#wrote this instead of working on my stupid art projects i am about to walk into the woods and never return i hate college

[wizardsix]

I can't remember who said this but there was this one dev who said that when making romanceable characters they have to be attractive in some way (personality, looks, not too morally fucked up etc). and since I read that, the statement hasn't left my mind and I'm very aware now of whenever outside influence and modern discourse get to me or other writers. like just yesterday I found myself rewriting a scene to be more "comfortable" to witness, even though the point was to be emotionally charged and face a difficult topic the character had been actively lying about. but some things can't be glossed over. sometimes it's good when media grabs you by the shoulders and makes you face horrible shit. it's good when media makes you uncomfortable even if it's coming from a ~romanceable companion~. that means it's working. if you remain comfortable forever you learn nothing.

I bring this up bc the veilguard companions are the perfect example and victims of the "romanceable characters need to be attractive" mindset. they don't have ugly sides, they don't fight with each other--and I mean really fight--they don't have controversial opinions or do problematic things. they don't ever question your authority over their lives and why you're the guy in charge. they are nice and perfect and their problems aren't really that serious and can be fixed by simply having a therapy session w rook (bc being possessed or gaining new magic isn't a big deal in a world where previously such events are Very distressing and hard to control). they are further proof that trying too hard to make something attractive has the complete opposite effect if your brain isn't the size of a pebble.

it's overall very frustrating that big game developers continue to be so spineless and I'm not giving anyone a pass for shallow writing, especially from a franchise that is known to have complex characters. none of this is impressive after the first three dragon age games, which were well loved and dissected and debated for years after their release. that isn't to say these games don't have kind characters, having that balance is why I personally like dark fantasy and liked what the dragon age games offered (whenever the writing was good..). it's not dark for the sake of being dark (see grimdark), there's a reason why these things are happening, and in this world no one is completely innocent even if they have good intentions. most people like when their characters aren't always kind or agreeable, bc it's extremely rewarding to finally find that middle ground (of course I have to bring up larian, who made bg3 and proved just how much people appreciate flawed characters, see astarion). conflict is the driving force of a story, no matter what it is. even the most sickeningly sweet cozy slice of life story will have some kind of conflict. it's unavoidable. that's life. taking that away is setting yourself up for failure and all that remains is a boring story full of boring people. no one cares about characters who have their lives together.

(the post is technically over but I wanted to put some final thoughts under the cut bc this got longer than I meant)

I want to go back to the statement real quick... like i do agree, it's true as writers we'll subconsciously (or consciously if you're insecure) try to make our characters appealing, but this is the common trap writers fall into by giving a shit about what others think and want from Their work (which btw I fully believe in writing what you want even if it's "bad" because something with genuine soul will never be as bad as soulless cashgrabs). romanceable characters can and should be as flawed as you'd make any other character, bc trust me there's an audience for everything. even a random npc with two lines will be attractive to someone.

the pressure of an imaginary audience is what pushes writers into a corner and prevents writers from writing and exploring what They want. it's the writer's story first, not the audience's. I think the romanceable companion trap can be easily avoided if writers just 1) grow a bit of a backbone and 2) ask themselves if this is even a necessary or insightful mechanic that will help develop a character further. ask themselves if this character even has the capacity to handle a romantic relationship bc everything else is subjective and it's impossible to appeal to everyone (which apparently this is a controversial take). I won't sit here and pretend that I don't appreciate a good romance, but sometimes all someone really needs is a friend.

obsidian is a good example of self aware devs. they tried to do romance for pillars of eternity 2 bc of fan demand, and it didn't work very well. now for avowed, they didn't explore romance bc they know it's not their strong suit and don't feel it's necessary for this story, instead that time and effort went to developing the characters in other meaningful ways. I have nothing but respect for such a decision bc they know what they want from their story instead of lying and trying to be everything at once. less is more as they say.

[lost-mydick]

“I really am sorry”

[Sam might be ooc]

You had gotten paired up with Sam in a science project. When the bell had rung you had turn to Sam but he was already gone by then, you weren’t so worried to find him as your next class was Art with him. During the class you had slipped a note his way, you wanted to get the project over with as you had more important things to do. Yet again the bell had rung and you still had no answer from Sam, you turn to the door to leave this place as school was now over, one’s you got to your locker to collect your stuff Sam came up to you “I would like to do the project in my house” He said giving you a piece of paper with most likely his address, you were going to ask him at what time and when to go but he was already gone.

You made your way to the address on the paper and when you got there you knocked. A women opened the door “Hello do you need something?” She asked you but before you could answer her Sam had grabbed by you by the wrist and said “Let’s go” as he dragged you to what you believe is his room. It was themed like the Antarctic, it had penguins and polar bears he also had a pet turtle. He sat in his desk as you sat in his bed “Let’s make the project about xxxxxx” he said and you simply agreed as you both got to work, he didn’t talk most of the time. “Hey Sam do you have-“ A girl came inside his room and stopped talking when she looked at you “Who are you” She said “There the person I got paired up with for the project I believe there name was (Y/n)” Sam told the girl not letting you speak “Wait weren’t you that kid that won the Art contest last year” The girl said “Yeah I am” you said quietly and got back to the project putting back the (headphones/earphones) you had taken of before. When she left Sam made his way with his notebook to his bed “What’s your favorite animal I like penguins” he randomly said “I like (animal), mostly the (breeds name)” you said as Sam wrote something on the book.

Sam and you remained friends after you had finished the project because you weren’t ‘loud’ or ‘touched his stuff’. You were over at Sam’s house having a silent hang out as he had called it where he does stuff in his notebook and you read books Sam had recommended you, most of them were about penguins and the Antarctic. “Ok I figured it out” Sam had said out of nowhere “What is it?” You asked “Would you like to be my practice (Girlfriend/boyfriend/partner) he said. “Practice?” You asked. You had developed feelings for Sam these past few months “Yes it will prepare me for a real partner and I already wrote the pros and cons” he said. You didn’t want to upset him because he looked happy to tell you so you accepted his offer. He wanted rules for the relationship so you made some up (not the ones that Paige did they were awful I’m sorry but some of them were stupid)

You were currently in a cafe which was open 24 hours and it was quite so Sam and you decided to go the around 6. It was all going well but Sam seemed anxious and nervous the whole time so you thought he didn’t like the place but you’ve been there quite some time now. You were going to ask if he wanted to leave but then he yelled “JULIA, I’m sorry (Y/n) but I’ve realized that I do not love you” And with that he took his coat and left. You were left there alone sadness washing over you. You really liked Sam and you enjoyed the time you had spent with him even tho it was just as ‘friends’ or ‘practice couple’. You went home ready to cry it out.

That night you got a phone call by his sister saying there was an accident on the bus so you made your way to his house. Even though you were mad at him you were still very worried about him. You entered his room and saw him snuggled up. It was cute as you could only see his face. “How are you feeling?” You asked him “good” he said as he watched penguins on his laptop

It had been a week after the whole break up and bus accident. Sam had texted you to go to the empty science classroom which you did. He was sitting with his headphones on and doing something on his notebook. You sat in front of him and he took his headphones of. “I’m sorry I hurt your feelings and I realized how much I hurt you and I also would like to try the relationship again because it was really fun but instead of being practice it’s for real” he said with a straight face “I really am sorry” he said as you just stared at him and started laughing. “”I don’t think I said anything funny” he said “No you didn’t Sam, and thank you for the apology I also would like to get back together” you said to him as you stood up and reached out your hand to help him up. “Good ok so how about we go to my house and you can hold Edison” he said smiling a little “Sure” you said as he took your hand and started walking to the exit of the school.

[five-wow]

i watched 10.17 a few days ago and this has been lingering in my drafts since then because i forgot to post it! as always, rambles about the episode behind the cut.

i’m for once really glad for the “previously on” recap, because it showed us the yakuza big bird telling adam that adam is going to be his eyes and ears in five-0 and the bit where steve welcomes adam back home, which i had both forgotten about, and which make the last two episodes make slightly more sense adam-wise

oh BOY. tani and junior are incredibly cute and then suddenly, bam, car sex. i’m really happy for them!!! but i’m also really scared that with how quickly this is happening suddenly, it’s a prelude to something bad happening that they don’t know about yet, ahhhh. they don’t deserve that! they deserve their happy post-coital snuggling, even if it’s in a car.

fjdkfd steve and danny at a literary festival, bickering (obviously), is not something i knew i wanted. also. tom clancy. dear lord, steve, if you want to sound like a guy who likes reading, you might want to dig a little deeper than the number one most obvious choice. :p

oh gOD harry is here!! maybe i should have known that but i DID NOT.

harry: “it seems, uh. it seems i’ve written a best-selling book.” as a person who pretends to know things about writing and has never published anything but definitely done a lot of research on the subject, i am both intrigued and made very wary by the implication that harry accidentally wrote a best-seller. go on.

fjdkfdjkfdjfkd it’s EXACTLY the story i was expecting him to tell, which is that he randomly sat down one day, had a manuscript within a few weeks, sent it to a friend and was immediately offered a seven figure book deal. i both hate and love this, because this is in no way how anything at all works, but it’s also very... harry langford, by which i mean basically james bond, by which i mean definitely a male mary sure, which to be clear in this case i don’t mind, but does amuse me greatly.

oh my gosh, the dramatics with harry suddenly talking nonsense at no one and then it turns out he has an earpiece in to talk to his “literary alter ego”, i just. oh my god. this is all so stupid and i love it.

fjdkfjdkfjdk steve’s little cyrano namedrop with a meaningfully faux-whispered “de bergerac” in danny’s direction is killing me dead, haha. well done, steve! you know at least one (1) literary reference that is not tom clancy. i’m sure danny will be deeply impressed.

right, so deirdre naysmith was a fictional crime writer and maureen townsend was the real life writer behind her. the agatha christie vibes are strong with this one.

we’re switching kind of abruptly from steve on the phone with lou about the case, to steve at hq in his office with adam, talking about tanaka and how they haven’t caught him yet, and then he tells adam that he knows adam did what he did for good reasons and adam’s FACE. he does not look entirely convinced of his own good reasons, pff.

adam: [turns to leave] steve: “hey. i trust you, okay?” oh dear lord, this hurts.

danny: “it’s like a vintage murder art project, or something.” what a lovely description!

junior and tani walk in!!! and there are huge smiles all around and it’s super cute and then the FIRST THING danny says to junior is “i have a confession to make. i’ve been uh, sleeping in your bed” and LOOK, no offense, dear h50 writers, because you were very close there, but you made danny say that to the wrong seal. totally understandable mistake, just make sure to keep an eye on it next time.

they have to go back to the literary fair for their case so steve throws up a hand and goes “just came from there” and danny says “well you love books, so we’ll go back” and that’s some good throwback banter on its own, but what really makes it for me is that in the brief reaction shot of steve we get to also see junior crack a huge grin. sometimes a family is two bickering dads involved in the slowest friends to lovers slow burn in human history and their navy seal son (and a whole bunch of other people) and that’s not only okay, it’s pretty damn great.

harry’s double gets abducted, because of course he does, but he didn’t deserve that! he’s just an idiot who stumbled into a really nice, really dangerous job.

harry tells junior (who is at the wheel as they’re chasing down harry’s double) to “drive it like you stole it, my friend”, which i get, but also makes me think junior should slow down and stick to traffic laws, because if he had actually stolen the car he wouldn’t want to attract the attention of the police by speeding and causing near-collosions.

harry is guiding his double through transferring harry’s money, like the kidnappers asked, and we’re casually told he has a total balance of ten million hidden cleverly behind the password “LAN9F0RD” and all of it is objectively hilarious, fjdkf.

adam is now climbing a tree in the middle of the forest to do something with a camera, and i really wish this means his subplot gets switched to “adam has developed an interest in birdwatching since the divorce and is hoping he caught this rare species of [insert type of bird] on tape!” instead of more crime stuff.

harry transfers the money for the kidnappers and there’s probably some ruse or trick involved (either that, or it turns out he actually owns like, another ninety million), but also... would any reputable bank just let you remotely transfer ten million while only requesting a username and a password? i feel like my bank asks for better identification if i just want to view my own balance.

fdjkfd harry employed an ex in the caymans to get the money back from the kidnappers’ guy there, and she tells him she’s keeping it now because he never called her back. beautiful, A+, i love this. i hope she lives her best life with this new fortune.

so. harry’s double has been rescued and is in harry’s expensive hotel suite going “thanks for letting me use the bathroom” (shower, it’s implied he used the shower) while there is some piano music in the background that could be taken as vaguely romantic and they kind of swagger each others’ way and harry says something about the finer things in life while sort of toasting his double’s face with his drink and i’m not saying harry definitely slept with this guy, but, you know. i’m not not saying it.

there are fireworks! and i’m not sure why (what american holiday am i missing? are fireworks a set part of every literary festival?) but steve and danny and harry and tani and junior are on a balcony and looking at it and it’s very pretty, and tani and junior hold PINKIES, which is almost painfully cute, dammit.

ah, adam’s mystery tape shows two executions instead of pretty birds, which is a bummer. hate when that happens.

this was such a good episode though!! again!!! seeing harry again was a lot of fun, the main plot was ridiculous but also super fun, and tani and junior got to actually be happy for a little bit without immediately being thrown into turmoil for whatever reason, and that’s also wonderful. and oh my god, i enjoyed all of the side characters so much - harry, harry’s stand-in, the woman who was obsessed with a mystery writer from the past and ended up being the murderer. they were all such characters and just really delightful to watch, honestly, which is awesome because it means it wasn’t just the main cast that i’m here for. (adam, though. oh, adam. what are the writers doing to you? i minded his subplot less this episode, but mostly because it got less screentime.)

[cassafra5]

Where Have I Been?

I’ve been a bit nervous to post this.

Two month or so ago, I teased at a possible announcement and something I was very excited to share with you all. I had been given the opportunity to work on a temp-to-perm basis for a comic start-up headed by Marvel alumni. I applied on a whim to be a freelance Storyboard Artist, but I was instead offered the chance of working in a full-time Editorial and Admin position with a few hours dedicated to storyboarding and participating in creative meetings each week. As someone who's always wanted to get into creative work, this was a really huge deal for me and I was excited to learn and be able to have projects to add to my portfolio.

Now, part of the reason I held off was because I wanted to make sure it was solid before I made the announcement. It was a dream come true and it seemed too good to be true ... and it was. 

Read below if you'd like to hear about how I unwittingly signed up to take care of a herd of entitled neckbeards and had to work on preventing them from literally walking into glass instead of actually storyboarding as advertised.

TL;DR of my experience:

2018 unfortunately was a pretty rough year. The good news is that I managed to push for a mutual termination of contract and should be a lot more active very soon now that I’m not as emotionally drained by an incredibly toxic environment.

