#YES PLEASE THIS WOULD BE AWESOME

[butterfilledpockets]

Hey how would you feel if someone were to make a Spotify playlist based your B.E.N.T. comic???

JGJSBGKS YES YES YES

I actually have several playlists that I've hoarded BUT YES ALL PLAYLISTS ARE MORE THAN FUCKING WELCOME

I love music and playlists like that I shall listen to them whilst I draw

[pushing500]

I'm sure native folk of the far future will have plenty of landback and get to be connected with their homelands, but native folk spanned all the Americas. I'm sure Mechi speaks relatively regional to his tribe + how much time he spends connected to it, versus the rest of society (which, given his personality--). My mas from the south, so even though I was raised in the north, I still call her her ma (which is a bit more grown feelin than mama/momma), and slipping into her or my dads southern accents. It's especially pleasant in a long, 'But Mommaaaaaaa'. Hair style traditions also vary between tribes, but some embrace pan-indianism, meaning a lot of culture sharing in the modern era and likely future. I've taken to braiding my hair even though historically my people were more topknot oriented. | No shade on your presentation of native identity, its p tasteful, just infodump, because I didn't get to grow up In Touch with my tribe, so I've been doing studying. No need 2 post if it's hardly a question. I'll definitely send some questions.

I confess I was very nervous about trying to portray anybody who wasn't plain old caucasian white because I am very, very white, and I know that there are things I'll never understand about the experiences of being someone from another culture. I worried I'd do something wrong, but in the end, I thought it would be better to try and draw diverse people to the best of my ability and trust that if I did anything problematic or offensive, the internet would very quickly let me know in no uncertain terms.

I did a lot of research before I started drawing Mechi and planning his family and stuff. His name and all his family members' names are of Hopi origin, I believe. I saw a lot of traditional Hopi hairstyles while I was researching, and they were sooo gorgeous!! Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be any RimWorld mods with traditional hairstyles, so the pawns wouldn't match any drawings I did if I used more traditional styles, which is why they all just have more generic long hair.

At the end of the day, though, RimWorld is set thousands of years in the future, and I'm pretty certain Mechi isn't even from Earth originally. He was likely born on some other urbworld. I just wanted to practice drawing people who weren't Caucasian, so I'm doing the best I can with what limited experience I have.

I do like the idea of Mechi calling Squashbug "Ma", though. Maybe he'll stick with that. It's very sweet, and easily solves my 'u' versus 'o' problem!

For anybody curious, Mechi's family names and their meanings ❤️

[its-gettin-weird]

"Because I want to be one with you — you finally noticed the wish that I'd been praying for!"

Sirius’ outfit is a wedding dress / wedding themed! I made this her motif because of her obsession with Petelgeuse and because of the whole ‘becoming one’ thing reminding me of marriage / wedding vows, stuff like that. I didn’t know whether to incorporate her bandages or not, and in the end decided against it + opted to just cover as much of her bare skin as possible like with the veil, sleeves, and purple fabric above the shoulders. I gave her a spiked collar and spiky halo-like hairpiece + put her hair in a ponytail (maybe that’s a little hard to tell ahaha) to give her kinda punkish elements to her, twisting the ‘purity’ of the wedding theme a bit to subtly reflect her instability (and because it looks cool). I didn’t want her to just have a regular old wedding dress cause I thought it would look kind of bland compared to the other magi designs, so I added some fire elements to her dress that I think turned out really well :) . I also had the genius idea to make her hooks double as weaponized wedding rings to go with the outfit’s aesthetic. Her hooks are connected together to also symbolize ‘becoming one’ / the unity of marriage, that sort of thing.

The authority from a wish doc says that her wish was for love / believes love is to become one, so her wish would grant her ‘soul-washing’ powers. Her abilities make her extremely dangerous to other magi…

[phatcatphergus]

Ranch of fobo Sunny

[autism-corner]

man. women huh.

[benicebefunny]

While everything involves class politics, reducing Burning Man to "decadent dolts drown in desert" ignores the fundamental role of settler colonialism in the event.

It's been said before, but not everyone at Burning Man is rich. Like, my dad is there. He works at a trucking company. He inspects trailers for a living. He didn't know pesto was green.

