prometheusascendant

[that-ari-blogger]

What's The Point Of A Chorus Anyway? (Loser Baby)

Hazbin Hotel has a structure to it lays out its songs. Each episode has two, with one set piece and a supplemental number to get information across in an entertaining manner. For example, Welcome To Heaven is supplemental to You Didn’t Know, and Happy Day In Hell is supplemental to Hell is Forever. Naturally, this is subjective, as importance varies on reading, but you can generally tell.

However, episode four gives us Poison, a showstopping tune that brings the house down. The type of song that feels like a finale to a story. But it’s the first number in the episode, which means something is going to try and outdo it, and what could possibly do that?

Enter Looser Baby, a song that sets the bar for what the entirety of the series is, condensed into just under three minutes.

Let me explain.

CONTENT WARNING (Vulgar Language, Mention of Sex)

SPOILERS AHEAD (Hazbin Hotel)

Not every song has a repeating chorus, or even a chorus at all. Sometimes there is a refrain, but often there is nothing, and this isn’t a bad thing at all.

Bohemian Rhapsody, for example, has either no chorus, or six different ones, adding to the jumpy thought process of the song. Meanwhile Bitter Sweet Symphony has nought but a consistent riff and a bridge to nowhere creating a feeling of momentum.

Hazbin Hotel has done this before with Stayed Gone, which is symmetrical, but presents no chorus to speak of.

This is actually really simple to explain, but more difficult to examine in detail. The chorus is the most central idea of a song. The audience remembers it the most and highlights its importance purely because of the number of times they are shown it, although musical cues might also imply significance.

For example, Beneath the Brine, by The Family Crest, takes on an operatic tone to discuss a tumultuous relationship, and how it handles personal struggle. This is a song about love drawing you to a person, and then getting caught up in their own downfall and being unable to stop it. It presents itself as a crossroad, does the perspective character delve into the wreck, or do they cut their losses now. As such, the chorus feels painful, like the agony of severing something that was part of yourself.

“Oh young love, young dear, why have you taken me in your fall? All of my love, all of my life Given to you, sacrificed!”

The lyrics give a thematic statement, and are repeated to reenforce that idea, hence why I’m calling this the chorus. But the song itself changes around this to show the song evolving. Each time, it gets more expressive and adding more and more melodrama to itself.

It's becoming the centre of an opera, a theatrical piece, too emotive to be real, too painful to complete. Add to that the progressing difficulty of the vocal performance and you get a song that keeps coming back to itself, keeps begging the question and never truly answering itself.

A chorus is the central idea of a song, you get setup and payoff elsewhere, but if you need to remember something, you remember the chorus.

It's also the term for the backup characters who don't have names. The crowd is the chorus. This is thematically relevant to what I will say later.

Obviously, it is more complex than that, as all things are in life, and I’m sure that those who know more than me would be happy to explain that in the replies.

In pub songs and folk music, for example, the chorus just exists to be memorable for everyone to sing along to. Sosban Fach’s chorus is simple.

“Sosban fach yn berwi ar y tân Sosban fach yn berwi ar y llawr A’r gath wedi huno mewn hedd.”

Or, in English:

“A little saucepan is boiling on the fire A big saucepan is boiling on the floor, And the cat is asleep in peace”

You may remember this as the “silly saucepan song” that keeps getting mentioned in Howl’s Moving Castle. The chorus is fun and booming. You belt it out with mates at a pub or at a football game.

But the song is actually about stagnation and the passing of time, as such, the chorus reminds us how little things have changed and ends on an upwards inflection to set up the next verse. You may also notice that it is morbid as all hell. The only constants in life, according to this song, are overwork and death. Welcome to Wales.

All this leads me to Looser Baby, a song about redemption, in a weird way. It’s not about lofty ideals, just community, and companionship.

“You're a loser, baby A loser, goddamn baby You're a fucked-up little whiny bitch You're a loser just like me You're a screw-loose boozer An only one-star reviews-er You're a power bottom at rock bottom But you got company”

The chorus does change over the course of the song, reflecting a developing idea, so we’ll start here, with a subversion.

Loser Baby opens quietly, and soulfully. Husk is reaching out to Angel and checking off what upset him. You are expecting reassurance, everything is alright, things aren’t actually that bad.

In short, you’re expecting the type of advice that Charlie gives, and hold on to that idea for a moment.

Instead, Husk flips the whole thing on its head and gives us the song’s titular theme. Yes, everything is fucked, but it’s like that for everyone else here. You need to have solidarity with your fellow human beings, or demons, or… you get the point.

That is actually an important element of jazz music, the community of it. Once again, this is more complex than a Tumblr post can go into, but in short, there’s some history here that carries over into the theming of the song.

According to Jazz Observer:

“The beginnings of jazz actually date back to the 19th century. New Orleans was home to Congo Square, a space where slaves would gather and play music. That tradition started a bit before 1820, and it brought together people from a wide array of countries, each introducing a bit of their nation’s unique sound to the mix.”

In other words, Jazz arose amongst the downtrodden as a way of keeping culture alive. It became a melting pot of ideas that were outside of the mainstream, and if you associate the genre with shady bars and speakeasies, there’s a reason for that. The music was created as a means of subversion and community amidst oppression.

Subversion and community amidst oppression? If that ain’t sound like Hazbin Hotel’s entire deal, I don’t know what does.

There is a jarring tone shift in the first chorus as drums are introduced along with brass instruments and a general sense of fun. The song feels like it’s being improvised as it goes, allowing for individual expression withing a general plan. Everyone has their own story, but it's being put together to form something greater.

That vibe continues into the verse, which mentions opening up and that sense of community again, but I’m focusing on the choruses, and so the second one of those goes as follows:

“We’re both losers, baby, we’re losers, it’s ok to be a…” “Coked-up, dick-suckin hoe?” “Baby that’s fine by me.” “I’m a loser, honey, A schmoozer and a dummy, But at least I know I’m not alone” “You’re a loser,” “Just like me.”

Once again, the solution isn’t that none of the bad things matter, it’s that it’s ok to be going through them. Losers together.

That’s why Angel sings along in this chorus, we’re opening conversation, and he’s realising what the theme is of the story he’s in.

Linking back to the instruments here, I mentioned briefly in my post on Poison that the electronic synth feels fake to me. I don’t mean this in an “it’s not real music” way, because listen to the song and tell me with a straight face that that ain't music. I meant that the synth is artificial, there’s a human element that has been forcibly removed.

Even the percussion is electronic, meaning that the only emotionality in this song is Angel himself. He’s blending in and the pitch perfection of the vocals mean that everything about him is fake, until he breaks down.

The last verse of Poison hits so hard because he is alone against an unfeeling backdrop.

Side note, this is why the Poison AI covers annoy me more than usual. Not only is it theft, not only is it cheap and effortless, but it misunderstands the point of the song.

Loser Baby is truly the opposite of this, with a ton of instruments giving the vibe of a full band backing up the characters. Husk brought friends to this, and they are all here to lift up Angel together.

Angel adds his higher vocals to this, but also his vernacular. “Schmoozer” isn’t a word typically associated with jazz, it's Yiddish, a pseudo-Hebrew language that was common among American mobsters and is still very popular in New York. Fun fact, the word “bagel” comes from the same place.

As such, we get that melting pot that is this song and jazz in general. Everyone adds their unique vibe to the larger motif.

“You're a loser, baby” “A loser, but just maybe if we…” “eat shit together, things will end up differently”

Everything is cut off abruptly, except for that piano and the drums.

I do love that little tap of a hi-hat, because on the one hand, it’s establishing a rhythm and reminding you all that everyone else is still here and running up to joining back in. But on the other hand, I can’t help but visualise it as accidental. Like the drummer clipped it as she leant forwards and has to pass it off as an intentional decision. To me, that makes the song seem more human and especially more fallible.

The visuals also simplify here. No longer are we on the street, but something more symbolic. Husk is sheltering Angel from the rain, sitting alongside him and enduring the world together. The two are taking comfort in each other.

“It's time to lose your self-loathing excuse yourself, let hope in, baby Play your card, be who you are” “A loser, just like me.”

We’ve brought in the full band for a finale, and added one more instrument, kinda.

“Ooooooooooooh”

I’m sorry. I couldn’t help myself.

In seriousness, Angel has become part of the group. He’s backed up by everyone else and is now lending his own voice to theirs. He doesn’t get outshone by anyone, he’s not fading into the background, he’s just making the music denser.

He’s playing his card and being who he is. He’s accepting his flaws and trying to improve on them, rather than pretending that they ain’t there.

Here’s my argument, then: I think this song is the chorus of the whole musical.

We’ve had our thesis statements, but this is the thing you need to remember. Everyone is fucked up, everyone is a loser, and they need to bear that together. Community, introspection, and hope.

Remember what I said about Charlie? She’s optimistic, she looks at the bright side of things. My reading of this series is that it is fundamentally about the difference between optimism and hope, and that that difference is something Charlie learns over the course of the story.

I’ve seen a few public figures (whose names I will not give because I think they are eejits) wax philosophical about how hope is fleeting. As someone who grew up in Wales listening to songs like Sosban Fach, I want to firmly disagree.

If it’s fleeting, it ain’t hope. Hope looks to the future, a time that notably hasn’t happened yet, and tells you it will be better. Optimism looks at the present and finds something nice in it. You cannot disprove hope, you cannot say that a future will not come to pass, no matter how unlikely, because you can’t know.

By the same ticket, the nihilist idea that the world can’t get better has been disproven so many times. The world has improved again and again and when there have been hardships, there have always been people who will get in the way of that and work to oppose them. Grimdark isn’t reality, the world may not be kind, but it is fundamentally good. And those things that make the world worse can be changed, progress has been made in the past and is continuing to be made now.

Hope has wings, but it also has talons.

That’s what redemption is. It’s not looking at the bright side of sinners and ignoring their flaws, its making work towards getting better. The musical as a whole is about doing that together.

Essentially, if we eat shit together, things might end up differently.

Final Thoughts

I write these in Microsoft word before I post them to Tumblr, because I don’t trust the draft feature of any website. Ao3 has burned me too many times before to allow for that kind of mistake. However, one caveat of this is that the application can’t comprehend the phrase “power bottom”, which makes me laugh.

