#absolute charicature

[toart]

The duality of my two DND characters now that I've made them into VeadoTubers

[llycaons]

I love it when a character who has been presented as one-dimensional or even stereotypical is suddenly revealed to have an innver life and personality and motivations. such a pleasant surprise like - oh, you’re a person interacting with the world too!

[futurewriter2000]

Warm Enough

A/N: Spent all day writing this with some distractions in between but I love it! LOVE IT! I still got it. 

REQUEST: Post!Azkaban Sirius is really burned out with Grimmauld Place but he absolutely refuses to go outside in the snow no matter how many jackets he has on bc the cold reminds him of the dementors in Azkaban and reader helps him work through it.

(REQUESTS ARE CLOSED)

XX

He slept... and slept... and slept... 

The curtains were covering the little light that was trying to make way to that darkened room- the room that never changed, not one thing was moved since he left it. His desk was covered in papers from his Hogwarts days, some awful written essays about potions for Professor Slughorn and there were drawings of werewolves, vampires, ghouls and charicature of Remus and Peter from their boy ages. Peter had overly large eyes and thick glasses stuck on him, mustache and some pimples, meanwhile Remus had large ears, awfully crooked nose and half missing teeth. It was funny back then because James and Sirius both drew that together during Arithmancy class. James had a talent for drawing, everybody that knew him knew that and Sirius, growing up by his side, managed to pick that up as well. Never good as James... in anything... James was always better. So why was it that it had to be James the one that was murdered and not him. Sirius would give anything to have switched places. James would handle all of this so much better than he did. 

Sirius’ sides were hurting from laying in the bed but it was as if the gravity was pulling him into the matress. His pillow felt uncomfortable though and so did every position he tried to fall back asleep. He hasn’t looked much around his room since he came back. He hasn’t noticed the past, whteher that was a conscious decision or sub-conscious. All he ever saw was his bed that always seemed to pull him into slumber. Why he woke up? The dreams started to turn into nightmares. Memories would hunt him, sometimes good memories from his boy days and sometimes memories from his 20′s- those he would suppose to enjoy the most. He didn’t. He spent it in the cold and darkness, that was why the bed was so inviting. It was warm, so warm and comforting. 

He heard a knock on the door and a head peered through. He lifted his head a bit, only to see the shape or the little sign to know who it was. 

“May I come in?” said the voice. 

He wailed quietly and shuffled himself amont the silk sheets. Maybe he did despise his family but at least they bought silk. 

“I will take that as a yes.” the person shuffled in the room and closed the door. “Blimey, Sirius. What are you- a vampire?” the curtains broke open and there was more light in the room, shining over every piece of furniture that hid in the dark for all these years. The person opened the door widely and the freezing, sharp cold burst in against the skin, causing the reaction of goosebumps. 

“I’d like to sleep.” 

“It’s three pm.” 

“I’ll get up at four.” he shuffled his head in the sheets as the cold reached his nose far too quick.” 

He could feel the infamous glare- the one only you could make to make him quirk a smile. You crossed your arms over and smirked. 

“So this is your room.” you let go of the hold and let your hands roam free over the furniture. “It does match your personality quite well- OH! A pony bike!” you laughed and made your way to it. Blue and a bit dusty but it would still probably work if you tried it. 

He peeked through the sheets and started to watch you wander. 

For some odd reason, you wore pink shirt and a black trainer. He’s not used to you wearing such light colours, especially pink. You were more of a moddy, dark teenager as he remembered, just like most of them were. Your figure was womanly, curves in all the right places and your hands- your whole body moved so delicatly, elegantly over his room. 

You came over his desk and saw the drawings hiddent underneath the paper.

‘James’ - you thought and smiled as you saw his usual drawing style. Your smile widened at the sight of the charicatures. You didn’t want to open this theme though. Not in front of him. Not when he slept for so long in the darkness of his own home. You knew this subject always opened a wound in him- a wound that resulted in fury and revenge. 

“Cannot believe you still have Slughorn’s paper.” you grabbed it and started reading it, laughing midway. “And it’s horrible.” you laughed and he rolled his eyes, laying on his back. 

“Well, I despised Potions and that man was all about Snape and Lily being the best of the best of his favorite, perfect little apprentices.” he mocked and you laughed, making his way towards him. 

You laid on the bed next to him, placing your arms on top of his chest as you did almost 20 years ago. The two of you never dated but you both were in the same friendgroup. Back then you found him quite childish and annoying but you’ve always cared about him. It was a bit sad there was only three of you left... four if you count the rat Peter. 

He smiled at the sight. He never told you that back then but whenever you did that, drunk or not, he always felt such a rush of heat rush his body. His heart would go into a whole new world of high rollercoaster rides and Merlin, the face you made- the look you gave him with those glimmering eyes- the glimmer that never seemed to go away throughout the years. He felt himself sweat onto his perfect silk and the cold never seemed too cooling enough to bring down his tempeture. 

“I miss those times sometimes.” you said, looking into his eyes as he gazed into yours. 

“Yeah... I never imagined it would en up like this, you know?” 

“There can still be a happy ending, you know?” you said, drawing circles on his chest but he hated that because it made him arouse and so he put his hand on top of yours to stop. “Sorry.” you said. “I forgot.” You knew he hated that, you just thought it was because he hated it in general, not the real reason behind it. 

There was a moment of silence and for the longest of time, he wanted to ask you this quiestion. “Did you believe it?” 

You lied down next to him, staring at the ceiling. “Believe what?” 

“That I did it.”

