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maniacwatchestheworld · 2 months

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We Need To Talk About Danny's Power Level.

I was hesitant to make this post, but the more I think about it and the more I see... We really HAVE to discuss this. Generally speaking, I really don't want to be seen as someone who is trying to ruin people's fun within this fandom. I want to inform, and while I have issues with some of the very prevalent ideas in this fandom, I don't want to tell people what they should or should not be making! I want people to follow what they find fun to create! But this power level thing...? I think that it has some rather concerning implications to it that need to be examined and discussed! This is an actual, decently serious problem, and after considering it for a time, it occurs to me that I may be one of the few people in this community that recognizes this issue as an actual issue and has the authority to speak on it...

You NEED to stop making Danny so incredibly overpowered in the DPxDC space.

Now please don't misunderstand me. I understand the value of a good fun power fantasy and making Danny more powerful than God can be fun and cathartic if you have a negative history with the Christian faith. But this insistence on the Ghost Zone being The Most Important Thing Ever and Danny being The Most Powerful Entity Within It is actually actively warping how people interpret and think about DC canon as well as certain characters within its canon to the point of unrecognizability as well as robbing characters of what makes them interesting, the point of their stories, and their agency within it. But most importantly of all, all of this is just... Generally, genuinely dismissive and shitty towards most religions, cultures, beliefs, and faiths that people practice, ESPECIALLY the faiths of POC and other minorities. And this is specifically an issue that DC does not have and that people within this space are making an issue by refusing to let the Ghost Zone and Danny have some limitations.

So that you understand where I'm coming from, please understand that I'm a person of color (I'm half Filipino) and that I'm Buddhist (a religion that I decided to convert to and embrace after a lot of thought and soul-searching, even if I'm not very good at practicing it). It also needs to be stated that in the DC universe, all religions and faiths are true and real at the same time, and they all have more or less equal footing as any other faith or religion or mythology explored in this multiverse. Christian heaven and hell are real. Reincarnation is canonical to the DCU. The Greek Pantheon is real and they are just as real and powerful as the Norse Pantheon. (By the by, just to let you know, yes, people in the real life modern day do actually actively worship both of these pantheons today.) Different alien planets have different faiths, and there is precedent for them being real as well. (Hey! Fun fact! Kryptonians are polytheistic!) It does seem that some form of animism is real within the DCU (within concepts of The Red and The Green)! And there is even representation for indigenous African faiths and beliefs within this shared universe! One of the genuinely wonderful things about the DC universe is that all of these faiths are real, they're all valid, and they are all more or less on equal footing to one another! If all the religions and afterlives and gods of each pantheon went to war with one another, it would genuinely be difficult to know who would win, or who would even stand a chance of coming out of this conflict alive!

In fact, a lot of characters and storylines within the DC universe are actually DEPENDENT on all of these faiths existing and being equally valid at the same time. Do you know where Billy Batson gets his powers from? The phrase "SHAZAM," if you didn't know, is actually an acronym for the names of the gods and heroes that he derives his powers from. (Solomon, Heracles, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury.) And it's implied that each person with SHAZAM powers has different heroes and gods that they derive their power from! (Black Adam derives all of his powers from the Egyptian Pantheon. Mary Marvel derives all of her powers from female gods and heroic figures.) Many of Wonder Woman's stories involve her interacting with various different pantheons. Xanthe Zhou gets their powers from traditional Chinese folk ancestor-worshiping practices. Ragman is a Jewish character whose suit is a powerful Jewish artifact- a suit made out of the souls of sinners that was created to protect the Jewish community. Sun Wukong is an actual character in the DCU and he is JUST as overpowered and immortal ×500 as he should be! And there are like... At least 3 entirely different characters that either are iterations of, claim to be, or pull their powers/inspiration from Anansi! DC celebrates a lot of faiths and religions and are bringing in more beliefs and faiths into their universe all the time! TONS of characters derive their powers from their religions, faiths, and beliefs! And DC celebrates them all as being real and valid to all who practice them! ... And you want them all to be forced to be under the same umbrella and less important and powerful as Danny and the Ghost Zone...

Bringing up ideas of ghosts and afterlives are always going to be loaded subjects because they often inherently rub up against actual living people's practiced religions and beliefs. But a belief in ghosts and dimensions better suited for them is also a valid belief that real life people have. And there is precedent for these beliefs also being real within DC canon. But DC only manages to get away with crossing over as many faiths as it does by saying that they are all real, valid, and while you might see less of some pantheons and more of others, they all exist and are doing their own thing just like they do in real life, just off panel... Are you beginning to see what the problem is...?

