to greet me with warmth and charm. A vivacious oenophile and expert in Old World vintages, Evans is actively translating the language of tastings and terroir from the established wine field into the more freewheeling world of cannabis.

“You have one season, one seed, one plant to express itself, creating a vintage that will never exist again.”Chef Holden Jagger, Altered Plates

Through her acclaimed “Thursday Infused” dinner series, she introduces well-to-do San Franciscans to cannabis cuisine and connoisseurship in an intimate setting, recruiting a rotating cast of chefs and purveyors to demonstrate their crafts.

“Cannabis is very complex,” she says, “just like wines, certain strains will make you feel uplifted or sleepy, so you can create moods.”

Evans needs to attend to some last-minute tasks (I’ve arrived early by invitation), so I settle into a plush sofa in the backyard to share a joint with Chef Holden Jagger, who’s driven up from Los Angeles to cook for tonight’s guests. A fixture on the So-Cal cannabis cuisine scene through his Altered Plates supper club, Jagger is one of the few chefs working with weed who actually grows his own. He’s also distinguished himself with innovative techniques such as pickling and salt-curing parts of the male plants or using their pollen as a seasoning, Holden came out of skateboarding culture enamored with the idea of “never been done,” slang for nailing challenging tricks in novel spots, and now applies this spirit of bold experimentation to cannabis cookery.

With unruly red hair and a hint of mischievousness about him, Holden says he’s been giving grow tips to other dads in Topanga Canyon, a bohemian enclave north of Santa Monica where he lives with his family. As we passed a jay of his tasty homegrown Royal Sour back and forth, Holden explains that this herb originated with a dearly departed grower named Ras Truth, formerly an influential seed breeder at Emerald Mountain who wrote extensively about the importance of nurturing living soil, and why sungrown cannabis compares favorably to indoor hydro grown under energy-intensive lamps.

Understanding Terroir in the Context of Cannabis

“Why do we celebrate a good bottle of wine?” Holden asks and answers, “Because it’s humanity and nature coming together to produce something special that’s a once-in-a-season opportunity.”

The concept of terroir—literally “of the land”—encompasses every environmental factor affecting the expression of a plant’s genetics, from farming practices and fertilizer regimens to the specific microclimate of the place where it’s grown. How terroir applies to cannabis is an ongoing debate between connoisseurs like Evans and Jagger, especially complex because weed is an annual plant, versus grape vines that live for decades or even centuries.

Chef Holden Jagger plates super-low-dose THC paired cuisine at Altered Plates. (Courtesy Altered Plates)

“With wine, you have a ‘good year,’ but with cannabis you can have a ‘hypervintage’ that is so exclusive…” Holden pauses before articulating this expansive idea. “You have one season, one seed, one plant to express itself, creating a vintage that will never exist again.” Coming from this perspective, a ‘good season’ for cannabis results in flowers that truly represent the weather and soil within the unique environment of a certain farm at a moment in time that can never be repeated, embodying these influences in a particular expression of cannabinoid and terpene profiles. Such specificity makes fine cannabis vintages even more precious and fleeting than any bottle of wine on earth.

Understanding the complexity of different cannabis cultivars, let alone the influence of terroir, requires years of devotion to the plant and its methods of production. Before a wine snob can assume the title of sommelier, they must pass a certifying test administered by The Court of Master Sommeliers, a process that requires years of study. While there’s no comparable program for “cannaphiles,” correctly guessing cannabis cultivars by taste and high alone necessitates a mastery of the plant gained only by the experience of growing it, or at the very least traveling to the regions where cannabis thrives to taste every varietal possible, talking to farmers and witnessing cultivation methods.

Taking a break from party preparations, Evans joins us, explaining how for the average person who just appreciates good food, wine and weed, beginning to experiment with pairing all three sensual delights can be made simple and fun. For newbies to cannabis, Jamie recommends developing connoisseurship by tasting the same cannabis cultivar grown by various farmers and training your senses to recognize the nuances that differentiate them.

How to Pair Cannabis with Wine and Food

When working with chefs, Evans starts her process by first reviewing the menu, looking for standout ingredients to base her pairings on. From there, she employs her “B.I.T.E. philosophy,” an acronym that stands for Balance, Intention, Taste and Enjoy.

Balance

Consider the weight of the wine and the intensity of the flavors in the dish as well as the textures of the food. Evans matches light wines with cannabis cultivars containing citrusy limonene, while pairing more sedating strains with darker, richer wines. If the food is rich, creamy or boldly flavored, she looks for more acidic, bright wines to balance the dish.

