#i hope that distinction makes sense

[abstractfrog]

THE GLORIA SCOTT - part 2, and a follow up to my comic for the first half of this scene! thanks sm to @crashingmeteorz for allowing me to source validation for my whimsical cosmic approach to this moment <3

[commsroom]

as an extension of how hera reads as trans to me, hera/eiffel resonates with me specifically as a relationship between a trans woman and a cis man. loving hera requires eiffel to decentralize his own perspective in a way that ties into both his overall character arc and the themes of the show.

pop culture is baked into the dna of wolf 359, into eiffel’s worldview, and in how it builds off of a sci-fi savvy audience’s assumptions: common character types, plot beats, or dynamics, why would a real person behave this way? how would a real person react to that? eiffel is the “everyman” who assumes himself to be the default. hera is the “AI who is more human than a lot of humans,” but it doesn’t feel patronizing because it isn’t a learned or moral quality; she is a fundamentally human person who is routinely dehumanized and internalizes that.

eiffel/hera as a romance is compelling to me because there is a narrative precedent for some guy/AI or robot woman relationships in a way i think mirrors some attitudes about trans women: it’s a male power fantasy about a subclass of women, or it’s a cautionary tale, or it’s a deconstruction of a power fantasy that criticizes the way men treat women as subservient, as property. but what does that pop culture landscape mean in the context of desire? If you are a regular person, attracted to a regular person, who really does care for you and wants to do right by you, but is deeply saturated in these expectations? how do you navigate that?

I think that, in itself, is an aspect of communication worth exploring. sometimes you won’t get it. sometimes you can’t. and that’s not irreconcilable, either. it’s something wolf 359 is keenly aware of, and, crucially, always sides with hera on. eiffel screws up. he says insensitive things without meaning to. often, hera will call him out on it, and he will defer to her. in the one case where he notably doesn’t, the show calls attention to it and makes him reflect. it’s not a coincidence that the opening of shut up and listen has eiffel being particularly dismissive of hera - the microaggression of separating her from “men and women” and the insistence on using his preferred title over hers. there are things eiffel has just never considered before, and caring for hera the way he does means he has to consider them. he's never met someone like hera, but media has given him a lot of preconceptions about what people like her might be like.

there’s a whole other discussion to be had about the gender dynamics of wolf 359, even in the ways the show tries to avoid directly addressing them, and how sexual autonomy in particular can’t fully be disentangled from explorations of AI women. i don’t think eiffel fully recognizes what comments like “wind-up girl” imply, and the show is not prepared to reconcile with it, but it’s interesting to me. in the context of transness (and also considering hera’s disability, two things i think need to be discussed together), i think it’s worth discussing how hera’s self image is at odds with the way people perceive her, her disconnect from physicality, how she can’t be touched by conventional means, and the ways in which eiffel and hera manage to bridge that gap.

even the desire for embodiment, and the autonomy and type of intimacy that comes with it, means something different when it’s something she has to fight for, to acquire, to become accustomed to, rather than a circumstance of her birth. i suppose the reason i don’t care for half measures in discussions re: hera and embodiment is also because, to me, it is in many ways symbolically a discussion about medical transition, and the social fear of what’s “lost” in transition, whether or not those things were even desired in the first place.

hera’s relationship with eiffel is unquestionably the most supportive and equal one she has, but there are still privileges, freedoms, and abilities he has that she doesn’t, and he forgets that sometimes. he will never share her experiences, but he can choose to defer to her, to unlearn his pop culture biases and instead recognize the real person in front of him, and to use his own privilege as a shield to advocate for her. the point, to me - what’s meaningful about it - is that love isn’t about inherent understanding, it’s about willingness to listen, and to communicate. and that’s very much at the heart of the show.

