#i say and then they end up being one of my most frequently drawn characters in the series

[cy-cyborg]

How your disabled character's allies react to their disability can make or break the representation in your story: Writing Disability Quick Tips

[ID: An image with “Writing Disability quick tips: How your character's allies react to their disability matters” written in chalk the colour of the disability pride flag, from left to right, red, yellow, white, blue and green. Beside the text are 2 poorly drawn people icons in green, one is standing with their hand up to the face of the other, who is in a wheelchair. /End ID]

Something I brought up in my big post about Toph Beifong was how the other characters reacted to Toph pointing out that things were not accessible to her and setting boundaries regarding her disability, which were ignored. I had more to say about it than I thought I did, as it turns out (when isn't that the case lol) but I feel like this is an important aspect of disability representation that is all too often over looked.

You can write the best, most accurate portrayal of a specific disability ever put to screen or page, but it won't mean much if all the other characters, specifically those we're supposed to like and empathise with, treat your character terribly for being disabled and having needs relating to said disability, especially if the story justifies their behaviour.

You see this most often with autistic characters and especially autistic-coded characters. The character in question will be given a bunch of autistic traits, most often traits relating to not understanding certain social dynamics or sarcasm, and when they get it wrong, the other characters we are supposed to like jump down their throat, tease them or outright abandon them. Autism isn't the only disability that gets treated this way, but it is one of the more common ones that get this treatment. It doesn't matter if you do everything else right when creating an autistic character if the other "good guys" constantly call them annoying, get angry at them or laugh at them for the very traits that make them autistic, or for advocating for their needs.

Likewise, if you have a leg amputee character who is otherwise done well, but is constantly being criticised by their allies for needing to rest their legs or taking too long to get their prosthetics on, it undermines a lot of the other work you've done. Same goes for having a wheelchair user who is accused of being a bore or a stick in the mud because they point out the places their friends want to go to on a group holiday have no wheelchair access, or a deaf character who is accused of being entitled for wanting their family to learn to sign, or anything else.

This isn't to say you can never have moments like these in your stories, but its important to remember that a) people with the same disability as your character will be in your audience. If you spend a whole season of your TV show shaming your autistic character for real traits that real autistic people have, they're not exactly going to feel welcome and may not want to hang around. b) it's going to very, very heavily impact people's perceptions of your "heros" who do this, especially in they eyes of your audience members who share the character's disability or who have had similar experiences. This isn't like calling someone a mean name or being a bit of a dick when you're sleepy, it's going to take a lot to regain audience appeal for the offending character, and depending on exactly what they do and how frequently they do it, they may not even be able to come back from it at all. And finally, c) there should be a point to it outside of just shaming this character and saying the other guy is an asshole. Like I said before, you're character is criticising real people's real disabilities and the traits or problems that come with them, things that they often have no control over, it shouldn't be used as a cheap, quick way to establish a quirky enemies to lovers dynamic or show that one guy is kind of an ass before his redemption arc. If you really must have your characters do this, be mindful of when and how you use it.

[yurious-george]

For those of you who don’t know anything about Hollow Knight or its upcoming sequel, Silksong, there is some drama of astronomical potential that is going to be hilarious to see how it shakes out.

Three things. First, as you may already know, Hollow Knight is one of those hardcore games that attracts a certain type of cishet “gamer guy”: I’m sure you know the type. They can be more or less overtly bigoted, but either way, they’re all kind of That Guy. Second, Princess Hornet is one of the major characters in Hollow Knight, and the player character in Silksong. Third, every character in the Hollow Knight world is a bug, and aren’t depicted as having sexually dysmorphic traits that humans have: there are no insects with tits in this game, despite being bipedal and anthropomorphic. (Despite that, Hornet is frequently drawn with tits anyway, because the aforementioned demographic is outrageously horny for her. This is important later.)

In Silksong, Hornet is strongly implied to have a rival/deuteragonist, Lace! Not much is known about Lace, except she’s described as sadistic and set up as Hornet’s rival. And gamer dudebros hate her.

Maybe not full on hate, but they don’t like her. “Too mean and dislikable,” if memory serves. If I had to guess, they’re subconsciously picking up on the subtext and being homophobic about it: Hornet is the waifu of many a gamer bro, and between the subtext and Lace’s implied importance in the narrative/sadism/independence/backhandedness, Lace does not have a lot of love in that half of the community.

(As for the other half of the community, the player character of Hollow Knight is canonically agender. There are two canon gay couples within the game, and while not required, completing their side quests is essential to 100%ing the game. Despite being a couple of Cishet Male Gamers themselves, the Hollow Knight team is gracefully supportive of the LGBT+ community, and much of the fan base is LGBTQ+!)

But back to Lace: Lace and her subtext. Lace has insane amounts of wedding and romantic subtext despite only having 2 trailers and a demo’s worth of content. Off the top of my head:

association with white & gold, particularly white roses

Lots of church imagery, especially an emphasis on ringing bells

Lace’s and Hornet’s VAs are both Japanese, and Lace is straight up wearing a Japanese wedding garment while dressed head to toe in white

Visual design and presentation wise, Lace is framed as an equal and opposite to Hornet. Lace is likely to play the rival-won-over role that Hornet had in Hollow Knight, to the point of leaving the arena the same way as Hornet when her first fight ends

Calls Hornet delicious when first introduced. Then says she likes her when Hornet tells her to fuck off

Strongly implied to have saved Hornet in the opening trailer

And, last but certainly not least: the original Silksong announcement, with Lace’s introduction, came out on February 14th.

And that’s just off the top of my head!

I don’t want to get my hopes up, much less expect anything and get disappointed, but in my heart I am hoping gamer bros take the BIGGEST L when Silksong comes out. I hope Lace is complex and engaging and still sadistic. I hope Lace is the Vriska of Silksong. I hope Lace and Hornet have so much subtext it’s practically text. I hope the good end is locked behind a lesbian wedding.

I don’t hope for that last one specifically, but just imagine. Go on, pair off the one character that cishet male fans go “hhhurngh… female character” and draw with massive balloon tits to the character they hate the most. Do it. I believe in you

But seriously: The main character of the most wishlisted game on Steam confirmed in a wlw relationship, effectively alienating half or more than half of the fan base. Hollow Knight: Silksong has the potential to be the funniest lesbian W in the universe and I cannot wait to see how it all goes down.

[nexahexagon]

hiii can you tell me more about your redstone & skulk royalty au? i love love the idea and would love to hear anytjing you have to say about it! /nf

:DD OFC!!! This is gonna be a bit of a ramble as I dump all my thoughts here!! I’ll try organizing them somehow!!

I don’t have much on the world of it, I mainly made it bc I wanted to dress them up for some fancy ball and it was the first excuse my mind ran to (I still haven’t even drawn that)

BUT!! I have some character analysis? I’m not really educated in royalty, kingdom affairs, or medieval ideology so take everything with a grain of salt!! And lmk if something just doesn’t work generally!!

I know that if there are many heirs to the throne, the younger siblings usually become commanders or have some high ranking authority in the kingdom. I imagine Tanguish, very much hating the idea of seeing blood in of itself, took on some advisory role for Tango, kinda like a part of his personal council. He was very, very content on being Tango’s shadow, not having to bear a ton of responsibilities!! He (and Tango) also thought that he wasn’t much of a target for ransoms, so he never had any personal protection.

Tango, on the other hand, was the heir, the crowned prince! The king and/or queen are not in the picture at the moment (I can’t figure out who to put there), so Tango is running the kingdom, and therefore has a personal guard, Welsknight!! I like to imagine that Wels and Tanguish’s one-sided beef started with Tanguish being caught looking very, very guilty at an attempted assassination on the crown (poisoned food/drink?? Poor little guy was at the wrong place at the wrong time) and Wels is completely convinced Tanguish tried to take the crown for himself(poor little guy was stuttering up a storm!!). Tango is having none of it, ofc, so there’s a ton of animosity when Wels sees Tanguish, but he can’t do anything.

