#i don't write this kind of stuff without either a lot of time and research

[acorviart]

Europe VAT laws not changing any time soon, recent. If understand FAQ well, mean shipping to Europe impossible for several years minimum?

That's correct, I won't be shipping to the EU for the foreseeable future due to some import packaging regulations that either have already been implemented or are planning to be implemented in the future.

Note that this is for EU countries only—I can ship to all other non-EU countries like Switzerland, except for the UK due to the UK's own convoluted VAT system.

The only workaround I can offer for EU folks is that you can have a friend or family that lives in a non-EU country place an order to deliver to their address, and then they are able to ship that order to you marked as a gift. Not an option for everyone, I know.

Longer explanation under the readmore for those curious:

As it stands now, each EU country has its own system and fees that I can't keep up with (for example, France would cost me 80 euros per year), I'd need to individually register and report to each country, some require reporting and tracking of what sources of packaging I use, I believe? It's all very complicated, and it makes my head spin just trying to figure out what the requirements actually are, so that's why I stopped shipping to the EU entirely out of an abundance of caution. I also just don't get enough sales to the EU to justify the headache, I'd probably actually lose money paying all the fees. Actually, while I was looking up details while writing this post, apparently there's a new PPWR that's going to replace the old EU Packaging Directive? This is why I can't handle this (ಥ﹏ಥ)

As for why this doesn't seem to be affecting all companies—corporations can obviously afford their own professionals whose entire job is to handle this stuff, and the requirements are also different for large vs small volumes. Meanwhile, a lot of other small or 1-person businesses straight up don't know about these requirements, because it's not like there's a memo passed around about updates to international shipping law. It's also even more confusing because some packages are slipping by without any issue, probably in part due to how the regulations are still new and still being implemented, so I assume it's kind of a mess.

I know of a few people who are willingly taking the risk and shipping to the EU anyway and have had no consequences (for now at least), but I'm not risking the fines ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Now for the UK, their VAT system doesn't have anything to do with packaging, but what it does require is similar registration with the government, and I'm required to collect and pay the VAT myself. No thanks!

TLDR; laws hard. laws also expensive. too stupid to figure out and too fearful of fines. no ship to countries

fun story: someone also once emailed me this long diatribe about how they think I'm shit at research and that I'm just making all this up (specifically just to screw with europeans or something, I guess?), so I sent them a few links to the literal official government websites where I got my info (like that UK one), and they never responded. lol

[wisteria-lodge]

hi, i just wanted to drop in and ask if you know of any other blogs that post hp meta/discussion that are also very jkr critical? i love everything you write, but many of the other blogs i find when perusing tags are... questionable. its kind of a requirement for me to know that the people posting hp on my timeline don't hate trans people so if you know of anyone else who meets that criteria, i'd love to be linked!

Okay. Now the last thing I want to do is write a callout post (or the opposite of a callout post? A call-in post?) BUT. I do also know that this site can be hard and frustrating to use before you've built up a good follower list for yourself. I know it was definitely rough for me there at the beginning, when I first exploring HP tumblr.

So, this is not meant to be a comprehensive list, this is me going through my recent reblogs and DMs, and if anyone feels they should be on the list (or wants to be taken off the list - people use their fandoms to have a good fun chill time, and I respect that. Having a good fun chill place to exist is unbelievably important.)

But I would say these are are blogs who regularly write meta about Harry Potter that is primarily rooted in the books, while remaining critical of the books in way that I enjoy, and are some combination of funny, earnest, and academic (and drama-free, that's a big one.) I haven't gone and background checked them all or anything, but these are people who I've either had good, meaty conversations with in the DMs, have publicly posted about disagreeing with JKR and her political views, or that I've just followed for a while without any problems. Or some combo of the above.

As I'm sure some of the people on this list will tell you, we *definitely* interpret the books differently and have different headcanons, but their style of interpretation is one that fits with the kind of experience I want to have.

***

@saintsenara - a new follow, but I'm in the process of reblogging their back catalog, and they've definitely written about how to be a HP fan in post JKR-swan-dive-off-the-deep-end world, in the context of their absolutely hysterical crack ship series.

@thistlecatfics - bio says "fuck jkr in a canon compliant way" which I rather like. Their last post was a link to their new Sirius/Fanon Sirius one-shot - which was so sweet, clever, and well-written. Which I think is very much their vibe. I massively enjoy their "Harry Potter Characters in Therapy" series.

@pangaeaseas - a really fun follow. They post a lot, they're funny and their ideas are unique, original, and sometimes totally off the wall. It's like they keep throwing out fun little bookclub prompts/discussion starters, and then we all have a really nice time.

@its-the-allure - lovely, and my intro into some really fun, chill fandom communities. @etl-echo-audiobooks is fantastic, they do live readings of fic of their discord and then turn them into audio books. Did one of my metas once! Also they're currently running a Drarry fest, I snagged a prompt but there are plenty left.

@the-phoenix-heart - has been a mutual for a while. Their original stuff is mostly art, when it comes to text-based stuff they're more of a commenter and reblogger. But they're a GREAT commenter and reblogger. They know their stuff, and I would feel weird leaving them off the list.

@blorger - always has an interesting take, especially when it comes to worldbuilding, and they always do their research and cite their sources. Their last post was all about debunking the popular fanon that the non-Snape teachers are really prejudiced against Slytherin as a whole. Also, great fic reccomender.

@360degreesasthecrowflies - probably the most political blog on this list, which they would definitely agree with. What I really love about them is the way they're willing to go into historian mode, and find and repost some really excellent HP Meta originally written for Livejournal. I was never on Livejounal, so all this stuff is new to me, and I feel like it also provides a really good perspective on fandom history.

@arkadijxpancakes - really well-written, well-thought out, well-supported meta. Great thoughts on worldbuilding. One of the only blogs I've found that really digs into the Weasleys, but they have great takes on everything. Has a very reasonable, focused, lets-get-to-the-heart-of-the-issue vibe that I really appreciate.

@riddlesmoon - followed me recently, and I know you don't post as much original content as you'd like, but I think your comments are hilarious and very insightful, and you *should* write more meta.

@hollowed-theory-hall - another person who can cite their sources really impressively. Tends to do very comprehensive deep dives into worldbuilding out things like the magic system and in-universe politics, or doing very in-depth text-based character analysis. I also love it when they post designs and art, because they went in a very different direction than the films did, but it still totally works.

@trothplighted - I know them from their main blog, which is about literature in general and not HP, but this post got them to resurrect their HP meta blog! I've had fun discussions with them, and they have good takes on other literature, so lets see how this goes :D

@regheart - A good, mellow follow (but with absolutely zero tolerance for JKR and her antics.) A good blend of art, fic recs, and fun good takes. Just read a post of their reccing fics that are pro-Jilly, but still willing to dig into their potential issues as a couple. Which I think is pretty representative.

I 100% expect to add to this list as I think of/find more people, but that should be enough to get you started.

[tagamantra]

realities, maximalism,and the need for big book™️

some gubat banwa design thoughts vomit: since the beginning of its development i've kind of been enraptured with trying to really go for "fiction-first" storytelling because PbtA games really are peak roleplaying for me, but as i wrote and realized that a lot of "fiction first" doesn't work without a proper sort of fictional foundation that everyone agrees on. this is good: this is why there are grounding principles, genre pillars, and other such things in many PbtA games--to guide that.

broken worlds is one of my favs bc of sheer vibes

Gubat Banwa didn't have much in that sense: sure, I use wuxia and xianxia as kind of guideposts, but they're not foundational, they're not pillars of the kind of fiction Gubat Banwa wants to raise up. there wasn't a lot in the sense of genre emulation or in the sense of grounding principles because so much of Gubat Banwa is built on stuff most TTRPG players haven't heard about. hell, it's stuff squirreled away in still being researched academic and anthropological circles, and thanks to the violence of colonialism, even fellow filipinos and seasians don't know about them

this is what brought me back to my ancient hyperfixations, the worlds of Exalted, Glorantha, Artesia, Fading Suns... all of them have these huge tomes of books that existed to put down this vast sprawling fantasy world, right? on top of that are the D&D campaign settings, the Dark Suns and the Eberrons. they were preoccupied in putting down setting, giving ways for people to interact with the world, and making the world alive as much as possible.