You knew it was going to be something among those lines but you were going to answer it truthfully. “I didn’t...at first. I couldn’t- it didn’t make any sense to me. From all the years I have known you, I just couldn’t put your personality and that action together.” you paused and looked at him. The two of you were so close, in his bed and that made you not only nervous but extremely, beaucoup nervous. 

“And then?” he asked, watching every facial movement you made. 

“I had to... somehow believe it.” you sat up from the guilt, even though he didn’t blame you for one bit. He believed he killed them too, if he was truly honest with himself... but he wasn’t. “Somebody had to take the blame and after years, I had to point at somebody because I was still so mad that they died. Especially when I saw Harry on the news- something inside of me just exploded. I was angry because there was logic fighting with me and the need to blame somebody for it. Peter was supposed to be dead, you know? And everything led to you. So either I was going to get crazy for not believing it or I should just accept it and have peace.” you turned back to him and he was smiling a bit. Shocked, you furrowed your eyebrows and asked: “What?” 

“You’re just so funny when you care what I think.” he sat up as well, feelig the pain in his legs burn from all the lying around. Yet it was too cold for him and he had to close the windows. He had to. 

“You laugh but I felt so guilty when Remus told me the truth. It was the shock all over again.” you walked behind him. “I don’t understand why didn’t you just tell us the truth?” 

“Would that have made any difference?” he said as he turned around from the window only to find you standing close to him... too close. “James was dead. Lily was dead and like you said- all evidence pointed to me. If nothing I was guilty of attempted murder.” he started to walk out of the room, you following. 

“It would have made all the difference in the world.” you started to raise your voice a bit and he noticed that, bringing up his hot-headed temper. 

“I really don’t want to talk about that, right now, (y/n).” he gritted his teeth.

“Well, not talking about it won’t make it go away.”

“I know that.” he turned towards the kitchen.” 

“It would have made a difference to Harry, to Remus- to me!” you started to shout as he burst into the kitchen and you right behind him. 

He opened the cupboards quite aggressively and you could see he was a bit furious. 

You wanted to be furious- you did. You wanted to explode and make a whole mess about it but you knew... that wouldn’t bring you any satisfaction. It would only make chaos. 

You could see it in his eyes- those angry, feisty dark grey eyes that you shouldn’t make a storm out of rain, so you took a deep breath in and put your hand on top of his. “I’m sorry.” you said softly and you could feel his hand relax, the veins on top of his slim fingers disappear back into its depths and his eyes soften. 

He closed one of the cupboards and leaned onto the counter. 

“I just don’t like to get reminded of my mistakes, (y/n). That’s all.” he said, looking at you through those dark curls of his that fell in front of him. “Don’t you think I know what I did? And every day I was reminded in that cell... every day of those 12 years.” he let out a pitiful laugh, turning around to lean his backside on the counter and crossing his arms over his chest. “You lot kept me alive.” he continued to smile. “And you also made me fall in the darkest corners of my soul.” his smile now faded. “I was trapped in that stupid cell, filled with rage and revenge and you were out there living your best lives- living your twenties how we talked about we would.” he sighed, trying not to look at you but you made him do it by standing in front of him. He wanted to continue but you already wrapped your arms around his neck and squeezed him tight. He let go of his arm hold and wrapped his arms around your torso, sighing and nuzzling close into your neck. 

“Should we go for a walk?” you whispered into his shoulder and he gently pulled away, looking down into your eyes. “To breathe- to clear your head?” you smiled but he only moved away and moved his head sideways as a no. 

“I don’t really want to.” he walked towards the fridge to get some milk. “Plus everybody would recognise me.”

“I know this path in the back- it’s really nice and brings a lot of solitude. It’s quite enchanted now that it’s all covered in a white coat.” 

But that didn’t convince him. 

“I don’t really want the cold.” he poured the milk into a cup and put the cup into microwave.

“Why don’t you just heat it on the stove? It’s faster.” you judged immediately.

“It’s faster in the microwave.”

“It’s faster on the stove.” 

“But the milk gets all burnt on the bottom.”

“You pour a bit of water on the bottom.”

“Too much work.” 

“You’re too much work.” you now bickered and he laughed. “Anyways, it’s snowing and you just put the jacket on- come on.”

“No jacket would be enough to keep me warm- even if I turned into a bear- I won’t.” he stood next to the microwave, crossing his arms again and you mimicking him. 

“You’ve been stuck in here for too long. Don’t be a lazy sod and go for a walk.” 

“No.”

“What do you mean no? Are you afraid of little snowflake?” you started to tease. “Will it wet your perfect curls? Newsflash, they’ll start to fall off soon anyway.”

“Oi! Don’t mess with receeding hairline- alright.” he started to comb his hair. “Our genes are strong.”

“Not all genes make it.”

“Oh, sod off.” he waved his hand in front of you and pulled the cup out. “You’re just jealous of it.”

“It’s overrated.” you mocked and he chuckled. 

“Come on, I’m serious.” you leaned on the counter in front of him, pleading with your eyes. “It’s just a little snow. We used to love it.”

He kept his eyes on yours and he could feel his knees giving into it more than his soul did. No... that was a lie. His soul would succumb to you, especially when you acted like that. 

Almost though. 

“It’s not the snow that bothers me.” he mumbled and walked past you, into the living room. 

Again, you followed him. “Then what is it?” 

You couldn’t figure it out. Nothing really happened. James and Lily died on the end of October and nobody’s birthday was in January that you know of... so what is it.

“I just don’t like the cold.” he sat down and turned on the TV, sipping on his choco.

