not me re-watching the barbie movie and bawling my eyes out at the scene where Margo Robbie is sitting on the bus bench and watching the world around her because it's like. I know it's not exactly what they're going for, but just, that scene breaks me?? because of that sense of being a total stranger to the world, only really seeing it for the first time as a grown-ass adult and feeling so separated, so alienated from it, watching people and their range of human emotions and relationships, the awe and confusion and wonder and this strange new empathy for them and myself?? I just sob

It's really disheartening that Rick Riordan stance on the war I understand that he wants to be neutral on this stance but in my opinion by becoming neutral he only worsening the issue as many Palestines are dying that are mostly children, how the majority of Israeli are supporting the Genocide of Palestine, and how the government is trying so hard (but miserably failing) to justified the genocide. I will hold him accountable for what he said on this issue as during this period the choice is basically "you are with us or against us."

Part of me wishes he will realize what he said was wrong and understand the bigger issue that plays at hand. I will criticism for his actions as how can a man who promotes LGBTQIA and representation of minorities and disabilities in his books turn a blind eyes to Genocide of people. However we can only wait and see on his next move.

One last thing about your previous you said you don't group Riordan with other authors where do you would group him with? Also this is more on an opinion base answer but many people are boycotting companies that support Israel there as been another post on Twitter on boycotting authors. Rick Riordan happens to be one of them. Do you believed that he should be boycotted with other authors or he should be properly educated and apologized for his previous statement? If you believed he should be boycotted what do tou have to say to those who might have the mentality of "separate the art from the artist"

thank you for this ask, and i completely agree with you! it is extremely hypocritical of him considering what he preaches for in his books. i think he’s convinced he has properly addressed the apartheid by using very vague language that can be applied to anything, and in doing so, he’s addressed nothing really.

your first question on who i would group him with— probably other authors who are doing the exact same as him in their virtue signalling. i always like to link my other blogs to each other, so i don’t think it’s a secret that i have a red queen account and i’m pretty passionate about that. unfortunately, victoria aveyard is another fantasy author who has literally wrote a whole four-book series on the uprising against oppression but is now playing neutral in her address of the apartheid. rebecca yarros is in the same boat, although i haven’t read ‘fourth wing,’ fans have said there are large themes of oppression within the book. so if i had to group riordan it would probably be in the ‘i-like-to-write-about-it-for-profit-and-praise-only’ group.

in terms of boycotting, i think that’s a great idea! i would also like to remind everyone that the percy jackson tv show is coming out in a little over a month, but disney is a huge industry financially supporting israel as well ($2 million in funding), which is obviously far more damning than a poorly written address by one person. there is a boycott happening for disney as well— and the pjo show will be released on disney + . i implore everyone to not watch it on that platform!! personally i will be pirating it online (idk if i’ll get into trouble saying that here but lol oh well), because im pretty sure the boycott is only for withdrawing financial support, not simply consuming media.

i feel like separating art from the artist only works if that artist is… like, dead, and you’re using that art and its values as a historical insight to how the world was during its time. you can still like a piece of work that has a problematic artist, you can engage with the work (to an extent). but separating art from the artist barely works because either:

to engage with the art is to support the artist in some way, so that artist is making money based on your interaction with that (particularly in the case for singers and streaming of songs)

that artists’ views and values are so rancid that it’s literally embedded within the text itself. to ignore it is harmful.

harry potter is my all-time favourite example to use, because jkr is the scum of the earth, and her views are entrenched in her work. a lesser known example is sarah j maas and her books (she’s also not as dogshit as jkr, but then again, its not hard to be a better person than her). i’m not going to bag on these people for liking things by problematic people (would be hypocritical of me), i just think it’s cowardly not to address it when you come across it, or at least admit to it. to simply write things off as ‘separate to the artist’ is like purposefully turning off your critical thinking skills.

