#this is abt fictional cultures btw

[twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat]

ari i’m curious do u have kenny hcs

RIKO U HAVE NO IDEA THE MONSTER UVE UNLEASHED.....

i do have some kenny hcs <333 take a seat here's a snack we’re gonna be here for a while 🧁🧃 (THANK YOU FOR INDULGING ME <3 this man genuinely makes me feel ill im sooo delusional abt him)

okok so first of all; general hcs !!

he likes art!! loves art!! this one is canon to me i just think he is so interested in any and all of humanity’s creative outlets and ofc art is the most prominent one. he loves all different forms of art — from sculptures to paintings to writing to video games (HEAVY on the latter btw i think he's so entranced by new technology) and so on.

and on that note!! i think he paints and writes himself :3 hes been alive for so long, learned so many languages, there's no way he didn't have time to pick up a paint brush. i think he paints to release stress!! and his styles vary but there's something mildly macabre abt all of his pieces. tends to gravitate towards expressionism above all else, especially the abstract kind.

i also feel like he sincerely enjoys ”bad” art like low budget movies and modern romance fiction and goofy video games…… he just thinks they're fun. def gets a good laugh out of them (this man canonically had a whole comedy phase he just wants to have fun!!)

and and and!! this is self indulgent as hell but i also think he cooks. there's just so much to learn when it comes to different cultures and their cuisine and i think they all interest him. but i hesitate to say that he's a good cook bc i feel like he’d make really weird fucked up food combinations just for the hell of it…. he's a freak. 100% the type to mix orange juice w black coffee just to see how it tastes.

i also hc that he has a soft spot for children, seeing as he literally carried and birthed one of his own LMAO... i just think he admires the innocence of childhood !! that childish and simple hope that adults tend to lose. he's very good w them too!! gentle and patient. and in geto’s body he has the softest nicest voice so i feel like kids gravitate towards him (i'm just thinking abt that One scene where he blows bubbles at a playground and all the kids chase them… they love him i just know he's a regular at that park)

OH AND……. idk if i’d call this a hc exactly but i just wanna see kenny in more feminine clothing. he literally has All the genders i don't think for a second that he cares abt gender norms. one moment he's in that tacky middle aged divorced father core hawaiian tshirt (he's so Me), the next he's wearing a purple floral dress or a puffy turtleneck <33 i just think he could pull anything off.

NOW FOR THE GOOD STUFF……. relationship hcs <33333 hes a whole red flag but hes also my silly pookie bear just trust me on this

FIRST OF ALL he's huge on quality time. if he's in a relationship w u then that means he sincerely enjoys ur company and therefore has a tendency to just bring u with him wherever he goes. otherwise he gets bored and starts whining abt it (silly silly man) hes a lonely guy ok </3 i feel like he gets very sudden urges to explore new places / do new things and he’ll make sure you’re right there w him !! you’ll wake up in his arms only to find you're in a snowy forest or some shit and he just WILL not tell u where he's taken u bc its ”a surprise ^_^” LMAOO

he also takes on a teaching role in the relationship and i think that's where hes happiest !! gets a kick out of it but it's also kind of special to him. especially if you haven't seen much of the world, or if you're just a naturally curious person — preferably both. he just enjoys teaching you new things, leading you towards new sights, drinking in your expressions and reactions. it's precious to him. something to cherish.

ON THAT NOTE i think he has this unquenchable curiosity that gets temporarily sated when he tries to like . Dissect you. see inside your mind. it's like hes solving a puzzle that never runs out of pieces. hear me out riko but i see him as somewhat similar to makima, he's detached and has trouble connecting w people and handles you almost like a math equation….. but since he unlike makima is a human being, i think he still has the capacity to grow to care for you and treat you like an equal (or something close to an equal). he genuinely does love you, but he's rusty. kenjaku just wants to know all there is to know about you — every single thing. he’d dig into your brain if he could, but he’ll settle on just brewing you tea, listening to you speak about your fears, hoping it’ll give him the same insight.

he's a little possessive . kind of a Lot. idk i just think he feels a pang of jealousy when he sees u laugh and have fun w someone else (he's like a preschooler getting pouty bc his bestie is playing w someone else LOL) and that makes him Uncomfortable so he just waltzes in and steals u away w a smooth smile and a hand on ur waist. pretends like it doesn't bother him in the slightest but if u tease him too much he drops the smile and gives u a Look (it's scary as hell so u immediately shut up LMAOO) and god forbid someone else is like… teaching u something… a subject they're knowledgeable abt while u sit there listening happily to their rambling……..... ohhh he gets so jealous it's funny. researches that particular subject in frightening detail JUST so he can correct your little friend and teach u abt it himself <33 weirdo. freak.

also (this is extremely important to understanding kenny's character) he's both mother coded and father coded but in the worst possible ways.

he's mother coded in the sense that he's a smidge controlling, good at coaxing you into doing things outside your comfort zone, an expert at making you feel guilty by acting especially sweet and gentle, has the ability to make you cry w one disappointed look etc etc

and he's father coded in the sense that he's easily offended but pretends not to be, wants to see you succeed so bad that it's almost more for him than you, forces you to have really deep onesided philosophical talks at 2am when you just want to sleep, sucks at voicing his love for you out loud so he just buys a bag of your favorite fruit, cuts them into slices and calls it a day. etc etc. he's awful actually. i need him

but !!! as for more soft hcs i think he's honestly an affectionate guy deep down… like deep deep down but it's there. he just likes having u close. preferably touching him. not constantly bc that’ll annoy him but he wants you to stay near so he can pull u into his lap whenever. loves reading to u while u rest ur head on his thigh, playing w ur hair and lulling u softly to sleep <3333 (it's the geto kinnie in him) AND idk why this came into my mind but i think he likes nose kisses. just bc ur face scrunches up and he thinks it's cute. he can be sweet !! probably.

OHHH AND he loves playing board games w u <33 everything from chess to monopoly. he thinks it's fun + a good bonding activity but it's only fun in the beginning. he's condescending if u lose and petty if u win but he’ll still ask u to stay up w him all night just so u can finish the game (he's insufferable actually) if u decline he’ll huff and play by himself while shooting u petty glares until u feel bad and join him. then he's back to being all suave and calm and mature ohhhh i hate him

he wants to be the mature stoic indulgent person in the relationship sooooo fucking bad but he’s plagued by silly impulses day and night. he’s just good at hiding it. but deep down he is and always will be a silly nerd <33

and finally; i think that in a no curses au he's significantly less of a freak but still weird and obsessive and a lil mean. bullies u just a tinyyy bit and acts condescendingly sweet but he cares for u a whole bunch. probably struggles w showing it in a way that isn't too overbearing or mildly alarming… maybe through writing. poems and paintings of u… sculptures…. just wants to portray the beauty he sees in u (can u tell artist!kenny makes me go a little crazy)

overall hes a weirdo hes a freak (def wants u to kiss his brain just to see how it feels) and he may or may not be a bundle of red flags but i love him dearly <333 hes a silly goose. i want to study him in a lab

[punkeropercyjackson]

CW for incest mention incase you're uncomfy with it btw:

Hey I saw one of your reblogs from another blog on a post abt incest and the generalization/desensitisation of it online, looked through your blog on similar topics and I just wanted to say thank you thank you thank you because your posts+reblogs on the topic put into words what I've been feeling for a long time now.

