#and stuff feel a lot more disconnected nowadays

[bionic-baby]

In the original bionicle story bible, there was a line about how it wasn’t going never meant to be specified whether bionicle was going to take place on earth or on an alien planet.

That was the sort of escapist fantasy that bionicle was going to provide.

Some series are too alien to provide this specific type of fantasy, some series are too grounded in reality to provide this type of experience (think Moana. It has actually humans in it, so it makes you feel like an outsider looking in.)

Moana and bionicle are both based on the same cultures, but bionicle provides this specific type of daydream more than Moana.

Bionicle makes you feel like a different race. (At least early bionicle)

Later bionicle is more typical of modern sci-fi. That’s ok, I like things like the transformers and Ben 10 and arcane and even the movie 9, but early bionicle and later bionicle have different fantasies attached to them.

Later bionicle is like beyblade, it’s more consumerist(that’s the same for most toys in the action genre, it’s not necessarily a bad thing), the commercials are more flashy, the rahi look less surreal and more beastly, the imagery gets less spiritual, but the toys are still fire! The story is still compelling, and the characters are still interesting.

Early bionicle had quieter commercials with less music and voice acting, the commercials were calming, though to some, that might make them boring, there was spiritual imagery used that made it seem remote, esoteric, and tantalizing.

The Toa Metru were like a modern superhero team, while the Toa Mata were like a bunch of grown up siblings that lived in different apartments and sort of hate each other but not really, and by the time they became the Toa Nuva, they (through character development) became a stronger team.

The metru are still cool though. Nokama has an excellent voice. Vakama’s arc is excellent, Matau is funny. They look cool together. Vakama fighting against the makuta was awesome.

I live in a boring town with geometric architecture, and early bionicle made me feel like I was not American, it made me feel like an island-lifer! It made me feel like I was livin’ on the edge. It made me feel special. It made me feel like a part of a different culture.

It being based on a real culture made it feel connected to real life, but since there was no humans and supernatural elements and sci-fi stuff, it was just disconnected from real life enough to feel comfortable for you to imagine yourself in without feeling out of place.

That’s why I was upset about the lawsuit threat and bionicle’s pivot into pure sci-fi, you just can’t get the same feeling from 2004 onward, and a lot of you out there don’t want that feeling or you find the search for that feeling to be actively harmful or “exoticism” or something.

Listen, it’s not fun to be Euro-American nowadays, I don’t enjoy it, and I’m mot proud of it, most medieval art looks terrible, most traditional European things/clothes/artwork look desaturated and dull, while artworks from other cultures look so much better. They have a better sense of color, sorry. This is just my opinion, I just like other styles.)

Please don’t judge me or unfollow me.

Is my search for this feeling harmful?

[hiiragi7]

I can't relate to the way people talk about autism online nowadays, and it feels incredibly isolating.

For example, I am glad that people nowadays can be open and celebrate their special interests, but I never had that and feel disconnected due to it. My special interests meant I was socially isolated growing up and trained through ABA not to speak about them unless asked, and to limit myself even then.

Same with stimming, growing up I always had very large stims and it was punished out of me, and now I have a skin picking disorder and don't know how to reconnect with stimming at all. I'm glad for people who can stim without worrying, but at the same time I don't share the experience and feel a bit odd about it.

The way people talk about autism in general nowadays also just doesn't line up with how I have experienced it, which is okay, I just don't relate to the community because of it. Autism for me meant developmental delays, needing help with basic self-care a lot longer than my peers, various speech disorders, facing discrimination from a very young age for being visibly autistic, growing up in SPED and ABA, not having my IEP followed and having no power to do anything about it, my parents fearing I'd regress in my skills and talking about sending me to a special needs home, learning disability and being unable to keep up with my peers in school, processing issues and being constantly overwhelmed by stimuli, needing to have noise cancelling headphones to manage being in public, having to switch schools because they couldn't support an autistic child, elopement, specialized schedules, autism therapies, and... a lot of shit that just doesn't get talked about in the online autism community, basically.

Which, I feel a lot of that is because most people in the online community are diagnosed late and "level 1"/"high-functioning"/"low supports needs"/whichever term you prefer, which is fine, but I also wish I knew of spaces for autistics which don't have that experience - I'm sure they exist, but I don't know of any and don't know where to look.

There's no point to this post, really, I'm just like... rambling, and maybe even hopeful that someone who reads this can point me in the right direction with where to find experiences like mine, and community. Others like me I can talk to. More space for people with medium and high supports needs. Stuff like that.

[cumaeansibyl]

March 2025 In Film

Thought I might start writing about the new movies I watch every month. I keep pretty good track on Letterboxd. We tend to rewatch movies we love (or love to hate) but I'll leave those off.