In the DPxDC fandom's eagerness to incorporate Danny into the DC universe and to make him powerful enough to go toe to toe with the likes of Superman, it seems that most people immediately overcompensated and that no one has really thought to slow down, stop, and actually think about what they are implying. Because the most common headcanons that I have seen regarding the Ghost Zone and other afterlives and religions? It's that they are all parts of the Ghost Zone, but are all ultimately subordinate to it. And since Danny is the Most Powerful and Important Person in the Ghost Zone... This implies that all religions, faiths and beliefs are less important and are indeed subordinate to the Almighty Danny. That all deities and the people following them should just bow down to Danny's might. This is something that DC, in spite of all of its flaws, has managed to avoid. These religions are REAL religions! Actual faiths practiced by actual people! We are NOT talking about dead, irrelevant pantheons that no one alive worship anymore! We are talking about living, active faiths and religions, some of which colonizers have tried to eradicate from the world! Some of these faiths have been suppressed! Some of the people who practice these beliefs have faced genocide for them! And so saying that the Ghost Zone is bigger, better, and that Danny is more important than any single other faith and afterlife...? THAT'S A SHITTY THING TO DO! You are literally doing the shitty Christian missionary thing, but with a fictional afterlife that consists of fictional characters that you know are not actual religious beliefs! You're landing on the sandy polytheistic shores of the DCU and declaring that the Ghost Zone is actually vaster than every faith already in the DCU and that Danny is more powerful and has authority over your gods! That your beliefs and faith and religion should just take a backseat to the Danny power fantasy! That your real, lived religion is not more important nor should it be respected when Danny is in the room! Of course the Buddha should bow down to Danny! Of course the Jewish people should renounce their faith and worship Danny instead because he's better and more powerful than the Jewish God! Why should people pray to their ancestors when Danny ultimately gets to decide what happens to everyone's ancestors!? If they want good things to happen to their ancestors in the afterlife, they should pray to Danny instead! Not like any form of prayer works or matters in this universe anyway because Danny is Almighty! And he doesn't hear the prayers! By making all faiths subordinate to Danny within these stories, you are saying that anyone who practices these beliefs and faiths within these stories are not valid in their beliefs. The only belief that matters and is real in this universe is the Ghost Zone and whatever will appease Danny the most. And while the characters in these stories are not real, the religions, beliefs, and practices they engage in ARE. And so you are implying that real people's faiths and religions don't matter. You are just dismissing real faiths and beliefs as not something worth thinking about or respecting within your works! You are saying that this fictional American white teenage boy and his goopy green land is more important to you than just being respectful of real people's faiths, beliefs, and religions. That your power fantasy is more important than saying that a person is valid for holding on to their beliefs. That when it comes down to it, that you would rather people choose your Danny power fantasy over their religion being portrayed as important and valid. That is honestly insulting. And really alls that you've done is impose monotheism onto the DC universe. You're just enforcing monotheism on people with extra steps. But instead of it being the Christian God, you've put Danny in that position. THIS IS A SHITTY THING TO DO! THIS SHOULD NOT BE THE DEFAULT HEADCANON THAT PEOPLE HAVE IN THIS FANDOM! PLEASE STOP!

Please understand. I know that you didn't do this on purpose or mean to imply this intentionally. I know that you didn't realize that you were insulting and undermining actual faiths and religions by pushing these ideas on the fandom. If one or two people had these thoughts and headcanons and didn't think very much about what they are implying, this would not be a problem. But for this to be the default is VERY disconcerting! As a Buddhist, it does feel genuinely shitty and insulting to imply that Danny has authority over the Buddha and that he outranks and is more powerful than Sun Wukong. It's not fun to think that my beliefs matter to you less than continuing to play with your Danny power fantasy. That you don't think that the pursuit for enlightenment and inner peace is real or worthwhile. That you would find my pursuit of compassion over everything else to be silly, stupid, and laughable when stood next to Danny. I know that you don't mean it. I know that's not what you meant to imply. But it is what you imply by making every faith subordinate to the Ghost Zone. And as someone who has a faith that is so often seen as subordinate to others and just a silly little play fantasy that doesn't matter and isn't real, it's depressing and uncomfortable to see this community as a whole unknowingly echo these sentiments. People in real life don't think that my faith is valid. People don't believe me when I say that I'm Buddhist. And as someone who is Filipino on top of that, I can't help but to think about the utter tragedy of my ancestors being forced to convert to Christianity or die. To forget their beliefs, pretend they never mattered, and embrace Jesus. To be forced to believe that their indigenous beliefs didn't matter. And so many of those indigenous beliefs are now lost and forgotten to their living ancestors (including myself) for it because to the Christians, their belief in Jesus was ultimately more important to them than just letting the Filipino beliefs and religions peacefully exist as they were. It's uncomfortable to me that you would rather I just embrace this view of Danny and let him be more important than and be an authority over my religion. That I should just be comfortable in Danny being more important and better than every religion that people actually practice in real life. That I should just forget the insult to my and any other religion that you make by placing Danny as more important than, and to "just have fun." But I can't. And these ideas are everywhere in this fandom. Even in stories where it shouldn't matter or doesn't need to be present, it's there. This reminder that you don't take my faith seriously- these ideas that Danny is more important than my faith are ubiquitous to this community. An issue that wasn't present in either of the original source materials. Because they thought about it and so went out of their way to not imply it. But here, people are just not willing to make that courtesy for even a second.

