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factual-fantasy · 1 month

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30 Asks! Thank you!! :}} 🌊

😅Ah, well this is awkward-

I haven't drawn Gravity Falls in quite a while. And with this sudden fandom resurgence following the book of Bill.. I actually went back and privated a huge chunk of my Gravity falls posts. :x

My reasoning for this is that looking back, a lot of those old posts are rather embarrassing for me 💀 now I respected them all as stepping stones to where my blog is now so I didn't actually DELETE any posts!! But now with the fandom coming back people are finding them aaaannddd.. when ever I get a notification of someone liking an old cringey Gravity Falls post of mine? I just go beet red. uhhg they're sooooo embrassingggg...

SO! For my own comfort, I privated lot of those embarrassing posts. I didn't delete them in case I change my mind and want them back in the future- but they should all be hidden.

Now that that's explained, the comic you're talking about is likely one that I privated parts of out of embarrassment. But if you happen to have a link to one of the parts or can remember the what the comic was about... mayyyybe I could go back and un-pivate it.? <XD But just that comic! It depends on how beet red I turn when I see it-- :x

I've heard of cult of the lamb, seen a lot of fanart for it- and several of my friends play it!... But I still don't know much about it <XD Isn't it like a cult simulator or something..? Idk-- the cult imagery just didn't really feel like my thing 😅

XDDD THANKY IU SO MUCH!! :)))))

@i-v-y67 (Hiding the image because its not my art! <:D )

Sorry man, <XD Maybe someday I will! But for now I got Welcome home, FNAF and Pokémon on the mind 💀

DUDE I LOOOOOVE THE AMAZING WORLD OF GUMBALL!! That show has absolutely no right to be that funny XDDD

XDD Aw, thank you! Truly the highest compliment my version of Wally could receive. 😌

Idk how Bibi's name is actually supposed to be pronounced.. but I personally pronounce it as "bee-bee" <XD

And for his little sister Cici, its the same. "see-see"

While I'm at it, Gerald's name is pronounced "erald". The G is silent XDD

Aw man.. Ingo couldn't cope.. 😔😔

No that's not me saying that Emmet loved Ingo less or was emotionally stronger than him- but Emmet sees Ingo as his strong and capable older brother. With some comfort from Elesa, he believed at his core that Ingo could handle what ever he was facing out there.. although his body was wracked with worry..

If the roles were reversed.. I mean.. man..

Ingo sees Emmet as his precious baby brother. Despite them being only minutes apart in age. He knows logically that Emmet is just as strong and capable as he is.. but just imaging his baby brother out there.. wounded and all alone.. he should have been there. he should have done more. He's all alone. What if he never sees him again? What if he dies alone out there?

The separation would quite possibly destroy Ingo..

@anikakitty11

Boop!! :DDD

@cat7890

I'm feeling pretty rough, but doing my best to rest! <:D and thank you!! :)))

@katjustvibinglmao

XDD EGGDOG!!

I don't have many clear ideas for Home yet.. I'm thinking that its pretty sentient. Home can problem solve, make assumptions and learn..

What does it think of everything... I'm not quite sure. I imagine Home to be curious though, and that's why it watches Wally sleep and why it watched Eddie at the Christmas party..

I also pictured Home to have been in an almost coma/zombie like state back when it was dilapidated.. but then I wonder if Poppy would still be spooked by it.. hmm..

It couldn't have been comfortable in that state at least. So when Wally fixed it up, maybe Home was grateful? Or maybe Home is just kind'a coming to and doesn't know how to feel about the neighborhood springing up around it.. overall I kind'a want to keep these general malicious undertones to Home... 👀

Yeah, I didn't have them crushing on each other because I don't like writing romance stuff for characters that are not my own.. <XD

But this doesn't mean that Eddie and Frank cant have a strong platonic bond in my au! :0 One thing I imagined for their friendship is how they met/how it started.

I had this picture in my head that Frank used to butt-heads with the other neighbors a lot more than he does now. Frank had a certain way of talking and expressing himself that some of the other neighbors didn't really understand.. and since Frank can be irritable at times.. well.. I guess the best way to put it is that Frank had a hard time making friends at first..

I imagined that on a particularly bad day, where nothing seemed to be going his way.. Frank was huffing and puffing and just grumbling to himself.. attending to some chores around the house and just overall feeling down. At some point, he realized the package he ordered should be here any second now.. so he stepped outside to check the mail.

When he went outside, whaddya know! The new mailman was here right on time and putting his package in the mailbox. Well FINALLY something went right for him! That's a nice change..

I imagined Frank went out in a huff to grab the mail, not intending to chat.. but 10 minutes later and he was still stood outside talking to the new mailman.

I thought that when Frank spoke to Eddie, Eddie listened intently and waited patiently for his turn to talk without interrupting. When Eddie talked to Frank, he basically asked all the perfect questions in the perfect tone to get Frank to simmer down.

Eddie told him how beautiful his garden looked, and with his tone and bright smile, you could tell he meant it! Well that's a nice thing to say..

Frank asked how he feels about the neighborhood. And Eddies responses were relatively quick and to the point. Huh.. its nice to have no filler in this conversation considering how grumpy he was today..

Eddie makes a comment about Franks nice clothes, Frank chuckles and comments that his grumpy expression probably doesn't make them look any nicer.. Eddie is a little taken aback, "I didn't think you looked grumpy.. I'm sorry to hear you're feeling down today neighbor.." Huh.. someone who doesn't just see his frown and assume he's a grump. That's a really nice change..

By the end of their conversation, Franks day had been completely flipped on its head. He had a nice chat with the new neighbor and got his mail right on time. Eddie was respectful, interested in what Frank had to say, and had plenty of genuine compliments to spare.

Since that excellent first impression on Eddie's part, their friendship would grow and grow into what it is today. Not a romantic relationship, but definitely a best friend situation for sure. :)

@viennaarttt

A phone call? :0 Is this one I talked about happening in my at some point and forgot or was this something that happened in canon? <:0 Forgive my poor memory- today is not my day! 😅😅

WAAAAGGHH WAAAA THIS IS SO SWEETTJJA WAHAGHAGGG CANONCANONCANONCANON!!! 😭😭🥺😭💞💞💞💞

@glitchhayden418

AWWWEE!! the little babeee.... 🥺🥺💞💞💞💞

(In response to this post)

Thank you! These past few days have been pretty rough but I'm hangin in there! <:D ...

ALSDO WAAAARRHRHHHAAAA!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! THATS SO SWEEETTT RAAAHGGAA!!! 😭😭🥺💞🥺💞💞💞💞

Man I really gotta work on the story/personalities for Julies siblings <XD These ideas for them are just wonderful! Him meeting Julies brother/sisters sounds like a fun drawing idea!

B-But.. with no return address... how am I supposed to send a thank you..? <:'(((

@holly-opal

It is one of my all time favorite shows.. 🥺🥺💞💞💞 I love it to bits. Stanley is my favorite character.. I watched it like twice and I would have watched it a third time but I couldn't watch it without crying so I had to quit <XDD 100/10 would recommend Gravity Falls.💞💞

(Jangles birthday post)

Ahh don't worry, his birthday was actually on the 6th. I was late too! <XD

Also thank you! I'm glad you like the details I added! :)))))

😔😔😔Man, it never ends. Thanks for letting me know though..

I kind'a pictured it being similar to Sans and Papyrus. Well, if Papyrus loved puns that is- XDDD

Their personalities are kind'a opposite. Barnaby is relaxed, laid back and always cracking jokes. Howdy is always on the move (in the warmer months). Always darting from shelf, gotta stock stock stock! Gotta go go go! Got so many things to do!

Barnaby usually hangs out in the shop and chats with Howdy. They like to talk about life, their opinions on different topics. And of course exchange jokes back and fourth XDD

I imagine their friendship is strong enough that they've opened up about some darker things. About their pasts and what not..

Sorry if this wasn't super descriptive and/or didn't answer your question 😅 brain is not braining today!

She's thought about telling someone else. The people she would trust the most would probably be Wally, Barnaby, Poppy and Sally.

Though she's afraid if she shows Wally, he'll be afraid of her. Just like all the other humans were...

She thought about telling Barnaby because he's so laid back and easy going.. perhaps he'd accept her for who she is.. but Barnaby really values honesty.. maybe he'd be upset that she lied to him about who she really is and wouldn't want to be her friend anymore..

She almost told Poppy, but backed out last second. She doesn't want to scare poor Poppy..

She's considered telling Sally.. and since Sally has a similar story to her.. maybe she'd be really understanding and accept her.. but she wasn't sure. So she never told her..

I'd like to imagine Home does, but Wally either doesn't notice them or thinks they're just normal old house things :0

For example, the first picture in this post shows Home before Wally restored it. The peeling paint was supposed to be like rotting flesh, showing a pale red wood underneath.. bright red wood exists in their world, but its not usually that shade of red...

I thought about there occasionally being a faint blowing sound somewhere in the house. Accompanied by drawn out rise and fall in temperature though all the rooms. Wally would say the windows don't seal that well or the walls have poor insulation.. Other's would say it feels like breathing..

I've considered that when Wally tries to hang a picture, the walls leak some kind of thick fluid. Obviously meant to be blood- but I miiiight not go with that one. Since that would be a big glaring problem that would grab Wally's attention-

KSJLJSJK WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT TO HOWDY?? XDDD

Also I'm actually pretty thin on ideas for Howdy.. although I DO have these headcannons about Howdy not liking winter/the cold! :0

I imagined that Howdy can't handle the cold at all <XD In the wintertime howdy is constantly cold, hungry and sleepy. This makes him move really slowly and show up late to everything 😔Thankfully he has his good pal Barnaby to lend a hand around the shop. But it just sucks that he's so exhausted in the wintertime and can hardly get anything done..

(In response to this post)

Thank you so much! :DD And ooooo! Yellow and black could work really well! :000

ALSO NOOO DON'T TUMBLE DRY THE CATERPILLAR- XDDDD

@neo-metalscottic (Chandelure post in question)

AAAAA THANK YOU SO MUCH!! I'M SO GLAD YOU LIKED IT!! :DDD

And as for Julies sisters/brother, I actually haven't thought about them much.. BUT THIS IDEA IS SOOOO GOOD AND SPOOKY!!! U GOTTA FIND A WAY TO ADD IT TO THE AU!! :DDD

I would like to draw that comic, but its just a huuuuuge project for me to pick up atm <XD

@problematicskeleton

Thank you so much!! :DD Although unfortunately I don't know what image you're talking about.. I don't remember seeing Eddie hurt with Wally carrying him, and I don't have any intentions for Eddie to get seriously hurt! <:0

#my response #gravity falls #welcome home #factual fam #slime rancher #ingo and emmet #submas

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franki-lew-yo · 4 months

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James and the Giant Peach is still (mostly) for young children

Despite a single pre-metoo joke and it's uncanny-ish artstyle that's a serious make-or-break-you factor on if you like it, James and the Giant Peach is aggressively a movie for young children. I personally like it as I never find it a patronizing sit for little kids, like Don Bluth's movies from the 90s so often were, but that really is what I think alienates people; the intended audience may be a bit too scared of the visuals (NOT like how they are with TNBC, which kids go in expecting to be scary) where the adult audience who is here for the 'creepy stop-motion' feel like the movie is lacking for not being Nightmare or Coraline, which is unfair. It absolutely scared me as a little little kid but upon finally facing it at, like ten or whenever it was on Cartoon Network's movie show, I realized there was nothing to fear. And that, in turn, was exhilarating. It's such good symmetry that the film is about facing your fears and standing up for yourself because that's exactly what my relationship with it was. It's such a comfort film for me. My og Bluey. JatGP, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Ernest and Celestine = perfect comfort after I watch something serious and/or disturbing.