3/9/25: TNT JACKSON (1974), dir. Cirio H. Santiago. Santiago was a legendary Filipino director/producer, mostly in exploitation genres. He has a small but devoted cult following nowadays but I can't say I'm among them; compared to something like COFFY (1973) or FOXY BROWN (1974) this is pretty weak. Standard blaxploitation plot of "someone did my relative/friend/partner wrong and I'm going to do kung fu to them," low-energy execution. 2.5/5

3/10/25: THE MUTHERS (1976), dir. Cirio H. Santiago. This one's got a women in prison setup but doesn't include any of the usual sleazy stuff, which is actually fine, except then it doesn't replace it with anything interesting. 1.5/5

3/13/25: THE MONOLITH MONSTERS (1957), dir. John Sherwood. Gosh, I love the trend in 50s scifi of trying to invent monsters that aren't creatures. You can just tell the writers were deadly bored with aliens and giant bugs, and desperate for something new, something that didn't feel like a retread of every other movie. The "monsters" are meteorites that grow when they encounter water, turning into towering crystalline monoliths that wreck the hell out of a 50s-sf standard Sleepy Desert Community. The writing is reasonably snappy, the direction sharp, and the monoliths themselves actually quite creepy in their inexorable advance. 4/5

3/24/25: THE GREAT ALLIGATOR (1979), dir. Sergio Martino. Italian jungle movies from this period always make me think of that Britta quote from Community: "I can excuse racism, but I draw the line at animal cruelty." Well, the Italians will give you both! I love a bad creature effects movie, but the alligator in this is mostly too boring to be gratifyingly bad, except for a few incredible shots with the full body model. I did appreciate the bit where they bonked it gently against an equally unconvincing minibus model in a fishtank. 2/5

3/26/25: MERCURY IN RETROGRADE (2017), dir. Michael Glover Smith. In which six young friends spend a weekend in a cabin in the woods and do NOT get murdered, contrary to our usual viewing habits. Just a really well-written, well-acted, well-directed little interpersonal drama, about women who don't know how to tell their secrets and men who don't know how to listen, which we picked at complete random because it was filmed in Western Michigan. We're now looking out for Najarra Townsend in more stuff; turns out she's something of a scream queen. 4/5

3/26/25: PLAY VIOLET FOR ME (2015), dir. Matt Mercer (short). Unfortunately, when you have found an interesting new horror actor, you will end up watching a lot of absolute crap. Dumb excuse for the director to play out his noir/hot twins fantasies. At least it's only 14 minutes. 0.5/5

3/26/25: FEEDING TIME (2016), dir. Matt Mercer (short). Also dumb but funny because I'm unsophisticated. What did I say about bad creature effects? One of the worst I've ever seen of its particular kind (affectionate). 3/5

3/30/25: CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD (1980), dir. Lucio Fulci. What a disappointment. Everyone in the sick pervert film community really hypes up Fulci's "Gates of Hell" trilogy as masterworks of surrealist audacity and so on, but this just did not hit for us. I love a movie that operates on nightmare logic, but I don't think you can just fake that by leaving your scenes disconnected. I really liked the lighting? 2.5/5.

3/31/25 RONIN (1998), dir. John Frankenheimer. Hot damn, that's more like it. I've seen Frankenheimer at his worst (1979's PROPHECY; don't drink and direct, kids) but this is absolutely masterful. Top-tier cast, a plot that's just twisty enough to keep you engaged without leaving you confused, fantastic performances, and I now understand why it keeps coming up as a dark horse in "greatest movie car chases of all time" conversations. Does everything BULLITT did but on streets half as wide. 4.5/5.

[galionne-speeding]

Hi! At the time of writing this ask, AO3 is still down, so I decided to put some headcanons for your Pantheon AU in here. If you like them, please feel free to use them. If you don’t like them or the reasoning behind them, please let me know why so I don’t continue misinterpreting them in my head.

Boreas:

When you’re going to do something incredibly stupid, he’ll tell you it’s stupid, but he won’t stop you if you decide to do it anyway. (He seems like the type of person who has seen so much idiocy that he’s numb to it.)

Piia:

They actually weren’t too mad at the kid who tricked them into trapping themselves in a mirror. They were very impressed that someone actually outwitted them, especially since it was a fellow kid. (I have a hunch that it was the adults’ idea to sacrifice Piia, and as such, they didn’t target other kids with their tricks and pranks.)

Zeutaros:

May or may not be an ancestor of Zavok. Assuming that he gets disconnected from the emerald’s power and he manages to calm down, he will hang around Zavok a lot, trying to “parent” him, much to Zik’s annoyance. (Zeutaros has horns shaped like Zavok’s, and the two have very similar builds. Also, the thought of a ripped hulking creature arguing with a tiny old man about how to raise a kid is… amusing, to say the least. Especially when you realize that Zik is easily puntable by someone like Zeutaros.)

Mother Agnes:

Overprotective parental figure, who put the children under her care into that comatose state to “protect” them from the outside world. (It just seems like a quality she would have, especially if the emerald messed with her mind.)

Malda:

The embodiment of “You either earn my respect or get off my lawn.” (Cranky hermit.)

Occasionally bleps. (Frog.)

Desíré:

Spoiled as heck. Will not accept anything considered “the stuff of simpletons”. (Prince stuff.)

Manas:

Will scam you once he learns what scamming is. (He just has that air about him.)

All the Pantheon:

Severely time-displaced and will probably wreck numerous things as they figure out how modern amenities work.

Oh wow, hello! Thank you for writing, I think this is the first time someone has sent me their headcanons for my OCs and I must say, this is awesome! It's so cool to see other people's interpretation of them!

Quite a few of these headcanons are pretty spot on too

Boreas Correct! He has no interest in stopping anyone from getting in trouble (unless there's a chance their stupidity might affect him). This isn't out of malice- after losing his entire tribe he's become numb to people in general. He doesn't form bonds with others anymore and has stopped caring about pretty much anyone and anything.

Piia The child who sealed them away is probably one of the only individuals Piia doesn't have a vendetta against. They were more angry at themselves for being tricked than anything else. Sacrificing villagers to the moutain was a common occurence where Piia lived, although the children were typically kept out of the loop. Being albino, Piia was considered a particularly valuable sacrifice. Their primary target for their vengeance is indeed adults (and older teens) ; however if a kid is nearby or even caught in the crossfire… That is not a reason for them to stop.

