#artists with very poor mental health. when you are in comics this is how it is. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

comradekatara · 5 months

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if this comes off as a really weird and pretentious ask please just delete it but since iirc you've been in this fandom since 2019 or before 2019 i need to know . how do you deal with such in bad faith takes ??? i scroll & move on & filter tags as much as i can but it's astounding how anybody from any corner of this fandom will have piss poor takes whether they support canon or fanon

lmao not a bad question at all. some background context feels necessary: i’ve been very into atla since i was a kid, and before i used this blog i talked about it (and lok, because korrasami melted my brain) a lot on my primary blogs. in november 2018 i convinced my friend to start watching atla, and she got extremely into it. we talked about atla every day for months. eventually, my friend started this blog in summer of 2019 to talk about atla and invited me to join. it was mostly a repository for our inside jokes and for me to post the fanart i had been drawing on my phone. it was really just a space for our circle of mutuals to have some laffs.

the atla fandom was very small at the time so we were really one of the only blogs actively talking about the show. by complete accident, however, some of our posts got popular, and we accrued quite a bit of a following. we didn’t really know what to do with all the attention (some of it extremely negative and unhinged at that), and it would only get worse after “the atla renaissance.” we got more followers than we knew what to do with, at which we considered just abandoning the blog. my friend did, and handed over the reins to me.

for her, atla was a recent interest that had soured after the fandom became too much to handle, but for me it was an interest that had endured since childhood, and i found that despite all the negative attention, i still really enjoyed having a space where i could unpack my feelings towards this thing that felt like such a significant cultural touchstone, feelings towards characters i had been so deeply moved by for so long, and i enjoyed making art on a consistent basis for an actively receptive audience who praised my skills as an (extremely amateur) artist.

i’ve been drawing atla characters for a very long time, long before i had this blog, but it feels like the incentive to draw for an audience is what motivated me to improve my art over the years, so that’s genuinely been a really nice thing. and i enjoy analyzing art, literature, and media, so trying to pick apart one single text (or multiple connected texts if you wanna bring in lok, the comics, and the novels) for so long is very fun for me.

however, as much as i’ve tried to avoid engaging with bad faith takes, i am nonetheless aware that there is a not insignificant contingent of the fandom who viscerally hate my guts for whatever reason. it’s definitely less prevalent in my daily life now that the fandom is less active (cannot begin to emphasize enough how much the atlassaince ruined my life), but at the time a lot of people wanted to make their hatred of this blog known, loudly. which, especially when you’re in the middle of a lockdown and you cannot leave your room for fear of possibly dying, is not a great feeling.

that’s not really what you’re asking, but since i have had to deal with “bad faith takes” in the most personal possible way, my advice would simply be to try to shut it out. i follow maybe two or three atla blogs, and they are blogs that do not interact with the larger fandom. i do not seek out what other blogs have to say, and confine my scope to my friends and responding to my inbox.

for some reason, atla does seem to be a bad opinions factory, but actively seeking out those opinions is simply not conducive to one’s mental health or a productive use of time, which is why i keep to myself and try to mind my own business. i cannot control how i am perceived, which i am viscerally reminded of every time i see someone reblog an older post from this blog that i didn’t even make (and sometimes straight up do not agree with), but i try to remind myself that this literally has no bearing on my material existence whatsoever, and bad posts aren’t real they can’t hurt you <3

#making this nonrebloggable for obvious reasons #dogsinspaces #asks #housekeeping #running this blog has been such a strange surreal experience #but also. i am just minding my own business it’s fine. this is fine.

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piratecaptainscaptainpirates · 7 months

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Since Ed will hopefully be getting some time to figure himself out and learn more about what makes him happy, I've been thinking about how badly this poor man needs some hobbies.

Hobbies that I think would add enrichment to Ed's life:

Knitting, crocheting, other needle arts: repetitive, soothing motions, something to do with your hands, and you get a cool piece of art at the end of it! I think he'd love making clothes for people.

Cooking. Ed loves good food, and I think he'd love taking care of people by sharing food with them.

Model ship building. Ed loves Stede's model ship, and it's something fun to do with your hands that requires focus (and, again, you get something cool when you're done). He'd either love or hate this one, I think; personally as someone with AuDHD it's the only thing that can make my brain shut up (to the point I always keep a spare model in the closet for bad brain days), but I could also see him getting annoyed with how fiddly it can be.

Visual art. How many of Ed's tattoos did he do himself, I wonder? I'd wager he's a pretty damn good artist! Give this man some crayons.

And because it's also fun to imagine what comical mishaps he could get himself into, hobbies that I think would make Ed's mental health worse:

Fishing. Sitting completely still in silence for hours? Ugh.

Journaling. Ed is a very introspective person, in the same way that my therapist once told me that I'm "very self-aware, and not in a healthy way." I think he'd just make himself upset.

Hiking. He might agree to a hike for Stede's sake but he would not enjoy a single second.

Bird-watching. He tries to impress Stede by knowing the names of all the birds they see but there are just so many birds and they all look so similar. Within a week his greatest enemies would be the many very similar varieties of seagull

#ofmd #our flag means death #ofmd ed teach

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drifting-pieces-blog-blog · 2 years

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SUMMON THE SUIT!

After all, the suit is its own character, isn’t it?

Let’s look at the suit. I want to talk about the suit and by god I’m going to talk about the SUIT.

Now the suit has undergone SO. MANY. CHANGES. Over the years. In fact, just about every new artist to the comic has taken their own stab at the suit. Hardly any of them seem to keep the same ideas behind it.

The original run from back in OG days was basic superhero simple. Except for the cape. They always brought back the moon motif. Which while it looked cool sometimes was just comic book crazy. I think what really brought moon knight out in those early days, design wise, was the stark white. Despite him being someone that was active at night, he was so radiant.

Originally I’ve heard that they wanted him to have a silver outfit, but silver does not translate well in comic print. Especially back in the day of difficult to print pages.

I could be wrong, it’s been a while since I’ve read through the original comics, but they never really feel the need to explain his choice in costume. White was just naturally the color of the moon and they wanted every chance they could get to remind you of the moon. The cape was originally the shroud that was on Khonshu’s statue.

Let’s explore that a little. Marc is dying alone in the desert. Up until that moment he has lived a life of poor choices. He’s probably questioned his choices more than a few times, but never really taken the time to let them dwell. He was a bad man who wanted to try to be good but didn’t know how.

He takes one step in defending someone and trying to be a good person and do what is right and not only is he left to die by his teammates, but everyone he tried to save ended up dying anyway. This isn’t a good start for him. His mental health is taking a bit of a hit on this one.

So he’s laying there dying and he hears the voice of Khonshu. He’s revived and he takes the shroud. A shroud that is potentially ancient. Wrapped around a statue of a god that was built to be worshiped. This is his link to Khonshu. His way to wrap himself up and believe. To trust that it all wasn’t just in his head. He can touch it. It’s real. It will catch him when he falls and protect him.

He keeps this cape for a very long time. The mask is off and on in the early days. The mask does not yet define him, but even though it isn’t spoken, the mask coming down was always the line between his alters.

Jake was the information gatherer and face of the people. Steven was the way to make the money and be what he should have been. Marc was the know how to fight and do what he needed to do as Moon Knight.

Many have argued that Moon Knight himself can be considered an Alter. He’s not just one of them under the mask. There is some thought that can be given to that. After all, Moon Knight is not Marc, Steven, or Jake. Either one of them could put on the mask and become the Moon Knight. It doesn’t matter who is wearing it, his fighting is the same. The job is the same. He serves his god, he takes down the bad guy, he messes up and has doubts about his abilities.

At first, it seems Marc wears the mask. Marc is usually the one to put it on and fight. He has less reason to feel bad about the things he does. He’s the one that comes back time and time again to needing something to justify his existence. Yet he only feels validation when he puts on the mask. It is the only way he can face himself. The only way that he can give himself reason to keep going. The mask starts to have importance. The mask is what starts to define Moon Knight. The mask becomes their grip on the world around them and who they are.

The outfit itself starts to change over the years. Simple white with a crescent moon on the chest. Sometimes heavily armored and lined with weapons. The darker periods in the comics came when Moon Knight’s outfit was battle hardened armor with spikes on the knuckles. A time that can also be defined as when Marc was the main one in control. When the three of them fought the most and Marc himself was suffering the most in depression and self hatred.

When Jake is most in control, the outfit tends to take on a darker tone. More black. More sleek. More basic gadgets and less high tech, but still very spike oriented.

Sadly, we don’t really have a time where we can point to that is mostly a Steven controlled suit. Steven tended to get lost a lot in the earlier days. Perhaps he was the one behind the more tech heavy suits. The ones that let him fight in style and keep more of a distance. Less…bloody.

What’s interesting is that the mask has always been the same. Formless. Shapeless. Often blending into the background to take away any hint of a face. Of a person. He is not a man under the mask, he becomes the mask. He is Moon Knight. He is not the person underneath.

This is what the other heroes don’t understand. This is where he is different from them. Spiderman is Peter Parker. Even Captain America is Steve Rogers under the mask. But who is Moon Knight? Marc, Steven, or Jake? All three of them? They are so different in personality and have different goals and ideals. Yet they can somehow all agree on how Moon Knight functions as a hero?

Later we do get into discourse when Moon Knight becomes more violent and they have the inner turmoil on how much murder they should be allowed to do. How much do they listen to Khonshu? How far is too far?

The mask becomes an identity. The number of times Marc has poked two eye holes in a formless sack and pulled it on as his mask is…actually a little embarrassing. I’m sure there were a lot of “What are we wearing?” moments from Steven and Jake.

The thing is, Marc can’t deal with himself. He can’t deal with who he is. He’d give it all to Jake and Steven, but he can’t give up control either. As long as he wears the mask he doesn’t have to acknowledge that he is Marc Spector. He is only Moon Knight. He wants Moon Knight to be a separate person. To be this person. To be the protector and good person he wishes he had always been.

We see this the most as Mr. Knight comes into play. But we’ll come back to that in a moment.

Let’s look at Shalvey/Ellis. They brought back the paranormal aspect. They wanted Moon Knight to look like a spector (ha). His cape billowed behind him like a flowing mist from another world. This was a time when the people behind the mask were most in flux.

We didn’t see the inner struggle. There was no primary driver behind the wheel. There was no Marc/Jake/Steven. Honestly, it felt the most like a period of great dissociation. They didn’t know who to be. Who they were. The only thing they knew was that they had to be Moon Knight because that was the only time when they could agree on anything, even if it was not in full.

But then you have Mr. Knight. Suave, cool, detective-esque….and absolutely full of rage and ready to beat someone brutally upside the head with a baseball bat. This is his walking around suit. This is his “I’m not Moon Knight right now” suit. This is his refusal to take off the mask, but not wanting to be that nothingness. He is a person, but not THAT person.

Mr. Knight is the desire to be something more than the ghost. He wants to walk among the people. To connect. To give himself purpose that isn’t otherworldly. Khonshu has the most say in Moon Knight, after all. Khonshu is in the shroud. Khonshu is in the shadow of the Moon Knight. Hell, Khonshu even has his own special Moon Knight costume with the bird skull and Egyptian artifacts to help kick ghost and other worldly ass. But is he in the mask?

See, I don’t think he is. I think the mask has become Marc’s. He refuses to take it off in the MacKay run. He fights to keep it on. It isn’t until Steven takes over that the mask is forced off.

As much as Marc doesn’t want to be Marc Spector, the mask is how he sees himself now. It is more his face than his real face. Steven can take it off and become Steven. Jake can take it off (and put on his mustache) and become Jake. So Marc can put it on and become who he wants to be, which is not Marc.

NOW FOR THE SHOW.

I have so much love and admiration for the team behind the costume design. How much they wanted it to be real and not just some green suit CGI. They made sure each glyph in that outfit MEANT something. Even the placement of each and every glyph. The inside of the cape is LINED with them for crying out loud. It isn’t just white, either. It’s white and silver and gray and has the same shading as the moon’s craters. COME ON.

So what does the costume mean to Marc and Steven? On first look, you think, “Oh, Khonshu gave Marc a ‘traditional’ armor to represent him”. I mean, Khonshu is also in wrappings and looks like a mummy, right? And then of course Steven is in a suit because he was told he needed a suit and he ‘doesn’t know how all this works’.

But wait! There are layers. And I mean LAYERS.

When Steven puts on the suit, he puts on a suit. This is not only what he understands is being asked of him, but what he wants to be. You see him earlier when he’s getting dressed for his date how much he wants to look good. He wants to be suave and handsome. He wants to look like a fancy desirable man.

So he builds something that will make him look and feel good. Boost his ego. He isn’t there to fight. He’s there to assess the situation first and talk it out, negotiate if needed. Then if that goes down hill, he’ll roll up his sleeves and start beating all your weak points with his fancy little poles.

It’s beautiful really. The absolutely white with the patterns to keep the form moving and not be dull. How it almost seems to sparkle and reflect the light like the actual moon. This is the moon when it is beautiful and clear. It isn’t emblazoned all over with Khonshu’s name. It’s hidden gently in the buttons holding it all together.

His mask is also so interesting. Smooth but clearly a shape underneath. It’s open and wide eyed. You can tell the face is gentle and friendly. It sees the world around it and takes it all in. Yet there is a jagged line sewing it all together down the center of his face and cutting off to the right. It isn’t in the back, either. It just starts at the top and slashes down the middle. They could have made it a smooth mask, but it’s almost given the effect of being hand sewn. Even the moon in the center of the forehead. It’s bulky and obvious. It’s as if the mask was pulled together in the front to cover his face as an afterthought.

And it would have been an afterthought for Steven. Why hide his handsome face? Steven is proud of who he is.

So why is this all important for Marc?

Marc went to the temple of Khonshu to kill himself. He was already dying and he planned to go on his own terms. In his mind, he was already dead. He was revived by Khonshu and owned by Khonshu. Khonshu is an egyptian god so obviously what ever Khonshu gave him would be themed.

Moon Knight is wrapped up like a mummy. Dead, embalmed, and prepped to go into the afterlife and encounter the field of reeds if he should balance his scales. Marc doesn’t own his body, it is Khonshu’s to own, so his name is on just about every surface of the suit. The colors are like the moon in shadow. White but mostly grays and marked with craters. He is dressed similar to Khonshu, who also appears dead and mummified.

He has the moon symbol all over and there are hints of gold wrapped in the fabric where his armor is. He is there to fight. He is there to take the hit and keep going. You cannot kill a dead man.

The mask is formless. You cannot see the man underneath. It’s wrapped and sealed fully. The wrappings go over his mouth, and the moon symbol is on his cowl in a much more gentle manner. This is the mask the mummy wears. No one will look at it and think “there is a man under that”. They will only see the dead body being forced to move by what’s left of his spirit.

We aren’t going to speculate about Jake’s costume here. I’m not sure that he has a Moon Knight version at this point. Once Steven and Marc were free, Jake may have been worried that Marc would somehow sense the suit was still there and a part of him. Marc certainly felt the suit each time it came on, after all. It crawled out of him and wrapped him up. He always looked so drained when it came off him. Forcing him to let go of the healing wrappings and make him feel the pain of being alive again.

Maybe Jake had a suit when he fought in Cairo, possibly a hint of the suit was seen in the end credits of the last episode where you catch a glimpse of the masks changing from Marc to Steven. It looked a little ragged and darker. A new moon or one waning off and about to enter into a new phase. Marc’s is the only one, after all, with a full moon symbol hidden on his chest behind the crescent.

But again, I’m not going to speculate on the costume. Let’s talk about his other outfit.

First we see the gloves. Leather and thick with crescent moons on the knuckles. He is the fist of Khonshu, after all, right? Not going to lie, those gloves will provide some padding but mostly they seem to be there for his own comfort. Marc wore gloves that were wrapped like the rest of him. Steven’s gloves were small and tight and didn’t add much except to look damn good and maybe help with some gripping.