Half my reason for trying to pied-piper everyone else towards it as it's own merit is I think James and the Giant Peach would hit hard for lovers of weirdcore and dreamcore ala Jack Stauber or @samsketchbook's 'Welcome to Our Dimensional Party'.

That "looks unsettling/potentially disturbing but actually cute or gentle" vibe pairs perfectly with dreamcore aesthetic. We're coming up on it's 30 year anniversary I hope to see a genuine resurgence. If I had it my way and I was Dan Olson I'd make an hour-long look at the movie, the original book and Henry Selick's filmography as a surrealist the way Dan made an hour-lookback at Bakshi's Lord of the Rings. But I'm not. Cause I'm not Dan Olson and I can't build up the nerve to either show my face or figure out how to make videos in two years.

But anyway, about the title of this post (content warning: downer nsfl stuff; mentioning of real life child ab*se cases):

James' life with his aunts hits VERY different when you're an adult and you've watched too much true crime.

It's not intentional on the part of Dahl or Henry Selick. Selick had Mariam and Joanna ham up the screen and they clearly loved every minute of it and Dahl I think was just trying to tell an 'authentic' type fairytale story where the main character has to escape their evil family. Point being- Spiker and Sponge are supposed to be 'evil for the sake of evil' villains who could only exist as hammy caricatures in an already weird story. They aren't supposed to be like the parents in Matilda or the Twits who I'd argue are a little more 'realistic' depiction of awful people...except for the fact that legal guardians like Spiker and Sponge DO actually exist.

There's a heavy implication in the film that no one else in their county even knows James lives with Spiker and Sponge (literally the only people around to recognize James' existence are the bugs when they first meet him!). His aunts seem to make James work out of frustration for having to take him in, like he's a burden and they're making him pay for being one by being their slave. They actively don't feed him except for rotting fish and then shame him for not eating it. The Lane Smith picture book implies that James' parents weren't killed by a rhino but rather it's Spiker and Sponge who put that idea in James' head and use it to control him. And all that BEFORE the beatings which you know are happening off screen.

After the horrifying cases of Ruby Franke, Sylvia Likens and the Turpins, the "every child deserves a parent but not every parent deserves children" reality of it all makes you realize that James probably would have died if he lived with his aunts. Considering how they flip out on him in New York- that boy REALLY needed to escape, giant peach or no.

This is absolutely another reason for why JatGP is a comfort movie for grownups. You have this horrific childhood rescued by loving in-human parents who will kill everyone in the room and then themselves if you touch their human boy. It's like Opal but if Claire found a happier family. Of bugs. None of that was intentional, ftr, but it's what sticks out to me.

#james and the giant peach #franki's features #dreamcore #oddcore #dereality #cw: child abuse #true crime #henry selick #um yeah #also this fandom needs to be bigger so I don't have to be bombarded with only TNBC or pr0nz posts

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dukeofriven · 1 year

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To Ravel-Out The Weaved-Up Follies: The Decline and Fall of Homestuck^2

[I first started this essay a few months ago during a strange, brief resurgence of Homestuck^2 discussion that vanished almost as quickly as it began. Because my brain is A Wretchedly Uncooperative Thing this essay has stayed in draft form, being picked at, until—naturally—Homestuck^2 surprised us all by relaunching with a completely new team at its head. I’ve decided to push myself to publish this anyway, because I still think the core of my thesis is correct. So, keeping in mind that this leaves the starting gate slightly later than I would have wished (not knowing I was in a race), let us commence.]

___________________________________________________

“A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. -Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965 “Once upon a time there was a Boojum——" the Professor began, but stopped suddenly. "I forget the rest of the Fable," he said. "And there was a lesson to be learned from it. I'm afraid I forget that, too." -Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, 1893

Several posts about Homestuck^2 have started to crop-up… adjacent to my dash. I'm not attaching myself to those posts because it seems rude, but their points are largely an attempt at revisionism of the fate of Homestuck^2. Understand I'm not using the term ‘revisionist’ pejoratively: it is common, even sensible for artists to look back at failed projects and try to pick up the pieces and derive some value from them. I’ve done it myself, many times. Nobody likes to say "I entirely wasted my time, my passion, and my creative energy for [X] days, months, years.” It is important to look at a failure and see what you did right, treasure the parts that were worth treasuring.

But equally I don't want to go too far in rehabilitating what was, undeniably, a failure. There's a lot of critical theory being brought-up, a lot of talk of Homestuck^2 from a standpoint of post-modernism, or post-post-modernism, trying to engage with what Homestuck^2 was as a platform for ideas. A habitus, if you’ll forgive the jargon, what Bourdieu famously called (in a Hussie-like masterwork of language) “the structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures.”

I get it. I get what the Homestuck^2 team was trying to do intellectually: where their minds were at, the hostility they faced, the vitriol they were harmed by. I get it.

But that's not why Homestuck^2 failed. Homestuck^2 did not fail because it dreamed too big, or was too intellectual. It did not fail because its themes were not worth exploring, or because its lens was too meta: for most of its original run, after all, Homestuck is nothing but an interrogation of Homestuck. Its brains were not why Homestuck^2 failed. The problem was its execution. The problem was its heart.

There's a lot to be said about not giving fans what they think they want. The internet drowns in coffee shop AUs where everything interesting about a franchise's characters has been vulgarly ripped from the text, leaving a drama-less, tension-less pablum where everything is stagnant and unchanging, everyone gets along, all the romances are cute and smooth, and you can burrow in the comforting ooze of artistic and narrative death. Give fans exactly what they want and frequently nothing creatively meaningful will result. Fandoms famously resisted both The Empire Strikes Back and The Wrath of Khan when they first released because they pushed characters to change, and yet they grew to be beloved as fans realized that what they thought they wanted and what it turned out they could enjoy were not as alike s they assumed. There's nothing wrong with showing fans that there can be more to a story that just doing the same thing over again, retrenching into the pablum wastelands of growth-free comfort fics.

But when asking whether Homestuck^2 did or did not gave fans what they wanted or needed, we must first raise an important establishing question: which fans? That is to say: who was its intended audience? Who was Homestuck^2 written for?

At its peak, Homestuck Classic had millions of readers and a million page-hits a day. There was a whole contingent of fandom who came only for the trolls (in some baffling cases actually skipping the first four acts of the story to jump right to into Act 5). There was another contingent who loved the video game parody, there were Problem Sleuth junkies, and in the early acts there were the suggestion box obsessives: all of these were readers who were fans of parts of the story but largely stopped reading Homestuck as the story got more concerned with the complex nature of stories and narrative itself. Homestuck^2 is clearly not for them—as indeed Homestuck Classic itself had not 'been' for them for much of its run. Homestuck^2 is also not for new readers: if you haven't read the Homestuck Epilogues through at least twice, if you don't remember all its major plot points and the plot points of Homestuck Classic, it makes no attempt to onboard you and is, probably in-arguably, outright impenetrable to those not already in the know. It’s not impossible—there were SBaHJ fans who onboarded with the first context-free SBaHJ and went ‘yeah, I can vibe with this’ and never knew or cared that it was a reference work for something else— but it doesn’t seem likely that many people ‘jumped on’ the Homestuck train with Homestuck^2. I think Homestuck^2’s writers would agree that Homestuck^2 expected you to know the lay of the land. So: nobody new was likely going to read Homestuck^2, and (given its density of Homestuck call-backs) neither was it for more casual Homestuck fans. Homestuck^2 was not even for the truly otiose Andrew Hussie diehards: Hussie was only tangentially involved in the project, they weren't writing it, and there's seemingly no references at all to Barty's Brew-Ha-Ha or Inappropriate Time for Ham, so that's a full seventeen readers it also likely turned off (sorry, comrades. One day…)

So who, then, was Homestuck^2 for? Its intended readers seemed to be those who read the Epilogues and loved them. This is a complicated issue: for those who weren’t there, the Epilogues were… controversial. I defended them at the time: I liked them, even admired them, partially because I believed with the fervor of a zealot that there was still something else to come. I called this final entry ‘Pumpkin.’ Homestuck, a story that always rejected binaries, surely was not meant to conclude with over-the-top Candy and/or grim, dour Meat. I knew in my heart that Pumpkin was coming, where John rejected both of these dark and crazy futures and found a third way in which his friends grew up and matured without losing themselves and their friendship: not a story without conflict, but surely the prime timeline as existed in general fandom imagination could not accept Dirk’s grotesque, manipulative suicide, breastfeeding Gamzee, brutal civil wars, and Dirk and Jane becoming so cruel and hateful. Surely that was set-up to pay-off a better future later: after all, like its author, Homestuck abhorred a binary.

But Pumpkin never came, and now I look at the Epilogues and I find lot in it (for lack of a better term) ‘edge lord showboating.’ It feels like reading 90s comics all over again, including the bits with cannibalism. A lot of bleak and miserable things happen in the narrative, and I find myself asking ‘do they happen because they should, or just because they could?’ (And how many times can one franchise treat Jade Harley like absolutely garbage?)

But if the Epilogues had a true and golden virtue, it was their framing as intrinsically being fan-fiction: Meat or Candy, this was not the 'true' continuation of the franchise (as much as that means anything), this was speculative futures, not much different from Doc Scratch’s story of the Vriska/Noir battle. A one-shot, in other terms, an elseworlds: not a definitive statement about What Homestuck Was From Now On, but an experiment in tone and structure. How far can you push Homestuck before it doesn’t feel like Homestuck any more? (Turns out not nearly as far as you might think.) A lot of people didn’t notice, however, or perhaps simply didn’t care: the Epilogues ripped the Homestuck fandom apart. Homestuck Classic often did things in bad-taste as part of its odd charm: Gamzee’s codpiece, Jack playing dress-up after slaughtering a nice couple on a date, Caliborn’s cartoonish misogyny. Some bits land, some don’t, but for fans—I think for many, if not most—the Epilogues crossed a line that they were not comfortable with.

In some quarters the Epilogues are reviled, and I honestly can not fault people who found them off-putting. They are: intentionally so, provocatively so, and it should be okay for people to be put off by them without insisting that the haters ‘just didn’t get it.’ Often they did: they ‘got it,’ they just didn’t like it. It ‘squiked them out’ as we used to say, and the writers had to have known it would: discomfort is the nature and partial purpose of provocative art.

(Sidebar: Epilogue writers, you wrote a plot-line in which 16-year old Homestuck Act 6 protagonist Jane Crocker grows-up to become a racist dictator who has a cuckolding sexual relationship with Gamzee Makarra that involves kin-play involving public breastfeeding.

