#this is only tangentially-related to this topic but look

[lu-is-not-ok]

Hello! Just wanted to say that I've been reading your posts and analyses for awhile now, and I really enjoy them! So, I also thought of sharing a sort of theory of mine, bc I'm very interested in hearing what you might think about it.

For starters, these lines from Jia Xichun are very intriguing:

«No amount of pain could wake it from... whatever this dazed state it's in. As you can see...»

«... it must've been long driven mad from pain. Reminds you of the tricks from back home that could induce such an effect, doesn't it? Big brother.»

For two reasons. 1. This is the first time (iirc) in the story where Hong Lu doesn't reply and stays silent and seemingly uneasy; 2. The fact that this "dazed state" as it is described actually kind of reminds of Hong Lu's usual behavior a bit?

To elaborate, after her lines the attention was drawn back to the Priest, and his face was described as "serene". And who's facial expression was also described in a similar manner, precisely, with a literal synonym? Of course, Hong Lu, during the TKT Intervallo:

«The culprit wasn't the only one who suddenly began to behave strangely. Hong Lu did, too.»

«His face relaxed into a tranquil look, as though he was ready to let something go.

... Or perhaps... that was an express of liberation.»

And also to mention how the Priest started reminiscing similarly to how Hong Lu tells stories about his family (but idk, I'm afraid I am starting to reach even harder for this😭)

All in all, my theory, if you can call it that, is that perhaps those "tricks from back home" where actually performed on Hong Lu. This could potentially explain his constant aloofness, his reaction to Xichun's words (she brought up some of his traumatic memories?), and why exactly he has one of the most deranged IDs — because he has already been long driven mad from pain.

I really hope I worded this well enough, and I don't know if I sound like a lunatic or if I actually cooked something when I was thinking abt this at 2 am. And well, I'm also probably not the first one to think of this. But anyways, still thought this is worth bringing up!

Well, I hope you enjoy the Xichun Sin Analysis I just posted earlier then! That being said, there is something interesting I want to bring up with regards to this theory you pose, as it's tangentially related to the bits you reference and also it's been sitting in my head for a while now.

First point - I definitely agree that when Xichun brings up the "tricks" that can leave people in a similar state to the Priest, it's something Hong Lu has experienced himself.

We see Hong Lu has a tendency to avoid topics that bother him at all cost, like how he actively tries to redirect conversations in Hell's Chicken when he's being questioned regarding what he thinks could lead him into Distorting and when he senses Meursault is about to verbally lay into him. It's a tactic he employs very often as a distraction from the weirder things he says.

Interestingly enough, I believe Canto 7 is the first time we see Hong Lu avoid topics not through redirection, but through shutting down. That interaction you brought up isn't the first time in the Canto that he's rendered speechless either. In part 1, he's shown to respond with silence when both Rodya and Sinclair comment on their dislike of Xichun, being seemingly uncomfortable with the way they're talking about her.

And then there's a scene even earlier on in Part 1 that left a really, really major impression on me. Which. I can talk about now!

This, I believe, is the first time in Canto 7 where we see Hong Lu properly shut down in response to something. Something about what Xichun has said made him completely stop what he was doing earlier. His entire approach to the conversation changes in this moment. Earlier on he was excitedly asking questions, trying to give advice and gather information, but after this moment, Hong Lu is rendered completely passive, his lines being reduced to only responding to Xichun is saying in a very... honestly weird way.

It's not obvious in the transcript by itself, but his tone is... odd, compared to the way he was speaking earlier. In addition to that, every expression Hong Lu has during this conversation after this point are ones that actively have him not looking at Xichun, either using his closed eyes sprite or looking to the side sprite.

This moment struck me very, very heavily the first time I got to it in my plathrough. Part of it is because of the weird unnatural shift Hong Lu's behavior takes in this moment that I wasn't even consciously noticing until a reread. The other part is that the exact words Xichun says to Hong Lu that triggers this are ones that reminded me of something very specific in Dream of the Red Chamber.

There is a chapter fairly early on in Hong Lu's source novel that I can only describe as Bao-yu being verbally and emotionally abused by his father for the entire chapter. His father takes Bao-yu along as he shows off his garden to his acquaintances, and every time Bao-yu speaks up, whether by being prompted to or on his own, his father chastises him excessively. I don't remember the exact words, but the framing is pretty clear about the fact that Bao-yu's father sees his son's behavior as being a source of embarassment to himself in front of his acquaintances.

The kind of abuse shown in that chapter is downright stomach-churning in how realistically it is potrayed. It's genuinely upsetting and one of the main reasons I was unable to continue reading much further past that point.

I don't think it's a coincidence that Project Moon decided the thing that made Hong Lu have a shift in his behavior was being told him being himself is a cause of embarassment for someone else in his family. ...And I think Xichun's immediate reaction shows she realizes what is happening as well. It's very telling she doesn't bring up Hong Lu 'not getting better since the last time they've met' until this moment.

Because I don't think the thing he hasn't gotten better from is his upbeat, naive attitude. I believe it's his trauma response he's exhibiting right here. To become passive, downright submissive, and simply take everything that's being dealt to him without objections.

...Which segues nicely into the second point! Because the 'serene daze' shown on the Priest? The tranquility and peace Hong Lu exhibits in TKT, which is outright called out as strange by Dante? I believe it's the exact same as the trauma response I highlighted earlier. It's the immediate instinct to just lay down and take the pain because trying to fight back would only prolong the suffering.

The line about that expression being potentially "an express of liberation" is very telling. On the one hand, this Canto only further cements the fact that Hong Lu is just as passively suicidal as Yi Sang was before going through Canto 4. On the other, it directly ties back to Hong Lu potentially believing that the less resistance he shows, the sooner he'll be freed from suffering.

I already briefly went insane over the following line in a seperate post, but it feels extremely important to bring it up in here as well.

This line. This. Fucking. Line. Directly creates parallels between Oblivion and Naivete, drawing parallels between Donqui/Sancho and Hong Lu. And it's not that hard to see why.

We see that Donqui/Sancho's choice to embrace Oblivion, to completely try and erase her former identity and fall into a dream is motivated by her wishing to escape her reality, to stop thinking about the bloodshed and violence.

This line, and what we see of how Hong Lu acts throughout this Canto, is making it clear that Hong Lu's naive attitude, his constant willingness to assume the best of everyone around him, is just another part of his trauma response I've pointed out earlier.

It's how he escapes the violence he's been subjected to, the reality he's been living in. After all, the explanation he gives for why he wasn't afraid when the Time Killer tried to kill him... is because he understands why people want to hurt him. He didn't fight back when his siblings tried to kill him, because he knew why they would want to do that.

Because he tries to assume the best of everyone, tries to understand the reasons they do what they do, tries to be naively innocent, he's able to accept the pain and let it happen. Because if he can't, if he's forced to face none of what was done to him was justified... Well...

...This is where I would like to jump off and go on a tangent about my own theory. You see, you bring up the story the Priest starts telling to compare it to how Hong Lu acts with his anecdotes, but I think there's something much deeper going on with that story. Look at how the Priest begins it.

