axikitksauce

[axikitksauce]

btw I have one specific melee plotline that I dont think I mentioned yet but it calls for a bunch of sentinels so I keep adding the OCs you make to it

i dont think i have normal or good words to describe how giddy this is making me. i think i needto become a bunch of gangle-like ribbons and then just kind of wrap aroud you like a sort of tube.

[axikitksauce]

I actually wanted to talk a bit about the Sentinels magic system today, but now I realise that I have to wait for my surface pen to be operational again so I can draw the diagrams that go with my lecture. YES IT DOES NEED DIAGRAMS SHUT UP-

[axikitksauce]

who up wanting to change things that can't be changed

[axikitksauce]

i just realsied i did write down the new sentinel oc (the one which was inspired by a song i listened to on my way to work)

Sentinel Blazer - Dee (Spark) -= Can make a strong firestarter out of ANYTHING, like sparking a match! -= Likes metalworking and has a weapon which is a hammer-like mechanism for hitting two backpieces together. -= Works too hard -= the song she was based on was up to snuff by atsuover -= Has a very diligent strategy with fighting in which she throws herself on fire and just tries to rush them down to engulf them in flames -= her initiation catchphrase (i should start taking those into account...) is "Flame on!". like the human torch

Yessss.... Gooooodddddd.... More sentinels.... feed me more OCs....

[axikitksauce]

[axikitksauce]

looks wistfully in the distance...

i truly do love SM (sentinel melee)

*something over the horizon explodes*

[axikitksauce]

type prevs url with your eyes closed in the tags

[axikitksauce]

i have depression

[axikitksauce]

i really wanna hug you and like put a cup of warm milk ontop of your head (not pour just like place like im putting something atop that one sasuke figurine) but my powers are limited. However i do have a thing i can do

so like after some brainstorming i wondered to myself "okay so like? bowband? power somewhere? because melee is really strong? pow wow? power band?" and then i just settled on powgirl because its kind of similar. anyway i got inspired and really drawn to it so i hope you like this one.

(reffed ofc off of that one image)

OMG THIS IS INCREDIBBBLLEEEEE YEEEEE

[axikitksauce]

bleag... fictional worlds and stories that i dont have the executive function to write keep multiplying and piling up... i dont even create them i think they just happen to me....

[axikitksauce]

cardiegon can any shape ( big )

[axikitksauce]

i thought about bowgirl but then pronounnced her name as burrowgirl

I keep accidentially calling her Ribbongirl, who is a character from ARMS

[axikitksauce]

Sentinel Unit - Marlowe (One)

-= Creates and launches projectiles which can be anything at 1m/s, size depends on energy, objects bigger than her fist take her out more.

Sentinel Duo - Reve (Two)

-= Does things doubly, but can ONLY do them doubly, temporary clones? They only last an action.

There is no original body, if one dies, the other "becomes" the original. Can duplicate further, theoretically, but in multiples higher than 4, it starts to make one of them dizzy, and multiplies in seconds.

Sentinel Tree - Polyp/Polly (Tree) make like a tree and leave

-= Can grow trees anywhere, the trees can be any type. Can speed this treeing up.

one day im gonna do the marvel comics thing of "don't know who these guys are? read hulk issue #183 for their backstory!" except these guys will just show up and the footnote will be a link to this post

[axikitksauce]

accidentally thought too uard about sentinel 1 and 2 for that quick one off joke and came up with 3 hypothetical sentinels

sentinel 1 plus sentinel 2 = 3 sentinels

the maths checks out

[axikitksauce]

Sentinel Unit: it is fun for me to frag a noob...

Sentinel Duo: Can you stop saying that every time your projectiles hit a new person

i'll make this canon when you least expect it

[axikitksauce]

maybe its, like, conceited of me to be worrying about getting cancelled over fiction I've barely even started writing, but its just that I get annoyed picturing the people who I have reason to believe WILL exist and get the wrong idea WHILE I'm writing.

TO BE MORE EXPLICIT WITH WHAT I'M GETTING AT::::

what really makes me think about this way iiiiis: the SENTINELS, and the overall deal of the Sentinel Core. (The name of the organisation. BTW.)

The central conceit of this whole deal is that some lucky young eggs get selected by mysterious creatures to become magical girls (and guys too - but "magical boys" isn't the name of the genre, now is it) and are rewarded with the fufillment of all their gender fantasies, and in exchange they use their new magical powers to fight big evil monsters and such.

Why did I write things this way? because I was a young disphoric trans girl who wanted wish fufillment and decided to make some for herself. Like, wouldn't it be nice if I could just be given my fantasy life on a silver platter AND be a cool anime warrior on top of that?

