Okay Goodnight - Tumblr Posts

My favorite part about getting ready for bed is when I slather my lips with a disgusting amount of aquaphor.

I mean, what if my Prince Charming finds me and has to kiss me awake? Can’t have that happen if my lips are dry and cracked.

there wasnt supposed to be two griandes but well

‘GIMME GIMME’ ♡ TAEYONG

봄여름가을겨울 (Still Life)

The Korean title is Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter

4 rows of flowers. Gerbera daisies in 4 colors. 4 seasons of change. And now that the ice is thawing, the ground softening, the sun warming the air, and the petals of spring’s first flowers unfurling, 4 members are returning after 4 years of silence and seclusion to keep a heartfelt promise: that we would one day meet again when the flowers bloom.

They were only dormant, not dead. There’s still life in them… and in us, too.

The English title Still Life is possibly a callback to Still Alive, the first track on BIGBANG’s EP Alive (2012) and a triumphant anthem about the group overcoming their last brush with crushing, nearly career-ending controversy. But even if it is a nod to that, it’s probably also an homage to the members’ love of art. A still life is an age-old form of art depicting inanimate objects, usually commonplace items like food, furniture, utensils, household decor, etc. Flower pieces are a popular subject of still life paintings.

This is where I scratch my head. Maybe it’s just me, but the Korean and English titles seem to send mixed messages. The four seasons, collectively, are a well-known metaphor for change, especially a kind of constant, natural change that occurs in cycles (“the only constant in life is change”). But a “still life” is exactly what it sounds like, with a focus on that which is unchanging, motionless, inert. Maybe they’re saying that though they’ve changed in some ways, in others ways (in every way that matters) they’re still the same BIGBANG we know and love.

Or maybe they’re saying that the stillness of the last few years existed only on the surface. Looking back, this has been BIGBANG’s lengthiest hiatus to date – to us a period of stagnation and creative calm as the guys took the time we believed they needed to regroup and put down new roots. But still waters run deep, and far below, down in the dark where we couldn’t see, they were remaking themselves in secrecy. As observers, stuck on the outside looking in, the BIGBANG we saw was a still image – a still life. But while they were out of sight they underwent seasons of change. And now that that they’ve resurfaced, they’re going to show us what they became.

How many of you remember, in the days leading up to enlistment, the guys saying that they looked forward to showing us sides of themselves they’d never been able to show before?

Or maybe the “still life” title isn’t about the band at all. It could be about us, the fans. Maybe they’re saying that through the changing seasons of their lives VIPs have been a steady, reassuring presence.

The possibilities are endless, but I’ll stop there. We’ll find out what it is they want to say to us soon enough! (Feel free to reblog or comment with your own thoughts though!)

As for the teaser poster, the undeveloped Polaroid photo… turns out that is actually an existing work of art that as far as I can tell is titled Elaine Lustig Cohen - Ad Reinhardt, 1966. It’s more than just a Polaroid; it’s a painting by Ad Reinhardt positioned inside the frame of a Polaroid photo. Reinhardt is known for his solid-colored paintings that appear to form an image the longer the viewer looks at it. Out of the black, blues and browns seem to emerge. Interestingly, this is precisely what happened when BIGBANG released the teaser poster that was actually one of Reinhardt’s “black” paintings, though we didn’t know it at the time; VIPs began analyzing the image in search of shapes, seeking something recognizable. Many shared that they saw people embracing. Here are some examples from Twitter:

Whether there was any accuracy to the things people were seeing, I suppose only the artist would know. But now that the next teaser has been released, revealing flowers and no figures at all, there’s no reason to keep guessing! It was fun while it lasted (personally, I saw two people embracing, a man and a woman, but that’s no matter now.)

Reinhardt’s work was recently featured at the Pace Gallery in New York from February-March 2022 in an exhibition aptly named Color Out of Darkness. It’s possible the BIGBANG members were inspired by the exhibition (GD and TOP supposedly have some kind of connection to Pace Gallery) and so chose to incorporate Reinhardt’s work into their own? If so, I can’t think of a more fitting comeback concept for them than color out of darkness. Fields of flowers bursting with color, bright with pigment and promise, no longer shrouded in black. This spring BIGBANG will join VIPs on this flower road we’ve been faithfully walking… together at last.

