#it is their job and definitely a big and meaningful project for all of them. and if they got to know only in january or something??? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sophieinwonderland · 8 months

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About the plural artists conversation:

For those who have worries about being at a normal job with a singlet boss, there's a great video about this in the archives of the Plural Positivity World Conference, "2022 Working while Plural Accommodations, Automations, and Disclosure in the workplace"

It's possible to get free/pay-what-you-can tickets for each year's PPWC conference and then afterwards they send an email with a link to give you access to recording from previous years. Highly recommend

But also, yeah. The thing is, I have a LOT of experience with enduring sustained ostracism/harassment/abuse, and grew up thinking that I might as well put my resilience in that area "to good use" in some way (eg I grew up witnessing women politicians getting hounded by the press, and it looked pretty similar to what I was already tolerating in school, so I thought, I could endure that treatment in a job and maybe get some improvements underway). But also, at the actual time that you're busy Enduring, it's really hard to tell just how much it's affecting you, and in retrospect, I did develop good survival skills for that type of scenario, but I also developed CPTSD. If I faced the risk of publicity and hatred again, could it be "finding meaning" in my experiences and reinforcing my strengths as part of healing? Or would it turn into reliving past bad experiences and exacerbating things, making it harder to heal? There's no way of predicting how it would affect me.

So it's a question that I don't have an answer to, either. We should push for a world where succeeding in view of the public eye does not carry an implicit threat, and that project of social change requires a certain amount of openness. Like you don't get a queer civil rights movement if barely anyone comes out.

But also, one thing that I've been contemplating recently is the idea that our choices of how to behave depend on the social context that we're in. And there's a big difference between social spaces where people are trying to live genuinely and with equality and compassion, and social spaces where there's an inherent power imbalance that never really goes away no matter how nicely/ethically the specific people are. And in this capitalist society, with no universal basic income or meaningful safety net, any situation where you're trying to get paid is a situation where you are underneath someone in a power hierarchy, whether you're dealing with a boss or a customer or both. The consequences of poverty create power imbalance. Starhawk writes about this more coherently than I am right now, but you know what I mean.

It's one thing to love having plurality as part of your online identity, where you've got some degree of control over who you engage with, and whether you engage with them at all, because the social context is building a nice community online. But yeah, loving that experience is one thing, but the second money and dependence come into it, you're dealing with a different social context so the decision to be openly plural has a different meaning.

When it comes to surviving under capitalism, you definitely just gotta do what you gotta do. "Branding" is a matter of surviving under capitalism, and so is "controversy-as-promotion" - like, they're both just hollow strategies and I feel like in a way it's completely interchangeable - if you're not free to be genuine, and you have to pick a strategy for survival, then they're all equally bad options in way, because your hand is forced. It's hard to feel good about a decision when that decision was made in awareness of the threat of hatred and/or poverty, for me at least, I feel like no matter what way I end up going, the power and implicit threats set up by society mean that it's a coerced choice and not one made freely.

I feel like I'm sort of rambling, but this is something I think about a lot. My current life plan (and we'll see how that goes, lol) is to write under a penname, because my writing is an area where I want to be genuine and break away from self-censorship; but also, my Plan A is to have other jobs as my main income, so I'm not dependent on writing. For me, that feels important, I think I'll do much better and more meaningful, truthful work as a writer if I can distance that work from the fears and threats and coercion that are impossible to remove from paid work under capitalism. I don't know if I'm explaining this well. I feel like, when it's an unbalanced power situation, you can retain greater dignity and greater freedom to make choices without coercion if you lean heavily on having privacy. So in situations where I need to think about "making money" it becomes necessary to think about professionalism, branding, etc and so there's more self-censorship, and less genuine freedom of choice.

I already sort of have a split between "fandom creative work that can't be monetised" and "other creative work that is safe to mention to colleagues without weird reactions" so it feels natural to me to have multiple avenues for presenting things. I'm planning to publish things under my legal name that I wouldn't mind being seen if I was googled by a boss or landlord. Then the penname(s) can allow for more freedom and authenticity and creativity, for the "meaningful" work that I want to do as a writer or artist, where it would be nice to get money but it's not intended to be commercial.

Of course, I don't know how this will work in reality, since it requires both having time and having time-management skills to be doing multiple avenues of work at once - a lot of people end up finding that the pressure for commercial creation leaves them with no time to make their important art. I hope I won't get too stuck in that type of rut. But I feel pretty good about the idea of being a writer/artist who also has a day job part-time, and then going full "professionalism and privacy and strategically negotiating power imbalances" in the day job, so I've got room to go "full authenticity" in the creative stuff, without those psychological effects of being totally shackled to public opinion of my personal art for food and housing. I'm speaking as someone who has not yet really got an actual career off the ground, but anyway these are my thoughts about how I'm going to go about it in the future, and I feel pretty okay about this as a plan.

That sounds like a solid plan to me! And this is just an excellent post all around!

If anyone is interested in the video, I think I found it here.

youtube

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ultrahpfan5blog · 9 months

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Secret Invasion - Excellent performances and interesting ideas squandered with mediocre execution....

I was actually pretty psyched for Secret Invasion when the trailers came out. I didn't feel there was a whole lot of hype around the show but I was looking forward to it. After the fairly jokey nature of recent MCU, I was looking forward to the pivot towards more darker material, similar to TWS, and TFATWS. Now I didn't think TFATWS was great but it was solid and TWS is arguably my favorite MCU film to date and the trailers for Secret Invasion definitely felt like they were more that tone.

Having seen the series, it really feels like Marvel just don't have a handle on how to pace and structure their tv shows. Secret Invasion, at 6 episodes and such an intricate storyline, had no business being a slow burn show with a rushed ending. This should have been a fast paced paranoid thriller. Maybe all of it should have been set within a very short window of time. Instead, as a lot of these MCU shows have done, there are episodes where very little happens, and then there are episodes where a lot happens and it feels rushed. Given that this is now a common occurrence in the MCU tv shows, it seems obvious that the writers don't have a handle on how to pace these 6 episode series. Also, this show was oddly small for a show that was about something so big. There was a lot of sidestepping to try and explain why Fury was the person who had to be the one who stopped Gravik and why he couldn't involve some of his powered friends. While the explanation works up to a point, when the world is on the brink of WWIII, the explanation starts falling apart. Then there are certain relationships that are very essential to the emotional weight of the show, which have far too little screen time for us to really care. The marriage of Fury and Priscilla/Varra is a bond that is brought up throughout the back half of the season, but the truth is that it is treated with a sort of reverence in the show which it has not earned from the audience, which is a damn shame because Jackson and Woodard do some excellent work in their scenes together. Then there is the whole ending of the show. While they do shake up the status quo a bit, which I hope will be followed up in the next Captain America movie, there are some very dumb decisions taken as well. For example, the decision to make G'iah into a superpowered being who is ridiculously overpowered is something that will be a ramification the MCU will have to deal with for a while. Maybe they will have this make more sense in a future MCU project, but for now, it does seem strange that they made such an OP character all of a sudden. Also, the bait and switch in the finale cheapens a very fine scene. The entire scene between Gravik and Fury was actually very meaningful, but having Fury be G'iah all along makes that scene loose its emotional value because we don't know if that is what Fury feels.

The damn shame about the show is that there is actually a fair amount of stuff that is actually pretty good. There is some excellent acting work in the show. Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Olivia Colman, Don Cheadle, and Charlayne Woodard all do some excellent work on the show. The actual story of the show is interesting because we actually do genuinely see that the Skrulls have very legitimate grievances against Fury. He is a man who used the Skrulls as agents, gained power within SHIELD as a result, but did not find a new home for the Skrulls and did not have the courage to admit that finding a new home wasn't possible. And then he deserted them on Earth and went to Saber. The resentment built up in the Skrulls is totally understandable. And Jackson does an excellent job showing a much more brittle and guilt ridden man, as opposed to the confident operative we have seen in the past. His dynamic with Talos is one of the highlights of the show. Ben Mendelsohn was insanely likable as Talos and his death was honestly one of the most gut wrenching deaths in the MCU. Olivia Colman just looked like she was having a ball of a time and boost of witty energy whenever she's on screen. Don Cheadle does some of his best work. The scenes between Fury and Rhodey, both before and after Fury find out that he's a Skrull, are impeccable. Kingsley Ben-Adir does a lot to make Gravik was a very understandable villain, even though his backstory is half baked and told rather than shown. Similarly, Charlayne Woodard is excellent, even though her character gets the sort of reverence from the show which is never earned by the writing. The scenes with her and Jackson are excellent and they are able to get that "married for a long time" feel despite barely any setup. Emilia Clarke is a bit of a mixed bag. She's forced to be rather stoic throughout most of the show, so she doesn't get to stand out despite being a significant part of the show.

The tone and story of the show is interesting. The idea of infiltration and creating paranoia is a good concept and when the show leans into that, its pretty good. But the show then also tries to be a bit too big for its boots by introducing super Skrulls and attempting to start WWIII. So it sometimes feels like the showrunners and writers aren't sure what show they are trying to make.

All in all, this isn't a bad show, but it had potential to be much better. If executed right, it could have been up there with MCU's best. Its a show that actually had some major character deaths like Maria Hill and Talos, and at least seems to have rattled the status quo of the Earth and not every thing is settled by the end of the show, but the execution of how things led to that point felt a little lacking. I would say this ranks around a 5 to 6/10.

#secret invasion #secret invasion spoilers #samuel l jackson #olivia colman #ben mendelsohn #emilia clarke #kingsley ben adir #don cheadle #charlayne woodard #skrulls #nick fury #sonya falsworth #talos #g'iah #gravik #james rhodes #priscilla fury #varra

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struggle-but-its-all-ocean-floor · 7 months

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for a second I thought maybe the collabs are because (aside from him probably wanting them) he didn't nearly have enough time to do his own things but that doesn't make sense because

pretty sure a lot of those songs were already made, he just needed to sing them and create/learn the choreography &

yes they're all English and created by other people (not a criticism just an observation) but those could've still been solo songs? Like them being English singles doesn't mean they needed to be collabs

I'm not sure why I had that original thought lol.

I think maybe it's the label's influence (the American label). something to do with the marketing and introducing him to different audiences in America. Plus It's not like JK would be opposed to working with different artists he finds cool.

I am hesitant about his album though. The tracks might not all be collabs but at this point I don't think any of the songs are gonna feel like him at least the him prior to chapter 2. And I think they'll all be English (which isn't necessarily a bad thing because English songs can be meaningful, but I don't think they'll go for that. Hope I'm wrong)

I would've said differently before I discovered 3D and Seven were part of the album, but now I think this is the case.

They want his name out there and known across America as much as possible before military and before he'll literally be absent for almost 2 years.

But then that makes the whole thing so confusing!!

Well, collabs have the obvious advantage of getting fans of the other artists to listen to Jungkook's songs as well, and possibly becoming fans. I think it also helps Western audiences accept Jungkook, since he's already been "accepted" and "vouched for" by American artists. It gives him more credibility? If it was just Jungkook, maybe his solos would be regarded as side projects, and maybe his streams and records would be seen as the BTS fever effect. But with popular artists credited to his songs, I think that confers Jungkook a certain degree of legitimacy, and maybe shows he's interested in reaching a broader audience and in really building a name and career for himself. I can see the pros of the collabs. At the same time, those can quickly become cons if Jungkook just becomes the dude who only does collabs and can't succeed on his own. So far, all of his solos that charted well and had radio play have been collabs - L&R, Seven and 3D. Now that people know who he is he definitely needs to establish himself solo.

Regardless, he did a poor job choosing the collabs. It's obvious that the alternate version of 3D's better than the main one, and the reason why 3D isn't doing nearly as well as Seven is that, apart from Seven being his anticipated solo debut and having a trendier, and I'd say more tasteful, sound, even Armys didn't like Jack Harlow. The fandom itself isn't responding very well to the song. The MV was lackluster compared to Seven, which had made every Army's Y/N fantasy come true, and if the first song about sex shocks people, the second one is just more of the same. Worst of all though is probably Jack's feature. The lyrics are terrible and sexist, he's not a particularly liked rapper, many fans (like me) are only streaming the solo version and the solo and alternate versions doesn't even combine on Spotify. The way Big Hit lets BTS collab with problematic or not very well respected artists is insane. It's like they'll take anyone and don't even bother understanding what fans want. There are tons of respected, liked and very popular artists that would love to work with BTS and they chose Jack Harlow? They could've fucking asked Cardi B (who is problematic too but generally well liked), and she probably would've said yes. They could've brought back Megan.