Zeutaros Bingo! This was the idea when designing him (a little too obvious but oh well). He's Zavok's great(x40) grampa ; although because I kept going back and forth on this it's not actually that important to the overall story. I was also originally going to give him power over both fire and electricity as well ; but I decided to focus on the latter for. Story reasons. As for caring for Zavok… That is unfortunately very much not the case. I have a lot of headcanons about Zeti and the Lost Hex ; one of them being that warrior packs like the Deadly Six make up only a tiny tiny portion of the population on the Hex. The majority of Zeti nowadays are farmers and artisans living in small communities, relying on the warriors for protection in exchange of food. Back when Zeutaros was (first) alive however, things were much the opposite. Warriors ruled the Hex and those who couldn't fight back were either killed or made to serve them. Zeutaros in particular was known to slaughter those he considered weak with little remorse- which is why the Deadly Six allied themselves with Sonic & Co. Because they know this guy would have no issue killing them and then everyone on the Hex if he ever makes his way back up there. Oh also yeah, the Emerald gives him power but has no impact on his psyche. He's just like that.

Mother Agnes Overprotective in the worst way possible. She suffered a lot in her youth and always wished someone would have taken her away from that suffering ; that she could have escaped it all. As an adult she views the world as inherantly evil- and children to be too pure and gentle to be a part of it. She projects all of her past trauma onto them and believes the best for them is to never have to face anything upsetting, ever. Hence putting them in a permanent sleep where she believes nothing can ever harm them.

Malda Deep down she's a kind old lady ; always was until she was you know, drowned for crimes she never committed. She's still got some of that kindness in her but yeah, if she doesn't like you you are not welcome.

Désiré Well, yes and no. They were very much spoiled in the material sense ; jewelry and good food and expensive robes… But they never felt truly loved- much less accepted. Désiré is the name they chose for themself. It was never uttered by anyone else in their family. To them they were always Raaj, their heir who was throwing a petty tantrum and would come around eventually to his princely duties. Désiré could easily be convinced to give up the riches for a more simple life where they can feel loved. Just give them some time to get used to it.

Manas Oh absolutely, yes. Scamming's his game and all he needs is a few gullible individuals to get started.

All The Pantheon I need to make a timeline for when all these guys were alive. Mother Agnes would be the closest to present time (think the Sonic equivalent of the 1920s) and Zeutaros the furthest away (roughly early Iron Age). So yeah, lots of tech getting completely wrecked with these guys around.

[dizzybizz]

ok i need someone elses (especially- but not exclusively- other afab autistics, cis or trans) thoughts on this shit cause im losing my goddamn mind i just have so many feelings about gender and its fucking me up

ok so.

ive always sorta felt disconnected with my gender and i dont think me being autistic helps with it either. what with trying to pinpoint feelings and all that being hard. and it has i guess planted a lot of doubt surrounding my thoughts and feelings about my own gender in my mind. i question if everything im feeling is just bc im autistic. which is why im making this post!! i just need some outside perspectives and thoughts and i guess i want to know that im probably not alone in my struggles with this.

idk how i wanna structure this post but ill just write down the things that come to mind.

like before i hit puberty i was not into the idea of it at all. and before i had considered the fact that i might be trans, i thought it was just because i didnt like the thought of change. and i think thats normal, being hesitant about puberty.

BUT uhm. now im not religious. but i vividly remember praying to god that i would at least be as late a bloomer as possible. if not, never ever going through afab puberty. and i always felt more inclined towards amab puberty, and i thought it was a MUCH better deal than whatever afab puberty was going to do with me.

and i feel really silly writing this cause that does not sound like something a normal cis girl would do or think... and i feel quite confident in me being not cis. but i guess this is just a post to seek some validation in my suspicion and feelings. but i also want to know if it is an experience others share.

my gender thoughts as i call them have been particularly prevelant since 2019, thats when i think i first started contemplating whether i might just actually be trans. at that time i believe it was more towards the non binary, but nowadays its ftm

and i just idk. im kinda lost and lonely here, i havent talked about with any family members which are the people i spend most of my time with currently. i wanted to get the perspective of people who are also autistic and might relate to the gender feelings and yeah

and ok no sorry, jumping back, cause its always at its worst before and during shark week (like right now :)) and that has also thrown me off quite badly

cause what if its just pms, or just some kinda hormone imbalance or some shit like that. am i crazy cause sometimes i feel like im driving myself mad with this stuff. is it common to have really intense thoughts about gender anytime your period is about to kick in.

also growing up with a younger brother (who also has a whole ass army of guy friends) when you have these thoughts is fucked up ngl who allowed this. youre telling me he gets to just get that puberty for free. fucking hell wtf

sorry i lost it pls just idk tell me your thoughts wherever, replies, i think im turning off reblogs for this but, my inbox or dms anything ok thanks so much, means the world

[pippin-katz]

RWRB Essay Part Ten: Pacing

Word Count: 611

The film moves fast, but this is because the book also moves fast, but the film has way less time to get the same point across. I may be in the minority, but after I disconnected the book from the movie, I didn't feel like it was rushed.

Here's the thing, a lot of movies have a nasty habit of being stuffed with filler. There's so much unnecessary stuff that's put into films to pad the runtime, make it longer. Most people don't really think about it, but it's actually super common, and annoying for those who notice.

