#inspired by my IRL friend group when i was a young adult

[secrettreestuffidk]

ok listen i understand

that by canon

M'dame Odile has gotta be somewhere towards her forties, maybe fifties. the kinda age where you know which knee is your bad one. the kinda age that gets instant deference from them young whippersnappers

i love this. i respect this. i am team "give me more actually-middle-aged women in fiction"

but also. it will not leave me.

that it would be so fucking funny if she's like. 35.

a good decade on any of her teammates, sure, but also. only a decade. she's like. two peer groups ahead of the rest at most.

undisputed team grandma

[herrscherofmagic]

Collection of WIPs for my newest honkai 3rd AU: a synth- and post-punk band AU! featuring the band “Mirror Mirage”

More art and an explanation further below

I dont want to put too many details down yet since i intend to do more with this and don’t necessarily want to spoil future story stuff, but the gist of it is that its an AU focused on the villainous Herrscher personas (except Veli, but she fits the vibe lol)

The tentative setting I’m working with for now is Central Florida and its meant to be a more serious/realistic AU with a focus on young adult life, not late-teens stuff. Think less “fun times at Perfect Fairytale College(TM) with my besties! Lets have fun and study today!” and more “rent is due, my roommates are assholes, the hourly bus is 20 minutes late again, and i almost got hit by a drunk driver on my way to work for the third time week and it’s only Tuesday”. That sort of thing lmao

I’m not sure if there’s any real interest in a story that focuses more on some underrated characters like Herrscher Mei (not normal Mei as a Herrscher, but her alternate persona), much less a story that also deals with more serious IRL issues

Mei is bassist and a vocalist, formerly lead until Kiana (more precisely HoV in Honkai terms) joined; Mei also handles the finances as she is an accountant in her day job working at a community redevelopment agency. Has a strong sense of justice and puts on an air of confidence and superiority on stage and when fending off hostile folks, but acts with great humility with the ordinary people she encounters in her daily life.

Kiana is the (new) lead vocalist. Works the graveyard shift at a gas station and is a self-proclaimed “cynical asshole” that barely gets along with anyone else; also plays the guitar occasionally. She was dragged in by Mei and reluctantly joined the band, leading to an awkward and tense relationship with the others, but her incredible skill as a vocalist means the rest of them put up with her shitty attitude.

Seele is the lead guitarist; she is an immigrant from Estonia and came to the US with Elysia a couple years back, in early 2022. Keeps in touch w/ Bronya, who is still living back in Europe. Tends to be a bit withdrawn but is very loyal to the band and would throw hands to protect the crew. Seele has Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) and is a system comprised of two alters: Saule and Veliona. Veliona is the one that actively plays in the band.

Elysia (HoC in Honkai terms) is the synth player and mixer, and does a lot of work in planning and executing complicated tracks both live and in studio recordings. Despite being having no local heritage, she loves switching between a southern cowgirl persona and her usual preppy nice-girl persona. Since Elysia is said to be from “Vladivostok 51” in Honkai canon, that would make her Russian; however for the purposes of this story im headcanoning her as Ukrainian (which ik is far from Vladivostok irl), simply to mix things up a bit, lol

Fu Hua (Senti in Honkai terms) is the drummer; still a college student, shes a bit of an odd one out in the group, but was there since the beginning and has grown close with the rest. Has a bit of an attitude and says cocky things, but is much more timid at heart and acts a lot more calm with her friends at school.

A huge part of the inspiration for this story is a desire to try and depict the more ordinary aspects of urban life, adding flavor to mundane daily activities without relying on magic or scifi or high-octane action and drama. The villains of the story aren’t comic book supervillains, but rather its the various systems that the characters have to live within- corrupt governance, financial struggle, societal divide, etc.

I also really want to tell a story that emphasizes the queer experience. Not just the usual lovey-dovey girls-love stuff, but what life is actually like for real women in real sapphic relationships when living in the state that passed the infamous “Don’t Say Gay” bill IRL. As much as I love the canon KiaMei relationship in Honkai 3rd, i think it’s hella sanitized and can’t really convey the depth of the history and culture of the LGBTQ+ community. So I’m hoping to address this by placing their relationship in a specific real setting, one where LGBTQ+ folks (including myself) have to fight for our rights, acceptance, and representation.

As for musical inspiration I largely draw from a few big sources: one of the bigger inspirations is ASTROPHYSICS & MINTTT, as well as more recently Chappell Roan; genre influences include rock/punk, synth/EDM, and Sovietwave! This is both inspiration for their vibes and also for what type of music i imagine this band would play

The last image is a more suggestive one but ive hastily and sloppily censored it, so hopefully that is okay with y’all x-x

I rarely make spicier content like this, but having listened to The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess for the first time today and then listening to it 4 more times in a row, I couldn’t help but push the limits of what i usually do just that little bit, lol

[sheepstitches]

More facts n shit from DOKIx2 bc I love yapping about this gay ass hedgehog/aff /pos

- His favorite flowers aren't a specific breed(???) but he likes to lean towards yellow ones. Dandelions count too.

- If you, as a player, are naturally soft spoken, have the same beliefs about peace and harmony, or you're just really nice to him and play along, Doki will grow attached and eventually try his best to persuade you to "join him". If the player chooses to accept his invitation, they will naturally die of a heart attack. Sadly, Doki has never figured out how to put the player's soul into his game successfully, he's tried so many times. He always cries when this happens.

Read more has more info, it's got a lot of important stuff :)

- Doki keeps badniks in the game, but he replaces their weapons / drills or whatever with softer objects. For example, if it's that one ladybug badnik with the drill hands, he'd replace the drills with bouquets of flowers.

- Doki takes place in a rom hack of Sonic 2. <== I originally was gonna make it Sonic Rush Adventure, but then you'd have to use a DS? I grew up playing that lol

- Doki's Tails is going to be designed soon, but they're also someone who plays along with Doki. Tails originally disagreed with the idea of making the world "safer", but Doki brainwashed / manipulated him so much to the point where Tails is pretty much is held at gunpoint to play along. I'm thinking of naming him Flutter (haha, not intentional bc it's part of my name, it's bc he flies and that's what your heart does)

- Eggman isn't deleted exactly, he's just locked away in a hidden file. He does have a love themed design, he actually hates it and wished he can change it but he can't. He's not super evil like the normal Eggman, if anything he's probably the most mature and well out together person.

- Amy Rose does not exist in this world (duh/LH) but if she ever met Doki, Doki would be extremely confused about her. He'd probably think that this was him in a different form too.

- ^ hypothetically!!! If there was an Amy in his game, she'd be extremely violent and hateful towards him. Her hypothetical design might be made soon either by me or my friend. She'd also be locked up with Eggman.

- "How does he feel/react towards people who naturally skeptic of his motives and try to call him out on it?"

He'd try his best to explain that this is the best of both worlds, in game and irl. He'd try to explain that not every game during this time (2016) has to be violent or be enjoyable, and that we all need break from it all sometimes. He wants to break the cycle and try to have people explore and be inspired by it.

-If a character in the game is sceptical, they're banished. I would say he'd try to somehow brainwash them into understanding it, but if they continue to fight back, they become locked up like Eggman.

- oh yeah this takes place in 2016, where the majority of content is edgy or adult humor. (Pink guy, idubbz, MLG memes, etc).

- his player is a young adult named Tyler, he's not ... A great person. He actually was told to play the rom hack by his online group of friends. He gave the challenge to fuck around and try to mess with the coding as much as he can to try to change it back to the normal game.

- Doki later on in the game, because of Tyler not understanding his motives, Doki would brick his PC. Doki dislikes it when people try to alter his plans or act rude. Doki also hates violence towards others, and he rarely ever does anything like that, even to players. If Doki gets mad at you, the worse he can do is brick your PC, or lock out his game.

- there are multiple copies of his rom hack, it's actually downloadable. So....umm...HAHA every Doki is personalized OU NY GO D WHOAAA WHOOAAA HOLY SHIT WHAHATAAAAAA AHAAAAA!NNNNN!!!!.

[bluedalahorse]

I want to know your answers to all the questions in the secondary character ask game but let's start with 3, 5, 7 and 15! <3

Hi friend! thanks for sending me numbers.

3. Favorite platonic friendship

How do I narrow this down? Young Royals goes so hard when it comes to all the platonic friendships.

My answer might be Sara and Felice. I don’t know if I was as surprised by them being a supportive but complex teenage female friendship, because I feel like I encounter a lot of those in the books I read. I also feel like the show shows us their friendship when it’s just at its beginning—they have a lot more places for their friendship to go over time!

Simon-Rosh-Ayub’s trio energy is great too, and I love the complexity we got for August-Nils-Vincent by the end of the series. (If anyone has any recs for them that are friendship-focused, I’ll take them.)

5. Favorite familial relationship

This is another one that’s hard to narrow down, but by the end of season three it might just be Sara and her dad. Their relationship is fraught and complicated but I feel like I learned so much watching them interact.

7. Character you didn’t initially like/love but have now warmed up to

Vincent, maybe. He was just sort of a Mean Background Guy to me at first. As we started to uncover more about his internalized ableism I found him quite compelling, though. Like he’s still mean, but in an interesting way. I also admit I’m All In for characters who struggle with envy, and Vincent’s slowly emerging envy of August is like… art, actually.

I also love the extra bit of trivia about how Vincent may have been a rebellious skater kid in his pre-Hillerska days! More of that, please.

15. Adult character whose teenage backstory would make the best spin-off series

I know I clamor for a young Kristina series here like, ten times a week, so obviously that. I would want young Carl Johan to be a prominent character though, and for the show to focus on their relationship as cousins at 1980s Hillerska.

If we take inspiration from the IRL Swedish royal family, it’s possible that a law was passed around the time Kristina was born that allowed a girl to inherit the throne, so she’d be taking a throne that otherwise would have gone to Carl Johan. And I think that extra lever of tension between them—maybe something that’s unspoken, but always lurking in the background—could be pretty interesting.

That said, a series about Felice’s parents could be interesting, too. I’ve always imagined Felice’s mom as someone who was somewhat bullied within her friend group, so she’s pushing Felice to be popular and glamorous to avoid the fate she ended up in. And knowing what we know about Felice’s dad’s assimilation, I imagine you’d have a tragic series about two young people kind of erasing aspects of their identity to fit in.

Questions are at this link if anyone else wants to play along.

[andromedasummer]

despite it all f1 gave me some incredible friendships with so, so many people. it helped me meet people who have inspired me in so many different parts of my life, have made me comfortable in spaces where i thought it was impossible. ive met people so similar to me its like i was looking in a mirror and people so different to me that their own stories and conversations have opened me up into different subcultures and ways of life. Ive become connected to people all over the world from scotland to norway to india to saudi arabia and i love them all so dearly.

ive been able to explore sides of myself i felt frightened to look at and gained confidence i thought was previously unattainable. ive made connections i know will be lifelong. with people who see things in stores and go "hey, that reminds me of liv" and will buy and ship it over even when i live oceans away. who will come to my defense or to comfort me when im stressed.

and theres so many of them. im so used to one on one connections that this big group of people to flit around and chat with really does keep everything alive and ever flowing.

i grew up with internalized misogyny from my mothers experiences that were reinforced by bullying at a young age, because most every girl could tell there was something different about me (autism/transness) and decided it needed to be punished. and while i unlearned my negative feelings over my teen years i never found myself in large friendship groups with girls. in part because of this past bullying and my dysphoria and worry of being percieved as a girl instead of nonbinary i would shy away from large groups where i could make female friendships.

but the girls on the server are nice and kind and intelligent and fun. they respect me and look out for me in ways i never thought would be extended to me. they help me explore myself in their own presentation. they respect and love my identity and the identity of other trans people in the server. they make me feel safe and i know no matter what i will always have someone in there i can talk to.

its hard as a young adult to keep friendships alive. near impossible to maintain a friend group. ive seen other people my age in the same fandom claim the lifetime of discord friends is a mere 3 months, (which considering i have this discord friend group coming close to a year and a half and another soon to have its 4 year anniversary, is really not true) and as someone who isolated themselves completely for an entire year, i do get it. its hard not to fall back into those bad habits. but its cos of this server that i havent.

like the people in this server have been so good to me and good for me. my mental health is better, im working more on my physical health, im learning more and i feel motivated to actually do things!

and the best part is i know im gonna meet these people some day. people in the server are already meeting, are already irl friends! whether its small groups of us in our regions, like aus/nz, great britian, the america's. we're gonna meet each other! And we're gonna be friends no matter what we put our interests into after f1! we're bonded beyond a mutual interest and thats what makes our friendship so strong.

and i dont even care that this is huge and its gonna fill up peoples dash boards because its about my friends and i love talking about my friends!!! theyre all funny and kind and unique and clever and outspoken and i love them!

laura, zoe, ana, annika, allie, ana, miels, nat, kerry, tam, sophs, libs, anna, elisha, jane, nina, wid!!! theyre all my friends and i love them! i love them so so so much and im so happy i get to keep being friends with them!

[multimetaverse]

HSMTMTS 2x08 Review

Most Likely To was the best ep of S2 so far and ended one ship while launching another. Let’s dig in!

Gaston was super fun, a very nice showcase for both Larry and Matt. This is the kind of energy that early S2 was lacking. Also feels like the first ep where East High might actually have a shot at beating North High. Covid restrictions played a role but we really needed to see more rehearsal scenes and scenes of the wildcats just being theatre kids. This also may be one of the last times we see EJ perform as a student in the musical so I’m glad we got this.  

