#might make this a theme actually…

[wxywardsun]

◾️ The line between heaven and hell ◾️

[cherryfennec]

Summer Times

Hi! I'm finally back from my two week abroad trip!

[gremling4mer]

bracelet I just finished themed around my favorite song of all time, ghost stories by the narcissist cookbook!!

each bead color represents a letter, the bracelet has the first letter of each word laid out in rows of four at a time (so the first line is YAMW for example). only got about halfway through the song with this one but I'm planning to make the other half and maybe give it to someone as a. totally normal and definitely not queer at all token of affection

(first pic is natural lighting in my room with the dogshit lightbulb, second is with a filter to bring back the more accurate colors)

[astr-hal]

the 7 angels of shimokitazawa

[lesbianherald]

kind of feel like 'write for yourself, nobody else' is bad advice. like i get where its coming from. but idk. it just feels too general. at least for me writing is about connecting with others and good writing knows how to do that. not connecting with everyone - not writing to please - but still connecting with others you know. you have to know what questions people might ask and how you might be able to get them invested etc etc.

[phynixdotcom]

Yeah, so while I was on my "I'm going to read into Vanny/Vanessa as much as possible" journey, I noticed an odd quirk in her animations in how she moves. At first, I thought it reminded me of a ballerina, 'cause she's kinda tip-toeing, & she has this way of keeping her head & chest in one place as she moves, but I looked again & realized --

That's not ballet! She's doing a tight-rope act. Like, look at this one:

This is like standing up on the wooden boards before you do the actual tight-rope walking, & the ring leader is hyping you up as you do some fun movement for the crowds. &, then, these:

These are all instances where she walks with one foot directly in front of the other. In that third, she's doing the "woaaah" wiggly-ass balance movements & everything, as if she's swaying up at the top of the tent, even though she's down on solid ground.

Idk, I feel like the way her feet are placed isn't accurate (pretty sure they should be pointed left & right, not both forwards...) doesn't make this 100% correct, but I like it. It also connects back with her first SB teaser, wherein she's up in the rafters.

[icewindandboringhorror]

Pages from trying to keep a little sketchbook-scrapbook type thing going for two weeks lol. I gave myself specific rules in hopes they might all end up more cohesive/consistent seeming, but alas, scribbly chaos reigns, it seems

[axolau]

TRANSFORMERS PRIME RANT

content warning: discussions of physical/psychological abuse

I’m going to try to write a rant but we’ll see how good I am at stringing my words together.

I love Transformers Prime with my whole heart, particularly Starscream, and despite and because of this, I don’t like the way his character plays out in season three.

After Starscream rejoins the decepticons at the end of season two, the abuse he receives from Megatron gets way worse. Megatron physically beat Starscream quite often in season one, and as season three progresses, this treatment is on full display and gets so much worse. And these abuse scenes are genuinely horrible and upsetting. Megatron physically dominates Starscream, who is much smaller and thinner, and the show spends a lot of time emphasizing his fear and screams as Megatron beats him.

Alongside Starscream’s abuse getting worse, he also gets significant Stockholm syndrome in season three, which makes the whole situation one thousand times ickier. While in season one Starscream tried to usurp and fight back against Megatron, now he looks up to the person who is actively and regularly beating him half to death.

But there’s nothing wrong with depicting a toxic character dynamic, it’s how the narrative frames it that matters.

Starscream gets treated worse by Megatron while thinking better of him as the show goes on. And the only people we get to see this ugly situation through the eyes of are Starscream and Megatron, who both think this is fine in one way or another.

