#that i have a lot of. just by. osmosis. so thats why i had to get in to laundry history a few months back ok. i do love a good museum

[beeseverywhen]

laundry and chemistry (starring: coin cleaning chemicals)

so i saw a post on here about laundry stripping and i wanted to try it out as i live somewhere with really hard water and can’t use very strong detergents day to day as i have very sensitive skin, so it seemed like an interesting thing to try and see what happened

(my suspicion is, it will leach the dye and i’ll have to redye the towels but thats no big issue as i kinda feel like a new colour anyway and am gonna make sure i only put the same colours in together during my trial)

anyway so immediately, i read the instructions and know that some adjustments are gonna have to be made, as borax isnt sold here (banned) so i’ll need a substitute for that at the least. the post directed me to use borax, laundry SOAP not detergent, and washing soda

now straight away i know i need to be on my guard here as a lot of stuff like this will have the same name as an american thing, but be a whole different product. (cleaning products are very different here, in part cause of different regulations, but i think a big factor is actually how we clean stuff? american washing machines tend to be a lot bigger, and with toploaders you can soak stuff/have cold cycles which allows you to use laundry bleach which isnt really used so much here) when i visit my family (non us country but american appliances are common) i have a complete nightmare finding like for like laundry stuff i’m not allergic too

anyway, i’m not so worried about allergies here as after the soak i’ll be rewashing anyway. so laundry SOAP i figure they mean plain soap, like castile soap; washing soda, i figure is likely the same as the soda crystals we use for cleaning, which brings me to the borax. now this i know i definitely cant get here, so i find out that i can make a borax substitute from soda crystals and bicarb of soda, as i’m already using the soda crystals, this seems like a good option.

so i go to buy myself some bicarb, and the shop are selling a product called ‘borax subsitute’ so i decide to pick up this and the bicarb and compare the two.

so soda crystals= sodium carbonate

bicarb of soda= sodium bicarbonate

borax substitute? that’s sodium sesquicarbonate

now i’ve got the borax substitute the bicarb seems a little redundant, however. if i’m mixing any kind of chemical i want to make sure i know what i’m going to end up making, and make sure i’m aware of any risks.

leading me on the the chemistry of this all. i find myself on a coin collecting site, where they explain that by mixing sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO₃) and sodium carbonate (Na₂CO₃) with water i can make sodium sesquicarbonate (Na₃H(CO₃)₂ ) AND CO₂ (so i need to ensure i have good ventilation!)

however i clearly have no need to make my own sodium sesquicarbonate as i have ready made borax substitute. which made me wonder, as i am using sodium sesquiocarbonate rather than borax (sodium tetraborate decahydrate) is the addition of soda crystals (washing soda) (sodium carbonate) now redundant? in fact, why did the original recipe say to mix washing soda and borax, when the washing soda is made of the same components as borax (minus the borate), is there a secondary reaction involved here, or is it a case of overengineering the recipe? and what about the laundry soap? will that react as well?

when i tried to investigate further i stumbled upon sodium percarbonate, otherwise known as oxygenated bleach, and made by mixing soda crystals and hydrogen peroxide. now, while i am willing to risk the dye in the towels somewhat by stripping, i’m not looking to bleach them, so i realise pretty soon that sodium percarbonate is to be avoided

i’m not intending to add any hydrogen peroxide (don’t have any, not very common here), but i do need to make sure that it isnt in any soap that i may use. i know that castille soap is made from olive oil, water, glycerine and potassium hydroxide (lye), so i need to check that mixing the lye and the sodium sesquicarbonate is not going to make anything a) dangerous b) bleaching (like sodium percarbonate). when i tried to research this, i came across a very alarming chemistry forum post in which someone mixed the two, and it lead to a exothermic (hot!) reaction producing a mystery chemical, which they poked??? noting ‘I touched the tip of my finger to it and didn't get any chemical burns.‘ i mean i know this isnt labwork, but have some awareness of health and saftey! don’t tocuh mystery chemicals.

anyway, this reaction turned out to be a one off, likely caused by the soap they’d made containing soy oil, which introduced acid in to the mix, luckily i am not at risk of this as i have a deadly allergy to soy, so no soy oil is in the building. anyway.

by this point i’m really starting to doubt the need for additional detergent, when there is already sodium sesquicarbonate and possibly, washing soda, in the mix. i’m also starting to think that american ‘laundry soap’ is not pure soap as i’d assumed, but maybe something else entirely. looking up american recipes, they all seem to mean something different by laundry soap and some of them are using detergents, honesly i’m still a little unclear on the benefit of combining washing soda and ‘borax substitute’ when washing soda is used to make ‘borax substitute, it seems to me that changing the proprotions of ingredients is unlikely to be helpful (or may be more helpful if it makes something better i guess, but this i doubt) i’ve been hoping i might come across an old web style forum or webpage, where a chemist might explain the benefit of using 3 ingredients rather than one, and explain what is being created when they are all mixed. as i’ve yet to find this, i’ve decided to go with equal amounts of all 3 and then i will experiment with removing one ingredient at a time and comparing the results, in the future.

by comparing the various laundry detergents in my house i have found that they actually vary quite a bit ingredients wise, even tho they are all sensitive non bio detergents, one of them includes optical brighteners including oxygenated bleach, so we will not be using that one with the coloured clothes (funnily enough this is actually the one that i avoid using and only use for rugs and sofa covers and stuff as my skin plays up with it. the other ones don’t seem to have anything major that’ll react with the rest, so lets see

i have also learnt that borate requires hot water to activate it, so the americans i saw using it without hot water, probably arent getting much benefit from it

[g0nta-g0kuhara]

why do u think people r so ashamed of loving danron??

I mean, honestly, there's a lot of reasons, which makes it kind of complicated to tackle. I can list out a few from the top of my head, based on personal experience Feeling the shame and observation of other fans

•The problematic content in the games themselves. People feel embarrassed to like the other parts of the game because of the amount of bigoted moments (and sometimes whole characters) within these games. They don't want people to think they like those parts too, so they couch their appreciation in embarrassment.

•The reputation of the fanbase. On tumblr at least, things have normalized significantly and I find this fandom a very chill place to be. But the danganronpa fandom at its peak (2012-2016ish) was RABID. Like any major tumblr fandom, there was tons of drama, discourse, and toxic fan behaviour, but DR was genuinely on another level. This is especially true because of the young average age of members of the fandom at the time. Even though thats not generally true anymore on tumblr, this fandom still has that reputation to non-fans, and so people don't want to be associated with it.

•Cringe culture. At its peak, the DR fandom on tumblr was made mostly of teens, especially younger teens. I think the earnest way young teens participate in fandom led to it being seen as cringe, just like many other fandoms. Also, even outside of its problematic content, DR's plot can be weird and, frankly, even completely ridiculous. Similar to hom/estuck, I think this esotericness adds to people's kneejerk reaction to it when hearing about it second hand.

•The tendency of tumblr to turn on popular media when the magic is gone. This is something I've noticed with a lot of tumblr's number 1 big fandoms. Once a lot of people's interest in it starts wearing off, for some reason people will pivot to hating it. It happened with T/MA a little, it happened with Und/ertale, it happened with S/U, and so many other fandoms that tumblr went crazy over initially. Maybe its because these fandoms became so vocal they started to annoy those not participating, so they started to meme and make fun of it and its fans. Then, when people start to leave as their interests change, they join in on the teasing to displace the shame they might've felt from being teased. Eventually, people usually turn around and come to appreciate the piece of media casually again. That didn't really happen with DR... probably because of the other three reasons.

DR gained this reputation of being "irredeemable, problematic, cringe media" with a toxic fanbase and never shook it off. Before I played DR, I knew nothing about it except that tumblr hated it, for some reason. I had learned literally nothing else through fandom osmosis! And I think that general feeling, that Good People who like Unproblematic Things* (*requirement of being a good person) would never touch DR with a 10 foot pole outside of to make fun of it, sticks with people.

So when people finally check it out, usually through irony-poisoned letsplays of it, and end up actually liking it, they don't know what to do with themselves. How do you balance genuinely liking this piece of media with the site-wide perception youve grown so used to? With the idea that everyone will hate you if they know you like it, that you are a bad person for even posting about it? And thats how you get everyone's first DR post having a caption essentially communicating "im so sorry for posting about dr- I know its terrible and associating myself with this game makes me look disgusting- people who've followed me up until now, please dont hate me!"

[acaciapines]

Your nanowrimo pieces are soooo goooood they hit so hard fr fr. I’m especially LOVING today’s one with the owl & the collector even tho I don’t rlly know that much abt toh bc I haven’t watched it but I can tell that u LOVE IT & I can’t wait to learn more thru osmosis once the fic is poooosteeeed✨ (i WILL read it i PROMISE i SWEAR)

Anyways give us the thoughts, the tea, tell us how you make the words do that✨ anything u wanna give in regards to today’s bit!! We’re not picky!

Hope y’all are doing okay! Gal says hi :) Remember to eat and drink something, take breaks, and look after yourselves and each other! We love you! This has been a Daily Interaction Ask <3

he he :3 im glad youre enjoying!! its been really fun to pick out my favorite bits even when usually those are the ones w/out context lol. look at my owl and weep boy. firefly <3

YOU WILL LEARN SO MUCH VIA OSMOSIS....literally now that im also doing something for s1 its like. why watch owl house we have owl house at home (the owl house at home is a 1 million word daemon au) (<- 1 mil is not a joke btw idk if it'll hit it but itll at least come very close. no idk why i did this.)

as for today! hmmm...

its truly so fun to write the collector. like im not joking about him being my favorite owl house character despite his maybe twenty total minutes of screentime, so its been such a JOY to expand his role in this series!!

bc like. god. actually i think i wrote a whole like. bit of flash fiction/prose poetry type thing for them a while ago. probably in my files somewhere. but just. youre an immortal eight year old. you are in these years where you need to interact with other people for your own mental stability and health. to figure out the whole Being A Person thing. and you are trapped for like, centuries. trapped away from everyone and everything and DUST, which, in universe, in literally connection personified. you're cut off from all of this.

and you are, let me say again, eight years old.

truly the collector is just. hes had everyone he ever cares about leave him--his siblings the other archivists left him behind not out of any sense of cruelty, really, but because caring about people just isnt really a thing they do. quite frankly they live so long they didnt even notice. theyre far-away stars. not far because they're mean. just because thats what stars do.

and then king's dad (who um. doesnt have a name <3 this is why the collector calls him 'the big bully' its literally bc i never gave him a name--) was an adult the collector actually trusted and looked up to (he meshed REALLY WELL into titan society until the archivists started Doing A Murder since titans are the only beings that match them in power and they have very very different ideas about dust). like ive said before the collector is owlbeastkin but before that they never had a super stable sense of identity--in another world where they stayed w/ the titans they wouldve ended up a titan.

and then king's dad just. trapped him in a tablet forever.

and like, to be fair to king's dad he was reacting out of fear and the best knowledge he had (he assumed the collector led the archivists to the titans, and like, he did, but its not like he knew he was doing that, and, you know, poor guy had seen a huge chuck of his fellow titans killed including babies and eggs of which he had an egg to consider), but it still TRAPPED THEM. and then he died and so did all the rest of the titans so nobody could free the collector even if they wanted to.

and then BELOS, who manipulated and lied to the collector for so long and was also literally his only friend after being alone forever, so like, of course the collector just blindly went along with whatever he said. he was gonna free them!! he listened to them when they talked about stardust which nobody else ever did! he had no idea what the fuck a witch was! he just liked being able to see the stardust sometimes, and belos brought him to places with a lot of stardust. to destroy it, but like--you know. it was THERE.

but all these people were just USING them, and they never really understand that until king comes around. and king's also a scared eight year old!! but like. king's also not wrong. the collector did aid belos in destroying the entire isles. like no joke belos SUCCEEDS here. like not long-term obvi this has a happy ending but at the point we're in at for the future? it doesnt matter that the draining spell failed. all the palistrom trees are dead. witch society Cannot come back from that even if they did end up beating the collector. theyre doomed.

anyways what was i saying. collector. right.

so like, then they meet firefly/grr-click-growl/wings-across-night/the owl beast (king of having so many names i love her <3) and shes like, the first person who cares for them and ISNT using them. even king is using them!! but firefly has seen Some Shit. she sees the collector as a hatchling who was kicked out of his nest and is doing her best to be some sort of stable figure for him, but she doesnt Not see the stuff he's done.

the collector took over the world bc he's scared--all he's ever known is being used and trapped so he doesnt exactly trust most people easily. firefly would Love to not be in this world anymore. shes also got a loyalty to eda and king and luzmari. and, like, cool motive, still trapping an entire society of people.

but like. shes the one who is here right now and nobody else is trying to help this kid.

but the collector just. hes just an eight year old. a very, very old eight year old. but he doesnt understand things like "you can make the wrong choices and still choose to do better later" and "im mad at what you did but that doesnt mean i dont care about you."

he just sees someone upset with him. just sees another person who used him and doesnt care and is going to leave bc everyone leaves him and in a world where EVERY SINGLE PERSON comes in pairs, hes the only one who stands alone.

basically tl;dr: collector my beloved <3

[kaladinsspear]

Ooooo!!!!!!

