#i made this for a very specific audience aka me

[dokyunqsoo]

EXO LADDER 4 | EP 5 fairy!Kyungsoo

[vidavalor]

Crowley actually says a barely-coded "I love you" to Aziraphale back in 2.03

In his proposal in the S2 finale, Crowley told us that he and Aziraphale know they're in love and have known it for damn ever but they pretend they're not a couple. This, by default, means that they've not specifically said the words "I love you" before, by Crowley's own admission. They've said I love you in their own little language and we've watched it before. It's little demonic miracle of my own. It's don't go unscrewing the cap. It's just a little bit of a good person and just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing... But what Crowley says in the S2 finale is that they've never-- ever-- said in 6,000 years is just I love you in those normal people, human words. It has always been too dangerous for too many reasons to count so they have euphemisms for it and whole conversations around it and have made that be enough. Why do I bring this up? Because Crowley found a middle ground between the words and their coded language with one another in S2 and it's flying under the radar.

So you know that scene when Muriel has shown up and interrupts Crowley and Aziraphale talking in the back room? The one where while Crowley is speaking, Aziraphale suddenly looks like he's about to pass out with sheer want? Yes, our angel always looks at Crowley like he hung the damn moon (which he did but lol...) but this scene is different. This scene is like... someone get Aziraphale a chair and a glass a water because he is pupils-dilated, audibly breathing, and eyeing up Crowley with naked want. More than the lust? He looks happy. He looks delighted. You can basically hear his heart race from that look on his face. Why here? Yes, Crowley looks hot. Yes, he's in profile in a way that is a visual parallel to Before the Beginning (which was an inspired choice for this scene.) Yes, he's here with a Plan and taking charge of the Muriel situation and swaying his hips a bit while he speaks. It's not any of that. Those are nice bonuses. Aziraphale likes them. He gets them all the time. It's what Crowley said in this moment. To Aziraphale. Through what he said to Muriel.

Crowley cracks a dry, kinda dark joke that is meant for an audience of one: just Aziraphale. He knows Muriel won't get it. Since Muriel is cosplaying as what they think is a human Inspector Constable and they are here to verify the miracle Aziraphale has told Heaven and so are monitoring them, Crowley quips that Muriel is here to spy on them (since they, well, are, actually) and that he knows that many human police officers like to make a bit of a hobby out of spying on "people in love."

People. In. Love.

In a one-two punch in the same sentence, Crowley called him and Aziraphale queer humans and he called what they have love, using the actual word *aloud* for the first time in 6,000 years. He said he loved Aziraphale in front of an angel of Heaven in a little coded joke but this time, using the coded bit to say the real thing for the first time.

Then, just to hammer it all home and make sure that Aziraphale really knows it was very much intentional, Crowley says 'love' again in the next sentence. He starts going on about how Muriel can come to him anytime with any questions about love and he's happy to assist with their understanding of human love with all of his implied vast, vast years of experience with the subject and how he'll be here to answer their questions, in the bookshop, while Aziraphale drives his car to Edinburgh.

Go back and tell Heaven I'm here, Inspector Constable, I don't give a fuck anymore. *We* don't give a fuck anymore. You go tell The Archangel Michael that I'm who they're going to get managing Angelic Embassy X aka The Bookshop until Aziraphale gets back-- yep, me, former Demon of Hell. The Boyfriend in the Dark Sunglasses. He's asked me to, which is his way of saying he wants to stop hiding and asking me not to sneak out to my car in the middle of the night which hallefuckinglujah, Inspector Constable... Go tell Their Beatitudes that we ravish each other all over the bookshop. You won't even be lying. As Maggie'll put it later in the season: I'm done being afraid all the time. I love him. We're in love. There's your hot intel.

Aziraphale:

Aziraphale: Inspector Constable, be a dear and spray me down with all 700 of our fire extinguishers, will you?

[shirecorn]

Your reindeer designs give me such childish joy I can't wait to see the rest. What's your process (aka any advice) for designing from scratch with something like just a name or concept?

Redbubble (buy reindeer swag) || Patreon (see all early!) || Ko-fi

See more free tutorials!

You can see my process unfold in real time by joining any tier of my patreon discord. Which doesn't even have to go through patreon! If you want, you can just pay me $20 and let you in for a year (and then lose track and probably keep you anyway)

Here's a preview using comet! (nevermind the preview thing I wrote you a whole lecture lol)

initial sketches in 2021:

Revisited in 2022 and 2023

I was constantly asking which design was the weakest, why, and how to fix it. Whenever I tested without the magical comet behind it, people could only guess who comet was by process of elimination.

I didn't want to rely on throwing icons into the design. I wanted each one to communicate through shape and silhouette alone. It would be like drawing a little cherub with a bow and arrow floating along with cupid. If you have to include a nametag to communicate, your design can be improved.

So I tried a few different strategies to say "comet" before I realized I could twist the antlers into any shape I wanted. I was worried I would have to discard the drawing and restart from scratch! Which is what I did for rudolph about 6 times before I had a breakthrough.

Then I gave my patrons a brief lesson in antlers to explain where and why I was placing the tines. When I stray from the caribou structure, I do so knowingly in order to achieve something that cannot be achieved within the caribou shape, like dancer's tutu. Know the rules before you break them. My goal is to make animal nerds (myself chief among them) happy when they see species-specific anatomy instead of cop outs.

I tried a few things before figuring out antlers could become comet

Another thing that often caribou have is an unsymmetrical "spork" that comes forward off only one antler. I figured this out by looking at hundreds of reindeer pictures and saving them to my reference folder. A few of my designs have this, that's what the little spiral is in the final comet antler design.

When I put comet in my lineup, I realized that the antlers I drew were way more stylized, chunky, and "tribal" than the others. I had already changed the proportions on one of my designs to match, so then I had to hack away at the basic comet rack to make it look natural.

I already knew that comet's colors would be easy because a basic reindeer already Has the big comet on the shoulder. But here's a peak at all the reindeer images I posted for my patrons to look at.

As you can see below, I chose reindeer markings for all my designs instead of other deer or animals. Even vixen is tied to actually possible reindeer patterns rather than copy-pasting a fox. Almost all of my designs have light-colored anklets on dark colored legs, which is very common with caribou of any color. This is the sort of thing no one tells you; you have to observe it yourself.

Ft cupid's early design! I was continually testing out my reindeer silhouettes and colors on new people, taking their feedback, and fixing what wasn't clicking.

I know I could have made vixen sexy and curvy to play into a recognizable trope, but I really wanted them to be scary and fox-like. Sometimes you gotta do what you want and not what you think will appeal to audiences. Reindeer Days is a purposeful exercise in audience resonance. Most of my art is 100% me and what I feel like doing with no regards to anyone else. So it was a fun challenge!

My patrons also got to see me making fun of corporate designs for recognizably/cliches at the expense of literally anything good

One of these is going to get a lot more "that must be vixen!" results from people who aren't constantly thinking about animal colors, markings, hunting strategies, and teeth.

And one rocks.

Vixen changed the least from the initial 2021 concept!

A Vixen is a female fox. In english slang, it means a cunning, fierce human woman, and sometimes sexually attractive or promiscuous. Quite often an insult to someone because she won't date you!

But to me, a vixen is an animal. A predator.

When designing to reference something, I like to hit it at multiple angles, referencing obscure trivia about something to delight and educate. This is done by researching a topic deeply, far below surface level and beyond what you think you need to make your design. Or in my case its just knowing a bunch of animal trivia already.

After researching/dredging your knowledge, sit there and Think. Don't draw anything. Come up with several ideas and then throw them all in at once for the ultimate trivia design.

Trivia about red foxes:

They have Long bushy tails

They have teeth that include large sharp canines, flat incisors, triangular premolars, and chunky molars with points on them that slide scissor-like with the molars above to cut meat via chewing

They hunt rodents in burrows under the snow by jumping into the air, arcing, and slamming down with their face through the snow

They are orange

They have a dark vertical stripe on their snout

They have black legs, with the backs and bottoms being orange

Translated into the design:

Pose based on a fox jumping, about to land in the snow

Antlers twisted to resemble teeth

Long (for a reindeer) bushy tail

black mark on snout

Some adjustment to the pose to be at the top of the arc and flow better.

Tinkering with the design to make it recognizable but not 100% copypasta fox

I was finally happy with a design that absolutely showed "fox" while still being creative and plausibly caribou shaped. This would absolutely communicate who it is! I thought!

The most obvious one of the bunch! After all, everyone knows what a vixen is!

Nope! No they do not

Want to be part of the design process, help me with WIPs months before everyone else, see exclusive doodles every day, and join a funky little community?

(you also get to see photos of my dog)

Connect your discord to your patreon and join any tier to automatically get added to the server. Not a fan of patreon or monthly subscriptions? message me here, on ko-fi, or via email (shirecorn.art@ gmail.com) and ask if you can pay $20 to get put in the server for at least a year and longer if we work it out later!

This was supposed to be a preview to get you to pay me but instead I wrote an entire lecture for free because I can't help myself.

Want to thank me for the free info? Tag me when you use what you learned! Comment and give feedback! If I could pay rent with attention I would never need anything else in life.

You can also thank me by tipping my ko-fi! I use it to buy pens since I die if I have caffeine. But could you imagine??

[markrosewater]

Echoing what that other guy said, I have felt a rise in complexity recently. With so many new cards that not only make you read and remember what they do, but what the tokens they make do, then what the tokens that that token makes does, it really adds to the mental load. Some examples would be Ring Tempts You, daybound/nightbound, initiative, Venture into the dungeon, stickers, attractions, and many more.

For instance, had a vindicate, and was debating between killing Frodo, sauron’s bane and Nahar, selfless paladin, I would have to read a total of 6 cards. Each of the original creatures, plus the 3 dungeons and the Ring card. And this problem gets worse the more effects you add on, many of which don’t go away as the game continues. If someone introduces the initiative, I now have to worry about nahar exploring the underdark. This scaling complexity as the game continues now means there’s an insane amount layers of the game, which while fun, is also very daunting, and somewhat of a headache.