Tanguish sneaks out of the castle!! He enjoys dressing down (still far too clean for the common folk, and he’s aware but he doesn’t want to be caught in dirty common clothes or it’ll out him completely!!) He sneaks most of the way through the castle, then climbs up and down some of the walls to avoid patrols (he has them roughly memorized). He enjoys running across the rooftops and watching the people mill about below him! He’s too far up for people to recognize, especially with his change of clothes and loss of royal attire. No one looks at him like he’s worth more than he feels, and no one expects anything of him then!! It’s a freeing feeling for him, even if he only sneaks late at night and doesn’t see the busy streets of the afternoon!

And Tango knows about him sneaking out. It’s not every night, but it’s frequent enough. And he noticed Tanguish’s small collection of trinkets he’d “liberated” from the common people, that Tango knew could only have come from the town. He’s not bothered by it, Tanguish is just having fun! And he still shows up on time when Tango needs him, so what’s the big deal? Wels doesn’t agree at ALL, and thinks it’s another confession of guilt (he finds out much later than Tango) but still the knight can do nothing! (Yet?)

Tango joins Tanguish once, and ends up badly hurt. He just wanted to run away from his duties for a day! But it didn’t work out well :[. Tanguish, in a rush of panic, tried finding anyone to help (he tried avoiding guards a little, but knew he’d probably need to go to them. He didn’t want to run in with Wels, though). Enter Helsknight!!

Helsknight isn’t from the kingdom. He’s more of a freelance knight looking for work in my head! My brain kinda separated kingdoms by churches? So Tango’s kingdom is under the Church of Remembrance, and Helsknight comes from a kingdom that followed the Saint of Blood and Steel!! I don’t know if that’s how it works, but my brain thought that as very very logical and I haven’t questioned it yet.

Anyways. Tanguish finds Helsknight (through some insane luck) and Helsknight helps Tango. He was a bit reluctant at first (would you follow some harrowed, shaking guy with blood on his hands to some dark corner of the town?). He at first tells Tanguish to deal with his own mess, but follows eventually out of curiosity and because he felt uncomfortable with the amount of begging Tanguish was willing to do. After helping Tango, he then finds out that they’re the princes of the kingdom (he’s the mc of a Webtoon now lmao, living that y/n life).

Tango thinks he’s scary at first. With Wels in his ear telling him how suspicious it is that Helsknight just “happened to be sat there, waiting for them”(he became very paranoid since he wasn’t there to protect his prince). Wels also quickly connected Helsknight to Tanguish, and thought it was another assassination attempt (Tanguish has got to stop looking so guilty!!). At Tanguish’s constant insistence that Helsknight isn’t evil and he trusts(?) him, Tango allows him to be Tanguish’s guard, as a kind of test maybe? Wels is NOT a fan.

Helsknight was a bit peeved, not really wanting to be in such a huge position. He was looking for something smaller than protecting a prince. He and Tanguish were not friends for a while. And the story is getting a little fuzzy now!!

The first time they really sat down comfortably in each other’s presence was Tanguish sneaking out to escape the pressure and hostility he felt within the castle walls! And Helsknight followed. They have a nice heart-to-heart during this time, I’d like to think!

And Helsknight and Wels conflict! That hate each other! Helsknight thinks Wels is too cocky, that his position gave him a big head. Wels thinks Helsknight is evil, point-blank. Large gap in my brain here story-wise cuz I can’t think of anything good!!

As antagonists, I think Wels is more of a threat within the castle, a place Tanguish was meant to feel safe. And the Demon is a threat outside the castle! Someone Helsknight knew, but was greedy. And thought the price of a Prince’s head was worth it. And, Tanguish would come to find out, he’d apparently stolen from the Demon before, and the Demon recognized him. The Demon was just going to kill him or chop his hands off as a thief, until he realized he was a prince!

Word kinda relayed a bit to the castle, more a nuance than a “real problem”. I kinda see it as “blasphemy! Our prince would never do such a thing!” And people shrug it off. Wels doesn’t. One rough fight later and Tanguish is fleeing the castle the next night. He had Helsknight pack things up and meet him on the other side of the city, with no explanation as to why. Tango, who knows Tanguish’s route, stops him. Questions him about leaving the kingdom and abandoning him, which Tanguish fervently refuses! He’ll be back, he just needs time! Tango lets him go and that’s that!

Helsknight and Tanguish travel a little! They stay within the Kingdoms borders, but Tanguish is learning more about, everything!! To his dismay, that includes fighting. Helsknight can’t fight off every bandit that stops them (he can, but he won’t always be there). They also meet more of Helsknight’s friends! (Colosseum Crew guys!!! I’m not sure what to put them as though, just yet!!) Tanguish learns to be a person rather than a shadow! Yippee!!

I wrote a TON more than I expected lol. If you’d like to use the idea, feel free to bend anything the way you’d like!! I don’t mind if you take snippets of my ideas or use this loose idea for anything!

[susandsnell]

Jonathan Crane, 14 and 21

Character Ask Game

Hiya Mira! Thanks for sending these. <3

Jonathan Crane - Batman (various)

14. Assign a fashion aesthetic to this character.

As hotly contested as the term/aesthetic is, unfortunately I can't really work around Dark Academia being core to our beloved Scarecrow; the patchy professor's outfits and the ostracizing comments they provoke are so key to the character from his inception, and I'd love to see more Batman media where he's drawn in it. Knitwear, argyle, button downs (with salaciously rolled up sleeves when in the lab, oh my!), sweatervests, neutrals, patterned ties (though throw in the bolo for our Southern boy!), camel coats, heavy emphasis on neutrals and houndstooth. Double-bridged glasses are my personal headcanon, but wire frames are solid regardless. I also love it when artists/fanartists incorporate dorky Halloween elements into his wardrobe/accessory; I've drawn him with Jack-O-Lantern patterns/patches on his sweatervests, I've seen him drawn with ghost ties, he might even have some more scarecrow-themed looks just to really rub it in...the man is a nerd, let's lean all the way into it! On top of being funny and kind of adorable, I genuinely find "Crane is obsessed with Halloween themed clothes" to be a great characterization mainstay since it's super humanizing for your otherwise cold, poised and intimidating scientist to still dress like what he also is -- a dorky middle-aged college professor.

21. If you’re a fic writer and have written for this character, what’s your favourite thing to do when you’re writing for this character? What’s something you don’t like?

Oh, this is just delicious. Writing Crane, as with many villains, is a dive into the id -- he's Batman's drive for vengeance if it took a full nose-dive into Sweeney Todd territory, and I love getting to revel in that. I also really like to think "what's the most fucked up but still plausible thing I could have him do", but contrasted with "where might the weak spot be, and how do we get him to this point". Fear toxin inflicted on various characters is a wonderful gift-that-keeps-on-giving device in how it reveals so much about its victims, but I find that just as much, how Jonathan engages with inflicting it and with his victims' reactions really helps me work out just what kind of monster he is -- and where his empathy, should he have any left, lies.

As for what I don't like when it comes to writing him, I will say voice is hard just because he's so frequently underwritten, and I tend to write my headcanon version of him as a composite versus a more specific one (with that said, Nolancrow you beautiful bastard, let me capture your speech style you job-switching weirdo). This is more an insecurity thing (as is the would he do that? would he not? why? - the neverending tug of war that is trying to write believable and occasionally cute romances for awful people) than a problem with the character himself. The other big challenge with writing Crane is keeping it fresh; Batman himself has pointed out many times that he's one of the Rogues that evolves/learns the least with respect to MO and master plan (I guess because the field of science is always ongoing, fear is eternal, and revenge is almost as infinite in its scale?), and it's true he isn't really given much in the way of personal arcs. Because of that, I end up having to rely a lot more on trying to come up with new situations to put the old man in to try and nudge him in either-or direction.

Thank you so much for this!

[gay-little-izzet]

I love the funky little phyrexian shapeshifter so much and am curious if you have any spare bits of OC lore about them

I do!

Okay okay so a while back some friends and i were brainstorming what planes we would be from if we were characters in magic, and I tooled around with a few ideas but never really settled on anything, I was fascinated by the worlds and factions of every new set and couldn’t quite pin anything down.

When One started releasing story and cards, I realized I really loved the aesthetics of phyrexia, so I decided to have my self-insert/oc become a phyrexian metamorph, because I’m trans and basic and if I see a shapeshifter I want to be it.

