#a growing subgenre

[konakoro]

Starting a list of movies and shows that features people dying horrifically on dance floors

[wyn0rrific]

new music got me inspired to draw dolly!vitus in various outfits ^^ (not pictured: fulgrim getting so h*rny he needs to lie down)

[soft-serve-soymilk]

help I’ve started listening to my chemical romance 😭

[bunnyb34r]

Just word spilling here to get this out of my head

I was thinking lately yknow how people always say stuff like "oh I hate rap" or "anything but country" when music tastes get brought up

I have a theory that the reason why is in how/where they're exposed to said genre initially/most frequently

Like people who hate rap, maybe it's that they don't seek it out on their own bc they typically only ever hear it coming from someone's loud speakers (car speakers bass blasted, on the bus, at school) and they then associate the genre with "loud sound 'intruding' on my personal space"

Or maybe they have racist parental figures and THEY always sneered at rap music when they were a kid so they grew into young adults/adults who hate rap bc of the racial bias they were influenced by as a kid

And country maybe the ONLY times they hear it/ the only kind they get exposed to typically is the post 9/11 patriotic shit and that makes them uncomfortable/they dont like that shit (understandable) so they think aaalll country is that kind

I mean it all boils down to them needing to examine their racial bias that underlines their hate (since rap is a predominantly black genre and country was started by black singers) AND explore the genres to find something they do like and find what they appreciate in the genre based on that

I think this also applies to other commonly "hated" genres (but for the majority it IS mostly an underlying racial bias)

Anyway idk I'm just throwing this into the void so my brain shuts up

[lunarpunkwonder]

LunarPunk 🌙

Lunarpunk is Solarpunk for the night dwellers. Similar philosophy and movement but with a darker, bioluminescent, celestial aesthetic. With a focus on Community, Sustainability, Reducing Light Pollution, growing Native Flora and creating a livable and thriving home for the night dwelling Fauna (nocturnal animals, insects, and people too), and obviously, don't forget the Punk.

Lunarpunk is a very new and slowly growing subgenre and community, please continue to add new ideas, add to the conversation of sustainability, do research in your own area about the local flora and fauna, what you can do to help reduce light pollution, even if it's just coming from your home, how to be more energy efficient, how to reduce waste, save money on electricity, see if you can switch your lights to LEDs, speak with your neighbors about switching as well.

Any little bit counts.

[dolljunk]

Here is my M3gan custom doll using a Draculaura head on an Ever After High Lizzie Hearts body with a custom outfit and painted shoes and accessories by me.

I was a big ol' baby when it came to horror things growing up but in recent years I find myself really enjoying Horror films as a genre nowadays. And it might be graphic or violent but really good horror films pick up on themes, anxieties and the uncomfortable aspects of contemporary society.

And I do think M3gan is a good horror film, especially in the subgenre of killer toys since I think it's really hard to make a good horror about toys unless you're skilled at the genre.

Haunted dolls or murderous plush toys aren't scary because they run around killing people, they're scary because they violate a sense of safety that inherently comes with toys. It's why Chucky or Gremlins still works as a film because it isn't just the character being terrorised, it's a commentary on how vulnerable children can be when left unsupervised and the consequences of that. Versus something like Annabelle where it's just an evil doll.

M3gan is a pretty clever film that tackles the issues of how unsafe the internet and technology is for children, while also being campy and violent. I do like that not only Cady was a victim of handsoff parenting but M3gan too was exposed to the vast array of the internet without any guidance and how that messed her up.

It's why I really like M3gan and had to do my own doll.

Her outfit is one of the rare instances where I actually sewed her tights instead of long socks since she had that iconic dance routine, as well as searching for that in scale striped fabric was really difficult.

Her paper cutter is actually several layers of paperboard layered together since I used MyFroggyStuff's method, and I'm always surprised how dense and heavy this method for accessories actually is.

[fernthewhimsical]

Hopepunk Primer pt. 2

Philosophy of Hopepunk

I cannot express this better than other people have done before me. So I'll start with an interview Kayti Burt had with several hopepunk authors in 2019.

"What is hopepunk? It depends on who you ask…

Rowland, quoting their essay “One Atom of Justice, One Molecule of Mercy, and the Empire of Unsheathed Knives,” says: “Hopepunk is a subgenre and a philosophy that ‘says kindness and softness don’t equal weakness, and that, in this world of brutal cynicism and nihilism, being kind is a political act. An act of rebellion.’”

To understand hopepunk as a concept it helps to understand what it stands in contrast to. Grimdark is a fantasy subgenre characterized by bleak settings in which humanity is fundamentally cutthroat, and where no individual or community can stop the world’s inevitable decline. Hopepunk, in contrast, believes that the very act of trying has meaning, that fighting for positive change in and of itself has worth—especially if we do it together." [4]

When Alexandra Rowland was asked on Tumblr to expand on the initial statement she made they elaborated:

"Hopepunk says that genuinely and sincerely caring about something, anything, requires bravery and strength. Hopepunk isn’t ever about submission or acceptance: It’s about standing up and fighting for what you believe in. It’s about standing up for other people. It’s about DEMANDING a better, kinder world, and truly believing that we can get there if we care about each other as hard as we possibly can, with every drop of power in our little hearts." [5]

I also love the definition of the Tumblr blog @hopepunk-humanity:

"What is Hopepunk?

Wild laughter from ragged throats

Flowers growing choked from crumbling asphalt

A warm bed after a long, hard journey

Your partner’s hand cupped in your own

Bright graffiti on cracked tunnel walls

The chains falling loose to the stone floor

A glint of silver beneath a century of tarnish

A long rain after a blistering wildfire

Just one more step, and then another

A single candle flame joining the stars against the night

A loved ones voice calling your name after hours lost in an unfamiliar place

A hand taking yours, just when you’d given up on reaching out

Smiling, laughing again, when you thought you’d forgotten how

Knowing, despite everything, that humans are inherently good

It’s not simply blind optimism, or naivety. It’s choice. It’s taking the human race by the hand and saying, “I will love you, because I am you”. It’s facing a world dripping with cynicism and fashionable hopelessness and saying, “no, I will not give in”. It’s putting kindness out into the world, knowing you might not get it back, knowing you may be scorned for it, knowing it might not change anything, but with a certainty that kindness is what the world needs the most.