It's very clear the story he's telling is him directly comparing someone among the Sinners to Lorenzo, the Bloodfiend he's talking about. Dante's narration doesn't specify who the Priest means, as they only mentioned that "He looked at us", but it's clear from his words that he means a Single Specific Person here.

On my initial readthrough I assumed this was about Donqui, as this is her Canto after all, but... I no longer believe that's the case. In fact, I believe that the Sinner being used as a parallel to Lorenzo here is Hong Lu.

Let me give my evidence first.

One - We know the Priest, even in his daze, still recognizes Donqui as Sancho. The way he ends off his story says as much.

It's clear from his words and his actions that he's actively blaming Sancho for what happened to Lorenzo, and what he believes has happened to Cassetti as well. This would align with the feelings all of the named Kindreds we mett express towards her. So, to me at least, it's clear that the Priest wouldn't compare Sancho to Lorenzo in a way he has here.

Two - The framing of the scene and what follows later puts a lot of focus on Hong Lu.

Hong Lu is extremely present during this scene. Not only is the Priest compelled to share the story right after we see Hong Lu shut down at what Xichun has said, but the CG that follows his story inexplicably includes Hong Lu in it, listening intently.

And not only that, but soon after the Priest is taken away and Sansón tells another story, we get the moment of Donqui telling Dante she thinks it's Hong Lu's turn in the Golden Bough horrors.

If this were a game made by anyone else, I would take this as a self-aware joke pointing fun at how much focus Hong Lu has gotten in a Canto that's not his and move on. But this isn't anyone else.

This is Project Moon, who have a very Notable Track Record of hiding extremely important reveals and foreshadowing in one-off lines during comedic moments, especially in Limbus. See Canto 2 and Hell's Chicken. I genuinely believe the reason this joke exists here is to draw our attention not only to the parallels between Donqui/Sancho and Hong Lu, but also to the moments where Hong Lu is already the focus.

Three - The phrasing the Priest uses to refer to whoever he's comparing to Lorenzo.

The way he addresses this person and the rest of the group is very interesting, as there's emphasis put on his choice of the word "friends" to describe them. This feels important, as earlier on, in Part 1, Hong Lu himself denies Xichun's assessment that the Sinners are his faction, deliberately calling them his friends. Just like here the Priest calls the people accompanying the one he's directing the story at their friends.

So... what does that all mean for Hong Lu to be directly compared to Lorenzo? Well, let's take a quick look at what Lorenzo's story is.

Lorenzo is initially described as a Bloodfiend filled with positivity, to the point that the Priest thinks he didn't have anything to actually confess for. We see him think the way he's able to eat so many hemobars in one sitting as impressive, seeming completely oblivious to the the fact it's a clear sign the hemobars do nothing for Bloodfiends nutritionally.

This attitude completely changes however after Lorenzo tastes blood for the first time. He completely loses himself to obsession, spending hours licking a syringe just to be able to taste it. He completely loses his hope in the hemobars, having the drastic realization they do nothing, and lamenting how much longer he has to keep on living like this.

The story ends with the Priest remarking that after that shift, the only time he had seen Lorenzo genuinely happy was when he was about to be buried alive, when his head and brain were already completely decimated to the point he should be dead.

This... is already a lot.

Lorenzo's initial attitude, his positivity and naive belief that the hemobars are good despite the evidence to the contrary, are extremely close to how Hong Lu is right now. Upbeat, oblivious, always assuming the best of others. Hong Lu's passively suicidal tendencies could also track to Lorenzo's ending, how it's clear that Hong Lu is extremely willing to accept his own death.

...And then there's the whole middle of that story. There's a lot of different things this could be foreshadowing for Hong Lu's arc, but one thing is clear - he's not going to stay his upbeat self forever.

Every hint we've had about Hong Lu thus far. The implication he knows there's something that could make him distort all the way back in Hell's Chicken. The way we're told this Canto that Hong Lu's eye is dimming right after he comments how Donqui's twinkling eyes show she's "lucid", or living completely detached from reality. And then this, him being directly compared to a story of a Bloodfiend who upon finally being hit with reality begins to spiral and completely lose all his hope.

It all points to the idea that Hong lu will be forced to face his reality. To understand that his hemobars do jack shit and always have, that perhaps his family have never truly cared for him. And that realization could very well be the thing that finally breaks him.

I mean, his IDs already point to it, no? After all, Fanghunt Lu, possibly the most violent and deranged Hong Lu ID released thus far, one released alongside this part mind you, is shown to be actively thinking about and doubting the nature of family. "What even is a real family, I wonder?"

I'm just saying, if there's any Sinner who deserves to go utterly apeshit in their Canto, it would be Hong Lu. Let. My guy. Break Everything.

[max1461]

only tangentially related but sometimes I wonder if survivorship bias makes us view modern art as less than older art, that time and cultural memory acts as a natural bullshit filter, that actually people were just as vapid and pretentious back then, but none of the vapid and pretentious work had enough cultural value stick around to be examined now

I think it's partly this, but it's partly something else.

This is probably gonna piss a lot of people off, but I think in a particular sense, contemporary art is just... straightforwardly more advanced than older art. I know, I know, but hear me out: I don't mean that as a value judgement. What I mean is like...

Ok, take math as an example. Math started out talking about things that everybody's heard of: triangles, circles, whole numbers. But as those concepts were better understood, they got abstracted more and more. Symmetries of shapes where abstracted to symmetry groups, numbers abstracted to rings and fields, eventually it was all abstracted to category theory, and so on. And now if you look at major research topics in modern math, things like e.g. the Langlands program, as a non-expert, it often looks like a bunch of fucking nonsense about bullshit objects that don't have anything to do with the real world! But even though I don't understand the Langlands program itself, I know enough math to understand why all the levels of abstraction that I have understood are meaningful and valuable, and I can see why going even further would be too. And math is useful enough that the results often speak for themselves.

So I think contemporary art is much like this. If you read contemporary art theory, you will immediately see that it is all very meta. Art used to be made about very concrete things—people and nice looking vistas and so on—that anyone could understand. And then theorists came along and built up frameworks for thinking about art, because they wanted to understand why that art worked, why it was powerful and emotive. And then new, avant-garde artist came along and made art about the frameworks, pushing at their edge-cases or exploring their unintuitive implications. And then new frameworks were built up to understand that art, rinse and repeat. This account is, as I understand it, a little bit ahistorical—the building and the pushing of frameworks was often simultaneous and often not clearly articulated. Although, frankly, the same could be said for the history of math. But in retrospect I think a pretty undeniable picture emerges.

So, to put it bluntly, I think one of the reasons so much contemporary art looks vapid is that it isn't for you. It's about things you've never heard of, in the same way that category theory is about spaces and morphisms, and explaining that to someone who's never heard of groups or topological spaces is basically impossible. And I think there are some differences—art is obviously, you know, totally vibes based in a way that math isn't. If a big wire sculpture with styrofoam cups on it or whatever doesn't speak to you then it doesn't speak to you, no one can defend it on "objective" grounds. And art isn't useful in the way that math is, so it doesn't demonstrate its validity to people who don't get it in any way. But what I wish people understood is that there are people, who know a bunch of art theory and art history, who that wire sculpture with styrofoam cups on it does speak to. It makes them go "oh, I love how it plays off of X and contrasts with Y" etc. etc. And that isn't going to happen for you because, like, you don't know what X or Y even are! But that doesn't make it valueless, it just makes it insular. Which, you know, contemporary art really is! I think there are a lot of contemporary artists who claim to not be doing what I just described, who claim to be making art "for everybody", but I think if you read their artist statements and stuff it often becomes pretty clear that this is not the case. And this is a valid criticism of contemporary art! But "vapid" is mostly not.