But it doesn't have to be this way. You can do better! I know that you can do better. And it isn't even difficult to do! All that you need to do better is to simply... Just... Think about it. When you imply or say "all afterlives are part of the Ghost Zone" actually think about ALL afterlives! Christian and Atheist and Greek ones, yes. But also Asian and Native American and African and South American ones too! Is that kind of thought fair towards Native American faiths, Buddhists, Jews, Hindus, Palestinians, Hellenists, Animists, and every other person and group that practices a faith? Or does this have majorly fucked up implications towards some or all of these people? If the answer is yes, you can proceed, but you need to be mindful of that fact and just think about it, even if only a little. Even if it's just a small acknowledgement that you don't know what you're talking about or that you are choosing to ignore some of the fucked up implications you're making here for the sake of the story in the tags. I just want you to take a moment and think through the implications of what you are making, and to make a choice on whether you should proceed or reconsider things. If you choose to proceed with the fucked up implications, that's fine. It means that you can do so with other mindsets in mind and can possibly use these ideas in interesting ways! At least you made a stance to possibly be shitty towards some people for the sake of your fun. At least you made the choice to say that some people's beliefs just don't matter to your story. This is a neutral statement. Some works of art are just not made for some kinds of people. And that's fine. But it is always better to knowingly acknowledge and make that choice than to pretend that it isn't there. And if you didn't realize that's what you were doing? If you reconsider and choose to turn back on this idea? At least you made that choice and didn't just passively follow the rest of the crowd to get here. Hopefully, thinking about it will make you more mindful about your art in the future and therefore make it better! The only thing to do about it is to acknowledge that you weren't thinking about the implications, but that you changed your mind, and move forwards with your life.

Now just to be entirely clear, I'm not telling you that I want you to feel guilty about being inconsiderate towards other faiths. That doesn't really do anyone any good. I won't get any satisfaction from you feeling guilty about it or internally punishing yourself for it. Just actually give what you might be implying more thought in terms of religion next time and do better. It's alright to make mistakes. We are all just human and we all make mistakes. Sometimes we don't even realize when we've made a mistake. Just strive to do better next time, be more willing to let go of these ideas that you're so attached to, allow yourself to see things from another perspective, and move on. Sometimes, it's better to just leave things alone. Sometimes you shouldn't meddle and try to rework ideas that were perfectly good on their own to begin with. Sometimes nothing that you personally can add will be a positive contribution. Sometimes the only thing that interfering will do is over-complicate things and rob the idea of what made it so interesting and powerful in the first place. But it's okay to leave it alone. It's going to be okay. I'm not angry. Just disappointed and a little frustrated. But it's better if you are able to just drop these things and move forwards with mindfulness in the future.

As an alternative, I think that it would generally be better for the Ghost Zone to just be its own thing separate from the other afterlives. Equal to other afterlives and not all-encompassing of them. It can be connected or related to other afterlives, but being greater than them as a whole is just a very uncomfortable and cruel implication. You don't need the Ghost Zone to be the most important thing in the multiverse. And Danny does not need to be the most powerful thing in existence. Please. It's okay to have power fantasies. But the invincible overpowered stronger than all Gods Danny should not be the overwhelming norm here to the detriment of everything else. It's only when you let go of Danny NEEDING to be the MOST important thing in the multiverse can you start to really dive into some of the more interesting sides of characters on their own terms and not on yours! Like... Did you know that there is one ghost character in DC called The Spectre and that he's the literal personification of the wrath of God? Did you know that Xanthe Zhou as a spirit envoy is actually half dead and half alive? Did you know that The Wizard Shazam is actually, secretly an aboriginal god? Did you know that in the DC universe that Judas Iscariot still walks the Earth to this day, doing vigilante work to atone for his betrayal of Jesus? Did you know that Ra's Al Ghul's mom has met and hung out with some of the demons that Sun Wukong fought against in Journey to the West? Hell, did you know that Damian is Buddhist!? Imagine that. Danny coming in and telling Damian that he's more important and more powerful than Damian's entire religion. That the Buddha is just a lackey of his and that he rules over all afterlives, including nirvana and cycles of reincarnation. I'm certain that Damian would take that very well and accept it wholeheartedly! Don't you agree with me?!!?!???!

I personally think that all of this is better and more interesting if characters, their religions, and ideas in general are able to interact with Danny's world on their own terms without being forced to fit within Danny's box! You don't need to try to force everything within DC's universe to fit inside Danny's. DC wouldn't ask for Danny's universe to conform to theirs! They would just add everything that Danny's universe has to offer on top of everything else they already have! And trying to fit the entire DC multiverse within the scope of Danny's universe... It's too small a box for too large of a universe! Sometimes you can just let things not be deeply connected. And sometimes things don't need a complicated explanation and it can literally just be magic. There's nothing wrong with trying to tie everything together in a neat and succinct way. But sometimes you need to pull your view out a little and look at what you're doing and genuinely ask yourself if what you're doing actually adds depth, or if it does more harm than good and makes everything worse, make less sense, and more complicated or not. It's okay to fall down the rabbit hole sometimes. I completely understand that happening and do it all the time! Just remember to be mindful about it!

