#someone who says they dont give a shit about the system

[homosexualmorelikehomiesexual]

i was homeschooled by a neo nazi. the sheer amount of damage it did to my psyche as a queer child in that environment is something im still grappling with to this day. and thats to say nothing about having my education, health, and emotional wellbeing neglected. i had to fucking laugh in 2020 when people were crying about not leaving the house for a single month, when i had been kept housebound since i was 6 years old. i cant describe the indignity of watching people finally recognize what id been saying for years, which is that remote learning was not only useless as an education method but fundamentally damaging to the students mental health, and then not ONCE think to check up on kids who'd already been homeschooled. not once.

because nobody gives a flying shit about the actual voices of homeschooled kids, least of all the parents that subject them to it. and thats not to say those parents dont care, or arent attached - quite the opposite. remember, we're talking about the kind of abuse that seeks to keep the victims closer, not further away. its just that the pressure to cover for that abuse is placed directly on these childrens shoulders. i know, because i lived it. we are expected to present ourselves to the public as prodigies, partly to sell people on the idea of homeschooling but mainly to ward off social services. and if we fail to do that, which we largely do, we are kept out of the public eye our entire childhoods.

and thats assuming it ends with the onset of adulthood. if we're lucky enough to have parents willing to let us go at all, that isolation and lack of worldly experience leaves us with no resources, no networks, no support systems, no basic survival skills. do you know the difference between debit and credit? what health insurance is, who pays for it, how to find a provider? who taught you to drive? do you know what the dmv is? what social security is, or where to find your birth certificate? do you know how to use a crosswalk? if you arent homeschooled, you do not realize how much knowledge you have that you take for granted. the level of dependance it creates on the abuser is terrifying. im 21, i didnt move out till 6 months ago. most people assume i took an extended gap year. the truth is i was psychotic from isolation trauma, rapidly developing stockholm syndrome, and had no resources to leave after i turned 18 even though i desparately wanted to. if i hadnt been lucky enough to have other family members to rescue me, i would probably not be alive today.

and despite how damning the evidence is that this is a terrible byproduct of multiple systems that long since shouldve been fixed, despite all the hubub about protecting children in this stupid, stupid fucking country, there is ZERO public interest in acknowledgeing our existence outside of using us as a talking point to snub rural america. a talking point, and nothing more. nobody actually cares to change those red states, they just want someone to blame. so when we do speak up, we get tuned out. because it turns out nobody actually wants to hear about the medical neglect, or the cults, or the grooming, or the domestic violence, let alone do anything about it. (besides vaguely gesturing to things like...calling CPS on our own parents, once again placing the pressure on the victims to rescue ourselves, when weve often been taught to fear those institutions since the onset of our abuse.)

if you think im exaggerating, go read through r/homeschoolrecovery. thats just the kids whove managed to get internet, most of whom profess terror at facing further abuse if their parents find out. look at your phone. look at your computer. every single device you own has the ability to set parental controls. i dont know the exact numbers of the silent majority of homeschooled children without access to the internet, but considering the main demographic who chooses homeschooling is white supremacist christian fundie cults, who really fucking love having numbers of white babies that exceed the double digits, id be confident in wagering its a lot. so you wanna know why over half the states in the country are red? fucking start there.

because theres a *reason* isolation is a cult tactic. its why im such an advocate for libraries, unpaywalled and un age restricted internet, and actually putting money into rural infrastructure - ESPECIALLY internet networks and public transit. because while the american public education system remains the stinking garbage fire it is, people are gonna keep choosing to take matters into their own hands. and under this presidency, it is going to get worse. there is no point bashing the parents for it, because it just convinces them further that the left has an agenda to systemically brainwash their kids or whatever. so please, for the love of god, make sure that even in the worst case scenarios where they have complete control over their children, those kids arent completely cut off from the world.

Anyway enough lame gifted kid discourse we are in our 20s. Let's talk about how homeschooling in america should be fucking illegal it's insane lol

[imperaptorfuriosa]

just like in 2016 i am finding it infuriating to listen to people blame the election on american "stupidity." in order to understand WHY people (all kinds of people) voted for him, you need to be able to show empathy for them. you have to see things from their pov and think about the information they were given. i just heard someone on the bbc world news service put it really well. to paraphrase: "trump speaks to the working class in a way no one else has for a long time. in order to dismantle his power, we have to understand why that is." im not saying to go hug your racist uncle or forgive elon. fight the fuck back against them. AND think critically about what appeals to the rural poor, the working class, the poc that voted for him about the current republican party.

blaming it on "stupidity" brushes aside alllllll the ways that the country has failed it's citizens.

