#that's the majority of the posts on this blog really

[str4wbstudy]

It's the first day of school eve! We had snow that canceled the first day of the semester and I spent it folding clothes, making blueberry walnut bread, and playing minecraft. I'm trying to fix my sleep schedule. I was tired all day, now I'm pretty awake at an inconvenient time after crashing with my sleepy meds for a few hours.

Winter break was really nice. My school has a really short one compared to the major university in town that has like 3 more weeks to go. I didn't travel or anything as I wanted to stay home, sleep a lot and play games and watch YouTube and it made my sweet cat very happy! I partook in a hibernation like state for like 3 weeks and I wish it could be normal for humans to do that if they want.

This next semester will include grad school applications and REU applications. However, I'm not planning on getting accepted by and REU programs because 1. They're very competitive and 2. I'm planning a trip in summer and I'm registered for classes as well but I am encouraged to try.

My goal for this blog is a post a week for the next 16 weeks! They might look very different from week to week and just include my thoughts on what I'm working on, highlights of the week to remain focused, and keep positive. I was really stressed and annoyed at the end of last semester, but I got the highest marks possible, which is a relief and reassurance. I do want to enjoy myself despite the hard work!

Happy 2025!

[hilacopter]

grr filthy jew im HATE… /JOKEJOKEJOKE I AM ALSO JEWISH THIS IS AN ACTUAL ASK)

ive been following you for a while now and ive seen a lot of your takes and generally agree with em, but just out of curiosity do you have any issue with “free palestine” or the idea of palestine being its own state, or do you just hate how some people will use palestine as an excuse to be antisemitic? /genq

I mostly hate when people use Palestine as an excuse to be antisemitc/xenophobic or paint Israel as uniquely evil for things that apply to many other countries. Idk on paper I don't have issue with "free palestine" in the context of stopping the war and establishing a 2SS, I do think Palestine should be it's own state (really I want whatever solution in which everyone's humanity and rights are respected), but idk the phrase and the movement associated with it has very much become a negative association in my mind. Like the majority of pro-palestinians I see are at best misinformed but well-meaning and at worst blatant antisemites. Plus it has ruined a lot of online spaces/content for me, I go online on fandoms and such for escapism and when something associates itself with the conflict that gets pretty much completely ruined, I can't really bring myself to engage with it with a clear mind and it's why there's really barely any fandom stuff on this blog anymore and I don't post on the sideblog much. Like I'm aware how it sounds like a selfish complaint and maybe it is but idk the fact that at this point just seeing someone with a watermelon emoji in their bio sends my mind into a spiral of "how much does this person want me dead" I think says more about a lot of the people saying "free palestine" than it does about me.

[letherightonein]

Well I’d explain through comments but you have those disabled, so I’m just going to do it through asks, it’s really quite simple, your idea of what BDSM is is operating off the assumption that only one party is benefitting from the pleasure (the dom) whilst the other suffers, and under the assumption that the sub will always be a woman (you never explicitly said that but with your view, I feel the need to mention that is untrue) and somehow the most important part of BDSM has slipped by you, 2 actually, 1. Consent is paramount if enthusiastic consent isn’t given it’s not valid consent, any couple worth their salt isn’t gonna do anything with a meek little “ok” as consent, and then

2. And I think this part is the most important for you BDSM never was and never will be a purely masochistic act, there is nothing inherently harmful about wanting to lend full control to your SO, nor is there anything inherently harmful about bondage, or degradation kinks, masochism is part of BDSM but it’s not all of, and to clear something up before I continue, masochism is not sadism, a masochist derives pleasure from pain, while a sadist derives pleasure from harming someone (consensually, we aren’t talking about serial killers) while yes it is a form of self harm, the biggest difference is going to be the fact that between a depressed person cutting and a masochist who likes to be slapped during sex, the masochist is the one who knows when to stop.

Honestly I think BDSM is the healthiest form of pleasure seeking, foreplay, safe words, aftercare (more important than you might think) all those things were popularized by or have backgrounds in BDSM. BDSM operates off of the fact that it’s what both sides desire, otherwise we would call that rape, hope this helped a little bit, please refrain from spreading misinformation and hatred in the future :]

"and under the assumption that the sub will always be a woman"

Not to be nitpicking, but here is something that I think that I haven't repeated enough in my blog:

When pointing out a trend, people is not stating that every single individual behaves according said trend. It's not that *always* something happens, it's that in the majority of cases said thing happens.

"1. Consent is paramount if enthusiastic consent isn’t given it’s not valid consent, any couple worth their salt isn’t gonna do anything with a meek little “ok” as consent, and then

2. And I think this part is the most important for you BDSM never was and never will be a purely masochistic act,"

I don't know exactly what it has to do with anything. I mean, in theory I can consent to being chocked and end up killed by my partner or with a stroke. I can consent to bondage my breast and end up with damaged tissue or even death tissue. In that case, it really matters that I consented? It really matters if it's a "purely masochistic act or not"?

The point of the post that bothered you was to highlight the false equivalence between being subjected to harmful practices and enjoy of midly unpleasant things like a sour candy.

