#this is so creative white i like the way you think
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dolliedyhard · 2 days ago
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🔪Jeff The Killer Headcanons🔪 [PART 1]
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I think is about time I posted my headcanons for him! BOY I did not plan this post to be sooooooo long, I HAVE SO MUCH TO SAY OMGGG!!! I LUV HIM SO MUCH (  ੭꒦ິ꒳꒦ີ)੭ ᰔ. I might have to make this into a multiple part series on my blog. These are all hc’s for adult Jeff, I have completely different ones for when he was a teen and I’ll make one for teen Jeff later on. None of these hc’s involve his relationship with Dollie or other pastas, this is all about him. All of this is SFW. Enjoy <3
AU: Paracosm of the Vagabonds
‼️TW: mentions of self harm‼️
♥︎A/N: btw this is my first time making/posting hc’s so plz don’t jump me if they’re bad- (/ _ ; )
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♥︎Appearance & Attributes♥︎
He’s 25 y/o
6’4
Straight
White American
Full name is Jeffery Woods. I’ve always liked his name the way it was so I’m not changing it.
Muscular and lean. He’s got more of a sleeper build tho.
Despite being lit of fire he managed to heal his hair, it’s healthy now.
He loves keeping his hair long. He’ll never CONSIDER cutting it short. His hair is one of his favorite parts of himself.
He for certain wants his hair to be down to his waist one day
Hair type is 1c
Jeff’s hair is naturally brown. When the “incident” happened the fire made his hair temporarily black. (Ik that’s not how real logic works but cmon let me have fun >:c)
After a few months his hair went back to brown
Now he dyes his hair black bc he prefers it that way.
His tattoos don’t mean anything, he just got them because he thought they were cool.
He smells like incense and ash most of the time.
If he decided to finally wash his clothes then he smells like clean laundry.
He doesn’t wear cologne, he’s never cared for it.
He showers like twice a week. For the rest of the week he just wipes himself down this a cloth.
At least he uses a soap cloth (oh thank GOD)
When “the incident” happened his face scars would constantly bleed and wouldn’t close.
It was really sensitive and if he smiled or laughed to hard it would gush out again.
It took multiple years for the wound to permanently close.
It’s completely healed now it’s just deformed skin
The scars on his body are from fights, him doing stupid shit or self harm.
He’s not hairy, some underarm hair but that’s all
His veins are most visible in his forearms and hands
I don’t have a voice claim for him (YET!) but his voice is pretty deep and it has a raspy sound to it
He has dark circles under his eye from staying up for days at end
He got some sharp ass canine teeth. In my AU he got bit by a vampire. He didn’t get turned into one bc the transformation was stopped right after his vamp fang came in.
Warm to the touch. Doesn’t matter what season it is, his body manages to retain a significant amount of body heat.
His skin is very pale due to lack of sunlight and frequent blood loss.
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♥︎Personality♥︎
When meeting him for the first time he comes off as an asshole.
He insults everyone and it’s hard to hell if he’s joking or not.
And if he’s really pissed he’ll get REAL creative with the insults.
Swears like a sailor
He’s distant and off putting to people that aren’t in his circle.
He loves showing off and will do it no matter what. Even if the circumstances are dangerous.
Jeff loves stroking his ego, it’s so obnoxious but he could care less.
Lowkey thinks he better than everyone
LAWD he’s handsome and he knows it
Doesn’t care about ur personal space
Will creep up on u to whisper shit in ur ear to scare you. And other stuff like that.
Gives people the nastiest stares of all time. And I dare u too say something to him about it, he’ll square TF UP.
Says some really offensive shit but he doesn’t care if you get upset because of it.
And he’ll say it loud and proud no matter how much of a dumbass he looks like saying it.
Jeff’s one of the most defiant proxies in the mansion
He listens to NO ONE and hates more than anything to be bossed around.
Though he partially listens to Slenderman, yk, bc he has to so he can live in the mansion. Masky too bc he’s Slenderman’s right hand man.
Can’t laugh like a normal person to save his life
Like he’s literally out of breath, red face, everything
“How do I befriend him?!?” I hear you say
Like I said before he loves his ego being satisfied so u could just blow smoke up his ass.
But to him you’ll be more like a “fan” than a friend.
And he will just use you for his benefit. He’ll step all over u since you’ve shown ur willing to be submissive to him _| ̄|○
Show him you’re not to be fucked with but not to be intimidated by.
For Jeff it’s more about if you guys get along and have a good time together than having the same interests.
Jeff only plays favorites if he has a crush on you
Oh boy is he one petty motherfucker… He holds grudges over anything with anyone and is very vengeful.
He’s quick to temper too. He’ll go into a rage induced episodes and they can last for days at a time.
That’s due to his IED (Intermittent Explosive Disorder) and just him being a fucked up person.
He also has BPD (Bipolar Personality Disorder)
He’s not trying to manage his IED by being more laidback and comedic but that’s not really helping.
Not a big fan of animals. So if you were to ask him what is fav animal was he wouldn’t say any.
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♥︎Interests♥︎
Wannabe lead guitarist
He’s not good enough to be the lead but his ego says otherwise.
He owns a sick ass guitar tho
Started out being emo in his early teens, now he’s more of a metal head.
(I don’t know much about nu-metal or any metal at ALL so I can’t rlly say who his favs are. SORRY IM AN EMO FUCK AT HEART OKAY???)
Listens to goth music occasionally too
Loves going to concerts no matter who’s performing
If you happen to bring up a band he’s seen live before he will 100% without fail say “I saw them live at _!” And will proceed to info dump about what went down.
Even worse if they were in their prime when he went.
Fashion wise he dresses alternative but it’s nothing fancy.
A band tee + hoodie or jacket, jeans, shoes (cons, or boots), for accessories belt and some spikes bracelets. That’s about it :v
And yes he does consider his piercings as accessories.
Paints his nails black on special occasions
Likes to collect weird stuff
His biggest collection is of knifes
Some of them are ornamental and some he actually uses to kill
He gets the money to fuel his collection off the dead bodies of his victims
Also has a strange fascination with history
Specifically historical torture methods & atrocities
Sometimes he uses the same torture methods he learned about on his victims.
HUGE HORROR NERD
He collects dvds of slasher & horror movies
And of course you can’t forget about the vintage TV to play them on!
He’s not a fan of snuff films or gore videos
It just takes out the art out of film making. Why should he watch uninspired shock gore for 0% satisfaction when he can go cause it for 100% satisfaction?
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♥︎Killing♥︎
To Jeff killing is something he does for 3 things. Survival, satisfaction, and emotional regulation.
Once he’s got you in his grasp you won’t make it out alive.
Jeff commits the worst murders when he’s having a IED or BPD episode.
He’s not a kidnapper type serial killer
He likes to get the job done by the end of the day at the longest
He loves the taste of blood and often licks it off his knife
He thinks he can train himself to be able to taste the differences between blood types.
He just likes inflicting pain on complete strangers, it’s thrilling to him.
And it’s usually not a stab and go kill, when he first started out that’s how it was bc it was more for survival.
Now Jeff has the taste for blood. And he’s got some horrifyingly creative ways to extract it.
Nowadays you’ll be lucky if it’s a stab and go. His goal is to make sure u feel the agony, every. second. of. it.
He would never consider hurting someone close to him, that would severely fuck with him.
Since the murder of his family he has no one. So he cherishes the few people close to him a lot more than he used to.
He’s never had any regrets about any of the many murders he has committed.
The one and only time he’s ever felt bad about inflicting violence on someone is his older brother Liu.
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♥︎Vices♥︎
Jeff is a regular smoker (hence why he smells like ash)
He’s able to blow different shapes out of smoke
Prefers cigarettes over anything else
Hates vapes tho, he think they make you look like a massive pussy.
He’ll flat out refuse to fw you if you whip out your fruity-tuti flavored e-stick when yall go on a smoke break.
Jeff’s not a big drinker
Drinking just ups his already high sex drive to the max and he acts like a complete idiot when he’s drunk. Then after all that his hangover is fucking hell.
At the most he’ll get a bit tipsy cause the boost in arousal makes sex tenfold better.
Jeff’s never done any hard drugs and doesn’t care to.
Who needs a drug addiction when you have a murder addiction?
Okay so about the self harm earlier…
♥︎A/N: Btw in my au Jeff had a much shitter life than the og Jeffery Woods so all of this with context makes sense.
Jeff doesn’t s/h anymore but did it heavily in his teens before he went crazy.
His life was genuinely a miserable hellscape that was picking at his sanity and at every turn it only got worse.
His mother and father didn’t care about him at all. The only person that actually cared and loved Jeff was Liu. But Liu rarely showed any affection towards Jeff so it didn’t really matter how Liu felt about him.
No one knew what Jeff was doing to himself up until he ended up in the hospital with the gashes on his cheeks.
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You have reached the end. TYSM FOR READING!!!
I hope you enjoyed reading my headcanons, and I will be doing more hc’s in the future for other creepypastas.
Stay frosty❄️ BAIIIII!!!!!!!!!!!
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starry-bi-sky · 2 days ago
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no context snippet for a "SY is SJ" au i thought of at 1am last night, because i am a firm believer of the "amnesia doesnt erase your trauma it just erases the context of it" agenda.
