#v v v v v v v interesting to me to see whose bad behaviour the blog decided to call out. v e r y

[morgana-pendragon]

[juminies]

I agree, things are objectively less hectic in a normal end. You at least somewhat get away from the paparazzi, live your life as a somewhat normal couple, sure. I just think it's important to remember that it is, in fact, the normal end for a reason.

(Read more as I don't want this to get overly long on the dash. I have a lot to say)

I feel like people tend to overlook the fact that the endings are labelled good or bad looking at the long term for the character whose route you're on, not particularly for MC. A lot of the bad endings also result in a bad outcome for MC, that's undeniable, but let's look at V's route for the clearest example of this. In Jihyun's normal ending you get into a relationship immediately and live a normal life as a happy couple. Nothing about this seems particularly bad, and it's not really, not on its own. It makes sense that a player might prefer this ending, because V's good ending would absolutely be harder on the MC. He disappears for two years. She's left missing him; the future uncertain. But... he comes back a better person. In a GE he learns how to be Jihyun again, and he learns how to unabashedly love again without the shadow of Rika over him. It's a good ending because it's the best possible outcome for him. Then, because of his self discovery, it's the best long-term outcome for the MC too.

Let me quickly repeat what I said in a self reblog about Jumin and MC's attachment in a normal end as a foundation here.

Jumin falls into the pattern of neglecting his career because of MC's behaviour in neglecting the party. Her failure to complete her duties was down to her focus on Jumin and their relationship. Jumin sees her prioritising love over completing her tasks and goes Ah, right. That's why they end up working together. Because both of them will simply.. fail to do their job otherwise.

This is genuinely the case. We know because, well,

in a normal end Jumin says that MC "taught [him] that it's much more important to share emotions and love rather than finish [his] tasks." This is not logical, and there's a reason that he only thinks this way if and when the MC is vaguely obsessive; shows him it's the "right" thing to do. He isn't creating a balance! He's indisputably putting love over everything else without entirely thinking it through like his father, and he says it himself. It is his decision to resign, but that doesn't mean it's built on logic and realism – even if it seems like it is in the moment.

Jumin worked hard to get where he is. His job plays an absolutely huge part in his life. MC is the one who plants the idea that none of that really matters, because now he has love. Which is wrong. It is not healthy nor mature to indefatigably prioritise your relationship over your career, especially when you're proud to have spent the better part of a decade building your reputation, and especially when the relationship in question is with someone you met less than two weeks ago. And with no communication regarding the decision, no less! Thankfully it works out somewhat okay in this case, but I still go nooo!!! reading the quote above because it's such a rash choice to make, and one that would probably be very difficult to go back on. (Proposing after less than 2 weeks was also an interesting choice, sure, but at least the MC has a say in that and it doesn't take immediate effect).

In a realistic scenario resigning from C&R would negatively emotionally impact Jumin sooner or later, too. Here's something else I wrote in another post about his NE a couple of months ago:

Jumin would play it off as nonchalantly as he could for as long as he could, but resigning would likely have a big impact on him, especially so suddenly. He works a lot. His job meant a lot to him for a long time, and it was also practically the basis of his relationship with his father.

As well as this, the separation of work and home life is important to Jumin (I recall that he mentions at some point something along the lines of how he doesn't bring work home). Having time to work at the office and time away from that to relax at home is something he needs to keep his life balanced and happy, but it's something he wouldn't have a boundary between in a NE. And I want to emphasise that in a GE he would certainly make sure the life part of work-life balance does not get neglected whatsoever now that he has MC.

Not having that separation is something he'd learn to live with, of course. It's not something he wouldn't–or doesn't–get over. Clearly the mutual obsession dependency isn't detrimental to either Jumin or his MC's wellbeing, because they seem to be doing fine. Like, I'm by no means saying that Jumin is unhappy in a NE. But again, it is a normal end because it's just that. Neutral. They are happy on some level, and everything seems to be working out, but is it the best possible outcome for Jumin?

Jumin's normal ending is actually rather sombre to me, mostly down to the fact he spent so much of his life denouncing his father for allowing women to cloud his vision and have so much influence over him, and then Jumin quits his job on a whim because he deems love more important.

Jumin isn't like Chairman Han, of course. He's no womaniser. He's honest and loyal and beyond in love. But Chairman Han making women–love–his sole priority and neglecting other responsibilities is something Jumin (especially in his route) has, rightfully, been very openly critical about his father doing. It's something that's actively frustrated and upset Jumin his whole life. But, just like that, an MC who ignores her duties because she's too focused on him pulls him into the mindset he's spent so much time resenting. He's already in such a new and vulnerable position with very little legitimate knowledge of what a healthy relationship should look or feel like, and then with her attention on nothing but him? This weird sort of uncomfortable codependency arises. Oh? Perhaps that's just how it should be? It's safer with her constantly by my side. It's more comfortable if we're always in each other's sight. There's no need to put much weight on anything else as long as we have each other.

It's almost as though GE is "we're a team no matter what" where NE is "I cannot and will not function in a room without you in it."

[firebirdsdaughter]

Yeah…

… This is super frustrating. I’d totally be feeling something from this scene if I felt like their relationship was real and not something Korenosuke/Aruto manufactured exactly to their liking. Also if it was less ‘remember your ~dream~’ and more ‘you don’t need to do use another berserk Key.’ Like… I feel like the ‘want HumaGear to smile from the heart’ is a little overdone? Like, in theory it’s valid, but I feel like it gets tossed around w/out much thought to how or why, or recognition of the fact that’s also okay to be upset and angry and that happiness may not look like ‘smiling’ for everyone? I dunno how to explain this, but… There’s just too much of shilling Aruto as this ‘perfect paragon of benevolence’ and Izu as his ‘perfect angel supporter’ for me to have any emotion for this scene? Once again, their relationship feels groomed and manufactured, and not even the collective good acting of Noa and Fumiya can save it? And I think in general the film itself wouldn’t actually really bother me w/out the baggages from the show? I’ve run into the ground how I feel the whole ‘memories’ thing was superfluous, but I just feel like this should be focusing on how Aruto is fully capable of making bad decisions, just like any person, and that the message shouldn’t be that he exclusively ‘needs’ Izu to ‘save’ him from malice, but just that everyone needs someone to call them out when they are being stupid. It shouldn’t be ‘remember how good you are’ but more ‘this is a bad course of action.’ Bc you ultimately can’t ‘save’ someone from ‘darkness’ people will be stupid and make bad choices and everyone needs a network, but that ‘network’ shouldn’t be the android made to cater to your whims who follows you around telling you how great you are twenty-four-seven. Izu disobeying Aruto and confronting him about making a bad decision would have been a really interesting and good subplot for them… If it weren’t for everything else in the show. If her character didn’t feel more like a siri or a tomagachi than a person. If this was treated as her and Aruto learning from their mistakes and failures, esp w/ Horobi, and Izu making a choice about what she thinks is right and Aruto coming down off his high horse. Her confrontation of him being less ‘remember your dream’ and more ‘everyone else is working their butts off to try and stop this and you’re here on your own using a berserk Key again???’

Also if there had been more of him interacting w/ and/or acknowledging the other characters, esp Horobi, whose motivations were very similar to S’. I would absolutely be here for a scene of Aruto being like ‘I’m going to say to you what I should have said to him.’ If Aruto seeing S’ behaviour made him realise that he’s been making similar assumptions about HumaGear/everyone in general, that he somehow knows how to make them happy. If the movie had ended w/ them meeting up w/ the others, and then at some point either he or Izu (or both!) go and quietly apologise to Horobi (what’s it gonna take for me to get an apology for Horobi???), and then maybe to everyone else for taking off like that.

Basically… This film would have benefitted greatly from a more smoothly handled finale. Something where everyone owned up to their parts in what happened, and it turns out that Izu’s data was stored in the 02 Key the whole time, so if Aruto had just paused for a moment instead of going full murder spree, this could have been dealt w/ much sooner. The final fight also features him apologising to Horobi for letting it get this bad and complicated, and reassuring Horobi that the situation is ‘more complicated’ than ‘all his fault.’ Horobi is the one who retrieves Izu’s data from the 02 Key and the one who remakes Jin. Mbjr’s new goal is more to try and fight for HumaGear rights in a new way than just ‘hang out and watch until another ‘Ark’ shows up’ and Aruto and Izu are now more focused on actually changing things so that no HumaGear have to suffer like mbjr and the others did ever again, and there’s talk of trying to give HumaGear more voice in their situations, esp in regards to the new satellite. Something where Aruto/humanity is vowing not to forget the mistakes they also made. The whole ‘memories’ stuff is scrapped bc it’s meaningless, and Izu’s moment in Zea is more about her considering her previous actions (rubbing Horobi’s defeat in baby Jin’s face, stuff like the time Gai tried to mind control Fuwa into shooting her and everything after, her conversations w/ Yua about intentions and the Ansatsu-chan incident, Horobi’s very obvious distress in the warehouse) and taking everything into account about what the right course of action is. Whether she’ll just cause more pain again, or whether she could help. Zea/02 popping in and weighing could still work, and I’d love to see Izu conclude that yes, she does think she can go help, that is the right course of action, and she’s not just doing it to ~support Aruto~ but for everyone else, too, bc everyone else is out there doing all they can, including Shesta, and she wants to do what she can, too. I feel like that all would make me feel much better going into this? Like… That’d make this film mostly work for me. I’d still take issue w/ trying to push Aruto and Izu as romantic bc of the whole he has absolute power over her to the point it comes across as grooming/wife husbandry, but that would require a whole-ass show rewrite.

As it is… I’m just caught in limbo w/ how this could have all been real good, actually, and how good Noa and Fumiya are and how they genuinely do have very good chemistry, but the shilling of Aruto and Izu’s lack of development and any other relationships and the fact that his absolute power and humanity’s absolute power over HumaGear is never addressed, the way the protests were treated as Horobi spreading ‘malice’ rather than a valid complaint on the part of HumaGear that they feel like they have no rights (bc they don’t, and Aruto never seems bothered by this)… I feel like they were perpetuating that there was ‘nothing wrong w/ the system’ despite repeatedly depicting how there is stuff wrong w/ the system… Like. It shouldn’t have taken them until the mbjr v-cinext to be okay w/ showing that sometimes people are just. Actively bad people. Doesn’t mean all of humanity is evil or anything, but at the same time, we’re also not all ‘good.’ There are bad people who will do bad things, and when humans screw up and hurt others, they should be called on it. Horobi wasn’t wrong in that humans can be a danger to HumaGear and that the system was rigged, but he was too extreme in his way of dealing w/ it and was also having a mental breakdown at the same time. Yes, he needed to be shown that humans were not all evil/that destroying them all wasn’t the answer, but not in the vein of ‘you’re wrong humans are what’s best for us’ but more the Wonder Woman view of ‘you’re right but they can be more than that and they can change’ and then humans had to follow through. And… I’m going off topic again.

Anyway. RxT frustrating af.

[skamamoroma]

Are you watching any skams meg atm?

Sorry it took a day or so to reply! And also for being a bit of a stranger recently

Yes! I’m enjoying Skam Espana and Amira. Some of the season is a little shaky for me but some is exceptional so I’m really enjoying it and Amira is such a beautiful, bold, mature and gorgeous soul. Plus, it was a decision and a half to make Dani into the love interest but I like it. I understand some people are unhappy and I get those reasons but, personally, I think that although it takes away some valuable stuff, it also adds a lot of intretesting stuff too that is a little fresher to the story and that’s always a good thing. Their chemistry is off the charts though and it’s all just incredibly sweet.

I am actually REALLY enjoying Druck. I wasn’t going to watch as I wasn’t always that connected to the original cast and new gens don’t tend to interest me as a concept but I really really like what they’re doing, Nora feels fresh and interesting. Already, she intrigued me and her story is something different so far. It’s absolutely baffling in terms of theme (in a good way) and direction and which people who keep cropping up will remain around her as the main group but I can see a few amazing prospects (football girl, Fatou etc) and I feel like she has huge main potential, is really easy to like despite so much going on... it feels like true Skam energy and I am really enjoying it so that’s a damn revelation! I find myself rooting for her so much when people are dicks to her and that’s the sign it’s working! I also see a LOT that I relate with from my teen years which has hit me in my heart a few times!

Wtfock. Jesus Christ the least said about it the better. What a major major shame. From s2/s3 (most of which I thought was bloody mesmerising and so well done) to wtfockdown which was a joy, so clever and so in tune with the characters to... this. It’s almost difficult to believe. No matter how you view where the season will go, it’s bad. Racism told through the eyes of a white girl dating a boy of colour? Potentially Autistic girl (such a rarity for tv) whose racism and other poor behaviour is explained away by her autism while v little other insight is given to her or her condition? No introspection, no depth, very sketchy storyline progression, poor writing, absolutely zero POV focus, an unlikeable main... the mind boggles?! Honestly, it’s episode 5 and absolutely nothing has happened of value and we know so little about this character and she is so painfully unlikeable because of how little time has been taken to establish her with the audience and how many things she has done to upset beloved characters and how the things that make her different aka dancing and social media are so underused and she, sadly, isn’t that great a dancer for that to be a real pull? All in all, it’s a damn shame they let the side down this season and it’s beggars belief. I just hope it doesn’t impact Yasmina’s season.

And missing Martino daily - ofc.

[elliehillfinalmajorproject]

RESEARCH BLOG - FMP 12/03/2020

Research Blog for the Final Major Project

From the beginning of this year, I began a brainstorm of subjects I was interested in conceptually, considering aesthetics, media and audience as well. While I know I have always had an interest in the general concept of identity, and human physical existence within the world as a space, I knew this was fairly vague and that I needed to dig deeper to create more specific and purposeful work. I knew I was especially interested in the universal relatability of physical existence and of how one presents themselves to the world.

