me: super excited to see the girl in animation again after 30 yeARS

also me: so little info/clips have been released I cannot help my inner fear of any hint toward the idea of the ‘surprise actually the WORST villain’ theme disne y has seemed to love doing the past few years leT HER BE ANTI HERO CATW NOT VILLAIN CATW PL EASE SCROOGE HAS HAD ENOUGH PAIN IN LIFE LET HIM BE HAPPY FOR FIVE MINUTES

tuesday again 6/29/21

i read part of a book, the reading section is no longer fallow, we have planted and sown some sort of crop

listening venus fly trap by MARINA. a dear mutual whose post i cannot find and i do not want to tag in case i am misquoting her called her latest lyrics “preachy” and i gotta agree? this one is almost but not quite a fun throwback to electra heart era. whereas that album was very much about watching “weaponized femininity” and a persona crumble around you, this is more of a mean-girl single designed to get your attention on the rest of the album. “why be a wallflower/when you can be/a venus fly trap” is an inherently delightful line.

because i take a week off from this project every december, one week’s listening gets doubled up. glass animals’ mama’s gun gets on here bc it is perfectly engineered to stick in the back of my brain. i love a layered, kind of cluttered instrumental backdrop. the chimey-chimes! the sad woodwind! i don’t know that i particularly care for the lyrics or the people in the internet arguing about whether this song is about drugs or schizophrenia (the band said it’s about drugs, don’t be terrible to people with schizophrenia)

reading here is a stab at the beginning of a post, bc i fully intended to finish this book sunday night and then. didn’t.

i’m trying to walk a fine line between pointing out things i find irritating and taking an older work for what it was at the time but tumblr is not known for its reading comprehension so i am belaboring some points and being more diplomatic with my word choice than if i were jawing about this book with friends. i read The Drowned World by JG Ballard as one of my first forays into the adult (shut up) fiction section at the library. there are some lines that have stuck in my brain for more than ten years, such as (describing sailing over a city under sixty feet of water) “...like a reflection in a lake that has somehow lost its original.” i’m a sucker for “sad man on the bleeding edge of civilization holes up in a once-grand building with looted bits and bobs”. i think it’s good set dressing and i love a poor little meow meow. 

@morrak​ kindly offered me a pretty vintage hardcover that came in the mail a few weeks ago and i finally had time to crack it open. i draft these posts on sunday, and this sunday it comes to you from my phone in my landlord’s backyard, where a hammock really isn’t helping with the ninety-two degree heat and fifty-eight percent humidity. a good backdrop for reading about the earth remembering it used to mostly be a big swamp.

i typed a very long draft that ended up being mostly “wow kay you’re saying a novel written in the 60s is worried about the destruction of the world but in a dreamy and kind of sexist way with a tenuous relationship with reality at best?” yes. that’s just how old sci fi is sometimes and we can point out how parts of it don’t hold up for a modern audience while talking about the parts we do like.

for example, it takes a lot of its flavor and style from late-1800s harder scifi about hidden worlds/a changing world due to industrialization (think Journey to the Center of the Earth, or any novel about a secret paradise at the South Pole, or Erewhon). it is, instead, a softer scifi mostly concerned about the effects of living through a disaster that isn’t your fault and couldn’t be prevented, and what staring at constant ruin (no matter how beautiful!) and isolation does to a guy’s brain (as opposed to “harder” scifi like a lot of Verne’s work or Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem that are really interested in how future technology might realistically work). i personally don’t think it’s a meaningful remix of these early altered-world novels, or at least i personally don’t find it terribly compelling in this particular aspect. women in late-1800s scifi either don’t exist at all or exist to be rescued from primitive humans so the author could write about some cool guns killing people. Beatrice thedrownedworld is in fact a catalyst for part of the book, but she does not feel like a real person, whereas Robert thedrownedworld feels like most of the professors ive had. poor bea, trapped in a sixties novel only to look pretty, be negged, and serve as a psychosexual metaphor. i have a pet theory that if you fuck in an older dystopia (like older horror) you die, but i don’t really have enough data points to separate it from standard misogyny just yet.

but at the same time, it’s such an interesting example of an apocalypse that isn’t humans’ fault. the earth is just doing some fucked-up shit for a while, and we might as well go see what’s up. in a lot of earlier scifi, the earth is just doing some fucked-up shit in the polar regions and we might as well go see what’s up.

sidebar, bc i’m me: in late-1800s scifi there’s some fun brotherly love/camraderie among the protagonists that you could put an interesting queer reading on (ask me about my Professor Arronax-twentythousandleaguesunderthesea-is-trans-theory) but Robert thedrownedworld is extremely straight. also like most of the professors ive had.