[solidwater05]

It's ADHD awareness month so l thought it'd be nice to explain why someone with ADHD might consciously make horrible decisions despite being aware of the consequences

So, let's image a situation. A person with ADHD is doing a mildly entertaining activity, let's say doomscrolling. This person also has a task to do. I made a graph where the brighter the color, the higher the satisfaction that the person gets from an activity

[ID: A graph showing a line that divides into two separate lines. The main line, and the bottom line, are a dull yellow. The top line starts off black, and turns bright green as it gets further away from the bifurcation. /End ID]

So here, doomscrolling isn't super gratifying but hey, it's better than nothing. The person has the choice to keep doomscrolling, even though it's honestly pretty boring, or they could do the task they need to do. When they're done with that task, they'll feel a lot better, so they should do that, right? Just do the task because there's literally no cons? Well. Look at this other graph:

[ID: The same graph as before, but cropped to only show the bifurcation itself. This way, the top line seems to be completely black. /End ID]

This is how a person with ADHD perceives the choice. They can logically know that they'll feel better if they do the task, but executive dysfunction makes it literally impossible to get any sort of motivation or satisfaction for gratification that doesn't currently exist. So the choice goes from 'feel meh or feel good later' to 'feel great in comparison or never feel good again'. And what's the obvious choice here?

[geekynightowl1997]

I find it very interesting what episodes you figure out where Eliot, Parker, and Hardison learned to trust each other vs. them believing in each other.

For Hardison The Nigerian Job is where he first started to trust Eliot. But I'd say that The Second David Job is where Hardison believed in Eliot. There's no distinct episode where I think Hardison started trusting Parker, but I do believe that The Stork Job is where Hardison believed in Parker.

For Parker she started to trust Hardison in The Stork Job, and believed in him in The Queen's Gambit job. She trusted Eliot in The Snow Job, and believed in him in The Big Bang Job.

For Eliot he trusted Hardison in The Second David Job, and believed in him The Iceman Job. Eliot trusted in Parker in The Two Horse Job, and believed in her in The Runway Job.

I hope that all makes sense. 😬

[hoofpeet]

Man I adore your work! Most of the time when I look at things with even vague romantic connotations I get super grossed out, but something about the way you write and draw it is just So cute, I can't help but love it ahaa.

OUGH thanbnk you what that's actually such a huge compliment ... I would imagine that's bc I myself am aro/ace so 90% of the time like pairings based purely on how funny they are

[trapdoornumberthree]

Hey hi artfight is coming up so i made some quick little halfbodies that're nice and small and great for bios ! Get one for yourself! Get one for your friend on the opposite team! Get one just because you like vampires or werewolves!

$20 USD each, any species/body type [though there is a $5 surcharge for complex designs, like mechs or detailed anthros. Please ask if you're unsure!]. Speech bubble will be the colors shown here by default, but please ask if you'd like a different color for the text/bubble ^^

If you're not interested, but would like to help out, reblogs are great <3

Please DM me to order! I'll be taking these throughout July, or until I get sick of doing them lol. I do have a second ych idea I'll clean up and post if these do well.

[fisheito]

The fact that yakumo has made so much soup that eiden can ID the type based on smell alone

[front-facing-pokemon]

[infizero]

any time u say ralsei is cute or sweet or whatever ur playing right into his trap btw. not ralsei’s trap, toby’s

[embraceyourdestiny]

i feel like nomura not knowing what to do with kairi's character has a very meta explanation of kairi doesnt even know who she is and nomura lives / writes his characters so thoroughly that the quandary hes having is because shes having it too. we really live our characters when we're imaging their life and i myself have felt the total confusion, the heartbreak, the love, the fury, the betrayal, the anger of some characters as emotions completely separate from mine so it makes sense for him to be "stuck" / not utilizing her until now because he didnt know where she fit in because kairi didnt know her place in the universe either

[specialmouse]

lgbt people need to stop thinking in terms of black and white and by that i mean stop thinking our oppression as directly analogous to the oppression of black people by white people it's not the same !

