#its such a weird bizarre loneliness to be the only person in this whole world who ever experienced my mother | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

greyfen · 3 years

Text

Mithra 01: Looming Shadow

Been a long time since I posted any writing on here but in case there is anyone still interested in what I occasionally come up with these days, here is a bit of writing. It’s from the perspective of Mithra Hyndell, an elven druid who I play in a D&D game on Sundays, this scene took place at the conclusion of the first arc the party experienced. After we’d gotten stuck in a house full of time magic, a vampire and a whole host of other weird shenanigans. For context, Mithra is the last remaining (as far as she knows) druid of a place called the Verdant Thicket, a forest that has been overrun by some sort of magical corruption. At this point in the story she is working with the group in the hopes of speaking to the personal alchemist of the Queen of the kingdom they are in so as to find a lead on how to fix the Thicket. For those wanting a read, enjoy!

The walls felt as if they were closing in.

Mithra wasn’t sure how she got here, it had sounded pretty simple: work with a few mercenaries or other interested parties, do a favour for the queen and in return gain the information that could help her home that she desperately needed. Instead, in a short period of time she’d been attacked by orcs, met a man claiming to be a god, visited an impossible mansion and got trapped in a vampire’s castle.

For all her own pride in her abilities, she’d felt increasingly out of her depth since arriving at the town outside the estate of Lord Cartwright, the eternal night the vampire seemed to have conjured around the town and area, the tortured prisoners they’d found and escorted to safety and the bizarre time magic that kept everyone who spent too long on the estate trapped in some sort of loop; a fact they’d only recently discovered when electing to temporarily leave. It went entirely beyond her own experiences, she’d felt increasingly caged, something that the circle of the moon within her railed against in the back of her mind. It had taken a surprisingly understanding Nilsa to snap her back to reality earlier when she’d dropped into a panic; now she was here on the top floor, looking at the dead bodies of her friends.

No, not my friends, some… vision of the future perhaps. Gods this must be hard for them, how do you even comfort at times like this?

The smell of mold and decay hung in the air throughout the library, both musty books and the aroma of rotten flesh; the dead paladin’s skeleton was slumped against the wall, the ominous barred door led to the greenhouse and more bodies. The dark corridor their new companion refused to let go down altogether, shaking her head frantically when traversing it was suggested. Their new companion was an enigma too; an older version of their warrior friend Fiora, older, tired and worn, seemingly unable to speak or communicate beyond the written word and frantic gestures, the last survivor of a group that failed.

That had died.

Around them the ghosts of the Lady Celeste and her killers played out their repeated macabre performance, the same murders and fights over and over again, every hour. Even with all kinds of insanity around them, Lilli dashed off to a side room and Mithra intended to follow but found her eye resting upon a body in the greenhouse with the remains of Zenn, another companion. When she saw it, all thoughts of everything else deserted her mind as a creeping suspicion and fear began to gnaw at her chest.

That figure; the garb looked elven, druidic even, but it wasn’t what she wore; as the wraiths wailed and argued she tuned them out, even the conversations and frantic questioning of this strange future version of Fiora failed to register as she looked the skeletal remains over. Patting down the body, gently at first, then more frantically as she became more and more sure that the body was not her own.

Another might have felt relief to avoid the sight of their own remains, but not Mithra. Death was not the worst thing that could bring an end to a druid from the Verdant Thicket. She found a token, a simple cast leaf denoting rank within her circle, but it wasn’t hers.

A heavy weight set on her stomach as around her the ghosts played out their argument, the daughter and father who’d come here to save her, even if she didn’t want to be saved, the looting of the mob that accompanied him. To Mithra it was as the wind in the grass, of no importance and mere background noise as she made her way back to the older version of the tiefling she’d met only days ago.

She nodded at the paper in her friend’s hands, her eyes meeting Fiora’s directly, almost unblinkingly as she kept her voice level, Nilsa a spectator as the two women gazed at one another.

“Fiora, was that me in the greenhouse?”

She already knew the answer as the older Fiora scribbled down something frantically on her paper before holding it up.

‘NO’

“Am I dead? Is that why I’m not here?”

A solemn nod was all she received in answer as the tall tiefling woman looked at her, eyes full of pity, loss and more, a sense of loneliness; Mithra was used to solitude, but the type she saw looking out of Fiora’s eyes chilled her. As much as she felt for this lost soul however she also felt the creeping dread rise from the pit of her stomach, like a weed, choking her level breathing as it came.

“Did.. Did something take me? Is that why I’m not here?”

‘YES’

Nilsa looked on, concerned and confused and tired at the back and forth, opening her mouth as Mithra turned, her head spinning as her fears seemed almost confirmed. Walking, or was it staggering, five paces back towards the centre of the room. That sick feeling grew, reaching her lungs and biting down her fears she turned again.

“Was it my home? Did the sickness, the curse of my home take me too?”

A pause.

‘YES’

After that, Mithra didn’t register a lot of what happened next, it was like everything happened at once, their friend of the future had been waiting, waiting for Lady Celeste and her father to be near the window and then threw both them and herself out of it. Ending the loop, the curse all of it; saving both herself and her friends, even if it wasn’t the same friends she’d been through hell with. In the aftermath, everyone took a moment to recover, but Mithra could stand to be in the house no longer.

Catching Nilsa’s attention while the others took a few moments, Mithra smiled a pained mirthless smile that hid none of her internal torment. Her words tumbled out of her mouth at a rapid pace, uncertain and troubled; in her core fear had seized her heart and wouldn’t let go.

“I.. I need outside, I can’t be in here, sorry but I have to breath fresh air. Or as fresh as it gets here.”

Nilsa looked at her and then said something that she didn’t expect, the steely gaze meeting her own.

“That’s fine. I can come with you, if you need it.”

And Mithra said yes.

Minutes later Mithra was sitting on the grass, staring at the dark sky and opening up a part of her history and soul to the paladin beside her. She told her of her fellow druids, the curse that affected not just land and tree but animal; how the druids had feared that their connection to animals, to the forest might leave them vulnerable too.

How it looked like at some point, she was going to turn into a monster if she did not find a way to negate its effects, find a way to save her home.

Nilsa gripped her shoulder and promised to help her, a gesture from the taciturn paladin that was not lost on Mithra, but even in that moment a cold feeling settled inside the druid.

Despair.

She had no idea where to start, she was not powerful, she was not wise and she was out of her depth.

As the rest of the day passed she found herself buoyed by the others, their presence and made a silent vow to herself. In one world she had already failed, but she would not give up: she would fight tooth and claw until her last breath to save her home, to save the others, to save herself.

#DnD #Mithralla Hyndell #Mithra #druid #5e #original nerds #greyfen writes #high elf #circle of the moon #dungeons and dragons #dnd writing

5 notes · View notes

takerfoxx · 5 years

Note

Looking back, was Madoka Magica really that dark? Only three characters actually die, two of whom are later resurrected through the power of love. Blood and gore wise, most blood is offscreen, and that which is shown is fairly tame compared to other dark magical girl shows. Yet somehow, this show the show managed to hit me in the gut more than far more horrific and bloodier dark magical girl shows ever have. Why?

That doesn’t sound surprising at all, and it all comes down toexecution.

See,people often have this false idea when it comes to “mature” stories, inthat things like character deaths, blood and gore, and suffering are thebuilding blocks of maturity. But they’re not. They’re tools, and like all tools,they can be wielded correctly and incorrectly. Quite often, less is more, andtoo much grimdark results in an edgy, tryhard mess of a thing that isn’t maturein the slightest. This is one of the reasons why Blood-C got such a negativereaction, or why Elfen Lied is so divisive. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I loveme some Elfen Lied, but even I admit that it’s a schlocky white-hot mess. Itjust so happens to be my kindof schlocky, white-hot mess.

So yeah, I know this is weird coming from the apparent king ofTouhou Grimdark (cut me some slack though, I learn as I go), but gratuitousviolence does not, in of itself, equal maturity or anything of substance. Atbest you get the adolescent view of maturity, which is just so cynical andtiresome.

Madoka Magica, on the other hand, is a different sort of beastentirely. That show’s been out for years, but I am continuously impressed byjust how well-crafted it is, and how the creators used the tools at theirdisposal to get so much out of so little.

First of all, there’s the genre itself. Now, darkdeconstructions of Magical Girl shows are nothing new. Utena had already poppedthat cherry years ago, and you already mentioned how others had…less of animpact than PMMM did. But even so, the Magica Girl genre is one that’s almostuniversally associated with little girls. So, lots of bright colors, optimism,and cute, and the good guys and bad guys are easily distinguishable, and goodalways triumphs over evil. So even if new viewers know that something is up,their guard is still automatically going to be dropped, at least a little.