EJ has been criminally underused for most of S2, he’s marketed as part of the big 4 along with Nini, Ricky, and Gina and Matt Cornett’s name is listed 3rd in the credits but in the early eps of S2 you’d think he was guest star. Lately he’s started to become more important and tonight was an excellent showcase of why he’s such an interesting character. I’m not gonna check but this feels like it’s the most EJ screen time in a single ep that we’ve gotten all season long. 

Of course, the main reason for EJ’s increased screen time is because of Portwell. I’ve been neutral on them but tonight they really won me over’ their scenes were so sweet that they warmed even my cold black heart. Matt and Sofia are good friends irl and that shines through in their easy rapport and great chemistry. Gina snorting at EJ’s joke was cute and I loved the shot of Gina accidentally walking into the shot for EJ’s confessional. As an aside, they’ve been doing some fun stuff with the confessionals lately which helps add a bit of the metaness that helped make S1 so great.

The real big Portwell scene tonight was EJ and Gina talking on the couch at Ashlyn’s. Lot’s to love there. Gina’s speech to EJ about what she sees when she thinks of him was sweet and her saying that EJ tried to do the right thing and often failed but kept trying echoes what she said of herself during her confession to Ricky. Also when EJ asked Gina if she understood the feeling of having her life mapped out she replied, ‘’not really’’ which is almost certainly the inspiration for Gina asking a question to EJ and him responding ‘’not really’’ in their pre S2 face time call on the hsmtmts instagram. 

EJ is still wracked with guilt for the guy he used to be but Gina reminds him that he’s grown and is a good guy which leads to her slip up about her seeing him that way vs the rest of the gang hinting that she’s beginning to catch feelings for EJ. Which leads to EJ complimenting her and them having a moment that could well have led to a kiss if Ashlyn hadn’t come home. And they cap it off with Gina falling asleep and EJ covering her with his Duke sweater. 

It’s been nice not seeing Gina upset over Ricky these past two eps and it’s a damning indictment of the poor writing and pacing of S2 that her story in the first 6 eps can be summed up as Gina being upset over something Ricky said or did. Not only has Portwell allowed EJ to rise in prominence but also it’s allowed Gina to escape the rut her character was stuck in pining for Ricky. 

I hope after S2 is over that we get an interview where Tim explains how the Portwell plot came to be. The S1 finale set up some possible interest between them as did the pre S2 face time call but nothing came of it during the first 4 eps, they stood next to each other a lot but barely interacted otherwise. Notably in 2x01, which Tim himself wrote, EJ tries to grow a beard and tells Ashlyn that he says her as so young which is extremely jarring now that we know that EJ is crushing on Gina who is Ashlyn’s age. 

Was Tim not set on doing Portwell until he realized he needed to give Gina something else to do other than hopelessly pine for Ricky? Narratively, it made sense after Rini got together in S1 to put the other two Big 4 characters together in S2 but did Tim not want it to seem so obvious to the audience so he deliberately kept Portwell apart until 2x05 where EJ’s feelings make for a nice plot twist? Was he just reluctant to plug EJ back into the love square due to how much more complicated it would make things but later felt he had no other options? Or was it just plain old bad pacing and writing?

Of course, I wish that there wasn’t such a large age gap between Sofia and Matt but there are no Gina ships that avoid that problem, there’s also an age gap between Sofia and Joshua, just as there was between Olivia and Joshua and Matt in S1. Depending on when they film S3 there’s a good chance that most of it will be finished before Sofia even turns 18 which is deeply unfortunate. There’s a broader issue of teen girls being cast in mostly age appropriate roles while their male love interests are older adults and in particular it often affects female characters of colour. Netflix has a really bad track record with those kind of age gaps but Disney has problems too as we’ve seen on HSMTMTS and on GMW where by the end of S3 they had 18 year old Peyton Meyer as the boyfriend of 14 year old Rowan Blanchard’s character (not to mention canon Joshaya which didn’t have such a bad age gap between the actors but was problematic regarding the ages of the characters themselves).

A knock I’ve seen on Portwell is that EJ is just gonna leave for university next year but that was never gonna happen, Matt’s under the same 4 season contract as all the other mains and he’ll be sticking around in some capacity much like Sharpay ended up doing in the movies. It is true that EJ will probably have to move on at the end of S4 while Gina still has her senior year left but that will also happen with her and Ricky since he’ll be graduating at the end of S4. It was a big mistake to make EJ a senior but it also may end up being a big mistake to make Gina a sophomore. It would have been too messy to retcon EJ to be a junior but Tim probably should have taken the chance to retcon Gina into being a junior in S2.

That Rini breakup was so sad (missed opportunity for gotta go my own way). They managed to get in a Troyella reference with the treehouse. This was inevitable they just have not been communicating well though now that we know that Ricky thought Nini left YAC for him some of his desperation to spend as much time together as possible makes more sense. I think Rini is endgame if the series has 4 seasons but it wouldn't shock me if we never seem them dating again and they only get back together in the series finale. It also wouldn’t surprise me if Nini never dates anyone else for the remainder of the series or at least not seriously. 

We’re not even halfway through the series so it’s way too early to permanently slam the door on Rini though this time apart will probably help Joshua and Olivia move on from their own bitter break up before it bleeds too much into their performances. I do wonder if Tim really has a clue what he's gonna do with them for the remaining 24-28 eps of the series, assuming S3 and S4 have 10-12 eps each. 

Roman Banks killed If I Can’t Love Her and the montage of all the couples or ex couples was great.

It was nice to finally meets some parents other than the Bowen’s and Salazar-Roberts’. Kourtney’s mom was played by Dara’s actual mother and their dynamic was great as expected. It seems from their conversation that Kourtney's father is dead which I don’t believe has been mentioned before. Cash Caswell.... well it gets what the character is about across. He really looks and sounds like a rich Utah republican, I bet he knows Mitt Romney personally. I liked EJ going to tell his father that he’s not going to Duke and recognizing that he wants to build his own life on his own merits. 

We saw a bit of that S1 Miss Jenn energy tonight which was fun though I didn't like how curt she was with Seb nor did I like how rude Carlos was to Seb although we know that blows up in 2x10. 

Jazzara rising! I really liked how Jazzara and Portwell are sort of mirroring each other and since Mazzara knows about EJ’s feelings for Gina it wouldn’t shock me if helping EJ out is part of him showing a softer side in 2x12.

Of course Ashlyn is VP of the Nostradamus society. It's clear her family has some kooky new age beliefs (her parents are probably members of some naturopathic medicine group on Facebook that doubles as a gateway into Qanon)

It was nice to see Big Red being such a good friend to Ricky and the return of Ricky’s infamous pillow hugs. Lmao at Ashlyn just chilling while Big Red is comforting Ricky

Also Miss Jenn saying sexy and Big Red referring to pillow talk, the writers are adding a bit of spice when cooking up these scripts.

Looking Ahead: 

Looks like Gina may be wearing EJ's duke sweater next ep according to some posts I saw. Jack presumably is there to somehow help Gina decide what she wants with Ricky and EJ though him having wanderlust might also feed into Gina’s thoughts on settling down in SLC or moving with her mom around the country.

Let's see what mom of the year, Lynne Bowen, has up her sleeves. Ricky’s bedroom at her place in Chicago looks much nicer than the apartment Mike Bowen has so perhaps she makes a lot more money than he does. 

Not looking forward to the Zoom portions of the ep but I guess it was inevitable. 

There’s only two paths for Gina’s story to go in the remainder of this season; either she decides to move on from Ricky and give EJ a chance or she decides that Ricky is worth trying again and squelches her budding feelings for EJ. The former looks much more likely after tonight’s ep but either way it needs to be handled with care. Inevitably Gina and Ricky need to talk about what happened between them but if Tim really wants Ricky to continue being a viable love interest or even a good friend to Gina then he needs to really have Ricky apologize and show a thoughtful, kinder side of him that’s largely been missing this season. 

What I think Tim is doing is setting up Portwell getting together in 2x12 but Ricky pining over Gina until Portwell break up late S3 and Rina get together in the S3 finale before they break up later in S4 and Ricky gets back with Nini near the end of the series. If I had Tim’s ear I would tell him that he should pick which ship he wants to do, Rina or Portwell, but don’t do both. He wants canon Rina? Great then end Portwell before it starts and have Rina happen in S3 and introduce other obstacles to them getting together rather than having to damage EJ’s character and make him lose another girl he likes to Ricky. He wants canon Portwell? Great then have Gina and Ricky’s conversation be closure for the both of them and have Gina and EJ get together and break them up without Ricky being a cause of it or waiting in the wings to get with Gina soon afterwards. Doing both will be a disaster and I truly hope that Tim Federle carefully thinks over his mistakes in S2 and really plans out the remaining 2 seasons of the series while there’s still time to prevent things from going really off the rails like GMW and AM did thanks to the bad decisions of Michael Jacobs and Terri Minsky. 

Until next week wildcats. 

[sunshinewarrior11]

Sokka’s Real Name (Modern IRL AU) HC

Hello, so before we begin on the fun head canons, let’s talk a bit about the character and the culture. In this specific AU, Sokka and his family is based on the Inupiaq people who live in North-most modern day Alaska. This group of people have beautiful and ancient name traditions which span centuries. In the tradition, names tend to be genderless, as you are often named after someone in the family who just died before you. And it can be a term of endearment to then be called with the person who passed kinship term. Say for example (this is not an Inupiaq name btw) your grandfather was named John and he died right before you were born, so now you are named John. Your family and community may call you aapa (father/grandfather in Inupiat) as a term of endearment. This is because you are the atiq (Inupiat concept of ‘namesake’) of someone in the community who was referred to as this. Therefore, the name you are given is of high significance because you are the continuing spirit of your ancestor. Now, of course this changes after contact with Christian missionaries and the wide spread conversion to Christianity. Which means in modern day Inupiaq communities, people tend to have Biblical or Christian names, as well as like with any modern community, there will be names ‘just cause’. Therefore for this headcanon, Katara’s name has been left as it is, as it is a real name with Arabic/Greek origins. However, Sokka’s name is changed because ‘sokka’ (or more correctly ‘sou ka’ そう か and pronounced SO-ka -- bc Sokka is not only a misspelled but mispronounced too) is an informal way in Japanese to say ‘really/is that so?’, ‘I see’ or ‘Eureka!’. (The formal form being Sou Desu Ka そうですか). Obviously, Bryke chose that on purpose because Sokka is meant to be ‘Eureka! Guy’. So what is the proposed modern irl name for Sokka?

Leonard

A bit about the name, Leonard is a common European name with variations between languages. This is the English variation. It is also the name of two famous Catholic saints. Therefore, making it a Christian name. And lastly, it is dorky af, which suits Sokka well. Now, onto the headcanons:

-  young like 6 y/o him hated it bc it was dorky but Kya was like ‘hey, u r my little Leonardo Da Vinci’ which perked him right up bc baby inventor though that’s cool. he also loved knowing that like Da Vinci, he struggled to finish his projects. he was a little annoyed he was not named Leonardo bc he thought that was a cuter name, therefore Kya would always call him ‘Leonardo’. And did he obsess a little over Da Vinci? The scientist artist? Yes.

- he also became obsessed with Leo from Ninja Turtles and tried insisting to be called Leo bc of that (it worked and that’s mostly what he always went by)

- only Gran Gran calls him Leonard, because ‘his name is perfectly good as it is’

- 11-13 y/o Sokka got obsessed w/ Star Trek and OMG LEONARD NEMOY! (this obsession never ended; trekkie for life)

- freshman at uni Sokka tried making call me Len, like John Lennon bc he learned guitar and thought that was a good pick up line (it wasn’t)   

- the only time he calls himself Lenny is when he’s comparing himself to Lenin bc he’s a baby socialist in university and an adult socialist later on lmao     

- his iconic hair cut is inspired by Leo Di Caprio bc he also thought this was a good pick up trick (I mean eh it worked?) 

- Sokka got his nickname ‘Sokka’ while he was on a year abroad (that turned into years lmao) in Japan came from a late night in the labs when he got a Eureka moment that saved the group project and thus everyone started calling him Sokka and eh it stuck and he likes it  

- When Sokka and Suki were dating, he’d always make Jack and Rose jokes because in general he’d compare himself to Leo Di Caprio as pick up lines. 

 - it was weird for Zuko to go home w/ Sokka and just hear him called Leo/Leonard all the time out of nowhere bc most their friends just call him Sokka, even though he knows that’s his name and even calls him Leo himself

This list and concept was created between myself and @mostly-mundane-atla Please check out their page for more information about Inupiaq culture which they lovingly share. They also have a ko-fi, so yeah. Also thank you to @the-hot-zone for giving me more insight into the Japanese origins of そうですか .

[ultravioart]

"It's your interpretation"-- no it's canon lore. Not fanon, not my headcanons. Canon lore. My issues are with the writers for canon lore who wrote this canon.

Innocent child hood crushes ARE totally fine-- yes. I agree. In fact, Gravity Falls actually handles this kinda well imo LOL because they don't ship it in the end. Wendy and Dipper have a down to earth convo, Wendy points out she is way to old for him / he is way to young for her, and Dipper moves on from the unhealthy attempt, they even remain friends, Wendy and Dipper do not get together in the end.

