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clotpolesonly · 6 months

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20 questions for fic writers!

tagged my @thotpuppy!! <3

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

209

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

1,195,283

3. What fandoms do you write for?

on AO3, i have posted for: Teen Wolf Merlin Raven Cycle Captive Prince Dark Rise Supernatural (crossover w/TW) once upon a time, back in FFN days, i also wrote and posted for Harry Potter (primarily) and then one each for Newsies, Little Mermaid II, and Twilight. none of these fics ever got finished lmao.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Metamorphose (Merlin, Merthur, 7750 kudos) Happiness is Effortless (TW, Sterek, 7746 kudos) Much Ado About You Two (TW, Sterek, 7046 kudos) I'll Dissolve When The Rain Pours In... (TW, Stackson, 6172 kudos) We Duel At Dawn (Merlin, Merthur, 4949 kudos)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

i respond to all my comments!! (except for comments on old suspended WIPs that ask if i'm writing more, which i let sit in my inbox to haunt me like a beating heart under my floorboards slowly driving me insane until i figure out if i am writing more or if i can definitively tell them it's abandoned alkfdgh) i've been stuck recently though and have let my inbox get backed up for a month, so i really need to go on a reply spree soon 😭 it's just a point of pride, i guess? i made the decision that i would Respond To All Comments/Reviews I Ever Get when i first started posting back on FFN in ye olden days (like 2008 lol), and i've been pretty darn good at keeping that promise to myself. and i just think it's nice!! FFN had private messaging, and a lot of those responses turned into whole conversations and friendships that lasted for months. community engagement is a good thing and i like reaching back to the people who reach out to me.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

proooobably These Gordian Knots We Tie (Sterek)😅 though An Empty Glass Is An Ugly Mirror (Dydia) is also pretty bleak.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

uuhhh most of them??? i write a lot of fluff, LOL, i wouldn't know how to pick out just one that stands above the rest when the vast majority of my posted oneshots are sappy as fuck 😂

8. Do you get hate on fics?

i really don't, tbh. which i count myself lucky for, cuz i hear a lot of horror stories. but i've only gotten a small handful of negative comments, most of which were bitching about disagreeing with the characters' choices. i don't think i've ever fielded personal attacks or what ye olden FFNers would've called flames, lol. proportionally, they're negligible.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

on occasion. out of my 209 fics, only 13 of them are explicit, which is roughly 6% lol. including my 7 mature fics (not all of which are rated so for smut, i don't think) ups that to 9.5% 😂 i'm just not very interested in writing smut, not to mention it's both difficult and kind of boring and repetitive when you think about it. i feel like i'm notorious for romances that use one kiss as the climactic ending, if even that, haha. when i do (rarely) write smut, it's usually in dedicated pwp format, rather than integrated into a larger story, cuz i just feel like most larger stories (mine, at least) don't need it 🤷🏻‍♀️

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

the only crossover that i've written and posted was Teen Wolf/Supernatural, cuz i just could not resist the urge to have Allison call the Winchesters and tell them that her father had gone on a hunting trip and he hadn't been home in a while. i just needed that in my life, and i was offended that no one else had written it. also i thought that Dean "Easily Flustered By Flirtatious Men" Winchester should really meet Stiles "Doe Eyes, Witty Banter Someone Needs To Sex Me Right Now" Stilinski. for reasons.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

i have! the reason that i teeechnically have a wattpad account is because someone yoinked To Be A King wholesale and posted it over there themselves, and i needed an account to be able to message them to take it tf down. weirdly, they changed some of the names, but not the distinctive names? the identifying names?? like Mordred or the names of my OCs. it was an odd choice. anyway, they took it down immediately with no other response. i think that's been the only time, as far as i'm aware.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

i've got 15 translations listed in my related works 😍 8 of them by the same industrious person, bless them.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

not since that one disaster of an attempt with a friend in early high school, lmao. that's when i realized that i am a control freak with high and unforgiving standards. she was writing her parts 1) badly and 2) WRONG and it drove me up the wall. i can't handle not having complete control of the narrative 😅 i write alone.

14. What’s your all time favourite ship?

that's not faaaiiiiiir, patently impossible to answer, next question

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

if i don't finish For Shell And Safety someday, it'll be a fucking tragedy, cuz i'm really proud of that one and i was so so invested in it when i started it and i've still got Thoughts on how it's supposed to end, i just got stalled out in the middle of it and never found my momentum again. but.....it's been 6.5 fucking years. however, i feel like, because i do still have those thoughts and plans, that one might have a better chance than REM-DAC, because THAT one stalled out right before it was supposed to be over due to the sudden realization that i actually wanted there to be a sequel and i couldn't tie up the loose ends in the first fic without knowing how to set up for the second one. but. i never figured out concretely what i wanted to happen in the second one. and it's been 5.5 years there too. still no concrete plans. so, despite that one also being a GREAT FIC that i'm VERY PROUD OF and deeply invested in, i will have to at some point accept the reality of how low the odds are that i will ever actually get back into the swing of it and finish what i fucking started. they haunt me.

16. What are your writing strengths?

i'm really not quite sure 🤔 strengths and weaknesses are easier to tell from an outside perspective, lol. i feel like i write good natural-feeling dialogue. at least, the professor in the one short story technique workshop i took in college told me as much 😂 said i had the best dialogue in the class. been riding that high for a decade aldkfjghf

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

idkkkkkk 😅😅😅 pacing maybe?? like, long form pacing in lengthier narratives??

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

i have avoided it so far, lkajdfgh. objectively, i think it can be done well and it can be done badly, and different methods serve different purposes so it depends on the story which is most appropriate. the online medium provides more avenues for it than print, like the hover text translations that used to be more popular before phones/touchscreens without cursors became the most prominent way to read things, or superscript links to footnotes with translations. some people put the translation directly into the narrative like an echo, but that gets really tedious really fast, and it would be simpler and more streamlined to just cut out the other language entirely and say "XYZ" he said, in french instead. overall, my preferred method is to filter it through the understanding of the POV character and their potentially limited/imperfect grasp of that other language. if they don't know what's being said, we don't know what's being said. if they pick out some words and get the gist, we see their thought process of figuring it out. it informs our understanding of the character, as well as providing an obstacle and creating tension. if you want to include a full translation of the foreign text, you can in endnotes or a postscript, but i don't really think it's necessary. if people wanna find out what it says, google translate is free 🤷🏻‍♀️ probably best not to use google translate to write the thing, though. if it's not a language you speak, preferably find someone who does speak it to translate, to make sure it's accurate and not butchered. hence me avoiding writing anything that requires other languages 😂 cuz i'm a monolingual usamerican loser who doesn't want to go to as much trouble as it would require to branch out like this. i am a "so-and-so said something unintelligibly french" bitch.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

cut my teeth on Harry Potter back in the day

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

another patently impossible question, i have no answer for this, i love all my fics equally (or at least in tiers uwu)

i am tagginggg: @adamprrishcycle @flightspathfic @nooowestayandgetcaught @adrianfridge @nyxelestia and anybody else who wants to do it!!

20 questions for fic writers!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

3. What fandoms do you write for?

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

8. Do you get hate on fics?

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

14. What’s your all time favourite ship?

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

16. What are your writing strengths?

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

19. First fandom you wrote for?

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

#fics by me

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canmom · 1 year

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Heya! I saw ur post about ssris a bit back. Thank you for talking about your experience. I am potentially about to go onto ssris, and I really appreciated hearing about an experience that wasn't good and, in fact, actively harmful. Do you think there are scenarios where ssris are the right choice? Just because I'm curious about your thoughts! Have a nice day :)

so the non-answer is that SSRIs are the right choice iff they work and the benefit they give is not less than the negative impacts of the side effects.

all i can really report is what my experience was, i'm afraid! I feel bad about it and resentful, but I can't actually compare against the counterfactual of 'what my life would have been if I had never taken SSRIs' or 'if they told me they were giving me SSRIs and actually gave me sugar pills'. am I deluding myself, when in reality SSRIs helped me? it's so hard to tell, I only know the life that happened.

so far as i understand, the metastudies of randomised double-blind placebo-controlled trials of SSRIs for depression say... well ok it's kinda prevaricatey. 2008 and 2010 the meta-studies say 'no better than placebo' for 'mild' to 'moderate' depression but stronger for 'severe' depression. 2012 a meta-study says they are significantly effective after all... but the authors work for the pharma industry. ('significant' here means that the apparent effect is unlikely to have occurred coincidentally by chance, not that it is necessarily a particularly large effect. for a weak but significant effect, you need a larger study to detect it.)

in 2017 another study comes along and says that well maybe they're significant but the effect size is really small so it's probably not worth the side effects. another paper criticises this conclusion... but the authors work for the pharma industry. you can go read that WP link for the details and to get the papers. (if they're paywalled, grab the DOI and get them off scihub.)

now, I think if you're dealing with depression, you know it's super hard to have any sense of how you're doing compared to how you were some time ago. when you're really in the thick of it, the world just looks bleak, and you can't really comprehend the time when things were better, even if it was just a day or even an hour ago. in my experience at least, depression varies in severity, and I have a poor memory of 'how bad' it was in the past.

you can imagine how difficult that is for a study design. if i take a pill when i'm at absolute rock bottom and i start to feel better afterwards, is that the effect of the pill, or just regression to the mean?

i don't know how these studies are conducted in detail. they probably have some kind of 'depression inventory' questionnaire to act as a proxy for 'how depressed you are'. seems like a pretty murky subject though.

should you take SSRIs? if i got to go back in time and try those years over, I think I would try going without. but that might be a 'grass is greener' thing. I felt very bad in those years, but that prove I might not have felt even worse had I not been on SSRIs. what I can at least say is that SSRIs did not cure my depression, so if that's what you're hoping to get out of them, I would say it's not very likely.

(what I suspect I really needed back then was stimulants to treat ADHD, which I believe was the root of the situation that was making me feel so desperate and hopeless. but also if I had been given that treatment, my life would be so different it's hard to imagine.)

#medicine #ssris

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denimbex1986 · 8 months

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I recently watched Sofia Coppola’s 2003 comedy Lost in Translation on my laptop for the first time in over 20 years to prepare for or, more likely, to procrastinate writing a lecture I was slated to give surrounding the translation of Francesco Petrarch’s sonnets. I remember this film being formative when I was 16; it communicated what I thought, at the time, was a sort of untranslatable feeling of anomie and social isolation. This feeling was pervasive among my suburban high school friends, who tried our best to capture it in our respective blogs but never could quite find the right words or the adequate Livejournal emoticon in its list of moods, which at the time were restricted to Sad, Tired, Happy, Feeling Excited, Confused, etc. This time around, I watched Lost in Translation via Amazon Prime, whose viewing platform, at the end of the film, recommended I next watch Jackass Forever.

This seemed like an unlikely pairing from an algorithm; it confused me. It didn’t seem like counterprogramming since that happens on the level of a box office release to hundreds of millions of viewers rather than on the level of a streaming program option advertised to one sole viewer. Besides, counterprogramming assumes the existence of separate target audiences with disparate tastes. You don’t want to watch The Dark Knight, but you want to go to the movies? Chances are you’ll want to watch its polar opposite, Mamma Mia, released on the same day. This happened in 2008; I ended up watching both, but I think I was the exception to this rule.

A larger exception to this rule, of course, is Barbenheimer, which, in a kind of cultural fission, resulted in the co-incident one-day dropping of the two films Barbie and Oppenheimer, resulting further in a fusion of the two seemingly disparate target audiences, caught in the twin sights of the two films’ media teams’ allied marketing strategies. When I watched Lost in Translation, Barbenheimer wasn’t yet even a meme.

It’s hard to imagine a time before Barbenheimer was a meme. This has more to do with the nature of memes than the films: “meme”, in French, is a noun that means “same” or, as an emphasizer of personal pronouns, “self”, for example, “memes themselves.” Like nuclear proliferation and a mass-produced one-name doll, a meme is simply a virally self-replicating and highly disseminated image or concept. Of course, it’s not “simply” that, in regards to the hierarchical and moneyed interest differentials between an Instagram user adapting and re-posting a Barbenheimer meme and two film production companies making good on the meme by releasing Greta Gerwig‘s Barbie and Christopher Nolan‘s Oppenheimer on the same day.

In the beginning, was the meme, and then Warner Bros. and Universal Studios said, “Let there be Barbenheimer”, and it was so. A meme travels across time, regardless of its origin, but it transports along with it some of its originary cultural and historical contexts and transforms the present. “In the beginning” has become a meme, most famously originating from the Bible, but it is also played upon in the opening of Barbie, and it helps herald Barbie’s genesis, a Deus ex machina moment, a God out of the Doll.

Both Barbie and Oppenheimer recall particular times when the world was forever changed or, at least, both the films make an argument for a product that changed the world by introducing something new that threatened – or that promised – sameness. A meme change. Both arguments are convincing. Oppenheimer is specifically a period piece that argues for periodization; there is the time before the bomb and the time after. Within Oppenheimer‘s story, we live in the aftermath, or the fallout, of a nuclear event that is yet to come, the total annihilation of human existence through human-driven actions, when all will be razed to ash and reduced to sameness. The name “Barbie” is itself a meme. Though the actors playing Barbie are multiple, their name is the same. Their call and their response are fused into one and the same: “Hey Barbie,” calls one Barbie, “Hey Barbie,” responds another Barbie. They are more like dolls than humans, though, and more like atoms than Adam, and they proliferate rather than procreate, and in their fission, something is unleashed and exploded.

This is the other aspect and function of the meme; not only does it travel relatively unchanged through time, but it spreads and mushrooms through self-replication and through the transformation of unlike elements into like elements. We can think of money, for example, as the superlative meme example of our time, and its alchemical technology of sameness-making being commodification, the transformation of images, like the atomic bomb exploding in Japan, or the transformation of labor, like the manufacture of the first Barbie dolls in Japan, or the transformation of concepts, like the critique of Patriarchyô, into near-Universalô profits for Mattel.

Amazon Prime didn’t even recommend I watch the 2002 movie Jackass – a contemporary of Lost in Translation – but its sequel, the 2022 movie Jackass Forever. What does this mean? Lost in Translation :: Jackass Forever. What is the relationship between what is Lost and what is Forever? What happens to a work as it ages? What about works that seek never to age, that seek to update themselves, or continually translate themselves, or to laminate and plasticize themselves, to modify themselves? The unlikeliness of Barbie and Oppenheimer‘s success has been described as their representing something new in the film industry. But in the current climate, the standard for “something new” has lowered dramatically: essentially, neither film is an action movie nor a sequel.

The term “sequel” loses meaning in reference to the meme, as does the term “original”: the meme displaces both of them. Even “action”, such as an action film, is problematized insofar as an “act” is a “thing done”, but the moment a meme is generated is the same moment a meme is spread, and the moment a meme is spread it has copied and been regenerated; simultaneously, it is asking to be translated. Interestingly enough, “to translate” comes from the Latin “transferre” which means “carried across”, and “metaphor” comes from the Greek “metapheirein“, to transfer. Maybe I am still writing my translation lecture after all.

In any case, these analogies are not too metaphorical, and they translate. As in translation, a meme does “carry across” itself, its selfsame self, largely unchanged, and nonetheless, some meanings are gained and are lost in that movement between spaces and times. Oppenheimer exemplifies this phenomenon: as a translation machine, the film’s primary aim is the transformation of the foreign into the familiar, of unlike elements into like ones. Through literal acts of translation and aesthetic acts of cultural erasure, Oppenheimer is a film about the end of difference not due to the emergence of endlessly proliferating nuclear energy but, well, metaphorically. Metaphor is a principle of replacement; one element stands in for another. In Oppenheimer, English stands in for Sanskrit, dramatic actors stand in for historical actors, and the guilt of the perpetrators stands in as worthy of dramatization, as worthy of recognition, rather than the horrors faced by the victims; in Oppenheimer, the victims have no faces.

Beginning at translation, let us consider a meme that is older than “In the beginning”, as dramatized in the film Oppenheimer. “Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds” is the English translation of the ancient Hindi scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, written in Sanskrit. J. Robert Oppenheimer reported later, in a televized speech, that this was the line that flashed through his mind as he viewed the first successful test of the atomic bomb in Los Alamos. After saying as much, he adds: “I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.” The “I” in “I am become death” is not solely referring to Oppenheimer, then, but rather to the human species itself, which now possesses this world-destroying bomb. Oppenheimer’s historic regret, or at least ambivalence about being father to the bomb, falls on all of us. It is a gesture towards communal accountability.

