#we do a lot of work to create our stories

[assignedmale]

Our recent troubles with our home have made me acutely aware of how after ten years of working on these comics, I am still just a few bad lucks away from finding myself back on the street (lots of love to everyone who helped us out this winter!). It is unsustainable for my health and for the well-being of my family.

I think the main reason is that since the pandemic and the following recession, I have avoided mentioning my patreon as much as I could. It felt out of place, when so many people in our communities were struggling. Naturally, subscribers come and go and that's how it should be. However, barely promoting it for several years has made the amount of subscribers slowly but steadily decline. When you add inflation to the mix, I'm now at a point where I can barely afford groceries.

I used to rely on speaking tours to make up for it. But honestly, it has become too dangerous. I have never received as many threats as I do right now. As my husband and I are trying to conceive, it would be reckless to put myself in harm's way as much as I used to.

Of course, I could stop everything and get a job that pays real money at any time. But I don't think I could live with myself, not when our communities are facing so much violence. I believe in what I do and the importance of creating art that empowers and raise awareness.

So this is to let you know that I will be promoting my patreon a bit more in the coming weeks. It always feels awkward, first and foremost because I know that a lot of my most dedicated readers, the ones who have the highest chance of seeing these posts, are already patrons in one way or another, but also because it probably gets repetitive for many of you. I hope you won't mind!

My goal is to eventually double the current amount of subscribers (965). Do you believe that we can do it?

www.patreon.com/assignedmale

I have also two other pages, if you are interested in different content : A Frog in the Bog, about my foraging and gardening in Finland : www.patreon.com/afroginthebog Pastel Sexy Times, my 18+ art and short story page : www.patreon.com/pastelsexytimes

I wish you all the best for Pride Month - stay tuned for a lot of new art!

Love you, Sophie

[pictured : Nandor the Relentless, for engagement]

[sparkyskid]

BLeeM, renowned improv storyteller and lore builder, used improv storytelling skills to create a joke-based rival group in a season about rage and justice (XP leveling bad and unfair). He did not go to public school. All the fans, who largely did go to public school and tend to be queer/neurodivergent, resonated strongly with the unintended theme of the ways schools cannot possibly reach every student in the way they need to be successful.

BLeeM, who did not go to public school, likely didn’t realize this theme, only that something was compelling. As an improv storyteller, it works because it is compelling. Rage and Justice in high school goes hand in hand with feeling like the system is rigged against you. He integrated this in a way he was familiar (privileged cis straight white person with perfect home life has nothing to write on college essays and vilifies an already struggling minority about it, and XP leveling can be very unfair because it can be cheated). These are the ways that TRG and KLCK are intended to be antagonists in the story.

As fans, we have FAR more time between episodes to consider themes and implications and metatext. BLeeM, who is doing it largely improvised in a short period of time, and who never went to public high school, likely simply missed that this was a possible theme that was emerging. And that unintended theme resonated SO STRONGLY with an audience of public schoolers who (in some way) were all let down by the school system due to queerness/neurodivergence.

The unintentional themes that emerge from a body of work is where you see glimpses of the author’s identities and biases. In this case, that being BLeeM having not been in the public school system.

It is still a theme in the work- and I agree that it is what makes FHJY so compelling. But an improvised storyteller who didn’t go to public school and is recording this entire show in a very tight time window is simply not going to have the time and space to pick up on a theme so deeply personal to the public school experience. Frustration is logical, but at some point you gotta put on your “basic literary analysis” hat and realize that pobody’s nerfect and a creator can’t be aware of all the unintended themes that show up in their work.

D20 is a show with a format, and the constraints of how it is recorded means there is a lot that has to be planned from the start, and there is only so far that one can deviate within the realm of things happening. The themes that get wrapped up with a bow are intentional (Rage, Justice, XP leveling). The themes that don’t are unintentional (everyone slipping through the cracks of the school system to varying degrees). The group rightfully saw it as compelling and kept returning to it. But the tight time frame of recording a season means they may not have had time to sit down and specifically realize the theme and it’s most satisfying conclusion. We the fans had that time and space to realize it. Herein is the disconnect between our experience and the experience of those who participated in FHJY. And why the pre-recorded interviews are unsatisfying to so many- the unintended theme is still not brought up.

