#the other of steel

[whumpfish]

It has come to this. I have content blocked the word Caretaker.

This has been a slow spiral into doneness for a while. At first I content blocked just the main phrase present in the most egregious ableist woobery, "Caretaker's heart breaks." Then I blocked "Caretaker raises their voice." Then I blocked "Whumpee cowers" because sometimes woobie "Whumpees" confused their trusted Caretaker for their evil Whumper over something similarly trivial and unrealistic but not exactly. Then I had to block "cowers" because sometimes it was "Whumpee just cowers" and it wound up on my dash anyway. Then I thought if I blocked "all the things the whumper did" I would remove whumpless "whump" from my dash. That would take care of the people who want to write after but can't handle their own before, right? Spare me that, at least? Nope.

I'm not the only one who has asked for this woobie shit to be tagged. For it to at least be tagged as "infantilization" if you don't self-identify as woobie. But it hasn't been. Not once, that I've seen. And I've been watching for it, hoping.

And that tells me something depressing about the state of the community. It tells me that a lot of folks don't see infantilization and ableism as a problem. It tells me that a lot of folks don't care as long as their soft blanket power fantasy is satisfied. It tells me that a lot of folks have no intent to afford the same courtesy to others that they insist others afford them. It tells me that this community is no longer the one I joined years ago, that was my literal salvation when I was bedridden.

One where "Caretakers" were optional because it was the whumpees who were the focus of the narrative because we were here to explore pain and vulnerability in a place where it isn't sanitized with blankets and soup. One where we could confront the reality that such "Caretakers" as have become popular do not exist, and have that acknowledged in a space that was ours, away from a mainstream fiction culture that likes to imagine itself in that role... right up until the moment they'd actually have to do it. One where we could get away from that self-fellating performative sympathy.

I hate making these posts. I hate feeling like I'm "being negative" when I'm asking for basic genre parameters to be respected... which is what this makes me feel like because I've been - wait for it - conditioned to think that I'm an annoyance and a burden on Normal People in Normal Society, and that standing my ground is unreasonable, impolite, dragging people down, and just overall Killing The Mood.

And I can literally feel the vagueposts forming in the aether. About "whump" that contains no actual whump ever being ValidTM and don't let people make you feel bad if you mislabel your posts. I hate having to make these posts and I hate how often I'm driven to it, because the thing is, I'm not asking a lot.

If I labeled my dead dove shit #angst, y'all would lose your shit. If I tagged my caretakerless whump #hurt/comfort, y'all would lose your shit. It would be the end of the goddamn world. I would be a pariah--and rightly so, because dead dove isn't angst and hurt/comfort is literally the only genre extant where comfort is mandatory. Whump is a genre about pain, and as such, pain is explicitly necessary for something to belong to that genre. It's not personal. It's categorization. It's being able to find what you're looking for and avoid what you're not.

I don't put my watermelon in your casserole. Don't put your broccoli in my fruit salad. That's just basic courtesy. I don't hate casserole, I like me a good casserole every once in a while. I just get aggravated when I find broccoli in my fruit salad, because the whole reason I opened the container of fruit salad in the first place was that I wanted fruit, not greens. My goal when I write these things is not to make anyone feel bad, it's to make people be aware.

I am just. So tired. I want my community back. Maybe this latest measure will allow me to have that again... I'm just aggravated that I had to take it.

[steelsartcorner]

@angstyastro recently pointed out that you can cast “speak with the dead” on Haarlep’s corpse and ask if Raphael was a top or bottom and Haarlep basically intones he was a lazy bottom

And I just think it’s so funny you can even ask that as one of your limited five talking corpse questions

[im-creature]

Mark Maggiori painting but I turn the cowboys into Johnny and Gyro

(WIP still gotta finish the horses and Johnnys chaps and such)

[bigfatbreak]

Birds of a Feather previous / next

[octos-art-blog]

“Life belongs to the living”

