#i straight up cried at this

[ludinusdaleth]

the parting of the ways

-Critical Role Campaign 3, Episode 93, "Bittersweet Reunions"

[axoqiii]

☕️🥞 sketch dump

[buttercupshands]

never say never I guess

had a sudden "I want to draw them"

Lyrics from "The Last Goodbye" by Billy Boyd

also a warm up that led to this, wanted to try drawing them again and somehow got inspired a bit

[sunnymainecoonx]

I don't think I ever published these so ig.....

There's a last one but err warning for gore and blood(mostly just ripping an arm off)

[charlott2n]

a lot of my autism can be summed up by the time i was a kid and i was doing an ant maze where you had to lead an ant through the ant hole and i got really frustrated for some reason and tore it up and then i got really upset thinking about the ants i killed. the ones on the paper. i killed them they just wanted to go find their home and i killed them. i still feel the same grief

[orfisheus]

The Problem With the Eddsworld Fandom's Depictions of Red Leader/Future Tord, A Disabled Perspective

Disability is a contentious concept for most of society, with most either treating us with disgust, confusion, refusing to treat us as human, or to see our struggles as what they are. Ableism affects all people in many different ways, but as someone who focuses a lot of my energy in fandom spaces, the pervasiveness of ableism with how media and their fans interpet and react to disabled characters is a very personal situation for me. While many may argue that an ignorance to these topics in fiction has little bearing on real life, the prevalance of these tropes have echoed and led to feelings of othering for many disabled people, and oftentimes support the same notions that lead to the day-to-day ableism in our own personal lives.

In recent years, I have experienced this most often with the prevalance of negative disability tropes perpetrated by fanfiction surrounding the character of Tord, also known under the alias of Red Leader in some fanworks. It is a problem not just common in the Eddsworld fandom. A more recent, and much larger fandom in Mouthwashing also shares a common trend of repeated ableism in fan depictions and interpretarions of disabled characters. Most fan creators are unaware of these tropes and the harm that they cause, but as a disabled person, I am unable to ignore it.

For context on myself, you can call me Fish. Get it? Or"fish"eus? I like to think I'm funny. I am a mentally ill, disabled, and neurodivergent creative who has niche interests in representation in media and the intersection of intersectionality and fandom spaces. I experience chronic pain due to a multitude of conditions, all of which are invisible disabilities. I am NOT an amputee or have a facial difference, like the character I am analyzing. I can only speak based on my own research in my attempts to portray him positively, but I want to mainly focus on the ableist tropes I see and the real life effects they have. That is something I CAN focus on, because I've been dealing with it for years from conditions that came onset later in my life. I will be speaking from that perspective, but will be doing my best to try to educate on what I do know from my research to help authors, artists, and creatives create a better portrayal of him in fanworks.

The most common tropes I see with him are what I will call "The Disabled Villain", "The Innacurate Disability", and "The Ignored Disability". There are a few tropes in each, but for ease of organization (and the sake of your (and my) time), I will be talking about them together in these sections. There are also overlaps in many, but I will define the main issues with them.

The Disabled Villain

James Bond, Wonder Woman, The Witches. You name it. You have most likely seen this trope at work in cinema. A malicious evil-doer is revealed to have a "horrid" face symbolic of the true evil within their soul, while the beautiful, able-bodied hero is meant to stop them. It's a trope as old as time, one that goes back to even Plato. Tropes are tropes, people subvert them, so a few cases down the line may be excusable. But that has not been the case For many years, the most prevalent form of representation for disabled people was in these villains. Imagine if the only representation you had for yourself was narratives surrounding how the way you look or what your disability is and have it only be equated to evil people. It leads to a villainization of disabled people. People react to facial differences with disgust, because they are "shown" that it is "evil", or "ugly", or equal to being a horrible person. As stated by The Nora Project, "According to the book Disabilities: Insights from Across Fields and Around the World, disabled students are two to three times more likely to be bullied in comparison to their nondisabled classmates. The disabled villain trope contributes to this phenomenon in overt and subtle ways. For example, the trope implicitly encourages fear of disability and difference, while validating, and even elevating, those who fight against the evil, Disabled Villain. Bullying based on fear and disdain is almost a natural consequence of the trope when viewed in this light". Another big issue is that disabled characters have not been given space to exist outside of villainy. There are not many complex narratives surrounding them. This leads to our disabilities being downplayed, us being dehumanised, and we are seen more like props in real life, or simply tools to achieve a message in a narrative.

