#it also feels really fucking targeted

[phaedra-mero]

its so fucking frustrating to me that this site is full of porn bots, full of full frontal nudity and sexual gifs/ads/videos/pictures etc. and they never get flagged or taken down. (its there. any time 'gay' or 'transgender' comes up on the 'trending topics' on the app, the preview posts are ALWAYS full on nudity, genitals out, ans sexually explicit. Not artful or tasteful nude for art's sake.).

but it seems each time i upload some screenshots that are suggestive where there's sex taking place but you can't see anything those posts get flagged and taken down within 30 minutes.

fuckin... lesson learned, won't be bothering with that shit any more i guess.

if you want to see any of the more explicit gpose stuff i have a blueksy account: phaedra-mero.bsky.social where at least everything i do doesn't get immediately flagged and removed. because fuck me i guess.

[trans-axolotl]

also this is the reason why i hate the whole discussion about "oh can we still say hermaphrodite in science discussions" because like. you all do not fucking understand the weight of the word. what it feels like when someone calls you a hermaphrodite when you are fearing for your fucking life. the amount of times i had to call myself a hermaphrodite because no one fucking knew what intersex meant but i needed to find a way to disclose that to clients so i didn't end up assaulted again when they were surprised. you don't know how much i fucking hated myself for that and what that was fucking like to experience at 16. like. that is what that word means to me! that's what i think of when i hear it! lots of other intersex people have their own stories, their own ways this slur was weaponized against us and written down in our medical records and a million fucking things. so i really don't want to hear from dyadic people who have never had this slur used against them about how hard it is to find an alternative word and how they just really really need to be able to still say it because of all the scientific discussions that are happening all the time or whatever. literally fuck off i don't care

[sieglinde-freud]

one time eva told me that inigo was basically just a total drama character and i cant like that kinda hit me like a slap in the face but like in a good way because like. she was right. and that was several months ago but the concept was so good i sometimes just come back to it and now i have a question for the class

no i dont think inigo (or anyone else i excluded) would win but if you have a case for him im open

[clegfly]

Thought I had today that I decided to doodle. Oh em gee I wonder what musical cleg’s been obsessing over for the last like month

[bunnyb34r]

Who would have thought that eating cherrios 2x daily when I'm allergic to oats, and several pastries when I'm allergic to wheat, would come back to bite me in the ass? Surely not I! 🙃

[joshuamj]

also i watch The Wild Robot the other day and oh my god 11/10, absolutely beautiful in every sense of the word, would cry again 👍

[dykedvonte]

I really do like character design in mouthwashing

Anya is obvi inspired by Shelley Duval (who was also verbally abused by Cubric, if I recall correctly), the Shining protagonist. Curly is your typical captain America style charismatic leader, he is even canonically a gym bro (although I recall you mentioning that if Curly's pre-crash face wasn't revealed, you would've headcanoned him as black, so I am a bit curios, what his dynamic w/ Jimmy would've been. Like, I think this little piece of sht would be casually racist towards him, he is just that sort of asshole. If the story was set at our times he would've def vote for Trump and complain abt immigrants eating dogs or something equally rediculous lol. Also, his dynamic w/ Anya - being marginalised himself would've he been harder on Jimbo's bullshit? Or would that not matter at all in their particular situation? So many possibilities.)

Daisuke is a bright spot in an otherwise dull and grey space. Swansea is simply perfect, 10/10😁

-💀

I don’t think Jimmy would be racist towards Curly or anyone for that matter.

Like I don’t see Jimmy as a misanthrope. He’s not hateful just to be hateful, he’s spiteful. All of his envy and resentment of others comes from his own projection of shared aspects he feels inferior by. I think the biggest difference is it adds a little more ire to Jimmy’s sentiments as it takes away an easy aspect of Curly’s life. I assume Mouthwashing operates in a similar social history and structure as our world so Curly likely faced prejudices based on his race in this scenario. He had something extra outside of his control weighing him down and yet he still reached that highest rung.

For Jimmy it’s infuriating. It feeds that delusion that Curly has it so much easier, that he doesn’t have to do the real work to get to that space. He should’ve struggled more, he should be more bitter but he isn’t. He’s not like him still and he’s pissed about it. He still wouldn’t understand the underlying and systemic issues Curly would’ve faced cause he can’t. He wouldn’t try to because in doing that it’s an admission he’s just not trying like Curly is. Any comments that could be seen as racist are less targeted at Curly’s ethnicity but just at him. Jimmy’s issues are with Curly as a whole, being so idealic compared to him and everything around him. It’s not just one facet of him physically, mentally or emotionally that makes Jimmy so envious. It’s why he’s obsessed, it everything about him.