Sorry Andres Serranos acolytes, that’s not going to go down super-well with the majority of people, not because they are uptight suburban prudes but because they liked Jane Crocker and felt this outcome was not grounded well in the character they knew: only the obtuse would act shocked and try and argue it was due to a lack of sophistication. You took a gamble, you took a risk, you faced the outcome. You fucked around with ICP Hitler breastfeeding cuckoldry and you found out.)

So: who was Homestuck^2 for? It was for people who had read Homestuck multiple times, had read the Epilogues multiple times, and wanted a sequel that involved those Epilogues.

That is… a small audience. A very small audience. I counted myself among them, but had no illusions that its reach was ever going to be very large. Homestuck^2 was never going to be the Second Coming of Homestuck as a sui generis cultural phenomenon: seemingly by design, it was deliberately written for an insular audience who liked a controversial and difficult interpretation of a famous story and wanted more of that interpretation. So the Homestuck^2 team wrote for them: they came to the table with big dreams and big ideas. They came to the table with lots of critical theory under their belts: they knew their Barthes and Baudrillard, they could reference queer theory and the legacy of post-structuralism, they were the sort of people who knew how to situate Homestuck in post-post-modernism and what that meant for the nature of its exploration of stories.

They had an audience, and they had a plan. They were going to give the fans what they wanted.

So after much hype and fanfare, after interviews and the Tumblr equivalent of a press-junket—which saw the new team saying how excited they were to tackle Homestuck’s legacy, how many great ideas they had, how much having a diverse team was going to see Homestuck ‘done right’—Homestuck^2 first published on the 25th of October, 2019, releasing 32 pages.

We start in the glittering majesty of space. The camera swoops in among the stars, barrelling towards a rushing spacecraft (every frame of Homestuck^2 looks great, the visual arts team's work is its unquestioned highlight). We aim at a viewport in the spacecraft’s hull and slowly the Muti-Narratively-Dimensional Ubervillian Dirk Strider comes into view. Fresh from his triumph in the Epilogues, continuing his wicked schemes, he looks right at the camera, and—speaking directly to the audience—he voices the first line of dialogue in Homestuck^2:

"Surprise, bitch."

…

There is…

…

… there is no coming from back that.

There is no saving it.

It is the 25th of October, 2019, and Homestuck^2 launches with its own death-rattle. It stumbles out of the gate like a beautiful racing pony catching its delicate hoof on the sharp, treacherous edge of an unwieldy analogy and tumbling into the indifferent soil of hard reality, shattering all four legs and immediately marking itself for teary euthanasia at the hand of the devastated young girl with the violet eyes who raised it from a foal and dreamed of making Nationals.

We have established that Homestuck^2’s potential audience was small. The people who were most likely to like it were already an insular, distinctive group who had bought-in to what much or all the Epilogues had to offer. Homestuck^2’s opening-day crowd did not need to be sold on the word of the Lord—they already believe it: they came to see their first glimpse of the promised land.

And in its very first conversation with that audience, in its very first words, Homestuck^2 makes the most spectacular miscalculation of tone since 2013's DmC: Devil May Cry—or for those of us of who remember the 90s: ‘Dirk Strider’s about to make you his bitch.’

There's nothing wrong with starting a story with a villain, there's nothing wrong with a villain being a contemptible heel to its audience, but Homestuck^2 spends its opening 32 entries—which, at over 7600 words are longer than the prologue to the Homestuck Epilogues—jumping between Dirk’s smarmy conversations with fellow characters and a monologue to the audience, pages infused with an arrogance and condescension that is downright enervating. The text is frequently dense, so dense it feels like chewing your way through a plank of wood. It is actively tiring to read: I bailed on my first attempt at reading Homestuck^2 when it originally dropped because I just did not have the energy to squint at my screen and read that much orange-on-off-white text.

It is, to be clear, contemptuous. Dirk did much the same in the Epilogues, but the locus has changed. In the Epilogues Dirk taunts the reader with the changes he is making to the story: he knows they object to his manipulations, and he preens as good villains do. But in Homestuck^2, Dirk speaks not of his changes but of the very existence of Homestuck^2 itself. He treats his audience as inherently hostile to the entire existence of the work they have just shown-up to read (or even support via a Patreon), a hostility that culminates when he ‘opens’ a suggestion box and receives the suggestion ‘Dirk: Stop Making Homestuck,’—which he at-once rejects and goes on to monologue some more.

Dirk is talking to an audience who isn’t there. He is speaking to everyone who didn’t like the Epilogues and objects to Homestuck’s 'sequel' directly following them: but that audience isn’t reading Homestuck^2. They bailed in advance, and any who did try and keep an open mind likely jumped ship the moment the comic started by calling them a bitch and implying they’re idiots. The only people likely to read past the fifth page are those who already bought-in to Homestuck^2’s plan: and they are greeted with some 32 pages and 7600 words of the comic’s villain re-litigating and justifying that plan over and over and over again to people who nominally already agreed with him.

It is draining. It is annoying. It is boring to read.

There’s so much you could critique about Homestuck^2’s choices: from Rose cheating on Kanaya to impregnate Jade to Jane Crocker going full Trump and keeping kids in cages. Equally there’s arguments to be made that Homestuck^2’s very premature cancellation inhibits any ability to judge the story fairly: like any serialized narrative stopped mid-way, we have no way of knowing what narrative payoffs were supposed to be. Decisions that seemed baffling on page 8 might prove brilliant and bold by page 8000. But we never got to page 8000, because Homestuck^2 made one crucial error:

It started by telling its audience they were fools for not being smart enough to appreciate how brilliant Homestuck^2 was going to be, and then spent a majority of some 7600 words repeating itself like the worst self-pitying incel you’ve ever had the misfortune to be trapped with at a party. If only the ungrateful could realize how smart, handsome, and well-educated I—Homestuck^2—am, the love I deserve will come flowing in. I’ll show them all.

Homestuck^2 never recovered from that first, fatal error. The rest of its choices, good and bad, are almost irrelevant in the face of that opening broadside, that hostility, that tedium. Homestuck Classic earned its walls of text and at least knew how to space them: Hometuck^2 took its audience forbearance as a given and opens with a lecture on its principles and quality like an unusually snide abstract on a sociology paper. Homestuck^2 essentially began by telling its audience to leave unless they were willing to give it carte blanche, to roll over for its brilliance from the first, to accept in advance that its intelligence and virtue were first rate. So the audience did leave and it never came back and eventually the whole thing collapsed via artist infighting that was so rancorous and possibly subsumed by NDAs that to this day no one has ever halfway adequately explained what happened at the end.

But that ending was preordained from the beginning, for the balance was hopelessly incorrect.

So to anyone trying to write a revisionist history of Homestuck^2 in which its downfall was the fault of readers who simply didn’t ‘give it a chance,’ who didn’t appreciate its themes, who couldn’t grasp (or didn’t care to grasp) its intellectual bonafides (not to mention its extraordinary self-assurance that it was going to be queer Homestuck ‘done right,’ which is a whole essay about a priori reasoning in and of itself)... in other words, a history in which Homestuck^2' downfall happened because people just didn’t ‘get it,’ I’d like to sum up my counter-argument succinctly:

People didn’t like Homestuck^2 because you wrote it bad.

[Afterwards:

There is something bitingly funny about the ‘return’ of Homestuck^2 with the announcement that, from what I can gather, seemingly every person involved with the original project was fired (or, as they’d probably insist, refused to come back). Dirk’s preening, overwhelming arrogance, that ‘Dirk: Stop Making Homestuck’ prompt, will forever haunt the original team’s unwieldy vision. “I’d bet you just looove for us not to make Homestuck anymore” the team said, with all the confidence of an entrepreneur dismissing safety regulations before climbing into his homemade submarine, and boy were lessons learned. My problem with the return, however, is that I don’t know who genuinely wants to see the story of Homestuck^2 finished: the remaining cadre of die-hard patrons who still have enough goodwill to want the promise of the story’s finale fulfilled is microscopic. I’d argue there’s more people waiting for the conclusion of Wizardy Herbert, and I’m the only person I know who has ever read it. What I mean is: as a choice to revive a struggling franchise it doesn’t make much sense, and further—if it is not clear—I don’t think this is a story worth finishing. What is to be salvaged? Jane-the-Dictator, Rose’s cheating, Obnoxious BabyVriska, Dirk Strider the monster? The problem with Homestuck^2 is that Pesterquest happened, and those who played it went ‘this—this is the kind of story we were hoping for, not your edge lord showboating.’ And we only got one Pesterquest and Homestuck^2 limped on for another year reviled, ignored, and eventually forgotten. When it died, most people didn’t have any idea, because the drama never crossed their screens: nobody was talking about it any more. As my best friend noted, give us more Paradox Space. Give us more stories with joy and some sense of fun, something not written by people who often felt like they had an ‘End of Evangelion’ style hatred of Homestuck, or at the very least took the old joke that Hussie was ‘trolling’ his audience at face value. (Writing a good story with twists, set-backs, and tragic moments is not trolling, it is just writing a good story.) Homestuck^2 never felt like it understood that: it was rude and iconoclastic for no more compelling reason than it thought that was meaningful. But then I think the legacy of Epilogues has been extremely toxic—part of the positivity towards Pesterquest was that it let the Epilogues go, featuring a triumphant moment where YoungDirk confronts his Epilogues self and goes ‘I don’t have to be a huge wanker, actually, I can stay a character people can stand and even love again.’

Do that, new team. Pesterquest is named-dropped on the new site more than once, and my dream is that its cast arrives and overthrows the corrosive toxicity of the Epilogues, banishes it to the far realm of underbaked elsewhere ‘what-ifs’ along with every DC cannibalism story and that time Peter Parker’s radioactive semen gave MJ cancer.

The Epilogues and Homestuck^2 are, at this point, not worth salvaging—but I’d happily see them formally buried.]

#homestuck #Homestuck 2 #Homestuck^2 #homestuck beyond canon #andrew hussie #dirk strider #pesterquest #homestuck team #james roach #jane crocker #rose lalonde #kanaya maryam #homestuck epilogues #Wizardy Herbert #Vriska Serket #Jade Harley #daikatana #john romero

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kastlenetwork · 10 months

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Hi! So I'm pretty new to the kastle fandom and wanted to know if there are any like- classic fics or interviews or memorable moments in panels and cons (with the actors) that I should know about? I know about the interviews that are on the kastle wikifandom page but only because I've read them.

helloooo! welcome to the family! it's been quite quiet lately, but frank and karen are always in our hearts lolol and every now and then there's a little resurgence, so that's nice. umm first up interviews. there's a lot of little quotes here and there that were a big deal. we didn't get many interviews of the two of them together, if i remember correctly. i think two comic cons were pretty exciting.

here are some interviews from comic con 2017 yup

this is a cute clip from last year, where deborah talked about how jon's intense but really uplifted her. and that they want to work together again.

(i'm looking at kastle's wikifandom and, really, the big interview quotes all seem to be there.)

