#grounbreakers

[sexy-raccoons]

Why is it that no one is talking about the fact that Tholemule is Matt’s last freaking name.

[blu3berrydraws]

@aangsfrogs said: I’m always a slut for Zukka! If you wanna spoil me you don’t even have to draw I just wanna know your adult headcannon for Sokkas hair and like what he does with it and what any little braids or beads mean :3

--- okay WELL, I like to ground my headcanons in historic reality, which atla does themselves too { which is in part why i love it so much to begin with }. Traditionally, in inuit culture and also many indigenous cultures at large, the braiding of the hair has a spiritual meaning and represents the entanglement with the creator. In contrast, free flowing hair is associated with the freedom of life. Personally, I don't think Sokka is a terribly spiritual person { quite the opposite }. It makes sense to me that he likes to keep his hair loose, yet out of his face, so I am generally drawing him with his trademarked wolf tail {as an adult though, he grows it out much longer}.

HOWEVER. Sometimes I'll draw him with braids incorporated. and the idea of them actually having a meaning is not one that purely sprouted from my brain. I first read the idea of braids as signifiers of status in Hold Me Like You Do, Cover Me In Blue by @chitsangenthusiast. I've since also read more info on @atlaculture's blog and found during own research that this was a common use of braids in many cultures (including viking culture, which is interesting to me because his hairstyle first struck me as very viking inspired when I was 14 lol).

Many cultures (African tribes, Inuit, the norse) will use the hairstyle of both men and women to signify their age, marital status, wealth, religion, and even the tribe they came from. Usually, when I draw Sokka with a braid, It's close to his shaven head and gets pulled in to joining his wolftail in the loose hair. Personally, I like to think it means tying a tether (Zuko) into his otherwise laissez-faire life. It might be a signifier that he is 'taken' so to speak. I also like to draw him with more braids as he gets older, braids that might indicate chief- or warriorstatus that would let other watertribepeople know that he is established and to be respected. Sometimes though, I'm just drawing him with braids because I want to, because I like how it looks lolol

I haven't looked into the use of beads and ribbons much, but i do know that there is an Inuit/native custom of wrapping braids completely in cloth, which I don't think is Sokka's speed. The intricacy in chitsangenthusiast's fic is really nice though, so do recommend !

[nicomrade]

had a thought that i should reread in the room but its like craving snacks when what you actually need is 2 meals a day. i think ive gotta reread money game is the thing. and watch the doreiku live action. and that would satiate me.

[elmundodeflor]

Attack On Titan is a Work of Love

Something I'm always in awe of, is how love is depicted in Attack On Titan. Mostly, because it feels realistic and relatable. Love isn't always the big, over-the-top Romeo and Juliet type.

Love is Eren wrapping a scarf around Mikasa.

Armin regularly going to see Annie.

Love is Levi and Hanji knowing each other so well, they’re able to communicate without the need for words.

Historia trusting Ymir so much, that she was the first one she revealed her real name to.

Love isn’t always flowers and big confessions like the ones we see in movies or media. Daily, human love lays in the detail. It’s in consistency, in those little day-to-day gestures a person can have with another. it's in waiting for your partner with a nice meal at home, in sharing a moment of comfort, in understanding eachother by just looking into one another's eyes. it's in protecting and caring and nurturing and motivating.

And it’s why love in Attack On Titan will always feel real. Palpable. Beautifully subtle.

To me, it will always be grounbreaking how, in a world so full of hatred, Isayama managed to create so many unbreakable bonds of the most imperfectly pure love, and how he was able to explore love in all of its different phases and colors.

Love between brothers/family:

Love between friends:

Idolatry (the tpye of love that makes you go blind)

Unrequited love:

Grief (the loss of someone you loved):

New-found love:

It will always be close to my heart, how Attack On Titan shows love at every corner, in every frame: in words of hope, in helping somebody who struggles, in the will to protect somebody at the highest of costs, in the joking and teasing in affectionate ways. It’s all there, in the small, in what the eye doesn’t always see. It’s always been.

