#think it's either from reddit or Tumblr

[crime-soncloud]

I remember seeing somewhere that somebody found which guitar Ichika used specifically... I need to find that again. for an important reason

[miru667]

Audrey Grace needed a quick disguise so I put her in a new outfit and wig! 🤫...But it's also just an excuse to draw her with green hair, since that's the colour she'd want if she ever had to change it. ^.^ I've also included a few other colour variations here since I had to do a LOT of trial and error...she probably has those other colours at home!

[wellfine]

Hey I found ur art uncredited on tik Tok

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMreQSnaw/

They said they "found it on Reddit" so they just decided to steal it and post it ig?? Ugh!!

Wow, that's a whole other repost to the one I thought it was going to be, lol. It's been reposted to TikTok once before, and I'm also not surprised this person got it from Reddit, where I doubt I was credited either.

At the end of the day I appreciate the heads up but there's nothing I can really do about it. The most helpful thing anyone can do is to leave comments on the reposts to provide credit,* because if artists ever try and comment then we pretty invariably get attacked. Don't be mean or aggressive, that just builds their animosity towards the artists, but I do think people respond positively to outside pressure to do the right thing 🤷

*Remember to make sure there's enough context - eg. something like "art by @ landegart on Twitter" is more searchable/useful than "artist is Landeg" to someone on TikTok who has no idea who I am haha

[queer-omens-in-the-archives]

.

[theres-whump-in-that-nebula]

I think I’ve been horribly burned out for the past year ahaha

[micer2012]

a reflection on MatPat's plagiarism

Hello, my name is Della, or micer2012, and 2 years ago Game Theory plagiarized three Tumblr posts of mine, making a video that now holds almost 6 million views.

My posts explaining his plagiarism made their rounds on Reddit, Tumblr and Twitter, but despite the Hermits and Pooka commenting on it (generally in support of me or saying they don’t know enough details about the situation to say either way), MatPat and his team have never owned up to anything, and no mention of my name is present on the video. The one Reddit post they made denying it (which was made before my detailed takedown, which they have never responded to (though the mods on the r/GameTheorists Reddit were kind and made sure it stayed up)) didn’t even mention me by name, just referring to me as “a tumblr user”. (Though one of the screenshotted comments in the body of the post does say my name)

This experience was baffling, but it’s overall had a positive impact on my life. r/Hermitcraft gave me a Golden Apple Award (post of the year, 2021). My inbox was filled with excited fans, wanting to ask me questions or pose their own theories, far more than the hate I got. (Though the hate I got from Game Theory fans was VERY funny. I wondered why none of them gave me shit about saying “MatPat misgendered Evil Xisuma” before realizing none of them read that far into the post.)

And getting on a more personal, and much more important note, I met most of my current online friends through this, including my partner. It helped me grow closer with my irl friends as well and gave me an entertaining story that I tell whenever I have the chance. It was one of the first things in my life that really made me feel like my talents, my autistic hyperfocusing and analyzing of things I love, could be valuable. Useful. Exploitable. It blew my mind that MatPat thought an autistic kid’s ramblings about a Minecraft Youtube joke character were good enough to steal. To put an audible sponsorship on. To get 6 million views off of.

And that’s why I’m writing this post, this update years later. As you might’ve been able to guess, Hbomberguy’s Youtube video on plagiarism reopened this wound. It was really hard for me to sit through, it took days of pausing and taking breaks, because I had experienced everything he was talking about firsthand. 

In my 10 page long takedown post, I wrote about how his rewording of my sentences made him say things that were incorrect, just like Filip did. The content farm production style that made big companies like Cinemassacre take one creator (AVGN/MatPat) and turn him and his content into a brand, a voice that reads out scripts by other people with other opinions/theories, is a history shared with Game Theory. What really hit me was Harris talking about how big creators only do this to people they think they can get away with doing it to. How they view their victims as lesser, as not deserving of their words, repackaging them as their own to give to an audience that can gain from hearing them, but deserves better than to have to listen to the original victim.

That’s the thing, I 100% think a video version of my theory to expose to a bigger community than “Evil Xisuma Fans on Tumblr” is a great idea!! Near the end of the video Harris talks about how video adaptations of things could be a great market, even an accessibility tool, and I completely feel that about my posts. I wrote them quickly assuming the reader was someone well versed on Evil Xisuma lore, after not even watching most of the CarnEvil series, and the diagrams I made to explain them are even less comprehensible. Harris makes a joke that I completely agree with, 

“I’m sure some of my videos would do very well if someone translated them into English.”

I don’t think I would’ve ever made my posts if I didn’t have autism, and a special fixation on Evil Xisuma and Hermitcraft. I made them because I felt the character was being done an injustice, and because I wanted to share with other superfans this theory that might explain it away. I do think that MatPat plagiarizing me was ableist. I used to wonder a lot if this would’ve happened if my posts were articulated better, if they had been peer reviewed, if the posts themselves had been spread to a wider audience before MatPat made his video. At one point when the discourse was fresh (before I had the time to write out my 10 page rebuttal), a bigger YouTuber (100k subs at the time) messaged me and started talking on Discord, interested in possibly making a video on the discourse, but I think my style of typing and general enthusiasm drove him away. You can tell by a single look at my blog (or my original 3 posts!) that I don’t usually type like this. This post you’re reading now has been peer reviewed and edited, and took me hours to format correctly. That video could’ve been huge, the entire outcome of this MatPat situation would probably be much different.