Credit to @kirain for looking through this and helping to edit it when I just rage-typed all of this together lol;

I walked away from my interviews in tears after being told that my work really had potential. I told them I had been a comic fan since I was a kid and this was something I was excited about. I grew up with family trying to dissuade me from doing art and I had friends/partners who really weren't interested in my work. I am by no means a professional, so I threw up whatever I could be proud of and applied to the role on a whim. So as you can imagine, having real professionals say I had potential was something amazing to me. 

My first day, they sat me at a desk with a tablet and computer and I was super excited to start learning and was immediately approached with a Sexual Harassment plaque and told to mount it. Weird but alright. It was a start-up and I already assumed we’d all be helping out with small jobs around the office. I helped them fix their scanner and they suggested I move it to my desk. I was a bit confused but did so. I asked if they wanted me to set their computers up for it but they waved their hands at me and said we could do it later. 

This would eventually result in me scanning every single document for every person in the office, and also measuring the office for furniture that they would randomly decide not to get. When I had a day off, I came back to piles of documents they refused to scan themselves since "that was my job". I got chastised since they wanted them in a hurry and it should have been done sooner ... i.e., the day I was off.

Alright. 

I also ended up doing the following duties:

Calling the IRS every single day because the Controller was too uppity about something that was in the mail and somehow thought they could track it...DURING THE GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN. I was required to do this and told it was part of my job.

Calling Instacart at the behest of their Legal Counsel, a man who bitched on the phone for 2 hours because he didnt want to go downstairs to drop off a faulty computer part, and having to tell them that their avocados were too soft and their almond milk had too many ingredients. I was required to do this and told it was part of my job.

I had to ask for multiple vendors to provide quotes and COI and do site visits to our office for things that they, on a whim, would decide they wouldn’t want....resulting in multiple vendors getting angry at me.

I had to get what “everyone wanted for Christmas” for their luncheon...they expected me to get cakes same day from a fancy bakery, as well as LOBSTER (one of them said this was apparently a Christmas tradition of theirs?) Mind you, they repeatedly spoke about budgeting since they were working on investment money and the owner repeatedly would mention how “every day we weren’t producing was a day we died a little more.” I guess that death would have been from gout.

I had to take on dealing with all building requests. Fine ...until they started to tell me I should be reaching out to building management about the "radiation coming out of the cable box". They said it was shooting at a person given their angle and, because I'm *that person*, I mentioned it'd probably be more of a radius vs a direct shot. They started talking about it causing a mushroom cloud over the office. I laughed. Apparently it wasn’t a joke :/ They also complained about the fan making noises and being able to hear people partying and singing songs ... during the holidays ... when people normally do that sort of thing.

I also had to deal with things such as their electrical work and assistance with general interior work in the office...for some reason

They put me in charge of the Party Committee for a Housewarming Party where I was the only one actually making arrangements. This would be fine but the office was sublet and, due to their clumsiness in handling their electrical work before I got there, part of the office has no electricity and there was also a fallen over power beam in the middle of the office...but I guess that can be an accent piece.

I literally had to rename their files. Rather than renaming documents themselves, they would email me to rename them and reupload them because they couldn’t be bothered to change them themselves.

I made the mistake of telling them I had worked with DocuSign in a previous job. What resulted was them forcing me to teach it to them...but then they would argue with me about why it couldn’t mail merge or allow them to revise their documents. A Docusign rep mentioned they could just do their work outside of Docusign and import it since the whole point is to maintain the integrity of the document but they just kind of blamed me for not knowing enough about something I had only briefly used in another completely different setting.

I was literally approached by the person who should have been leading me in storyboarding and told that I needed to look into “distraction graphics” for the office because he was concerned that the two head people (WHO WORKED AT MARVEL) kept bashing their heads on the glass and he was afraid they’d go through the glass eventually. My literal reaction:

Yeah...he didn’t laugh. It was apparently serious and I had to have some very awkward talks with some window vendors. Do you know it apparently costs more than $3.5k to cover glass that you could probably avoid if you just looked up from your phones when you walked?

Frustrating, but whatever ... it wasn't a big deal and so long as I got to do some creative work, I was willing to tolerate it. 

I asked the person in charge of art and asked when we'd be able to work on creative and was told that my role was mainly in admin and to "leave the storyboarding to the storyboarders".

I guess I just imagined every single mention of that during the interview process.

I was taken aback but he assured me it was fine since I could work in production and work on other items, like cutting comics up for Webtoons. This wasn't what I wanted, but fine ... maybe I could get something out of this regardless and learn, even if I was just cutting up and processing other peoples' work. By the way, they ended up not even letting me do that.

And here’s where I get to the owner of this establishment...

I got called in to meet with him and told I would be given a special project. He wanted me to suggest a few themes that would be used for a promo project the company was working on. Okay ... this could be good. I started thinking of all my favorite genres and comics and wrote out a decent list. I asked him if it there was a limit and he said there was no limit, so I made a comprehensive list.

He brought me back in a week later and ripped my report apart.

First, he didn't want Marvel and DC included, but then he got upset when they weren't. 

Star Wars and Serenity weren't Scifi, according to him; they were "Space Opera". So that had to be done. They were set in space but apparently that wasn't scientific. Alright. 

Spongebob and Ducktales were irrelevant, but apparently The Simpsons was super relevant. 

He smiled at me and told me I needed to redo it because I obviously didn't know what I was doing. Okay ... sure. Then he kept changing his mind. We started this before the holidays and I worked on making a very sortable report in case there were anymore last minute changes.

Me and another co-worker who were avid comic book readers spent a lot of time looking at sales numbers and articles to compile what we should focus on; however, for one reason or another, the owner would dismiss everything we brought up since he "hadn't heard of it". Deathstroke apparently never existed. Teen Titans also ... totally not relevant. Although he said he was open to ideas, he'd bash every single suggestion, answer every question by asking us why we'd ask such "stupid questions", and he literally asked us to bring in articles and statistics just so he could completely dismiss them. He was completely un-open to hearing anyone else's opinions and already had a dead-set idea of what his audience wanted ... despite having told us he hated comics and that "normal people [like him] don't read comic books". He knew what these idiots wanted, and it was just a matter of making us redoing the report over and over until we happened on the right combo HE wanted. I.e., pretty much the top comics he last saw at the dawn of the early 2000's.

I literally had taken pics of a few bestseller displays I’d seen in stores (Newsbury Comics, Barnes and Nobles etc) but he literally said that that didn’t mean they would sell. What does Best Selling even mean then?

But it's cool to just completely dismiss your customer base and act like you know better, right?

I ended up having to work until 10:00pm one night in order to make all necessary changes and print covers for him to review. What started as a simple list of themes became a report that had over 600 rows in Excel. Even then, 80-90% of it ended up not being used. I was so exhausted at this point and burnt out. I loved comics ... but having to rip them apart by category, put them back together, eliminate whole categories because he didn't want them, and then having to remake them after he changed his mind was agonizing. 

I had another meeting with him and he smiled at me and simply said, "Aww I thought this would be a fun project for you, since you're a fangirl after all"

He was taunting me. This was a game to him. Of course, I should have expected this from someone who literally made a cheat sheet so "idiot comic book fans" would get his jokes. I'm not joking. It actually exists and I'm sure it's something Marvel would rather not even remember.

A couple more weeks passed and, at this point, a majority of the office depended on me to get people's food choices for their snacks, following up with building maintenance, and I barely had any creative projects whatsoever. I did get to create the party invitation the main art guy refused to make but he pushed me to make in Canva, because he thought Canva was the end all and be all to graphic design and that it should be used for all presentations for our LinkedIn. Pretty much everything Canva (something used mostly by Instagram and Twitter users) probably wasn't meant to be used on.

Keep in mind that this person was in charge of creative and was also in charge of gate-keeping me from doing the one thing I was tolerating everything for. I had literally repeatedly asked about the storyboarding during the interview process and even though they had changed the duties, they always confirmed that storyboarding would be a part of it. 

Last week, I asked the main art guy again about my job description and about how he had mentioned storyboarding being off the table entirely. He immediately got defensive and reminded me that I was an admin. I mentioned I still had the job descriptions and emails mentioning me having a hand in creative, and he accused me of talking back and said that he could tell from how I looked that I thought he was an idiot.

He also accused me of not being enthusiastic about his projects. I was confused since I was actively asking for projects and had literally been trying to find some way to take on creative assignments. He got even angrier and said I wasn't telling him how much fun I was having and how excited his work was making me.

What?

It suddenly dawned on me that every talk I'd had with this guy about how excited I was to learn from him/to work on the team gave him some sort of weird satisfaction. I mentioned that I didn't think I should have been sending him emails about that, and he asked, "Why not? You shouldn't assume I don't want them. I want you to tell me my stuff is fun and how excited you are about them!" I was ... very uncomfortable. This grown man. This grown ass man wanted me to fawn over his work and send him emails about how excited I was about his work. About HIM. What a narcissist.

He made enough commotion that the owner brought us in. He sat us down and said something about him being a bit familiar with this sort of thing, having gone to marriage counselling himself. I was already uncomfortable and that really didn’t help. 

What ended up happening was they berated me in his office and told me I was "too honest", and I was told that I didn't know my place.  I was told that at the very top were the two Marvel alumni, then underneath there was everyone else and I was right at the very bottom of everything and I should know my place.

These were the two people who had told me I had potential and who had made me so happy just a couple months prior. I was frozen in place as they grinned at me and told me that obviously there was some misunderstanding on my part. They then told to run along while they thought about what they could throw at me to make me happy. The guy who yelled at me was not chastised or told his behavior was wrong in any way, shape or form. I got dragged into a staff meeting afterwards, where the owner proudly told all of us, "This is the best company you can work for, where you can work with people you like." And in the same breath, he told everyone not to fuck up or otherwise it would be "resume time".

I felt broken the rest of the day, where I heard them blatantly laughing and insulting the creators they were going to work with. One creator was commented on as being able to "...work as a writer but you shouldn't look at her stuff unless you want your eyes to bleed.” They said worse stuff too and laughed like a bunch of entitled douchebags on DeviantArt trying to get kicks off of stuff they thought were cringey. It was insane. These were supposed to be professionals in the field. It made me uncomfortable to think what they said about my own work when they told me I had "potential". Some of these were small time Tumblr creators like me who probably thought this would be their big break too...

I thought about putting in my two days, the amount that was specified in my contract, and worried about what they'd try to do in the time I had left. I was miserable and scared and nervous.

On Friday, the owner approached me and asked me for my portfolio while smiling to himself. I was skeptical and asked why, and he firmly said, "Because I want to see it." I sent it and prepared for the worst.

He brought me in for a two minute "friendly" chat in the conference room, and once we sat down, he mused over his computer and said it was "coming back to him” I did art.

He remembered now. It had been so forgettable, after all. Aww, maybe there was something there.

With a smile, he told me I "shouldn't take it personally", and that only one artist so far had been able to get along with him and work with what they wanted. They'd thrown out 8 artists after they just simply "didn't work". They admitted that they had promised me storyboarding, but no one was working to their intended vision. That they hadn't really figured out a place for me in the company, but maybe going out on a business trip would help him clear his head and he could find something I could do. "I guess we've been letting you down a bit, haven’t we?" 

I felt like at this point he wanted me to act desperate and happy for the possibility of a chance and buy into it and take his offering with gratitude...

...but I was done with his shit. 

I told him that I had started at his company a few months ago and that if they hadn't figured out where I was supposed to be in all that time, then maybe it wasn't a good fit. He was quiet and didn't seem prepared for it. "Well ... what do you think we should do about it then?"

"If it's alright with you, I would like to terminate this contract immediately." I said it through gritted teeth. I'm not a confrontational person, but after everything that had happened, I was worried I'd lose it. I could feel myself shaking, but I just couldn't deal with it anymore. "I didn't appreciate being told I was at the bottom of the food chain and I really didn't appreciate you allowing me to be treated this way. Frankly, after that, it's taken every bit of motivation out of me and I'd like to end this. Now." I was trying to be professional and control myself, but I was quietly seething with every word. I told him I had saved all my job descriptions and had the contract if he wanted to review it, and I knew that what they had been telling me was bullshit.

He was really quiet and his eyes were wide open. I really think he expected me to be grateful and happy and willing to do more and more for the company just for that little chance. He mumbled something about not prolonging my suffering and told me to just assist in transitioning over my duties and typing things up. 

Once I did, I asked if I was free to go and he said I was and I left. It was so much of a relief not to have to come back to that office.

So this is what happened with something I thought would have been a great in to an industry I was excited about. I got used up (and not even for the skills I actually have under my belt) and kept around as an emotional punching bag, and for the dumbest things imaginable and essentially just assisted them with setting up their office after they'd sublet it.

On the plus side, I feel like it was a big deal that I could actually stand up for myself, even if it happened to be to someone like that. Even though I'm not a professional and even though some people would consider me insignificant, I feel like there's never a reason to make any person feel insignificant and like they're the lowest of the low. I hated how they spoke about other creators and I hated how they spoke to me, and there isn't any reason anyone should have to deal with people who are just bent on being condescending.

Ironically, around this time, Steven Universe released an amazing episode and the ending theme kind of hit home with me. I loved its message and I think that ep. kind of helped me in a way.

2019's off to an interesting start, I guess ... but I guess I can be proud that I'm stronger despite it. I am passionate about my art and do want to be able to work professionally but there’s no reason to ever tolerate disrespect and dishonesty in a company.

In the words of Raul Julia/Gomez Addams:

Hopefully, one day, I’ll get my break but this definitely wasn’t it. 

If any of you guys are in NYC and happen to come across a mildly shady startup toted to be headed by Marvel alumni, maybe just be a bit careful. I normally don’t post about stuff like this and honestly tend to get quiet when things happen because I have trouble opening up about personal issues but maybe it can help someone or at the very least be an interesting read.

[morganeuk]

The Doctor & the Librarian. (Sherlock AU)

Part 3: The British Government interferes

(Read Part 1: Kissing is not required on Tumblr)

(Read Part 2: Brainy is the new sexy on Tumblr)

Summary: Sherlock, academic librarian at Oxford, talked with an interesting doctor from London on the library help line... He don't know what to do next and founds it difficult to understand his feelings when his brother decides to visit him. But, thanks God, Lestrade gives him the occasion to escape the discussion!