Either way, if you're going to insist on desperately clinging onto these ideas of Danny being the Most Important and Powerful Thing in the Multiverse to the detriment of literally everything else, that's fine. But just be honest with what you're doing and why. This isn't a Ghost King Danny AU. Kingdoms don't have unequivocal power over other and all kingdoms. It's a God Emperor over all Gods Danny AU. Nothing wrong with that concept in of itself. Just tag it properly as something like "God King Danny" so that I don't have to deal with it and the implications you're making about my religion with it. That would be enough! I would be happy with that! Just make your choice. Think about what you're doing, why you're doing it and choose. If you choose to keep going, that's fine! All the more power to you! Have fun! But be honest about what you're making. I may not like it and think that it's an overdone, overplayed idea at this point, but you're free to do it! So go forwards and make what will bring you joy! But now that you've thought about it a little, hopefully you'll continue with a little more knowledge and foresight. And hopefully that will make your work even more interesting and better for it! And if you decide to change course, I'm glad that I was able to sway you and get you to see things from my perspective and come to my side on this. At the very least, hopefully this will help to vary up ideas within the fandom a bit and you won't just take ideas that are happening in this space entirely for granted and as givens! I have so many ideas on interesting ways that these intersections can go and characters that you can use, and ways to look at this community that offer so so SO many interesting story directions! I'm so happy that you've decided to come with me on this journey! You're going to make something great, I'm certain of it! So let's make something wonderful together! I believe in you! There's a lot of fun to be had! ^.^

#ghost king danny #dcxdp #infinite realms au #god king danny #dpxdc #dp x dc crossover #dp x dc au #dc x dp #dp x dc #danny phantom x dc #religion #religious discussion #religion tw #religion talk #danny phantom

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fatehbaz · 4 months

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what does your username mean?

Cat ghost.

As child. Would go to library, to look at books about creatures, with a pen and notepad. Or sit before a television watching "nature" documentary stuff, with a pen and notepad. Was fixated on habitats. The context. Did not like to isolate an individual creature from the wider ecological community. This led to interest in geography, distribution range maps. Was aware that, in popular perception, some creatures were strongly associated with a particular place. "Lion is an African animal. Tiger is an Asian animal." Allegedly. And other stereotypes (many of them, I would later come to learn, due to chauvinism, exoticism, Orientalism, colonialism, etc.). Came across a kind of large textbook on wild cats. Saw the historical distribution maps. Only a few centuries ago, tigers were in Anatolia, the Caucasus, near the shores of the Black Sea. Was intrigued. From the middle of the twentieth century onward, the lion and cheetah were so closely associated with Africa, where like over 99% of their range was located. And yet. There remains a small remnant population of nearly-extinct Asiatic lions far away within India''s borders. And there remains a small remnant population of nearly-extinct Asiatic cheetahs within Iran's borders. And all that space, in between, where both cats were now extinct. Only 100 years ago, tiger, lion, leopard, and cheetah all lived generally near each other, still, in eastern Anatolia, near Mesopotamia, etc. And now, only a few dozen wild native cheetah remain on the entire continent of Asia.

"Cheetah". The word for this cat is from South Asia. Through Hindi, from Sanskrit.

"What happened?" I read on. Cheetahs were present within the national borders of what is now India, along with tigers, lions, and leopards. By the 1500s, there was a tradition in South Asia, where some in the Mughal aristocracy enjoyed using cheetahs as companions in sport hunting. The cats would be captured in the wild, and then trained, and then brought along on royal hunts. The cat was the star athlete, goaded into chasing down prey, for the entertainment of the hunting party. There are elaborate paintings, commissioned by Mughal courts and some now displayed in collections of European museums, depicting trained cheetah hunts. It has since been popularly said that Akbar was particularly fond of cheetahs. (Akbar the Great was the "emperor" who is credited often for consolidating Mughal state power across India, solidifying regional power by building administrative systems/structures in India ["forging an empire out of fiefdoms"] that would later eventually be manipulated and overtaken by the British Empire. According to some tellings of the historical narrative.)

Accurate or not, it was said that at any one time, Akbar possessed one thousand cheetahs. A vast royal menagerie. The names of several of the most celebrated cheetahs are still known. In some stories, when he was still young, Akbar was presented with a gift. His very first cheetah: Fatehbaz.

This disturbed me. A child, reading this book, I was upset by the idea of such a vast menagerie of wild animals. Large wild animals, with great need for food, space, enrichment. I was upset by the exploitation of captive wild animals as displays of aristocratic wealth, not just in the Mughal state(s), but also those menageires and exhibitions elsewhere, both earlier and later in time: the royal hunts of Assyrian kings, the Roman arenas, Charlemagne's elephants, European circuses.