I also used to stress a lot about “being the one who ruined Evil Xisuma’s story”. If you didn’t know, to me S8 Evil Xisuma’s story got wrapped up pretty quickly and unsatisfying (in my personal autistic opinion). (though this might’ve been due to s8 being experimental and ending early with moon big) There was no real culmination of the plot points and arcs going on, and I don’t want to blame myself, but when Xisuma said on stream (when the MatPat thing was first going on) that he didn’t want to focus on the discourse or draw more attention to it, it makes a lot of sense to me that he just wanted to wrap it all up as quickly as possible. For a while I beat myself up about it, of ruining the story of this character I love, but it’s not my fault. If anyone’s, it’s MatPats, but I don’t think it’s useful to just blame someone else. That’s how the story ended up going, and that’s fine. This is Evil Xisuma we’re talking about, their inconsistent lore is what made them such an interesting character. And notably, Pooka made an animation with an awesome culmination of Jeff, the Dreamer, Evil Xisuma, and his own sona’s story, and it makes me so happy to watch. Whatever Pooka does is of course his own choice, but I’m glad he got to give this personal story his own ending (if it is an ending, and not just the start of a new chapter!). 

Typing this all out and getting it off my chest has made me feel a lot better. For a while I wanted to make my OWN video essay about Evil Xisuma’s lore and CarnEvil’s lore, actually going episode by episode to explain it instead of just assuming you knew as much about Evil Xisuma as I did. That idea is still not off the table, but MCYT isn’t something I’m that into right now. Maybe if something else comes out about Evil Xisuma I’ll get back on it, but for now I’m fine with letting that go. But I want to make other videos, share other theories and analysis… if I have the freetime I’d love to make YouTube videos, and if I don’t have the time I’ll continue posting to my tumblr and infodumping to my friends. Apparently my infodumping is valuable enough “content” to steal! Writing this out has made me feel a lot better though, I’m really glad I got it out.

If anyone ever wants to talk to me about the things I’m obsessed with, or reach out to me as a source in a bigger discussion about Game Theory or other channels, my inbox is more than welcome :] Thank you for reading! 

Sincerely, a tumblr user.

[ecoterrorist-katara]

Zutara, romance novels, and the female gaze

Okay so I’ve been thinking about the female gaze a LOT so I checked out a subreddit about romance novels, despite never having read one. I came across this meme (which was initially a Tumblr post and then got posted to Instagram and then to Reddit and I’m now bringing back to Tumblr — Internet telephone, pls never change):

And…what is The Southern Raiders, if not a platonic grovel? Katara’s pain is central to the episode. It’s central to Zuko. Zuko asks Katara what he can do to make up for his betrayal; she demands the impossible. He reads between the lines, cockblocks her brother to get the necessary information, and then waits outside her door overnight (which he also did for Iroh, the one person we know for sure he loves). He basically makes himself a receptacle for her rage, and he holds space for her by coming with her on her revenge quest and carrying their bags and not saying a damn thing about what she should and should not do beyond like…asking her to rest. And obviously the grovel works! She forgives him and then they’re thick as thieves, bantering and fighting and saving each other’s lives, etc.

On a different note, I’ve been told that enemies to lovers is one of the biggest tropes in romance novels, similar to YA lit and fanfic. Here’s something else I found in the romance novel discourse:

And…yeah. In TSR, Katara really does show Zuko her worst self, because she doesn’t feel the need to perform for him. She doesn’t feel the need to perform moral perfection OR cold blooded vengeance. She bloodbends in front of him and he just goes with it. She doesn’t kill Yon Rha and he just goes with it. He doesn’t treat her any differently afterwards. Maybe they talk about it off screen, but I kind of like the idea that they don’t, because Katara doesn’t need to explain anything. And it’s so interesting, because some people in the ATLA fandom have a totally different read on TSR. They think Zuko was encouraging Katara to get revenge (by what, keeping his mouth shut?), and that Aang is the one who acts as her moral compass. I believe that either Bryan or Mike said in the DVD commentary that Aang is the angel on her shoulder the entire time. And this interpretation does make sense if you see it from the male gaze, where Katara as an object of affection is acting in an angry, irrational, threatening way. But if you see it from the female gaze, you recognize that actually it’s probably the most emotionally taxing experience Katara has to go through, and she doesn’t owe it to be nice or perfect to anybody. Katara’s formative trauma literally comes to a head, and she has to make a decision — no, a discovery — about who she is in relation to the tragedy that defines her life and even her identity (as a waterbender, as a parentified child who becomes the mom friend, as a genocide victim), and she’s accompanied by someone who trusts her judgement and validates her feelings.

I’m not saying TSR is explicitly romantically coded, but when it conforms so well to romance novel tropes…is it any wonder that so many people thought “yes this is her man?” And then he takes lightning in the heart for her and reaches for her when he’s literally dying, I will never be normal about that either

[kelaeri]

The Many Languages of Dick Grayson

Apparently, according to Nightwing #54, he can speak 12, so I went on a little quest to see just how many I could identify.

Starting off with The Essential Batman Encyclopedia, the entry for Dick Grayson lists him as being trained in French, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, Mandarin, and Cantonese with having some proficiency in an unknown Romani dialect. Given there are multiple examples of him speaking these languages throughout the comics, I am inclined to trust this claim. To start, we've got several examples of French (Gotham Knights #14, Detective Comics Annual #12, Nightwing #73, Grayson #10-- also featuring Spanish)

In Grayson #1 he speaks Russian only briefly, but in Detective Comics #36 he speaks it throughout.

As far as the Chinese languages go, while I believe Dick can speak Mandarin and/or Cantonese fairly well (Batman/Superman World's Finest #3), his Hanzi recognition and literacy could use some work.

Similarly, when the Titans head off to Japan in Titans Annual #1, we have Nightwing speaking Japanese in battle; however, when it comes to the prospective job of being a manga translator in Nightwing #125, he claims he doesn't know Japanese, which leads me to believe he is only proficient in speaking Japanese/Chinese and struggles with the writing systems.

