#we need more positivity like this in the world

[renthony]

In Defense of Shitty Queer Art

Queer art has a long history of being censored and sidelined. In 1895, Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray was used as evidence in the author’s sodomy trials. From the 1930s to the 1960s, the American Hays Code prohibited depictions of queerness in film, defining it as “sex perversion.” In 2020, the book Steven Universe: End of an Era by Chris McDonnell confirmed that Rebecca Sugar’s insistence on including a sapphic wedding in the show is what triggered its cancellation by Cartoon Network. According to the American Library Association, of the top ten most challenged books in 2023, seven were targeted for their queer content. Across time, place, and medium, queer art has been ruthlessly targeted by censors and protesters, and at times it seems there might be no end in sight.

So why, then, are queer spaces so viciously critical of queer art?

Name any piece of moderately-well-known queer media, and you can find immense, vitriolic discourse surrounding it. Audiences debate whether queer media is good representation, bad representation, or whether it’s otherwise too problematic to engage with. Artists are picked apart under a microscope to make sure their morals are pure enough and their identities queer enough. Every minor fault—real or perceived—is compiled in discourse dossiers and spread around online. Lines are drawn, and callout posts are made against those who get too close to “problematic art.”

Modern examples abound, such as the TV show Steven Universe, the video game Dream Daddy, or the webcomic Boyfriends, but it’s far from a new phenomenon. In his book Hi Honey, I’m Homo!, queer pop culture analyst Matt Baume writes about an example from the 1970s, where the ABC sitcom titled Soap was protested by homophobes and queer audiences alike—before a single episode of the show ever aired. Audiences didn’t wait to actually watch the show before passing judgment and writing protest letters.

After so many years starved for positive representation, it’s understandable for queer audiences to crave depictions where we’re treated well. It’s exhausting to only ever see the same tired gay tropes and subtext, and queer audiences deserve more. Yet the way to more, better, varied representation is not to insist on perfection. The pursuit of perfection is poison in art, and it’s no different when that art happens to be queer.

When the pool of queer art is so limited, it feels horrible when a piece of queer art doesn’t live up to expectations. Even if the representation is technically good, it’s disappointing to get excited for a queer story only for that story to underwhelm and frustrate you.

But the world needs that disappointing art. It needs mediocre art. It even needs the bad art. The world needs to reach a point where queer artists can fearlessly make a mess, because if queer artists can only strive for perfection, the less art they can make. They may eventually produce a masterpiece, but a single masterpiece is still a drop in the bucket compared to the oceans of censorship. The only way to drown out bigotry and offensive stereotypes created by bigots is to allow queer artists the ability to experiment, learn through making mistakes, and represent their queer truth even if it clashes with someone else’s.

If queer artists aren’t allowed to make garbage, we can never make those masterpieces everyone craves. If queer artists are terrified at all times that their art will be targeted both by bigots and their own queer communities, queer art cannot thrive.

Let queer artists make shitty art. Let allies to queer people try their hand at representation, even if they miss the mark. Let queer art be messy, and let the artists screw up without fear of overblown retribution.

It’s the only way we’ll ever get more queer art.

_

Like this essay? Tip me on Ko-Fi, pledge to my Patreon, or commission an essay on the topic of your choice!

#original essays #original post #media studies #queer history #queer media #queer issues #fandom issues

[hadesoftheladies]

why you should have hope for separatism:

-this is one of the first times in history where women en masse are educated and (are expected to) participate in the working class which means now more than ever women are better equipped to take care of their own financial needs (even with all the tradwife influencers, not many women will be able to convert because house-wifery is strictly limited to the upper-class, which is shrinking more and more, so most women will always have to work anyways, and most women see this! even the ones that joke about being housewives/strippers are serious about their careers!)

-separatism is mostly non-action. it is strategic non-interaction with men or male media which makes it extremely accessible and easy to replicate across cultures. it removes women from exploitative relationships with men. this means the only thing you need to do to convince women to become separatists is attack the idea that their lives will be unfulfilled without men. and more women and girls are embracing that culture simply because of their experiences (and access to education)!

-late stage capitalism and the rise of blatant misogyny men display is radicalizing women. which means more and more women are open to living together and raising children together romantically/platonically. (literally every woman i've talked to who's unmarried lives with their parents or wants to live with women because men are genuinely an unattractive option--thank you men for showing your asses <3)

-the internet and globalization positions women from all over the world to share their experiences (and we have many shared experiences), which means consciousness-raising has never been faster or easier or more powerful!

-men and boys are failing and dropping out of school way more than women and girls which means that women and girls are on the way to dominating academia and relevant industries! women will make up more of the skilled workers in future job markets which means that women who are educated now will likely be better off and more pursued financially than men. women's influence in society is increasing! think about it. as much as male violence is increasing, male literacy and competence and skill is DECREASING (even nepotism or sexism will not be enough to fix that problem because hiring men will still result in profit losses and other financial inconveniences). in short, male culture is killing men!

-resistance to pornography and understanding the evils of pornography are also increasing. awareness of male violence is increasing!

please read more literature on separatist strategies and don't think whatever is happening on tiktok/IG is how all women think. most women irl are not stupid enough to trade in their jobs for prostitution because women don't actually want that. many women i've talked to in real life also don't want children (in these conditions or at all)! they aren't radfems but they still have self-preservation instincts and intelligence!

there is literally so many ways we can use the current sociopolitical climate to our advantage. it is too early to give up. like wayyyy to fucking early.

#radblr #sometimes things aren't as dire as radblr makes it seem #or the internet #start talking to women at work! #separatism #hope tag #feminism

[vivendraws]

making an important announcement about some things i’ve noticed in the gwendoline christie fandom that really bug me.

disclaimer: read this at your own convenience and discretion. i am not responsible for any sort of hurt feelings and frankly… i don’t care. if you’re mad about this, you are probably the problem. /lh

to start with id like to begin on a positive note so that i’m not diving into negativity, i don’t want to be completely negative about my experiences because i’ve actually met some of the kindest people in the world through this fan base.

the gwen fandom, the gwandom, the gwendoline christie fandom , the lesbian cesspool, has been an incredible experience that i’m grateful i’ve had the pleasure of being apart of.

i went through a rough patch during november, and if i hadn’t found out about gwen, or met such wonderful people during my time here , i honestly wouldn’t be here right now. i owe my life to these people, gwen included. i will forever adore miss christie and what she stands for alongside the friends i’ve made along the way.

and while i know someday this hyperfix will end, it’s really disheartening to me when a fandom is what makes me grow distant from things i enjoy. it happened before, i feel as though it is happening all over again.

and no, i’m not taking issue with anything like the catrissa stuff or the brienne and larissa ship going around or anything like that. i like that we can all be weird together and enjoy aus like catrissa and crackships like bririssa (not sure the official name that was decided lol). my issue is the amount of content i’ve seen that either focuses on gwen herself, or the strange relationship with minors, or the odd artwork of gwen, and the absolute disgusting behaviour towards giles.

gwen would be absolutely appalled seeing fanfictions of herself that involve nsfw or just her in general, anyone would, it’s disgusting to make works of real people in that setting. it’s like you’re treating them as an original character you can mould and manipulate as you see fit and using someone who is real with thought and feeling and consciousness for smut fics is not okay, or any fic in general. i totally get the hype around her characters, i literally have “brienne’s princess” in my bio and i’ve had “jane murdstone’s bloodbag” (in reference to my vamp au) as a name in a discord server.

but i think the fandom has begun to blur the lines between fictional characters and reality settings when it comes to gwen and the personalities she portrays on the television screen. it’s not fair to her. it’s disgusting. i’ve seen a minor do it, i’ve seen a grown adult do it. it’s something i don’t see shamed and frowned upon often enough and it’s really not okay.