Pretentious, definitely. It's pretentious as fuck.

[incorrectmahabharatquotes]

This is not as coherent as my usual posts and I'm sorry about that in advance. This is tangentially related to our last post about women in Mahabharat. I saw this post by @nushkiespeaks. I have a lot of thoughts about it but what matters the most in the context of our previous post is that I do not like the use of the phrase "her dharma saves her" in this scenario. I will explain.

TW: violence against women, sexual assault. Please proceed with caution.

(I want to clarify that this is not meant as a call out post or anything. These are just my thoughts about what some feminist analysis of the epic lack sometimes. You can feel free to agree or disagree with me but please be kind and respectful about it and not call people names or harass anyone.)

I love Draupadi as a character so I say the following with all the love in my heart for her:

People usually either praise Draupadi for being a perfect victim. Or denigrate her for not being one. To them, she's either the pure hearted goddess who believed in her personal god and fulfilled her dharma of being a perfect wife. Or she's the cunning woman who didn't perform her dharma properly and deserved what she got.

What gets left behind is that the fact no one should have to go through any of that regardless of whether you believe they performed their dharma correctly. What also gets left behind are: all the other women mentioned in the scene, if only in passing. The slaves.

If you're strictly talking about the BORI CE version of the story(as the post clearly is), while reading it, it's almost impossible to miss the repeated mentions of the normalised and legally sanctioned sexual abuse/harrassment and rape of slaves. (Side note: Yes, slavery was a thing back then. It's horrible. People just don't like to acknowledge the instances in the Mahabharat where slavery is mentioned because it's just not a good look for sacred books to be chill with and actively encouraging buying and selling of actual people like objects. Trust me, if you have a favourite character in the epic, they were probably involved in the practice of slavery somehow, even Krishna, I'm very sorry to tell you this.)

To me, it's odious to mention dharma whenever we talk about Draupadi's vastraharan because it leads the obvious conclusion that those other women mentioned in text suffer at the hands of their "masters", in part because maybe they weren't performing their dharma correctly.

Maybe that's not what people mean when they praise Draupadi for her dharmic perfection. But every time those people, I cannot help but think of those women. The ones that are forgotten.

The ones who were not allowed to save themselves.

I guess, I'm ultimately just trying to say that this post is just my humble request to people to not talk about topics such as sexual assault in terms of the moral character of the victim. The people may mean well, but it does unfortunately perpetuate the idea of a perfect victim.

-Mod S

[dinocanid]

This might be a hot take related to the current discourse (and is much more broad than the original topic and only tangentially related) but like, I don't think you have to know anything about your kintype/theriotype/etc. to know that's what you are.

Not to say that research doesn't help people, it certainly can help someone confirm/deny what their nonhuman identity is, and it is possible to be wrong the first time around, but for some people that's legit just bonus information. Neat to know but not necessary to figuring things out. It makes absolutely zero sense to be like "you can't be sure unless you can recite some wikipedia facts to me right now", or if you can play spot the difference between two (very similar looking) species. There is no alterhuman diploma.

To use a personal example: one of my kintypes is a wolf, I do not know most things about wolves off the top of my head. Don't ask me anything about wolf ecology outside the bare basics, I couldn't tell you. When I was really young I thought my nonhuman identity was a dog until one day I had the epiphany that I was actually a wolf. I didn't have to bury my head in research to figure that out, I just knew for not much reason. Any information on wolves I know today is stuff I picked up here and there over the years, independent of my identity. Even so, most wolf facts are irrelevant to me as a wolf since I wasn't wild and don't act like most wolves do or have the same instincts or behaviors. If anything I would've been thrown off-path, possibly for years, because my experiences didn't match that of wild wolves.

All this to say, you do what works for you and don't set the bar for entry based on your personal journey. Your experiences are not universal and all that. Some people just know for no reason, that's fine. Some people don't know and need that extra research, that's ok too. This feels like The Discourse Ever(tm) to be starting 2024 with, this feels like something people would've argued about in 2010.

[dipperdesperado]

Get Organized!

I recently made a post about how to get started in doing radical stuff. Said otherwise, that post was meant to answer the question, “Where do I go, when I know the world is fucked?” This post covers similar ground, but is more interested in the theoretical side of things. Not to say it won’t be practical. It’s just saying that if you’re not the kind of person that can read a little bit and feel confident to act, or you like having a little bit more scaffolding, that you also deserve a resource. I’m hoping to contribute to that today. As the title says, we’re going to be focusing on organizing. This is one of those things that is said a lot, but is actually defined much less often. Tangentially, you should be aware and ready for this for literally everything relating to politics. Any word that you hear used, you should always ask for a definition. Many a movement would have gone differently if folks spent more time trying to find semantic alignment. Anyway.

When I say organizing, I mean catalyzing the energy of folks, acting from a specific theory of change. A theory of change is a thought process or method to create some kind of social impact in a particular context. When the world sucks in some particular way, and you want it to stop sucking, the answer is to organize, in the way defined above. By organizing, we lean on the idea of collective power to create changes that are currently only afforded to those with authoritarian power. It’s a game of evening the odds.

I will also note that this assumes that you are going to be framing your work around broad-based movements, that have (mostly) aboveground (as in “legal”) tactics. This is not necessarily a statement of what is correct; small groups that are in concert with larger movements are also able to be successful, even when doing more confrontational tactics.

So, to organize, I’d say it would be useful to be involved in movements already. You can look at my radicalism 100 post to see how that could look. Either way you have to know what your where your niche(s) lie. In other words, what sits in the middle of the intersection between what you like to do, what you are good (or can become good/have a willingness to become good) at, and what is needed in your context. I tend to center the local level, because that is the area where influence is more tangible, and fits into how I see a resilient world coming to fruition. So, you have to ask yourself, “What can I do, that I would enjoy doing, in my community?” Then, you should find some other people who are in that same vibe. Depending on your approach, this may take no time at all, or a lot of time. I listed some ideas for finding folks in radicalism 100, but to reiterate: look for social medias and IRL presences of people who are into the same topics, and connect with them. See where you can plug in, and see where the contours of organizing in your local contexts are. Ideally you can see places where gaps can be filled.

Once you find an issue that you think has potential, and you have a couple of people to do some organizing with, you have what I think of as a catalyst group. This group is meant to start (or assist) in a certain kind of reaction, but not lead it. Trying to control movements is both futile and antithetical to liberation. So, to ground us, we have two very important ingredients: a topic/issue/area of focus to organize around, and a group of folks to work with. Once this is in place, you can co-create a strategy with your organizing team. I’d recommend employing an encircling strategy as your long-term or meta strategy, where multiple sub-strategies and campaigns happen within this frame. Essentially, this allows you to employ campaigns across a matrix of tactics. Within the encircling frame, you can create a campaign (what I consider a “short-term” strategy). Campaigns are a series of actions over time. Strategies are a series of campaigns over time.