My dad is a white, working class boomer desperate to relive Woodstock--an event he didn't actually attend.

Like everyone else at Burning Man (going back to its founding), my dad is using the Western desert landscape as a way to connect with his true, primal self and forge bonds of community sheltered from commerce.

As a settler, he's using this colonized land as a resource, as a way of becoming the person he wants to be, to create beauty, to test his resilience.

Even before the tech bros arrived, Burning Man has always been about settling (however temporarily) a small piece of the frontier.

Burning Man hinges upon the myth of an empty, lifeless, artless desert ripe for improvement.

Burning Man is settler colonialism.

To caricature this year's Burning Man as another Fyre Festival is to obscure the role of colonialism in both events.

When US settlers make Burning Man about the excesses of the wealthy elite, they cover up the role of settler colonialism in their daily lives.

Burning Man isn't just a playground for the rich. Like the rest of the United States, it's a playground for settlers, a place to dream. Beware.

[kanskje-kaffe]

.

[unagrancantidaddepanes]

"allo people ship aroace characters in QPRs as an excuse for aroace erasure by still shipping them with other characters" is the most mind numbing take ive ever heard in my life. I cant believe I have to say that respecting aroace identities isnt aphobic 💀

[gristol-liker]

So, I would like to sketch this someday. And I have no one to ask. If there was a boss in the Fatherland Follies level, what would it be?

You came to the right place! Not only have I thought about this before, but I actually have a concept for a short fic centered on a boss in Gristol's mind.

The boss I've thought up is Puppetmaster Malik, very much based on this:

Puppetmaster Malik is a gigantic Gristol, just like the other bosses in Psychonauts.

The fight takes place on a giant stage with an audience comprised of Grulovian citizens. The closer Raz gets to defeating the Puppetmaster, the angrier the audience becomes, jeering louder and louder. They also throw things onto the stage at various points. (Not sure what they throw yet, but it's thematically appropriate.)

As for his attacks, Puppetmaster Malik controls three marionettes; Maligula, Truman, and Loboto (I'm open to suggestions for alternatives.) Each marionette has a different attack; Maligula floods the stage, Truman summons underlings (censors and such), and Loboto... well, I'm not sure about his yet.

Raz then has to counter the marionettes in appropriate ways. To avoid Maligula's flood, he can climb onto the items the audience throws. Truman's stage is straightforward - wipe out the summoned enemies. Again, I'm not sure about Loboto.

To defeat the Puppetmaster, Raz has to sever the strings on each marionette, separating them from Gristol's influence. I don't have the full details for how he accomplishes this though.

That's about all my thoughts on the subject.

A sort of prototype of this boss appears in my fic "Another Part of..." I wanted a big finish, so I was thinking about what a boss fight would look like with Gristol. I came up with both Puppetmaster Malik and the character who actually appears in the fic at the same time, so they share similarities.

[cruell-summers]

me holding onto 1989 tv era despite the rep tv announcement rumours like:

[mel-loly]

-Plush of Mario✨

[king-sdw]

i really really really hope the blade artist miniserie is actually going to happen because it would be the coolest thing ever

[thetimelordbatgirl]

Do I like the looks of trying to MCU'fy Doctor Who??? Not really, no. But I can't deny the fact that these bits of intro made me happy at least.

[mekatrio]

ill only talk abt this once so it doesnt bear repeating again and again and again in my fruitless mind but that fucking.....TWEET... where jin says kano would become a cop in the future. a cop. a cop.... yes i think jin is a pretty good writer in spite of various plunders (unfunny misogyny-tinted jokes + lack of a proper ending), but all things considered i think he made a great narrative especially considering how overworked he was like the sheer amount of works churned out by jin and sidu in like a 7 year timespan is not a pretty picture. but still.. A COP.... kano fucking shuuya becoming a cop as an adult.... yeah thats a plunder. obvs jin as the creator understands his character the best (THEORETICALLY) but like this is an instance of idk differing politics or whatever. bc in what world would a child who grew up wary/fearful of welfare states intervening in his family issues become a cop. a child who hid and kept his powers a secret with his friends because they were fearful of possible detainment. a child who runs away to live in some abandoned warehouse instead of contacting authorities when their father figure endangers them. AND also idk how well-developed this aspect of kgpr is but like i think its subtext that saeru-possessed kenjirou had other people working under him so like kano wouldve been privy to the amount of corruption present in systems as well.... if his time at the facility with kido and seto wasnt enough already to show him that. LIKE WHY WOULD HE EVER BECOME A COP........

