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zot3-flopped · 1 month

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Sylvia Plath did not stick her head in an oven for this! When Taylor Swift took the Grammys stage last month to claim her award for Best Pop Vocal Album for Midnights, she saw that spotlight as an opportunity to announce her 11th studio album: The Tortured Poets Department. The follow-up cut to audience members—Swift’s music industry peers, mind you—told us all that we would ever need to know, and the collective disinterest across the crowd echoed through our TVs.

Folks from all walks of life took to social media to express a multitude of reactions. Swifties clamored to their beloved monarch’s forthcoming era, while others lambasted the terminally cringe title and artwork and ridiculed Swift for making a night recognizing musical achievements across an entire industry about herself—knowing perfectly well that it would send her fanbase into a surge that would, no doubt, overpower the excitement around the ceremony itself.

Quite a few people questioned whether or not that moment suggested that a critical—definitely not commercial—tide would turn against the world’s most-famous pop star. And, perhaps it has—but, to most, it will look like nothing more than a single ripple in Swift’s ocean of successes.

Swift remained relatively hush-hush about The Tortured Poets Department up until its release, leaving her fans, admirers and haters alike with nothing but an album title to ponder about. And it’s a bad title.

If you have never been in Swift’s corner, her taking the route of labeling her next “era” as “tortured” was likely catnip for your disinterest. If you are a fan—not necessarily a Swiftie, but even just a casual lover of her best and brightest work—you might be beside yourself about the first Swift album title longer than one word in 14 years.

In terms of popularity—certainly not always in terms of quality—no musician has been bigger this century than Swift, which makes it impossible to really buy into the “torture” of it all.

This is not to say that Swift being the most famous person in the world makes her immune to having multi-dimensional feelings of heartbreak, mental illness or what-have-you.

But, she has made the choice—as a 34-year-old adult—to take those complex, universal familiars and monetize them into a wardrobe she can wear for whatever portion of her Eras Tour setlist she opts to dedicate to the material.

Torture is fashion to Taylor Swift, and she wears her milieu dully. This album will surely get comparisons to Rupi Kaur’s poetry, either for its simplicity, empty language, commodification or all of the above.

And, sure, there are parallels there, especially in how The Tortured Poets Department, too, is going to set the art of poetry back another decade—as Swift’s naive call-to-arms of her own milky-white sorrow rings in like some quintessential “I am going to take pictures of a typewriter on my desk and have a Pinterest mood-board of Courier New font” iPhone fodder. 2013 called and it wants it capricious, suburban girl-who-is-taking-a-gap-year wig back!

Soaking our book reports in coffee or having our moms burn the edges with a kitchen lighter cannot come back into fashion; the cyclical notions of culture cannot make the space for such retreads.

There is nothing poetic about a billionaire—who, mind you, threatens legal action against a Twitter account for tracking her destructive private jet paths—telling stadiums of thousands of people every night that she sees and adores them.

Tavi Gevinson says it well in her Fan Fiction zine: “When 80,000 people are also crying, you become less special, too.” If Swift can return to one of her dozen beach houses across the world, kick up her feet and say “I’m a poet of struggle,” then who is to say that millions—maybe billions—of people with access to a notes app and a social media account won’t dream that dream, too?

Maybe that looks like a net-positive, but it’s inherently damning and destructive to take an art form that has long stood on the shoulders of resistance, of love and of opposition to power, systematic injustice and climate warfare and boil it down to the new defining era of your own 10-digit revenue empire. “My culture is not your costume,” yada, etc.

The Tortured Poets Department does begin with a shred of hope that, just maybe, Swift knows what she’s talking about—as she sneaks in a cheeky “all of this to say,” textbook transitional phrasing for poets, on opening track “Fortnight.”

But “Fortnight” unmasks itself quickly as a heady vat of pop nothingness, though it isn’t all Swift’s fault. “I was a functioning alcoholic, ‘til nobody noticed my new aesthetic,” she muses, attempting to bridge the gap between a behind-the-scenes life and on-stage performance—only for it to occur while propped up against the most dog-water, uninspired synth arrangement you could possibly imagine.

Between producer Jack Antonoff’s atrocious backing instrumental and the Y2K-era, teen dramedy echo chamber of a vocal harmony provided by out-of-place guest performer Post Malone, “Fortnight” chokes on the vomit of its own opaqueness.

“I took the miracle move-on drug, the effects were temporary,” Swift muses, and it sounds like satire. This is your songwriter of the century? Open the schools.

The Tortured Poets Department title-track features some of Swift’s worst lyricism to-date, including the irredeemable, relentlessly cringe “You smoked then ate seven bars of chocolate, we declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist / I scratch your head, you fall asleep like a tattooed golden retriever” lines glazed atop some synthesizers and drums that just ring in as hollow, unfascinating costuming.

Aside from the Puth nod, which I can only discern as a joke (given the fact that he is one of the 150-most streamed artists in the world and is one of the blandest pop practitioners alive—I don’t care if he can figure out the pitch of any sound you throw at him), I think Antonoff should stick to guitar-playing. Get that man away from a keyboard, I’m begging you.

Synths can be, if you use them correctly, one of the most emotional and provocative instruments in any musician’s tool-box. There’s a reason why keyboards defined the 1980s; they rebelled against the very oppressive nature existing outside of the cultural company they kept. There’s resistance in electronic music that, while they brandish an aesthetic that, to a layman’s ears, seems like technicolor hues for any infectious pop track, it’s a genre that aches to tell its own story. That is simply not the case here, and that electronica hangs Swift out to dry when she drags us through the lukewarm “I laughed in your face and said, ‘You’re not Dylan Thomas, I’m not Patti Smith’ / This ain’t the Chelsea Hotel, we’re modern idiots” lines, only to hit us with a softly sung F-bomb that sounds like a billionaire’s rendition of that one Miranda Cosgrove podcast clip.

I used to rag pretty heavily on Reputation—mostly because I thought (and still do, mostly) that it sounded like Swift had given up on making interesting, progressive pop music; that, in the wake of her (arguably) best album, 1989, it seemed like she’d lost the plot on where to go next. But as she’s put out Midnights and The Tortured Poets Department back-to-back, I find myself clamoring for the Reputation-era more than ever—at least seven years ago, Swift wrote songs like she had something to prove and even more to lose.

That was the always-obvious charm of Reputation, even despite the downsides—that she took a big swing from the echelons of her own musical immortality, that the comforts of winning every award and selling out the biggest venues in the world were no longer pillowing her aspirations. Even though that swing didn’t land, she still made it in the first place—and Swift is at her best either when she is clawing upwards (Reputation) or faced with nowhere to go but into the studio and noodle with the bare-bones of her own sensibilities (folklore).

You get something like The Tortured Poets Department when the artist making it no longer feels challenged, where she strikes out looking.

The mid-ness of The Tortured Poets Department will not be a net-loss for Swift. She will sell out arenas and get her streams until she elects to quit this business (a phrase decidedly not in her vocabulary, surely).

She will sell more merch bundles than vinyl plants have the capacity to make, and rows of variant LP copies will haunt the record aisles of Target stores just as long as Midnights has—if not longer.

Perhaps, in five or six years’ time, we will speak of this record just as we now do of Reputation. But right now, it is obvious that Swift no longer feels challenged to be good. The Tortured Poets Department is the mark of an artist now interested in seeing how much their empire can atone for the sins of mediocrity.

Can Swift win another Album of the Year Grammy simply because she released a record during the eligibility period? The Tortured Poets Department reeks of “because I can,” not “because I should.”