I desperately want to know more about Lightsong!! He just decided to work with Blushweaver in the hopes of softening her agression and shielding Siri. Good job Lightsong, I know you are an honorable man!

I want to know who Larimar was to Lightsong. I'm gonna guess brother, but I really dont know. I feel like he was some sort of family, but student or teacher would also fit.

Lightsong is putting on his detective hat and trying to figure out who broke into Mercystar's palace. It seems like whoever he was before returning, detective work is not new to him.

Have to say, I kind of like Blushweaver. I don't trust her, but I have no reason to think she is evil yet. So far she seems to honestly believe that Idris is a threat to her king and her nation and is responding accordingly. She certainly has selfishly power seeking motives as well, but she doesnt seem on the same level of evil as cutting out a childs tongue and using him like a puppit. She's just your average smart, selfish, and powerful. I can enjoy the character without condoning her actions.

~

Oh Vivenna. So many prejudices. I get her point that its all perspective, but come on! I would respect her beliefs if she had a reason for them, but so far it seems like she holds her convictions because thats what she was taught. She believes that breath is a persons soul, but she cannot defend why she believes that and flat out rejects the experiences of people who have lived without breath. She believes that using lifeles is wrong, but she cannot defend why beyond that she believes that a corpse deserves to be put to rest. Forget what the original owner of the body and their family think, Vivenna feels icky about it so it must be wrong.

I'm perfectly ready to believe that using lifeles is wrong and that breath is much more significant than Hallandrens credit it with being, but I'm gonna need some more evidence than Vivennas feelings on the matter. I personally find the lifeless a little uncanny. I'm not ready to accept that they completly lack sentience without question, but I'm withholding judgment until I know more.

I really, really want to like Vivenna, but I'm having a hard time. I think once she breaks out of her conditioning and starts basing her convictions and beliefs on life experience rather than cultural osmosis I'll like her a lot better. For now, she just rubs me the wrong way. I dislike when people make morel judgments that they can't/won't defend.

~

Still loving the mercenaries. Would like to know a little more about Jewels!

~

No new info on Vasher or Siri. I cant wait to pick up Siri's story line again!!

[nerves-nebula]

wait I legit thought that the rat dad figure being (?) in TMNT was extremely neglectful and that's why the four stick together because they essentially had to raise themselves alone while hiding from the rest of society?

Like that's why they're big on fighting/being strong is because they had to protect each other from whatever dangers might come and try getting rid of them all for being mutants and stuff.

Also thought they grew up in the sewers and had to climb out and steal a few things at night and that's why they dressed up as ninjas originally. So they could steal food/some supplies and like not die of starvation or whatever

(I have not seen any versions of the show and have only a vague understanding of TMNT. It sounds like it's ripe for dysfunctional family dynamics possibly??)

GHAGHAG OK SOOOO THE THING ISSSS THAT I HAVE A LOT OF OPINIONS ON SPLINTER and the nature of abuse/neglect in the tmnt franchise BUT

the thing is that there are a lot of versions of TMNT that I haven't seen, including any original/old versions or comics SO mind you that my opinions here are also mostly crafted through cultural osmosis, and some vague memories of comics/tv shows. the only tmnt show ive watched in its entirety has been the 2018 version (ROTTMNT).

THAT BEING SAID: I don't think its unfair to call most versions of splinter kind of bad parents. theres definitely versions of him that are barely parents at all, really more of a Master figure who teaches the turtles to fight and trains them, than like, a Dad. 2018 is prolly the most Dad like one (they even call him dad and pops and stuff)

the thing is that TMNT can be either incredibly lighthearted or really really angst-y. They do live in the sewers cause they can't usually live above ground with people, but this really ranges from "all humans hate and fear them and will attack them on sight" to "they just need to stay in the shadows and make sure they dont spook anybody" and sometimes it barely matters at all and people are just like "wow cool costumes guys"

and so in those lighthearted versions, while splinter might not be portrayed as a really cool great dad, he is usually a really cool great NINJA MASTER. so any kind of symptoms of neglect that could come from not being raised by PARENTS is usually forgotten/hand waved because who needs parents when you have your brothers??? COwabunGA lets go eat pizza :)

and thats FINE thats the tone they're going for its ok, even if logically it would be an emotional nightmare. this is a show about teenage mutant ninja turtles its ok to not be logical.

im actually not sure why they're ninjas, apart from Master Splinter training them to BE ninjas. though there are definitely versions where they're being hunted/seen as threats and that's why they need to Get Good at fighting.

so to recap: splinter isn't always portrayed as a good person or a good guardian, but usually the story doesn't really delve into that or frame it as abuse/neglect. sometimes he's "too harsh" or "too cold" but usually nothing deeper than that.

WHICH BRINGS US TO RISE OF THE TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES, the 2018 version that ive watched all of.

THE THING ABOUT ROTTMNT is that they made me uncomfortable by making jokes about splinter being a neglectful shitty dad, which i made a whole post about a while ago. and while they did make him a better dad LATER on it really really weirded me out how his neglect wasn't super focused on except for like. one or two episodes??

the thing is that splinter needs to be neglectful so that the boys can go out and have adventures and I GET THAT I REALLY DO as a storyteller some things just need to be hand-waved I GET IT. BUT. why draw attention to it if you dont plan on there being long term affects???

the only result seems to be that he Becomes a Better Dad but I can tell you first hand if my parents did a turn around like that it would NOT fix everything and I GUESS i'm just weirdly disappointed that they pointed out the neglect, made jokes about it, and then didn't reallyyyy go into it more. I mean im sure if I wanted to I could go into analysis mode and be like "well these character arcs could point to the ways neglect has effected them" but to be HONEST that'd probably be more me projecting than anything else.

AND LIKE. if they didn't want to discuss neglect why even bring it up???

and your point about it being a set up ripe for familial abuse/dysfunction is TRUE, but is also hardly ever the focus of the story. sure the stories focus on interpersonal issues, but its almost never framed through the lens of "these kids are being neglected" or "the reason they're having interpersonal issues because of the neglect they suffer" because well. that's just not very cowabunga. that's not very Kids Show. why not just have Raph and Leo fight over being the leader or again or something that's still a conflict but its less existentially draining.

and like MAYBE there's a version out there, some obscure comic run or something, that addresses all these issues and gives me the catharsis I crave BUT UNTIL THEN I will continue redrawing childhood memories of my shitty family superimposed onto TMNT characters.

SORRY for this huge, loosely jumbled together ramble but you activated my tmnt abuse/neglect fixation trap card

[hrtmonitor]

i just beat FF9 and went to FF7 and thats probably the reason why, but FF7 seems to have aged really poorly by comparison despite being more populer at time of release. it just has a LOT of sections so far where its very unclear what to do and where to go next, and when you finally figure it out it demands you go grind for money to make progress or play some obtuse and poorly thought out mini game. also the materia system seems interesting at first but imo it kinda enables all the characters to do the same things and thus they end up feeling kinda samey mechanically outside of limit breaks, but even a lot of those are just "do damage with extra steps"

im only like 16 hours in and havent had to switch discs yet, so maybe it gets better around there, god knows the first disc swap was where i started to get really invested in ff9, but it only really took me 10 hours to get there so i feel like it shouldve happened already

plus the fact that ive gotten a good amount of the vibes already from cultural osmosis may be making it a bit less exciting

[dizzeeflower]

I guarantee you there is one manifestation of disability that almost everyone on this planet has actively laughed at and made fun of. yes, even you

can you guess what it is?

it's something there are constant gags about in media, something people mention in passing as a joke

something that if it presented itself in a public space i guarantee in most situations would be openly and loudly mocked (and if not humour, most people would at least express disgust)

don't believe me, do you?

✨ incontinence ✨

yep, it's incontinence. (get your giggles out now folks)

I am partially incontinent due to a fun cocktail of mental and physical disabilities and i know for a fact this is where people will stop reading, have a little laugh, and move on thinking this isn't worth the read anymore

but please, if you want to be a true disability ally, stick around and listen.

5% of the world population is estimated to be incontinent to some degree. 1 in 20 people (and no, that is not just elderly people)

so yea when you're in the grocery store, or at the gay bar, or seeing your college theatre's rendition of Grease - chances are there's a good handful of people in the crowd who struggle with incontinence.

it might be just someone who has minimal stress incontinence - something very common in people who have been pregnant - or someone who has adhd and forgets to go to the bathroom, missing the cues from their body that they are desperate, or yea it could be the 85 yr old grandma who wears diapers.

the point is, all of these people deserve respect for their bodies. everyone does. and this includes bodies that malfunction sometimes.

'omg thats so funny im gonna pee myself' 'reddit boys can go piss in ur little baby diapers' - great comeback bestie, but can we move on from them now? im gonna be honest these don't offend me personally, but it's worth being aware of where the humour of these comments comes from. its rooted in ableism

but something that does offend me and something that genuinely triggers me to have panic attacks and can push me into an anxious depressive state for days at a time, is when a character wetting themself is used as the butt of a joke on screen.

i'm thinking season one of stranger things. yeah, most of us know the scene right? when eleven forces a bully to pee his pants in front of the whole school? yep, triggers my ptsd right good that one does. and my siblings ptsd. and im sure many many many more ppl with incontinence (or even ppl without it who had the unfortunate experience of an accident in school)

if you found it funny, i dont care at this point. keep doing you. i dont blame you, okay? but i just want to ask that you reconsider WHY you laughed. 'because he pissed himself' okay but WHY is that funny? 'older kids and adults arent supposed to piss themselves' yea well it happens sometimes to most people at least once, and to 1 in 20 people much more often than that. so WHY is that funny?

keep asking why why why... and if in the end you can't think of WHY, then maybe there isnt a reason for you to laugh at it except that you've been taught to by osmosis. because everyone else laughs

dont give up here, because this is where i want you to really think. is it worth it?

is it worth laughing at something just because everyone else is, and risk 5% of the population going into a self conscious spiral, a panic attack because of your mocking, making them think they will never be accepted?

obviously u making a "im gonna piss myself" comment while laughing does not put 1 in 20 ppl into a panic attack, but u get where im coming from now i hope

so if you're still reading, im guessing you want to reconsider some of your behaviours and comments about this subject. thank you! now that you've realised where these jokes are rooted, you're going to start noticing a lot more often just how much this disability is mocked in society.

but what else can you do to help?

consider sticking up for us because understandably incontinent people dont tend to stick up for themselves lest it out us as incontinent. because admitting that is still met with laughter and disgust. help us jumpstart the incontinence acceptance by speaking up for the silent minority whenever an incontinence joke comes up in class/family gatherings/general conversation (this is my opinion, any other incontinent folks are v welcome to challenge this if u would rather ppl didnt for whatever reason!)

another thing you can do is - you won't like this - dont call ppl disgusting for buying adult diapers with silly animal characters on. unpopular opinion here on tumblr dot com, i know

but listen: incontinence products are disability aids! pullups, incontinence pads/pants, adult diapers, these are all disability aids. not products of k!nk, not things to snigger at in the pharmacy.

and would you complain about someone putting hello kitty stickers on their walking cane? would you think it gross for someone to doodle little stars and affirmations on their wheelchair armrest? is it wrong if someone wants pink hearing aids instead of a nude coloured ones? no?

then don't laugh if someone wants lil hearts on their pullups, and don't fake gag if you happen to see purple patterned adult diapers on ur dash. sometimes humans just like to decorate their bodies and extensions of their bodies. this is just that. and lets be real, plain white nappies just aren't the vibe sometimes