So, even when Attack On Titan can be seen as a work of war and life and death and how the evil parts of the human world work, to me, it will forever be a work I remember for being overflowed with love, too.

[gamegirlx]

okay so hear me out

so this isnt even a grounbreaking theory or anything like this was just a thought-

SO THESE GUYS LOOKED VERY SIMILAR.

i am indeed stating that the monk from the left could be mayor, and here's why.

OKAY SO MK GOES TO THE PAST, RIGHT, so i can assume that mayor not being an LBD follower or soldier YET could be reasonable, so that's one.

THING IS THO, why would mayor be in a monk palace or smthn

well for one, these monks in this temple are pressumaby, training to become immortals, yes? (this temple btw is where wukong learns how to be immortal)

now WE HAVE MAYOR. whom we know has existed since the ancient China era all the way to the modern times

SO ASSUMABLY mayor is immortal

and the only way mayor could be immortal is by doing all that immortal monk training schmack

HERE'S ANOTHER THING

the monk also seems to have an almost "awkward squeeky" voice, very similar to mayor's goofy voice (except in this case the monk's voice hasn't developed to the distinct mayor voice we all know and love :>)

IN CONCLUSION

the aliens are real and i really need lmk s5. :DDDD

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 40 – Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

Okay, 40th book of the year! And yes I’m going to be smug about that, no matter how pathetically it pales in comparison to some of the rest of you. To commemorate the occasion I decided to acquire some actual Culture of the kind I can talk about reading to older relatives and have them nod approvingly. I’d say I wish this had been assigned in some English class I took, but honestly I’d have just ended up skimming and using sparknotes and generally ruined it for myself.

Baldwin, as it turns out, really does live up to the hype. This book was absolutely sublime. I feel like it’s going to be impossible to be fair to whatever I read next.

The book follows David, an American expat in late ‘50s Paris. Specifically, a queer man with truly apocalyptic levels of internalized homophobia and lack of self-awareness spending his late 20s valiantly pretending not to be gay while contriving every possible excuse not to go back to his father and the rest of his life in America. The book takes place while his girlfriend is taking an extended vacation in Spain deciding whether she wants to marry him, and he meets Giovanni, a gorgeous Italian man who’d left his village and ended up in Paris under unclear circumstance, while he’s working at a gay bar David views with visceral contempt even as he visits it. They have a passionate romance, and unsurprisingly it all falls apart in a mess of a tragedy that ruins just about everyone involved (Giovanni most of all).

This was the most beautiful thing I’ve read all year. I’m not even sure it’s particularly close. Every single page had a line or two of incidental narration or dialogue that struck me enough to want to save it – I’d given up trying to note them all by the end of the first chapter. The narration has the sort of elevated, literary quality where everyone is two or three times more eloquent and articulate than they really should be, but when the things they say are so lovely it’s hard to mind that minor offence against verisimilitude – the constant peppering of French into everyone’s dialogue is honestly much more of an annoyance, if only because it keeps making me wonder what language all the other dialogue among these French Parisians is supposed to be in. The exact details of their speech (and tendency to monologue about the details of their psychology) aside, just about every character felt really, achingly real, all broken by the world in one way or another and dealing with it with whatever self-destructive coping mechanisms they have to call their own. Insert your favourite Richard Silken quote here.

Tangentially to the actual content of the book; I of course know Baldwin was one of the canonical Great Authors of the 20th century (I knew this before I knew literally any other fact about him), but my god does the edition I have of the book lay it on thick. There’s a 17-page forward that seemed to be an incredibly dryly written English essay talking about his influences and the role of Paris in American literature and etc (I skimmed the first few pages and skipped the rest, as is my habit with forwards by people who had nothing to do with actually creating the book and whose name I don’t recognize), followed by several more pages of a timeline of the authors life. I swear it’s like they’re trying to make reading this seem as much like homework as possible.

