#there are a bunch of factors contributing so like i get why but it still never fails to surprise me

[kaikhou]

one pun ched man. one of the most well known anime in the world. 4th most popular anime on MAL. celebrities and tv shows have referenced it. the memes that have entered the mainstream. oppai shirt. OK panel. what’s with this sassy lost child etc. posts about it used to rack up hundreds of thousands of notes here on tumblr dot edu. the sai genos shipping. literally the original webcomic and manga are still ongoing. and yet the active fandom right now numbers approximately 8 ppl. on ao3 it’s just barely crossed 6000 fics and most of the ones coming out are those crossover fics with 10+ media tagged. the current manga arc is about two characters who were raised in a facility built to turn them into cold blooded assassins and didn’t allow talking to each other but they ended up becoming each other’s only friends anyway and dreamed together of turning the facility into an orphanage instead until one of them killed everyone there except for the other who he poisoned and left for dead then became a hero while the other survived and became a villain and now they have a complicated antagonistic relationship where they bicker and are still perfectly in sync when they fight together and both obviously still care about each other but neither of them acknowledges it. and they’re both hot twinks. yet the ship tag for them on ao3 currently numbers exactly 47 fics. 10 of which are mine. what the hell happened

[argumate]

i think you're missing a big picture view on immigration. unless it's done slowly and carefully - which isn't what you argue for - there are huge social and economic consequences, and this is what drives xenophobia and racism up.

mass immigration -> drop in wages (supply and demand) and general COL rises, especially rent - it's impossible to keep uo housing demand that fast -> public resources get stretched thin (education, transportation, healthcare).

the only ones who benefit from big waves of "unskilled" labor (no such thing obviously, but they're the ones easy to exploit) are big companies. they get to pay them less than a native would accept, while the city and state govt who are already incredibly inefficient at best, let the whole place decay.

i have literally seen it happening in real life in my hometown. the first wave of immigrants in the 2010s (haitians) were generally welcomed and the population had a positive outlook on them. now, in the 2020s, the huge mass of venezuelan immigrants are very looked down upon because of the reasons i said above.

obviously it's not /their/ fault, bc they're also being exploited by the system.

also, there is a cultural and language factor! they play a big role in this, too. my oarents neighborhood HAS gotten more rowdy and dangerous after the venezuelans came in.

immigration only works if there is integration, but we can't say that w/o getting accused of xenophobia and racism. you cannot have a functioning harmonious society without a minimum amount of social cohesiveness. there is a reason culturally homogenous countries are the happiest - and i genuinely mean culturally, not racially.

i used to believe in Free Immigration For All until i experienced this in real life. there are no spots in school for kids and teens, the buses are full, the healthcare has gotten horrible, wages are incredibly low and rent js crazy high. obviously this isn't the immigrants fault - it's a simple question of supply x demand + government inefficiency. but to be quite honest? not even the most best equipped mayor would've been able to build enough schools and hospitals when you're constrained by the bureaucracy of things.

not to talk about the fact how they have access to social benefits, like our own version of ssi for vulnerable people without contributing anything to it nor needing to be a citizen when public pension style of social benefits (what we have) are already stretched thin by low birth rates!!!!!

im not in the usa, and this is my perspective in a 200k hab city. i cannot imagine how this is like in a larger city and the impacts it has ln the local population.

also, i will say one thing about the usa immigration issue: there are plenty of reasonably safe countries people pass before getting to the border. they dont HAVE to go there. they want to go there bc it doesn't matter to them that it's a low paying job, that money is still worth a lot back in their home country. that is why to them it's worth to cross the ocean and be at risk at the border. that, and it's only way to claim asylum is being physically there - after they're in waiting for a court date, it doesn't matter anymore whether they're legsl or not. they already have a job and are making 2 dollars an hour which is worth 83737373737383838282 back home.

yes fixing housing policy is essential for so many other things, but you're kind of mixing a bunch of random things here: if low birth rates are a problem then young immigrants help with that, low wages are less of a problem when immigrants don't need to fear deportation, etc.

[flower-boi16]

Do you think this fandom can still improve despite everything? Is it Viv and Spindlehorse's fault that this fandom is problematic or there is deeper root cause? Despite the amount of negativity both hh and hb recieved, is it still possible to listen to fans who give constructive criticism and improve both shows? Many fans often say something like"The Spindlehorse's crew don't want to listen to critics because there are too many bad faith criticism and hate" or "Those critics don't have the vision of the creators so their advices are invalid." I think both sides of this fandom are overly aggressive to whatever happened. It must have something behind it.

I think the reason why the fandom reacts so poorly to criticism is a mix of several factors:

These shows are fairly popular, the more popular something is the bigger the fanbase will be. And, likewise, some fans would be very defensive when it comes to criticism.

The batshit insane twitter users and fake outrage being confused with the actual critiques people have of the shows. I'll admit, early critical videos were...not great to say the least (cough cough Pkrussel cough cough), and many of Viv's past controversies are admittedly dumb. However, there are real issues people have with these shows and Vivziepop, however, because of all the past controversies with Viv being over-blown, fans lump these real and valid critiques in with the fake Twitter outrage, causing this confusing mess.