Second, we have the art style. Now, this is very interesting, inthat they went with a very Hidemari Sketch sort of style, where the girls allhave designs that are cute, appealing, and very distinctive, but never goingoverboard with the cuteness to the point where it becomes obnoxious. Even withthe fairly cartoony designs, their actual movement is pretty realistic, and isnever exaggerated for comedic effect or goes super-deformed and all that.Furthermore, rare for something of this nature, they are never objectifiedand/or used for fanservice in the slightest. A more realistic or a more adultstyle wouldn’t have been nearly as effective, nor would something sexier. It’sjust enough to make you like the girls and want the best for them, but notenough to get annoying or ruin the mood with unnecessary fanservice.

So basically, to get a little neckbeardy with it, the art styleis meant to make the viewers want to protect and comfort the girls, but notstrangle them for being way too moe, or fuck them for that matter.

…

Well, I mean, lots of people still do, but it’s the internet,so…

…

Moving on.

Anyway, continuing with theanimation, let’s talk about the witches. In sharp contrast to the somewhatcartoony designed but mostly realistically animated real world, the witchbarriers go for a surreal, dream-like feel, with the weird, jerky, low framerate movements of the witches and their familiars to the bizarre designs thatstick more-or-less to aesthetic themes but still have no explanation and anoverall look that, rather than being overly and obviously dark and evil, isinstead…wrong. Off. Alien. Discomforting rather than outright scary. Thewitches are meant to clash with the characters’ animation in a way that isdeliberately uncomfortable without spilling into cheesy. I mean, puffballs withbutterfly bodies and big handlebar mustaches? Spotted mice in nurse hats? Howis that scary? But just look at how they move, how they sound, and it becomesincredibly unnerving. Even before the big episode three twist, until which PMMMcould still pass for a more standard Magical Girl show, it still stood out withjust how bizarrely disturbing its monsters are. There is something genuinelyunsettling about them, a sense of dread that just permeates their every scene,even when our heroes are victorious.

And with that, I’ve exhaustedmost of the synonyms for “disturbing.” Let’s move on.

So, we’ve gone over how theart and animation is carefully crafted to evoke a specific reaction from theviewers, but what about the story itself? Well, like what was discussedearlier, part of what makes PMMM work so well is that despite its grandambitions and epic feels, the bulk of the show is…actually pretty small. Imean, save for the universe-changing repercussions of Madoka’s wish at the veryend, most of the focus is kept away from the world at large and remains on asmall group of characters and how being sucked into the contract system affectsthem. The story revolves around these five girls and is all about theirpersonal lives, and the whole Incubator thing is portrayed as alarger-than-they-can-imagine thing that’s been going on since the beginning oftime that they can’t do anything about, so why even bother trying? For Kyubey,it’s pretty much just business as usual, with the gang just being another setof marks in a long, long line of them, to be chewed up and spat out by the cogsof his machine.

And that takes us to what youmentioned earlier, about how PMMM has fewer character deaths, less violence,and nearly no gore in comparison to other shows, but somehow manages to leave abigger impact. And that comes down to one of the most important rules aboutstorytelling: it’s not what you’re about, it’s how you’re about it. Killing offcharacters doesn’t make a story mature, hurting your characters doesn’t makeyour story mature, or even using something as risky as rape doesn’t make yourstory mature; those are just the catalysts. Rather, maturity comes fromexploring how those things affect your characters, how it changes their livesand how they change and grow in response to them. Mami’s sudden and shockingdeath had profound effects on Madoka and Sayaka, and it’s by exploring thoseeffects that it feels like it has such a big impact, in that it shatteredMadoka’s perfect world and sent her into a bout of depression while motivatingSayaka into recklessness to compensate for her guilt in not being there to helpMami and overcompensate in trying to take her place. The reveal of the MagicalGirls as liches with their souls literally contained within their soul gems wasa big twist in of itself, but by taking the time to show how it set Sayaka intoher downward spiral into self-destruction coupled with having the oppositeeffect on Kyoko by jarring her out of her self-centered nihilism and motivatingher to start reaching out to Sayaka it really does feel like it has actualmeaning beyond shock value. And their deaths become even more tragic, asKyubey’s later monologue shows that they were doomed from the beginning, andnothing other than a damned miracle was going to save anyone. And being that hehad the monopoly on miracles in that universe, the audience is left bitingtheir nails and hanging on the edges of their seats through the climax, prayingthat an out would be found while fearing that there would be none to be found.Which just makes Madoka’s loophole of a wish all the more gratifying, whilestill being bittersweet. Because a happy ending just wasn’t possible, but shefound a way to prevent an all-out tragedy, a way to alleviate the bulk of thepain. And all it cost was her earthly existence.

Anyway, we’ve talked aboutthe visuals and story direction, so now let’s talk characterization. This is yetanother place where this show shines. Becauseeven though it only had a few episodes, the relatively small cast and focus ontheir personal problems allowed for a lot of character development. It helped that,save for Madoka’s, each of their wishes was something small and easilyunderstandable. Mami just wanted to live, Kyoko just wanted people to listen toher father, Sayaka just wanted her close friend and crush to get better whiletaking up Mami’s responsibilities, and Homura just wanted to save her dearfriend, who had been one of the few people to ever give her positive attention.Hell, even Madoka’s original wish was to save a cat. And like their designs,their personalities are all distinct, balanced between likeable strengths andtragic flaws: Mami is stalwart and nurturing, but also tripped up by hercrippling loneliness. Sayaka is determine and has a strong sense of justice,but also brash and prone to self-loathing. Madoka is kind-hearted andencouraging, but held back by her lack of self-esteem. As for Homura and Kyoko,they’re introduced us when they are at their worst, but do to cleverstorytelling and exposition, we then see the goodness in them and what theyused to be, and it becomes all the more easier to understand how they becamethe way they are. And again, despite its small number of episodes, the showreally takes the time to show how these personalities bounce off each other andconflict, while also showing how the consequences of their actions change them.I really like how they did it two: the show is essentially divided into fourmini-arcs of three episodes apiece, with the main focus on a different girl perarc, with Madoka being something of a passive POV protagonist throughout the wholeshow: first it’s Mami, then Sayaka, then Kyoko, and finally Homura. And as isexpected, each mini-arc ends in a tragedy, from Mami’s death to Sayaka’srealization about the truth of soul gems to Kyoko’s final stand to Homurafeeling as if she’s lost Madoka forever. But even with all that dark, it stillends on a note that is, while bittersweet, is still optimistic. Madoka is stillgone and Sayaka is still dead, but they seem to have come to terms with that. Also,Kyoko and Mami are alive and on good terms again, Homura has something new tofight for, and the universe is a little less cruel, showing that despiteeverything, it was all worth it in the end, and all of their struggles, pains,mistakes, and tears mattered.

I could go on and on and on,but let’s sum it up with a tl;dr: Puella Magi Madoka Magica may not have had nearly the amount of death and despair as other shows and very littlegore, but it had a far greater impact because it was carefully and brilliantlyconstructed from top to bottom to hit you right where it hurts, twist theknife, and still make you thankful for the ride. And I wouldn’t have it anyother way.

#pmmm #puella magi madoka magica #Madoka Kaname #sayaka miki #mami tomoe #kyoko sakura #homura akemi #gen urobuchi

454 notes · View notes

hadnothing · 5 years

Text

kiun is a lot more complicated than he gets credit for welcome to my ted talk -

ok so hear me out. this shinki. is fucking insane. just, what the fuck is happening? let’s break this down. oh boy.

he’s a fucKING LIGHTNING DRAGON. so, he’s one of exactly two shinki we’ve seen with extremely ‘abnormal’ manifestations. this implies that he’s, honestly, probably led an incredibly traumatic and weird life given the track record we can see of how other shinki have forms that are very symbolic of their past occupations, their personalities, etc. sadly we’ve not seen that in canon yet. so i have a lot of hc about it but i also want to see if he gets revealed in the next few chapters or anything first, so i won’t post anything for a little just to find out, you know how it is. if i get impatient i’ll just spill eventually so it’s fine.

but genuinely, kiun is fascinating. he’s incredibly old, to start with. it’s dropped in the manga that takemikazuchi’s forced reincarnation was directly before the reign of the first Japanese emperor, jimmu (660 bce). kiun was employed on the day of said reincarnation. so this implies that his death was very, very long ago. and he really lacks the generally uppity-ness one would expect from a noble, so he was also likely a peasant.

i’m not even going to touch on the fact that he’s got blonde hair in this and seemingly always did post-death. well. maybe a little. i don’t think it’s natural. i’m thinking he may have straight up died by lightning strike, but i’m not sure. i have some logic to work out on that later. i realize that most likely it’s just a style choice of the creator and doesn’t really matter, but i like everything to have a reason bc i’m a dickhead.

but yeah, so he’s a fucking lightning dragon. what’s with that? oh, and he can change his size seemingly at will. and he bleeds, which implies that he does have something of a physical form underneath the lightning, at least circumstantially. which is...you know, interesting, but not particularly weirder than any of the other things we’ve seen happen with shinki. but, anyway, my whole point here is that he does then have a physical form underneath the lightning which he can display if he likes. my guess is that there’s just seldom a reason to, so he doesn’t. this isn’t a major thing, but i think it’s really interesting and opens up new avenues of communication and interaction.

