#I did like the book fine

[vamptoll]

Finished Fitzpatrick's "The Call-out". Trans girls in NYC have drama- thoughts below

I liked it alright (I finished it!) though a lot of it struck me as very myopic. The "White trans girl in NYC" experience very much becomes all of transness, in a way that doesn't totally feel intentional. I'm a white trans girl in Philly and it still feels off to me.

And of course that ties into the major problem of the primary trans girl of color, who's portrayed (imo) as the most moral of the group, which makes her incredibly boring in an ensemble piece. But basically every conversation in the book is between one person clearly in the wrong and someone else who's clearly in the right but being led astray by the other.

This lack of ambiguity in most every conversation means every character feels shallow, which really hurts in a narrative about characters who do shitty things to each other despite caring about "The community". While I like its brevity, too often I wish these characters had a bit more breathing room.

This in some ways is the opposite of the NYC problem- if I wasn't familiar with trans community dynamics I might be ambiguous on, say, the group staging a public call-out beyond the wishes of the victim, or on the cis girl twisting the arm of her partner to go off E for a baby the trans girl doesn't want. But I am familiar, so I know those people suck! Some more depth to their motivations might make me invested in them, instead of screaming for their conversation partner to go running the other way.

The verse gimmick i found a little twee at first, but grew on me (I have been called twee before, it's a fault). When it works, it's very effective and flows beautifully, but other times I felt like I was reading a stilted line. I know the book is based off a specific model of poetry, but, well, I don't much like rules and prefer a more free-flowing structure.

[cryptocism]

"just as I did, in 1983."

you'd never know my favourite parts of the show are the fucked up insane bits when my first instinct is to draw the cheesiest thing imaginable

[lurking-loaf]

It's essential to teach them color theory when they're young so they understand how to mix colors. How else will you get art that's good enough for the fridge?

Day 6 of DCA Promptober - hues plus bonus animation of Sun imitating the Mac's wait cursor aka the Spinning Beach Ball of Doom

[starry-bi-sky]

do yall ever think about bruce/batman!clone danny standing in front of his bathroom mirror after finding out he was a clone and silently tracing his face. The slope of his jaw and point of his chin. The high angle of his cheekbones and the shape of his eyes, the curve of his brow bones and the shape of his nose. The volume of his hair and the way it curls and gets fluffy when it gets too long.

His hair is black the same way a crow's wing is black. His dad's hair is black the same way a black bear's fur is black. His dad's eyes are blue like the ocean is blue. Danny's eyes are blue the same way a glacier is blue.

His dad has a square jaw and straight flat hair, and he tans and gets a face full of freckles when he's out in the sun for too long. Danny burns like a lobster and his face remains untouched. Danny has a sharp jaw and tall cheekbones, and Sam says when he's not smiling there's almost something regal about him. You would never call Jack Fenton "regal" when he's not smiling.

Sam says when he's not smiling he looks scary the same way a stone statue is. Jack Fenton when he's not smiling looks scary the same way that german shepherd staring at you across the street is.

Do you ever think he grew up wondering if he was adopted. Because of course, he has black hair and blue eyes like his dad. But having the same color doesn't make you someone's child.

Or, worse, things he's heard from the other kids and the other parents and even some of his teachers growing up; that he was the product of an affair. And that his dad was just too stupid to notice. And Danny would defend his parents until the day he died, because Jack Fenton wasn't an idiot and Maddie Fenton wasn't a cheater.

But doubt comes in with fickle tongue. his parents swear up and down that he is their child when he asks about either. That Danny just had his grandparents' features, but he was their son and they loved him.

But Danny doesn't look like either of his parents. His mom's eyes are blue like an aquamarine and Jazz's too. And they burn like lobsters in the sun too, but Jazz gets freckles on her face and so does Maddie. And as Danny grows up he doesn't bulk up or get stocky like his dad did, and when he hits puberty he doesn't shoot up like a tree like Jack Fenton did.

He stays small, and they say he's a late bloomer (and he is), or that he just has his mom's height. But he's fast and has good stamina, and some days it feels like he's built entirely different from his family. That the things they went through growing up just didn't apply to him. Jack and Maddie Fenton both had acne and breakouts when they hit puberty, and Jazz inherits it and he's seen the amount of skincare products she keeps on her side of the bathroom.