Intention

Set the mood for your event by matching the food, wine and weed to the desired atmosphere. Evans starts with pairings to energize her guests, followed by later combinations of wine, weed and food that will soothe them.

Taste

Based on the science of terpenes, Evans looks for common flavors shared by the ingredients in the food as well as the cannabis by smelling and tasting both items side by side.

Enjoy

“Pairing should be fun, so don’t let it stress you out,” says Evans. “There’s really no wrong answers!” Experiment with different wines and weeds until you find matches that resonate on your palate.

Beyond this basic framework, you can also pair flavors based on locality, matching wines with weed from the same region, along with food made from fresh ingredients harvested from nearby farms. Seasonality plays a role too, with delicate, brighter flavors appropriate for summer and more concentrated, intense flavors better suited to winter.

“Take a bite of the food, sip the wine, smell the flower and taste the vape, all those flavors should work together harmoniously,” Evans says, recalling a pairing of Candyland and Rosé that became her summertime favorite. “There was a bright beautiful candied citrus nose to it” that worked well with sunny warm days and light, refreshing cuisine.

Turning to winter flavors, Holden waxes poetic about a phenotype of In the Pines stuck in his memory due to its incredible piney-ness, remarking that he “paired it with venison and mussels in a coconut broth, and that was one of my favorites.”

Perched at the end of the long marble counter that serves as a chef’s table, Holden begins to assemble dishes, adding precise doses of THC with a tincture dropper. The entire meal contains 5 milligrams of THC, a microdose that’s barely perceptible to most cannabis users. Before each course, we’re also treated to passed vape pens and sniffs of Utopia Farms cannabis as Evans explains the wines and Holden talks up the food.

Dinner opens with a first course of Celeriac with purple potato, maitake mushroom, miso and honey, the celery root flavor complimenting Evans’ choice of a Balletto Pinot Gris 2017 to sip alongside. With notes of candied tangerine and citrus, the Pinot Gris matches the aromas and flavors from Utopia Farms’ Clementine cannabis flowers, as well as the deeper savory notes of the Master OG vape cart from Kurvana.

Capturing the feeling of summer fading into fall, the unctuous Roasted Duck Tostada that follows incorporates butternut squash, savory peanut sauce, salty cotija cheese and spicy salsa verde to create a rich dish with a slight sourness. Selecting for a wine that would stand up to the bold flavors of the roasted duck, Evans decided to go with a Buttonwood Rose 2017 because of its soft red berry notes, bright citrus, and cleansing acidity. Made from bolder Syrah grapes, this versatile rosé brings great depth to flavor, balancing the spicy richness of the duck while its citrus notes compliment Utopia’s Golden Lemons and Kurvana’s Citron OG.

Dessert brings Malt Semifreddo with roasted banana and chocolate, complimenting Utopia’s C. Banana cannabis flowers and a Banana Smoothie vape from Kurvana. With a burst of tropical fruit notes, the paired Rancho Sisquoc Sylvaner 2016 brings acidity and brightness, a great match for a rich dessert. Not overly sweet, this final wine cleanses our palates, bringing another soigné evening to its conclusion.

Being fortunate enough to enjoy gourmet food, wine ,and weed should (and does) inspire gratitude for the time and place where you find yourself, as well as the labor that went into producing your artisanal fare. Just like the practice of cooking or winemaking, growing and consuming cannabis ties us to the earth and the cosmos, bringing art and intention into our lives. Celebrating cannabis, educating yourself about it, and caring about how it’s grown introduces enthusiasts to true connoisseurship, deepening the relationship to the plant and the people who grow it, cook with it and love it.

Cannabis Pairing Shopping List

Replicate this experience at home (if you live in California) by finding the products featured at Thursday Infused at a dispensary near you.