But then as I continued thinking about the world, I kept yes-anding the worldbuilding and questioning what I'd written so far, and that process just naturally caused the Sentinels' guild to become more sinister.

I mean, why specifically target transgender children? Is it because they're more likely to be desperate to take the deal you're offering? Fighting monsters might be part of the fantasy from the perspective of an outside observer who likes shoenen action, but from the perspective of an actual sentinel, is becoming a soldier in exchange for magic HRT not an incredibly fucked up bargain? What exactly are the motives of the people running the Sentinels' Core? Does "maintaining order in the magical world" not carry implications? Does the stated goal of defeating godlike beings and taking their power not sound like it could lead to absolute corruption?

At the same time, I was also feeling the urge to tell a more honest story about being trans in this world. As I came to terms with the fact that Sentinel's Pride is inherently a dream that cannot and will not come true in many ways, I started wondering if it was a healthy fantasy. It was fun, but wouldn't it ring hollow in some ways? Was it even really about being trans, or was it functionally about cis women who used to be boys? I found myself wanting a character who would bite and claw herself into womanhood. Even if it was in an unrealsitic magical world, I wanted it to be more honest to how daunting it seemed to me to actually transition. SO I created my first spin-off of the sentinels universe that I've rarely if ever mentioned on tumblr because after that, Melee took over my entire brain! SORRY LILAC I SWEAR I REMEMBER THAT YOU EXIST.

And that's where another problem crept in: at this point, the sentinels core has in fact become an Allegory. But it's sort of clumsy, and doesnt quite fit the worldbuilding and isnt really that applicable and people won't get it-

oh man is the problem jsut that I didnt write it well enough? Eugh. there's always time to go back and alter stuff-

Because now, in my head, the sentinels represent the fantasy I had, the dream of just simply and cleanly becoming a girl one day. And it felt like the narrative I had to put some characters through was the process of rejecting that, and actually forging their own path to achieiving gender. Because Sentinels' Pride was a fantasy which could only ever be escapism from the fact that, in the real world, I was not transitioning at all. The problem is, the reason that, in universe, the sentinels are not a fantasy. They are real and they are an option. So what does it seem like I'm saying if I portray them as "the wrong" option?

Okay now that I lay it out like this, I see that a big part of the problem is that the "correct" allegory is too messy... the way I've written this created an allegory that's like mixing Duplo Blocks with Lego Blocks. Things just aren't connecting.

So going back to the purely incorrect stupid not real allegories people might draw from it... Are people going to think that I'm implying some conspiracy theory secret cabal of trans people exist? Or, since the arbiters are the ones with power, will they say that my depiction of trans people being exploited is flawed since it doesn't reflect any real systems of trans exploitation, even though it was meant to be entirely speculative as a concept? Will people accuse sentinels of being analogous to cops or imperialist soldiers? Willl they call that transphobic? Will they think that I'm implying that trans people have systemic power or privledge in real life because I depict a lot of them being powerful and infleuntial magical girls in my fun silly shoenen series? If I present conflict between Sentinels and people who transitioned using forbidden magic or other general "rouge" elements in the story, what kind of godforsaken queer discourses will they project onto that?

I mean, it's kinda impossible to seperate my worries about this from the real phenomenon of double standards in diverse media, you know?

Hmmm... the more I think about it, the more I can't really blame my theoretical strawmen from taking away weird conclusions... I mean it's on me to depict things the right way, isn't it? Even if people are pointing at my story and saying "how dare you say we piss on the poor", it's still probably due to flaws in my writing...?

wow can you tell I'm overthinking this

I know that death of the author is a thing and I have no control over what conclusions people draw from whatever art I may one day create. but uh

goddamn i get so annoyed thinking about what allegories people might imagine in my fiction

[axikitksauce]

this goes hand-in-hand with that thign I complained about on main yesterday about youtubers hallucinating morals and then complaining about those morals.

i think there's a certain way of regarding fiction that, among many things, has people looking at everything in a work and asking "okay what real thing is this meant to represent.

And then if you have the "wrong take" on the subjects your audience decided you were commenting on, they'll never forgive you for it

You may recognise this from - in my opinion - a big fat tonne of the steven universe discourse that I refuse to look deeper into in order to be more accurate and nuanced about because I don't care!

I think art should reflect the real world generally, but sometimes that doesn't mean that a thing is a commentary on some real event - it can just mean that it feels grounded. Like even if it isnt explicitly like anything from our reality, you can analyse the people involved and understand that they're behaiving like real people do. Or see a character struggle in a certain way and understand that it's relatable to a lot of real people even if the circumstances aren't trying to be direct one-to-one

I know that death of the author is a thing and I have no control over what conclusions people draw from whatever art I may one day create. but uh

goddamn i get so annoyed thinking about what allegories people might imagine in my fiction