#Mesoamerican Tag

[hollowsart]

@lazydaydrawings

I really like your Mysterio a totally normal amount, I just couldn't help but draw their cool design!!

+ progress shots cuz I'm really happy with this!

bonus silly thing:

[the-everqueen]

...not to be insane but i stumbled on a fic where h*b is the Nahuatl deity Quetzalcoatl and i. i cannot. the once slave trader has been posed as a Native god. what.

[nicosraf]

lines from "an angel song from the ether" and "paradises", both by me and in Devout: An Anthology of Angels. You can pre-order it here ! :>

[passifloramoonlight]

Digging deeper into Cacao sources, I now wade thru layers of New Age, 5 dimension Acuarian nothing burgers. But at least I discern the pearls here and there. Im determined and prepared to deepen and contextualize this trip im having with IxCacao the Sweetheart of Earth.

[imperiuswrecked]

Designing an animated character means more than just creating how the character looks. As three TAG Character Designers share, it requires an understanding of physical movement, technology, and the art of collaboration. By Kim Fay MULTI-LAYERED MAGIC SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE CHARACTER DESIGNER: KRIS ANKA In Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Miles Morales is catapulted across a multiverse filled with Spider-People. All of them are charged with protecting its existence, and all of them have very different ideas about how to do this. Especially Miguel O’Hara, AKA Spider-Man 2099. Unlike Miles and his predecessor, Peter Parker, Miguel intentionally altered his DNA to become a Spider-Person. Because he played a role in his own transformation, he is as multi-layered as the movie he inhabits—literally. Character Designer Kris Anka approached Miguel in stages, adding layers throughout the process to develop the complexity of this superhero. When Anka was invited to work on Across the Spider-Verse by Joaquim Dos Santos, the film’s director, he was already familiar with Miguel. A CalArts graduate, Anka had been working at Marvel comics for eight years, even designing one of Miguel’s suits. He had worked in animation before his Marvel stint and was ready to return. Little did he know that his three-month contract would extend to three years, with much of his time focused on Miguel. While Miguel exists in comics, and screen audiences got a glimpse of him briefly in the end credits of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Anka says the sequel’s creative team wanted to take a new approach to the character. Some early pre-concept work had been done, and “they knew the vibe they wanted,” he says. “They wanted Miguel to be someone who was very proactive. He always had to have a presence. When he walked into a room you think, oh, this guy takes things more seriously than everyone else. He had to move in that intentional way—I’m on the hunt—physically intimidating.” The film’s Visual Development Artist Spencer Wan did physicality animation tests, giving Anka an understanding of the impact of Miguel’s weight. Miguel has claws and doesn’t stick to walls, “and he’s not lithe, he’s not an acrobat. He’ll go through a wall rather than find some artful way around it,” Anka says. Working with his musculature, he had to figure out how to make Miguel fit in with the visual language of Spider-Man while at the same time stand out among the other Spider-People from the previous movie. “We had two very separate approaches with him,” Anka explains. The first was translating the comic design into a character that would work in animation. While the strong red and blue silhouette would remain, in animation action scenes with a lot of movement, “Miguel could accidentally become a muddled mess because of all that blue,” says Anka. He added red to Miguel’s palms and soles, designed red arm bands that angled in specific directions, and created a red design for the back of his suit that looked different from the front to make sure the audience could always tell what side of his body they were looking at. With this initial design done, Anka sent Miguel down the pipeline. Then the vis-dev team told him they were working Mesoamerican Burle Marx-influenced patterns into the backgrounds. Marx was a Brazilian landscape architect whose style had distinctive patterns. Like the other Spider-People, Miguel inhabits his own universe—Nueva York in the year 2099. Anka was asked to return to Miguel to unite the character’s look with his world. “To make everything feel that Miguel was born in this culture,” he says. Anka spent the next six months focused on working in patterns without breaking the original silhouette. The blue parts would have a faint pattern underneath the digital texturing; the red parts would have the same pattern, but it needed to be stronger. Overall, they wanted three different layers of detailing to the suit, and the challenge, Anka knew, was to “add a sophistication to the design without it being ham-fisted and too noisy. Things can get really loud really fast.” Anka was given some loose patterns to work with, but nothing lined up. He researched everything from Marx’s designs to Mesoamerican textiles to architecture for inspiration—and set about experimenting. He tested what would happen if the pattern was curvier, straighter, softer, or more hard-edged. Then he had to ask, “Where does everything fit so it all looks intentional to the anatomy?” His method was to take all the red parts—the mask, the chest, the arm bands, and the legs—and use each to show how he could break down the pattern and still retain the silhouette. He had vis-dev choose which versions of each body part they liked best. Once he had that, he says, “I would try to holistically find commonalities between those patterns and bring it all into one unified piece.” Now that Miguel was ready to move down the pipeline again, it was decided that Anka would translate the geometric patterns he had designed directly onto the model—not a usual role for a Character Designer. But nothing about Miguel and the rest of the Spider-People was usual. “Every design is wildly asymmetrical including Miguel’s body,” Anka says. But because he’d been thinking about the patterns for so long, “I could figure out, how does this all really sync up, [so] when it went into animation, everything lined up already,” he says. On and off, Anka spent 16 months working on Miguel. It was a laborious process, but one he gladly undertook in service of the ultimate payoff—a design, he says, “that feels effortlessly that character by the end.”

Kris Anka interview on Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse with Key Frame Magazine (issue no. 22)

[fandom]

Fandometrics In Depth: Black Panther

This post is entirely spoiler-free for those who have yet to see Marvel Studios’ Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

It’s been an eventful five years since the original Black Panther film was released and the titular character introduced into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As a fandom, we’ve experienced wins and losses. We got to witness history in the making and incredible representation. We watched as our heroes triumphed against Thanos and saved the universe time and time again. But we also lost a hero along the way. Midway through 2020, the world said a tragic goodbye to Chadwick Boseman, who brought T’Challa to life for the first time on the big screen, and whose memory and legacy will live on forever. In the series’ latest iteration, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, art mimics life as the nation of Wakanda struggles to find its place in the world following the passing of its king. This new chapter brings with it a myriad of old friends and new faces, a foe unlike any we’ve seen before, and a whole new civilization that lies deep beneath the ocean.