on whether boycotting or an apology is enough— if riordan did apologise and used specific language and not the nonsense he had in that blog, expressed his remorse for his ignorance and then actually did or said something to support the people of palestine then, yeah. that’s fine and that’s how we learn ig. but he should educate himself, too many activists, people from the arab community and especially palestinians are expected to be all-knowing and to educate everyone else on an already draining and personal tragedy. it’s been exhausting for me, i can’t imagine what they’re going through. if riordan (or anyone) needs to be educated, he should do it himself, and (at least in my opinion) i don’t think the info is very hard to find now. it’s just about weeding out the misinformation.

i think boycotting is a good idea as of now. it can serve to be a catalyst for self reflection for many people. also, as much as i hate most online discourses, talking about it online needs to happen. i don’t want these authors to forget, for a moment, about the ignorance they posted online during a time of international crisis.

my new OC: cempaka!

she is based on the story/universe that my friend @haydardotjpg's OCs indra and yuwei exist in! pls go checkout haydar's art he is amazing!! his ocs can be found more easily on his ig but if you're lazy this is his oc indra (cempaka's one-sided love interest) and yuwei (indra's fated lover)

also, cempaka means "magnolia" in malay!! (she gets a flower name bc my name is lilly which is also flower c:)

bonus first iteration under the cut!

i accidentally had "poinsettia" flower in mind when i did this iteration instead of an actual magnolia, hence the color scheme. but yeah, this is as self-insert as it gets LOL like she's literally MEEEEEE but still very different and i love her as she is <3

for real WHERE does the idea that [utdr humans] are nongendered so that "you can project on them" come from. their literal character arcs are about NOT being a blank slate to be filled in by the audience

i think i understand the assumption on some level for undertale, because there is a very intentional effort to make you identify with the "player character" in order to make your choices feel like your own (the beating heart of undertale's metanarrative lies in giving you an alternative path to violence against its enemies after all, and whether you're still willing to persue it for your own selfish reasons. YOUR agency is crucial).

of course, the cardinal plot twist of the main ending sweeps the rug from under your feet on that in every way, and frisk's individuality becomes, in turn, a tool to further UT's OTHER main theme: completionism as a form of diegetic violence within the story. replaying the game would steal frisk's life and happy ending from them for our own perverse sentimentality, emotionally forcing our hand away from the reset button.

i think their neutrality absolutely aids in that immersion. but also, there's this weird attitude by (mostly) cis fans where it being functional within the story makes it... somehow "editable" and "up to the player" as well? which is gross and shows their ass on how they approach gender neutrality in general lol.

but also like. there's plenty of neutral, non PCharacters in undertale and deltarune. even when undertale was just an earthbound fangame and the player immersion metanarrative was completely absent, toby still described frisk as a "young, androgynous person". sometimes characters are just neutral by design. it's not that hard to understand lol.

anyone who makes this argument for kris deltarune is braindead. nothing else to say about it.

i think "nonbinary" can be useful but a lot of times the way it is being used isn't helpful to actually discussing nonbinary people, especially since it is a HUGE umbrella term with very few boundaries. like there are nonbinary men & women, so positioning "nonbinary" as something intrinsically separate from man/woman isn't accurate. or there are times where it would be more useful to name the specific group (like multigender people, androgynes, abinary/aphorians) rather than a much vaguer term

in general the problem is that our language to describe nonbinary existence is basically some scraps held together with duct tape. there's sooo many ways in which nonbinary people are erased or binaried through language. not just through the lack of gender neutral options but the la of blatantly genderqueer ones.

i kinda feel like as of right now, nonbinary-ness is pretty slapdash & all over the place and it would be helpful to have a large-scale discussion on what terminology would be best for discussing things like exorsexism and it's various aspects, and how to talk about nonbinary people without homogenizing us, while ALSO acknowledging the need for umbrella terms that can cover a range of individual identities, even if people don't personally identify with the umbrella term itself. & on that note we should also probably discuss the issue of. like. perfectionism wrt nonbinary language & the way that potentially useful terms get lost bc of it. I don't think nonbinary people can really achieve meaningful equality and inclusion on the same level until we are able to have equally diverse and useful ways of describing ourselves, and a stronger understanding of how we relate to each other as a community.