Tord's disability is never explicitly shown in the show. It is something more prevalent in Fanon, specifically in fanworks that focus on the "Future" era of the show's timeline, where the narrative and outside discussions on the show implies a high tech society, potentially dystopian, potentially a consequence of his actions. These ideas have taken a life of their own in the fandom, with many creators fully expressing these ideas. The problem arises when Red Leader falls in line with this trope. In many works, he is the sole disabled character, a figure of pure evil, or given little nuance in the narrative. Artists illustrate his scars as bright red, crimson, or, in TBATF, green. For some reason. In this way, they attempt to highlight the villainy by equating him with common symbols of evil: facial differences and disabilities. Unfortunately, these are not just symbols. These are conditions and scars that real people have, which the fandom tends to ignore in favor of dramatization.

This was a trope I most commonly saw explored in fanfiction when I first joined in 2016/17. The show, unfortunately, subtly and accidentally perpetrated it by having the only character visibly and irreparably "damaged" by the giant robot fight be Tord, despite the fact that Tom, who had a whole missile directed at him and got buried under a house, was fine with at most a leg injury and a cut on his arm. Luckily, we have grown past the need for ableist tropes, and the faults of the show can be left in the past!

... Not.

Disability tropes have simply evolved in how the fandom treats Tord. Even if it is now done with more consciousness and sympathy towards his character, ignorance still prevails. Let's talk about common pitfalls people fall into when writing him.

The Inaccurate Disability

In fanon perception, Red Leader is an amputee with a high tech prosthesis and a facial difference resulting from burn scars. Like many disabled characters, he suffers from a collective fandom lack of research. But never fret! That is what I have subjected myself to for the past four years, so your friendly neighborhood disabled Fish can tell you how to right your fandom wrongs! Just kidding! Take this as a pointer, and do your own research.

As is common with fictional prosthetics, his arm prosthetic is treated as a perfect fix for his amputation. It acts just like, if not better than an actual arm. The issue with this is that is isn't realistic. Yes, I know, I'm criticising Eddsworld fanfiction for not being realistic. STAY WITH ME HERE. Once again, if it was one instance, or a few, that explored prosthetics being incredibly functional in science-fiction, then it could be a cool concept. But when every sci-fi work has it, then that is no longer a concept. That is a misconception. And I have interacted with people who believed that prosthetics were 100% functional! The thing is, like all disability aids, it does not suddenly make us able-bodied. For example, I have ear defenders that I wear when I experience pain within my ears. But that does not mean my hearing will now become normal, and I will no longer experience pain from the sound I'm hearing. What WILL happen is that I will straight up not hear you. Like, literally. Can you repeat that? I had my ear defenders on. Oh, you're saying that my ear defenders aren't prosthetics and are not a fair comparison? Well, that's fair, but take this as an illustration of a disability aid and how they differ from able-bodied experiences. Also, many prosthetic users do many things without their prostheses, and some even prefer NOT to wear them. Blogs that explicitly cover disabled representation, such as @/cripplecharacters, have posts that cover WHY many amputees are not fans of this trope. The problem comes with that it erases disability, and yet also treats us like we are given a space at the table of representation. It's just another way that authors avoid actually doing research.

Other things that people tend to ignore are how burn scars, or any scars, would not only appear on a character, but also affect them. I have seen, aside from skin tones that looked like they were picked out of a crayon box instead of what would appear on a person, teeth exposed, wounds that look as if they are fresh from the explosion YEARS after they occurred, and what I like to call "paper shredder" scars. Because instead of them looking like burn or shrapnel scars, it appears as if his skin was put through a shredder. Once again, another consequence of the show's at most-30 second scene with questionable decisions that made massive ripples in the fandom. With the injuries Tord received, it is most likely that he would have two kinds of injuries: a burn on 18% of his body (minimum, based on rule of 9s), and/or shrapnel scars from debris. While shrapnel scars would manifest as darker scars, the burn scar would likely be a hypertrophic scar, as "70% of patients develop hypertrophic scars following burns" (Finnerty et. al). The scars, when healed, are warm toned on the boundaries of their areas and cool in between. When on a pale skintone, they are not too dissimilar, and would therefore not have such a drastic color difference as seen on skin. They would also not go down to the bone or skin, as that would be a completely different kind of injury, and are also commonly done to make him look "scarier", which then aids the Disabled Villain trope. It also treats these scars and injuries more like a work of fiction, rather than something that many real people have experienced, adding to continuous misinterpretations of real life disabilities and facial differences.