And then he hits puberty and breaks out maybe once or twice, but his skin stays clear for the most part and the problems and changes his dad went through just don't happen to him.

And the truth is worse than all of the lies.

How horrifying.

[mollysunder]

Sky and Viktor's relationship is such a horror movie to me. You've got a man who was frustrated by the limitations placed on his life that were out of his control, like his class, mobility, and general health. Despite everything, he manages to rise beyond his station and avoid being an assistant for the rest of his life.

Then you've got a woman from the same background who admires him and all that he's accomplished in spite of the similar class based prejudices they faced all the while she's his assistant. She works up the courage to take leap of faith and reach out to him with her own research to show what's possible if they worked together as equals. And then he gets her killed!

Sky's death isn't the end of it because while it affects Viktor it is in no way meaningful to Sky's life or value as a person whatsoever. Even the pendant he wears in her memory is based on the design of her notebook, but that was just her notebook's cover, she probably bought it from a store and the design itself is probably mass produced. Why not use Sky's signature that was in her letter and in the notebook, the thing part if the notebook with real value?

Then Sky's brought back in s2 and she really only exists to be Viktor's assistant again, who he kills, again! But this time it's different because this time Viktor's making a conscious decision to look Sky in the eye and kill her... to prove he's changed.

In the middle of all this, in no way has Sky's death been mourned by her family or anyone else who could have known her. Jayce wasn't affected by the reveal, he didn't think it was important to tell Heimerdinger, or anyone who knew her. Nothing about her life, death, or disappearance has spurred any emotional reaction or even curiosity about what happened to her.

Sky's new life was also extremely isolated because she became further tied to him (in some ways you could say she was defined by him). Viktor never mentioned Sky to anyone in the material plane during his commune arc, so she only exists to him and she has no way to communicate with others, she's just there for Viktor's sake.

Then in the finale we learn this all a part of a big time loop where Viktor actively set the wheels in motion to have him and Jayce create hextech together, but if everything follows as is, that means Sky is violently killed in those timelines too. That means Viktor weighed the costs and decided over and over and over again that Sky was expendable enough to let her die for his plan to work eventually. How is that not murder at this point?

What's worse is that post-finale Sky's humanity is a point of dispute amongst the fandom, the VAs, and the writers themselves. Sky's the hexcore manipulating Viktor. No, Sky's a manifestion of Viktor's guilt. No, she's actually supposed to represent his humanity/conscious made physical. And in none of these arguments do they discuss Sky as a person, she's just an object meant to serve Viktor both in the narrative sense and literal sense as his assistant.

The most absolutely maddening part is that with Viktor's new bio on the League site, not only have most traces of Viktor had been scrubbed by Piltover's archive, but Sky's life has been completely wiped. Her death was implied to have been swept under the rug, and only described as the "loss of life" consequence from his Hexcore experiment.

Viktor was afraid of dying a senseless death (created by the conditions Piltover condemned his birth to) in obscurity and then he turned it into Sky's destiny.

[firestorm09890]

Y'ALL. Y'ALL so for a long time I've believed that "the sun" in Meursault's story is Carmen, and I went to check Hell's Chicken's dialogue to see exactly how he said that he'd dealt with distortions before, and... you know what else he said?

To my knowledge, it is a phenomenon where an individual morphs into a form often unfit to be considered “human”. It has no known causes, and the appearances were all different.

Unfit to be considered human.

Meursault, who, in his book, was judged by the court to be soulless.

Meursault, who has EGO for Cyborgs who have been so mutilated they barely act like people anymore; a murderer who was experimented on until ceasing to be human; a sheep named after Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, a novel about the humanity of androids and the inhumanity of humans; and now a rose that can't help its bloodsucking nature, based on Carmilla, a vampire whose story emphasized the duality between her vampiric traits and her human ones.