On a different note, I am not a Husker Dust shipper. Don’t get me wrong, if you ship the two characters, go for it. I simply read them as platonic. A friend helping out a friend. It doesn’t have to be romantic to mean something. There doesn’t have to be something more for these two to care about each other. Community isn’t always romantic.

That being said, if the ship becomes cannon, I will not be surprised at all.

Next week, I’m covering Hell’s Greatest Dad, and the global treasure that is Jeremy Jordan. So, stick around if that interests you.

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[gnomeniche]

SO. OKAY. "SILLY SAD DUCK" TALK BECAUSE IT HAS ME IN THE BIRDMANGELION MINES. welcome back to the corner where i spin conspiracy theories about duck.

so, "silly sad duck" was a bonus track from a dhmis album that was sent out to backers of the kickstarter in 2017. so it's pre-pilot and pre-tv show, which is important because i'm interested in this song in the context of the creators' ideas for where they could take dhmis and duck in particular.

this motherfucker's gonna get real fuckin speculative. and rambly. i'm very sorry i need to get all my thoughts out and it's the middle of the night so the structure's loose.

let's start out with some analysis of the song itself and the rest of dhmis surrounding it. the thing that immediately stands out is that this song, which is placed after every other song on the album, is about duck being "sad because he can't find his friends".

first of all. this was the last mental state we saw him in, and his fear of losing his friends keeps coming up in later dhmis media.

second of all. this kind of highlights how different his end was from his friends'?

like red and yellow were alive but isolated in relatively coherent false worlds, but as far as we know, duck just fucking died. and if he didn't, we don't know where he could have been. even the world he woke up in when he was being eaten was ambiguous.

a lot about his final moments were ambiguous. the metaphor is clear but the literal meaning of it is hazy. and he only appeared in the finale due to the machine glitching and bringing him out of... whatever limbo he went to after his consumption. this song's context, too, is ambiguous, and it makes significant use of audio glitches and distortion.

and like. this isn't the only time in post-original-series-dhmis that they've highlighted duck's existence relating oddly to the world's resets and the enforced narrative.

in the pilot he keeps repeating "i've lived in this town my whole life!" for seemingly no reason. this running gag is one of many reminders in the pilot that the three of them were somewhere BEFORE clayhill and they just can't remember. him insistently, dreamily saying it at odd occasions gives off the feeling that something about him has been thrown off. pilot!red gets flashes of awareness, but pilot!duck is strangely and pointedly unaware, as if he had been overwritten a little too forcibly. maybe due to both the shock of his death and how he disrupted the show so badly?

besides that, there's the connection between how he's pulled along by the antagonist of the pilot and how in the tv series he seems the least comfortable with throwing off the narrative. something about resets and death and punishments and replacements (though he's still the same even though he was replaced).

and SPEAKING of the whole replacement-but-does-it-really-matter thing, that's one of the weird interactions between duck's existence and the narrative in the tv show! along with that bit in the "electricity" blackout where there's his headless corpse next to a tv with a clip of him waving out at the screen that we've never seen before. which is another instance of duck in an ambiguous space. hm.

speaking of narrative, what's with the singer? who are they?

the singer acts like a narrator for the audience's benefit and maintains a warm, teacherly tone toward the student. the way they reads their lines gives the impression that they are doing the voice for duck; they inhale before the duck voice speaks its first line of gibberish. the dynamic of being a puppet on a show is extremely visible in this song.

to me, this gives off shades of lesley, our amiable narrator/puppeteer. i feel like this singer might have been some kind of precursor to her character. it could have been an early draft of an in-universe "show host" or "writer" presence, or it could have been a device that they used for this one song that later sparked the idea for the lesley character. but either way i think there's some kind of inspirational connection.

and the phrase "silly sad duck" itself... "silly" and "sad" are both fundamental to duck's character the way i interpret him. silly to deflect fears that may make him sad. however: how does the singer mean it? given how every other teacher in dhmis acts, they could very well be chiding him for being sad. saying that he's silly for grieving his loss? his sadness is silly?

and the singer's way of treating his loss as a cute little children's show (bc there’s a lot of these sweet-style little kids shows where a narrator speaks to an animated character as they do stuff! examples escape me rn though) might also serve to minimize legitimate pain in the characters as insigificant. which is a recurring theme with the authority figures in dhmis but i just wanna note its appearance here.

and the most important question: who IS that over there?

option 1: it's the other two! bc they came back once red pulled the plug and reset the show. he found his friends! the sweetness of this option IS undermined by the ominous deepening distortion of the narrator's voice at the end, but is the ending of dhmis not ALSO ambiguously sweet vs ominous. this does beg the question: is this song an in-universe thing. in the time between between his death and the plug pulling, was duck in some kind of puppet limbo where the meta of the show (where he's a puppet guided by a narrator) was a little thinner? if that's true, it would make sense with the increased meta associations of duck in later dhmis media.

option 2: it's NOT the other two. "who is it then" i don't know. but whatever it is, it can't be good. here's some sub-options:

2a: the audience? duck alludes to an audience a couple of times in a new series, and the clip of him on the tv in the blackout is waving at the screen and thus the watchers.

2b: a replacement? the first time his consciousness got transferred to another one of himself?

2c: another meta "puppeteer" figure like roy or lesley? maybe the featureless figures who are behind the cameras in "computers" and moving the puppets in "electricity"?

2d: a metaphorical thing of him realizing that the singer of the song is a separate person whose existence is weirdly enmeshed with his own? this one's probably too abstract but

so now we get to what i think it might mean regarding how the creators developed their ideas for the dhmis series. obvious disclaimer that i am not the creators and i cannot read their minds. this is just speculation.

this and the pilot are both two of the first pieces of post-original-series dhmis content, and they both show a strong focus on duck. which is very interesting to me. it couldn't have escaped the creators' notice that duck had a strange ending in the original series; both the pilot and the tv show constantly reference it.

this song focuses on duck's fear of being left alone. which is obv drawn from "health" (i've given up on calling it “food” bc the tracklist for the album calls the webseries 5 song "the healthy song"). but this trait keeps coming up in media released after this song was made? in the pilot, it's not explicit, but the way he's so easily able to be lured with the idea of keeping everything in the town secure could relate to this fear. and in the tv series, many of his negative reactions are spurred by his fears for his friends). and though we saw these traits in "health," what's interesting is that this song indicates a decision to keep and commit to this as a part of his character.

given this song's... everything... and how threads of its ideas keep running through the rest of dhmis, i really do feel like the creators have had the vague idea of something they want to do with duck's character development and and the narrative for a long time. in general, i think they've had many fairly consistent ideas for the direction of dhmis that they've been trying to shape across different iterations. like the whole "narrative is manipulating the protagonists and they will have to shatter it" thing

so, it's very interesting to me that duck's consequences of his own death, ambiguous existence within the world, and certain core character traits have seemingly been around for so long that they all come up in this bonus song from 2017.

just to be clear: i am not saying that the creators have had everything about dhmis planned out since the beginning. i truly do not think so. i just think it’s interesting to track the development of their ideas as they figured it out over time n what they decided to keep vs throw out. and i think it’s cool that you can kind of see it in these different stages of the show

anyway (pins all this up on a conspiracy board labeled with the words "get hype for birdmangelion" in huge block letters)

[ljomi-silvanius]

My response to Dawntrail. Woof. When I started the expansion I actually posted reactively about how much fun it was feeling, and deleted that two days later. Spoilery through the end of MSQ below-

I went into Dawntrail really excited for a chill start-up to future story. Vacation vibe while running into events and characters that might set up big consequences and meaning to other events down the road. No expectations of big drama within the expansion itself just building blocks. We got one block with zero attached narrative. While everyone is yelling that this is supposed to be our new ARR so we should chill about the quality of it- ARR provided us with countless characters, villains, and background plots without conclusions that continued into the future expansions (I know 1.0 really did this but for the sake of the story we have now, it was ARR). It may have been slightly confused and heavy-handed with its traditional MMO gameplay, but it did have a huge engrossing world set up for us. Dawntrail played out like any other expansion except feeling like it has even less effect on the future of the game in-world. We saved the day, again, and everything is exactly the same as it was a couple days prior. After Endwalker, I was excited at the thought of the WoL picking up their belongings and heading off into the horizon on their own and fumbling their way into new exciting events and alliances; yet our place in both the Void arc and Dawntrail felt so reliant on the Scions' decisions it's like nothing has changed. The WoL has been through so much and would be quite capable at this point yet seems to have no agency. This feeling of being trapped by past characters they can't seem to shake off, along with the idea being pushed repeatedly that we are an "adventurer" who goes where the wind takes us, makes the absence of a new band of allies kind of depressing. This was even more annoying as the Scions throughout Dawntrail felt very empty character-wise and unnecessary for the plot. Their reactions to events felt like having a livestream chat on the side of MSQ with no development of their own. I admit that I can't read the future, and maybe patches will make some characters we encountered continue on journeys with us, but nothing pointed to that as they all had their roles in their homes. While not new, I am hopeful Erenville will continue with us elsewhere! I was actually morbidly hoping something would happen making Wuk Lamat not end up in the throne, to give both continuous conflict and a new ally for some period of time past this expansion.

And regarding Wuk Lamat- absolutely love her. That doesn't mean that the dialogue making her repeat herself constantly about peace and learning wasn't some of the most tedious stuff ever put in this game. This tendency along with constant flashbacks and Scion commentary of "this reminds me of past expansion event" made it feel like the game, which has put us through complex politics and Limsa Lominsa dialect, now thinks of us as babies who can't pick up on the most basic thematic threads. The flashback to the Shadowbringers trolley guys was so unnecessary- let the audience pick it up on their own! And if they miss it, the current event should be fun or interesting enough that it's ok. I was thinking by the end that it was all for new players who chose to skip everything before Dawntrail, but flashback pictures would give nothing to them. I entirely agree with the complaints that this expansion was overtly exposition-based. Learning about new cultures is a huge basis of what we've gotten over the years, yet we generally learn through story beats that aren't just "learn the cultures". I love how important the individual cultures are, their differing ideals and lives, and how much color it adds to FFXIV, but I don't want to feel like I'm being placed in a classroom about it.