I thought it would be cool to get that izzet angle by making them a surgeon who ended up being rejected from the progress engine for some flaw, and sent to the quiet furnace to be melted down—where they decided they actually liked being molten. Also, I think that the ideas of the “Great Synthesis” and the “Great Work” don’t really oppose each other as red and blue ideas often do, and could instead be combined into an endless cycle of experimentation and creative exploration.

Originally I thought of making them a compleated character, but honestly I feel like I can relate to someone born on new phyrexia—between being trans, being neurodivergent, and coming from an oil obsessed, imperialist, frequently awful country I…well, it’s not too hard for me to project onto some silly little robots.

With that in mind, I wanted to explore what phyrexians who escaped Norn’s mind control might have been able to do after the invasion, so here’s my take on one who decided to devote themselves to helping people have control over their bodies, instead of the typical “compleat first ask questions later” method with phyrexia. Although this is essentially a reference to all of the compleated planeswalkers and ocs I’ve drawn in the past, I imagine he would end up doing a lot more of the opposite, helping reverse the compleations of people who didn’t want to be phyrexians in the first place, or other surgeries. In addition to referencing my art, this isn’t actually too far off from what I’m actually studying to do irl! More the flesh stuff than the machine, unfortunately.

As for the safety of doing such things, I thought it could be interesting if their oil was somehow non-viable, at least to the extent that while they could use it to give others mechanical enhancements, it wouldn’t be infectious or transmissible from these patients. I really liked the comparison of phyresis to a viral infection in the latest chapter, because it makes a lot of sense for my interpretation of phyrexia in general—at their core, they’re just replicating and reproducing, like any living thing (or any protein shell full of genes). And it just so happens that their life cycle and reproduction is directly harmful to most of their hosts, like any parasite. Not necessarily evil, at least not at an individual scale, but certainly dangerous. I’m getting a bit off topic here, but suffice to say I think it would be interesting to see what happens when you remove the inherently infectious aspect of phyresis.

Uuhhmm this was a lot but I hope some of this is interesting to read!

[antimony-medusa]

Hi! To preface: I don't think there's any one right or wrong answer to my question necessarily, but I value your opinion as a level-headed adult in this fandom who can probably provide sensible input on the issue I'm having, so I thought I'd ask.

If a CC asks for their character not to be drawn (specifically referring to fanart, which they likely saw on Twitter) in a sexualised way, what does that mean for written fanwork content? Is it "wrong" (putting this in quotation marks since that's a loaded word, to say the least) to write nsfw content about said character and post it on Ao3, considering the differences in visibility/CC knowledge of those platforms, as well as the general consensus/expectation that CCs don't generally read fanfic anyway? Where is the line between "you should respect the CC's wishes" (avoiding the word "boundaries" since that's also very loaded in mcyt spaces) and "you can do whatever you want forever; fanworks are created by and for fans, not for the creators" drawn? Does "just don't put it where they can see unless they go looking" (i.e. correctly tagged on Ao3, not on a CC-frequented site like Twitter) apply? Would it be better not to do it at all, or only create and share said content in private spaces like Discord? Or is this all a "there is no single 'morally correct' answer, make your own personal judgement" thing?

(Sorry for the long-winded question but this is genuinely something I'm struggling with right now, lol. As I said I value and respect your opinion and views about these kinds of things in fandom, so if you have anything to say on the matter I'd appreciate your input!)

Alright so, obligatory warning for discourse on this one right at the top, and possibly also long post. These tend to be me rambling.

This is a situation that I think it's fair that a lot of people disagree. Your personal comfort level with making NSFW content in general is not where my comfort level is, we can come to totally different equilibriums. And then you add in creators expressing that they don't like seeing NSFW content of their characters, and people end up in a whole lot of different places, whether that's a complete no on shipping or NSFW, or people feeling fine to consume it but not create it, or only if it's archive locked, or only specific ships or smps, or whatever. I think it's fine that we don't all agree on this, creation is a fickle beast and we are in a weird place as a fandom of being not rpf but kinda cousins, and we can get *really* close to the creators with twitch and twitter, so people's comfort level in meshing all the parasociality and roleplay and real life of it all can end up in a lot of different places.

I just think that the most important thing for the fandom being a healthy place to spend time on the internet is that we don't go aroud sending hate/abuse to those we disagree with. a) i don't agree with internet mobs or suicide baiting or anon hate in general, b) the number of times I have seen internet games of telephone happen when it comes to this subject is unreal. To use an example from literally today, I saw someone saying that Pac of qsmp pacmike was uncomfortable with shipping art and fic and we all should stop shipping immediately, and once I tracked it back to its source, it turns out that what had happened was the creator said that he wasn't a fan that all the art was of him in the jumpsuit that used to be his skin, he has a new skin now, which turned into sexy jumpsuit art was the problem, which turned into pac hates all sexy fan art, which turned into "pac is being bombarded with nsfw art and shipping and he hates it". Now he might actually also not like NSFW art, but that's not actually what he was adressing, but it was certainly what was being circulated! So like, people warning me off of certain subjects— how do I know that they're actually accurate or if twitter just went twitter on a passing mention of something someone said on a twitch stream?

So I think it's way way way healthier for us as a fandom to sometimes disagree on the subject of "what we're drawing/writing about" and when that happens we implement Don't Like; Don't Read, and we just ignore that, or block if necessary. Don't Want To See it? Simply Don't See It. It's a bad idea to start hate campaigns for sinners, and half the time it's based on bad information anyways.

But in cases that you do know that the creator doesn't want to see that, you found an accurate clip? So this is a case where I think that there's no single moral answer to this that everyone is gonna agree on. We're all coming at it from too many different cultural backgrounds and different streamers in mind and comfort levels with NSFW in general. I don't think there is a firm answer that is gonna make you morally safe. But my personal feelings is that in cases where we know the creators doesn't want to see that, I think the important part there is that the creator never sees that, not that we stamp it off the internet entirely.

I do think, personally, ymmv, that you are not necessarily doing anything morally wrong with drawing or writing NSFW of someone's character, even if they think it's weird. There's a long history of creators saying "you can't do [this] with my characters," and it happens to be you can't [make them gay] enough to make me uncomfortable in general principle with saying creator of the character gets to call the shots in all settings forever. This happened with Anne Rice and with the supernatural fandom and like— it's the internet, we get to make the characters be gay together. This is the making sex jokes about fictional characters website, and Ao3 is the making porn about fictional characters website. I think it's fine if it exists on the internet, the question comes down to one of what we're forcing the creator to see, or what we're putting where they'll stumble upon it. Like, examples from real life— if you have a friend who's vegan, it's polite to not spend time rhapsodizing about how good meat is around them, and if you know that meat makes them sick, it's polite to do a meatless meal around them. That's a human person you want to be okay around you. But that's their boundary for their life, not yours, so even when you're being polite you have no obligation to go vegan when they're not around. And they have a politeness obligation to not walk into a steakhouse and freak out because there's meat there. They have a boundary for their life, and I'm going to respect it, but my life is a different story, and they need to take reasonable steps to protect their boundaries and not just expect everyone else to conform to them.

Or walking by someone on the street and waiting till they're out of earshot and then going "jesus christ that guy was hot" to your friends— that's fine. That's normal human behaviour. What becomes rude is when you make it hot guy's problem and yell at him. Being attracted to someone in your own space is not a problem. I'm aroace, I am not going to be in a relationship with anyone. I'm not going to ban having crushes on me, as long as you don't make it my business. Talking about an attractive person in your own space is not a problem. Being sexual in your own space— and again we are talking about fictional characters, the way I see it, these are lies we're telling about folks that are not real, who live in little minecraft worlds— that's fine. The problem is if we start catcalling people about it.

When you walk into fandom spaces you are walking into a space where we all like taking fictional guys and telling stories about them and a good portion of those stories are going to include kissing. That is not necessarily baseline normal for like, all of humanity, but people talk about tv shows they watch as one of the classic work small talk techniques. Fandom takes the "I hope ted gets together with jessica" "no he needs to work on himself first" discussion and writes stories, is all, to share with each other. Privately. On our special private website where there's a button you can click to hide your work from search engines and another one to hide it from logged-out users. If you log into the website and search things up, no tags blocked, what you find is on you for saying "I will see literally anything that exists on this subject in a space meant for literally anything". You will find gore. You will find kissing. You literally just opted in to seeing it. That's on you.

