Some Thoughts On ONE And His Themes

Lovely, sun-filled room is perfect for plants. (The lucky lady who lives here says, “ Y’all… I am never going to get over how privileged I am to be living in this room.”)

via instagram

Making a Villain Richard III by William Shakespeare Look What You Made Me Do by Taylor Swift Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo Tangled (2010) screenplay by Dan Fogelman No Good Deed (from Wicked the Musical) by Stephen Schwartz Untitled Poetry by Stephanie Bennett-Henry mad woman by Taylor Swift

if you define “woman” as anyone who feels like one, or whatever, then there is no actual basis of female reality. the struggles of natal women are erased and swept under the rug in the name of “inclusion” and we move backwards.

I’m really obsessed with the idea of worldbuilding that refuses to clarify its relationship to reality

When we read books we instinctively try to categorize books based on the kind of book they are, oh this is fantasy, post-apocalyptic, etc. and we try to find out things and clarify what kind of world it is and whether or not the things in it are make believe and how make believe they are.

So what if I...Messed with that process?

For instance. A book is set in Ohio. We mention the names of cities in Ohio and pieces of Ohio’s history and famous landmarks in Ohio and it’s incredibly well researched, even down to the names of museums in Cincinnati or something. We’re talking very firmly established in the facts of a place. It’s kind of an eerie book and in some ways the setting seems weird or cloudy or dreamy but it seems grounded in just the amount of facts that are in it about the setting.

There are little factoids dropped here and there. At first very boring ones. Something that happened at an Ohio water treatment plant in 1995. What it takes to serve on a jury in Ohio. Ohio laws about spraying pesticides on corn. Facts about corn itself. Probably one of those cutesy little facts about weird local laws.

They start to get...stranger. The little bits of worldbuilding. Did you know that Ohio has had more nuclear power plant accidents than any other state? In this small town in Ohio, you used to need a license to perform an exorcism! This charming small town’s mayor is a ghost. In Ohio, it is legal for doctors to draw more of your blood than they need to sell to third parties. There are no Dollar Tree’s in Ohio. (Have you ever seen a Dollar Tree in Ohio? Are you sure?)

At some point the reader catches onto something that is clearly not right. Maybe the book states at some point that Indiana is to the east of Ohio instead of the west. This is clearly a mistake, and they move on.

Some things about the everyday realities of the setting seem peculiar. There seem to be quite a bit of packs of wild dogs about, and mold seems to grow a lot quicker. Grass is described very strangely—a shade of green that isn’t very characteristic of grass. There seem to be a lot of cults, and there are a lot of empty lots in town enclosed with razor wire for no apparent reason. Sometimes a character’s hands grow suddenly cold, and they panic and hasten inside. Frostbite? Is it the climate? Why does the author write that way?

At some point, though, it becomes clear that the author is fictionalizing a bit. It may certainly be the case that nuclear accidents have occurred in Ohio more than any other state, but the tale of how deer from that area glow in low light is probably made up. And though that famous televangelist existed and it seems plausible enough that he owned tigers, like some kind of janky drug dealer would purchase, it seems implausible that he regularly fed people to them.

As the story continues, more and more facts seem a little off, though. The spatial relationship of Ohio to its surrounding states, and the shape that Ohio is (it’s described at one point as having a panhandle, and as bordering East Tennessee) seems to make less and less sense. The wild dogs are massive, and have smoldering eyes like hellhounds. One nuclear disaster apparently wiped out a full sixth of Ohio’s population. The deer, plagued with cancer from the radiation, have turned carnivores. The wild horses run under a red sky—the sky is always described as red. The original capital of Ohio is lost, its stones dashed down in the war that made its citizens turn to cannibalism. The invasive plants of Ohio can pry open windows, and once choked a woman in her sleep. The people of Ohio dream more frequently of birds of prey gouging out their eyes than people in any other state. There are plagues of rats in Ohio that sometimes devastate towns. In Ohio, unexplained disappearances are rarely investigated. There are eagles in Ohio—their wings blot out the sun. Ohio briefly seceded from the Union in 1922, and there are those that still believe in the Free People’s Empire of Ohio. Ohio shares a border with Arizona. Ohio has a coastline on the edge of a dark and perpetually cold sea.

It becomes abundantly clear that this is not Ohio. It is something else, named Ohio and superficially wearing Ohio as a skin, but it is not Ohio. And looking back, it is hard to tell when it stopped being Ohio. When it stopped being just quirky Americana and an eerie mood and started being...this. Small details were off early on, but these were not noticed, because they seemed so normal. The sky was always described as red, but that was because it was supposed to be sunset...right?

The governor of Ohio has been struck down. All bow before the God-Emperor of Ohio. The black wolves of Hell await those who will not bow with their teeth.

im back slightly better than before but at least i feel like drawing again.

- Why must you hurt me like this, Illumi?…♠

Books

Viktor really loves books, his apartment is crammed with them. When he was younger, some of the more fantastical stories ended up inspiring a lot of his routines, ever desperate to play out the hero of certain things he’s read. 

As he gets older, Viktor basically finds reading to be one of his few hobbies. At first he does it a lot at Yakov’s insistence to improve on his English around the time he becomes internationally famous, essentially sticking to the classics at first (causing him to sound incredibly pretentious for a year or so), before deciding he genuinely enjoys it, expanding his tastes more into non-fiction.

He picks up a pretty bad habit of starting the longest novels possible on flights to competitions, which often ends in him not finishing it, and proceeding to spend basically every moment off the ice with his nose in a book (which is why a lot of the other skaters go unnoticed and recognised). 

Yuuri at first thinks it’s a little weird how Viktor seems to have random spouts of knowledge on a seemingly infinite amount of subjects, and can quote things like detailed philosophy out of nowhere, but mostly he puts it down to him just being a sophisticated person, and that’s what he assumes sophisticated people do. 

It’s only when they move to St Petersburg together, and Viktor is reunited with the books that he had no space for in Japan, that Yuuri realises that his fiance is… well, a book nerd. All things considered, Yuuri is a night owl, but that’s nothing compared to Viktor when he’s in the middle of a good book. Thankfully, Yuuri manages to adapt to sleeping with the bedside light on, and the sound of turning pages. 

He begins to find it endearing one of the few times he actually gets a response when he politely asks what he’s reading (usually it’s just a mumble as he holds up the front cover). In this case, it happens to be some sort of mythology collection, which Viktor goes into about half an hour of excited discussion about every little thing he finds interesting. It’s like some kind of barrier has gone down and Yuuri can’t help but loving the man just that little bit more with every passionate word that slips from his mouth

Even if he does force Yuuri into dressing as Harry Potter for a party one time.