The fictional and titular Oppenheimer, however, is represented as using the same quote in a context completely removed from, and in fact antecedent to, the development of the bomb. Writer and director Christopher Nolan dramatizes a scene years before the Manhattan Project when Oppenheimer has just accepted his first academic appointment at Berkeley. One night at a house party thrown by colleagues with socialist leanings, Oppenheimer, played by Cillian Murphy, meets Jean Tatlock, played by Florence Pugh. The two exchange meaningful glances, and suddenly we find ourselves at the beginning of what will be a tortuous relationship full of pain and adultery.

For now, however, we find ourselves, again suddenly, in Oppenheimer’s bedroom, where he and Jean Tatlock. Tatlock abruptly dismounts Oppenheimer and walks pointedly a few meters to his bookshelf, where she removes the Bhagavad Gita. She opens the book, views the Sanskrit, and says, “Can you read it?” Oppenheimer humbly and somewhat bashfully avers that he can. “What does this say?” she asks, pointing to a short passage. Oppenheimer equivocates a bit, and starts explaining the context of the passage. “No,” Tatlock pursues, “what does it say?” She points to one line.

This scene confuses me for a few reasons, some of which I indicated above, but primarily because I expected Murphy’s Oppenheimer, at this moment, to pronounce Sanskrit. Granted, the spoken language is far in the past, so correct pronunciation can largely only be conjectured at, but when Tatlock says “no, what does it say?” in response to Oppenheimer, I expect she’s asking in contradistinction to his English translation, that she wants the Sanskrit. Oppenheimer says, “I am become death, destroyer of worlds.” They resume having sex.

The historical context of death in relation to death, i.e., death in relation to the destruction harbored by the bomb, is translated to a filmic context of death in relation to sex, i.e., death in relation to the destruction harbored by love. The communal accountability is lost; it is replaced by an eroticization, which gains its sexual charge from the exoticization of a foreign text. This is the great palliative Oppenheimer offers us in metaphorical exchange. Sex for death. The biopic for history. The fetish object for the sacred text.

Similarly, now “I” and “worlds” in “I have become death, destroyer of worlds”, refers to Oppenheimer and relationships, becoming entangled in the drama of his own personality and vices, his perpetual adultery. This also sets the film up to ultimately steer empathy toward the perpetrator instead of the atomic bomb’s victims.

This latter point becomes obvious in Oppenheimer‘s treatment of the Japanese. There is a scene after the twin bombings of Japan where the bomb’s architects are in a screening room, watching a film documenting and displaying the horrifying effects the blasts had on the skin, especially the faces, of the Japanese civilians. The audience sees no footage of this; rather, we watch the principal characters watch the footage. We watch the bomb-builders’ faces distort in; well, in what? Horror? Regret? Shock? Sad? Tired? Confused?

While we can’t know their feelings as they see what their product has wrought, this is the point: the drama shifts not to the brutality of the action and its victims but to how the people responsible for it felt about it. The historical disfigurement is imitated by aesthetic defacing in that not one character in the film is Japanese; they are rendered faceless. This is not simply a film within Nolan’s film; it’s the nucleus of the film itself. The effects of the disfigurement are expropriated from the Japanese and superimposed onto the Americans. We could consider this filmic erasure a loss in translation: the lethal erasure of Japanese civilians is echoed and cinematically re-employed through aesthetic erasure.

The same dynamic occurs throughout Oppenheimer, but this time with a translational gain or addition. In several scenes, we watch Oppenheimer hallucinate a recurring waking nightmare: whatever crowd of Americans he is viewing – generally his colleagues at Los Alamos – a blinding white light obscures the screen, and we hear the sound of people fleeing, and in a soft blur, we see a white ectoplasmic goo slide down the faces of the crowd. Not only has the Japanese’s physical blast trauma been erased; it has been superimposed onto the faces of the white Western builders of the bomb. In this displacement, the literal and figurative defacement of Japan is appropriated by Americans and grafted onto the professional dishonoring and defacement of Oppenheimer, towards whom our sympathy is ultimately steered. Even their victimhood is appropriated.

This erasure is not incidental; if the disfigurement of the Japanese people is literally just beyond the periphery of the camera – relegated to verbal and textual history – it’s because the main focal point of Oppenheimer is Americans’ faces. Hoyte van Hoytema, Oppenheimer‘s cinematographer, explained in an interview with IndieWire: “This was a three-hour-long movie about faces. And our challenge was to be able to get closer with the camera to make those faces become our landscape, and to make those faces interesting enough for the audience to become captivated by them.”

There are very few wide-angled shots in Oppenheimer. We do not look out at the Los Alamos landscape with Cillian Murphy or the other actors; we do not identify with them. We do not witness events with them; we do not witness events without watching them witness those same events. The depiction of the detonation of the atomic bomb, the moment we’ve all been waiting for, is more instructional than it is exceptional. The preparation for the detonation involves close-ups of others – the builders of the bomb – being instructed by Matt Damon’s Leslie Groves to hold a chunk of metal before their eyes during the blast while Edward Teller (Benny Safdie) slathers sunscreen all over his face.

Jack Quaid’s Richard Feynman is sitting in the front seat of a car and says the windshield will protect him from UV radiation. Once the blast occurs in the film, the camera spends more time on the spectators than on the spectacle, as the real drama revolves around which viewers look away and which are too captivated to follow safety protocols. The faces are the events, and their reactions to historical events are also the events.

How did Nolan make a film where the locus of all action is the white American face? In the same way, and for the same reason, I name-dropped so many actors’ names above. Matt Damon of the Bourne franchise, playing Leslie Groves, says, “Hi Ken!” to former “Iron Man” Robert Downey Junior, playing Lewis Strauss, says, “Hi Ken!” to Kenneth Branaugh, playing Niels Bohr, says, “Hi Ken!” to Josh Harnett, a predecessor from another wildly jingoistic and inaccurate film, Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor from 2001. In one scene, Japanese planes attack a civilian hospital, although historically, this never happened, and Japanese pilots were under strict orders not to fire on civilian targets.

Michael Bay knew this and went ahead with the scene anyway because he said it would be “more barbaric” – who says “Hi Ken!” to Bohemian Rhapsody‘s Rami Malek, who says “Hi Ken!” to Cillian Murphy who says “Oh, hi Ken!,” delightedly, a pleasant shock of recognition on his face, to Harry S. Truman disguised as Murphy’s former castmate from Nolan’s Batman franchise, Gary Oldman. Because it is not actors playing historical characters but historical characters playing actors. Nolan makes the famous face the site of entertainment, a familiarized (white western men) landscape that absorbs the shock of death and foreignness (Japan). What we ultimately recognize when we recognize this celebrity landscape of faces is not a story, narrative, or history but the film industry itself, an autobiography.

Closing the chapter on Ken, I mean Oppenheimer, which is placed largely in the mid-’40s and dramatizes an event that takes place at the beginning of the age range for the genesis of the Baby Boomer generation, we move on to Barbie, a film that opens by dramatizing a similar paradigm-shifting event that takes place at the middle of the age range for the genesis of the Baby Boomer generation, the introduction of the first Barbie doll in 1959. Fittingly, the film’s opening is also the film’s promotional video.

The film/promo opens with several wide shots of an empty and austere landscape golden-drenched with the light of the dawn sun. “Since the beginning of time, since the first little girl ever existed, there have been,” and here a dramatic pause from the narrator, Helen Mirren, before she completes the sentence: “…dolls.” Here we cut to an amber-hued landscape of rocks, leaden gray clouds above, and then in the foreground, the profile of two little girls in shadow facing one another and each holding up a baby doll; a lone pram is behind one of the girls, giving the whole atmosphere a Little House on the Prairie feel. “But the dolls were always and forever baby dolls,” says Mirren, and now several little girls appear in plain drab dresses, walking prams across the rocky landscape, raising tea cups to baby dolls’ mouths – baby dolls dressed in the same joyless and muted-colored dresses as the girls – “until,” says Mirren, and this is the final word of Mirren, whose narration is replaced with the opening strings of Richard Strauss’ Thus Spake Zarathustra.

The irruption of the music is synced with the sudden apparition of a gigantic Margot Robbie – or Barbie – as viewed from below by a blonde-haired pigtailed child, who watches Barbie’s face in shadow as the crown of her head eclipses the corona of the sun, effecting the emergence of a new celestial/earthly body. So far, it would appear the other girls have only seen Barbie’s enormous and nude legs; they stare directly up at them. One of the girls touches her shin as if it is a structural beam, then rapidly removes her hand; both the impulse to touch and the impulse to retreat are symptomatic of the experience of awe, of something extraterrestrial but also familiar.

So far, this is shot-to-shot a masterful, hilarious, and, most importantly, recognizable parody of Stanley Kubrick’s celebrated sci-fi film 2001: A Space Odyssey, the opening of which is headlined “The Dawn of Time”. 2001: A Space Odyssey opens in a similar barren landscape but with chimpanzees as its principal characters, and instead of the mono-nym Barbie, we have the monolith, the enormous black smooth rectangular tower jutting out of the arid dirt, which has either arrived from outer space or even from another time and seems completely alien to everything surrounding it. The peak of the monolith similarly eclipses the sun’s corona, signifying not only the emergence of a new form but something that interrupts time itself.

Barbie, in a one-to-one correspondence with the monolith, replaces the sun and time itself, where the unmentioned year 1959 is only visually referenced by the black and white swimsuit and is further displaced into a new mythical time, a kind of year 0 that, like in Oppenheimer, documents a paradigm shift. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the monolith is entirely alien; however, the Barbie monolith in Barbie is as new as the doll is familiar. There is no compelling visual link or likeness between the chimpanzees that touch, in awe, and then retract their hands, in awe, from the inorganic structure that is the monolith. The Barbie monolith, on the other hand, while distinct from the landscape and the girls in her smiling attitude, her striking and modern outfit, and her height, nonetheless resembles a possible, a desired future for the girls; both demographics are at least human, and the smooth monolithic legs of Barbie, which never grow hair and, as Gerwig’s film later dramatizes, never grow cellulite, could become the girls’ as well. It is the tangible object of the girls’ fingers’ veneration, a new model to strive to resemble, rather than the baby dolls that are dressed like the girls and that are, after all, babies and represent their past.

This representation of a break between the past and present that can trend towards a new future is notable, considering 2001: A Space Odyssey. The sci-fi genre is a serious genre that posits alternative and possible futures as a way of commenting on the trajectory of the present. 2001: A Space Odyssey is somewhat exceptional to the genre, however; it argues, through its structuring, that the dystopian future finds its source in the remotest past, “in the beginning”, from which irrupts the monolith that, like a meme, recurs and reappears unchanged through monolithic time.

This is the strange ambivalence that Barbie introduces in its parody: it is parodying a dystopia. While the monolith is the most commonly parodied element – the most meme-ic element – of 2001: A Space Odyssey‘s opening scene, the central argument of “The Dawn of Man”, however, is a kind of narrative argument that immediately follows. After the chimpanzees crowd and touch the monolith, and we see the crown of the monolith obscure the sun, we cut to a lone chimpanzee sitting in a pile of the bones of a large, long-decomposed tapir. This is when Strauss’ Thus Spake Zarathustra begins.

The chimpanzee, thinking, creating, repurposing, lifts one of the longer bones and begins smashing the other bones with it, tepidly at first, until the music swells with the increasing ferocity of the chimp, crescendoing at the moment the chimpanzee smashes the skull of the tapir. The music suddenly ends and cuts to a scene of rival chimpanzees encroaching on the territory of the original tribe. The chimpanzee holding the bone from the previous scene then kills another chimpanzee from the enemy tribe, causing the enemy tribe to retreat before this new technology.

This is the cosmological argument of 2001: A Space Odyssey; humans are not distinguished from animals through language or through culture; it’s not even because we discovered and wielded tools; rather, it is because we discovered and wielded weapons. In this way, humans make animals and other humans submit before the threat of violence. Its transformative and primordial use is in destruction and death. I am become death, destroyer of worlds, implies the bone-wielding chimp.

In Barbie, after the girls have finished touching the monolithic legs of the new giant adult doll, the camera returns to the blonde-haired girl in glasses with wide eyes staring up at Barbie. With a close-up to Barbie’s face, a pulling down of the glasses to cheek level, and a wink, the girls, as if cued by the wink, in slow motion – cued now also by the crescendo of Strauss’ music – raise their baby dolls by the feet, and smash the head of the now-weaponized baby club into the head of a prostrate baby doll, smashing the latter to plaster pieces. Then the girls fling their dolls away, and the final flung doll rises to the sky, revolves, continues rising, leaves Earth’s atmosphere, which is replaced by stars, and then pops to be transformed into the Barbie logo.

As an opening to the film and a promotional video for the film – focusing on the latter here – it’s ingenious. Not only is Margot Robbie’s character winking at the girls who are audience to her arrival, but Gerwig seems to be winking at an audience that could otherwise be torn, acknowledging the fraught and polarizing symbol that is the Barbie doll. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the monolith is not the weapon, but rather the catalyst for the discovery of weaponry or, if a more causal relationship, that which incites and invites violence. The bones in 2001: A Space Odyssey are aligned with the baby dolls in Barbie, but in the former, the bones are used as weapons against the living, whereas the baby dolls are used as weapons against themselves.

Will Barbie then be a feminist weapon against the Patriarchy, or will it be used as a tool of the Patriarchy? This question is purposefully left unresolved and ambivalent, and this is the genius of the commercial because it is, ultimately, a commercial for two things that will become one. First as a promo, the scene is a commercial for the film itself, and it is the real counterprogramming at work, more successful I think even than the Barbenheimer counterprogramming: whether you are against Barbie or for Barbie doesn’t matter, this film is for you. Second, Barbie‘s opening scene and the entirety of the film is a commercial for Mattel itself. Once again, the final image of the promo is a baby spinning in space, replaced by the Barbie logo.

Notably, it’s the logo and not a Barbie doll, not Margot Robbie as Barbie, but Mattel’s Barbie font and Barbie pink. Whether you buy a Barbie doll, a Ken doll, or a Midge doll, you will always find this logo on the box—the meme behind the meme. Indeed, Barbie‘s opening scene is both the promo video and the film itself; it is art that advertises the art that advertises the product. It says to throw out the baby with the bath water and buy Barbie. Mattel’s profits have reinvigorated since the release of Barbie, and of course that is the point.

There’s a parable by 3rd-century Chinese writer Han Fei that speaks to this. A merchant one day has two objects for sale at the marketplace; the first, he says, is a spear that can break through any shield. The second, he says, is a shield that can repel any spear. A savvy customer comes by and asks the seller, What happens if you hurl the unstoppable spear at the unbreakable shield? Naturally, the seller doesn’t answer and leaves the marketplace. Naturally, the story ends. This story is itself the origin of the Mandarin Chinese word mao-dun. Mao literally translates as spear, and dun literally translates as shield. Mao-dun, or spear-shield, is the Mandarin term for “contradiction”.

Mao-dun, or contradiction, also operates like a meme that has detached from its original picture. That original picture, which is also the original picture, is the market. That’s to say; in the story of the spear and the shield, we make the mistake of taking the merchant’s words at face value. The spear isn’t an unstoppable spear, and the shield isn’t an unbreakable shield, and they don’t actually cancel one another out nor contradict each other; they don’t actually, together, form a contradiction. Even if they did, it doesn’t matter. Whatever they actually are, they aren’t now; now they’re just for sale.

Before moving on from this inaugural scene in Barbie, it’s important to tease out the implications of the outermost frame, which infrequently but strikingly persists in the form of Helen Mirren’s narration, and that is the Documentary Now – also narrated by Mirren – allusion. The mockumentary Gerwig references is not one episode, but an entire current and ongoing series. The strength of Documentary Now is in its research; the most effective, which is to say funny, episodes are the ones that most closely document the original documentary.

Thus, Gerwig can have Barbie walk a tightrope between fact and fiction, between force and farce; if you take it too seriously, you’re ruining the fun. Mockumentary is also a keenly self-aware genre. The uncanny juxtaposition of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Documentary Now actually synergize: these two seemingly antithetical registers – the iconic and the ironic – are mutually reinforcing as frames that translate and transfer and recycle content, that reinforce tropes and memes even as they “critique” them.

The monolithic Barbie, and the opening monolith that is Barbie, follow this opening scene to an immortal place populated by immortal and unblemished Barbies of different social castes and social roles – it’s Plato’s symposium, only now it’s Barbie’s symposium – delimited by a mountain whose face is lettered BARBIELAND, in the same font as Hollywood’s HOLLYWOOD wign. This acts, intentionally or not, as a kind of foreshadowing: while the world of the film is putatively divided into Barbieland and the Real World, the Real World is actually just “the country of California”, as they say in the film, and the portal between the two worlds leads directly to Venice, California. The original Venice is a city in the country of Italy, and so Venice of California is like its copy, but Hollywood reverses this by rendering every other place in the world a copy of itself, via image production and image distribution that transforms Everything Everywhere All At Once.