On “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can),” Swift tries stepping into the shoes of the country renegades who came before her—the Tammy Wynettes and Loretta Lynns of the world. But her self-aggrandizing inflation of importance, glinting through via a seismically-bland bridge, is backed by a minimal set dressing of guitar, drum machine and keys.

“Good boy, that’s right, come close,” she sings. “I’ll show you Heaven if you’ll be an angel—all mine. Trust me, I can handle me a dangerous man. No, really, I can.” On “Florida!!!,” Swift calls upon Florence + the Machine to help her sing the worst chorus of 2024: “Florida is one hell of a drug / Florida, can I use you up?”

Even Welch, who is a fantastic pop singer-songwriter in her own right, delivers a grossly watery verse: “The hurricane with my name, when it came I got drunk and I dared it to wash me away.”

Not even the typos on the Spotify promotional materials for this album could have foretold such offenses. I won’t even get into the sonics, because Antonoff just rewrites the same soulless patterns every time.

What separates The Tortured Poets Department from something like Reputation is that, on the latter, Swift made it known what was at stake and who she was making that album for—herself, in the aftermath of her greatest long-standing criticisms (“Look What You Made Me Do” triumphs exactly because of this).

On The Tortured Poets Department, there is a striking level of moral nothingness. The stakes are practically non-existent, and the album sounds like it was made by someone who believes that they had no other choice but to finish it, as if Swift fundamentally believes that her creative measures are firmly embedded in the massive monopoly her name and brand currently hold on popular music. That’s how you get meandering pop songs about hookups, wine moms, Stevie Nicks comparisons, Jehovah’s Witness suit mentions, hollowed-out, tone-deaf nods to white-collar crime in lieu of empowerment and, topically, Barbie dolls.

(Don’t even get me started on the Anthology lyrics, which feature these absolute barn-burners: “Touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto” and “My friends used to play a game where / We would pick a decade / We wished we could live in instead of this / I’d say the 1830s, but without all the racists / And getting married off for the highest bid.”) This album and its hackneyed grasps at relevance exist as “Did I just hear that?” personified, but in the most derogatory sense of the notion.

My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” features another low-point in Swift’s lyrical oeuvre, as she sings “I felt more when we played pretend than with all the Kens, ‘cause he took me out of my box”—perhaps a measure of her capitalizing on the Barbenheimer mania that none of us could escape, not even the musician who spent most of 2023 flying across the world from one country to another.

But you, us, the listener—we want to believe that Swift makes these records because she has the artistic will, drive and interest to continue giving us parts of her story in such ways that they exist as an archival of her life.

But the problem is that, on The Tortured Poets Department, Swift is packaging her life into a form that is easily consumable for the 17 or 18 years olds who pour over her music. Just because her Eras Tour film is on Disney+ doesn’t mean she has to strip her songwriting (which we know can be, and has been, phenomenal) down for the sake of it being digestible by a wide spectrum of ages.

And, sure, maybe that makes the work accessible. But on The Tortured Poets Department, Swift makes Zoomer jargon her bag—titling a song after one of the most popular video games in the world and conjuring flickers of “down bad” and “I can fix him”—and it feels like she’s cosplaying because the Fountain of Youth was out of order.

Now that Swift is in her 30s, it sounds like she is infantilizing her own audience more than ever before—that singing to them at a level that could force them to reckon with something more akin with adulthood would be some kind of kink in the coil or her consumeristic threshold, that writing lyrics that sound like they were penned by a 30-year-old would, somehow, deter the interests of the billions of people who adore her.

If making one, continuous coming-of-age album is what Swift has been doing for 15 years, folklore and evermore were hiccups in the timeline—existing as the most fully-formed renderings of Swift’s own insecurities and concerns. They mirrored our platitudes towards an uncertain future with sweet, stirring remarks about isolation and heartbreak and the unavoidable, hard-worn truth about getting older. On those records, her larger-than-life living seemed, for once, to truly feel as close to the ground as ours.

Now, though, Taylor Swift is at the top of the mountain. Far better artists have made far worse records than The Tortured Poets Department, but you can’t read between the lines of this project. There is nothing to decipher from a place of quality.

Sure, Swift’s fan base will pour over these lyrics for the rest of their lives—insisting they know, for certain, which song is about who. But you cannot place a bad album on the shoulders of lore and expect it to be rectified.

We are now left at a crossroads. Women can’t critique Swift because they’ll run the risk of being labeled a “gender traitor” for doing so. Men can’t critique her because they’ll be touted as “sexist.”

And, sure, Swift is probably too easy a punching bag in this case—and most of the time, I would argue she is undeserving of being a victim of such barbs. But, you cannot write about someone being a “tattooed golden retriever” and get away with it and still retain your title as the best songwriter of your generation. You just cannot.

Sisyphus should be glad he never got the boulder to the top of the mountain—because Taylor Swift is showing us that such immortality and success ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. And, when you’re standing on the peak alone, who else is there left to hit?

In a recent interview with The Standard, Courtney Love said that Swift is “not interesting as an artist,” and I think The Tortured Poets Department proves as much. She has nothing to fight for, no doubters left to drown.

So where does she turn? Well, to boredoms of celebrity thinly veiled as sorrow everyone and their mother can latch onto—because we’ve all had to “ditch the clowns, get the crown” at some point in our lives, right?

The billionaire is having an identity crisis, but there are no social media apps for her to buy up. So she sings like Lana Del Rey and writes meta-self-referential songs about looking like Stevie Nicks.

What’s hollow about The Tortured Poets Department is that the real torture is just how unlivable these songs really are. No one can resonate with “So I leap from the gallows and I levitate down your street, crash the party like a record, scratch as I scream ‘Who’s afraid of little old me?’ You should be.” And normally, that wouldn’t be an end-all-be-all for a pop record—but when your brand is built on copious levels of “I’m just like you!” as the demigod saying it to their fans does so from a multi-million-dollar production set, it’s hard to not feel nauseated by the overlording, overbearing sense of heavy-handed detritus we’re tasked with sifting through on The Tortured Poets Department.

Love’s words to Lana, her advice to “take seven years off,” should be applied to Swift. Now, that doesn’t mean that, to make a good album, you must sit on material for years and labor extensively through the sketching, shaping and recording in order for it to be transcendentally landmark. But it’s obvious now that not even Taylor Swift wants to be the head of an empire—that she, too, can’t outrun the damning fate of being plum out of ideas by hopping in her jet and skirting off to God knows where.

See you at the Grammys.

****

#this review is everything #anti taylor swift #taylor swift #travis kelce #3.6 !!!#hope Pitchfork comes for her too #jack antonoff #taylor swift reviews #the department of tortured poets

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genericpuff · 4 months

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Why is the art so unappealing in lore Olympus now Persephone looks like a highlighter and maybe it’s just me but the proportions like the fingers in arms are soul over the place I don’t think they used to be this bad. Am I just looking at it with nostalgia or am I crazy ?

Honestly, nostalgia does play a huge part in it, even to this day there are times I look back on old S1 panels and go-

Actually here's a great example that literally just happened yesterday in the ULO Discord that nearly had me on the floor LOL This is from Episode 70:

Like I didn't even believe that that was real until I was told what episode it was from and I was just. Astounded and flabbergasted. The over-shading of the blanket that just makes it look like a really bad edit. Insane.

And yeah, there are a lot of old panels that hit different now that the rose-colored glasses have been removed, crushed, and thrown into the trash compactor.