No offense but trans-masc/trans-man headcanons about Arya are so incorrect, I'm sorry. I can't even take them seriously considering this fandom's desire to separate Arya from girlhood/womanhood. I would love it if people would stop trying to divorce female characters (and real women) from their identities as women just because they aren't traditionally feminine.

If we're talking about actual good-faith interpretations, ones that actually work with how Arya is written, then trans-femme is a much better fit. Arya has never had the desire to be a boy or be seen as one, she is fiercely insistent on her identity as a girl and corrects people several times, she doesn't consider herself a "real" Lady because she's not one in the same way her mother and sister are (!!!), she has self-esteem issues from her looks and ability to perform feminine tasks, she actually spends time pretending to be a boy but never considers herself one or enjoys doing it, as time progresses she loses the ability to pass as a boy (!!!), etc. Look at the material!! There's so much there to discuss from that perspective! Arya's non-conformity and how that fits into a society with such strict gender norms is fascinating and there's a lot to discuss there, but calling her trans-masc is one of the laziest interpretations to come up with.

Please understand that, more often than not, works of fiction are a fictional exploration of concepts and ideas rather than a declaration of morality

I have no idea why but I absolutely hate how Ameridan' story was handled, they basically dumbed it down to him worshipping both the creators and andraste/chant of light, which kind of proved Cassandra's dumb (and incredibly disrespectful) point of an inquisitor having "room for another god". It's also so unfair how they made the evanuris to just be power hungry slavers and tyrants, my only hope is that if the creators were disproving then I hope it would be the same for the chant of light and maker (seeing asnit was solas who made the veil and not the creator) I really hate how centrist the game has gotten, like flat out, whenever I hear the words grey morality and nuance I can't help burn cringe, that's how much dragon age has ruined it for me.

It's also so incredibly funny how the devs are genuinely surprised that most of the players are pro mage, like of course we are?

i think it's particularly extremely aggravating, the way bioware writers write about a pantheon as if polytheistic religions are simply a thing of the past and dead and some kind of mystery/mythology. according to bioware, this kind of writing for polytheistic religions is fine because no real religion these days would everrrrrrr worship multiple gods /sarcasm. (note that the links are just some examples and not comprehensive in the least)

there's a lot of writing choices i quite simply disagree with in dai, and there's some that are just... i don't even disagree with them because that implies it's something to argue about. some of their writing choices are just wrong. after borrowing so heavily from ethnic groups to shape their fictional histories, the disrespect of writing their fictional oppressed minorities as being responsible for their own oppression because they were not "open" enough to include/absorb expy christianity into their religious beliefs and fought back against violent colonialism. the resulting clumsy collation between isr*el and the indigenous people of the americas wanting to reclaim their lands stolen from them by white colonisers makes my blood boil.

ameridan is just another piece of the puzzle that makes me seethe. we have a man who apparently ~existed before hostilities between the elves and the humans~ which is now the fault of drakon's son who invaded the dales after ameridan was long gone. that's already absolute bullshit because ameridan lived in the fucking dales. elves only started living in the dales AFTER ANDRASTE'S REBELLION. after the fall of arlathan, and hundreds of years of enslavement at the hands of tevinter humans???