So what about the languages not covered in the encyclopedia? To start, we have another romance language: Italian (Nightwing #72).

Followed by some alleged German (Nightwing #51, JLA #44)

And conversations in Farsi (Robin #175)

While I've seen some Tumblr and Reddit posts claim he knows Kikuyu, The Power Company: Manhunter #1 only says he "brushed up" on his Kikuyu before going to Kenya, so it is unknown how much of the language he actually speaks, but to me it doesn't seem likely to be a lot.

He also, to some unknown degree, speaks Tamaranean-- at least enough to hack into an alien computer (Action Comics #842).

As far as unspoken languages go, Dick is fluent in ASL, which is proven numerous times when he communicates with Jericho (New Teen Titans 1984).

And lastly, the two languages that remain rather uncertain are Romani and Cant-- largely due to the nature of the languages themselves and their representation in comics. "Romani," for instance, has several different dialects, and when Devin Grayson introduced it for Dick (Gotham Knights #20-21, Nightwing #91), she never specified which, and based on the lines she wrote, her research into the language was questionable at best. Writers since have recognized Dick's Romani heritage, but have not otherwise suggested he retained much of the language to be considered fluent.

Cant is an even wider term than Romani and can be seen as more of jargon for a particular language than a language itself, sometimes even being called a "pseudo-language." The colloquial term for American circus cant is Carny, or "Carny speak" as Boston Brand puts it in Batman: The Brave and the Bold #14 when he and Nightwing encounter a kid who speaks it.

So... this leaves us with 11 languages Dick has notable proficiency in: English, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, German, Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Farsi, and ASL. And ~3 languages he has unknown proficiency in: Tamaranean, Kikuyu, Romani, and Carny/Cant (if you want to count it).

Maybe memory-loss Dick was including either Tamaranean or Kikuyu in that count from Nightwing #54, or maybe he knows some other language we haven't seen yet. Given how close the family is to the Al Ghuls, I personally think it would be cool if one of them was Arabic.

But anyway, hope you enjoyed this post! A lot I've seen covering this topic are very surface-level and label some of his more iffy languages as "fluent," so I hope this cleared things up. I've read tons of Nightwing, and I swear there are more examples, but sifting through the 1,000+ comics I've read of him is a lot haha. If y'all know of some others, let me know!

[ajthemagpie]

NASTYA ART

I do not yet understand how to add more than one image at a time, but when I do I will get the other blorbos up here. Anyway, this has already been put on Reddit but apparently Mechs Tumblr is active as shit so it's going here now too. Nastya as M (mechanic, or monarch, take your pick (king and queen were too gendered for these mfs)) of Auroras from the card set I'm designing. I love her. No, seriously, I cannot articulate how much I love her.

Also, no, none of this is intentionally meant to line up with the cards that each of The Mechs get in Who Killed Doc Carmilla. Just what I think would work.

Not sure quite how to do an image ID thing (please help I don't understand Tumblr yet), but I'll give it a shot --

Image ID: Drawing of Nastya Rasputina based on a real image of her. She has her eyes closed, and is playing the violin. There is a gear in the background. The image is mirrored along the x-axis. On her right in both halves of the image, there is a blue 'M' and a small drawing of The Aurora, which are indications of her suit and rank in a set of cards. End of image ID.

(Thank you to the person who explained how to image ID a bit better in their reblog, I think I've done it right but please correct me if I'm wrong)

Okay thanks I'll stop rambling now. Actually, no, I have no idea how social Tumblr is but if anyone has suggestions for what object-thingy I should do for the background of either Carmilla or Marius then please, please, PLEASE give me suggestions. I'm getting closer to having to draw them, and I still don't know what to do for the background.

Now I'll actually stop rambling, sorry, I hope you enjoy the space lesbian, goodbye.

[romanceclub-confessionss]

Confession:

"it's fine for readers to have types and not be (physically) attracted to all the LIs but the amount of people i've read on tumblr and reddit confidently calling the LIs in the missing UGLY makes me want to chew rocks. i have nothing against personal preferences but it actually blows my mind that's there's a strong overlap between the people saying this and the people insisting that ANDERS (of all people lmfao)...is somehow more attractive than all four??? the fact that i see more people confidently expressing these opinions than the opinion that some sprites from the older books look either busted and/or are just caricatures makes me think it's definitely racially charged."

[doberbutts]

So I'm going to ask an honest question here and ask you please explain in layman's terms. Every trans person I know irl has no concept of the transandrophobia discourse but every time I see more of it online I'm...unsettled, and it takes a lot to power through all the terminology.

I initially was really receptive to transandrophobia because the rationale behind being against it sounded stupid and akin to label discourse in the queer community. I saw "being a man is not an axis of oppression therefore you don't get your Own Word" and thought that was pedantic nonsense, that language doesn't need to adhere to that rule, and that it's helpful to have a term designated towards transmasculine experiences so people can find those experiences easier. Not that trans women's experiences aren't also beneficial! But that, well, obviously no matter how similar the experience birds of a feather and that sense of comfort of sharing identity still matters. This is true for other issues of identity too, I find, weather that's a good thing or a bad thing idk, but it is human.

The thing is I follow a lot of transwomen and have been seeing some alarms being raised about the community being formed around this word. You blocked one of the most egregious offenders so I trust you (which is why I'm asking sorry) I've seen a lot of misogyny and essentialism from people using the term "transandrophobia" and more egregiously "transmisandry." Idk your opinion on the latter term (I haven't scrolled down far enough on your blog, sorry if you talked about this before) but to me it's unconscionable. I was taught that transandrophobia existed as a term specifically NOT to use that term, that elevating misandry to a legitimate issue was dangerous for obvious reasons and it was one of the reasons why I was so supportive of transandrophobia. To me, it seemed like an awareness that misogyny was the prevailing issue behind all issues of gender oppression, but when I actually look at the tag I...get uncomfortable.