Tbh if D20 was more like CR or TAZ or D&Daddies in the sense of recording and releasing in real time, there likely would have been enough time and space for the participants to see how the fan base resonated with the theme of being left behind by the school system, and they would have been able to continue the improvised storytelling to incorporate more of that explicitly, and wrap up the theme at the end. But it isnt- it’s all prerecorded in a short time window, and nothing will get changed or added once they wrap. This is a limitation of the format. We get incredible production value, music, elaborate battle maps and countless minis, at the cost of everything being done by the time anyone sees even a moment of it.

The ending and the epilogues are meant to wrap up the themes that are present, but if the theme was unintentional or unnoticed, it won’t get wrapped up because no one realizes it’s there. This is a loss, for sure. But it is one I can forgive, because of the context of recording the improvised show in a narrow time frame where they have some planned story beats they have to make sure to get in regardless of where the improvised part takes them. The cast was focused on other things. They didn’t have time and space to realize the elaborate meta narrative about how the school system is so “we have to try to reach everyone, one size must fit all” that a lot of children get left behind because everyone’s needs are so different.

We, as students and teachers and support staff around the school, are quick to identify this unintended theme because we are surrounded by it already. The improv storytellers we are watching are not, and they are on a tight tight time crunch to get it all recorded and hit all the beats they need to hit to make the intended story work.

[mochiwrites]

hi. hello. it’s me, everyone’s favorite mochi /j. I have a little thought for you all.

I hold my hands out to you, a gentle reminder to send some love to your fic writers. it’s easy to read a fic and go “that was great!” and close out of it. but it’s not easy to write said fic.

some writers spend hours agonizing over their writing. some take weeks or even months to write due to reasons out of their control. and some completely give up because they lose the motivation.

a lot of work goes into the fics you read. work that’s free. so here is your gentle reminder that while you aren’t obligated to, it brightens a writer’s day when you leave them something nice. a comment, a kudos, a message of some kind. it’s a way of saying “I see this. And I enjoy it. Please keep doing what you’re doing.”

some writer’s get lost in their head, they get a little insecure. so just… go on and give them some love, yeah? let them know you appreciate what they do <3

[simgerale]

me after attempting to get back into sims and realizing i had a lot more to do than play the game

[writhe]

[toonbly]

honestly i have a really have a hard time looking at my old vrai stuff. but going through old stuff for grtv fills me with absolute delight, its been so long but i still hold so much love for this story and the people who followed it

[charaunofficial]

Mod is this Dessmods december? Or your own version of her

(Nope! Dessmod is super cool but very obviously has an idea for what she's up to in their universe. This is my own :)

Honestly I think the only blog that, of those I've talked to, could be considered a part of this blog's canon would be Memo (and we have talked about it a bit) but iirc they still haven't made a solid decision on it and honestly I respect that! So for now, I am the one and only blog for this continuity, and it'll likely stay that way. I'm a bit finicky about that just because I do have a whole story in mind, and sorting out the lore and everything with someone I don't know that well is just a hassle I don't want to deal with right now, mostly because I don't have a ton of spare time.)

[vaspider]

While I'm writing things that I've been intending to write for a while... one of the things that I think that a lot of people who haven't been involved in like... banking or corporate shenaniganry miss about why our economy is its current flavor of total fuckery is the concept of "fiduciary duty to shareholders."

"Why does every corporation pursue endless growth?" Fiduciary duty to shareholders.

"Why do corporations treat workers the way they do?" Fiduciary duty to shareholders.

"Why do corporations make such bass-ackwards decisions about what's 'good for' the company?" Fiduciary duty to shareholders.

The legal purpose of a corporation with shareholders -- its only true purpose -- is the generation of revenue/returns for shareholders. Period. That's it. Anything else it does is secondary to that. Sustainability of business, treatment of workers, sustainability and quality of product, those things are functionally and legally second to generating revenue for shareholders. Again, period, end of story. There is no other function of a corporation, and all of its extensive legal privileges exist to allow it to do that.

"But Spider," you might say, "that sounds like corporations only exist in current business in order to extract as much money and value as possible from the people actually doing the work and transfer it up to the people who aren't actually doing the work!"

Yes. You are correct. Thank you for coming with me to that realization. You are incredibly smart and also attractive.

