#cpost

[flockofdoves]

thinking about tara working at a build a bear in juxtaposition with all the literal and metaphorical stuff in the movie connecting understanding of the self to ones insides/owens line about how trying to think about sexuality makes him feel like someone dug his insides out with a shovel and theres nothing there/the cutting open scene

they literally put hearts in those bears

[serious2020]

The White Settlers' Bizarre Economic Strategy Of Terrorizing Black People

https://popularresistance.org/the-white-settlers-bizarre-economic-strategy-of-terrorizing-black-people/ By Jon Jeter, Black Agenda Report. December 15, 2024 Educate! Jordan Neely’s killing and the subsequent acquittal of Daniel Penny can be seen as part of the reactionary existential panic felt by whites whenever the country experiences growing economic instability and hardship. That jurors…

[flockofdoves]

i saw 3 pink footed geese together in massachusetts last fall :)

it's kind of disappointing that vagrant birds never come in pairs. like, if i were a little five-striped sparrow & i wanted to go party in completely the wrong habitat for a season, i think it'd be very romantic to bring a cutie along with me. we'd have matching outfits and everything for when the paparazzi show up. instead it's always just one lone chripy boi who's absofuckinglutely awful at reading a map

[flockofdoves]

my god. it is the bane of my fucking existence how often i see peoples interpretations of early sunsets over monroeville that assume either that:

the couple featured are the demolition lovers

one of them got turned into a vampire

they are both white

they are a straight couple

its crazy how like. this song is directly engaging with peter and rogers storyline in dawn of the dead but instead people are constantly parroting a much more boring and frankly just entirely unsubstantiated interpretation instead

[existentialscreaming]

Having a period while being disabled and trans has got to be a form of torture.

[flockofdoves]

hey!!! submit stuff to my tournament!

i'm really excited about this, i've fantasized about making this tournament since like the first couple weeks polls became available, and now i finally have the time to do it!

i know some of my mutuals have said they're tired of tournaments, but i hope the different non-single elimination bracket structure of this will still make it exciting for you :)

are you tired of how many character tournaments just become a popularity contest?

how regardless of seeding, even high contenders can almost arbitrarily be knocked out early on, leaving you with nothing to root for?

if you're feeling that, and if you like any webcomics, you should participate in the webcomic character tournament!

the primary goals of this tournament are:

to celebrate the medium of webcomics as a whole

to find new webcomics to read, and to recommend your own favorites

to highlight indie creators and help them build a wider audience

to have fun rooting for and celebrating your favorite characters!

in order to accomplish these goals, instead of a single elimination bracket, i will be using a mcmahon system inspired tournament structure!

this means that no character will be eliminated, and you can participate in polls rooting for your favorite character throughout all the rounds. characters will also be roughly matched up based on a system that determines how well known their work is, so most rounds should be relatively evenly matched, allowing people to fight for their favorites on their own merits

more details about how the mcmahon tournament will work can be found under the cut!

submit as many characters as you would like to here! the deadline is tentatively next saturday, june 3rd, at 4pm EDT

tagging some other tournaments i like whose participants i think might be interested :) @wlw-webcomic-bracket @obscurewebcomictournament @gaywebcomicsshowdown @autisticgirliesbracket @yuribracket @secretthirdthingtournament @nonyanderepoll @funkylittlebaldcharapoll @divorced-tournament

no submission is specifically banned, but try to keep in mind the spirit of this tournament when deciding what to submit.

under the cut after my more detailed description of the tournament structure, i also ramble in a lot more detail about my philosophy regarding submission eligibility, but it's not necessary to read all that before submitting characters

mcmahon tournament details:

matchups will be decided based off of a survey sent out after submissions are over gauging participants' familiarity with all of the competing characters' source materials. each character will be assigned points based off of how known their source material is, and each character will go up against a character with a similar popularity score for the first round

characters will be awarded points based off of if they lose, win, or tie their match and have that added to their total score, and then they will again be paired against a character with a similar updated score

depending on how many characters are participating, this process can continue either until there is a definitive ranking of all characters, or until just a few top winners are clear

i haven't entirely decided on specifics such as whether points will be awarded by a simple 0 for a loss, 0.5 for a tie, 1 for a win or by percentage of the vote, and if initial popularity points will be counted in the final ranking, or if i will try to rank winners from within their initial popularity categories, but i hope that won't matter too much, because in my opinion the main fun of this isn't the final results, it's for people to have fun in the individual rounds seeing their favorite character's points go up!

