stardusteyes

[stardusteyes]

Just because someone was/is a good writer, doesn’t mean their work makes you feel all good all the time. In fact, I doubt any good writer does that. Even the lowest of low stakes slice of life media needs conflict to drive a story, no matter how small.

Alright, apparently this "Tweet picture" is booming again because I saw it FOUR TIMES posted by FOUR DIFFERENT PEOPLE since yesterday. All agreeing with it. And I just want to say... YOU ARE ALL DELUSIONAL

I am just... I am just getting so pissed off.

The way this Tweet was formed, it sounds like Gaiman's work was one of comfort. And did we actually look at the SAME works?

I am putting aside the "humanity" part because here it is getting too complex, but... "All the warmth and joy"? Since when are Gaiman's works warm and joyful? SINCE WHEN?

I mean... American Gods? Murder and misery and suicide everywhere. Coraline? Frightening survival tale for kids. Anansi Boys? Kind of goofy but with also mythological rape and murder and lot of sadness to it all. Stardust? Bittersweet sadness everywhere. Sandman? Don't get me started!

You want to know since when people embraced this (absolutely stupid) idea of Gaiman's career as some sort of warm, comforting path? Well me too! We just had this sort of massive, generational shift of public image. Today people associate Gaiman with... I don't know, fluffy, hopeful, "comfort comedy" like the Good Omens TV show? (I insist on the TV show part because I do consider the show was sanitized and "softened" compared to the novel and that's one of the grudges I bear to it, but that's another tale of public perception being twisted.) Because he was a man who always defended and depicted and was friend with queer people and drag queens, today people immediately jump to this idea that he is just "a giver of heart-warming romances and cute happy-ending stories and builder of one's childhood" and... That's sickening. Because THAT'S NOT TRUE and people are just... They just strolled in a few years ago with all those adaptation of Gaiman's works in their head (dont get me started on how Gaiman gets credited too much for the Coraline movie) and thus decided they would retrospectively know everything about Gaiman.

Even I, who wasn't there for the beginning of it all, still was there a bit back, enough to see the generational perception and public agreement about Gaiman at the time, back in the mid 2000s and all that, because he became the "super-star" of fantasy he is today. He was still famous back then, but not as much of a behemoth talked about by everybody as he is today. And how did it went? It went as such: he was considered innovative, imaginative, but he was also recognized as a very dark and edgy creator. He was praised for revolutionizing the comics at DC, he was praised for created the new generation of urban fantasy, but he was also disliked by a lot of people due to his work being too weird (too artsy or too disturbed), way too gruesome (all these murders, all these rapes, all these cosmic horrors) and way too subversive. Gaiman literaly was the guy who wrote "Snow, Glass, Apple" and "The Problem of Susan" and this Judy and Punch graphic novel. He made a career out of blood and horrors, out of strange sex scenes and tearful tragedies. That was his signature style. This is why he was divisive and why some people loved him and some people hated him.

Mind you I do think the shift in perception was in part Gaiman's own fault - because he himself "embraced" a sanitized, fluffy, "sugary" version of his own brand and of his works recently. You could see it from the way he interacted with people on Tumblr, and from how he influenced some adaptations of his works. He tried to appeal to an audience who wanted nice, neat stuff that fitted their current-day and their very strict expectations of what was "right", and he formed this fandom seeking comfy, fluffy, all-good-and-nice stuff. You know, like those people who think gay men can't be depicted as being murderers, or trans people can't be shown murdered, or same-sex romances can't end sadly... All stuff that Gaiman literaly made as foundatons of his works.

He kind of forgot himself that he had built his fame and original fanbase out of people who were not just here for the poetry, and the scholarly worldbuilding, and the vivid imaginaton, but also for the edginess. Gaiman was as much friends with lesbians and drag queens as he was with prostitutes and junkies - he made it VERY clear in his interviews back in the days. This why his world is like this: he was an author of the "underworld", he was a creator of a "counter-culture". People wanted his works because he was the guy who had put Sherlock Holmes in a Lovecraftian dystopian, because he was the guy who threw gods in the gutter and had them work in slaughterhouses, because he was the guy who embraced the old mythologies while also shitting on the vapid and superficial New Age neo-pagans by bringing back the terror of the Roman witches, because he was the guy who brought you beheaded unicorns and twisted fairytales over their head and transformed your escapist fantasies into nightmares. There's a reason why he was such a key influence on White Wolf's World of Darkness.

