#its also one of the reasons why i ended up liking len and a lot of aspects of his design are fun to draw to me

[hikukastel]

len.exe

#鏡音レン #color #sketchy things #bakaroido #crossoverz #art queue #oh someone asked about the keytar in the tags and i did think about it but not super deeply for it to make sense #i liked to think when the buster is used one of the keys disappears #bc his shoots are the keytar keys #recharges automatically and probably works as a loader connected to the buster #all parts floats as layers and is also used as an instrument #(he can and will also beat up ppl with it bc regular len also. does that.) #also yeah rmx was one of my first big fandoms and the only thing i drew for years so im familiar to most of the sagas #its also one of the reasons why i ended up liking len and a lot of aspects of his design are fun to draw to me #i have always wanted to design him for X Exe Zero and Legends/Dash....... but i feel so rusty w the sagasfdsnjk

[astrobydalia]

More observations pt. 13

Masterlist

Work by astrobydalia

Mercury is such an underrated planet. It literally shows under which lens we process information and communicate ourselves as well as what our mind is constantly focused on, and since we use our minds and communicate all the time, this planet really plays out in your personality a lot more than you think

Speaking of, the two mercurial signs (Gemini and Virgo) represent two types of communication:

Gemini -> is all about collecting and exploring information and ideas. Rules oral speech or spoken communication that is much more spontaneous and open to variations, casual/informal language

Virgo -> is all about organizing and classifying information. Rules written communication and grammar which is more deliberate and nuanced and sets the standard for an adequate expression

Scorpio Sun/Moon women are usually very extroverted or outspoken, they're usually not afraid to speak their mind at all

Is it just me or Cancer Sun women ALWAYS embody the Cancer stereotype 😭 Like they really take pride (Sun) in being vulnerable, caring and emotionally driven or somewhat emo (Cancer)

Venus/Mars in the 2nd house people aren't really wealthy from what I've seen. Yes they are hustlers and do attract money easily but they're also big spenders so they're really not good at budgeting and actually struggle with long-term wealth. I've seen many people with this placement struggling financially or barely surviving day by day not because they don't have money but because they don't know how to spent it and forget that they have to set some money aside to pay bills.

With that being said, that's why I've seen 8th housers/Plutonians (including Pluto in the 2nd house) being far more wealthy and powerful than Venusians/2nd housers because 2nd house is about making money to obtain your own resources but 8th house is all about making money by knowing how to invest your resources and assets. That's why it's always Scorpio/8th house placements who have their own business

I’m on a mission to understand why there’s so much Venusian influence in the charts of philosophers: Taurus and Libra placements (specially Taurus Moon) including Venus influence in the MC

I haven't met a single Cardinal Mars that wasn't super workaholic

Leo North Node people need to learn to be more courageous in this lifetime and be brave enough to stand out. They have a tendency to be kinda cowardly and conform to peer pressure

When underdeveloped, people with Sun in the 12th house or Sun-Neptune aspects or Neptune in the 5th house actually have a HUGE ego and literally put themselves in a pedestal. Because they don’t have a solid sense of self they end up sustaining their identity on a very idolized image of themselves, and because they feel misunderstood they end up thinking they are more elevated or special. They usually feel very entitled to status because of this

Aries Lilith people are so petty and passive aggressive for no reason... Females with this placement live in a constant competition with other women and easily feel threatened by other women

Leo Mercury won't hesitate to interrupt or change topics in a conversation if they don't care what you're talking about

To be honest, people with Neptune in an earth sign/house are better off with having their own business or being their own boss bc people that they work for/work with tent to deceive them or exploit them and they most likely have being victim of fraud at some point of their life (they could fraud others too). Another reason why I think this is a good placement for entrepreneurs it's bc these natives have the ability to materialize (earth) what they imagine (Neptune)

Sagittarius Moons really are blind to/don't care about social norms and politeness. On one hand this can make them effortlessly funny and chill but other times they often come across as entitled assholes

Leo Moons 🤝 gatekeeping. The way they claim things genuinely makes it feel like ITS JUST THEIRS

People with Neptune in the 1st house usually come across as dumb, impressionable or gullible to others, this 'dumb blonde' image sort of like Cat from Victorious or Phoebe from Friends. Even when they proof to be very smart, they are never seen as particularly intellectual and women with this placement are seen as trophy wives. These natives are treated like they’re just a Barbie doll sitting there 😃🧍🏽‍♀️

Even though Virgo rules protocol (following stablished rules), I've seen that Virgo placements particularly Virgo Mars like doing things THEIR OWN way because they are very confident they know how to do it better. They don't mind breaking or adjusting some rules if they genuinely believe that their way of doing something is better

Aquarius are known to be trend-setters, but it's actually Aries placements who people are always trying to copy

Natives with Taurus/Venus/Ceres in the 4th house or their 4th house ruler falling in Taurus/2nd house probably grew up in the suburbs, a village, a farm, the outskirts of town or surrounded by nature or far from the big city.

Any sort of Neptune/Pisces/12th house influence in the 4th house is giving Bruno from Encanto. These natives often have very big families that are present in their lives but they still feel very distant from them in some way, they secretly felt very alienated growing up like they were almost a invisible or they feel like their family doesn't really know who they are. I've noticed many times these natives usually follow a very different path and their family ends up idolizing them for it, they basically become a 'legend' or something 'otherworldly' compared to the rest of their family

I just have to point out how earth mercuries are the BEST writers. They are so good at picking up beautiful details and choosing just the right words to illustrate something. I have seen so many poets, song-writters and novelist with this placement it's amazing

This won't apply to everyone but the people I've seen with mayor Capricorn, Scorpio and Pisces energy in their chart (either through house, planet or sign) always ended up really needing psychological help for some reason.

^^Another thing I've noticed in people with mayor Capricorn, Scorpio and Pisces energy is that they are the most prone to getting themselves into really shady business like getting involved with/attracting the wrong people or even having experiences with dark entities

Virgo Moons are the definition of understanding the assignment

Earth signs in the big 3 🤝 self-earned success

Gemini placements 🤝 talking back/having the last word

I’ve actually noticed that Scorpio/8th house Mercury actually LOVE it when you ask them questions specially if you're asking them for advice or their opinion. Doesn’t mean they will spill their guts (they definitely won’t), but they really like it when others trust them to dive into any sort of conversation and they like it when you trust them with your problems and insecurities. I swear if you wanna catch the attention of these natives just say “can I ask/tell you something?” in a very confidential tone and they will often reply with “oh yes please you can tell me ANYTHING”

Women with Moon opposite/square Venus have a very complicated relationship with motherhood. They may not want kids but if they do, two things can happen when they have them: First scenario is they become the type of woman that loses herself in motherhood (Moon) and feels guilty for taking care of herself and indulging (Venus), in which case they could guilty-trip their children, "I gave myself up to take care of you" sort of thing (underdeveloped Moon energy). Second scenario is she doesn’t want to give up her self-care and ends up becoming a neglectful mother, she will love her kids and give them all they want (Venus) but she's not nurturing (Moon), in such cases the mother is superficial and treats the child as a possession (underdeveloped Venus energy). I've very often seen that in both cases women with this aspect end up taking the role of an older sister/friend rather than a mother to their children and they may have also had trouble conceiving

One time I was ranting to my friend about how much I hate septum piercings because “why would you wanna look like a bull or sum ox??” and right on that second I realized: Taurus placements💡

I've seen so many Taurus Suns who are atheists. They're so focused on grounded reality that they find it hard (almost absurd) to believe in a transcendental reality or if they believe in it they think it's not possible to reach it. They seem to be hyper-aware that the only moving force of life is nature itself and nothing more

One last note on Taurus placements, they're usually not the type to cut people off easily, but I've actually noticed there are two main reasons why they would actually cut you off:

1) if you bring drama and too much trouble into their life. They are patient to a fault and can keep the wrong people around them for a bit too long but when you break their patience it's genuinely OVER for you and they won't look back. They're Venusian after all so what they really want is to chill and have peace around them

2) if you bring any form of change or newness into their life. Taurus placements like things staying the same bc it gives them sense of peace and stability, so they will run away from anyone who challenges this or wants to change their perspective of things in some way. It's like they want to stay in their own bubble and will not want anyone to burst it in any way.

Aries placements are hit or miss. They are either emotionally immature, selfish and superficial or the most chill, LOYAL and overall the most elite people to have in your life

Every single time North Node has transited Taurus there has been an economic crisis of some sort or issues with resources and nature. We're seeing it right now or for example this this transit also took place during the the Great Depression

I've noticed Gemini Mars folks are bad bitches like wow they really don't play

I've seen many people with Neptune in the 7th house being quite selfish and not the most empathetic tbh. If underdeveloped they could have a tendency to alienate or depersonalize others because they see them as some sort of caricatures

Air moons or Moon in an air house had mothers/families that never made a big deal out of their emotional issues or needs, they may have been like "I'll just get you a therapist and problem solved you'll see" or "it's okay don't worry we'll just do this and you'll be fine", etc. That's why these natives tend to rationalize their emotions

I have to say that Moon in the 4th house are some of the most emotionally intelligent people I've ever met but please you guys need to leave the past in the past 😭 These natives have a tendency to ruminate a little TOO much to the point where is damaging their emotional well-being and personal development

Cancer risings deep down think of themselves as smarter due to Gemini in their 12th house. They are open to hearing new ideas and perspectives but ultimately they believe they have the last word

I've noticed this pattern in Scorpio/8th house Mars where they have this strong tendency to be incredibly invasive and can easily walk all over your boundaries. They’re the type to really rush relationships or eat half of your food when you offered them just a bite (lol dumb example but you get the idea)

Natives with South Node in an earth sign (specially Taurus and Capricorn) are the most likely to get caught up in hustle culture. In this lifetime they might be forced to sacrifice their ambitions in some way to focus more on their own sanity, fulfillment and emotional well-being

Libra placements 🤝 being homosexual, being called homosexual by others or toying with homosexuality

Mutable risings 🤝 self-deception and self-gaslight, can easily convince themselves of whatever and believe their own lies

Honestly, never underestimate water mars people (water sign/house). They are very sneaky when facing problems and never come forward with their real intentions so they’re the type to show results and surprise everyone with their achievements. I've noticed that when they set a goal instead of pursuing it directly themselves they manipulate the situation and work bts until things fall into place for them. You’ll never see them fail because they just sneak away as soon as they realize they can’t win and they will be very good at hiding when they’re struggling

Aquarius placements seriously don't get enough credit for how psychic they can be actually! Most people that I've seen that had a talent to accurately predict the future had Aquarius placements (namely sun/moon/mercury), they really are ahead of their time

This may sound super obvious but I've noticed that my fave people to follow on social media always have their personal planets falling in my 11th house

Neptune/Pisces in the angels 🤝 seeing themselves as the main character and seeing their life as a movie or sum to cope with the fact that they feel out of control of their life/themselves. These natives are the best story-tellers imo bc they romanticize their life so much that they will describe even the most boring and mundane shit like it's the scene of a movie (they be reaching sometimes with the things they say but hey at least it's entertaining)

Chiron can also represent how we hurt others the most by projecting our deepest hurts and insecurities

People with Moon in the 5th/4th house have fixation with children and usually want to be parents with all their heart. On the other hand I've noticed natives with Sun in the 5th/4th house are not that fond of the idea of having children because they want to continue being a child themselves, but if they want kids they may like the idea of being the cool or fun parent

I’ve noticed that saturnian influence on the Moon is far more emotionally devastating than plutonic influence. I don’t mean to minimize Pluto’s power at all, but let’s not forget that this planet rules death and rebirth so when Pluto is influencing the moon emotional pain will be intense but the person comes out of it renewed. Saturn on the other hand rules permanence and Saturn brings that type of emotional pain that you never really get over you just learn to live with it overtime

Aquarius Sun+Capricorn Venus combo how does it feel to be the cool and popular kid?

work by astrobydalia

#astrology #astro #astro observations #astro notes #zodiac #ascendant #birth chart #gemini #capricorn #moon signs

[sanctus-ingenium]

i answer your asks vol... 6?