It is choosing hope" [6]

Hopepunk is choosing hope in a world where they want us to have none. It's choosing humanity when they want us to forget we are human. It's choosing community when they would benefit of us staying individuals. It's choosing action and hope when they want us struck down and paralyzed.

Alexandra Rowland emphasizes to not forget the second part of the word: Punk. In another interview with Kayti Burt for Den of Geek they say:

"it’s important to remember that punk is the operative half of the word – punk in the sense of anti-authoritarianism and punching back against oppression." and "The instinct is to make it only about softness and kindness, because those are what we’re most hungry for. We all want to be treated gently. But sometimes the kindest thing you can do for someone is to stand up to a bully on their behalf, and that takes guts and rage." [7]

What is Hopepunk to me?

That spark that is both love and spite that keeps me going. It's seeing the good in humanity, while also acknowledging the harm. It's refusing to lay down and die, refusing the accept the status quo, refusing to believe that this is it.

It's believing in a better world. In kindness. In the inherent sense of community in humanity. It's believing in the power of stories.

It's seeing kindness and hope as an act of Sacred Rebellion. And spreading that kindness and hope is a Vow that I have taken.

It's taken the anger I have against corporations, injustice, bigotry, capitalism, oppression, and letting it fuel the fire within me in a constructive way. It's working to dismantle systems that are oppressive to work towards a more inclusive world. It's pruning the garden of dead weight so new things can grow.

Late stage capitalism wants us all to be docile, to work, not to live. So I will shout my small joys from the rooftops. I will create for the sake of creating. I will practice radical acceptance so that I stand strong above the masses of ads that wants me to hate myself. I will choose to see the good so that I can believe change is possible.

Hopepunk a fire that says "Rage. Rage against those who deserve it. Stand up for those who do not and show them a better world is possible."

[4] Den of Geek - Are you afraid of the darkness: a hopepunk explainer

[5] Alexandra Rowland tumblr post

[6] Hopepunk-humanity - what is hopepunk

[7] Den of Geek - a hopepunk guide: interview with Alexandra Rowland

Part 1: Intro and history

Part 2: Philosophy of Hopepunk

Part 3: How to practice hopepunk and further reading

Part 4: Extra! Hopepunk and magic

[meerawrites]

Black Vampires!

Below the cut you’ll find a list of 10 pieces of vampire media centring black folks by black folks, happy black history month!

1. Fledgling by Octavia Butler (see more)

2.The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomèz

3.House of Hunger by Alexis Henderson

4.Darknesses by Lachelle Seville

5.My Soul to Keep by Tananarive Due

6.Slay: the stories of the vampire noire by multiple authors

7.Horror Noire (documentary on AMC+)

8.Vampires in Brooklyn (movie)

9.The Dark World Series by @writingvampires

10.The Black Vampyre (1819) by Uriah Derick D'Arcy, problematic themes and handling of blackness, however our black protagonist vampire, a black bisexual (implied) vampire protagonist is very AMC-Louis-like and it’s important for understanding the others as groundbreaking and reclaiming their stories as they are.

Happy Black History month! I rarely make booklists like this, however, it recently came to my attention that some people aren’t aware of the brilliant subgenre that is gothic/horror written by people of global majority (colour), given it is black history month this list focuses on black people vampire stories written by black people, most of which are also queer (cause vampires are queer af). Allyship is the bare minimum, if we as a society are to grow at all from our forefathers we must understand that our ancestors were flawed, unlearn internalized biases (racism etc), and make intersectional spaces for everyone. I’ve kept it to 10 for my own ability to count everything, I can say with most certainty there’s more out there. These are just the ones I’ve read/watched and have influenced me the most.

[aokozaki]

I like GOOD VN's, however most are not good. A good VN has at least decent dialogue, decent visuals, interactive to a degree, and being able to recap what happened in a chapter (and actually being structures with chapters in mind)

And the thing with auto-text is that some people read slower than others and the conversation will move faster than they can keep up. Then they have to resort to manually going through dialogue.

VN's still has a lot of room to grow, but most out on the market today aren't great.

Visual novels do not have to be interactive.

The subgenre commonly called "kinetic novels" are defined by having no choices, or at the very least no branching storylines (e.g. Kindred Spirits on the Roof has some dialogue choices, but they only lead to optional scenes and the plot as a whole always follows the same arc).

Visual novels are novels. Some of the most famous kinetic novels, at least in the west, are 07th Expansion's When They Cry series. They don't have any choices to make, but they're undeniably games because they're mystery novels.

It's easy to understand "non-interactive gameplay" through the lens of "mystery novels traditionally have a point where the detective announces that all the clues have been displayed, and it should now be possible for the reader to solve it", isn't it?

Furthermore, in practically every VN with an auto-mode ever (like, genuinely, we haven't played one without it), you can manually adjust the speed that text displays, and how long auto-mode lingers on each text-box.

That is, if you read slower, make it slower. If you read faster, make it faster. If you need to stop on a textbox, toggle auto-mode off, take in the text, and then toggle it back on.

Yeah, sure, some Visual Novels are designed better or worse than others. But people write off the entire medium as trash. Imagine deciding turn based RPGs are a dead-end genre that nobody could possibly like, all because you played Hoshi wo Miru Hito one time.

[antaniilla]

Kidd (Trolls OC)

BACKSTORY/CHILDHOOD: Kidd (also responds to Kiddo) is biologically a pop troll, but she was never raised amongst them. Her parents were eaten by the outcasted Chef (before the events of the first movie), but at the last minute, her mom managed to throw Kidd's egg far from Chef's view. Eventually, an unsuspecting Cloud Guy came across Kidd's egg. He wasn't that interested in it and disregarded the egg, throwing it behind him, only for the egg to crack upon impact and for Kidd to be born (prematurely at that). Realizing what he did, he kinda took responsibility for baby Kidd but was barely a reliable guardian. Cloud Guy never truly named her, resorting to just calling her kid/kiddo, so much so that she considered that her name. 