I think that's why it makes it all the more amusing when people come into my inbox and ask me "wait, why did you like LO to begin with?? It's always been ugly as shit, I think you're just romanticizing it" because like... there's something to be said about art and subjectivity, even if something is ugly to one person doesn't mean it isn't beautiful to someone else. It's why I try not to be too mean towards the fans of this comic for still enjoying it, because while I definitely have strong opinions about how "LO has gotten worse" and what kind of following Rachel has cultivated (cough cough), there are also just as equally valid arguments that LO has never begin good to begin with that I can't necessarily disagree with now that I'm looking back on it with a more critical eye.

That said, there's tons of media that I enjoy that is objectively awful. Like y'all, you don't need to take my opinions about a dumb pink x blue fantasy romance comic seriously, I like Starfox Adventures-

Like yeah it's a badly made rushed piece of shit that was developed right on the ass end of Rare's glory days and was really an original IP (Dinosaur Planet) that got Frankenstein'd into a Starfox game so it could "sell better" for Nintendo, but I don't give a fuck, I love Starfox Adventures and some day I wanna be in the top 10 speedrunner leaderboards for it, which I know doesn't mean much because no one is speedrunning Starfox, but I do and no one can take that away from me dammit-

Anyways. Lore Olympus has, in many regards, always had "bad art". But "bad art" can and should still be enjoyed by those who find joy in it.

And in LO's case, the world it existed in when it launched was a lot smaller than it is now - more specifically, the world of Webtoons. We can look back and see how 'bad' LO looks and reads now because there are genuinely way better comics surrounding it. It was unique and refreshing and experimental back then... now it's just "that stupid blue and pink comic for horny teenagers".

In most cases I would consider that "cringing in hindsight" feeling a good thing because normally it means something has grown and that it seeming "bad" in hindsight would mean that it's outgrown itself and moved onto bigger things. But LO has the more unique problem of "its current stuff is shit and it's making us want the old stuff more, even if the old stuff wasn't good either". In that regard, LO is closer to being like Harry Potter. Remember when The Cursed Child came out at the height of Rowling being exposed for being a TERF and even people who liked Harry Potter didn't like The Cursed Child because it was just objectively worse overall (with or without Rowling's bullshit attached)? It made a lot of people go back and re-read / rewatch Harry Potter with a more objective lens and go "wait a minute guys, I think we only adored these books so much because we were 12 when we read them". Often times it's the good memories we have surrounding certain things that make us have the opinion about them that we do.

Of course, LO is definitely not as politically weaponized as Harry Potter is, so that's where that comparison ends. But my point is that LO is definitely in a situation where it's been riding off the same privileges it had back in 2018 - having an 'experimental' art style while also utilizing tropes and characters that were VERY popular at the time (remember that 2017-18 was when Tumblr was at its height of H x P "Hades was a chill accountant guy who wore socks and sandals and didn't cheat on his wife like Zeus did" fantasizing) - and thinks that those same tricks and tropes will still work today.

Because of this, the art in LO really, really hasn't aged well, even the stuff that we look back on fondly. But I think it's the panels that we specifically think of when remembering "old LO" - the ones that stuck in our memories the most - that are the ones that make us miss or just not care about the panels that don't look good (the panels that make people question why we ever liked it to begin with).

We liked it because of how it made us feel to look at panels like these-

Those genuinely wonderful panels that we think back on the most don't exist separately from the bad panels, they exist in spite of them. Even if we can look back on panels like these and pick out problems in the lineart or the proportions or the color travelling outside of the lines, that can't and shouldn't change how those panels made us feel at some point or another. And that's why when people ask me "why were you even into LO in the first place" I don't have any one answer, because I can't fully explain how something made me feel to justify why it's good to someone who can see from the outside - without rose-colored glasses - that it evidently isn't. It's very much a "you had to be there" type of thing.

Unfortunately, nowadays even the 'best' LO panels in S3 still don't come close to what the S1 panels accomplished - because for many of us, the rose-colored glasses are gone, we can't appreciate the good among the bad because we know now how bad it truly is and so the good just feels like wasted attempts at trying to recreate something it can no longer be. It "came back wrong" so to speak.

LO came back just regular. But our journey to resurrecting it changed us to such a degree that even its closest intimacies are now foreign to us. Sorry dude.

This is still probably one of my favorite panels out of the entirety of S3 for being as close to "old LO" as I've seen since S2, and even it feels like a mistake, an accident, how could a panel like this exist in S3 when so much of it is a dumpster fire? It's like a flower growing in the ruins of an apocalyptic wasteland.

But wasn't that always the case? Isn't that 'always' what LO has been, since the very beginning? A poorly cobbled together mess of writing and panels that, every now and then, manages to leave an impression that makes you feel something? Did we ever truly know LO? Or have we just been relying entirely on an idea of it that we've built up in our heads that when it does do exactly what it's evidently always done (even if not made apparent until looking back on it in hindsight) we think it "came back wrong"?

#anyways sorry that was a way deeper response than it oughta have been #welcome to the AMA roulette game of “ask puff a simple question which they may or may not respond to with an introspective essay"#lore olympus critical #anti lore olympus #antiloreolympus #ask me anything #ama #anon ama #anon ask me anything

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silenceandpatiencepining · 1 month

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I am dusting off my little blog here because TTPD has my mind absolutely reeling. I am really wondering if anyone else listened to this and had this feeling that the album confirmed everything that they were thinking was going on with her. I know we talk so much about reading her songs beneath the surface of muses or certain details used to craft a story, but to me, TTPD reads so strongly of her reckoning with her life in the industry. like, it's so much more than the relationships. it's the comp het, it's the religious trauma, it's the being exploited as a child star, it's deep wound of abandonment and neglect when she as a person got split off from her brand and both could not thrive, it's giving everything to this brand and career and fandom and that still never being enough. it's her codependency with the very people that exploit her. it's the fact that she is bigger than she ever imagined and none of it feels how she wanted. it's the simultaneous love and resentment she has towards her family, and relationships, and career, and yes, even her fans.

the rawness of this album, the unrefined feel, the summation poem talking about this as mania, the continuation of the cage imagery and themes of escaping to her mind/fantasy, the coping with criticism, numbing it all with alcohol, the willingness to burn it all down and disgrace her name because none of this is what she wants or at least not how she wants.

I have seen so many criticisms of the album and honestly, I understand where they are coming from, but I also think the things they criticize make the exact point of what this body of work is - something that exists for it's own sake to turn things back on the people that made her into what she is now. art created not to be acclaimed but because it demands to be expressed. it is an exorcism, an expulsion. it is something that erupted from her. and it's so meta because this fandom and the industry are voyeurs in an echo chamber so desperate to see what they want that they miss that this is about them. that is what makes it brilliant to me - it is self-indulgent and metaphorical, and complex, and so direct, but yet still masked just enough that people miss it. her entire life has become performance art. it is a play within a play. and I fear the audience has not caught on.

it feels like she is reclaiming it all. I feel like this could either be a hint at a new beginning or a signal that she has broken and this is the end. this felt like the tell-all memoir written in code that everyone else will finally understand when she really leaves this spotlight. it's the lucky one come to life. she is daydreaming about fucking it all and leaving this life behind so she can finally have some goddamn peace.

I love this album for it as art. it is so expressive. it is so heartbreaking. it's messy and nuanced, and I think it is going way the fuck over most people's heads, especially when you really dig into poetry being the theme and the specific works she references. it's only been a week and I am just starting to really dig in but talk about a fucking iceberg.