Vivziepop's reaction to critiscm. She directly dismisses critiques people have of her shows and pretty clearly spends a bit too much time on online discourse about her shows. Viv IS aware of the critiques people have of her shows but she has this very immature response to criticism just looking at her twitter, and, this does translate to the fandom as well.

Drama channels such as AyyLmao and Iox constantly defending Viv and her shows. AyyLmao is a fairly big channel and a lot of his videos are about controversies surrounding Viv. Pretty much all of these tend to be heavily biased as AyyLmao instantly takes Viv's side, as in several of his videos he deliberately chooses to lump in the actual critiques of the shows with the deranged Twitter users online, which contributes to the second problem I mentioned above. This can be seen with his hatedom video where he says that most of the criticism at least on Twitter isn't "real criticism" and "just hate disguised on such". Notice how he says that at least on Twitter the criticism is just hate. He's deliberately making it look like the critical community is just a bunch of deranged Twitter users who just hate Viv cuz they are jealous or something, when looking at sites such as Reddit, Youtube, Tumblr, etc you'll see people with ACTUAL PROBLEMS with the shows, by AyyLmao's ignoring that in order paint the critical community as a toxic hell-hole. He pretends to be neutral in the video but he clearly is biased with how he paints the critics here, as he only focuses on this one site just to make it look like the critical community is just an annoying vocal minority on Twitter. and because of that, the fandom views the critical community as just that; just an annoying vocal minority of Twitter users who shouldn't be taken seriously.

The fandom just refusing to engage with people's critiques because they can't handle criticism of their favorite shows. That's pretty obvious.

I don't think the fandom will get better any time soon given these factors I just mentioned. Until Viv learns to accept criticism, until Viv drama channels stop defending her bullshit, and until the fandom actually engages with people's critiques rather than sending death threats...ya no this fandom is still going to be awful.

[foreststarflaime]

Headcanons! Cloud and Sephiroth!

You got it! o7

Headcanon A:  realistic

Cloud: From the second I clapped eyes on this guy I immediately clocked him as ace if not aro as well. And nonbinary. Both him and Seph actually

Sephiroth: Dragons are his favorite animal. He sees a lot of himself in them—wonderful creatures who are severely misunderstood. Someone got him a little plush dragon once and he would start Nibelheim early if Hojo so much as breathed in its direction.

Headcanon B: while it may not be realistic it is hilarious

Cloud: Has fallen down the stairs multiple times. Has the worst possible luck with this, and it always ends up being in front of someone he knows and respects. They told him it was just because he was growing and that his legs would get used to themselves eventually, but he has seen little evidence of this and wonders where his extra inches of height are in compensation for this curse of his.

Sephiroth: Cannot pronounce a specific semi-common word so Shinra went to great lengths and hired a bunch of linguists and made them work with their media/PR team to try to manipulate that word into going out of fashion. Genesis laughed so hard when he learned about this that he pulled a muscle. Zack tried to make the word a trend and change the pronunciation to that and was nearly assassinated by the Turks for his efforts.

Headcanon C: heart-crushing and awful, but fun to inflict on friends

Cloud: After Nibelheim, he occasionally slips into a hint of a Gongagan accent at times, especially when he’s feeling strong emotions. When his confusion was really bad towards the start of this, his native Nibelheim accent sounded strange to him, but he couldn’t figure out why or articulate how exactly. That is until he Realized

Sephiroth: Can describe in far too vivid detail the feeling when you scream hard and long enough to completely lose your voice. He can usually tell how long it will be gone for when this happens to him. Yknow, from experience. Because of this he can also have sensory issues occasionally from talking because he gets too focused on the vibrations of his vocal cords. This is one of the (many) contributing factors to his quiet nature.

Headcanon D: unrealistic, but I will disregard canon about it because I reject canon reality and substitute my own.

Cloud: Took Zack to eat dinner with his mother and really just hung out with him a lot in the time before Nibelheim turned disastrous

Sephiroth: He may not have gotten to go to Banora, but he has had at least one dumbapple forced down his throat by Genesis. He very much liked the taste, even though Genesis swore it was like dirt compared to a fresh one. He pretended to agree so that Genesis and Angeal would still take him to Banora.

[paikothecateater]

We absolutely need more about Iceland growing too quickly and experiencing genuine horrors away from the Nordics/anyone’s control, and them trying (and maybe lowkey making it worse) to make up for it

Like, damn, Iceland has probably felt more pain and emotion than a lot of others but they act like he can’t handle lifting a bucket. Mf he’s had to lift heavy and burning planks of wood/metal/whatever off of himself and ur worrying about a bucket? Pls

Iceland's approach for dealing with what has happened to him is unnaturally accepting in comparison to the others. It's not that he doesn't care, it's the mindset of "it's going to hurt, but I'm not just gonna keel over and die. I can take it." he's learned over the years not to rely on anyone for anything serious.

While the others know he's been through a bunch of stuff, they don't know the extent of what he's been through.

Iceland has accepted that he has grown up a lot faster than he ideally would've. He absolutely hates it when the others try to baby him, but he also just doesn't want to complain because he knows the guilt is probably eating at them.

The reason Iceland has to be the voice of reason so often is because being real, he's probably the most mature. Which is a huge contributing factor to his absolute hatred for being regarded as a child.

Like, no Denmark, you don't get to give me advice on being a better nation, I just watched you try to eat a battery.