Even more tangentially; I was aware that Baldwin was gay, before reading this, and more vaguely aware that some of his work explored this. But I was expecting more, like, Great Gatsby-plus levels of subtext, not just explicit and unsanitized portrayals being the focus of the entire book. That came out in ‘59! Not exactly an obscure or reviled one either. I feel like I could go back and retroactively give myself permission to sneer and roll my eyes at a lot of ‘grounbreaking queer representation’ now. (This is a sign I have spent altogether too much of my life reading discourse on tumblr and tiwtter).

Trying to talk about the themes of Giovanni’s Room is probably just wasted effort – spend five minutes and I’m sure you can find an extensively researched essay by someone whose devoted years of their life to the subject. But it did really strike me how, like, fundamentally inegalitarian the book’s vision of romance is? Aside from David and Giovanni themselves I mean (and even then, David’s internalized homophobia expressed itself in large part through a terror and resentment of being made the woman (domestic homemaker) to Giovanni’s man (breadwinner)). David and Hella’s relationship is just drowning in ‘50s patriarchy, of course, with the future they sketch out for themselves both baldly hierarchical and just incredibly bleak, and David’s parents and upbringing aren’t exactly inspirational reading either. But Paris’ gay underground isn’t exactly portrayed as a liberated and welcoming space – it’s disgusting older men blatantly exploiting and being exploited by desperate younger ones, everyone involved pretending they don’t know what they’re doing and hating themselves and each other for it. All just incredibly unsentimental and anti-romantic.

David as a character and as a narrator really was fascinating, too. In that he’s such a fucking mess with zero awareness of his emotions who keeps making everything worse and seems to almost cause as much heartache for everyone around him as he possibly could. If he wasn’t the protagonist he’d be the most loathsome character in the book, or at least close to it. Was great.

Though one thing that really does drive home how historical the setting is is just how coincidental so many social meetings are. The cast is largely a bunch of bohemians and vagabonds and expatriates without real fixed addresses, and so much of their interaction revolves around just happening to run into each other as they frequent some of the same locales. Which, like, yes, that is just how socializing worked for most people until a historical ten minutes ago, but still very alien to me, someone with an electronic correspondence planning and scheduling ~90% of social things I’ve done since I left school.

Anyway yes, this isn’t an easy read – most emotional and heartwrenching thing I’ve read all year by far, and the only thing last year I can really think of that might beat it is the final chapters of The Making of the Atomic Bomb – but it really is a beautiful one. Five stars.

[undulla]

Haha can you imagine.

Inevitably, the official youtube channel is going to post the ‘top 20 most watched’ video for May and the first place is NOT going to be the winner of this year’s contest for like…the first time in history?

Truly grounbreaking.

[not-so-lost-after-all]

As for Astarion's changed bio

Larian were tweaking his bio quite a lot during the EA. Astarion went from getting lost in his masks to wanting to become the strongest vampire to walk the earth to being chased by his past to finally wanting power to protect himself from his abuser. What's noteworthy, all of these things are true, Larian just chose which one to emphasize.

I think, they decided to remove the "he wanted eternal life" element because it was the initial idea, which changed in the course of fleshing out Astarion's character. Even in the EA, I had an impression that his warped morality and obsession with power stemmed from his trauma rather than his pre-transformation qualities. Astarion has never mentioned what he is going to do with all that power if he gets it (aside from getting rid of Cazador) and didn't really have any grand plans. Moreover, the EA tadpople dreams chose not to play into his power fantasies but instead kept torturing him with images of Cazador claiming him back. He never struck me as someone who would plot and make deals with vampires that backfire spectacularly. Yes, he is a charmer and a liar, he gets inspiration from bullshitting your way through obstacles, but his skills certainly don't include long-term planning.

At best, I can imagine him as a spoiled brat who didn't treat his job seriously and maybe caught Cazador's eye by expressing interest in vampires (for instance, his noble peers were romanticizing the shit out of vampire topic, and Astarion jumped on the bandwagon) and made a bad decision of letting him in.

I'm still in Act 2 though, so I haven't seen the full extent of information we can get on Astarion, but I'm looking forward to discovering them.

