#Say My Name (single)

[bolithesenate]

Satine Kryze should not be a sympathetic character.

A complex and tragic one? Sure. Every day of the week.

But she did not 'have a point', neither in-universe, not outside of the sw framework. She isn't a hero, neither of her own story, nor of someone else's. There is no way she wasn't a tool. You should not look at her and think 'this woman has done nothing wrong and what ultimately happened to Mandalore was to no part her fault'.

Because guys. Friends. Strangers on the interwebs.

Pacifism doesn't work.

And it certainly wouldn't have worked in motherfucking Star Wars – the 'wars' is literally in the title – for a system or series of systems who wanted to stay neutral.

YOU DON'T STAY NEUTRAL FOR LONG BY JUST SAYING 'YEAH, NO THANKS <3' TO A LARGE-SCALE CONFLICT.

source: I am Swiss, we've looked at this in history class. Extensively.

Satine was a dreamer (thanks Obi-Wan) who was allowed to keep her delusions because they actively benefitted Palpatine's plans. And that's something you can quote me on. There is literally no other reason (apart from supremely bad writing but we'll leave that aside here) for her and her little friends' 'Alliance of Neutral Systems' or whatever to be allowed to exist.

Not that they were neutral in any way, shape or form, by the way.

So yeah sorry to the Satine stans, but you're idolizing a character that was written exclusively and specifically for Obi-Wan's manpain and who, in-universe, was a supremely bad politician. Because the level of mental dissonace needed to factually be a Republic System, have a seat in the fucking Republic Senate, rely upon their military for aid while actively proclaiming that All Violence Is Bad And Barbaric one sentence later AND THEN CLAIM TO BE NEUTRAL IN THE WHOLE CONFLICT – it's just mind-blowing. Even moreso that people actually look at this character and see something aspirational in her.

Again, I'll gladly dissect her character any day of the week. She is fascinating because of all the implications her existence as a head of state carries with it, as well as her deeply complicated family history and her relation to mandalorian culture.

But it just grates on me personally that that all gets ignored in favor of her being some sort of icon of white american saviorism (bc that's literally what she is) and her objectively bad political takes being treated like they are the only correct stance to be taken during the Clone Wars/Mandalorian Civil Wars.

If you think pacifism works and actually lets you stay neutral, I desperately urge you to open a history book. Because those two are mutually exclusive. Especially in the scenario that Star Wars paints.

[buttered-toasty]

Might as well write this post while I wait on the bus

“What the hell do you need photos of the inside of a van for” -my roommate, one month ago

Also colors for this one were picked from the palette of this song’s album cover

[aardvaark]

im so glad that we never get a clear picture of sophie’s background in leverage & i hope we never do. however i also really like making up various, often conflicting backstories for her in my head. perhaps they’re all backstories for an alias of hers, ones she laid to rest back in season two.

[glitterfish1272]

so this is what shipping rarepairs is like.... fascinating

[thepoisonroom]

'I flirted with the idea that instead of being trans that I was just a cross-dresser (a quirk, I thought, that could be quietly folded into an otherwise average life) and that my dysphoria was sexual in nature, and sexual only. And if my feelings were only sexual, then, I wondered, perhaps I wasn’t actually trans.

I had read about a book called The Man Who Would Be Queen, by a Northwestern University professor who believed that transwomen who were attracted to women were really confused fetishists, they wanted to be women to satisfy an autogynephilia. And though I first read about this book in the context of its debunkment and disparagement, I thought about the electricity of slipping on those tights, zipping up those boots, and a stream of guilt followed. Maybe this professor was right, and maybe I was only a fetishist. Not trans, just a misguided boy.

About a year later, on the Internet, I come across a transwoman who added a unique message to the crowd refuting this professor. Oh, I wish I remember who this woman was, and I wish even more that I could do better than paraphrase her, but I remember her saying something like this: “Well, of course I feel sexy putting on women’s clothing and having a woman’s body. If you feel comfortable in your body for the first time, won’t that probably mean it’ll be the first time you feel comfortable, too, with delighting in your body as a sexual thing?”'

-Casey Plett, Consciousness

[retributory]

gx is so crazy how do you explain to someone with a surface-level understanding of what yugioh is that the series after dm features a hermaphroditic dragon-demon card spirit fusing their soul with the main character, who also has apparently been continually reincarnating for 100s of years with the card spirit's primary goal being to protect him, and when they embrace to fuse he says they shall never part again because they will forever and always from that point on be one jointed soul and body, and also he commits a borderline genocide against the card spirit race (???) and straight up kills some of his friends (they get better), and also there's a character who got his leg broken during an archeological dig and they replaced the broken bone with a dinosaur bone (???) and now he's like part dino and has fucking dino dna (?????????) and they send him to space as his dinosona to destroy a satellite that is about to destroy the earth (????????????), and also one of the teachers in the school (seto kaiba's duel school for dueling) is a homunculus and when he dies his soul (???) gets eaten by his cat and for the rest of the series he is living (?) inside of the cat's body, and also on top of all that theres a cool rival character as expected of a show targeted towards young boys who looks cool but in actuality he's lame as hell like he canonically stinks like shit cause he doesn't wash his clothes and he joins a cult and they get him out of the cult by reminding him that his real personality is being a rancid little stinky smelly bastard loser and no one likes him and he spends the entire series getting completely dunked on and also his main archetype is these things:

and then you have to concede that at the end of the day it is still an anime for a children's card game designed to sell the cards so if you ever try to explain the impact this had on your developing mind at 7 years old you'll sound sick