He has the responsibilities of an adult without the respect. It's not even just that they're treating him like a kid. They don't treat him like a kid. Iceland still has the same responsibilities as all of them, they just disregard all his opinions because "he's a kid. What does he know?"

It's why they're so surprised when they find out that Iceland is a very well adjusted gentleman and not a sloppy teenager.

This also means that they subconsciously dismiss his feelings all the time. They assume that Iceland has no idea what he's talking about.

Iceland doesn't talk about the things he's been through often. Mostly because he actually prefers keeping the Nordics oblivious. They're not always the best guardians, but he knows that if he tells them what he's been through, they would not take it well.

If he does eventually talk about everything, I don't doubt that the other Nordics would definitely make things a billion times worse. They'd get too damn protective of him and make him feel even more suffocated. They wouldn't listen to him, even though Iceland doesn't need their protection, they'll insist on making it a huge deal which will essentially make things worse for Iceland.

The best thing they could possibly do for him is listen and let him do his own thing. Iceland is a child, but he naturally has a harder time feeling safe and comfortable enough to act like one. If they want to make things better, that's what they need to give him, the safety he needs to be able to let his guard down. They can't just expect him to act his age just because they want him to.

Anyway, as always thank you for coming to my yap session, I hope you enjoyed it because I definitely did. This one is a bit more angsty than usual, but you guys have been wanting angst, so here.

[cipheramnesia]

I think it's funny how you got these general schools of scifi artists depicting their ideas of alien or imaginary sapient life. Like bottom tier are the "write what you know" artists. We know what humans are like and factors contributing to our present day adaptations, all their aliens are humanoid with a lot of effort put into explaining why the eyes are slightly bigger or how come they have only three fingers and scientists get super excited about the "realism" while everyone else knows these are bullshit and absolutely these aliens do not fuck.

Next tier up is the silly zone, aka probably the actual realistic zone. These are the artists who start out wondering what a really fucked up looking guy would be made out of and generally use some amount of familiarity with the natural world to come up with weird skin and skeletons and shit so you get like trilateral symmetry aliens or guys who have eyes on their snake arms and brains in their body cavity or whatever. It's great but also really takes the monster fucker winds out of the sails because a bunch of these ones you know for a fact like you couldn't fuck. Probably a bunch you could have sexy good times so it's still cool, but you can't plunge right into icky sticky fantasy, you gotta spend a lot of preliminary time on logistics.

I this group there's also a division, some artists will still insist everything has to rigidly adhere to something we know from life on earth and others are down to clown for the most abstract ideas. In the former group is the artist whose name I forget but he was really bitchy about Giger's alien having jaws that opened the same direction, because "in natute" secondary jaws always open the opposite direction. Then I learned about pharyngeal jaws in eels and was like in your face buddy. The latter is Wayne Barlowe who is all about the challenge of depicting fucked up under described creatures.

Top tier of course are artists who depict alien life in the coolest way they can first and think of reasons why second. This is what is top tier monsterfucking looks like.

[persianflaw]

i've been feeling a little embarrassed lately by how my attention span has dwindled when it comes to reading. i can still focus on other hobbies more or less the same, but those hobbies are more physical (cross stitching and making miniatures are my main two right now) and i often have music or a video playing in the background for additional stimulation. which i don't think is a bad thing, i actually find that i'm more attentive to both tasks when i do this, it just means that my ability to focus there isn't really representative.

i think some of it is anxiety-related; i find that i am more inclined to seek familiar stimuli of all kinds when my baseline anxiety levels are higher. and when i'm going through a period of higher inattentive behaviors, i struggle to initiate activities that require sole focus (as opposed to a creative project where i'm using my hands while listening to a podcast). same reason i have a bunch of movies and television shows stagnating on my watch list. obviously my adhd is a major element, arguably the underlying one. but adhd can be managed better and it can be managed worse, and this does feel like a decline.

cutting the rest for length because somehow this post ended up longer than i thought it would lol

this really stood out to me when i decided, last minute, to scrap my yuletide WIP in favor of reading a totally different book my recipient had requested and writing a fic based on that. it wasn't especially long, only 348 pages in the print version, but it took me maybe a week to get through when back in the day i would have knocked that out in an evening. of course, work was a factor, as well as the fact that i was having some medical procedures done, and the book itself was somewhat complex (an arthurian murder mystery with a lot of similarly-named characters whose relationships with each other are a complicated but extremely plot-crucial web). hell, even the fact that i had more or less assigned it to myself as homework probably contributed. but i didn't like the feeling of picking it up and feeling like i was dragging my heels. reading has never been a chore to me. i was an early reader and i took to it like a duck to water. this is not a pleasant experience.

(i HAVE noticed - and this is kind of funny - that font size totally impacts my reading process. i read very, very fast, and tend to process text in chunks (not skimming, it's just how i've always done it), so if the font is too large it slows me down a lot, which i think in turn tells part of my brain "this is a non-preferred task because it is going slowly". that's why i had trouble with e-readers at first: different font size than what i was used to in print books. but my eyesight is also getting worse as i get older, so i've had to size up text in digital formats, and i'm still finding a balance.)

all this to say that i want to work on my reading this year. i don't know if setting a specific book goal will energize or paralyze me, so i'm not sure if i'll do that or not. maybe... twenty-five books? i do have a lot of other hobbies in addition to working and attending college part-time, so i don't think that's unreasonably low. i also want to get back into reading short stories, so maybe i'll work out some kind of equivalency system there. i don't want to overcomplicate things. i just want to read like i used to.