If nothing else, I’d really like if “reading the card explains the card” was true, not “reading the card, then the three different extra cards that it makes explains the card”

I do appreciate your listening, and generally a lot of the new stuff has been cool. However, this push for many “outside the game” mechanics is not great for paper play, and I would prefer less of it.

Here's the core problem. A huge part of Magic is that we keep making new cards. When we do that, the audience wants new mechanics. (Market research shows again and again that one of the biggest draws to new sets is new mechanics.) We're thirty years in. We've made a *lot* of mechanics, so we have to go to new spaces to make new things. It's not as if there's lots of simple, elegant, non-complex design space that we're actively choosing not to do.

What this means is if you want to play constructed formats that don't rotate, complexity will rise with time. There's literally no way around this. Every new card we create, every new mechanic we make, every set we put out adds complexity to the system.

So if you're finding the mental load too much, there are ways to play Magic where this isn't an issue. Limited formats and rotating constructed formats limit complexity. Or you can choose to build your decks such that you focus on less mechanics you have to track.

That said, I don't think there's a way for me to do my job (aka keep designing new things) that isn't going to raise complexity. We can look at how many things we add to any one set. Maybe slow down the rise in complexity a little. But can we do so in a way that the audience is getting what they want? I'm not sure.

One of the mechanics I get asked most to bring back is mutate, and that's confusing even without the rest of Magic, so there are many forces pulling in different directions.

I do like hearing the specific things that cause you all problems, because it's possible I can figure out the style of designs that cause people problems. But the idea that we just stop making mechanics that reference things not on the card is a tough one given where Magic design technology is currently at.

I do appreciate all the input, and I hope the dialogue helps me better understand what specific things are causing problems.

[aangarchy]

So while rewatching the live action trailer a 50th time i kind of started thinking about something.

There's a few moments in atla that always seemed untouchable to me. Not only because they were well executed when it comes to storytelling, but also bc we never actually see the moments in question. Examples are: the attack on the air temples, Ozai burning Zuko, Katara's mother's death. We hear about these from other characters who happened to be there, or in case of the air temples: we hear the moment being retold as history. It's the latter i want to expand on.

The original cartoon never shows us even a glimpse of the attack on the air temples. You could say "well it's a kid's show they can't show a brutal genocide" but honestly, we're talking about a cartoon that showed a skeleton on screen in the third episode, showed the main character getting electrocuted and plummeting to his death, and showed a man being drowned by a spirit. The reason they didn't show it imo, is because it makes sense for the narrative. This attack was a century ago. Everyone that witnessed the attacks and was old enough to remember them is dead. Bumi is the only person we know of that was alive at the time and old enough to somewhat remember, but he wasn't present. It's comparable to world war one for us. There's nobody alive currently that properly remembers WW1. We're being told about it in history class, we get shown those weird black and white videos of smiling soldiers on their way to their death, pushing carts through the mud, them shooting a few canons, the trenches etc. But there's no first hand recollections. The creators really drove home the point of the airbender genocide being ancient history to the current inhabitants of this world by never showing us the attacks itself, and only having it be a known historical fact. It's just something that happened, it was long ago, nobody remembers it. All they know is there's no more airbenders, they're extinct, and nobody remembers jack shit about airnomad culture and philosophy except those that study it (aka professor zei) and even then, it's based off of destroyed architecture and hard to find historical texts that i'm sure the Fire Nation tried their best to erase. The viewers of the show only get information about air nomads through Aang, and whatever flashbacks from his own memory he provides. It leaves us wanting to know more, and it feels extra tragic knowing we'll only have Aang to rely on to tell us the tales of his people (for atla specifically, i know we now have more info due to the avatar novels).

Netflix however, literally opens their trailer with three shots of the attack. The comet, then the fireballs being shot, then the firebenders and airbenders facing off. I don't like this decision to show the battle that took place, because then the point of it being ancient gets a bit lost. We as the audience get more information than the main characters have, and idk but to me that kind of ruins the experience?

Same with Zuko getting his scar. Not only are they gonna show us that, they put it in the trailer. Why? This is a very important character moment in the show that we don't even get to see bc it's told from Iroh's perspective and he looked away the moment it happened. Before this we were given crumbs as to how Zuko got his scar. And Netflix is just tossing it our way like Peeta tossed bread at Katniss Everdeen.

I might feel differently abt this when the show airs (although not likely lol) but currently i'm just kind of mad at these creative decisions being made man

[woomycritiques543]

TW: Visuals of Blackface, Trans erasure, Transphobia.

Well then…

Sure makes the fact that Vivziepop supported Blaire White, even if she doesn’t want to admit that, had caused her to have internalized transphobia since EVERY trans character is pushed entirely into the background to the point of barely being visible or is only mostly there for fanservice (trans fetishisim) with no actual role yet at all, in the story…

Yeah… Vivziepop’s “I was NEVER transphobic I just liked Blaire because she was pretty! I didn’t know that she was a transphobe even AFTER I already saw her transphobia but defended it as “a normal political discussion” just because I didn’t want to admit to the fact that I supported a transphobe so I pulled a “I forgor!” in my “apology” to pretend as if I didn’t remember anything- when I clearly remembered the tweets that I was pretending that I “didn’t” see “yet” enough for me to mention the “insensitive tweets” that I “didn’t see until after I watched her and drew the fanart and realized my terrible mistake AFTER I watched her videos and saw her tweets AFTER I supported her!” like I said in my “apology” and instead saw WHILE I was watching Blaire White because I SUPPORTED HER for her transphobia, aka her entire channel, and pretended as if what she did was a “simple political discussion to disagree with” and “not” TRANSPHOBIA AND RACISM! Which means that I do remember supporting a transphobe, and her transphobia, but just dont want to admit it because REASONS!” that are in her apology hasn’t aged well… hasn’t it…

(What Vivziepop actually said compared to what she said she “did”…)

AKA: Vivziepop made a false apology, lying about what she did and weaponized her trauma again, writing an entire speech about “seeing things from all sides!” when she specifically supported transphobes, and didn’t do this as a “perspective thing” since she drew fanart of Blaire White, a transphobe, and actually saw the “insensitive tweets”, not “after” she supported Blaire but WHILE she supported Blaire and even DEFENDED the existence of said tweets that she claims that she did “not” see at the time where she made said fanart. When all Blaire White’s channel is, is transphobia anyway, so either way Viv couldn’t cover up her own transphobia even if she tried. Her post directly defending the existence of transphobia by calling it a “political discussion we “should!” have (the “trans are politics!” code word transphobes say to alienate people that are trans.) and saying that she’s “allowed!” to support transphobes just because she doesn’t “CATER!” to her audience. When let’s face it:

What’s worse than a past transphobe, is a past transphobe that refuses to admit to her past transphobia. A transphobe, that still has transphobia that she clearly has today due to the past influences that she refuses to own up to… which in itself: is transphobia.

When:

1. “Political Discussion that we should allow to exist! I DONT CARER TO U!” and being a bigot aren’t the same thing. Transphobia isn’t a simple political discussion Vivienne.

2. The way Vivziepop replied here very much implies that she knew about the transphobia in advance, which is why she got so defensive about it.

3. She already saw the “insensitive tweets”, and cant make the “I FORGOR!” excuse anymore like she did after Hazbin came out when she clearly remembers what she responded to, despite lying and saying that she “didn’t” see those tweets at that point, when she clearly did and even SUPPORTED the existence of said tweets from some she drew fanart of and all mentioning those tweets did was blow her cover.

So all of this “I JUST WANTED TO SEE DIFFERENT SIDES!” speech about how “good faith my simple mistake was!” was a total lie and she actually defended Blaire for said “insensitive tweets” that she tries to deny that she saw at the time, when she defended the existence of these posts and tried to call transphobia and racism a “important discussion”, which is transphobia.

She also tried to go “I DONT SUPPORT BLACK FACE!” as in “I NEVER SUPPORTED BLACK FACE!” when she clearly did, it’s right in the post that she’s denying existed 👆

When Blaire’s post says “BLAIRE BLACK!” in reference to the mask she was wearing AS blackface, and is clearly mocking Black Lives Matter, was posted in the BLM tag to harasss them- for being black: which is RACISM!

Blaire of course, denied all of this, and only showed the mask picture in her fake as all hell “apology!” video, and per usual, used misinformation to mislead her audience, but that’s another post-full altogether…

So in a nutshell:

Vivziepop supported a transphobe and her transphobia, lied about it to make herself look “good faith”, which ironically, is worse for her reputation since that means that she denied what she actually did and never apologized for it, which means that she never apologized for how she treated the trans community, which still makes this a current action and something to currently hold accountable since she currently lied about it in her “apology” to make what she did look “goos faith” and outright denied being a transphobe at all, which means that she still supports this since she lied about it to make herself look “good”instead of admitting to the fact that she supported a transphobe and a drew Nazi oc of a real Nazi scientist that tested on children.

-annnnnnnnnnd… she shoved all of her trans characters into the background and even ERASED a trans character just because he was directly on screen in HB Episode 5.

Yikes.

[haveyouseenthismovie-poll]

previous anon gets offended that white American dudes are behind a lot of the most popular films in a world that's kind of ruled by American pop culture, which is definitely not fantastic despite being the current state of things, but then they immediately jump to calling women "females". Be the change you want to see in the world and start requesting films made by women, POC, and other minorities, there are plenty of popular amd acclaimed films made by people who are not white American men. It's very reasonable to expect the owner of the blog to go through IMDB and Letterboxd's top films first.

Yeah, the use of the word "females" definitely rubs me the wrong way but some people just have a different opinion on that.

A lot of people seem to view this blog as primarily one for recommending movies and, while I don't have a problem with people using this blog to find new movies to watch or submitting movies simply because they want to promote their favorites to a new audience, I do think it's important to remind folks that this blog was created with the goal of seeing how popular well-known and/or critically acclaimed movies are to the Tumblr user base. Obviously this is going to result in a large number of posts about movies directed by white, American men because, for a variety of reasons, those are the films that tend to receive the most amount of publicity and critical acclaim. Heck, the reason that I chose to start with the IMDB list first instead of any other "top films of all time" list is because the IMDB list is widely looked upon as a sort of "entry level" list, AKA the list people start with when they're only just getting into movies and haven't done a whole lot of research into films outside of what has received mainstream success.

