#the best uke honestly

[yeah-alright-brill]

How it started vs how it's going:

Me when characters are so completely, irrevocably changed by their experiences and relationships and trauma to the point where you could hold them at the start and the end of their stories up against each other and they'd be practically unrecognisable, like two different people, and they've changed for the better yet in the process lost their inncocence and gone to hell and back, and yet deep down there's still that undeniable part of them that makes them them.

[thebe4ulog]

also i dont think its as bad on here but as insufferable as some of the contestants are.. not naming names..

[kay9leo]

Boggart

Because at 14, everything feels so long and permanent. Especially when the future is uncertain.

Honestly this was inspired by this post asking about your MC's boggart. I always figure that my MC's would fall into a more similar vein like Hermione where her boggart represents more of a symbol/idea.

When read up on reddit on Hermione's boggart was Professor McGonagall, someone pointed out saying that it's more of a symbolic thing when you look into it under a deeper light. With Professor McGonagall saying she failed all her classes, Hermione could get expelled from Hogwarts and get her wand snap. Essentially denying her from the wizarding world.

Since Hermione -a muggleborn witch- wants to belong in the wizarding world (when the muggle world rejected her), she is trying to prove that she deserve to belong in the wizarding world through her grades and by being at the top of her class. Hermione failing her classes could risk her getting kicked out and getting her wand snap. The McGonagall boggart failing her is symbolic of her true fear - belonging no where.

While Hermione a girl trying to belong somewhere and doesn't want to be kicked out, Iñaki is a girl who's afraid that she'll never go back home.

What's a more permanent way of saying you aren't returning to your home country by getting a passport (symbolizing that you got naturalized) of your adopted country? More about Iñaki "MC" Martinez Cariaga

[lord-squiggletits]

Idk if my previous posts were unclear but I don't remotely hate any Optimus version that isn't IDW or think they suck. Every Optimus is good and there's a fan (or multiple fans!) of every version of OP no matter how obscure or underrated (as well as all the other characters).

What's more questionable (or at least annoying) is when fandom ignores canon character personalities in favor of writing specific archetypes that are either out of character or repetitive/stereotyped to the point of annoyance. As an example of this, it would be a female character being called the Team Mom just because she's a woman existing in a group of (primarily male) characters even if she's not remotely motherly or nurturing. Or, as a more topical example, how often I've seen Transformers ships where even though both characters are canonically masculine (or gender neutral), fanartists love to turn one of the characters small and weak (or even outright feminine) to turn the ship into Strong Dominant Seme and Sweet Cute Uke to fit a specific kink or romantic fantasy, even if it's a disservice/OOC to portray those characters like that.

In other words, a fandom's popularity of certain characters, ships, headcanons, etc is often more informed by tropes and forcing canon to adhere to one's personal tastes, as opposed to approaching canon and trying to understand it on its own terms. I'm not talking about the quality of the source material, but rather the way that the fandom interprets the source materials in ways that don't make any sense, approach it in bad faith, or just generally don't care about canon at all. So I'm not saying one OP is better than another, my problem is when fandom consistently focuses on certain stereotypes or flanderizations of a character, and then any character that doesn't fit the popular (often stereotyped) mold is ignored or virulently rejected. In other words, I think popular fandom often does a DISSERVICE to characters whether they love them or hate them, it just takes different forms.

So, just as an example, I think one fandom caricature of Optimus that I see a lot (and heavily dislike) is making Optimus some sort of shrinking wallflower type who's innocent, sweet, and virginal, in contrast to an opposite caricature of Megatron that's big, strong, dominant, and rugged, and making ship art that forces the characters into some kind of seme/uke or borderline heteronormative romance. Despite the fact that canon Optimus (in, say, TFP for example) is tall, broadly built, deep voiced, dignified, assertive, and strong (physically and morally), completely incorrect interpretations of him as a shy feminized uke type are still pretty common to find. And it makes you ask yourself why it is so many people make MOP ship art of them of The Small One and The Large One or The Small, Cute One and The Big, Violent One when it's completely different from canon. It feels as if such fanart is made by people who just want to see seme/uke style slash ships, and if canon doesn't give them what they want, they'll simply trash it and replace it with their own version, even if it's completely OOC.

So when I said in my other post that people don't like IDW Optimus because he can't be fit into caricatures like happy dad or shy twink, I'm not saying it to say "other OPs who resemble that suck," I'm saying it to express "Fandom tends to simplify characters into easily palatable and comfortable tropes, and when they encounter a character they can't do that with, they respond by ignoring or even hating on that character."