How consent changes the potential harm of said practices exactly?

"the biggest difference is going to be the fact that between a depressed person cutting and a masochist who likes to be slapped during sex, the masochist is the one who knows when to stop."

I struggled with self harm for several years of my life, and yes, we do know when to stop. I mostly stopped when the injury was bleeding -just as I intended-, but that didn't stopped me from ending up with scars, and infections, and falling on a spiral of new methods of self harm given that after a while the previous ones didn't give me the effects I wanted. Because the effects are not purely physical, but with a great emotional and sensory load attached. Once you get used to cut yourself because you can't bear the pain or because you "don't feel anything", you then start coping with any uncomfortable situation with a new form of self destruction.

Now, I recognize that I don't know all the details of the BDSM experience, but given that painful and potentially harmful practices are being linked to sex, an act that gives people a potent load of pleasure and it's attached to complex emotions, psychological states, even ethical views or existential ones, that involve also other people and the way you bond with them, I doubt that BDSM is immune to the "spiraling" I mentioned above, after all, people who don't practice it also get bored of certain sexual practices and sensations.

"Honestly I think BDSM is the healthiest form of pleasure seeking, foreplay, safe words, aftercare (more important than you might think) all those things were popularized by or have backgrounds in BDSM."

In self harm that also happens, you mess up yourself, you cut, you bleed, and then you cure the injuries and cover them. You look up for essential oils and moisturizers so the scars don't end up being that big. Or you end up in the hospital and feel completely cared by the nurse and the doctor that listen for half an hour why you did that to youself.

You, even when you didn't want it, end up in a cycle of destruction and damage control, when sometimes you receive attention and care and tears spilt for you, which kinda reinforces that in order to get care, in order to be seen, you should keep destroying yourself.

What would prevent a person to end up in that situation if they practice BDSM? It's really so far fetched to worry over the possibility that women may end up in a dynamic where the only way to get affection or caring touch and attention from their partners is to "consent" to painful practices?

"BDSM operates off of the fact that it’s what both sides desire, otherwise we would call that rape, hope this helped a little bit, please refrain from spreading misinformation and hatred in the future :]"

I desired to destroy myself, I guess that calling that self harm and self destruction is hateful and misinforming. But seriously, I don't think you are making a great case in BDSM favor.

[marzipanandminutiae]

Oh you don’t have my favorite social history architecture myth! Someone (in a class on Elizabeth Gaskell’s work and its relationship to Victorian domestic culture and handcrafts I was taking where I was one of maybe 2 people who study history at all let alone fashion history specifically and everyone else was a lit or art major) very confidently stated that doorknobs in Victorian times™️ were lower because women’s sleeves were so restrictively cut that they could not raise their arms. When I said this wasn’t true, they got super defensive and insisted that it was because they “heard it at a museum”. I think about this every time I open or close a door in an old house or sew sleeves into a garment

Ye. Gods.

I mean like yeah there were Victorian garments with restrictive cuts because of fashionable shoulder shapes and such...but there are restrictive modern garments, too. And not all women wore those then, just like many don't nowadays. It wouldn't make sense to build one's house based on fleeting fashion trends, any more than the canard about wide doorframes for wide skirts.

On top of that- women had to live their lives. If an outfit couldn't even enable you to raise your arms enough to turn a doorknob, why would that many people wear it on an everyday basis? The more sleeve-restrictive Victorian patterns I've tried cause problems reaching high shelves, not opening doors.

And finally, modern doorknobs mostly aren't that much higher? I'm looking at three Victorian doorknobs and a modern doorknob right now in my living room, and the older ones are lower by a few inches if that. Honestly I'm surprised anyone even noticed- they usually don't at the museum where I work.

Just because you heard it in a museum, doesn't mean it's true. It should be! And it probably wasn't repeated with the intent to spread misinformation! But there are a lot of "old guides' tales" floating around that people have just never thought to question- if it sounds too simple and easy an explanation, do your own research when you get home. Just don't trust unsourced blog posts on the matter either.

(I read one bit of anecdotal evidence where someone asked the original owner's daughter why the doorknobs in their house were REALLY low, and she said it was so the kids could reach them as well as the adults. I doubt that's true across the board- like I said, most Victorian doorknobs I've encountered aren't that low -but it's an explanation for one specific case.)

[lucent-roase]

The problem with your “There’s no one way to enjoy fandom” take is that everyone overwhelmingly, coincidentally, fixates specifically on that overrated white boy and thus pushes the idea that the only way to enjoy TOH fandom is to have Hunter as your favorite, because otherwise you will be driven mad.

But in the end nobody wants to reflect on their personal, individual contribution to the wider problem!!! It’s just the fault of the collective, which totally isn’t made up of individuals who are expecting everyone else to put in the work because they’re the special exception in their interest.

(Here is the original post)

Hi hello, I want to make sure you know I talking about Huntlow, not Hunter. Maybe my blog doesn’t show it as much as I’d like, but I’m a far bigger fan of Willow than I am Hunter, lol. I’m not really sure why you specified him. That post was about me wondering if I’m a bad fan for creating art and talking about one part of the fandom rather than everyone in the show, like the way other artists do.

