would you be able to give examples/explain more about how race only impacts gideon in the tlt-universe? not being facetious or condescending, genuinely asking. thank you!

Hi anon! If you mean my tags to this post, I wrote

#earth conception of race doesn't impact any character in the series except the canonically brown main antagonist

By which I mean my Worstie and main antagonist of the series, John Gaius (PhD).

I don’t think TLT as a series engages with race in any especially meaningful ways. It’s set in a post-Earth society with entirely different social norms, and there’s no concept of race and ethnicity within the population of the Nine Houses. Physical descriptions of the characters are scarce to say the least, and they rarely spell out the kind of features that suggest specific racial connotations, because the POV characters don’t seem to think it’s something worth remarking upon. iirc, it takes until halfway through HtN for the narrative to confirm that Harrow has brown skin.

[See also Tamsyn’s GtN characters description post. It quotes passages from the book, and you can see how minimal the descriptions are, and she repeats several times that her characters’ appearances are up to the readers’ interpretations. It just doesn’t seem to be a big concern of hers]

Then there’s John, who grew up in twenty-first-century New Zealand and IS explicitly Māori in a way that absolutely impacted his character arc. It's not A major theme of his Nona chapters, but it’s there if you read between the lines. The boarding school he went to, which IRL had a high percentage of low-income Māori students on scholarship. The depth of his climate anxiety, his uncompromising “Nobody left behind” stance before the cryo project was halted, and his fervent hatred of ‘the trillionaires’ afterwards... these are all informed to some extent by his background as an indigenous man imo, and so was the global reaction to his developing powers. The “We were going to put you fellas in jail, weren’t we?” the way his initial attempts at publications are all flat-out ignored by the scientific community and dismissed as culty gimmicky faith healing until he leans into it.

John being Māori is just one of the many pieces of his backstory, and far from the most impactful to what eventually went down, but my point remains that he is the ONLY character in TLT whose racial background 1) affects his story arc and 2) is relatable to the audience. Everyone else is ten thousand years removed from Earth, and I’m just not very interested in using racial identifiers when exploring these characters and their dynamics, because the characters themselves don’t care and neither does the narrative.

hosting a draw this in your style to celebrate my comic SIGNALS coming out next month!!! winners will get a free copy--all you have to do is draw your take on one of these images, post it, and tag me in it by the end of october :)

okay i meant to make this post forever ago but my personal opinion on why so many people were so dissatisfied with lightfalll (disclaimer: i am not one of these people, i love lightfall SO much), is that lightfall was kind of subjected to a really aggressive marketing campaign.

like, stick with me here, i feel like almost all the lightfall release content (the trailers especially) were so focused on battling the witness, how this battle has been centuries in the making and this is the Second Collapse Finally Finding Us, only for there to be,,, no real resolution. the end was left on such a severe cliffhanger, but not only that, there was NO battle with the witness. the witness didn't even seem to be having a hard time at all with what we WERE throwing at it.

and for narrative reasons *i* am obsessed with this ending; in terms of storytelling i adore practically every creative decision that was made in lightfall, but i think the reason that so many people were so upset about it is because lightfall had such intense marketing and was rooted in the implication that this was the End of Days, only for us to get almost no closure, and instead so many more questions.

(there's also something to be said, i think, about the fact that the people who ARE most upset about this are like, the youtube gamer dudebros who's content is very very often rooted in the aggressive, violence-and-warfare, pvp-centric, no-interest-in-lore approach to destiny, and that the people i've seen primarily ENJOYING the narrative decisions (or at least being understanding about it) are the artists and writers and loremasters of the fandom, but i'm not quite sure,,, how to expand on that point.)

I GOT THE MAX NUMBER OF BOOPS? WHAT NOW?

i’ve always found it peculiar how during meeting the chargers cutscene the game just assumes your character automatically understands what krem is talking about when he mentions binding (though, granted, it’s all very unsubtle). like, this is a roleplaying game. what if i want to play a character who just doesn’t get it

jay not asking coach about letting lonnie onto the team bc he doesn’t want to do anything coach might disagree with…….