[poisonousquinzel]

"a dude in Texas legally changed his name to "Literally Anyone Else" and he's attempting to run for President against Biden & Trump" [source]

okay, but putting aside the comedic aspect of this, it is concerning the amount of people who are prompted to vote for candidates just because it's funny. I'm not the biggest fan of how his policy about the boarder sounds [Site], but I do implore anyone who is able to vote in the 2024 US election to please research other candidates.

The media is only going to continue pushing the idea it's inevitably going to be Trump vs Biden 2.0 and we have no other options, that we have to vote for Biden again because of Project 2025. Is that whole thing terrifying?

Yeah, fucking absolutely.

But voting for Biden will not solidify our safety from that. Biden is exactly like the rest of them. He always has been. You can't make the lesser of two evils argument when they're both just plain evil.

You cannot say that Biden is even mildly a better choice than Trump when he is currently directly involved in a genocide. That is not some little fucking thing. That in and of itself disqualifies him as a lesser evil. Biden is just as bad as him and he will not save us because he doesn't fucking care.

Cornel West [Site] is an Independent candidate running for President in the 2024 Election. [Policies]

Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia [Site] are running for President and Vice-President as the candidates of the Party for Socialism and Liberation in the 2024 Election. [Policies]

There are options.

There are people trying to change the corrupt foundation our system is built on, but we have to help amplify them because the mainstream media will not.

[lupins-hehim-pussy]

I wanna know ur Fontaine msq criticisms 👁️👁️👂I’m all ears

I'm not sure if you wanted me to talk about this secretly or publicly but! Here I go!

The TLDR: Fontaine MSQ aestheticised prison, poverty, child abuse, the justice system/court and didn't properly address any of it.

More:

Focalors/Furina has way too much of a sympathetic angle for a dictator who's lets people drown with her inaction.

Neuvillette feels Bad for sentencing some people to death/prison, but that's it. He's one of the most powerful people in Fontaine. If he felt like there are systemic injustices, I.E sending an abused Child to prison, he should be the first person to DO something about it, not just cry and be sad so the audience can be like aw, that's complex character writing isn't it? No it's not! And guilt doesn't absolve you!!!!!!! (These are stuff we deal with in OTCOJ read my fic now /j)

Meropide has children in it, both Sentenced there (Wriothesley) and BORN THERE (Lanoire), and this is just a quirk of the place. Not only that, Meropide accepts prisoners of all genders and crimes. There are abusers and abuse victims in one place. Do you know how bad that is? How much potential for crimes to happen in a place like that— oh wait, Meropide isn't under Fontaine's jurisdiction. If you are assaulted as an inmate it literally means nothing to the court.

Wriothesley had no qualifications when he took over. Depending on how long he lived on the streets, how old he was when he killed his parents, how old he was when he was first taken in by the orphanage, etc, the man might never have more than 4–5 years of formal education. Sigewinne probably had to teach him how to write reports. And do Meropide's spreadsheets. Edit because I forgot to elaborate on this one: This isn't a point brought up anywhere, which is bad, because when poverty and incarceration robs you of a proper education (and the rights to vote in many places too, too, by the way), it reduces your prospects for jobs, reduces many people's ability to get a home etc etc. Wriothesley was just, narratively, Given his position.

Meropide is an industrialized prison, and they portray this as a good thing. Prisoners are paid in coupons for their labour, and this is also portrayed as a good thing.

The One-Meal-A-Day reform was something Paimon gushed about being so great of a perk, that people might want to go to jail for food (could be interesting and reflective of systemic poverty if MHY had brains, but they don't, so I was just Pissed because essentially all Paimon wanted to say was "Prison isn't so bad, but still don't go to prison guys! Prison labour is really hard!"). By the way, in most real-world prisons they are obligated to feed you three meals a day. Because that's how much food a human needs. MHY went with one meal just so they can say "if you want to eat more, you have to work." And then the welfare meal is a goddamn gacha. So imagine you're a starving child who's too weak to work in the fucking robot assembly line, and you wander up for your first meal in 24 hours, only to luck in with a shit one. I'd kill myself.

They wrote Wriothesley, who's a victim of the system, into a guy who's say shit like "I'm the Duke I can do whatever I want" for a cool moment where he choke-slams an inmate (I know he was a bad guy. But also, in copaganda when cops are violent/disregarding protocols, they are always only portrayed to do that against bad guys, so what does our critical thinking tells us about this one?) They wrote Wriothesley, who was an inmate of a prison so bad, so notorious that it is the literal boogeyman of Fontaine, that has a legal (???) fighting pit, with an administrator who abuses his position to be unreasonable, to willingly stay in the place and become an Administrator who would choke-slam an inmate while saying a cool line about how he has the power to do whatever he wants. They wrote him, the guy who had to be fed on the streets by melusines, to think one-meal-a-day was a good enough reform (while he spends god-knows how much on his boat). This wasn't a victim-turns-into-abuser narrative either, they want all this to be seen as positive character growth.

