social anxiety is making me hate myself for asking this but i was wondering if you had an adult polyphemus design for the band au? cause i adore the child design you have for him but i’m so so intrigued in what he looks like all grown up in his own band. ack, have a nice rest of your time.
of course! here he is :-)
to clarify: odysseus isn't directly responsible for polyphemus's injury here! think more like a really poorly timed/placed shove directly into a sharp object.
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OKAY so what ive been thinking about for ages is ctommy and being soft vs quiet . because i feel like it's one of those things in his fandom characterisation that sparks the most debate and in my opinion theres a huge difference between the two but i keep seeing people mix them together.
ctommy is soft but he's not quiet, and to disregard either of those things is what makes him less believable in fanworks imo
because on one hand, of course he's not quiet, that's the most obvious and i think one of the most commonly accepted qualms that we have with general fan interpretations of him. he doesn't just lie down and take shit, he's always committed to being an annoying shit, he's straight up rude so often, and even just. vocally. man's loud as fuck. i think that's pretty easy to establish .
but then what i find is that sometimes we veer into the other opposite, by completely denying that ctommy is also very soft sometimes. and by this i don't mean he turns into strawberry shortcake or starts being polite or whatever, but it's the fact that he's not just crass and rude. he's very considerate a lot of the time, he just shows it. uh. in his Own Way let's say. he cares for animals so so much, he's always so apologetic when he thinks he's hurt one of them, for fuck's sake he sung to the FLOWERS. he's very soft with nature, with things he's attached to, with things he perceives as weaker than him and needing protection.
the complexity of ctommy and what makes him so hard to grasp is that he's loud, he's brash, he is NOT a perfect quiet victim who suffers in silence, he asks for help, he's rude, he steals stuff, he's annoying as shit; but he's also soft, and incredibly empathetic, and he has no shame in showing that softness for animals or nature or his friends.
ctommy, and this is very much because cctommy himself acts like that a lot, is constantly vacillating between someone with the maturity of a thirteen year old boy who shouts and swears and pretends not to give a shit, and a boy who will stop everything he's doing to look at the sky or a flower or an animal (which does contrast his stereotypical rude teenager persona, because lots of aforementioned thirteen year old boys Would be embarrassed or whatever to do that).
he does BOTH. he's not just quiet and nice and sad and lonely; but he's not just rude and loud and """uncaring""" (if there is one thing ctommy is not i think we can all agree its UNCARING).
and i think this is why a lot of debates around "woobifying" ctommy (who remembers the july 2021 trenches . the butterfly clips.) tend to point any ctommy design that portrays him as soft, cozy, or even leaning into his feminine side as the be-all end-all of reducing his character.
in reality i think that misses the mark a bit because while there IS something to be said for sure about people turning ctommy into Blonde Anime Child #249824 and stripping him of his Very Vibrant character, i don't think that putting him in butterfly clips and skirts erases him in the same way. i think he could very much lean into that kind of thing . as long as he's still flipping off the camera we're all good
TLDR : fans strip ctommy of his loud-and-annoying persona but in avoiding that some forget that he's a character who's not afraid to be soft
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Ranboo saving Charlie while he was streaming is the direct reason Charlie died I'm not okay
Ranboo said in their stream today that there were two choices that he actively made without the audience's input. One was choosing the security code on his own, and choosing to save Charlie from the brainwashing. Obviously using the wrong code stuffed it all up (which released the wire monster) but they said that because of the time it took to pull Charlie out, by the time they reached the doors the showfall media employees were locking them. Which eventually leads to both Ranboo and Charlie's deaths, and almost mirrors the final choice of episode three, choosing to live but be under showfall's control forever, or to die, only it hadn't been realised yet.
also SNEEG!!! The poor guy tried to get out and get help again but never made it, and died alone (because of Ranboo’s choice, ouch). While showfall probably wouldn't have allowed it but a storyline where he did make it out would be insanely cool.
Another thing, while the theory that showfall kidnapped Charlie as a kid and raised him to be their entertainer is very cool and has a lot of potential, I don't think that's the way the story would go. Showfall was(is??) going to use Ranboo until he no longer had any use to them, like all of the other actors, combined with sneeg's death suggests that raising a child and creating a whole personality and audience for slimecicle would be overly complex when they could just take people who have already done the work for them. The slimecicle channel is canon to the genloss universe now, and they likely would have had Charlie continue to stream to keep up appearances like he's not missing. Also, when ranboo finds all the streamers he recognises Charlie by name, suggesting they knew each other before showfall got to them, because iirc the name Charlie is never used in episode 1 or 2. And there is surely enough history between the two for Ranboo to want to save him, but recognises that he can't save everyone. That or he just felt bad for ripping the man's guts out.
Anyway, I have Too Many Thoughts about Generation Loss and desperately want to know if Charlie and Sneeg are dead dead or if they'll be coming back for more generations because they were both so good in this series.