It was early in the morning and Sherlock hadn't slept at all since he came back from the university. Usually, his thoughts are focused on a particularly hard research question or the creation of a complex database schema needed at work.  His job at Oxford, assisting creative and gifted researchers and professors, most of the time was rewarding, and it was easy to get immersed in an overload of projects. To banish the constant boredom, to avoid reaching for drugs as an easy answer

But as of last night, no need for external stimulation! His mind was focused on one thing only: Doctor John Watson.  When the doctor contacted the helpline three days ago, it was like if someone had thrown him a life jacket. Like he was finally able to fully absorb the oxygen around him! And it wasn't planned at all, a mere coincidence... Even if he does not like to work in the library, with regular ordinary people, he must do it when nobody else is available. Usually, his non-verbal attitude is clear enough that nobody asks questions, except the few giggling girls or cocky boys who ask if he wants to go for a beer after his shift, and he can work on his project. 

That night, to avoid a discussion with an insistent suitor that clearly not understand the meaning of 'bugger off', he uses the excuse of a call on the helpline. It was that or killing the stupid man in front of him! 'You're one hot librarian, I would like to check you out!' Come on! And what's with all the winking? Does he need an ophthalmologist? He's not supposed to reply to the helpline requests, the head librarian has received too many complaints about him, but it was an emergency!  

And his world has suddenly shifted because of one of Bart's finest: Dr John Watson.

Sherlock found his name less than five minutes after their first exchange. It was easy, a doctor, probably between thirty and forty-five, John, working in an ICU in London... but then at the end of the conversation he gives his real phone number! A phone number is as good as a social security number when you know where to look... Once his identity is clarified, more information appears. Ex-military, Afghanistan, unattached, a blog full of... emptiness. Probably an idea of his therapist. His life turning solely around his work. What's so special about him? That was the question that kept Sherlock awake all night. 

What's so special about him?

The log of the first and second conversations they had was printed in front of him.  He had to delete them from the system as it was too... personal. He read over the few times, adding them to his Mind Palace in a brand new room simply named: John. The will to help a patient that wasn't even his, the quirkiness of the discussion, the genuine amazement when he deduces him. He said that it was fantastic... Nobody has ever said things like that to me... His openness, the suggestion that they meet in London someday!

Sherlock was realistic and knew that the invitation was only made because of the excitement of discovering the disease he was looking for. He looks objectively at the transcript of the first conversation and nothing that he said could be considered the basis of romantic interest from the doctor. But... he came back! After 2 days of trying to forget the beautiful man, he finds pictures!, Sherlock begs for a night shift in the reading room. A few ridiculous questions later, including if it's best to sleep with her legs up while trying to conceive a baby; HIS doctor was there. To talk with him. Only to talk with HIM! He seems to understand the appeal of his job, was thankful for his help in solving his problem and was openly flirting. Openly, confidently, effectively flirting. Sherlock was lost for words and after he closes the chat window couldn't resist and... texts him his name.

His name, unique as it was, it was certain that John would be able to find him on the Internet (He knows he's the only Sherlock in the UK!). What should I do now? Should I contact him or let him take the first step? Maybe he won't like what he finds on the web? His brother regularly cleans his records to avoid any unsavoury surprises but a few of his articles are available in open access journals, his blogs about data mining and the science of deduction are accessible to all, but due to his brother's line of work, no pictures of him have ever stayed on the Internet more than a few hours.

Maybe I should send him a picture of me? Is this 'online dating'? How does it work? Oh God, this is killing me! It's Saturday, I don't go to work on Saturday... But I can't dream about this doctor all days! It's driving me mad! His phone rings on the coffee table and he jumps quickly to get it. If lucky, it's Lestrade with a murder investigation! Blah... It's only Mycroft. Ending the call, he opens the text app instead.

What do you want? -SH

You know I prefer to talk -MY

Yes -SH

So you're doing it on purpose only to annoy me. It's childish -MY

Sue me. What do you want? I don't have all day! -SH

As Sherlock was going in the kitchen to put the kettle on, someone knocks at the door.  For God sakes... "Go. Away!!"

The door opens and an impeccable Mycroft walks inside the small flat. "Good morning Brother mine." The imperious glare of the Government official surveys the room.  The few computers, print out of codes and parameters. Newspapers and journals everywhere. A pile of Lestrade's now resolved cold cases... "I can deliver those to NSY if you want, on my way back." The older Holmes proposes.

Sherlock, English to a fault, put a second teacup for his brother on the countertop. "What do you want, Mycroft? You're not in Oxford,  on a Saturday morning, for nothing."

"I'm only here because I care for you... and Mummy asked me to check on you." He shakes his head, thinking about their overprotective mother. "She's worried about you, constantly. Being all alone here." And so am I...

"You can tell her that I'm doing great. I haven't put anything 'recreational' in my body for nearly two years!" He drinks his tea with a stern look. "So you can leave now." He points his long fingers in the direction of the door.

"It's not the only thing I want to talk to you about..." Why is this always so complicated? "I know that you seem to love your job as a librarian, and though we were thrilled when you decided to finally do something with your chemistry degree and go on with a Masters in IS, I would like you to consider a position with me, in London." Sherlock was still listening, even if he did not acknowledge his brother's words. "Or if you don't want to work with me, I can arrange for you to become a full-time consultant with NSY." Still not a word from Sherlock... How can he waste his talents like this! It's not that what he is doing is unimportant, but someone else can do it.  Less effectively perhaps, but with similar results! "Sherlock! Say something!"

"Are you finished?" He rises from the chair he was sitting. "First of all, I don't seem to love my job, I really do love it. Second, I went back to complete my university for myself and not to 'thrill' anyone else.  Third,  I would never ever work under your orders. And lastly, I don't need you to coerce the NSY as Lestrade asks me regularly to come to work with him on cases more than I used to." He turns his back on his brother and simply states. "Now, leave."

Getting up and playing suavely with his umbrella, Mycroft can't restrain himself and replies softly, as an afterthought, "But in London, you may find interesting things... people..." He looks at his phone to confirm the name of the man. "A Doctor John Watson, for example."  He knows it is a cheap shot, but sometimes it's the only things that work! Something big is brewing and he needs his brother in London, whatever the cost.

"What are you talking about, brother mine?" Sherlock's voice was now cold as ice. "I know that you are checking on me nearly 24/7 but I don't understand how you could considerate that man, unknown to me, as  leverage to get me back in London."

"You're far too easy to read, Sherlock, sentiment... Always sentiment... You wrote to him about why you like your job, you falsely admit having ADHD instead of turning him off by announcing with a flourish that you're a high functioning sociopath." Mycroft's eyes locked on Sherlock's. "You voluntarily  went to work in the reading room, which you hate, in the hope he would contact you again." Knowing he was getting the upper hand of his younger brother, he concludes, "And you gave him your name and your phone number.  Tell me brother, how many phone numbers do you have in your directory? Besides our parents', Lestrade's and mine?"

Sherlock was looking at his brother with disgust. How can a man have any hope of getting a love life if the British Government interferes! His phone chimes, a text from Lestrade.

Are you available? I need help with something... - GL

The fake suicides? - SH

Yes... got another one. -GL

Giving his brother an unreadable smile, Sherlock gives him a cup of tea. "Wait for me while I'm getting dressed, I need a lift."

"I'm always happy to use my chauffeur as your cab driver... Where do you need to go?"

From the bathroom, Sherlock responses loudly, "London!"

With a satisfactory smirk, Mycroft Holmes considers once more how irreplaceable DI Gregory Lestrade is.

Read the rest of the story here! http://archiveofourown.org/series/770607

[fallinfor-youreyes]

Hi for the performing arts prompt thing for Lara jean and Peter: It’s the day before opening night and I’ve lost my voice, you have to nurse this melodramatic ailing actor back to health (P.S I read the fic you wrote about how Lara Jean got her lockscreen and it made me so happy it was so cute 💖)

Thank you for this prompt! It was so much fun! 

Read it on Ao3

She likes the dark corner of the stage, so the dark corneris where she will stay.

No one bothers her in her corner, and she’s actually able toget things done, which she really needs to do because opening night istomorrow, and someone messed up three of the sets by spilling paint on the wood.

Lara Jean took one, escaped to her corner, and set to work.

She’s not sure if she actually likes stage crew or not, butshe’s good at it. It’s like her scrapbooking, but on a much larger level. AndMargo was so proud of her when she skyped to tell her she was joining a club.She doesn’t have to tell Margo or her dad or Kitty that she hasn’t actuallymade any friends.

Instead, she paints in her corner, and mostly keeps out ofeveryone’s way.

That is until Peter Kavinsky decides to be a drama queen.

There’s a loud thump next to her, startling her out of herrhythm, almost making her drop her paintbrush.

“Covey,” the thing that made the thump croaks. “I need yourhelp.”

Lara Jean turns to the thing that made the thump, only tofind Peter Kavinsky, dramatically spread out across the floor, his hand overhis eyes.

The very same Peter Kavinsky who is the captain of thelacrosse team, boyfriend of 3 years to Gen, object of Lara Jean’s affection foran entire year in 7th grade, and now, apparently, a Troy Boltonwannabe.

She carefully moves her supplies out of the way of hisdangerously long legs and turns back to her project.

“With?”

He pushes himself up on his elbows. “I’m losing my voice.”

Lara Jean sighs. “Have you told Mrs. Klein?” She asks. Thiswill add just another flurry of stress to the night before the show opens, onethat Lara Jean plans on staying as far away from as possible.

Hence, the dark corner.

“No!” He grabs her arm, and glue drips onto her jeans. Sheblinks. “Please. I don’t want to be benched. I just need help.”

He pleads at her with his eyes that are too beautiful forsomeone like him to have. Those same stupid eyes that made her fall in lovewith him when she was 13.

“I don’t think I’m qualified.” She says. She tugs her armaway from him and attempts to clean the glue on her pants. “Plus, if you askanyone else in this room, they would be very willing to help you out.”

Peter pushes himself up fully now, and even though they areboth sitting he still towers over her.

“That’s why I’m asking you. You are the only one I trust toactually make me better.” His voice breaks over a few of the words, and thereis a small part of her that wants to help.

“Why don’t you ask Gen?”

Peter rolls his eyes. “We broke up. Like 3 months ago”

Oh.

That makes things slightly more complicated. “So you’resaying, I am the only one you want to deal with her wrath when she realizes youdidn’t go to her for help?”

“No. Come on, Covey please.” He pouts and gives her the biggestpuppy dogs eyes, and he knows it will work. And she hates that he knows that. “Youalways knew what to do when we were kids.”

“You have to give me a ride home.” She says, turning back tothe set piece at hand. “And try not to talk a lot for the next day.”

He nods and flashes her a smile before making his way backtowards the other actors.

She feels like this is bad idea but tries to focus on theactual task at hand.

Peter Kavinksy is sitting in her kitchen, drinking a cup oftea and staring at the lemon in front of him.

“According to google, there’s a few things we can try, but Idon’t know if they are going to work.” She jumps onto the counter, so she’smove level with him, and takes a sip of her own cup of tea.

Peter Kavinksy is in her house, and literally a staircaseand a closet away is a love letter she wrote to him when she was thirteen, talkingentirely too much about his eyes and a game of spin the bottle.

He holds up the lemon, his brows knotted in confusion.

“Before school tomorrow, you should put some slices in somehot water. Pretty sure it’s an old wives’ tale, but theater people swear byit.” She says. Peter continues to stare at the lemon.

And it’s weird. There’s a boy in her kitchen at a quarter tomidnight on a school night. A very attractive, very popular boy.

It almost feels scandalous, like one of her romance novels,when the heroine sneaks the handsome love interest into her room before theyare married, so they can do something that will be amazing, but she’ll regretin the morning, adding to the drama before said attractive love interest comesand asks for her hand in marriage.

Not that Peter Kavinksy is her love interest in any way,shape, or form. She’s not even sneaking him in. She texted her dad before theyleft school, and he was fine with it.

“Also, if you are singing correctly, you shouldn’t even haveto worry about your throat.”

“Mrs. Klein says-“

Lara Jean glares at him, and he holds his hands up insurrender, before pulling his phone out of his pocket. He flicks throughsomething, before he rolls his eyes, and grabs her phone out of her hands andtypes something in.

He hands her phone back to her, and it goes off, a textmessage coming through.

Mrs. Klein says I’m agreat singer.

He saved his name in her contacts with a heart next to it.She’s not entirely sure how to feel about it.

“Whatever you say, Kavinsky.”

He rests his head on his hand and stares at her, and shefeels like she’s exposed, like he can read her mind.

She takes a screen shot of her google search and sends it tohim, hoping it will distract him.

“Stop for cough drops and honey on your way home. I’ll bringmore tea tomorrow, and I can give it to you in English.”

He takes a sip of his tea and moves around the counter sohe’s standing closer to her. Close enough that his arm brushes against her legwhen he pulls out his phone.

13-year-old Lara Jean is screaming. 16-year-old Lara Jean ispretending that she does not care at all.

Thank you.

“You’re welcome.”

Can I give you a hug?

Her eyes flicker between her phone and Peter, who isintently staring at his own phone.

“Sure.” She says, because there is no harm in a hug, and 13-year-oldLara Jean would thank her.

His face erupts into smile, and then his arms fold aroundher, and his head fits into her shoulder, and this might be the nicest hugshe’s ever received.

It’s over before she has a decent chance to enjoy it, andthen she’s walking him to the door.

“I’ll see you in English.” She says. He nods and holds uphis lemons before disappearing into his car.

Lara Jean falls back against the door once it’s closed andtries to steady her heart rate. The last thing she needs right now is to haveanother crush on Peter Kavinsky.

“Kitty! Let’s go!”

Kitty runs down the stairs and almost right into Lara Jeanthe next morning, almost spilling not one, but two travel mugs worth of hot teaon her.

“Whoops!” Kitty says, slowing down. “Sorry, I had to grab myhelmet.” She flashes Lara Jean a grin before opening the front door.

Only to reveal a grey Jeep on the street, and a freshlyshowered Peter Kavinksy smiling at both of them from above his car.

And he has a sign.

GOOD MORNING!!!

“Who is that?” Kitty asks, the smile on her face so wideit’s almost threatening to split.

“That, is Peter Kavinksy.” Lara Jean starts to walk towardthe car and Kitty hurries to follow.

“Is he going to give us a ride?”

“It appears like that would be the case.”

Peter breaks out into a smile almost as wide as Kitty’s andjumps down from his Jeep to open the door for both of them.

He tosses the sign in the back, takes the tea and passes asmall note into her hands before making his way back to his side of the car.

Lara Jean can feel Kitty’s eyes staring into her back.

Before you try tofight me, I only came for the tea.

“You’re ridiculous.” She says. In the middle of the consoleis an industrial sized pack of cough drops, and three more lemons. He pops acough drop in his mouth, and Lara Jean has to try very hard to not watch himplay with it as they drive to school, while Kitty rattles off a hundredquestions that Lara Jean has to answer for both of them.

Under no circumstanceis she going to fall for Peter Kavinsky again.

He catches her staring and winks at her.