This one made me actually consider how they balance the humours beyond just a simply "they scour it out". Because sometimes a holy beast gets 'sick' and it's not necessarily related to any sort of tissue growth, it's more often a mechanical fault and because the beast is considered to be alive, he is then therefore 'sick'. So how do we deal with this? An enginesmith will make the necessary repairs, but sometimes the sickness is related to environmental conditions. The four humours are arranged on a scale like this:

A mechanical fault associated with being too hot and dry could be something like a lack of lubrication on moving machine parts. So this would be considered the reason for a production of yellow bile (excess of yellow bile, btw, was what Pantera was diagnosed with on his last outing). Whether or not the bile is literal or more symbolic depends on the case. Anyway this was the reason Pantera is associated with fire (originally, when I was designing them all) and Leun, diametrically opposite, is associated with phlegm, water, acid, etc.

But anyway, the way to fix these imbalances in hot/cold/wet/dry is to simply reduce whichever one is excessive. In practice, keeping holy beasts maintained even when they're not out on a crusade is a full time job for an army of workers, where the atmospheric conditions need to be as neutral as possible. Too wet and you've got rust, too dry and the metal fatigues, to hot and it might warp and break, too cold and the joints won't fit properly, etc etc. Although the enginesmiths view this through a lens of The Four Humours, it's also just good practice to try to keep things balanced.

Btw while they do cure an excess of blood by bleeding the holy beast, they don't make leeches big enough :'(

-

There are illustrated representations of dragons that are pretty traditionally dragony (typically a winged serpent with many tails representing the stinging tendrils). These are added to drawings and art as a catch-all symbol for a conscious and targeted Evil. The laity, which is very devout, is unlikely to associate dragons with resistance - dragons cause a lot of damage too, and those stinging barbs will kill you just from the trauma of the impalement before the venom even has a chance to (unless you just get grazed, in which case.. the venom will paralyse you. then kill you)

So active rebellions/civil wars/wars of succession have occurred many times. The subjugated Midaean nation/territory (depending on who you ask) rallies around their beloved Saint Lycaon, a wolf. Flags and signs depicting a wolf devouring a crocodile/a lion/whatever holy beast currently tops the hierarchy of the church would be more likely. Rebellion itself is rarely black and white and as neat as picking a symbol the church hates. It is more likely people would pick a symbol that they love. Outside of Midea, the Mezian empire might not be at its peak but it also has not given its own citizens and laity a reason to take up arms against it.

at the start of the story, at least

-

awesome questions thank you @curious-sootball !

So the nerve cords inside the vertebrae are artificial, but they still perform the same physiological function as a real spinal column. They interface with a knight's dialogue. This produces an incredible amount of heat - this is why the spines are often exposed, even though that might be a point of vulnerability. The spinous processes in particular are very effective heat sinks.

But the tail? In most cases we don't need the tail, really. The spinal column ends at the base of the pelvis. The tail is cropped for most beasts on purpose - we don't need this thing dangling around and becoming entangled, and it has no machinery around it to act as replacement muscles so it couldn't move even if they wanted it to. Krokodilos's tail is the exception and it's just extremely heavy for not much pay off. That's a lot of additional engines we gotta maintain.

So the tail tends to be abandoned. The bones are kept of course but not mounted on the chassis where they're not needed. With no nerve cord running through them they don't run hot either so they won't disperse heat all that well.

Now for replacing bones... they don't. The bones that exist in the chassis are the bare minimum needed to perform the required functions - basic movement. They don't have ribs, they often don't have phalanges. A skull is there to complete the nerve cord - but all you need of that skull is the occipital bone. Nothing more.

If they break a leg, it might be repaired using screw and plate fixation. The bone may deign to knit together (enginesmiths swear that they don't allow tissue growth ever.. but sometimes you need some periosteum. Don't tell the bishops). But if it gets crushed? That's the holy beast done, scrap heap time. The majority of all holy beasts that have ever existed have already broken down and been decommissioned at the start of this story - we only have seven left (eight if you count krokodilos). Krokodilos is an unusual case because he is not dead, so they can't just hold a state funeral and add his heart engine block to the big hall of old hearts in the cathedral. He's sleeping.

But he's the exception. Take Saint Guinefort - dead as a doornail. He had a full funeral, his heart was put in the hall and his body was [redacted] like they do with all dead holy beasts. And then he was [redacted] and now our pal "Sir Victory" with the metal arm uses him as Nosewyse. Circle of life.

I think sidecar motorcycle is a pretty apt way of looking at him lmao. You don't wanna know how many people he's cooked.

-

Hey there! So I know I've mentioned they are similar to pterosaurs but they are not related to them at all. In fact they are cetaceans :) Later art I did of them plays up the mammal traits a bit more. Check out these nipples

However it is a fact that they are not closely related to modern cetaceans - as in, they did not evolve from modern whales and dolphins, but belong to a side branch that diverged relatively early, around the same time dragons were leaving the water for the skies. That art is quite old too, from before I kind of nailed it all down, so if I drew them now I would remove the more derived traits (i.e the single blowhole, the tail flukes, etc) and tidy it up a little. They diverged from the lineage that would become modern whales before the pelvic limbs were lost. I originally depict them having the crowbar-like claws on their feet to lever skin parasites off the dragon, but i think they are more likely to not use their feet much at all, and are more likely to use their single huge beak-like tooth to do the job instead. They cannot walk on flat surfaces.

-

Only insects and, specifically, winged insects :) I know it would be really cool to have various other giant arthropods but milennia ago, when they crossed into Thera for the first time, insects were the only fliers. And there is no other way to get over the mountain range quickly enough for it not to kill you. The mountain range in which the endless city sits is completely and 100% devoid of life. A journey on foot for a tiny bug would be next to impossible - they are more likely to starve or simply turn around and go back to where the food is.

The winged insects, otoh, can cross the range in a day or less, if the breeze is flowing right. And they would find plants already there in Thera - also solely wind-dispersed species from the previous time the mountains arrived and linked the world with Earth. The insects didn't really come by choice, sometimes the wind just blows the wrong way, but they definitely got lucky.

There are wingless insects in Thera today but only because they lost that trait over time (like ants or larviform female beetles). They have managed to colonise every reasonable habitat, including the sea (though the sea is not very salty) and have developed into a lot of very strange forms which might be unrecognisable to us. But a lot of them just got bigger and smarter.

This time round, in the period of time the story is set (early 1900s on earth), the mountains appeared and new animals crossed over who were not insects. Birds have become invasive in Thera, happily taking advantage of the smaller insect species who are completely unprepared for this new threat. There are also some wind-dispersed spiders hanging out now.

EDIT: oh i forgor the parasites on the flying insects that first colonised thera... yes they would have mites and horsehair worms and things of that nature

#setting: mez #setting: thera #i wrote so much <3 read it

[that-ari-blogger]

On Grim Spectacle and Greatest Fears

There's a reason Enchanting Grom Fright is beloved by fans of the Owl House, not only is it just a plain old good story, it's also a phenomenal queer story.

But why is that so, and what makes it so important? That's what this post is about.

And if you're wondering whether I'm going to talk about @moringmark in this post, you bet I am.

Let me explain.

SPOILERS AHEAD

If you look at online discourse, there is a lot of discussion about "good representation" and that is certainly an interesting discussion, but I don't think there is much explanation as to why representation is important in the first place. It is a good thing, we all know this, but why?

One word: Normalisation. Representation of varying identities, cultures, and ethnicities is important because it takes apart the implicit bias inherent in society.

The generic individual in western society is white, male, and straight, and while there is nothing wrong with these character traits, this means that anything added to that template becomes a statement. It becomes an important metaphor for the story which doesn't get applied to someone with the three characteristics I mentioned earlier.

For example, there is a question in analysis of what a character being gay does for a story, where a character being perceived as straight doesn't get that level of scrutiny.

This is a problem for a number of reasons, most notably it abnormalizes certain traits that a large proportion of society (myself included) exhibit, effectively othering those people as a result.

Representation does the opposite of this, it allows real people who are not the generic individual to be treated with the same level of respect and for audience members who don't usually see themselves in media to find characters like themselves, to see their own stories reflected in fiction.

I think the best reason for representation actually comes from Ordinary, by Joriah Kwame, the sequel to Little Miss Perfect. This song, written explicitly from Luz Noceda's perspective, says this:

"The characters I read never act or look like me I can't depend on them to lead me through the right door"

Stories are a way of learning about the world and yourself, and in stories with extremely low representation for marginalised people, that lesson is pretty clear.

@jameswoodall has a video essay on YouTube titled How Much Representation Is Enough. In it Woodall discusses the benefits of representation through a queer lens, and argues about the end goal thusly:

"It's not about achieving a certain percentage. It's about making that percentage stop mattering. When queer representation is no longer noteworthy. When queer inclusion is so naturally assumed that nobody feels the need to count anymore. When even if we did put queer rep in every story, nobody would bat an eyelid. Because we have just as much right to be there as anyone else."

So, let's talk about Grom.

Meromorphic is a channel with a two-hour long video about The Owl House as a whole, and while there is a lot in that video that I disagree with (as is the nature of media analysis) it is comprehensive and fascinating, and I would recommend giving it a watch.

However, I am not bringing up that video to talk about its points, instead, I would like to shamelessly steal borrow a term from it: Magic Literalism. In this context, it means when a piece of media uses magic to make physical an intangible concept. In this case, it turns fear into a monster, that being Grom.

When Grom looks into Luz, she sees Luz's mother, and she sees Luz's fear of disappointment. She sees that Luz has a secret that she hasn't told her mother in case she breaks her heart. It's literally about the Boiling Isles, but there's something written between the lines here.

It is possible to read this as Luz's fear of coming out to her mother, and by "it's possible", I mean that this is how I read this.

