#really this is just a ramble

[autumntouched]

Day 16 of Ode to Phoenix

Sorry, I just have some thoughts to share today. I need to recharge on the creative steam/my head is in a weird place

Some of you may have noticed an o/c Naval aviator named Riptide in Talk to Me and Every Time It Comes Around Pt. 2. In my headcanon, Riptide is Black and the only female aviator to overlap with Natasha during their training at NAS Meridian in Mississippi (Halo trained at NAS Kingsville in Texas.) In a throw away line that didn't make the cut, during their training at Meridian, Riptide and Phoenix hooked up in a sexist pilot's cockpit so they could call it the pussypit.

As I was doing research for Ode to Phoenix, I learned Madeline Swegle is the US Navy's first Black female fighter pilot. She received her wings in 2020, which means that when Top Gun: Maverick was made there were no Black female fighter pilots in the Navy nor had there ever been one. Which means that there has never been a Black female TOPGUN aviator.

When I was growing up, there weren't a lot of women doing what I do. The ones who were received little to no visibility. There wasn't really anyone who looked like me to show me it was possible so I worked on faith that if there wasn't someone like me out there, I'd somehow find my own way. So many people were skeptical of my dreams or told my parents they should force me to do something more traditional. But there were also a lot of people who believed.

Phoenix is so important because she shows girls what they can be and boys that women have a place on the team. But I also imagine that when Phoenix was growing up, she might not have seen many examples of women to look up to. Women weren't allowed to fly combat missions until 1993 (Monica was born in 1990 for reference.) In my headcanon, she cobbled together her dreams on what women she did see, even if they weren't doing exactly what she wanted to do. Being a representative at the base open house, a role model for Hangman's niece, those things are so meaningful to her because they're what she didn't have or had to work so hard to find.

While I think it is important for girls to see what they can become, I think it's also important to encourage them to be what they can't see. Why not them? It's okay to be the first, whether by plan or accident. Sometimes we have to be what we can't see because that's what the world needs but doesn't have.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this. Maybe this. If you look around a room and don't see anyone else there who looks like you then know that you belong, that you're supposed to be there, and that you deserve to be there. If your ideas are different from everyone else's, that doesn't necessarily mean you're wrong, only that you may see the world in a way that they don't. That is your truth and it belongs in the room too and it deserves to be shared.

[eydilily]

would you bite the hand that feeds you?

[didhewinkback]

one direction will always be so so so bittersweet to me like they were such a foundation of my teenage years while at the same time those boys were spending most of their days trapped in hotel rooms or waking up at 2 am to record an album and non stop touring and working so much more than anyone let alone a bunch of teenage boys should work and its always been hard to reconcile those two realities especially on a day like today because god when they were good together, they were so good together.

and i just don't think anything like them will ever happen again. 5 boys from basically working class backgrounds thrust into a level of fame the height of which hadn't been seen for decades, all of them becoming the breadwinners of their families before the age of 18. the immense pressure but also the amount of fun they were. the tragedy and joy of it all intertwined. really impossible to put into words

[secretmellowblog]

People who try to analyze what happened on Tumblr on November 5th, 2020, often really overstate how much it was actually “about” Supernatural. As someone who has never been in the supernatural fandom ever but dID join in on the hysterical destielposting—it was really more about the stress of the pandemic and the 2020 presidential election.

The two biggest Youtubers I’ve seen try to dissect “what happened that November 5th” in video essays both weren’t American—- and I think that explains why they both tried to explain the hysteria primarily via analyzing the Supernatural fandom/the original show, rather than through the lens of the election. And while those videos are cool, valid, informational, and make lots of really well-considered interesting points�� I can tell you that me and almost all my mutuals had literally no knowledge or interest in the fact that “oh supernatural had made nods at the ship in the past but the creators were adamant that I wouldn’t be canon” or etc etc etc etc. the first time I learned about any of that context was way later, watching videos where people claimed that fandom history context (that I did not know anything about) was the actual reason for the hysteria.

But the reality is that people latched on to the Destiel stuff because it was a piece of big useless inane zero-stakes fandom news in a time when we were desperately waiting for serious high stakes election news. We were latching onto a “positive “ piece of inane stupid fandom news in a time of great stress, with all the desperation of a drowning man who latches onto whatever piece of wood will keep him afloat.

The core of the hysteria was that Americans (who make up a huge chunk of tumblr’s userbase) were currently glued to their laptops watching the live presidential election vote counts come in. These vote counts were taking an extended amount of time due to the pandemic causing high numbers of mail-in ballots, resulting in a constant state of Election Day Stress for multiple days straight.

