steinbecks

[steinbecks]

u know besides the million other reasons i hate generative ai i also refuse to use it bc i dont trust anything being pushed on me this hard. why does every company desperately want me to get on the bandwagon. whats in it for you. whats in it for me. if ur pushing this shitass product into my life so intrusively u must have nefarious intentions. i dont trust anything being shilled like this

[steinbecks]

I previously posted this on twitter but for all the smart people who don't have that hellish app, here's an entirely too long analysis on how Kleya and Dedra are mirrored characters and foils to one another

Both Kleya and Dedra are orphans. They had their families and innocence ripped away from them as children at the hands of the Empire, or, if we want to be more specific taking into consideration Dedra's age, at the ends of a government that rules via violence and repression.

Kleya's family and people are massacred and she is raised by one of the men responsible for said massacre. Dedra's parents are arrested and she is raised in a kinder block, an apparatus that works in tandem with the one that took her family away from her.

Dedra is 3 years old when she is taken away from her parents. At such a tender age, she has no recollection of her prior life, which means she completely interiorizes the Empire's values she's exposed to. Kleya is 11-12, old enough to remember exactly what was taken from her, to know it was an atrocity, and to hate who did it.

Dedra has no sense of self outside of the system that phagocytized her. She becomes the Empire. Its rules and structure are home to her. She finds affirmation in becoming the oppressive force that tears families apart, so she dedicates her life to enforcing that chokehold.

Kleya, too, was shaped by what was done to her, but she becomes the Cause. Her life is in service of freeing the galaxy from the Evil that took everything from her, of making sure no one else will ever have to experience what she did. Most importantly, it's her own choice.

The Empire wants the homogenization of its subjects, and Dedra embodies the Empire, but here is the hypocrisy and brilliance of her character: she is selfish. She is ambitious, ignores orders to seek personal glory. Dedra works in service to the system, cannot imagine anything outside it, but within the system she exists in, she wants to emerge as DEDRA.

Kleya fights for the freedom and individuality of every being in the galaxy but she has stripped herself of any individual hopes/desires. Her own self does not matter to her, to the point that in 211 she doesn't get why Cassian wants to save HER instead of just caring about the intel. 

Even the fact that Dedra dates Syril shows this Selfish/Selfless dichotomy. Having a partner is, broadly speaking, a self-indulgent choice. It's an exclusive bond between yourself as an individual and another person, and Dedra gets herself a boyfriend who is like a pet that will do everything she wants. Kleya instead sacrifices everything to the altar of the Cause. She deprives herself of love or friendship or meaningful connections, she doesn't even entertain the possibility of seeking something for herself. 

And speaking about that, both Kleya and Dedra are extremely controlled, contained, emotionally guarded characters. The rigidity in their physicality reflects the need they both have to maintain control at all times, because vulnerability scares them.

They both grew up without tenderness or affection. Dedra understands love only through a lens of control and power. Kleya wills herself not to feel love at all.

It's very boring to me when people interpret Dedra and Syril's relationship as "she never cared about him, she only ever manipulated him because she is EVIL". That is so two-dimensional and not at all accurate. Yes, she is evil, she is a fucking monster. But also, from her perspective, Dedra does love Syril. We see it in the way she steps up to Eedy to defend him, when his happiness after the meeting with Partagaz causes her happiness. But that's the beauty and tragedy of it, and why she is such an amazing villain. Her understanding of love is completely warped. To her, love is all about ownership and control. But love is the opposite of ownership. True love is selfless, and it is freeing, and Dedra is terrified of freedom. She is someone who wants to love, but never can. Not really. Because control isn't love.

On the other hand, Kleya is someone who very much does not want to love. She wants to be as cold and unfeeling as she can because that will make her free from any vulnerability and she will better serve the Cause. But underneath that armor, she loves immensely. Kleya wants to be heartless, but love spills out of her.

They both have nervous tics that manifest when the control they desperately need is slipping from them. By definition, a nervous tic is something that can't be controlled. This crack in their armor reveals itself literally through a betrayal by their bodies.

Dedra in particular literally needs the dark to be vulnerable. She needs Syril to turn out the lights to have sex. She lets herself sob in Narkina only after the lights go off. Everything that reminds her that she is human is something to hide, something to be ashamed of.