one of my main problems with gubat banwa was trying to convey this world that i've seen, glimpsed, dreamed of. this martial fantasy world of rajas and lakans, sailendras and tuns, satariyas and senapatis and panglimas and laksamanas and pandai... its a world that didn't really exist yet, and most references are steeped in either nationalism or lack of resources (slowly changing, now)

i didn't want to fall back into the whole gazeteer tourist kind of shit when it came to writing GB, but it necessitated that the primary guidelines of Gubat Banwa were set down. my approach to it was trying to instill every aspect of the text, from the systems to the fluff text to the way i wrote to the way things were phrased, with the essence of this world i'm trying to put forward. while i wrote GB mainly for me and fellow SEAsian people, economically my main market were those in the first world countries that could afford to buy the book. grokking the book was always going to be severely difficult for someone that didn't have similar cultures, or are uninterested in the complexities of human culture. thus why GB had to be a big book.

in contemporary indie ttrpg spaces (where I mostly float in, though i must admit i pay more attention to SEAsia spaces than the usual US spaces) the common opinion is that big books like Exalted 3e are old hat, or are somewhat inferior to games that can cram their text into short books. i used to be part of that camp--in capitalism, i never have enough time, after all. however, the books that do go big, that have no choice to go big, like Lancer RPG, Runequest, Mage, Exalted are usually the ones that have something really big it needs to tell you, and they might be able to perform the same amount of text-efficient bursting at the seams flavor writing but its still not enough.

thats what happened to GB, which I wanted to be, essentially, a PbtA+4e kind of experience, mechanically speaking. i very soon abandoned those titles when i delved deeper into research, incorporated actual 15th century divination tools in the mechanics, injected everything with Martial Arts flavor as we found our niche

all of this preamble to say that no matter how light i wanted to go with the game, i couldnt go too light or else people won't get it, or i might end up writing 1000 page long tome books explaining every detail of the setting so people get it right. this is why i went heavy on the vibes: its a ttrpg after all. its never gonna be finished.

i couldnt go too light because Gubat Banwa inherently exists on a different reality. think: to many 3 meals a day is the norm and the reality. you have to eat 3 meals a day to function properly. but this might just be a cultural norm of the majority culture, eventually co opted by capitalism to make it so that it can keep selling you things that are "breakfast food" or "dinner food" and whatnot. so its reality to some, while its not reality to others. of course, a lot of this reality-talk pertains mostly to social--there is often a singular shared physical reality we can usually experience*

Gubat Banwa has a different fabric of reality. it inherently has a different flow of things. water doesn't go down because of gravity, but because of the gods that make it move, for example. bad things happen to you because you weren't pious or you didn't do your rituals enough and now your whole community has to suffer. atoms aren't a thing in gb, thermodynamics isn't a real thing. the Laws of Gubat Banwa aren't these physical empirical things but these karmic consequent things

much of the fiction-first movement has a sort of "follow your common sense" mood to it. common sense (something also debatable among philosophers but i dont want to get into that) is mostly however tied to our physical and social realities. but GB is a fantasy world that inherently doesn't center those realities, it centers realities found in myth epics and folk tales and the margins of colonized "civilization", where lightnings can be summoned by oils and you will always get lost in the woods because you don't belong there.

so Gubat Banwa does almost triple duty: it must establish the world, it must establish the intended fiction that arises from that world, and then it must grant ways to enforce that fiction to retain immersion--these three are important to GB's game design because I believe that that game--if it is to not be a settler tourist bonanza--must force the player to contend with it and play with it within its own terms and its own rules. for SEAsians, there's not a lot of friction: we lived these terms and rules forever. don't whistle at night on a thursday, don't eat meat on Good Friday, clap your hands thrice after lighting an incense stick, don't make loud noise in the forests. we're born into that [social] reality

this is why fantasy is so important to me, it allows us to imagine a different reality. the reality (most of us) know right now (i say most of us because the reality in the provinces, the mountains, they're kinda different) is inherently informed by capitalist structures. many people that are angry at capitalist structures cannot fathom a world outside capitalist structures, there are even some leftists and communists that approach leftism and revolution through capitalism, which is inherently destructive (its what leads to reactionaries and liberalism after all). fantasy requires that you imagine something outside of right now. in essence read Ursula K Le Guin

i tweeted out recently that you could pretty easily play 15-16th century Luzon or Visayas with an OSR mechanic setting and William Henry Scott's BARANGAY: SIXTEENTH CENTURY PHILIPPINE CULTURE AND SOCIETY, and I think that's purely because barebones OSR mechanics stuff fits well with the raiding and adventuring that many did in 15-16th century Luzon/Visayas, but a lot of the mechanics wont be comign from OSR, but from Barangay, where you learn about the complicated marriage customs, the debt mechanics, the social classes and stratum...

so thats why GB needs to be a (relatively) big book, and why I can contend that some books need to be big as well--even if their mechanics are relatively easy and dont need more than that, the book, the game, might be trying to relay something even more, might be trying to convey something even more than that. artesia, for example, has its advancements inherently tied to its Tarot Cards, enforcing that the Arcana guides your destiny. runquest has its runes magic, mythras (which is kinda generic) has pretty specific kinds of magic systems that immediately inform the setting. this is why everything is informed by something (this is a common Buddhist principle, dependent arising). even the most generic D&D OSR game will have the trappings of the culture and norms of the one that wrote and worked on it. its written from their reality which might not necessarily be the one others experience. that's what lived experience is, after all

*live in the provinces for a while and you'll doubt this too!

[illarian-rambling]

Because I'm bored, here's a definitive rating of canon and non-canon ships across my works!

(Based on what people have told me they shipped and what I think would be funny)

Starting with my big two canon ships:

Astra/Mashal - This is my ultimate otp, the one I wrote a whole trilogy for. They're fucking adorable together, in all their chaos/calm glory. 10/10 imo, they make each other want to be better people.

Nyda/Kaulakri - My lesbian scientist ghosts, how could I not love you? True rivals to lovers, they get on each others nerves as much as they admire each other. 9/10, only because I haven't actually gotten to a confession scene yet.

Short list, huh? That's why we've got non-canon:

Ivander/Mashal - The foils are foiling. Something, something, Mashal makes Ivander remember the world can be kind and Ivander is someone Mashal wants to protect. 7/10, it's good...

Astra/Ivander/Mashal - But it could be better! Astra adds in a note of tension with Ivander and a note of sweetness because she understands Mashal better than Ivander does. This ship is just Mashal and his two partners who kinda hate each other, 8/10.

Astra/Ivander - Without Mashal as a buffer, they're gonna tear each other into ribbons. 4/10, it'd be fun to watch.

Sepo/Izjik - No, pass, skip. I know they're soulmates but they've got more of a blood brothers vibe than anything. That said, they would totally get married for tax reasons, so 2/10.

Djek/Daedryn - I know she kidnapped him but she said sorry. The street rat/priest vibes would be funny, he'd take her out to a casino and she'd get tempted to cheat at cards them immediately pray for forgiveness. 5/10 because in all universes, Djek has no game.

Izjik/Daedryn - I know she kidnapped her too, but godkiller/priest?? The angst is baked in. Also, Izjik knows Daedryn is easily flustered, so she's just teasing her the whole time. 7/10 for doomed lesbians.

Elsind/Avymere - Hard no. Elsind might be deeply involved in Avymere's love life, but they're besties. Honestly, I can see them in a qpr as the years go on, they're very close. 10/10 for the qpr, 0/10 for anything romantic.

Daedryn/Loqang - For an antagonist/secondary protag, Daedryn sure ends up in a lot of ships. Loqang is her god so... No? There is a deep and passionate love there, beyond anything platonic or familial, but it's not really romantic either, more of a secret fourth thing. 4/10 for anything romantic though, the power dynamic would be kinda fucked.

Anarac/Faalgun - I can see how some people would get these vibes from their casino scene, but if anything, Anarac sees Faalgun as a son-figure and Faalgun sees Anarac as a member of his crew he wants to help out. 1/10 because a rebound might not be bad for Anarac, just not this rebound.

Nyda/Vermir - Canonically, this did happen. Two ambitious scientists who traveled a lot, who were alive in the same time period.... I don't think they had anything more than a fling, but it is fucking hilarious to think about. To be fully for real, Vermir might honestly have been pretty good for Nyda, in the sense of giving her a confident boost for her research. 7/10.

If you've got any other suggestions for ships I missed, I will rate them accordingly 🫡

Until then, have a bitchin day!