If I were making a blog with the specific intent of recommending more obscure films or films by marginalized directors then it would be in an entirely different format than this one and frankly would not involve using any sort of "top films of all time" list as films on those lists have already garnered a decent amount of publicity.

[soular-sisters]

The Origins Of Horoscopes 🔮

as an astrologer who has been mesmerized by the cosmos for 10 years, i have come to have an honest disagreeance for horoscopes. although those whimsical columns are what naturally gravitated me to the world of astrology, it is a shame that horoscopes are what seems to come to the average person's mind when they think of the zodiac. it is our personal belief that the fantastical nature of horoscopes overshadow the beauty of astrology. but this made us wonder.... where did horoscopes come from? continue on to learn about, the origins of horoscopes.

Ancient Times

🔮 The Silk Roads: The earliest evidence of horoscopes date back to the 3rd millennium BCE in Mesopotamia.

🔮 Astrology was adopted on the trading routes of The Silk Roads during the Tang Dynasty (705-907 CE).

🔮 Along these trading routes, traders would sell horoscopes as a service to different regions such as Central Asia, the Iranian Plateau, & China.

🔮 China became very fond of horoscopes during this time & adopted them into the framework of Chinese astrology today.

🔮 Chinese horoscopes at this time were derived from the Hellenistic Period of Ancient Greece.

🔮 During this time, it became Chinese tradition that newborn Chinese babies would be given a horoscope upon birth & then throughout pivotal moments in their lives.

🔮 One of the most important astrologers of this time, Abu Ma'shar (8/10/787- 3/9/886), wrote a book called “Book Of Thousands”.

🔮 “Book Of Thousands” (written in 850)

🔮 The book did not survive to today. Remaining fragments show us that the book was a chronology of world history (from Christian, Persian, & Islamic sources) that intended to connect past, present, & future events to the stars. 🔮 The remaining fragments of the book were collected by David Pingree in 1968 & can be found on select scholarly sources online today.

🔮 Astrology became very popular in Medieval Central Asia.

🔮 It was during this time that two types of astrology formed; mathematically-based astrology (what we astrologers go by) & the magical form of astrology (AKA: horoscopes).

The 20th & 21st Century

🔮 Prominent British astrologer, R.H. Naylor (6/9/1889- 1952), was hired by the Sunday Express (a London-based newspaper) to write a horoscope article.

🔮 Naylor was an assistant to the leading British astrologer of the time called Cheiro. 🔮 Cheiro was sought out by many celebrities of the time for his brilliant astrology services to read their natal charts. He was known to have read the palms of such significant figures such as Mark Twain, Grover Cleveland, & Winston Churchill.

🔮 The article was about the birth of Princess Margaret, born August 21, 1930. (a leo beauty)

🔮 The newspaper decided to run a few more articles. In one of the next articles, Naylor predicted that “a British aircraft will be in danger” between October 8th and 15th. On October 5th, British airship R101 crashed outside Paris with 48 of the 54 on board the plane passing away.

🔮 The population became amazed with the incredible prediction Naylor made. The editor then offered Naylor a weekly column & “What The Stars Foretell”, the first ever horoscope column in human history, was born.

🔮 "What The Stars Foretell”

🔮 The column started as advice for people whose birthday fell on each specific week the newspaper article was published. 🔮 By 1937, the article became more grandiose & spoke of “star signs” to relate to a wider audience. 🔮 This was the creation of the term “star signs”.

🔮 From there on, the world caught on to the eye-catching spells of horoscopes & publications from all over the world began to replicate what Naylor created. This is why historically, horoscopes are written by writers assigned to the task of creating a spellbinding horoscope piece & not astrologers.

Well folks, there you have it. Although the roots of horoscopes share soil with the beautiful creation of astrology, they became more of an object of purchase than the art that astrology truly is. I do believe if horoscopes were intended on sharing truth & not appealing to the masses as a means to sell a product, they would hold value to humanity. But in all honesty, if horoscopes remain to just be a tool to spellbind their readers & curate them into consumers, then they hold no good intention to the art of astrology we are so passionate about.

Thank you so much for reading! I appreciate our lil astrology community so much & hope you learned something from this lil trip down astrology lane. 😊

Research Disclaimer: All research was conducted by Andrehya in May 2024. This is all information found by her own research. Sources are listed below for your own curiosity.

Sources:

The Silk Roads Info

Ancient Horoscope Scholars

Modern Horoscope Info

EXCITING NEWS: we are in the process of configuring our work to create a lil astrology instagram for all of us astrology lovers! please go check it out & show your support by giving us a follow! we really appreciate it. 🥰 IG: astrology instagram

-A.A.

[samantha-and-her-chaotic-desires]

The hazbin hatedom is getting out of hand for me it's really cringe. Your thoughts

I have mixed opinions on this. So beforehand, I am going to say that this is a longer post from me, and I appreciate the anonymous message! <3 I will be talking about this specific question, as well as my interpretation, thoughts, and overall feelings on this matter. Please feel free to reblog, like, and comment your opinions and keep it civil. I want to have a friendly discussion, no matter how brash I seem: this is brutal honesty coming from my heart.

For those who have ZERO clue: Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss are dark "comedy" shows for an adult audience, created by Vivienne "Vivziepop" Medrano, originally airing on YouTube. Helluva Boss is currently in its second season, while we have yet to find out anything else on Hazbin Hotel, as it is now a part of A24 and BentoBox. They center on the same setting, Hell, but have two different plot lines.

Hazbin Hotel is redemption focused, led by Princess Charlie Morningstar, the daughter of Lucifer. She wants to help the sinners in Hell become good and go up to heaven to avoid the yearly Exterminartion, aka a Purge. Helluva Boss, however, is about a murdering business called I.M.P., with Blitz, Millie, Moxxie, and Loona, going up to Earth with a grimoire that is provided by Stolas of the Ars Goetia, a prince. So here we go, into the Depths and reasoning of this post: the Hatedom. So lo and behold, my answer below.

On one hand, yes. The Hazbin Hatedom is a bit over the top. Yes, people are assholes. However, the Vivziepop stans who don't want to admit their precious senpai Vivziepop has done some pretty fucked up shit in the past. The hate can be unnecessary, but you know what else can be unnecessary? The toxic stans. I follow #vivziepop for certain analysis portrayals and criticism, or just general news. Sometimes people are tiresome. This is no exception.

I am falling out of the fandom because it can be toxic. I enjoy most of the characters, but other than that? Helluva Boss's current writing is NOT good. At all. The latest episode irked me to no end. I'm unimpressed with Seeing Stars. I am not very happy that they are forcing Stolitz down our throats as an "uwu pwease wove us" type of bullshit ship. I would much rather prefer Blitz and Stolas to be friends. I wished Stolas had his pilot personality and not the "uwu im a gay, tragic prince with a shitty wife, feel bad for me" bird we know in the series.

Moxxie in the latest episode is bitchy. He got on my nerves and was pissed at Millie being happy. This girl deserves more screentime (and I'm glad she got some of it) but seriously...Millie is always there for Moxxie, and Moxxie needs to reciprocate.

They made Stella seem stupid, when in reality, and if written properly, she can be a cunning and calculating villain with her brother. We've yet to see how Octavia and Stella interact, but I'm unsure.

I have definitely tried to keep my mouth shut as much as I could on this matter, because when I finally openly admit how I feel, it's not a pretty thing, especially with something that I'm so passionate about. Animation takes time, writing takes time, scripting, acting, everything takes so much time, and this is wasted potential. We can have so much better than just a fan-ficcy type rom-com, dark humor, sexual humor schtick. It's getting annoying, and I fear the worst when it comes to Hazbin Hotel.

Criticism is welcome here! Let me know what I left out. I'm willing to hear other opinions, so long as they're nice. If anons start flooding my inbox and getting mad, anons are off. Anon is a privilege, not a right.

[amageish]

Spider-Man 2 Post-Credit Spoilers

Time for some more signature Amageish overthinking!

Sooooooooooooo.

How about that Cindy Moon appearance, huh?

From this Gizmodo article, we do have a bit of insight into the decision to have her appear where they mention the challenge of making a Cindy unique to the GamerVerse specifically - though it's obvious they are keeping their cards close to their chest here as well.

io9: Along with giving Miles a promotion, you’ve introduced Cindy Moon, aka Silk, into your universe. Of all the Spider-heroes, I don’t think anyone was expecting her. What made her so appealing over someone like Eddie or Gwen Stacy? Arfmann: Cindy’s always been a really compelling character in the comics who, similar to [SM1's] Martin Li, hasn’t really gotten a ton of exposure outside of the immediate fanbase. There’s something really exciting about taking a character who we love, who not everybody’s had a chance to meet, and exposing her to a wider audience. Morris: I’m so excited to see what we do with Cindy. Arfmann: Exactly. That was the real drive with her, and figuring out who Insomniac’s Cindy Moon is a really exciting challenge. And we also have this interesting complication that [Cindy’s dad] Albert is dating [Miles’ mom] Rio, and we’re thrilled to explore how that creates a new iteration of this character that folks already love.

So this confirms that they will be changing stuff too! This is going to be a unique take on her, but they are also self-aware that this will be plenty of people's introduction to the character.

The main question on my mind is a pretty basic one: Does Cindy Moon need to be shoved into a bunker for 7-10 years in order to be recognizably Cindy Moon? Her father is already in the game, so we know the "parents are missing" story is probably off the table, but does she need to still spend all that time in isolation to be Cindy?

In the comics, her time in the bunker is credited in-text with being a source of so many of her defining character traits.

It is something that separates her experiences from Peter and the other Spider-heroes.

It's something that fills her with a drive to prove herself and is the experience that made her such a talented martial artist.