Coming out is terrifying, even if you have supportive parents, it's still asking people to accept a part of you, and that comes with risk, because if they don't accept you, what do you do?

That's what I think Luz is afraid of.

Amity, on the other hand, is afraid of getting rejected in a similar way, although hers is more direct. Amity is scared of falling in love and not being loved back.

As a side not, I think it's a really cool detail that of Odalia's many flaws, homophobia isn't one. As in, Amity isn't afraid of coming out to her parents, and when she makes passing remarks about having a girlfriend to her mother and father, their surprise is that it's with Luz, not with another girl. Bellos kind of keeps this going, and the message with that is clear. Homophobia is too low, even for these villains.

Anyway, Amity's experience with Grom is the other side of being queer, the romantic part. I am aware that romance isn't something everyone experiences, but when you do, especially when you are queer, confessing your feelings for someone is terrifying.

So, Amity avoids the question and doesn't really confront it directly at all. Even at the end of the episode, she has everything thrust upon her and still doesn't confess. Luz does the same thing with her mother. Fear is a powerful force, and I would argue that the best time to deal with it is when you are ready, not before.

I really like the scene in the forest. The light gives the two a feeling of warmth and safety, and it wards of the night. Once again, it's Luz giving hope to those around her, and here it is in a more personal sense. Light, do not falter.

The colour palate of the scene (that warm light) conveys that these two people are comfortable in each other's presence and can talk freely around each other. They are already in love; someone just needs to say it.

However, there is another side to Grometheus that also factors into being queer. When Amity explains the event, the art style changes into this style that I want to call classical, even though it probably isn't (art nerds, rise up in the replies and tell me what this is please). But she also directly calls the Grom event a tradition.

"Every year it tries to break out and a student has to defeat it before it invades town. Ever the optimist, Bump holds a party and calls it tradition."

Perhaps tradition, at least in the Boiling Isles, isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Perhaps there is an issue with seeing a problem and instead of trying to fix it, stalling it and making a spectacle out of achieving nothing. Maybe there is an issue with willingly putting children in danger for the drama of it. Maybe the fact that certain sports are just the audience enjoying people getting life threatening injuries might be an issue. I'm just throwing ideas out at this point.

If we link Grom with fear, there is the idea that fear spreads from schools and it is the role of the students, as decreed by the adults, to contain it. See the plot of Footloose for an example of this, or certain places in the real world today, where fear of the other (mainly bigotry) takes the form of arguments about schoolbooks.

This is a valid reading, but I'd like to go a bit wild with my interpretation and talk about @moringmark's comics.

Chapter three of A Little Hint of Blue is a brilliant piece of storytelling that actually characterises Bosha a ton. It carries the theme of fear over to both Skara and Bosha, but it shows them in real time. Skara is scared that Bosha won't let her spend time with... (*checks notes*)... Fledermaus?

She has good reason for this, Bosha is overprotective to the point of toxicity and runs on her own fear. Bosha's hierarchical worldview comes from a place of fear as well, she's afraid of being out of control, and a really subtle thing that gets done in this comic is the association of Bosha with fire.

It doesn't really get done in the original series, but Bosha and fire are such a neat thematic paring. They both consume, they both try to reach out, and fire is heavily associated with strong emotions, like anger and fear.

Bosha tries to control everything in the same way she controls her flames, but as it turns out, people aren't fire. People, when they are free, don't immediately destroy things, and a lot of people actually benefit from that freedom. Most notably, artists and musicians, like Skara.

Grom Factor also deals with the subject matter, but from a slightly different perspective.

First up, the most obvious, at least to me. Enna saves the town but it outcast in the process because what she is scares people, despite her heroism, she is not accepted. The metaphor isn't perfect and reading it as a one-to-one analogy is a detriment to the story. For example, the reason for Enna being outcast is because of a curse, and queer people are generally not magically cursed to be queer, they are born that way.

But, there is also the idea of Luz's fear as an adult being the exact same as when she was a child. She is scared of disappointing people, specifically her family and her daughter. This means that she is acutely aware of Ayzee's own mirror of that, and this line is spectacular:

"Make yourself proud"

It's ok to be afraid of what others think, that's part of being human (or a witch, or a demon. It's part of being sentient), but in the end, the only person who you have to make proud, is yourself.

Final Thoughts

I've been dying to talk about the Moringmark comics, and I do plan on talking about them more, but that will happen when I get there. I will do more gushing about their serious artistic and storytelling skill when that happens, so buckle up.

Enchanting Grom Fright is one of my favourite episodes of the series as a whole, and its a testament to the writing of it that there is more that I am yet to cover, and more that I am discovering as I watch it. For example, the storyline with Gus and King is a big part of the episode, but I didn't mention it because it wasn't really relevant to my main point, and the whole thing with the dance is stellar.

Next week, I am looking at Wing It Like Witches, so stick around if that interests you.

Previous - Next

#rants #literary analysis #literature analysis #character analysis #what's so special about...? #the owl house #toh #toh luz #toh lumity #toh amity #the owl house luz #the owl house lumity #the owl house amity #moringmark #lgbtq #lgbtqia #queer community #queer

[catboybiologist]

Hey, transfem who has only started to like her body about half a year ago here

As someone who takes a lot of pictures of themselves, do you have any resources/tips for angles or something that accentuates feminine features?

Also in regards to having a somewhat normal facial expression, like my eyes look so weird in every picture I take bc I don't know where to look

This response ended up WAY longer than I expected, and I think Imma add it to my pinned post- thanks for pushing me to talk about this! I don't think I'm really an expert here, but if people want to leave more advice in reblogs and comments, please do.

So when I say "I had two years of femboy experience before transferring to the related (and potentially overlapping) but separate field of trans womanhood" I'm only like... half joking. Selfie angles took a fucking wild amount of time for me to figure out, and guess what? The pictures I post are usually 1-3 in a set of about 20 that I take at any given time. I'm still unhappy with most pictures I take, you just gotta take a lot of them, and figure out for yourself.

That said, I think I have gotten a lot better over time. Behold, the first selfie I posted on reddit (warning for kinda cringe but I know y'all fuck with that):

(Damn, my thighs look good when I properly shave, gotta do that sometime)

(btw I'm 23 in this pic so feel free to simp if you so desire)

And another early one:

This was still selected from a bunch that were horrible, but you can really tell that my face is basically just covered in fabric entirely. My eyes look very dead in both. Compare that to:

^this one is still pre-transition, so don't blame the estrogen.

So what are my specific tips? Well, the classic "selfie angle" is from above. This angle certainly helps, but why? Personally I've found that its far less about angles are far more about lighting. Since most lighting is overhead, taking selfies from above means that you'll have a well lit face in those standard lighting conditions. Notice that in both the early selfies and the later one, the camera is actually positioned below my height level, and there's still a noticeable facial difference between them. The reason this is possible is good, forward lighting. Generally, you want a soft light source to be vaguely behind the camera, shining onto your face- but make sure its not too close, or too bright. This will ensure that harsh shadows don't artificially make your features look much different than they actually are.

Another thing that cannot be understated: DISTANCE between yourself and the camera, especially if you're using a phone camera. There are several reasons for this- notably, it'll help make the background be framed more pleasantly, as well as prevent the camera/phone itself from shadowing your face. But there's also a massive, insidious reason this happens- all phone cameras have some degree of fisheye to their lens to increase the field of view while still using compact optics. Multiple lens have helped a bit, but its still a problem on all of them. Higher end phones will algorithmically correct for this, but they also add a TON of other postprocessing "beautification" in ways that are sometimes completely invisible (insert entire rant here about how this is a deceptive marketing tactic to make a brands phone cameras seem better than they actually are). Sometimes, these edits are way off base. But I digress. The fisheye is killer because it takes any slightly more prominent feature and bulges them out, including the nose and chin. Conversely, recessed features, like eyes and the sides of your cheeks, are going to be less emphasized. Moving further away from the camera significantly reduces this. If you can get a small phone tripod and take selfies that way, it'll alleviate this. Unfortunately my living space is not large atm, and I have less motivation to bother my roommates in the common areas and use their hallways for picture taking, so this has been a little lacking in more recent selfies. It's also just a lot of work for a couple quick selfies, so its hard to do right- but it genuinely makes a world of difference.

Otherwise, my advice about eyes would be that your eyes show your overall facial expression, even if you're covering your mouth. Most of my pictures are taken while smiling slightly under the mask, and it shows in the eyes. If I want a scarier looking picture, I'm stone faced or deliberately make my entire face angrier, and you end up with the "glaring directly down the camera wanting to kill you" face. Referring to the pictures I just posted- the first two are both dead faced under the mask, whereas in the last one, I'm doing a smug, sultry smirk. The eyes then reflect that.

Don't focus on specifically trying to open your eyes wider. Change your facial expression and just let them be how they want to be in relation to that. Eye position should fully commit to looking straight into the camera, or be fully distracted with something else, imo (including the screen of your phone, if you're doing something like a mirror selfie). If you're taking a mirror selfie, look at the camera lens as it's reflected in the mirror. A HUGE takeaway is that cameras, especially phone cameras, straight up lie to you. They don't work the same way as the human eye, and have to compensate for that- but they'll never be a completely faithful representation of what you look like. Don't let your ego be affected by how you look in pictures, when all is said and done.

And of course, experiment, experiment, experiment! Figure out the lighting you can get in the space you have available, and the angles that work for you! Don't be afraid to delete selfies you don't like! Show off your style and your features in the way you want to! There are no rules for what's attractive, this is just what I do and you should develop your own style!

I guess I'll take this with both femboy and trans tags bc the selfies are pre-HRT

#trans #trans advice #transgender #selfie #selfie advice #femboy #femboy advice #femboy fashion #crossdressing tutorial

[vivzzi]

ditto

part one , part three

The camera focuses on the snow falling out on the school yard. The subtle sounds of your classmates talking can be heard. You admire the now white running track outside from your classroom window, the windows fogging up due to the heat emitting from the student and the heaters in the classroom. 

“Isn’t it pretty” 

The camera glitches as you turn it around to face Shuntaro sitting at your shared desk. His head not facing the window nor the camera but instead towards a book in his hand. No longer human by Osamu Dazai, the camcorder catches the front of the book. 

“Do you want to know my favourite quote in this book?” 

Your hum of approval can be heard in the background.

“What uneasiness lies in being loved.” 

Your face drops slightly trying to find a reason of why that would be his favourite quote. You point the camera down towards the page he’s currently on. A quote stand out to you as you see it in the view finder. 

“Everything passes.”

Why did it leave a sore feeling in your stomach? did you relate to it somehow? you keep your eyes glued to the viewfinder not wanting to break contact with it and look up. 

“From your depressing lunches to your depressing taste in books i feel like i should be worried shun” 

You let out a faint chuckle and place the camera in the middle of the shared table. Not looking towards Shuntaro’s side of the table you place your head on your hand and continue to look out of the window to see that the snow has become much more heavy in the way it falls towards the ground. The white cover of snow makes it hard to see the once green grass on the school yard. The camera stays filming you in the same position along with Shuntaro’s very focused expression on his book. It also catches the confused glances of your classmates behind you who look directly into the cameras lens then at you.