Then we see his pants and shirt, a working man’s outfit. Skinny tie, simple jacket. Really nothing fancy at this point. His hat is a traditional flat cap. The flat cap first came about when English Parliament ordered that all people of non noble blood wear a head covering on Sundays and holidays. In more modern times it became the hat of the working-class man.

In America, New York and Chicago has it listed as still very common in working-class society. A taste of home, perhaps. It also acts as a way to hide his pretty signature curls. It pushes them back and tucks them away. You don’t have Marc’s mess or Steven’s side swoop. This is Jake’s identity. This is Jake’s style.

His jacket is pretty casual until you get to that wonderfully popped and embroidered collar. A way for him to almost hunch down into himself. To feel the collar on the back of his neck as a sort of protection. To sink down and hide in plain sight.

The embroidery is Mayan. Here, best said by the people that made the jacket (not important to this analysis but fucking cool as hell so it must be said):

“It’s all in the details! I knew the reveal of Jake Lockley needed to catch the audience eye and i wanted Jake to have a silhouette similar to the comic, with details to discuss. Here is the explanation of the collar. It was discussed that Jake would give his lines in Spanish. Being that Oscar is Guatemalan, and had given a performance like no other, I wanted to add a detail from his heritage to honor Oscar. I took the Mayan calendar symbols and throughout the collar there are Mayan symbols mixed with ancient Egyptian symbols to create a design to showcase the hold Khonshu has on these characters. I wanted to incorporate important dates to the MCU and to Oscar into the design, hence using the Mayan calendar symbols (similar to if I used astrological signs) to add a little Easter egg in the end."

But in the context of the show? Let’s dig a little. Egyptian symbols of Khonshu to show his hold, mixed with Hispanic heritage that seems to define Jake further. Either a blend of acceptance to Khonshu and this way of life, or a rebellion of Jake seeking his own identity and way of life.

There is so much individuality in these three outfits. So much inner mind on display. So much beauty. I get so excited when I just think about the complexities of his suit and mask in the comics and show.

Moon Knight is more than the man underneath. Moon Knight is the mask.

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sohotthateveryonedied · 3 years

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Hiii!! I really love your tumblr posts and I'm pretty new to the Batfam (meaning I have only read fics and textposts about them, no comics) and I wanted to ask about the year Bruce/Batman gets "lost in time". I know general things of what the kids have been doing–Dick became batman and fired Tim from robin, giving it to Damian, everyone thinking Tim was crazy for believing Bruce was alive, (don't really know what Jason was up to though, was he still murderous towards Tim? Does the pit still affect him? Also I have no idea about Cass and Duke, were they introduced at this point??) Anyways, my real question was why was Bruce lost in time, what villain put him there? And how did he get out? And how long was he "dead"? Was Bruce in another reality or like just asleep the whole time? Oh! And how soon did this happen after Damian got introduced to the family–a couple months?

I'm so sorry this is so long, but I hope you answer and thank you!!

(I’m going to try and cover all my bases here by going into how exactly Bruce “died,” what went down during the Battle For the Cowl, what the Batkids did while Bruce was gone, and how Bruce came back. Hopefully it all makes sense?? We’ll see how it goes lmao.)

Part 1 - What Happened to Bruce:

So there was this event called Final Crisis (which I won’t go completely into since it would make this post a million times longer than it already is), but the bottom line is that Darkseid wants to overthrow reality and release his Anti-Life Equation, which would overthrow the whole planet and turn everyone into slaves. (If you’re interested in knowing more about the storyline, here’s a Reddit thread that explains it WAY better than I could.)

What I CAN tell you is that during his final confrontation with Darkseid, Bruce is hit by an Omega Beam and turned into a burnt chicken nugget killed. Poor guy.

Final Crisis #6

Clark and Diana bring the body back to the Batcave and break the news to the Batfamily. Batman #687 covers a good portion of the aftermath such as Bruce’s funeral, the Batfamily grieving, and Dick coming to terms with his new responsibility of becoming Batman.

Batman #687

Part 2 - Battle For the Cowl:

Musical chairs time, fellas! After word gets out that Batman is gone, Gotham erupts into chaos. Dick doesn’t want to take over the mantle, Tim needs Dick to take over the mantle, and Jason says “fuck it” and takes over the mantle himself because somebody around here has to. He becomes this murderous psychopathic Batman and starts taking out criminals with deadly force because someone’s gotta do the job, so it might as well be him.

Batman: Battle For the Cowl #1

(Okay honestly, this series had some pretty bad characterization overall, which sucks since it’s such an important storyline. Jason is portrayed as this violent psychopath, which...okay, he was kind of insane after the Pit and all, but not to this degree. Personally, I choose to owe the bad characterization to Bruce’s death because as much as Jason resents Bruce for all he’s done, he does still love him and losing him would be devastating, which would exacerbate his already fragile mental health. As for Damian, this happens roughly three years after his first appearance, so we can assume it’s been a few months since he first joined the family. He’s still relatively new at this point, so nobody knows how to write him yet. He ends up being depicted as if his main two personality traits are Bratty and Assassin-Child and that’s it. It’s all just a mess.)

Anyway, Tim tells Dick to become Batman and stop Jason’s reign of terror. Dick says no, so Tim follows Jason’s lead by saying “fuck it” and putting on the cowl himself. He goes to confront Jason, which ends in Jason beating the crap out of him (again) and leaving him for dead after Tim declines his offer to become Jason’s Robin. Dick goes to save Tim and ends up fighting Jason.

Battle For the Cowl #3

Dick wins, Jason disappears, Tim is fine, and Dick finally gets his head out of his ass and becomes Batman.

Part 3 - What Happens to Each Batkid While Bruce is “Dead”?:

Dick:

As I said, Dick becomes the new Batman a month after Bruce’s death. He’s got big shoes to fill, and it takes some time for him to get used to his new role. He and Damian end up flipping around the classic Batman and Robin dynamic, with Batman now as the fun counterpart to Robin’s edginess. Dick, Damian, and Alfred relocate to the penthouse above the Wayne Foundation building, operating out of a secret Bat-Bunker in the basement.

Batman #688

Jason:

After Battle For the Cowl, Jason is still batshit insane and determined to make Dick’s already stressful life even harder by becoming a supervillain with an ugly costume and an even uglier hairstyle. (I know it’s just because the artist sucked, but still. Jason is horrifying to look at during this time.) He mostly just gets on Dick’s nerves by running around Gotham with his new sidekick Scarlet and killing criminals as Batman and Robin wannabes. Eventually, Dick has Jason committed to Arkham Asylum and he hangs out there until Bruce returns.

Batman and Robin (2009) #5

Tim:

Tim...doesn’t do great after Bruce’s death, mentally. Dick makes Damian Robin, his reasoning being that Robin is more of a sidekick and he sees Tim as his equal. By making Damian Robin, Dick hopes that it will give him the stability he needs to keep him from straying back toward the “bad” side. (It’s the right move ultimately, although his execution was pretty messed up since he didn’t discuss it with Tim beforehand, but he’s allowed to make mistakes. Dick’s father just died and now he’s in charge of picking up the pieces of their broken family. It’s a lot to handle.)

Long story short, Tim has a breakdown, realizes that Bruce is alive, dons the Red Robin identity, and cuts ties with his family to travel the world in search of proof. It’s a rough time.

Red Robin #1

Damian:

Our little guy becomes Robin! So proud of him! As I explained earlier, Dick makes Damian his Robin with the assumption that it will keep him out of trouble, and he’s right on that account. He mentors Damian, teaching him how to channel his violent instincts into something productive, and it works! Slowly but surely, Damian makes the transition from bratty assassin to actual hero!

Batman and Robin (2009) #22

Cass:

Duke sadly was not introduced at this point in time, so he missed out on all the pandemonium. Cass, however, has been Batgirl for years by now, but she got kind of pushed aside by the writers after Bruce’s death. Bruce disappears shortly after adopting Cass, but once he was “dead,” the writers sort of moved Cass around for a while, not quite knowing what to do with her. First she was with the Outsiders. Then they got disbanded and Cass tried forming a new network of heroes to take over for Batman if needed. Then she helped out in said network during Battle for the Cowl, taking care of a newly ravaged Gotham. Then Cass gave the Batgirl mantle to Stephanie Brown after she became disillusioned with the role, thanks to the loss of her father and mentor. Then Cass picked up and moved to Hong Kong to “follow Bruce’s plans” by continuing whatever work he had set up for her there. It was all very vague and confusing, and Cass more or less got swept under the rug during this time. Thanks, writers.

Batgirl (2009) #1

Part 4 - How Bruce Came Back:

When the Blackest Night storyline happens, the Justice League realizes that the corpse buried under Bruce’s grave is apparently not the real one and that he’s actually alive out there somewhere! How wild is that! This is further proven by Dick after he places Bruce’s body in a Lazarus Pit to revive, which has the same result because it’s very clearly Not Bruce and they should have listened to Tim from the start.

Batman and Robin (2009) #9

Anyway, what actually happened is that the Omega Beams that Darkseid shot at Bruce didn’t kill him, but rather blasted him back through time to the prehistoric era with his memories wiped. The Omega Energy inside of Bruce ends up catapulting him through various time periods, which is all part of Darkseid’s plan. With each time-hop, Bruce builds up more Omega Energy in his body which, when he gets back to his original time period, will be unleashed and destroy everything.

Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #5

It’s been a little under two years since Final Crisis, though in-universe it’s uncertain exactly how long Bruce has been “dead.” We can assume it’s been a year, give or take. The way he comes back is too scientific and complicated for me to understand, so uhhhh the bottom line is that Tim and a few Leaguers save Bruce at the Vanishing Point and the day is saved! Hooray!

Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #6

(If you want to read about how it actually goes down, then I seriously recommend reading Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne. It’s only six issues, so it’s a quick read and it explains the situation far better than I ever could.)

Bruce eventually reunites with his family after spying on them for a period of time as Insider to see what has changed in his absence:

Bruce Wayne: The Road Home

After that, things quickly settle back into their new normal. Dick and Damian stay on as Batman and Robin. Bruce goes back to being Batman as well, with him handling Batman Incorporated business and Dick continuing as Gotham’s defender. Tim keeps the Red Robin outfit, Steph stays on as Batgirl, and Cass becomes Black Bat. Jason stays in Arkham for a while before filing an appeal to be moved to a regular prison. He kills 82 inmates in less than a week and gets transferred back to Arkham, which he promptly escapes from. It’s a ride, I tell ya.

Aaaaand that’s about it! I hope this answered all of your questions!

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nadohunter · 3 years

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Are you not a fan of kuro anymore? ):

I'm assuming this has to do with me posting... none of it and being pretty slow on Will to Live Comic Updates

Well...

Here's the thing. Kind... Kind of yes? Kind of no... but honestly... mostly yes....

I fully intend to finish my fancomic, bc I think at a certain point it will be far enough removed from Kuro's canon (I am planning a time-skip afterall) that it will kind of like... not be kuro??? But still using the characters. Idk. And I have a lot of ideas and new characters to introduce, I've done a lot of planning that shouldn't go to waste, and making a comic has GENUINELY been amazing for my growth as an artist AND I've met some amazing people because I dove into working on it.

But let me get a little honest here for a sec - I didn't post them here (for the most part) and only shared them with friends bc I didn't want to give them any attention (and so I could block them)- but I've gotten quite a few really nasty hateful messages over the past few months, including 'classic' ones telling me end myself and just generally being hateful - that started back when I had the 'audacity' to say shipping adults and minors is fucking gross and normalizing it has been used as an entry point for grooming real minors by predators.s also using that content to manipulate them). I suspect some of it might have been following a slight drama in a discord server? But I'm not confident enough to say for certain.

This has honestly been the worst kind of bile I've had thrown at me in a long time. It is worse than any other fandom I've been in. I remember this same vibe back when I was a little dumb 13 year old and I guess I was stupid enough to think things have changed. While I felt like maybe I could take it better at the very least... but while I'm incredibly grateful for the little community I've met because of will to live, my mental health and well being has taken the worst nose dive that it has in years, and the longer I was interacting with this fandom... the worse it got.

So frankly... yeah... I've kind of been chased off Kuro as a whole. Whenever I think about posting anything related to it I've started feeling anxious, I feel like I've gotten more paranoid for lack of a better word, and that's not a healthy mentality to be in. I don't necessarily want to go 'wah wah poor me', there's plenty of people that have it worse off... but I hit my limit. Honestly I tend to take on more than I can handle anyway usually without realizing it, and I often find myself taking on a rock role when honestly... I feel like these days at least I break easy. And I need to take note of that and take measures to take care of myself and remove myself from things that chip away at me.

I just want to be honest that yeah... I am a person, I do have silly things called emotions, and taking on that kind of shit is honestly exhausting and depressing no matter how hard I've been trying to keep myself distracted and ignore it. It still. Hurts.

There's a reason why there's so many reports on why sending people that kind of thing can cause very real... and sometimes fatal consequences. So also to anyone out there that thinks its okay to send people stuff like that... no... just... no.

I hope I don't cause like... a Streisand Effect by saying this... hopefully with a wall of text MOST ppl won't read it lol. But I think this needed to be said.

So yeah, I've always been a multifandom blog, but this is also another reason why my content has shifted towards a fandom that feels more lighthearted and genuinely makes me happy and feel good and a lot safer (you know... outside of the fact my brain has just decided this is the new hyperfixation fasklfjlkajskl)

Comic updates will be slow, but I will still work on them, I've done too much planning to let it go, and I love the community around it so much that I won't abandon them just because the kuro fandom in more broad terms has been shitty and I honestly have to step away from it for the sake of my wellbeing.

I think it will be rare if I ever draw any kuro fanart or write anything for it again that's non-comic related. So... hope that long winded essay answered your question that probably could have been summed up a lot quicker falksfjlkaj

#tw #announcement? sort of #tw for mentions of suicide baiting from anons

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quinintheclouds · 4 years

Note

Hey, I just read your post on ADHD/EFDD and was just wondering if you have read any research articles on this and if you have, could you tell me which ones because it all sounds super interesting and I need to choose a topic for my psych lit review and I’m thinking about doing something to do with all the stigma around and misconceptions about different mental health disorders.. it’s totally okay if not tho, I know it’s a big ask, but thanks anyway

That sounds like such a great topic!!! I would be HONORED to help :D

The first person I think of when discussing the term EFDD is Dr. Russell Barkley. He’s one of the leading ADHD experts, and has been a spearhead for studying executive dysfunction in people with ADHD for decades. Very much ahead of his time compared to the DSM. I’ve had his book “Taking Charge of Adult ADHD” recommended to me so many times, but have yet to read it.

Here’s some free stuff, though!

[reblogs appreciated because Tumblr hates posts with links and I wanna make sure this anon sees it!]

I tried to include some short stuff and longer stuff, some articles, images, videos, and comic recs, so you can choose based on your current energy and focus level :) I’ve also bolded links and key points of each source if you like skimming. Let’s go!

...................................

Here’s an interesting article/study on EFDD! They found that “ADHD [is] associated with deficits in inhibition, managing one’s attention, self-directed speech and rule-following, self-motivation, and even self-awareness [...] ADHD therefore involves deficits in self-restraint, [...] selfsensing and imagery, self-control of emotion, and self-directed play for problem-solving.”

Thank you for motivating me to look up some articles, because I learned some new things, too! For instance, they assert that ADHD could also be called SRDD (Self-Regulation Deficit Disorder), but conclude the article by saying either SRDD or EFDD fits better than ADHD, and that the terms could be used interchangeably, because SR (self-regulation) and EF (executive function) are effectively talking about the same things. So his assertion is that even if the name ADHD never changes, it can still be scientifically classified as either of the other terms. I believe in recent years he’s preferred EFDD more and more.

[note that the above article/study is from 2011, back when we were on the DSM-IV, so a lot of research has been done since then]

...................................