the main thing i really want to talk about though, is his personality. because we see him mostly as just a sort of airheaded guy. very sleepy, a bit formal, quite lonely and generally not in some regards what we would expect a guidepost to be.

this is fascinating, especially since takemikazuchi on meeting him pre-incarnation and after taking him into his employ notes that kiun is a reflection of himself more than anyone or anything else has ever been - this god, who is known for being reckless, angry, vengeful, uncontrollable, wild - and asks him to promise to stay by him. so what does that say about kiun deep down as well?

of course, the fact that he reincarnated that night after being murdered by his elder shinki for being too uncontrollable complicates things, but keep in mind: kiun keeps this promise. he never stopped keeping it. and it’s interesting, because i think that the reason that take claims him as an echo of himself is that deep loneliness. their personalities are too vastly different (even though i do think that kiun has some anger issues that he’s supressed an incredible amount during his service in order to perform well). they are both these really undefinable beings; they’re sort of the shape of something recognizable, but not really, and they’re massive as concepts. you can’t contain lightning. you can’t shape it. it simply is, and when it strikes, it’s fast and decisive. they both make their decisions this way.

so it’s absolutely fascinating to me that kiun keeps this promise, especially in agony. i don’t think he stood idly by during the execution either - in fact i’m quite sure he probably begged to be used against the elders and was denied. because realistically, the only way that execution could have ever commenced is by take’s consent, because if he had called for any of his other shinki (not the elders, if they were drawing lines to deny him), they couldn’t have not answered his call. he let them take his life. yeah, he fought, and there were collateral deaths, but i think that's genuinely just pride. because at the end of the day i don't believe there wasn't a way for him to call for aid if he truly wanted it.

which makes it so much more incredibly cruel that his powers were bound upon reincarnation, and he was only given kiun to express himself. and as his guide. this newly dead shinki, who (as far as we know) had never served before and had no idea what he was doing, and didn’t truly know his master yet. and now his master doesn’t know him, because he no longer remembers kiun’s naming, but he still belongs to him. his vessel has already been declared.

and kiun has had to, more or less, just...do what he’s told from two directions for all of this time. he had to learn to be a guidepost, and yet his true loyalty is to take, not the elders, so he has to learn how to appease them without prompting another execution, and serve without being a traitor to his master’s wishes. (not surprised he’s always tired.) and it’s so sad, i think, because the really strong implication is that the elders left kiun to raise the new take, and at the end of the day that had to be the most frustrating thing in the world for them both. he couldn’t tell him who either of them used to be, or really what he was supposed to do. all he could do was stay by his side. and care.

which is, i think, a heavy part of why take is so bitter and sometimes cruel to his shinki. he doesn’t understand himself, he is full of resentment, his closest companion and really the only person he cares for he isn’t sure that he can trust. and kiun is really faded. i think this is a huge part of why his most defining feature is being an exhausted ditz. he’s so distracted by always fretting after take that it makes his functionality in literally anything else essentially shit, because he wants more than anything to keep his master well. he drowns his own desires and personality in the interest of service. and it’s really fucking sad, because takemikazuchi is almost generous in that he allows his shinki to have relationships, and be free, to mingle. kiun doesn’t do any of that. he has no friends. no lovers. he glues himself, absolutely and completely, to take. and that’s self-punishment at its finest, because while he’s practically all of his master’s happiness he can’t see that. he blames himself for all of takemikazuchi’s misery since his reincarnation. and in a way take does too, but he forgives him for it except in the moments where he’s enraged beyond belief, and then it’s weaponized.

their relationship is a bizarre, tangled mess of emotion and frustration spanning millennia. they both have incredibly deep affection towards each other that they don’t admit, because it isn’t proper and they are both super steeped in tradition. take is selfish; kiun will always serve his whims until he thinks that take is destroying himself. they are apart only when kiun is asleep or when takemikazuchi tells him to be gone. i genuinely think that they probably have adjoined quarters (if not just straight up shared) and their codependency is absolutely bonkers. they both look to the other for instruction and affection while trying to retain an autonomy they have no idea of how to gain, and it’s ultimately just tragic.

but neither of them will give it up. they’re part of each other.

#HEADCANON. ( kiun. )#DO NOT REBLOG. ( without permission. )

5 notes · View notes

the-little-prophet · 5 years

Text

Time of Death || Charlana

@alana-the-badbitch

Summary: Immediately after waking up from Titanic, Charlie and Alana meet up and talk Life and stuff.

TW: Health anxiety, mentions of environmental disasters, climate change, vague suicidal ideation

CHARLIE: 2:37 a.m.

Charlie was often up at 2:37 a.m. These post-midnight hours were his favourite and least favourite, full of Golden Girls reruns, and flash-card-building, and inventory down in his bunker, and nibbling on snacks he knew that he shouldn’t eat. His tired got comfortable at 2:37 a.m.; his loneliness, though, got bigger. Not that he ever had many people to text or that wanted to hang out with him, course, but, well-- at 2:37 a.m., there really was no one. Even Swynlake’s party animals were staggering on home or they had found themselves a person to keep them company for the rest of the night.

Tonight, though, Charlie had a person.

He took his bike to meet her. It wasn’t like sneaking out-- Charlie’s dad snored too deep in his own bed and Charlie doubted he’d care even if he woke up and Charlie was gone anyhow. So he slipped down the stairs and latched his bicycle helmet on tight. And then he pedaled off into empty, dark streets, wind whisking through his ears, cold as it had been on the ship. But the air didn’t taste like ocean. It tasted like home.

His bike sped over Pride University’s green and straight up to the Robinson’s STEM building. He hopped off it and rolled it into the bike racks, then swiped his card in. It was Thursday night-- Friday morning-- but there were no late night stragglers here either, not even in the computer labs.

He wondered if they were still dreaming, dying, drowning, somewhere on the Titanic. Was it like in a video game? Since he’d died, had he spawned first?

Charlie took the stairs. He took ‘em at his own pace but still got to the top floor where the alchemy and astronomy classes were held before Alana did. He checked his texts one last time, but her last ones shone back at him. Be there soon.

He went into the biggest lab, the one with the massive glass dome ceiling. He’d always loved this lab-- spacious, magnificent, polished, and clean. Charlie climbed up on one of the tables and sat cross-legged, looking up through the dome at all the shining stars.

He thought about how stars reached through time and space, their lights all unanswered distress calls across the black.

He thought about hearts-- how sometimes, when a heart gives up, there’s a moment where it still has just enough electrical impulse to fool a monitor into thinking its pumping away, but not enough to capture the musculature of the heart, so there’s no real beat-- just a parade of ghost complexes marching past the monitor screen.

He thought about how his visions were like these two things: an SOS call that misfired and found its way to him.

And then the door opened and Charlie looked behind him, still cross-legged on the table in the dark, the only light in the room pouring in through the dome. “Hey Alana,” he greeted softly. “Still alive, yeah?”

ALANA

Alana was, in fact, still alive. She knew what it was like to die -- actually die, mind you -- so she wasn’t going to get her knickers in a twist after dying in another one of those Swynlake dreams. Least this time, she didn’t just give up and walk into a river.

No, it hadn’t been her death that disturbed her, nor the fact that she had been so soft and in love (she’d deal with hunting down this John Darling -- if he even existed -- later on to make sure he thought it all a dream as well). No, what had unsettled Alana had been snapping at Charlie. Had been how he’d somehow remembered. Had been how, in the end, she came back.

She felt -- well, she felt guilty, really. On the logical end, she knew there couldn’t have been a way for her to know. On a more personal end, she felt like a shit friend.

So she’d texted Charlie immediately and she’d crept outta the house. She;d done this before, repeatedly, but never over to the science building -- usually it was to be alone, to creep in one of her old houses. She hadn’t done that for a while. Tonight was different, because she was going to school. She was going to meet Charlie.

Nothing in Swynlake was ever far, and she reached there shortly, swiping into the building, climbing up the stairs, hands in the pockets of her coat. She thought lightly of the events of the dream -- death, of course, since that always stuck with you when you woke up even though it was not real; but also love, this time, because bloody hell she’d gotten married, what kind of Swynlake bullshit.

She reached the top of the stairs, pushed the door open, and saw darkness. Her eyes adjusted, Charlie’s silhouette appearing, sitting atop the table, the dark around him slowly morphing into a deep blue the longer she looked. The faint light of the stars and the moon trickled in from the glass dome.

“Last time I checked, yeah,” she said, with a shrug and a smile. “And as we both know, I’ve got experience in making sure I’m alive.”

She hopped up on the table with him.

“Sorry I got us killed,” she said, after a second. “I mean, not like anything would’ve happened, but I feel like I should apologise for that.”

CHARLIE: Sorry I got us killed.

It actually made him laugh.

Not laugh-laugh-- Charlie rarely had any real laugh-laughs in himself, even at very funny things. He figured laugh-laughs were for people who had more energy than he had on any given day. Though several times, after staying up for over 48 hours, he had been prone to a few giggle-fits and snicker-fests. But the whole throw-your-head-back-and-laugh-laugh was something Charlie only saw on his TV sitcoms, sometimes imagining the people on the laugh track.