While researching this topic in order to make my ideas more specific, I came across a TED talk by Caroline McHugh, ‘The Art Of Being Yourself’. While McHugh talked about perception of others and being perceived, she noted that the need to be liked and the need for recognition from others, even strangers, can be rehabilitating (especially in women). Positivity and self-love ran through the talk, especially within the phrase “you will never be perception less, but you can be free of perception”. However, one of the main things that interested me from the talk was McHugh’s statement that there are four main sides of a person; perception (“the most visible you”, what people see), persona (your adaptive personality, a “construct self”, forever changing), ego (what you think of yourself) and self (who you actually are).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veEQQ-N9xWU

I found the distinction between who you think you are and your actual identity interesting, as well as the idea that all these different sides, all first impressions and relationships to others make up a person’s identity. I also began looking at Instagram makeup artist accounts, seeing how they used makeup to alter or enhance their appearances.

This allowed me to begin experimenting with makeup on myself, altering my appearance and taking research photographs throughout the process. Having never used makeup as a medium before, and a human face as a canvas, I began by doing detailed designs, and in some photographs, simply blacking out whole sections of the face. For example, one of the make-up looks was based on the hundred-eyed giant Argos from Greek mythology. An hundred-eyed giant-son of Arestor, whose name “Panoptes” translates to “all-seeing one”, his myth involved slaying Echidna for Hera, which he completed successfully. To be able to see from all angles is a gift humans are not blessed with; the idea that people are constantly physically viewing you from different angles, and mentally judging you (i.e. first impressions, reviewing if you are good or bad based on your actions, etc.) is genuinely scary to me and is something I feel I am aware of a lot of the time. While Caroline McHugh's mantra “you will never be perception less, but you can be free of perception” rings true, I feel that the fear of being judged is an issue a vast amount of people struggle with, including myself, and could be a really interesting concept to explore in trying to relate to all these people, a reminder that you are not alone.

I used the myth of Argos as inspiration because of the common saying that eyes are the window to the soul. Whether or not the saying has any truth to it, (which I am open to exploring), I liked the irony of covering the face in fake eyes, creating an illusion of where to look to truly see the person. Considering my audience is something I don't feel is a strong area of mine, but this make-up look is designed to "confuse", using suspension of disbelief to confuse or disorientate the audience.

After this, I created multiple skin tone canvases, painting them as if they were flesh, then rubbing them with white spirit to reveal cracking in the canvas to make them look as realistic and "fleshy". I also painted each canvas in slightly different shades, showing the different perspectives one can have of a person in different lights from different angles. Velcro-ing these together, I projected my ‘Argos’ makeup, documented through film, onto the canvases to create a flickering piece across a multitude of different canvases, intending to confuse the viewer of which eye to meet eye contact with, as well as the multitude of different canvases representing the different perspectives and angles one can be seen from.

Following this, I practiced drawing specific facial features, (including eyes, as they symbolise Argos), to become familiar with the human form. I then painted the eye motif onto wooden panels in black acrylic in order to experiment with materials and techniques, with one eye looking to the left, one to the centre on two separate panels. I wanted to present a mysterious “shifty” idea of a person looking both ways, while also exploring the different “sides” to a person that McHugh described, physically representing that through the directions left and forward.

I then wanted to delve into other methods of adapting the face to alter appearance, and used the Matthieu Bourel as an artist reference.

His work includes cutting out sections of the face to reveal an ambiguous setting beneath; I took this as inspiration, using my own photographs of settings from over Christmas (taken in Rome, Italy) and placing them beneath images of people where I had cut out specific elements of their face, for example the cheeks, the eyes, the eyebrows, the mouth: essentially, any element that could reveal inner emotion of a person to the outside world (a raise of the eyebrow, a smile or frown, crinkle in the eyes).

I was additionally influenced by artists within the Surrealist period (such as Rene Margritte and Salvador Dali). Inspired by Magritte’s ‘The Lovers’, I created a photographic series where I covered my subject’s faces with calico. While the material is opaque, if you look closely you are intentionally able to decipher various physical features, which I find interesting; it poses the question do the subjects want to be seen?

By exploring new media such as makeup, canvas, projection, and paint on wood panels, I feel I have delved deep into my concept of perception and presentation of the self, while learning new techniques throughout this exploration.

Media I am interested in experimenting with includes embroidering on calico, as it reminds me of a blank canvas ("pokerface"), while the artist Maurizio Anzeri uses embroidery within his pieces to represent psychological outburst. Anzeri embroiders into his own photography to show human vulnerability through his use of colour and direction, and I have always admired his work.

While I have previously looked at adapting facial features, or adding to them to alter appearance, I would like to explore the idea of masking (hiding, rather than adapting). While makeup serves to enhance the features you already possess, I am interested in people who hide their appearance, or “wear a mask”, and the reasons why they do so. When considering this idea, I was reminded of lyrics to songs I listened to when I was younger, in particular from Billy Joel’s ‘The Stranger’ and The Beatles’ ‘Eleanor Rigby’. Both songs reference wearing a mask or a ‘face’ to prevent anyone from knowing who they really are deep down; Eleanor Rigby is “wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door”. Within my final project, I am interested in possibly creating masks, or a metaphorical representation of covering your face. I also think I could explore the reasons why people may feel the need to cover their face physically: religious reasons, insecurity (covering up blemishes, acne, imprecations, flaws with makeup), decorative tattoos, piercings or make-up (for fun) and metaphorically: sociopathic tendencies (as sociopaths tend to imitate traits of non-sociopaths i.e. empathy), insecurity again (i.e. plastering on a personality or behaviour to seem like someone you are not). Delving deeper into one of these reasons could result in some focused work, and I am more inclined to talk about physical and mental presentation as a result of insecurity as that is something to relate to (I am not a sociopath, and I am not part of a religion). As a result of this, I intend my audience to be people who struggle with the idea of other perceiving them, and their need to be liked.

In conclusion, I am excited to make more work and explore my concepts of perception and physical existence during the Final Major Project.

[themyskira]

The Life of Captain Marvel - issue #1

So here we are. Issue #1 of The Life of Captain Marvel, the miniseries that was touted as a bold new origin story that would change everything we thought we knew about Carol Danvers.

And it starts strong by exploiting family violence, trauma, mental illness and traumatic brain injury for melodramatic effect, with no intention of dealing with any of these complex themes in any depth or sensitivity.

For all that, infuriatingly little actually happens in this first issue. No exaggeration, the issue actually includes a stretch of nine months wherein Carol essentially does nothing except mope and grow her hair out. The dang plot doesn’t even arrive until the final seven pages.

Content warning: This issue begins with a flashback to Joe Danvers verbally abusing and hitting his kids. I haven’t included any images, but I talk at some length about Margaret Stohl’s abysmal handling of themes of abuse and family violence. Just a heads up.

The story opens on a flashback to an idyllic childhood holiday in Harpswell, Maine. There’s a montage of Carol and her brothers flying kites, wrestling each other, splashing in the water and stuffing their faces with candy, while adult Carol muses that she used to think her family was perfect.

Then the flashback takes a turn. One of Carol’s brothers rips the kite from her hand, tearing it. Their father, Joe, descends on the boys in a rage and begins verbally abusing and physically beating them as Carol looks on, because — surprise! — it’s Traumatic Past Retcon time!

Goodbye Joe Danvers, well-meaning but hard-headed dad who’s never understood his daughter and whose approval always seems to be out of reach. Hello Joe Danvers v. 2.0, scary unpredictable drunk who hit his kids and terrorised his entire family. Aren’t comics fun?

The flashbacks are interspersed with shots of Carol in the present day, where she’s battling supervillains Tanalth and Moonstone. As the flashback progresses, present-day Carol lashes out violently, alarming friends and foes alike.

“That’s why fighting’s easier than remembering. I tell myself that if I’m strong enough… I’ll beat the memories down so hard they’ll never come back.”

What’s strange to me about this page is the way it deliberately draws a parallel between Joe, snarling and raising his fist to strike his powerless young children, and Carol, snarling and raising her fist to strike down a powerful villain. By implication, it places Carol in the role of abuser, indicating an intergenerational cycle of violence.

Which of course is never explored or discussed beyond this, because Stohl doesn’t want to actually talk about the lasting impacts and terrible toll of family violence, she just wants to exploit it for THE DRAMAS.

As Joe whales on his sons, kid!Carol tries to run to their defence, only to be held back by mother Marie, who tells her, “You’ll just make it worse. Now’s not the time.”

We will be told numerous times over the course of this book what an incredible, loving mother Marie Danvers is, and how she’s prepared to sacrifice everything for Carol. Her actions, though? Her actions consistently portray a woman whose number one interest is in not creating more work or emotional angst for herself, even when it means hanging Carol out to dry.

This is not to say that Marie isn’t a victim as well in this scenario: though she never fears for her life or safety (she could pummel Joe into the ground without breaking a sweat), it could well be that constant gaslighting and emotional abuse have left her feeling unable to oppose her husband in anything.

It could well be, but that is nuance that Stohl is not interested in exploring, and all we get throughout this miniseries is Marie making excuses for Joe’s abusive behaviour and prioritising her own comfort over Carol’s emotional wellbeing and safety.

So anyway, flashback!Marie says “Now’s not the time”, and in the present day Carol shrieks “WHEN - IS - THE TIME?!” while damn near beating Moonstone into a pulp.

The other Avengers are disturbed by this.

Iron Man: Hey, Carol? Could you maybe leave a little something on the plate for… you know… bad guy jail? Black Panther: Would you call that rage… disproportionate?

hellooooo unfortunate paternalistic implications. A female superhero has a hysterical outburst on the battlefield, while her almost exclusively male colleagues look on in bewilderment. (‘This is why women can’t be superheroes, they’re too emotional!!!’)

Cap and T’Challa have to physically pull Carol off Moonstone, as Carol begins to hyperventilate.

Adding to our list of things that this series has zero interest in exploring:

What it’s like to experience a panic attack or traumatic flashback

What it’s like to live with an anxiety disorder

What it’s like to live with trauma

The Carol of this story is not a woman living with trauma and mental illness, she is a woman who swoons hysterically whenever the narrative starts drag a bit. Her panic attacks are purely a plot device used to ratchet up the dramatic tension at convenient moments, and it’s some of the most insensitive handling of mental illness I’ve seen in comics for a while.

Next comes the obligatory scene of Carol getting a full medical in Tony’s lab, only for Tony to throw his hands up and declare, ‘welp, there’s nothing physically wrong with you, are you sure there’s not something else going on????’. Because apparently neither Tony — who has personal experience with trauma — nor Steve — who lived through a FUCKING WAR — know PTSD when it’s punching them (well, Tanalth and Moonstone) in the face.

I mean REALLY.

Tony: Look, the breathing thing is probably some kinda nervous tic.

hi, hello, person with an anxiety disorder here, please do not tell somebody having a full-blown panic attack that it’s just a ‘nervous tic’, you absolute insensitive fuckstick.

Carol: [sigh] It’s… Father’s Day. Not my favourite day of the year, you know?

waitwaitwait, so CAROL recognised that she’d triggered and experienced a traumatic flashback, but for some reason decided to play dumb about it until she’d after she’d had a pointless medical examination??

Tony tells Carol she needs to get herself sorted out or else somebody is going to get hurt, so she goes to visit her mother and younger brother Joe Junior at the family’s holiday home in Maine.

Carol flies into town past a sign that reads, “Harpswell Sound / Summer Home of Captain Marvel” Carol: [narration] Oh, brother.

‘Oh, brother’ is right. I guess at least it isn’t as embarrassing as the time Stohl introduced a D-grade Captain Marvel TV series.

“Sugar’s Donuts / Official Donut of Captain Marvel”

hoookay yep that’s a bit much now.

At the donut shop, Carol runs into childhood friend Louis Lee, who’s grown into a Designated Love Interest with an obnoxious phonetically-spelled accent

“Better keep that to yah self, Ms. Danvers. Wouldn’t wantitah get out that yah cheatin’ on us…”

I despise him already.

Carol goes up to the house and hangs out with her mother and brother. Over dinner, Marie and JJ ask her why she’s dropped by so suddenly. Carol evades and JJ blows up at her because apparently he’s been holding in some anger about how he feels she abandoned the family and didn’t even bother to come home when their dad was terminally ill. (Which, hey, here’s another potentially rich thread to explore — PITY IT NEVER COMES UP BETWEEN THEM EVER AGAIN.)

Carol shoots back that he knows full well she was avoiding home because of their abusive father, only to be interrupted by the door slamming as their mother walks out.

…eeeeeexcept apparently that was an art mistake, because the very next page is Carol chasing after her brother, the one who actually stormed out. She finds him at their father’s grave, drinking booze.

He offers his recovering alcoholic sister the bottle, and when she lightly turns it down he gripes that she’d always thought she was better than everybody else and she should feel free to piss off any time now. Then he gets into his car and Carol lets him drive home drunk like the responsible person she is.

“Part of me knew I should go after Joe Jr. I mean, nobody in my family was any good with a bottle.”

WHAT IN THE HELL, CAROL.

But nah, see, she has more important things to do, like scream at her dead father and desecrate his headstone, because that’s sure not going to upset her family further, nope.

Her little tantrum is interrupted by the sound of tyres screeching and a car plunging off a bridge because YOU FUCKING MORON you stood there and watched your brother stagger drunk into his car and made the conscious decision that ‘nah, I’m gonna let this one play out’.

and ohohohohoho how ~poetic~! He crashed right through the ‘Summer Home of Captain Marvel’

god I hate everything in this comic.

JJ is rushed to hospital, where he is diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury, leaving him in a catatonic state.

And of course, Stohl’s Carol makes it all about her-fucking-self.

“In an instant, everything changes. You ruin someone’s life… it ruins yours right back. You’d give everything to have gone after him… and acted like the hero you’re supposed to be.”

Yes, JJ is in a coma with a traumatic brain injury, but let’s talk about how his near-fatal car accident ruined Carol’s life.

Anyway— NINE MONTHS LATER.

No, really.

We just skip over nine months.

Wherein apparently Carol has been doing nothing but poor-me-ing over her brother’s hospital bed.

Like.

She gave up her entire life and career.

Stopped saving the world.