You might also say, "but Spider, is this a legal obligation? Could those running a company be held legally responsible for failing their obligations if they prioritize sustainability or quality of product or care of workers above returns for shareholders?"

Yes! They absolutely can! Isn't that terrifying? Also you look great today, you're terribly clever for thinking about these things. The board and officers of a corporation can be held legally responsible to varying degrees for failing to maximize shareholder value.

And that, my friends, is why corporations do things that don't seem to make any fucking sense, and why 'continuous growth' is valued above literally anything else: because it fucking has to be.

If you're thinking that this doesn't sound like a sustainable economic model, you're not alone. People who are much smarter than both of us, and probably nearly as attractive, have written a proposal for how to change corporate law in order to create a more sensible and sustainable economy. This is one of several proposals, and while I don't agree with all of this stuff, I think that reading it will really help people as a springboard to understanding exactly why our economy is as fucked up as it is, and why just saying 'well then don't pursue eternal growth' isn't going to work -- because right now it legally can't. We'd need to change -- and we can change -- the laws around corporate governance.

This concept of 'shareholder primacy' and the fiduciary duty to shareholders is one I had to learn when I was getting my securities licenses, and every time I see people confusedly asking why corporations try to grow grow grow in a way that only makes sense if you're a tumor, I sigh and think, 'yeah, fiduciary duty to shareholders.'

(And this is why Emet and I have refused to seek investors for NK -- we might become beholden to make decisions which maximize investor return, and that would get in the way of being able to fully support our people and our values and say the things we started this company to say.)

Anyway, you should read up on these concepts if you're not familiar. It's pretty eye-opening.

[inkskinned]

no, actually, where is the whimsy?

my ex had a best friend named larry who asked me once: what do you think comes after irony?

we were at the bar where larry worked. it was a quiet night, and he'd hopped over to sit with us on the patron side. i swirled the lemon around my limoncello martini.

earnest positivity, i said, while my ex said, art self-destructs.

i stared at my ex. he stared at me.

his argument was the cinemasins argument: look how bad media is becoming! look at the loopholes and the dumb shit!

it was roughly 2011. galaxy print was still in. at the time, i had a favorite shirt that was a wolf howling at the moon. it got ripped in half in the wash and i honestly still mourn it. i dressed like effie stonem, because everyone did. and irony was the name of the thing. men liked MLP "ironically." the internet liked the kind of crass, "anti-mainstream" vibes of things like fuck romance, touch my butt and buy me pizza. we put cats in sunglasses everywhere, which was because we only liked things in irony.

and media had the same vibe in it: anti-hero white men would be "hard to love" and then storm off the scene. nobody was just earnestly trying to save the world: they were jaded, angry, unoriginal. mad you even asked them to try to help.

my ex ends up not being wrong. cinemasins becomes super popular. a lot of people start viewing media with this lens that is the cruelest, most jaded depiction. it's wrong for your character to have unexplained powers, even if the entire movie is about how strange it is she has unexplained powers - that is still considered a "loophole." characters make thoughtless, panicked choices? loophole. characters are actually kind people, despite hardship? loophole. features a woman doing literally anything without assistance? loophole. movies become hyper-aware of scrutiny, and now irony rules the media.

which means you go to a movie, and the character has to turn to the screen and say "beats me!!" or one of the side characters has to have some kind of quip like "are you seriously telling me that you think this is normal?" because nothing can happen in earnest. like a sitcom laugh track, we now anticipate the fourth-wall break: the moment that the media acknowledges it is telling a story. the media has to apologize for itself, or else someone like my ex rolls their eyes.

but here's the thing: i wasn't wrong either.

the difference might be that i am (and always have been) so soft-hearted that any crack in the light of this world will spear me into the ground. and i was the poet in the relationship. (he thought that was the same thing as being naïve and stupid). i was making things daily. i knew how all of us artists are driven by some strange desire to evolve. he notably liked to critique art, not to create it.

so yes, i've made things that are bitter and angry and even ironic. i've made long, sharp poems with all capital letters, and i've made poems about how the silence stretches out like a song. someone wrote once that we will spend our whole lives just circling the place we grew up. i think it's more that we spend our whole lives trying to remake a home. i think it's that as we age, it becomes less exciting to build the castle on the beach - we become aware of erosion, of windforce. we realize what we really want is to come home to our dog, castle or not.