No where am I asking for "perfectly healthy" relationships in media, either...?

Seriously no offense but nuance seems to be missing in this convo. Throw out any extremist pro/anti shipping discourse here, because I am not talking about extremeist idiotic takes on if someone should "burn in hell" or "be worshipped 5ever" for even agknowledging dark content subjects exist, I am talking about ip ethics in how corporations represent healthy LGBT+ relationships.

Relationships in media NEED to vary from healthy all the way to unhealthy because it is necessary to show what IS and is NOT healthy behavior in stories. Strong stories can be told by showing that somethings ARE unhealthy.

But professional media should NEVER be authentically advocating that fundamentally unhealthy dynamics are somehow healthy or "positive representation" --especially for LGBT+ relationships. It's very insulting.

Basically my motto: You don't kick actual puppies to show audiences puppy kicking is bad. You ALSO don't unironically endorse puppy kicking as good/normal to the public. Simple concept. Replace my dramatic example with any other bad thing and you get my point.

ANYWAYS. to the actual canon that shows the mentioned unhealthy dynamic between Angela and Fareeha:

CANON:

Angela was an orphan, was a prodigy, advanced fast in school, and was close with the Lindholms growing up. So close that at 14 when she was studying, she visited Torb in the hospital after he lost his arm.

Then there is this picture where Fareeha is 12 and Angela is 17.

For the group photo: Mercy was basically an intern at the time, and a uni student, at around 17 during that picture. In canon Mercy would visit the Lindholms often as they were close, and Torb was with OW.

Fareeha was said to grow up around Overwatch agents which inspired Fareeha to train to join OW, but Ana steered Fareeha away from joining, trying to protect her daughter from the dangerous life of an agent/hero (the darker aspects like murder, violence, etc).

Direct Quote from wiki about Pharah's lore:

" By her teenage years, she had met (and was familial with) Angela Zeigler and [Redacted]. Notably, she was apparently aware of his real name of "Cole Cassidy." "

[Redacted] is Cole's Blackwatch alias.

Also, Pharah got her eye tattoo sometime as an adult--any picture with Pharah having an eye tattoo can be considered as depicting adult Pharah.

That should answer the questions, but for explaining my logic with anything else not directly said in canon you can read below:

Implication: (akin to: devs say 1 + 1. So we can say 1 +1 = 2. More or less understanding timelines, etc.)

This isn't irl, so showing the group pic with Mercy in the current OW webpage for Pharah's bio (the images were created art to tell a story, not happenstance) and other pics from OW comics indicates Pharah met the overwatch agents in those pictures more than once or twice--more like pretty often-- throughout her childhood. Even if you don't agree, canonically Angela was around Overwatch/OW members around the same time period that Fareeha was surrounded by Overwatch/OW members growing up. They canonically where familiar with eachother in Fareeha's teens.

Therefore, 1 +1 = 2, Mercy knew Fareeha throughout the years as Fareeha grew up--12(picture) to adulthood, and Fareeha was Ana's daughter for goodness sake--Ana was a prominent member, so of course Angela would know Fareeha. The dynamic was that Fareeha was a growing kid/teen and Captain's daughter who was encouraged by Ana against following the path of wartime (also litterally Angela's motto of anti-war), and Angela was an adult (soon to graduate) doctor who met often with the Lindholms and OW team during the time Fareeha was growing up.

Speculation: (akin to: devs say 1 + X = 2, the answer to X could be 1 based on trends in the story, or maybe not.)

We don't know when Fareeha joined the army, but based on the tensions between Fareeha and Ana, Fareeha most likely joined ASAP, and you can join the Egyptian army starting at 18.

(I am unsure if we have a proper date for when Ana faked her death, because anytime after Ana faked her death, Fareeha got her eye tatoo + joined the army--aka definitely adult by then).

Before Fareeha left for the army, Fareeha /most likely/ did not spend more time with Angela as an adult than when she spent time with Angela as a child. Therefore, Angela would /probably/ know Fareeha firstly and mostly as a growing kid/youth rather than an equal. And even if she did know Fareeha more as an adult, she still watched Fareeha grow up through the years. Legit the creepy 17 to 23 situation that was mentioned before as wack happens if Angela knew Fareeha more as an adult than child during this time period.

Back to actual canon: After Fareeha grew up and joined the army, there is the gap in time when Angela and Fareeha did not keep in contact. Then sometime later they met up again when they were older.

TDLR; ALL Speculation aside, reading current canon, it means that Fareeha grew up around Overwatch. Angela was around Overwatch when Fareeha was growing up. In Fareeha's teens, Fareeha was canonly familiar with Angela. They knew eachother (Angela as an adult) when Fareeha was growing up 13 to adulthood. And lastly, Angela and Cole are the same age.

The weird power dynamic age gap thing is there in canon! It's not interpretation, nor am I saying the ship concept is ""irredeemable"", I am only pointing out this isn't a healthy dynamic in current canon, because ow writers just... CHOSE that. For some reason.

I am also saying (seperate statement) OW calling unhealthy dynamics healthy is a shitty move, epecially when it's about lesbian representation DURING PRIDE MONTH of all times. And I think it is safe to say we (LGBT+ community) do not want problematic content touted as "positive rep" by money gobbling corperations because that only harms us in the long run. A big fuck off to Blizzard, basically. They need to retcon story aspects otherwise its canonically unhealthy dynamics for Mercy x Pharah, and I don't want that crap. Pharah deserves healthy dynamics, dammit. Mercy deserves better treatment, too.

Am I missing something because Mercy was an older teen when she met kid Fareeha?? Cole and Angela are THE SAME AGE.

This is the main reason Pharah x Mercy NEVER sat right with me, even back in ow1, bc the two met/knew eachother when Pharah was just a kid(12) and Mercy was nearly an adult(17). And now official media is making it out like modern day ow2 Pharah has a thing for/with Mercy? Uh????

Plus they had Baptiste mistake Pharah and Cole as being together for NO needed reason (not a respectful way to treat found family sibs in writting, nor a lesbian character, plus the first meeting age gap between Cole and Fareeha is the same gap as Fareeha and Angela=gross), this set up was done ONLY to make space for Fareeha to say "No, definitely not. Cole and I have known eachother for a long time. He's like a brother to me. Besides, I am a lesbian."

...And not to be picky but the "I am a lesbian" here reads like "I am a gay" which uh... awkward/dry phrasing strikes yet again in ow short stories, it seems.

Congrats to the Bi Baptist and Lesbian Pharah confirmations, but ong if OW is actually sticking to this gross age gap first meeting script for Fareeha and Angela that is a HELL NO from me. We do NOT want problematic aspects in Lesbian/WLW/Saphic rep, thanks.

[jcmorrigan]

Do you support anti-harassment and pro-shipping?

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: This is an issue I’ve been monitoring and grappling with for a long time, and I feel like while my core philosophy has been the same for a while now, the nuances I’ve held shift every so often. I don’t identify as an anti. I just don’t. I think shipping things - be it incest, adult/minor, or one of the many flavors of abusive - is an ENTIRELY separate issue from wanting to do that IRL. I think sometimes people just want to write taboo topics for various reasons. Because the topics themselves are taboo and that’s interesting, because they offer methods of coping, even because some people are kinda into projecting upon the person on the losing end of the power dynamic and being dominated and kicked around, since that’s not something you should really chase in real life (unless it’s during a roleplay with a network of safewords).

There are many ships I think are gross, but I don’t want people to stop shipping them because I don’t like them. I don’t like ships that involve anyone under 13 with anyone over 18. I don’t like ships that involve anyone under 18 with anyone over 30. (Aging up is a whole different matter; if you write the younger character older and legitimately have them behave the way you think they would as an adult, it’s all good.) I REALLY don’t like ships where a character is either confirmed homosexual or only shown onscreen to be attracted to the same gender in a big-deal reveal sort of way (if the character has crushes on many genders or the creator uses Word of God to say they’re bi/pan, it’s fine) and the ship involves putting them with someone of the opposite gender (shipping them with enbies is fine). And no, I don’t think it’s a double standard that I sometimes like to do same-sex ships for characters who are coded very very straight. But this is all to do with my tastes and beliefs, not with what I think the rest of you all should do. If you like something that falls in my personal no-no category, then go ahead and do it. I’ll decide how much I want to interact with you, and that says more about our potential chemistry as a unit than it does about you as a person. And if you have boundaries yourself - if age-gap ships skeeve you out - then that doesn’t make you a bad person or even an anti! Just block as needed, talk to friends if you feel betrayed by them, and recognize what it is you don’t like and that you don’t have to like it.

Selfshipping? Do what you want. Again, I might personally have reservations about shipping with somebody too young (I actually perceived my own main f/o as in his twenties when I first watched his source, then saw Word of God say he was NINETEEN actually, even though that invalidates many many jokes about how he’s bad at adulting, so I just said “fuck it” and he’s at least 24 to me because that makes more sense and is more of my comfort zone). But what I like shouldn’t dictate what YOU do. I might give you a little side-eye if you’re shipping with somebody young, but I don’t know your reasons for doing so and I don’t have the right to judge. I might distance myself from certain situations if I’m feeling skeeved out. Or I might not feel skeeved out depending on how it’s handled. I also again would raise a brow if you’re selfshipping with an opposite-gender gay character, but same principle: you have your reasons, you shouldn’t stop because some rando (me) has an issue with your ship, and if I have a problem with how you handle it, I’ll just peace out on my end and not make a deal out of it.

A lot of this comes from the fact that I have mega OCD and I already try to moralize everything I do and hyper-analyze my choices to make sure I am being a Good Person. If I try to follow the “rules” to make my ships palatable to everyone, then I start worrying that any deviation makes me unforgivable. The vast majority of ships in my deck are squeaky-clean and have no problems, but sometimes I’ll get, like...Ventus/Papyrus, where Ven is 15, and Papyrus is in age limbo but I always thought he was at least 18, and then I don’t want to spiral into a moral crisis because I really think it would be cute to put the anime boy with the skeleton and I think they’re both asexual anyway. Or when I aged up Zevon from Descendants in order to make him make more sense as Yzma’s son, and then I had to give him a ship with an adult and I found one I really like (Kamdor from Power Rangers). And this is not even scratching the very complex issue of “The writers of this piece of fiction were ACTUALLY horny for incest and I can see the subtext for it and now I gotta figure out what to do with this mess because I like the series and I do want the characters to have partners who will treat them right.”

That said...up until recently, I looked up to the more extreme proship community, even so far as to kinda be more of an “anti-anti.” But as time went on, that...didn’t seem to fit. I’ve unfollowed a few of those blogs now because first of all, proshipping as a “political party” seems to come with some things I don’t believe in, such as forming a parasocial relationship with AO3 or saying that freedom of fans to ship what they want means the creators of mainstream media should be allowed to portray whatever they want and that being “critical of media you consume” is an automatic dogwhistle for bullies. More importantly: I have at least one friend who I know leans more anti, and I value her a lot and I think it’s valid for her to have her boundaries. After a while, the things that anti-antis did to protect themselves from bullying started to feel a little bit like bullying right back. I can’t really call myself a traditional proshipper anymore, even though I’m definitely not an anti. But I don’t want to be an “anti-anti” either. Because actually, I USED to be an anti on a different social media platform long before Tumblr, and though I can’t tell you exactly why I was that way, I can understand what it’s like to feel that strongly about things that gross you out and want to get them out of your face. I don’t want to say I’m against a whole bunch of people who are probably as varied in intensity as proshippers are.

At the end of the day, what I want is for us all to CHILL OUT. Can we please, PLEASE just focus on having fun in whatever way that comes - problematic ships or no - so long as people IRL aren’t getting hurt? Can we respect that there are probably a LOT of people with OCD on social media who spiral easily if shamed too much (which is probably how the anti movement rose in the first place - I’m sure my anti phase was fueled by my secular scrupulosity)? Can we not assume that people who ship weird age gaps are Actual Pedophiles, which is an entirely separate issue? (Listen...I grew up in the Age of AkuRoku. I hated AkuRoku. But if all the AkuRoku shippers turned out to be pedos, well, the news sure didn’t cover it. I’m saying the majority of them didn’t. And it’s been a decade.) Can we not spread the fear of being cancelled or that having a certain fictional preference will ruin a budding friendship? Can we communicate with one another in private if a friend says or does something that makes you uncomfortable, such as shipping something that makes you question their moral stance? Can actual legitimate creators of media not take sides in the goddamn pro/anti war, thereby making groups of their fans feel alienated from being welcomed by the source? Can we just have fun PLEASE?

Also, just...stop fighting about Reylo. That’s the dumbest thing to fight over and we managed to somehow get the actual SW crew in on that dumbass fight. Some people like Reylo and some people hate Reylo and THAT’S IT. WE’RE DONE HERE.

It sure says something that I worry, before hitting the Post button, that this might ruin some of the relationships I have or inspire a mass exodus of the followers whose names I come to like seeing in my notifications. But it’s ultimately better for all of us if I’m honest.

[aimmyarrowshigh]

@reliand @marysuewhipple -- I was midway through this response when you blocked, but let’s just bear this out after all, because you genuinely an actually seem to be confused on some of your canon and you might, like, want to know, for real, in a not-mean way.

Wow, you really bought into your own fanon and forgot that it literally is FANon, didn’t you.

No one knows what happened after Luke was knocked unconscious except for Kylo and the other students that left with him (presumably who became the Knights of Ren).