The camera finds itself in the same position its normally in whenever you and Shuntaro take your normal path home. In the basket of your bicycle. This time instead of the sounds of puddles meeting your feet it’s the sound of snow crunching under your steps. 

“Not a lot of memories to film today.Huh?” 

You keep your head forward.Not looking towards the direction the sound is coming from. The cold air making goosebumps grow all over your arms and legs doesn’t help with the long walk down the path. 

“I guess not” 

A small but noticeable frown appears on your face. Looking down towards the basket of your bike you pick up the camera and move it towards his face.Yet again a glitch following it once it reaches the view of Shuntaro. You admire his features through the view finder. 

“We can make some now you know. I was thinking about going to the park for a bit”

Your excited voice makes his smile appear on the camera more clearly than your own eyes would make it appear. 

“Theres snow everywhere along with it being cold and dark. Doesn’t sound like the best idea.” 

“But i brought my coat this time” 

The camera still focused on his face. His smile turns into a smirk once he realises youre right about the coat. 

“Fine but not for long” 

You point the camera towards yourself now smiling at it to show your pleased expression once its placed back into the basket. You reach the end of the path now meeting the main busy street. Instead of turning right you turn left towards the park. The camera catches Shuntaro in front of you as you look down at your feet while walking. You arrive at the park leaving your bike at the bicycle stand near the entrance. You take the camcorder out of the basket and show Shuntaro walking through the park in front of you. He stops at the swing set and takes a seat on one of the swings. The camera glitches when he does so. You move the camera’s view towards the empty swing next to him as you go towards it and sit down. 

You move the camera to back to his face as he is seen looking out onto the snow covered park. His relaxed expression is the only thing youre focused on through the view finder. 

“What happened to your hoodie?”

You ask only now taking notice in the fact that he’s only wearing his uniform and not his signature white hoodie that normally compliments it. You move the camera down to show his whole outfit to prove the fact that he’s not wearing his hoodie. The camera catches his light chuckle from your question but thats the only response you get in return of your question. 

He slowly turns his camera towards you and not the camera lens. You still stay looking at him through the viewfinder. 

“You know i really do miss you” 

Your ears along with the camera’s microphone catches his sentence. You slowly move your eyes from the viewfinder about to look up at Shuntaro before the sound of the camera beeping to let you know the battery has died catches your attention. Youre back to looking at the now blank viewfinder. The black screen showing you your saddened expression. You close the view finder and place the camera in your lap while keep your eyes on it. 

The hot tears that are now falling down your cheeks feels like the only thing keeping you warm. You slowly stand up from the swing set and walk towards the bike stands. The tears are still falling but you let it fall as you grab your bike and drag it with you out of the park and towards your house. The tears never stopped that night. 

AN: hii so this is the second part of the ditto series.since i wanted it to be a short series the next part will be the last.once im done with this series im going to start doing some of the requests ive gotten so far. i rlly hope u guys enjoyed this tbh i almost cried while writing the end but lets ignore that...

<3 viv

#alice in borderland #chishiya shuntaro #chishiya x reader #alice in borderland fanfic #chishiya alice in borderland #chishiya imagine #arisu x reader #kuina alice in borderland #new jeans #chishiya shuntaro fanfic #chishiya shuntaro x reader #Spotify

[antianakin]

what are your opinions on the sequels? specifically how luke (and his new jedi order) is portrayed. but also like just the jedi stuff in general, the training and everyone becoming force ghosts and somehow palpatine

Oh gosh, it has been a MINUTE since I've even watched the Sequels. I'm planning on rewatching them sometime early next year for Reasons, but for both episodes 8 and 9, it'll be the first time I've seen them since I saw them in the theaters. I MIGHT have seen episode 7 after its theater release, but not often. I can definitely say I haven't watched a single one of them since 2019 lol.

All of that to say, I don't remember them super well. I liked episode 7, but didn't care AT ALL for TLJ and was ho hum on TROS. My overall opinion is that it's too bad these characters didn't have anyone writing for them who seemed to actually CARE about them at any point and that nobody bothered to create a fucking blueprint for the entire trilogy and then stick to it. Say what you will about the execution of the Prequels, but Lucas had a damn vision in mind and a clear end goal for the story and the characters and he STUCK TO IT. You can go back to those films and rewatch them and find that story and see the arc he was trying to take the characters on. You may not LIKE what he chose to do or feel like it worked very well, but it's clearly THERE. The same cannot be said for the Sequels. The characters change personalities in basically every film, the primary motivations and intended end goals for them are never consistent, the relationships aren't built up well, and the theme and message of the Sequels is so muddied with all of these changes that they may as well not exist.

All of that is very broad, though, and doesn't touch much on your specific question about the Jedi and Luke and how they were portrayed in the Sequels. To be honest, I don't remember it very well, and when I saw these films, I was a pretty casual Star Wars fan who was still what I would now consider Jedi critical. I didn't hate them by any means, but I had absorbed the fandom osmosis of the Jedi having been too repressive/old-fashioned and how they caused their own doom. So I haven't watched them from a more pro Jedi lens yet in order to comment on it with any level of authority.

What I DO remember feeling was that making Luke bitter was a bad choice. There's undoing a character a little in order to allow them to develop somewhere, and then there's complete and utter character assassination and TLJ's characterization of Luke falls closer to the latter for me. The biggest thing anyone remembers about Luke is that he chose not to kill Anakin in ROTJ. That's his big climactic triumph. He goes on an entire journey towards understanding Anakin and having to accept that Anakin was a person making evil choices so that he could believe in Anakin's ability to be BETTER. That's kind-of the core of Luke's WHOLE JOURNEY. So I don't really get the entire concept of Luke reacting so violently to "feeling some darkness" in his teenaged nephew. He's already sort-of worked through that particular flaw of his and overcome it, why is he suddenly reacting this way? What's the point of that? And why would Luke just completely lose himself to cynicism and bitterness in the aftermath of that kind of failure? What was the point of leaving a piece of map behind or whatever? None of it really seems to make any sense to me and you can just FEEL Rian Johnson sort-of tossing things in the trash as he wrote this so that he could do his own thing.

All of that being said, what I've seen other people comment on is that there's a lot of shit Luke says in TLJ that are pretty anti-Jedi, but that the whole point is that Luke is wrong. Luke is succumbing to despair and so he feels like he's defeated and there's no point to anything and he's WRONG. The movie does pretty strongly emphasize that he's WRONG to feel this way and act like this. So I think a lot of people take what Luke says in this film sort-of at face value without taking into account that context that you're not SUPPOSED to agree with him any more than Rey does. I'm interested to see how I feel about it when I do end up rewatching them in a few months, but it rings relatively true to what I can remember.

It doesn't seem wrong that Luke and Leia could end up being able to ghost, it doesn't make any sense that Han can ghost but we all know that that happened specifically because Carrie Fisher died mid-filming and they had to figure out how to work around that, so I'm willing to give a little bit of slack to TROS for that exact reason.

I don't remember much training even HAPPENING on screen. I remember Luke barely teaching Rey anything at all in the one week she spends with him and Leia sending Rey on an obstacle course at the beginning of TROS. I wish they'd chosen to spend more time really showcasing more of Rey's actual training (or, ya know, FINN training in Force abilities at all), but I don't have any strong feelings about it at this point.

And as for Palpatine, I think everybody knows it was a bad choice to make at this point. It was lazy, it was silly, and it doesn't work. It feels like a direct response to Snoke having been killed off too early and disagreements between the directors and the studio execs about whether Kylo Ren should be a villain or not. It doesn't work and nobody likes it.

So, yeah, my feelings are a little faded at this point because I disliked them enough that when I do my Star Wars marathons, I never include the Sequels in it and I just stop at ROTJ. I feel like that says enough on its own.

#star wars #star wars sequel trilogy

[rocketturtle4]

Only Friends, a possible take on Mews feelings

(…wasn’t going to post this week because I’m still shadowbanned but here we are) EDIT: No longer shadowbanned here's a post about how I frame aceness and talking about it in BL if anyone is curious.

So I have seen a lot of confusion and different takes on Mew this week which is lots of fun and my favourite so far has been this one by @slayerkitty (If I had in fact read that one before writing most of this I probably wouldn't have bothered BUT I already wrote it and the brain rot is real sooooo....)

First and foremost I want to note that Mew has come across so far to me as rather Demiromantic & Demisexual, (which, as its my own orientation, is definitely going to involve some projecting). I do not necessarily think this IS his orientation but that's the lens this post is going to take.

(Small sidenote I wrote a long post about Aceness in BL and how I’ve related to it and seen it depicted a little while after Be My Fav ended, that I WISH I COULD REFER TO however I am waiting for the shadowbanning to end before posting it so I can interact with people. I am frustrated by this.)

We have been told reasonably clearly that Mew has never had strong sexual or romantic feelings for a person before Top and I do think this goes a long way towards understanding his actions so far.

Evidence:

He is not really seen checking out/flirting with anyone (other than Top) at any point (and in THIS show, I count this as evidence because we have seen ALL the other main characters check out people on the regular, this show is doing a good job of showcasing casual sexual attraction as a part of the day to day and Mew is not showing signs of this.)

Mew explicitly mentions that he has never clicked with anyone before, ergo he’s never really been attracted to anyone before.

Mew tells Ray that Top is the first one to make his heart flutter.

Mew seems somewhat disconnected from his friends experience with sex and attraction.

In some ways Mew even seems disconnected from his OWN sexual and romantic attraction

Do I think this means he’s definitely doubleDemi: Nope

Why this matters for my take: If Mew has never experienced attraction before, or never experienced it strongly before, then delving into his feelings might feel a lot more daunting than people might think. Because it’s not about this being his first sexual encounter/romantic relationship, its about this being the first time he has ever felt these emotions.

My take on Mew and Top

Re: Mews Virginity. Boston was the first person to tell Top that Mew was a virgin, later, in the counter scene, when Mew stops things he says ‘I’m not ready’ and then ‘I’ve never done it’. This does not imply to me that he has no experience, just that those experiences likely haven’t involved his genitals (we'll see if I eat my words next week).

Okay Ep 1 (I am going mostly off memory)

We see from the beginning that Mew is less connected into the bar scene than his friends, he’s introduced as the tablekeeper and is the one collecting people to leave once he’s had enough. He is also put forth as the one most academically inclined which often implies a sense of responsibility (while the bar scene does the opposite.)

Top, our Top Tier, (brought in by Boston so Boston could turn their fun in the phone booth into another encounter,) is intrigued by Mew for being so different from what he typically encounters at the bar scene and is successful in getting Mew to take him home.