That being said, I get the annoyance of a majority of the fandom liking a character you don’t, or that you think is overrated. I used to be in another fandom like that.

But why is it wrong to love a character that everyone else also likes, and why is it a communal problem within a fandom? I enjoy posting about Huntlow. As much as I love other ships like Lumity and Raeda and Gustholomule, I don’t have the energy or motivation to think of or talk about them as much. Obviously, I’m sure others would be happy to see a drawing of Amity more often (I still have a ton of asks about her), but this is my blog, and it reflects my life and interests! There’s no reason anyone should try and change what they like. It just so happens, yes, that for most of the fandom, that’s Hunter.

I admit that I don’t understand what the last part of this ask is. I don’t know what the “special exception” means, or who it’s referring to specifically. If you could shoot me another ask explaining, that would be very appreciated.

[mind-murder-palace]

Things really do get better. I know that's not a crazy concept or anything but it used to feel like a crazy one.

Before Robin made this blog she was part of a teeny tiny majority of fronters who were actually optimistic about meeting people and life in general because previous attempts on our old blog went horribly and just made us feel lonelier and more isolated than before. We even had a suicide note on our old blog before we made this account, kinda crazy.

But here we are. Makes me want to cry in a positive way honestly. Thank you for keeping us alive, Robin. Hope you see this the next time you front. 🫶 Thank you to Mitsuri and Ace too, for also believing Robin and keeping us alive the day that note was posted

[theohshit-r-official]

Long-as-hell OOC post incoming

So, I feel I should probably clarify this, on account of shit going on in the zeitgeist re: Lancer RP on here, and because I and this blog am not an entrenched figure in the community here, so it pays to be as clear as possible what I am here for:

First, let me clarify: this is not about anyone in particular, and god knows I'm guilty of not doing some of the shit I'm going to recommend here. Second, this is, in addition to not being about any one person but instead the different microcultural elements I've noticed on here, mostly a post to explain what *I* am going for with this blog so that *YOU* can decide if or how you want to engage with it and me.

The primary purpose of this blog is as follows and as I will elaborate on here:

To serve as a place for people to dump their shitposts, serious opinions, and in-world takes they don't necessarily want to put out via an established character blog or their main in a more centralized place. This means I WILL publish most shit people send, even if some of the implications are not so great, though I won't publish some of the more egregious shit on account of it sucks. See this article [LINK HERE] for an example of something similar being done by a real world political figure (notably, a known inspiration for the Ungratefuls' Tyrannocleave) for a much better purpose than mine.

This ALSO means I will likely be publishing from people not immersed in the community or party to your established norms. I understand that online spaces largely run on reputation, but I, out of character as well as to some extent in, am an academic and I'm pretty well informed of both positive and negative consequences of this, and this is an intentional choice. DM me or send an ask labeled as OOC if you want to talk about this, I'm happy to discuss it, I'm just not likely to change my stance on it on account of "This is a heavily established, pretty well-researched concept in human social dynamics" so don't expect me to change what I'm doing from the jump. With that being said, let's lay out the motivation a bit:

Part of the appeal of LANCER that was explicitly intentionally designed by its creators is that there are both large structures of recalcitrant, sticky politics (see: Albatross hunts pirates, a group known to exist largely due to economic suffering, for a megacorp that sells weapons to pirates; the KTB is required to maintain an absurd level of extractive industry by Union, which favors their most abjectly fucking awful major house politically; etc) that serve as a shared bedrock for engagement and are pointedly shitty as hell *AND* large swathes of space where you can largely do pretty much whatever you want and have things be as good or as bad as you want so long as you avoid having them be run directly and heavy-handedly by the major players (as a brief sidebar, if you want an example of someone doing an excellent job of navigating the intersection of the larger players and the open, freer space and a damn good homebrew module, I highly recommend Vex Werewolf's In Golden Flame Act 1 [LINK HERE]). LANCER is a game where both the narrative impetus and mechanics are intrinsically tied to political context and dynamics, and the way LANCER allows for space from that for players and GMs is to have a lot of literal space unaccounted for.

The implication of this, of course, is that it is intended to be an equally valid mode of enjoyment to get really into the weeds of the established politics (hello, Siren Song, cannot WAIT to play an idiot in you and see how you break her) OR to not do that and avoid it entirely, but, and this is key, you cannot really feasibly do both at once reliably at scale without a lot of care and awareness, and I do not think that that is a reasonable expectation to have of total strangers on Tumblr. The official Discord community for this game has a rule to the effect of "Do not use your comfort to stifle political discussion unless ABSOLUTELY necessary" (very, very roughly paraphrased), and instead encourages disengaging from shit you do not want to deal with. To give an example of how that translates to practical domains, in the context of the game, if you didn't want to have to deal with Harrison culture, you wouldn't play a game on Ras Shamra, so why would you choose to pursue a conversation with someone playing a proud character from Ras Shamra on here if you don't want to hear what that character would say?