and while art in the foreground is mired in white male violence and irony, and aggression, and not taking anything seriously - i don't think that's true of all art. i think more and more artists are leaning in to the things we love. the world has changed so much. they have taken so many things from us. the only thing we have left is love. at the bottom of the moving box - all we get is the faint sense that we have to appreciate what little we've got. i can't enjoy this stuff ironically anymore: what room do i have for irony? if it makes me happy, that is an amazing thing. there are so few happy places left for me. i want to be happy because of how leaves shiver beside each other like nestling birds. i want to be happy because of the color pink, and how magenta doesn't exist. i have spent so much of this life suffering, i have earned my right to a gentle ending. if nothing matters, i get to assign meaning to the nothing. i get to create meaning. i am an artist first and foremost, which means creation is my thing.

where is the whimsy? wherever i fucking put it. because if this is my last fucking chance to do any good in this world - i want to do it earnestly. i want to write things that make you happy. that make people feel heard and seen. what comes after irony has to be positivity.

it was close to my 21st birthday. in 7 years, i would end up writing a book about this relationship, which is hopefully coming out somewhere around May 2024. i come back to this bar scene in my memories a lot. i keep thinking of how pale my ex was. the look that crossed his face. how i looked back at him. how for a moment, both of us couldn't recognize the other person. like the gulf between us was a suddenly wide and cavernous thing. like we were alien to each other. he never took my opinion seriously, and he always seemed surprised whenever his manic-pixie-dream-girl ever broke free of the plot. like in the whole time we were together, i wasn't human enough.

this knowledge: where he said nothing comes after, my only instinct was what comes after is love.

[caparrucia]

Full offense and pun fully intended, but I genuinely think the very existence of "dead dove, do not eat" was a fucking canary in the mines, and no one really paid attention.

Because the tag itself was created as a response to a fandom-wide tendency to disregard warnings and assume tagging was exaggerated. And then the same fucking idiots reading those tags describing things they found upsetting or disturbing or just not to their taste would STILL click into the stories and give the writer's grief about it.

And as a response writers began using the tag to signal "no, really, I MEAN the tags!"

But like.

If you really think about it, that's a solution to a different problem. The solution to "I know you tagged your story appropriately but I chose to disregard the tags and warnings by reading it anyway, even though I knew it would upset me, so now I'm upset and making it your problem" is frankly a block, a ban and wide-spread blacklisting. But fandom as a whole is fucking awful at handling bad faith, insidious arguments that appeal to community inclusion and weaponize the fact most people participating in fandom want to share the space with others, as opposed to hurting people.

So instead of upfront ridiculing this kind of maladaptive attempt to foster one's own emotional self-regulation onto random strangers on the internet, fandom compromised and came up with a redundant tag in a good faith attempt to address an imaginary nuance.

There is no nuance to this.

A writer's job is to tag their work correctly. It's not to tag it exhaustively. It's not even to tag it extensively. A writer's sole obligation, as far as AO3 and arguably fandom spaces are concerned, is to make damn sure that the tags they put on their story actually match whatever is going on in that story.

That's it.

That's all.

"But what if I don't want to read X?" Well, you don't read fic that's tagged X.

"But what if I read something that wasn't tagged X?" Well, that's very unfortunate for you, but if it is genuinely that upsetting, you have a responsibility to yourself to only browse things explicitly tagged to not include X.

"But that's not a lot of fic!" Hi, you must be new here, yes, welcome to fandom. Most of our spaces are built explicitly as a reaction to There's Not Enough Of The Thing I Want, both in canon and fandom.

"But there are things on the internet that I don't like!" Yeah, and they are also out there, offline. And, here's the thing, things existing even though we personally dislike or even hate or even flat out find offensive/gross/immoral/unspeakable existing is the price we pay to secure our right to exist as individuals and creators, regardless of who finds US personally unpleasant, hateful or flat out offensive/gross/immoral/unspeakable.