The minimum runtime to be considered a feature length film in the US is 60+ minutes, but a lot of movies nowadays try to get closer to 120+ minutes, which is a big difference. Consider the original Avengers film, 143 minutes, which is a lot, and then we got Avengers: Endgame which was 183 minutes.

For some perspective, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers released to theaters with a 179 minute-long runtime, but the extended edition runtime is 235 minutes. The Lord of the Rings films are notorious for their extended versions and the fact that they are extraordinarily long. Almost everyone who watches the extended edition trilogy spreads it out over several days, if not a week because it is too much to watch in one sitting unless you have the entire day free.

These massive numbers come from the fact that they have a lot to show, most of which is vital to the plot. Too many movies now add unnecessary content to make their runtime longer.

Red, White, & Royal Blue does not move too fast. It simply does not waste time.

There is not a single scene in Red, White, & Royal Blue is meaningless. Even the fun montage scenes like those at the lake house are there to communicate the development of their relationship, and how far they've come.

While we can see their love showing up early on, obviously they lead with friends-with-benefits relationship that makes for most of their physically shared time being sex centered. The lake house shows them genuinely enjoying being around each other outside of that context, like reading together on a hammock or Henry doing drunk karaoke. Their small conversations are picked carefully to showcase their banter, then their growing connection.

The story is about them, and therefore, there's no point in taking a winding sidetrack to go into the details of Alex's college classes or the campaign progress. That's all great for the book, but in the movie, they don't need to do that, and the decision not to was the right one. It only would've taken the focus off of them.

They have a lot to do with just them. There's no reason to drag their feet around, so they don't! There's no point in spending fifteen-twenty minutes to show something they can accomplish in five. There's no point in dragging out the passage of time.

The fast pace only doesn't work if their progression as a couple isn't believable, and we've already established that their progress as a couple is perfectly balanced.

That's my take on the pacing, that it's not rushed. I prefer them just going, not wasting any time. That's the other part that makes the cuts not bother me.

As much as I love so many scenes that didn't make it, they didn't need to be there for the story to progress as it needed to. Trying to cram more in would've only made it hard to keep up with. That would've made it rushed. The way it is is fine.

previous part | next part | master post

[vodkacranberrywitch]

I'm a casual Harry fan, but I was a bigger fan a few years back. I definitely noticed his disconnect from the fans. You can see it in comparison to the other 1D members, who still actively interact with their fanbase. It just feels like he doesn't want anything to do with his fans, and I personally think it's cos a lot of personal stuff got shared about him in 1D and I don't think he liked it

Harry was far more open in 1D, but nowadays, it seems like he has a team to do his social media stuff, and you only really see the 'real' him or get a genuine reaction from him at his concerts. I wonder to what extent it's because it's a controlled environment and he's able to deal with what info gets shared, and to what extent he can physically interact with the fans one on one

But that's just my take as a more casual fan now

Interesting. Thank you for giving me that info.

What do you mean by "I wonder to what extent it's because it's a controlled environment and he's able to deal with what info gets shared, and to what extent he can physically interact with the fans one on one". I read it a few times but I'm not following.

[rosalesbeausderholle]

Like, I know this is not so strong in my case because I'm a fairly feminine woman so I am not at the edges of "womanhood" (aka what is allowed to be called "womanhood") in any way, and of course I don't feel the pressure as strongly as masc women do, but I feel really sad about the fact that people are so into gender roles nowadays. As a kid I was obviously very aware that gender roles were bullshit because I was a girl and I knew I was intelligent and strong and capable and that the idea that there was some innate difference between me and boys was stupid to me. Because I was a girl who had been taught about her own value (thanks mom and dad) so there was never any disconnect between "girl" and "human" to me. But the thing is, I thought everyone realized that!

Yes, there were the aesthetic pressures (tho again, they weren't as painful for me because I did like princesses and pink stuff) but none of that ever made me felt less human, less intelligent, less capable, it only hurt me knowing that women and girls were valued more for their beauty but knowing that this was something deeply unfair! Because again, I was fully aware that I was a human deserving of respect and my body or having "girl" or feminine pronouns attached to me did not change that at all. I never found it to be incoherent or weird to pair up "girl"/"woman" with "capable human complex person who can do and be absolutely anything she wants to be".

Of course, I grew up in the 90s and early 00s and on TV "girl power" was very emphasised, not just with girls who presented more "masculine" traits (read: were active, did not care for beauty standards or girly stuff, were assertive and brash) but also with girls who were fairly typically feminine (there were mean girls but the collective gaslighting that went on ten years ago about how all femininity was villainized in fiction was a straight up lie, people simply conceived of "femininity" as "cattyness and/or brainlessness" which says a lot more about them than it does the shows/movies/books they were actually criticising).

Point is, I grew up knowing that there were many ways to be a woman or girl, whether one was a tomboy or not, whether one was active or smart and it makes me very sad that a lot of people grew up with the same media and messages I did as a kid but got the completely wrong message.

I never got the idea that tomboy characters hated womanhood, I could see that they were struggling with what girls were forced to be and I understood that and found it just as unfair because I struggled with it too! But I didn't think the problem was "being a girl" but rather "what other people want girls to be in spite of who we really are". I never got the message that girls who liked pink and princesses were stupid or not brave, because I liked pink and princesses and I was the smartest person I knew but also so were many fairly feminine characters! The girly girl being the smart one of the group vs the more tomboyish girl being the rowdy one is like, a whole ass troupe. (I wasn't tomboyish in the aesthetic sense but I was very aware of my own intelligence which is why I found the idea that any boy or boys in general could be smarter than me to be something absolutely appalling. To this day, I find nothing more humiliating than ceding intellectual ground to a man.)