So like, there's my little defense of nsfw work existing in general, I think it existing is not a problem. I do think that we should keep it FAR AWAY from streamers. They get to set the rules for their spaces, and if someone doesn't want to see sexualized fan art, I do think we should make sure that in a reasonable way, they never have to see sexualized fan art/fic.

So like me personally, I'm going to hit that Ao3 button to hide my work from search engines, and anything NSFW (or shippy, depending on the person) is not going to go into the main tags on tumblr or twitter or anywhere I'm aware that the creators ever check that tag, and I'd probably archive lock it if the creator had publically mentioned being uncomfortable with it, and if I was regularly posting NSFW I'd block the creators on social media with any account I discuss NSFW with. I want to make sure that I am talking to my friends about the cubitos, not catcalling someone.

And I would probably err on the side of caution when it comes to social media sites that creators are on? Okay so the fandom has a habit of saying that NSFW and Shipping is BAD and can't exist, on the one hand, but on the other hand it says that anything that isn't Bad Wrong Shipping/Explicit NSFW is fine, which leads to like— extremely sexy thirst trap art being drawn and then the creators are tagged. People putting family dynamic fics that really pushes that envelope in the main tag. Gahhhhhh????? No? Don't do that?

I think it would be healthier in the fandom if we did a lot more going "this is for the fandom, not the creator" and we don't tag creators on twitter, and we took our little kissing fics, or gore, or kidfic, or neurodiverse headcanons, or anything else it might be not for the creator to see, and we kept it in fandom spaces and away from creators. But Ao3 is that fandom space that you have to opt into, it's literally archive of our Own, for fans, in that space as long as you tag it you're good.

So the TL;DR of this all is that my opinion is that if you tag it correctly on Ao3 you're fine. Maybe archive lock it. Keep it off twitter. Don't make it the streamer's problem, and you're good.

[khrysm]

What are some of your favorite things you like in a ship? Like what about Chilumi really does it for you and what are your favorite things?

Sorry for the late late reply.

Favorite things I like in a ship...

I wouldn't say I have a common theme among the ships I've liked. Generally, I need to be somewhat emotionally invested in one of the partners, and then my brain eventually manifests some ridiculousness that leads to whichever partner I end up shipping them with. I don't think I have specific things that I like.

(Incoming an answer no one asked for...)

I started out as a canon-shipper in my younger years. Like with Sailormoon and Card Captor Sakura. I was totally on board with each canon ship and went with the flow.

It wasn't until many years later that I eventually braved the treacherous waters of the OW shipping fandom that I just outright didn't go along with the popular ships. The only ship I gave any attention to was Hanzo and Mercy, and I had to basically feed myself with that one. I know that it makes zero sense to most people, but I think my brain just wanted to put my favorite OW characters together. I was a Mercy main, and Hanzo was stylistically my favorite character archetype in terms of combat (I like archers). There's a lot more I could say about it, but that will make this post potentially ten times longer.

Anyway, when I finally moved onto Genshin, I wanted to avoid falling into any ships...

But then Tartaglia showed his stupid face, and I was immediately drawn to his character. His banner was the one that made me break my pledge to stay a low-spender (just Welkin Moon and Battle Pass) and swipe for each bonus pack to guarantee that I'll pull at least one copy of him. Yes, this is long, roundabout way of me saying that I was only interested in Tartaglia for a while... Until I finished his story quest.

The moment Tartaglia and the Traveler shared after he cleared out all the Ruin Guards was the spark that started me have feels for THEM having feels for each other. xD;;

It felt like their strong ties to family (particularly their siblings) was something that resonated stronger than every other friendship the Traveler had made up until then. Also, he was so insistent on meeting up with the Traveler as frequently as possible, even if it was mostly to spar and train. And with the game sort of putting a blanket personality on the Traveler being quite proud of their fighting ability, I thought that they had a decent connection that could lead to a real relationship.

Also, the way Tartaglia is always so excited to see the Traveler when they happen to run into each other randomly. It just feels like there's so much more sincerity behind his greeting. And his voice lines! When it comes to directly talking about the Traveler, he's so possessive! Maybe I'm delulu, but I don't care. That's what my brain thinks! xD

Ah! I figured it out! All the ships I like, started out with the characters not liking each other at first. Usagi couldn't stand Mamoru at first because he teased her about her hair. Syaoran was so mean to Sakura when they first met! My headcanon for Hanzo and Mercy had a rocky start, but they eventually grew to like each other. And like the rest, Traveler had to beat the crap out of Tartaglia because he was a bad guy, but somehow they manage to come to friendly terms after a while. Yup, enemies/rivals to lovers is my shit!

[alphasmoonlit-selfships]

Ranpo falling in love with Dany first is such a mood 🥺💜💚 it’s been a long while since I’ve drawn Ranielle by themselves.

Ranpo is technically the first bsd character I self shipped with and remember all the silly shenanigans of them together. This is kind of a soft redraw of an old post that I’ll link up when I find it again ✨

After tagging along with him on a crime case and observing his relationship with the police and potential suspects, Danielle sees how different he is compared to his attitude at the Agency and comes to see why everyone regards him so highly! Voicing this out to him after the end of a long day.

Ranpo has always noticed Dany silently, he was the one that deduced her ability prior to her being in the Agency and has recognized her as a member of the ADA, even if she hasn’t for the first few months.

Needless to say, hearing her genuinely praise him stirred his heart in a way he wasn’t expecting to feel. Not with her violet gaze gleaming with honesty and seeing her walls come down for a brief moment. Maybe it was also her unrestrained crooked smile and her slight laugh that twisted his heart further.

But the world’s greatest detective would never admit that aloud, not right now at least. Instead he boosts himself further from her praise, unable to himself but tease her and childishly poke her for being so slow. Even if it does ruin the moment, so Danielle claims~

Also an additional draw of my s/I just being silly ✨ she has a habit of shaking or tapping her foot or her hand and wagging her tail (most frequent). She gets restless being still for too long and are like nervous ticks or ways to shake her anxiety. Her tail appears more often from her emotional response to things ✨

[quinnkdev]

MfLDoP #3 - Inland Empire

Not the Disco Elysium skill, the David Lynch and Laura Dern film!

@sev-wildfang and I sat down together this evening to watch it. We were unsure at the beginning - still finding our footing in its tonal and technical idiosyncrasies - but soon we got extremely into it, and both left it saying it may be our new favourite movie.

Having recovered from the adrenaline rush, jury’s kind of out on that until I give it a rewatch. What I do know is that it’s my new favourite thing Lynch has participated in - moreso even than Twin Peaks.

More under the cut - spoilers throughout.

Inland Empire may just be Peak Lynch for me. Here is where his work culminated, and from here, it scatters out again. Having seen Twin Peaks: The Return earlier in the pandemic, I loved a lot of what it was doing, but felt it was bogged down by its connections to what came before, as self-aware and critical as it was about them. Sev said it after our watch - Inland Empire is free of any sequel baggage, it gets to be itself: Self-contained and decently long, but not so long that it becomes drawn-out.

There is a lot to love about Inland Empire’s cinematography - at least if you can take that kind of thing for what it is, not what it’s “supposed” to be. For one, the frame rate of the version we watched was unedited: The film was 60 FPS, which was immediately noticeable in a perturbing way.

Being shot on 2000s-era digital cameras, a constant air of hyperreality sat on everything: It felt like we were looking at a documentary, or at somebody’s wedding recordings - not a film. It felt more real than Lynch’s movies ever did, and that’s what made it horrifying.

Usually, you get to pat yourself on the back a bit, after viewing a Lynch film, and say: “Nothing this nightmarish could ever happen in the real world. People don’t act like that.” That, of course, is a lie we tell ourselves to be able to stash away the discomfort over very real problems often featured in those films- But for a hard-to-describe reason, seeing the characters and their perturbing actions displayed in 60 FPS, and with the aesthetic of a home video, puts them in a different, more immediate light.

