#Inter-dimensional Mailbox

[askmadcomcrew]

Doc, why is there a limit on the Interdimensional mailbox? And how can I bypass those limits?

Obviously, I'm not telling you that.

There is a limit on it in case something truly dangerous comes through. The last thing Nevada needs is multidimensional invaders, or weapons capable of destroying the land.

Sometimes I may personally approve objects deemed dangerous by the Mailbox's security systems, but in your case, I simply cannot fit an entire spaceship in my base.

[dark-lord-of-awesomeness]

If Ford had unplugged the phone would the timeline had progressed similar to Cat Stan (because Carla came to give the car to Ford because Stan was missing) if Stan peaced out in the inter dimensional stomach he would be a “missing person” as well right? Everything up until Shifty where poor boi gets frozen. But then the mailbox scene lets Ford know he effectively killed his brother by ignoring the phone and not being “smart enough” to recognize the signs (paralleled with being crazy from Bill and not seeing his red flags).

Would Bill know the way Stan died seeing as inter dimensional stuff is his thing? Cause he could either blackmail Ford by saying he failed his brother or promise that he��s on the other side.

or could perhaps…..things turn out differently? Could you be a ghost in another dimension? Would Stan want to?

Oooh man. Once again, ya'll love to really drive in the stake. Keep at it, the pain invigerates me.

Hmm. I'd say yes, it would work out similar, with Carla moving in, Fiddleford getting his cult, right up to Shifty. No Shifty means no Emma-May, means less of a support net for when Bill's betrayal happens, Fiddleford goes full cultist, mind wipes Carla to keep her safe, gets divorced at some point and then crazy.

The mail box doesn't even have to be vague here. It actually kinda feels bad, being the one to deliver the new that not only is Stan dead, Ford was the last person ever in contact with him.

I'd say Bill would use Stan's death to mess with Ford here instead of taunting him by trying to call Stan. Hinting at Stan's fate, telling Ford that he really did impress Bill by shedding the extra weight so effortlessly, really driving Ford up the wall with hints about what happened to Stan.

As for ghost Stan... hmm. I'm not sure. Stan got pretty thoroughly eaten here, in such a way he wasn't feeling very strongly and any energy he'd have would have gotten slurped up by the Entity.

Buuuuuut, because I love both angst and some sort of happy endings, even bittersweet ones, I'll say Stan did leave a ghost.

Its still in the Entity's stomach though :)

Ford can hear Stan's voice when he figures out how to summon/contact it, furious, grieving, and not just a little insane. He can't make out the words, just the sound, distant and at that pitch that's meant to drive people insane when they try to listen harder. Once Ford figures out how to both block out Bill and tear the Entity to pieces, it frees Stan's ghost and they have a bittersweet farewell. Stan doesn't have a body to bring back here, its long gone, and he's tired, and just getting to see Ford's enough to make him happy.

Fords full on sobbing as Stan genuinely thanks him for rescuing him, then wailing as his ghost disappears, moving on. Life goes on similarly to Better World, with the added angst of Ford being extremely paranoid about missed phone calls.

[charastale]

buddy, chocolate is not gonna fill you up. have a hot dog. *you receive a "hot dog...?"

inter-dimensional mailbox officially works!

<<Prev - First - Next>>

[faffreux]

What does Fawful think of your art? :) If he could draw, what would he like to make?

Fawful loves my art!!!! Omg thank you for giving me the chance to gush about this

I can’t even keep track at this point how many times he’s asked about it or complimented me on a piece I’d finished recently in a dream. It’s actually one of the things that helps me feel better about my work when I get self conscious (and I get self conscious super often, but that’s just an artist problem in general…)

My art is one of the ways I communicate with him— some of it is just like dropping a note in the inter-dimensional mailbox for him, lmao. If you see words like “hello!” or “hi, Fawful!” or any otherwise sounds like it’s directed to somebody stuff like declarations of love and encouragement, it’s meant for him.

Fawful technically DOES draw… he’s just more of an architect than an illustrator :] he draws up all the plans for his inventions himself! Here’s a screenshot from Bowser’s Inside Story from his very own desk. (Unfortunately it’s pretty blurry because a higher quality zoom in doesn’t exist…)

[lunar-writes-things]

15) Can Pandas Be Purple?

After Mumbo left, Y/n stepped outside and checked their mail. 