As for Anya, this is no anger toward you, but there’s this perception in fandom spaces with intersectionality that sharing a minority status creates an equal understanding of what exact struggles the others go through. You can understand the feeling of oppression but certain aspects of certain systems will still be misunderstood if they don’t apply to you. Curly is still a man and Anya a woman. Perhaps she is a woman of color, it think he may have been a bit harsher to Jimmy as he would be aware of the racial factors at play when it comes to the dehumanization and sexism perpetrated towards WOC but he still wouldn’t get it as a man.

It’s like apples and oranges to where they are both fruit but being categorically the same doesn’t make them identical. I can not describe to you the taste of an apple by using an orange. Anya would no more understand Curly’s struggles being black than he would her being the only woman on board. Of course they share the similarity of being the only one but even in this case we do work off the assumption everybody but Daisuke is white. He’d inherently have more solidarity with him on that aspect than her.

[romantically-yours]

I wanna pick up a girl and pin her against a wall and give her lots of lil smooches while we giggle like the little gay goblin gremlins that we are

[presiding]

What is your favourite thing about Billie Lurk?

(Answers are obvious possibly but i love when people talk about her👍)

thanks for the ask!! YEAH ME TOO I love when people talk about Billie! I can't say I have a favourite thing specifically, but I can explain why she's my fav. apologies for not taking this qn literally, but -

short answer: she’s really cool

& you can stop reading there, or, for the maybe 2 mutuals who might have time to read this my thoughts on her as a character, her meta, and her character as raw potential...

long answer:

i considered making this entire thing a gush so you could read a gush about Billie. but, part of what draws me to her is that she’s not always well written, and in fandom she’s underrated for a literal protagonist.

since you ask...

billie is a cool character

when I played Dh2 (hadn't played Dh1), I was excited to see a black woman with disabilities who was captaining a massive ship by herself. wow.

then I discovered Billie’s backstory with Deirdre, the way she responded to that, then having to survive while living on the run, and her bisexuality. as well as her history with daud & delilah. fascinating!

she’s an outsider who has so much to lose, and knows what it's like to lose everything - having lost everything not once but three times - but nevertheless speaks truth to power. she's so brave! she went and helped Emily & Corvo and she must have known they might kill her! plus, she’s smart, she’s funny, she gets shit done, she’s gorgeous.

but... the meta

mild critique of fandom & arkane incoming.

skip this bit if you want - you've been warned twice now - jump to tired Hayao Miyazaki and read from there if you'd like my thoughts on writing her.

i thought Death of the Outsider was going to be amazing and then... well. *sad trombone* i've written about that before so i won't keep banging on. i figured others must be disappointed too, so I joined a few fandom spaces in hopes of finding camaraderie.

most people with complaints about DotO didn’t like how the Outsider and Daud were handled. which is valid & I agree. but it seemed like most paid no attention to Billie; when people talk about her it’s with respect to Daud, as opposed to in her own right. you could argue for fandom misogyny because people don’t talk about adult Emily Kaldwin that much either, but in Billie's case, it’s misogynoir (compare & contrast with the popularity of thomas, particularly the popularity of thomas portrayed as a white man for no particular reason that i've been able to discern - i keep asking around, is it in the books???).

i think this is a LOT better now than it used to be, which is fantastic. or perhaps i have found the correct echo-chamber? ha.

ultimately, The Fandom is a fraction of the entire picture, and not even the important bit since The Fandom is not who these games are made for. you can't make money relying on only your hardcore fans even if all of them spent a fortune on merch, this is true for any AAA game.

while it's true that Billie is underrated from a fandom perspective - but Billie as an underwritten protagonist is squarely Arkane’s fault.

it was reasonable when she was a side character - the lack of info in Dh2 makes perfect sense (if anything there was more lore in Dh2 which is kind of wild)-

- but as a protagonist in Death of the Outsider?