It informs her understanding of modern technology and the level of pop culture awareness she has - the former of which helped her develop her uniquely positive relationship with J Jonah Jameson.

And, lastly, the time she had in isolation is credited with causing her to develop her anxiety disorder and communication challenges.

So, with all that in mind, it feels like Cindy does have to be put into a bunker, right? As it's such a core part of her backstory?

Well, no. Maybe this will be a hot take, but I honestly don't think she does.

While I do think everything I've listed here is a key aspect of Cindy Moon as a character, I don't think they need to lock her in a vault for 7-10 years in order to explain why a Korean-American woman in New York city has anxiety or practices martial arts or feels a need to work twice as hard to have her accomplishments recognized. These are all very relatable experiences that do not require a fantastical superhero origin story to justify them.

Honestly, with how emotion-forward the Insomniac Spider-Man games are already, I think her being a woman who has had a depressive episode recently which she describes as having felt like being trapped would work just as well as literally having had her be trapped by a supervillain. I would not be surprised if the ability to tell a story about anxiety and depression was a factor in them selecting Cindy as the next playable character as well - the potential for a Silk game that incorporates actual mindfulness and grounding techniques into the gameplay is really high IMHO.

I also think that the final scene kind of supports the idea too? Cindy has no lines, but she does have a silent awkward wave. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but her introduction makes me think she already has social anxiety - so unless she's already been in the bunker and we'll get a story about how she escaped, then I think she will probably jut be getting powers and moving forward from there.

Anyway, that's a lot of thoughts brought about by like 5 seconds of Cindy waving. I'm just really eager to see where things go from here and am hoping we'll get a DLC trailer or a Silk expandalone announced sometimes soon...

(PS: Having Peter already be in a committed relationship with MJ and Miles, who is also already in a relationship with Hailey, being in a psuedo-sibling relationship with Cindy is an excellent way of desexualizing the Cindy + Spider-Men relationship. I have no fears about Insomniac stumbling on that particular hurdle.)

(I do, however, have fears that I will be seeing unironic speculation about pheromones in reddit threads for the next 2 years until whenever Spider-Man: Miles Morales 2 or Silk: Cindy Moon is announced... but that probably cannot be changed, unfortunately.)

[heyftinally]

Swifties do love setting Taylor up.

Just what I saw on Twitter Yesterday:

1989 is a pop Bible that everybody knows. - Well if it's trash maybe.

Reputation is hip hop ??? - What?

Reputation is goth Rock ?? - Lol

That Reputation is also supposed to be R&nB - like where?? wtf?

And her new album the Treacherous Dead Poets Default is an album with a new sound.

Or this yt lady on tt that was claiming that no other artists has transcended genres as successfully as taylor did. 😭 And she mentions Rock? Girl where? And literally there are tons of artists who did it way better than her.

Or that one video which they have now deleted bc taylor was getting dragged. It was a video of her just walking on stage and singing (not live) and the caption was like: I can't believe she was doing that for the first time. ' - Some small part of me does feel sorry for these delusional fanbase. Cause she has the highest grossing tour right now. Big emphasis on right now cause that record is not forever. Anyways they can not post much about her performance anywhere without people using it to drag her. Cause let's face it. She can't perform. She's not serving. She's giving nothing. Her dancers slay more than she does.

Pffffft Taylor went from pop country to pop and never changed again. Slightly different vibes? Sure. Still pop. She wouldn't know rock if it smacked her in the head.

Missy Elliott is hip hop. Early P!nk (ie Most Girls) is R&B. Sumo Cyco is goth rock (+ others, but still). Taylor Swift wouldn't touch any of those genres with a 10ft pole, and quite frankly she'd suck at them if she tried lol.

She doesn't "transcend genres", and considering she can't even make different versions of pop sound good, I think we know why.

And no, she can't perform. Let me flex my expertise here: I'm a trained dancer. Specifically with 26 years of training in tap, jazz, ballet, theater, and contemporary, with additional training in commercial/street jazz (aka music video and tour choreography) and various other styles in sporadic classes. I've literally been choreographing since I was about seven years old, and have been analyzing commercial choreography since I was 15.

That said,

Her performances are not only weak, but they show me that her tour choreographer either

Doesn't exist and she created all of her own "dancing" herself

Doesn't know how to adapt choreography for someone with virtually no dance technique

Actively has something out for Taylor and is trying to make her look bad

I'm going to reference "Look What You Made Me Do" from the Eras tour, because that's the most recent and clearest to illustrate my point

A video of the performance in question, for reference.

Okay, first off, right off the bat, her hand floating on her hip looks awkward and uncomfortable. It's giving "over-excited 8yo at recital". For someone with as much experience as she has performing, I'd expect her to look more settled in her beginning pose. She looks like she's overthinking, and thus it looks under rehearsed.

Then we have that flexed hand - yes it's a nit pick, but that pose belongs very few places outside of a 6yo's tap dance.

Movibg on, her robotic movements look messy as fuck. Sharp isolations like that are HARD. A lot of dancers with years of training struggle with getting the kind of sharpness you would expect to see from that choreography. And on the scale of a stadium like she's in, everything is amplified. If it's messy, it's going to look five times as messy as it might on a smaller scale, because the further away the audience is, the more detail gets lost. So you're movements need to be SHARP in order to translate to the audience. Add to that that this is clearly filmed professionally/intentionally, and it really just looks unprofessional/poorly planned.

Meanwhile the things like the "don't like you" scolding (besides looking childish) are so small that you wouldn't see them beyond the front row. When you're choreographing even for a normal stage, the #1 rule is make everything BIG and intentional. If you're kicking, you're hitting AT LEAST a 45° angle, and with the force of trying to kick the winning soccer (football) goal. Taylor doesn't do that. Those movements are small, sad, and weak, and it honestly looks lazy. I know a 10yo currently doing a competitive dance solo to this song, and I shit you not that 10yo is 50x more interesting to watch perform than Taylor.

So yeah, her music has been one note since Fearless one note (uninspired pop), and her "stage presence" is about on par with an 8yo who doesn't want to be here.

[samasmith23]

We need to talk about EssenceOfThought's ongoing bullying & slander campaign against Rachel Oates...

I normally don't make posts covering this kind of stuff since I mostly try to keep my Tumblr blog here relatively positive and cheerful. And I normally try to avoid YouTube drama in general. But recently I've become increasingly frustrated and angered by the behavior of a certain YouTuber whom I regrettably used to be a fan of awhile back known as "Essence Of Thought" (aka, Ethel Thurston), whom in the past 2 months has been continuously releasing multiple videos & shorts which slander and defame another YouTuber named Rachel Oates. I know that Rachel herself is currently trying to combat this situation and has even filed multiple claims against Ethel's videos, but I felt the need to try and show my support for Rachel by help signal-boost her story in response to Ethel's revived targeted harassment campaign against her.

Content Warning: Mentions of Transphobia, Cyberbullying, Self-Harm, Suicidality, and Child Abuse.

Also, while this post is going to be very critical of Ethel and her conduct, I will NOT tolerate any misgendering or deadnaming of her! Just because I think Ethel is a bad person does NOT excuse any transphobia that is directed at her, and I will immediately block and report anyone who engages in such reprehensible behavior!

Section 1: Confessions of a former fan, or my personal falling out with Essence of Thought

For those who are not aware, Ethel Thurston is a transgender atheist content creator who regularly produces video essays analyzing and criticizing TERFs and the broader far-right. This content greatly appealed to me as both a supporter of trans-rights and as someone who vocally opposes both TERFs and Neo-Nazis. However, exactly 1-year-ago I unsubscribed from Ethel's channel when she began made a series of videos accusing Lily Orchard of being a child groomer. While I do agree that Lily is an AWFUL person who has received multiple credible accusations of sexual abuse from both former partners and even her own younger sister Courtney, Ethel's videos which accused Lily of "grooming all minors in her audience" were actually heavily criticized by several former victims of Lily's abuse who have argued that the way Ethel & her editor "ABirdCalledLevi" (aka, Levi) presented their information against Lily was not only overly inflammatory, but only served to misrepresent and damage the testimonies of her other victims.

Specifically, critics like "Patchwork Heart" (aka, Shiloh Conner) took serious issue took issue with Ethel & Levi's constant liberal usage of the word "grooming" to describe Lily's actions towards individuals like Glade, who accused Lily of encouraging him on her Discord to watch a livestream where she repeatedly flashed her audience (Glade was still 17 at the time of this incident). Essentially Shiloh stated that while Lily was undeniably guilty of sexual harassment, neglectful misconduct, and indecent exposure, her behavior technically does not qualify as "grooming," since "grooming" is a term specifically meant describe the gradual breaking down of a victim's boundaries through manipulation and isolation from others (online it's usually conducted through private DMs rather than on public servers like Lily's channels). Furthermore, Shiloh and other fellow victim's of Lily's abuse also criticized Ethel & Levi's usage of the phrase "parasocial audience grooming" to argue that Lily was grooming her ENTIRE audience instead of individuals, as "parasocial audience grooming" is NOT a legally or medically recognized term, but was instead invented by the commentary YouTuber "Korviday" in 2020 to describe Shane Dawson's sexually abusive behavior towards several underage members of his audience. Essentially, it's impossible to groom an entire audience all at once since grooming is defined by the specific and deliberate targeting and manipulation of individuals in private or isolated settings with the intention of eventually sexually abusing them. But when criticized for the way they badly mishandled the testimonies of victims like Glade, Ethel & Levi instead doubled down by not only continuing to misuse the word "grooming" in their videos, but actively smeared and defamed their critics and other victims of Lily's like Shiloh as "abuse/groomer apologists.” Ethel even went as far as to compare Shiloh criticizing how she misrepresented Glade’s testimony to “defending Harvey Weinstein.”

Like... YIKES!