봄여름가을겨울 (Still Life)

The Korean title is Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter

4 rows of flowers. Gerbera daisies in 4 colors. 4 seasons of change. And now that the ice is thawing, the ground softening, the sun warming the air, and the petals of spring’s first flowers unfurling, 4 members are returning after 4 years of silence and seclusion to keep a heartfelt promise: that we would one day meet again when the flowers bloom.

They were only dormant, not dead. There’s still life in them… and in us, too.

The English title Still Life is possibly a callback to Still Alive, the first track on BIGBANG’s EP Alive (2012) and a triumphant anthem about the group overcoming their last brush with crushing, nearly career-ending controversy. But even if it is a nod to that, it’s probably also an homage to the members’ love of art. A still life is an age-old form of art depicting inanimate objects, usually commonplace items like food, furniture, utensils, household decor, etc. Flower pieces are a popular subject of still life paintings.

This is where I scratch my head. Maybe it’s just me, but the Korean and English titles seem to send mixed messages. The four seasons, collectively, are a well-known metaphor for change, especially a kind of constant, natural change that occurs in cycles (“the only constant in life is change”). But a “still life” is exactly what it sounds like, with a focus on that which is unchanging, motionless, inert. Maybe they’re saying that though they’ve changed in some ways, in others ways (in every way that matters) they’re still the same BIGBANG we know and love.

Or maybe they’re saying that the stillness of the last few years existed only on the surface. Looking back, this has been BIGBANG’s lengthiest hiatus to date – to us a period of stagnation and creative calm as the guys took the time we believed they needed to regroup and put down new roots. But still waters run deep, and far below, down in the dark where we couldn’t see, they were remaking themselves in secrecy. As observers, stuck on the outside looking in, the BIGBANG we saw was a still image – a still life. But while they were out of sight they underwent seasons of change. And now that that they’ve resurfaced, they’re going to show us what they became.

How many of you remember, in the days leading up to enlistment, the guys saying that they looked forward to showing us sides of themselves they’d never been able to show before?

Or maybe the “still life” title isn’t about the band at all. It could be about us, the fans. Maybe they’re saying that through the changing seasons of their lives VIPs have been a steady, reassuring presence.

The possibilities are endless, but I’ll stop there. We’ll find out what it is they want to say to us soon enough! (Feel free to reblog or comment with your own thoughts though!)

As for the teaser poster, the undeveloped Polaroid photo… turns out that is actually an existing work of art that as far as I can tell is titled Elaine Lustig Cohen - Ad Reinhardt, 1966. It’s more than just a Polaroid; it’s a painting by Ad Reinhardt positioned inside the frame of a Polaroid photo. Reinhardt is known for his solid-colored paintings that appear to form an image the longer the viewer looks at it. Out of the black, blues and browns seem to emerge. Interestingly, this is precisely what happened when BIGBANG released the teaser poster that was actually one of Reinhardt’s “black” paintings, though we didn’t know it at the time; VIPs began analyzing the image in search of shapes, seeking something recognizable. Many shared that they saw people embracing. Here are some examples from Twitter:

Whether there was any accuracy to the things people were seeing, I suppose only the artist would know. But now that the next teaser has been released, revealing flowers and no figures at all, there’s no reason to keep guessing! It was fun while it lasted (personally, I saw two people embracing, a man and a woman, but that’s no matter now.)

Reinhardt’s work was recently featured at the Pace Gallery in New York from February-March 2022 in an exhibition aptly named Color Out of Darkness. It’s possible the BIGBANG members were inspired by the exhibition (GD and TOP supposedly have some kind of connection to Pace Gallery) and so chose to incorporate Reinhardt’s work into their own? If so, I can’t think of a more fitting comeback concept for them than color out of darkness. Fields of flowers bursting with color, bright with pigment and promise, no longer shrouded in black. This spring BIGBANG will join VIPs on this flower road we’ve been faithfully walking… together at last.