Speaking of light: An important motif in the movie. It’s frequently used to determine era, location, mood, psychological space and otherwise. Hell, near the end, somebody is shot with a gun that shoots light - not as in a laser, but as in a spotlight that manages to kill a character.

Another thing that lent the film more flavour, and I think improved it for me, was some of the stage-like set designs featured in it, as well as the fact that it, unlike most other David Lynch-directed movies, didn’t exclusively take place in the U.S. Something about seeing European actors on-screen speak a European language (Polish), and some scenes - apparently - being shot in a European city made it all less drab and uniform, stand out from the others. Lynch’s Americana is nice and all, but it’s good to know that he has - at one point at least - done something else, too.

Laura Dern’s performance was intense! Not exactly nuanced, but very intense. Often, she was just reacting to things, and her face-acting for those close-ups was pretty challenging, if occasionally excessive. The coolest stuff from an acting perspective is mostly front-loaded in the movie, when she, playing Nikki Grace, plays a character as Nikki Grace. Lying while lying is always tough; she does it pretty well, and even later when her performance turns more reactive, it occasionally returns.

Plot was this movie’s least interesting aspect - at least what was intelligible of it on a first watch. The usual skewed portrayal of women rears its head, sudden violence, ableism... It’s more subdued than in other Lynch movies, but it’s still there in parts of the plot, and as elsewhere, it’s been used by Lynch so frequently that it becomes hard to know whether he is condemning or reveling in what he’s portrayed.

Finally, the ending it left us with was... interesting? In a strange way, it felt like what we were seeing was a happy end, though why we felt a sense of closure from it, neither Sev and I could - at first - say. The ending felt pleasant, and like an appropriate come-down after the tour-de-force before it.

Absolutely would recommend.

[castielmacleod]

I used to feel like Crowley's unrequited love for Dean Winchester was out of character. It was definitely there because it was intentionally written that way. But I always feel like Crowley, unlike Castiel (who was programmed albeit against his will to be a soldier and a follower), would not tolerate being talked down to and dismissed the way Dean did. So I really disliked that part of the show.

But I see you seem to consider Crowley's unrequited love for Dean essential, and would love to hear more of your thoughts on it (of course you don't have to explain yourself, I am just genuinely interested).

Hello! Sure, I’d be happy to. As a bitter Crowleyguy who used to be VERY into Dr*wley I sure do have Thoughts about that whole mess

To start, I think you had an absolutely fair and correct assessment by the way. Crowley should NOT have taken any of that from literally just some guy in jeans. Crowley SHOULD have obliterated him, and if the writers had let him keep more of his early seasons fire and self-respect I know he would have. But I think the very fact that he had canonically kind of fallen to a point where he didn’t or even couldn’t push back as much as we might’ve expected him to is what is so horrifically compelling to me in the first place?

The thing is that I think Crowley being in unrequited love with Dean is abhorrent. It bothers the absolute bloody hell out of me. It represents a tragic an frequently degrading storyline for a canon mlm character. It seriously compromised him, contributed to his depression, and kept him fruitlessly at the Winchesters’ beck and call right up to his suicide, which they pretty much drove him to. Back in the day when I was more tolerant of fanon Dean I used to be a big requited Dr*wley guy because I thought bending Dean to my will and fabricating a version of events where he genuinely loved Crowley back was like, the least Crowley deserved, but I really had the wrong read of it because actually the least Crowley deserves is to be fucking free of Dean for good lol. So if I were to rewrite the series from scratch now I would not even START to go near any of this, or at least not in such a literally horrible and anticlimactic way. But as far as canon goes, I view Crowley’s unrequited love for Dean more or less the same as I view Cas’ unrequited love for Dean. It might be annoying and sad and so very rage inducing but I can’t bring myself to ignore it completely for a couple of reasons.

The first reason is that I tend to love characters who make me sad.. I’m not sure what it is. I’m not the kind of guy who like, ENJOYS it when my faves are miserable or anything. It’s quite the opposite. Crowley’s misery throws me into a searing fury just as easily as it depresses me. But I guess I’m a melancholy person and I just easily get attached to tragic characters who are sad for what I subjectively find to be sympathetic reasons. Gay demon whose one desire is to be truly loved ending up trapped in unrequited gay love is definitely that. The more sympathetic it is for me the more I tend toward exploring it in my writing, headcanons, etc. And I loved Crowley from the first moment I saw him given that he was funny and homosexual and a breath of fresh air but as soon as the show started making me SAD about him, like miserably sad from thee 8x23 into 10x01 onward, that’s when I REALLY latched on. So I actually get the most out of the character when I’m engaging directly with his awful depressive spiral and by extension the Dr*wley situation, in the sense that I’m either venting about it (cathartic) or writing something drawn from personal experience so as to explore the emotion behind it and/or let Crowley come terms with it and move on (also cathartic).

The second reason is that I do find Crowley’s infatuation with Dean very fascinating and revealing from a character analysis perspective, particularly in the way it extends the 8x23 Crowley thesis that he really does just want someone to love him. It says a lot about Crowley and just how desperately freaking lonely he actually is and it’s just. So much. Like post s8 it’s certainly a very different Crowley than the guy we met in s5, and I think there is a strong case to call him ooc in a LOT of ways (most of all the ways in which he was defanged and dumbed down like please 😭 the s12 Lucifer shit I mean GOD………………) but the way I personally understand how we got to his seemingly unconditional love for Dean circa s10 is that it was very much a result of the botched curing ritual. That event permanently rewired something in his head like for real. He never went back to normal after the human blood and whether that was shoddy writing or because it actually changed him to be more open and outwardly emotional, I don’t know, but I think the latter could be compelling. He tried to use Dean for his own purposes but then accidentally got attached to him and went on to spend SIX MONTHS. In trashy American dives, just to have Dean beside him. And as I’ve indicated my Dr*wley warrior days are so far behind me but I won’t be so disingenuous to say they didn’t genuinely connect on some level while Dean was a demon… they shared a room and called each other pet names and shared personal stories and had sex and like. Crowley was in love with him. He proposed to him, in total earnest. To me it’s like he truly projected this Hallmark romance over top of what was going on between them and I just find that so devastating, but also. Very humanising. If that makes sense.

In my assessment the Dr*wley break up only made Crowley’s loneliness worse because now he had a fresh memory of what he was missing AND had a specific face to miss, but to me it wasn’t…. actually about Dean himself. It wasn’t so much Dean as it was the concept of Having Someone that Crowley just could not move past. A friend, a boyfriend, a family member, just….. someone. I don’t even think the “summer of love” was about Dean himself like I genuinely think Dean could have been anyone. It’s not that there was anything special about him, it’s just that I think Crowley was in such an affected state in s9 (i.e. post-ritual) that I think he would have imprinted on anyone he spent enough time with, and that just ended up being Dean. And that break up leads directly into Crowley letting Rowena into his court and trying so sincerely with Amara in a familial sense, and then trying to reconnect with Cas in at LEAST a friendship sense. He continued to help the Winchesters, paying special attention to Dean. But all of these people (with perhaps Cas as the barest exception) outright rejected him in some way, sometimes over and over no matter what he did for them, and it drove him suicidal…. that’s another post entirely. But my point is that Dr*wley is a watershed in Crowley’s post-8x23 “arc” (too strong a word for the amount of non-writing that was happening with this character but you know what I mean) that sets the stage for understanding his frame of mind in his last 3 seasons. It’s the first in a long series of rejections that will eventually lead to Crowley killing himself. And trust me I fully recognise how demeaning and terrible this all is for the character and how pathetic the writers made him and it IS infuriating but at the same time the sheer brutal tragedy of it is just. Man. I really can’t get over it.

Anyway, I’ll reiterate that this is all my personal interpretation, I don’t really have citations or receipts on hand, it’s just how this particular canon arc of Crowley’s has settled into my head in a way that makes sense to me. Essentially everything in the paragraphs above can be boiled down to the following: I can’t help but acknowledge Dr*wley and consider it essential to examinations of canon Crowley at least because I think it’s critical to understanding so much of his character motivation from s10 on, and also because I just find it so cathartic to rant about or to let Crowley recover from it in my own writing. That’s kind of that!