.... there’s lousy writing, and there’s whatever is going on with Billie Lurk, a black woman who mostly exists as a foil or saviour for light-skinned characters. In her own game there’s barely any of her own lore except where it's relevant to saving two dudes.

lore hints at, but barely touches on what race means in the Dh universe (xenophobia is stronger in Dh1; separate essay i guess), but Arkane has patted themselves on the back for portraying non-white characters, which feels like the same thing as the aesthetic of diversity we're seeing in advertising currently because it’s in marketing trend guides. it's self-congratulatory and it's a missed opportunity for deeper storytelling.

you can see an example of diversity at its most shallow in the way that Billie’s written: there’s little engagement with her as an entire person with history & wants & preferences, and the world she walks through in that game feels like it has nothing to do with her. you could make a case for alienation as a theme, but then, how do you handle the titular premise of 'Dishonored' without ever letting Billie make changes in an environment without a chaos system? it's disappointing from that angle too.

in my opinion, whatever it's worth, it was an accident Arkane created such an awesome character - they needed someone to betray daud. congrats billie.

all this said, it makes her an underdog as far as characters to enjoy & create art & stories for. it's nice to find so many like-minded, switched on people! <3

billie's character potential

she’s got a wealth of unexplored lore, being deeply intertwined with both Karnaca & Dunwall’s fates & criminal underbellies, as well as her connections to the witches & whalers, and three Empresses.

she’s lived a few distinct lifetimes and in the games we get to meet her at two peaks (KoD & DotO) & a low (Dh2 as Meagan).

her voice is very distinct, her dry & often dark humour is entertaining & fun to write. her perspective is really interesting - she’s had the widest variety of void-powers of anyone canonically, and she’s also lived through the highest highs and lowest lows.

she's got everything going for her :) i couldn't really pick a fav thing!

[turtlespancake]

me when i write a character who is prone to dooming themself and then they run off and doom themself. core traits are stubbornness and a willingness to disregard their own humanity gET BACK HERE IM NOT DONE WITH YOU

[autism-disco]

can i please request a fun fact about anything ever

[theoreticalli]

I put 30 tags on that dear evan hansen post. for the love of god don't click to expand the tags I'm so fucking sorry I just hate that awful fucking show so fucking much. oh fuck I've done it again in the tags here oh god

[winter-hoof]

My new ornaments this year 🎄

[subaru-meteorlight]

ok yeah esupuri is getting to me sooooo fucking bad I LOVE KANNA……….. HIS VOICEE!!!!! MELLOW!!!!! SOFT BOY!!! UUWWAUUGHHFHH his dance movements!! Give us nothing!! I really like esu’s movements, it’s high energy and skilled… truly knights kouhai…. Raika is super cute too, his strength to me is his facial expressions in mvs being more expressive than the others and pushing his cute charm

[fantastic-mr-corvid]

wip wednesday

peek at the start of the 7th chapter/epilogue of rage, where i get to see how Tesoro & Elena are doing [spoiler: Tesoro aint doing so hot]

“Feeling sorry for yourself all on your lonesome Cavallero?”

Trust Elena to be the first one to find him and his one man pity party, hidden away on the roof of the gym. He didn't move his gaze from the skyline as she sat down on sun warmed stone next to him, too exhausted to even muster up a twitch of his lips in greeting.

Pages turn, and he realizes his mistake as Elena picks up his discarded sketchbook, a sharp intake of breath as his hopes that she wouldn't see his latest sketches were dashed. 

Dragging his eyes away from their city to the offending page, his eyes once again took in the images that had been lingering in his mind, and the pencil sketches that were his attempted exorcism.

“I’ll always be envious of your visual memory, your ability to hold onto what you see and draw it with such accuracy,”

Celia, wounds still raw on her face, an expression of fear and shock on her face as she stared out of the page, accusatory and taken aback, rough pencil marks only heightening the emotions on her face, rough featureless figures crowding around her.

“You shouldn't be,”

[bigmammallama5]

pulling a 12 hour shift at the wood kiln this weekend kinda set me back with my shoulder/neck trouble i've been having. but i did go to pt yesterday and we tried dry needling for the first time (two in my left trapezius, on the top near my neck) and what the fuck. i dont understand how that all works and usually approach it with a healthy amount of questioning but my muscle released and i feel so much better. i didnt hurt when i got up today lol other than im sore where i got stuck (and yes im still doing my exercises im gonna get a good grade in dont screw your body up)

(we also think that muscle is the culprit for my nerve tingling in my hand, that reacted during the procedure and has also since improved)