#ttpd #tsttpd #tortured poets department

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csuitebitches · 4 months

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I apologize for the long ask and if this question is a bit juvenile but objectively, how can one “gain” pretty privilege/gauge how they are viewed? I’ve done well in career pursuits for how early on I am ( I graduated in 2020) but started noticing that the invites to events/opportunities where one can really establish themselves not only professionally but socially, I was getting passed over by some higher up colleagues. In speaking to a female mentor who is related to my field and the same background as me (Black), she alluded that while my race may play a small factor in it, it’s more so my appearance that may be holding me back as the personality and poise is there. Some coworkers of mine who are brilliant and POC have similar credentials and positions as I and while we are all wonderful and hard working, they (who I feel are more beautiful and put together looks-wise) have discussed privately to me they have noticed a difference in treatment between us. While it’s not right, I am adult enough to know not to let things that can be fixed hinder the life I want. Your page is a wealth of information and I appreciate how encouraging you are!!

well. I’m going to be very blunt.

it’s all fun and games to say “oh fuck the beauty standards they’re terrible and they shouldn’t exist” yes, true, unfortunately they do exist and they play a bigger role than we imagine it to be.

the first thing you have to get right is your mindset.

you need to be strong enough to admit that you need changes in X, Y, Z area but not in A, B, C area. You also need to be a little loyal towards your racial identity (for the better or worse) because that’s what is going to make you stand out.

if you have a sensitive, overly emotional mindset and you get hurt very easily / become obsessive by nature, I highly recommend you to STOP reading now.

Understand what is considered pretty in your country and area. Even in one country, beauty standards can different from the north and south. Don’t exactly try to become attractive for the opposite sex but understand what they find attractive because these guys are your primary responders to your pretty privilege. Women will be kind on the surface and so it can be difficult to get constructive criticism from them.

Understand what YOU consider pretty. Who are the women who you think are crazy beautiful? What do they look like, dress like, how’s their hair and their make up, can you replicate any of it? Rule of thumb when it comes to hair and beauty - look at influencers / celebs who are of your racial background for the best fit.

there are always a few things that are universally considered “respectfully attractive” not “you wanna fuck me attractive”- semi modesty/ modesty outfits (my father always told me that when in doubt, go for a more conservative look), hygiene, well kept hair, clean nails and toe nails, soft skin, natural make up, natural hair colour, perfume, clothes that fit, skin care, a workout routine.

pretty privilege is not just the art of looking pretty. It’s also bringing in something of value on the table. Value = money / connections / knowledge/ humour / being the fun social person / whatever value the target group considers to be the most important for you to be relevant to them. Work on your soft skills. It’s better to look half baked but have solid soft skills than to look amazing and not know how to converse.

things that one normally notices when meeting someone new:

Skin - is it clear, is the make up overdone?

hair - is it messy or does it suit your face structure?

how you smell

teeth, when you talk - and dental hygiene

shoes - are they filthy?

shirt/ top - does it fit you well (always check that the seams on your shoulder and your actual shoulder line up), the colour of your clothes

body type, posture, how you carry yourself

start with incremental changes. Make a list of things you think you could improve on (this is not a list of “ugly” things, it’s an “improvement/ potential” list). Sort them according to ease of improvement (is this going to be expensive and difficult or affordable and easy?) and time (can this be done overnight or will it take some time).

Use point 1 and 2 only as launching pads. You do not have to look like Beyoncé, you’re simply understanding what her MUA and hair stylist does for her that could work for you. After a point, you have to ensure that YOUR identify sticks out and is still there, you’re not born to imitate someone else and also, it’s very obvious when someone is trying to be someone they’re not.

again. I repeat. If you’re going to get obsessive and make yourself sick over this it’s NOT WORTH IT. If you’re not mentally capable of making these changes, do not go through it.

#Q/a #pretty privilege

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shokolandish · 3 months

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edit: i made a new charlie design and a post-finale vanessa design!

---

viv is not a good person and i don't support her, but ive got a hyperfixation right now and im gonna make that everybody else's problem

besides, separate art from the artist or whatever

hazbin has a shit ton of mistakes, problems, same body and hell, even same clothes syndrome. does hell only have one shop or something???

but i just kiiiinda enjoy (?) it for what it is

and ive seen a lot of people do redesigns and that seems really fun and honestly, the characters have a lot of potential that's just blatantly ignored by the show

aaaanyways, after all that out of the way, i present to you...

finished refs for two of my redesigns for the cast!!! did the main couple first, naturally

soo, here's charlie

age: about 22 in human years

and vanessa!

age: about 25 years old. not sure if angels age differently but that's her age in human years

some notes under the cut

Charlie

- yep, i made her non-binary. just get a lot of non-binary energy from xer. besides, i like the hc of them preferring the name charlie over charlotte because it sounds more gender-neutral

- i like to imagine xer a bit on the bigger side complexion-wise. like, i don't know if you could call her chubby but she is a bit plump and really soft to the touch not only because of the fur. i feel like being soft and having more soft edges in buns design would fit buns character more

- she's not freakishly tall anymore!!!! like.. i don't mind her being tall because she's the princess of hell after all.. also have you seen how tall lilith is???? but i feel like sometimes it's TOO much... also honestly it also just fits them more imo??

- they're a redhead now. I MEAN LIKE. both lucifer and lilith were described with red hair in old paintings.. i just had to.

Vanessa

- yeah yeah i made her a demigirl... her original color palette just screamed demigirl. like. it was literally the demigirl flag color palette.

- i thought of naming her violet but that'd be a little too on the nose i think- gave her actual hips!! and not whatever was going on in her original design (the waist just going straight into the legs)

- also made her a little more.. (uh i guess the appropriate word is "thicc") overall- yeah i also redesigned the angelic spear a bit. not too proud of it but i think it gets the idea across

- i don't usually.. draw noses, but i figured it was a pretty big/most recognizable part of her design so i gave her one.

- oh yeah btw she's not gray anymore!!!! yippee!!!!! like what's even up with viv and making poc characters gray. anyways since she's a fallen angel i figured giving her a more human appearance would make sense. we've seen winners in heaven and a lot of them look pretty human. even if we only look at exorcists, lute looks pretty human too.

writing notes

okay, so, i wanna give you some notes about the writing, but before i do - i am NOT a professional writer, im just a kid who has some criticism for the hellfire of a show hazbin is

with that out of the way...

chaggie's writing

okay so. chaggie am i right.

so, ill just get this out of the way - it's boring

like, really boring

chaggie defenders will say they're just "casual" and im an asshole for wanting more from them but you can be casual and not be FUCKING BORING

like.. all of their interactions just go the same waythey comfort each other or hold hands or vaggie is trying to convince charlie to do something and she NEVER. FUCKING. LISTENS. like seriously.

the only time she actually listened was when vaggie convinced her to be more assertive but she was trying to do it anyway... and she changed vaggie's words and did her own thing anyways

they don't even have that much chemistry. and they're like, the main couple. they're supposed to have chemistry.

hell, emily and charlie had more chemistry in one episode they interacted in than vaggie and charlie in the whole damn show

vaggie's writing

vaggie's writing.. it's... sigh.

she doesn't really feel like a separate character when she's with charlie

they're just. doing the same thing. over and over again. all of their interactions are the fucking same. like.. i wanna care but i just have no reason to. i just DON'T FUCKING CARE.

even vaggie's whole deal in "whatever it takes" is her just?? dedicating her life to being charlie's partner?? and not even being her own person and living for herself??? like. what's up with that. maybe i just didn't pay enough attention??? i can't be bothered to rewatch any chaggie scenes in episode 2 because they did not deserve that drama and i just don't care enough

im supposed to care but i don't

the show just. doesn't give me any reason to care.

vaggie interacting with ANY other character is so much more interesting - i don't know what to expect, i can't predict it!

vaggie interacting with alastor? hell yeah! we never know alastor's intentions and seeing vaggie not taking any of his shit is really entertaining!

vaggie interacting with angel dust? sure! id love to hear the bickering or maybe them having to put up being alone with each other for an episode? maybe both of them having to put up with charlie's shenanigans and bonding over that?

vaggie interacting with niffty? okay sure! a lil gremlin and an involuntary caretaker maybe with vaggie seeing niffty can take care of herself? or vaggie trying to put up with her insanity?

vaggie interacting with husk? oh hell yeah, they both seem to be the straight man in any situation (despite neither of them being straight but whatever), maybe they can have a drink or two together.

vaggie interacting with pentious? yes please! she'd not take any of his shit, but honestly? pentious' obliviousness with vaggie's seriousness could be a very fun dynamic!

but charlie? yeah i can just. predict any interaction they'll have.

and that's not really a good thing with the main couple

because it just gets old really quickly

and we see them all the time, so after some time they can just start to irritate people

how would i fix it?