on that note i’d like to quickly mention the photos, we alllll know what photos i’m talking about. the bunny one, the nudes, the ones gwen has expressed regret towards and wishes to not have them spread. was there not a “fan” who brought her a book of her nudes and wanted her to sign it? that person who was blocked on instagram by gwen because they reposted her nudes on their story and tagged her???? how can you refer to yourself as a fan after behaving so abhorrently? absolutely disgusting behaviour. as a collective fandom we need to stop touching those photos (metaphorically speaking) and leave them in the past.

i’ve been told of numerous circumstances in which adults have shown their nsfw works to minors in this fandom and it has to fucking stop. it’s disgusting!! how can you do that knowingly? i constantly ponder terminating my account after a minor got ahold of my nsfw work, and upon realising they WERE a minor it was as simple as blocking and moving on. it’s truly not that hard, folks. and the minors on tiktok who fight with others saying silly things like “that’s my wife” or worse. i’ve seen it all, i feel like, and the more i see it the more sick i become. i cannot stand it.

i have seen and heard of fans who have fat shamed gwen for that one pink dress she wore to the met gala. she looked so happy in that dress, and the audacity one must have to fatshame that poor woman on twitter then turn around and continue to proclaim your ‘love for her’ as if you’d done no wrong? are you fucking serious? are you mental?

and the sexualisation over the porcelain doll look, gods some of you are sick. those were not real breasts, people. considering the fact she wholeheartedly regrets her nude photoshoots , what possesses you to believe she would actually flaunt her chest in that outfit?

the blatant mistreatment of poor giles is not fucking okay either. just because you’re jealous of someone who makes her immensely happy does not give you the right to post something so vile and cruel about him. shame on you. why do you believe this is okay to post:

????????

are you serious? have any of you stopped to consider how HAPPY giles makes her? or is her happiness the last thing you ponder when you look at her? have you even noticed how unhappy she looks lately? have you truly paused to consider how she would feel about seeing this on your page, random twitter user, or the rest of you who think this is okay? bless your hearts.

and some of the absolutely horrific things i’ve seen about her online and the hurtful behaviour towards giles makes me question the difference between a fan and just the general paparazzi. because if you truly loved her and you truly loved giles then i would not be ranting into the fucking void about it for no reason.

i avoid interacting with pages i find problematic on here to keep from stirring the pot but tonight i chose violence and got reeeeeal pissy about how i felt about this place. it’s not okay what i see on here and it’s getting exhausting seeing the same cycle of content on a daily.

that’s everything i have to say, i think. i probably missed a lot that should be discussed in the comments but i’m done for now because i know if i go on i’ll probably cry.

before you post things about real people with real feelings , stop to consider how they will feel those real feelings towards the content you put out. chances are you’ll become less problematic and obnoxious that way. 💘

#gwendoline christie #gwendolineuniverse #sigh #announcement #i’m upset #this fandom is insane #some of you need help #seriously #like its not even funny #you guys are weird #please repost this everywhere #this is not okay #i’m really tired of seeing these things #and i understand i can block and move on but i feel as though it was important enough to be said #fandom #tumblr fandom #and specifically #the tumblr and tiktok fandom #instagram is becoming just as bad #and twitter has always been atrocious

[trans-axolotl]

content note: discussion of suicide.

this next monday will be the six year anniversary of losing one of my friends to suicide.

when he died, my high school barely mentioned his death, even though for other students who died by things like car crashes or illness, there were so many public expressions of grief. they believed that having any memorials for a student who died by suicide would encourage other people to die the same way. in their rush to erase the circumstances of his death, they erased the memory of his life.

there are so many things i am angry at that high school about in terms of how they treated mental health (mandatory reporting and collaborating with cops, their refusal to recognize the ways in which that system led to peer-to-peer crisis support, their refusal to recognize the ways that trying to keep each other alive through trial and error was scary and exhausting, carceral disciplinary policies, etc etc etc). but i think one of the things i am still angriest about is the way they enforced shame around his death. it felt like they were retroactively blaming him for the constellation of circumstances that made suicide an option in his life. it felt like they were blaming those of us who missed him and cared about him and wanted to grieve him. it made those of us still there who were actively suicidal feel even more scared about the reaction if we did reach out for help from one of those mythical safe adults.

as an adult now involved in psych abolition/mad liberation work, it makes me so fucking mad to see the ways in which he was discarded by people in authority positions. and the older i get, the more options i have found in my life for making sense of the world and finding healing and community and support which were never available to him because he died when he was 16 and the only things offered to him were a carceral psychiatric system that blamed him for his own fucking death. it feels so incredibly unfair.

i miss him and i think i always will; i can't remember his laugh or the sound of his voice or his favorite color any more and that aches. this grief is so heavy and it feels harder in a new way each year, when i become older than he will ever be. sometimes meeting new comrades or seeing new anticarceral suicide support models hurts because i wish so fucking bad that we had that back then. i remember how close we came to losing even more people that year and i know it is simple fucking luck that i'm still here when he's not.

i remember another letter (never sent) that i wrote to a friend while they were in an ICU bed after a suicide attempt when i didn't know if they would live or not. i have spent so much time in the past 10 years begging for anything to keep me and my friends alive, but even in that letter i knew that there is so much fucking violence that is hidden beneath psychiatric logics of cure and safety that promise a "solution" to suicide. I knew that institutionalization, coercion, and shame would not have helped build a life more liveable for him or **** or any of the people i've loved and lost since.

there needs to be more fucking options for care and support that aren't so incredibly cruel to suicidal people. i know so many people doing incredible work in alternatives, peer respite, a million different frameworks for healing and liberation. but it makes me so mad every day i have to live in a world where there are still people restrained, locked up in psych wards, having all autonomy and personhood taken away from them. knowing there are dozens of people every day getting blamed for their deaths the same way he was blamed for his.

i miss him. i cared so fucking much for him. and he died by suicide, and all of those things are true. he has been dead for 6 years and he lived before that and the people who loved him want to remember all of him; our celebrations of his life should not require hiding the way that he died.

Image description: [1000 origami cranes in all different colors and patterns that are tied together in strings of 25]

(these were the 1000 cranes we made to give to his parents, in memorial and recognition of how much he meant to us.)

#personal #suicide tw #suicide mention tw #psych abuse tw #psych ward tw #ok to reblog if u want #psych abolition #mad liberation #psych survivor #it's a lot of grief hours over here and will be for a while all week i think #lots of grief so many ways this year for so many people #but this week. his memory . my grief for him #is hitting especially hard. i think partially because of all the transitions in my life. i'm graduating college. he will never become an ad #adult. #i think i might ask my roommates if they will go do something to remember him with me. maybe making origami cranes and sending them off in #the river. or writing things down and burning them #idk. grief is hard #six years in grief is different. but hard

[mamawasatesttube]

one of the funniest aro traits i have is that i NEVER notice people i know being romantically into each other. they can be the most obviously pining couple in the world flirting ridiculously hard right in front of me and ill just be like wow, look at us three besties all just hanging out :) and then they'll be like btw we're dating now! and ill go WHAT???? oh that was romance??? WHOA. like yay happy for you!!! i just didn't clock it at all whatsoever!!!! (part of this is that im just an affectionate person with my friends and ill happily flirt with my besties and physically lay all over them with absolutely no romantic intent. so i forget that sometimes people are flirty or always concerned with each other for romantic reasons. like. EVERY time it's just oh YEAH... i forgor again...)

anyways, i like to hand this to bart allen, aroace extraordinaire. guy who just straight up forgets romance is real and not something they made up for video games with romanceable companions. he's happy for his friends when they say they're dating someone, bc they're happy so yay! but until they come out and say it he will NOT clock any sort of romance going on.