Stopped interacting with everybody.

Just sat by JJ’s hospital bed looking melancholy and growing her hair out so that comic bros would stop complaining that she looked like a lesbian.

Tony tries texting her and she turns off her phone. So he appears beside her in an explosion of pixels.

which-- how?!?

There’s no visible technology at work here, nothing to indicate what’s projecting his image or enabling the two of them to communicate. Tony might as well be speaking to Carol via magic, for all we can tell.

Christ, it’s a superhero comic, it’s not like you have to work that hard to sell it to the reader. Two lines of dialogue: ‘What the actual hell, Tony?’ ‘Well, you wouldn’t return my calls, so I [insert technobabble here].’ That’s all you need. How lazy can you get?

Tony asks her to come back to the Avengers — we miss you, we need you, this isn’t good for you, etc. — and Carol’s like, ‘nah, I’m too busy wallowing in self-pity’.

And yes, like Carol’s PTSD and panic attacks, like the family violence, JJ’s brain injury exists solely here as a plot device. It’s not a disability he lives with or a trauma he survives, it’s a vehicle to bring melodrama to Carol’s story and a weakly-fabricated excuse for Carol to stay with the family and discover what she’s about to discover.

Because now it’s time to bring the still-catatonic JJ back home. And since the downstairs living room is more accessible than his upstairs bedroom, he’ll be taking the couch, where Carol has been crashing.

Yes, even though Carol has her own childhood bedroom in this house — we see it next issue — she has been couch-surfing for nine months.  But now that somebody else has claimed her spot, she’s got to move into… JJ’s bedroom.

So she goes up the room and rather rudely starts going through her catatonic brother’s wardrobe and pulling his clothes out to make room for her own shit. Again, I cannot stress enough that she had her own bedroom in this house. She’s just… weirdly choosing to impose on everybody else.

In the wardrobe, Carol finds a box belonging to her dead father. The box contains a love letter, in Joe’s handwriting, addressed to a woman who is not his wife — along with what is obviously a piece of alien technology.

This is a comic with a goddamn identity crisis. It keeps tossing out plot hooks, only to abandon them pages later in favour of the next shiny idea.

It begins by announcing, ‘This is a story about Carol returning home and confronting her childhood trauma.’ Then it abruptly swerves: ‘wait, scratch that, this is a story about Carol struggling to hold her fractured family together after her brother is hurt in an accident she had the power to prevent’, and then, ‘hold up hold up what we meant to say was, this is a story about Carol discovering a hidden truth about her family and parentage’.

It’s like Stohl doesn’t know editing exists. Because spoiler alert: this story is not about either of those first two things. The first fifteen pages of this issue are a dead fucking weight. They do not need to be there, and in fact a lot of problems could have been solved by cutting them.

Carol decides to spend some time with her family because she’s working through some personal shit, and discovers a letter hinting that her late father was leading a double life. That’s it; that’s the story.

All these convoluted logistics around who gets the couch and who gets the bedroom? Not necessary. Again, Carol has a bedroom in this house. Since she’s not around much, it makes sense that Marie might be using it as a general storage space. So: Carol is staying in her old room and has to shift a few boxes to make space. In the process, her dad’s shoebox gets knocked loose from whatever nook it was stuffed into. THERE. EASY. DONE. PLOT UNLOCKED.

Like, the car accident actually makes it harder to get Carol to that point. The only reason I can see for it being there at all is to force the passage of time so that Carol can grow her hair out and dudebros can stop complaining that she’s unattractive. Because I guess it just never occurred to anybody that they could draw her with long hair to start with?

But ‘oh no, the aliens and the superpowers I can accept, but in the last comic I read Carol had short hair and I AM SORRY BUT there is NO WAY human hair grows that fast, this is BEYOND THE PALE’.

Oh, and can we talk about how Carol’s response to finding OBVIOUS ALIEN TECHNOLOGY is to go, ‘huh, I wonder what this is, let’s see if I can open it by smashing it repeatedly with a hammer’??

Carol: Huh. Let’s see if we can open it. [starts bashing the device wildly] Gah! Why — won’t — you— Marie: [off-panel] Carol! Can you help me with Joe’s tube? Carol: [wandering off as the device activates] Coming, Ma!

And then IMMEDIATELY GETS DISTRACTED AND WANDERS THE FUCK OFF, failing to notice that the OBVIOUS ALIEN DEVICE has suddenly activated and is now beeping ominously????

So while Carol blunders around obliviously, the obvious alien device sends a signal to a galaxy far far away, which in turn activates what is seriously and embarrassingly called a Kree Kleaner. A small spherical vessel orbiting a distant planet lights up and begin speeding towards Earth, while inside some kind of Kree cyborg gestates and grows to maturity at a rapid rate.

Meanwhile Carol sits by the sea with Digital Tony and mopes that “I knew my family wasn’t perfect… but I thought love was”.

you.

you fucking.

Look, I recognise that trauma is complicated and that family shit is even more so.  I know people process and cope with things in different ways and at different speeds. And for Carol to suddenly discover that, on top of all the grief he was causing at home, her father was leading some kind of secret life with another women, must surely feel fucking horrible and bring up a lot of deeply painful memories.

But her reaction doesn’t gel with everything Stohl has told us about Carol’s relationship with her father.

We’ve been told that Joseph Danvers was a physically and verbally abusive alcoholic who terrorised his family to the point where, to this day, Carol struggles with PTSD and anxiety attacks. We’ve been told that Carol thinks of him as a mean, violent drunk who even in death haunts her family. She doesn’t understand why her mother stayed with him or why her brother still defends him, when all he ever did was make all of them feel small and powerless.

The idea that Carol would think all of this and yet still be totally blindsided to learn that Joe and Marie’s marriage was not a true-love-fairytale-romance is utterly, outrageously laughable.

Stohl presents the letter as bombshell that overturns everything Carol thought she knew about her family, indicating that Joe was leading a secret life she never knew about. It’s not. All it is is a confirmation of everything we’re told Carol already thinks about her father: that he was a cruel, self-absorbed bastard who treated his family like crap. You know what is a fucking bombshell?

The fact that Joe Danvers apparently had personal access to OBVIOUS ALIEN TECHNOLOGY.

AND AS FOR THIS LINE.

“And like they say, families were made to be broken.”

literally nobody says this.

I even checked, just to be fair to this comic, on the off-chance that it was in fact a thing.

One of the six search results is somebody on instagram quoting this comic. The other five are all related to the title of a single playlist on 8tracks.

But hey, like they say, Margaret Stohl is a fucking hack.

[thesydneyfeminists]

Joss Whedon and Vee: It’s Complicated

By: Vee H.

Here’s the thing, I have a confusing relationship with Joss Whedon. If we were “Facebook official” (does anyone still call it that, or have I just revealed my true spiritual age of 105?) our relationship status would be “it’s complicated”. It didn’t used to be like that; as a teenager, I probably would have said my favourite tv show was Buffy The Vampire Slayer, with its spin-off, Angel, in second place. I fell in love with a premise that Whedon certainly did not create (one girl in all the world, blah blah) nor was he the best at executing it. Whether it was the characters he’d created, the actors playing them, the witty scripts and storylines – or a mix of all of these things, I was hooked. I staunchly defended the show, and by proxy, Whedon himself, from any harsh criticisms, and overlooked anything that now, as a 32-year-old, stands out as (and I hate using this word) problematic. I followed him from Buffy; to Angel, Dr Horrible’s Singalong Blog, Dollhouse (look, I skipped Firefly for some reason, I’ve tried dipping a toe in but space cowboys aren’t for me, it seems), and that’s not to mention the movies he had a hand in (not an exhaustive list) – The Cabin in the Woods, The Avengers and The Avengers Age of Ultron. I was loyal, if Whedon’s name was attached, most likely, I was all in. There was something comforting and familiar about his humour, the way he told his stories – all of them laughably simple but layered to make them more complex. Like Shrek and onions.

So maybe you’re wondering where I took a left turn, jumped off the Joss Whedon Fan Train, as it were. Admittedly, it was a slow process, it wasn’t just a running leap off into the unknown post-Whedon world. A few years after Angel ended, some things circulated in the Buffy and Angel fandoms, rumours of how he treated his favourites, and those who had fallen out of favour with him. One of those people being Charisma Carpenter. In 2009 at a convention, a fan asked her how she felt about Cordelia’s last story line in Angel and how the show changed after her departure. While she didn’t explicitly come out and say the exact reason, she hinted that Whedon had been mad at her for making certain life decisions that would directly impact the vision he had for his show. Rumours have long since abounded that, in short, he punished her for falling pregnant. Obviously, no one but Carpenter and Whedon know the true story and at the time of hearing it, I took it with a grain of salt, but that seedling sat in the back of my mind and began to grow. After all, it explained a lot about the fourth season of Angel, and why the character of Cordelia made a complete 360. It was here that my relationship with Whedon started to sour, I began to question how someone who was so outspoken and publicly proud to be a feminist, could treat a woman that he had worked with for nearly a decade like that.

With that knowledge in mind, it was hard not to view some of the dialogue and plot points in his media a little differently, this is only one small example, but looking back, there is way too much slut shaming going on in Buffy to the point where Faith (my favourite character in the whole series, don’t @ me, I’ll defend her until I die) is seen as a lesser person than everyone else, because other female characters (Willow, Cordelia and Buffy herself) have branded her as a “cleavagey slutbomb”. Sure, ok, she goes and kills a bunch of people but they focus on her being slut much more than a psychopath – and I feel the need to point out that we only actually saw her sleep with one person (Xander) by the time the slut shaming actually started, and not that we should count, but Faith only slept with three people (Xander, Robin, and Riley in Buffy’s body) in the whole course of the show. And she killed four humans. Which means in Joss Whedon’s world, if you’re a woman, having sex is a worse crime than murder. Not exactly a feminist message.

Cut to just last year, when Whedon’s ex-wife, Kai Cole, came out with a heartbreakingly honest account of just what went down in their marriage. Details of his infidelity, gaslighting and emotional manipulation came spilling out of her, and sure, you could argue she was an embittered ex-wife, wanting to hit him where it would hurt the most, but it’s interesting to note that Whedon himself has never actually outright denied or refuted these claims. And ok, infidelity does not strip you of the right to call yourself a feminist, but as written by Clementine Ford “it's about how he absolved himself in a letter sent to Cole after his infidelity had finally been exposed, blaming the women he cheated with, calling them "beautiful, needy, aggressive young women" who "surrounded" him.” It’s about how he used his feminist badge as a shield, claiming he was raised feminist so he just liked women better, or how he claimed in a letter to Cole, and I quote, “in many ways I was the HEIGHT of normal, in this culture. We’re taught to be providers and companions and at the same time, to conquer and acquire — specifically sexually — and I was pulling off both!”

With all of these things in mind, I started to see Whedon’s feminism as what it likely is; performative, a way to excuse his behaviour, a safeguard to hide behind as if to say, “oh no, I am not like other men at all, although I may act as other men do and fully accept my privilege as a cis-het white male, I’m different. Because I’m a feminist so when I do these terrible things to women, it’s ok, because I love, respect and support women.” Maybe he truly believes he’s a feminist, publicly, he flies the flag very well, and there’s no denying he’s profited from this label, heralded as a great feminist hero, an ally to women everywhere. It’s only when you start to scratch the surface, peel back the layers of the Shrek-onion, do you start to see him for what he (in my mind) really is. A dudebro playing at being the nice guy, someone who says all the right things but whose actions don’t quite match up, in fact, they crumble under any real scrutiny (for further proof of this, go read the leak of the Wonder Woman script, allegedly by Whedon. If you can make it through the whole thing, I’ll buy you a coffee – hell if you can make it through the first 10 pages).

Where does that leave Joss and I then? I admit that I’m conflicted, in a culture that has moved more and more towards “cancelling” people I’m the proverbial fence sitter. I acknowledge that there are people, media, etc that are problematic (the dreaded word) and I think everyone has the right to decide whether or not to consume said media. And for myself, personally, I endlessly flip between the two schools of thought. I won’t watch anything new with Johnny Depp, nor anything from Woody Allen, for example, but I have gone back (since Amber Heard spoke of her abuse at his hands) and watched some of Depp’s older movies. Some people have told me that they disagree, that even watching his older stuff is wrong, that I should ban all forms of Depp media from my life otherwise I am giving him my tacit approval, and that’s their choice and their right, but I suppose I’m still working out where I want to draw the line. I (maybe naively and incorrectly) believe that I can view a piece of media and know its flaws, or the flaws of the person behind it, but still somewhat enjoy it for what it is, or the story it’s telling.

Maybe that’s where I am with Whedon, somewhere in between, neither in the black or the white, somewhere in the shades of grey, because that’s how life is sometimes. I don’t think he’s a fully bad person, nor do I think he’s a fully good person. I think he’s human, and humans are inherently flawed. And maybe that feels like a cop out, but it’s all I have to offer right now. My view of him will never be as it once was, and thus my viewing of the media he has created and produced will likely reflect that. Re-watching Buffy and Angel has become a different experience; I’m no longer blindly swept up in the twists and turns, the witty repartee between characters, but instead viewing through a different lens, one where I question what message he's really trying to send, what his true intentions are. Instead of laughing at every single joke, they never quite land right with me anymore, my childish naivety gone, replaced with the simmering anger of a woman who wonders why sexist jokes and judgements are supposed to be funny, why the rape of a female character is an excusable plot device to teach men a lesson. It’s exhausting to second guess someone I don’t even know, but this is the brave new world that a combination of his behaviour and my own feminist journey has left me in. These days, I wouldn’t ever say “I love Joss Whedon”, like I would’ve back in my teenage years, more likely you’ll find me saying “I loved Buffy but God it’s weird to watch as an adult”.

Like I said, it’s complicated.

