#tbqh i think they were both kind of into it

[deadpanwalking]

“Orson and Oja had, of course, met Cybill with Peter and knew all about my shattered marriage,” Platt recalled. “Orson roared in the telephone line, ‘Come and work for me.’ I was more than grateful.” Welles sent her shopping for ground beef, tapioca pudding, brandy and coffee before preparing a dinner of steak tartare. It was followed by brandy and watching the Arizona sunset before working on the script for the shoot. “I was recovering from heartache and Orson was infinitely helpful about that,” Platt recalled. “He said, ‘You’re not unhappy. You would only be unhappy if Peter had left you for a woman as intelligent as you are. Don’t you know that Peter would rather be unhappy with Cybill than happy with you?’ Then he would laugh uproariously. It was infectious and I would laugh too.” Welles, 56, was married to Paola Mori as he conducted his own an extramarital relationship with Kodar “willfully blind,” Platt says, that Kodar, 30, was having a passionate affair with a riding instructor during the filming of The Other Side of the Wind. After a day of shooting, Platt recalled how the crew would listen as Kodar read from a novel she was writing about a woman living in Arizona with her older lover, while having an affair with a Russian horse riding instructor. “Brilliant, [Welles] would assert – clapping when she read her scenes to us. I didn’t find them brilliant at all and wondered why he pandered to her,” Platt said. “What Orson didn’t know, but I did, was that Oja was, in fact, having an affair with the Russian man who was teaching her how to ride.” Kodar went riding with the instructor daily and “make mad love on the horse blankets… sometimes I would go out riding with Oja and I had to ride around alone in the desert until they were done,” Platt stated.Platt recalled how Kodar would tell her how she and her riding instructor had sex in a cave, and the next day or so the lovemaking in the cave would turn up in her novel.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

WIBTA for calling out my friend for writing RPF?

I'm in a friend group of about 5. We've known eachother for 5+ years but I'm closest with Sam because I've known them the longest. What Sam doesn't know is that when we first met I was browsing through their Twitter profile when I found a link to their AO3, it was full of RPF of two celebrities they were a fan of. At the time I thought it was kinda weird but said nothing because the fics were quite old at this point and we were both stupid teens, I didn't see it as a big deal. The AO3 stayed up (I am embarrassed to say I checked up on it occasionally out of morbid curiosity or what I don't know) but Sam never mentioned these fics around me and a few months later I saw that the account had either been deleted or renamed and all of the fics had been deleted too.

This was about seven years ago. Although Sam would still talk about these celebs they liked in our group chats (and still does) they never brought up shipping them seriously and only talked about RPF as a joke. I never brought it up all this time because I thought that they'd moved on from writing and the jokes were part of that.

However recently Sam started posting about a new thing involving IRL people. As we usually do in our friend group we were being supportive, asking them questions and letting them infodump ETC. But then one of our friends made an offhand joke about there being fic of this thing out there and Sam totally clammed up. It wasn't super noticeable but they suddenly started trying to change the subject away from it. We let it go but something didn't sit right with me, maybe because I knew about their history with this stuff, later that day I decide to check out the AO3 tag for this thing and lo and behold, there is an account that started posting roughly when Sam started talking about it. Not only that but I skimmed through some of the fics and they had very specific quirks of Sam's writing style and grammar, one of the fic titles even referenced a song by their favourite artist! This was 100% Sam's alt account.

Here's where I might be the asshole. TBQH I don't care about the RPF, I think it's weird and I would never write it myself but it's harmless. But recently Sam has been... kind of an asshole to our other friends about their own interests. We poke fun at each other all the time but recently Sam has been upsetting our friend Kai by 'jokingly' calling his current hyperfixation cringy a lot to the point Kai has privately told me he feels embarrassed infodumping about it any more. Kai is the youngest in the group and I feel really protective of him, this got me really angry. I told him I'd talk to Sam and I will but I feel like what I want to say to them is too petty and over the line.

So, WIBTA if I pointed out to Sam that they have no right calling other people's interests cringe considering what they write? They don't know I know about their AO3, it would definitely be embarrassing for them but that's the point if they think it's okay to embarrass their other friends like this.

[cybersteal]

ℂ𝕙𝕒𝕣𝕒𝕔𝕥𝕖𝕣 𝕀𝕟𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕧𝕚𝕖𝕨: 𝕍𝕚𝕔𝕖𝕣𝕠𝕪

Tagged by @dreamskug and subsequently ripped off inspired by his, @lokiina’s, @nightcityace’s & @arcandoria’s creative take on it.

V: Hey, sorry I’m- Interviewer: Late? V: Only by thirty minutes, can't be that big of a deal. Interviewer: Maybe it is-

V: Okay, well, I'm here now, on a Friday night, instead of drinking myself stupid like I wish I was. Go ahead and ask your questions.

ɴɪᴄᴋɴᴀᴍᴇ:

V: V. Interviewer: That’s it? V: Yup.

ɢᴇɴᴅᴇʀ:

V: Male.

ꜱᴛᴀʀ ꜱɪɢɴ:

ʜᴇɪɢʜᴛ:

V: Six feet. Interviewer: Actually? V: Does this look like a face that would lie to you?

ᴏʀɪᴇɴᴛᴀᴛɪᴏɴ:

V: You first. Interviewer: Excuse me? V: Hah! Relax, choom, just trying to lighten the mood! Jeez. I’m Pan. Equal opportunity for all. Mostly me.

ɴᴀᴛɪᴏɴᴀʟɪᴛʏ / ᴇᴛʜɴɪᴄɪᴛʏ:

V: I was born in SoCal, but my parents are both from Mexico. I have a…complicated relationship with my Latino heritage, since it wasn’t really somethin’ that my parents took the time to share with me in detail, or my siblings. Never had the chance to ask why, but after comin’ to Night City, I realized I kinda missed out on a lot growing up.

ᴅᴏɢ ᴏʀ ᴄᴀᴛ ᴘᴇʀꜱᴏɴ:

V: Well, I have a cat at home. One of those hairless ones. But I did always want a dog. Interviewer: Oh? What kind? V: Xoloitzcuintli.

ꜰᴀᴠᴇ ꜰʀᴜɪᴛ, ꜱᴇᴀꜱᴏɴ, ꜰʟᴏᴡᴇʀ, ꜱᴄᴇɴᴛ:

V: Whoa, whoa, slow down, Jesus. Uhh…first one was-? Interviewer: Fruit. V: Right. I like grapes. The purple ones. Interviewer: Why purple? V: Shit, I dunno. They taste better? Interviewer: Heh. Yeah, fair enough. Season? V: I love summer. Life slows down a little, people take more time to relax. I don’t mind the heat, neither, ‘cause I can just go for a swim whenever, or go for a drive with the windows down. Cools me just fine. Interviewer: Preem. V: I like those orange poppy’s that grow all over the Badlands. California poppy’s I think they’re called.

Interviewer: And for your favorite scent? V: Right – probably amber. I've used the same brand of amber-heavy cologne for years. Oh, and I really like that one specific brand of tobacco my mom smoked. Interviewer: What brand was that? V: Can’t recall. Somethin’ imported.

ᴄᴏꜰꜰᴇᴇ, ᴛᴇᴀ ᴏʀ ʜᴏᴛ ᴄʜᴏᴄᴏʟᴀᴛᴇ:

V: Coffee. Double shot. Sometimes triple, if I’m doin’ a long gig. Interviewer: Christ. V: Hey, merc work ain’t easy. It’s that or synthcoke. Interviewer: I’m scared to ask the next question…

ᴀᴠᴇʀᴀɢᴇ ʜᴏᴜʀꜱ ᴏꜰ ꜱʟᴇᴇᴘ:

V: Yikes…like 5? If I’m lucky. Interviewer: I’m not at all surprised. V: The fuck is that supposed to mean?

