dangerboxstudio

[dangerboxstudio]

I got a laptop with Windows 11 for an IT course so I can get certified, and doing the first time device set-up for it made me want to commit unspeakable violence

Windows 11 should not exist, no one should use it for any reason, it puts ads in the file explorer and has made it so file searches are also web searches and this cannot be turned off except through registry editing. Whoever is responsible for those decisions should be killed, full stop.

Switch to linux, it's free and it's good.

[dangerboxstudio]

YALL. Holly Black has a list of resources she's used for writing her books on the fair folk. I'm OBSESSED. I love her work and world building. it's so true to the heart of faeries

[dangerboxstudio]

the trolley problem vs. systemic oppression: a comic.

[dangerboxstudio]

Daily "avoiding hopelessness" checklist

Hey, friends. I know I've been really struggling to look towards the future with any kind of hope, so here are some little things I've been trying to do every day that might help you, too.

Accept that your productivity might look weird right now. Don't expect yourself to act as if nothing is wrong.

Make art. I try to write something every day, even if I don't really feel like it, and I've found that once I get into it, I'm grateful I did.

Do something to plan for the future. Doesn't have to be big. Even getting some ice cream you know future you will thank you for counts.

Eat. Even if you're not hungry. I keep skipping meals because I don't feel like eating, and then I force myself to make something and realize I was absolutely starving.

Clean up one thing in your space. If doing all the dishes and sweeping the floors and putting away laundry all feel too overwhelming, try just doing one of those things.

Lean on your online and offline communities. I live in a county that voted trump by a margin of eighty percent. My world feels scary and hostile right now, and it's my communities that are helping me feel hopeful.

Try to find one thing that feels normal. One thing that feels safe and normal and helps you feel a bit more grounded. My local grocery store just got their shipment of chocolate oranges in for the season. That's my thing.

Try to find one thing to look forward to, no matter how small. My thing is checking my ao3 inbox for comments on my fics.

Love you all <3

[dangerboxstudio]

so many of the "i only use chat gpt for ___" excuses are concerning because people use it in place of learning basic, valuable skills.

you don't need chat gpt to write professional sounding emails for you, there are many many guides on the internet and with a bit of practise you can learn to write them yourself. a very important skill for a professional to have, and some of the basic rules will carry over into irl conversations!

you don't need chat gpt to be a "more detailed search engine", because you're robbing yourself of the chance to learn how to find and filter information on the internet and evaluate the credibility of sources. which is a VITAL skill. plus, chat gpt is notorious for being wrong?

if you use it to write essays, you're taking away your ability to hone your research skills, your writing skills, your critical thinking skills. your ability to create persuasive arguments!

and for most of the other reasons people use chat gpt, there are non-ai websites for that! for maths, wolfram alpha. for figuring out what you can cook with the ingredients you have there's supercook and the like. for creating routines, there's about a million apps!

whatever you "only" use chatgpt for i promise there are better websites out there that you don't have to worry will produce complete bullshit???? and destroy the environment???

[dangerboxstudio]

Wait, which way do we go now?

[dangerboxstudio]

like thinking about "ethical vampirism" in a piece of fiction starts with the basic question of "can a vampire drink blood without killing someone"? but even just the answer to that spins off a whole bunch of others about the morality of killing to survive, who you can kill and still (metaphorically) sleep at night, or whether it's okay to drink blood if it doesn't kill someone but leaves them traumatised, what other effects (thralling, turning) not fully drinking someone might have, and so on!!

i feel like its important to remember then that "a vampire" isn't a thing that exists but is a literary tool for exploring a bunch of different themes, ideas, motifs, political stances, aesthetics, etc etc. theres no "canon" or "true" or "correct" version of "a vampire" and so theres no definitive answers to what "a vampire" entails, embodies, or teaches, EXCEPT that it's always horny

[dangerboxstudio]

Stuck on the idea of vampires as a kind of reverse fae, or like someone's twisted, perverse attempt at moulding humans into fae.

They're repelled by liminal spaces.

A vampire could never enter fairyland, not just because they'd never be welcomed, but because most of the usual entry-ways are naturally barred to them.

They can't cross running water. They can't be seen in mirrors. They will wait forever at a crossroads, unable to pick a direction to go in. They can't even step over a thresh-hold unless there is absolutely no ambiguity about whether they are welcome inside.

They crave human blood, iron and salt, but are repelled by herbs and plants. They are supernaturally prevented from harming you unless the rules of hospitality have been invoked.

A fairy may replace your newborn child with something unnatural and ever-hungry. A vampire will do the same, but with your grandmother's corpse.

The fae are typically associated, even in stories where they're the bad guys, with flourishing and purity. Vampires, even in stories where they're the good guys, are typically associated with decay and corruption.

The fae turn ancient human burial mounds into fancy halls for their courts. Vampires take ancient human castles and let them grow mildewed and cobwebbed, exchanging the beds for coffins, turning them into burial places.