If that article’s a bit wordy or you want something more visual and up-to-date, here’s a really detailed PowerPoint presentation used during the 2018 ADHD Symposium! It’s long but well-organized so you can just read the big headers or you can read all the bullet points explaining it. Keep in mind this was a lecture, so some of it probably made more sense in person. I’m glad I read this, because I realize the terminology I’ve used is slightly off: according to the Symposium, there aren’t “subtypes” of ADHD, but the different names (ADHD-PI, ADHD-PH, and ADHD-C) are really just used to show the prevalence of certain symptoms in that individual. So they’re all terms for ADHD, but “subtype” was poor word choice on my part.

Oh! I just found a video of him giving a lecture in 2012 using many of the same PowerPoint slides! Here ya go! It’s a bit longer than the other videos I’ve linked below (13min), but it might make the slides easier to interpret :)

...................................

If you want a really short and basic overview, here’s a video explaining 5 main ways executive functions affect the brain and how they work differently in people with ADHD. [I put the video below as well if you wanna stay on tumblr] It’s from 2010, but it holds up. It only covers 5 big ones, so remember (if you can) that executive function affects EVERYTHING and the symptoms will affect everyone differently and at different levels.

This is just the most basic overview and a good place to start:

youtube

...................................

Here’s one where he talks about our Time-Blindness! (below) I was going to pick a couple favorite quotes to give you an idea, but that’d wind up being a transcript of the whole video because HE GETS IT. This is from 2014, but I CANNOT recommend it enough!!! He mentions that ADHD doesn’t have a deficit of attention, but rather a deficit of intention. He describes us as having a near-sighted sense of time, and talks about deadlines, “laziness,” etc.

ALSO he talks about how our brains DON’T CONNECT our knowledge to our performance (back of brain to front) like everyone else’s, so we have the same level of knowledge and intelligence, but can’t access and use it the way others can. This is why teaching skills and organization/memory/time-management tips isn’t helpful -- we can learn them, but our knowledge and action centers are separated, so actually doing them/sticking with them is just as hard as before.

If you don’t watch the whole thing, at least skip to 3:29 cause that part’s really funny and relatable (ok the whole thing is relatable):

youtube

...................................

And of course, I highly recommend the YouTube channel How to ADHD! I have a couple friends who work on it, and they REALLY know their stuff! (They’re the ones who taught me during a game night that RSD isn’t a real term and it should be called “rejection-sensitivity” as part of the emotional dysregulation umbrella)

I went looking and found this video (below) has the BEST explanation of it that I’ve seen in such a concise, entertaining way. I hadn’t seen this one before, but it even covers some of the things I mentioned in that post your ask is about! Especially the Internal Restlessness that I mentioned as the true “hyperactivity” we all share; even though some of us also express outward hyperactivity, both presentations come from the same restlessness in our brains.

youtube

^^^This has some great examples, visuals, animations, and different ways of explaining and thinking about our symptoms! If you want more about this, the description has a bunch of links to their sources! Jessica and everyone else who works on this channel is great at making the videos watchable for people with ADHD (even if we have to rewind sometimes)

Here's Jessica's official Twitter @HowtoADHD! (I was today years old when I found out that she follows me)

...................................

And if you want something REALLY short and simple, here’s a 2 minute animation comparing living with ADHD to trying to film a movie with a director who keeps falling asleep [below]

youtube

....................................

If you like comics:

My favorite ADHD comic artists are: ADHD Alien [@ADHD_Alien on Twitter and @adhd-alien on Tumblr]; Dani Donovan [@danidonovan on Twitter and @danidonovan on Tumblr -- we’re somehow twitter mutuals and she is such a sweetheart. She has some really good infographics, too!!]; ADHD Bri [@AdhdBri on Twitter and @adhdbri on Tumblr]; and dreamadept [@yume_dango on Twitter and @yume-dango on Tumblr]

They’re all well-researched, funny, genuine, intelligent, insightful, talented artists who depict ADHD in a very accurate and relatable way. Go check ‘em out and support them! :D

....................................

I’m gonna stop there for now, but PLEASE feel free to add on to this with other sources, questions, videos, thoughts, comic artists, etc.!!! Hope this helps someone out there!

#adhd #actuallyadhd #efdd #executive function deficit disorder #how to adhd #dr. russell barkley #I hope you see this in time for your essay!!!#tried to give you a variety of sources and places to start #quinpost #quinanswer #oof I'm sure I forgot some adhd comic artists I love but maybe I'll remember later lol #Anonymous

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maggotmouth · 3 years

Text

hillo sexthy legends !! i’m nora and i’ll be writing margo colby n probs sm1 else bcos lets be real, i lack self-control. u can find her pinterest here n some info abt her sexy self below the cut. plot with me on discord ( hot girl midsommar#8664 ) or in my ims !! x o x

* CAMILA MORRONE, CIS WOMAN + SHE / HER | you know MARGO COLBY, right? they’re TWENTY-THREE, and they’ve lived in irving for, like, ELEVEN YEARS? well, their spotify wrapped says they listened to SCRAWNY BY WALLOWS like, a million times this year, which makes sense ‘cause they’ve got that whole BLEACH WHITE SNEAKERS POUNDING ON A GYMNASIUM FLOOR, USING THE SAME BLUNT SCISSORS TO HACK THE SLEEVES OFF AN EXES T-SHIRT THAT YOU USE TO CUT YOUR 3AM FRINGE, A WALNUT-SHAPED ACHE IN THE PIT OF YOUR STOMACH FOR THE PERSON YOU COULD HAVE BEEN thing going on. i just checked and their birthday is AUGUST 8TH, so they’re a LEO, which is unsurprising, all things considered. ( nora, 25, gmt, she/her )

CLICK ANYWHERE ON THIS SENTENCE FOR SEXII GOOGLE DOC!!

bullet point summary of margo.

— born margaret but NOBODY calls her that. its colby, coach or margo, and go to the privileged few. margo grew up in the creek commune n then dropped out of school cos of a teenage pregnancy so she was a bit of a cautionary tale back in’t’day (said tht in my yorkshire accent). she now works for summer camps coaching pee wee soccer and pee wee cheer, as well as helping out her beekeeper dad on his honey farm, which is jst north of abernathy creek, and working at scuba on the off seasons.

— its just her and her dad, and has been for as long as she can recall !! everything she knows about her mum could fit on the back of the weathered passport photo she keeps in her wallet of a stranger who shares her face - her name’s melody, or at least tht was name she used when working as a dancer, she’s from argentina and dropped mag’s dad as soon as someone w more money came along.

— margo’s father is a beekeeper with his own organic honey company. margo and her dad moved to irving in the early 00s, the summer between grade school and middle school, because her dad had heard about the communal living in abernathy creek and wanted to lend his skills there and live off the fatta the land in a very lenny from of mice and men kinda way.

— for a few years of middle school margo was bullied for living with the ‘freaks from the creek’, but when they realised how chill her dad was with underage drinking, margo ‘keg-bringer’ colby soon gained popularity among the more renegade students. every so often, the high school parties would happen at her end of town, occasionally with members of the commune even offering the high schoolers a spiritual experience they’d never forget (often in the form of mushrooms) which meant people tried to stay on her good side. to get an invite to a margo colby party handed you a free pass to make up the most ridiculous shit about the commune you liked and nobody else could say anything, because they’d never been to the creek.

— at school, margo had a lot of ‘behvioural issues’ bcos of undiagnosed adhd, she found it difficult to sit still for hours n write down huge chunks of information n her restlessness was seen as laziness. she was encouraged to do sports, as were most of the kids who weren’t that academically inclined, but she turned out to be pretty hot shit at sprinting, because she grew up surrounded by bee houses and he who runs slowest gets stung, baybeyy!! so yea, in school sports became her LIFE. she was gonna get a sports scholarship to college but ended up dropping out of school in senior year n becoming one of those kids who could have had it all but lost it.

— she had sex with sutter at a house party when she wasnt really ready because it felt like the right thing to do at the time and everybody else was doing it. she’d attended health class, she’d seen the corny videos. she knew about all the statistics, but she also knew that it had never happened to anyone she knew and the pull out method was basically safer than the morning after pill and way less expensive.

— a teenage pregnancy knocked her out of the runnings for prom queen and meant she had to leave school early. she didn’t go to college when her friends did, instead she spent the time interviewing potential foster candidates and eating her weight in lindt chocolate while marathoning love island in her room.

— she had a son, who she passed off to someone else a couple of towns away. it was a closed adoption which seemed like the best idea at the time, but she now wishes she had access to his life.

— after peaking in high school and jumping between jobs for a few years, she got a more permanent role at scuba which she loves with all of her heart and soul, but unfortunately a bar job doesn’t pay the rent.

— she works at summer camps coaching junior soccer and netball on the side. she’s extremely competitive and takes it very personally if her team lose. the kids all call her, coach colby n write her longwinded letters about how they’ll never forget this summer camp before they go back to their suburban picket fence houses n she keeps all the letters in a drawer n takes them out to read when she’s feelin depressed.

— enjoys surfing and worked for a number of years on resorts like mila kunis’ job in forgetting sarah marshall. she went on to work 18-hour days as a stewardess on luxury yachts which is a part of her backstory i added after watching season one of below deck because i guess i really am that fucking impressionable. met most of her surf friends doing tht but said she’d never in her life do it again bcos it was mostly just picking up after rich white ppl for shit pay. she came back to irving n thats when she started doing the summer camp jobs so she could move out of the creek n get her own apartment.

— she never actually finished senior year so she’s currently going to night school at the community college to get through her exams and is trying to save to go to college or open university. she wants to major in criminology. she’s super ambitious but also super adhd so she fluctuates between thinking she can achieve anything to just feeling like a failure n thinkin whats the point

— used to shoplift to feel joy and as an act of resistance to her hippy commune routes, but now sees herself as a reformed, bin-diving freegan (sims 4 eco living can i get a hell yaaaa). also she thinks it’s totally wrong to steal when you have enough money and clearly don’t need to steal to survive, ppl risk imprisonment for basic necessities, so for her to do it for a brief thrill and some new shades felt a bit derogatory

— was raised jewish. became a vegetarian as a child because it seemed, at the time, easier than having to explain which foods she was and wasn’t allowed to eat together, so she just cut out meat entirely. still a vegetarian now and dabbles in veganism, although its become less about not eating certain meats in the milk of their mother and more about her global impact / carbon footprint

— nurses little animals to health in her garden. has a hedgehog name OJ short for orange juice not the other one filthy pig. her and her dad have always been huge animal rights activists and existed on a vegetarian diet. the only one in their house who isn’t vegetarian is their cat, auggie. (short 4 augustus gloop)

— has a lot of stupid ass stick and poke tattoos. there was a phase during her years as a barmaid where she wanted to train as a tattoo artist n would mostly practice on herself or any friends who would let her

— she doesn’t form many long lasting friendships cos she tends to be super excited when she makes a new friend and just see them all the time but then it wears off and she can ghost a bit. she’ll always coming pinging back but she’s not the most predictable or loyal friend, sometimes she’ll sleep in your house every night for a week and then you won’t even get a text from her for a month. her best friends are elderly neighbours and houseless people she meets when volunteering at the foodbank. she thinks they’re more authentic than most of the ‘fake posers’ she meets down the vela pier

— calls herself a butch lesbian but still has sex with men when she wants validation. sexually attracted to some men, especially effeminate men, but only romantically attracted to women. very possessive of the gals in her life.

— stopped giving a shit about getting older or adhering to anyone elses bullshit standards, realised it was all fake p much as soon as she dropped out of school and one by one her friends just stopped texting her

— lives in one of the lofts in port apartments. it’s open plan with rugs and lava lamps everywhere. she has a palette bed. its all very ‘sustainable chic’. like, oh wow, a pallet bed that im supposed to think you made from scratch but i KNOW you got it off ebay because you thought it looked trendy

— constantly says shes poor but still buys clothes from urban outfitters. sus.

— frequently found at fannies flirting with the cute bisexual bartender with a choppy black bob.

general vibe / personality

vibrant, vulgar, self-absorbed, tenacious, veers bewteen apathetic and dogmatic, temperamental, flighty, unreliable, magnetic, charismatic, passive aggressive, likes to play devil’s advocate, takes the moral high ground. estp and a leo

likes: 70s music, john wayne movies, black mirror, philosophy, cowboy chic culture, dc comics, the smell of locker rooms,, deep red lipstick, lacrosse sticks, smoking weed from a bong, dogs, karaoke, pet rats, kate moss, late-night strolls, hawaaiian shirts worn open over a bralette, skinned knees, thai food, picking the apples at the very top of the trees, zip-lining, cigarettes, the idea of pegging but not the practical application of it, decorative lamps, LGBTQ+ pin badges, worn-out furniture, twangy electric guitars.

dislikes: girls who call other girls ‘pick me’ girls, woody allen movies, mental mathematics, wealthy children, quentin tarantino, ironing, institutionalised misogyny, the imaginary future, french literature, ‘dump him’ feminism, wes anderson films, spoken word poetry nights, college-educated bar staff who act like they’re better than you, indie softbois, the general mentality of cheerleading squads.

aesthetics

orange peel, the smell of bleach, skeleton drawings in the margins of a journal, thumb holes poked through the cuffs of your sleeves, bleach white sneakers pounding on a gymnasium floor, setting dumpsters on fire for the hell of it. a hit flask of vodka decorated with hello kitty stickers, split knuckles, alien conspiracy theories and sci-fi paperbacks, doc martens with fraying laces, a child in an oversize bee keepers suit, scabbed knees, not eating your greens, smiling with a mouthful of blood, and piercing your own ears with a safety pin when your dad wouldn’t take you, a tennis racket you punched through in a fit of temper, feet pounding the earth until your soles bleed crimson, sleeping in a cherry lip balm and scrunchies to keep the wild locks from your eyes.

hoo boy this is getting LONG AS FUCK but here are my wanted plots

wanted plots

ok margo’s been in irving since she was like 10. she’s quite a vivacious person?? she dresses completely instinctively without any sense of cohesion so she stands out. a guy once told her she was wearing the ugliest outfit he’d ever seen and he thought that was so cool and brave of her. but anyway where was i going.. she grew up in the abernathy creek so stuck out like a sore thumb,,,, maybe ppl who were super interested in the creek or maybe poked fun at her bcos of it idk.....

b4 she dropped out, margo used 2 b in with the cool kids at school bcos her dad would buy them booze and rarely ask for the money. maybe a fun plot cld b with some of the ‘it girls’ she used to hang around with b4 she got pregnant n dropped out and they all went off to college n stopped texting her.

frinds !! unlikely friends !! toxic friends !! some1 she feels like she knew before irving ???

since margo literally can’t differentiate between romantic and platonic love, she’s got off with so many of her mates, so i want awkward friendships where they nearly dated, or exes that have now just turned into weird friendships. fwbs. enemies with benefits. all the angst. all the slow burn mutual pining we hate each other narratives

locals who play sports. margo wld be all over community soccer n take it way too seriously. maybe ppl she plays hockey with. girls who she’s like, weirdly intimate with but its not a thing cos the other girls straight !!! what do u mean !! aha just fun !

she works part time at scuba. i want a mate that just goes and sits in there talking to her until her manager gets angry.

she's also a surf instructor and occasionally works as a lifeguard!! gal has like 7 jobs ik but regular swimmers hmu

ppl she coaches at the gym !! she wants to be a personal trainer

i reckon she might have recently started meditating to try and calm down her mind cos its always bustling with thoughts, n i think she’s p interested in buddhism so if anyone’s a buddhist hmu

someone she’s trying to make a zine with on female empowerment and women in film and art, etc. just a very feminist zine.

TLDR: angry sports gay, former high school track prodigy turned drop out, who likes feminist literature, wearing leather jackets over slip dresses, and smudged red lipstick.

this was so long !!! im sorry !! if you’ve read this far have a biscuit, love x

#aaaaaaa #we back boys #irvingintro #hmu for plots bayybeyyy

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buckyisabigmood · 3 years

Text

Basic Character Questions

First name? Hera

Surname? Kane (Murphy?)