Now, WHY did Mew agree if he is not yet particularly attracted to Top you ask? (I ask, same dif)

Curiosity

Do you know what its like for all the people around you to talk about Sex and just...not get it? To stare around at people eyeing each other up and down and feel…nothing? And I mean it’s not like Mew is celibate for other reasons…he’s just… not interested.

He’s also what 22? And Horny? (Because as a reminder Ace people still have a libido and some of them want to have sex, aceness is explicitly about lacking attraction to an individual)

So he takes Top home and then things get started and he realizes hey, no, what, I’m not sure about this.

And he stops things.

Because while he is experiencing lust from the situation, he’s not really comfortable in his attraction.

“I just feel like I don’t know you well enough.”

That is not just a line, that is an explicit feeling that I have felt. It wells up inside and squirms into every part of you. I can’t do this, I don’t know you well enough.

But it’s also VERY MUCH about both fear and control. I agreed with a lot of posts in the first few weeks about Mews desire to remain in control, but to me this is strongly linked to his possible sexuality. He is USED to feeling in control because he hasn’t experienced strong attraction before. He doesn’t know what it’s like to stare at someone and lust after them, or even what its like to dream about falling asleep in their arms.

These are brand new emotions, big, scary, new, emotions and they are probably making him feel rather OUT of control and so all the distance we see from Top, and even from himself, is him attempting to stay regulated.

He even seems aware of this in his disclaimer that if he were to go all in on his feelings, he would be a crazy stalker, because those brand-new feelings are unlike anything he has felt before. (I remember the first time I experienced it I could only liken it to extreme anger or fear, or the highest excitement, it was just so much stronger than I’d imagined)

Additional Note Re: @plantsarepeopletoo

Another part of this, which Paprika put forth and I agree with, is that Mew might be scared of his emotions because he's afraid of hurting others. He's the table keeper, the even keel, the calm one, he keeps everyone's stuff safe and makes sure everyone gets home. (And he fails at this once he starts paying attention to Top...). (But I'll get to Ray)

Let’s fast track a bit

We have a cute montage of the getting to know you, they eat ice cream, they go to the library, Top helps out with the project. The getting to know you is going well and Mew is absolutely feeling things.

And then Top jumps the gun a bit because he is still trying to fast track to the good stuff and Mew says yes to save his face.

In Ep 2

We have Mew confessing to Ray that Top makes his heart flutter (the first time this has ever happened). We see Mew starting to test his own boundaries and feelings, but FIRST we get him asking Top to backtrack a bit because he’s been moving too fast, and he only said yes because Top asked him in public.

After that boundary is back up we get Mew teasing and testing and feeling out how things stand.

What can he do that lets him explore things without them progressing too far?

If he does x what does Top assume he wants?

Because Mew has NO IDEA where Tops boundaries are, Mew’s not ready for sex, I imagine that if he could be sure that making out with Top would stop at making out he might have tried it by now, but their first make out escalated rather quickly so he is being careful. (as @slayerkitty puts it he doesn't trust Top yet) but I also posit that he may not trust himself yet.

He doesn’t allow the bed sharing, but he does later allow the cuddling. Why? Because the couch cuddle is after increased emotional vulnerability, it’s helping Mew see that Top is moving with him. It builds trust. It builds connection. It builds emotion (it builds demi stability...)

Ep 3

Not a WHOLE lot happened in Ep 3, we were very Mark and Boston focused but here’s what I got:

Mew is getting more comfortable with his feelings for Top, and he’s trying to move them towards being on the same page (I read some excellent takes on the disco scene and the disconnect between their clothing in both that scene and the later one)

He’s stopped correcting people when they say Top is his boyfriend, including Top, that was the main change we saw this Ep for the record. Mew has already made it clear that the label is important to him, and this suggests to me he is growing increasingly comfortable with the relationship.

Top is also the first one Mew calls later on. He's go to number 1.

The PROBLEM with EP 3 is 1 Boston is getting in Top’s head and 2 Mew has NOT BEEN COMMUNICATING. (Because he doesn't trust...)

Mew has been testing out his feelings and playing with his boundaries because he has genuine feelings for Top but he hasn’t TOLD Top this (he also hasn’t told us this so I could be totally wrong but - projecting) and so even though Mew is nearly ready to move things forward (next eps teaser), all Top knows is his own sexual frustration and Boston’s half truths so… it’s about to get ugly up in here.

Any Questions? (I can’t answer them but ask away lol)

My take on Mew and Ray

Real quick my projections

Mew and Ray’s moment from 2 years ago was probably Ray kissing Mew for a bit, Mew letting it happen (again curiosity) but stopping before things got any further.

OR Ray confessing his feelings, Mew inviting the kiss (because again, he has had no attraction before and was curious) but realizing after a bit he felt nothing and stopping it.

Mew stopping Top in ep 1 before he got the pants off makes me think the pants have never come off for Mew before.

What this means IMO

Mew is aware of Ray’s feelings because of the two years ago incident

They presumably 1 talked about it and agreed to stay friends

Or 2 silently agreed to never acknowledge it again because the feelings weren’t reciprocal and they wanted to stay friends.

This tracks for me in the way Mew seems to keep a bit of distance from Ray but still wants to be there for him, but also emphasises ‘friends’ in their ep 2 hug/chat.

Also the way Mew seems excited by Ray’s interest in Sand.

I don’t think Mew is intentionally hurting Ray, more that they both agreed to ignore it since so long ago that it’s part of the background noise at this stage.

ALSO

I honestly also think that Mew and Ray are the closest two of the friend group (I have speculated that maybe Mew was there for Ray when his mom died). (AGAIN @slayerkitty explains this well, like, their take on the friend group felt nearly plucked out of my brain). My guess is that the incident 2 years ago left them a bit more distant. However, Mew had no way of knowing Ray was with Sand (I don’t buy the encouraged him means Mew knows they’re hooking up. ‘Make sure you talk to him’ is not the same as 'take him home and do him', especially in Mew’s book)

After Top who else was Mew going to call? Boston? BOSTON?? Or Cheum?, who Mew knows came to the party with her girlfriend. (Also gender rolls and the societal appropriateness of sleeping over at a girls house lesbian or not).

Yeah, Ray is the most sensible second choice.

(My fav take on the car scene so far, Ray & Sand Perspective: here @idleorbitals)

Thoughts?

#ofts #only friends the series #only friends #only friends meta #onlyft #rturts is wondering #roc goes haywire over only friends

[fancifulplaguerat]

I wish there were more dialogues between Victor and Daniil about death because honestly those conversations seem the most revealing about Daniil’s conception of it. Daniil’s skepticism towards Victor’s more mental, philosophical view suggests that Daniil conceives of life and death in a much more tangible, physiological way, which is more revealing about Daniil’s philosophy and work than most of the text. I will admit it drives me up the wall in ways I cannot articulate that it’s so vague exactly what Daniil’s objective is, and what his research entails. We get so little insight, but Isidor’s letter and his celebrity status indicate that he is established in his field, but that’s about all, perhaps besides that infamous and offhand comment that Daniil has reanimated someone (???). In my endeavor to get my bachelor’s degree in Dankovsky I gather that Daniil is likely focused on achieving longevity through something like preventing tissue death or aging; a physiological solution that is rather than the Kains’ mental one. 

The Kains are nefarious to no end but I find the concept of their “immortality” fascinating. That Victor and Georgiy “die” to give themselves up in service of the memory of their dead loved ones, of essentially being stuck in perpetual grief. It doesn’t even seem that effective, considering the frankly impractical soul-swapping shenanigans. But while the game’s text communicates that the Kains have triumphed over death, there’s only one instance I can remember of Daniil expressing this view; in the Haruspex Route, he says “[The Kains] conquered death. And that is why I live. We have a lot in common.” Otherwise, Daniil is rather skeptical towards Victor’s explanations, which I feel ties into how he views the Polyhedron; it’s the single most important thing to Daniil, but not for its actual ability or purpose. Even in Artemy’s route, when Daniil is most starry-eyed for the Kains, his main goal in preserving the Polyhedron is both to prove that possibility is not immutable, and as revenge against Aglaya. In the Haruspex Route, he describes the Polyhedron as “a miracle capable of pushing humanity towards a new breakthrough” and when he chooses to save the Polyhedron: “It is a delicate fortress that holds veritable proof that however well-established our notions of possibility are, they still fail to account for what may or may not exist. This is the bastion I am willing to fight for.” Besides that moment in Artemy’s route, Daniil seems to primarily view the Polyhedron as a symbol for humanity’s achievements and possibility, rather than a vessel for immortality, which makes sense given that while Daniil so loves the Polyhedron, almost every character in the game emphasizes that he doesn’t actually understand it.

I���m especially interested in how the Stamatins talk about the Polyhedron, such a Peter saying that “To fall in love with [the Polyhedron], you have to have a vivid imagination... and a huge heart” and that the Tower is for “lovers, dreamers, and poets” all of which Daniil staunchly says he is not, which is where I want to touch on a particular dichotomy in his character. Daniil is first and foremost rational, and quick to shoot down anything he thinks is irrational. I notice he’s prone to accuse people of speaking poetically when they explain the more miraculous aspects of the Town to him, like he refuses to believe anything even slightly misaligned with his rigid, rational worldview. He seems downright obsessed with the rational; in his route, he tells Andrey “Madness is frightening... It’s the only thing I’m truly afraid of,” which gets elaborated on to Katerina: “And I, a champion of reason, fear madness over anything else.” But then he has these rather fantastical goals, and longs for miracles, and professes to take philosophy rather seriously. Perhaps Daniil’s idealism is focused through a lens of perceived rationality, but I also wonder if Daniil is imposing that rationality on himself. Even if he doesn’t truly “understand” the Polyhedron, his appreciation for it still suggests he is an imaginative and emotional person. There even seems a sense that his imaginative disposition is something he lost, considering when he tells Kaspar, “thank you for bringing me back to my childhood, if only for a moment. I’ve already forgotten what it’s like...” He also says, “[Artemy] will speak the language of the scary tales of our long-lost childhood—the language I've forgotten already.” Of course these quotes can be taken many ways, but given that Daniil is a utopian, it reads as though he could be scornful towards the absolute rationalism of adulthood, and misses the hopeful idealism and easy imagination of being young. 

This is speculation, but I wonder if Daniil’s obsession is a response to people accusing his work of being improbable or even ridiculous, as Isidor writes: “there is an observable case that would quell the obscurants that reject the research of death, aging, and necrosis as a subject that lacks academic viability.” Perhaps he is afraid of being viewed as anything but a Sensible Scientist, and God forbid, a poet 

#pathologic #daniil dankovsky #patho.txt

[izziessogay]

More tenderness for transness

I have something to say about how transness is being dealt with lately. There has been a lot of controversy, but I ask you to put your pitchforks down for a moment and listen:

Transness is delicate like all forms of queerness. And recently we have allowed queer sexuality more freedom and space than queer gender. We’ve realized that labels are often restricting and don’t always allow us to view a full queer perspective. We realized that our mothers are sometimes really bisexual, our grandpas a little gay and our darling historic icons always a bit queer. We also realized that that’s totally okay and that it is in no way harmful to recognize queerness in our elders or peers even if they themselves have not recognised it. It isn’t meant to label, it’s meant to understand eachother and eachother’s experiences.