The thing is that I don't think Jungkook even knows or understands that Jack Harlow ain't shit. He likes him, but not that many people seem to, which actually surprised me because I thought he was a big name. It's Big Hit's job to at least inform Jungkook of that or suggest other artists. With Latto the problem (aside from the racists tweets that I either misinterpreted or everyone chose to ignore) was more that no one knew who she was and he helped her career more than she helped his. However, since she's an up and coming rapper, it's a much more interesting feature, introducing him to a more specific type of audience and also showing that he's serious about music because he noticed her talent and chose to work with her even if she's less known.

The point is, people loved Seven, including Army, and mostly liked Latto, but the response to 3D has been very lackluster, and Jack is a big reason why. I wonder if Bad Decisions wouldn't have done better with different people, even if the song is Benny Blanco's.

I also think the 3D MV was a huge mistake. I saw someone on Reddit say Jack Harlow's parts give Blurred Lines and it tracks. I watched the MV yesterday and even Jungkook's parts aren't great though. The choreography is poorly shot and Jungkook's dancing doesn't look that good, the dance practice video is miles better. After Seven, which was a huge production, with a beautiful, famous actress and Jungkook being the goofy lover boy, the 3D MV is so low effort. It killed the hype for the song. And Jack dominates the track too much, it's ridiculous. I like the alternate version quite a bit, but Big Hit and Jungkook need to be smarter. I think Jungkook lacks self-confidence and is too humble to realize he's better on his own. He still has this mentality of "the more the merrier, I'll take anything", when he should've listened to the alternate version and realized the feature needed to, at least, be shorter.

As for collabs in other artists' tracks, those are an easy way of having more songs and getting his name out there, since he doesn't need to look for the songs or perform them. He just does a bit of work in the recording booth and that's it. Hybe doesn't even need to promote the songs much either, since that falls more on the main artist. However, again, it's not just about having more songs and exposure. His image matters, the kind of discography he cultivates matters. He needs to be choosier. He can't just take anyone, which at this point feels like what he's doing. It gives less "I'm a pop star" and more "I'm just a nobody from Korea who will take anyone who will help me and isn't big enough to attract more high profile names". I don't know how to express that in a non cruel way. This is really the vibe I'm starting to get, despite Jungkook carrying all of those songs and being so big already.

I don't know what to expect of his album, but 3D didn't help build up anticipation for it. I don't even know if 3D will debut on the top 10 of the Hot 100 and Army is way less excited about Golden now. At least Seven is still going strong. I remember when Seven dropped. 3D only had a week's notice which didn't help, but when Seven dropped the timeline was insane. The horniness was off the charts. The explicit version, as cheesy as it was, had everyone grabbing their hair. When 3D dropped, the reaction was much smaller, and a lot more negative. Visuals matter a lot, and 3D didn't have them. Jungkook also showed everything with Seven, so flashing his abs and talking about sex isn't going to shock people anymore.

Anyway, it's a shame, because I like the solo version of 3D a lot, the choreo is much better than Seven, the performance is better too, and I love Jungkook's vocals so much in the alternate version. I pray he does that high note live. I don't even mind the lyrics. 3D needed a much better MV and no Jack Harlow. I won't even complain about Latto anymore, since, in comparison, she fit Seven better, had less screen time and lines, and helped the song be better, and not worse, received. Maybe I'm biased because I only know what's happening in kpop spaces, but...

Thanks for the ask! Sorry for the rant...

#ask #bts #jungkook #text #thanks for the ask!#I went off #I was being so positive about 3d is asks too and now I'm the one slandering it

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fallout-lou-begas · 2 years

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Less people know me on tumblr than they do on twitter so I feel a bit safer using this as, like, yknow, a blog that is personal, and something that’s been eating at me for a while is that the pencils to the first two pages of the next IKROAH have been done for a while but when I tried to ink them I fucked it up so bad that I’ll probably just have to completely redraw them, and I don’t think anything that discouraging has happened to me before since I started drawing back in 2020. It’s just been really hard to motivate myself for the mulligan when I’m already worried about messing the inks up again, and also I’ve been under a heat advisory for the past week and change so I’m already too hot and sweaty to be motivated to do much of anything lmfao

I remember when IKROAH first started I would put out issues every two weeks or so, and then once per month, and treated that as almost like a schedule or a deadline, which was insane! All while working the same full-time job that I do now! Admittedly that pace was only achievable because frankly my art was worse and sloppier and while impatience is definitely still my biggest weakness as an artist, I have undoubtedly improved over time but at a certain point making art better means taking more time on it. It’s created this weird conflicting feeling where art and comic pages aren’t something that I can just bang out in a day or a few days anymore, and even relatively small projects are pretty big time and attention investments. Obviously I could revert this by just embracing drawing more shittily but, like, come on, I have my own standards. And this isn’t insurmountable and doesn’t mean that I hate drawing now, not at all, but this change in my relationship to my art and my art-making has definitely been on my mind a lot, especially as I’m aware of how much I’d rather just play video games or hang out with my husband whenever I’m not at my job. Because that’s a big part of it, the increase in how much art feels like “work” means I don’t want to do it as much in my leisure time. It’s good work, it’s work that I love doing (much more than my actual job lmao), but it’s still work and lately I haven’t wanted to work!

It’s another funny balance. A wise friend of mine once said, bluntly, that you do it or it doesn’t get done. This applies to making and finishing art of any kind, reading books, cleaning house, developing skills, etc., and applies even if you’re sick or busy or distracted by myriad other things. If the only people who ever made and finished art were the idle people with the luxury of all the time in the world, we’d only have pretty shitty and boring art. So unfortunately the only way to get good art or to make it is to power through feelings of overwork or sickness or exhaustion or whatever is ailing you and make it anyway. Intellectually, I know this, but emotionally(?) I’m just dealing with a real lack of steam ever since I finished a zine at the start of May. It’s not like I depend on commissions or print sales for income or anything, anyway, so it’s not like I have an urgent need to be drawing, either, the way some other artists might be.

These thoughts don’t really have a point. I suppose I’m just self-conscious about falling off such a meaningful hobby to me for so long, about not Making Things, especially as someone who generally figured that she Makes Things? But it doesn’t feel like burnout or loss of interest, it just feels like I’m doing what I want to do and enjoying it and I just don’t want to make art as much as I used to. Maybe if I got paid my current salary to work on comics eight hours a day instead of doing data entry I’d get a lot more art done but that just goes back to the previous paragraph lol. I don’t really need any kind of “chin up lou, i’m sure you’ll be able to draw again soon” or “it’s okay take all the time you need” kinds of comments because I feel like I know these things already and I’m just Posting Through It

Anyway how’s your summer going

#louposting

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destinyc1020 · 2 years

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All those roles florence has and she doesn’t come close to zendayas stardom popularity though and awards. So who really won ? 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔just saying. Hollywood loves zendaya and I’ll stand by that

Zendaya definitely has way more fame and clout, and she is most certainly Hollywood's "Darling"/"It Girl" right about now... But it isn't a crime for her to also want more meaningful roles written for women coming her way is it?? 🤷 🥴 I don't see the issue with wanting more.

That's why I really hope that the Ronnie Spector biopic film pans out for her and that she does a great job, because a role like THAT would put her in a totally different dimension, and she would have even more meaty roles and opportunities thrown her way. 😊

I think that Zendaya's popularity kind of makes people forget that up until NOW, she really has only done a few handful of big-screen roles, and most of them have been just playing the gf, or having a few lines here and there or 20 min of screen time. Spider-Man HOCO was only 5 years ago lol. 😅🤣 Her first big-screen role with only a couple of lines here and there. She has been dominating the small screen, but the big screen is where she seems to want to have more opportunities. That's all I'm saying. 🤷

It's okay to want meaningful roles made for woc on the big screen too. She's fortunate though, because darker-skinned actresses her age don't even get to be in big blockbuster films on the big screen these days it seems. 🥴 So at least Z is getting that with Dune, Spider-Man, etc. She's playing the game smart. Honing her craft in smaller projects, and keeping it small/manageable in larger big screen projects. Like I said, the Ronnie biopics would be a totally new ballgame, and NEW territory for her, especially playing a LEAD role on the big screen. Whew! I can't wait! 🤩 👏

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tanenigiri · 2 years

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Review #23: I Think Our Son Is Gay (Volume 3)

Japanese title: うちの息子はたぶんゲイ (Uchi no Musuko wa Tabun Gay)

Story and art: Okura

English publisher: Square Enix

Number of volumes: 3 in English, 4 in Japanese (ongoing)

Expanding horizons.

(CW: Mentions of homophobic language)

(This review contains story spoilers.)

Out of the first three volumes of I Think Our Son Is Gay, I think Volume 3 is the one that can stand the most on its own. While it’s obviously best to have read this after the first two volumes, I say this because not only does the story take its time to reintroduce us to certain characters and plotlines, it also has one major storyline that starts and ends in this volume - a school choir competition.

Volume 2 ended with Hiroki revealing that since he and Daigo ended up not being in the same class for their second year in high school, they decided to join an after-school club together. This turns out to be the school choir, and Asumi, Hiroki’s neighbor, has also joined the same club (which is why we see the three of them together in the cover). There are a few chapters here that show Hiroki practicing hard for this competition and putting in the effort to get better at singing, and it’s nice to see that it doesn’t look like this is entirely motivated by his affection for Daigo. While that’s obviously a big factor, I always got the sense that Hiroki genuinely wanted to improve and do well in the competition when I was reading those chapters.

This arc does lead to an interesting facet of Hiroki’s character - his low self-esteem. While this is a pretty common character trait across many of the protagonists in the series I’m covering for this project - and I enjoy reading about all of them - this story tackles it quite uniquely in that we only get to see it from the point of view of Tomoko, who of course thinks the world of her son. This first shows itself in his singing, where despite Asumi and their other clubmates saying that he was doing a good job, the only feedback he listens to is Daigo’s, who tells him that he was off-key during their practice. While this could easily be attributed to Hiroki prioritizing Daigo’s opinions, I do think it’s supposed to be a nod at how Hiroki doesn’t think too highly of himself. (This is also how Yuri assesses the situation as well, once again proving that he’s the best character.)

However, this eventually manifests itself again when Akiyoshi, back home from his work, tells his son that Asumi used to have a massive crush on him when they were kids. Hiroki immediately shuts this down and says that it’s nothing like that now, adding that there are other guys in the choir who are much cooler than him. But it’s the line he says after this - “There’s no way she likes me. It’s just not possible!” - that elicits a reaction from Tomoko, saying that anything is possible when it comes to liking someone. I really like how she words this, as she was definitely making the connection that Hiroki had the same views about his crush on Daigo. Her reflection on this that ends this chapter is really sweet, too, as she surmises that as long as Hiroki actually believes that being together with someone is possible, then he can work toward it. And I definitely appreciate how the story doesn’t just limit this to Hiroki’s pining for Daigo as it also references Asumi’s pining for Hiroki.

The story revisits Hiroki’s low self-esteem one more time in a later chapter that sees Daigo having dinner with the Aoyama family. As it turns out, Daigo has picked up on Hiroki’s self-deprecation, and he’s made it a point to always remind Hiroki how much of a good guy he is. I initially found this scene primarily hilarious, thanks to the ridiculous reactions from Tomoko and Yuri after this, but after rereading, I actually found it more meaningful than anything. Since it’s shown earlier on that Hiroki values Daigo’s opinion more than anyone else’s, this could be just what he needs to have more confidence in himself. And while he has a hard time swallowing it, I definitely think this is a start of a change for his character, though unfortunately the volume is already wrapping up when this happens.

Turns out, Hiroki isn’t the only man in Tomoko’s life who’s pining for another man. We get confirmation from this volume that Mr. Tono, one of her workmates, is in fact in a relationship with another man, as it was only a rumor when it was brought up by one of the other employees in Volume 2. Mr. Tono mentions that he doesn’t really hide this fact about him, but he only brings it up when needed, and since nobody had asked him until that point, he kept details about his partner to himself. Tomoko is obviously floored by this revelation, but not for the same reasons that her workmates are - suddenly, she has someone reliable who can help her with how she deals with her son.

This leads to my favorite scene in the entire series so far, where Tomoko asks Mr. Tono for advice on how to best support her son. All Mr. Tono asks her is a simple question - would she want to change Hiroki if he turns out to be gay? It’s implied that Tomoko gives this question a bit of thought, but she surmises that she would want nothing more than for her son to be comfortable with himself. Mr. Tono then tells Tomoko that for him, this is already more than enough, and that she’s doing “just fine.”

