#more than a brand

[emotionsofateen]

Rare Beauty’s Float at the LA Pride Parade June 11th! I love their float, their tshirts, their signs & I love that they participated in the pride parade! I love how inclusive Rare Beauty is! They overall looked very happy & full of great energy ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜 I love you

[davidtennantgenderenvy]

some people: ughhh the bigeneration totally undermined Ncuti’s entrance!!!

Ncuti, probably: teehee I get to call David Tennant honey

[egophiliac]

his magic is so PINK and FLUFFY and PRETTY! I love it!

I'm ready to process the Diasomnias now, buckle up

[whiskeyswifty]

The Black Dog - Taylor Swift (Tavern Branding Concept)

On an unremarkable side street in north London you can dry off your rain soaked body in The Black Dog Tavern, serving up pints to a crowd of almost exclusively locals. This staunch neighborhood watering hole has always been a place for friendly catch-ups and first dates. Mellow and time worn, it's been revamped by new owners, but still retains all the scratches and scrapes of it's history upon the hundred year-old oak bar. Many loyal patrons will say The Black Dog bears the marks of a bit of their own history as well, nights ended in dancing and tears in equal measure. Next time you pass by, drop in for a stout and a reprieve from the hustle and bustle of city life. You just might find your old flame nursing a beer at the corner of the bar, listening to your old favorite song.

[mobius-m-mobius]

falling in love with a god is not a death sentence. the story is only a tragedy if the god loves you back. - nathaniel orion g. k.

[pixlatedvampire]

💗

insert "these boots are made for walking" joke

[corvidkusnos]

Encouraging everyone to continue making noise for Gaza, even after today's shutdown is over.

Spread the word, contact representatives, protest, donate to fundraisers/charities, keep the momentum going!

Even just a click can help: https://arab.org/click-to-help/

If you've ever made, or even profited off of, stories/characters revolving around freedom and fighting oppression, you have a responsibility to practice what you preach and not remain silent.

More useful links:

Donate feminine hygiene kits: http://piousprojects.org/campaign/2712

Call for a ceasefire: http://ceasefiretoday.com

Learn about Palestine: http://decolonizepalestine.com

E-sims for Gaza: http://gazaesims.com

[hyacinthsdiamonds]

Imagine having the fastest car on the grid, but Max Verstappen lives so rent free in your head that you try to copy him instead of doing literally anything original... Mclaren, you'll never be him, no matter how many times you claim the orange army as your own!

[phanchester]

obsessed with the fact that phil was 100% aware of fanfiction tropes and had actual experience with it and yet chose to write the hand. unserious king winning the idgaf war i love him

[housecow]

one secret is eating cereal with heavy cream. it’s GOOD

[stil-lindigo]

the candle.

a comic about rediscovering passion and recovering from burnout.

creative notes:

[fixated-dark-king]

Sooo, I had the amazing experience of attending a panel C.S. Pacat was part of during the Sydney Writers’ Festival on 25th May 2024. The panel was called “Creating a Monster” (with two other YA authors).

And finally a week later (because adult-ing is hard), I had time to actually go through my notes and write up some of the fascccccinating things Pacat had to say about: monsterous heroes, and villains, and enemies-to-lovers deliciousness, and queer identity!

I didn’t want to forget some of the interesting things said in this panel and thought others might be interested in hearing about them too? Please indulge the splurge. :)

(Please note that all bold headers are just my thematic summary of each section for people to jump to, not the actual question asked.)

WHAT APPEALS ABOUT ‘THE MONSTROUS’ TO PACAT:

From a technical writing standpoint, the ‘Monstrous’ is appealing because a villain will often do an act and the hero reacts to that. It gives unconscious clues to the reader that when the villain turns up, something exciting is going to happen. In that sense, villainous characters have a special sort of ever-present attention given to them (possibly because human nature is to always keep one eye on the dangerous thing that could harm you).

On a personal level: A) When queer characters are awesome but also ‘Monstrous’, Pacat says it can feel really ‘electric’ and empowering to reclaim/allow yourself to embrace the monster role that you’ve been told you fit into by society. Like in Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles where queer people are allowed to be beautiful/glittering & powerful & witty & have existential conversations about good and evil while fitting under the Monstrous label. Like heck yeh, that’s cool. And B) as an author, you can feel a ‘minority pressure’ to have characters be Good all the time and be the perfect ambassador for that minority, but sometimes you just want to be a vampire and take over the world, you know?

THE EXISTENCE OF ‘PROTAGONIST-CENTRED MORALITY’ WITHIN THE DARK RISE BOOKS:

When pondering whether it is hard as a writer to convince readers that a Monstrous protagonist is a likeable character, Pacat pointed out that the funny thing is that the question ‘How am I going to make readers like this monster?’ never really ends up being an issue because people actually really like monsters! The thing you might not expect is that the struggle is actually: ‘How am I going to make these readers who are barracking for the protagonist feel that this ‘monster’ is actually monstrous?’

Pacat explained that when a protagonist is also a monster, it brings into play something called ‘Protagonist-Centric Morality’ -- where you bond with that protagonist and want the best for them etc, so much that it can obscure when the protagonist is actually doing something bad. Pacat mentioned that he has found the Protag-Centric Morality fairly striking in the case of the Dark Rise books because people have said to him things like: ‘The Dark King Did Nothing Wrong Ever In His Whole Life’ and Pacat questioned whether the moral centre of the story was landing somewhere different than intended. He was curious whether the other authors had experienced that with their ‘monstrous’ protagonists too.