"But what about [illegal thing]?!" So the thing itself is illegal, because the thing itself has been deemed harmful. But your goddamn cop-poisoned authoritarian little heart needs to learn that sometimes things are illegal that aren't harmful, and defaulting to "but illegal!" is a surefire way to end up on the wrong side of the fascism pop quiz. You're not a figure of authority and the more you demand to control and exercise authority by command, rather than leadership, the less impressive you seem. You know how you make actual, genuine change in a community? You center harm and argue in good faith to find accommodations and spread awareness of real, actual problems.

But let's play your game. Let's pretend we're all brainwashed cop-abiding little cogs that do not own a single working brain cell to exercise critical thinking with. 99% of the time, when you cry about any given thing "being illegal!!!" you're correct only so far as the THING itself being illegal. The act or object is illegal. Depiction of it is not. You know why, dipshit? Because if depiction of the thing were illegal, you wouldn't be able to talk about it. You wouldn't be able to educate about it. You wouldn't be able to reexamine and discuss and understand the thing, how and why and where it happens and how to prevent it. And yeah, depiction being legal opens the door for people to make depictions that are in bad taste or probably not appropriate. Sure. But that's the price we pay, creating tools to demystify some of the most horrific things in the world and support the people who've survived them. The net good of those tools existing outweighs the harm of people misusing them.

"You're defending the indefensible!" No, you're clumsily stumbling into a conversation that's been going on for centuries, with your elementary school understanding of morality and your bone-deep police state rot filtering your perception of reality, and insisting you figured it out and everyone else at the table is an idiot for not agreeing with you. Shut the fuck up, sit the fuck down and read a goddamn book.

[etherealkissed88]

how i manifest when i feel anxious •°. *࿐

i decide i have what i want…

when i feel anxiety -> i let it pass while knowing its only a human reaction

◦ since i am beyond just a human (i am limitless imagination/self), i know any anxiety is below me and it has nothing to do with my limitless self. i have exactly what i decided i have, regardless of any anxiety.

know anxiety usually comes from a fear of failure

◦ so, i cannot limit myself based on what i see or what i negatively assume my future will look like bc i am always beyond the 3d, no matter what feelings/anxiety my human self experiences.

◦ i become indifferent/i dont care about what i see or what i assume i will see because i know everything comes together in the 3d once i change self/know its done. fact: everything always comes together and works out in the end. being indifferent to the 3d = being indifferent to emotions, anxiety and everything that doesnt serve you.

dont fight it, dont avoid it, tackle it head on

◦ acknowledge you are experiencing anxiety bc you are. yes it can feel like shit but it doesnt have to affect who you are being (whatever version of self you are embodying). again, i can choose to be indifferent to this anxiety. you dont have to be scared of the anxiety. it is a natural human response. cry if you need to, let it all out. dont try to suppress it bc that will only come to bite you back in the ass, believe me.

◦ take care of your mental health in whatever ways necessary. when i used to experience anxiety, i used to take walks in the park, clear my head, meditate, express myself and my emotions through art and journaling, etc. remember nothing you do (or feel) in the 3d has to affect who you are being/your state.

"how can i still have anxiety yet still be a desired version of me?"

anxiety has no affect on anything unless you allow it to change your identity. you are the one with power, the anxiety is only an experience, similar to breathing in oxygen and using our sense of touch; its all neutral. when you start surrendering to the anxiety, you are creating and accepting negative stories that you create based on the feeling of anxiety. allowing that anxious feeling to change your state/identity is surrendering to something you view as more "powerful" than you. stop transforming that anxiety into a state that you embody based on the false, negative stories u imagine.

remember a 3d experience or anxious feelings doesnt have to influence who you are being. an example: a model who knows (fulfilled) that she is graceful and beautiful can have anxiety about doing her catwalk. the anxiety is normal, she can experience the symptoms of anxiety (shortness of breath, dry mouth, shaking) but her core identity/state is still a graceful model. the anxiety is only a temporary feeling. usually when we experience these feelings, they occupy all of our attention in that moment which is why it seems so scary but in reality, its not that big a deal. know that anxiety is just a feeling. you are safe. you can still experience shitty feelings while knowing you are a bad bitch!

you dont always identify with everything you experience. for example, a lot of people experience good things and still identify as people who are unworthy of good things. so its really up to you to choose what to identify with.

i know my only job is knowing its done

◦ if i just decided its done, as the operant power, as i say goes, therefore its done. so my job is done. anxiety is part of the 3d, not my limitless self, imagination. so i can be indifferent and experience it without identifying with it, the same way people manifest what they desire while experiencing their shitty circumstances daily (because they do not identify with those shitty experiences).