She almost chokes on her tea.

She finds three more notes in her lock her throughout theday, and he passes her at least 5 in English alone.

And he texts her. Periodic updates about how the cough dropsare helpful, or how much he likes the tea, and there’s one saying how much helikes her jacket, and it’s a lot.

They haven’t really talked in 3 years, but here, now, it’slike they never stopped being friends. And the smallest part of her feels likeshe never fully got over her stupid crush.

He finds her later, as they are setting up for the show, andshe’s putting the finishing touches on the set.

“I think it worked.” He says, coming up behind her, voicealmost completely normal.

This time she does drop her paint brush.

He picks it up before she has a chance to and holds ithostage.

“That’s great!” She holds out her hand to take the brushback, but he holds it over his head.

“I wanted to say thank you.”

“You already did that last night.”

“Not properly.” His leans down slightly so he is closer toher height, and Lara Jean is not sure where this is going. She’s not sure whata proper thank you for googling how to get your voice back looks like.

“Peter! You are needed in makeup!”

He stares at her for a moment, like he has something else hewants to say, but he just passes her back the paint brush. “Later, okay Covey?”He asks, and it feels like a promise.

Peter finds her, after the show is over, placing the propsback into their designated area.

The show went off perfectly, and Lara Jean was proud ofherself. She sort of saved the star of the show from certain theatrical ruin,and helped the half of the student population that wasn’t already in love withPeter Kavinsky fall in love with him.

“Hey,” He says, gently brushing his hand across her back ashe passes her his prop. “When you’re finished wanna go grab something to eat.My treat.”

“Sure.” She smiles at him, and he smiles back, until someonecrashes into backstage and nearly breaks two of the props they are holding, andPeter is called away for a cast huddle.

But he finds her again, once she’s finished packing up allthe last minute paints and glues and props.

And he holds her hand on the way to his car.

And he steals the fries off her plate at the café.

And her heart won’t stop pounding a mile a minute every timeshe catches his looking at her.

And then, they are walking to his car, and his hair is stillgreased back from the play, and he brushes a smudge of paint on her cheek thathe claims to have just seen now, and then before she knows it, his lips are onhers, and she she’s standing on her tippy toes trying to reach him.

He pulls back, cheeks flushed. “Thank you.”

She falls back down to her normal height and takes a deepbreath.

13-year-old Lara Jean has died. 16-year-old Lara Jean feelslike she might as well.

“That is quite the thank you.”

“Yeah.” He laughs slightly and tucks a piece of hair behindher ear. “You did give me a lot of lemons though, so I might need to say thankyou a few more times.”

“I think I can deal with that.” She winds her arms aroundhis shoulders and pulls him down for another kiss.

Yes, she decides. She can deal another crush of PeterKavinsky, as long as they get to keep kissing like this.

[toughknit]

Hey, i dont know you at all but i am always able to help!! What can we do to help you?

thank you very much

i have no idea i exploited pretty much every resource that people gave me or that ive found during the past 3 years (medication , therapy, hospitalisation, opening up to friends, going towards people instead of waiting for them, working, crying, self harm, deleting or creating social media accounts, watching movies to absorb the main character’s personality, writing)

i believe i need people to be physically here and to make new connections, i want attention, i need to live somewhere else that is not my parent’s house. i know that i am feeling very lonely even though i can’t compare it to any other feeling ive had in the past

talking to people here has been helpful really, because some seem to appreciate me or rather my aesthetic, this projection of the self or whatever this blog is or means, and receiving likes/asks/replies (this is very superficial and meaningless and temporary, hedonistic at best) keeps me going right now.

making art to get out of this has been very difficult as i am not feeling anything. i don’t feel like i can get out of this state by myself, i need connections with other human beings and interactions with voices that are not in my head (you know today i was walking to college and i had an idea about something i don’t even remember what and the voice said “oh that’s actually a great idea you stupid bitch” which is not very helpful)

i am very ashamed of what i am right now and i am pushing myself to throw up everything that needs to go, like this, like the very long paragraphs i wrote yesterday and the day before; writing on this blog is the only conversation i can handle and actually get at the moment

[tilbageidanmark]

Movies I watched this week - 24

In The Cakemaker ( האופה מברלין‎) a lonely baker moves from Berlin to Jerusalem in order to bond with the widow and young son of his boyfriend, who had died in a car accident. 

A restrained, moving and subversive Israeli film about Identities - what a surprise!. 8+ / 10.

The only trope that annoyed me was the power of “Food” as magic.

✴️             

2 with Saoirse Ronan:

✳️✳️✳️ In The Lovely Bones, 14 year old Saoirse Ronan is being murdered (brutally, but off screen) by creepy neighbor Stanley Tucci. The first 30 minutes before the murder are bone-chillingly scary, but then it turns into a stupid, unnecessary metaphysical theoretical bullshit. Sad!

✳️✳️✳️ Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut.

Sensitive, quiet and empathetic, well-paced and beautifully acted. Re-watch.

Best film of the week!

✳️✳️✳️ Bonus: Saoirse Ronan's many accents

✴️               

In Daniel Clowes’s sad Ghost World, misfit teenage friends, Scarlett Johansson and Thora Birch, prank dorky Steve Buscemi after they find a lonely heart ad he had placed.

Sweet and sensitive about adolescent angst and punk restlessness.

9/10.

✴️                

Unfortunately, Terry Zwigoff’s next film after Ghost World was Bad Santa, a terrible, unfunny crime story of a Charles Bukowski-type mall Santa with no redeeming characteristics who robs the stores where he works at the end of the season. 2/10

✴️                  

“Mmm... Whale carcass...”

Luca, the newest Pixar feature, (which is like “Coco but on the Italian Riviera”...), and which is like “Call me by your name”, but without the gay stuff. First feature from the director of La Luna, and pretty much a Vespa product placement.

I like the posters from the old film classics (Roman Holiday, Bicycle Thief) that can be briefly glimpsed on the town’s walls!

✴️                       

2 with Kristen Stewart:

✳️✳️✳️ American Ultra: A goofy underground comix disguised as an action movie where the hero is a loser stoner who loves his stoner girlfriend. Sweet and over the top. With Huell Babineaux in a colorful sweater in a small role.

Terrific end titles done in Mike’s "Apollo Ape" drawing style.

I wrote about it here, giving it “3 Funyons”.

(Re-watch)

✳️✳️✳️ Personal Shopper starts suggestively with two interesting stories, one of lovely Stewart as a shopper for a super model celebrity who eventually gets murdered, and another of her being a medium who communicates with ghosts. But in the last 30 minutes, she is trying to connect with her dead twin brother, and the whole plot falls apart and ends ‘nowhere’ (literally in a random room in Oman).

It is shot in romantic Paris with a small side connection to Hilda of Klimt (who was also a spiritualist), so it was very appealing to the eye.

Even though it was uneven, I’ll look for other films by prolific French director Olivier Assayas.

✴️                    

The Bothersome Man is a weird Norwegian film about a man who suddenly finds himself in a cold, “perfect” city - but without children or any emotions - and his attempts to escape from there. He is first dropped off - dressed like ‘Paris, Texas’s Harry Dean Stanton - in front of a deserted gas station in the middle of nowhere. It’s a dystopian story without explanations or much direction. 4/10.

✴️                

Icarus - Amateur cyclist Bryan Fogel’s 2017 investigation into illegal doping in international sport, and his discovery of a massive Russian conspiracy of cheating and cover up. I wonder how he first got the director of Russia's national anti-doping laboratory to help him cheat.

✴️                       

✳️✳️✳️ “Man just wants to forget the bad stuff, and believe in the made-up good stuff. It's easier that way.”

Kurosawa classic 1950′s Rashōmon - I didn’t remember how low budget and simple it was: There are only three settings in the film: Rashōmon gate, the woods, and the courtyard. The black and White filming is symbolic of light and darkness, good and evil. Part of the score is Ravel’s Boléro.

(The Internet Archive copy is haltingly bad, but the only one I could find).

✳️✳️✳️ Sheila Marie Orfano explains The Rashomon effect, where individuals give significantly different but equally believable accounts of the same event.

✴️                        

Kurzgesagt’s short film A Minute by Minute Account of the Day the Dinosaurs Died.

The YouTube channel of Kurzgesagt in general is one of the best.

✴️                   

In the new Fatherhood, Kevin Hart’s wife dies a day after she gives birth, and he stays to raise his daughter by himself. I wanted to like it more but there wasn’t much there.

Also, the newborn baby was a bit too old. 3/10

✴️                  

Errol Morris’s horrifying Standard Operating Procedure shows that we only know about Bush’s war crimes at Abu Ghraib because they were photographed. “American values” never change.

(This copy is pretty grainy)

✴️                       

On the waterfront - Young Brando’s first Oscar performance was truly riveting.

“... It wasn't him, Charley, it was you. Remember that night in the Garden you came down to my dressing room... I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it. It was you, Charley..” 

✴️                   

In 2018, before he did ‘‘Another Round", Thomas Vinterberg must have bought a big house in the country, so he had to direct Kursk, about the Russian nuclear submarine that sunk and couldn’t be saved.

Conventional and boring. But I can’t imagine how this story could be told in any interesting way. 

With Lars Brygmann (in a ”normal” person role) and a cameo by Max Von Sydow.

✴️                        

Another unforgettable Max Von Sydow role, as “Joubert”, in my all-time favorite film, Sydney Pollack’s best, Three Days of the Condor.

“...It will happen this way. You may be walking. Maybe the first sunny day of the spring. And a car will slow beside you, and a door will open, and someone you know, maybe even trust, will get out of the car. And he will smile, a becoming smile. But he will leave open the door of the car and offer to give you a lift...”

The perfect thriller which I’ve seen at least 12-15 times, and will probably see again and again. Dave Grusin’s score is superb. It’s also one of the most Christmasy movies I know. 

10/10

✴️                             

2 scars:

✳️✳️✳️ The original Pre-Production Code, Howard Hawks Scarface, inspired by Al Capone, and the archetype of the gangster film. “This picture is an indictment of gang rule in America and of the callous indifference of the government to this constantly increasing menace to our safety and our liberty”. I never realized that there was some comedy and (lovely!) cabaret singing in it.

✳️✳️✳️ Oliver Stone’s 1983 Scarface, with Hector Salamanca as “Alberto” and Harris Yulin as Mel Bernstein!

40 years later, it’s just a bit too long - could use a little trim.

You need people like me so you can point your fuckin' fingers and say, "That's the bad guy."

✴️                  

A short YT clip of clips from Kubrick’s films, from FilmoteCanet Cinema which has hundreds more.

✴️                

Woody Allen’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, with Gene Wilder as the doctor who falls in love with an Armenian sheep, Burt Reynolds and Lynn Redgrave. In hindsight, not as lecherous as remembered, but very 1972.

- - - - -

Throw-back to the art project:

Lady Bird Adora.

Daniel Clowes Adora.

La Luna Adora.

Three Days of the Condor Adora.

- - - - -

(My complete movie list is here)

[i-am-a-fan-of-empty-spaces]

super long 12/21 birthday letter

dear god:

i’m on ritalin and can’t nap.

when i write these things there’s always a kind of balance i have to maintain. emotions and words are slippery and when you get an image you want to complete it, and you have to stop yourself and think: does this stay true to what i’m actually feeling? 

the truth is i feel a mix of a lot of feelings at all times. they come and fade. that makes it hard to write about them. i felt physical joy watching the contrapoints video on violence, then switched to facebook and saw my conversation with graham, felt guilt and shame and sort of a self mild-dislike. i felt motivated when ritalin first started coming on, and thought, i could probably do anything right now. but now that i’m faced with the task of studying for tutoring, it’s hard to get motivated, even if it’s easier than normal. feelings exist on scales, but words deal with yeses and nos. 

what’s going on w me? a lot happens over the course of a week. maybe one dominant theme of this week is shame and frustration over not being a good friend. some expectation to be comforted by others when i share this with them. a small degree of guilt over my desire to share this as a way to be comforted. not enough to demand anyone tell me what they honestly think about me, which is what i want most. 

i get the desire to have immediate access in crucial moments to the things that would make me a better/interestinger friend--the right words, responses, a good understanding of their feelings, more intelligence and insight, genuine interest in their lives, more skill at writing and art, 

part of this feels very myopic and selfish and pointless. if i were a non-me person reading this i wouldn’t care.

steven asked me how my friends were doing. i told him they were probably busy with finals. it didn’t dawn on me until then that that could be a reason i felt annoying. in the past whenever he got busy i got depressed and insecure and then i’d realize it wasn’t anything about me at all, i wasn’t messaging more he was just responding less. 

honesty about situations and not editing in little narrative-enhancers is a difficult task when writing for my future self and knowing an audience can read. it’s easy to believe my own lies. things like “here is why i am like this”, that make for a more coherent life story. the truth is just “i don’t know” for 99% of all things, so the method is to use as few words as possible and to be as direct as possible when describing any emotion or circumstance. even highlighting a truth like this is dangerous. you can’t be sure your insights will ever hold up over time. you can only describe your feelings in the moment. the closer you zoom and the less you make sense of things, the less dangerous things get. 

i wrote that on mdma feelings can only be defeated by larger contextualizing feelings.

ok god that’s out of the way. lemme do a thing real quick. lemme express feelings dishonestly to beautify myself and my life. the ritalin is wearing off sharply and my head is clouded by noise suddenly and my writing ability has vanished.

i said on mdma i wanted you to save people. i still want you to save people. i want you to save all of us. my tendency to read humanity as being sad and deserving of pity probably gets me in trouble with friends, probably makes them feel condescended to. but can i indulge this for just a second? i feel helpless a lot, a lot. i see people feeling helpless, even if they don’t admit it or recognize it. and i worry about a lot of people, about how they might never find someone to understand them, about how they might lose faith in the capacity of humanity to save them. i see them feeling sad and wanting to die. they talk about not being worth anything. my friend graham has tried to kill himself a lot of times already and he is a great person who should not die. i’m afraid they’ll always struggle with sadness or alienation or all of the weight they carry from past hurts. i don’t have enough love in me to give. even if i were to have all the love they needed to feel important i wouldn’t know how to express it in a way that could save them. 

i confess that these days i believe in you less, believe less in some power outside of human effort and blind luck that can change hearts, but i think when desire is powerful enough it will escape in the form of prayer, and a god becomes necessary as a receptacle of something so impossibly good that reality can’t contain it. we find ourselves bargaining, promising tasks, changes of heart, our lives, in exchange for an answer, and then we find all of it falling short and hope you have enough love for us to grant us mercy. the desire for a loving god is woven into the human heart.

it’s taken an hour or so to write these past few paragraphs. writing on a ritalin comedown is an uphill battle against mental noise.

let’s try short sentences. i can’t think long.

i pray for graham. i pray for cherr. i pray for JC. i pray for steven. i pray for giulio. i pray for felix. i pray for ace. i pray for arielle. i pray for myself. i pray for my sisters, though i find this oddly hard to say sincerely.

i pray that i have more love for my sisters. 

i pray for myself, that i can sincerely want what’s best for people even after growing close to them and seeing their selfish bits in high resolution. i pray for love that doesn’t rely on projecting my own desires on to people.

i pray for my parents. 

i pray for more love and more wisdom and more desire for love and wisdom, and stupid courage to face my own lack of it no matter how depraved and awful it gets to look at and courage also to develop where i need to develop even if it will never be close to enough, and i pray for my very best to be enough for me and i pray that people will be patient with my faults and i will be patient too,

i pray for humility and trust and stupid faith in you to provide for them all,

i pray for all of them to go places in life that are good and to find things that are good that help them survive and become fulfilled and beautiful. at the time of writing this i really feel it.

i pray for a good world. i pray for strong people. i pray that you are real, and one day things will be made right. i am angry at people who try to see things as good as they are now because things are fucked and awful and the world hurts people without recompense. i pray that you are the fulfillment of every unfulfilled desire.

i pray to be less selfish. 

i pray, selfishly, to be less insecure, because it feels bad. i want to be a healthy happy person with good thoughts and intentions.

god these days i get stressed a lot and i’m weak so instead of powering through i say things like “god save me” and “i feel lost” when it’s not actually that bad. and i curl up and let the noise in my head scatter in a million directions until i feel okay.

being honest is hard work. sighing to you like a child to a doting mother is much more satisfying. i would like to sigh to my friends because they respond more readily but humans don’t take well to self-pity. so i sigh to you.