A useful way to think of strategic planning is by separating the process into stages, grouped by movement size.

Small: Organize small actions/protests, figuring out ways to build movement visibility and interest

Medium: Focus on scaling up the participation, through mobilizing efforts. Promote your actions, get people involved, and encourage meaningful action.

Large: Create a movement. The kind of thing people hear about.

To organize on the smallest level, the easiest thing might be to just do plan actions that are well within your team’s capacity, organize those actions, and execute. If you can swing it, I’d really recommend to not lean too much into symbolic actions. There are risks with every action, no matter what legal frameworks your locality has. If you’re going to do something, you have to be very intentional with:

what you hope to accomplish through the action

a high likelihood of success for the action

doomsday planning in case something goes wrong

If you’re able to do this, then you will be leagues ahead of a lot of other folks. This is not to make it a race or a competition, but it is moreso to say you can symbolically represent and catalyze action without becoming a martyr.

As you’re doing actions, you should be refining your idea of who’s impacted by the issues more and more. As that picture gets clearer, you should spend more and more time understanding and listening to those folks. Ideally, you get to a point of co-creation, where you are enabling people to fight for themselves and build their autonomy. That is the kind of thing that prevents movements from dying. Organizers should be trying to put themselves out of business, in a sense. Catalysts should be able to come from anywhere.

To scale up, I’d recommend a focus on meeting folks. Take the ideas of deep canvassing, where you empathetically have conversations with whoever is impacted by the issue you’re responding to, through the lens of giving power to those people. Rather than asking them to feed into some established system of power, encourage them to take action into their own hands, as a collective.

I’d also recommend that as capacity grows, build a “positive” or “constructive” power. This can look like a lot of things. Whether it is a block club, neighborhood pod, community council, or community assembly, dedicate energy into creating spaces where people can start building their democratic and consensus muscles. These can simultaneously act as the training ground and alternative governance structure that allows folks to start making decisions for themselves in a very specific way.

This will ideally allow the movement to really start to be intersectional. It should be intersection minded from the outset, but that can be difficult to meaningfully actualize in the early stages of the movement. since single-issue movements are inherently brittle (if your movement revolves around getting something on a ballot, winning or losing just ends the movement)—there are throughlines that connect all movements, and those lines should be made visible and traveled. Environmentalists should fight for housing rights, LandBack, Reparations, and a host of other things. The more developed our networks, the stronger our movements will be.

[olderthannetfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/742116226529099776/that-is-in-fact-the-part-we-disagree-on-there?source=share

A lot of stuff like this feels like the kind of concern trolling that makes people want to cure diabetes by harassing fat people about their diets.

Yes, diabetes is bad, and yes there isn't as much f/f fic as m/m. But your f/f ship being a rarepair isn't caused by fanfic authors being pro-gay, and worldwide diabetes statistics aren't caused by fat people enjoying dessert.

You can't focus on something that's only tangentially related to a large problem and think that yelling at people to stop enjoying things will cure the world. You have to do real activism.

Yelling at m/m shippers for writing too much gay smut makes you a homophobic jerk and discourages them from writing f/f, while doing absolutely nothing about sexism in society.

Yelling at fat people for eating sweets makes you a fatphobic jerk and makes people feel bad about their bodies and encourages them to eat less healthy diets (starving yourself leads to health complications!), while doing absolutely nothing to prevent what is ultimately a genetic disorder.

--

TBH, both could be looked at as access problems to a degree too.

"Healthy" diets (a complicated topic, obviously, but go with me here) can be out of reach either financially or logistically. Other factors for making that genetic predisposition turn into actual diabetes have a lot to do with money and time and the involuntary parts of people's lifestyles.

Similarly, while there absolutely is plenty of media full of female characters with great dynamics with each other, and people who strongly prefer this stuff are already seeking it out, it's also the case that a lot of the truly massive fandoms form around things with 300-million dollar advertising budgets. Those things tend to be sausagefests. Effects on the resulting fanfic are predictable.

It's not just about what's possible but about what's convenient. If [desirable lifestyle thing X] isn't the first one most people encounter every morning, it may just not happen. People don't have infinite time, attention, and will to make that change. They're fucking busy.

Pester Hollywood studios and deal with food deserts first. People having "bad taste" will take care of itself.

[immaturityofthomasastruc]

This is related to the Season Finale/Child abuse thing somewhat, but also kind of tangential so I thought I would submit it in an ask instead of a reply.

It's worth examining that it's *largely* because of TA's own bile that we had this S5 situation as an 'endpoint' and writer's intent. If we stripped all of his commentary out of the equation there is still some stuff, but ML undercuts it as well.

Chloe is framed as a Villain? Felix was a Villain until he was a hero, with about 2 minutes between the two.

Everything framed as her fault? Well, ML has a history of swapping framing. Mari's antics were farce for 4 and a half SEASONS, then poof, now it's Trauma. Without TA's word, reframing Chloe from 'She's evil!' to 'Well actually no one paid attention and she's been a victim' would be easy. Heck that's Felix 2.0 but with more weight to it.

ML loves it's twists. Burying a character to pull them back out in a 'You didn't think we'd do it!' moment is right up their alley.

If we look at what's put *on screen* it *feels* like the writers are aware of what they're showing, of how she's being abused and no one sees. Yes they crammed Marinette's mouth full of TA's tweets about how Chloe has no problems only privileges, but again, without those tweets it's just Mari being unable to see things from someone else's PoV, which is normal for her. (a very reasonable Achilles heel)

All of this could easily be building into something, if we didn't have TA warbling on the internet. Though, it's worth noting he once warbled about Felix too, and 🤷‍♀️

Not that it matters that much, since a topic like this *especially aimed at kids* is time sensitive. You can't run a 4-5 year arc in a kids show without some payoff in the middle. By the time you go 'no wait, we were just setting up for this!' your demo has aged out, or gone through something where that information *would have already been helpful* and your incomplete lesson might even have them acting on the misinformation you've left them with.

It's just... kind of baffling.

I don't know if this is something you'd want to touch on in your finale review,or just answer, but it struck me and I figured it was worth sharing.

I get what you're trying to say, don't worry.

The show has always shown it believes in a "good victim, bad victim" mindset, and nowhere is it more obvious with Chloe and Felix. It doesn't matter how poorly Chloe is treated by her mother, she's seen as bad, so she deserves it, while Felix doesn't deserve to be abused by his father at all.

Put aside the fact that it's easier to connect with Chloe because we actually see her abusive parent on screen, it's clear that both of them are victims of terrible parenting, but for some reason, only Felix is allowed to be seen as an actual victim of child abuse.