“ … just in terms of whether this is Jon’s story to tell or my story to tell, you just want to kind of be respectful of everybody’s contributions. Jon and I have certainly felt that there is room for a romantic story in there. And there were certainly scenes where we took it farther in some takes than we did in other takes. We’ll have to sort of wait and see what the editors chose, and how far they decided to push it. But we as actors allowed for that possibility.” -deb cinemablend

deborah and jon were both supporters, but deborah was always including frank into karen's romantic potentials:

“But all of the romance I’ve gotten to play, with any of the characters in the series, whether that’s Frank or Matt, they all come from a need. From a lonely person, a person who doubts whether she is deserving of love.” -deb collider

“I like that Karen can say, ‘How far down this road of violence of revenge do you go before you’re ripped apart?’ and he can look at her and go, ‘I’m already ripped apart. And you are, too.‘” -deb 92.1 bobfm

“When professor [Jeph] Loeb [Marvel TV head] told me we were gonna do a series on The Punisher,” Bernthal continued, “first thing i asked him is would I have the pleasure and the honor to work again with one of the most honest, the most kind, and the most talented actors I’ve ever had the privilege to work with.” --jon ew

oh! karen page being announced for the punisher. very cute.

youtube

"i just want to say, you guys don't love him as much as i do" was very exciting when it happened lmaoooo. the hope for kastle was high.

*****

i'll be honest up front and say, i tend to forget a lot of stuff? so, basically, i can read a fic and then read it again months later and it's like a brand new experience. which is both a blessing and a curse. so, i basically just zoomed through my bookmarks to try and find some things?? 😩😩

(i'm scanning my bookmarks and.............a lot of them are basically just smutfdjklgsdfjglkdfjglkdfjg)

ballads for a dead man ❤❤ [three parts, unfinished] Safe up in the mountains with Frank following a bloody showdown in Hell's Kitchen, Karen wonders just how much more complicated things between them can get. She's about to find out.

these heavy words, your open heart 😘😘 (this was a kastlechristmas gift to me from @carry-the-sky 😊❤) “You told me once that I was honest. That I don’t lie to you. But the hospital—you asked me to start over, and I said I didn’t want that.” Karen sucks in a breath. Frank’s eyes are still on her, wide and bright. It’s the most vulnerable she’s ever seen him look. “I lied,” he says.

The Reporter [kinda iconic ❤👀] Force Recon missions keep Marines isolated, entrenched for long periods in covert locations. They rarely received visitors, and in Frank’s long experience, the visitors were almost never civilians, let alone gorgeous blondes with mile long legs and sky blue eyes. Frank was trying not to stare. They all were. Well, everyone except Bill, who’s face had just split into a shit-eating grin.

The Flower Cam [oh god, the flower cam! i just remembered!! ❤] It had been a long time since there had actually been any flowers in the window. She must have trashed the white roses after his latest bullshit at the hospital with Madani and the kid. Good. Good for her. She should forget about him. But still… Frank couldn’t help but check every once in a while.

actually just, everything in their ao3. i have all this bookmarked.

(..................god, my bookmarks are really all smut. this says a lot about me.)

Castle’s Auto Shop ❤❤ yes. yep. Karen Page is in need of a car mechanic. Castle’s Auto Body Shop seems a reasonable choice. There’s just one problem: This little auto shop has become a well-known spot where less than honorable people to go get their car fixed…only to have justice find them at the next stop light. Having her brother’s truck fixed there means Karen will have to own up to a few secrets in her past.

Blood and Bone ❤❤❤! this is the fic that has seared itself into my brain. i've never once forgotten this. iconic. Frank Castle is a boxer at the top of his game. Laconic and anti-social, he has a reputation for being an incredibly-tough interview. Karen Page is a sports reporter trying to prove herself in a male-dominated field. She's done playing games--trying to be the "Cool Girl" who caters to the male fantasy--and now she's on a mission to take no shit. "For a while, the fact that an interview with Castle lasting longer than 5 minutes even existed was big news. Splashed all over the message boards—circulated among boxing and Castle fans alike. The very concept that someone actually got the man to sit down for more than a breath of time and give multiple-sentence answers to a question—it was huge. Massive. It was the only thing Castle fans could talk about. Until three months later, when Frank Castle disappeared. Then that was the news. It was the only news."

this is hard lmaoo how ludicrious. i have about seven collections from some of our events, as well. there's loads of good stuff in there:

kastlesmutweek 2018

kastlesmutweek 2019

kastlechristmas 2018

kastlechristmas 2019

kastlechristmas 2020

kastlechristmas 2021

kastlechristmas parent collection

#theshipdiaries #kastle #ask #txt: chey #kastleff

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thepunkmuppet · 4 months

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I can’t find frank iero tongue stigmata story either it timed out before I could see it or he deleted it but um. did I manifest this by causing a minute tumblr unholyverse resurgence I’m scared I feel like I angered god (wahey) and it’s some kind of weird cruel joke on me

#I’m SCARED like WHY NOW??? SIR????#DON’T LOOK AT ME EVER WHY DOES IT FEEL PERSONAL AAAHH I’M SORRY FOR READING HOT CATHOLIC RPF ABOUT YOU BBGIRL #frank iero #unholyverse #danny reads unholyverse #uhv #mcr #my chem #my chemical romance #my chemical fucking romance

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madamtrashbat · 1 year

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I was chatting with a friend recently about the ways antis operate and how damaging their ideology is and I wanted to organize my thoughts about it.

It's one thing to be like "I wish minors wouldn't interact with my work because it's got adult content" (which is not something you can 100% control short of paywalling) but it's another thing ENTIRELY to be like "minors should never look at anything sexual ever and people who think it's okay that they do are secret pedophiles."

Teenagers need to have the safe space to explore their sexuality and figure their shit out and sometimes that place is fandom. Sometimes teens are trying to deal with the fantasies they have about their hot history teacher so they consume teacher/student smut in order to work it out. Sometimes they're wondering what gives them their jollies and are just reading whatever they can to wank to, including incest and rape and other "unsavory" things just so they can get it all figured out.

Sometimes awful things have happened to teens and they're using the avenue of art and fiction to take the power back from their rapist and create a narrative they control where they are working through it safely.

And antis would see all of this and want it fucking destroyed.

I was brought up in fandom by a few of the sweetest older women (adult women!) who took me under their wings and showed me that what I was thinking and writing wasn't bad or wrong or shameful and it was all perfectly sane to have these sexual feelings because nothing makes sense when you're a kid and if you want to write Frerard where Gerard is the hot teacher to Frank's catholic schoolboy in order to deal with your feelings about the sexy sub you just got at your school then that's totally fine.

These trusted adults also comforted me when I was afraid, taught me what boundaries were (please do not actually pursue the sub!), told me what were normal interactions and what I should be wary of (do NOT let the sub pursue you), and they were proud of me as I made my way into the world as a reasonably well-adjusted adult.

(Hi, Gaja, can't wait for your Christmas card!)

Sexuality is weird and messy and whatever makes our pants tighter is all individual and equally weird. Telling teenagers to not seek out porn and to not even speak to adults is just a one-way ticket to growing fucked-up people who don't know how to operate without shame and then we have a resurgence in Catholicism and NOBODY needs that.

And the way that antis rally against this, like teenagers are Pure and Sweet Babies who are being corrupted by the Awful Adults Like Me (who are secretly child diddlers obviously) is just. So fucking damaging.

Imagine trying to handle the way your hormones are firing off at everything and you're just not sure what's going on and instead of a kind adult going "hey we were all freaks at 16 and it's totally normal to be like 'this strange thing is turning me on' I promise" you have some sniveling puritan asshole going "YOU ARE ACTUALLY A SEXUAL PREDATOR IF YOU LIKE THESE THINGS AND YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED AND PUNISHED BEFORE YOU ACTUALLY HARM PEOPLE."

Like. Y'all. I have seen antis claim that people who wrote about/drew rape in order to deal with their own assaults DESERVED IT because they chose to deal with it in this way. I have seen antis tell people they hope they get raped for the fiction they create. They wish death and harm against people who make fiction. Antis literally have a body count over this shit. And yet they want me to believe they're the good guys? Bye.

Antis will argue that it's not normal for people to think about gross and icky things. I argue that Holocaust survivors had sexual fantasies about actual fucking jackboot Nazis.

No one says you have to like everything everyone else does. We have a robust tagging system for a reason. But to behave as if what YOU like is the only thing that is acceptable and everything else is Bad and Wrong is not the business. Kink Tomato exists for a reason. We are all individuals who like different things. Get with it.

Teenagers are in a precarious time of development and if you want to shame them for whatever is going on in their heads then you are the problem, not the solution. Be the kind of adult you needed as a teenager, not some shaming, screaming Puritan trying to pin scarlet A's onto everything because it's sinful. Goody Proctor is just trying to rub one out in peace.

Get with the way fandom has always operated or go away. ACAB means fancop, too.

#discourse #long post

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mariacallous · 4 months

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Last February, as the sound of automatic weapons erupted in the early hours before dawn, Amina Museni hurriedly packed a bag while her husband, Joseph, shook their three children awake. They were joining a group of neighbors fleeing their hamlet as the front line between the Congolese army and rebels of the March 23 Movement, or M23, crept closer. For days afterward, they walked across the hilly landscape of Masisi, in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, before reaching one of the camps that have sprung up around Goma, the capital of North Kivu province. There, they pitched their tent, a young family of five among more than a million people displaced by the resurgence of a conflict that has ravaged Congo for nearly three decades.

When Foreign Policy visited the camp last July, Museni sat amid an undulating sea of white tarpaulins stretched over eucalyptus sticks. “When I was little, I lived in a tent with my parents,” Museni said, her youngest child, Nestor, cradled into her neck. “Now my children have to endure the same. It feels like a curse.”

Why Congo has been in a perennial state of upheaval since the mid-1990s has been the subject of much debate, but no other narrative has cut through as much as that of so-called conflict minerals. In the 2000s, the link between markets’ demand for minerals and the war in Congo helped bring attention to the conflict in an unprecedented way. Western organizations such as the Enough Project and Global Witness mobilized around the seductive proposition that the solution to one of the world’s deadliest conflicts was within the grasp of consumers and policymakers, triggering a series of laws and regulations beginning with, in the United States in 2010, Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act. The logic behind the legislation was simple. “Armed groups finance themselves through the exploitation of cassiterite, gold, coltan,” Fidel Bafilemba, a Congolese researcher who used to work for the Enough Project, told me at the time. “By stopping the export of these conflict minerals, we dry up their resources and lessen the violence.”

Section 1502 required companies to conduct due diligence checks on their supply chain to disclose their use of minerals originating from Congo and neighboring countries and to determine whether those minerals may have benefited armed groups. The legislation didn’t outright ban the sourcing of minerals from mines contributing to conflict financing but instead intended “this transparency and its attendant reputational risk” to pressure companies to stop buying them voluntarily, according to Toby Whitney, one of the authors of Section 1502.