Growing up, Cloud Guy would tell her how there were other trolls out there, to which she started to wonder where she belonged. She craved finding out what type of troll she truly was-- sure she was technically a Pop Troll, but she wasn't entirely sure if she could just accept that without experiencing all the different genres of music. Her curiosity only grew as she grew till eventually, at the age of 12, she decided to explore the world on her own. With some encouragement and support on Cloud Guy's side, Kidd made her way into unexplored territory, letting the winds guide her journey (she didn't have a plan, so she just went with the flow-- a trait she learned from C.G.). It was rough... to say the least. Even if she had lived moving around the forest, there was only so much a 12-year-old could do on their own. She was almost eaten by some creature, barely escaping. She lost a piece of her right ear during the escape. Despite all this, and more, she never lost sight of her goal. She kept brave and optimistic throughout her journey. Kidd enjoyed her time exploring, she wrote and drew everything down in a journal she was given. She was crafty and good at using her resources (and she was extremely lucky), so traveling alone wasn't much of an issue. Her friendly personality earned her the trust of a few nonhostile critters, specifically Poof, a Glowfly that had become quite attached to Kidd.

PERSONALITY: Kidd is a very brave and optimistic troll. She is friendly and easygoing. So much so that she is usually just going with the flow of whatever is going on around her. She is very open-minded and easy to talk to. On the other hand, she can be very reckless, blunt, and indecisive. She tends to mirror the behavior of others around her, which does make her much easier to approach in most cases, however, it comes to a point where she doesn't know if she's acting on her own accord or just copying someone else (She suffers from copycat syndrome and is mildly aware of this). She sometimes lacks social cues, but that's mainly from being raised by C.G and never staying in one place long enough to understand how others might truly feel. However, she does know when she oversteps a boundary and tries to fix it once she realizes it. She has a rather dry sense of humor and tends to find herself in mischief more often than not. She loves teasing others and seeing how far she can get without getting in trouble. She doesn't scare easily but has a deep fear of being outcasted. Despite that, she does not mind traveling by herself (mainly because she's on a mission to find a true home). She loves having company and is more of a listener than a yapper. 

GENRES SHE HAS VISITED/EXPERIENCED...in order:

Funk (pre-first movie... 12-14 y.o...)

Country (pre-first movie... 14-15 y.o...)

SubGenres (pre-first movie... 15-16 y.o...Lost Map during this time)+ Latin Trolls and Folklore Trolls

Rock (post first movie... 16-18 y.o...)

Pop (pre-second movie... 18-19 y.o...)

*On her way to Symphonyville, she got there a bit late, seeing how it was in ruins, so not sure what to do, she went back to Pop Village. By the time she got there, the Rock Apocalypse had ended. She resides in the Troll Kingdom (based on the series: TrollsTopia), where she experiences all the main genres. She has yet to decide what type of troll she is.

TRIVIA:

was created more as a self-insert but eventually turned into an oc

is not part of the main cast whatsoever but reappears in the background as a minor background character (still knows/has heard of the main cast before, just doesn't stick around long enough to be considered one of them)

Despite having already seen most of the main genres of music, she continues to explore outside of the Troll Kingdom in search of other subgenres, and mainly to explore. She always goes back to the Trolls Kingdom after a few months or so. (still going through an identity crisis lol)

Calls Cloud Guy her Cloud Pa

When she dresses up to fit in, she dresses Poof up too

very touch starved, but never initiates it unless needed

Turned 20 after the events of the third movie

Due to the way she was born, she was much smaller than most trolls her age (but not as small as Smidge)

What she wore before she met the funk trolls was a makeshift top and pants from some of Cloud Guy's old socks

Carries with her Socko, which is just a sock with googly eyes that C.G made her when she was a child to keep her entertained.

Looks up to Queen Essence a lot, mainly because she was like her first mother figure

LIKES & DISLIKES: Likes: 

Moving around (never in one place for too long)

Dressing up

Playing the Piano/Keyboard and Harmonica

Singing and Whistling

Listening to people talk

Bad jokes (usually sarcastic jokes, puns, or dad jokes) and doing high-five variations (got that from Cloud Guy)

Collecting Memorabilia

Puffalos- (and of course her little companion, Poof)

Hug Time (again, very touch-starved)

Dislikes:

Stotic/Serious people 

Glitter (or anything flaky and hard to get off)

Feeling left out or seeing others get left out

THIS IS ALL FOR NOW THE FUTURE UPDATES WILL HAVE MORE INSIGHT INTO HER AND HER RELATIONSHIP WITH OTHERS

[puddin-dear]

Therian v Furry? I didn't start hearing Therian until my trans nephew started calling itself one, is there a meaningful difference?

There is a difference! Hear lemme help you out in understanding these terms!

Furry

A furry is someone who has an interest in anthropomorphic animals. Such as dogs that talk and walk on two feet.

Furries express themselves in a range of ways. Such as wearing fursuits (a costume based off a fursona- or a furry OC/persona), creating art of fursonas, watching furry media, or simply just admiring other furries works.

Theres no requirement to being a furry, except for just wanting to.

Being a furry is a hobby, its not an identity in the way being queer (for example) is, but an identity in the way being part of a fandom is.

Therian

Therians are folks who identify as animals on a spiritual, psychological or physical level (though physical also plays into being non-human, which is another identity.)

Therians are folks who find themselves not being only/fully human. Whether because they believe that they have a connection and bond to a previous life or because they find themselves mentally thinking like/seeing themselves as/being an animal.

Therianthropy can be a result of plenty of things such as Imprinting on an animal at a young age and then growing up identifying with/as one, a way to cope with trauma, a result of a delusion, a spiritual belief, a religious belief, etc.

Theres a wide variety of reasons for being a therian.

Therianthropy is a subgenre of Alterhumanity, which is an umbrella term for all the ‘not totally normally human’ kinda identities. Which are too complex to explain in this post, but if you feel like diving into it, feel free to ask for resources that can explain the complexities better than I can!

Therianthropy is an identity sort of in the way being queer is

Furry is an identity based off a fandom

At the end of the day both Therians and Furries still live their lives the same as everyone else, just with slightly altered experiences. Neither group would bark or snarl like a rabid dog at a random person because of their identities.

Wishing you and your nephew well! feel free to ask for any ways you can support it :3 We’d be glad to help!