◦ ive heard/experienced situations where we know its done yet we cried and felt like shit, and what we wanted still manifested into the 3d. bc anxiety is only a feeling. do not allow your feelings to take hold of your state, but if it does, its never the end of the world... just get back in the state. 3d shit/anxiety doesnt have to intervene with who you are being/what you identify with.

kisses, jani ☆

[ave661]

Post about art-theft, AI and tracing of my render:

Unfortunately, one of my renders I made a year ago, was traced, copied, edited by AI by "brothers in arms" store and now sold as a merch aimed towards CoD fandom. They are currently sending this out to various cosplayers asking them to promote it.

As someone who is affected by this, I have to speak up about it.

(post about it on twt & insta)

I found out about it by accident when I saw promoted post on my insta feed. When I started talking about it in my stories, this store sent me a private message saying they had been working on this design for weeks and had never heard of me so they definitely didn't steal anything, and offered me free stuff. When I disagreed with them and sent them files comparing our works, they stopped replying to me, so I continued talking about it again on my insta. Only when my followers started leaving comments under their post saying this is wrong, they decided to continue discussion on the next day.

2. They mentioned that they could have been inspired by some pictures they found on the internet and showed me their "first sketch" of design… which was made by AI.

3. During the conversation, they mentioned that their artist could have based his work on a picture he found on the Internet, but he defended himself by saying that they might not have known it was mine. But even if they didn't know about me, even if they found some fanart on the Internet - it doesn't mean you can copy something detail by detail and sell it as your own. What is most important here, their offer to solve the problem was to give me credits in their design. IF they worked hard on it, why would they want to give me credits? My offer was to remove it.

4. Why do I mention that it could have been done by AI? because many lines are unfinished and a lot of details don't make sense.

5. Below is a comparison of my render that I published on March 18, 2023 with their first sketch they showed me, which apparently they drew themselves:

I am saying this so that the CoD community, which is very large, will be aware of this, because there are many people who have already bought it and after my insta story, they felt bad and said they want return it because they don't want to support art theft.

It's not just about me anymore - it could have happened to anyone who creates fanart and share it on the Internet just for fun. One day someone may use it for their own profit without us being aware of it. It doesn't matter if it's a 3D render or a drawing. All artists in this (or any other) fandom do not deserve to experience such thing, and we need to speak out about it to prevent it from happening in the future.

Reposting fanart is, as this example shows, dangerous and hurtful, so please respect artists and don’t do this. Especially on pinterest.

Their only proposal and offer to give me credits for the work they traced is something I will never agree to.

[esoteric-goblin]

on worldbuilding, and what people think is going on

there is one facet of fantasy worldbuilding that is, to me, the most interesting and essential but i don't see it come up in worldbuilding guides or writing prompts or anything, and that is the question of:

what do the inhabitants of your world believe about how the world works, and how are they wrong? a lot of fantasy media will set up their cosmology, gods, magic systems, planar systems, concepts of the afterlife, &c., and proceed as though the inhabitants of the world know and understand them.

from someone whose entire academic career is focused on studying human culture in various regions and time periods, with a focus on belief systems (religion, occultism, mythology, folklore): that sort of worldbuilding is unrealistic and missing out on so much fun.

people are always seeking new understanding about how the world works, and they are mostly wrong. how many models of the solar system were proposed before we reached our current one? look at the long, turbulent history of medicine and our various bizarre models for understanding the human body and how to fix it. so many religions and occult/magical traditions arise from people disagreeing with or adapting various models of the world based on new ideas, methods, technologies. many of them are wrong, but all of them are interesting and reflect a lot about the culture, beliefs, values, and fears of the people creating/practising them.

there is so much more to the story of what people believe about the world than just what is true.

to be clear: i think it's fine and important for the author to have a coherent explanation for where magic comes from or who the gods are, so they can maintain consistency in their story. but they should also be asking what people in the world (especially different people, in different regions/nations and different times) think is happening when they do magic, or say a prayer, or practise medicine, or grieve their dead. it is a rich vein for conflict between individuals and nations alike when two models of the world disagree. it is fascinating how different magic systems might develop according to different underlying beliefs.

personally, i think it is the most fun to spawn many diverse models of the world, but give none of them the 'right' answer.