[bijoumikhawal]

got reminded of the "saying Arabs conquered and colonized North Africa is Zionist because obviously no one saying that coulx possibly draw a distinction between North African Arabs and Palestinian Arabs, and even drawing a distinction between Arabs and Imazighen is colonizer shit" school of thought

[neversetyoufree]

I just realized that there are a lot of similarities between FMA and VnC; from certain characters and their dynamics to story beats. And that’s because Mochijun’s inspiration was Hiromu Arakawa. Isn’t that right?

Hey anon, I'm super interested to hear what dynamics and story beats you think parallel between FMA and VNC, because I'm personally having trouble thinking of any? Like I genuinely really want to hear more about this idea and what connections I'm missing.

I suppose you could make the small angry+strong sunshine duo comparison between Ed and Al and Vanitas and Noé, but just about every other thing about their dynamic is very different lmao. It's been a hot minute since I read FMA though, so I could be forgetting something.

As for Mochizuki being inspired by Hiromu Arakawa, I actually didn't know that until you said it here! I did some googling, and here's an interview (in French lol) where she talks about that for anyone else curious. Thanks for the fun fact, anon :D. I know they've also talked in public before about being fans of one another's series, which is extremely cute. It's always exciting to me to see the creators of things I enjoy supporting one another's work.

That said, though, I'm not sure how much I think FMA was an influence on VnC specifically? Mochijun has talked about her inspirations for VnC, and a lot of it came from Interview with the Vampire, Sherlock and Watson, and her actual visits to Paris. I suppose the whole thread of Paracelsus and the Babel Incident could be inspired by Van Hohenheim's whole deal? But we know so little about all that right now that it's hard to say if there's much parallel beyond "mysterious alchemical history."

Now that I've finished saying, "huh, I dunno about that" in various tones to every part of your post, though, I do have one way that I agree FMA and VnC are similar! I have a longer post about this in my drafts that I might dig up someday, but I think they're similar in the way that they approach their shonen/action elements.

Shonen tends to often be really driven by fights/action. The characters want to get stronger, and the process by which they get stronger forms the heart of the series. It's why training and tournament arcs are such staples lmao. With FMA and VnC, however, the action isn't really the series' core. There are a lot of fight scenes in both, but the fighting and getting stronger is never really the point.

I hesitate to get more into the specifics of what I mean by this now because, frankly, I haven't reread FMA in like six years, and I'm almost certainly going to forget something big and/or say something wrong if I try to talk about it in too much detail. But I hope you can kind of get what I mean?

They're both series that are very invested in forcing their characters to examine certain themes and question themselves. To be a little reductive, FMA is about ethics and VnC is about death and salvation. It's just that sometimes the means by which Ed, Al, Noé, and Vanitas are forced to question those ideas is by fighting.

A lot of shonen (though certainly not all) falls into the category of "stories about action and fighting that also have themes," whereas FMA and VnC are more "stories about themes that also have action and fighting."

[handgiven]

it's genuinely something that aids my mental health so much to imagine a being that's seen the beginning and the end of the world, a being that's seen the best and the worst of what humanity can offer, a being that's had all the time in the universre to ponder about a purpose, and about the meaning of existence, and whose very simple response is just. be kind. in the long run, none of the other things matter. what matters is to allow your soul to blossom into something as beautiful as it can be, through little acts of kindness, whenever you are able. that's enough.

[ghostlyheart]

I like that BBC Ghosts and CBS Ghosts are kind of both about second chances but in different ways. I feel like british Ghosts is more about getting closure. Like you don't get a do-over but you learn to be okay with it and appreciate what you had and fill the holes with new kinds of love. While with american Ghosts they actually DO get to try again. You can confront your awful husband/see your daughter get married/tell the stories you never got a chance to/say goodbye to your mom and dad. You can still screw it up but you also have a choice

[vaugarde]

ok moments passed. sorry for being a bit of a hater, i was gushing abt the game so i feel i deserve this- i still do not get why partner had to disappear in the context of the game. or at least the reason they gave us (if dark matter dies then mew has to as well because it contributed to its growth)