I genuinely hate fandom spaces so much. One of my primary fandoms (not pjo) for an anime I like alot is just an actual nightmare to interact with every time because it's full of proshippers and I feel so helpless bc i want to post my art and media of it on my art account, I want to interact with others who like the show, I want to talk to ppl who like my fav character and hyperfixation!! But you can barely trust anyone in the fandom because it's so normal to ship or tolerate incest that people will genuinely get angry if you even express disdain towards a common incestuous pairing in the fandom, much less state that you don't want to be anywhere near proshippers. Even if I find someone who doesn't support that pairing, they still actively interact with and are mutuals with those who DO. I have like no actual friends and interaction in this fandom because i actively despise incest and proshippers and refuse to interact w people who do

This is actually the last straw for me bc one of my fav mutuals on there and like one of the few ppl I got close to when i started using Tumblr for that fandom, I went thru their blog today and turns out they're a fucking proshipper this whole time and I never knew, they reblogged posts that defend proshippers. I'm so done man, I want to expand my art blog and talk to people but it makes me sick that my art for this fandom could be consumed by people who look at actual incest and think fiction doesn't affect reality when they already dumbed down an incredibly abusive dynamic to uwu twincest. It feels so gross, like I end up feeling like I'm somehow supporting this by staying in the fandom and making art.

I genuinely wonder how you stay in Tumblr fandom spaces without going insane when majority of them on Tumblr (esp what I've experienced from the Pjo fandom too) are full of toxic disgusting people who don't know if they said anything they said online to a normal person irl they'd get decked so fast. /gen

So so sorry if this ask comes off as vent-like, i just ended up rambling since this whole situation is so exhausting. You don't have to respond to this at all if you don't want to, but it would be nice to hear your thoughts too. Ty again :)

Hey Venna!!!!Like i said in my ask to you while on post limit,don't dw,my inbox is always open for fandom vents and i'm so glad i could provide a safe space for you where you wouldn't feel bad for having a backbone and taste!!!

And since you said you wanted to hear my thoughts,i completely agree with you and objectively you're right!!Being grossed out by incest is the behavior of a good person and the normalization of incest and the following pedophillia is a bi-product of terminally online gayness-Incest as a positively potrayed story element is a white supremacy thing as a reflection of it's irl status as also a white supremacy thing,both between white families and forced onto families of color by colonizers!When incest isn't a racist thing,it's either 1.Eugenics specifically('keeping it in the family' is a version of it),2.Ageism via 'punishing kids' or 3.A misogyny thing,see ancient greece since you mentioned Pjo!Pedestary only exists because ancient greek men were so misogynistic they'd rather be pedophiles than be with women,not out of any actual gay attraction,and Percy x gods shippers can look it up if you don't believe me.Note that 'purity culture' as they love to harp on actually means 'normalizing sa as a positive thing for palpability to men and forcing young girls to surpress their sexualities to make it easier for them' and by extension 'puritan' refers to 'highup self-righteous bigot who loves the fabled dark/questionable dynamics/content' so take that as you will,from an afropunk autistic trans person with bptsd

And the way i stay in fandoms is to be with my mutuals who also know this and have the same stances as me on this i.e insta-blocking with zero tolerance for proshitting.If you're interested and want a reason to stay,i can rec you their blogs and they can support your content to encourage your creativity as you deserve as all good people who're artists do and we're all tired of the Pjo proshitter gangs too as we roast them often and we do a lot of positive posting both in our Pjo writings/appreciation and other interests so who knows,you may even become friends with them too!!

[aviancataclysm]

regarding GD levels and misrepresentation of Chinese dragons

so. have you seen this level yet?

okay now dont get me wrong, the level looks VERY GOOD and i rly like it. but this brings to mind an issue that ive observed for a while in the GD community (and western media in general) (DISCLAIMER AGAIN that i do not have anything against this level and its creator)

it is that dragons are NOT obstacles/evil/menaces in chinese culture, which is what this lvl is obviously themed around

the difference lies in that most depictions of european dragons were symbols of power in the aggressive/menacing/evil way; they were tyranny and greed and destruction

and even though dragons are epic in modern society, these undertones are still prevalent because it just went from what we hate abt dragons to what we love abt dragons

but chinese dragons are NOT that. they are wealth, they are peace and power and symbol of holiness and kingship they bring rain that allows food to grow, they calm the lakes and oceans so sailors can pass; they will NOT bring misfortune unless one angers them, just like gods because they were gods

while it is true that 1. dragons are all fictional so you can do whatever with them 2. there are moral alignment variations within european dragons (eg. welsh dragon vs dragons in christianity)

chinese dragons are like . exclusive one of their kind bc its been associated with said culture (and had its rules set) since like 2070 BC (yes ancient china dates that far back and that's not even near the beginning of it)

so you cant rly make a whole level with blatant effort to resemble chinese culture, get the dragons symbolism wrong and then go "but theyre fictional so i do whatever i want,," -> bc ur associating with something already established

if you want to do whatever then you need to make distinctions in design and stuff to make it FEEL like it's your own thing.

so yeah theres that ty for coming to my ted talk. 掰囉大家

btw if youre wondering why i can talk about this. i am a native chinese speaker living in a country right next to china with its cultural roots very deeply intertwined (one could say they're the same but in different nations). we still have chinese history in our curriculum and many aspects of our traditions came from the time we were under qing dynasty rule

[ardentpoop]

i totally get what you mean abt how the fandom views the abuse in spn. like the vast majority of them fall for the biased narrative hook line and sinker, and it makes me extremely uncomfortable because if they can’t understand that it’s abuse on a television show from the abuser’s perspective (extremely blatant btw), i cannot trust them to identify real life abuse if the perpetrator is likeable enough. sorry this is a bit longer than i intended but. yeah

right, and i see patterns in this rhetoric all over the place from popular fiction to shipping culture at large to sensationalized news coverage of publicized abusive relationships. AH/JD being the most memorable recent example of the latter that will stick with me for a long time because of how profoundly sick to my stomach and violently disappointed in The Audience it made me feel.

[yonemurishiroku]

hey I just read your post abt where you answered an anon abt how even tho u kinda hate him u don't shit on him intentionally but would if promted or asked .that you would put it under percy hate tag and I just.....I respect so much rlly Ily and I'm can be like rlly pity sometimes and I wanna like u teach me ur ways

oh. wow. uhm. Thanks for your compliment, I guess? 😳 LOL I just think that letting people enjoy things was the least respect I can give to other media consumers.

Actually no. I just think that I don't have to waste my time hating something when I clearly can be dedicating my time and effort to those I love.

I hope I can teach you my ways but to be honest, since the day I came to know of the fandom culture, I've been instructed to respect others' choices of consumption. It came as a way of life, I think? Like basic manners in fandom space. I suppose it does have something with the fact that the Asian fandom, where I come from, has always been more lenient, dare I say respectful, and open in comparison with the Westerners, by which PJO thrives.

If I have to give you any advice though, I think I have a few that would help:

Before you send any hate, ask yourself if this is really worth your time, and if you'd be really feeling better if you engage with what you dislike.

Most of the time, it's just not worth it. Yeah maybe at that time, shitting on something you hate might sound fun, but at the end of the day, you'd only have burdened yourself with a sense of frustration and ruined others' fun. Try scrolling away the second you feel like you're not enjoying yourself. Pretend they don't exist. You'd forget about it like three minutes later. It helps a lot.