God, help me. i feel lost. help me, help me, save me, please. teach me strength sure, 

but right now also save me and make me float in the confident knowledge of your strength and beauty so i don’t have to be strong and i can just walk forward effortlessly knowing graham and cherr and steven and giulio and felix will be okay always and forever and that one day i will be good and wise and loved and so will they. 

make this world beautiful and okay. this world is fucked and we are sad.

like a child’s cry is designed to be heard by a mother our suffering exists to invite your grace. 

amen

PS shit sucks and i’m confused a lot and stressed out and i’m a coward so i like it when it gets bad enough that i feel okay napping.

PS my therapist sucks

PS odesza is good i wanna listen to em on molly

PS i wanna be a good friend but also this is code for i wanna be liked by people i like forever

PS remember that time in taiwan i shouted at my mom and she cried and said she felt unloved even if she knew i loved her? i know how that feels and it sucks.

seriously god how do i become likable and make people’s lives good and enjoyable, and how much of this is selfishness vs genuine desire to help others and when this happens how do i make sure my whole life is constantly in a state of this and never in a state of me being annoying and needy and what is the meta truth i need to defeat my fear of being annoying

lastly PS here’s to a good 25th year 

and thank you god for letting me meet graham and cherr and everyone even mel and thank you for letting me see humanity in its richness and interestingness 

and thank you for giving me emotions and for keeping me safe all these years and giving me a sense that i am loved and understood and valuable no matter where i go

thank you for this unwavering confidence in the beauty and goodness of the human experience. you’d better not take this from me. 

like can i brag? my life rocks, taiwan was beautiful, i am cool, i am likable to a lot of people and able to get close super fast, i travel and try drugs, i am deep and interesting and moody, i bought a fucking sick cat hoodie and it makes me cute, i feel cute sometimes like right now, this bed is soft as hell, i can read tarot cards drunk at parties, i’ve grown so wise, i made a comic w cherr,

can i thank you double for my friends because holy fucking shit they are such great great humans and in every measure no matter how deep or shallow they are A+, like on the shallow end they’re easily as cool as me and have interesting opinions worth hearing and if i weren’t weird about hugging i’d hug like 2 or 3 of them maybe,

ecuador is gonna rule, maybe one day things will fall apart and i’ll lose a sense of joy over things as shallow as sick cat hoodies but like lemme have this moment, lemme have this joy okay god

amen.

oh but

on the one hand i wanna say 3 hour journaling is the norm for me. but also, i distinctly remember being on 40 mg methylphenidate and spending the 3 hours writing a letter to nathan, i also distinctly remember this molly trip a few weeks ago where i spent 8 whole entire hours writing, and each of those times it felt totally natural and not a drug compulsion, and my therapist was like “holy moly that’s a lot of writing” and i was like “nah i write when i’m sober” but shit i think he’s right

[freljordsking-blog]

Academy Blooms

This is a Darius x Kayn story I wrote for @axe-me-darius

It contains NSFW material under the cut. Please be warned as the NSFW material contains partial non con.

If you are troubled by anything above, then please do not continue reading under the cut.

Enjoy~!

The main door to the gym creaked open. It was after school hours, cheers coming from within the gym hall. There were loud squeaks of shoes across the lacquer polished wood flooring. Quietly a young man sneaked towards the large doors, other side where people loudly roared happily before a buzzer sounded. Slowly the door opened silently after a click of the bar unlocking. One foot creeped in, drawing no attention to the male who obviously didn’t belong.

Kayn was quiet, dressed in a black jacket, black skin tight jeans, and a deep grey side bag. The long black hair he had blended in with his dark outfit. The only indication of difference between hair and clothing was the long blue bang hanging over the right side of his face. His blue and red eyes observed the area.

Sixteen players stood on and next to the basketball court dressed in either red and black, or grey and blue. Two coaches stood on either sideline, groups of cheerleaders waving pompoms around. Crowds of people cluttered seating stands reaching up each wall. Kayn’s eyes observed each person, quickly scanning about.

People in the stands… The cheerleaders… Players… Female, male, female, male, male, male… Kayn had come searching for someone. But he couldn’t seem to find them…

Darius dribbled the basketball down the court length, brutishly defending the ball with his arm hooked out. Although the other team persisted to stop him, Darius was well known for being unstoppable once he started moving. Reaching the inner circle of the enemy’s hoop, he leaped up. Shoving a few people out of the way who were trying to stop him, the ball was slam dunked through the ring. Half the audience broke into an intense celebration, other half applauding at the impressive display. A whistle blew, buzzer sounded, and the score was increased. The scoreboard read 72 to 66 with only three minutes left on the clock in the final round.

The gothic looking boy walked up to the side of a stand, watching in awe of Darius’ powerful actions. He watched him carefully, unable to stop himself from staring. This guy had bullied him so many times before. But instead of keeping his distance, he couldn’t help coming back. A finger reached up and touched the black bruising around his left eye. Darius’ fist left the mark on him, although Kayn couldn’t stay away. He couldn’t only stay in a trance, watching the Noxus Academy student jogging back with his team as a multitude of them whacked his back encouragingly.

Kayn had been going to an academy nearby, however once he had met Darius, he was suddenly compelled to seek him out. It wasn’t long before Darius was actually transferred to the same academy as him. Although he still played basketball for his same team. Darius was a year above Kayn.

The male who stood in awe watched the Noxian stride along the court. He watched his legs carry him, powerful arms, solid build, attractive face, curl of his hair bouncing with each step… He was incredibly popular. Kayn, on the other hand, was not at all. He was picked on regularly, bullied relentlessly by Darius and his peers, and those similar. ‘Pretty boy’ he was called because of his blue hairs. ‘Just a woman wannabe’ his long hair in a braid sparked insults. But Kayn was by no means a weakling. He was well versed in martial arts. Despite his ongoing education, his off time was spent taking lessons from a man named Zed. Those lessons often left him with severe injuries for the week at the academy, leaving him to be further laughed at by Darius.

He was athletic and fit. But Darius was much larger. The Noxian was larger, bulkier, and obviously worked out regularly. However it wasn’t at all for show, despite the attention it got him. To Darius, it was about peak performance, being unstoppable, and never letting anyone best him.

Through Kayn’s thoughts and absentmindedness, he didn’t catch when two green orbs locked in on him. Darius looked somewhat confusingly at the dark haired male. “What are you doing here…?” He mumbled under his breath before honing his gaze angrily. “I’ll teach you to intrude on my turf. The gym is mine…” With that, someone down court called out for the team member to pass the ball down. With a wry smirk, the ball was hurled at an intense velocity. However, not to the one who requested it. Just above Kayn’s head, the orange ball slammed into the wall with a frightening bang. It bounced, clipping the male’s shoulder before cleverly reaching the hands of the one who asked for the ball in the first place.

The ninja in training’s shoulder erupted in pain. An injury from training left him vulnerable. Instead of drawing attention, he simply expelled all oxygen from his body and fell to the floor hidden by the stand. Darius let out a laugh, watching the shock on his face followed by him ducking to the ground, or so he thought.

The game continued, both teams tussling for the ball and having it go back and forth. With Noxus ahead and no further points scored, the final horn sounded for the game to be over. All members of the team grouped up and celebrated, joining in on the audience chanting “Noxus! Noxus! Noxus!” A minute passed by when everyone began to disperse. Both teams headed off to their respective locker rooms.

Passing across the gym from Kayn, Darius looked over to see him sat with his knees against his chest. His arm gripped the arm hit with the ball as a tear rolled down his cheek. With a smile, he joined his team and headed out to get changed. The black clothed boy grit his teeth. Zed had broken and dislocated his shoulder just days before. Normally ball hit would hurt and subside quickly, but like salt on a wound he was flooded with uncontrollable agony. “I-… I’ll make you pay. Y-You’ll pay you fucking asshole.”

Gym now clear of all people, Kayn was left completely alone. Both teams were in their changing rooms, some already leaving. The junior stood, storming towards the door and into the corridor. Down the hall was the entrance he sought. A few students exited, ignoring the smaller peer. He then took his chance to sneak in.

NSFW Content under read more

Darius slipped a white dress shirt on unbuttoned, placing the last of his shower items back into a sports bag. “Good shit big D!” A teammate walked up behind the notorious dunk master and slapped his back. “I heard some of the cheerleaders talkin’ about your performances recently. Seems like you’ve got yourself some more than just adoring fans. If you’re headed to your brother’s party tonight, you are SO going to get laid at least one of the girls! Hahaha! You player~! Plus you’re always so pent up and grumpy! Let loose and have a good time with someone for once!”

Darius simply smiled awkwardly and turned around. “You did great too, but I’m way more interested in action than I am in some stupid party. I’ll be there the day after having to clean up his mess as usual. Not to mention some dumb writing project that’s due tomorrow.”

“Come on man! Don’t be a pussy! There’s beer, chicks, music, it’ll be sick! You gotta come! You don’t really have a choice you know!”

“Yeah… I’ll think about it.”

“Alright. See you tonight then man! We gotta celebrate properly!” With that, the second last player exited the locker rooms, leaving Darius almost completely alone.

Behind a wall strolled Kayn, seeing the back of Darius who was placing the last of his sports clothes into his bag. A thud echoed through the empty room as the junior’s bag landed on the ground. Darius slowly turned around, seeing the younger man standing there with his fists up. It took a moment to register before the Noxian burst out into laughter. Leaning over his dress shirt hung open. Kayn could see the other’s chest and stomach heaving in and out as the hearty belly laugh mocked him relentlessly. Back up his back stretched, leaning back and holding his forehead in further mockery. Settling down finally, Darius shook his head in disbelief. “You’re kidding! Right?! Do you even have any idea what you’re doing right now?”

Instead of faltering, Kayn stood his ground. He even took a step forward with readied fists. “You’re a fucking idiot! Hahaha! I mean sure, if you really want to get beaten up again, let’s go. I had no idea you were such a glutton for punishment.” A devilish smile lit up his face, opting to roll up the sleeves of his dress shirt. Although not ideal fighting gear, as it gripped his arms tightly also restricting movement, having the shirt open allowed easier movement.

The shorter male suddenly launched a punch that connected with the other’s solid chest. Kayn grunted angrily, but the sudden stop sent force up to his shoulder. He winced and closed his blue eye, gasping in pain. Darius’ counter was a prompt fist in the gut. Winded, Kayn collapsed to the floor. One arm gripped his shoulder, the other holding his stomach. “What’s your problem?” Darius taunted, picking the male up by the collar and tossing him against the wall.

Through shallow breaths, Kayn winced and pulled his coat off. Desperate for more air, he undid one of the top buttons on his pearly white shirt. “Y-you…” He panted. “You’re my problem! You’re my entire problem! I-I can’t…”

“Fucking idiot. If that’s how it is, then I’ll make myself a real problem!” Grabbing the other’s right arm, he pulled it back and tossed him at the bench. And walking over to him. “You’re a real piece of work. Getting beaten up all week, then turning up after the weekend with more injuries! You’re a fuckin’ sadist aren’t you!” Darius only shook his head and strolled over. Gently pulling his shirt off, he rolled it up and placed it on his bag.

Meanwhile, Kayn coughed at the ground with both arms on the bench. Finally he could breathe, chest still aching. Darius then picked him up, turning him around so he was sitting on the ground. Fiddling with his waist, the button and zip promptly showed his large bulge contained within some black underwear. “Might as well make use of you.” Pulling his length out, Darius slapped his length against Kayn’s cheek. “I haven’t gotten off in weeks. And I gotta say, you’re not too bad. Yeah you’re a woman wannabe and a long haired freak, but you know, I like it.” The smile on Darius’ face widened, blood slowly surging to his loins. Already boasting a half stiff manhood, he promptly pushed it into Kayn’s mouth. There was little to no resistance, the junior taking it without moving at all. Still, only breathing, cock in his mouth.

“You gonna suck it you sadist?” Darius cooed, pulling it back out and stroking it idly.

“You’re fucking disgusting. Dickhead asshole perverted cunt bastard whore!” Kayn’s blood boiled, fuming with rage as he was unable to move due to the piercing pain coursing through his entire body. “I-I’ll fucking… Y-you can’t do this!!! Stop this!!!”

“Hey. You came to me, filthy mouth bitch.” Putting a hand to the blue hair, Darius gently pushed it out of the male’s face. “Definitely a pretty boy.” Once more, the erection was stuffed into Kayn’s mouth. Although inactive, the wetness of his tongue and saliva were covering the musky meat as Darius slowly guided it in and out. The feeling of the other’s tongue on his underside was incredible. He couldn’t help himself from entangling his fingers in the long black hair while rolling his hips back and forth.

The assassin in training sat completely still. His body was entirely limp. All he could do was breathe and blink, watching Darius’ muscular chest while the thick rod invaded his mouth. Although this wasn’t an ideal situation, Kayn couldn’t help but admire just how well toned and bulky the Noxian was. He had pecs, large biceps, and washboard abs. Then there was the V-line that directed attention to his thick manhood.

