“I hate the script, the vault dwellers sound so cheesy—“ my Brother in Steel you realize that’s the point, right? They were bred to act like the physical embodiment of an HR e-mail. Did you not catch the memo that Vault-Tec put out regarding their experiment facilities?
'I flirted with the idea that instead of being trans that I was just a cross-dresser (a quirk, I thought, that could be quietly folded into an otherwise average life) and that my dysphoria was sexual in nature, and sexual only. And if my feelings were only sexual, then, I wondered, perhaps I wasn’t actually trans.
I had read about a book called The Man Who Would Be Queen, by a Northwestern University professor who believed that transwomen who were attracted to women were really confused fetishists, they wanted to be women to satisfy an autogynephilia. And though I first read about this book in the context of its debunkment and disparagement, I thought about the electricity of slipping on those tights, zipping up those boots, and a stream of guilt followed. Maybe this professor was right, and maybe I was only a fetishist. Not trans, just a misguided boy.
About a year later, on the Internet, I come across a transwoman who added a unique message to the crowd refuting this professor. Oh, I wish I remember who this woman was, and I wish even more that I could do better than paraphrase her, but I remember her saying something like this: “Well, of course I feel sexy putting on women’s clothing and having a woman’s body. If you feel comfortable in your body for the first time, won’t that probably mean it’ll be the first time you feel comfortable, too, with delighting in your body as a sexual thing?”'
FINALLYYYYYY. My guys of the jury, this has a tracked 30 damn hours and boy does it feel like it. ANYWAYS, I return for more AU shenanigans because Get Redeemed Loser AU lives in my head rent free. Felt like a nice way to experiment with more vertical style comics? Which is SM EASIER TO PANEL THAN CLASS LAYOUTS. I get why they're so much more common nowadays. Comic,,, so satisfying but at what cost,,, i'm tired. So proud of the top half tho :3.
Okay back to AU brainrot, Mark and Wasp fighting over one of their core differences! I think this is early in their relationship where Mark still thinks Wasp can at least understand what it's like being Nolan's son, only to get smacked in the face with how pride Wasp holds in that title. Anyways, look below to see my suffering made into video.
local artist redoes like 4 damn panels 8 bajillion times and screams into the sky ♡ also if you want fic of this au you should read the fic that @avisisisis wrote about it, ooooo you wanna read it so bad, it's good :3
God forbid when aang has emotions and act like his age, like seriously I can't with people. Like I'm sorry, a lot of you assume people that defend aang thought he's perfect that could never do anything wrong, like no bitch I love him DESPITE his flaw, because guess what?? When he act childish, and or do anything wrong in the show, his ACTION HAS CONSEQUENCES. and ya know what else?? DESPITE EVERYTHING HE'S STILL A VERY COMPASSIONATE CHARACTER WITH HEARTS AND LOVE SO BIG FOR THE WORLD THAT DONE NOTHING BUT GAVE HIM SO MUCH PAIN AND SUFFERING.
You people keep nick picking every single thing he had done as if it's the crime against humanity, it's not him who commit genocide and colonialism in the show now isn't!? I'm sick and tired many of y'all act like he's one dimensional as well. HE HAS DEPTH, WE LITERALLY WATCH THE SAME SHOW!?
Come on man, it's almost two decades of this same thing, I'm so tired, leave my boy alone for fuck sake oh my god
@prudensvulpes requested Sora with Dylan Hollis' energy where he has his own cooking channel! Thank you so much for your patience! And this was alot of fun to do! I used Dylan Hollis' "Fake Apple Pie" tiktok (shortened to certain moments and some moved around for comedic effect!). I hope you like it and thank you again :)!
And here's a bonus sketch because I couldn't resist drawing Sora's face lighting up the same way Dylan Hollis' does when a recipe is actually good!:
I'm seeing a lot of people with neurodivergency, specially under the autism spectrum say that "Laios is annoying, never shuts up, is insensitive, and I can't stand him"; and the irony is not lost on me lmao.
post/734733274896809984/do-you-ever-worry-your-own-writing-might-come-off that makes sense. i was asking because i'm afraid of accidentally writing misogyny myself and i kind of admire what you do
Hmm... I wish I had better advice to give you on this front, but honestly, the only thing I can tell you is to consider the perspective of your female characters.
Women are people. They have thoughts and feelings of their own, so like... just let them have their own arcs. A lot of the worst misogyny in WC comes from the way that the writers just don't care about their girls (or, in the case of tall shadow, actually get undermined and forced to rewrite entire chapters), so they're not curious about their lives, or WHY they feel the way they do or what they want, or any direction for their character arcs.
Turtle Tail as an example. She'll often just end up feeling whatever Gray Wing's plot demands. She's gotta leave when Storm dumps him to make him feel lonely. She shows up again to love him in the next book. Lets her best friend Bumble get dragged back to Tom the Wifebeater, but is sad enough about her death to be "unreasonably angry" with Clear Sky, and then calms down and accept Gray Wing is right all along.
And then she dies, so he can have his very own fridge wife.
In this way, Turtle Tail's just being used to tell Gray Wing's story. They're not interested in why she would turn on Bumble, or god forbid any lingering negative feelings for how she didn't help her, or even resentment towards Clear Sky for killing her or Gray Wing for jumping to his defense. She isn't really going through her own character arc.
She does have personality traits of her own, don't misunderstand my criticism, but as a character she revolves around Gray Wing.