[cbrownjc]

Oh! You reblogged my reblog of your reblog and added 'wonderful addition' in your tags! Thank you so much! You're one of my very iwtv and dm blogs, so I'm very excited that you thought so. You always have such great meta (and made me feel unalone in the 'Daniel was dying of AIDS when Armand turned him; I don't care what Anne says' camp.. Overdose deaths... don't go that slowly and nobody who was overdosing could be that coherent. Even the most high-functioning addict couldn't have told such cohesive story re: the twins. Not even with their minds. If you have taken that much, you are either passed out or the words coming out your mouth are incoherent *or* your delusions are literally delusional and they tend to be really on a few things. Daniel would not have able to collect his like that. He just wouldn't have been. I didn't pick any of this up when I first read it because I was about 14 and didn't anything about anything. I have since grown-up and gained life experience I wish I did not have. I hope I don't sound like I'm being flippant about this. Or that I'm oversharing. Because I'm not trying to be. As I said, I take this from my own life experience as someone watching what this kind of drug use looks like and how it usually concludes. It's also just something that *really* stood out to me when I reread the Devil's Minion chapter very recently. I sat there and said holy shit, this is AIDS, right? I mean, it doesn't specify anything except Daniel destroying his body and I'm like, okay, well long-term drug use does destroy your body, but it's not all at once like this. This is a metaphor, especially with all the sexual encounters Daniel was having especially in that specific time period. Obviously, the first thing I did was hunt down posts on tumblr to confirm my suspicions only to find that, according to Anne, it was not meant to be a metaphor for AIDS. It was drugs? So, I sat there and went nope, not really how long-term drug use go, definitely not how overdoses on hard drugs go. Anne, I do not think you have been in the presence of a serious addict while they are scary high or even around one for any length of time if you think this is how it goes. I also thought that if it was supposed to be an overdose, then 500ish years-old or not, it should have still affected Armand. A longterm hard drug user like Daniel would have to have taken a lot of something very strong, particularly if we're talking about the drugs readily available to addicts in the 80s. This is one of those things in the books that I reject their canon and insert my own when I think about it. There are a bunch of outstanding arguments for why Daniel was dying of AIDS and then there's Anne's own words that she meant for it to drugs and I just feel like this is one of those occasions where death of the author must be applied. At least for it to make sense in *my* brain.

I am so sorry I just filled your inbox with a wall of text only very tangentially related to the original topic, which was to say 'thank you' and 'yay, one my favorite blogs said this was nice and now I feel less like all my commentary is unhinged nonsense! :D' But a wall text that no one asked for came out. I'm so sorry.

Hi!

First of all, don't worry about the wall of text, it's fine. It's nice getting message from people who just enjoy what I have to say and just want to say thank you! I will never have a problem with that. 🙂

I don't know if you've checked out my tag on the subject of AIDS on my blog, but I have some older posts there that discuss my thoughts when I first read Queen of the Damned and how Daniel was dying in that book. And, to be fair, Daniel wasn't really dying of drugs there, it was cirrhosis of the liver from drinking too much. Which I'm sure Anne chose it because she'd had a history of alcoholism and so could write from experience about it.

But yeah, it's still an addiction he was dying of. Which, by the time I read the book in 1995 was rather jarring that it actually wasn't AIDS, as I said in this post here. I can understand why it wasn't (given when Rice was originally writing that book), but it just can't help but be jarring now, when you read that book after the 1980s I feel.

Given that the showrunner and writers are playwrights, however, I think they well know they can't do Daniel's story in this day and age now without mentioning the AIDS crisis and tying his character into it in some way. It would just ring hollow not to, IMO. And I think they know that given that AIDS-related issues were some of the very first images we see in the first episode of the show, as well as the book we know in-universe he wrote about it.

Anyway, yes I really liked your post, and again, no apologies needed for the length or anything, really! The fact that you see me as a favorite blog to read is so nice to hear! 🤗

[babacontainsmultitudes]

Ngl getting worried that "Sparrow doesn't like Normal" thing has been said so much on the show that the actual cast forgot that isn't true ......

Hi anon! Okay first of all, this was a very cathartic ask to receive, to the point that it kind of cracked me up when I first read it, so thank you, you were so real for this. I can empathize with this sentiment (though I had no plans on voicing it) and I've felt similarly for… A while honestly.

You sent this back in December (heh. classic baba.), and while I didn't forget, honestly I intended to answer this in a manner that's a bit more. Organized but… I sort of lost sight of where I wanted to go with things, to be honest with you, and I didn't wanna leave you hanging forever! Still, a couple notes and tangentially-related thoughts…

(Oh, maybe before we get into it- I assume based on the nature of this ask that you probably read this post of mine, but perhaps I'll leave it here as additional context for anyone who happens to find themselves reading this).

Okay, in Will's case to be totally real I've never confidently felt that he realizes that it's not true? If my memory serves, the first time the idea comes up at all is in episode 17:

Which irked me a bit at the time, in part because to me it feels pretty blatantly discordant with Sparrow's characterization- in general but also since he literally says this during the dance scene:

but even more so because it feels very inconsistent with Normal's degree of shock during this same scene. All the same, for a while I could still look past it, on the basis that y'know it's a very teenage thing to make mountains out of molehills and leap to increasingly cynical conclusions the way Normal tends to do, and so perhaps it was all intentional, and as both Sparrow and Normal went through a bit of growth and development, things would slowly turn out alright. :0 A bit willfully naïve, I suppose! But what can you do.

In Anthony's case… I've actually been pretty happy with what he's given us of Sparrow for the past little while, honestly. Sigh but still now and then Anthony will say things offhandedly like this (transcribing myself from episode 47 since the transcript isn't out yet):

Anthony: (…) The only thing keeping you together is the absolute ignorance you have of the fact that maybe the only person who ever showed you any real affection in the last couple years of your life is dead, and the fact that you don't know is all that keeps you going. But the only thing that keeps me going is [ADVERTIZEMENT].

And while that joke lead-in was very funny, it's also just. Objectively not true? Like even aside from all the instances of Sparrow being very affectionate with Norm (including in the dance scene), the other teens? Lark? Rebecca???? All of them have shown Normal affection in one way or another throughout the course of the show. Like, I get that he probably mostly did it for the joke but. Eh, still rubs me the wrong way I suppose.

As for the rest of the cast… It's hard to say, and I guess less important at the end of the day. The other teens' responses to Norm in the last episode make sense for the most part given their POVs imo, so while frustrating to a degree, I can't really fault them for it. Still… Hm, in Scary's case I briefly discussed what I would sort have wanted/liked to come from her own interactions with Sparrow after episode 37 here, and tbh I suppose everything outlined there is still more or less what my ideal scenario would have looked like!

So honestly I suppose that's it anon! I could talk more but I would most definitely begin to stray off topic if I did lol. Thank you kindly for the ask! 💜

[catboybiologist]

boymoders always be like "I'm not passing" while still activating the lesbian neurons in my brain smh how can both those things be true

anyway congrats on passing the thing!! my viva is coming ever closer and I'm def a little nervous lmao, how long did it take?

Good luck! I... had to look up what a Viva was, tbh. As far as I understand it, Vivas are another subtle difference between the two PhD systems in the world, so just to clarify: I do NOT have my PhD, but this is the most significant midway step. And this now has me on my whole little rant about the two PhD systems again!

