#a misnomer

[ryukisgod]

I don’t understand how they are female presenting, they’re just lizards

I am literally on my knees begging fantasy writers to use "he-elf, "he-dragon," and "he-dwarf." ... Oh, it sounds weird? Then stop doing it for the female presenting ones, it sounds just as weird 🤭

[missmisnomer]

it's always a good day to wake up and choose violence

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[hrokkall]

ULTRATOBER /// SECOND: MOST EPIC BATTLE

[idrawprettyboys]

"The Back-From-Hell Hug" painted with Mei Liang watercolors on Canson cold pressed paper and inked with a Sakura Pigma Micron.

Patreon / Ko-Fi / inprnt / redbubble

[natjennie]

game changer stills are often like renaissance paintings to me.

[apas-95]

I think the 'problematic media' issue is composed of two principle parts, one superceding the other.

Firstly, and the most important to address to cut the discourse off at the head; yes, media is a vector by which social systems reinforce themselves. This is the purpose of propaganda, and this dynamic is completely intelligible to us if we consider the cases of 'person whose sole source of online interaction was 4chan, and who exclusively watched History Channel hagiography about fascist war machines', or 'person who developed inappropriate ideas about sex through watching misogynistic media'. It is plainly clear that it is both possible and common for media to influence people ideologically, as an apparatus of a given social system. Material reality dictates which social systems are given ideological hegemony in media, but media is in fact an effective tool of those systems.

Secondly, while acknowledging the first point, it is not the dominating factor, here. While media can and does influence people ideologically, often commandingly so, it is not some sort of cognitohazard. It is plainly possible to watch, even repeatedly over an extended timetrame, some given piece of fascist propaganda, or abuse apologia, or what have you, without becoming any more beholden to its ideas - if anything, becoming more opposed. The crucial thing, here, is that doing so requires some level of understanding and defence against the ideas presented. Someone with no rebuttal to fascist positions, with no even kneejerk dismissal that what they're taking in is fascist, is unlikely not to internalise something if they're surrounded by fascist media. On the other hand, someone who has been innoculated with opposing political theory, who is capable of recognising the social systems being reinforced by a given communicative work and reasonably countermand them, can watch a thousand misogynist movies, read a thousand racist books, peruse a thousand transphobic news articles, and leave with only stronger convictions to oppose these systems. Clearly, the dominating factor here is not the content of the media itself, but the content of the audience - whether the audience is able to sufficiently recognise, interrogate, and oppose the messaging in a given work.

All this is to say - yes, media can and does influence beliefs, but that that influence is completely subordinate to the question of whether the audience has any level of political theory or critical analysis. A liberal reading fascist literature, not holding any real theoretical opposition to the content of fascism, is safe so long as they can recognise and reject basic fascist signifiers. A feminist is able to recognise misogynistic logic in a given work. A communist can recognise and countermand reactionary spin in a news article or wikipedia page. While the politically-unconscious man will not recognise that his favourite sitcom is instilling him with absurdly sexist views on marriage, the issue here is not the media itself. Fundamentally - the issue of 'problematic media' is one best and principally solved by the development of political theory and political education, not by any suppression of the media itself, which is cumbersome.

[ansburg]

not to soapbox but like. diasporic asians growing up the in the west were constantly told we were uncool, ugly, unfit for leading roles, and just so generally other that many of us still struggle with that self-hatred and deal with the material discrimination that comes with looking "different" from the default. so many diasporic asians have stories about how our creative accomplishments or potential were discounted because we were told we didn’t have enough “personality” – a judgment call that can’t be divorced from how racial triangulation has worked to alienate asian people from dominant cultures in the diaspora.

you know how asian people have been treated by western fantasy? we’re either

ugly and monstrous

exotified beyond recognition

or we don’t exist.

(thanks david. it’s not like thedas is the only continent the player can explore or anything. or that boats exist. where does solas get his tea btw? where do the silks in orlais originate from? why are there always asian aesthetics present without asian faces?)

when a game like bg3 comes along and the studio makes a decision to make an asian companion, it’s huge for us. that’s our crumb of representation. karlach is very obviously not “eurocentric” in her features – if anything, westernized beauty standards would have her face redone to comply with market demands.

she has monolids. she has a flat nose bridge. her cheeks are full and round, buccal fat very much in attendance. whatever she may have arguably been in previous patches, that is not what she is now. and pretending like her face – a face that, newsflash, asian people can relate to – is just a toy you can pop features out of because they don’t have enough “personality” to you, or because they’re too “soft," or because you don’t think a face like hers is “warrior-like” (whatever the fuck that means), is insensitive at best and willfully ignorant at worst. her asianness isn’t a setting to opt out of any more than wyll’s blackness is.

lastly, i’m exhausted that it even needs to be said, but being a person of color does not absolve somebody of intercommunity harm. minority status isn’t an excuse to get out of self-reflecting. it’s okay to step back and say, “wow, i didn’t think about how i’d affect members of this community,” without digging your heels in like one mistake on the internet is an extinction-level event.

studies:

[promiseimnotacop]

jsyk user genderyomi reblogs from ppl identyfing as baeddel/“transman-hater” (w their words). safe to assume she is one.

i do appreciate well meaning calling me out on shit i've reposted and whatnot but that does not to my mind warrant any kind of unfollow/deleting posts what have you

i have been seeing traces of this new wave is 'transmisandry a real thing/is baeddelism real and if it is is it actually a bad thing or kinda based' flooding my dash lately and have very deliberately stayed away from engaging in any of it/weighing up on one side or another.

thankyou for engaging here though in a more polite way!