(although in SY's case he DID kinda forget that trauma.. at first. it's coming back to him. the system gave him a grace period. there that's my excuse)
crossposted on ao3 too in case anyone wants to read it there instead
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Shen Qingqiu is painting again.
He's found himself doing that a lot lately, now that he's out of seclusion and Binghe is in the bamboo house, squirreled away into the side room where the Head Disciple should be. Painting is, of course, a logical course of action for a peak lord to do! Especially one such as himself, the Peak Lord of Qing Jing, which was basically the peak of the creative arts.
But— well, he wasn't expecting to find himself liking it so much. Or doing it so often. Painting in the style of the time period is a lot easier to learn than he expected, and it gets him B-points for in-character actions! Who knew the Original Goods was such an artist of the time? He had such an evocative way with his brush, he should know — he's found some of his works!
(They were tucked away like a dirty secret in the back of his closet, locked away in a qiankun chest that Shen Qingqiu found the key to far too easily. He’ll admit to being a little disappointed in the Original Goods’ predictability — a false bottom in the vanity, really? Anyone could find that!) 
This brought him to his next issue; he was getting headaches, and he thinks, perhaps, just a little, that the Original Goods' thoughts and feelings were bleeding into him. Just a tad! And he was certain it was the Original Goods too, because— because, well…
He keeps flinching. You know how you’re walking down a public but otherwise empty hallway, and turn the corner and nearly run right into someone, and your heart jumps three spaces to the left and back? Subconsciously you knew there was a chance you were going to see someone, but their sudden appearance still startles you? 
Yeah, that. He keeps experiencing it with Binghe. He about jumps right out of his skin whenever Binghe emerges from the side room or the kitchen, even though he knows his disciple is there! And he knows it’s not a habit from his old world, because Shen Qingqiu lived with three other siblings in the house, and always knew to expect someone to be right around the corner. 
And he knows, especially so, that it’s not a habit from his old world, because along with the mini heart attacks that come with Binghe’s presence in the bamboo house, is the discomfort. A distinct yet indistinguishably vague feeling of unease that comes with sharing a living space with someone. The kind that makes his hackles rise like a particularly disgruntled and cornered street cat. 
Again, he grew up with three siblings! That could not be coming from him. It has to be an Original Goods feeling slipping in, and it was really getting in the way of things! How was he supposed to give Binghe a sense of belonging and a better upbringing if his presence in the bamboo house made him feel horribly exposed?
Some days, he just can't escape the gnawing feeling of dread in his chest when he returns to the bamboo house at the end of the day, knowing full well that it will soon be accompanied by someone else. Even if that someone was Binghe. 
That feeling of a lack of privacy makes his skin crawl and his shoulders lock up to his ears with every step. It was inconvenient; annoying. 
It was utterly unscientific, it was his house! And it was only Binghe, who, currently, is a harmless little white sheep! There was no darkened protagonist here, come to tear his limbs off. There was nothing to be so… tense about. 
It does nothing to stop the little swooping his heart does when he opens the door to, sometimes, Binghe already there, kneeling at the table like a dutiful disciple as always.
Oh, and that's not starting on his steadily increasing dislike of physical touch. It had to be something to do with the ludicrous amount of layers he wears and the modesty standards of the time period — and, also, of course, the Original Goods' own aversion to it.
He knows he's never felt so uncomfortable in another human being's presence before! Sure, he wasn’t the most social of people in his old world, but he still remembers being able to leave the house and be among the masses with relative ease. Here, though, was an entirely different story. His personal space bubble seemingly doubled, no, tripled in size, and it was irking him quite unhandily. 
The worst offenders were the Peak Lord meetings, it had to be. Navigating through the sea of disciples, cultivators, and visitors on Qiong Ding was a nightmare enough on its own — lessened only by the fact that said mountain occupants parted like the red sea when they saw him coming — but sitting in a secluded room with eleven other people, majority of whom still disliked him despite his turnaround? Awful.  
The proximity between him and his martial siblings isn’t even that bad, either. He has plenty of elbow room and in fact, would need to make an effort to reach out and physically touch anyone on either side of him. But, still!! Too close!! 
Shen Qingqiu made the conscious decision to sit as close to the door as his own comfort would allow, but not so close that he couldn’t see it — he tried that once. He doesn’t want to speak of the incident. The stress alone will give him heart palpitations. 
(He, pointedly, doesn’t want to think about the time he arrived at a Peak Lord meeting and found the Long Ning Shou Peak Lord sitting in His Chair either. Shen Qingqiu has never been particularly territorial about ‘assigned seating’ before, up until that moment. While he’s proud to say that he didn’t do anything to Chen Qingxuan for sitting in his spot, he’s mortified by how childishly petulant he felt about it for the rest of the meeting. He’s pretty sure everyone could sense his sour mood.)  
Why, just a few days ago he nearly bit a poor disciple's head off during martial lessons when they accidentally tumbled into him after a series of spectacularly fumbling footing. The child had been so horrified and apologetic that Shen Qingqiu remembered to reel himself back in time and merely scold them, rather than tear their skin right off with a tongue lashing.
But— enough about such stressful things! Shen Qingqiu was painting, and when he was painting, Binghe knew not to bother him, and to not let anyone do so either. Lest they all be dealt with a moderately grumpy Shizun. 
(His emotions may be as volatile as a hormonal boy lately, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t know how to keep them in check!! He still had a reputation to keep.)
His studio offered him a sense of privacy and solitary that not even his bedroom allowed him — for Binghe could knock on his bedroom door to alert him for whatever needed his attention, and while he could do the same to the studio, the fact remained; a Shizun interrupted during his precious studio time, did not, a happy Shizun make. 
There were silencing talismans painted into the walls — courtesy of the Original Goods — that Shen Qingqiu really quite appreciated. It allowed him the peace of mind to do things his face could not allow him outside of it— and that is, he got to muse aloud to himself, and hum songs from his old world that he couldn't anywhere else. Some songs that he still knew the lyrics to, he was happy to half-sing under his breath.
It had to be a form of meditation, it had to be! With how much peace and grounding it brought him, it couldn't be anything but a form of meditation.
Currently, he was just letting instincts lead his brush strokes while he hummed a melody from some myth musical he stumbled across a few weeks before he died. The songs had been so catchy that he had most of them all but memorized! He's tried repeating the instrumentals on his guqin and ruan with varying degrees of success.
Painting helped kill his migraines the most. As it stands, he’s had a killer one hammering at his skull since this morning. Bad enough to the point that he nearly snapped at poor Binghe during breakfast, and the child could all but sense the sour mood radiating off his master, and in turn had been silent and subdued until he left. 
Aish, that child… Shen Qingqiu hasn't quite quelled the guilt in him. Something about that awful subservience rankled him in a way he couldn’t explain, making him want to recoil and snap out at the same time. Something dark and deep in him had reared its head, wanting to reach over and shake Binghe for it. 
He'd been horrified by his own thoughts, and then locked himself in his studio for the rest of the day.
Even in death — or wherever the Original Goods was — he was still making things difficult! It was only natural that Binghe would go quiet and careful at the sight of Shen Qingqiu’s bad mood, he used to beat the boy at whim for imagined slights! He’ll have to reassure Binghe better that he wasn’t going to hurt him. 
Bah. He was supposed to be painting, not thinking about things that made his head pound worse or his mood dampen more! He didn't want to think about Luo Binghe right now — a surprise, even for him! — he wants to focus on the scent of ground ink and paints, and his own soft humming.
He blinks, once, twice, and focuses on the painting. It happens, like now, that he would zone out and paint entire landscapes, people, whatever, without realizing. It was always a guessing game of what he's made when he lets his mind wander. Some of things he painted were merely of Qing Jing, other times— 
— a burning red fire, encased on canvas, hangs off his eyelashes. And following it, the ensuing qi deviation he'd shoved off. —
Other times aren't worth mentioning.
He's painted a boy this time, a young one, with dark skin and even darker hair, and a smile that isn't quite right. There's a beauty mark right above the corner of his lip, artfully placed, as if it had been hand-placed by an expert craftsman. The boy's upper face remains unpainted, as if he’d been born without eyes. Yet, even without them, the boy looks completely serene and non-judgemental. Mn, no, perhaps more accurately he looks passive? Peaceful? 
Shen Qingqiu can feel his gaze, missing as it is, burning into him. He frowns immediately. His headache no less lessened, in fact— he thinks it's gotten worse. There’s a horrid familiarity about the boy in the painting, like a word poised on the tip of his tongue that he can’t quite place. "Don't look at me like that." He says aloud, bah, he hadn't meant to! But it’s not like there’s anyone to hear him. "Don't you know who I am?" 
En, no, it’s placating. That’s what it is. The boy is placating him. How unscientific! Unneeded; ridiculous. Why would he paint a boy trying to placate him? He was a scum villain, and a grown man!
The painting says nothing, as it ought to, it was only wet ink and dry parchment. Shen Qingqiu's ears burn anyways, and his eyes drop down to the smile on the boy's face. 
He finds that he deeply detests that smile on his face, it disgusts him. 
It disgusts him in the way only sheer incompetence can, a burn of irritation that bubbles up every time he saw an objectively wrong take in the PIDW comment section. As if he can't believe someone would look at him, a scum villain such as himself, and still be able to smile like that.