now i also like to imagine that when the gang are all like in their late teens to early 20s, there's some RIDICULOUS lesbian drama going on. cassie and cissie have been kinda sorta dancing around each order for ages, but then after kon's death and resurrection cassie got distant and cissie and anita started spending more and more time together, and cassie isn't proud to admit it but she maaaay have gotten jealous and fucked rose about it, and now cissie is giving her the cold shoulder. and rose keeps flirting with cissie even though she and cassie keep having unplanned hookups, and anita just asked cassie to be her plus one to a wedding and cassie is shocked she didn't ask cissie and what's going on?! is anita hitting on her??? omg??? wait but what's going on with cissie?? and....

anyway, all of this to say cassie is going the fuck Through it and it's a mess that she keeps bemoaning to kon while languishing on his couch and eating all his ice cream (kon is listening wide-eyed like "wow. if i ever need romantic advice, i'll ask you and then do the exact opposite of whatever you say.") this whole ridiculous affair is going on for months.

until one day there's a core four sleepover and kon is like soooo is it the time of night where we start unpacking the latest developments in cassie's love life? and cassie goes AUURGHGHRHH!!!! yes but oh my god shut up don't say it like that auugghhhh

and bart just looks at her and tilts his head like a puppy dog and asks "wait. you have a love life?? since when???"

silence.

cassie gawks. kon looks positively gleeful.

and then tim starts laughing so hard he doubles over and accidentally slams his head into the corner of the coffee table hard enough to get a mild concussion. bart's aro swag claims yet another victim

#rimi talks #im half asleep in bed with a migraine as i type this and im sure i could phrase it better were that not the case #but as it is i hope it's both funny and clear all the same. aro bart is dear to me. lesbian disaster cassie as well #aro bart who forgets abt romance and lesbian disaster cassie together = prime comedy routine #you see it right?? #cassie #bart #kon #core four

[femboycatofmystery]

Hey folks let me anti-doomscroll you for a quick second:

Batteries and Solar have been getting cheap very quickly for a long time now and not only is it not stopping, but even at the rates it's at the economics of energy are shifting rapidly. The costs of decarbonizing all forms of electric power are now more down to infrastructure and planning than bulk cost. Compare and contrast to the turn of the century when Solar was so prohibitively expensive that saying we'd meet any meaningful fraction of our needs with photovoltaics would have gotten you laughed out of the room.

Meanwhile, although there are lots of complicated moving parts and a surprising amount of gross politics attached, gas cars are now less good in most ways than electric. Again, at the turn of the century this would have sounded laughable.

Many industries have specific needs that prevent direct conversion to electric, but hydrocarbon fuels are not intrinsically fossil fuels and can be made as a storage medium for solar. Hydrocarbon fuels made in this way are intrinsically carbon neutral. The technology is relatively young, but from a basic math perspective looks very doable.

Inflation actually has more to do with the above than it does with whatever it is the federal reserve does, and pulling down a supply of energy from the sky that requires less infrastructure to get (which is true because that's why it's cheaper now) directly helps.

The current "business as usual" scenarios with global warming are lower than they used to be, because the solar transition is just sort of happening because of economics without a lot of government help. All of the above lower the amount of friction and pushback we face when trying to get the government to do something.

By the way, the Inflation Reduction Act, passed by Joe Biden a couple years back, is explicitly designed to accelerate these trends.

As disastrous as the current projections for global warming are, it's important to keep two things in perspective: first, that they are exactly that, disasters, not the end-of-the-world kind but more sort of the hurricanes and floods kind, and second, while they certainly will get worse before they get better, they can and will get better. What we do now from a policy perspective has an outsize impact on how much flooding, droughts, and other weather-related costs we will face in the decades to come, but "human civilization ends" is not actually particularly likely. It is much more realistic to say "we could have a huge number of climate-related disasters or a moderately increased number, and every little bit of policy work helps move the needle".

We can and we will solve global warming, the question is not if but when, and how many lives can we save or improve by acting as soon as possible. Imagining this as an almost-certain death sentence for the future of humanity and nature is not merely unrealistic, but wildly counterproductive. It is paralyzing and enervating when what will do the most good is planning, policy, and communication.

Remember, despair is not a tool for positive change. Hope is the real language of revolution.

#hope #solarpunk

[soberpluto]

Know Your Soul Purpose With Your Big 3

It's been so much time since I've been here, but it's amazing to be back! Now, here's a topic I was wondering about today...

All our configurations hold divine meaning, in that before we are born, our souls chose the type of experiences we needed to undergo as part of our next visit on Earth. What makes us "us" is perfect in design. And what we're "made of" can be neatly seen in our birth charts. No birth nor birth chart happen by chance.

While it’s accurate that specific karmic work (which is part of our life's mission) is indicated by studying the positions of Saturn, its aspects, planets falling in water houses and the configuration of lunar nodes, I feel we can also find great part our soul's purpose (our main lessons) by analyzing our Big 3. This is equal to drawing a picture of the blueprint of our unique navigation system, our compasses through our human experience.

To make a draft of your soul's blueprint, take these steps!

Look at your chart to know your Ascendant, Sun and Moon signs and chart ruler(s). If your rising sign has two rulers, take them both into account. In my case, I always use whole sign system.

Identify the houses of your placements.

Start drafting your Ascendant, Sun and Moon signs' significations using the tables below, including both positive and negative traits. If we're moving through life based mostly on our positive qualities, it's very likely we're on the right track. Conversely, living constantly under the influence of our negative traits marks potential blockages to get where we need to be.

Add to your blueprint areas in which you naturally express your placement's traits (houses). This is important because you will know where your mission will be accomplished more easily or naturally.

Have fun!

If you're having a bit of trouble to come up with yours, take my own example...

I am proud of myself when I present to the world as passionate, powerful, magnetic, and intuitive (positive Scorpio rising qualities). I realize that when I become vengeful, jealous, obsessive and/or mournful (negative Scorpio rising qualities), I am attracting unnecessarily challenging circumstances that hinder my lessons in my life. My personality (rising sign) projects most in my physical appearance image and identity, in my close communities and in the pursuit of my dreams (Chart Rulers in 1st and 11th house). I feel my life has meaning when I act as a nurturing, sensitive, creative and empathetic person (positive traits of Cancer sun), but when I become needy, emotionally instable, insecure and/or manipulating with others (negative traits of Cancer sun), I realize that I am blocking myself from living in my fullest potential. The area where my conscious self (Sun sign) shines most is in my path towards higher learning, distant travelling, truth seeking, legal affairs and spirituality (Sun in 9th house). I feel safe and fulfilled when I can be brave, independent, assertive and passionate (positive Moon in Aries traits). But, when I realize that I'm repeatedly reacting in a violent, selfish, impulsive and/or inconstant way (negative Moon in Aries traits), I know that am blocking my ability to be peaceful within myself and move ahead in life. My emotional needs (Moon sign) are best taken care of through my habits, health care, daily routine, service to others, jobs, and pets (Moon in the 6th house).

Now, what information can you derive from this description? What does this tell about my purpose in this life?

Naturally, I am pulled to creative, healing and spiritual work. I studied Industrial Design in college, but I've expanded my career in other directions, including developing and managing intermittently art and esoteric online businesses while also holding an office job in Change Management. I am also the eternal student, self-learning and passionate about higher knowledge. I like to share my insights with others and help them find their own truth, their own awakening. I am drawn to intense (and sometimes not so positive) experiences and relationships, and have drastically changed my own image, jobs and spiritual views along the years. I've certainly went through a lot of turmoil, but also have gained significant life lessons and valuable wisdom thanks to the way I approach life. I cannot help to be deeply emotional, empathetic, passionate, excitable, idealistic and inspired, for the good and the bad! Even though it's not been an easy road, I realize that little by little my purpose is being fulfilled... and I hope you all do!