Similarly, when Barbie alights to the ground from her bed in the morning, the wind pushes up her dress as her arms push it down, a visual absorption of the Marilyn Monroe meme. Quickly, however, Barbie starts experiencing thoughts of death and other disturbances, which begin to expose the cracks in the simulacra of her life and surroundings: her heels touch the ground, the waterless shower nozzle emits what Barbie “experiences” as cold instead of hot water, etc. It is as if there is a chink in the programming of the matrix in which she lives.

In keeping with and further embedding itself within a production matrix that reproduces itself, Barbie employs a Matrix reference. Barbie seeks the advice of Weird Barbie, an outcast guru who explains to her that she has a choice: she can either choose a pink high heel (the blue pill), which represents staying in Barbieland, or a brown Birkenstock sandal which represents knowing the truth (the red pill). Barbie says, “The first one, the high heel”, and the guru says, “You have to want to know. Okay? Do it again”, and further explains to Barbie that she doesn’t actually have the power to choose, but just wants Barbie to feel better if she happens to make the right choice, but she has to choose the Real World because that’s what happens in movies.

Here is where the Documentary Now frame makes even more sense; Gerwig treats all of Hollywood’s cultural production as one document to remix, to parody. But the parody is a parody of parody; rather than satirizing and thereby escaping Hollywood’s endless revisions and recastings and inability to generate anything besides sequels and reboots, Barbie is imprisoned in Hollywood. The film cannot even imagine a place outside of the real world, nor can it imagine a dream world; both are Hollywood. Moments like this are depressing because they didn’t offer any kind of escape but rather a dissertation on the history and makeup of the prison bars. In other words, Barbie‘s self-awareness seems less interested in teaching viewers how to live and more interested in showing them, in algorithm fashion, what to watch next.

Another such moment is framed once again by Mirren’s narration. Towards Barbie‘s end, experiencing a sort of paralysis or what we’d call a Reality Check, Barbie laments that she is no longer pretty, that she is no longer “stereotypical Barbie pretty”. Here, the Documentary Now narrator interjects, “Note to the filmmakers: Margot Robbie is the wrong person to cast if you want to make this point.” That is, I think, the point: the filmmakers don’t want to make this point. The point the filmmakers want to make – and it is the writers, Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, of course, who wrote Helen Mirren’s line – is that they are aware that their film promotes stereotypical ideas of feminine beauty. And by stereotypical ideas, I mean patriarchal ideologies of how a woman’s body should be shaped and displayed. Gerwig and Baumbach commenting on their awareness of their not having escaped this does not allow them to escape this, but this is how Barbie is structured; this is the patriarchal weapon against the patriarchy that the film presents, the smashing of the baby doll’s head into the baby doll’s head.

In its climactic scene, Barbie presents this weapon, or shield, against the patriarchy. Barbieland has been usurped by Kens, who have introduced the patriarchy to Barbieland and transformed it and the Barbies therein. The Barbies have been brainwashed; they are subservient to the Kens and have no memory of their own needs, personalities, abilities, or former vocations. Breaking the spell requires that another woman shares a testimonial of how difficult it is to be a woman in this society, the contradiction of being an oppressed person who cannot testify to her oppression because she is supposed to enjoy it, for example. Suddenly, the awakened Barbie’s eyes pop open, like she is a doll, out of a trance, as if from the Barbie’s neck just fell an enchanted charm bracelet called The Patriarchyô, made by Mattel.

It is not the job of a Hollywood film to critique power structures, promote alterity, give voice to the oppressed, and help viewers imagine a future outside of the patriarchy. But why isn’t it the job of a Hollywood film to do that? Even if there is an argument that concretely and irrefutably lays out why it shouldn’t be Hollywood’s job, Barbie purports to be doing just that. And yet, the patriarchy isn’t a magic spell that we can simply wave away by talking about it. It’s a crushing, brutalizing, murderous machine or, better yet, a matrix of machines that is so powerful, so subtle, interconnected, and so meme-ic and self-reproducing that it can make a slew of films about itself and make money doing it.

In Barbie, the patriarchy is presenting the all-male board of Mattel as bumbling, witless, and supportive, while in the real world the majority-male Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade according to “non-biased” legal logic regarding the intentions of the slave-owning and women’s suffrage-denying founding fathers who wrote the U.S. Constitution. The patriarchy is a film that presents a car chase between those same Mattel owners and Barbie but reveals itself as a Chevy Blazer commercial with prolonged filming of the car’s cross-shaped logo.

In that same car in Barbie – which, to be fair, is an electric vehicle – towards the film’s end, America Ferrera’s character’s husband says “Sí, se puede” to Barbie, and both Ferrera and her character’s daughter say “that’s cultural appropriation”, which it is, but more on Gerwig’s part. Sí, se puede is historically associated with civil rights and labor activist Dolores Huerta, who used the phrase to motivate and organize labor strikes in Arizona and California in the ’60s, and which later became President Obama’s campaign slogan; he credited Huerta when he awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.

While this is most likely what the phrase “that’s cultural appropriation” refers to, it ironically does so without cultural or historical context. “Sí, se puede” here is re-appropriated to refer to the 2002 Disney film Gotta Kick It Up, in which the character Yolanda, played by America Ferrera, would chant as a high school Latin American dance team member. Treated as a meme, “Sí, se puede” largely retains its cultural context, but its revolutionary and class context is erased and re-employed as self-referential by Hollywood: “We said that,” says Hollywood.

In other words, “Sí, se puede” is removed from its original context of striking farm workers in California and is re-employed as a meme celebrating and advertising earlier Hollywood films at exactly the moment Hollywood writers and actors are striking against being replaced by literal meme machines, or AIs that generate new scripts by remixing human-written scripts they have been fed, and that also reproduce the faces of background actors so those memified faces can melt more cost-effectively in Oppenheimer: The Squeakquel. Not to mention that the husband who says “Sí, se puede” says it while using Duolingo, an app advertised throughout Barbie. Thus the labor activist’s chant is commodified into a commercial for a language-learning app for white people.

The anonymous husband says “sí, se puede” to Barbie at the end of the film; he’s wishing her luck for what the viewer is made to think will be a job interview. “You’re going to do great,” America Ferrera says. Barbie is wearing a brown blazer, business casual, like she’s looking for a job. She enters a glass building of what appears to be corporate America and then goes to the secretary’s desk. The secretary says How can I help you? and Barbie says I’m ready to meet my gynecologist! Rather than entering the department of labor, Barbie is entering the reproductive labor market. This makes her really real, like a real woman, in the real world. Like being born, the doctor first says, “It’s a girl!” Once she is real, she must be a woman; she is immediately equated with biological sex. This is the patriarchy, too.

Another strange aspect of Barbie is the eerie absence of sex until this culminating moment and the strange lack of gender exploration. Again, the moment when Barbie individuates from the other Barbies, where she is suddenly inhabited by The Real, is when she says, “Do you guys ever think about dying?” to her fellow memes. This is Barbie’s own “I am become death, destroyer of Barbieworld” moment, but whereas in Oppenheimer, death is harbored and eroticized in a culture-appropriating sex scene, sex haunts Barbie throughout metonymically.

I mean this in a few ways. In terms of “haunts”, neither Barbie nor Ken has genitals, and this absence is indirectly addressed throughout the film, mostly via euphemistic substitution: “I’m gonna beach you off so hard,” Ken says to Ken. The truly funny but truly bizarre aspect of this homoerotic scene is that, according to the logic of the film, it almost isn’t homoerotic because none of the denizens of Barbieland have sexes (genitalia), and none of them have knowledge of nor desire for sex. “Can I stay over tonight?” Ryan Gosling asks Margot Robbie. “And do what?” asks Robbie innocently. “I don’t really know,” admits Gosling. Sexuality is intuited in this scene, and the two are nominally boyfriend and girlfriend, but this only reaches so far as the nominal.

It is interesting that in the Real World of Barbie there are no queer characters nor depictions of queer sexualities, nor of nonbinary genders. Instead, we have the liminal and deferred sexuality of Barbieland, which at best functions as a kind of incomplete heteronormativity. While societal gender roles are explicitly thwarted in the sense that Barbieland’s vocations are all held by women, they’re never called such; instead of gender roles, we simply have The Patriarchy, which is inverted in Barbieland. After the Kens are deposed, they are permitted to remain in society, but they’ll probably have to work their way up, the same as women in the Real World. But as Helen Mirren points out, perhaps the filmmakers should take note that weapons built by the patriarchy don’t work so well against the Patriarchy. I add that the meme-ification of the concept of the Patriarchy – which in Barbie is so simplified, reduced, and docile that it actually comes to resemble a product of Mattel, as inseparable from Barbie as Ken – is also the patriarchy.

In the 2022 film adaptation of Don Delillo’s novel White Noise, written and directed by Noah Baumbach and starring Greta Gerwig, which adheres very strictly to the events and the mood of the book, even down to the level of dialogue, there’s a scene missing from DeLillo’s book. I guess it was lost in translation. The book’s story takes place in a small college town. The narrator is a professor at a small liberal arts college; he is the chair of Hitler Studies, and there is a new professor named Murray who teaches cultural studies, and he is most interested in teaching the legacy of Elvis. He wants Elvis to become, in terms of cultural capital, the new Hitler.

Murray one day suggests to the narrator that they drive to a small outlying town with a tourist attraction called The Most Photographed Barn in America. On the 22-mile car ride, they count five signs that all say THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA. They park and walk to an elevated spot and, like the audience members of Oppenheimer, stare less at the barn than they do at all the spectators with their cameras and tripods trained on the barn.

The narrator has the same question you and I have: Why is it called Barbenheimer? I mean, Why is it the most photographed barn in America? But the narrator doesn’t actually ask this; the two remain silent. Murray says, “No one sees the barn,” and then there’s silence, and then Murray says, “Once you’ve seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn,” and then there’s silence, and then he says “We’re not here to capture an image, we’re here to maintain one,” and then there’s silence, and then Murray says, “They are taking pictures of taking pictures.”'

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wisegalaxysweets · 11 months

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Class of 2008: Chapter 1

Here is the first chapter of the Larry fic I am working on. It is on my AO3, but I am also posting the chapters here for those that prefer it.

pairing: Bad Boy!Harry Styles x Football Captain!Louis Tomlinson

rating: G (this fic will have eventual smut, but this chapter does not)

word count: 3k

a/n: This fic is set at the start of the school year in 2007 where Louis Tomlinson is captain of the football team and the new freshman wearing leather, lots of rings, and sporting curly hair begins occupying his mind.

The hallways were filled with a buzz of excitement as the new year began. Just like every year when summer ended and classes started up again, all of the energy that had been spread across the small town was now housed in one building. Hundreds of teenagers reuniting with friends and enemies alike.

Louis walked through the familiar corridors that he knew and had come to love after the past three years. There was a sort of charm to the old decrepit building that made it feel like another home to him. The squeaky lockers, the wooden floors, colors on the walls that hadn’t been updated since 1985. All that time made it a little bittersweet stepping through the doors this morning.

“There he is! Big man on campus!” The loud voice boomed behind Louis causing him to turn and see his friend Mike just as he was scooped into a crushing embrace, the larger boy lifting him off his feet. He questioned how the quarterback was able to wear his letterman jacket in such hot weather, the old age of the building not giving much solace from the August heat outside.

“You act like you haven’t seen me at practice for the last month man.” Louis quips as he is placed back on the ground only to be jostled around, the rest of his teammates shoving him with their shoulders.

“Yeah but we are officially seniors now and that makes you, our totally awesome captain, the big man on campus!” All of the boys cheering around Louis, and causing a general raucous, has him folded over with laughter.

This was his favorite way to start the school year, even if he felt a twinge of sadness that this was his last year of high school. He liked it here. Not just his friends, but he liked his classes, he enjoyed being popular and having somewhere to go where people liked him and looked up to him. It wasn’t that he was top of his class, but he did well in school and that was good enough for him.

“Don’t forget Mike,” Tom, the tight end, chimes in, “Lou here is not only a senior, but he also has the smokenest babe on campus for his arm candy!” The boys hoot and holler crudely at the remark of Louis’ girlfriend Jennifer. She may be cheer captain, and they may be going on three years of dating, but Louis still doesn’t love it when the guys comment on her looks.

“Ok ok enough of that you animals. Jen is more than a pretty face, she is sweet and far more intelligent than you lot.” Louis thinks back to growing up with Jen and knowing her far before he ever asked her out. People thought they were the perfect match even before they were dating so it only made sense when he finally made it official the summer before their freshman year.

“Yeah and probably a minx in the sack!” One of the other boys shouts as he slaps Louis over the back, causing him to glare back.

He was never one to objectify women or play into the pig-headedness of the guys that he surrounded himself with every day. It was something he prided himself on and he never saw the appeal. Most of the cheerleaders said that made him a really sweet guy.

“You guys really don’t help the football player stereotype when you make comments like that.” Louis shakes his head as the guys all giggle and grin at the childish comment.

As the guys say their goodbyes to head towards home room, their captain is stopped in his tracks as he lays eyes on a tall, curly haired biker, sporting a leather jacket, unusually tight jeans, and aviators. The figure whisks by him as if he weren’t even there, leaving a cloud of heavenly sweet musk.

Louis has never seen anyone like him before in his life, and while he thinks he should probably be scared of the boy, he finds himself intrigued and wanting to know him more. He feels like he was almost transported back in time seeing some greaser that used to walk the halls of the school, but there were barely people who dressed like that in the year 2007.

“Lou!” The high pitched voice of his girlfriend pulls him out of his trance, turning on his heel to meet her as she approaches his locker. “Happy first day of senior year!” She bounces lightly on her toes and places a gentle peck on his cheek in greeting.

“Hey Jen, you too. How are you feeling about this year?” Louis opens his locker to find the books for his first few classes before lunch.

“I’m really looking forward to the season this year and I can’t wait for prom!” Jen’s blonde ponytail swinging behind her with excitement.

Prom.

Louis had almost completely forgotten. Every year their school made a big fuss about prom. Not only with themes and decorations, but with warning the seniors that they shouldn’t drink and drive. Going so far as to have a smashed up vehicle sit on the front lawn of the campus for the month leading up to the end of the school year.

There was so much pressure around prom and the expectations of what the seniors should or shouldn’t do with their last big school sanctioned dance before they leave for good. It wasn’t like the captain of the football team was planning on getting shitfaced and joyriding on prom night, but still he wanted to have fun. Louis just smiles and nods his head, hoping that will suffice as a response to his girlfriend.

The first half of the day flies by with teachers introducing themselves and giving a brief synopsis of what they have planned for the school year. It isn’t long before all of the students are filing into the old cafeteria, splitting off into their cliques like they do every year. Round tables surrounded by geeks, freaks, and barbie wannabes alike. The football team sits together just like they always do, their cheerleading girlfriends hanging around their necks or perched upon their laps. They may be a loud group, but they are well liked and Louis doesn’t seem to mind their crude behavior since he is so used to it.

His eyes are caught once again across the sea of teenagers by the tall boy with the leather jacket. He must be new, Louis thinks as he watches the figure glide to an empty table at the back of the room. He doesn’t even realize he is staring until the curly headed boy lowers his sunglasses, locking his gaze with Louis’, revealing the most enchanting eyes he has ever seen.

He chokes on his milk, liquid sputtering out of his mouth when those eyes toss a wink in his direction. A shocked screech comes from Jen who was on the receiving end of the spit take that has the rest of the football team laughing obnoxiously. Their captain gets up, milk still flowing from his face as he runs off to the bathroom to clean himself up.

Louis can’t get his mind off of those eyes for the rest of the school day. The words of his teachers are mumbles just droning in the back of his mind.

As the last bell rings, he finds himself back in his yearly routine getting changed in the locker room for his after school football practice. Louis’ thoughts are still on the stranger, leaving him to be the last person heading out of the locker room and towards the field.

The cheerleading squad chants in the distance as Louis makes his way down the sidewalk. The blue sky above is free of clouds, the sun shining brightly in his face. He walks distractedly down the path, his attention only being caught by a figure only recently becoming familiar.

The tall stranger is sitting on top of his ridiculously macho Harley, gaze following Louis as he locks eyes with him. Sitting on the blacktop near the football field, a slight smirk curls the edges of his mouth when he realizes the football player has seen him. Their staring contest is interrupted only by a rock that trips Louis causing him to fall flat on his face.

He lifts himself up with a groan only to see the gorgeous boy that he was looking at, laughing hysterically before driving off with a revved engine. Small bits of gravel being kicked up in his wake.

The football captain curses as he brushes the dirt off himself and jogs to meet up with the rest of his team. Thank god no one had seen his embarrassing fall. No one except the mysterious stranger, that is.