So tell me, why do I get shocked looks from my queer peers whenever I mention that my father is transfeminine. The guy who would kill and die for Janis Joplin, the guy who cried when the military cut his long hair and who hasn’t cut it in the almost 40 years since then? Why is that outrageous? Why is it outrageous to recognise transness in people who haven’t explicitly stated their exact gender identity?

Finding and seeing eachother has always been crucial to queer survival. To this day it is often still not safe nor desirable to announce your identity freely, especially for trans(feminine) people. On top of that trans spaces are still hidden and not easily accessible for anybody (for good reason). So it takes an invitation. Someone to know you before you know yourself.

I do not like the language we use when it comes to spotting our own kind. Both clocking and egg cracking seem out of place for the gentle way that we see our own mannerisms, behaviours and struggles reflected in a complete stranger. It sometimes happens in such subtlety that we ourselves don’t notice it: remember that friendgroup in school that started out as fully straight, but by the time you graduated everybody ended up being queer? What about flocking to queer artists and music (Take Me To Church had an impact on so many of us before we even knew what it stood for)? What about the lesbian aunt that we felt a strange connection to? We’ve always known how to find eachother, and it has never been malicious.

It is no crime to recognise your own self and your community in someone, even if they are a complete stranger, even if they don’t consciously recognise it themselves and even if they have already passed. To conflate this gentle and harmless practice with the misogynistic trope of the crazy fetishising (cishet) fangirl that will go to the point of obsession, harassment and stalking of someone to “prove” their queerness seems out of place and quite conservative. We as queer people cannot forget that we all suffer from queerphobia and applying a conservative rhetoric to the queer people we don’t like/understand won’t save us from said queerphobia. It’s not evil to treat transness and its spectrum delicately. It is not evil to assume someone’s queer gender. In many cases it will even be helpful to them, with discovering themselves, finding answers to their struggles, integrating into a community and many other things. And even if none of that applies, it helps us understand them better and see their lives through a lens that isn’t often graced by sunlight.

Lastly, I want you to ask yourself one thing: Who truly gets harmed if a cis person is called trans (in a non-harassing way and without pressure to come out)? In my opinion it is not trans people and definitely not cis people.

#I'm not here for discourse and I won't respond to any #I'm open for genuine discussions obviously #queer #trans #queer community #transness #queerness #lesbian #gay #bi #lgbtq

[sideblogdotjpeg]

hello unfortunately i thought even more about sol + swag as an analogy for being asian and it is . making me unwell. i am putting it under the cut for the main reason that it is stupid beyond belief

OK. so. hear me out .

STUPID REASONS WHY SOL IS ASIAN:

(and hint: this is all me projecting 100%)

1) moist frog who immediately turns off when it gets too cold. SOUTHEASTASIAN BOY AS FUCK (to me). guy who thinks thirty degrees celsius is pleasant temperature. guy who thinks that anything below 25C is sweater weather. guy who is soo sweaty and moist all the time (the humidity) and that is not only a natural state, but a preferrable state. 20 degrees is too cold. anything below 0 is actually not functional.

anyway. sol bufo. keepin it warm and gross. if its too cold and dry he immediately hibernates. king

2) idk if anyone reading this has seen shaolin soccer. but sol bufo. could clump shaolin soccer. essentially what im saying is sol bufo is like a buff asian jock. which is kinda goofy and goodnatured and loud and also very obnoxious. i cannot articulate this very well. but. what can i say except a human version of sol bufo was delivered to me in a dream and it was every buff chinese classmate ive ever met.

3) (you will notice the reasons get progressively more stupid and more deeply specific)

sol bufo would love milo. omg. like. chocolate drink in a juice box container that is branded as a sports/energy drink and also green. also the guy on the front of the packet milo. sol bufo coded. tbh

anyway. milo isnt strictly southeast asian..? but. yes it is actually.

4) the whole monk class is extremely steeped in asian 'aesthetics' anyway. i mean. ki. so whatever i can claim this monk for me thats my right

NONSTUPID BUT STILL KIND OF SILLY REASONS:

and this is also me projecting 100%. obviously all delusion. so i guess see this as a for-fun reading of the sol/swag storyline through the lens of a very specific of asianness

okay so. swag right. his journey is about leaving his home where he was comfortable and safe but also very confined. mothership lures him to ezry w the promise of opportunity & seeing the world, making something of himself. he ends up being exploited for his body and skills. and he runs away, but his blood still oils up the mothership cogs.

so anyway. i think its pretty clear how that cld map onto like . an immigrant experience? leaving home because of the need to find urself, but simultaneously, the threat of exploitation at the hands of ppl who see you as a potential profit to be mined. this is the first part

the part that is more crazy to me is his experience in irondeep. like, when he left moonstone he left his entire community. now hes alone ... and he cant go back. (he is stranded physically, emotionally). and at this low point, of true and utter loneliness and purposelessness, comes along bronzebeard industries. they offer him a job - but more importantly, they offer him connections.

like. thinking about how were introduced to swag. its not at his job, its his downtime, its when hes hanging out with his coworkers, when hes surrounded by 'friends'. w people who think hes cool, and the people who think hes a "sucker".

idk! but i think this also relates rlly strongly to a common experience of being international? like. when you know you are permenantly lost from home. what you want more than anything is to feel the same community and sense of belonging you used to have. and it is very easy for that desire to ge manipulated. (like - im just gonna mention the one specific instance that ive seen. which is like. international students on college campuses getting targeted a lot by christian groups. because they know those people are lonely and want a feeling of shared tradition and practice. anyway. this is one specific example but also this is literally what happens to lyddie and sister rosaline :-| )

anyway so in summary: swags story of hope/idealism, exploitation, and loneliness leading him to be a very good pawn. i think that is something that could potentially be read as the experiences of ppl dislocated internationally from their home. and im saying its asian because I Want To.

... and sol! okay. i think very simply: sol is super white-washed. total banana. and thats part of his character. he is a moonstone bullywug who never knew his own home, and still, has never even seen moonstone with his own eyes. he does not know his own history. (and kinda tangent, the place where he spends the majority of his life is in launchpad, a sanitized corporate version of reality. and i mean, the whole 'boy wizard and frog pal' is very clearly alluding to harry potter. like. its white.) but ignoring that, the essence of his character is like. this is a guy who does not know where he came from

and currently? a large part of his arc is about trying to unravel his identity by figuring out where (who) he came from. swag daniels is his one link to a community hes just now found out he has. that is a part of why hes trying so hard to save swag. swag is his family - specifically the parts about family you cant choose. that is hard, complicated and how you understand where the parts of yourself track back to.

like. i think a lot about how the pivotal moments of connection between swag and sol are all about swag... showing sol what moonstone is like. in a dream, he lets sol experience what that place is like. that place is a muggy swamp. idk. swag is taking sol back home. that fucks me up a lot

... anyway digression aside. i think one of the most painful things gg on rn w sols arc rn is. how its looking right now. sol is going to lose swag. sol is going to have to come to terms w losing swag. sol for the first time, yearns to know who he is and who he came from. but by the time he went looking it was too late. his time is up. that moment of connection was brief and gone. there are so many questions about their history that sol will never know now

so obviously this kind of dips a bit into metaphor at the end. swag represents connection to cultural history and heritage and identity. and in that lens, it reads to ME as a story abt being asian and disconnected from ur roots. but anyway. even without that lens i think sols story is still v much abt cultural estrangement

(i also have a very loose and unformed thought: which is that sols journey from wanting to stand out/be special to wanting to find a place of belonging. is ALSO INCREDIBLY RESONANT to the experience of being whitewashed asian... ESPECIALLY for ppl who do come from asia. and how that also relates to the tragedy of wanting to understand ur roots when its already too late. but . i dont rlly know if that is a common experience so. itll be noodling in my head for now)

anyway. my essay. and yes this is all make believe in my head . TLDR: i think swags an immigrant sols a banana and i am fucking insane thanks everyone

also if u read this all and want to know what part of this long ramble actly answers the question of why i think theyre asian. well. you know what.

#ramble tag #im NOT tagging this . LOL. #if u read this that was an ACTIVE CHOICE ON UR PART and i am NOT LIABLE #also anyone who doesnt know: banana = asian on the outside white on the inside #so.... MEEEEE 🌸🌸🌸🌸🌸🌺🌹🌹🌹🌷💐 #fml this is 1k + words. LORD. okay.... im SILLYY.. man i have actual work to do tonight #anyway. i hope u guys understand why im normal abt sol

[tozettastone]

Just on the topic of radical feminism— (heads up that there's some transphobic stuff discussed below, although not in much detail)

I think it's worthwhile to acknowledge that radical feminism did have its era. I know we deride it a lot online now and we have some good reasons for that. And I also do think it isn't really the right tool for approaching the evolving gender landscape of modern life. Radical feminism views all oppression of women as a result of gender relations between men and women (who are binary opposites) specifically. Today, a lot of highly educated people who think deeply about sex and gender have stopped treating gender as, like, "these are the unalterable facts about our bodies and they have a specific, inalienable social and biological meaning," which makes radical feminism just kind of... less useful to us. A school of thought that wants gender as an entire concept to be dismembered and served up on the good silverware can't really make use of a framework that's grounded in gender binary.

But I still think it's worth knowing about radical feminism.

I just think we kind of need to understand where we as feminists have been if we want to understand why we're here. Radical feminism did, in fact, have its era. Once you start thinking about it in its context, it's absolutely no coincidence that it emerged as a force in a froth of rage during the post-war years in the west—when the menfolk came back from war and the women were so condescendingly ushered right back into the home. It's worth reading your Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin and Carol Hanisch (and, yeah, even the most loudly hostile transphobes like Sheila Jeffreys or the off-the-wall spite of Valerie Solanas, yes, sorry), and it's worth thinking about the absolute rage that informs, well, pretty much anything Sylvia Plath wrote (although I don't think she'd ever have called herself a radical feminist, if she'd lived that long—she's furious about the same things, though). All that stuff from the 50s (or late 40s, if we count de Beauvoir's The Second Sex) and 60s and 80s is useful and educational, if the people around you read you as a woman when you walk around on the street. It's worth reading and knowing where words like 'patriarchy,' and phrases like 'male supremacy,' and 'the personal is political,' are coming from.

And, anyway, reading something doesn't mean you should treat it as an authority. Obviously I don't think you should read Jeffreys and come away agreeing with her that "sex reassignment is mutilation," because I personally think that's incorrect (because... see my point above about dismembering gender). But maybe you shouldn't take my, or anyone else's, word for it? Maybe you should read and find out how she arrives at that idea and figure out what you think about that? If you come away thinking she's wrong, you'll be able to explain to yourself, clearly and with high quality critical thinking, exactly why. And if you read a bunch of radical feminist stuff and come out going "all this was a massive distraction from a more significant axis of oppression—which affects all women anyway—which is CLASS," or something, that's a reasonable criticism that you can probably support. I know people who think that, too.