Blogs I follow have repeatedly been upset at misogyny from this community, and have been using the term "transandrobro" to describe behavior they find akin to cis MRAs. I've truly seen horrible things with hundreds, sometimes thousands of notes to it that do, unfortunately, feel like women are being blamed for the plight of trans men. I've seen cis people say they were originally on MRA reddits and then came to tumblr to "confront the misandry directly" only to wholeheartedly adopt transandrophobia into their worldview. It's hard because I KNOW I shouldn't judge a community based on a few crazies but it truly does feel sometimes like "transandrophobia" gives misogynists a venue to air their woman-hating to an eager audience, kinda like how "Karen" has been co-opted beyond the og meaning of being for racist white woman to any woman being mildly rude.

So like, here it is: can transandrophobia exist without being co-opted by misogynists? Is there a threshold of proliferation for misogynists destroying this word until a new one needs to be made? Or will every word trying to identify the transmasculine experience be inevitably co-opted by misogynists because misogynists are just that powerful, so people should double down harder on the word and work to push misogynists out?

(Also am I going crazy, or did this word a year ago used to have a WAY better community than the one I see nowadays. Back then I could find your blog and really compassionate people easily, and now it's just...bad.)

It is a little hard to understand some of this post but I will do my best to answer what I think is being asked.

To put simply, I think the reason why it was better a year or two ago is because the majority of the people who were actually trying to further the conversation and not just circle jerk in the echo chamber got chased off. Transandrophobia, anti-transmasculinity, transandromisia, transmascphobia... the guys who coined these are largely either not posting at all anymore or post far far less than they used to. They were harassed and the constant exposure to transphobia made them shut down their blogs for their own mental health. Not all of them, but a lot of the so-called "big names" had this happen.

Even I stopped posting for a while and shuttered the doors for a bit outside of a long queue of dog photos because of how much it was affecting my mental health.

In their place remain people who are not committed to the same conversation. Perhaps they are younger, or less familiar with the building blocks of theory that really should be required reading, or are still stuck in their "everything sucks and it's YOUR fault" phase. Maybe they do come from different places, like 4chan or reddit, which are less prone to this sort of discussion. A lot of the original crowd had been on tumblr long enough to remember when we could still edit posts, and I keep seeing people who would have been in elementary school at that time posting to the tag nowadays.

I was discussing this problem on discord with a small group of friends and one of them- a trans fem- called it second wave transandrophobia discourse as a bitter joke. I think she is more right than wrong, regardless.

I'm not sure who you believe I've blocked- in general I don't air out who I block on this blog because at nearly 12k followers there are too many people who would love to dogpile someone for the sin of disagreeing with me and I do my best to prevent that. I don't want anyone to be harassed, after all. There's a lot of assumptions that have been made about my block and follow behavior that vary from "hilarious but untrue" to "outright offensive slander".

People are people, and some people are shitheads. Trans mascs and people who want to support trans mascs are not exempt from that. I say this all the time- Kayne West is objectively a shitty person but his existence doesn't prove the concept of antiblackness to be a myth. Caitlyn Jenner is objectively a shitty person but her existence doesn't prove the concept of transmisogyny to be a myth. So why do shitty trans mascs prove our own theory to be dangerous or nonexistent? Why hold us to a higher standard than any other marginalized group?

I could ask you the same question- there are posts on here with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of notes made by trans fems and cis women who blame their problems with transmisogyny on trans mascs. There are people coming from reddit, Twitter, 4chan who are being actively transphobic and misogynistic and claiming they're doing it for the good of transfeminism. There are posts filled with misogyny and bioessentialism and gender essentialism and even interphobia and racism and transphobia being left completely unchecked. Do you think it would be acceptable for me to ask if that means transmisogyny theory should be abandoned or if we should just accept that it will draw people with bad intentions?

Or do you think the better answer is to focus instead on finding those with a good head on their shoulders, and making sure it's them who has their voice heard? Do you think we should maybe not judge entire demographics because there exists some shitty people who claim the same identity?

[emperor-kumquat]

"Public domain Sunder" outside of Tumblr (How my project art runs away)

This is NOT a general Sunder! As cool as he looks, he belongs to me and Mynametia/ Inishira (Instagram)!

I want to talk about how reposted art causes harm. It has been stressful to see and I hope fellow artists can sympathize or empathize. And please, if you base art off this Sunder, credit the project Transformers: Mercy!

Firstly, I've heard both "you're niche and unknown" or "you have a big following so watch your mouth"

It feels mean either way... :( Like the jab takes whatever stance is most convenient.

Bottom line: I don't consider myself special. I am just a very hard worker. The only reason I have gotten as far as I have was my hours of daily work for years on my project and YouTube channel.

I am awed when I reflect on how far I have come. Growing my social media platforms, working with 100 different artists from all over the world, commissioning comic artists like Alex Milne and Livio Ramondelli for posters, getting interviewed, collabing, or having shoutouts on other YouTube channels, sitting on panels at TFcon in front of hundreds (although it was t e r r i f y i n g) and getting to talk to them about Transformers: Mercy! And this year, I will be selling Mercy merch at a table at TFcon in the art gallery!

So I don't think I am niche anymore... I don't think my project Transformers: Mercy is. Over the years it has become very widespread with art posted on blogs across social media platforms. As I will discuss, maybe too widespread in one wrong way.

But... there is a long way to go to completing the project. I have about 1000 images now. That's insane! This is no tiny lil project. And I am gunning for 1000s more to make this TFP fan-made sequel. But, I have to pay so so much out of pocket despite making less than minimum wage most months. I need a lot of support to make this big dream possible. Thank you to all who have already helped me thus far.