Sources:

http://oranges8hands.tumblr.com/post/117924895453/charisma-carpenter-transcript-on-being-fired

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_igTbXKPck

https://www.thewrap.com/joss-whedon-feminist-hypocrite-infidelity-affairs-ex-wife-kai-cole-says/

https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/clementine-ford-why-joss-whedons-treatment-of-exwife-kai-cole-matters-20170821-gy16lx.html

https://indiegroundfilms.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/wonder-woman-aug7-07-joss-whedon.pdf

Image sources:

Yahoo.com

tenplay.com.au

[the-cryptographer]

I’m actually replaying Tales of the Abyss now instead of just thinking about replaying it as I become randomly taken over by Dist-related feelings. So under the cut is my experience with the first third of the game (everything up to the haircut).

- Imma just start with the character stuff and then move onto the gameplay stuff bc nobody cares about gameplay.

- Yeah, I started playing this like - “I wonder if I’ll still like the same shitty ships I liked when I was playing this ten years ago.” And the answer is FUCKING YES - they are apparently permanently ingrained in my psyche.

- On the subject of Luke... I didn’t actually remember how much of a douche he is for the first third of the game, since it’s been a while and I’m more accustomed to seeing portrayals of the better rounded and kinder character he eventually became. I’m going to say, I’m really glad he grew out of it on both a narrative and personal level, but I also really did enjoy and love long-hair douchey Luke. He’s insufferable and I adore him.

- That being said, I think this kind of puts an interesting spin on Luke/Tear. I do genuinely like this ship and am happy with where it ended up, but a lot of what seems to keep their early interactions from going even more poorly than they do is that Luke is... very used to bossing people around. And Tear is very used to being bossed around. Like, she’ll obviously talk back to him, but even so- Tear kind of falling into this servile protective bodyguard role is kind of what ends up endearing her to Luke and it’s kind of bad and good at the same time. Especially combined with things like her thinking the Baticul maid outfit his servants wear is cute... This idea could be taken places... I’m glad the relationship didn’t stay like this in the larger context of things, but I’m also kind of enjoying where it’s at so~

- That being said I feel like the party starts making lovebird jokes way too early. Like, I like this ship a lot, but I also have bad taste, and this isn’t the kind of thing I feel should be encouraged irl/in-universe. Not as their relationship exists during this part of the game, at least. ubb.

- More generally I do like Tear a lot tho. I think having her be a bit more serious and stoic and emotionally withdrawn are things that speak a lot to me, with regards to female characters and heroines especially. I also like that she is genuinely competent as a fighter and protector. And that the more traditional damsel role is occupied by a man, Ion.

- I’m also surprised that Tear’s boobs are as modestly proportioned as they are. Maybe it’s because of doujin content, or a couple of tactless jokes later on in the game(?) but I always thought they were HUGE instead of, well, buxom and hourglassy in the vein that you might find on a real woman. This game in general isn’t super fanservice-y in its character designs (although there’s something to be said about a few of the scenarios). There’s some Zettai Ryouki on the girls, but that’s about it. I guess the fact that this game's age is showing.

- The different iterations of ships involving Anise, Arietta, and the Ions are also something that are still appealing to me a lot. Part of me feels bad for being okay with Anise/Florian, since Florian’s a kind of an obvious replacement character. But then I start thinking about how conflicting and upsetting it would be for Anise and then - whoops - I’m interested again.

- Luke and Ion crush on each other so hard though. This was not a ship from when I first played but, god, it’s so cute how much Ion seems to genuinely like Luke, and how Luke gets so tsun and blushy about protecting him. Excuse me while I try and figure out a way to write this that isn’t heartbreaking, and fail.

- me: I wonder if I’ll like Jade as much as I did the first time. Since I seem to have come to a realisation that he’s an emotionally manipulative asshole with a very limited capacity for empathy on any non-abstract level. Jade’s disembodied voice *hasn’t even shown up on screen yet* : Move out of the way or it’s not my problem if you get run over by this tank I’m driving. me: I was a complete fool. He’s a total asshole and I love him so much.

- Naw, yeah, for real tho: one of the first things Jade does upon meeting Natalia is try and establish that she’ll be easy to emotionally manipulate and control. He rather easily brushes over watching the suffering of others in favour of more goal oriented behavior. That, in addition to what happens when he extracts information from Dist at the Keterburg Hotel... I don’t really think I was off the mark about Jade potentially negging his boyfriend or exacting physical torture on his ex, especially insofar as his ex is a criminal anyhow. Like, obviously Jade has some kind of moral code by the time the game begins. And overall I think it’s admirable that he’s concerned about things like minimising the world’s death toll and human suffering. But he’s certainly not above breaking a few eggs to make and omelette, even if those eggs include visiting long-term physical and psychological damage on others. I would... hope that he could restrain himself from taking that kind of route with things. But I don’t think I’m exactly wrong in thinking he’s not a person I would trust not to, and thus not someone I’d want to invite within a mile of my personal life. Although he’s probably going to continue being a character I really cherish. He might still be my favourite playable character in the game - although Tear and Anise come close.

- Actual favourite character is Dist, of course. I mean, he’s hammy and awful and terribly written, but I love him so much. ‘Everyone is jealous of my intelligence and beauty.’ (Which is even funnier considering the post-battle dialogue where Anise and Jade tell Luke to write about their beauty and intelligence respectively in his diary. Birds of a feather.) idk, it’s just really strange, because I don’t really like when fanon iterations of characters are made more femme and flamboyant than they are in canon. But you have actual femme and flamboyant men in canon (Dist, Wallace from pkmn, etc) and somehow I love them so much, omg. (Dist also has a lot of grief stuff I like tho - v relatable with regards to Nebilim.) idk, I just count my lucky stars every day. Because five of the six God Generals die in this game, so the odds were definitely not in my favour, but somehow my favourite is the one that makes it out alive?! I’m dying at how blessed I am. Dist is basically the opposite of the Bury Your Gays trope, and I love it.

- On that note, when Jade and Dist are snarking and Luke and Guy share the look(tm) and are like ‘they’re off in their own little world’ asdfghjkl;

- me: I wonder if I’ll like Natalia more this time. Since I’m more aware now of the baggage and misogyny that goes into female character creation, and am more likely to blame authors than the characters themselves. Natalia: *to Luke, after taking one look at Tear* Are you fucking the servant girl? me: YIKES(tm)

- Naw, she’s okay. I mean... she’s not less okay than Anise or Tear, really, in terms of poor (stereotypical) writing and poor (catty) behaviour. I certainly think her commitment to being a kind ruler and acting towards the public good with her own hands and own feet is quite touching. But she appeals to me the least out of the three girls on a personal level. And, also, I think there are several issues with her introduction-

- Well... first off, that we hear about Natalia from Luke and Guy earlier in the game - and we’re told she’s high maintenance and clingy before we’ve even met her. And then we meet her and her introduction ends up immediately corroborating what Luke says about her. So... it’s a very bad first impression in a way. In general it’s kind of interesting seeing how the narrative feeds out information, now that I know all the characters and all the twists. Some of it is info-dumpy, and some of it is unintuitive, but it’s interesting to watch how it drops out hints and evidence for you to try and piece together before the reveals come.

- But I digress, the other thing is Natalia is, after her disastrous first impression, set up as a foil for Luke. Her kindness and selfless concern for others, and how seriously she takes her responsibility as a state leader, are both immediately cast against Luke’s self-absorption. Which... is in some ways ineffective for me tbh.

- Idk, just, like- An adult man spends seven years building up trust with a child that’s been isolated and emotionally neglected by design, and then manipulates and uses him as part of a murderous rampage. (two children, if we’re including Ion) And somehow this is Luke’s fault? Yeah, I don’t... buy that.

- I mean, Luke is obviously rude, callous, selfish, and arrogant. And I think all of those things are problems. All of those things are Luke’s fault and responsibility. I do think it’s upsetting that Luke is more concerned with dodging blame regarding Akzeriuth than he is concerned about... everyone who just died. And I’m certainly glad that Luke makes a decision to change. But... none of those things are really related to him feeling he can trust Van, and it’s pretty monstrously unfair to blame him for being manipulated by the only adult he really felt took his interests and concerns seriously as a kid. (I mean, obviously his parents love him, and he them. But there’s also a definite feeling that his concerns are not being prioritised by them. And that he can’t even advocate his concerns with regards to his mother, whose emotional and physical health could be endanger if Luke burdened her with his upsets.) As the player, we don’t really have a reason to trust Luke, and Luke’s loyalty to Van, more than Tear’s (and the rest of the party’s) distrust of her brother. We’ve known Luke and Tear approximately the same amount of time. But... Luke has known Van for seven years. And Luke has known Tear and Jade and Anise for a couple of weeks and has little reason to trust them. Tear spirited him away from the safety of his manor and into a dangerous world. Jade and Anise had him restrained and arrested and made no secret they were using his status for their political goals (good goals, but still...) They’re all openly disparaging of Luke. It seems pretty natural that Luke would trust Van over them, and the fact that Van was counting on that when he betrayed Luke and everyone... I mean... I also don’t blame the rest of the party for blaming Luke in the heat of the moment, but I think the game and narrative itself takes the ‘it’s your fault’ stuff a bit too seriously and uncritically. It’s also super obvious that they ramped up Luke’s unlikable qualities in preparation for what happens at Akzeriuth - pride cometh before the fall. And, even if it’s emotionally effective, it still don’t really go from point A to point B that being selfish and rude and arrogant makes you at fault for being susceptible to emotional manipulation. Which is kind of frustrating.

- Also, yeah, zol was right. You could’ve saved that kid with stalagmite or smthn, Jade.

- There’s a lot of weird bullshit along the lines of gameplay vs plot dissonance. Like trying to light barrels of oil on fire in the Abandoned Factory. I’m surprised none of them blew up in Luke’s face. Did nobody think to bring a candle? Or just have Mieu light up the dark with fire near the switch? That would have been a lot more expedient and a lot less dangerous.

- Ion: The seventh fonon was recently discovered. Jade: And thirty years ago, when I was a young lad, I was upset I couldn’t use the seventh fonon and blew up my teacher by mistake (whoopsie). me: what the flippity fuck, Ion? that’s not recent. I thought you were supposed to be better than Luke about this shit. What could possibly be responsible for this mistake - OH!

- In general, since Ion’s four years old and somehow knows a shitton about the world, it kind of takes some of the wind out of Luke’s sails when he’s had a three year lead on Ion ‘but i had more important stuff to learn, like my parent’s faces’. Luke’s amnesia and subsequent isolation are pretty well integrated into the story for the most part, but parts of it are obviously exaggerated for the sake of having a character that needs the relevant info about the game world infodumped on them.

- Mieu... is a thing. I don’t really like mascot characters as a concept in general. But I think some authors, like CLAMP, have done a good job integrating them into their stories. I can’t really say the same for Mieu though. That he kind of is Luke’s chew toy for the beginning part of the story is interesting. And that he fucked things over for his people and the Ligers due to this random accident (much like Luke) is kind of interesting. But... overall he’s just a very annoying cute thing that’s following you around for no reason. I wonder if his voice is less grating in Japanese, but the PS2 version of this game at least didn’t come with JP audio, which was kind of a bummer. I like the dub for the most part (Anise especially is really good) but I would have liked to hear the JP version this time.

- I think I still prefer platonic Guy/Luke to romantic Guy/Luke. (Although I don’t dislike it, the way I dislike Asch/Luke) but I am super charmed by the drama with Guy having all this resentment towards Asch that then becomes easier to move past once Asch gets switched out for Luke. Like, I think in some ways it’s more about Guy being in a different place looking after this helpless newly replicated Luke at age 14 compared to looking after the better-realised Asch when he was younger, rather than because of a stark difference between Luke and Asch themselves. But I can’t help but love Guy a little for seeing them so differently and feeling certain that Luke is the one that’s his friend. It’s really sweet and cute x’)

- And last thing - the hyperresonance stuff was super poorly explained. Particularly the first one between Luke and Tear. We’re told that this is something that can randomly happen when two seventh fonists interact, and Tear’s like ‘i should have been more careful’ like this is something that happens periodically that you can predict and avoid. but... how? What are the conditions that lead to this? Is this scientifically replicatable at all? Or is it something that can happen completely at random whenever Luke and Tear touch each other? Whenever Natalia and Asch touch each other? they’re just going to be having sex one day and randomly teleport out into an open field or smthn. This is so dumb. Except I know that the teleportation thing was actually 100% convenient plot bullshit, so I shouldn’t even pretend it can be made sense of in any real way, smh.

- New Game Plus! I debated quite a bit, but in the end EXP x10 was the only thing I purchased from the grade shop. I wanted to have the experience of gathering all the items and bonuses myself, since I forgot what happened the first playthrough. But I’m regretting the decision a bit now since I did all the sidequests and ultimate weapons and stuff the first time around and had a very full inventory, and I’ve already missed at least one thing on my current playthrough when a combination of not saving and forgetting how to walk lost me Barrelow X’s Capacity Core. (Not saving also made me not have a save to go back to to win against Asch at Yulia City- boo) But, regardless, even without all the other perks, I figured EXP x10 would basically mean breezing through the story, which was what in theory I wanted. But then I decided to combine this with the Unknown Difficulty Mode (enemy stats x3.5) which effectively made the game even more slow than the first runthrough, EXP x10 be damned. I spent a lot of the first part of the game crowding around Engeve, frantically trying not to die before I gathered 100 gald to stay at the Inn. I was completely outmatched on the Tartarus when it gets overrun with Griffins and Ligers. And I made about a dozen trips between the Fubras River and Engeve before I finally made it to Arietta without my characters dying. After getting my party to level 40, spamming Mystic Cage, and still getting absolutely crushed by Arietta at Coral Castle, I finally gave up. I lowered it down to Very Hard mode instead and defeated her in two minutes. After a quick search, I learned that this is considered one of the hardest battles with the hard mode stat multipliers, and it gets easier from there. So I technically could have kept going to level 50 or smthn but... it also seemed like a lot of these people were doing this challenge with the capacity cores and equipment rollover, and without them I’d most certainly have to grind more (and grind without good capacity core stat bonuses). And the simple truth of the matter is I wasn’t having fun anymore. So... if I do a third playthrough in another ten years, I’ll rollover everything properly to do Unknown properly, but in the meantime I’ll stick to whatever mode lets me farm grade the most easily.