ɴᴜᴍʙᴇʀ ᴏꜰ ʙʟᴀɴᴋᴇᴛꜱ ʏᴏᴜ ꜱʟᴇᴇᴘ ᴡɪᴛʜ:

V: No, no. Hold on. I wanna know why you’re not surprised. Do I got bags under my eyes or somethin’? Interviewer: Actually, no. V: Nova. Interviewer: You got suitcases.

V: You’re fine, choom. I appreciate the banter. I don’t need to sleep with any blankets though. Interviewer: Really? Why not?

V: Sub-dermal armor. Got a bunch of other stuff you can’t see as well – keeps me runnin' hot, all the time.

ᴅʀᴇᴀᴍ ᴛʀɪᴘ:

V: Aw, shit. There’s so many places. If I had to pick, I guess…Havana. Interviewer: Cuba. You into history? V: Nah, choom. Beaches.

ꜰᴀᴠᴇ ꜰɪᴄᴛɪᴏɴᴀʟ ᴄʜᴀʀᴀᴄᴛᴇʀ:

V: Mad Max. Interviewer: You don’t think that’s a little…stereotypical? V: Does it look like I care? Me and my sister used to pretend we were members of the MFP and annoy the hell out of our brother. I called him nothin' but Toecutter for two years. He hated it.

ʀᴀɴᴅᴏᴍ ꜰᴀᴄᴛ:

V: If you lick a person’s elbow when they’re not looking, they won’t feel it. Interviewer: …huh. Misty: Oh, V… V: It was the first thing that popped into my head, okay, I panicked-

This was a lot of fun to make tbqh. He's such a gonk - that ADHD brain keeps him moving around and fidgeting 24/7 even without the help of caffeine or stims and boosters, and he can talk about himself for hours, the narcissistic dickhead.

Shoutout to my bestest choombatta @klept0kid you deserve to have your name attached to your masterpiece lmao.

tags: @chooh2 @pinkyjulien @meltingangels @ouroboros-hideout @ne0n-rust @netripper @wilxfyre @klept0kid @glitchinginthegarden @nightcxty @shimmer-like-agirl @noirapocalypto @katsigian @wanderingaldecaldo @cyberpunkaddict @elvenbeard @wraithsoutlaws

[henrysglock]

[Lumax voice] Turn Around, Look At What You See! In Their Face...

(If you couldn't already tell: I have finally lost all my marbles.)

I'm sure this has occurred to other people by now, but if El's memories leading up to the 4.07 monologue are ripped directly from Brenner's (<- slayful Nat post, required viewing), and she runs in to see One killing Two...then doesn't it stand to reason that that is what Brenner saw when he ran into the Rainbow Room in 1979?

Now before anyone hops in to correct me: There's definitely a version of things where Brenner finds El alone in the rainbow room after the massacre. That's not in question. We all know that happened at some point.

(Regardless of the manner of death...no broken bones or gouged eyes...okay!)

However, as I'm sure we're all aware...these guys are different guys.

(This detail has been beaten into the ground but always bears repeating)

So, what is in question is what close-up Brenner saw when he ran into the Rainbow Room.

Those duplicate memories appear to belong to close-up Brenner:

i.e. not the Brenner who runs in and sees El at the start of 4.08. (This isn't to say that that Brenner doesn't have those memories or similar ones, but he's not the Brenner whose memories are being featured. Begone, thot.)

So, arguably, if El has close-up Brenner's memories...then she should be running in and seeing what he saw, no?

So what did he see? Someone just slightly shorter than him, who walked close enough to warrant a tight shot.

That POV (as has been discussed ad nauseam by many) is far too tall to be any version of El:

But it is about the right height for someone a few inches shorter than Brenner...something like:

So, tl;dr: I want to play a clip for you.

I love choreography and camera work. That's art right there.

However, that video doesn't include the subtitling that accompanies the visuals that link El finding One to Brenner finding El:

Now, it's difficult to compare anything after this point (though not impossible, can't keep a south Wisconsin boy down. I will be using them for comparisons later)...because of course that's when weird, random blood starts appearing:

Hence, the clock is visibly frozen after that point:

This smacks, to me, of the same kind of shit that happened with 004 when the kids were bullying El—Scenes that never actually happened in the real past being spliced into a tape that cuts off and then picks back up like no time had passed/nothing had been spliced in. It makes more sense if you read the post I linked, since the video in that post makes my point clearly.

< TANGENTIALLY RELATED >

The anime nerd in me is tempted to liken this whole deal ^ to JJBA/DIO's time-stopping stand "The World" in...that's right...Stardust Crusaders, wherein DIO pause time for everyone but himself, which I'm certain others have done as well.

Tbqh...I'm still here:

Specifically a reference to The World/DIO vs Star Platium/Jotaro, both of which are time-stopping stands...(Much to think about irt Jotaro/Star Platinum developing time-stopping powers later on in terms of El, sure, but also in terms of "Everything was hard for [One]...He walked in here, and it was like something had changed. He told me he had figured it out.").

[Distant screaming as I'm forcefully prevented from going on a "Stardust Spider-Stardust Crusaders-Dio Brando-Joestar Family-Dio's Bone-Green Baby-Green, Green Grass of Home" tangent in this post...and don't get me started on DIO's regen healing/vampirism from the ancient stone mask...don't get me started on King Crimson and Golden Experience Requiem either...]

Not to mention the DIO reference with One linking this scene to (you guessed it) Edward Munson:

Edward Creel proven once again, but this time it's via goddamn JJBA and Brenner fuckery. (And yes, yes, I know about DIO the band. This ain't about her. Things can have multiple meanings. It was a Choice to associate Henward with DIO and Eddie with DIO. I rest my case.)

< ANYWAY, TANGENTS ASIDE >

As I said earlier, close-up Brenner is shot at a distance baby El could never have achieved. She passes out on the far side of the room, entirely too far away to have been anywhere near close enough for a close-up of Brenner's face, height aside.

However, ignoring the blood fuckery and disappearing gate cracks:

Some-One else has enough energy left to walk towards the doors. All the way over, in fact. So while those close-up shots are 100% out of range for post-gate baby El, they're very much in-range for 3:46 PM One.

Tl;dr: It's entirely possible, if not likely (based on the choreography and camera-work in these scenes) that close-up/angry Brenner was addressing One rather than baby El.

[dateamonster]

webcomics*! webcomics baby!!! i grew up reading these bad boys like they were the sunday funnies. im serious i would get up early in so i could check my daily roster of webcomic updates before leaving for school.

webcomics sort of feel to me like my generations version of zines. not that both those things arent still around, i just mean that, in the same way that there was this big boom of super creative zine self-publishing in the 70s through the 90s thanks to the increasing access to copy machines, and later home printing, the early 00s-10s was sort of the moment people seemed to collectively realize they could kind of just upload whatever they wanted to the internet and people would actually see it, leading naturally to another boom in indie art and storytelling.

a lot of the comics that popped up around this time were sort of... rough. raw. weird. there were no rules about what a webcomic had to be other than 1) a comic and 2) on the web, so there was some freedom to be as messy or as precise as the author wanted. this led to some real bangers, and some absolute flops. but regardless of how it turned out i think theres something to be admired about the sheer amount of creativity going into these projects that, for the most part, were purely passion-driven without any guarantee of greater recognition or success.

obviously webcomics are still around, but the culture surrounding them has shifted quite a bit. most people who are willing to put in the work of a longform serialized comic In This Economy are also doing so with the hope of being able to profit or at least sustain themselves financially on their work. theres no shame in that! but it has made the webcomic scene more competitive, more polished, less experimental. capitalism at work, you know.

people arent really as incentivized to try new things and dare i say get a little weird with it when innovation doesnt pay the pills. however that doesnt mean that there arent still artists out there who are challenging that.

i got the idea a while ago that i wanted to put together a list of webcomics that have been really influential to me and my own creative efforts, but i realized that list would be a mile long and wouldnt really give me the breathing room to talk about why those works resonate with me. so i decided instead to make a list specifically of my (currently) most beloved, most influential webcomics that i feel like are doing something unique that sort of pushes the boundaries of what is considered a "normal" comic.