As we're tagging along with Lamat, it feels weird to me that we were asked to come at all. While I don't have qualms with being a side character to her, she's capable in combat and we're not given the chance to prove ourselves in much other than it, and we don't even mentor her in any way. We could have been the big sister/brother teaching her the ropes! Being given the mezcal jar to hold feels like an encapsulation of the entire ride. It feels like with how much new non-instanced dungeon/raid content we've started to get in MSQ, it was jarring how little there was in the entire expansion. We start out early with the look and zoom mode on Galool Jaja's tablets (which makes no sense why aren't we just walking up to them) and then they just forget we can do anything like that again other than sneaky stalk mode.

After the Rite of Succession and the brief moment in Texas, stuff starts getting better in plot and pace. There's some actual mystery, new characters who are more than an example of a culture, and it doesn't feel like you're doing things for a checklist. I'm obsessed with Otis and Galool Ja. At this point, the predictability seems to wane.

And then it comes back hard two levels later. The final area is again, a complete rehash of Shadowbringers and Endwalker. The Final dungeon is a complete rehash of Shadowbringers and Endwalker. The final zone is incredibly ugly, and I assumed with how jarring the colors were it would be glitchy and haunting. No, it's just a tasteless theme park that is keeping people happy for hundreds of years by having water fountains? Not much in this area points to people having anything but happy lives in a pointless and plasticky town, and yet as recalled by Alisae, their situation mirrors other civilizations we were shown to end up very unhappy. But they all like their salty popcorn and spending eternity serving it to others. I cannot understand the vibe they went for here and the task was again a tedious checklist. I also didn't understand the scale of this location- they made it Amaurot-esque extending to the horizon, yet we are able to turn off all memory sticks in a five malm radius- there could have been mention of other scions making their way to power down areas we weren't involved with, or a montage? Something? There's no way that would be everything.

I really wanted to enjoy Sphene, yet she has nothing to her but one side of Emet-Selch wrapped up in faux-innocence. They tried hard to place her as a foil to Wuk Lamat in the same way Emet and Exarch are foils, yet they had Lamat mention it directly ten times and at that point, how can you care about it anymore? There are threads they placed for her that I can't parse and was hoping to lead to a deeper character- how is the levin sickness her fault? In the end they painted her as nothing more than an overly caring helicopter mom. (Sphene WOULD beat you up at a child's soccer game.)

And that one building block I mentioned at the beginning- having an overpowered Azem-based stone that just hands Y'shtola exactly what she was looking for feels cheap and demeaning. I know she could have figured it out herself. In the same way I know Wuk Lamat could have figured out her trials without the perfect NPC walking up to her by chance every time.

In the end everything was entirely predictable. You get told x, you know that x is coming. We were told about Solution Nine before the drop- can you imagine if Amaurot was spoiled? We don't need plot twists, we don't need insane curves in characterization (Bakool Jaja I'm looking at you and your 90 degree angle), but some detail would really help, something that doesn't feel like it was a fan's recreation of tribe quests and the last two expansions, something I can continue to look forward to. I would have loved for Tural to have more stake and power in what goes on with Alexandria's presence. I would love for Tural to be more important in the future of the story, because I love everything there, and I'm just sad as hell about the package it came in. A package that came with Donkey Kong music using the same part of the leitmotif in every song, instead of Latino tinged songs that fit the region (if Kugane deserves that masterpiece, Tuliyollal deserves a sweeping and nostalgic piece that ties into the heart of Tural). Hell I would be happy with a minigame of making a piña colada if it was something new, but if feels like we're hanging onto loose threads now.

[darkietrashcan]

BAKUGO KATSUKI RISING

Many are saying that the animation looks wacky compared to the beautiful manga panels. Like, this:

Do I have to remind you that ANIMATION ISN'T ILLUSTRATION???

Animation is a media in which drawings are moving: that's its core. Therefore, shapes are simplified to achieve that goal. The better the drawings the higher the budget/farther away the deadline. The drawing in the anime doesn't look that appealing because Shiggy is supposed to move mid air, how do you expect all those lines/injuries being shown in the anime? To do that, an animator must draw many drawings of shiggy with all those scars, which would take a lot of time to do. And sometimes, with the budget given, those things can't be possible.

How do you expect the anime having the same quality as the manga? The manga has illustrations that imitate movement and only one drawing is needed to make the audience understand what is happening. but in animation we have that ACTUAL MOVEMENT (animation needs many frames-drawings to achieve a movement) therefore shapes must be simplified or it'd be too difficult to animate. Animators invest much time on drawing many drawings for a certain action.

Remember that 1 action panel in a manga=many drawings in the anime for that same action.

Animation quality gets better with a higher budget. We could blame it on the movie, as if it drained a lot of the budget for this season but idk. It could be also a low production budget overall. Another possibility could be the decision making of the director: if he wants certain scenes to look better than others, those scenes will be animated better because animators will invest more of their time in them. Example: (this scene was insane!)

Therefore, other scenes like the Shigaraki one, won't look as great because the animators had to focus on other scenes which are more important for the episode/series.

Which doesn't make much sense too, because the impalement scene looked like a still frame. It could've shown Shiggy's blades cutting through Bakugo's body (or would that have been too gory to show?) Or another creative idea.

I would blame this on the decision making of the director, he may have wanted the Endeavor scene (in which he burns Shigaraki to death) looking better because it was like a hope symbol for the Heroes, and therefore for the audience... Shiggy looks defeated, until he comes back to life thanks to AFO and impales Endeavor and the hope gets lost once again. But why hasn't the director put the emphasis on Katsuki's impalement? This scene returns a sour hope back because Deku gets saved but Bakugo gets seriously impaled AND showcases his character development. And I repeat: IN MY OPINIOM, this was a "bad decision making". They could've put more time into animating the impalement. it happened too fast (although in the manga, it's literally like that!), yet I couldn't savour it enough, it wasn't as impactful as when I read the manga, or when I wasn't a manga reader and got to watch Kacchan vs Deku 2, or Shoto vs Deku in the Sports festival. I believe that a lot of the budget for this season was cut down, which is sad, and delivered this result.

Either way, LOOKING AT THE WHOLE EPISODE, it was GREAT. SHIGGY VS DEKU. THE PUNCHES. BAKUGOS PAST. GEEZ. SO ANOTHER REMINDER: LOOK AT THE WHOLE EPISODE AND don't say the episode was shit because of one frame or one action. Bakugo's impalement was my only complaint for the ep, the rest, was an absolute banger

And we got beautiful still panels for the ending. 😭😁

To conclude, I still wanted to remind you that animation isn't illustration, and many of you had elevated expectations because you saw redrawn manga panels that looked way more appealing... When in reality, animation. Is not. Illustration. Animators can't make such beauties unless they get correctly paid for doing that.

Anyway that's all. I want to listen to your opinions though. Please be respectful.

[okcomputeroknotok19972017]

attempting to write an actual response to the problem of saw but... im actually getting so fucking bewildered reading this that i can barely type up a response. every sentence of this paper is SATURATED with hatred for the series, right from the beginning. sharrett is slinging mud at a made-up version of the saw franchise, distorting the actual text and framing of each movie until it becomes something it never was. he is writing this for an audience who already disapproves of these movies without ever having seen them.

in what world can a film critic not understand the idea of an unreliable narrator? the concept of self-deception? "john kramer is the most active character in (nearly) every movie, and he fully believes in his flawed worldview and acts confidently according to it... so is he being framed as the good guy?! and some people online sure seem to like him, too!"

the way that sharrett spends the majority of the article waffling about other movies which he seems to have an extreme distaste for as well only serves to distract the reader and to suggest that he's making some kind of intelligent point by wandering aimlessly and using some big words. it's smoke and mirrors. none of it has anything to do with the supposed problem of saw, which sharrett cannot actually confront in detail because it is not there. it does not exist the way he wants it to exist. he is arguing with a made-up version of the series.

if you want to argue that john kramer is framed as a hero, then you have to ignore every time that the series points out his hypocrisy or general fucked up-edness, through text or through subtext. it's truly astounding to me that a professional film critic would need to have his hand held through a movie to figure out who's the bad guy. in the first movie, adam is tested because he does not appreciate his life. by the end, he is screaming that he wants to live. his death was rigged. you can't see that the movie is framing that as something fucked up? as something tragic? in the second movie, we see the extent to which john has manipulated and ruined amanda's life. do you have such little faith in the average moviegoer that you think they'd see that as a noble thing of him to do? do you think the movie is honestly justifying daniel's psychological and physical torment? if this is all too subtle for you, what does amanda's confrontation with john in the third movie mean to you? what does it mean to you?

this is all ignoring the behind-the-scenes context of saw. while the increasingly sensational gore of the later movies reflect societal trends, it's important to understand how and why this happened. saw was made by two broke australian film students, leigh whannell (writer/actor) and james wan (director). the idea of a slowly unraveling mystery set in a single room came about from budget constraints--they wanted a film to shoot in just one location. leigh's anxieties about health inspired the "hey, wouldnt it be crazy if..." idea of a serial killer with cancer who tortures others to vicariously make them "appreciate their lives." from the get-go, john is portrayed as a hypocritical monster--again, see the way adam's trap was shown to be unbeatable from the start through no fault of his own.

neither leigh nor james expected saw to get big, and its success was unprecedented. the one shocking scene at the end of lawrence severing his foot (a rather bloodless scene, mind you) amidst an extremely high-energy ending created lots of buzz, and saw was a very unique film for the time. the more intense second film was co-written by leigh, as it began as a script someone else wrote that was reworked into a saw movie. lionsgate, as any other corporation would, wanted to include more of the stuff that made people talk about their movie: gore. and so, it was ramped up. rinse and repeat for the rest of the movies, remove the original creators after the third movie, and insert a soap opera storyline of succession, family ties, and betrayal for the more dedicated fans to follow along with and feel rewarded for keeping up with ... and here you are.

(it is interesting that sharrett seems to think john kramer's complete dedication to his ideology must mean he is being framed as smart or correct. i, for one, can understand the difference between someone acting and talking like they're right versus actually being right. it's why i disagree with this article instead of blindly lapping it up because sharrett speaks with conviction.)

this paper is not about saw. not only does the author misrepresent the film series, but 85% of the actual text is about other fucking movies with no tie-in back to saw. the point sharrett is trying to make is shrouded in unrelated pompous bullshit about how he had some problems with that one jodie foster movie's portrayal of sexuality and blah blah blah blah fucking blah. this article only serves to affirm the biases of people who have never seen saw but have already made up their minds about it. it misrepresents the plot, narrative framing, and especially the portrayal of john kramer. also he calls billy ugly which is by far the worst.