I absolutely love this exchange as this is the first time that Tomoko gets the credit she deserves for being such an open-minded and understanding mother. It’s easy to forget that Tomoko is an anomaly - realistically, most parents act more like Akiyoshi when it comes to LGBT people, and even this series, wholesome as it is, doesn’t shy away from featuring more close-minded characters. I’m not surprised at all that she’s moved to tears by Mr. Tono’s words, and I really hope we get to see more of him soon - I think Hiroki meeting Mr. Tono would be a huge turning point for the former.

Her newfound confidence in herself is immediately put to the test in the following chapters, which sees Akiyoshi reacting quite awkwardly when Tomoko tells him about Mr. Tono, going as far as calling him a “fairy.” He brings up the term again in a conversation with Hiroki, where he wonders why he isn’t pursuing a girl and observes how he’s gotten quite close with Daigo. Unexpectedly, Hiroki doesn’t just stay silent about this and calls his father out on how ridiculous his expectations are, saying that it was quite unfair how he’s immediately labeled as a “fairy” just because he prefers focusing on his friendship with a guy instead of a relationship with a girl.

While this anger is surprising for the parents, this doesn’t come out of nowhere for the reader, as the chapter right before this is a Yuri-focused flashback, which shows Yuri’s classmates calling him a homophobic slur for hanging out with girls a lot. Yuri’s shown to not really be affected by this, but his brother ends up stepping in and defending him from these bullies. While Yuri admits that the bullying didn’t stop even after this confrontation, he does recognize that what Hiroki did must’ve taken a lot out of him, especially with the subject matter hitting quite close to home.

So Hiroki ends up treating the situation with his father in the same way that he treated the situation with Yuri’s bullies as they broach on the same topic, and he’s justifiably pissed off about it. Like I said above, both parents are surprised at this sudden outburst, but Akiyoshi rightfully muses that what he was saying about “fairies” must have been a sensitive topic for his son, and he ends up entertaining the idea that the label might also apply to him.

Tomoko, who definitely knows that her husband is nowhere near ready to handle that conversation, steers the topic away from it and instead focuses on how his words hurt his son’s feelings, even if Akiyoshi only treated them as jokes. She ends up making the connection with Yuri’s past bullies, which Akiyoshi finds eye-opening. I definitely think she made the right call here, as not only has she not even heard confirmation from Hiroki himself about his sexuality, but she still thinks that she’s on training wheels with regards to the situation, despite all the progress that she’s already made.

It’s an interesting note to end this volume of I Think Our Son Is Gay on - though there are two more chapters right after this scene that wrap up the school choir competition plot - as while it definitely shows that the entire Aoyama family has made a lot of progress in terms of how they each handle Hiroki’s issues about his identity, it also reminds us that all four of them have a long way to go before being able to comfortably talk about it. While Tomoko and Yuri may be a few levels ahead in terms of understanding, they know that they have to be patient in waiting for Hiroki and Akiyoshi to catch up.

Random thoughts I couldn’t fit elsewhere:

It pains me that I didn’t talk about Yuri much above, but the best character of the series actually has a lot more to do in this volume compared to the last. He gets a killer line in an early chapter where Tomoko urges him to get a haircut, and Hiroki suggests to have it cut short as he thinks having a short haircut is cool. Yuri then comes to the conclusion that his brother likes guys with short hair - and it takes a full beat before he corrects himself by saying that what he meant was he liked short hairstyles.

Another character who has a lot more to do in this volume compared to the previous one is Asumi, as like I mentioned above, she’s also part of the school choir. While she’s presented to be a very good friend to Hiroki - and it’s once again implied that she hasn’t really gotten over her childhood crush on him - what stands out to me here is how in quite a number of her appearances, it’s hinted that she’s caught on to how Hiroki feels about Daigo. This isn’t really confirmed, and we don’t really see any change in her behavior because of this revelation (if it’s even happened), but I’m very interested in how the story will end up dealing with this. I have a feeling that she does realize what’s going on but is still coming to terms with it in her own way.

Asumi also ends the Hiroki self-esteem plotline in a very positive note, as when asked by Tomoko, Asumi reveals that Hiroki is very well-liked by the people around him. And I don’t think this has anything to do with her crush on him, too, as her observations about Hiroki are quite close to what Daigo said about him in an earlier chapter. It’s nice to see that even if Hiroki doesn’t think highly of himself, the people around him in school do see him as a good friend.

Thanks for reading! You can read my review of the first two volumes of I Think Our Son Is Gay here. I’m really enjoying the series so far, as it has a lot of depth for something that I initially thought was just a light-hearted and goofy title. I’m definitely rooting for Hiroki to become more open about his identity, but I’m also content in celebrating the little victories that each of the Aoyama family members experiences throughout these volumes.

#I Think Our Son Is Gay #Uchi no Musuko wa Tabun Gay #Okura #Aoyama Tomoko #Aoyama Hiroki #Aoyama Yuri #Aoyama Akiyoshi #LGBT manga #manga review #manga

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aacciorriptide-writes · 1 year

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Kenny McCormick headcanons

summary: basically a small look into how i imagine kenny's future and who he is

A/N: i started this list ages ago as a gift for @kennys-whore but since he's rarely on tumblr I don't think he'll see them. he was going through a tough time, so I did what I do best and projected on a fictional character

south park masterlist

Demiromantic pansexual

He has had romantic flings that he didn't really care about, but only a few meaningful relationships he was invested in

A bit of a man-whore if I'm honest

Dyes his hair light blue at some point

definitely doesn't go to university/college

Honestly his dream job is a sugar baby

I think he would pick up reading as a hobby when he's out of school (20s) but only non-fiction

Like battered second-hand paperbacks and they're all studying the human mind or whatever. I think he would find that interesting. Psychology. I forgot the word for psychology.

Also becomes friends with Wendy

Like, he, butters and Wendy become really close at some point

They move in together near Wendy and butters' college after Wendy breaks up with Stan

Stan isn't happy about it but Kyle won't let him talk to Kenny about it (read: his boyfriend keeps him in check)

Likes socks as a gift. But only if they're funky.

Really big fan of cheese. Like. Big fan.

Has one of those blanket hoodies. He lives in it.

Likes good omens — specifically Crowley. He likes their vibe.

I think he would pick up drawing, but isn't amazing at it. He does it for fun, and fun only, so doesn't really care how it turns out.

super into fashion and is always trying to mix up his outfits into something daring and new

his favourite album is I brought you my bullets, you brought me your love

has experimented with his gender, and is cis, but doesn't care too much about pronouns or how he is perceived

#kenny mccormick #south park headcanons #sp kenny #south park #south park fanfiction #south park kenny #aacciorriptide headcanons #aacciorriptide south park

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dzpenumbra · 1 year

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3/1/23

Well shit, I guess it's March, huh.

I, yet again, did not get a good night's sleep. I might as well get this out. I wrote a comment on a post on an artist's group on Reddit. They were in a similar position to me. All-in on art, 7+ years no other work history, battling with mental health. They were saying they were worried they would have to get other work, another job.

I wrote a whole thing, several paragraphs, you know how I am. I just.. wrote from a place of being able to deeply relate. And a bit bitterness because this isn't really a thing with a lot of careers. For some reason, art, which used to be one of the most revered and sacred professions since before we even invented spoken language... is viewed as a child's hobby now, in many circles. As in, it's not viewed as a legitimate, sustainable career. And modern western society is most definitely not built to sustain fine art as a career. No-sir-ee. Modern western society is built to turn fine artists into contractual laborers, who supervisors and tacticians can use for profit. Like pieces on a factory line. Like Assemblers in Factorio.

It's a really fucked up thing in the end, because they're so short-sighted that they genuinely can't see why their corner-cutting and exploitative practices don't work the way they want them to. They want to emulate art. They want to create the illusion of art. Of passion. Of vision. Picture acid-washed jeans. That. But with passion, with inspiration, with vision, with a personal message. But, as with most of western society, they are always looking forward. They try to emulate the end result. They try to emulate the product.

It's a very industrial concept, like China reverse engineering iPhones to make clones. It works in that industry. And you see it in gaming a lot, when a big soulless company buys out a small indie passion project, then they release a cheap straw-filled scarecrow wearing that indie game's skin. They try to emulate what a good game looks like, what it feels like, what it sounds like. But it's just an imitation.

I found that in watching a lot of streams of newer games. If you see a chat saying "oh wow, that's just like BioShock" or "oh wow, that's just like Minecraft" or "oh wow, that's just like Call of Duty". Then you know that game is not really standing on it's own two feet. And they can get by, and make a good product... but you will rarely find art this way. Those games, art games, legendary games... some may start as "wow, this is just like ____" but they quickly break free and have their own unique, memorable experience.

Fine art is the purest form of this "lightning in a bottle" I know. And it's different for everyone. My form is trying to capture my inspiration, my passion, things that are incredibly meaningful to me, in whatever medium feels right, even if I don't know how to work in that medium. The picture in my profile here, or whatever, idk what it's called. The Barred Owl. I have a few incredibly vivid memories of that bird. One, I was going up the mountain with my friend to find a bar we were told about that had pool tables. There was nothing to do at night in our town, so we were searching for the holy grail, essentially. It really felt like a quest, you know? And we end up on this dirt road in the middle of nowhere at like 10PM and neither of us know where we are, and this is before GPS and all that, of course. And we're driving along and up ahead we see... these fucking figures in the middle of the road. I'm serious, this was like... horror movie shit. Like I thought they were kids wearing the same hoodies with the hood up at first, it was really weird and surreal. Like a fairy tale or something. And there were like... 5 of them? As we got closer they seemed like they were around like 1.5-2 feet tall, and we started to suss out that they were Barred owls. Just standing in the middle of the fucking road, with us coasting towards them with the headlights on and the windows open. They were just... dead silent. And as we crawled towards them, they inched to the side and let us pass, but like stared directly at us as we passed, heads on a swivel. And I was really sketched out having the windows open, I was convinced they were going to like attack me or something, they were like... a foot away from me. It was really scary. Then right as we passed by, they scattered and they started flying tree-to-tree behind us, following us. Some overtaking us and perching in trees ahead, the rest following behind, swooping from tree to tree. It was nuts. We never found the place either, never even figured out if we were on the right road.

The other owl story was from my post-breakup days, the summer after, when I revisited my hippie self - who is firmly hybridized in my personality now, thank god. I kept getting the image of owls come to me in dreams, and I tried to do some kind of spirit guide meditation thing, like a summoning ritual or some shit (as though I've ever really needed that, good lord, they seek me out constantly) and I kept getting images of Barred Owls popping into my head. Just the head, for a long time. It's a very distinct face. And that summer, I had a family of Barred Owls hunt in my neighborhood at night. Maybe they'd always been there? Maybe I was just starting to go outside more, and finally heard them. But I lived right next to a pond and I would hear them calling to each other and coordinating. And I could hear them relocate from the north eastern corner across the pond... to the south eastern corner... then through the woods on the southern side, then looping around to where I lived on the western side. And they'd sometimes do a really slow loop, like over the course of hours, and sometimes they would just stay on the eastern side and then head out or go quiet. So, I started working on my owl call. Someone taught me how to do an owl call with my hands when I was really young, I've always remembered how to do it, I'm just very rusty. And I started to get it back really well that summer. And one night, I decided to call them. Just to see what happened. The cool part is, the leader (or whatever, I don't really know how their psychology works) had a distinctly different call. It's hard to articulate how, but when I heard it I knew it was them. And that one responded to me. And I went back and forth with them for a few calls. And then they went silent. They were across the pond (like a soccer pitch sized pond, not huge), on the eastern side, directly across. And after about 5 minutes of silence, I called again, and I got an immediate response from the leader... from due south. They had relocated. Then I heard a call to my north, a bit closer. That... was a very unique feeling. Then I called back, and the leader was a bit closer, and one or two other calls from varying locations. They had split up, and were coordinating locations. They were... surrounding me... I should mention at this point, I had no porch lights and a pretty poorly lit home. It was super dark at night. Like... super dark. Like walk out to the edge of the fenced-in yard and you can't see your hand in front of your face on a new moon. There was definitely moonlight that night though, I remember distinctly summoning my courage and walking out to the fence (about 30 feet from my porch, as though the roofed porch was "safer" or something...) and being able to see a tree about 10 feet away from me. So... decent visibility. And I called again, but got no response. And then one last time, and I got a response from the leader... I still don't know if they were in the tree 10 feet in front of me or the tree behind it, but they were fucking loud. Like, they were right there. Like... it made me freeze up a bit. But I got really excited at the same time. But like... it was one of those feelings, like... this animal and it's entire family can see me clear as day. And I can't see or hear a single one of them. And they're predators. So there's something very instinctual about that, it's a very unique feeling. But the coolest part about that scenario, I had summoned them, and they willfully sought me out. But having them that close? It freaked me out a little too much, and I headed back in.