Why was he even here? Louis couldn’t wrap his head around the stranger and found practice a little more difficult as his mind fell back to the pair of emerald eyes he couldn’t seem to shake.

Who just laughs at someone else’s clumsy behavior like that? More than anything Louis is slightly annoyed. He continues to dwell on the moment long after practice has ended and he has changed back into his regular clothes.

“What kind of asshole just watches and laughs as someone faceplants?” Louis asks himself as he gets in his car to head home. He feels this annoyance turn to irritation and resolves that his previous interest in getting to know the stranger was wrong. His tires squeal slightly as he drives home with a bit too much fervor and rage.

It isn’t until he has flopped onto his bed later that evening that he resolves to not let the handsome jerk take up any more of his brain power. He had barely been able to get through his homework without thinking of the long haired boy and he couldn’t stand it any longer.

Nope he won’t think of those deep green eyes.

Weeks pass by like normal and Louis gets over his humiliation. There are similar staring contests as the two walk through the musty old hallways, but he doesn’t entertain the stranger too long so as not to fall over himself again. He would hate to ruin the wooden floors throughout the school that he loved.

“Tomlinson.” The gruff voice pulls him from his thoughts as he looks to his teammate Mike across the lunch table. “Do you know Styles or something?” Mike chewed almost like a cow on his hamburger, jaw moving from one side to the other.

“Styles?” He questions with a raised brow. Not knowing what he was referring to.

“Yeah, you two are always burning holes into each other’s heads. You know him?” Realization dawned on him that his friend was talking about the gorgeous asshole that had laughed at him. Louis glanced briefly over to the table of the boy in question to see him talking lightly with the few friends he had made in the past few weeks at school. Not that Louis really noticed, he wasn’t keeping tabs on the guy or anything.

“Oh uh not really, he’s kind of rude isn’t he?” He took a careful sip of his milk, not wanting a repeat spit take like the one that had happened on the first day of school.

“Who, Harry?” James, the team’s wide receiver chimed in. “He just moved in down the street from me. His family is pretty nice. He mostly keeps to himself though so I don’t know much else.”

Harry Styles

Finally a name to put with the attractive jerk that he had been silently staring at for weeks.

“Well he gives me a weird vibe.” Tom decided to join in on the conversation.

“He’s not horrible, maybe a little standoffish at first, but I’ve said hi to him a few times in passing. Nothing like the staring contests you and him have, Tomlinson.” James nudges into Louis’ side at his remark. The other guys chuckling.

“He laughed at me.” Louis blurts out before he can stop himself. He mentally facepalms for saying anything.

“Laughed at you for what?” Even Jen had joined in on the conversation now. A slight blush rose to smatter across Louis’ face as he looked around at his expectant friends waiting for an answer.

“It was nothing, I tripped on my way to practice and he just laughed at me. Like what kind of asshole does that?” The guys laughed a little before shushing one another as their captain glared daggers at them.

“Oh baby, I’m sorry. He does seem mean.” His girlfriend moved even closer into his side than she already was to lay a comforting hand over his shoulder. He wasn’t a coward and he didn’t realize how much Harry laughing at him had actually bruised his ego. So what if he was hot and had a face carved like a statue? Louis was going to give him a piece of his mind.

After lunch he found the Styles boy at his locker, all gorgeous and gangly with his curly hair and tight jeans. Ugh. Louis stomped up and was annoyed at how much he had to crank his neck back to look at the taller boy.

“Styles, right?” Those eyes he knew well by now glanced down at him before returning to his locker. What could he possibly be focusing on? This biker wannabe couldn’t possibly be a good student or care about his classes for that matter so what about his locker was so interesting. Louis huffed in frustration that the taller boy wouldn’t even acknowledge him.

“You’re Harry Styles, right?” He repeated, a little louder than necessary. Not even a glance in Louis’ direction before Harry closed his locker, turned on his heels and walked away.

The football captain was confused more than anything. Had he just been ignored? It wasn’t often that people would ignore his existence. If anything he got quite a lot of attention. He tried not to let it go to his head, but with being captain of the football team and a decent student, it came with the territory. Rarely could he walk the halls and not have people calling his name in greeting at every turn. Students and teachers alike.

So to his surprise, the badass wannabe who had already laughed at him once was now not even going to give him the time of day?

Well fine, two can play at that game.

[Game On - Disciple]

Jen’s blonde hair swayed gently along with the rest of her body as she lay half off of Louis’ bed, her book for English class in her line of sight suspended above in outstretched arms. Gentle music played through Louis’ boombox on the radio that he had turned on while they worked on their homework.

The start of September brought earlier nights causing the sun to already be setting even before it was late in the evening. Golden rays streamed through the bedroom window and onto the papers that Louis had spread across his desk. His pencil eraser tapped over the equations from his advanced calculus homework that he had yet to fill out. His mind had been elsewhere.

He hadn’t told anyone about his exchange with Harry - or lack thereof. Along with ignoring the boy, he wouldn’t complain about him to anyone either. It was becoming harder not to think about him though. There was so much about him that puzzled Louis. He didn’t want to ask anyone about him either because he was ignoring him. Right?

“Do you want to go to the mall this weekend?” Jen’s voice interrupted his thoughts as she sat up on his bed, looking at him now.

“Uhh, I don’t know. Maybe, I think some of the guys wanted to go see that new Superman: Doomsday movie that comes out this weekend,” Louis had found himself spending less time with his girlfriend lately. He didn’t know why, but there was a sudden loss in interest on his part. He felt a weird feeling that he had been playing some sort of role and he was getting exhausted. There was a twinge of guilt as he blew Jen off and he could see the slight hurt in her eyes. “But whichever day they don’t want to go we can go to the mall that day.”

Jen perked up at that and smiled at her boyfriend. “Ok!”

–

Saturday rolled around and there was just something about going to the movies with his friends that had Louis relaxed before their big game that evening. The next few games were crucial if their team wanted to make it to the championship in December. As team captain, Louis always felt a little more pressure to be on his game so having time to hang out with his friends was important to him.

The guys were messing around while waiting in line at the concession stand to get their popcorn and candy when Louis spotted the familiar head of curls that had been haunting him for days. He had gotten over being ignored by Harry. Really, he had. He wasn’t dwelling on it, he was at the movies with his friends wasn’t he? But that didn’t stop him from staring again like he always did. Normally he would try to be more discreet about it, but he wasn’t playing around anymore. His eyebrows were knit closely as he stared a little too intently. Harry wasn’t even glancing in his direction and so Louis was content on looking at the boy angrily.

He knows how strange he must look and maybe this isn’t quite ignoring Harry like he told himself he would, but there is only so much he can do when the biker had started walking towards Louis and his friends. That sweet musky smell overtook Louis’ senses again as the taller boy whisked by, without even a small look at Louis.

He was really amazed, he hadn’t done anything to the new boy to cause him to act like this. There was no reason he should be ignored and it was starting to get on his nerves. There wasn’t much he could do about it with the big game tonight so he took a deep breath and put it out of his mind so he could relax and have some fun with his friends.

–

The excitement leading up to a game never changes. No matter how many games Louis plays and no matter how important the game is to their team. He loves to feel the buzz that thrums through the stadium as fans sit in anticipation of what is about to begin.

Coach had given a rousing pep-talk before the game, but it seemed to go in one of Louis’ ears and out the other. He feels the world fade around him as he leads his team through the tunnel out to the field. Muted roars of applause and cheers slowly bring him back to reality as the team runs onto the field, determined to take this game by the balls.

Louis has never been more in his element and has never been more ready to lead his team to victory. At least he thought he was, but just as the guys all headed to formation for their first play, he looked up to the crowd for one last burst of confidence and then he saw him. Harry was sitting in the stands on the home side with the rest of the student body.

Louis didn’t expect to see him there and he could be hallucinating from all of the excitement of the game, but he could swear there is a smile on Harry’s lips.

No, no he can’t be thinking about Harry right now. He has a game to play.

There was a sort of determination behind every snap and move from Louis as he played the game and kept his eyes hard set on the field and away from the crowd in the stands. The need to focus on anything other than Harry up amongst his other classmates pushed Louis to lead his team through three successful plays all before half-time.

“Tomlinson! What has gotten into you?!” Coach slapped him on the back as the team ran off to the sidelines at half-time. Louis just shrugged at the question. What was he supposed to say? “I’m ignoring this hot guy in the stands so my focus is better than usual”? Yeah that would make total sense. But none of this really made sense in the first place. There was no logical reason that Louis was dwelling on Harry. The second half of the game went much like the first.

#harry styles #louis tomlinson #harry styles x louis tomlinson

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tribow · 2 years

Text

I went through the touhou fanworks of 2009 and so much happened with the fanon. This year was the release of Undefined Fantastic Object and Hisoutensoku. (which is easily the best side game objectively, this is not an argument). A new and wild batch of characters gets dropped on the community and some older characters get significant developments as well. So yeah, here's my notes:

Sanae is officially evil now. She may act nice, but she's scheming under that facade. Obviously this isn't the case in all works, but she is certainly way less nice than last year.

Koishi actually opens her third eye in several works either for a gag or after getting convinced to re-open it by other Satori and/or other characters. Some of these works punched me right in the feels and it hurts knowing that canonically, she aint opening that eye.

Utsuho isn't very stupid around this time. She's just extremely forgetful. Don't give her a task that has more than 3 steps!

Morino Hon starts producing fanworks in 2009!!! That's my favorite doujinshi creator! Read their stuff it's top tier.

Marisa cooks increasingly more dangerous food.

Nue has no prior connection to Byakuren in canon like the rest of the UFO cast, but in fanon she almost always does.

Yamame is practically Kisume's mom

Yamame also gets hella bullied.

Wriggle is uuh, Wriggle is getting dominated quite a lot.

Tenshi and Iku rarely show up, did SWR get slept on?

Daiyousei has finally snapped. She either gets pretty scary when mad or is even depicted as much stronger than Cirno in some way, but is hiding it. Don't mess with Daiyousei!

Mima tends to be seen hanging out with Yuuka rather than haunting the Hakurei Shrine now

bkub? pog (i might have the wrong year)

Kogasa can't surprise people with scares since she's too cute, so instead she usually ends up surprising people with sudden declarations of love. Whether or not this actually feeds her never seems to said.

Nazrin will never admit it, but she really does like cheese.

Byakuren is genuinely scary. Many works take her philosophy to the absolute extreme. The lengths she goes to protect and bring salvation to youkai can spell genocide for humans. Those who oppose her philosophy may be brutalized even if they're youkai. It's a very edgy take on Byakuren and is nearly the opposite to how she is canonically. I wonder if this depiction will last long outside of 2009 when she gets more fleshed out (especially with Ten Desires).

Shou is depicted as mostly pathetic which is surprising to me...look she's the only reason I haven't beaten UFO I can't see her as weak!

Yuugi is everyone's big sister.

Would you believe that Meiling almost never fell asleep at the gate until now? Usually she was just too weak or stupid to guard it properly and now she just sleeps.

Murasa always goes down with the ship if it crashes (which happens often)

Kisume does not get enough content. For shame!

Both Reimu and Marisa die a lot this year.

Utsuho really likes eggs for some reason...and not in a motherly way.

Mokou's friendship ended with Kaguya. Now Keine is best friend. Eirin is there for Kaguya though.

Aki sisters are desperate for popularity. They'll do anything!

Okay this is a western joke and I can't even confirm if this was 2009, but I would be remissed if I didn't mention the SAKE NOT EVEN DROP post about Yuugi. It's still funny.

Mystia's grilled eel stand doubles as a barstand now.

No Ichirin/Unzan focused content??? For shame!!!!!

Kanako has her own "charisma break" situation going on. She does her best to look cool, but completely crumbles whenever someone embarrasses her.

This bleeds into 2010, but Alice tends to start trying to bring life into her dolls and it often puts her character in a real dark place. It's the most introspective the fanbase gets with her.

Muuuch more focus on the newer characters. SA gets some of the most heart-wrenching doujins here and the UFO-cast is mainly used for gags (unless your name is Byakuren).

A real interesting year.

Also read Warugaki's, Morino Hon's, and bkub's stuff. Not sure if 2009 is their start or not, but they're all legends in my book.

#touhou #doujins #fanon #fanwork #managed to condense it a bit than originally planned #the 2008 post was larger than I thought it was. but i feel like I could have removed half of those bullet points ngl #Here everything feels way more significant #also we have reached peak Meiling hours #do people even read tags this far #i can put anything in here #flat chest utsuho is better than big tiddy utsuho. it's true #2009 #touhou fanon years

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askagamedev · 2 years

Text

I Was Wrong: Gold Farming has a much larger footprint than I thought

On occasion I do make mistakes and I wanted to own up to a mistake I made in [a recent post]. I wrote from the perspective of a designer on the team, but the overall effect of real money trading in a MMOG is much, much greater than what affects me as a dev team member. The game itself encompasses a lot of people in a variety of roles. Some of those team members are much more affected by the actions of gold farmers and other bad actors, so much so that many of their day-to-day job duties involve planning for and dealing with the actions of these bad actors at scale. I want to give special thanks to one of my discord members who works in this field for giving me a better understanding of what they go through. It was very enlightening.

Gold Farming Is Automated

As long as value can be transferred from account to account, there will be incentive for bad actors to trade account value for real money. The desire for more value over time pushed gold farming away from employing humans to farm the gold for them to using bots to do it for them. Automated farming will ensure 24/7 value gathering uptime - a large enough force of bots can effectively camp every valuable enemy and resource spawn in the game if they need to. This feels bad for the legitimate players who have to compete with bots for resources while playing the game, and adds to the player churn rate. Because there is real value in creating these bots, there have been professional software devs who built subscription bot services for these games. There was actually a [legal battle fought in 2008] over the creation of the Glider bot used in World of Warcraft in large part because of this. Detecting and disabling systems and features that allow bots to function is a large part of running a successful live game.

Item Duping: If You Hear About It, It’s Already Too Late

One of the things bad actors constantly search for is a way to duplicate valuable items - for obvious reasons. The more popular the game is, the more incentive there is to find the small holes in the system that might allow them bad actors to duplicate the valuable items. The main issue here isn’t that bad actors manage to duplicate a few items for themselves, but that they can codify the process and sell that information to the large-scale bot farm owners. Once that happens, the floodgates open and thousands of bot accounts all perform the same process. This means that, in order to prevent a very public and feels-bad rollback, the live team needs to be able to catch and fix these proof-of-concept successful item duping cases before they can go mainstream.

A Product Needs Buyers To Be Valuable

Bad actors don’t just try to grab up all the resources though - that’s only the supply side of the equation. Having all that gold means nothing if you can’t find people who will buy it. So how do the bad actors reach out and advertise their services to players in a game? By using the game itself, of course. This means that the very social systems in the game are used by bad actors in order to reach out to potential sellers. Friend requests, private chat, guild chat, guild invites, party invites, yelling, spamming world/trade/local chat, even using in-game names and leaving named corpses all over the place were tactics used by bad actors in order to push their services to players in game. Seeing these actions happen to them in real time also feels bad to legitimate players, contributing to churn rate. This means that steps must be taken, typically from the engineering team, to combat these bad actions at scale without harming the ordinary player.

Bad Actors Need Accounts Too

One of the biggest problem in any live service game is the issue of compromised accounts. Bad actors need a steady stream of new accounts to use because their accounts tend to be short-lived - they get detected and banned quite regularly. I mentioned that engaging with bad actors like using a bot or leveling service can lead to compromised accounts, but this is only one source of compromised accounts. One major source of compromised accounts is players who use the same password for their game accounts as their game fansite account. There are other attack vectors like embedding keyloggers in popular mods, or compromising an account without transferrable value in it (e.g. a Battlefield account) and using that account to run a bot in SWTOR because they all use the Origin back end. These accounts gum up the MMOG but can also lead to some real financial issues due to chargebacks if credit cards are involved. Bad actors rarely use legitimate payment methods for games that require buy-in, so they are a constant source of credit card fraud. Most payment processors have a very hard line at the 1% chargeback rate - if 1% or more of a vendor’s payment processing are chargebacks, the payment processor will hit the vendor with a very steep penalty (VISA, for example, will charge the vendor $100 per penalty if they hit that 1% chargeback rate).

So yeah... There’s a lot that goes on in live service games that are driven by grey market real money trade, most of which is intentionally hidden from players. Because of the total amount of money involved, bad actors in live service games are incentivized to do a lot of bad stuff and we on the dev side must wage a shadow war against their efforts - including reacting to and dealing with events that occur outside of the game itself, like data breaches and website hacks. I wasn’t aware of all of these things going on behind the curtain myself, but it has been a fascinating trip down that particular rabbit hole for me. I hope you learned something from this today. I know I certainly did.