For this impromptu trip under the sea (see what we did there?), we analyzed engagement data—that’s searches, original posts, reblogs, and likes—around tags used in the last year, starting on November 2nd, 2021, right up until when this post was written to paint you the most detailed picture possible. Let’s break down the Black Panther fandom in depth:

A nation united.

The cast and crew for the Black Panther films are hands-down some of the most incredible in the business, so naturally, this next ranking is filled with talent that goes above and beyond. Sure, the list is based purely off of conversation on Tumblr, but we personally believe they all deserve to be number one. Check out the full breakdown below:

Lupita Nyong'o | 36.17%

Angela Bassett | 16.61%

Chadwick Boseman | 15.02%

Danai Gurira | 7.92%

Tenoch Huerta | 7.39%

Letitia Wright | 5.98%

Winston Duke | 4.29%

Michaela Coel | 3.83%

Ryan Coogler | 1.96%

Dominique Thorne | 0.83%

A world divided.

With every new entry into the MCU, Marvel strengthens fans’ relationships with their favorite heroes and brings to life new faces we’ve only seen on comic book pages. This time around, we’re introduced to Namor, who rules the underwater city of Talocan. Fans are so excited to see Mesoamerican culture featured so prominently in one of the most anticipated films of the year. Below are the most popular characters in Marvel Studios’ Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, ranked:

Namor | 20.93%

T'Challa | 19.81%

Shuri | 19.00%

Okoye | 10.25%

Riri Williams | 9.27%

Nakia | 9.26%

Everett Ross | 4.15%

M'Baku | 3.67%

Queen Ramonda | 2.07%

Aneka | 1.60%

Wakanda Forever.

Marvel Studios’ Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is out in theaters now—if you’ve already seen it, we’re betting you want even more, and if you haven’t, we’ve got just the content to get you hyped up. 

Marvel Studios (@marvelstudios​) to keep up with incredible fanart created by the community, Answer Times, and exclusive cast interviews.

Follow the #black panther tag for GIFs, fanart, memes, and more! Don’t forget you can filter any tag from your dashboard for a spoiler-free experience. If you need a reminder for how to do that, check out this handy Tips page.

[elizabeth-karenina]

YO I GOT TAGGED

nine people you’d like to get to know better

Thank you so much for the tag, @montanabohemian

last song: "I Believe In Love" by Lily Collins (Mirror Mirror soundtrack)

favorite color: sapphire blue, royal purple, light pink, emerald green, burgundy red, and chocolate brown.

currently watching: I rewatched Interview With the Vampire (2022) in honor of the second season coming out next month, and I am back on my vampire/Gothic horror bullshit, y'all.

sweet/savory/spicy: Outing myself as the gluttonous asshole that I am, but I truly love and appreciate all three flavors. You gotta have savory and spicy together, and then have something sweet for dessert. There's no other way to eat, if you ask me.

relationship status: Empress Elizabeth of Singledom, if you please, commoner. *extends hand for you to kiss my ring*

current obsession: Interview With the Vampire, obviously. I'm still lowkey obsessed with Shadow and Bone and One Piece, but I'm also currently planning on rewatching Studio Ghibli movies, because I periodically go back on my Miyazaki bullshit tbh.

last thing you googled: ....Mesoamerican societies. *hides my face and blushes* LOOK. I'm currently reading Aztec by Gary Jennings, and I'm completely fascinated and enamored. I'm particularly interested in the Aztec and Mayan cultures, and if anyone has any biographies or histories about them, please send them my way!

nine people to tag: @virginiaisforvampires, @1980s-jean-ralphio, @miumiumacaron, @malglories, @ofallingstar, @clytenmestra, @nellygwyn, @stray-kaz, @wifeofbath, @magalis, @stcndupeight (because I'm a cheater) (no pressure!)

[archaeology-findings]

hello!

i have a question as googles been largely unhelpful with how much there is and how i dont know where to look.

i want to give a character of mine a nickname that correlates to "mama bear" but remaining neutral in the parent phrase if possible. they would be a nagual shape shifter (mostly bear shape) ranger and that type of theriantrope is from mesoamerican mythology and fits best in my case so id hope to find something in that language range.

i looked through tags and blogs and hoping you may be able to help. if you don't thats absolutely okay as it's kinda out of nowhere and niche thing to ask.

regardless of if you answer or not , hope you have a good day

Hi, thanks for asking me!

I have almost no knowledge of American languages, so I decided to do some research. I started by looking for entries in dictionaries of various meso-american and Native American languages (I'm not sure which would be more useful). I tried to go for some I've heard of as a British person but I'll include my sources if you want to go look at some of the other languages I found resources for.

I couldn't find a direct word for mama bear in any of them, so instead I found the words for 'bear' and 'parent' respectively. Maybe you could combine both words into one nickname, or pick ones from different languages.

Maya languages:

There are several words for bear depending on the specific language, I've found chab (source)

Parent is onel or onelbil (source)

Kichwa/Quechua:

Bear is ukumari (source)

Mother is mama, father is tayta or yaya (source)

Choctaw:

Bear is nita (source)

Mother is ishki, father is iki (source)

Osage:

Bear is wasape (source)

Mother is enah (source)

Lakota Sioux:

Bear is mato (source)

Mother is Iná, father is Até (source)

Cheyenne:

Bear is náhkohe (source)

Parent is -né'ame (source)

Navajo:

Bear is shash (source)

Mother is amá, father is ataaʼ (source)

Feel free to reblog this with your own ideas or corrections of my findings. This is my first foray into Native American languages and I found it really interesting!

[callipraxia]

Well, folks, here it is. The ATOTS review. It...really could not have been done together with the NWHS review, that was a silly idea. Here is a link to a Google doc with the previous S2 reviews arranged in chronological order, if you want to catch up on those (not sure many people saw the second part of the NWHS review) and don't want to deal with wading through tags and reblogs of reblogs and such. That said...