So... my point with these stories? That's what Barred Owl means to me. And so much more. It's not just something cool to draw (I mean it's that too...), it's a deeply personal part of my life. And the act of drawing that piece? I streamed it. I streamed the entire process, start to finish, it took like... 40 hours total. And I met some cool people while I was doing that, and we talked about a lot of important life stuff. Point being, that piece wasn't something commissioned off some random dude on Fiverr. That piece wasn't focus grouped in a graphic design or illustration firm, then tasked to the most capable illustrator, then sent to print, mass produced and available on-demand as a postcard or a t-shirt. It's something special. Made by me, with my memories in it, with my emotions in it, with my skin oil in the paper. It's an artifact of a memory, or a concept. Or both.

So... when someone says... go get a job working for someone else, in a related field? It's like... they come from another world. It's like they don't even understand what this life or profession is. It's like they interchange "logo designer" or "basket weaver" or "candle maker" or "landscape painter" and they throw them all in the same pile and label it "not-normal jobs". Or "not real jobs". Or "hobbies". Usually "hobbies". It upsets me so deeply. Not just because I have devoted so much of my life to this, but because... I love these things so much. This way of living so much. This way of looking at the world. It's my everyday experience. I see art everywhere. I see art in the architecture of my building. I see wooden beams from different eras, some machined, some seemingly hand-hewed, at least in parts. I see brickwork that is quite old. And I envision the people constructing this building back... probably 100 years ago? Maybe even earlier. Let me google real quick. Yeah, it was originally constructed in 1880. 143 years. 143 years ago, some dudes were mixing mortar and placing bricks to make a gigantic mill. There are relics of different time periods, different constructions; all telling a story, like a fantasy movie scene that plays out in my head. And I see stuff like that everywhere. And it fascinates me, and I want to share it with people. Because it makes life so much more deep, and rich, and romantic, and fascinating. Art and writing allow me to do that. For anyone who chooses to participate. Unfortunately, not many have been interested.

So yeah... all this... because some dude sent me a reply to my comment at like 3AM saying that the OP should get a "normal job". And I was fucking livid all day. I was surprised I feel asleep. And I woke up angry. And I carried that anger all day long, until like 5 or 6 PM, when I finally talked to my mom and was able to get those thoughts out.

An interesting thing happened when I was talking to her about art. I was telling her this, the stuff about how... like... I'm basically looking for private collectors. For these relics, essentially. These artifacts. I don't know what else to call what I make. I say art and people just roll their eyes. But they really are so much more than the end product, they are the product of intellectual exploration, of memory, of my personality. They are concept pieces, most of them. My necklace that I'm wearing now is a concept piece. It's a bloodstone centerpiece, which was a stone I was given at a very difficult time in my life, and I lost it. And it always upset me very deeply that I had lost it, and I always pledged to get a new one. Now it's the heart of my necklace, and sits right above my heart. The wooden beads are stained with my tattoo ink that I have injected permanently into my own skin. The large beads are Tiger's Eyes, which were my favorite stone as a child. And the filler beads are Black Obsidian which is cool, but also a pretty important mineral in the advancement of humankind. Maybe that's a reach, it doesn't have a ton of personal sentimental value, it was a later addition. I got it because it called to me. Because my eyes kept being drawn to it, and it fits perfectly in the necklace thematically. It's more than just... something thrown together because it looks pretty - which is respectable in its own right. Every single direction in it was picked deliberately. The rhythm and pattern of the beads. The number of square knots used for spacing. The transition into braiding at the end, to emulate my symbolic braided mohawk that I used to have, as a reminder of where I came from. Every step of it is intentional.

I was telling my mom about the stones I've been sanding and faceting, that she sent me from her driveway. Sounds silly when I say it that way, wait til you see what they look like now. They are absolutely gorgeous. And I'm like 80% sure some of them have tiny veins of silver in them. And I asked her... if I approached a gallery and I just told them "here, here are some stones that my mom was drawn to, that she sent me from her driveway, which I sanded by hand into these shapes that somewhat mimic their original organic forms, but take on their own unique geometry, which I sanded while I was caring for and then eventually grieving my beloved cat." I asked her... "do you think they would put this in a gallery if I told them that." And she took a minute... then she started telling me about a woman she knows who does a lot of stuff that I would be interested in - candlemaking, beekeeping, making soaps and stuff, you know... someone who would make my life fucking awesome if I were dating them. But she's married so, whatever. XD And she's a vet, a traditional and alternative vet. So she does all kinds of stuff, and... she said this woman might be interested in these pieces.

So... she asked me, "how are you going to package it? Or present it?" And I went... "I'm probably going to go up to her with the stones in my cupped hands and say 'you want them?'" And my brain started getting fuzzy and quiet. Like static or white noise or something. Meaning like... thoughts just started not being there, going blank, like I was getting really tired or something. And I told her, "I could like... put them in a box, or a bag or something, maybe she could put them in a fountain and the light could play off them or something? Whatever, once they're out of my hands it's up to them." And then from there on out, my brain was just... struggling to keep up. Very blank and slow and having difficulty focusing. And I really brought attention to this very transparently, saying "this is my problem". I have trouble even envisioning the scenario. I don't believe in my ability to make a successful sale. I don't like it. I don't like the process at all, and I don't believe I'm skilled in it, and I don't want to be. I would be more than glad to tell the insanely personal story behind them, and burst into tears in front of them, but figuring out money? Making a sale? I naturally reel. I naturally pull back and freeze up. And I literally froze up, which is what my mom helped me learn. My mind froze, I was having trouble thinking, I couldn't envision the scenario or any options of what to do, the whole white noise thing. My brain would just go blank of thoughts.

So... I'm gathering... this is not just... something I don't like or don't want to do... it's something that's actually triggering a panic response and sending me into "fight, flight, freeze, fawn" mode, and this is my "freeze". Earth element out of alignment? Meh, I don't know enough about that kinda stuff to even speculate, I understand the language of psychology much better. I just have more experience in that tongue. So... that's a bit of a problem... if you want to ever have a career doing anything ever... and you freeze up any time the topic of asking for money comes up. As an artist, this makes you a golden fucking target for scammers, especially if what you produce is valuable. But more than that, I just... never get a chance to even get started. Because I don't care if I sell my shit or not, in fact, in some ways... it even benefits me to not sell my shit. And I really just want my art to go to a good home, where someone really appreciates it and lets it run free in the yard and feeds it food scraps under the table when no one's looking. And I wish life could be that simple. That I make really cool shit for people who really want it, whatever they want, whenever, we'll work together and make it work. And I'll cook for them and entertain them, and tell stories and teach them what I've learned in my travels. In exchange, I don't have to worry about housing or food. That's all I really want. But I'm afraid I'm... about 4000 years too late for a life like that. Apparently that life is not available to me, and I need to get a "normal job" to make "money" to pay for things to stay "alive" so I don't "die on the street" and then maybe in my free time I can dick around with paints or whatever lame shit I do that no one actually cares about. Yay.

But yeah, identifying how bad that anxiety/panic mechanism is getting, and how... I had a complete blind spot for it. Like... I was insanely disoriented and had no idea why my brain was just going blank. Luckily, perspective from my mom helped me connect the dots. No wonder I've been so adamant to get help around that, I had no idea it was so bad, because I wasn't like... physically feeling the fear. Fight is a very unique feeling. Like boiling water or something, like pressure building. Flight is very... sharp. Tightness, tension, gripping. Fawn is weird, it's like a hollowness and then like... a release... when it's genuine. When it's a fake fawn, like... going along with what a scary person is doing... it can be more like flight but... I don't know, like... cold and spooky. I'm pretty well acquainted with fawn, unfortunately. But freeze... at least this one... This one barely even registered to me as a panic response. It was just like... emptiness. Stillness. Blank. So, like... I didn't even associate it as a feeling, an emotion, let alone Fear.

Fear is so weird, it takes so many wildly different forms of experience, yet it's all the same emotion. So odd.

So yeah, we wrapped up, got the electric skateboard ordered, hopefully it'll be shipping before too long. It seems like it's a final plan. I'm gonna be doing the skateboard and car share thing, that plan. Hopefully it goes well, if not, we'll just reconvene and talk options again. I'm cool with it.

Okay, I wanna get to this because it's getting really late, I had no idea I had so much to say tonight. I went skating tonight. I was debating between streaming or playing a new game, and I said fuck it and went skating instead. I'm really glad I did. As always!

I spent most of my time at the handicapped access sidewalk that has that plateau section that ramps down, so it basically makes a little natural kicker. I landed some pretty good ollies and a shuvit, and really went after 3 shuv for a long time. I got really close a few times but I never stuck it. Though I'm pretty sure I have landed it at that spot before. I packed in a flatground section and just practiced kickflips for a good half hour. It was exhausting. It's weird, but I think flatground is actually more tiring than skating a gentle hill and then climbing back up. It's hard to really tell which is worse, but I feel like flatground might be. Because you just... don't carry speed... so you end up having to run and push more. Just a theory. I landed one kickflip, out of probably... I don't know, if I was to hazard a guess, probably 30 attempts? Not a great ratio. But I was really focusing on something specific today. I watched this video from a pro skater on common mistakes skating, and noticed something that I do a lot snowskating that I don't do as much skateboarding (though I still do it, just not as much). Leaning my torso forward rather than squatting on anything that isn't a straight ollie. Even ollies I get that sometimes, especially when landing a drop. But I noticed it a ton on backside 180s and heelflips. Correcting this by keeping my weight above my board, keeping my hips and shoulders lined up more (thank you, yoga!) made me much more consistent in proper 3-shuv landings, I was just... having trouble focusing on catching the board. The path turned to solid ice really quick, so when I popped... it felt like trying to jump forwards while wearing skate shoes (flat bottomed, little grip) on an ice rink. Your balance just immediately goes fucky. So regaining balance, staying above the board and looking at the board for catch and foot placement was just... too much for me all at once while mid-air. The "look at the board" part was usually too late, because all these moving parts still haven't been committed to muscle memory yet. The foot position, riding and correcting balance, steer correction, the pop and flick, those are all committed pretty well to muscle memory, I don't have to think too much. I just go 3-shuv and my feet go to the right place. But weight placement, posture and looking at the board aren't intuitive yet.

The "squat, don't bend" method definitely made kickflips much more consistent, and they actually popped higher too, which was an unexpected bonus. But sticking them moving on very uneven terrain... it was a battle. But I landed one. And it was much higher than my other kickflips. It wasn't clean, but it was enough to call a land.

I started to head back... then I eyed the 6-set at the bottom of the hill. Yep. I was tempted. It's weird, it's diagonally angled, so... it's a little weird to hit it? It feels much bigger than it really is. I decided to set the goal of bombdropping it. And I refused to leave until I landed it. And I tried and tried and tried. Over a dozen times, easily. I ate shit on that over and over. I just couldn't get my balance right. Too far back, too far back, too far back, too far toe edge, too far forward. At one point, I spooked a young woman and her dog who were out walking, it was like... 11PM. I think I scared her a bit? I don't know. I tried to be friendly, but she just... seemed to want to keep walking. I get it, it's late at night, your dog's barking at me, I'm some dude with a weird board thing alone in a park wearing all black. Probably not the place she felt the most safe in the world. I tried to be really friendly, told her I used to have a german shepherd and it was cool, I wasn't upset by it or anything. Then wished her a good night. Then it was like... probably another 6 or 7 more tries. And I was so fucking close, I just kept sliding out. And I was just about to give up and getting so tired. And I just went, "I'm fucking landing it this time. And I'm just riding away." And I tried to envision it, like... envision what it feels like, what it looks like. Really get that in my head. Then just clear my head and immediately go. And I came really close but I didn't land it. So I bolted back up and just said. "Nope, this time. This is it. Just do it." And I ran, and jumped, and put the board under my feet, and... rode away. And I did it. And I scared the shit out of some dude across the street who was walking and didn't see me because of the sound of the board smacking the packed snow. And I was beaming.

