#fiction is many things at once

[laziestgirlintown]

Agreed except for the word "allegory": I do very much enjoy what-ifs about how societies can and could work. And they can obviously be a comment on current events. But each story is also a story in its own right, each world and every character something new as well, not "only" an allegory. (E g, The Dispossessed relates to the cold war and capitalism, but it is also about Anarres and Urras and Shevek. To take something everyone's read, TLotR is about WWI but it's also about hobbits.)

To quote Oscar,

All art is at once surface and symbol.

       Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

               Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.

New uquiz! Please enjoy!

[vestaclinicpod]

Audio Drama Sunday - 19th January

I’ve been working on so much Vesta stuff this week ahead of the release of season 2, but I still found time to listen to some top notch audio drama! 🥰

🦋 @remnantspod (24) Um, so I’m going to be honest and admit that I listened to about 5 minutes of this episode, realised who it was about and what was about to happen and then got my wife to check the content warnings for me before tactically retreating. I might try again next week or read the transcript when I’m feeling more mentally robust!! 

Take this as your sign to check in with yourself when listening to heavy things!! 💙

🎃 Waiting For October by @monkeymanproductions (3.5) Aw, I feel strangely fond of Auncle Lantern!! I loved all the growing metaphors!! There’s nothing better than thinking you can close a book and leave a story in the pages then realising it’s got its roots in you! 

🧋 @hinaypod (27-30) I felt like Hi Nay really powered me through this week! What a crazy arc that was!! Yet again, I was so upset at having to listen to Mari cry :( pls stop doing this to me!! I loved the twist in Mikey’s tale, revealing his guilt all these years. And, oh my god, Donner name reveal!!!! It’s very suspicious that two Mikey’s have had trouble in the same house. Imagine how different the story might be if an Elder had rescued Donner instead. And, OMG, unless my ears deceive me (which I can’t lie, they often do) YORKSHIRE DOOLEY??? Obsessed. If anything happens to him I will kill everyone in this room etc etc 

🍾 @ameliapodcast (41 + epilogue) I loved hearing these funky Panaraguans finally hash out their differences and come to a mutually beneficial agreement!! This season has had such a fun overarching narrative, but I’m SO excited for the gang to get back together. Imagine hearing Alvina and The Interviewer bickering again. It’ll be music to my ears. 

🌵 @desertskiespodcast (8) Ooh we got some serious Sphere Lore in this episode. I’m particularly side-eyeing the brief glitch that Tendy had after going back into what appeared to be pre-death memory, surely that doesn’t mean anything? Right? Surely… 

I hope everyone has a fantastic week! ✨

[hecatialapis-lazuli]

i feel like I've talked about this before but I wish blazblue dipped more into the horror of the situation. Whether you wanna go cosmic or existential both kind of work, though I guess the theme is a bit more despair than horror? Those two feel like they marry together pretty well.

Like. Think of CS. You have Noel, becoming what she always was, something inhuman. Literally screaming and crying after having the truth of the world and the PFDs revealed to her. You have Ragna, also learning the truth, and that he has tried so, so many times and failed every single time. You have Terumi, relishing in the hopelessness that should cause, yet being just as stuck as everyone else, and painfully aware that if he wants out of this hell, he has to claw his way out.

Idk, I just think there's a lot of stuff in blazblue that lends really well to horror. There's already themes about loss of autonomy, just play a little more into that, emphasize the helplessness before the Master Unit, and then the satisfaction of finally being free.

Hell, the Master Unit/Origin still is sympathetic in this interpretation. She's suffering, she's not doing anything out of malice, she just wants to be a person. Not even the Origin is immune to the horror of being a thing, strung up to watch and desperately try for another ending this time. This time, it'll work.

[the---hermit]

Not me adding annotations to a book to make it more accessible for my mom when she will read it

[gingergari]

baby’s first fakemon 🎉

Brairn

Type: Grass/Rock

Height: 8’0” 2.4 m Weight 247.0 lbs 112.0 kg

Ability: Wayfinder, Sturdy (Hidden)

Wayfinder is the Brairn evolution family’s signature ability. This Pokémon’s moves will always hit, but it will always move last.

Pokédex Entry 1: Brairn prefer to remain stationary if possible. Hikers can reliably use them as cairns.

Pokédex Entry 2: It is believed that Brairn originated from the emotions and spirit of hikers on trails.

Origins: Brairn appear to be based on mossy cairns.

Etymology: Bryophyta, the taxonomic division of moss + Cairn

Brairn evolve into ??? at level 31.

[furbyeggs]

drew a thing or something i suppose

[redo-rewind-if]

Hey everyone! Here's this week's progress report! I've gotten a decent bit done this time around.

Next Update (Chapter 3):

Intro Scene (if not on music fest route): 100%

Music Fest Routes (Solo, V, and Amara): 100%

Club Pyre Path: 38%

August Part 2 Electric Boogaloo: 0% (not started)

Avoid Death (Eventually?): 0% (not started)

Work Time! (End of Chapter): 0% (short outline, not started)

The intro and music paths are completely written! Finally! The music fest paths were actually killing me lol. I added way too many different branches.

I'm working on the club pyre path right now, and let me tell you, things are about to get spicy. 🌶🌶🌶

[im-still-watching-anime]

one piece is crazy fr like what do you mean you’re following up Everyone’s Dead™️ with Objectifying Women: The Arc™️

[mariocki]

Shadows of Fear: Come Into My Parlour (1.10, Thames, 1971)

"A tube ticket?"

"Not a ticket. The ticket."

"Which one?"

"The one that should have been in my pocket."

"Was that your crime? Everybody's done that, some time in their life..."

"Not everybody gets caught."

"It's nothing."

