#everything about me she hated anyway...

[angelicstalker]

I don't know anymore

[deoidesign]

I'm so mad that post was misinformation because there is actually an EXTREMELY important conversation to have about the production schedules artists are forced into. There's no need for exaggeration, the conditions are bad.

I work for webtoon. My publication schedule is weekly. While publishing I'm required 10-15 pages a week. Fully colored.

This means I'm finishing a 150 page fully colored graphic novel every 10-15 weeks.

When my comic is not updating, I am not getting paid. Any time writing, editing, or off is out of my own pocket. I don't get healthcare. They do not provide any assistants. They expect me to promote myself; they chose to deprioritize me before I even launched and gave me an end date half a year in. I never had a chance.

And this is the industry standard! Every company has artists forced into crunch hours, overtime, and burnout. Artists are literally dying early due to it. So many of my friends can't afford to go to the doctor.

It's unsustainable and untenable, and it's also the expectation our audiences have.

If we want to have this conversation, there's plenty of conversation to be had with the realities of the situation. It's bad as is.

[commsroom]

cutter was born in the 20s, and he'd become "arthur keller" by the early 70s, so obviously pryce's story at the beginning of brave new world can't be taken literally - that's not even an old man, much less "older than anyone she had ever met." it's also inarguable she was an adult already working on her... ideas for the human body when cutter sought her out; "i want you to make a doll for me" and "i found people who had some very bold ideas about how to... tune up the human body [...] i funded their work, and provided them with a willing test subject" are pretty definitely referring to the same events. so, it's fairy tale language, but the question is: why? why frame it this way?

one part of it is the "fountain of youth" in connection to immortality, strength, and health. the implication isn't literally that cutter is very old and pryce is very young; it's that she represents this power, and that he wants her to bestow it upon him: "then you and i will fix the world. i will be young and you will be whole." cutter and pryce choose to look eternally 28, while referring to and conducting themselves as if they're very old: it's not just vanity, it's part of their self-mythology. simultaneously young and old, having overcome the natural order.

that mythology of "overcoming" natural limitations is especially significant for pryce: characterizing herself as a "little girl" within her own story is both self-victimizing and self-aggrandizing. pryce does not see herself as disabled so much as temporarily inconvenienced; even the usual limitations of the human body are something she hopes to transcend. "instead of being wretched or afraid, the little girl decided to be clever." she was put at a disadvantage, but overcame it all by herself because she was smarter and better than other people. by extension, anyone who can't do what she did just isn't good enough, even as she's closing doors behind her and making it harder for others like her. and at the same time: it's an underdog story that requires her to have been an underdog. she hasn't been in a very, very long time, but the power she holds over others remains justified in her self-perception by this image of a sick little girl who was hurt by the world. there's an implication of inherent worthiness, and even a sort of expected assumed innocence in characterizing it that way. the first thing people notice about pryce is her eyes, and... sure, maybe it's the technology, but if cutter can catch bullets without any visible signs, it seems likely to me that, like her age, this is at least in part an aesthetic choice. it intimidates people. she's turned this point of hurt and vulnerability into a power play, and remains attached to it.

and that's the other part of the mythologizing that's going on: presumably, pryce was not the only person who worked on all of this. cutter funded others. but the story retroactively simplifies it, in a childish fairy tale way, and paints an image of them as exceptional, uniquely capable and so uniquely deserving, people.

i think there's something interesting to consider here about pryce in contrast to hera: that pryce is a woman who self-justifies her cruelty via a mythologized girlhood, while hera is a woman who was never a girl, who was never considered innocent or even allowed the same recognition of the ways she's been a victim. pryce resents humanity and all it represents, resents her body and its limitations, feels that being human has only caused her suffering, but still clearly believes that she has more of a claim to humanity than hera does by nature of her biology and upbringing. pryce's "bootstraps" attitude re: disability and her own self-victimization are the crucial things here, but i think that is also particularly interesting if you read hera as a trans woman.