For writers wanting to include consequences of burns, what would be more likely to be affected are his hearing, vision, and nerves on the right side of his face, as burn scars can go as deep as nerve endings. Also, burn scars, especially third degree burns, require treatments, such as burn-specific skincare. Scars, especially burn scars, can affect you and become disabling. For artists, the main thing I don't see artists do is draw him with damaged hair follicles. Burn scars damage the scalp and eyebrows, preventing hair growth. I am sorry, but he would not still have fluffy, luscious hair. Do not kill me. He just wouldn't. And if you are saying that he had it in the show, I can't hear you because my ear defenders are on, but I hope you heard me, as we've gone over that the show is inaccurate and we should do our own research.

Even well intentioned authors and artists ignore many aspects of the disabilities he would likely have!

Which brings us to the last trope...

The Ignored Disability

Many well meaning people intend to give him nuance by trying to avoid the Disabled Villain trope. Accidentally, however, they end up completely ignoring his disabilities instead.

Just like the high-tech prosthetic, the real disabling aspects of having a disability are at best rarely mentioned. I have seen, in some fanworks, that he goes straight from amputation to having a prosthetic. And that is where his disability ends. Because the prosthetic ends up being a fix-all situation. Authors refuse, or forget, to include aspects of amputation, such as the healing process, stump or phantom pain. Artists will cover up his scars with a helmet or a mask, another trope that undermines his disabilities and attempts to brush it under the rug. I understand that there is a discomfort for able-bodied authors in thoroughly exploring how a character feels about their disability. That is something I think we should. Avoid. If you're not familiar with the experience of being that minority, you do not need to add commentary on it. And if you do, and it just falls into more negative tropes, I will send a salmon cannon at you (/j). However, I do not agree with brushing every disabling aspect of his life under the rug.

People can assume it's not a problem, like it isn't something blatantly apparent. But, if you assume that disability and being disabled is not a "big thing", you end up where your medication is denied because your insurance refuses to see your common procedure as not a necessary medical intervention because you're "too young". And that is not fiction. That is what inspired me to write this essay, because the day that I got that news was the same day I sat down and told myself that I needed to share my perspective on the perception of disabled characters by honing in on one of my favorite characters and how the fandom treated him.

Disabled characters deserve to be included in media, disability and all, with care given to how their life would operate as a result and what they would experience with their specific disability. That's why many people recommend sensitivity readers who can give proper insight upon that disability and can advise people to properly portray it.

But if you cannot afford or access that resource, what can you do?

Fish's Non-Cohesive List of Ways I Tried to Write Tord as a Non-Amputee Without a Facial Difference

Do research!! The more you are to try to understand what you are writing about, the less you are to misinterpret or misrepresent it.

Look into resources that focus on portraying disabled characters, especially with those you wish to write about. Read blogs, research tropes that are common in disabled characters, and hell, read medical journals. They can provide great insight (<< nerd who likes reading medical journals)

Include more disabled characters. Make the other boys be disabled! Want to be canon compliant? Create OCs who have disabilities! I have a bunch! It's 2024! Be cringe and be free! The character's disability would go against the traditional narrative form of "usefulness"? I'm an animator who can't wear headphones and a theatre performer who can't physically handle the volume of a band. And yet, we find ways to persist, to exist. We will always find our way to live in the way we want to, in whatever way we can.

Look into disability activism. Learn the difference between the Medical Model and Social Model of disability. Know what an invisible disability is. Listen to us when we say that we don't want to be treated as special or an inspiration for simply living (inspiration porn). The more you are aware of what we struggle in real life, the more aware you will be to not repeat those mistakes in your fiction.

Write what you can. Highlight little talked about aspects of having a burn scar or being an amputee, such as the recovery, or treatment for the chronic pain, or how different he would be in battle due to decreased depth perception. As a disabled author, I have personally touched on the experience of gaining a disability later in life, and how he copes with it. Now, not all of y'all can do that. But that is a personal experience I do have, and it is something I have highlighted in my own work. So, while I couldn't tell you the ins and outs of having a burn scar or a prosthetic arm, I could describe the shock and frustration that comes with suddenly experiencing difficulties, or even being unable to do what you had done before.

I ask that, if you are willing to do better, or to start on the right foot, you take what I have written, reflect on it, and treat disabled characters, and in turn, disabled people, better from here on out.

Fiction is not reality, but the way we deal with it is reflective of who we are and what we believe. The boundary for our own personal being does not suddenly stop within fiction. When we interact and interpret it and create for it, it is integral that we remain conscious that bigotry runs rampant, albeit often as an unseen force, within fandom spaces, and do our best to counteract that.

I have doubts that the new eddisode will treat this topic with the same respect. I hope you can all go forward with what you have read in this WAY LONGER than I expected essay, and do what those grown British men cannot. Even if they erase it, retconn it, or do not treat it with respect, let's all go forward and do better!