A lot of the conflict on here seems to stem from people being frustrated with people from one side of the aisle or the other interacting with them without establishing rules of engagement and/or where they stand on "I want to enjoy a sci-fi power fantasy without thinking too much about the implications" versus "I really want to dig in on the psyche of a proud Harrison soldier," both of which are equally valid ways to engage with the setting and the game. They come into conflict in no small part because many people in the prior category are expressly interested in using the mechanics of a mecha setting to tell a mostly feel-good story without the political meat and grit of the original setting materials, which, I'll especially note, is not something people coming from other mecha contexts are likely to expect. This means that you have a conflict between people interested in one mode of engagement (which, if I had to guess, comes more frequently from a general tabletop gaming background) and others interested in a very different mode of engagement coming from differing backgrounds, including but not limited to the broader world of mecha fans.

(NOTE: I am not saying that these groups are totally distinct or that this is the sole reason conflict happens, I'm just trying to give a more fleshed out example for people who are less familiar with the draw of the grit. I think the mecha community is a good example for this, as it is both something that a lot of people are peripheral to AND a cultural context a lot of people really don't understand from the outside)

Let me elaborate a little here on where the mecha side of things is coming from, for those of you less familiar. The arguable single most influential piece of mecha media in much of the world (Neon Genesis Evangelion) is in part an express exploration of the ethics of military recruitment and the use of child soldiers. The fact that this piece of media has recently been used to sell McDonald's does not change that weight in the culture of mecha media, nor does it change that, historically, mecha is a genre about war. The most prolific mecha series by far is Gundam, whose villains famously have a point and whose protagonists infamously tend to develop through deeply traumatic realizations that they may not be the unambiguous good guys they thought they were. Mecha media, on the whole, pointedly cultivates a strong sense of engagement in setting geopolitics, the ethics and process of war, and the role of individuals as vehicles of violence, and people coming from a heavy mecha background are likely to be invested in exploring these themes.

That being said, I totally respect wanting to engage with it from another angle, but you can see how people wanting a more free-form, canon-lite experience and people who are coming from a mecha background looking for the nitty gritty of the established, shared setting could come into conflict, particularly when it comes to making claims about established parts of the setting. Of course, in character conflict is fine and well and dandy if that's what you're going for, no shame in that, this is more to do with the out of character aspects, including how you respond to and handle in character conflict.

Here's the thing: this dichotomy of interest does not favor a single, fully connected network of people heavily interacting. It does not favor a community with a single set of hard norms. It favors a lot of individual level variation, it favors many smaller sets of norms between individuals, and it favors good communication about those differences. I am aligned with the creators of LANCER in that I think both approaches to engaging with the material have value, and I want there to be space for both here, and I agree with them that the two are not always compatible. To preserve space for both, we need to prioritize curating our own experience over policing others', which, I know, shocking that the person who linked Anarchists Welcome would make a statement about taking an anarchistic approach to maintaining a stable, healthy social context which allows for conflict.

This is one of the reasons that I, in running this blog, have consciously chosen to almost exclusively respond to other people's posts who I actually have spoken to out of character, despite Umommiest being an extremely vocal HORUS shitposter, because I often cannot tell from character blogs what their relationship to the shared text is and their interest in different modes of interaction. This is ALSO why I'm going to be fairly indiscriminate in publishing asks and submissions, and only have Umommiest respond to what gets sent in when either prompted directly by the material or when it is plainly a shitpost that allows for some play (see also: the 8 year old seeking liberation via artillery platform and soft target elimination frames). As is quite well known in the kink community, consent does not occur in character, and personal norms and interests should be established outside of them. If there is a character blog on here that you have concerns about or want to interact with but are unsure how to proceed, DM them and check in, the same way that you would talk to someone if you wanted to join a game of pickup basketball or something. This is a social activity, social activities have fairly well established means by which to initiate them in a more intentional manner, let's make a point to start using them more consistently.

With that being said, if there is a character blog that you do not want to see, block them. There will be characters that people choose to play that you personally A will not like and B may not wish to engage with. Use the curation tools you have rather than relying on norms all the time, as norms develop from consensus and require other people to change to work. You don't have to put it on others to tailor your experience. I will go somewhere else rather than deal with somebody I don't want to talk to at a bar, and this is a similar sort of interaction. Blocking is not a condemnation, it is a choice to not engage with someone or something you do not want to. On my end, I will be doing my best to consistently tag in-character posts, reblogs, etc with ohshitumommiest going forward so you can block the tag as described here [LINK HERE] if you want to see what people are submitting without any of Umommiest's commentary, responses, etc. I'm also thinking I'll move towards initially publishing even the shitpostier things without commentary and then following up with a reblog with the commentary (so if you want to see just what other people make and not her bullshit, that's cool, too).

For the record, I *am* personally interested in the politics of the setting and Umommiest is a character that is heavily written based on the canon. She is also, frankly, a HORUS shitposter of the highest and worst degree, if you can't tell from her demeanor, and will engage with people who comment in character on posts here as would reflect a highly informed, terminally online political agitator with no formal affiliation to anyone who sees all of her speech as largely without personal consequence. Part of the purpose of the ohshitumommiest tag is to allow you to engage with the submitted material without having to see if and how she replies to you if you are not interested in that. If you are, hey! Looking forward to having some fun together with this horrible girl I've made!