(incidentally, this is part of why i have a particular love for hera designs where she's just a regular woman, more angular, and maybe even older looking - a natural 30-something in contrast to an unnaturally maintained 28 - than pryce. they're both women who have chosen how they want to look, and it highlights something.)

[six-of-cringe]

Something that has been on my mind is what Kaz says to Nina at the end of Crooked Kingdom about Matthias's share of their money. He offers Nina that share, and then says, "I know it doesn't matter".

Kaz, who has spent this entire series insisting to the others that kruge means retribution, safety, success, comfort, and thus is the driving factor in his life, is sort of accidentally revealing how little he believes it. He knows Nina disapproves of his purported obsession with profit and is not motivated by money, and he also knows from personal experience that no matter how much he insists otherwise, having money will not fix what has happened to you. Maybe it will kind of buy you retribution or a degree of safety, but it will never bring back who you lost - it's too late for that. Kruge is a shitty consolation prize, and Kaz knows it. This is the only time he explicitly lets it on to the others - as emotionally constipated as he might act, he knows Nina's pain and knows that even suggesting that money would in any way fix it would be an insult.

[phoenixcatch7]

Reading loz/lu fics and it's just so interesting how wide the spectrum is of their personalities.

Sometimes it's got an in universe reason (different past (usually gender or species change), recent or ongoing traumatic events, a spectacularly bad first meeting), but sometimes (often) the characters are just... Weirdly angsty or peppy, there's no in between!

And I'm beginning to think less people have played more than one game than I thought XD.

Not that it's anyone's fault! One game is more than enough to be part of it all, and loz is exclusive to Nintendo consoles - and all the older stuff is frustratingly hard to get hold of. Heck, I'm still looking for wind waker, and that was really popular! And then you have to play it! They're not small games!!

But could people writing wild please ease off just a tiiiiiny bit so he can be a semi functional member of society pretty please XD? He's just as much a polite boy as any other member of the chain! He won't even run in shops! He can't attack npcs! He talks to every single person he's ever seen and remembers every single name. Yes, he's three quarters woodland creature with a hefty amount of trauma but he's also a fashionista who managed to avoid accidentally taking sides in a mayoral election and that's not easy!

[nachosncheezies]

Mulder, Scully, and "sibling vibes"

So a few times lately I've remarked on the sibling energy I see in early Mulder & Scully, and I think perhaps it's misunderstood. I jokingly self-identified not long ago as "not a romo, not a noromo, but a secret third thing (delighted they ended up together but wishes the whole kiss kiss kiiiiiss! thing wasn't dominant forever and always)" This applies to all my fandoms fwiw. For me the friendships generally trump everything.

The other day I added this (among some other rambling) to one of @randomfoggytiger's excellent posts about Mulder and women:

To me, these two start out as best friends, almost a "sibling" relationship at first: Mulder has been looking for Samantha, "walking into that room" everyday for many more years of his life than he wasn't, and here comes this precocious, punchy little woman who says she's looking forward to being around him. She plays with him in the rain, she laughs at him, teases him and calls him "sucker", she listens to him and is eager to learn everything he can teach her. They squabble, but always stick together. She stands next to him with her little foot stuck stubbornly out to the side and her arms folded, or her little hands on her little hips, always exuding an attitude that's surprisingly large for her little body. When he looks at her it's at the top of her head. She's even the same age as Samantha. When she panics or gets scared she turns to him, and he wraps her in a blanket and tells her stories. I know it is often interpreted as flirting, but if you were to age them down, it could just as easily be a big brother who adores his little sister and a little sister who thinks her big brother hung the moon. My personal feeling is, it would be almost impossible for him not to notice commonalities between Scully and Samantha. Perhaps that's partly why he's so comfortable sharing Samantha's story with her.

To clarify, I don't think either saw the other as an actual or replacement sibling, and I don't see it as something that is remotely incompatible or icky regardless of where they ended up. Love's a lot of things and it can change and be all of it or none of it at once.

