the thing is that they're so fascinated by sex, they love sex, they can't imagine a world without sex - they need sex to sell things, they need sex to be part of their personality, they need sex to prove their power - but they hate sex. they are disgusted by it.
sex is the only thing that holds their attention, and it is also the thing that can never be discussed directly.
you can't tell a child the normal names for parts of their body, that's sexual in nature, because the body isn't a body, it's a vessel of sex. it doesn't matter that it's been proven in studies (over and over) that kids need to know the names of their genitals; that they internalize sexual shame at a very young age and know it's 'dirty' to have a body; that it overwhelmingly protects children for them to have the correct words to communicate with. what matters is that they're sexual organs. what matters is that it freaks them out to think about kids having body parts - which only exist in the context of sex.
it's gross to talk about a period or how to check for cancer in a testicle or breast. that is nasty, illicit. there will be no pain meds for harsh medical procedures, just because they feature a cervix.
but they will put out an ad of you scantily-clad. you will sell their cars for them, because you have abs, a body. you will drip sex. you will ooze it, like a goo. like you were put on this planet to secrete wealth into their open palms.
they will hit you with that same palm. it will be disgusting that you like leather or leashes, but they will put their movie characters in leather and latex. it will be wrong of you to want sexual freedom, but they will mark their success in the number of people they bed.
they will crow that it's inappropriate for children so there will be no lessons on how to properly apply a condom, even to teens. it's teaching them the wrong things. no lessons on the diversity of sexual organ growth, none on how to obtain consent properly, none on how to recognize when you feel unsafe in your body. if you are a teenager, you have probably already been sexualized at some point in your life. you will have seen someone also-your-age who is splashed across a tv screen or a magazine or married to someone three times your age. you will watch people pull their hair into pigtails so they look like you. so that they can be sexy because of youth. one of the most common pornography searches involves newly-18 young women. girls. the words "barely legal," a hiss of glass sand over your skin.
barely legal. there are bills in place that will not allow people to feel safe in their own bodies. there are people working so hard to punish any person for having sex in a way that isn't god-fearing and submissive. heteronormative. the sex has to be at their feet, on your knees, your eyes wet. when was the first time you saw another person crying in pornography and thought - okay but for real. she looks super unhappy. later, when you are unhappy, you will close your eyes and ignore the feeling and act the role you have been taught to keep playing. they will punish the sex workers, remove the places they can practice their trade safely. they will then make casual jokes about how they sexually harass their nanny.
and they love sex but they hate that you're having sex. you need to have their ornamental, perfunctory, dispassionate sex. so you can't kiss your girlfriend in the bible belt because it is gross to have sex with someone of the same gender. so you can't get your tubes tied in new england because you might change your mind. so you can't admit you were sexually assaulted because real men don't get hurt, you should be grateful. you cannot handle your own body, you cannot handle the risks involved, let other people decide that for you. you aren't ready yet.
but they need you to have sex because you need to have kids. at 15, you are old enough to parent. you are not old enough to hear the word fuck too many times on television.
they are horrified by sex and they never stop talking about it, thinking about it, making everything unnecessarily preverted. the saying - a thief thinks everyone steals. they stand up at their podiums and they look out at the crowd and they sign a bill into place that makes sexwork even more unsafe and they stand up and smile and sign a bill that makes gender-affirming care illegal and they get up and they shrug their shoulders and write don't say gay and they get up, and they make the world about sex, but this horrible, plastic vision of it that they have. this wretched, emotionless thing that holds so much weight it's staggering. they put their whole spine behind it and they push and they say it's normal!
this horrible world they live in. disgusted and also obsessed.
Fig: Hah! - Nobody ever expects an Archdevil rockstar to be nice.
Riz: … yeah. - 's just budget work tho. (the stuff I'm working on) - I've heard it's boring.
page 05
Fig: yeah, but you do it…
Riz: It keeps things going, right? - Nothing happens if nobody sits down and - does the thing.
Fig: That's right… - though. Yeah.
page 06
Fig: sometimes it's someone else who - doesn't want the same thing to happen.
Riz: … - mm.
page 07
Riz (off screen): …It took me a long time to get that not everyone likes doing what I do. - 's probably because you guys are so nice– - or. - kind.
Riz (off screen): to anyone too, not just. - the people you /love/.
page 08
Riz: that's not how it is elsewhere. - The world's– not. hostile. - but 's not like it's kind.