I think I am just writing this post to clear the air. I am honoured deeply by fanart or fanfictions or fan animations people have created for Transformers: Mercy. It is very motivating and heartwarming and helps me keep up the pace of working hours every day on this project.

I don't mind inspiration being taken from my work. It is an honour. My project draws inspiration from James Roberts' MTMTE and would be nothing without his appealing takes on characters. We may critique MTMTE but where would we be without his Whirl, Rodimus, Drift, Ratchet, Pharma, Cyclonus, Tailgate, Chromedome, Rewind, Swerve, Overlord, DJD, etc.? I carried on from him, others may carry on from me.

A while back, I never meant offence when pointing out one animation of Sunder had features that looked eerily similar (to me) to the Sunder of my game. The reason I got a jolt of horror stems from the fact that this project has fallen victim to reposts on places like Instagram, Pinterest, Reddit, the fan wiki, and other TF forums with zero credit to me or the artists. The growing popularity of Mercy art has also caused it to appear in general searches for IDW or TFP characters. This is why if you search "Transformers Sunder concept art" you are likely to see Mercy Sunder right there but uncredited. So you would see our art but not know what it was for. And Mynametia/Inishira (the artist) did such a good job that it even looks like IDW concept art. It can be mistaken for official content.

But it's not. It was created for my project with very specific features to match my story. A project which costs so much of my time and money and it needs all the donations it can get. It is loses support when its art becomes popular with no tie back to this project. It is still a project in development and is therefore vulnerable.

Transformers: Mercy, after all the years, has become a famous project. But it is a struggling project due to the high financial cost. It is made with ok not blood, but real sweat and tears as I have pushed so hard to make it this far. It has been emotional. It even brought me the love of my life, my spouse.

I want to continue to work on it, the largest Transformers fan project that I believe has ever been attempted. But I need that support, that credit. It hurts when I use google/another search engine and search "Transformers Sunder concept art" and see our work totally visible to the public and not at all attached to Mercy. It then jumpscares me to see other people creating something that looks just like my creations. I see fanart that uses the face of my ghoul Sunder, the one-eyed purple-eyed version with a gaping black pit where the other eye should have been with a small white light within (or the other specific features I requested for Mercy Sunder).

It feels like my ideas are running away from me.

I do not believe anything was done with intent to harm or any malice or spite. I did not believe my project art had been knowingly stolen by any animator or fan artist of Sunder. But when I wrote my post in response to one animation, I did believe that Mercy Sunder had been seen and used as an inspiration because he does appear in general Sunder searches on the Internet. So this is where I came from and why I felt compelled to step in at the time.

I hope I have expressed myself better than last time and I just would like to voice that not this artist/ animator I first reblogged, but other people have reposted Mercy Sunder and caused him to become like.... public domain? Please, I just want it to be known that what you see on search engines, forums, wikis.... was taken from my project. Please do not base your Sunders on that art without crediting Transformers: Mercy and Inishira (Instagram or X).

I hope all the artists here can imagine the feeling of distress I feel seeing credit and support fly away from me and that talented artist, Inishira (who designed Mercy Overlord, Sunder, Crankcase, Fulcrum, Misfire, Krok, Spinister, Waspinator (bug form), and angel Starscream).

I don't want drama or a public back and forth. I seek amicable relationships going forth. Please be very mindful and go back to add in credits if you realize you used this Sunder design as a reference!

[spanishskulduggery]

so this might be kind of difficult for you since it heavily relies onnyour knowledge of the english terms, forst and foremost, but do you think you could compile a list of LGBTQ related topics, since it is Pride Month after all? honestly there might be some that are either hard to translate and others might be straight up untranslatable (since they'd feel weird if translated) besides the sexualities and gender identities, stuff like bear/twink/pillow princess/top/bottom etc would be make for a very enlightening read if they turn out to have spanish equivalents! i fully understand if thats something you wouldnt want to do for any of the aforementioned reasons, but i figured it wouldnt hurt to ask. and in any case, you might welcome the challenge?

So there are some terms I know, and some I don't - because there are quite a few that are simply loanwords in Spanish like un twink

But I'll include what I know... just know that the default terms like homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual etc are the same in Spanish and English

If I'm missing any that you'd like to know, please let me know. Truly the best ways to find the cutting edge of slang is probably Spanish-speaking Tumblr or Spanish-speaking Reddit, particularly if you're going through Drag Race or some of the Orgullo tags etc.

Wikipedia in Spanish will give you a lot of the basic words though, just not always current slang

To answer your question about top/bottom that one is pretty universal for Spanish:

activo/a = top

pasivo/a = bottom

vers / versátil = versatile [I've heard it can also be called inter for some countries so this might be regional]

The words mean "active" and "passive" in any other situation - like in linguistics, la voz activa/pasiva etc. just in gay sex terms, that's the "top/bottom"

As for other words to know...