Middle names? Lee

Nicknames? (Murphy?)

Date of birth? 9/24/02

Age? 18

Physical / Appearance

Height? 5'6"

Weight? 125lbs

Build? thin, muscular

Hair colour? dark brown, curly

Hair style? bun

Eye colour? grey

Eye Shape? almond

Glasses or contact lenses? reading glasses, night glasses

Distinguishing facial features? n/a

Which facial feature is most prominent? nose

Which bodily feature is most prominent? hair

Other distinguishing features? height

Skin? fair, tanning

Hands? average

Make up? occasional; sharp cat eye, foundation, dark lips, blush, dark eyeshadow

Scars? inner left bicep, mid back across spine, right wrist

Birthmarks? oval inside of right knee

Tattoos? various across entire body

Physical handicaps? bad right hip, fibromyalgia, migraines, chronic fatigue, overall worn joints

Type of clothes? men's button ups, men's dress clothes, vintage men's and women's attire

How do they wear their clothes? tucked in, loose fitting

What are their feet like? (type of shoes, state of shoes, socks, feet, pristine, dirty, worn, etc) callused feet, hammer toes. men's shoes, 6in heels, oxfords, good quality

Race / Ethnicity? caucasian, Irish heritage

Mannerisms? leg bouncing, lip biting, sitting with leg propped, limp on right side

Are they in good health? no

Do they have any disabilities? not legally

Personality

What words or phrases do they overuse? like, probably, uh, I mean

Do they have a catchphrase? indeed

Are they more optimistic or pessimistic? pessimist, though tries to encourage optimism in others

Are they introverted or extroverted? ambivert

Do they ever put on airs? no

What bad habits do they have? zoning out, talking too fast, not sleeping, not eating enough, binge eating

What makes them laugh out loud? whose line, crush flattering them

How do they display affection? compliments, affectionate touches, mock insults

Mental handicaps? depression, anxiety, overthinking, slight adhd

How do they want to be seen by others? strong, confident, capable, protector

How do they see themselves? crippled, broken, worthless, challenged

How are they seen by others? stubborn, loud, capable, caring

Strongest character trait? unforgiving

Weakest character trait? impatience

How competitive are they? very

Do they make snap judgements or take time to consider? impulsive

How do they react to praise? hide away, deny it

How do they react to criticism? shamed, crying

What is their greatest fear? secrets being discovered

What are their biggest secrets? they are polyromantic greysexual, a feminist, have long term online friends, (hopefully) will soon be dating a woman, is an independent

What is their philosophy of life? do no harm but take no shit

When was the last time they cried? a week ago, having a mental breakdown

What haunts them? inevitability to disappoint their family and be disowned

What are their political views? independent, leaning left

What will they stand up for? the treatment of others

Who do they quote? carrie fisher, hozier, brie larson

Are they indoorsy or outdoorsy? both

What is their sinful little habit? listening/watching 'none christian' things

What sense do they most rely on? hearing

How do they treat people better than them? respect, positivity, optimism

How do they treat people worse than them? assuming the worst, judging, sarcasm

What quality do they most value in a friend? loyalty

What do they consider an overrated virtue? prudence

If they could change one thing about themselves, what would it be? physical strength

What is their obsession? swords, women

What are their pet peeves? incorrect animal care, being talked down to, loud chewing

What are their idiosyncrasies? doors must always be closed and locked, gets up two hours earlier than needed, will fall asleep if reading on the computer

Friends and Family

Is their family big or small? Who does it consist of? big; mother, father, five older brothers, two older sisters, one younger sister, three nephews, two nieces, four aunts, five uncles, many cousins, two grandmothers, one grandfather

What is their perception of family? overrated; the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb

Do they have siblings? Older or younger? 8 siblings; five older brothers, two older sisters, one younger sister

Describe their best friend. the same as them. fight more than flight, major physical problems, mentally worn out, respect is given until proven undeserved, funny, caring, heart over head

Ideal best friend? see; best friend

Describe their other friends. overall kind, caring, considerate, musically talented, loud

Describe their acquaintances. annoyances, loud, bubbly, hyperactive

Do they have any pets? one dog, two horses, six sheep, many chickens, many snakes

Who are their natural allies? minorities, protectors, those who need protecting

Who are their surprising allies? church youth, some police, nurses

Past and Future

What was your character like as a baby? As a child? easygoing as a baby, wanting attention and to be part of older siblings' group as child

Did they grow up rich or poor? lower-middle class, wanting some but getting few

Did they grow up nurtured or neglected? nurtured physically, neglected emotionally

What is the most offensive thing they ever said? 'it is disgusting gay people can adopt' (a lie)

What is their greatest achievement? having the courage to come out to online friends

What was their first kiss like? n/a has not kissed anyone

What is the worst thing they did to someone they loved? thoughts of abandoning family

What are their ambitions? to marry someone they love, have a self built farm, foster teenagers, be a freelance artist

What advice would they give their younger self? don't give up, you are not an abomination for being attracted to women, do not tell youth leader about suicidal thoughts

What smells remind them of their childhood? homemade pizza, pines, dogs

What was their childhood ambition? to be a veterinarian

What is their best childhood memory? being with older siblings and hanging out with their friends

What is their worst childhood memory? figuring out they were polyromantic, the fear of being found out and disowned

Did they have an imaginary childhood friend? n/a

What past act are they most proud of? talking to other kids first

Has anyone ever saved their life? doctors; had major kindey infection at age of two, had major uti at age of eight

Strongest childhood memory? disappointing parents

Love

Do they believe in love at first sight? infatuation at first side, that may develop in to love

Are they in a relationship? working on asking a woman out

How do they behave in a relationship? caring, prioritizing spouse, lots of gifts

When did you character last have sex?

n/a, does not desire sex

What sort of sex do they have? n/a

Has your character ever been in love? currently in love

Have they ever had their heart broken? no. has ghosted a fuckboy and thought they had broken his heart

Conflict

How do they respond to a threat? defensive, posturing, threatening

Are they most likely to fight with their fists or their tongue? fists

What is your character’s kryptonite? children, sob stories

If your character could only save one thing from their burning house, what would it be? electronics

How do they perceive strangers? men are possible threats, women are in danger

What do they love to hate? disney villains

What are their phobias? aquaphobia, entomophobia, atychiphobia

What is their choice of weapon? longsword

What living person do they most despise? larry nassar

Have they ever been bullied or teased? yes

Where do they go when they’re angry? bathroom, bedroom, outside

Who are their enemies and why? n/a, enemies are unknown

Work, Education and Hobbies

What is their current job? apprentice horse trainer and farm hand

What do they think about their current job? too physically taxing, worsens already poor physical condition

What are some of their past jobs? n/a

What are their hobbies? reading, writing, drawing, video games, research on medieval times, watching tv, movies, youtube

Educational background? homeschooled highschool graduate

Intelligence level? low, cannot do simple math, does not know history

Do they have any specialist training? n/a

Do they have a natural talent for something? art, slightly

Do they play a sport? Are they any good? equestrian sports, intermediate

What is their socioeconomic status? low social status, seen as unlikeable, n/a economic status

Favourites

What is their favourite animal? wolves

Which animal to they dislike the most? insects

What place would they most like to visit? mountains of utah

What is the most beautiful thing they’ve ever seen? mountains

What is their favourite song? in a week by hozier

Music, art, reading preferred? alternative, metal, emo music. realistic, stylised, comic-esque art. fantasy, medieval, adventure, action books.

What is their favourite colour? black, blood red

What is their password? "I love you for who you are"

Favourite food? steak, homemade rolls, pizza, salad

What is their favourite work of art? women with umbrellas, reunited

Who is their favourite artist? mambo

What is their favourite day of the week? friday

Possessions

What is in their fridge? frozen pizzas, salad stuff, soda, beer, snacks

What is on their bedside table? mace, a notebook and pen, phone, cologne, empty cans

What is in their car? mask, air freshener, large knife, window breaker, charger

What is in their bin? candy wrappers, cans, bottles

What is in their purse or wallet? pepper spray, bible, book, keys, pen, pencil, mints

What is in their pockets? knife, carmex

What is their most treasured possession? their truck

Spirituality

Who or what is your character’s guardian angel? Gabriel

Do they believe in the afterlife? Yes

What are their religious views? non-denominational Christianity

What do they think heaven is? where there is no pain, or hurt, where you can be with your loved ones (including pets) for eternity without getting tired of their company

What do they think hell is? suffering, eternal torment, both physical and psychological pain

Are they superstitious? no

What would they like to be reincarnated as? a sandcat

How would they like to die? by sword

What is your character’s spirit animal? house cat

What is their zodiac sign? libra

Values

What do they think is the worst thing that can be done to a person? rape, mutilation, taking away loved ones

What is their view of ‘freedom’? being able to do as you like, as long as it does not harm others

When did they last lie? earlier in the day

What’s their view of lying? not necessarily good, but needed on some occasions for safety

When did they last make a promise? tonight, promising to get a full night's sleep

Did they keep or break their last promise? break it

Daily life

What are their eating habits? hectic- binge eating one day and eating nothing the next. usually eating on impulse rather than specific times

Do they have any allergies? lactose, sulfa

Describe their home. medium sized, lots of storage space, including many closets. an organized mess, knowing where everything is exactly without putting it away, unless it is clothing

Are they minimalist or a clutter hoarder? somewhere in the middle, though leaning towards clutter hoarder. loves collecting shot glasses

What do they do first thing on a weekday morning? get dressed, feed the animals, have breakfast

What do they do on a Sunday afternoon? eat pizza, hang out with friends or family, watch a movie

What do they do on a Friday night? drink with friends at home, hang out

What is the soft drink of choice? dr pepper

What is their alcoholic drink of choice? whiskey

Miscellaneous

What is their character archetype? The Trickster

Who is their hero? Gal Gadot, Gideon the Ninth

What or who would your character dress up as for Halloween? Gideon the Ninth

Are they comfortable with technology? somewhat

If they could save one person, who would it be? Hozier

If they could call one person for help, who would it be? best friend

What is their favourite proverb? the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb

What is their greatest extravagance? clothes

What is their greatest regret? not being who their parents wanted them to be

What is their perception of redemption? if you truly change and do your best, most everything is redeemable, but there are some things which can never be forgiven

What would they do if they won the lottery? buy a cottage, clothes, animals, and put some into savings

What is their favourite fairytale? the three bears, by robert southey

What fairytale do they hate? the little mermaid (original)

Do they believe in happy endings? yes

What is their idea of perfect happiness? being loved, loving others, and being content with what you have

What would they ask a fortune teller? will they find a spouse who loves them wholeheartedly?

If your character could travel through time, where would they go? the 1830s, dressed as a man and supporting women, whom know they are a women themselves

What sport do they excel at? n/a

What sport do they suck at? all. unable to do physical sports

If they could have a superpower, what would they choose? super strength

#character sheet #but like #me #I'm the character #some of it is for my current situation #and some is what I hope to happen in the future #not gonna tell you what parts what tho

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lazarustrashpit · 4 years

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Hey if you want to be an artist, I want to be artist but on the side since I am worried about the financial situation and I have to get a career and stay in school that’s what my parents say do you think I can become an artist still or? Or how do you manage? I’m not sure o becoming an artist since I’m not that good at digital, colors but I would like to be but in a more financially stable future.

Hi anon,

They don’t call us starving artists for no reason.

I’m not sure I’m the best person suited to answer this, as this is something I personally struggle with in becoming a full-time illustrator. However, I’m going to give you as honest of an answer as I can based on my own experiences. Please note, that I do not speak on the behalf of other artists.

I’ve been a graphic designer for over 10 years, and an art director for a production company for half of that. What you see me doing on social media is something out of pure hobby. Fan art doesn’t pay my bills.

Short answer: Yes, it’s possible to become a full time artist and be financially stable. Is it easy? DEFINITELY NOT. Like with literally anything, it takes a lot of work and dedication to be successful. I’ve had the pleasure of conversing and working with several different types of artists. We’ve all struggled and continue to struggle, but the pay off is incredibly rewarding, if you can get your foot in the right door... but you gotta find the right door to begin with. What kind of artist are you interested in becoming?

Artist is a vary vague term. There’s so many different career paths for each specialty. Comics: Pencilers, inkers, colorists, letterers; Concept artists: props, vehicles, costumes, backgrounds, fauna, aliens, buildings; Animation: 3d modeling, flash animation, compositing, rigging, storyboards, 2d hand drawn animation, 3d computer animation, stop motion animation. There’s a lot of positions out there. Saying you want to be an artist is like saying I want to be a doctor. Okay, but what type? Podiatrist? Veterinarian? Neurologist? Pediatrician? Psychiatrist?

Long scary answer below the cut.

Disclaimer: I’m not speaking on behalf of other artists, just my own opinion from my own experiences. Also, I am in no way trying to discourage you because a lot of what is written below is negative. The last thing I’d want is to deprive the world of another artist, but I also don’t want to provide some sort of false hope.

Being a full time artist is not easy. It’s extremely competitive regardless of what industry you want to dive into. It’s a lot of work and sleepless nights overcoming deadlines, your own self-esteem, and the biggest hurdle of all, finances.

Choosing any career is a big deal. As stated above, you have to do your research to really understand what you’re going to get yourself into. What’s the job market like for where you currently live? If there are not enough opportunities, are you willing to move for work? Yes, a lot of jobs can be done remotely, but if we’re talking about being financially stable, your best bet is to get yourself in with a studio full-time or on a long contract project. Freelance artistry is difficult—you set and negotiate your own rates for projects, and you’re responsible for marketing yourself to keep getting jobs, not to mention you are more susceptible to getting scammed and taken advantage of. And with social media being a driving force for a lot of marketing, you’re constantly fighting with the algorithm to get your work seen. Not to mention, there’s a lot of pressure because you get paid per project and if you can’t land a project, then you’re not getting paid. Whereas if you can work for a studio, the work is brought to you on a consistent basis, provided you can keep up with the demands and perform to the task at hand. A lot of the work may be repetitive and time sensitive, but it will be steady. Working for a studio/business gets you benefits like retirement options, health benefits, vacation/sick pay, tuition reimbursement, etc.

There’s also the other side of being a freelance artist that no one ever really talks about. Everyone thinks that we spend every day just pumping out art, which is somewhat true, but we don’t often talk about the missing the endless emails with clients, the constant marketing, searching on artstation, fiverr, etc for gigs, querying literary agents, changing your portfolio(this is another thing I can talk about for days so hit me up in DMS if you want to discuss) constantly to reflect your very best work, keeping up on all your social media platforms to engage your audience, honestly, finding an audience in general is another conversation, dealing with carpel tunnel and other muscle related injuries... it goes on and on.

I moved 3000 miles across the United States from my hometown to California for better work opportunities. Are you prepared to work another job(s) to make ends meet? I worked in retail and a handful of odd jobs for several years before I fell into an actual full-time art job.

Ultimately, it really depends on how passionate you are about this, and how much you’re willing to struggle to get to do what you want. For me, I fall into a very depressive state if I can’t flex my creative muscles for even one day. I worked as an event coordinator for several years, and was never worried about money. However, despite being financially well-off, I was so incredibly miserable every single day because I just didn’t have the energy to draw when I got home. It was nearly impossible for me to get out of bed every morning. Then, I landed a job as a graphic designer, I made less, but I was so much happier, but it still wasn’t enough. I would work a full day and still come home and draw something after having dinner, even though I had already spent 8 hours being creative beforehand. It’s literally something I just need to do to be happy. It helps me relax and de-stress. So, what I’m saying is, if you’re not passionate about it, don’t make it your main focus. Why open a restaurant if you’re not ready to wake up at 3 am to bake bread or go to the fish market for fresh ingredients?

In the end, I’d rather be dirt poor and drawing, than be wealthy and miserable. But that’s not for everyone. It really, really, really, just depends on who you are.