[evie-doesnt-write]

“Why doesn’t Toshiro just tell Laios that’s not his name??” He’s an immigrant, next question

[other-peoples-coats]

ok so we all agree that jedi sports are just like, ludicrously insane, right?

like jedi baseball is really only technically sort of like baseball, if you squint very hard and are also very drunk. the ball is a stunner shot, the bat is your lightsaber, and it's less 'catching to throw out' and more 'deflecting it directly at the runner'.

Jedi soccer has a special pitch with re-inforced walls and ceiling because the last time a ball escaped the pitch it went through three buildings.

the less said about jedi track and field events, the better.

[notaplaceofhonour]

well fuck Michael Hobbes is downplaying & denying antisemitism in the Pro-Palestine movement again

[satorisoup]

people will think im ordinary until they say one (1) thing about tmnt and all of a sudden im explaining the entire lore starting from the 1990’s movie & why donatello is the best turtle i fear… T^T

tag limit fights me… i must yap… please listen… SOB </3

[echodrops]

I know I've posted about nothing but my job lately, but I am really struggling right now...

I honestly think one of the greatest failures of our modern education system is that teachers are expected to exhibit patience and forgiveness beyond anything that would be expected in other career fields.

Genuinely, I think the world would be a lot more functional (and better educated) currently if teachers were just allowed to be a little more real with students and tell them that, yeah, actually, it's not acceptable to continue making the same mistake after being corrected on it twelve times.

Of course, I fully understand instructors cannot expect students to master concepts they're never been taught.

But if a concept or rule has been clearly communicated to the student multiple times, it is honestly just not reasonable to expect a high grade while still continuing to make all the same mistakes. If a student refuses to learn the material, they just shouldn't pass. If I give a student a step-by-step video walk-through for how to handle basic formatting and they still fuck it up because they didn't bother to even watch the video, they should lose points. Like is that rocket science???

Imagine being a cashier, being taught the proper procedure for closing out a register multiple times, and then still fucking it up every single time you have to close.

Would you be employed as a cashier for very long? No!

Man, I don't even know. I know I'm just ranting at this point because I'm disappointed, but... Really, I do think that teachers should just be allowed to be a little more real. Sometimes calling people out for not putting in the minimum effort is fair.

If a student makes the same basic mistake after I've corrected them 20 times, it should be socially acceptable for me to tell them to stop wasting my time--and wasting their own time--in a class they don't intend to learn anything from.

I'm so tired...

[bonefall]

As a big sibling with a lil sib with epilepsy, when they read TBC they Honestly thought if they got struck with lightning reciting the lord's prayer they'd be cured like Shadowsight is from their epilepsy. I had a discussion with them on how that's not how it works, but ge was so upset they took it away from Shadowsight that he hasn't picked the books back up and has stated that 'he hopes Ashfur wins and starts a new religion.,'

I do not even know how to respond to this besides saying that your little sibling is 100% right to be pissed and I now also hope Ashfur wins and starts a new religion.

[poisonousquinzel]

"the only reason Harley's called Harley Quinn and not Harleen Quinzel or some other moniker is because the Joker manipulated her into thinking the similarity in her name and the name of a specific type of clown meant they were destined to be together and that means she's intrinsically tied to him forever and can't exist as a character on her own because her origin is tied to him" ass take has gotta be the worst one I've seen as of late,,, like really can't lie it's stuck in my head lol 😭

i wish i could go about life misunderstanding characters this much and thinking that one who's been a canonical domestic abuse victim since her og origin episode / comic, who is partly (story wise) inspired by a real life dv victim who survived

In the afterword, artist Bruce Timm shares that their Harley was based in part on a real-life friend who was stuck in an abusive relationship: “I’m happy to report that the ‘real-life Harley’ did finally break away from her ‘Joker’ and has been happily married to another man for several years now.”

[Source]

is a character who's "girlbossified" when she's allowed to grow past and outside of her abuser himself,, and that that means idk writing her without him dilutes her character and takes away everything interesting and flawed about her? that she should never be written without him / without her world revolving around him, due to him being the catalyst in her origin?

The Joker's part of her origin because he was the root cause of her fall, the villain, the bad guy, the abuser. that doesn't mean she's required to be forever tied to him?