this is a book i’m fond of for its place in my life at a particular time and some really good imagery. sometimes on a sunday afternoon you read a short novel that does an excellent job of telling the story it set out to tell, and that’s enough.

watching the L0ki show. d/isney for once did not queerbait me, i do find their budget and attention to detail in costuming and set dressing excellent, and i do love an unapologetically not very nice woman. from previous experience with this particular flavor of #content this particular company puts out, i do not think it will hold my interest for a full season. also i am unable to read TVA as anything but Tennessee Valley Authority but that’s a different post

playing fallow week due to NDA

making lots of cleaning and packing and move-prepping. bought a fuckton of future textile crimes at various yard sales, which need to be frozen bc im inherently suspicious of old yarn and i’ll be fucking damned if i bring carpet beetles or moths into a new place. bug-free zone in the new place goddamnit

One thing I noticed when I was reading debates on So Kai's canon status on KHinsider, was that a lot of people were vehemently insisting that both So Kai interactions and Sor iku interactions could be interpreted as either romantic or platonic. I completely disagree, but, do you think a lot of people are under the impression that this is true because of their experiences playing Final Fantasy and other games that play both sides of a love triangle?

I don’t think so. Though I could be wrong, of course. Because the only game to really do that is V*II (and even then, you have C*leriths in particular--though C*loTis do it, too--that C*lerith is totally the intended, canon pairing. And even as a C*loTi myself, if I’m being honest... I think they might be right. It just seems that if most of the developers did have to choose in the end, they’d choose C*lerith. And you get the C*lerith scenes easier than you do the C*loTi ones). Some of the other games somewhat have other love triangles, sure. Like Q*uistis likes S*quall in V*III, and you can get scenes with R*ikku and L*ulu as T*idus in *X... But even there there’s a clear intended pairing. Squall never showed any interest in Q*uistis, as he was all about R*inoa. And while you can get those scenes with R*ikku or L*ulu, T*idus of course still falls in love with Yuna canonically in the end (and also, not every K*H fan has played F*inal F*antasy). And even a lot of other media that has love triangles has their intended pairing planned out from the get-go.

Warning: This post is probably going to get salty, because to explain what I think happened with the whole S*oKai vs. S*oRiku war all the years that K*ingdom H*earts has existed. And since I wasn’t as chill in the past as I am now, some of this stuff used to tick me off and I might unintentionally unearth those old feelings here, in making myself remember it all.

But at least for the the fans who have been here from K*HI on or from K*HII... I think they saw S*oRiku because they wanted to see S*oRiku. Like, apparently there were some fans who saw it as early as the first game, and were trying to argue it was canon over S*oKai even way back then. And while I’ve been with the series since only K*HI was out, I didn’t have Internet at the time (I got it right after K*HII came out, so I found these old arguments then). And just... no. Just no. S*oKai was so clearly canon in K*HI, while as S*ora and R*iku pretty much hated each other 99.9% of the game. I don’t get where those people are coming from. 

And then with K*HII, a lot of people were like “Oh my gosh, S*ora totally touched R*iku’s butt! These two are so g*ay!” And also “no” there. Guys, this is a D*isney game. In what world do you think D*isney would ever let that happen. And then there’s the infamous S*ora cries when he finds R*iku while holding his hand while he falls to his knees, that really started all of this--because don’t you seeeeeee, that S*ora reacted so much strongly to finding R*iku here than he did K*airi?!--never mind the fact that to try and push that angle, you really have to take that scene out of context. But even if you count that scene as S*oRiku, instead of somewhat as a writer’s flop, that’s really all you have pointing at S*oRiku from I-II, while you have a million things pointing at S*oKai... and yet S*oRikus were adamant that S*oRiku was canon, and people were fools for thinking otherwise.

And if these games were always going to be S*oKai, like I think they were because tbh... J*apan still isn’t very open about when it comes to g*ay couples and you definitely see that with S*quare E*nix, I wish they would have just left it like it was instead of giving us C*oded and D*ream D*rop D*istance.

Why those games are how they are, I don’t know. But we at least know K*airi was originally planned to be in C*oded, even if that doesn’t excuse that she wasn’t in the end. But tbh... And granted, I’m clearly a S*oKai, so maybe I can just never really see S*oRiku because of that (even if I have tried, to see if these people are right and I’m missing something): I’ll admit it... But while C*oded is a game many people look to to say that S*ora and R*iku are g*ay, all I see here is friendship... even when I tried to look at it through another lens. 

