Silco || Before & After

` So the idea here was done for his writing blog — but with the hc in mind he scribbles out people he meets faces? Had the idea Jayce would not be the best at drawing people’s faces at first. Rune / project designs and anything else detail oriented he's amazing with but people not so much. But I figure that changes over the years when he’s had more time to practice. ( was mostly an excuse to draw out people’s muses I’d write with at the time )

small brain: the scene where jayce gets it on w mel and the scene where sky asks viktor out and he refuses are paralleled to show that jayce has decided to focus on politics (mel) and neglect his partnership with viktor, while viktor continues to focus on science and experimentation (as well as poiting out viktors growing isolation from those around him).

big brain: the scene where jayce gets it on w mel and the scene where sky asks viktor out and he refuses are paralleled to show that viktor is not interested in women and is gay. and in love with jayce.

reading r.f. kuang’s babel right now and after skimming through some locked reddit threads i am so disappointed by the reception.

spoilers ahead, and disclaimer that i am only on chapter 21, but i went looking for a discussion about how their plan to cover up after lovell was a little lacking, and what i found instead were hundreds of disappointed (apparently) white readers tone policing the author. calling her a bad writer, unsophisticated, and overly simplistic. Arguments that are so profoundly rich with irony as these are nameless white readers discussing the qualifications of an asian cambridge/oxford/yale graduate, but i digress. i can easily enough dismiss these criticisms as inane and incomprehensible to anyone who values non-western intellect.

Wthe criticism i have seen over and over again though, which infuriates me to the point of hysterics is that the book is too “preachy”. again and again and again dozens of people posted and hundreds of people upvoted that kuang’s book about the evils of colonialism wasn’t subtle enough. that it’s too in your face, the characters are too aware of “modern” discussions and opinions of colonialism, and that her heavy handed, over-articulated critique shows her youth and inexperience.

i could scream.

because why should colonialism be subtle? why must people of color assuage our indignation to accommodate the feelings of our oppressor’s descendants? why must the cruel, ceaseless destruction of hundreds of world cultures be boiled down to a beautiful metaphor? why is it that books about the evils of capitalism and discrimination can be so easily understood in the fantastical dark academia pieces of white authors, but the second the discussion shifts to imperialism and white supremacy, we must speak in similes and hushed whispers?

does reading about western missionaries intentionally devastating the lives and cultures of people of color for dominance and profit feel like preaching to you? imagine how the natives feel. for monolingual, white intellectuals who base their intellect purely off of western morality and philosophy, this book may certainly feel like a lecture, but for the marginalized communities who to this day speak the languages of their colonizers, this is just reality. a reality that in upper academia is still discussed in stilted, awkward tones because it would require considering where their endowments comes from. and kuang would know that, as someone who graduated from such institutions thrice.

for those that say her character’s speak with too much modern disdain and comprehension of colonialism, these opinions are not modern. the novel takes place in the 1830s, slavery, indentured servitude, and genocide were common practices of the western empires, and i can promise you none of their victims would be upset by admitting so. to say that the cantonese protagonist, with his indian muslim and haitian best friends, the three of whom were torn from their colonized home countries and now make up 75% of the incoming class of oxford’s most prestigious college, should not hold beliefs of anti-imperialism and should not have the vocabulary to express such, is so completely absurd and insulting I can’t even dignify it a response.

make no mistake, it is not that i cannot believe the outrage, because it is so very believable, but i cannot fathom how someone can deign to call themselves a reader and so flagrantly despise learning the experiences of others.

something that was particularly fascinating to watch was when someone mentioned achebe’s things fall apart, lauding it as the faithful brother to babel’s prodigal son. in an interesting reversal of roles, this black author’s novel was presented as the model to which minority writers should aspire to. subtlety, intrigue, mysticism, a delicate string of scenes and plot points to allow the reader to internalize the profound pains of cultural oppression without pointing too many fingers at whose doing the oppressing. because it is simply ‘more powerful’ to draw a beautifully direct parallel to a rhetorical issue than to point at the true source of our real world, ongoing crisis. not only is this a deeply mischaracterized description of achebe’s novel, but is precisely the rhetoric that both novels aimed to critique.

no novel is perfect. i still have yet to finish babel, and some comments I’ve seen about dialogue and characterization choices, with which i often disagree, i see the merit and validity of such arguments. however listening to the mindless degradation of this work by self-proclaimed white academics, who offer nothing of note besides overly-intellectualized statements of cultural insecurity, frustrates me on a level i struggle to put to words in any language.

anyways back to reading! i don’t imagine my thoughts are of much note, but if i have anything interesting to say, i’ll give an impassioned key smash when i finish

Get Jinxed!!