A lot of artists have day jobs and do art on the side for supplemental income. If you have the drive to keep that up, because it will be taxing on your physical and mental health (please take proper breaks), then please pursue it. I would NEVER want to discourage anyone from pursuing art as a career or hobby. I just want to be real about the struggle. The beautiful thing about art is that it’s never too late to fall into. It just takes time and dedication to the craft. I’ve spoken with dozens of animators that didn’t fall into it until they were in their 30s and now work full-time for Disney. Anything is possible if you have the talent and the drive for improvement.

Again, I’m not speaking on any other artists’ behalf. I’m sure we all have differing opinions and experiences on the topic. Feel free to DM me if you want to talk about this further. As you can see, I can ramble about this for days, so I’m just gonna shut up now lol

#Anonymous #this was a really difficult question for me to answer #I have a lot of feels #art questions

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thanksjro · 4 years

Text

More Than Meets the Eye 2012 Annual - None of These Guys Know How to Be Nice to Others or Themselves

Hey, so you remember how every kids’ show until basically 2006 had a Fantastic Voyage episode, where they explored the inside of one of their friends’ bodies? We’re opening up with that.

Rodimus and a few pals are busy trying to clear out a nanocon infestation from none other than Ultra Magnus himself, and are doing it in the most convoluted way possible because Brainstorm wanted to try some new invention out, and I guess Ratchet just can’t say no to that faceplate. Whirl’s in there, which seems like maybe not the best idea. Wonder how Magnus feels about all this.

Oh my god he’s been asleep this entire time.

There’s this thing that doctors are supposed to do before performing any medical procedure on a lucid patient, and it’s called informed consent. It would appear that it didn’t happen here. Ratchet, your medical license, please and thank you.

Things start getting hairy for the Fantastic Voyagers during their throw-down inside Magnus’ mouth, and Ratchet’s forced to do something drastic: he has to ask Ultra Magnus, king-sized stick-in-the-mud, to smile.

Woof, that’s rough. Don’t worry, buddy, you’ll get the hang of it eventually.

The sudden engagement of the smiling pistons is so violent that they explode, thus destroying the nanocons entirely and utterly. Great!

Word gets out that Ultra Magnus smiled. Not so great.

Atomizer’s all about them crossbows, so I’m going to make a call and say his design aesthetic is probably rustic chic. Of course, rustic chic for a bunch of space robots probably looks a hell of a lot like brutalism. What I’m saying is, I don’t think Atomizer’s work before the war was too hot.

Everyone Magnus runs into and tries to inflict his job upon makes fun of him. Magnus is a sensitive soul, so he takes it to heart. Poor baby.

A bit later on, in the double page spread with layering issues, Chromedome wakes up from a nightmare.

Rewind has to think about this and double check his database to make sure that Chromedome hasn’t in fact tried to commit suicide by way of ingesting space napalm, and I think that says a lot about Chromedome from a mental health standpoint that even his husband isn’t 100% sure what all he’s tried.

Chromedome hasn’t tried this particular avenue of suicide, which means that his flashback nightmare is the result of one of the many mnemosurgery autopsies he’s performed over the years. Turns out digging around in someone’s memories has a few side-effects.

Meanwhile, Tailgate’s inviting Cyclonus to his Autobot graduation ceremony, because while Cyclonus pulled a real bastard move last time we saw him, Tailgate still seems to think he’s worth having around. Tailgate really wants to be liked by people. Cyclonus doesn’t even respond, and Tailgate decides to leave him alone to stare out at the free-to-use image of space that’s currently in their window.

Then there’s Swerve, who’s down in the engine rooms looking for his roommate, Red Alert. Yep, that’s right; Red Alert somehow ended up sharing a room not just in general, but with Swerve, who we established in issue #1 as being maybe not his favorite individual.

Swerve stops by the corpse of Ore, who I guess they haven’t scraped out of the side of the quantum drive yet for whatever reason, and he take a moment to pay his respects.

OH MY GOD.

Everyone looks like they’ve got retainers in for this issue too! What an oddly specific design choice to see repeated by multiple artists. And on that note…

The 2012 Annual was drawn by two people, Jimbo Salgado and Emil Cabaltierra, both of whom seem to only have this singular contribution to the Transformers franchise. Salgado appears to have been employed by DC Comics, and Cabaltierra’s most recent work seems to be on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics. There isn’t a ton of information on either of them, so I suppose we’ll have to take the art here at face value.

Over in Rodimus’ inexplicably not-pink room, he and Drift are discussing talking points for Tailgate’s graduation ceremony. Well, Drift’s talking while Rodimus half-listens. We get a taste of Rodimus’ motto for the series.

Drift thinks that less might be more in this case, but the saying, much like a majority of Rodimus’ personality, is based in feelings of inadequacy. Optimus says it- though not nearly as often- and if it’s good enough for Optimus Prime, surely it’s something to emulate. Rodimus, feeling a bit snippy over being called out on his hero-worship, accuses Drift of not actually caring about the ceremony and just wanting to get to the part where they hit up Crystal City to join up on the Knight Quest. Drift, admittedly, is excited to see the Circle of Light again, which is surprising considering what happened the last time he was in Crystal City.

I dunno, I just feel like things would be awkward.

Magnus walks in, demanding the whole crew be thrown out because they’ve been making fun of him. Rodimus tries to help Magnus see the lighter side of things, saying that a little harmless ribbing means that the crew is starting to warm up to him, but Magnus doesn’t see it that way.

There’s also the issue of the Lost Light still not having made contact with the Circle of Light. Magnus is concerned about the sect of religious zealot-pacifists having been attacked, but Drift fills Magnus- and the reader- in on the bad-assery he witnessed back in the Drift miniseries.

It’s later now, and Tailgate’s ceremony is about to start. In the audience, Jackpot takes bets on how long it’ll take for Rodimus to say the Thing, and Whirl confides in First Aid about the graffiti he left inside Ultra Magnus. Wonder what sort of violation that is. Defacement of personal property? Medical malpractice? Assault?

Rodimus kicks things off, Whirl wins a bet, and we get word that all the dead bodies they just keep stacked up in the medibay started moving and clutching at their heads as if in pain. Apparently First Aid doesn’t know proper ceremony etiquette, because he’s fully leaned over the seat in front of him, in a crowd that honestly isn’t nearly big enough to hide what he’s doing, to whisper to Skids about the whole thing.

Well well well, if it isn’t Mr. Grumpypants himself watching from the wings. Glad you could not-join the party, you night-creature. If you’re attempting to be a nice person, Cyclonus, the person you’re attempting to be nice to needs to be aware of it.

Rodimus makes his speech, reflects on his own right of Autobrand, and Tailgate gets his very own temporary Autobot badge.

Or not.

Rodimus, who didn’t mean to fuck up Tailgate’s paint, doesn’t even know what he just did. Rewind steps in to translate the gobbledygook, while Tailgate has a minor crisis over his ruined beauty, saying that it’s Old Cybertronian for “let me out.” Drift and Ratchet run out of the white void behind the stage, both touting their own theories on what just happened, and both at odds with one another. Skids interrupts the debate of science vs religion before it can start, stating that Swerve’s on the horn about that Duobot not being dead.

Ore being alive poses a problem, because he’s still stuffed into the quantum drive, and if he freaks out he could set the thing off and having them bouncing all over space. They just got to Theophany, home of the Circle of Light, so bouncing around would be really inconvenient.

But wait, there’s more! The Galactic Council has come calling, wanting to know just what the hell everyone’s favorite war-mongering race is doing on their turf. Rodimus is a rude little shit, because bonding with the Matrix doesn’t really do much for your skills in traversing delicate political situations. Luckily, Magnus steps in before Rodimus can cause a galactic incident.

Magnus, because he’s the Enforcer of the Tyrest Accord- Tyrest being seen as a neutral party by both the Cybetronians and the Galactic Council- is received much more warmly by such a bureaucratic organization. They have what might be considered playful banter to them, and an agreement is reached.

Ooh, that’s a spicy take there, Rodimus!

We get a brief explanation of what exactly the Galactic Council is- a coalition of sentient races who organize treaties between species and police the galaxy in an attempt to keep the peace. Obviously, they don’t much care for the Transformers.

Before we can get terribly deep into the history of galactic politics, there’s a bright flash of light that consumes Rodimus-

-and we cut over to Swerve and his zombie pal.

Hey, who wants to see some high-level self-sabotage of one’s sense of worth? Because if you do, you’re in luck, because Swerve’s apparently got it down to a fine art. After failing to identify himself, Ore- who cannot see or feel anything at present- thinks that he’s speaking with Pipes, and Swerve proceeds to offer up that thing that happened in issue #6 on a silver platter to the guy who apparently doesn’t like him a whole lot already.

Swerve, please, practice a little self-love, my dude. Don’t subject yourself to this.

Down on Theophany, the boys are driving towards Crystal City, and are none-too-impressed by what they find.

Rewind, what the fuck do you think you’re doing? You can’t do that, it’s been established.

It’s looking like Crystal City’s been proper fucked, and Drift’s none too happy about it.

Back over at the pity-party, Swerve’s ruminating on the difference between peace and happiness, and how he doesn’t think he’s cut out for either of them. Ore adds that they’ve only just ended the war, and it may take some time to settle into the new normal. Swerve worries that he’s wasting his bold new tomorrow by playing pranks on Red Alert when he could be using his medical degree for something useful and important. Poor Swerve, caught in the trap of “you’re only worth something if you’re productive”. We’ve all been there, man.

Because it’s trauma, and you don’t owe anyone to be perfectly healthy and fine when you’re traumatized by warcrimes and atrocities! Every single member of the Cybertronian population is chock-full of trauma, and they need, just, so many more mental health services in order for it all to be processes and dealt with.

Also, Ore is very scary and bad to look at, so I’ve cut him out of the capture for this little bit of dialogue.

Back in Crystal City, the boys have made the rounds, and determined that a fight did indeed happen, but there aren’t any bodies to speak of. Odd, that. Drift is a little on edge, as he snaps at Rewind that he’ll cut his camera off of his head if he doesn’t shut up, then decks Whirl for playing the name game.

Then Drift gets mad at god, and things go about as well as you’d expect.

Later, bitches!

Over on the Benign Intervention, the Galactic Council ship, we see where Ultra Magnus’ gotten to, as he has a meeting with a representative. The Council is offering Magnus a seat at the table, because he’s about the only member of his race the Council respects.

Back with Drift, the lads have picked themselves up from the fall and have found themselves a nice little surprise.

Ratchet and Skids up there just straight-up disrespecting gravity. Can you tell I’m not a huge fan of the art here? Because I’m not.

The fellas climb up on this giant’s face, Swerve shows up for a panel, and Rodimus has everyone jump down the Metrotitan’s throat to go find the thing’s brain.

Lot of vore-adjacent action this issue. Gotta love an Annual.

Once inside, they find a very big brain, and Cyclonus reflects on his faith. See, back when Metrotitans weren’t so rare and Cyclonus hadn’t spent 6 million years in the Dead Universe, he would worship in their shadow. Rewind, because he’s a history nerd, asks for a taste of that action, and Cyclonus indulges him, probably because he’s once again realized that he misses connecting with other people, and still doesn’t know how to handle the Tailgate thing.

This is where the Guido Guidi art kicks in, and it’s so friggin’ pretty. So pretty, in fact, you might almost miss Roberts slipping this into the lore dump.

An urgency, you say, which- stop me if I’m wrong- resulted in the creation of life.

Honestly, I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner.

Anyway, this is where the Guiding Hand came to be- the five gods of Cybertron.

Now, back in The Death of Optimus Prime, it was established that the Guiding Hand were ancient, lost knowledge, only known to the Matrix and its bearer. Cyclonus is really fucking old, but I’m thinking that this discrepancy is simply a case of early-installment weirdness that’s now being rectified, so it isn’t too odd when members of the crew are revealed to have faith.

So the gods hung out, made a bunch of babies asexually, gave them the gifts of thought and feeling and being able to turn into tanks and shit, and it was pretty sweet for a while.

The Mortilus got a bug up his butt about killing things, and the Transformers found their true purpose in the universe- war. Mortilus was eventually defeated, but only after every other member of the Guiding Hand had been reduced to abstract sculpture art; Primus became Vector Sigma, Solomus became the Matrix- which, considering what happened to that thing prior to MTMTE, uh, yikes- and Epistemus and Adaptus became the basis on which the modern t-cog and brain module were built.

Because the god of death is no more, the Transformers were made immortal, which explains why it takes so much to fucking kill them. A bunch of the first generation of Transformers decided to fuck off into space to spread the good word about their pretty-much-dead gods, coming to be known at the Knights of Cybertron. The end!

Ratchet doesn’t appreciate the tale that Cyclonus just told, because Real Atheist Hours are 24/7 for him, and that fight that Skids managed to put a stop to starts up again.

Then Drift brandishes a sword a Ratchet, because this is how we deal with our problems when we’re Drift, and hiding behind a façade of being a happy-go-lucky flowerchild fails. Rodimus breaks the two of them up before someone gets stabbed, and drags Drift away as Chromedome sets up to do his thing on a brain the size of a school bus.

Skids comes up and starts chatting him up, and Chromedome reveals a little bit about himself as a person.

Chromedome, I’m happy that you found someone you love who loves you just as much, but I’ll go ahead and say it- I don’t think telling the dude with short-to-midterm memory loss to look for a relationship is the hottest idea you’ve ever had.

In a place that isn’t the inside of the Metrotitan’s skull, Drift asks Rodimus about his faith. Rodimus is a believer, then proceeds to put the guy on a pedestal as he make the claim that “everything will depend on him.”

Then Chromedome stabs his needly little fingers into a giant brain- much to Rewind’s chagrin- and all hell breaks loose.

Oh man, y’all are going to double space-prison for that one.

Magnus’ meeting gets interrupted, of course, and the Council’s automatic response is to assume they’re being attacked, and they break out the big guns to take down to the planet’s surface. Magnus, seeing the writing on the wall, teleports back over to the Lost Light awith the intent to call Rodimus to try and see just what’s happening now, when the entirety of the ship is encased in a forcefield, and not one courtesy of Trailcutter.

Back planetside, Chromedome’s flat on his back as he explains that the Metrotitan is screaming its friggin’ head off in a frequency they can’t hear, mad as hell that it can’t answer the call of Vector Sigma to come home. This frequency can also apparently raise the dead, and do a bunch of other really weird shit. Chromdome wants to dive back in.

Chromedome, are you sure that statement about being suicidal should have been past-tense?

The whole planet is a-rockin’ and a-shakin’, as the Council troops make their way towards our dear friends. Rodimus, thinking quickly, orders Whirl to take a few friends and keep the Council busy while Chromedome wraps up. Rodimus wants all that good, good Cybertronian history, and figures that they need to rip it all out of the Metrotitan’s brain while he’s still kicking. Brainstorm offers to shrink the guy, seeing as he brought along his mass-displacement gun, but Rodimus seems intent on using the method that could kill Chromedome and might not even get them what they need before the Metrotitan dies.

Before a decision can be reached, Ultra Magnus gets through to Rodimus. Turns out that forcefield the Lost Light’s in is an incineration shell, and things are about to get spicy for everyone on board. Said shell is also draining the power cells, so they can’t quantum jump to safety. Rodimus has an idea though.

Over with Swerve and Ore, the conversation turns to religion. Swerve is a man of faith, whereas Ore has a much more straightforward view of life- you live, and it’s odd and wonderful and terrible, and when you die that’s it. Ore does not believe in the afterlife, and believes that what you get is what you get.

This is about the time that Rodimus calls Swerve to have him set off the quantum drive by killing Ore via shock, by telling him the truth about his predicament.

Swerve just shoved those orders so far up Rodimus’ ass, he’ll probably blow them out of his nose in a minute.

So, the Lost Light’s done for, thanks to the power of standing up for yourself. I guess Scott Pilgrim got that one wrong. Chromedome asks Rodimus what he wants to do with the Metrotitan, and Rodimus says to let him free.

And then everyone died. That’s a series wrap, folks!

What do you mean we’ve got 49 more issues? Okay, let’s see where this goes.