MAKE THEM INTERESTING, DAMN IT

maybe make charlie listen to vaggie more often??

or maybe vaggie getting a bit irritated because charlie doesn't take her advice seriously

or maybe actually show us how they fell in love?? not just love at first sight or whatever they had in the flashback

like, id love to see actual chemistry develop!or maybe make their interactions not as predictable??

or maybe actually show us how they work together

have an episode dedicated to them

that's the problem with trying to fit everything into one season - the character and relationship developments can end up rushed and just. not very good.

like.. the season we got could be easily stretched out into two or three, WHERE ARE YOU GOING SO FAST, SHOW?? why so fast

this show doesn't know about the existence of filler episodes and we NEED filler episodes

to actually get to know the characters, to explore dynamics, to get to know the world around them

the season is just way too short to tell the story it's trying to say

and if i didn't care about a character from the start and the show doesn't let me meet them... im not gonna just start caring.

---

anyways, that's about it! im definitely gonna do more, i even have angel and pentious ready:) niffty, husk, alastor, emily or adam are next after them, i already have them sketched out

idk what order im gonna post them in but we'll see i guess

---

bonus:

some concepts

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dailyrothko · 15 days

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Thoughts on Barnett Newman? Since his "Stations of the Cross" series is right next to a room of Rothko paintings in the national gallery I was curious about what you think of him, personally I prefer Rothko's work but Stations of the Cross is nice imo :)

I do like the Stations of the Cross, and it's really nice the way the NGA has them all together much more effective as a group I think. They are my favorites of his paintings.

Newman was a writer and become a painter later than Rothko or Gottlieb or Still. I think there was tension about him as he was seen to be getting on the bandwagon. They say Gottlieb was enraged called him "Bullshit Barney" (i think that's right, something like that). But depending on who you ask, Rothko was less wound up about it, I think he didn't feel as threatened. However, Clement Greenberg, the most influential critic of the time, embraced Newman and didn't like Rothko. To me it's all politics but I think it may have hurt Rothko's feelings, he was sensitive.

Newman appealed to Rothko's intellectual side but they were very different. Newman affected a pose, wore a monocle, posed in a suit with a cigarette holder. Everyone seems to say he was a very smart person but some of his peers I think were less impressed with his actual painting. One annoyance was that he apparently changed the dates on some paintings to make it appear as if he had done them earlier than he had.

I hesitate to say anything is 100% true, I only know what I read.

Jack Tworkov said, "I think that Rothko's struggle was an intense one. And now that I know his work much better, his earlier work that I've seen a great deal more of, I can now see what he started from, what he worked through in order to get where he did. Whereas Newman began painting I think in 1947 with that stripe and that was it."

Without being even more digressive, I do think as a society we place too much emphasis on the single artist and whole genius idea. People are parts of groups and their groups are part of a society that has different functions depending on when they exist (Tworkov has good things to say about that). Ginsberg had the Beat poets, for instance, it's part of a bigger tapestry, if you will. I think Americans love this genius myth, (everyone is a goddamn genius, apparently)and that obsession fuels the art world too. There are plenty of painters who do great paintings as good as anyone, but if they are not anointed, they don't sell the same, so i think it invites the idea that one artist is the best and the others must be lesser. If you're an Orson Welles type, you are great but also great at fueling your myth to get work, other people just don't have it in them. Newman could play the whole game a lot better than Rothko.

For me, I do like his paintings and especially Stations of the Cross, but I would say I find his painting less deep than Rothko's. He kind of stuck to a simpler thing than some of the artists of the period. It's not about these personalities really, it's about the art. But I thought I would give some Rothko context to your question.

#mark rothko #markrothko #rothko #daily rothko #dailyrothko #abstract expressionism #modern art #questions #barnett newman

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untoldsoup · 6 months

Text

Something scary about drawing fan comics is when you're faced with a pose, or a background, or a color scheme that is needed to move the plot forward but you *know* is beyond your skill.

Or even just a character that's hard to draw (looking at you, early versions of bowser lol).

You know it's not turning out and it's not going to be perfect. And it won't be perfect for a while as you figure things out slowly, and the fear everyone else can see you struggled with that one panel, or that one page. Just feeling like everyone can *tell* this is where you faultered and the scope of your story was bigger than what you could do but you pushed forward anyway.

And then I read other artists comics and I wonder if they are having the same struggles. And they *must*, I can't be alone in this, but I don't see those struggles in their work. So surely If I'm reading their comic and I can't see where they faltered or struggled or feel that 'this is the worst page I've ever drawn' then no one else can see it in mine, and we truly are our own worst critic. We judge our own work on a scale we wouldn't judge others by.

You got to remind yourself the viewer most likely won't see those mistakes. And if they do they are already reading the next panel and moving on. They didn't stop to analyze and judge that one mistake that you agonized over yet couldn't properly resolve.

Sometimes when I'm struggling, when a panel is just...not how I want and I realize I've spent so much time trying to fix small things no one will give a shit about I hear that meme in my head, the one that says "fuck it, we'll do it live!" And I move on. It's just gunna be like that. I gotta keep the momentum going. I can't be hung up on one thing.

And the momentum is crucial with comics. You gotta keep moving. Every panel or page you finish helps the next one be better, because soon things you once struggled with are second nature. You gotta use the tools in your toolbox. References are not cheating and every person who ever said that to an artist held that person back from improving. You're never going to fully know how to draw that angle if you don't *look at it*. It wont become second nature to draw if you just hope you can guess right through sheer force of will.

And coloring is fucking hard. It's tedious. Its boring but god when you finally get it right it's so rewarding. When you learn a new thing that makes your work pop.

And you gotta just accept your art will not look the same from page one to page 50 if you're learning as you go. You got to stop being embarrassed. Because it shows you were *learning*. It shows you improved and yes the early pages wont look as good but look!! Look at what you can draw now. It's a visual representation of every new skill, every new technique you learned on the way and we gotta stop cringing at our old work and instead thank it for getting us to where we are now.

#rambling after waking up at 3pm #just working on some really hard panels rn

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thefirstknife · 2 months

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lightfall was a lot of fun, i think the only gripes i have with it is that i wish the patrol zone was a bit bigger and i wish there were more of those little holo-cats. i’m almost tempted to speculate that the people getting so up in arms were partially looking for a reason to call it a bad expansion because of nimbus.

the main criticism i saw was about the tone of the expansion not being tense enough, but i don’t think it would’ve worked to make lightfall a super tense and grim expansion because there wouldn’t’ve been much payoff for it

Yeah agreed. People got SUPER obsessed with the placeholder art we got 3 years before Lightfall which was... placeholder art. But it was basic black-and-white image that looked edgy and if you look at the fashion Destiny players prefer, you know that they like their edginess. Lmao! But yeah, the complaints about "placeholder art was a better direction of Lightfall" is so bizarre to me because like. It's placeholder. Lightfall wasn't being developed yet at the time. There was no direction.

