#it’s like my anti form

[thetwilightroadtonightfall]

me posting that fic out of nowhere is extra funny if you know what else I’ve been working on lately

love is in the air? WRONG!! WHUMP!!!!

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts 2 - Timeless River Anti Form

[evenmyhivemindisempty]

My controversial opinion about Hob Gadling is that I believe he’s absolutely the sort of guy that “puts things behind him”, and tries to wash his hands clean of the things he feels icky about. This is implied pretty well in the show, with him blithely moving from soldiering and robbery to printing, from slaving to… whatever it was he was doing in the 19th century instead. That being said, this is not at all the same as actively trying to atone, or even making a concerted effort to be a better person, and I really wish fandom could tell the difference!

[genericpuff]

I'm not sure if anyone else has made this connection, but I've never seen it mentioned before. I think, similar to Lolita, RS was also inspired by the art of Trevor Brown. His work has a lot of young girls and medical fetish themes (to put it lightly) in a style reminiscent of RS's earlier stuff.

sigh

CW: medical fetish art often depicting children / child-like characters and medical equipment such as needles, gas masks, etc. seriously don't hit the jump if medical equipment or young girls in nurse's outfits or with open wounds makes you squeamish, I will not blame you for turning around now LOL

OP I was about to just... dismiss this. Wave it away as a funny coincidence that is indeed funny, but doesn't have any real evidence to back it up. I had a post typed up in response already declaring this, after which posting I was gonna move on with my day, work on Rekindled, play some XIV.

Because sure, there are a lot of resemblances between Trevor Brown's work and Rachel's old art, but nothing that can't be dismissed in good faith as a simple coincidence of being within the same genre of fetish art (first three are Trevor's, last three are Rachel's).

But then that little voice in the back of my head whispered in my ear, "Puff. You should double check. Just to be sure. Do your due diligence." And I once again found myself on the precipice of the rabbithole that somehow becomes deeper every time I jump. This time though, I knew it couldn't be that bad, I mean, I had enough confidence in knowing that there's no fucking way she listed Trevor Brown as one of her favorite artists-

God fucking dammit. How in the world did I miss this? I mean, I suppose I missed it simply because I'm not familiar with the works of Trevor Brown, but you can bet your ass I became familiar with it in my digging. Yeah, this guy is a supreme creep.

Again, I am not going to accuse Rachel of being a pedophile because that's just not an accusation that should be thrown around without undeniable evidence. What I will say, which has largely remained the same - though even more confidently now than ever before - is that she's clearly someone who took a lot of inspiration and influence from very problematic artists when she was young (I'm talking in her late teens which has me wondering if she started making medical fetish art when she was still a minor-) and then, BEST guess, she started to drop the medical fetish stuff around the time she went to college (which was also the same time she dropped The Doctor Pepper Show, which later got reworked into The Doctor Foxglove Show which was a lot less reminiscent of her medical fetish style from the early 2000's, but still had some of her usual preferences at play) and that's led up to today where she's drawing comics that look like they're for kids but tackle heavy adult subject matter in the worst way possible that straight up perpetuates grooming.

No matter how much experience I have with this already, no matter how much I think I've already seen, I always find more, and this time was no different. In fact - though unrelated to the original topic - thanks to this one fucking ask, I even found the full Mads Mikkelson comic with the completed caption. You know, that one.

And apparently Mads Mikkelson did very much replace her crush on Jeremy Irons.

Who's Jeremy Irons?

Oh yeah.