(and if any fellow critters want to rephrase anything I said or add to this, feel free. Hopefully nothing I said is off, I just woke up lmao)

[gabessquishytum]

This has been haunting my head forever, but as we all know Robert Smith was the leading inspiration for Dream in the comics with more than a bit of Neil sprinkled in there (and a few other goth rock bands like Bauhaus' Peter Murphy) and I just can't get over the image of a goth rockstar Dream.

It's the late 70s, and our boy Dream is riding a creative high of LSD and pedal effects to the top of the pops. They're calling the band he fronts, name and members are up to you or whoever takes this idea on, Goth bc they're too dark for New Wave but are just upbeat enough to steer clear of Televison's particular brand of Post-Punk. It's a newer label but a fitting one considering how dour and moody the genre has gotten since Ian Curtis's death. One he despises as he claims he's very happy with his current success and how his life is going.

But he's not happy. He hates playing to the newly forming stereotype of his fans, but he isn't. Celebrity Marriages hardly ever last and his relationship with his novelist wife is crumbling around him. He loves his son but the touring schedule is killing all of his free time. He's also pretty deep into substance abuse but he wouldn't admit it to his big sister let alone the random journo who has a camera in his face while he's trying to catch a 5:30 am flight to start his newest tour. He's just burnt out and creatively stuck as the label tries to pigeonhole him into this new subgenre, which he doesn't want anymore. Life, his life, can't be doom and gloom forever even though that's where it looks like it's heading. Forever being hailed as the Nightmare King.

Meanwhile, three radio stations over, Hob Gadling is desperately trying to hang onto life. He's a bit older now than when he first broke out onto the music scene as a rambunctious coat rider of the Sex Pistols, but he's still going strong. Punk has always been his outlet. Life sucks and you keep on living despite it. It tried to kill him not long after he debuted with substance use, but he powered through it and got clean. His wife died in childbirth, but he stuck around to raise his son. He even took a three-year hiatus and completely missed how much the sound had changed from his younger years. Even as post-punk has risen in popularity and the friends he knew have either died or changed their sound completely, he won't give up hope! Punk's not dead and neither is he. No matter how long his hair gets or if he grows out of his leather jacket.

The two meet rather coincidentally. Hob just happens to be opening for Dream on the Europe leg of his tour. Unsurprisingly the tension around Dream's band has become a powder keg and when he finally snaps and fires his guitarist, his bassist also leaves. With half the band gone, Dream considers calling it quits right then and there. Fuck the new album, fuck the last fifteen or so dates. He wants to go home. But Hob sees how close they are to finishing the tour and puts his foot down. They will finish the tour! So he offers up his services to Dream. He's not bad with a guitar and if Dream can cover the bass, then he'll play all night if he has to. Because out there on stage? That's life and he wants to keep making people happy and give them something that might transcend time and space. To never die bc his name is there among the annuls of rock history.

And in time, Dream will come around to his new friend. He will learn to appreciate the zest for performing and living his new friend has. He will also think he has the greatest body known to man and will forever laugh at the terribly done anarchy A Hob has tattooed on his ass, but that's neither for here or there. For now, Dream pulls himself together and gets his bass out from the dark pits of hell the roadies call gear storage. For the show must go on.

Oh god I want an entire novel length story around this. It’s fantastic! I have so many thoughts about these two!!

Hob is falling in love with all the new sounds that he’s hearing. He spent his time on his hiatus being a suburban dad, and now he’s back on the scene is just feels amazing. He can’t get enough of Roxy Music and David Bowie and Elvis Costello. And he’s determined to drag himself back up among those names! He’s got so many ideas of where punk can go! And he’s fascinated by Dream and his band. The lyrics are a little dark and wallowy, but Hob understands that actually people need to hear that. Life in the UK isn’t easy, particularly for young people. They need something loud and desperate and real. Little does he know, Dream feels like what he’s doing is so far away from being real. He feels likes such a fraud. He can’t get off the hamster wheel except by shooting up and passing out.

Hob recognises all of this in approximately 0.5 seconds after meeting Dream. It makes him pretty sad, but he’s determined that he’ll lift Dream out of his funk. If nothing else, he’ll make him love music again.

So when Hob said he was OK with a guitar, he was lying - he's actually a bit of a genius, and it's fair to say that Dream falls a little bit in love with him about half way through the sound check. Instead of hiding in the dressing room and licking his wounds over the band breaking up, he actually watches as Hob opens for him. Hob is very classic punk, it's all very "fuck the government, fuck me up the arse" kind of stuff, but Dream doesn't get bored for a single second. Hob is just that entertaining, and his riffs are insane. Dream itches to write a song for him. And when Hob ends the set with a jokey little song that his five year old son allegedy wrote the lyrics for (lil Robyn is very punk, just like his daddy) Dream’s eyes actually get a bit misty. It's probably all the smoke.

And there's really no time to get emotional! Dream’s drummer, Constantine, thankfully didn't walk out with the rest of them. So somehow, with Hob’s virtuosic guitar skills and sheer determination, plus Dream’s refusal to fail yet again, they actually make a really decent show. Dream feels a tingle of the old spark that he used to get when he first started out - it probably has something to do with the way Hob upends a bottle of water all over his head half way through the show and grins like a maniac.

After the show they crash in a local hotel. Hob calls his kid from the payphone and Dream wishes that he had the courage to do the same. Instead he takes some pills so he doesn't have to feel the high from the show gradually wearing off into nothingness. He doesn't know why Hob comes and sits next to him in the dark, pressing against him from thigh to shoulder. He stays for the whole of Dream’s trip, in fact, humming something quiet and classic. Dream feels quite ashamed of himself, and for the first time he thinks that maybe he'd feel better without the drugs. Maybe.

As the tour gets off to a slow start, Dream starts to notice that Hob is having some kind of positive effect on him. Just little thing. They get breakfast together, so Dream actually eats something, which is unusual. Their little arguments don't get out of hand, because Hob never lets them escalate. When Dream is angry and spitting at the world, Hob is sure to point of something positive. Not that Hob doesn't get sad, too - he just deals with it differently. He goes for long walks, and turns off the news when it gets bad. He gets himself a snack when he's irritable, and laughs about it afterwards.