presented in no particular order, with all attempts made to be spoiler-free, below:

nasty red dogs and feast for a king by kosmicdream (18+)

delicious, dark, meaty comics. ffak in particular is like this massive sprawling scifi stream of consciousness thick with blood and viscera and. a lot of highly transsexual erotic cannibalism tbqh.

personally i find nasty red dogs a lot more like easy to get into story-wise, but both are just chockablock full of this beautiful grotesque unapologetic and downright indulgent physicality. its pages dripping with every fluid you can think of and some you cant, and its also compelling surprisingly empathetic characters set against a backdrop of otherworldly rituals, cosmic pre-apocolypses, and worlds inside of worlds inside of worlds. body horror heaven lives here.

mr boop and crimehot by alec robbins (very 18+)

if youre at all into weird webcomics youre probably already well familiar with mr boop, and if you arent theres really nothing i can say other than Please give it a shot, but if you havent been keeping up with alecs work since then you might not be as familiar with his current project crimehot. and thats a damn shame because it is all the comedy, unabashed horniness, and surprisingly understated storytelling of mr boop taken to its absolute max.

crimehot is set in a future where nearly every aspect of human life and culture is controlled by an all-powerful all-seeing computer algorithm. but who cares about all that when theres a ragtag team of ultra sexy ultra horny master thieves going on wacky little misadventures together!

alecs style is blunt and simplistic in a way that comes off as juvenile at first glance, and then uses that presumption to completely blindside you with its actual content, reminding me weirdly enough of memeable classic tails gets trolled. in spite of their potential as works of ironic comedy however alecs comics really give me this impression of total earnestness. crimehot in particular is so blatantly un-erotic, with its complete lack of any subtlety, comically exaggerated (and surprisingly diagetic) anatomy, and impossible physical positions, that it circles back around into becoming, indeed, kind of hot. i think silliness can be hot so sue me!

blind alley by adam de souza

departing completely from my last couple recs, blind alley is a cozy, peanuts-inspired comic strip about the day to day lives of the children of blind alley. its also occasionally a deeply unsettling horror-mystery that has just barely begun to show its hand more than two years in. its distinguishing factor to me comes from the fact that the cozy exterior doesnt seem to be there to conceal or divert your attention away from the growing sense of unease that infiltrates its panels on an increasingly frequent basis as the story progresses. it feels more like the two elements live side by side, horror and mundanity, otherworldly creatures and secret conspiracies living peacefully alongside lazy summer afternoons and goofing off with your friends. it perfectly captures the anxiety of knowing that theres something the grown-ups arent telling you, the powerlessness of being a kid.

blind alley feels to me sort of like if those "what if Nostalgic Cartoon was secretly DARK" media theories were actually real, and actually scary. i might be getting ahead of myself as the series likes to take its time and is really only just starting to peel back the layers, but what ive read so far feels makes me feel like this could be something very special.

boy island by leo fox

beautiful beautiful beautiful first of all. the dreamy, surreal visuals? the colors?? oujhjh.. boy island is set in a world split violently in two, divided into boy island and girl island, and surrounded on all sides by a sea of monsters mutants and ghosts, those sorry souls who committed the trespass of trying to cross from one land to the other, or even live outside of either! a boy named lucille must strike out on his own to make it to boy island, but in doing so begins to discover things about the world and in fact himself that reveal an even greater mission.

im making this all sound very dramatic. its a trans story. its about trans people, being trans. its also about surviving the ripples of a world laid out for you by your parents, managing grief for the ones that didnt, and a funny little blue guy named jounce. also did i mention its gorgeous? hot fuckin diggity it is gooorgeous.

vivians ghost by hal schrieve (18+)

speaking of trans comics!! (plot twist: theyre all trans comics suckerrrr) look, all of hals comics are fucking baller and im sure the book zes got coming out will be too, but ive like Imprinted on this one. its attached itself my brain. much like the main protagonist collin has been attached to by his suicide victim best friend and ex highschool bf viv!

the sketchy art style threw me off at first but it quickly becomes part of the charm and meshes very well with the chaotic pace and gutpunch emotional moments. theres a strong element of magical realism that i honestly think comics as a medium were made for. viv is a ghost, and viv is grief, and guilt, and fantasy, and shame, and glorious trans revenge taken form, and hes not even the only apparition in this story, taking the stage alongside cameos by jesus christ, a detransitioners fursona, almanda palmer, and (checks notes) gonzo for a second there i think.

as a disclaimer (or incentive, depending) no one in this story i think is someone you could really call a good person. some of them are in fact plainly terrible. they are all so undeniably fucking fascinating though. and viv himself gleefully inhabits that moral gray area, deliberately and loudly disturbing any image of himself as a pure perfect victim, blurring lines and thrusting both the characters and audience out of their comfort zone. its a challenging read thats not going to be everyone for sure, but i definitely think its worth the read.

(and if this sounds interesting to you but youre not sure you can handle it, hal has other equally good comics that are still heavy on the trans gay relationship drama but much lighter on the childhood trauma.)

what happens next by maximumgraves

if youre reading this on tumblr i hope that youve at least heard of what happens next by now. thee seminal tumblrina art of our time i swear. it starts with a true crime podcast exploring the strange story of griffin and his accomplice milo, trans teen murderers, the latter of which has since been released from the psych hospital while the former continues to serve his sentence. but thats in the past, and in the present milo still has to figure out how to live the rest of his life.

the story moves rapidly, though not necessarily chronologically, in and out of the real world and the online lives its characters frequently inhabit like its guiding you through a twisted dream. its a comic on the internet about the internet from someone clearly well aware of its more poisonous aspects, as well as the addictive quality it can have for someone who has become otherwise isolated from the world.

at the end of the day though the major appeal i think is the characters, how messy and horrible and tragic they can be, which is all you can really hope for from a largely character-driven narrative. to say much more i think would ruin the experience, but ill say what happens next absolutely delivers on its ominous title, and im waiting on the edge of my seat for the next chapter.

preeny has to repeat 6th grade by momodriller

on a Much lighter note, preeny has to repeat 6th grade is a super cute adventure series about a magical little kitty named preeny who on her first day of sixth grade is called upon to go on a great mission. its a sparklefur comic!! ive been really starting to dive into furry art lately, and if youre the kind of person who raises an eyebrow at that statement, fine, whatever, but im talking to the cool people right now so keep it to yourself.

art from within the furry subculture is such insanely creative and passionate stuff, and the focus on this subset in particular, calling back to the early 2000s deviantart xD rAWR s0 rand0m era of online culture, feels so intensely nostalgic it makes my chest ache, despite never being heavily involved in the sparklefur scene myself.

the author states in the comics description that the story takes inspiration from her experiences as an autistic child, and even before reading that man i felt it. what really makes this comic unique to me though is that the majority of characters that appear are based on adoptables the author purchased off of, as she puts it, the children of deviantart. i LOVE that. not only is that probably amazing for the kids, it makes every character feel truly unique and adds perfectly to the overall flavor of the world shes created. there is just not another comic i can think of that feels alive like this one.

broccoli soup by secretpie

ok so i know how we might feel about webtoon comics but hear me out. broccoli soup is probably the first comic ive seen to really exploit the otherwise sort of bland and restrictive format of webtoons, utilizing the excess of white space to enhance the feeling of emptiness that characterizes the protagonist broccoli's time in the blank void they call home as well as to make the sparse use of color really pop in contrast.

broccoli soup is a mysterious series thats a little hard to pin down in terms of genre. a strange little being named broccoli spends their days in a vast blankness drinking tea with their loving yet highly suspicious Best Friend and benefactor, doris. doris has the ability to move between worlds, coming and going as she pleases, while broccoli is only allowed to leave when they are on a mission on her behalf. these missions vary, but the goal is always the same: make everything Polite and Good.

as the story progresses, little by little more friends and more color come into broccolis still new existence. the art style also changes from world to world, which imo is a very nice touch. and! theres music! its an interesting project that dances back and forth between fantastical whimsy and some surprisingly dark moments. and thats the shit i like to see.