Not a person, but a pattern

Mulder and Scully were thrown together and immediately flung themselves about as far from home as you could get without crossing an ocean, at a time when there was no internet and a long distance phone call cost a million billion dollars (adjusted for inflation)(facetious). This is more than just long hours doing stakeouts or interviewing witnesses or writing profiles or joining sting operations or whatever it is that average partners (especially green-ass newbies from Quantico) might presumably be doing. They might as well have been at sea. They'd known each other for maybe a week and suddenly had to learn to not just work together but to live together, being each other's only company and support system, etc.

Watching the way they interact particularly during the pilot could be (and it seems almost always is) interpreted as crushes and flirting. I see that too, but I'm gonna toss that aside for a sec and ask you to imagine they are children, or at the very least that they're not looking to date (other people have written some very good posts about sex not being that important to them ever, or how they use it for self-flagellation (him) or rebellion (her) etc. And as fun as fanfic is, I agree with that take. For all their smouldering - both individually and together - they're remarkably sexless. But I digress. Just imagine that the search for a date or the possibility of sex is not part of the equation at this stage.)

They're both SO influenced and informed by the patterns they've been living all the way since childhood, as most of us are.

Scully is used to following strong male personalities, living to impress her dad, being a kid sister to a man who has strong opinions about how the world is or ought to be. She's extremely capable but very young for her long list of credentials (she's presumably gone from school to school to school without much lived experience), and they give her her very first field assignment with Fox Mulder. She's heard a lot about him. She's looking forward to working with him. This is probably nothing at all like what she expected when she went to Quantico, but she wants to distinguish herself so she'll go where she's asked and do her Very Best Job at it. But he immediately absconds with her and now she's doing something fun and new, and this man they've assigned her to is quirky and weird and possibly just bat-crap crazy, but in between it all he's incredibly intelligent and he's showing her the ropes and teaching her new things and she's just so excited to be here.

Mulder had to grow up way too fast, aged 12, and maybe suffered a sort of arrested development in that sense. He was once a big brother to a girl who was 8 years old and probably a bit of a brat, as precocious 8 year olds often are (I mean the first time we actually see her she called him a buttmunch and screamed in his face because she didn't get her way). They've sent him a partner who is a remarkable overachiever; she's a biophysicist and medical doctor, a Quantico graduate, and all under age 30. Her credentials include rewriting Einstein and her job responsibilities include "tattle tale". She's gonna challenge him at every turn, but she's green and earnest enough to want his to learn from his experience. She's following him and she's hanging on his every word and she's laughing at and with him. She asks a lot of questions and openly enjoys just being there with him, just being a part of it all.

Age them down 20 years and they could just be two kids playing in the woods and the rain. That doesn't mean they see their siblings in each other, but... to me, it doesn't not mean that either. It's patterns they've carried with them their whole lives. What I'm getting at is that that sort of sibling push-and-pull would be an extremely comfortable and familiar dynamic for them both to slip into, especially considering their isolation, and it's one which also lends itself to quick and easy affection. It's not the predominant feature of their friendship, but it's a starting place, and it ripples forward across time. (Imo it also informs the lack of romance for a number of years.)

The sibling vibes fade into the background after a few episodes (although I see shades of it popping up here and there through at least Darkness Falls), and it transforms into what becomes an easy, fast friendship, and then a deep, ride-or-die best friendship.

Of course, a twisted version of it is brutally resurrected and brought to the fore in season 2, and I think that more than anything is what scuppers a move out of denial or past anything apart from best friends until at least cancer arc, but that's a whole other post.