Both have a mentor in Luthen and Partagaz. Dedra spends years trying to impress Partagaz only for him to make no qualms about casting her aside after the Axis fiasco. Kleya wants to hate Luthen, she refuses to consider him a father, yet she cannot help but love him, and when the time comes, Luthen gives up his life to save her. One is a bond of opportunism, the other is a bond of love.

And this is where it shows why they're such perfect mirrors as villain and hero. Dedra spends her whole life in service of a system that rejects her and spits her out. Kleya is ready to be tossed aside, but is instead offered love and kindness, by people she oftentimes had a hand in hurting. She is reminded that her life matters.

This show is SO intentional when it comes to its transitions. In the final montage of the show, Dedra and Kleya's ends are shown back to back, and I don't think it's a coincidence at all. 

Dedra ends up in prison bc of a chain reaction that started with her inability to let go of Axis. She disregarded all protocol in her obsession to catch him. And once she found Luthen, her arrogance led her to face him. She didn't just want to neutralize a threat to the Empire. She NEEDED him to know that SHE beat him. Except, she didn't.

Because Luthen wasn't Axis. Or at the very least, it wasn't just him. Kleya is the Axis Dedra never found, the one she never even knew existed until it was too late. Back in season 1, she tortured Salman Paak and he revealed that a woman had approached him and convinced him to hide the fractal radio in his backyard. That woman was most definitely Kleya. But Dedra, so meticulous with every other bit of information, didn't focus much on it. Her obsession with Axis blinded her. In her hubris, she let the most important piece slip through her fingers. She destroyed her own life for nothing.

Look at their final scenes. Kleya steps into the sunrise, sees the community she doesn't quite feel part of but that she helped create, a community that welcomes her. And she smiles. Dedra, alone and forgotten in the dark, is consumed by misery and despair, in a place that values its prisoners less than droids.

They both essentially started out in a box. Kleya in the metal compartment on Luthen's ship, Dedra in the kinder block. Kleya ends her journey out in the open, surrounded by light and life. Dedra ends her journey back where she started - in a sterile, lifeless box.

Dedra's ultimate personal defeat wasn't the leak of the Death Star information. That's a defeat for the Empire. Dedra's goal was to win against Axis. And she doesn't. She loses. Because Kleya gets to live.

[steinbecks]

I want you all to imagine with me, if you will, what I witnessed today.

McDonalds parking lot. teenage boy. giant polished white ford Tundra. windows down. blasting. I mean BLASTING. Beethoven's moonlight sonata. boy demolishing burger.

[steinbecks]

Antique Czech Glass Charms

(c. 1890s-1930s)

[steinbecks]

ive been reading garbage romantasy lately and it's truly truly awful but i've figured out a huge symptom of fantasy worlds that i know i won't like: i cannot imagine old women or children existing in them.

everyone is late teens-early thirties. these are worlds flattened in their demographics to the coveting of sexually available youth. there are no mothers with young children, no sons caring for older mothers, no elderly people who aren't evil and no children that aren't cardboard cutouts instead of developing people.

i knowww this is a symptom of me not being the target audience for this, and i understand that people don't come to these books for complex worlds but for erotica and romance, i know! so this is my caveat before i rant more that i'm not being super serious i'm just discussing something i've noticed i appreciate in more complex worlds

it especially stings in medieval fantasy (and by that i mean largely Western medieval fantasy) settings. it reeks of an inability or refusal to conceptualize a society and communities (or lack thereof) isolated from modern capitalist ideals, particularly the nuclear family. you don't know the kind of labor elderly women did to keep the world running in the premodern era.

who taught your nondescript background serfs to embroider the belts they're wearing? who made their 'roughspun tunics?' who weaved their blankets? who cares for the children while the parents are working in the fields? who brews their ale? who passes on their stories, medical knowledge, songs? why aren't there any older women in your clergy, helping manage your estates, present in your royal court? who are your midwives? who does your teenaged protagonist learn from and look up to?

beyond that, how do you treat your old women? are they all evil witches, all tradition-obsessed backward fossils, all smothering female relatives, all background extras? are they and their bodies cheap punchlines and jumpscares? where do your women go when they're too old for you to imagine them with sexual appetites and complex personalities beyond grandmothers and jealous evil hags?

children exist as infants or late teens only, ironing out the uncomfortable ugly years of a person becoming a person, teens without acne and without social awkwardness and fully developed in their competencies and personalities without the difficult part of growing up and learning included. babies are allowed because they're cute, they're basically props, a goalpost for the main romance of the book to satisfy heteropatriarchal expectations of couples instead of the main characters subverting any expectations. not to mention that most of these protagonists i can't imagine being 12, 13 years old. they sprung up fully formed at 19 before being whisked away by a love interest so overtly sexual he circles around to being sexless and utterly unappealing.

don't get me STARTED on how i hate seeing characters propping up relationships of main characters instead of being complex on their own.

this post is about ACOTAR.