So Brainstorm blasts the brain, everyone is enveloped in a bright light, and we smash-cut to Swerve talking at Rung’s headless body in the medibay, as he recounts the outright religious experience he had.

Ore’s gone, and Swerve believes that Primus came and took him to the Afterspark, the Cybertronian afterlife, and so it was that Swerve’s faith was strengthened.

Over in Rodimus’ office, we tear down that miracle with some equally unrealistic sci-fi bullshit. Brainstorm’s mass-displacement shrunk the Metrotitan down enough to allow himself to teleport, and some theorized psychic link with Ore allowed the Lost Light to piggyback to safety.

Still no clues as to what happened to the Circle of Light, though, which is troublesome. Probably kidnapped, or some such. Going off of that hunch, the Lost Light will be following some reports on Decepticon activity- because we haven’t gotten to the point of nuance with our former enemies just yet.

Rodimus has decided that winging things isn’t really working out like he’d like it to, so he’s going to try to be a better captain. Which, y’know, thank god. Let’s make an effort to keep everyone kicking.

We get a brief flashback to just what happened during Magnus’ meeting with the Galactic Council, and as it turns out, he turned down their offer, saying that he was needed on the Lost Light.

The Council is disappointed by his decision.

Oh well dang, I wonder who that mysterious figure could possibly be. Surely he will in no way factor into the entirety of every single problem ever faced or made by the planet of Cybertron and the galaxy it resides in. Oh, surely not.

While I got you here, let’s take a gander at the section blurbs.

We’re getting yet more mindsets about god and faith, from folks not in the narrative but adjacent to it. Alpha Trion is a well-respected, learned robot who has no doubt spent a vast majority of his time taking in literature and theory on the subject of religion. In contrast, we have Beachcomber, who in this particular continuity doesn’t have a ton of characterization, but does seem to be pulling from his hippy-dippy persona from the ‘80s cartoon at least a little for his excerpt here. New-age, we’ll call him.

And then there’s Megatron, who’s just straight-up torn the cover off of Karl Marx’s A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right and is trying to pass it off as his own, but let’s look more at the actual meaning of such a quote.

Now the problem with that is, much like in real life, we aren’t seeing the entirety of the quote, instead having only kept the last little bit to play with.

"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people".

Now, for Megatron here, we should assume that the front-end of this quote from Marx isn’t applicable, seeing as we seem to be operating as if it doesn’t exist.

So, “Religion is the opium/engex of the people.” It’s a comfort, a drug, something to keep one docile. We’ll see the logical conclusion to such a mindset much later on in the series. As is, it gives us another glimpse at the creature that is pre-war Megatron.

And now you know why the Annual subtitle was Primus: You, Me, and Other Revelations.

#transformers #jro #jro punches me in the face #maccadam #Hannzreads #text post #long post #comic script writing #overthinking about robots

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canyouhearthelight · 4 years

Text

The Miys, Ch. 71

Thank you to @satan-parisienne for being my #1 beta reader and literally writing half this chapter. So many conversations between us are captured in their essence when Sophia and Tyche interact, but this was such a rare opportunity to transcribe such a conversation.

There are so many other people I want to thank, but if I thank all of you, this post would be literally just tags. So, I want to include @baelpenrose and @anotherusrname for also being there for everything that doesn’t make it into this story, and @charlylimph-blog for being the light and joy in the world that I wish I could be.

No worries, this isn’t the last chapter, I just had a really rough week from a mental health perspective. The show will go on.

At some point during the night, Xiomara vanished with the gorgeous artist. This left my sister, Charly, and myself to annoy Sebastian until the guys could come and rescue… someone. I wasn’t sure if they saved us or the poor pub-owner. All I could remember after Xiomara leaving was Charly deciding Conor was a good chair: intending to sit on her stool, she had unceremoniously climbed in his lap instead. After some wiggling to figure out the difference, she had pronounced the chair to be soft and warm.

With a snort of laughter that made my eyes water, I had to explain that it wasn’t the chair she was practically wallowing in, it was my boyfriend’s lap. With a very serious look at his face, she had only patted his beard and announced that she understood why I kept him since he was so comfortable and warm. That was the point when Coffey scooped her up, tossed her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, and took a still-waving Charly home, and everything else kind of blurred together.

As for myself, I woke up the next morning being tortured for my sins. Someone had decided to play a recording of a cement mixer over a looped track of a chainsaw, at full volume, targeted straight at my ears. Groaning in pain, I covered my ears and quickly realized I didn’t have enough hands to also cover my eyes. The chainsaw stopped abruptly and I felt the mattress dip to my left. I cracked my eye when an arm nudged mine. Maverick was handing me a cup full of something that was quickly snatched away when I tried to sniff it. He brought it back with a pointed look, so I placed my faith in him and chugged it.

If it smelled half as bad as it tasted, no wonder he wouldn’t let me take a whiff – only every shred of self-control I hadn’t exercised the night before kept the concoction my stomach. It tasted like analgesic, so I assumed if I kept it down, the hangover would go away eventually. That didn’t make the act of forcing it to stay in my stomach any easier.

When I no longer felt like my brain was trying to escape my skull through judicious use of a sledgehammer, I took a deep breath and braved opening my eyes. What little light there was in our bedroom was no longer cleverly crafted from sharp objects, and the cement mixer had been replaced by Conor snoring away to my right.

“He took the late shift to make sure you all got home safe,” Maverick whispered softly. “So I agreed to be the one to deal with your hangover.” When I glared at the empty cup he had taken from me, he shrugged and smirked at me. “Analgesic, electrolyte solution, and an anti-emetic.”

“No wonder it tasted like ass,” I grumbled.

Jokingly, he waved a hand in front of his nose before pinching it. “I think you’re just tasting your mouth, honestly. You really need to brush your teeth.”

Scowling, I ran my tongue over the inside of my teeth – and immediately regretted it. Did I eat a dead rat or something? I whimpered to myself before staggering to scrub the taste of whatever it was out of my mouth. After a rather prolonged date with my toothbrush as well as a shower, I managed to walk much more gracefully into the kitchen to get some coffee. Conor had already beat me to it, however, handing me a steaming cup as I walked in. He carefully ruffled my hair – I was still struggling with flashbacks – and bent down so I could kiss his cheek.

I pulled back and arched an eyebrow. “You sure you don’t want that kiss from someone else?” I teased.

“You would never believe how awkward that was,” he deadpanned, rolling his eyes. “Charly’s a nice girl, but I got my hands full with you two. Sides, she’s a bit much for me, you catch my drift.” He gave me a pout and tapped his cheek again.

Giggling, I obliged before going to sit on the couch and putting my head on Maverick’s shoulder. “Do I smell better?” I yawned before sipping my coffee.

“Much,” he exhaled gratefully.

I snuggled in further, now that I was granted approval. “Tyche make it home okay? I’ll admit I don’t remember much.”

“Yeah, she’s fine. Antoine took her home not long before Coffey came and got Charly.”

“They weren’t sneaky at all, you know?” As I said this, Conor walked in with a quizzical look on his face. “We knew you, Coffey, and Antoine were sitting in the opposite corner all night. Zach showed up later, hung around for a bit, so did Simon but he headed out kind of early.”

“You weren’t supposed to know,” Conor scowled comically.

“You and Coffey are the two tallest humans on the ship. Did you really think you were hiding? Especially with Xiomara at the table?”

“She’s got a point,” Maverick laughed. “What is it you always say? Xiomara has horse’s ears?”

Conor tipped his head back laughing. “I said I hadn’t seen her in a donkey’s ears, which just means a really long time. But yeah, I should have known she would see us. We figured she’d be on our side, not ratting us out.”

I buried my face in Maverick’s shirt, laughing. Sitting up, I wiped a tear from one eye. “Love. Xiomara was in the military and trained in hand-to-hand combat, and you don’t want to see what Tyche can do in a fight. She fights dirtier than mud. We were safe, I promise.”

“Let us worry,” Maverick pressed a kiss to my temple. “You don’t get to hog all the overprotective instincts, you know. And besides, if any of you ladies thought that Coffey wasn’t going to be watching Charly like a hawk, you’ve lost your minds. I’ve seen what she can get up to when she’s sober. Drunk? No thank you.”

“Speaking of Charly,” I adjusted so I was sitting straighter. “Galactic education starts next week. She told me she’s in one of the first classes.”

Maverick nodded. “Yeah, same section I’m in, I think. I didn’t recognize the teacher’s name, though.”

“At least that means we know it isn’t Simon,” Conor pointed out with a grin.

“Be nice,” I remonstrated. “Eino administered all his testing for certification, and he’s pretty impressed with Simon. Even in the practical observation, he did a great job.”

“Wait,” Maverick ventured slowly. “If this is a new curriculum, how is there a practical observation?”

Conor shook his head before reaching forward to squeeze the other man’s knee. “The educators have to go through the course before they can teach it, just like anything else. They’ve already been trained in how to teach, but need to know what they are teaching.”

I picked up from there with a nod. “Simon, on the other hand, is already familiar with the material but had to go through training to know how to teach. So, two birds, one stone.” Leaning forward, I flicked my wrist to bring up my datapad where everyone could see it. “Simon is one of three people who will be fully reassigned to teaching the Galactic education courses, while every other trained educator on the ship will be teaching one to three sections in addition to their existing coursework.”

“Nearly every other educator,” Conor corrected with a stern look.

“You sound like Tyche.”

“With good reason! You never told anyone you were a teacher!”

“Wait, what – “ Maverick sputtered, confused. “You were!?”

“One, I never actually taught on my own, I changed careers in my last year as a student-teacher. Two, I did tell other people! It just never really came up that often.” When Conor opened his mouth to object, I cut off the statement I knew was coming. “And I have mentioned it to the two of you, so I don’t want to hear it!”

Conor’s mouth shut with a click and realization dawned on Maverick’s face. “All those nights you were going through candidates to teach the courses… You kept saying you would make sure the program succeeded….”

“Even if I had to teach it my damned self,” I finished. “I wasn’t kidding. All I need is about fifteen more hours practical observation, according to Eino.”

“You asked?” Conor looked skeptical.

“Well, Tyche did,” I admitted. “Just because we were having a hard time finding enough candidates to dedicate their time to just that course.”

“I thought Alistair was a teacher?”

“Librarian,” I corrected. “Totally different skill set, believe me. I tried suggesting that he teach a section or two, and got an earful about the differences. Ironically, he gave me a lecture about how he isn’t trained to lecture?” Shaking my head, I finished off my coffee. “Anyway, we managed to find enough teachers, so courses should start next week.”

“We should celebrate!” Maverick grinned. “A big family dinner, since we kept it small for Insert Winter Holiday. Invite everyone!”

I started counting in my head and groaned when I hit the double digits. “Mav… that’s…” Xiomara, Zach, Hannah, carry the three…. “That’s fifteen, sixteen people? I don’t think we really even have room for everyone. Especially if we don’t want people getting overwhelmed.”

“You and Tyche may want to talk about a family dinner rotation.” I thought Conor was joking, but a look at his face told me he was dead serious. “When there were just five of us, it was one thing, but now? The dinners the two of you make are turning into the hottest table in town.”

With a sigh, I shot a quick message to Tyche to see if she was in the land of the living. Rather than respond, she showed up at my quarters, Antoine in tow and Mac staring balefully from her shoulders. “Hangover remedies are revolting, but work,” she proclaimed while making a beeline for my kitchen. Shortly, everyone was seated with a fresh cup of tea or coffee. “Now, why have I been summoned from my lair?”

I gestured to Maverick first. “Handsome number two had the idea to have a family dinner to celebrate the launch of the new education courses.” I paused for effect. “All of the family.”

Tyche sputtered and choked on her drink. “Where would we fit them all!? Neither of our quarters are anywhere approaching large enough. We would need a small mess hall, which kind of ruins the effect.”

“I agree. But I also agree we need to celebrate… what if we talked to Sebastian and took over the Undine for a night? It’s smaller, with dinner-style tables.”

She tipped her head side to side, thinking. “It might work.”

“Well, Handsome number one came up with another good point.” I gestured for Conor to explain.

“I just think you and Sophie should consider setting up a rotation for family dinners. Not just who is cooking,” he rushed to clarify, “but who you’re inviting. We love you girls ‘til the wheels fall off, but you adopt strays faster than most cat ladies I’ve met. Not that I’m complainin’, being part of that number!” He held up his hands in surrender. “But don’t you lasses think the ‘come one, come all’ approach is getting to be a bit much?”

To my surprise, Antoine nodded even more emphatically than Maverick did. “Sophia, Tyche, he is right. Only sheer luck and good manners have kept the two of you from being overwhelmed by your insistence on feeding anyone who arrives during your ‘family dinners’. Inviting specific people on specific evenings may be the best idea, while also considering keeping some meals to just the five of us.”

Before the objection could even bubble up to my throat, Maverick squeezed me against him. “I can actually feel her heart breaking.” Briskly rubbing my arm, he dropped a kiss on top of my head. “Sweetheart, you and Tyche both said it yourselves: If everyone chooses to drop in on any given Wednesday, neither set of quarters have room to accommodate that.”

Tyche heaved a sigh of concession. “Okay, I definitely see the point about the ‘just us’ dinners… I’ve really missed those, honestly. But, how do we decide rotations for everyone else? How are we supposed to make it fair?”

I sat bolt upright as her words hit me. “You. Are. A. Genius. I actually have an answer to that!”

The expression on her face was matched by the one Mac was dishing out when my exclamation interrupted his nap. “Okay… How am I a genius right now?”

“How to make it fair.”

“So, for bringing up the question?”

I nodded my head emphatically before gulping down the rest of my coffee. “Themes. We are going to set… five. Five themes. Culinary ones. We are going to set… five. Five themes. And anyone who has a standing invitation to dinner will be asked to rank them, one through five, and we’ll use that to set the rotation.” I grinned triumphantly as Tyche’s face shone with realization, but then looked at the guys.

All three of them were completely lost.

“Everyone except the five of us will get the list of themes… something broad. Not a specific dish, but a really broad type of food. They rank the five, with one being the absolute preference and five being ‘hey, not my favorite, but if Tyche or Sophia are cooking, I may give it a shot.’ The first, say, three people who ranked a certain theme their favorite get that, then the rest get their second choice, so on and so forth.”

“Ideally, no one will have to eat their fifth choice theme,” Tyche clarified. “Or even their third.”

Maverick hummed briefly. “So, say everyone picks the same thing for their number one. How do you decide who gets it?”

Tyche and I glanced at each other before I shrugged. “Honestly, the three who have the most restrictive dietary needs, are closest to us, and get along the best. If everyone picks the same thing for their first choice, it’s going to be something plain and probably vegetarian because that’s the majority of Derek’s diet and he has the most restrictive one. So it would be Derek, Grey, and probably Zach who got that one. Everyone else would then get their second, and so on.”

“But,” Tyche emphasized, “letting everyone pick the meals they would prefer makes it the most fair and easiest on us, because then we know what to cook each week. And there would still be meals for just the five of us, right?” She glanced at me, questioning.

“At least every sixth meal, but I would prefer after every three,” I admitted. “That gives us once a Terran month.”

“What about big meals?” Maverick pressed. “For everyone?”

I tapped my chin for a moment while Tyche furrowed her brow. “Quarterly?” I asked, just as she suggested “Birthdays?”

Ugh. Both made sense. “Well, our birthdays are three months apart, give or take a few years, so we could still do quarterly. I just figured the Terran equinoxes and solstices, because they align with pretty big Terran holidays in most cultures and religions.”

“If you went with that, it would mean we could have the option of quiet birthdays,” she pointed out.

“That’s what I was kind of thinking,” I admitted. “I mean, what if we don’t feel like peopling on our own days? We could still do that, in addition to the other four, but it wouldn’t feel mandatory.”

“I like it. That’s the solution.”