[dorothydalmati1]

Obscure Animation Subject #55: Serial Experiments Lain

Originally posted on Twitter on April 15, 2023.

Created by Yasuyuki Ueda, written by Chiaki J. Konaka and directed by Ryūtarō Nakamura, this is a 13-episode miniseries produced by Triangle Staff, and aired on TV Tokyo from July 6 to September 28, 1998.

The series follows Lain Iwakura, an adolescent girl in suburban Japan, and her relation to the Wired, a global communications network similar to the internet. The show is an original idea to the point of it being considered "an enormous risk" by its producer Yasuyuki Ueda.

Ueda had to answer repeated queries about a statement made in an Animerica interview. He stated that Lain was "a sort of cultural war against American culture and the American sense of values we [Japan] adopted after WWII". He later expanded this in numerous interviews.

He created Lain with a set of values he took as distinctly Japanese; he hoped Americans would not understand the series as the Japanese would. This would lead to a "war of ideas" over the meaning of the anime, hopefully culminating in new communication between the two cultures.

When he discovered that the American audience held the same views on the series as the Japanese, he was disappointed. The Lain franchise was originally conceived to connect across forms of media (anime, video games, manga), but due to its failure that was scrapped.

Ueda said in an interview, "the approach I took for this project was to communicate the essence of the work by the total sum of many media products". The scenario for the video game was written first, and the video game was produced at the same time as the anime series.

However, the anime was released first. A dōjinshi titled "The Nightmare of Fabrication" was produced by Yoshitoshi ABe and released in an artbook An Omnipresence in Wired. Ueda and Konaka declared that the idea of a multimedia project wasn’t unusual in Japan, as opposed for Lain.

Despite the show’s confusion to the audience it wanted to appeal to, critics responded positively to the thematic and stylistic characteristics, and it was awarded an Excellence Prize by the 1998 Japan Media Arts Festival for "its question the meaning of contemporary life".

According to Christian Nutt from Newtype USA, the main attraction to the series is its keen view on "the interlocking problems of identity and technology". Nutt saluted Abe's "crisp, clean character design" and the "perfect soundtrack" in his 2005 review of series.

He said that "Serial Experiments Lain might not yet be considered a true classic, but it's a fascinating evolutionary leap that helped change the future of anime." Anime Jump gave it 4.5/5, and Anime on DVD gave it A+ on most criteria with some As for volume 3 and 4.

Lain was subject to commentary in the literary and academic worlds. The Asian Horror Encyclopedia calls it "an outstanding psycho-horror anime about the psychic and spiritual influence of the Internet". It notes that the red spots present in all the shadows look like blood pools.

It also notes the death of a girl in a train accident is "a source of much ghost lore in the twentieth century", more so in Tokyo. Gilles Poitras describes it as a "complex and somehow existential" anime that "pushed the envelope" of anime diversity in the 1990s.

Susan J. Napier in her 2003 reading to The Problem of Existence in Japanese Animation, compared the show to Ghost in the Shell and Spirited Away. According to her, the main characters of the two other works cross barriers; they can cross back to our world, but Lain can’t.

Napier asks whether there is something to which Lain should return, "between an empty 'real' and a dark 'virtual'". Mike Toole named SEL as one of the most important anime of the 90s. Anime Academy gave the series a 75%, but criticized it due to the "lifeless" setting it had.

Michael Poirier of EX magazine stated that the last three episodes fail to resolve the questions in other DVD volumes. Justin Sevakis of Anime News Network noted that the English dub was decent, but that the show relied so little on dialogue that it hardly mattered.

So all in all, this show is one of the weirdest shows out there, but despite being a miniseries, it still has significance thanks to the bizarre nature and sci-fi themes. Not in the levels of Neon Genesis Evangelion or Cowboy Bebop, but still really interesting to go through.

[magnorious]

Pirates of the Caribbean and How It Perfectly Executes A Theme

We are taught from a very young age, every year in English class, to study the theme of the texts we read. What “theme” means evolves with the complexity of the class.

Theme is first a single concept: Good versus Evil, for example. Then it’s a statement: Hubris leads to ultimate downfall. One cannot repeat the past. Comfort creates complacency creates apathy.

I like to think of theme as the question your story must answer. When all those people in all those stories had the chance of turning back, only they didn’t, what were they holding onto?

Answer: “That there is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.”

That’s theme.

You as the creator ask a question to the world, and in your work, you provide the answer. Your work is your argument for your case, proven through as many characters as possible.

So how important is this notion of one central, driving idea to your story? Depends on the goal of the story. Those that serve as lessons or warnings or to inspire, probably should know and make explicitly clear what they want their audience to walk away with. If it’s a comedy, or an explosive action movie purely to distract so you can switch off your brain for two hours, then having a central idea is less important.

Theme is the common thread that streamlines a plot, when done well. It helps cut out the fat. Remembering you have one for each and every element you write helps you decide what is necessary and helpful, and what can be left out or modified.

But are action adventure blockbusters and life lessons mutually exclusive? Of course not. Enter Curse of the Black Pearl.

I adore Pirates of the Caribbean (1-3 we are not here for anything that comes after).

There’s a hundred and one essays out there about these movies and I’m likely not the last to point out what I’m about to say, but for a film franchise this old, to still having fresh content be made about it, praising it, there is something to be said about Pirates’ legacy.

So CoBP is based off the Disney ride, something with little depth or substance to its name pre-film franchise money boon. It being based off this ride, not a book or historical figure or event, or a previous film, this gave the writers the perfect advantage: It forced them to be creative.

Which is apparently kryptonite to Hollywood, but here you go.

This movie was so underestimated, so surrounded with disregard and skepticism, that it allowed Pirates the complete freedom to do whatever it wanted with almost zero stakes. It allowed for sincerity and passion, instead of being controlled by the unseen strings of shadowy producers and statistics.

Which meant that the writers were able to write the good story first, and cater to the money second.

CoBP poses a question, a theme, and spends the entire movie answering that question, and defending its argument.

“Can a pirate be a good man?”

Pirates is a story about social dichotomy first, and an action adventure movie about scurvy-ridden undead sea-farers second. The sequels, notably, do not keep providing arguments to answer that question, or provide a new question to answer. They are absent of a theme as strong as this one.

So can a criminal, a pirate, an orphan blacksmith, be a good man worthy of praise, or the love of his life? Can he overcome the societal boxes he is forced to be in, break out of his prescribed role, and perfectly blur the line between a man with a “sense of propriety” and a hero who, though he works outside of the law, still does the right thing in the end?

CoBP says: Yes.

We have four characters who answer this question of black and white social dichotomy all in different ways: Jack, Will, Norrington, and Elizabeth.

Jack is a pirate captain, wrongfully mutinied upon by his greedy crew and left to die before escaping with his life. Because his crew ousted him, because they were greedy, Jack was unable to take part in the curse cast on the crew by the treasure they stole before the plot began. For ten years now, the undead crew of the Black Pearl have been hunting down all the pieces of the treasure they stole, and Jack has been trying to get his ship back from his mutinous first mate. 

Elizabeth is the governor’s daughter, locked like a bird in a cage in her suffocating life, strongly encouraged by her father (who is genuinely a good man, not an ass like he easily could have been), to marry a man of the Navy, Norrington.

Will is an orphan rescued years prior by a ship Elizabeth was on, having been stranded at sea. He’s brought up as a blacksmith’s apprentice, and he and Elizabeth want very badly to be with each other but due to the massive divide between their social classes, it’s just not meant to be.

That’s the setup, then the plot begins.

Jack arrives in Port Royal looking to steal a ship to go hunt down the Black Pearl. Meanwhile Elizabeth is being courted by Norrington, the navy commodore, and due to her suffocating life and literally suffocating dress, she falls off a fort wall into the ocean below. Jack is around to rescue her.

Upon doing so, he’s discovered as a pirate and one of the movie’s signature exchanges occurs, when Norrington chides Jack for being “The worst pirate I’ve ever heard of,” and Jack responds: “But you have heard of me.”

And in the same conversation we have: “One good deed is not enough to redeem a man of a live of wickedness.” // “Though it seems enough to condemn him.” Sidetrack, I firmly believe Jack is absolutely referencing “People aren’t cargo” from AWE, even though that script wasn’t even a passing notion yet.

So already we have a rebuttal for the question, the theme of the story. Can a pirate also be a good man? Well, here is a pirate who did a good deed. What do you do with him?

The answer is to send Jack to the gallows.

Jack’s arrested, Elizabeth is safe but spooked, Will has missed all of this. Then the Black Pearl crew attack the city and due to some misassumptions, Elizabeth is taken captive by the previously mutinous first mate turned new captain, Barbossa.

(Sidetrack, this post isn’t about Barbossa but he’s not a bad dude, either. Will, Jack, and Elizabeth are just in the way of him breaking an awful curse. CoBP has two of the most unique villains in any summer blockbuster.)

Will, wanting to save her, frees Jack from prison since the Military’s strict rules prevent Norrington from speeding things along, and they go off together, breaking the law to do the right thing.

Plot progresses, we find out about the curse on the undead pirates, get some character development and backstory. Norrington is obligated to join the hunt now that Jack has commandeered one of his ships.

Due again to misassumptions, the undead pirates think Elizabeth is the key to breaking their curse, and take her to the Isla de Muerta to spill her blood over the cursed Aztec gold. It fails, because she’s not the person they need, and Will and Jack arrive in time to save her.

Turns out that Will is the person they need. Will’s father was a pirate, not the “good man” he believes him to be. Will’s father did the right thing, standing up for Jack against the mutiny, and was punished for it. It’s his blood that will break the curse.

Piratey ship battles occur, the protagonists’ ship is overtaken, Will’s discovered as the proper blood bag and Elizabeth and Jack are marooned. It’s Will’s turn to be sacrificed, only now Norrington has rescued Elizabeth and Jack and must decide whether to keep to his duty and drag Jack back to face judgment, or rescue Will.