This isn't even a problem in the actual comics or anything. It's just absolutely 100% not.

No one even pretends Joker isn't intrinsically tied to her story, or more specifically her trauma. No one in real life and no one in their universe.

Tim Drake literally mentioned The Joker in like the last chapter of her (2021 - ) comic ffs!!! 😭

"Did the Joker make you want to do that? Do you wanna unpack that, Harley? Do you wanna talk about The Joker?!"

Harley Quinn (2021-) #42

But it's almost like people grow and heal and evolve. Her codependency and shit are flaws that are not permanent and are things she (can) and is working on.

She's riddled with flaws and they've gone nowhere! she's just trying her best to stay afloat and better herself bit by bit because she isn't Dr. Harleen Quinzel anymore, she can never walk into a medical building and apply and expect them to not know who she is upon a singular search in the system.

She's just Harley Quinzel now, she still has the skills and experience and schooling, but she also has a long serious criminal record, severe mental health issues and is living in a city that rightfully does not trust her. She can't go back, she can't get her old life back, and she can't go back to being Her, The OG "New & Improved" Harley Quinn who's world revolved around 1 person and him alone, because she would die.

He'd kill her, maybe not immediately, but he would be the death of her.

And she knows that. It's a lose lose.

The only real option she has is to lay down and die or to survive. To float and swim bit by bit until she finds stable ground.

Until she finds a way to live with herself again.

Harley's "obliviousness" is a coping mechanism that we literally see her dealing with since BTAS.

A warped world view that does in fact make her actions more complex,, and makes the aftermath / come down all the harder for her as she has to grapple with the internal traumatic response to Everything with Joker while also dealing with the world she's waking up to and realizing the real reality of her actions and the actual pain it left behind. It's literally been in her character plain as day since her First Personal Comic from 2000!

It's something taken seriously and something she knows, regardless if she even remembers the crime, that she has a responsibility to take accountability for. She almost lets Clown Hunter execute her because she was involved in his parents death, even though she doesn't remember the night, she trusts Batman enough that if he says she was there, she was. And she's going to own up to being there. She starts a therapy group for ex clowns post Joker War, she's become a (court ordered) professor and during all of these arcs Joker and his influence on her and her life are mentioned and acknowledged and present.

He's not been removed as an intrinsic aspect of her story, but he is no longer the center of her world and that is a good thing.

It's almost like character growth after 30 goddamn years is something that happens.

And! you know who else is intrinsically tied to Harley Quinn's character just as much as The Joker?

Poison Ivy and Batman.

Her three primary connections since the Beginning, since the original series that everyone wants to pretend was so so different about her than it ever was, was Joker, Batman and Ivy.

And a primary goal (Harley wise) for 2/3 people she's been connected to since Batman The Animated Series has literally been to get her away from the 3rd. They've just successfully helped save her in most universes now, even when she's the one who pulls the trigger in the end.

It's been over 4 years since I made this blog and I still cannot wrap my head around this fandom's deep seeded hatred and disdain for actual character development.

"Sorry", but that's just such a disgusting take built on misinformed foundations and idk a personal rage for bad guy characters not being bland, predictable one note entertainment for the rest of their miserable existence in comics until they're shelved for being fucking boring one note d-list characters?

[retroautomaton]

✨ Metropolis Cocktail ✨

Here’s the first few pages of my first full-length comic with the crew, to close out the Halloween season! 🎃

pg. 1, 2, & 3

[moonstruckhaze]

during work yesterday I had the thought that Satoko is the more likely sibling to want kids, and then the image of early-to-mid 20s Sasaki hanging out with said kid would not leave my mind...

[novella-november]

Is this fanfic friendly? I feel like an outlier.

I guess this is my sign it's time to throw together a FAQ post to link to lol.

Yes, every event for this blog is fanfic friendly :D

Though as I mentioned on my Ominous October post, for events that include multiple short stories, I encourage everyone to flex their creativity and take one of their planned short story fanfics, and at least *attempt* to turn one of them into something entirely original; rebuilding a character and story from the ground up to stand on its own two legs is no easy feat, and that is what makes it so fun!

It really gets your creative gears turning, to make an "au of an existing material" to be something entirely original, and you can be pleasantly surprised about the things you come up with!

As a few people say, its not just a matter of "filing the serial numbers off" -- you have to add in just as much *or more* as what you take out when you are turning a fanfiction into something that is original and completely divorced from its original source material / inspiration, and that is a hard, but very rewarding challenge!

Obviously, this is not a requirement (there's no hard requirements for any of the challenges, other than no cheating, including no using AI),

but if you would like an extra challenge for the short story events and you're planning on doing entirely fan-fiction, I highly recommend trying it out at least once, and seeing where it leads you--

you may find yourself pleasantly surprised by what you find down that rabbit hole!