#They were all SO kind
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my copy of the Candela core rulebook is now signed by Spenser, Rowan, and Tracey Harrison :3
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⌠Freshly ordained âŚ
#a packless dog will happily accept his collar or something like that#own art#own characters#CanisAlbus#art#artists on tumblr#Machete#anthro#sighthound#dogs#canine#animals#maybe you might benefit from a little bit of context in this case#Machete becomes a priest at around 20 or so#he has trained all his life for this goal#he has worked himself to the bone and sacrificed so much#because he believes it would make him respectable and worthy and give his life a purpose and meaning#he gets his very first cassock from the tailor's and it immediately fits like a second skin#for the first time ever he feels like something he wears actually makes him look kind of nice#the hard part is over it'll be smooth sailing from here on out#there's a period in Vasco's and Machete's lives where they were apart for almost a decad#they met in their late teens when they were both studying in the same university in Venice#became friends and then lovers#but had to separate when Machete graduated and Vasco dropped out#Machete was ordained as intended and Vasco followed his father into politics#they meet again unexpectedly in their early 30's thanks to their similar jobs#Machete had became a cardinal secretary of state and Vasco was a Florentine diplomat#this takes place shortly after he had lost contact with Vasco and before he reconnects with him again
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Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".
[plain-text version of this post can be found under the cut]
Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"
And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".
Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.
At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.
So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!
Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!
Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!
Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.
Plain-text version:
Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".
Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"
And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".
Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.
At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.
So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!
P.S. Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!
Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!
Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.
#hlep#original#mental health#my sympathies and empathies to anyone who has to rely on this kind of hlep to get what they need.#the people in my life who most need to see this post are my family but even if they did I sincerely doubt they would internalize it#i've tried to break thru to them so many times it makes my head hurt. so i am focusing on boundaries and on finding other forms of support#and this thing i learned today helps me validate those boundaries. the example with the milk was from my therapist.#the example with the towing company was a real thing that happened with my parents a few months ago while I was age 28. 28!#a full adult age! it is so infantilizing as a disabled adult to seek assistance and support from ableist parents.#they were real mad i was mad tho. and the spoons i spent trying to explain it were only the latest in a long line of#huge family-related spoon expenditures. distance and the ability to enforce boundaries helps. haven't talked to sisters for literally the#longest period of my whole life. people really believe that if they love you and try to help you they can do no wrong.#and those people are NOT great allies to the chronically sick folks in their lives.#you can adore someone and still fuck up and hurt them so bad. will your pride refuse to accept what you've done and lash out instead?#or will you have courage and be kind? will you learn and grow? all of us have prejudices and practices we are not yet aware of.#no one is pure. but will you be kind? will you be a good friend? will you grow? i hope i grow. i hope i always make the choice to grow.#i hope with every year i age i get better and better at making people feel the opposite of how my family's ableism has made me feel#i will see them seen and hear them heard and smile at their smiles. make them feel smart and held and strong.#just like i do now but even better! i am always learning better ways to be kind so i don't see why i would stop
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Hello ! I positively adore the running joke of Idia unknowingly finding Lilia to be the coolest guy ever whenever he doesn't know it's him, like when Silver described his father, or obviously with muscle red. I can't say what'd be funnier, Idia finding out his online best friend is actually Lilia, resident spooky hyper fairy; or them both never finding out, and it'd become even more ridiculous as time goes on. How do you think it'll play out ? You're always so on point
(Also, though it makes sense, I'm still devastated bat boy didn't get a ticket for the Halloween skeleton train : ( does anyone mentions him at some point ? Like how he'd have fit right in with all those Halloween town little freaks, and how he'd have impressed them with his spooks and scared techniques; after all he's been every Briar Valley's children worst fear on Halloween for centuries. I'm on the eng server and I didn't wanna spoil myself by watching the whole thing on youtube)
Have a nice day !
you and me both, Idia and Lilia being oblivious online BFFs (+ Idia being incredibly intimidated any time Silver brings up his jock gamer dad) is my favorite running joke/subplot. đ¤ it's SO good, to the point where I also am unsure if I actually want it to ever be resolved or not...maybe, like, as a post-canon stinger or something? everyone's standing around covered in overblot ink, and Idia and Lilia's phones go off at the same time...
