#International Year o

[pikkish]

I thought it was hilarious, at first, that everyone’s decided Doomguy is still the protagonist of MyHouse.wad. After all, it doesn’t really have much more to do with Doom than gmod has to do with Half-Life 2. But then I remembered, isn’t that a plot point of Doom II? Visiting the burnt out ruins of your hometown on your way to the portal to Hell? Why couldn’t Doomguy take a few minutes to have a nightmare of an emotional journey in a childhood friend’s home to come to terms with everyone and everything he ever loved being destroyed?

[whatudottu]

Do y'all think object heads have a peculiar vision? Well I certainly do!

If DJSS is actually a supernova then assumption probably brings with it the idea they were a star, and being a star where it sends light in every direction and vision is directly correlated to light, what if that means omnidirectional vision?

[contagious-watermelon]

I think we went wrong with emphasizing the distinction between sex and gender. People have taken it to mean that sex is immutable and that gender is whatever you make of it

Transphobes in instagram comment sections get refuted with "hey, he may be female, but he's still a man!", completely conceding to the "lol still a female" comment by faceless user 06873. People call trans women "male women," seemingly unaware of the fact that terfs often call them exactly that same thing... well, the nicer ones do. I'm not going to repeat the meaner things they say.

Maybe it's not that distinguishing sex and gender was a mistake. Maybe it's that the trans community never dealt with its transphobia, and pulled out the band-aid of excising gender entirely from sex whilst not questioning its beliefs about the immutability and inevitability of biological sex.

The trans community as a whole, I've noticed, doesn't seem to really believe that we really are our genders. They act like it's an impossibility for a trans woman to be female — or mostly female, or infertile female, or with a mix of both sex characteristics, or — and that it's insane to suggest that a trans man really is a man.

They seem to be of the opinion that transphobes are right about the science, but wrong in their treatment of us, and that therefore we must find ways to deny and circumvent the science. “If we reduce gender into an entirely amorphous and nebulous concept, couched with words like "identify as," we can obfuscate our sex so that it becomes irrelevant.” Nevermind that trans people really can and do change our sex. Nevermind that even if we don't, we still don't have the same gendered experience as a cis person of the opposite gender.

[hachiibun]

“The dust from the old newspaper slides down and makes L/uke sneeze repeatedly.”  — Another actual quote from the game

Happy Birthday to my favourite of the guys from T/ear/s o/f Th/emis, the detective himself 🔎

From what we get from him in the game, he seems to be sensitive to dust. What a fun little quirk for a guy who handles antiques in his store and does secret agent-type stuff in addition to his detective work~

If you like my drawings, please consider supporting me by buying me a coffee ☕ ! It helps me out a lot and I’d really appreciate it!

❗ PLEASE NO REBLOGGING TO NON-KINK BLOGS ❗

[chaosspelledwrong]

I fucking hate art thiefs.....

[gilfrespecter]

Listening to coinstar by the growlers and thinking about mel so hard I get nauseous

Ridiculous stream of conscious in the tags apologies but not really

[fluffypotatey]

Gwen is not only a woman, but a woman that is the obstacles of the main gay ship. No way they would ever treat her well

when will we ever learn 🫠

[deus-ex-mona]

starting the year ✨wrong✨

[griseldabanks]

Desire, hate, and wound for Shard, from the not-so-nice oc asks.

-Rain

desire: What's one thing your OC wants more than anything in the world? Are they open with that desire? Why or why not? What would they do to fulfill it?

This is something I've been puzzling over lately, while trying to think through my characters' goals and how to use them to make the protagonist more proactive. For the most part, Shard is more reactive, reacting to issues that come his way rather than setting out to achieve some goal. But I think what he wants most in the world is peace and safety - for him, and for the people he loves. Ironically, that desire is what initially pushes him out of the safety of his hometown and out into the big, scary world. He realizes that his new dragon friend will probably be killed if he stays home, so they have to run away together.

As they continue on their journey and eventually join up with the Ambassadors, this desire for peace for himself and Shynael expands to include everyone. He realizes that everyone is scared. Everyone wants to live peacefully, but they're living on the brink of war, so when they feel their security is being threatened, they lash out against someone else's security. And Shard realizes that, if he's ever going to have the hope of living in a peaceful world where he doesn't have to keep looking over his shoulder, he's going to have to do something about it.

hate: What does your OC hate? Why? How do they act towards the object of their hatred?

Shard would say, "Hatred is against my religion."

But you know what the first answer was that came to my mind? The person he hates the most is himself. Anger and rage he has plenty of, but there aren't a whole lot of people that I would say he actually hates - at least not for more than a few minutes.

But himself? Oh, there is so much he hates about himself. Especially once that rage gets the best of him, and he finds himself saying and doing things he regrets as soon as the anger wears off. He always thought of himself as a kind, quiet peacemaker like the priest who raised him. He always thought the best thing to do with any anger he felt was to stuff it away, not think about it, and wait for it to dissipate. But due to the nature of his new life away from his usual safety nets and routines, confronted with the cruelty and anxiety of the world around him, suddenly he finds that anger exploding out of him...and onto others. He ends up hurting people. Seriously hurting people. What kind of person does that make him?

So yes, one of the main things Shard has to grapple with in his story is not only how to control the rage inside him so it doesn't hurt anyone, but also how to live with these two sides of himself - the one that wants to tear the world apart, and the one that wants everyone to live in peace.

wound: How does your OC handle being wounded? Are their wounds mostly physical? Mental? Emotional? What's the worst wound your OC has ever experienced?