If I haven’t already bored you to tears then I also have some recent semi-related thoughts on 12x23 and Crowley in a post-8x23 landscape in general that you might be further interested in here.

[mi4011amandithewarathanthri]

Assessment 1

2. conduct research into their life stories

Lisa Hanawalt - life and work

Went to UCLA - graduated with a BA in arts in 2006

Born in California, USA

Her parents were Stanford biologists Philip Hanawalt and Graciela Spivak. Her mother was born and raised in Argentina by a family of Jewish refugees originally from Odessa.

Hanawalt discovered indie comics in high school.

“I read work by Renée French and Phoebe Gloeckner, and both of them really blew my mind, ’cause I was, like, here are these two women who are being so candid about their lives and their feelings and, like, how disgusting life is. Their comics are really grotesque in different ways, so that was a huge influence on me.” - Hanawalt 

After college, Hanawalt took a job as a secretary in Glendale, coming home at night to draw. The gallery-painter path that she’d envisioned didn’t pan out. “I was, like, ‘I’ll get solo shows in Chelsea, that’s what I’ll do!’ That didn’t happen, so I went back to comics,” she says. 

She is a former member of Pizza Island, a cartoonist's studio made up of only women in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Her illustrations and writings have been published in print and online periodicals including The New York Times, McSweeney's, Vanity Fair, and Lucky Peach magazine.

From 2011 through 2013, she was a regular contributor to The Hairpin and produced a series of illustrated film reviews. 

Her first comic series, I Want You, was published in 2009 by Buenaventura Press. In 2010, Hanawalt was the first woman to win an Ignatz Award for Outstanding Comic. 

In 2012, she illustrated her first children's book, Benny's Brigade, published by McSweeney's and authored by Arthur Bradford. The book stars a tiny talking walrus, rescued by two sisters with a range of magical animals at the end of the quest. The book was named a "Wildest Book of the Year" by children's lit blog 100 Scope Notes and called "exuberant and imaginative" by Foreword Reviews.

In 2013, Drawn & Quarterly published My Dirty Dumb Eyes, Hanawalt's "one-woman anthology" of comics and illustrations, including previously-commissioned works. The collected stories and shorts range from autobiographical narratives to cultural observations, frequently featuring anthropomorphic animal-people and scenes of nature rendered in bright, detailed watercolors, and likened by one reviewer to "a grown-up Richard Scarry turned absurdist social commentator.”

Made Bojack Horseman in 2014. 

BoJack Horseman won the 2016 Critics' Choice Award for Best Animated Series.

August 2016 - Tegan and Sara “HANG ON TO THE NIGHT” animated music video 

In 2016, Drawn & Quarterly published Hot Dog Taste Test. This book is a collection of comics and illustrations often featuring animal-people in vibrant watercolors. Publishers Weekly said about her book, "Hanawalt takes a kebab skewer to the pomposity that's grown up around food and dining. The cartoons evoke an idiosyncratic absurdity akin to Roz Chast's work.”

On August 21, 2018, Hanawalt released a graphic novel with Drawn & Quarterly entitled Coyote Doggirl. Unlike her previous two, Coyote Doggirl features a singular narrative and follows its titular character and her trusty steed, Red, on their escape from a vengeful bulldog and his cronies. the book is about the tug between self-reliance and community.

Tuca and Bertie (2019) - immediately received critical acclaim and is one of her best works. More relatable that Bojack especially if you’re a woman. Dropped by Netflix after the first seasons and was picked up  by adult swim. 

Hanawalt is fascinated in particular by the ways that sex manifests in the animal kingdom. This is most present in Tuca and Bertie.

She currently co-hosts a podcast and is working on another season of Tuca and Bertie

[hierarchyproblem]

1, 2, 19 for book asks

1. book you’ve reread the most times?

I don't really tend to reread books tbh. There's so many other books I wanna read that I'd get more out of than a second go at something I already remember, y'know? That said, I have read the bible cover-to-cover four times. Normal behaviour.

2. top 5 books of all time?

Aw fuck. I dunno. I'll assume "books" here means "novels" and I'll list five of my top books of all time:

The Dispossessed, by Ursula K Le Guin. I need not labour the piont here 'cause I know you've read it, so I'll simply say that Le Guin is possibly my favourite writer of all time, and this is her at her best.

Ubik, by Philip K Dick. This book gets weirder by the page. PKD loves poking at the nature of reality, and this is the exemplar. A lot of his output reads as surprisingly adventurous work to come from a 60s sci-fi guy, and this is among his most interesting. Several carefully-crafted "wait - oh, shit" moments in a deliberately-contradictory narrative. Head-spinning stuff.

The Fifth Season, by N K Jemisin. A lot of SFF is, like, fun, and that's cool; I like to read that stuff too. This is art, no two ways about it, and of a kind I'm not sure you could easily translate into a different genre or medium. Bold and nuanced exploration both of the apocalypse and of parenthood. Also rocks are magic, and magic is rocks. When people ask me to recommend a book, this is my go-to.

Version Control, by Dexter Palmer. This is pretty lit-ficcy compared with my usual intake (ie. genre fiction that wears it's genre-ness like a tiara). If an act 1 full of normies having brunch doesn't put you off - and it shouldn't, because the characters are extremely well-drawn - then it'll be very satisfying when all the little bits of wrong-ness come together. Also far more prescient as near-future spec-fic than any cyberpunk.

The Traitor Baru Cormorant, by Seth Dickinson. Unlike most in the tumblr-popular "SFF imperialism but with lesbians" genre, this one sketches out an imperialism that's mostly plausible and worth exploring. The worldbuilding is really very good. This is mostly a pretty light read, for all it deals in heavy themes. I basically don't believe that spoilers diminish one's enjoyment of a story, though that might just be me, so I still think it's worth reading despite your having looked up the ending on wikipedia. The rapid series of increasingly-punishing gut punches in the final few chapters is worth experiencing first-hand.

19. most disliked popular books?

I'm sure I've bitched about this to you before, but I thought Harrow the Ninth mostly sucked. I respect the ambition of the book's structure, but I felt that it fucked the pacing unbearably. Gideon is way more interesting to read about than anyone else in these books, and I might have felt better about being dragged through 400 pages of Harrow moping by having "you're gonna find out what happened with Gideon soon, I swear!" dangled in front of me like a carrot for a donkey, if the payoff was worth it. Unfortunately the denouement largely consisted of everybody standing there and stating out loud what their master plans were, I guess because the stupid B-plot where I'm somehow expected to care about Ortis at all(??) took up too much space so there was none left for a proper ending. There were some fantastic scenes, but in my opinion they couldn't save the book. I thought Gideon was truly excellent, so this was a bit of a let-down.

Also - if you'll allow me a brief tangential rant - I can only assume the publisher (correctly) decided that the meme references were highly marketable, because otherwise an editor that let that shit through should surely have been let go. It's baffling, because these books are frequently hilarious, but never when referencing Bone Hurting Juice or whatever the fuck. "Oh it's a worldbuilding thing, it shows that John-" no. It's stupid. Piss off.

Thanks for the questions!

[pyreofsunflowers]

What I watched this week 3/13-3/19

this week was a little skimpy because I had to work so much, but fret not I still have plenty of stuff for y'all

The Shining (1980, Dir. Stanley Kubrick)

Did y'all know I go to the "overlook" (The Timberline lodge up in Mt Hood national forest) every year in the summer? It's a beautiful place. Anyways you'd think with that I'd have seen the shining by now, but nope! This was my first time ever watching it! And man - what a film! Nothing beats a well made horror movie, in my humble opinion, with that sweet spot blend of the meta-physical and the physical threats, threatening, stylistic cinematography, and a small-yet-solid cast of characters portrayed by talented actors really giving it there all makes for such a satisfying watch!

I've never read the original novel, where most of the subtext and themes of those movie -obviously - are drawn from, and I likely never will as I generally dislike fiction. However. I still found the themes permeant and the subtext moving despite not having it in full context. That, in my own opinion, is what makes the Shining such an effective adaptation - although I am rather uninformed as I've only ever heard people talk about the book.