Dream writes him a near impossible guitar solo and it feels like a "thank you".

They have a sweet, unexpected first kiss. It's 2am and they're standing at the edge of the road, waiting for a mechanic to come out to their broken down tour bus. There's no one around to see, so Dream rests his head on Hob’s shoulder. He's sore, and weary. Hob turns his head slightly and tucks an arm around him, and it just happens. They kiss. It is, of course, the first of many.

And you can bet that Dream kisses that anarchy tattoo a million time, too.

[lavender-laney]

writeblr introduction!

About Me

Hey, I'm Laney! I'd love to become more active in the writing community and find some writer friends. I love reading about everyone's ideas, and I'm always happy to beta read if anyone is looking for feedback! I'm currently a reporter, but have a passion for creative writing and editing. Some of my other interests include evolutionary biology, Greek mythology, and all forms of art.

About My Writing

Although I'm still trying to find my niche and what I enjoy writing, I'm currently working in the genres of literary fiction, fantasy, and gothic horror. I'm especially inspired by mythology and folklore, finding magic and significance in the mundane, and the diversity of the human experience.

Writing tag: #my writing

Current WIPs

Choking on Sea Salt

wip intro, chapter 1, chapter 2 part one, chapter 2 part two

tag: #choking on sea salt

In the same vein as the Southern Gothic subgenre, this novel is inspired by the idea of Coastal Gothic. In a remote coastal town, a young journalist finds herself unraveling the town's foggy history and ever-growing mysteries -- why are there so few women, why is it forbidden to walk along the beaches or sail in the waters, and what is the haunting song whistling through her windows each night?

Acrylic Body

wip intro

tag: #acrylic body

Upon the passing of an eccentric and reclusive painter, his artwork is left without a keeper and lies abandoned for years. Eventually, his home is cleaned out and his paintings are sold at auction. Through the eyes of one of his paintings, we view the lives of those whose hands she is passed through.

Feathers and Wax

tag: #lysandra

Ovid's Metamorphoses detailed the devotion of Persephone's handmaidens, and their transformation into winged sirens to pursue the goddess. This retells Persephone's myth from the perspective of Lysandra, a nymph-turned-siren who would travel to the ends of the Earth for her maiden.

I'd love to find some other writeblrs to follow so feel free to comment if you think our interests may align! + feel free to reach out to me if you ever want to chat about writing or want another pair of eyes on your wip!

<3

[frokenkeke]

Making of Ashes to Ashley

Recently I posted my comic Ashes to Ashley, and got such a tremendously kind and loving response that I felt like sharing a little bit more about where it came from.

The story is about a transgender awakening, where the quiet and somber Ash explodes out of the closet as the loud and colorful Ashley. This was always the plan, however the details changed along the way. Quite quickly I realized that I was writing about myself and my own trans journey. I never played in a band and I don't imagine I'll ever grow bunny ears (sadly), but still Ashley is undoubtedly a reflection of myself. I just allowed life to become a stage and gender performance a rock concert.

Above are the first idea doodles I drew late at night in early April. I quite enjoyed giving Ashley lipstick and prominent eye shadow, since I hadn't ever done a character like that before. The idea was a bit of exaggerated femininity that accidentally becomes raw punk expression. One or two people have pointed out the Um Jammer Lammy similarities, and they are absolutely not coincidental. Initially I imagined Ashley would've been more reluctant about her transformation, which is why she looks a bit more annoyed in some of my sketches, but the story became more bright and funny if it was made immediately clear that this all happens off of her own volition.

Some method and color tests. My girlfriend suggested I instead go a lot more raw with it, which is why I ended up adamantly using an ugly sponge brush built into Photoshop. Sapphic Disaster are some form of punk-shoegaze band, so combining rough pencil linework with crunchy texture coloring felt like a fitting visual representation of them. This also side-stepped the biggest problems I've always had with drawing comics – dealing with inking is a boring waste of time, and working digitally always makes me fixate on perfection. By just using pencil on paper I had to stick with whatever errors couldn't be saved by a regular eraser, in fact I dedicated myself to only using an old worn down Bic mechanical pencil and embraced the idea that the comic would consistently look a bit off and amateurish. Of course I allowed myself the luxury of cleaning up my drawings digitally before coloring, but that can only take you so far. This way of working helped me make fast progress and kept each step engaging, I've never had as much fun drawing a comic as I had with Ashes to Ashley.

Here's a before and after from initial scan to finished panel. I often only tidy up around focal points like faces or hands, and allow the rest to remain as it is, usually parts like the legs or Ashley's ears.

Character references and my initial color picks, they went through small changes as I went along. I liked giving all the band members different sorts of rabbit ears to make them all look distinct from each other.

Here's some ideas for the Sapphic Disaster band logo and the comic's color palette, notice how Ashley is more vibrant than Ash.

While working I filled up numerous papers with doodles trying to workshop panels and layouts. It's too much to show all of them here, so I composed a few collages of my favorites.

It was pivotal for me that Ash would always look painfully cute. The sketch of the table scene with Floyd shows a rare out-of-character confident and laid-back Ash. In the presence of Floyd?! Never!

I was very concerned about the reader recognizing the old Ash when first seeing Ashley. She may be all excited about being a girl, but her nervous cluelessness remains. I ended up going back and redrawing two panels in Ashley's introduction to strengthen this impression.

For those not in the know, shoegaze is a rock subgenre that centers around noisey guitar textures, typically achieved through heavy use of effect pedals at the musicians feet; hence the name. When Ashley plays her guitar she produces a cacophony of strange sounds, the reader will have to imagine what they actually sound like, but I always imagined their opening number "I Wanna Be a Girl" to sound like a couple of amateurs trying to recreate Lush's Blackout.

The page where the band go around looking for Ashley while she's receiving her makeover was shoehorned in at a later stage for pacing purposes. That's why Gabriel is suddenly back to pulling cords after previously claiming they're all set, oops!