~ while we're at it, ppl with stoma bags are beautiful and deserve to wear whatever they want to feel comfortable and handsome as hell 😘 ~

and let me address the elephant in the room. yeah, some people have a f3tish for this stuff (just like anything can be made into a f3tish). whatever. if ur against that stuff then idc pls dont talk abt it in the tags and comments. anyway it is NOT an excuse to find actual disabled ppl disgusting for needing these aids.

and heres the funny thing: you usually can't tell if someone uses diapers for a f3tish or for their disability, or possibly both!

so you're gonna have to not attack random ppl on the internet bc you don't know what their life is like (what a shocking new hot take)

if a 46 yr old balding man with a beer belly and chest hair who isn't visibly disabled mentions he uses diapers, don't assume he's a creep and its a k!nk. it might be, sure, but it might be a condition or disability that you have no right to comment on or judge him for.

so if youre squicked by it just block and move on, don't send anon hate, dont make a post about how these types of people make you sick. you might just lose a valued mutual who was secretly incontinent and thinks you hate them for it now (whether this is right or wrong, its often how these things come across)

(btw if anyone fuckin talks abt k!nk on this post im going to scream directly in ur ear :) make ur own posts and don't bring any f3tish discussion onto mine)

had to get that out of the way unfortunately because this is a condition that is so unfortunately overrepresented by the f3tish side. i wouldnt have to talk abt k!nk on many other posts about disabilty aids but this one unfortunately was necessary

it's exhausting

imagine having a disability that requires aids thats almost EVERYONE winces at, laughs at, mocks loudly. and then to come on tumblr, the place that is meant to be full of acceptance from strangers in similar circumstances, queer and disabled and poc - but the moment your aid is brought up in discussion its seen as something disgusting and the property of freaks and creeps and people who are evil and want to do children harm

it's exhausting, like i said

i dont have much else to add honestly, im shit at writing cohesive posts (especially when im physically shaking with anxiety bc woohoo announcing to possibly thousands of ppl that im incontinent) but if anything i just hope you will question yourself if you laugh at this stuff in future

im going to go back into my little anxiety hibernation hole and never open up about this condition again ✌🏼

as for the incontinent population, we’re pretty silent about this condition so it’s easy to forget abt us. but please just keep us in mind and stick up for us when u can

— for clarity: incontinence is not ALWAYS a disability, it is a condition that can affect ppl on a sliding scale. for some it is a mild inconvenience, for some it severely impacts daily life. for some it is the only physical condition their body experiences, for some it is a symptom of a predetermined mental or physical disability such as generalized anxiety disorder or paraplegia. whether or not it is considered a disability, acceptance of ALL incontinence is a good step to eradicating this source of ableism —

no one has to reblog this but pls consider it if this has opened ur eyes a lil and u wanna open some more

[desitenya]

ok hiiii. so after osmosis learning some info about kuusuke i have a few thoughts about him meeting touma. the reason why akechi is such an interesting person to have him interact with, is because not only is he incredibly smart, he’s bested kusuo a few times which is something kuusuke’s unable to do.

first thing, what would be their impressions of each other excluding the part where kusuo factors in. not really much to go off on considering touma mentions knowing about kuusuke for one panel and thats it, but in psi battle there was an event story where they did interact. heres where you can read The Strongest Young Psychic part im referencing. > actually just go check out the psi battle translations.

first impression is that, honestly they’re matching the same rhythm. touma was excited to see them fight even though he’s sure kusuo would win. even with touma’s inclusion, the battle was still for the most part kusuo v kuusuke. kuusuke didnt get to see any of touma’s abilities through the ep, and probably only remembers touma as that kid who just hung around his little brother that one time. touma on the other hand knows of kuusuke’s accomplishments.

no idea what he was planning there but he seemed confident about their interaction. ALSO speaking of confidence, in the psibattle ep, he says himself that kuusuke beating kusuo in this challenge would be a one in a million chance, compared to him being confident in his own challenges with kusuo. kuusuke doesnt keep tabs on all his friends considering he didnt even know who toritsuka was until laaate series, so its entirely possible he slipped under the radar as well. however, if he DID manage to find out how smart he was from most likely a challenge proposed by touma, its no doubt he’d be hella surprised by how hard it is to fight him.

even with taking psi battle quotes with a grain of salt, though his AI tried to basically “take him out”, he still has a favorable outlook on him (he does still destroy the AI or whatever). he’d probably view whatever contest he had with touma as a fluke. that one in a million chance that was mentioned earlier, but even so, he’d keep him in mind. and if akechi does continue to beat him, i think he’d still hold on to the whole “im a human everyone else are ants” way of thinking lol. that would completely change if he heard about why touma knows about kusuo’s powers.

no way he assumes touma found this out on his own. he probably thought kusuo went soft and decided to tell his old friend about his powers to resolve some old questions. of the two contests touma had with kusuo (other being horse betting), THIS one would be the one that catches his eye. mainly because that was similar in nature to kuusuke’s other contests. there isnt any denying that kusuo was literally cornered here. the only way he could give touma less credit was to say that kusuo basically gave up and even then, there’s no way kuusuke could think that. i explained why on another post.

he’s basically trapped between a rock and a hard place. does he accept that some one beat the one person who he’s put on a pedestal for most his life OR does he accept he’s cornered that same person into giving up.

beyond this, there's not much to go off of. the closest thing was how kuusuke’s world was “shattered” at 2 or 3 or whatever when kusuo first beat him. its also likely he gets pissed since thats like, the only other emotion we see him express lol. how he expresses that... idk. but i feel like he’s gonna pop up in touma’s life a lot more now since he’s kinda took an axe to his world view.

[cainightfics]

have you seen the new batman movie? I saw a lot of parallels between the riddler and batman with tyrell and elliot and I want to know if you saw it too. feel free to ignore this message if you have genuinely no interest in batman that is totally fine lmfao, it's just that you always have really well thought out and interesting responses to your anon messages and I was wondering your thoughts on this if you had any!

thanks for the ask! i actually havent seen the new batman movie, but i feel like ive absorbed lots of info about it via cultural osmosis, so im gonna take a crack at this anyway, lol. please correct me if im off base here.

batman in general is kind of similar to elliot, although their worldviews are very different... batman is a vigilante who hunts down criminals under an anonymous alias because of childhood trauma, and elliot is the same. the difference is that elliot acknowledges more openly that he himself is also a criminal, lol, and his sense of morality isnt as black and white. despite being the protagonist, elliot isnt always particularly heroic. for example, its hard for me to imagine batman doing to anyone what elliot did to olivia. elliot is a huge believer in "the ends justify the means," to the point where by season 4, he begins to view peoples livelihoods as collateral damage in his mission. to elliot, anyone who works for "bad people" is essentially fair game -- hence why he so easily frames colby in s1e1, or sacrifices price in s4e9, or tries to cope with angelas death by convincing himself that when she began working for whiterose, the "real angela" essentially died, and dark army angela took over as some brainwashed imposter.

i think that like batman, elliots heroic deeds are often somewhat washed out by his more questionable choices. both elliot and batman have fallen so completely into their vigilante "second life" that these personas (superhero and hacker) have become their whole identities. obviously, with elliot, this is taken to the most extreme end possible, as we find out in s4 that elliot/mastermind is an alter created entirely to act out these vengeful, heroic fantasies host!elliot had. identity and morality are big themes for both batman and elliot.

in terms of tyrell and the riddler, i think the big tie-in is the theme of spectacle!! elliots vigilanteism is quiet and he revels in anonymity, whereas tyrell is narcissistic and genuinely sees himself and elliot as superior to regular humans. tyrell is very preoccupied with how other people see him, but ESPECIALLY with how elliot sees him. like mr robot says in s1e5, tyrell "cares what [elliot] thinks about him," and thats his biggest flaw. tyrell WANTS to be noticed. i think this is really emphasized with how elliot is framed in scenes with tyrell... take this one, for example. both elliot and tyrell are framed in the centre, with the camera angled slightly above elliots head, as though hes looking down on tyrell.

now lets contrast that with another scene where tyrells obsession with power manifests again, this time with the e corp building looking down on him from above, and him clearly feeling the weight of his own inferiority:

elliot is often framed in the position of the observer AND the superior party, even in situations where (seemingly) tyrell has the upper hand. in the conference room scene, for example, despite having been kidnapped and brought to this scary place with all these lawyers threatening him, elliot has the upper hand-- tyrell can intimidate him all he wants, but he still NEEDS elliot to say yes to his job offer, because its him who desperately wants elliot to work with him. tyrell is obsessed with getting elliots attention and approval -- think, also, of his preoccupation in s3e3 with having his suit when he goes to see elliot. "i have to look my best for him" are definitely the words of somebody whos trying too hard, lol.

the riddler is the same way. he requires batmans participation and attention, because without it, its no fun. villains only exist because they have heroes to fight them. in batman 2022, batman seems to quite literally ruin the riddlers plans simply by refusing to participate:

Batman: You think you'll be remembered? You're a pathetic psychopath, begging for attention.

The Riddler: No.

Batman: You're gonna die alone in Arkham.

The Riddler: No. No, no, no!

Batman: A nobody!

The Riddler: NO! AHHHHH! This is not how this was supposed to go! Ahhhhh! I had it all planned out! We were gonna be safe here. We could watch the whole thing together.

i would say the difference between tyrell and the riddler is that tyrell really does not seem to have a cause. i think the reason why its easier to sympathize with tyrell than other antagonists in mr robot is because hes just so damn pathetic. his obsession with attention and impressing people and being special precipitates his own downfall and makes him easily manipulated, dependent, and miserable. at least the riddler has some ideological underpinning to his actions (he wants to expose corruption in gotham) and that appears to attract followers to his cause. tyrell, however, is extremely uninspiring, because most of what we see him do is either 1) what somebody else told him to do (joanna, irving, mr robot, etc) or 2) the result of an impulsive temper tantrum (murdering sharon knowles immediately comes to mind). tyrell will never be a genuine revolutionary, because he just doesnt care. his core belief is that "power belongs to the people that take it," and this winds up being hilariously ironic, given that hes so easily controlled by others.

anyways, hopefully that was a decent answer lol. thanks for the ask, i do have loads of fun answering them!

[vancalox]

💙🧺👀💎✈️☔️💧 for miss triss !!!

thank u miss maia MWAH

💙— how do they say/show that they miss their partner?

i wanna say "draping herself over ava's furniture and whining softly" NFJFJDNFFN and honestly its not that far off. triss has been known to pine, on occasion. usually subtle tho, lots of little absent minded touches to the shoulder/waist/hands, standing closer than she normally would so she can soak up the attention thru osmosis rather than ask for it directly lmao

🧺— random domestic headcanon

oh she's definitely a borderline horder ❤ growing up without rebecca meant she didnt rly have anyone around to like. beg for toys or Items as children often do lol, so her personal possessions were fairly sparse until her teen years. as a result she rly doesnt show any restraint when it comes to buying the dumbest knick knack decor imaginable as a sort of balm for feeling so lonely? im talking like..... garage sale figurines of 1970s soviet russian children's cartoons, a kettle shaped like a garden gnome, the tackiest b-rated horror movie rip-off merch she can find ..... thankfully she never got into online shopping so most of the stuff she buys is limited to what she can find in the wild lmao.

👀— what’s their favorite body part on themselves? on their partner?

on herself??? hm. if not her smile, then probably her arms ! she worked hard on those sleeve tattoos damn it. on ava i was going to say arms as well BUT i think thats just me projecting t b h lol. so probably her stomach/chest ! she runs her hand down ava's torso and suddenly feels transported into the body of a virgin Y/N maiden in a 19th century high romance smut novella 😌 as she deserves !

💎— do they like to tease?

yes. incurably so. annoyingly so ❤

✈️— how far will they go in public?

not far enough to like. be arrested lol fbdjdjd she's mostly considerate of the people she's around who um dont wanna see that shit. but she's very pda friendly by default and did get a little (a lot) crazy back when she was living/partying in new york...... but ya it also rly depends on the person and their comfort/limits. with bobby – who's even more obnoxiously pda than she is – they were rly unbareable to be around in public lol. but that was bc bobby was ok with it. with ava she would be respectful of her boundaries and personal space no questions asked and no judgement. and i think despite being down to clown she'd be pleasantly surprised by a more lowkey relationship. triss has dated a lot but hasnt had much experience with intimacy/vulnerability so. that would be nice !