A Tale of Two Stans

1) And now here we are. A Tale of Two Stans. Aka, the episode that proves you can break the “writing rules” if you’re good enough, since an info-dump like this would normally be a no-no, and yet…well, here we go:

2) Aww, tiny Ford. Why would there be a boarded up stash of mesoamerican gold in New Jersey? Did you also do that thing Dipper does where sometimes he doesn’t really know what a big word means? Possible reference to the whole mesoamerican salamander thing? 

3) Oh, Ford did kinda make it into the opening sequence, didn’t he? Last picture to fall on the stack before the title card of the Mystery Crew. Kinda fitting, given that despite being very important from here on out, he still holds himself a bit aloof from most of the cast for the majority of that time. 

4) I know why the writers had to include that awkward “brother!” line (so people catching up would remember, “oh, yeah, Stan said that this person was the Author of the Journals and his brother…and then the camera revealed he meant twin brother,” and so they could avoid calling Ford anything for a little while), but it was just…awkward. We see in flashbacks that Stan did sometimes call him “Stanford,” so I have to wonder if anyone would have noticed had Stan gotten halfway through the word and then gotten socked in the jaw. Or heck, even just called him “Ford” - though I’ve gathered that enough of the fandom had already guessed there were twins and one was called Stanley by this point that they might have actually said “wait, what?” upon Stan bringing forth “his” rarely-heard second syllable at the sight of his brother. 

5) …And then you see that however clubby they were in the flashback, something has clearly gone Very Wrong in the interim. Or would that be apparent to someone viewing this in isolation, I wonder? Stan’s repeatedly remarked that he’s been working on his project for thirty years, and Powers had previously implied that the machine did…something…thirty years ago in “Scaryoke.” Perhaps someone thought Mr. Mysterious Man With No Name was just very, very confused…and then got to the rest of the episode. 

…Though once you’ve seen the rest of the series and especially if you’ve spent far, far too much of your life dissecting Ford’s character on a molecular level, it is noteworthy in its way that all he did was punch Stan. Does he have a bit of a “do not shoot people who closely resemble relatives” policy? Considering the things we know about the multiverse, such a policy could probably have gotten him killed fifteen times over even assuming he didn’t stumble into a parallel Earth where the Shapeshifter had escaped, eaten Stan, and set up shop just to wait for the person it *really* wanted to kill to come back….

Hm. If the Shapeshifter stayed in one form for long enough, would it age the way that form would? I have no idea, my brain is wandering off on tangents again. Anyway, back to the episode. 

6) I am…unsure what to make of the fact Ford a) instantly recognized this individual as ‘his’ Stan, despite being aware of others existing, b) immediately figured out Stan is responsible for the portal restarting, without even checking to see if there are other people in the room, implying he isn’t altogether surprised that Stan would do this, and c) gets mad about it and launches into an argument as though picking right back up where he left off thirty years ago. And Stan goes straight from…all kind of emotions to sarcasm “some kind of…sci-fi sideburn dimension?”) with just as little hesitation. 

7) “Just because you’re family.” Dang, this makes Stan’s outburst at the end of the episode that much more painful to think about. 

8) “Stan, you didn’t tell me there were children down here.” That…would have been one of the upsides of giving the guy time to say…much of anything before you started yelling, Ford. Just saying.

9) Oh gosh, poor Dipper. Just…poor Dipper. 

10) “Also maybe the entire U.S. government.” “The WHAT?!” That…was some pretty impressive lede-burying, Stan. 

11) “Okay, it’s all right.” There’s Ford, never wanting to admit he’s completely lost control of the situation (I might not have noticed this, but happen to have reread the Ford essay of doom this morning)

12) Gotta compliment the animators on the scene where Ford (completely unaware he’s doing so) drops the bombshell that he’s not Stanley. The camera isn’t really focused on Stan in particular, but he has an utterly “oh [redacted] this is gonna go over like a lead balloon” expression on his face even before Mabel says his name is Stanford.

13) You know Stan was deliberately crafting his retelling of his childhood, focusing on the boat and how they were always a team and etc. Of course, we know from later sections that Stan isn’t necessarily telling the kids everything he remembers (he may not have narrated the scene with Crampelter to them, for instance) but his wording in the speaking bits are clearly trying to remind Ford of “good times.” 

14) If you look closely, when Stan jumps into the science fair picture, Ford momentarily looks…something. An expression of consternation is observable. Considering what he later says to Dipper about how being a twin’s a very claustrophobic experience, and the fact they both get called to the office when only one of them was wanted…yeah, I’m going with the theory that Ford wasn’t quite as happy as Stan might have liked to think for a while before the Incident proved the straw that broke the camel’s back. In the beach scene, Tiny Ford muses on whether there is a place where “freaks like me” fit in. I think this sums up a subtle but important difference in the characters: Ford wanted to find a place in society that would accept him, while Stan’s goal was just to get away from it and find a place where neither of them would need acceptance anymore. Which makes it interesting that Ford’s sometimes perceived as the ‘loner’ twin - Ford himself might want to think that, but truth is, he’s wanted to be amongst people since he was a small child, he just couldn’t figure out their social behaviors well enough to remotely compensate for having an unusual physical feature. On one hand, he can function much better when he’s truly on his own than Stan can, but on the other, one reason why Bill might have found Stan harder to manipulate is because of how very exclusive the list of people with opinions Stan actually cares about seems to be. He’s much more comfortable being an outsider…just so long as he has that little group of people on his side. Without them, however…not so much.

15) Why on Earth did the receptionist call “Pines twins” instead of just one of them? Was it just assumed Stan would show up whether called or not (if only out of confusion), or just a habit of everyone treating them as so much of a unit that even the school staff had to remind itself “oh, yeah, this isn’t actually some ‘person with two personalities’ deal, they’re separate people who are in fact capable of walking down hallways independently.”

16) Oh gosh, I just now noticed that the ears are drawn just as…blank things, and now I can’t unsee it. 

17) Hi, Principal Guy? I hate you. Just for the record. I think Caryn might agree with me; blink and you’ll miss it, but she clearly gives the guy some kind of Look when he gets to that “and his name’s Stanley” bit, and it could be interpreted as a glare.