thats all for now! though if im lucky there will be many more fun stories and projects to talk about in the future. keep in mind as well that this is like barely half of all the webcomics im currently reading, just the ones that most stick out to me as really doing something special.

until next time yall!!

oh wait sike honorable mentions time

awful hospital by bogleech

the only reason this isnt up there with the rest is bc im woefully behind at the moment. ill get back to it eventually! awful hospital is an interactive multimedia horror-comedy webcomic about a hospital that is. well this hospital is simply sub-par to say the least.

hedgehog's dilemma by mellodilla

this ones still a little new to say much on but so far it looks like a cute series. what most appeals to me is that the art style looks like something that fit in seamlessly with an early 90s newspaper comic strip. in particular it has a strong calvin and hobbes vibe to me. just, you know, about wacky lil lesbian animals living their lives.

ok now im done for real

*for clarity's sake, im using webcomic here to mean "a series of comics that was first published and predominantly exists online" so even if a print version exists, i still consider it to be first and foremost a webcomic. this also includes comics that contain a multimedia or interactive element. if its a combination of pictures and words to tell a story, its a comic.

also my list is probably going to end up massively favoring serialized fiction because thats just what i like to read, but i dont necessarily think thats a required element.

[aita-blorbos]

WIBTA for getting revenge against the person that ruined my life?

I (36M) am (still am, losing your job doesn't get rid of a persons PHD) a scientist that specializes in theoretical physics and studies of the multiverse. Until around a year and a half ago I had a job at a prestigious science facility, where I designed a device that would transport anything from other dimensions to ours (we had to set it off a little bit ahead of schedule, but overall, I'd say I did a good job with the timeframe I was given!).

This is where a person I'll call SM comes in.

One of the tests I ran on the device involved bringing a radioactive spider from another dimension to ours, but unfortunately, it escaped and bit him, which resulted in him gaining amazing powers, and becoming a superhero (he killed the spider right after it bit him, BTW.) (just thought I should bring that up.) (really stellar guy, takes important moments in his life REAL seriously.) (I don't think text is doing a good job conveying how sarcastic I am being right now, so to clarify: I AM BEING REALLY SARCASTIC.).

My first face-to-face meeting with SM was brief, but impactful. It happened when he and another important-but-not-so-relevant-to-the-story-guy broke in to my (ex) workplace a day before we were going to set off the device for real, all so that they could steal top secret information from us....And a bagel?! Which SM actually used as a projectile to HIT ME WITH (what kind of person DOES THAT? And with so much unnecessary force, too!)

Then, a day later, he blew up my invention WHILE I WAS STILL IN THE ROOM. I wasn't even one of the people fighting him, all I was trying to do was grab a canister of the dark energy my device was generating, but he didn't care at all that I was there!

Because of him blowing up that machine, I was turned in to...Something else. I don't have a face anymore, and my entire body is covered with these holes. Things fall through them all the time, and it leads to all sorts of embarrassing accidents that always cause people to laugh at me.

Not only that, but by doing this, he also made me lose my job, which was practically my entire life. I look so grotesque, my own family won't even LOOK AT ME, and I can't even get a new job to support myself because of the way my condition makes me look!

So that means by the time SM and I finally met again, I was so dangerously low on funds, I had to resort to a life of crime! I decided to jumpstart it by robbing an ATM machine because that's pretty harmless and easy, isn't it? I mean, it's a machine, nobody loses anything from me taking from one of those, besides for the bank, but who cares about them? They steal from people all the time! I'd hardly say it's a villainous act to take from them, except for the fact that robbery is illegal. Anyway, the shopkeeper assaulted me for trying to steal from the ATM machine.

Maybe I should have seen that one coming.

...Eh, whatever.

It only gets worse from here, because then, out of nowhere, SM shows up, makes fun of me, and then cuts me off while I tried explaining to him who I am and why I should matter to him, just so he could read a text. Which is just unbelievably rude, and tbqh, pretty unheroic!

He spent the rest of what was SUPPOSED to be our epic battle on his phone, texting some person. This fight was meant to be a huge deal for both of us, and he didn't take it seriously at all, he barely even bothered to look at me for a majority of it. At one point, he even webbed me up and left in the middle!

Our fight did eventually resume, and midbattle he told some police officer that I was just a "villain of the week", while I was RIGHT THERE!

Eventually, the fight brought as all the way back to the site of the accident, right where our connection first formed. This was finally a point where I had the chance to tell him everything, what I did for him, what he did to me! And even after all that, he still treated me like a JOKE!

I got really mad at that point, which came back to bite me pretty quickly. As in, I accidentally kicked myself in to one of my own holes (like I said before, I have a lot of holes, they go places, one hole took my foot to my own butt, and I fell in to another hole).

But on the bright side, this resulted in me finding out that I'm a transdimensional superbeing. Which gave me an epiphany! I finally know what I want to do now, and how I'm going to do it. There's a lot of science involved, multiversal travel, stuff like that. But the basic idea is that I'm getting payback. The way I see it, he took everything from me, so why shouldn't I get to take everything from him? It makes sense, right? Because of him, I have nothing, so why should he have anything? It's only fair!

So, as long as everything goes according to plan, by the time I'm done, he shouldn't have anything left, and then he'll finally learn to respect me.

....Wow, this came out way longer than I thought it would.

Here's a tl;dr!:

SM ruined my life, WIBTA if I ruined his in return?

[biracy]

abt your post abt bi women belonging in the wlw community just as much as lesbians : i was reading the replies and youre so right abt how ignorant people are abt what comphet really is. im a lesbian and like yea i think we would experience comphet in the most intense way since were not attracted to men in any level, but comphet isnt only abt that, its a symptom of the patriarchy forcing women to center men in their lives and hell even straight women experience comphet, let alone bi women. people just have thrown around the word comphet so much they dont even know the true meaning

I was actually gonna post abt this soon LMAO so yeah!! I think it's also a misunderstanding of what "heterosexuality" as a dominant social force is to say that lesbians who are not attracted to men can experience "comphet", but bisexual women who are attracted to men cannot experience it. "Heterosexuality" as it is defined by dominant social forces is not only "a relationship between a man and a woman" - it's almost always a relationship between a "masculine" man and a "feminine" woman, and quite often a relationship between a man and a woman that results in monogamous marriage and childbirth. When people write about comphet, they're not talking about how movies and TV and fairy tales and children's books and my parents and my teachers and my religion all came together and told me to want to fuck genderfucky bi guythings. There is a specific kind of man centered in the heterosexuality enforced onto women, and a specific kind of role that a woman is expected to take on in that heterosexuality. I think the idea that bi people (women especially) cannot experience "comphet" overlaps a lot with people who believe that all bisexual people have the capability to become "straight-passing" if they enter different-gender relationships, which is in and of itself based on, in my observances, the belief that "gay/lesbian culture" and "bisexual culture" are completely distinct and that bisexual people are in some way innately less capable of being gender-nonconforming (or as some Tumblr scholars will call it, "visibly queer"). Bisexual people often date each other, we're often trans and/or visibly gender-nonconforming, and that's not something that we can just turn off the minute we enter into a quote unquote "heterosexual relationship." I'm bisexual, I'm nonbinary and id as both a man and a woman (so I take part in all these "sapphic" conversations etc etc u know the drill), I'm weird and kinky and switchy, I'm polyamorous, right now I'm dating a cis butch bi girl and a trans + nonbinary pan guy. At this point in my life I have absolutely no interest in relationships with cishet men, I don't want to get monogamously married, I never want to have children. I have not performed heterosexuality any better than, idk, a "gold star lesbian" has, and I FEEL it, I'm given shit for it, every relative I have pressures me already about boyfriends and grandkids and whatever. I do think there are bisexual people sometimes who do conform more to Straight Society but a) I think there are an equal amount of gay guys and lesbians who conform to Straight Society tbqh and b) it doesn't cover the breadth of bisexual people who do exist and who do feel the pressure to conform to the mainstream, dominant social system of heterosexuality and who CANNOT conform to it any more than you, anon, probably can. So yeah TL;DR bi girls can definitely experience "comphet" lmao and people are probably gonna hate that I said that

[chaikachi]

since you're caught up on the Locked Tomb, I thought I'd send some asks your way because I'm kind of curious:

1) I've gathered Cam and Pal are your favorite characters, but do you any particular favourite moments/quotes of them? Or just why you love them as characters in general?