I just... y'all I can't. This is un-fucking-real. I'm gonna go take a shower, I need to scrub myself off of this 😭

[osteochondraldefect]

IDENTITY DOGMATISM, THE IMAGE IS ALWAYS IN STYLE

[massiveladycat]

[skrunksthatwunk]

actually i'm still thinking about the moral orel finale.

he has a cross on his wall. do you know how much i think about that bc it's a lot.

a lot of stories ((auto)biographical or fictional) centering escape from abusive/fundamentalist christianity result in the lead characters leaving behind christianity entirely. and that makes complete sense! people often grow disillusioned with the associated systems and beliefs, and when it was something used to hurt them or something so inseparable from their abuse that they can't engage with it without hurting, it makes total sense that they would disengage entirely. and sometimes they just figure out that they don't really believe in god/a christian god/etc. a healthy deconstruction process can sometimes look like becoming an atheist or converting to another religion. it's all case by case. (note: i'm sure this happens with other religions as well, i'm just most familiar with christian versions of this phenomenon).

but in orel's case, his faith was one of the few things that actually brought him comfort and joy. he loved god, y'know? genuinely. and he felt loved by god and supported by him when he had no one else. and the abuses he faced were in how the people in his life twisted religion to control others, to run away from themselves, to shield them from others, etc. and often, orel's conflicts with how they acted out christianity come as a direct result of his purer understanding of god/jesus/whatever ("aren't we supposed to be like this/do that?" met with an adult's excuse for their own behavior or the fastest way they could think of to get orel to leave them alone (i.e. orel saying i thought we weren't supposed to lie? and clay saying uhhh it doesn't count if you're lying to yourself)). the little guy played catch with god instead of his dad, like.. his faith was real, and his love was real. and i think it's a good choice to have orel maintain something that was so important to him and such a grounding, comforting force in the midst of. All That Stuff Moralton Was Up To/Put Him Through. being all about jesus was not the problem, in orel's case.

and i know i'm mostly assuming that orel ended up in a healthier, less rigid version of christianity, but i feel like that's something that was hinted at a lot through the series, that that's the direction he'd go. when he meditates during the prayer bee and accepts stephanie's different way to communicate, incorporating elements of buddhism into his faith; when he has his I AM A CHURCH breakdown (removing himself from the institution and realizing he can be like,, the center of his own faith? taking a more individualistic approach? but Truly Going Through It at the same time), his acceptance (...sometimes) of those who are different from him and condemned by the adults of moralton (stephanie (lesbian icon stephanie my beloved), christina (who's like. just a slightly different form of fundie protestant from him), dr chosenberg (the jewish doctor from otherton in holy visage)). his track record on this isn't perfect, but it gets better as orel starts maturing and picking up on what an absolute shitfest moralton is. it's all ways of questioning the things he's been taught, and it makes sense that it would lead to a bigger questioning as he puts those pieces together more. anyway i think part of his growth is weeding out all the lost commandments of his upbringing and focusing on what faith means to him, and what he thinks it should mean. how he wants to see the world and how he wants to treat people and what he thinks is okay and right, and looking to religion for guidance in that, not as like. a way to justify hurting those he's afraid or resentful of, as his role models did.

he's coming to his own conclusions rather than obediently, unquestioningly taking in what others say. but he's still listening to pick out the parts that make sense to him. (edit/note: and it's his compassion and his faith that are the primary motivations for this questioning and revisal process, both of individual cases and, eventually, the final boss that is christianity.) it makes perfect sense as the conclusion to his character arc and it fits the overall approach of the show far better. it's good is what i'm saying.

and i think it's important to show that kind of ending, because that's a pretty common and equally valid result of deconstruction. and i think it cements the show's treatment of christianity as something that's often (and maybe even easily) exploited, but not something inherently bad. something that can be very positive, even. guys he even has a dog he's not afraid of loving anymore. he's not afraid of loving anyone more than jesus and i don't think it's because he loves this dog less than bartholomew (though he was probably far more desperate for healthy affection and companionship when he was younger). i think it's because he figures god would want him to love that dog. he's choosing to believe that god would want him to love and to be happy and to be kind. he's not afraid of loving in the wrong way do you know how cool that is he's taking back control he's taking back something he loves from his abusers im so normal

[phoenixisrq]

I follow intersex tags on my main, as a cisintersex person. This way, I get good ol' intersex content on my dash often, and what do I see? Some clown placing 'transintersex' people among horrendously intersexist things. These people actually believe someone who wants or desires to be intersex/more intersex is in the same boat as fucking TERFs who call us "people with DSD" and at this point I fear the person who made that post may be too far gone if they genuinely believe that.