What followed is an important lesson for a world rushing to secure critical minerals for the energy transition. Western advocacy led to policies focused on derisking supply chains and virtue signaling to consumers, rather than improving artisanal miners’ living conditions or addressing the conflict’s root causes. That narrative continues today: An Apple store in Berlin was vandalized last week by Fridays for Future activists accusing the tech giant of sourcing so-called conflict minerals from Congo.

ITSCI, the region’s leading private traceability scheme, is facing criticism about the validity of its work—and that it has not improved the lives of artisanal miners in the region. ITSCI stresses its limited mandate and that it is working as intended. But in a cruel twist, the cost of the due diligence program has been shouldered by Congolese miners themselves, effectively asking the world’s poorest workers to pay for the right to sell their own resources to Western companies.

This week, industry leaders and activists gathering at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris for the annual Forum on Responsible Mineral Supply Chains will need to reassess their approach. “We welcomed Dodd-Frank,” said Alexis Muhima, a Congolese researcher, during a meeting in a cramped office in Goma. “But what it did is outsource complex issues to the private sector, and we’ve been paying for it ever since.”

“The Americans didn’t think this through.”

There was a time in the 1970s when the quarries of Nyabibwe, a mining town in South Kivu province, were run with enough capital to employ 500 workers and to invest in semi-industrial machinery. Every month, the French company in charge shipped 20 metric tons of cassiterite ore—a component of tin—back to Europe for cans, wires, and solder. Safari Kulimuchi was a worker at the mines, starting at age 17, who quickly rose through the ranks to become a manager. “It was an exciting time. … Things seemed to be working out,” Kulimuchi recalled to Foreign Policy over dinner in Nyabibwe. But, he said, “it didn’t last.”

In the years that followed, Kulimuchi witnessed the economic unraveling of Congo (then Zaire), rotten under decades of rule by dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, who presided over the country from 1965 to 1997. Amid a global economic downturn in the mid-1980s, the French company departed, abandoning its workers to fend for themselves. “Overnight, we had no wages, no tools, no structure,” Kulimuchi said. “We used to have a stone crusher. Now we had to crush rocks with a hammer.”

Nyabibwe was far from an exception. Across the country, as investment dried up and the state abdicated its responsibilities, people resorted to making ends meet any way they could. An informal economy based on débrouillardise, or resourcefulness, sprouted in the ruins of Mobutu’s derelict regime. That informal economy is estimated to account for more than 80 percent of Congolese economic activity today. Nyabibwe grew into a town as people came from far and wide to work in the mines. They replaced the industrial machinery with picks and shovels, a low-capital, labor-intensive extraction called artisanal mining, as opposed to industrial mining. “Artisanal mining is the heart of our economy. It’s the reason Nyabibwe became this big center,” Kulimuchi said. The World Bank estimated in 2008 that up to 16 percent of the Congolese population depended on the sector. “For us, it’s a lifeline,” Kulimuchi added.

Mobutu was finally ousted in 1997 by a coalition helmed by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel army led by Paul Kagame. Kagame had just seized power in Rwanda in the aftermath of the genocide there and was intent on chasing after Hutus responsible for the massacres, many of whom had crossed into Zaire. What became the First Congo War brought Laurent-Désiré Kabila, a Congolese rebel, to power.

Kabila’s allies in the RPF quickly turned into foes when they refused to relinquish control over an area where instability threatened their security and interests. The Second Congo War began in 1998 with the creation of the RCD, a Tutsi-led, Rwandan-backed armed group that quickly gained control of a large swath of eastern Congo. The rebels began shipping cargo loads of coltan and cassiterite ores out of mines such as Nyabibwe’s into Rwanda just as the price of coltan, a key component of capacitors used in mobile phones and most electronic devices, soared with the demand for electronic goods at the turn of the century. A 2001 United Nations report estimated that Rwanda made at least $250 million during a temporary spike in prices in late 1999 and 2000. A popular formulation in Western campaigns at the time linked the violence in Congo to “blood phones.”

Many experts have criticized the advocacy of the 2000s for sometimes going so far as to suggest that conflict minerals were the root cause of the violence, painting armed actors as merely bloodthirsty, greedy militias—instead of considering real, historical grievances. The Enough Project campaigns, leaning hard on celebrities such as Robin Wright and Ryan Gosling to spread the group’s message, obfuscated the nuances of the conflict and the vital place of artisanal mining in the local economy. “The ‘conflict minerals’ label was problematic,” said Sophia Pickles, a former Global Witness campaigner and U.N. investigator. “This isn’t just about Congo—it’s a global issue.”

The campaigns succeeded in putting the issue on U.S. legislators’ agenda, but Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act was both too specific—singling out the so-called 3T minerals (tin for cassiterite, tantalum for coltan, and tungsten) in eastern Congo—and extremely vague on execution. It deferred the drafting of rules to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), leaving companies with no clear guidelines to report on their supply chain.

The law created a panicked scramble in the industry, said William Millman, a former technical director at Kyocera AVX, a leading manufacturer of electronic components and major coltan buyer. “Everybody was ignorant about the specifics. We just relied on our smelters.” Unlike an oil company directly operating its wells or a sneaker company outsourcing production to a sweatshop in Asia, electronics companies have virtually no way of knowing where the minerals in their products come from upstream of the smelters or refiners that have turned them into smooth metal—unless the smelters themselves know. “I visited all my suppliers to gather information. They knew very little because it was all largely bought on the spot market with international brokers,” Millman said. As a result of Section 1502, companies liable to fall under the SEC rule demanded that their suppliers simply stop buying from eastern Congo.

The result? A de facto embargo dropped like a bomb on the mining communities of North and South Kivu, just as the region was emerging from its latest cycle of violence. Nyabibwe had navigated two major wars mostly unscathed, but when I visited in June 2012, the town was in the midst of an existential crisis. Businesses dependent on the cash flow generated by the mines were closing down one by one, unable to sell stockpiles of rubber boots and shovels, blacksmithing services, or simply food. Tellingly, the local nightclub had shut its doors. More concerning were thousands of families’ insufficient funds to access health care, forcing women to give birth at home. One study found that the boycott increased the probability of infant mortality in affected mining communities by at least 143 percent.

Kulimuchi, who was then 54, was still managing a small team of undeterred miners. “The Americans didn’t think this through,” he said. His team had three metric tons of ore stored in a warehouse in Bukavu, South Kivu’s capital, waiting to be bought and shipped. “School is about to start again. Where are we going to find the money to send our children?”

Though U.S. lawmakers had struck out on their own with Section 1502, industrywide talks to create guidelines for the responsible sourcing of minerals in high-risk areas globally were already underway at the OECD. The OECD guidelines, adopted later in 2010, ended up becoming the foundation for the SEC rules, released in 2012. “The choke point in the supply chain is the smelters—everything has to go through them, and there aren’t many smelters in the world,” Millman said. “The OECD came up with a standardized protocol to audit and certify the smelters on an annual basis to know that they have control and knowledge of their supply chain.”

According to Millman, a handful of downstream companies seemed genuinely interested in doing things right and getting involved at the mine level. In 2011, together with Motorola and the Washington-based NGO Resolve, what was then AVX launched Solutions for Hope, a pilot project in Congo’s Katanga (now Tanganyika) province, where there was no conflict. They created a closed-pipe supply chain, sourcing from artisanal mines through a company that sold directly to a Chinese smelter and then onward to AVX, which manufactured components for Motorola and Hewlett-Packard.

Solutions for Hope also decided to hire the services of ITSCI. Its “bag and tag” traceability scheme set up by the International Tin Association (ITA) promised to trace minerals from the mine and guarantee their origin to buyers through a paper trail associated with sealed tags affixed on bags. According to Millman, Solutions for Hope was successful largely because its integrated supply chain bypassed traders and brought end-user companies closer to the miners. Replicating it would take time and effort. But, Millman said, “what other companies who had sat back saw was that, suddenly, with ITSCI there was a way for their CEOs and CFOs to sign off on their SEC statements. … And so everyone piled in, and it became the easy option.” ITSCI’s first project in eastern Congo was implemented in October 2012 in Nyabibwe.

“Do you think these people stopped working?”

Ten years on from when we first met, Kulimuchi came down from the mountainside where he had been working with his son on a sunny day last July, his broad smile still intact. The mining site hadn’t changed much either. Around us, men wearing flip-flops were using the same basic tools to split the earth open, with no protective equipment.

Initially, Kulimuchi recalled, the artisanal miners had been relieved when a large delegation showed up to officially launch the traceability scheme. “It meant we could finally start selling again. All my financial worries would be a thing of the past,” Kulimuchi said he thought at the time.

Instead, an elaborate public-private bureaucracy emerged, driven in part by regional governments intent on bringing the artisanal mining sector under control but quickly superimposed by foreign private sector initiatives like ITSCI, responding to market demand for paperwork required by end-user companies to file their reports to the SEC.

“We started selling again, but it’s a cacophony. There is a ton of admin, taxes after taxes, and prices have gone down. We have been weakened by all this,” Kulimuchi said.

As the de facto embargo on eastern Congo’s minerals lifted, by 2012 thousands of small sites across the region found themselves effectively outlawed by a new mine site validation process. To be able to sell, Congolese mining sites must now be inspected by a delegation of government representatives, NGOs, and U.N. agencies. At sites given the go-ahead from that audit, the Congolese artisanal mining agency carries out its own checks while also tagging and recording the minerals in logbooks for ITSCI. There are other records kept by the provincial government’s Mining Division and a regional body. Many sites are still waiting for an audit. For those that don’t conform, the consequences are devastating: “You are destroying the livelihood of hundreds or thousands of people,” said Maxie Muwonge, who was a program manager for the International Organization for Migration between 2013 and 2018 when it was tasked with coordinating the validation process. “This excludes entire communities. What are they meant to do? Do you think these people stopped working?”

In fact, even under the de facto embargo, the minerals trade never really stopped. It just went further underground. Rwanda’s export statistics, which experts say don’t match its reserves, suggest that smuggling to neighboring countries spiked during the period. While the volume of trafficked minerals has fallen with the reopening of the legal market in eastern Congo, smuggling is still an issue, not least because of the market distortion caused by heavy regulation and taxation in Congo of small businesses. “Many collapsed because they couldn’t meet the requirements, and the investment in the sector decreased. It broke down artisanal miners even further,” Muwonge said.

Joyeux Mumpenzi followed in his mother’s footsteps when he decided to become a négociant, an intermediary who buys minerals from the creuseurs, or diggers, and transports them to export companies in large cities—a reflection of the highly organized division of labor in the artisanal sector. “To begin with, we have no say regarding the going price—the London Metal Exchange sets it, and it fluctuates constantly,” he said. “Then there are all the taxes, and finally, the export company retains a penalty on my payment for ITSCI.”

Today, 99 percent of ITSCI’s revenue comes from the levies it collects from upstream actors based on the volumes of minerals tagged and exported, ITSCI program manager Mickaël Daudin said in an interview. The organization says artisanal miners are not supposed to pay for the scheme. But the cost, or at least a percentage of it, is passed down the supply chain to the négociants and ultimately to the miners. “I have no choice” in doing so, Mumpenzi said. “I end up earning little more than they do, and I take huge financial risks.” The 33-year-old trader says he earns about $300 a month, while an artisanal miner’s household makes $200 on average.