- On that note, it became very clear that the defense stat in this game is very broken. All the characters (including your own characters, pretty much regardless of level) have /lots of HP/ and are meant to take /a lot/ of small hits - this is just the play style. So, as long as you have full TP and a way to heal, taking on characters with multiple times their usual attack and HP stats is doable. On the other hand, characters with high defense, like Arietta, Golems, etc... Even small differences between your attack stats and the opponent’s defense stats can result in your own attacks doing half/quarter/tenth of their usual damage, which means a battle taking two/four/ten times longer than usual (and you’re way more likely to run out of TP and healing items this way). I think this essentially means that high fonic/phys attack (respective of whether the character has a mage vs melee move set) are the most important stats for the player character. It would be cool if you could replicate Arietta’s defense effect with your own characters but... the truth is the bosses in these types of games are built very differently than the player characters (unlike something like pkmn)... so I’m not sure you can(?)

- Pet peeves currently include the Tales Of series’s multi-part cutscenes. It’s started already and I know it will get worse (i distinctly recall latter parts of this game where I had to fly between characters in different cities collecting cutscenes before I could move onto the next dungeon) But, yeah- I’m at a bit of a loss here because, while I like open exploration game worlds where you walk between different locations and vastly prefer this to games that teleport you between battle stages (ie Sonic Adventure 2, Disgaea) there is a lot of retreading old pathways in Abyss (as there was in Legendia) trying to negotiate between different talking heads. Like... I saved my game going up the tower at Coral Castle, intending to walk into a boss fight. And then a cutscene happened, during which I was teleported three loadscreens back in the direction I came from for another cutscene. And then I had to manually walk back the same exact route and save again, before another cutscene and finally the battle. What’s the rationale behind not just making that one big pre-battle cutscene with the travel included/implied? Maybe the fact that they DON’T HAVE A CUTSCENE/SKIT SKIP BUTTON which is another pet peeve, mind you. Another example is when you get to Luke’s home in Baticul and have to run back down to the port to retrieve the scrolls that the maids threw out, and then climb back up to his house again. It’s not like anything exciting happened on the three different elevators I took between those two points. It’s not like I don’t know what the trip between those points looked like - I just came from the port. There’s no reason not to just have it be automatic. Even attempts to reduce this - the wing bottle - are frustrating in their setup. By requiring me to spend money and keep inventory in order to use the teleport function, they are incentivising me to /not/ use the teleport function. They’re requiring me to spend money to /avoid/ doing something boring. And that’s, idk, kind of unnecessary and shitty? Like, usually in a game I want to be spending money in order to unlock new features and content and have more fun. Not to, like, avoid playing parts that I’ve played already. idk, because i do realise that streamlining some of these moments would require alterations to cut down some of the movement in the plot - and ultimately I think flying between cities to talk with different people before acting isn’t bad or unrealistic plot wise. buuuut, even if some of the multi-part cutscenes need to stay for this effect, even if not all of them could have been streamlined into a more direct line of action and travel, even if not any specific moment of this travel is unbearably awful, it still frustrates me that this clearly wasn’t even a priority for the devs.

[thewinsisterchronicles]

What You’ve Done (P5)

Warnings: angst, sadness, physical abuse, language, Dean doing V BAD THINGS LIKE WHY???

tags and a/n at the bottom

"Where are we going, again?" Y/N asked. She was half listening to Dean, half looking out the window at the clouds overhead, as she curled up in the front seat of the impala on the long road. She wasn't really paying attention, which was unusual.

She’d been doing it frequently, lately. Normally, she was sleeping with one eye open and a knife under her pillow. It wasn’t uncommon for hunters, but Y/N slept less, ate less, and practiced more than any other hunter that Sam or Dean knew. Whenever she wasn’t on a hunt, researching, eating or resting, she was either in the gun range or in the war room, sparring with whoever was willing- or, alternatively, beating up a punching bag at 3am when she couldn’t sleep.

More likely, she didn’t want to sleep.

Sleeping is lethal, she had said to Dean. You can’t fight when you’re asleep; you can’t even trust yourself. You’re not safe.

Thus, she had rarely been seen not working. It concerned the boys, and they often tried to encourage her to find interests elsewhere. Until recently, she hadn’t taken to it. Now, however, she was watching movies with them, playing games with them, talking to them without trying to peel away the layers of who they were…

It was an improvement, really. She wasn’t fully unquestionable with them and their intentions, but at least it wasn’t constantly on the forefront of her mind anymore. When Dean brought it up to Sam, he simply suggested that Y/N was beginning to trust them.

She was trusting them. Dean bit the inside of his cheek.

"We're going to meet some hunting buddies," he replied nonchalantly. His voice was steady, but something lingered behind the words. If Y/N had bothered listening more closely, she would have noticed.

"Sam's..." Dean faltered. "Well, Sam couldn't come because he was doing some... important research, and I figured it was about time you met other hunters and see what they’re like."

Y/N finally looked over at him, arching her eyebrow.

"You want me around other hunters?" She questioned. Dean swallowed and tightened his grip on the steering wheel. "Dean, the last time I was around another girl my age she tried to break my wrist. I talk to get what I want. Not everyone’s a fan of that. "

"Then this is the time to learn some manners," Dean retorted harshly. He sighed. He needed to calm down, to get off the edge of whatever nervous chasm he was teetering on the brink of; especially with Y/N, with what he was about to do to her.

They drove on in silence for a long time after that. Dean could feel Y/N looking at him, but neither of them spoke for a while.

"Are you okay?" She finally asked. Her voice was calm, collective; Dean knew it well.  “You've been a bit... off, the whole ride. You good?”

She stared intently, caringly, at Dean's face. Concern was etched into hers, like she was afraid for Dean.

He absolutely hated it. Dean… Dean didn't deserve her caring, her compassion, her empathy or whatever else about her. She didn't know.... He shoved the thought out of his mind.

You’re fine, he thought. Cut yourself off.

"I'm fine," he said through gritted teeth. Y/N squinted.

"Yeah, sure you are," she muttered. "Listen, you don't want to talk? That's cool. But I'm not gonna judge, just saying-"

"Well maybe you should just quit saying things," Dean snapped angrily at her.

He saw her flinch before the words left his mouth. Actually flinch. Dean had never seen her flinch before; not even when they were being tortured, or when they were fighting. She’d wince, maybe. But not flinch. He couldn’t get that angry at her.

Y/N had this way of... making him calm down. It was most likely, though, that she calmed him down out of fear; like she was afraid he'd do something bad. It did the trick, but he’d never actually....

Dean didn't like the way it made him feel after everything had settled, like she had only calmed him to save herself. That was absurd. Dean would never harm her.

Dean clenched his jaw. Wasn't that what he was doing now?

"Sorry," he sighed. "Just... I'm a little nervous, to be honest. I don't know how this is gonna go down, and I..." He faltered.

"Y/N," he started again. He looked over at her.

"Y/N, you know... you do know I'd never want you hurt, right?" He said. Y/N swallowed and didn't say anything. No one did for a while.

Dean turned off the exit into the bush. Y/N frowned slightly, but kept her mouth shut.

"We can't exactly meet a couple of sketchy people to talk about monsters in the open highway," he lied through a smirk. "Tends to draw a crowd."

He saw her smile softly. He tried to memorize the shape of it on her face.

The bumpy road tossed Y/N around as she sat in the impala beside Dean. He pulled it into a park, continuing to give off that weirdly-nervous energy. She didn’t want to push him- maybe he’d talk, when he was ready- but something was off.

"They're taking a long time," Y/N sighed, shifting in her seat. "You sure they're meeting us here?"

"This is where they said to meet up," Dean replied stonily, looking down ahead at the road. He checked his phone.

Something rumbled up ahead. Y/N turned her head. A truck appeared on the dirt road. She watched as he stared at the vehicle.

Something clicked in her brain.

Oh.

Of course.

It rolled up across from the impala. She gulped. Her right hand tensed until she couldn’t feel it; anger surged through her veins, almost as fast as the fear drew the blood from her cheeks.

Dean said she was family. He promised she’d be okay. He swore every night when she’d wake up screaming and sobbing and staring at her wall like Clyde could somehow come out of it and-

She let out a deep breath. Of course he’d betray her; Sam was still in the picture. Y/N cared deeply about both brothers, more than she ever had for any of her own relatives.

But Dean promised she’d be okay.

Surely, there was more than one car like that in America. A different hunter could have the same car. Dean wouldn't bring her here if Y/N was going to be in danger.

Would he?

For the first time in her life, Y/N wasn't so sure.

The car pulled up to a stop, tires squealing as the person inside stepped on the breaks. Y/N looked away. She shrank into her seat as she heard the car door slam open and shut. Her gaze was locked somewhere in the distance as the gravel crunched under feet that walked closer to her.

"Well, well, well," a horrifyingly familiar voice called out. A rough hand opened the car door and grabbed her arm. "Lookie what we got here, boys."

He wrenched her out of the car, making her fall on her hands and knees. She took a deep breath before moving to stand. Something kicked her gut, knocking the breath out of her and sending her sprawling again.

“Dean-” she tried.

"Shut up."

Crack.

The sickening sound of Clyde's boot crushing her nose resonated through the air. Y/N coughed, almost as if unfazed by his behaviour, as she spat blood onto the dirt below her. Dean clenched his jaw and swallowed thickly, looking at the man standing above her.

"That's enough." His voice was hoarse, like it pained him to speak. He cleared his throat. "Just... just take her."

“She’s not yours to play with anymore, Winchester.” He smiled humourlessly, something cold behind his bloodshot eyes. He squatted beside Y/N. “She’s mine now; you don’t get no say in what happens to her.”

Clyde pulled harshly on Y/N’s hair, sending shooting pains through her scalp. Y/N looked up at Dean, just fucking sitting there, letting this happen to her. He didn’t return her gaze. Clyde pulled hard on her arm, throwing her in the direction of the truck.

"Please-" She groaned, earning a boot to the knee as she tried to stand. Dean refused to look at her. Clyde laughed with the two other men Y/N suddenly noticed. "Dean, don't let them- no, no-"

A hand struck her face again- she couldn't tell whose it was- and she tumbled down to the ground.

"Get up," Clyde's gruff voice barked at her. She moved slowly. "I said get up, bitch." He drew his leg back and kicked her. She whimpered at the blow. Dean looked up at the sky ahead of him, blinking profusely.

"Is that necessary?" Dean's voice cracked.

"Our deal was you get her to us, and we's ain't gon tell nobody about your brother's secret," Clyde snarled. "That's it. What happens to the girl now ain't none of your concern."

Dean's face twitched. He still didn't look to Y/N.

She wasn't sure she wanted him to.

"Dean..." Her voice was a whisper. She still couldn't believe what was happening. Dean- her Dean- the Dean who had taught her every Led Zeppelin song and showed her the wonders of pie and music and what life could really be like with a friend, a family- was walking away from her. He was the only true family she'd ever had, the first person to show her kindness and love and compassion and forgiveness.

And there he was, walking away from her the only time she asked him to stay.

"Dean," she heaved, blood and sweat and dirt on her face. "Dean, don't let them take me. Please-"

Crack.

Her eyes refused to open, but the unmistakable sound of a car door closing met her ears. She began to panic.

"No- Dean!" She cried. The rumble of the impala engine echoed in her mind, the dirt kicked up from it making its way into her lungs. She coughed and hacked, still screaming after her brother.

"Don’t leave- fuck!" she screamed. A cloth was pressed over her mouth. Y/N smelled... chloroform. Tears leaked from her eyes as she struggled to stay conscious. She writhed viciously, trying to get away from the cloth that covered just enough of her face so that she couldn’t breath anything other than the toxin while she watched him drive away.

Something wet reached the edges of the cloth. It was salty.

She didn’t fucking care.

Dean left her. Sam left her. Once again, Y/N was alone.

Tags: @zeusmyster @mogaruke​ @dunkirkc​ @assbutt-still-in-hell​ @spn67-sister​ @thegreasiestbear​ @sammysbeanie​ @thyotakukimkim @lemonadegazeelle

A/N: wooOOOOOOO BOYYY I am sort of sorry for that but like ????I really wanted to write it

also I'm v sorry that it’s not nearly as long as the last one but I just kind of wanted this to be snappy and short and all that jazz so ://///// but the next part will be................................................. interesting

[krhendro]

Iwata Karen Twitter translations from October 9th-15th 2017

NOTE: Not every tweets are translated.

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Source: https://twitter.com/karen0513_/status/917617303155384320

October 10th, 2017

This is Iwata who after cutting my hair has been hearing about 「Did you do a band?」

I didn’t do a band, but recently I'm addicted to Aroma. My room smells nice. I’m properly a girl. Don’t worry. 

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Source: https://twitter.com/karen0513_/status/917752445161238530

October 10th, 2017

I appeared a bit in Mio Yamazaki’s new song’s MV 「Beloved」😌  I am glad that this time my dream to appear on a very good song & MV has also come true. Please see it by all means ◎

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=UYEc_Kp6JVY&app=desktop

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Source: https://twitter.com/karen0513_/status/917961750707933187

October 11th, 2017

It’s been a while since I had lunch with WUG stage play membersーーー!!! Everyone is still cute as usual 😂 It has completely become a picture where 1 man are mixed… (laughs) This is Iwata whose all aspects of YoshiMegu have disappeared, but the heart is always YoshiMeguMegu. ←

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Source: https://twitter.com/karen0513_/status/918065023926255616

October 11th, 2017

Announcement!