(bonus points if you also have a thriving academic system in the world with its own theory, research, and discourse between factions! as an academic, it is very fun to imagine fictional academic debate over the topics i'm worldbuilding. sometimes i will be working out details for some underlying mechanic of the world and start imagining the papers being written by scholars researching it)

[guardianspirits13]

Ok. I’m still trying to gather my thoughts and settle my hyperfixation after episode 3 of the Percy Jackson show, but one of my conclusions is that this is one of very few adaptations that actually understands the term ‘adaptation’ and furthermore what makes one successful.

On a fundamental level, understanding and respecting the source material is a must. You need to not just know the bullet points of the story, but you need to know the ‘why’s’- why does this story need to be heard, why do people like it, why does it stand out from the others in it’s genre, etc.

Second, you need to deconstruct the source material and piece it back together in a way that makes sense for the new format. Copy-pasting almost never works, since there will inevitably be discrepancies between the readers’ imagination and the adaptation that can distract from immersion.

Third, you need to provide something new. Why does this story deserve to be told in a different format? What can this add to the original themes of a story? What can we change to make the message come across more on screen? Will this dialogue really be as funny when it’s said out loud?

We’ve seen a lot of terrible “adaptations” of animation and books and musicals into movies/tv shows, and I think even among the better ones there is a dissonance between the desire to stay faithful to the source and the desire to make a good adaptation, with whatever changes that may necessitate.

I think while we’ve watched the casting of this series, the hints here and there, and final the premiere with bated breath, they’ve been playing the long game. They cast Walker as Percy before he was in the Adam Project. Many people expressed…unsavory…feelings when Leah was cast as Annabeth, but those of us that trusted the team behind this project- including the author himself- did our best to welcome her and were repaid tenfold with her performance in this episode particularly.

Most of the scenes in this episode were not at all how I imagined them in the book, but I adored it. They took what they were given and expanded on it. They created a mini-arc for the trio learning to trust each other. They gave Medusa a labyrinthine lair. Annabeth is a 12 year old walking into a convenience store for the first time in 6+ years with $200 in her pocket, of course she’s gonna buy as much as she can carry.

The love and care and artistry that went into this single episode brings me so much joy and gives me so much hope. Like I was already excited for a faithful adaptation, but seeing these characters come to life on screen, once you see their chemistry with each other and how they speak and push and pull at each other’s emotions, it has never been more clear to me the amount of care and foresight that went into this show.

Rick said that these kids are the characters he created and for like 2 years I’ve trusted that that was true, but today it was proven beyond the shadow of a doubt.

I am just…in awe.

[spirits-having-flown]

“matthew, it is with heavy heart i say goodbye. the times we had together are honestly among the favorite times of my life. it was an honor to share the stage with you and to call you my friend. i will always smile when i think of you and i’ll never forget you. never. spread your wings and fly brother, you’re finally free. much love. and i guess you’re keeping the 20 bucks you owe me.” - matt leblanc

“i am so grateful for every moment i had with you matty and i miss you every day. when you work with someone as closely as i did with matthew, there are thousands of moments i wish i could share. for now here's one of my favorites. to give a little backstory, chandler and monica were supposed to have a one night fling in london. but because of the audience's reaction, it became the beginning of their love story. in this scene, before we started rolling, he whispered a funny line for me to say. he often did things like that. he was funny and he was kind. 🤍🕊️" - courteney cox

“oh boy this one has cut deep... having to say goodbye to our matty has been an insane wave of emotions that i've never experienced before. we all experience loss at some point in our lives. loss of life or loss of love. being able to really sit in this grief allows you to feel the moments of joy and gratitude for having loved someone that deep. and we loved him deeply. he was such a part of our dna. we were always the 6 of us. this was a chosen family that forever changed the course of who we were and what our path was going to be. for matty, he knew he loved to make people laugh. as he said himself, if he didn't hear the 'laugh' he thought he was going to die. his life literally depended on it. and boy did he succeed in doing just that. he made all of us laugh. and laugh hard. in the last couple weeks, i've been pouring over our texts to one another. laughing and crying then laughing again. i'll keep them forever and ever. i found one text that he sent me out of nowhere one day. it says it all. matty, i love you so much and i know you are now completely at peace and out of any pain. i talk to you every day... sometimes i can almost hear you saying "could you BE any crazier?" rest little brother. you always made my day... ��️🕊️” - jennifer aniston