And then, the final kicker is, they gloss over his entire abuse. You can only read about these shit in his profile, which most people don't because they don't Have Him or doesn't care to unlock it/read it online, and they jammed his entire backstory into a flaccid info-dump at the end of his character story quest. This man isn't Allowed to feel abused and neglected and show any reaction to it within the narrative of Fontaine itself, because if they actually Gave Weight to what happened to him, they'd have to confront THE FUCKING JUSTICE SYSTEM they had NO PLANS on criticising. I don't think they ever explicitly said the fucking Crime-Theatre nonsense was Bad either.

I could go on, but this is already so long. But yeah, I hope this gave you an idea.

[alltimewhat]

being a schizophrenic th fan genuinely fucking sucks more than anything ever

[stxrmnight]

Brick and Mortar ohhhhhh

[horce-divorce]

It's wild watching someone who used to be self aware (or at least, who didn't want to be like their parents) become entitled to things like avoidance. And children. Often simultaneously

[svankmajerbaby]

i just realized. the menu reminded me of cohn and duprat movies and it makes me want to bite maim and kill

[rxmxa]

uranus through the houses + the future <3

I saw this video the other day of this girl (colette bernard) who became a millionaire selling claw clips designed to look like teeth (her audience was dentists) but then she expanded when they were a hit so she has like cute claw clips designs for a dozen of professions. BUT all i remember thinking that stuff like this is so pluto in aquarius coded and we’re going to keep seeing people become successful more and more through their specific interests and hobbies.

she was truly self made and her passion for art changed her ENTIRE life (even though people told her it was a dumb idea). Pluto is gonna be in Aquarius for a long ass time and we know the significance it has on social changes, the collective, the government, community etc etc. This is a time for innovation and transformation, and with Uranus’s energy on your side, you can truly step into a future where you lead the charge in creating something new and lasting ⚡️

the point is your weirdness, your out of the box ideas, the shit you think is straight up weird or maybe mee maw and pee paw call “useless” IS GONNA COME IN FUCKING HANDY!!! people are changing their entire lives everyday online and/or by finding their niche. so whatever “weird” idea or hobby you have, keep investing in it !! im not saying bc it will bring u money instantly (although thats always a plus) but bc it will bring you OPPORTUNITIES.

we all have our own claw clip tooth idea and we can look at uranus to show us the forward thinking/ innovative energy that can help us during pluto in Aquarius :) 💙🦋✨✨🪩✨✨💙💙

uranus in the 1st house: moving forward by embracing your quirks and letting the world see the real you. dont ever ever ever try to dull yourself down. the right people will find you. dont shy away from shaking things up with how you present yourself or how you lead others. the visionary is YOU and during pluto in aqua you can inspire others to embrace their authenticity the way you do. in a way YOU are the “unique idea” so take full ownership. Dont be afraid to experiment with your style and image, especially in the moments where you are feeling the urge to try something different! Step into leadership roles that call to you! Volunteer for projects that require someone open-minded or that align with innovative (like new companies, organizations or small owned businesses that are producing/ delivering new kinds of products or services).

uranus in the 2nd house: think of unique ways to invest your money (ik theres a lot of debate with crypto) but anything thats outside the box could be a worthy venture. think about you can use tech to help you streamline your finances or organize your budget! just be open to trying new financial systems. this placement gives me the energy of investing something that others might see as SUPER random or specific but then it takes off years later. this is not me telling u to put ur savings in electric scooter stocks or something but to just be OPEN to sustainable investments that catch your attention that can help u and even ur community!! this also reminds me of tech inventors or investing in tech or USING technology as a way to help you determine the kinds of values you want to have and/or what you actually wanna stand up for.

uranus in the 3rd house: moving forward by shaking up how you show up in your online communities, or your social media presence. have you ever been interested in starting a podcasts or blogging more? (like those conversations you have with your friends about your interests or hobbies can go far or even commentary on the way media looks like and is being used now. Invest in learning new methods of communication you have been interested in (like buying that new camera or learning how to code or finally starting that youtube channel). Use your platform to reach more people!! This also reminds me of someone who disrupts the status quo with innovation in education like maybe writing new curriculum thats more aligned to our modern generation or any other platforms/ media that are up and coming and useful to students??

uranus in the 4th house: focusing on moving forward with your ideal home environment in mind. visualize it and focus on the ways you can start putting in into action! dont be afraid to start over and re-design! think about the ways you want your environment to be emotionally and physically stable for you and what its gonna look like (eco-living? smart homes? communal living?) this placement reminds me of those people that buy mansions or plots of lands with a group of friends and put their money together to help grow and live together! Don't beat yourself up if your idea of home or family doesnt fit the cookie cutter image (which is honestly going away now slowly and will def shift with pluto in aqua). YOU get to decide what home and family is and you can inspire others to do the same. Your idea of family has to align with your desire for freedom and emotional growth.