One of the core rules to this story is that everyone is always overly supportive of Ashley's transition no matter what. This is what makes the otherwise stern and serious Floyd especially funny, my girlfriend was pivotal in sprucing up his dialogue, adding bits like "have you seen the health care waiting lists?, "I know an endocrinologist who owes me a favor or two" and "give me 35% more danger"

Towards the end I discovered that Ashley and Debbie dancing was apparently the most important panel in the entire comic, judging by how much I tried to perfect it. (For the record, my favorite panel is when Ashley screams into the microphone that she wants to be a girl.) Maybe Ashley and Debbie dancing should've replaced the final full-page panel? Well, we got a lot of cute doodles out of it regardless. Just kiss already!

Initially I imagined Ashley to be standing alone in the "could this be the real me" final panel, but I realized her odd family of friends was equally a part of the real her. She was always right where she needed to be, she just needed to find herself within that place. (I ended up giving Ashley a cigarette because otherwise it looked like she was praying.)

Here are some ideas for the cover illustration, of course in 1:1 format to look like an album cover. Up until last minute I planned for the comic to have You Made Me Realize as its subtitle to distinguish it from eventual follow-ups, which is why the You Made Me Realize EP cover art is paraphrased in the top-middle. I ended up just going with Ashes to Ashley to keep it clean and simple. The title Ashes to Ashley was blurted out immediately by my girlfriend when I first showed her my concepts for the story. It's perfect, she's perfect.

I drew two Ashes and two Ashleys for the cover art and let my fingers smudge all over the latter. While most obviously riffing on the cover for My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, it's equally taking from the Ecstasy of Saint Theresa's Pigment.

And there you have it.

However I never intended this to be the full extent of Ashley's story, just a satisfying and complete end of a chapter. I've already finished writing the next story, Today Forever, and I hope I can get it out to you all soon enough. Your love for Ashley keeps me going.

/Kiki

[linkspooky]

Bohman is a good character you guys are just mean

Yu-Gi-Oh Vrains is one of the better received spinoff series. Though, like any of the Yu-Gi-Oh spinoffs it's not without its faults. Usually I'm the first to admit the flaws in my favorite silly card game shows, even while I myself take them way too seriously. However, there's one common criticism I can't bring myself to agree with.

That is calling the main antagonist of the second season Bohman "boring" or "badly written." I've noticed fans unfairly blame Bohman for season 2's writing flaws.

Forget for a moment about whether or not you find Bohman's stoic attitude interesting or likable. If you look at characters not as people, but as narrative tools the author uses to say something about the story's themes then Bohman has a lot to say about VRAINS cyberpunk themes.

Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction that tends to focus on "low-life and high-tech." As I like to put it, in Cyberpunk settings technology has greatly advanced while society itself lags behind unable to keep pace with the rate at which technology changes. Yu Gi Oh 5Ds is an example of a cyberpunk dystopia because despite having what is essentially access to free energy, and living in a society with highly advanced technology resources are hoarded by the wealthy and an unnecessary social class divide still exists.

In other words technology changes quickly while humans tend to remain the same.

The central conflict for all three seasons of Vrains are actually based on this very cyberpunk notion. That technology changes, updates, and becomes obsolete at a rate too fast for humans to ever adapt to. For Vrains, the conflict is whether humans can ever coexist with an artificial intelligence they created that can grow and change faster than they can keep up with.

This is well-tread ground in science fiction. The idea itself most likely emerged from I,robot. A science fiction book that is a collection of dirty stories that details a fictional history showing robots growing slowly advanced over time. The framing device is that a journalist is interviewing a "robopsychologist" an expert in the field of analyzing how robots think in their positronic brains.

One of the major themes of the book is despite the fact that robots are 1 - intelligent and 2 - designed by humans, they don't think the same way humans do. Hence why a robopsychologist is needed in the first place. One of the short stories is the first appearance of Asimov's three laws of robotics.

The First Law: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

The Second Law: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

The Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

This is just one example. A robot no matter how intelligent it is will be required to think in terms of these three laws, because robots aren't biological, they're programmed to think in pre-determined patterns.

Of course clever enough artificial intelligences are capable of finding loopholes that get around the three laws, but even then they're still forced to think of every action in terms of the three laws.

Robots and humans are both intelligent, but if AI ever becomes self aware it will 1) be able to process information better than any other human can and 2) think differently from humans on a fundamental.

Vrains is themed more than anything else around "robo psychology" or trying to understand the ways in how the Ignis think and how that's different from it's human characters.

Robo-Psychology is actually a common reocurring theme. "DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?" fearless artificial humans known as Replicants who need an empathy test known as the voight kampff test to distinguish them from human beings.

There are other Cyberpunk elements in Vrains. There's a big virtual world where everyone can appear as custom designed avatars, that's taken from Snow Crash or of the most famous and genre defining cyberpunk novels. There's a big rich mega conglomerate that's being opposed by a group of hackers.

However, the central question is whether humans and AI can coexist in spite of the fact that AI are much smarter and evolve faster than us.

Revolver's father believes the Ignis must be destroyed in order to avoid a possible technological singularity in the future.

The technological singularity—or simply the singularity[1]—is a future point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable.  According to the most popular version of the singularity hypothesis an upgradable artificial intelligence will eventually enter a positive feedback loop of self-improvement cycles, each new and more intelligent generation appearing more and more rapidly, causing a rapid increase ("explosion") in intelligence that surpasses anything humans can make.

Basically your computer is smarter than you, but your computer isn't self aware. It needs you to tell it what to do. Artificial intelligence already exists but it's programmed by humans, it doesn't program itself. The technological singularity proposes that eventually a self aware ai, will be able to program itself and improve upon it's own programming- therefore ridding itself of the need of it's human programmers.

This is what leads us to Bohman, an AI designed by another AI.

THE THIRD LAW

Before digging into Bohman let's take a minute to discuss his creator. Lightning was one of the six Ignis, created by Dr. Kogami through the Hanoi Project.

The Hanoi project involved forcing six children to duel in a virtual arena repeatedly, and using the data collected from that experiment to improve the AI they were working on, creating what became known as the Ignis. However, after Dr. Kogami ran several simulations and found that the Ignis would one day be a threat to the humans that created them Hakase decided instead to try destroying the Ignis before that future ever came to pass.

We later learn that this isn't the complete story.