>:D You know me! I love my angst and I love my whump, so when I get a world and characters all of my own, you can bet I put them through The Trials.

As you can see from the previous question, Shard has some mental/emotional wounds, mostly self-inflicted, he has to deal with. At his lowest point, he teeters on the verge of ending it all.

But one of my favorite scenes, predictably, is a scene where Shard gets stabbed and nearly loses his life. I'm definitely going to have to tweak the circumstances, because the way it happened in the first draft just...doesn't work, on multiple levels. But I want to keep the scene itself in, because there's just too much delicious whump potential there! Shard's bleeding out, Shynael comes to his rescue, the poor baby goes in a panic to Vesper, who patches Shard up and nurses him back to health, which jump-starts their friendship. Originally, I had dragon blood have healing properties similar to phoenix tears in Harry Potter, but I haven't quite decided if I want to do that anymore (it would make dragons even harder to kill, for one thing). But if I do go that route, Shynael gets to donate his blood and then you get to dwell on how they really are brothers now that Shynael's blood runs in Shard's veins.

Not-So-Nice OC Ask Game

[999-roses]

unpacking 'sinophone' and its sinophobic roots

so. it never occurred to me to just type "sino diaspora" into google before.

and google is like "oi!! you meant sinophone yeah? here's wikipedia on sinophone" and here's like the other top results

I'm squinting. What the hell do you academics have against diaspora using the term diaspora?? I click.

inb4 this whole rant: I have no qualms with using sinophone as a language-family-use descriptor (like sinophone media), but coming from academia or as an academic field unto itself. but. the literature about wanting to use it as a demographics thing & separate it from "chineseness". just. looook if anyone knows that they're no longer like this let me know. with what im seeing, im having a bad faith moment

so... this is the academic that's hard pushed the term for sinophone.

"crit on orientalism might be complicit for allowing Chinese intellectuals to call themselves victim under an 'unreflective' nationalism" & "but the flipside may be a new imperialism" yeah?? any more unsubstantiated claims???

What a joke!! Clearly only takes authority about Chinese history from western sources, like literally has the uncritical echo of "X country doesn't deserve territorial integrity" that literally fueled western imperialism, and not just of China. Treaty of Nanjing 1842 ringing no bells? Sigh. National sovereignty is the barest basis against overt imperialism where someone just comes over and declares where you live their colony!!! ... is this a test in how far can you stretch the definition of imperialism or colonization? lmfao, China invests in poverty-relieving measures like building houses and improving infrastructure out in Tibet, Guizhou, Xinjiang, and you have the audacity to call that colonizing?!? 我真无言了。

different article by the same person:

laughable to think that the Chinese state even bothers to think I exist, let alone talk to me about my diaspora status. (I was born in the US)

also, people are really out there saying 'diaspora has an end date' huh

here it is. here is the 'scholar' conflating American or western imperialism with things Big Bad Scary Red China does.

Clearly mixing up concepts of tributary system with colonialism, and acting like historically (other than Yuan era under Genghis) that ancient China/Chinese culture was expansionist, going around trying to conquer peoples and set up colonies. Admiral Zheng He would spit on you.

Comparing the spread of culture and language in Ancient China to the colonization and subjugation that the French/Belgium did in Africa, or the British Empire, or the Spanish and Portuguese in Latin America, is so blatantly dishonest. The indigenous people of Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and Xinjiang still speak their own languages and use their own scripts, and yes, they learn them in schools alongside the national language... which is Chinese!!! Yes the Hanyu writing system was adopted and adapted by many neighboring cultures in ancient times, but you literally don't examine WHY? The fluidity in its system: frequently non-Han peoples invented characters to suit their language, like there's even some Canto-specific characters that are in use today. Another reason that Chinese writing system was so popular was because two Sinitic language speakers who do not speak the same language could communicate through the same script. Yeah, Ancient Chinese scholars and dignitaries often had an insufferable elite-ness and superiority complex, but describing their attitude as subjugating and forcing other people to adopt their system? What a wildly malicious mischaracterisation!

just... mask off, gringo butt-licker.

Please. where is the "Chinese containment" policy? The white papers reaffirming what the international community agrees, what Taiwan historically agrees (tho Taiwan held that it was the true capital/head of all of China), that Taiwan is part of China?? I know this article was written back in 2010s but are you seriously comparing American weapons deals and boots on the ground with Chinese military exercises in Chinese territory that haven't harmed a single civilian? "critical" my ass!

gotta love the title of this one. yeah, I know it, I've seen it before. the Chinese or feminist binary, pick a side /s

but hey in this piece she admits she's ignorant and unobjective and out of her league sometimes?

edit: found this:

yeah that about seals it for me. anti"diaspora" sinophobe

[selfcontainedunivcrse]

I think abt Evan and I get sad. Evan and his gradually less gratuitous tragic backstory but whatever i do he does remain 15

[earl-grey-love]

Last night I reread my first Barbs fic, like I wrote it when I was first getting interested in him way back when, and omg he was so out of character 😭 I'd never write him like that now!

[gifti3]

leona needs to go therapy actually

[bibleofficial]

it’s me & my faggoty ass scrunchie against the world

[runayachi]

Unfortunately you've been misspelling aran's last name too 😔

wait. for real?

[keeps-ache]

got the piano set up so my brother and i have discovered we have the ability to make the Dreariest tunes ~+~anytime~+~ :3