#mother nature’s show

[krispyweiss]

Song Review: The High Hawks - “Temperature is Rising”

The High Hawks hold a mirror up to contemporary America - and don’t like what they see - on “Temperature is Rising.”

The third advance single from Mother Nature’s Show (Feb. 18) is thus a frustrated, slow-burning rock ‘n’ roll song that owes little to the supergroup’s roots (Leftover Salmon, Railroad Earth, Horseshoes and Hand Grenades, Great American Taxi and Hard Working Americans) as the vocals spill out through gritted teeth and over a tangle of electric guitars.

The temperature is rising/lie’s already spread/echoes all around us/taking what we want to be fed

Following “Diamond Sky” and “Somewhere South,” “Temperature is Rising” succeeds in critiquing modern trends with sincere concern and without sounding stilted or preachy. And the music is a perfect fit.

Grade card: The High Hawks - “Temperature is Rising” - B+

2/2/24

[orangerosebush]

Artemis will disassemble and clean a fountain pen with the same level of intensity as Butler disassembling and cleaning one of his guns.

[morganbritton132]

The funniest thing about 911 is the moment something goes slightly wrong in Eddie Diaz’s life, it’s starts a chain reaction of even worse things happening to him until he has a mental breakdown.

Whereas if Buck has a single second of peace in his life, the universe fucking kills him.

[agathasvidal]

imagine rio and agatha did have nicholas together.

rio brought this child into the world, only to have to take him away again.

[b4kuch1n]

post-drive sketch commissions fulfilled so far! for Cookie Nomie, A. Peake, @azaelyas, viviiyon on twitter, bxby_ashhh on twitter, tsunesama, @trucbiduleschouettes, and Anna.

[rattkachuk]

i heard there were some beautiful northern lights in calgary last night

[bonefall]

longtime dc fan and i think a lot of people are angry because alex is obviously one of the most culturally relevant instances of misogyny in media. that being said being more culturally relevant doesn’t mean it’s the worst instance of misogyny and i think bumble definitely experiences more profound misogyny in the way the actual content is presented, if that makes sense

I get you, and that's a charitable way of looking at it.

I think what's rustling my jimmies is that like, there was a couple of WC fans being mildly dismissive of Alex in that note minefield, after dozens of comments of "fuck you how could you let the fridge woman lose" and "Bumble didn't deserve to win ANY rounds" and "how could A CAT experience misogyny." But then WE get blamed for the toxicity because THEY were butthurt that the Funny Cat People have the 'audacity' to win something they feel entitled to.

Like, we've gotta be endlessly charitable as we get openly insulted because they're upset about Alex losing, a very well-known and culturally relevant character with a legacy so massive we have a whole term named after her. But condemnations of "She's just a cat, letting WC into this poll was a mistake, Bumble can't even be a victim of misogyny" only started coming around once I started talking about it.

as if it's OUR fault people got passive-aggressive or even OPENLY aggressive towards us, and that we're "just as bad" for retaliating

But like you said, it's not a "Most Culturally Relevant Misogyny" tournament, it's a "Canon Misogyny Victims" tournament. And you're not even supposed to give a shit that Bumble died. The fat, woman abuse victim is beaten to death by a dictator, and your takeaway is meant to be, "It's so sad that Clear Sky is being blamed for murdering her, now they're all preparing for self-defense against a homicidal maniac, oh nooo :("

And I think that DOES make her deserve the win here! Alex is a MARTYR. Everyone with a brain agrees what happens to her is bad. It happened in her canon because it was bad. We talk about her and keep her memory alive. Bumble gets dismissed entirely out of hand because she's "just a cat in a kid's book" as if that doesn't make it worse, and as if the kid's book didn't treat a domestic abuse survivor like a moron for even asking for help.

Anyway, just to reiterate, I love DC fans. It's not all of you guys. Alex was done dirty and deserves justice-- and it's even kind of a shame that all she became is "The Fridge Woman." I haven't even heard people talk about how she was a wary, responsible person who was still ready to rock with Kyle's new weird glowstick powers, or that she was a journalist, or that she just got brought back in another edition as a Green Lantern only to be revealed as an illusion and re-absorbed back into Kyle's mind. Nope. Even her fans just remember her as The Fridge Woman.

[timbourinedrake]

Finally posting the Talia focused animatic I have been working on, because I don't know when I'll get time to finish it and I like it too much to let it rot in my folder.

This is based on the events of Batman: Son of the Demon and the song is Wife by Mitski

I have a whole lot of thoughts on how this song reflects Talia's treatment as a character both within comics and outside of them, and how she is always treated as the mother/daughter/love interest rather than an individual in her own right. These roles are important to her but she is also more than them, she is her own person. I think it's super interesting to look at how Talia would wrestle with balancing these roles whilst also not letting them be her own defining trait.

[dragonsarecats]

anyone else obsessed with how gently Percy holds Medusa’s head? how he cradled it close to his chest and refused to hold it aloft like his namesake?

[krispyweiss]

Song Review: The High Hawks - “Somewhere South”

The High Hawks answer Jimmy Buffett’s boozy beach calls with the baked-by-the-sun-and-the-bud response of “Somewhere South.”