We literally see what happened in TFA. Remember? Kylo, and his knights, surrounded by the dead bodies of the other students in the mud. Kylo kills one of them. We saw that happen. We watched him kill them. That was on screen. That was canon.

I mean, you act like he is just plain evil and started training with Luke as an adult[.]

I can’t speak for Dan @raptorific​, but I have never said that Ben’s training STARTED as an adult -- just that his decision to end his training with Luke and his choice to become Kylo Ren happened as an adult. He started training with Luke at ten, as far as canon has said, but canon has also presented two different timelines for Ben’s training with the Jedi because of the changes made to canon between TFA and TLJ.

Granted: in the Road To TFA materials, Ben “Jedi Killer” Solo became Kylo Ren at age 15; in the Road To TLJ materials, starting with Bloodline, this was changed to age 23 -- whether this change is because of actual canon-bearing narrative choices or just because Adam can’t play 15 because he’s 34, IDK, and it ultimately doesn’t matter.

The current canonical age that Ben Solo slaughtered all of his classmates except any who became the KoR -- and we only know for sure that they lived long enough to assist in the massacre, because we’ve only seen them in that singular flashback -- is 23. An adult.

An adult man who man the choice to kill all of his classmates.

That is what is canon.

First, Ben has had Snoke preying on him since he was in his mother’s womb. Keeping him up for days on end as a toddler, and getting into his head nonstop. Snoke has been grooming this kid from day one…

You guys straight-up invented this.

It is not even ALLUDED TO in any actual canon materials. Leia senses the Dark side of the Force while she’s pregnant, but guess what? EVERY Force-sensitive person is equally affected by the Dark side and the Light side. Their choices are what “choose their side.”

She does not sense Snoke, at least as far as any current canon has said, and Pablo Hidalgo -- I know you guys hate him, but he’s still the guardian of the SW bible -- has said that it has not been stated, or alluded, in canon. Will it turn out to be true? Maybe. It’s certainly a popular enough fanon that I could see LF throwing up their hands and surrendering to it.

But guess what else?

Even if Snoke were grooming Ben from the day Han’s sperm met Leia’s egg, it would not excuse Ben’s adult, agential choices.

Actual canon, in the films -- because Kylo and Ben have not appeared older than toddler-age in real-time in the extended canon materials yet -- makes it explicit that Kylo Ren’s actions are his own. He has a choice every time.

At Tuanul, Phasma asks him what to do with/to the villagers. It is Kylo’s directive to kill them all. Not Phasm’as. Not Snoke’s.

When Kylo Ren attacks and kidnaps Rey, he says -- in a defense TO SNOKE, so it clearly was NOT Snoke’s choice -- that it was his choice to take The Girl because she had seen the map rather than continue to search for The Droid. He’s chastised for this choice, sure. But he still made it.

When Kylo Ren murders Han, it is because Han is giving him the option to come home and come back to the Light. Kylo Ren does not want to be saved. He does not want to be loved. He was given the challenge by Snoke to kill Han because Ben Solo’s “greatest test” would be to kill the father he had loved and who loved him -- arguably, with that language, the person Ben Solo had loved most in the world.

Kylo Ren makes the choice to kill Ben Solo once and for all by choosing to reject Han’s offer of continuing love, welcome, belonging, and Light. The choice to remain Kylo Ren, NOT Ben Solo, was 100% Kylo’s agential choice. Snoke needed him to make that choice of his own free will for the Dark side to actually embrace it. He wasn’t controlling Kylo’s hands.

He wasn’t some kind of Kilgrave, Imperius Curse mind-controller. He was your average, run of the mill charismatic sociopath who radicalizes sensitive, smart, gifted, young men from loving families every goddamn day.

That is the metaphor that JJA set up. On purpose. As a writer, who is not an idiot, who wrote things on purpose in the script that he wrote with very unsubtle metaphors that he made on purpose.

The SW villains have always been mirrors of political and social threats in the era of their trilogy’s writing. The OT cast the Empire visually as Nazis, and included the Holocaust-analog event of the genocide of Alderaan, but the villain Lucas was critiquing, particularly through ESB and ROTJ, was the U.S.’ military-industrial complex and the war on Vietnam. (“Back in a 1973 note on “Star Wars,” Lucas made clear which side he was rooting for in the Vietnam War: 'A large technological empire going after a small group of freedom fighters.’”) In 1981, Lucas literally said in a press conference that Palpatine was based on Nixon; he’s held since that his inspiration for the series was less A Space Opera than “How do democracies turn into dictatorships?” Discussion of exactly how racist it is that he considers the ewoks to be based on the Viet Cong is for a totally other post...

This was also super unsubtle if slightly contemporized with the PT, when Palpatine became less Nixon and more Bush, working to create a global economic crisis that would precipitate a war against his own long-hated enemies. At the same time, it’s been pretty widely believed that part of what muddles the PT’s storytelling is Lucas’ dual focus on criticizing the Catholic church, who at the time that the PT was being written and filmed -- late ‘90s through mid-2000s -- was finally being publicly held to account for centuries of corruption and abuse that had been downplayed as just being part of the status quo because of the Church’s obsession with ritual and dogma. While a worthy thing to criticize, trying to go for moral ambiguity and “both sides are bad from a certain point of view” while also trying to adhere to Campbell’s schema while ALSO trying to make people sympathize for a character that the entire audience already knew grows up to be a mass-murdering cyborg was... a lot to tackle. Lucas arguably failed a lot of his intentions with his execution in the PT, but he still HAD intentions, and again: they weren’t subtle. ROTS literally ends with Anakin cribbing one of Bush’s jingoistic declarations post-9/11: “You’re either with me, or you’re my enemy.” In some ways, the most successful criticism Lucas made through the PT was that this kind of dichotomous sociopolitical dialogue eventually causes you to get three of your limbs chopped off as you backflip into lava to your own downfall -- and yet, it doesn’t cause you to die -- it just makes you come back stronger and angrier than before. Which leads us to the ST.

Although Lucas has nothing to do with the ST, it’s honestly rude to the Storygroup, JJ, Kasdan, and even RiJo to pretend like it isn’t following the same edict to use the fantastical setting of a Galaxy Far Far Away to level harsh, and super overt, criticism of the sociopolitical power structures of the real world contemporaneous to the trilogy’s release.

Snoke -- the gold bathrobe-wearing charismatic fascist megalomaniac who smooth-talked his way into a figurehead position of power despite functionally having others do all of the actual work of both “governance” and violence.

Hux -- the far-right neo-Conservative political schemer who actually WAS raised from bith to idealize the explicit, intentional SW-universe analog for Nazism and thus became a powerful and Dapper Haired neo-Nazi leader.

And Kylo Ren, the violent angry entitled man who sees the kind of power his life position (wealthy, male, Force-sensitive AKA educated and gifted) would have garnered in previous generations but doesn’t today in a Star Wars Analog For Democratic And Increasingly Diverse Landscape*) and is enraged by it, so thus turns to the rhetoric of the megalomaniac and the Neo-Nazi to find afocus for that anger beyond, idk, trying to fucking just be better.

SUPER UNSUBTLE METAPHORS FOR THE POLITICS OF MODERN AMERICA.

* See: Bloodline, and the differences in policy/goals of the Centrists and the Populists; as the Populists have more Senatorial power at the time directly preceding the destruction of Luke’s school and the chief schism between them and the Centrists is that the Populists believe in giving more planets and more sentient species equal rights to vote and self-determine governance, and the Centrists -- many of whom are secretly funding the First Order, not unlike how many Republican senators and congressmen IRL have turned out to have very strong ties to the Klan, the NRA, the TWP, the Proud Boys, various neo-Nazi groups, and alt-right supremacist organizations and militias, fwiw.

THIS PARALLEL WAS NOT AN ACCIDENT.

All of the insistence y’all make to it being Just A Kids’ Movie This Shit Is Just ~Ess Jaw Dubbayoo~ Reaching!!!! is a) something you have to know, truly, is just borne of wanting to stan for Kylo, and honestly, it’d be less irksome if you just... stanned for him without trying to rewrite canon and insult everyone else? and b) Insulting, both to fellow fans and to the SWST writers.

While TFA was written long before The Election, it was still written within the modern sociopolitical landscape. Trump already was out there leading the idiot Birther movement. Sarah Palin was a thing. Alex Jones and Glenn Beck and Fox & Friends had 24/7 airtime. Antisemitic hate crimes were on a steep rise both in America and overseas, and homophobic and Islamophobic hate crimes were still happening far, far too regularly. Police brutality and the unlawful extrajudicial lynchings of Black men and boys by Klan-affiliated police officers and unjust Thin Blue Line that protected their murderers was already (finally) a daily headline. Standoffs between the government and far-right fringe militia groups lasted months; conflicts between armed militias and civilians over access to statehouses and public spaces was on the rise. Mass shootings by angry disaffected young white men were happening every fucking day. Gam/e/r/g/ate was a thing, exposing the depths to which angry entitled young men could sink if they felt like their stranglehold on All Media Things was threatened. The writing for 2016 was on the wall long before the campaigns on either side officially began.

And you know who probably was not an unaware dumdum just scootin’ along without a clue of what was in the air?

Two Jewish men, one of whom was the son of a man who won two Emmys for a docudrama about the Nuremberg trials -- gee, wonder where JJ came up with the imagery for Hux’s Hosnian rally on Starkiller, though? -- and the other of whom does interviews of Holocaust survivors for the HMH.

Denying that is both to assert that JJA/Kasdan don’t have the right, as Jewish writers, to react to the world authentically, and to assume that they are too stupid to know what they wrote. You gotta stop pretending like everyone who fucking sees what they wrote into the ST on fucking purpose is either lying or crazy. Seriously. Stop it.

~*Antis*~ don’t en-masse see these parallels and metaphors just because wE tHiNk EvErYoNe We DoN’t LiKe iS A NaZi!!! It’s because that’s what they’re fucking overtly intended to be.

And guess what? Hitler was in the ear of the Hitler Youth from infancy, too.

It 0% absolves anything they fucking did.

SW is not subtle. The only thing LESS subtle than SW is Harry Potter, and they’re both the same fucking story. With the same fucking villains. The difference is that JKR is white and goyishe and you can tell. (As you can, tbh, in TLJ being written by RiJo. RiJo goyishe as hell and it, uh, shows. A lot.)

For all of RiJo’s faults and lazy writing, he ultimately did not undo the metaphors that JJ/Kasdan set up. He handled it in maybe the most circuitous and sloppily written way possible, but honestly, the longer since TLJ came out, the more it becomes clearer that RiJo really wasn’t trying to make Kylo seem heroic, or trying to subvert TFA’s storyline insofar as giving Kylo depth that belied his character’s setup. He was showing the audience just how easy it is to be hooked into a narrative like the one that suckered in Ben Solo, and that he tries to use to sucker in Rey -- and nearly succeeds.

In TFA, it couldn’t have been more overt if he were straight-up just constantly watching snuff film porn or something, but in TLJ, Rian’s cues -- which I STILL will always maintain are poorly executed -- are less “out on the street in Charleston with a tiki torch in hand” than “on Twitter sealioning female journalists until they delete their account, and then retreating back into anonymity on /pol.” It’s still Kylo Ren as the toxic masculine underbelly of rage, violence, and entitlement that is part of the current sociopolitical nightmare hole, even though he’s actively trying to seem like an empathetic #normie. Every single frame of Kylo Ren in TLJ, especially after Snoke makes him remove his helmet, is in service to the Dark and to all of the real-world metaphors of toxic masculine rage that Kylo represents.

Because when given the choice between being free and usurping Snoke’s power, Kylo chose to the power. That is Dark.

It isn’t even Dark inherently because he First Order are an explicit Neo-Nazi parallel, although they are -- and FWIW you don’t get to be antisemitic by rejecting JJ Abrams’ and Lawrence Kasdan’s right, as Jewish artists, to create fantastical metaphors for their Jewish pain and name them as such [“The original name for the First Order was the Neo-Empire,” etc.] in the name of ~protecting Jewish feelings~ when the entire schema was created by Jews and the fact that y’all are excited to claim that theyre are “six Jewish reylos” is... just yikes; I gotta say, as a Jewish ~anti~, there are more than six of us -- it’s Dark because it is the self-serving choice at the expense of the Galaxy.

And, truly, at the expense of what Ben Solo would have known was moral and ethical. Ben Solo was raised by Han and Leia. He was educated by Luke. He grew up with three parental/guardian figures, plus Uncle Lando and Uncle Chewie, who ADORED him and doted on him. He canonically had happiness and friendship in his childhood (per Bloodline). He isn’t a sociopath devoid of empathy; I’ll give you that, because it’s true. He knows exactly how much he is hurting people, both emotionally and physically, with his actions. And he chooses those actions anyway, because they further his goal of becoming the literal Master of the Universe.

Kylo Ren considers his own desires to be of higher value and priority than the well-being of the Galaxy or his own sense of morals/ethics, and that is a Dark choice. (See also: Anakin killing Mace Windu.)

(Cue Palps cackling about “POWAAAAA!”)

Being brainwashed by a fascist lunatic to murder for them does not absolve you from that murder.

Are you out campaigning for the release of Manson’s girls, too? Because they were brainwashed. Psychologically, medically, truly brainwashed to the point where they were unable to perceive the fact that Manson’s beliefs and orders were objectively fucking batshit and evil. But they still were responsible for their actions. They committed the murders. They are in prison for them because of the choices they made.