I guess I just sincerely believe that we really only get to know one little tiny bit of reality from one single point of view at a time. So each new piece of information can form part of the lens through which to view reality. And to me it's just so much more useful to understand radical feminism as a deeply necessary, if now outdated, era of feminist thought than it is to howl "RADFEM RHETORIC," and not actually know what you mean by that.

Anyway if you got to the end of this and you're like, "yeah, maybe I should read more historically significant theories, but I simply lack the will and energy," then. Understandable. Have a nice day. LOL.

#tozette.txt #feminism #i haven't expressed this super clearly sry #maybe I will edit it to be clearer later #I'm just thinking about how much I benefited from reading stuff like this in uni #even though I don't actually agree with that much of it as an older adult

[druidposting]

Not to get sociopolitical in the cr maintag, but I think a lot of people arent understanding something VERY critical to the "gods good or bad" argument, so I'm gonna try and lay out these points as best I can.

(This ended up being very long, but if you enjoy analyzing CR through a sociological lens, it's all under the cut.)

To start, you have to understand that the Exandrian gods are immortal beings with immense power and influence compared to the mortals of the material plane. Yes, obviously gods have died/sustained wounds in the past, but comparing the power required to do any of those things to a god is like comparing the wattage of the Sun to that of a lightbulb. Its just incomparable.

In spite of this, however, I keep seeing posts about how its fucked up to kill someone just because they didn't give you what you wanted. For starters, the gods aren't just "someone" - as I said before, they're unfathomably powerful and immortal beings, and while they no longer have the ability to walk the earth and shape it to their whims, they absolutely have the ability to influence the ideas and ethics of the mortals that do walk the earth in very material ways (see the Angle of Irons cult, Tevan Klask the champion of Asmodeus we just met, and Pelor vs the Valley Coalition for examples). To put it in maybe more understandable terms, you can make a decent allegory between the gods and real-world political pundits, in the sense that while a president cant literally shape the world how they want, they have an overwhelmingly disproportionate ability to influence and shape how the people they rule over think and feel, and what should and shouldn't be morally permissible in their society. In a vacuum, the fundamental role of politicians in current neoliberal societies is to try and ensure their ideas and ethics are the dominant ones, so that the people they rule over can do the shaping of the world for them. This is why I find it much more permissible, and often necessary, even, to pass judgement over and rise up against (and wish death upon (in minecraft)) political pundits whos morals don't align with mine - their ideas have material influence on society, in ways that normal individuals don't, and I happen to agree with Marx when he said "the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas".

So all that said, I totally see why some Exandrian mortals would be very very upset with some of the gods for various reasons! And I fully support their desires and rights to protest and fight back against any proponents and arbiters of bad ideas and prescriptions.

HOWEVER. This does NOT mean I am pro destroying the Exandrian pantheon. I think that based on everything we know so far (especially with the new info from the latest episode), that would be a net bad for Exandrian mortals.

To understand why I feel this way even in spite of my above arguments, I think it will be helpful to outline what I think are the worst of the likely outcomes if Predathos is released;

A power vacuum opens with the gods eradicated, and Ludinus (or some other dictator, but likely Ludinus as I think this is his actual goal) promptly fills the position of god emperor of Exandria, With no external forces to restrict their actions, and free reign over how they choose to rule the people. The consequences of this are even less freedom for Exandrian mortals than they had under the oversight of the gods, which is in my opinion, very bad.

The swaths of demon armies who have been chomping at the bit for literal millennia to find any minute perceived weakness in the divinely appointed (whether by Prime or Betrayer god) defenders of the Material Plane from the Abyssal armies, are finally able to overcome these defenses and wage devastating war and eradicate all life on Exandria. This is something we're already starting to see happen in the Grey Valley in the current arc, and I have to say, this also seems like it would be really bad for mortals.

Predathos doesn't stop after eating the gods, and in the end, devours all of Exandria. That would probably also be pretty bad.

Even if none of those things ended up happening, the overwhelming threat level of any of those outcomes, and the fair likelihood of any of them happening, far outweighs the potential benefits Ludinus proposes. I'll liken it again to real-world politics in the US, because I think some useful parallels can be made here; Think of the Exandrian gods as the Democrats, and Predathos as the Republicans. No one likes the Democrats. They're cowardly, their polices are luke-warm at best and detrimental to human happiness at worst, they continue to bolster capitalism even though their constituents hate it, all of their politicians are way too old, and god damn do they ever come off as condescending. But compared to the Republicans? They are the bastion of freedom. The Democrats are far from perfect. The Exandrian gods are far from perfect. But when your other option for who gets to govern you and your society is a fascist, you must do anything to preserve the freedoms you currently have, even if they're limited. Under the Exandrian Gods, the limited freedoms mortals have are infinitely more favorable to the zero freedom they would have under a dictatorship or as a dead person. With the Exandrian Gods, individuals have the chance to rise up against oppressions they face from their disciples, and to make more and more gains over time that solidify and bolster their freedoms. This is just objectively not an option under any of the above scenarios if Predathos is unleashed. If you're facing down the existential threat of fascism in a neoliberal establishment, you do not toss the current establishment aside in favor of a better one - you buy time by bolstering the current establishment, and when the threat is lower, then you can look at revolutionary action and work towards better forms of governance again. I believe that similarly, Exandrians will have the best opportunity for the greatest freedom in the future if they're able to stave off Predathos and Ludinus.

Now with all this context, I can talk about something that Ludinus either fails to understand - or deliberately doesn't care about and misconstrues for the sake of enacting his end goal - that is key to this debate, that being the difference between positive and negative freedoms.

Very briefly, negative freedoms are characterized as freedom from external constraints on any actions they may wish to take. For example, freedom of speech allows an individual the freedom to speak whatever they wish without the imposition of government. Positive freedoms are characterized by the freedom to do something, the ability to enact your future goals and desires. Positive and negative freedoms are often at odds with each other. A good real-world example of this would be murder. I think everyone would agree with saying murder being a punishable crime is a good thing - but is it not an imposition on an individual's freedom to legislate against them acting on their free will, if murder was what they wanted to do? Technically, its a removal of their negative freedom to act without constraint, but outlawing murder is itself a positive freedom, as it allows people the ability to live without fear of death (and obviously grants positive freedom to the hypothetical victim in that they now have the freedom to live instead of having died to the murderer).

With Ludinus, the freedom he talks about, freedom from the meddling and imposition of the gods on the free will of mortals, is a negative freedom. But if the potential consequences of releasing Predathos could be as dire as the complete destruction of all mortals on Exandria, or the subjugation of all mortals to the dictatorship of whoever fills the resulting power vacuum, then I feel pretty safe in saying that Exandrians deserve the positive freedom to continue living without the fear of certain death or subjugation under a post-Predathos world, even if there's the possibility that the current gods continue to meddle with ideas as they have. A dead Exandrian can't rise up and resist the will of the gods and their disciples, after all.

#critical role #bells hells #ludinus da'leth #c3e67 #cr spoilers #cr meta #I should also note that im a rule utilitarian #so while i know i framed a lot of my arguments around what prescriptions will yield the greatest happiness and freedom #and not everyone shares the same moral framework as me #i like to think that most people in general value happiness and liberty and strive to achieve those things whatever their reasons or method #anyway i could say so much more on this topic especially re: the difference between persecuting a normal individual #vs an existentially powerful being #but this post is so long already and i am so tired

[emprcaesar]

just watched poor things!!!!

i find this movie so delightfully strange. in the beginning it really was such a fever dream with the fervent and colorful setting. l liked the black and white in the beginning to show her constricting circumstances without any color and then when she leaves with duncan color enters her life. she doesn’t understand the situation but she is filled with such curiosity.

her being her own mother is so incredible. it reminds me of that one ethel cain lyric.

she can never escape the melancholy of her mothers life the hopelessness and monstrosity of all of it. she slowly sees the horrors and understands why someone could be drawn to suicide. but the difference is she has a need to know more that draws her to believe in the good in people. she says multiple times that people can always improve. people can be awful but she believes they can always be better.

the setting and costumes and makeup in this movie is INCREDIBLE. i won’t be surprised if they win the oscar for best makeup and hairstyling. they explore this world through the costumes and makeup. this whimsical and futuristic edwardian made me fall in love. the way bella’s costume reflects her maturity when in the beginning her clothes are reminiscent of diapers and childlike silhouette. and as she matures her style changes and shows her own personality that is not influenced by whatever man she is with (when she is a prostitute in paris).

her father figure being called god because his name is godwin is so funny and deep. she relies on him and her religion and faith is dependent on him. but like any person who is raised with religion and didn’t anything different you begin to question it. she cares for him and so much of who she is (her vocabulary and way of thinking) is because of being “raised” by him. but she also develops her own ideas and beliefs when she meets new people and experiences new things. when she returns home at the end of the film and tells her he never made her she was a complete person before and after him.

the men in this movie is so interesting. harry was an amazing character. when he apologized for purposefully upsetting her because he just hates her blissful ignorance and happiness and she’s like it’s okay i understand and i’m glad you did it. and when she told him he’s a hurt little boy and that’s why he act in such cynical way.

duncan who is a crybaby that scream in bella’s face and flips out on her and she meets his emotions with complete apathy and reason. her past husband that said she was his property to conquer and she did not waiver in her determination and confidence in her own being.

i have to talk about cinematography the camera angles and the fisheye lens and the wide shots were so captivating and interesting. it gave this movie such a unique and singular look that you rarely see in film. those shots would only work in a movie as strange as this one. it truly was a marvel.

the movie was a bit slow in the beginning and the plot was fairly boring when she was just having sex with duncan ALL THE TIME. but it started to pick up when she was on the ship and began to question the world around her and her own morals.

i’ve seen a lot of criticism for this movie saying it was like a pedophiles fantasy and glorified it but i think you are entirely missing the point of the film if you believe that. yes all these grown men going for this women with the mind of a child is very disturbing but that’s the point. it’s calling out men for their strange sexually fantasies. duncan begins to hate bella when she begins to mentally mature, saying she lost her spark. the spark being her having a child’s mind and blissful ignorance.

there is A LOT of sex in this movie its one of the big plot points. i actually don’t really like sex scenes in film and tv so that’s my one critique but i do understand why it furthers the plot. the sexuality of women and how bella felt it to be liberating even when she was prostitute and felt indifference for act when she wasn’t given the choice who she would have sex with she still took pleasure in it like when toinette gives her head then cuddles with her. she likes sex but she loves the before and after as well. she wants to speak with someone and understand who they are and she wants the aftercare of sex as well. she doesn’t want sex to be this one sided transaction she want both participants to feel safe and happy.

also love the score for this movie. it was eerie and strange, but oddly beautiful.

i really liked this feminine twist on such a classic story like frankenstein considering mary shelley wrote frankenstein as a desperate plea to her father because she felt neglected in her childhood because of him. frankenstein has always been feminist literature. all in all i’d give this movie a 4.6/5 i really enjoyed it!