“It’s not even that cold. It’s barely 8 degrees. It’s not even on zero.” you rolled your eyes and sat down beside him. 

“If you want to go, then go. I’m not.” he started to speak with a sharper tone.

You sat there, speechless. You really didn’t understand this man. You knew he wasn’t the same man as he was 12 years ago but there was something in Sirius that always screamed adventure. He wasn’t an introvert and he wasn’t the one that would hate to go outside. If you could find him anywhere in Hogwarts, it was definitely outside. So it made you sad to see him like this. See somebody so down... but you won’t force him to go out either. It doesn’t feel right. 

“I just wanted to make you feel better.” you mumbled as you  got up and left the living room. 

You didn’t look back. You couldn’t because of all the tears that were gathering in your eyes. It felt such a big rush of emotions climbing up from the bottomless you threw them all these years ago. It felt like grief... but not for James and Lily and the other friends you lost in that war. It was for Sirius because that day, you lost him too and you felt so much love inside of you that you had nowhere to give. Yes, he was imprisoned for 12 years and he must have suffered the loss but did that mean that your problems, your grief, your importance was less worthy than his because your problems were smaller than his. You went through a lot after Sirius was imprisoned. The hours of questioning, the terror in those nights that followed, insomnia, anxiety attacks, tears of loss- losing one person by one- counting down the days of when this is all going to be over. He may have been imprisoned, far away from all of that- he didn’t get to see others slip away slowly and he didn’t have family that fought in those. 

You wiped the tears away from your eyes and washed your hands, opening the doors widely before seeing him appear in front with an apologetic look in his eyes. 

You couldn’t, however. Not when your thoughts and emotions were raging inside of you. The bells of the past rang so loudly in your head that you pushed past him and walked into your room. 

He followed. 

You couldn’t say anything. There was something squeezing your heart so tightly right now that you only faced away from him, towards the white snow in front of you, a window glass seperating the two of you. Tears wanted so badly to climb up but you fought them with all your might. He won’t see you cry. He just won’t. 

But he knew. He knew you were upset and he knew why. You could have stayed in your apartment, enjoying your normal life, going to work, watering plants if you had any, going out with your friends, working on your hobbies... and you’re throwing all that away to spend your days with him, closed up in this house and trying to give him any feeling of normal you can. Hell, he should be even thankful that you decided to speak to him. You were always the toughest in the friend group, yet somehow the most understanding one. 

“It was cold there...” he started, sitting down on your bed and watching you face him your back. “And at first I didn’t mind it. I felt like I deserved it. I felt like I killed them all.” he said. “I didn’t know what was happening outside those walls and I preffered it that way. James was dead and he was the only thing I kept thinking about. I didn’t think about Lily or Harry or anybody really. James was always so much more than my best friend and I loved him- God, I loved him... even if he was so much better than me in every possible way, I couldn’t envy him because I loved him so much. He was everything I had. His parents were gone and then he was gone and without him... I just couldn’t function properly.” he looked up at you but you didn’t move, he could only see your reflection in the mirror, looking back at him. “And at first, the revenge, the fury inside of me was keeping me warm so the cold didn’t really matter but when that faded away, I could feel my toes freeze up. I walked up and down the cell, every day. Eight thousand steps every day... a few jumping jacks to get my blood pumping if I had any energy inside me left but it only lasted around 20 minutes. Then cold hit... again.” he said and suddenly, he could feel you sit beside him and the way your cherry blossom lotion made its way into his nostrils. 

He didn’t dare to look at you. Not now when he was so vulnerable. The only thing he could do was look at your hand and wanting its warm touch to give him comfort as it always did... but it didn’t. It was just there... in his vision... so far away. Touch his arm, his thigh, his hair... anything- he wants it so badly when all his emotions are in chaos. 

He looked away, gathering his thoughts. “I could deal with Dementors for a while as well but that didn’t last either. There were some days, months even, especially in the winter when the food was hard, tasteless and... well, cold... not much of it either. I started to lose my energy to do those walks or jumping jacks or to move a muscle. I laid there on that bed and tried to warm myself with all the clothes and blankets I could muster. I was weak and Dementors... it’s like they smell you and he came and I was sleeping when I felt it. I was so confused and-and-” he lost his train of thoughts as his eyes moved left and right on the ground as if he still couldn’t believe he let himself get caught like that. 

Then there it was. That warmth, right between his lats, down his spine to his toes and up to his arms. It was like a relief and he could finally look at you, looking back at him with tear-filled eyes and a comforting smile- the one that he adored so much. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.” you said and he smiled, tears dripping down as he grabbed your face between his palm and leaned his forehead on yours. 

“Oh, no!” he smiled so brightly and looking at you. “I want to tell you what I did next.” he said and put your hands into his, kissing the top of it and making you smile. “When you want a Dementor to leave you alone, you had to think of your happy memories and if I tried to think of James, I could only think of the grief and the pain his death left on me. And I thought so hard to think of something happy and I thought of you.” he leaned his chin on top of your hands and watched you with a smile, eyes gilstening from all the tears that continued to fall. He was in too deep now. “Whenever you walked into the room it was always lighter, wasn’t it? Everybody loved you and the way you bickered with James- it was the most funniest thing in the world. He simply adored you though- everybody did because you were this light in everybody’s lives. People came to you like magnets and you sort of ran away from them sometimes.” he laughed and you laughed with him. 

“It was a gift I didn’t really like.” 

