#breaking kayfabe

It's me the lil crow behind the Raven shadow puppets!

I'm going to keep this short since I have written this out two times already and Tumblr has eaten both posts! Yay I love the hellsite's app so much!

To cut to the chase, life has been so much of a drain that I am struggling to RP as your local sad Raven man. I have been for a while, which makes me even sadder because I love interacting with you all and taking on the mantle of my take on Corvus Corax.

But, I need to sort myself out first. I can only hide behind the raven shadow puppets for so long before I am forced to tend to my real life crow problems, like living in the US.

All this to say I'm taking a longer break but come about mid May, I'll be back to posting. I'll be using this time to not only take care of myself, but write out some stuff for Corvus so I can better tell the story I have in mind.

I know it’s fun and funny to incorporate “Alex designed Taskmaster around his kinks” into kayfabe (to be clear: if that were truly the case, he’d be a massive creep), but I also often think about how fun and funny it is that he has sort of just stumbled into making the kinkiest show on television by accident, simply by following the logic of British comedy, and I wanna talk about that, so here’s more meta for you!

First, the entire concept of the show is straight-up clown troupe hierarchy, which has been very popular in British sitcoms for decades. Like, Alex didn’t come up with that formula. There are tons of examples of it, as the article I just linked outlines. (tldr definition: “So what we see is a clear, closed circuit of hierarchy and status. The Whiteface is in charge, and the Augustes compete to impress him. The Character Clown is either low-status and appealing, or else occupies a role outside the status play, and is thus able to inject a different energy to keep things lively and unexpected.”) You can see how the formula is built around power imbalance.

Then, you add to this that the competition between the clowns has to be genuinely difficult, because a hard challenge is more entertaining to watch. Well, what’s a good way to make it more difficult to do a physical task? Bondage. Blindfolds. Discomfort. Other arbitrary rules and trickery. Lots of stuff that also gets utilized in kink because, in both cases, it plays into the power dynamic in addition to adding that challenge element. Alex has actually mentioned they’ve put a limit on how many times they use blindfolds in a series because it’s such a ‘gimme’ way to add an obstacle to a task that it would get repetitive.

Finally, I don’t know if you guys have noticed, but the entire BritCom scene is rather kinky to begin with. There are sooo many kinky jokes on every panel show ever. I don’t know about other places, but the British public, in particular, seems to find kink hilarious when it’s presented as a joke, so of course tons of the comics are going to use that, whether on Taskmaster or elsewhere. Taskmaster simply gives them the most opportunity due to the two factors I outlined above.

EHSPAZ

With many thanks to @happy-capy-art for tagging me so I could wax on about this ambulatory bag of neuroses <3 Tagging @smackins and anyone else who might be interested in giving this a whirl!

Compassion: 3/10. Spiza's day job is a service position that leaves him surrounded by inebriates in the Milky Way's political hub. His night job involves wet-work for one of the galaxy's premier intelligence agencies. Between this and multiple tragedies of a personal nature (see above for the only picture of him with his daughter!) he's erected a wall around his heart that is extraordinarily difficult to break down.

Bitterness: 6/10 (previously 9/10). Managing some successes late in life has taken some of the edge off - but indentured servitude, professional blacklisting, abductions, frequent unemployment, alcoholism, and a nasty habit of outliving his friends while having the shortest average lifespan among them have left an indelible mark on him.

Happiness: 6/10 (previously 1/10). Having at least one friend that isn't a mayfly helps!

Politeness: 8/10 - that is, until you've proven yourself too stupid to live. THEN the 2/10 knives come out.

Chivalry: 8/10. He has very few friends, but those he does have know that he would go to the mat for them, die for them, and (if necessary) commit brutal, heinous murders for them.

Pride: 3/10. He is very proud of the cybernetic security he's developed, and knows perfectly what kind of razor wit he possesses. He's also extremely aware that he continues to exist at the pleasure of the Special Tasks Group, and the best he can hope for at the end of his life is a quiet funeral attended by his friends. The most successful agent, after all, is the one you never knew existed in the first place.

Honesty: Hahahahahaha. He lies to everyone, including himself, as both a professional and basic defense mechanism. After all, everyone who finds out about his true profession keeps dying. 2/10.

Bravery: 8/10. He may hate the task, he he may LOATHE the task, he may be terrified and screaming internally throughout the task, but Shrell as his witness he will COMPLETE the task.

Recklnessness: 2/10, but only out of sheer necessity. Spiza has terrible marksmanship and, despite everything, he's still afraid of bullet perforation!

Sense of Family: 3/10 for blood relations, 9/10 for found family. Salarians typically don't have strong familial ties, aside from the imprinting they receive from their mothers at birth. Spiza's own mother might have gone a little overboard during that ceremony, as he is an an absolute momma's boy - but given that his clan refused to lift a finger to assist him during his indentured servitude, Spiza's had frigid relations with them ever since. For those who have stayed in his corner, however…

Attractiveness: 2/10. Maybe someone out there is hot for neurological facial disfiguration and gradually yellowing skin, but Spiza's yet to meet them.

Agility: 8/10. It's his one physical advantage, and it's saved his tissue-paper hide so many times.

I've kinda struggled watching Stardom as of late, with everything going on, so I'm not looking to jump properly back in until the contract stuff is sorted out.

It's a shame when your main fuel of serotonin turns into something that Does Not Spark Joy, but hopefully after this break I'll be able to come back to it afresh and enjoy it as much as I used to.

Or maybe I'll take more time. Trying to stay up to date during this recent Bad Period was kind of a chore, and I hated the thing I loved becoming that.

So don't worry, this blog isn't dead. There'll be some reposts now and again to tide me over until I come back in full force :)

But that cant last forever, and I think itll kill the vibe fast, unfortunately.

However, we can avoid this! Some brave soul just has to write up The definitive outline, and save the meme.