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#the business of video games #bad actors #real money trading #Working in the game industry #how things work #game systems #online services #Live Operations

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qqueenofhades · 4 years

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Re: the post you reblogged about Bush. I'm 21 and tbh feel like I can only vote for Bernie, can you explain if/why I shouldn't? Thanks and sorry if this is dumb or anything.

Oh boy. Okay, I’ll do my best here. Note that a) this will get long, and b) I’m old, Tired, and I‘m pretty sure my brain tried to kill me last night. Since by nature I am sure I will say something Controversial ™, if anyone reads this and feels a deep urge to inform me that I am Wrong, just… mark it down as me being Wrong and move on with your life. But also, really, you should read this and hopefully think about it. Because while I’m glad you asked this question, it feels like there’s a lot in your cohort who won’t, and that worries me. A lot.

First, not to sound utterly old-woman-in-a-rocking-chair ancient, people who came of age/are only old enough to have Obama be the first president that they really remember have no idea how good they had it. The world was falling the fuck apart in 2008 (not coincidentally, after 8 years of Bush). We came within a flicker of the permanent collapse of the global economy. The War on Terror was in full roar, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were at their height, we had Dick Cheney as the cartoon supervillain before we had any of Trump’s cohort, and this was before Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden had exposed the extent of NSA/CIA intelligence-gathering/American excesses or there was any kind of public debate around the fact that we were all surveilled all the time. And the fact that a brown guy named Barack Hussein Obama was elected in this climate seems, and still seems tbh, kind of amazing. And Obama was certainly not a Perfect President ™. He had to scale back a lot of planned initiatives, he is notorious for expanding the drone strike/extrajudicial assassination program, he still subscribed to the overall principles of neoliberalism and American exceptionalism, etc etc. There is valid criticism to be made as to how the hopey-changey optimistic rhetoric stacked up against the hard realities of political office. And yet…. at this point, given what we’re seeing from the White House on a daily basis, the depth of the parallel universe/double standards is absurd.

Because here’s the thing. Obama, his entire family, and his entire administration had to be personally/ethically flawless the whole time (and they managed that – not one scandal or arrest in eight years, against the legions of Trumpistas now being convicted) because of the absolute frothing depths of Republican hatred, racial conspiracy theories, and obstruction against him. (Remember Merrick Garland and how Mitch McConnell got away with that, and now we have Gorsuch and Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court? Because I remember that). If Obama had pulled one-tenth of the shit, one-twentieth of the shit that the Trump administration does every day, he would be gone. It also meant that people who only remember Obama think he was typical for an American president, and he wasn’t. Since about… Jimmy Carter, and definitely since Ronald Reagan, the American people have gone for the Trump model a lot more than the Obama model. Whatever your opinion on his politics or character, Obama was a constitutional law professor, a community activist, a neighborhood organizer and brilliant Ivy League intellectual who used to randomly lie awake at night thinking about income inequality. Americans don’t value intellectualism in their politicians; they just don’t. They don’t like thinking that “the elites” are smarter than them. They like the folksy populist who seems fun to have a beer with, and Reagan/Bush Senior/Clinton/Bush Junior sold this persona as hard as they possibly could. As noted in said post, Bush Junior (or Shrub as the late, great Molly Ivins memorably dubbed him) was Trump Lite but from a long-established political family who could operate like an outwardly civilized human.

The point is: when you think Obama was relatively normal (which, again, he wasn’t, for any number of reasons) and not the outlier in a much larger pattern of catastrophic damage that has been accelerated since, again, the 1980s (oh Ronnie Raygun, how you lastingly fucked us!), you miss the overall context in which this, and which Trump, happened. Like most left-wingers, I don’t agree with Obama’s recent and baffling decision to insert himself into the 2020 race and warn the Democratic candidates against being too progressive or whatever he was on about. I think he was giving into the same fear that appears to be motivating the remaining chunk of Joe Biden’s support: that middle/working-class white America won’t go for anything too wild or that might sniff of Socialism, and that Uncle Joe, recalled fondly as said folksy populist and the internet’s favorite meme grandfather from his time as VP, could pick up the votes that went to Trump last time. And that by nature, no one else can.

The underlying belief is that these white voters just can’t support anything too “un-American,” and that by pushing too hard left, Democratic candidates risk handing Trump a second term. Again: I don’t agree and I think he was mistaken in saying it. But I also can’t say that Obama of all people doesn’t know exactly the strength of the political machine operating against the Democratic Party and the progressive agenda as a whole, because he ran headfirst into it for eight years. The fact that he managed to pass any of his legislative agenda, usually before the Tea Party became a thing in 2010, is because Democrats controlled the House and Senate for the first two years of his first term. He was not perfect, but it was clear that he really did care (just look up the pictures of him with kids). He installed smart, efficient, and scandal-free people to do jobs they were qualified for. He gave us Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor to join RBG on the Supreme Court. All of this seems… like a dream.

That said: here we are in a place where Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren are the front-runners for the Democratic nomination (and apparently Pete Buttigieg is getting some airplay as a dark horse candidate, which… whatever). The appeal of Biden is discussed above, and he sure as hell is not my favored candidate (frankly, I wish he’d just quit). But Sanders and Warren are 85% - 95% similar in their policy platforms. The fact that Michael “50 Billion Dollar Fortune” Bloomberg started rattling his chains about running for president is because either a Sanders or Warren presidency terrifies the outrageously exploitative billionaire capitalist oligarchy that runs this country and has been allowed to proceed essentially however the fuck they like since… you guessed it, the 1980s, the era of voodoo economics, deregulation, and the free market above all. Warren just happens to be ten years younger than Sanders and female, and Sanders’ age is not insignificant. He’s 80 years old and just had a heart attack, and there’s still a year to go to the election. It’s also more than a little eye-rolling to describe him as the only progressive candidate in the race, when he’s an old white man (however much we like and approve of his policy positions). And here’s the thing, which I think is a big part of the reason why this polarized ideological purity internet leftist culture mistrusts Warren:

She may have changed her mind on things in the past.

Scary, right? I sound like I’m being facetious, but I’m not. An argument I had to read with my own two eyes on this godforsaken hellsite was that since Warren became a Democrat around the time Clinton signed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, she sekritly hated gay people and might still be a corporate sellout, so on and etcetera. (And don’t even get me STARTED on the fact that DADT, coming a few years after the height of the AIDS crisis which was considered God’s Judgment of the Icky Gays, was the best Clinton could realistically hope to achieve, but this smacks of White Gay Syndrome anyway and that is a whole other kettle of fish.) Bernie has always demonstrably been a democratic socialist, and: good for him. I’m serious. But because there’s the chance that Warren might not have thought exactly as she does now at any point in her life, the hysterical and paranoid left-wing elements don’t trust that she might not still secretly do so. (Zomgz!) It’s the same element that’s feeding cancel culture and “wokeness.” Nobody can be allowed to have shifted or grown in their opinions or, like a functional, thoughtful, non-insane adult, changed their beliefs when presented with compelling evidence to the contrary. To the ideological hordes, any hint of uncertainty or past failure to completely toe the line is tantamount to heresy. Any evidence of any other belief except The Correct One means that this person is functionally as bad as Trump. And frankly, it’s only the Sanders supporters who, just as in 2016, are threatening to withhold their vote in the general election if their preferred candidate doesn’t win the primary, and indeed seem weirdly proud about it.

OK, boomer Bernie or Buster.

Here’s the thing, the thing, the thing: there is never going to be an American president free of the deeply toxic elements of American ideology. There just won’t be. This country has been built how it has for 250 years, and it’s not gonna change. You are never going to have, at least not in the current system, some dream candidate who gets up there and parrots the left-wing talking points and attacks American imperialism, exceptionalism, ravaging global capitalism, military and oil addiction, etc. They want to be elected as leader of a country that has deeply internalized and taken these things to heart for its entire existence, and most of them believe it to some degree themselves. So this groupthink white liberal mentality where the only acceptable candidate is this Perfect Non-Problematic robot who has only ever had one belief their entire lives and has never ever wavered in their devotion to doctrine has really gotten bad. The Democratic Party would be considered… maybe center/mild left in most other developed countries. It’s not even really left-wing by general standards, and Sanders and Warren are the only two candidates for the nomination who are even willing to go there and explicitly put out policy proposals that challenge the systematic structure of power, oppression, and exploitation of the late-stage capitalist 21st century. Warren has the billionaires fussed, and instead of backing down, she’s doubling down. That’s part of why they’re so scared of her. (And also misogyny, because the world is depressing like that.) She is going head-on after picking a fight with some of the worst people on the planet, who are actively killing the rest of us, and I don’t know about you, but I like that.

Of course: none of this will mean squat if she (or the eventual Democratic winner, who I will vote for regardless of who it is, but as you can probably tell, she’s my ride or die) don’t a) win the White House and then do as they promised on the campaign trail, and b) don’t have a Democratic House and Senate willing to have a backbone and pass the laws. Even Nancy Pelosi, much as she’s otherwise a badass, held off on opening a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump for months out of fear it would benefit him, until the Ukraine thing fell into everyone’s laps. The Democrats are really horrible at sticking together and voting the party line the way Republicans do consistently, because Democrats are big-tent people who like to think of themselves as accepting and tolerant of other views and unwilling to force their members’ hands. The Republicans have no such qualms (and indeed, judging by their enabling of Trump, have no qualms at all).

The modern American Republican party has become a vehicle for no-holds-barred power for rich white men at the expense of absolutely everything and everyone else, and if your rationale is that you can’t vote for the person opposing Donald Goddamn Trump is that you’re just not vibing with them on the language of that one policy proposal… well, I’m glad that you, White Middle Class Liberal, feel relatively safe that the consequences of that decision won’t affect you personally. Even if we’re due to be out of the Paris Climate Accords one day after the 2020 election, and the issue of climate change now has the most visibility it’s ever had after years of big-business, Republican-led efforts to deny and discredit the science, hey, Secret Corporate Shill, am I right? Can’t trust ‘er. Let’s go have a craft beer.

As has been said before: vote as far left as you want in the primary. Vote your ideology, vote whatever candidate you want, because the only way to make actual, real-world change is to do that. The huge, embedded, all-consuming and horrible system in which we operate is not just going to suddenly be run by fairy dust and happy thoughts overnight. Select candidates that reflect your values exactly, be as picky and ideologically militant as you want. That’s the time to do that! Then when it comes to the general election:

America is a two-party system. It sucks, but that’s the case. Third-party votes, or refraining from voting because “it doesn’t matter” are functionally useless at best and actively harmful at worst.

Either the Democratic candidate or Donald Trump will win the 2020 election.

There is absolutely no length that the Republican/GOP machine, and its malevolent allies elsewhere, will not go to in order to secure a Trump victory. None.

Any talk whatsoever about “progressive values” or any kind of liberal activism, coupled with a course of action that increases the possibility of a Trump victory, is hypocritical at best and actively malicious at worst.

This is why I found the Democratic response to Obama’s “don’t go too wild” comments interesting. Bernie doubled down on the fact that his plans have widespread public support, and he’s right. (Frankly, the fact that Sanders and Warren are polling at the top, and the fact that they’re politicians and would not be crafting these campaign messages if they didn’t know that they were being positively received, says plenty on its own). Warren cleverly highlighted and praised Obama’s accomplishments in office (i.e. the Affordable Care Act) and didn’t say squat about whether she agreed or disagreed with him, then went right back to campaigning about why billionaires suck. And some guy named Julian Castro basically blew Obama off and claimed that “any Democrat” could beat Trump in 2020, just by nature of existing and being non-insane.

This is very dangerous! Do not be Julian Castro!

As I said in my tags on the Bush post: everyone assumed that sensible people would vote for Kerry in 2004. Guess what happened? Yeah, he got Swift Boated. The race between Obama and McCain in 2008, even after those said nightmare years of Bush, was very close until the global crash broke it open in Obama’s favor, and Sarah Palin was an actual disqualifier for a politician being brazenly incompetent and unprepared. (Then again, she was a woman from a remote backwater state, not a billionaire businessman.) In 2012, we thought Corporate MormonBot Mitt Fuggin’ Romney was somehow the worst and most dangerous candidate the Republicans could offer. In 2016, up until Election Day itself, everyone assumed that HRC was a badly flawed candidate but would win anyway. And… we saw how that worked out. Complacency is literally deadly.

I was born when Reagan was still president. I’m just old enough to remember the efforts to impeach Clinton over forcing an intern to give him a BJ in the Oval Office (This led by the same Republicans making Donald Trump into a darling of the evangelical Christian right wing.) I’m definitely old enough to remember 9/11 and how America lost its mind after that, and I remember the Bush years. And, obviously, the contrast with Obama, the swing back toward Trump, and everything that has happened since. We can’t afford to do this again. We’re hanging by a thread as it is, and not just America, but the entire planet.

So yes. By all means, vote for Sanders in the primary. Then when November 3, 2020 rolls around, if you care about literally any of this at all, hold your nose if necessary and vote straight-ticket Democrat, from the president, to the House and Senate, to the state and local offices. I cannot put it more strongly than that.

#politics for ts #long post #anonymous #ask

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kanohivolitakk · 2 years

Note

So, what’s your Bionicle unpopular opinion?

Teasing me from teasing something and never posting it mlfdsflfsdmlfdsmk

In my defense, I did start writing the post but its just in my drafts. Something that happens quite often and I honestly hate how common it is, wish I was better at just writing my thoughts down and publishing them. I do still plan to make the post but it may take some time so going to answer here

I do have a fair bit of unpopular opinions, but I guess my main one is that I do prefer the 2004-2008 era over the first three years and feel the franchise wouldn't have as lasting impression on me or a lasting legacy if it wasn't for the later years.

Don't get me wrong, the first three years are great and laid important groundwork to the world and setting. They have a great mysterious tone, that just adds to the mystery. The worldbuilding is also excellent, I love the personal way you get to know the setting inside out in a rather personal way, something that was rather lacking later on.

But I just feel that, great worldbuilding, atmosphere and worldbuilding aside, the first three years are, rather basic. The story is really barebones "collect the mcguffins and/or fight the monsters". Which was fine, it feels that early on it was more a setdressing for toyline than a story. But like, in 2002 and 2003 when they tried to have a bit more story it was rather uninteresting for me personally, especially compared to what comes later on. Theres also some pacing issues, especially with how fillery the Bohrok Kal arc is.

Now, I just think that 2004 onwards the story becomes so much more interesting. While sure, a lot of the story is still mcguffin hunting, it feels that there's much more into it. This is largely thanks to all the sideplots and factionwars and backstory stuff that make the world more grand and complex without them.

Also I know that people say the worldbuilding gets worse after the first three years but honestly...I kinda disagree? Sure, we never get the same personal feeling with the settings as we did in Mata Nui but that doesn't mean the worldbuilding is bad? It's moreso that the worldbuilding just changed from a microworldbuilding to macroworldbuilding. I think that the worldbuilding is still good and quite interesting, just in a different way. We still have this super fascinating world with a lot of mysteries and concepts and stuff that demands to be explored.

This is also a kinda related unpopular opinion but honestly??? I'm happy that the world was developed beyond Toa. Like don't get me wrong Toa are the posterboys and heroes and all that, they are crucial to the story. But I personally find a stories worlds much more interesting when the heroes aren't the only thing allowed to exist in the world. I find all the factionwars and conflicts and things much more interesting than the main plot and wish they were developed further. Heck, I don't really have that many toa faves I think, like big top tier faves at least, Lhikan is the only one I think

So yeah I guess my unpopular opinion is "I like when the series went from being a story about a group of heroes to a story about a larger world and conflicts in said large world." An just I know that there are people who love the 2004-2008 stuff as much as I do (the Ignition saga is arguably more beloved than 2001-2003 stuff) but just. I still feel there's a somewhat amount of criticism of people who wish that they hadn't gotten rid of the tropical island setting or that the later years were too boring and simple worldbuilding wise or ruined the series worldbuilding and I disagree. Because I feel that a lot of the more complex stuff comes from the later years. The later years are the reason Bionicle is such a formative franchise for me and why I held it near and dear to my heart and i wish they got respect the same way the “golden years” do as well you know.

#asks #anon #Bionicle

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peach-astrology · 3 years

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Natal chart:Ariana Grande

Hi! I want to create a new category in my blog,where I talk about the natal charts of famous personalities.I've been listening to Ariana's songs since 2015 and watched TV shows with her on Nickelodeon.I love this Princess! She and Dalton are now engaged and I'm so happy for her.I also want to suggest that this is an incomplete analysis of her natal chart,otherwise this article would be too large,here I looked only at the main positions(for youuuuuuuu ahahahaha)

The first thing I noticed was that there were no planets in the fire element(not counting houses).Although many astrologers say that this means a lack of optimism and fire in the eyes.But look at its conjunction of Jupiter and the Moon in Libra.She went through difficult times in her life,but she went on and wrote beautiful songs.We'll talk about this later.