If larries think Louis is closeted why are they surprised/offended he “acts straight” (my bros in cheezits it’s been nearly a year since he was pictured with a lady - what are you talking about), or bitch slaps “fans” who bring up gay relationship lore? And they make it about their feelings on the matter?? Does he not have his own feelings, like maybe he doesn’t want the entire world talking about how he’s gay (neon letters- gay w/ Harry Styles - who to anyone with a brain seems not straight)?!

All the times when there is actually a simple, straightforward explanation that, u kno what, would actually align with their narrative to some degree if they weren’t so obtuse, they take the L and become crybabies. Also, maybe they should just stop being cunts to him. I kno, what a concept.

It's the "maybe they should just stop being cunts to him" for me, but yeah, so much of this! Because here's the thing, he's a real-life person, and he's living his own real life, not a script, not a fic, not a built-up fantasy quilted by overly invested strangers. I feel for him, and I'm not here to say there was nothing there, clearly there was, but also? Maybe, just MAYBE there isn't anymore, and maybe, just MAYBE he's genuinely pissed to have to talk about it allllll the time as this cutesy GOTCHA by people who put in their bios that they believe in conspiracy theories around his sex life, desperate to break the fourth wall in a way that both outs him and dredges up a relationship that might not be something he wants to be dealing with at the moment. And rather than think, wow, oof, sorry, king, that's on me, instead, you have people all ass-hurt about it, acting like he's some kind of dick for (justifiably) losing it. You haven't been gaslit, you haven't been lied to, you haven't been baited, he owes you literally jack shit about something that maybe just MAYBE hits him on god knows what fronts (this is not YOU you, anon, lmao, you get it)

ultimately i do actually enjoy the ghibli films i watch theyre well animated and always have an interesting way of conveying the message theyre trying to convey i just cant stand the fandomification of the films so much that i outright refuse to watch some films on principle

Are there any FS manga ideas you've had which you haven't really seen anywhere but wish were more common?

RUBS MY HANDS. ok so bc i havent been here that long i havent really seen even a fraction of all the fan content for this thing (although i comb through oldER threads, fanworks, and deviantart fairly often) so i cant say anything on it not existing... plus this is pretty basic

but onw of my fav concepts i dont see utilized too often is pairing off two of the 4/maybe5 guys and putting them in a damn situation by themselves. most of the time , at least the fancontent I see has them all together, by themselves, or paired off like they were in the manga. which is FINE. maybe im just geared different. but what better way to enjoy their characters like its new. what better way to analyze . fuck you scoops up red and vio puts them in the Labrynth with devious creatures. .yaknow?

just for you anon N9BODY ELSE LOOK !! /joke. some very * rushed in the fervour of inspiration * [badly drawn] concepts for a green n shadow dungeon

forgetting which of the OCs are lesbians and which are bisexual because the insane dykery and problematic sexuality is so strong in all of them. hashtag feminism.

for the first time ever. in my dirtbrain ideas Guy capacity. I’m thinking about sasamiya. like this is a very stream of consciousness thing but like on paper miyano is the character I have the LEAST to say about WHICH ISN’T A DISS OBVIOUSLY. love that fudanshi. but also his immense gender is SO INTERESTING. (and a little why I have like. so many opinions about depictions of him. different conversation)