Just a quick reminder if y'all aren't aware: there are two PhD systems in the world, largely split by geographic region, and I think this is why this confused me.

System A (the Americas, East Asia): the total time of the PhD is 5-7 years, the only strict entry requirement is a bachelor's degree (although, due to inflating standards, this is becoming less true in practice). Ends with a thesis defense on the research project you did during your time. At some midway point, you have a qualifying exam, which is a presentation you give about your project with the added twist that your committee is supposed to grill you about any subject even tangentially related to your research topic. The timing of this varies from the end of the first year to right before the thesis defense.

System B (Africa, Europe, Oceania, elsewhere in Asia): total time of a PhD is 3-5 years, but typically requires a separate master's degree or technical certification to start. Culminates in both a Viva, which is similar to our quals, and a defense? I think? Someone please correct me here.

They both total to the same amount of experience, its just split differently.

Currently, I'm 1.5 years into my PhD. This is pretty early to take my qual- my department does them early, because they're supposed to decide the direction of the rest of the years of your research, and I took it earlier than usual on top of that as well. I also already have a masters degree in a related but not quite the same subject (bioinformatics) so technically it's taken me 3.5 years of grad school.

Also. You're gay.

[galactic-pirates]

Animation > Live Action

So I finally finished watching Star Trek: Prodigy last weekend. Don't worry I binged it on Netflix the day it dropped (I just didn't watch it as it streamed). I wanted to savour it because it might be all we get and that is damn sad.

Anyway! As good as Star Trek: Prodigy was (seriously watch it, you won't regret it) this ramble is only tangentially related to it.

Right or wrong nostalgia is riding high in media right now. Some hits, some awful misses. We also need new stuff and shouldn't just recycle existing IPs but that's a whole other post. To keep it zoomed out, I think there is an element of human nature that likes more stories in worlds we already love. I've seen posts explaining why people love fanfic vs. reading new original novels for this reason. They already love the characters, they are invested. There is a warmth and certainty to it. When this is done in media it can go horribly wrong. If something is revisited and done badly there is like a taint... I'm getting off topic.

TLDR - we like more stories set in worlds we already love.

BUT (and it's a big but) live action has a lot of constraints.

People get older when their characters shouldn't e.g. Data is an android and doesn't age but of course Brent Spiner does and no amount of make-up can disguise it.

Hard to portray alien proportions. Like the Grand Inquisitor on Star Wars looked awful on the Obi-Wan show and I don't know how much this was Disney being cheap, but I don't like actors to suffer either. I mean just look at this here. To me there is no contest.

There are limits for safety/physics/reality reasons as to sets or action sequences. Animation obviously has it's own limitations like characters have default 'outfits' quite often, as rigging new clothing takes a long time (also budget plays a factor just as it does for live action). But still I would argue imagination is the primary limit of animation in terms of what can be done. Art is wonderful that way.

I'm sure there are many other points to but this post is long enough as it is.

Anyway it just struck me watching Star Trek: Prodigy that we had Janeway, and Chakotay, and the Doctor and there was zero issue with when in the timeline this was set post-Voyager because actor aging didn't matter. They could record their lines in a soundbooth wearing their comfiest clothes if they wanted. There's a longevity to that which live action can't realistically offer.

I don't know I just think there's a reason that looking at more recent franchise entries for both Star Wars and Trek, the best shows have both been animation (Prodigy and Rebels).

So yeah I would love to see more animation if we're riding the nostalgia train, and having more adventures with long-time faves.

[alias-mike]

ok so. i feel like the term "video essay" has become very diluted. what people are calling "video essays" nowadays are just commentary videos. and the creators of the videos themselves are doing this, which annoys me because dude. youre making a 18 minute long video about like. "haha people on tiktok are soooo crazy look at them fight over stanley cups" and then have maybe like. a whole 3 minutes total of actual substance and the rest of the video is just pointless rambling about tangentially related opinions or basic surface level takes. THATS A COMMENTARY VIDEO !!!!!!!! JUST CALL IT A COMMENTARY VIDEO FOR THE LOVE OF. my sanity mostly

personally. what i consider a video essay is like. something along the lines of hbomberguy or philosophy tube. something with a clear topic, a thesis if you will, and supporting points with examples/proof and analysis explaining how those examples support the points and thesis. it doesnt have to be super structured and serious like a proper academic essay, but its clear that those videos are well thought out and edited so only the best parts make it into the final script. theres a reason channels like those only upload once every couple of months!! the quality clearly shows that they put a lot of time and effort into researching the topic and making an enjoyable video!!! so when commentary videos call themselves "video essays", i get really annoyed. hate to break it to you but your recap of the tiktok trend of the week is NOT an essay sorry

p.s. dont get me wrong i can totally understand/see the appeal of commentary videos. theyre lighthearted and about inconsequential stuff and you can just put one on for some background noise and thats totally cool! im just particular about how you label/classify stuff hfdjfdsh

[oodlenoodleroodle]

I was reading an article about a new book in my local newspaper, which included this only tangentially related idea that I thought was super interesting:

In a lot of secular cultures the belief in love has replaced the belief in God.

And like not in a good way: like the religious belief it replaces, it comes with a sort of orthodoxy, which then leads to ideas that the right kind of romantic relationship ("true love") will solve all of your problems (Ally McBeal is a great example of a character who is like this btw), and of course it also creates norms of what is the right kind and what is the wrong kind of love (for example polyamorous and asexual/aromantic relationships are all the wront kind, but also being too happy being single or not wanting children is dubious in the eyes of these norms). This to me explains so well why so many people are so mad about what total strangers do or don't do in private: these sorts of love believers consider any deviation as heresy.

This is obviously nearly impossible to google, because all the results are either Bible things or some sort of "7 reasons you need to believe in love" Psychology Today articles. So if anyone has encountered anything interesting re: this topic, please share.

(If you reblog with anything you want me to see, please at tag me so that I get the email notification; I p much never look at my activity page.)

[yamayuandadu]

Megumu Iizunamaru

How I feel about this character: I have mixed feelings, honestly. Expanding the tengu society via the introduction of a new character from a different social stratum is very welcome. We’ve been sitting on heaps of tengu background from the print works since the early Windows days and it felt like it’s just going to be a way to make it easier for fans to come up with ocs. I’m pleasantly surprised that was not the case. I think her personality is fun and it was refreshing to have an antagonist with multiple actual minions again after WBaWC and HSiFS where almost every character operates on her own. However, I can’t help but think she was sort of robbed of the grandeur she could’ve had if she had more spotlight in the game instead of sharing it with Chimata. Especially since the latter is… hardly thrilling, probably a candidate for one of my least favorite Windows final bosses, with a design which looks like that old meme poking fun at ZUN’s art. That’s beside the point, though. I also think Megumu's own design is missing something. More than once I’ve seen fanart giving her a more pronounced night sky theme, which works well. Same with leaning more into her namesake’s highly distinctive iconography. All around, from my perspective Megumu is a promising character who however for now failed to quite reach the standard for modern Touhou big names, despite having the potential for that.