gay = gay [note: sometimes it's spelled differently in Spanish, but it's pronounced like English] el / la gay = gay person

lesbiana = lesbian [note: just like English; lesbiano/a can refer to someone from the island of Lesbos] sáfico/a = Sapphic

el orgullo = pride

el desfile = parade

ser de la otra acera = "to play for the other team" [lit. "to be from the other sidewalk", sometimes it's de la acera de enfrente which is "the opposite sidewalk"... not that la otra acera means "the other side/team" in general, so if someone were a double agent or double crossing they could trabajar para la otra acera "to work for the other side"... but in gay terms, la otra acera is a euphemism]

salir del clóset = to come out of the closet salir del armario = to come out of the closet [no difference; some places use el clóset from English; others use el armario which is "armoire" and more French-related... you will see both]

tapado/a = closeted, "not out" [lit. tapado/a means "with a lid on" or "covered", but it means someone who hasn't come out yet and is very common; the other term I've seen is closetero/a which is like "closet case" or "closeted" - but tapado/a is used very often, even more so than closetero/a............. also note that el tapado means something like "a cover-up" so you might see this in other situations; tapar is like "to cover up" or "to block out" which is where this is coming from, and it's often a word used for "to deliberately hide" or "to block out"]

el sexo = sex [the act, and biological sex]

el género = gender [also means "genre" in books"]

asexual = asexual [sometimes people call themselves as which is "ace"; like in cards and in English]

arromántico/a = aromantic, "aro"

transgénero = transgender

el/la trans = trans person una persona trans = a trans person [trans is unisex, and transgénero is

no binario/a = non-binary

Now I need to break up this vocab list to discuss gender neutral things in Spanish. Of course, Spanish is really gendered, and English has more ambiguity. The way that Spanish-speakers prefer to use gender neutral language is by using E instead of A or O

As an example; él "he", and ella "she" are the default pronouns for 3rd person. Gender neutral is elle "they" singular

In plural, that's ellos, ellas, elles with elles being gender neutral plural

What I have noticed as a trend is that people who identify as masculine or feminine will use the standard gender rules for groups of people. That is to say, for plural the standard rule is if it's all women you use feminine plural. If it's mixed, you use masculine plural.

In other words, in a group of all women you'd say nosotras "we" [femininine plural]. In a group of all men, or in a mixed gender group you would say nosotros "we"

For non-binary, the tendency is for non-binary people to use the NB endings in a way that replaces masculine plural. The idea being that they tend to be more aware that there may or may not be other gender neutral people there - so you'd probably see nosotres or if a NB person is talking about a group of people they probably say elles

The gender neutral endings tend to override masculine plural; and so someone who is cisgendered might use NB pronouns with someone NB, but may also decide between NB plural

I'll try and do a larger post on this in the future, but just know NB people in Spanish (at least in the media I've seen) tend to use the E endings in a way that replaces masculine plural, so you'll see nosotres, vosotres, elles, etc.

Moving onto vocab again...

el/la drag queen = drag queen [usually drag queens use feminine gendered articles in drag, but might use masculine outside of drag]

el/la travestí = cross-dresser [the tra is related to trans... and vestí is related to vestir "to dress", so it's someone who dresses up in the clothing of the opposite gender]

el/la transformista = "drag queen" [this might be old-fashioned; el transformismo is a branch of biology in theories of evolution; but transformista meant someone who could change clothes very quickly so you sometimes still see this in theater for special musical numbers like Cinderella etc... so this word CAN be used for drag queens, but people usually say drag or reina de drag etc]

la reina = queen [can be used the way English uses it, both as "drag queen" like reina de drag, or it can be someone effeminate]

el twink = twink

el oso = bear [also just "bear" in a Spanish voice]

el cachorro = cub

la nutria = otter [again, the actual word for "otter" the animal]

For lesbians this is where it gets boring, because the terms butch and femme get used the same as in English

Note: You'll also see the word lésbico/a used for "lesbian" particularly in genres or romances; it's like "Sapphic", and I tend to see it more as a term or category, often for literature or culture not usually used for individuals [though it is also another term for "from Lesbos"]

However, there are additional words to maybe know just in general:

machona = "butch" [from the word macho/a this is "manly", but literally machona means "manly woman" with an augmentative...... so it can be "dyke" in some circles]

marimacho/a = tomboy / "butch" [from María the most default female name in Spanish, and macho/a this can be used to describe a girl who is a "tomboy", but people do use it as "butch" or "dyke" too]

The word for femme is usually femenina or just femme like English, or saying una femme etc.

I don't know if this term applies to lesbians, but there's also afeminado/a which is "effeminate" - usually it's for men, but it means "womanly" or "with feminine characteristics"

And just in case you ever needed to know, the slurs associated with lesbians are usually torta or tortillera... I have mixed feelings about teaching slurs but they do come up so better to be aware of them

The general slur for gay people is marica, though it specifically tends to be used for gay men

This word is a diminutive of the word María - however just know that in some countries, marica is like saying "wow" or "gosh" like an expression of surprise/dismay [particularly Colombia; it's not meant as a slur but it is somewhat impolite]

Note: marica can apply to anyone gay, but specifically gets used for gay men - the big term that you do not want to call someone is maricón which is used for gay men and that's basically the F slur. There are times when gay men will call each other this, but be aware that this is a word that will start a fight if you use it carelessly

-

Also be aware in some contexts people will use the terms raro/a or rarito/a for "queer" - some people find it offensive, others don't. It literally does mean "strange" so when you see "queer" used to mean "odd" in older literature it's fine. It's just with people it can be considered disrespectful, and with some it's not a big deal; just be careful

I would also mention that the terms for "intersex" are usually intersexo or intersexual

[trappedinafantasy37]

I am sure many of you are aware by now that Minthara's Speak with Dead lines now have her mentioning a daughter. She did have these lines back in EA that were since removed on final release, but have now been reintroduced with Patch 8. @baldursyourgate did bring up a very good point that we could potentially be dealing with another breakup scenario where these lines were readded by "mistake" and may be reverted in a future hotfix. The only thing that has me feeling a bit sus is that unlike the breakup, tweaks to Minthara's Speak with Dead lines were mentioned in the Patch notes this time.