This is not real life. You can hardly (if ever) change someone's mind by arguing with them online. There's no need to trouble yourself, right?

Accept that whatever you like, there's always someone who dislikes it; and whatever you hate or feel disturbed at, there's always someone who's into that.

Because we're humans. and humans are self-centered at birth. we're not saints. we love and we hate as we'd like. it's just how we are. And it's fictional anyway. Who caressss. Let us love and let us hate.

This is... really a very simple thing in the Asian fandom, actually, but somehow the Westerners miss out. I've seen Twitter accounts condemning those who support pairings they disapprove of. I find it stupid and meaningless. Just. Don't. 😔😔😔

Which also means acknowledging your dislikes btw. You might figure out your reasons, but don't try justifying them. You hate whatever you don't like, that's all. Rant as you want. just avoid the fan's space. Don't jump into their sanctuary and commit blasphemy.

As I usually do, I might dislike Percy as he is, but I'm aware half of the fandom's in love with him, and that's okay! I know I don't like him though, so I stay away from his tag, and if I'm ranting I'm putting it somewhere fewer Percy fans can see. You wouldn't want to see hate in your blorbo tag now would you? It's just respect in its simplest form.

Fictional characters don't have rights. The only right they have is copyright. Just remember that the next time you feel offended in your blorbo's place.

However, I'm aware most of these just... don't apply to the wester fandom. yeah I don't know why either, everybody has this need for justice (their justice) somehow...

I suppose it'd be hard for you, but if you'd like to change your perspective to have a better, more peaceful fandom experience, I strongly recommend following the above.

I hope you have great experiences in this fandom culture. With love.

[spacetravels]

5, 13, 21, 30 for the artist asks? 👀 (btw you don’t have to answer 13 if you worry they’d take offense or something haha I just thought it was an interesting question!)

21 here :9

5. Estimate of how much of your art you post online vs. the art you keep for yourself

quite a bit i think. i tend to draw big canvases with upwards of 100 layers of Anything(tm) so about 20% actually sees the light of day 🧍… i’m shy

13. A creator who you admire but whose work isn't your thing

it’s ok i love opinion sharing 🧘‍♀️ this is HARD cuz i mean . smth smth art is subjective . i think all artists are dedicated to their craft and how/what they draw. smth not for Me works for Someone and that’s why art is awesum. besides i don’t tend to follow artists if i didn’t enjoy their work in some capacity LOL so u can have my opinion on a style: i’m not into anime realism

like i have respect and love for the artists. i empathize w them cuz this genre is ai art’s greatest victim. it’s very… art meant for easy consumption? “beautiful” and nothing else evocative? nothing challenging to the audience. a near perfect contemporary style for people who are afraid of art. easy to steal, clearly. it’s uninteresting to me to see a piece of art and only call it beautiful and be unable to dissect why beyond technical skill 🧍..

but also being technically well done is Not a bad thing. i do think these works are made skillfully. stylized realism presents unique challenges, and it’s awesome when ppl can figure it out for themselves. i’m not gonna name names cuz no one specific comes to mind but well u could just type realistic anime girl into google or whatever and you’ll get the idea 🫡

30. What piece of yours do you think is underrated

MAN normally i’d say i wish my ocs got attention. and i do. i love making my webcomics and talking abt my ocs and drawing them!! but it’s ok cuz well i know i love my ocs soooo. it’s ok

i’m gonna say this piece!! i don’t often do this type of work even though it’s a style i love working in. i was worried my intention wouldn’t come across very clear (heartbroken americana, i’ve been calling it) and i just don’t think i have the audience for this. it’s a little too vulnerable and too idealistic in discussing usamerican patriotism turning commodification into religious iconography… the higher powers of pop culture and the watering down of social identity by what we understand thru film lenses versus being oneself in their community… is this all buzzword talk. is the only way we can engage in greater issues is when someone can fictionalize it and create a safe barrier of reality disconnect. is it meaningful to create art about this when i myself am begging and needing my pain and grief to be understood through that same barrier. god was a 2 dollar cheeseburger before inflation

[catcrazies-midnight]

thinking abt the Light in jieu’reis culture actually thinking abt how in the void of space it bore itself and in it the Ten and in them the Mother and in it the blae and how they are all a shadow with a Light at its heart a Shadow with a light at its heart a shadow with a light at its heart and everything around it for incomprehensible distances are made in its fractal image and one day in the far far future beyond the perception of any living thing the Light will blow up in a great ball of fire and take everything it created with it but it is not sapient and it did not intend to create or to exist and it simply was because in the presence of the shadows there must be a Light and in the presence of the Shadows there must be a light and in the presence of the shadows there must be a light and it is worshipped and it is above anything but it is not a god and it is not alive it is simply a rule that the presence of one means the existance of the other

[avenger-hawk]

Hi Hawk, I've been following your blog for a while. I'm also a writer with an interest in "problematic" subjects, some of which come from personal trauma, others just because I find them hot. Who knows why we like the things we like? The point is, I'm very disturbed by the social justice trends in art and creativity. In a real world scenario, if we can't write about things that aren't "approved of", then we're all fucked. It's hard enough to make art without fear of censorship. 1/2

2/2 I’m worried about the repercussions of this type of thinking. If you take away problematic subjects, what do people expect stories to be about? The real world is extremely problematic. This just shows me that most of these "woke" people are very young, but unfortunately their morals have a real-world impact on the kind of media we consume. I’ll end my rant now. Thanks for defending your right to like whatever you want. I hope you can keep writing, because your prose is very beautiful.

                         **************************************************

Hi and thanks for appreciating my writing.

I think that this moralistic trend in fiction killed fandom culture already. These ‘woke’ fans are young, yes, and extremely ignorant. They ignore that not only the real world is very problematic so with certain things they’ll have to coexist with and with others they’ll (we’ll, as humans) try or should try to change things but it’s impossible cause decisions are in the hands of corrupted governments and dictators who don’t give a shit about human rights or environment, so in this shitty world we live in, where people get killed for the color of their skin, where people are killed in shellings because their country is invaded with a pretext, fiction, be it problematic or not, doesn’t matter anything, even less than in a peaceful world where things are all ‘unproblematic’.

Because it’s fiction and fiction should be a safe place to explore things we are interested in even if (or precisely because) they’re dark and dangerous so we wouldn’t do them in real life, or to elaborate certain things, traumas or whatever, or to just enjoy weird stuff.

It’s extremely offensive imo to start moral crusades against a pairing or some fanwork, or to have all these long ass discourse things about some injustice in the fictional world, when in the real world real injustice happens, real r*pe, real genocide happen. And now I feel this even more and I hate fandoms even more because they’re disconnected from reality, or, they engage in some online activism thing abt the current trends, because there are trends for activism too, and they apply them in fiction. Idiots, just do some real activism in the real world instead.

For me it’s too late for everything, because when I was younger and not active in fandoms I remember how much ‘problematic’ stuff there was everywhere and how people either enjoyed it or ignored it. btw I hate the word ‘problematic’ so much, and only now I’m starting to use it, and this is a victory for them too. I remember how when I started being active in the Nar fandom there were little little problems about this, and I see how it is now instead, where people self-censor themselves and their creative works so the 90s% of content is boring and stupid, 5% is ok and 5% is ok but the author apologizes so much that makes it less cool with their words. I see how my fics in the beginning received positive feedback, then less and less, with more hate because how dare I, or with justifications for liking them, as if it’s not only a guilty pleasure but a real sin to atone for.