He wondered if this was a laugh track moment then thought himself bizarre for thinking it. Why would this, right now, be a laugh track moment?

He really was tired, huh?

So Charlie chuckled, shaking his head a little at thoughts of laugh-tracks before he looked right back up through the dome ceiling. He shrugged his shoulders. “Ah, that’s alright. Not really sure if it was your fault anyway, I’m the one who got myself locked up like a nutter.” He tapped his own temple and snorted at himself. He really was a nutter, thinking he could change the outcome of the Titanic.

Though-- she’d believed him.

He remembered that. He remembered both times now-- Alana in the forest and now Alana on the other side of that horrible concrete door, trying to get them both out. She’d believed him. She’d believed him. Even when they were strangers, and she was not-Alana, she believed him.

His eyes drifted back to her and he had a feeling in his gut he couldn’t explain. It was the opposite, he realized, of deja vu. It was the opposite of how he felt when he knew that something bad was coming.

So-- anticipating something good. Like a shooting star or the sunrise.

He smiled. “Sides you-- you tried to help. Even though you were some weird not-you and you didn’t know not-me--or uh, this-me, I dunno how that worked exactly. Was pretty brave, actually. Well, stupid, since you died but--- I was stupid too.” He shrugged again and looked up at the dome. “It was nice not to die alone for once.”

ALANA A moment of silence passed between them. Not one that was particularly uncomfortable, mind you, but silence it was, and Alana thought a bit about her dream-self and about rushing down to the makeshift brig.

“It was real stupid,” she said, letting out a little laugh, and leaning back on her hands. She arched her neck, looking up at the sky. Alana wasn’t one to get all misty-eyed at the stars and complex nature of existence or whatever.

She liked space well enough, maybe not for deep philosophical, feeling-y reasons but because of stuff like how the light they were seein’ from stars right now might be from a star that had burned out long ago. That there were things such as black holes that ate everything and that there were nurseries of stars that looked all purple and dusty like a dream.

In a world of so much magic and dreams that altered everything, there was something comforting about the science of it all, that there were big, massive things in this universe that had explanations -- instead of the magic town tossing them all into the plot of a Leonardo DiCaprio movie.

Alana glanced back at Charlie now.

“Have you ever realized it was a dream before?” she asked, raising both eyebrows. “We didn’t end up ever crossin’ paths during the Hunger Games, but -- I don’t think you did, did you?”

She figured Charlie would’ve mentioned it right after the Hunger Games, then, though of course Alana had been in the accident right after, so maybe he’d been more preoccupied with, you know, keeping her alive. Even though she’d died in the both of them, at least the Titanic one hadn’t taken place in a dystopian society. There’d been some fun there before the death.

CHARLIE: As far as Charlie knew, Titanic had been a first--

Which is what he’d thought until Alana brought up Hunger Games and he remembered that too. It struck him all at once, like another electric shock to counteract the one that buried Charlie’s memory over a month ago now-- Charlie in the Hunger Games, Charlie’s vision--

He had killed himself.

Charlie was glad of the dark again, because without it, Alana would have seen the horror in Charlie’s eyes, the colour leave his face. It was the sort of realization you automatically wanted to hide from another person, this dark and terrible piece of Charlie that he had, in fact, hid from himself. But it sat inside him, another jagged puzzle piece of an ever-increasing, confusing puzzle that seemed to have no edges to it-- the pieces just kept making the puzzle-- the problem-- spread out bigger and bigger, like how the universe was expanding into nothing, and into nothing, and into nothing…

How did you tell someone any of that? In context, it wasn’t really that bad, unless you thought about the greater context, in which case Charlie’s magic was at best a mindfuck and at worst-- going to get him killed.

“Er,” was how Charlie started then. “Er…. okay so-- about that-- don’t freak out,” he stuttered quick. He knew Lana wasn’t the type to freak out, of course, but it still felt like something he should say. “It’s going to sound rather bad, but I don’t think it means anything for this-me, like I would never-- anyway-- um so. Yeah. This...this was the first dream where I sort of knew from the very start that it was some kind of...alternate universe or dream or I thought maybe I had dragged everyone into one of my insane visions because I’ve been having the whole Titanic sinking one on and off for over a decade. But um, actually… well...Hunger Games, I… had a vision during the Games on one of the nights.”

He’d been talking quite fast, the way Charlie always did when he was nervous and uncomfortable, but then slowed down as he reached this main point.

“And I saw...through the dream? Like, Hunger Games-me saw Swynlake-me and knew that it wasn’t real. And so in...the Games, I actually… ended up killing myself to get out of it. And I did, as soon as I died, I woke up. And what’s interesting about that is as soon as I died in this dream too, I woke up. So-- I dunno what that means. I don’t know what any of it means, but it has to mean something, doesn’t it?”

Charlie felt the weight of the small piece of paper in his pocket as he talked. He hadn’t even gotten to that part-- one life-altering epiphany at a time, he guessed.

ALANA

She listened to Charlie’s words and she thought about them as he spoke. Alana thought about them, taking each new piece of information and adding it to a growing list of facts about Charlie’s Dreams: he dreamed she died, he was able to change that ending (kinda), he dreamed about the Titanic, this had been the first time he’d remembered who he was, but here had been a moment in the Hunger Games --

“Huh, do you think, maybe, it had something to do with the fact that what happened to me, like, well it wasn’t exactly what you saw?” she asked, picking at a thread on her jacket. “Like, it changed. I mean, I’m here, so I guess it did. I dunno. I’m just spitballing. Maybe this means your magic’s getting more powerful.”

She wondered, though, if it had anything to do with the electric shock that odd kid had shot right into Charlie’s brain. The whole thing still gave her shivers. It was like right out of one of her true crime shows -- some kid who kept electroconvulsive therapy gear in his basement just to get a kick out of watching people squirm. It was one thing to hear it on a podcast or watch it on T.V.; another to rescue your friend.

“Just an idea. I dunno. I don’t know anything about magic, I’m horrible that way.” And she leaned back on the table totally, splaying her arms out, before turning her head to Charlie.

CHARLIE: “If you’re horrible, I’m even worse,” said Charlie and as he looked up at the stars--

It felt like a thousand eyes looking back at him, a thousand eyes staring, unblinking, seeing Charlie for exactly what he was: a coward.

All those months he’d spent trying to get rid of his magic-- and convincing himself it wasn’t magic-- and convincing himself that it was a problem that could be solved. And the years he’d spent stockpiling in his basement and building bug-out bags and trembling terrified in his safe room during any Swynlake event, ever. His whole life had been one long panic attack. He’d lived in Swynlake and he’d run scared from himself; what kind of hypocrite was that?

The cowardly kind. The word repeated itself, the weight of it in all those eyes looking at him. Coward. Coward.

Charlie didn’t want to be a coward anymore. He wanted-- to understand. Not hide or run or electrocute his brain into spaghetti.

Course, wanting something was one thing. Because Charlie had shriveled at the mention of his magic getting more powerful, even though it made sense, even though-- there would be no stopping it, if that’s what was happening to him. He could feel that paper again, waiting like a rock in his pocket. Slowly, Charlie fished it out.

“There… is um...something else. Another new thing that might mean that-- my-- magic--” it still felt so odd to say out loud “-- is uh… changing.” His finger rubbed over the crinkly scrap. It had the texture of paper that had gotten wet and dried off again. “I think I brought something back.”

He finally looked at Lana and he extended the tiny little paper toward her.. “It’s like, so tiny, I know,” he blurted. “But-- well-- you know Reed? Reed Fisch? He was a year under us, but in my art class I used to go to. Well until he moved but-- anyway, he-- he was the one in the cell with me and he’d written that note when I first approached him on the Titanic because I recognized him and I put that paper away in my pocket and then when I woke up it-- I still had it like it came back with me. But-- how could it come back with me? We didn’t go anywhere. And how does that fit with the rest anyway? Like, how I can move around and stuff in my vision but other precogs can’t-- is that even what I am, a precog? Why do I see past stuff too? And why the hell does it look like I’m brain dead when I do?! None of it makes sense! Ugh!” he groaned, tossed his hands up and fell back so he was stretched out on his back too.

The stars kept staring.

“I think I liked it better when I was just crazy,” sighed Charlie.

ALANA

The more Charlie talked, the more Alana’s thoughts swirled and darted and she could not wrangle them into anything cohesive. It was late, she reasoned. It was late and she never had a mind for magic, because being a mermaid and having magical powers were two totally different things to her (and to the rest of the world, the world that thought mermaids ought to be hunted and skinned and turned into expensive handbags).

Charlie fell backwards and Alana wanted to help him.

She wished she could say something. She wished she could help.

Instead, she stared up at the stars.

“This shit’s crazy,” she said, because she couldn’t think of anything else. She did turn her head towards Charlie, though. A cloud drifted, letting the moonlight stream in at that moment, casting a silver triangle across the two of them. “And fuckin’ confusing for you and just a lot, yeah? But you can talk to me about all this stuff even though I’m gonna be shit at helping, but I’ll try. We’re in this together, Charlie.” She grinned, a little mischievously, the reached over to bop him on the nose. “Whether you like it or not.”