☔️— what are they like when they’re emotional? how quickly do they recover?

triss recovers pretty quick, mostly because she hates burdening people with her low moods. she likes to keep a happy/nonchalant façade no matter what, even if its a detriment to her actual state of mind at the time lol. when she's sad she tends to isolate herself so ppl cant ask what's wrong, and if she can't do that she'll just crack jokes until she sounds convincing enough that they stop worrying

💧— random angst headcanon

hm. triss had a drug problem prior to returning to wayhaven (it's why she left university and returned home in the first place). she's clean now but it's still a daily battle. even around unit bravo, when she gets in a bad place mentally it's hard to dismiss the urge to take off again and get back into old habits.

[mookybear12404]

OKAY i have never watched any of the Vox Machina episodes but i’ve watched like 20 episodes of the Mighty Nein and I’ve absorbed stuff via tumblr fandom osmosis so im going to try and explain the characters as best i can

first off there’s a pair of twins named vex and vax. They’re both sassy half-elves.  both of them think they are the older sibling. I for the life of my cannot tell which one is which so im just going to call them boy twin and girl twin

boy twin is VERY hot and also edgy. theres also something with him and ravens. I think he’s part raven or something? theres also a meme where he yells “DAGGER DAGGER DAGGER”. Im pretty sure he dies at the end of the story.

girl twin is very pretty and calls everyone “darling”. badass of the group and uses a bow. 

Then there’s the white hair dude percy whose actual name is incredibly long. i feel like i know the most about him because he’s the fandom’s favorite. he has a really dark backstory and wants to get revenge on some people. also he invented guns and has a really strong steampunk vibe going to him. i think he’s also possessed by a demon or something? i think at some point he wears a mask and turns on his friends? the fandom calls him “no mercy percy” for some reason. also he has a romance with girl twin and ends up getting married to her. I think at some point the boy twin beats him up for flirting with his sister. he dies at some point and its really sad but he gets better so its okay

Theres also a red haired druid girl that i think has a romance with boy twin?? people either seem to think she is really boring or are obsessed with her. i know that there is some point in the story where she tries to see how tall a cliff is by jumping off of it and straight up dies. 

Theres a goliath barbarian named Grog who is the absolute definition of himbo. He is really huge, dumb as hell, and yet very kind, (when he’s not ripping people in half). also he is best friends with the gnome bard and does anything he says

then theres a gnome bard dude named scalath or something? basically he’s just the stereotypical horny bard.

also theres a white haired halfing girl named pike with lots of armor that i wouldn’t have even known existed if i hadn’t been curious to who Ashley played in the first campaign. Why does nobody talk about her??? she seems like a cinnamon roll 

also theres a bear. a whole ass bear. not a magical bear or anything but just a normal bear. Why is it on the team??? why has it not eaten any of them??? i have no idea 

ALSO I SWEAR TO YOU THERES A RED DRAGONBORN. I DON’T KNOW ITS NAME BUT I KNOW HE EXISTS. i have no idea why ive never seen anyone talk about him but im pretty sure he was in the comic book?? I think he was Talisen’s character before he had percy? maybe he died early on and thats why nobody talks about him?? 

[ilu-writes]

Tyrant’s Tomb Predictions

I almost forgot that the next TOA book is coming out tomorrow (today, technically, for me) but I want to get in some of my predictions before it does so I can compare them. Also, I haven’t read any of the promo stuff, but I have absorbed some information via osmosis from my dash. 

Frank Zhang won’t die. yes, I know they said his firewood would burn up, and that’s why they had the whole bucket list... but what kind of writer spoils that stuff before the books even come out? Nah, if Frank’s firewood does burn up, there’s going to be some kind of subversion of the curse. Maybe he’ll just lose his shapeshifting ability? Maybe Hazel will save him? Who knows. (also, i want to say I don’t think Rick will kill another member of the seven, but. who knows.)

Nico will appear again. Part of that’s wishful thinking, but also... his sister is definitely in the book, and we know he loves Hazel. Him taking a trip to see her definitely isn’t out of the question. Plus, he’s the first link between the two camps. Makes sense that he takes the ex-greek god there. ALSO it would be a nice mirror to Apollo being the one to take Nico to CHB in the first place. 

will could also appear, or at least be mentioned, since. y’know. nico’s bf. 

Reyna/Lester... wont be a thing. I know it’s implied he’s attracted to her, and like i said, i haven’t read the snippet (i believe he compares her to a goddess?) but honestly? How many people has he already been attracted to in the series? I don’t think anything will come of it. I do think Aphrodites prophecy/destiny thing will be addressed, and unfortunately, i get why in light of it reyna/apollo seems like it could happen. but... i dont think it will. I think by the end of the series, Apollo will be a god again (albeit a more humble one), and the relationship wouldn’t make sense.

On the topic, there’ll be a RARA joke in there. At least one. 

More seriously, we’ll get to see Hylla (and by extension the Amazons) again. partially because of the sibling thing, but mostly because Hylla is also a child of Bellona, so it kind of makes sense to introduce her, given the prophecy. 

The soundless god could be harpocrates, since he’s the literal god of silence (and secrets, which could be relevant), but i’m not too sure. I’ve seen suggestions of Dea Tacita, especially thanks to her connections to the Lares, which would be cool. I know Calypso would sometimes be referred to as a deity of silence, but sadly, i dont think she’ll be returning, at least not in that capacity. It could be a god who was recently silenced, maybe another god I know Bellona has been associated with Mars, and that would line up with Frank, which could be cool. Or it could be artemis, since we know she isn’t allowed to contact apollo and can only help from afar, thus making her ‘soundless’

another theory i came up with while writing this and now desperately want: it could be hestia, who’s soundless because she doesn’t have a voice on the council. Especially since she hasn’t appeared yet in the series, even though a lot of it took place at CHB and we know she tends the hearth there a lot. i want this. 

iirc, Julius Caesar was deified after his death. He was also supposedly a child of Venus. And part of the first triumvirate. I’m pretty sure he’ll appear in some form. He could be the one who’s ‘even worse’ than the other emperors, but he never had a tomb. 

On that point - Augustus Caesar, Julius’ nephew (?) did have a tomb dedicated to himself, was an emperor, and formed the second triumvirate. He was also stated to have joined the roman pantheon on his death. As much as I want hestia... i feel like he’s going to be the soundless god. 

percy and annabeth might make a small appearance, at least as a cameo, because they’re meant to be studying in New Rome, and obviously, thats were at least some of the book takes place. 

And, yeah, those are the ones i can think of right now. Feel free to add: I’m curious as to other peoples predictions! I’m hoping to have the book by the end of the week. 

[flockofdoves]

hxh and/or fma (for the anime ask meme)

hxh

haven’t heard of it | absolutely never watching| might watch | currently watching| dropped| hated it | meh| a positive okay| liked it| liked it a lot!| loved it| a favorite

don’t watch period| drop if not interested within 2-3 episodes| give it a go, could be your thing| 5 star recommendation

fav characters: i love all the main 4 but definitely gravitate a lot to kurapika!! for more minor characters theres so many but i love knuckle bine a lot dfkjghdfk. also i love alluka and nanika so much my daughters

least fav characters: hisoka, also palm like while i want hisoka to die i Guess i can appreciate his aesthetic far away from gon and killua and also like . i guess he can be an example of how unaccommodating towards kids hxh’s freak ancap society can be but palm just being a pedophile but played for laughs but also theres weird misogyny and ableism in her characterization and then all of a sudden we’re just gonna forget all that and she’s cool now?????? hewwo??????? i would prefer hxh if she did not exist or if a palm siberia that looked similar (again a nice aesthetic) but was entirely not the same character. like . what was gained from this oh my god.

fav relationship: gon and killua!!!!! ofc i love leorio and kurapika too but killua and gon is so blatant and i feel it could literally happen or at least just . they just Are each others first loves and they make me emotional in so many ways. non romantically just the found family in the main 4 and also killua and alluka and then killua coming to love and understand nanika too through alluka caring for her…. oh my god…. Siblings….

fav moment: omg uhhhh theres a lot?? a big one that immediately comes to mind tho is killua pulling out illumis needle ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!

headcanons/theories: i think we should find a way to synthesize both the fantheory that gon was born as some . homunculus thing from the greed island pregnancy stone and the one that pariston and ging fucked and pariston is gon’s other parent for the most distressing gon origin story

unpopular opinion: i know i have some but i don’t remember atm i’ve already rambled way too much rn

how’d you find it: i literally don’t remember i gotta think about this tbh i’ve been into hxh since i was like 14?? like yeah everyone whos ever been into anime has at least heard of hxh in passing but i feel like there wass some specific prompting for me getting into it that i can’t remember anymore. almost don’t want to remember because theres a high chance it was bc of some people i get sad thinking about now but out of all the people i was around back then fortunately i think it seems most likely i got into it bc of one of the few people i still care for among the people i hung out around as a young teen

random thoughts: i’m a fake fan i’m still not caught up with the manga i love it so much but i’ve barely read any manga i care about these past couple years i just know what people are talking about through osmosis nowadays i REALLY wanna legit catch up !!!!!

fma

haven’t heard of it | absolutely never watching| might watch | currently watching| dropped| hated it | meh| a positive okay| liked it| liked it a lot!| loved it| a favorite

don’t watch period| drop if not interested within 2-3 episodes| give it a go, could be your thing| 5 star recommendation

my bolds make no sense on this one and thats because i’m a fake!!!!! i was absolutely obsessed with fmab as a tween and watched almost all of it but then netflix didnt have the last season and that was when i was dumb and the only thing i ever pirated was glee on megavideo so me and my brother watched the last season by recording it when it was airing on adult swim and i know i got so close to the end but like somewhere towards the last few episodes i’m assuming (??) my brother watched it when i wasn’t home and then my parents deleted the recording before i could watch it and then i just???????? never watched it??????

so tl;dr i watched the vast majority of fmab (and started the manga) as a tween but like. never finished it and i was in love with it then but its been so long now i don’t trust my opinions to be very accurate about it.

i really really want to actually finish it some day!!! but at this point i feel like i should just restart so thats why i keep putting it off bc thats gonna take some dedication when i barely finish shorter things even anymore

so. disclaimer the following is very much filtered through me as a 13 year old and my memories from that plus how friends who love it have influenced me since fdjkghdfkj

fav characters: back then al was my favorite character and i had a crush on izumi curtis dkfjghkdf and then i always loved scar but now i feel he’d def be my fav

least fav characters: i had dumb opinions about this back then i’m sure. i think now i’d probably dislike roy even tho i used to like him. i dont remember enough to say more

fav relationship: i wasn’t big on ships watching it as a kid but i appreciated winry and ed idk. in retrospect and from fanwork friends share i think ed and ling seems like a lot of fun?? oh wait who was that one other mechanic girl i think i shipped her with winry very casually back then??? (edit: ig she wasnt a mechanic i got confused bc she showed winry who made her automail but i meant paninya!!!) but in retrospect i stayed away from fanworks bc they made me uncomfortable with all the gross shit but i didn’t think i was justified in feeling like that :(

fav moment: back then i thought the reveal of some of the people who ended up being homunculuses was so Epic but idk now

headcanons/theories: idk enough!!!!

unpopular opinion: idk probably like ……. going in being conscious of imperialism stuff now i’m sure i’ll have more contrary opinions than i used to but idk enough yet

how’d you find it: i literally just was going through netflix like ‘oh this is a popular anime’ and put it on on a whim

random thoughts: this whole ask took me so long to answer why am i so rambly djfkghjkdfgh also god. my terrible pattern of never finishing media for the smallest of reasons. one day i will actually consume media that takes brain power to process again…… i mostly just read like. romance webcomics and fanfic nowadays rip

thank you for this!!!!