More than that, it's not right. That smile. It's— there's something wrong with it. Which can't be right, Shen Qingqiu hardly makes a mistake when he makes these trance-made paintings. But there is, he’s looking at it right here. He hates it. That awful smile. It's so— so… insincere. If you're going to smile at him, at least mean it, eh? Doesn't he deserve that much?
Long, slender fingers dip into the small wooden paint bowl beside him and lift back up, dripping wet ink onto the side table, and then onto the floor, across the last two layers of his robes that he always strips down to in here.
He reaches for the canvas to— to what? Smear that stupid smile off that boy's face? Mould it into his own image, back into place like the way it should be, paintbrush be damned? That wretched child, smiling at him like that. That smile is too straight, too perfect. It's mocking him.
Where is the tilt? The slant in it? That boy always smiled with an off-kilter turn of his lips, crooked, that made him real the same way blood in the mouth did, and now he's not, and it's wrong. He will wipe that smile off the boy's face himself if he must, if only to get him to wear anything else—
There is a knock on the door, gentle, hesitant. Only his cultivator hearing is what allows him to pick up on it. Shen Qingqiu's head pounds terribly at the sound. It makes a screeching sound go off in the back of his skull, like an abrupt kick to the teeth. His jaw clacks together on pure adrenaline as he regains the sense to not snarl wordlessly.
Didn't he say not to interrupt—?
His ink-stained fingers snap back, a gunshot recoil that sends splatters of ink flying and splatting coldly against his face. His nails dig painfully into the soft flesh of his palm, and Shen Qingqiu gathers himself back into his lofty cultivator persona with a single breath and a ramrod straightening of his spine. His ears ring horribly. "What." He calls, perhaps a little too coldly.
"Shizun?" Binghe says softly, and the sound of that child's voice is like a bucket of ice water dumped over his head. Recognition hits him, and the guilt crawls back in at his earlier irritation. "Forgive this one for interrupting, but Yue-shibo is here."
Shen Qingqiu is still staring at his painting, but the boy’s smile burns behind his eyelids like a fire. It takes half a beat for him to respond; "…Alright," he says, and stands up, "prepare some tea, Binghe. And use the ginger root this master owns, he has a terrible headache."
He walks around the stool, fingers still dripping black, and plucks his robes up from the chair he draped them over. His head still hurts, and there’s a peculiar ache in his heart. He takes his time putting his layers back on, vindictively tying each button and knot leisurely. 
Surely Yue Qingyuan has the patience to wait for this one after he so rudely arrived unannounced, hm?
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quibbs126 · 2 days ago
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Well I also did this today. Sketches so I could try and figure out that skystar fankid since as mentioned earlier, I’ve been trying to think about him
I’ve been trying to draw other stuff today, but honestly after drawing Jazz, my creative juices have not been flowing as much. I tried to do more color palette drawings, but Megatron’s shoulders give me so much trouble I couldn’t figure them out, and I tried to draw Ironhide but he wasn’t turning out right proportion wise and I realized by them I was kind of just forcing it
But then I was bored and needed something to do creatively, so I tried to at least attempt some amount of designing this kid. Though first I needed to try and draw Starscream and Skyfire’s helms (since that’s on of the main things that don’t rely on alt mode) to see how I could combine them
I mean, I think I did all right. It is very much still a work in progress though
Probably shouldn’t have even posted it, just kept it to myself for future reference, but I have a problem of wanting to share literally everything I make with very few exceptions, so here we are
I have multiple alternate color schemes here as well because I just didn’t know what to pick
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Honestly my biggest problem here for me is that Skyfire doesn’t have any design in Transformers One, at least not as far as I can tell. And he doesn’t really appear in much outside of that, so I’m really just stuck with his g1 design to base off of. So most of what I do have to work with comes from Starscream and the other Seekers
So like, I feel like this kid looks too much like Starscream, but I don’t know how to fix it
By the way, while I haven’t settled on a name for him yet, the one floating around for me right now is Overdrive? I don’t really know why, and it unfortunately is already a character’s name, but shush
It may change, but for now, in this post, his name is Overdrive
There’s also the problem of the color scheme for him here. Because like, Skyfire and Starscream technically have almost the same color schemes, just that Starscream also has black/grey and they’re dispersed differently. So I’m trying to find a balance here that works without looking too much like one or the other
I had a brief idea to base Overdrive’s color scheme on the original Jetfire toy, and honestly I do think it could work, with the mainly white with red and black accents, it's just that for whatever reason, I don't like how it looks when I make his middle part red. Maybe I've been watching too much g1, because there's a lot of red Autobots, and characters having white and red on their helms isn't that uncommon either. So I just keep it blue so he looks distinct in my head. I might switch it over to the Jetfire color scheme later though
Also you see that for one of the visors I toyed with him having green eyes (his eye and visor color match btw, the eye's only there so you can see it), because some people decide that pre-betrayal Starscream had non red optics. But I didn't just want to stick with plain blue, and I knew that we see a number of miners with green eyes, so why not green? I changed it because I thought maybe he didn't look Starscream enough, but eh
Oh yeah, I do have a few other notes on his design here, since I'm realizing I've mostly just been complaining
Why did I give him a visor? Eh, why not, Skyfire and Starscream don't have them. But I based it on how it looks on Thundercracker and Skywarp
As for his side vents, I wasn't really sure how to do them, but I didn't want them to be the same as Starscream. I tried to base them off of Slipstream's, but the way the vents folded looked weird to me, and I ended up cutting them off and making his face into what you see in the bottom left there. It didn't turn out exactly the way I wanted in the colored version though, and I think I ended up circling back to Starscream's vent shape. But oh well, things to change later
Oh yeah, pictures of Thundercracker, Skywarp and Slipstream to know what I’m talking about. Or more accurately, this is what I used
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Also those things on his sides? They were supposed to be like Skyfire's side cheek things he has in g1, but I also made them puff out for some reason. I don't know why. I'll probably tweak it, but I want to keep some aspect of it I think
*sigh* to be honest, I really don't know what I think of this design. It really isn't finished at all. I'm really not even sure why I'm showing it, other than to say I'm working on it and I didn't just abandon it? But I mean, we'll see how long that lasts
Do I have anything I added on to Overdrive's character at least? Well no, not really. By this afternoon I think I had mostly creatively drained myself, I mostly just wrote what I had originally again
Namely that he came to be after Sentinel's betrayal, and as such Starscream doesn't know he exists and Skyfire thinks Starscream's dead. Overdrive still has his cog, it never got stolen, either because Sentinel hadn't thought of it yet or he didn't have a believable means to have it taken without it being suspicious. All I really know is he's a jet, but isn't outfitted for military work of any kind, his profession probably being closer to Skyfire's
As for Skyfire, I'm stealing his role here from another fanfic I read, where he's a scientist who was trying to figure out the cause of the Energon shortage and the lack of the miners' cogs (unaware that latter part is a lie, but he was growing suspicious with the discouragement of that line of research), though he also races occasionally. So maybe Overdrive's a scientist too? I don't know, I don't think he needs to be, but I don't know what to make him
Also a note that isn't new to me but I don't think I ever mentioned, due to Skyfire's research, he's met the miners plenty of times and was generally considered one of the nicer cogged bots to them. Overdrive has by proxy met them on occasion as well, including D-16. So as it happens, Megatron does in fact know about Overdrive and the fact that he's Starscream's kid (Skyfire probably mentioned his former conjunx at some point), but he doesn't know that Starscream doesn't. So he hasn't told anyone because he assumes everyone already knows
But yeah, I have Overdrive's backstory, but I really don't have anything about his actual job or personality. To be honest, I think some of it's me being paranoid I recreate Locket in some way, since I like seeing stuff on the Locket AU. I suppose I try making him closer to Skyfire's personality? But for whatever reason, my brain can't rectify that in my head. I don't know
Still don't have an answer on his alt mode either. And it gets even trickier now because they don't have Earth alt modes, they're Cybertronian (even if they don't all look the most different from Earth vehicles here). I did learn about the existence of triple engine jets today, and I kind of want to do that, but I don't know if I will. I also don't know how to draw planes yet, or how they entirely translate to robot mode
But yeah, I think I'm done here, just updating you on what I've been up to this latter half of the day
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lume-nosity · 2 years ago
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TW: gore
Imposter au where the reader has help from a strange person in the mirror where they don't explain anything to the reader, they say they just want to help
Very sus
*they were the old God who sacrificed their mortal form and locked their spiritual form in their mirror world*
They believe that the reader wasn't treated the way they intended and would demolish the true imposter
Before they killed their mortal form, they were brutal
They would publicly burn any they deem against them and would stake the heads on display and would torture people who would even think of going against them
So after some thinking, they decide to lock themselves in a desolate domain. And those greedy who call their name near a reflective surface, let's just say they would be put on display in her realm
Since children would dare to call their name as a game, they would entertain them by giving them a scare
Old God's lore is too deep and murky even I don't know who they are
p.s. I copy+pasted these from my old asks to sumone
holy…
i’m shitting myself over how genius and good this is…i instantly thought of lapis lazuli being trapped in a mirror the moment i saw the first sentence
this is quite the scare now that i think about it. it’s like a sort of legend and then reader over here happened to come across the old god as if it was ‘by coincidence’ the god’s like: ‘shit, no explanation needed, i’m here to help your ass’ despite the dark backstory they have under their belt
but when it comes to children or anyone who have no ill tendencies they like to mess around with them
it’s similar to saying: ‘i may look like the most intimidating person you’ll ever meet but if you deem yourself worthy of my presence i suppose i’ll let you slide’ type shit
i like this. 10/10!