@amandacanwrite @elsie-writes @riveriafalll @kosmic-kore @kaylinalexanderbooks

@bard-coded @carrotsinnovember @patternwelded-quill @somethingclevermahogony @whatwewrotepodcast

@the-angriest-author @mk-writes-stuff @frostedlemonwriter @vyuntspakhkite-l-darling @watermeezer

@leahnardo-da-veggie @mr-orion @televisionjester @ray-writes-n-shit @evilgabe29

@trippingpossum @tragedycoded @halfbakedspuds @ominous-feychild @cain-e-brookman

@wyked-ao3 @thecomfywriter @mysticstarlightduck @rumeysawrites @the-golden-comet

@cowboybrunch @gioiaalbanoart @theink-stainedfolk @sableglass @thelaughingstag

@finickyfelix

[bonefall]

are there any bb!cats with schizophrenia or that regularly experience psychosis? people absolutely suck about mental illness so like. seeing characters like me going thru life and being treated like people and not monsters for something out of their control never fails to put a smile on my face! thank you for all the research and effort you put into making sure your disabled cats are not only believable but human. pd: cinderheart with bpd is an extremely based headcanon

Not yet but it's on my radar, plus NPD. The reason why I feel so unflappably confident with BPD is because I know and love people who have it, and I hate that I don't see any characters who are like them! So I feel like I'm really good at handling it, and knowing what's wanted in portrayals of it. It feels very personally important to me.

Pair that with the fact I write BB!Clans as canonically struggling with ableism and all these being so heavily stigmatized irl, I've gotta be REALLY careful with NPD and psychosis. I'm less connected to them so personally and I don't want to accidentally strike a nerve, you get me?

That said... I got an ask a while back that I'd been thinking about a lot, basically asking me about how Clan Culture would see psychosis in the first place. I've actually always been fascinated by how deeply schizophrenia is affected by the culture of the afflicted, so I've been idly thinking about that for a while without sharing those thoughts.

OH WAIT hangon let me explain some stuff about Schizophrenia and psychosis for people in the audience!!

Schizophrenia used to be diagnosed in subtypes before 2013. This is no longer accurate! A lot like Autism, it's a spectrum of symptoms that affect people differently. It's a cognitive disorder that messes with rational and organized thinking, and that can express in all sorts of ways.

One of the symptoms is hallucinations. It's The Famous symptom of it, but it's not actually something you NEED to have to be Schizophrenic. Not all people who are having hallucinations or delusions are Schizophrenic, either! I want to include an OCD character of some kind who experiences some mild auditory hallucinations, actually. The type where it's just random mumbling.

Delusions and hallucinations aren't the same thing Delusions are false beliefs and hallucinations are false experiences. An example of a delusion is, "If I don't click my pen three times, my family will die." An example of a hallucination is hearing voices.

PEOPLE WITH PSYCHOSIS ARE FAR MORE LIKELY TO BE THE VICTIMS OF VIOLENCE THAN TO COMMIT IT Feel like this is common knowledge in this space, and especially within my own following since I make a lot of art about mental illness and awareness, but it's always worth repeating.

So anyway

If you compare psychosis between cultures, you actually end up seeing VERY different expressions of the hallucinations. For example, in some cultures, voice hallucinations tend to say things that are negative or abusive, while other cultures hear significantly more positive, playful voices.

This doesn't mean that they're always less distressing. For example, the study above points out that Nigerian students (reported to hear lots of playful hallucinations) experience as much distress as Dutch students (tend to experience negative, abusive voices) during their psychotic episodes.

Still, there does seem to be a correlation with "less distress" and cultures that encourage psychotic people to see their hallucinations as positive, personal things. Even more interestingly, distress seems to be correlated with income and individualism in a culture.

But it doesn't stop there, the findings are fascinating.

Delusions of grandeur are rare in societies that discourage that sort of social mobility, reflecting social values.

Cultures that believe religious experiences are specific experiences-- like certain smells, temperatures, or sounds, will see those reflected in psychotic episodes

Yet, "voices" seem to be something seen across ALL cultures studied. Though some have more prevalence of random sounds and mumbling than others, they all share some expression of "voices that say stuff."

SO all that to say-- if I include psychosis it's definitely going to be trying to take the culture of each Clan into account, and I need to do a lot more research into what sorts of things people with schizophrenia and various types of psychosis want to see more often.

[vaaaaaiolet]

Have u ever hit a hard core slump and if u have how did u get out of it ? 😭

hardcore slump, you say.

BOY HAVE I

tl;dr:

EAT WORDS

jot down stuff over time in a dump sheet with not a SINGLE intention of turning them into full-fledged writing

eject any self-imposed deadlines from your brain

and boom shakalaka YES GAWD you'll be writing again in no time.

what gets me into writing slumps is when i'm either:

1) not interested in the thing i'm writing about

2) frustrated with my writing quality.

if you go to my masterlist, the longest i've gone w/o posting anything is ~3 months but i've DEFINITELY had longer periods where i didn't write anything at all. they just happened before i started writing fic.

imo, a lot of that "stuck" feeling we associate with writer's block comes from not exposing ourselves to a variety of writing styles and getting stuck in the predictable flow of our own. this is where my EAT WORDS philosophy comes in.

i want you to get your hands on whatever writing (books, poems, shows, blogs, articles, nutrition labels LMAO) sparks ANY interest. act like you found an all-you-can-eat grazing table after 3 straight ramadans of fasting. DON'T STICK TO STUFF YOU'RE FAMILIAR WITH!! i was a voracious reader as a kid and that translated into a love for writing bc i learned about so many interesting words and ways to arrange them that i wanted to try doing it myself. get creative!! writing is a creative art!! YOU are a creative person. think of this as adding fuel to a depleted creativity tank.

then i want you to keep a running scrapbook doc of interesting words or phrases that you add onto whenever something strikes your fancy.

i'm talking less MLA citations and more like random musings that pop into your brain while watching sunlight stream through your kitchen windows, lighting up a bowl of mandarins into a thousand splendid suns (FANTASTIC book btw). collect quotes!! include screenshots!! notion is excellent for this but you can totally carry around an old-school notebook like a bona fide author too. don't let grammar rules get in the way!! stop judging yourself!! there's no such thing as a stupid addition to your blurb sheet. i'll even give you an example of how stupid you can be by showing you mine and you might recognize a few lines from my fics LMAO

this does 2 things: you get practice playing with phrasing without the metric ton of pressure that comes with "actually" writing, and you get a personalized bank of handmade writing prompts for the future that imo work better than the super blah generic ones on writing blogs from 2015.

and finally!! FORGET THAT YOU NEED TO WRITE

the more pressure you put on yourself to write the next classic novel, the less likely you are to get it done by any foreseeable deadline. if you give in to the writing slump demon whispering in your ear that YOUNEEDTOWRITENOWNOWNOW, you're not going to get anything done, trust me. reverse-psychology your writer's block by reading and feeding your creativity. being a writer also means being a reader. you can't be one without the other. take a backseat, let yourself love reading again. think of it as researching what it's like for the person on the other end of your future work; how are you going to write well if you don't even know what you like to read? let your creativity take a breather!!

if you're any kind of writer (which you are), the itch to write ALWAYS, inevitably comes back. before you know it, you're going to be scribbling on notebook margins and scrambling awake at 1 am to write down half-sentences. a slump is not the be all end all!! it's just your writing skills telling your brain that they needs time to catch up with your excellent creative vision :)

GO FORTH AND WIELD YOUR MIGHTY PEN, ANON!! i wish you the very best of luck in all your writing endeavors, and i hope this yapfest was somewhat helpful LMAOOO <3

[storagebay29]

james somerton 'apology' video transcript

Note: for those who do not want to watch it. For those who do, here's a link to a reupload as the original has since been deleted. There are a lot of a pauses and 'um's/'uh's, the latter of which are largely ommitted from the below transcript. Posted under a readmore as it's pretty long.

I'm sorry for taking so long to make this video, or to say anything. I'm in the hospital- I've been in the hospital for a little over a week. I tried- Fuck. I tried to do something really stupid... (pause) I'm only here now because before I did it, I called my dad to talk to him one more time and, he figured out something was wrong, called paramedics or 911 or… and they got here and I woke up in the hospital and, yeah.

…

Anyway, I'm not trying to make this a sob story, I'm just trying to explain why I've been so quiet. I had a friend from back home checking my emails and stuff, and yeah.

…

But anyway… I wanna say that I'm really really sorry, really really sorry... for the stuff in the videos, the not crediting people, and for a lot of videos, you know I, I did the opening titles thing, and I tried to put like ‘this is based on X's- this person's research, or on this person's book,’ but I know now that wasn't enough, that wasn't okay. And then there were a lot of times... that uh...  oh god. There were a lot of times that stuff just got put in and there was no attempt at crediting anybody (pause) and I'm really really sorry.