Anyway this post is getting way too long but... If you ask me, Gaiman never brought me any happiness. He never brought me any laughter. He never brought me any warmth. And I didn't want him to, for that I had other authors - Pratchett for example. Heck it took me a long time to even get to enjoy Gaiman's work due to how at first it seemed too bleak and blend for me. But I still ended up enjoying it... Because he wasn't just doing urban fantasy, he was doing urban decay fantasy. Because he was a very erudite author who made me discover a lot of obscure stuff I didn't know about, both in literature and Biblical lore. Because he was a creator of grand worlds and he had a knack for reinventing stuff or subverting expectations. Because he could truly get in the mind of serial killers and brought one of the best embodiments of Despair I saw. There was hope in his works, but hope in misery. There was humanity, but it was an ugly one. I never read Gaiman to feel good. To feel amazed yes, not to feel good.

So yes, when I heard about the accusations, I thought back about all he wrote, all he presented, all he created... And I was not surprised.

[stardusteyes]

Fairytale Moodboards // Peter and the Wolf

If a wolf should come out of the forest, then what would you do?

(requested by @penguinofspades)

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I disagree, we shouldn’t ignore that, if anything that makes this even funnier!

Like, imagine your literal great-grandfather pulling this on you 😂😂😂

Hermes: Si corro y salto hacía Ody seguramente me atrapará en sus brazos. ✨ ¡ALLÁ VOY! ✨

Ody: ¡NO! ¡HERMES, ESPERA! Estoy amarrando la bolsa- de viento.

[stardusteyes]

Hey, don’t cry. Free online database of Japanese folk lore

[stardusteyes]

Working on a Peter and the Wolf adaptation has actually opened my eyes to an interesting angle that I hadn’t really considered before.

That being, Peter is sort of an equal and opposite to Little Red Riding Hood.

Think about it: Red is a young girl with some kind of close relationship with her grandmother, who is sent out into the woods on her mother’s request where she has an altercation with the Wolf until the Woodsman comes along and rescues her, defeating the Wolf. Peter is a young boy with some kind of close relationship with his grandfather, who goes out into the woods against his grandpa’s wishes where he has an altercation with the Wolf, defeating him by the time the Hunters come along and find him.

Red is a passive protagonist while Peter is an active one. Red is overpowered by the Wolf and has to be rescued by the Woodsman/Huntsman in the Grimm version, while Peter captures the Wolf without needing the aid of the Hunters once they show up. Red is alone until the very end, but Peter has allies all the way through in the form of his animal buddies. In Perrault’s Red, the Wolf wins until the Grimms brought the Deus Ex Woodsman, while Prokofiev had the Wolf lose, but still live thanks to Peter asking the Hunters to spare him, albeit caging him in the zoo. Also some of the more cannibalistic versions of Red Riding Hood even had a cat involved.

Peter’s association with the color red in a lot of adaptations make a lot more sense now…

[stardusteyes]

"You are in the Underworld now..."

Yesterday i made this, a fan art for @imcasperfox 's musical "Stories from Styx".

The three judges of the Underworld! From the left: Aeacus, Minos and Rhadamanthus!

And then, the silly version, very Epic the musical vibe:

... Isn't It fitting?

Again i used for reference @anniflamma 's chara sheets!

[stardusteyes]

[stardusteyes]

So, you know I love Icarus. That myth has been a core part of my personality since I was a kid. The Jim Henson Storyteller version was the one I grew up with, as I was introduced to it in school. That was the version I considered gospel. However, as a result, I didn’t bother to check its actual accuracy for years.