I'm not going to lie... when I saw the way Ethel & Levi actively bullied and slandered other victims of Lily Orchard, I was deeply disappointed and disgusted. While I was already starting to grow weary of Ethel's tendency to overly moralize in her arguments, and I knew she was unpopular in a lot of online spaces, for the longest time I tried to give both her and Levi the benefit of the doubt since I knew she had been harassed by TERFs like Graham Linehan past simply for being an outspoken non-binary trans-woman online. But the way Ethel bullied people like Shiloh Conner was simply inexcusable! And personally, I completely agree with Shiloh's criticisms against Ethel & Levi. Even though I dislike Lily Orchard and think that she's an abusive scumbag, spreading misinformation about issues as serious as CSA only serves to inflict further harm onto the people that Lily has hurt. Victims like Shiloh have very publicly stated that they either want their testimonies to be reflected as accurately as possible, or not at all. And I especially understand their concerns about misusing the word "grooming," especially because of how that word in particular has been so easily co-opted as an anti-LGBTQ+ slur by Republicans and the far-right in the past 2 years alone, which only serves to promote bigotry and obfuscate actual instances of child sexual abuse (Ethel claimed in their video that they "saw no harm in extending the definition of the word" BTW). Here's a link to Shiloh's video responding to Ethel if you want further details on the ways in which both she and Levi so badly mishandled the testimonies of Lily Orchard's victims BTW:

So how does Rachel Oates fit into all of this exactly? Well...

Section 2: Reevaluating Ethel's past conduct and the targeted bullying of Rachel Oates

Once I witnessed the ways in which EssenceOfThought bullied and smeared the victims of Lily Orchard's abuse, it honestly caused me to reevaluate and question a lot of their past content, especially because Ethel & Levi already had reputations of being overly inflammatory figures who've burned tons of bridges with lots of other leftist YouTubers. It was then that I was reminded of the biggest controversy Ethel's been involved in, and one I was only tangentially aware of before the Lily Orchard drama. That being Ethel's 4-year-long and currently ongoing defamation campaign against feminist and atheist British YouTuber, Rachel Oates.

The conflict between Ethel & Rachel all started back in 2019, when Rachel's friend and former atheist YouTuber "Rationality Rules" (aka, Steven Woodford), got into serious trouble when he posted a video arguing against the inclusion of trans-people in sports (which relied on heavily fallacious scientific data and even cited clips from Fox News, Ben Shapiro, and Joe Rogan). Unsurprisingly, the backlash against Woodford's video was enormous, and it even resulted in him being deplatformed from hosting a panel at an ACA conference in Austin, Texas that same year. However, a lot of Woodford's friends within the YouTube atheist community, including Rachel, argued that Woodford did not make his video out of intentional malice or bigotry, whilst fully agreeing that it was a terrible poorly-researched video that did serve to reinforce transphobic narratives even if it was unintentional. This led to Woodford not only delisting and demonotizing the original video, but also releasing both an apology and retraction video to try and help mitigate the damage his original video caused.

Ethel however, refused to accept Woodford's apology and retraction, and made several response videos accusing his apology of being fake and him continuing to spread transphobic misinformation. And while that's perfectly understandable if Ethel personally didn't find Woodford's apology to be adequate or genuine, where this crosses the line into unacceptable behavior is that Ethel then went onto repeatedly attack Rachel Oates simply because she was both friends with Woodford IRL and didn't want to get directly involved in the controversy. Essentially, Ethel is engaging in the "guilt by association" fallacy here. In actuality though, Rachel not only repeatedly stated that she disagreed with the content Woodford's original video and agreed that it was very bad and harmful, but that she is supportive of the trans community and felt unqualified to weigh in on the subject matter of trans-people in sports since she has barely any knowledge or interest about sports in general.

This response was not good enough for Ethel however, who instead misinterpreted Rachel's comments as a backhanded attempt at silencing Woodford's critics.

Things got even worse when a random fan messaged Rachel a screenshot taken from a private Facebook group from a trans-self-help group which compiled a list of public figures for the trans community to avoid following the Woodford controversy, and her name was included on that list. Rachel, not knowing that the list was from a private chat, immediately went on Twitter to defend herself, which led to Ethel accusing her of doxxing by publishing private information. This is in spite of the fact that not only did the screenshot already exist before Rachel discovered it, but she went out of her way to censor the names of the members of that Facebook group. Furthermore, Ethel had also blocked Rachel on Twitter which led to the latter asking some of her followers to show her what Ethel was stating about her so she could try to adequately defend herself, which in-turn resulted in Ethel accusing Rachel of sending her millions of followers to circumvent her block and harass her.

The situation escalated even further however, when Ethel posted a now infamous tweet to one of Woodford and Oates' friends' Lizzy Lang, not only described Woodford as a "violent transphobe intent on stripping away dozens of human rights,” but called Lang and others (presumably Oates) "members of Woodford's church a transphobia" before ending the tweet with the words, "do this world a favor and exit it."

That last line in Ethel’s tweet, “do the world a favor and exit it,” got a lot of people justifiably angry since it was very easily misconstrued as Ethel advocating for Woodford's defenders to commit suicide (she claimed it was meant to say “exit Woodford’s church of transphobia”). And while EoT later apologized and clarified the incredibly poor wording of that last comment, she still refused to apologize to Rachel after several months of targeted bullying and defamation. When Rachel saw the infamous tweet, it only served to amplify her pre-existing feelings of depression since she mistaken that tweet to be directed at her instead of Lizzy Lang. And a few days later, in an act of desperation Rachel posted an impromptu unedited video begging and pleading for Ethel to stop bullying her, not realizing that she was still badly bleeding from cuts on her arm due to feeling completely hopeless and isolated (Rachel already had a history of engaging in self-harm and cutting).

But not even Rachel engaging in self-harm nor her feelings of suicidality were enough to sway Ethel, who still continued to double-down on their harassment by arguing that Rachel "weaponizing self-harm, transmisogyny, and benevolent patriarchy," and was using "upper-class cis white woman tears" (even though Rachel has openly admitted to being lower-middle class). And to this very day, Ethel still continues to slander Rachel and falsely label her as a "serial transphobe" and "abuser" all throughout her videos, even going as far as to not only claim, "Rachel Oates' [abuse] was the second most psychologically destructive thing [she's] ever suffered, only being second to being raped as a child," but that she would rather relive her trauma of "being outed as bisexual, groomed at age 15, and sexually assaulted."

Seriously... FREAKING YIKES! Those are incredibly extreme and inflammatory statements to make! I do understand that Ethel is a CSA survivor (and on that level I 100% empathize with her because that is of course absolutely terrible and is one of the absolute WORST things anyone can suffer from), but claiming that someone circumventing a Twitter Block and or begging you to stop bullying her whilst feeling suicidal is even remotely comparable to “being raped as a child"?! That is so unbelievably insensitive on so many levels that I don’t even know where to start! It’s insensitive to not only Rachel herself, but to other CSA survivors as well since it trivializes their trauma! Ethel should know better than this!

Also, that screenshot of Ethel tweeting a link to a Guardian article discussing the weaponization of white woman tears? That was literally the top pinned-tweet to her Twitter account immediately days after Rachel posted that desperate video of her pleading to Ethel to stop her harassment campaign whilst feeling suicidal. What a truly vile and unempathetic thing for Ethel to do!

Section 3: Showing support for Rachel Oates

After I did more research into the whole EssenceOfThought Vs. Rachel Oates situation, as well as hearing Rachel's side of the story, I ended up subscribing to Rachel's YouTube channel and have since become a fan of her work. Before I eventually unsubscribed from Ethel's channel due to the way she similarly bullied several of Lily Orchard’s victims, I was given the impression by her that Rachel Oates was just another garden-variety TERF YouTuber based on he way Ethel constantly talked about her. But that’s NOT accurate at all… Rachel's channel from what I’ve seen is mainly just about discussions of secularism and religion, feminism, book reviews, and cute dog videos!

Seriously, her dog Kyra is so FREAKING adorable!

Look at her! Kyra's such a good girl! She's such a cute doggy!

But yeah, this is a prime example of how Ethel’s pattern of engaging in bad-faith moral absolutism while misrepresenting events and evidence can be seriously damaging to uninitiated viewers. And I say that not only as someone who was largely unaware of the full extent of what she had done to Rachel, but also because Ethel frames her content in a very pseudo-academic/intellectual manner and uses a lot of professional sounding words to try and disguise severely misguided and inflammatory arguments. She tries to portray her YouTube videos as if they’re akin to college-level essays with lots of citations and crap, which can easily fool people into thinking that her content is well-researched and sophisticated. Except looking below the surface, in hindsight Ethel’s videos are mostly just pretentious word-salad, cherry-picking evidence, and relying heavily on academic terminology in order promote her thinly-veiled absolutist black-&-white views on morality, attacking anyone who is “not progressive enough” for her (in addition to Rachel, Ethel & Levi have also done this to other leftist YouTubers like Lindsay Ellis, Philosophy Tube, & Suris the Skeptic). According to Ethel’s logic, you’re either an entirely good or entirely bad person, and there’s zero in-between and if you dare disagree with her to even the slightest degree then she’ll automatically consider you to be just as bad as the far-right. Basically, it’s moral absolutism.

All of Ethel’s fallacious claims against Rachel Oates are textbook examples of bad-faith moral absolutism, and I deeply regret the fact that I was ever once a fan of Ethel’s content. She is a bully and a liar. And that’s a conclusion I arrived to after seeing how Rachel’s stories about being repeatedly slandered & bullied by Ethel heavily paralleled the similar experiences of individuals like Shiloh Conner, thereby revealing a pattern of toxic behavior on Ethel’s part.

Section 4: Ethel’s renewed and current bullying campaign

So why do I bring all of this stuff up?