What about you? Let me know what you find out about yourself!

Thanks for reading! 😘🖤

Written by @soberpluto

#astrology observations #astrology notes #astrology community #astrology #astrology signs #big 3 #soul purpose #soul mission #karmic lessons #lessons #karma

[maxwell-grant]

Any thoughts on Doctor Sivana?

Nothing too extensive but Sivana rules in a way that doesn't really invite too much introspection. He's THE archetypal mad scientist comic book supervillain and he's more or less stayed as that, arguably the most influential of them after Luthor if not outright on par with him, because while Luthor is the comic book supervillain template, the pop culture image of a mad scientist (big head short body, ugly, big glasses, always with a labcoat, hunchback and big teeth optional) is pretty much taken from Sivana. But Luthor's status atop the ladder and position opposite Superman mutated him into varying kinds of villain and a complicated character over time, where as Sivana is Sivana and never really needed to be anything else, there's just a purity to him. They've tried to make him a Luthor clone and the movie ran with that, but who cares, we all know what Sivana is, you're not fooling anyone with that guy.

He's got a pretty great thing going as not just an evil scientist, but the evil scientist head of an evil scientist family, with children split in either looking exactly like him or looking like chiseled models who look brutally dissonant next to their dad, and he genuinely loves his kids (at least usually or in his own way), in fact he's even show loving the ones that don't support him and turned good. If he's going to be the arch-nemesis of the superhero who introduced the concept of a superhero family, he can't exactly be lacking in one of his own, and that familial aspect he has towards his children has become just as important to his characterization as the fact that he spends most of his waking hours trying to destroy a child and failing.

They get some mileage out of how ruthless he can be despite his image (and people's tendency to overlook how dark Captain Marvel stories could get), he has enough basic standards to not go as low as other DCU supervillains and Thunderworld establishes a Hannibal Lecter-esque Sivana to hammer in contrast with the main one finding him unnerving, but I'll never forget this panel:

Like I said, there's a lot of dark stuff in Captain Marvel/Shazam that gets forgotten, but I also like this about Sivana, that's the flip-side of that purity I mentioned. That he can and does have almost a Doofenshmirtz-thing going on, where he's playing such an over-the-top cartoon villain 24/7 that every mundane or decent thing he does becomes inherently funny via contrast, as is his loving relationship with his own family, but he is a guy who's very serious about taking over the world and very serious about destroying Captain Marvel even if that means killing the boy Billy Batson to do it and doesn't think for one second about that contradiction. Contradictions are for chumps. He may love HIS kids, other kids are just a thing in the way. Sivana doesn't need to explain himself, like some OTHER inferior bald guy who sold out to become a CEO or something, Sivana lets his deeds do the talking.

Besides, evil is his family activity, who's to deny the joys of it to him?

#replies tag #superheroes #dc comics #comic books #captain marvel #shazam #dr sivana #dc #billy batson

[zot3-flopped]

Sylvia Plath did not stick her head in an oven for this! When Taylor Swift took the Grammys stage last month to claim her award for Best Pop Vocal Album for Midnights, she saw that spotlight as an opportunity to announce her 11th studio album: The Tortured Poets Department. The follow-up cut to audience members—Swift’s music industry peers, mind you—told us all that we would ever need to know, and the collective disinterest across the crowd echoed through our TVs.

Folks from all walks of life took to social media to express a multitude of reactions. Swifties clamored to their beloved monarch’s forthcoming era, while others lambasted the terminally cringe title and artwork and ridiculed Swift for making a night recognizing musical achievements across an entire industry about herself—knowing perfectly well that it would send her fanbase into a surge that would, no doubt, overpower the excitement around the ceremony itself.

Quite a few people questioned whether or not that moment suggested that a critical—definitely not commercial—tide would turn against the world’s most-famous pop star. And, perhaps it has—but, to most, it will look like nothing more than a single ripple in Swift’s ocean of successes.

Swift remained relatively hush-hush about The Tortured Poets Department up until its release, leaving her fans, admirers and haters alike with nothing but an album title to ponder about. And it’s a bad title.

If you have never been in Swift’s corner, her taking the route of labeling her next “era” as “tortured” was likely catnip for your disinterest. If you are a fan—not necessarily a Swiftie, but even just a casual lover of her best and brightest work—you might be beside yourself about the first Swift album title longer than one word in 14 years.

In terms of popularity—certainly not always in terms of quality—no musician has been bigger this century than Swift, which makes it impossible to really buy into the “torture” of it all.

This is not to say that Swift being the most famous person in the world makes her immune to having multi-dimensional feelings of heartbreak, mental illness or what-have-you.

But, she has made the choice—as a 34-year-old adult—to take those complex, universal familiars and monetize them into a wardrobe she can wear for whatever portion of her Eras Tour setlist she opts to dedicate to the material.

Torture is fashion to Taylor Swift, and she wears her milieu dully. This album will surely get comparisons to Rupi Kaur’s poetry, either for its simplicity, empty language, commodification or all of the above.

And, sure, there are parallels there, especially in how The Tortured Poets Department, too, is going to set the art of poetry back another decade—as Swift’s naive call-to-arms of her own milky-white sorrow rings in like some quintessential “I am going to take pictures of a typewriter on my desk and have a Pinterest mood-board of Courier New font” iPhone fodder. 2013 called and it wants it capricious, suburban girl-who-is-taking-a-gap-year wig back!

Soaking our book reports in coffee or having our moms burn the edges with a kitchen lighter cannot come back into fashion; the cyclical notions of culture cannot make the space for such retreads.

There is nothing poetic about a billionaire—who, mind you, threatens legal action against a Twitter account for tracking her destructive private jet paths—telling stadiums of thousands of people every night that she sees and adores them.

Tavi Gevinson says it well in her Fan Fiction zine: “When 80,000 people are also crying, you become less special, too.” If Swift can return to one of her dozen beach houses across the world, kick up her feet and say “I’m a poet of struggle,” then who is to say that millions—maybe billions—of people with access to a notes app and a social media account won’t dream that dream, too?

Maybe that looks like a net-positive, but it’s inherently damning and destructive to take an art form that has long stood on the shoulders of resistance, of love and of opposition to power, systematic injustice and climate warfare and boil it down to the new defining era of your own 10-digit revenue empire. “My culture is not your costume,” yada, etc.

The Tortured Poets Department does begin with a shred of hope that, just maybe, Swift knows what she’s talking about—as she sneaks in a cheeky “all of this to say,” textbook transitional phrasing for poets, on opening track “Fortnight.”

But “Fortnight” unmasks itself quickly as a heady vat of pop nothingness, though it isn’t all Swift’s fault. “I was a functioning alcoholic, ‘til nobody noticed my new aesthetic,” she muses, attempting to bridge the gap between a behind-the-scenes life and on-stage performance—only for it to occur while propped up against the most dog-water, uninspired synth arrangement you could possibly imagine.

Between producer Jack Antonoff’s atrocious backing instrumental and the Y2K-era, teen dramedy echo chamber of a vocal harmony provided by out-of-place guest performer Post Malone, “Fortnight” chokes on the vomit of its own opaqueness.

“I took the miracle move-on drug, the effects were temporary,” Swift muses, and it sounds like satire. This is your songwriter of the century? Open the schools.

The Tortured Poets Department title-track features some of Swift’s worst lyricism to-date, including the irredeemable, relentlessly cringe “You smoked then ate seven bars of chocolate, we declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist / I scratch your head, you fall asleep like a tattooed golden retriever” lines glazed atop some synthesizers and drums that just ring in as hollow, unfascinating costuming.