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welcometogrouchland · 6 months ago
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Batman #149 by chip zdarsky is mostly unremarkable, but I'm really fascinated by how it makes a great case for 'good' endings not saving 'bad' stories*. Because there's a lot of interesting concepts in this issue (bruce having to deal with his rapidly aging and decaying clone making him think about his own life, re-establishing a 'nest' so to speak for his family after pushing them away, etc) but bc of the OOC slog that came before it, almost every moment w/ the batfamily comes off as unearned and disingenuous imo.
Like, everything with Damian is the perfect example in this. Because in isolation it's...fine. admittedly it's a missed opportunity to not go deeper into how Damian would feel about a clone of his dad who tried to kill considering Damian's relationships with clones of himself (the heretic rejects and respawn) or with former enemies who wanted him dead but who were manipulated and/or brainwashed (like suren and maya).
Zdarsky doesn't go into any of this but you could maybe excuse it as the issue not being about Damian. However, coupled with the previous bizarre characterizations of Damian in 147 and 148, it ends up not being fine- instead it starts to feel...icky how Damian (who, despite often being drawn and written as white, will never have his connection to the non-white al ghuls forgotten and will always be effected by racism even when not portrayed as a poc) is constantly written as overly violent, uncaring and narrow minded in this run. Coupled w/ trying to recanonize the morrison origin for Damian it's like. OH this is badly written and laden with subtle bigotry, sick**
That's me going into detail on it with Damian but it's applicable to other things in this issue- the way Cass, Steph and Duke have all been ignored or turned into jobbers makes their inclusion in the 'family' here feel hollow instead of satisfying. Bruce proclaiming that Zur was still a part of him and he needs to accept responsibility for his actions (when it means taking in clone son) wrings hollow when just last issue zdarsky was bending over backwards to separate Bruce and Zur bc otherwise the Jason thing would get really awkward. Ends are achieved through means that feel hollow or strange. I'm at my destination but damn why'd the bus have to do all that???
I only really have opinions on this latest arc of zdarskys Batman bc it's the one I've read the closest (bc I'm a hater, masochist and avid follower of even the bad damian storylines) but it's not saying great things.
Bc zdarsky can do one thing good in this book, and it's write Bruce and Tim. And yet this entire story, whether of his own volition or editorial mandate, includes other characters who aren't Bruce and Tim, the fabric starts to unravel in very telling ways.
(p.s, I think pennyworth manor is an interesting idea but I feel like in execution it's just gonna be 'bruce living in a house haunted by the memory of the people he couldn't save' but with a different dead guy this time. Illusion of change and whatnot)
*whether or not the ending is good is up to you ofc, as is your opinion on the proceeding arc! I saw some ppl complain that the ending was too "WFA" for them, which I get even if I dont think it'll literally be the same premise. If anything it's probably a lead into the new tec run. Likewise many ppl who aren't in the weeds of Damian and Jason characterization liked the previous arc! But I have my opinions and rest my case before the bench
**disclaimer, I'm white and portrayals of bigotry in comics are complicated and subjective, but I am basing my point here off what other poc comic fans on socmed have been saying about 149. Also the "sick" is sarcasm incase that wasn't obvious
#ramblings of a lunatic#dc comics#dc#damian wayne#bruce wayne#uhhh. not gonna tag the others i dont have time#batman#idk if the zdarsky series has its own tag#anyway yeah. i saw some interesting discussions surrounding 149 and it got me thinking#the experience of reading the issue is inoffensive until i remember how we got here and then all of a sudden i start to feel downright evil#the bruce/zur separation thing pisses me off so bad. MOTHERFUCKER YOU WERE JUST SAYING LAST ISSUE THAT NONE OF IT WAS HIM#and maybe we were meant to agree w Bruce and not Jason in that issue but if that's the case. piss poor job demonstrating it#Bruce never really faces like. interpersonal consequences from the family that last beyond an issue#which is WILD considering the shit he pulled back before they knew he was having a menty b (mental breakdown for those who dont know)#the damian thing is just like. its such clear author bias in ways both lowkey funny and also. not funny. at all#i know a lot of ppl on here didnt vibe w/ batman and robin by joshua williamson but like#i cannot stress enough how he was one of the ONLY ppl in damians corner and now hes leaving that series#he says he approves of the new creative teams assigned but also they're his coworkers. so i dont trust SHIT until its in my hands#anyway one day I'll give a more good faith reading of zdarskys Batman and i do wanna read his daredevil some day#but as it stands he suffers from terminal ''has seemingly never read a comic not abt my special white boys and refuses to try''#which means everyone is going to have to suffer through my haterism#also sorry for no images. i really want to but i just don't have the wherewithal to do alt text rn
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i-love-your-light · 1 year ago
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burrows end ep1 is SO GOOD god im sorry but i really can't imagine the audacity of some ppl watching a 2 minute trailer for a season of Dimension 20 that hasn't come out yet and confidently saying "i know better than any of the experts involved in making it and i think they should've used a different system for this game"
like i can't even IMAGINE being aabria and logging on after the trailer for something i worked really hard on dropped and seeing a bunch of people being like 'ugh dnd was such a bad choice of system' when they had SEEN NONE OF THE SHOW??!!?! how would you know???
anyway, everything she does is literally perfect and SO immediately captivating. she is both generous and awe-inspiring in her command of the table and it is an honor to even get to watch her do what she does at all!!!! literally blessed with the presence of a ttrpg and storytelling goddess and some of y'all have the audacity to complain. couldn't be me though!
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zukoromantic · 4 months ago
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My precure color opinions because why not. Don't read if you think you'll be upset reading different opinions, i just wanna put this out there haha😭:
Summer is white, let her be white (this is the one i'm the most passionate about). I didn't even KNOW there was a debate on this until this year, what in the world. None of that rainbow or pink nonsense. I don't even know why she would be classified as rainbow officially. Especially when the color they TRY to force her into is pink (for example saying today's color is pink before the outro). I heard she was created to be white but i don't know the source of that so that might be wrong
i agree with Finale being golden, she gets to be golden as a treat <3. She is not purple, y'all are just mean, compare her to actual purple cures. A golden theme really suits her in my opinion, it's beautiful and elegant like her. There should be more golden cures that have some some golden accents imo :D
Parfait is green to me with rainbow sub-color, i KNOW it makes no sense and she is just a rainbow cure, but that's what she is in my brain somehow acejcdksvd
Cosmo is blue with rainbow sub-color, but SHOULD have been rainbow. Maybe with blue sub-color bc it Does with the team arrangement (also should have had her cat form in cure form but that's beside the point). I heard they WANTED to make her rainbow but weren't allowed?! Unsure about that too though
i haven't seen hugtto yet but ma cherie literally looks so pink acejcdjd. You're red? Whatever you say, girl, you can be anything you wanna be, who am i to tell you otherwise <3
Milky as green is fine, but i see why people want turquoise to just be its own category. I think her color shouldn't look different though, she looks great
similair for Lillian, except that i've seen some people giving her a wonderful light green and she would look gorgeous!
Nyammy can be a blue cure if she wants <3. Especially next to Lillian, it's obvious how white is their base color and they define themselves via the accents. But also she is literally the whitest cure ever made, let alone the whitest blue cure wcejev
Felice is fine as green cure and she's beautiful
there should be more pink non-leaders like Butterfly
bring back black as cure color. Also brown and grey would be gorgeous <3
i actually prefer when cures look kinda colorful and they AREN'T monotone. The main color is really more about the vibe in my opinion, like with Finale and Nyammy haha!
This is all light-hearted, just thought it would be fun to post these bc everyone has Some precure color opinions xD! 🙌 It's so funny how color discourse is such a serious topic in precure fandom CSJDVEK
If anyone wants to share their own opinions, you can tell but please only if it's in good faith 🙏
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crossbackpoke-check · 3 months ago
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Dysprosium, Mary Soon Lee
dysprosium, AN 66, is a silvery-white rare earth metal. its name is derived from the greek dysprositos, meaning “hard to get at”, owing to the difficulty in separating and isolating this rare earth element. dysprosium is used to measure neutron flux, to fuel reactors, and to activate phosphors. terfenol-d is a magnetorestrictive alloy, meaning that it changes shape when a magnetic field is applied, and is used to manufacture underwater acoustic systems.