So, as a child, I imagined that Fatehbaz resisted the captivity. Like in a daydream, a fantasy. I imagined a royal menagerie breaking free from restraint. I imagined elephants and rhinos and tigers and lions and leopards and jackals and crocodiles. I imagined the beasts attacking an emperor's court. But there are now less than one hundred cheetahs which survive in the wild in Asia. And when Mughal statecraft gave way to European statecraft, when Britain moved into South Asia, the bounty hunting specifically targeted big cats. And, meanwhile, the cats were confronted indirectly with habitat destruction, commodity crop monocultures, industrial-scale resource extraction. So I came to imagine the ghosts of cats. The ghost of a cheetah like Fatehbaz on the Indus plain. The ghost of a jaguar in the Sonoran desert. The ghost of a lion on the Mediterranean coast. The ghost of a tiger on the Amu Darya shore beyond Bukhara, where even the Aral Sea itself has vanished.

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octuscle · 7 months

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Two of my friends, a gay couple, asked me to use my Chronoviac to help them out. They love the whole jock/twink fantasy and wanted me to make that a reality for them. Well, I sort of did, but I screwed up the settings. The guy who wanted to be a jock is growing all slender and cute and submissive, and the guy who wanted to be a twink is buffing up and dumbing down fast. Idk if I should interfere, or just leave things be, or hell, join in on it myself…any ideas?

What you used to be doesn't matter at all in a transformation. What matters is that the transformation went well. And hey, the two of them really don't seem unhappy. But to answer your question: If I were you, I would just join them. I can send you a first class jock preset. A twink should be able to handle two jocks. Even if you are a damn big jock.

Looks good on you, your new African American heritage. Have fun with the three of you!

Found your pic @maxx-magnum

#male tf #muscle tf #reality change #chronivac #male transformation #muscle transformation #inked man #race change

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cryptotheism · 11 months

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Tediore actually was the villain of the new Tales from the Borderlands iirc

Yeah and they look boring. The Borderlands series is my favorite type of media to consume because it's so almost good. I love any Strong B+ type shit that could have been cool if you changed like two things. It inspires a man!

Borderlands 1: Nothing writing. Solid base of mechanics for a fun series.

Borderlands 2: Mechanically fun. Some pretty dope environments. Flashes of genuinely good writing contrasted with actively awful writing.

Pirate DLC: Forgettable writing, but had some dope set piece fights. Carried by the strength of it's setting alone. Fun mechanically. Forgettable writing.

Torgue DLC: Grating and annoying.

Hammerlocks Hunt: "I'm sure gearbox will handle the African big game hunt themed DLC well. What could possibly go wrong."

Tiny Tina DLC: Honestly more enjoyable than the base game. A genuinely fun concept that manages to hold back the annoying quips long enough to flesh out Tiny Fucking Tina of all characters??? What's wild is it WORKS. Imo it successfully walks the line of madcap humor and commentary on its own uberviolence, exploring how Tina's LMAO random XD persona is a safety blanket. At her core she is a traumatized child who has lost another father figure. It's Tina using the player as an instrument of uberviolent fantasy justice to process her grief and against all odds it works PERFECTLY with the tone of Borderlands.

Pre-Sequel: Literally everything interesting in this game happens in like, flavor text. Expanding on the villains of 2 is a cool idea. Seeing Jack become Jack is neat, but honestly didn't do much for me. Forgettable environments. Mid gameplay. Felt like a test run for 3. The Dahl mercenaries were a missed opportunity. I remember a single quest that got a real laugh out of me: the one where it's revealed that the respawn station voice isn't pre-recorded, it's a live lady who has now been captured by bandits, who are making her say cringe shit on the intercom.

Borderlands 3: A master class in environmental and level design. Every character is extremely fun to play. I love the Eden-6 Louisiana Dinosaur Jungle. I love the Maliwan Corporate City. I fucking LOVED Nekrotefayo. "Evil twitch streamers" was a brilliant choice that the writers legendarily fumbled. Main Villain should have been the Maliwan twerp. The Danny Devito Indiana Jones character fits in the world but needed way more time in the oven. Making him the Calypsos dad was a bizarre choice.

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odera · 3 months

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Hi tumblr! I figured I would reintroduce myself here, since I have decided tumblr is simply my favorite place to share online *still* to this day.

My name is Odera and I am a painter and illustrator! The main places you can find me are here, my side blog @burritobowlofthepelvis, my website, and @ oderaigbokwe on IG. I'm physically located on the unceded ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations (aka known as Vancouver Canada).

Alot of my work centers the magic of the African diaspora and the Black Queer Imagination. The foundational years of my career were complimentary to Black speculative works, Afrofuturism, and Fantasy as a gateway to healing. This has since grown to explore the spirit based, ancestral work of the diaspora, and most recently I have been combining it all and trying to find that magic in the physical, daily, embodied things.

My side blog is @burritobowlofthepelvis which I am slowly but surely reorganizing. This blog is filled with reblogs for inspiration, potential reference images, more casual glimpses of my life, selfies, and outfits of the day. (Some of the reblogs are NSFW, so minors DNI there). Ultimately I am trying to use that blog as a combination journal/resource for my sketchbook.

Below are some of my favorite paintings and illustrations over the years that give an idea of the kinds of things I am exploring or have done throughout my career.