Eventually, Darius grew tired of the lifelessness, opting to start pumping faster. Noises started unintentionally being made, wet sounds and sloppy saliva being displaced. It was oddly arousing. But this was no fun. “Come on. If you’re gonna want it to hurt to get off, at least struggle. You’re making this really boring!” A while passed by with no changes.

Enough was enough and the Noxian pulled out and lifted Kayn up onto the bench with one hand. It was impressive to watch the man’s thick muscular arm flex as it lifted him. But as fast as he was picked up, the ninja in training was set down with his ass just off the seat. Darius stared down at him with a menacing smile, gripping the hem of the other’s pants and forcing them down. Pulling them all the way off, he was left with only a shirt on as his semi erect dick confusingly resisted the stimulation.

It wasn’t until there was a hard warmth at Kayn’s ass that he finally realised what was going on. “H-hey what are you-… S-sto… Please… D-d…“ The words trailed off as two athletic legs were lifted onto Darius’ broad shoulders. The Noxian entered his junior’s ass, struggling as the saliva was only partially sufficient for penetration.

The words Kayn spouted were futile as he lost his anal virginity, Darius losing his own virginity too. Red flooded the ninja in training’s face, blushing intensely and biting his lip. The cock plunged into him roughly, only half way in and it burned profusely. There was immense pain, but for some reason his own manhood was starting to grow. Tears began to form in the sides of his eyes as he watched Darius spit on his length for more lubricant.

“Oh fuck… I had no idea this felt so good…” Darius moaned, throbbing eagerly and grabbing Kayn’s hips. Beginning to move, he pulled out and pushed back in slowly. The other’s ass gripped around his dick like a vice, but it only made it all the better when he moved. It sent shivers up his spine. The Noxian flexed each time he thrust in, hungry to experience more.

“D-Darius… Please stop…”

The weeping words of Kayn softly flowed out of his lips and caressed Darius’ ears. It was then that he broke from the lusty stupor and began to realise what he was doing. He saw tears roll off his peer’s face. He saw the black ring around his eye. He saw the bruising on his neck, chest and shoulder. With a wet slop, he stepped back. Covering his mouth with his hand, Darius stood in shock before kneeling down.

“What have I done… Oh by the gods… What sort of monster am I…”

Although the other sobbed, the Noxian’s eyes welled with tears. “I-… I don’t know why I am an ass to you Kayn… Fuck… I didn’t mean to do something as fucked up as this… I just… Feel something about you and can only express it… But just doing this…” Two large hands cupped his face, leaning over and hanging his head in shame.

There was a moment of immense dread for the two of them. One almost used on the bench, the other helpless on the ground.

Kayn got up from his place, lowering to the ground and shuffling over to Darius. “Darius…” He finally spoke up, placing a hand on his shoulder. “I like you… That’s… Why I… Keep being around you. B-but…” There was a moment’s silence, neither moving. Without warning, Kayn grabbed Darius’ chin and turned it to face him.

“You’re not a monster. We’re just confused.” He stated before leaning in. There was a mere sliver of air between their lips. They both stared, both eyes locking. “If you like me too… Just kiss me…” Kayn whispered.

Darius waited some time. He looked down shamefully, looking back up sympathetically. Slowly his hand brushed up Kayn’s arm, stopping at the elbow and staring down. The other’s hand then pushed his wrist up further to his cheek. They stayed silent, gazing into each other’s eyes. Gently Kayn nuzzled his cheek into Darius’ palm. The act elicited a soft breath and smile from the both of them.  Both of the Noxian’s arms suddenly wrapped around the smaller male’s body. Lunging forth, he eagerly kissed while also drawing the other tightly to his exposed chest. Their lips smacked together, pressing, nipping, teasing, licking. Passionately their mouths danced together, the junior ending up in his senior’s lap.

Several minutes passed of their intimacy before Darius pulled back. “Come back to my room. I-… I um… I want to do this right.” But when Kayn looked down and saw Darius’ pulsating manhood pressed up against his body, he couldn’t help but smile.

“Yeah. And I can help you with that project that’s keeping you busy tonight.” Kayn cooed.

“Wait, but I don’t have a project…”

“You do now~”

[dhj8735]

Reflective journal.

Alright another personal time.

Our Task: ‘In this assignment, you are revisiting your previous blogs and creating a reflective journal blog. Journal should be a reflective document that provides personal and thoughtful analysis of your individual participation/progress and reflection.

You are required to submit a full reflective journal, aggregated collection of entries so that your “final” journal covers the entire’ semester analysis of your thinking process and articulating what you learned

as a creative thinker.

HOWEVER, it is very important that you be honest in your journal entries.

Website of this: https://blackboard.aut.ac.nz/bbcswebdav/pid-4092675-dt-content-rid-7616768_4/institution/Papers/CTEC502/Publish/Assignment%20Two.pdf

 The journey to Auckland university was not very eventful or interesting. On my mind, right now was focusing on my new life here. I was stressed to say the least, well, all of this is to be expected if you study at a University. The university is bigger than expected, this was one of three campuses. Luckily, the campus I am in this year is somewhat new and the equipment seems to be quite new and modern. Albeit Chairs and Desks.

Although funny enough, my high school life did end quite quickly. I can almost guarantee my university life will not be the same. I am not one of those party animals, which drink and smoke to make themselves look popular or cool, nor am I Someone that is desperate to prove myself to be useful, trendy or approachable. I am me and I won’t change or do anything just to fit in, it may be stupid or the wrong choice, but it is my choice to make. In university, I am the minority.

I remember walking in to the WG1103 room, I was one of the few people that came early, I walked into the far-left side corner of the room, nobody else was sitting near there, I sat down, and waited. I didn’t want to converse with others, I didn’t like to meet new people, I only wanted to do what I needed to do. When all the seats were full the class began.

Walking into those doors, I knew this was serious, I had no intensions of making any friends, I either get distracted, or weighed down. I had to do things by myself. My first week of BCT… well, very personal. They ask us to blog frequently, talk to people, get to know other teams, work all that. I was confused, my first thoughts in University were to focus on your own work, never mind other people. But this course is different. I have learned some things regarding BCT, such as processing... It reminded me of high school. When we were writing blogs, I had no idea as to what to write. But as I continued to write, I began writing more about the things that I have experienced and learnt.

My first Blog post was at least 4 sentences. I didn’t know what I was doing, but as they say, do more things than once, you’ll learn it. Don’t know as to who said that but you get the picture. I remember our first project, we literally lost so much that project. We had lost ideas, the will to do anything, even a team mate, who later chose to do designing instead. I respect her choice; she has every right to choose what she/he wants. We had come up with five ideas for our card game. The first was a drinking game where the point of the game was to make sure to not get drunk in the game. Loser would be kicked out of the game. After a few trials and testing we thought that our idea was brilliant. However, after a feedback session with a lecturer, we realised that our game had some clear problems. I will not state it as it is already it my blog. After a couple of days, we came up with a new idea, where you pick a card at random, and that card has a certain type of food, once you pick that card you place it in a blender and you blend it with other cards you have chosen. Our team found this interesting and tried to find a way to play it. 

Yet another flaw arises, this might be a bit too costly, for the player. Such as not having the right ingredient or missing a certain ingredient. They would have to either buy one or have completely lost interest in the game. At this point we have all lost the will to keep going. We decided to rethink about this tomorrow. Another game came up, It was like a game similar to Yu-Gi-Oh, but this time, it was with gods, other religions, Christianity, Buddhism, Jewish, Muslim, etc. We were desperate to get at least an idea out there. Yet another problem, people will find it too offensive. I don’t know what we were thinking, we are a multi-cultural group consisting of an Indian, Filipino, Japanese, and Fijian. How did we not find this offending? Yet another devastated day. Problems kept coming every time an idea had come up, was it good or was it bad?

We ‘came up’ with another idea, a puzzle game, where you must sort out the cards in their rightful place. And you guessed right another problem. It was already made. Yeah, it’s called jigsaw puzzle. In the end, we decided we need to come up with a game that all ages can play, where you don’t have to drink alcohol, where you don’t get offended, you don’t have to waste precious money on food you won’t eat, instead you waste your brain cells on thinking: We created a… Maths game. All in all, that time we spent was very stressful, all those ideas being thrown away hurt, all the time effort put on those ideas were time consuming. But at least we saw our flaws.

After that project was done, another project had been given, this had been my favourite out of all the projects I have done thus far. During this project, we also had another project, programming. But the project that I enjoyed was creating my own soundboard, making art using my own sounds. I was a huge fan of medieval games, such as Skyrim and tactical games, so my idea had arisen from there. It was fun, sitting down, making sure everything plays in the exact time I want it to. It was a lot of fun for me, and so did some people.

What Creative Technologies means to me?

When I had created this video, I cringed, hearing myself talk and letting the public see it is quite weird. Very strange, and I dint like it, It was a problem. I wrote it as a serious answer, I only came here to do what I need to do, learn and do animation. If I need to more things than need to be done then so be it, that’s life.

What Creative technology means to me, good question, I never thought about it, all I Thought of it was a course that I could take to study animation, and learn more about the modern technology. Nothing more. But I wouldn’t say it’s a course that can make me ‘change the world’. To me, it’s more of a place where my ideas can be heard, people may comment, agree, disagree, but that won’t be the reason for me to change my idea. Pretty words aren’t always true, and true words aren’t always pretty.[1] If I rethink and find any flaws in my creation, then I will change it. Even if I may be wrong, it is my decision and I hope people can respect that. And I will respect theirs, if they want me to comment, I will, if they want my opinion then I shall give it, Creative Technologies is a place where my and others ideas can be heard. This could be said from our first project; others have asked us to try their games and they asked for our opinion.

These might be the best days of our lives, the past makes you want to die out of regret, and the future makes you depressed out of anxiety, so by elimination, the present is likely the happiest time.[2] Creative technologies’ challenges us to get out of our seats and converse with others, because communication is key. Working hard is also key. Hard work Betrays none, but dreams betray many. Working hard alone doesn’t assure you that you’ll achieve your dreams. Actually, there are more cases where you don’t. Even so, working hard and achieving something is some consolation at least. In short, Creative technologies is somewhere where  I can be myself and where my ideas matter.

[1] Hikigaya Hachiman

[2] Hikigaya Hachiman

Speaking of problems, this has happened to my Instrument. A classmate of mine had told me the flaws of it, about how the sound frequencies not being able to bounce through the end of the strings, I have found a way. I had tied the end of my strings into a screw which held the instrument tightly, there I will wrap my string into it making the vibrations thicker and tighter. It was an alright experience to have flaws, but having to many is an issue. Our instrument that we created as a team was all unique, I’m not saying this to be nice about my teammates, honestly they were quite amazing. One of my teammates had to use a car battery for it to work. Very dangerous but a very cool idea.

So far the projects we were doing have many flaws, but there are some good outcomes. We as a team could easily change our minds if we find faults. It was nice to hear others intakes at your faults as to show that others can see what you cannot. Many changes were involved in this project, when we were working on our soundscape for our performance, our first concept was based on a “Battlefield” Like area. But the problem was that our instruments did not match the soundscape, forcing us to remake it from the start, which annoyed me slightly as myself and my team member spent hours on it.

On the day of the performance, we did not practice at all, this was all done on the very first try. I was surprised we didn’t make any mistakes. We stayed for hours to try to make our instruments work with the soundscape. We have used sounds like that of war, gun fire, planes, bombs, and sad piano playing in the background. Our aim was to bring a slight sadness into the hearts of the audience, but we have gotten something a little different.

When we were working on our project about E-Waste, it was the one that had the least number of projects. But it also means we had mistakes, flaws and more mistakes. Such as ‘The Circuit board was created in the 1940’s’ what? I didn’t search this in the internet at all, and I knew the circuit board was created at least around the 1900’s. Anyway, we decided to do a film about circuit boards, well more like a documentary. It was quite impressive to say the least, and I don’t find that many things in our work impressive, our music choice was good, our narrator had a good voice, our editor was precise.

In between this project, we were to create a poster that talks about what we have learnt so far. I have written:

Teamwork- Working hard alone may not guarantee you that you will succeed in your dreams.

Communication- Only 40% of human communication is done using speech. But we observe the other 60% bye eye movements and small actions.

Change the World?- Some say that if you change yourself, you can change the world. That may be possible, but me trying to change a world where I am one of Seven Billion people. Highly unlikely.

Ideas. Mistakes.- It doesn’t matter if any of us are wrong, because every time you fall, you’ll continue to find the right answer right?

Teamwork 2- The Phrase “Three heads are better than one” In short, when people gather, they can become even stronger, than working alone.

At first, I thought being alone and working by myself will be much faster. It may be true. May. But being in a team can also make it faster, they can see the flaws that you cannot see.

 Thus: So far Creative Technologies means to me, is work together, not by yourself, there will come a time where you will have to work by yourself, then adapt, give out your ideas and let them be heard. I have learned so far that working alone may not always solve your problems, they try to take us out of our comfort zone and converse with one another, making us experience how to communicate with others who are similar to you. Blog posting is something I have to get used to. But as of now, Creative Technologies is a fun experience for me.

[dianamjackson]

Use the Force Luke (2015)

This was a piece I wrote in 2015 during one of my break-ups with visual art (specifically drawing). We got back together again after this, then broke up again. Now it looks like we regard each other as long-ago lovers might: ‘you’re beautiful and lovely but I’ve moved on, thank you.’ I always recall how Duchamp quit art and took up chess, or how Carrie Fisher’s husband left her for a man... Drawing will always be in my life, albeit in a smaller role. But this piece isn’t about drawing or art -- it’s about waking up and realising you’ve been wrong about something (or someone), even when it seemed, for all intents and purposes, so right. It’s about having the courage to accept the way things are. (Italicised text not in quotation marks constitutes my 2018 responses.) ‘Luke, you switched off your targeting computer. What's wrong?’

‘Nothing. I’m all right.’

And indeed, I am all right too. Why? Because last Monday, on the 6th of July 2015, at around lunch time -- I quit art.*

There are many reasons for this and they have recently become impossible to ignore. The main one being:

“I’m just not that into you.”

Imagine your whole life you’ve been told you are straight. You acted straight, felt ‘straight enough’ and had heterosexual relationships. Sometimes you even quite liked it. Then one fine day, clear as a bell, the fantastical insight, quite without warning, alights upon your head: you’re gay.

That’s what I feel like now. I don’t know that I’m gay, but I know I’m not straight.

*Well, quit the pursuit of art as a career fine artist in the conventional sense. There are other ways of ‘being artistic’.