And I'm not, I'm not sorry that I got caught, I'm sorry for ever doing it, I didn't- I honestly honestly... didn't realise that I was hurting people... And now that I know that I was hurting people… I'm just really sorry.

I lost my best friend because of this. Nick and I have been best friends since 2011 or [20]12? We'd been friends online and then. He lived in Ottawa, I moved to Ottawa so we could be, like, friends in person, and then we moved back to- I moved back to Nova Scotia, and Nick came with me. We eventually moved to the Toronto area where we lived together for 7 years? 8 years? We lived together for a really long time… and… he hasn't spoken to me since this happened.

Sorry, sorry I said I wasn't gonna make this a sob sorry. I should’ve got some Kleenex.

Then again I'm really really really sorry for the things I did in the videos: copying people's work and not crediting them properly or at all. I also wanna apologise for the misinformation and just outright lies that ended up in the videos? I didn't- I honestly say that I never intended for any of that stuff to be in the videos, most cases I didn't write it but I should’ve, you know it was my face on the channel, my name on the channel, I should have been, I should have been more diligent about fact checking and stuff. ‘Cause there was a lot of really stupid shit in there. It would’ve- it's just so easy to check, I just never did, I just took it for granted…

I also, I wanna thank Hbomberguy and his team for setting up the fund to make some money available for the authors that were wronged and the journalists and writers and…

I wanna help somehow, I don't know how, a lot of- I've seen a lot of people online saying how much money I apparently make and they’re way overestimating. Beyond the fact that Nick and I split everything 50/50, they're still way overestimating how much money came in… And the Toronto area is expensive, so there's not really any kind of savings, I'm moving home really soon… ‘Cause without Nick there's nothing for me here, and like I said it's really expensive…

And so I wanna say I wanna thank them for setting up that fund, and I wanna help somehow. The only thing I can think of right now is to make the videos, most of the videos public again and every month I can send the ad revenue from all of the past videos- ‘cause there were plenty that didn't have any, any uncredited stuff in them... But I can make them public again, and then every month I can send the AdSense to- either I can send it to Hbomberguy's team, that they can add to the fund, or I can start a fund myself? And every month I can publicly say how much money was made on the AdSense and show it. And send that to the writers and stuff every month. I don't know... what the system for that would be? But I would be more than happy to do that

You know some of the videos like the ‘Killing Stalking’ video brought in like a pretty decent amount of money every month so that would be helpful I think/to them. I'll also put in either the description or the pinned comment the names of the authors so that anyone watching the video knows where all of the information came from, that it wasn’t me going out doing journalism- I never thought that anyone thought that I was doing journalism and stuff, and I don't think anyone did. For the people who actually were doing it should have been given the credit they deserve, they did the hard work, all I did was edit a video. They did the hard work and they- they deserved the credit

(cut) Sorry about that, phone stopped recording.

But- yes. They deserved- they deserved credit, and… when it was something... when it was something like the, the recent... ‘history of hollywood’ videos, right there in the opening credits, I put the Vito Russo's name, that it was adapted from his book ‘The Celluloid Closet’. Same thing went for the gay panic video and the gay holocaust video, they were- the holocaust video was adapted from two books, and the gay panic video was adapted from a lot of journalism, and I- I put their names right at the beginning of the videos.

But and- I understand that's not how citation works... now. I understand that, I get it. And I wanna do better. And I know a lot of people hate me now, ‘cause I did bad shit. But I wanna try and do better. At some point I’d like to make videos again. I'd like to do videos that are fully sourced, where I will put a link to the script where you can find all the sources so that everyone is properly given the credit that they deserve, any the kind of research that's done, credit for any b roll that's used whether it's stock footage, or movies or TV shows or video games, or anything like that, have it all in there. I would like to become a really really good example of giving proper credit to writers and journalists

And I know a lot of you watching this aren't- aren't really gonna care, you'd rather I just disappear. But I would like to try to do better.

I never ever intended to hurt anybody. I never thought that that's what I was doing. Before I went- before I went to the hospital, I read a lot of stuff from people who were really hurt, not just authors and stuff but people who watched my videos who were hurt by stuff in them. People think that I hate ace people and women and bisexual people and lesbians and that's not true. It's really- it's just- it’s not true. And I’m sorry that stuff made it into videos that just shouldn’t have been there: misinformation and lies... But I promise you I did not write that stuff.

I should have been a lot more exacting when Nick and I would be editing scripts but I promise you that those are not- I don't think those things. I specifically want to apologise to asexual people who feel that I just completed delegitimised you. Nick being ace, I- I know that it's kinda like you know, no two gay people are exactly the same, no two ace people are exactly the same, but I kind of, when it came to that I just kind of ran with Nick's judgement and his observations and stuff like that. And I’m not trying to throw Nick under the bus, which a bunch of people are saying that I was setting him up as doing, which is not true…

This whole thing, Nick and I were 50/50 partners, it wasn't I hired him to have a scapegoat or something like that. I never hired Nick. Nick and I were roommates for years before I started doing Youtube videos and then they started- people started watching them and I asked Nick if he wanted to help me write them and he said yes and we started splitting the- first the AdSense and then the Patreon and then the sponsorships, we just split everything. Nick was never supposed to be a fall guy.

I'm sorry. Maybe I should have waited longer to do this. But yeah, I- the- I did not- I don’t think those things and I don't think Nick does either, I think it was just how fast we were writing stuff, and how fast we were putting videos out, it was just too fast. And we weren’t putting the care into them that needed to be put into them.

I've seen a lot of people on social media and other youtubers even lying about me, but other- other- Hbomberguy was not one of them, I just wanna be clear about that, except I was never setting Nick up to be a fall guy and. It was never a grift or anything like that. I swear it was not. It is not.

In the next couple of days, I'm gonna send out a message to the Telos supporters on Indiegogo and explain the whole situation in more detail to them because we were not super clear about everything that was going on with Telos and so I can- I understand if it seems like we weren't doing anything but we were. We were doing a lot of work on Telos. We just weren’t talking about it is because we- we made that initial first announcement for ‘final girl’ and that fell through and I'll explain that to the message I send out to the supporters which I'm sure will end up on reddit or somewhere… And after that we didn't- we didn't want to talk about it too much until we had something really concrete, and I will explain all of that in that message

Telos was and is not a grift. I was never gonna take the money and run. None of the money that came in for telos was ever going to be paying me or Nick. It was going to be paying queer actors and artists, musicians, things like that. And I know there's been lots of talk about budgets and all this stuff, and people saying that I'm really stupid for thinking a movie could be made for that little money, but there are examples of it being done, and I actually do have a work ethic.

Anyway. but yeah. anyway

I do want to keep making videos and I know a lot of you won't watch them and that's- that's fine. But I really liked making videos…

We ended up making a lot of videos we didn't wanna make because people were asking for them, and so there were a lot of videos that we made that we didn't wanna make, and I think those videos are very clear on which ones those were. One of them never got officially released. It was released to patrons, some patrons have shared it to other people before all the videos went private. A lot of people hate the analysis that Nick and I did on it but. And so maybe it's good that that never got properly released, because… maybe it would have hurt people. And I don't want that.

But I do wanna make videos again sometime. I'd love to do like retrospectives on important gay movies. If you watch the channel ‘Be Kind Rewind’ they're an amazing channel that do a lot of retrospectives on older Hollywood movies and I would love to do that for gay movies. A lot of gay movies, people my age and younger have never heard of, things like ‘Torch Song Trilogy’ and ‘Longtime Companion’, and stuff like that, movies from the seventies and eighties and the nineties, things that were like really influential for gay cinema that no one talks about. And you know, I'd like to talk about not just those movies but how they got made and stuff like that. I would love to do something like that.

I swear on my mother's grave that there will be no copying people, no copying pasting. Every source will be cited in a document and on screen. ‘Cause I usually liked doing the research. I loved doing research - reading the books and articles and stuff like that. I- the part of me that was lazy was the copy and paste part. Instead of just putting it into my words and citing them properly and giving them credit… that's where the laziness came in. That was- I wasn't trying to be malicious. That was just laziness. And I promise for anyone who does watch the videos that I make going forward… I promise that will never happen again. I welcome the highest level of scrutiny on the new videos.