ITSCI, which operates in both Congo and Rwanda, applies differentiated levies to businesses in the two countries. Daudin said that’s because “the cost of implementation … remains much higher” in Congo than in Rwanda but declined to disclose the levies’ rates; a Congolese government official called it a “conflict tax.” The rate discrepancy effectively encourages trafficking to Rwanda for Congolese mining operators keen to increase their margins.

A report published in 2022 by Global Witness cited “[s]ome industry sources” alleging that ITSCI was in fact set up to facilitate the laundering of Congolese minerals smuggled into Rwanda. Foreign Policy hasn’t been able to confirm the claim, but the tagging system that ITSCI created does offer the perfect cover for smuggling, in Rwanda or Congo. The integrity of the scheme relies entirely on the integrity of the people implementing it; the tags themselves offer no guarantee. In a statement released in response to the report, ITSCI wrote that it “strongly rejects all Global Witness’ stated or implied allegations of wrongdoing, facilitating deliberate misuse of ITSCI systems or illegal activity.” If ITSCI had aimed to maximize smuggling into Rwanda as alleged, a spokesperson wrote to Foreign Policy in an email, “ITSCI would not have launched in Katanga in 2011 nor in any other adjoining locations at other times. During 15 years of implementation, ITSCI has continued to expand the programme in [Congo], now supporting more than 1,500 sites across 8 Provinces.”

The Global Witness report also documented how the system can be breached without ITSCI’s cooperation. For starters, the tagging is not performed by ITSCI but by Congolese government agents who earn less than the miners themselves and sometimes go for months without pay at all. From bribing agents to trading in tags, the number of ways to circumvent the system is almost limitless—as Mumpenzi demonstrated to Foreign Policy. The négociant stood up from the sofa in his living room and walked to a corner where sturdy white plastic bags had been stacked. “See the tags? The bags were sealed by an agent before I picked them up yesterday,” he said. “The mineral sand now has to be washed, so when I’ll bring the bags to the washing station, the tags will be removed. When minerals are washed, the weight goes down, so this is a perfect time to smuggle in minerals before a new tag goes on. As long as the bag weighs less than it did initially, no one will say anything.”

ITSCI doesn’t rebuke such allegations categorically. The organization says it was aware of many of the incidents documented by Global Witness and had already addressed them. “The program isn’t perfect. There are issues, and there always will be,” Daudin told Foreign Policy. “But from my point of view, it wasn’t better before.”

Kulimuchi and other artisanal miners might beg to differ. Rather than improving their living conditions, the “increasing regulation of the artisanal mining sector and responsible sourcing efforts, have rather had a negative overall effect on the socio-economic position of artisanal miners,” analysts at the International Peace Information Service (IPIS), a leading minerals research institute, wrote in 2019. Guillaume de Brier, a researcher at IPIS, told me that “working in an ITSCI or a non-ITSCI site doesn’t change anything. Conditions are dismal in both cases. There’s no difference in terms of child labor, and miners don’t earn more.”

When asked by Foreign Policy about this criticism, an ITSCI spokesperson stressed the organization’s limited mandate as a traceability and due diligence not-for-profit initiative. “It does not function as a certification mechanism,” the spokesperson wrote, and the organization’s focus “does not extend to working conditions.”

However, evidence suggests that responsible sourcing efforts have failed to shift conflict dynamics. A 2022 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), part of its mandate to evaluate the impact of Section 1502, was titled “Conflict Minerals: Overall Peace and Security in Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo Has Not Improved Since 2014.” Violence has instead risen, remaining “relatively constant from 2014 through 2016 but steadily [increasing] from 2017 through 2021,” GAO wrote.

Arguably, some measure of progress has been achieved at the 3T mining sites targeted by Dodd-Frank, where the presence of armed groups has decreased. But while ITSCI claims to have played a role, de Brier says the scheme merely implanted in sites where the situation was already better. Overall, this demilitarization has largely been the result of Congolese policies and the evolution of conflict dynamics themselves: The defeat of the M23 rebellion in 2013 (the armed group changed names multiple times as it successively integrated into and rebelled against the national army) led to the dismantling of one of the country’s most predatory mafia networks. Today, for instance, Bisie, once an iconic mining site under the control of Bosco “The Terminator” Ntaganda, is operated by the Canadian company Alphamin. (Ntaganda is serving a 30-year prison sentence in Belgium following his conviction by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.)

Now though, with the resurgence of the M23 rebellion since November 2021—which has displaced Museni, her family, and more than 2.5 million others—even that small measure of progress is under threat.

“This is how the armed groups are paid.”

Belgian colonial administration profoundly altered the Congolese relationship with the land, introducing private ownership and displacing people for commercial exploitation. Since independence, who has the right to own land—and by extension its resources—has remained an unresolved existential question. “The main resource driving conflict isn’t coltan,” said Onesphore Sematumba, an analyst at the International Crisis Group. “It is the land. It’s material ownership, of course, but also who has a legitimate right to be here.”

In the borderlands of eastern Congo, these questions have been exacerbated by intertwined histories with neighboring countries. Hutus and Tutsis, who arrived from Rwanda in successive waves throughout the 20th century—first brought by Belgian colonialists to work on plantations in the territories of Rutshuru and Masisi—have struggled to find acceptance and secure land rights. Rwanda, meanwhile, a small, densely populated country with little resources of its own, largely depends on economic ties and access to Congo’s resources. These two dynamics have helped create the vicious circle of the last three decades. Backed by Rwanda, the RCD rebellion and its successors claiming to fight for Tutsis’ rights have helped entrench tensions along ethnic lines while facilitating land grab by a small elite.

“Indigenous communities in Masisi were dispossessed of their land during the war,” said Janvier Murairi, a Congolese researcher. “Today’s farm and mine owners are people who had links to the RCD. Everything from Mushaki to Masisi town belongs to hardly more than 10 people.”

One such owner was Edouard Mwangachuchu, an aspiring Tutsi politician and a member of the RCD’s political branch, who was awarded a concession covering seven mines in Rubaya by the rebel administration in 2001. Two years later, the Sun City Agreement, a peace deal negotiated between rebel factions with little regard for social justice or community grievances, endorsed Mwangachuchu’s ownership over the mining sites as a prize of war for the RCD, granting his company, MHI (now SMB), control over what have become the most productive sites at Congo’s largest coltan mine. Today, Rubaya accounts for about 15 percent of global coltan production.

Rubaya is emblematic of the way ITSCI, and more broadly due diligence as it is practiced today, treats “conflictual issues, such as concessions and land ownership, … as a black box,” Christoph N. Vogel writes in his 2022 book, Conflict Minerals Inc., turning a blind eye to political issues around social justice and equity, even as those are drivers of the violence it means to help prevent.

In Rubaya, Mwangachuchu’s plan to turn the quarries into an industrial mine spurred a backlash from local communities. “The artisanal miners didn’t accept that this family [the Mwangachuchus] who had come into the possession of the mines through the conflict could take away their livelihood,” Murairi said. The government mediated a deal: The miners were allowed to continue mining SMB sites but had to sell exclusively to the company.

ITSCI began operating in Rubaya in 2014, tagging minerals from both SMB and peripheral sites belonging to a state-owned mining company, SAKIMA. But the situation unraveled as the scheme was embroiled in a tit-for-tat commercial war in the years that followed.

Suspecting that ITSCI’s tags were being used to launder the sale of its minerals to a rival trading company, SMB eventually turned to ITSCI’s main competitor in the tag-and-bag business, Better Mining. The move should have represented a major financial blow to ITSCI, the loss of roughly half its revenues for Congo. Instead, as production at the SAKIMA sites kept growing while SMB’s dwindled, ITSCI’s business was preserved. According to an internal U.N. report provided to Foreign Policy, “Only about seventeen percent of the production that officially originates from the SAKIMA concession has in fact been mined there.” The report noted that “[s]uch discrepancy between official data and reality is only conceivable if a structured mechanism of fraud is established.”

Daudin, the ITSCI program manager, responded that ITSCI is “confident about its data.” He argued that the production increase was due to the higher level of investment going to SAKIMA sites when local miners turned away from SMB.

The M23’s resurgence dealt the last blow to Mwangachuchu, who was arrested in March 2023 and charged with treason after weapons were allegedly found on the grounds of his company’s facilities in Rubaya. According to the prosecutor, Mwangachuchu intended to support the M23 rebellion. The government has since revoked SMB’s mining permits. Few people in North Kivu will feel sorry for Mwangachuchu, “but one of the protagonists was pushed out in favor of the other, and that never works,” said Achile Kitsa, a former private secretary to the provincial mines minister.

The Congolese army took full control of Rubaya last spring, leaving the former SMB concession at the mercy of local armed groups it used as proxies on the front line against the M23. “This is how the armed groups are paid,” said a Congolese researcher who spoke on condition of anonymity. ITSCI resumed its operations in June, tagging minerals from the SAKIMA perimeter up until November, when the road was cut off by the fighting, according to Daudin. “We relaunched our activities after evaluating each site with the government services,” he said in July. “There are no nonstate armed groups in our sites.”

In a December report, the U.N. Group of Experts on Congo contradicted Daudin, establishing that between June and November, the “production from [the former SMB] sites was either smuggled to Rwanda or laundered into the official supply chain using [ITSCI] tags for minerals produced in [the SAKIMA concession], where mining activities were still authorized.”

“ITSCI recognizes that there have been, and remain, ongoing risks regarding fraud and presence of both non-state and state armed groups in the area of Masisi territory, North Kivu,” the ITSCI spokesperson wrote. “These risks are regularly reported through ITSCI’s OECD-aligned systems.”

Muhima, the Congolese researcher, sees the possibility of tainted minerals in the ITSCI supply chain as inevitable, given its built-in conflict of interest. “Their income depends on the volume they export. They cannot stop tagging minerals, or their business will collapse.”

“We don’t need another scheme.”

Congolese activists were not pleased with the Global Witness report exposing the shortcomings of ITSCI when it was published in 2022. They felt that the research mostly rehashed criticisms and evidence that they had presented for many years without being listened to and that the report failed to draw the necessary conclusions, ending with tepid recommendations to reform ITSCI or consider options to replace it with another independent scheme. “We don’t need another scheme,” Murairi said. “We don’t need more foreigners who think Congolese can’t do anything.”

Global Witness’s cautiousness should perhaps not come as a surprise. The activist organization played no small part in paving the way for today’s conundrum, and the risk of triggering another de facto embargo on Congolese minerals hangs heavy. “We’ve learnt some very difficult lessons, and as an activist, I’m not the one who bore the consequences of bad policymaking,” said Pickles, the former Global Witness campaigner.

When I pressed Daudin last July about ITSCI’s resumption of its activities in Rubaya, even as armed groups were swarming the mining area, he dodged: “If we don’t start tagging again, mining communities will be the first ones to suffer from not being able to carry on their activities.”

