#both space themed

[green446004]

Cover art I’ve done this year for Dazzlingbookishshop’s special editions of The Darkness Outside Us and Stars, Hide Your Fires

[dykedvonte]

You ever just see a Mouthwashing take that makes you want to bang your head into a wall? I literally just saw someone claim Curly couldn't have been emotionally abused by Jimmy before the crash because he was in a higher position of power than Jimmy.

-Shrimp Anon

The mouthwashing fandom has shown me that people genuinely do believe that certain types of abuse are not as detrimental as other types especially when they deem those immune/resistant, ergo, believing one is objectively worse no matter how it affects the person nor the intersections of power, history and dynamics at play.

Get ready cause this is a yap session:

Cause like it's heavily implied that Curly and Jimmy's friendship was toxic and abusive, pointedly in the direction of how Jimmy uses Curly's belief/comfort in him. Curly wasn't forced to enable Jimmy but he was emotional and mentally on edge around him in almost every scene in some way. Mental and emotional abuse are not contingent on what positions you have at work. Yeah, he's Jimmy's boss but he was Jimmy's friend first and it's like getting into Psych discussion to talk about how social power tends to overshadow any perceived organizational power in the human mind. People are concerned about their jobs ofc but they tend to hang onto and put more value/investment into their personal relationships, hence why there tends to be laws and restrictions around mixing the two.

I always see the sentiments that "Curly is a grown ass man", "Curly is bigger than Jimmy", "Curly is Jimmy's boss", "He just needed a backbone" as criticisms of Curly and while I do agree that on the surface level all of these to be true and viable ways Curly could've taken more control of the situation, I often look at the parallels of Anya and Curly as victims of Jimmy pre/post crash.

The way Jimmy talks to Anya post crash is how he talked to Curly in the pre-crash segments. It's hard to pin-point mainly because we know he hates and wants nothing to do with Anya compared to his contrary but similarly handled obsessions with Curly. It's a weird sort of "honey-moon" effect of abuse Jimmy does in terms of emotional and mental victimization. He is always horrid to Anya, always talking down or questioning her abilities and thoughts in a situation, this of course includes the harassment and assault. However, he has a moment of attempted gentleness/conditioning when he question her about the mouthwash when she's contemplating drinking it at the table. The key difference is he has no personal investment in Jimmy outside wanting nothing to do with him, meaning there is no sort of romanticized version of him that he can condition her off of. He knows this, hence, why he always reverts to trying to make her to scared to oppose him.

This sort of give and take of "kindness" doesn't work on her because she knows he is just doing it to take more from her than whatever he could possibly give but it reflects even the "softer" scenes between him and Curly where he always rewords or rephrases Curly's sentiments and concerns to sound more shallow. He is feigning a deeper understanding by reworking Curly's emotions into something bad and needing to be hidden. Everything is laced with envy and resentment, an outburst just around the corner, I mean he even slams the table in the birthday party scene, a tactic in emotional manipulation to set the victim on edge and cloud their ability to respond. Even if Curly knows Jimmy won't get physical in that moment, the physical actions is intended to make him back down in the confrontation in case it does. This is something that is just not person specific. It ingrains itself into how you interact with the world and life and it shows in major and minor ways with Curly.

Post-crash, the abusive nature is more in tandem to the physical victimization Anya went through and the stripping of voice and autonomy we see take place. Like the parasite in HFIM, Jimmy speaks for Curly most of the time and puts words in his mouth, similarly to how he takes Anya's plans as his own. He very commonly, with the both of them mind you, supplements the worst aspects of himself into them; pettiness, selfishness, lack of understanding... And tries to cover himself with their best qualities; kindness, planning, initiative, etc...

These parallel are just to say that positional power has little to do with if a person can be abused and how it can even be flipped to further the abuse. There is no doubt that Curly could've picked up on Jimmy's envy of his position hence another reason he never confronted him as a Captain but as a friend as doing so would immediately put Jimmy in a space to be confrontational/combative.

I think the disdain some people have when they talk about the heavily implied if not implicitly stated emotional/mental abuse Curly experienced being Jimmy's friend is when treating it as an excuse to why he didn't do more. I can understand that completely because it is not an excuse to why he didn't do more but is a very real reason people in his position in these scenarios can experience whether in the context of a work or social environment. However, I also think the way people talk about it really does demonstrate a bigger problem when talking about abuse when somehow who is/was abused is either part of the issue or enabled it.