[steinbecks]

In Blood Meridian by New York Times bestselling author Cormac McCarthy, the Kid is a chaotic bisexual disaster with a big dream: to make this the queerest Mexican-American War ever. Just one problem: an asexual, certified DILF named Judge Holden. The 25th anniversary edition of Blood Meridian is a whole 351 pages of steamy will-they-won't-they enemies-to-lovers goodness.

Learn more

[steinbecks]

Me about The Character:

[steinbecks]

As someone in and around their 30’s it has been INSANE to see feminism in popular media descend through

Women can wear pants and play sports and that’s equality. Women don’t just belong inside the house. This woman has a career

This woman can be a mechanic just like a man could. She’s probably still a lesbian, though, which is basically the closest to a man a woman can *be*, and explains everything. But she’s still a person!

If a woman superhero CHOOSES to wear stilettos to fight crime, that’s girl power! This comic character written and designed by men wears a bikini and has a waist size of 12 inches because it makes her FEEL POWERFUL! Girls don’t HAVE to dress boyish to be strong! She can make you a sandwich AND be a feminist! Girl power!

What, are you saying women HAVE to do boy things to be taken seriously? Who are you to tell a woman what to do? Maybe some women NEED to get their hair and nails done twice a month to feel powerful! Maybe a lot of women WANT to be stay-at-home moms!

What I don’t think you understand is that women have an inherent feminine spirituality which guides them towards maternal and nurturing paths. Women need to honour their divine female aura to keep their. Their fuckin. Their chakras together or some shit. You should put quartz up your hooha and huff wheatgrass. Leaving manual labour and science and technology to men is natural and good for you spiritually

Uh she can’t do that, that’s a blue job, she’s a pink job girly. Food? Yeah, she’s having #girl dinner, which is a handful of almonds. Time for our 15 step skincare routine, which is empowering. Hashtag #girlboss. Ew no, touching dirt? She’s just a girl. You can’t expect a girl to do that. Haha #girl logic

[steinbecks]

This is a dangerous sentiment for me to express, as an editor who spends most of my working life telling writers to knock it off with the 45-word sentences and the adverbs and tortured metaphors, but I do think we're living through a period of weird pragmatic puritanism in mainstream literary taste.

e.g. I keep seeing people talk about 'purple prose' when they actually mean 'the writer uses vivid and/or metaphorical descriptive language'. I've seen people who present themselves as educators offer some of the best genre writing in western canon as examples of 'purple prose' because it engages strategically in prose-poetry to evoke mood and I guess that's sheer decadence when you could instead say "it was dark and scary outside". But that's not what purple prose means. Purple means the construction of the prose itself gets in the way of conveying meaning. mid-00s horse RPers know what I'm talking about. Cerulean orbs flash'd fire as they turn'd 'pon rollforth land, yonder horizonways. <= if I had to read this when I was 12, you don't get to call Ray Bradbury's prose 'purple'.

I griped on here recently about the prepossession with fictional characters in fictional narratives behaving 'rationally' and 'realistically' as if the sole purpose of a made-up story is to convince you it could have happened. No wonder the epistolary form is having a tumblr renaissance. One million billion arguments and thought experiments about The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas that almost all evade the point of the story: that you can't wriggle out of it. The narrator is telling you how it was, is and will be, and you must confront the dissonances it evokes and digest your discomfort. 'Realistic' begins on the author's terms, that's what gives them the power to reach into your brain and fiddle about until sparks happen. You kind of have to trust the process a little bit.

This ultra-orthodox attitude to writing shares a lot of common ground with the tight, tight commodification of art in online spaces. And I mean commodification in the truest sense - the reconstruction of the thing to maximise its capacity to interface with markets. Form and function are overwhelmingly privileged over cloudy ideas like meaning, intent and possibility, because you can apply a sliding value scale to the material aspects of a work. But you can't charge extra for 'more challenging conceptual response to the milieu' in a commission drive. So that shit becomes vestigial. It isn't valued, it isn't taught, so eventually it isn't sought out. At best it's mystified as part of a given writer/artist's 'talent', but either way it grows incumbent on the individual to care enough about that kind of skill to cultivate it.