All the people I ship romantically with this character: I already covered this topic in the Tsukasa and Momoyo asks.

My non-romantic OTP for this character: there is evidently great potential in her ending interactions with Kanako. A funny thing to note that's tangentially related is that in the middle ages both Suwa Daimyojin and Izuna Gongen developed origin myths which inolved them arriving from India in the distant past.

My unpopular opinion about this character: the story in UM would be better off without Chimata and with Megumu getting the bump to stage 6 and a more elaborate design to match (Tsukasa is functionally the spiritual equivalent of the typical stage 5 boss anyway). Granted, not sure to what degree this is an unpopular opinion because frankly through the past two years the only time when I’ve seen Chimata brought up on my social media feed it boiled down to some variety of high caliber “horny on main” incident, while I do see Megumu and Momoyo, let alone Tsukasa, semi-regularly.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: honestly would like to see her interact with Okina, she's probably the best character we have atm to use to go further with what is already implied in Aya's route in HSiFS.

[n7punk]

What is my immortal?

Ohhhh boy. Ok. Sit down.

My Immortal (wikipedia page) is the most famous fanfiction of all time. Couple disclaimers: it's almost not well-written enough to qualify for trigger warnings, but it does touch on a lot of triggers that I won't list off here. It is also, theoretically, tangentially, supposedly, "harry potter" fanfiction. However, harry is now known as Vampire, hermione is now B'loody Mary Smith, ron is Diablo, etc. A lot of the characters are now vampires and everyone is "goth" except the characters the author doesn't like, who are preps and posers. Also in one of the author's notes I think the writer ("Tara") literally says she hasn't read the books and it's based off "the movie". So like, it's connections to harry potter are tenuous at best and I'm not recommending you read anything beyond the first paragraph anyway, just putting that out there.

It's first person, follows a self-insert OC, and is entirely a fabrication of the writer's indulgence. It's one of those things that has gone down in fandom history and most people have read the first chapter, but we hadn't read more (AN: I don't recommend you do) so we had a read in the group chat and I either lost braincells or gained code-cracking skills trying to parse through the misspellings (both accidental and purposeful). A lot of people think it's a troll fic (which like, yeah makes sense) but there's a case to be made for it being a young tween's idea of a cool and edgy story that she and her friend made up and don't understand why everyone is hating on. I also think the world is a more beautiful place if it's sincere. The writer has managed to remain anonymous and undoxxed, which I am VERY grateful for, for her sake, even if I do desperately want to know the "real" story behind it and how she feels about its meme-status. Many people have come forward claiming to be the author and having done it as satire, but every one of them was a lying poser and a prep.

Below the cut is the opening of the famous "first chapter" (which only has a few more sentences in it after this anyway) for your reading pleasure. You really don't need to read any more than that, this is the part that became a meme and it only goes downhill from here. Also, "AN" (or "A/N") is "Author's Note" and yeah people really did used to just stick them in the middle of a fic, at least bad ones.

Hi my name is Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way and I have long ebony black hair (that’s how I got my name) with purple streaks and red tips that reaches my mid-back and icy blue eyes like limpid tears and a lot of people tell me I look like Amy Lee (AN: if u don’t know who she is get da hell out of here!). I’m not related to Gerard Way but I wish I was because he’s a major fucking hottie. I’m a vampire but my teeth are straight and white. I have pale white skin. I’m also a witch, and I go to a magic school called Hogwarts in England where I’m in the seventh year (I’m seventeen). I’m a goth (in case you couldn’t tell) and I wear mostly black. I love Hot Topic and I buy all my clothes from there. For example today I was wearing a black corset with matching lace around it and a black leather miniskirt, pink fishnets and black combat boots. I was wearing black lipstick, white foundation, black eyeliner and red eye shadow. I was walking outside Hogwarts. It was snowing and raining so there was no sun, which I was very happy about. A lot of preps stared at me. I put up my middle finger at them.

[canmom]

Animation Night 136: The Zagreb School

Good afternoon everyone! Welcome back to my odd little... column I guess, in which I infodump about animated films (or topics only tangentially related to animated films, like the history of the samurai) and attempt to, in some sense, curate a big collection of all the great animation in the world that I can find? That’s kind of what this ended up being, huh.

Writing about animation is tricky. After avoiding some of the most obvious clichés - it’s so smooth! - you’re left with some slightly less cliché phrases like ‘strong key poses’, ‘graphical’, ‘sense of form’, ‘energetic’, ‘weighty’ ‘strong character acting’... or maybe you throw open your mental dictionary of production terminology and praise the ‘boards’ and ‘LO’ and ‘sakkan work’ and ‘genga’, which has the great advantage of making you sound like an industry insider even if you’ve never worked a day in animation (*cough*).

To get further you need to get very specific, and start pausing on specific frames and drawing bright red over things, and pull out your deck of animation principles and artist words - timing, spacing, arcs, line of action. This is the specialty of the Twitter account Frame by Frame. A useful type of analysis but also one that is very easy to parody...

‘course you might say this is less a parody and more a perfectly legit “animation” analysis with an unusual subject.

But the real reason for all of this is that animation is something you feel more than process in words. When you create an animation, you can plan it out carefully with keys and breakdowns and arcs and timing charts (a skill that was all the more necessary when you couldn’t hit a ‘play’ button in your software) and apply concepts you might know about like ‘hand accents’ and ‘overshoot and settle’ and so forth, but even with that you are going to spend a pretty long time flipping between drawings, erasing and redrawing bits, and shifting the timing to and fro until it just looks right. And then when you watch an animation, it evokes a feeling that can’t just be broken down into all those applications of technique. And describing feelings in words is its own entire art form...

Anyway, that’s a roundabout way of... partly self-reflection, because for a series of essays about animation I don’t do a ton of actual animation analysis so much as biographising, but also to say, today’s subject is a pretty tricky one to approach!

Tonight the plan is to look into the Zagreb School of Animation - not a literal institution but a (loosely defined) artistic tradition that began in the 50s in what was then the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, centered around (you’ll be shocked to learn) the city of Zagreb, capital of Croatia.

(Tumblr is only gonna let me post five videos in here so, I’m gonna have to spread them out a bit...)

The occasion for this is the appearance of the Zagreb Film channel on Youtube, which has been uploading clean, HD releases of dozens of old Czech films. But it’s also heavily indebted to the blog Animation Obsessive, who wrote about the Zagreb Film channel, and before that, a great deal about them and specific films made by artists associated with the Zagreb School.

OK, these guys are from Zagreb, but what makes them a big deal? We can say their influence is a unique graphical style influenced by the once-renowned UPA in America, all an overt and conscious break away from the ‘full animation’ of Disney. We could talk about their influence in Eastern European animation and worldwide. We can perhaps quote a certain manifesto, from an art show in 1968...

Animation is an animated film.

A protest against the stationary condition.

Animation transporting movement of nature directly cannot be creative animation.

Animation is a technical process in which the final result must always be creative.

To animate: to give life and soul to a design, not through the copying but through the transformation of reality.

But that doesn’t actually tell you very much, and also that’s where it gets trickier, because the Zagreb School - especially in their earlier years - were crazy varied in their output. As AniObsessive put it...