How about Allison Mack sex trafficking and branding women for NXIVM? Is she an innocent lamb-flower who could not possibly have made any other choices because her charismatic leader was in her ear for years and years? I’m sure that in her trial, her lawyers will make the same exact arguments about her relationship with Renier than y’all make about Kylo and Snoke, but uh, it ultimately doesn’t fucking matter. Allison Mack is the one who slowly and torturously branded her victims with a goddamn laser-pointer. That was her choice. That was her action. She will be held accountable for her choice.

...and his parents didn’t know what to do with him. They have a super force sensitive child, who has a presence constantly poking at him, and he’s highly emotional…

This just literally isn’t canon.

All of Ben Solo as a child’s appearances in canon have shown him as a happy, playful, mischievous child who knows that he is loved and is responsibe to the emotional cues of his parents and others. He is exactly as upset by things that would upset any child as... any other child. He doesn’t have a Presence Constantly Poking At Him in canon. You guys invented that, and it isn’t backed up by his largest pre-Kylo canon appearance, which is Last Shot. Ben, in Last Shot, is loved and knows it, and he loves back. He is happy. He is a normal, good-natured child. He babbles, he plays, he cuddles, he goes outside and gets muddy with his friends and beams and laughs. He has toys and watches cartoons.

He cries a) when he gets woken up, which is when all babies cry and frankly everyone else wants to cry when they get woken up lbr; b) when he doesn’t get to do exactly what he wants to do, and, tbh, it could be interpreted as foreshadowing of the way that Kylo Ren uses the display of emotion to manipulate people into letting him do what he wants in both TFA and TLJ. Or it could just be him being, you know, a normal toddler.

I will give you: he IS highly Force-sensitive. SO IS LEIA. Leia is the granddaughter of the Living Force for fuck’s assing sake. You really think that Luke and Leia are LESS Force-sensitive than Ben??? Being highly Force-sensitive doesn’t, and literally in canon did not, turn Ben into a hyperemotive mess as a child. He’s just, you know, two years old.

“But Kylo Ren is hyperemotional, so what happened HUH!?” you cry.

Well -- for one, the main emotion that he canonically shows as Kylo Ren is anger. He is an angry man, and he acts like an angry man, because he is in a social environment -- by his own choice as a 23-year-old thru 30-year-old -- that encourages violent expressions of male anger. He punches walls. He chokes subordinates. He destroys property. He yells at people. He SCREAMS at people. He is angry, because he feels entitled to more than he has, always more, more power, more respect, more control over others, and he has been encouraged to believe that acting on that anger will help him get what he feels he is owed.

That ain’t special. And it’s hardly even a scifi metaphor. That’s just how violent, angry men ARE.

“But he cries so much!” He cries once in the movies. Once when he is about to kill the father he still loves, because he craves the power he sees as his due more than he cares about anything or anyone.

The other time that it looks as though he might cry -- in the elevator after Snoke’s mocking and the Force lightning -- he instead does what violent, angry men DO when they live in a culture or subculture that glorifies male violence and disrespects all other emotions: subverts actual emotional processing or catharsis by turning it into an act of violence. He destroys his mask, the symbol of his obeisance to Snoke. RiJo even confirmed that was the moment he started to plan Snoke’s murder more concretely. His reaction to feeling sadness, or rejection, or guilt, or WHATEVER, in the face of his killing Han not actually getting Snoke to give him more control and power and leadership, was to PLAN A MURDER.

(AKA: It wasn’t to save Rey; Rey was only there because, using Snoke’s playbook of manipulation, Kylo got her to believe what he wanted her to believe and come to the First Order because Kylo couldn’t kill Snoke alone, and Snoke had to die for Kylo to get what he wanted: ULTIMAAAATE POWWWWAAAA.)

(And FWIW, I’m not saying Snoke’s murder was unwarranted, I’m just saying that it was borne of the same exact cocktail of toxic hypermasculinity that caused Ben “Jedi Killer” Solo to kill Luke’s students and flee to Snoke in the first place. Kylo Ren’s sole motivation, in canon, is the pursuit of total power over others, which he feels is his due because he happened to be born to the family he was and with the genetic makeup [Force sensitivity] that he has.)

[B]ut his parents are also war heroes and they’re trying to build a government and just rebuild in general after a war, so they can’t be there for their son. They’re not the best parents, okay. They leave him in the care of a kitchen droid instead of one suited for care giving. (Also, this kitchen droid tries to murder him as a toddler due to a…let’s call it a computer virus or malfunction. so that’s extremely terrifying).

They literally left him with BX for like 20 minutes because his actual nanny droid had to run an errand.

This argument is so tired and it also kind of proves that you don’t even actually read/watch canon, you take all of your beliefs and cues from what Reylo BNFs with vested interests in keeping y’all brainwashed to believe that Bennyboo is a Pure Sweet Angel Baby Who Never Did Anything Wrong so that they can maintain the social capital of having lots of followers.

Gee, I wonder if that’s similar to anyone we’ve been talking about?

That said, this argument is also exhausting because it places blame on working parents for being working parents, and that’s misogynistic bullshit. Han was Ben’s primary caregiver. In canon. T-2 is really only ever in full-on Nanny Mode during Last Shot, when Han has to leave the house for more than a day or so.

Otherwise, it’s literally canon that Han is a stay-at-home parent whose full-time vocation is caring for Ben until Ben leaves for Luke’s school. After that, he STILL is a full-time househusband, but does some charity ship-racing on the side to raise money for galactic orphanages. He does mentorships for junior pilots, too, and once one of them -- Greer Sonnel -- starts to seem like she has a terminal chronic illness that will keep her from flying, Han helps to place her in a safer job opportunity rather than have to go back to her impoverished home planet. MAN, what a BAD GUY who HATES KIDS and is BAD AT CARING FOR THEM.

Not even the nanny droid -- they kept T-2, who had programming for obstetrics and pediatrics, around because he was a protocol droid just like Threepio but with the benefit of specialized programming that would help them better care for Ben, from early on in Leia’s pregnancy at least through when Ben left for Luke’s school. God forbid parents have specialized, knowledgable help raising their child!  

It is only after Ben “Jedi Killer” Solo destroys Luke’s school and becomes Kylo Ren that Han leaves, and that’s alluded to in canon -- although I’ll give you that it isn’t confirmed at this juncture in either Road to TFA or Road to TLJ material/timeline -- to search for Luke, search for Ben, and/or help raise and gather capital for the burgeoning Resistance. He isn’t a deadbeat who’s never around for his son. His son’s disappearance is the only thing that could make Han leave the domestic home and life that he’d wanted since before he even met Leia.

Second, his powers are erratic and POWERFUL and when he’s like a preteen or something he hears his parents discussing him behind closed doors…like he’s some sort of monster.

And what, exactly, did Ben do before they said this?

We don’t know.

We have had hints in both Road to TFA and Road to TLJ canon that something Ben Solo did, at age 10, was sufficiently powerful and Dark enough that Leia and Han did the best thing they could as parents to a child who did a Dark thing: get them help from a source who has the training and knowledge to help them in ways the parents themselves cannot.

That is not bad parenting. That was the right thing to do.

We don’t know what Ben did that caused his parents to worry about how Dark his behavior, in that act at least, had been, but parents admitting that they are out of their depth and getting their child help from a professional is not neglect, or a lack of love, or a lack of empathy. I get it; being forced to get help, when you view your own actions as justified, is scary and painful and embarrassing. When I was teaching, I had an eight-year-old male student who had been expelled from public school after breaking another kid’s arm and was in a specialized school for students with violent behavioral issues because he had kind-of-accidentally killed his toddler cousin by hitting him over the head with a chair when he was angry. I’m 100% sure that his parents talked about that event, amongst themselves, behind closed doors, with horror and the kind of language that would be immensely hurtful to this boy if he overheard it. That’s a human reaction. A monstrous thing happened, hard to comprehend, and like... parents are allowed to react like humans about complicated emotions of trauma or shock or horror, even though they are parents. But then they did the exactly right thing for their profoundly violent son by getting him professional help. That specialized school was not fun. The boy definitely saw it as, and talked about it as, a punishment. But it wasn’t a punishment. It was loving him enough to try to save him from himself.

Sending Ben to Luke’s school was not a punishment or some way to ~throw him away. Ben DID need help, objectively, although we haven’t yet been told exactly what the final straw was. I believe, IIRC, that the Road to TFA referred to whatever he did as a “great family tragedy,” but I don’t 100% remember -- I only recall that was part of why most people assumed that the incident occurring right around the time of Rey’s birth would ultimately be significant, and who knows, it may yet be. We don’t know. There’s no canon about it.

Also --

You guys act like Luke was some mean, scary stranger who hated Ben on sight, but Luke was Ben’s uncle. Leia and Han adored him, and he adored them, and he loved Ben. We don’t have any canon about Luke’s feelings towards whatever child!Ben did to warrant the intervention, but even in TLJ, there’s no actual objective statements of Luke hating Ben, or even Kylo.

The only person who asserts that Luke hates/hated Ben Solo is Kylo.

And frankly: he needs to believe that. Just like he needs to believe that killing Han will cause Snoke to finally respect him and give him more control/power/leadership. These are things that, honestly, he’s gotta KNOW are not true, but has to create the believe of their truth to continue acting as Kylo Ren.

So this belief, and those actions as Kylo?

Are agential, active choices. As an adult man.

Further:

Re: the moment with Luke in the hut, any interpretation that doesn’t take into account the filmmaking and CANONICAL choice to present it twice, once in Kylo’s POV and once in Luke’s POV, is missing the point of its being shown at all.

Kylo has already begun his manipulation of Rey in service to the eventual murder of Snoke and usurpation of the throne when he tells Rey about that night. He knows that Rey is frustrated with Luke on her own merits, so she will be receptive to a telling of that story that frames Luke as all of the things that Rey is already annoyed with Luke for being: stubborn, afraid of the Force, afraid of the Dark, quick to anger, irresponsible, whatever.

In the flashback from Kylo’s POV, he is telling Rey the story, so it is being presented to her for the purpose of garnering her sympathy in order to manipulate her. It isn’t even necessarily how Kylo remembers that moment when he’s just remembering it to himself, late at night, or whatever! We have never been privy to what’s actually in Kylo’s mind about that night. While you guys are using that as evidence that his mind was good and guileless and sweet, it’s equally (or more) likely that he was so Dark that night bcause he was, just like with Rey, already planning his next Dark act. In both TFA with Han and TLJ with Rey, Kylo’s choices in Dark actions tend to rely on someone else -- someone Light -- falling alongside him because he is a skillful manipulator of empathy.

Han steps closer and takes the lightsaber, blade-end pointed at himself, because he believes that Kylo Ren is choosing the Light and will come home.

Rey mails herself to the First Order, becoming a pawn in the takeover of Snoke’s throne, for the exact same reason.

When Kylo is telling Rey about the night that he destroyed Luke’s school and killed the other students, he is relying on the same tactic -- using someone’s own goodness and Lightness against them.

Han, on the bridge, even as he was dying, believed the best in his son and believed 100% that if given the choice, Kylo Ren would be Ben again, and that he wanted the Light and just felt like he couldn’t have it anymore.

So when he’s manipulating Rey with the story about that night with Luke, in Kylo’s POV, we can visually see from the filmmaking choices that he is telling it in a way tailored to her belief in inherent goodness. Rey, until after the throne room, believes that people are ultimately and innately good and Light -- it’s stated basically outright iirc in her Survival Guide -- and Kylo knows that because he mind-raped her and saw her thought processes and viewpoints and knows, exactly, how to mold his story to ply her. When we see that night with Luke as Kylo tells it to Rey to get her to come to the First Order, he tells it in a way that casts his choice to flee to the Dark as being borne of fear and confusion, not desire. (And y’all reylos buy that??? Okay.)

But if Rey herself weren’t being so muddled by her own confusion and sadness, honestly, TLJ itself presents her with enough evidence that wasn’t true: she knows Leia and Han loved him, and he tells her that he didn’t hate Han. And yet, he stayed. He stayed in the First Order for six years after that night. He didn’t destroy Luke’s school by accident out of shock and fear and pain in a whirlwind of Dark energy that he couldn’t control, and then, you know, feel bad and atone and try to make amends and acknowledge his bad deed and accept consequences and try to redeem himself.

He destroyed the school and fled to the First Order and stayed. He destroyed the school and kept on destroying.

But he IS a skillful manipulator, and he also knows that Rey most likely assumes that he wants to come home because, he’s seen in her mind AND she’s reaffirmed, that all she wants is a loving home and parents. If he tells about that night in the hut in a way that casts himself as the victim, his hand forced so that he doesn’t feel he can come home, she’ll believe it (despite literally having seen him in front of her face reject the invitation to come home with his dad, but whatever Rian).

So that’s how he tells it: Luke, fallen to the Dark side, his face twisted into something demonic in his fear and hatred, and Ben, still innately Light inside, only acting in the Dark basically by accident. THAT IS KYLO REN MASTERPIECE THEATER PUPPET STORYTIME, AS HE ACTIVELY MANIPULATES REY TO LEAVE LUKE AND COME HELP HIM KILL SNOKE.

It is, in the world of the story, and in the narrative through-line of TLJ, not the truth.