Like you said, their ‘morals’ have an impact on the media we all consume, so we’ll have more and more ‘wholesome’ boring flat stuff...about s*x and relationships (especially when it’s about lgbt+ fictional stuff...I get that maybe for some life is so shitty that they want only ‘wholesome’ content but for others it’s ok to consume different stuff? I speak for myself and my gf for example, but there are more like us), while violence is always ok. So we’ll keep on having serial killers crime stuff because for some reason they are never included in the problematic stuff even if they indulge in problematic stuff but in the end they catch the bad guys (like Criminal Minds, which idk if it’s still ongoing. I kinda like the characters but I find the way they show serial killers/s*xual maniacs things very disturbing) or those shitty super violent things like The Walking Dead, which was so disgusting but somehow it was ok? Idk. As long as there was no ‘age gap’ or ‘problematic relationship’ cannibals and extreme violence is ok.

I think there is no turning back, not for now. Our generation of fan creations is fucked. We can continue writing, drawing, whatever but we’ll have less and less appreciation because the trend is against us. I can keep on shamelessly admitting what I like but I’ll be more and more cornered in a pit of shame and immorality by puritans. Until I, we (not you specifically but we creators of problematic content) will get tired, bored of this and we’ll grow out of the fandom. Also because like you said they are very young, so they have more time and less ideas of their own, their biggest pasttime in fandom is not creating anything, it’s politicing creators, who, on the other hand, have less time because they are older and because they spend it creating stuff.

It’s a lost battle.

[geothefafa]

fae 🌠and birch 🌳

fae 🌠 - what’s a fact about yourself that you don’t know how to explain?

well it’s hard to even come up with even a normal fact abt myself but one strange thing for certain, I have insanely good luck guaranteed but ONLY in high stakes situations. Games and general chance I would say my luck is fairly average, but in actual life or death situations (there have been too many to count at this point) I always end up with the Best luck outcome. maybe it’s just an optimistic outlook, maybe having a significant number of near death experiences is actually BAD luck but like, lol I won every time so far havent I? Sounds pretty lucky to me.

birch 🌳 - what’s something you’re proud of?

So many things it’s hard to pick just one! But after a bit of thinking I’ve determined that all the world building I’ve put into my ocs and their world is what I’m MOST proud of. Even if I don’t post abt it here, I have sooo many documents with so many pages of information on almost every topic in that universe. The topic with the most in depth stuff I’ve gone into is my conlang that goes with it all. A fully formed and functional language that I still to this day (Ive been working on this every now and then for the past 10 years) add more words to the dictionary. When I was younger I kept the vocabulary in a physical book, but I actually ran out of room entirely and just started keeping everything into a much easier to manage Google doc. I do at times still wish I had a physical copy of the dictionary, but that’s a huge project that’s gonna require a lot of patience.

The language has more than just a dictionary too btw! I also have documents just for sentence examples to show how (almost) every word is used in different contexts! The grammar of the language is fully developed and over time there’s plenty of fictional culture that’s seeped in and poured out through the world building in general. There are 18 different sets of pronouns though :). And words can get Really long due to how words form in sentences. but hey at least you don’t have to conjugate verbs!

[hgsn-moved]

ok this isnt a tumblr person (theyre an irl) but i am sooo annoyed with them and they are like. The only part of school i completely hate rn. anyways im a senior and theyre the same grade as me and they act literally the exact same as her freshman year... pansexual theatre kid who WILL sing loudly in public and acts like shes in charge of EVERYTHING when they arent even like. A teachers assistant just a student. They never get lead roles in theatre (bc they. arent a great actor or singer or dancer or anything???) Like theyre... fine at some things but they project their voice ALL THE TIME for no reason and interupt students and teachers contantly to correct them and theyre barely right (AND NOT IN CHARGE? THEY HAVE NO AUTHORITY?) and like. Ugh theyre annoying in general and theyre Christian (which isnt inherently bad but most of the school is lgbt in some way and a loooot of people are uncomfortable with christians especially when you start reciting??? Bible passages???????) Anyways theyre kind of a dick about it and she gets suuuuper hissy when someone asks her to not project her voice across the whole classroom while talking abt christian shit and they genuinely act like some gay high schoolers not liking christianity makes the religion unpopular and controversial and like. shes never said it directly but she acts like shes oppressed for talking abt the bible. the other day she called the old or new testament "too pc" like bruhhhhh it was written so fucking long ago and anyone saying "pc" is a red flag for me. oh and this isnt like the worst things btw. (1/?)

She complains about cancel culture. All the fucking time but not in a reasonable way, no just a freak way bc they dont care abt racist musicians and stuff like that bc??? Idk???? Last week or so she said to my face "haha i kinda do ship the beatles like they were sooo gay for each other like omg" and the amount of violence i felt... like i was gritting my teeth so hard my orthodontist is gonna be mad at me, thank fuck for masks bc i could not handle them with my whole face out there. Anyways they talked abt shipping the Beatles more lately BUT i was talking to a friend and apparently in their (the og person) freshman year they talked to my friend abt their house being haunted by famous ghosts (they said this to me too) BUT THEY APPARENTLY SAID THEY HAD GHOST SEX WITH ONE OF THE BEATLES?????????????????? i wouldve left my school if i heard that freshman year but my friend said she said that to her and hhhhh. she told me in our freshman year that was communicating with freddie mercurys ghost and that he had a crush on her and it was soooo weird but telling ppl u had ghost sex???¿?¿?¿?¿??¿????shes also said shes in love with the beatles like. Romantically and like this is off topic but they never listen to people and always interrupt with what they want to talk abt and WILL and HAS yelled at me and people around me for saying we don't like/dont care abt the beatles and its so fuckinf annoying. if it couldn't get worse, shes a hardcore dreamsmp stan AND KEEPS THINKING SHE CAN TALK TO ME ABOUT THEM and talking abt how she's cosplaying one of the characters for halloween and jow theyre soooo funny and something somethjng doesnt support dream bc of his FICTIONAL MINECRAFT CHARACTER not even his racist shit but still likes the smp and i want to rip my hair out abt her. i had a drean i yelled at her for the. Everything and it was sooooooo cathartic or whatever and the closest high ive gotten is talking shit abt her and staring directly at her while saying it while theyre talking to someone else bc theyre so self absorbed they never notice. Ok this is kinda minor comparatively but they wear like 1-2 inch heels all the time and like. fucking stomp in them everytime they walk to make it sound louder but they act casual abt it and talk abt how its sooo cool they make noise when theyre really being loud as hell on purpose (its so fuckinf obvious) and they always give me terrible advice (i wanted to work at this place and i was mentioning how they were hiring a manager FOR THREE RESTAURANTS and they immeaditely said i shouldve applied bc i was qualified and everyone there was ??? that doesnt make any sense but they didnt back down and it was so stupid like im 17 why the fuck would i manage three restaurants with no prior experience???? but they always assume shit and act like its fact and its literally gotten kids in trouble and they always divert blame its infuriating) AND they keep bragging abt how many ex boyfriends theyve had and like........ idk if theyre counting ghost sex with the beatles in that but they very much could be. ALSOOO they misgender kids all the fucking time and dont apologize or correct themself AT ALL but whine abt their one second cousin of theirs maybe possibly being transphobic with no evidence and talk abt how hard it is when they live thousands of miles away and barely talk like shut upppp!!! also the people they misgender are almost ALWAYS transfem and theyre tme and its. Very uncomfortable and they touch ppl without consent a lot (not excessively but Enough) and also they call me a bitch all the time in a "friendly" way even tho ive told them i dont like it and they call me hispanic when ive told them to call me latino and UGH. i think im done but i fucking hate them so much i hope they die -_- (2/2)