Well, even though the worst of the harassment Rachel suffered was back in 2019 and she has since tried to move on from this whole fiasco and continues making her usual feminist book reviews and dog videos (she even deliberately avoids mentioning EssenceOfThought by name in her videos...), Ethel has not only repeatedly tried to drag all of this drama back up, but has this singleminded obsessive vendetta to defame and destroy Rachel's YouTube career at all costs. For instance, in 2022 Ethel tried to further slander Rachel by yet again engaging in "guilt by association" fallacy because notable transgender TERF YouTuber "Rose of Dawn" (aka, the British equivalent of Blaire White) once tried to befriend Rachel in 2020 after the initial harassment campaign by Ethel, and later in 2022 Rose openly defended self-confessed genocidal serial rapist Lily Cade when the latter was platformed in an infamous transphobic BBC article. What Ethel completely neglects to mention however, is that Rachel had permanently stopped interacting with Rose when several members of her audience informed her that Rose is actually a TERF (and the way Rose suddenly tried to befriend Rachel after Ethel's bullying of her strikes me as very cult-like since TERFs sadly do have a history in engaging in incredibly abusive cultish tactics to recruit new members, as many people who have escaped that disgusting hate movement have reported...) and she has since apologized for ever giving Rose any attention. Regardless, Ethel still tried to falsely implicate Rachel alongside "Rose of Dawn" in a video condemning Lily Cade & the BBC, which led to Rachel rightfully filing a defamation claim to YouTube, getting Ethel's then-latest slanderous hit-peace against Rachel blocked in the UK.

But even worse however, is that starting in August 2023 Ethel has begun releasing a constant stream of videos continuing to smear Rachel even further by both repeating all of the exact same aforementioned slanderous claims along with a whole bunch of new ones. Like, not only has Ethel already released 3 main videos out of a planned 6-part series ranting about Rachel Oates, but she has also released 24 shorts taken from the main videos!

Geez! Not only is this beyond obsessive, but this is just straight-up targeted bullying and harassment on Ethel's part! And the new claims she makes against Rachel in these videos are equally slanderous as the ones before! For just one example, Ethel & Levi’s cite a now-deleted livestream of Rachel's that they re-uploaded as a mirrored-copy to their channel, accusing Rachel of denying trans-women's existence by making the offhanded comment of, “No, the only thing a man can provide me that a woman can’t is a p*nis. Only thing.”

Except… I actually went and watched the ENTIRE 3-hour mirrored livestream myself just to see the full context of Rachel’s quote, and it turns out that Ethel took that quote completely out of context! Not only are there lots of points in the livestream wherein Rachel repeatedly states that “gender is a social construct and that trans and non-binary people exist,” but during the stream she's doing a counter-response to a Christian fundamentalist incel who once responded one of her earlier videos. And that potentially problematic quote of Rachel’s, “No, the only thing a man can provide me that a woman can’t is a p*nis. Only thing,” was actually a sarcastic response to the incel’s homophobic argument that “women don’t want to love their equals [(aka other women)] because they actually all want what only a [dominant alpha male] can provide them.”

Essentially, Rachel was criticizing the incel’s sexist & homophobic “logic” that, “all women secretly only want p*nises,” in a snarky & sarcastic manner, but Ethel took Rachel’s comment out of context to try and instead paint it as some transphobic-slip-of-the-tongue/TERF-dogwhistle, accusing Rachel of “completely ignoring the existence of non or pre-op trans women,” in order to try and support the fallacious argument that, “Rachel Oates doesn’t actually view trans women as real women, but instead as props to objectify in order to make herself look like a better ally.”

Not once does Ethel ever mention the context that Rachel was responding to & mocking a bigoted incel during the livestream... at all...

I don't have time to go into all of the other new lies that Ethel & Levi are currently spewing against Rachel Oates since this post has already gotten incredibly lengthy (for instance, Ethel also claimed that Rachel “downplayed JK Rowling’s transphobia” simply because she used the words “incredibly problematic” to describe the Queen TERF’s bigoted views; which is such a weak and pedantic argument), but it’s a whole lot…

Conclusion

Overall, I just wanted to bring attention to this situation because EssenceOfThought's harassment campaign against Rachel Oates has been ongoing since 2019 and it shows ZERO signs of stopping anytime soon. Ethel & Levi are serial bullies and liars who regularly engage in bad-faith arguments, misrepresent evidence, and engage in moral absolutism in order to paint anyone who disagrees with them or makes even the slightest mistake as the worst people imaginable. So the more people who are made aware of this mess, the better.

Please show support for Rachel, whether that be through signal-boosting this post, subscribing to her YouTube channel, or even donating to her Patreon if you so choose.

And to EssenceOfThought, aka Ethel Thurston, (along with her editor Levi...) specifically, the famed basketball player Michael Jordan would have some choice words for you:

And I mean that sincerely. Seriously... just stop this targeted bullying & slander campaign against Rachel. It's incredibly unhealthy and obsessive. Just let it go already...

[joys-of-everyday]

SQQ(SY)'s character arc

Last time I talked about Shen Jiu's character arc, so this time, let's talk about Shen Yuan's character arc. Here's the theory of character arcs I'm working on for reference. If Shen Jiu's arc in SVSSS is an (abstract) redemption arc, then Shen Qingqiu (Shen Yuan) is an (abstract) enlightenment arc.

I say 'abstract' because I'm not talking about the spiritual enlightenment that 'enlightenment' often refers to, but the more general meaning of the word 'enlightened' aka. to have a better understanding or wisdom of something. Character arcs are often framed as 'goal-misbelief-truth' (good video on misbeliefs here) - the character works towards a 'goal' (which is not necessarily the 'truth'), is hindered by a 'misbelief', which is related to the 'truth'. Take Shen Qingqiu. His 'goal' is to get away from Luo Binghe. His 'misbelief' is that Luo Binghe wants to harm him. The 'truth' is that they love each other. When I say 'enlightenment arc', I'm referring to the specific way that Shen Qingqiu discovers this 'truth', not as a slow process of learning (a growth arc), but as a sudden moment of revelation. There are two points that this occurs - first in the dreamscape where Shen Qingqiu realises Luo Binghe's intentions, and second on Maigu Ridge, where Shen Qingqiu realises he's been hurting Luo Binghe all along.

Let's talk about enlightenment arcs

I made this up. Someone might have already done this (it feels like a natural thing to think about). If you've come across this/thought about this, please let me know >.<

To be clear, enlightenment arcs are not constrained to certain cultures, and are not that uncommon either. Here's a Western example: in the 2021 film Don't Look Up, Randall discovers a 'truth'. All along, what he cared about wasn't arguing with people online or hooking up with sexy news presenters; it was the time spent with his friends and family. The 'moment of revelation' is very sudden, probably less than 15mins in the film. Enlightenment arcs underpin a lot of romantic comedy, where the revelation is in the form 'A likes B'. Secondly, enlightenment arcs aren't just 'super fast growth'. They're structured in a way that is fundamentally different from a growth arc. Whilst growth arcs may have 'moments of revelation' where the truth fully hits the character (those 'power of friendship' moments), they're still building on things that the character has been discovering up to that point. Meanwhile, an enlightenment arc contains a fundamental turning point. An 'it was all a lie' moment.

But also, enlightenment arcs are arcs, not just moments. You can't just 180 in the middle of an arc and go 'so they discovered the truth and were forever changed'. That will probably leave readers severely dissatisfied. The 'moment of revelation' requires serious set up, some parts of which I want to demonstrate with Shen Qingqiu's arc in SVSSS.

1. The audience/reader should know your 'truth' well before the revelation

A twist without foreshadowing is... kind of just annoying. If in the middle of a sports story, the MC suddenly decides actually the industry is screwed and sports competitions are unethical, then rides off into the sunset with the love of their life having decided happiness and comfort is more important... well good for them, but it would be awful to read. By the time the revelation comes around, the reader should at least be able to acknowledge why the 'truth' is what it is.

For SVSSS, it is abundantly clear right from the start that Luo Binghe is madly in love with Shen Qingqiu. Luo Binghe might as well be holding a sign in red flashing lights which says 'I love you' at all times. The second revelation is... more subtle. From Luo Binghe's return from the abyss to the start of the holy mausoleum, we're led to believe that Luo Binghe is this yandere character who killed resident cinnamon roll Gongyi Xiao out of jealousy. But almost as soon as the first revelation (Shen Qingqiu discovers Luo Binghe is in love with him) is done and dusted, we're led straight into uncovering the second revelation.

In succession we learn that 1) when Shen Qingqiu tells Luo Binghe to leave him alone, he does, to Shen Qingqiu's surprise 2) Luo Binghe wasn't responsible for the sowers (start of Mausoleum) 3) Luo Binghe goes to great lengths to protect Shen Qingqiu (Mausoleum) 4) Luo Binghe wasn't murder boy actually. That was Zhuzhi-Lang all along (demon realm scene) 5) Luo Binghe is a sad wet puppy who needs a hug (tea scene in flash back) 6) Bingmei isn't like Bingge at all (end of flashback) 7) Bingmei has separation anxiety

All along the way, Shen Qingqiu's care for Luo Binghe is also reiterated. We learn that Shen Qingqiu is willing to go through great pain to protect Luo Binghe, and that he would rather face down the entire cultivation world than leave him. By the time Maigu Ridge comes around (chapter 21 in Seven Seas translation), the revelation is natural.

Note: the 'truth' can be ambiguous. In Everything Everywhere All At Once (great film!) 'truth'=googly eye. Interpret that as you will. (As in, of course all of this is alluding to something like 'human connection good' or 'meaninglessness and absurdity is fine actually', but it's felt rather than told.)

2. The character is completely missing the mark most of the time

In an enlightenment arc, before the revelation, the character is completely oblivious to the 'truth' and is often actively working against it for the majority of the time. This is what separates an enlightenment arc from a growth arc - the dissonance between the message the reader is getting from step 1, and the actions of the main character. You probably recognise the vibe: characters that are 'oblivious', 'frustrating', 'why are they so dumb?!!!! (affectionate)'. Or characters who are pitifully drowning in their faults/traumas and are pushing away the people trying to warn them.