#poor things #poor things movie #film #film review #movie review #letterboxd #emma stone #willem dafoe #mark ruffalo #academy awards #oscars 2024 #frankenstein #cinematography #yorgos lanthimos #bella baxter #godwin baxter #film bro #movie poster #sci fi #mary shelley

[intrulogical]

Hi! I was looking through your various meta posts and I noticed a small thing you posted about possibly writing a meta on Patton's perception of mortality through his catholic lens, and it made me think about how I've noticed a lot of people(myself included) who are more fond of sides like Remus, Logan and Janus, tend to sympathize less with characters like Patton, while also understanding the purpose he serves(I'm not sure if my point makes sense but I am REALLY excited to explain this stuff). I've always, in particular, found the way the other sides(ESPECIALLY Remus) might view Patton due to this strict moral compass Patton took on, even if he's actively trying to remedy it now due to Janus' intervention. It's especially interester me since Roman valued Patton's opinion of him so highly(considering Roman's views up until this point were, at least to a degree, reliant on Patton's perceptions of selflessness), and I always wondered if it would make sense for Remus to have an opinion(or two... or five... or a million-) on that.

this is actually a good talking point! thank you for sending this in :D

dark sides + logan fans being critical of patton is honestly such a phenomenon. i definitely want to preface i don't wanna generalize fans' stances, but i've literally witnessed this thing happened in Real Time. i think it has something to do with lntao? because logan was incredibly villainized by the fandom during that time. the fandom's doing better now, but it really did struggle with the concept of Nuanced Characters back in 2019-2020, which i think brought upon the "logan + dark sides fans hates patton" schtick.

but like you said, i and a lot of other fans do understand why patton is the way that he is. he's such an interesting character because he has such a Grasp on thomas that no other sides have. i want to emphasize i do NOT intend of villainizing patton by saying he has a lot of power, moreso it's quite evident that this season's conflict focuses on how thomas' decision-making is more emotion-centric than it is thought-centric.

even the fact that patton represents morality is big on its own, because black-and-white thinking literally shapes how the sides are visualized. i don't mean it like, his sides are created vis-a-vis black-and-white thinking, moreso the reason why the sides are separated is because thomas upholds this type of thinking. virgil, roman, and thomas look up to patton as a guiding figure, which gives him a lot of power/influence. @orbmanson7 can probs explain it better than i do lol

but if you're asking me if remus would have something to say? YES. of course he would. the entirety of dwit confirms he has a gripe with how thomas is being so "demure" and "safe". remus and janus have always wanted to override thomas' black-and-white thinking, so they obviously have something to say to patton. hell, the reason they are suppressed is because of patton. i'm too dumb to explain it now but always return back to how patton is seen to be the final decider in a dark sides' "acceptance". him w janus is apparent enough, but in dwit we literally see him have to "give permission" to thomas to think icky thoughts.

i'm not saying patton is conceited btw. this shit always boils down to, think of sasi as a metaphor for how our brains work and it makes sense why the moral side is still iffy about accepting things he once pushed away and labeled as evil. and also istg pls no one accuse me of villainizing patton bc i acknowledge he's literally doing all this unintentionally. his arc is definitely gonna end w him being more open to changing his moral views, but yeah patton is a fascinating character to me and one of the best encapsulations of catholic-influenced morality

#asks #my analysis

[mdhwrites]

Is The Owl House Timeless?

So this morning I made a blog about how the main thing required for something to be timeless is for it to be at least decently enough written to connect with an audience and that it had to have an emotion that the audience could connect with. A universal feeling that could cross race, gender, religion or even, yes, time. I used It’s a Wonderful Life as my example then.

I bet a lot of you who read it though were waiting for me to talk about TOH though because I know a LOT of people in the fandom at one point expected TOH to not only be timeless but a classic. The new Avatar the Last Airbender or the new Harry Potter (especially in what people wanted for its popularity with the latter). Both of those works are indeed timeless, as much as I am loath to compliment Harry Potter.

Is The Owl House? Individually, I think one could argue specific episodes and maybe the first season but the real reason I wanted to do this follow up blog is that satire and comedy almost always ages the worst. As worldviews change, what was mocked might not seem like it was in such good taste. How many 80s/90s college comedies like Animal House now feel kind of tacky when viewed from a modern lens? Or at least kind of misogynistic with their treatment of women?

I don’t think there are many element in TOH that are going to be as yikes as stuff like that someday but I think there’s already been a turn against it. It claimed to be progressive but in the end gave few real answers to that which it wanted to claim it was better than and even fell into many of the same holes as other works like it fell into. Its comedy is often stale and rooted in needing to be in its exact same mindset in order to be able to enjoy it.

Frankly, the style of satire, comedy and social commentary kind of makes me think of the spoof movie craze in the mid 2000s. You know, stuff like the constant sequels to Scary Movie, or Action Movie, etc. like that. TOH NEVER gets as bad as those, don’t get me wrong, but they’re both taking the same approach to their writing of these elements.

Rather than tackling it with a human emotion, something anyone can latch onto, they’re looking for buzzwords, specific gripes and incredibly specific tropes/references. Then they nail it to a board so they can hammer away until it’s damn near unrecognizable and whatever point was there is lost because they’re using a blunt object when a scalpel is required.

A LOT of people way better at this than me have talked about how a lot of things that want to be ‘satirical’ or ‘subversive’ are nowhere near as good as Mel Brooks but rather than talk about why his subversion is allowed while so many people fuck it up, I just want to talk about why they’re so often still timeless.

Blazing Saddles is the easy one. Human stupidity, greed and hate is always going to exist so rooting your comedy in both a genre and time period known for being exceptionally stupid, greedy and hateful, all while it normally tries to pretend it’s not, is just brilliant. Frankly, the main change from some Westerns to Blazing Saddles is that it’s willing to recognize bigotry and state it as bigotry, rather than try to justify it as a noble crusade or the like.

How about Space Balls though? One line tells you that they know what makes Star Wars both good and also exceptionally silly: “Evil will always win... Because good is dumb.” You want to criticize the fantasy genre as a whole? THAT is how you do it because we’ve all gotten fed up by meat headed heroes who walk into an obvious trap instead of thinking for literally five seconds but we also still like seeing those same meat heads win! It also plays into the ego in most fantasy villains as well as their hubris, as such working as just a general villain line but with the bluntness and delivery needed for it to be a joke instead.

TOH never really has this. Honestly, the best moment it comes to it is probably when the crackpot human curator seems so close to the truth before going off the deep end into conspiracy theories. I’ve literally had a friend do that to me once where I thought they were sane and rational until one night they told me, and I quote “You could have a catgirl girlfriend, it’s just that no one’s willing to admit that they’re real.” It’s a genuinely good subversion away from there being a mastermind villain and instead he’s just some loon who managed to be about 20% right in this case and that’s enough to make them dangerous. And mocking that level of insanity, of someone who has just lost themselves entirely in a rabbit hole that everyone else knows is unhealthy, is a common thread for many, especially in the modern age. It’s not like people in Ancient Greece never had to deal with some loon who thought the end of days was coming though.

Most of the time though? Most of the time it’s stuff like the Golden Snitch reference where it’s not even referencing a common trope in fantasy writing but specifically calling out a very singular thing. Where if you don’t know Harry Potter, or even worse LIKE QUIDDITCH, then you have nothing to connect to there. Maybe Luz’s outrage over losing due to a technicality but it’s not even a technicality. It’s just being outplayed and so the closest to a more universal feeling is betrayal but the joke spends so much time on rage at the literal trope, instead of even what Boscha did, that the thread at bare minimum gets lost.

And that’s much of TOH’s elements like these. They have a theoretical point to them but along the way, they lose their point or focus, or are so focused that they miss the universal element that’s right there. Take The First Day. Luz is someone who has struggled in school because of being bullied and an oddball. This was a great chance to really connect with every child who feels left behind by the school system because they won’t cater to them.

Except... It doesn’t work here. Her complaint isn’t that she can’t learn, that how things are being taught don’t work for her either because she learns differently or her brain processes things differently, etc. like that. Instead, it’s that she COULD learn whatever single subject she is stuck on but that’s not what she WANTS to learn.

Even the detention kids are the same way. Viney in S2 is established as one of the best healers in the school despite her multi-classing but it’s got nothing to do with her multi-classing. As such, strict healing magic is something she learns just fine. It’s just that she’s not being allowed to be creative with it.

And THAT is an interesting topic to discuss, schools stifling creativity or needing to give opportunities for it, but the narrative context stops that. They never say it because it would get in the way of their point but the school should say they allow single tracks because it’s literally illegal for them to do otherwise. That can allow a theme of how industry and government too often dictate the priorities of our schooling and how that’s a bad thing. That would even fit within the themes of TOH where the individual is crushed by the monopoly. By the ‘normal’.

 But they don’t do that because they have a different goal in mind. And this is why being well written is part of my criteria for being timeless. Again, not perfect, but an invested audience in TOH should also have that nagging question of why the coven system isn’t getting brought up in this episode. The EC is brought up as the basilisk disguises themselves as an inspector, but never that the Emperor would potentially close the school entirely if they were to allow mixed classes because that goes against both the coven system and the Titan.

It instead just never comes up so while it has a theoretical point it’s trying to make, the resonance is lost as a reasonable question, a genuine plot hole, grows wider and wider with every passing minute until the moment an audience should cheer for creativity winning out, for the need for flexible thinkers to be shown, is still met with some amount of confusion as people wonder why the show still hasn’t said ANYTHING about the coven system properly in this entire episode, even as now Hexide does frankly the biggest act of rebellion in perhaps the entire show.

And that is when TOH is GOOD. The later TOH goes on, the more and more a disconnect can be felt between the theme or resonance the writers are going for and what they’ve actually setup until S3 is pulling things out of its ass left and right because it can’t even do an identity arc with a clone, a sci fi staple to put it mildly, right because it literally can’t focus on anything long enough to make it function. Or its actions are too contradictory to keep you invested, like in Reaching Out where Luz is willing to at least tell 75% of her problem to Eda and King but then acts like she literally cannot, lest she die instantly on the spot, tell Amity or even think about it for all of five seconds.

As I concluded my last blog: Resonance should be something that all writers as a base element of writing should strive for. Bare minimum, it should resonate with the writer and that will help it resonate with others. How well you can make your writing be able to resonate beyond yourself though is the real test for a good story and a good writer.

And while obviously the fandom for TOH proves it resonated with many, myself even at one point, I wonder how many it still resonates with today? And especially as time wears on and tests the claim of it truly being transcendent of the moment it was created, or if it will just look like a relic to be left behind.

#TOH Critical #the owl house criticism