#so i practiced some perspective in this one!!

[drchucktingle]

THE CRITICS ARE RIGHT

lets talk on big issue for artists, REVIEWS. lot of discussion on how to feel about these things when youve put so much work into your art. usually buds will assure you 'dont worry, that negative review is wrong,' but i disagree. i think it is important to remember that NEGATIVE REVIEWS are correct

lots of folks will look at subjective nature of art and say ‘well this reviewer doesnt know what theyre talking about because NOBODY does’, and HEREIN LIES MY POINT. i think there is a subtle but very meaningful difference in acknowledging that, when it comes to art, everyone is actually RIGHT

so why frame it this way? when you write a book or a song or make a film, the second it is released it is no longer yours, IT EQUALLY BELONGS TO THE AUDIENCE. i do not get to decide what my books are worth just because i wrote them, this timeline does, and how this timeline feels is never static

i happen to like pretty much everything so i would be a terrible critic, but those who CAN do this are also CREATING SOMETHING with their opinion, and that is just as important as the initial piece. it is PART of the initial piece, even when it is negative. everyone gets ONE vote: their perspective.

so how does this work in a practical sense? let me say, my first MAJOR REVIEW came when i was a literal child in an international publication. it was (drumroll) VERY, VERY BAD. it hurt, so i am not immune to those feelings, but i have not ONCE been bothered since then because it TAUGHT me this truth

criticism is not some opposing team. art and critique are the same thing, because creation is inherently a review of reality, and critique is a valid form of creation. WE ARE ALL WORKING THROUGH THE SAME GIANT PERFORMANCE TOGETHER and it is so much more beautiful by everyone having a say

now i am sure some buckaroos will think ‘well this person was mean in whatever bad review’ and SURE, sometimes people ARE unkind, but i would argue a bad review is not, by the nature of being bad, UNKIND. you can be very unkind in a good review. they are unrelated

anyway artist buds, i hope this helps. next time you see a bad review, instead of thinking 'well theyre wrong' consider thinking 'they are ALSO right and that is a really really cool part of creation.' always worked for me and being able to create with you all is one of the biggest blessings i have

[lastoneout]

I mean I think about it all the time but I have OCD and an obsessive fear about dying AND I lived in Tucson AZ when Gabby Giffords and all those other people were killed in a mass shooting AND lived in Macomb IL when a guy took a bunch of people hostage in a Farm King very close to my house so I don't think the average American is consumed with quite as much terror surrounding guns as I am. I also live in a purple but historically red state and I look visibly queer so if I see someone open carrying I tend to give them as wide a berth as possible. There was a guy open carrying in a restaurant I was picking up food at the other day and he stormed out into the parking lot right as I was leaving and I swear to god I freaked out so bad I got dizzy. And on top of all that I am terrified of sending my kid to school when I have one and I'm really not sure how I'm gonna work through that when the time comes. Genuinely, I do not know what to do about that except idk leave the fucking country?? Which isn't really an option.

The only person who has had a gun in my vicinity that didn't make me instantly scared for my life was my godfather, and I knew he had the gun because he was an openly queer man living in a small town in a VERY red area so I really couldn't fault him for it. He was very responsible and never took it out to even show me, he understood good gun safety practices and that it was a dangerous weapon and legit just existed to protect himself from bigots who wanted to queer bash him so that put it in a different light.

Also ngl I do think most people here do think about it a lot even if they don't think they do, because I've heard people in other countries talk about the way their American friends will sit facing the exit and scope out the exits and jump at any loud bang that sounds even remotely like a gunshot and it takes a really long time for them to get used to the reality that they aren't really at danger of random gun violence there. For some of us it really is pretty baked in and it's really hard to unlearn.

That's just my perspective as an American with OCD though.

Americans - how do you function in daily life knowing there could be a gun on the same street / in the same bus / in the same Walmart as you? At any given moment? Like how do you not go insane with fear? I am genuinely asking.

