Granted I have the overall geographical and cultural knowledge of a 4th grader but from what I can tell the nuclear family model really does seem to be a white colonial invention
Different cultures have different approaches but I mainly hear about either large family units where multiple generations support each other and raise their children and grandchildren together or an "it takes a village" approach where children are raised somewhat communally
And I can't really speak on it much or claim that these families were free of abuse or that children aren't often an oppressed group basically everywhere I know of but the way ownership of your children is so engrained into white society is so bizarre
Like once you notice it you can't unnotice it even the most loving well meaning parents don't know what to do about it because everyone is so isolated from their own families and their own communities so you wind up with 1-2 parents who have full legal ownership of their child and are raised in a culture where you don't have personhood until you're 18 and all attempts at self actualization before them are seen as clueless rebellion. Like our culture is so divorced from the concept that a parent is someone who is helping mentor and care for their child so they can thrive as a fellow human being and it's actually so alarming
And ik this problem isn't unique to white and colonized people but it's honestly really soothing to hear about how other cultures approach and view parenting and community as a whole and to internalize it doesn't have to be this way
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Joel Smallishbeans & 47
like real people do- hozier
[image description: a digital drawing of lizzie and joel from empires season one. lizzie is a massive axolotl woman with long hair and a coral crown. joel is a small clay man with a crack in his face and long, wavy hair. lizzie is laying on joel's lap, looking up at him lovingly, while he looks back with a smile. they look like they're about to kiss. end id]
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FLASH/BURN ADVANCE WARNING
If anyone has been around here for a while, you'll know I've got this running story named FLASH/BURN. You'll know I love it and maybe you might know that I've been burning out.
This started maybe a month ago when I thought that Alph--one of FLASH/BURN's protagonists--was really boring for me to write.
It's not that Alph is a boring character to me. Alph has a lot of hobbies and a lot of passions, they speak their fucking mind and they don't back down for anything except maybe the unconscious forces of telepathy.
And I've robbed them.
I have robbed my favorite character in my own series.
For an arc and a half of FLASH/BURN, Alph has been mostly if not totally blind. Which should be way more of a problem to this hotheaded passionate firestarter. Alph's hobbies are all things that involve them seeing in some way--driving, spray painting, hand-to-hand combat. When I think long-term about Alph's future, a life of helping kids and being a damn good cop, I've made it unnecessarily difficult for them to do that.
Alph should be furious, and they're not.
The reasoning Alph became blind is rooted in real life science, they were in an acid bank for about a month to make it easier for a telepath to rearrange the thought content of what makes up their reasoning for Storm's policy. As wonderfully defined by Harlow in chapter fifty, “ 'Acids destroy proteins,' Harlow puts his head in his hands. 'Eyes are made of proteins.' ”
Which is a big problem to me. The entire body has proteins. The only thing that got damaged was Alph's eyes? And it almost completely removed their eyesight?
It feels cheap to say something now like, "Oh, it's a special acid. It only affects eye proteins because magic" or "Actually everyone is WRONG about this and I've been LEADING the reader all these chapters about what happened" or "Nobody's mentioned the other injuries but they are there."
I'd like anything without connection to kinetics to remain as similar to real life as possible, I don't want to make everyone else seem dumb for trusting the conclusions of my characters, and I don't want to pretend like Harlow's internal monologue in chapter thirty-seven wouldn't have mentioned other points of scarring.
That's just not fair to me.
When I think about it harder, there's more reasons to just not include Alph's blindness arc:
The tank program used for Alph's blindness is really cheap--it only appears the once and that's the way I've been planning the story. That's wrong because I've made it seem more significant than that.
I don't want to offend people. Most of Alph's interactions with Afyer are just incredibly boring and I have to resort to Afyer saying things like "smiling, by the way," which is nice and all but is wrong in my head.
I'm trying to learn to describe more things about my scenes. To add more than just dialogue and monologues. The viewpoint of Alph does the opposite of this for me.