This was also during the height of the Pandemic. People had predicted Trump’s presidency would be bad; no one had predicted it would be this apocalyptically bad. No one had predicted pandemics and lockdowns and hospitals overflowing with bodybags. remember Trump spreading Covid lies and conspiracies?? There were so many Qanon conspiracies about democrats being Satanic child traffickers who had to be put to death, and coup threats were mounting from the right wing side. It seemed like this election was a choice between ‘centrist democrat’ and “apocalyptic right wing conspiracy theory authoritarianism,” in the midst of pandemic conditions that people feared would never ever improve— and it seemed like a close election.

Another major point was that Trump voters were more likely to be antimaskers/Covid deniers, while Biden voters were more likely to take the pandemic seriously— so Biden voters were more likely to send in mail-in ballots instead of risking the in-person voting crowds, which meant their ballots would take much longer to count. And so, in many state electoral vote counts, it would initially seem like Trump was very far in the lead— only for Biden to slooooowly build up an agonizingly small lead as the mail in ballots came in, and then defeat Trump at the very end.

So you’re just watching these news sites giving live election updates, refreshing the page every 2 minutes to see if you’re going to live under a spineless centrist democrat or a literal Qanon Dictatorship. And then you go on tumblr to distract yourself, and there’s more election posting, and more agonizing over the votes, and more stress and despair—-

And then it’s been days and we’re right at the crucial tipping point where it’s anyone’s game and the next few hours will determine whether Trump will win, so you need to keep your eye on the vote count, because the next hours will determine the future of the pandemic and your country and your plans for your entire life—

And then stupid Destiel becomes canon! And it becomes canon in the silliest way possible!

If Destiel had become canon at any other time, it would have been a big goofy tumblr celebration? But we wouldn’t have gotten the insane explosion of hysterical interaction.

The entire core of it was the contrast between the inane meaningless stupidity of fandom news vs the actual stressful election news you wanted to hear! It really is best conveyed in that meme where Castiel says “I love you” and Dean indifferently responds with a piece of important election news.

It’s about the contrast between the low-stakes inanity of fandom and the massive life-destroying stakes of a terrifying election. There really was no reason it had be Supernatural specifically, except that Supernatural was a thing everyone knew basic things about from dashboard osmosis— it could’ve been any other equally huge silly fandom ship news about a ship everyone *knew of* but might not necessarily be invested in (ex. Stucky becoming canon, Johnlock becoming canon, Kirk/Spock becoming more canon somehow, etc etc etc.)

I think it’s true that people who weren’t paying agonizingly close attention to the American election news got swept up in it, and that non American Supernatural fans also were extremely excited for purely fandom reasons — but the entire reason it blew up to an unprecedented degree was because of that core of stressed out terrified Americans glued to their computers watching election results and suddenly receiving stupid fandom news instead, and deciding to just hysterically parodically hyper-celebrate this absurd useless zero-stakes news.

I think it was also all elevated by the fact that, as I said before, this happened at the crucial “tipping point” of the election where the next few hours would determine the winner. The fact that Biden began to slowly develop a lead in the hours after made it feel, hysterically, as if the hours after Destiel became canon was somehow the turning point where he began to win; so celebrating Destiel felt like celebrating that slow turn towards victory.

The tl,dr is that it’s so important to Remember the Fifth of November …..in preparation the inevitable hysteria that will happen in the presidential election on November 5th of next year. XD. Personally I’m rooting for Johnlock or Frodo/Sam to somehow become canon in the eleventh hour right before the democrats win

[gingermintpepper]

I think, perhaps one of the funniest things to come from EPIC popularising the Odyssey is that now a ton of people think Poseidon wanted to kill Odysseus.

In the Odyssey, Poseidon has no intention of killing Odysseus. In fact, part of the whole reason Zeus lets Poseidon do whatever he wants even though he thinks Odysseus is rad and should get to kiss his wife is explicitly because Poseidon had no intentions of killing Odysseus. Poseidon wanted to pay back the suffering/inconvenience blinding Polyphemus would have caused. It's a really abstract thing tbh. How do you pay back someone permanently disabling your son? Poseidon's solution was just to amputate Odysseus from his other half; i.e. Penelope. The end game was never murder, it was always an endurance race.