[k1llerfr0sst]

It really did! Thanks for the response ❤️ I do still have some questions tho lol😅 Mainly regarding Gotham itself. Do u think the city can be fixed? Like at all. If the inhabitants of the city civilians, hero’s, and villains alike are all feeding into the chaos of Gotham how can it be fixed and should it be fixed? I’ve heard that in some comics Gotham is cursed or corrupted by manic and/or supernatural. If that is true how can the city be fixed and should it ever be? If it should be fixed then who should be one to do so? Should one of the Bat fam do so or should a someone else do it? And if the city isn’t cursed in any sense then I feel like that means that the people of the city are the cause not the effect. Also curious what u think of other Bat fam members. Is NightWing, Red Robin, Spoiler, etc better than Batman and RedHood in their morals or are they all the same? Are they all causing more damage than they fix and how much does Gotham really need them? I’m really passionate about the Bat fam and I love to word vomit on them especially Bruce.😅

Thank you for all the comments I love them so let me yap

Can Gotham be fixed?

- Right now, Gotham is a city where everyone is shaped by violence. The villains exploit it, the heroes try to contain it, and the civilians are caught surviving inside it. But none of those groups are innocent and none of them are beyond saving either. The problem is that everyone’s playing a role in a system that’s designed to never change (considering constant violence/action is a main thing for superhero stories)

- Batman fights crime without addressing its causes. Villains lash out as symptoms of a broken society. Even the average person in Gotham has been written as numb or resigned to the chaos. That’s not a city it’s a cycle, one needed to continue a story/comic. Gotham can be fixed, but only if it’s stops being a stage for vigilantes and rather like a real city with real people who deserve more than constant violence

- fixing Gotham wouldn’t be about stopping Joker or Scarecrow. It would be about systemic, long-term change and restorative justice. Not exciting comic book stuff—but the real kind of justice that prevents crime before it starts.

- So yes, in theory it could be fixed, but in practice considering Gotham is fictional and a background, it probably will never be fixed for the sake of Batman’s story

What if Gotham is cursed?

- Some stories (Gates of Gotham, Batman: The Cult, Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, and more recently Detective Comics) suggest that Gotham is literally or metaphorically cursed. Some runs even suggest Gotham itself is alive or has a malevolent will of its own, shaped by centuries of exploitation/colonialism/suffering.

- If that’s the case—if Gotham is cursed in a magic sense—then fixing it becomes about more than just infrastructure or policy. It would require a kind of spiritual healing (a more comic-book magical plot rather than real world issues I focused on in my other analyses.)

- It’s a powerful metaphor though, Gotham being cursed, especially when you consider how real cities carry legacies of genocide, torture, violence, and destruction.

- So should Gotham be fixed, even if it’s cursed? Yes. Maybe the idea of a curse is really about what happens when pain is never acknowledged and rather only passed on. If a city like Gotham is “haunted” then healing it means naming the ghosts, honoring the hurt, and choosing not to repeat it. Even then Gothams curse is just another magical metaphor for real systemic rot or history

Should it be fixed—and by who?

- Speaking from if I was in the dc world, yes, it should be fixed, bc Gotham is full of people who deserve more than survival. Speaking from a comic reader perspective, if Gotham was fixed, there would no longer be a need for Batman, and despite the comic being imperfect, Batman is a hero that teaches many valuable lessons and betters irl society, so I wouldn’t want it to end.

- But if it would be changed, who gets to lead that change? The solution can’t be one person it has to be collective. The Batfam could help if they actually shifted from punishment to rebuilding. Change would require a full shift and a full dedication from most of gotham, the poor, the rich, and everyone in between (which is unlikely).

- So maybe the question is, who could light a spark to make people stand up. And honestly, I don’t know. But it would be good for superheroes to try—not because they can fix everything, but because of what they represent. Batman has always been a symbol of fear to criminals, but what if someone in the Batfam became a symbol of hope to the people instead

- Superheroes are icons, cultural forces. They inspire, and we’ve seen glimpses of that. Like the “We Are Robin” movement, it was powerful not because it was led by a hero, but because it was picked up by regular kids. Duke Thomas the baddie didn’t tell them to idolize Batman—he gave them a symbol they could use to stand up for themselves. That’s what superheroes could be doing: not just saving people but empowering them.