…

As for Patreon, I’m going to reactivate it. Because I saw a lot of people on social media saying that I was probably going to reactivate it right on January 1st so that everyone could get a surprise billing and I could take the money and run. And, no. First of all that was never my plan and I'm not gonna do it. I'm gonna reactivate it now so that anyone who wants to leave - which I imagine will be the vast majority - can leave and not have to worry about being billed again in January.

… Yeah. So. In closing. I'm again incredibly sorry... And again I'm not sorry because I was caught, I honestly didn't know how much I was hurting people… and how much harm I was bringing to the community, because that's not ever what I intended. I wanted the channel to be a safe place. I spent so much time deleting comments that were hateful

I recently found out that I wasn't being notified about- that I wasn’t seeing comments that were in replies to other comments so there were plenty of hateful comments in the comment section that were plenty hateful that I wasn’t seeing, and I didn't know that. But I wanted the channel to be a safe place and it ended up not being a safe place.

And for the misinformation, that kind of falls into two categories. 1. I did the wrong research in the historical things and other things they're not what I wrote.

Again, thank you to Hbomberguy and his team for making the fund for the writers. I'd like to try to contribute to that somehow so- if- if it's okay to make the videos public and send all of the- public and send all- it won't be all of videos ‘cause some of them had to be taken down because sponsors wanted them taken down, but I can put the videos back up with the sources properly put in either- for the I guess for the videos that would be going up from zero, I could actually put in sources for the videos, which would be good.

I guess I could- For the other ones that would just be made live again, I could put them in a pinned comment. ‘Cause I think people read pinned comments more than they read the descriptions, cause like the descriptions disappear in a lot of places. Something like that. Something so that I can try and- it won't make up for what I did but just. Something.

So I’m really really really sorry. I hurt a lot of people that I really respect and that really sucks. And.  Nick if you're watching this I know you're probably not but I miss you and…

Yeah I want to do better. I want- I want to do better. I want to prove that I can do better. I don't expect anyone to just give me the benefit of the doubt. But I want to show that I can do better, so I hope you'll let me do that.

Again, I'm really sorry. I'm sorry that the things I did- I'm sorry that I disappointed you. I promise going forward I will do better.

Thanks for watching, and...

…

And I’m really sorry.

[ccmatta]

please, enlighten me of some more Linda headcanons 👁️👁️ (if you’d like to)

Ok, wow, so... I'm still building her, I don't know if I have that many (edit: I do, lol). I don't even have her last name yet lol. I just started liking her a lot after she ended up having a big role in my m2 longfic. But her real name is Lile (like Lily, but... different lmao). She's still a work in progress and I guess I'll have something more solid after writing more about her. that said, ok, the things I have for now (edit: and I'll put under the cut because it's getting too long lmao):

She's around 1 year older than Matt and Mello.

She's extremelly grounded, practical and knows what she wants. I can quote a scene where Matt asked her why she wore pigtails ("childish hair style" he said) being 16, she was like "I like it" -- and she's like that with pretty much everything. At the same time, she gets excited with silly things, is pretty lively and doesn't care too much about what others think. In my longfic, Matt describes her as something like "she can turn from a grown up to a child in a blink".

Which brings us to the fact that she meddles too much into people's lives. She has that mentality that people are a good source to create things and this makes her want to really get to know people, as if they're the art itself. It's her reason to get closer to Near (as much as she can because that boy is difficult lol), and even Matt (and I think Mello scares her lmao so she doesn't even try). People fascinate her. But that made her be seen as annoying growing up at Wammy's. And that leads us to something i'm not 100% set yet (but maybe 90% xD): all this makes her decide to study neuroaesthetics when she's at/after university.

She had a small crush on Matt for a while. And when she finally got closer to him (after Mello's left), it grew way stronger than she was confortable with.

A little quote that serves as an exemple of how I write her:

Linda: You look awful. Matt: I know. Linda: Want to talk? Matt: Not really. Linda: Okay, I’ll just sit at your desk and draw, then.

And this one from another thing i've just finished, when asked what she'll do after Wammy's:

“Well, following in L’s footsteps? Probably not. Near’s already gearing up for that. And even without–“, she nearly let something slip about Mello again, so she stifled the words before they escaped. “…without Near doing it, I’m just third in line, no chance. I’ll live my life. Go to college. Grow as an artist. There are some research fields I’m pretty interested in.“

Now, backstory that I'm still trying to figure out, so don't take it as a 100% done:

Before Wammy's House, she basically took care of her sick parent (maybe mental illness, maybe physical, who knows). And maybe that's why she's quite centered. She only had one living parent (either mother or father, idk yet), so when they died, the path was like random orphanage -> oh look she's so smart -> watari comes -> she arrives at wammy's. Or something like that. I don't remember how old she was when she appeared in my fic for the first time, maybe 12~13, and I don't think she got there too young either, so maybe around 10~11.

I thiiiiiiiiiink she's from Ireland? asfdhuasofhasoihd

I'm inclined to make her parent having some kind of mental illness because I write Matt pretty depressed after Mello's gone, and she knows how to deal with him.

Now random stuff. I'll repeat myself from the last post: oh she totally listened to Jonas Brothers and McFly. Any boyband, actually. Backstreet Boys? Oh hell yeah. If she could, her room'd be filled with posters. She liked manga too, mainly because of the art style -- and she read shoujo the most. She kinda dated some random guy at Wammy's.

aaaaaaaaand done :D ashdoasidh that's what my version of Linda is becoming. At the moment I'm pretty obsessed about her. I know she's basically an OC but I don't care, I love her and she's canon 😡 And I liked the way I wrote her and Matt interacting. How she grounds him and yet they can be completely silly together. And how she's the oposite of Mello; she's something stable. Something I believe Matt'd need after his boyfriend best friend left. And, by what I've wrote, she brings back something Matt thought he had lost inside him. (yeah, she was made initially to support Matt, but who caaaaaaaareeeesssss)

And the first drawing I made of her, to make my post pretty:

[donnerpartyofone]

Would you consider ever writing for comics Claire? Weird under groundy kind of stuff I mean

Ok first of all you don't gotta say my name, I'm the only person who picks up this line.

Secondly, yaaay this draft finally appeared from out of my overloaded inbox! Who knows if it will save, or post, or continue to exist after this round of editing!

Now onto the actual question: I don't really know. Possibly, but probably not? Like I would certainly write a comic IF I had a good idea, I would write anything that seems like a good idea, but that part that is not under my control, and will almost definitely never happen. I did write (and draw) a comic once, and it was pretty mortifying. Not even my best friends would address it, even after they bought it and asked me to sign it. It was a kindness to me to never, ever mention it. I worked really, really hard on it, but I knew I didn't have it in me and I shouldn't have done it. I feel bad for the guy who put his faith in me and published it.

My relationship to writing is sort of complicated. I do it compulsively, but not necessarily purposefully or well, where "well" = "achieving an intended goal or desire." In the past few years, life offered me an amazing opportunity to give my oppressive job and straight society the finger, and pour everything into my writing, which has always been my "dream" if ever I had one. I had the privilege of collaborating with an established professional, which meant that I had incredible access to a teacher, and to his connections when I was ready to drive my own projects forward. It seemed as if my life had reached one of those mythic turning points that you hear about in the biographies of famous people. The reality is that, despite a decent amount of research and planning and hard work and humility and outside support and unbounded time to do nothing but try to be a writer, I couldn't make anything out of it. I don't have anything to say. I'm not a writer.

I really should have known this because I've never had an original thought. I don't mean that in the abstract philosophical sense of originality being an illusion; I mean even as a kid I didn't have that free-thinking creativity that so many kids have before they get all fucked up by school and society and everything. Whether I was writing or drawing, I was always laboriously imitating some commercial-industrial thing that I saw around me, and it did not turn out that I'm the kind of imitator who can create a viable product out of a formula. You know, I wasn't going to be Franz Kafka and I wasn't going to be Stephen King either. For years I have been kvetching about people I see online who are sort of roleplaying as writers or artists -- that is, they like the idea of being a creator, but they don't seem to have anything really personal that it is urgent for them to do. They just do this kind of lifeless imitating of commercial products and of each other, mainly in search of likes and reblogs, and you can't tell one post or person from another. I always accuse these people of wanting to be a certain kind of person (e.g. a "famous writer" stereotype in their mind), without having the desire to really DO the action that makes that role model what they are. And honestly I still think this is true of a lot of people, but probably I'm so good at recognizing (or thinking that I recognize) this because it actually describes me. I don't have it in me, I don't have the stuff.