Thanks for readiiing 💕

[helmarok]

romeo roleplaying as his favorite OC to beat the shit out of his other OC who he hates very much

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

with a few minutes' reflection and a second conversation with my parents I have realized that I may have overblown things and overreacted a bit and also in some ways they're correct even if I think they're also harsh about it

[htsparrowheart]

"Mia kind of sucked actually" yeah geez she only grew up in a resentful death cult, got parentified at age 12, fled the only home she's ever known to avoid being pitted against that same sibling she had to raise, graduated law school alone, overcame trauma and depression to start a successful law firm alone in her mid-20's, and spent whatever free time she had researching emotionally painful cold cases and planning to take down a corrupt CEO. even if therapists existed in the trilogy (real therapy, not Athena's bs), when would Mia have had the time? she covered an incredible amount of ground just breaking free of Kurain and adapting to the world outside the village - again, without anyone she could entirely trust to catch her if she fell. but still, she changed and grew as a person in just the 3-year span we knew her. she got much better at managing her anxious and aggressive tendencies. she was more openly supportive toward Phoenix than any adult was to her. and she was literally TRYING to open up more to Phoenix and Maya on the night she died, by introducing those two halves of her life to each other despite the risks! if Mia Fey "sucked", then how high a standard should women be held to, hmm?

[xxplastic-cubexx]

on the absolute highest of keys james mcavoy does pull off bald charles really well and i wish we got another movie with bald james mcavoy

[kennyomegasweave]

4 Minutes really is Korn and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Life.

His dad clearly doesn't care about him besides him being his firstborn and thus heir, possibly because he didn't care about his mom. Great's mom doesn't give a single shit about him. Great was willing to throw him aside like it was nothing, despite Korn seemingly always being there for him AND being willing to take on everything terrible about their family so his baby brother doesn't have to. He's lost Tonkla due to his own inactions, actions, and just the circumstances of his life*. Fasai seems to be the only one on his side, but they so clearly don't see eye to eye on the realities of their lives. His own henchman went above him to report to his dad, so he really doesn't even have any power at his job either.

I'm pretty sure he's about to do some real clown shit to try to get his dad's approval. Especially with Great and his mom being shot since that only happened because Nan was able to go live and that is sorta kinda definitely his fault. If his dad already didn't like him and thought he was a disappointment, he's certainly not going to be happy that his failure with Nan got his wife and son possibly killed.

I just don't see this show ending well for Korn the most out of everyone. I feel like death will actually be the best ending Korn can have at this point, it's just gonna suck hardcore for him before it happens.

*and lowkey I'm not sure he even knows Tonkla at this point anymore. Like even if he was able to fix what's broken with their relationship, there's no chance it would be the same anymore. Tonkla's not the same college student that was trying to do better than his alcoholic dad for his brother. He's out here smoking meth, killing people, and his brother is dead. Tonkla can no longer be his getaway from everything because Tonkla is living foully himself. And I stay scared about what his reaction is going to be when he finds out Tonkla not only is fucking Win, who's a cop at that, but moved him in to the house Korn bought. Especially since everything in his life is imploding and he has control of nothing.

[stafsar]

L. Lawliet is a gifted photographer who believes he has understood the light and its secrets. Light Yagami is a young, unstable and slightly crooked model. Together, they kill time.

I had a bookcover design assignment so obviously I chose @devilinthebox's literary masterpiece of a fanfic Our Bodies, Possessed by Light

[lesbiantrish]

i think i could heal if people were more crazy about spydoc. btw

[transmascutena]

thinking about how akio sees his younger self in utena and wondering if there's any fondness there. doesn't change the horror of what he does to her obviously but i do wonder

[ccbatman]

actually so evil how much of hal's internal world gets obliterated with the rewriting of his relationships with jessica and martin.

[wolfnesta]

I’ve always entertained the idea of Nesta going full on evil because she already has a compelling backstory that makes a villain relatable, understandable, these things could push her to extremes to fight for change but not without questionable choices, I mean, she has the cold, unflinching, cunning attitude down, bonus sexy points. She fights for humans, fights for women. But why not make her evil in the process.

And then there’s Feyre with her own backstory but she has that innate compassion, both are fighting for change, have a common enemy, but Feyre has lost faith in Nesta, wants to see her nurturing future come to fruition without burning everything to the ground.

Hmmm I’m just compelled