jason “robo” robertson, dallas stars #21 for @simmyfrobby’s nhl periodic table poems <3
#i had a couple different ideas for poems that were taken by the time i could go deranged for a couple hours to make this but as I looked#i was like WAIT NONE OF YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I LOVE JASON ROBERTSON YOU HAVEN’T SEEN MY TEXAS CAM and had to do it. also was STRUCK with the#sudden immaculate vision of the Dallas D as part of terfenol-D and could not get it out & robo is the most dance! person i know on the team#liv in the replies#dallas stars#jason robertson#nhl periodic table poems#guys i am plagued with visions and no execution skills!! every day i come here and learn one new skill on GIMP the way god intended!!!#today it was emboss. also cannot claim any credit for the pulse to the magnetic beat photo which is so cool that was one where i had a#couple and was like maybe i can do like crayon shockwaves like the art process video kasper showed? and then found that picture and was#like thank you lord stanley for knowing my limitations. thank you for your understanding in this moment it was a trial enough to make#expand contract dance and one would THINK i would have fucking learned from the claude animorphs tragedy!! i did not. but i did use the#shear tool and 3D rotate so at least if we’re animorphing it’s SLIGHTLY better. anyway me frantically doing this like WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT#WAIT FOR ME YOU GUYS ARE SO FAST i keep seeing all of these and just spinning around in circles until i get dizzy & fall down I’m so happy#the drive folder for this is just called joy!!!!! because joy this is such a cool idea but now because it brings me so much joy#i just saw the Travis dermott one and burst into tears super normal AND someone did exactly what i wanted with hydrogen which was the water#the ice!!!!! it’s so perfect!!! and cody ofc did silver lord stanley. like does it ever make you cry how beautiful & creative everyone is?#anyway if you see me post and delete this and then update it or change it no you didn’t it’s fine. but i wanted to be included#if i could make the dysprosium letters not have a white background i would I simply could not fuck with it at 1AM. we are hitting send#it may not look like it but i queue#pretend i spoke at length about the reasons why i picked all the pictures & the element just know that it’s there inside my brain u can ask#GUYS I TAKE IT ALL BACK I SAW NEONFRETRA’S ISOTOPES AND I COULD MAKE THE EDITS EVEN THOUGH THEY’RE THERE!! ISOTOPES!!!! YOU GUYS!!!!!!#get ready for the edits then. dylan magnesium my beloved child of stars who can never return… like i wish i could say anyone else but it’s#i KNOW number nineteens bismuth don’t make me Google how many years nolan played hockey but also there’s ej for stable so.. also half-life#actinium claude giroux my beloved… when i saw there already was a claude i thought maybe Brady too for that#I don’t know how but flerovium doubled magic is percolating in my brain as was promethium bad boy because I was like hmmm. tyler. but#couldn’t commit and THEN SOMEONE DID BAD BAD LEROY BROWN TYLER BERTUZZI TO PROMETHIUM AND BESTIE I AM KISSING YOU ON THE MOUTH!!! with cons#anyway shane wright germanium with juraj slafkovský but showing him very obviously not missing it. if jack eichel was not an asshole#the narratives WOULD be narrativing. you could argue for a sidovi here with the calder cup and potentially a best friend stealing narrative#(the most recent is cam yorke’s acquisition of jamie d from trevor zegras which would then require a yorkie one for silicon the other side)
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aphverse-confessions · 9 months ago
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i find people who include fantasy racism, sexism and homophobia in their rewrites for ‘added drama’ and ‘issues’ are extremely unoriginal and lacking creativity. if your go to conflict is always fascism just because you have no creativity to try and come up with anything else besides what you know and is obviously ingrained in your brain, you should sit down and think why your go to awnser is always fascism.
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#ooookay#so uh#I can understand this sentiment when directed at ppl who have no expierence being discriminated against in a particular way#and still write a story abt that discrimination#like a white person adding fantasy racism to their story#however#people often use fiction as a means of exploring or explaining our world in a way that can be more digestible to the viewer#and gay person creating a fantasy story thay focusses on a world with homophobia and how that impacts those living in it#is not adding it for 'drama'#they are commentating on the state of our world which has homophobia#maybe someone's first way to explore conflict in a story is via bigotry because they have expierenced bigotry so often in their life#they view it as one of the major driving forces in their circumstances or perspective#to belittle writing that depicts real world issues as 'adding drama' shows to me that there is a lack of reading comprehension on your part#if your first instinct when faced with a story that includes an oppressed class being oppressed is 'stop add drama'#I think you need to reevaluate some things#one the number one pieces of writing advice you hear is 'write what you know'#who are u to say someone should be more 'creative' than that#aphmau confessions#aphmau#aphblr#aphverse#fandom angies#angies#instead of being mad maybe consider WHY an author may choose to add those things to a story#maybe u want fiction for escapism and that's why it bothers you#but not everyone goes to fiction for that purpose#sometimes they want to vent issues via a story or explain to someone why smth is a problem while excluding as much bias as possible#hence the fantasy setting and depiction of oppression#🤭
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7-oh-ta1 · 3 months ago
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"[...] that is, that man everywhere and at all times, whoever he may be, has preferred to act as he chose and not in the least as his reason and advantage dictated. And one may choose what is contrary to one’s own interests, and sometimes one positively ought (that is my idea)."
Stares up at my ceiling dostoevsky I need to have a conversation with you
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mmmthornton · 2 years ago
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youtube
She was so real for this
#that *AHAHAHAHA.. Stupid. >:( *#what a queen#<3#life things#inspiration#i looked up this interview again because i was thinking about how bad the Death on the Nile remake was AGAIN#and i thought the choice to make Otterborne into like#Sister Rosetta Tharpe ISH#like they used her music and superficially made her character into a rockstar while also taking away any personality or drama or like...#personality in the character lol like what a disappointment#Angela Lansbury in the old version is HAMMING it UP like can you imagine showing up to a movie thinking that THATs the character you -#- get to have fun with only to be told most of your scenes are sitting quietly listening to Branagh talk? BOO#anyway if they wanted to do a (roughly) time appropriate singer and that's not a terrible idea....and if they wanted to have a cool -#- real black creative woman inspo which is ALSO not a bad idea... why wouldn't you make her character more like Eartha Kitt?#some disctinctive way of speaking that's sort of recognizably old fashioned while being vivacious and the life of the party?#yeah thats what works for that character AND it'd be a fun inspiration for her as a singer#its so baffling that they just...straight up played the audio tracks of Sister Rosetta Tharpe singing while also not adding anything -#- to her character that was relevant and in fact just took away stuff about the character that made her an actual part of the mystery#they gave her narrative purpose to a white guy who wants to eat people irl ffs if that's not women being passed over for mediocre#white men idk what is#Youtube
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toxifoxx · 7 months ago
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hrmmmm
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thaliagrayce · 2 years ago
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。*★.°*:.☆Don't Put Ship Hate In The Ship Tag☆.:*°.★* 。
#mj talks#*whiteknuckling my hands* i am usually better than this but. please.#why is jasico so controversial??? like for real????#starting to get to the point where i see Adult Women Shouldn't Be In Fandom takes and realize they mean Me#?????????? no interests???????#i track the tag for silly headcanons and art#i once wrote a fic about jason getting so flustered he couldn't control his whole Flying thing because. get this.#nico just held his hand. depraved.#anyway the post i saw that made me mad asked why all jasico shippers were adults and side eyed us for that#but then seemed annoyed at the answers and their tags blatantly said dont follow me i dont like you#i wanted to answer because i had an answer! i have an answer and that answer is#most jasico shippers are adults because we were a lot closer to the target age range when house of hades came out#and house of hades was The Jasico Book#the year gap between when HoH and BoO was when jasico was at its peak and there was SO MUCH creativity going on#we looked at those characters and read the signs and saw they would be good together! they would complement each other!#recognition of self through the other is what it's all about!#and then nico got a canon boyfriend and most people jumped ship overnight lol#the people left who still ship jasico are here bc we genuinely like Them together and we think about their characters#this is not the roving white boys fandom. there is a different ship for those people.#also we may be older bc ive noticed that a lot of younger fans dont interact w their fandoms in the same way#like. fighting for ships to be canon and getting into vicious online debate about it#and thinking that a ship is a joke/worth nothing if it wasnt canon#*old man on a porch voice* back in my day you shipped characters on your own time and you didn't give a shit about canon#like. does kirk/spock mean nothing to you. how many of the top ao3 pairings are actually canon#talking more specific here but i met a person who liked a lot of the same things i did but when i got into like critique of the piece#or thinking about how i would have told it different or just like brainstorming fun 'what if' scenarioes#she was like. 'oh i like this because its canon. ive never thought about that before'#she was not that much younger than me!!! and she engaged in Zero critical thought or fun nonsense!#THAT'S WHAT FANDOM IS! CRITICAL THOUGHT AND FUN NONSENSE!#huh maybe i was actually annoyed at her the whole time and needed to get it off my chest
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samaspic31 · 2 years ago
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"Separate the art from the artist" is so insulting to the artists too actually (and totally irrelevant to the question of financial support of said art, in the age of pirating). Have you ever seen as artist say who they are is irrelevant to their work? Why are you implying that what we create is so unspecific to us that you can ignore us. You are trying to extend the capitalistic alienation from our labour to something inherently resistant to commodification, as much as the system forces its monetization for artists to live (and I wish all domains stopped alienating production from its producers, but it's particularly egregious for art imo). It’s something given or sold to the public for them to give the meaning they see fit, and you can decide to discard the initial/intended meaning for yourself, but it was still born from the artist and specific to them, created with their intentions motivating it, their biases colouring each and every choice, it is ludicrous to argue it can be totally dismissed. Trying to erase our role is downright offensive and akin to failing to credit properly. Copyright law has many flaws, in the sense that it is ill-equipped to handle the fact no art is ever 100% original and builds off existing elements, but it exists for a reason, so that artists get their due, you better believe corporations would not compensate us if they could. And minimizing our place in creation is the same mindset
I think it’s also tied to the myth we're born this way, given talent from birth and therefore not really the inventor but merely the executor of our art, negating the amount of training that goes into building skills, and the intellectual labor necessary for any creative work (see: ai bros acting like artists are hoarding drawing skills??), as well as the disregard shown for artistic industry workers anytime there's talks of unionizing (see : caring more about their marvel movies/video games releasing early than making sure crunch is avoided). Some people don’t like to think in depth about neither the context of what they consume nor the breathing bodies that make it come to life (and I understand, cause honestly it makes a lot of stuff depressing, be it food, clothes or art, but it'snecessary sometimes), and seem to think an artist’s relationship to a piece of work is over, all ties severed the moment they publish it, when it is a lifelong and everchanging relationship that takes labour to bear