Frankly, I don't care where you fall on the spectrum/split of hard text engagement versus loose text as inspiration, but I do care that everyone has an outlet for shitposts and other art/thought pieces on the setting that they think are gold or at least fun but don't have a place for personally. I think Lancer fucking rules, and people have a lot of cool, funny, and beautiful thoughts and ideas on it regardless of affiliation on these grounds, and I want to make this a place to share them without too much worry of how they fit a given blog.

If that nondiscriminatory approach to publishing is unacceptable to you, cool, I don't care, block this blog. Maybe read the linked article first and see if that helps you see a different perspective a little, but, please, use the basic curation tools available to you on this site to help maintain a diverse community that reflects the varied appeal of LANCER's setting.

With that said, play ball, and I'm looking forward to continuing to see the awesome, wild, wonky, and frankly unhinged shit this community continues to create!

PS: if you want to anonymously publish something with a link or an image via this blog, please DM me and I will effectively spoof a submission so your blog does not have to be attached. You run the risk of me knowing that you sent it, but it doesn't get broadcast to the world.

PPS I know that there are some other folks on here who engage with other LANCER online communities (e.g., the official Discord) who share much of the opinions I expressed here, particularly the "Hey there are different, conflicting way to enjoy the setting, and having some understanding around that is healthy for the community" stance, so feel free to share this around as you like.

[eschergirls]

January 2025 Update & 2024 Supporter Thank You

Hi everyone! December is over so it's time not just for the January update and thank you post, but also to thank everybody who supported Escher Girls in 2024!

This month has no major external site updates, but we have updated the site internal software which should hopefully fix some errors. We've also fixed the formatting in the way the site displays gifs and videos in previews in the tags, so there shouldn't be giant white spaces between each post.

This month I didn't have a lot of time to fix up old posts because I've been jumping from appointment to appointment for the health thing I mentioned before. But I was able to fix up a few posts.

Specifically, I restored this post of Kevin Nash's short-lived comic book, a panel of Gamora's butt sucking in her thong and also her entire body I guess?, this cover of Shanna: The She-Devil in a boobs and butt pose, Nikki Doyle being turned into a snake by a snake, and two really good fan-art/redraws of Nikki Doyle, one by Keskerist, and another by JustTheMiles. I also fixed up and sourced the Samurai Champloo bomb-boobs video from a very old post.

All restored/fixed posts have working images, videos, and animated gifs (a lot were broken or deleted by either Tumblr or during the move to the new site), and have added image descriptions for screenreaders, sources, and link to the corresponding cross-post on Tumblr and vice versa (except for the cases where Tumblr removed the post entirely either because the submitter deleted their blog/submission, or Tumblr's algorithm mistakenly tagged something as nudity, usually a solid coloured bodysuit, in those cases I've tried to find an archived version to link to). For very old Tumblr posts that don't allow image captions, I've linked the images to the image hosted on EscherGirls.com which does have image captions.

And now I want to give a big thank you to Escher Girls' Patreon subscribers for all of 2024 regardless of when you subscribed or for how long. I really appreciate all the help people give me to help keep the site up, pay for hosting and domain costs (which keep going up due to inflation v_v), and allow us to keep the site updated.

So thank you so so much to the following people for being 2024 Patreon subscribers:

Anne Adler Cat Mara CheerfulOptimistic Chris McKenzie Em Bardon First Time Trek Greg Sepelak Karrius Ken Trosaurus Kevin Carson Kim Wincen Leak  Manuel Dalton Mary Kuhner Max Schwarz Miriam Pody Morgan McEvoy randomisedmongoose Rebecca Breu Ringoko  Ryan Gerber Sam Mikes Sean Sea Who Used To Be Much More Annoying SpecialRandomCast  Thomas Thomas Key

And also special thank yous to JohnnyBob8 and PJ Evans for their donations through Ko-Fi in 2024!

And also a huge thank you to everybody in general who reads, submits, reblogs, comments, and otherwise interacts with the blog! Escher Girls' audience is truly great and I love seeing all of your responses to my posts and your captions!

Also, if anybody is on Fedi and wants to talk to me, I'm at https://urusai.social/@ami_angelwings.

Thank you so much and see you next month!

Ami

PS: As a reminder, we added a button that links to the Escher Girls Tumblr and to our RSS feed for those who want to follow that way. (For newbies, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is basically a feed you can read using an RSS reader. Simply copy and paste https://eschergirls.com/rss.xml into an RSS reader and it will keep you up to date on Escher Girls!)

Make sure it is eschergirls.com and not eschergirls.tumblr.com, as that is Tumblr, and not the self-hosted site.

If you have any issues with the site or suggestions to improve it, please do not hesitate to contact me and let me know!

If you wish to support Escher Girls, you can subscribe to our Patreon at: https://www.patreon.com/ami_angelwings or donate through Ko-Fi at: https://ko-fi.com/amiangelwings.