[coalessscence]

one of my favorite worst things to Think About are the ways herb’s casually neglectful childhood sometimes just....surfaces in the every day world of his life now. and since his whole shtick is my childhood was perfect my father is basically god and i have absolutely no parent issues idk what ur talking abt, he winds up having to flail, having to learn on the way down, and try to keep up a cover that he knew all along. which, usually, doesn’t work, and just makes it all the more sad. here’s a few examples i’ve thought of because i don’t love myself:

someone around the station gets stuck with something metal and comments they might need a tetanus shot. herb was definitely never taken to the doctor’s for a checkup and regular vaccinations as a child, and since he works daytime hours lucille takes the kids while he’s at work, so he literally has never had a shot and he doesn’t fully understand what vaccines are, aside from cultural osmosis, so he asks in telling confusion, “what’s that supposed to mean?” @piper-aileen-lenox specifically, thnx for making me think of this and ruining my life xx

when herb and lucille moved in together (i imagine they were engaged but maybe not married just yet) lucille made it clear to her rather sexist fiance that she was expecting him to tow the line around the house just as much as her, which he agreed to, except when she asked him to do the grocery shopping thinking that was a harmless thing he could do (not like she’d trust him to actually get the dishes clean or fold her clothes so they don’t wrinkle). they almost never had food consistently in the house growing up and if they did eat full meals, they only had the food for THAT MEAL around because 1. herb sr. and ruby (herb’s parents) lived an erratic lifestyle of little to no money or a whole lot of money but only for a second because it was burning a hole in herb sr.’s pocket, and because 2. ruby quickly learned spending money on food ahead was pointless because either herb sr. hecked off somewhere w/o warning and it went bad, or his deadbeat friends hung around and ate it all, so she only bought for that day if they had the money for anything. but since no one was ever around to TEACH herb anything and he figured most things out on his own, herb doesn’t understand all this and he literally thinks you’re not supposed to by food until you run out or that you have to throw out whatever you have left at the end of the week because....... who knows ???? that’s just what he thought. it caused multiple arguments early into herb and lucille’s relationship before she figured it out and explained it to him because he didn’t know well enough to ask.

when herb and lucille’s first child, bunny, was born, he had to be shown how to hold a baby by the doctor. he had literally never held or even interacted with a baby before until that moment. he had no siblings (that he knew of), he had no friends as a child because if he wasn’t the bully he was the target and he was an ass just like dear old dad so no one liked him anyway, and he had 0 other family. lucille realized in that moment as she watched his palpable confusion when she extended their newborn child to him that he was going to have a lot of learning and growing to do. she hoped he was ready for it.

god that time there was a station fam barbecue early into herb’s wkrp career and someone, maybe mr. carlson, is like ‘WHO WANTS TO BE THE GRILL MASTER’ like its a big deal and everyone is like oh it has to be herb bc he’s the newest out of us and hes aware all the men see it as a status symbol and he CAN’T be less of a man than another man bc Ego (tm) so hes like of course im the grill master !!! and then panics for the next thirty minutes because he’s literally never even stood next to a grill let alone used one HOW DOES IT WORK the first fifteen minutes he doesnt even have the gas on rip

when herb was, like, 15, he taught himself how to drive a car because one of his “friends” (peers who was a bully that he called a friend and hung out with to stop also getting bullied but who was still bullying him anyway, herb was just brainwashed into thinking that’s what friendship is) wanted them to go out cruising and herb wanted to be a Cool Guy and not look like a chump so he lied and said he could drive. they got pulled over, because of course they did, and herb got in big trouble for you know, driving w/o a licences. the kicker though is that herb didn’t fucking know you can’t drive without a license or that licenses and road tests and drivers ed were even a THING because he literally raised himself and no one ever  t a u g h t   h i m   a n y t h i n g. anyways his dad got called home to deal with it from wherever he was away at at the time and he got in big trouble for interrupting dear old dad’s work anyways so :) what a healthy family

surprisingly, herb DID know how to cook the basics. grilled cheese, pasta, stir fries, a couple casseroles. lucille asked him about it because he was always such a Gender Roles (tm) type of man who wouldn’t even wear a brighter shade of red than like. maroon. in case it got loosely contaminated with the concept of the color pink and he’d have to change his name and move to alaska. so why was he doing a “ womans job “ (cooking) and herb just looked confused and said “what, guys don’t cook?” she told him that no, they usually didn’t and would have laughed at her if she tried to make them, and he laughed awkwardly and absently stirred the pot on the stove and shrugged in mild confusion. “that’s weird. if i didn’t cook i’d have... starved, i guess.”

the bad news is his cooking wasnt GREAT and lucille was happy to take over because again.........self taught. and he has one (1) brain cell so. not Great

LITERALLY DIDN’T KNOW ALL CLOTHES DON’T HAVE TO BE DRY CLEANED. his dad literally wore clothes that had to be dry cleaned Every Day (and we wonder why the tarlek family was short on the food budget god) (and they were ugly clothes too akdhfjfg) and ofc if ruby washed her clothes, it was while herb was at school. he dry cleaned so many clothes that do Not Make Sense to dry clean in college before he slowly figured that out.

did not know what an allowance was. bunny asked him for one and not willing to seem stupid to his swift daughter he told her to ‘ask her mother’, who thought it was hecking weird that her money obsessed husband would say that, so she asked him why and after several long minutes he just shrugged helplessly and said “what’s an allowance?”

don’t even get me started on herb and lucille planning their wedding ( ‘what kind of stuff should we put on the gift register?’ “put on the WHAT?”  ‘what are we going to put on top of the cake?’ “there’s gonna be CAKE?”  ‘i can’t wait for daddy to walk down the isle with me, it’ll mean a lot to him’ “your DAD is gonna walk you down the isle....?? but you’re marrying ME, right?”   ) also herb not knowing the wedding look of the bride is supposed to be a Secret and barging into the room w a question or smth while lucille and her bridesmaids are getting ready, and everyone is hella miffed and he’s like WHAT i’ve seen her naked before and theyre all like THATS NOT THE POINT HERB

herb did Not Know about seasonal allergies. he just........didn’t know. he just thought god hated him and every spring and fall his head sprung a leak. and the whole time he was growing up no one A. listened to him complain about them and put 2 and 2 together, nor B. just taught him about basic first aid stuff in general for that matter he doesnt know shit. anyways, then lucille was like why are you such a tough guy just stop complaining and take some medicine for your stupid allergies and he was like take some what for my what now

ANYWAYS herb’s mom left while he was v young and he doesn’t remember much about her. herb’s dad was literally   n e v e r   home. the people herb’s dad left him with would work for obscenely low amounts of pay or owed herb sr. money and largely used all the money for their own food, drugs, alcohol, or other more unsightly business, and left herb alone to fend for himself. this is the disaster human that that produced, thanks, family dynamics! don’t abandon your children, kids, thanks for coming to my ted talk

[sharksfood]

spoilers for Ralph Breaks the Internet (Wreck-It Ralph 2)

SO i was going to wait to record my thoughts on Ralph Breaks the Internet until after i finished my homework but i cant stop thinking about it!!!

anyways, I saw RBTI on Tuesday night in 3D and it was AMAZING!! i mean, both the movie by itself and how it looked in 3D. i loved that they put in a nod to those movies that took 3D to the fullest potential with stuff coming at you from the screen, when Ralph was throwing the football into the air.

BESIDES THAT i LOVED this movie!!!! i’m no negative nancy when it comes to sequels and i had been wanting a WIR followup since the first one came out!

but to get the biggest aspect out of the way, i was not always on board with the plot of Ralph and Vanellope going into the Internet. when I first heard the movie announcement and the whole Internet aspect it didn’t totally make sense to me. I mean, I originally thought the gang going into online games was a good mix between Internet and video games (since WIR revolves around video games). However I quickly changed my mind, especially since they WOULD be going into online/mobile games.

My initial reaction to the movie as a whole was EXTREMELY POSITIVE!!! I loved how the animation looked, the fact that we got an introduction on what Ralph, Vanellope, Felix, and Tammy (Calhoun) had been up to since the last movie, and that everything including the arcade had changed in basically real time. That last part was a bit sad too, especially with how few games were left in the arcade and that it seems business was not as good for Mr. Litwak as it used to be. BUT this movie, especially the beginning, was like catching up with an old friend after a long time apart! WIR means so much to me and I was so glad Disney took the time to connect to those who’d seen and loved the first movie.

I’ll admit I was a little nervous with how they’d handle the Internet, especially for a fictional universe thats based on the real one, like WIR. I knew they’d have to create fake websites and video games and what not to fit the plot and because of licensing rights. I’m also glad they did this because if Yesss were the algorithm for actual BuzzFeed or YouTube I don’t think they’d let anyone forget that. plus that would be too 4th wall breaking in my opinion. and this movie did A LOT or meta/4th wall stuff. I dont think any of the references or hints or real-world tie ins were annoying or over the top, it was the right amount for me. they could have made everything fictional, but that would fail to hook people. it was the right amount of fiction and real-life.

that being said, I do think some of the things Ralph, Vanellope, and Yesss accomplished couldn’t work in the real world. What bothered me is that any video of Ralph showed him as 3D, like how he looks in Sugar Rush or in the Game Central Station. Yes, that is how he looks “inside” the games and from other video game character’s perspective, but does that work for humans? Maybe it wasn’t explained very well, thats all. WIR is at times a little hard to wrap my head around. But then again, not everything needs to be explained or completely realistic, since, you know, video game characters are not able to coexist in each other’s games or buy stuff from Ebay.

the new characters was SO GOOD especially Yesss, Shank, and Knowsmore (to me anyways). I would have liked if the new characters had interacted with each other on screen more (like Yesss and Shank are friends but you wouldn’t know that without each of them saying so). also the Disney Princesses were adorable and actually more plot-related than i thought they’d be!

the biggest surprise for me is how much importance the movie gave to Vanellope for being a princess, i mean, she got a song and everything! To me she never gave her princessship much mind, since she only wanted to be a racer. by the end of the movie she was farther from being a princess than before. but i think this was intentional and why we got the scene with the other princesses in the first place, Disney wanted to show that there’s no one way to be a princess. obviously Pixar addressed this with Merida, and I think Moana is a good example, too, but Vanellope really is the least-princessy princess. I’m also glad that they didn’t make her song or voice too cute/pretty, it fit with her character, personality, and dream!

the part of this movie that my most impactful for me was the message and eventually plot structure of how Ralph and Vanellope’s friendship was addressed. WIR means a lot to me is many ways, but the fact that romance or blood family isnt the main relationship dynamic is huge.  I mean, I can’t think of many Disney/Pixar movies that do this, and even those that do, friendship is just a subplot. Ralph and Vanellope becoming friends, protecting one another, even in the face of their differences is one of the main messages of WIR (the other being self-acceptance and following your heart). RBTI took this further with the message of how friends can grow, drift apart, have difference dreams, become too attached, and build negative friendships based on anxieties. I’ve NEVER seen this in an animated movie, and it hit me pretty hard.

so with anxiety in mind, I really liked how Vanellope’s glitching was utilized, i mean since she now has a general control on it, she doesn’t glitch out as much. the only time she does in RBTI is when she wants to or when she’s super anxious. its almost like a physical symptom of her having a panic attack. (on a personal note, Vanellope’s glitching was the main thing that helped me get over my fear of glitch, so that relation to anxiety and fear is very meaningful to me) but Vanellope’s anxieties were very different from Ralph’s, which is good! they both struggled with being accepted within their games in the past, and part of that still lingers, though now, especially for Ralph, it manifests in anxiety over their friendship. I really like the direction that Disney/Pixar has taken with some of their movies recently in that the main antagonist is not a villain, but rather an emotion or conflict anthropomorphized.

as for the characters, Ralph and Vanellope were PERFECT. Vanellope is my favorite and she was just amazing. Their characters were the right amount of the same from the first movie and different, since there’s been 6 years for them to grow. I’m also really happy that Felix and Tammy were in RBTI, though I wish they were in it more. I mean, this was Ralph and Vanellope’s movie, but most of Tammy’s appearances were just for comedic affect, in my opinion. They also seemed way different, but I guess that’s marriage? It’s as if their character-specific dialogue and quirks were toned down. Maybe after a second viewing it’ll make more sense to me.

My only other complaints are that when Ralph accidentally finds the comment section of BuzzTube, his reaction and that whole scene didn’t add much to the story. I think it was important, especially given Ralph’s past, but it was so short. Ralph seemed to have forgotten all about it after the scene ended. The comments and toxic parts of the Internet play a much bigger role than that, so I wish it was addressed better. I also thought it was weird that we didn’t get any clear context as to why Mr. Litwak got Wifi in the first place. I mean, I assumed it was to get an online presence for the Arcade, but i don’t think that was actually addressed. Of course thats a minor thing compared to my previous comment. 