CHARLIE: Alana booped his nose.

He blinked and he looked at her, wide-eyed and… his smile crept over his face like it was sneaking up on him too. Because Alana just booped his nose. Alana was smiling too. Alana said they were in this together.

We’re in this together, Charlie.

For once in his life, he believed it too-- like if he took Alana’s hand, somehow, they could fall back into his dreams together and he wouldn’t ever have to die alone again.

Wishful thinking probably, but who knows? Nothing was apparently impossible anymore.

“Thanks, Alana,” he breathed out. He looked back up at the dome, still smiling as the stars glittered back at him. It was quiet for a few more breaths before Charlie’s brain started ticking again (it didn’t stay quiet for long). New questions rose to his tongue. He chewed on the side of his mouth like he could chew the question up, but there it still was.

“Do you think…I should tell Reed?” asked Charlie. “About me, and-- and the dreams and-- the paper? Like, I mean, if there’s a reason why we keep dying together, maybe there’s a reason he was there too. Maybe? I dunno.” His heart was racing under his hands which were folded over his chest.

ALANA

Y’know Alana didn’t remember Reed in this whole mess till Charlie mentioned him. She didn’t have much memories of Reed Fisch, and honestly she only had memories of Charlie because of that day with the ice lollies. For a moment, she felt this -- this flicker of jealousy. Because they were in this together, yeah? Like it was a secret. A Charlie-Alana secret.

But the paper --

But hadn’t she wanted Charlie to make friends? Hadn’t she spent the whole summer trying to do that?

Was she that horrible of a person that she couldn’t even let him tell Reed?

“Nah, you should,” she said, balling up that little smidge of envy or whatever it was and burying it down low and deep. “Like obviously at this point there’s some weird -- I dunno -- universe, town, magic shit happening. And this is a new variable you’ve got to consider.” A pause. “Plus, I mean weren’t the two of you friends back before he left? Or something? Nothing rekindles a friendship like shared death, yeah?”

She nudged Charlie’s shoulder with her own.

“We can call ourselves -- Charlie’s Angels! Me and Reed are the angels, of course. You’re the Charlie. Maybe he can help us figure all of this out.”

CHARLIE: Charlie could have easily been convinced out of it. Heck, he might go home and convince himself out of it anyway because Charlie wouldn’t be Charlie if he didn’t run most of his opinions and his plans through very detailed checklists and mental simulations to make sure they came out as close to foolproof (with a comfortable confidence level) on the other side. And when it came to his magic… he’d never come close to certain anyway.

Though if he were honest, he was never certain about much. He never felt safe. He could count and recount the jars of peanut butter, olives, and soup cans he kept in his safe room; he could document weather patterns and keep lists of Swynlake disasters; he could create as many Excel spreadsheets as he wanted to organize his life, down to the teas he drank in any given week.

But all these things rubbed a salve over an open wound. His nerves numbed, but never went away.

Honestly, right now, with Lana at his side-- he felt the safest he’d ever felt. He didn’t even need a safe room. If he saw an asteroid turn toward Earth, maybe he wouldn’t even mind. He’d just-- take Alana’s hand. And they’d go down together, like always.

And that was why Alana reassuring him about Reed worked more than any list or Excel spreadsheet out there.

Charlie breathed out in relief. And then he laughed. Charlie’s Angels. It sounded cool in Alana’s voice, it sounded like they had superpowers, like in a comic book, only, like, not offensive or appropriative or anything. “Well-- I do got a lot of practice being a Charlie,” he said, grinning up at the sky. “So-- yeah. Yeah. Maybe we will.”

And then a star shot over head, so fast it was a blink-and-you’d-miss-it.

“Hey!” he pointed. “Make a wish!”

And Charlie squeezed his eyes shut and thought about the sun rising over a primordial Earth, back before cities, and sinking ships-- and next to Alana, that wild, gargantuan yesterday, full of methane-sky and crocodiles with fangs the size of Charlie’s right arm, didn’t seem as scary as it had before. And this time when he wished, he believed that it could come true.

#charlana #para #tw health anxiety

1 note · View note

barbecuedphoenix · 7 years

Note

Which chick movie do you think the Eldarya guys would (really, really, in a embarrassing way) love?

This was a fun request. ^u^

It’s just a shame that Idon’t know that many chick-flicks, so I included a few male-POV romances toround this out. I tried my best. :(

So, assuming that the guyswere spirited away to the 20th - 21st century humanrealm, and grew up here watching our movies…

Nevra

Are you kidding? He knows all the chick-flicks! Growing up with akid sister, he used to watch at least one romance a week. (Frankly, this started out as a way to keep her out oftrouble on weekends, but it morphed into a routine once she entered her tweens.Now, they still meet up for movie marathons every few weeks. It’s theirguilty pleasure.)

He is definitely not ashamedof watching chick movies. Their stories generally have more character and heartthan, say, testosterone-pumped action flicks that all guys are ‘supposed’ towatch. Not to mention that women’s movies have a much higher proportion of eye candy because of the female lead’sscreen time…

But the biggest real life benefit?Knowing and liking chick-flicks is a boonwhen a guy is picking up a date. You all wonder why Nevra is so popular withwomen? Blame his sister for training him up on their entertainment.

What he enjoys:

Powerful and ambitious,but flawed heroes with initially zero chance of ‘getting the girl’… and gettheir hearts stomped on at least once. Their common Achilles heel:loneliness.

Plucky, but innocentheroines who unknowingly hold the power to twist their man’s heart. And ifthey’re smoking-hot on the screen, he’s got another good reason to watch themovie.

Power-games, schemes,and corporate backstabbing shenanigans, where there is no clear dividebetween wrong and right.

Snappy dialogue witha cynical touch

(Crazily) balancing life’s priorities: first sacrificing love on the altar for ambition, power,reputation, etc. And then sacrificing more to get it back.

Redemption andforgiveness for the lead(s).

Personaltransformation in order to get ahead in life, and then again to win or save arelationship. (i.e. rags-to-riches Cinderella themes)

High-budget movieswith A-list actors; he likes qualityentertainment, thank you. He’ll also watch anything with Harrison Ford init.

Favorite ‘chick’ movies:

Sabrina (the1995 remake): This movie embodies everything Nevra loves in a romantic-comedy.He loves the story, the dialogue, and all the actors. But he reallyfeels for the hero Linus (quote from the movie: ‘the world’s only living heartdonor’), who starts off seducing the heroine to save his family’s businessinterests and his brother’s engagement, only to fall in love with her.Then gets the door slammed in his face once the love-of-his-life learns hisreasons and leaves the country. …What? He swears that has never happened to him before.

The Devil Wears Prada (2006): This is more of a laugh-fest for Nevrathan a romance. Keeping your head above water using your wits in NYC, whilescurrying around for an ultra-glamorous, fire-breathing boss with personalissues? Andy isn’t the typical heroine he likes to follow, but he sure wisheshe has an employee like her. But he is nota fire-breathing boss! What are you implying?

Disney’s Beauty and the Beast(1991): You read that correctly. Whether animated, live-action, or on Broadway,this classic holds a firm place in Nevra’s heart. This is also the one moviehe’s embarrassed to love. He was skeptical first at watching aG-rated movie—Karenn had dragged him to see it when she was a kid–, but he wasthe one who teared up when the Beast released Belle, thus doominghimself to life as a pariah and monster. (His mental dialogue during thatscene: “Of course he had to let her go! He loved her!”. His mental dialoguelater when the lynch mob arrived: “You bastards! Leave him alone! Hasn’t hesuffered enough?!”) Nevra still gets a reaction when Karenn starts humming theBeast’s solo– ‘If I Can’t Love Her’– from the musical.

Ezarel

Chick-flicks?Ugh! Spare him the torture! There must be other types of brainlessentertainment you can subject him to.

Ezarel won’t be caught deadwatching a romantic-comedy. Not unless it’s a very quirky, nontraditional,indie movie that’s more bittersweet than sentimental, makes fun of its owncharacters, and isn’t exclusively told from the female POV. That way, he’ll sayhe’s watching a screwball comedy instead. (So it has a little romance in it. What movie doesn’t, these days?)

What he enjoys:

A cast ofcompletely-flawed, borderline obnoxious characters, who rarely get what theydeserve (good or bad).

An underdog leadingman (or woman), who’s the only smart one in the movie and frequently a lonelyoutcast. (He will not tolerate anair-headed protagonist.)

Fast-paced trollingdialogue, non-stop sarcastic humor, and screwball jokes. Pranks are a bonus.

Realisticrelationships (i.e. with all the ugly baggage, awkwardness, and confusion thathappen in real life).

The constant struggleto overcome distance, misunderstanding, and social obstacles. (i.e. the ideathat people are completely unreliable, and that romance never makes sense.)

Unrequited love andbittersweet endings.