And sure, I was lucky that I grew up in that era of girl power, and that I was able to be a fairly "feminist" child because my parents were always fairly progressive. I'm lucky that I started reading up on real, actual feminism before everyone started hating on it. And most of all, I'm lucky that I'm a lesbian so that I don't have to concern myself with men's opinions on my personal life or appearance, or even have many men in my life at all. I'm lucky because I never had to be in a situation where I found any incongruence between the concept of "woman" and the concept of "human".

But I'm also... deeply, deeply sad, because not everyone got to have that experience and in fact now mentioning that gender roles are insane, women are actually just human, you don't need to sacrifice either body or mind or self to what society wants you to be, you can just be, is seen as something strange and ridiculous, laughable even.

There's nothing about any body or any word that interferes with your humanity. You can seriously just be.

[pinkpeccary]

it's weird cause like i don't get a ton of dysphoria from interactions with other people nowadays, bc while i don't talk to most people about gender stuff the disconnect in my brain between what they say and what is true is so big that it just doesn't bother me (very "that's just obviously wrong? but okay" energy)

but i have been getting a lot more of it from mirrors, or just like. being aware of my appearance. it's not quite physical in the way of it feels wrong, but like. the way that i feel that i look and the way i actually look are not in congruence.

and it's definitely related to finally making progress on surgery (consult is this week, although i don't expect to schedule it until may at the earliest) bc that has me thinking more about all of this but like.

idk it just sucks dude. it feels like i am hideous and ugly and everyone can see it even though i know that i look Totally Normal and no one else would ever notice bc it's entirely internal. even though it regularly cycles out with finding myself super adorable.

like i don't think it's ever been This Bad. and it's really not something i like talking about so it's not like anyone really knows, but it's just always There.

[flockofdoves]

soooo close to done but i just hate hate hate any way i try to color and shade this theres such a disconnect between my vague fantasies of how i'd find making art to be fun when it comes to that and my current abilities and past defaults with digital art

i at least still have fun lineart but even that i feel like i could have so much more fun with other types of stuff

but also i'm rushing to finish this a little so idk dont feel confident enough to totally reinvent stuff

maybe i shouldve just done traditional art. i have a lot of fun every time i do traditional art nowadays but every time i do digital the ways i'd have to experiment with it feel kinda overwhelming so i don't do as much with that as i'm realizing i love to in order to have the most fun and growth possible in my art. and bc i did digital art sooo much for years but havent in a few years i just all of a sudden feel like i'm back to when i stopped doing art again bc i was tired of my digital art process whenever i do it

omg finally have a semisatisfying character design for my rpg character i wanna submit to the ttrpg character tournament!!! now no one submit anything else while i try to finish this art before this round of submissions end since i already failed at that last time lol

[maggielindemannsource]

Maggie Lindemann: From Social Media Star to a SUCKERPUNCH Album

Read the article here — Listen to the podcast episode here

she always knew that she wanted to be an entertainer when she was very young.

she always listened to a lot of rock music. her parents listened to rock, her brother listened to classic rock and metal, and when she started developing her own music taste, she listened to pop punk a lot. she always knew she wanted to make alternative music. she mentions sleeping with sirens, pierce the veil, secondhand serenade, black veil brides as influences.

she views social media as the modern age ; instead of going out in the streets to give out your mixtape, you have to sell your music through social media. it helps because she can connect more directly to her audience, fans can see things directly from her instead of through a third-party, and also social media offers a bigger reach. streaming through twitch shows her true personality, as well as coming on twitter to talk more spontaneously or posting instagram stories. she also states that social media feels a bit foreign to her now that she's growing older and new generations are coming on social media ; she feels really old with the stuff she sees on tiktok and she does feel a disconnect from social media. she says that the most negative thing about social media is the effect it has on her - she feels a boost of dopamine when she posts a picture, with every like she thinks "they liked it so it means i'm pretty" so she ends up relying a lot on validation from other people and it brings her down. she says she tried to do a grwm but she's not a good story teller and she didn't even know what to say so she ended up not doing it.

the creative process for creating suckerpunch was very fun. she started writing songs very shortly after paranoia, everything felt like it was falling into place very naturally and not forced at all. her life inspired suckerpunch. the name came to her because she felt like punches were thrown at her during the process of creating the record, whether it was a relationship, a friendship... so many things were happening and were unexpected. her favorite track is "novocaine", and she really likes the intro. she doesn't like the more "commercial" songs (like "she knows it"), she prefers the songs that people least expect.

the concert film was filmed in nyc because it was the biggest show of the US leg ; she had label people, friends, family... she had a really cute outfit planned but things didn't go according to plan, so she hates the outfit she has in the video.

deprecating is about being manipulated and made to believe by a friend, trying to make you believe they have your best interest in mind when they really don't. the song is about a particular friendship (not a relationship). she writes her music about her personal experiences and feels it's therapeutic in a way.

she started making music when she was sixteen and at that time, she didn't feel welcomed in the industry and felt like people didn't take her seriously. now, a lot of her peers do message her and she feels welcomed. however, she feels that this industry is very bipolar ; one day they love you and the next they hate you. she feels that women are really dominating the music industry nowadays (especially in hip hop and rap). she feels that the age of pop stars is really coming back (she says that "tate mcrae, i love her, she's so cool, she's giving the britney spears dancing on stage while singing"). she feels a special sense of safety and connection with women.