[pan-magi]

Another time for me to go into anime and manga differences, woop. This one is more technical in how some things cannot be simply adapted because different mediums. Somewhere out in the interwebs (outside tumblr) I saw someone claim that adaptations have to be 1:1 to be good and this is also a semi-refutation of that.

I go kind of in lecture mode I'm sorry ><. I try to keep the tone relatively informal so I hope it isn't too boring of the read.

Here is the manga panel in question:

(From when Aladdin and Alibaba are in Amon's dungeon and witness the slime reforming and regenerating. The text here is "A slime appeared (x3)." I believe in the official English release the translation is slightly different with "Here, a slime. There a slime. Everywhere a slime." I do think that one is slightly funnier which is important to this.)

(If any aversion to slime or gooey things this isn't the post for you. It's my whole example. Also some with Aladdin almost being eaten at my example at the end.)

You may be thinking what's the big deal with this simple panel? The anime has the encounter be basically the same. You are correct. However, the presentation is very different.

What I find funny about the panel is the repetition of the slime going splat and the accompanying text reinforcing it. It is so simple and so effective. The scene is basically like "oh, look, there's one here. And another one here. Oh no, they're coming together. We're in trouble." The delivery works best with a graphic novel medium as compared to an animated one.

The crux, in my opinion, is the emphasis the text and narration give. If Aladdin and Alibaba voiced the line out loud it would have been out of place and out of character for both of them. Neither are type to have stream of consciousness observations spoken out loud, which the above emphasis will be if given to a character.

Without the text emphasis, the scene doesn't really convey a joke. It's more of a standard action scene. That's fine. A way to attempt to add it in the anime is to linger on the slime an extra moment to draw attention to the uh oh funny.

Here is the equivalent in the anime:

The first column I set to a 150ms; the second is slowed to 200ms. The slightly slower one can add some foreboding. The meaning is not clear though and up to the audiences interpretation on why the camera chooses to linger on the shot, as it were. If someone watching does not get the visual joke and frame the whole thing falls flat. That is a failure to the action end of the scene that demands a quick pace.

What's the big deal for a straightforward joke? That is about it, really. I chose it because it has the clearest distinction in being a 1:1 scene and conveying two different tones due to the simple medium difference. I do not think the anime is weaker. The scene in movement lends itself to be more action oriented. Thus, that's the focus. If it tried a literal translation of that visual joke it would have fallen flat and ruined it.

The anime does still have the comedic (also horrifying) framing that is allowed to be translated more literally. See example two:

&

The above gif is set to 2 seconds per frame. I don't know what the timing is for the anime. I was lazy to check, eep. The important part is the jump cut makes it funny and makes it work so well. In my opinion at least.

That's a wrap~ Sorry for being a bit dry and lecture mode. Magi does a decent job and that means letting the show breathe as an adaption. I wanted to take the opportunity to be a bit of a nerd about it. haha. Thanks for reading.

[biblically-accurate-dca]

painting test with a limited color palette

here's the moon equivalent!

[aroaceleovaldez]

What is the PR disaster in question that made Rick announce TSATS? I wasn’t active in the online fandom at that point

Of course! This was awhile ago so it figures people don't remember it/aren't familiar:

Basically a couple years back (2020) the fandom had some posts circulate discussing the ways different characters in the Riordanverse were written poorly or offensively. There was a masterpost that went around tumblr but the two major points people were particularly focusing on were Piper and Samirah (particularly because Piper had featured prominently again in Trials of Apollo recently and the third MCGA book had further emphasized and discussed Samirah being Muslim, since it was supposed to take place during Ramadan). Basically each had multiple posts breaking down the ways they were depicted incorrectly or offensively. The entire fandom for a little bit was VERY intensely discussing this (and it's around this time the "RR crit" tag got very popularized on tumblr - it did exist before, but suddenly was being used VERY frequently - cause it was that wide-spread - though the discussion took over basically every side of Riordaverse social media on different platforms). People really wanted Rick to respond to these criticisms, so he did!

He made two blog posts, one about Piper and one about Samirah. He has since deleted both so the links are to archived versions. The short version: he essentially tried to justify his poor research and double-down that he hadn't written them offensively, actually, people were just being mean to him. The fandom, of course, reacted poorly to this.

[Further elaborated events under the cut since this got a bit lengthy]

(Fun fact, this all happened within a month or so of the time i posted an open letter on aphobic tropes in the Riordanverse that Rick replied to, and then he immediately followed with announcing that Reyna was intended to be ace-coded [which cause a LOT of fandom debate] before Rick dipped for a couple of weeks, and then came back to post the blog posts in response to Piper and Sam stuff. So I like to jokingly refer to this as "The time I imploded the fandom/drove Rick off of twitter." Twas I that set the house ablaze.)

Rick fully left social media after this and the LT Musical social media manager became Rick's social media manager for the time being.

So this all happened June/July of 2020. Tower of Nero would end up being published in October of 2020 and a few months after that Rick would state that he was done with the series and wouldn't be writing any more series installments involving Percy, and also that he wouldn't be writing a Nico quest following Tower of Nero as it "wasn't his place to" and encouraged the community to write their own versions of Nico's story.