“But you accepted them anyway.” he continued. “And besides James, you were the only one that could make me say things out loud- whenever I had any girl problems or army- I could tell you the most random things I thought in the middle of the day because you were so easy to talk to- so accepting of everybody and everything but you still had your boundaries. You were the one people came to when they needed something because no matter what, you had it and you didn’t judge us for it. And I remembered that day we got wasted with Remus in our room and you would lay down on me like you do, look at me with your eyes and I would just fall in love all over again with you- every time. That day and the day you looked at me in your black skirt and white shirt underneath the blazer. And another day when you would just lay your head on my shoulder and I would tell you to sod off but when you did it, it was the best thing.” you laughed a bit because you knew it was true. You liked to flirt with all the boys in the friend group but it was always innocent, except with Sirius because he was the one that was always single and the two of you would always mess around. You knew the two of you liked each other but it never felt right at the time. 

“You fancied me.” you gooed at him and he smiled. 

“I still do.” he brought your hands closer to his chest. “Back then it really felt like a casual fancy but the dementor left and I could find myself on the ground smiling at the memory of you- then it hit me. I need to know what happened to you and there was nobody there to tell me what- so I stayed hopeful that please, not you. And it was a horrible thought to have but I prayed and I wished that if I ever get out of here, you would still be alive.”

“And I am.” you smiled. 

“You are. It was one of the first things I checked before I ran for Harry.” he laughed, thinking back. “You were out with a friend and laughing so much with her- and she was quite funny.”

“You stalker.” you fooled around and he laughed. 

“I was for a bit but I couldn’t face you back then... and I couldn’t face cold again because I spend 12 years in that tempeture, shivering and surviving- felt as if it was the second version of Hell nobody mentioned before... and every winter since I just... I can’t face it.” 

You watched his head fall back down and you knew you had to understand him... but you also understood fear and fear was not real. 

“You’re not there anymore.” you said. “You’re here and if you continue to think that this cold is the same cold as it was in Azkaban, then you are still stuck there.” you continued as he watched. “And I’m here... not Dementors or any other prisoner- me.” it was your turn to place your palms underneath hsi jaw and scrunch your nose. “And my torture is different. I can bring you out and shove your face into the snow just like I did every time.”

“No you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did.”

“No, James shoved your face into the snow.”

“That’s debatable. It has been a long time, your memory must be foggy.”

“I think I can remember (y/n) the Snowman.”

“Turning mean now, aren’t we?” 

He only laughed. 

“And you know what... if you get cold I’ll be right there to bring you back into your warm home.” 

He smiled, seeing so much of you in this entire moment that the two of you shared and it clicked, just like it clicked all these years before... “I think you are my warm home.”

[comicaurora]

Happy Glorious 25th of May. Thank you for getting me into the discworld books (at least in an indirect way). They have quickly become one of my favorite series of books, even if I've only read a handful of them. As for a question, what have been your biggest takeaways or lessons from the discworld books? Whether it be how you write, how you engage with stories, or even how you look at the world.

we got another one lads

It's a little hard to boil it down! The books cover so much ground, and I read them at such a formative age it's hard to tease out how much of me is made from them.

On the most basic level, I love how angry those books are. Every POV protagonist is seething at unfairness and injustice and this is never framed as a bad thing - just something that needs to be controlled, directed, weaponized.

I like that everything is a joke, but in-universe everybody is absolutely sincere. The characters are charicatures and punchlines because of their sincerely-held beliefs and ideals. Captain Carrot is shiny and literal-minded and perfection personified and it's funny because he really is that good. Nanny Ogg is an outrageously horny and boisterous old woman and it's funny because she's having such a good time with it, especially when contrasted with her stern and serious foil Granny Weatherwax, and it's funny because the two of them know each other incredibly well and deal with each other's eccentricities with the practice of decades. The dwarves are funny because they're goofy little guys with big beards that think about nothing but gold and new songs to sing about gold, and as the books go on, the complexities of a culture that looks like that punchline become the deepest and most fascinating element of the worldbuilding in the entire Disc. The world is mounted on the back of four elephants and we made a book called the Fifth Elephant, how wacky, hey let's casually integrate the worldbuilding consequences of massive deposits of perfectly-crisped organic matter caused by the collision of a planet-sized elephant with a planet-sized planet. The discworld tells a joke and then commits to the consequences with its entire ass, and I love that.

A lot of the characters are in some way one-of-a-kind and unprecedented, or at least appear to be on the surface because nobody like them has even been publicly known, and the stories frequently explore how these unique people navigate their existence without a roadmap and trailblaze the way for the people just like them to someday follow. People who break rules by existing and make the world question what purpose those rules serve if they aren't actually unyielding principles of reality. The dwarf gender cultural revolution, the female wizard, the golem given a voice, the entire existence of Susan Sto Helit. It produces a world that feels like it's absolutely full of protagonists, like every story is one-of-a-kind and every individual person matters and has the right to choose the way they want to live, no matter what anyone else thinks. can't believe some terfs really think these books are for them as if they aren't precision-built to tell them to go fuck themselves

The cast full of protagonists makes the crossover events a delight. All these characters existing in the same universe means they can just run into each other sometimes, and they're all such absolute weirdos that their interactions never fail to be absolutely incredible. The world feels very thoroughly lived-in, to the point where the stories sometimes almost feel like they're telling themselves.