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i know ive basically said this already lol but a lot of ppl have been like "oh man i should reread homestuck with the commentary!" and i do want to warn yall it is an extremely mixed bag of genuine insightful stuff and good writing advice and then just like. terrible writing advice, and weird off-kilter bad-taste jokes. i've just been posting the stuff i think is good and interesting or particularly funny, but it's not all top tier commentary lmao
if ur doing a reread with book commentary get ready to be annoyed. and put on ur critical thinking helmet lol because you have to parse through so much of hussies bullshit. u have to ask urself CONSTANTLY "are they serious, or are they being satirical right now?" and i genuinely do not know the answer for some of the shit they say.
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I keep seeing discourse on my dash about whether or not we should be teaching ~challenging~/emotionally rough books in elementary and middle school, and I think there's a very important point that all of this discourse is eliding.
What counts as "too rough/traumatizing" heavily depends on the kid.
Two kids in the same class, from the same background, at the same developmental and reading level, might have wildly different reactions to a book. To take an example that's less likely to generate insufferable discourse than anything dealing with ~marginalization~:
Say you have two kids in the same class. One kid is a sensitive, sweet soul who loves dogs more than anything in the world. The other kid just lost their dog, is still grieving, and needs some catharsis.
Your class is supposed to read Old Yeller, or some other kids' book about The Death Of A Dog.
For the first kid, that book is likely to mess them up a little. It might seem like brutality for the sake of brutality. They might not fully understand the concept of death yet, or they may not be ready to grapple with the idea that dogs can die. It might be something they need to read, even if it'd mess them up- but it might also just hurt without any real benefit.
For the second kid... whether they're ready to read that book would heavily depend on how they're grieving and whether they're ready to think about a dog dying. It might trigger them and make them feel worse. But it might actually be helpful for them and make them feel less alone. Other kids have had to deal with their dogs dying and have lived through it. It might give them emotional tools they need to get through this.
But unless you know these kids really well and have the chance to tailor how you teach the book to them? You're likely to screw both of them up without any real benefit.
If they have to fill out fifty million worksheets about What The Dog Dying Means In Old Yeller, they're going to have to think about something they're not ready to think about over and over again. They're not likely to learn whatever you're trying to teach them about death or empathy or tragedy- they're just going to remember that English class was about depressing books about dogs dying and remember how much it hurt to get through. And they're going to be put off reading anything you might read in English class, because it's just going to hurt, right?
The one-size-fits-all model of education most schools are being forced to adopt means that we can't mold what kids read around what they need and are ready to hear; we have to make every kid read the same thing, at the same pace, with the same worksheets.
You can't decide, 'hey, this kid might not be ready for this particular book, here's a book that hits some of the same thematic notes but is less graphic'.
You can't take the time to make sure that a student who's reading a book that might be rough for them is okay, give them time to decompress and debrief, or let them process what they're having to deal with. You can't let them take a break from the book after they hit a point that is graphic or triggering. You can't let them sit with their feelings about it.
You can't take the time to make sure that the marginalized students in the class are okay after reading a book about oppression that affected people like them, or take the time to make sure that their non-marginalized classmates who said boneheaded things about the book know why what they said wasn't okay without publically yelling at them.
Hell, you can't even choose books based around what your students would be interested in and want to read. You have to make a lesson plan to teach like 50 students; you don't have time to pick things based around their individual likes and dislikes.
Nope. It's just on to the next book, the next worksheet, the next test.
Teachers are forced to take on classes that are way too big for any one person to manage, teach emotionally hefty books without giving kids time to process what they've learnt, and teach to tests instead of giving kids time to empathize and understand.
The problem is not specific books. The problem is not privileged people's fragility. The problem is not even individual teachers. The problem is a systemic problem with how American schools teach literature.
Until we fix the system? Yeah, plenty of kids are gonna get fucked up from reading Lord of the Flies or Where the Red Fern Grows when they're not ready to tackle it. Because their teachers do not have the time or spoons to gauge whether they're ready, and do not have the luxury of letting their students deal with things at their own pace.
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Don't make fun of any accents, ever, for any reason.
The person on the receiving end will most likely fall in at least one of three categories:
Second language
Regional accent
Speech impediment
1. Second language
This person is probably speaking in this language to you because either you don't speak their mother tongue or you speak it worse than they speak the language you are speaking. They are making an effort for you. An accent doesn't make you dumb.
Making fun of someone for attempting to communicate in another language is the height of assholery.
2. Regional accent
Half the time you make fun of regional accents, you make fun of historically disenfranchised accents.
Southern accents? Congrats you're making fun of the way rural, usually poor, people speak. Their speech was highly influenced by black people.
Don't even get me started on making fun of AAE.
Again, an accent doesn't make you any less intelligent.
3. Speech impediment
They know they have a speech impediment. They are probably trying very hard not to sound like that. It is literally not their fault. They have had to deal with people making fun of it their whole life.
A speech impediment doesn't make you less intelligent either.
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