The last thing I noticed is that the main conflict of the movie, the steering wheel of Sugar Rush breaking and how they’d need to buy a new one or Sugar Rush would be gone for good, was introduced too soon. I think this was done because there was so much content to get through within 2 hours, and I know that the main premise was involving the Internet, so staying in the Arcade would defeat this purpose. It’s just that to me it all sort of fell into place a little too easy and fast. Also, Vanellope feeling trapped in a boring loop of her game and other feelings from the characters in the beginning were told rather than shown. I know already mentioned that I thought certain things weren’t “explained” well enough, but I mean that like, both visually and through dialogue. With the emotional parts of the movie’s conflicts, I think those developed well once Ralph and Vanellope got into the Internet, but it seemed “presented” almost at first. Again, I only saw it once and its not totally fresh in my mind anymore, so maybe after seeing it again it’ll clear this up.

okay so as for the aesthetic and animation of RBTI it was GORGEOUS!!! I love how Disney/Pixar can take things like the Internet or your brain (like in Inside Out) and turn them into working cities/structures that are creative and make sense! I really like that Pop Ups are maneuvered by sentient beings like street salespeople, since the feeling of online popups and ads is the same! Also, the Dark Web being the underbelly of the Internet “city” and all the avatars are dressed like theyre in Incognito mode is amazing. i also LOVED the viruses, since they looked like gross, scary, creepy fictional bugs or visual germs (they reminded me of Osmosis Jones in a way). How the viruses functioned, at least the Insecurity Virus, made sense for how I think most people imagine computer viruses to act. I honestly don’t know how that stuff happens, and I bet Disney knew most of their audiences dont either, so they took some artistic liberties with that in mind. But the virus was a clever plot device because it literally detected insecurities, both in that Ralph/Vanellope were insecure about their friendship, and neither of them “belonged” in the Internet.

ANOTHER THING is when Shank and her crew had to fight the Slaughter Race players, the distinction between player and NPC was clear and funny. It felt very GTA to me. How they handled Slaughter Race in general was great, since it was obviously a violent video game, but they didn’t tone it down too much to loose that feeling. I think it would’ve been cool to see cars and buildings “update” like they do in some games, too. OH the way that the Virus Ralphs joined together to make the Giant Ralph and that they kept moving to make the entire thing kinetic was SO CREEPY BUT COOL!!! that must have taken forever to animate.  I also noticed that on the Giant Ralph the little virus dudes were like laying down or posed a certain way to give the impression of different textures or colors on Giant Ralph, which is amazing!!! the filmmakers and animators paid so much care to the look and feel of this movie and it really paid off.

okay last few things before I forget: all of the main characters were great examples of positive and negative personality aspects that real people could reflect on. Ralph felt so much more openly emotional and body positive than in the first, which for a dude character is great!!  Vanellope has always been a great example of a girl who likes “tomboy” or “masculine” stuff but still likes cute and “girly” stuff (i mean she obviously wasn’t into the whole princess thing but she found her own way around it!). Felix and Tammy in RBTI were obviously an example on how married couples can still love each other just like the day they met! Did i mention how much I love Yesss? I love her SO MUCH!!! she wore a different outfit/hairstyle every time we saw her, she was fun and smart and over the course of the movie grows to actually care about Ralph and Vanellope beyond their Internet fame. the MUSIC was fantastic as always, and I love Imagine Dragon’s song and the Julia Michaels rendition of Vanellope’s song on Slaughter Race.

Just like the first one, this movie was funny, heartwarming, emotional, and really fun!! I hope it gets all the recognition and love it deserves. I can’t accurately say if I like this one of the previous better, since I’ve only seen it once. HOWEVER I ma really glad that Disney has made a lot of merch for RBTI since the first one got barely anything. All in all, I loved Ralph Breaks the Internet!!!!

P.S. Did yall see the after credits scene?

[reactingtosomething]

Reacting to The Old Guard

She Is Not In Any Way Playing

The Setup: It’s our first Reaction to a comic book! And it’s not from the Big Two! Written by Greg Rucka (Wonder Woman, Gotham Central, Black Magick) and drawn by Leandro Fernandez (Punisher MAX, The Incredible Hulk, Deadpool & Cable) -- a duo who previously collaborated on Wolverine and Queen & Country -- The Old Guard is about (mostly) immortal warriors who can trace their lives back through Napoleon’s attempted invasion of Russia, the Crusades, and the conquests of Alexander the Great. They’re led by Andromache of Scythia, but you can call her Andy.

Andy’s fought and fucked, loved and loathed her way across thousands of years and at least six continents, and she is tired. So when a seemingly routine rescue mission goes way off the rails, and just a few hours later her team learns that -- contrary to what they’ve believed for a century or two -- they’re not the last immortals left after all, Andy has to find out if she can still surprise a world that she didn’t realize could still surprise her.

Kris, who briefly studied ancient military history in college, really liked Rucka’s Batwoman: Elegy and his webcomic Lady Sabre & The Pirates of the Ineffable Aether, so when he learned about The Old Guard he asked Marchae -- a BIG fan of Rucka’s Lazarus -- if she’d want to react to it.

Two spoiler notices below, but until the jump it’s just first-issue stuff.

KRIS: So we’ve both read some Greg Rucka before

I don’t think I’m an expert, but I’m fairly aware of at least the range of his work

MARCHAE: I am a HUGE fan of at least one of his comics!!!

KRIS: And he seems to be One of the Good Ones re: male feminist writers

MARCHAE: YES I absolutely agree and spent even more time thinking about that as I read The Old Guard

and this notion that I have about “super heros”

but also I like some of the things he examines in his works, at least what I’ve read

KRIS: Oh good I think we’ve all wanted to hear more from you about your theory of superheroes, so definitely feel free to get into that when it’s relevant

MARCHAE: LOL

I definitely will talk more that’s for sure - and especially since I’m reading Jessica Jones at the moment

KRIS: Also I really like how distinctive most of the faces in this are, just wanted to say that upfront although I am not super qualified to discuss the art

MARCHAE: So I’ve spent some time making connections between what I’m currently reading , a traditional comic, versus the indie books

Neither am I - but the art is gorgeous

KRIS: OH and for our readers who may not be super into comics (yet), maybe we should say how we’re reading

I’m using the Comixology reader on their website, in Guided View mode

MARCHAE: And I use an app from my public library called Hoopla

I also use  a guided view mode - however I definitely prefer hardcopies

KRIS: I like Guided View a lot, although occasionally you lose some of the impact of splash pages, and there are very rarely (but especially with older comics) sequencing errors

ANYWAY sorry tangent

MARCHAE: I am reading newer ones mostly, it definitely feels more cinematic to me reading it electronically.

I like it a lot especially for fast paced ones like The Old Guard

like an action film

KRIS: But I wanted to just get it out there that there are good accessible digital ways to read comics, which is often more affordable, and also for some reason Amazon is selling a bunch of Marvel comics at massive discounts

Yes! Thank you for getting us back on track -- the action layouts here are great

MARCHAE: Affordable and FREE!

and you’re welcome!

I am a newbie to comics- I’ve only been reading them for a year maybe less - and I am obsessed with how much I can relate to them from a screenwriting perspective in terms of sequencing and layout. In this weird abstract way. This was one of the best one’s I’ve read in a while in terms of the pacing with layout - and I love it. I actually started re-reading the book just to gawk at the art etc

KRIS: Oh you should check out Rucka’s web comic Lady Sabre and the Pirates of the Ineffable Aether [see above] -- it was like the equivalent of a page or so twice a week, and Rucka’s script for each entry was included

MARCHAE: **GASPS**

KRIS: I always mean to really break down and study a comic book or two but just like with studying TV, I end up being too lazy, and just hoping I’ll absorb lessons through sheer osmosis

MARCHAE: LOL -

I have studied the dialogue

I think more closely than anything

although I really need to study their structure

KRIS: That’s interesting

I would not guess that most comics writers do dialogue as well as Rucka

MARCHAE: It’s something about these short bursts of dialogue that kind of flow with the quick images we get that makes sense to me… I’ve read a couple that I really prefer

KRIS: I’m interested in how comics people obviously think in “shots”

MARCHAE: Revival is good and so is Alex and Ada … it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they are super character driven

KRIS: and I think a lot of screenwriters don’t

MARCHAE: YEAH

KRIS: or aren’t necessarily really well trained to

MARCHAE: It is fascinating when you think about because there are SO MANY correlations between the two

because as screenwriters and movie makers we end up having to think like comic writers when we get to the storyboarding portion of the work

which i guess is more of a production function

but

KRIS: Right, it should be super obvious, and we do get TOLD to think in shots but there’s still such a division (at least in our film school experience) between learning to write and learning to tell stories visually

MARCHAE: I feel like with comics the action - even  in some of the not as good ones I’ve read is all about taking you to that next shot

EXACTLY!!!

KRIS: Honestly this is one of my very favorite parts in the whole book, just as a visual storytelling beat:

MARCHAE: I was grateful that I had the experience of reading comics at least near the end of my time in school… i did take a lot of lessons from the comics

OHHH

tell me why

KRIS: I think a lot of the impact for me was in the guided view

The panel before this is Booker trying to talk Andy into the mission: “He says there are kids involved, Andy. Kids.”

Then in GV you get everyone looking at Booker, and you can linger on that panel

MARCHAE: The guided view makes a tremendous difference!

it feels like a moving image

KRIS: Then the next panel makes you sort of realize that it’s not really “everyone” looking at one person, but Joe and Nico looking back and forth between the new guy and the boss

although I guess you don’t get the “new guy” information until later

MARCHAE: Exactly

KRIS: Yes! The movement is there, and can have this weird interaction with how long you can linger in a single shot

But I guess what I like about this page is how the visuals help establish the relationships even without Andy’s exposition

MARCHAE: And i feel like you should be able to tell the story without the words

some of my favorites were the panels without words period

I especially love the first few pages

KRIS: Yeah, and in a nutshell that’s what comics writers are trained to do and what a lot of screenwriters (including me!) are often too precious about their own dialogue to internalize

MARCHAE: its just a few bits of inner dialogue

(side note your dialogue is beautiful!!!)

KRIS: Yeah but I didn’t become a playwright

MARCHAE: YESSSSSS

KRIS: ^That spread is so amazing and efficient

MARCHAE: YESSS  and YESSS

those were my favorites

oh my word and its just pretty

KRIS: It’s not even a really dense two-page spread by any means and there are only like 30 words on it

But it tells us so much about Andy

MARCHAE: I’m looking at it now on my device and its in guided view - so it shows up as each individual panel

YES!

KRIS: Right

MARCHAE: and I’m hooked from the beginning and that’s what I think makes this story effective and invests you in it

Rucka does this with my favorite comic - Lazarus

also

KRIS: She’s a warrior, she’s been around forever, she’s bi, she’s tired, she doesn’t have a lot of meaningful human connection in her life

MARCHAE: And we get that quickly

and efficiently

KRIS: and obviously the sense of repetition

in her day-to-day (century-to-century)

MARCHAE: thats been going on for centuries

[SPOILERS throughout below]

KRIS: Oh sorry did you want to say more about Lazarus

MARCHAE: It’s okay -

I was just going to say that there are some definite similarties between the two books

Specifically just the idea of strong female protagonists who are capable and leaders

and also the notion of these women dodging death

All. the. time!

I thought it was interesting to have read and to be a HUGE fan of both books now

and think critically about what he means to demonstrate and also why i consider the woman he portrays more heroic than other “heroes”

that was a long rant LOL

sorry

KRIS: And there’s a quietly great line in chapter 2 about how everyone just defaulted to Andy being the leader because she was the oldest, so it was obvious

MARCHAE: Yes I remember that

KRIS: And I haven’t really thought about this, but it’s interesting and I’m assuming very deliberate that the oldest and the youngest leads are the women

But so matter-of-factly

MARCHAE: Yes - I did note that and remember being worried for Andy and what it meant later on in the series

and also the conflicts that we could expect to see in the future books

I think it’s smart  honestly and kind of this mentorship that also gets to happen between the two women

we know that historically women have a difficult time finding mentors so I guess it is great to see it demonstrated in this medium

I think we’ll eventually see some bickering between the two , but ultimately a respect which is also not often depicted in other medium as much as I feel like it should be

KRIS: I’ll save it for a little later but I did screenshot that great (affectionate) bickering toward the end

MARCHAE: YES!