additionally, the battle of red crossing happened in 2:9 glory, but tensions between the elves and humans had been building up since the second blight. drakon the first died in 1:45 but the elves apparently did "nothing" to help montsimmard when it was overrun by darkspawn in 1:25 divine - twenty years before his death, there was already simmering resentment. additionally, it was drakon the first that expanded the orlesian empire and the orlesian chantry - wotv2 notes his battles against the darkspawn did more to spread the chant of light (specifically, the orlesian chant of light which he, yknow, fucking made up) than any of his other attempts. by the time the exalted march on the dales happens, over three quarters of thedas is under orlesian rule. maferath himself handed the dales to the surviving elves from andraste's campaign in -165 ancient and the elves lived in the dales peacefully until the orlesian chantry was salivating at its borders. and the orlesian chantry has a history of wiping out "cults" - i.e. other sects of their own religion that differ from belief, no matter how minor, to their own. including, notably, the wholesale genocide of a non-violent sect centered around fertility rituals and, later, the dragon worshipping sect in haven off their own land. (and i'm willing to BET MONEY that they were originally alamarri themselves, considering that andraste was brought there to rest, and considering how cultural variance in religion usually occurs [i.e. through the blending/adoption of folk beliefs or the cultural/religious practices from Before]. so the andrastians slaughtered the cult AND THEN TOOK THEIR FUCKING LAND.)

the entire way andrastianism is treated in inquisition makes me violent. and unfortunately, it does not look like it's going to change - there's been multiple statements about how the maker's existence will continue to remain "a mystery" out of a reluctance to confirm or deny the existence of a One True God which, coupled with how they've shat on every other religion in the game - the tevinter chantry, the qun, the stone, the elven pantheon, every other sect worshipping the maker/andraste - gives me absolutely no hope that the writing team is going to get their heads out of their asses about it.

I am super fucking pissed about Wee John in this last episode.

Why. The. Fuck. Was. He. Not. Included. AT. ALL. During. The. Escape??????????

Legitimately, where the fuck was he? I was fuming for a lot of that because he's my favorite character, so I was looking for him. While everyone was stripping the English of their uniforms and getting dressed up (at least partially) in disguise, he is the only character not included.

They make a point about Fang not getting a proper shirt, which already pissed me off enough, that he had to wear what was essentially prison stripes while everyone else was in uniform, but Wee John wasn't even there. He wasn't in the raid. He wasn't in the run down the beach.

He just wasn't even fucking there. And if it was something Kristian decided he didn't want to worry about hurting himself over, particularly looking out for his back and knees, I understand not asking him to run over and over again for reshoots. But the fact that he didn't even get dressed with them... and that's the second time he's been excluded from a plan apparently due to his size (remember that he didn't get to participate when The Revenge dressed up as rich boys for Nigel Badminton)...

It is legitimately breaking my heart. One of the things I love about this show is the love is gives to its fat characters and actors. Fang gets to have his tummy out 24/7 and he's treated like a snack by Lucius, Wee John got to have an incredible dress, Oluwande is the crew's most eligible bachelor, and we even got a delightful fat character in 2x07 who spent his whole time dressed in only some leather halters and pants...

But the fact that Wee John was singled out and left behind, and the fact that Fang was singled out and othered at that very same time... It fucking hurts. As a fat person who has loved getting to see so much love for fat bodies... it stung to see that the comedy couldn't even suspend its reality long enough to say "there are a few fat people in the Royal English Navy, so Wee John and Fang get to be dressed up too."

It's interesting, the contrasting difference between the way that Rick sees and thinks about things versus being someone like Jerry ( this concept that the episode presented is incredibly philosophical in terms of what the difference is between a mind and a brain already.)

But generally, I think this definitely suggests that Rick is either completely miserable inside of his own brain so much the point that in mind like Jerry wouldn't be able to handle it for even one minute from the way that he sees and knows things, which has definitely been suggested throughout the series-and likewise, that he wouldn't be able to handle being inside of a simpler person's brain in for some sort of deeply emotionally and psychologically traumatizing reason that comes along with being wired the way that Rick is. Which I think is interesting, if there's anything to go by from the more nuanced and eccentric people that I've met throughout my life, who have all been completely miserable in contrast to the simpler people around them.