she thinks that there is more pressure put on women in the industry to look really good, be in shape, have your makeup done perfectly but not too much, make sure your hair looks good...

the recording of her next project is all done. she's been working on music videos, cover art, photoshoots and all the creative stuff. she hopes to be able to perform at festivals in 2024 (so we can hope that her next project will be out during the first semester of 2024). there may be some pop up shows. it's not an album (ep or mixtape?). she prefers to release albums over singles because it gives her a devoted fanbase that really connect with her whole body of work.

maggie's advice for people that want to start in the music industry: "be yourself and do not listen to what anybody says. literally, if you think something is cool and you like it, then it doesn't matter if everyone is telling you that it's not gonna work. really be yourself. there's an audience for everyone. so you might not be these 10 people's cup of tea that you showed the songs to, but maybe there's a hundred people over here and you are their cup of tea. so just be yourself, be authentic. you're never too weird, you're never 'too' anything. just be yourself, there's always gonna be a group of people who appreciate that."

if she could only listen to 3 bands for the rest of her life, it would be radiohead, pink pantheress (or lana del rey) and deftones (the bands she listens to the most as of right now).

her dream collab was with sleeping with sirens and she got to collab with kellin quinn so it was very cool. she would love to collab with bring me the horizon or paramore. but her collabing process is very random so it could be anyone.

[harpywritesfic]

Stephen growing up on a farm is one of favorite facts about him, since I’m a farm kid myself. If any of you city/suburbia people want help writing Stephen’s childhood, here’s some farming knowledge, which I will try to keep relevant to Nebraska and the 80s/90s when we can assume MCU Stephen was young. I’m planning to follow this with another post of general country kid stuff, so if you want to see that, just lmk and I can tag you in it! Also, if you have any questions, feel free to ask!

Farming vs. Ranching- Farming is crops, while ranching is livestock (typically cattle. Cattle are the most common livestock in NE). We’ll talk about farming, since all I know is farming.

Crops

Nebraska is known for corn. So much corn. Hay (timothy hay, oat hay, or alfalfa) is another common crop- many farmers grow both corn and hay. Crops in NE are usually corn or hay because that’s what you feed cattle.

There are different types of corn! The big two are field corn and sweet corn. Field corn is usually for animal feed (cows, remember?) so that’s most common in NE. Sweet corn is the kind we eat.

Irrigation

I’m only talking about sprinkler irrigation and siphon tubes here, fyi! Other methods (i.e. drip lines or subsurface) are for different crops. (I should rly go take my own photos, but it’s dark out ;-; )

Also worth noting: the amount of land you can water decreases with each method down the list, because of the work involved increases for the lower methods.

Circles

Nowadays the most popular and most efficient method of watering corn and hay is the circle (aka center pivot, but no farm kid calls them that). They have a central tower with a control panel (lets you choose how fast it turns, when to stop, etc.) A line of pipe and sprinklers pivots around the tower (hence the name). They’re very expensive, so if you want to write Stephen’s family as lower-class farmers, no circles for them! Middle-class, they either had circles or a mix of circles and the other types below. 

Lots of things can go wrong on a circle, from a sprinkler head getting plugged, hoses leaking, wheels getting stuck when it’s muddy, and on and on. Not fun maintenance-wise.

Here are a couple photos of a circle, in case you haven’t seen one! The first shows the tower and the second shows the sprinklers (hoses attached to the pipe) and endgun (water gun on the end, increases radius of water). Each section between the wheels is called a span, and a span usually has between 8-30 sprinklers, depending on the length of the spans and the amount of spans in the circle. A circle can have anywhere from 2-10 spans, maybe more. The wheels move a little bit at a time, starting at the span farthest from the pivot and moving inwards.

Wheel lines

These are the second-easiest method of irrigation. Water is distributed from a long pipe on wheels, and they have a motor to move themselves. The wheels are about 7 or 8 feet in diameter, so standing next to them, they’re as tall or taller than a person. Each span has a sprinkler with a leveler to keep it facing up. Usually a field has several of these in a row.

Similar deal as circles on what can go wrong, but on a smaller scale and easier to fix/replace parts.The connection between spans can come undone and leak, or the sprinkler heads will spray water everywhere. If the pipe breaks, the water will shoot straight up.

Hand lines

These lowkey suck. You have to move and connect each span by hand every time you need to water a different section of the field, and it takes half an hour or so for a small field. 

Maintenance and issues here are the same as wheel lines, except for the way mice start nesting in the pipes if they’re disconnected and not used for weeks.

Siphon tubes

These. These suck. They work by using a tube to siphon water from a reservoir (called a head ditch) over a mound and into a ditch that runs alongside the crop rows. You have to start the suction on each tube with your hand morning and evening, or whenever you want to water. This is done by shoving the pipe in the water, then pulling it out with your hand plugging the end, and repeating that until the water comes out. Then the suction will keep the water flowing until the head ditch is drained. For most farmers who use these, this is a sunrise chore. It also takes a lot of time to start a hundred or more of these.

These are the cheapest (and least efficient) way to irrigate. Not many parts to break here, just a lot of work and time.