ITSCI suffered a major setback in October 2022, when the Responsible Minerals Initiative (RMI), a member association of more than 400 of the world’s largest corporations, announced that it was taking the scheme off its list of recognized upstream due diligence mechanisms. ITSCI had failed to submit an independent assessment of its alignment with the OECD guidelines in time. When the organization eventually released an independent audit in June 2023, it failed to assess ITSCI’s activities in Congo, focusing solely on coltan production in Rwanda. The RMI has offered to pay for three site visits in Congo, including in Rubaya, but ITSCI has so far not agreed. (“Site visits outside alignment assessments are not explicitly required,” said the ITSCI spokesperson, who noted the terms of such a visit are nonetheless under negotiation with RMI.)

“They are holding everyone hostage,” an industry insider close to the RMI process told Foreign Policy. “There is so much pressure on the RMI to capitulate and say we need this system. But this isn’t a technical issue.” To many experts and industry insiders, the resurgence of the M23 conflict has at least had the benefit of clarifying the situation. “The system cannot withstand what it was built for. It can’t withstand the conflict. We are back to square one.”

Breaking ITSCI’s quasi-monopoly is often presented as the solution in minerals circles, but SMB’s switch to Better Mining solved none of the problems in Rubaya and only created more confusion. Better Mining’s for-profit business model and its reliance on technology make it hard to scale and mean it is explicitly designed for larger companies with capital, not artisanal miners. “The problem with all these initiatives is that no one is there to control them,” said de Brier, the IPIS researcher.

Who is supposed to exert this control is part of the problem. Much like the fragmented nature of the supply chain, the nebulous ecosystem of public and private actors involved in responsible sourcing means that responsibility befalls no one in particular. In a July 2023 report, the GAO noted that the number of companies filing conflict minerals disclosures to the SEC had been steadily declining year-on-year since 2014, in part because “companies perceive that they are unlikely to face enforcement action by the SEC if they do not comply.”

Pickles noted that, unlike Dodd-Frank, the European Union’s own conflict minerals regulation, which came into force in 2021, avoided the trap of focusing only on Congo but equally fell for industry schemes such as ITSCI. “I’ve spoken to the competent authorities of three member states, and they said that the reports they receive from companies don’t tell them anything. They don’t actually know what’s happening along the supply chain,” she said. “So where does that leave us?”

For Congolese, ending this hypocrisy is a necessary first step but requires trust and support on the part of international partners. “The Congolese government has its own traceability system. All the necessary documents are delivered by Congolese state agencies. They tell you where the minerals come from just as reliably as ITSCI’s tags, which is to say it’s not perfect but it’s no worse,” Muhima said. “The same state agents deliver these documents and implement ITSCI’s program—for free I might add, since ITSCI doesn’t pay for them. What needs to be improved urgently is their payment.”

These lessons are relevant beyond the specifics of the 3T supply chain. The attention around cobalt—the conflict mineral du jour thanks to its use in electric vehicle batteries—is a case in point. While there is no conflict in the area where cobalt is extracted, working conditions and child labor have been discussed in much the same way as conflict minerals were back in the 2000s: in decontextualized and sometimes inaccurate reports that fail to examine the complex ways in which minerals interact with people’s livelihoods. Instead, such reports paint artisanal mining as illegitimate, something to eliminate. They have been used to justify land grab by large mining companies whose supply chains are easily traceable for end-user companies.

“We haven’t learned from our experience with diamonds or 3T minerals. With cobalt, it’s as if those experiences never existed,” said Joanne Lebert, the executive director of IMPACT, a nonprofit organization working on natural resource governance. “Instead of supporting communities, we’re just monitoring. There is no connection in my view between a clean supply chain and governance and security outcomes. Maybe you take kids out of your supply chain, but they’ll go to agriculture, to domestic work. They’ll go to another mine. They’ll sneak in at night. Clean supply chain is about eliminating the risk and not necessarily about doing good. And it’s the doing good we have to get at.”

Following the same pattern, an EU law aimed at preventing products linked to deforestation from entering the European market is pushing coffee companies toward industrial producers able to generate the paperwork and sidelining small farmers from Ethiopia to Brazil. Private companies will always take the shortcut, while black markets, exploitation, and conflict feed on exclusion.

Whether Western consumers like it or not, artisanally mined minerals will continue to find their way into the supply chains that fuel the energy transition and consumer products. Investing in mining communities’ welfare, education, and businesses is indispensable.

Museni is still living in the refugee camp on the outskirts of Goma with her husband and young children. Surrounded, the provincial capital has been struggling to absorb and provide for the constant new waves of displaced families reaching the city as the M23 is inching closer.

Even as evidence of Rwanda’s support to the rebellion has been mounting, the country has still not been sanctioned. In February, the EU signed an agreement “to nurture sustainable and resilient value chains for critical raw materials” with the Rwandan government, calling the country “a major player on the world’s tantalum extraction.” Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi described the deal as a “provocation in very bad taste.”

In Nyabibwe, Kulimuchi took me on a final walk around the town, waving around at the myriad businesses and hard-working people in the streets. “No one here has a bank account, for example. We can’t save. We can’t build,” he said. “We don’t require much—a road to Bukavu, a little boost, you know. Then, we’ll take it from there.”

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ghostrealmgatekeeper · 6 months

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resurgence, go check on your boyfriend

-he rushes to Wally concerned-

Wally? @ghostie-wally

#limbo! barnaby au #welcome home au #welcome home multiverse #resurgence frank

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jwhitewolfbarnes · 1 year

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The Unexpected Visitor

I know this blog hasn’t been active in a long time, but my recent resurgence of obsession with Daredevil has sparked a need to write. Hope this is a good one. Please give feedback! I am not sure when or if I'll write again but if this does well, I just might!

Characters: Matthew Murdock, Frank Castle, Reader, mentions of Karen Page and Foggy Nelson

Relationship: Matthew Murdock/F!Reader

Description: While alone at the office, a surprise visitor for Matt drops in. He may have a thing for you.

Warnings: None really. Potentially OOC Frank and Matt, definitely non-canon law office, a slight blind joke, Matt’s devil senses, sexual hints, not beta read, use of Y/N, no physical description given so reader is up to interpretation

Word Count: 1,140

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Working at Nelson, Murdock & Page always seemed to involve something interesting happening at least once a week. Being paid in produce or livestock or baked goods. Seeing people get so flustered when interacting with Matt. Listening to Karen and/or Foggy complain about their most recent dating adventures. But these were all things you could get used to.

Something you hadn’t gotten used to yet was dating Matt Murdock. Foggy and Karen had placed a bet a little over a year ago when you were hired about when Matt would make his move. Turns out he would make it just before your one year anniversary at the firm. The both of you had confessed feelings while Matt walked you home after a few too many at Josie’s. And here you were, three months later- still working as the office assistant/manager/lawyer and vigilante wrangler/girlfriend.

It was just you and Matt in the office for a few days while Foggy and Karen were a few hours away meeting with a prominent client. Matt had just stepped out for a short local meeting and said he would pick up lunch on his way back.

As you fought with the printer, the door opened. The man that walked in seemed somewhat familiar to you, but you didn’t have a chance to fully inspect his face before he spoke.

“I’m here to, uh, see Murdock.” His gruff voice cut through the concerning noises coming from the printer. He glanced around the office before his eyes finally settled on you. He watched as you moved to stand behind your desk. A slight smile appeared on his face as his eyes roamed your figure.

“Well, well… what does Murdock have a pretty little thing like you hidden away in this shithole for?” He let out a low chuckle and moved a bit closer to your desk. You couldn’t stop the small smile from forming on your face. You couldn’t deny it- he was attractive, very attractive. He was large and intimidating wearing dark jeans, a gray shirt, a black jacket, and a baseball cap that covered just enough. He smiled a little bigger, noticing you giving him a once over. You cleared your throat before attempting to speak.

“I, um, I’ve been the office assistant for about a year now. But anyway, what’s your name? And did you have a specific appointment or is this just a drop-in situation?” You tried to avoid making direct eye contact with him so he didn’t think you had any larger interest in him. You nervously fiddled with a string on your pants as you sat down to go over the meetings calendar.

“Castiglione, ma’am. I didn’t have any appointment or whatever. Where is that asshole anyway, I know he’ll want to hear what I got to say. What’s your name, darlin’?” He makes a move to sit down in the chair across from you. You watch as he settles in and leans forward to place his elbows on the edge of your desk.

“My name is Y/N. And Mr. Murdock should be here in just a moment. He had a short meeting before this. Can I get you anything to drink while you wait Mr. Castiglione?” You gesture behind you to the very minuscule drink area you had forced Matt and Foggy to help you set up. He glances around you and nods. You have a slight moment of panic over admitting you were alone, but something about this guy doesn’t make you feel afraid.

“A water would be real nice… I am a bit thirsty over here.” You stand up and turn slightly to grab a cup and dispense some water. As you turn to hand him the water, you notice he was most definitely staring at your ass. He clears his throat and leans back, spreading his legs as he relaxes. He takes a sip of the water and makes a little show of licking his lips.

“So, Y/N, would you like a drink? What do ya say? Tomorrow at 7, me and you darlin’?” He tilts his head back and suddenly the obstruction of his baseball cap has disappeared. You finally recognize him.

“Frank. What are you doing here?” Matt’s abrupt question startles you. You hadn’t even noticed him come in. He sets a takeout bag and his cane down on the desk and moves to stand beside you. You know that he can probably hear your heart hammering in your chest.

“Finally, Murdock. Bout damn time you show up, but I have to say, the view in here is absolutely something. Such a shame you can’t admire it.” Frank’s eyes never leave you as he speaks. There’s a small cocky smile on his face as he opens his mouth again. “So, what about that drink, Y/N? Just cause this asshole shows up, doesn’t mean we can’t finish what we started.”

You shoot him a confused look but as you go to respond, Matt cuts in. “Frank, if you would like to keep the privilege of dropping in here and leaving unharmed, you might want to stop hitting on my girlfriend.” There’s a hint of smugness in Matt’s voice as he tilts his head towards Frank. That cocky smile almost instantly disappears from Frank’s face. He suddenly sits up straight and looks between the both of you.

“Goddamn it, you always get ‘em first, huh? You’re a little shit, you know that?” He turns back to you, “I am sorry, Y/N. I didn’t mean to make ya uncomfortable.” His apology seemed sincere and kind of adorable. This big, scary man apologizing for hitting on you. Matt’s hand has made itself known on your waist, pulling you into his side. You look up at him and then back to Frank.

“It’s okay. You didn’t make me uncomfortable, it was flattering. It was really nice to meet you. I have heard quite a bit about you.” Matt shoots you a look that you know means trouble for you later while Frank’s grin makes its return.

“Well, thank you ma’am. Keep me in mind if this one ever fucks up.” He chuckles and throws a finger in Matt’s direction. “Now, about that meeting Red. I ain’t got all damn day here altar boy.” Frank stands up and makes his way to Matt’s office without any guidance. Once he steps inside and the door is shut, Matt turns his eyes towards you.

“You were flattered, huh sweetheart? Well, I’ll see what I can do about that later tonight.” He leans down and kisses you probably a little too inappropriately for the middle of a law office. As he pulls away, there’s a slight grimace on his face. “I can smell him on you. As soon as he’s gone, we’re fixing that.”