submission guidelines:

if you are submitting characters from extremely popular webcomics, try to limit yourself to just characters that are among your top favorites of all time, and maybe try to submit stuff from lesser known works as well

similar goes for webcomics that are more widely known for adaptations into other media forms (one punch man, tower of god, heartstopper, etc.)

i'm not specifically banning any comic for having bigoted content or its creator being a bad person, there's a wide scale of stuff i could decide to include in that definition or not. in the goal of celebrating favorite characters, obviously a lot of people love characters despite flaws in the work they're from, but also keep in mind the goals of recommending works to other people, and helping uplift and promote creators you like, and try to find a reasonable balance from there

what counts as a webcomic:

physically published works that you can find pirated or scanlated online probably don't count

comics whose publication is centered around physical releases, who also have simultaneous online releases by their publishers (comics on manga plus or comixology, newspaper strips with online sites, etc.) probably don't count

comics published through traditional publishers that are exclusively online (such as shōnen jump+ comics) still probably don't count

comics published online through companies that exclusively publish online (such as lezhin) are still discouraged

stuff like line webtoon or tapas official comics are more acceptable, as there are a lot of free comics from independent creators around them and many of these comics started out that way themselves, so they exist within a culture of webcomics more so than the aforementioned comic categories

stuff that is paywalled beyond just having an early release system is discouraged

comics that are no longer online but accessible through archives are fine though, especially in the wake of sites like smackjeeves being deleted there's a lot of stuff in webcomic history that can only be found that way now!

webtoon style comics absolutely count as webcomics, they're an exciting way of fully making use of webcomics' digital format! simultaneously however, i feel like with the rise of mobile webtoon apps, there are many people who read webtoon style comics but who dont further engage with webcomics, so i'd definitely encourage submitting a variety of styles of webcomic!

none of these rules are set! feel free to submit whatever you want, i just list them so you can try to find a balance between the different goals of this tournament when submitting stuff.

anyone can submit as many characters as you want, but just maybe if you find that a lot of your submission ideas are from comics in some of the more discouraged categories, limit yourself in how many you submit from those categories and only submit characters if they're absolute favorites of yours you want the opportunity to celebrate, and maybe try to also submit a character from something that isn't in a discouraged category too!

theres no penalty for not going with this, but i think because choosing characters by number of nominees doesn't really align with my intentions for this, depending on how easy it is to sort submissions i might just go off of vibes, so you might just be less likely to have a character make it to the tournament if their comic is in more heavily discouraged categories is all

[sharkjumpers]

The most compelling part of Cassandra Cain's character for me continues to be how her self-hatred conflicts with the way her life experiences have shaped her into a person for whom it is pertinent and necessary to believe that everyone—especially those who have "proved" by some metric or other (the justice system, personal opinion, Batman's direction, her own abusive upbringing, actively shooting at her) that they should be given up on in favor of doing the "righter" thing—deserves to be given the chance to do and be something good, and that it is not up to anyone else—let alone her—to decide that their life is unprecious, unwanted, and sacrificable.

She clings to this belief so strongly that she would rather take bullet after bullet for a stranger trying to kill her than move out of the way. There is almost zero exception to this—save for, notably, herself. Her life is at odds with her own conviction in redemption; every opportunity to protect a life is also conveniently one in which she would be fine with being rid of hers. Her inability to conceptualize and treat herself as anything other than, to her core, an eight year old little girl who will forever be a killer is in stark contrast to the gentle approach she takes with other children.

This is a direct parallel to her relationship with Cain, which she believes has doomed her to be fundamentally bad. However, Cass wholeheartedly believes in what she's telling him; she wants this little boy to understand that he is independent of this "badness" that his father carries—that it is not a reflection of his capacity for being good. He can be different because he is different; he is not his father.

