literalcyborg

[literalcyborg]

God, Maxwell and Olethra's equal but opposite character arcs are really getting to me.

Olethra is sky-eyed from the start, granddaughter of the legendary adventurer Comfrey MacLeod. She's desperate to escape the boring life that her parents lead in Pilby and to follow in the footsteps of her grandmother. She's a huge fan of the Zephyr crew, and she read all of Monty's books about their adventures.

But as she goes on this adventure, she realizes that while it is certainly fantastical, it's also dangerous as well. She's lucky enough to have the mech, but the other people around her don't have that kind of protection. She watches them get beaten bloody and struggle to fight back. When she tries to get in a good quip for Monty's next book, he's distracted in the middle of his fight. Things aren't like the stories.

And on top of all of this, the grandmother that she adored so much is slowly revealing herself to be a not-so-great person. She was reckless and single-minded, prone to taking on debts that she knew she couldn't pay. She was sometimes unkind to the people who had once been family to her, and sometimes her recklessness really hurt them. Her grandmother is not the false idol that Olethra has made her out to be, she is a real and flawed woman.

On the other hand, Maxwell is incredibly serious and practical. While he holds onto his grandfather's idea that finding Zood is a worthy investment, he does not hold onto any whimsical ideas of exploring it. He simply wishes to note that it exists to restore the Gotch family name before immediately returning to Gath. Even his fighting is based in rules and structure, even if it's incredibly violent. Mordecestershire is "breaking the rules" by wearing a jetpack to escape instead of simply dying from being thrown off the ship. It's all logical.

But the longer that Maxwell spends in Zood, the more impractical and almost whimsical he becomes. Yes he's still incredibly serious, but he also believes for a moment that he could fight a dinosaur. He jokes with Monty about his books being terrible. He makes the "rowdy" and reckless choice to give Torse his heart. He throws a snowball at Monty when they're at the Ectic Research Station. Even the "you're meat" scene is its own kind of twisted whimsy, comically violent and highly impractical. Of course he's still a bit of a wet blanket sometimes, but he's slowly learning why his grandfather was so sky-eyed.

Olethra's arc is about a dreamer having to ground her dreams in reality, and Maxwell's arc is about getting a realist to start dreaming again.

[literalcyborg]

My current not-approved-by-the-government opinion is that im not anyone's parent and i should not be responsible for random teenagers online. If I post smth thats 'meant for adults' and its labled as such then what happens from there is literally not my problem. If a teen- who is fully capable of turning on self moderation settings on their own btw- doesn't use a site's provided self moderation settings and they see boobs or dicks then like literally whatever, its neither the end of the world or a big deal. It shouldn't fall on me or a website or a tech company to do a parent's job, and also frankly i don't think a parent should be breathing down their 16 year old's neck on the off chance they do actually want to look at tits, but thats a discussion that americans will fucking throw a fit at so maybe we'll discuss that another day in better company.

"But what about young children!!" see thats! where parents should be involved- that is to say, why are you letting your young child on the internet in the first place, you fucking idiot.

[literalcyborg]

guy i saw in traffic today that i felt compelled to draw

[literalcyborg]

[literalcyborg]

i like that 13 reasons why's cultural impact is how poorly it handled suicide and sexual assault as well as inventing a new way for people to say they're going to kill themselves

[literalcyborg]

this terrible distant blurry shot of two pigeons is one of my favourite photos out of any pic I’ve ever taken I think

[literalcyborg]

*post reveal*

Merlin: fuck, are you going to kill me?

Arthur: what, no, of course not. You're my best friend, I already knew. I was just waiting for you to tell me. I am working on legalizing magic, you wanna help????

Merlin: oh my god. This is everything I've ever dreamed of

Arthur: haha, yeah :)

...

Arthur grabs Leon by the shoulders: Leon!!!! I fucked up!!!! I did NOT know about his magic!!!!

[literalcyborg]

Let’s goooooooo

[literalcyborg]

I hate googling shit like "why am I still sad and tired when I ate and slept and have been walked and watered" and it's always some shit like "your brain is fried because your parents sucked at handling kids when you were a kid". Like can it be literally anything else sometime, just for the sake of variety.

[literalcyborg]

Look, I don't necessarily expect people writing historical fiction to rigorously research the language of the period, but I recently bumped into a story where a guy who was ostensibly born in the year 1805 uses the word "parkour" in his internal monologue, and there are limits.

[literalcyborg]

🐟🐟🌕🐟🐟🐟🐟 // swallowtail shiners // gouache on hot press paper

[literalcyborg]

historical drama/sitcom where two gay best friends (woman and man) get lavender married--and proceed to spend the Fancy European Honeymoon their parents paid for acting as each other's wingman

[literalcyborg]

Small penises aren’t bad, balding isn’t bad, being short isn’t bad, being fat isn’t bad. Physical traits are not signs of morality, and the sooner people stop mocking people for their bodies (yes, even when they’re bad) the better.

[literalcyborg]

Sam Reich is such a cartoonish character to me. His last name is literally "Rich". He's this villain-y game show host. He's the son of the ex-secretary of labour who saved a comedy media company from extinction and does magic tricks as a hobby in his free time. What kinda muppet factory did they release him from

[literalcyborg]

kids deserve so much more respect and it turns out that saying that is a great way to locate the horrible people in any community <3