But this game is, perhaps, where you had to start to wonder if S*quare E*nix knew S*oRiku was so popular, and started q*ueer-baiting with it to try and sell games. You could argue that that was why K*airi was left out in the end. I think it was probably more for time-constraints (which is still bull), but you could still argue it. And you have that part where S*ora’s going inside of R*iku. Which at the time, a pretty famous amv maker (who recognized S*oKai was canon and shipped it) posted that scene alone and titled it “The Reason Re:C*oded Will Sell”. And tbh, they probably weren’t wrong. And you could say that that part in particular was q*ueer-baiting. But again... I don’t know if it was. Because to do so, they would have had to be trying to give that line a double meaning--rather than it just meaning that Data Sora had to go inside Data Riku’s data. I.E. Another computer had to access another computer’s data--which I don’t think they would do, because that wouldn’t have flown with Disney. And as I’ve said above, S*quare E*nix--until the FF*VII R*emake, perhaps--usually treats g*ay couples as a joke, like with the non-serious B*arret and C*loud ship, that’s played for laughs. The only exception is, perhaps, V*anille and F*ang. But they’re never even said to be flat-out canon, and F*ang was originally supposed to be a guy... yeah. Also, sometimes it seems like N*omura doesn’t know much about what goes on in his games’ fanbase--at least not originally--because he only heard that A*kuR*oku was a big ship in the fandom a few years back, and then quickly stated that that wan’t canon. So... I don’t know if they’d really do this. But it’s up to you, I guess.

Which brings us to D*ream D*rop D*istance. I don’t know why this game is the way it is. I don’t. Though people have said they don’t think N*omura was in his right mind while making this--because this was the time that those “N*omura’s Depression” articles were coming out, because after ten years he was getting nowhere with V*ersus X*III because of the company’s shitty decisions--and F*rustrated J*acob makes the good point in his D*D*D playthrough, that it sounds like N*omura was moreso making V*ersus at the time than D*D*D, because I think this was when Yasue first became co-director. And in interviews, Nomura was mostly saying things like, “This happened in D*D*D because the team wanted it”, but not that he did. Which is the opposite of how he usually handles KH. But this was the game where even I started to feel there was some q*ueer-baiting going on (though when I recently made a post about this, palizinhas--a friend of mine who does ship S*oRiku--explained that the game moreso felt again like N*omura just celebrating how great male friendships are (a big thing in J*apan, and also in N*omura’s work. *cough* V*ersus/F*FXV and perhaps even more *cough*), and I think I agree. But still... this game, and to a lesser extend C*oded, makes me feel bad for the S*oRiku shippers, because I feel they were teased about their ship when it would never become canon, and I kind of just wish S*quare E*nix had left it alone. And I guess it’s also worth noting, that D*D*D was originally supposed to be the start of K*HIII, as was 0*2 after that... which might actually explain a lot. In a world where that had actually happened, we would have had one better balanced game. We would have had the section that focused on S*ora and R*iku’s friendship, the part that actually focused on R*iku and K*airi’s a little bit (0*2), and then the one that finally pushed the S*oKai romance forward again (K*HIII). And in a game that was about how S*ora felt his strength came from his friends, and that he didn’t think he would triumph without them... it would have made sense if said game was divided into his strongest friendships (his one with R*iku in the first half, and his one with K*airi in the second, and his ones with D*onald and G*oofy all throughout). It’s kind of sad that isn’t the game we got in the end, as that would have fixed a lot of problems. Alas.

...And I don’t really know how to end this thing, so I’m just going to randomly end it here. Yep.

Edit: And I just remembered why Kairi may have been left out of Coded and DDD: because the fandom hated her. So much.

The ccers are just like the gop

Watching the Impeachment testimony today it’s a nightmare for the gop and Trump. Ambassador Sondland has admitted everything we knew was true using the words “Quid Pro Quo” and admitting that everyone in Trump’s administration knew.  Watching the gop then try to defend Trump is a disaster or outrageous lies, conspiracy theories, and distraction.  