The Zagreb School is a tricky thing to pin down — scholar Ronald Holloway said it best when he called it “a loosely fitting group of artists in open competition with each other.” Many of its key figures were art-school graduates. Even more had a background at Kerempuh, something like Yugoslavia’s answer to MAD Magazine.

It was never just one thing. Zagreb School cartoons are wild and anarchic until they’re sad and serious. They’re cartoony and geometric until they’re loose and painterly. It’s less of a style and more of a “protest,” per a manifesto signed by some of the key members.

So to get more concrete, we’ll have to narrow our scope to particular artists and films. I’m not going to be able to do the Zagreb School anything like justice - there have been massive books written about them, and even when AniObsessive boil it down, that gives several long articles - so take this post more as a signpost, to explore further if you’re curious...

Here is Kod fotografa (At the Photographer’s) by Vatroslav Mimica, with lead animation by Vladimir Jutriša. I’m leading with this one because AniObsesive have written an extensive breakdown of the animation style, which is a great read. But here let me put in a little background...

Traditional animation is usually divided into two broad strands. To start with, there is the famous ‘full animation’ pursued by Disney, spreading to Warner and later carried on by Disney offshoots like Don Bluth and Dreamworks. It’s a style which really came into its own in 1937, with The Old Mill (1937) and Snow White. Inspired by studies of live action film using the rotoscope (see: Animation Night 65), ‘full animation’ pursues what Disney called ‘the illusion of life’, when the drawings cease to seem like drawings and appear as a living, breathing character.

To this end, ‘full animaton’ places drawings on 2s and 1s (12 or 24fps) - mostly on 2s, speeding up to 1s for rapid actions, and applies a body of techniques summarised by Disney’s ‘Twelve Principles of Animation’ to create a sense of continuous motion: arcs, overlapping action, overshoot and settle, lots of dangling bits to shake and wobble. A huge emphasis is placed on acting, with the animator conceived of as an actor inhabiting that character and lending them unique mannerisms, drawing initially on the ‘broad’ acting of vaudeville performers but later splintering into more reserved styles suitable for more dramatic stories.

‘Full animation’ traditionally avoids certain techniques that will break the ‘illusion’. It will rarely use hold frames, or shots that are just multiplane effects. The extreme of full animation is the work of Richard Williams (Animation Night 119).

Then there is ‘limited animation’. This is mostly associated with TV animation, both in the States and in Japan, where the need to make a lot more animation in a much shorter time necessitated production shortcuts. These include

animating at a reduced framerate anime will usually animate on 3s i.e. 8fps, or even 4s i.e. 6fps, and drop to 2s for fast action

hold frames the same drawing stays on screen for a long time

partial holds when most of a drawing stays still, but a small part is varied, e.g. a character’s mouth and maybe jaw moves to indicate speech while the rest of their face stays still

moving holds a single drawing is moved across the screen without changing. can be used to, for example, make a very cheap walking shot by shooting a character from the shoulders up and moving them up and down while scrolling the background

bank shots repeated footage that is reused, sometimes every episode - e.g. henshin (transformation) sequences in old-school magical girl and super robot anime

multiplane effects/animetism when animation consists of sliding ‘book’ layers passing over each other, without trying to create an appearance of 3D space

loops particularly for repetitive actions like walking, but also sometimes for background animation - a handful of frames can be cycled repeatedly

As anime envolved, animators like Yoshinori Kanada (AN 62) and directors like Osamu Dezaki (AN 95) appeared who found ways to make animation that turned these limitations into strengths. Anime started to emphasise the storyboard and layout, with increasingly elaborate camera moves and a very cinematic approach to the animated ‘camera’. And viewers got used to animation on mixed 2s and 3s, and even started to come to recognise the special value of its ‘snappy’ feel - which is incidentally part of the reason for animators’ loathing for AI interpolators.

It’s not strictly that one is the ‘Japanese style’ and one is the ‘American style’ mind you. Indeed, ‘full animation’ has mostly been practiced in just a handful of studios, mostly in America, and almost exclusively in films, because it is kind of insanely expensive.

Then we come to the slightly more obscure terms for ‘hybrid’ styles, such as the ‘full limited’ of Mitsuo Iso - although this is subject to many misconceptions as @why-animation noted for this translated interview. But to briefly summarise, ‘full limited’ refers to mixing the techniques of full animation - constant movement, strong sense of weight and overlapping motion - with the reduced framerates of anime (typically on 3s). The iconic example is Iso’s animation of Asuka fighting the Mass Production Evangelions in End of Evangelion.

I mention this because I’m about to talk about a very different sort of ‘full limited’. The ‘reduced animation’ - a term coined at UPA - practiced by the Zagreb School is a form of ‘limited animation’... yet one that paradoxically often involved extended sequences on 1s, as you can also see in this brief ad...

The way this is still ‘limited’ is that these ‘smooth’ sequences are one of two extremes. Characters slide with uncanny smoothness from pose to pose... or they remain perfectly still, moving our attention around the frame. As AniObsessive note, the spacing is very even, where conventional animation wisdom would say you should use a slow-in or slow-out, overshoot and settle. It’s consciously extremely unnatural, in an arresting way.

So returning to At the Photographer’s... (link, again) - this film builds on that into a fascinating string of visual gags, morphing pespective, playing with shapes... it feels in some ways like Flash animation, way ahead of its time. The film’s soundtrack is entirely musical, timed with the animation in a way resembling the ‘Mickey Mousing’ of Disney, but here used to create an uncanny distancing effect. The photographer struggles to get the boy to create a proper smile, an expression represented by hyperdistorted photo collages, a technique also used (along with painted elements) in the background.

I won’t try to itemise every gag, but I think it is cute how the kid’s mouth floats around his face like a little fish.

Czech animators at the time of this film, and honestly pretty much throughout the existence of the ‘school’, were working with truly limited resources. Pavao Štalter, director, background artist and lead animator of The Masque of the Red Death (1969) once described it...

All of our cameras are made from aircraft scrap from landfills. We are madmen who work with abnormal effort. Instead of making a film in three months, it takes us a year. Everything is done by hand. … Here in my little room in the studio, it is 45 degrees Celsius in the summer, and we work ten hours a day! I really don’t know how long we can say, “Tomorrow will be better!”

Masque shows a very different face of the Zagreb School, with the gloomy, textured, bleak world of expressionist paintings. Its animation is a mix of cutouts and traditional animation in paint. Its process was discovered experimentally, Poe’s story is presented without dialogue, though there are some really choice screams and there is a song with lyrics. But mostly it’s an incredible atmosphere piece.

Masque, writes AniObsessive, was also unusual in its funding: while Zagreb Film received funding from Tito’s government, in an unusually hands-off arrangement, it didn’t go very far. For Masque, a large part of the money instead came from the American company McGraw-Hill, primarily an educational publisher, a serendipitous connection made by a display of the film’s storyboards at MoMA. You can read more about its story here.

That is also the end of my video limit for this post, and I haven’t even begun to cover more than a fraction of the Zagreb school’s important films. So please hold on for part 2, where I’ll write about a few more in the next hour before we begin our film night...