There is a point where, in your brigade to call everything intersexist, that you need to actually analyze things that actively hurt ALL intersex people. 'DSD', which stands for 'disordered sex development' for those who are unaware, actually harms the community. Forced binaries, such as 'amab/afab genitals', 'TME/TMA', painting 'cis/trans' as clear cut opposites where you can only be one, etc actually harms us. Genital surgeries, forced HRT, the fact that DOCTORS still see us as things to be fixed... THAT harms us. The vehement erasure of intersex people at pride events harms us.

For somebody to sit behind a screen and even acknowledge the horrors intersex people face, only to throw transintersex people under the bus while they're at it, is upsetting to me. I see all this hatred, cries of intersexism, towards transintersex individuals and cannot for the life of me see the point or reason behind it. It's possible that it's just cashing in on the current transID hate fad, which has poisoned so many supposed safe spaces... but it's still so upsetting to watch multiple communities I'm a part of waste their time on transID folk.

Whether or not you actually believe transID is all fetishization and that, in turn, means bigotry, one cannot waste their time on ultimately harmless shit when coercive sex reassignment (among other actual issues) is still a fucking thing. There are bigger issues at hand here, and the nonissue that transID people pose is not fucking important and never will be, because again it's a NONISSUE.

[high-voltage-rat]

Actually I'm still thinking about it. Another interesting way in which RvB is anti-war is the way that the Director fills the role of a villain and antagonist (especially in the Recollections trilogy, where he's a faceless villain we never see but is responsible for everything that happens).

In his memos to the Chairman, the Director emphasizes his sense of duty and obligation to the military- he becomes irate for the first time when he feels that it's being implied that he was derelict in his duty... or that the work he did out of that duty is being criticized for being against the military's interests. He also talks about Allison's death in a way I find... interesting.

"You see; I never had the chance to serve in battle. Nor did fate provide me the opportunity to sacrifice myself for humanity as it did for so many others in the Great War. Someone extremely dear to me was lost very early in my life. My mind has always plagued me with the question: If the choice had been placed in my hands, could I have saved her? [...] But, given the events of these past few weeks, I feel confident that had I been given the chance, I would have made those sacrifices myself... Had I only the chance."

The idea of sacrifice is central to the way he talks about his wife's loss, to the way he talks about the war in general. He talks of sacrifice with a sense of veneration- that it's something he aspires to do, that he longs for. There's a few ways we can interpret "I would have made those sacrifices myself"...

-That in Allison's place, he thinks he would have laid down his life too.

-That if given the chance, he would have given his life to save hers.

But most interestingly...

-That he would have sacrificed Allison's life for the continued survival of humanity, if that was what duty called for.

...And personally, I think all 3 are true.

In most war media, the Director's perspective on sacrifice is very common. Sacrifice is glorious and heroic- to die in battle is an honour- and it's the only way to ensure the group you serve survives. This is a tool of propaganda- nobody wants to go to war just for the sake of it, you have to give them a reason that the risk of dying or being permanently disabled isn't just acceptable, but desirable. Beyond that, most people don't want to do things they think are immoral- you have to convince them it's important, a necessary lesser evil. You teach them to sacrifice their morals, too.

The way they train soldiers to follow orders and to kill, is to convince them that they, and the people around them, and the people they care about, will all die if they don't. It's drilled into your head from day one. It's the way they ensure their commanding officers won't shy away from sending their men off to die. The message is constant- sacrifice is your duty, and duty ensures your people's survival.

In the Director's eyes, the damage Project Freelancer caused was his sacrifice. He never got the opportunity to sacrifice himself during the war- so he sacrificed others, as military brass do. The Freelancers- including his daughter. The countless sim troopers. Any people he considered "collateral damage" on missions. And when the opportunity to do so presented itself, he sacrificed a copy of himself- Alpha- and he sacrificed a copy of Allison- Tex.