Notes on Luke Castellan,

I would like to say first,

Map is almost done!!!! I just have to finish some like very fine-tuned layout stuff when the weekend roles around.

But! This is in part mostly, on Luke’s last name,

Castellan is a governor of a castle/warden of a prison

It works with Luke’s whole thing a little, with the whole Kronos’s right hand man/puppet/vessel or whatever,

What I wanted to talk about were these, Castellanus cloud formations,

These guys right here, specifically what Castellanus clouds are those towers of clouds that are ‘reaching’ up higher into the sky.

Reaching up to the heavens, clawing their ways up.

I just thought that it was interesting that it matched up so well that Luke Castellan clawed and reached up to Olympus, to the heavens, to tear it all down and these clouds that have similar names are the ones that reach up and appear to also be reaching up for the sky.

Probably not intentional but I thought it was cool and interesting over the correlation and this is 100% just a tide over until I do have the whole ‘As historically accurate as I’m willing to research Camp Jupiter map’

Anyway have a good night :]

The Camp Jupiter thing.

That is a vague title, but ‘The various reasons that we have gotten fundamental rules about the ascendancy in Camp Jupiter due to the list of characters we were given’ this post has turned into ‘Various reasons I’m sad about canon Camp Jupiter’

I will note I just go off on like 50 tangents through this post, bear with me. And I forget what I was talking about halfway through. But hey! Long post :D also I’m reading through this and note I am not serious about this, I am cannonically a silly Kerropi and Choco cat hugging on the internet that talks about how much I like Rome and this fictional franchise- please don’t take anything I say too seriously, I can’t put up good arguments without actually trying to format my points in a argumentative essay format. This is just me typing words and thinking it’s good enough.

This takes into account that I have not read ToA yet because for some reason the hidden oracle falls under the same problem that I had with reading TLT or tTC; which is very slow first chapters that are hard to get through :[ So nothing other than what I know about ToA Camp Jupiter stuff (which is dubious) won’t be talked about; sadly including characters that are fully introduced in ToA and their issues, though I’ll probably mention them or something.

Okay, these are claims, but I’ve now decided to dedicate my bus ride to this issue that I’ve realized (that probably is well known and whatever) while those are a couple things,

First and the most well-known Camp Jupiter thing is lack of characterization, or at least consistent characterization (the first cohort),

Aside from our POVs I feel that (and I think most of what I’ve seen from the community) the characters don’t have much of any Characterization, and not in a like ‘these characters don’t have complex narratives and that means they suck >:[‘ but in the fact that they don’t have.. much of anything? Comparing them to Camp Half-Blood seems the best, some of the side characters we see there like Clarisse La Rue, Charles Beckendorf, Silena Beauregard, and Thalia Grace, and more I can’t think about right now all have noticeable to somewhat noticeable arcs, and clear characterization and more than just 2D personalities. (I don’t focus on Camp Half-Blood nearly enough to give rundowns of them and I don’t have room, but note that every single CHB character mentioned has at least 1 B plot and is important to the narrative)

Now, let’s look at Camp Jupiter characters were given (that don’t end up POVs because they obviously have to be given complex personalities.. to which degree it is effective and how they chose to use those personalities is probably a different post) but we have characters that get Characterization like,

Octavian; A character set up to be some form of threat, even though repeatedly we are shown that, despite what traits were told he has, are shown a different character. Who then in the next books is played for laughs because the community didn’t like him enough and is eventually killed off without a solid reason to be killed off. He is set up to be a threat and told to be a threat, but showed to be incompetent and played for comedic value to varying sucess (don’t set up a character as a villain that is said to be hard to deal with if you then turn around and have him beat in the first 5 pages and then continue to beat him again and again without any strain from your Protags)

Michael; We know nothing about him, we are told that he is ripped and that he is meant to be Octavian’s closed ally and confidant (that is slightly exaggerated but he is meant to be close to Octavian) then we see him remorselessly wave and say goodbye as Octavian is murdered and simply walk away (Also and exaggeration, but like- he’s not doing himself any favors)

Dakota; he’s not really given a personality that is distinct, and is played for an addiction joke before being killed off (I have no idea if he is given any character in ToA, but like..)