(legit I do think this is part of why Idia couldn't be present for Lilia's dream, because for some reason Lilia decided he was going to just. embody his past self online. he probably quotes his own battle strategies or whatever in the middle of boss fights. Idia didn't pick up on the whole "oh how weird that we both live on a super remote island" thing, but he would spend thirty seconds listening to General Lilia describing siege warfare and be like "w-wait")
all that aside, however it does end up happening, I do see Lilia being very blasĂŠ and all "oh! cool!" about it. y'know, taking it very much in stride! and Idia...very much not.
(can't tell if tumblr is going to chew this into illegibility or not, this will be a fun surprise á( á )á)
as for Lilia sadly missing out on Halloweentown shenanigans...he does get one little mention as part of an offhand reference to the light music club, but so far no one has brought up how this basically is just Lost In the Book of Liliatown (Sebek's been too busy yelling about not getting to be in the same group as Malleus). đ honestly though, it's probably for the best that he got left out, because he would just settle right in and refuse to ever leave. canon would shatter. we would miss out on all the delightful angst of episode 7 because Lilia is too busy eating poisonous shrubbery inbetween practicing his very best screams, and no one can pull him away from it.
(I can hope for a sequel next year though...)
#art#twisted wonderland#twisted wonderland spoilers#gentle spoilers but y'know. just in case#lost in the book with nightmare before christmas#hajimari no halloween#most of the kitchen scene was jade messing with the firsties and that was so delightful that i didn't think til after#that you'd think sebek would have made some kind of reference to lilia 'i lost my tastebuds in the war' vanrouge's quote-unquote cooking#ah well. jade being mean is more than entertaining enough#looking forward to more of it tomorrow!#god. lilia and idia though.#lilia is like. genuinely idia's best friend and neither of them have any idea#and idia keeps doing that 'ha ha what if we were friends out of game too? what if we met offline? jk jk jk uNLESS...đđ'#and then he immediately chickens out because he's so convinced that crimson will hate him if they ever met irl#(meanwhile lilia is just like 'my online bestie is so cool :) la la la')#they are both so stupid and i love them so much#i've just realized that i actually do want them to find out each other's identities#because idia doesn't just go to school with his online bff#he ALSO goes to school with his online bff's extremely supportive and extremely socially-inept kids#idia is going to get invited to dinner at diasomnia and it's going to be SO awkward#silver is going to give a long formal speech thanking him for being a stalwart comrade and trusted warrior brother to his father#as sebek stews in jealousy that idia got to fight by lilia-sama's side >:(#while idia sits there like 'all i did was link him a video about lane control for his character class'#malleus will make such an effort to learn literally anything about online gaming and he won't understand a word of it#it will be SUCH a disaster and i very much do want it now
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the fritter (frin critter)
#inspo struck right after posting the last two. some kind of a hermit crab. a snail#they think they look all cool and mysterious under their safety shelter but if u remove it they're a disastrous puffball of uncombed fur#the hat is not accurate to an adult human btw. i tried to put them in a full size hat and they were lost forever. this is a child sized hat#they need to swap out for bigger hats as they grow#MY FRIENDS WROTE AND DREW SO MUCH FOR THE FRITTER I HOPE THEY CAN REBLOG AND ADD BC THEYRE SO GOOD <3#we started making a whole au about critter species in the wild and how they interact and survive. very fascinating.#i need to collect all the worldbuilding into one place eventually. rn all i'll say is.. overworked odile petsmart employee (tealgoat's idea#isat critters#isat#in stars and time#isat siffrin#my art#a6se/twohats (this tag only) implication then is that loop is bald i guess aksdks. loop = wild shorthair. fritter = domestic longhair.