Personally, as with a lot of the things that Kylo claims to believe, I don’t think even he believes it’s the truth. It is what a convenient truth would be in that moment to further his progress towards his goal of supremacy. He KNOWS that he was steeped in the Dark side (by choice, as an adult) when Luke entered his hut that night. Even though you’re trying to insist that he was an innocent lamb that night, even your own pro-Ben Solo arguments rely on the idea of his being fully and totally steeped in Darkness by then -- don’t you think he was 23 years and 9 space months into being groomed by Snoke by that night? If Snoke really had been grooming him for so long, then by default Ben Solo was already Dark by then, and the Dark has no power unless you choose to act on it.

And to that end: what, exactly, if not kill all of the other students, destroy Luke’s school, and help to destabilize the New Republic in favor of the neo-conservative fascist junta of the First Order, was Snoke grooming him to do or be?

If you believe that Snoke was grooming Ben Solo to the level that ALL of his Dark actions were really Snoke, and not Kylo Ren actually making agential active choices to further his own agenda, then what was Snoke’s plan for him before that night? Because unless his plan for Ben Solo involved the destruction of Luke’s school... wouldn’t Kylo be starting out his tenure under Snoke’s tutelage with Snoke HELLA PISSED at him for doing something so rash and stupid?

So yeah, granted, it IS only an assumption that the Ben “Jedi Killer” Solo actually consciously and actively planned the destruction of the school and the murder of any classmates who refused to join him... but it’s an assumption based on all of his actions since that night. He has made zero efforts towards self-aware atonement or culpability, and if he truly did not mean to destroy the school and kill other students, one would think that someone who ultimately wants the Light and to be Saved Ben Solo Again would, idk, feel bad about it. Not try to blame someone else as a tactic to get a partner in another murder.

And you might hate the comparison to a school shooter, but that was as unsubtle in Ben’s destruction of Luke’s school as the comparisons to Neo-Nazis are in Hux’s rally in TFA.

He is an angry and entitled man, already steeped in Darkness and resentful that he doesn’t have all of the power that he feels is his natural due, and he scapegoats the adults in his life for making him get professional help that he didn’t want and was angered by because one of its tenets (if Luke was adhering to at least basic Jedi teachings) was that no one person should have that much power.

When he is caught continuing to act/think/speak/etc. in Dark ways -- like, IDK, someone’s loving parents trying to disconnect their internet access because they were so deeply entrenched in alt-right conspiracy theory that they were functionally insane and had become frighteningly violent -- his reaction is extreme violence (like stabbing to death the father trying to protect you from your own delusional conspiracy-driven subculture) in service to leaving his life for a literal, in-world neo-conservative fascist slave-owning militia planning a political coup through the equivalent of an atomic bomb in the capitol. Again: the parallel that JJA and Kasdan wrote and created for Kylo is not an accident, nor is it subtle. We’re MEANT to see him as a toxic masculinity-driven, entitled, violent white man, and we’re meant to view his slaughter of his classmates as having been driven by his rage and his quest for the power he feels is his due.

That is a school shooter. Trying to pull the “you can’t compare this overt fantastical metaphor to a real-life bad thing to the bad thing it’s meant to be because that would mean acknowledging the bad thing!!!!” card is really tired.

Like. There is no realistic, actual, canon-based scenario in which Ben Solo, by the night of the hut, DIDN’T have plans for violence against any who would not join him.

Remember? Star Wars has already cribbed-and-canonized the reactionary mindset once: you’re either with me, or you’re my enemy.

[dayo488]

fic writer asks

Tagged by @burninghoneyatdusk​ and @bookwormforalways​ ❤

Name(s)?

dayo488 (tumblr, ao3, and twitter - though I don’t use twitter for fandom stuff much, since it’s also connected to my IRL friends too)

Fandom(s)?

I’ve only posted the100 fic so far, but I’ve got a QotS one-shot (like 1500 words) in my folder that I haven’t posted yet.

Where you post? AO3

Most popular one-shot (by kudos)?

I don’t actually have any one-shots posted yet, just multi-chaps, but I do have a Bellarke one-shot that I did randomly a few weeks ago and the above-mentioned QotS one-shot.

Most popular multi-chapter (by kudos)?

Stay Here Tonight E-F-L, slow burn, angst, mutual pining  Clarke goes with her best friend Wells to a wedding of one of his fellow firefighters, Raven. Come to find out when they get there, that the groom is none other than Clarke's boyfriend of a year, Finn. Stuck with having to blow up Raven's wedding day, Clarke has to deal with the guilt of being the other woman, even if she didn't know, and figuring out how to move on.Surprisingly, the worst day of her life, just might lead to more happiness, family, belonging, and love than she's ever known as she makes friends with some unexpected people. But she has a hard time with one person in particular in her new circle. Bellamy happens to be more stubborn, hardheaded, and protective than anyone she's ever come up against, but she might also see a different, kinder side of him that she never thought he would have.

- It was actually my very first fic and I really didn’t expect people to like it as much as they did. I wrote a lot when I was younger, but drifted away from it until I started this idea. It wouldn’t leave me alone and kept developing in my brain so I wrote it down. And now it’s got almost 900 kudos which is completely mind-blowing to me. But it helped me rediscover my love for writing, so I’m eternally grateful for whatever burst of bravery made me post it. Plus, I made some pretty awesome friends by doing so! And it was nominated in the Bellarke Fic Writer Awards, which is incredible!

Favourite story you’ve written so far?

Moved By You

E-F-L, mutual pining, slow burn, angst, canon universe, kidnapping, hurt/comfort, found family

When Clarke finds out that the Ark cannot sustain oxygen past a year, she, along with 3 other experts in their fields, join the prisoners on a mission to Earth, to find out whether it's survivable in the even they can't fix the oxygen systems. However, one of the other adults with her on the mission betrays her and trades her to a Grounder village. Clarke must figure out where she belongs and who she is as she struggles with what her life looks like now. She finds that she enjoys the people of her village, but still feels torn between the people who want nothing to do with her anymore, and the people who she finds she wants to be with, including the village's leader, who is annoying and pushes all her buttons, but also has a depth to him that she hadn't expected.

- Even though SHT holds a special place in my heart, MBY is my favorite. It stretched me in ways that was exhausting, but SO rewarding. I had to research Trig language and survival techniques and fight sequences and other things that I don’t have knowledge in. But it was SO fun and getting to write the found family portion of it was my absolute fave. There’s a few things I’d redo if I could, but I’m really proud overall of how it turned out. 

Fic you were nervous to post?

There’s always a measure of anxiety every time I hit that Post button on all my fics, but actually, my Aladdin four-parter (I Can Show You the World) was probably the one I was most nervous about posting, just because I’d never really done a re-imagining fic before. I had to blend the OC characters and the100 characters and it was a little nerve-wracking. It definitely wasn’t near one of my more popular stories, but that’s okay - it wasn’t really meant to be taken very seriously anyway. I had the idea and wanted to see if I could do it - it was more of writing exercise really. Especially since I didn’t want it to be a musical, but wanted to incorporate the songs anyway. But yeah, I was still really nervous.

How do you choose your titles?

Song lyrics, totally. I have a playlist for each of my fics in my spotify and there’s usually one that I pick specifically that kind of just reminds me of the whole vibe of the fic and I usually pick a favorite line from that.

Do you outline?

Sort of? I have a VERY messy bullet point list for each of my fics of storylines and plot points I want to include, character arcs, character traits, background info, ideas, scenes, even dialogue. But it’s not in any sort of organization lol. I should probably work on that.

Complete works? 3 posted. 2 one-shots not posted

In-progress works? 1 posted. 3 not posted. 

Coming soon/not yet started?

I seriously cannot decide which fic to post next since my inspiration and excitement over the 3 multi-chaps I’ve currently got going shifts every day. Here’s the breakdown so far -

- Treasure Hunt AU, tentative title that I don’t want to say just yet since it may change. This is the one I’m leaning towards posting next. Basically, Bellamy is a treasure hunter/authenticator, with Raven as his partner in crime, and Clarke runs the Palace, an art gallery/school that her father opened when he was alive. Bellarke used to be married - a few years before the fic started they met while Bellamy was on a hunt and needed information from Clarke and she joined them and they fell in love. Then they ended up splitting up and hadn’t spoken in years until Bellamy finds a lead on a BIG find that sends him back in Clarke’s orbit. Very angsty, lots of mutual pining, lots of danger, lots of craziness. (That’s a terrible summary - I’ll clean it up before I post it lol)

- We Were Built to Last - Fantasy AU (this started as a Wonder Woman AU, but morphed into something no longer resembling that at all lol). In this one, Clarke grew up a princess on the Island - a place where the women are trained as warriors because when they turn 21, their “gift” (basically a super power) reveals itself, except Clarke, who is apparently the first woman to not have a gift manifest. The men don’t receive gifts either, but no one knows exactly why (and it’d be a huge spoiler to reveal the reason here 😉). Bellarke grew up best friends and when she’s young and wants to start her training, but her mother forbids it, Bellamy helps her learn anyway, with the help of his mother who is the Head Warrior. Anyway, Clarke discovers that her father didn’t die like everyone thought years ago and instead was kidnapped by Queen Nia, an escapee and outcast of the Island for using her gift for death and destruction. Clarke, Bellamy, Octavia, Raven, and Murphy go on a quest to rescue him. It’s a VERY complicated plot with a LOT of world-building so I’m not sure I’m ready to get this one out yet, even though I’m like 5 chapters in.

- Between the Raindrops - Apocalyptic AU loosely based on the show the Rain, though the plot of the fic is VERY different than the actual show. One day, the rain starts falling and whoever it touches, dies. Bellamy and his sister are the children of a brilliant scientist (Aurora) for the company Eligius, who has access to a bunker that they end up staying in for 6 years. When they finally emerge, they are confronted with a world they no longer recognize. And also a traveling group of survivors - whose leader Bellamy doesn’t understand or like (spoiler - it’s Clarke, and they fall in love 😂). I’m actually the farthest in this one - 6 chapters finished, but I’m kind of at a block with it right now. 

Prompts?

I’ve got one that I haven’t started, still trying to get the ones above finished first before I dive into any others right now. Real life has been crazy the last few months and it’s all I can do to get I Don’t Want to Dream About You finished first! 

Wow that ended up being lengthier than I expected! But it’s very fun to get it all typed out - especially the WIPs I’m super excited about! Thanks for the tags, friends! I love reading your works and being a part of this fandom ❤

I never know who to tag in these, especially since most of you that I would usually tag have already done it (I’m so behind!). You are all an inspiration to me, and I wish all nothing but happiness and inspiration for you in 2021!

[daniellethamasa]

Hey all, Dani here.

Welcome back to another very early post for me. Same as with last month, this post is going live while I’m deep asleep, but I want to make sure that all of the participants in Calendar Girls can link to my post as soon as possible, so why not have this post go up at midnight my time? I’m so glad to be involved with Calendar Girls; I feel like my relationships in the online book community have been grown and strengthened by this blog event, and that my blog has developed far more than I imagined because of it as well.

Anyway, it is the first Monday of the Month and that means it is once again time for a Calendar Girls post.

Calendar Girls is a monthly blog event that was started by Flavia and Melanie, but is now being hosted by Katie and Adrienne. They are all wonderful ladies, and you should check out their lovely blogs. Okay, so Katie and Adrienne needed to take a brief hiatus for a few months, so for right now Flavia and myself are temporarily hosting Calendar Girls until our fearless leaders are ready to step back in.

Honestly Calendar Girls is a group effort and I feel like we have become a pretty good group of friends, so it makes sense that we can share in the responsibilities and pick up any slack should it happen. I’m happy to do my part to help keep this tradition going. So if you link back to Flavia and me, we can keep track of all the book picks and posts each month. Thanks, everyone!

First, more about the Calendar Girls. It is designed to ignite bookish discussions among readers, and was inspired by the 1961 Neil Sedaka song, Calendar Girl.

Just like the song, each month has a different theme. Each blogger picks their favorite book from the theme, and on the first Monday of the month reveals their pick in a Calendar Girls post. Make sure to post back to the hostess’s post, and both Katie and Adrienne will make a master list for the month. The master lists allow everyone to see the other Calendar Girls’ picks and to pop on over to their blogs. Thus, we all get to chat about books and even make some new friends!

Oh, and you don’t have to identify as female to join the Calendar Girls. We welcome readers of all types. So if this sounds like fun for you, join us in all of the fun bookish conversations.

Finally, the February theme is…

Meet Cute

Favorite Romantic Comedy

So several years ago I joined an online book club–called Vaginal Fantasy Book Club–and started reading a lot more romance, but most of it was genre romance. It’s not that I didn’t like to read romance, but for the most part I preferred stories where romance wasn’t the main focus of the story. When it comes to romance stories I tend to enjoy watching rom-coms instead of reading them. But I’ve been doing a little better over recent years.

So, some of the books on my contender list may not technically be listed as romantic comedies, but they are mostly focused on romance and there were at least a few moments that made me laugh.

All right, here are my contenders for favorite romantic comedies.

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I think it’s a pretty nice blend of both Young Adult and Adult romances, and okay, yes, clearly Christina Lauren takes up quite a bit of space on this list. What can I say? I find their stories to be very enjoyable with plenty of fun moments. And I think I have reviews for most of these, so I’ll link to those just in case.