“matty, thank you for ten incredible years of laughter and creativity. i will never forget your impeccable comic timing and delivery. you could take a straight line of dialogue and bend it to your will, resulting in something so entirely original and unexpectedly funny it still astonishes. and you had heart. which you were generous with, and shared with us, so we could create a family out of six strangers. this photo is from one of my favorite moments with you. now it makes me smile and grieve at the same time. i imagine you up there, somewhere, in the same white suit, hands in your pockets, looking around— "Could there BE any more clouds?” “ - david schwimmer

“shot the pilot, friends like us, got picked up then immediately, we were at the nbc upfronts. then... you suggested we play poker and made it so much fun while we initially bonded. thank you for that. thank you for making me laugh so hard at something you said, that my muscles ached, and tears poured down my face every day. thank you for your open heart in a six way relationship that required compromise. and a lot of "talking." thank you for showing up at work when you weren't well and then, being completely brilliant. thank you for the best 10 years a person gets to have. thank you for trusting me. thank you for all I learned about grace and love through knowing you. thank you for the time i got to have with you, matthew.” - lisa kudrow

friends cast remembers matthew perry 🤍🕊️

[rowenablade]

Okay. I’m going to wait to do a second watch before I articulate most of my other feelings here, but I want to address one thing.

I’m seeing a lot of posts like, “I related to Izzy because I am also queer and older/disabled/depressed. By killing him off, the writers are saying that I deserve to die.”

Guys.

I’m not saying your feelings aren’t valid. I totally understand grieving a character that you relate to. But speaking as a writer, I just want to point out that trying to write with the shadow of “what is the absolute worst and most harmful way a reader can interpret this” will smother your ability to create. Twisting yourself in knots, trying to think up the worst-faith takes possible and scotch-guarding all your writing decisions against them is exhausting to the point of making you just not want to write anymore.

And we’ve seen the writers deliberately choose not to do this in Season 1. Remember all those terrible “Izzy is racist” takes that the writers and cast seemed completely blindsided by? That happened because the writers and directors and actors weren’t going over every scene with a fine tooth comb, ferreting out every shot or line of dialogue or micro expression that could possibly be interpreted as racist, and scrubbing it off. Because there comes a point where your story is what it needs to be, and you have to accept that some people will interpret it in ways you didn’t intend them to. And if you can’t accept that, you’ll never find the courage to put your work out there.

The point of diverse casts and writing teams isn’t to achieve a state of, “Nothing bad ever happens to a character from a marginalized demographic ever again.” It’s to achieve a status quo of these types of characters just being people in the world of the story. Not symbols, not representation boxes to tick, not tokens that you can point to so that you can say, “Here, we acknowledged this type of person exists, now where’s our woke points?”

OFMD is full of characters of color, queer characters, older characters, characters of differing body types. And in stories, things happen to characters. Some fall in love. Some make the same mistakes over and over. Some turn into birds. Some die.

Izzy’s character represents a lot of things, but he does not represent every older, disabled fan or fan who has struggled with suicide, any more than Jim represents all genderqueer fans, or Olu represents all black fans. That’s not how the writers were handling him. They were handling him like a character, because that’s what you have to do.

Again, I understand being sad. I am so, so fucking sad. But this idea of, “Any time something bad happens to a character I relate to means that the writer thinks I deserve these bad things to happen to me,” will poison everything you engage with eventually. Because stories are full of things happening to characters, and they won’t all be good things. And the more representation we get, the more often bad things will happen to characters we relate to.

But good things will happen too.

Queer couples get married. Disabled women run off with their favorite husbands. Middle-aged characters change careers. A multiracial polycule finds a home at sea. A fat man covered in tattoos stars in a drag show and all his friends cheer. All these things happened in the same show as Izzy’s death. This is what this world is.

Anyway. I know emotions are running high and I’ll probably get blocked or unfollowed by a few people for this. But I’m just trying to find my peace where I can, and if anyone else finds this useful, cheers.