wordsandrobots

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I realize I've never posted my master studies comic here ?? If anyone wants to check it out, it's called White Cat, it's a 60 pages one shot loosely inspired by a fairytale called "The Grave Prince and the Benevolent Cat" (and its slightly more well known french version, La Chatte Blanche).

It's about a sad prince, cat therapy and repressed thoughts of violence !!

I made it a little while ago but I'm still very happy with it, it started off as a weird idea and it wouldn't leave my mind, I kind of still can't believe I actually completed it. I kept worrying while making it that maybe I'd be the only one to like it lol. Now I'm really happy to be able to say it exists !

https://tapas.io/episode/3416103 Read White Cat | Tapas Web Community

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I've been thinking about this since I saw it this morning and . . . hmm.

The *refrain* of 'keeping going' is present in both shows, but it means vastly different things. Or, rather, it's used in vastly different ways.

Because in G-Witch, it's Suletta's personal mantra, taught to her by Prospera, for whom it is a way of justifying stuff to Suletta, placing ends over means. Specifically, it's used to justify the things Prospera needs Suletta to do, hence its deployment at the end of Season 1 in order to get the kid to go murder a bunch of people. It's cynical, from Prospera's point of view, extending out of her drive to achieve her goals at all costs.

By the act of reclaiming that mantra for herself -- taking it to mean what it says rather than allowing someone else to twist it -- Suletta gains her ultimate victory, not just overcoming her blind devotion to her mother but also pushing her family to actually *move*, rather than stay trapped in the whole Delling/Vanadis/permet-semi-death snarl. Prospera's failure to move past what happens in the prologue is the mire Suletta needs to pull everyone out of at the very end, by powering onward regardless of the personal risk. And I want to stress the personal here: this is something that defines Suletta, separate from everyone else. It's *her* thing, to be somebody who will always get back up and try to help regardless of the situation. Which is obviously a very positive spin on the idea.

Over in Iron-Blooded Orphans, however, 'keep moving forward' is something that defines basically every major character. for better and very much for worse. Tekkadan, McGillis, Gaelio, Kudelia, Ein, Julieta - they all of them make the choice to keep going in spite and regardless of the consequences. Every tragedy, every wound, every battle and every death can be traced back to a character deciding they need to forge ahead and damn the torpedoes.

Yes, it's the good things too. The friendships and the loyalties and the looking out for one another through thick and thin. But in IBO, friendship is a gateway to obsession, leaving everybody balanced on the knife-edge between winning by pushing through and losing everything because this time, the odds against them were stacked too high.

In G-Witch, moving forward is clearly a good idea, given the status quo. Yet with Prospera trapped by her desire to undo past decisions, Shadiq compromised by . . . whatever you want to say, exactly, compromises his vision, and Miroine's natural instinct to run away, it's left to Suletta to catalyse things actually changing for the better.

In IBO, Mika and Orga will literally die if they stop. They cannot conceptualise the space necessary to pause and think about the results of their choices, stuck as they are in the survival mode created by their time on the streets. It's much the same for McGillis, who cuts out every last good thing in his life for the sake of reaching higher and never returning to where he once was.

I'm not trying to claim IBO is exclusive about a negative conception of the idea of 'moving forward'. It blatantly isn't. Nor am I claiming G-Witch doesn't explore that negative conception itself; again, the mantra is used by Prospera to manipulate her daughter into becoming a murderer.

At the same time, I think G-Witch stresses the idea of moving forward as personal growth, while IBO is much, much more thoroughly about the drive to keep going despite the world being tilted against you, and, importantly, what it takes to actually survive doing that. Because a good chunk of the cast do not and never could have.

Determination on its own is not enough, if you're trying to scramble up from the bottom of the social heap. It can be as destructive as it is liberating. And charging into the unknown can be a really bad idea, if you can't even describe where you're trying to get to, no matter how often you can pick yourself back up off the floor.

Which is a very different message from a show that concludes with a girl trying again so hard she bends space to save the people she cares about.

(As for G-Reco, I think that show might be the only time Tomino ever concerns himself with something approaching actual economic world-building and colonial structures as something beyond a broad underpinning of primarily national conflict. So that definitely got carried forward into IBO!)

"Don't you ever stop."

"If you run, you gain one. If you move forward, you gain two." "Even if there's nothing to gain, you have to move forward."

thinking about how the theme of 'always move forward' is being echoed in G-Witch, now that I've finished IBO

it's no surprise that newer works in the franchise call back to previous ones, but now I'm curious what message in G-Reco was carried over to IBO...