[flockofdoves]

i was out as trans a a middle schooler and long before anyone else i knew at school etc. ever came out as trans. id like to think that even as the specifics of how i navigate my identity have changed throughout the years, that i've been pretty in touch with myself for most of the past fucking. 13 years when it comes to gender stuff and don't consider myself to be repressed in that way or anything.

but as time goes on its silly but i sometimes feel so weird comparing myself to a bunch of people i know who realized they were trans and came out way after me who are way way further in transition while i've still done nothing to physically transition and still waffle about wanting to do it perfectly and at the right time

and i know i didnt like Actually regress in my understanding of myself and i do actually find joy in being a woman through the context of being a lesbian, but i hate how that combined with still not physically transitioning in any way and not having as many unambiguously masculine clothes that are my style that fit me anymore and giving up on binding because of health issues/comfort/weight change/etc and growing out my hair (which genuinely has been an interesting or satisfying experience in some ways to learn how to take care of my hair but maybe long since has outserved me by now) and being indifferent moment to moment about what pronouns or gendered terms people use for me have all combined together to make me so fucking cis woman adjacent. and like yes i'm fine with being referred to as a cis woman and contextually sometimes describe myself as such and i'm like individually fine with most of these separate contributing factors but all together i cant take it anymore theres just too many contexts in my life where the balance is so off and people can totally ignore anything trans about my identity and i don't want that i want to be visibly gender non conforming i want to take t and get top surgery its so so so unreal that i feel less trans than i used to be and all of that history is just totally invisible to anyone who hasn't known me that long

i understand all of my reasoning and why i've made the decisions i've made and am in the position i am and but also its so strange realizing how despite all that a lot of the time i feel like the things i say sound so similar to the types of things me and other long out trans people affectionately joke about people who haven't quite accepted themselves as trans yet doing. and i know part of that is because of course any joke is gonna flatten real life experiences and peoples internal worlds a bit, but still maybe the point of the comparison isn't entirely without basis and that makes me feel really awful and feels so degrading to think about it like that when ive thought of myself as so self assured about this stuff for so long

[paradife-loft]

random khisit characterization/personal history tidbits, because I've been Thinking About Them 🥺 and I feel like it

most of the time if you'd asked them whether they were angry about something, or whether they were an angry person in general, they would say no with 100% genuinely sincere belief that they were telling the truth. (they're not angry, they're just annoyed by something that's rightfully and inherently annoying. or somebody is being obviously fundamentally wrong about something and you can't just let people go around being that wrong and stupid. anyway, alexithymia's a hell of a drug.)

on a pretty fundamental emotional-regulation level, they associate "having and exercising autonomy" with "getting in trouble and being punished". .........as in, "pissing people off and making life harder for yourself is/ought to be standard background noise, otherwise things get stifling and twitchy and you're probably being a doormat".

(regarding the above... they get better about it, to an extent. eventually. their relationship with Rivka is a pretty big contributing factor as to why & how.)

they have a lot of conflicted feelings and uncertainty around the idea of their biological family, and about being sith in general. "I would've had this entire heritage and culture that I refuse to believe isn't worthwhile, but it's been taken from me by other people's decisions" vs "if biology doesn't dictate who you are then why should I have to care about being sith in the first place? it matters more to the people around me than it does to me personally" vs "theoretically there's people out there who know more about where I came from, who I could find and contact if I wanted" vs "my parents - let alone any more extended family - clearly didn't give enough of a shit about my being raised by the Jedi to actually prevent it happening," fight!

relatedly: I genuinely cannot remember if I've explained it on here before or not, but so. the deal with their surname. the Savrow family is a long Red Sith lineage with a bunch of different offshoots, and given the significance of social status, positional relationships, and naming in sith culture, familial sub-branches will often end up distinguishing themselves from others by adding elements or modifying parts of the family name to reference a significant "founding member" or famous ancestor/close relative. "Ffosavrow" is likewise a fairly old modification of this sort, referring to a (quite distant) ancestor who was the second child of their house - not the heir, but one who nonetheless cultivated a significant power base worth its own distinction. when Khisit's parents fled to the Republic for political asylum, the interaction between sith cultural-linguistic touchpoints and Republic bureaucratic record-keeping got their legal surname listed as just "Savrow". Khisit learns this history as a ~preteen-equivalent, from old holo records and from badgering their elder cousin about memories from before they came to the Republic & Jedi.

speaking of said cousin - Khisit and Tryse never really had an amazing relationship, but that was also pretty structurally hamstrung by the whole "no attachments" deal. through Khisit's childhood, they just straight-up didn't interact with one another very often (Tryse being kept quite busy with an accelerated training montage of crash-course-assimilation-into-Jedi-and-Republic-culture). Tryse I think still felt responsible for Khisit in a way, and wanted to be able to have some sort of mentorship relationship, but by the time that would've been logistically feasible, Khisit had become kind of a difficult child who did not respond well at all to the angle Tryse tried to get to know them with, and it just resulted in a lot of frustration and hissing on both sides. (also, not that anybody was remotely in a position to understand/identify this back at that point, but by the time Khisit had gotten the basic rundown on how they and Tryse were related, that knowledge flared up real quickly into resentment/envy/anger at Tryse for a) having memories of family and growing up in the Empire, b) completely turning her back on anything from that life, and c) both of the above while also being human on top of it. obv from Tryse's pov it's more complicated than that and she's got a boatload of her own trauma shit going on, but. yeah.)

one of their hobbies as a kid/teenager was absolutely just causing tons of IT chaos on purpose throughout the entire Jedi temple.

also as a teenager: figured out they were not particularly into pain during the process of getting six piercings done on their face in a single session. no regrets though!!! even though ow.