I will appear at Vietnam Festival 2017 in Kurihara on October 14th-15th! 🇻🇳 I’m happy that I got a job in Kurihara that I loved 😊 I will appear in a talk show! Those who are nearby, by all means ♥️

http://vietcul.com/

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Source: https://twitter.com/karen0513_/status/918467241934446592

October 12th, 2017

Today was also kaatsu training 😎 Recently I went there constantly so my body condition is well ◎ Every time I go, I will have a good body fat percentage!!! I will go next week as well✌︎

#KaatsuTraining #studioarm

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Source: https://twitter.com/karen0513_/status/918467998045708289

October 12th, 2017

I’ve seen the pictures of my 1st Image DVD 『Iwata Karen First』which was released last year 😎 That’s right. When I was kept being told “Who is this for?”, it’s for the 5 awards achievements 😎  (LOL) (LOL) Because they’re surprisingly cute thanks to the staffs😎 (laughs)

http://photographerakira.com/iwatakaren-gallery.html

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Source: https://twitter.com/karen0513_/status/918808783635193857

October 13th, 2017

!?!? It’s been 50000 playback!?!? Everyone works too fast!!! (laughs) Thank you very much 😭✨ I'll prepare a new work as soon as possible so please wait. I’ve reached my goal, but please watch it again and again 💟

https://twitter.com/karen0513_/status/886058499444166656

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Source: https://twitter.com/karen0513_/status/919026459766747137

October 14th, 2017

It’s so sudden, but, This movie is very interesting!!! I don’t know why it’s not being shown in the big theatre in Japan, but it’s worth going to see it ◎ I met a movie that made me feel 『I want to watch something like this』after a while. 🎬 I like action movies more than everything after all...

#Scramble #WildSpeedSeries

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Source: https://twitter.com/karen0513_/status/919051850048868352

October 14th, 2017

Vietnam Festival 2017 is so crowded~ (*´ｰ｀) My turn is at 2:10 pm~ !

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Source: https://twitter.com/karen0513_/status/919163376764297216

October 14th, 2017

Vietnam Festival 1st day has ended ♪ Thank you very much for coming 😊 The weather was also nice, it was the best!! I’ll also wait for you tomorrow ^ ^ The talkshow was with 『Kamen Rider Blade』’s Morimoto Ryoji-san ✨ Heat-san also came, and then I danced (laughs) I got Heat-san’s T-shirt ヽ(・∀・)ﾉ Yeay!

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Source: https://twitter.com/karen0513_/status/919220958610653186

October 14th, 2017

This is such cool Iwata, but recently loved Tapioca too much that for 1 meal in 1 day I will get tapioca. By the way, I love black tapioca.

•••←Tapioca

Good night.

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Source: https://twitter.com/karen0513_/status/919227989933432833

October 15th, 2017

Everyone, please tell me recommended mangas~~ Horror is welcomed ( ◠‿◠ )

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Source: https://twitter.com/karen0513_/status/919393361542332416

October 15th, 2017

Vietnam Festival 2nd day〜🇻🇳 It will be 12:20pm soon~ I’ll be on stage! Please come ^ ^

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Source: https://twitter.com/karen0513_/status/919423096104271873

October 15th, 2017

I have finished my turn in the 2nd day of Kurihara Vietnam Festival 🌟 I’m with Dobrock-san who helped me in『Hatsukoi Lady』,, ! I was really glad when I was told「It’s been a while」（ ; ; ）I was remembered（ ; ; ）Let’s sing together again later! (laughs) And then Makoto-san made me a puppy 🐩 (LOL)

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Source: https://twitter.com/karen0513_/status/919443653155700736

October 15th, 2017

Due to my agency’s policy, taking photo with customers and signing are not allowed, but I myself am glad to hear your voice, shake hands, and talk to everyone, I will respond as much as I can. I was glad to hear a lot of voices today, I think it’s better than just only coming 😢✨→

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Source: https://twitter.com/karen0513_/status/919445209464807424

October 15th, 2017

To be able to appear in the event with other casts on a stall like this time, to be able to meet everyone in close distance more than usual, I was really happy. But today, there’s something that was a little bit disappointing. In any situation, I think being considerate to each other at the minimum is important. It’s just one person’s behaviour, so for others→

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Source: https://twitter.com/karen0513_/status/919445884839981056

October 15th, 2017

There's also the possibility that we can’t meet at a close distance. I hate that. Certainly, I often refuse to be photographed. I’m sorry about that. That was my agency’s policy. But the reason I said that is because, apparently someone released the shutter by surprise, forcefully took picture with the front camera→

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Source: https://twitter.com/karen0513_/status/919446309550956544

October 15th, 2017

It makes me feel really sad, and I feel really bad to other customers who were patient. I’m so troubled because I didn’t want to say such thing in a fun event like this, but because there are a lot of people who didn’t have bad intentions, I wanted to tell it properly so I wrote it. Not only me, →

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Source: https://twitter.com/karen0513_/status/919446958506352642

October 15th, 2017

For other performers as well, I think that being considerate at the minimum is necessary, in order to make it a place where people could interact, to make everyone comfortable, please cooperate with each other to protect the manners so that everyone is comfortable. Nevertheless, almost all customers nicely protect the manners, so it’s a very pleasant 2 days→

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Source: https://twitter.com/karen0513_/status/919447338950672390

October 15th, 2017

That was most of my feelings ☺️Everyone in Kurihara, and everyone who bother to come to meet me, thank you very much ✨ I’ll do my best to be able to return again!  I’m sorry for dirtying the timeline with long posts 😞🙇

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Source: https://twitter.com/karen0513_/status/919485710968614913

October 15th, 2017

I’m healed because my pet dog bothers to come to meet me! Cuuuuuuuuuuute!!!! ←

[southeastasianists]

As a general rule, scandals ruin political careers. But this rule does not seem to apply to every political figure equally. Political figures who maintain an image of being virtuous, or at least civil or decent, seem to suffer a heavier blow to their popularity from a scandal than those who routinely tread on the edge of decency.

Again and again, bad-mannered, foul-mouthed political figures get away with saying or doing outrageous things that could end the career of a normal politician. Prayuth Chan-ocha, the head of the junta that has ruled Thailand since 2014, threw a banana peel at reporters, 1 threatened to slam a lectern on journalists, 2 played on the head of a photographer while giving an interview 3and threatened to close down media 4 and execute journalists. 5 None of these incidents significantly damaged his popularity.

As the president of a Catholic-majority country, Rodrigo Duterte called Pope Francis “a son of a whore”. 6 On one occasion, he bragged about having personally shot and killed three men. 7 On another, he talked of having thrown a man out of a helicopter. 8 Any one of these incidents could have ended the career of a decent, civil politician.  They failed to damage Duterte.

Let us call political figures like Prayuth and Duterte “scandal surfers”.  For they seem to ride on one scandal after another, all the while staying afloat, thriving spectacularly and taking little damage, like an adept surfer riding on one wave after another.

What allows scandal surfers to survive their own scandals uninjured?  How is it their outrageous behaviour fails to damage their popularity? I can think of four factors related to the media. These factors, I think, are significant, but by no means exhaustive. Other important factors probably include those to do with the personalities of the scandal surfers themselves, as well as the political contexts in which these scandal surfers operate.

Media factors

1) Distraction

The first, perhaps quite obvious, factor has to do with how the scandal surfer’s outrageous behaviour distracts the public from more severe charges – charges that would otherwise do real damage to the scandal surfer’s popularity.

Outrageous behaviour is more easily understood, and thus provokes immediate reactions more readily, than accusations about conflict of interest and abuse of power, which are usually harder to grasp. Outrageous behaviour makes for attention-grabbing headlines and sensational news, which encourage quick sharing, quip comments, and viral memes. It steals headline space and floods news feeds. In Thailand, the outrageous behaviour of Prayuth made more headlines during 2014-5 than some more important issues, such as the roadmap for elections.

This factor surely contributes to how scandal surfers thrive. I doubt, however, that it alone can explain very much.  It seems to me that scandal surfers thrive not just because people are distracted from more severe charges against them, but also because the public tolerate severe charges against them much more readily than they would a normal politician. Duterte’s bragging about having killed suspects is one example. Murder was a severe charge. Yet the Filipino public tolerated Duterte’s self-professed murder in a way that it’s hard to imagine they would do with any decent, civil politician.

2) Newsworthiness

A second factor, I think, has to do with newsworthiness. Once a politician does or says enough outrageous things, a story about “yet another outrageous thing this person said (or did)” becomes trite. It becomes less newsworthy.  Readers will grow weary and pay less attention to similar stories.

The media will then adjust their thresholds for that politician. The next outrageous thing grab headlines and stir people will have to be more outrageous than before (or outrageous in a different way). Another way of saying this is: scandals compete for attention, and once there are sufficiently many of them, their importance in the eyes of the public is diluted.

This was what happened in the case of Prayuth’s vulgar behaviour and threats towards the media. After many reports about Prayuth’s threats against journalists in late 2014 and early 2015, similar threats rarely made headlines since.  Prayuth’s threats would sometimes be mentioned in one or two lines in some news reports, but rarely feature in the headlines. 9

3) Coordination failure

A third factor has to do with coordination failure. For an outrageous thing said or done by a political figure to damage him, it has to become the talk of the town. But that requires, firstly, that most, or at least many, of the major media outlets run the story simultaneously. Given the constant stream of outrageous things said or done by a scandal surfer (combined with the reduced newsworthiness of each), the media cannot run headlines or even stories on all of them, and it will be difficult for various media to pick the same issues to run.

Secondly, for an outrageous thing said or done by a political figure to become a major story, it’s often not enough that many major media outlets report on it. They also have to follow up on it, by asking the political figure to comment on his or her remarks (e.g. asking him to clarify, or asking whether they feel regret or will apologise), asking experts for comments and people affected for responses, and following up again on those comments and responses. 10 Given the number of outrageous things said or done by a scandal surfer, it is difficult for the media to coordinate to “follow up” on multiple issues.

4) The short lifespan of news

A fourth factor has to do with the short lifespan of news today. More and more people consume news through social media, and primarily through smartphones. The short life of news helps scandal surfers by making it more difficult for journalists to follow up on what scandal surfers do or say.

When readers move quickly from one story to the next, journalists are forced to do the same. News editors now have to be more responsive to readers’ taste than ever. Social media users now decide which stories are worth sharing. So the power to decide which topics occupy news space – the power to set agendas – away from the hands of editors, into the hands of social media users. The result is that what a scandal surfer says or does remains a mere remark or action, whose significance and implications are left under-explored. It is thus easy for scandal surfers to shrug off these remarks and actions and simply move on. 11

Personality and political context

To be sure, factors to do with the media alone cannot completely account for the resilience of scandal surfers. For one thing, even when most of the major media outlets focus and follow-up on a severe charge against a scandal surfer, the public tends to be more forgiving of them than they would be of a more civil politician. (This was arguably the case, for example, when Duterte bragged about murder.) We need to explain why.

The resilience of scandal surfers must, it seems, be partly to do with their personalities and political contexts. At least two hypotheses seem prima facie plausible.

One hypothesis is as follows.  Given scandal surfer’s personality, people don’t take everything they say seriously. This helps them, because it encourages selective readings as to whether they really means what they say. Supporters of the scandal surfers will have no difficulty dismissing things that cause distaste as non-serious talk.

But there has to be more to it than that. Scandal surfers don’t simply project an image of being silly.  That would help people forgive them for their outrageous behaviour, but it would not preserve their image as leaders. It doesn’t seem a coincidence that virtually all scandal surfers are strongmen.

This leads to another hypothesis: that scandal surfers thrive because they are seen as strongmen, those that a country might need in times of crisis, and, in times of crisis, the kind of scandals they spawn – outrageous behaviour and comments – are a petty matter. Civil manners and polite speech are not expected from a strongman in a times crisis. Focusing on outrageous things said or done by a scandal surfer would therefore be seen as nitpicking, or as politicking in the worst of times.

There is ample evidence of scandal surfers using crisis rhetoric. Prayuth has talked time and again of the “special circumstance” facing the country, mostly in the context of justifying his anti-democratic orders. 12

But the rhetoric, it seems, also justified his strongman personality and, thus, his lack of civility.

Prach Panchakunathorn Prach Panchakunathorn was a journalist at NBT Channel and Voice TV, Thailand. He is currently a PhD student in philosophy at the University of Toronto.

YAV: Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia, Issue 21, July 2017

Notes:

“Photographs: Big Tu [Prayuth] throwing various objects at reporters, saying it uplifts his mood”, Matichon, 24 December 2014: http://www.matichon.co.th/news_detail.php?newsid=1419416138.

“PM threatens to throw podium at reporter, teases media for pressing on coup, says to go to every region and country, denies being anyone’s enemy”, Manager Online, 23 September 2014: http://www.manager.co.th/Politics/viewnews.aspx?NewsID=9570000109467.

“Prayuth plays on ear and head of photographer while giving interview”, Matichon TV, 19 November 2014: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO84V70r_20.

See: “Prayuth irritated at media for ruining ‘image as leader’, threatens to use martial law to close down media”, Prachatai, 25 December 2014: http://prachatai.com/journal/2014/12/57130. See also “Prayuth says he has summoned lying media as a warning, vows to close down all media if lying doesn’t stop”, Prachachat Turakij, 10 April 2015: http://www.prachachat.net/news_detail.php?newsid=1428671202.

“In the latest outburst, Thailand’s Prayuth reminds reporters of his powers”, Strait Times, 19 February 2015: http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/in-latest-outburst-thailands-prayuth-reminds-reporters-of-his-powers.

“Rodrigo Duterte: Philippines’ president-elect to ‘apologise to Pope for son of a whore remark’”, ABC News, 12 May 2016: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-12/duterte-to-apologise-to-pope-for-son-of-a-whore-remark/7408796.

“Philippines: Duterte confirms he personally killed three men”, BBC News, 16 December 2016: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-38337746.

“Rodrigo Duterte: I once threw a man from a helicopter”, Al Jazeera, 29 December 2016: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/12/rodrigo-duterte-helicopter-161229062349259.html.

For example, see this report from Khaosod, in which Prayuth’s threat to hit a reporter is mentioned only in passing in one line: https://www.khaosod.co.th/view_newsonline.php?newsid=1453188254. See also this report from Matichon, in which an exchange in which he threatened a reporter features as part of one of the video clips attached to the report, but never mentioned in the content of the report itself: http://www.matichon.co.th/news/124287.