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cult trait: good die young
#my art#cotl#cotl lamb#as you can tell. my lamb is SO normal#i wanted to do a thing that showed what kind of a cult leader they were without being like. 25 pages long sakjhfsdg#surprisingly hard???? what can i say i love dramatic spacing and plotlines that slowly build over time. its my curse#this lamb btw is largely based off of the way i played cotl in my first full playthrough. i call this one the Collector#because they do all the fucked up shit you need to in order to collect all the follower forms etc
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btw i feel like this shouldn't have to be said but the reason that agatha hates rio is because agatha didn't get to say goodbye to nicky. rio couldn't offer her any more time. and, in rio's mind, nicky going peacefully in his sleep (and even telling him to turn around and kiss agatha goodbye!!) is the one grace rio feels she can give agatha. nicky doesn't suffer. he doesn't fight. he just...goes. he goes on a walk with his mother and kisses his mama goodbye. but agatha doesn't get to say goodbye!!! she doesn't get those final moments with him!! she wakes up and he's already gone.
#agatha all along#aaa spoilers#agatha all along spoilers#agatha harkness#idk i keep seeing people say that like. there's no reason for agatha to hate rio bc of how gentle she was collecting nicky and its like#i don't think u are seeing it from agatha's pov.#unfortunately i am team agatha in the divorce. sorry.#also i do genuinely love that they were so messy.#agathario#kind of?#anyway. trust i have my docs open.#again so sorry to everyone who followed me for literally anything else#i also think some of agatha's coven killings for agatha were a way to balance the cosmic scale or whatever.#she kills enough witches and she might have the chance to get nicky back etc etc but im too tired to go into that further
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class swap design masterpost for convenience (from top to bottom: bard!riz, cleric!gorgug, sorcerer!kristen, barbarian!fig, artificer!adaine, and rogue!fabian)
#dimension 20#fantasy high#fhfy#fhsy#fhjy#riz gukgak#gorgug thistlespring#kristen applebees#figueroth faeth#adaine abernant#fabian seacaster#my class swap stuff! oh yeah I think I got a tag for that I'll call that#fh class quangle#gna slowly go back and get that tag on relevant posts too. for organization's sake#even tho I didnt really intend this blog to be that kinda blog lmao. we were all just gonna be out here dealin with that at our own pace#anyways uh! they! u know all the lore for the designs already I put em in tags. but otherwise this also collects like the#color keys kind of for these. mostly the things that change between designs#doing this did make me realise half of these are a Lot more consistent in color keys than the other half lol#like kristen's palette stays pretty much the same. and fabian's. the hit's mostly in the construction#a lot of this is overall like an exercise in remembering what high schoolers would actually wear and how to work in Costume pieces#on this point at least I straight up have No relevant recollection lmao all the basic education establishments I went to have uniforms#and outside of school I was. well kind of a shorts and tee guy. so#on that topic I feel like fabian's is the furthest stretch lmao. like if a guy in high school wears the same bright yellow raincoat#to school every day that's like. people would Not like that guy. fabian really is saved by being cute and a rogue#he will still have stans when he's deep in his fishing arc in junior year he's the manic pixie dream bf#anyways uh. things to do! stuff to get done. sleep first tho. have a good night lads#I have not caught new nsbu yet! seems I mostly catch them like two to three days late nowadays.#so please uhh. don't reply on my posts with nsbu spoilers? we are all excited and having fun but that's rude#ok thank u. signing off for the day have a good night#!!
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the problem is that being single is seen as the consolidation prize, and not the natural neutral state of being-a-person. at the end of the movie or the book or the poetry, there is a person waiting for you at the altar, and they love you. if the play is a comedy, everyone gets married. the metaphor is about how you are not-whole. the metaphor is about how everyone is going to be happily-ever-after. the metaphor is that romantic love is the most important resource on the planet, not just all-love. all-love is not a thing, that is a disappointment. the treasure is not the friends we made along the way. the treasure is the girl you landed.
the metaphor is that you cannot be alone, that means you are broken. are you getting over someone? that is acceptable, you can be getting over someone, but not for long. you must be single because you would rather not be single. you must be single and looking to not-be-single. you must want to date, eventually.
friendship and community are never seen as being equal-to or even-better than romantic connection. that person is your one! you need to find them. you need to hunt through the sand particles until you can shift out some kind of gem. this is regardless to your own experience of the beach and the sun. you need to be somewhere with someone.