Breaking movietraditions and the fourth wall. If a movie is serious from start-to-finish, andasks him to suspend disbelief for 90+ minutes, then Ez practically fallsasleep.

Cult classics. A-Listblockbusters are pretentious, and plain boring.Give him weird animations, weirder stories, and bizarre camera angles anyday.

Favorite Romantic Comedies:

Annie Hall(1977): Ezarel adores Woody Allen, and this movie is seen as ‘The Romance’ inhis collection. He can watch this film over and again just to catch allthe references and in-jokes. He also turns to this movie for general lessons onhow to cope with relationships. And you all wonder why he’s so salty.

What If (2013):One of the few modern romances with a happy ending that still has Ezarellaughing out of his seat. He knows the friend-zone very well, and how it’seasier (and more dignified) to stay there rather than to try to climb out. He certainly does not hope that what happens to Wallacehappens to him one day. He’ll gladly live life without falling for a friend andgetting punched down the stairs.

Amelie (2001):He always turns beet-red when someone catches him watching this classic.Because he only watches it for the pranks and the deadpan narration, he swears!All right, so he feels a bit sorry for the quirky outcasts Amelie and Nino too,and he sort of likes the convoluted, pinball-machine way they finally find eachother. It doesn’t mean he enjoys thatlast, sugary scene of them laughing together like idiots on a bike. Tch. You never saw him watch this movie.

Valkyon

He’s quite neutral on romanticcomedies. To him, it’s just another movie genre that doesn’t fall on his listof favorites. Why spend 90+ minutes on a handful of little arguments that can technicallybe resolved in just 15 minutes? He doesn’t get it.

So the only romantic elementthat he can enjoy is if it’s tangled into a greater conflict that heunderstands. Like war, penance, and exile. That’s when it really hits home for him. (This also means that Valkyon is actually the weakest of the three guys for stories about‘true love’, so long as they’re packaged as epic sagas.)

What he enjoys:

True heroes/heroines,who weather the curve-balls life throws at them without complaining, and try to hold onto their honor despite trying times.

Turbulent, large-scaleconflicts, but where there is still a clear divide between what’s wrong andright on the individual scale. (i.e. war dramas)

Crossing cultures andborders, and adapting to difficult new circumstances.

‘Pure love’ that is more seen and implied than spoken and argued about. And which enduresboth time and distance, despite great forces tearing the couple apart.

Dramatic reunions.

Tragic endings.

Sweeping landscape shots and vistas. (Really, it’s the best way to immerse the audience in the story.)

Historical accuracy.The story may be fictional, but it shouldn’t completely abandon reality; otherwise it’s pure fantasy orpropaganda. In the end, the most powerful stories come from real life.

Favorite (romantic) movies:

‘Atonement’ (2007):His favorite romance of all time, hands down. It’s also the most tragic film hehas ever seen. Don’t bother taking him to see the next installment in ‘FiftyShades’; this movie has inoculated Valkyon against all cheery/sexy romanticfilms. Most other romances are just so… pettycompared to what happened between Cecilia and Robbie. Other screen-writers shouldstart putting in more themes of loss in their plots.

‘Zero Motivation’(2014): The only real ‘chick flick’that Valkyon actually likes, because it’s such a spot-on portrayal of the screwylife of military recruits (like the ones he commands). The first time he sawit, he smiled knowingly to himself throughout the whole movie. Because he haspersonally seen all the pranks, the sassing to superior officers, and thebarracks feuds that erupt from boredom, stress, a general refusal to getalong, and well, exactly zero motivation. It’s even funnier to see it up on thesilver screen.

‘The Last Samurai’(2003): This movie used to be number one on Valkyon’s list… until someone broke it tohim that real samurai are a lot less romantic and used guns by the time theywere disbanded. That’s why he’s embarrassed to admit that he still loves thisfilm. In fact, the ‘armoring’ scene between Capt. Algren and the samurai’swidow he fell for, prior to the suicidal battle, had him squeezing his date’shand very hard in the dark of the movie theater (result: they yelped loudenough to disturb the whole row). Even now, Valkyon firmly believes that thescreenwriter meant for the captain toremain in Japan and find her again after the war.

Edit: Whoops. Did you just say chick movie? As in, one? Looks like I went overboard again. >_> Nuts.

#request #headcanon #Eldarya #Ezarel #Nevra #Valkyon

15 notes · View notes

blogdeathbyjbsilenttreatment · 5 years

Text

Jerry Hsu’s Off-The-Wall Photography — Acclaim Magazine

Jerry Hsu’s latest photograph ebook, The Lovely Flower Is the World is weirdly and wonderfully human. The pro skater and photographer creates a compelling collection of art from pictures shot solely on cell phones. The candid photographs come from Hsu’s blog Nazi Gold, which was created back in 2009. The ebook is a visual journey into the sudden, the place parts of tragedy collide with the comical. He manages to seek out beauty and intrigue in what many people would overlook as mundane and helps us see life’s absurdities. I spoke to Jerry about ‘skate-vision’, the story behind the guide’s title, and his non-photographic images.

Hey Jerry! Back in 2009 when this collection of photographs started, did you assume it’d someday be a e-book? How spontaneous are tasks like Desk for One and The Lovely Flower Is The World? Are they pre-planned or do they only unfold naturally? I didn’t really have a plan for a ebook, I was extra considering in the brief time period, [I] was actually simply taking pictures and posting them online and didn’t assume that significantly about them. The BlackBerry pictures have been unplanned, they only kind of advanced out of bizarre photographic habits I had with out a lot planning. The Table for One stuff is a bit bit more of an concept I shaped earlier than I began taking them as a result of I was all the time interested within the notion of solitude.

It’s fascinating, typically individuals take a look at those pictures they usually see loneliness or they see mockery perhaps, but that was undoubtedly not my intent, it was more about self reflection. Individuals who see them have very fascinating emotional responses, a whole lot of the time individuals like what they see, but other occasions individuals get offended, perhaps because of their very own views on being alone or by themselves, or that it’s uncomfortable. That was actually what that venture was about, illuminating solitude.

The pixel high quality of cellphone photographs has changed dramatically in the 10 years because you began posting on Nazi Gold. How do you assume an identical venture captured in 2019 would differ in material? The thing concerning the Nazi Gold blog pictures is that they aren’t photographic, they are footage, however they have this type of very unrefined, newbie quality to them that I sort of like, I feel it provides them a certain character and locations them in a selected time. A challenge now would just mirror the know-how of at present, it will be a bit bit harder to differentiate.

You take a look at the Nazi Gold photographs and it’s obvious that they’re from 10 years in the past. I am a photographer but I type of treated the Nazi Gold photographs to be less photographic, I wasn’t making an attempt to make pictures really, I was just making an attempt to capture a feeling and an concept.

Like several artwork in the public area, many people have described what your work evokes for them, but how would you summarise your newest venture? One thing that I needed to do was to make pictures in an un-photographic approach, a sort of non-traditional method to make artwork. The purpose is principally communication. A low-quality telephone photograph is just a ubiquitous solution to talk now, it’s type of a language and I needed to explore how I used my images to communicate immediacy inside the digital area.

Can you tell us concerning the release celebration on your new e-book, The Lovely Flower Is The World at NTS Gallery? It was great! I made some prints and I hung them in a type of impromptu art show. Loads of buddies and supporters came out which meant quite a bit to me. I used to be kinda nervous and didn’t know learn how to act and my face was kinda purple and all that stuff. They’re all the time very annoying in that approach but I am very grateful.

Do you go on the lookout for your topics or do they discover you? I document issues around me and things that I see so my subjects come about organically or are in my life not directly.

Do you’ve gotten a favorite photograph from the collection? It’s very troublesome to choose a favorite, nevertheless there’s one photograph meaning quite a bit to me. There’s a photograph in the ebook of a gaggle of six or seven individuals in a scorching tub in the snow. That’s a photograph that I took of some pals from a visit to Lake Tahoe. I do know all the individuals on this photograph very nicely, I’ve spent a variety of time with these individuals individually and their relationships are all very interconnected, they dated each other and there are these weird stories with that group of people.

It’s type of like once you take a look at a photograph from back residence, of people who you’re pals with but from a unique time in your life, and there are all these interconnected stories. I really like the private significance of that story. I take into consideration all these individuals’s relationships and all the issues they went by way of and what all of us went by means of collectively [and] it’s a weird encapsulation of that back house feeling.

I’ve received to ask, did you chat to Spider-Man if you took that photograph? [Laughs] No, I used to be with my mother and father on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles and didn’t actually have time to cease. And I feel he was on a break and I don’t assume he actually needed to speak to anybody.

You’ve spoken up to now about skate imaginative and prescient and the way it helps you notice the unnoticed. Do you consider images is something you’d have been drawn to even for those who weren’t a skater? I do assume so, it undoubtedly helped me, however I feel it [photography] would have been something that I might have been drawn to regardless. As a toddler I really liked comedian books and the paintings. I’d all the time attempt to copy it, then I started going into bookstores and searching at the artwork books and studying about painters. Even before skating, I feel I might have gone in that course. However with the ability to see as a skater really helped my type of images, the eye to element, there’s a looking facet. Not figuring out what you’re after however turning a corner or taking place a road you’re unfamiliar with, that behaviour informs the images rather a lot.