It wasn't an ollie, but it was the biggest stairset I've ever done. And the only one bigger in the park is the 7-set above the flatground section. Talk about progression. I don't know if I'm brave enough to try to ollie that 6-set this winter. Ollieing is so different from bombdropping. I'll leave the option open... but... it spooks me.

But I'll tell ya, that first bombdrop on the stairset? That took a bit of pumping myself up to do it. I was tempted to just jump first, no board under me, but... I was actually worried that might do more damage than good. I feel like landing flat-footed with nothing to move your momentum... all the impact just goes to your static feet, right in the ankles. And I don't really know how to like... tuck and roll out of that to distribute momentum, especially with a phone in my pocket. I do know how to tuck and roll and slide out of landing on my board to distribute momentum, pretty well too. So I actually opted to just skip the test jump and go right to the first bombdrop. And that was... a literal leap of faith. It took a big "fuck it" to get me to override my survival instincts there. I often feel like a baby because there are kids half my age that jump down stairsets twice that big, and they don't even have snow to break their fall. But for me, it's spooky. For me, these sets are the biggest thing I've done. So... I'm gonna let myself have that fear. Because the fear = the challenge. And overcoming the challenge, conquering the fear = the reward. Otherwise, I'm kinda cheating myself out of progression just because others have progressed further in their own journeys... That's kinda silly.

I ended skating on that note, it was a great feeling. I am so glad I stuck it out and pushed the last few attempts. It was worth it!

#diary #journal #online journal #stream of consciousness #stream of thoughts

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rantrambles · 3 years

Text

Ever get so upset you make a Tumblr account to vent?

I haven’t even listened to The Penumbra Podcast yet but it’s on my list because it’s insanely popular and the cosplays I’ve seen are hot as hell (A+ to all the cosplayers I’ve seen you’ve done great work). Now, with the recent news surrounding the podcast, I’ll wait till it’s done if I ever do get into it. I’m Asian and part of the LGBT community but I’m not nonbinary so I can’t say much about the trans represention in the art but I wanted to add my two cents on the matter as a person of color and someone examining the situation from the outside. Also, before I get deeply into it, I’m not the only person of color with opinions on this matter so if people have their own frustrations and criticism with the racism in The Penumbra Podcast and/or the new artist they hired, definitely listen to them too. These are my own personal opinions, and I’m sure other people will disagree and that’s fine. We’re all going to have different views on this so bear that in mind. Also, feel free to correct me or add anything if I’ve missed some information. Here’s a great breakdown of the whole situation for those that don’t know what happened. Finally, I was very hesitant to post this, but I felt it was important because I make a statement at the end on how race should be presented in a podcast format so if you are interested in making a podcast and want to have a diverse range of characters, please skip to the end to read those thoughts.

I’ll start off by saying, I’m not even that upset with the new artist that The Penumbra Podcast hired. I know that statement alone is controversial but I don't personally know them, and I’m not going to judge who they are as a person by a few pieces of art they’ve made. They are the least of the problems that I have here. Since the announcement and the backlash, I’ve been scrolling through the artist’s Instagram account and I can tell why people find the designs offensive, but I’m also comparing the designs to the artist’s other work, and I honestly believe that’s just their style. They’ve exaggerated the features of just about every character they’ve made, regardless of race or gender. From what I’ve seen the sharp angles and overly round curves in the anatomy that make some of the character’s features more jarring are how they prefer to draw. I’m sure they’re capable of drawing more realistic proportions but for the most part they’re art aims to call attention, be bold, and create distinguished features. Not inherently a bad thing on its own.

And yeah I’d understand the issue if this were a scenario where the artist heard how these characters acted in the podcast and thought “hey, obviously this character is a black woman because they are super strong and therefore must have big muscles, no other woman could look like that” or “hey, this character has to be Asian because they act super seductive sometimes better draw them as such.” But from my understanding the race was already decided by previous official artists and a general description of the characters were already generated by the audience, similar to how The Magnus Archives leaned towards drawing scrawny Jon with black, greying hair and dark skin. The new artists couldn’t really change those features even if those features aren’t described in canon because a depiction that strayed too far from popular fandom interpretation would make the character’s unrecognizable to the fanbase.

I think the reason this became such a big issue for most people is because the new Penumbra artist used their exaggerated art style when making these characters and people of color and nonbinary folks already see themselves drawn as these exaggerated caricatures all the time (with those images being used to further discriminate against them). I’m sure the artist didn’t mean for their art to be offensive, but that of course doesn’t change how it was received.

According to some, the poses and expressions the artists chose did not fully represent the characters entirely and only served to further perpetuate harmful stereotypes, and I’ll have to take their word for it because I still haven’t listened to the podcast so I have no idea how the characters act. But again much of the criticism is based on the one line-up and doing a deeper dive into the artist’s work I managed to find artwork that was much less offensive. Here some art where Vespa is depicted in a non-violent pose and one where Vespa is in a threatening pose but not an overly violent one. Here is Peter drawn in a non-seductive pose. Hopefully, the artist truly does keep the criticisms in mind as they work on the new official art. I’m just not the type of person that wants to get the pitchforks out and cause this particular person to lose a job they seemed really excited about over their old character line-up, especially when that person is also part of a marginalized group.

Again, that’s just my opinion on that particular artist. Those who are offended by their art are still valid in how they feel, and the artist should absolutely take their criticism to heart to better how they represent the characters.

What I’m more upset about is that I think The Penumbra Podcast should never have released official art for their characters in the first place and that’s their mistake that they refuse to own up about. They have made it clear that the story was never meant to portray characters of colors, a fact emphasized by the fact they hired mostly white actors from the start. They only started releasing art of the characters to get a profit. And the thing is they know what they did was wrong. All I had to do was search Penumbra Podcast racism and there is a note on their website saying that they archived some old official art.

“We have discontinued all Penumbra merchandise that uses the original character designs, and in the meantime, any profits on the sales of that merchandise will go to the For The Gworls project. We also realize that the depiction of these characters as POC, while not appropriate for us to use in our marketing and merchandise, has nonetheless become personally meaningful to many POC listeners. For that reason, and because we do not wish to distance ourselves from our mistake, we are keeping these images on our website for archival purposes. Though we do want to make it clear that many of the main/featured voice actors are white and that we did not write the characters to represent any specific POC experience, you are, as always, free to imagine these characters in any way that you like.”

I went to their shop and they still sell posters and pins with the character’s faces on them, but they are donating it to a good cause so hopefully that stays the same. However, I still find it a little uncomfortable that they are still selling character merch and have plans to continue selling character merch. They have no right to dissuade the fans that already found representation in the characters, but they also have no right to profit off the representation that was built, regardless if they made the story.

Let’s compare this to another piece of popular media. I love Avatar the Last Airbender and, I liked the ATLA voice actors just fine but there should have been more people of color doing voice acting behind the screen too. The voice actors for that show were mainly white too, however, the creators knew that they would be making poc characters. That’s what makes the difference. Did they still choose to go with mostly white voice actors? Yes. Could they have done better and pay more people of color? Also yes. But I’m not as furious at them because they did their research on the cultures they were basing the ATLA world off of and intentionally gave us a show where Asians could see characters that looked like them represented on the screen. The Penumbra Podcast did not do any of that. Again, they openly admitted that it was never their intention to make the character’s people of color when they made the podcast so that goes to show no research was made to properly represent specific cultures. The color of the character’s skin in their official designs therefore became more of aesthetic choice rather than representation, and it wasn’t even their aesthetic choice to begin with!

Race isn’t a color you can just throw onto the character because you feel like it. So I want this to be a lesson to anyone that wants to make a podcast: if you want to include poc characters please do some research into the cultures you plan to represent the way you would with any other form of media. Just because the audience can’t see the characters and just because it’s harder to smoothly introduce the character’s appearance doesn’t mean you’re allowed to be lazy on how you present the characters. Do research before you start writing the first episode and take the time to hire poc actors. Hiring poc actors is actually the least that can be done to show representation. Also, since the audience cannot visually see the race of the characters on a podcast and it can’t typically be described the way you would in a book, you’ll have to be creative. It’s not my job to say how, but my suggestions would be, before the fans come up with their own image of the character, you need to establish race in the first few episodes or release character profiles on a website so that the fans know you canonically intended the characters to be of a certain race even if you aren’t able to mention it in the actual podcast. If you are unwilling to do any of these then the best route is to avoid stating race at all and allow the audience to build their own representation into your form of media. However, once this happens, you are not allowed to profit off popular fan interpretations. You lose all rights to create official art or images of the characters. You cannot use “we have a diverse cast of characters” when you market your story. It doesn’t matter whether you created the content or not, you did not create the representation for those minority groups.

It’s one thing for fans to build their own inclusivity into a form of art like a podcast, but it’s another thing for the creators who never worked to make the representation happen to take advantage of the representation that the listeners built for themselves. Thank you for attending my TedTalk.

#the penumbra podcast #podcast #race #the magnus archives #diversity in podcasts #diversity #tpp #tpp fanart

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kingwuko · 3 years

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Wuko in the comics

Welcome to my first post discussing Wuko in the LoK comic books!

This first post will be discussing Turf Wars- which unfortunately does not feature Wu. But there are lots of excellent Mako moments, and there are some major plot points that carry over into the next comic trilogy.

Turf Wars is the first LoK comic trilogy released after the finale. Though it was released two and half years after the finale aired, it picks up right where we left off. While the creators confirmed after the finale aired that Korrasami was canon, the last moments of the animated series were a little ambiguous (on purpose, since this was a time when queer representation was just not considered "acceptable" in children's media-it was truly the only way they could get away with it). The comics definitively remove all ambiguity. Turf Wars features multiple frames of Korra and Asami kissing, holding hands, and coming out to their friends and family.

The overarching plot of Turf Wars is a conflict over the land upon which the new spirit portal sets. There is also conflict between rival Triad gangs, the Triple Threats and the Creeping Crystals, over turf in Republic City following the chaos of Kuvira's invasion. These two sets of turf wars overlap when a business tycoon hires the Triple Threats to secure the spirit portal for him by driving others off. The new Leader of the Triple Threats, Tokuga, is attacked by a spirit defending the portal, causing him to gain a dragon-like appearance and a new agenda-seizing control of all Republic City. In the midst of all this there is a refugee crisis, a presidential election, and Korra and Asami trying to navigate their new relationship once they return to the real world with all their responsibilities.

Notable plot points and character developments:

Korra and Asami canon is confirmed (repeatedly)-They come out to family and their friends

Business owner Wonyong Keum, who owns the land upon which the new portal sits, demands everyone vacate so he can turn it into a tourist attraction for profit-prompting Korra to enter the Avatar state to temporarily drive him away.

An unhappy spirit requests Korra closes the portal to prevent exploitation of the spirit world.

Bolin joins Mako as his rookie detective partner.

Zhu Li is running efforts to care for refugees who lost their homes during Kuvira’s attack and teams up with Asami to begin rebuilding homes for everyone displaced.

Tokuga is introduced as the leader of the Triple Threats, fighting for control of the streets with Jargala, the leader of the Creeping Crystals.

Kya reveals she is queer and gives us a history lesson on the context of LGBTQ+ history in the world.

Tokuga is attacked by the afore-mentioned spirit and his right arm and half his face become dragon-esque.

Raiko is a colossal idiot. He is way too focused on getting reelected and making his decisions based on what his campaign advisor suggests, rather than just, you know, governing his city. He calls the military to occupy the portal, prompting the Airbenders to peacefully protest.

Zhu Li runs against Raiko for the presidency. She rallies more protesters to protect the spirit portal while her husband films her for his newest project- a “docu-mover” which he presumably uses to influence the election.

Asami and Keum are kidnapped by Tokuga and forced to make a poison gas device bring the city under Tokuga’s control.

The Krew manages to save the day of course, thanks to Asami’s wit, Korra’s unstoppable stubbornness, and back-up from Bolin and Mako. Except Mako, bless him, says he’ll “take care of Tokuga”, and then promptly loses him.

Tokuga mysteriously disappears into the spirit world.

Zhu Li wins the presidency.

Korra and Asami share a lovely, romantic moment where they exchange their first “I love you”s at the conclusion of the comic.

Mako scenes

There is no Wu in the Turf Wars comics (Unless you count one line of dialogue where it is mentioned that the Earth Kingdom is sending supplies to help the refugee situation) - however, there is plenty of Mako! Mako’s primary role in this series is as a detective trying to find and stop the Triads from waging their turf war in the city.