if you are taking this time alone to heal, that is so sad. everyone gives you this little pitying look. the understanding is that you are not actually happier than you were before you were single. it is seen as a sort of pity - oh, you are choosing yourself, making yourself the priority? - that isn't quite right. you must mean that you are making yourself ready for the right person. you are just laying the bed better this time. open up your heart. you'll find them, we promise!
what do you mean you're really-truly genuinely-very happy? you are probably misremembering what it was like to be in a relationship. and besides, once you meet your person, that time will look grey and bland and wasted. your person is the only way for you to see in color. so what if you have taken this time - for the first time in your entire life - to actually-for-real do the fucking work. you can be proud of yourself, sure. but the way we need to know that you got better is that you get a partner. you're healed enough for the next bad part!
people don't choose to be single, they just say they're choosing to be single - they actually mean "nobody wants to date me." it doesn't matter how many people you have gently rejected or how many times you've talked it over carefully in therapy. what matters is that you are single, and by all accounts - that means you are something worth our pity. your successes and life all seem pale in the sunlight. sure, you have done amazing things and finally found your way in life. what matters is that there wasn't a person in the room with you while you did it.
you want to tell them - that's the whole thing. i didn't know how to be alone in the room. i didn't know how to handle the silence. every moment was so sharp, and i kept choosing the wrong way to close the door. i have spent my entire life in the empty well, living in the ricochet of someone else's cruelty. for once i have built myself a ladder. for once everything i taste is all mine, every bite of sunshine and laughter. i have learned how to sleep out in the open with my memories. recently, they have started to purr.
your father rolls his eyes. listen. this isn't about you. i just want a grandchild in my future.
#writeblr#i actually didn't want a girlfriend before nat#and my dad recently said to me - raquel. i don't approve of the promiscuity#1. i am 30.#2. i had casually dated about 4 people over 18 months.#3. i do believe he was just mad that i get more girls than he ever did#i had to look this 60 yr old deacon in the eye and say. okay so i have a girlfriend first of all im just not tellin yall about her#and secondly.#OKAY???? OLD MAN I DONT EVEN LIVE HERE WHAT ARE U GONNA DO ABOUT IT#briefly considered asking nat if i could pretend we were a one night stand kind of a thing
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This wine tastes like pigs blood!
[First] Prev <â-> Next
#poorly drawn mdzs#mdzs#lan wangji#jin zixun#wei wuxian#su she#(Su She needs to have his carrie moment before he can have his Carrie Moment.#Which means he needs to exist as a punching bag before he can hit 'em with the rebound).#My first draft of this comic had WWX slurping LWJ's wine per actual scene canon#As it really is a great scene of how WWX is willing to absorb the scandal and harm that befalls others.#It had a lot less to do with it being LWJ and more so that WWX just happens to be the kind of person who refuses to turn a blind eye.#It could have been any Lan who was being pressured (inappropriately) to drink (do not pressure anyone to drink irl PLEASE).#Because this is a romance plot it of course *is* LWJ. But don't forget that in this moment they aren't on great terms.#It's not a knight in shining armor moment - it's a 'you were being treated unjustly and I have the power to absolve you from that.'#And as we are very soon about to see - WWX certainly cannot turn away from those who need aid he can provide.#And like Jin Guangyao; that kindness is also his downfall.#By the way - that you all for the amazing community commentary on the last comic. I really loved reading everyone's thoughts!#Suyao shippers...I get it now. You had me at 'wen ning and WWX parallels'. I'll be back with a treat for you soon.#And yes 'everyone' does include the ironically named tumblr user jin zixun.#Who blocked me right before the character makes his pd-mdzs debut.#I hope you are well. You seem like you were having a real bad time yesterday.
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*catboys ur shounen protag*
#my art#jujutsu kaisen#jjk#itadori yuuji#yuji itadori#yuuji#fanart#jjk fanart#boss shes drawing shirtless catboys.............#listen i just bought the mewji plush ive been in a Mood ok#u all can forgive me im sure#i rly liked the original mewji sketch that i did last night but fr some reason when i went to clean it i could not get th expression??#it just looked so off and kind of uncanny and not like yuuji at all#so i scapped it :) hes less scrunchy faced now#also. gomenyasai i am still guilty of doubling up on human/cat ears....#espECIALLY with a haircut like yuujis it is beyond me how to omit them#if anyone can make it work u r a better artist than i#anyway im so happy the trend of like. putting ur ref pic next to the finished piece exists#adds a lil layer of visual interest i think !!!#plus i for one think its neat seeing what other ppl use fr ref#i realized while drawing this tht its been a minute since my last boy without a shirt on#every time i get to draw torso muscles i am like i shld do this more often !!! and then i never do#bc the only thing i like more than rendering muscles is a cute fit GHJFJHFGSHg#anyway itadori mewji ladies and gays enjoy <3#i have ! places 2 b !#'why were u late' . uh .