(Od. Book 1: Zeus reassuring Athena that he is not, in fact, a part of Odysseus Hater-Nation. Trans. Robert Fagles)

Also, for those wondering if there's any sort of in text reason for why Poseidon wasn't around in God Games - at the time in the Odyssey when Athena petitions Zeus to let Odysseus leave Calypso's island, Poseidon was -checks notes- on vacation in Ethiopia. Yep. He left to Ethiopia for a festival and thusly was very much absent for Athena's whole "please let Ody go? Please? 🥺" request.

(Od. Book 1: While Odysseus was suffering, Poseidon went to party in the east)

I am begging y'all to read the Odyssey. It's a comedy for everyone except Odysseus and Penelope who are, in fact, suffering 24/7 365.

[tragedykery]

I ❤️ self-loathing characters, characters who struggle with monstrosity (either fearing or embracing it), characters who are so lonely, who have a gaping hole in their chest, who bottle up & repress their feelings, who claw their way up & have ambitions, who fall down & lose everything, who search for identity & purpose yet can’t see themselves outside of what others want from or expect of them, who are hurt & hurt others, who long & grieve, who lie & pretend. characters who are messy & flawed & human

[unforth]

Gentle reminder that very little fandom labor is automated, because I think people forget that a lot.

That blog with a tagging system you love? A person curates those tags by hand.

That rec blog with a great organization scheme and pretty graphics? Someone designed and implemented that organization scheme and made those graphics.

That network that posts a cool variety of stuff? People track down all that variety and queue it by hand, and other people made all the individual pieces.

That post with umpteen links to helpful resources, and information about them? Someone gathered those links, researched the sources, wrote up the information about them.

That graphic about fandom statistics? Someone compiled those statistics, analyzed them, organized them, figured out a useful way to convey the information to others, and made the post.

That event that you think looks neat? Someone wrote the rules, created the blogs and Discords, designed the graphics, did their best to promo the event so it'd succeed.

None of this was done automatically. None of it just appears whole out of the internet ether.

I think everyone realizes that fic writing and fanart creation are work, and at least some folks have got it through their heads that gif creation and graphics and moodboards take effort, and meta is usually respected for the effort that goes into it, at least as far as I've seen, but I feel like a lot of people don't really get how much labor goes into curation, too.

If people are creating resources, curating content, organizing the creations of others, gathering information, and doing other fandom activities that aren't necessarily the direct action of creation, they're doing a lot of fandom labor, and it's often largely unrecognized.

Celebrate fan work!

To folks doing this kind of labor: I see you, and I thank you. You are the backbones of our fandoms and I love you.

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

so in an attempt to actually use positive thinking, anytime i fuck up and my brain reacts as if ive cause a minor apocalyptic event, i compare my fuck up to the 4 minute fuck up committed by the crew of the uss william d porter.

and only today, as i was having to explain what happened to my mom when i was explaining the whole comparison thing, did i realise that most people dont know about it and ive decided that needs to change because its objectively hilarious.

...which is a weird thing to say about an event that occured on a warship in 1943, specifically november 14th.

see the uss william d porter was a fletcher-class destroyer but you dont need to know what that means, just that she had guns that went bang bang and that she was escorting another ship, the uss iowa, to cairo.

while they were on their way there, they performed some gun trials like testing the anti-aircraft guns or the torpedos. and while they were running a torpedo drill, the crew of the porter managed to fire a live torpedo straight at the iowa which you know, in terms of a list of things to do while escorting a ship, shooting a torpedo at them is not on that list.

especially if the president of the united states is on board.

yeah so fdr was on board and the gun trials were actually his idea, and part of the trials was that they were conducted under radio silence.

and that means the crew of the porter couldnt just call the iowa to be like "move out the way, we accidentally shot a torpedo at you."

but they did have signal lamps and you know, the signalman on board was trained to signal this exact kind of message.

...and uh never mind, the signalman did manage to successfully tell the iowa that a torpedo was coming toward them but wasnt as successful when it came to the direction the torpedo was coming from.

not all hope is lost though because the signalman could still use the signal lamp to correct his previous mistake and-, never mind, he announced that the porter was reversing, which she wasnt.

yeah so at catastrophic mistake number 3, they broke radio silence to warn the iowa and she managed to turn out of the way just in time which meant no one got hurt. and even though the inquiry into the incident led to chief torpedoman (fantastic job title btw) lawton dawson being sentences to hard labour, fdr intervened and waved away his sentence, saying it was all an accident.

but yeah, so thats my new measure for "how much did i really fuck up?" and when i compared accidentally picking up a pencil case without a tag on it in wilko, turns out it was a very minor fuck-up. yes, the cashier had to ask another worker to grab a duplicate so they could scan the barcode, but i didnt nearly kill the president during wartime via accidental friendly fire

[philsmeatylegss]

If I were Dan and Phil I would never hard launch because it’s so embarrassing that we were right. Like what do you mean you were so in love a bunch of thirteen year old’s clocked it? I would never give that satisfaction.