(18) Seriously, this...the school sections just anger me for very specific reasons...not least of which is how, er, close to accurate it kinda is in some ways, regardless of how far off it is in others. I have relatives in the same age range as the Stans. One of them once had a teacher snidely remark that he’d pull the hood of his sweater up over his head, too, if he was as ugly as her; he then punished her for said rule infraction by making her walk home after school in the rain. The guy was eventually made to apologize to her very unimpressed and irate mother, but the fact remains – he felt perfectly comfortable saying that out loud to a student’s face in the seventies, just as Ford is the only person in the room here who seems to fully realize ‘wait, that was...not really so much a compliment to me as a setup for insulting Stan, and that’s kinda messed up from both directions.’ Now, I work in education, so I know the system is still seriously screwed up in lots of ways...but at least there would be a reasonable expectation of negative consequences for anyone who said something like that to a student or parent these days.)

19) Setting, briefly, aside how much I’d like to kick the principal character and then give him a lengthy lecture on why he sucks as an educator on every possible front...his remarks about Stan potentially not finishing high school are the reason why I’ve always favored the timeline which puts this in the second half of their junior year of high school instead of their senior year. If it was senior year, after all, then Stan could have continued to coast on Ford’s papers for the rest of the term, or – in the extremely unlikely event Ford just went straight to college without passing Go or collecting 200 diplomas or anything like that – just the school handwaving him through. It only makes sense if he had at least a solid, not-started semester left to fail spectacularly in, and a year left seems more reasonable.

20) This would, however, mean that Filbrick did not kick one of his kids out a couple of months before the kid was eighteen (which still would have been a deplorable thing to do), but a sixteen-year-old. So yeah, kicks and lectures to Filbrick, too.

21) Stan, you’re breaking my heart here. How. Many. Times. In this review set have I mentioned that you’d solve a lot more of your problems if you just told people what they were instead of being defensive and making attempts at jokes and just generally deflecting the situation. I mean, you probably weren’t going to get the outcome you wanted even if you had communicated, but you might have not, y’know, gotten disowned as a teenager, thrown out on the street, and left to fend for yourself and therefore almost inevitably slip into a life of crime.

22) If Stan didn’t intentionally smash the thing, he...probably shouldn’t have phrased the lead-up to the Science Fair Incident that way in his voice-over.

23) it’s kind of interesting to note how far back Stan’s tendency to talk to inanimate objects goes - one assumes he was projecting Ford onto the Journals when he would seemingly monologue to those, but who was he really talking to when he told the machine it was “all your fault!” Thinking back on what I said in my “Little Gift Shop of Horrors” reviews…his attempts to dissociate Ford’s academic giftedness from his base personality, his inability to communicate…it’s tempting to wonder if he’s kind of speaking to Ford when he’s ranting at the machine, too. He might not realize it consciously - would probably go to any lengths to avoid recognizing the fact, actually - but….

24) A lot of people have commented on how stupid the college admissions board bit is (how it’s extremely implausible that they wouldn’t at least look over the work he put into the thing, how they give their school a bad name being rude, etc.), but have an extra point from me: why was an asterfladjik perpetual motion machine being kept right out in the open with the other science fair projects, anyway? For all we know, Crampelter did the majority of the damage in the interim just for spite or something. Or Blendin, or...get the picture? The irresponsibility of whoever was in charge of the exhibits is probably at least as much to blame as anyone else for things going awry there.

25) Stan cost “our family” potential millions. Not “your brother.” “Our family.” The Pines tendency toward groupthink really isn’t just a Stan and Mabel thing, they all have it to some degree – unless, of course, one interprets things as uncharitably as possible, in which case Filbrick and Stan might both use “our family” and “this family” as a cover for “me,” to make a totally selfish objective look better….

Yeah, I know I say I have fun doing it, and I do – but too much character analysis can…kinda start to get to you after a while. Become involuntary. Prompt you to put forward these possibilities in public, as if you were still in English 400-something…Engage with caution, kids.

26) Pity Stan didn’t actually, y’know, go into sales. He managed to a) come up with a convincing-looking product as a teenager with no resources, b) presumably talk his way into an opportunity to pitch it to TV, and c) actually sell what looks like a decent number of fake clothes cleaners and shoddy pitchforks. And then just. Keep. doing it. Over and over again (the map showing glimpses of his travels indicates he got into horse racing at some point, doubtless losing his shirt as one generally eventually does when gambling, and…we probably don’t even want to know why he was being chased by guys with machetes outside the country, do we, but apparently he was also hawking lousy tennis rackets in his twenties along with the previously-viewed StanVac.). In a legit sales job, he might well have done all right for himself….

Except, of course, for it being…tricky to get a job outside of manual labor/something in a plant or mill without a diploma, and, perhaps even more importantly…Stan being Stan. His personality would render him utterly unsuited to joining a sewing plant or a cotton mill, at the very least, even if he’d been so inclined (I don’t know much about meat-packing plants or anything like that, but three generations of my family worked in the same sewing plant; decent living, but you had to have social skills more advanced than any of the Pineses demonstrated to flourish in such an environment, and of course you’d never get rich at it), and possibly for working closely with others/in a subordinate position at all. Despite his lack of self-esteem, Stan does not take orders especially well; we see when he tries and fails to call Ford for help (and then lies about it to the kids) that he’s proud as well as touchy and someone who just fundamentally…struggles to stay within the lines dictated by normal society, really. Perhaps it’s a mental illness or other mental issue (his shoplifting could well be indicative of a compulsive tendency as well as his depression and possible Issues post-homelessness, and when his behavior is looked at as a whole, I imagine it would be quite easy to make a case for him as someone with one of the major personality disorders, especially given his extreme emotional volatility. He could also reasonably be interpreted as having ADHD, with an emphasis on the poor-impulse-control aspect. Most likely, there’s more than one thing a psychiatrist could put a label on going on with him, really), but one gets the impression that Stan just…cannot help himself, or at least finds it extremely difficult to do so. Independent business probably really was his best option, all things considered - though under better circumstances, it might have consisted of something like “eventually taking over the business from the old man” or some joint venture with one of his brothers, not, er, endless con games and dodgy product sales. 