KRIS: We often write these in a way that sort of assumes the reader knows at least generally what we’re talking about but maybe we should try explaining a little about at least the main character relationships here

MARCHAE: That’s true - especially considering this is our first time reacting to a comic book

KRIS: Oh my god wait I just want to show this page transition I didn’t pick up on in Guided View

MARCHAE: I was trying to find a good article that listed the main concept with characters (mostly because I need to know how to spell andy’s real name)

KRIS: The color palette!

MARCHAE: It’s beautiful I liked these panels

KRIS: They only say Andy’s whole name twice but it’s not the same both times!

MARCHAE: I have this weird way that I read them… 1. for story. 2. art with story 3. only with art

KRIS: Oh interesting

MARCHAE: even the layout is nice

KRIS: I’m not much of a re-reader (or re-watcher) but I should be

MARCHAE: I don’t generally - but because I am so used to reading “regular books” I have to almost get the story then go back so I can appreciate the art with the story

then just the art cause #pretty

KRIS: Oh man I sidetracked us again

OK so

Andy!

MARCHAE: its okay really theres is a lot here to talk about actually!!!

Yes, Andy short for Andromeda?

I think

KRIS: I THINK Andromache is what her name is supposed to be, since that’s what the Comixology store “logline” uses

MARCHAE: YES

KRIS: and that’s what Booker calls her

MARCHAE: I was all off LOL

KRIS: but when she tells Nile an issue or two earlier, she says Andronika

which I’m assuming is just a continuity mistake on someone’s part

MARCHAE: I am now curious if it changes with the time

KRIS: and maybe a reprint will correct it

MARCHAE: like each century she modifies it?

yes but she’s centuries old

and most important

KRIS: But I got the sense that we were given everyone’s “true” name at least once

MARCHAE: Immortal - she can’t die - at least she’s not able to right now

KRIS: So “Andy” is her modern day shorthand and maybe in the 1800s it was something else, but Andromache is her birth name

MARCHAE: yeah! that’s my deduction at least

KRIS: So Andromache means “battle of a man”

(I think Andronika would mean something like victory of a man?)

MARCHAE: I love your to the minute, on the spot research!

KRIS: Well Andromache I knew because I briefly studied Greek in undergrad and have always been a little bit of an Ancient Greek Stuff nerd

What I’m not sure of is in what sense “battle” is being used

MARCHAE: are the names from the same era?

I guess it could be two fold

KRIS: Like, is it a battle as in an event, or is it in the sense of “she’s got fight like a man”

MARCHAE: Oh i was going in a different direction!!!

wow

yours is probably more appropriate LOL

KRIS: Andromache is at least as old as the Odyssey

MARCHAE: I was thinking more of “battle of a man” - as in battle against one’s self

KRIS: Oh interesting

MARCHAE: like man against man conflict which i suppose is fitting considering that she’s somewhat immortal

KRIS: oh I meant the Iliad -- Andromache is the wife of Hektor

MARCHAE: OH YEAH

Also thinking of “battle of a man” to mean battle of time and life

we always want to live longer, better, never die

KRIS: I don’t know much at all about Arabic so I don’t know how old Joe’s real name is, etymologically speaking

MARCHAE: and here Andy is wanting to be done

I loved that scene where introducing himself

KRIS: Yeah, that’s pretty classic

MARCHAE: and we get to Joe!

So I am checking an article and [the Newsarama interviewer] says Andy’s real name is Andronika

https://www.newsarama.com/33272-rucka-joins-the-old-guard-with-queen-country-artist-fernandez.html

(also side note I feel redeemed and a bit smart that he mentions some of the themes I pointed out and made similar comparisons! )

KRIS: OK skimming now

“John Wick meets Highlander”

That’s pretty great

MARCHAE: Truth!!

KRIS: Oh Black Magick I should link to that [see above]

MARCHAE: I haven’t read that one

KRIS: Anyway where were we?

MARCHAE: Ok we have digressed again! I guess a brief synopsis of the main characters

KRIS: Right right

So we have this 4-person mercenary team

MARCHAE: Right and they’ve been connected FOREVER it seems like

KRIS: Led by [Andronika/Andromache?] Andy, who is literally biblically old

MARCHAE: Well it doesn’t seem like - they have been together for ever

KRIS: Then Nico and Joe (Nicolo and Yusuf) who met during the First Crusade, so 1090s

And presumably they linked up with Andy sometime between the Crusades and the Napoleonic Wars, when we get Booker

MARCHAE: There is a lot of history here

KRIS: And there’s this stuff about how when a new immortal dies for the first time, other immortals (maybe within a certain range?) start having dreams about them

MARCHAE: and that’s how they are introduced or at least made aware that they will be meeting someone new? did I read that correctly

KRIS: Yeah

MARCHAE: HA - I misread your text LOL

I literally rephrased what you said LOL

KRIS: Andy had to figure it out the first time it happened, like the dream doesn’t spell anything out for them

MARCHAE: They are often killed or incredibly injured during their battles and they heal themselves which is how they discover ultimately that they are immortal

for a spell at least

KRIS: Oh there are some GREAT “match cuts” in this

There’s a really good one in the Nico/Joe origin story

MARCHAE: OH YEAHHHHHH

KRIS: 

But that whole sequence is great

MARCHAE: I loved the twist there

KRIS: So yeah sorry for our readers my mental leap isn’t obvious, but this is preceded by a couple pages of Joe and Nico during the Crusades repeatedly killing each other

MARCHAE: I sent over a few screen shots hopefully they will come through…

The book definitely has a distinct aesthetic that’s for sure

KRIS: It’s mostly serious but lightly comic, like they just don’t question it, like okay yeah I guess I’ll just kill you again

Oh getting your screenshots now

Yes the faces (again)! You can see the modern Nico and Joe even under all the facial hair

MARCHAE: you mentioned my idea of hero

KRIS: Yes

MARCHAE: and your point “it’s mostly serious but lightly comic”

that’s the thing… saving lives/the world is a serious thing

these people have real problems that are connected usually to slightly dystopia ideas of our current world

I feel like with more mainstream comics we are in some alternate reality all together and the people are trying to be funny and trying to save the world and trying to be cool…

I feel like in Rucka’s books (and also a few other’s I read) it’s rooted in something that i can grasp and their problems are real

so in this text it’s when does my suffering end

in a book like lazarus it’s why won’t my family love me

and it’s not in this over the top let me fly all over the place and shoot missiles out of my hands kind of way

it’s serious

it’s business

KRIS: But I think tonal variation is a good thing

for the genre and the industry

Like a lot of the recent DC movies are SUPER SERIOUS on a surface level, but they’re not necessarily handling ideas in an intellectually rigorous way

MARCHAE: I absolutely agree I guess in a world I could see myself being saved by someone who is more similar to Andy than say Captain America

I think that’s the thing I like is that it is this exploration of more complex ideas in these types of comics and I feel more connected to the work

it’s more accessible

KRIS: And even though the Marvel movies are lighter, and not SUPER thematically driven, they’re relatively smart about the thematics they do include

See I think most people would say Marvel’s tone is more accessible

But I think you might mean accessible in a different way

MARCHAE: LOL hence the mega fafillion dollar industry

KRIS: Like you’re looking for something concrete to latch onto

MARCHAE: I think I agree with you there - I want a take-away

KRIS: And I think the Iron Man tone is more “here is a world that speaks the language you speak with your friends” in a generalized sense

MARCHAE: I can give you that…

the more mainstream comics make the business of saving the world seem less serious

I also am a lover of drama and heavy topics so I think there is also the attraction - these people don’t always feel like they have be “on” to me

they are trying to make it

and that I can relate to!

KRIS: I think that’s because “saving the world” isn’t REALLY what they’re about, though, to the extent that they’re about something

I think at some point, maybe with all four of us, I do want to talk more about the difficulty you have with comedy

MARCHAE: It’s like an intervention LOL

KRIS: No! Well maybe a little. But it’s so ingrained for you that I think I also just want to understand

Maybe when we eventually return to Sweet/Vicious, which I still really want to do

MARCHAE: comedy is truly a challenge for me with the exception of a few - but even those make a larger statement in my opinion!

we do need to finish S/V

KRIS: I’d also like to see you and Keely talk about comedy

ANYWAY

We should talk about Nile

MARCHAE: that might be fun - Keely and I have talked about why I like her brand of comedy best…

OK NILE

KRIS: So Nile is an American Marine

in a Female Engagement Team in Afghanistan

MARCHAE: I absolutely adore her

she’s the “youngest” immortal

KRIS: So at first I didn’t realize she didn’t know she was immortal

For some reason I assumed she had abandoned the team at some point

MARCHAE: OHHHH

KRIS: But then she becomes our (great) audience surrogate

MARCHAE: Which is why I like her - she’s new- but it’s clear she’s competent

and is legit just trying to understand “what the heck is going on here”

KRIS: Yeah, and she gets to push back a lot when Andy is like “don’t worry about it”

But never in a way that sells out either of their characters

I feel like so often the “new one” is obnoxious

or the “old one” is a tired “Asshole with a Heart of Gold” trope

MARCHAE: Agreed! it is very organic and you can believe in them… but also it establishes what the relationship can be

I also think that because we know that eventually these people run out of “changes” to live - I almost felt like we are operating on a clock

ticking clock*

it ramped up the tension for me when reading  - my mind was legit going a mile a min.

KRIS: And it’s this female friendship that never really leans on “the women! they are alike and get along because they are women!” but also doesn’t completely pretend gender doesn’t matter

Oh man that freaked me out when Andy shot herself to convince Nile

I was like “WHAT IF THIS IS THE ONE, ANDY WHAT ARE YOU DOING”

MARCHAE: YESSS

Because she doesn’t know when the one will be

that’s what makes me nervous about this entire series …

KRIS: The moment when they find Booker [temporarily] dead was amazing to me

MARCHAE: like antsy and I like the characters so it’s worse LOL

KRIS: Andy’s narration is like “he’s the youngest, if he’s really dead it would be so unfair”

And we’re trained to THINK that means “unfair because he was so young”

But then there’s the reversal of “unfair to ME (Andy)”

MARCHAE: Right! But he isn’t young at all - none of them are except for Nile

it kind of plays with your mind when you put into context that one of them is 5000 years old? did I read that or am I making that up - either way it’s insane

But there is also this entertainment of how in real life we all want to live forever, Andy is ready to kick the can

KRIS: Yeah in the last issue Andy says she’s over 6000

so the others are ALL babies compared to her

MARCHAE: yet they don’t ACTUALLY live forever at all

geesh i was off by 1000 years

good googley-moogley

KRIS: haha

So we get what becomes, by a little bit, our central relationship between the oldest woman in the world and the youngest woman on the team

MARCHAE: I love that! LOVE LOVE LOVE IT!!!

KRIS: although the book really does manage to make all the relationships pretty robust

Nico and Joe are our romance, and where a lot of our humor comes from

MARCHAE: The majority of it actually… and they are some deep relationships

KRIS: Andy and Booker obviously have a lot going on because of her dependence on his tech savvy and then The Twist

MARCHAE: (but this isn’t unusual for Rucka which is why I’m #obsessed and why he was my entrance into comics)

KRIS: I loved how the running joke of Andy’s inability to learn new tech ends up becoming a totally serious, really important story detail

MARCHAE: It actually does and it runs through the entire story

it’s smart and well thought out and incredibly problematic in our current world

KRIS: Only tangentially related but I really like how well the body language is rendered in this panel:

MARCHAE: and intentional on the writers part and what I’d imagine- if I were a 6000 years old hero - a real real problem

KRIS: Here’s a better one for the “joke” aspect

MARCHAE: LOL

KRIS: If you had that panel out of context it would be totally relatable for a lot of people

MARCHAE: she is so clueless - and it’s funny

KRIS: Although maybe with relatives who don’t look as young as Andy does

MARCHAE: Oh god I know all too well!!!

It’s also funny because she’s so on top of it in every other area of the job

I want more of her backstory too - I am so curious - I’ve already downloaded the other book

KRIS: which other book?