Alph isn't having any fun--I want Alph to have fun. I want to portray more fucking around with Alph and Afyer. I can't think of anything for them to do together that wouldn't just make Alph upset somehow.
I want my story to be fun to read. I want more of Alph looking around their surroundings and finding the best way to wreck the shit out of someone.
I want to have fun.
So I'm going to go to sleep. I'm gonna wake up, I'm gonna attempt to make myself food, try not to get distracted by the active disco that is my house at all times, I'm going to release all of the written chapters I haven't released yet, and then I'm going to start planning out what the chapters are going to look like using what I've written already as a rough baseline for going forward.
I actually can't guarantee I'll do anything tomorrow. But I'll try. I'll listen to a different song than Breaking Benjamin - Unknown Soldier (sorry, Harlow), and I'm gonna let myself enjoy writing FLASH/BURN again.
Because Alph deserves an apology for getting their life ruined.
Because if my head is telling me something is wrong--I need to listen.
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Did somebody say Bill shouldn't be allowed to swear? I think somebody said Bill shouldn't be allowed to swear. Thanks to that, have these retooled The Good Place jokes:
The "powers that be" can refer to either the Theraprism staff, the Axolotl, or just. Ya know. Disney in general. Or all three! Whichever you think is funniest. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The "party" Bill's referring to is Weirdmageddon, of course. He was quite the ashhole to everyone back then.
Ford has probably gotten pretty good at the 'tune out your psychopathic ex with dank memes' challenge.
It must be very cathartic to be able to make Bill shut up whenever you want with just the press of a button. I'm sure Ford doesn't abuse this ability at all.
Oh, sure, 'Not now,' he says, before he immediately backs out of the newly-made hole in the Theraprism wall. 🙄
Don't worry, Bill doesn't get far.
also yeah i know this one doesn't have an attempted swear - i just wanted to use the joke because of the massive stink-eye involved in it because it makes me laugh
⬇️ More goofs beneath the brief ramble if you wanna skip it lmao⬇️
Why is Ford even there, you might ask? Well, he either decided he preferred to watch Bill suffer in person over being distantly and repeatedly harassed with the same evil desperation book for the rest of his life, or he got roped into some kind of contrived community service for 1.) all his many counts of interdimensional thievery, and 2.) his ignoring all the very clear warnings to NOT summon Bill in the first place (which I like to imagine is also illegal). Theraprism staff were just like, 'Wait, this guy matters to Bill? Ooh, we can USE that! It might be the only thing that can help him want to get better!' It is not considered that throwing Ford at Bill so soon after Weirdmageddon could instead make them both WORSE - in new and altogether special ways! :D
Anyway, I'm calling it the Community Service AU, and I am most likely not going to do anything else with it beyond appropriating these silly Good Place jokes. So, feel free to adopt the concept if y'all wanna??? Just make sure that Bill is still not allowed to swear, no matter what, full stop. It's gotta be a real linguistic corkblork of a situation for him, is all I'm sayin'.
Finally, have these bonus Good Place jokes, but with Handyman!Bill this time:
'Opposite tortures' doesn't sound so bad...at least until it's an all-powerful chaos entity known for torture saying it.
you may think i forgot mabel's cute pink cheeks but the truth is that i did in fact forget but then immediately stopped caring which makes it okay, SHHHHHHH
And, finally:
lmao this is shit
True facts, if you cram Season 1 Eleanor Shellstrop and Michael into a singular triangle shape, they turn into Bill Cipher. This is science, look it up. Or don't, and just trust the source that is me, bro.
Anyway, I should be in bed, y'all have fun with these, I guess. Tune in after like a week or so and maybe I'll have an addendum to my comic about how Bill was drawn naked for karaoke night. Because him actually being naked was not the only thing I considered as a plausible explanation. XD
Also if you see any inconsistencies or errors in any of these comics, No You Do Not :D
Also also, reblogs are rad as hell and I appreciate every single one, just don't repost, please and thanks. Every time a repost is made, an artist somewhere cries. :,)
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