[seawitchkaraoke]

No but sometimes I am so tired of playing therapist/neurotypicals translator for my neurodivergent friend like. It's exhausting, to have to be the one to explain why your friend got upset when you just signed her up for the same study group as yourself without asking her first or letting her sign up for what group she wanted herself.

Like. I am good at patiently explaining these things, which is why she always asks me about these things but it's exhausting. But also therapy isn't very accessible and she doesn't have anyone else who really gets her problems understanding stuff to the same level I do so....

Then another friend who doesn't do this on this level but who does go on about how great it is that we can kinda laugh about neurodivergent problems together and such and how amazing it is and how she never really talked about these things with anyone else, which I agree it's great to have someone to talk about it but? The way she phrases it, puts a lot of pressure on me and makes it kinda weird? Like it's this great secret we're sharing? Especially since we haven't known each other all that long?

And like. Idk. I get it, I get to you it's amazing to have someone to talk about this to, someone who gets some of your struggles, someone who talks very openly and happily about being neurodivergent but. Man. I'm great but I'm not an expert in all things neurodivergent. I'm not?? Idk I'm not "special" for having adhd or for talking openly about it, I'm just some perfect life coach, I don't have my own life together, all I've got going for me is that I know what my problems are and that I'm not super afraid to talk about them

Idk. It's just exhausting. Like.... These two in particular just have vibes of kinda putting me on a pedestal (though in different ways) and that just makes me uncomfortable but also idk how to set boundaries there bc "stop telling me that I'm awesome" is. Hmm. It's not like that's what they do. They just imply it. They imply that things I do or say that really aren't anything special are somehow amazing and like??? Idk man I'm just me? Compliment me for the things I do that are actually awesome, not like... For agreeing to do a fun thing with you? I don't do it out of?? Pity? Or whatever? I want to do the fun thing?

[mathmusicreading]

Xiè Lián: My surname is Xiè, my first name is Lián. Huā Chéng: You can call me your third husband. Xiè Lián: What happened to my first two husbands?!

I learned Huā Chéng was having Xiè Lián call him "husband" from Ty the Canasian on Kictor's YouTube, I found this when I was trying to corroborate the linguistics, and I indulged and bought the official Seven Seas Entertainment (translator and editor are on Tumblr!) English translations of the books so here's further confirmation from Volume 1:

ETA:

I made this post private because I was unhappy with it (misspelling/misformatting Wúmíng, knowing I wouldn't have good reach for larger and less biased sample size even if I could have tagged better for the fandoms and characters if Tumblr organized by more than the first five tags), but I'm making it public again since it finished and so did the similar poll that fun-mxtx-polls was kind enough to make for me.

Not to bias towards the first option, just to explain it, the first option and why I wanted this poll come from the naming pattern trivia for MXTX's love interests/male leads/gongs, which I think you can best read on Huā Chéng's page on the Heaven Official's Blessing/Tiān Guān Cì Fú wikia. I'm just using that as my citation given:

I'm not sure if MXTX has discussed this meta in-joke somewhere and if so, where.

The SSE Glossary: Terminology note (all volumes of all three MXTX novels) only explains the second and third gongs, and implies MXTX is doing this purposefully. Lán Wàngjī's wikia page explains only the three published gongs, and implies this started from fandom phenomena creating a proto-stage pattern (if you subscribe to "one is chance, two is coincidence, three is a pattern"). Huā Chéng's page linked above is the odd man out and so probably incorrect about Lán-èr-gē vs. Lán-èr-gēge, but it goes above and beyond by explaining the fourth gong, and it uses the most neutral language regarding this trivia.

I think citation is unnecessary for "gē" (哥 | 哥) meaning "big brother" and in certain contexts having the connotation or meaning of "eldest brother" (admittedly my unverified inference), "èr" (二 | 二) meaning "two", and "sān" (三 | 三) meaning "three".