I love her

MARCHAE: I misread - I just looked and it doesn’t exist LOL

😟 sad face

I was curious about what your thought were about the exploration of being immortal

or mostly immortal

KRIS: I mean personally I still find the idea of death terrifying, maybe because I’ve never really dealt with it yet

So I’m kind of in the “yes we should try to become immortal” camp most days

And I tend to feel that the idea that immortality would ultimately be boring or soul-crushing is kind of a self-serving one, to make us feel better about mortality

BUT

I think this is a really good exploration of it

MARCHAE: interesting!

KRIS: The speech Booker gives to Nile about why she shouldn’t contact her family is really really good

MARCHAE: and kind of sad I loved it (not because it was sad, but because it was good)

KRIS: And Andy’s ultimate epiphany -- she doesn’t want to die, she wants something to live for again -- is really simple in the best way

And it’s also really sad, and I think mostly unremarked upon, that it takes Booker betraying the team for Andy to realize that the team is what she has to live for

MARCHAE: yeah…. she’s incredibly melancholy to me and I like that she’s wanting to push again

they are her family

KRIS: And it’s great that part of how Nile pushes the change in Andy’s mindset is very specifically “millennial” -- she’s always hustled, she’s worked a bunch of jobs briefly and picked up a bunch of random skills

in a way that’s convenient to the plot but doesn’t feel TOO Convenient

MARCHAE: Exactly - I could believe and buy into each and every single character

KRIS: Everything about Nile is like, That’s So Real

MARCHAE: I wanted to be on the team by the end of it

even the emotions that Andy experiences

there is a lot of hurt …maybe that imitates from the page

A lot of it is in her inner dialogue, the panel placement and the colors

but you feel for her

and you want her to win and win hard

KRIS: So hard

It was amazing to me that they actually fit a Booker redemption arc into this

and it works because of Andy’s feelings

MARCHAE: they do! A lot rides on the protagonist here - And what I think is amazing is that she carries so much of the tone for what we experience over the story - because of her we are able to buy the rest of them

I think if we had been led by anyone else it might not have been as effective

KRIS: It’s very successful at being clearly led by one character but still having a really strong “ensemble” feel

And that first issue and a half have to do so much heavy lifting to establish the team relationships so we buy the motivations when they spend most of the rest of the story separated

MARCHAE: It really is amazing from a storytelling standpoint

I could see the movie adaptation as I was reading it

Its so well crafted

KRIS: I think this arc could actually work as a feature

MARCHAE: (have you read lazarus?)

KRIS: and not lose much detail

Not yet

MARCHAE: (KRIS!!!!!! THAT IS A FEATURE WAITING TO BE MADE)

(BUT KRIS READ IT STAT!!!)

And it would be beautiful to shoot those period scenes

KRIS: It would

(I just love the face drawing so much in this book)

MARCHAE: they are much more expressive than others  - I feel like other books Ive read are more sketch like

?

KRIS: This sequence was VERY cinematic too

Not in a spectacle way but just in a general visual storytelling way

with the elevator door

I feel like a lot of superhero books don’t bother making faces distinctive

MARCHAE: That bugs me too - I think it’s why i started reading them three times

KRIS: It can get especially ridiculous when people don’t bother drawing Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne differently from each other

The one issue I can think of in The Old Guard is that in the first issue, it wasn’t super clear to me that Joe was a man of color

And I feel like Andy’s skin tone was also a little variable, but it’s more or less obvious that she’s supposed to be from Somewhere In the Mediterranean

MARCHAE: I  didn’t entirely register that either until he said his name

I can agree with that too

I also get the impression that Nile is also likely a POC as well

KRIS: Nile for sure read to me as a black (or possibly multiracial) woman, I guess the color was just off in the first chapter

MARCHAE: it was refreshing to see a more diverse group of characters that’s for sure

KRIS: Oh shit my mistake I guess the Scythians (Andy) are of Iranian/Central Asian descent

Yes! Which was why I was so glad Joe turned out not to be white -- at first I was like “hmmm this is an oddly white book for someone as woke as Greg Rucka”

MARCHAE: OH NO WAY!! (Re Andy)

KRIS: I really should have known that from like freshman year classics courses

MARCHAE: You are much more well versed than I am in historical references  and I definitely don’t have a tremendous breath of the classics

KRIS: I guess we should talk about the action

It’s almost funny that we haven’t, much

This is very much an action story

MARCHAE: There is so much action that’s for certain and I LOVE IT

KRIS: And all of the set pieces are distinct

MARCHAE: I love seeing it on the page, the pacing of it, how the panels are set up and YES the set pieces!!!!

KRIS: Which is definitely something superhero comics struggle with

Guided View is GREAT for these layouts

MARCHAE: It works beautifully and makes the work fly

KRIS: There have to be some good interviews out there with comic artists about how that’s influenced their approach in the last several years

MARCHAE: like the action legitimately in this comic soared off the page in my opinion I wanted to be in it

that’s really interesting I’ll have to take a gander

KRIS: I do have to say, I wished Andy’s axe had come back

MARCHAE: YES! She’s fierce!

theres a cover where she’s flailing that axe

She’s powerful

the look on her face

even and her posture

I LOVE THIS IMAGE

KRIS: For our readers, that variant cover is by Nicola Scott, Greg Rucka’s collaborator on Wonder Woman: Year One

Yeah even though I’ll tag this as a spoiler post I won’t include the axe sequence, everyone should have to go read the book to see it

It’s short but awesome

MARCHAE: Its so unapologetic and that makes me happy as a woman!

(re the axe photo)

but to talk about action

I really liked this and how it looked!

KRIS: so good

The other standout for me was the Crusade battle -- the use of silhouettes in the night scene

MARCHAE: it reminded me of the old school batman TV show but also has this frantic feel to it like if you are in the room - the images move almost

KRIS: And the use of the BANGs in the background instead of within most of the panels is really interesting

MARCHAE: OHHHHH that’s a great one too

KRIS: literal background noise

MARCHAE: it reminds me of sound

AHHHH YESSSS!!!!

visual cacaphony

which i suppose is a bizarre pairing of words but the best i could come up with

KRIS: It conveys the chaos but also leaves the actual action layouts clear

MARCHAE: nothing is left to confuse the reader - which when I was a newer reader of comics was always confusing

KRIS: Oh here’s that great banter scene:

MARCHAE: these comics are new user friendly

KRIS: Definitely an advantage of indie books

MARCHAE: I like that one - laughed a few time reading this book like legit noise came out which doesn’t happen terribly often

KRIS: I mean I get it, if you’re writing Big Two characters, you want to reference the stuff you grew up with, it can’t be an easy balance to make it accessible to new readers and rich for longtime readers, but still, you can’t blame people for having trouble getting into most recent Marvel or DC stuff

Yeah I guess a way to describe how humor works best for you is that in a scene like this it’s like, cathartic?

Or it’s a release valve

You like it as punctuation, not as the baseline

MARCHAE: I can read it now but I tried starting with Hellboy and was like ABSOLUTELY NOT!

KRIS: Oh that’s interesting because isn’t Hellboy indie? Was it that you jumped into a late story arc?

MARCHAE: I am not sure… if it is… All i know is that it was a challenged to follow on the page

I think I started at the beginning?

Also YES! in regards to humor!!! It’s kind of like a sigh 😊

KRIS: I only know the movies but I’d believe it’s just a weird-ass book as a first comic

MARCHAE: I do not love humor as a baseline - ever generally

LOLOl

it was not a good first jaunt I didn’t finish it and sold it back and the comic book store owner was like what do you like - we chatted and he handled me Lazarus

and I’ve been hooked on the comics since and they all have the same tone save one that I like called Alex and Ada

We’ve digressed again

KRIS: yep

I’m just grabbing a link for Alex and Ada to put into the post [see above]

MARCHAE: yeah its drastically different in tone from what I generally read - but the characters and story were pretty good!

Also an Image comic if I’m not mistaking

KRIS: Yes

MARCHAE: Yup!

KRIS: (For readers: Image is a publishing house like DC and Marvel, but all of its books are creator-owned and independent of each other, rather than company-owned characters in a shared universe)

MARCHAE: Correct! The ones I’ve read seem incredibly character driven to me and tend to be more focused on themes and ideas

What else are we missing - I feel like we’ve covered so much with this one trade!

?

KRIS: I was just gonna ask you that

We haven’t really talked about the villain but I think that’s okay

Don’t want to spoil everything

We really want you to read it yourselves, everyone!

MARCHAE: I really hope people read this one!

Along with the others we’ve recommended!

KRIS: It’s very accessible if you’re new to comics, the art is clean and you won’t have trouble following it, and Greg Rucka is arguably one of the most acclaimed writers in comics right now so I promise it’s not a risky buy

although MM did you get it from the library, you said?

MARCHAE: I did using the Hoopla App but I will probably eventually buy it for my collection (I do have a comic collection and I keep them in plastic!)

KRIS: Should we talk about the ending? I can add another FOR REAL MAJOR SPOILERS warning around here

[the VERY END is briefly discussed below]

MARCHAE: Can i just say I was absolutely sad when it ended

I was mad indeed

but yes let’s

KRIS: I really liked it

MARCHAE: I think I just wanted the book to keep going LOL

KRIS: Oh for sure

But there’s just a lot of great storytelling in those few pages

Even just that first page in Malta

MARCHAE: And it really is a hero saves the day type deal and shows Nile and Andy working collaboratively

again the art is beautiful (I just sent another image let me know if you get it)

KRIS: Just got it

Yeah it’s such a hero shot

MARCHAE: The entire team really comes together!

KRIS: And the use of light is great

MARCHAE: (sent over another one)

KRIS: Yeah I don’t think I’ll include that in the post for spoilers’ sake but it’s a great page

I think the “zoom out” makes it

MARCHAE: but even the quote at the end is amazing: “ Soldiers live and wonder why”

and it perfectly encapsulates what this story is about thematically

why do they - survivors guilt

the desire to move forward and be better

the desire to end something peacefully and in your own time

KRIS: Glen Cook is a fantasy author you might like -- maybe check out The Black Company

MARCHAE: but you do want this story to keep going and be with these characters for much longer than the trade allows

I WILL!!!

KRIS: Someone’s adapting that series for TV, I forget who but I think for one of the premium cable channels

More great body language:

MARCHAE: http://deadline.com/2017/04/eliza-dushku-star-the-black-company-series-adaptation-david-goyer-im-global-1202076367/

There are so many interpersonal nuances in this book it was fun to look at

KRIS: I like that Nico is very clearly ignoring Joe here -- no word balloons, but it’s obvious that this is heated

and classic Andy not wanting to deal

MARCHAE: he’s turned away from him entirely

KRIS: (I love that I can say “classic Andy” after just five issues)

MARCHAE: LOLOLOL

she’s so unimpressed by the entire situation

probably mentally sighing

KRIS: So what do you think of the punishment?

MARCHAE: its kind of devastating I think for Booker - It also makes me curious about what time feels like for these people

KRIS: Yeah

MARCHAE: What does 100 years feel like when you’ve lived a fafillion years already

KRIS: They have no friends besides each other

You don’t even really get the sense that Booker sleeps around the way Andy does because the team is a liiiiittle bit judgey about it in #1

MARCHAE: LOL they kind of are!

and it would just be complicated - we see that with Andy and her relationship

it reminds me of the first book of a series i like called the discovery of witches

just that idea of engaging in a relationship with someone who is mortal you’re constantly reminded that you are too much - and that the person you are with will never be enough for you because they will perish

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8667848-a-discovery-of-witches

(the text is now being turned into a major television show)

KRIS: I really love that the last two pages have no dialogue

It’s not a long epilogue at all but it also doesn’t feel too abrupt because those last two pages are a really well done kind of fade-out

MARCHAE: it’s incredibly effective - just as much as the opening which had very little dialogue

KRIS: I mean, just to really drive this home for everyone, not that I think anyone missed this, but THE LAST LINE OF THE BOOK IS “you’re alone”

And it’s so simple, it’s not a Dramatic! scene at all, it’s so understated, and that’s why it lands so hard

Andy’s not a Dramatic! person

MARCHAE: and you absolutely know she means it and is not in any way playing with this man

KRIS: ANDY DOES NOT PLAY

MARCHAE: Almost like I’ve worked to hard to get us here  - I’m disappointed and i hate to do this but it has to be done

KRIS: It’s so good

This will probably not be our last comic Reaction. Marchae really hopes you read not just this but other Rucka work. In the meantime, follow us on Twitter!