Aside from the Puth nod, which I can only discern as a joke (given the fact that he is one of the 150-most streamed artists in the world and is one of the blandest pop practitioners alive—I don’t care if he can figure out the pitch of any sound you throw at him), I think Antonoff should stick to guitar-playing. Get that man away from a keyboard, I’m begging you.

Synths can be, if you use them correctly, one of the most emotional and provocative instruments in any musician’s tool-box. There’s a reason why keyboards defined the 1980s; they rebelled against the very oppressive nature existing outside of the cultural company they kept. There’s resistance in electronic music that, while they brandish an aesthetic that, to a layman’s ears, seems like technicolor hues for any infectious pop track, it’s a genre that aches to tell its own story. That is simply not the case here, and that electronica hangs Swift out to dry when she drags us through the lukewarm “I laughed in your face and said, ‘You’re not Dylan Thomas, I’m not Patti Smith’ / This ain’t the Chelsea Hotel, we’re modern idiots” lines, only to hit us with a softly sung F-bomb that sounds like a billionaire’s rendition of that one Miranda Cosgrove podcast clip.

I used to rag pretty heavily on Reputation—mostly because I thought (and still do, mostly) that it sounded like Swift had given up on making interesting, progressive pop music; that, in the wake of her (arguably) best album, 1989, it seemed like she’d lost the plot on where to go next. But as she’s put out Midnights and The Tortured Poets Department back-to-back, I find myself clamoring for the Reputation-era more than ever—at least seven years ago, Swift wrote songs like she had something to prove and even more to lose.

That was the always-obvious charm of Reputation, even despite the downsides—that she took a big swing from the echelons of her own musical immortality, that the comforts of winning every award and selling out the biggest venues in the world were no longer pillowing her aspirations. Even though that swing didn’t land, she still made it in the first place—and Swift is at her best either when she is clawing upwards (Reputation) or faced with nowhere to go but into the studio and noodle with the bare-bones of her own sensibilities (folklore).

You get something like The Tortured Poets Department when the artist making it no longer feels challenged, where she strikes out looking.

The mid-ness of The Tortured Poets Department will not be a net-loss for Swift. She will sell out arenas and get her streams until she elects to quit this business (a phrase decidedly not in her vocabulary, surely).

She will sell more merch bundles than vinyl plants have the capacity to make, and rows of variant LP copies will haunt the record aisles of Target stores just as long as Midnights has—if not longer.

Perhaps, in five or six years’ time, we will speak of this record just as we now do of Reputation. But right now, it is obvious that Swift no longer feels challenged to be good. The Tortured Poets Department is the mark of an artist now interested in seeing how much their empire can atone for the sins of mediocrity.

Can Swift win another Album of the Year Grammy simply because she released a record during the eligibility period? The Tortured Poets Department reeks of “because I can,” not “because I should.”

On “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can),” Swift tries stepping into the shoes of the country renegades who came before her—the Tammy Wynettes and Loretta Lynns of the world. But her self-aggrandizing inflation of importance, glinting through via a seismically-bland bridge, is backed by a minimal set dressing of guitar, drum machine and keys.

“Good boy, that’s right, come close,” she sings. “I’ll show you Heaven if you’ll be an angel—all mine. Trust me, I can handle me a dangerous man. No, really, I can.” On “Florida!!!,” Swift calls upon Florence + the Machine to help her sing the worst chorus of 2024: “Florida is one hell of a drug / Florida, can I use you up?”

Even Welch, who is a fantastic pop singer-songwriter in her own right, delivers a grossly watery verse: “The hurricane with my name, when it came I got drunk and I dared it to wash me away.”

Not even the typos on the Spotify promotional materials for this album could have foretold such offenses. I won’t even get into the sonics, because Antonoff just rewrites the same soulless patterns every time.

What separates The Tortured Poets Department from something like Reputation is that, on the latter, Swift made it known what was at stake and who she was making that album for—herself, in the aftermath of her greatest long-standing criticisms (“Look What You Made Me Do” triumphs exactly because of this).

On The Tortured Poets Department, there is a striking level of moral nothingness. The stakes are practically non-existent, and the album sounds like it was made by someone who believes that they had no other choice but to finish it, as if Swift fundamentally believes that her creative measures are firmly embedded in the massive monopoly her name and brand currently hold on popular music. That’s how you get meandering pop songs about hookups, wine moms, Stevie Nicks comparisons, Jehovah’s Witness suit mentions, hollowed-out, tone-deaf nods to white-collar crime in lieu of empowerment and, topically, Barbie dolls.

(Don’t even get me started on the Anthology lyrics, which feature these absolute barn-burners: “Touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto” and “My friends used to play a game where / We would pick a decade / We wished we could live in instead of this / I’d say the 1830s, but without all the racists / And getting married off for the highest bid.”) This album and its hackneyed grasps at relevance exist as “Did I just hear that?” personified, but in the most derogatory sense of the notion.

My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” features another low-point in Swift’s lyrical oeuvre, as she sings “I felt more when we played pretend than with all the Kens, ‘cause he took me out of my box”—perhaps a measure of her capitalizing on the Barbenheimer mania that none of us could escape, not even the musician who spent most of 2023 flying across the world from one country to another.

But you, us, the listener—we want to believe that Swift makes these records because she has the artistic will, drive and interest to continue giving us parts of her story in such ways that they exist as an archival of her life.

But the problem is that, on The Tortured Poets Department, Swift is packaging her life into a form that is easily consumable for the 17 or 18 years olds who pour over her music. Just because her Eras Tour film is on Disney+ doesn’t mean she has to strip her songwriting (which we know can be, and has been, phenomenal) down for the sake of it being digestible by a wide spectrum of ages.

And, sure, maybe that makes the work accessible. But on The Tortured Poets Department, Swift makes Zoomer jargon her bag—titling a song after one of the most popular video games in the world and conjuring flickers of “down bad” and “I can fix him”—and it feels like she’s cosplaying because the Fountain of Youth was out of order.

Now that Swift is in her 30s, it sounds like she is infantilizing her own audience more than ever before—that singing to them at a level that could force them to reckon with something more akin with adulthood would be some kind of kink in the coil or her consumeristic threshold, that writing lyrics that sound like they were penned by a 30-year-old would, somehow, deter the interests of the billions of people who adore her.

If making one, continuous coming-of-age album is what Swift has been doing for 15 years, folklore and evermore were hiccups in the timeline—existing as the most fully-formed renderings of Swift’s own insecurities and concerns. They mirrored our platitudes towards an uncertain future with sweet, stirring remarks about isolation and heartbreak and the unavoidable, hard-worn truth about getting older. On those records, her larger-than-life living seemed, for once, to truly feel as close to the ground as ours.

Now, though, Taylor Swift is at the top of the mountain. Far better artists have made far worse records than The Tortured Poets Department, but you can’t read between the lines of this project. There is nothing to decipher from a place of quality.

Sure, Swift’s fan base will pour over these lyrics for the rest of their lives—insisting they know, for certain, which song is about who. But you cannot place a bad album on the shoulders of lore and expect it to be rectified.

We are now left at a crossroads. Women can’t critique Swift because they’ll run the risk of being labeled a “gender traitor” for doing so. Men can’t critique her because they’ll be touted as “sexist.”

And, sure, Swift is probably too easy a punching bag in this case—and most of the time, I would argue she is undeserving of being a victim of such barbs. But, you cannot write about someone being a “tattooed golden retriever” and get away with it and still retain your title as the best songwriter of your generation. You just cannot.

Sisyphus should be glad he never got the boulder to the top of the mountain—because Taylor Swift is showing us that such immortality and success ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. And, when you’re standing on the peak alone, who else is there left to hit?