The community continued to circulate the tumblr posts and discuss the topics of Rick's offensive character depictions, and this is also where we see the dramatic shift in how the fandom depicts Piper in fanwork (though in most cases it is admittedly not an improvement 😬) because of all this discussion. This is also around the time when the fandom brought Viria under scrutiny claiming that she was whitewashing Piper as part of the same discussions, through the justification that she was drawing Annabeth as having tan skin (which she does canonically), and if Annabeth has tanner skin then Piper then that's whitewashing Piper? Except they were using completely separate images of not fully rendered Piper art versus Annabeth in dramatic lighting, so it's all very awkward and poor logic, and did actually get kind of racist. A lot of people were calling it "Tannabeth Blackchase" (yeah, i know) or similar and a common sentiment you'd see repeated is "Don't draw Annabeth as having darker skin than Piper, because that's offensive/racist/whitewashing." (Note: it was not phrased "don't draw Piper as having lighter skin than Annabeth" - we also won't get into certain offensive depictions of Native Americans, but I digress). But yeah, the Annabeth stuff in all that did not age well at all.

Anyways, in October of 2021 however Rick would announce that he was co-writing The Sun And The Star - with a lot of heavy emphasis on how Mark Oshiro works as a sensitivity reader, and some false advertising from the official social media that Mark Oshiro was the first time a non-Riordan author would be collaborating on the series (disregarding the ghostwriters completely). One of the big criticisms in the breaking down of issues in Rick's writing was his lack of ever seeking a sensitivity reader, and fans claiming that a sensitivity reader could solve a lot of the problems. This was basically Rick's "look! I totally listened!!!!" (though it did little to actually improve things, based on the book) and in TSATS as well Piper gets a large cameo at the end where the text very directly addresses a lot of points made in criticism of Rick's writing of her.

We also then of course got the CoTG trilogy later, explicitly stated to be for advertising purposes for the show.

So basically, short version: Rick came under scrutiny for a lot of offensive writing within the span of two months, made some bad blog posts doubling down about it, left social media. TOA ends. Rick says he wasn't going to continue the series/write what would become TSATS. Community celebrates the end of of the franchise but also continues to discuss Rick's poor writing and the blog posts at length. Rick suddenly announces TSATS and Mark Oshiro's involvement. Everybody gets distracted from being mad. Show announcement stuff also happens and the discussions peter out.

[leroibobo]

pictures from the old city of jerusalem's "african quarter", which comprises of ribat al-mansuri and ribat al-basiri. mamluks built the compounds in the late 13th century to house muslim pilgrims and the poor. ottomans used them as prisons, and the british closed the prisons when they occupied jerusalem in 1917. the ribats then came under the ownership of the islamic waqf, and were leased to the local afro-palestinian community.

afro-palestinians have an array of origins. like some other diaspora communities in palestine, some came through pilgrimage - al-aqsa was on their hajj path, and while many would visit to pray there, some decided to settle in jerusalem. there are also some who came to palestine enslaved or conscripted, most recently to ottomans. some came during the time of the british mandate, many as conscripted laborers to the british. afro-palestinians who can trace their ancestry do so to nigeria, chad, senegal, or sudan.

jerusalemite afro-palestinians were employed to guard al-aqsa throughout the ottoman period. during the 1948 palestine war, some joined the arab liberation army and fought with fellow palestinians to defend al-aqsa and their presence in jerusalem. the position of guards has been taken by occupation soldiers since the 1967 war, after which a quarter of the afro-palestinian population became refugees in surrounding countries.

jerusalem's afro-palestinian community still live in the compounds today, which also house the local african community society. (the door in the last picture is theirs.) afro-palestinians as a whole face the same legal, social, and economic restrictions and maltreatment as other palestinians, compounded with the same anti-black racism from israeli government and police which ethiopian jews and eritrean asylum seekers face, which result in a form of "passport racism" unique to them.

[anghraine]

I'm trying to redirect my political thoughts from my fandom escape blog again, but I found something interesting enough that I thought I'd talk a little about it.

Occasionally I choose suffering (looking at the more granular 2024 exit poll breakdowns rather than the summaries that I mostly don't trust much at this point). Anyway, I did find something intriguing, if not particularly surprising, in the CNN exit polls, which were done in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin with a sample size of 22,914 voters.

(I mention the specific states forming the sample because this pretty notably excludes any blue states while including some reliably Republican ones.)

Anyway, most exit polls including CNN's let respondents identify their place on the US political spectrum: conservative, moderate, or liberal (reminder that "liberal" in US usage can be a pejorative for "less leftist than me" but also a shorthand for "radical leftist" but also for "anyone who doesn't seek a cishet white Christian ethnostate", but also can be a more neutral synonym for progressives and/or leftists and is often used that way, as here). So you can look at the election results for each of these ideological factions and what share of the overall sample size they represent.

