#me when i'm lurking

[jlf23tumble]

for your lurking tag

https://at.tumblr.com/fashionlandscapeblog/claude-cahun-studies-for-a-keepsake-c1925/yi6tluwx63xk

From here! YES AND THANKS!

[nostalgia-tblr]

Hey do yous want to see my favourite bit from the first Thor film? It's this bit:

What's going on here? Why would anyone be standing behind that big gold pillar for any reason other than to slink out from behind it? There's nothing there! Not even the sinister shadows that I suspect were supposed to be on that part of the set.

Oh ho ho, here we go, here we goooooo!!!

Oh yeah, I absolutely 100% trust whatever this lad's about to say. That's the least shifty approach I've ever seen in my life. He barely even skulked.

Listen to him, Thor! I don't care what he's saying to you, it's definitely good advice whatever it is. See how he's leaning towards you in a completely un-conspiratorial manner, speaking quietly because he knows you're a sensitive type who gets nervous around loud noises. This is really good advice. You can tell because he looks so earnest.

Oh and here come some witnesses! I mean your friends!

You can safely ignore whatever he's saying now though, Thor. He's obviously got a bit intimidated by the success that lies ahead when you carry out this amazing plan that you've just come up with all by yourself after he suggested it.

Oof, he's very against you doing that thing that you're about to do! He's sooooo disappointed with the way this is going. He's just said it's madness! In a loud, clear voice that should have carried across the room quite well.

I wonder if any of the witnesses overheard that part of the conversation?

Aye. Aye, they did :)

[leiascully]

You know what, I am unbothered by disputes in TXF fandom because I have been here since almost time immemorial, longer than a goodly number of you have been alive, and I will be here at the end of time when the universe cools, listening to “Walking After You” as everything goes stiff and cold.  I have forgotten more thoughts about Mulder and Scully and the rest of the crew than most people have even had, and I have written and written and written until these blorbos are engraved in my bones.  Look for me in the deep places; find me at the wellspring writing with water on slates.  Listen for me on the wind, whispering “fuuuuuuuck chris carterrrrrrrrr.”

[ricoka]

I see a lot of compassion for (fanfic) writers lately and I'm glad about it. I didn't wish it any other way. It takes a lot of time and a lot of research and practice. It's a lot of work, it should be honoured.

I still wish this compassion and understanding extended more towards (fan) artists as well.

People interact longer with written words and it's easier to genuinely connect with it for most people. And I often get the feeling that most people know by now as well that a lot of work goes into it. But I still don't always get the impression that people realise the same thing is true for art. You just end up looking at it for a few seconds. A few minutes if it really catches your eye, or several times if it speaks to you enough to turn it into your lock screen. But the interaction is so brief and fleeting in most cases. And I get the impression that as an artist you're not allowed to complain over not feeling valued. you're not allowed to air your grievances, or people will just block you and not reblog from you again because there's someone else, someone better, already around the corner.

[ranchthoughts]

Hi again everyone. Thank you for participating in my lengthy series of polls.

I have another follow-up poll, this one for the poll "What was the first show you wrote meta for?" . People don't always write meta for currently airing shows and I wanted to see whether the chronological spikes in meta writing coincided with the shows of the last poll.

Please feel free to indicate which show you first wrote meta for in the tags or comments! I'm curious

[boopshoops]

So deadass right after i said I prolly shouldnt start another comic about TCOAV Yuu,,,, i did it. I blame the little adhd creature running on a hamster wheel in my noggin.

(Don't worry to the remaining individuals who made requests, I didn't forget about you and they're still being worked on LOL)

Uhhhh WIP???? 😳

[vibeamphibian]

Cold glass! Covver

Flats under :3

[astromechs]

sparks fly is rebelcaptain (taylor's version) from cassian's pov and i will not take criticism on this at this juncture

[presiding]

What is your favourite thing about Billie Lurk?