In a recent interview with The Standard, Courtney Love said that Swift is “not interesting as an artist,” and I think The Tortured Poets Department proves as much. She has nothing to fight for, no doubters left to drown.

So where does she turn? Well, to boredoms of celebrity thinly veiled as sorrow everyone and their mother can latch onto—because we’ve all had to “ditch the clowns, get the crown” at some point in our lives, right?

The billionaire is having an identity crisis, but there are no social media apps for her to buy up. So she sings like Lana Del Rey and writes meta-self-referential songs about looking like Stevie Nicks.

What’s hollow about The Tortured Poets Department is that the real torture is just how unlivable these songs really are. No one can resonate with “So I leap from the gallows and I levitate down your street, crash the party like a record, scratch as I scream ‘Who’s afraid of little old me?’ You should be.” And normally, that wouldn’t be an end-all-be-all for a pop record—but when your brand is built on copious levels of “I’m just like you!” as the demigod saying it to their fans does so from a multi-million-dollar production set, it’s hard to not feel nauseated by the overlording, overbearing sense of heavy-handed detritus we’re tasked with sifting through on The Tortured Poets Department.

Love’s words to Lana, her advice to “take seven years off,” should be applied to Swift. Now, that doesn’t mean that, to make a good album, you must sit on material for years and labor extensively through the sketching, shaping and recording in order for it to be transcendentally landmark. But it’s obvious now that not even Taylor Swift wants to be the head of an empire—that she, too, can’t outrun the damning fate of being plum out of ideas by hopping in her jet and skirting off to God knows where.

See you at the Grammys.

****

#this review is everything #anti taylor swift #taylor swift #travis kelce #3.6 !!! #hope Pitchfork comes for her too #jack antonoff #taylor swift reviews #the department of tortured poets

[brotoman-exe]

So seeing as the trailer is finally out and one of my more frequently revisited posts is about this movie let's talk the trailer. Now these are off the cuff barely put together ramblings with like an hour to think on it so don't take this as a final verdict or my hardest stance ever.

The Good

- It looks generally alright. There is some clear signs someone was flipping through the art book for the War For Cybertron games when designing a lot of this stuff. As well I'm interested to see how the 'surface' is seeming to be overgrown with plant life and the like.

- Alpha Trion and some sort of grave, of the other 13?, shows up and seems like they are going with the G1 style of him making Optimus and Elita into their present selves, just adding Megatron and Bumblebee there.

- Elita One even getting to be a major player is pretty neat. Really a rise to prominence from a time when I think people didn't even know female characters existed before Arcee.

- Also Quintessons seeming to be an oppressive class enslaving the Cybertronians is another good G1 call back.

- Also having both Orion and M-16 start as workers is nice since it means you can't accuse Optimus of not knowing just how bad the system was when he opposes Megatron going full Peace Through Tyranny.

The Bad

- The dialogue, like you know it, I know it, and everyone else knows it. Now to start not saying Transformers can't be goofy or funny, '80s film everyone has a dance party to Weird Al and fandom loves the hell out of that movie. But that felt more organic to G1s general sillier side versus this where it feels the writers looked up a bunch of posts satirizing later stage MCU diaologue and thought "yes let's do that".

- Bumblebee being there, since seems he is just being shoved in as comic relief and cause marketers love Bumblebee versus a fourth main character being needed for this story.

The Fear

This is more speculation on from what the trailer presents could be bad about the film but I can't say 100% from the trailer.

- Elita One being in the movie being reduced to other three main characters are going to spend parts of the movie having the hots for her or the plot being configured into any kind of terrible love shape. (I will barely accept a love triangle with Orion and M-16 if those two are also onto each other. Transformers made enough strides in LGBT rep to not back slide into the worst of Het writing now.)

- Bonus negative points if Elita One getting hurt or dying is used as the final straw for Optimus and Megatron's relationship breaking apart.

- The reveal of the names Optimus Prime, Megatron, and Elita One not being allowed to be good moments and instead get ruined by shitty jokes (Like how the RWBY/Justice League film had to constantly make jokes about Superman being called Superman. I get it writers are so above silly naming schemes like that in the 2020s now, but just shut up)

- Speaking or other things that are atrocious I'm worried this movie is going to pull a Devil May Cry reboot and just have Megatron swerve into "I wanna be Big Dick Dictator of the Galaxy" two seconds after they beat the Quintessons like how Fedora!Vergil went "I'm actually evil and we should now in some vague way rule the world Dante" right after the 'Kingpin From Marvel but turned into a giant made of buildings' boss fight. So no time will be given to the deteriorating state of Orptimus' and Megatron's relationship before hand. That or they sequel bait the downfall and we have to cross our fingers it was good enough to get a sequel.

- The Quintessons will have their menace damaged by bad pot shot jokes/references to the original animated movie.

- We spend all movie with MCU quips Bumblebee but Starscream never shows up.

The Hope

But that is all nerves and speculation as so far I've just seen a single trailer. So what about positive possibilities.

- The major one is the trailer is just cut by brainless add executives and a lot of the worst quips are either not in the movie or there is way more good dialogue and the stuff in the trailer was all of it.

- They actually do give some other members of the Decepticons appearances and completing backstories of their own.

- Optimus and Megatron are in unambiguous romantic love before the big break up.

- They do some really interesting stuff with the lore based on some of that cool environmental design. Perhaps a more interesting version of Megatronus for Megatron to be inspired by?

- Lastly this film just needs to clear the low bar set by most of the Bay Films to not be bad at this point. And I highly doubt this movie can do anything to hit the "Your Racist Uncle" level of some Revenge of the Fallen scenes or "Mmm I sure do love high school girls" level of the first one and especially Age of Extinction scenes.

#Transformers #Transformers One #Maccadams #Optimus Prime #Megatron #Elita One #Bumblebee #Trailer speculation #Alpha Trion #Quintessons #Youtube

[variousqueerthings]

VERY RAMBLY BUT I think rose and martha are like the inverse of one another in terms of narrative, in that they both meet a doctor who is deeply deeply hurt, but the doctor interacts with them about it so differently, because of where they're at with that hurt, and the doctor is like "hey, I'm suave and vulnerable beneath the surface, which is quite attractive, want to travel in space and time in my whimsical timeship?" and they both go "oh heck yes!" and then it's like splintered glass from that point on, like martha lives in a funhouse mirror of rose's story -- up until she makes it her own of course and she does call the doctor out on it relatively early on, although rose continues to have that haunting effect

so rose has this bubble created around her that is perfect and unchangeable almost, in which nothing bad can ever happen (except for all the times it does but huuush, we'll be together forever forrealsies don't look at that big ol hurricane hurtling our way), which then inevitably bursts, but is always there-as-memory, because rose becomes something of an impossible ideal to some extent

and martha isn't protected at all, and has all the badness spilling out on her because the doctor is unable to contain any of it (and maybe is relieved to finally give up on being strong), and subsequently all of the promise of wonder has an air of sourness to it, and the doctor will always feel incredibly guilty about how it all ended

but crucially there's a lot they have in common, that is quite different to, say, donna (who is woven in in her own, interesting, way) -- they both become attracted to this powerful, interesting, and suuuper traumatised being, they're both taken along on a journey of promised wonders, they're both incredibly reliable to the point that the narrative is retroactively fitted around how much the doctor's belief-systems revolve around belief in their companions, with many others from the past given their dues (starting with sarah-jane), and they both do see wonders beyond their comprehension (and so does donna, but again, there's something a bit different there to poke at in another post...),