uranus in the 5th house: going all out in the ways you experiment with your art and creativity. You could be great at creating "futuristic" type of art haha (or investing in art forms that arent super popular or well known rn but you're ahead of the game and they could be popular in the future). Be bold in all areas that have to do with the 5h (think outside the box with how you express yourself artistically and romantically). Pluto in aqua will support you in u turning your creative work and forms of self expression into something that inspires people and gauges strong emotions from them! that claw clip idea was def giving uranus in the 5h energy. She was HAPPY creating it, it was a hobby first (5h) and then people told her it was useless or strange and she kept going anyway and she got to profit it from it, especially through social media (the 5h-11h axis). trust me when I say there is something out there for everybody. EVERYBODY.

uranus in the 6th house: pluto in aqua will urge you to break free from outdated systems and explore new ways to stay productive and healthy!! The traditional 9-5 might not appeal to you and thats okay because it doesnt to a lot of people and they have created their own way. Think about the tech-driven approaches you want to explore in your daily life (apps, the media you use, how you use tech in regards to your health). Think about how tech can help your productivity and your health!! This reminds me of my coworker who bought like this ultraface ring (I think thats what its called) but she loves it and its super high tech and fancy and shit and it monitors a lot of her health and its motivated her in her routines! The way we motivate ourselves looks different! You can move forward by exploring the most flexible options for you.

uranus in the 7th house: you can move forward by redefining what partnership + relationships actually mean to you. now more than ever its time to focus on partnerships where there is a sense of independence and equality. ESPECIALLY bc pluto in aqua is going to redefine and TRANSFORM (pluto) what community and friendships and relationships (aqua) look like in the first place. so be ahead of the game by surrounding yourself and nuturing your relationships with people that are not scared to break away from the norm and actually want to work together and are built to support mutual growth and freedom. dont stress trying to confine yourself to keep someone who is not open minded enough for you! find your person/ people.

part 2 coming soon!! 🪩✨🦋

[wizardpeebis]

this reads like a children’s church skit. like 9 year olds horribly re-enacting biblical scenes. i’m so here for it

And they hated her because she told them the truth!

Anyway, yes, God under the Trinity Doctrine is a protogenic system.

You know those silly anti-endo posts about "reclaiming" terms and flags made by endogenic systems?

Well, guess what? We're reclaiming your God now!

The Holy Trinity is officially a pro-endo protogenic system. Take that anti-endos! /lh

[aguyinthepubliceye]

BREAKING MY SILENCE...

my partner and I have been watching different Ride The Cyclone productions. So far we've watched the off-broadway 2016 production (and just in case i'm mistaken, its the one played by Gus Halper, Alex Wyse, Tiffany Tatreau, etcetc. I will also be referring to this one as the OG even though is not cus im too lazy to type allat again), and some of t he more recent ones done in universities. I think it shocked us both to see the differences in the script. I mostly have qualms and complains around Mischa and Ocean's character. Mischa's has to do with how he's portrayed rather than the scripts, like Ocean's. In the newer ones, Ocean is portrayed as such a mean girl especially with the whole improvisation thing. They made her so superficial when in the original it really felt like she was trying her best to (as repetitive as it sounds) be her best and change the world positively even though it gave her a feeling of superiority for believing she is better than anyone else, that it came from HER being capable of changing the world. And by the end instead of reviving herself, she revives Jane and comes to terms that this is how she will affect the world, through giving someone else the chance to live again. That also means that Penny might not even remember her, and that's a whole lot development for Ocean cus she's not thinking about what her mark will be in the world and the changes SHE will make, but rather giving someone else the opportunity to live is purely selfless cus she gets absolutely NO reward, not even personal achivement or nourishment. It's just character development which kind of looses her effect when she's turned into a smart ass MEAN mean girl with airs of moral superiority that make no sense when she's bullying just because. Basically, yes she does think she can change the world but her superiority comes from moral and ethics, not just cus she's like 'im just better than anyone else cus im so slay yas girlypop'. They just pushed it too far with some of the stuff they changed/added (I will admit the improvisation bit was funny, if only it didnt ruin her character ((imo)) I feel like Mischa is being interpreted much more dumb than he actually is. They make him SUUUCH a himbo but almost fully negatively. It seems like they are putting characters in boxes. I enjoyed the OG because - much like he himself says - he gets hyped about things BUT in Halper's interpretation conserves that ''gangster'' more or less serious/chill persona and it's not just some loud ass class clown type of character. We didn't watch much of talia but even thinking of those interpretations singing Talia clashes so much because it feels so dumb'd down compared to the 'og' since he's kind of stupid and silly so it feels like Talia really is just a silly first love, he's being delusional and shit like that. Instead of the Mischa we first saw who already seemed far more realistic and less stereotypical, so it makes more believable for him to be so in love with Talia and that being the whole argument of his desire to live. GRANTED WHAT WE SAW ARE UNIVERSITY PRODUCTIONS so im not sure they were full on actors but still, it bothered me so much to see that twice, i had to get it out of my system bro. No hate to the actors tho these things happen, whateverrr anyway gus halper slayed that role, i have yet to see a Mischa that has so much ACTUAL passion and doesnt dumb down his rage thanks for listening im done yapping please dont yell at me thanks x2!!