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there are a lot of evil people in the world and a lot of darkness in the world and so itâs very important for me to stress that now more than ever is the time to spread kindness and compassion. combat the evil by not only not partaking in it, but actively refuting it. destroy the notion that being compassionate or generous or kind to someone is uncool or embarrassing or even scary. be the change you want to see. start a chain reaction. positivity only breeds more positivity. do an act of kindness for someone so that that person who is too afraid to do it themselves can see you, realize that theyâre not alone, and perhaps sheepishly follow your example. and then the next person who is too afraid but sees that person can do the same. when bad news comes out about bad people or horrible atrocities in the world itâs such an easy impulse to despair, and obviously itâs important to feel what you need to feel. grieve. be angry. be sorrowful. be empathetic. but dust off your pants and get up and be a part of a chain reaction that, no matter how small the scale, and spread compassion and love and care. all the reasons why you might notââitâs hard! itâs scary! people will make fun of me! itâs useless because thereâs too much evil!â are all grade A arguments as to why you should. you have no idea how many people you could inspire to do the same. even if it doesnât get you anyway far, you can at least say you have the nobility of trying. please choose love and please choose life. you are worth loving and you are worth inspiring others to love
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there's going to be a doctor who renaissance someday soon and when you finally give 12 a chance you will come crawling to my door and say i was right all along. that weird old man does fuck so hard after all
#if you stopped watching because 'he's mean' so were all the others !!!!#the doctor has a mean shell around them and you have to boil them and peel them like a hard boiled egg and inside they are soft and so#so full of love. 12's whole arc is him wondering if he's to cruel too heartless and by the end of it he's just so unashamedly kind#he's been peeled. my little hard-boiled egg.#doctor who
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this is like christmas eve for emos
#i thought i was done with feeling that kind of excitement but i feel a little sick and im not sure i can sleep#so all it took was mcr to retrieve that childhood wonder huh#mcr#my chemical romance#mcr5#my chem#wwwy 2024#wwwy fest#when we were young fest#i was gonna tag this my inane tag but this is actually a quality shitpost nvm
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just thinking about hair and faces
#art#twisted wonderland#twisted wonderland spoilers#twisted wonderland episode 7 spoilers#twisted wonderland book 7 spoilers#i don't THINK this counts as face horror but just in case#face horror#for your daily dose of me losing my mind over anime characters#i don't know why the hair thing surprised me so much. i think because i thought it was funny that lilia named silver after his hair color.#like ha ha lilia is hilariously bad at names how cute and silly!#oh. oh it's kind of a Thing.#anyway i am excited to see where the heck all of this stuff with silver's various dads ends up!#we still don't actually know who killed meleanor!#we still don't know literally anything about dad draconia! (dadconia? dradconia?)#we don't know what happened to the macguffin gem with its magical dad-saving powers!#(surely this will not come back to save a certain dad at a later point. of course not.)#man i was not expecting episode 7 to be all dads all the time#i mean i'm here for it but#hey remember when the highest stakes were who was gonna win the big talent show#then robots started kidnapping people and now we've just escalated from there#episode 8 our cat is going to turn into a drippy ink kaiju and we're going to have to mecha battle him to save the world or something#each member of diasomnia pilots a limb and we gattai into a giant robot dragon and hold on i gotta submit this spec script to aniplex brb
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i wrote a big long essay talking about tlt and how it engages with describing the skintones of brown characters its under a read more bc it is so long.