Most of it was requests to either collab or for advice. 

However

Today, They had gotten a gold envelope with a baby zombie riding a chicken as the logo. 

Y/n had seen this Logo before, Grian had gotten it once or twice

Giddiness bubbled up in their chest as they looked at the shiny letter and they ripped it open. 

Dear Mx. Y/n'sHarmony,

Congratulations! You have been accepted as a player for the Next MCC on August 21, 2021, as a purple panda! 

You have been recruited due to the fact that Fruitberries will not be able to make it. Your teammates will be Scott Smajor, Grian, and Smallishbeans! 

Along with this letter, inside your mailbox, there should be a tiny box with two portal keys for your convenience for the travel you will have to endure during travel. 

Thank you for signing up! We hope to see you on the practice server and on the day of! 

 Yours truly, NoxCrew and Scott Smajor. 

"Oh my void!" Y/n exclaimed and hopped around in sheer joy before gasping and turning to run towards Grian's section of the gigabase and yelling his name out so he can turn around and Y/n could tackle him into the ground while cradling his head to make sure he wasn't hurt. "Hi." 

"Hi!" He grinned and leaned his head up to place his forehead against Y/n's "What's got you so excited?" 

"I got into MCC!" They exclaimed and Y/n watched as Grian's face contorted from confusion into happiness back into confusion 

"That's great!" Grian said with a large smile "But how? I thought all the teams were full." 

"Fruitberries dropped out," Y/n said and gave him the letter so he could read it 

"So you're going to be on my team?" Grian asked softly, wings fluttering "Wait- is fruit okay? Do you know what happened?" 

"I wish I did," Y/n shook their head "If anything you can always text him through the inter-dimensional comms we have. Although, I feel bad that he won't be able to make it. I'll do my best in place of him!" 

"I'll ask if he's okay later, for now, if you want I can text Scott and Joel and we can practice later for the event? Since it's a week away?" Grian asked softly and grabbed Y/n's hand

"Could we?" Y/n's eyes lit up as she gripped his hands back and pulled them to their chest with pure excitement in their eyes "I would love to go right now!" 

"Yes," Grian grinned  "Yes we can. Go finish up your laundry and when you're done we can head over." 

"Yes sir!" Y/n grinned and rushed back to their home to finish up their chores and change 

Y/n walked through the portal with Pearl and Grian. Y/n and the avian wore matching purple outfits and huge grins on their face while Pearl wore a cyan outfit with a cocky smile on her face. Scott and Joel came to greet them and they all chatted for a bit before agreeing they should split off and start talking to their chats and starting their streams.

"Hullooooo," Y/n murmured to the stars around their head, all twinkling with excitement and gleaming with pure joy and positivity "How are we today?" 

High-pitched chiming made Y/n smile as they continued to walk and jump around in excitement. As the stars around her head began to crown Y/n had counted and noticed there was a ton more than usual, that's when a star shining brighter than the sun itself made an appearance. 

"Scar! Oh my Goodness! Thank you so much for the raid! It's deeply appreciated." Y/n laughed "I hope you guys had a great time! Welcome Scarians to my pov of MCC! I hope you guys enjoy the chaos.

"Anyway! Today we are teamed up with Grian, Scott Smajor, And Joel Smallishbeans! I'm so excited to be here chatters! it's a great honor!" Y/n felt their back strain as they attempted to flutter with invisible wings "Moving on! I'm sure you've seen my weaknesses while streaming practice games but I'll do my best!" 

The stars around them cheered Y/n on and crowded their face as they finally sat down and read out the brighter shining stars and listened to the words they whispered into their ears. As they sat, Scott found them and motioned for them to talk to him and so they did, waving away the twinkling stars as they cheered for Scott's arrival

"Are you ready Y/n?" Scott asked and bounced around them, his purple coat flowing behind him and cyan hair bouncing with him as a bright smile shines on his face 

"Hell yeah!" Y/n grinned and stood up with such enthusiasm that they got lightheaded

^^^^^

The games went as well as they could! 

First was Grid runners, a great (and new!) game to establish the team's communication skills and speed. Purple pandas ended up 5th overall. 

Then was Sky battle. This definitely was a step up from grid runners as they had been in third place, grian being the mv of the team and Y/n standing back to let the others take the lead as they barely knew PVP. 