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gaelio bauduin

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I mean . . . two years prior to Zeta, no massive blows to his ego from having a burgeoning newtype wipe the floor with him, the chance to disappear completely without any expectations being imposed from outside, a mission to save the world from the Zabis/interdimensional hoo-ha, and not even a doomed infatuation with the emblem of future possibility weighing on his conscience . . .

It probably isn't too surprising to see him more put-together than any previous version of the character. They've short-circuited literally every event that shaped his personality except for the heir-to-the-Romanovs knock-off backstory. He doesn't even get to have his sister yell at him!

This iteration of Char seems... a lot more well-adjusted than any of his counterparts? Zeta Char gets pretty close prior to revealing himself as Zeon zum Deikun's heir, but this man is miles different from CCA Char.

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You know, I am suddenly reminded that when Star Trek: Discovery started airing (the show that has our heroes commit an actual, textbook war-crime in, like, episode two and this is somehow not the part anybody gets arrested for) I made a quip about how, for all the grim seriousness and obvious intent to dirty up the Federation some more, I was fully expecting the first season to end with the USS Enterprise sweeping into shot as the shining beacon of True and Proper Trek, putting everything to rights and resetting the world to the status quo. Lo and behold, that was exactly what happened, as deference to the show's status as a prequel overrode any potential for innovation Discovery may have possessed in outline.

It's a problem encountered by prequels and alt-universe stories alike, especially within long-established franchises, as everything trends towards a mean where the only point ultimately being made is: hey, isn't that thing you like good? Don't you love the thing? That thing is great!

This has been a post about G-Quacks.

[wordsandrobots]

No transphobes allowed, only transborbs.

Check out my stuff!

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I do the opposite of gatekeeping, I’m not going to shut up until you like this thing as much as I do

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Happy pride guys! dont let the bastards get u down

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this is just my opinion but i think any good media needs obsession behind it. it needs passion, the kind of passion that's no longer "gentle scented candle" and is now "oh shit the house caught on fire". it needs a creator that's biting the floorboards and gnawing the story off their skin. creators are supposed to be wild animals. they are supposed to want to tell a story with the ferocity of eating a good stone fruit while standing over the sink. the same protective, strange instinct as being 7 and making mud potions in pink teacups: you gotta get weird with it.

good media needs unhinged, googling-at-midnight kind of energy. it needs "what kind of seams are invented on this planet" energy and "im just gonna trust the audience to roll with me about this" energy. it needs one person (at least) screaming into the void with so much drive and energy that it forces the story to be real.

sometimes people are baffled when fanfic has some stunning jaw-dropping tattoo-it-on-you lines. and i'm like - well, i don't go here, but that makes sense to me. of fucking course people who have this amount of passion are going to create something good. they moved from a place of genuine love and enjoyment.

so yeah, duh! saturday cartoons have banger lines. random street art is sometimes the most precious heart-wrenching shit you've ever seen. someone singing on tiktok ends up creating your next favorite song. youtubers are giving us 5 hours of carefully researched content. all of this is the impossible equation to latestage capitalism. like, you can't force something to be good. AI cannot make it good. no amount of focus-group testing or market research. what makes a story worth listening to is that someone cares so much about telling it - through dance, art, music, whatever it takes - that they are just a little unhinged about it.

one time my friend told me he stayed up all night researching how many ways there are to peel an orange. he wrote me a poem that made me cry on public transportation. the love came through it like pith, you know? the words all came apart in my hands. it tasted like breakfast.

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So I've been slowly (very slowly) making my way through the cast of Wishing On Space Hardware, starting off with certified QT Kipchoge Ordsley and the mysterious Magenta Man. Eventually I'd like to have the whole team in here, or at the very least the core cast 🙏

As for their suits, I've cobbled together the most basic gjallarhorn officer's uniform, a sort of pared down gjallarhorn pilot suit, and uniforms of the maintenance crew.

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Gundam Wing. 13x6. The last poll I ran on twitter said anime throwback so here ya go. 💕

Instead of watching that garbage debate I wrote porn and finished this up. A much better choice for my mental health.