Bryce Lawerence; given the stereotypical traits for a psychopath, given 2 minutes of screen time to be un-menacing and then to have a horrific death.

I chose some of the worse options (also options of characters I hold dear to my heart and like talking about) but there are probably a plethora of other characters that can also be used as examples. The point is, comparing them to other secondary characters that are presented in the books. They are used situationally, for laughs, to fill in a menacing problem blank or be killed off, and for one of them (*cough, cough* OCTAVIAN *cough, cough*) they fit all of the boxes I have listed. Which sucks because it generally means that when thinking about Camp Jupiter characters, there is digging and a whole lot of interpreting you have to do to squeeze character and possible traits out of them. I’ve been ranting a lot and it’s hard to get what I’m trying to say typed, but I hope when I say ‘most characters were given are nothing burgers’ people understand what I’m trying to convey; that compared to other characters in the same universe that are written by the same author; Camp Jupiters characters are given so much less amazing characterization!

Also I don’t quite know where to put this; but the books treat Camp Jupiter with this mob mentality, but not in a like actual way; but in a ‘I think of them as just a hive mind instead of people with distinct personalities’ where again, in Camp Half-Blood they all have these somewhat distinct personalities and would react differently to situations, where Camp Jupiter, one of the Praetors would say something and then we wouldn’t care because there would be no mixed reaction. There is no CJ equivelant to the Apollo and Ares cabin having a tiff over a chariot, literally it’s just ‘we agree that the 5th sucks haha’. I consider this for one key reason; we aren’t introduced to enough characters in Camp Jupiter who have distinct personalities nor are we introduced to a big variety of characters! And most of the times we get a variety of characters is in probatio’s journal, an extra short story book that people who aren’t interested in Camp Jupiter. THAT I AGAIN MENTION NAMED A DAUGHTER OF JANUS JANICE!!! it’s not a big deal, it’s fine; but it bothers ME. It shouldn’t, it’s fun, it’s a short story but still.

Okay, okay. Second reason is the Centurion/position of power issue. NOT including Probatio’s journal (which I decided not to read before this) almost every single character in Camp Jupiter we are introduced to is or ascends to a position of power. We don’t get a ‘hi I’m Jerry and I’m just a legionnaire trying to work through’ even characters that don’t need to be in other positions of power like my example, Larry.

Larry is mentioned in the Senate scene of SoN, opposing Frank rising to Centurion-hood. Great, he can be one of the 10 elected senators we are told about and then we never have to talk about him again.

But, they had to make him the Centurion of the 2nd cohort. Okay, great, that’s fine- he just was cool enough to be elected as a senator.

But that’s not just it. Every single character that was mentioned there (not including Cato’s ghost which is wild but extremely funny in my opinion- no I will not be elaborating on why it is funny to me) was a centurion or in a position of power. Every named character was a Centurion, Praetor, or someone who ended up being a Centurion or Praetor (I don’t remember if we’re told names of Veterans, other senators, or if there is a character that was just mentioned without a secondary rank).

But, that itself is like, all fine and dandy. If this and the scene right before it didn’t throw around a bunch of rules during it. Which- with the combination of lack of named characters that were purely elected Senators, we ended up with mishaps like thinking the rule for Centurion’s that they had to serve 5 years in camp before being able to.. like be a centurion (if there is confirmation that the rule applies to Centurions somewhere else in the book please tell me) but no, the quote is just in relation to being a Senator. (I just realized but it doesn’t help that Dakota; our in the book closest source of info for Centurions also happens to be a Senator)

But Okay, so that- and then there is the obvious assumption that Centurions just also go and serve in the senate. Though- I don’t believe that is explicitly mentioned in the books- so not confirmed..? My memory is dubious though so this is a little more flimsy- BUT THE POINT-

The point is, that without any labeling or clear-cut rules that are told to us, it’s harder to know. In combination with the rules we were told being muddled up between the two roles, and it’s not helping when all the characters there mentioned in the senate end up being Centurions- it’s a mess.