Definitely one of my favorite horror movies -5/5

Enemy (2013, dir. Denis Villeneuve)

Okay so I'm just gonna be frank - I am bad with metaphors and symbolism. I can understand character growth, plot structure, timelines, cinematography, lighting, peroid accuracy, and all sorts of more technical and object elements of a movie. I mostly critique based off of these things, I stay in my lane. It's not that I can't ever understand a metaphor or pick up on any forms of symbolism, it's just not really how my brain works.

That being said, I still really really enjoyed this movie. It was a well made slow paced pysch. thriller that tackles adultery and cheating in a way I've never seen a movie do before. Villeneuve's style, as always, adds such a rich, amazing, and lonely air to the film - one which I think helps enhance it's message.

To condense, this is a film about double lives, about two drastically different halves inside one body. It's about secrets and hiding and ultimately letting the facade all down and the chaos all of that will cause in one's life (illustred quite well by the ending scenes of the film.)

I can't really describe this film, just go watch it for yourself. Unless you can't stand spiders. 4.5/5

Halloween (1978, Dir. John Carpenter)

After marathoning all 6 Scream movies over the course of 2 weeks, my hopes were really low for Halloween. Specifically because Scream, at least the first one, is a pretty self admitted satire of tropes Halloween brought to the table. But I was really surprised with how good this one was!

I don't really know why? Maybe it's because I don't tend to super love what is super popular? But I'm happy to say Halloween holds up and is a genuinely creepy slasher. John Carpenter's slow, meandering style really lends itself well to the genre - making the final kills feel well deserved and establishing a true sense of fear in the audience. Especially with how hidden Michael Meyer's is from the camera for the first 2 acts.

This films lighting and cinematography are also on another level, the way the film gets both literally and tonally darker as the day drags on, the way Michael is always kept in the shadows, the intimate, stalker-esque camera... It's amazing!

Me and the friend I watched Scream with are doing the same thing but for the Halloween franchise now, but less frequently cause there's no upcoming film. So stay tuned as I work my way through 9 more fucking Halloween movies.

This movie was really well made, though not something I would consider a personal favorite. 4/5.

Breaking Bad Season 4 (2011 shrn. Vince Gilligan)

So I'm just about finished with season 4 and hollllyyyyyyy shit Vince Gilligian is a mastermind. I've really been enjoying the plotline with Hank catching up to Walt + Gus, and am really excited for the payoff in S5. Jesse's arc continues to carry the show and I want nothing but the best for this man. Please oh god Mike just help this man he NEEDS it.

The scene where he went back and cussed out his old rehab therapist was *amazing* and really hit home with just how far gone he thinks he is and gives you a really good look into his pysche. Speaking of Pysches Walt's undoing is finally starting to rear it's head and boy howdy am I ever ready for that clown to kick the bucket. Fuck that guy.

I also really enjoyed the Gus backstory, and Max's death is probably one of my favorite scenes in the entire series (is that a spoiler? i don't think so...) Anyways brba continues to be a masterpiece and you'll be seeing more of dis.

[davidmariottecomics]

The Staying Power of the Simpsons

Hey there! 

This week we're talking about longevity. If you've been reading my "What I enjoyed this week" bit for a while, you know two things I've recently been consuming a lot of are the Blank Check Podcast and The Simpsons. Blank Check, if you're unfamiliar though I do think I've mentioned it before, is a podcast about directors' filmographies--how they go from their early hits to being given free reign to make the sort of movies they want to make, and loosely, how the movies "clear or bounce". I've been more-or-less bouncing back and forth between the newest episodes and listening to the back catalog from the beginning, so I've most recently finished Spielberg (the Dreamworks years) and Henry Selick. 

One of the show's hosts, Griffin Newman (Arthur from The Tick), has a theory that I've been very drawn to. He talks about actors and how interesting to trace how many decades they've been relevant relative to their creative evolution.

Just because I think he's a good example (and he's been on The Simpsons), let's use Woody Harrelson as an example. In the 80s, he is essentially Woody from Cheers. He's in a few other things, but he's a TV actor from one huge show, to the point that even into the 90s, his most frequent role is Woody from Cheers. In the 90s, at the end of/post-Cheers, he becomes a movie star. Like an actual movie star, where the poster is his face, it's his name above the title, etc. The 2000s, he becomes a character actor. He's still working at a good clip, he sometimes ends up on the poster, but now he's back as part of ensembles. And in the 2010s, like so many former-movie-star-character-actors, he becomes a franchise guy: He's a big part of the Hunger Games. He's in a Marvel movie. He's in a Star Wars movie. He's so good in True Detective, that even though he's only in one season, he gets the show renewed. And while we're still fairly new into the 2020s, his 5th (technically 6th) decade as a working actor, the prestige-y films he did between his franchise movies have earned him elder statesman status and he's on posters again. For a guy whose most famous role is also a guy named Woody, he's really stuck around and managed to find a way to stay relevant. 

Okay, but The Simpsons? 

Tracking of creative evolution over the decades works for all sorts of creators and endeavors. That same framework, that same way of thinking, can be applied to something like say, The Simpsons. If you're a fan of The Simpsons, there's a distinct chance that either A. you believe it stopped being good at the end of the 90s or B. you've heard people it stopped being good at the end of the 90s. I like a lot of The Simpsons, so I wanna talk about that a bit. 

In the 90s, The Simpsons was a family sitcom. That's rightfully what appealed to people about it. It's right there in line with Newhart and the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air as a show about family dynamics that're usually silly and sometimes serious, with the only real dividing factor being that The Simpsons is animated.

But by the 2000s, the Simpsons exists in a really strange place. It's no longer the only primetime animated sitcom or adult animated sitcom. You have King of the Hill and the Mike Judge properties, you have South Park, you have Family Guy and Adult Swim and Futurama. And at the same time, while family sitcoms never go away, there starts to be a shift to occupational sitcoms being the power players--Scrubs, The Office, etc. So the show's in a place where it's competitors are shifting genres and moving to absurdist humor and they have to find a new identity within that. And what they find is they keep it a family sitcom, but heighten the absurdity and start to really play into The Simpsons as a pop culture object that can be aware of other pop culture.

In the 2010s, things have shifted even further--I'd say actually in some ways tied to what I was talking about a few weeks back in the brandification of geekdom. And The Simpsons, in growing and changing their relevance 20 years in, change from a pop culture object that is aware of other pop culture to almost a self-referential pop culture staple. The show, in some ways, is about how long "The Simpsons" can last and the what "The Simpsons" means. It's common knowledge that the Simpsons "predicts the future", but interestingly enough, the future episodes of the show used to be a lot more spaced out. It was roughly one every five years, until 2011 when they became much more regular--from full episodes to end of episode flash-forward tags to "life of" episodes. 

Now, in the Season 30-somethings, The Simpsons has truly become such an institution that it can be a bit of everything it's been before. Some episodes lean more heavily on traditional family sitcom "drama". Some are unexpected and bizarre (Lisa the Boy Scout is a personal favorite from the current season). Some are straight up pop culture pastiches. I think to their benefit, it's what the writers find funny because all aspects are true of what The Simpsons is and it's not a surprise to hear they've been renewed for a few more seasons. 

Each decade has charms because they're responding to what was needed at the time for the show's longevity. 

I Thought this was a Comics Blog?

It is! And here's what that has to do with comics. On the one hand, you can apply this "changes over decades" theory to a lot of comics creators. You look at someone like the much missed George Perez and can track how he maintained a career for so long and how his art and storytelling and even the functions of his job evolved, right? He's a creator whose style is so specific and recognizable that two pieces from different decades can both immediately be identified as his own, even when they might look very different from each other. Part of what I'm getting at is if you are looking at comics as a long-term goal, the thing you want to do with your life, it's worth it to study the people who have managed to do that and the sorts of changes they've made along the way to do so. 