One thing that I am sort-of kind-of good at, probably as a consequence of being a compulsive imitator, is manipulating preexisting structures. Like you probably sent me this ask because you read, or read about my novelization of the movie SPLICE. That gig kind of fell into my lap, and then it was just a matter of watching the movie and encrusting it with adjectives. I mean some people liked it, which is nice of them, but it was all just a matter of putting into words what I saw on the screen. Then recently I did a collab with someone who had written some very basic ideas -- like really general story sketches based more or less on existing cliches -- and I picked one and fleshed it out and we both thought it came out way better than it had any business being. But I couldn't have thought of it by myself and whatever success I had is purely due to my brain just being this Rubik's Cube of cliches that I know how to rearrange. You could call that a sort of skill, but it isn't exactly enriching my life. It doesn't improve my self-esteem, or my income.

As both a movies and comics fan, I have tried many, MANY times over the decades to develop stories for both, and they all really sucked. And not in that beginners' way of like, you have to suck before you can rule; my "writing" is just really pretentious and lifeless because ultimately I'm not a writer, and this is a lesson I've had to learn. Now I just spend all day promising God that I will never write another word as long as he lets me have a normal job again so I don't have to feel terrified and guilty all day long, but we're still working on that one.

Of course, even though I am not capable of making anything like art, I do have a philosophy of what art is. I think that any kind of art-making in any medium is good when you are pursuing a question that you have. There is some mystery, some dark feeling that you don't understand or don't know how to translate, some "what happens if I do this," that drives you along a path of discovery. And I think you can tell when a piece of writing, or drawing, or whatever, is only intended to achieve one specific unmysterious concrete goal -- for instance, to be liked by other people, or to be just like some other guy -- and that stuff is always dead on arrival, even if it's pretty, gets you likes and followers, or encourages people to jerk off.

And now, because I've been on Tumblr for too long, I have this brain damage where I'm forced to make a big disclaimer about how these are only my personal views and experiences, and this is only one single solitary blog post that cannot include the whole entire world of usual and unusual advice that would help people develop into artists, and I'm not participating in the whole game of validating or invalidating thousands of random strangers with what is just, like, my opinion, man. I hate that Tumblr has trained me to think of every single form of opposition that any post might receive, because it's not even helping me refine my arguments, it only makes me act defensive and insane on the internet, and it very, very often prevents me from saying things that I might like to try out, because I just know it's going to be a headache if I open my big fat mouth. But anyway that's it, that's all I got.

[fishymom-art]

Fishy, I know you mean well with forwarding those asks that ask about donations for Gaza, but if you can, please check the blogs of the non anonymous ones first and have a conversation with those blogs.

(You also don't have to forward this one here as well btw).

Before I start though: I myself am not expert about this topic, though I did look it up and did a bit of research about this.

And this is what I found out (and ended up explaining to myself with my own reasoning of how and why).

There are etiquettes and practices to a successful donation campaign that if ignored or neglected that really can harm the campaign itself since it does affect how it is in turn perceived by potential donors. At worst unthoughtful organisation and forwarding of donation campaigns can even inadvertedly make the actual cause and need for those seem like trivial or guilt trippy scams.

To these practices and etiquettes, following for example are a part of it:

1st: A campaing plan that focuses on more than just collecting enough aide money or food and water and getting it there. You don't just want people to get the temporary aide and forget about it then, you also want to have the awareness still be there afterwards and also by extension a plan an attempt to bring a more longer lasting solution to an ongoing problem instead of just a temporary one.

2nd: Transparency about what the donation money is gonna get used for and how much of it for what. I'm not sure about you, but I would at the very least be very suspicious, if someone I don't know asked me for money and then refused to tell me for what it is.

3rd: A specific tangible donation amount. Be it a one time or monthly one dollar or euro or just a one time 20 of either of those... this makes the cause or what can be added more tangible to potential donors instead of a vague something that one might not even be able to afford giving for all one knows.

There are some more in following link here that I could include in this ask here now, but I think I can't really rehash or rehearse it well enough in my own words without sounding like I'm giving an unsolicited lecture about this topic here:

https://www.qgiv.com/blog/asking-for-donations/#steps

reason for my ask here: I am way too familiar with good intentions not automatically translating into good actions or consequences there. And also because the last ask I saw on your blog did feel a lot like very common scam tactics and rhetoric has been used in there (also something worth looking up if you want to)

and lastly: yeah, I'm anonymous with this ask here because I am kind of too much of a coward and because way too self aware that these are some half baked thoughts of mine and because I haven't spent hours researching that topic before writing this ask here (I hope you can forgive me on that)

All in all: it is on the person asking for donations to follow the good practices and etiquettes behind one to make it work out and not on you to compensate for that. If anything the only thing (in my opinion at least) that is on you is to be picky enough to make sure that legit and well planed donation campaigns get visibility and promotion over poorly planned out ones or even scams.

the thing about the last one is that i don't want to spread scams. I don't like the "i'd rather share everything even if some of them are scams" thing, because it still harms the people who need real help. I do look up if the messages i get are real or not and I am picky because I don't want to spread scams. Maybe some stuff that I shared was not real, I dunno, but I'm trying to make sure those are one hundred percent real and I follow different guides on how to recognise if it's a scam or not. The only icky thing about the last one was that that person sent me the same ask like 7 times. I still shared it because I didn't find any copies of that message from different accounts and the blog + the campaign looked legitimate enough + i just couldn't bring myself to deleting an ask like that.

I'll try to be more careful with all the messages.

I gotta say. It's so fucking sad that we have to actually check if the person asking for help in a life or death situation is a scammer or not. Especially considering that we're talking about people who are literally dying everyday. Some people are fucking monsters.

[llatimeria]

fear mongering about new tech stuff is so fucking frustrating because it leads to people completely losing the plot about what they're actually mad at and the real problems in the world.

like, NFTs are not bad because they're collectable and tradeable pngs. collecting and trading art rules and has probably existed since the first moment a human made a piece of art that could feasibly be handed to another human. NFTs are bad because cryptocurrency is a power-guzzling scam pitched by people smart enough to know it's worthless to people who want to pretend they're just as smart as those people because they have too much money.

AI isn't bad because it's a computer that makes art. that in and of itself is completely and utterly morally neutral. it's a complete nonissue and I can't believe the people who romanticize things like the Mars rovers and Voyager sattelites aren't all over COMPUTER THAT DRAWS THINGS FOR YOU or COMPUTER THAT WRITES A LITTLE STORY FOT YOU as a super cute anthropomorphizeable phenomena.

the problem with AI is that corporate behemoths, who either don't understand the technology or do and don't care, are firing actual people in favor of using AI and even this is nuanced. In creative fields it's obvious horseshit, but in every other field it's slightly more complicated horseshit - we should be striving for a world free from dumbass labor, but we also live under capitalism and a person's ability to feed themselves and their families is tied to the amount of work they do so, unfortunately, they depend on doing that dumbass labor that they probably don't like and would rather be spending their time doing literally anything else, like spending time with the families they're performing dumbass labor to feed.

Not to mention a lot of creative AIs were built with scraped datasets taken nonconsentually from artists and writers (and imo that's also kind of a nothingburger - are you really materially harmed by someone looking at your art and being inspired by it, even if that "someone" is a machine? why do you care if i don't care if my work is used in training data? what would you say if i told you that, if asked nicely, i'd enthusiastically give an AI programmer permission to use my art and writing in their training sets so they can better understand how these programs work?), a significant privacy issue -- creators should have the final say over what is done with their art -- and actively making their programs worse by including junk and irrelevant data. AI is dangerous because it's been unleashed on an unsuspecting public without enough caution and safeguards by its creators, but what's done is done and now we just have to figure out what to in this reality rather than getting stuck on what we should have done.

can we please. Just. keep ourselves on the fucking plot with this shit, before we get people thinking that it's evil to have your cancer diagnosed by a computer program who can catch it way faster than a human doctor could, or that it's a problem to SELL AND TRADE ART, or that we should really stop researching the shit that eases the burden of dumbass labor because some people reaaaallly neeeeeeed to do dumbass labor for money when we could just as easily have those people do less dumbass labor with all the time and energy we're saving offloading dumbass labor to computers instead of making a poor schmuck scan documents day in and day out

[r0bita]

Being a Tezuka fan is so complicated.

Where do I even begin?

Not because it's such an old and niche (at least where I am) thing and meeting people that actually appreciate it is... difficult.