except where for rose this wonder helps her break out of the path that was set down for her and become who she always had the potential to be in a way that is mostly framed as a positive (although with some -- I think -- under-analysed caveats...) and she will be forever thankful for the doctor arriving in her life, martha's is more like an awe that the universe is so hostile and so lonely and so heartbreaking, and so she needs to become more resilient and more ready to make choices that are terrible (from travelling the broken world for a year to the osterhagen key....), and so there's another story about someone who becomes strong and tough (just like rose) but it's because the doctor wasn't really able to be there for her, and while I don't think the show (from memory) ever has her totally regretting the doctor dropping into her life, there for sure is some solemnity to how her story ends, a bit of a dampener in comparison (even tbh in comparison to donna, who yeah, gets her memory taken, but is suggested -- now confirmed perhaps? -- to get more of her life in order/feel more self-confident, also partially because of that subliminal influence of her time with the doctor)

and this isn't to say that it's all-bad for martha! her working for UNIT and Torchwood has a lot of very interesting facets to it, and she is fulfilling her potential to be this impressive, capable person, but the ways all of this was built up to is so heartrending

rose coming in and "saving" the doctor, except it was a bit of a lie, because the second she wasn't there they crashed even harder than before, and martha coming in with the idea that she could save the doctor and walking away when realising what it was doing to her life, and both rose and martha irrevocably changed to the point that the person pre-doctor is barely recognisable in them anymore, both take on the doctor's self-sacrificial traits...

and also the idea that rose gets the fantasy, but it's the fantasy a-bit-to-the-left (funhouse again) because there's always something a bit disconcerting about the lengths the doctor goes to to maintain the bubble, to the point of offering up the alternate-him/tentoo so that she can still have it, even though the actual physical doctor that shared it with her isn't actually there! and martha gets the glimpse of the fantasy, and then has to come to terms with the fact that she's not the person it's "for" and reassess her relationship to the idea of a fantasy in the first place (it helps that martha is an incredibly practical, pragmatic person, but it's still so... ouch)

I don't think it was intentional, but this also fascinating from the perspective of rose as a white woman and martha as a black woman -- who is the fantasy for, to the extent that strange and universe-breaking events go into maintaining it, and who has to be practical and pragmatic and self-reliant?

and also, it's got more tragedy in both cases -- rose as a spectre/haunter of the narrative is always a little bit intangible when she's looked back on (even though in the story she's in she's incredibly real and well-rounded, every time I go back to s1 I am struck by how grounded she is in reality), and I think that's something interesting in terms of her mother's warning in s2, how if she travels with the doctor "forever" she'll become something else, something not her

and martha's mother warns her as well, although she's not completely sure of what, and in contrast to rose this warning comes into very painful fruition, harming her entire family (except, maybe her brother? I wonder if there's anything written about that), but where rose is so omnipresent, martha tries several times to take herself out

(also something about both of their mothers being their anchor-points)

there's something there that's at the centre of both rose's and martha's arcs:

is the change they're going through because of the doctor... good? good for them? good for their families? good as in they're becoming better people than before? good for the world they inhabit? is it good for the person they used to be? did they become better than that person? can they ever truly deal with or even begin to comprehend how these events made them who they are? can they even connect who they are now to who they were then? was this good?

they both become these larger-than-life people, somewhat without noticing on both parts (but the narrative does notice), one of them a ghost, and the other a soldier -- one of them an increasingly intangible, ever-present idea, and the other someone who has to fight every step of the way

it's just a bunch of things I've had going through my head that I can't quite formulate in coherent essay-like sentences, but for sure it's there

opposite sides of the coin, rose tyler and martha jones

I do wish they'd had space in the story for them to talk

#martha jones #rose tyler #doctor who #dw #i also wish they'd had space in the narrative for them to make out but youknow #i know that rose and tentoo is generally interpreted as a net-positive -- including in a subsequent comic #but it was always very eerie to me #this also to deal with the fact that while i looove martha's arc in s4 #hers was the weakest goodbye scene in the final episode imo #because the pair the spares makes it seem like there wasn't a lot of thought put into it/where she is now #and like sure they're both hanging out with jack at torchwood but it's so out of the blue #and then she finishes up with a gun in her hand -- far cry from where we met her even in poison sky #working for UNIT but! --- but does fit somewhat from where we saw her end s4 when she was ready to destroy the world #but it's still sort of disconnected from the story? why is she there? why is there a sontaran there? why gun and not medicine? questions #questions for which the answer presumably was: because she looks badass but i need More than that! I need Answers! #argh martha i want so badly for them to at least mention you in the specials. where are you 🥺🥺🥺 #gun to your head rtd do it! #doctor who meta

[boiled-bronze]

I have finished translating to spanish and posting all of Heist, the first comic in the Rain World Anthro AU series made by @pansear-doodles so here's a little drawing I made as a celebration, based of one of the comic pages

#rain world #rain world fanart #fanart #art #saint #rainworld saint #slugcat #anthro #the text file in the Anthro AU Drive folder says something like fanart is tagged gift #I don't know what that means or how that works but #gift #I guess? #We need to see more of Saint having a good time #Or at least expressing a positive emotion

[mejomonster]

On a serious note, I do feel mysterious case lotusbook has a lot of sincere themes about getting older, realities of responsibility and dreams realized, how it's difficult to succeed and not always the direct path one expects, how there's value in little aspects of life. Almost every li lianhua scene seems to be about that to some degree. The murder cases aren't particularly deep as far as super complicated to figure out or Able to be predicted super well (since they don't always give all the details in the initial setup), but the themes about who was killed and why do connect to li lianhuas situation.

#mysterious lotus casebook #lb #by all this i mean: a lot of the positive things li lianhua AND di feisheng say are fairly good advice tbh #like a fei? hes like you need to be fair in your decisions for your actions to be worthwhile and earned #li lianhua: sometimes being the one taking all responsibility was bad for you and the people you led who felt burdened #by You taking the burden. and stepping back can be a respectable choice. #cooking is more difficult than fighting. keeping yourself alive is Hard and its the hardest thing we do #and its admirable even when youll never be a hero never be able to achieve what those around you might #your peers are worthwhile if they choose diffetently than you (qian wanmian isnt lesser for not choosing to lead a sect and instrad #dissolving it. di feisheng doesnt think li lianhua is no longef worth his time even though hes weaker now. li lianhua is still someonr he #wants to see alive see brlieve in himself see passionate about things. the monks think its never too late to #reconnect to people again. that people who love you will want you and accept you even when you fail. #even fang duobing by knowing li lianhua gets the experience of someone who wants him alive #and fondly smiles and Is proud of him. evrn if hes learning and fails and moody #fond of him in a way his family wasnt that strangers lied about due to his status #in a way that he clung to li xianyi for ALSO seeing value in him when he felt he didnt live up to expectstions of the world #its the Kindness of little moments of acceptance. of being kind to yourself and kind to others (even down to #not wantjng to kill suspects but take them to trial. not wanting scapegoats blamed. which arent usually done in wuxia) #its the fact this show is quite about gentleness and healing (i see the Love and Redemption screen writing ismilarities) #rather than about power struggles. do you know what i mean?