And it's risky, because unmeasurables come with the possibility of rejection or failure. Drop in too many allegorical descriptions of the rose garden and someone will decide your prose is 'purple' and unserious. A lot of online audiences seem to be terrified of being considered pretentious in their tastes. That creates a real unwillingness to step out into discursive spaces where you 🫵 are expected to develop and explore a personal relationship with each element of a work. No guard rails, no right answers. Word of god is shit to us out here. But fear of getting that kind of analysis wrong makes people hove to work that slavishly explains itself on every page. And I'm left wondering, what's the point of art that leads every single participant to the same conclusion? See Spot run. Run, Spot, run. Down the rollforth land, yonder horizonways. I just want to read more weird stuff.

[steinbecks]

i had my first wedding dress appointment today and everything was like "yeah this sure is a dress!" or "i love THIS part of the dress, but not THAT part" until this ONE DRESS that the owner pulled off the rack in a fit of inspiration and i was like "strapless, a-frame, no lace, exactly what i didn't want," and then i tried it on and i was like holy FUCK bro i'm getting married. wild

[steinbecks]

being anti ai is making me feel like in going insane. "you asked for thoughts about your characters backstory and i put it into chat gpt for ideas". studies have proven its making people dumber. "i asked ai to generate this meal plan". its causing water shortages where its data centers are built. "ill generate some pictures for the dnd campaign". its spreading misinformation. "meta, generate an image of this guy doing something stupid". its trained off stolen images, writing, video, audio. "i was talking with my snapchat ai-" theres no way to verify what its doing with the information it collects. "youtube is impletmenting ai based age verification". my work has an entire graphics media department and has still put ai generated motivational posters up everywhere. ai playlists. ai facial verification. google ai microsoft ai meta ai snapchat ai. everyone treats it as a novelty. every treats it as a mandatory part of life. am i the only one who sees it? am i paranoid? am i going insane? jesus fucking christ. if i have to hear one more "well at least-" "but it does-" "but you can-" im about to lose it. i shouldnt have to jump through hoops to avoid the evil machine. have you no principles? no goddamn spine? am i the weird one here?

[steinbecks]

lmao people fought (are still fighting) tooth and nail for the right to learn how to read. truly fucking dystopian

[steinbecks]

Anubis Reading—Joanna Karpowicz

[steinbecks]

Commissions OPEN! (August 10-20, 2025) -- Custom Brooches, Bag Charms, Keychains, & Magnets

I have been working for a few months now on building up an inventory to start a nerd fashion brooch (and bag charm, keychain, or magnet) shop that will launch on September 1, 2025. But given that I had emergency surgery in July that I need to pay my parents back for covering, I'm opening just to Tumblr for custom commissions now as a sort of "soft launch"!

These are not enamel pins! They are not factory forged or machine-drafted! You send me pics of your blorbo or OC, I design a portrait brooch, you okay the design, and then I laser-cut, hand-paint, and hand-assemble an acrylic mosaic piece. Here's a video of me making my own blorbo as an example!

Commissions are currently open from August 10 - August 20, 2025.

Fill out this form if you are interested in commissioning a piece.

Almost all* blorbos and OCs are welcome! No religious figures, political figures, true crime figures, or Harry Potter characters.

Made and packaged in a pet-free, smoke-free environment.

$60 includes a custom design (+1 major revision if necessary) and a 2 x 3 x ¼" handmade piece. $5 shipping for domestic United States shipments. Overseas shipping is available.

I am super excited to be able to offer these pieces, and I can't wait to hear all about your blorbos, The Characters, and OCs! If you have questions prior to filling out the form, you can send me an Ask or a message here on Tumblr or e-mail me at aimhighbroochdesigns@gmail.com.

Thank you!

[steinbecks]

Slowly becoming both my father (maniacal desires to declutter the house in all realms) and my mother (do NOT leave random crap on my countertops and also make your bed)

[steinbecks]

if you wiped every ICE agent off the face of the earth, a hundred million people would become safer overnight. if you wiped every furry off the face of the earth, the entire internet would collapse for good in a matter of hours. i know where my allegiances lie.