Our first scenes with Mako shows him back to being a detective- and his brother is his partner. He doesn’t seem super thrilled to be working with Bolin, but I think it’s just because he knows how his brother is- not that he doesn’t want to spend time with him. They are trying to track down the new leader of the triple threats and control gang activity. Mako’s arm is still in a sling, he’s got his usual brooding grumpy facial expression, and his hair is spiky again! He and Bolin arrest two-toed Ping and try to interrogate him. Two-toed Ping is weirdly proud of Mako and Bolin for rising up from being “nobodies” to a couple of “bigtime cops”.

They catch up with Korra and Asami, and the four of them are alerted by Jinora that the Triple threats are attacking the Airbenders that were meditating at the portal. Asami gets hurt in the battle and she and Korra share a kiss in front of everyone:

Look at Opal’s sweet face. She looks like she’s barely containing her excitement and is maybe squealing a bit, and she’s looking directly at Bolin which I think is a sweet moment to show their relationship. Bolin calls dibs on the first double date.

Mako probably needs time to process the information....

Mako and Bolin do some detective work to try and find Tokuga. There is an interesting scene where they are questioning Scoochy (We saw him in the first season, he’s the kid that told Korra and Mako the Bolin went to do some work for the triple threats before getting captured by equalists) Bolin tells Mako they should do “good cop, bad cop”, with Bolin being the good cop. Mako gets annoyed, and Bolin asks if he’s grumpy because his exes are dating. Mako insists he’s cool with it- though he’s got a distressed look on his face. They catch up to Scoochy and Bolin actually loses his temper and is rather menacing. Mako pulls Bolin back and genuinely connects with Scoochy- relating to his past, pushing him to do the right thing and help others. I really liked this moment because it shows how much character growth he’s had when you compare the way he treated Kai in season 3. (They are ultimately unsuccessful and Scoochy’s tip leads them to a room rigged with explosives- but I don’t think Scoochy knew that, I think he was fed false info).

There’s another touching scene, after Asami is kidnapped, where Mako notices how upset Korra seems as everyone is trying to form a plan to stop Tokuga. He steps aside to check in and see how she’s feeling. He comforts her’ empathizes with her, and reassures her that they are going to find Asami. At this point he seems to have fully processed that they are together and seems to fully accept it and is very supportive. Not easy considering the awkward position he’s in as both their exes. In this scene, Mako also informs Korra that he can’t firebend with his injured arm.

Mako and Bolin helps Korra to find Asami by requesting help from Jargala- in spite of the fact that Chief Beifong told them not to… They show up for Korra and Asami even if it means risking their jobs. They team up and fight the bad guys together, just like the old days.

We see many examples of how bad the damage is from Mako’s injury in the Colossus. He can’t bend with his left arm, it’s in a sling almost the whole comic, and he really doesn’t seem to be at the top of his game. He told Bolin he would take care of catching Tokuga, but apparently couldn’t and lost him. Mako’s injury is pretty bad and it’s probably really frustrating.

At the end, Bolin decides to quit the force (surprise. The guy loves to hop from calling to calling!). He makes a big dramatic speech to Mako, talking about how it’s time they go their separate ways. Mako is like “Um I’m going to see you at home in like two hours”, so it sounds like they are living together.

What all this might mean for Wuko

So now I’m going to try to tie things back into how all this affects the potential of Wuko- whether that’s for headcanons or fics or whatever- and just try to give you an idea of what this comic means for Wuko shippers.

Wu is governing in the Earth Kingdom right now. It is mentioned by Zhu Li that the Earth Kingdom sent supplies, so one can assume Wu has taken his place on the throne and the Earth Kingdom is in a stable enough position to be sending supplies to aid another nation. Nothing is mentioned about efforts to transform the Earth Kingdom into a democratic nation (we’ll get to that in the Ruins of the Empire comics).

Mako’s primary relationships that are explored are with his brother and with Korra. His relationship with Bolin is just as it always is. He loves his brother even if he is a little exhausted by his upbeat, enthusiastic attitude. We build up on his final interaction with Korra from the animated series and continue to firmly establish them as friends and amicable exes. Interestingly, we don’t get any meaningful Mako and Asami interactions. When he is comforting Korra, he relates to her by remembering how worried he was when Korra was kidnapped by Amon. He doesn't try to say “Yeah I’m really worried about Asami too”, which, to me is bizarre because he and Asami are friends too, right? I don’t know if we should read too much into it though- most likely it was just a writing choice that we aren’t meant to psycho-analyze- but it could also mean he is being careful with his words so that Korra doesn’t wonder if he still has feelings for Asami. The love triangle is completely resolved and Mako is out of the picture romantically with either of them and has no lingering romantic feelings. In other words, he is 100% ready available for a relationship with someone else.

The scene where Kya gives us a history lesson establishes how LGBTQ+ people are viewed in the world of LoK. In short, Korra and Asami are fully supported by their friends and family, and even their enemies acknowledge their relationship without any homophobic tones. The closest we get to homophobia is Korra's father, who, after expressing his happiness at their relationship, warns Korra to be cautious going forward because not everyone will be as understanding. Kya gives us a quick lesson on how same-gender relationships are viewed across the nations: The water tribe, being a patriarchal culture, expects discretion. The Earth Kingdom is not particularly accepting-Kya says that Avatar Kyoshi was bisexual but couldn't affect "real change" and that the earth kingdom is the slowest to accept change and is also militarily repressive (full disclosure I have not read the Kyoshi comics, maybe there is additional insight in those?). And in the fire nation, Sozin made same-gender relationships illegal when he took power (I hope Zuko undid all that when he became Firelord). The air nation is the only one that seems truly accepting-Kya paints a picture of total acceptance and says that Aang was supportive when she herself came out. Korra is worried that maybe her father was right, but Asami points out that a lot has changed over the years and everyone seems accepting, especially in Republic City.

I think what we can take away from this as far as Wuko goes- is that in Republic City, same-gender relationships are not much of an issue, while in the Earth Kingdom it could be viewed negatively. One could make a case that Wu might have cause to be closeted, while Mako might not. (Feel free to reject this history canon and substitute your own. I’d just as soon say that no one in the avatar-verse cares if you aren’t cis or het).

In conclusion. Mako is just a guy trying very hard to be a good, supportive friend to his exes who are now dating each other. He loves them (platonically) he loves his brother, he’s kind and has matured a lot, but he still always has a grumpy look on his face so it’s time for him to move on and get together with Wu.

Well, that’s Turf Wars. I did cram the plot of three comic books into one post, so I certainly did not hit all the details. If you feel I missed something crucial, feel free to reblog with your own takes. Next I’ll discuss Ruins of the Empire, in which we get lots of Wu and potential Wuko moments, a sizable helping of angst and even some Wu & Korra friendship! RotE is a really fun comic trilogy and I’ll be breaking it down into multiple posts. Thanks for reading everyone!

Wuko In RotE part 1

Wuko in RotE part 2

#Wuko #Mako #Turf Wars #Lok #King Wu #Prince Wu

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lihikainanea · 3 years

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1/2 So I’m not entirely sure how to word this but maybe you can help me with my thoughts. But you know those times when you’re body is just aching for it, when you need it to be rough and a little painful and a little less loving. You need it a bit more raw and a bit more animalistic. You need your back to arch from the force of it, you almost need to pull off only to get shoved back on. You need your breath to hitch and you need to bury your face in the mattress and bite down while..

Anonymous said:

2/2 .. every muscle in your body tenses. While your toes curl and hands ball into fists until you let go in a way that makes your head throb. You need to be fucked and you need to be fucked like your lover doesn’t love you. But I know Bill’s hard limit with Tiger so how do they navigate CONSENSUAL pain or discomfort when Tigers body is screaming for it? Thanks - hope this isn’t weird

Bullseye on the kink button. Oh sweet nani, this is a concept I want to discuss.

There’s just something so, so delicious about this concept of being used, isn’t there? And truth be told I’ve written some harder stuff about Bill and tiger in these situations, things that maybe even border a bit on dubcon, and I keep those for myself because I really have not yet formulated proper thoughts on how I feel about those things, let alone how I would defend them if needed as they are projected into the internet universe. I’m going to keep this on the safer side here so that we can all enjoy it, and I’ll try not to put my foot in my mouth.

I love this concept. I love this concept that within the safe confines of their incredibly trusting relationship--that sometimes Bill just takes what he needs, sometimes tiger exits solely for his pleasure and it’s something that gets them both so riled up.

And trust is absolutely the key here. These things, they don’t happen unless you trust the other person with everything that you have. Tiger is able to let go to this level, she’s able to give everything up and let him have control to this extensive degree because she knows, beyond shadow of a single doubt--that she’s safe. She knows that she is in the safest place she could ever be, with him watching over her. And she knows that because Bill has proven it to her over and over and over again, whether it be through big gestures or the much more meaningful smaller ones. Bill has been the one to end their night on a few occasions, when tiger was so far gone and still begging for more--he ended it far before she wanted to, because he knew that she wanted more now, but that ultimately it would be too much for her to handle. That it would end up causing her pain once she was back in her right mind. He has been the one to stop and make her take a break even though she didn’t ever utter her safe word or give an indication that she needed a few minutes, because he knew that at that point after everything he had done to her, there’s no way that he wasn’t erring on the bad side of pain now. Her trust in him in infallible, because he has never let her down.

So when it comes to this...oh man. Tiger is able to let go because she knows she’s safe. Bill is able to let go because he KNOWS tiger is so far gone, so into it, because she feels safe.

And like, look. Tiger is a tough cookie. She always was. And part of her toughness, part of her brat mode, is the fact that sometimes she wants her submission forced out of her. Sometimes she wants to put up one HELL of a fight because she needs to get it all out of her, needs to be exhausted, needs to get fucked seven ways from Sunday and she needs it to hurt. She gets in moods like that where she’s after pain, but not through punishment--she just wants something that hurts a little, because she likes it.

And when I say that hurting her is a hard limit for Bill, that’s an important difference. When tiger is after penance, when she’s after some self-gratifying need to feel pain in exchange for forgiveness--that’s when Bill won’t give in. That’s the hard limit of hurting her. He’s not going to spank her and go as hard as she wants just so she can find some sort of resolve in physical pain.

But when she’s like this? When she just wants it rough because it feels good? I’ll bet Bill struggled a little at the beginning just because he’s Good Dude, but once they found what worked for them--oh god. Being a little disrespected, consensually, by someone who loves and respects you, someone you know you’re safe with--oh fuck. Tiger wakes up the next morning feeling like she was astral projected into another fucking dimension.

She gets like this when work has been really hard, or when she has had to be balls to the wall for too long. She gets like this when she has had to take control of too many things, be a little too powerful. And it’s something that tiger excels at at work--she is Boss Bitch--but it’s not something she particularly enjoys. It’s more of a persona she adopts, and it’s exhausting--so when it has gone on too long, that’s when she comes home looking for a fight. Looking to be dominated, manhandled, thrown around in a way that hurts so good.

Bill had the hardest time with her reactions, at first. He didn’t like that she cried, he didn’t like being so rough with her. She had to ease him into it, give him a little smile the first few times, tighten his grip around her throat or his fist tighter in her hair or hell, even just give him directions. Tell him to shove her down on the mattress and not let her move, tell him to slam into her harder. Her safe word always, always works but more than that, Bill laid down a new rule: he also got to dictate when enough was enough, even if she was begging for more. And he insisted on that because he knew that tiger sometimes doesn’t know her own limits, sometimes he has her so far gone and floating so high that even she can’t tell the difference anymore between pain and pleasure, and when that happened Bill wanted the control to end it immediately if he felt that it was getting too much for her. She had to trust him that when he said that she had had enough, despite how much more her body was telling her she wanted--she had to respect and trust that he was right. That of the two of them, maybe he was the only one in that moment who was of sound mind.

And it’s a beautiful thing you know? Once they got into it, once they both got more comfortable with it--tiger had never known a greater high than the one where she was so far gone that pain just felt like pleasure. And Good Dude Bill has also never known a greater high, nothing had ever flared up that dominant, protective spark in his chest quite like reducing tiger to an incoherent, mumbling, crying mess. The power he had over her--god, the thought killed him every time. The power she gave to him--that’s what really got him going. How much she trusted him, how much she gave up, how vulnerable and raw she allowed herself to be with him.

How safe he knew she felt, to be able to do that.