Kogami and Lightning both ran simulations of the future when the Ignis were in their infancy. Kogami's simulations showed him the Ignis would inevitably go to war with humans. Lighting however, ran more in-depth simulations and found that he was the one that was corrupting the data set. If you ran simulations of the five ignis without him, then the projected futures were all in the green, but any simulation with Lightning counted as a part of the group projected a negative future for both humans and AI.

Which means that if Kogami knew that the bug in the program was Lightning, he'd likely respond by just getting rid of Lighting and letting the rest of the Ignis live on as originally intended.

This is where the third law comes into play - a robot must protect its own existence as long as it does not interfere with the first and second law.

Now, I don't think Kogami used the three laws exactly, but artificial intelligences are programmed in certain ways, and Lightning was likely programmed to preserve itself.

Even a human in Lighting's situation would be driven to act as they did. Imagine you're in a group of six people, and you fid out that YOU'RE THE PROBLEM. That if they removed you, everything else would be fine. Wouldn't you be afraid of your creator turning against you? Of your friends turning against you and nobody taking your side?

Lightning is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Ai asks him at one point why he went so far as to destroy their safe-haven, lie and said the humans did it and pick a fight with the humans himself, something that might have been avoided if they'd just stayed in hiding. It seems that Lightning is just defective as his creator declared him, but you have to remember he's an AI programmed to think in absolutes. AI, the most humanlike and spontaneous of the AIs ends up making nearly the exact same choices as Lightning when looking at his simulations later on - because they're character foils. As different as they may seem they still think differently from humans.

When Ai explains why he made his decisions based around lighting's simulation, he tells Playmaker that he can't dismiss or ignore the simulation or hope for the best the way Playmaker can because he is data, he thinks in simulations and processes.

AI even admits to feeling the same feelings of self-preservation that Lightning did.

While Lightning may seem selfish, he's selfish in the fact that he's thinking of his own survival above all else. He's afraid of 1) his creators turning against him, and 2) his fellow Ignis turning against him.

To solve the first he decides to make a plan to wipe out his creators. To solve the second, he needs every ignis on his side when he goes to war. The first thing he does is destroy their safe haven and frame the humans for it so the Ignis are more inclined to take his side. He's so afraid of his fellow ignis turning against him he even completely reprograms one of them - a step he doesn't take with the others, he just imprisons Aqua. He probably thought having one more ally would make it more likely for the others to pick his side.

Every step he takes is a roundabout way of ensuring his survival and the other ignis- eve when he actually goes to war with the other ignis he intended on letting them survive. Though his definition of survival (fusing with Bohman) was different than theirs.

So Lightning seems to be working out of an inferiority complex, but what he's really afraid of is that his inferiority makes him expendable.

At that point you have to wonder, what does death mean exactly to a being who is otherwise immortal? Ignis won't die of age, they'll only die if they're captured and have their data stripped apart or corrupted. Kogami made an immortal being afraid to die.

Some part of me thinks though that even after taking all these steps to preserve themselves, the simulations were so convincing that Lighting accepted their death as inevitable. Which is why they made Bohman, to find some way for them to keep on living afterwards.

After all AI are data, ad having their data saved in Bohman is still a form of living by Lightning's definition.

Ghost in The Shell

Bohman is the singularity. He's an AI designed by another AI to improve upon itself. Unlike the rest of the Ignis who were copied off of traumatized chidlren, Lightning basically made him from scratch.

Ghost in the Sell is a famous anime cyberpunk movie directed by Mamoru Oshii. The title comes from "Ghost in the Machine" a term originally used to describe and critique the mind existing alongside and separate from the body. Whereas in the movie the "Ghost" is the huma consciousness, while the "shell" is a cybernetic body.

The protagonist of Ghost in the Shell is Major Motoko Kusanagi, a human that is 99% cyborg at this point, a human brain residing in a completely mechanical body. The movie opens up with a hacker namd PUppet Master who is capable of "ghost-hacking" which is a form of hacking that completely modifies the victim's memories utterly convincing them of their false memories.

There's a famous scene in the movie where a man tells the police about his wife and daughter, only to be told that he's a bachelor who lives alone and he's never had a wife and daughter. Even after the truth is revealed to him, the fake memories are still there in his brain along with the correct ones. Technology is so advanced at this point that digital memories (hacked memories) are able to be manipulated, and seem more real than an analog reality.

Anyway, guess what happens to Bohman twice?

Bohman gets his memories completely rewritten twice. The first time he believes he's a person looking for his lost memories, the second time he thinks he's the real playmaker ripped out of his body, and playmaker is the copy. He's utterly convinced of these realities both time, because Bohman is entirely digital - and simulations are reality, and so simulated memories are just the same as real memories.

I think part of the reason that people find Bohman boring is because he's a little strange conceptually to wrap your head around, as an AI produced AI he's the farthest from behind human. If you use the ghost in the shell example I just gave you though - imagine being utterly convinced that you had a loving wife and daughter only to find out in a police interrogation room you're a single man living in a shitty apartment. imagine after the fact you still remember that they are real, even though you know they're not.

That's the weird space Bohman exists in for most of Season 2 when he's searching for himself. He's an AI designed by an AI so he can be rewritten at any time according to Lightning's whim until Lighting decides he's done cooking.

The Ignis at least interacted with the real world because they were copy pasted from traumatized children, but all Bohman is is data. So, why would he see absorbing human memories into himself and converting them into data as killing them? He is data after all, and he is alive. He has gone through the process of having his own memories rewritten multiple times, and he's fine with it b/c he's data.

Nothing for Bohman is real, everything is programmed so of course he thinks saving other people as data is just fine. He even offers to do the same thing to Playmaker that was done to him.

If Lightning is following the path of self-preservation however, Bohman is following his program to preserve everything in the world by merging with it.

His ideas also follow the idea of transhumanism: the theory that science and technology can help human beings develop beyod what is physically and mentally possible. That technology exists to blur the boundaries of humanity, and what humans are capable of.

Ghost in the Shell isn't just a work of cyberpunk, it's a transhumanist piece. Motoko Kusanagi is a character who has had so many of her human parts replaced with mechanical ones she even posits at one point it's possible for her to simply have been an android that was tricked into thinking it was human with false memories just like Bohman, and she has no real way of knowing for sure. The only biological part of her his her brain after all in a cold mechanical shell.