Pulling this off is a technical skill. A Silent Voice does this in a really cool way, with dissonance between Ishida and Nishimiya's actions, combined with the eerie quality of the music, portraying Ishida's complete obliviousness to a really important thing that will soon hit him like truck. A lot of people have written cool posts about Shen Qingqiu's obliviousness to both Luo Binghe's feelings and his own feelings. I wrote a short post here on Liu Qingge's role in this for SVSSS. In summary, how to create romantic tension without telling your MC:

Have your MC obsessed with the love interest, but in an 'appreciating objective beauty' way

Have your love interest be obsessed with MC, but make MC allergic to sensible logical deductions

Wife plot your MC

Liu Qingge (with help from Gongyi Xiao)

3. But just before the moment of revelation, the character should be in a position to understand the 'truth'

Everything in an enlightenment arc is building towards a moment of revelation, but this moment is extremely fast. There is basically no time for character development, so you need your character to be ready for the 'truth' before the moment happens, e.g. maturity or life experiences or wtv. If you told Shen Qingqiu at the beginning of SVSSS that Luo Binghe will fall in love with him and he needs to look after him or cause pain, he would probably laugh in your face. Some maturing has to happen before he is capable of realising this. This kind of character development is the same as in any arc and there's lots out there on some of the ways to do it, so I won't go into this. However, in an enlightenment arc, this is uniquely difficult to pull off. Because for a long part of the arc, the MC is increasingly ready for the 'truth', but makes no progress towards finding it. (If they did, it would be a growth arc.)

Here's two techniques to make this work.

The first technique is to withdraw information from the MC. They might be ready for the truth, but they don't know it because.... they just don't know. For Shen Qingqiu's first revelation (Luo Binghe is in love with him) he finds out because Luo Binghe kisses him. This is information he didn't have before (that Luo Binghe wants to kiss him), so when he gets it, that forces a change in his world view.

But one has to be extremely careful with this - since you need the readers to be aware of the 'truth' and the MC to not be, this can rapidly devolve into the hated (badly done) misunderstandings trope (misunderstandings can be done well. This is an easy way to do them badly).

The second technique is to distract your MC. They are too stressed/traumatised to think straight. ('aaah he wants to kill me' -> 'he's in love with me' is obviously a big leap and the 'aaaah' feeling is hard to get out of) They are too focused on their goal and the rewards that this is giving them to stop and think. (For Shen Qingqiu Operation run away from Luo Binghe/stop Tianlang-Jun takes too much precessing power while they're in action) Or maybe their misbeliefs cause them to shrug off evidence of the 'truth' and diverts their thoughts to other things ('he doesn't like women' + 'protagonist can't be gay' -> 'he must be asexual' ...??? I love the SQQ logic)

This is used for both of Shen Qingqiu's revelations, but relies on it more heavily in the second half (in part because of practicalities. The second revelation is also largely about Shen Qingqiu's internal feelings, which is not something an external event can give you information about). Note that as Shen Qingqiu gets closer to the final revelation, the 'distractions' get stronger. Regret of Chunshan causing Shen Qingqiu to feel humiliation and embarrassment. Tianlang-Jun threatening to destroy the world. Luo Binghe's declining reputation and increasingly unpredictable behaviour. All of these are work to prevent Shen Qingqiu from self-reflecting on his relationship with Luo Binghe.

This kind of escalation is important for an enlightenment arc, because that's how tension is built. Think of it like a spring. The more energy you store in it, the more dramatic the release is.

4. Making your 'moment of revelation' hit home

In an enlightenment arc, absolutely everything rests on a single moment. Get this wrong, and the whole arc falls flat.

I say moment of revelation, but the 'moment of revelation' might be an entire episode or chapter, or even longer. A moment of revelation is a transformation, and here it is 'very fast growth'. Actually discontinuous character arcs aren't usually advisable, so there should be a natural sequence of things happening that get you from A to B. Often, there is a external driving force (or 'small scenario pusher') which forces the MC to confront the 'truth'. Alongside this, there may be a series of thoughts the MC has, dispelling the misbelief and arriving at the 'truth'. In visual media, moments of revelation can be given impact by having a definitive moment where an actual thing happens e.g. Music changes, symbolic cues, use of colour palettes and lighting etc.

Some popular forms of 'revelation' include

- a conversation, where the MC is told the 'truth'. ('I love you!' proclaims the love interest. 'Oh wow who could have guessed,' says the main character.)

- a conversation, where the MC is told the 'misbelief', but dramatically counters it with the 'truth'. ('you're just like me,' says the villain. 'No, I'm not!' says the hero.)

- an event, which forces the MC to question and disregard their 'misbelief'. ('I'm all alone' thinks the MC, but when they wake up in hospital, they are surrounded by friends.)

- exposition (often used in writing, for first person, or third person limited) where the MC's thought process is explained

MXTX leans very heavily into exposition, and the second Shen Qingqiu revelation is all of chapter 21 (Seven Seas), which includes like 10 paragraphs of straight text (in the original serialisation, this was chapters 78-81). This long 'moment of revelation' is a good opportunity to dissect one way a 'moment of revelation' can unfold.

1. The doubt. The closure of Tianlang-Jun's story (a story of hatred and betrayal turned to one of love and sacrifice) works as a final bit of foreshadowing, while Luo Binghe's descent into madness shakes Shen Qingqiu terribly.

Upon hearing him admit to his lunacy, Shen Qingqiu's heart spasmed with a dull pain. "Binghe, get away from that sword first," he said quietly. "The farther the better."

2. The realisation. Next we have Yue Qingyuan's reveal (a story of loyalty and sacrifice gone wrong because of miscommunication). Shen Qingqiu has an 'oh fuck' moment in the middle of this, then immediately after starts to throw off his misbeliefs and starts making his deductions towards the 'truth'.

Everyone said Luo Binghe had gone mad. Even he himself had smiled and admitted it. Xin Mo, which Luo Binghe had finally managed to suppress after a million words of struggle in the original work, had gained the upper hand in this struggle and invaded Luo Binghe's mind. This wasn't a result of one or two events, but a slow accumulation over time, until finally it had completely erupted. Numerous signs had long since made themselves apparent, but Shen Qingqiu had never noticed. Or perhaps he should say that he'd never realized that Luo Binghe was actually so insecure, to the point of having an inferiority complex.

3. The reflection. With this realisation in hand, Shen Qingqiu continues to think about all the things that he's done that has hurt Luo Binghe and seeks to fix the wrongs, ending with the (in)famous Maigu ridge papapa.

Why hadn't he told him earlier? It was just like Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe. Why hadn't he told him earlier? If he hadn't been so cavalier, so full of conjecture, Luo Binghe might never have darkened. He could have remained the sweet and bashful disciple he'd been on Qing Jing Peak.

4. The big truth reveal. And finally Shen Qingqiu's 'truth' is made clear. He loves Luo Binghe, has always loved Luo Binghe, and wants nothing more than for him to lead a happy life. And in turn, Luo Binghe loves him, not in dark yandere demon lord way, but a child who wants security, having been thrown away so many times.

Shen Qingqiu made sure to emphasize every word. "If I were her, no matter how venomous that drug was, I would have drunk it down without hesitation, then escaped the Water Prison. Afterward, I would draw all its effects into my own body. No matter how agonizing the process, no matter if the price would be complete destruction of my marital aspect, no matter if it meant a horrible death: I absolutely would not allow my child to suffer even an ounce of harm."

He'd only ever been a child. Walking the world alone, tripping and stumbling countless times. Wanting only those few things, yet never able to grasp them. If only Shen Qingqiu had realized this earlier, he thought, he'd have definitely... definitely...

5. The acceptance. With the truth out, Shen Qingqiu's mental crisis is over. He accepts the change, and is happy to die with Luo Binghe.

"Dying together" also included a "together". It didn't seem that bad.

((Completely for fun, and if you're HxH fan, let's see how this template works in a different story. In HxH (big spoiler alert!). Meruem in the Chimera Ant Arc has an enlightenment arc. (You can tell because there's 6 panels where everything goes white.) The 'moment of revelation' starts quite slowly, and ends with a 12 page climax (in the manga). 1. Meruem doubts Pouf and suspects he is missing something important in his memories. 2. He is suddenly reminded of Komugi 3. Meruem recalls his time with Komugi and has Big Feelings. 4. Meruem's feelings are acknowledged. 5. Meruem walks off, having not killed a traitor, indicating he has no more desire to lead the Ants.))

Summary

I hope I have convinced you that Shen Qingqiu's character arc in SVSSS is an enlightenment arc, in that the discovery of his 'truth' is a sudden, dramatic reveal, and that this was interesting run down of some of the ways MXTX makes this work :3 As ever, comments/complaints/suggestions are greatly welcomed.

Acknowledgement

All this theory on character arcs was heavily inspired off these video essays on character arcs:

Hello Future Me's video on redemption arcs

Schnee's video on madness arcs

[cloudcountry]

fuck i literally realized a lot of this is due to how much I relate to him IM SORRRYRYRYRYRY but i just wanna talk about him today (i have no fun insights this is just yapping... URGGBSHGRFYGH I RELATE TO AND LOVE HIM SO MUCH SOBS ON UR DOOR STEP)

im sorry, i believe a little warning for the first paragraph i bring up my own dead sibling cause I wanted to get that out of the way

This is decently specific to me: I have a younger dead sibling and idia is just i can relate just so hard to bc of that one fact, (gets out the idia journal) we were around the same age when our siblings died we think we both got them killed through harmless fun comments and just having someone so close to you as your younger sibling die at a young age kinda fucks with you and stuff idrk whats going on but something is

we both have social anxiety i don't think mine is as bad but if i had the option to just talk through a tablet i would, especially in certain situations where i'll freeze up (aka talking to any waiter ever) I genuinely a lot better when im there for someone else that has so we could have a symbiotic relationship for social situations

+ I NEED TO REASSURE HIM HIS DAMN IMAGINARY AUDIENCE ISN'T ACTUALLY REAL NOT EVERYONE HATES YOU YOU DON'T HAVE TO ACT LIKE IT IM RIGHT HERE I LOVE YOU SM :((