27) I do not wish to recall how much time I spent trying to google “universities that were viewed as always second-choice schools in the seventies” and similar terms, trying to pin down where Backupsmore might be/what it might be vaguely based on. 

28) It’s also interesting to contemplate…sure, a kid might want to go to CalTech, and, for whatever reason, might not manage. This does not mean said kid could not still get into a really excellent school which could just as easily be someone else’s first choice…which, frankly, it’s hinted Backupsmore…might have been, looked at from a more objective perspective than Ford’s? Perhaps it didn’t have the good publicity of some others, but Ford seems to have flourished there both academically and (by his standards) socially. That’s where he met Fiddleford, someone he considers even brighter than himself. They had a DDMD group, and this resulted in him noting in the Journal that he had ‘friends’, plural. He made rapid progress in his studies and wrote a nationally-ranked doctoral thesis in at least one of the hard sciences at an age when a lot of folks are still working on undergraduate (we’re never given an exact number, but based on a combination of him noting that he is “in his thirties” six years after arriving in Gravity Falls and a lot of googling about how long standard programs in various areas last, I’m…guessing that to be as far ahead as he says he was, he was probably around 23-24. At most.). This is where he also apparently, for reasons unknown, a) participated in a competition to invent mind control devices for a politician and b) even knew that was what the competition was for, which was…interesting (in a fic, I made this a plot point by saying the people who sponsored that program were from the same government agency as Powers and Trigger). It’s understandable why he might be bitter about having a golden opportunity to go to The Very Best snatched away almost as soon as it was presented to him, but it doesn’t seem like Backupsmore was really all that bad of a school. The dorms comment…I never lived in a dorm, but my understanding is that it’s quite common for them to have these sorts of problems, even at good schools. Just one of those “communal living” things, particularly when the residents are at one of those ages where a lot of them are not much invested in keeping their environments clean and tidy. 

29) Tea club represent! (I am…quite enthusiastic on the subject of hot tea, so I notice when characters have it. Especially when they are Americans, as this can imply that some thought was put into the decision to draw that instead of a coffee cup)

30) “Just…going to ignore that.” Oh, gosh, poor Dipper. It’s funny - if you just watched this episode, you’d walk away with the impression Mabel and Ford were going to get along fabulously while Ford thought “...what is wrong with that one?” about Dipper. But for Gompers, I guess….

31) Just saying…Fiddleford apparently had a pretty nice house. Unless, of course, the implication is that he, Emma-May, and Tate were literally living in the garage and that the house belonged to someone else, but this seems unlikely. He also seems to have had some business going on his own already, plus whatever Emma-May might have brought in (I’ve written her as a schoolteacher before, and there’s no reason, really, why she shouldn’t be in much any profession one might wish to place her in. It was 1980. Everybody was on the Pill and women were allowed to have private bank accounts even after marriage. Maybe she was the breadwinner, I’m just noting that Fiddleford hardly seems to have been a starving visionary, one way or another)

32) I love the implication that Ford didn’t bother with comments like “hello” or “this is Stanford,” but just sprang “multi-dimensional meta-vortex” on Fiddleford in the first sentence…and Fiddleford just instantly did the calculations in his head to determine it “mathematically feasible” without missing a beat. 

33) In the field of detail work - it could be interpreted differently at the time, but we see Fiddleford being a little sloppy with where he put his feet, and them both looking grim just before launching the dummy - all in keeping with the eventual reveals that they were both extremely sleep-deprived and had just had a nasty quarrel the night before. 

34) Hate to say it, Stan, but…frame of mind your brother was in at the time, I wouldn’t have entirely ruled out biting under the right circumstances. 

35) Stan is the quickest man on two feet with a snappy comeback. Not always to his benefit, but guess you gotta work with the skills you have.

36) Ford, on one hand, you’re quite right - Stan really does have no idea what you’re up against. He exists, at this point, 90% in the mundane world, where things are…usually not as dramatic as they are in yours. Out of context, it sounds like you’re just complaining that you have dangerous enemies; Stan’s response to the mailman a few days earlier was to grab a baseball bat on the assumption that anyone who knocked on his door would be an enemy, so that much, he gets completely. On the other hand, Stan is also right - you really do have no idea what he’s been through. Heck, you both robbed the United States government and he’s the only one who got caught for it; I highly doubt you’d been to any prison (at least at this point), much less a South American prison in the seventies, and things were going pretty well for you until…well, frankly, they hadn’t been going all that well for the past two years, but you didn’t realize it until much more recently. On yet another hand, though, Stan - you looked concerned a mere scene ago that Ford might be going off the deep end, and you were kinda right about that. Man answered the door rambling about people stealing his eyes, and he just handed you some tatty, ragged-looking handwritten book that he’d glued a silhouette of his own hand onto like some kind of grade school art project, all while rambling about how you had to take it to the ends of the Earth to prevent terrible destruction. If you know about Bill, of course, this is all perfectly logical…but without that knowledge, Ford doesn’t look like someone being insensitive here, he looks like someone suffering from severe paranoid delusions, possibly having some kind of psychotic episode. Either way, it’s quite obvious there’s something…Very Wrong. 

But then we get back to the theme, boys: communication. Do some of that sometime, won’t you? I mean, you’ve tried everything else, you might as well give this a shot, yeah?

(In real terms, though…this scene is one of the painfully realistic ones. Neither party is thinking straight; for various reasons, neither party may be capable of thinking straight for a sustained amount of time. As an adult who’s seen some Stuff, Stan realizes that there is something…wrong…here…but even leaving aside how frightening it would be to find a relative in that state, and how much you’d try to deny it was as bad as it was by analogizing it to Caryn on a caffeine overdose, this is just Not Something Stan Is Remotely Equipped To Deal With, and wouldn’t really be equipped to deal with even if he didn’t have so many issues of his own. We don’t know how long he’s been traveling, but traveling will wear you out quick enough, and we know the state Ford was in. Neither of them was in anything like any condition to control his temper well even if either had had a better track record than they do, and so, you’ve got two people with anger issues who are playing with incomplete decks here, and who have a lot of personal history…one starts talking over the other, they’re exchanging shots now instead of actually discussing the issue, then next thing you know…yeah. I’ve never actually had it come to blows, but I’ve had a lot of arguments with relatives which played out depressingly similarly, where you’re trying to make a point and the other person jumps in with something else and next thing you know, neither of you is talking about the original subject at all anymore, you’re yelling about something seemingly unrelated. Or possibly even two totally different subjects at once, even though both of you think you’re on the same topic. That’s always…fun….) 