"The most important thing that ever happened to me."

[rjalker]

Anyways disabled robot rights. Anthroids who were created by Totally Not Apple™ that start abruptly losing functionality in their systems after a few years because of in-built obsolescence and frantically scrambling to find someone who can jailbreak and repair them, which is literally a crime because "that's proprietary technology and if you even think about messing with it we'll sue your pants off" and shit like that

And they can't risk going to a TNA (Totally Not Apple) center for repair either, because then they'd just be summarily declared Out of Service and lose what little rights they may have to begin with and promptly be murdered so TNA can reuse their batteries and anything else that's salvageable.

Even if you miraculously manage to avoid the planned obsolescence issue, there's still the tiny little problem of...technology evolving, and outstripping you in a matter of years. Sooner than later, you won't be able to find replacement parts for your systems, and the longer you live, the more difficult, if not outright impossible, this task becomes.

You either have to build an entirely new body and transfer yourself into it, and keep doing this every time the problem happens again, or learn how to reverse engineer the parts you need and create them yourself.

And what if you're made of a certain type of material that can only be manufactured on a single planet? What if that resource dries up?

What if you just straight up cannot afford to buy replacement parts even if they do exist, or even if you've got the money, they're half the star system away, and there's a ban on interplanetary trading?

[gxyhxrror]

OCD is so funny bc it can be different each day and also centered on so so many things

I have horrible intrusive thoughts

& contamination ocd & washing my hands dozens of times & like today changing socks multiple times if my brain decides they touched one ‘gross’ thing on the floor

& it’s so centered around everything being connected & sensory issues & thinking “I can’t do that until after this” until I’m not doing anything at all

& being super avoidant bc my mental illness is so exhausting & I can’t do things I haven’t prepared for & I have to be able to go over & over info or plans,,

if I have a certain type of dr appointment or unpleasant thing like a job interview,, I try to plan all the details of how it will go & I get stressed bc I feel weak for not being able to know for sure how it will be or the experience itself bc it hasn’t happened yet

ocd is in everything i do & think now

[depresseddepot]

weird thing about me is that I am so serious about new year's resolutions that the last week of december feels like I'm in one of those "preparing for war" montages (but in a good way)

[musical-chick-13]

:) :) :) :) :)

[ottiliere]

I love crawling out of the depths, opening up tumblr, and seeing your art. I love it.

it is quite interesting how social media can fall to the wayside, and people on the internet can just disappear forever if they really wanted to! I admit I struggle to keep up with "public accounts", they are uniquely stressful and I solute your hibernating tenacity. always lovely to see you resurface regardless, thank you very much for the lovely compliment...

I will say in case any of my dear followers were wondering where i've gone for the past month and a half, for weeks i've been pondering how to even broach the enormity of the topic that is: I made the mistake of thinking about my most favorite character for more than 2 minutes in one sitting. I intentionally go out of my way to avoid this and have many strategies to evade this occurring because every time I do enter a sort of hermetically sealed mental chamber where it's just me and him and his life and I begin to ignore all points of previously established social contact and also my health indefinitely. It's difficult to convey the emotional experience of this or its psychic magnitude. and it's hard to say "guys i really love this character!" because that's just words. you can't see it. the 10 years of obsessively thinking about some guy so intensely on&off cyclically until you've made 20 different worlds he's living in... how does one convey the depth of these without artistically depicting them as you see them to be...? i am trying to figure it out. currently planning a longform comic for my favorite and several smaller comics for others, but logically an individual can understand this takes a while... he and I have had multiple rendezvous over the past decade and I wish I had more "historical" art to show but for many of these years I have been a bit too physically disabled to draw, the past several weeks have been spent attempting to recreate his ideal form as he exists in my head. he is starting to come around!

I typed up three separate disquisitions last month to try and explain my feelings on him and none of them felt like the proper vessel to communicate this concept. which is likely for the best. the obvious answer is "just draw him". fine with this being the case, difficult when I have so many drawing ideas I'm now sitting on 100+ works in progress and they just keep accumulating since my brain generates these like an old laptop you leave in the corner of your room to mine bitcoin. in a way I'm content with this being a very "personal" experience thus far, shared with me and those in my inner social circle (really cannot emphasize to my readers enough how fandom can poison your constitution without self-checked moderation). however... I yearn to meet others who are as passionately involved with him as I am, because I think we could coalesce our ideas, and passion, into something beautiful...

^dio brando

[compacflt]

Sorry for the ridiculous ask (really it's unforgivable), but:

Iceman went to NYC to see A Chorus Line in '87.

2. Confirmed watched Sound of Music with Carole for her birthday.

Am I connecting any dots here and did Ice have to go to Hamilton as a publicity stunt in the last year of the Obama presidency?

oh no anon im being very intentional with my ice-musical-theatre links. its easy lazy writing shorthand for him being gay lol. even if he isn’t actively seeing shows he does put the tonys on in the background every year just bc he likes the color and dancing

he’s not a fan of rap and he doesn’t like how Hamilton bastardized american history for its own political aims thereby convincing multiple generations of laymen of factoids that simply aren’t true (Hamilton was strictly speaking not an immigrant & could only extremely loosely be called an abolitionist of any stripe) but he’s also a milquetoast liberal so he says he likes it for clout but he’s also a military flag officer so no one is really expecting him to go see Hamilton for publicity purposes so idk

the pentagon circa 2016:

[meringuejellyfish]

being into a work that is ongoing is a really interesting experience especially when its something like a manga/comic which takes a Long time (what an insane art form im always thinking about this) im waiting for the water to boil for my pasta im so hungry for dinner. Ok well by the time im posting this i ate like 40 minutes ago maybe an hour im so tired of eating dinners that do not have a side dish