The very thing that derailed his life- the loss of his wife- he made it happen again. He put her copy in dangerous situations, let her exist in the position of constant repeated failure, created the circumstances that would eventually lead to her death. He put their daughter in deadly situations that nearly killed her repeatedly, provided her with impossible expectations leading to self-destructive behaviours in the name of duty, implanted her with two AI knowing they could cause her permanent harm. He was confident he "would have made those sacrifices himself" because he did.

The Director is the embodiment of the military war machine. As an antagonist, he is a warning against buying into the glorification of sacrifice. He's a condemnation of the idea that one should be willing to do anything to win a war- that duty to the military is the thing that ensures survival... All the messages that are pushed to ensure recruitment and obedience of soldiers.

He's a reminder that swallowing the propaganda leads to you doing terrible things... and in the end, you're a broken man left mourning the losses that you suffered even as you repeated them, convinced that it was all necessary.

[itriedimhighandreadytodie]

The way I see MaBill, I don't think Bill would ever truly "love" her, just because she's not a supergenius like her grunkle. He sees her as only a puppet he can manipulate. At most, he'd only end up find her cute and endearing the way you would a pet. All while he continues to prey on her feelings so she can do his bidding for him.

Essentially, he'd give her everything she could ever want- except his love.

[juwaiin]

piastri gaining more positions in races doesn’t mean he’s performing better than norris or more consistently. he’s 13-3 down in quali, you are always going to gain more places if you start further back! norris has consistently outperformed him this season, which is kinda clear from the gaps between them at the end of races - norris has finished more than 20 seconds ahead of him quite a few times this season. piastri’s biggest lead to him was abt 10 seconds and that was when norris didn’t put under the sc at jeddah.

norris is getting team orders because he is the one who has performed well enough and consistently enough to be in the championship fight. oscar hasn’t. simple as that.

the sheet will also show you the positions norris has lost. you gain more positions if you start further back, but you really aren't supposed to lose more positions if you start ahead! norris makes too many errors that cost him positions. simple as that.

and speaking of consistently outperforming,

i personally don't think what norris needs is team orders. what he needs is to perform better- and not just in comparison to oscar. the bulk of his point loss is because of stupid errors and, not to sound like a broken record, but calling for team orders instead of improvement on his end is like slapping a bandaid on an open wound. will it work? maybe. is there a bigger problem that needs to be resolved? absolutely. is it unfair for oscar to be the bandaid at his own expense in this scenario while the gaping wound goes unaddressed? goes without saying!!

go back and read that paragraph three more times because i keep repeating the same notion but i don't know why you have elected to ignore or misinterpret.

everyone hates team orders yadda yadda but most people will shut up when they're justified. in this case, it's unjustified. if you lose positions in 47% of your races, you are not consistent or strong. if you NEED team orders to fight a championship and cannot carry your own weight, you do not deserve it. simple enough i hope.

anyway, please stop sending anon asks about norris jesus fucking christ. it's cowardly and pointless. if you want to share your opinions, you have a blog for that. if you want to have a conversation (and i doubt this is the case :p) dms exist. but i don't think there's a conversation to be had given. vague gesturing. the nature of this exchange

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts 2 - Anti Form

[pigeonxp]

I do not think there’d be EddieTmmy lovers the way there is for BT, just my thoughts when I thought about it for a while but I think the racism would play out differently: “Eddie as horrible for not seeing poor baby uwu Buck” vs “ew racist Tmmy Eddie get better standards Bucks right there” type of vibes, I think they’d still be shitting on Eddie in defence of Buck and making Buck out to a poor pure baby who is too good for Eddie anyway

u are actually so right and u should say it louder. the amount of hate towards eddie is ever increasing, and in general there is nothing the narrative can do to make people stop hating on him, just like how there is almost nothing that it can do for people to stop the "buck can do no wrong" perspective. there is no right way to move, because every direction leads back to eddie hate. its unwinnable and this should be studied more i fear.