I already left a long comment about this on someone else post but I wish I could study tazmuirs odd little habit of dancing around the fact that Gideon and Harrow are women of color when she describes them, and how this kind of extends to other brown characters
We get a million descriptions for how sickly pale ianthe Silas and cytherea are, what a lovely golden tan corona has, the odd tannish yellow hue of colum, all imagined by her, in her own words, to be white. Then when it comes to Marta and Judith they're called dark like Once in the text. I don't think it's even mentioned for Jeannemary and magnus in the entirety of gtn though I will gladly stand corrected if I missed something. It's such a non factor for them, which normally I would overlook if it wasn't for the aforementioned specificity of how white characters are described on Top of one of the major themes of the book being how John, a Maori man, resurrected a largely Polynesian population and then proceed to rule them using the exact same methods that actively colonized new zealand. Like I just think it's really interesting that in many ways, the story is about two young Maori women completely stripped of cultural heritage, they can't even speak te reo maori they cannot even conceptualize the scale of that kind of loss. Theyve been to earth once and during her brief time there Gideon literally died on it's soil it feels so poignant
Back to them specifically being Not Pale, this is not me saying they would be "less" maori if they were light-skinned that's total bullshit and the entire paradigm exists as a product of European bullshit. My fascination is more with the fact that tamsyn has clearly thought of them as midtoned to dark skinned. I'm going to be really generous and disregard the Tommy Arnold covers- he is a talented artist but he's not the author and Taz stated in an interview that she didn't envision Gideon with an undercut either so he clearly has little liberties he can take and I'm fine with that get your coin dude. For these two I'm going to have to focus on Nona the Ninth, bc for the entirety of gtn, harrow is described as grey, and while I understand that's bc she's constantly under a mountain of white and black facepaint, we basically never get an objective description for either of them. Gideon stand out features are her build, hair and eyes, like a lot of characters, but it could have been pretty easy to throw in a line about how she seems less desaturated than what one might expect from a ninth cavalier, like a rich warm brown, possibly hinting to other characters that she isn't a ninth native
Htn also gives very little to work with, again harrows primary colors are the blacks whites and greys of facepaint and her hair and the reds of constantly sweating blood. The character who's darker skintone is Most remarked upon (also one of the few ever constantly headcanoned) as black, is g1deon. I've actually spoken to a few people about this and there seems to be some actual Mandela effect shit going on where people remember Taz saying he's black despite me never once finding evidence for this. However, this is not a case where I'd be overjoyed to be proven wrong, because g1deon being the one black guy in this entire cast, the one who's dark skintone is commented on the most, being the guy who barely speaks, tries killing harrow with a spear 14 times and then dies offscreen. Not good. Bad, actually
Finally onto ntn, in the beginning chapters Nona remarks her (harrows) skintone is the color of an egg carton. I assume she means the light tan, desaturated brown of the cardboard used in certain cartons, which is fitting for harrow, girls lived in an ice cave for 17 years. This is basically the only word we get on it. I believe a few times the text will say something about pyrrha's (g1deon's) brown Everything; brown skin, russet brown hair, rich brown eyes. that character gets to be viewed and constantly affirmed as a brown character in teh way gideon and harrow arent, it kind of others pyrrha. to contrast camillas hands are called tanned way at the beginning while recording nona's dream, then at the way end it says, "Her face still looked grey beneath its nice normal olive," olive being used to describe her once before in gtn as far as i can see. pyrrha's (g1deon's) skintone is one of her most notable features, its brought up to a noticeable agree the text wants you to keep it in your mind when you think of the saint of duty; "Most of Pyrrha was the colours of the building site: deep dried-out browns, dusty hunks of clay, rusted metal." "Pyrrha wouldnât burn any colour other than her deep cool brown." "Nona took the water from Pyrrhaâs brown, work-chapped hand and even sipped it" "Pyrrha had carried Camilla to bed in her big brown arms like Cam weighed nothing" "Pyrrha said, âThanks, Nums,â and drained the whole thing. Nona,fascinated, watched the brown column of her throat move as she swallowed." its just notable to me when alternatively with nona you'll get a line like "Camilla didnât say anything to that either, only rubbed her wrists where the tape had been. Nonaâs skin was already back to its nice normal colour." like just the vagueness in nice normal color, we get one line about what shes supposed to look like in the beginning and thats it