Its ascendant is in Capricorn,but it doesn’t,fortunately,create an opposition to the Sun.This gives her a beautiful face shape and beautiful cheekbones(Capricorn is responsible for the bones).Also in the interview,we can see how comfortable she is to communicate,as if she is confident in herself and her words,even when joking.In this,in addition to the ascendant,Mercury in Cancer(gentle and sweet communication)and the 7th house are also involved.This position can’t but fascinate.

Let's talk about the Sun(Oh,this is Ariana ahaha).But seriously,it's in the 6th house in Cancer.People with this position can choose a certain vocation and grow very much in their career.Cancer is responsible for the beauty and soulfulness that is in her songs.The Sun has many aspects.The Sun square Moon cause it to fluctuate between the impulses of the soul and the mind.Sun trine Saturn,I notice that this situation indicates a late marriage or a good career.Both planets are in water signs,which indicates the importance of feelings in a relationship.Sun sextile Mars another indication of fame.

In a recent interview,she said that she tries to be sincere in front of fans,but at the same time tries not to divulge too much.She also said that she didn’t want her current relationship to be too public,as it was with the past.Here comes the influence of the ascendant opposition Mercury.The ascendant is responsible for what we show to the outside world(strangers,for example),and Mercury is responsible for our communication.Mercury's opposition to Uranus shows its rebelliousness.You've noticed exactly how often she supports social movements.She helped in the voting and actively disseminate information about the BLM.Moreover,both planets are in cardinal signs.Ariana has a song called "Just like magic" that fully describes Mercury's opposition to Neptune.This position gives a rich inner peace and interest in psychoanalysis,but also obsessive thoughts and anxiety(which she also spoke about in a recent interview).Sometimes indicates a good intuition.

She has a Venus opposition to Pluto,which makes frequent changes in her personal life.Venus controls the sphere of love and relationships(including friendship),and Pluto controls revolutions,changes and transformations.Pluto,like Saturn,gives difficult and morally difficult lessons,but thanks to them,a person becomes stronger and more experienced than others.Venus is in Taurus in the 4th house,which makes her so cozy and caring.It's a very romantic position.Only sincere feelings and their best manifestations.Ariana has two trines(Venus trine Neptune,Venus trine Uranus)that indicate the possibility of development in music.Remember when I said that trine gives us chances,sextile gives us opportunities,and conjunction gives us talent?All of them differ from each other in that the trine requires the most time to develop.You know that Ariana has been developing in show business for a very long time(if you believe the Internet,then since 2008),which is why she has achieved such success and such a strong vocal.Venus trine ascendant makes her so beautiful OMG.

I want to pay special attention to Mars,because it has greatly influenced her life.You probably remember the terrorist attack in Manchester.This event is indicated by 2 positions in her Natal chart:Mars opposition Saturn and Mars in the 8th house.These aspects create accidents and dangerous cases,severe damage.Even if a person tries to get out of this situation,he will not succeed.This event affected her career(Mars sextile MC) and her personality(Mars sextile Sun).After the terrorist attack before the concert,people began to search for security reasons,and Ariana still sends money to the affected people.

Jupiter in the 9th house in Libra also hints at our favorite work and study.Jupiter in Libra gives the ability to cooperate and meet people,and the 9th house shows a person's desire to constantly learn and develop.Jupiter square Sun also indicate to us the desire of a person to develop(but a little in a negative sense).They are competitive and a bit of a gambler.They respect themselves and appreciate their merits and sometimes it is difficult for them to accept criticism.

I consider Saturn trine MC to be one of the best positions for a career.Saturn,though strict,loves the field of work(MC is responsible for this),so it isn’t a pity to give him several opportunities for a good career.Remember the times of Nickelodeon,don’t underestimate them,because they brought considerable popularity to her,although they were not associated with music.Here Saturn gave her the opportunity to gain a little fame.Saturn in the second house and Saturn square Pluto force you to be a perfectionist in the field of Pisces,that is,music and creativity.Remember her shows and how she and her team carefully prepare for them.Also,this situation is often found in people who often take on someone else's fault.

Uranus and Neptune in the first house make her stand out.She has a photogenic appearance,interesting images and style.Also,such positions bring sensitivity,empathy and a rich inner world.Uranus square Neptune make her be honest,a little moody and intuitive.She is interested in politics,society and a bit of astrology(during Cancer season,she posted posts about it in stories).I've noticed that people who made some major changes somewhere had Uranus sextile Pluto or Neptune sextile Pluto.Remember her albums,which are filled with their own atmosphere and their own era,vocals and a style of voice that can’t be confused with anyone.She made a big contribution to the pop industry and made it more sincere and unusual.

Pluto sextile ascendant forces her to also be active in the affairs of society(notice how many provisions say this?).She is interested in the topic of magic,money,personal growth and is very curious and inquisitive.Scorpio is at home(in Pluto),so it plays an important role.You know how famous Scorpios are for their stubbornness,love of success and power,and since he is in the 10th house,this is another position that indicates success.In a recent interview,she said that she doesn’t set herself boundaries or specific goals,she just wants to develop her creativity every day.

Lilith in the second house indicates that a person in a previous life was careless about his money and property,so in this life he should invest and protect his money.Often the sign in the 2nd house indicates exactly how a person should invest them.In this case,the Pisces are in the second house,so Ariana had to invest in creativity and music.She creates great shows,gathers a huge team of professionals and spends a huge amount of money for music.But don’t forget that later this amount is returned to her in a much larger amount.That's about how Lilith works in the second house.Simply put,"The more money and labor you put in,the more you get back".

Thank you for reading this! Write if you have similar provisions.Love ❤

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realmofitria · 2 years

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Hello, About Me - 11/15/2021

First Post on the new ROI blog. I decided to come back to tumblr to talk about my progress with this novel series. I need a place to do this, I swear. Sometimes I echo at myself too much. I suppose that a tumblr blog is also like an echo chamber, but it feels more cathartic.

Presently I’m writing two novels, technically. Firebrand and RoI. But they are all part of the same, larger saga. I admit, I’m a little hesitant to post on the internet but I’m sure it’ll be fine. I’ll probably post the sensitive content on my patreon. Not because I want to peddle a patreon, but because I like the idea of protecting my content. Anyway, this has been a very special, isolated project. I’m really interested in potentially finding some other original content creators to chat with. Hopefully, someone will like my story. I think one of my biggest dreams is publishing something entertaining that people can enjoy.

So about me.

My name is Kone.

I have been writing this kind original content since 2013. Truthfully, I’ve been creating as long as I can remember. I was an artistic kid, who came from a house of artists. I was inspired by all things magical and wonderous. My favorite movies were Hocus Pocus and Labyrinth.

My mother was an animator and film maker, and while she was working on her projects, I had access to tools like wacom tablets and computers. She’d let me borrow stuff and figure it out. I taught myself how to draw digitally, and I had a brief ‘career’ of animating fanon stuff on youtube for awhile. I was young. I’m talking 2006-2008 era. My greatest love had always been art. I struggled in school, both academically and socially. I was very beside myself, and other children often picked on me I assume this is because of my interests, and maybe because I didn’t have many friends. I also was bisexual, but I didn’t know how to articulate that. (long post so I’m shortening it with a readmore, or a keep reading now I guess.)

I never thought of myself as an intelligent child because I didn’t catch on in school as quickly as other children. I also had a negative view of my capabilities because of some really horrible, discouraging teachers. Turns out, the industrialized school system was not favorable to my preferred learning styles. Go figure.

By the time I was a teenager, (with help of the internet) I figured out how to study to suit my needs and found a deep fascination with history, English literature and art. I graduated with honors from high school (much to my surprise) and I found myself accepted into a university, of all places. This was a great accomplishment for me because many educators of mine insisted I would never be able to pursue post-secondary education. So fuck you, still. I have a lot of thoughts regarding putting that much pressure on a child, but that’s for another time.

I felt a lot of pressure between the ages of 16 to 18, especially as a young indigenous woman from a reserve. I felt like I had to prove myself and do better than the expectations people had for me. I was competitive. While I was proud of myself for getting that far, I had a very loose idea of what I wanted to do with my life. If, any real idea. I wanted to go study animation or character design, but I found myself going to university with a vague, undeclared major instead. I had this perception that I had to grow up, give up that ‘kid stuff’ and become a ‘real adult’ since I was apparently intelligent enough to get into university. So much unexpected pressure came with that honors in high school. I wanted to get out of the poverty trap. I wanted better things for myself. I wanted to have a good job, and make money. But I wasn’t sure how to do that. I was convinced that a “real job” would be a better option than my disorganized artwork and fascinations.

I struggled.

Because it turns out, you should never lie to yourself and pursue something you’re not interested in. Especially when you have this vague idea about what you should be doing in society. My initial major was geography, but I quickly lost interest in that and I found myself aimlessly taking different courses that sounded okay to me. The lack of direction, paired with mourning my “wasted potential” and not creating made me incredibly depressed. Not to mention the various other obstacles I had. I wasn’t adjusting very well to my university town. I couldn’t make any good friends. My family situation wasn’t doing so great, and the person I loved was in another country.

I fell into this deep, lonely depression. I remember feeling this complete lack of joy and struggling to get out of bed. I was wasting away in my dorm room, sometimes skipping classes. I had a tv and an xbox set up in my dorm. I also had my computer. So, naturally, I started to drift back into the things that comforted me. Like video games, anime and art. I didn’t have much drive, but slowly I started to engage with those things again while keeping my GPA afloat, for the sake of staying in school. Staying in university was incredibly important to me, even if it was out of spite more than anything.

I took a course about medieval town life and I loved it. I was inspired by the things I learned, and I liked to imagine a distant time, away from everything. Something about history took me out of my problems and I started exclusively taking history, art and classics courses. I learned how to be a historian, while romanticizing these periods. (I’m aware that romanticizing history is not good practice in my degree, but that’s why I do it in fiction, lol). An idea started forming in my head, a story. I remember listening to Desert Rose by Sting (lol) and imagining this fantasy realm. I sketched all night. I wasn’t pleased with how rusty my skills were, but I persisted. Music has always helped me envision things.

My husband (boyfriend at the time) proposed that we both create some original characters and develop a little thing. It was innocuous, but fun. We kept building on the idea of creating a unique, historical fantasy world where we could escape. I found myself creating characters that I wanted to see in media, that I didn’t often see. Storylines that were fresh, or new. Particularly stories about female characters. It was so fun to draw and write. The more we envisioned these characters, the more we created. It branched from simple sketches to entire fictional countries, cultures and religions.

I used the fictional space to explore concepts, and vent emotions. It was a good way for the both of us to process our feelings about the world, and society while escaping it. Realm of Itria was born and it became my fixation and my favorite thing to write between classes, and painful moments. I relied heavily on it to get by, through the hardships of my degree. And I’m not talking about just academics. I was in financial ruin, and my parents got divorced in the worst way possible. It was a nightmare.

Again, I struggled with ROI. I reached a point where I loved it so much that I wanted to publish it, but I was once more faced with the inability to refine my direction. I didn’t know what to do with it. I struggled frequently with perfectionism and unrealistic expectations. Always fighting my worth, and myself. I would restart, try harder and always reach these points where I would stop. ROI never came to light because I would get so far, get discouraged and then give up. I’d often convince myself no one would care about it, and that it wasn’t a priority.

After I graduated with my degree in 2016, I took a long hiatus and did other things with my life. I got married, moved far away and had many adventures. I joined the workforce and experienced actually being an adult. I learned that it wasn’t about getting a high salary or paying bills. It was about being true to myself. I realized that I had no expiration date for my interests. I think I needed that time away to understand what I wanted in life, and what was important to me. As much as I loved school at the end of it, the amount of work that was constantly thrown at me kept me from catching my breath. I do not regret those years abroad, doing whatever and learning how to enjoy life, and be myself.

Late 2020, realizing my mortality with the ever sobering reality of the pandemic, I revived the project with a great devotion. Once again, I returned to it during a difficult time. I’m older now and I know who I am. Despite every obstacle I’ve faced, I’ve always found time to create. It is a deep passion of mine, and I need to honor that. I know now that it’s okay to enjoy these things and be an adult. Now, I want to incorporate every creative talent I have doing this. Don’t get me wrong, shadows of perfectionism and previous self doubt sometimes haunt me. But I always remind myself that at the end of the day, I want this published and completed. Even if it’s just for myself, and my husband. I don’t want to die with this story. I’d like to leave it behind, as a legacy. I suppose. It’s important to me.

Realm of Itria has been there for me during my lowest times, and it is a charming world that touches on a lot of things I have dealt with in life. Realm of Itria is about young adults making their own decisions, and standing up to forces greater than them. It’s about morality, loss and blood ties. About ethics, taking charge of your own fate and the capability everyone has to do good, or harm.

It reflects my own coming of age and coming to terms with being an adult. Shadows of truths, and fantastical lies my imagination came up with. Not all of it is a direct reflection. Rather, aspects with things. Half truths, and I love the ambiguity of venting it without totally revealing what is and isn’t fiction. I don’t think I could ever completely I love it, and I love the characters. I want to share their stories. In a sense, they are alive to me. I cherish them deeply. I think their stories can help others, and maybe be an escape for them too.

ROI is a big world, kind of like the Elder Scrolls or Harry Potter. It’s made to be OC friendly, and vast enough to find your own little corner of comfort in time, and space. I look forward to talking about my writing, and I hope that you enjoyed learning a bit about myself. Kind of a lot, but that’s okay. I have a lot to say.

#blogpost #ipl 2021 #about me #writing #writers #bio #writersnetwork

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infinitelytheheartexpands · 3 years

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Traversing the Verdi Canon #4, Part I: I Lombardi alla prima crociata

NOTE: This is the first part of a planned two-part post. The second part, on Jérusalem, should be coming up later this week. “But Savannah,” you protest, “Jérusalem wasn’t written until 1847, five years and several operas after this.” Well, I’m putting the two in relief of each other to compare because essentially they are different versions of the same thing, as far as I know (I have never seen Jérusalem).

Following Nabucco, Verdi once again wrote a big ol’ opera mixing larger political/religious conflicts with more intimate (but still closely linked to the large stuff) personal conflicts. The plot is thus...pretty confusing, but after much consideration, this is how I would sum it up briefly:

two brothers, Arvino (tenor) and Pagano (bass-baritone) “reconcile” after the latter was in exile on account of him threatening to kill the former over some romantic disappointments, by which I mean that Pagano and Arvino were both in love with Viclinda (soprano) but she married her true love Arvino and had a daughter, Giselda (soprano). Pagano apparently did not learn his fucking lesson at all because that night, he breaks into Arvino’s house and attempts to abduct Viclinda and kill Arvino, but instead ends up stabbing his and Arvino’s father, killing him. oops. he is summarily sent into exile again. rip.

meanwhile the First Crusade is starting so Arvino, Viclinda, and Giselda all leave for said Crusade, but on the trip a) Viclinda dies offstage (genuine rip) and Giselda is captured by Acciano (bass), the King of Antioch. once at his palace, she immediately comes across the Tired Orientalist Harem Trope TM, becomes best buddies with Acciano’s head wife Sofia (soprano), and falls mutually in love with Sofia’s son Oronte (tenor). Arvino then invades the palace with his men, kills Acciano, wounds Oronte, and attempts to rescue Giselda, but Giselda is Based TM and calls him and the entire Crusade out instead. she finds out Oronte isn’t dead after all (she thought he was) and they run off together.

meanwhile Pagano has become a hermit, which is rather convenient for Giselda and Oronte because Oronte ends up slowly dying from his wound and Pagano baptizes him before he dies (personally not a huge fan of the logic of “your love is a sin and you can’t be together unless your Muslim boyfriend gets baptized” but as far as I know that’s official religious doctrine so...). also Arvino finds out Pagano is nearby and basically organizes a hitman situation. then Oronte appears in a dream to Giselda and tells her where to take the Lombards to get them water, which she does. the hitman thing is presumably successful because Giselda and Arvino find Pagano, who is dying, and everyone finally puts two and two together. the crusaders forgive Pagano, who dies. the end.

yeah. like I said, it’s complicated.

this is my second time watching I Lombardi alla prima crociata, having previously watched it for Verdi’s birthday last year in a 1980s La Scala production, which was nice but somehow hopelessly stuffy. the production I watched was from the Teatro Regio di Torino in 2008, with quite a nice cast (Ruggero Raimondi My Beloved as Pagano/The Hermit). it was traditional but felt less stuffy.

the music is lovely, much in the same vein as Nabucco but a lot of it is more understated to me, from the gorgeous prelude at the very beginning to much of the choral music to the fantastic Giselda/Oronte/Hermit trio in Act III (which has been called “Verdi’s Violin Concerto”, an apt moniker for a marvelous violin solo). when the score explodes, though, it really does, particularly in Giselda’s defiant stand against the crusaders at the end of Act II.

dramatically, I don’t think the characters have the same depth as Nabucco, largely because this opera in many ways feels a bit episodic. while there are many opera where characters can be episodic but have depth, this doesn’t happen a whole lot here: several characters die or disappear from the story before we really get to know them (Viclinda, Acciano, Sofia, and even Oronte), one character spends almost the entire opera pretending to essentially be a Generic Hermit TM, one of the characters is just a complete douche who throws his power around willy-nilly (Arvino). Giselda’s the only really interesting one in the group, but towards the end, she loses a lot of the fire that makes her interesting in the first place. however, it’s nice to know these characters and there are many times where they do feel real.

yeah, I think this is one of those operas where I like the music more than the story. sorry Verdi. you tried. I’m just not really into it, I guess.