(....on the other hand, discovered several years later via the club a friend held a birthday celebration at, that they were particularly into other people's pain. they uhh. they feel a whole entire Way about that. and almost certainly aren't letting anyone know about it unless said person has max approval and just got a critical success on their persuasion check.)

they genuinely really love the outside environment of Balmorra; ironically enough it's probably the first place they ever resonate with as somewhere beautiful and restorative and peaceful. something about it lets them feel... insignificant, less trapped in their body, in a way that doesn't demand anything of them. they do really miss it sometimes after they leave, and I do think they probably come back somewhat regularly after all the big galaxy-shattering nonsense is dealt with.

[chewbokachoi]

this is me ranting about a really dumb thing from a billion years ago but it relates to what has shaped my relationship with my writing

I had a friend group I was in from middle school to about ~6yrs ago. One friend, S, was somebody who was just...look, she had a lot going on, so I am sympathetic to her to an extent but looking back + how she continued as an adult

holy fuck was her impact on my writing bad

She was a hypocrite. She was a factor for why I stayed in the closet and is now married to another woman--tax reasons or not still what the everloving fuck. Went from being extremely right-leaning to left-leaning and acted as if she knew more than me about everything I had been going on about for years (including suddenly implying me, the bisexual she played a role in keeping in the closet, of homophobia). Was suddenly concerned about my sensitivity to other cultures and ethnicities yet always laughed at my culturally appropriate choice of an Albanian name (Liridon).

it got to the point where we were at a Starbucks and I overheard a woman mentioning she was from Albania that I actually interrupted to confirm the name Liridon was accurate and meant "free willed"--she said yes and even was like "AH an Albanian name?! YAY!"

(It's a character I named Liridon)

S still laughed about it and it was like ???? she toned down but STILL??? didn't actually apologize or see the problem

anyway

I was recently informed S is still mad about the friendship fallout. Which is valid. But it's also leaving me as extremely confused because one could argue she "won" or got "the better deal." A bunch of people from our group moved to the same city as her. I got left behind because I needed to be where my post-BA program was (and my ex RIP oh well I got the education I needed and wanted and that's not leaving me anytime soon).

Also I was the one everybody kept saying "you need to let go" and was the one who "held onto things for too long." Yet she's still mad about it. I have no clue if others are telling her to move on. That's fine. I was just so surprised to hear she was still mad about it after all these years.

I've referenced this a bit before--she was very controlling (I think partly to save our souls from her perspective). My writing was heavily policed and mocked by her to the point where I was not writing for me, and my characters didn't feel like they were mine. She wasn't the only one who contributed, but she was a heavy hitter for it. Of course one could say she was harsh with critique, but she wasn't even that. She was just controlling and taking out her trauma and anger on me.

Hurt people hurt people I know

Anyway it's relevant to my writing because this reveal about her anger is occupying more of my mind than I thought. It might mean I'll do more "fuck it I do what I want" with my writing. It might mean I write more than I expected out of spite. I'm not sure. It isn't gonna stop the writing that's for sure.

And of course there's always more to a story but this has gotten long enough.

The point is it's my writing and nobody else's. Also the added fact that I can be a real petty bitch and the fact she's still mad now has me going "okay get published and see what happens next"

No, brain. Bad brain.

We get published to make happy brain chemicals as well as see how much of a fucking PR nightmare we can be fore the publishing house.

[tiptapricot]

Hi!! I saw your MK mystery swap and was going through the doc and saw the red eye Jake is not to be featured? I haven’t been back to this fandom in a long while so I’m not aware if Jake having the red eye depicts him seriously wrong..?

Hi! Totally no worries, it’s something that’s become pretty ubiquitous and widespread and on platforms where there’s less discussion or talk ab it it’s not as, well, talked about!

Essentially, giving Jake the red eye is harmful for a mix of reasons, all generally tying into that it contributes to the idea of him being sinister or evil or “other” in some way. From what I know the trend of it started from a mix of those in more anime-art communities giving it to him (as a shorthand/visual of him being more sinister, violent, unhinged, etc) and then people either followed that after seeing it enough or went with it off the behind the scenes image showing Oscar as Jake wearing some kind of dark contact. Whatever the reason, it has a whole lot of connotations in the end that aren't great.