The Spirit Child. 2022. Oils on board. This painting is the centerpiece of my series of Tarot/Oracle/Afrodiasporic Divination paintings. The series is slowly but surely coming together, and once I get to the minor arcana I am excited to make some stylistic shifts that not only match the messaging but are also much faster to make.

Selections from my solo exhibition 'New Yam Festival'. These paintings are all big, juicy, vibrant, improvisational, and embody the playfulness, pleasure, and joy of the Black Queer imagination! Up until that point I was working mostly at a smaller scale (anywhere from 8x10 to 20x30 inches). So it was fun to size up to 6-8 feet for each of these!

Above are some of my favorite commercial illustrations for book covers and comics. Covers are their own particular fun design challenge, but of all the illustration assignments they can feel the most fulfilling to me.

And something classic from the archive: Odera Redesigns the cast of Sailor Moon.

I can't believe most of those were created almost 10 years ago. But that's where we are, and it feels good to still want to use this platform despite how much the world is changing.

Feel free to reblog, like, comment, or ask me any questions you have!

#Odera #Odera Igbokwe #artists on tumblr #black artist #queer artists

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blackfictional · 2 years

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ch • bini

born into a family of jewellery makers and gem cutters, she is ambitious and will inherit her parents workshop.

#african fantasy #african fantasy ideas #OC moodboard #poc moodboard #woc moodboard #woc aesthetic #my OC #poc aes #mood: an african adventure #black women in fantasy #black girls in fantasy #fantasy ideas #fantasy #world building #black women in leisure #black women luxury #soft black girls #soft black women

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honeybeezgobzzzzz · 1 year

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Creative Writing Resources

Writing Tools:

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Use: Body language descriptions

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🐝 ✎ Descriptionari

Use: Finding examples for creative inspiration.

Good For: writing prompts, descriptions of scenes, and help with describing a scene such a kiss or fight scene.

Cost: Free

✎ Flower Meanings Dictionary (A to Z) and Color Meanings

Use: The language of flowers! Lists flowers and their meaning.

Good For: Flower symbolism in stories, good for regency & victorian AU when floriography was popular. Take it with a grain of salt, sometimes flowers can have several different meanings depending on where you source the floriography.

Cost: Free

✎ Pre-Modern Combat Weapons

✎ Medieval Weapons

✎ Superpowers

✎ List of Legendary Creatures by Type

✎ Gemstones A-Z

✎ THEOI GREEK MYTHOLOGY

✎ Black Market Information (Legally Attained)

✎ Forensic Pathology, Science, & Death (Use W/ Caution)

✎ Religions of the World

✎ Languages of the World

✎ Methods of Torture (Use W/ Caution)

✎ Methods of Execution (Death Penalty)

✎ Poisonous Plants

✎ Plants, Just Plants

✎ Stab Wounds

Naming Generators:

🐝 ✎ Fantasy Name Generator

Use: Generating names, generating appearances, generating maps.

Good For: Generating names for people, places, things, planets, diseases, etc. Has a wide selection of name generators for all different ethnicities from African (varied by location) to Asia and Historic. Also includes fantasy and folklore name generators. It's my go to name generator for everything. You can also generate a description of a character or design your own map.

Cost: Free

✎ The Story Shack

Use: Generating names, creating your own generator, writing exercises.

Good For: Generating names, obviously. But also practicing writing through offered exercises.

Cost: Free

✎ RanGen

Use: Generating plots, appearances, archetypes, love interests, cities, worlds, items, and more.

Good For: What I just said previously. Very helpful.

Cost: Free

✎ Generator Land: Titles

Use: Generating Titles!

Good For: Creating... titles....? This site also has many other generators to use.

Cost: Free

Images:

✎ Free Images for Commercial Use

Use: Pictures!

Good For: Whatever you want!

Cost: Free

Story Development, Plot, Character:

＄✎ E.A. Deverell Workshop & Worksheet Index

Use: Learn how to plot your stories and build your world.

Good For: Character building, world building, narration, plot formula, prompts, ideas, genres, development. You name it, Eva has it.

Cost: Paid Courses, Free Worksheets & Tips.

＄✎ Story Planner

Use: Planning your story. Obvs.

Good For: People who need a little guidance with outlining and implementing before they jump into their story. Takes yous sentence by sentence building summaries and such.

Cost: Paid & Free Planners

✎ Character Sheet to Build Your Character

Use: Build your character in detail!!

Good For: Um. Building a highly detailed character? Self explanatory really.

Cost: Free worksheet through google docks.

✎ Create Your Character

Use: Build your character visually.

Good For: Designing a visual representation of your character rather than just writing out details on paper. You can save final result as an SVG or PNG

Cost: Free

Map & World & RPG Building:

✎ Inkarnate: Map Making

Use: Build a map of your world or country.

Good For: Designing a map of your country or world with details such as oceans, mountain ranges, cities, towns, and waterways.

Cost: Free version and paid version

✎ DonJon: RPG Tool

Use: Map making, name generator, good for D & D resources/references.

Good For: Designing RPG.

Cost: Free

✎ Townscaper: Oskarstalberg

Use: Map making 3D.