[golvio]

i dont really know how to word it, but ganondorfs speech after his rehydration about reshaping the world, crushing opposition, as a king does. i just went "oh so like rauru but hes being more honest and less nice about it."

Yeah, like...the story's mostly uncritical nationalism, but there are certain lines that stand out that I interpret as Ganondorf's existence being a natural consequence of Rauru taking power. Not just as plain, mundane secular politics, but as the universe trying to rebalance itself after Rauru's attempt to build a perfect world by suppressing things like monsters and the blood moon that were a natural part of the world but he nevertheless saw as undesirable.

Take Jerrin's line about the Horned Statue, for instance:

"As there is the Goddess of light, then it follows that she would have an opposite—the horned god. Like light and dark, one cannot exist without the other—their power manifests through the other's existence."

The Horned God wasn't originally the opposite of Hylia. That role would be better suited by an entity like Demise. However, there's a certain implication that, in the absence of a competing counterforce, certain entities eventually emerged in response to Hylia's existence or were shaped by the consequences of her actions to occupy that niche. Jerrin's tone makes this process of opposition sound inevitable.

And then there's the Depths being a mirror image of the surface, a little like ALTTP's Dark World or ALBW's Lorule. The terrain of the Depths is an inverted version of the surface's terrain. The Lightroot names are even the names of the Shrines spelled backwards, and are in the exact same locations as their aboveground counterparts. As above, so below. And although the Depths were Ganondorf's prison, they eventually became his home and the metaphorical womb-of-the-earth where he could be nurtured back to health and reborn. As their ruler, he, too, is a mirror image of someone above: first Rauru, and later his descendants, culminating in the current Zelda.

As Rauru was the self-proclaimed King of Light, it would stand to reason that there would eventually be a King of Shadow who took charge over the things the King of Light refused to touch. Both the monsters and the blood moon, which IIRC existed well before Ganondorf took on the crown if Rauru and Mineru built the shrines to suppress them before the events of Zelda's memories, fall under the Demon King's dominion. And then there's that one theory that Ganondorf might be the Sage of Shadow, which made me literally say "oh shit" to myself because that was the one element that was missing from Rauru's stable of pals compared to the seven sages of Ocarina of Time. Of course Mr. Light-Must-Dominate-At-All-Times wouldn't want a Shadow guy around, even if they were an absolutely loyal secret-keeper and professional warcrimes-mess-cleaner-upper like Ocarina of Time's Impa.

But also...Rauru wasn't just "a king." The narrative presented him as the absolute monarch over the nation, literally sent by the gods to rule. He's elevated so far above "the common people" that even the leaders who aren't part of his Important Royal Bloodline are presented as faceless and subservient, always wearing masks in his and Zelda's presence and never giving their own names, as who they are isn't as important as their oath to serve the king. However, there cannot be absolute power without the capacity to abuse said power. No matter how "nice" the guy currently in charge is, systems of absolute divine-right monarchy are problematic by nature and inevitably create conflict. Ganondorf was the other side of the coin of absolute kingship, the uncomfortable truth lurking in the background, never outright said but always felt. It's kind of why a lot of our ancestors got together and agreed the whole "divine-right monarchy" thing wasn't a great idea.

[nerves-nebula]

I fucking adore your comic panelling, any advice on how to do it? Like specific ratios or ways to divide the page?

god there's so much advice i COULD give but i really dont wanna end up writing a book here. so I guess I'll say this: however you divide the page you should be CONSISTENT with it, i literally just learned/internalized this but it's made comic paneling soo much easier. when you break that consistency it will be more impactful. hold up lemme grab some pages.

so i recently started making loose stitches a 4 tier comic. it's not the exact same for each page cuz i'm lazy but i think it's made legibility way better. before i think it was kinda uhhhhh a little all over the place. not BAD but a little difficult to tell where your eyes supposed to go sometimes. which isnt great for a commic.

the page on the left in particular has always bothered me cuz i always read the top panels incorrectly and it's like. fuck man what is the paneling here why is it in two columns ????? that's so hard to understand. but the page on the right can be more or less easily understood (by someone who knows how to read comics) even without panel borders because it's just a simple 4 panel square.

one thing my comic professor really stressed was that he didn't like weird paneling or weird borders. for the most part, a square is fine. AND HE'S RIGHT. weird paneling is fun and cool but should be used sparingly or with intention, cuz if you do it too much then like. how tf are ppl gonna read your comic.