Riz: So I'm doing as much as I can now…
page 09
Fig: Hey.
Riz: ?
Fig: Go dig some dirt with me.
page 10
Riz: [blank speech bubble] - oh you meant like - actual dirt. (not incriminating information)
Fig: o yea.
Fig: there's clay in the backyard soil. - sometimes when I'm sun deficient or something I go touch dirt for a bit.
page 11
Fig: here u go
page 12
Riz: uh
Fig: now we make a thing! - 'm pretty good at freehanding a bowl.
Fig: I'll show u
page 13
Fig: just– yep, flatten that out as evenly as u can, then–! - actually ur nails'd be so good at cutting out the strip. [larger than usual space] wait. - wait. wait u can carve patterns with them! we HAVE to try
Riz: uh - What. do I carve?
Fig: anything!!!
page 14
Fig: and– yep just seal the inside uh. seam?
Fig: yep that works - okay time's up! all contestant hands up
i keep trying to think of funny/poetic ways to talk about all the things i'm feeling right now but i honestly can't so. i'm really sad about what happened with my partner. i know he was an inconsiderate prick about it and that i didn't do anything wrong and i couldn't have prevented it but i'm just really fucking sad.
Hehe this man is broken and severely emotionally distressed. Silly lovable guy but given self esteem issues because of the crushing weight of perfectionism. Not so funny if you think about it too long. But at least on the upside he cries pretty :))
No but seriously for all those who relate to Mr. Puzzles just want you to know your accomplishments alone do not define your value and worth as a person. Even when you’re a messy work in progress, you are loved and appreciated more than you may recognize. Thank you for being here. Don’t get me wrong it’s good to be idealistic and set goals, but don’t undermine yourself if you don’t get that perfect score….or if you start to fall behind compared to everyone else. Everyone goes through those moments of doubt or perceived failure. We need to fail every once in a while. And that’s okay
…a-anyways funny goofy dramatic TV guy we love him so much so silly so slay he lives in my head rent free yipeee. This animation is dedicated to him because if anyone in the cast deserved a feature length film it was definitely him, and he sure took up the spotlight in Puzzlevison and absolutely owned it. I’m excited for his future endeavors ✨
Had a MegaMan on the mind one evening, and it's one I've never drawn before surprisingly, so there he is. I think Juno is such an interesting character, with that aura (and hair) that he has.
(He should be A Lot Bigger in that last shot, oh well.)
i love these freaky little teens and their freaky little relationship problems within their freaky little marriage. this is how it works in MY mind no matter WHAT anthony burch may or may not say re: hermies feelings 😌
Some aspects of Laudna's behavior from the most recent ep have really started to stand out to me re: her backstory. We're told basically that after leaving Whitestone she roamed to different cities and was subsequently run out of many places by the townsfolk for being...well, a creepy undead witch. This is really all we know of thirty years of her life, we have nothing more detailed than that until Gelvaan, which is also not very detailed on what exactly she was doing there. And it's interesting because this backstory feels like it's meant to elicit a lot of sympathy on Laudna's behalf--i.e. she is being wrongly chased out of places for the crime of being/looking different. But something about the way she approached Imahara Joe's establishment--sending in the creepy whispers, specifically making a bunch of terrifying "rattling noises", and responding with a smile and saying "It works every time" when they heard a noise in response--really has me like. okay. Laudna, did you get chased out of places because you were terrorizing people in those places? because it sounds like you've done this before, potentially many times, and what's "fun scary" to one person can so very easily be "scary scary" to the people on the other end of the schtick.
Laudna clearly loves people, but I do have to wonder if she experiences a certain amount of dissonance about the effects that her actions cause. She very much has this Manic Demon Nightmare Girl persona thing going on, and that delighted, manic energy mixed with her penchant for the macabre, often directed at other people where she enjoys their freaked out reactions? I think, perhaps, there were reasons she kept getting run out of places that we have not, uh, unpacked as of yet.