Nights like that...ooof. Both of them are exhausted, both of them are sore. For a long time maybe Bill even had to fight a bit of a dom drop after, it probably happened to him a few times--because he knows that he hurt her. He did it on purpose, he did it because she wanted him too--but it doesn’t change the fact that he hurt her. Tiger probably had to help him a lot with that the first few times, in the days after--just keep reassuring him that she wanted it, that she enjoyed it, that she felt good, and that she wanted to do it again. He never let it get to him in the moment because his sole focus was on making sure tiger was okay, but in the days after, it weighed on him.

And despite how exhausted he might be--because let’s face it, as much as he enjoys this too, Bill has the double job of also keeping such a close eye on her to make sure she’s okay during the whole thing--for as exhausted as he is, tiger is basically comatose. She’s a zombie, until she can come back down from her high. She whines, she shakes. Sometimes a blanket is too much for her to handle because her skin is just on fire, in which case he just has to pull her close and keep her tucked into him. She can rarely handle a bath that same night, because she’s far too sensitive. She can’t speak for a long time after. Bill just has to hold her and talk to her, keep her as warm as he can, just tell her over and over again how good she is for him, that she’s safe. Sometimes she drifts off like that right in his arms. Sometimes she’s still awake but definitely still small--Bill just has to keep an eye out and adapt. If she’s calm and happy and basking in it he’s able to get her to eat a little something, get some water into her, clean her up with a cool washcloth. Sometimes after a night like that, tiger is small for days--and Bill just has to adapt, make sure he’s around a lot, make sure she gets lots of snuggles and hugs and that he’s never too far out of reach so that she knows she’s loved and cared for and safe.

The next morning is always the worst, because tiger is usually in some pretty intense pain. Sometimes her mind is real fucked up, and a subby headspace quickly turns into a bad one. It’s why Bill always makes sure he wakes up before her, so that he can ease her into consciousness with lots of kisses and soft touches and his voice in her ear. She wakes up surrounded in his warmth and affection so that bad thoughts can’t even START to creep in. Once she’s settled, once he checks in and sees how she’s feeling, he’ll check her over and that’s when the real care starts. Sometimes her head aches from where he pulled her hair, sometimes her shoulders hurt from when he held her arms back behind her. Her ass is usually red and bruised and sore, bite marks on her chest, her muscles twitching and a deep ache between her legs--sometimes the back of her throat, too. Gentle head scritchies help her scalp, some muscle relaxant cream and a long back rub for her shoulders while she sips on some hot tea for her throat. If she’s feeling up to it he’ll cart her into a shower and soap her down lightly, kissing at all the places he left bite marks the night before. He’ll rub coconut oil into some of the friction burns on her ass, maybe even tuck a small cooling pack wrapped in a towel into her panties to help soothe that bruising ache he knows is there.

They can’t have a night like that too often because both of them are fucking wrecked--Bill’s back is spasming and tiger literally looks like she got hit by a truck, and it takes them both awhile to recover for it. But only once tiger is comfortable, only once he knows she’s on the mend and feeling better--only then will Bill lie prone on the couch for days, because he threw his fucking back out and can’t move. Maybe the idiot even spanked her so hard that he jammed his wrist and has to keep it in a splint for awhile.

#bill skarsgard #bill skarsgard drabble #BFF!Bill #sub tiger #mean bill

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fansofvow · 3 years

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Interview with Eve Golden Woods!

Many of you know who is Eve is. She's a writer and artist, a part of Dreamfeel studios whose beautiful game If Found won Best LGBTQ Narrative and Best LGBTQ Indie game at the first ever Gayming Awards presented by EA games. I am really excited I had the chance to ask Eve some questions about herself, her time at Lovestruck and her creative process.

Congratulations on the two Gayming Awards (Best LGBTQ Narrative, Best LGBTQ Indie Game) for "If Found" from your game studio, Dreamfeel. What was the inspiration behind making the game?

If Found... was a game that emerged out of a collaboration between Llaura McGee, the founder of Dreamfeel, and artist Liadh Young. Liadh's background is as a comic artist, and so when they started working together Llaura had the idea of showing off Liadh's art by making a diary game, and using an erasing mechanic she had previously developed to let the player move through the diary in a fun way. By the time I came on board at the start of 2019, the game had already been in development for a while, so in some ways my work on that game was similar to the work I did for Voltage, because it was taking existing characters and concepts and writing a lot of scripts for them. Unlike Voltage, though, my work for Dreamfeel was a lot more collaborative and I had a lot more creative input. I really enjoy taking something and helping to make it the best version of itself that it can possibly be, but I was also really happy that I got to reflect a lot of my own experiences in If Found. Llaura and I both grew up on the west coast of Ireland, and although If Found... isn't autobiographical for either of us, it was definitely really meaningful to be able to tell a story that reflected our own experiences of growing up as queer teens in a similar kind of environment. Since the game came out we've had fans reach out to us and tell us that they also connected to the experiences of the main characters, and as far as I'm concerned, that makes me feel like I achieved everything I wanted to.

You are a writer and a visual artist. Does one come easier to you than the other?

I used to think of art and writing as talents, and I always felt like my art was at a very mediocre level (that's probably still true, lol). So when I was younger I focused a lot more on writing. It was only later that I started genuinely trying to improve as an artist, but when I did, I think I had a much healthier mindset, and approached it as a skill I could learn with patience and effort. Because of that, even though I still have a lot more confidence in my writing, I find art more fun and relaxing, and I don't stress about it as much.

Did you always know you would follow a creative path?

Kind of? Both my parents are artists, and I grew up surrounded by artists and writers, so it was something that was always very familiar and accessible to me. On the other hand, I didn't exactly have a clear idea of how to make it into a career, or what kind of work would be involved. But there's never been a point in my life where I wasn't doing something creative, even if it was only writing fanfiction.

What did your path to working professionally as a writer/artist look like?

I did a creative writing masters in college, but after that I spent years teaching English as a second language. That was really fun and I got to live abroad, but it was so busy and tiring that I didn't have time to do any writing outside of the occasional fanfic. I only started to take art seriously again when I became interested in games and comics as ways of telling stories. I did some critical writing, which led me to speak at a few local events and get involved in zine fairs. That was how I met Llaura, the director and lead of the Dreamfeel studio, and it's also what gave me the confidence to start applying for actual writing jobs.

Is there any work of art, visual or written, that you look to for inspiration?

So many! I try to read and watch as widely as I can, although there are touchstones I always return to, like the works of Ursula Le Guin and Terry Pratchett. Right now I feel very passionate about the actual play podcast Friends at the Table, which manages to combine really thoughtful worldbuilding and storytelling with cool, fun characters and great action scenes. I'm also reading a book called The Memory Police by Youko Ogawa, which has extremely beautiful prose.

Do you have a favorite piece of your own art, whether it is something you’ve drawn, a screenshot of something you’ve written or something else?

My favourite piece of art is usually whatever I finished most recently (I think that's true for a lot of people). Especially with visual art, once a bit of time has gone by you look back on it and start to notice all your mistakes, which is very annoying. But actually I do still really like the first piece of Fiona fanart I did last year. I managed to use some effects to give it a kind of nineties anime quality that I find really fun, and I think it conveys an emotion pretty effectively. That's always one of the hardest things to predict with visual art, whether the different parts will come together to create the exact mood you're looking for.

I also really like the compass I did for Bycatch. Krissy (@xekstrin) was the one who suggested filling it with fingernails, which was such a good, gross idea! As soon as I heard that I knew it was perfect and that I had to try and draw it.

Many people who read this blog know you as a writer for Lovestruck. When you look back on your time there, what stands out in your mind?

Lovestruck was very important to me when I first started because it was my first ongoing, regular, paid writing work. It gave me a lot of confidence and helped me to get into the habit of writing consistently and rapidly, which is a really useful skill to have. I know I was right to leave when I did, though, because I am just brimming with energy to work on my own projects, and channeling that power into something that you can't control will always end up disappointing you. Also, I made a ton of incredible friends, through Lovestruck itself but then even more so through VOW (@vowtogether), and that is more than worth all the difficult parts.

Is there any character that you would have liked a crack at writing?

Oh gosh, what a fun question! There are so many, but one I do sometimes think about is Axia, just because I know there are a bunch of fans who want her route, and because I had fun writing her as a villain in Zain's route. I can see in my head the shadow of a storyline that takes place after Zain's route is over, where she's in prison and trying to understand how she lost the battle with Zain and MC. I think there's, like, a gap there, where you could see her downfall forcing her to reconsider her assumptions about power, and that could build into a very interesting redemption story. But maybe it's for the best I never got to do that, because I would have wanted full creative control over it, and also I think the story in my head is very different to the sexy, in control, menacing version of Axia that her fans enjoy.

Do you have any upcoming projects you can talk about?

Most of my current work is under NDA, but I will say that I'm doing something very exciting with other VOW members that we should be able to talk about soon(ish). Maybe I can even give a little teaser... It's not a game, but it is something you can read, and my part involves cakes, swamps, and a museum.

Do you have a favorite quote or song lyric?

It's a big long, but there's a section from The Dispossessed by Ursula le Guin that has stayed with me ever since I read it:

"For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think."

It's such a profoundly radical way of imagining the world, so different to everything I was raised with, but whenever I think about it I feel like I can see something very beautiful and powerful that I hope to come closer to understanding some day.

And of course, "Solidarity forever, the union makes us strong."

I was a big fan of the show Inside the Actor’s Studio. Host James Lipton asked every single guest the same 10 concluding questions. I’ve picked 3 of them:

-What is your favorite word?

My favourite word: for sound, I like words you can really roll around on your tongue. Chthonic, alabaster, insinuation. For meaning, I think simple words that encapsulate big concepts have a kind of power to them. We use them so often we forget how big they are, how much weight they really have, but they give us the space to imagine new possibilities. Love. Freedom. Revolution.

-What is your least favorite word?

I've heard that "moist" is a lot of people's least favourite word but it doesn't actually bother me. My least favourite word is probably one where I feel like the sound doesn't match the meaning. One of the Irish words for rain is báisteach, which I feel has a much weightier and more onomatopoeic sound than rain. Rain is just very flat and uninteresting.

-What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

Oh, so many! I love history, and I think being a historian/archaeologist would be fascinating. Or something that had a physical component to it, like being a potter or a carpenter. I don't think I'd be any good, but I'd love to take the time to learn.

What would be your advice to anyone who wants to pursue a creative career?

All the work you do matters. Even the failed experiments, the things you hate when they're finished. It all helps to make you better. Also, creative career paths are often really unexpected, so chase any opportunity that seems remotely interesting. Don't work for free for anyone who can afford to pay, but work for yourself and put it somewhere. On a blog, twitter, whatever. You'd be amazed how many people get noticed and get offered opportunities because of something they made in their spare time. You'll probably have to work another job for a long time, so don't be hard on yourself if you're too tired to devote much energy to creative work. Try to make art consistently, but don't feel like that has to mean every day. Don't chase after celebrities. Make friends with your peers.

#vowtogether #vow interview #writing #art #lovestruck #dreamfeel #iffound #gayming #gaming #mod atlas

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titularkilljoy · 4 years

Text

Black Coffee

Summary: Spencer had changed since prison. And no one seems to be able to help.

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Reader

Warnings: Strong language, mental health struggles, angst

Author’s note: Inspired by this post. Also, this is my first time writing for a fandom. So, don’t be gentle. Be brutally honest.

Spencer was different these days. On that much, everyone could agree.

Everyone on the team walked on eggshells around him now, myself included. It wasn’t that we didn’t want to be there for our friend who had just gotten out of a three-month stint in prison; it was quite the opposite. All of us were waiting with bated breath for an opportunity to help. None of us wanted him to bottle up all his frustration and end up throwing books at the bureau walls again. As it was, he refused to acknowledge it or talk about it, and as a result, we all talked around it, trying to profile him without making it too obvious; trying to help him without him catching on to the fact that we were trying to help him. All in all, it was a Herculean feat. Every time he detected the slightest ounce of what he deemed to be pity, you could see his hackles raise, and an impenetrable barrier would form around him. That was incredibly unpleasant for everyone involved.

Spencer and I had been close, once. Extremely close. We had confided in each other about everything. I think he had always appreciated the fact that I never treated him like an all-knowing alien or a socially awkward little brother. It probably helped that my feelings for him were far from brotherly. But he didn’t need to know that.

Regardless, our close bond seemed to be a thing of the past. I had been there to welcome him back to the outside world on the day he was released. My heart was fuller than it had ever been, with love and relief and grief, and I had thrown my arms around him without a word. He had been stiff in my embrace for a few seconds before I felt the familiar warmth of his arms clutching me tightly. I had sighed deeply. I had missed his touch.