As for always, you can discuss more in the tags or my inbox!

I hope you have a wonderful life,

Fish

[hazellight11]

No fucking WAY Ford calls Bill, quote: "a needy theater kid" literally THE PAGE BEFORE Mabel calld Bill "a super-needy ex" and gives him post-breakup tips and tells him to "go crush on someone else's uncle"

[see-arcane]

@re-dracula immense shout out to the sound design here because, per usual, you guys know how to steer a soundscape so that it feels like the capping of one arc and the descent into another

The closing music has the tone of 'Wow, that stuff with Lucy was pretty harrowing, huh? What comes next is worse.' In my mind I could picture the camera pulling out of the asylum and over a night sky-view of Carfax Abbey, the moon looking abruptly like an undead eye peering through the clouds... Excellent stuff

Petition to have the Re: Dracula cast and crew be behind an Actually Good Dracula animated series someday, please please please

[struggling-jpg]

Not to be that person but

The Wardance event really had Luka and Yanqing reflect each other. I feel like we got a speedrun of vaguely similar events that happen to Yanqing occur to Luka here. Like while being really good, he gets hit with obstacle after obstacle that shakes his confidence and willpower. Yet, when it comes down to it, Luka boxes because he loves it and it makes him feel happy and free.

"The most important thing is to always throw the next punch."

To work towards self-improvement, to love what you do, they both share that sentiment.

These two really felt like protagonists from different yet similar genres lol

This event was just so peak TvT

[sofokl13]

*gives one public speech*

*fucking falls into a coma*

[redrobin-detective]

Something I think is very funny is that Ice King, Marcy and Bubblegum have been in each other's orbit for centuries before the main series. Early Marcy, hurt and isolated, I don't think would talk to or about Ice King all that much. I think she just straight up avoided him as much as she could. But she did date Bubbleum pre-series for a while and probably was at least a little emotionally vulnerable.

So I think she mentioned Simon, off handedly, like he wasn't once the most important person in her life. So imagine you're Bubblegum and your notoriously free wheeling, punk rock gf starts talking about this Simon dude. How he saved her from the wasteland, raised her, loved her as a dad and then left without explanation. This... doesn't sound like a real thing that happened. Bubblegum definitely files all Simon stories under "Things Marcy For Sure Made Up."

Now a couple of centuries pass and you learn, all in quite a rush, that not only was Marcy's "Simon" actually real but he's alive, here right now and has been the annoying Ice Wizard that has been kidnapping you for hundreds of years. I think I might lose my mind a little.

[the-gay-trashmouth]

I don't feel like the conversation Curly has with Jimmy right before Jimmy crashes the ship gets enough attention, because in that scene we get so much character information from both of them, completely outside of Jimmy warped perception. (Long ass ramble below the cut)

One thing I don't see brought up nearly enough is that Curly and Jimmy aren't just co-workers. They're friends back on Earth. He also brings up Jimmy's "hard times" back home, specifically bringing it up when he's trying to talk him down after he finds out Anya is pregnant. Now we don't know what exactly he means by "hard times", it could be anything from a depressive episode to a drug habit. In context though, I feel like it isn't a stretch to say it was something to do with the law, considering Jimmy is talking about having to face the consequences of assaulting Anya when they get back to Earth ("what do you think will happen when we get back?").

Some people then take the rest of what Jimmy says to mean Anya's assault was pre-planned as a way to tarnish Curly's reputation- I think this theory is bullshit. We see multiple times throughout the game that Jimmy is really good at just pulling shit out of his ass when he feels like he's cornered. He's constantly coming up with new justifications as to why he does things and how it's somehow never truly his fault. I think that's what he's doing here, making it Curly's fault for "pushing" him to extremes. "I was just so jealous of you, you're always dangling the life I want right in front of me, you don't even want it, you don't deserve it".

He's twisting his own disgusting actions into some sort of rebellion against the system, just like he always does, just to make himself out to be the poor, downtrodden layman with no other choices. A man pushed to extremes by the world around him. However, this is just Jimmy's rewriting of history, a way to shove blame off onto Curly, a way to manipulate him into going along with his plan. If he really did set out to ruin Curly's reputation he wouldn't have crashed the ship, he wouldn't try and manipulate him into going along with it by saying they could be remembered as heroes instead.

I also think this theory, once again as y'all are so eager to do, makes Anya's assault revolve around a man. It once again turns her into a plot device or means to an end rather than her own character. It shifts the focus onto Curly as the victim when she was Jimmy first and most ignored victim. Like Polle says "why are you still so concerned with HIM?"