On another topid so much of art is made of collaboration and merging intellectual properties and building off other people’s work i would like to beat up the myth of the lone genius artist or the mastermind director who deserves all the credit for his big brain, all projects would be nothing without the teams making them happen and an artist with no fellow creative friends literally will shrivel up so pls start putting all the people working in artistic fields on an equal footing, financially speaking too, i am begging society to stop disrespecting craftspeople too btw-
#sam speaks#sorry im mad when non artists go 'but it's not an autobiography so it's not about the artist themselves' shut up you know nothing#i can guarantee whoever the protagonist is the creatives found a path to relate to him and gave them to live their own experiences in a way#also people always use that shit to defend awful people or justify them being rewarded#did you know : you can consume art by terrible people without denying it it's called critical analysis#i had a teacher use it for fucking woody allen. when he literally makes movies where he plays the protagonist grooming a 16yo#never more obvious self insert/confession has existed#*relate to them#also like. the cliché of artists being self obsessed isn't exactly wrong let's be honest. there has to be a little bit of thinking highly o#yourself to believe (rightfully because that's the case for everyone) that your self is worth being expressed#so why would you think artists of the most arrogant self centered demographic in society would be humble enough not to insert themselves?#cishet white men write only about themselves and everybody else in their stories is an accesory; written with no empathy or understanding#something somthing refusal to acknowledge the inteligence of the people different to you#anyways. fuck jk and woody allen and polanski and so on and there are too many names#and support artists if you can so we can share art on our own terms#that said i often dislike art made about artists it's so. uninterestingly self centered
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fatespalm · 1 year ago
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solemn vow to never be complacent or meek around things i feel strongly about again — to at least start the conversation even if i don’t have the words to talk back exactly to a poisonous idea — in kind, to pick up the thread if someone else does the same — tired of letting evil shit unfold —
#honestly this mostly only happens because of my disability which. i've been dreaming/reading about navigating that in ways feel better#or else because im scared of violence as a trans woman but i’m sick of fear of violence making me passive#rarely because i got scared in the crosshairs of financial insecurity and feared losing work#but that is what im parsing this time and very determined not to let that happen ever again#cuz like. having the supposed 'non-action' of passivity even available to you is a privilege of whiteness#in this case it was taking a creative-side gig on a play that felt very clear the playwright had given very little if any consideration#to nonwhite perspectives like clearly by a white person thinking about a white audience kinda liberal politics#and i took it bc my friend's mentor was directing and she put us in touch and spoke highly of him#and she's indigenous and very willing to call out white bullshit so i had some hope/trust that he would push it more#and he........ did at least cast a latino actor in the one role that would have made the play horrifically racist#if it had been cast as a white person but that felt like doing the absolute least to me#im still very much figuring this world out#understanding the ethics of theater work and im glad i did this in that regard#cuz like. i didn't fully realize that my only real chance to make a creative + ethical statement was right out the gate in accepting the gi#as an SM like... there's really no other chance to have an opinion so i should not take work if the script doesn't align w my ethics#and use that rejection as a chance to make it clear what's fucked up#...if i even ever SM again that was the most stressful gig i've ever done and i didn't even get paid for it. fuck#sorry for writing half the post in the tags. if ur reading this ur too close >O< jk haaiiii thx for reading my diary#very much a 'i am thinking through these concepts still and ur welcome to share ur thoughts on them' kinda post
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cy-cyborg · 3 months ago
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Disability Tropes: The Perfect Prosthetic
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[ID: A screenshot from the movie Nimona, showing Nimona, a small white girl with red hair, grabbing the right prosthetic arm of Ballister, a knight in black armour with black hair and light brown skin. He is holding a broken bottle in his prosthetic hand while Nimona admires his arm. Overlaid on the screenshot is white text that reads "Disability Tropes: The Perfect Prosthetic" /End ID]
In a lot of media, prosthetic limbs are portrayed as these devices that act as a near-perfect replacement for a character who has lost, or was born without a limb. So much so that in a lot of cases, the use of a prosthetic has basically no impact on the character beyond a superficial level or their appearance, or it's portrayed as something that's even better than the old meat-limb it's replacing. This trope shows up most often in Sci-fi, but it shows up in all kinds of stories outside of that, even otherwise very grounded ones!
If a story isn't depicting the loss of a limb as the be-all-end-all worst thing that can happen to a person, they almost always default to a perfect prosthetic, functionally curing the amputation with it. But the reality is that prosthetics are FAR from perfect, and as someone who has used them for their entire life I don't think they ever will be. Limb difference is still and always will be a disability, regardless of the prosthetics available, and this really isn't a bad thing.
Why is this trope so common?
I meant it when I said this is a really, really a common trope, so much so that the majority of the media I've seen with amputees and characters with limb differences that released in the last decade or end up using it. Even stories where becoming an amputee is treated like a fate worse than death, ironically, aren't excluded from this. I have a few theories as to why this has happened: The pessimistic answer is that it's easy. You get to have a disabled character and claim you have disability representation, without really having to do much extra work or research because most of your audience won't notice if you aren't accurate - in fact they kind of expect it. You also, for the most part, dodge the backlash other kinds of disability representation (or really any minority representation) usually get. The more optimistic reason is that, for a long time, amputees and people with limb differences (as well as a lot of other disabled people) were predominantly shown in media as sad, depressed and unable to do anything, very much falling into the "sad disabled person" trope. As a kid, this was really the only way I saw people like me on screen or in books. And so, the limb difference community pushed back against that portrayal and were pretty successful in changing the narrative in the public's eye. A little too successful. A lot of creatives were genuinely trying to do right by our community, listen and do better, but many simply overcorrected and instead ended up creating stories where prosthetics were essentially cures instead of the mobility aids they are. I also think the public's general lack of understanding about disability plays a roll in all this. There are a lot of people who, in my experience, believe that the more visible a disability is, the worse it is. Limb differences and amputations are very visible, but prosthetics, even those that aren't trying to be discreet, make them less so. While using a prosthetic is very, very different to a biological limb, you won't necessarily see how in a casual interaction with, say a co-worker or neighbor, especially because there is a very real stigma applied to people with limb differences to keep those things hidden from the public. There are other reasons too, such as the fact that a lot of creatives don't even consider the connection to real amputees when creating characters with robotic limbs in genres like sci-fi and some fantasy, so they never stop to consider that these tropes could be impacting real people. Amputees are also very frequently used in "inspiration porn" content that uses the angle that disabilities can be "overcome" with a good attitude, downplaying the way those disabilities actually impact us. The prosthetics industry - specifically the component manufacturers, often also push the idea of prosthetics being the only way to return to a "normal" life, both to the wider public and to people with limb differences and amputations (which can add to that sense of shame I mentioned when it doesn't play out that way for them). On top of that, I also think the recent increase in popularity of concepts like trans-humanism contributes to it as well. these movements often talk about robotic or bionic body parts being enhancements and "the way of the future", and I think people get a bit too caught up on what may be potentially possible in the future with the real, current experiences of people with "robotic limbs" aka prosthetics, now. There are also inherently disabling things that come with removing and replacing parts of your body, things that will not just go away with some fancier tech.
So How do you actually avoid the trope?
So, we have some ideas about why it happens, but how do you actually avoid the "perfect prosthetic" trope from appearing in your work? The most important thing is to remember that this is still a disability. The loss of a limb, even with the best prosthetic technology or magical item in the world, will always have some inherently disabling aspects to it - and this is not a bad thing. The key is to not over-do it, lest you risk falling into the old "sad disabled person" trope. So let's go over some of the ways you can show how your character's disability impacts them. You don't have to use all of these recommendations, just choose the ones that would best fit your character, their circumstances and your setting.
The prosthetic itself is just different
Probably the most important thing to address and acknowledge for prosthetic-using characters, is the actual ways in which the prosthetic itself is different from a biological limb, and the drawbacks and changes that come with that. For the sake of simplicity, I'm mainly going to focus on modern prosthetics here, but it's worth considering how to apply this your own, more advanced/fantastical prosthetics too. One major thing that most people writing amputees fail to acknowledge is that prosthetic limbs are not fleshy-limbs with a different coat of paint. They do the same basic thing their meat-counterparts do, but how they do it is often drastically different, which changes how they are used. A really good example of this is in prosthetic feet. There are dozens of joints in a biological foot, but most prosthetic feet have no joints or moving parts at all. Instead of having dozens of artificial joints to mimic the real bone structure of a foot, which are more prone to failure, require power and make the prosthetic much, much heavier for very little gain, prosthetic feet are often constructed from flexible carbon fiber sheets inside a flexible rubber foot-shaped shell. This allows the bend and flex those bones provide, without all the drawbacks that come from trying to directly mimic it. Making the sheets into different shapes makes them more ideal for different activities. E.g. feet made for general use, like walking around the city, are simple and light, shaped to encourage the most energy-efficient steps, while still allowing their users to do things like wear normal shoes. Feet made for rough terrain often have a split down the middle of the foot to allow the carbon fiber sheets to bend better over rocks when there is no ankle, and some newer designs also include a kind of suspension using pressurized air pulled from the prosthetic socket to allow some additional padding. Running feet have large "blades" made of these carbon fiber sheets to absorb more pressure when the foot hits the ground, and redirect the force that creates to propel their user forward as quickly as possible.