His silence and inability to look her in the eyes tells her that this divide from one's father is something that he—much like her—cannot apply to himself. The issue ends with the best she can offer him: a silent, understanding hug.

Cass is capable of extraordinary amounts of compassion and kindness. She has a compulsive need to keep trying. The Father's Day issue with Cain is a fantastic example of this.

Here lies David Cain—the man who shot her from behind with bullets as a little girl—bloody and beaten on the floor after fighting with her... in a moment in which she acknowledges he was a terrible father... yet something still compels her to leave him with a Father's Day gift (a flower and a note labeled "DAD").

She knows he doesn't deserve it. He's a terrible person and a terrible father. Yet she got him a gift in the first place—and still gave it to him after he once again proved undeserving of anything from her at all.

Even when confronted with the most extreme situation in which she believes someone (the person who transferred this 'badness' onto her) doesn't deserve what she can give them—she continues to try. She is able to extend a fundamentally kind act to Cain—how does that reflect back on her view of the self?

Maybe one day her self-hatred can become a background influence in her life, as opposed to a dominant one that fuels the continuously self-preservative-lacking actions she takes (like Bruce acknowledges in Gotham Knights #2 in which she plans on going down with a sinking ship: Her experience of being trained almost from birth as an ASSASSIN leaves her less than fully able to acknowledge her own capacity for GOOD. Not for DOING good. But for BEING good.) in the name of helping others. Maybe she can offer her younger self the same understanding she gives to that little boy. But, for the time being, she will have to consciously carry (and treat) herself (as if it's true) with the knowledge of what she thinks she is always a step away from devolving into.

[macabre-halloween]

[puppetdoggy]

[radweekender]

ill make a real pinned eventually!!

❤️ cheri she/they

❤️ 16

❤️ sideblog, private main

❤️ specialised akito tag. hes my sugar muffin

[feyd-rautha-apologist]

Corvus Corax Callout Cpost

[flockofdoves]

was looking up more and this is literally so cool nature is awesome

from here

Still in awe that more than zero people in the world believe corals are just inanimate mineral formations, or that sea anemones are plants, or that sea urchins are just stationary objects, or that so many people didn’t know that every single seashell in the world comes from the death of its original owner and isn’t “molted” or “shed” from live snails. People deserve to know marine invertebrates as well as they do so many other animals :(

[flockofdoves]

hoooly shit...

[existentialscreaming]

Someone with a golf cart at my college saw me struggling with my cane and he gave me a ride to my next class shout out to that absolute legend

[chuck-of-spades]

Exposures – Charles Ashley – Exposedfaggots.com

https://exposedfaggots.com/members/chuckofspades/cposts/

[flockofdoves]

what if you were from the future, but only realized you were trans once going to the past!

what if you made a drastic choice in desperation, trying to save one world by giving up all hope on your original future!

what if you had to go through all the normal struggles of self discovery as a teenager outside of any context you've ever known, with only a foggy and fractured memory of your past in the future, and a very inexperienced understanding of your present in the past!

also what if you went to party city and bought a piccolo cape out of some vague sense of affection for a retro show you don't really remember at all anymore and then dyed it purple so you could secretly be a superhero as a 17 year old with no money

even if rishika loses, i'd love to talk about her if anyone has any questions! i've been playing her for about a half year regularly now, and i just really really love her :)

Why you should vote for each of them and full art below!