Good For: Designing maps, obv (it's really interactive a cool. Link if above is broken: https://oskarstalberg.com/Townscaper

Cost: Free & Paid Versions

✎ Medieval City Map Making

Use: City Map Making.

Good For: Making maps of medieval cities. Link if above is broken: https://watabou.itch.io/medieval-fantasy-city-generator

Cost: Free

✎ Fantasy Town Generator

Use: City Map Making.

Good For: Making maps of medieval cities. Link if above is broken: https://www.fantasytowngenerator.com/

Cost: Free + Paid Upgraded Accounts

🐝 ✎ Wonderdraft

Use: City & World Map Making.

Good For: Making maps of medieval cities and worlds. This app has labels and icons you can use to mark mountains, rivers, valleys, etc. It is a very good investment if you enjoy map making (particularly for D&D). Versatile, you can change map size (11"x 8.5", 9"x9", etc)

Cost: Paid, One time purchase of 29.99 USD.

🐝 ✎ Kanka

Use: RPG management and world building.

Good For: D & D related things (it's intended purpose)

Cost: Free + Upgraded Accounts (depends on how many "worlds" you create)

Search Engines:

✎ Search Engines

Use: Search Engines!

Good For: Researching topics for your writing! These website have an amalgamation of of different types of search engines depending on your need (Writing, Research, Reference, etc)

Cost: Free + Upgraded Accounts (depends on engine used but mostly free)

Writing Software:

✎ Pages (iOS)

Use: Mobile Word Processor

Good For: Tagging folder system for organization, export documents, good for apple pencil, multiple formats & templates. Sync's w/ iCloud.

Cost: Free

＄✎ Liquid Story Binder XE by Black Obelisk Software (Windows)

Use: Liquid Story Binder XE is a uniquely designed word processor for professional and aspiring authors, poets, and novelists. Writing software for those who require the editing ability of a commercial text editor as well as a document tracking system. It is for those who want the freedom to create, outline and revise but are tired of losing track of their work.

Good For: Keeping your writing in one place, organization, compiling into one document, no internet connection required.

Perks: Drop Box Compatible

Cost: $45.95 US, free trial, one payment.

🐝＄✎ Scrivener (Mac, Windows, iOS)

Use: Scrivener is a word-processing program and outliner designed for authors. Scrivener provides a management system for documents, notes and metadata. This allows the user to organize notes, concepts, research, and whole documents for easy access and reference.

Good For: Keeping your writing in one place, organization, compiling into one document, no internet connection required.

Perks: Drop Box Compatible

Cost: $59.99 US (50.99 students & academics), $23.99 US for iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch, free trial, one payment

Editing & Grammar:

✎ Text to Speech

Use: Listen to your writing be read to you.

Good For: Editing, catching grammar and other mistakes. Also great for listening to the flow of your writing.

Cost: Free and paid versions

✎ Grammarly

Use: Editing.

Good For: editing your writing, catching spelling mistakes along with grammar mistakes.

Cost: Free and paid versions

Languages:

(Google Docs I made for my own references 🙂) IN PROGRESS!!

✎ Latin

✎ Greek

✎ Spanish

✎ Yucatec Maya

Creative Sources the 🐝 Uses:

Canva (I have pro)

Last Edit: 3/18/24

#writing help #writing tips #writing research #writing resources #creative writing

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artificial-transmutations · 10 months

Text

Two sides of the same coin - Ancestral Roots

The idea had been unusual enough to get Dylan to agree, but his first intuition had proven to be right. Visiting a museum, let alone a museum of anthropology really *was* a horrible idea for a first date.

His date, Henry, on the other hand seemed to be enjoying the place immensely. Looking at Henry, Dylan wouldn't have guessed that the other man was a history nerd, but apparently, not all nerds wore thick glasses and oversized hoodies. In fact, Henry was pretty good looking: tall and slim, with brown hair and blue eyes.

They were both standing in front of a large display case which displayed various tools from prehistoric times, mostly made of stone or bone.

"Don't you find that fascinating? How people used to live back then, what tools they used, what they wore?"

Henry had a shine in his eyes, while he looked at every single exhibit with enthusiasm.

Dylan on the other hand found the whole thing a bit boring, if he was being honest. Going through the exhibition for half an hour could have been kind of interesting, but they were here for at least two hours now, and only halfway through.

When they moved to the next room, that was African themed, Henry asked: "What do you think, who were your distant ancestors? What did they do every day?"

Dylan was only half listening because he had found something on the floor that caught his interest. He picked up a curious coin and pocketed it. He would need to show it to the curator later, perhaps it was a piece from the exhibition that fell to the ground.

"Sorry what? Oh, what my ancestors were doing. Well..."

He looked around in the room and answered: "Human beings came from Africa at some point, right? So, I guess one of my ancestors was a tribesman."

Henry nodded, excitedly. "That is very possible, yes! What do you think that man did for a living?"

Even though it was just completely fabricated, Dylan liked the question so much that he thought about it for a moment. He imagined himself as a Black skinned primitive man before deciding: "He was probably a tribal warrior. There were many things to fight back then, so it makes sense."