Meursault, who answered Heathcliff's ironic question of if he had metal for brains like this:

I'm placing my bets now, that line from Hell's Chicken is foreshadowing for Meursault's canto even more than "I have witnessed a number of [distortion] cases in the past" was

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 173

Danny might have made a mistake. On one hand, thankfully, his class hasn’t realized he’s Phantom, which is good. On the other hand, he’s somehow become their arms dealer after maybe, just maybe er, being done with Skulker’s shit when he was just trying to do his test and er… maybe beating him to a pulp. As Danny Fenton. 

Well, the good news is apparently everyone now thinks that he doesn’t fight back lest he accidentally snap someone’s spine. Which is honestly kind of nice to not have to deal with the harassment anymore. 

How has he become the fenton technology arms dealer though?! Legitimately, he has no idea how it happened except for sleep deprivation and someone mentioning how one of the places that they might be going to for the field trip was Gotham. 

At least everyone has their weapons and knows how to use them when some sort of clown-masked people decide to break into the mall and attempt to take them hostage. So. He guess he can’t complain, and at least he got food that doesn’t come alive in exchange. 

[fictionadventurer]

Maybe Jane Austen's real genius was that, unlike other authors at the time, she didn't have long sections where characters share their backstory. Or rather, when she did it, she set it up like a mystery so we'd want to know the backstory.

Instead of having a character be like, "Here's three chapters about my life," soon after showing up in the novel, she'd sprinkle little clues through the story that make us wonder, "What's Colonel Brandon's deal?" and then closer to the end of the story, Colonel Brandon would tell us what his deal was. We'd wonder "Why does Mr. Darcy do all those horrible things?" and then he'd give an explanation that includes a lot of backstory.

And these infodumps always come in response to significant moments of the story. She'd engage our minds and our emotions and then give us the infodump at a point when we care about the information it contains. Compared to some other authors (even some that came long after) it seems like a significant innovation.

[hijinxinprogress]

Billy definitely thinks about random things during fights and decides the internet needs to know immediately

[somegrumpynerd]

Dust's nightmare

Dust has nightmares about fighting and killing here and there, but the ones that really stick with him are the ones that are just... memories. Things he can never have again.

What he can have though, is a distraction when he wakes up to help him settle and make sure he's not alone with his thoughts for too long

[thatswhatsushesaid]

psa that the day there are no jgy stans left on tumblr dot com is the day i am dead

but rest assured i'll go to my grave exactly as i lived: obnoxiously proclaiming to everyone within earshot how great lianfang-zun is. narratively, metaphorically, spiritually. sexually, too, like why limit myself. i like to keep my options open

[bionicboxes]

I think a core internet experiences is- YES, people are allowed to not like or enjoy the thing *I* like, but they have to dislike it CORRECTLY.

If I watch a youtuber not read any dialogue and then complain about the story not making any sense I'm seething. If I see a youtuber read all the dialogue and then still be like 'this story is shit' I'm like 'lmao yeah fair.'

It's all about knowing that the person actually gave it a fair chance and aren't just going into it already disinterested

[marzipanandminutiae]

so help me god if I tanked the chance for a well-paid job with full medical benefits, sick leave, paid vacation time, etc. because I hardly ever do machine seam-finishing

I'm going to be. really really really upset

[iammissingautumn]

i hate you the need to explain how actually louis was the most toxic one in this relationships. i hate you the need to explain how actually lestat was the most toxic one in this relationship. i hate you the need to explain how actually armand was the most toxic one in this relationship. I hate you iwtv fans using the word “abused” or “X deserves better” like a weapon to destroy another characters integrity. yes they do suck in whatever way you are highlighting but also so many are getting too close to just making up shit takes bc they want to see it that way. Like just wait for marius if you need someone to hate with yr whole being

[moon-and-ocean-child]

In my mind Illario Dellamorte as a character is

"Says the cringiest romance novel stuff and gets away with it" *Eternally suffering with the crippling insecurity and pain of someone who has never been considered enough and never will be*

And y'all want me to not need to beat him stupid and later make him a nice bowl of soup and cuddle him.

Bioware needs to stop expecting me to not adore every pathetic villanous man they write. It hasn't worked since DAO. I'm looking at you Loghain Mac Tir.

[vilnmelling]

Isn't it fun how both Steph and Grace tell Richie to "grow up" but that's something he'll never get to do ahahahahhahahahahahahaha