that being said there are a lot of cool ways to cut up panels even if they're just squares hold on lemme grab some examples

so the panels here are all square but the image in the one at the bottom is almost like a mural. one thing i really like to using is a lot of heavy BLACK, what can i say silhouette's have my entire heart.

in my fable comic, I used a 3 tier system. it wasn't the same exact size across all pages but all pages had 3 tiers of paneling. that way i can be a little more flexible with the SIZE of the panels to emphasize the more important things, without it feeling like it's all over the place

meanwhile in my comic final i used a 4 tier system where each tier was nearly the same across every page, but you can collapse tiers together for establishing shots and big reveals so that they're more impactful. it's still fully within the grid system I set up so it doesn't feel like it's messing with shit either.

ok i just spent a lot of time rambling about this one particular concept and it's probably not even what you wanted to hear about :') i didnt even go into ratios or anythinggg guhhhh sowwy

other than all that i'd just say you gotta keep looking at what comic artists have written and take note of how they use space and cut things up. there's this book called How To Read Nancy and it has all these exercises for understanding the building blocks of nancy. for real the author is OBSESSIVE and goes through everything of a 3 panel nancy strip from body language to spot blacks to the minutia of the background. we used this book in my class and did some of the exercises in the back and i think it's really good at getting you to THINK about what you're drawing. and you can easily pirate it if you're broke.

also try to make sure things dont get stagnant on a page. zoom out if you're only doing close ups (i try to make sure every page of loose stitches has at least one full body shot even tho I'm lazy and wanna just do talking heads- talking heads arent interesting!!)

also, take advantage of the fact you're drawing a COMIC. you can do shit in comics that you can't do in other mediums, try to implement them when u can! ALSO PRACTICE. you're not gonna get better just by reading and watching. you gotta do it lol. ok ok that's enough and you didn't even ask for that stuff you asked about PANELING sfdasfsd byeee

[drdemonprince]

Re: an anon from November 15th: do you have advice on how become more comfortable with negativity? Because the White Woman Socialization Brain is strong with this one and I've had a couple of friends say it gives me a tone-policing problem

I'm going to depart from my usual gradual tolerance-building exercise approach here (though all that stuff still applies) and give you a more targeted recommendation:

I think you need to find a friend who can be a bit of a shitty little outrageous bitch in how they speak and emote, but who is at their core a wonderful, reliable, and morally stand-up person, and make a special place for them in your life.

The type of person who is not afraid to be disagreeable, who says "terrible!" and launches into a whole long rant about why when you ask them how their day is going and who will show up to your house with groceries when you are sick and start cooking and cleaning all around even when you've (lyingly) said you do not need the help. The type of person who will teach your nervous system that negativity is not bad, that ruining the vibe is sometimes needed, and that we can be good people even while not worrying about making other people feel good.

You can often locate such people in hard-core activist spaces, as the people steadily Doing the Work for years on end are unlikely to be motivated by soft, tender feelings, because those emotions sure don't keep in that line of work. You can also find them in places like AA programs (or SMART Recovery meetings, etc), support groups, queer discussion groups, book clubs, marxist reading groups, church groups, food kitchens, and any other gathering of people that is motivated by a strong ideological commitment or interest in intellectual pursuits but which can be rather dry or unpleasant in its execution of their ideals. you can also just like, throw a stone in places like New York or Boston or Philly and hit three to five people like these. Even as far out as Pittsburgh or Cleveland there is a lot of them.

Now, if you have chronic white woman everybody must be happy all the time syndrome (which really just means i will *make* everybody pretend to be happy or else im going to lose my shit), it can be tempting to fall in with someone who *seems* like a person like this, but who in actuality is a manipulative undermining abuser taking advantage of your tendency to excuse and downplay their many slights and offenses.

You do not want that. You want someone who can accept criticism just as readily as they dish it out. The kind of person who will fire off at the mouth but then go "oh dammit, youre right, i hate it but youre right" the moment you point out a valid flaw in their logic. Someone brash, but with a heart. Someone who can teach you that conflict is inevitable, and needed, and that saying something weird or off-putting is not the end of the world, and that arguing and complaining can actually bring you closer to someone when it is done authentically and from a place of good faith.

to find this person, keep putting yourself in places that align with the type of person you'd like to be, filled with people who are doing things with their lives that you admire. notice your initial reactions to people. who is off putting? is that a fair judgement? who are you afraid of upsetting? who expresses themselves in a way you'd never, ever dare to? most kind of unpleasant people wont be the special Prickly Friend for You, they'll just be kind of annoying people you dont want to be around. but at some point you will notice, hey actually, this person is a little off and irascible, but i notice they always come through for people. they might not be the most elegant in how they express their views, but when i think about it, i think they tend to be right. over time a person like that will prove themselves through their behavior and track record, and as you get more acclimated to their way of communicating, you'll find your voice of disagreement too.

good luck!