But because the concepts and ideas behind Tezuka's works are SO interesting and influential and YET it is also so much work to look into it.

It's not like Disney, where a good majority of it is shoved into your face without your consent, but instead you have to actually deep dive into it - like it's an academic research topic (it practically is...)

And as a modern reader, it can be awkward at times when navigating through some of his stories.

Now here's a list of what that's like for me.

Pros:

The Tezuka Star System. I love recognizing characters outside of their stories and typical environments. Some even start evolving or get synchronized with each other which is interesting. It also encourages you to read other works just to see who's who and where they come from.

The artsyle is heavily influenced by Disney's (*AHEM* Iwerk's) animation and other movie media styles. If you look at a good number of his mangas, you'll notice the art's evolution since the man had been making manga since elementary school and published mangas between late 1940s towards the 1980s. There are some mangas where there are panels that you can tell he changed or added something to it later on.

Neat character designs that are super interesting and iconic. Some are based on real people and celebrities and even preexisting characters from folklore or other western comics that were popular at the time.

Interesting concepts for characters and plots that feel like they are worth expanding on. The man's ability to tackle so many topics and genres for different audiences is impressive (and probably stress inducing on his part... and mine).

Puts a lot of his personal research (especially from when he was in medical school) into his works.

Recognizable influences on later japanese media as well as nods and cameos of other mangakas and celebrities of the time.

Cons:

Has some genuinely progressive thoughts and opinions displayed in his works (at the time), ranging from civil rights, environmental concerns, societal expectations, gender identity and expression. His takes are either, STILL politically relevant, psychologically potent, or just downright weird and silly (or all of the above).

In the collections, there is an afterward where you get to hear some of his thoughts and opinions on some of the stuff he was working on at the time, so it gives you a good Insight of what was probably going on in his head when he was writing some of his manga and making anime.

For all his progressive takes and well meaning ideas, some of these are delivered either somewhat or VERY poorly in his works. Either because of the art or the writing choices. (Caricatures, stereotypes, humor and topics that has not aged well...) There are notes in later publications and collections that acknowledge this issue... so, at least there's that...

The Freudism... (Pinoko, I am so sorry...)

The poorly disguised fetishes... (Melmo, I AM SO SORRY...) the manga is fine, the anime is so weird...

Honestly, how Tezuka treats his female characters is a MIXED bag for me. Often times, I don't dislike them. But I have extremely complicated feelings towards his more serious and adult oriented works when women are involved. (That's whole different post for later, maybe even a discussion...)

Not a great track record when it comes to depicting romance. Most of his "best" are doomed and the rest is kinda messy imo. This is also kind of related to my previous point about who female characters handled since a lot of their roles are designated for being a love interest... (Again... I can not stress how people should look into the original 1953 Princess Knight and not just the 1963 revision. It is unfair that we only have 1963 and Twin Knights translated for the West, BUT NOT THE ORIGINAL...)

The rushed and awkward endings. I know these are not entirely Tezuka's fault because some of these projects were either being cut by someone higher up or were losing popularity by the time he was probably halfway done. Not to mention he would also be working on multiple mangas and animations at the same time, so that probably contributes to why it feels so chaotic to read and watch his stuff at times.

Again... these are just my personal takes on Tezuka's work. They don't have taken as 100% fact or even agreeable. And I certainly don't want to discourage anybody from reading anything he's ever made, because I still give the man 100 points for his creativity and imagination (Yes, even the weird stuff).

The man himself never really admitted to being good artist, but I think his older works are worth looking at for so many reasons. So... I think he is a good artist.

[mercurialmalcontent]

I don't usually like doing seat-of-my-pants plotting anymore, but The Circus at the World's End has pretty much insisted upon it. I spent a lot of time noodling about characters and perspectives and wow I'm going to have to figure out characters to fit these roles and how to make a bunch of Things Happen... and I suddenly realized I was headed into the land of busywork and foot dragging and to get this one done I need to just do it.

So... I'm doing it, if very slowly and without much of a clue as to what's going to happen from town to town along their way to the ocean. It'll work itself out as I go along, much like the main cast has after I loosened up a little on what performers the circus had to have. And I don't have to stumble along totally in the dark; since I'm going for a kind of... Mythic America feeling, I guess I could call it (I should describe what I'm going for sometime). Researching tourist traps, notable/infamous/abandoned towns, train stories and ghost stories, and the geography along previous and currently existing train lines will give me a lot of inspiration.

What I'm not sure about is what format it will take -- like, if it'll be told best in an episodic/serialized format or if it should be a traditional novel. I do know that it's in third person omniscient, which is exciting for me as I've never actually written in omniscient before. I don't read it often either, but I did binge read a bunch of Discworld in June and July... that counts as craft research, right? :D

As for my other stuff, Absolution remains hibernating at the halfway point (I didn't think it needed more cooking, but maybe it does? Or maybe my brain is just waiting for autumn for the Vibes), and Night City is fighting me but in a good way that makes it better, even if it is a pain in the ass (one of the characters is a conspiracy theorist who needs to be sympathetic, but in a way that doesn't legitimize conspiracy-minded thinking while still having a setting where a lot is bubbling under the surface... it's tough!).

My writing speed problem has been intractable, though. There's writing slowly and then there's positively glacial, and that's me. I think the only thing for it is to disengage heavily from the barrage of bad news and stupid opinions that the Internet has largely become. There's being informed and then there's being deluged, and buds, I've been having trouble keeping my head above water. I felt so cheerful and free having a bunch of social media blocked while I was playing through Dawntrail, so I'm going to have to do that again.

I'll also have to get back into using my Tumblr as a blog. Remember when I did that regularly? Turns out writing blog posts keeps the old brain exercised so writing fiction is easier to do too! How about that.

[coldresolve]

tbh i didnt mean “not wanting to be criticized” i meant “not wanting to search up things and dive into stuff”. Rolling your head on the keyboard and relaxing while creating something is not the same by any means. I was also thinking more of visual art when i wrote that, since “art” is usually used in that sense these days. I do write and i do “research” (not like actual research articles tho) but i couldnt care less about political or any “other” interpretations. I know ur on the mindset of “all art is political” but nah. I just like creating. I dont even ever look ar politics. No news, no social media, nothing, i dont care, i dont interact, i dont listen. Not something that i care about. And im not the only one. And thats also fine. Art and creativity and the act of creation means different things to different people and noone can make a blanket statement with saying “its always political” or “it always has a »deeper« meaning”.

I also dont think “no deeper meaning” means its “shallow” or “lacks depth” (eventho this sounds contradictory), it just means that what might mean something to the artist, doesn’t necessarily mean anything for others and interpretating it in all kinds of ways is the viewers own opinions (also fine, but my point stays that it wasnt “meant” to be interpreted in any way other than how the artist meant it). Like idk how to explain this but just because you (or anyone) thinks about art in such a “deep” and “layered” way its not always like that. Not by far.

Woodworking is art. Pottery is art. Even architecture is art. All those art forms usually dont have any “statement”, or if they do, its not as common. Its relaxing and soothing to just… create. And im not saying “oh just start woodworking without any research”, that would most likely be a safety hazard. What im saying is not knowing about all these political bulshits and not CARING about them either doesnt make the art less valid?

I used these examples because writing and drawing is usually more “political” for a lot of people (including you I know) but for many people its just the same as a piece of pottery or wood statue they work on to relieve stress. And the way you talk about art/writing makes it seem like those people are “less than”. Because they dont do research, because they dont use themes or whatever all those things. No, you dont have to do all those if you just wanna create. Its gatekeepy af.

And tbf at least they are creating it themselves, even if it doesnt fit your standards. At least they arent using some ai. In these times we need to encourage people to create more than ever instead of gatekeeping art and writing and talking down to people who arent as sophisticated as you are.