they're just really fuckin good ok

[johnsspacesuittight]

finally got around to watching Knives Out yesterday, and just started Glass Onion, and I have to say, Rian Johnson has absolutely nailed the ecclectic-ness of the characters that go into classic murder mysteries, there’s something so terribly unlikeable about almost all of them, and yet you can’t not be fascinated and really enjoy them, it’s all exaggerated just enough to feel charicatured while also still feeling close to real, there are little details to every single one that enamour you to them even though they are mostly really horrible people, I don’t know he has just really nailed the form, struck the balance between something that feels incredibly reflective of real people while still feeling very much like a Character

[trashasaurusrex]

i hope this doesnt sound weird at all, but i really love how you portray lindsey in terms of femininity. she has some traditionally masculine features in her build, her jawline and facial features, her musculature, but she's also deliberately feminine in her dress and makeup and such in a way that doesnt feel a charicature. it feels so comforting to see her. i reqlly hope this isn't at odds with how you try to portray her at all because it's just my personal view on it as a casual blog-viewer, but lindsey is just such a lovely oc and she really shows that you love her too

Ahhhh anon!! ;_; no, you are absolutely correct! And I'm so so happy to see that you find her comforting T^T

Lindsey's character takes heavy inspiration from much of the Y2K "girl power" stuff and feminine characters who were villainized or belittled due to their femininity. I want to emphasize "freedom" with her, because that's what she means to me ;; so, it makes me so happy that she's read in this manner by you! thank you thank you! ;_;

I could probably talk about lin's inspo more in depth, but oh goodness, that's gonna be a long one hahailovehertoomuch

[poetessinthepit]

One thing to note about the propaganda narrative that Palestinian culture is anti-women and anti religious freedom is that Leila Khaled, a female athiest, is an absolute icon in Palestinian culture, even amongst those who are deeply religious, may hold conservative attitudes, etc. When this point is brought up, the usual counterpoint is "Well, Leila Khaled is a terrorist". But that's another conversation. Regardless of what you think of her, Leila Khaled is not a traditional Muslim woman or a typical woman in general.

All this is not to say there are no regressive elements within Palestinian society, but it is say that the complexity of Palestinian culture is often reduced to a charicature to justify it's destruction.

[anglerflsh]

I have a special interest in witch hunting and I felt legally obligated to send an ask since I never have people to talk about it with. What do you think of the myth circulated about Matthew Hopkins dying after being subjected to the swimming test? I almost find it more ironic that he likely just died a fairly mundane death of tuberculosis after spending his life hunting the supernatural.

I think that it's a great example of the mythification of his own life - of course people would think he died in a thematically accurate way, even when it's absolutely untrue: he became a symbolic figure and that requires a certain umpf of narrative, kind of like how the "let them eat cakes" line that was never even uttered during the French revolution.

A lot of historical figures become cemented as these charicatural representations! It's a very interesting process, actually.

[rottenbrainstuff]

Oh boy we got discourse already for some new Snow White movie that’s not even coming out until next year. Awesome.

I’m getting a headache here. The argument is, apparently, that the new movie wants to take the direction that Snow White don’t need no man and doesn’t just spend all her time dreaming and waiting to be saved, Snow White wants to be a leader, (…what) because the old story is outdated and not feminist. The counter argument is that telling women they can’t dream about love, they HAVE to go out and get a career and be a girlboss, is still just telling women what they should do and is also not feminist, and doesn’t support the women who want more “traditional” things.

Guys you’re all missing the ultimate point, which is exactly what Disney wants, they want stupid discourse because if you’re all talking about it then you’re going to go out and see the movie one way or another. The point you’re all missing, the huge gross issue with all their stupid live action remakes, almost every single one, is that these movies are creatively-bankrupt cash grabs with little artistic value that Disney tries to advertise by picking a “problem” with the original that absolutely NO ONE was talking about, and announcing they have “fixed” it in their new adaptation, while simultaneously ignoring actual problems that people WERE talking about. (Ie: dumbo and the bizarre animal rights message that absolutely no one was clamouring for, vs the complete removal of the crows and even changing the damned feather to a white feather because we don’t want to have to do any actual work addressing or subverting racist charicatures)

So it’s the same stupid thing with Snow White, guys, don’t get distracted. It’s not necessarily a bad idea to explore how to update a fairy tale and make it more interesting for a contemporary audience. (Though I say, with extreme irritation, if you don’t LIKE old fairy tales then maybe just don’t MAKE old fairy tales, hey?) Just slapping a “girlboss don’t need no man” sticker on top of your stale, badly-costumed money grab isn’t the way to do it though. Snow White was an important, historic industry ground breaker both for the Disney company and for animation in general and it’s an insult to shit out such an insipid remake. THAT’S what you should be offended by.

[sic-semper-hominibus]

whenever anyone trots out the old propaganda about how no one would ever do anything if their needs were met, they would just sit on their ass and let themselves atrophy into a fatphobic charicature of a human being, all i hear is "the guy from Office Space (1999) was right about everything. his burnout had absolutely nothing to do with late 90s corporate office culture or the thanklessness of y2k-prevention work, it's a universal truth of human nature and his girlfriend's therapist dying in the middle of a hypnosis session really did give him a transcendant awakening that made him better than the people in his life by allowing him to see that. how does that movie end, by the way? i never finished it"

(spoilers i guess: he quits the tech industry and finds joy and fulfillment working construction with his neighbor)

[steveharrington]

But we’re not told WHY they’re vecna’d. There’s no reason why vecna targets traumatized teens EXCEPT to make it even more horror-movie-ish. Why do they get trash compacted like that specifically? It’s implied that’s how vecna a powers work but why? No idea.