Other versions of Optimus have the problem where fandom turns them into a stereotype instead of the actual character they are, e.g. portraying TFA OP as some poor abused damsel with no self confidence and crippling anxiety being abused by his superiors, and then they talk more about this fake uwu smoll bean cinnamon roll version of TFA OP than they do about actual canon TFA OP. And honestly I can't think of any prominent content/meta about G1 OP that isn't just "he plays basketball and does funny one liners and is Team Dad/Grandpa." (Hell, you even get that with non-Optimus characters that get simplified to just sexy twink, old grandpa, comedy relief, evil ex, Diversity Win-- She's A Lesbian, third wheel to the favored ship, etc even though there's way more depth to them than just their surface level stereotype.)

IDW OP's problem is that he can't be stereotyped like that so instead the fandom ignores him. He's not small, so they can't stereotype him as a skinny twink getting topped by a burly uke. He's not jovial or happy go lucky or extroverted, so they can't stereotype him as Team Dad or Comedy Relief. He's assertive, blunt, and has a temper, so they can't stereotype him as a shy wallflower in need of protecting. He makes catastrophic mistakes and is responsible for bad things happening, so they can't stereotype him into a sweet cinnamon roll who has never done anything wrong in his whole life or The Infinitely Wise and Kind Paragon. There's no Big Bad Authority Figure who was mean to IDW OP and traumatized him, so they can't excuse the bad things he did as "he's traumatized so he couldn't help it" and wave away his flaws as "it's his abuser's fault, they made him this way." IDW OP has the kind of depression where he's grumpy, shut off, and angry-- as opposed to the shy, sad kind of depression that just stares forlornly out of the window in a beautifully tragic way-- so they can't make him into a sad woobie kicked around unfairly by life.

Or I guess they just stereotype IDW OP as "evil bastard with no redeeming qualities that's mean to everyone for no reason, plus the writers forced everyone to like him just because he's Optimus Prime" even though that isn't accurate either.

Put bluntly, IDW OP forces fandom to contend with the idea that someone can be a good person with good intentions but still fuck up on a massive scale and maybe end up hurting more than they helped. IDW OP is messy, ugly, flawed, mean, stoic, closed off. When IDW OP has mental breakdowns or has his feelings hurt, he's loud and angry and harsh, and the consequences of what he did while he was unwell continue to haunt him long after. In other words, he actually experiences negative emotions the way a real person would, and sometimes when he's under the influence of negative emotions, he lashes out or does stupid things (like a real person might) instead of inoffensively crying in a corner somewhere. He isn't sanitized enough for a fandom that only wants Perfect Pure Good Optimus Who Never Hurts Anyone Even By Accident, so instead of IDW OP's mistakes and dark moments being treated as the logical end point of a person put in constant no-win situations until he breaks, he gets treated as if his mistakes and flaws make him an irredeemable bastard with no good qualities who should've fucked up less often to make fans actually like him.

And this is all in a fandom where 90% of the characters are war criminals and a good half of them have massacred organic planets. But god forbid IDW Optimus ever make a bad decision in a stressful situation. Or be mean to someone. Or have a character arc about how blindly idolizing people as paragons ends badly for everyone involved because no one can be that perfect. He is simply The Worst Optimus Ever and there's absolutely nothing about him worth discussing.

And just to be clear, the problem isn't the fact that some people don't like IDW OP, or he's just not their thing and they don't care.

The problem is the fact that he's consistently and actively hated by the fanbase who makes a concentrated effort to say he sucks and make sure none of their fan works ever include him. It's literally at a level where I stopped looking in the Optimus tag on this website because I was tired of people randomly going "and btw IDW OP sucks and I want to drown him in a ditch" in posts that weren't even about IDW, and I stopped looking for MegOP fic on AO3 because most of it is IDW Megatron/clearly TFP or G1 inspired continuity soup Optimus. Places that are Optimus friendly for Optimus fans, where I could reasonably expect to find positive conversations, but instead get sucker punched by hate about the character The Space Is About. And I can't even have conversations asking about why they do, bc the way 90% of them talk, I can tell they literally just didn't read the comics or deliberately misinterpreted the story.

I find it bizarre and frankly, tragic, that the hate train for IDW OP is so pervasive that people actively erase and replace him from fan works IN THE IDW UNIVERSE in a way that no other character is targeted in. I have tried so hard to understand why IDW OP gets this sort of hate and erasure when other characters who were as bad or worse than him have perfectly normal takes about them that go "yeah he kinda sucks but he's cool and I like him" or "who cares if he's problematic IRL, it's a story." The only conclusion I can come to is that because Optimus Prime (TM) has a specific brand image and is locked into being a cultural icon, he's held to a standard of The Ideal Perfect Hero instead of the way better standard of "Is he an interesting, well written character?"