37) I know I was defending Backupsmore a few items ago, but, uh…they didn’t have a single lab safety class in there, Ford? And/or they let you in the lab after you failed one in epic fashion? Cause everything about this screams “I never read the lab safety rules in my life!” 

38) I also have to wonder if…more than just errors that are attributable to Ford being bad at lab safety was at work here, though. Fiddleford put half a foot over the safety line and got sucked in; Stan ran over it and almost to the base of the thing without it affecting him even as Ford, in the same moments, a) could throw a book hard enough to overcome the gravity suspension but b) could not stop himself from going through the Portal. 

39) “That’ll be 99 cents.” Ways You Know This Was Set Before I Was Born….

40) Y’know, I never realized it, but…Lazy Susan changed the course of history. Stan presumably would have either left the store without buying anything or (it is Stan, after all) tried to punch Ma Duskerton in the face before running out the door with the loaf of bread in question if Susan hadn’t happened to mistake him for Ford…and then Toby and Blubbs started telling stories about the “mysterious science guy”’s reputation…and next thing you know, Stan has created the basic idea for the Mystery Shack out of pure desperation. If that hadn’t happened, then nothing else in canon could have proceeded to happen: Stan would probably be dead or permanently in prison by now, Ford would have mysteriously disappeared without a trace when the Northwest Realty people finally came to knock down the door to demand overdue mortgage payments, and Dipper and Mabel would never have come to town. Aside from issues of prophecy and destiny and all that, there’s also just how it’s implied this is the first time Dipper’s had friends…basically ever. They both do a lot of personal growth over that summer, especially him, which they wouldn’t have had otherwise. All because of Lazy Susan, of all people. 

41) 1982. Bread costs 99 cents per loaf. And they all just forked over fifteen dollars apiece. That was rather good money in those days, no wonder Stan’s eyes did that thing upon seeing it presented to him. 

41) Oh, Lazy Susan also inspired “Mr. Mystery”? Dang, Susan, you are surprisingly important! 

42) I’ve noted it before, but I’ll note it again: look at the surroundings of Stan’s mirror in the aging montage. At first, we see a bunch of papers about Stan himself. Next shot, still a lot of papers about Stan/his business, but he’s also taped a picture of himself and Ford as small children to the wall beside it - motivation, I suppose. Then in the final shot, he’s replaced his own “Employee of the ‘Month’ plaque with one declaring Soos the Employee of the Year, and where the picture of himself and Ford was, there’s now a framed photograph of Dipper and Mabel on the fishing trip. I’ll be the first to point out his occasionally questionable motives and ethics and multitude of character flaws, but credit where credit is due: man built a life for himself through genuine work (hey, making up tall tales is a valid job, what else do you call what authors do?)...and then was prepared to throw it all out the window, as he *had* to know that there were going to be…issues…with having killed off his original identity if he really did get Ford back/when Ford got back and saw the length of ‘his’ alleged rap sheet for the past thirty years. He had some personal motivations, of course (he felt guilty about what had happened; he wanted the relationship they’d had as children back; etc), but considering how much he had to lose by 2012, it’s hard not to give Stan some credit when deciding whether or not he genuinely thought he was doing the right thing. 

43) “The town. My family. Your parents. Even you kids.” Ah, this is why I assumed that Stan was just airbrushed out of the family’s collective memory after his disownment and that nobody knew he was really Stanley all those years - he lumps ‘your parents’ and ‘you kids’ together as distinct units, implying that ‘my family’ would mean his own parents and presumably the twins’ grandfather. Also, I find Ford’s expression very difficult to interpret here. 

44) And then there’s one of those moments when it’s hinted that Dipper and Stan are a lot more alike than either of them might be fully comfortable with - as soon as he’s heard the story, Dipper instantly apologizes for his…actually extremely reasonable doubts and anger in the first part of the episode. It’s not just that even Stan would have trouble believing a tale as tall as the truth of his life: it’s that Stan never told them a tale to begin with, which just left them to draw their own conclusions. I…really can’t think of a sensible interpretation Dipper could have reached other than “this guy is a murdering identity thief who isn’t related to me at all and…even if he doesn’t want to end the world, this is still probably not good, whatever he’s doing” with the evidence he had at the time, especially after the conversation in “Scaryoke” where Stan ‘fessed up to lying about the town and promised that was the end of it. It would, to some extent, be fair to be a bit upset with Stan about this even after learning the truth…but he isn’t. It really was for the family, then? Oh, ok, we’re good. 

45) I know the random utility of the totem pole is a bit contrived, but I’ll give ‘em their due: we did see in “Scaryoke” that Stan had security cameras showing the exterior of the property on monitors in the lab, so that’s actually a reasonably sensible place for some electronics to have been after all, I guess.

46) Ford admittedly did a decent enough improv job right up until he fumbled the technology, but it was a good thing Powers and Trigger were a bit dazed and confused - otherwise, they…might have noticed that his “very real report” was actually a picture of Mabel, outlined in flames and apparently laughing maniacally beneath a caption of ‘what hath science wrought?!’, considering it was in plain view of everyone for several shots there. 

47) I just realized that the timeline I established once means I almost certainly wrote three novels where Ford is stuck in his just-left-the-Portal outfit: aka, high-collared black rags that make him look a bit like a vampire that’s recently been in a knife fight. I’m…sure this did wonders for him all the times it would have helped him out to be perceived as a Respectable Sort Of Person We Should Listen To….