Henry looked at him with wide eyes and a big smile. He said, in a lower voice so only Dylan could hear it. "That sounds pretty hot to me, don't you think?"

Well, this was a kink Dylan hadn't yet heard about, but he had to admit, it was a nice fantasy.

"Yes, just imagine,", he answered in the same low voice, "the big muscles under the black skin, and the paintings on his body..."

Dylan grinned as he could clearly see the other man's groin twitch. He was getting into it a lot as well and needed to readjust himself in order to make his boner less noticeable.

"And how did he look like?" Henry continued to whisper.

"He had short black hair and dark brown eyes. He must have been strong, and he wears animal skins and carries a spear."

Henry gave an involuntary low moan, and Dylan also felt surprisingly aroused by the very short exchange.

"I... need to visit the bathroom" said Henry in a husky voice and hurried towards the next men's room sign. Before he entered the door, however, he turned around again to Dylan, who understood the move just then.

It was clear to him now, what Henry was going at, and Dylan was torn. On one hand, he never had much of a thing for sex in public places, let alone a museum bathroom, but on the other hand, he could very well relate to Henry. His cock was throbbing in the confines of his underwear, and he would go crazy if he didn't get release soon.

So, after a short consideration, he followed the tall man to the bathroom, soon enough to see Henry go into one of the stalls. At least, the bathroom was empty except for them right now.

He followed Henry into the stall and locked the door behind them. Immediately, he found himself thrown against the thin separator walls by Henry, who started to make out passionately. Dylan, too, was horny beyond measure. They kissed deeply, hungrily, and their hands roamed each other’s bodies. Dylan couldn't help himself when he reached down and felt the hard bulge in Henry's pants. He stroked it slowly through the fabric until he could feel it more clearly.

"You're so fucking hot", he whispered in Henry's ear while undoing his belt and opening his fly.

Henry was busy getting rid of his own shirt and pants, which wasn't easy, since he was lip-locked with Dylan most of the time. In-between, he moaned: "Just... imagine. How hot you would be."

Kinky! Henry wanted to role-play this. Dylan was immediately on board. "*I am* hot. I'm the hottest guy from my tribe! And I'm proud of it!"

Instinctively, Dylan widened his stance and shifted the dynamics of their interaction slightly. He was no longer the one pressed against the stall wall, but he was standing upright and tall, while Henry was the one who had to move around him.

Henry was completely naked by now, his clothes scattered on the ground, easy to see for anyone who entered the bathroom. He didn't care, though. All he cared about was the horny high he was on right now.

"Oh God, you're so strong. Tell me how strong you are!", Henry moaned while he removed Dylan's shirt and jacket.

"I am the strongest warrior of my tribe. No one can defeat me in battle."

Dylan flexed his arms as if to show off his strength.

Surprisingly enough, as he flexed his now naked arms, muscles bulged under his skin, popping into existence where there were only thin arms before. It felt so... Right!

"I can run for miles without tiring and I can swim in the strongest current!"

Dylan puffed out his chest proudly, a chest that quickly packed on definition. His stomach was adorned by cobblestone abs that paved the way from his impressive pecs into his pants.

On those same pants, Henry was unbuttoning them with his left hand. The right hand was busy pumping his own member, he just couldn't stop himself.

In-between, he encouraged Dylan to go on: "And you're not any man, but you're a Black man from Africa?"

"You haven't seen a blacker man than me!" Dylan said proudly, as his skin was darkening rapidly. Dylan, too, was now completely naked in the stall, and his loud and proud voice didn't care if anyone was listening. His ginger hair darkened and became black, while his facial structure rearranged to show his African roots more clearly.

"And you know what they say about Black men. It's all true, we really are so big down there. And I have the biggest cock of them all."

Although it stayed unclear if it really was the biggest cock of them all, his hard and throbbing member grew significantly, almost poking one of Henry's eyes out in the progress.

Henry couldn't constrain himself any longer. He needed to have that cock in his mouth now and never let go. As he closed his lips around the shaft, he didn't notice his own body changing, simplifying and focusing on his arms around Dylan's waist and his face that was buried in Dylan's groin.

Breathlessly, he asked: "And you are one of the early humans?" before getting back to pleasuring the superior man.

"You bet!" answered Dylan. "To be honest, I am, as my whole tribe is, pretty primitive. I am not really smart, and, uh, my equi... my stuff is very basic."

Dylan closed his eyes for a moment, and when Dyalo opened his brown eyes again, all the modern knowledge was gone, replaced by survival skills and instincts long forgotten. He grabbed Henry's head with his strong hand and pressed it to his groin, flattening him in the process until Hen... he... *it* was nothing more than his leather loincloth. With a few quick strokes, he finished and came in a wide arc with a grunt into the vegetation that had replaced the stall walls.

Dyalo grabbed his spear and turned around. It was time to return to his tribe, to his roots.

If you liked this story and want to read new stories as soon as I've written them, consider joining my riot page!

Also, if objectified guys are the best guys, be sure to read my other two sides of the same coin stories!

#two sides of the same coin #male transformation #inanimate transformation #racial transformation

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