We never get to see any other character acknowledge the abusive relationship. The autobots are totally oblivious or totally uncaring that it’s happening, and you can bet the other Decepticons aren’t going to do anything about it. Even after Megatron leaves behind his goal of oppression, he shows no regret of how he’d treated Starscream, the person who he had arguably made suffer the most. He just shouts at him and makes him flinch one last time then abandons him. He continues to mistreat him then leaves him behind. Leaves behind the person who he had physically and psychologically destroyed for thousands if not millions of years. Although I don’t expect Megatron to show sympathy for Starscream, since his ‘redemption’ was just him retiring and leaving everyone else to clean up the mess he made. (I have good and bad feelings on Megatron’s ending, but I don’t want to get too sidetracked)

What matters is, without Megatron acknowledging the horribleness of the situation, and without the autobots being aware of it, the only person who can acknowledge how toxic the situation was is Starscream.

But he doesn’t get this chance. His arc ends when the Predacons beat him up for revenge.

Starscream is an abuse victim, and he is never given a chance to heal. No character, himself included, ever fully acknowledges how problematic the situation is. He is never given a chance to be powerful. Over and over again he is forced to be weak and without agency. From the start of season three to the end of the movie, his character is a slow trickle into suffering more and more, being beaten down again and again until he doesn’t get back up.

When watching the show, I was fine with the amount of frightening abuse they were depicting on screen because I thought they would have some amount of healing from it. But it just gets worse and worse until the show ends and that’s it. It just feels like abuse for the sake of abuse at this point.

But the thing is, I’m not even opposed to Starscream having a bad ending. Let me explain.

I think it makes sense after him being conniving and evil and power hungry and cruel for his actions to catch up for him, and for him to be humbled in one way or another.

The thing is, they depicted Starscream’s fall to shame without ever giving him a moment of power. There’s no climax in season three where he takes control of his life again. There’s no moment where he gets to be more than humiliated and shamed.

Starscream is a victim, and he’s an abuser as well. He treats everyone around him horribly. He is a perpetuator of the cycle of abuse, where, after being abused by Megatron and others, he started to replicate their cruelty in order to have power.

The story needed to recognize him as both an abuser and a victim. It seemed to think these cancel out. That Starscream being beat by the Predacons in the end is the consequence of his abusive actions towards others coming back to haunt him. But just as a middle school bully doesn’t deserve to go home and be bullied by their sibling, an abuser does not deserve to be abused by another person. No one deserves to be abused.

Starscream being abused doesn’t pay for his crimes. And he isn’t just being humbled for treating the predacons badly; he’s being tortured.

As an abuser, Starscream deserved to see the consequences of his actions in some way, but as a victim, Starscream deserved any kind of moment of victory.

All this to say, this isn’t about wether or not Starscream deserved to be beat by the predacons (although I maintain that we should have better mindsets about paying for our crimes than “abusers deserve abuse”). This is about the fact that he deserved to see a shred of honor before his fall as well.

This is about the fact that as an abuse victim, he is given not a shred of dignity or an acknowledgment of his pain. His descent in season three isn’t even a character arc. There’s no growth, no resolution, no rising or falling climax. Like I said before, it’s just him suffering over and over, until the series ends.

Starscream is perhaps a good, although tragic, depiction of an abuser: a character who treats others poorly until it finally catches up to him. But he is a bad and problematic depiction of a victim: someone who never gets to be seen, even by himself.

[toringo]

Curlywashing

[aquanutart]

She is offering water to any lost travelers! However, it's so hot that the water has become tea, so she's adjusted accordingly!

[devilsskettle]

The X trilogy + "psycho-biddy" influences

[little-mouse-adventures]

@orangerosebush's post here, with my comment and @fowlblue's tags today got me thinking.

Artemis Senior has been teaching his son matters of business from a young age. Not only was Artemis, at 11 years old, discussing stocks with his father, but Fowl Senior had been imparting his wisdom onto his son for years by that point, discussing the ever-increasing value of gold with him before tucking him into bed. Even outside of pure monetary value, Sr. had tried to go legitimate with his business dealings, leading Artemis to have a few legal ventures of his own.

We also see very early on in the books that Artemis has been regularly using Butler as a resource for his plots: bouncing ideas off him was apparently a fairly common tactic when he was scheming.