[paiirupie]

any tips on how to draw more? i draw very little nowadays, even though i want to draw and i know what i want to draw. it's just, i never get to it, and it sucks. :( do you know how to find the motivation and drive?

i have dealt with a similar issue before, drawing little to nothing for literally months. for me, it had a lot to due with my own self esteem and other personal stuff, i guess…

what helped me most was actually disconnecting a bit from drawing by doing other stuff, like playing videogames. if i wasn't feeling like drawing, then, why push myself to do something i know is going to end up frustrate me?

there's no need for u to force anything, you don't have to be drawing all day, even silly little doodles are more than enough. after all, we are not machines, but people. and you can always left hobbies there and come back whenever u feel like it :) who knows, maybe when u come back u will remember what motivated you in the first place !

besides, there's so many different ways of experimenting art than just drawing, you can also study and appreciate it in it's various shapes n forms !! for example, -following the videogames thing- it always fascinated me how final fantasy VII utilised it's combat and transformed it into an absolute visual spectacle but also, as a way to enrich it's narrative. even if the games is old, and does not stand to today's visual standards, it's delivery works amazingly.

things like those are the ones that helped me see games as another medium of telling stories just like books or movies do, but that also inspired various of my artworks.

you can learn so many things by doing other stuff that can later be applied to your own art, so no need to feel like you're not progressing at all, think about it as gathering even more knowledge ;)

[violetshine-appreciation]

look i absolutely love the creativity in this fandom and i do not mean to step on anybodys toes whatsoever w this but. i feel like a lot of warriors maps nowadays have like. nothing to do with warriors?? like i get that there are AUs n stuff and thats ok, AUs exist in every fandom. but i feel like there comes a point where a thing becomes so disconnected from the source material that it stops being an AU and starts being its own original story. and i see this a lot in the maproject community specifically

and again, theres nothing inherently WRONG w wacky ooc canon-divergent AUs like that, and ive definitely reblogges/retweeted map parts and animations for these projects bc again, the animators in this community are so incredibly talented and their work deserves recognition. and im certainly not going to stop following ppl for smth as silly as contributing to a map that i personally dont like. i just wanna know like....why do these map creators/writers keep using the wc name if their AUs are so far disconnected from warriors at this point yknow? like i get that fandom content generally gets more views than oc content but like. some of this stuff might as well already be oc content w the warrior cats name slapped onto it.

and again, obligatory reminder that this is all my OPINION and i dont want to start any Drama or anything and i certainly dont think these map creators are horrible ppl. its just smth thats been Perplexing to me lately

[the-sappho-of-lesbos]

Honestly I think it plays into a lot bi and lesbian women relating to the fictionalised culture of gay men.

Because that’s something I can relate to. You know feeling like you are “a gay man” or relating to gay men more, but solely on the bases of how they are depicted in fiction. And feeling more of a kinship to that as opposed to bi and lesbian women in fiction. Because from my experiences irl gay male culture is absolutely nothing like the stuff you see in fiction - which makes a lot it sense , since for the longest time it wasn’t gay and bi pushing the frontier of their own narratives in popular publishing.

This probably sounds really weird , but from what I can tell and whatnot, fictional gay/bi culture is more reminiscent of irl bi woman and lesbian culture and fictional bi/lesbian culture can often feel more like straight culture. Which is odd. Especially nowadays since most of that fiction is written by lesbians and bisexual women. But there is just this disconnect and felt with lots of modern lesbian fiction. And I can’t really explain what it is. Genuinely thats why I tend to go for older or more indie f/f books because it doesn’t seem to be affected as much by whatever the heck is going on. Because even I can’t explain it and I don’t even know if I’m making much sense lol.

Also obviously this a super general statement and obviously isn’t applicable to everything. And I mean gay and bi men ARE starting to take up more space in their own areas of fiction now, which is so great, because hopefully the conventions and expectations will start to shift in that area to more accurately reflect their lived experiences

Again lol I don’t even know what I’m saying. Please don’t take this too seriously I’m just a tired idiot who os spewing out word vomit. I have like no credits or qualifications in any of this. I just have a running head that likes to spew stuff up lol

[iron--spider]

butternut squash

“Boss, Peter Parker’s heart has stopped.”

 Tony spits out his coffee. “What? Friday? Repeat?”

 She’s still just as deadpan as before. “Peter Parker’s heart has stopped, as reported by his in-suit AI, Karen.”

 “What the fuck?” Tony chokes, stumbling out of his seat. The chair topples over behind him, hitting the floor with a loud crack, and Tony tries to catch his breath. “Like, you’re talking directly to Karen or you’re reading diagnostics from Karen?” His mouth is dry and his hands are shaking, and he’s already heading for the door. 

 “Diagnostics,” Friday says. “Karen is unresponsive.”

 Tony activates his earpiece and nearly trips over his own feet. “Fri, call him, push through a call to Peter, just, just—push it through, don’t wait for him to answer.”

Tony feels like his entire body is seizing up. It’s a fucking Wednesday, it’s eleven in the morning, Peter Parker’s heart is not allowed to stop. It’s not allowed to stop ever, but especially not right now, on a fucking Wednesday at eleven in the morning. There’s no reason for it, so it can’t be happening, it just can’t.

 He races down the stairs and listens to Friday trying to push the call through. He hears the click, and Tony listens hard once it’s connected, but it’s only silence and static, which doesn’t seem right. 

 “Disconnect,” Tony says, his voice breaking, and he’s still going down and down and down, towards the workshop.

 He’s panicking. He’s panicking. 

 He needs to stop, but easier said than done, as always, especially when it comes to the kid. He’s always so goddamn worried about Peter, and now he gets a goddamn notification that his heart stopped? No, can’t be, not allowed, one hundred percent out of the question.

 He doesn’t entertain the idea or the future it presents, drifting out of the fog like a phantom. He doesn’t think about calling May or what she would say if he did. The way she would scream. He tries to stave off the cold sweats and the tightness in his chest.