[papers4me]

Fascinating concepts in Golden Kamuy Manga ( part 2)

In part 1, I listed 3 concepts that I find intriguing in Golden Kamuy ( GK), I provided short explanation of these concepts but due to issues of space couldn’t provide more examples. The previous 3 concepts were: (1). Broken men of war & death, (2) Fun dynamics & journey companion  does not equal close friendships, & (3) Perspective is where characters are truly at. In total I have 9 concepts but intend to post 3 at a time. So, here we go~

4. What breaks men of war: ( emotional ties)

in my previous post, I’ve mentioned that these men of war are not fazed by death & some are even obsessed with it. goldenkamuyhunting has kindly added that they are affected by the death of those whom they’re emotionally connected to, and provided examples. very true. However, I want to look at this concept from another perspective. As much as the constant brush with death has hardened their hearts & stole chunks of their humanity, all the characters are still human. Their humanity isn’t mostly displayed in how they treat strangers/ enemies, or men on the other side, it is presented on how easily they crumble down once you press the right button: their loved ones. They have strong emotional ties that can break them down, even now after they’ve become so drenched in blood. These ties are mostly connected to ppl who are the reason of their current perspective or their past selves. Sugimoto, the ruthless, breaks down in tears at the memory of toraji, at the idea of failing Yumi, at the thought seeing Asripa become like him: a killer. These emotional ties break him into tears & self loathing frenzy. Sadistic Nikaidou not only mourn his brother, but becomes a shell of a man, delusional, erratic, addicted to drugs & hollow. Tsukishima, Tsurumi’s right hand who kills with no hesitation, becomes all sorts of mess at the thought of Igogusa: anger, tears, loss, despair, explosive rage, self-loath coupled with low self-esteem. Tsurumi himself, the man who fondly remember running thro rain of blood, was so affected by the murder of his wife & daughter to the point of not being able to restrain himself. (many examples) but the point is, I applaud the writer for not going the path of writing these characters as emotionless hard cold blooded war veterans. They have emotions & can break into sobs. You might think they’re unable to form new emotional ties, but some can, sugimoto formed healthy independent ties with shirashi! But the issue is not the new ties. The real issue is these men of war not yet dealing with the old emotional ties from their past. Those ties are eating them from the inside. The pain is still raw!

5. Excellent portrayal of unstable psyche:

Some of these men, due to the past emotional ties, have developed unstable thinking & deep troubling thought process & reasoning coupled with the ugly brutality of war. Other writers will simply write men such as Tsurumi or Ogata as mad guys, crazy & lunatic. But Noda chose a deeper more logical & intriguing approach. Their behavior shows elements of unstable & deeply trouble thinking; little boy Ogata poisoning his mother & Tsurumi’s infatuation of being a soul snatching shinigami. What they have done is unexcused & cannot be corrected. However, they are not mindless lunatics. Both characters are mysterious & rarely allowed to have inner monologue abt their true goal. Both play on different sides & have gone through some personal journey to solidify their nihilistic belief. Both goes even deeper into the depth of seemingly unstable thought process. Ogata, lacking family love, questions the concept of pity, mercy & compassion. Embarks on a journey to prove that he’s not alone in feeling no guilt over human death. That his tragic thinking is not up-normal. Other ppl exist like me. ppl other than weird Usami. Nothing is wrong with me, so father should accept me. So tragic. Yet Ogata even with this unstable thinking is portrayed as smart with analytic thinking, skilled, seemingly not swayed by manipulators & very perceptive! Same goes for Tsurumi, extremely manipulated, cunning, intelligent & sweet talker, but was shown as a loving father as he held his daughter in his hand in most of his Japanese language teaching scenes with wilk in Russia. His family’s death deeply troubled him & changed him into the monster he’s currently is. Obsessed with their bones. Not mourning them yet. His position as the story’s villain adds to this but in a very balanced way. There are more examples, such as Usami & a number of the tattooed convicts. But the point is the writer treats the characters as human, who are capable of unstable obsession & thinking, yet can display normal behavior & excellent logical thinking as well.

( btw: I’m not putting any character with the same scale as the other, or saying they’re equal or identical. They are NOT.  I’m simply looking at a ting aspect from their behavior in light of the concept they share) 

6. No heroes:

I duno abt you. But I don’t sense that this is a story of a bunch of alliances saving the day against the big baddie. I could be wrong tho. But this story has sth that is lacking from most stories, which is: each side have winning points as much as loosing points. Meaning each side has arguments that can lead to their logical success as much as arguments that sheds some light on the holes in their plans. Even the argument that says minority groups should have their own land with their own culture, while very just in concept, the application is quite complicated. A group of ppl with no strong army sitting on a land of rich resources won’t be left alone by other nations. It never happened in the real world, & while GK is fiction, it is safe to say that Noda is aware of this as he made Tsurimi himself point this out in ch,271. Even if the minority groups get their land, they can’t preserve their own culture if they continue their old ways without adapting into new generations & without reaching out to the outside world. Once again Trsumi pointed this out while talking abt japan itself. I duno how Noda plans to solve this. But This is not even exclusive to the Auni/Japan/Russia situation. Again, the story itself is way bigger than that. Each character is not even the hero of their own story. Asirpa’s trauma of finding herself shouldering the burden of an entire culture while struggling to have a normal selfish goal like any normal girl. Sugimoto becoming her body guard while she solves an issue that he himself isn’t that much interested in! he just wanted her to be happy. More importantly he wants her to NOT be like him. Living thro Asripa while he should be trying to figure out his own path, rather than looking for salvation thro the innocent angelic Asipra or becoming a human skinning tool to get the money for Ume’s eyes treatment when she herself never asked him to! Tsukushima, desperately trying to believe that there’s at least some bigger picture good for following Trsurmi, that all the years of blood stinky hands can mean sth, somehow, in the future, so may examples. But I love the concept of grey characters so dearly, no heroes, no angels.

Disclaimer:

I know my explanation for each argument & each concept & the examples I provide can be misunderstood. But I assure you that each time I provide an example, I’m looking at a tiny aspect of a deeply complex & intriguing character that cannot be summarized into one or two concepts & is bigger than to be compared to other characters as well. Each concept is shared by a number of characters but with different approach, level & reasoning behind it. If I want to discuss a certain character in depth, I’ll do that in a post dedicated for them  alone.

Lastly, This is just a fraction of my personal opinion abt the story & characters. I’m not claiming this is how they are truly written or this how Noda intended it or even that you should share my thoughts. I just think this manga is so darn good & rich with fascinating characters!

[sol1056]

wuxia/xianxia: a loose and somewhat second-hand introduction to the genre, pt1

Sorry for the unconventional q, but i keep seeing Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation everywhere and I kinda want to get into it but a) don't know where to start (web series? live action adaptation?? wait how many are there!) and b) i don't really "get" wuxia / xianxia, that sorta stuff, i find it really hard to cross that cultural barrier and chinese mentality seems very alien. (it's not that i have no experience w different mentalities but chinese in particular is v hard to grasp w/o sources).