(Answers are obvious possibly but i love when people talk about her👍)

thanks for the ask!! YEAH ME TOO I love when people talk about Billie! I can't say I have a favourite thing specifically, but I can explain why she's my fav. apologies for not taking this qn literally, but -

short answer: she’s really cool

& you can stop reading there, or, for the maybe 2 mutuals who might have time to read this my thoughts on her as a character, her meta, and her character as raw potential...

long answer:

i considered making this entire thing a gush so you could read a gush about Billie. but, part of what draws me to her is that she’s not always well written, and in fandom she’s underrated for a literal protagonist.

since you ask...

billie is a cool character

when I played Dh2 (hadn't played Dh1), I was excited to see a black woman with disabilities who was captaining a massive ship by herself. wow.

then I discovered Billie’s backstory with Deirdre, the way she responded to that, then having to survive while living on the run, and her bisexuality. as well as her history with daud & delilah. fascinating!

she’s an outsider who has so much to lose, and knows what it's like to lose everything - having lost everything not once but three times - but nevertheless speaks truth to power. she's so brave! she went and helped Emily & Corvo and she must have known they might kill her! plus, she’s smart, she’s funny, she gets shit done, she’s gorgeous.

but... the meta

mild critique of fandom & arkane incoming.

skip this bit if you want - you've been warned twice now - jump to tired Hayao Miyazaki and read from there if you'd like my thoughts on writing her.

i thought Death of the Outsider was going to be amazing and then... well. *sad trombone* i've written about that before so i won't keep banging on. i figured others must be disappointed too, so I joined a few fandom spaces in hopes of finding camaraderie.

most people with complaints about DotO didn’t like how the Outsider and Daud were handled. which is valid & I agree. but it seemed like most paid no attention to Billie; when people talk about her it’s with respect to Daud, as opposed to in her own right. you could argue for fandom misogyny because people don’t talk about adult Emily Kaldwin that much either, but in Billie's case, it’s misogynoir (compare & contrast with the popularity of thomas, particularly the popularity of thomas portrayed as a white man for no particular reason that i've been able to discern - i keep asking around, is it in the books???).

i think this is a LOT better now than it used to be, which is fantastic. or perhaps i have found the correct echo-chamber? ha.

ultimately, The Fandom is a fraction of the entire picture, and not even the important bit since The Fandom is not who these games are made for. you can't make money relying on only your hardcore fans even if all of them spent a fortune on merch, this is true for any AAA game.

while it's true that Billie is underrated from a fandom perspective - but Billie as an underwritten protagonist is squarely Arkane’s fault.

it was reasonable when she was a side character - the lack of info in Dh2 makes perfect sense (if anything there was more lore in Dh2 which is kind of wild)-

- but as a protagonist in Death of the Outsider?

.... there’s lousy writing, and there’s whatever is going on with Billie Lurk, a black woman who mostly exists as a foil or saviour for light-skinned characters. In her own game there’s barely any of her own lore except where it's relevant to saving two dudes.

lore hints at, but barely touches on what race means in the Dh universe (xenophobia is stronger in Dh1; separate essay i guess), but Arkane has patted themselves on the back for portraying non-white characters, which feels like the same thing as the aesthetic of diversity we're seeing in advertising currently because it’s in marketing trend guides. it's self-congratulatory and it's a missed opportunity for deeper storytelling.

you can see an example of diversity at its most shallow in the way that Billie’s written: there’s little engagement with her as an entire person with history & wants & preferences, and the world she walks through in that game feels like it has nothing to do with her. you could make a case for alienation as a theme, but then, how do you handle the titular premise of 'Dishonored' without ever letting Billie make changes in an environment without a chaos system? it's disappointing from that angle too.

in my opinion, whatever it's worth, it was an accident Arkane created such an awesome character - they needed someone to betray daud. congrats billie.

all this said, it makes her an underdog as far as characters to enjoy & create art & stories for. it's nice to find so many like-minded, switched on people! <3

billie's character potential

she’s got a wealth of unexplored lore, being deeply intertwined with both Karnaca & Dunwall’s fates & criminal underbellies, as well as her connections to the witches & whalers, and three Empresses.

she’s lived a few distinct lifetimes and in the games we get to meet her at two peaks (KoD & DotO) & a low (Dh2 as Meagan).

her voice is very distinct, her dry & often dark humour is entertaining & fun to write. her perspective is really interesting - she’s had the widest variety of void-powers of anyone canonically, and she’s also lived through the highest highs and lowest lows.

she's got everything going for her :) i couldn't really pick a fav thing!

[fisheito]

Imagine you have to set up yakumo's enclosure for the next couple months. How do you set it up and what do you put in there?

oh NO.! THE PROPPHECY HAS BEenm FUFILLED

i am standing in my room, leggies rooted to the floor. i am in shock .frozen and i have no idea how to proceed. there is a perpetual pathetically sobbing serpent under my blankie.

[throttlegainwell]

Milestone Celebration

So, turns out I'm about to have over half a million words posted on ao3 (not counting anything I've got floating around anywhere else on the internet, more recently or from forever ago). I know that's not a huge deal for some people (especially over a whole decade), but it's pretty cool to me.