Reading this thread from the cc coven, I’m reminded of how similar their tactics are to the gop’s. This thread is full of lies and conspiracy theories that have been duped and yet these people- like Nunes, Jordan, and Stipanik- clearly believe the lies they share. The two groups have built their knowledge bases on these lies. These faulty foundations don’t hold up to even the smallest of scrutiny. People living in reality can see the faults, but sadly ccers and the gop don’t see reality and live in an imaginary world where they are always right.  

ajw720 answered:

It is hard to me to select the one thing that i find the most offensive, there are just so many.  They have also named at least 2 drinks based on breast size, Good Rak (I forget the exact name) and R2DD2.  you know reducing women to their body parts.  And of course the one called C3PHO that is implying that women should be called whores if they decide to exercise their sexual freedom.  And we are even touching on the innuendo which maybe isn’t offensive, but is extraordinarily immature.  Or the fact that they have naked women gyrating on the bar and simulating sex with teddy bears in a PIANO BAR where on a different night you can sing d/isney tunes! (Abby refuses to understand that the drink names are NOT to belittle women but to take ownership of the words away from those who use them against us. She has been told this but she needs to be angry at Mia so she refuses to even think about it=faulty foundation)

But hey, according to her stans, I am closed minded and they are progressive. (yep! That’s true). You know what it reminds me of?  The individuals watching the impeachment trials and daring to say that these upstanding, career public servants, many of whom serve both democrats and republicans, are liars because they refuse to admit the bigot in the WH is a criminal. (Nice try but no, you honey, you are those people. Faulty foundations) 

D looked really drained to me last night, and we know he is PBB free in NYC. I have to imagine the way the are smearing his name constantly is weighing heavily on his soul. My heart hurts for him.  (In fact, 3 of the 6 people in at least one of the photos has the same neutral face. Other photos, released later that night show a gleefully happy Darren=faulty foundations. Photos at the end.)  

ajw720 Can I just add one thing?  The “marriage” was forced by D’s team, and this includes his extremely powerful PR agency.  (NOT TRUE= faulty foundations) Why are they not reading and reviewing everything posted by that offensive institute prior to its release? (Because Darren controls his own life and his business is not part of what Sunshine Sachs does for Darren).  That would be working FOR THEIR CLIENT.  Instead, they are allowing that bar to actively harm his character. (Such a stupid argument.  Why would Darren continue to pay them if they were actively harming him? Abby this one is so stupid you need to stop=faulty foundations) 

I hope that there is a time D can sue them for defamation, I really do, because to me, this is an absolute outrage. (Well we are a decade in, when you believe that could happen, Abby? Ya know ....using your legal knowledge?) 

This flannel shirt theme stunt has made my blood boil more than most. (This just pisses me off.  My daughter read this post, called herself a dyke and said.“I just wish I could go.” She was wearing a flannel shirt)  

notes-from-nowhere My question is: why M has been forced to drop “s/unsetstrippa” (and f/etus but, let’s leave one of the sock account behind for a moment)? (Fetus IS NOT MIA. OMG THIS IS SO STUPID=Faulty Foundations) That was not her decision.(WTF? Of course, it is=faulty foundations)  So, why? I’ll tell you why: given that the plan was to make her relevant for everybody besides for her nanny, it was embarrassing for D (and his team) to have her tagged by colleagues and various celebrities with that childish nickname. Do not even try to tell me this is not the reason (Faulty Foundations).

So why isn’t the same level of “courtesy” reserved for your establishment? Quite frankly “s/unsetstrippa” was far less offensive than what happens constantly in&out of that place. When will we see day D will be treated with the respect that a man in his position should have by default? And above all, when his team will accept that they are no longer managing a teenage dream? Controversy as a way to make someone famous it doesn’t work as a shortcut if there is nothing behind that people might like. (I honestly don’t understand this sentence so I have no good debunk...Darren was never marketed as “teenage dream” and he certainly currently isn’t= Faulty Foundations)  

It’s time to remove D from the TS/G narrative once and for all. M dropped this place a long time ago and it has no meaning for D’s career, let alone finantial reasons since he is just the piano man and not the owner. (Well “finantial” reasons aside, Darren and Mia own the bar. They don’t work there.  -=Faulty Foundations).   

ajw720

Sadly she dropped that for another made up name that they have used to mock D.  It is unfathomable the way D is being treated.  

And honestly, I don’t know why more people aren’t screaming about this bar and how people don’t see or ignore how offensive it is. (Because only someone who refuses to live in reality actually sees the bar as problematic.  It’s a queer-safe space that celebrates the LGBTQ community in ways that MAKE SENSE TO THE LGBTQ Community.  Just because Abby doesn’t understand it doesn’t make it wrong= Faulty Foundations).  D does his best to distance himself, but it is his name front and certain in every article about the place and he is the one on TV naming it repeatedly (I love this nonsense..so is he distancing himself or is he the name that is connected often?)