So if you have the time and patience, I'd love to hear a summary of it (like, a coherent summary bc all i get on the wikis is a shower of names and concepts that don't make sense to me) and perhaps some "intro for dummies" abt the relevant parts of chinese history and mentality tied to it? not just the cultivation / buddhist part but also re: familial relationships, philosophy and all that. (v brief and low effort of course) Thank you and sorry for bothering you!

("brief and low effort" referring to what I'm asking from you, not to what I need for me - as in i asked for it so i'm more than ready for a complicated essay, but you can write with as much detail as you like, I don't want to ask for some sort of comprehensive tome)

Okay first, you do realize that if you want “brief and low” for anything, you’re asking the wrong person? I was a philosophy major. brief got drilled out of me a long time ago. 

Second... well, explaining what makes The Untamed / Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (mdzs for short, from the chinese title, Mo Dao Zu Shi) such a standout story does require understanding some of the wuxia conventions it subverts -- as well as some that it plays straight (so to speak) very, very well. 

I figure the best approach (again, sadly not brief) is to first get a handle on the genre of wuxia. Gonna break this post into two, so you’re not reading in a single three-hour stretch or something. I’ll do a follow-up about mdzs, to hopefully make it a bit more accessible for you. 

before I do that, let me first say: I didn’t grow up with this genre, so there’s going to be parts that I may miscast unintentionally. for an insider’s view, my go-to voices are @guzhuangheaven, @atthewaterside, @dramatic-gwynne, @the50-person and @drunkensword. if any of them are reading this and can point to more/other/better voices, please do.

I have three analogies -- like cultural doorways --  and like all analogies, they break down when you get into the finer details. In the broad strokes, though, they mostly work, and if nothing else, hopefully they’ll demonstrate that wuxia may be a chinese-specific version, but part of a storytelling tradition that’s nearly universal.

The three doorways are: the american wild west, the samurai era, and the british arthurian romances. And, in a tangential way, the regency period in the romance genre. 

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- 

The term ‘wuxia’ can be translated several ways, but I prefer ‘martial chivalry’. Most wuxia takes place in the jianghu, a harder term to unpack. Generally, though, ‘the jianghu’ has connotations not all that different from what americans mean when they reference the wild west. 

More of a concept than a physical place, the jianghu (like the ‘wild’ west) exists beyond the reach of the law and/or civilization. It’s occupied by a diverse cast of farmers, merchants, beggars, and so on, but also by outlaws, gangs, hermits, pretty much all those who don’t like the suffocating nature of the civilized world, for whatever reason. It’s not a lawless place (except to outsiders); it does have laws, but those are only unto itself. 

So, jianghu is a world to itself, for the most part -- which also makes it kind of timeless. Tang dynasty, Song dynasty, Ming dynasty, it could be any of them and all of them and none of them. Just as the heyday of the cowboys and the cattle drives was barely a decade long, a culture’s romanticized history stretches into lifetimes that exist separate from any date you could pin down on a calendar. 

The average wuxia protagonist would fit in reasonably well as knight errants in an arthurian romance, with one important detail in difference: they’re rarely aristocrats. Wuxia protagonists are just as likely (if not more so) to be lower-born, whether the child of farmers, or servants, some common caste. 

This is where wuxia diverges from the british and japanese traditions, which have a bit more noblesse oblige going on (knights and samurai both being upper-class types). Even ‘aristocratic’ characters tend to be so only within the jianghu -- sort of like the way a territory’s elected leader in the wild west would’ve had no pull in Washington, given they weren’t from a fully-recognized state. 

Wuxia does often have politics, between competing sects (think schools of learning), but that political infighting is independent of the capital’s rules or wishes. A lot of stories -- in the rare cases the topic even comes up -- tends to speak of ‘the capital’ in disparaging terms. 

That’s not to say wuxia is all about the flat social systems (it’s definitely not), but most commonly a rank implies some level of competence/study. The title of sect leader isn’t granted, it's earned. Children inherit, but it’s also a common storyline to have an heir with no skills (who then goes through all the trials and tribulations to finally level up and earn that position in turn).

What makes wuxia hard to grasp is its vernacular: the conventions that form the backbone that make something recognizably ‘wuxia’ and not just ‘historical drama set on a frontier in a loosely-defined time period’. 

Frex: in a Wild West story, convention is two gunfighters at opposite ends of the street, and at least one of them is wearing a holster tied to his leg with string in a way that no real gunfighter wore, ever, but Hollywood came up with the idea and now it’s a permanent part of our imagination. In the arthurian romances,  convention is carrying the token of one’s lady love (a distant, untouchable figure who rarely appears on-page), or meeting the unnamed knight in black on the jousting field. Convention are the samurai who’ll die for their lord’s honor, always touchy and prickly at the first sign of disrespect. 

These are things granted the most remarkable gravity, that to an outsider might seem ridiculous. (Why is there always tumbleweed?) 

Now, wuxia is the latest evolution in a long-lived literary tradition (and by ‘long’ I mean like 2000+ years) -- but like any living tradition, each subsequent generation reinvents it for their time. Part of that reinvention comes from particularly influential writers, who put their own spin on things, and their interpretation becomes the next generation’s standard for the genre -- “of course wuxia must have X” or “a protagonist never does Y”. (Like how Tolkien almost single-handedly changed western concepts of elves, in fiction.)

And here’s where I explain what regency romance has to do with it. Another short-lived period, in real history, but along came Georgette Heyer, who took bits and pieces of actual research, blended them with her reactionary politics, exaggerating some things and ignoring other things completely. The result is a time-that-never-was, but she cast (and still casts) a shadow so vast that I’ve seen multiple romance writers complain that readers will see a footnoted-and-researched version as wrong, if it contradicts one of Heyer’s made-up conventions. 

Modern wuxia has its own Heyer-sized influencers -- like Jin Yong (the Condor trilogy, Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils), Wen Rui'an (The Four), Gu Long (The Legend of Flying Daggers, The Proud Twins), to name a few of the biggest. If you have a chance or are inclined, the big names get remade on a pretty regular basis, and catching one will at least let you see some ur-tropes in action. 

But it also means that you can’t really extrapolate, in the sense of saying, “in wuxia, people do X, ergo, X is also a factor in Chinese culture.” It’s like... take any western made in the 50s, and the vernacular is simple. The bad guys wear black hats, the good guys wear white hats, the prostitutes wear bright-colored dresses with frills and the good women wear subdued colors buttoned up to their neck. It told an audience exactly what character filled what role, but that’d tell you zero about real people you might meet in Nebraska or Utah, let alone New York City. 

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- 

Almost forgot: xianxia is basically wuxia but with ‘immortal heroes’ -- so there’s gods, divine influences, non-human beings as characters (main or NPC), etc. (Btw, by ‘immortal’ I mean exactly that, like this character is six hundred years old, that one’s a thousand years old, etc.) You can think of xianxia as wuxia, but amped way up on the mystical scale. 

Xianxia will sometimes take place on earth (jianghu) but sometimes in the celestial realm (heaven). Or a mix of both, like stories where a character falls (or is banished, or defects) from heaven and has to go through various trials and tribulations as a mortal human in order to regain a power, rise in rank, fall in love, or whatever their goal is. 

A number of wuxia stories are driven by some sort of mcguffin, but in xianxia, the mcguffin is more likely to be a powerful spiritual weapon. But I can also think of a number of wuxia in which the mcguffin would fit right in, in xianxia (some near-mystical thing with significant positive, or negative, power independent of the wielder, which often amplifies or boosts the wielder to an inhuman degree, etc). 