Kurvana Vape Cartridges

Places to Find It:

7 Stars Holistic Healing Center in Richmond

Treehouse in Santa Cruz

Sonoma Patient Group in Santa Rosa

Caliva in San Jose

MedMen in West Hollywood

Utopia Farms Flowers

Places to Find It:

SPARC in San Francisco

Santa Cruz Naturals in Aptos

Harborside in Oakland

Berkeley Patients Group in Berkeley

From the Earth in Santa Ana

TO READ MORE OF THIS ARTICLE ON LEAFLY, CLICK HERE.

https://www.leafly.com/news/lifestyle/how-a-sommelier-pairs-cannabis-with-wine-and-cuisine

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zcbp5 · 7 years ago

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Early Thoughts on The Last Jedi

Like a pretty sizable chunk of humanity, I love Star Wars. I love the stories, I love the characters, I love the mythic overtones even when they occasionally slide into nonsensical mumbo-jumbo, I love the visuals, I love the way my heart always skips the moment John Williams’ iconic fanfare explodes over the opening crawl. I even love the much maligned prequels, movies that both diehard fans and more casual viewers seem to wish had never happened. Even though it was slightly reactionary in its storytelling, I really enjoyed The Force Awakens. So it pretty well goes without saying that I was extremely excited for The Last Jedi and rushed to see it on its opening weekend.

The critical reception was largely ebullient. As is becoming increasingly clear, fan response has been far more divided. So what did I think?

Read no further if you haven’t seen the film, because spoilers abound.

My first thought is that I have considerable admiration for what Rian Johnson is trying to do. People aren’t kidding when they say that he is taking Star Wars in some new directions. After the hammering George Lucas took for taking risks with the prequels, it takes some balls for a director to fuck around with Star Wars tropes in the way that Johnson does. I genuinely admire his willingness to tweak and subvert the formula.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure I admire the actual results as much as the ideas underlying them, and I think that in more than one place, he strayed too far from the established lore with too little motivation. Put bluntly, at least on an initial impression, The Last Jedi is probably my *least* favorite Star Wars movie, and yes, the ranking includes The Phantom Menace.

Recycling the framing of The Empire Strikes Back, The Last Jedi opens with the new Rebel Alliance (the Resistance) on the ropes in their face off with the new Empire (the First Order). Probably one of the weakest elements of The Force Awakens was the total lack of clarity about the power dynamics in the galaxy, and The Last Jedi does nothing to improve matters. Unless you read a lot of supplementary material, there is very little context: at the end of the original trilogy, we saw the Rebel Alliance triumph over the evil Empire. The Emperor and his most powerful subordinate were dead, their super-weapon destroyed, and their fleet in shambles. At the start of The Force Awakens, it feels almost as though we’re back at square one: although the Alliance has nominally restored the Republic, the military advantage in the galaxy appears to lie with First Order which, in all but name, is the Empire. It has its own star destroyers, its own stormtroopers, its own dark-side-of-the-Force-wielding leader (Supreme Leader Snoke) and its own Vader-like enforcer (Kylo Ren). It even has its own Death Star (Starkiller Base) which is summarily dispatched…to apparently no effect whatsoever. The chief impact of the First Order’s most powerful weapon (and a slew of associated personnel and hardware) being blown to smithereens seems to be that the First Order is now the undisputed power in the galaxy. Talk about “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!”

This trope worked in The Empire Strikes Back. The Empire was the Empire, after all, and even without explanation, it made a reasonable amount of sense that a powerful galactic empire with vast resources could quickly rebound from the destruction of a super-weapon. Without further development than we’ve seen in either movie, the First Order’s mere existence makes less sense, and their sudden total galactic hegemony following hard upon the loss of Starkiller base makes even less sense—even factoring in their destruction of the Republic’s core worlds and fleet. Furthermore, the Resistance’s resources seem vastly diminished. In The Force Awakens, they were able to intervene when the First Order tracked BB-8 to Maz Kanata’s castle, not to mention mount a large-scale attack on Starkiller base. Here, they’re down to their last couple of ships by the time the movie starts, which is a bit of a problem since the movie seems to start within hours or days of the end of The Force Awakens.

Despite the increasingly compounded problems with the overarching narrative framing, things get off to a bang, with fighter ace Poe Dameron trolling the hell out of the First Order’s prissy military commander, General Hux and a desperate Resistance attack on a powerful First Order vessel that is bombarding the Resistance base and its escaping fleet. After that, things start to flag a little bit as the rag-tag Resistance fleet is tracked through hyperspace and then begins to run low on fuel as the First Order pursues, the latter being a rather forced plot device, since fuel has never before been an issue in a Star Wars movie. Worse, the Resistance ships are just enough faster than their First Order pursuers to lie outside of effective weapons range which again seems more convenient to the plot than particularly plausible.