The rest of the games went like this; getting high rankings and great spots with the exception of tgttos with them getting their lowest placement that MCC, 7th place. 

Soon they got to dodgebolt in first place. 

"DODGE Y/N!" Grian shouted and Y/n just barely dropped to their knees when an arrow almost lodged itself into their skull 

Y/n scrambled to get up while their team had the arrows and soon nocking an arrow and aimed at Dream, who was currently their biggest threat and let go

They watched the arrow and as if time seemed to slow down, it shot dream through the heart and pushed him into the Scorching Magma below

Whose idea was it to build the dodgebolt on top of a volcano with a shrinking platform? 

"Y/N!" Scott called out and Y/n had just taken a step to the left when an arrow whizzed past them "Be careful!" 

"Sorry!" Y/n smiled sheepishly and grabbed both of the arrows and shot one of the remaining two players before they shot back and got Y/n 

"SHIT-" Y/n wailed as they popped up within the stands 

"WHAT?!" Grian asked and looked at Y/n like they were crazy "THAT GOES IN THE SWEAR JAR!" 

"NO!" She called down to him "DUCK JOEL!" 

Joel dropped to the ground as an arrow flew past and Scott fired the last arrow and shot down the remaining member of the pink Parrots. 

"YES!" Y/n cheered along with the rest of the group before being poofed back onto the reset stage and giving Scott hug "That was a Great shot, Scott!" 

"Alright! Now to win these next two rounds!" Joel and Grian cheered 

They in fact did not win the next two rounds. 

They lost Dodgebolt

"Welp, that's upsetting!" Y/n laughed to the stars around their head who whispered encouraging words in their ears "But I had a great time overall! It was a great time chat! Admittedly, I was on the edge of my seat the entire time! It was such a close comp!" 

You did great Angel! Can't wait to see you in future championships! Scar's star shone brightly as he whispered in Y/n's ear and Y/n cradled his star 

two other stars came up to her and whispered praises and encouraging words to her. Each shining with a familiar item on their person, Mumbo with his mustache and Impulse with his new gigantic bowtie. Soon Grian and Pearl ended up joining Y/n and they talked to friends before all three agreed to head home to hermitcraft after ending their streams. 

"We're home!" Pearl called as the three stepped out of the interdimensional portal that connected all the realms that their friends lived on

When they stepped out, everyone was there and greeted the with smiles and presents for getting so far in the games. Pearl was praised for her determination and was cheered on for her proudest moments. Grian was glowing with the amount of attention he was getting from ren and others. 

Y/n sat back and watched the group with a soft smile.

"Are you okay?" Someone at by them 

"Yeah," Y/n turned to them, a scarred face rarely anyone sees anymore entering their view "I'm going great X. It's beautiful. The community you helped cultivate from the beginning is beautiful. Thank you for letting me join again." 

"How could I not?" He asked, a smile playing at his lips "Mumbo was practically begging me too and After what you went through with that crazy ex-boyfriend of yours? You needed a safe place and I'm so happy to be able to give that to you." 

"Thank you X," Y/n smiled "Do you think I'll ever find love again?" 

"You already have." X grinned slyly and winked before he put on his helmet again "Just look around you and at the people closest to you."

Masterlist

[pickledwombat]

(this is fan fiction of @thatbeluga‘s fan fiction of Rad x Elmo, you should definitely go read the first two parts before reading this hot garbage)