2) any plot twists you didn't see coming but liked?

3) any dark horse characters that grew on you over the series or that you'd want to see more of?

EEEE I SURE DID!! Okay, warning for anyone that is not caught up with it or plans to read it, that there are going to be spoilers below. You have been warned!!

Yes, they are my favourites.😔 Friends specifically told me to read the books because they are "very much my flavour" and they were right. Which is very rude of them, tbqh :/// As for the why, it's a lot of things, I think. From a character design perspective, I've always been a sucker for scholarly types like Pal, and you can never go wrong with short hair and double swords like Cam. I like that they have a decent amount of contrast and are quite different from each other in some ways while also being soooo alike in others. From a thematic perspective, all the bits and parallels around devotion, identity, and responsibility. How just by knowing someone, we add 'indelibly to their weight'. How this is explored both as a positive and negative thing. How just by knowing someone else - dare I say, to tame or be tamed by another 👀- can change us irreversibly. How burdening those we care about is something we have to come to terms with, and that being burdened can in and of itself be an act of care. How these themes are exacerbated and mixed with plurality and merging. The ever important question of 'where do you end and i begin'? For moments and quotes, a lot of my favourite things about them are just how they interact with one another (or with other characters). The sort of relationship where words often aren't necessary. How so much of their connection is conveyed in actions. "Tell Cam... never mind, she knows what to do." and the "what to do" is her collecting the fragments of his skull off the floor?? that she glues back together with her own hands?? then travelled millions or billions of light years to meet with the one person that can pull his soul back into it??? Her carrying him, despite the risk and harm it poses to herself, because he doesn't have a vessel anymore??? Pal asking Nona to "give this to Cam" and it's a kiss to the back of her hand???? Sick!! Twisted!! I demand financial compensation for damages!!!! Cam had every right to go sit in the bathtub about that!!! What the hell man!!! But I would be remiss not to mention the conversations they have across the voice recorder when they can't speak face to face, the co-fronting/synergy thing that happens when the protect Nona at the beach, and of course: "Life is too short and love is too long."

I'll admit I was spoiled a bit to some things going in so that skews this answer a bit. There were certainly some things I predicted incorrectly but then was like "OF COURSE THAT'S HOW IT HAPPENED, HOW COULD I HAVE ASSUMED DIFFERENTLY". I was not expecting that many people to die in the first book tbh. What happened to the Fourth and Fifth houses hit particularly hard. Was not expecting Gideon to find a decapitated head in Harrow's closet. I think the most surprises I had were in the second book though. Kept asking myself what the heck was going on. The narrator reveal was such an unexpected and pleasant surprise. Like, I kind of figured that was the case but I wasn't expecting that to be how we found out. Camilla showing up somehow out of nowhere?? The full extent of Harrow and Gideon's origins had me at a loss for words. Also the epilogue leading into Nona had me soooooo confused.

Yes. I absolutely adored Augustine. Big fan of his whole vibe; i miss him. Also really liked Magnus, Abigail, and Ortus in the second book. Especially them stepping up and being the Responsible Adults™ Harrow never really had, but always deserved. Also Polyamory Win with both whatever Pyrrha and Dulcie had respectively going on with Cam and Pal aha. Very big fan of Dulcinea in general. From her appearance in htn to popping up in The Unwanted Guest. I don't know how we could see more of her, but I would not be complaining if we did. Muir is really good at characterization tho, i don't know that there have really been any characters I've actively disliked. 🤔

Thank you for asking! I'd love to know some of your fave characters/plot twists too if you feel like sharing!! no pressure tho uwu

[aroaessidhe]

Mid-Year Book Freakout 2023

1. Best book you’ve read so far this year

The Art of Prophecy - this was so fun and made just for me I enjoyed it a lot The Misadventures of an Amateur Naturalist - really good and also quite unique for the space it’s sitting in I think! The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi - this is very good and fun I loved it

2. Best sequel you’ve read so far this year

The World We Make - love this duology!! NK Jemisin does it again etc etc A Day of Fallen Night - prequel technically, but I enjoyed it a lot and more than priory I think! Sailing By Carina’s Star - i am enjoying this trilogy a lot we love queer pirates The Shadow Cabinet - somehow even more wild than the first book

3. New release you haven’t read yet

I don’t keep lists of books I need to read, so of course when I try to think of something my mind goes blank, here’s a couple from my library holds/kindle To Shape A Dragon’s Breath Wander The Night also does Flight & Anchor count if I’ve read the original patreon version but not the published version yet

4. Most anticipated release for the second half of the year

(same situation lmao) I’m looking forward to He Who Drowned The World! that’s the first thing that comes to mind

5. Biggest disappointment

tbqh I’ve read a lot of disappointments but they’re mostly self published ones that I read soley because of aspec characters that didn’t hold up in the writing department and are not very well known anyway. (I’ve read tons of selfpubs that are amazing too of course!!) so I’ll just mention some traditionally published ones: Rosewater - I did go into this with the wrong expectations for one, but also the MC was so (intentionally) misogynistic it was hard to enjoy :/ The Wicked Remain - there were a few iffy things in the first book but also things I liked and the second book just...didn’t really add to the things I liked. idk Song of Silver, Flame Like Night - I knew this wasn’t gonna be entirely for me in the first place but man what was up with the only other female character (that’s not dead) having an absolute caricature of a mean girl rivalry with the MC in like. a calling each other slurs kind of way not a fun way

6. Biggest surprise

Beating Heart Baby - I enjoy reading YA contemporary but there’s usually a limit to how much I enjoy it compared to sff, but this went beyond what I expected and I really loved it The Meister of Decimen City - I didn’t have any expectations for this, someone just mentioned it on a discord and I got it from the library, but I loved it a lot!

7. Favorite new author (debut or new to you)

See generally I only call people favourite authors if I’ve read and loved like, at least 3 separate books from them, and I don’t really have any of those for this year.....you need to work to get my loyalty Here’s a few authors that I’ve read a second book/series from them this year and am like, ah yes, I will read the next one: Ceinwen Langley Rebecca Schaeffer Liselle Sambury

8. Newest fictional crush/newest favorite character

tbh I’m not one to separate an individual character from their book or like, the other characters surrounding them very often, so I just can’t think of anything specific... all the women in The Art of Prophecy are great

9. Book that made you cry

I’ve actually started recording this in my stats this year HAHA, with “fully crying” “teared up” and “cried from cute/happiness” and,, I did not expect that there are only 3 books that have made me fully cry????? Which are: In Other Lands and Lirael (nostalgia def has a part to play in both of those) and Beating Heart Baby. I can’t remember why I cried for that one but clearly it was a lot lmao

10. Book that made you happy

I mean it’s a reread but In Other Lands of course

World Running Down - only just read this and I really enjoyed it! a good mix of an interesting sci-fi future that isn’t super dark but also doesn’t shy away from various issues, and an interesting romance! (me enjoying a romance, shocker)

witch hat atelier! - how could it Not make you happy tbh

thanks @violaeade for tagging me!

I will tag @thereadingchallengechallenge @nycorix @speculatives @dkafterdark and anyone else who wants I guess

[shrimpmandan]

Ngl with the amount of antis who interact with my works or end up following me on social media I’m REALLY losing my empathy for when they freak out about proshippers following/interacting with them. Like. Why the fuck am I putting in all this effort to unfollow and block antis, checking for DNIs and signs of discomfort so I can respect their boundaries, when 90% of the time they don’t do the same? I can understand not checking everyone who follows YOU, but following others? Not even a brief check? Does there need to be a giant neon glowing sign for them to take the hint?