From the start its a differentiation detail thats not needed. It's not canon, and Jake is probably the system member with the most visual cues to indicate Its Him (hat, mustache, gloves or jacket, etc.). From there we get into implications and connotations. The one red eye is often used or helps to imply something off or sinister, most often seen in extra violent/"evil" or bloody art of Jake, or as a visual to make him seem out of place or like he's hiding something. It's a glare, a twinge of villainy or “madness” etc. And even if that is not the intent when giving it to him (I’ve seen plenty of art that’s chill and fine where it’s a choice that’s been made) it's easy to have it be read that way anyway, as that is not only the culture that has grown around it on a larger scale, but as a visual shorthand it still gives him an offputting feature that separates him from the others for no real reason. Why does he have it? What does it mean? Why is he the one given it and for what reason, etc.

In the end it all overall contributes to the wider view or stereotype of him as the "evil alter,” again, even if the depictions of him with it do not do that intentionally. Jake is the outsider, the one with madness in his eye, with some kind of hidden violence. It also can contribute to some antisemitic stereotypes, depicting a Jewish man with a sinister feature or the "evil eye,” especially if tying into his shooting of Harrow as some “unhinged” thing instead of rightful revenge.

This post and the additions and discussion below go further in depth on certain things and have points of view from others as well, but overall it’s just something better to avoid as it’s not needed as a detail and has become a wider hallmark of evil alter Jake depictions in fandom (similar to only giving MCU!Jake the nose bandage, perpetuating that he’s the one in the Duat scene with the broken nose, which can b blurrier but I can also talk ab if needed!) so it’s better to steer clear of!

But not knowing about it before is not a bad awful “you suck” thing, again, it’s extremely widespread due to a bunch of different factors, and if you don’t know you don’t know! Tumblr is also the main space I’ve seen any mentions or discussion of it happening due to the blogging nature. I hope this helps and if you have further Q’s I’m happy to answer as well :-)

[galacticnova3]

How does Reloh feel about Kirby

*Rubs hands together evilly*

It depends on how worked up he is at the time. Under normal circumstances, he’s pretty neutral about them, if not a bit wary. He’s fully aware of Kirby’s role in the downfall of Dark Matter as a group, but tends to view things from his usual lens of “yeah but we did all that and had it coming even if some of us made the effort to be better” because A. That’s Just A Kid and B. it really was probably best from the metric of reducing overall suffering in the world. They DO frighten him a bit if he actually dwells on the thought, though, mostly because knowing the guy who killed most of your family(even if for an understandable cause) has had impulsive moments of fighting first and asking questions later while wanting to do the right thing… Isn’t exactly a comforting thought when you very much look like The Enemy and also did do things in the past that many would see as warranting being labeled as such. Basically he can get scared of his past catching up to him in the face of the one who, y’know, took down the big bad Zero and Dark Matter who also happen to have been his immediate “family”. It’s complicated and that’s why he prefers to simply not think about them when he can help it.

I haven’t really touched on this but the more emotional Reloh gets, the more clarity he has regarding some of the memories he held on to that aren’t his. This is for reasons I plan to elaborate on in something I have in the works so I won’t explain why exactly this is the case, but writing-wise it’s a bit of irony because his “normal” life as a Dark Matter was basically 90% repressing emotions. Anyways, what this means is if he were to be particularly upset and think about Kirby in the midst of it, his perspective would lean more towards “oh my god that’s the one who killed us. this guy killed my strongest sibling twice, killed my creator twice, and heavily contributed to the majority of everyone else I was related to dying as well.” Like, he wasn’t physically there, but because of the hivemind he still has bits and pieces of what was witnessed by those who were. He has glimpses of what DMS saw in both of their final moments. He can recall the way Miracle Matter slowly started losing sight of the world around them as they were gradually killed an eye or two at a time. He remembers the sudden shock that came with Zero’s deaths as if part of his fundamental being had been torn out on two different occasions. He retains some of the sense of chaos and confusion and pain from the Dark Star before everyone there died. Even just considering his own memories, going from hundreds of voices in your head to just your own and knowing what it meant… That’s something he actively represses.

Kirby happens to be the common factor between all of those things. Granted, the same feeling actually extends a bit to Ribbon as well, though not quite as strongly on account of her not visibly being the one to deal the killing blow— he doesn’t know how big a role she played in the events of 64 because everyone there was more focused on the one who actually killed DMS and Zero’s first incarnation… So yeah basically as long as he’s not already Feeling Things Kirby is just kind of someone who exists and has an unfortunate connection to his life but otherwise doesn’t concern him. If he is having an emotions moment things are less chill. Sorry Kirby but you did kind of kill his parent and siblings, in some cases twice, and he’s stuck with the baggage that comes from that and also baggage inherited from a bunch of said siblings. Nothing personal kid. Well I mean it is kind of personal just not in the usual “we have met each other and have beef” kind of way.