The metal was thin, and it felt cold against Wombat's paws. Cold and dangerous. Some considered it a tool, others a weapon. He wasn't sure where his thoughts lay on the matter, but he knew that it was deadly nonetheless. Many had fallen prey to the likes of the glistening alloy he held so precariously. He reached for a cloth to wipe the viscous red liquid from it's surface. "You owe me," Wombat said to the solitary figure on the other side of the jar. "Quite a lot, this time." Frankenstein Rodolphus Ortensia Gallagher the Seventy-Third of Luxembourg, or Jack for short, sighed deeply as he hopped towards his door. He entered his inter-dimensional apartment and returned moments later, a crisp Canadian twenty hanging loosely from his mouth. He set it next to Wombat, and then returned to his pedestal. "I'm surprised you did it, to be honest," Jack exclaimed. He stared at the crumpled form mournfully. "Poor bastard." "It had to be done," Wombat replied, cloth now considerably heavier than it was earlier. "I needed the money." "Yeah, but I didn't think you would do something as extreme as this," Jack said through his thin smile. "I mean, that ketchup is everywhere." "You bet me that I couldn't break open this bottle in one hit and then didn't expect me to commit? I thought you knew me better than that." "You're right, of course," Jack nodded. "Why do you have that driver anyway?" Wombat shrugged, tossing the club into the dishwasher. "I used to enjoy golfing. That was before I realised that I am terrible at it and much prefer searching for free golf balls in the bushes." Jack's response was cut off by a sweet metallic chime emanating from his apartment. He returned to his door and reached into the mailbox stapled to the front, pulling out a thin sheaf of parchment. Unfurling it, he read the brief message inside. "Who's it from?" Wombat inquired, rinsing out his cloth. "Is it the Council again?" "No, it's just Rudolph this time. Apparently Elmo has gone on the prowl again and, perhaps even more interestingly, has come into contact with Rad. From what he can gather, it appears that they have made plans to have dinner at the estate." Wombat perked up at this. Rad? Date? At the estate? Moving past that incredible poetry was difficult, but possible due to this interesting development. It did raise one very important question though. "Doesn't Rad claim to be the only god that exists? And Elmo claims to be a forgotten god? So does that imply that they've met before, but Elmo disappeared for so long that Rad forgot about her and then began claiming that she was the only god? Because I think it implies that Rad forgot Elmo existed and then decided to claim that she is the only god that exists." Jack nodded at this, stroking his lower face. Wombat was unsure whether or not that would be called a chin. Do frogs have chins? He would need to add it to the list of important questions he would need to consider. But first, he had a meal to attend. It was breakfast. At 4:30 in the afternoon. Because why sleep at night when it's dark out and you can't see what you're doing.

*finger guns*

[azurexalacrity]

Harmony's turn to get her friend back. Maybe a little much with one of those spring loaded envelopes of colorful glitter, but she thought he might get a good laugh out of it after digging himself out of what was probably an entire container of it. Bonus if it was already nightfall when he found it.

( @projectlightfox )

 It appeared strange that out of all the days that an envelope would appear in his mailbox, it had to be today. Maybe it was a coincidence. After all, not everyone was knowledgeable of the prank infested holiday, nor have any interest regarding it. He can mark off a couple people he’s known that don’t celebrate whatsoever and while he didn’t mind that, it still pegged him that someone would just send him mail.

Then again, the mail could be anything. A late birthday card, a drawing that a fan made for him, a batch of Chili-dog coupons, or even letters. No matter what it could be, it got Saber skipping down the front yard, opening the hatch to the mailbox, and yanking out that envelope.

Slamming the box shut, an eager smile was shown on his face as his gloved fingers gripped on the corners of the envelope. Nothing seemed too off about it, per se. All he can really tell about it was that it had a dashing shade of color and that it was from… Harmony?

That raised a few eyebrows. It raised his for sure. Now, how in the world can that happen? Do inter-dimensional letters exist? Maybe. The hedgehog hummed in questioning, and the urge to tear open this “letter” has been killing him from the inside, like some devil on his shoulder demanding him to open it.

And so, after carefully tearing through the paper in order to open it, he opened the envelope. What he didn’t realize, however, was that he opened the hatch to… a whole stack of glitter launching at him, as if the envelope itself was a catapult.

“Gaaaah!”

Colorful specs that resembled the rainbow (or one of the speedster’s favorite candies) dumped onto him like gallons of water. It got into his quills, coated his face, and he was more than ever sure that some of it are now in his teeth just because of him letting out a startled scream when it started.

He turned his arms around, his hands, and checked out the rest of his body. The glitter on him was like a fresh coat of paint, but at least it wasn’t as sticky as paint. Or glue. Or any sugary, gooey sweets. He had to spit out some of the glitters, but it wasn’t awful.

After all, once he stepped inside the bathroom, glancing at his glittery reflection in the mirror, he can’t help but sport a grin, making pose after pose. Sure, this kind of prank would be annoying to wash out later, and he had no doubt about that. Although, there’s no shame in having fun in it, right?

“Well played, kiddo, well played. But, hey…” He paused, winking at himself in the mirror, “I had no idea glitter looked good on me.”