So, zoom out every now and then, and just ask yourself; "Whose story is being told by what I wrote? Do my female characters have goals, wants, and agency, or are they just supporting men? How do their choices impact the narrative?"
But that's already kinda assuming that you already have characters like Turtle Tail who DO have personalities and potential of their own. Here's some super simple and practical advice that helped me;
Tally the genders in your cast. How many are boys, how many are girls, how many are others?
And take stock of how many of those characters are just in the supporting cast, and compare that to the amount you have in the main cast.
If you have a significant imbalance, ESPECIALLY in the main cast, fire the Woman Beam.
It's a really simple trick to just write a male character, and then change its gender while keeping it the same. I promise women are really not fundamentally different from men lmao. You can consider how your in-universe gender roles affect them later, if you'd like, but when you're just starting to wean yourself off a "boy bias" this trick works like a charm.
Also you're not allowed to change the body type of any girl you Woman Beam because I said so. PLEASE allow your girls to have muscles, or be fat, or be old, or have lots of scars. Do NOT do what a cowardly Triple A studio does, where the women all have the same cute or sexy face and curvy body while they're standing next to dwarves, robots, and a gorilla.
Or this shit,
If you do this I will GET you. If you're ever possessed by the dark urge, you will see my face appear in the clouds like Mufasa himself to guide you away from the path of evil.
Anyway, you get better at just making characters girls to begin with as time goes on and you practice it. It's really not as big of a deal as your brain might think it is.
Take a legitimate interest in female characters and try not to disproportionately hit them with parental/romance plots as opposed to the male cast, and you'll be fine. Don't think of them as "SPECIAL WOMEN CHARACTERS" just make a character and then let her be a girl, occasionally checking your tally and doing some critical thinking about their use in the story.
(Also remember I'm not a professional or anything, I'm just trying to give advice)
Are there any other wizarding families that are underexplored in canon and pique your interest in a similar way to the Blacks?
This is a unique function of what food my brain worms like to eat, but no one's doing it like the Blacks. The drama? The intrigue? The Gothic horror? The prodigal sons and lost daughters and killers and sinners and martyrs and saints? The wizard Catholicism of it all? The story of the House of Black is the best book never written.
Honestly I think crocodile/dragon and crocodile/Doflamingo are only interesting when treated as failed relationships spinning off into increasingly petty grudges and instigations. Become a warlord to piss off one ex by working with his hated father only for the OTHER ex to ALSO become a warlord to drive you insane. Etc.
I am now going to take his as an opportunity to rant about Dragodile because I unironically think it's an interesting ship if Crocodad Real and I don't think I'm ever going to find a better excuse to rant about it unprompted lmao SO HERE WE GO
But yes like. Dragodile is so fucking interesting to me
A marine and a pirate falling in love with each other is already some starcrossed lovers kinda BS. But then it's like, a FORMER marine and pirate who is WORKING FOR THE GOVERNMENT. That's EXTRA JUICY, it adds layers to the starcrossed lovers shit, and I am not immune to it, it's FACINATING, like what was the dynamic here
But also we don't even know when Dragon left the marines and when he and Crocodile first met, so for all we know it could've been some real enemies-to-lovers-to-enemies shit AND THAT'S SO INTERESTING
(Also the mere concept that Dragon could've been chasing Crocodile around kinda like Smoker tried to chase Luffy, only for Crocodile to become a Shichibukai and Dragon having to give up because they're on the same side now (kinda). Like. That is so fucking funny. And then he leaves the Marines to start a revolution. Or just out of spite dshgjdgs)
Then there's the absolutely hysterical part where Crocodile is the meanest, most intimidating, standoff-ish asshole around. So the idea Dragon was fucking into that is INCREDIBLE. THIS MAN LIKES BEING BULLIED DFSHFKGHFGJHDS
(It's possible Young Croc might've been less mean but it's funnier if he wasn't)
And yeah. Somehow. In complete secret. A romance blooms.
And then there's a baby.
And Crocodile transes his gender.
And there's a divorce.
And 17 years later Crocodile has commited dozens of unforgivable warcrimes that are almost exactly the kind of things Dragon wanted to stop the government from doing to begin with.
Mind you, I don't actually think there's coming back from that, this relationship was burned to the ground and the ashes blown away by wind, there is nothing left
But could you imagine if despite the anger and the hurt and the warcrimes they still somehow loved each other
actually what's funny about the bill and ted trilogy is that the stakes Do keep getting higher with every movie, but it never really feels like they are because no matter what's happening, Bill and Ted always wind up focused solely on the potential damage posed to their families and everything else going on is just noise to them
like in Excellent Adventure, Rufus goes back in time because if something disrupts Wyld Stallyn's development, the basis of his whole society is going to collapse; bill and ted don't care about any of that, they just don't want Ted's dad to ship him off to Alaska because they won't be able to hang out anymore
in Bogus Journey, De Nomolos has this whole multi-step plan to kill Bill and Ted and take over their lives and change the whole timeline to be made in his own image; bill and ted don't care about any of that, they just don't want the princesses to wind up getting hurt (they don't even find out who De Nomolos IS until after he's been arrested)
in Face the Music, the whole timeline is unraveling, the whole of time and space is on the verge of complete collapse, and if they don't manage to pull everything together by the deadline, reality as they know it is going to end; bill and ted don't care about any of that, they just don't want to lose the relationships they have with their wives and daughters