I still tend to unfollow/unmutual antis, if not hardblock them depending on how bad they are, but it’s really fucking funny how quickly they’ll victimize themselves for being in the proximity of a proshipper that they themselves followed and who doesn’t really keep it a secret. In a weird way I’ve started taking pride in the antis who leave kudos on my AO3 and shit. I don’t owe ‘em shit, I don’t consider practically anyone on social media to be a friend outside of Discord, I lose nothing for them fucking off or sticking around at the end of the day. If they end up throwing a hissyfit over what other content I write in my own time that’s their problem lmao.

Though I really should write more problematic Cuphead fics. Might get some of them to take the hint. For as much as I love TCS, I’m really beginning to miss the Cuphead game era of fandom where seeing problematic content was pretty common place, even if 2016-2018 was the peak of stupid cringe culture content online. I think that was my first exposure to Cupmug/Cupcest actually lmfao. Adult YouTubers pointing and laughing at it and calling it ‘cringe’, blasting it in front of their knowingly underage fanbase because cringe content was majority consumed by dumb preteens. Funny how that works out eh?

Side note: Calamug, Devilcup, and Devilmug were all also decently popular ships back in 2017. Devildice was still easily the biggest, but do not fucking think there weren’t HEAPS of toxic fics about ‘em. Everyone knew they were at least a little fucked up and unhealthy. Boss and employee is a power dynamic. Hot power dynamic, yes, but one regardless. The hypocrisy in this fandom is hilaaarious.

Anyways. I’ll get around to Ch 2 of Don’t Stop Singing eventually. It’s still in the works. I’m just frankly exhausted with the current state of the Cuphead fandom, though I guess at the absolute least most of the cesspit is contained to Twitter. Not to say there aren’t antis on here, but there’s way less. I can deal with muting people on AO3 if it means I can enjoy myself in peace. Granted, after I post ch 2 of that fic, I’ll probably move on to another fandom for some time. Again: not that I don’t enjoy Cuphead still, just kind of tired. I’m still eager to hear more news, but if we don’t get a new season, then. Oh well I guess. At least I can take solace in the fact that none of the folks that worked on the show particularly care about this stupid internet shit-- Dave Wasson and Grey DeLisle interacting with/outright shipping Chadice respectively, DD also interacting with both proshippers and antis amicably. It’s just suffocating as an actual writer and fancreator being mostly unable to engage with the fandom (or most fandoms tbqh) without putting up a bunch of emotional barriers.

I didn’t even get hit with harassment as heavily as some other proshippers in the fandom. Won’t name anyone in particular of course, but I’ve watched people get bullied off the platform while antis gloated after the fact. I was harassed by a popular fanartist who STILL interacts with my works and the most amicable assumption is just that he doesn’t know it’s me. I got the LEAST bad harassment, but that required me putting up all these emotional barriers and blocking like half of the fandom.

All so I can not worry about possibly being harassed. Possibly. And it’s so fucking tiring to have to do all the time, but I refuse to abandon my values just because it’d be ‘easier’. No amount of not labeling myself as proship would change the fact that I like and have both written and consumed problematic content for well over a decade. And I would not give it up for the fucking world, because I think as someone who went through utter HELL in real life, that if nothing else I should GET to express what that did to my brain instead of censoring it for a bunch of internet nobodies who don’t truly care for someone like me to begin with. It’s a lot easier to burn out on fandom when you both can’t make friends, and also don’t want to, because the first time you tried you got harassed.

I’m eternally grateful for the other proshippers and neutrals in the fandom. Keep on chuggin’.

[butch-reidentified]

Thank you for being kind towards women who shave obvious facial hair. I'm very fair-skinned but brunette with facial hair, so it's very dark and there's a lot of it (my doctor thinks I might have a hormonal imbalance or maybe a brain tumor that causes the hair to grow). So I shave it off because otherwise people stare and it makes me self-conscious but I feel like I'm betraying my sisters when I shave so it's just bad feelings all around.

i don't think you're betraying anyone. actually i don't like that take in general & i usually make a point to speak up when i see that. fighting for liberation for all woman means fighting for the women you consider "traitors" too, you can't have it both ways. i don't think there's anything productive that can come from using that language tbqh.

but when it comes to facial hair on women, i think it's fair to say that we are allowed to take baby steps. fighting to increase acceptance of female leg hair and armpit hair is already a massive challenge. i think it's okay to focus on that right now and compromise on facial hair because at the end of the day, we ARE working to break stereotypes and free women, but we are also human beings trying to survive ~in a society~ yk? i think we need to keep that in mind and meet women where they're at to an extent

i have a lot of success with this. i've brought a LOT of women to radfeminism or radfem-aligned views IRL, and just about all of them were very "normie" when we met. none of them were antifeminist or anything, but certainly a majority of them still strongly believed in or at least complied with gender. some still do even though they know it's harmful, and i love them just the same bc i know they're trying at their own pace and nothing other than understanding and gentle yet tough love pushing them to challenge themselves for their and all women's good, is going to actually have an impact. i know this from experience, i know this from how much success my wife and i have as the type of feminists who literally will not shut up about it irl & make a point to at least expose all the women in our lives to a new way of seeing things - to data (á la "invisible women"), to material analysis, class perspective, etc.

we cannot compromise on things like letting men into women's spaces, yet when i use the word compromise, many women assume this is what i'm implying. no, i'm talking about compromising on individual women's actions. if she is doing 15 awesome things for other women but she hasn't yet found the courage to completely stop shaving her legs, are we rly gonna focus ONLY on the legs?

[psychoticallytrans]

This is gonna be a weird question, and im sorry in advance if i dont word it the best. is it possible to only have temporary psychosis, or, i guess, episodic psychosis? im bipolar (type 2, i *think*, my psychiatrist isnt one for divvying the two up tbqh and im not either) and back when i wasnt medicated, during 2021ish, i had what was most likely a psychotic depression episode (and have probably had more before, but my memory is really bad). i didnt get that diagnosed; i told my school counsellor about how i was feeling and she just kinda went "thats... a little out of my paygrade" sdfghjk. now that im medicated i dont have those kinds of episodes anymore, but, well--my symptoms have gotten worse lately, likely due to stress (i am a trans man, easily clockable as trans, living in florida, plus i've had life stuff going on) and i suppose im just wondering if you have any advice for trying to catch an episode before i'm near the end of it. sorry if this is technically easily-google-able, but i'll be honest, i dont trust random articles more than i trust people with the conditions they're talking about, given how stigmatized a lot of mental illnesses are. thank you for your time !! have a good day !!

No, it's not weird at all! It's certainly not easy to google, if you want accurate information. I'm glad you felt comfortable coming here to ask. Psychosis is a symptom. Specifically, it's a response to stress. Some disorders, like bipolar, make you more prone to it than average, lowering the amount of stress that needs to be applied for you to experience psychosis. For some people, the bar is zero stress applied for them to experience psychosis. For most people, the bar is pretty high, requiring major stress sustained over days for them to experience it- and when the stress is removed, they are no longer psychotic. In other words, the vast majority of people's psychosis is temporary!

It sounds like that for you, the amount of stress required is lower than most, and you're looking out for how to manage an episode. That's a great question to be asking, and I'm glad you're taking care of and looking out for yourself.

The first thing is to think back to your first episode, and think about what symptoms you experienced. Were there hallucinations? Delusions? What were they about, and how did they feel? Identifying what you experienced can help you figure out if you have an episode coming up. For me, the first thing is always hearing things that aren't there, like footsteps. Figuring out what your first thing is can help a lot. Next, think about what might help you figure out what is and isn't real. For visual hallucinations, a lot of people use their phones to check by looking through the camera app. For auditory ones, earplugs and recording then playing back sound are both common ones. For hallucinated smells, most people use nose plugs, but I use essential oils because they work better for me. I cannot smell anything past them, so anything that doesn't smell like the oil ain't real. For taste, I hear a lot of people use an ice cube on the tongue, but I don't have those. Anyone who does, please chime in! For tactile ones, usually touching the spot yourself will help.