Both Artemis Senior and Butler are interested in (or at least, not opposed to) educating Artemis on the ways of their lifestyle(s). It would be Artemis Senior who would have taught his son the value of banks and safety deposit boxes and hidden safes but it was Butler who was actively working with Artemis to rob those safety deposit boxes.

In the same vein of breaking-and-entering, TLC also gives us the fun little moment where Butler hands Artemis his own lockpicks, to get into the workings of the bomb.

With one line we learn that Artemis knows how to pick locks, but does not have his own set of lockpicks. Butler, on the other hand, has both the tools and knowledge how to use them. Partnered with a brief mention in TTP of some the specific trades of those previously employed by Artemis Senior (including such things as crime lords, insider traders, and cat burglars), we can extrapolate that Artemis Senior would generally hire someone to pick a lock for him, rather than do so himself.

It's pretty logical to conclude then that Artemis learned big-picture management from his father, and day-to-day skillsets from his bodyguard.

Essentially, Artemis Senior taught Artemis how to run a criminal empire. Butler taught Artemis how to be a criminal.

[spookythesillyfella]

hv tracey trying to remedy their word problemz with help from other traceyz ¥_^

★ featuring @jumjum-crafts 'z and @chamom1le-t3a 'z traceyz

[jesncin]

Hi, I did an ask a while back, and I don't think I got the point across that I was trying to (which is my fault, I wasn't sure how to explain it so it ended up being convoluted). I was not asking about which name suited Clark/Superman/Kal-El best (all the names are his and are true to him). I was asking about his personality. What is your Clark's personality like?

I'm asking because depending on what media you consume Clark can either be super outgoing, fun, bold, and closer to what we associate with Superman's personality (like in Birthright). Or he can be dorky, awkward, shy, which tends to be more associated with Clark Kent Daily Planet reporter (like in MAWS). Obviously Superman and Clark are one in the same (and these personality traits can coexist), but he presents himself differently depending on who is watching.

So my ask is basically who is your Clark Kent when nobody is watching?

Ah okay! The use of all the different names was confusing haha. So here's another go! I know the spectrum of his personhood as Clark Kent goes from "himbo -> bumbling reporter -> mild-mannered reporter" I prefer "mild-mannered reporter" for the same reasons most modern versions gravitate towards that characterization: to show that while Clark is soft-hearted he's still an exceptional reporter. Himbo characterizations (like MAWS) tend to go overboard to the point of incompetence. Unless it's for comedy, I think that's antithetical to "immigrant trying to assimilate by being a model minority" part of his identity and it also flanderizes him.

But if I had to thoroughly answer "who is Clark Kent when nobody is watching?" I would say: that's one of Clark's perpetual internal struggles that he doesn't have an answer to either. If we whittled down who Clark feels most comfortable with right down to his adoptive parents:

There are times Clark puts on a face for them too. And that makes sense, they might be his parents but they're still human- so there's a distance between them. When he's constantly anticipating how others perceive him, it's hard to know what's fabricated and what's real about himself anymore. Especially when he has no other Kryptonians to look to as reference outside of archives. And even with Kara coming around eventually, they don't share the exact same diaspora experience.

I think it's the questions a lot of diaspora ask themselves "who would I be if I didn't have to worry about what others think?" and "is that version of me even possible when I'll always be subject to others' perceptions of me?"

Under all that code-switching, assimilation, model minority over-achieving, and making himself less threatening, who is Superman? He doesn't know either, and I personally like stories where he comes to peace with that. To be okay with making it up as he goes.

[hdra77]

Nyaworld designs part 5: gourmand!! + a comic????

originally this simple comic was supposed to be joke but then it slipped... now im not planning to actually make a full on comic series about this (since they'll be in an amv format) this AU has NO proper lore whatsoever and i just threw this in..

[flufflecat]

roughing out some concept sketches for more bill fashion designs