I was going to respond to @waitmyturtles' ask about if a person should finish Step by Step, but instead of taking that post hostage, let me be honest on my own post:
Step by Step has problems.
Step by Step isn't perfect.
Step by Step has pacing issues.
Step by Step's timeline is all over the place.
Step by Step's second couple was not fleshed out.
and yet . . .
Step by Step has consistently stated that being gay is its biggest problem.
AND I LOVE THAT!
A BL about how being gay is a problem in an industry profiting off of gay stories is what I'm showing up for each week. Mostly when it directly stated that in the series, only to have to be edited due to fan outrage.
Put being an actual gay man in the BL industry is a problem.
Jeng being an actual gay man in a company that made a BL to promote a product is a problem.
Pat being an actual gay man, who successfully marketed a product using the BL concept he was adamantly against yet pulled off with a limited budget and time, rising to a leadership position is a problem.
All was fine and dandy when we were watching a BL about two men falling in love and providing each other balance, but the problems started to spring up when the story became about gay men trying to balance their work with their lives.
The pacing fell apart as their work started to take over their lives and everything work related sped up as their personal stories stopped.
The timeline became muffled as life and emotions started to cut into their work. PAT FORGOT HIS OWN BIRTHDAY because time escaped him as we dug further into the corporate world.
The second couple fell apart before they even started as the show began to tell us that life-work integration was never going to work
when
you
are
gay
especially in spaces that want to profit off of the queer community without openly accepting its members in those spaces.
A gay man can't integrate his life into a job that doesn't want to accept that actual gay men exist.
It's performative action at its finest, and it demands that queer people become compliant in their own oppression.
Jeng never caused a problem at work, yet those men sat there and told him their biggest problem with him was that he was gay. Then they made Jeng apologize for it.
Put never caused a problem at work, yet his manager told him that revealing he was in a gay relationship was going to be an issue. Then he pushed Put back in the closet.
Two years ago, both of them sacrificed their relationship and their lives for work, and as result, their entire lives became their work.
They lost track of time. They missed important moments happening in their family and friend's lives. Entire events passed without them being present. They had to compromise themselves to succeed.
And we witnessed that happening to Pat until he realized he didn't want to be manipulated into doubting his skills, his work, or himself.
I'm sticking around to see what justice this show brings to its characters who gave up everything just to be left with nothing.
But I stuck around because this show told us from the very first line in the very first scene what it was about.
This wasn't a story about falling in love while balancing each other out. This was a story about trying to find a balance between a job that doesn't want to accept your life exists and a life that can't exist because of your job.
One gives you security.
And the other makes you feel safe.
Pat made his choice.
Now it's time for Jeng to make his.
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HEARTS DAY
💘💘💘💘💘💘💘💘💘
(or whatever they say in Faerûn for Valentine's)
Pictured here doing a lil' dance to celebrate (despite being dressed for a completely different holiday depicted here)
Are the local faves Asheera (@optiwashere's Tav) and Shadowheart!
The addition of clothes when it comes to animating brings up something I have never considered before.
- Did you draw them the same in each frame
- Fabric moves slower than the body, are they moving like that?
Hey Bear, you forgot a boot in a previous frame and now the past two frames you drew had no boot guess you gotta go back
If the hair moves in this frame but not in that frame, why do my eyes hurt?
The belt is heavy so it moves slowly
Needless to say, I ate this up. 😌
Doing this also realised I can just animate anything! So I'm gonna jump into the deep end and try doing Aylin's wings! It can't be that hard.
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Something zoomers and less informed millennials struggle with is that support for Israel has been baked into American society for decades and really only in the last ten years has that meaningfully changed.
The process has inarguably been going on longer than that, but has been most obvious to the lay observer for about a decade. Particularly, Trump made Israel a partisan issue. Trump brought to America the vicious hate of blood and soil Zionism. It's hard to fully encapsulate how much damage Trump's support for Israel did to the works of hasbara. Honestly, it's depressing.
More critically still, Christian Zionism—a necessarily antisemitic belief—has become the primary form of vocal support for the Israeli state. I don't particularly believe the average gentile is reacting to the plenary evil of the Evangelical beyond how loathsome they are or, indeed, their antisemitism in any meaningful way, but as with the reaction to Trump, at least we've gotten here.
Prior to around the turn of the century, American support for Israel was part of a cultural and political reaction to the Holocaust. Even different from a lot of powers in Europe that had found in a Jewish state an answer to their Jewish question, the United States was among several nations to make a blunt, direct statement about allyship with Israel as a deviation from historical antisemitism locally and abroad. Now, all but our most vicious antisemites claim to be Zionists and, vitally, Israel embraces them.
More notable still is how a reified, non-ideological form of anti-Zionism has taken root in American society. This, in particular, is a very new development.
Truthfully, I am deeply suspicious of any gentile who calls themselves an anti-Zionist. Anti-Zionism and Zionism both are ideologies with historical roots nearly two centuries old. Anti-Zionism is not merely a dislike of revanchism and far-right nationalism—things one should not need a deeper body of thought to dislike.
Nonetheless, where gentile anti-Zionism was once primarily a form of thinly-veiled antisemitism (it still is in many cases), it has seen more and more use by people seeking a specific term for their hate of state violence, which has further crystallized the change in the perception of Israel.
This, not just some mindless love of death, is why there is such a notable cleaving between the generations on the issue of Israel in the US.
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