[du-hjarta-skulblaka]

Welp I can't say I'm pleased with the results so far but I sure am enjoying watching all the Torry cunts dropping like flies!

[tabooi]

Giovanni Spano as The Cowardly Lion

In Leicester Curve Theatre's production of The Wizard of Oz

[mariocki]

Pathfinders in Space (ABC, 1960)

"Now, the remainder of us have fifteen hours of oxygen left. That leaves fifteen hours in which to complete our research here."

"Well, what's the good of all that if you can't come back with it?"

"The moon never destroys her treasures, Henderson. We shall leave a record and it'll be preserved in the vacuum of the caves. And the future expeditions you mentioned, they will find it."

[deliajackson]

I was reading The Atrocity of Sunsets chapter 1 again:

It is a perpollo with fem!Percy alright.

And for some reason my brain went: turn it gay perachel.

And it got wilder:

Percy cosplaying as Wonder Woman and Rachel cosplaying as BatGirl in the last Halloween they had before turning 16.

[wild-at-mind]

OK my new hot take is that no one should get radicalised into anything from this election result. Please instead take some time, rest, look after yourselves. And in a few weeks, start thinking about politics but stop when you find yourself spiralling.

[waugh-bao]

*

[al-mayriti]

my therapist on saturday: what happened to you is una putada (a shitty situation) so it's best to take it slow, and relax this week, don't do anything academia related, just chill.

me, today: receives my first positive answer from a foreign professor willing to supervise my phd proposal and writes them a wholeass essay as a reply email with around 10 attachements. and right after that i start looking for more phd options.

[singsweetmelodies]

Heyyy… how are you? Didn’t see you for a few days and ngl i was a bit worried 😬… and then i read the sequel to the tiara fic by Sol, and there i read about Lady Katie being buried in her studies😂😂 so I thought ‘oh it’s been a while i should pop in and say hi’… so yeah.. how is your doctorate going? And how’s life? Hope you are taking care of yourself.

xo

T❣️

PS: UK is so fucking cold.. my tropical ass wasn’t built for this shit

heyyy love! honestly, when i first saw this ask, i was planning to answer it with a bit about how i've not been very well this week, and it's been a bit rough 🙈 but OH. MY. GOSH. after this quali!!! i am doing absolutely BRILLIANTLY, omg, i still can't stop grinning!! CHEF'S FREAKING KISSSSSSS, i love everything about this <3333 😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍❤️❤️❤️

[cowboylikedean]

.

[lightyakami]

ok with a lot of hard work & dedication i’m finally up to date with succession and i would like to announce i’m completely rabid about roman/gerri. “let’s get married. or an equivalent. like i abduct you and force you to live with me. or you kill me. you eat me. i eat you.” this is the most unhinged toxic codependent nonsense i’ve seen in my life & i am obsessed

[edenorisshitposting]

So, for the ask game: 5, 14 and 15 maybe?

5. Anything you haven’t drawn yet but want to?

Another comic.. About a young girl who who meets a large, kind, wolf. The story has a beginning and and end, but I haven't figured out the middle yet. But when I do HEHEHE.... It's gonna be sad.

14. How has your art changed over the years?

Oh boy, it changed a LOT. I went from drawing nearly exclusively edgy anime boys in middle and high school, to completely ditching anime but still drawing characters all the time, to actually drawing environments more than people.

My style changed a lot too. I think today I draw in a much more graphic, illustrative style. Kind of european comics inspired. Compared to my old thinking of "it's only good if it looks like the art on magic the gathering cards" (which it never did). I often just use one (two if I'm filling fancy!) additional colour, rather than fully colouring every artwork. Truth is, many of my illustrations don't actually need colour! There's so much more WHITE (or blank paper) on my art now, and I use it in much smarter ways. It actually adds to the composition now, rather than just be space I didn't bother filling out.

If you fancy a trip down memory lane, scroll all the way down on my instagram, or my art blog down to my pre uni days. it's different.

15. Biggest artist pet peeve?

You're adding too many details with your white gel pen, and it's making things look shiny that aren't supposed to be. You're buying art supplies with cute packaging that are garbage in quality (looking at you Himi Jelly Guache!). The same white girl with vacant expression on a blank background does not evoke as deep of a meaning as you think it does. You say your nude photographs don't come from a place of sexualising your subject, yet you photograph exclusively young skinny women (r/analog....). Shirts don't fold in between boobs like that. You're adding too many labels to your political cartoon. I can tell the person is being used as bait, because they're hanging from the end of a hook. No need to write "bait" on them in addition.

I'm gonna stop here before I make this post a mile long...

Ask thing

[mzannthropy]

Lol not people bemoaning the block feature change on X (formerly known as twitter). You should have been like me and stopped actively using that site. You would have felt much better now.