As Leia and her small remnant of Resistance fighters remain in their plot-mandated stalemate with the First Order fleet, our Force-savant heroine Rey, seeks the assistance and guidance of Luke Skywalker. Just as Yoda initially refused to train Luke in The Empire Strikes Back, Luke initially refuses to train—or even talk to��Rey here. Like his old master, Luke gets some laughs with his curmudgeonly trolling of his would-be apprentice, as when he blithely chucks the lightsaber that once belonged to him (and his father before him) over his shoulder and into a porg’s nest. Alas, despite some enjoyable and funny moments and Mark Hamill’s finest performance to date as Luke, the “training” doesn’t play out as well as its forbear in “Empire”.

First of all, in The Force Awakens, Rey was presented as the most naturally powerful Force user we’ve ever seen, able to use Jedi mind tricks and go toe-to-toe with the powerful Kylo Ren without any training at all. She’s far more powerful than Luke was before he was trained, and she even shows more natural aptitude than Anakin, who was a sort of messiah. So it’s not really clear that she even needs training so much as she needs answers—a sense of context or, in her words, a sense of “my place in all this”. When Luke inevitably comes around to helping Rey, she gets very little of either training or context. We could use a little more exposition from Luke on the nature of the Force, his own tangled history with it, and perhaps at least a brief montage of Rey further developing her already formidable skills.

Instead, Kylo Ren keeps butting in. The Last Jedi elects to introduce a radical new Force ability—Force Skype! From his quarters aboard a First Order star destroyer, Kylo can commune with Rey as she stares into the windswept waters around Luke’s island hideaway, giving them the opportunity to develop their antagonistic and faintly erotic connection from The Force Awakens. This is a clever plot device for advancing Rey’s and Kylo’s ambiguous relationship and for further fleshing out Kylo’s motivations. It’s also a previously unmentioned new superpower, a distraction from Rey’s interaction with Luke, and a cheap plot trick to cram important, perception-changing revelations into the space of around one-third of the movie. In The Force Awakens, Rey’s previous experiences with Kylo were not positive (unless she’s the kind of girl who had a well-worn copy of 50 Shades of Grey stashed in her AT-AT desert home): he kidnapped her, tortured her for information, murdered his father—and her mentor—as she looked on, and finally tried to kill her. In her first Force Skype with him, she calls him a monster. A few Skype calls later, and Rey is optimistic that she can set the brooding Vader wannabe formerly known as Ben Solo back on the right path. It’s silly. I understand that Adam Driver exudes a peculiar sort of sex appeal as Kylo. I understand that the internet is filled with legions of “Reylo” shippers. And I understand that even in The Force Awakens, the relationship was played with some noticeable—if muted—sparks. But the rapidity of Rey’s reversal on Kylo in The Last Jedi frankly plays even worse than Padme’s sudden discovery that she truly, deeply loves Anakin after repeatedly rebuffing him in Attack of the Clones, and using a brand new Force ability to sell it makes the plot creak mightily.

While Rey is learning to love Kylo, Poe Dameron has come up with an ingenious plan to save the last 25 Resistance fighters in the galaxy. After a rather less Force-y Skype call with Maz Kanata (the First Order can track you and outgun you, but they can’t overtake you or jam your communications), he sends ex-stormtrooper Finn and newcomer Rose Tico on a top secret mission to the casino world of Canto Bight to track down a hacker who can help them get aboard Snoke’s flagship and disable the hyperspace tracking device, thus allowing the Resistance to safely retreat and regroup. It’s here that the movie inserts its most incisive and politically relevant messages—the rich get rich off the backs of poor children, brutalized animals, and conflict (no matter which side wins the war, the arms manufacturer always does). They play baccarat in posh casinos while the galaxy burns, the people suffer, and both the First Order and the Resistance indiscriminately buy their wares and line their pockets. Further, it gives Johnson a chance to introduce the sort of down-trodden and overlooked young’ins whom he clearly wants us to believe are the future of both the Resistance, and of the Jedi order. But to the plot of the movie, the whole sequence still comes off feeling both too long and not long enough, essential to some larger story but entirely tangential to the one at hand. This is especially true since the entire mission yields no result in the overall story: Rose and Finn fail to contact the hacker they were sent to find and instead settle on a stuttering, cynical Benicio del Toro. While they succeed in getting aboard Snoke’s ship and getting near the tracking device, Benicio betrays them to the First Order and they are very nearly executed before a very well-timed, deus ex Holdo attack on the ship saves them. Johnson wants to make point about the importance of failure, and if this particular lesson on that front hadn’t come at the expense of other storylines, or if he had been unable to weave it into other aspects of the movie, it would be fine enough. Alas, even at two and a half hours, the film feels weirdly rushed and the lesson about failure is boldly underlined elsewhere, meaning that the diversion on Canto Bight comes at the expense of richer development of Luke’s misgivings, Rey’s and Kylo’s connection, and huge unanswered questions about who the hell Snoke is and how the First Order has so completely demolished all resistance (both with and without a capital ‘r’). This brings me to yet another problem: Snoke.