These follow-ups help turn an isolated event or action into a story, with reactions from various sectors and further facts from media investigations, which will provide a basis for discussion and allow the public to see the significance of what the political figure said or did.

In the case of Thailand, short, under-developed news reports have long been a norm. News reports often contain what one person has said, with little context provided to explain the significance or implications of the remarks.[11] But the pace of social media has made online news articles even shorter and void of context.

For example, he talked of the “special situation” in Thailand to justify appointing of military personnel into the National Legislative Assembly (August 2014): https://www.isranews.org/main-issue/31772-prayut_07.html. In an interview with Thai PBS in September 2014, he invoked the “special circumstance” to justify his ban on political discussions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nnAZB0ApkY.

[saviormysticmeme]

Can I request a hc rfa +v & saeranwhere mc is very very intelligent and introverted and people always tell her she's boring since she doesn't like talking much. I'm so sick of it, it happens to me all the time :( Your blog is so awesome & I love it^^

1. Omg thank you ^‿^2.If people don’t respect the fact that you’re introverted drop them! Trust me, you’ll find people along the way that can understand that introvert doesn’t equate to boring whatsoever!3. Personally I’m pretty extroverted, so I’m basing MC off the traits of my introverted friends and what I think I know about it, but if it’s not quite what you were looking for just let me know~!

Sidenote: When people hear the word ‘Intelligent’ a lot of them think of the traditional “Good at school, well read in this and that subject, yada ya” and I just want to remind everyone that there is different types of intelligence. And I’m not saying that to be all “Don’t feel bad uwu you’re special too” I’m saying it because it’s a fact. Some people are good at standard education, some are amazing in the STEM field, some are masters of reading social behaviour, some humans are talented artists, etc. For the sake of writing I’m going to write MC as a very Literary Based ‘intelligent’ (because that’s one I’m personally familiar with) I just want to make sure everyone knows that ‘Intelligent’ isn’t defined by the books you read or anything of the sort. Ok rant over. 

Yoosung

At first he thinks you don’t like him, that once you met him you weren’t as infatuated with him because he seemed cooler in the chat

Don’t worry Yoosung no one thought you were cooler in the chat 

Eventually though he realizes you’re just introverted! Even at RFA parties you stand by him and quietly sip your drink and listen to everyone talk rather than take the attention for yourself.

He originally questions why you don’t want to greet the guests yourself, but then comes to understand that you’re just more of a wallflower. But that doesn’t make you any less great!

But one party he notices you being extra standoffish. Everyone in the RFA is standing and chatting with each other and you’re not there.

He finds you off to the side of the room pretending to be distracted by something on your phone

“MC? Why are you over here?”

“Oh, hey Yoosung. I was just uh, checking in on…uh”

“Come on MC just tell me what’s wrong” He pleaded

You decided not to lie, it’d feel good to get off your chest anyways “I just feel like I’m so…boring. Everyone else in the RFA is super chatty and have fun stories to tell and all my life people told me I was boring cause I didn’t talk…I felt like I was bringing down the mood.”

“What!?” YandereYoosung: Activated “Who ever said that to you?? That’s so dumb!! They’re dumb!!!1!” 

You had to calm Yoosung down from his mini rage before too many people looked at you guys. You go to grab his arms but he ends up grabbing your shoulders and looking deep into your eyes

“MC just because you’re quiet doesn’t make you boring! You are so great, and so smart, and so..so everything good! How much you talk doesn’t matter!”

You just kind of stared at him for a second with a blank face. No one had ever been so adamant about assuring you that your ‘flaws’ weren’t flaws.

A smile fell upon your lips and you quickly brushed a tear away, which snapped Yoosung back into his normal flustered boy mode.

“Uh sorry for grabbing you” He pulled his arms away immediately and blushed

You shook your head and chuckled.

Then you grabbed his hand, making him confused and ever more blushy uwu

“You’re right. Let���s go stand with the others” You had the biggest smile on your face as you led him back to the group.

Jaehee

Jaehee didn’t mind introvert MC at all

And as a fellow intelligent introvert, you two got along just fine. 

You could have very interesting conversations when you felt chatty while making coffee together

Or you could appreciate each other’s company when you both felt just like being silent while doing your own activities. 

‘Boring’ would never cross Jaehee’s mind when thinking of MC, MC was her lover Best Friend! You are always putting a smile on her face and she puts one on yours.

She’s also been called ‘boring’ before so she’s always conscience to remind you how much she enjoys your time together, and how not everyone has the same idea of what ‘fun’ is. 

You two are quite the pair, silent, but deadly

Goddammit that just sounds like a fart joke

You two are some of the quietest when it comes to the RFA members, but you’re basically running the scenes from behind the curtain. 

And you’re both perfectly happy with that. You two organize the party and deal with the guests who are also more introverted, and the rest of the RFA can handle the other guests and public relations. It’s a good setup

And you never think about being ‘boring’ again, because how can you feel boring when you’re surrounded by friends and a lover and doing what you love?

Zen

You being introverted never really bothered him…because he never really noticed.

Zen has such a big persona it fills the room for both of you. Everyone is too wrapped up in Zen’s stories that they don’t even notice your silence or occasional escape to the less crowded areas of the room

He’s the perfect cover. He’s so obsessed with the idea of taking care of you and being the ‘provider’ of sorts even though it can be too a fault, it works well for you because he even starts speaking on your behalf by accident.

“Oh how are the two of you?” Someone will be looking at you but Zen takes it as open opportunity to answer for both of you

Even questions more aimed towards you “Oh, MC, what are you doing these days in your spare time?” You stammer out a couple words, which Zen mistakes for you being humble rather than shy, and he begins praising you and going into detail for you “MC doesn’t give themselves enough credit!” He’ll cry out, then he goes on to list everything you’ve been up to and just how awesome a job you’re doing. You recognize how someone could find it annoying, but it works for you personally since it saves you the nerves of having to talk with strangers for long periods of time.

Even when it’s just the two of you it’s nice because Zen always has something to say, always has a compliment to give or a story to tell. He could talk for hours and you’re happy listening. And when you do want to talk he shuts right up and gives you all his attention.

One flaw is he doesn’t always see you getting tired after hours of social interaction. He could float around a crowd chit chatting with anyone and everyone for hours, meanwhile you get a little antsy to leave. But usually with some hint dropping you make it clear you’re ready to go and Zen ushers you out like the Knight he is.

It’s because you two work so well he doesn’t understand when his coworker calls you boring

“Excuse me?” Zen scoffs

“Yeah” His fellow actor laughs as he puts his costume on “I always imagined you’d end up with another social butterfly, not someone so..quiet. And when she does talk it’s like..I don’t know all really boring stuff that I haven’t heard about since my school days.”

Zen gives him the biggest scowl. “Just cause MC doesn’t blabber on and on about random shit the way you do doesn’t make them boring. In fact it makes them pretty interesting, because obviously if MC doesn’t talk much, they must have something pretty great to say if they decide to open their mouths in front of douche bags like me or you.”

His coworker was silent

Zen can’t wait to go home and tell you all about how he schooled his dickbag scene partner

Jumin

Like Yoosung at first he’s worried your silence is a sign of distaste

He can’t help but worry so much that he makes a call to V, looking for advice

V laughs

“Jumin, are you telling me you’ve met someone whose introverted? Someone who doesn’t verbally open up much? Gee, where have I met someone like that before? Oh! I should introduce you to my friend, he’s the exact same way.”

What friend V who do you hang out with besides me

It takes him a while, but finally Jumin gets the joke and realizes you two are the same. 

He starts paying attention to your body language more, realizing more and more that you are comfortable with him and just don’t verbalize it all that much

Besides it’s not like you guys don’t ever talk, you’re just not as chatty as you are on messenger. Probably because that’s just typing from behind a screen, so it makes you less anxious. He can understand that.

One day he comes home to find you on the couch reading Shakespeare

MC you like Shakespeare? 

Turns out you like literature in general, something Jumin also has a taste for in his rare bouts of free time.

You two begin chatting about older pieces and genres, ranging anywhere from fictional masters like William Shakespeare to poetry writers like Yi Sang.

It’s actually one of your longer talk sessions, ranging a few hours of just straight talking. Once it’s over though, you two are happy to cuddle up to one another and just throw a movie on.

Jumin is often called boring himself, and he never pays any mind to it. But when you two are talking one day and you mention how much it irks you that people call people like the two of you boring he just 

“So let them. Their opinions will never affect either of us, especially since we both know the value of our own words and have each other to share them with.”

A grin crawled on your face. You loved how graceful he made the phrase “Fuck those guys” sound. 

Defender of Justice

“Wow, I never thought you’d end up with someone so … normal.” Vanderwood mused while looking at a picture of you and 707 sitting on his desk.

“I wouldn’t call MC normal” Seven chuckled as he tapped away at his computer.

“Really?” Vanderwood cocked an eyebrow at the back of Seven’s head as he placed the picture down. “Maybe they were just quiet that time I met them..”

“No.” tap tap tap “MC’s always quiet.”

Vanderwood squinted at Seven now, assuming the red head had cameras set up so he’d see the look on Vandy’s face at some point. “So she is boring?”

Seven sighed a dramatic sigh, Vanderwood could tell immediately whatever the hacker was about to say was well rehearsed. The fucker always trapped him into weird conversations with some strange moral lession. 

“Vanderwood, vanderwood, vanderwood. You’ve called MC quiet, normal, and boring….none of those words have anything to do with each other~” Cue 707 going on a playfully long and annoying rant explaining why you were quiet but by no means boring. Normal was up for debate.

Seven had always understood you.

He put on quite the exuberant and extroverted exterior, but on the inside, Saeyoung was also an introvert.

You were never boring to him because he knew you had so much going on in your brain despite your few words explaining the thoughts running around up there

And you knew this because the two of you were constantly analyzing each other

And you both knew it

It became some weird sort of game, picking up on subtle cues and few words you guys would exchange, and figuring out the other’s intention

It got so intense the other members of the RFA swore you guys were telepathic or had made some weird secret language between each other

V

He grew up with Jumin so he understands

He is quiet as well, but he doesn’t mind being the conversation driver at all, or just sitting in silence together while you read or play games or do whatever your heart desires

He is just happy to be near you.

Given his eyesight is a bit weak, so sounds make it easier to figure out whats going on in your head, so he just learns to listen to the things you do. Your footsteps, your breath, pages turning, pencils on paper, computer keys clicking.

He understands you so well without words, but when you do speak he’s in love because everything you say is so thought out.

Or you just….”Sneep”

“What MC?”

“I don’t know. I was just thinking and…I thought of the word ‘Sneep’ I don’t know it’s just one of those things that’s fun to say aloud….Sneeeeeep” And you started giggling “it’s just so weird”

Jihyun laughed.

Ok so not everything was some profound rhetoric, but he enjoyed anything that comes out of your mouth.

“Try it!” You egged him on

He paused for a minute, and prepped a really funny deep voice and just “Sneeeeeeeeeep”

You both had a hard time controlling your laughter.

He knew he’d never have a boring moment with you

Saeran

At first he was worried you were constantly mad at him

Saeyoung is loud when he’s in a good mood…so shouldn’t you also be loud when you’re happy?

He hasn’t had much healthy human interaction to judge so he’s confused and worried

But you two manage to nip the problem in the bud before it becomes serious

One way or another you realized he was feeling this way and sat him down to talk, saying you were never mad you just…were quiet. You said you’d start being more vocal if he’d feel better..

“No…I…I trust you.” Saeran trusted that you meant it when you said your silence was nothing bad, he wanted to always trust and believe with you so despite his own anxiety he was going to. You were touched.

You figured a good compromise for the two of you, you were quiet, but that didn’t mean you weren’t physical. If you two were close you’d always take his hand in yours and give him reassuring squeezes. It became so common he started grabbing your hand first.

Constant smiles from you when one of you would walk into the same room as the other

Attached at the hip when sitting anywhere.

Much like with Seven, you two communicated a lot through action, and Saeran wasn’t very keen on anything academic aside from a bit of coding, but even then he didn’t have much to say about it

But he loved to listen to you talk about. He’d feign interest in classic novels and evolution theories just to hear you talk about them and tell him about them. You’d get so passionate about them, he’d hope that one day you’d get the same starry eyed look on your face when talking about him that you do when talking about Multiverse theory.

He never found you boring,  even if he didn’t actually have an interest in the subjects you were talking about, he was in love with how you talked about them. The passion you had. There is nothing boring about passion

And so what if you’re quiet? 

Quiet is important for sneaking up on the enemy and obliterating them from this plane of existen-

Quiet has it’s perks. 

[completeworksofsigmundfreud]

Studies on Hysteria (1895) - Part II - Case Histories -  Case 2 -  Emmy von V., 40 year, from Livonia (Freud) - English summary

The second case of Studies on Hysteria is a woman performing under the alias Emmy Von V., who Freud took care of from May 1889. According to his observations, it was very easy to get her into the state of somnambulism and so he decided to use Breuer’s method since his friend described it to him in detail, although he was inexperienced in it and it was his first try. When he saw Mrs. Emmy for the first time, she lay on the sofa and her still youthful appearance was giving her enough charm despite her age. Her face was distorted by a painful grimace, though, her forehead was wrinkled, the tone of her voice too low and she often alternated between states of stammering. Her hands were tightly clasped, her facial muscles kept moving, just as the muscles on her neck. She kept disturbing her speech by a clacking sound coming out of her mouth. When she started to tell Freud about her illness, she spoke intelligibly and she showed a high level of education and intelligence. In the middle of the conversation, she fell into hallucinatory state, though, her face twisted in disgust and contempt, reaching out her hands to Freud with bend fingers and yelled at him not to come any closer to her and not to touch her (Freud later discovered that it was her defensive mechanism). At a slap, she became normal again and resumed the conversation without being aware of her hallucination. Freud got to know everything essential about her origin – her family descended from central Germany, but lived in Baltic provinces in Russia for the last two generations and owned vast estates there. Emmy was thirteenth of fourteen children from which only four children survived under the supervision of their strict mother. In her age of 23 years, she married to rich, significantly older man, who died of stroke soon after the wedding. She was forced to bring up two daughters completely alone (now in the age of 16 and 14 years) who were often ill and suffered from various neurotic problems. Emmy herself attributed her illness to these events as she withered away year by year despite several treatments and procedure she had been through all over the world. Freud advised her to disconnect herself from her daughter who had her own governess by that time, and to move to a nursing home where he could pay his entire attention to her. Emmy agreed without objections.