But people wanted some incredibly grimdark expansion which is insane to me because like... This is Destiny? It does have exceptionally dark themes and background stuff, but on the surface it's never been grimdark. Even the most serious expansions have humour and whimsy in it. I also think that Lightfall was fairly tense due to the high-paced action and the looming threat of "The Witness wants this incomprehensible paracausal entity to finish the Collapse and we have no clue how it means to do that, but we know what the Collapse is and we have to prevent this at all costs."

I personally think that a lot of people just do not understand the aesthetic Lightfall went with on the account of not being old enough to know it. I don't know how much merit there is to this and there's definitely people who DID understand the aesthetic, but just don't really like it, which is fine; we all have different preferences! I personally do not vibe AT ALL with the aesthetic of Forsaken. However, I understand what they wanted to do with that aesthetic and I understand that they nailed that aesthetic for those that do love it and that made the campaign click really well for them. Lightfall wasn't made "wrong;" it had a really well defined and perfectly executed style. It's just not everyone likes that style. This is true for every expansion as well.

The 80s action movie vibe has a goofy and campy feel, but to me it did not detract from the real threats and tension because that's just how that vibe works. And I'm a huge fan of that vibe so Lightfall landed perfectly for me. There's a really silly and over-the-top quality to it, but it's underlined with a lot of emotional journeys between characters and larger-than-life threats.

Also! I really enjoy how Destiny does genre switching with each expansion and even each season. It's one of my favourite things about the setting: the flexibility to just do whatever, without messing up the base of the setting. It's probably the reason why I genuinely have NO issues with any of the campaigns or seasons. They all have problems naturally, but I can never pick what's my favourite or least favourite because they all fill different niches for me.

#destiny 2 #lightfall #ask

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the-iron-shoulder · 22 days

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It says the way to your heart is through a good boss theme so if a guy started playing Molgera's theme -

Molgera is SUCH a bop! My symphonic sandworm~

so fun story, I had the idea a few years ago of a tiny baby version of Molgera: Smolgera. (Can’t you imagine it? It’s so cute, right?) I tried searching everywhere for it, but the Internet disappointed me. Nothing to be found. In fact, there wasn’t a hell of a lot of Molgera fan art at all! What the hell, right?

I then reflected on this and realized that Molgera is a late game boss with a cool but not necessarily unique design who isn’t exactly plot-critical (you could replace it with any arbitrary boss and the story would be the same) and who doesn’t have any dialogue. It’s only actually going to be famous to VGM-heads like us!

I mean I’m just saying, you go to MAGFest and mention Molgera and I bet you’ll get a bigger response than at your other average con, even with a similar proportion of Zelda fans in attendance. (Source: trust me bro, I know the vibes)

aaaaanyway I’m not a visual artist, so I instead went on Fiverr and commissioned an artist to draw Smolgera for me, as seen above. Definitely one of my best art purchases 😁

#Molgera #smolgera #Legend of zelda #zelda #wind waker #vgm #ganondorf #I recorded a cover of Molgera a few years ago but it’s too low quality for me to want to share it but maybe I’ll try to do it again someday

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yuikomorii · 10 months

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The day tumblr stans will stop being chronically online is the day I will finally like this fandom. Goofy aah people think their opinions matter?

Last year everyone adored Ayato on this platform but after a certain ahem cult ahem of people joined, I can sense they’re secretly having beef with Ayato and are sending mean anons to Ayato fans for some jealousy reason.

Granted he is not my personal best boy but he’s DiaLovers’ best boy for a fact and the hype he started getting is pretty much deserved. In a series of games that’s a bit dead, I’m glad he’s able to keep it relevant not only for the DiaLovers fans. Don’t mind delulus saying bad things about him, those only exist on this platform anyway and are just seeking for attention and approval from random strangers.

// Tbh, I’m disappointed but not surprised. Unfair and two-faced people are everywhere and if they truly spend their time in that manner, you can already see how miserable their lives must be.

I believe that the Ayato hate train began with Youngblood and picked up steam this year after the release of the Meow Meow vampire art. Many people made fun of Ayato's appearance and blamed him for FaVoRiTiSm , despite the fact that everyone in Japan adored him there. I don't know why, but the DL Tumblr fandom is completely out of touch with everything DL-related. They have no idea that Rejet simply creates Ayato content as a marketing ploy; in fact, Japanese fans are literally the ones who request it. In 2020, Ayato was stated as fans’ top choice and got invited as a co-star with a national idol at Nino-san, which was broadcasted on the second largest television corporation in Japan. If people hadn’t recommended him so much, he wouldn’t have ended up there… it’s not that hard to understand.

This has the same vibe as those kpop fans who always complain about how their ult group is underrated but don’t even stream their songs, instead they spend their time criticizing bigger groups for what??

I’m not forcing anyone to love Ayato but at least give me good reasons to dislike him. I understand not liking ALL Diaboys but isn’t it hilarious how some people would give you a litany of reasons why they can't stand Ayato, but when you look at their bias, he did the same (or worse) things as (than) Ayato? If you truly dislike those actions, at least pick a side, lol. I honestly don’t hate any Diaboy (though I don’t agree with their behavior all the time) but even if I did, I wouldn’t throw shade at that one character out of the blue only to piss of his stans.

And I swear, it's incredibly annoying how some people would tear Ayato down when asked about their favorite character/ship/route, etc., even though he has absolutely NOTHING to do with the question or he isn’t even the main topic of the question. Saying things like, "Yeah, I like this character because, unlike Ayato (just an example hehe)—" or "No hate towards Ayato but — *proceeds to mischaracterize and hate on him*" are examples of uncalled hate speech. Literally why use HIM most of the time as an example when talking about negative things?? At this point that’s not even a coincidence anymore, but a pattern, which is truly giving fan behavior.

Such people are really the worst. Reminds me of how some fans still think it’s okay commenting stuff like “This is great but I don’t like *inserts thing the OP obviously likes*” or “Not trying to be mean but *starts being mean*”. Respectfully, who even asked for your opinion? Mind your own business and learn basic etiquette.

#admin

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a-town-called-hometown · 2 months

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hi!! i loved your post about deltarune's metafiction and its (not) escapist themes, and it got my brain jogging, like... i guess ive just been thinking "why"? like ive heard that take before and i think its valid, but also like. why ? its obvious enough to me that deltarune uses the lightner/darkner relationship as a reflection of the player/game relationship and both of these things are addressed critically, but i can't help but wonder if there's a driving force for it all, outside of deltarune. like i can accept diegetically the darkners are not, or shouldn't be, subject only to the whims of lightners, but with any good story if you break it down to its core is ultimately saying something about humanity or the world and such. i mean i seriously doubt the people who seem to think that Toby Fox intends to induce *actual* guilt into the people who fund his life's work and career by purchasing his videogames, like, it's obvious that "you are a bad person because you play this videogame" isn't the intended message, nor was it in undertale. but then, what is? what is the purpose of a story that invites us to think of toys and game characters as "real"? not to trash my beloveds but i mean, literally speaking, their lives DONT matter, they r not real. it just feels like ive seen a lot of discussion about 'what' toby is doing with the narrative but i feel like that's only half the ordeal, the other half would be the reason why. my first thought was that the implicit 3rd thing being compared to the light-dark, player-game thing is actual social hierarchy IRL in which people are oppressed by another group that doesnt see them as human, bc iirc toby talked a bit about feeling powerless and wanting to do more to change the real world on real issues in an interview in 2020ish and of course there's the snarky gag about the fedora plugboy who doesn't like politics, so he doesn't care that an evil ruler is taking over the world. im not sure if that sits right with me as what the intention is (esp because the latter is a darkner talking about another darkner) but i couldnt think of much else although i do feel like a fallacy people get themselves into a lot in the fandom is the assumption that toby fox is this Impeccable Writing Machine and not just like A Guy. people make weird or flawed art sometimes, it doesn't *have* to adhere to standards. maybe deltarune is meaningless (or the meaning IS that it's meaningless, as though to complete the metaphor of it being a "real" fictional world, because if it is 'real' then like our world there is no "answer" or "purpose", it simply *is*.) dunno! im not expecting it to boil down to a simplistic fairytale moral like "dont bully people!!" or something, mr. fox tends to write more convoluted than that, but i feel like if there's something to be gained from this particular part of the game's story then i'm not sure i see the vision. what do u think? do u think this question is even answerable with only two chapters?