#matthew murdock x reader #matt murdock x reader #frank castle #the punisher #x reader #plus size reader #flirting #kissing #inappropriate behavior for a law office #daredevil #daredevil x reader

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da12thkind · 1 year

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Tumblr and The Old Internet Re-Awakens, An Opinion Essay

This is going to be a super long post about my thoughts on the current state of the internet, with a chunk of what I'm about to say having been stuff I've already said elsewhere on other sites. To save your dash, I'll be putting a READ MORE break.

The fact that Twitter and Reddit have basically been destroyed by their own hubris is both hilarious and sad. It's funny because "ha ha rich man's hubris" but also sad because this is very emblematic of the current direction many social media companies that have been at the top for too long are going.

Ever since the muskrat purchased Twitter, it was clear from the beginning that something seriously wrong had happened, with worse decisions to follow. Something I hadn't realized was just how extensive the ripple effects of this would be. Reddit is now being destroyed by their leader's desire for more and more money, as if they needed any more.

I've been having this conversation with my friends via Discord and with strangers on the Starmen dot net forums. The writing is on the walls. The internet is moving towards a future that caters to advertisers more than its users. If there's even the slightest hint of getting more money by screwing over users, the higher ups of a given site will be chomping at the bit.

Where does that leave us?

Well, with Reddit and Twitter both now in a state of complete and total self-destruction, albeit rather slowly, we have seen an influx of new and returning users. Fantastic! I love when an old place gets new life breathed into it.

That being said, I don't believe that Tumblr is the bastion of The Old Internet, far from it, and many of you would agree.

Instead, I think that the resurgence in Tumblr's popularity could be just the first step towards the return of The Old Internet. We have the power to go back to the days of making our own websites. Information on web design and web programming are available online for free, in addition to many places offering free hosting services for a basic website or blog that don't need many bells or whistles (just don't go to GoDaddy).

Tumblr, in my opinion, once you know how to use the advanced editing tools, can make for a great "Baby's First Web Blog." There are some users on here that have made GORGEOUS blogs that will absolutely blow you away.

What about peer-to-peer communications?

We've seen that Discord has been another victim to the plague that is internet gentrification. They've removed the discriminators for usernames, had a store put in, and so many other little changes that have consistently annoyed the end users.

That being said... Discord is not going to be falling apart anytime soon. It's still a fantastic way to connect with many people at once and have quick access to all your different communities.

However, you could make the case, and I certainly try to, that internet forums fulfill the same thing. It is true that forums for many topics have drifted into the void of internet history, but is that not simply the nature of the internet? Communities sprout up, thrive, have an internal way, break apart, and start anew. We've seen that with many Discord servers, albeit rather small ones.

I will still hold my ground that forums should be revitalized if we truly want to go back to the days of old.

What does the future hold?

I... don't know. Despite my vast horde of opinions, research, and second-hand accounts of what The Old Internet was like and how The Current Internet is becoming, I cannot say for absolute certainty that we will see a total collapse of these tech empires. At the very least, however, I do believe that they will become hollowed shells of their former selves.

I have yet to talk about YouTube and its history, and, to be quite frank with you all, I simply must avoid that topic for now. All I will say is that I implore my fellow content creators, specifically those that create Video On-Demand content for YouTube and TikTok, to look into creating your own websites to host your content in the event that something happens to these empires, too. If you don't have offline copies of your videos, do so when you can.

That will be it for now. Thank you for reading this essay. I love your faces. Stay safe.

#da12thkind text post #opinion essay #opinion #essay #the old internet #internet #twitter #reddit #tumblr #twitpocalypse #elongated muskrat #reddit refugee

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importantwomensbirthdays · 4 months

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Ruth Adler Schnee

youtube

Textile artist and interior designer Ruth Adler Schnee was born in 1923 in Frankfurt, Germany. Schnee's family fled the Nazi persecution of Jews and ultimately settled in the Detroit area. In the late 1940s, she began designing and winning awards for textiles. Schnee was a trailblazer in the transition of textiles from simple decoration to a medium of contemporary design, and was also a well-known interior designer who worked with famous architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright. She is credited with helping spread midcentury modernism to Michigan, and the revival of midcentury modernism in the 1990s brought a resurgence of interest in her work. In 2015, she was named the Kresge Foundation's Eminent Artist. Schnee's work can be found in the collections of the Henry Ford Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Ruth Adler Schnee died in 2023 at the age of 99.

#art #artists #art history #textile art #midcentury modernism #interior design #design #jewish #jew #jewish artists #jewish women #women's history #jewish history #Youtube

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doamarierose-honoka · 5 months

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May is quickly shaping up to be one of the biggest months for new comic book releases in a long time. Marvel alone is going all-out this month, kicking off the massive Blood Hunt crossover and celebrating the milestone 50th issue of The Amazing Spider-Man with the return of Spidey's greatest nemesis. Elsewhere, DC has big stories planned for two of Batman's most important sidekicks, while Image is launching several promising new projects like The Whisper Queen and Grommets.

Read on to see all the biggest comics of May 2024, and be sure to let us know in the comments what you'll be reading this month.

Blood Hunt

Creative Team: Jed MacKay & Pepe Larraz

Publisher: Marvel

Release Date: May 1

As is tradition for Marvel, the first week of May brings with it the start of a major summer crossover event. Blood Hunt pits the Avengers and other assorted heroes against a resurgent vampire nation. For the first time, the many vampire tribes of the Marvel Universe are united under a common cause, and that's bad news for the human world. Expect some major heroes to be turned to the undead as this massive war unfolds.

Blood Hunt will unfold in the pages of the core miniseries by Jed MacKay and Pepe Larraz, but expect a lot of tie-ins to accompany that book. Most of Marvel's Avengers and Spider-Man-adjacent books will tie into the event, and several new limited series will also launch aside the main book.

Get Fury #1

Creative Team: Garth Ennis & Jacen Burrows

Publisher: Marvel

Release Date: May 1

Garth Ennis doesn't often write for the Big Two publishers, but we're always excited when he does. That's especially true whenever Ennis delves into the grim and gritty world of Marvel's MAX imprint. Get Fury brings together Nick Fury and Frank Castle, arguably the two characters on which Ennis has left his greatest mark. In this Vietnam War-era story, Fury is captured by the enemy, leaving the military to dispatch Frank to bring him back by any means necessary. We're getting strong Apocalypse Now vibes from this book, which can only be a good thing.

The Whisper Queen #1

Creative Team: Chip Zdarsky & Kris Anka

Publisher: Image

Release Date: May 1

It's hard to go wrong with a creative pairing like writer Chip Zdarsky and artist Kris Anka, and we're big fans of their work on The White Trees. At long last, the two are reuniting for a new story set in the Blacksand fantasy universe. In The Whisper Queen, a former assassin named Javro must hunt down the king's killers before her son is murdered by a ghostly threat known as the Dark Whisper.

The Boy Wonder #1

Creative Team: Juni Ba

Publisher: DC

Release Date: May 7

DC's newest Black Label series comes from Monkey Meat creator Juni Ba. The Boy Wonder aims to present a fresh spin on the origin of Batman's son, Damian Wayne, and his rise as Robin. In this limited series, Damian is forced to confront the realization that he isn't Batman's first Robin and embrace the idea that he's part of a legacy bigger than himself. It sounds like a great primer for the character, and a worthwhile read for anyone who simply craves more of Damian's crimefighting adventures.

Doom #1

Creative Team: Sanford Greene & Jonathan Hickman

Publisher: Marvel

Release Date: May 15

Jonathan Hickman's latest Marvel epic is quite the deviation from books House of X and G.O.D.S. In Doom #1, Hickman teams with Bitter Root's Sanford Greene for a very different take on the Fantastic Four's most iconic foe. This oversizedone-shot is set in the future, as Doom takes it upon himself to defend Earth from a ravenous Galactus. Can his mighty ego stand up to one of the most powerful forces in the Marvel Universe? We're about to find out.

Nightwing #114

Creative Team: Tom Taylor & Bruno Redondo

Publisher: DC

Release Date: May 21

DC just celebrated the 300th issue of Nightwing, and now they're speeding straight ahead into one of the most important chapters of Dick Grayson's costumed career. This issue kicks off "Fallen Grayson," a story arc that explores what happens when Dick loses his ability to leap. Can he still be Nightwing when his city needs him the most? This is the climax of Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo's excellent run, so it's definitely a bittersweet moment for fans of what has easily been one of the best superhero comics on the stands.

The Amazing Spider-Man #50

Creative Team: Zeb Wells, Marv Wolfman, Nikesh Shukla & Various Artists

Publisher: Marvel

Release Date: May 22

Thecurrent volume of The Amazing Spider-Man reaches the all-important issue #50 mark this month, and it's shaping up to be a big one. This oversized issue features several new stories, including new material from guest creators like Marv Wolfman and Terry Dodson.

But the real news is that ASM #50 features the return of the Green Goblin. For years now, Norman Osborn has tried to prove that he's reformed and can be a crucial ally to Peter Parker rather than his worst nightmare. That all seems to be at an end, as Osborn becomes consumed by his sins once again. But is this simply a return to the status quo for Osborn, or do Zeb Wells and Ed McGuinness have another big twist in store? Hopefully we'll find out in issue #50.

Blood Squad Seven #1

Creative Team: Joe Casey & Paul Fry

Publisher: Image

Release Date: May 22

Superhero deconstruction stories are nothing new in comics, but it's not often that we see them directed at the bombastic, gritty heroes of the '90s comic book explosion. That's what Joe Casey and Paul Fry aim to do with Blood Squad Seven. This new series focuses on a team of former superhero celebrities who flamed out after the '90s, leaving a new generation to try and take up the mantle in 2024. We're expecting a book that both pays loving tribute to the '90s and skewers the more over-the-top aspects of the era, and it should be loads of fun.

Grommets #1

Creative Team: Rick Remender, Brian Posehn & Brett Parson

Publisher: Image

Release Date: May 29

We're immediately on board for any new project from Rick Remender, but this one looks especially intriguing. Grommets pairs Remender with comedian Brian Posehn and Tank Girl artist Brett Parson for a limited series steeped in 1980's skateboard culture and punk rock. The series is both a throwback to that bygone era and a timeless story of two Gen-X outcasts who find a new home in this scene.

Fall of the House of X Finale

Creative Team: Various

Publisher: Marvel

Release Date: Various

We all knew the X-Men's Krakoan Age had to come to an end sooner or later, and that finale is now close at hand. May marks the end of both Fall of the House of X and Rise of the Powers of X, capping off a journey that began way back in 2019's House of X and Powers of X. Will the X-Men finally triumph over Orchis? What sort of future will there be for mutantkind when all is said and done?

May also marks the end of both the current volume of Wolverine and the Immortal X-Men epilogue X-Men Forever. We'll see Logan leap into his latest and bloodiest battle with Sabretooth in Wolverine #50, while X-Men Forever #4 promises to close out with even more startling revelations about Krakoa and its survivors. All of this paves the way for Marvel's X-Men: From the Ashes relaunch in July.

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