- So while the real change has to come from the collective—from workers, activists, educators, and survivors—the Batfam has the reach and visibility to amplify that change. They can step back from being guardians of the status quo and instead become allies in transformation.

And if Gotham isn’t cursed, and just this way…?

- Then yeah the people in part are responsible. But only because they've been shaped by decades of systemic failure. If there’s no curse or no supernatural explanation, then we’re looking at a city that became cruel because it was built to be that way. It’s realistic and sad. But that means people can reshape it, because if the system made it this way a different system can unmake it.

Opinions on other Batfam..?

- The Batfam definitely share similar forms of justice with Batman and Red Hood—especially in the comic book sense (where justice often means chasing criminals and punching bad guys without addressing the deeper systemic problems) they’re mostly locked into the same cycle: reacting to violence rather than preventing it. So they all operate under the same flawed framework.

- But morally they do vary. Nightwing has a much more empathetic people-first approach and tends to prioritize protecting people over punishing anyone.

- Red Robin is more tactical and cerebral—very much influenced by Bruce. He can veer into surveillance-state thinking especially in his solo comics. He means well but sometimes leans a little too hard on the “ends justify the means” logic like jason (less murder tho)

- Spoiler has a strong moral compass. She questions authority, challenges Batman’s methods (Batman: War Games (2004), she consistently voices discomfort with the escalating gang violence that Batman’s war causes)

- Signal is my fav, he believes in community-driven justice and empowerment, He prioritizes visibility (working in the daytime) and focuses on uplifting people rather than just punishing criminals. His morality is rooted in rebuilding rather than retaliation. He is who I think of when I think of a person sparking hope for Gotham

- Robin (damian) starts off deeply indoctrinated by the League of Assassins’ ideology, but over time he slowly carves out his own moral code. his morality is defined by the tension between nurture and nature

- Black Bat has one of the purest forms of morality in the Batfam—nonverbal, deeply empathetic. She understands violence intimately and thus rejects it with quiet conviction. Her morality is rooted in redemption and restraint,

- So while they’re all still shaped by Gotham’s endless trauma loop (and still mostly fighting symptoms instead of causes) they each approach justice with different priorities and values. But unlike Bruce and Jason, who represent two extremes (detached idealism vs. rage-driven retribution), the others tend to exist in more nuanced middle ground.

- In the end they’re all good people trying their best. They just haven't escaped the limitations of the world they’re written in

[acti-veg]

So a friend online called me an apologist the other day, and I was hoping for your opinion.

Going vegan was quite easy for me, despite my autism and ARFID. I didn’t eat meat beforehand and while transferring from dairy to soy was…difficult, I did it. It hasn’t expanded my diet at all, but I’m healthy. I generally think it saved me to, I was in a really bad place and feeling like I was doing some good in the world helped me out of there. But I can’t help but think how I’m lucky. I can’t imagine what it would be like if all my safe foods were animal products and then wanting to go vegan, I’d probably have starved myself to death.

These issues can come with other mental health issues and even physical ones, so I’m aware that someone might have a lot more going on. I think as neurodivergent people we should be happy others like us might be curious and looking for help. They might be scared, they might be pushing through a lot to reach out, they might be confused. They might not have support. Shouldn’t we know these feelings? Shouldn’t we know what it’s like to live in this world as neurodivergent? We should be showing support, trying to make it easier, picking them up when they might try and fail, be examples that it is possible to be vegan with these issues. If they’re completely uninterested or unwilling, that’s different. But I think scoffing at anyone who says they have sensory issues and immediately calling it an excuse is hypocritical of us. Idk, I have a lot of trauma around food and how people have treated me, so seeing others like me say people struggling with these things are making excuses/not trying etc…makes me feel physically sick. And honestly, I think about this for all medical issues. Dragging someone down when they have legitimate concerns and are getting misinformation from ‘professionals’ (as we’re told to) isn’t productive. I think our time would be better spent advocating or making it easier for people with any health issues have a vegan diet, and helping those people do what they can.