The show has left so many unanswered questions already and this new element (vecna itself!) just over complicates everything

And I’m actually kind of pissed bc Patrick gets vecna’d and we know almost nothing about him. But stranger things… hates poc

I actually kind of hate Chrissy because of how differently she (pretty white girl) was treated from Patrick (black boy). And. her eating disorder existed SOLELY for exploitative purposes just to cause an emotional reaction it’s not something that adds to her as a character it’s just there to freak the audience out, meanwhile other REAL LIFE ACTORS are being forced to starve themselves for the roles. We get it eating disorders are scary good thing they’re not real! /s

Acting like this new girl will be important focusing on her ed only to kill her off in the most horrific way possible… i don’t like it it feels exploitative especially of a real world problem this show is absolutely complicit in spreading

We got a LOT less development for Fred than chrissy and didn’t fucking. Languish in such a triggering topic I think he was the happy medium.

Regardless the focus on traumatized teens with no other similarities was already so random they could have just picked literally anyone with no special backstory and it would have worked just as well? At the end of the day Chrissy ONLY matters as motivation for Jason, who only matters as motivation for Eddie ( and since Eddie’s death did nothing like. It didn’t seem like he was saving Dustin’s life or anything) who only matters to make Dustin kind of sad? She died for man pain except the ultimate man pain was for some guy she never even met

Chrissy isn’t a person or a character she’s a bafflingly written INTENTIONALLY TRIGGERING and misogynistic plot device with an outrageous amount of minute details they could have given to any of the real characters. They didn’t have to spend 10 minutes pretending she mattered only to beat her to death with a rock and then run over her a few times for good measure

well first of all i am no authority on the topic of whether or not chrissy's struggles with her ed were done correctly and therefore i will not speak on it because its really....not my place as someone who hasn't experienced that!

as for why vecna targets people with trauma specifically, i think it serves a greater narrative purpose and that's depicted best through max's arc this season. vecna's whole backstory as henry shows that he was obviously traumatized himself by brenner and when he appeals to chrissy, fred, and max he attempts to persuade them to just give up/join him/etc because it's easier than carrying on. he's using their trauma against them. and then when max is faced with this threat of losing her life to vecna, it motivates her to want to get better and want to stop isolating herself from lucas and the group, she literally says "i don't want to go, im not ready" and it kinda overall like. saves her life! vecna acts as a narrative tool to explore mental health and trauma and guilt. imo it's much much MUCH more impactful for our characters to overcome him through their bonds and their desire to live despite what they've been through than like.....killing a monster of the week

obv you dont have to agree with me and that's fine but i don't think chrissy is like...a misogynistic charicature in the slightest. like i said before i really don't think chrissy's treatment in the show was uniquely different than fred's or even max's. i don't really understand how chrissy's trauma was "languished in" any more than fred's? i feel like they got equal screentime and fred's vecna vision was just as brutal as chrissy's, even if they talked about two entirely different topics. and if im being completely honest (again not trying to be rude or demean your view of the show, but you did send this ask to me personally so im going to give my honest opinions back) i think referring to chrissy as a "plot device" and not a "real character" is intentionally reading the show in bad faith.

this season is a horror season. people die like they do in any slasher movie. i understand if the vecna plotline isn't for everyone because like yeah watching characters who are already suffering die very tragic deaths is hard! but i think the point of vecna like i said before is to personify trauma, guilt, and shame to allow our characters to overcome those feelings. chrissy's death worked both to establish what vecna does and to involve eddie. but i dont think that automatically makes her a "prop" or a "plot device" because she's given a personality, she's given a lot of thought and care from the actress, she's given people who mourn her. i think it was genuinely one of the sweetest moments in the whole show when eddie dedicated his little guitar solo to her because it showed that her death affected him and in motivating him to want to kill vecna and save his friends from her same fate, it had meaning

[luimnigh]

I posted 9,449 times in 2022

1,311 posts created (14%)

8,138 posts reblogged (86%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@venn364

@aspiringwarriorlibrarian

@dingdongyouarewrong

@disregardcanon

@preciousmetaltimeofnight

I tagged 4,466 of my posts in 2022

#uncaptioned - 570 posts

#rwby - 446 posts

#asks - 303 posts

#anonymous - 253 posts

#uk politics - 201 posts

#signal boost - 137 posts

#toh spoilers - 132 posts

#luimnigh plays p5r - 115 posts

#tumblr - 109 posts

#ableism - 108 posts

Longest Tag: 136 characters

#being raised by aunts and uncles is a great way to give your character a stable home life without having the narrative weight of parents

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

...do people not understand that we want corporations to use Blaze?

Guys, it's non-targeted advertising. The best you get is choosing a specific country. It's not the laser-beam powered by cookies and tracking software that's part of the wider internet hellscape, it's spraying a bunch in a general direction.

It's the way adverts used to be and the way we want it to go back to being.

We want to advertisers to get used to this way again, rather than push for more targeted tools.

3,511 notes - Posted November 11, 2022

#4

One thing I love about Goncharov is that Tumblr just decided it was a 1973 film.

That's actually really early in Martin Scorsese's career. Depending on when in the year it came out, it'd either be his third or fourth film, coming out the same year as his breakthrough film, Mean Streets.

It'd possibly be his first film with Robert De Niro (also in Mean Streets), and would absolutely be his first film with Al Pacino, who he never worked with until 2019's The Irishman.

If this was a real piece of lost media, you could absolutely see why film buffs would be so into it.

4,800 notes - Posted November 22, 2022

#3

Officially, there are no eligibility requirements to be UK Prime Minister. Realistically, you need to be the leader of the majority party in Parliament, and a Member of Parliament.