[nukuome]

Man... I'm really starting to feel the "Why doesn't anyone like my art as much as I do". I try not to be bitter about it, especially not to my successful artist friends because I really am proud and happy that they have as much of a following as they do, but like idk.. what do the people want from me?? My fanfictions do way better than my art even though I don't like them that much all things considered. Should I plug my art on ao3?? That sounds really scummy.. waaa I complained to said successful artist friend a couple days ago that I just really like obscure or niche things, and that just makes it even harder to find an audience- plus i dont think anyone is looking for a Jessica Hyde sticker. He just loled and loled too, but I really do think that is a contributing factor. That + I do NOT have the skill/focus to pump out a bunch of little animatics to post on like tiktok or reels. I tried that, but it was really difficult for me to transfer what I had in my head onto paper. And I don't use tiktok, so I don't understand the landscape at ALL. Hhhhhuhgjhhhhhhhggggggg..... idk. I don't want to draw just to please people (unless you give me money uwu) but at the same time I really want to please people by drawing for them?? But I also don't like drawing for people like half of the time aaaa. I just really need something to click for me. I'm not gonna like.. give up if that doesn't happen lol I still love drawing and love digital art. I just might get really sad lmao. It doesn't help that my mama doesn't consider art a "real job". And it REALLY doesn't help that all the women in my family are a) artists in some way (nana's a singer, sister's a talented musician, mama loves art and design, etc.), but they b) don't understand the way I draw. I like to call my style: It sure is something. I don't actually have a name for it, but I don't like calling it "cartoonish" or "anime" or "chibi" or stuff like that. It's just "Nukuome's style". Maybe squib. I like that. I just remembered that is a term in Harry Potter.. it has nothing to do with Harry Potter. But yeah.. this might also have something to do with the whole "do people even think of me" thing I have going on rn. Aaaaannnyways.. *ima go post to deviant art now. BYEEEE!!* (imagine hunter is saying what's in the asterisks)

[czhybrid]

Okay, so, I've been struggling with my art recently.

I love doing design work, and I especially love doing character art for things like transformers or superhero OCs, but recently, I've been struggling with getting my art somewhere I'm happy with. Sure, I still do have the skill I'm happy with, and look forward to growing, but I've just been... uninspired?

Before someone says it, yes, I watched Across the spiderverse, and that had me on a spider sona fix for a while. Same happened with the new transformers movie, and even monkey kid to a degree. But both of those fixations have been running fairly dry. Even with my transformers fixation, the more recent of the two, I've had a bunch of random roadblocks complicating the process of creating characters I want to mess around with.

I have some ideas as to why this is, but I think a factor that has been contributing a non-zero amount to this is my constant consumption of media. I feel I've been almost completely connected to the internet in some way, finding every excuse I can to throw my headphones back on and tune my brain out to some obscure character lore or something. And yeah, sure, inspiration is great, it's not really been inspiration; more like a constant flow of information into my brain that I haven't been able to use in any way that I like.

All that to say, I'm going to probably take some time away from the constant flow of audio and visual stimulation my brain has been experiencing in order to just let my thoughts breathe. Maybe find some kind of clarity in it.

At the same time, I think I might dabble in some background art for a bit. I think my mind has been too unfocused to churn out consistently creative characters I can get attached to, so maybe trying to convey emotions through broad colour palettes and sweeping scenery will help me find my artistic focus again? We'll see.

Now, I'm not saying this to any one person or group or anything in particular, I just wanted to kinda throw my ADHD ridden thoughts out with what I think my problem is, and how I'm gonna try and solve it ig. But, if anyone actually makes it this far down the post, and maybe if you resonate with some part of it, I would love to hear whatever thoughts or ideas you might have on this issue, or if you're in the same place as me, what in particular you've been struggling with. We can form a little struggling artist cult or something!?

So, uh, other than that... thanks? Peace out ig, don't forget to brush your rocks.

[plasteredwalls]

Reminds me of that post of someone recreating a look from a movie like 40 years ago and they got the jumper spot on but it was a huge decrease in quality.

And now indulge me as I ramble about this because sustainable fashion is something I'm passionate about.

Companies swap to synthetic materials that costs less. Why does it cost less? Because high quality materials are running out and are therefore more expensive. So polyester is able to easily undercut the market by being "basically the same product but cheaper". Except its not. Its not the same. And I really hate companies who switch fabrics and be like "Omg look at this shirt it's made from plastic bottles we're so eco" THAT'S not a good thing! Because that shirt will not last and then we have to buy another shirt with the same rubbish material. Plus plastic stuff doesn't breath as well, plus can melt if you iron it too hard, plus a bunch of other things.

Recycling? Yes cool we should absolutely do it. But synthetic fabric closes the cycle of recycling and is still discarded quickly. If a primark t-shirt is in the same wasteland as a water bottle can we really say we did a good job?

Plus we have to consider why so much is being made that it ends up in landfill. Because not too long ago 6 sets of clothes was enough. They'd last forever, unless you worked in like a really damaging environment so you might need to replace work clothes more frequently. But now we have fashion seasons. We have trends that last months if not weeks. We have influences and brands telling us that what we wear is so last season and we need the new one.

Even if you're not in the mainstream fashion pipeline and think you're safe - what about youtuber merch? People shill put 100s for it and while some is good quality, some really isn't. And youtubers are, ultimately, a trend waiting to die. Some go quietly and its fine but some go before the merch can get its use. Just look at how many people spent so much money on Lovejoy / Wilbur Soot merch and now they can't wear it because they don't wanna be associated with him. That garments lifetime has been significantly shortened which is why I applaud people who put patches over merch they don't like anymore.

And coming back to OP's point because I as starting to get off topic - companies don't care about all these factors contributing to the low quality product. They actively want you to buy more stuff, they want trends to move on. They need to meet a demand they created to get you to spend money. If they're gonna keep up, they need to make their process as quick and cheap as possible.