However, these notes are vague. Her dialogue "makes more sense" in Act 2? I don't quite recall precisely what they were before, but I'm pretty sure her lines made sense. But, this does indicate that Larian did deliberately change her SWD dialogue. There are one of two possibilities I can think of, 1) they intentionally reverted back to her EA lines where she mentions a daughter or 2) they recorded new SWD lines entirely but accidentally reverted to the old ones rather than add the new ones (although there is no indication of new recorded lines). If #2 is true, we can expect a future hotfix to wipe this one away. Another more anecdotal thing I want to mention is that Larian tends to respond to mass public opinion. I wasn't on Tumblr when the breakup went down, but I was on Reddit. And that period of time was the most any of the BG3 subreddits talked about Minthara, and most were not pleased with the breakup. It did not take too long for Larian to undo the breakup. Right now, it's almost as if Reddit is unaware of the new SWD lines even though some subreddits do, uh... enjoy the idea of Milfthara. Since there isn't a massive social response to it, I have my doubts Larian will do anything.

As a Minthara enjoyer, it gets very frustrating to have each new patch recharacterize her. It would genuinely piss me off if they take her baby away... AGAIN. We know this will be the last patch, but there will still be hotfixes for a little while. As excited as I was yesterday, I am going to reserve calling this canon until Larian completely moves on from BG3 (even though it is canon in my heart).

However, if this dialogue remains, it creates a continuity error with Minthara's character as she never mentions having a child while she is alive. She only mentions the kid if she is dead. But, it's not like I've recombed through all her dialogue with this new Patch and Death Domain Daedra just barely woke up on the beach so give her a minute. So far, the theory most have is Minthara keeps her daughter a secret to protect her. But, I do not see any reason why she would withhold info on her daughter to a romanced player.

Minthara does actively grieve her home and says she will miss it until the day she dies. She could, of course, be grieving a daughter she will never see again. But I would think that if she had a child, she would not resign so quickly on the idea of never going home. From the moment you recruit her, all her future speak is of her remaining on the surface. She really really wants to kill her mom, but accepts she never will because she accepts never going home again. Even at the end of the game, she still plans to live on the surface. You are the one who has to bring up returning to the Underdark and her sole intent is to kill her mother. That honestly would be the most appropriate moment to mention she has a daughter waiting for her at home.

It also isn't like Minthara to be so witholding either, even if her intent is to keep her daughter safe. But, once she reads your mind, she knows with certainty that you are a safe person to tell. Minthara also very much likes knowing your intent, and she explains her intent to you often. So she wouldn't hide her intent to retrieve her daughter if she goes to the Underdark with you. Yes, she does go to the Underdark on her own if not romanced. But I think she is compelled to go down there for a completely different reason and not for a child.

So, we have a Minthara who supposedly has a child, but never mentions one unless she is dead. Minthara is also very open about her life in the Underdark, but never once talks about how motherhood affected her life. And she never speaks of a kid to a romanced player when returning to the Underdark, the one person in the world who should know that they are about to be a stepparent. This child creates nothing but contradictions. Personally, I do headcanon she had a child anyway regardless of what Larian says. She is 200+ years old, has admitted to having many sexual partners, and would have had the expectation by her house to have a child at some point. I have thought this exact contradiction through many times over. My theory is that Minthara does not mention having a daughter because while the Absolute was erasing her, it also erased her memory of having a daughter. "Well, technically the lines happen if she dies after the Absolute torture." Ssshhhhhhhhh... I'm going to ignore that because this is the only way all of this works in my brain.

[cy-cyborg]

We have communities - Writing disability quick tips

So often, stories centred on disabled characters, especially in modern settings, emphasise how lonely or isolated the character is because of their disability, especially if it’s a newly acquired disability or one that non-disabled people assume would have a big impact on our ability to do “fun stuff”. This will often be accompanied by statements of “no-one understands what living with [insert disability here]” is like!

And while isolation and loneliness are things a lot of disabled people deal with, a lot of us are not completely alone either, especially in the modern day.

Just like any group of people with shared experiences, we find one another. Sometimes this is through formal systems; some spinal rehabilitation centres for example, will pair newly paralysed people up with a mentor who’s had a similar form of paralysis for much longer to help guide the person while the adjust to their new disability. Other more formal systems can look like disability sporting organisations - the one I used to work for used to specifically encourage very newly disabled people to join so they didn’t feel like the had to learn everything about their disability alone, or support groups.

Other times though, these communities are much less formal. They may look like online forums, such as the ones on Reddit, built by and for disabled people to talk about their experiences and seek recommendations from others in the same boat, or parts of larger social media sites. For example, on Tumblr, there aren’t really any formal groups, but thanks to the hashtags we use in our posts, we often find one another fairly quickly there. We sometimes also carve out our own little subsections of fandom or hobby spaces, brought together by the shared interest itself, how things like disability might impact the way you interpret or interact with it, and how we can modify it (in the case of hobbies) to make it work for us.

A lot of disability communities, formal or otherwise, also form out of necessity, such as advocacy groups run by and for disabled people, and those built around ensuring the rights of disabled people are protected.

Isolation and loneliness are problems within the disabled community that many of us deal with, but this tends to be more in the context of isolation from the wider public, exclusion from public spaces and events (despite there being laws that are supposed to stop this because they’re often not enforced), disconnect from non-disabled friends and family, etc, most of which are the result of systematic issues or the lack of understanding or care and support from non-disabled people in our lives. Not always, but often.

The communities made by and for disabled people though are often (at least in part) made to help make up for this, and they’re more common than you might think, you just have to know where to look. It would be nice to see more creators reflecting this in their work a bit more often, or at least acknowledging that they are there, even if your character chooses not to engage with them.

However, as a reminder to authors and creatives: These communities, especially the online ones, are for disabled people, they are not there for you to use as a reference as a creator. Some communities are ok with you being there to learn, so long as you listen and don’t try to speak over/bombard their members with questions. Others are not. The ones that are, typically will have something written somewhere if it’s online (e.g. subreddits that accept writers wanting to write disabled characters will often have it written in the “about” section or the rules). There are also dedicated groups and platforms for non-disabled people seeking to learn more about us and our communities, which can be excellent resources for creatives like writers. Just remember to be mindful of where you are and respectful of people’s spaces and boundaries when doing your research.