[juniebugs]

assigning marvel heroes engineering majors (1)

i tried to write this so it makes sense even if you don't know much about engineering!! this post has my headcanons for peter parker, steve rogers, tony stark, and clint barton!!

as a preface, i am very aware that most of the marvel heroes would not in fact be in school for engineering even in an alternate universe. unfortunately, my fixation on both superheroes and engineering knows no bounds.

please feel free to ask me any questions about eng or for further explanation my reasons for these picks!! i am only in one type of eng but know many people in other disciplines so hopefully i'll be able to answer :)))

Peter Parker - Mechanical & Biomedical

I truly, truly believe the correct peter parker engineering take depends on what portrayal of spiderman you are looking at. like tobey's spiderman? would not touch biomed with a pole let alone mech. ... that peter parker is so far from engineer...... i dont even know where i would put him. materials? pls send your opinions if you have them.

BUT MCU, tom holland, spiderman would definitely definitely be in mechanical & biomedical. i actually got this from an irl friend, so if you see this somehow pls say hi LMAO

mechanical is one of the most common streams of eng and, while absolutely not something i ever want to touch, is really neat. it centers around keeping things in motion (contrary to civil engineering where if something is moving you're in trouble). it applies physics in really cool ways which i imagine would be a draw to peter just on the sole basis of personal interest. mech also plays with materials as it explores elasticity, deformation, fractures, yield strength, and other materials things i have blocked out LOL. when i think of that aspect i feel like it matches really well with the designed suit, the webs, and, if you listen to the science jargon he throws around in the movies, some of his prior knowledge.

biomedical engineering is actually used by some (the insane) as a gateway into med school. it covers human anatomy and genetic engineering (radioactive spider????). i do not believe peter would do med school too (because that student debt tho) but i also can't imagine him not trying to apply what he learns to helping others. i am personally partial to applying engineering principles to physiology and i can just imagine him implementing his mechanical knowledge into making prosthetics. if i had the brain power for this degree i would love to do that.

Steve Rogers - Civil Engineering

.... listen. steve rogers would fight a war before sitting in an hour lecture about dirt. i know this and acknowledge this wholeheartedly. HOWEVER,,,, I have a friend in civil with a special interest on sustainable design and you cannot, cannot tell me that isn't steven rogers coded.

civil engineering is not architecture, like at all, which i think is a common misconception if you don't know engineering well ( totally understandable!) unfortunately, i don't think civil caters to his artistic side that well but as someone who likes art but only does it as a hobby next to eng, i think thats okay.

civil engineering is kind of the mother to environmental engineering in the sense that they both look into wastewater treatments, geology, and even environmental planning (in some cases) but civil will also go into more detail with structural components and design of buildings. you'll find civil engineers involved in every building being made and in every town council ensuring clean drinking water and working sewage systems. typically they specialize into one or the other but shhhh ignore that for this post.

what i am trying to say here is that this would give steve a shit ton of wiggle room which i think he would use to help both the environment and people. paying engineers is expensiveeee especially for qualified, capable ones. i think steve would find deep satisfaction in working either for free or for the bare minimum cost (not that you should - know your worth :) ) and i think that he would actively use his work to call out designs that endanger communities or their environments.

this man knows his local engineering ethics code and WILL call someone out.

Tony Stark - Engineering Physics

when i started writing this section i thought it was going to be the easiest but unfortunately i did in fact have to phone a friend. tony stark is THE engineer so narrowing him down to one discipline felt impossible. my friend suggested engineering physics so i went with that.

the thing is eng phys is THE engineering degree. it is wonderful because you look at almost every thing mech, elec, and comp related (will explain more below) without specializing too greatly. it is also difficult because you don't specialize. for tony stark, who did not have to go into that internship grindset mentality, it would all be net positives.

to make the suit i immediately knew tony needed to have an extremely good knowledge on BOTH electrical (circuitry, coding, wires, magnetism, fun stuff) and mechanical (explained in peter's section!!). i was considering a double major but then was stumped because i love my elec and mech friends but they have no desire to produce a new element and also... creating an arc reactor??? plus AI's??? while likely related to software, it he would have bare minimum had to have had a good computer engineering (kind of how it sounds, engineering related to building and using computers and components of computers, lots of overlap w/ elec) background.

to wield the amount of science knowledge tony stark has an be able to apply it in an engineering context he would either have to be a genius (which like canonically he is so yknow) or take every course offered to engphys students (and some).

i think as a student he would have also enjoyed that not having to specify aspect. i imagine him always in the pursuit of knowledge. yay eng physics!!!