[spooksier]

i love revisiting and re-drawing my old tma stuff because most of it was done in my senior yr of high school/freshman yr of college and it's really cool to see my progress in illustration/character design/composition/being-able-to-draw as a whole :-) ily the magnus archives

[squidsploitation]

i hope someone made this one already jeez.

[wolfythewitch]

I need to reread your Judas x Jesus fic again, can u send the ao3 link ?

Sure

[tonydaddingham]

wandering into the macbeth tag every few minutes or so like a lost child searching for mum in the supermarket

[missmisnomer]

They're my little guys. My good time pals. Just a couple of goobers.

They are also menaces to society, but that's besides the point 😁

More Rise silliness [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ] [ 6 ]

[10001gecs]

i do think that many of you are much more distrustful and contemptuous of ai than is reasonable

[ale-arro]

[defiantinsect]

figured id write something up for the side order au i keep mentioning. general stuff below but if youre curious about anything specific feel free to ask (the same is true for all of my splat stuff)

no smollusk is the biggest change here. i think marina doing this on her own volition is much more interesting to me. give me women doing bad things

not that she thinks shes doing anything bad - she just thinks shes "making up" for all the things shes felt guilty for over the years. this, combined with her basically exploding and breaking down during the early days of the tour after shes suppressed herself for so long (she is 100 percent a bottler change my mind), culminates in the persona marina takes on after she enters the memverse.

the world of order is a place where no one can feel pain, sadness, regret, or...anything. no emotions, no hurt. marina wont be able to ruin any more lives if she just turns inkopolis into a place of stagnation. flawless plan. greyscaling in this au is for those that still feel scared and upset (how could you be upset? this world is so much better than the one you left behind!), and it turns them into either parallel canon-like beings or, arguably worse, jelletons, though the latter is reserved for specific individuals she has in mind (the idols, namely, but the agents as well). she cant watch over this place by herself, so greyscaled people are her mouth and eyes in the areas she cant reach.

ending up in the memverse is like entering a coma in the real world (while its still around. closer to the end in this au, marina initiates the merging of the two). for a while you grow increasingly lethargic, your personality begins to fade, and anhedonia starts consuming your life to the point you dont want to do anything but sleep. the more you sleep, the more youre likely to end up in the memverse until one fateful day or night, you lay down, and never wake up. mass hysteria amongst the public sets in not just in the wake of marinas disappearance, but in the wake of this new sleeping sickness.

another big point in this au is the ambiguity of whether or not the memverse itself is alive and alters your body in subtle ways to "adjust" you better to your new home. also ambiguous as to whether or not the memverse is truly separate from marina herself, and whether or not its her thats ship of theseus'ing your ass

marina has a mental link to eight. she tells pearl, whos a fucking mess, about how shes being listening to her voice and how she wants eight to join her, and its a dark relief for pearl - marinas alive somewhere. neither of them know how to actually reach her, and the stuff marinas saying isnt exactly normal. the sleeping sickness comes for them a lot faster and it takes a long time for them to wake up in the memverse, separated (pearl also ends up in a wheelchair. that wheelchair concept art is too sick to not utilize)

acht. the memverses original purpose of de-zombifying the sanitized is still in effect here, so theyre just a dude who is in a new torment nexus. like everyone else in this au, theyre in the order suit and have an id tag in their one of their ears. marina tempts them constantly with the allure of being re-zombified, though at one point they witness someone being greyscaled into a jelleton and know the horrors that go into the process, and its enough to keep them rejecting her. as the cast shrinks over the course of the au, they become eights lifeline until they give in to a moment of weakness and submit themselves to marinas whims, ironically triggering eights greyscaling in the process as shes the last one standing (no point to being the only sapient being in a world full of beasts)

greyscaling can be self-inflicted to some extent, btw. in these cases marina usually adds "finishing touches" to the individuals final form. stress and angst and trauma feed into desires of escapism, and the memverse listens and fulfills their wishes in the most malicious compliance way possible. their forms as jelletons, if they turn into one, are usually informed by what traumatized them or what made up their identity while normal (i.e. eight ends up being predominantly deep sea metro themed)

last note: agent 4. secondary antagonist in this au. shes one of the very first people to end up here, and marina weaponizes her loneliness + self worth issues to transform her into a formidable, calculating opponent. doesnt attack herself, and instead relies on her army of people-turned-parallel-canons to do the work for her; up until she snaps and becomes a jelleton, she runs the greyscaling operation so marina can focus on other things. seeing eight sends her into a rage (just dont pay any attention to the little part of her that lights up instead), and she only gets angrier when eight just tries to talk it out with her instead of fighting. in her mind, eight cant do anything to redeem herself - her past behavior betrays her words. the cool facade melts away when she proposes a new, specially made body for her (one that she can puppet from afar, leaving eight utterly at her disposal) and eight flatly rejects her. then she goes apeshitt

much more horror/angst oriented than canon side order

ok. i wrote too much again oops