I at this point, I have lost the whole point I was trying to talk about. But yeah. Camp Jupiter has a lot of problems, and suffers so much (in my opinion) from the lack of utilization. It makes me sad and upset, and now I have to go re-read Camp Jupiter’s parts in SoN to confirm… a lot of things that were wrong. And think a lot harder on things.

But yes. Camp Jupiter makes me so happy and then realizing Camp Jupiter isn’t written the best makes me very sad/upset/angry but yeah. Lets give Camp Jupiter better characterization and actual characters- yeah :D

I say this a lot in recent posts, but I am a little tired compared to when I wrote most of this and I feel like that’s obvious, but Camp Jupiter map is about.. 75-80% ish done. The first draft at least will be done by at the least, this weekend. I’ll probably either finish a Dionysus/Bacchus kids post I was working on, or start on that Michael Varus post, talk more about Larry because he’s so infrequent but is so silly. OR just talk more over Octavian or Bryce Lawerence because those two are genuinely some of my favorite characters and one (Bryce Lawerence) clearly has much less reason and content for me to like about him.

ALSO possibly Outsiders (the book by S.E Hinton) content coming up? I don’t know how much people like the Outsiders, but I like it. And if anyone wants to know; I’d probably be posting about Two-Bit, Dally, really any of the Greasers. Or Bob- the Soc that Johnny murdered. He is my 2nd favorite character. Yes that is so stupid but I love him too much for no good reason one day I just joked with a friend about Bob being my favorite and it came true-

UPDATE-?!?!?

I PINKY PROMISE ILL GET AN UPDATE ON THE MAP OUT BUT IVE FALLEN DOWN A RABBIT HOLE ON THE OUTSIDERS (JUST BOB SHELDON-) AND I CANT GET OUT

BUT WERE ON THE HOME STRETCH!!! JUST WORKING ON PLACING DOWN THE LOCATIONS OF BUILDINGS, WALLS, AND ROADS!!! BUT EVERYTHING ELSE IS KINDA GOOD

EVERY COHORT HAS EVERY RIGHT TO HATE THE 5TH COHORT IT IS SO MEAN THAT THEY MADE IT AND ODD NUMBER CAUSE IT MAKES IT LOOK WEIRD AS HELL TRYING TO BALANCE OUT THE BARRACKS WITH EACH OTHER BUT I MIGHT JUST USE THE FOOD STORAGE TO BALANCE WITH THE 5TH’s BARRACKS

OKAY AAAAA-

I have no idea where this energy for all caps came from. But I haven’t really posted any content other than PJO (because that’s one of my main things and I don’t want to try and post anything about Rome because that is begging me to be so wrong about things I said) but the Outsiders is really silly and I need some way to talk about it even though I feel like there is like 0 fans that I’ve seen around

But I wanna talk about my favorite character! Who.. also happens to die suddenly. It’s not very nice when authors do that to the fun characters :[

(Every single time I say that a character is my favorite they end up dying. I’m cursed and it’s not nice, and I am too scared to look up if Dallas Winston dies but if he does I am crying and my English teacher will have to deal with me.)

But BOB! He’s alive in the book for like 3 pages and then is horribly murdered by another character, Johnny Cade. He is a little rich boy who loves his rings and his girlfriend and managed to keep a best friend since kindergarten and I have SO many Hcs for him-

Okay, okay. Important things- 1st draft of map is on its way, sorry I’ve been delaying it but school is just slightly more important than the silly map. 2nd, please. Can we stop killing characters I like :(? Jokingly of course but I almost cried, several times now for various characters in various books. Let’s not.

Okay good night :3

i got so unbelievably fucking lucky with my roommate i can’t believe it like i cant even put into words how much i love them and how grateful i am for their patience and consideration and consistency

as much i love them all, i really think if i lived with anyone else in our program the sheer stress of the work would bleed into the home and they wouldnt be as tolerant or cognizant of my peculiarities, so i think i truly am very blessed to have all that i do and i’m glad my roommate and i can grow and learn and accommodate one another together instead of letting stubbornness and different needs pull us apart