Thing is, the mcguffin being divine/infernal supernatural isn’t enough alone to make the story xianxia. I’m pretty sure you need non-human or super-human immortals and/or creatures to be considered in the xianxia genre. 

part two

[mychemicalraymance]

whilst watching velvet goldmine i was like. thinking about how easy it would be to make that exact movie except it’s about my chemical romance. like ok thinking about the cultural timeline of this. it will be made in approx 7-10 years and i’m very excited for it.  the earliest part of the relevant cultural timeline of vg is like mid ish 60s w the mentioning of mods and rockers and the movie was made in 98 so that like mm...... 30 yrs give or take. and so, taking into acct the fact that culture as of the last 15 yrs or so is evolving faster than it has been since the advent of the 21st century, i’d say we have about 7-10 yrs to wait until we get to the point where we can have a melodramatic stylized mcr vg remake. we are nearly already at a point right now where mid 2000s culture is being remembered fondly deeply by the people who lived it and VERY soon it will be fully realized as a demographic and will be treated like the 90s 80s 70s are now by the commercial culture at large. and like. translating mcr into that movie is SO easy. talking abt the childhood formation of brian is like. 80s 90s horror, rock and comics culture infoming mcr/ the scene at large. 

very easy to follow the progression of the 2000s emo/rock scene and also the fact that gerard was the defining figure of that ( which like. i dont think he’s brian slade at all. i’m obviously being very loose with this). there’s so many parallels btw the movie and how the scene revolved around a select few people and the EXTREMELY mythologized origins/relationships of said people/bands. fuckin crazy. 

barely even touching the fact that gerard/my chem were the 2000s equivalent of a sexual revolution. the sexual rebellion of mcr...... very vg. but like i would not say mcr evolved into the homosexual sweatshop seen in the movie. the gay circus was directed by brendon urie. the commodification of the homosexual gene came more from him and somewhat pete wentz i would posit. not that gerard was a perfect gay icon and can be argued to barely even be one (like..... i would oppose that deeply but it can be argued) but reflecting on these things makes him seem a lot more genuine than a lot of the stuff otherwise seen in the scene. everyone stole from jack fairy. 

we talked about gerard taking a lot of ideas of fame and the way it works from vg on board possibly when working dd and cw. there’s a lot of similarity there except i DO NOT think that gerard slid into the moral bankruptcy/ evilness of fame. he seems extremely aware of it, as a matter of fact. its like he was a version of brian who had seen velvet goldmine himself and was like... wayament hawld awn (not saying gerard has no moral code outside of cautionary tales LOL just as an easy way of explaining that he avoided the moral bankruptcy of celebrity even though chronologically it seemed close to happening  which. gerard has more integrity than that i just mean in the traditional sense of a band. none of this makes sense sorry). he struggled with it would seem but like. gerard despite being a millionare shill could be doing a lot worse. like he could be a (spoilers) republican rock star who faked his death. he did not do that. he escaped uhhh...mostly.... kind of  unscathed.

but that really is part of what i would point to with regards to similarities like bowie did not do that either. the movie is a very very fictionalized take of a biography. its extremely stylized and editorialized. and like. so is mcr. it would be very easy to make a story the exact same way when translating mcr into a fictional movie. that’s already happened sort of with the very very large culture of fanfic etc in the mcr fanbase. that can be attributed in part to the already mythologized origin story and arc of the band. it’s a perfect storm to create a realfake version of the band and their story. and that’s a similarity btw both the the movie and the real life events (for both music scenes). there’s an element of fate and story in the tale/ feeling of glam rock and bowie, as well as a very significant amount of narrative fiction in the text/art of the music for both mcr/ glam.  

there are a lot more just influence parallels btw gerard/my chem/ the scene at large in vg that i could point out and possibly will in the future but this is what i can get out now. 

anyway. i cannot WAIT for there to be a movie musical about the gay catfights of my chemical romance and the scene and how both developed. waiting patiently for the movie version of under pressure with mcr/the used being the bg song for a montage of the gerard and bert characters being in a whirlwind romance and kissing for cameras like satellite of love. like the fanfic culture of these bands has already essentially recreated this fake/melodramatic version of dubiously real events.... use those for the script. it’s the same thing

[i-drink-and-i-write-fics]

I’m backkk. Congrats once again! I totally don’t know if I can do this but can I ask for another pairing but this time from lotr. I’m binging the movies and honestly can’t decide who to thirst over 😂. Here’s my info again:

My pronouns are she/her and either male or female preference is good.

𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗦𝗢𝗡𝗔𝗟𝗜𝗧𝗬: I have massive introverted tendencies and am awkward in nature with new people. As a result I can come across as aloof and indifferent at first. I’m usually too much in my head daydreaming and thinking. I absolutely despise small talk. However with my friends I’m quite friendly and outgoing. Whenever I’m with my friends I can get really giggly and dorky when talking abt my recent hyperfixations. I open up to people very easily if we have similar interests. I tend to either overthink everything or not think at all. I’m a bit of a control freak and want to do the things the way I do them but I won’t enforce this on anyone else unless the result directly affects me. Just let me do things the way I do them. I'm also quite dedicated and ambitious on what I want in my life and will stand by those decisions.

𝗜𝗡𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗧𝗦: New media art. I love to creative code. I love working with interaction design, web design, user experience and user interfaces. I also love creating special effects, and 3D/2d modeling. Apart from this, I love digital illustration and character design.

𝗛𝗢𝗕𝗕𝗜𝗘𝗦: let’s just say I spend way too much time daydreaming. Fan fiction, video games, movies, books, tv shows. Anything that lets me daydream and disappear from reality for a while is a hobby of mine. I also love working out and weight lifting.

LIKES: I love lazy weekends at home, classic arcades, coffee, learning random new facts, spending time alone, intelligence, creativity, a good sense of witty humor, conversations where you can just be yourself and skip all the awkward small talk, the look on people’s faces when they ramble abt the stuff they’re into, a good home cooked meal, summer and warm weather, a good giggling session with friends esp abt fictional crushes ahahha.

DISLIKES: physical touch (tho I do warm up to the people I’m close too), large crowds, cold weather, admitting my anxieties, talking on the phone, and small talk

Thank you and loved the precious ship btw!!! Congrats once again love!

Welcome back!

Today I’m pairing you with….

Arwen is the perfect elf for you. First being they are not big on physical touch as it isn’t part of their culture so she will easily give you the space you need.

Small talk? Not a thing for elves. They love to dive deep into discussions and learning. Hell, a night of crafts and learning is part of their courtship! And Arwen will be happy to show off Rivendell’s massive library.

And since you will be living in Rivendell, you will have the perfect weather nearly year round. She’ll show you the gardens, the fountains her mother had put in when she was there, where her brothers and her learned to shoot bows, and the parts where her father gathers ingredients for the healing halls.

While Rivendell is known as the Last Homely House, travelers don’t stay long or in large groups, making it easy to avoid the crowds when you and Arwen want more alone time.

And at the end of the day, you’ll have this gorgeous view with a very devoted partner.