Elizabeth persuades Norrington by agreeing to marry him if he helps Will and they all go to rescue him. Norrington screws his crew over by ignoring Jack’s advice, more piratey battles happen only now with an undead sword fight gimmick.

The curse is broken, enemies killed or captured, and come the end of the film, Jack is taken to face judgment, Elizabeth has agreed to marry Norrington, Will’s once again alone, and Norrington has done his duty. They even say it, explicitly, that everyone has kept their word, and no one is happy about it.

So then the final minutes are closing in, and Will comes to rescue Jack from the gallows, Elizabeth declares her love for Will, and Norrington… lets them all go. He’s a very rare honest hero, despite being an antagonist, and I wish there were more people out there written like him.

So the question of the narrative: Can someone deemed undeserving of praise and good fortune by society, actually deserve it in the end?

Jack answers it the most explicitly. Can a pirate be a good man? Yes. That line I highlighted earlier, “though one good deed seems enough to condemn him.” Jack would not have gotten caught had he not done the right thing.

Jack’s full semi-canon backstory is that he was a lawful privateer, then he was commissioned to haul slaves for the East India Trading Company. Jack refused, because, and I quote, “People aren’t cargo.” And because of that choice, the legally wrong thing to do but morally just cause, he was branded a Pirate, literally. One good deed was enough to condemn him to a life of piracy.

That semi-canon backstory was a deleted scene because the writers knew including it would make him unamibiously a hero, and remove a lot of the tension from AWE when it came time for Jack to decide whether or not to save Will and lose immortality, because we’d all know what the answer would be.

He’s self-serving more often than not, but in the end, he is a pirate, and a good man.

Elizabeth also answers this question, in a different way. She is also two nigh-incompatible things at once. She is a proper lady, and a sword-fighting badass pirate herself (eventually, Pirate King). Can a woman of her stature and social standing, also be a pirate? Yes.

Norrington answers this in another different way: Can a good man remain a good man, even if he acts outside the law to do good things? He is shown he’s wrong, proved by Jack and Will, and admits defeat come the end of the film. The Governor explicitly says that sometimes an act of piracy, if it may be the only course of action, is the right course of action.

And finally, Will. Will, who must reconcile with the fact that his father is both a pirate, and a good man. That ‘one good deed was enough to condemn’ two good men, branded as criminals by the laws that be. That he himself, is a pirate, and a good man. The iconic pirates theme “He’s a Pirate,” the title comes from a line at the end of this movie references Will, not Jack.

Elizabeth’s father accepts that his daughter loves Will, and admits that despite his upbringing and lacking social status, Will is a “good man.” It’s Elizabeth who corrects her father and says, “No, he’s a pirate.”

This is a fantastic movie, and so much of it comes from the theme. It’s not just a movie about pirates, it’s a question about society and the lines we draw to create artificial hierarchies so that those deemed worthy by arbitrary rule succeed, and those deemed unworthy are punished.

Thanks for letting me soapbox; TLDR: CoBP is a fantastic case study in thematic storytelling by using its four main characters to answer the question of the theme: Can a pirate be a good man? Will, Jack, Elizabeth, and Norrington all represent dichotomous sides of societal expectations: A poor, orphan blacksmith wanting to court a society lady AND a good man being a pirate (Will), a pirate being a *decent* man, when pushed (Jack), a society lady breaking free of classist expectations and being her true, nerdy and badass self (Elizabeth), and an honest military man skirting the law to do what’s right (Norrington). It’s just a shame that the other movies couldn’t be as strong.

[forget-mad-not]

Alas, I have not read Macbeth and therefor cannot judge or analyse you on your references. If I miss or misinterpret anything blame it on that. English classics are still difficult for me in terms of english, for the most part, so I tend to avoid them. Schiller, Büchner or Goethe references are very welcome though. /j

I love how everything, even before the last paragraph (the revelation) points to the fact that this is not the height of the plot, the story reaching it's climax of an organic development but a perfected, practiced tale being told to the audience.

"Once upon a time: all as it should be."

The very first line, fairy tale opening. This is the Actor introducing his audience to the tale. I really love how fond you seem to be of repetitions. How it is repeated again in the last paragraph, promising that nothing will change.

"Revenge is always predestined, a necessary heartbeat. If it is a good story, it must be fulfilled, because every good story is a promise kept, like ‘till death do us part’ or ‘I’ll protect you’."

Well, this is just foreshadowing to DAMIEN in the best way possible. Again, drilling in the fact that Celine is a character in this, by the Actor perfected, tale. Repeated actions over dozens of the same day all coming to a climax where she buries the axe in Marks chest. Revenge being fulfilled, planned, leading to Damien taking the leading role. As planned.

To me, it almost seems like sentences in italics are either thoughts planted by the Actor or direct comments of his (I'm obsessed with him, I can't help it).

Your use of stylistic devices is fantastic. The frequent use of anaphoras, parallelisms and repetitions combined with your fantastic use of metaphors? Perfection

Keeping this short as it is 00:29 here and I am tired.

Spoiler for anyone out there, we're talking about this fic of mine:

And now I'd like to shove all the thought-forming tools of my entire academic career into the answer /hj /lh

First of all, I swear I'm going to put a Woyzeck-quote in a piece of writing just for you :"D ✨

In this piece of writing, by the way, I didn't so much refer to the plot of Macbeth as use fragments of its more known speech because intertextuality is a wonderful thing:

Small allusions, I know, but first of all: they sound good ✨ On the other hand, the mental image of theatre evoked by these lines are to further build associations that are meant to suggest the reality-creating function of a story (which is an important point of the characters in WKM?, especially in relation to Actor and the DAMIEN-video).

The loop-mechanic, the act of continuous repetition, also evokes a sense of rehearsal, which can develop the classic rules of storytelling and the methods that can give a story its most powerful form. One might think, of course, that a self-regarding all-mighty story-creator like Actor would be aware of them and use them to the verge of obsession.

HOWEVER. Of course, there has to be a 'however' :"D

You point very well here to the self-reflexive nature of the text and, more importantly, the story, probably my favorite canon element of the Markiplier Cinematic Universe.

Because Actor may be aware of the elements that make up a good ol' perfect story, but on the one hand: fiction is not life, and on the other hand Mark as a writer (consciously or in his usual 'sounded cool' way) has very cleverly in DAMIEN subverted the audience's expectation and literally put a gun on the wall that didn't fire and said 'fuck Chekhov'.

Basically, he managed to take his Markiplier-promises to the level of storytelling meta-criticism. Brava.

So this fanfiction was trying to be a lyrical expression of that idea, as Celine, thinking like Actor, tries to adjust and win in this twisted world, because until the story is over, she can win. (The tragedy: the story will never be over.)

From that point of view, your point about the italicized sentences is absolutely correct, on some level Actor did indeed plant those ideas there, but they are more Celine's (otherwise correct-seeming) assumptions about Actor's strategies.

However, Celine's downfall in this situation is, ironically, that she is trying to play Actor's game, following in his footsteps, trying to make sense of his arcane, stupid story-beats, trying to use them to her (and Damien's) advantage. However, all this does is make us go round and round in circles and we just tire ourselves out.

Maybe, a solution (won't solve everything, though, some things can't be fixed, and that must be accepted): if you don't play by the rules, there is no play.

You can only break out of the loop. But look, it's cracking around the edges like ice anyway. Leave the gun on the wall. Here's an axe, more practical.

Fuck Chekhov.

But hey, that's just a theory, a dead author's theory! (Next time our lesson respectfully will be 'fuck Roland Barthes', just watch :"D)

Meo dear, thank you so much for your thoughts and for taking the time to reflect on my story and share your interpretations with me, it means a lot! :"3 💜

And, I haven't forgotten, I will definitely keep in mind your offer of beta-reading and German proofreading ;) ✨

[kyarbrougharts245-02]

Blog Seven

Today’s reading, titled “Hierarchy, Web Hierarchy, Web Accessibility,” covered pages 94-120. The reading starts off where Blog 5’s ended. Something important I didn’t mention last time was the topic of redundancy, which page 94 briefly delves into. Here it mentions that writers tend to avoid redundancy but highlights that such behavior can be accepted within typography. The examples the book gives are line indents and breaks. This specifically stood out to me because it cohesively compared and contrasted two feats associated with Graphic Design (type and writing) and how redundancy produces different results, explicitly illustrating how it can benefit someone depending on the work they are doing. 

Graphic Design can also delve into web design, a topic this reading also covers. It mentions hierarchies and how designers can make sites more accessible to a general audience (an example mentioned being line readers for the visually impaired). I knew of the existence of these amenities but I originally did not realize that Graphic Designers could play such a big role in its creation. The reading helps illuminate how vast the job of Graphic Design can expand. 

One quote in the reading that stood out to me was, “Paragraphs do not occur in nature” (Lupton, 102). I had not previously associated this fact with paragraphs. It makes sense as no animal has ever been seen to develop a written language, let alone an entire paragraph. Nor can the trees or the rocks found in the soil. It is mentioned that the standard of indenting new paragraphs began in the 17th century, another detail I did not know. Ever since then, we’ve seen most books being indented, associating the inclusion typically as professional. It draws me back to the beginning of the reading where the humans discover that indents make paragraphs more appealing and therefore repeat it. It is a desired redundancy.

Steering away from the reading, the class has remained relatively easygoing. We’ve entered the topic of mood boards and what to expect in a client meeting. Many valuable tips were shared but I think the one that stood out to me was the idea that a logo should stand the test of time, meaning logos should not have to be redesigned and if they do, there should be a minimum of ten-year lifespan before redesign. 

I can see how this would be useful going forward and the importance of why design is such a time-consuming process. Lots of research must happen for the best results. One of our classmates agreed to be our test client and we are currently tasked with designing a mood board based on an abundance of responses he’s given us. On Tuesday we recorded some additional information and now I plan to figure out how to make the most faithful mood board that represents him while discerning how to design when certain traits contradict each other. 

[ogma-conceptions]

Transform Enterprises Through Marketing Innovation

As a business, you often question how to get more prospects to recognize your company. With traditional routes such as print advertising or coupon mailers, you see a slight return with a trickle of business here and there.

Your business needs consistency. Whether you have a large or small following, there is always room for improvement with digital marketing solutions in India including social media marketing services in India.