[mvsicinthedvrk]

@grcycosmcs sent: 🌠 shooting star for blathers

🌠 SHOOTING STAR - if they could make any wish with no repercussions, what wish would they make?

If there really are no rules, Blathers would wish for unlimited wishes first, because that’s just what makes logical sense. Obviously. But if it’s going by the usual no-wishing-for-more-wishes limitation, I think he would probably use his single wish for a reliable and frequent way to contact his sister Celeste and make sure she’s alright, wherever she is. Some sort of inter-dimensional, magical mailbox. He doesn’t know how long he’s going to be in D.C. and while he’s confident that she can take care of herself, he still can’t help but miss talking with her. 

[moodboardinthecloud]

I don’t want to be the strong female lead

By Brit Marling

Ms. Marling is a filmmaker.

Feb. 7, 2020

I moved to Los Angeles to become an actress at 24. These are character descriptions of roles I have read for: “thin, attractive, Dave’s wife”; “robot girl, a remarkable feat of engineering”; “her breasts are large and she’s wearing a red sweater.”

I stuffed my bra for that last one. I still did not get the part.

After a while it was hard to tell what was the greater source of my depression: that I could not book a part in a horror film where I had three lines and died on Page 4, or that I was even auditioning to play these roles at all. After dozens of auditions and zero callbacks, my mom suggested I get breast implants. From her perspective, I had walked away from a coveted job at Goldman Sachs and chosen a profession of self-commodification. She wanted to help me sell better.

But I wasn’t drawn to acting because I wanted to be desired. I was drawn to acting because I felt it would allow me to become the whole, embodied person I remembered being in childhood — one that could imagine freely, listen deeply and feel wholeheartedly.

I continued to audition and continued to fail. My depression deepened. My self-esteem plummeted. My boyfriend would get drunk and punch holes in the wall next to my head. I let him. He spat in my face. I let him. He dissolved into tears in my arms. I let him. And then I sifted through the ashes of his anger and his father’s anger before him to help him uncover the forgiveness he needed to move on. I was auditioning to be “Dave’s wife.” I was “robot girl, a remarkable feat of engineering.”

After a day of running from men with chain saws in audition rooms and a night of running from the man I shared a bed with, I decided I was done auditioning. I felt I had to write my way out of these roles or I wouldn’t find my way in the real world, either. I could not be what I could not see onscreen.

So I went to the library in downtown Los Angeles and started reading books and watching films about how to write dramas for the screen. I clung to Jodie Foster in Jonathan Demme’s “Silence of the Lambs,” to Holly Hunter in Jane Campion’s “The Piano.”

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But aside from a handful of exceptions, I was overwhelmed by the number of dramatic narratives that murdered their female characters.

In “The Big Heat” she has a pot of boiling coffee thrown in her face and is then shot in the back. In “Chinatown” the bullet tears through her brain and out her eye. And in case this seems like a trend of the past, consider the more recent noir “Blade Runner 2049,” where the holographic femme fatale is deleted and the remaining women are stabbed, drowned and gutted like a fish.

Even the spirited Antigone, the brave Joan of Arc and the unfettered Thelma and Louise meet tragic ends in large part because they are spirited, brave and unfettered. They can defy kings, refuse beauty and defend themselves against violence. But it’s challenging for a writer to imagine a world in which such free women can exist without brutal consequences.

We live in a world that is a direct reflection of these stories we’ve been telling. Close to four women a day are murdered in America at the hands of their partners or former partners. One out of every four women in America has been the victim of a rape.

I am one of those one out of four. Our narratives tell us that women are objects and objects are disposable, so we are always objectified and often disposed of.

There are centuries of trial and error inside the “hero’s journey,” in which a young man is called to adventure, challenged by trials, faces a climactic battle and emerges victorious, changed and a hero. And while there are narrative patterns for the adventures of girls — “Alice in Wonderland,” “The Wizard of Oz” — those are few and far between, and for adult women, even less so.

Even when I found myself writing stories about women rebelling against the patriarchy, it still felt like what I largely ended up describing was the confines of patriarchy. The more fettered I felt inside the real world, the more I turned toward science fiction, speculative fiction and lo-fi fantasy.

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I eventually co-wrote, produced and starred in two microbudget films, “Another Earth” and “Sound of My Voice.” Both stories left reality just far enough behind to give me the mental freedom to imagine female characters behaving in ways not often seen onscreen.