Where are the people protecting the actual marketable commodity’s interest? The person with talent that is at the top of his game?  I have never seen anything like this. (Its all made up in your head=Faulty Foundations)

notes-from-nowhere You know one of the reason his team keeps ignoring things like this bar is because people bring gifts to M. (OMG...this is just a stupid thing to say) Because even if these people know everything about t his place, how rude the staff is, how undrinkable and overpriced the drinks are, how annoying and out of place “certain activities” inside of it are, they swallow their beliefs and words to go there and have a picture with D to post on their social media (This is all conspiracy theory and absolutely Faulty Foundations.  This is exactly like Nunes repeating all the conspiracy theories tied to Trump this morning. I’ve looked at these and most -if not all- of these are not real.)  

As long as there will be people that put their interests ahead of D’s wellbeing and public image, his team will keep to ignore how hurtful behaviors and bar are. They will buy an article on a random magazine that will praise the bar, D will be forced to publicly say the its name and so on. (Faulty Foundations) 

D’s team is not protecting an investment, they are making money out of people. And people is allowing them to do so.

leka-1998 Yesterday someone asked me why I keep being angry at the things they do or don’t do, at what’s going on at that bar that screams M. Why I even had to point out that flannel theme. Because I shouldn’t be surprised at all. And I’m really not, but the way they are destroying D’s character really gets me. He’s currently getting more attention due to M/idway and AB, two great projects. Both are/will be seen by a new audience. I’m sure HW will be big too. A competent and well-meaning team would care how D looks, what he’s associated with. They don’t. And no one can tell me that’s not wrong. (The idea that Darren can’t take control of his own life is pretty gross.  Nobody lives this life they imagine- it’s outrageous.  Faulty Foundations) 

ajw720 Obviously everything annoys me about the circus that surrounds him. But I can mostly laugh about the Halloween BS or and the excessive praise she receives as none of that ultimately affects D’s character and his reputation.  But this bar, it is so harmful and it potentially could be so damaging.  Imagine a theater goer looking up D after AB and finding their IG full of discriminatory themes/drinks and extremely immature innuendo. And D’s name is what that bar is associate with, not his “bride” as she doesn’t do anything, but D who is the one promoting it the media regularly.  He has not promoted anything in his life more than the bar over the past 2 years.  Not even his fake nuptials. (Yes, Imagine what it looks like that Darren’s bar is a queer safe space.  OMG How horrific!!!!!!! How doe he live with himself? The ONLY People who are upset that TSG has LGBTQ programming most nights but Disney on other nights are those who are homophobic!!!!!!!!!!!) 

And I truly do not understand how anyone dismisses this stuff or says we are the ones who are wrong. Some of the marketing ploys are blatantly and clearly offensive.  And yet it continues and no one seems to care that D is the only one that could potentially be hurt by this as it is his career that they are jeopardizing.  And M is praised as a role model for disparaging women and members of the LGBT+ community. (YOU are literally claiming that the gay women who runs Dyke Night doesn’t know anything about-or respect - her own community... but YOU do.  SHUT THE FUCK UP ABBY)   

It is revolting (yes you are) and it is really important that we document it and discuss it and continue to highlight it and I don’t care how much hate i get for doing so, people need to realize what they are doing. (The “hate” should be a  HUGE WARNING SIGN Abby. But you see EVERYTHING as proof you are right and it doesn’t matter how hard it is to get to “I’m right”, how much you have to twist the truth or makeup stories about Darren's lack of personal agency, it’s all confirmation bias for you. YOU ARE WRONG and these comments are homophobic).    And maybe it won’t be today, but at some point he will get free from his tormentors who are hell bent on destroying him and we will have the public record of everything they did to actively harm him. Faulty Foundations). 

klaineownsmysoul This is precisely the kind of place that a real pr/management team would work overtime to keep their client away from instead of pushing it relentlessly as a point of pride. There’s nothing remotely redeeming about it and like that farce of a wedding, nothing that reflects D’s personality. It’s beyond tacky and juvenile and straight out of the wheelhouse of a 20 year old frat boy. You expect me to believe that the same person who wrote beautiful songs like “Not Alone” or “TDTDIO” also decided to name a drink period sex? (Yes!!!!!! because people are complex animals.  But also because that same person wrote “Me and MY Dick” =Faulty Foundations).  the words of Trevor Noah, get the fuck out of here. But I’d expect nothing less from his team at this point: a group of people who think class and notoriety are equal. I live for the day when he gets a team to actually support him instead of trying to further themselves through him. (His team by law has to support him but also WHY THE FUCK WOULD HE STICK WIT HTHEM If they weren’t helping him?  He’s not a moron=Faulty Foundations) No one goes to events hoping to see D’s manager on the drums. There are actual musicians out there who are more than qualified. (And yet Darren chose Ricky to play drums for him=Faulty Foundations).   Go do your actual job for a change.