Tweet Cute by Emma Lord, Waiting for Tom Hanks by Kerry Winfrey, Frankly in Love by David Yoon, Roomies by Christina Lauren, Again, But Better by Christine Riccio, The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren, Geekerella by Ashley Poston, My Favorite Half-Night Stand by Christina Lauren.

These books utilize a lot of different set-ups that make for funny encounters and memorable stories. Fake relationships are definitely prominent in several of these books. A few of the characters are adorably awkward, and that awkwardness is amusing and endearing, so those situations definitely make me chuckle.

Okay, are you ready for my pick for this month?

…

…

…

What’s super great about this one is if you like the idea of meet cutes this book is chock full of them…or rather it’s filled with failed meet cutes, but that just makes it more amusing.

My review for this book will be coming soon, but I read it last month and while some of it was immensely predictable, overall it was simply outstanding. Getting to watch our lady protagonist as she utilizes as many movie meet cutes as she can as a way to try and prove to a screenwriter that these stories are real and worthwhile. I don’t want to talk too much about this book right now, because as I said my review is not yet up, but I’ll go ahead and drop the summary and just go ahead and say that I definitely recommend this book. It is fun and cute, and ultimately is a feel-good romantic story that honors all the rom-coms that came before it.

In this charming, feel-good debut novel, a cynical assistant at a screenwriting agency must reenact the meet-cute scenes from classic romantic comedy movies in order to help her #1 client get his scriptwriting mojo back–but can a real-life meet-cute be in store for someone who doesn’t believe in happily ever after?

After seven years as an assistant, 29-year-old Evie Summers is ready to finally get the promotion she deserves. But now the TV and film agency she’s been running behind the scenes is in trouble, and Evie will lose her job unless she can convince the agency’s biggest and most arrogant client, Ezra Chester, to finish writing the script for a Hollywood romantic comedy.

The catch? Ezra is suffering from writer’s block–and he’ll only put pen to paper if singleton Evie can prove to him that you can fall in love like they do in the movies. With the future of the agency in jeopardy, Evie embarks on a mission to meet a man the way Sally met Harry or Hugh Grant met Julia Roberts.

But in the course of testing out the meet-cute scenes from classic romantic comedies IRL, not only will Evie encounter one humiliating situation after another, but she’ll have to confront the romantic past that soured her on love. In a novel as hilarious as it is heartwarming, debut author Rachel Winters proves that sometimes real life is better than the movies–and that the best kind of meet-cutes happen when you least expect them.

Calendar Girls Picks

Flavia @ Flavia the Bibliophile –

Dani (that’s me) @ MousaiBooks – Would Like to Meet by Rachel Winters

More added soon.

Calendar Girls: February 2020 Hey all, Dani here. Welcome back to another very early post for me. Same as with last month, this post is going live while I'm deep asleep, but I want to make sure that all of the participants in Calendar Girls can link to my post as soon as possible, so why not have this post go up at midnight my time?

[jessicakehoe]

Four Easy Ways to Kickstart a Social Media Detox in 2020

At the start of the twenty-tens, your wristwatch couldn’t talk to you, Instagram was just on the brink of launching and comparing yourself to your “followers” was hardly a concept. And now, social media rules our lives in this digitally-saturated world we find ourselves in. That being said, as we settle into a new decade, people are yearning for ways to unplug and rediscover the things this world has to offer beyond our screens. According to Pinterest’s report of top trends to try in 2020, which is based off of growth in search volumes, interest in a social media detox is up a huge 314 per cent.

View this post on Instagram

Put yourself first for 2020. Finding balance is a top cultural theme for 2020 ⚖️ ⁣ ⁣ 📌: Link in bio to see all the trends on our #Pinterest100 site

A post shared by Pinterest (@pinterest) on Jan 16, 2020 at 4:50pm PST

Social worker and psychotherapist Melissa Fellin tells FASHION that when people are routinely looking at social media, their self esteem and self confidence take a hit. “Social media is just another media source that is influencing people’s self image,” she shares, adding that digital devices are isolating, “leading people to feel lonely even though they feel connected.” Constant exposure to social media is also one of the root causes of anxiety, stress and burnout.

The solution? Take a step back from your devices and connect with the tangible world around you. Here are some tips to get your own digital detox underway:

Replace the habit

Fellin says that the main point of a digital detox is to get you out of the habit of using your devices. To stay on track, find something positive to replace those digital moments with. For example, spending your commute immersed in a book will pass the time much faster than aimlessly toggling between apps.

Get creative

Reflecting on experiences with her child and adult clients alike, Fellin says people are more creative when they step away from social channels and digital devices. “They are better able to use their imagination, they’re more creative in their lives and they start to be pro social — going out, playing, doing things that they normally wouldn’t do because they were already doing [a version of] it online.” Yep, you heard it right… this is your time to take that adult dance class or head out to paint night.

Pursue human connection

If you rely on your devices to connect with others, Fellin suggests making a conscious effort to hold meetings IRL or see friends and family as this will take you outside of your bubble. If you don’t have any companionships in your area, joining classes and groups in the community is the easiest way to make some.

Embrace low-key down time

With so much going on in the world, it’s easy to feel lonely and bored in the confines of your home. However, it is worth considering that this fabricated connection to the outside world via your devices really isn’t giving you much, as Fellin alluded to earlier. Tune into your thoughts and appreciate your down time with journaling, kitchen experiments or a challenging puzzle. The end-result is drastically more satisfying.

And if embarking on a digital detox still seems daunting, get inspired by celebs like Lizzo, who, with boss-like energy, ditched Twitter at the start of this year.

Yeah I can’t do this Twitter shit no more.. too many trolls… ✌🏾

I’ll be back when I feel like it.

— Feelin Good As Hell (@lizzo) January 6, 2020

This Pinterest trend didn’t come out of nowhere, however, as certain celebrities really made the case for Instagram absences in 2019. Selena Gomez, the fifth most followed Instagram user, shared her relationship with the app on LIVE with Kelly and Ryan last June, revealing that she doesn’t have it downloaded to her phone. “It’s just become really unhealthy, I think personally, for young people including myself, to spend all of their time fixating on all these comments and letting this stuff in,” the 27-year-old star shared, explaining that if she wants to share something she will use someone else’s phone. “It was affecting me, it would make me depressed, it would make me feel [bad] about myself. I’d look at my body differently.”

Another user who recognized the need for an Instagram break is actress Freida Pinto, who, upon her return to the platform last summer, outlined the benefits she encountered during her hiatus.

View this post on Instagram

(Part 2 of 2) So, In that time off some wonderful things happened: 1. I read more books. 2. I slept an undisturbed 7 to 8 hrs every night. 3. I had more time to workout meditate and plan my meals right. 4. I didn't get headaches and motion sickness from scrolling in moving cars. 5. I was more curious about the details of the current affairs and not just headlines. 6. I didn't fall into that deep dark hole that starts with a photo of your bestie on a holiday and a wasted hour later ends up on an account of cute golden retrievers doing cute things.(although those retrievers did brighten up my day often) 7. I stopped getting drawn into ads and buying more than I needed. 8. I was a lot more clueless on who wore what, ate what, kissed who..and my gosh I am happy to be clueless again! 9. My phone battery stayed alive longer. Woohoo! 10. I now know all the hues that I might have missed that come to make Cory's beautiful blue eyes! 😍 So here I am…Making an appearance on this platform but this time very aware of what I want to put out on it and more importantly what I certainly don't want to take from it. I do enjoy sharing my thoughts and views, especially when they are positive and can inspire on a public platform. But I still plan on sleeping 8 hrs undisturbed every night with lowered cortisol levels. Wouldn't trade that for blue light exposure before bedtime ever again! I am sharing my story with you because I know there is a large majority out there who relate and if any of you are planning on going/have gone on a real insta detox or have found that using this platform meaningfully and positively, maybe even sparingly has bettered your life. Then I highly recommed it and… Congratulations! Until next time Love and positive vibes FP … 📸: @go_dwells

A post shared by Freida Pinto (@freidapinto) on Jul 12, 2019 at 9:35am PDT

Considering everyone’s experience is different, you may not feel the need to get rid of social media altogether. Instead find success in cautiously curating what you consume. “Some people decide to only follow people they know, or they’ll decide to delete, block or unfollow people that they feel are giving them negativity and are making them feel bad about themselves,” Fellin adds. The message is clear: choose your own adventure, based on your own happiness. Likes be damned.

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[minrcrafter]

Stonewick [SMP]{1.12}{Hard Difficulty}{Economy}{Adults 18+}{Community}{DynMap}{Anti-Grief}{Whitelist}

★ About Us ★

  Website

  We are on a brand new map and just opened September 3rd! We are a laid-back group of adults looking to form a fun, stress-free environment with others. Our spawn was inspired by small-town living. Complete with a park, an old-fashioned mall, and community center. Inspired by beloved games such as Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley. Stonewick is co-admined by a married couple who are young at heart and hope to meet new friends on this journey!

  When you first join, you arrive via train to our beloved train station. From there you can navigate your way around our DynMap via warps or Nether hub. You can also take a guided player tour of our overworld on our rollercoaster. Spawn has plenty of room to grow, with space to make memories building community projects against a lovely backdrop of scenic mountains, rivers, and forests. Spawn is decorated with Secrets & Easter Eggs from references to Harry Potter or LOST to inside jokes and even secret ways to earn trophies and decorative heads.

  We offer Discord, Wiki, DynMap, Forums

Plug-ins: Player Command Warp (1 sign per player), Nether Hub, GriefPrevention, Economy, Shop Chests, Decorative Heads, Brewery, Player Crates, Editable Sign, More Fish, and Custom Shopkeepers at Spawn.

We do not offer commands like /home, /sethome, /spawn, or /warp.

  ★ Should I Apply? ★

  You should apply if one or more of the following applies to you:

★ You love making new friends! ★

★ You have other geeky endeavors besides Minecraft (roleplaying, fandoms, other games) ★

★ You want to join a tight-knit community! ★

★ You want your server staff to be mature and professional ★

★ You are between the ages 18 - 100 ★

★ You have a sense of humor ★

★ You love server events, contests, and projects ★

★ You like vanilla playstyle, but enjoy a few plugins to spice it up ★

  ★ Server Basics ★

  MobGrief and FireSpread are OFF

Difficulty: Hard

Players get 1 warp after 10 hours of play time

Warp signs are extremely limited and cost money to use

The End will be reset once a month

Fully functional nether hub that also serves as a hub for player warps.

Land claiming -- Griefprevention & Lockette

4000 block world you can see on our DynMap

Map generation and mob/treasure spawn rate is 100% vanilla

Plug-ins do not overwhelm vanilla players.

No hidden plug-ins! Unlike some servers, we list our plug-ins that you have access to all up-front so you know exactly what server you’ll be playing on. You can find a detailed list of our commands here

  ★ Server Perks ★

  New map! The map was created August 2017 in 1.12.

We are newbie friendly! Just starting MC or perhaps switching from console? We’d be glad to have you.

A chance to help build a new community and meet new friends!

Small map, with chances to grow!

Discord, voice chat optional! Ability to access Discord text chat via in-game chat!

Caring and mature staff members! (Yup, we’re all adults here.)

Weekly events or contests!

Loyal members (play time = 10 hours+) are awarded one warp from their home to the hub.

Website and wiki to archive fun and keep you updated.

Option to play with semi-vanilla plug-in perks or opt-out and play strict vanilla.

  ★ Future Plans ★

  Adding Multiverse for Creative & PvP Worlds

PvP Games

September – The End Opening & Ender Dragon Fight

October – Brewfest, Special Event & New Brewery Additions & Casino Grand Opening

November – Fishgiving, Special Event involving fishing & competitions

December – Minecraft Advent Calendar & Secret Santa

  ★ Rules ★

Community

Be kind and courteous to all members. Displays of toxic behavior that affect the community negative will not be tolerated.

Keep chat relatively family-friendly, occasional swearing is fine. Just remember, everything in moderation.

Players must be ages 18+. No exceptions.

Recruitment of the server is the sole duty of admin and staff.

No griefing. This includes stealing from claimed/unclaimed chests, pranking players without their consent, harvesting farms or animals that belong to other players, mass terraforming/deforestation in unclaimed areas, or destroying builds/items placed by other players.

Mechanics & Lag Prevention

Keep the map pretty. No stray torches, floating trees, abandoned boats/craft benches, or 1x1 towers.

Do not build or harvest within two hundred blocks of other players without consent. This includes mining. Mining should be in your claim and the general 200 block buffer from your claim. Do not mine long tunnels near players or cutting across the map unless you have permission from players to mine near them. (This is because our map is small right now.)

Animal/mob rooms should be kept at a reasonable entity number or they will be culled. Redstone devices should be controlled by an on/off switch and not left on. Floating redstone machines are not allowed.

X-ray, flying, hacking mods, or the use of in-game exploits is strictly prohibited.

Circumventing the AFK timer kick is prohibited.

  (Read Server Policies if you have any questions.)