I grinned widely, happy with the compromise. Conor, however, waved his hand where everyone could see it. “For those of us who don’t have a mysterious psychic connection that even Noah says doesn’t exist, what exactly are your themes going to be?”

“Spicy, simple, protein, vegetarian, and soup,” Tyche and I answered in unison. While it wasn’t intentional, we managed to stifle our surprise and laughter to make it look like we had done it on purpose.

Antoine looked thoughtful before nodding. “That does, actually, make the most sense. Those are such severe distinctions, excluding the soup, that there should be no difficulty with anyone having a definitive preference.”

I thought about that briefly. “Yeah, I know ‘soup’ feels like a stuck on category. But I genuinely know people who hate it, and also some who will eat any soup or stew you put in front of them. It’s about the food touching, the flavors combining, and so on.”

Maverick was the one to back me up on that bit of information. “Derek will probably rank soup as either first or second, especially if you go by the strict culinary definition. For someone who doesn’t like mushy food, he practically loses his mind if you give him a bisque. It’s crazy.”

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#the miys #humans are weird #scifi #found family #aliens #original #original fiction #hope #love #earth is space australia #humans are space orcs

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cryptic-michael · 4 years

Text

I tend to procrastinate I'm told.

Although I feel as if it isn't that, and instead somthing more.

It's not that I haven't gotten to the task, it's that my mind won't let me.

I have to meany projects of writings and art that I I don't know what to do.

And then we have my cat, who needs attention too.

As well as myself, I need a bath.

The laundry needs to be done too.

I need to cook myself food, and thought the dish I wont eat again.

My comic's need a story line and plot, as well as character design and more indebth personalities for all them.

I don't think have 2 comic series and some graphic novels are good.

That's just far to meany to keep track of!

And it's true, my generals and workers are long forgotten in the snow of Russia and my little jews have been stuck in their homes hiding in shame from the public.

My plague doctors haven't left Nottingham, but need to go to Brixtion, instead they are stuck in their caravan hoping for the light of god to bring mercy on them as they hope to be in Brixtion in a month.

Hell hasn't been this peaceful since it was made, that's because no one is making any conflict and instead they are home drinking their tea and coffee, listing and reading up about themselves in the papers and books. Heven is peaceful as normal, even Gabriel is shocked by how nobody is doing a thing. Even purgatory has been slow, it's mailroom abonded as the whiskey runs lower by the day and the smoke room gets cleaned...no ones been fired, or even demoted to purgatory or hell in over two years.

My cossacks are dead and gone, the little Russians stuck in the woods in a reched snow looking for their parents and t dth ing to find their way home.

My goat? Oh no, he was the first one I never finished....He was little and black, with a broken horn who belonged to a witch and her crow. He never found his witch, and only found the crow.

My strange story of him and him? Well...I don't talk about that one, to contraversal and I know I'll get yelled at once again for having a jew, since those times are bad.

Those are my tells I wish to finish, but cannot find a plot or things!

And damned be my mother, for she only goes, "It's your story, do what you please." I am! And I'll be damned to hell with all my demons before I finished them.

She only likes one, my Doctors, how they are silly and happy at times, but none the others.

The hell one gets to controversial she claims, how I shouldn't poke fun at god and religion. At times she's on board for it all, other it's to dark and bad for my mental health.

I dare not speak of my three sides that came to be general in the war, no dare not say, the three are silly, unprofessional and how did they land this position and die like that! I fear her words like a deer fears sounds.

I never told her my Russians and cossacks were for a story, just claimed them to be doodles and gave a vague idea of if it were a story, she claimed them cute and to make it happy, not so dark.

The loved my goat, but then didn't like it so much, in a strange mood from being dragged into meetings at the hall again, saying to make it light hearted and nor scary or dark. The darkest thing it it was when it would fall from a hill and be treated by the witch, who is clumsy but professional.

My him and him as I insist upone it? I've heard her words about such topics of love, and how she uses the proper terms as insults to me and others, poking fun at how gay a person can look or making assumptions about ones sexuality and gender, it's never nice and I dare not speak of it, only drawing the characters on separate pages and make it seem like one is in hell, the other my three generals, knowing full well the two soldiers share nothing in common except a love for the polish and jewish.

We have my plans! My story, my tales! As well as my woes and how I feel.

I never could express how much I love them, my stories even if I made them up for my own entertainment during test.

But they become forgotten whenever she would say, "There no money and pay in being an artist! You need a real job, a good stable one, you'll wind up starving and homeless is that what you want!"

The words still hurt and burn my cheeks with embarrassment and dread, I just wanted to share my passion with people, share my stories in hopes of helping people find a story they will like and love.

But I rarely post my creations in fear.

In fear that she'll somehow find them.

See the positive messages and comments I'll get.

In fear of her yelling at me, about sharing my art and it getting stolen.

It wont! Who would want horrible drawing in the first place?

They reched and bad.

Poorly drawn and I barley know how to do proportions.

"Well that wont matter to them!"

Yes it will, and I do traditional art.

I let my hand flow over the paper and create things, and I put my name.

I asume she just, doesn't understand.

Lives back in her times, or maybe not?

We are very diffrent after all.

I'd love to make art, comics, novels and stories! I dream of being a voice actor, I'm very good at mimicking and changing my voice.

But those are not real jobs. Their hobbies.

A real job is working at a bookstore or library?

No, those aren't real either.

Retail?

Perhaps.

Nuring and being a lawyer? Even an IT department worker at a plant?

There you got, those are real.

I dont want those.

I want to make art, I thrive from it and it helps me feel, helps me know who I am.

But my issues are this, how can I thrive and feel good about what I make, when I feel like I'm disappointing my mother?

It's not procrastination at all, no.

It's a poor environment, with very little hope of springing my characters to life.

The reasons I'm so hard on myself is because at times, she isn't that supportive, and I dare not reveal that to her, or anyone in fear of yelling.

#somthing #a somthing somthing #a little thing #on how i feel #jt is not good #or bad #or anything really #just an emotion #that i do not like #poem? idk #poem? maybe #poem?#poetry #not at all short

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dropintomanga · 4 years

Text

On the Industry, Fans, and Piracy - My Feelings on Manga Today

This year has been quite an interesting one for anyone who’s involved in manga industry happenings with regards to piracy.

As most of you may know, an infamous manga app known as Mangarock was finally shut down this year after years of proliferating as a “legit” manga-reading app on the Apple and Google Play Stores. They finally got shut down when a Western comic artist found their work being distributed on the platform. While this was good news, there has been criticism about whether there were signs of subtle prejudice towards manga (since it’s a foreign medium) as it took a Western comic to bring things to attention.

There was also the news of Mangamura, a well-known Japanese raw scan site, and how the head honcho of the site got arrested in the Philippines this year and will face consequences for his actions. (Update: 12/21/2019 - Now Mangastream and Jaimini’s Box are out of the game with regards to scanlating popular titles)

While this is good news for people who love to support the manga industries in both Japan and overseas, things are still the same. The pirates will keep coming over and over again. I wonder when enough is enough or maybe I’m just tired of hearing the same old debate on legal vs. illegal manga.

I see multiple Twitter threads from pro-industry folks on why everyone should support buying manga. I also see threads on why manga publishers suck. They’re both right if you ask me.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how this industry vs scanlators fight is similar to what I’ve been reading about in the mental health field recently - psychiatry vs. anti-psychiatry.

Psychiatry advocates believe that taking medicine is the best way to solve mental health problems and mental illness. They realize that things can happen in the human brain that lead to something worse. However, they think a lot of issues warrant medication when it may not be the best solution.

Anti-psychiatry advocates believes that medicine isn’t the best way to solve mental health problems and mental illness. They dislike how the mental health care system treats people with mental health problems. Yet they believe that “mental illness” doesn’t exist.

So throwing it back to manga -

The manga industry believes that supporting the industry involves purchasing their books at any costs. You buy the books, you support the mangaka drawing them. Yet the system that drives the industry is terrible. As we all know from Bakuman and tales from manga professionals, the system to become a successful mangaka involves often-poor working conditions in the form of long hours, strict deadlines, and a good amount of isolation.

Scanlators believe they are doing the manga industry a favor in providing free exposure to titles that would go undiscovered by fans. More often than not, scanlators do what they do without any care for profit. However, they tend to go a bit extreme with regards to translating certain text. Some scanlators also become a bit too egotistical for their own good and end up causing ridiculous drama among other scanlation groups over material they are technically stealing.

Tying this back all together with all regards to comparing psychiatry vs. anti-psychiatry and industry vs scanlators, there’s a third party being affected that’s ignored in both debates.

For the 1st war (psychiatry vs. anti-psychiatry), there’s not enough focus on the seriously mentally ill. The seriously mentally ill are the community suffering the most right now and present a great deal of harm to themselves and others. A 3rd party group that addresses them would utilize certain views and rejects certain views from the psychiatry and anti-psychiatry movements to help the seriously mentally ill. They are often forgotten as a lot of money goes to those whose mental health issues aren’t as bad on both sides.

For the 2nd war (scanlations vs. legal manga), you can argue that there’s a huge crowd of fans that are willing to pay for manga as long as you give them almost everything on one platform a la Steam/Netflix at a very low price. That platform also needs to be easily accessible with little-to-no regional restrictions. There are so many fans in certain parts of the world that can’t purchase manga due to lack of access to bookstores/libraries or availability of them. I’ll put this in caps in case people don’t get it - THE WHOLE WORLD IS NOT THE UNITED STATES OR ANY OTHER NOTABLE AND PROLIFIC COUNTRY. I sometimes think certain fans that are able to buy manga forget how lucky they are.

A side note: While a huge step forward for legit digital manga, Viz’s Shonen Jump isn’t enough because not everyone likes shonen. All the other subscription services are fine, but everything’s kind of fragmented a bit compared to how Crunchyroll has almost everything anime-related (though they are going through a big streaming war that’s causing fragmentation as well). Though to be honest, I think the scanlation community and the manga industry have to band together on one thing I think both sides can all agree on - it’s the relative value of manga compared to other forms of media in general.

To explain, I watched a video feature on the mangaka Shinichi Sakamoto, creator of Innocent and Innocent Rouge. Sakamoto goes into a discussion about manga’s value that really got me thinking. He talks about how manga is treated as “disposable” and how he tries to make his works worth keeping and remembering.

In the end of the video, Sakamoto says: “I feel manga is something that is read, then thrown away. For example, people would read a manga during their work commute and throw it away once they finish reading it. Or they would read a manga at a restaurant during lunch break. Then they would close it once the food is served and forget about it. I thought at first, manga was something that was read then thrown away. However recently, since I started to adopt my current style, I now want to make something that stays close to readers. Something that remains. It’s what currently motivates me to draw manga.

I ask myself what to do in order to make something that stays for a long time, using themes or opinions that they stay engraved in the minds of readers without being forgotten. I keep this in mind in order to leave something behind. It is what motivates me.”

The quality of manga made in Japan isn’t the best. The paper is comparable to toilet paper. If you ever browsed through a manga magazine in person, it feels like going through a super-thick newspaper. Compare that to overseas volumes of manga and it’s a world of difference. I’ll admit that publishers like Viz Media, Kodansha Comics, and Yen Press do a great job in making their printed manga high-quality albeit at a higher cost to fans.

Yet I realized that there’s a larger number of manga fans who don’t care about quality as long as what they want is accessible and cheap. That’s a big reason why scanlations have exploded and will continue to do so. Convenience is something that a lot of outside forces now push onto everyone. I frankly love print books, but I wonder what if the price of printed manga volumes reaches a certain point that makes me go “Yeah, I don’t think I can buy printed manga anymore.”

In the end of the day, even if you make it look pretty as hell and close to a luxury product, manga is still a “throw-away” item with little relative value to a lot of fans thanks to how it’s originally conceived in Japan combined with how internet culture takes advantage of what the meaning of “free stuff” is. Not everyone will find a sense of belonging with manga the same way that fans do.

There are certain folks that support purchasing manga that say things like “Wages need to be raised because they’ve stagnated” and when it comes to fans reading manga on an illegal site, their views sound like “You should buy no matter what” and/or “Just don’t buy.” I know there are those who will point to manga sales and they still aren’t exactly affordable to some fans. 20%-33% off titles with a high price point to begin with may not feel like a significant discount to someone who may not be a hardcore manga collector. Maybe it’s better to say, “You know what? Let’s just smash capitalism for ruining everyone’s lives” or better yet, “Let’s promote wage growth so that manga fans can actually purchase manga and manga artists can survive.”

For now, let’s all be like Sakamoto and promote how valuable manga can be because appreciating the arts makes people better human beings than learning how to make a “efficient” website/software program look good for someone whose end goal is usually profit. The arts is what keeps people from turning into robots. Yes, this sounds like I’m saying “Let’s have the manga pirates keep doing what they’re doing then.” What I’m suggesting is that everyone from the top down (government, etc.) has to take charge in promotion of anything related to the arts (which manga and comics in general are a part of), not just the regular folks, as they appear to be all on-board the "let’s mindlessly consume/produce everything with ruthless efficiency” train.

I feel sympathetic towards anyone who works with on the American side of manga publishing (or anything that’s based in Japan) because Japan’s mentality on promoting their works overseas is awful. The Japanese want a level of control in how they want to be perceived outside of their own country. Compare that to a country like Korea (where K-Pop is now featured on major American TV networks), you can see how bad Japan is promoting their own brand of pop culture to the world. If you want an example, just look up Nintendo’s history of taking down anything overseas that looks to violate their principles of promoting their games.

I realize that I’m sounding like this Japanese manga creator who criticized publishers for how they handle piracy. Well, I dislike how manga publishers or professionals involved with the manga industry will shame fans for reading scanlations/raws. Almost everyone that reads scans/raws tends to be a fan of manga in general. A lot of them may not be unaware of the nature of scans (especially fans who meet mangaka in person and tell them they read them online). And even if they were aware, have you noticed how wages have stagnated for a lot of people across the world versus inflation?

Plus, how often do shame tactics work on people? They’re just as effective as most diversity training workshops hoping to change people’s bias on visible differences (spoiler alert: not very well). They never change anyone’s minds at all due to being short-term solutions that ignore the shamer’s role in perpetuating the problem. I realize changing minds takes a long time and requires a LOT of nuance (AKA not good for making immediate money), so it’s easy to focus on quick and fast.\

I also don’t like how scanlators disrespect localization efforts at times. I don’t like seeing multiple instances of swear words when most Japanese (or people in general) don’t talk like that in real life. Yes, some localization efforts are full of cringe. Appealing to a bigger array of new readers is important to having an industry thrive. Having just loyal customers isn’t enough.

Loyalty can only go so far. So many people don’t care about brands and/or will switch whenever it’s convenient to do so. There’s always a psychological disconnect between community and profit. That’s why you try to get as many new consumers as possible so they can become great word-of-mouth spokespeople for your stuff. Given how a good number of anime/manga fans stop consuming either medium after a certain age, replenishment of fans is an absolute necessity. I wish scanlators who frown at legit translators who bust their asses off to make manga accessible to a wider audience realize this.

There’s a final thing I want to address regarding the whole debate about scans and it was something I noticed at Anime NYC this year. So this year, Artists’ Alley and the Exhibit Hall were put right near each other on the same floor. In years past, they were separated via different floors or on different sections far away from one another in the same floor. I had a troubling thought and reading one convention recap reinforced it.

It’s the fact that Artists’ Alley is almost always fan works and the close proximity this time clashes with the Exhibit Hall vendors’ sale of official merchandise. There are anime industry members who dislike an arrangement like this with good reason. Bootlegs are a problem in an industry largely associated with piracy. Yet fans LOVE Artists’ Alley. Anime cons can’t just gut them to please industry folks. Supporting the fan artists at Artists’ Alley is a win-win for fans and con organizers.

Also, some of the artists at Artists’ Alley I spoke to all read scanlations in some way, shape or form when discussing certain series. I have no damn desire to play moral police with those artists because I know they are lovable and messy people. Just enforce the golden rule - don’t be a dick in a public setting even if you have a good reason to because you will never change anyone’s views that way.