The interesting thing: this "liberal" category accounted for very similar proportions to 2020 of the overall vote in the sample (24% in 2020, 23% in 2024—a difference well within the margin of error of exit polling). There is no need to explain liberals/leftists staying home in 2024: at least in terms of proportions of the overall electorate, they didn't. Just under 1/4 of voters in 2024 were liberals or leftists, just as in 2020.

Okay, if the most leftwards faction of the US political spectrum actually formed a similar proportion of the electorate, then who did they vote for?

Harris. In CNN's own exit polls from 2020, 89% of this faction voted for Biden, and (surprisingly!) a full 10% voted for Trump. God knows what motivated that 10% Trump share after four years of his hellscape of an administration at the height of COVID, but in any case, that support cratered in 2024. 91% of this group voted for Harris and only 4% for Trump. It's an estimate, but it looks like these very peculiar Trump voters had enough of him in 2024 and around half either voted third party this time or for Harris.

So which faction is Trump's victory coming from? Further consolidation of the far right?

In part, yes! 90% of conservatives voted for Trump in 2024, vs 85% in 2020—likely, some conservatives who voted third party or even for Biden in 2020 came "home" this year. However, conservative turnout was actually a little down in 2024, proportionally speaking: conservatives dropped from 38% of the sample in 2020 to 34% in 2024.

But there's one more major faction in all this: "moderates" or centrists. To be clear, we're talking about the US version of centrism, given that this is a US organization polling US voters about US politicians, not "Bernie would be center-right in Denmark" or whatever. This moderate faction jumped from 38% of the overall sample in 2020 to 42% in 2024, and they swung hard towards Trump, though Harris still won a plurality of them. In 2020, 64% of moderates voted for Biden vs 34% for Trump. In 2024, 57% of them voted for Harris vs 40% for Trump—that is, the Democratic lead among centrists dropped precipitously from +30 to +17.

Tl;dr—ideologically speaking, this data suggests that Trump owes his victory to gains among both right-wing and centrist voters rather than some faction of would-be leftists or progressives apathetically staying home or voting third-party or otherwise deserting Democrats (because they're insufficiently radical or for any other reason).

Oh, and if you're curious as to how this compares to CNN's 2016 exit polls, I also checked those! Harris's 84-point lead among the most leftwards faction is a significant improvement from HRC's 74-point lead in 2016. Trump also got 10% of that group in 2016, as in 2020, so it's this campaign—not Hillary's or Biden's—that managed to eat into whatever the hell is going on with that group.

Harris's +17 with moderates is actually a slight improvement on Hillary's +12 in 2016. Biden's jump to a +30 lead among centrists in 2020 represented either a backlash against Trump from centrists, or Biden's own rapport with that group, or some mysterious issue some of those voters had with both HRC and Harris (I wonder what it could be!!), or some combination thereof. Regardless, there are a lot of actual ideologically centrist voters in the USA and not just would-be leftists who haven't heard the good news of Marx yet. And Trump has an iron grip on the right wing at this point: he beat Hillary with conservatives by +65 in 2016, then beat Biden with an even larger margin of +71, then leapt to a 81-point lead over Harris with right-wing voters this year.

[fancyshooting]

r3volv3r oc3lot

[ironicsoap]

you are expendable, you are not expected to return

[bearotonin-international]

Hey, I love this blog, but it does feel a bit irresponsible to be sharing a video where a human is performing extremely dangerous and somewhat sketchy behaviors with wild animals. I went looking for info and could only find that tiktok and don't have the mental energy to parse through all of that to find out if that place is even legit (the way he handles interacting with the ostrich and bears make me doubt). And looking through the tags, the video is showing the false idea of domestication of wild creatures.

I just wanted to share my concerns since I don't usually see videos like this come across my dash unless they're being critiqued cause of who I choose to follow. :c

hi friend. This person works at some kind of animal sanctuary and is a trained professional. Also, if you actually listen to the video, he explains that he doesn’t interact with the animals (the brown bears) that he didn’t raise and doesn’t fully know and trust their behavior, because it is dangerous.

also the video literally has the text in it that says clearly “Do Not Attempt” because this man is a trained professional who works with wild animals for a living and is NOT encouraging people to treat wild animals as if they are domestic and safe to touch

the team is dedicated to posting responsible and ethical bear programming, and can be trusted to vet our posts. we do not require any additional assistance, thank you.

friends, we would like to take this time to gently point out that coming into someone’s asks with unsolicited ‘advice’ or ‘concerns’ about the way they run their blog is actually an etiquette no no and generally not something that’s in any way appreciated. We’ve been getting a fair few of these types of ‘helpful suggestion’ asks lately, and would like to remind people that this is not something the team particularly appreciates, especially when there isn’t a fully factual or correct basis. While your intentions may be harmless or well-meaning, it doesn’t mean that you should unsolicitedly share your opinions directly in people’s inbox and ask them to change the content they post on their blog.

this is not an indictment of this person or this ask, but a general reminder to everyone. and we shouldn’t have to specify, but unfortunately feel we must say that there is never permission to go harass anyone involved in this ask. If you don’t agree with something, just ignore it and move on. There will be no unkind words said on or in response to this post, friends.