Let’s transform enterprises through marketing innovation:

Innovative marketing is about being creative and uncovering fresh ideas to engage your customers. It’s about understanding the current trends in marketing and then taking it one step further to create something new and exciting. This can be anything from a creative campaign or concept to a fresh approach to traditional marketing techniques that sets your business apart from the competition with the help of digital marketing solutions in India.

Key Takeaways:

Distinctive Positioning: Embracing marketing innovation fosters a unique selling proposition that differentiates a product or service in a crowded market, capturing consumer attention and interest.

Enhanced Customer Relationships: Innovative marketing strategies nurture customer loyalty by engaging the audience with fresh and relevant campaigns, which translates to repeat business and a solidified brand community.

Revenue Growth and Market Agility: By continually reinventing marketing approaches, businesses can not only increase their revenue through novel offerings and expanded customer reach but also adapt swiftly to changing market conditions, sustaining their competitive edge over time.

Think about Tesla’s commitment to putting the first electric vehicle on the road in 2008, or Google’s introduction of a search engine in 1998. Each innovation was unheard of at the time and represented a major paradigm shift.

Benefits of digital innovation from digital marketing solutions in India with an eye on social media marketing services in India:

Improving the Efficiency of Marketing Campaign: innovation in technology and analytics can help companies optimize their marketing campaigns, making them more effective and efficient.

Increased Reach and Visibility: innovative tools and platforms can help companies reach a wider audience and increase their online visibility.

Increased Customer Engagement: it can also help companies interact and engage with customer in new and exciting ways.

How do social media play an important role in digital innovation?

We know what social media is and many of you reading this will most likely understand how it can be leveraged to meet your business goals, be it database capture, brand awareness or product sales. But how do you build a strategy that drives digital innovation with social media marketing services in India?

Here are three areas:

Building customer relationships

Enhancing brand credibility

Data, data and more data

Beyond improving efficiencies and streamlining tasks, perhaps the biggest advantage social media provides as part of a wider digital innovation drive is visibility. According to a survey, 90% of businesses understand the importance of social media and leverage it to drive growth.

A Word of caution from one of the best digital marketing solutions in India:

Firms must prioritize network security to safeguard against data breaches that can undermine customer trust and corporate reputation. Compliance with legal standards regarding customer engagement on social media is also paramount, as failure to adhere to these regulations can result in severe penalties. Maintaining a proactive stance on security and compliance helps protect the organization and its customers from potential cyber threats and legal issues.

[dereksmcgrath]

Re-Plotting 'Bungo Stray Dogs' Season 5

For Seasons 4 and 5 of Bungo Stray Dogs, I have recorded audio commentaries for each episode. 

I did so because I enjoy the series. 

(I feel like I’m going to be repeating that a lot in what follows, like an apology: “I swear, I do like the series! Just because I really hate how this is being adapted doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy most of the series!”)

In each audio commentary, in addition to talking over the episode while I’m watching it, I also include preconceptions–predictions I make about the episode before I start watching, such as what will be cut, what will be kept, ideas about maybe how scenes will be re-arranged or altered for ease of animation or content concerns. I build these preconceptions off of the knowledge I have about what comes next in the story as based on what I’ve read in the manga and light novels. 

But it looks like Season 5 will likely overtake the manga. And I really don’t like that. 

Season 5 Episode 10 isn’t out until Wednesday. And before what I have to say gets any more out of date ahead of Wednesday, I decided to share those preconceptions first. But the discussion is actually more about how I wish the story had made different choices so that we wouldn’t be in this mess of rushing through so many plot beats, forgetting about characters or hiding them for too long or failing to bring them into this arc (where is Yosano, where is Kyoka), and setting a better pace that ramps up the tension where it’s lacking, extends fight scenes that could have shown off the animation better (assuming there is any budget for some extra action beats), and re-arranging moments from how they first appeared in the manga to help keep the focus on a plot beat or character moment to let its full importance weigh on the audience rather than cutting to the next scene just because that’s how the manga did it. 

The following is slightly edited from how it will appear in the audio commentary, but as I said, I wanted to share this now before it is outdated when Season 5 Episode 10 comes out on Wednesday. 

Season 5 Episode 10 Trailer and Preview Images

Like I said, typically before the audio commentary I give my preconceptions, as based on what appears in the teaser trailer and preview images released by Kadokawa. However, it is hard to think up preconceptions when the trailer and preview images pretty much spoil every last thing left in the manga that hasn’t yet appeared in the anime yet–there’s not much room for hypothesizing what happens when it feels like the trailer and the preview images are telling you exactly what is going to happen. 

BONES Was Likely Adapting Before the Manga Chapters Were Published

The anime is now no longer adapting the manga, the manga and the anime are both now adapting the same story beats that Kafka Asagiri wrote, because the manga wasn’t out long enough for anyone working on the anime to refer to published chapters at the time of episode production. 

It is incredibly likely Asagiri was advising, if not himself writing, these anime episodes while also writing the manga chapters, which would account for what this episode and the last one, if not others, have so many differences between the manga panels and the anime storyboards– it has nothing to do with BONES thinking they could make a better decision (even though I think some of those changes have been better and some worse than how the manga did it)-- no, it has to do with BONES having zero example from the manga to look at, because it likely was not yet published. That’s why we get Chuuya shooting Dazai differently, or Dazai looking creepier before he’s going to share air with Sigma through a kiss, or Fyodor just not looking as engaging when offering his hand to Sigma, and no, the blood coming off isn’t helping make this better. 

But, that’s the sidebar, let’s get back to my point. 

What Else Is in the Trailer

As I said, I would go into all of these details from the trailer– but they would have me repeating points I really want to make about what is left to adapt from the manga, because, honestly, Episode 10 could adapt everything left in the manga, with nothing left for Episode 11, meaning Episode 11 may be entirely new to everyone, manga readers and anime-only watchers alike. And I can’t see any way to give this season an ending that ends this arc in any satisfying fashion. Yes, Fukuchi could just win at the end– but that means the arc is not technically over. Yes, Fukuchi could lose– and that would be rushed, and wouldn’t give enough time for closure for what will probably be the deaths of Fukuzawa, Dazai, maybe Aya and Sigma, potentially Bram and anyone vampirized including Akutagawa, Jouno, and Tachihara, very unlikely the deaths of Fyodor and Fukuchi. 

I don’t see how this season wraps up well. 

And that is all at the feet of this trailer, which seems to adapt everything left from the manga in just this trailer. 

Plot Breakdown by Trailer and Preview Images

I’m not kidding. Let’s quickly go through a few plot beats from the manga, and I’ll supplement those with what appears in the trailer and the preview images. 

Chapters 106 and 106.5: Akutagawa is holding Aya and Bram hostage atop the airport control tower– we see Aya and Bram in the trailer atop that control tower. Dazai and Sigma are still drowning and are going to kiss to share oxygen– we see that in the trailer. 

Chapter 106.5: Sigma escapes the elevator and heads to Fyodor in the security room– a preview image shows Fyodor reaching out to Sigma, so this chapter has to be adapted to show how Sigma got out of the elevator to arrive at Fyodor in the security room. 

Chapter 107: Atsushi finds Akutagawa holding Aya and Bram hostage– again, the trailer shows Atsushi versus Akutagawa. Also in Chapter 107, Sigma confronts Fyodor– again, the preview image shows Fyodor reaching out to Sigma. 

Chapter 107.5: Aya tries to pull the sword out of Bram– we see that in the trailer. 

Chapter 108: Atsushi is about to bash in Akutagawa’s head but stops himself– we see that in the trailer. At the same time, that allows Akutagawa to tie up Atsushi and rip his limbs off– we see that in the trailer. Meanwhile, Fyodor reaches out his hand to Sigma– again, we see that in the preview images. Elsewhere, Fukuchi calls the UN to unseal One Order– we see that in the trailer. At the same time, we see Fukuzawa bleeding out while a bright light shines from where Fukuchi is unsealing One Order– we see that in the trailer. 

Chapter 109: Fyodor is still reaching his hand out to Sigma– again, it’s in the preview image. Elsewhere in the prison, Chuuya aims a gun at Dazai’s head– we see that in the preview image. Chuuya then shoots Dazai in the head while Fyodor watches– we see that in the trailer and in the preview image. Meanwhile, Fukuchi directs all military forces to start bombing– we see that in the trailer. 

All of what I just said? That is too much for one episode. Not one of those moments is going to get a moment to breathe. 

The Rest of the Plot Broken Down by Chapter

And what is worse? That’s not all that happens in those chapters. I only listed what the trailer and preview images show from those chapters. There are so many other moments from Chapters 106 to 109 that can also be adapted. 

Let’s list those numerous moments as briefly as I can: 

Chapters 106 and 106.5: 

Aya wakes up from remembering everything her dad said about her dead mom and her dead sister. Aya finds herself and Bram atop the airport control tower. 

Elsewhere, Sigma and Dazai are drowning in the water and can’t go above the surface or else the fire up there will asphyxiate them or burn them alive. Sigma tries to shoot open the doors with the gun– no luck. Dazai pulls him down further below the water; Sigma believes Dazai is trying to kill him, and we hear all of Sigma’s inner turmoil– before Dazai kisses him to share their oxygen before he blows up the circuitry in the elevator to turn off the water and the fire. 

Sigma opens the elevator doors– but before he and Dazai can escape, Fyodor sends the elevator plummeting. For plot reasons– because there are no good reasons– Dazai can only push Sigma out through the elevator doors before it’s too late. As Dazai sacrifices himself for Sigma, he tells Sigma that it is now his responsibility to defeat Fyodor. 

(What I just said could have been half an episode, especially if you moved some of the later Aya stuff to the beginning of this plot summary. But onto the next chapter being adapted this week…)

Chapter 107: 

Atsushi is searching for Fukuzawa while worrying why he can’t hear Dazai’s voice any longer. He finds Aya and Bram atop the airport control tower– where Akutagawa attacks him. Akutagawa doesn’t try to block, breaking his arm before healing himself by biting himself to suck his own blood. Atsushi tries to get through to Akutagawa. 

Back at the prison, Sigma finds a note in the hallway written in Russian, asking for help. Elsewhere in the prison, Dazai drags himself out of the elevator; he is bleeding out and his leg is broken. 