Rey becomes frustrated with Luke’s reticence and sets off to return to the Resistance and persuade Kylo Ren to turn against Snoke and turn back toward the light. Just as Vader did with Luke, Ren seizes her and escorts her to his master. Just like the late great Palpatine/Darth Sidious, Snoke sits in a grandiose throne room with a good view of the Resistance fleet getting wiped out and a contingent of red-robed guards. Just like Palpatine in Return of the Jedi, Snoke can’t seem to stop with overconfident sneering about his impending total victory, his utter power with the Force, and Rey’s imminent demise at the hands of his apprentice Kylo Ren. And just as Darth Vader turned on the emperor at the last moment, right as it appears that Kylo is going to carry out his master’s command and kill Rey, he instead ignites her lightsaber (which Snoke has set on the armrest of his throne), impaling and then bisecting the Supreme Leader. Snoke’s bodyguards leap into action and, fighting side by side, Rey and Kylo defeat them. But here Kylo’s path diverges from his grandfather’s: this isn’t an act of redemption, this is the classic instance of a figure powerful with the dark side betraying his master for his own aggrandizement. Kylo wants to be Supreme Leader, and he wants Rey to join him. Along the way, he even manages to reveal that the mystery around Rey’s parentage is one big fat nothingburger.

Watching the scene, I expected that sometime later we’d see Snoke putting himself back together and rising from the dead. Nope. Unless he has a comeback in the next film, Snoke is dead. My first reaction to this was consternation: what kind of story kills off its “big bad” well before the last act? Snoke doesn’t even make it to the end of the movie, and he was set up to be the overarching baddie for this entire cycle of Star Wars films. On reflection, I think that killing him off is actually pretty clever and pretty gutsy. It’s surprising just in and of itself. It makes Kylo Ren’s arc that much more interesting. And it actually fits *extremely* well with the lore around the Sith, where sooner or later the Sith apprentice always ended up murdering the Sith master in the quest for ever more power. That said, Snoke still needed more explanation. Who was this powerful figure who managed to essentially rebuild the Empire and turn Luke’s fledgling Jedi against him? Explaining that would do a lot more to put the big picture (that is, how did we get to Rebels v. Empire 2.0 in mere decades after Return of the Jedi), and it would also make his murder at the hands of Kylo Ren that much more impactful.

Like much of the rest of the film, the final big scene in which the First Order ground forces attack all 10 remaining Resistance fighters on Crait felt oddly truncated and choppy. Oh, here are some cannon fodder guys manning some trenches. Oh my, here come some walkers across the salt flat! Send out the speeders! Oh goodness, not only do they have walkers, they have a mini-Death Star (another one! Jesus!) Is Finn going to die? No, it can’t be! Oh, thanks Rose! Oh man, is Rose going to die? And suddenly a wild Luke Skywalker appeared! I never realized he was so vain—looks like he stopped by the salon for a trim and a dye job. My, I guess Luke *has* gotten really powerful what with withstanding all that blaster fire! Oh, Kylo’s pissed. Look at Luke trolling the fuck out of Kylo. Oh shit, Luke is a hologram! Oh shit, Luke is using the Force in some really crazy ways! Shit, now he’s tripping hard and seeing Tatooine. Oh damn, he’s dead. Oh well, no time to mourn, there’s Rey picking up rocks, getting hit on by Poe, and wondering why Finn doesn’t love her anymore. It’s not a bad scene, but like a lot of the movie, it feels like Rian Johnson needed to piss really bad while he was editing it.

I’ve never seen a Star Wars movie that I really didn’t like, and The Last Jedi is no exception. But at least on a first watch, it is getting a lot closer than I would have thought possible.

There’s still a lot of stuff I liked.

It looked good (the marvelous salt-encrusted red-velvet cake landscape of Crait, Snoke’s throne room, the aftermath of Holdo ramming Snoke’s flagship) and there were some really exciting sequences (the opening space battle, Kylo and Rey fighting Snoke’s guards).