It was truly a lightbulb moment, just like in the movies. ‘Ah! This weight I’ve been carrying around -- I don’t have to! It was self-imposed, a chore all along. Bubbling under the surface always was I do not want to be a fine artist. I do not want to be an artist. I don’t feel like an artist. I mustn’t be an artist… These people are artists. Am I like them? In my life thus far, great things have happened when I’ve ‘let go’, when I’ve stopped trying feverishly to attain something -- particularly goals I’ve set myself. I thought that was the way to achieve things -- set goals. What I didn’t know was how powerfully something could take possession of me from the outside, without me controlling it.

Over the years I’d managed to find a peace and inspiration in visual art like a gay man can in a relationship with a woman. A disquieting pebble in my shoe whose persistent rubbing I’d gotten used to. Pride was resident in the boast “I’ve been at this for 28 years!” How can I ignore a thing with such pedigree? But The Thing isn’t about time spent; it isn’t quantitative. Say I have spent my entire life in bad habits -- is that an excuse to continue them? If I flatten a tyre do I get out and flatten the other three?

Doing art is boring. For me. Sitting in a room all day and into the night -- even if accompanied by a functional heater and Wagner -- sinking deeper into a miasma of pointless and circular introspection about my life and how it’s going, the validity of what I’m doing and my relationships with others as I laboriously render a 5cm square of paper -- let me tell you now dear reader -- the answer is a foaming, blazing, sparks-flying-out-of-my-ass No.

Yes, I draw very well. I can copy things I see because I can judge relative size and position of shapes, and relative colours and their intensities. I can draw steady lines 1/8th of a millimetre thick or less because I have SHARP PENCILS, a STEADY HAND and FINE FINE MOTOR SKILLS.

I’m an excellent copyist. I can imitate anything -- painting styles, real-life objects, your signature, your accent, your walk, even your voice. Copying has a certain thrill, for sure. “Yep, I can do that too.” A fleeting and superficial pride attends these feats. Then come the cheap requests: “Can you draw a photorealistic drawing of my dog/my girlfriend/my parents/my face?” “No.” “I’ll even pay you!” (Gee, how nice!) “No.” People ask me would I like to be an artist full-time. No! That would be horrible. Or just boring, which is a soft kind of horrible, but horrible all the same. It would be like being an invalid, or under house-arrest. No.

Aptitude is a mysterious thing. I have good taste, a fairly broad range of interests and I am curious. I like colourful and shiny things because I am human and geared to like these things. But all these, even combined with technical ability, are not sufficient. I always recall what my illustration teacher said to me when I was 14: ‘Your technical ability is at Year 12 level. Now all you need is something to say.’

Art doesn’t make sense to me and perhaps that’s what held me in its thrall -- I’m drawn to things I don’t understand because they’re a challenge. But the fact that there are no answers at the end, nothing to discover -- frustrates and depresses me. It leaves me cold. What’s the point of playing a game if there’s no consensus on what constitutes winning? It is still true that I’m drawn to things I don’t understand. However, I now disagree that there is “nothing to discover” in art. On the contrary -- it is indistinct enough to include almost any interpretation. Instead, perhaps it is its lack of precision that frustrates me -- I find writing is much better at nailing concepts. Art’s openness is hence both its strength and weakness. I was enamoured of science at the time of writing this piece; confirmation bias was certainly at work.

To Feynman, philosophy was stupid. To me, art is stupid. This is uncharitable and myopic, but in a certain sense I do believe it. Art is ‘dumb philosophy’, and philosophy is ‘dumb science.’ I’m not the first person to advance this idea. Amazingly, the hierarchy has for me flipped: at the bottom is science, which is just a procedure; then philosophy, which grapples with concepts; then art is at the top. Art’s preeminence is due to the fact that it doesn’t try to be philosophy (contra Danto; if art tries to be philosophy, it’s just philosophy). Art is its own project; it doesn’t give a fuck about anything else.

I refuse to spend my life troubling my head over something I feel obliged to do mostly because other people think I should. Did I ever stop to consider my true feelings on the matter? Curiously, no.

A trip to Europe or an art show that appeals to me usually engenders a furious period of inspired production. I want to ‘do’ the buildings and spaces that I saw -- capture them, own them, possess them. But this is the consumer’s passion, the gatherer's, not the artist’s. And I do them because I can. I don’t care about innovating in art; I just like making pretty things that soothe my eyes. I'm a jeweller; a confectioner; a traditionalist. An enthusiastic cake-decorator, a polisher and tinkerer. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve attended exhibitions in the past several years, and when I do it’s often only because a friend wants to. I am not part of any artistic community, and I hardly ever buy art books (certainly no instructional ones). Art theory I don’t mind, and generally my choices are non-fiction -- philosophy or science. Perhaps I think art can tell me nothing that I don’t already know or feel; or at least that there are other disciplines and activities far more qualified to do those things.

I spent my entire design degree trying to figure out what design was. What is this thing? Why is it? How does it fit in the disciplinary landscape? How is it possible to judge designs when the assessment criteria is so unclear? Perplexing things are like this -- they make sense to other people. My classmates seemed to melt so easily into what needed to be done. I also felt different because of the importance they placed on personal style -- I was always merely practical and thought such effort misdirected. So while they got off on paper stocks, central alignment and thick-rimmed glasses, my head spun from the Boudrillard, Barthes and Žižek that eventually led me to academic philosophy.

Little signs along the way hinted at it -- an early and enduring love of vehicles and machines, a lack of respect for the ‘anything goes’ attitude in high school studio arts, confusion in my first degree, an impatience with teaching art and much of my cohort, a frustration with the general character of my peers in experimental art and music circles, a persistent fascination with science, taking a job in dentistry, the conspicuous lack of artists among my closest friends and a preponderance of scientists, software engineers and psychologists. There aren’t even any architects among my close friends. Most conversations with 'artists' remind me of Zappa's recordings of stoned hippies talking gibberish on Lumpy Gravy.

And the boredom. Oh the boredom. Only retrospectively do I realise how deep my boredom was, and all the troublesome and potentially damaging things I did to try and alleviate or ignore it. In Hungarian there is a perfect saying -- pihent agyu -- meaning those whose minds are ‘overly rested’, which translates roughly to ‘idle hands are the devil’s plaything.’ Boredom, pride, lack of courage to assert my true inclinations and desires -- such deadly sins muddied my time.

This is one of the most significant realisations of my life, and it has taken me this obscenely long to acknowledge it in full. One can set out so obviously in a particular direction, for so long, and for all intents and purposes look set for success in it. Everything can seem perfect: the tables are laid and the ribbons hung, the champagne poured. But patterns and intuition must be heeded -- the tiny, persistent voice that tickles closest to my heart -- even if it means the whole party must be packed up. The truth is often uncomfortable, but it's true.

One needs to truly love the thing one sacrifices for -- it has to fill the spirit in a way almost nothing else can. It’s a compulsion so strong and lasting that all else is employed in its service. Then it is worth it. It has to be what one wakes up for, the thing that is so thrilling that spare moments are spent on it and one’s person is filled with an almost embarrassingly unguarded glee when the loved thing is spoken of. Did I have these for art? No. It was more that odious thing that I owe to friends and family who are so impressed by my abilities and, in the case of parents, facilitated them.

I feel empowered; awoken. I’m taking up the oars and steering across the lake, headed for the unknown. It’s been easy to be passive, letting myself be tossed this way and that by the currents of outside opinion and counsel. It’s been easy to retreat from hard work out of fear and laziness. But these will no longer do.

I wash my hands of you, flickering cave pictures. I place you in a little boat laden with flowers and candles and push you out into the blue. May you be pampered and stroked and coddled by those you truly thrill.

May this be a lesson to any person trapped in the visions -- however convincing -- that others have concocted for them.

May this be a lesson about the perils of lacking the courage to face the uncomfortable, the surprising, or the merely inconvenient, truth. © Diana Szabo 2015-18.

[meralee727]

Dumb characters are a television staple. Characters who just don’t always seem to have it together, whom you wonder how they manage to live, survive and basically not die. Characters that despite their intellectual deficiencies, we root for them to maybe figure out or not.

Back in 1983, Dr. Howard Gardner discovered that there were eight levels or eight different types of intelligence. Later, existential intelligence and moral intelligence were added and will be added to this blog to determine the ultimate truth behind two of my favorite television dumb guys–the characters, not the actors who play them ’cause I don’t know the actors who play them and that would just be mean even though I’m sure they’re lovely individuals.

Now, given my Bachelor of Arts in Media Studies and my Masters in both Marriage and Family Counseling and Elementary Education, I am basically an expert in my own head.

So who is smarter?

Subjects:

Joey Tribbiani

Place of birth: Queens, New York

Age: 48

*While Friends ended in 2004, I am giving him the age he would likely be now, as It’s Always Sunny is still going and it’s just easier for me. 

Occupation:  Actor most notably for playing Dr. Drake Ramoray on Days of Our Lives

Vices: Food

Brief Background:

Joey Tribbiani is an Italian American, Caucasian male who grew up in a large family where he was the oldest and the only son. He has seven younger sisters whom he is close to and is very protective of. He has a close relationship with both his mom and dad. There has been no notable childhood trauma although when he was twenty-five years old, he discovered that his father was having an affair with a pet stuffer. His parents still remain happily married with his mom deciding the affair would simply be looked at as a hobby.

Charlie Kelly

Place of birth: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Age: 42

Occupation: Janitor at a bar in Philadelphia called Paddy’s Pub

Vices: Drinking, eating cat food, huffing inhalants, drinking paint, eating chalk, stalking, sniffing glue

Brief Background:

Charlie Kelly is a Caucasian male who was raised by a single mother in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Not much is known about his father though it is assumed that his biological father might be Frank Reynolds, a man whom he is currently sharing an apartment as well as a bed with. Charlie discovered at the age of thirty that he was the survivor of an abortion his mother had soon after she had a sexual relationship with Frank Reynolds. His mother often supported herself and her son through prostitution. One of Charlie’s most vivid childhood memories is of Christmas Day, opening the door to a series of men dressed as Santa who would “visit” with his mom. Despite this, there is some severe denial on Charlie’s part as to what was happening. There is also some suggestion that Charlie may have been the victim of sexual assault as a child at the hands of his Uncle Jack.

 Gardner’s Levels of Intelligence

Spatial Intelligence: Visualizing yourself in a 3D world, excels in figuring out puzzles and maps. Does well when presented with a construction project.

Joey: He does have some background in construction and did build an entertainment unit for his apartment, though he incorrectly measured the size of the unit which ended up being too big for the wall it was placed on. He is not skilled with puzzles and doesn’t quite understand maps. During a trip to London, he needed to lay his map down on the ground and step into it in order to find his way around.

Charlie: He is not clear on what 3D means, once wearing a pair of 3D glasses outside and wondering why they didn’t work. With assistance from his friend, Mac, he was able to successfully glue the pieces of a broken beer bottle back together and drink beer out of it which was required during a game of Chardee MacDennis, a game created with his friends and coworkers at Paddy’s. He is also not strong with reading maps, during a trip to the water park, he struggled to understand North, East, South and West and relied on Frank to show him where he needed to go.

Winner: While it is impressive that Charlie was able to successfully put together a broken beer bottle, Joey takes the point here. Despite being the wrong size, he did build an entire entertainment unit without assistance and was able to retile the bathroom floor in the apartment of his neighbors–Monica and Rachel. Joey’s construction background gives him the edge here.

Intrapersonal Intelligence: Understanding your needs, wants and desires. Understanding yourself.

Joey: His strengths, although not always successful, are in acting. While at times, he has been plagued with self doubt about his talents as an actor, he seems to come back to it. He seems to understand where his strengths lie and has a strong desire and motivation to make it as an actor, going so far as to beg for his job back at Days of Our Lives after he had embarrassed himself with the producers. He knows what he is good at and tends to go after those things. He did try to move into his own apartment in order to get in touch with his thoughts only to realize he didn’t have a lot of thoughts.

Charlie: He is a simple man who is happy with who he is. He has no desire to move up in life and is content to remain a janitor at a bar and continue living in squalor in Section 8 housing. He doesn’t have the drive or motivation to better himself because he understands who he is and likes who he is. That being said, there is not a lot of self reflection and there is a sense of delusion to some of his activities such as believing he is a lawyer who specializes in bird law without ever having attended law school.

Winner: Joey. Charlie’s needs and wants are more primitive and while he is content with who he is, there is a lack of self awareness and a lack of an inner thought process which often causes chaos in his life. He acts first, thinks later. Joey does seem to have a more advanced view of himself and while his inner thought process may not be deep, his desire to move forward or at least try gives him this point.

Linguistic Intelligence: The ability to understand spoken and written language as well as the ability to speak and write.

Joey: He is an actor so his ability to understand the words on a page is a strength. He has also shown an understanding of poetry, being able to decipher the meaning behind a poem a man had written about his friend, Monica. While he may not always enjoy writing or reading, he is able to do so. With encouragement from his friend, Ross, he did try to write a play although got bored doing it and instead wrote quick stories for his friends to act out. His favorite things to read are comic books, the backs of cereal boxes and pornographic magazines.

Charlie: He is unable to read or write and his friends have often stated that he has a learning disability, though he has not officially been diagnosed. During a group intervention at their bar where they staged several interventions for various reasons, they had suggested one of the interventions be about Charlie’s illiteracy. At one point, Charlie accidentally offered the bar up as a prize in a dance marathon after misreading “pride” as “prize”.  He is a song writer but instead of using lyrics, uses pictures instead. His writings are a serious of random words that are strung together in incoherent sentences. He also has difficulty pronouncing words with more than two syllables. When his friend, Dee, asked to take him to a spa, he thought she was asking him for a spaghetti day. There is also some suggestion that one of the reasons he struggled with working in a mailroom which he had done for a brief period was because he read Pennsylvania as Pepe Sylvia. He also seems to be in denial about the severity of his illiteracy problem, often blaming his friends or brushing it aside.

Winner: Joey. Joey may just be lazy when it comes to motivation in this area but Charlie’s illiteracy as well as his denial about said illiteracy gives Joey the edge here. Also, Charlie needs to be enrolled in some sort of Special Education reading program for adults but his lack of awareness regarding this problem may prevent him from doing this.

Bodily Kinesthetic Intelligence: the ability to use your body to convey feelings and ideas. They have good hand eye coordination and their gross and fine motor skills are above average as well.

Joey: He once broke his arm jumping on his bed. He is average at playing flag football and does seem to possess an average level of athletic ability.

Charlie: He jumped out of the back of a moving van without injury. He also took a shot at a Phillies Hockey game and while he missed the shot, he still showed skill as an ice hockey player and taught Mac how to skate. He also jump kicked Mac out of the way of a falling piano. He is a skilled baseball player.  After drinking seventy one beers on a cross country flight from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, he was able to hit a baseball out of the park on the first try. Of course, he did have some trouble walking straight but his abilities to hit the ball were above average.