Clint Barton - Materials Engineering

If you've read the reasonings for some of the characters above you have likely thought to yourself "wow, such clear arguments, time must have been put into this" which like yes but also no because for this decision i am going exclusively on vibes.

materials focuses on, well, materials. it looks at both composition and properties (plus how composition effects properties). my friends in matls tell me its pretty research heavy which doesn't really fit with clint, i am aware. but every person i have met from this faculty i am convinced would get along with him.

I KNOW THIS ISN'T GREAT REASONING. i think that engineering would always be second to other things or interests in his life (even when he's a student) but I think the promise of a stable job and the hypothetical applications are really interesting. matls and mech can be surprisingly similar and i think he would find more satisfaction in manipulating materials to better fit his goals than in being stuck within predefined constraints.

plus, imagine creating a new material for like the tensile strength of your bow. incredibly cool

I'm thinking i'll work on doing more of these as i find the time!! i definitely have a few ideas for other characters, i just need to figure out how to articulate my reasonings haha.

if you have any ideas or shared interest in engineering and superheroes please let me know!! i have also been recently into the bat family, as you could probably tell by my reblogs, and am thinking of doing a version with them also!!

[yuri-for-businesswomen]

the thing is - pro prostitution activists (and people who agree with idea) usually never suggest their 'perfect system'. On average, they just scream 'it needs to be legalised and then everything will be great', sometimes you get few ideas on how to protect "sex workers". But you know what? Whenever I do see such discussions and their suggestions, I can easily come up with 3 different scenarios where their rules and laws won't work or just would/can be ignored and women would still be harmed. EVERY TIME. People did and do all kinds of shady stuff, even in highly regulated industries + cool phenomenon called 'corruption'. Do they really think men give a shit about law, especially those who don't see women as human beings (and its all of them)?

The pro 'sex work' discourse is just people using fancy words to state that they don't believe misogyny exists, women are exploited, but most importantly they believe that men's pleasure and need to masturbate (with woman body) are more important than women's feeling and right to be save.

i recently had a very frustrating and saddening exchange with a woman on here who is in prostitution and kept saying the same thing (it should be legal) over and over again and when i told her it is legal in germany and it has not made things better just shifted problems and increased demand she said well but its legal that is definitely better. and you know i myself dont advocate for prostituting oneself to be illegal at all, i think its crazy that 30 % of women incarcerated in the usa where its fully criminalised are prostitutes, but it seems like usual people are only able to grasp the two extremes: full legalisation or full criminalisation. when in reality, abolishing the sex industry is a lengthy and complex process, but you have to start somewhere.

they say, „you wont stop prostitution by criminalising/outlawing it“ but think they can somehow stop the harm of prostitution through legal means, lmao (which also ignores the inherent harm of bought consent compared to freely given consent and knowingly making someone endure sexual acts for money). there has to be a cultural and legal and economic shift and thats a lot. we have to alleviate poverty from women systematically affected by it (single mothers, immigrated women, mentally ill, disabled, addicted women, and so on); this means pulling out the roots of misogyny and we all know this is not in the works. the difference between them and us is, we think a different future is possible if the effort is put in, but they dont. which is so fucking bleak and tells you a lot about how women see their own position in society, and the chances of it getting better.

even if you dont criminalise buying sex, you could still make it more difficult to buy sex. „but then it will move back to the black market“ honey its already there, even here in germany where its legal. so much prostitution is happening invisible, in apartment buildings and deserted areas. we should work towards ways how to reach women in these situations without legalising their abuse. if there was a perfect solution that immediately solved all the issues, we would advocate for it, dont you think? but there is no perfect solution and just accepting men will always use their money to coerce sex is just not something im okay with and we, as a society claiming to want gender equality should be okay with.

why not reverse what we have in germany right now? instead of prostitutes needing to register, its sex buyers who have to register. they need to do regular health checkups. they need to carry their sex buyer id with them or they will get fined. the registry is public because wives, daughters, partners and even your employer should be able to make decisions based on the knowledge that that man is coercing women into sex with his money. most sex buyers are partnered you know. „the government will never do that“ well they sure as hell wont if nobody advocates for it and instead opts for the lazy, superficial „fix“ of legalisation? and also, they say an issue under criminalisation is that prostitutes and other „sex workers“ are hassled by cops. well do tell who will enforce those sacred regulations you want? if it was for them, everybody would just „mind their own business“ and the state does not interfere with the sex industry at all and they somehow think this will protect vulnerable groups?! it doesnt make any fucking sense.

it is really frustrating to me. at the end of the day you have to ask, what is your feminism, if you want to accept, regulate, institutionalise, normalise, legitimise and legalise this form of systemic sexual abuse (because using your money to coerce sexual acts IS abuse of power) at the hands of men instead of working towards a future where we are equal? there is no equality as long as the sex industry exists and profits off and reinforces social inequality, specifically misogyny and racism.