I emerged from the Sundance Film Festival with offers to act in projects I would never have been allowed to read for a week prior. Most of those roles were still girlfriend, mistress, mother. But there was a new character on offer to me as well, one that survived the story.

Enter, stage right: the Strong Female Lead.

She’s an assassin, a spy, a soldier, a superhero, a C.E.O. She can make a wound compress out of a maxi pad while on the lam. She’s got MacGyver’s resourcefulness but looks better in a tank top.

Acting the part of the Strong Female Lead changed both who I was and what I thought I was capable of. Training to do my own stunt work made me feel formidable and respected on set. Playing scenes where I was the boss firing men tasted like empowerment. And it will always feel better to be holding the gun in the scene than to be pleading for your life at the other end of the barrel.

It would be hard to deny that there is nutrition to be drawn from any narrative that gives women agency and voice in a world where they are most often without both. But the more I acted the Strong Female Lead, the more I became aware of the narrow specificity of the characters’ strengths — physical prowess, linear ambition, focused rationality. Masculine modalities of power.

I thought back to the films I watched and stories I read burrowed deep in the stacks of the library. I began to see something deeper and more insidious behind all those images of dead and dying women.

When we kill women in our stories, we aren’t just annihilating female gendered bodies. We are annihilating the feminine as a force wherever it resides — in women, in men, of the natural world. Because what we really mean when we say we want strong female leads is: “Give me a man but in the body of a woman I still want to see naked.”

It’s difficult for us to imagine femininity itself — empathy, vulnerability, listening — as strong. When I look at the world our stories have helped us envision and then erect, these are the very qualities that have been vanquished in favor of an overwrought masculinity.

I’ve played the Strong Female Lead in real life, too — as an analyst at an investment bank before coming to Hollywood. I wore suits, drank Scotch neat and talked about the women and the men I was sleeping with like commodities on an open market. I buried my feminine intelligence alive in order to survive. I excelled at my linear task of making more money from a lot of money regardless of the long-term consequences for others and the environment.

The lone female V.P. on my floor and my mentor at the time gave me the following advice when she left to partner at a hedge fund: Once a week, open the door to your office when they finally give you one, and place a phone call where you shout a string of expletives in a threatening voice.

She added that there doesn’t actually need to be someone on the other end of the line.

I don’t believe the feminine is sublime and the masculine is horrifying. I believe both are valuable, essential, powerful. But we have maligned one, venerated the other, and fallen into exaggerated performances of both that cause harm to all. How do we restore balance? Or how do we evolve beyond the limitations that binaries like feminine/masculine present in the first place?

In 2014 I went back to the library and encountered Octavia Butler’s “Parable of the Sower,” a sci-fi novel written in 1993 imagining a 2020 where society has largely collapsed from climate change and growing wealth inequality. Butler’s heroine, the 17 year-old Lauren, has “hyperempathy” — she feels, quite literally, other people’s pain. This feminine gift and curse uniquely prepares her to survive the violent attack on her community in Los Angeles and successfully encourage a small tribe north to begin again from seeds she has saved from her family’s garden.

Butler felt to me like a lighthouse blinking from an island of understanding way out at sea. I had no idea how to get there, but I knew she had found something life saving. She had found a form of resistance.

Butler and other writers like Ursula Le Guin, Toni Morrison and Margaret Atwood did not employ speculative fiction to colonize other planets, enslave new life-forms, or extract alien minerals for capital gains only to have them taken at gunpoint by A.I. robots. These women used the tenets of genre to reveal the injustices of the present and imagine our evolution.

With these ideas in mind, Zal Batmanglij and I wrote and created “The OA,” a Netflix series about Prairie, a blind girl who is kidnapped and returns seven years later to the community she grew up in with her sight restored. She opens up to a group of lost teenage boys in her neighborhood, telling them about her captivity and the inter-dimensional travel she discovered to survive it. It turns out these boys need to hear Prairie’s story as much as she needs to tell it. For the boys face their own kind of captivity: growing up inside the increasingly toxic obligations of American manhood.

As time has passed, I’ve come to understand what deep influence shaping a narrative has. Stories inspire our actions. They frame for us existences that are and are not possible, delineate tracks we can or cannot travel. They choose who we can find empathy for and who we cannot. What we have fellow feeling for, we protect. What we objectify and commodify, we eventually destroy.