Musically pleasing with a rolling rhythm and joyful fiddle, the track is lyrically simplistic as Leftover Salmon’s Vince Herman sings:

Somewhere south/we’ll be laughin’ and a-smokin’/feelin’ like we’ve got it figured out/there ain’t no doubt/I’ve got an intuition/there’s gonna be good fishin’/and we’ll finally get that time to all hang out/somewhere south

The track follows “Diamond Sky” ahead of the Feb. 18 arrival of Mother Nature’s Show, the second LP from the supergroup that also features members of Railroad Earth, Horseshoes and Hand Grenades, Great American Taxi and Hard Working Americans.

Grade card: The High Hawks - “Somewhere South” - C+

1/12/24

[the-girl-who-didnt-smile]

Ranting about portrayal of Alastor’s ethnicity

This is basically Part 2 to a previous rant… I just need to get this bitch moaning out of my system. 

As previously mentioned, I think we might get the first glimpse of Alastor’s human life in Season 2 of Hazbin Hotel. As also previously mentioned, I don’t think Vivienne retconned Alastor’s heritage from white to mixed race. Given that she is herself a white-passing mixed race person, I think she originally envisioned him as a white-passing Creole.

Due to the controversy, I think there is a decent chance she is going to retcon his skin tone to make him more visibly mixed race. I feel ambivalent towards this. On the one hand, I much prefer Alastor’s character design if he accurately looks like a mixed race person from the 1930s (not that fanon Alastor is a bad design… this is a personal preference). But if his entire backstory has not been retconned, this could fall into the trap of: “Alastor became the first radio host of color in America without any issue, because the Deep South was a colorblind society where racism did not exist!” 

That being said, this is a very light-hearted show. THIS IS GONNA BLOW YOUR MIND but people (of all races, at that!) don’t want to think about the harrowing realities of racism in America while watching Hazbin Hotel. The lack of skin tone diversity in the main cast is worthy of criticism, so I’m not going to be complaining too bad if they pull an Adventure Time Marceline and retcon his skin tone.

But if they do retcon his skin tone, I hope his human design isn’t just Italian-passing Alastor. 

You’ve seen him. 

…What I’m referring to is the variation of fanon human Alastor, where artists just take fanon Alastor and shift his skin tone a bit without changing anything else about him. 

(I’m not going to insert an example image because I think a lot of these artists are well-intentioned but very young, and yeah… I don’t want to be a dick!)

Granted, “Italian passing Alastor” is not an entirely bad character design. In a place like New Orleans, there is such a wide range of phenotypes that it is not inconceivable that a mixed race Creole could have this phenotype. Not to mention, the whole mukokuseki effect - racial features are generally diminished due to the built-in limitations of animation as a medium (faces cannot be rendered in the same level of detail as live action or comics/manga). For these reasons, I won’t be complaining too much if this is his final design. Actually, I probably won’t be complaining at all, as I’ll just be excited to see his human form! It really isn't a bad design... I'm already simping for him!!

But to bitch moan anyways, here is my critique of this fandom trend: All of the visual data that went into fanon human Alastor is this: https://www.google.com/search?q=white+boys 

If you just shift his skin tone without changing anything else, the visual data that went into him is still this: https://www.google.com/search?q=white+boys 

If you’re going to retcon his skin tone (really, his ethnic makeup / family tree) you actually need to start from the ground up and use this as reference material: https://www.google.com/search?q=creole+men+1930s 

As you can see, there is a wide range of phenotypes, and many did pass for white. But this is a necessary step, not just for human Alastor fan designs, but in designing POC in general - including mixed race POC. The visual data / reference material behind the design needs to be people of color - not white people. You can always immediately tell who took this step and who didn’t; the former category always looks WAY better than the latter!

It’s not just white artists who do this. Many non-white artists fall into this trap, because they were only trained on how to draw white people. For this reason, I don’t really fault the individual artists - it’s more of a systemic problem in how schools etc. teach upcoming artists how to draw.

So yeah… thanks for coming to my TEDx Talk!

[lesbianlenas]

so many young women recently desiring to be stay at home mothers….the ironic part of it is that all of those women that do become stay at home moms will one day understand why the women before them fought so hard for them to not have to fulfill that role at the point at which they realize that their personhood has been entirely sacrificed in the name of motherhood & there is no going back on that. all women who are stay at home moms are forced to put themselves aside to take care of their children and husband & are forced to make that their entire identity & that is exhausting and dehumanizing. that is how betty friedan started second wave feminism w the feminine mystique. bc women finally realized that all women hated being housewives & there wasn’t smth wrong w each of them individually as they had all believed. but those that do not learn history etc etc……

[ableedingpromise]

God I'm so fucking annoyed how come she gets to treat me however she likes and then gets to say she didn't mean it?????

[queensparklekitten]

time princess players how do y'all picture the MCs of every story

like since every set and piece of official art has a different hair colour, length, and style with every picture of them, and sometimes there's descriptions that don't match the images, which one do you go with

and do you make half of them look like your avatar or have your own designs

[swamp-world]

Im begging people to stop saying that TMAGP Gerry would like. Embrace his natural hair colour as if TMA Gerry only does so out of trauma. Begging yall to start seeing goth/alt as something affirming and positive rather than purely masking and reactive. I haven't seen my natural hair colour in years and it has nothing to do with "embracing" it i just fucking. Enjoy. Having dyed hair. It's because I'm gay not because I'm traumatized.