Harkening back to the sentiments about Curly's inaction regarding Jimmy, I think the exact phrases I used/have seen show how there is an inherent belief that it is easier to overpower the effects of emotional/mental abuse that go in tandem with the perception of Curly as someone who should be able to. There is not an age you suddenly stop being susceptible to abuse nor a set point or low where you realize how it has affected you. You don't suddenly know to stand up or put a face on to face your abuser nor admit that you inadvertently enabled them to subjugate someone else to the same treatment. Maybe it's my psych brain but their is this growing belief that direct action is somehow easy or always the best method with the game shows you instances where it is not always the case. In real life that rings true too. He should have done more, but it's not impossible to see why he struggled to find a way or didn't even if it makes us mad.

It's not easy to suddenly gain a "back-bone". You don't immediately want to resort to aggression, especially if it mirrors the type you were a victim to. You don't want to believe you allowed yourself to be treated this bad, let it get that bad or allowed something bad to happen to someone else. It is easy to be in denial, to retreat to your thoughts or make excuses to avoid the painful truth. It's frustrating but in a way we know is relatable. It why we both hate and love Curly for it. We know we'd be better, we think we'd be better, we like to think we wouldn't falter in the same ways but it's always easier to say that from the outside looking in. It's easy to see what he was doing wrong because we are seeing it, not him, but the game really does make you picture what you would do if this was your raw reality and it's why this debate about Curly seems so never ending/contradictory. We can all say what we'd do but bottom line is that's much different when you're in the moment with all the emotions and human feelings attached.

I personally think Mouthwashing tackles the themes of rape culture, enabling, toxic masculinity, types of abuse and patriarchy in ways that are meant to deconstruct the typical straightforward views we mostly have of these concepts and how little subtilities of them are just as, if not more, detrimental than the overt/obvious parts. The game deals with the idea of little details and bigger picture in a way to show that sometimes the bigger picture is not the issue but the little details that make it up. It's why I have a personal dislike of depictions of Jimmy as the typical horrible person who would of course do something like this because the game is about noticing the little warning signs, the foreshadowing and foresight.

It's why I dislike the typical discussion of "bro code" and "boys will be boys" for the game because the game makes a point to avoid the standard depictions of such. It is about the type of men who still enable despite not condoning, agreeing or even perpetuating harmful beliefs because they can't see the little details or the ways it seeps into their everyday. The severity is not obvious to them as it was not obvious to Curly, Swansea or even Daisuke the way it was to a woman like Anya. There are little details about Jimmy that should ring alarms but if you are too naive like Daisuke, too distant like Swansea or too conditioned like Curly, they are just off markers.

There is 100% more constructive/concise ways to say "Curly was a victim of Jimmy's abuse on an emotional and mental aspect that clouded his judgements and perceptions in the scenario" while also critiquing on the side of "Curly still had a responsibility to protect Anya as a crew mate and Captain that he failed to do due to biases and stigma's he failed to surpass" without the weird condemnation people give him about should've knowing better than to let himself be manipulated by a person he considered a close, if not family/best-friend and had his own reasons to trust initially. Also stop being weird about victims of abuse in general with this fandom, like sorry not everyone has a like social epiphany the moment someone's nasty to them. People are treating it like you immediately know when you are in a toxic relationship immediately or comprehend when a person is actively dangerous and either it's your fault for not knowing how to leave/cut them off or you deserve it. Like the hypocrisy of people believing how certain fans treat the story reflect their irl views but not their own is crazy.

End statement is: I honestly don't even know man, I've been writing this too long and just like no man on that ship was perfect or really helped Anya when it mattered and I feel like pitting them against each other in discussion on who did the least or most or how it was justified sucks cause in the end Anya always did the most and best thing for herself.

[brucespringsteencomments]

[angel-hole]

SUPTOBER DAY 01 - liminal in the beginning

4 And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire.

5 Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance;

— Ezekiel 1:4—5

[agentc0rn]

Lonely earth-bound monarch figures whose existences and legacies extend past the bounds of time and space.

[magpie-trove]

Inklings Challenge 2024

What Was Found at the Bottom

Instruct the Ignorant

Raxxon wasn’t supposed to go through the wormhole. That part was an accident. The capsule wasn’t equipped for long term space travel, and so here he was. Dead in the waters of some new world. And something else was with him.

He knew what it was. Worse yet, he knew what it had been responsible for. Ever since the Ripple had reached Nemith-4, he’d known it, as if the whole universe had gotten larger, and was on its way to exile—as if it had been tilted by some unfathomable weight, and some new trajectory was set. Like they were all going to slide right off the universal plane one day, if nothing were done to stop it.

And the reason was standing before him here in a dull shirt bespattered with buttons—no doubt what passed as a uniform. It spoke a language he couldn’t understand—the Man, the race that broke their world. He could see even from here in the depths of the water that it was far worse than he’d imagined.