Because your writing and art is insane but man that shits stressfull. I just want to relax and turn my brain off and create some art to soothe my nerves… not all this political implications lol

My opinion and i know you disagree but anyways. You said you like “criticism” so thougth i would share my thougths too.

hope you dont mind if i break it up by point. below the cut cause youve said a lot and i say a lot, ayy

you wanna have mindless fun and dont care if it comes at the cost of spreading harmful misinfo, bigotry or stereotypes, i got it. i read you loud and clear. im also criticizing you for it, which according to this, you shouldn't have a problem with

so when you said in the last ask that you don't care about 'pushing bad stereotypes', you meant visually...? are you drawing racist charicatures or sth lmao

you're right, i do think all art is political, but politics isnt just men in suits arguing about taxes yknow. a political ideology is a prescriptive worldview, that's it. broadly speaking, it's about how you see the relationship between the past/present/future, resources and power, who has them and who don't, and does that align with our ethics, etc. why things are the way they are and how they ought (/not) to be. how you see the world, other people and yourself necessarily shows up in self-expression, that is what self-expression is. it's inherent to art, and you can't get away from this by simply going 'not true' - what you're telling me here is just that you've decided you personally don't care. which is your right i suppose

just like i have a right to be able to think of this 'heres all the ways i'm extremely apolitical' section as you just declaring a privelege. lots of people - especially this site's userbase - don't get the luxury of being able to look away, because their existence itself is highly politisized. either you pay attention or they start sending you and your friends to camps, babey. deciding to be apolitical is a Very political act

you're not sticking fully to topic here. i never talked about depth, i talked about engaging with art uncritically, which are two different things. i do hold the former as an opinion but this is already long, send a different ask if you want me to get into it lol its mostly just me being a judgy bitch abt popular culture

to the relevant stuff, im just gonna reiterate that the themes you put in your work exist whether you want them to or not. death of the author, that whole thing. if you portray poverty in a way that suggests poor people are just being lazy, or that black people are violent, or that gay people are predatory, if you essentialize these traits in any given work, that is the statement that depiction makes, regardless of whether the artist actually believes it's true or not. that's just how biases work in fiction. it's not gonna stop existing because you stop paying attention to it.

funny you should mention woodworking - hi, im a cabinetmaker and i love talking about my craft. cool facts: scandinavian woodworking tends to use sustainable/local wood, minimalistic and semi-rustic designs with a focus on elegance and simplicity, and mostly uses natural finishes. american wwoodworking is a bit flamboyant and grand, frequently uses exotic woods for details, bulkier designs, with a focus on sturdiness and practicalty, and mostly uses glossy/shiny finishes. japanese woodworking is all about precision, subtlety and a world-famous tradition of the craft spanning back millenia, using wood from species that allow for chisel work with a precision that's down to the width of a human hair, occasionally stained with some nice colors (asia generally loves wood stain). ikea's woodworking uses cheap materials and cost-effective factory production, focuses on the mass marketability of their furniture, and has a legal team to deal with worker's rights abuses and forced labor cases. if you can read nothing about priorities and worldview into any of this, i don't know what to tell you. alas its true. your chair is indeed political

this doesn't mean you can't also use any chair to simply sit down in. these two aren't mutually exclusive.

pottery is the same. architecture is the same. in fact, tell any former soviet country that there's no politics in architecture lol they'll look at you weird

never said your art isn't valid or whatever, idek what that means in this context. i just said i can still criticize your racist charicatures regardless of how much mindless fun you had making them lol

(in case its not obvious i dont think youre making racist charicatures or all that shit, im going to the extremes to illustrate a point ykwim. im guessing you'd be fine with me critizising racism in fiction - in fact i don't actually believe you'd disagree with any of the things i've said if i'd framed it in terms of racism, or at least i hope not lol i dont know how far your take goes. im challenging a double standard ig)

"because they don't use themes" mhm, youre one of the ppl who dont know what a theme is, which ig is pretty valuable for context. art necessitates making decisions about what you portray and how you portray it. those decisions say something about your thought process, which your audience is able to draw conclusions about, or at least interpret from. art is a form of communication. if you create art, you are communicating. it means something. there is a message, usually more than one. that's what themes are. can be as benign as "damn hangovers kinda suck" or some grand statement about the nature of being human, doesn't matter. both of those things are themes

i don't think any person is "less than", i'm criticizing people's approach to art. person =/= person's approach to art. remember in my original post when i said that criticism is not the same as personal attacks? or cultural elitism?

im not particularly sophisticated, i just like abstraction cause im mentally ill lmfao. and i do want to encourage people to make art. i just also hate consumerist brainrot, so

its not that i cant relate to wanting to turn your brain off sometimes and just watch some sloppy horror movie or whatever, i do that too. but i also recognize that said sloppy horror movie can be criticized in seventy thousand different ways, and at least being aware of that instead of mindlessly consuming probably leads to a more wholistic appreciation of the art you create and engage with.

this is sliding into opinion territory like the sidenote in my last answer, so beware, but. if 'mindless fun' is the only way you engage with art, you're missing out, i'm sorry, Facts*. you're treating art like content to be consumed to distract you from the real world, not as something thats supposed to inspire or motivate or make you think about/understand things. it's reductive of what art has the potential to do, the ways it can help you grow. it takes effort to change your approach and i get that, but it gets easier once you've done it enough, and it is very worthwhile imo. just sayin'. im genuinely being an optimist about art here

*= opinion lol. but its a strong opinion which is basically the same as a fact**

**= irony

anyway i genuinely enjoy having these sorts of conversations just for the record. am able to disagree with someone without assuming they're a bad person or whatever. i understand if youre not interested in talking continuing but youve been fairly respectful or whatever so thats nice, love and peace✌️

[astudyofrosesandthorns]

I wanted for a long time to write about my link between studying and witchy stuffs. Because for me they are the same thing. Therefore, I will try to express the benefits to be a witch as a full time student and how it helps me staying focus and sane !

Firstly, being a witch it's a lot of studying. You need to read books, make your own research in various subjects such as history, sciences and social sciences. You need to educate yourself and be curious. Don't judge things but study them to try to understand and be able to articulate not an opinion but a clear view of what are pure garbage and what are interesting.

And on this aspect, these are qualities perdectly in line with your student role. Studying, reading materials, thinking about the quality of it, asking questions, read more, improve your critical thinking skills.

Secondly, the link with nature. As a cerebral person, sometimes you lose yourself in textbooks, abstract thinking. Being a witch encourages you to take a step back and observing the nature around you. A lot of celebration are linked with the season's cycle. It's helping me feeling grounded in reality. I must observe seasons passed, the weather's change, the nature evolving. I have to open my eyes and don't bury my head just and solely in books/knowledges.

Being a witch, it's also having a spiritual practice and don't rely solely in reason, rationality. It helps me make peace with situations I can't control. And I'm not supposed to control either. I get conscious of my energy, understanding how it can work and how to use it well. For example, making spells it's quite therapeutic for an anxious person like me. My practice of the tarot it's the same for me : it gives me the opportunity to check my mental state, how I'm coping with life. Without it, I will be lost !

I hope it helps... I really wanted to do this kind of tumblr. To conclude, be well all of you 🥰

[fracturedgodhead]

I'm back

uh....

Fitting that it'd be late I guess. Weird. This doesn't feel like my blog. I guess it kind of isn't. I think we're figuring out this whole plurality thing. It's chaotic, but honestly, it's just become the way I live life now? I don't know how to describe it. Words like "good" or "fun" or "stressful" or "confusing" are just too small. It encompasses the entire breadth of my experience, to boil it down would be an injustice and misleading. It is the entire feelings wheel because life is the entire feelings wheel.

Anywho, I didn't do much work on any of the projects. I think I'm gonna break from the schedule method. It was a good experience and I learned a lot, but I think I will thrive better by allowing myself to work on whatever I think I can do the best on at that moment. I'll still push myself to work every day, and I think the others also want to do the same.

I think I got punished a lot for approaching work like that, and to be fair, usually what would happen was that I'd switch to something... sticky? I don't know how to describe it. Most things don't hold my attention. I can focus on stuff like that for maybe 30 productive minutes at a time, then I need to switch or else I just start free-wheeling. There are some things though that don't have that problem. I can focus on them longer, almost indefinitely, so if I switch to that kind of task I am never naturally prompted to switch again. Stuff like games or doomscrolling or things like that.

The solution that I have for that now is basically a ping in the back of my mind that goes off every 45 minutes or so and prompts me to check the time. This is constant and based on mounting anxiety. The anxiety builds passively in the background and the limit to where I notice it and am motivated to act is around that 45 minute mark.

I don't really like this system, and I don't think any of the rest of us do either. It's always happening regardless of context, so rest without being fully unconscious is basically impossible. I'd much rather externalize it as a physical timer, but honestly I don't know if that works. My limited knowledge of psychology suggests that doing that would only reinforce the system that's already there... hmmm.

Maybe conscious effort could overwrite it? I don't know. I'll try and do some research.

Anyway, I got some class work I need to look at. It's good to be back, even though I'm not the original owner I guess. I don't think he minds me writing in his place... guess I'll find out?

-Mike