Winner: Charlie. While both men seem to have average athletic abilities, Charlie’s ability to knock a ball out of the park after seventy one beers gives him the edge here.

**Disclaimer: It is not advisable to drink seventy one beers in one sitting because it is stupid and you will die.

Interpersonal Intelligence: The ability to understand others and make meaningful connections with others.

Joey: He has close, dependent friendships with five people in particular: Monica, Rachel, Phoebe, Ross and Chandler. While not often discussed, he does seem to be able to maintain friendships with others outside his core group. He often hosts a party for the people he works with on Days of Our Lives and moved to Los Angeles in 2004 by himself and fostered a new set of friendships. He is protective of his sisters and his friends. He genuinely cares about their feelings and supports them when he can.

Charlie: He is also part of a very close knit group. He is incredibly close with his co workers at Paddy’s: Dee, Dennis and Mac. He also shares a bed with Frank Reynolds and at one point, married him so he could get on Frank’s health insurance. They have since divorced. He saved Mac’s life once when he jump kicked him out of the way of a falling piano and enjoys smoking breaks with Dee. While it’s not always obvious, he does care about those friends in particular. This unfortunately has not extended to outside the group. Ignoring all restraining orders, he continues to stalk a woman known only as the Waitress. People who seem to come into contact with him and his group often end up with their lives completely destroyed.

Winner: Joey. While both men are part of two very codependent, fused groups, Charlie’s group is far more toxic. Joey seems far more capable of making meaningful connections with others both in and out of his group.

Existential Intelligence: People who are able to see the big picture and use intuition to understand that world around them. They seek meaningful learning experiences in understanding the world.

Joey: While he prefers to live in the now and doesn’t seem interested in deeper learning, it does seem that he does have the ability to think beyond himself. He does believe in ghosts and has a fear of little girl ghosts. When his agent passed away in 2004, he did believe that she was calling him from beyond–this was later revealed that his friend, Phoebe, was calling him pretending to be the agent to spare his feelings.

Charlie: He is a man with very primitive and basic needs and does not seem capable of meaningful learning. He does not concern himself with questions of life and death. He does not look at the big picture and how it relates to the world, but focuses on immediate gratification.

Winner: Joey. While neither man is that deep, Joey’s thinking is a bit more advanced than Charlie’s which gives him the edge.

Logical/Mathematical Intelligence: Skilled at deductive reasoning, detecting patterns and logical thinking. They excel at abstract and complex ideas.

Joey: Math is not a strong suit as he is often in dire financial straits, relying on his friends to bail him out. His thinking is not always based on logic and is not always linear. He struggles with basic arithmetic and confused his phone number for the amount due on his phone bill.

Charlie: He struggles as well with logical and linear thinking. He does not understand complex or abstract ideas but when presented with a scheme or a scam, without being told, he can understand the steps of the scam as when his friends were trying to run a contaminated chicken scam on a day of a surprise health inspection.

Winner: While this could end up in a draw as neither one excel in logical thinking, Charlie takes the win by a rat’s hair. When his friends doubted whether or not he had an understanding of the scam they were playing on the day of the health inspection, he got it immediately and was also able to help the gang pull off the scam while at the same time figuring out the steps needed to pass the inspection.

Musical Intelligence: The ability to understand pitch, tone and an enjoyment for making and playing music.

Joey: He does have ballroom dancing skills as he worked with his superintendent Mr. Treeger to teach him how to dance but does not show a skill for more complicated dance moves. When he got a drum set once, he seemed more interested in banging on them and throwing the sticks up in the air more than actually playing. He does not seem to posses a natural singing ability.

Charlie: He seems to be a prodigy in this area, having written a musical called The Nighman Cometh which his friends performed. He also wrote and performed  several songs for a bar industry night when important bar people stopped by Paddy’s to see if the gang had finally done enough to make them eligible for an award. He also wrote and performed a song at Frank’s Little Beauties kids beauty pageant.

Winner: Charlie. His skills to create catchy music and to be able to pick up an instrument and start playing put him far above Joey in this category.  Charlie is incredibly gifted in this area and seems to be self taught.

Naturalist Intelligence: The ability to understand the patterns of living things, understands animals and plants.

*it is important to note that this skill also comes with the ability to record and chart scientific data when it comes to plants and animals but we are just going to ignore that because I would like to.

Joey: He loves animals but doesn’t quite understand them. He believes that animals eventually go to a farm, showing a lack of understanding when it comes to the life cycle of plants and animals.

Charlie: He is a janitor who lists “rat basher” as part of his job description where he also has a special bat with nails as his rat bashing stick. He also created a line of mittens to put on kittens and through a speciality of law he invented, he seems to have an understanding of birds.

Winner: The whole scientific data part aside, it might be Charlie. He seems to feel an intense sadness when he has to kill rats, a feeling of remorse he surprisingly does not have when he interacts with other people outside of his core group.

Moral Intelligence: Ability to understand right from wrong, understanding of values

Ummmmm……

Well, this is awkward.

Joey: When he began a relationship with the ex of a best friend, he told his friend he would not pursue the relationship with her if the friend did not approve. He has a strong sense of right and wrong, cares deeply about his friends and family and expects the same honesty and loyalty from them.

Charlie: At this time, Charlie has committed the following: stalking, harassment, violation of several restraining orders brought on him by the Waitress, breaking and entering, public intoxication, illegal drug use, assault and battery, eating Santa Claus, grand theft, shop lifting, faking his own death, selling drugs, destruction of property, kidnapping and torture, fraud, false reporting, etc, etc….

Winner: Joey…..no explanation necessary

Final Score:

Joey: 6

Charlie: 4

Final result: While neither man would ace an IQ test, this very scientific and quite honestly pointless blog will put to rest the question absolutely no one asked.

Joey Tribbiani is more intelligent BUT Charlie Kelly does make some lovely music.

                            Using Gardner’s Levels of Intelligence to discover who is smarter: Charlie Kelly VS. Joey Tribbiani Dumb characters are a television staple. Characters who just don't always seem to have it together, whom you wonder how they manage to live, survive and basically not die.

[raystart]

A Driver’s License Can be Revoked for the Elderly, but Artistic License? Never.

She was due for retirement. Try telling her that.

Louise Fili, the designer behind logos for Tiffany & Co., Good Housekeeping, Paperless Post, and Sarabeth’s was, as always, a font of great ideas. “I think you should be focusing on the great octogenarians out there — Seymour Chwast, George Lois, Ed Sorel, R.O. Blechman, Bob Gill, Henrietta Condak, Sara Giovanitti…there are so many,” she said in her graceful decline to be a part of this story. “I will be happy to participate when you update the article in, say, 20 years.” Fili is 65, the touchstone — albeit arbitrary — retirement age. Time will tell. But that’s an offer she can make confidently.

Artists exist in careers without reply-all emails about the break room fridge, or dress codes, or — and most importantly — without punch clocks. They are timeless talents.

In 1972, at 90 years old, Pablo Picasso painted “Facing Death,” a self-portrait; he died the next year, having painted since 1891, when he was 9. I.M. Pei, the architect, is set to turn 100 this year as he works on 28 projects in six countries; he’s been working since his designs first caught fire in 1949. “I know how lucky I am,” Roger Angell, then 93, wrote in The New Yorker in 2014, “and secretly tap wood, greet the day, and grab a sneaky pleasure from my survival at long odds.” He has been contributing to the august magazine since 1944, most recently about the Chicago Cubs’ World Series victory, their 108-year championship drought being one of the few things in this world that predate him.

Now 94, Norman Lear is rebooting his 1975 sitcom classic One Day at a Time for Netflix, a Latina spin anchored by Rita Moreno, the 85-year-old EGOT superstar, who plays a 73-year-old sexualized grandmother. Hayao Miyazaki, the anime demigod, has came out of retirement to turn a 12-minute short film titled into a feature-length project, as you do at 76 years old.

There is an element to vocation beyond Western raison d’être, the French “reason for being” mired in Enlightenment sensibilities, that approaches the looser Japanese concept of ikigai, which can be translated as “a reason to get up in the morning” but was best described in a 1990 article in the Japanese business publication The Nikkei (formerly The Nihon Kaizai Shinbun) as “the process of allowing the self’s possibilities to bloom.” That process is itself a craft. Sorry, Tim Ferriss, there is no Four-Hour Ikigai.

These are all-work-and-all-play lives lived in the livelihood of humanity’s lifeblood: art, creativity, design. “To create is to live twice,” Albert Camus famously mused. While that wisdom may have been a gesture at the metaphysical immortality of fame and legacy and the stuff of lifetime achievement awards, it can also be taken literally as the doubling — or more — of creative professional lives as compared to the workaday world’s corporate drones, to say nothing of the relatively fleeting glories afforded professional athletes, dancers, and porn stars. A driver’s license can be revoked for the elderly, but artistic license? Never.

“To create is to live twice.”

“It’s not about doing something well over and over. It’s about doing something new over and over,” said Ivan Chermayeff, the 84-year-old graphic designer behind iconic logos for Barneys, Mobil, National Geographic, NBC, and the Smithsonian. “People who want to retire want to do other things. Travel. Plant a garden. I don’t. I’ve been doing those things every day my whole life. It’s a good racket,” he added from his office, with Wally, his Australian labradoodle barking in agreement at his feet.

Ivan Chermayeff, image courtesy of Chermayeff.

Chermayeff noted the physical costs of activity outweigh the mental and emotional costs of lethargy. “I have a bad knee but thankfully it has very little bearing on graphic design abilities,” he said. 

“I was a professor, a teacher. I just stayed in offices. It was awful,” said the prolific architect Daniel Libeskind, 70. “I have lived in reverse, my active period coming after the introspective, reflective period. With architecture, I fell into a new dimension. I made my first building when I was 52! Instead of withering me, time gave me a sense of flowering, of growing. To be honest, I don’t think of aging. There is an immortality to being creative. You are like God, who is the poetic symbol of creation, the poetry of creativity. As your work continues, you become younger. You discover youthfulness — braver, bolder, more confident, more adventurous. You discover possibilities.”

Daniel Libeskind at the Roca London Gallery. Photo courtesy of Libeskind.

Not that it’s easy. “You have to make a conscious decision early on that the suburbs and its finished basements aren’t for you. I had an illegal apartment for ten years, 1971 to 1981, $50 a month in a garret at 55th and 7th. I paid another $50 a month for a work space. So I was free,” said Larry Hama, 67, the comics superhero who single-handedly revived the series G.I. Joe and Wolverine, among other feats. “I’ve had years without any work. But I still did what I wanted. The only difference is I got paid during the working years, which was nice, but it wasn’t the reason I worked.”

There are, of course, life hacks to this Fountain of Youth.

For Libeskind, it is thermodynamics: A body in motion stays in motion. “I’ve lived in 18 cities,” he said. “Sometimes without knowing the language. Sometimes without having a job. Warsaw, Berlin, New York, São Paolo, Milan. They contribute so much energy to your mind. I’ve never been one for the beach or solitary walks in the woods.”

“As your work continues, you become younger. You discover youthfulness — braver, bolder, more confident, more adventurous.”

For Jonas Mekas, 94, the filmmaker who founded Film Culture magazine in 1954 and what would become the Anthology Film Archives in the 1960s, it is cultivating prickliness — not antisocial, just countersocial. “I was an urchin, a sea urchin, covered in spikes. Society could not swallow me. I did not fall into its holes. And those of us who escape enjoy a camaraderie. We don’t have to talk or get together. But we show other people what life is. We lure them into life with the things we make,” he said.

“You want what? That I go to the beach? I hate the beach. For one thing, it’s hard to get an espresso at the beach. And what is there? Ugly, grotesque people indulging their laziness while they cook and bake in the sun like slugs. That is joy? That is freedom? I don’t blame them for retiring at 65 because they have lived as robots in mechanical, menial, tedious tasks. They deserve a few years trying to feel human after all of that. They took my humanity and my youth in the camps. I was 17 in Lithuania and the next day, on the other end of the war, I was 27 in Brooklyn. I will never lose my youth again. I’ve worked too hard all my life to be this young,” Mekas says.

For abstract artist Carmen Herrera, as she puts it, “my bus was slow in coming.” She first sold her paintings in 2004, when she was 89. But what a ride it has been since then. Last year, at 101 years old, she had her first museum retrospective, at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her secret is her stealthiness. “I was liberated by being ignored,” she said. “I was free to do as I wish.” Not to suggest too much whimsy; asked her morning routine, she laid out her breakfast: “Cafe con leche, toast, butter and jam, orange juice, and work.” And work. As if it were a chewy bagel or bowl of porridge. She devours it. And it nourishes her. But at her own pace. She takes all week to read the Sunday New York Times, favoring the alchemy of its stories over the checklist of the task. Asked what advice she would give youngsters — y’know, people with mere double-digit ages — she spoke in her native Cuban Spanish: “Patience, darling, patience.”

Carmen Herrera in her New York studio. Image courtesy of Herrera.

For Hama, it was saying yes. “Whenever the train got into the station, I got on board. And wherever it took me, when I got there I didn’t want the guided tour,” he said. “I was in an elevator in 1974 and a woman asked me if I was an actor. I said no and she asked ‘Do you want to be?’ And later that day I was in an off-Broadway production of Moby Dick put together by the starlet Jean Sullivan. I was on M*A*S*H and Saturday Night Live. They needed guys and I raised my hand.”

How do you retire from saying yes? “I can’t imagine retiring, and I have a great imagination,” he said. “If I go to the beach and try that, after an hour or so I just feel inert. Life is for action. Wander. Wonder. Surprise yourself. That’s the only adventure. You can’t win the lottery if you don’t buy a ticket. I’ve done, I think, 239 issues of G.I. Joe and never ended with a coming attractions of the next issue because I never knew. I don’t know what’s on page three until I’m halfway through writing page two. And I guess I’ve lived my life like that, too,” Hama says. 

“Life is for action. Wander. Wonder. Surprise yourself. That’s the only adventure.”

When he was a child, Mekas’ home would be visited by an old man who climbed his roof and stood on his head on the chimney. He was 100 years old and his upside-downness had a profound impact on Mekas. 

“You’re asking all the wrong questions. You’re asking why I’m active at 94. But why are people living like they are already dead at 60? Or 40? Even 30?” he said. “I am not the abnormal one. I am normal. I am alive. This is life. They are the abnormal ones. They just don’t see it because they happen to be the majority, sadly. They believe in patterns that suck out their energy — ads and transactions and labels and paperwork and technology that all tell them they are not enough, that they are behind, that they are lacking. What is retirement or even vacation except a stupid trap built to justify the first trap of this draining existence? I reject it! Instead I choose art! Art and the avant garde is the difference between making a life and mirroring one.”