Most garments today are overlocked and have the seam sewn down. That's it. And while that can be enough, the overlocker seam is usually still exposed to damage. Fancy seams that keep the garment intact waste time and money so why bother? Sure that seam wasn't done with the correct stitch and is already coming apart but they'll buy another shirt soon so who cares?

There's also an illusion of degradation. I had a top which had the entire bottom row of stitching come out and my mum suggested I throw it out because it's clearly old. How old was this top? 8 months. But in our minds 8 months of wear is definitely enough to justify it being past its best.

And lopping back round to the fabric quality debate, yes I've just ranted about how it's decreased hugely but expensive brands use the better quality materials so you assume they're overall better. But that means nothing if the stitching is the same shitty quality. £100 a metre fabric won't be saved by awful seams. Because construction quality is labour and is always gonna cost more than fabric quality.

Learn. How. To. Repair. Your. Clothes.

It sucks that we can't rely on "expensive but last forever" brands to give us something that will actually last. But if we repair our clothes and keep them in good shape then they will last longer. Finish off the bits the company isn't bothered to. Learn the fsncy seams. It sucks but it will save money and resources in the long term.

its actually insane how everything we buy now is just. unfinished. every clothes. every cloths. just. loose threads everywhere. ripped fabric. i should be able to get a refund, but i need this thing, i need something like it, something that will fulfill this purpose. what am i gonna get instead ? another crudely made excuse of a product ? an actual thing that will cost more than my rent and has a forty percent chance of being just as shoddily made ? everything capitalism has ever promised us is rotten, nothing more than mold dust & worn out wishes hanging by loose threads. im done.

[felixcosm]

a message from will wood, as a comment under the icimi stream: willwoodmusic ♪ 6 days ago (edited) Thank you all so much for listening and for all the kind words in the comments below! I've seen a lot of commenters talking about how you can sort of tell that I'm "doing better" on this album because the music isn't as wacky and wild as previous releases of mine, and I wanted to respond to that really quick! I think it's worth saying that my previous albums sounded wilder because I wanted to make wilder music, not because I wasn't lucid enough to make music as soft as the music I chose to make for ICIMI.

The reason I think it's important to say that is because I don't want the fact that I wanted to make louder music on some albums than I did on others, the results of me experimenting with genre, or my sense of humor, to further the idea that mental illness is some kooky evil carnival ride or always some screaming wreck. It can be, of course, but if people hear the wackiness of The Normal Album and think "here he's doing badly" and then hear the baritone uke on ICIMI and think "you can tell he's doing better" I think that risks contributing to the stigma, romanticizing, or giving the impression progress is a straight line. While I was much deeper into recovery and treatment during ICIMI, those songs were written in one of the toughest periods of my life; absolutely the closest I ever got to giving up completely. Whereas I was doing okay for most of the production of The Normal Album, to be honest! I think you can hear some personal progress through my discography, as you often can with many artists, but I wouldn't say the level of wackiness in my songs is necessarily related. Maybe in some songs, I suppose, but overall not really, there are a lot of other factors at play!

Over the years a ton of other things have changed in a ton of ways; my skill and experience level, my budget, what band I'm playing with, the music I listen to, my intentions with each individual song, what's fun to do in the moment, my tastes changing, etc. For instance, self-ish is all high energy songs partly because I was playing exclusively on the punk circuit at the time and needed to beef up my setlist with my higher energy songs, partly cause I had the opportunity to record with a great metal producer, partly because I wanted to try an early Foxy Shazam feel, partly cause I just wanted to see how weird we could get, and partly cause of Mike & Jon's creative influence. I was also writing more high-energy songs back then, but I was still writing ballads and folk tunes behind the scenes all the time, just never included many of them in a release until ICIMI, 'cause the point of that record was to show the more intimate side that I historically didn't tend to record. I've never not written and sung soft songs, (as a matter of fact early on in my career singing too many slow, sad, songs at live shows was a criticism I received!) and I don't plan to never write anything wacky and wild again - that's why Skeleton Appreciation Day is on my first album and Vampire Reference in a Minor Key is on my latest, you know? It's performance and it's art, stuff I made consciously and with a whole bunch of ideas behind it.

While the above mentioned interpretation of the changes in sounds may tell an interesting story, it's not really a true one. While yes, over the course of my career I made an enormous amount of progress in my mental health, that's not really why ICIMI sounds softer and slower. Of course it's had some effect on my music, partly in the subject matter, partly in my tastes, and partly in my goals as an artist, but it's not really a direct thing. ICIMI sounds like it does partly because I learned enough about composition, performance, and production to create some sounds I've always wanted to create, partly because I had been listening to a lot of chamber pop/indie folk music, and partly because I was really quite depressed. Of course, if how you interpret that trajectory of sounds is meaningful to you and is something you feel in a way that brings you some comfort, inspiration, or joy, then you should relate to the sounds however you do! I just wanted to explain a bit of the real history! :)

Thanks for the support y'all - check out my live album "In Case I Die" coming this Friday the 13th, after which I'll be taking a break from my music career to focus on my mental health and personal stuff for a while. It's got some unreleased songs, as well as new versions of released songs, and I'm really happy to have it be my sign-off. If you enjoyed ICIMI, I think you'll really like ICID. It's been a pleasure, an honor, and a hell of a trip. Thank you all for everything.

Much love, -ww