Nonnie, the changes in his bio were never a big deal to me, they weren't grounbreaking. His writer said that Astarion was initialy very different character from what we see in the game, so that artbook probably took inspiration from the early drafts. Yes, he's no planner. Whatever turned Cazador's interest in Astarion's direction, it certainly was no master plan on Astarion's part. I like the idea of him always being this flirty chatterbox which is what sealed his fate. As a magistrate, he certainly wasn't above corruption. I understand why his corrupted past didn't make it into the game (or maybe It's mentioned somewhere in his playthrough?), Larian focused on his survivor story and it's easier to empathize with him without knowing he's always been a dick. But seeking eternal life? While his tombstone most likely states that he died at 39 which is wrong given what we know about elves and the timeline, he certainly was a young elf when he died. There was no reason for him to want to become a vampire, he had all the time in the world.

[thestobingirlie]

i guess it's mike and will both being important characters from the beginning while not blatantly being "the gay friend" and the show being that big and not being marketed as a lgbtq+ show? but i agree with you that there's definitely more grounbreaking pairings out there i think it's more what surrounds it

i do get what you’re saying but i also just think people… i don’t know how to explain it lol, but people aren’t recognising the characters?

like. what makes mike groundbreaking rep? what makes will groundbreaking rep? not just “a lot of people will see it” because people have been seeing gay rep for years now! what makes byler, as characters, stand out?

i think a lot of people confuse gay representation to mean gay couples representation, and it’s more than that! robin would still be good representation even if rockie didn’t happen. and, from what i’ve seen, a lot of byler shippers don’t seem to feel the same way about will.

[highwireshrimper]

a visually grounbreaking game, this one challenges viewers to interpret its cryptic symbolism

[obi-troll-kenobi]

I’m so sad and mad Carnival Row got canceled and all the popculture blogs who complain about there not being enough original fantasy shows were either completely ignoring CR or just waving it off, bitching about it like the only sin of this show was not being The Most Grounbreaking Philosophical Show Ever (while getting of to much worse cheap nostalgia grab shows).

It has a great concept, good acting, absolutely fantastic propts, costumes and scenery. It’s really worth watching and I will now spam my dashboard with some more Carnival Row gifsets.

[perexcri]

Perexcri, my beloved perexcri, it’s time to talk about aftry…

So first off i’m just gonna say i absolutely LOVE when authors and artists use light as a metaphor. Idk why but it always hits me so hard. This is probably the most obvious thing ever so i’m sure this is no grounbreaking observation but I took the light vs shadows metaphor as a stand in for depression. The voices that whisper to you that nothing but bad is coming for you but the light of hope that breaks through when you can share things with those you care about perfectly sums up how i personally feel when mine flares up bad. It was haunting, thoughtful and beautiful

As for the story itself, while yeah the action of thaba might have been missing here i definitely feel aftry was more of a ride. I love a good action piece as much as the next person but i also love the more character study driven stories like aftry just as much, probably a little more so because i tend to be a pretty emotional person in general so stories like these tend to get me a little more. The way relationships are explored here was also truly special. Getting to grow with them with all their ups and downs was so fun

As a musician i am always looking for new inspiration and you definitely provided! I wrote two pieces based on byler fics I absolutely loved and i think i feel one coming on for this one! I’ll keep you updated!

As always lovely i thank you so much for your gifts and sharing your stories with us! They are such a bright spot on my shittiest days and i appreciate you so much! Wishing you gentle days and nothing but love and light 💜💙💚

Jon i need you to know i read this message and couldn't stop smiling, so thank you for that :]

now *cracks knuckles* onto my beloved aftry. again, i cannot thank you enough for reading it. tbh, if i was forced to delete all but one of my fics from ao3, this is the one i would keep up. which is all to say it makes me overwhelmingly happy when people read it :')

ahhh yes, the depression metaphor!! listen, i am also a sucker for light metaphors. it's such a simple one but always so lovely to draw out and think about.