Goodbye the the Penumbra podcast! It was a really sweet finale! (Quote is from season 5, episode 24)

my tpp ramblings below the cut

I’ve been listening to Penumbra since 2018, and Juno Steel especially has been a hugely important piece of media for me! So when I heard TPP was ending I knew I wanted to do something for it (like with Magnus). Originally I had this plan to do an animatic but I grossly overestimated how much time and work animating a 4 minute song was going to be lmao! So I decided very last minute to do this comic instead! It was obviously not done when the finale actually came out but better late than never I suppose. I did my best to try and capture as much of the podcast as possible, but I had to leave out some stuff unfortunately (it’s a long ass podcast), this comic was originally also gonna have another page so I might make that and add it later!

[heatwa-ves]

i made playlists of every song/album/artist referenced in diu, golden wind, stone ocean and sbr :]

[hyakunana]

POV: Even with advantage and buffs, your local folk hero just rolled 1 in Intimidation

[queenlucythevaliant]

Honesty hours: I've been working a summer job at a bookstore for almost two months now. Here are the books I will discreetly shake my head at customers for buying. My literary red flags, if you will.

Anything tarot

Particular romance and romantasy novels that I've been told are basically just soft erotica (ACOTAR being the most popular)

Harlequins, which apparently still exist

Colleen Hoover

The Colleen Hoover merch we sell for some godforsaken reason

Heaven is For Real, When God Winks at You, and other theologically sketchy but inexplicably popular books. I'm always internally thinking, "oh honey, no!"

Giant stack of self help books combined with books from the business section. This suggests a very particular type of person. This type of person scares me.

Especially that one book we have about how to become a "superior man" (??)

More than one book by James Patterson. One book is forgivable; multiple suggests you follow him as an author

More than one book by Danielle Steel (same reason)

Parents buying their kids books that are just "Adult Thing: For Kids!" Like we have a picture book that's called "A Day at Dunder Mifflin" or the one adapted from the Dumb and Dumber movies and I'm like. Don't you think your kid would prefer something that's actually for them??

That guy who bought the collected writings of Lenin, the poetic writings of Mao, and a giant, thousand-page biography of Che Guevara all in one go. You okay there buddy?

[clownowo]

I think that if Miles Edgeworth were to ever have a Tumblr blog it would be entirely Steel Samurai based with a carefully organized tagging system. He posts lengthy formally worded analysis about Steel Samurai and nothing else. He doesn't check his notes. He does check his asks, because they're kind of like emails. He has anon asks and dms turned off. Someone sends an ask about his interests outside of Steel Samurai and he immediately blocks them. He doesn't have pronouns or a name to be called by in his bio. The only hint about Edgeworth's personal life is that when he refers to the death of Jack Hammer or the conviction of Matt Engarde he only refers to Phoenix as "that man".

Maya definitely has a tumblr and it has a canon Pink Princess url. She actually hoarded a bunch of Pink Princess urls long before the character was officially announced because she knew she needed to have them. Her tumblr header is "the real pink princess ask sal manella". Her pinned post has these

[ID: Two blinkie banners. The first has a lesbian flag background and says "Pink Princess is canonically gay." The second is light pink and says "PinkSteel shippers dni". End ID] (thank you @princess-of-purple-prose)

Maya follows him and sends Edgeworth asks periodically. He thinks she's a wonderful conversationalist. He has no idea of her identity. Maya is fully aware he's Edgeworth.

[wasyago]

the kind of chemistry these two have is very entertaining

[doctorsiren]

some mp100 doodles from the last couple days

[llutik]

promised land sugar mountain

[rambunctioustoons]

different drum // the stone poneys 🎶

[its-your-mind]

How to: Build a podcast protagonist

Make a Guy. The scrunglier the better.

Pour in an ounce of survivors guilt.

Pour in the rest of the container of survivor’s guilt.

Give them a gay little romantic subplot.

Tragedy.

Trauma.

Compounding trauma.

Eye motif.

[quiddling]

feel like pure shit just want spoon back x

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Who will deal the most damage?