On 2nd May 1889 Freud visited her in the nursing home and noticed that Emmy always startled whenever anyone entered her room. He ordered to everyone to knock loudly and wait for her invitation before entering. In the following days, Emmy felt better thanks to Freud’s practice – he ordered hot baths for her and massages of her whole body twice a day. Before she went to sleep, he always lightly hypnotised her and tried to convince her that she should sleep well and her symptoms should improve. Emmy reacted more than positively and she never asked him about her hypnoid states, slept well and spent most of her days by peaceful rest in the bed. Her daughters could visit her, or Emmy could read and deal with her correspondence.

On 8th May 1889 she piqued his interest by a story she read in newspapers that made her tremble with fear – about a boy who was tied up by an apprentice and who gave him a white mouse into his mouth. The boy died of fear. When Freud hypnotised her, he found that the article in the newspapers really tells a story about a boy who was tormented to death but there was no mention about mice or rats. He came to the conclusion that Emmy had to create the association by herself in some sort of delirium after one of the doctors told her that he sent a crate of mice to Tbilisi. In the evening, she couldn’t remember anything about it, she just mentioned that she suffered from cramps in her neck in the afternoon. Freud tried to convince her in the hypnosis to talk more about her past experiences so he could find out why she associated the tormented boy with mice and rats. Although she mediated before every single answer, she was able to give him the answers during which she kept twitching and the expressions on her faces kept changing from the one of horror to the one of fear. She started talking about how her siblings threw dead animals at her which caused her first fits of fainting and cramps. Her aunt considered it as unacceptable so these demonstrations of her mental state stopped. Another traumatic experiences were dead bodies of her sister and aunt, and her brother who scared her dressed as a ghost. On a question why she kept throwing herself so much, she explained that when she was talking about all the traumatic experiences, she could see them in front of her quite lively and colourfully. Freud swore to himself to help her to free herself from these lively notions by therapy and induced this suggestion to her by stroking her eyes for a couple of times.

9th May 1889 – Emmy slept well but she started to have digestive problems after she spent too much time with her daughters in the garden. Freud advised to her to limit the visit of her daughter to two and half hours at maximum. There were also other symptoms that had origin in a shock she suffered after she leafed through an ethnological atlas and she saw American Indians dressed as animals. Freud tried to convince her in the hypnosis not to fear of the pictures but quite the contrary, to laugh at them which she did after she woke up. She kept giving out the clacking sound, though (she brought it about when she took care of her sick daughter and was forced to be completely quiet and now the tic showed when she was nervous or anxious), and especially after Breuer’s visit (she didn’t mind him) and a doctor from the nursing home (the reason of her anxiety). By the evening, she was cheerful and showed very surprising humour sense considering her social status that was directed mainly on her previous therapy which she tried to get rid of, but never found the courage to do so. That happened after a remark from Doctor Breuer but then she was horrified that she was too indiscrete. Freud calmed her down that it wasn’t like that and hypnotised her so she could tell him more about her fears. Emmy started to talk about her teenager years where she started to suffer from fear of insanity because her female cousin and her mother spent some time in an asylum, and from one of the maids who was also in the asylum, she hear horrific stories about how the patients were treated. Freud tried to fix her impressions about the asylums. Then Emmy talked about her concerns for her mother because she once found her after a stroke which mother survived but few years later, she died anyway and Emmy found her. Freud succeeded in suggesting that she should perceive these facts but shouldn’t associate them with any emotions.

10th May 1889 – Emmy went through a bran bath for the first time and she didn’t like it, claiming that it caused her a lot of pain. During the massage, she relaxed and while she was afraid that Doctor Breuer could get insulted by her yesterday’s behaviour, she also started to talk about her queer male cousin whose parents got all his teeth pull out at one sitting. She got into hysterics during these moments and kept repeating her defensive mechanism, then she calmed won again. Freud focused on her defensive mechanism during the hypnosis and found out that the phrases she used had an origin in her past – “Keep still” was connected to a period when she was attacked by her animal hallucinations. “Don’t touch me” reflected in a past experience where her brother grabbed her strongly in a fit caused my morphine overdoes, or when her daughter was sick that one time and almost strangled her to death. During the evening hypnosis, the focused on her stammering problem and it came into light that she got into a situation in the past when she forced herself to keep quiet so the frightened horses wouldn’t be frightened even more. After another suggestion therapy that Freud practiced in her case, she got rid of the problem. Then they talked about other cases during which Emmy got scared and they came to the understanding as to why Emmy always startled when someone entered her room. All her shocks and past traumas usually came suddenly and unexpectedly.

11th May 1889 – gynaecological examination of her daughter made Emmy very nervous and Freud had to hypnotise her. It came out that she was afraid of telling him something that could insult him the other day, but Freud explained to her that nothing like that happened. After the examination they talked about her greatest shocks and fears – especially the death of her husband and the following illness of her daughter who was a bit retarded during her childhood. Freud argued that her daughter was now an adult and she was in a very good condition by which he helped Emmy to get rid of the inner fear what would happen with the child. Then they returned to her fear from asylums and Freud once again tried to convince her that the patients were treated well. He realized, during these hypnoses, that it wasn’t good to interrupt Emmy because she was angry with him for that in her hypnoid state.

12th May 1889 – despite Freud’s expectations, Emmy didn’t sleep well and didn’t want to talk about the bad dream she had had. During the massage, she rather talked about the times she spent at the Baltic and people from the neighbouring town she entertained etc. During the hypnosis, she uncovered that her nightmares from the last night concerned her fear from animals. Freud tried to force her to the root of the problem, but she informed that they would get there when she wanted and he should let her to narrate the story. When he did so, she started to talk about her husband again, how she couldn’t believe he had been dead and how she hated her child for three years because of that, because she believed that her husband could have still been alive if she could have taken care of him, instead of lying in the bed because of this child. These events were also connected to drear of foreign people after the family of her deceased husband started a campaign against her, slandering her, printing defaming articles in the newspapers about her, and keeping accusing her that she poisoned her husband because they couldn’t stand their marriage and their happiness. Emmy relaxed after Freud told her a couple of soothing words.

13th May 1889 – Emmy slept badly again and although she was in relatively good mood, her tics returned. She spoke about her fear of animals in the hypnosis that appeared after she had been on one theatre performance and had gotten scared by a character of giant lizard. She also spoke about her digestive problems they connected with depression after her husband’s death when she ate out of duty. She also confessed that although she hated her child, no one could ever notice it and she reproached herself until this day that she had been fonder of the elder child more.

14th May 1889  - Emmy slept well finally but she complained about pains in her right leg. During the hypnosis, they returned to her fear of foreign people when she listed all the other cases of this fear. Freud saw the main problem in what had happened after her husband died, though. When he came to see her in the evening, she was anxious again. Breuer had visited her and she had startled when he came in. She considered it as inappropriate because she disparaged Freud in front of Breuer according to her opinion. Freud had noticed so far, though, that she always tried to be obliging and dutiful to comply with Freud’s wishes and when it wasn’t like that, she reproached herself. He assured her during the hypnosis that nothing happened and she shouldn’t be so hard towards herself.

15th May 1889 – Emmy slept well again, but she started to be anxious immediately. She explained that she had advised her daughters to used a lift in the pension both for a ride up and down. But because she didn’t trust lifts, she reproached herself for causing a threat to her daughters’ lives. Freud, who knew the pension and its owner, explained to her that the lift is safe and the owner wouldn’t make such an advertisement out of it if it wasn’t. Emmy was able to laugh at her unwarranted fears, but Freud suspected that her today’s anxiety had different roots. He started with the massage of her body, but Emmy spoke mostly about her social life in German Russia and North Germany and entertained him with many stories. During the hypnosis, they returned to her morning anxiety and it came out that she was afraid that her period was about to start and it would prevent her from having massages, but in attempt to avoid this fear, she attached to something entirely different – thus to the lift in the pension. Freud added in the footnotes that this hadn’t occurred for the first time – for example she once claimed that she didn’t want to take cold bath because they caused her a depression and when Freud convinced her through hypnosis that she wanted cold bath, she really started to take them. However, she fell into depression anyway, but later admitted that she read in newspapers reports about riots in San Domingo and her brother, who hadn’t sent any message about himself, was there. Freud came to the conclusion that during the splitting of consciousness, there is also a transfer of psychosis onto different object, most of the time seemingly irrational. Then they focused on her pains in the various parts of her body, when Emmy talked about the events when she had felt them the most. In the evening, they also focused on her fears about the family members – illness of her children, life of her newlywed brother. They talked them through in detail and Freud also gave her a couple of advises considering her pains.

16th May 1889  - Emmy slept well and she complained again about some pains, but the hypnosis didn’t reveal a thing. When Freud came to her in the evening, she was nervous and her thoughts kept running without any kind of order. She wasn’t able to answer on any of the questions he had asked her, and so he hypnotised her and started to take her words one by one to let her talk about it.

17th May 1889 – Emmy had a very good night, but the pains and anxiety lasted, she was overly cheerfully and didn’t want to talk about why she was so excited. In the hypnosis, Freud focused on animals because she saw worms in her bran bath. She began stammering again and when he asked why, she answered that it did so every time she felt frightened. She was afraid that because of the return of some of her symptoms, Freud would lose patience with her and stop his treatment, and she also worried about not thanking him for coming to visit her. Freud assured her that she was getting better, and that she was more resilient and opened to people she was close with and that was the important thing. By the evening, she was very content and hypnosis didn’t bring anything. Freud focused on the pains in her right leg then which he managed to get rid of in her hypnoid state but after she woke up, the pain partly returned.

18th May 1889 – allegedly, she hadn’t slept so well for many years. The pains still last, though.

By that, Freud completed his notes about Emmy. Because he always waited for various symptoms to appear and let the things flow, the notes were often repetitive and didn’t bring anything new. Existing notes considered as sufficient. After 7 weeks of treatment Emmy’s state improved enough that Freud allowed her to return home with that both he and Breuer would stay in contact with her in correspondence to know how she was doing. She relapsed 7 months later because her daughter started to have some uterus problems. Freud advised her to visit his gynaecologist friend who managed to help her daughter for a couple of months. After the return home, the daughter got worse and Emmy chose a different gynaecologist. She started to reproach herself because of what happened to her daughter, and she also accused Freud’d gynaecologist friend, as well as Freud himself, by which she completely destroyed the results of his treatment. The situation improved fter Breuer’s intervention, but the aversion towards Freud still lasted. She let them persuade her, though, to transfer her to a sanatorium where the main doctor was in contact with Freud and received recommendations from him how to treat Emmmy.

Sanatorium proved to be a failure, though, because Emmy refused any kind of treatment. She improved after her family relative “kidnapped” her from sanatorium and took care of her in her home. Soon after, Emmy decided to leave for Vienna and ask Freud for his help again. He found that her state wasn’t that bad as he had heard. The anxiety was replaced by confusion, moments of sadness in a particular hour and various tics. He had problems to hypnotise her because of her unpleasant experiences in the sanatorium, but he succeeded in the end. During the hypnosis he came to the conclusion that to reach the therapeutic effect, the described event must be retold fully and completely truthfully. He started to pay attention if Emmy wasn’t holding back anything or distorting the facts. He “abused” the hypnosis to make her forget on unpleasant sanatorium. He had bigger problems with “storms in her head” as she called them that were connected to the illness of her daughter, but he managed to get over them, as well. At the end of her treatment, he found out that Emmy ate a little and she couldn’t drink anything else but thick fluids, according to her words. Freud ordered to increase the food portions and drink alkaline water. Emmy agreed with that she was doing it because he said so and warned him beforehand that it was going to end up badly, because her digestive system wasn’t adapted the way to eat normally. Freud dismissed that because he didn’t consider likely that someone could be able to cause digestive problems to himself by this way. However, he found her in depression after the food and she complained about digestive problems and he came to the conclusion that the problems were caused by psychical problems.  He tried to hypnotise her but Emmy rebelled and accused him of causing her these problem, and mainly that he threw away all the progress just because he wanted to learn her eat how he wanted. Freud told her that he would leave her for 24 hours alone to think it over and consider whether the digestive problems were really caused physically or if it was a psychical problem. If she would insist on a physical problem, he would ask her to leave because he couldn’t help her anymore. After 24 hours, he found her submissive and complaint. She admitted that she thought that the digestive problems were caused by her psychical problems but just because Freud thought so, as well. Under the hypnosis, she then talked about a series of experiences that produced disgust and distaste in her (inappropriate behaviour of other at the table, her mother forcing her to eat cold meat etc.), as well as her disgust towards water (caused by experience in the childhood when her whole family suffered from digestive problems because of bad drinking water). The therapeutic effect of hypnosis showed immediately the second day.

After she was released from the treatment, Freud remained in contact with Emmy as she wrote him how well she ate and drank, and how she gained some weight. She had problems with her daughter, though, who became disobedient with unreachable ambitions and even became violent. Freud came to the conclusion that it was a case of hereditary psychosis and said that to Emmy who accepted with understanding. In spring, he met with her in her home and was glad for her new and healthy life when she lived full social life with a couple of occasional, trivial problems, such as problems with travelling by train and gaps in her memories. She was also afraid that she would be less obedient to hypnosis but Freud managed to convince her otherwise by a little trick. After this visit, their communication was limited, Freud only heard that her daughter started to worsen and in 1893, Emmy sent him a letter if he agreed to hypnosis from a different doctor. Freud agreed because Emmy fell ill again.