On the other hand, and this is one of the things I find really fascinating about comics--generally speaking, it's a lot harder to apply that same thinking to specific titles. Not to say you can't do it entirely, but it tends to be easier when the comic is the work of one or a one group of people--Usagi Yojimbo or Dragon Ball or I'd say even to some extent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles given how much of it's history has had some combination of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird involved. But when you look at something like Batman, because of the nature of comics--between multiple titles for a single character, runs of incredibly varying lengths, a constant influx of new creators who bring in a diversity of storytelling (but not always a diversity of creators...) it is harder to take these evolutions by decade. Which, in some ways I think is a good thing. Because it means the things that last are not static and are changing to encompass multiple ideas of what it is and what it could be. 

Anyway, food for thought and mostly I wanted to talk about how actually The Simpsons has been pretty funny for the majority of their 30+ years. 

Coming up: Next week, since it's been about a year since I did a full one of these, I'm probably going to do another "Stuff That Sucks" and talk about the many massively disappointing and frustrating and downright awful things happening right now that we should all be keeping an eye on. The week after that, I think we're going to do another "Ask Me (Almost) Anything"! My inbox is open here (and it's incentive to answer a couple emails in there...) and I'll get a post up with next week's blog on Twitter for people to submit their questions! 

What I enjoyed this week: Blank Check (Podcast), Honkai Impact (Video game), House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (Book), Persona 4 Golden (Video game), Poker Face (TV show), Romantic Killer (Anime), Warioware & the other Gameboy/GBA games now on Switch, Snack vs. Chef (TV show), finally got my hands on a Minerva so that's one more Wrecker! And I got the new Big the Cat figure! Admiring good comics lettering. Seeing The Fablemans tomorrow and very much looking forward to it, and the Kaguya-Sama movie on Valentine's Day with my valentine! 

New Releases this week (2/8/2023): Godzilla: Monsters & Protectors - All Hail the King #5 (Editor) Sonic the Hedgehog #57 (Editor) Sonic the Hedgehog, Vol. 13: Battle for the Empire (Editor, collecting Sonic #50, 51, the 2022 Annual, and the 2022 Free Comic Book Day short)

New releases next week (2/15/2023): Off week for my books

Final Order Cutoff (2/13/2023): Godzilla: Best of King Ghidorah (Editor) Sonic the Hedgehog #59 (Editor) Sonic the Hedgehog #1 5th Anniversary Edition (Editor)

Announcements: Arizona Comic Book Arts Festival - 2/25! This is like 2 weeks from now! They've got a heckuva guest list including me, Becca, Elizabeth Brei, Danny Djeljosevic, Mitch Gerads, Steve Rude, John Layman, Henry Barajas, Jay Fotos, Jeff Mariotte, Marcy Rockwell, John Yurcaba, Andrew MacLean, Alexis Zirrit, Meredith McClaren, James Owen, Ryan Cody, and many more! Come and see us! Becca'll have some very cool new merch, too! And tickets are only $10! I'll be bringing a mess of stuff that I've written and edited from Transformers, Sonic, Godzilla, and more! (Promo by Becca)

Speaking of Becca, did you know they have a Patreon? They're doing weekly drawing prompts that're uploading Sundays, so lots of new stuff up there as well as a pretty impressive backcatalog from the past few years. This month, if you sign-up at any level, your support's actually going to a really amazing local organization, The Brown Building.

And final Becca news, they contributed to Aradia Beat, a Magical Girl Anthology Magazine! It's now on Kickstarter! It's both a tribute to 90s magical girl stories and part of a larger project about the overall preservation and mutual support of magical girl stories! We're in the final week and they're about $1K away from their goal. They can definitely make it, but it'd be cool if you could help out by backing or by sharing! Speaking of Magical Girl Kickstarters, it's still early in the life cycle of Sweet Little Resistance, which is by fellow AZ Comic Book Arts Fest tablers,  Elizabeth Brei and Danny Djeljosevic as well as a host of cool artists! They're only about $500 away from their goal, and would make for a very nice complimentary piece! (More Promo by Becca)

Pic of the Week:  So the actual Pic of the Week is Tiansheng who decided to sleep under the pillows in Becca's office chair, rather than on top of them!

[kitschykitchen]

🍽️Hot and Fresh Review🍽️

Ideal Snacks for While You’re Watching: A bottle of red wine, beef bulgogi with rice, kimchi, and mandu.

Main Ingredients:

A down-on-her-luck Korean-American trying to make it in New York's Wall Street.

Her meek and timid rich bestie who's married to a grade-A asshole.

A slew of love interests and paramours that range from a match made in heaven to Satan incarnate

This is not an easy novel to categorize by genre. In some ways, it mirrors a romance novel. In most ways, it's literary fiction. And at times it comes off as a TV drama with its meet-cutes and frequent dire situations. Min Jin Lee manages to dip her toes into so many different spaces and weave a complex narrative. Free Food for Millionaires follows the story of a Korean-American immigrant family. We have the rebellious and prideful older daughter, Casey Han, her dutiful and obedient younger sister, Tina, her submissive and evangelical mother, Leah, and her stoic and reserved father, Joseph. After Casey is kicked out by her father during an argument, our story progresses with her struggling to survive in the late 90s and trying to avoid the handouts constantly at her disposal.

We mostly follow Casey's perspective but the novel occasionally switches to the perspectives of the ensemble cast. One thing I appreciate about Lee's writing style is her ability to enter each character's mind no matter how brief. Despite our tendency to assume that we as individuals are the "main characters" and everyone else around us are just "NPCs," Lee negates this by giving us glimpses into the lives of the random people with whom the protagonists interact. Suddenly, we're not just privy to the thoughts of the Han clan and their friends, but even the doorman at someone's apartment or the saleswoman selling someone her wedding dress.

While reading Free Food for Millionaires, committing to reading every day was hard. This was one of the longest books I read with a whopping 600+ pages. I'm sure to any seasoned reading vet, that sounds like child's play, but considering I was juggling a new job at the time, 600+ pages felt like eons of reading. Needless to say, I've finished it now and my thoughts have changed slightly.

A lot of my animosity came from the book's length, making certain sections feel drawn out. I was reading it sporadically, which meant opening the book after days of distance only to find myself in the same situation. Casey struggles to make ends meet and has to rely on the kindness of others despite her intense pride. However, that pride forbids her from taking help immediately, so we're left with pages of her denying help despite her increasing need for it. Constantly being introduced to this problem felt tedious to me. How long was Casey going to suffer? When would I be able to read about the highs of her life?

After a while, I had to ask myself why I was so hostile towards this book. That's when I realized the entire premise felt too familiar to my current life. I'm a recent graduate living in my childhood bedroom. My family constantly complains about money--from the price of groceries to the inability to move any time soon despite the depleting neighborhood. I couldn't find a job for months and when I finally did, I got paid low wages that couldn't be used because I had so many bills to catch up on. Reading this book wasn't allowing the escapism that most anticipate from reading. Instead, I was constantly reminded of stark reality. I was angered by Casey's pride, yet possessed the same stubbornness. Despite my situation, my family constantly offers to pay for me and buy me niceties. And I'll cry, scream, and protest until my throat goes hoarse if it means protecting that sense of self-preservation.

Free Food for Millionaires teaches us that pride does not protect you from the slings and arrows of life. Community is the only way that we can defend against daily woes. Lee exemplifies this realization in the latter half of the book after Leah suffers a miscarriage caused by a sexual assault. While in the hospital recovering, the women of Leah's church choir come together to sing for her. This scene nearly made me tear up, reminding me of the importance of ties to others. Currently, politically and economically, we can start to shut down and become more selfish as a form of protection. We feel we lack autonomy and thus turn inward to focus solely on the self. But Min Jin Lee says selfishness and pride won't save you. When you see Casey denying help from her rich and wealthy friends, you feel frustrated because she keeps herself in poverty. Then, you must ask yourself why you do the same thing? Why do you deny the help offered to you? Why do you keep yourself trapped in your misery when solutions are being offered?

Ultimately, Free Food for Millionaires gives me many complex feelings. While it might not be the perfect book for me, I implore people to read it regardless. Use the novel as a starting point on your journey to being more kind to yourself.

Michelin Stars: 3.75/5 (⭐⭐⭐)

[lenateliier]

Lady Wind Master 🍃🌪️🪷