Okay funny silly time: love of cats omg cats i love cats he loves cat give him cat he would be unsure how to treat it exactly bc he never had a childhood cat but he has done so much research on cats that he probably could info dump on the cat on why it so cool and the best thing ever "Awww did you know you get a lot of your water from your food bcuz you're a dessert animal and you avoid still standing water due to your prey possibly contaminating the water" please let him see those stray cat cams in china he would love donating food to them,, he would be spear heading naming everyone and making sure they all get a wiki page

OKAY ENOUGH ABOUT IDIA AND CATS BUT HE WOULD SEE IF HE COULD GET THE FUNDS TO OPEN A CAT SHELTER AND FEED SO MANY STRAY KITTIES MOVING ON

baby noooooo,,,, :(( yes im looking back on his after overblot dialogue as a reference even though i just read it anyways,,, Idia will never be able to have his own life separate from his family, since yk cursed and shroud, it's basically a path that was bricked in for him. its like his life path is a long corridor that leads to the same road no matter what he picks. Especially since his unique magic locks him into working for STYX since he can just open a very vital thing and idk almost take over the world. if the shrouds acc got unique magic i think idia could have actually went on to lead a decently good life whether he was STYX head by choice or something else (game dev)

hes so passionate about the things he enjoys, there is so many examples of this, he's into so many things and loves them all with his whole heart it's so endearing (also uhsn dfbghrg bonding over media is the best, hes probably so fun to talk to about media... but he might lord knowing so much over you >:p ily just let me put my two cents in you can keep info dumping idia) OUGH (ignore me doing the hand thing PLEASE I LOVE IDIA I LOVE ORTHO IM ENJOYING WRITING THIS SM) OKAY ANYWAYS aww okay reading over idia's dialogue like im writing you an argumentative essay or something,, STAR ROGUE! the idia of idia (wtf r u writing edie) HIS SILLY ASS SLANG HRGBHRBGVLRHG "OUR LEGEND, POP OOOFF!" Anyways idia just recounting everything about star rogue without second thought he loves it sm he probably played it sm he knows the opening by heart (IDIA AND ORTHO SAYING THE TAG LINE TOGETHER THIS IS KILLING ME AUBURN)

hes heard so often that he was genius when he was really young it was just hardwired for him to think he was the best in the room especially with the advancements he has made from the ages of 10-12. like building ortho is genuinely a feat and he did it and two years definitely he's going to let that go to his head. ngl i feel that his parents were not too great probably absent most of the time since he can just lock himself in his room and work on something that no one knows about for two years. probably fucked him up developmentally too, he was NOT properly socialized the internet was his parents for the entire time probably

he wants to be FUCK THIS SHIT ACC OMG CRIES IN A CORNER SADDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD HE JUST WANTED TO BE A COOL ADVENTURER HERO GUY HE DIDN'T KNOW THAT WOULD HAPPEN!!!!! WHAT WENT WRONG IS NOTHING YOU WERE JUST A TOO SMART KID,,, IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT AND NEVER WILL BE YOU DIDN'T KNOW THAT WOULD HAPPEN OMG. DFGVJKDHJHBCBSHFBSFBSFR

it's like 12:30 right now my mental state is deteriorating this is stupid opinions for the most part i tried my best im sorry if this is bad but YOU SAID GUSH IN YOUR INBOX SO I MADE THAT HAPPEN???

-- with lots of love Edie

EDIEEE MY FAVORITE IDIA KISSER‼ THANK U FOR SHARING YOUR THOUGHTS READING THEM WAS SO INTERESTING!!

first of all holy shit im so sorry about what happened to your sibling. i totally get why you'd find him comforting because of that but Oh my gosh. im so sorry.

i think having social anxiety is something a lot of people can relate to with him, even myself. identity actually brought this up but seeing him being pushed into situations where he is ABSOLUTELY not comfortable makes me want to run in there and help him GET OUT. like i may not like this man that much but nobody should feel pressured or panic over entering a social situation they dont want to be a part of.

AH YES THE CAT CARD

RIGHT YEAH its so SAD how he will never get to live his own life and THATS one of the things that ive thought about a lot concerning him. like it would suck to actually have your fate predetermined no matter what. like he's just going to be stuck there with nobody else except for like ortho and his employees(?) but actually. yk what thats how he spent his school days which is even sadder hello

"the idia of idia" HELLO WHAT DOES THIS MEAN

actually! you bring up a good point about idia always being considered a genius since he was young and how that affects his self esteem and how he interacts with people now. i have literally never thought of it that way but it makes a lot of sense.

THANK YOU FOR SHARING YOUR THOUGHTS EDIE <3 I LOVED HEARING THEM!!

[magentagalaxies]

video essay!!!

hi friends!!

if you were curious at all about the video essay i was putting together for my comedy-theory class or are interested in hearing about some projects i'm working on, here's the link to watch it:

the video is unlisted bc it was specifically made for a class, and since a lot of the future-projects mentioned will probably go through major changes before i'm ready to release them to the world i didn't want this to seem like any kind of announcement video, but i'm also super proud of this video (it's probably my favorite final i've done) and i wanted to share it with any tumblr friends who are interested

if you'd like to learn more about any of the projects feel free to dm me bc i love infodumping about what i'm working on and the projects i mentioned here are very important to me. also dm me if you're at all curious about the comedy theory i'm citing, unfortunately due to the time limit on the assignment i didn't have enough time to give an in-depth explanation people outside of the class could get, but i LOVE comedy-philosophy and i made sure to download all the readings by the end of the course, so i would absolutely be willing to send over some PDFs and do some comedy analysis education lmao

also the first thirteen-and-a-half minutes are the video i turned in as my final, and the last six-and-a-half minutes are my in-class presentation that went along with it. for this assignment we had to construct a "comedy manifesto" using some of the theorists we covered in class to analyze our own comedy and outline goals for what we want our comedy to accomplish, and then for the in-class presentation we had the option of either presenting an abridged version of what we said in our "manifesto" or performing a piece of our own comedy that aligns with our goals. i of course did the second one bc i will never waste a captive audience.

tbh i don't think this was my best performance but i will say i literally memorized it in 24 hours so the fact that i only messed up twice is still impressive (also the lack of audience response is at least partially bc this was the last week of classes so most people who didn't have to present just skipped class)

presentations were also optional and i was the only one who did a piece fully in-character so that also gives you the vibe of the room

btw every piece of music in the video essay (aside from "having an average weekend" by shadowy men on a shadowy planet aka the kith theme) was composed by me for my musical other girls (who needs royalty-free music when you still have the demo files from your musical in fall 2022)

also there was no requirement on this assignment to interview a comedian, i just decided to zoom with paul bellini the week this was first assigned as a flex for my video essay lmao. so anyway watch this video if you want never-before-heard bellini content (at least 20% of which is just bellini complimenting my writing)

oh also if you're curious about the buddy cole tour behind-the-scenes thing i edited for my final in a different class dm me and i'll send you the vid, i'm not posting that one anywhere bc it's not great quality (i made it while super burnt out and i didn't have all the time/resources to include everything i wanted to include, plus the audio's not great) so i don't want it to be released as like an "official first look at the upcoming buddy cole documentary" until i can put together something more polished, but i would be willing to dm the link for people who just want to see a video of me and scott causing chaos on tour knowing it will be a much more polished edit later

anyway go watch my video essay i got the highest possible grade available on it and i'm very proud

[euphorbic]

Off the back of my photo dump post, here’s the detailed bit.

First, anyone that follows me should likely know that one of my Special Interests ™️ is motorcycles. Second, others follow me for ball-jointed dolls (BJD) stuff. BJD are just big action figures for me.

Concept

Motored Cyborg Runner (AKA 少女発動機) is a line of 17.5cm action figures, which are a mashup of “girl” and motorcycles. These designs are based on AF Kuro’s work.

I am n o t a fan of his barely-pubescent t¡ts and aśś and pυbis mons work. (Someone call the Hawkeye Initiative on this weird and gratuitous twät shot.) BUT I DIGRESS!

Here’s a pallet cleanser:

As you can see: basically sportbike gajinka. My (very gross) hero!

The details

Sen-ti-nel and Goodsmile teamed up to create action figures based on these designs. I’m assuming that this design is Tsujigiri. (I use Hepburn spelling, despite all packaging and marketing materials using Kunrei-shiki: Tsu-zi-giri. Why? Because there is no “zi” sound in Japanese and because I love you, of course!)

Onward! Have a recap photo:

Here’s where the motorcycle enthusiast in me gets consumed with glee. The motorcycle details. Starting with the removable fuel tank backpack. The tank shape isn’t motorcycleish, but from this angle? Yes, yes it is. It’s like looking down at your fuel cap from sitting on the seat.

Then there’s the torque wrench settings. On race bikes and cars, torque settings are painted next to bolts so nobody has to remember how many newton meters (N/M) is needed for each one.

Sorry, this shot sucks because I just used my phone all these. The warning label on this one reads: Caution, hot surface. The black arrow points up to the engine, but more specifically the engine’s header. Caution is appropriate: I don’t know a single motorcycle tech that hasn’t been burned on a header.

The single cylinder engine is very accurate to a motorcycle. Even the silver cover combined with the darker case is iconic. It’s so accurate that I can’t help but question why anyone would go with this single cylinder 4-stroke model when they could go with a 2-stroke? Better choice in my opinion… on a completely made up future that has internal combustion still in existence.

And, of course, we have the 4-stroke style collector/silencer/muffler. If I had some Akrapovic, Arrow, or Yoshimura decals in the right size, I’d slap that sucker on. The figure comes with two silencers, but the other one is very short.

Not a motorcycle thing, but look at this tiny QR code on the arm pocket! Adorable.

So there’s my word vomit on motorcycle things that make me half the target audience for these figures. Just one more thing, to mention, I guess. Scale.

Scale

Have a super crappy, backlit photo:

Pictured with:

Masterpiece (MP) scale Starscream

Classified scale Cobra Viper

Figma Utena Tenjou

The figure is the same sort of scale as Classified G.I. Joes if you compare them knee-to-knee. Tsujigiri has a lot of height in those wheels.

If you don’t mind that her height obliterates the illusion of “massive machine” she scales very well with MP scale Transformers.

Go to the photo dump post