Since then, however, he had shut himself off. I had tried to give him space, to let him resolve those issues , which he clearly did not want to speak to me about, on his own. When that didn’t seem to work, I decided on a more hands-on approach.

For a week, I had been trying to muster the courage to follow through on that decision. But every time I tried to broach the matter, the emptiness of his gaze and the rigid set of his shoulders would stop the words in my throat. I felt like I was trying to speak to a stranger. Worse than that– I knew how to deal with traumatized victims and witnesses. Spencer was neither of those and both of those at once. Besides that, he was the ghost of my best friend. Every conversation felt like trying to breathe new life into a relationship long gone dead and cold.

Right now, he was alone in the break room. On the surface, he seemed to be going about his routine like a normal person. But to the trained eye, it was horrifying. Because he was pouring himself some coffee. A black coffee. With one sugar. Knowing him like I did, the sight was bleak, and it spurred me into action.

I set my shoulders and walked into the room. He lifted his head and nodded at me in greeting. I sidled over to the counter and set my gaze firmly on the pot of coffee as it if contained all the secrets of the universe. He leaned against the counter, staring at the opposite wall while blowing on his coffee. I cleared my throat. There was a palpable tension in the air. Maybe it was just me. He certainly didn’t seem bothered. I, however, was choking on it.

“Spencer,” I tentatively began, “I was thinking, maybe we should talk?”

I cringed at my own words even as I said them. I’d spent a week working on this and the best I could do was some sitcom staple dialogue?

Spencer’s eyes darted over to me, brow furrowing in curiosity. “About what? Is this about the case?”

“No. No, it’s not about the case.”

That seemed to be the wrong answer. He heaved a frustrated sigh and rubbed a hand over his face.

“(Y/N), we really don’t have time for–-“

Another deflection. Except this time, I was expecting it, and wouldn’t accept it.

“Yes, we have time, Spencer. We’ve apprehended the suspect. We saved a victim. Today we’re doing paperwork”, I pointed out, “and this is definitely more important than paperwork.”

“If this is a personal matter then we shouldn’t be talking about it here anyway,” he said in a clipped tone. He was getting defensive.

“You’re right, Spencer.” That took him by surprise, and I was rewarded with his grudging attention.

“You’re right. This conversation shouldn’t be happening here. Except, you’ve been dodging my calls for a month. You pretend you’re not home when I show up at your apartment. You won’t even say a word to me that isn’t about work.” I let the frustration I felt bleed into my words; he needed to know this wasn’t a profiler’s attempt to poke and prod at his psyche. It was just me, and I wanted my best friend back.

“I’ve been busy,” he hedged, but there was a trace of guilt in his eyes. He had never liked seeing me hurt, after all.

“Don’t lie to me, Spencer,” I practically begged, “You’re shutting me out. I know you’re struggling. It’s so damn obvious that you’re struggling. I just want to help you. I hate seeing you like this.”

“I’m not asking you to! And I don’t need your help,” he spat with a scowl. “I’m not struggling. I can do this job just as well as you or anyone else on the team can, if not better.”

The sting from those words was overshadowed by my incredulity. “Are you serious? Spencer, this isn’t about the fucking job!” I cried in frustration. “This is about you. I care about you. You’re in pain, and I don’t understand why you won’t let me help. You used to tell me everything.”

He let out a dark chuckle, placing the mug back on the counter and standing up straight. For the first time in what felt like forever, he stared right into my eyes. Except I would have given anything not to be on the receiving end of that stare. It was so full of malice and bitterness; it was so unlike my Spencer.

“You’re so fucking transparent,” he began in a low tone, and my eyebrows shot up in surprise. Spencer wasn’t usually one for expletives, especially not at work.

“You claim to be worried about me, but you’re really only worried about yourself. You’re lonely, and you can’t form a real connection with anyone. Now that you don’t have me as your emotional crutch, you’re projecting those issues onto me. Typical.”

My jaw dropped against my will. “Spencer, that’s not fair,” I managed to whisper around the lump in my throat. But he wasn’t done yet. Nostrils flaring, he towered over me menacingly.

“Oh, it’s not fair. What isn’t fair is you trying to jeopardize my already precarious position at the FBI by bringing this kind of petty drama into my life. Not everything is about you.”

“I never said it was!” I practically yelled, shocked into anger.

“Yes, but you clearly think it is. You’re not actually worried about me. You just want things to go back to normal. You want me to be the old Spencer again. Sweet, naïve Spencer who would have gladly let you string him along for his entire life. Admit it.”

“String you along? What the fuck are you talking about? How about the other way around? And it’s fucking rich that you’re accusing me of not being able to form a meaningful connection when you’re the one who’s so scared that we’re going to reject you that you’ve completely shut us out. Your fucking family who went through hell and back to get you out. We don’t care that you’re not the same Spencer. No one expects you to be! But I’m sick of all of us talking around the big fat elephant in the room and I’m scared I’m going to find you drugged up and dead on the floor of your apartment one day!”

We were right in each other’s faces at this point, and I was breathing heavily. Surrounding us was a pregnant silence. Spencer’s face had settled into an unreadable mask that I desperately tried to decipher anyway.

Finally, he spoke. His voice was cold as he delivered the killing blow.

“I told you I didn’t want to talk about it. So, I’m not going to talk about it. That’s my decision. You’re not entitled to my confidence, (Y/N). Not anymore. Just leave me alone.”

Every word was well enunciated, and I knew he meant them. He was done with me. When he stormed out of the room, I collapsed back against the counter, trying to call out his name but my vocal cords refusing to cooperate.

I didn’t know how I felt. When your body suffers a massive injury, it numbs you for a while, to protect you. You often don’t even realize you’ve been hurt. But after the numbness fades, your entire body feels like it’s on fire. I supposed that was as good a way as any to explain what was happening to me at that moment. Something so monumental and world-shattering had just occurred that I was being given a few moments of numbness as a reprieve, before the pain would inevitably consume me.

I remained rooted to my position for uncomfortably long time before I realized several pairs of eyes were focused on me, trying and failing to be subtle at it. Overcome with a sudden wave of nausea, I rushed to the restroom. Splashing some cold water in my face, I stared at myself in the mirror.

Well, I thought, that backfired pretty spectacularly.

I closed my eyes and came to the grim realization that prison had left some indelible scars on Spencer. We had all been turning a blind eye to it–- we’d been hoping against all odds that Spencer’s endlessly resilient innocence would be preserved, even in the face of solitary confinement and selective memory loss. After all, the man had literally died and been resurrected, once. He had fought a drug addiction all on his own. He had been parenting his schizophrenic mother since he was a child. He was strong. If anyone could come out of this intact, we had reasoned, it would be Dr Spencer Reid. Being faced with clear evidence to the contrary was a bitter reminder that life always managed to snuff out light and goodness wherever it was found.

I kept my head down on my way to my desk. I made it halfway before I heard Hotch call my name. Garcia was at Morgan’s desk and she offered me an anxious, pitying smile. I didn’t want to acknowledge it. I turned and met his sympathetic yet firm gaze squarely, summoning a confidence I did not feel as I took the detour into his office. What other choice did I have? Life had to go on.

___________________

The next two weeks were tense, to say the least. Spencer and I could barely stand to be on opposite ends of the briefing room with each other. Hotch, perceptive as always, was gracious enough not to pair us up on either of the two cases we worked in that time. I threw myself into the gory details of case files and victimology, refusing to address the fact that I felt like I had lost a limb. I couldn’t succumb to that. Not quite yet, at least. Spencer, for his part, remained inscrutable, although I noticed Morgan and Emily trying to talk to him on more than one occasion. I appreciated their support, but Spencer had made himself very clear. There was nothing anyone could do.

I was dead on my feet when we finally wrapped up the case in Seattle. Derek Morgan needed to learn the meaning of the word “no”, because he still dragged me to some pub I can barely remember the name of. The memory loss could probably be attributed to the blackout drinking I embarked on that night. I drank, downing whiskey shot after whiskey shot until I lost my inhibitions and started giggling and singing along tunelessly to the music, then I drank some more until I felt comfortable enough to dance, and then I kept drinking until I hit the stage where I started sobbing. I usually knew to cut myself off before then. That night, though, my senses seemed to have left me entirely. To curb the sobbing, I drank some more, and that was about the point where I blacked out.

I woke up the next morning in a hotel room, ruing the day I was born, but there was an unopened bottle of water and some aspirin on the table, next to a note from Emily saying she was downstairs with the others. I gingerly caressed my forehead, groaning, before forcing myself out of bed and into the day.

The dark sunglasses I wore did little to make me feel better, and the teasing from Morgan about my alleged shenanigans the previous night did even less to that end. I boarded the jet with a grateful sigh, relieved that I could just curl up and go to sleep.

Alas, that wasn’t what the universe had planned for me, it seemed, because moments after I had nodded off, a hand on my shoulder gently shook me awake. I opened my mouth, ready to yell at whoever it was, but what came out instead was an embarrassing squeak.

Because standing in front of me, clutching a Starbucks cup, was none other than Spencer Reid.

He looked different. Different, and familiar. There was no tightly wound coil. There was no steel in his eyes. There was only warmth.

I eyed the cup in his hands curiously. Had he taken to tempting diabetes with his coffee once again? Had this mess all just been one long sugar crash?

He looked immensely sheepish as he murmured, apparently mindful of my piercing headache, “Can I sit?”

I nodded dumbly, enraptured by the sight of him sinking into the seat across from me, his knees almost knocking into mine. Was I just having a really good dream? Was I still drunk?

“(Y/N),” he whispered, and it felt like I’d travelled back in time. To back before our fight, before prison, before Mr Scratch, before Cat.

“I owe you an apology. Several, actually. I– you have to know that I didn’t mean any of the things I said. I was just lashing out. Textbook defensive behaviour.” He paused, watching me. I just stared back at him. I could only imagine what he saw on my face that made him continue even more gently, if that was even possible.

“You’re my best friend. You always have been. And you were absolutely right when you accused me of being worried about rejection. I- I’m not the same, anymore. I’ve never been particularly fond of myself, but now, I don’t even recognize myself.” He sounded miserable, and all I wanted to do was hug him. I stayed put, though. He looked like he really needed to finish what he had to say.

��I feel…darker, somehow. And I didn’t want to infect you with that. I didn’t want to hurt you. And instead, I hurt you more than I possibly could have if I’d just let you help me. I’m an idiot. I’m so sorry, (Y/N), I–“

“Spencer,” I finally interjected, and slowly, deliberately, reached out and took one of his hands in both of mine. “Yes, you’re an idiot,” I conceded, trying to hold back the relief that was flooding my entire body, “but I’ll forgive you. If you promise you’re not going to pull that shit again. I’m serious, Spencer. You’re hurting yourself, you’re hurting me, you’re hurting the team. We need you. I need you”, I said vehemently, and that was as close to a confession as I would get. At least, for the foreseeable future.

His face told me he heard the unsaid, and the dark guilt clouded his face once again. He was remembering what he’d said to me. String me along, he’d thrown out. Steady determination chased the guilt, and he opened his mouth, but I cut him off.

“No. Not now. You need help. You know how I feel about you. But we can’t right now. It’s not fair to either of us.”

He looked like he was going to protest, but I tried to convey as much sincerity through my eyes as I could. We’ll have our chance, I tried to tell him. I’m not giving up on you, so don’t give up on me, I implored.

Slowly, he nodded. For the first time in half a year, my heart felt light. I knew there would be plenty of hurdles to navigate, but for now, the promise of his company in doing so was enough.

“Besides,” I said seriously, “we need to talk about this bad habit of ours.”

The bafflement on his face was familiar, and I grinned, biting my lip.

“Having these intense conversations in front of everyone in the FBI absolutely has to stop,” I clarified, staring at each of the other people on the jet pointedly. They were doing a very good job of looking busy. Morgan had a smirk on his face. I caught his eye for a second, and we shared a smile.

My comment made Spencer chuckle. “I’ll, uh- I’ll let you get back to your nap then.”

“Oh, thank God,” I groaned dramatically, pulling the blanket over my head to block out the dim light. It served another purpose; as I listened to the soft cadence of his retreating footsteps, it obscured the smile which threatened to rip my face in two. Morgan would never let me live that down.

#spencer reid x reader #spencer reid imagine #criminal minds fanfic #spencer reid fanfic #angst #post prison spencer

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