What’s the best asset a road photographer can have? Endurance and perseverance. Principally endurance, it’s principally about with the ability to go out all day lengthy and get nothing and come back and do it many times. It’s one thing that you simply really should study to cope with, and again, skating also taught me that too. And in addition just to do it all the time, just work.

I’ve gone by means of long durations the place I don’t decide up the digital camera after which I do and it’s very troublesome to get back to it, it’s like being injured. Whenever you come again from damage you’re kinda psychologically injured too, you’re scared and you don’t have timing, you’ve lost every thing. So it’s good to be affected person and do it on a regular basis. Do the work, that’s all I can say.

When it comes to photographers, who evokes you? I really love JH Engstrom, a Swedish photographer. When it comes to road images, I really like seeing Daniel Arnold’s work as a result of he’s just out there and getting a lot stuff day by day and working so exhausting. I actually like his sensibility, the humour, the tragedy. I do know him personally and he’s a humorous guy. I actually take pleasure in speaking to him, so he’s someone that evokes me.

How do you are feeling about images turning into extra curated in an effort to create that good Instagram moment? Curating and modifying is among the most necessary elements of images so it’s no marvel that now, whenever you see one thing that someone posts, even when they don’t seem to be a photographer you must take into consideration the truth that there in all probability was a specific amount of modifying that went into it. I feel individuals study over time—we’ve this system in our arms that may take hundreds and hundreds of photographs [so] why wouldn’t you’re taking photographs until you got the proper one that you simply needed? I simply really feel like it’s a pure evolution of image sharing, even when they haven’t any sense of images or modifying over time they may start to perceive choosing the most effective one.

There’s additionally this expectation to have this curated feed of pictures that exhibits everybody what you need to present them, proper? You need to show them that you simply’re having a great time, that you are pleased, no matter it is that you simply need to present, you might have the facility to create that feeling. Everyone seems to be making an attempt to promote one thing with their Instagram or no matter it is and promoting is about creating a feeling, making an attempt to promote a sense.

Phrases function so much in your work, whether or not in the type of indicators, graffiti, or adverts. Out of all these words, why did you select the phrase The Lovely Flower Is The World as the title for this guide? The title of the e-book is a bit of grammatically incorrect so it provides you slightly bit of pause, you type of should stop and think about it for a second, like there’s something mistaken with this title. Does this make sense and why is that this a bit of off? It sort of mirrors the expertise of taking a look at a lot of the pictures, the theme of the photographs within the e-book. With most of them, there’s one thing a bit bit off, slightly bit improper with them. There’s something you’re drawn to, one thing’s a bit amiss and it makes you look a bit bit longer.

The title mirrors the photographs in that method, however the phrase can also be a degradation of language. It’s a phrase that came from an English talking place, travelled to Asia and back once more, so once we see it, it’s been jumbled, lost its unique which means and [been] degraded. The photographs degrade too, they’re taken with a telephone, posted online, you pull it off the weblog, e-mail it, whatever, it loses one thing every time it’s screenshot or no matter, moved round. So I assumed the title pulled it collectively completely.

As a person of many skills—skating and images to name a couple of—what else can Jerry Hsu do this we don’t find out about? Oh, [laughs] there’s nothing. I can’t do anything really… that’s really it… I wish to prepare dinner, I’ve been actually into that lately, I’m not that good at it, but that’s been enjoyable, that’s simply been a weird thing that I’ve been actually enjoying.

What are your plans for the longer term when it comes to skating, images, and life typically? Yeah I’m simply working on other photograph tasks, small ones. I’ve been working on a venture with these previous house films from once I was a kid skating, combined in with house films that my household made. Nearly growing up in America, rising up Taiwanese. Each my mother and father are from Taiwan, they immigrated right here, and it’s nearly growing up like I did. I’m just making an attempt to make stuff that I need to make.

Jerry Hsu’s ‘The Beautiful Flower Is the World’ is out now, grab a replica right here

The post Jerry Hsu’s Off-The-Wall Photography — Acclaim Magazine appeared first on Hacker Savant.

#art #Blog #Jerry Hsu #photography #Skating

0 notes

lovemnmiyukiko18us · 5 years

Text

Jerry Hsu’s Off-The-Wall Photography — Acclaim Magazine

Do you go on the lookout for your topics or do they discover you? I document issues around me and things that I see so my subjects come about organically or are in my life not directly.

Jerry Hsu’s ‘The Beautiful Flower Is the World’ is out now, grab a replica right here

The post Jerry Hsu’s Off-The-Wall Photography — Acclaim Magazine appeared first on Hacker Savant.

#art #Blog #Jerry Hsu #photography #Skating

0 notes

plhis-blog · 5 years

Text

Jerry Hsu’s Off-The-Wall Photography — Acclaim Magazine

Do you go on the lookout for your topics or do they discover you? I document issues around me and things that I see so my subjects come about organically or are in my life not directly.

Jerry Hsu’s ‘The Beautiful Flower Is the World’ is out now, grab a replica right here

The post Jerry Hsu’s Off-The-Wall Photography — Acclaim Magazine appeared first on Hacker Savant.

#art #Blog #Jerry Hsu #photography #Skating

0 notes

battheneoncrabuniverse · 5 years

Text

Jerry Hsu’s Off-The-Wall Photography — Acclaim Magazine

Do you go on the lookout for your topics or do they discover you? I document issues around me and things that I see so my subjects come about organically or are in my life not directly.

Jerry Hsu’s ‘The Beautiful Flower Is the World’ is out now, grab a replica right here

The post Jerry Hsu’s Off-The-Wall Photography — Acclaim Magazine appeared first on Hacker Savant.

#art #Blog #Jerry Hsu #photography #Skating

0 notes

wekawaiidonutwolfbanana · 5 years

Text

Jerry Hsu’s Off-The-Wall Photography — Acclaim Magazine

Do you go on the lookout for your topics or do they discover you? I document issues around me and things that I see so my subjects come about organically or are in my life not directly.

Jerry Hsu’s ‘The Beautiful Flower Is the World’ is out now, grab a replica right here

The post Jerry Hsu’s Off-The-Wall Photography — Acclaim Magazine appeared first on Hacker Savant.

#art #Blog #Jerry Hsu #photography #Skating

0 notes

coolxanasel · 5 years

Text

Jerry Hsu’s Off-The-Wall Photography — Acclaim Magazine

Do you go on the lookout for your topics or do they discover you? I document issues around me and things that I see so my subjects come about organically or are in my life not directly.

Jerry Hsu’s ‘The Beautiful Flower Is the World’ is out now, grab a replica right here

The post Jerry Hsu’s Off-The-Wall Photography — Acclaim Magazine appeared first on Hacker Savant.

#art #Blog #Jerry Hsu #photography #Skating

0 notes

thegodcup · 5 years

Text

Below is a post from hipsobriety. I pasted the whole text here because I wanted to be able to highlight the parts that I relate to directly. But, then I realized that I would be highlighting almost the whole thing. What she describes is a universal experience. A couple months ago, I listened on the phone as my dear friend Holly read to me a draft of a long, thoughtful, honest piece about her experience with AA and its part in her recovery journey.

When she finished I took a long, deep breath. Holly’s story is gorgeously brave – just like her. She’s an example of the deep well of power we can find in the softness of our human hearts. She is also fiercely fierce.

She's been sober for two years, and has had a mostly negative experience with AA. Whenever she describes her story I find myself getting defensive, which is interesting. I think it’s natural to want to defend things that mean something to us, especially when those things feel so connected to our own safety. But I also get it. While my experience has been very different, I get it. I’ve had mixed feelings about it at many points. I’ve wrestled with the language, the people, the groupthink mentality, all of it. I’ve wished I could be one of those people who walked into the rooms and never questioned a thing, but I’m not.

But today I’m grateful that I don’t fuss too much with how I feel about AA. How I feel about it – like many things – changes all the time. Maybe a little bit like a long-term relationship, when you’ve reached that place where your love and commitment to the thing, the respect, the reverence that you’re in the hands of the Universe anyway, trumps the inevitable and lesser ups and downs. The benefits far outweigh the perceived costs. Are there things that bug me? Sure. But my relatively short experience has taught me that when I put myself in the middle of AA, I don’t drink. When I go to meetings regularly I feel infinitely better, emotionally and spiritually. When I don’t, I start to feel jiggy. I don’t totally get the connection, but that’s fine. I also don’t get how electricity works.

I spent a lot of time intellectualizing my thoughts and dissecting my feelings about AA and you know what? None of that helped me stay sober. Because what I was actually intellectualizing was my drinking – and that’s not an intellectual exercise.

So what if the same annoying person drones on for twenty fucking minutes about the story you’ve heard 100 times before, again. There’s someone who might need to hear it. Patience. Tolerance.