The Man in the uniform, with his weapons and his instruments of broken peace, stared at Raxxon with mouth agape. As Raxxon watched, he swallowed, and inched toward a box on the wall, as if, if he moved slowly enough, Raxxon wouldn’t notice. A buzzing filled the chamber. “This is the captain…” he spoke into the box. But it just kept buzzing. Raxxon found he knew the words now. They were just old, cut off and bent away from the living tongue of the stars.

The Man’s shoulders fell, and he forced himself to stand up straight. Whatever emotions he was expressing disgusted Raxxon. They were base—vile. How could such a pitiful little creature have been allowed to disjoint the entire universal plane?

The Man spoke again. He was sweating, and his dark eyes were fixed on Raxxon with intensity. “What are you?” he asked. “And how did you get on this ship?”

So they had wrought such damage to themselves that they were cut off then. The Man had obviously never seen a creature other than himself before. It made sense. The relationships between creatures were a fundamental good of the universe. That was how they were made, because that was how their maker was. Something…not good…would only bring this. Isolation. Snapping off connections like twigs. What sabotage. Raxxon wanted to spew this world from his mouth. He was only here to get off. He could take the power source he needed and go. It couldn’t do any good to this creature, this Man, that had once been set by the Creator to crown the worlds, and instead had made himself into this.

Raxxon felt something in him slipping, sliding, pulled unceasingly in. “I am here for your power source,” he hissed.

The Man’s eyes darted towards a nearby door, and back. Did he wish to leave? Or was that where the power source was?

“Why? What do you know about it?”

“I need it. For my own purposes.”

But the Man shook his head minutely, never taking his eyes from the creature in front of him, the one he would have known if he weren’t cut off. “You can’t,” he said. “It’ll cripple the ship. My men, they’ll all die.”

Raxxon flicked his tongue, and tilted his head. “That is not my business. You have brought that on yourselves.”

“I won’t let you do it.” The man’s hand was slipping toward his weapon. He held Raxxon’s gaze so fiercely that Raxxon almost didn’t notice. But he didn’t really care either. The Man may have held a terrible power, but it was crippled by his insignificance. Raxxon treaded toward the area from which he could feel familiar energy waves emitting—the door the Man had earlier glanced toward. There was a pinging sound, and whatever the Man had thrown from the weapon glanced harmlessly off Raxxon. Yet he had meant harm.

Raxxon turned on him. “It is my prerogative to get to my ordered place,” he said. “You cannot stop me.“

One of the things that had been thrown from the weapon had apparently bounced back to the Man. His appendage was dripping red liquid. The consequence of his own action. Something deep in Raxxon ground like a rock through thick-grained sand. Why did the Creator allow such a thing to have occurred to his exquisitely worked worlds? It was not right his glory should be so marred. Everywhere else, like a mirror, one could see it. But was—this—what would become of the rest of the worlds now, as the Ripple shifted successively through all of time and space?

Raxxon studied the Man. Even here still, he was sure, the fundamental prerogative of living beings was to live. “I can save you,” he coaxed. “If you will let me have the power source.”

The Man leaned sagging against the wall, but when Raxxon turned back to the door, he threw himself between it and Raxxon, his futile weapon in hand. “I can’t let you,” he croaked.

“But,” Raxxon said, confused. “I have promised to save you. Would you die instead?”

“If I have to,” the Man said, and it was low and quiet and certain. His hand twitched, and Raxxon thought he was preparing to use his weapon again, but his hand came down on a button on the wall at his side. Nothing happened. Raxxon had already taken the liberty of ensuring the human devices could not aid the Man. “I have already gained control of your electronics,” he said. “As I said, you cannot stop me.”

The Man was clutching at his arm, casting his eyes around. Then suddenly he became—more solid. He looked from a panel, to Raxxon.

“There is one way still,” he said.

“But you cannot do that without dying,” said Raxxon. “So there is no way.”

The Man in the uniform with all the buttons lurched to a bright red box, opened it, and drove an emergency ax through the wall. Sparks flew and the doors sealed shut, overridden by the emergency protocols. Water poured in. There would be no power source for Raxxon. There would be no escape from the water for the Man.

He had chosen a choice that was not possible. It was not a choice Raxxon had ever known to be made, because he had never known the parameters of death that made such a choice possible. But in the time waves of the universe, this felt like a choice that had been made before.

“I do not understand,” Raxxon said. He was…marveling. “The prerogative is to live. You forgo it.”