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[ID: A photo of 4 prosthetic feet. On the left, the foot is covered with a black shoe, the one to it's right consists of a small, carbon fiber blade, split down the middle, in roughly the same shape and size as the previous foot. Next to the right is an even simpler and smaller carbon fiber foot with no split, and finally is a very short foot that is vaguely rectangular in shape. /End ID]
These are some of my own prosthetic feet I've had over the years. The two on the right are designed to be used by someone who is less mobile, and the ones on the left are made for someone who is more active. As my needs changed over the years, I've used different designs and styles, and keep the old ones since my needs do tend to fluctuate.
There are also robotic feet available that are designed as a kind of "all-purpose" foot that use an electronic ankle which more closely mimics a biological foot, but they are not very popular as the mechanism adds a lot of extra weight and it requires a battery and power to work, with many amputees feeling the jointless carbon fiber feet do a better job at meeting their needs. The same goes for arms and hands. "Robotic" hands that mimic a meat hand exist, but they aren't really that popular, even in places like Australia where the prohibitively expensive price tag isn't as much of an issue due to government programs that pay for the device for you. Instead, most arm amputees who use prosthetics that I know prefer simpler devices that do specific tasks, and just swap between them as needed, rather than something that tries to do it all. A big part of this is because the all-purpose hands can be clunky. they often require manual adjustment using the other hand to do simple things like going from holding a deck of cards to putting them down and picking up a glass of water, for example. The few that don't require that, I've been told, are often temperamental and don't actually work for every person with a limb difference.
Altered Proprioception
Loosing a limb is a big deal and this is always going to have an impact on the body in some way that won't be solved with a fancy piece of tech. One such example is how limb loss effects your sense of proprioception. This is your sense of where your body parts are in space. It's how you (mostly) know where your foot is going to land when you're walking, or how you're able to do things like lift up a glass of water without needing to actually watch your hand do it. Your brain does this by creating a mental map of your body, but this map doesn't get adjusted if you loose a limb. If that map doesn't accurately reflect your real body, you're not going to have an accurate sense of proprioception. This might look like a leg amputee being a bit less stable on their feet, or like an arm amputee needing to look at their arm or hand to be able to grab something with it. Those born without their limbs who take to using prosthetics often have a lot of trouble adapting, as their brains aren't used to having that limb in the first place, whereas an amputee's brain can sometimes be tricked into using their outdated body map to help them adjust to the prosthetic (though its impossible to line it up perfectly). Prosthetics that directly integrate with the nervous system, while rare, do exist, and even this direct connection doesn't completely erase this issue for reasons doctors aren't quite sure about. This is something that does become less of a problem with time. Eventually, someone proficient with their prosthetic will learn to compensate, but their sense of proprioception will never be 100% perfect. At the end of the day, no matter how it attaches, a prosthetic is still not a natural part of the body, and that will always cause some issues. It also means if they aren't practicing it all the time, they may have to relearn how to compensate for it.
Extra weight
You also have to remember that a prosthetic is not a natural part of the body, like we already talked about, and so no matter how good it is, your brain will most likely always interpret the weight of the prosthetic as something attached to you, not part of you. This means that, even though prosthetics are actually a lot lighter than biological limbs, they feel so much heavier. This is because, while a meat limb is heavier, a lot of that weight is from muscles which are actively contributing to the limb working, so it doesn't really feel like its that heavy. When you have less of your meat-limb though, you have even less muscle to work with to move this big thing strapped to it, so it feels heavier. The more of the limb you've lost, or just didn't have, the heavier the prosthetic has to be, and the less muscle you have left to move it. It's for this reason that a lot of amputees and people with limb differences get tired faster when using prosthetics. Some of us are fit enough where you almost wouldn't notice the extra effort they need to put in, but once again, just because you can't see it from the outside, doesn't mean it's not an issue.
Avoiding Water
Most prosthetics also aren't waterproof, and so prosthetic users have to be very careful about when and how they come into contact with it. For amputees with electric components, contact with water at all will likely damage the device. This can even include especially heavy rain, something I was told to avoid when I got my electronic knee prosthetic and something I assume would also apply to arm amputees with complex, electronic hands. For those with non-electronic prosthetics, water can be hazardous for different reasons. If the prosthetic has metal components, water may cause them to rust, especially if it's salty water. Other prosthetics have foam covers to give the illusion of a limb with the general shape of muscles and fat, but these covers do not come off, and if they get wet enough that water seeps all the way through, it is very hard to dry it and they may become moldy. Finally, cheaper modern prosthetics may also float. Many are made of very light-weight materials and some have pockets of air trapped inside them. For leg prosthetics in particular, this means a user might, at best, struggle to swim with them on, but at worst, may get flipped upside down and become trapped underwater - something that happened to me as a very young child. On the flip-side, older prosthetics were usually made of heavy materials like wood or steel, and so had the opposite problem, acting like a weight and pulling a person down if they were to wear them in the water. Water-safe prosthetics do exist, I had a pair of prosthetic legs as a teenager that were hollow, and designed especially for me to swim with fins on when swimming in the ocean, and Nadya Vessey, a double leg amputee in New Zealand even got a mermaid-tail prosthetic made especially for use in the water. Most amputees though just swim without any prosthetics at all, and in 99% of cases, this is the easiest and safest way to go.
Prosthetic-Related Pressure Sores and Pain
Many people with limb differences also experience pressure sores from their prosthetics. Modern prosthetics typically attach to the body using a socket made of carbon fiber or fiberglass, held on either by pressure, using a vacuum seal or through a mechanical locking system built into the socket. No matter the specifics though, the socket has to be very tight in order to stay on, and this means that extended periods of use can lead to rub-spots, blisters and pressure sores. Many socket prosthetics also use silicone liners to add extra padding, but this means wounds caused by the pressure can't breathe, and bacteria in sweat has nowhere to go, meaning if the person doesn't rest when one of these wounds occur, it can very easily and quickly turn into a serious infection. In a properly fitting prosthetic, used by someone who has fully adjusted to them, this doesn't happen often, but it is something most amputees and people with limb differences have to at least be mindful of. Some new prosthetics use a different method of attachment, called Osteointegration - where the prosthetic attaches to a clip, surgically implanted into the person's bones. While Osteointegration avoids many of the issues like pressure sores that come from a socket, they have their own issues: mainly that they are incredibly expensive, and as of right now, have a pretty high failure rate due to the implant getting infected. Because the implants are directly connected to the bone, these infections become very serious very quickly. Many people with Osteointegration limbs have to be on very strong medication to keep these infections at bay, and they are generally considered unsuitable for anyone who is going to regularly come into contact with "unclean" environments.
Maintenance
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[ID: A screenshot of Winrey, from Full Metal alchemist Brotherhood, a white woman with blond hair handing out the sides of a green hat. She is measuring a piece of metal from a prosthetic she is making while Ed, the prosthetic's owner, gives her a thumbs up in the background. /End ID]
Finally, prosthetics also require maintenance from a specialist called a prosthetist, and they don't last forever. Some parts, like a foot or hand, can be reused over an over, but the sockets of a prosthetic need to be completely remade any time your body changes shape, including if you gain/loose weight, you start experiencing swelling, or you're just a child who is growing. Children in particular need new prosthetics every few months because they grow so fast, and as such, their prosthetics have to be made with this growth in mind. If they go too long without adjustment or an entirely new prosthetic, it can seriously impact the child and their growth but even small adjustments can be costly, depending on where you live. While prosthetics are built to be sturdy and reliable, they need a lot of work to stay that way. The more complex the prosthetic, the more work is needed. Complicated electronic components may need to have regular maintenance done by your prosthetist or even the specific component's manufacturer, and depending on where you live, this might mean having to send your prosthetic limb away for this to be done. While my prosthetist technically has the skills and knowledge to do the maintenance on my electronic knee, for example, the manufacturer forbids anyone not from their company to provide this service, meaning my leg needs to be shipped off to Germany once every few years if I want to keep the warranty. This has the unfortunate side effect of sometimes your limbs getting lost in postage (shout-out to Australia Post, who lost mine twice), meaning it can be months before you get it back or get a replacement. Usually, you'll be given a replacement in the meantime if you need it, but walking on a leg that isn't yours, even when its correctly fitted, always feels a bit weird (maybe that's just me though).