So some of the language in the big book is misogynistic and simple – maybe even offensive to me as a writer. It was written in the 1930’s (and yes, it could use an update), but the underlying message is still brilliantly beautiful and profound. Take what works – leave the rest.

So there are some weirdos, crazies, and people I find incredibly annoying in the program.Welcome to life. Everywhere. By and large, the majority of people I’ve come across in the rooms of AA are wonderfully compassionate, surprisingly funny, and exceedingly honest. They possess the rare qualities I most love in human beings who’ve gone through and survived some kind of hell: humility, spirituality, tolerance and a deep respect for life. It took time to find my crew and appreciate this vibe. It took a lot of shopping around meetings, sitting through bad ones, tolerating annoyances, time. But I can honestly say that when I’m in those rooms I feel a sense of calm and hope I don’t feel anywhere else.

It’s also important to note I do a lot of other things to keep moving forward, and by no means do I think AA is the only way to get and stay sober, nor do I think it’s the best way for everyone. It’s just what has worked for me so far. The other things I do – some of which are technically part of the program (meditation, prayer, honesty with others, service work) and some of which are technically not (yoga, running, lots of sleep, baths, writing, engaging in any creative outlet possible) have only been encouraged and enhanced by what I’ve learned in the rooms and through the people.

When Holly finished reading me her post I said I was bummed she’d had such a bad experience, because mine has just been so different. She asked if I’d write about my experience and I said, of course.

So I’ve distilled why I believe AA has worked for me so far into three primary points: the people, the ritual, and God energy.

THE PEOPLE. I FOUND A TRIBE.

Photo credit: Unsplash

“We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.”

Being a human can be lonely. Being a human with an acute alcohol addiction is desperately, painfully lonely. By the end of my drinking I was surrounded by people, but nobody knew my insides. Nobody knew how much I was drinking, the crushing shame and anxiety I felt because of the things I did when I drank, how important booze was to me, how much I relied on it to feel normal, social, human. Even I didn’t know. We go to such great lengths to protect the addiction – such great lengths – that over time, incrementally, despite ourselves, we create a separate world with a population of two – us and the alcohol. While we exist in, manage, and are part of entire lives that include families and co-workers and big, vibrant circles of friends and houses and plans we are constantly, dreadfully alone.

In the rooms of AA I heard people describe my insides exactly. I heard people speak in a way I thought impossible. I’ve had more than a few friends say that while sitting in their first meeting, they were sure the person who took them there had tipped off the room, told them about their story, because the things people were saying were just too familiar, too close to their own experience, how could they possibly know? It’s funny but true. Of course nobody tipped them off. As wonderfully unique and special we all are, our human experiences are collectively, boringly similar. Love is love. Pain is pain. Fear is fear. Addiction is addiction. The thing Dr. Bob and Bill Wilson captured in the Big Book is the essence of what it’s like to experience alcoholism – the physical, mental and spiritual aspects of the disease – and every time we sit in a meeting we get the chance to recognize and be recognized, to hear how others have walked through it, to nod our heads and say, Yes, me, too. There is magic in Me, too. Me, too is the antidote to loneliness.

So by sitting there, listening and talking, I found a tribe. I now have a large circle of people I know from AA – some are very close friends, some are acquaintances, some are just familiar faces – all sharing this common, bizarre experience. I know so many people I wouldn’t have otherwise come across in my everyday life. People who used to be homeless, CEOs, Broadway dancers, insurance executives, total misfits and weirdos, wonderful humans. I hang out with these people inside and outside the rooms. When I first came in, they invited me to parties – sober parties – and I saw people having actual, real fun without drinking (gasp!). I was invited to dinners, to coffee, to run 10Ks and go on ski trips. They said, come along with us. They let me be weird and self-conscious and shaky like the most awkward days of junior high. When I said I was angry about everything, uncomfortable as fuck and sad, they nodded their heads, I knowand I have been there and Me, too. They told me to call whenever and picked up their phone when I did and didn’t ask why I was calling. They smiled when I showed up at a meeting after going missing for a few weeks and didn’t say, Where have you been? But instead, I’m so happy to see you.

Anne Lamott talks about how at some point in her recovery process, she had developed relationships with so many people who were invested in her sobriety that she couldn’t just disappear anymore. If she went off the radar for more than a day or so, she’d get calls or people would show up at her house. She called them “The Interrupters.” I have a crew of them myself now, and 90% are folks I met in AA. They keep tabs. They send texts and call. They show up. They don’t let me disappear, even if I want to. This is a tribe and it’s important in sobriety (and life) because we humans get lost easily, we imagine ourselves alone, we float off to the edge. And the edge is where you can fall off.

Lest you think this sounds like a total love fest, let me be clear: it’s not all a love fest.Sometimes when I’m sitting in meetings I press the palms of my hands into my eye sockets willing someone to shut up. I’ve walked out of meetings because I can’t listen for one more second longer. I’ve wanted to punch certain people right in the face, make-out with others, and sometimes I just shake my head. But underneath all that I get access to some bigger, deeper realm where none of that shit matters – the “good” or the “bad” – because I know we’re all doing something so much more important just by sitting there, being totally imperfect.

THE RITUAL: PATIENT ACTION

The ritual of meetings and the emphasis on action is another reason AA works for me. For a couple reasons:

I am lazy and dislike routines. I want to do things on my time, when I want to do them, the way I want. Which is fine and all, except when it comes to changing behaviors, paying bills and getting my kid to school on time. Particularly now, in early recovery, the simple practices of AA has been crucial. I remember when my first sponsor told me to call her every day. I thought, Every. Day?! I don’t talk to anyone EVERY DAY. But after a while (and enough falling on my face) I figured out why: recovery is a daily thing. Like one of the old timers said, “You wouldn’t skip a shower today because you took one yesterday would you?” (Well, yes. Yes I would skip a shower today, but point taken.)

It’s the same as any behavior we want to change. We must rewire our brains with new behaviors and that means action. Not talking about it, thinking about it, writing about it, but actually doing it. Sitting your ass in a chair and doing it. Over and over.

I also think it’s important to say, nothing “bad” happens if I don’t go to a meeting or call my sponsor every day, the program doesn’t require anything except a desire to stop drinking – these are just suggestions. Yet things seem to go a hell of a lot better when I follow those suggestions. At minimum, I stay sober. And at best, I help someone else do that.

“Every act or decision we make that supports life supports all life, including our own. The ripples we create return to us. ”

I have amnesia. We all do. We romanticize horrible relationships when they're over, we revere the dead even when they were assholes, and we forget the negative consequences of our behavior, over and over again. But when you have amnesia about a thing that can cause as much damage as drinking, it’s actually dangerous. When our neural pathways have been formed for years upon years (for me, 20!) to do a thing -- and that thing is so closely associated to daily living (laundry, dinner, restaurants, sex, 5:00 pm Monday - Friday (happy hour!), sporting events, sunny weather, fall weather, snowstorms, holidays, birthdays, thirsty Thursdays, celebrations, tough days, whatever – a hell of a lot of rewiring needs to happen.

When I first knew I had to quit drinking every day felt so fragile. Like I could step on a crack in the sidewalk and end up drunk again. Having a place to go and physically put by body was helpful and necessary. The rituals of going to a meeting, reading the preamble, hearing the same words, seeing familiar faces, the format of meetings, the daily-ness of it, I needed it. I like it. They say, move the feet and the heart will follow and I have found that to be the case.

GOD ENERGY

Photo credit: Unsplash

The third reason AA works for me is that in those rooms I find what I call “God energy.”

This has nothing to do with religion.

It’s the energy I feel when I am near the ocean, lost in a beautiful book, watching my daughter sleep, teaching yoga, in the writing flow. It’s an elevated energy - the vibration of hope and change. I want as much of it as I can get, on a daily basis, because it makes me feel better and not in a bottle-of-wine-or-six donuts-way, but in a long, restful sleep and a hug-from-your-favorite-aunt way. It reminds me I am connected to you. It reminds me both how strong, and also how powerless, I am.

I wrote the following four months ago, which sums it up better than I can now.

“I know AA isn't for everyone. There are many parts of it that kept me away and still turn me off sometimes. I know it isn't the only way, but if I look at my path over the past year, I feel deep gratitude that it exists.

I thought about it as I was sitting at a meeting tonight, feeling at ease, comfortable in my skin and at peace for the first time all day. Just listening and nodding and smiling at faces I know and strangers' too. Why I go now is the same reason I kept going back to the yoga mat so many years ago and still do today as often as possible. It is the same reason I bury my nose in my daughter's head and smell her 100 times a day. It is the same reason I never tire of looking at the ocean. I go because I feel God in those rooms. I feel God in all the broken bits of us sitting in those chairs. Because I can see the fear in someone's eyes when they are very new, and the way the room holds them. I can feel my own brokenness being seen and understood and thus, some kind of alchemy taking place. I can speak my own voice, even when it shakes. I see people hold space for one another, even when they are irritated, annoyed, angry, or disagree. I see people belly laugh and weep. I see people change…actually change. And it feels like witnessing miracles. So yeah, that's why I go. Because I need to be with God to remember who I am.”

0 notes