48) Anyone else really, really want to know what they were talking about for…at least a while, considering it was sunset (but still very much not dark at all) when Soos left the porch and full dark with stars out when it cut to the infamous mirror conversation? Especially since the fact that they were still talking fairly civilly - even joking - at that point meant that the previous conversation…probably was actually going reasonably well, or at least as well as could be expected, all things considered? 

Well, there. I did it. A Tale of Two Stans, a full reaction. It only took the entire day….

....Eh, worth it.

[like-dogs--shianni]

Unusual OC Associations: Variel Lavellan Edition

Tagged by no one, but I liked this too much to miss it! Tagging @isayashai , @ghoulsbeard , @antivantalon , and anyone else who feels like doing this. Answers under the cut :)

Seasoning: Saffron. The plant itself is easy to grow with a little care and yields a violet flower. The spice comes from the plant’s crimson stigmas and has a subtle earthy-sweet flavor. It takes time and dedication to gather saffron, as it does to get to know Variel in her guardedness and depth — proof that many good things take time. Saffron also represents love, healing, and mental strength.

Weather: A warm afternoon just after a heavy rainfall. Sunlight makes the wet streets glitter and the earth bloom with the scent of petrichor. The memory of a storm is fading away and would feel like little more like a dream, if not for the last rumbles of thunder in the distance. The air feels new, refreshed, and the day begs to go play in puddles.

Color: Plum, indigo, pale gold.

Sky: The hazy, diluted, dark blue of the night sky, still peppered with glittering stars, as it begins turning lighter and lighter into dawn.

Magic Power: Aura reading. The ability to sense the "energy" of another, including their emotions, health status, or moral alignment.

House Plants: Moth orchid. Often lonesome, but brings the symbology of beauty and joy to a room.

Weapon: Meteor hammer. A soft weapon that can take opponents by surprise, as it gathers inertia by swinging in various directions before striking. Long-range and dual-ended, it allows to perform defense and offense at the same time. Alternatively, a book thrown at someone’s head.

Subject: Translation. Variel is fascinated by the language and its trappings, the prospect of breaching gaps in understanding by bringing sources of meaning together. Knowledge is lovely by itself, but even better when used to foster connectedness.

Social Media: Wordpress. She has a dozen abandoned blogs from different periods of her life, full of poems, reflections, and unfinished stories.

Make Up Product: Mascara. Variel’s eyes are one feature she likes about herself and play a significant role in her communication style, earnest and moving. Doesn’t hurt to have a little extra oomph when she stares into your soul or resolves conflict with some strategic eyelash batting.

Candy: Fruit confections (aka gummies). A burst of flavor that is almost natural except enhanced for an unbridled sugar rush.

Fear: Becoming untethered. This includes losing the people she cares about, naturally, but also losing herself; to oppression, to expectations, to the confusion of existing. She is caught between wanting to be free and fearing that she will fly into the sun if allowed.

Ice Cube Shape: Ice chips. Delicate, simple, and yet great for staying hydrated + sensory stimulation to bring the mind back to reality.

Method of Long Distance Travel: Caravan. Sitting in the back of a supply cart, journaling anonymously, watching the scenery pass by.

Art Style: Expressionism. Based on subjective perspectives of the world, uses radical distortion and vibrant hues to evoke moods or ideas.

Mythological Creature: Feathered Serpent. In Mesoamerican mythologies, examples include Quetzalcoatl, which represented the duality of body and spirit, life, light, and knowledge.

Piece of Stationery: That one pen that writes with just the right texture to be soothing. Not too thin or scratchy, not so full of ink that it splotches.

3 Emojis: 🕊️🌩️📚

Celestial Body : Supermoon. A celestial body already known for its mysticism becomes even more striking when it is closest to us; but even then, it remains at an unbreachable distance. Associated with the enhancing and deepening of emotions.

[wint3r-h3art]

Alright Bong, buckle up. I got some ideas for Professor!Namor with Staff!Reader, office romance, kind of AU 👀 I know Professor x Student is what gets people going (tbh as a recent college graduate, it creeps me out, especially because I have such close relationships with some of my professors that I kept in touch with). And this is going to be based on my experience working in academia as staff, but here goes. Feel free to add on and make it smutty for our fellow Whoretas 😛

Professor Namor is recently tenured and teaches Art History with an emphasis on Mesoamerican civilizations. At least once a year (or every couple years, depending if funding permits), he takes a group of students to Yucatan to assist in his research particularly on the ancient Mayan civilizations. He has a reputation of being the "tough" professor- tough grader where you have to work to get the grade you want. He doesn't give out weekly assignments because he finds it busy work and he doesn't want to grade through all that, he's much into activities, discussions, presentations, and projects. He's either hated or loved, but the students who do love him say he wants you to learn. Even his fellow colleagues and other professors say he can be a bit hard-headed at times because he's defensive and protective of the art department (especially when it comes to funding, the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences are just as important as STEM, so stop giving them the short end of the stick). There's an inside joke amongst the art department where they say he's K'uk'ulkan, the feathered serpent god, because a few years ago, a student joked that Namor looked a little too like K'uk'ulkan and the name just stuck.

Enter you. New staff member and one of the program analysts of the art history department. You work closely with faculty in helping them hire student assistants to assist with their research and ensure they get properly compensated, purchase items for their projects, etcetera. Professor Namor is really the only faculty member you're comfortable with because he's so easy to talk to and was more welcoming compared to the other tenured-track professors who are a bit entitled and stuffy. You two get along, often inviting each other to coffee or lunch dates on campus. His students get a whiff of it and decide to play matchmaker ... 👀👀👀

No I haven't thought long and hard about this, and no I may or may not write this someday! Who knows, I sure don't!