To go deeper with this, Laudna is a character who rarely feels like she's in charge of her own destiny. Some of this is intentional, like the repeated puppet imagery re: Delilah. But I wonder if, perhaps, Laudna is someone who has had so many things--bad things, terrible things--happen to her that she had learned to erase her own role in her life. There was nothing she could do when the Briarwoods took over Whitestone, there was nothing she could do when she was murdered by Delilah, and there was nothing she could do when she was resurrected as the undead creachure that she is today. But there are thing she could have done in the intervening thirty years to change her situation. She could have pursued threads about getting rid of Delilah for thirty years, long before meeting Imogen. She could have (somewhat) altered her behavior so she wasn't freaking people out wherever she went and maybe she could have stayed somewhere. She could have been proactive in making changes and pursuing things in her life and I just wonder if she has forgotten that she can do that for herself and that the things she does do have consequences. In ep 49, she told Imogen, "The gods have never kept us from our ability to have a choice." But she only says this to Imogen. When does Laudna finally make an active choice? When does she realized that her behavior and the consequences of the behavior are in her control? When does Laudna decide that it's time to stop being a spectator in her own story, a person that things happen to? Soon, I hope. She should be the main character of her own story, and right now she simply isn't
of ten’s companions, if the doctor couldn’t handle losing them and crossed his own timeline to trick them into traveling with future!him instead of past!him so that he’d have a little more time with them:
rose would do it. first because bless her but she has the situational awareness of a rock, and legitimately would not realize this isn’t her doctor until his facade starts to break down and he starts bleeding grief-laced love for her at every turn. but once she does realize it, she’s both deeply sympathetic and a little scared that she could make him into this. it’s a lot to be confronted with having that much power over someone, to break them so thoroughly. rose would try to get back to her doctor, but while she’s with the future version, she tries to do what she can to ease his pain. (she also tries to figure out a way to subvert her fate. she fails.)
i think martha would be harder to trick. she can smell desperation on the doctor like a bloodhound. she is so tapped into the fact that this man wants to off himself so bad and that she’s 90% of his self-restraint, so present her with a doctor who is lacking that and she’s onto him immediately. however, assuming he gets her to come with him, explains why he’s doing this, there’s like. a minute where she’s kind of. not flattered exactly, but surprised, giddy with the realization that he’d come back for a little more time with her, especially if this is early season 3 martha. which would all come crashing down around the time that he reveals that he wasn’t pushed to this by losing her to some tragedy or her death or anything- but that she chose to leave. that is the point at which martha goes ‘oh i need to get the fuck off of this tardis right now’ and ghosts the past!doctor that she was also traveling with because holy shit, man.
donna, like rose, is easily bamboozled into following the wrong doctor home, provided that he shuffles her along into his tardis too fast for her to argue. but she catches on far quicker than rose does. like, three minutes tops of watching the doctor move through the tardis in a way that’s definitely not enthusiastic piloting and looks more like guilty panic. and then she yells at him for lying to her. and she yells at him for kidnapping her. and then she stops yelling because he’s gone sort of still and quiet and his eyes are just broken. and he doesn’t explain himself, he confesses. donna is going to try to stay with him after this btw. because how do you go back to looking your best friend in the eyes when you know he’d take everything you’ve become away from you, even to save your life? and this is still the doctor, he still did that to her, but he regrets it. regrets it so much that he can’t live with it, he’s breaking time and space just to hear her say his name again. and donna doesn’t want to lose him anymore than he wanted to lose her.
I am increasingly certain after 34 years of life that if you are afraid of something, if you want to get better, then you have to face it. Maybe you face it in little pieces. Maybe you face it with help or holding someone's hand, preferably in a safe environment but not everyone has that luxury. But exposure and being around what scares you is the only way to make it better.
Afraid of the ocean? Go touch the ocean.
Afraid of crowds? Go be around crowds for a time.
Afraid of being alone? Gonna have to be alone for a time.
Afraid of death? Talk about death, maybe go to a cemetary.
Afraid of becoming your parents? Gonna have to face the idea that you ARE probably like them to an extent, in order to NOT be like them.
Afraid of people not liking you? Gonna have to be not liked, sometimes.
Afraid of those thoughts saying you're a bad person. Gonna have to go talk to those thoughts.
Because humans are funny, paradoxical creatures, and almost always, the answer to being afraid of something is embracing it.
The more we embrace the thing we're scared of, the less control it has over us.
But, sometimes, people are also afraid of getting better. The decision to embrace our fears is not one that everyone takes.
Because sometimes, the fear of what is involved in getting better is greater than the original fear itself. It turns into a self-eating ouroboros.
Brought to you by me remembering me avoiding doing scary things and that made them worse and the only thing that makes them better is doing the scary things, even when scared.