“The prerogative is my men,” said the Man, his boots splashing in the water. “There’s forty other guys in that other room that aren’t going to die now. They get to live.”

“You’d give…yourself? For them?” Raxxon felt the universal constant shifting beneath him. “What deems them worthy?”

The man actually chuffed a small laugh. “Nothing. They’re my guys, is all. It’s what you do, if you’re a man. But you wouldn’t understand that.”

Raxxon was beginning to. The world was forming itself anew around him. He had known of course that Love was the source of all the gravity in the universe, that it was the law of time and space. All beings knew that, outside of this benighted planet. He knew many kinds of love from the Creator’s hand, each a fascinating aspect of its Originator. He knew love was given. But this was love beyond his ken. He had never conceived of a love so immense it could give to this degree. This—this was a love that changed the course of the universe. It was a revelation.

The Man stood there weak and bleeding and ready to die, with his eyes shining fierce and sure and afraid. Raxxon saw the world unfold into such beauties as he had never dared dream of.

“I did not know,” he sputtered out, “that He was like *that*.”

The man wiped blood on the side of his dull shirt. He tossed his weapon into the water. It was useless now. The man was going to die, and he looked…tired, but not like he particularly minded. He was rubbing his forehead with his sleeve as if he had won.

“My Lord, what have you wrought here?” Raxxon breathed.

The water reached a panel or two, and suddenly the room flashed blindingly bright. The Man, shielding his eyes from the sparks, fell limp into the waters.

Raxxon strode through the rising depths to the Man’s side, studying his face, his form. “You have become the least of these,” he said, “but to you has been revealed such magnitudes of love as none have before conceived. He has honored you, and you have honored me.” Raxxon lifted the Man so that his head was above the water. For the first time since the Ripple, he felt steady. “I will forgo my power source,” he told the unconscious form. “Perhaps another way may come.”

He left the Man there, the Man and his power source and the other men who’s lives had been lent such glory, who were even now pounding on the door and rushing in against the water to shore it up and pull the captain out. He did not worry for the Man. The world they had torn apart had only become a place of love that showed itself deeper than the rest of the worlds could know. If love was like that, it could live past all deaths.

[azuneekun]

hii!! love your art, question: if you have had any kids in sdv what have you named them??

I got all 3 of my farmers married with kids 👍✨

(Ari belongs to @50der in our multiplayer game)

[lurking-loaf]

Sun isn't the only animatronic doing crafts in the daycare. Sporting the finest in handcrafted cardboard accessories, Fairy Princess Moon decided to swing on by @daycarefriendpickup's Magma this past weekend.

And look, here's the Fairy Sun drawn by @lil-lemon-snails that inspired this drawing!

[noonbeam-stims]

multiverses by nuclear bubble wrap stimboard with glowing orange and black space stims requested by ME !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! RAAHHHH

SOURCES

🌟 | 🔶 | 🌟 🔶 | 🌌 | 🔶 🌟 | 🔶 | 🌟

[khaotunq]

Things I spend way too much time on: figuring out floor plans of fictional character's living spaces.

[pawthorn]

I’m so glad that Tomas is going to be part of Neverafter next week, so glad we may get more Pib moments, more of his story and what makes him tick.

Because Pib is another in a long line of Zac’s characters that stand slightly apart from the rest of the party, out of focus and out of the spotlight.

Let’s break it down.

Note: I don’t know Gorgug as well as a character and haven’t finished sophomore year, so I’m not going to go into depth with him, but as an Orc raised by Gnomes, I feel like he fits this too. Also leaving out Coffin Run because that, while great, is its whole own Thing. Anyway, here’s the rest.

Ricky Matsui. When the story starts, he’s neither an established part of the Unsleeping City like Kugrash, Kingston, and Misty, nor brand new like Sophia and Pete. He holds more allegiance to regular old New York than any of the others. This position of being caught in the middle is amplified in TUC 2, where he is no longer a firefighter, no longer a fighter at all, but in between and separate. And he recognizes this same feeling of separation in JJ, and that connection helps save the day.

Lapin Cadbury. The sole full caster among warriors. Not royalty or family. Keeping secrets from the Church and the other PCs. Unwillingly indebted to the Sugarplum Fairy. Left behind and gone too quickly.

Cumulous. Quite literally an outsider. The only PC with a connection to the Hungry One. He strikes off on his own multiple times to give the party the best chance possible. In the end, when everyone is discussing allegiances, Cumulous never chooses sides. There was an assumption that his ties to magic put him on Saccharina’s side, Saccharina and Theobald approach him, but he is the only one who never commits one way or the other.