Delusions are more complicated, especially when you're in the middle of them. The strategy that works best for me is basically examining my thoughts. First, I figure out if it's rational or not by applying logic. Why am I thinking this? Does it have a good reason behind it? Next, is this thought going to harm me or other people? If not, I leave it alone. You can choose to examine your benign delusions if you like, I just choose not to.

If it is (a common one that falls into this category for me is paranoia about leaving my home when I need groceries), I essentially start laying out an argument against myself, using my past experiences and research to resist the irrational thought (ex. going to the store is safe, even if it wasn't I can kick most people's asses, and if I can't do that I can scream loud enough to alert anyone within about a quarter mile, and even if something crap happens to me, I'm trained in First Aid and regularly update my training.). This can be difficult, and sometimes fails for me.

I also noted that you specifically had psychotic depression. this ca make things harder, because it's hard to do things when you're depressed. I recommend prepping for the possibility of an episode. Find ways to make your life easier. A list of self-accommodations you may find helpful:

Get some meals you can microwave. Make sure your meds are right next to something you can take them with. Try to keep enough clean laundry around that you won't have to do laundry during the episode. Disposable dishes and utensils are another great accommodation. Have a big trash bin you can pile trash into, and a misc box or hamper so that you can shove shit in it that you don't have the energy to put away, so you still have a floor to walk on safely.

The episode will be over, eventually, and you'll need to take care of whatever happened during it, but the better you take care of yourself during it, the faster it will be over.

If anyone else has advice, please feel free to add on!

[rivetgoth]

I got tagged by @captainspaulding to list my 10 favorite songs of the month so far :D I feel kinda stupid because I don’t completely get what that means/how to rank or categorize them so I’m just gonna list 10 songs that’ve stuck out a bunch to me this September so far in no order!

Idk who to tag uhh… @lysistra @maldoror-est-mort @ourladyofomega @omegaverse @theonlycure @john--adreams @testure-1988 @blackchantilly No pressure of course, just if you want to :) And TY Mason for the tag!!

1.) Portishead— Sour Times

This month started out really cool and cloudy and it felt soooo exciting having September begin and early fall weather and pumpkin spice and Halloween things going up in stores. I love listening to trip hop in that kind of weather and I’ve listened to a lot of Portishead’s “Dummy” in particular the last week or so.

2.) Sneaker Pimps— 6 Underground

Ditto but even more so because I heard this at a birthday party last night. Birthday girl was playing a trip hop playlist and I was sooooo excited lol. Hearing this one encouraged me to revisit Sneaker Pimps’ debut for the first time in a hot second.

3.) Oingo Boingo— On the Outside

Polar opposite to trip hop, I’ve also been listening to Oingy Boingy with October and Halloween coming up. It’s the right vibe for this time of year ykwim. Not much else to say… it’s fun it’s spooky etc.

4.) Shock Doctrine— Blood Copy

I saw Shock Doctrine live last weekend and they were cool so I checked out their studio albums and they blew me awayyyyy. They’re extremely talented and fun and I’ve been listening to both of their EPs a ton.

5.) Shock Doctrine— Compound Eye

Ditto. Another really good track of theirs off of their other EP.

6.) Murder, Inc.— Uninvited Guest

I LOVE Murder, Inc.’s self-titled album and think it’s grossly underrated and totally horrible how obscure it is nowadays. Shock Doctrine kinda reminds me of ‘em so I’ve been revisiting them lately. Love love love this one but I could list anything off the album tbqh.

7.) Tricky— Christiansands

Fuck it, more trip hop. I’ve been listening to a lot ov it. This is one of my very favorites of the genre, it’s so cool and so atmospheric and so psychedelic. Never gets old.

8.) PIG— Cult of Chaos

September 5th was the anniversary of seeing PIG live for the first time! 2023 is also the 5 year anniversary of Pig’s album “Risen” which came out that same year, and which blew my fucking miiiiiiind when it first came out. I listened to it nearly daily for basically the rest of the year. So it’s been on my mind. I’ve been listening through the whole album but this one is one of my very favorites lol.

9.) Vision Video— Cruelty Commodity

Again, colder drearier weather (and more stress recently, tbqh, what with new jobs and all 😭🙏) has me listening to different music, right now alongside the trip hop there’s also been more classic gothy music on rotation and I finally caught up with Vision Video’s new releases. I LOVE this song. Such classic goth rock, reminds me a lot of Southern Death Cult. Really really really fantastic song.

10.) The Bellwether Syndicate— Dystopian Mirror

Along the same vein I also revisited The Bellwether Syndicate whose work I super enjoy, and I’m still blown away by this song after it dropped last year. It’s SO good. Gets me so pumped up. Omg. I think these guys are crazy underappreciated to be honest.

[hoardlikegoldenirises]

in an act of (???) decided to basically redo my scorpion and carnorpion design from march almost entirely. i did copy and paste some of the stuff i had already done but i redrew a lot too so this took a few days...

the new claw design (and the carnorpion helmet) is based HEAVILY off of the Scorpion armor from Superior Spider-Man (which means it was probably designed by Ramos but I donʻt actually know, might have been a different artist)

gonna put a bunch of closeups under the cut lol:

accidentally made him hot (i already thought he was hot). based his face roughly off of Vin Diesel circa the first Fast and Furious movie lol

i sliiiightly changed the design of this helmet on both the back and front. there were aspects of the previous carnorpion helmet i liked more than the previous scorpion helmet so i kind of combined the two.

BEEF

i also added a quick doc ock for comparison:

Ock's neural implants are larger and more experimental than Mac's since he made them in like... 2005 at the latest, probably earlier than that and Mac's are made in 2007 by the Tinkerer using some of Ock's existing research, so basically Phineas refined what Ock had already done.

Mac's are also inductive (i don't... know if that's actually the right way to call it but it's at least similar; wireless energy transmission essentially) and don't require strong contact to transfer and translate nerve signals, whereas Ock's plug directly into his back into the sockets like that.

one of them is gonna have more back problems later in life than the other, that's for sure.

armor front

this part changed a lot compared to the old design but it also took me a lot of fiddling to get it to where i wanted... the whole gamut of inspiration... knightly armor... halo... metroid... in the end i went with the armor bikini, obviously, but there was a version without that.

back also took some fiddling. it's very similar to the old one though. this is basically where the tail attaches (or like, a cover if he's not using it, i guess) This DOES has plugs just because... I felt like it... more secure... etc... the opposite side of the plugs (inside) is smooth discs that take the signal from his back implants (which are exposed by open eyelets on his shirt) and then that signal goes into his tail as well as all along the gold parts of his special undershirt and through his suit to where he needs it—helmet, arms/claws, torso/tail

like so:

probably more padding in there than what i drew but... eh... it's good enough. probably uses some kind of conductive fabric or something.

gave him little thumb holes to keep the sleeves straight though... hehe

and yes i decided (a while ago) that he wears a jock strap with optional cup depending on outfit (probably no cup with the metal bikini but who knows, maybe it would help keep things more secure and protected lol)

here's the tail connected. this was a bitch and a half to get the way i wanted tbqh, especially since he needs to be able to like... bend his back at all... but simplicity definitely is the way to go for this kind of thing... i like what i ended up with a lot.

maybe it's not totally fool proof but i think it looks alright

the knife is only a few inches long but that's still probably enough to stab with.

here's a little closeup of my explorations of the tail. this is based off of photo references which is why it looks the way it does lol, basically looking at things like tension-based pulley systems and animatronics and thinking about how a mechanical tail could work. i think it turned out neat.