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#the point is not the content#the point is that another human being is so fucking feral and insane about a character or ship as you are #and you get to scream about it #it makes you feel alive and human and seen and it's the best fucking feeling in the world

Tags from @caparrucia

idk how to word this properly but wrt the fanfic thing you reblogged earlier. Why do fanfic writers have such different expectations than any other content hosting platform?

Like lets take youtube as a point of comparison, Engagement like comments and likes largely exists to boost the works place in algorithm, thats why youtubers put in calls to action and other engament bait. Few with decent reach even read the comments and the audience shouldnt try to develop any weird parasocial relationship with the youtuber. Fanfic authors ask for likes (kudos, because the websites gotta use nonstandard language for some reason) and comments despite them not having any impact on an algorithm, and seem to want the audience to try and develop a relationship with the author based on tumblr posts like that one.

Why the radical difference in behaviour away from the norm? And honestly with all the (usually) metaphorical blood spilled online about parasociality why are authors really surprised that the audience tries to keep their distance as is best practice with any other content producer?

okay I am going to answer this as kindly and as calmly as I can and try to assume that you are asking this in good faith. because my friend, the fact that you feel the need to ask is, to me, The Problem.

[this is, for the record, in response to this post]

fanfiction writers are not *posting content.* (I also have reservations about engaging with the term "content producer" or "content creator" but let's put that aside for now, I'll circle back to it.) you say "they seem to want the audience to try and develop a relationship with the author" as though it is strange, off-putting, and incomprehensible to you, when in fact that is the point of writing fanfiction. it is a way of participating in fandom. it is a way of building community and exchanging ideas and becoming closer with people.

if authors wanted to solely ~generate content~ that would get them attention (?? to what end, the dynamic you have described seems to equate algorithmic supremacy as winning for winning's sake, as though all anyone wants to do is BUILD an audience without ENGAGING with them, which I cannot fathom but let's pretend for a moment that is, in fact, true) then like. if that were the case why on earth would they choose a medium in which they categorically cannot succeed and profit, because it isn't their IP?

you are equating two things that are not at all the same thing. to the degree that parasocial relationships are to be avoided, and "that person is not trying to be your friend they are trying to entertain you, please respect their boundaries" is a real dynamic -- which it is!! -- like. you have to understand that the reason that is true for the people of whom it is true is because it is their JOB. they are storytellers by profession, and they are either through direct payment, or sponsorship, or advertising, or through some other means, profiting off of your attention. i don't say this to be dismissive, many wonderful artists and actors and comedians and any number of a thousand things that i enjoy very much go this route but they do so as a *career choice.* and so when you violate the public/private boundary with them, you are presuming to know a Person rather than their Worksona. the people who work at Dropout or who stream their actual play tabletop games or who broadcast on TikTok or YouTube are inviting me to feel like i know them to the degree to which that helps them succeed in their medium and at their craft, but there MUST be a mutual understanding that that's a feeling, not a fact.

however.

a fanfiction writer is not an influencer, not a professional, and is not looking to garner "success." there is no share of audience we are trying to gain for gain's sake, because we are not competition with one another, because there is nothing to win other than the pleasure of each other's company. we are doing this for no other reason than the love of the game; because we have things we want desperately to say about these worlds, these characters, these dynamics, and because we *want more than anything to know we are not alone in our thoughts and feelings.* fanfiction is a bid for interaction, engagement, attention, and consideration. it is not meant to be consumed and then moved on from because we are NOT paid for our work, nor do we want to be. the reward we seek is "attention," but attention as in CONVERSATION, not attention as in clicks. we are not IN this for profit, or for number-go-up. there is no such thing: legally there cannot be. we are in this because we want to be seen and known.

like. please understand. i am now married to someone i met because of mutual comments on fanfiction. our close friend and roommate, with whom i have cohabitated for over a decade now, is someone I met because of mutual comments on fanfiction and livejournal posts. that is my household. beyond my household, the vast majority of my closest personal friends are people with whom I built relationships in this way.

you ask why fanfiction writers want THIS and not "the norm," but the idea of everything being built to cater to an algorithm to continue to build clout, as though the only method of reaching people is Distant Overlord Creator and Passive Receptive Audience being "the norm" is EXTREMELY NEW. this is not how it has always been!! please think of the writers of zines in a pre-internet fandom, using paper and glue and xerox to try and meet like-minded people in a world that was designed for you to only ever meet people in person, by happenstance, in your own hometown. imagine the writers of the early internet, building webrings from scratch to CREATE a community to find each other, despite distance. imagine livejournal groups, forums, and -- yes, indeed, of course -- comment threads IN STORIES -- as places where people go to *converse.* in the past, we had an entire Type Of Guy that everyone knew about, the BNF ("Big Name Fan") whose existence had to be described via meme because it was SO DIFFERENT THAN THE NORM. treating fellow fans like celebrities or people too cool for the regular kids to know was an OUTLIER, and one commonly understood to lead to toxicity.