Fyodor watches Dazai on the security cameras before Sigma shoots him in the shoulder and demands to know his Ability. Fyodor tries to trick Sigma, saying Sigma just wants to join the Agency to feel like he has a home but that Dazai is just using him. Sigma blocks out that noise and says that even if he is being used by Dazai, he knows Fyodor has to be stopped and again demands to know what is his Ability. 

(All of this could have been half an episode, depending on how long Atsushi and Akutagawa fight, if you do a flashback to Sigma remembering what Dazai and Gogol told him to do to Fyodor. But onto the next chapter being adapted this week…)

Chapter 107.5: 

Bram admits to Aya that Akutagawa turned him over to Fukuchi, and Fukuchi used Bram to gain control over the vampires to prepare a global attack, with Bram negotiating a deal that Fukuchi wouldn’t hurt Aya. Aya tries to pull out the sword. Bram recognizes Aya as looking similar to his dead wife or his dead daughter. 

(Like I said, if you had this stuff moved to Chapter 106 with the rest of the Aya stuff, this could be part of the first half of an episode. But onto the next chapter being adapted this week…)

Chapter 108: 

Sigma asks why Fyodor wrote a note asking for help. Fyodor clutches his head and claims he has multiple personalities, and that he has a magic blade that Sigma can use to stab him to death to kill his evil side. 

But when Sigma reaches for the knife, Fyodor just stabs him. But Fyodor admits Sigma has guts and offers to trade their information. 

(This is the most foolish Sigma will be in this arc, and I don’t see how you can keep cheering on a protagonist who is this foolish.) 

Back at the airport, Atsushi pulls his punches, gets tied up by Akutagawa, and gets his limbs ripped off. 

(This is also why Atsushi is like Sigma, a silly protagonist that I can’t cheer on.)

Meanwhile, the UN surrenders One Order to Fukuchi, Aya can see the bright light all the way from the control tower of One Order being unsealed. 

(This is at least half an episode’s worth of content. Again, it depends on how long the conversation is between Sigma and Fyodor, and how long the fight is between Akutagawa and Atsushi. But onto the next chapter being adapted into this overstuffed episode this week…)

Chapter 109: 

Sigma takes Fyodor’s hand, learns everything– but passes out before he can contact Ango or the Agency. 

Fyodor then turns around to watch the security camera as Chuuya shoots Dazai to death. 

Back at the airport, Aya sees Akutagawa or someone broke the window at the airport control tower, so she pushes a desk out of the tower to tie up to Bram and throws the desk off the tower so that gravity pulls the sword out of Bram. 

Meanwhile, Fukuchi takes One Order and directs the bombing to begin, as One Order grows skin and three eyes. 

(And all of this is at least half an episode. But it may take up just a fourth of an episode.)

This Is Too Much for One Episode

If we are counting half-chapters as full chapters– and screw it, yes, I am, they are structured like complete chapters– that is six chapters of content in one episode. 

Listen to all those plot beats: we are going to go from Sigma escaping the elevator to being knocked out, we’re going to go from Dazai escaping the elevator to being shot dead (with a flashback to Chuuya thrown in), we’re going to go from Atsushi facing off against Akutagawa to already losing the fight, and we’re going to go from Aya not knowing what happened to waking up, learning Bram’s bargain with Fukuchi, learning Bram sees her like his dead wife or his dead daughter, and tying a desk to Bram to throw off the building. 

This is too much for one episode. 

And that’s not even getting into how what I read, despite my efforts to re-arrange some plot details for clarify, are largely in that order in the manga, and given how closely BONES has stuck to that same order in the anime, will be in that order in the anime, meaning moments not only don’t get time to breathe (like Dazai and Sigma drowning in the elevator), they are taken away from us before we get to process, so that we move onto another plot beat– before moving back to the previous plot beat. 

No! Stick to that one plot beat! Don’t change to another perspective or location or character– stay with this moment and let it end on its own terms! 

There is no tension held for long as to what is up with Fyodor or whether Fukuzawa is dead or what Sigma learned from touching Fyodor– this is just rushed! 

By this same logic, that should mean the ending will be rushed to make the Agency whole again and the world saved– but somehow, I don’t think I’ll like that, because, first, a rushed ending is also bad, and second, I really don’t think we’re going to get a happy ending to this story any time soon– more suffering awaits before Fukuchi is actually stopped.

I should also be happy we’re rushing because setting all of this in an airport has been weirdly underwhelming: no unique sets, no interesting ways of using what is at an airport in a fighting sequence, no clever use of airport equipment by Kenji in his fight against Tetchou, or even a gag about running through the food court. This is all so weirdly under-thought and feels like a waste of a decent set location.

Re-Write This Plot

In fact, screw it, before Wednesday’s episode comes out, I’m going to try re-staging all of this, just based on the manga chapters. 

Let’s start with Sigma, Dazai, Fyodor, and Chuuya. If you intersected the tension of Sigma waiting to reach out to Fyodor, and seeing Dazai about to get shot by Chuuya, and that is what compels Sigma to take Fyodor’s hand, knowing Dazai is going to die– that would have been better. 

One of my complaints is that Sigma, like a fool, trusts Fyodor is telling the truth about multiple personalities and trusts to take up Fyodor’s hand. I don’t believe Sigma is that desperate yet. So, force Sigma to watch Chuuya shooting Dazai in the arms– you know, like Sigma should have done to Fyodor. Then have Dazai look at the security camera and repeat what he said to Sigma earlier: it is now up to Sigma to stop Fyodor, right now. With that resolve, Sigma doesn’t just take Fyodor’s hand–he grabs that hand and pulls Fyodor up to him and demands to know everything. That is how you make a desperate person look like a character you want to cheer on–how you give us the Sigma who rigged a casino game, the Sigma who faced down Teruko and lived to tell about it, that’s how you give us a Sigma to cheer for. 

I know later I’m going to say that no moment is held long enough to let its importance stay with the audience– but I think my suggestion would reinforce the importance and let BONES still keep rushing everything, because you could make that importance and rushing make more sense if we see Sigma is also rushed to make a decision.

Heck, that even could have worked for the problems with Atsushi, Fukuzawa, and the absence  of Kyoka in this arc. 

Have Atsushi learn about Fukuchi’s past from Teruko before we see Fukuchi versus Fukuzawa. 

As soon as Atsushi exits, have him find Akutagawa and fight him. 

After that, show what Kyoka is up to, maybe she is fighting Teruko or someone else. 

After that, start the Fukuchi and Fukuzawa fight. 

Have the three fights happen at the same time: Atsushi versus Akutagawa, Kyoka versus Teruko, Fukuchi versus Fukuzawa. This way, you can keep cutting away, you don’t have to animate any one more than necessary, you can still rush how quickly each fight ends, you don’t have to put in thought about fight choreography minus maybe– please, please, please– making the airport serve a role in each fight. 

Basically, Fukuzawa, Atsushi, and Kyoka here act like our Gintoki, Shinpachi, and Kagura from Gintama–which actually kind of fits their personalities and roles (give or take Fukuzawa being maybe a little more competent than Gintoki). 

And just as it looks like Atsushi is getting through to Akutagawa, and just as Kyoka looks like she can stop Teruko (because Teruko can’t de-age Demon Snow because not tangible), at that moment when Atsushi and Kyoka are about to win, Fukuchi reveals he wanted to stop Fukuzawa first– because without his Ability, the rest of the Agency will crumble. 

And that becomes out dramatic tension: if Fukuzawa died, would that really end this Agency? 

And that’s when Fukuzawa is killed, that cancels out Atsushi’s control over his Ability and lets Akutagawa grab him, and that’s when Kyoka’s control over Demon Snow falls apart without her phone, and that’s when Teruko defeats her. 

Hell, you can even make this hurt more and ramp up the stakes: if Atsushi lost control over his Ability, any damage by Akutagawa is not going to be nullified and his limbs won’t regenerate. 

And if after all of this you don’t want to kill off Fukuzawa, you can do what Yosano did in “55 Minutes” to Dazai to revive Fukuzawa just in time. 

There are problems with my re-plotting. I probably got Abilities wrong and story reasons wrong: Fukuzawa isn’t dead right now in story or else we would have seen Atsushi struggling more right now in the story; if Fukuzawa did die that doesn’t mean Atsushi couldn’t still put up a fight against Akutagawa; Atsushi isn’t trying to beat down Akutagawa, he is trying to reach out to his heart. And yes, my proposed story does rip off Dead Apple, with Atsushi and Kyoka having to fight without their Abilities– but honestly, if I can improve upon what Dead Apple did poorly (sorry, I think that film has plot-based problems), I’ll take up that opportunity. 

So, that is how I would fix the problem with the rushed pacing in Bungo Stray Dogs Season 5.  

Asagiri Is Rushing

But this problem didn’t start with the anime. This problem started with the story that Asagiri wrote.

He advised this anime while he was writing this manga. At a certain point he had to have learned that the anime would outpace the manga. And at no point did he stop and say, “I’m going to throw in some flashbacks and action sequences so that we don’t rush through plot points”?

He could have re-plotted details to let fights go longer or back stories and flashbacks to fill in details. 

Nope– this is all about rushing to the next cliffhanger, and this episode is probably going to have as many cliffhangers as there are chapters, so, six cliffhangers. That is going to make this a miserable 22 minutes of television.��

[khalixvitae]

urngh... (i flop onto your doorstep like a dying fish) please.... do you want to brainstorm for that vil fic of yours with the gay people in your phone im so sane about vil...

Hi anon! Sure thing, I’m still trying to nail down a few major bits of the plot line but I’m willing to share what I have!

To begin with, I think I want to make the setting somewhere very innocuous. A book shop, a cafe, something completely mundane and away from NRC. The basic premise is that Vil is going to this off campus hole in the wall destination to read/annotate scripts for an upcoming role. The reader is an employee of whatever business he’s started to frequent! Kind of tropey, I know, but if it ain’t broke, yk? But I’m trying to get it. A little off the rails.

The idea is that the reader basically just. Ignores who he is. He’s a customer, after all. I’m leaning into the idea of them being a bookseller more than anything else- the idea that they could want to provide him with any additional literature related to whatever role he’s playing/essentially help him hone his craft feels important. This is another one of those situations where my own life events may seep through as well- the idea that maybe the bookseller doesn’t really know what they’re doing with their life. Maybe they’re trying to earn enough money for a graduate level degree program? Something along those lines, like they have aspirations but don’t know how to achieve them.