[radio-4-is-static]

I Wish you Roses | Kali Uchis

#i wish you roses #kali uchis #音楽 #gif #my gifs #the flower studies in this mv !!!! #according to kali's ig live from earlier today they spent 24 hours (!) shooting which is just amazing #i love artists who put everything they have into their work #i'm paraphrasing here but she said she created this song to spread a little love and positivity bc the world needs more of it #which like 🥺 #the sentiment of maybe we won't be close forever but i will always hope you're doing well #so so lovely

[smores100]

hey.

so. haven't been around for quite some time, mostly due to my health issues (the usual + muscle aches and joint pains, i'm having a great time), but also in part due to The Situation. it's hard to care about anything with everything that's been going on, it all seems so pointless and meaningless, i'm living in a completely different universe from everyone else here. wish i could be that privileged, but alas. it's also hard being around here, and on other social media platforms for that matter, and seeing the raging antisemitism and sheer hate everywhere. i haven't checked my dash in almost 2 months, haven't checked specific blogs like i used to either, and have no plans on doing so anytime soon. i know what i'll find, i don't want it.

i was gonna stay quiet like i ususally do, especially since i genuinely don't have energy for anything rn, but it's been 2 months and i've been biting my tongue and screaming and crying into my pillow daily and i just need to get some of it out before i implode. there's only so much ignorance and hate that one person can take before snapping, so. here i am.

i have so much i want to say, i've written a million posts in my mind in the past 2 months, but i'm too Tired to actually write them down, and it'll just be one big messy ramble anyway, so i'm just gonna reblog a couple of other people's posts and make do with that. just a couple, don't worry, i know these are issues most either want to avoid dealing with or the opinions shared in those posts are a complete 180 degrees from what's trendy to believe in today. but i have to share it anyway. for 2 months i've been terrified, frustrated, bitter, angry and absolutely heartbroken, but there's one thing i haven't been, and that is ashamed. i'm proud of who i am. i'm proud of my people and their spirit. you will never understand what it's been like for us, what it still is like for us, but let me just say this: they wanted to break us, they wanted to break our spirit. they failed. we've never been more united. they just made us stronger.

so i'm gonna reblog some stuff so i can get it out of my system and move on. at worst i hope you just ignore and scroll past it; at best i hope you keep an open mind and maybe for the first time read things from a different pov instead of just the one sided propaganda everyone is continuously exposed to. maybe you'll see it isn't all black and white, maybe you'll see there are nuances you're not even aware of, maybe you'll realize you've been fed a lot of misinformation, half truths and even lies over the years. maybe. if you have questions or want to have a mature and civil conversation about it, feel free to msg me and i'll try and reply when my health allows me to, i'm open to discussion. if you want to unfollow me after this, feel free to do so. i'm not gonna force my truth on anyone, but i'm also not gonna change who i am for anyone either.

and on a more personal note, i wanna say thank you again for the msgs i've received last time and haven't replied to (due to health, Situation etc), and for the ones i've gotten since (will get to those soon i hope). i do feel the need to say this tho - i did have a peek or two at my dash and on twitter earlier on and saw some things. i was in a super sensitive state at the time and it was pretty disheartening ngl. it's hard nowadays, with all the hate going on and public opinion being what it is, to know whether or not you're still welcome in these spaces, whether or not people still like you and care about you, or if you've officially become persona non grata. most days it feels like the latter tbh. i just don't know where i stand. i said i'm not gonna force myself on anyone and i'm not, so if you're still ok with me…i guess the ball's in your court? 🌻

thanks for reading. thanks for sticking around, to those who decide to do so. take care y'all. never again is now. am yisrael chai. 💙

#y'all are lucky i wrote this post and the tags on the following posts yesterday morning #bc after what was revealed yesterday and what happened this morning i'm a million times angrier and more bitter #i have never felt this magnitude of heartbreak and rage before #it was never like this before october 7 but with every day that passes i get angrier and angrier and cry more and more #every now and then i just want to set the world on fire #i cannot believe what has become of humanity. we don't deserve nice things. #and this is the mindset i have to live with in my condition??? i need positivity and light but there are barely any to be found anymore #fuck everything #anyway #it ended up being a bit more than a couple of posts bc i have a whole lot of feelings i had to get out #so if you don't wanna see anything about this you can blacklist the tag 'jumblr' #tbh i'll be lucky if i have any followers left after this lol but oh well it is what it is a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do etc etc #at least i will always have the pornbots to keep me company....<3 #jumblr #personal

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

What would the prime tails think about modern tails?

Interesting...

Well, anon, I'll be real with you. From what I've gathered thus far, Modern Tails' characterization is inconsistent at best, so I think it would depend upon which game Prime!Tails gets to know Modern Tails from.

For example, I think if we look at Sonic Adventure Tails, given the fact that Prime does incorporate games canon into its timeline (despite the confirmation that it DOES take place within the games timeline, with the inconsistencies that also poses with timeline stuff and characterization I think it's more helpful to analyze what games canon it clearly pulls from to form its own canon) Prime!Tails would see himself in this version of Modern Tails. Sonic Adventure Era version of Modern Tails strikes me as a plausible younger version of Prime!Tails if you only look at Prime itself and don't consider that Prime is meant to fit within games canon.

Likewise, if Prime Tails looked from SA era Tails, to Sonic Boom Tails, to Sonic Lost World Tails, to Sonic Forces Tails, and then to Sonic Frontiers Tails, I think the inconsistencies in characterization would also probably confuse him a bit (basically, "if these are all 'modern Tails' why are they so different in how they act or how independent they are?"). I think Prime!Tails can absolutely understand any given version of Modern!Tails' wish to be able to be as strong as Sonic and stand on his own. I get the vibe from Prime!Tails (especially compared to Nine) that he is a valued part of the team and can pull his own weight fighting, but that he isn't as effective as Sonic on his own (unlike Nine, who had to both learn to be effective in combat AND in strategic planning). So, to me, Prime!Tails is in sort of this in between phase. He can keep up with Sonic, he can fight on the front lines with others, he can sit back and play strategist or give advice, and he builds tools and fixes the Tornado, but (either perhaps from settling into his current role for so long or from coming this far only to stagnate) he isn't quite to the level of hero who can work alone and at Sonic's side effectively. In this way, I think he can understand how SA1/SA2 era and Sonic Frontiers Era Tails feel.

So...I guess my verdict is this. Prime!Tails would be simultaneously confused by the inconsistencies in characterization, but I think he'd actively try to sympathize with the versions of Modern Tails (either by relating to them with his past or his present as well as he can). With that being said, though, we unfortunately didn't get to see much of Prime!Tails in Sonic Prime Canon, so I think I could have a more solid answer if we perhaps knew more about him.

#anon interview #sonic prime #sonic the hedgehog #modern tails #tails the fox #miles tails prower #I just be ramblin #To be honest‚ most of the difficulty in answering this question lies with 3 things #1. That we don't get to see much of who Prime Tails is as a character #2. Modern Tails is so inconsistent #3. By all accounts Prime Tails technically *is* Modern Tails. So it's both like wondering over how Sonic Forces Tails would see Sonic #Advance Tails (for example) and it adds to the characterization inconsistencies #In a perfect world where Modern Tails is handled better though‚ I'd like to think that Prime Tails and Modern Tails are both in a position #where they've stagnated so to speak. They can go on solo missions if they wanted. They could learn how to be a powerhouse or work to be like #Nine. They could really change things at any point and seriously persue a dream of being able to be as strong as or better than Sonic and #independent. And yet...my personal interpretation of modern Tails is that he chooses not to. To me‚ his original wishes to be strong and #independent and to keep up with Sonic all served to allow him to be with Sonic‚ be useful to Sonic‚ and to not feel weak. So to me he could #at any point choose to perfect himself as a hero on Sonic's level who ultimately doesn't need him‚ but instead he's more comfortable in this #position of always being able to be Sonic's little buddy who gets to be with him #No offense to Sega‚ but Tails has long grown past the wish to be able to fight on his own or go on solo adventures. He obtained these all a #long time ago. Rather‚ I think the conflict could comes in the difference in lives Sonic and Tails are going to want over time #Haha sorry accidentally went off there #Anyways if things were perfect then Prime Tails and Modern Tails would just be basically the same guy (and I honestly kind of treat them #that way in my head) #Thank you so much for the ask anon! I love talking about my fav‚ so if you have any other questions about Tails or my headcanons/opinions #regarding him‚ feel free to send me another ask😊💖