But, anyways, by the end of that conversation- his manipulation works. Or, maybe it works. Of course we don't know exactly what's going through Curly's head, but he ends the conversation with "right..." And walks away. Either he didn't believe Jimmy when he was point blank telling him what he was going to do, or he did and genuinely bought into his manipulation for a moment, before snapping back out of it once the alarms actually sounded. Either way, the conversation ends with Curly walking away and letting Jimmy just do whatever he wanted.

That conversation also shows us a look into how Curly was "handling it". Basically throwing empty platitudes to both Jimmy and Anya. Never ever acknowledging the scale of Jimmy actions. An interesting thing to me is that, until the very end when he says "right", not once does he acknowledge what Jimmy is actually saying. Just repeating "we can fix this, you'll get through this, it's going to be fine" while Jimmy continues to talk about how he could still get away with it. It's like he barely hears him, and the same thing with Anya. Anya tells him, point blank, she doesn't feel safe. She hides the gun herself, and constantly drops hints about Jimmy, even tells him about the harassment, but time and time again he brushes it off with "I'll talk to him" and then never actually has a talk with him.

During the psych evals, Anya tells Curly she can't get through an evaluation with Jimmy. He makes sexual jokes and refuses to take her seriously. Saying "I find myself sexually attracted to the company mascot" while locked in a room with a woman who is at most a coworker you've only known for like 4-5 months during a company mandatory psych eval is at the very least non compliance, and at most sexual harassment. What does Curly say about this?

"so tell me about those horses"

And then nothing else. He doesn't get onto Jimmy about treating Anya with respect or taking this seriously. He let's him dodge questions and assures him how everything is fine. Jimmy is actively making the other crewmates jobs more difficult but Curly does. Absolutely. Nothing. And this is RIGHT AFTER he gets onto Swansea for letting Daisuke do a dangerous job. He knows how to be captain, he knows how to put his foot down, but he actively chooses not to with Jimmy, instead appealing to their history and friendship. Letting him slide with things you would NOT let a regular employee slide with.

Curly is a character defined by inaction. He didn't do anything when Anya first tells him that Jimmy makes her uncomfortable, he does nothing when she tells of the assault (off screen) or when she tells him she's pregnant (onscreen), he does NOTHING when Jimmy looks him in the eyes and tells them they can be heroes, if he just lets Jimmy fix it. That's what makes his ending all the more tragic.

His choice to do nothing until the very last second, when it's already too late and Jimmy has doomed them all, results in him not being able to do ANYTHING. he is stuck in constant pain watching as one by one his crew dies and every single time there's Jimmy, still avoiding responsibility, still manipulating the people around him, and he has to finally reconcile that this has always been who jimmy was, he was just too focused on the bigger picture to see the dead pixel.

When Jimmy gets the gun, Curly lets out what seems like something between a laugh and a sob. It's the last of Anya's predictions to come true. Anya was right, and Curly can't do a fucking thing anymore. his friend is a monster, a killer, and a rapist. He was never going to be able to "fix it", because it was never about Curly. It was about Jimmy, it was always about Jimmy and his complete need for control paired with his refusal to take responsibility.

And in the end we end up back in the party room back where Jimmy first created the character of Captain Curly in his head, the one that made it easier to blame. It's there that he makes himself the hero again, valiantly forgives poor Captain Curly and shows himself to be the selfless, responsible, perfect captain that he always saw himself as-

despite the fact that he was surrounded by the stiff remains of his crew, all of whom he'd had a hand in their death, and chewing on the leg of the only man who ever saw the good in him.

[chromaticcrazyass]

By far my greatest accomplishment in Cult of the Lamb was creating Biblically Accurate Jax

[otp-more-like-killmeplease]

Hi so this is actually so beautiful

Even if you don’t care about Star Trek or K/S or anything, please watch this because oh my word. It is gorgeous

[stupidlittlespirit]

I was struck this morning by such an intense wave of nostalgia for that period where GF was airing, when it finished and when the journal came out, and how all the Ford fans just had this little cave of solace that we all shared. Everyone loved him so passionately and everyone enjoyed interacting with each other and sharing stuff.

It genuinely kept me alive at the time when my life was skirting so close to the themes of the show and I really miss it. I know, I know, I sound like an old boomer (I am) but it really is such a special, fond memory.

[caffeinefafnir]

Like, I know it's a fictional character but I'm SO fucking mad, angry and sad, GODAMMIT. I hadn't recovered from Alice's death yet, JESUS FUCKING CHRIST