In honor of that, plus my most prolific writing year on record (no really I've never written this much creative work in one year, this consistently), I'm doing a little prompt/request event. So feel free to send something in (some kind of prompt or an actual specific request), if there's something you think you'd like, and we'll see where it goes!

There's really not much I absolutely won't write, so in the interest of having the loosest, lowest-effort parameters possible, the only request is this: if it's a fandom you see I've written for before (like it's on my ao3 works page), then that fandom is fair game. No preferences other than that. (And I will give anything an honest shot, though it may take me some time and I can't absolutely promise results.)

I've seen other people do stuff like this before, and it looks like fun, so I figured I'd give it a shot. No pressure. (I'm very shy and I very rarely come up with prompts on demand, so I get it.)

[emilyartstudio-s]

Are you in any other fandoms? Not asking you to draw all the fandoms you're in or anything! Just wanna know if you have any personality other than "heeheehoohoo southpark" ?

i don't have a personality

[dapotatoauthor]

Been getting into a lot of fandoms recently...2024 will be my year of creation fr fr

[ingoodjesst]

[light spoilers] "when evil lurks" (2023) was a thoroughly engaging horror movie with great direction, pacing, and lighting that complement its themes well. that said, it was also an intense and disturbing watch with a finale that frankly had my stomach churning. it's a film interested in the fear of losing control and what it reveals about its characters. though the catalyst for misfortune is a demonic presence that possesses and manipulates people, it's generally the characters' rash attempts to recapture a sense of control over their situations that cause things to spiral. their fear-striken actions are understandable in the face of a force they cannot predict the scope of or attack directly. but over and over again, we see our protagonists choose to run away or react with violence, even when they have both folk wisdom and mounting first-hand experience to advise them against such futile actions.

there's also an interesting lens of gender to view the film through, as we often see men choosing to exert violence in a desperate bid to feel powerful again against victims that - possession aside - are generally weaker than them: disabled folks, animals, women, children, etc. all this despite women pleading with them to remember how this violence will just guarantee the evil's spread. it's worth examining how the male characters feel the need to project themselves as protectors while overriding the feelings of the people around them, how their predominant emotions of fear and anger tend to preclude their ability to clearly communicate the stakes of their predicament, etc.

in a way, violence becomes synonymous with running away throughout the film. despite what their behavior would have you believe, our MCs always have options available to them (both in their personal pasts and in the present) that are less likely to lead to ruin… yet their fear always leads them to dig deeper holes. by seeking only the physical destruction of something that refuses to be destroyed, the rotten possession is never truly dealt with. it is simply put off and worsened. instead of engaging the root problem with care and deliberation, using the rules and expertise that are gradually presented to us, our MCs constantly fall victim to their insecurities, constantly fall back on maladaptive instincts that fool them into thinking that somehow their attempts at violence and domination will work this time. maybe the brief catharsis will be worth the consequences this time.

which isn't to say that the movie necessarily suggests that things could've ever been brought back under "control". but in the end, our protagonists fail every chance they have to confront their problems properly. in seeking shortcuts to regain an illusion of control, they sacrifice whatever possibility existed of reclaiming true agency.

it's also worth mentioning that it's not hard to find parallels to the ongoing covid pandemic, i.e. fighting an invisible enemy that cannot be directly eliminated, where violation of specific guidelines intended to keep you safe leads to further spread of the "possession" and therefore further tragedy. hell, even the way that government institutions (like the police in the film) absolve themselves of dealing with the problem properly, forcing citizens to fend for themselves…

the thing is, although the demon haunting our MCs manipulates their terror to its own ends, there's still a palpable sense that many of their losses could've been avoided, if only they didn't succumb to rage and dismay at their loss of control… in this way, i see parallels with the movie "the thing" too; once you let the terror into your heart, the path to destruction is paved with the resulting paranoia and panic. thus the film leaves you with a powerful sense of powerlessness, as you watch characters get progressively consumed by their fear (and uh, other more literal things), until their fates simply fulfill themselves.

[despairforme]

Why can't he be a cool fantasy character??

[daesungindistress]

GD went for a bike ride around Seoul, found these fun BIGBANG stickers that had been placed around the city by a fan, snapped a pic, and posted it to his IG story! He even added a few BIGBANG stickers of his own, including some for VIP 💛

Pictured above is the pole where the stickers were placed. The link on the stickers is for the BIGBANG Discord server: discord.gg/bigbang