I don’t want to be the dead girl, or Dave’s wife. But I don’t want to be a strong female lead either, if my power is defined largely by violence and domination, conquest and colonization.

Sometimes I get a feeling of what she could be like. A truly free woman. But when I try to fit her into the hero’s journey she recedes from the picture like a mirage. She says to me: Brit, the hero’s journey is centuries of narrative precedent written by men to mythologize men. Its pattern is inciting incident, rising tension, explosive climax and denouement. What does that remind you of?

And I say, a male orgasm.

And she says: Correct. I love the arc of male pleasure. But how could you bring me into being if I must satisfy the choreography of his desire only?

And I say: Good on you. But then how do I bring you into being?

Then I hear only silence.

But even in the silence I dream of answers. I imagine new structures and mythologies born from the choreography of female bodies, non-gendered bodies, bodies of color, disabled bodies. I imagine excavating my own desires, wants and needs, which I have buried so deeply to meet the desires, wants and needs of men around me that I’m not yet sure how my own desire would power the protagonist of a narrative.

These are not yet solutions. But they are places to dig.

Excavating, teaching and celebrating the feminine through stories is, inside our climate emergency, a matter of human survival. The moment we start imagining a new world and sharing it with one another through story is the moment that new world may actually come.

Brit Marling (@britmarling) is the co-creator and star of “The OA.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/opinion/sunday/brit-marling-women-movies.html?fbclid=IwAR3DSJ3Q6shZQwE8jGHxNhuU5skF62SAcfJzXap0j_XPFdZHK4JKYa5n02E

[askmadcomcrew]

*spring loaded device that fires a pie in the face of whoever opens the inter-dimensional mailbox*

You.

Me.

We're going to talk.

[thecomicsnexus]

The Stuff That Dreams Are Made of

HOUSE OF SECRETS #83 JANUARY 1970 BY MARV WOLFMAN, MIKE ROYER, GERRY CONWAY, ALEX TOTH, MIKE PEPPE AND BILL DRAUT

SYNOPSIS (FROM DC WIKIA)

Abel locks himself out of the House of Secrets, and to keep from giving in to fear he tells himself (and his imaginary friend Goldie) a story...

A young man dying of an incurable disease finds himself dreaming of another world where he falls in love with the beautiful king's daughter, but gets pulled back into the hospital bed when he wakes from the dream. When he eventually dies, he finds he remains in the dream world permanently.

An old widow finds a box left behind by her inventor husband and decides to use it as a mailbox since the dead man has no use for it. She discovers a letter in it written by someone who claims to be lonely and would like it if she wrote back. She assumes that the postman must be the one writing the letters and she does not find him unattractive so she starts up a correspondence with him. Eventually the letter writer asks if he could meet her and when she sees the postman in the street she tells him that she would like to meet him, much to his befuddlement. She challenges him about writing the letters and he tells her that she hasn't gotten any mail. She calls him cruel and races into the house where she cries. Later, she hears a knock on the door and begins to hope that it is her letter writer after all. When she opens the door, outside stands a hideous monster who greets her cheerfully. It turns out her husband's invention was an inter-dimensional transporter.

A girl looking for her brother takes her friend along for the search and they have the misfortune to enter a house which drains the youth from all who step inside.

Abel finishes telling his stories, and is surprised by his brother Cain, who has come to borrow a cup of hemlock. Cain opens Abel's door with no trouble at all, leading Abel to think the old haunted house is laughing at him.

REVIEW

Of the three stories the one that was the most entertaining was the mailbox one. Sure, the ending was a bit out there, but it kept me well entertained til the last panel. The first story was a bit uninspired (but nice) and the last story looked very nice, but doesn’t really have much structure.

I give this issue a score of 7

[askmadcomcrew]

Tricky, are you in for overriding the safety limits on the inter-dimensional mailbox? If you help me, there will be lots and lots of exotic, never before seen meat and gadgets for you

HMMMM, THAT'S AN INTERESTING PROPOSITION, BUT I WOULD HAVE TO RAMPAGE THROUGH AND KILL EVERYONE INSIDE OF A TOP SECRET SQ BASE THAT I....DON'T KNOW THE LOCATION OF!!!! OH WELL!!!