[infiniteglitterfall]

"...All of the punditry about diversity and free speech and criticism of Israel has extravagantly missed the point.

"The problem was not that Jewish students on American university campuses didn’t want free speech, or that they didn’t want to hear criticism of Israel."

(The problem is also not that Jewish students didn't support Palestinians or want a free independent Palestinian state. One of the biggest problems, in fact, is that the pro-Palestinian movement consistently implies that the only way to support Palestine is by calling for the destruction of Israel.

While activists in Gaza protest Hamas, activists outside of it follow Hamas's lead: framing this as a battle between all Palestinians and the existence of Israel.

This has effectively excluded activists in Palestine from the movement to support them. Which is a neat trick. /s)

"Instead, they didn’t want people vandalizing Jewish student organizations’ buildings, or breaking or urinating on the buildings’ windows.

"They didn’t want people tearing their mezuzahs down from their dorm-room doors.

They didn’t want their college instructors spouting anti-Semitic lies and humiliating them in class.

They didn’t want their posters defaced with Hitler caricatures, or their dorm windows plastered with Fuck Jews.

They didn’t want people punching them in the face, or beating them with a stick, or threatening them with death for being Jewish.

"At world-class American colleges and universities, all of this happened and more."

(I've added links to each of these examples. I couldn't find an incident of "fuck Jews" plastered all over dorm windows, but I did find it written on a chalkboard, left in a note by someone robbing a Jewish student, and graffitied in a music building bathroom.

That last one was at UCLA, where there was also an incident in which Students for Justice in Palestine held a public beating of a Netanyahu piñata while an organizer with a bullhorn led everyone in a chant of "beat that fucking Jew!")

"I was not merely an observer of this spectacle. I’d been serving on now–former Harvard President Claudine Gay’s anti-Semitism advisory committee, convened after the October 7 Hamas massacre in Israel and amid student responses to it.

"I was asked to participate because I am a Harvard alumna who wrote a book about anti-Semitism called People Love Dead Jews.

"As soon as my participation became public, I was inundated with messages from Jewish students seeking help. They approached me with their stories after having already tried many other avenues—bewildered not only by what they’d experienced, but also by how many people dismissed or denied those experiences."

Dara Horn says "the foundational big lie," in one version after another throughout the centuries, has been "that anti-Semitism itself is a righteous act of resistance against evil, because Jews are collectively evil and have no right to exist."

"In 2013, David Nirenberg published an astonishing book titled Anti-Judaism.

"Nirenberg’s argument, rigorously laid out in nearly 500 pages of dense scholarship and more than 100 pages of footnotes, is that Western cultures—including ancient civilizations, Christianity, Islam (which Nirenberg considers Western in its relationship with Judaism), and post-religious societies—have often defined themselves through their opposition to what they consider 'Judaism.' This has little to do with actual Judaism, and a lot to do with whatever evil these non-Jewish cultures aspire to overcome.

"Nirenberg is a diligent historian who resists generalizations and avoids connecting the past to contemporary events. But when one reads through his carefully assembled record of 23 centuries’ worth of intellectual leaders articulating their societies’ ideals by loudly rejecting whatever they consider 'Jewish,' this deep neural groove in Western thought becomes difficult to dismiss, its patterns unmistakable.

"If piety was a given society’s ideal, Jews were impious blasphemers; if secularism was the ideal, Jews were backward pietists.

"If capitalism was evil, Jews were capitalists; if communism was evil, Jews were communists.

"If nationalism was glorified, Jews were rootless cosmopolitans; if nationalism was vilified, Jews were chauvinistic nationalists. 'Anti-Judaism' thus becomes a righteous fight to promote justice."

(This second piece is a rip-off of Brazilian artist Carlos Latuff's 2008 comic celebrating a Communist event in Brazil.

It's also a particularly excellent example of how both "Jews are capitalists" and "Jews are communists" represent the core antisemitic trope of "Jews morally corrupt society.")