Norman. Grumpy asshole captain, betrayed by his former commanders. His entire crew is fine with him being brain-slugged. No one is on his side.

Skip. Slug prince who chooses the crew over his kingdom. Who couldn’t fully communicate who or what he was to the rest of the characters for a good chunk of the show. Who had more compassion for his host than anyone else ever had. So much compassion that he and Norman become something new together.

And now, Pib. Who is not a character in the same way the others are. Who is not just Puss in Boots, but the Cat. Who explores Drosselmeyer’s carriage and the Lines Between, alone. Who spies on the Fairy’s servants, alone. Who talks to Alphonse, alone. But who also will not allow Tomas to be eaten by Fox, or Alphonse to be killed. Not fully character or archetype, but something of both, in between and separate.

I love Zac’s characters so much. There are plenty of outsider characters in D20 history, but Zac’s hit different. They’re never clamoring to be heard or understood, or wrestling violently with the concept of self. They have this quiet, almost expected loneliness coupled with a deep well of compassion. It’s incredibly beautiful and never quite the same, and so enthralling to me.

Anyway, I’m in no rush to jump into Pib’s story, because I know we’ll get there eventually. Even if fandom tends to dismiss Zac’s characters, Brennan never does, so I know big things are coming for Pib, one way or another.

Because Brennan's stories are almost always about choosing compassion against all odds, and that is the core on nearly every Zac Oyama character.

[sysig]

Ayy hap day! A cheer in the murk, hope it's as good as can be

It was pretty good, ty ♥

[egg-on-a-legg]

dont make me tap the sign [sign that reads no one in 2001 a space odyssey was a villain everyone was acting under flawed information, assumption, and/or orders and this was a tragedy that could have easily been avoided had it not been tied up in bureaucratic red tape]

[art-that-fucks-you-up-tournament]

SET ONE - ROUND THREE - MATCH ONE

"Lament for Icarus" (2020 - Miao He) / "Hubble Deep Field" (1996 - Hubble Space Telescope)

LAMENT FOR ICARUS: In the work of 2020 the angels look a little out of place...I would honestly expect aliens to tend to him...that are clearly not human beings and not some otherworldly angels dragging a dead body...What are you doing with it anyway?...Why not collect the soul? The astronaut is basically a no_name_character without a face...He/She appears more like a destroyed machine, than a dead human being... (freewilllife)

HUBBLE DEEP FIELD: This photo is kind of only incidentally art, but it is one of my favorite photographs ever. It is the visual byproduct of scientific and technological advancement. Honestly, its not even the most visually impressive Hubble (or other deep space telescope) photo. But I don't think there is anything else in the entire world which can so clearly and deeply impart the existential, incomprehensible vastness of the universe. * This photo represents a section of the night sky with "nothing" in it. There are no stars and it is outside of the plane of the Milky Way. From our view on Earth, it is less than a square inch across. Before this image, we knew of other galaxies, and their abundance was absolutely hypothesized, but no one really knew what to expect when examining such a small, seemingly empty part of the night sky. This is what they found. A tiny fraction of the night sky revealed to be teeming with thousands of galaxies, light reaching us from billions of lightyears away. To extrapolate and imagine that the entirety of the night sky is full of this, a vast blanket hidden behind our local stars. At the time, hundreds of billions of galaxies were estimated to exist. Today that estimation has risen to 2 trillion. 2 trillion potential Milky Ways. 2 trillion of the 100 billion stars that exist in our galaxy, there ever growing and evolving and expanding. I look at this image and just feel so utterly and completely small. How can you look at this and not feel atomic. There is so much of everything, and even still there is darkness, space, filled with so much light and possibilities. It represents both our loneliness as a planet, our isolation, and our connection to the universe, that there is no way we are alone, that we keep reaching out and trying to learn and understand our existence. (if you are interested in some more of the science of this, I'd recommend this Forbes article. I think its a good summary of the history and science, and provides a lot of jumping off points for further research) *disclaimer - there are and continue to be images taken with the same and improved techniques to explore space outside of the galaxy. This was, to the best of my knowledge, the first long exposure of dark space. (travelingsmithy)

(Miao He's painting is a digital piece done in 2020 as a new take on the original piece from 1898. you can find Miao He's artstation here!

The Hubble Space Telescope took this photo in 1996, and it was the first picture ever taken of deep space. "Hubble Deep Field" was originally imaged by the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, a camera initially installed upon the Hubble Telescope.)

[maudiemoods]

The urge to dedicate my life to opening my dream business is so strong

[nonjumbledclown]

hi my 1000 year clown post based off ur emojis :3 @pantryeclair @fleshpained thank u for the prompts friends !!!