respectfully, I do heavily disagree with the notion that good stories necessarily have to say anything about the world or about humanity. one of the reasons I like metafiction is that it usually says something about how stories are constructed, and that's enough for me. there's plenty of stories that have bigger themes that aren't really all that much about human nature, at least, not directly. a story can comment on one specific thing without necessarily making a broader statement about people, you know? not every story has an easily explained moral lesson.

that being said, yes, this plot element is in service of deltarune's larger themes! which are about agency, control, fate, and identity.

deltarune's fate theming and its metafiction elements are a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation given how interlocked they are, but I've found it helpful to describe deltarune as a "person vs. fate narrative that uses a metafictional lens to characterize fate." rather than the three fates of greek mythology or whatever dictating its characters' lives, it is instead the structure of the rpg their world was made to be. they are player characters. they are npcs. they play specific roles in the narrative. no one can choose who they are in this world.

control is emphasized in this story. there's the control we have over kris, of course, and in a much subtler way the control we have over the world through them. there's the darkner-lightner hierarchy, which parallels our dynamic with kris. i would argue that there are even social forces in hometown which also serve to place the lightner characters into specific roles. under this level of control, it's hard for characters to push back and determine their own identities.

all these forces combine to mean that deltarune's characters are fighting back against the narrative itself! which says stuff about people's agency, and the way rpgs are written, and how we interact with all that...

ultimately, you can apply this to real life. even if there aren't things like "fictional people who are actually real," hierarchies of control do exist in real life. narratives that erase the agency and internality of certain types of people exist in real life. it's admittedly a rather general statement, but like with any narrative about fate, seeing characters resist rules that are seemingly written into the fabric of their existence can make you feel inspired to also define your own identity! and to be transgender. don't forget to be transgender

#deltarune #deltarune analysis #im not kidding deltarune really did make me transgender.

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takiki16 · 5 months

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Hey so I am starting to get into Jupiter Ascending fandom (a couple years late but what can I say). I was thinking of writing a fic. Do you have any resources for JA extra information?

Thanks in advance. Also I am loving your fic (it's how I started getting into the fandom lololol). can't wait to reread!!!

HOOOOOOO BOY!!!!

I'm paging @bemusedlybespectacled, @gallifreyburning, @vr-trakowski, @sorrelchestnut, @florentinequill, @fuckyeahjupiterascending, @vrabia, and honestly ANYONE ELSE who wants to chime in here, bc HOOOOOOO BOY!

(I made that sweet puppy in fucking 2015 on my dying laptop in the travel study dorm in DC, JUPITER ASCENDING HOW I LOVE THEE)

The eternal fucking tragedy of Jupiter Ascending is that the wider world doesn't love it like we do. Does it have every single thing that turns my crank, id-wise? Sure! Does it have gorgeous over-the-top sequined costumes and extravagant set pieces that remind you at every minute that this movie specially thanked Swarovski Crystal in the credits? Sure! Does it have theeeee single most pinpoint reading of MY PERSONAL FEMALE GAZE that Channing Tatum has ever done? (sorry mister Magic Mike, but you do not even come CLOSE to "may I kill him?" in terms of sexy) SURE! Was this movie a commercial or critical success? Absolutely not 😔

There isn't, as far as I'm aware, an art book. There isn't an official novelization. There isn't even an actual script posted to the usual internet databases that isn't just an automatic shitty talk-to-text rendition of the movie dialogue. There are concept art paintings and old cast interviews floating around, and this auction website where the Wachowskis auctioned off some of the props from the movie, but as far as canon resources and extra material beyond the movie itself there isn't much. A quick duckduckgo search would probably be more helpful to you than anything else, if any of the websites still have the articles up - it WAS eight years ago, and doesn't that just break my fucking heart.

My corner of tumblr LOVED this movie. In 2015, there were TONS of posts gathering interviews, posting concept art, making cosplays, all the signs of a small but healthy fandom ecosystem. However, we call this the blue hellsite for a reason - not all of those resources are still there, and the ones that survived time and incompetent archival site coding are probably difficult to find. I would definitely recommend trawling the JA tags of all the blogs I tagged at the start of this post, as JA introduced me to two of my longest and most beloved of all mutuals. ALL of their insights were key to A Fine Chain.

There is also my own jupiter ascending tag and my more specific jupiter ascending meta tag, although I don't know how bored you are lol. The general JA tag is 105 pages - I would almost recommend just starting at page 105 and working forward from there since it chronicles my descent into kinky space angel werewolf brain rot pretty nicely. There are also my ao3 bookmarks for JA.

I WILL SAY that it has been 8 years, and I have changed into a very different person than the one I was when I first saw this movie. I don't REGRET the first few chapters of A Fine Chain, or any of my breathless meta posts, but I do think that if I were to write any of them over again, I'd hope that my writing style has matured and I'd have lots more extra material to draw from. Actually graduating from law school, writing long fic in another fandom, and generally percolating more as a person has given me lots of new perspectives on JA that make it more interesting even as I still enjoy it (for example, HBO's Succession is ODDLY RELEVANT and I wish there were more JA fanwriters to take advantage of that fact).

...I hope that was helpful? I will ETERNALLY mourn the fact that this fandom wasn't isn't bigger - we haven't even broken 1k on ao3! But EYE MYSELF am here to discuss JA stuff as long as this weird spurt of creative energy sustains me, and my inbox is always open!

#jupiter ascending #fandom #my posts #jupiter ascending meta #if NO ONE WILL LOVE YOU MY GLITTERY SPACE EXTRAVAGANZA I WILL LOVE YOU #was it perfect? no. was it a bit of a hot mess at times? yes. BUT DO I LOVE IT? HELL YEAH #long post