#opera #opera tag #I Lombardi alla prima crociata #I Lombardi #Traversing the Verdi Canon #Verdi #Giuseppe Verdi

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precuredaily · 3 years

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Precure Day 203

Episode: Yes! Precure 5 Go Go! 05 - “A Letter to Student Council President Karen” Date watched: 1 January 2021 Original air date: 2 March 2008 Screenshots Transformation Gallery Project info and master list of posts

If they find out I’m faking being good at everything, my life is ruined, got that?

Our character reintroduction/Syrup learns to be a real boy arc continues! Today it’s Karen’s turn to influence him. Let’s dive in!

The Plot

When we left off, Urara had discovered King Donuts, but he was asleep. The episode picks up at school, presumably the next day. Karen ushers everyone into the Student Council room so they can discuss their next steps and/or advertise the assorted functions of the toys. They try to wake the King up by transferring him from Urara’s CureMo to the Rose Pact as well as using the Futon they acquired in an earlier episode. Their shameless advertising is interrupted by two members of the student council who come looking for Karen. They show her that the suggestion box that they set up is now filled with letters for them to take into consideration.

we suggested that you give us names other than “Student A” and “Student B”

(incidentally “Student A”, who I believe is the one on the left, is played by Oki Kanae, who will play Love in Fresh Precure)

After the OP, the scene changes to Scorp’s office in Eternal HQ. He is pondering how to get the Rose Pact while Bunbee offers some backhanded compliments about the difficulty of such a task and plays the fool. His new names for Scorp this episode are Scoop and, of all things, Ketchup. After Scorp storms off out of annoyance, Bunbee decides to see how hard it could really be, so he heads to the school to look for items from the Collection.

Meanwhile, Karen and the student council are reviewing the suggestions they received and determining whether they can implement them. The ideas include getting more novels for the library, decorating the hallway and giving the art club somewhere to display their work (these two solve each other), and installing a flower garden in the courtyard. Nozomi makes some suggestions of her own, including making summer break longer and doubling the size of the yakisoba bread sold at the cafeteria.

that is the appropriate reaction

Komachi wonders whether Karen is stretching herself too thin, but Karen assures her that she has help from everyone, and she’s happy for this program because people help her to see the things she can’t.

The next scene shows a student dropping a letter in the box, which suddenly glows. It cuts to Syrup on the clock tower, thinking about his interactions with the girls over the last few episodes, when suddenly Mailpo receives the student’s letter addressed to Karen, so Syrup heads to their school to deliver it. He gets roped into helping Otaka (the lunch lady/undercover principal) and she repays him in pancakes. Karen comes to talk about a request to address long lines at the cafeteria and recognizes Syrup. The delivery boy remembers his delivery and hands her the letter, which is a request to look into some thefts from the art room. Karen is curious why a letter from the suggestion box rerouted to Mailpo, and Syrup tells her there’s always a reason, so she brings him along to find out why. When they arrive at the art room, they discover Bunbee hauling away with student projects under the mistaken belief that they’re valuables from the Collection. When confronted, he double-checks his list and decries the artwork as worthless before attacking her. This insult annoys Karen, who transforms into Cure Aqua to fight him. Bunbee turns a bust outside the classroom into a Hoshiina and tries to ransack the art room some more, but Aqua protects it, against Syrup’s concerns, because she was asked to.

It looks like she’s outmatched, but the other girls show up in the nick of time to support her and validate her feelings. The Hoshiina is still a tough opponent for all five of them, but Aqua absolutely refuses to let it destroy the art room, espousing that there is nothing in the school that wouldn’t matter if it were lost. Her strong feelings let her perform her new finishing attack, Sapphire Arrow, which is our first archery-based attack in the franchise (but not the last). It destroys the Hoshiina while Bunbee flees. Syrup watches from safety, a little befuddled by the idea that he was tasked with delivering the letter because Karen felt strongly about respecting the request.

On a later day, the five girls and Mr. Kokoda approach the cafeteria, surprised that there seems to be a larger than usual crowd but not the expected line, and the girls discover Syrup working there. Otaka introduces him as Amai Shiro, her new assistant. She slips in a remark that she’s paying him in pancakes (protip, that’s illegal) and there’s awkwardness all around.

The unusual situation is interrupted when the student council girls show up with the suggestion box again, this time full of thank you letters. Karen sits down to read them and Nozomi, Rin, and Urara read Otaka’s menu and realize it’s got a bunch of new stuff on it. Karen comes across one letter that’s actually a drawing of the five of them which says to do her best. Komachi beams at her and Karen hugs the letter to her chest as she things about how fortunate she is to have these friends.

The Analysis

This is another strong episode, although it lacks a certain oomph that the previous one had. I really enjoy seeing Karen in her element, doing her utmost as the student council president to make school life better. It reminds me a lot of episode 14 of the previous series, where all the clubs needed new equipment, and Karen helped them by solving one problem with another. Her unwavering devotion to the student body shows that she’s truly a good student council president, and her earnestness to answer the wishes of the student who raised concerns about the stolen artwork is really moving.

I gotta say that I don’t feel like the Eternal plot is really going anywhere. I know it’s a strange thing to say about the villains, especially this early in the show, but I just do not understand the story angle. I love the evil corporation concept, but right now it seems like Nightmare did it better. Eternal leans more heavily into the paperwork and writing reports, which is a good gag when they use it, but this episode just features Bunbee annoying Scorp and then stealing a bunch of student art projects. The idea was for him to prove that finding this stuff isn’t so hard and show up Scorp, but he mistakes art projects for pieces of the Collection somehow? It makes him look incompetent, which is not unusual for Bunbee of course, but it seems like a new low from the former Nightmare executive whose previous plots involved threatening hostages to get what he wanted. Scorp, as well, has not shown the same degree of menace he did in his initial appearance. More on that next episode.

The B-plot with Syrup is enjoyable and helps round out the episode nicely. He’s largely kept to himself, but he’s starting to really think about how far the Precures go to protect their ideals, and it may yet have an effect on him. Of course, this self-reflection is short lived because he’s tasked with delivering a letter as an excuse to learn about Karen’s strong feelings, and in the process he gets roped into helping Otaka. He protests a bit, but clearly he enjoys it enough to agree to fully work for her, even if he’s mostly interested in eating her pancakes (although the real reason could be so he can stay close to the Precures and learn from them, as well as helping to protect the Rose Pact). It’s a well thought-out setup that allows for some nice gags and keeps Syrup on hand in future episodes.

I enjoy these sorts of day in the life episodes with the girls resolving mundane problems, they have a tendency to feel the most satisfying. I checked the director’s history and he has a history of storyboarding and directing episodes like this. The writer also previously wrote some of the best episodes of Yes 5 of a similar nature, so it’s another good team that comes together. The art and animation was actually a little better and more consistent than the last episode, but there was no standout moment of amazing animation like that wonderful turnaround. I realize you can’t have them all the time, but in an otherwise great episode, I was hoping for another stellar moment such as that. Ah well. Consistently good is plenty, and it makes my galleries look nicer.

Next time on Precure Daily, King Donuts wakes up, and Rin goes to sleep. Look forward to it!

Pink Precure Catchphrase Count: 0 kettei!

#Precure #Pretty Cure #Yes! Precure 5 Go Go!#YPC5GG05 #PCD203

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filmloading361 · 3 years

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More Apocrypha Iirejected Scriptures

(This is the second in a series of posts on texts to be featured in New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures edited by Brent Landau and I. The material here is included also on my More Christian Apocrypha page).

The Revelation of the Magi has appeared recently in an English translation: Brent Landau, Revelation of the Magi: The Lost Tale of the Wise Men’s Journey to Bethlehem (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2010), based on his dissertation (to be published in CCSA) “The Sages and the Star-Child: An Introduction to the Revelation of the Magi, An Ancient Christian Apocryphon” (Ph. D. diss.., Harvard Divinity School, 2008 (available HERE)). Brent and I did not feel it was necessary to include another translation of the text in the MNTA volume, but did want to expose a wider audience to the text. So, we decided to include an introduction and a summary. The same strategy was going to be employed for the Armenian Infancy Gospel (recently translated into English by Abraham Terian) and the apocryphal Apocalypses of John, but those contributions have not materialized.

More Apocrypha Iirejected Scriptures Fulfilled

More Apocrypha Iirejected Scriptures King James Version

The text is available in a single Syriac manuscript (Vatican, Biblioteca apostolica, syr. 162) of a larger text known as the Chronicle of Zuqnin. There are a number of apocryphal Jewish and Christian texts that have been preserved in such chronicles and compendia (e.g., Joseph and Aseneth, material in the Book of the Bee and the Cave of Treasures). The story is told from the perspective of the Magi, who are described much differently than in the canonical account of their journey. Here there are twelve Magi (perhaps more), they hail from a mythological eastern land named Shir, and the name “Magi,” it is said, derives etymologically from their practice of praying in silence. They knew to follow the star to Bethlehem because they are descendants of Seth, the third child of Adam and Eve, who passed on to them a prophecy told to him by his father Adam. The star appears to the Magi in the Cave of Treasures on the Mountain of Victories. There it transforms into a small, luminous being (clearly Christ, but his precise identity is never explicitly revealed) and instructs them about its origins and their mission. The Magi follow the star to Bethlehem, where it transforms into the infant Jesus. Upon returning to their land, the Magi instruct their people about the star-child. In an epilogue likely secondary to the text, Judas Thomas arrives in Shir, baptizes the Magi and commissions them to preach throughout the world.

Rev. Magi contains several interesting parallels with other texts from antiquity, indicating that its traditions about the Magi were wide-spread. The “Cave of Treasures” is mentioned also in the Syriac version of the Testament of Adam (a Christian work from the fifth or sixth century) and from there is taken up in the Cave of Treasures (dated to the sixth century) and the Book of the Bee (from the thirteenth century). Several elements of Rev. Magi's story are found also in the Liber de nativitate salvatoris, an expansion of the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew with curious features that may have originated in a very early infancy gospel. Some aspects of Rev. Magi were also passed on in summary by the anonymous author of a fifth-century commentary on the Gospel of Matthew known as the Opus Imperfectum in Matthaeum. From here some elements found their way into the Golden Legend (ch. 6). The Rev. Magi traditions are surprisingly widespread for a text that, were it not for that one manuscript, would have been lost to history.

Compilation of little-known and never-before-published apocryphal Christian texts in English translation

This anthology of ancient nonbiblical Christian literature presents introductions to and translations of little-known apocryphal texts from a wide variety of genres, most of which have never before been translated into any modern language.

More Buying Choices $102.40 (24 used & new offers) Apocrypha (Large Print): King James Version. 4.7 out of 5 stars 387. The Encyclopedia of Lost and Rejected Scriptures: The Pseudepigrapha and Apocrypha. 4.7 out of 5 stars 532. Hardcover $42.49 $ 42. 49 $65.00 $65.00. FREE Shipping by Amazon. Burke & Long, eds., New Testament Apocrypha, first galley proofs February 19, 2016 1:23 PM New Testament Apocrypha More Noncanonical Scriptures Volume one Edited by Tony Burke and Brent Landau William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company Grand Rapids, Michigan.

An introduction to the volume as a whole addresses the most significant features of the included writings and contextualizes them within the contemporary (quickly evolving) study of the Christian Apocrypha. The body of the book comprises thirty texts that have been carefully introduced, annotated, and translated into readable English by eminent scholars. Ranging from the second century to early in the second millennium, these fascinating texts provide a more complete picture of Christian thought and expression than canonical texts alone can offer.

For ordering information, visit Eerdmans.

PREVIEW (introduction and front matter)

CONTENTS

1. Gospels and Related Traditions of New Testament Figures The Legend of Aphroditianus (Katharina Heyden) The Revelation of the Magi (Brent Landau) The Hospitality of Dysmas (Mark Bilby) The Infancy Gospel of Thomas (Syriac) (Tony Burke) On the Priesthood of Jesus (Bill Adler) Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 210 (Brent Landau) Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 5072 (Ross P. Ponder) The Dialogue of the Paralytic with Christ (Bradley N. Rice) The Toledot Yeshu (Stanley Jones) The Berlin-Strasbourg Apocryphon (Alin Suciu) The Discourse of the Savior and the Dance of the Savior (Paul C. Dilley) An Encomium on Mary Magdalene (Christine Luckritz Marquis) An Encomium on John the Baptist (Philip L. Tite) The Life of John the Baptist by Serapion (Slavomír Céplö) Life and Martyrdom of John the Baptist (Andrew Bernhard) The Legend of the Thirty Silver Pieces (Tony Burke and Slavomír Céplö) The Death of Judas according to Papias (Geoffrey S. Smith)

2. Apocryphal Acts and Related Traditions The Acts of Barnabas (Glenn E. Snyder) The Acts of Cornelius the Centurion (Tony Burke and Witold Witakowski) John and the Robber (Rick Brannan) The History of Simon Cephas, the Chief of the Apostles (Stanley Jones) The Acts of Timothy (Cavan Concannon) The Acts of Titus (Richard Pervo) The Acts of Xanthippe and Polyxena (David Eastman)

3. Epistles The Epistle of Christ from Heaven (Calogero A. Miceli) The Letter of Ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite to Timothy on the Death of Peter and Paul (David Eastman)

More Apocrypha Iirejected Scriptures John Hagee

4. Apocalypses The (Latin) Revelation of John about Antichrist (Charles Wright) The Apocalypse of the Virgin (Stephen Shoemaker) The Tiburtine Sibyl (Stephen Shoemaker) The Investiture of Abbaton (Alin Suciu and Ibrahim Saweros)

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betweenthetimeandsound · 3 years

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Three Minutes to Eternity: My ESC 250 (#230-221)

#230: Dschinghis Khan -- Dschinghis Khan (Germany 1979)

"Die Hufe ihrer Pferde, die peitschten im Sand Sie trugen Angst und Schrecken in jedes Land Und weder Blitz noch Donner hielt sie auf"

"The hoofs of their horses, they lashed in the sand They carried fear and horror in every country And neither flash nor thunder stopped them"

One of my favorite songs to jam to is Boney M's "Rasputin". A disco-influenced song about the life of "Russia's greatest love machine", it's energetic while telling that of a myth. I mention this because Dschinghis Khan is compared to this often, in all the ways.

Only this time, it's about the great conqueror Chinghis Khan, who took over the whole universe (and lasted for a very long time). From how he struck fear across the steppe to fathering seven children in one night, he is seen as the embodiment of masculinity.

While entertaining, sometimes I'm put off by the gimmickry. It can be argued that it wouldn't age that well today, because it can be seen as culturally appropriative or mocking Mongolian culture. But for what it's worth, it's enjoyable and still a classic today.

Personal and actual ranking: 4th/19 in Jerusalem

#229: Louisa Baïleche -- Monts et Merveilles (France 2003)

“Oh, mon amour Où es-tu, mon amour?” “Oh, my love Where are you, my love?”

A definite case of love at first listen for me—Monts et Merveilles is a calming ballad, albeit with sad lyrics about the end of a relationship. The instrumentation is quite nice; it reminds me of songs that stood out on the charts during that time. It also had the "ethnic style" percussion in the bridge, which made me think that France Televisions wanted to mix what worked in the last two years (ballads) with the ethnic sounds from the 1990s (as Louisa is half Kablye, an Algerian ethnic group)

Despite it, it got a pretty low result—though it may be because 2003 was a stronger year songwise compared to the two years that came before it. Or it maybe because of the hair getting into her face that took away from the experience...

Personal ranking: 5th/26 Actual ranking: 18th/26 in Riga

#228: Hakol Over Habibi -- Halayla (Israel 1981)

"הלילה, הלילה, יהיה זה הלילה נאמר דברים שלא אמרנו מעולם"

"Tonight, tonight, it will be the night We’ll say things we’ve never said before"

On a random note, whenever I would search up Idan Raichel's "Hakol Over", Hakol Over Habibi would be one of the first search items that pop up. I would completely ignore it until now, when they actually participated in Eurovision!