I explained all this to my friend and they called me an apologist and we haven’t spoken since. I’m confused, because as frustrating as carnists are to me, to me this just seems like common sense and empathy for all animals (humans included) but if it is me being an apologist then I’m open to trying to change. I can genuinely see where she’s coming from, I just don’t understand how she can’t see where I’m coming from. I don’t want to fight with her, but how can I salvage this when we both feel like the other is a hypocrite? And I couldn’t keep talking about it because I think I feel this way about everyone.

My sister, for example, has two young kids, takes care of them by herself, on a single income and has extreme anxiety and depression. The kids favourite foods are fruit and veg, but they still eat animal products. It’s frustrating for me but I’d rather her focus on not killing herself. Would my friend see this as being an apologist, too? I don’t want to lose this friend, she’s the first other vegan I’ve clicked with and we know so much about each other and she’s been a rock to me in hard times. I love her so much and I don’t want to be the reason we stop talking.

I think that your friend is looking at this from the perspective of ideological purity. I was like this when I first went vegan, and this sort of righteous, uncompromising attitude feels good to hold. It is much simpler than having to acknowledge the nuances and the practicalities of actually dealing with people and their real lives, which are complicated and messy.

There is a great deal of difference between being idealistic and being ideological. You can have high moral standards, and hold yourself and others to those high standards. But people who are driven by pure ideology too often ignore the realities of trying to do good while also dealing with the complexities of life in a consumer society. You're absolutely not doing the wrong thing to not want to just completely dismiss the very real barriers that people face.

Even if you do think that compromising with people is somehow 'selling out' or being an 'apologist,' if we ignore our own egos for a moment we can remember the fact that this is supposed to be about the animals. What is more likely to make someone reduce their animal product consumption: A vegan who is empathetic and willing to work within their barriers and limitations to help them do the best they can, or a vegan who flat-out refuses to listen and dismisses your concerns by calling them excuses?

In terms of repairing the relationship with your friend, try to make the point to them that you are fundamentally on the same side, you agree on far more than you disagree on. Let them feel like they're more 'radical' if that is what they need to see themselves out, but them calling you a hypocrite is out of line. This is literally just a difference in methods between two vegans who ultimately have the same goal; it is small stuff. If they're not willing to look past these very niche ideological differences then I don't know how they're going to maintain any friendships at all, but for your part, all you can do is reach out and try to find some common ground.

[3ammicrosleeps]

I'd say because this blog has put down some pretty hardline stances, and it's one of the four things I expect from this blog, along with peepswine, ff mmo things, and dice. On one hand yeah. it's all true, this particular trans would very much like if jk rowlinged off into the sun and we never had to deal with this shit again, and i'm tired of terfs using the aspect of complicated or problematic media as an excuse to give a shitty person a pass. On the other hand it is real hard to currently erase the ghost of magical British boarding school from the genre, much in the way that eldritch horror *has* to deal with the garbage legacy of lovecraft or steampunk keeps trying, but can't fully escape the grime of Victoriana.

(oh look a bunch of pasty assholes with problematic pasts that tumblr keeps having a complicated relationship with i wonder if that means anythi-)

The better question, i feel, is to ask what the setting and characters gave people so that it makes it easier for people to start tearing down the edifice and build something better. Yes, we know about the rampant racism, sexism, body-shaming, practically-everything-ism, shit romances, shit-ASS-worldbuilding, copaganda and hypocritical fascist bootlicking. it's the media franchise that's launched a thousand essays. So what is it that people loved, besides nostalgia. For me it was because i felt this Worst Witch remake had a hell of a budget but lacked Tim Curry, and i wanted Evil House to turn out to have more depth than it ultimately ever had. I liked the clash of the old and new, and the possibility of ancient magics trying to survive in a modern age. I liked that there was an entire community of weirdos who somehow managed to make things work. I liked how the magic felt in the same pedigree as math magic, where theoretically if you calculus'd hard enough you could summon a dragon. That? is all salvageable, and you don't need some shitty terf who doesn't know proper latin to sign off on it.