in the past, I have likened writing fanfiction to echolocation. i am not screaming because I like hearing the sound of my own voice, though i can and do find my voice beautiful. i am screaming so that the vibrations can bounce back to me and show me the world. the purpose is in the feedback. otherwise it is just noise.

does this make any sense? can you see, when i describe it that way, why an ask like yours makes me feel despair, because it makes us all sound so horribly separate from one another?

perhaps I will try another metaphor:

a professional chef who runs a restaurant will not have her feelings hurt if you never fight your way into the kitchen to personally tell her how much you enjoyed the meal. that would, indeed, violate a boundary. professional kitchens are a place of work, and you have already showed her you enjoyed the meal by paying for it, or by perhaps spreading your enjoyment by word of mouth to your friends so they, too, can have good meals. you show your appreciation by continuing to come back. if a bunch of people sitting around randomly happen to have a conversation about how much they love the food, it wouldn't hurt that chef's feelings to not be included in the conversation. however: EVEN IN THIS INSTANCE, it is ADVISABLE AND APPROPRIATE to leave a good review! you might post about how much you like this restaurant on Yelp, and it would probably make the chef feel great to see those positive comments. but the chef doesn't NEED them, because the chef is, again, *also being paid to cook.* that's why she started the restaurant, to be paid to cook!

i am not being paid to cook.

i am at home in my own kitchen, making things for a community potluck where i hope everyone will bring something we can all enjoy together. some people at the potluck are better bakers, some better cooks; some can't cook at all but are great at logistics and make sure there's enough napkins for everyone; some people come just to enjoy the food, because that's what the party is for. and if I, as this enthusiast chef who made something from my heart for this reason alone, learned after the fact that a bunch of people got together in the parking lot to rave about my dish but no one of them had ever bothered to tell me while I sat alone at my table all night, occasionally seeing people come by to pick up a plate but never saying anything to me -- of course that would bother me, because I am not otherwise profiting off the labor I put in. this is not a bid to be paid, because if someone WERE to say "hey, great cake!! here's five bucks for a slice" i would say no, friend, that is not the point and give them the money back. i'm not trying to Get Mine. I am in it to see the look on your face. I'm in it so you can tell me what about it moved you, so that I can say back what moved me to make it in the first place. so we can TALK about it.

because what happened in the first place is this: one time I had a cake whose sweetness, richness, flavor, intensity, and composition moved me so much that I *taught myself to bake.* so I could see how much vanilla and sugar was too much, so I could learn how to make things rise instead of fall flat, so I could even better appreciate the original cake by seeing for myself the effort and talent and inspiration that goes into making one even half as good.

learning to do so is a satisfying accomplishment in and of itself, yes.

but I also did it because at the end of the day we should EAT the cake. and it's a lonely thing, to eat alone when a meal was always designed and intended to be shared.

so, to answer your last question: i'm not surprised, i'm just sad. because somehow two things that were never meant to be seen as the same have been labeled "content," and thus identical. and it diminishes both the things that ARE intended to be paid for AND the things that are not, because it removes any sense of intimacy or meaning from the work.

i hope you know i'm not mad at you for asking. but i'm frustrated we've come to live in a world where the question needs to be asked, because the answers are no longer intuitively obvious because we're so siloed.

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They’re soulmates but one of them is infact trying to choke the other to death with the red string of fate tying them together

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Gundam Wing. Duo & Heero. Took some fresh requests to get warmed up after a month of being too busy to draw. 💕

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I skim rather than fly. Like, skating just above the ground. So I can't really help, but flapping makes about as much sense as the feeling that I can just coast along on momentum alone.

PPL WHO FLY IN THEIR DREAMS

THIS IS VERY INMPORTANT

do u have to flap ur arms? when i fly in my dreams i havef to flap my arms or flying doesnt work. please tell me im nmot the only one

p;ls tell me im not the only one who hast to flap their arms in order to fly in their dreams

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Happy Star Wars Day! I’ve decided to make my Skywalker comic into one easily rebloggable post.