Vil intends on keeping their interactions minimal and very professional- he refuses anything that he could consider preferential treatment until he sees the reader offering other people similar services. Then he has a moment of oh, they’re just kind. The reader tends to go above and beyond for customers that need assistance, or even for those that they just think could benefit from more information. Then Vil is a little less hesitant. Still professional, but maybe he’ll accept their offer to keep the shop open a little longer when he’s in the middle of a reading, or he’ll agree to have a cup of tea since they’re already making some. Naturally they get to talking. And yea, that’s Kind of the broader premise! I’m trying to nail down the role he’s playing. The one idea I’ve got floating around is kind of a weird one, but I recently reread Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and I’m spitballing Vil participating in a retelling of the story. Not as Dr. Frankenstein, but as the monster. Hear me out: in the book, he’s described as being intentionally crafted with beautiful features- which is what makes him all the more haunting to look at. He basically triggers the uncanny valley effect. Something incredibly beautiful and human and yet distinctly wrong. And the original monster is really an emotional and intelligent creature that seeks to be loved - only after repeated abuses does it actually become “evil”. It’s a story where the protagonist (Dr. Frankenstein himself) is frankly far more sinister than its antagonist. He plays god, creating a creature solely because he wants to know if he can. Then once he does, he just abandons it because he’s horrified at his own creation. Neither the monster nor the doctor are without their faults, and it’s one of those things where the reader is meant to be conflicted on who to root for. Anyway, I think a retelling that’s more sympathetic towards the monster (I.e., that characterizes it was Shelley did in the source material) would catch Vil’s interest. Yeah he’d be an antagonist, but he’d be a heart wrenching figure meant to conflict the audience and their perceptions of both him and the character he’s playing. And it would be a challenge for Vil, something he doesn’t seem to get often. It’s fundamentally different from any other role he’s played that we know of, and to play a creature so beautiful that it drifts into the territory of abominable? WHEWWWWW. idk I think. He’d be intrigued when it’s pitched at him and he’d accept this get out of type casting free card before his reps could shoot down the offer. Anywho! I would love feedback or other ideas if you or anyone else have any to bounce around !!!

[ajchip]

Hi!! Sorry in advance for the long ask ;-;. I thought your use of text in 'All Thanks To You' was really cool. I love how it becomes an object or an image itself when surrounded by the other images in your piece and (Is it actually your handwriting? I have no clue 😳) the handwritten quality of it ups the ante of the intimacy that you're trusting with us/with the viewer. What really struck me about the piece though was your use of the texts repetition. I think these ideas you introduce of important words being repeated so many times that their meaning becomes a little muddied, or intimate words being obscured so that your audience has to work harder to know you or, I guess, this invitation to take something apart in order to understand it better. Unravelling feels like a very trans experience to me, or at least, in knowing my own transness I've had to do a lot of unraveling. The whole piece was really beautiful (I love art that maps experience and your map is the first that I've seen that navigates transness so personally and so delicately) but the text stood out to me in particular. Super late congratulations on its exhibition ❤

not sure where to begin on these such nice words 😭 thank you for your interpretation on my work !! you’re the first person who has told me their thoughts that are so related to my mindset with creating this work. (it is my handwriting!)

we had an exhibition de-brief meeting & whilst people liked my work, other artists didn’t really get why i executed the pieces the way i did and the most confusion surrounded my inclusion of text, so to hear someone understand it the way you have, really means a lot to me.

my initial reasoning of layering the writing was so then it becomes a lot harder for the viewer to read it. it’s pieces of writing which i wanted to get out of my system, relating so closely with the other forms of imagery i used. the more i think about it, the intentions i had for keeping the privatised words in the pieces, was because the visual elements of the photos and the drawings were so easy to digest, i didn’t want the trans experience (in this case, more my experience) to be taken as easy, with making the text more complex i heavily relate to how you said - the unravelling of it all.

i knew that the people who were engrossed in the work would spend extra time trying to read my writing in its layered forms - and selfishly i believed that those were the ones who deserved to know what i had wrote. (looking back i know that doing this didn’t make this element accessible at all. i have captioned extracts available for those who ask)

again thank you so so much for this message. i’m so glad someone actually gets it. ❤️

[a-weird-cryptid]

Hey uh. As a system who read Elle(s). Please don't advertise as a comic about a girl with DID. That's not what she has. You can say it can be interpreted as DID but it is not about DID

SPOILERS FOR ISSUE 2

it's revealed that she was in the womb with 5 other embryos. And that they merged into her. That's not how DID works. As a system that sought out this comic after seeing this post, I did feel like it was a bit of a slap in the face. It's not your fault the comic falls into some actual misinformation but I feel like it was never meant to be about did

I think issue 1 leans into the DID coding a lot and I was very excited for issue 2. I think it's very DID coded but stating that its explicitly about DID is a bit inaccurate

Thanks for the criticism!

(Don't worry, I'll leave my comment spoiler free. But if you want to know what it's referring to, I'd recommend reading the spoiler section to the comment I'm reacting to, to get a basic idea.)

Again, I'm only half way through the first volume and I sadly didn't know that that's revealed in the second book. I can't tell my own opinion on it, because of the same reason, but I most likely will when I get there.

I wasn't intending to advertise Elles and I'm sorry if I accidentally did. The post was ment to be a simple, subjective review about the part of the graphic novel I've read so far. Since I'm new on this app and I wanted to try out a new type of post, to see what my audience would most likely want to see more of.

And I'm extremely sorry if I made anyone upset because I posted this review, not knowing that the series would end up being misinformative.

I def didn't expect the post to blow up that much. But since it did, I see it as my responsibility to correct this mistake, even if I didn't made it, nor could have known about it until I now. (If this person didn't made this comment to put my attention to it, I still wouldn't be aware of it. Again, thank you a lot. I think it's really important to stop spreading misinformation as soon as you see it.)

I can't really judge the accuracy of this reveal, because I'm NOT a mental health professional or similar, nor somebody suffering from DID (as far as I'm aware). But based of my own research, it's def misinformative and a mistake the writer (or whoever is responsible for the basic story) of this comic made. And I won't defend them for doing so, just because I like Elles so far.

DID is NOT formed like shown in the second comic. Instead, it's formed by extreme, repeated childhood trauma (most of the time of sexual nature) before the age of about 8. (And that's already simplified.) I most likely won't give my own, "full", explanation of this dissociative disorder on my blog. Unless there's a high demand. Since they're many ACTUAL systems and mental health professionals who did that WAY better than I ever could, already.

I will correct my post to make all of that more clear. But I won't take the it down, simply because of the positive feedback I got from the DID community. Which I assume means that it's still a good comic for DID representation. At least when it comes to the first comic book.

As well as the fact that, when searching about "Elles", most reviews, as well as real advertisement for this comic talk about different "personalities". Which is another term often used instead of "alter", as far as I know. I even saw some websites straight up stating she has undiagnosed DID. Which, in combination with the rest of the story, lead me to the conclusion that it most likely is about it nonetheless. Or at least it is suppose to be. Accurate or not.

Which makes it all the more disappointing to find out about the reveal in the second novel, in my opinion. I think it's such a "missed out" and rare opportunity to NOT show what DID is actually all about. And how it's formed. I thought they didn't mention it in any kind of way so far, simply because it's undiagnosed and noone really knows abt it. So I was hoping there'd be some kind of "big reveal" later. A few panels or even just simple sentences could have been enough to depict it more accurate, without accidentally triggering sb. Or making it less kid/ya friendly.

[lemomentfatal]

October 31, 2022, 1:03 pm

This is the last day I can call. Tomorrow I am going back to Paris, back to the exhibition space, to see the performances programmed on the last day of the show. Two days ago, I fell on my bike, nothing serious, just kind of stupid, and the screen of my phone broke, the device no longer accepts my headphones, the transmitted sound is not distinct. There are parts of what this young person tells me that I cannot make out. It is the first time she has come to the Salon de Montrouge, she is here on her own, it is the beginning of the holidays. She thinks it is a great idea to call the visitors. She is a student in a preparatory art school near Paris. Her teachers told her go and visit the exhibition; she was very keen to come.

She is standing in front of a house, she thinks it is made of lead, it is a piece by the artist Corentin Darré. She finds it funny to encounter this material here, because last year she did some work on church windows, she thought a lot about this material which she did not like at all, because of its toxicity.

She does not identify herself as an artist, but this year she is being asked to create things. It is a beginning, on a small scale, it is not very concrete yet.

It scares her that as an artist you are not supposed to be there with the audience of your work. There is something about the things having to be finished, that disturbs her. Her interest in art began with theatre. This February, she went with some friends to see a play, which really touched her. She has been thinking a lot about stage design since then.

Our conversation does not quite flow. I ask her several times to repeat words that I cannot make out, there are silences while I take notes, she waits for me. She speaks slowly, but the phone obscures her speech. I explain that I have a problem with the sound, that my phone is broken.

It is a quiet hour in the exhibition. She is now next to a lot of small, white bunk beds that multiply in space because of a mirror, it is a piece by the artist Camille Sart, she thinks it is great.

She goes towards the drawings. She asks me if they are the ones with people with funnels in their heads. She reads the text on the title card, she likes Roland Topor too, the first thing she saw of him, but without knowing it, was the film La Planète Sauvage, with the blue people.

I feel like I have not asked people the right questions. What did I really want to hear from them? What did I want to give them? I want these calls to have a certain importance; I was looking for a certain sense of intensity that I often feel is missing in exhibitions. Today, I have the feeling that I am not really achieving it. The words are mumbled, as if I were under a duvet. It is the last day, it is the end of this framework of writing, this way of narrating that I have imposed on my life since the first day of the exhibition.

She asks me if I have talked a lot with the other artists. I say that I do not think I have talked enough with them, that the days of installing the exhibition and the opening were a bit feverish, that maybe I should start calling the other artists. She laughs. She asks me if I am happy with our exchange. I say that I am very happy to have spoken with her. I wish her a good day, good luck, and so does she.

[r4bbitdragon]

my heart is full, bursting.................. look at my Boy.... im so proud.........

OF YUA’S CREATION...