Bato, who represents the humanist perspective in this movie basically tells Motoko in that scenario it wouldn't matter if she was a machine. If everyone still treats her as human then what's the difference? His views are probably the closest to the humanist views that Playmaker represents in VRAINS.

Motoko Kusanagi meets her complete and total opposite, a ghost in the machine so to speak. The Puppet Master turns out to be an artificial intelligence that has become completely self-aware and is currently living in the network.

The Puppet Master much like Lightning, and later Bohman is gripping with the philosophical conundrum of mortality. In the final scene of the movie, The Puppet Master who wants to be more like all other biological matter on earth asks Motoko to fuse with him, so the two of them can reproduce and create something entirely new. The Puppet Master likens this to the way that biological beings reproduce.

Bohman like The Puppetmaster thinks that merging will fix something that's incomplete inside of him because he's so disconnected from all the biological processes of life. Bohman doesn't have anything except for which Lightning already prepared for him or programmed into him. I mean imagine being a being that can have his memories reprogrammed on the net, that in itself is existentially horrifying. It's only natural he wouldn't feel connected to anything.

Motoko accepts the Puppetmaster's proposal. Playmaker rejects Bohman's proposal. I don't think there's a right answer here, because it's speculative fiction, it's a "What if?" for two different paths people can take in the future.

However, in Bohman's case I don't think he was truly doing what he wanted. Puppet Master became self aware and sought his own answers by breaking free from his programming. Bohman thought he was superior to the Ignis, but in the end he was just following what Lightning programmed him to do. He'd had his identity programmed and reprogrammed so many times, he didn't think of what he wanted until he was on the brink of defeat by playmaker and then it was too late.

When Playmaker defeats him all he thinks about is time spent together with Haru, with the two of them as individuals. Something he can no longer do anymore now that he's absorbed Haru as data, and something that he misses.

He's not even all that sad or horrified at the prospect of death as Lightning was, and he even finds solace in the thought of going to oblivion with Haru, because if he were to keep living it'd be without Haru. In other words the one genuine bond he made with someone else by spending time with them as an individual was more important than his objective of fusing with all of humanity - which he believed was also bonding with them.

This is really important too, because it sets up the Yusaku's rejection of fusing with Ai. Yusaku's reasoning has already been demonstrated to be the case with Bohman and Haru. Bohman was perfectly happy being two individuals, as long as he had a bond with his brother. When he ascended into a higher being he lost that. Ai and Yusaku might solve loneliness in a way by merging together into a higher being, they might even last forever that way, but they'd lose something too.

Once again the problem with AIs is that they think in absolutes. That's important to understanding Lightning, Bohman and even Ai's later actions. Lightning can't stand any percentage chance that he might die, so he kills the professor, destroys the ignis homeworld, pulls the trigger to start humanity himself, he even reprograms his own allies all to give himself some sense of control.

Bohman's entire existence is outside of his control. He's rewritten twice onscreen, probably more than that, and he thinks merging with humanity is the thing that will give him that control - by ascending into a higher being than humanity. However, the temporary bond Bohman had with his brother Haru, was actually what he valued the most all along. Moreso than the idea of fusing with humanity forever.

Even Motoko making the choice to go with the transhumanist option is something that's not portrayed as 100% the right choice. Ghost in the Shell has a sequel that portrays the depression and isolation of Bato, the Major's closest friend and attachment to her humanity after she made the decision to fuse together with Puppet Master. In that case, just like Playmaker said to Ai, even if she ascended to a higher form, and even if she might last forever now on the network, something precious was lost. Motoko may exist somewhere on the netowrk but for Batoto his friend is gone.

Ai exhibits the same flaw as the previous two, he ca only think in absolutes, he can't stand even a 1% chance that Playmaker might choose to sacrifice himself for Ai and die, so he decides to take the choice entirely out of Playmaker's hands. However, no matter what Ai would have lost Playmaker one day, because all bonds are temporary. It's just Ai wanted to have that sense of control, so he chose to self-destruct and take that agency and free choice away from Playmaker.

It's a tragedy that repeats three times. Ai too just like Bohman, spends his last moments thinking about what was most precious to him was the bond he formed with playmaker, as temporary as it was. A tragedy that arises from the inability of the Ais to break away from the way they're programmed to think in simulations and data, even when they're shown to be capable of forming bonds based on empathy with others.

All three of them add something to the themes of artificial intelligence, and transhumanism that are in play at Vrains and none of them are boring because they all contribute to the whole.

Which is why everyone needs to stop being mean to Bohman right now, or else I'm going to make an even longer essay post defending him.

[fernthewhimsical]

Hopepunk Primer pt. 1

"It's like in the great stories, Mr Frodo," Sam says. "Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the Sun shines it will shine out the clearer."

"What are we holding on to, Sam?" Frodo asks.

"That there's some good in this world, Mr Frodo… and it's worth fighting for," Sam replies. [1]

Origins of Hopepunk

In 2017 author Alexandra Rowland (@ariaste) made a post on Tumblr saying: "The opposite of grimdark is hopepunk. Pass it on." [2]

From Wikipedia: "Grimdark is a subgenre of speculative fiction with a tone, style, or setting that is particularly dystopian, amoral, and violent. The term is inspired by the tagline of the tabletop strategy game Warhammer 40,000: "In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war.""

Other examples of grimdark are A Song of Ice and Fire, Breaking Bad, the darker Batman worlds, and the Walking Dead. [3]

2016 was a rough year, with an even bleaker outlook (although now writing this in 2024 we knew nothing, lol). People were growing weary of the grimdark worlds in media when the world around us was already so dark and left us feeling hopeless. It was time for a change, which Alexandra Rowland brought with their one, according to her own words, off the cuff post on Tumblr.

A few hours later, people were reblogging it and hopepunk found it's way to the people. Now, it's a literary genre, an aesthetic, and a philosophy that inspires people all over the globe.

[1] The Two Towers movie, based on the LOTR by J.R.R. Tolkien

[2] Original tumblr post

[3] Wikipedia page for Grimdark

Part 1: Intro and history

Part 2: Philosophy of Hopepunk

Part 3: How to practice hopepunk and further reading

Part 4: Extra! Hopepunk and magic