[mothzi]

[Spoilers for Clair Obscure Expedition 33] Like wildfire: the cruelty of grief

I didn't think I'd go back to Tumblr but I guess I just need to vent about COE33 because otherwise I'm going to explode :') Massive spoilers under the cut, and also I posted this on Reddit but wanted to find more people to discuss with on Tumblr I'm sorry.

Grief can make us do unthinkably cruel and selfish things to the people we love, and the game depicted this in how Aline treated both painted and real Renoir. When we hurt, sometimes we want others, especially those closest to us, to hurt too. I guess grief is like wildfire with us at the centre that consumes everything around us, including those who love us and are trying to reach out to and help us. 

(This is in no way a defence or deflection of either Aline or any of the Renoir, much less an attempt to minimise the abject horror of their actions to innocent lives caught in the middle of their trauma and grief response.) 

I rewatched the cut scenes before and after Renoir’s Act II boss fight and this line from Renoir made me pause and gasped out loud: 

"The pain of losing you. She made me inherit it. Punishment, perhaps, for not being there when it mattered." 

My understanding is that Aline had painted the Dessendres with memories of the fire, but with the huge difference that in this fire, only Alicia was a victim and Verso survived. Since the painted Dessendres only came to realise the truth of their existence after the Fracture during Expedition Zero thanks to Clea, this line from Renoir implies that Aline only imbued him with this “real” memory and pain of Verso’s death after that realisation, most likely when he finally found her and confronted her about her actions. 

At this point, Aline most likely was incredibly angry with (real) Renoir for his violent attempt to wrench her out of her happy fantasy. Lashing out at painted Renoir and hurting him by giving him the memory of real Verso’s death was much easier than hurting real Renoir. 

Even if she had blamed real Renoir for perhaps not being at the mansion during the fire (bargaining/anger), painted Renoir was innocent of this (not that I think anyone can be blamed for not being at the right place at the right time). Aline made painted Renoir, a sentient living being, carry this pain out of her irrational anger at her own husband. 

The final memory we saw at the Monolith before painted Renoir step out and initiated the boss fight was of the couple holding on to each other. In my first play through, I thought this was a memory of happier times. Now I’m inclined to think this was a memory of the aftermath of the fire, with Renoir comforting a grieving Aline. It wasn’t enough for her. The fact that he could be here trying to stop her meant he just didn’t understand, he wasn’t hurting as much as her, so she had to hurt him to make him understand. 

I think there’s also a more malicious and darker intent (whether conscious or not) behind Aline’s bequeathing of the memory of the fire to painted Renoir. Alicia/Malle mentioned to Verso in Act III that her mother painted an “unflattering” picture of her father, but despite possible differences in the painted and real Renoirs (more thoughts on that below), I think it is obvious that both Renoirs are solely driven and motivated by their need to protect their families. Tragically, Painted Renoir might not have needed the extra motivation to protect Aline and her world, but making him go through losing Verso (in addition to probably having found out about what happened to his Clea) would have massively tipped the scale towards a single-minded obsessive need to be on Aline’s side: 

Renoir: "I refuse to lose my son." 

Verso: "That son was a stranger" 

Renoir: "But you're not!" (Dramatic piano notes) 

And also painted Renoir’s last words to the Curator / real Renoir before the latter erased him, equally a proud defiant statement and a final insisting pleading: 

“I love them too.” 

It’s a display of Aline’s incredible power as a god to this world and how easily she can manipulate and therefore erase agency and free will of this world’s people, even after her initial painting of them into existence. She literally weaponised trauma for painted Renoir. (I think it has strong implications for Maelle’s ending as well but I don’t want to get into that here.) 

I thought this whole cut scene and dialogue is just incredibly well done by the writers—on first play through I was moved (and also the acting and animation were a big part why) even though I was also equally confused (but intrigued). It was only after the reveal in Act III that I could see the layers imbued in the cut scene and how so few lines made me feel sympathy for both Renoirs. I’m in awe of the economy but immense payoff of the writing, and how confident the writers are of not just the story and characters, but also of us the viewers/players to trudge along and piece everything together afterwards. 

(Anyway I’m also incredibly fascinated by the difference between painted and real Renoirs. Yes, painted Renoir has a darker design than the real Renoir because Clair Obscur amirite, but also it hints as to what other differences did Aline imbue in him. Alicia said real Renoir is warmer, but real Renoir hasn’t had to live through almost seventy years of loss and killing and the threat of losing his family even more and also all the drama with his son. Painted Renoir is, no point beating about the bush, incredibly dapper and suave. He’s Pierce Brosnan as James Bond by way of Belle Epoque. His grooming is immaculate. He gave off a commanding presence from the very first time we saw him. We can immediately tell that yes, this was an action man, a military man, the kind of man to lead the first Expedition. Real Renoir felt … much smaller the moment we saw him, frail even. His hair and beard are messier. There is no visual clue or hint of this man ever having been in a physical or violent fight before. At first I thought, yeah this is a grieving and lost man who hasn’t had time to take care of himself, but he looks pretty much the same way in the family portrait. 

Is painted Renoir a projection of who Aline wishes Renoir was more like in the aftermath of the fire? Did she feel he just didn’t do enough to protect his family, even though ironically he’s running himself down willing to erase an entire world of living beings to save his wife and daughter from being lost in their own grief and trauma? How did real Renoir feel seeing this projection of how his wife felt let down by him? 

Urgh the character design and art direction of this game just kills me. And of course, Andy Serkis's performance as both Renoirs is just the cherry on top.)