The problem is that it'll still be compared to harry potter. and everyone writing this knows it. Doesn't mean it shouldn't be done anyway, but the very writing of it sends very specific flags that invite confrontation with an equally loud and hateful segment of the population, and i can see why people wanting to engage in brain-soothing comfort don't want that.

Like. ultimately I'm going to groan, but put up with it when my busted-up, half-bedbound mom watches harry potter movies on the service that she spends the same amount on each month, hp-watched shows or not. I'll also keep updating her on each new act of bullshit that rowling has done and how it's affecting people. This is her Problematic Thing that she wants to watch with her brain off. People will always have a Shitty Thing That They Consume With Their Brain Off. I'm pretty sure that if i went into a deep dive of all the ff media i'd find enough to turn me off the franchise forever (like someone I knew had issues with Quina because it reminded them too much of how Japanese people stereotyped Chinese people in media, and that's been a splinter that i should look into), but hey, sometimes you want to turn your brain off and play mahjong against a naked man with glasses. At some point I know I need to put the series in perspective, but I also know that flagellating myself isn't doing anything to help any potentially affected communities, actually doing shit to help, will.

But to anon, only you can absolve you of internalized blame. People will have opinions, regardless of what you do or not do. If you're okay with that, then you already have your answer. If you're not okay with that, why are you either a) so afraid of what other trans people feel (if you're trans), or b) feel that internalized guilt will help our community more than joining us in communal efforts?

Genuine question: I have the whole HP book series in a neat little box set that I received as a gift before everything about JK Rowling came to light. I've made a vow to never purchase/rent the movies again and to never buy any new memorabilia. Is it...okay if I still want to re-read the books? They were a big part of my childhood, but I feel guilty for wanting to partake in them again. I feel like I need someone to steer me straight on this, and I'm asking on Anon in case any of your other followers might feel the same way. Sorry if this ask too heavy or requires nuance, thanks for your time ♥

I mean this as gently and kindly as I possibly can, but it feels like you're looking for a moral authority to grant you absolution for engaging with a problematic intellectual property, and I don't have the power to do that. On the one hand, I don't think silently and solitarily rereading books you already own is doing material harm to trans people, but why do it if it's going to make you feel guilty about it the whole time? At the end of the day it's up to you to decide where this fits in your own moral framework.

[charrfie]

I think he deserves to wear a pretty dress

I think so too :^)

[l4tchk3y]

I thought it would be fun to draw Espio using a couple different weapons and it was. :3

[dietmimo]

KDJ gets bored when HSY works from home.

Birb Daddy AU

[communistkenobi]

now that I haven’t lived with my parents for almost two years I’m starting to come to terms with myself as a full human being. and like idk I can’t really complain about my parents too much in terms of their overall parenting of me, I feel like I’m lucky in a lot of respects just based on the horrific shit some of my friends/family have gone through, but I feel like one consequence of how much my parents fucking hated each other for my entire life is that I feel like I have no reference point for showing affection or being emotionally considerate/vulnerable, those things tend to make me deeply uncomfortable and disempower me to do nice things for the people I love. I feel like I have to really concentrate and spend time on emotional reciprocity and spontaneous gifts/gestures of love. genuinely just kind of sucks how much my parents despise one another and how their constant fighting and days-long silent treatments over the course of 25 years has made me feel inadequate to the task of showing the people I care about how much I love them

[mc-tummy-blur]

Do I have any canonical proof that they were friends? No.

Am I going to believe that they were friends? Yes.