(this is not how ock's current tentacles work fyi—ock's current set uses a pneumatic bellows system similar to Festo's bionicmotionrobot, and his previous set i'm not sure; symbiote system was hydraulic and used the symbiote as a lubricant though)

legs are almost exactly the same but i got rid of the lights cause they're just armor and not neurally linked. there's mac's face with the visor up too lol

since i put it way up top i'll put it here again—

claws and gauntlets have been pretty updated. especially the pincers though. you can see below a few pictures down i based it very heavily off of the Superior Spider-Man design. hefty, good shape, etc. i like this 500x more than the pincers i tried to do last time. and i didn't even do any of the hard work xD

here's how his arms fit into the pincers though.

they're pretty hefty.

anyway as for carnorpion

well first here's an alternate version without the thigh highs cause i couldn't choose

it just feels so... naked with the thighs bare... and not even in a slutty way. is very meaty though.

obv i also copy pasted a chunk from the old version on this but i still redrew a lot of it... TBH I'm still not sure I like it XD but it's fine. I like the claws at least. but those are just the Superior claws with teeth. turning into a crab i guess.

This Incident Is Looming btw. Next chapter (ch 4/may) if all goes well 🤘

the scar he will have after carnage is created (not before)

put the left doodle from march on the main armor pic but it would actually apply to carnorpion, not the green armor lol. plan is that i am maybe drawing more from Superior than I originally was gonna and am probably gonna have Doc Ock punch Mac's face jaw off.

AS Doc Ock though. lol.

Did I mention I based this helmet off of Superior Spider-Man's Scorpion? Cause I did. I liked the lenses... and then I was like hmm this might be good for combining organic with armor... so it's very very very similar to his helmet in Superior, but different colors:

honestly I probably should have just lifted the entire helmet wholecloth, it's so organic and weird... (and here you can see the claw inspiration as well) (arguably the torso thing on carnorpion in my drawing are also based on this...) (I know I drew a whole fucking thing but what if carnorpion was just this but red)

anyway i didn't include the uh... coin slot.

(genuinely: what IS that?????)

white base version (might actually prefer this helmet's aesthetic tbh but it's not very organic.)

the idea here is that the carnage symbiote is not (yet) bonding with mac directly but rather through/with his armor, so the Tinkerer makes like, this bonus set of armor that acts as essentially a substrate/base for the symbiote to build off of... which is why it's that weird bluish yellowish white color.

though idk maybe they'll just bond... really it's shrug city rn i'm still figuring so much shit out for this plot lol it continues to escape me

also the knife is probably bigger? idk. i can't eyeball stuff like that very well so i can't tell if it's any bigger lmao.

was also thinking this could be an opportunity for a more portable tail that doesn't require putting on an entire suit of armor (but which comes with all the pieces just in case, probably?) and so i also designed an extremely unreasonable harness to secure it to mac's bod. so of course that means: lots of straps.

slutty slutty straps

the yellow parts are just the induction/conduction stuff... gold discs, gold thread, idk.

hm i should have put some little elastic straps crossing that hole in the center. oh well, not like he'd be walking around in this without a tail strapped to it anyway

i realized in retrospect i didn't include any actual securements/connections ON the spine part underneath this but it's fine just pretend I drew those. I DID add even more straps for this under the pretense that it's being strapped onto the existing straps to keep it from wiggling.

reduce the lights to one on top and one on bottom cause the pieces of the spine are laid out kind of odd so doing lights on every one looks weird cause some are smaller and doing lights only on the one interfacing directly with his back looked weirder because they skip some rows just because of placement. looks fine like this though.

uses the same understuff as the regular suit though (the shirt with the gold bits i put up in the green suit)

all in all i think it's fair to say that mac's shit is way more of a hassle to put on and off than ock's

here's a bonus carnage. i like when carnage looks like this the best. i think the less uptight/the more bonded they get, the closer to this face carnorpion would get, but keeping some of the spikes, claws, and tail...

that's it lol

i still don't know if i like the carnorpion stuff entirely but i like this green armor muuuch more than my previous design from march.

[onelungmcclung]

rosie/kidd truther anon here to deliver a half baked thesis on why its good 🤓 (obligatory english isnt my first language)

the first thing that stood out to me is that jack is like “rosie is thee pilot ever and if u were half as good as him u could maybe make it to 10 missions” and he hadnt complimented someone like that in the whole show. also u opened my eyes when u said that it looked like rosie was trying to flirt w him in ep 7 and has opened my mind to many what ifs + its the good ole serious dude falls for the sweetest and happiest guy on the planet, what im saying is, they compliment each other :)

honestly i just think its cute and they both deserve some love, maybe when i rewatch the show ill say something coherent but in the meanwhile im trying to draw them (i hate men and their complicated faces but fuck it we ball 😮‍💨)

I'm gonna sound like a bad feminist(tm) but I actually really like drawing men because they tend to have more prominent facial bones and I find that easier. (obv some men don't but I have to ignore them bc they make me look bad.)

anyway I'll try to make you some more sets of that scene for sure. if you post any art, please do feel free to let me know (I don't usually go into fandom tags).

it is kind of a big deal for Kidd to compliment anyone and it does a lot to establish how good a pilot Rosie is, because when Kidd says anything you know it's 100% true and doubly so when he says something nice. (Rosie is actually in the room at the time, although I'm not sure if he overhears it or not -- but I don't think it makes any difference to Kidd. he's saying it because he means it, not because he's being polite and he's not going to be embarrassed about telling the truth.)

which is why I thought in ep 9 Kidd should have got to do some non-combat copiloting with Rosie, because they clearly respect each other and Kidd deserves to fly more and have nice things and, you know, I'm sure flying is more fun without the flak.

and tbqh Rosie does look a bit like he's trying to flirt with Kidd. also it's different/interesting to see someone approaching Kidd with that kind of... lightness. (they both take the business of war seriously but they carry it differently.)

fuck it we ball 🤝

[tavina-writes]

well now I'm curious about your beefs with till the end of the moon lol

Nonny, where do I even begin. Okay I'll begin with saying that @autumnslantern has probably written about this with more eloquence than I ever have and ever will, here, because Lantern is good at essay analyzing and I just shriek my frustrations like "cactus plant shrieks at clouds" into the void of my tumblr blog.

But I think the primary issue for me about TTEOTM isn't even the plot inconsistencies or the "fans of a thing that is not very good do not acknowledge that it's not very good" because neither of those two things bother me. Neither plot nor "it's not very good objectively" have ever deterred me from my love of a thing. I have watched some supremely badly created cdramas and come away feeling completely fulfilled in an iddy way and I grew up watching 80s cdramas so it doesn't matter to me if a show is camp or pretty or however.

BUT I think the reason I get bothered by TTEOTM is because I, okay, one I think I hyped it up for myself too much by going on spring planting back home when it was coming out so I was like "I WILL SAVE THIS, TO SAVOR IT ALL IN ONE GO! when I get back!!! :DDD" and also I consistently feel like I'm Charlie Brown and the Lucy-esque show writers will never let me kick the football.

My id can neither be fulfilled by the sad woobie meow meow who snaps and does murder, nor can it be fulfilled by the tragically burdened correct but suffering about it hero because this drama flip flops back and forth between these two things in a way that is just. really difficult for me to enjoy personally. Adding this to the plot and pacing difficulties as well as some of the ????? decisions in the editing room makes this very difficult for me to like.

Either TTJ is "suffers more than Jesus and is correct and good about it" or he's "tragically deranged and learns to love the world through the power of a principled bae" both of which are things I I adore and would eat with a spoon but this particular combination of "he suffers more than Jesus and is correct and good about it BUT he's also a deranged murder man who does very few actual murders and has to learn what love and goodness is through the....bae who never really expresses a lot of feelings about the world tbqh" kind of leaves me a bit twisting in the wind of "but. why though." and if I stop to ask "but why though" in a xianxia drama that's just not a good sign! I personally just didn't vibe with it.

I mean I vibed with some parts of it. I really wish there were more parts of it I vibed with. I really WANTED to vibe with more of it. But some part of me still feels like Charlie Brown being denied the ability to kick the football you know.