  ★ What Our Members Say ★

  "To everyone still not sure if they should or not join this server i have been on for a little less than 6 hour but i can tell you already that the community is awesome and that this server got a lot to give us in the future so you should all apply and get on the server to come play with us!" - poker134

  "I've already got 20 hours of ingame time, and I'm enjoying myself so much. - The admins are very dedicated and friendly, and I'm looking forward to enjoying so many more hours together with the wonderful people who so far have joined the server. I've built a base on top of a mountain, opened a shop - supplying whoever needs it with lots of eggs, and are now starting to prepare for exploration of the world! If you play Minecraft for the sake of being social, and being part of a nice community, this server is 100% for you! Join our server, and buy my eggs!" - DeviantLilja

  "So I just joined this server yesterday morning, having a great time. To be honest I think the fact that I've been in game active for approx 14-15 hours so far testifys to how good it is here. Ive never met a more friendly and willing to help admin team. You have an issue, drop a message on discord and you'll have a pleasant and helpful response on minutes. The community is great, you can very much tell it's an adult and mature community when you first join there server. Before I took my first step after spawning in, I'd been greeted by numerous people and welcomed. Theres a well thought out tour when you exit the initial spawn building, guiding you on different aspects of the server. Theres books pre written to guide you on anything the tour may over look. If if your looking for a vanilla with sprinkles minecraft server, your over 18 and willing to get stuck in with a social group. Come join us. i look forward to playing with you." Glasi13

  "Hello everyone I am oldchuck, and this is a server you must try out, then get addicted to and play non stop. It is a economy based survival server, and it has so many features! Let's start with the spawn, it's beautiful and has plenty of signs to navigate and even a automated tour! There are hidden Easter eggs and secrets, shops and of course the magnificent train station. The map is fresh, it has alot to be left to explored, and it isn't cluttered with random buildings. Your items are grief proof with. Your claim block, but the community is so friendly there isn't a need to worry about it. This isn't your average server, I've been to plenty of servers where you have buy items with irl cash and gain a huge advantage, but that's not the case with this server. This server does have a donation option, but the price is 5$ and is totally optional and does not give another player a huge advantage not make them OP. I am a newish minecraft player to PC, and the staff has been so no d to guide me and teach me about the server and policies and gameplay, which is above and beyond for any staff. The rules are simple and so easy to follow, I've never even had to question if I'm breaking them. This server thrives off simplicity and a great support team. Please, do the hard working staff, the community, and yourself a favor and come try it out! My in-game name again is oldchuck and id love to build with any friendly players" - oldchuck

  Apply for Whitelist on our Website OR Apply for Whitelist on MCForums

  Please take your time and write enough in your application to give us a good idea of your personality.

  We look forward to seeing you in game! :)

[nofomoartworld]

[NSFW] Behold: Boobs of Every Kind in This Breast-Themed Art Show

Themed group shows have become a popular way for curators and artists to explore feelings, examine ideas, or pay homage to Bill Murray from a myriad of perspectives. Nearly 200 artists participated in The Breasts Art Show at Public Works in San Francisco, fleshing out concepts surrounding breasts, making what is often a perfunctory visual element the focal point.

The open-call exhibition, organized by husband and wife duo Ezra and Julia Croft, who actually curated , kept the theme loose, requesting that artists "create pieces that form an idea about the breast and its place in our lives."

an additional Bill Murray art show

"It has a lot to do with confronting fears about what people would consider normal and appropriate. In today's charged political climate, it's more relevant now than when I came up with the idea," Ezra Croft tells Creators.

E.T., 2017, Natalie De Ranieri. Image by the author.

The show featured performance art, sculpture, photography, and paintings, mostly from Bay Area artists like Natalie De Ranieri, who used her friends and family as models for her sculptural works. De Ranieri says she named one of them E.T. after her friend whose body she cast the work on said it reminded her of E.T.'s river death scene. 

A series she calls Uovo Fritto was made with the help of her husband. "I was looking at my husband's chest and I was like, 'Can I cast your boobs?' I was like, that would be such a cool installation," De Ranieri tells Creators. "I took one little pull and he started screaming… I had to wax him basically. The hair came out in the silicone and when I saw it I said that's gonna transfer to the plaster and it's gonna look so realistic." The resulting cast is a hairy, and not altogether inedible looking meal, part of a series De Ranieri calls, Uovo Fritto, or Fried Egg. 

Uovo Fritto from Uovo Fritto Series, 2017, Courtesy Natalie De Ranieri.

De Ranieri's sister, Dina Feliciano, exhibited work as well, collaborating with photographer Andrea Padilla Boudoir on an image inspired by a 2012 Vogue cover based on a Frida Khalo portrait by Nickolas Murray. "I love Frida Kahlo and always have since I studied about her in high school," Feliciano tells Creators. "My interest in birth art evolved after becoming a birth and postpartum doula. I enjoy the bond created during breastfeeding and love that we were able to capture that moment. It is such a special image for me. It encompasses so many things I love! I feel like if Frida was able to have a baby, she would have painted or posed in that way. I called that my celebration of weaning because about a week or two after, she stopped breastfeeding," says Feliciano.

Dando Pecho, 2017, Courtesy of Andrea Padilla Boudoir Photography and Dina Feliciano

Homages to matriarchal relationships were enlivened in sculptural works as well, like crocheted wire breasts sculpted from photos by Ashley Babcock. "I lost my stepmother and my mother in the same year so it was kind of a healing thing for me," Babcock explains. "This connection we have with our mothers through their breasts, through breastfeeding– even as adults there's something nurturing about our own breasts, or if you're a man, someone else's breasts." An installation by thebosomproject.com skewed philanthropic, with all proceeds from their breast-print pillows going to breast cancer research.

Grandma's, 2017, Ashley Babcock. Image by the author.

Install shot of The Bosom Project. Image by the author.

In a sea of bare-breasts, Benjamin Wester's self-censored image of a male chest with nipples barred out, pointedly pokes fun at the realities of female nipple censorship, both IRL and online.

Fiamma Giger's sculpture Bling conjures iconography of empowered female figures like Selena and Madonna who were known for donning bedazzled bustiers.

BAS Series, 2017, Benjamin Wester. Image by the author.

Bling, Fiamma Giger. Image by the author.

Exploring themes of domesticity and sex work, Knock, Knock, by Jeanne La Deaux and Michael Moore is also a play on the aphoristic term "knockers." She says the color red is significant and, depending on the culture, could be interpreted as prosperity or simply that "there's a hooker behind the door. I think it's kind of a viewing and permission to open the door, and there's some significance to the red door," La Deaux says.

Another play on words comes in an homage to everyone's favorite middle school calculator code, 8th Grade Math, by Sam Sheldon and Carolina Gallegos.

Knock, Knock, Jeanne La Deaux and Michael Moore, 2017. Image courtesy the artists.

8th Grade Math, Sam Sheldon and Carolina Gallegos. Image by the author.

Another playful work, Hyper-Inflated Sexuality by A. Owen Layne, works with humor and eros to form a colorful critique on hyper-sexualization. Layne says the photograph came together at the last minute after the scheduled model bailed on the shoot. "I quickly approached a young woman in the lobby, also waiting for someone who didn't show," Layne recalls. "She agreed to be my model, without even seeing the set design first. I feel she handled the expression and my random concept perfectly."

While much of the work in the gigantic group show was photographic, Explorations by Nicolo Serturio stands out with boobs being smashed, pushed, and pulled, beautifully distorting the standard structures associated with breasts.

Hyper-Inflated Sexuality, 2014, A. Owen Layne. Image courtesy the artist.

Explorations, Nicolo Serturio. Image by the author.

Using her body as an instrument, Carly Terreson creates abstractions on muslin in her work Composition, saying the imprints on cloth are the poetic result of cleaning her body of ink. "No brushes touch the surface of the fabric," Terreson tells Creators. "My body is my tool. I paint my body and imprint into the fabric, capturing different movements and creating many compositions and layers."

Composition, 2016, Carly Terreson. Image by the author.

Where Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase is all hyper-masculine, hard-lined futurism, Kira Polyudova's work In Motion offers a softer counterpoint. Not intentionally referencing the famous work, Polyudova says she was working with concepts involved in stop animation.

Allison Bouganim, no stranger to works confronting viewers with problematic ideas surrounding the female body, says her goal with the work 3X is to raise questions about political and social issues. "This piece is meant to dispute the ideals of beauty while also referencing and challenging the porn industry and their depiction of women."

In Motion, Kira Polyudova. Image courtesy the artist.

3X, 2015, Allison Bouganim. Image by the author.

The Crofts plan on doing more breast-themed shows in New York and Los Angeles later this year. 

Related:

from creators http://ift.tt/2nLjIRp via IFTTT

[universatile-girl]

I want to write a story about the people in my life currently. It's either that these people happen to be especially interesting or my attention to my surroundings is stronger at this particular time. I figure the setting will be a main meeting place, like what the arthritis centre serves as irl. I love the idea that everyone is in the same general area, some who live there and others who come to see the people in the area. Obviously in my life they meet there to do drugs, but I could think of another reason why everyone hangs out in the parking lot of a senior service centre. Or maybe drugs is still a reasonable option. Why hide a reality of young adult life? So a guy (braeden) lives across the street from the centre in a basement suite below a bitchy neighbour named Cathy. He's the host, I think I'll call him jay or Brandon, and he's the peacemaker of the group. He's perpetually single because he doesn't think he can charm girls and therefore rarely tries, and he has an addictive behaviour. But he's just a really swell guy with lots of interesting thoughts and theories of life. Then there's dexter and laura and I think I will keep their names because it works so well. Laura lives a block or two away from the centre but is always there, and her younger brother is occasionallly spotted but more of a background character. He tends to hang out with tree, the elder crackhead lady who is also a sweetheart who comes there to smoke. Dexter and Laura are very much attached so they're always together and very affection. They bring out glasses of wine with them and sit on pavement. It's a lovely irony. They nap and work and hang out with the group. She's a few years older than him but you wouldn't know. I need to add another single dude, so I'll choose Ryan (tristan?). He's quiet and humble. Maybe a player, maybe not. You'll never know unless he tells you his personal life, which he doesn't share openly. But he's nice enough that the group welcomes him. Jays longtime friend. Colin and Jamie shall become Connor and Harriet. I know they're not prt of the group irl but I love what they have going on right now. Graduated 2 years ago but they were bang buds in high school, then best friends, then disconnected for a while, then bffs again and slowly becoming banging buds again. Connor has a brand new puppy that Harriet watches while he's at work, so she practically lives at his house and is friends with the fam there, his roommates (a disfunctional couple with a baby). I imagine they would live a little farther away, but still swing by every now and then for (drugs). Connor is old pals with.... Chris! But he needs a different name. Caleb? Carson? Tyler? Idk. Cct for now. He's another quiet one, but he's comfortable with the group and initiates plans most of the time. He seems tough but everyone knows he's a softy, no matter how hard he'd like to pretend. Partially because they see him with his girlfriend (me!) and can tell he's full of love and loyalty. So then there's me, and my name might be faith. Or Reese. Or vee. Or Emma. That will be tough. But even tougher is cramming myself into a character description that other people will surely recognize as me. I suppose my role is the supportive girlfriend and artist more than most things. I'm shy but I'm also pretty smiley. And sensitive. I like the deeper conversations the group has. My best friend is Harriet because we all went to the same high school. And yes, she's much more amiable than Jamie irl. But she's not always there. In general I guess I am chill and chipper. And the only one who never does any drugs. In reality, they probably all think of me as the innocent one. Hopefully that doesn't accompany boring. But from my perspective I tend to have a very good relationship dexter and jay, and while dexter and Laura are the cutest couple (who also have a fair amount of issues), cct and I are the envied ones because we have the most realistic relationship. Jay has said he wants what we have with a girl of his own. I want to add a character named jj, who will embody Eric. The lone wolf guy. Maybe Travis and Eric in one person. Outdoorsy, super Canadian, sarcastic and realist. But mature working dude who is growing out of his teenager lifestyle. He and cct and Connor get along best, but he goes off on his own a lot. So that's the crew for now, I may add or remove characters but I love the way I see these people interact irl. I like the memories I have with them all and I find them very inspiring to write about. It's like a little family of lost kids trying to find their ways in life and learning from each other, all tied together with drugs!! Lol. It's only pot so don't fret. I honestly can't think of another reason why 5 or more people would meet in. Parking lot in the winter several times a day. It makes sense, it's Victoria. I kinda like it. That's just what people do here. Sometimes the gang hangs out at the elementary school not far away. Or they go for drives, or walks, to the nearby shopping areas to get food. Or they drink, or watch movies at jays place. They have handshakes and inside jokes and lives outside of everyone else there, but they can still all come together and be like. Family. They're interested in each other and enjoy the company and then they all peace out at the end of the night to go to their respective homes. Jay walks a short distance back to his man cave to play video games and draw. Dexter and Laura go to her house to watch movies and sleep. Ryan goes possibly to his might shifts at a bar? Or home. Cct and me go to my house to cuddle or for a drive. Connor and Harriet go back to his busy house to sleep. Jj heads for a long drive home and probably stops to do something reckless on the way home. That's the gang, normal and iconic at the same time. Some adventures will have to be thought of for them to be involved in. For example, when the cops were called on then but they were so chill about it that they just get a warning. Or avoiding Cathy cause she's a lunatic. Or a night dt to get jay some. Or a double date night. Or a puppy day. Or drinking at night in the summer on a field. Or car races. Or jjs potluck dinner. Or movie and snack night at jays with board games. These really aren't all that interesting but I'd like to write something that is more relatable than shocking. Literally this is just the life of some suburban young people in a ducked up world who don't really know what they're doing, but they're still going for it. There's no crazy plot twists or insane events in that kind of daily life. I want to expose our truthful life.