So what's the eligibility requirements to be an MP?

Over 18; citizen of the UK, Commonwealth, or Ireland; not a police officer, soldier, civil servant, judge, or Member of the House of Lords; and not a member of a foreign legislature (excluding Commonwealth nations and Ireland), or the European Parliament, the Northern Irish Assembly, and Welsh Senedd.

Not even a residency requirement.

So if you fit those criteria, and the Tories keep losing Prime Ministers at this rate, look forward to your mandatory week as Prime Minister.

4,833 notes - Posted October 24, 2022

#2

Okay, here's my idea:

The British should put a time limit on the Monarchy.

Not like declaring a republic tomorrow, but deciding on a date in the future that ends the British Monarchy.

And there's a perfect date for it coming up!

October 14th, 2066.

A thousand years since the Battle of Hastings. A thousand years of this one specific bloodline ruling England.

Call time on the Monarchy after exactly one thousand years. Nice, and neat.

Even better: Charles isn't living 44 years. He'll be gone in about twenty. Now William? He's what, 40? Yeah, he can live another 44 years. His great grandmother was over a hundred, his granny was 96, William can make it to 84 barring accident or assassination.

So on October 14th 2066, William the Last steps down a thousand years after William the First won the crown.

Nice, neat, and fair. William gets the crown he's been waiting forty years for already, but ten-year-old George grows up without expectation of it.

Have a nice big abdication ceremony, even.

32,115 notes - Posted September 20, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

According to the Irish Times, in the new Lord of Rings series on Amazon, the Hobbits are Irish charicatures and the Dwarfs are Scottish charicatures.

It also notes that the Men have Lancashire accents while the Elves are Upper Class British, commenting that "Somehow the Victorian caste system has been smuggled into a 21st-century American fantasy series."

38,133 notes - Posted September 1, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[msfbgraves]

cuba/teddy anon thanks so much for answering my questions now things were cleared up—or as much as they can be in this sort of story!!

i guess now that i finished it, with this understanding, i wanna read it again. i didnt think i was going to enjoy it this much but here i am. i still think teddy is a substitute character for the author.

i think my favorite characters were teddy and jackie. i hated che, what a groomer. and cuba is interesting but difficult and has no idea how to understand his son.

what characters did you like/hate?

thanks again!!

Aw, thank you, it's delightful that my interpretations - informed by many of my sweet discord friends who have also been enjoying the play! - have helped you want to read it again. It's a very rich story that way!

I'ts really one of the more original and thought provoking things I've read in a while. No one would produce it now with all these undertones, and the only reasons people are not clamoring for it to be censored is that I think hardly anyone knows it exists. But ask any social worker how messy life can get and I think it is great that it does exist, actually, and is so much more nuanced than the stories we tell nowadays.

For me, the heart of the play will always be the dynamic between Teddy and Cuba, although I appreciate how rich the other characters are, too. No one is one note. I think almost all of them could have whole novels written about them.

And I do like Cuba because could easily have been a villain if you take a few things about him away: he's violent, he's selfish, he's insecure, he uses his son (in what way is ambiguous, but he does treat Teddy like a servant a lot) and yet - he wants him to have a good life, he wants him safe from the outside world, he recognises there is something weird going on between them and he tries to fight it, tries to take care of him, and most of all he doesn't always blame the world for his misfortunes. He seems to understand that he has some responsibility, and it makes you feel that if he just had a little more actual support, there is hope for him. That this is why Teddy can honestly still love him, because if Cuba could face himself enough to get a little better....

I don't think it is going to happen, but it could, there really is some part of Cuba that could go to a priest or a wise lady and say: "Help." And maybe that is wish fulfillment on Rey Povod's part - his Teddy definitely is a self insert for me too - but these are people, not charicatures, and Teddy, argh, poor boy. I've said this before but I admire so much how smart he is in dealing with Cuba, smart in a way stories about abused children almost never show: because he's good at calming Cuba down; he goes behind his back, he takes care of him, he needs him, he wants to make him proud, he tries to grow up, he sulks, he's stupidly in love, he's stressed out as all **** and he goes to poetry readings. And Jackie also has such a good heart and absolutely no clue how to improve the situation so he tries to keep the situation livable the only way he knows. And it is not enough but he still really tries and it's all so... I mean Teddy needs to go to a safe space now but it's not because people don't care. Because they're out of their depth, but here is care and it is so bittersweet it makes my heart hurt.

[mbvvacationbibleschool]

Beyond Good and Evil

It’s come to my attention that I may be evil. 

A weaponized and naive notion of propaganda, mixed with moral absolutism has caused many people to throw huge swaths of humanity and the strawman versions of their morality or ideology into the camp of absolute evil. It’s always us vs them, isn’t it? I got into some kind of argument where I ended up being treated as some kind of charicaturized version of the idiot yuppie naive swindled evil soft godless leftist environazi that I may represent in the minds of others. To some, I am the posterchild of evil, especially because I am not shy about speaking my mind- spreading the devil’s seeds of deception.  I am the deluded one who has been bathing in propaganda.

It was very telling to me in that I had been painting these foolish stubborn backwards ecocidal fundamentalist assholes with an oddly similar brush.  I even let myself feel afraid of the alt-left anarchistic anti-natal “antiracist” misanthropics that are willing to throw every baby out with the bathwater. Or of course the truly deplorable “neo-nazis” that are allegedly everywhere, rioting, killing, pillaging. For the radical, even you are a brainwashed bootlicker. Truly these people are evil, right? 