I actually like so much because I like to think if it could use more wordplay and less literalism. Please forgive me for being a poor reader not remembering exactly, not buying the TGCF raws yet, not being able to buy the SVSSS and MDZS raws, and only being able to find old fan translations/interpretations of MXTX's fourth novel preview, but let me explain:

I believe Luò Bīnghé isn't being called "Luò Bīnghé-gē" (or rather "Bīng-gē" since I think? it's more usual to use the suffix with the single/first character of a person's given name, not with their full name, especially when the full name is three (or more? some of my reading has mentioned two-character last names but I didn't find if culture was strict about then making the given name be only one character) characters) for the usual reasons to address someone with "gē", but actually the PIDW!Luò Bīnghé is being called Luò Bīnggē (or "Bīng-gē") because he's more aggressive than canon/SVSSS!Luò Bīnggē who when being differentiated gets called Luò Bīngmèi (or "Bīng-mèi"), and I love that "very fitting reasoning for the naming, not strictly literal and not so bound to literal".

Then with Lán Wàngjī, I see the opportunity that his nickname could have used the natural naming of "erhua is used as a diminutive suffix", and the "er" would have been homophonous with "èr" (二 | 二) for "two" for him being the second gong, and homophonous to the potential "proper address for him as the second Lán son/brother".

In the most literal sense, you'll notice that the gongs so far have had their nicknames be using "(big) brother" and Huā Chéng's uses láng (郎 | 郎) "son" (his stated meaning, although it can also mean "man" and "husband" and the latter is how we can interpret he wanted it to be when coming from Xiè Lián). There's nothing wrong with that and the numbers are perfectly probable, and would still be so as they grow, but also they could feel more like "contrived" coincidence, which is part of my wanting to get away from literalism a little bit, not just my loving clever wordplay. With Huā Chéng, I don't have a homophone I can use for punning like with Lán Wàngjī, or really the "cultural language use where literal suffixes/honorifics get used figuratively for XYZ purposes", but I can make it fit with character interpretation. To me, Sān Láng doesn't have to be "Third Son" because "he has two older brothers" and in fact we aren't sure that he was telling the truth about that—instead, I think Huā Chéng could be being clever with not just getting Xiè Lián to call him (Third/surname "Three") Husband but in saying his name is "Third Man" because this is the third alias he gives Xiè Lián. (Some additional feels this gives me: It's like he's saying he's the same person Xiè Lián met before, that they shared all of that experience and it mattered, that he's the final form of that person wanting to be with Xiè Lián, that he's like a fairy-tale character with many names and forms and a true name and form and all along there was a trick or thread to follow in knowing and identifying him.) It just works out so perfectly because of the third way he introduces himself to Xiè Lián matching him being the third gong, and also the fairy-tale significant number of "three".

Finally, with the fourth gong, I've looked at Suika's TGCF Afterword translation, a NovelUpdates MDZS spoilers forum post by K.san crossposted to the Grim Reapers Have No Days Off spoilers forum by alexfilia, a reply to this post in r/tianguancifu by u/chenmochou, and also this post in r/tianguancifu by u/Loud_Daikon6167 which cites a TikTok I can't see either because of TikTok's thing about opening to a random page/the homepage or I assume the TikTok being removed or locked. Given the first NovelUpdates post maybe having more of a direct translation compared to the first Reddit post, it's still not definitive to me whether this is "actually more of a fandom thing, with MXTX acknowledging and participating in it enough to help make it possible" or it's "MXTX doing this on purpose with her name choices and character traits, whether she meant to have the pattern from the start or later, and yes could have been influenced by fandom" because I think "Other: 四少" is probably about the male lead(s) compared to it following "Protagonist: the uke's name is not determined yet" so it doesn't seem like the fandom came up with a nickname out of whole cloth. "Four young masters" is perfectly probable and could be equally reasonable, and "four ikemen" could even follow in reasonability; in fact it could be more likely and realistic since this is a modern setting, which would have different use of "young master" to me, and because we believe the gong to be the regular human and the shou to be the grim reaper. But for the wordplay, I would have liked it if the gong were the grim reaper and the "four theme naming" came from the famous "sì" (四 | 四) meaning "four" is homophonous with "sǐ" (死 | 死) meaning "die/death" and the latter being used in the Chinese for "grim reaper"/"death god".