IF A HERO IS ALSO MONSTROUS, HOW ON EARTH DO YOU DIFFERENTIATE THAT FROM THE VILLIAN? When pondering over the distinction between a Monstrous Hero and a Villain, Pacat shared some thoughts from his lived experience. He said the times when he has felt most threatened by the ‘Monstrous’ is when that person isn’t clearly identifiable to others around you; where there isn’t a shared understanding between everyone that ‘yes, that person is a monster’. Extending from that, the Truly Monstrous is when that person has some kind of control over you and control over the narrative as well; if the monster is the one telling the story but casting you as the monster. Essentially gaslighting via ‘narrative control’.

ENEMIES TO LOVERS TROPE:

This is Pacat’s absolute favourite romantic trope. And he elaborated that he doesn’t mean that in the sense of ‘these characters sort of don’t like each other’, but rather to the point where two characters really hate each other and for a very good reason. He likes when a path between two characters feels IMPOSSIBLE to overcome.

This trope was first explored in the Captive Prince trilogy and Pacat loved it so much he just had to use it again for the Dark Rise trilogy. The planning behind it for CaPri was brainstorming: ‘What is the worst thing I could think to use?’ (Answer: Killing a character’s brother, which lands the bereaved character into a set of hellish circumstances.) But that meant when Pacat decided to use it again for DR, he had to extend that to: ‘Now I need to think of something EVEN WORSE THAN THAT (CaPri)’ in order to separate the main characters. So Pacat had to spend ages thinking about what could be the absolute worst thing to use this time -- and he hopes that he came up with something that is ‘truly, truly way worse.’ Which essentially had everyone, including the moderator, laughing loudly in fear. XD

WILL KEMPEN: FOUND FAMILY & THE LONELINESS OF INAUTHENTICITY:

Pacat spent a lot of time trying to develop a really meaningful platonic friendship between Will and Violet. It meant a lot to see a friendship like that reflected on page for Pacat because some of the most important friendships of his life were across gender lines. The reception to Will and Violet has been so pleasantly surprising, so Pacat supposed he wasn’t the only one with a hunger for that kind of friendship within the romantasy genre.

Pacat also reflected on Will’s complex relationship with his Found Family -- that having the support of a Found Family can be so essential, but in Will’s case that lifeline is undermined by secrecy, turning that Found Family into a different kind of loneliness. Because the thing is: if something so immense happens to you that you feel you can’t talk about, or you feel some way about yourself but think you can’t share that with others, it means you can’t really be your authentic self. But if you’re not being you’re authentic self, who are your friends friends with? They can’t be friends with the true You; they can only be friends with a facade/with a performance. So as long as Will is scared to show his true self and remains hiding himself away from even his friends, he will be alone. It’s a hard step to take. (Note from me: so heavvvvy but poignant.)

NOT DR-RELATED, BUT PACAT’S FAV MONSTERS FROM POPULAR FICTION: Pacat was so excited to namedrop his favourite monsters from popular fiction, he volunteered to go first LOL. The answers: 'The Brat Prince' Lestat (Lestat has been on his mind a lot recently because the AMC TV portrayal captures Lestat so well & has completely rejuvenated Pacat’s 12 year-old love of vampires. Total mood); serial killers such as in the Ripley series; and simply: American Psycho.

Great panel, right? Now it’s Europe’s turn!

[tanadrin]

Jamelle Bouie made a couple of points on TikTok about US presidential elections recently that I thought were interesting. He argues it's kind of a myth that turnout rather than persuasion drives victories. The last couple of presidential elections have depended really on how undecided voters break, and in 2016 and 2020 how the so-called "double haters" who dislike both Biden and Trump voted when it came down to the wire. That pool of voters is quite small: in a highly polarized political environment, you just don't see the big swings in elections that you used to, and even now Biden is within a normal polling error of beating Trump. That polarization also puts a pretty low ceiling--and a pretty high floor--on any given candidate's approval ratings.

The 2020 election was in the end a very close re-run of the 2016 election--if you knew nothing about the 2020 campaign or election cycle other than who voted where and for who in 2016, you already have something like 95% of the results in 2020 figured out. This strongly contributes to my sense that the polls in 2024 are absolutely fucked: the idea we are going to see the single biggest race- and age-related realignment in voter behavior in November, when there have been no hints of it in actual election outcomes at any point in the last 18 months, and the swinginess of elections is at an all time low just doesn't seem tenable.

The other major point was that political events in a campaign have always had very short half-lives. This is one reason why people point out debates very rarely matter to the outcome of campaigns. Stuff like debates, major campaign gaffes, even campaign advertising, has a very short half-life in polls and seemingly in voters' minds as well. And since undecided voters are very different in their political behavior than people who care enough about politics to be following the presidential race in, like, June, they tend to only start paying attention to the race in the fall, and to make their final decision at the last minute.

All of this is to say the Trump assassination attempt is very unlikely to have any influence on the outcome of the election. Hell, neither is Biden's atrocious debate performance. People should make peace with the fact that the election as it stands is very uncertain: even if you rely on the polling data (which IMO you shouldn't), it is very difficult to predict with confidence who will win at this juncture.

[sillyfairygarden]

felt like doing some rendering ^_^ vc convex

[clarkgriffon]

TEN YEARS OF THE 100 ↳ Favorite Character ∞ Clarke Griffin

[redrobin-detective]

Me watching any media that takes place in the hospital and aggressively pointing out equipment I use and stuff I do. Bonus points is they're totally doing it wrong.