He’s showing her plants and she’s telling him the Latin name for them

Click for better quality

Check my pinned post to see links on how you can help the people of Palestine

[autism-corner]

about that

[kelpe]

Fucking,,, pirates. That feeling when you can’t draw a boat in the background so you make the setting weird ass show time lighting,, idk man 😿😿

Additional them with the not perspective warped one

I uh, I couldn’t really figure out the shadows so the lighting is weird asf, but I really like the faces I drew on this one so it was worth the hell

Hands, and might I point out that, even if you really can’t see it from how they blend into the pants so much on the second one, have nails on them

Look at how detailed their face is, it’s actually crazy I did that, what power I posess at my finger tips am I right lads

Anyways this one was more for an outfit concept thing, as you can tell it’s not the same one on either version of them but the concepts are still the same. Then I got really carried away with the coloring and bullshited the lighting at the end. Their eyes are supposed to look like fish, and all the blue dots on them are scales with the fade into siren hands. As much as I’m a firm believer that I could draw chains completely by scratch and end up with killer ones I was not doing that shit with them, and thus used chain brushes because shits way easier. I really like how their hair turned out tho

They were supposed to have a tail in this but the perspective literally covered the whole thing up so I just bullshitted the blue spot between the arm, what can I say yo.

[wonder-worker]

Any judgement on [Richard III's] reign has to be seen as provisional. The critic of the reign only has to consider how the Tudors would now be regarded if Henry VII lost at Stoke, to realize the dangers of too many assumptions about the intractability of Richard’s problems. But it would be equally unrealistic to ignore Richard’s unpopularity altogether. The fact that he generated opposition among men with little material reason for dissent, and that the disaffection then continued to spread among his own associates, says something about what contemporaries regarded as the acceptable parameters of political behaviour. There is no doubt that Richard’s deposition of his nephews was profoundly shocking. To anyone who did not accept the pre-contract story, which was probably the majority of observers, the usurpation was an act of disloyalty. Gloucester, both as uncle and protector, was bound to uphold his nephew’s interests and his failure to do so was dishonourable. Of all medieval depositions, it was the only one which, with whatever justification, could most easily be seen as an act of naked self-aggrandizement.

It was also the first pre-emptive deposition in English history. This raised enormous problems. Deposition was always a last resort, even when it could be justified by the manifest failings of a corrupt or ineffective regime. How could one sanction its use as a first resort, to remove a king who had not only not done anything wrong but had not yet done anything at all?

— Rosemary Horrox, Richard III: A Study of Service

[purplesaline]

... did you NEED an article about why breeding for health in dogs is good while doing so for humans is eugenics? because that sounds kind of concerning? governing how humans reproduce is much more invasive and a much bigger abuse of power than doing so to animals. human rights are not comparable to animal welfare. maybe look into theory surrounding "animal rights vs animal welfare" for similar themes?

Not at all! I was just curious about the nuances of that topic that would be addressed in such an article.

As a severely disabled queer woman with an incredibly high genetic cancer risk I am not at all confused about the topic of eugenics and why it's a bad thing, don't worry!

I do like to explore nuance and grey areas and challenge my beliefs to see which hold up to scrutiny and which ones I may need to rethink or dismantle particularly because it's very easy to not realize when beliefs are formed based on the ideals of a culture rife with systemic oppression.

I know that the reason animal breeding practices for health is seen as good while it's eugenics in humans boils down to "We can't trust everyone to act in good faith" and personal choice and agency and consent etc. Don't worry! I'm not someone you'll ever see knowingly advocate for eugenics. I was simply wondering if an article about such a topic would address any points I hadn't previously considered on eugenics or animal welfare.

I appreciate you checking in and for suggesting some direction for learning more about the topic if I had been as unsure as you worried I may be. I know in online spaces a comment like yours is more likely to result in conflict and that it takes both energy and courage to reach out, even anonymously, so thank you.

[passumstars]

I will likely never get to do anything with her

[kaisollisto]