First radicalized with the perception of environmental degradation, I found solidarity with the environmental movement, then the psychedelic movement, the posthumanists, moral relativistic deconstructionist and nihlistic philosophers of the current age. I’m all for a free expression of consciousness that is dignifying for people and the planet. You say you want a revolution? Well if what you’re talking about is violence, you’re going to have to count me out.

Most people are starting to see the cracks forming in our society’s foundation as growing problems rear their ugly head in droves with solutions constantly blocked by the bogieman of your choosing - is it the brainwashed left or the brainwashed right? Is it the rich or is it the politicians? Is it your neighbor? Anyone but me, once radicalized, of course. It’s easy to end up in perpetual exasperation with the dizzying paradox of everything changing and nothing changing fast enough.

You want to take down the Borguouse?  Don’t chase red herrings. Divide and conquer, as the old saying goes. A binary view of evil and defining outgroups through tribalism is the most effective way to stunt change or to ensure unintended or civillian casualties (figuratively or literally). Even Liberals are guilty of tribalism and redifining outgroups. I do believe that a binary view of morality will cause hatred and division by default- at best, it will convey easy answers to hard questions that really ought to be wrestled with for one’s own sake. As Socrates once said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Yin and Yang is about how everything has aspects of good and evil in it, and that any ideology brought to its logical extreme has severe negative consequences. As Marcus Aurelius said; “Men were born to be in service to one another.” If we are part of the same body (as it also says in the Bible) then why would one hand strike the other?” We are trying to push a leaning tower of a society, and it seems like taking a balanced or weak stance will mean the tower will topple right onto our heads.  

It’s easy for me to say that what we consider as right and wrong is mostly convention, as someone with a very laissez-faire and impersonal view of the divine influence on our human development. My ideas are a hodgepodge of Charlie Darwin and the Dada artists, Nietzsche, and of course the most controversial and brilliant pieces of post-modernist cinema such as Rick and Morty. We came from monkeys and our society has been left to figure it out on our own. The beliefs we hold dear are some sort of hodgepodge of whatever worked and whatever other people were saying - as the old sayings go -  “Might makes right,” and “Truth is whatever your friends let you get away with saying.” The irony here is that deconstructionism, moral relativism and absolute skepticism are the kinds of hip-and-trendy platitudes of the self-described intellectuals of the 21st century. Contrarianism is another common way to come to firmly held beliefs. Do we come to our beliefs naturally, or was Calvinism right after all?

So I want to try and redefine propaganda, as redefining is a post-modern deconstructionist thing to do- propaganda is often a logically consistent simplification of an issue that relies on omission or downplaying of certain truths and exaggeration of other truths to create a desired outcome in the induvials exposed to that message. Sometimes these messages are spread by so called grassroots organizations or well meaning individuals. Sometimes the messages or the desired outcomes could be for your good or the common good, sometimes it is for some stupid distraction or a culture war.  To reiterate  - often there is perception of real problems in so called propaganda or deluded and radicalized groups. A lack of mutual trust and putting up divisions between groups is where the real problem lies. It may help to consider both sides of an issue. It may help to ask if you may be vilifying other groups - even that particular group that you may think deserves to be vilified. EVEN THEM. The challenge is humanizing the people who have been dehumanized, putting a face behind the person that is the posterchild of your outrage.

We all love a good villain because it makes a confusing world so much simpler. Some people bemoan the rising popularity of the anti-hero or the humanizing of villains in television such as Disney’s (tm) Maleficent, or even villainless films such as Encanto, but I really think it’s time for a hard think. We generally only have enemies if they think we are their enemy and vice versa. Learn to communicate before you escalate.  Mutual trust and cooperation is preferable to mutual distrust. See the prisoner’s dilemma or Friend Or Foe. I don’t really believe that there are evil people or evil nations. Only through ignorance and lack of trust or respect do injustices occur, most people think they are acting out of their own self interest. I recommend vigilence against easy answers to tough moral questions, and avoiding vilifying your neighbor. Who really is evil?

[partypuppynastja]

In light of the recent drama, where do you stand on transmed/truscum?

I don't know what the recent drama is/was, but:

I am neither transmedicalist nor truscum.

I do have dysphoria and I am very glad of the HRT I have and I do want other things that I simply can't afford (or get paid for for me) at present.

I do recognise not everyone wants the same things, and that's ok.

I don't know of any harm that can come of treating people with respect by default. Even someone acting in bad faith, being the absolute TERF charicature of a masculine manly cis het man saying "I'm a woman!" to get access to places (or people) can at worst highlight problems with many public infrastructure things assuming a gender binary and that everyone in each has certain characteristics. And as for access to people, à la "trans women are demanding [cis] lesbians sleep with them!!!!1" then, respecting someone's stated identity doesn't require any given person to owe them sex.

As for respectability politics, and a notion that "that other group adjacent to us are making us look bad", be assured that to outsiders, we're all the same, and in-fighting won't make any of us look better.

[hotshotshitshow]

Btw mafia 2 sucks ass and I'm convinced the only reason it's so beloved is bc nostalgia. I feel absolutely nothing for Vito. Joe is played up to be this loveable goof but nevermind his bigotry I guess (yes I know it's historically accurate, that doesn't mean I have to like it). The fucking part where you have to beat the snot out of the worst charicatures of gay men in the shower of a prison so they don't sexually assault you. And I will NEVER be able to unsee the horrible O face of that sleezebag dude who gets sucked off in front of you like it's supposed to be funny instead of incredibly uncomfortable

Fuck this game, I don't wanna hear ONE word about how you think it's the best mafia game.