One of my favorite things about The Force Awakens was a welcome dose of diversity: the lead character was a girl who didn’t need rescuing. Another main character was a black man, another a Hispanic man, and they were surrounded by a background of diversity in both the First Order and the Resistance. The Last Jedi carries on this noble tradition, and even adds to it, introducing an Asian woman in a major role (and showing her sister nobly sacrificing herself), a heroic, middle-aged female admiral, and more background diversity. I absolutely love this about these new Star Wars movies.

There were any number of moments where the film was really funny, and that was a good thing. Hux is a great straight-man: Poe prank calling him in the opening was genuinely funny. Pretty much all of his interactions with Kylo Ren are funny. Snoke sneeringly telling Kylo to take off his “ridiculous” mask was funny. Luke chucking his family heirloom lightsaber over his shoulder was funny. Finn’s foot crashing through the floor of his speeder in the midst of an otherwise tense scene was a welcome moment of levity.

I liked the addition of two prominent female characters. Vice-Admiral Holdo was, alas, not around for very long, but she stood out while she was there, rightly scolding Poe for his recklessness. And when it mattered, she showed that her more cautious style wasn’t lack of courage. Rose Tico was a nice addition as well: a character with a humble background and a humble job who shows a lot of heart and rises to the occasion, not to mention giving voice to perhaps the single most important line in the movie, when she explains to Finn that the good guys don’t win by killing what they hate, but by saving what they love.

Speaking of Admiral Holdo, Poe Dameron’s arc was also well-handled. He’s a really likable character, but he’s also a cocky, arrogant, hotshot with rather poor judgement. Most of the ideas he has throughout the movie are really bad ideas--either too risky, too costly, or both. In the final battle on Crait, Poe seems to have finally absorbed some of these lessons as he calls off what would amount to a suicide attack on the advancing First Order forces--something that he almost certainly wouldn’t have done earlier in the film.

Finally, even though it was clumsily handled, I liked what Johnson was doing in showing the spark of heroism and resistance in the stable hands. It’s good to be reminded that the fate of the galaxy--and even the fate of the Jedi--doesn’t rest solely with the Skywalker family.

Still--and again, this is only a first impression--The Last Jedi made too much of a hash of its main story lines. My biggest problems:

Since I enjoy the interconnectedness of key characters and threads in the main Star Wars saga (the ones that get episode numbers), I couldn’t help but hope that Rey had some intriguing connection to something we’d seen before. I was particularly keen on a popular fan theory that she was related to Palpatine, but that was just me. However, I don’t really mind if she really is--as The Last Jedi indicates--essentially a nobody from nowhere. But if that is truly going to be the case, some big-time explanation is needed that either plausibly explains that most of what the previous two trilogies told us about Force users was bunk or plausibly explains that the Force itself has changed and adapted to a galaxy without organized Force users.

Killing Snoke relatively early in the game is fine, and even an ingenious bit of storytelling. Doing so with zero explanation of who he is and how he managed to successfully plunge the galaxy back into darkness so quickly is really bad storytelling. It would be fine if there were no previous Star Wars movies, or if the new trilogy were completely unrelated to the others, but that isn’t the case. Anyone watching these new films *knows* that the Empire and the Sith were destroyed. The complete reversal of fortunes--not only do we have a new Empire in the form of the First Order, but we have something like new Sith in the form of Snoke and Kylo Ren--trivializes the hard-won victories of the original trilogy and leaves a gaping narrative hole in the absence of any explanation.

There are plenty of smaller questions that aren’t quite as important but that rankle nonetheless: who the hell are/were the Knights of Ren? Were they Snoke’s bodyguards, and if so, why did they turn so immediately on their purported leader, Kylo Ren? If they are something else, who--and where!--the hell are they? How did the Resistance go from mounting a massive and successful attack on Starkiller base to scrambling aboard a handful of mid-sized cruisers? Why can’t the First Order just call in some other ships to intercept the fleeing Resistance ships?

At the end of the day, The Last Jedi has some really exciting moments and shows a laudable desire to try a few new things, and put a new spin on some old things. But despite its two and a half hour runtime, it felt rushed and too short. Too many questions, large and small, from The Force Awakens, remained unanswered and there were no satisfying reveals or truly unexpected twists to make up for that. And too often the subversion of Star Wars tropes seemed to exist for their own sake, rather than arising organically from the narrative.

#star wars #the last jedi #episode viii

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