Not every difference is Inherently Negative
We've talked about some of the negatives that come from having a prosthetic, but not every difference is negative or even really that big of a deal. In fact, often times, it's these little moments in the depiction of a disability that go the furthest and make it feel the most genuine. My amputations effect me from the moment I wake up, to the moment I go to bed, but that doesn't mean every single way it impacts me is always inherently bad or negative. For example, back when I was working a normal job and going to university, I would often come home, throw my legs off at the door with the shoes still attached and get into my wheelchair, the same way you might throw your shoes off after work and replace them with comfy socks and other comfy clothing. This is something I've only ever seen on screen once, with Eda from the Owl House (and she wasn't even an amputee yet, her limbs were just detachable)
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[ID: an screenshot of Eda from the owl house, a very pale woman, laying on the couch in a bathrobe, her hair in a towel. She has taken her actual legs off, throwing them to the other side of the seat. /End ID]
After that, my day mostly looked the same as most other people working a 9 to 5, I'd make myself dinner, watch some TV or play some games, maybe do some extra work at my desk or chat with friends. The only difference is that it would all be from a wheelchair, mainly because my prosthetics were heavy and it was just easier to use the chair around the house. The fact my afternoon and evening routine was done from a wheelchair wasn't a bad thing, it was just different. Likewise, I also don't sleep or shower with my prosthetics on, for the same reasons most other people wouldn't take a shower or sleep in thigh-high, steel-capped boots. In your own stories, this might look like giving your characters similar alterations to how they go about their day. Let them take their arm or leg off when they're resting or relaxing, show them taking a few minutes longer to get ready because they have to put it back on, show them doing some things without it. Arm amputees in particular tend to get very good at going about their days without their arm prosthetics, and leg amputees often either learn to get around more relaxed spaces like their homes using a different mobility aids like wheelchairs or crutches, or just through hopping if that's something they're physically able to do. Even when everything is going well and working as intended, your limb-different character won't wear their prosthetic 24/7, no matter how much they love it. There doesn't have to be something wrong with it or painful about it to not want it glued to them at all times, just like you can love a pair of big heavy boots but not want them on when you're trying to sleep. For more action-focused stories, being an amputee, also changes things like how you fight. The specifics will vary from person to person, but for example, when I did Hap Ki Do, a Korean Martial art, my instructor heavily modified when I learned what techniques. Beginner-level kicks and most leg attacks were impractical for me, as the force from the kicking motion would usually cause one of my legs to fly off. I also couldn't jump very well, due to some complications with my original amputation that made my stumps too sensitive to withstand the force of landing again. So I ended up learning a lot more upper-body attacks much earlier than it is typically taught. By the time I got my green belt, I was practicing upper-body techniques usually saved for black belts - including weapons training that I could use my secondary mobility aids for, like crutches and my cane in a bad situation. Many holds that rely on creating tension in your target are also less effective on amputees, because either the anatomy that causes those holds to be painful just simply isn't there, or the body part in question can just be removed to escape. Whether we're talking about the negative things, or just neutral differences that come with using prosthetics, you don't want to go too far with any one example. The key is to strike a balance. Of course, the old writing advice of "show don't tell" also applies here. It's one thing to tell us all of this stuff, but unless we actually see it play out, it won't mean much.
How NOT to avoid the trope
Before we move on, let's focus for a moment on some common things I've seen that you SHOULDN'T do as a way to get away from the trope.
The Enhanced Prosthetic
A lot of sci-fi in particular will take prosthetic limbs, make them function exactly the same as a biological limb, but add something extra to it. This does change the way the prosthetic functions and is used, but it usually still ignores the actual disabling parts of having a prosthetic. A really good example of this can be seen in pretty much any futuristic setting, but personally, I think Fizzeroli, from Helluva Boss is the best one to demonstrate what I mean. Fizz is a quadrilateral, above knee/above elbow amputee with highly advanced prosthetics that function, more or less exactly like the limbs he lost, but with the added benefit of being super-stretchy. Fizz is an acrobat and a clown in service, at least initially, to Mammon, one of the Seven Deadly Sins. These prosthetics help him perform and we even do see how they change little things like how he walks and just goes about his day, but the show still treats them like natural arms and legs, but better. 
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[ID: A screenshot of Fizzeroli from Helluva Boss, a white-skinned imp with 4 black, prosthetic limbs, dressed in teal a nightgown as he lays in bed, reading from a list /End ID]
We see that he never takes them off, even when sleeping, and when he needs to use them as regular arms and legs, they do everything he needs, perfectly fine - at least when they're working correctly. The only time he ever even takes them off or has any issues with them, is when they break in season 2. The word amputee is never used to describe him, as far as I remember, and the fact he is one never really comes up at all, except for when they break or when the story focuses on how he lost them. Which brings me to my next point.
The Glitchy/Broken Prosthetic
One way I see people try to avoid the perfect prosthetic trope, is to take the prosthetic and break it or otherwise make it unreliable by having it malfunction, but not really changing anything else. This approach is heading in the right direction but still kind of misses the point of the criticism a lot of limb different folks have with the depictions of prosthetics in the media. Yeah, prosthetics do break down and some do require extra maintenance, but if your character's prosthetic is still exactly the same as a biological limb (or even better, in the case of the "enhanced prosthetic") when it's not broken, and the only time their disability is treated like a disability, is when it breaks, you're not really addressing the issue. Real prosthetics, like we discussed, even when functioning at 100%, exactly as the manufacturer intended, don't function the same as a meat-limb. They are fundamentally different, and the glitchy/unreliable prosthetic completely ignores all of that. Once again, Fizz is a really good example of this - the only time his prosthetics are not perfect, is when they break or are malfunctioning (despite the criticism, I do genuinely love Fizz as a character, but he unfortunately does fall into a lot of disability tropes).
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[ID: Another screenshot of Fizzeroli, this time in a torn up jester outfit, looking down, panicked, at his prosthetic arms which are fully extended and laying motionless on the ground, with his left arm visibly short-circuiting with electricity around it. /End ID]
Now this isn't to say you can't have your character's prosthetics break down or malfunction at all. just that this shouldn't be the only way you differentiate the prosthetic from a biological limb. You should also be mindful of how or why they're breaking. A typical prosthetic isn't going to break down randomly from normal use unless something is very, very wrong or your character just has a terrible prosthetist (which unfortunately, does happen). You might experience issues if you try to make the prosthetic do something it just wasn't designed to do, or expose it to something it wasn't designed to deal with though (e.g. submerging an electronic prosthetic in water and trying to use it to swim).
Just add Phantom Pain
Another common pitfall I see when people are trying to avoid the perfect prosthetic trope, is to just give the character in question phantom pain - which is a side-effect of amputation where your brain's mental map of the body doesn't acknowledged you lost a limb. Your brain tries to fill in the gaps, since there is no signals coming from that part of the body anymore, and assumes either something must be wrong and so you should be in pain, even when you actually aren't. Alternatively, it can also happen when your brain was so used to feeling pain from that area before, in the case of people who had chronic conditions before they lost their limb, that it just keeps remaking those old signals itself. Like the broken/glitchy prosthetic approach, this also doesn't really address the issue with the perfect prosthetic trope, because it has nothing to do with the prosthetic itself. Phantom pain doesn't come from the prosthetic, nor does it effect how they're used, and so including it doesn't really address the issue of the prosthetic being functionally the same as the original, biological limb. This isn't to say that you shouldn't include phantom limb sensation or pain as something your character experiences, but just keep in mind that, when used on it's own, it doesn't counter the trope. Also, just be sure to do your research, everyone's experience with phantom pain is different and it's not something everyone with a limb difference even experiences.
Why is this trope even a problem?
Alright, so we know what the trope is, we know why it became so prevalent, ways to avoid it and also how not to avoid it. All good information, but why is this trope even bad? Why should you try to avoid it? Outside of just wanting to portray a real disability that effects real people more accurately in your creations, the prevalence of this trope actually contributes to a lot of real-world issues, especially when it's as overused as it currently is. I've talked before about "the jaws effect" - where the depiction of something in the media, especially something that the public is widely uneducated on, influences how people see it in real life. The Jaws effect specifically referred to how the popularity of creature-feature movies featuring sharks, like Jaws, caused the belief that sharks were monstrous killing machines to become much more wide-spread, even going so far as to influence decisions about laws and policy surrounding real-life shark preservation and culling in some parts of the world. But sharks aren't the only thing this has happened to.
Disabled people are so thoroughly misunderstood by wider society, that when tropes like this one become popular, people can and often do start to believe the misinformation they spread - in this case, believing that our prosthetics are a perfect replacement for a biological limb, and that getting a prosthetic means you're not disabled any more. While this can be annoying and cause small scale issues for some of us, like people giving us a hard time for using disability accommodations we very much need, it can also impact us in systemic ways too. If the wrong people believe these tropes, it can and does have a very real impact on the lives of disabled people through things like changes to policies to make it harder for amputees and people with limb differences to access financial assistance for other things outside of our prosthetics we may need assistance with.
Conclusion
Despite the very real harm tropes like this can do when it's overused, I don't think it should go away entirely. Some of my favourite pieces of media even use the perfect prosthetic trope and there are even some kinds of media where I even think it's somewhat unavoidable. Characters with perfect prosthetics in kids media in particular, especially when talking about side characters, can help to correct some of the other stereotypes kids may have seen elsewhere - such as prosthetics being "creepy" or "scary" - in a way that is casual and easy for them to understand. The problem with the trope, in my eyes, is it's excessive overuse. It's the fact that it seems to be the only representation amputees and people with limb differences are getting now. Not every story with a limb-different character can or even should delve into the reality of what using prosthetics is actually like, but we need at least some stories that do, without it being this majorly depressing thing.
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