and now it's time for me to be personal on main, though i know i wrote about some of this in the author's notes in some of the chapters in aftry. basically i felt horrible when i wrote most of aftry; all of the first three parts and a few sections of the fourth part were all written in the span of about 3 weeks, but leading up to those weeks, during those weeks, and for several weeks afterwards, i felt horrible, but i couldn't really place what was wrong. i'd actually started feeling that way around posting the last ~10 chapters of thaba, and it just got worse and worse. in a weird way, i couldn't articulate what i was feeling to myself, but what i ended up writing (especially with Will's own thoughts and emotions) were very much what i was going through at the time. it's like i couldn't see how much pain i was in until i'd written 70k words of the fic, and even at that, i still couldn't really understand? it wasn't until i took some steps in my own life to get better that i was able to start looking back and realize how much pain i was going through

so, here's a fun easter egg for you: this actually kinda shows up in the story itself! i had originally intended for Will's interaction with the mindflayer-esque shadows to give him prophetic visions or something of the like, but by the time i got around to writing that third part where they're kids, i started describing the shadows in a way that i would typically reserve for mental health matters, and i genuinely couldn't get myself to stop no matter how much i wanted to go with the prophetic visions route. so, i think there's a conversation between those two in one of the earlier chapters where Will asks about an uncle who tried to kill the king? yeah, that's what was originally gonna happen: Will was gonna predict the uncle's betrayal, and then the king would exile him for treason or whatever. i had already changed the story by the time i posted that chapter, but i was so miserable that i couldn't think of a way to change it and just kept it lol

wow okay!! sorry for the rambles about light and dark and depression lol. onto the next things!

i'll just be straight up with you: nothing makes me happier than hearing you say aftry was more of a ride than thaba because of its emotional ups and downs. it's like i beat myself in a competition or something lol. but seriously, i'm glad you enjoyed it!! i am also a huge fan of character-driven stories and emotional studies of our dearly beloved blorbos. i'll take a story where nothing but a conversation or thinking happens for 20k words over an action-packed 5k words

and this is a small thing, but i like that you said you enjoyed growing together with them, because that ended up being such a big theme of this fic for me: growth. i wanted a story that was really emotionally messy and showed both of them failing and having to try and reconcile their differences, and i'm really proud of the end product and how it incorporated those things :D

also i know you're super talented musically, and if you write a piece for aftry, i think i'll be forced to retire from writing tbh. like that would be the peak for me. but seriously, no pressure whatsoever to do so!! it does make me happy when something i've made inspires other people to make things, though, mostly because i think the world is a better place when people are making things they care about :D

which is a really circular way of saying create if you so desire, but if you end up not wanting to, no worries at all!! i expect nothing and this ask alone is enough to have made me feel the happiness of a cat happy-rolling in a patch of sunlight on the floor

and how am i supposed to top your ending paragraph :') you're always so sweet and nice, and are a genuinely bright spot in this fandom. i know i appreciate your presence because i know you're a positive force in a world where it's very easy to not be so. i'm grateful for these little interactions via shared blorbo brainrot (lol) and for everything that is to come! i wish you flowers and light :] 💐

[hibernationsuit-remade]

no but like. what i think is that the hope left earth only once the groundbreaker arrived to halcyon which leaves a ten year difference btwn the ships (considering that it took the grounbreaker ten years to get there) so they left at...2275?

[daz4i]

woag this is amazing i am actually calm and thinking fast and am more sharp and witty and instead of stressing over things i actually try to figure out how to solve them or figure out the best schedule to get things done this is truly grounbreaking. and all i needed for that was to [REDACTED] with [REDACTED] by [REDCATED] three times. who knew

[opinated-user]

Found a post by lily somewhere in the wild recently where she complains about people saying she-ra had groundbreaking representation, saying it was just a programmed response…

What the hell is her logic here. Yes it’s become far more common for shows to include queer characters in recent years, but how is them being praised for that a bad thing? Shouldn’t we keep encouraging diverse casts in media?