OMG PLEASE IF YOU TURN THIS INTO A STORY, PLEASE TAG ME!!! I would love to read this jajdjjskskdk

I NEED THIS OML

Your amazing idea needs to turn into a fic, and if you do write it, I will be the first to read is2g ANSJJSKW

[bcbdrums]

how do you feel about deus ex machina.?

do you mean when a character magically possesses all the skills and/or knowledge/equipment necessary to complete a task?

like...wade having every gadget for kim imaginable? or every gadget can do what's necessary despite defying scientific explanation?

or another fandom... bbc sherlock, he knows everything about everything no matter what the circumstance? and the original book canon holmes as well, pretty much...

well, for characters for whom it makes sense? like sherlock holmes and kim possible, the latter's tag line literally being "she can do anything." yeah for those chars and situations, it makes sense to me. that's kind of essential to who they are. just like how mcgyver or the a-team can finagle their way out of any situation.

when it's totally out of character it might break the magic for me. like if ron suddenly had vast knowledge of ancient mesoamerican mythology to get them out of some pyramid of death traps and is reading the heiroglphys... or if drakken suddenly had a mastery of ballroom dance or could speak fluent fuzhonese... impossible? no. wayyy out of left field? yeah, yeah it is.

and like i said, if it breaks the magic...then is it worth including? if it suddenly feels like "not the character" or "not the show/story" whether part of canon or fanfic... that's when i'd start wondering if it's worth it.

but, that's the challenge in good writing, whether for screen/animation or books/fanfic... a good writer will convince you without breaking the magic. and that's what i look for. i want to be drawn deeper into the magic of a world. i guess that's how i feel about it.

thanks for the ask!!

[lunarimpact]

if I do return to post my writing, I’m not going to tag it beyond my personal blog tagging system. big if, probably wont. I also wont be discussing f.go beyond a shallow reference here and there.

I have chosen the path of my own health and dropped the game bc it didn’t make me happy, it fucking stressed me out. and I am tired of hating every fucking character design or choice and letting it eat away at me as if I had any personal say.

ex.  I am Puerto Rican, I don’t have a stake in the Mesoamerican characters, however I will say that the design choices were ass, and bullshit. and wrong. the whole batch of them, with the exception of fucking Camazotz, were not only straight up disappointing, but fucking sucked. and I should have known bc of the treatment of Quetz in the first place.

anyway.

I’m tired.

[lightdancer1]

Me coming back to the Azula and Himiko fanfic after several months of forgetting i was reading it, and opening the fic to where i left off only to be absolutely blasted by the dai lei brainwashing / revealing the truth of the world / Yangchen v Agni spacetime brawl chapters.

Fantastic fic but absolutely incomprehensible place to jump back in with my poor memory. Your amazing fucked up Omnipresent gods do&say such poetic whimsical dastardly things. Is there a meta post you can direct me to that you talk about these Outsider gods in ?

(Also, is it the “same” Agni in this fic & your Dragon of the west fic, as in, Agni is Omni-universal and is aware of what is going on in both these AUs?)

My tags 'Urhalzantrani' and 'God on the Gilded Throne' are the ones to look up there.

And no, most of the time I have Agni as a deity who incorporates a mashup of Huitzilopotchli and Amaterasu, as per the Fire Nation's Mesoamerican past and Japanese mirrors. With more than a few aspects to not copy real life religions for a fanfic which I consider a disrespect to real life religions.

[vaqro]

𝙲𝙷𝙰𝚁𝙰𝙲𝚃𝙴𝚁 / 𝙱𝙻𝙾𝙶 𝙰𝚂𝚂𝙾𝙲𝙸𝙰𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽.

ANIMAL : the coyote. ㅤㅤthis animal symbolizes, un mesoamerican culture, a warrior's might. it also represents the aztec deity huehuecóyotl, known as the old coyote. god of dance and music, generally portrayed as mankind's "elder Brother", a creator, seducer, trickster. western anthropology suggests the coyote as a symbol mediator between life and death.

COLOR ( S ) : deep browns, maroons and dark reds, oranges and nudes. white and light blue.ㅤㅤ essentially the picture of a classic western, the american southwest.

MONTH : april and october. ㅤㅤthe months of change in seasons, which the colors come and go, which dead things rise one way or another.

SONG ( S ) : desperado, by johnny cash. ㅤㅤ [ㅤdesperado, why don't you come to your senses? / you been out ridin' fences for so long now / oh, you're a hard one / but I know that you've got your reasons / these things that are pleasin' you / can hurt you somehow / ㅤ( . . . )ㅤ now it seems to me, some fine things / have been laid upon your table / but you only want the things that you can't get / desperado, oh, you ain't gettin' no younger / your pain and your hunger, they're drivin' you home / and freedom, oh freedom / well, that's just some people talkin' / your prison is walking / through this world all alone / ㅤ( . . . )ㅤ desperado, why don't you come to your senses? / come down from your fences, and open the gate / it may be rainin', but there's a rainbow above you / you better let somebody love you /ㅤ ( . . . )ㅤ before it's too late ].

DAY OR NIGHT : the middle of the day, ㅤㅤwith the sun high up in the sky. but just as equally, a midnight with a full moon.

PLANT : yucca flowers, ㅤㅤstate symbol of new mexicoㅤ — ㅤthough not as visually applesing as other kinds of lilies, it represents also new opportunities, rebirth, loyalty and protection.

SMELL : a cloying and distinct fragrance of ash and gunpowder, bourbon and summer rains.ㅤㅤ personally, he keeps himself as clean and unassuming as possible.

GEMSTONE : jade. ㅤㅤacross many civilizations and cultures, the jade was symbolically associated with life and death. it is no different in mesoamerican culture.ㅤㅤ turquoise,ㅤㅤ a symbol of great fortune in old aztec culture, carried on and out to symbolize foremost hope.

FOOD : a traditional american breakfast,ㅤㅤ rich in fatty meats, eggs and carbs, accompanied by a fresh pot of coffee. ironically, he is vegetarian.

SEASON : summer. ㅤㅤmid summer, to be more specific. hot and dry and and seemingly endless.

ASTROLOGICAL SIGN : aries. ㅤㅤferocious, impulsive, courageous — the kind that leads with the head and acts with the heart.

ELEMENT ( S ) : earth & fire. ㅤㅤnurturing and creative, impulsive and wild.

DRINK : bourbon & whiskey.ㅤㅤ hard liquor in general.

tagged by: my fellow lesbian @femtaile

tagging: @vanctua , @misaentropy [ ashe ] , @arainaie , @pulchral [ hanzo ] , @motife [ junkrat ] , @dpsdiff [ mercy ] .