I know some issues have to be made public, but go through proper channels first since I don’t want to see someone being labeled a mood killer without proper context in places that are supposed to be safe for fans.

Another thing - I have friends (both ‘20s and ‘30s) who work full-time jobs that read manga in not-so-legal sites. Some of them I’m very close with. I’m not ending friendships with them over the fact they may consume media differently. The one thing I can say is that even the best of the best will have questionable beliefs/do questionable things and all you can do is figure out what’s really important to you - their actions or the consequences of their actions. Don’t expect the people you idolize will think the same way you do in every thought you have. Everyone has their own closet of behaviors and thoughts that will always irk others.

So for anyone who’s confused on whose side I’m on, I’m on neither. I know the truth is a lot more complicated than what most people will tell me. I do want manga to thrive more overseas. It’s just that outside of Japan, regardless if you pay for or pirate a manga, there’s no appreciation for lifelong reading. Reading is treated as a pain than pleasure in the Western part of the world. Many anime fans are only tempted to read a manga because of how cool an anime adaptation of a certain series is or just from buzz.

More than anything, I feel like there should be a bigger effort in promoting a sense of lifelong reading. I sometimes get jokes from corporate folks that I like to read and it’s depressing since libraries are always threatened by budget cuts. Reading books (fiction & non-fiction) has helped me processed a lot of things for my mental health. We got to do a better job in emphasizing that reading can be for fun and not just for achievement. Still, buy whatever manga you can for the artist’s sake if you really like the works (not for the publisher’s due to how I feel about capitalism sometimes). If you still want to read or prefer scans, then that’s your thing. You know, I’m glad I’m not really a pro-industry person and a pro-fan. I live in both worlds and feel like I have a balanced understanding of how people act in certain situations versus how they behave normally. I make a joke now that if anyone who works in marketing wants to really understand what their customers are like, they should go to a DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) and see the misery there.

I guess you can say I blame Japan more than anything as I do buy what I can from the American side of things. I know the hard-working folks in the U.S. manga publishing business probably get frustrated with Japanese bureaucracy to a certain degree at times.

Next year will be the start of a new decade after a decade of slow then fast growth in all things anime and manga. Things are going to get better and worse for anime and manga. Maybe once Luffy finally gets the One Piece treasure will manga piracy be severely hampered by then. I have some doubts because this is all reliant on what Japan will do as manga is here to stay in overseas markets. I know more Japanese manga editors have been traveling overseas to understand what’s going on outside of Japan. That’s a good start. So I just hope that the final chapter over here involves cultivating a joyful love of reading because I feel technology has to really pick up on that.

When reading really matters to everyone and takes some precedence over video in the minds of people, maybe we can see some meaningful progress in a battle where we might be fighting the wrong side(s) and/or missing a bigger part of the picture.

Regardless, it’s a fascinating and fun time to be a manga fan. I’m glad to have met many people who love and read manga regardless of how they consume it. Those experiences have provided so much value for me.

Manga may be considered “trash” in many ways, but to loosely quote a certain popular Naruto ninja, it’s at least better than giving up on the true joys of life.

Addendum (12/21/2019) - Two days after this post was made, two of the biggest manga scanlation groups on the net, Mangastream and Jaimini’s Box, decided to stop translating all Weekly Shonen Jump titles. I’m indifferent about either platform going away (or completely gone as Jaimini’s Box is still doing titles from other manga magazines). The one thing I will say is that Mangastream took advantage of the growing push for convenience in the minds of people over the last decade. I think about how much tech companies have abused “convenience” to generate unintended division and in some ways, Mangastream was like a tech company when they saw their ego being stroked by the large fanbase they were getting.

Photo Source: The Japan Times For one of my favorite takes on scanlations, read “Why Do Scanlations Persist?” from What Is Manga? There’s also this podcast from GeekNights about manga distribution in the United States which added some fuel to this post.

#manga #manga piracy #fandom #anime #otaku culture #relative value #manga industry #lifelong reading #scanlations

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eye-of-enigmatic-thought · 4 years

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2019, a retrospective to this year and decade

Long post in-comin’

I’m gonna be honest, I’m not really sure how to describe this year and by extension, this decade, I guess that’s to be expected in a way, so many things can happen in 365 or more days to the point of a information overload, but I suppose the best way to describe this year was ‘complicated yet also stale’. Not much happened in the beginning aside from therapy and support group appointments, which were pleasant albeit I don’t remember much from them aside from drawings I’ve done that I showed to the other members, nothing of significance happened that I can recall during the middle of the year, and around near the end I took part in art therapy groups that I managed to make a few friends out of (though I sadly don’t chat with them often), at September I was beginning to try and get into college after being out of education for a year and managed to enrol (though court issues made me miss the first five weeks that I had to quickly catch up to), most of my memories of this year actually came from college.

College has been going good, so far! I have been learning a lot and my tutors are very kind, of course it can get stressful due to the long days I have and also due to some of my more rowdier peers, but I’ve managed to also befriend a few others that I am very happy to have met. Currently I’m in my break and I will use it to advantage as much as I can to post as much art as I can.

Also, I’ve just recently been exploring my gender, and well, I’m now transmasc rather than a demigirl, I still go by whatever pronoun and still see myself as nonbinary, but I am more masculine leaning now? I guess I might be a ‘demiboy’ but I still feel a bit more ‘fluid’ than that, sooo... masculine leaning demifluid? I dunno, but overall I’m not a girl anymore! :D

Rebirth is still being rewritten, admittedly I haven’t been focusing entirely on it due to some things in the way, but some of that is now gone so really my only enemy is my lack of motivation and poor time management, but even times where I’m not writing and/or editing the rewrite I’m still thinking of how I want certain scenes to go or what things I want the characters to say, so it’s still being worked on! I do feel incredibly bad that I haven’t been doing a lot of my Undertale-related stuff lately or even attempting to at least finish off the HS’ blog’s first arc (I at LEAST wanna finish that arc before I go on a official hiatus to fully know what to do with it), but you can rest assured that I have NOT forgotten about it and I do want to continue on with it, I guess that’s probably one of my goals for 2020, ‘more Undertale fanart’, yes, good, very good, mwahahahaha.

And now, a little something more personal, mostly in regards to this decade as a whole. Warning for mentions and discussions of pedophilia, bullying, suicide, and trauma for the next three or so paragraphs.

(Warning starts here)

My memories from around the beginning of this decade are hazy, but very notable, I’m not going to sugarcoat it by saying that from 2010-2013 were some of my worst years of my life, I was only 11-14 around this time, but when I wasn’t going through awful bullying at school that the teachers did nothing about, I would come back home to a toxic friend circle on DeviantArt that was filled with constant irrelevant drama and some REALLY creepy adults that would do smut rps with the minors in our group. Thankfully I never was a victim of this due to mostly staying in my corner and didn’t interact with others much, but I saw it happen to many of the other minors in said group, it left me disturbed but I rationalised it by thinking it was just some ‘teenager thing’ that I was too young for (because I was a little cretin that lied about my age and said I was 13 when I was really 11 when I first signed up haha), it was only when I was late into being 17 I realised ‘Oh my god the people who I called my friends and RP’d with were pedophiles and groomed the other minors what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck’.

This whole shitty ordeal with that dA friend circle and the constant bullying I went through in secondary school were so bad that it literally led me to have a suicide attempt at the age of 13, I survived of course, and I’m really glad I did, because I wouldn’t have met friends that through them I would manage to get away and abandon the old dA group because ‘fuck you guys I have BETTER FRIENDS NOW!’ Unfortunately all of that dA friend circle are now deactivated or are no longer active with all the evidence deleted so there’s no use making a callout or name dropping any of them or even searching for the other minors in attempt to rekindle with them (and I don’t think my heart would be able to handle it in that regard...), but I did find out that one of them who was a pedophile apologist at one point commissioned a ton of Darkrai pregnancy porn with one of it being fucking mpreg, so I can at least get a laugh from that shit, doubt she’s reading this but if you are...

You may be gone, but your darkrai mpreg porn will live on FOREVER... Forever for ME to laugh at!!! >8DDD So anyway get rekt and suck my non-existent dick you fucking creep.

(Warning ends here)

Phew alright, all that nasty stuff out of the way... 2014 was where things began to improve, I had moved secondary schools and I switched from a mainstream to a specialist school for other autistic children and I found the people who would become my closest friends, through one of them I also got a tumblr blog, and when Undertale came around (so late 2015 to around 2016 when the fandom was most active), through it’s fandom I managed to gain really kind and lovely friends that I love dearly, it’s somewhat strange to me, in the beginning since childhood I never had any close friends and the only ‘close’ ones I had were ones that either kept me around out of pity (because I was a awkward autistic kid), kept me around to constantly bully and push my buttons, or (in this case with the dA friend circle) were potential predators that I thankfully was never THAT close to, and actual close ones I lost contact with too quickly, to this day I’m so thankful for these friends and I dunno if they’d be comfortable with me namedropping them here, but if you’re reading this, you know who you are <333.

I of course had rough patches throughout the years, recovery from my traumas wasn’t easy and I was constantly having issues with pretty much everything from my mental health problems to environmental factors that were out of my control, I’m not going to go into detail on this one because this post is long enough already, but I am much better now than how I was when I was younger, I still have a long way to go, but I have definitely improved and I hope I can still improve, hell, I’ve even improved my art! Wanna see an example?

I drew this back in 2011 on mspaint on a mouse! Yeah! Can you believe that? Whilst to me my art right now isn’t exactly ‘artist goals’ I have definitely improved a lot since!! And I’ll keep on improving forever because that’s what this decade was like anyway! I’m not sure what the future holds, but I want to set these goals for next year:

Create more digital art Finish my unfinished short comic ideas and parodies Continue to chip away at Rebirth’s rewrite and finish Hissterical Scientist’s first arc. Work on my original stuff Continue to improve my mental health Get proper time management skills Learn to do commissions (I be gettin munz lol) Thank you to all my friends and family who have helped support me and stuck by me throughout all these years, I am so happy I get to spend a life with you and I hope we’ll continue to go through the future together, you mean so much to me and I can’t say thank you enough. Thank you to any followers who have sticked by me for so long and if you’re new, I hope we’ll make memories together!

Onward and upward, and leave behind the pain! <3

#tara's text

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soulvomit · 5 years

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My 25 year adjacency to arts culture as a woman, and how it informs me being anti-anti

When I first started my art-making, in roughly about 1994, I was a young Gen Xr who liked zines, underground/edgy comics, magazines like Juxtapoz (which back then covered a lot of lowbrow and outsider stuff but now is pretty slick and commercial), and the stuff you saw at old school coffeehouses and used record stores. Later, Rocky Horror, Night Flight, and Spike & Mike’s Sick & Twisted Animation Festival entered my vocabulary. I taught myself enough art to start sketching out a horror comic about a suicide victim whose soul just jumps into another body, who has no memory of the life he had before. A kid who’d never fit anywhere - because my parents never fit anywhere - I found a home in liminal spaces. I was going to my entry level middle class job in the morning then spending my free time in grungy shops along the beach boardwalk that were run by ex-hippies. A majority of my friends were guys - a mix of old school nerds/geeks and pot-smoking guys who hung around. (And a couple of oldschool hippies.) It’s my guy friendships that largely shaped my artistic vocabulary; they encouraged me with stuff like “oh yeah, add that eyeball, that’d be sick, dude.” Everything that made me anxious, I put on the page. Everything scary or odd in my environment, I put on the page. Then at 21, I started taking art classes. Where I found, universally, that creative content is very heavily policed by gender. And that creative content is very heavily gendered in and of itself. There is work that men are allowed to create, and work that women are allowed to create. I also discovered that people saw women visibly involved in youth or alternative culture *very* differently, and very much more negatively, from how they saw young men. And I discovered that men were the universal creative voice but women were expected just to create for female audiences. Men could create anything they wanted and not get policed about it (unless the thing was so overtly hateful that it didn’t even make the much lower bar of 1990s social acceptability), men could create “adults only” and dominantly created all the teenage material, men could portray disturbing or distressing subjects or “gritty real life.” Women on the other hand, couldn’t. Anything non-generic that we drew, resulted in intense analysis of whether or not we were “good” or “bad” women. And it was mainly women policing other women. Not nearly as many of the men actually gave a shit. I found that men were encouraged to be original and have a “voice” but women were expected to fall into line and draw the same content as hundreds of other women. I observed that art teachers - ESPECIALLY women art teachers and ESPECIALLY the “feminist” ones - gave different types of encouragement to male students than to female ones. I found that in order to not alienate women art teachers or women classmates, I had to do art the “right” way. It had to be one of the following: * Boats, kittens, flowers, or some other totally non-threatening, wholesome, cozy subject matter, completely safe for old church ladies and young children. (This is honestly why the “twee” and Manic Pixie Dream Girl/cupcake culture of the late 00s and early 10s, really set my teeth on edge. Just more of the same, in a new package.) * some kind of leftover 60s-70s style white liberal We Are The World crap. * feminist art, which was a niche, was the only acceptable space to be “edgy” in, as long as one was edgy in the specific way that was prescribed. However if you did feminist art, you were never going to get a showing or make any money off of your work. But it was a “noble” kind of poverty. (That’s a thing about white feminist culture of the 90s, it was still heavily dominated by Boomer hippie mentality and heavily discouraged female ambition while accepting male ambition as an immutable fact of life that we were “better than.”) And the pressure was even heavier on marginalized women artists because you weren’t allowed to paint and profit from any part of your own marginalized experience. ALL of the social capital was on the part of affluent and or white people talking about groups that weren’t theirs. If you talked about someone else’s experience you were a Good Person but if it was your own experience then you were either a dangerous militant and probably a commie, or you were just seen as a big whiner. The pressure then was to get commercial graphics training and do production work for the creators who were permitted to create. Work that had nothing to do with you (which is what I ended up doing because it was the Prescribed Middle Class Path in art). And then once in commercial graphics, there was another two-track system: men got to do bigger projects and self-promotional work. Women were almost always socialized to stay small with everything. The attrition rate of women designers in my generation and older is EXTREMELY high, because you can’t build a competitive commercial portfolio on church bake sale ads. People blamed male-preferring employers but nobody would ever take responsibility for the ways women are socialized or trained much earlier in our career and schooling lives. One of the big problems is that many of the traditional acceptable male topics, which get the most attention and visibility from passersby, are unacceptable from women creators. Men are encouraged to create huge wall-sized works but women to stay small and cozy. Also, marginalization was only an acceptable topic as long as white male artists were portraying it. Otherwise you ran into the anger or talking-back-against taboo that pretty much everyone but white cis het men are subject to. Then there was this. If you were a woman and didn’t paint cozy pastoralia then automatically your work was branded feminist by the mainstream. But that didn’t protect you from the most harmful parts of a lot of proto-TERF 80s/90s analysis. The Personal Is Political meant that everything you did was held up to the light for political analysis in ways that white male work never was. I’m careful to point out race here because I do feel like race came into it. A lot of the benefits given to men here are specific to affluent white men. When poor white men painted, it was called lowbrow art. When people painted who were neither of those groups, and it wasn’t one of the 3 or 4 allowed “safe” topics, then it was called “dangerous militant propaganda” at worst or just “crackpottery” at best. And the art of mentally ill people? Forget it. Once you have a mental health diagnosis, everything you do is seen as a facet of your mental illness. You aren’t a human being anymore. It doesn’t help that artists who come into art via the medicalized culture of mental illness, via art therapy, are seen forever as art therapy patients and not artists. Even though many artists who are mentally ill are subsistence artists, and many artists who are mentally ill have an art practice that predates their diagnosis, and many are subsistence artists who can’t hold other work. tl;dr this is the background I come from with regard to why I’m never going to support anti-culture or cancel-culture. It is dominantly at this point a culture of policing based on extremely gendered social rules, a lot of it is based upon what women/marginalized people are specifically allowed to create and say about our own lives, and I am never going to be here for it.

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