I think it's interesting because it seems to relate to how intelligence or at the very least being a unique thinker than the average leads to someone being completely miserable, and this is a good comical somewhat exaggeration about how mad it would make a person go to be someone who has all of the heaviness that goes on in their brain and the things that they know from intelligence, or maybe not even intelligence but even just being a unique thinker and seeing human life and existence in general in a certain way that might make them different but miserable, and contrast it to a mind like Jerry. I don't know if it was intentional or not, but I definitely see this as an interesting commentary between the contrast between simpler-minded people and more "full-headed", tormented people like Rick-or at the very least, people who are more neurodivergent, versus people who are more content and simple, and how the two would be incredibly dysfunctional coming together.

Mainly watching only the show for any kind of hint that we have towards what it's like to be Rick and his brain, and his emotional state in general, since I find him fascinating and what he represents is a character, I definitely think this is an interesting contrast about how much differently he thinks and sees things in contrast other people, and how much this portrayal is such an abrasive difference between the way that he say things and miserable he is for it and miserable it would make someone like Jerry, the "mind" of Jerry, so to speak, that he wouldn't even be able to hate to stand having that kind of brain for even 5 minutes. Speaks true to reality to me, for some reason, lol.

The reason why this fascinates me so much isn't really so much because of intelligence or anything like that, but more so the contrast between the neurodivergent and the mentally ill versus the more neurotypical and the more simple. As someone who has been miserable their entire life and has seen things very differently from the people around me and has always wondered how people are so happy and content with the way that things are compared to the way that I see them, for me, this feels like an odd contrast between the neurodivergent and the neurotypical, and how completely miserable the neurodivergent are for the way that they see the state of the world and humanity in general. The thoughtful and the heavy-minded and did the people that are constantly seeing day-to-day life with a certain kind of interpretation that is much heavier and more complex, and with self-reflection towards themselves and existence as a whole and ways that are almost incomprehensible with how much they're constantly turning over in their heads life everyday, versus the brainless and the easy minded, so to speak.

There are two types of post on the webbed site and their "Martin is an uwu softbean 😊💕!" Or "Martin is evil and sexy manipulative 😈🦹‍♀️!" Have you considered that hes a grown man with dick and balls and 100 times more interesting then that

starting to think maybe waking up with an anxiety stomachache every single morning and then needing to spend the entire day trying to get rid of said anxiety just to maybe have a few minutes in the evening of feeling relaxed before going to bed is perhaps not normal

working retail is making me remember how much i hate stupid customers btw

Bloodborne is seriously the most beautiful game of all time i think about this every single time i replay it but genuinely. Just exploring yharnam and staring in awe at how gorgeous everything is, its never about graphics, bloodborne has a noticeable stylization i think in a way even stronger than other fromsoft games, and the use of lighting and color palettes is just so good it makes me want to Be there. The game is already so stunning as it is ingame but i think having access to the map viewer on my own to the side made me appreciate it even more i love seeing the way everything is constructed and put together with just the flat textures before applying any engines and even as flat surfaces you can just feel the cohesion in the backgrounds, even textureless stripped of everything that makes it "beautiful" it still feels so unique and already gets the vibe across and that explains how the game feels the way it does visually, which is something i think a lot of current gen "high fidelity" games struggle with. Hard to explain what I mean but I feel it. Also i love the slight like chromatic aberration effect bb has on the edges of the screen it adds such a nice touch to the atmosphere honestly. Sighs dreamily

I know I did not just see someone imply that bec Rauru is Zonai and bec Sonia is poc that Hyrule can't be imperialistic fhfhghh guys do we remember which country this game series is made in? Do we know the history of that country? Are the ppl of that country poc

I spent the last week mostly crying and healing old wounds and having revelations and also facing things I already knew on a bone-deep level but also I spent the last week reading Mark van Doren’s The Noble Voice and oh my gosh he’s so right the Aeneid really falls so much shorter of the Iliad and the Odyssey because Aeneas is a stand-in for history and the Weight of Rome not actually a real person.