[fallingfromdepression]

this should technically go on my other blog where i discuss/rant abt fandom/media (not my main lol) but i think the vibe matches this personal blog more. anyway as i wrote a few weeks ago, i am starting a new job very soon. this week was the last week of “freedom” and i’ve been wanting to draw almost the entire week but i haven’t. it’s a combo of lack of motivation, lack of confidence in my art prompted by seeing how much better other artists online are, and general malaise.

i’m aware i have a combo of positive and negative feelings abt starting this new job, and recently i’ve been focusing more on the negative aspects. my spiral thus leads to me not really wanting to do anything. combine this w my recent thoughts (again) that me drawing is useless, that my art isn’t good at all and won’t really improve until i do meaningful studies that i don’t really feel like doing. i don’t get why i feel like that about art since i don’t have a job in art nor plan to have one, but i think it’s an inevitable/standard side effect of fandom since i p much have only been drawing fanart for the past few years.

i honestly am hoping shifting my daily hours to focusing on work will improve the neuroses i’ve developed around fandom (particularly shipping but also just in general tbh). i know the obvious solution is to log off or at least stop checking on fandom accounts but since i haven’t had much to do w my time for the past year or so (unemployment tbf) i’ve been hiding in fandom spaces to pass the time. sure in hindsight it’s prob just done nothing past rot my brain but yeah. hopefully w starting work i’ll shift away from fandom and prioritizing it less per se (by this i mean feeling like i SHOULD be drawing fanart, i should be contributing to specific fandoms when i have the free time). i’ve been wanting to pick up another hobby but learning something new feels like it req too much energy and drawing is something that takes “less energy”... ugh but i’ll have to prob pick up a new hobby fr so i can have “normal” things to talk abt w my coworkers (btw the hobbies i’ve been thinking about are crocheting, embroidery, knitting so like they’re still creative things. i mean most hobbies are creative things tho).

my relationship w art/my perception of my art has really deteriorated since... tbh since i joined twitter in late 2019. i mean i’m happy to blame twitter as the main issue but i feel like around that time was when i started questioning what i wanted to do w my art and whether it was worth it to keep investing time in it when i don’t plan to make money from it (lol). i think the 1st reason is valid but the 2nd reason is just... such a capitalist way of thinking. now that i’m thinking on it again, the main reason why i feel like this is bc i do almost no original art... i’ve been working on fanart only since basically 2020 and since i’m not like spending 24/7 drawing or improving my art, my art hasn’t really improved in the past 2 years past me learning how to use my digital art program better. i don’t think fanwork is USELESS, but i feel like it doesn’t match up to original works (original fictional and/or personal stuff).

the main reason i started questioning what i wanted to do w my art was after seeing an artist on IG discuss their desire to continue representing their ethnicity’s culture through their art; me, i was doing no such thing. i was (am still lol) just drawing BL and not really in a meaningful way. the thing is, there ARE parts of my lived experience that i would love to put into art form but still cannot. and i can’t really force it when i’m not ready, but seeing other ppl do it makes me feel like i need to. even though if i try to do it now, i won’t be satisfied w it. but still this concern has stuck w me the past few years and is why i question my continuation in fandom. i wouldn’t consider myself “active” in fandom as i have little to no interest in interacting w other fans online, nor do i post like every day/week -- so it’s not a matter of maintaining clout or friendships. i just question it bc looking at the big picture -- what can a piece of fanart do? it’s not really something i can put in portfolios (i mean you can but at my age it’s kinda lol i feel even if i didn’t go to art school) nor show to irl ppl without needing to unfriend them (i don’t create problematic or questionable works, but it’s just embarrassing irl to admit i’m still in fandom at this age you know). i don’t have the kind of awe-inspiring style that will stick in ppl’s minds and/or make them rethink aspects of the story (also the things i create fanart for... no offense but they’re not really that deep. ppl making them deep are kinda reaching/projecting imo. nothing wrong w that but also be real, keep a clear eye abt the og work). i’m not saying all original work does that, but talking about my lived experience(s) feels more meaningful than drawing fictional characters or shipping. but as i said: i still feel unable to adequately represent my personal experiences. i’ve tried before but i’m not satisfied w what i’ve written or drawn. and so i stick w fandom where i barely exercise much less flex my creative muscles, but at least i’m still drawing.

anyway i quit IG back in 2021 and honestly hope to do the same w twitter. sadly i can’t log off bc i have accounts blocked that i don’t want to see as i am not really mentally moved on yet; but i really do need to reduce the amount of time spent on that site. tumblr is alright for now, but it’s definitely still a time waster and i still do see art that makes me feel bad by comparing myself to them.

but for now i hope i can just take a break from fandom and being online all the time. i just want to like my art again

[janiedean]

the way that some ppl promo series/ships/etc. cracks me up. "watch this cute sitcom it has a black female lead, a gay male character, an autistic nb one and it's written by an asian trans woman" "why ship x when you can ship this healthy interracial f/f ship" like they rlly act like diversity is end-all. but what abt the plot of the series? the writing? the acting? etc. and why are you assuming everyone is interested in the same genre or dynamics as you which are often of the vanilla (cont'd)

(cont'd) variety (i'm having a flashback of when someone i follow-a 23 y.o.-got yelled by an anon for only liking toxic ships -not true btw- and not watching wholesome shows with wholesome m/m relationships like sha*dowhunters...a fucking show for teenagers that's also badly written and acted). basically it's such a reflection of the recent obsession with identity politics and substituing your personality with your sexuality/ethnicity etc. also funny how these ppl will scream diversity (cont'd) but the moment they get some and it doesn't fit their puritanical standards then it doesn't count. not to mention the way they think harassing others into liking what they like and renouncing their ~bad~ interests is gonna work and make ppl want to produce content. newflash: it doesn't work it just isolates ppl spreads an hostile climate and makes you look like an asshole who they think they're better bc of their fictional preferences but treats actual ppl like shit

(sorry I was going out when you sent this and I couldn’t reply properly)

^^^^^^^^ tbh thanks I have nothing to add because that’s exactly why I hate these trends and especially this concept that the most relevant part of your personality is your gender or sexuality - because like.... to me it’s not and honestly I understand identity culture but if everything that there is to a show or someone is who the like to bed we have a problem X°D and like, the fun thing is that I’m into a lot of extremely diverse shit that people around here haven’t even heard of but tbqh..... I mean, you’ve probably read my rant re pacrim2 and the likes, but at this point I’m just glad no one watched the movie with idris and richard m°adden so that since I am the only person in that fandom who produces on a somewhat regular schedule (SOMEWHAT) no one can go tell me I’m problematic because I always have idris’s character topping lol

but like... these people are exhausting even if you are into the right thing or ship. I mean, I dropped the st/ormpilot fandom also other the endless top vs bottom disputes because apparently if you’re white and f/inn is a top you’re going with a stereotype so it’s racist, if he’s bottoming *you have a slave fetish* (read with my own two eyes) and if poe is having sex at all but mostly if he’s not topping and/or sleeps around/used to sleep around it’s another stereotype of the latino/a who has sex often (honestly it’s not that deep people it’s that o/scar isaac is the kind of guy who’d make people forget their sexual orientation if they aren’t generally attracted by guys come on xD) and like... if you just want to write them having sex in peace what are you gonna do at this point? use the ITALIANS ARE POC excuse to write porn for a damned ship I like? I mean, I don’t engage because these people make me lose my force of will, and I’m not the only one, and like this... people.... get.... tired.... like I understand addressing issues in fandom but one thing is that and the other is finding everything problematic ffs

tldr: this purity crusade is pushing me to my badwrong limits which are actually very tame in comparison to average but gdi I’m tired