That said, Halayla is very groovy song which plays with the disco vibe of the 1970s and the highly energetic choreography that would define 1980s Israeli Eurovision entries. The instrumentation is quite awesome, with the mix of piano, strings, and I think accordion setting up the vibe. (And it switches well from minor to major and back again , which can go awry when done wrong).

The members seem to have a ball on stage, and Kikki looks beautiful in her dress, which was fitted that way because she was pregnant at the time!

Personal ranking: 5th/20 (though it jumps around often...) Actual ranking: 7th/20 in Dublin

#227: Wind -- Laß die Sonne in dein Herz (Germany 1987)

"Manchmal bist du traurig und weißt nicht warum Tausend kleine Kleinigkeiten machen dich ganz stumm Du hast fast vergessen wie das ist, ein Mensch zu sein Doch du bist nicht allein"

"Sometimes you feel sad and you don’t know why Thousands of little reasons are making you dumb You nearly forgot what it’s like to be a human being But you are not alone"

Wind has the interesting distinction of participating three times and coming in second twice out of those three. The first one, "Fur Alle" was seen as such as a big contender that there were bets made against it winning. And then it didn't.

Laß die Sonne in dein Herz didn't come that close to winning in 1987, but I can argue it's the better song of the the three.

It catches you right away with the reggae influences, which creates a relaxed vibe throughout the song. It builds up well with every key change--it does get repetitive at times (especially with the choruses), but never boring. And while it shares a similar theme to Fur Alle, it doesn't come off as either derivative or charitys-single like.

(That said, I did grow to like Fur Alle eventually, but this one was more instantaneous.)

Personal ranking: 7th/22 Actual ranking: 2nd/22 in Brussels

#226: Charlotte Perrelli -- Hero (Sweden 2008)

“This is a story of love and compassion Only heroes can tell.”

The better Charlotte song, in my opinion. The song she won with, “Take Me to Your Heaven” is a complete vintage track, almost influenced by ABBA-nostalgia going on at the time. “Hero” , while still on the same schlager vein, modernizes the production a little bit, to the point I imagine it would be a good pop song of that era.

Alongside that, Hero has some compelling lyrics, one which could summarize the hero's journey in general. I wouldn't be surprised if somebody were to write a Eurovision jukebox musical, they would use this in some format.

That may be the case on why l like it better, but it could also be because it should’ve done better in the contest. The fact the jury wildcard saved Charlotte is a reason why they're around, but the fact there was a wildcard which kicked out the actual tenth placer (North Macedonia's Let Me Love You) could be totally flawed too.

Personal ranking: 6th/43 Actual ranking: =18th/25 (with France) in Belgrade

#225: Carlos Paião -- Playback (Portugal 1981)

“Podes não saber cantar nem sequer assobiar, Com certeza que não vais desafinar, Em play-back, em play-back, em play-back,”

“Maybe you don't know how to sing or even how to whistle But you won't sing out of tune for sure, In playback, in playback, in playback”

This is so modern and infectious it’s unbelievable. From the introduction to Carlos’ biting lyrics to the choreography, it makes one wonder why it got neglected in the voting. 1981 was a strong year, sure, but this song is definitely one of the best of that field.

Playback, as the title suggests, is about the pervasiveness of lip-synching in the music industry. One day, nobody will have to learn how to sing because the playback will save them. They can all focus on the performance without taking note of the song.

It's eerily relevant to Eurovision today, considering we don't use live music anymore and backing vocals can be mimed. I have mixed feelings about the latter, because one side argues it allows different genres of music to appear, but the other argues it reduces artistic credibility. I prefer having live vocals; if a delegation wants to use them on the track (e.g. looping), it should be on a case-by-case basis.

Maybe that's why it somehow made the ESC250 the last two years...

Personal ranking: 4th/20 Actual ranking: =18th/20 (with Turkey) in Dublin

#224: Emma -- La mia città (Italy 2014)

“E dimmi se c’è davvero una meta O dovrò correre per la felicità”

“And tell me if there really is a destination Or I have to run for happiness”

The black sheep of Italy’s post-comeback output, and coincidentally the only song completely chosen internally. That being said, La mia citta is still a good song, and for me it’s better than some of the fan-favorites out there.

Admittedly, I prefer the punchy verses to the chorus, with the latter reminding me of something out of P!nk's discography, but I revel on Emma’s energy and her letter to the city of Rome. We have struggles about the place we are from, but still try to sing its praises when we can!

The staging was a bit tacky at times, but I did like the aesthetics of it—particularly her laurel wreath. Her costume had a good concept also, but is also overdone it in terms of the bejeweled top.

(As for the Sanremo winner that year, Contravento, it feels like a bit of a grower. The clarinet intro really takes one in, but there has to be a whimsical, sweet staging to accompany the hopeful song. Had they done so, a left-side finish would've waited for them)

Personal ranking: 6th/37 Actual ranking: 21st/26 in Copenhagen

#223: Brigitta -- Open Your Heart (Iceland 2003)

“Everything you share with me Turns a little darkness into light And that is how we’re meant to be Truth will keep the light shining brighter”

Also known as, the woman who originally came from Husavik! The difference is that Birgitta was the lead singer of the group Irafar. Open Your Heart reminds me of songs that end up on DCOM (Disney Channel Original Movie) soundtracks—it can actually work in the end, but also in the beginning to introduce the characters and/or their circumstances. The random running order really helped it with being first, haha! Beyond that, it's an optimistic song, helped with the guitar influences which ground it in the era. Plus, the production and lyrics add to this feel, encouraging even the shiest to open up their feelings. Also, I like the flowery aesthetic that Birgitta has, from one in her hair to the larger one (which I think is real?) on her microphone. Personal ranking: 4th/26 Actual ranking: 8th/26 in Riga

#222: Tomas Ledlin -- Just nu! (Sweden 1980)

“Han vill dra iväg, kanske ner till Paris Och hitta äventyret på något vis Inte sitta här på stans konditori Och låta tankarna, bara fladdra förbi” “He wants to go away, perhaps down to Paris And find adventure somehow And not just sitting here at the local café Just letting the thoughts flutter by” The 1980s saw the genre New Wave come to vogue, and Just Nu was a valiant attempt on the genre, especially considering the direction Eurovision would go later. From the opening notes, I got the punkish notes from the instrumentation, and the lyrics definitely add to the feeling of being free from societal expectations, crying out "right now"! (which is funny, because I learned Romanian at one point and nu means no in the language. So I keep thinking it's "just no!" against conformity) Tomas also shows quite the attitude on stage--he just struts into the stage with a boyish charm and kickstarts the song. With his looks and usage of the microphone stand, he portrays this rebellious character well, though the orchestration could’ve been improved with the strings and flute. Personal ranking: 2nd/19 Actual ranking: 10th/19 in Den Haag

#221: Lea Sirk -- Hvala, ne! (Slovenia 2018)

“Moje ime je Lea in/Za vas imam nov lik!” “My name is Lea/ And I have a new character for you!”

I love the opening lines for this song—it immediately sets the tone and has a strong statement alongside it. She's Lea, and she won't let anything down on She asserts that she can’t be sold out, and has a great attitude to accompany the trap beat, which reminds me of a K-pop song for some reason. The staging fits the song to a T--though it didn't need any changes from the NF, haha. As for the fake break, I don't have any strong opinions on it, but it definitely kept up interest for the song. A nicer touch was the Portuguese line in the end. Either way, it was a surprise qualifier in its semi that year, and it was one surprise that I greatly welcomed. Hvala da!

Personal ranking: 8th/43 Actual ranking: 22nd/26 GF in Lisbon

#esc 250 #esc top 250 #esc germany #esc france #esc israel #esc sweden #esc portugal #esc italy #esc iceland #esc slovenia #three minutes to eternity #eurovision song contest

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fairestcat · 5 years

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We Did The Thing: Musings On the AO3, Wiscon, and Winning the Fandom Culture Wars

HOLY SHIT WE WON A MOTHERFUCKING HUGO.

Ahem.

More seriously - or at least more verbosely - I think we won the fandom culture wars. How weird is that?

This is a sort of rambly post. It's about the OTW and the AO3, but it's also about Wiscon, because that's the community I'm in where old-school SFF fandom and transformative works fandom collide, and it's where I've watched this transformation happen over the last decade.

Back in October I made a tumblr post about the history of the OTW/AO3: On the AO3 all these years later.

That post is mostly just quotes from the comments to @astolat's original post that started the AO3: An Archive Of One's Own - and quotes from the post I made back then linking to hers: An Archive of One's Own, Or: Why Shouldn't We Ask For Everything We Want?

Those posts are from May 2007. I was on the OTW Finance Committee by that fall.

One year later, in May 2008, I went to my first Wiscon. I was on two panels: "Fanfic and Slash 201," and "Fanfic Rising: The Organization for Transformative Works."

They were back to back on Saturday night. "Fanfic and Slash 201" from 9:00 to 10:15 and the OTW panel from 10:30 to 11:45. All fanworks panels at non fanworks-specific cons were late night panels back then. Or, occasionally, on Monday morning after half the con had gone home.

I don't remember who else was on the Fanfic 201 panel, but the OTW panel was me, @oliviacirce and ellen_fremedon. The three of us had never met before that con. @oliviacirce and I had been in Chicago Friday night for a Panic! At the Disco concert and hadn't gotten back to Madison until 3am. I have no idea how we were even still coherent for a 10:30 PM panel.

None of us wrote the panel description, which reads even more impressively antagonistic in retrospect.

"The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), led by fanfic writers, fan vidders, and fan artists (including writer Naomi Novik) seeks to establish a new regime in copyright law, in which 'all fannish works are recognized as legal and transformative and are accepted as a legitimate creative activity.' Should there be an exception for fanfic under copyright? Is OTW a good idea? (Some fans are afraid that OTW's activities will end BigMedia's tolerance for fannish creations.) What does the law say? What's the viewpoint of those who create original works -- should authors lose control of their original creations, as long as fans claim protection under a fanfic exception? And what about OTW's commitment to offer protection for RPF (Real People Fanfic)?"

At the time I would have said it was a pretty good panel, and yet we spent a distressing percentage of the panel defending the mere right of fanworks to even exist.

I went back to Wiscon in 2009, which was an...eventful year. It was the first Wiscon post-Racefail and it sparked a lot of discussion of intersecting modes of fannishness and particularly online fandom vs. offline con-based fandom, which was at the time a much bigger divide.

Wiscon 2009 was also the year @ellen_fremedon went to a panel on historical fiction, and got jumped on by Ellen Klages, who was one of that year's Guests of Honor, for the sin of mentioning fanfic in her presence.

After that Wiscon I posted Wiscon, Media Fandom and The Larger Fannish Conversation, about my experience of that divide, particularly as a transformative works fan at Wiscon.

Here's the thing: online media and fanfic fandom is a vibrant, active community within broader SF fandom. [...] And to a large extent media fandom is where the young female fans are, the women who are the future of fandom. We're there at Wiscon too; I was amazed by the number of people from LJ fandom I saw at the con this year. And yet, when it comes to having a voice in larger fandom, we're still the embarrassing cousin shuffled off into the corner (or the hotel lobby). Even at Wiscon, the feminist science fiction convention, we're mostly under the radar, carving out a tiny niche for ourselves.

Last year we had two general, broad-topic fanfic panels. This year we had a fanfic panel, a vidding panel and the media vs. book fandom panel, which was not explicitly a media fandom panel but had an audience heavily weighted towards media fandom participants. And I walked into those panels and I thought "Here! Here are my people!" But it was frustrating too. Why are we relegated to the corner, why are we willing to be relegated to the corner? The conversations we're having, the things we're doing, they don't exist in a vacuum, they're relevant to the larger fannish conversation, they're especially relevant, I think, to the conversation going on at Wiscon. And I think it's time we were a bigger, more open part of that conversation.

So, we set out to make that happen. The OTW and the AO3 were a big part of that. Everyone who was worried at the time that the OTW would bring too much attention to fandom was right to be afraid. And wrong to be afraid too. Because that attention was how everything started to change. The OTW was fandom coming out of the closet, and like any coming out it was a powerful, transformative moment for those involved.

In 2010, a group of fans held the first ever Wiscon Vid Party.

At Wiscon in 2010, we held the first ever vid party in one of these hospitality suites on the Saturday night, from 9pm to 3am. That's six hours of vid programming! It was mostly unthemed, other than "here are some amazing vids!"[...] The general vibe of the party was loud, a little bit raucous, and pretty informal. We had a mixture of sofas and armchairs, stackable seating, and standing room. People came and went at will. We put a sign on the door asking people to keep conversations to a minimum, and it worked pretty well to keep chatter down while still allowing people to relax and have a good time. It was pretty much like a really big living room.

I missed that con due to the whole move to Canada and get married thing I did, but I remember my first Vid Party in 2012, looking around the party room and having this amazing feeling of being surrounded by my people.

I loved Wiscon, but it was always a fraught experience. There was always this worry that I'd say the wrong thing in the wrong place and suddenly get that disappointed, "oh, you're one of those fans," response. The vid party was the one place at the con that you could just walk in and that worry went away.

And then there started being more of those places. We started suggesting more and more fic and vid related panels.

In 2012, @oliviacirce and I were both on two transformative works panels. "What makes a great transformative work?" and "Fans Fix SF." In a step up from previous fanworks panels at Wiscon they were both during the day. But they were also both in the smallest panel rooms at the con, and both panels fit comfortably into those rooms. Conference 5, where "Fans Fix SF" was held, is still the only room Wiscon uses for programming that's so small it isn't wired for microphones.

And then in 2013 I suggested ten panels for Wiscon and nine of them ended up on the schedule. They weren't all explicitly transformative fandom panels, but a lot of them were, and most of the panel descriptions were informed by my experience in transformative works fandom. Looking back, that was a sea-change moment, because an interesting thing happened. There mostly stopped being transformative fandom-specific panels at Wiscon, because it started being okay, even expected, that fanfic and other transformative works might come up on any panel, from the audience or the panelists.

At Wiscon 2018, I went to a panel on #OwnVoices fiction. Every panelist was a published author and/or professional editor. In the course of the panel, every panelist mentioned fanfic in general or the AO3 in specific in an explicitly complementary fashion. I nearly burst into tears in the back of the panel room.

Afterwards, I met up with @oliviacirce and ellen_fremedon to flail about it, at which point we realized that it had been ten years since that first fateful OTW panel where we all met. And that ten years both felt like so long ago, and also so recent for everything to have changed so completely.

At Wiscon 2019, the three of us were on another panel together. We called it "Fanfic: Threat or Menace - Ten Years Later," and this time I wrote the description:

Do you remember a time before the AO3? Do you remember a time when mentioning fanfic at Wiscon risked a lecture on its illegality and/or immorality? We sure do! In 2008 we met on the panel “Fanfic Rising: The Organization for Transformative Works,” & spent most of our time defending the right of fanworks to exist. In 2018 we were amazed to realize just how much had changed. Let’s talk about how the perception & reception of fanworks have changed, both in fandom at large and right here at Wiscon.

We made it onto the schedule. They once again put us in the smallest panel room. We looked around the lobby on Thursday night and said, "yeah, that ain't happening." We eventually moved to one of the largest panel rooms.

It was almost completely full.

I started the panel by reading out the original panel description from 2008. There was laughter! revolutionaryjo came up afterwards and asked to take a picture of the description on my phone. There were so many people in that room who had no idea what the Wiscon of a decade previous had been like. It was amazing.

Best Related Work? The OTW and AO3 changed the nature of the relationship between fic readers and writers and the entirety of mainstream organized SFF fandom.

The Wiscon Vid Party is still happening, and it's still a marathon of amazing vids, but it's not a really big living room anymore. The Vid Party is the Friday night feature in the biggest panel room. There are Premieres. There’s a sing-a-long. People come who have never watched a vid outside of Wiscon. People come who've never even heard of vids outside of Wiscon. The first year the Vid Party was in the big room, I walked into the room just before the show started, looked around, and realized I didn't recognize ⅔ of the people in the room. And I was so happy. Because I no longer need the Vid Party as a safe space to let down my guard, the entire con is now that place.

We did that. We made that happen.

The OTW made that happen. The AO3 made that happen. But also, a whole lot of individual fans made that happen. We stepped out of our corner, we stepped out of our closet. We demanded a seat at the table. And now we have a motherfucking HUGO AWARD, and when Naomi Novik got on stage at the Hugos and asked everyone who felt that they were part of the AO3 to stand up to be acknowledged, a notable number of this year's other Hugo nominees were among the attendees who got to their feet.

#ao3 #HUGO AWARD WINNING AO3 #we did the thing #otw #wiscon #meta

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