[misteria247]

I'm realizing that Stan is actually incredibly smart. Like in a Ford kind of way to some extent.

Like yes Stan's street smart and life smart but he's also got the smarts that Ford's praised for. Because he had rebuilt the portal and figured out his brother's notes and equations.

Like do you know how hard math is on Ford and Fiddleford's level of expertise??? How complicated and delicate it is????? Especially the kind that brings portals to life???? And Stan figured it out. Had taught himself to read and comprehend these difficult things. Difficult things that requires college degrees in science and mathematics.

And Stan did this on an incomplete high school grade level of academics.

That's fucking nuts. Sure it took 30 years but he learned it. By himself, can you imagine how frustrated he got, teaching himself Ford's educational level??? Using his mechanical skills of fixing his car to be up to par to Fiddleford's impressive craftsmanship????

And I can just see how Ford and Fiddleford react post apocalypse. Ford doing equations and science stuff and talking while Fiddleford listens and gives his input when Stan pipes up unintentionally and puts his hat into the ring. And it's mathematically sound?? And these two men are just blown away cuz what the actual hell?? Ford's immediately questioning Stan, wanting to hear his thoughts while Fiddleford watches impressed and Stan's mortified and a bit overwhelmed. Or Fiddleford working on something and Ford's watching him when Stan points out a better way to make a part work and Fidds is like omg thank you Stanley??? And Ford's looking at his little brother dumbfounded and itching to bomb him with questions and whatnot.

Stan never knows peace afterwards.

[puppyeared]

learned something about myself lately

[lazylittledragon]

taking all my american followers by the shoulders. listen to me. just because you have a more promising candidate now doesn't mean you just assume it's going to be fine and don't bother voting. assuming trump wasn't going to win is how you got here in the first place so you go out and fucking vote for harris and give everyone a fighting chance.

also if you're still in the 'they're both as bad as eachother' delirium, please take your head out from between your cheeks and consider that your options are an imperfect president and the literal worst person alive who is going to get masses of people killed. i've said it like this before, but it's like deciding between maybe getting food poisoning or definitely having a brain aneurysm. take your pick i guess but don't be surprised when you drop dead.

[gorgynei]

rip and tear and maim etc. etc.

[remxedmoon]

HAPPY (kinda late oops) BIRTHDAY MIWA!!!!!!!! ignore the other two LOOK AT HER!!!! IT’S MIRABELLE MSUNDAY!!!!

greyscale versions + my very normal color ramblings below!

ok full disclosure i already had this post drafted before realizing that mira’s birthday was coming up. i kinda debated just posting the mira doodles on their own but!!! i want to talk about my craft/general color headcanons still. and the mira art is part of that!! so be warned. also, this is going to reference my post about my craft headcanons a lot so like. read that if you so desire.

i personally think that mira’s healing craft is some form of creative craft, since the game describes her holding her palms up when she uses it (iirc anyways). this doesn’t really have an effect on anything, but it’s why i decided to color it yellow!

(also i ended up making mira’s scissors craft a lot more orange than i initially planned but that’s ok!!! i think both of her crafts would be pretty Orange. just thought i’d mention that since it’s a bit different from my first post)

i already explained sif’s craft in my last post so now i get to talk about the change god!!!!!! this is like. probably the most out there in terms of my color headcanons? but i have a reason for that. since the change god is, well, a deity, i thought it would be fitting for their design to match the colors of the 3 craft types (red, blue, and yellow)! this was a little hard to work around given that i also try to give my vaugarde designs warmer color palettes, but i think it worked out!

i also gave them a few slightly different palettes, since i think it’ll make sense for the change god’s colors to be variable. they never look the same, so why would their palette look the same? + i’m indecisive and liked all of these palettes lol

sorry for the ramble! i really like talking about character design and i’m not. very succinct. thanks for reading all this (if you did, perfectly fine if you didn’t!), here’s the greyscale versions as promised!!!

[doodoodinklefart]

pov fallin in love w ur homie cuz he's so pretty all of a sudden?!?!

[egophiliac]

I have SO many thoughts about everything and they are in no kind of order yet, so here's just some quick little bits in the meantime!

I am not normal about any of these characters!