In that episode, it depicts Icarus as having been around before Daedalus was exiled to Crete, even knowing (and lowkey being jealous of) his cousin when that poor kid was still alive.

So you can imagine my surprise when, I found out several years later that Icarus wasn’t born until after Daedalus got to Crete. Because Icarus’ mother was Naucrate, a slave of Minos. But not just any slave of Minos, she was also the king’s mistress.

So first off, bold move, Daedalus. Very bold move.

And secondly, with this additional context, the whole “getting Daedalus to build the labyrinth to imprison the Minotaur then immediately locking up Daedalus and Icarus at the top of an isolated tower (or in some versions in the labyrinth itself)” thing shows Minos is apparently consistent in how he treats his stepkids.

[stardusteyes]

settings I would love to see more in fantasy:

Deserts, but like, positive. Deserts portrayed as beautiful places full of life and wonder. Desert as homeland, desert as a place of beauty and intrinsic value.

Mountains. Andean-style settings where the world is mountainous and the land is organized into altitude zones, where uphill/downhill are more meaningful than east/west

Island archipelagos. We’ve gotten a few in fantasy recently but 1) I want More 2) I want someone to do a Fantasy Kula Ring

Something inspired by Tiwanaku or Chavín de Huántar

Independent city-states. They all are unified by basically the same culture but they are all also politically independent variously at war, making alliances, happily trading, in a trade war, conquered and subordinate to other city-states, founding new city-states, travelling to the central temples of other city-states’ patron gods, etc.

Full of prehistoric animals that never coexisted with humans but they do in this fantasy world because they’re Cool

[stardusteyes]

Favorite cookies so far

-Red Velvet. It’s one of my favorite desserts so naturally I *had* to have him which I got via chest. Dog dad ❤️♥️

-Milky Way!! So cute!!! Note to self: Read Night on the Galactic Railroad at some point

-Eternal Sugar is fav beast bar none of course, as I’ve already elaborated

-Fav ancient is currently in a bit of a toss up between Pure Vanilla and Golden Cheese. I have a soft spot for Ancient Egyptian mythology and I love her personality, voice, gameplay and design (fun fact: when I first got her, her design made me think she was Mesoamerican coded before I learned the Cheese Kingdom was actually Egyptian lol) but I haven’t gotten to her story yet 🤷🏻‍♀️

-On the other hand, I’m Catholic and PV is literally supposed to be my good brother in cookie form. Also I’ve gotten to know him first.

[stardusteyes]

“I don’t know what you’re on about, I’m having a great time out here.”

Okay I think I’ve contributed enough to this joke

[stardusteyes]

[stardusteyes]

STOP—THIS IS A KINDNESS CHECKPOINT! rb this post + say something you love about prev to keep the positive energy flowing 💫

[stardusteyes]

Apparently a lot of people get dialogue punctuation wrong despite having an otherwise solid grasp of grammar, possibly because they’re used to writing essays rather than prose. I don’t wanna be the asshole who complains about writing errors and then doesn’t offer to help, so here are the basics summarized as simply as I could manage on my phone (“dialogue tag” just refers to phrases like “he said,” “she whispered,” “they asked”):

“For most dialogue, use a comma after the sentence and don’t capitalize the next word after the quotation mark,” she said.

“But what if you’re using a question mark rather than a period?” they asked.

“When using a dialogue tag, you never capitalize the word after the quotation mark unless it’s a proper noun!” she snapped.

“When breaking up a single sentence with a dialogue tag,” she said, “use commas.”

“This is a single sentence,” she said. “Now, this is a second stand-alone sentence, so there’s no comma after ‘she said.’”

“There’s no dialogue tag after this sentence, so end it with a period rather than a comma.” She frowned, suddenly concerned that the entire post was as unasked for as it was sanctimonious.

[stardusteyes]

Idea: Gorgon Rapunzel

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murder drones in the big 25

gasp

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Oh my gosh. I just found this website that walks you though creating a believable society. It breaks each facet down into individual questions and makes it so simple! It seems really helpful for worldbuilding!