Rishika Díaz (by @flockofdoves for Masks)

(art by @flockofdoves)

in the year 202X, local Halcyon City newspapers report occasional spottings of a new superhero in town, a teenage girl with portal and teleportation powers calling herself “The Future Violent”.

in a different timeline some ambiguous amount of generations later, capitalism and global warming have gotten even worse, and superheroes are recruited to serve the interests of a few big corporations, who now even more explicitly are in control of the state and have a monopoly on legitimate violence. a 17 year old pores over a very old family photo, family from his dad’s side generations ago, smiling happily in their living room. he hopes that maybe, just maybe, he can take his ability to teleport anywhere he has a clear sensory grasp on to its most extreme, and do something he’s never done before, travel to the the past. to him it feels like the only hope at saving the world.

somehow, they succeed! they pop into their ancestor’s living room right after the picture was taken, aged picture in hand. in stuttering through an explanation in a post time travel haze, the name they’ve always gone by is misheard as Rishika, and on a whim, they go along with it.

rishika’s family (who are now referred to as her aunt, uncle, grandma, and nieces and nephews) fully accept rishika into their home. rishika is open with them from the beginning about their goals of stopping evil corporations, which is all well and good to their family as long as he’s safe about it, but he still needs to go to school and get decent grades while he’s at it.

using their powers for something as extreme as time travel has scrambled their brain a bit. their memory of the future is very spotty. in their meandering first attempts at stopping evil corporations, they end up encountering two other teens with powers from their school, and begin to work as a superhero, getting involved with situations not directly related to preventing their future, developing a costume and superhero name, and omitting all this while talking with family so as to not worry them too much.

when the first news reports of Rishika’s team’s activity refer to The Future Violent as a girl, for some reason rishika really enjoys that. she might as well have her teammates always refer to her as such when in costume, after all it’ll help make it harder to find out her secret identity as a boy!

when not spending increasing amounts of time embroiled in heroic situations, rishika loves getting to listen to long lost recordings of their favorite “retro” emo bands, running a fanblog for future revolutionary martyrs and now famous on the local scene band made up entirely of superheroes, The Gawth Chix, and modifying clothes in baffling ways (her friends aren’t sure what is future fashion and what is just rishika being rishika).

coming from their even more abysmal capitalist propaganda filled future education, history is by far their favorite school subject, but their history teacher is never quite sure what to do with the combination of their clear enthusiasm and huge gaps in basic historical knowledge.

rishika is open about casually mentioning they came from the future, but theres no real precedent for that, and most people just dismiss it as some sort of weird joke.

between their gaps in memory and knowledge both of past and future, juggling a new and dramatically different school system, a new family life, and a new identity as a superhero, and the nagging but vague feelings about identity starting to emerge for them, rishika has a lot of growing and reflecting to do, even as she feels the constant weight of saving the entire world on her back!

(a note on pronouns: if its not obvious, i intend rishika to be a trans girl or nonbinary transfem person who has not really consciously connected that for herself yet, but who is on the way to soon realizing that. in school and at home she uses he pronouns by default, but uses she pronouns in her superhero identity. her closest friends are also her superhero teammates, and they have started to occasionally slip up and use she and they pronouns even sometimes outside of superhero contexts. despite how this technically could help people connect her hero and personal identities, she hasn’t corrected this any time its happened, instead just privately going like .’whoa..’ when referring to her as a character, i mostly use she and sometimes they, but he can contextually make sense too like how i used it here. so feel free to use your judgement when referring to her)

Benedikt Ignatov (by @19orionis for Dungeons & Dragons)

(art by @19orionis)

Benedikt has learned not to fly off the handle very often, appearing relaxed and even at times sleepy, making his disastrous slip-up (more on that below) all the more difficult for him to think about. In daily life, he’s a chill, artsy guy, who, aside from living off the land, occasionally ventured into town to sell his colorful work. He says the occasional weird, funny thing and would be a great guy to smoke with. Despite not having as much in the way of physical strength as one might expect, his tall, large stature lends him skill in quiet intimidation. Initially coming off as a chaotic neutral, he does find fulfillment in listening to and protecting those who need it.

After being robbed and accidentally decimating his home woods in a firey rage of his own making, mortified, Benedikt fled his home continent by stowing away on a ship, and traveling to a new frontier where he is currently posing as a naturalist researcher, using his sketching abilities and background as a forester to make the act all the more convincing. As a totally human sorcerer with wild magic, he’s never had any idea where his powers came from, and is using the adventuring opportunity to hopefully gain some insight on what he is. And maybe find some community along the way. He’s always wanted a nicer family.