HES SO BOY. MIYANO YOSHIKAZU IS SO BOY AND HE LIKES BEING A BOY like down to his hands becoming more masculine in shape he paid so much attention to that and LIKED IT. SOOOO MUUUUCH and the slowburn development of the ssmy romance is one hundred percent because of miyano taking his time to. Okay yes consider sasaki’s feelings for him BUT WITHIN THAT figure out how he feels about being a boy in this romantic situation context with another boy It’s all about miyano deconstructing the foundations of his ideas of queer relationships as a boy who liked and LIKES bl stories Without the like. self aware queer lenses on because miyano LIKES BEING A BOY SOOOO MUCH. and he’d HATE it if outdated bl logic was applied to make him like. the “girl” in the relationship. he’d hate it. and it’s not like he wanted SASAKI to be the “girl” in the relationship because like. miyano doesn’t want a girl in this relationship. not that he doesn’t want girls period obviously etc etc I don’t feel I actually need to defend my point here but miyano is a boy with so much PRIDE in his being a boy. who doesn’t want to be seen as feminine because he’s a BOY and like there’s complicated juvenile nuances here I’m cutting for length (especially since this is all off the top of my head) and so it’s not like he’s going into thinking about sasaki in the Ew, we’re both BOYS… way because he’s going into it with this biiig fourth wall separation between the existence of BLisms and his like. Life. that he lives. like he’s going into it very clearly aware of the things sasaki was doing (flirting, mostly) (blatantly) but he was contextualizing it like Hey we’re both boys you know people are gonna get the wrong idea right. and I don’t know if it’s necessarily an internalized homophobia as it is just. having this big neon sign sitting in his brain that has been there for so FOREVER that he doesn’t like. look at or think about. so he’s not so much thinking about whether he’s LIKING the flirting and attention in that capacity as he is thinking about how it looks to other people. because miyano is so used to having the reader third person perspective he’s not all that plugged into what it’s like to actually BE IN IT the way he very evidently is.

like I feel like maybe my point is getting lost in translation but it’s just so IMPORTANT to me how miyano’s capital g Gender interacts with his fiction-programmed brain to recalibrate when the way he lives his life shifts to accommodate sasaki shuumei. AND HE IS THE CHARACTER I HAVE THE LEAST TO SAY ABOUT. still trying to articulate sasaki feelings in context with third year friendshipisms and different facets of one’s personality and the joy of Boys Life but. like. I don’t know tfw you’re ssmypilled. etc

hello upper middle class northern usamerican tumblr user. i want to play a game. you will notice that you are in a super america convenience store in rural kentucky - you have three minutes to purchase a snack and drink of your choice and make normal small talk with the cashier. however, if you use the word "cryptid" or generally make reference to appalachia and its inhabitants as "wild", uncivilized, or lacking restraint around alcoholic beverages during your time here, i will personally tie you to the chassis of a four wheeler and tip it into the river. live or die. make your choice

hiam going insane nyway here are some stardew valleys

@threadsandwings // plotted starter.

It's something out of a spooky story, Charles thinks, walking to this otherwise nondescript spot. The moon is mostly obscured by dark clouds, the wind howls and whips around him, and the temperature is cool enough that he almost regrets not wearing more than one jacket. If what his mother suspected is true-- and there is a lethal force of enemies with a base in this old factory-- then they've picked a hell of a place. Anyone too scared of ghosts and energies would turn tail as soon as they set foot on the property.

Fortunately, Charles isn't much for fear. He's wary about such things, of course (he grew up aware of curses, about omens and ill signs and why you should never bring a dismembered head to the home you sleep in), but not enough to be terrified. And certainly not enough to keep from turning his collar up and pushing the heavy door to the warehouse open.

There's a rusty chain and lock on the ground, implying someone had already broken in. Charles' brow raises, but as he looks out into the distance he sees nothing but the silhouettes of dead machinery. Some moonlight shines through the high windows of the building, but not enough to illuminate the whole area; this is just as well, and Charles keeps to the shadows to keep from being seen.

A part of him feels foolish for pushing on. The factory is so empty, the machines so dusty (he should've taken some allergy meds before coming in), that he starts to think it's less and less likely someone's inside. And all the while, like further evidence, in the pit of his stomach something starts stirring: an old sense of dread, like something terrible's about to happen.

He hasn't felt dread like this in a long time. Frankly, he's not sure what to do with it.

Deeper into the fray, he sees the door to what might be a staff room ajar. His hand reaches back, fingers curling around the hilt of a knife, and the other comes forward to push the door open...

Then something small thumps him in the forehead. And like clockwork, Charles whispers a soft, "Shit!", stumbling back and raising his hands in front of him in self-defence.

"What the fuck was..." His Mandarin trails off as he squints at the creature flitting frantically in front of him. "A bird?"

i really do love practicing 🎻