"This dynamic forces Jews into the defensive mode of constantly proving they are not evil, and even simply that they have a right to exist."

Dara Horn's piece has some super-fun examples.

"Around 38 C.E., after rioters in Alexandria destroyed hundreds of Jewish homes and burned Jews alive, the Jewish Alexandrian intellectual Philo and the non-Jewish Alexandrian intellectual Apion both sailed to Rome for a 'debate' before Emperor Caligula about whether Jews deserved citizenship.

"Apion believed that Jews held an annual ritual in which they kidnapped a non-Jew, fattened him up, and ate him. Caligula delayed Philo’s rebuttal for five months, and then listened to him only while consulting with designers on palace decor.

"Alexandrian Jews lost their citizenship rights, though it took until 66 C.E. for 50,000 more of them to be slaughtered.

"In medieval Europe, Jews were forced into disputations with Christian priests that placed Jewish texts and traditions on public trial, resulting in Jewish books being burned and Jewish disputants exiled. Later legal trials expanded on this concept, requiring Jews to defend themselves against the absurd charge known as the blood libel, in which Jews are accused of murdering and consuming non-Jewish children—a claim that has echoes in current lies about Israelis harvesting Palestinians’ organs."

fucking exhausting is what it is

I want to share more of this essay, and talk about it more. But this is more than enough for right now. This is way more than enough.

[randygrim]

Lineart for my next cyn drawing!!!!

Oh man, i cannot wait wait WAIT to color this oh my goddddd

The wings are gonna look awesome!!!

[givemewallywestorgivemedeath]

Growing up in an extremely ultra religious, cult-like family was a mindfuck for multiple reasons but that doesn't stop unfortunately, even when you escape. For example, see: The overwhelming feeling of boiling hatred and shame for who you used to be.

The angry hatred for the past person I used to be, the version of myself that mindlessly parroted my family's beliefs and listened to their every command, constantly simmered under my skin and invaded my every thought. I was embarrassed of what I used to be- even as I made friends of different ethnicities and faiths, as I listened and explored new ideas and worlds that I never knew existed, as I started the first LGBTQ+ club at my school and volunteered with kids who deserved so much more- there was always a little voice in the back of my head.

"They would hate you if they knew what you were. They would hate the horrendous teachings that were seared into your mind, the things that you used to say and believe. You are nothing but a pretender."

And it is true that my beliefs were bigoted in all the worst ways. It is true that I believed truly heart-wrenching things without a second thought and judged others in such harsh and unfair ways. I told myself that there was no coming back from that, not really. There was nothing I could do to ever make up for it.

Then I remembered that the person who said those things wore velcro light up sneakers and collected finger puppets that the librarians handed out as awards for reading picture books. The person that held signs at pro-life rallies and anti-LGBTQ+ protests had a cherished sticker book and hunted minnows in the creek after school and adored their puffle on club penguin and was really into greek mythology and had skinned knees from climbing trees at recess and knew every Disney song by heart and was absolutely terrified of the dark.

That person was a child.

I was a child.

It took a really long time. Years and years of reflection and distance, but I've decided that I can't hate the past version of myself anymore. I feel pity and remorse, I feel anger- I feel so much fury and violent rage- at what my childhood was and I grieve what could- no, should- have been, but I no longer resent who I was.

I'm not ashamed.

I am so, so, so unbelievably proud of that little kid. For being brave enough to leave the comfort and safety of what I was told was right. For not being afraid to be wrong. For seeking out information and knowledge in a culture that praised ignorance. For questioning everything, relentlessly.

I am by no means a perfect person, I never have been and I never will, but I am proud of myself in every iteration that has ever existed because I know that I have never stopped trying to understand and learn and grow, and I never will.

If you have ever been in a similar situation and feel similar things, first of all: My condolences on your lost childhood. Second of all: Please be nice to that past version of yourself and recognize all the hard work they did to make you who you are today. That person was a survivor and an inspiration. They deserve nothing but love.