towards the end during the broadcast, nona gets her first clear look at kiriona, described as: "warm-coloured skin that should have been a similar brown hue to Nonaâs, except that there was something wrong with it." break out the champagne its official
Obviously, dying takes some color from you. If anything, gideons desaturation should make them More comparable given the egg carton comment and harrows general state of constant anemia. Has Nona gotten darker during her time on new rho? Was Gideon lighter than the cover led us to believe? We don't know. We well never know, which is odd, bc these books fucking love purple prose about people's appearances. We have like seven different synonyms for the shade of ianthes hair. New words for black have to be invented in order to convey harrows eyes which are Black, not the dark muddy brown of someone like ortus. It's less that I'm bothered by the text not hyperfocusing on their skin and more it picking and choosing when it will laser focus on a detail like that, and how often it's skipped over to the point that I like, constantly see people draw harrow as incredibly pale, which is very different from being light-skinned
Finally, I know people can dismiss this as like an audience interpretation thing. I know I actively draw harrow darker than Gideon which I know isn't canon. But this is less about Fandom response to the text and more the text itself and how it's like. Afraid to say brown. near the end of ntn i found One instance of it referring to gideons "slim brown hand" on nonas cheek and that is direct as it gets. even her other like, strongly non european traits are sort of danced around. her nose is "a nose that was the complete opposite of Nonaâs nose, one that put her in mind of those big poison desert cats Born in the Morning was crazy about." a very fanciful description, you have to infer that nona means that its probably flat and wide, also giving us the information that harrows is most likely narrow and straight, possibly downturned. im not opposed to this, especially given the character talking about her is nona, but then you get the following paragraph:
"Her skin was very much dead-person skin, ashen and tinted the wrong colour around the nostrils and the mouth. But even if she hadnât been dead, Nona was critical. Her eyelashes were very dark, but short and curly, whereas Nona thought all eyelashes should be long and straight (her own eyelashes were long and straight). The corpse had too much mouth and a dimple (nobody in her home had a dimple). You could not, at least, see the veins in her eyelids, which were heavy and cold and deep-set. But Nona thought it was going to be a shame to go from being so lovely as she was to being soâredheaded."
its a very frank description. dimple, curly lashes, red head, dead skin, probably a wide mouth. her nose is contrasted against nonas nose, which is also never directly described, and then compared to a fantasy animal we have never heard of until right now
kicks rocks. there isnt a point to this. the series is almost over, there is zero reason to like, knock on taz's door and ask why she did this or that. it doesnt stop me from loving the series, and the insinuation that noticing this means i must dislike the series is frankly insane (real thing that happened). if someone got the impression that harrow was white given how shes described i wouldnt blame them honestly, its most apparent she isnt in the third book (with the cover art being incredibly ambiguous) and a single blog post from taz mentioning shes maori, immediately followed by an "oh i dont care how you see the characters" addendum, which i think is like. an odd thing to tack on bc them descended from kiwis is like, very integral to the story, and gideon being the daughter of the maori man who took everything from her she didnt even know she could have and the (presumably, given her name and a very brief description) maori woman fighting to get that world back its like. damn. it feels a little important. that the audience knows theyre maori. like a little. it feels intertwined with the whole thing about john using european standards of imperialism and general aesthetics to hurt his own kid. actually.
#tlt meta#hi im black but not maori or kiwi so thats where im coming from with all this#i am fully aware some fans of color will disagree with me thats chill this is just where im at#i have never been a fan of being cagey with how a character looks#it feels like. idk kind of leaning into the fact that the audience wants a blank slate to project onto#and with her being So specific about it like this guy is nz chinese these two are tongan these two are mixed maori this guy is pasifika#it just kind of intrigues me like do you have reasons why as to each one specifically or did they jsut kind of. happen upon you#spring up fully formed#this isnt like a 'tlt is bad' 'you should feel bad if you thought this character was white or black' thing#its strictly about how the text communicates certain ideas and how the audience reacts to them#were kind of primed for . a waifish snobby pale aristocrat. ianthe is Right There harrow being white or pale feels like a natural assumptio#but it is. directly contradicted by the text. and done in a way that can be easily ignored
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