 He’s not dead he’s not dead he’s not dead

 “Fri, what was his last known location? Because that’s where I’m going.”

 “Home, boss,” Friday says. “I’ll set the trajectory into your chosen suit.”

 Tony cuts his eyes to the side as he heads for the next stairwell. “Home?”

 “Yes. The Parker apartment.”

 That...that’s suspicious, and it almost worries him more. Why is Peter at home and not at school? Why wasn’t Tony made aware if he was staying home? Did someone break in? Is the building on fire? Is he killing himself with carbon monoxide somehow? Why the fuck is he in the suit?

 “Goddamnit,” Tony breathes, feeling lightheaded.

 ~

 He’s sure the Iron Man sightings are either thrilling people or making them question what the hell is going on, but Tony doesn’t really think about that, and he can deal with the repercussions later. He just makes sure he pushes the suit to the limit and gets the fuck over to the apartment, not looking at the flatline that’s plastered to his heads up display with Peter’s face next to it.

 Heart stopped heart stopped heart stopped

 He’s so young he’s too young this can’t happen Tony was supposed to protect him he was supposed to protect him

 He lands outside and leaves the suit there like a warning outside, and he’s already halfway up the stairs before he considers he might have needed it, that there could be someone in there, someone that did something to Peter—

 —but if someone did something to Peter it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t fucking matter—

 —if he’s dead—

 —if he’s dead—

 Tony’s horror overwhelms him, and he breaks the apartment door down with two blows. 

 He stumbles inside, glancing around. The curtains are pulled back, the sun streaming in, and nothing looks out of the ordinary. There’s still a cereal bowl on the dining room table, milk pooling in the bottom. A plate of half eaten...cookies?

 “Peter?” Tony yells, squeezing his hands into fists, and maybe he should have brought the suit, maybe somebody is here, and if he has to run across his kid’s dead body he can’t—he cannot—

 “Peter?” Tony yells again, louder this time, heading into the kid’s hallway. His voice is going hoarse, dread creeping in. “Peter, where are you? Where are you?”

 Is he talking to emptiness? A dead body? A broken future? Another funeral?

 Peter’s door is open a crack, thankfully, or Tony would have broken it, too.

 It slams against the wall as Tony busts inside, and Peter jumps, yelling, collapsing in on himself beside his bed. Tony’s brows furrow.

 “What? No! What? Huh!” Peter exclaims, hands at the ready for fighting before everything registers for him. But then it does register, his brows furrowing too. “Tony?”

 Tony takes it all in. Peter’s suit is on the bed, completely open and connected to his computer. Peter is in his pajamas, and his voice is nasally. Is he fucking sick?

 Tony’s brain isn’t working right, and he means to ask if he’s sick, why he didn’t call, what the hell he’s doing to the suit. Instead, he points at him. “I’m glad you’re not dead, but also, I hate you.”

 Peter pouts. “You don’t hate—dead?”

 “Somehow, with whatever the hell you’re doing there, you connected and disconnected your fucking heart monitor, and Karen sent diagnostics to Friday which led to Friday informing me that your heart had stopped.”

 Peter stares. Sniffs. “Oh.”

 “Yeah, oh,” Tony says, chin held high. “Big…oh.”

 Peter grits his teeth. Still staring. Lots of guilt. “Um. Sorry about that, that’s…that’s bad, that’s not good.”

 Tony stares back. Facade crumbling. “Why are you sick?”

 “I don’t know,” Peter says, petulantly. “It shouldn’t happen, I don’t want it to happen. It’s—it’s rare, and it just started this morning, and I’m hoping it goes away like it normally does nowadays because I don’t like it.”

 “Nobody likes being sick,” Tony says, crossing his arms over his chest. His eyes find the suit again, and Peter laughs stupidly.

 “I’m just, like, messing around,” Peter says. “You know, like, doing a couple upgrades, trying out webshooter combos—”

 “Uh huh, uh huh, maybe you should sharpen up your sixth sense because I got in here without alerting you, which is also not normal,” Tony says. He clicks his tongue. “Is that because—”

 “It’s because I’m sick—”

 They both sigh. 

 Tony is softening. “Fine,” he says. He lets out a breath, one he’s been holding since the initial reveal of this insanity. “Fine.”

 Peter raises his eyebrows, recognition flashing across his flushed face. “Aw, Tony, you were worried! You flew all the way over here because you were worried! About me!”

 Tony scoffs. “Yeah, I didn’t want your Aunt to come home to your newly dead body, because whether or not I was involved at all, it’d still be my fault.” He glances towards the window. “I better think about getting the suit in here, or at least activating stealth mode so nobody gets any ideas.”

 Peter grins at him.

 “Stop,”’ Tony says, trying not to smile.

 “I’m just glad I mean so much to you,” Peter says, smiling softly now, wistfully. “You know, that’s...that’s an accomplishment. I feel like I need to write this down. On like, my calendar, or in my diary.”

 “Uh huh,” Tony says, rolling his eyes, ignoring the diary comment. “C’mon, short stuff, let’s go make some soup and then I’ll help you destroy your suit from the inside out in a way that wouldn’t send me an alert saying you’re dead.”

 “Oh, yeah, thanks,” Peter says, trailing after him. “That would be good.”

 Tony pats him on the back, deflating a little bit when he really takes in the fact that Peter is walking around and talking, albeit through a spidery-head cold.

 Not dead. Not dead. Thank God.

 “Barring what May’s got in stock,” Tony says, leading him back into the living room and towards the kitchen. “Chicken or butternut squash?”