Oh right! It’s because it was representation that she personally dislikes.

It’s perfectly fine to have that opinion. But to claim that the fact that you didn’t like how it was written erased the entire quality of that representation as a whole is just nonsense. We’re incredibly lucky to be able to have shows like these, with a queer couple being featured front and center. And yeah, they weren’t the first ones, but they’re still out here creating something for other media to build on. We need a solid foundation, and they’re a part of that.

Lily’s one of those people who’ll happily stab her own community in the back for the slightest offense, and it shows in everything that comes out of her mouth.

the more shows like she-ra come out and have commercial success, the more companies realise that kind of content is profitable and that is how they give green light to more shows to be made. even if you don't like this or that show, the mere fact that they were made should be celebrated because it means more queer shows that aren't targeted only towards adults. but of course... reaching this conclusion means understanding that companies aren't perfect and we know by now that LO refuses to do that. so instead she has to blame the media and, worse, the queer people who dared to like the show, as if they were the ones to blame as to the fact that she-ra was grounbreaking by having a sapphic protagonist and a sapphic kiss on screen, when before Korrasami could barely manage to get handholding.

this is just an extension of her capitalist bootlicking tendencies.

[halfurganymede]

The Vicar's Betrayal: Part 4

SPOILERS: This story contains spoilers for The Outer Worlds and The Empty Man (Max's companion quest)

‘Captain? Will we be leaving... right now?’ The captain had been about to depart to make some final checks but Miss Holcomb’s words stopped her.

‘Uh... yeah? I just need to talk call Doctor Welles and then we can head off. That OK?’

‘Well I was wondering if I could gauge your temperature on something real quick?’ Parvati glanced at Max then quickly looked away. The captain, taking the hint, moved them to Parvati’s “spot” in the hull, shooting a last, warm smile at him before leaving. Again, that horrible, traitorous, twinge of guilt. The overwhelming urge to pour his heart out. The spur of self destruction that had seemed to plague his life prodded him to reveal all his duplicity, his darkness and violence, the anger, hatred and murderous revenge that burned in his heart. He gripped the edge of the table for dear life and closed his eyes until the moment passed. He couldn’t blame it on the whiskey this time.

When he opened his eyes again he was alone but he could hear the doctor loudly insulting Felix until he begrudgingly agreed to vacate his bed. Max got up and refreshed the pot of coffee and washed out the doctor and Felix’s preferred mugs as best as he could while trying not to get his new bandage wet. By the time they both emerged, their mugs were set up in front of the steaming pot of caffeine. Mr Millstone poured himself a full cup and added a tooth ache inducing amount of sugar before retreating to the sofas to nurse his hangover. Ellie nodded her begrudging gratitude to the vicar as she poured her own.

‘OK, slight change of plan,’ the captain declared, returning to the kitchen with an engineer practically vibrating with nerves and excitement behind her. ‘We’ve got some shopping to do. Shouldn’t take more than ten minutes and we’ll head back for the ship, I’ll call Phineas, then we’ll make tracks for Monarch. Sound good?’

There was an assortment of non-committal grumbling from the less awake members of the crew but Max just stiffly nodded his ascent.

‘Felix, you’re with me and Parvati.’ That elicited a groan from the young man.

‘But the Grounbreaker’s so loud boss. Take the doc with you.’ The captain rolled her eyes.

‘Come on Felix. The walk will do you good. Grab a bottle of water and let’s go.’

‘This is all Max’s fault,’ the young man grumbled as he hauled himself upright.

‘So you’re mad the vicar drank you under the table.’ The captain observed flatly. Ellie burst out laughing and Parvati let out a giggle. Even Max found his lips quirking despite himself.

The captain put her arm around the protesting young man’s shoulders and steered him towards the stairs.

‘We’ll be back soon. Make sure Max doesn’t hurt himself while I’m gone doc.’ she called back to them. Max scowled at her back as she moved away.

‘I hadn’t eaten anything!’ Felix was blustering as they made their way to the door.