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dakt37 · 1 year

Text

I love this "Wholesome Sonic and Tails Wednesday" trend. I don't have any new art, but here's a little ficlet set in my de-aged Tails Boom AU. It takes place before the other one.

~~~

"Never fear, Amy Rose is here!" She announced herself with gusto as she threw open the front door of Tails' house, inviting herself inside. Hearing noises, she immediately looked left to the kitchen. "What are you doing?"

Sonic didn't turn to face her, too focused on his task. "What's it look like I'm doing?"

"It looks like you're scouring a child like he's a dirty coffee cup."

Sonic froze mid-motion, then cranked his head around to glare at her over his shoulder. "Bathing an infant in the sink is perfectly normal. Look it up."

Amy hummed loudly and with much incredulity, walking around behind him to circle the long counter that cordoned off the kitchen alcove. When she got to the opening, she wasn't impressed with the scene inside. "He's closer to a toddler than an infant," she observed. "And you've gotten more water on the floor than in the sink."

Sonic glared at her again, this time over his other shoulder. "Are you here for a good reason, or just to criticize my parenting?"

Amy's eyebrows went up, but she left the label unanalyzed. "I brought food." She retrieved a large glass pan from her flowery tote bag and held it up like a trophy.

Sonic's frown deepened. "He's baby-fied, not dead," he snapped. "I don't need your condolences casserole." He turned back to the sink and poured shampoo into his palm.

Amy's eyes widened, then narrowed. A silence stretched as Sonic pointedly ignored her, the gentle motions of his fingers lathering fur a stark contrast to the emotion twisting his face. Luckily, the little fox under his hands was more interested in the hardware of the sink sprayer than the tension between the hedgehogs.

Eventually, Amy blew out a slow breath. "You know what I think?"

"I'm sure you'll tell me," Sonic grumbled, turning on the tap and checking the temperature of the water. With a plastic cup, he began rinsing suds off of Tails, letting the faucet run between refills.

Amy set down everything she had been carrying, and came to lean against the counter next to the sink. "I think," she placed a hand on Sonic's shoulder, causing him to pause again, "you're doing a great job. But you don't have to keep doing it alone."

Sonic silently watched Tails for another moment as the kid twisted the sink sprayer around in its base, examining the trigger mechanism.

"There better not be celery in that thing you cooked," Sonic finally said. He ghosted a finger across the tip of Tails' ear, watching it flick reflexively. "Because I'll tell you right now, he will know and he won't eat it."

"Never, "Amy retorted imperiously. "I do recall the Potluck Incident of last spring. And I don't imagine he was less picky as a toddler."

Sonic slumped then, resting on his forearms against the sink edge and letting his wet hands drip into the basin. He cocked his head to finally face her again, smiling sheepishly. "Yeah," he agreed, "I know you're smarter than that." His eyes flicked away, guiltily. "Sorry."

"Apology accepted." She gave his shoulder a squeeze and added gently, "We'll figure this out. Our little guy will be a slightly bigger little guy in no time."

"Ah, well," Sonic sighed. "It's not all so bad right now. Is it, bud--"

He turned to address the soggy little fox in the sink, and got a facefull of water. Tails giggled, his tails sloshing the shallow water around him. He held the sprayer in both hands, having successfully wrested it from its base and pulled up enough hose to let him take aim at the hedgehog.

"You little gremlin!" Sonic cried in faux outrage, "Surrender your weapon!"

Tails just laughed again and sprayed him right between the eyes.

Amy giggled as well, then pointed at the main faucet, which was still running between sprayer attacks. "You gave him the ammo, Sonic."

Sonic wrapped his hand around his little brother's on the sprayer, and directed it to soak her too.

#the curious case of miles prower #wholesome sonic and tails wednesday #dakity yaks #dakt rambles about sonic stuff #i wrote this in October and never posted it because I'm irrationality self conscious about writing prose 🫣#i brainstorm in present tense; if i switch it to past tense it's suddenly the most embarrassing thing I've ever written #idgi either but there you go

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cinefairy · 2 years

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Hey! I know you get tons of asks daily, but I saw you reblogged my old anon post lol (this one > https://at.tumblr.com/cinefairy/long-post-ahead-the-4d-is-the-only-real-reality/us69phf7wzjv idk how to link it bc I’m on mobile) but anyways I just wanted to update everyone to say that I’m doing so very well. Back then I was so stressed and idk I TRULY didn’t understand the law and I was still looking outward and I was stilll reading Neville and over consuming and not actually being a doer but I just wanted to update that all of those things are behind me and that I’ve manifested a lot of things now so I’ll list the ones I’m comfortable with sharing

1. I got into my dream college, I was orginally planning to go to an Ivy League but I realized I truly never really desired that and I just wanted to get in for the aesthetics and for my ego but deep down I wanted to go to this local small private art school near me and I got in! And I’m a top student as well. My teachers love me, recently one of my teachers used my work as an example for others and gave me extra credit!

2. Everything in my life has gotten so much easier. I’ve realized that I am the cause and if I am the cause of the bad things then I can also be the cause of the good things so I completely got rid of my inner critic and my fears/anxieties/worries and I am no longer surviving but thriving!

3. Making friends has gotten so much easier and my relationship with myself and my inner man it’s so amazing. Like yesterday I was shopping for perfume for myself with family bc it was my birthday and one of the workers complimented my vintage jeans and she was like she really loved vintage jeans and she told me all these places where she gets her vintage stock and I told my mom and she’s taking me and a friend to the places next week!

4. I manifested two of my ideal lululemon define jackets and flares! I asked my brother for it for my birthday and I really only asked for the jacket but I told myself he’s gonna give me two sets. So when my birthday came around he gave me a lululemon gift card and I opened it and it was for $400! Which I was able to order the two jackets and flares.

5 . I can easily play whatever I want on my guitar. I used to procrastinate on my guitar bc I thought it would be sooooo hard and that I would never be like my inspirations like Eddie Van Halen and Slash but once I went back to my roots and started back living in my imagination (NOT in a daydreaming way, wishing I could be just like them NO I assumed I was wayyy better than them ALL) it all became so much easier

6. I have fully accepted the laws of the law of assumption yk the basics like your imagination/inner man is the cause of it all and all of that crap (thanks to Edward art btw). I think that’s really a crucial reason why I think I really was “stagnant” with manifesting and just running in circles I truly didn’t understand the law. All I was doing was “trying” to get something and I was going 3D > 4D and I was affirming on loop just doing shit.

7. I finally got my learners permit lolz. I took my test and only missed two questions out of 40.

8. I finally realized what I truly desired. Now this one is so crucial because I remember reading on here about how some people are imagining things they truly don’t want and then Edward art said that you have to imagine what YOU want and not what OTHERS want from you and I did some deep diving and I realized I didn’t want what I wanted like I didn’t want fame, or fortune, or for people to be obsessed with me, or a baddie lifestyle, or men to flock at me, or a hypergamy lifestyle. I realized that was just who and I was using those lifestyles to fulfill the ego and I really view the ego as a bottomless pit like it’s only gonna get bigger and bigger until you just ignore it or pop it yourself. Like I didn’t want all of this designer crap like all I wanted was a life like the movie “dazed and confused” where I party til I drop on the weekends and I study like Rory Gilmore on the weekdays and I have this nice 70s-early 2000s rock/metal sound track vibe (I can’t explain this part but I just made a playlist and imagined my scenarios to it) and my own unique vintage style and I got that. 🤷🏾‍♀️ like if you desire something “odd” or “wonky” or “not so popular” like that then GO for it. No one is stopping you but self.

But now my inner man is fulfilled and if I desire something no matter how small or large I fulfill it instantly! Bc that’s what I’m here for anyways 🤷🏾‍♀️

Anyways I believe that’s really all I want to reveal. The law is really really easy peasy like when people say that they 100% mean it. Like no you don’t have to affirm 500 times, no you don’t have to mediate 5 times a day. All of it is coming FROM you not AT you. You are the cause of it all. Edward Art really helped me open my eyes more than they already were opened. He’s really the only law of assumption source I really trust other than Neville and a couple of blogs on here. But if you are still “stuck” (which you never are), I would 100% check out Edward art on YouTube and Reddit bc his wisdom freed me from a lot of things that I didn’t even consciously know I was doing. But you HAVE to apply it. You can’t be a hearer only. You have to apply the wisdom.

“The only real illusion is your disbelief that you don’t have your desires”

this is so amazing anon. im so happy for you. and i relate to you so much on the last point, go for the desires YOU TRULY DEEPLY WANT. do not alter your desires based on what other people popularise.

glad you’re living the life you want, you deserve it, im proud and you’re incredibly smart and inspiring ❤️

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