Fae don't tend to live among humans, but can generally pass for them with relative ease if they so choose. Vampires nearly always live among humans, but tend to find not revealing themselves a huge struggle.

I can't think of many stories I've read where fae and vampires even exist in the same universe, let alone ones where they actively interact. I feel like their enmity is almost more inevitable than that between vampires and werewolves, however.

The rivalry between vampires and werewolves is, essentially, the rivalry between two apex predator species who share a territory. (Even in stories where the werewolves aren't actually hunting humans.)

The vampires hate the werewolves because the werewolves interfere with their access to prey. The werewolves hate the vampires either because they consider themselves aligned with humans (the prey species), or because they are also predators and the vampires are competing with them.

By comparison, I think there's some story potential in the fae finding something genuinely creepy and uncanny valley about vampires.

They're immortal, like them, but also dead. They can be beautiful, like them, but that beauty is something they actively require humans to sustain. They like to inhabit beautiful and ancient ex-human dwellings, like them, but they actively work to make those places dark, damp and empty.

Fairies who are unflappable in the face of all sorts of Otherworldly monsters, can look an eldritch horror in the eye(s) without blinking, and have never been phased yet by any human, but will recoil from even the weakest vampire.

Vampires who hate fairies just as much, but in a more envious way. The way that the creature for whom immortality is a curse is bound to hate the creatures for whom immortality is an eternity of sunlight and laughter.

Maybe their touches burn each other. Maybe vampires can't stand physical contact with anything so alive and vital. Maybe immortal fairies become ill from too much exposure to the undead.

Maybe they fight over the human population when their territories overlap. The fairy need for servants and people to make deals with, competing with the vampire need for thralls and blood to drink.

Just… fairies and vampires. We need more stories about them interacting.

[dangerboxstudio]

the thing about the way people go on and on about how smut and shipping ruins the ability to think about character or worldbuilding or whatever, is that this is inherently a skill issue. nothing better to tell you about a character and their most important internal neuroses (personal, social, cultural) than discovering how they like to fuck and who they want to fuck and the why of it all. such complainants should, rly speaking, read better smut.

[dangerboxstudio]

THE GOBLIN

A short comic about a mysterious creature living with the monks of a secluded abbey.

I made this comic five years ago, and it's still probably one of the most personal things I've written.

If you'd like to support more of my comics, consider preordering my new graphic novel, THE PALE QUEEN, wherever you get books.

[dangerboxstudio]

people need to realise that a poor little meow meow must be a character who has committed atrocities you cannot poor little meow meow a good guy that’s not how this works

[dangerboxstudio]

Older cis folk keep asking me like "now that you've had surgery do you think your transition is finished" and honestly I don't think my transition is Ever gonna be totally "finished" I'm not even sure that's really a thing. I'm never gonna stop growing and changing. I am more comfortable with my body now than I've ever been, but I might mix things up again, who knows. I'm talking to my clinic about lasering my body hair and I've been considering dyeing my hair pink and getting a tattoo. Those are gender things to me too. Idk

[dangerboxstudio]

today in church one of the priests referred to trans people as "those who are growing into the gender they were called to be" and i'm kind of enjoying the idea of like....divinely ordained top surgery

[dangerboxstudio]

i love you intimacy in reverse order. yes we've had sex before and i know all the details of your pleasure, but i don't know anything else. i don't know what it feels like to embrace you carelessly. i can barely hold your hand, the grip is so slight it makes me lose my breath. i want to kiss you but what pressure is the right one? how much is too intimate? yes we've had sex and i've done all these things before - but without the guise of mutual pleasure, can i be sure you won't turn me away? will you allow me the delicate feeling of your hand in mine when you know it is me asking to hold it? i know i've held you before with our clothes off, but can i hold you even tighter? may i listen to the steady sound of your heartbeat? is it alright to look for it in front of everyone? yes, yes of course we've had sex before. i know what you look like naked, ive touched you with the lights off. is it alright to want see you with them on? in the morning, with the sun flitting through the blinds?is it alright to want you when the sun is up? yes we've had sex before but have we ever been intimate? can we be? tell me that it's alright to hold you. no, not like that. just like this.

[dangerboxstudio]

I’m so sorry but in the nicest way possible do yall actually read books or just read words??? Cause I’ve been seeing that trend of people not understanding how “snarled” and “eyes darkened” and “eyes softened” etc. was used in a book and like…

Genuinely, do yall just not have imagination?? Or not understand figurative language??? Also eyes do literally darken and soften have you not lived a life??? How do you read with no imagination? Is this how you get through so many books in one month - you simply don’t take the time the understand the words as they are read?

[dangerboxstudio]

I have beef with Saint Thomas Aquinas' 5 proofs for the existence of God (The Quinque viæ) we are throwing down in a parking lot