Anyways, if anyone would like to translate what they're actually saying that'd be great, even if it's basically the same meaning with different wording ✨️

Ughhhhh

Like tried to open the "hey I'm thinking abt moving out" discussion and it just. Hm

- why leave when you can save so much money living here

- implications of them being hurt because I'm leaving more because this house is slowly killing me and less because of my horrific 2.5hr daily commute

- I need to live in a community again. I can't do suburbs anymore. Even urban loneliness is better than this. At least there are people about. I can go pop into little shops. Join a club. Deadass wandering around a mall would feel less isolating than this. ANYTHING

- unspoken but present "no one in our family has moved out until they got married", ESP for the women on my mother's side, and even then they moved literally down the street and formed a weird codependent dysfunctionional situation that I can't seem to extricate myself from

- it's expensive but I am going to kill someone and then myself if I have to stay here longer. I haven't had a life since 2020. And yeah partially that's covid and even more so it's Living Here and slowly dying a bit everyday after having been free and on my own for 8 yrs

- I spent those 8 yrs putting myself back together slowly and figuring out who I wanted and needed to be and within a year of being back I came the closest to forced involuntary psychiatric hold that I've ever been and I don't think that's a coincidence. The move is not entirely to blame. But it's hard to help myself in an environment like this one. I'm going to need a whole lifetime to piece myself back together and I still don't think it'll ever sit right or be whole again

- but if I leave who'll look out for bro 3. The baby. The sensitive one. The one most similar in temperament to me. Or it'll hurt my parents feelings and what little progress they've made will backslide and everything will get worse again and maybe my dad will *** and it'll just be. My fault.

-bro 2 fucked off across the country without guilt and I wish I could just not care but unfortunately I was raised to be the therapist and carer and my whole purpose of being is to sacrifice myself for other people's comfort so what else am I supposed to do. I have to make up for myself somehow

- my parents bought a starter home with shitty jobs when they were younger than me. I'm maybe NEVER going to be able to afford property, but if I don't start "wasting" money every month on rent I'm not going to live long enough for that to BE a problem. Let alone things like investing and retirement savings. But what if I lose my job or smthn goes drastically wrong and I end up back here with my tail between my legs anyways. Idk if I could survive that again

I am so goddam tired of every decision I make being the wrong one for my family. Of none of my (significant!) accomplishments mattering because they're not the traditional milestones. No I've never had a relationship, I've never even been in a date or been kissed. I'm a weird unattractive person and that's fine because I'm particular and peculiar about relationships anyway. Even if I hate that and I'm defined by hunger and grief. No I'm not engaged or married with kids. I'm tired of me appearing years behind my peers socially because I had to spend so long recovering from wanting to die all the time that I don't feel my age or maturity level even tho I AM comptent at my job and also just good and social lying to appear friendly and normal. I'm tired of being nanny and therapist and mom and all of these horrible gendered responsibilities that I never wanted and can't escape and have shaped me and ruined me and idk what I am without them and I can't even feel resentful without guilt because isn't that what I'm FOR. What else am I for than that. That's my purpose and my Duty and Obligation and I'm weak and selfish for chafing against it. I'm not allowed to love parts of my family and culture and then hate and resent all the ones that have hurt and trapped me and will continue to do so until either I, or all of them, are dead.

All I did was hurt and/or upset both my parents which makes everything worse for everyone in this hell house and maybe that's not my fault or responsibility but it sure feels like it is, and I can't escape it regardless.

I'm so goddam tired

The Tenno holds no memory of who or what suggested he pay Cetus a visit. Were he the sort to gamble, he may have begrudgingly placed his credits upon the Lotus, who remains ever eager to tug his strings one way or another across the stars. The particulars of this memory escape him, as so many others do, and it is only when he is attending to his weapons in orbit of Venus does the thought of passing nearby Earth even occur to him.

Conferring with Ordis confirms that his docket, nebulous as it has been these past days, could certainly allow him a detour from wherever it is duty takes him next. The Tenno considers it while he oils the barrel of the Vectis he's taken to lately. Slowly, slowly, his ship crosses into Venusian night.

New Loka can wait. The thought of dealing with the Perrin Sequence agitates him more than he thinks he can bear. Of the Red Veil, he remains uncertain and uneager for rendezvous, overdue as it may be. So, the matter is settled.

"Set a course," the Tenno says aloud in a ship near silent as a grave, and he prepares himself for planetfall.

-------

The very last thing he takes note of is the smell of it all.

Fondness for Earth is more instinct than anything. It is the home he cannot fully recall, the mother he knows only through hearsay and missives and histories available to him only by other accounts. Its atmosphere is bruised with toxins yet to heal, ugly whorls that, he is told, once existed only in cautionary tales well before planetary invasion was ever a possibility. That the planet is now infested by Grineer boils something deep within the Tenno, hateful without truly knowing why. This, too, is an instinct so deep it may as well be primal, and as the orbiter peels beneath atmosphere and crosses before the face of a singular, tremendous tower of suspiciously Orokin design, he prepares himself for the worst.

He hears the ocean before he disembarks. He hears other things, too: the barking of people from across the settlement, the shriek and laughter unmistakably belonging to children no older than he himself once was before the Void cracked he and so many others open. The Saryn he commands this day, jet black and indomitable in combat, barely makes it off the landing pier before he is rushed by young faces - young human faces, who babble excitedly at him in a language he does not recognize. And when they are chased off, herded by an older woman built like a barrel, thick in the middle with arms that look as though they could bend steel, the Tenno can only stare. Dark smears of blue enshroud bright, steely eyes, as well as a brow the Tenno only belatedly realized is arched, unimpressed.

She lifts a meaty, beckoning hand, and then she is gone, swallowed by the course of natives and travelers both that pour into Cetus.

Outside his consciousness, the Tenno hears Ordis chirp, "Oh, doesn't this seem like fun?"

-------

The sight of other Tenno has long since ceased to fill him with wonder. Not that it really ever did after the first few encounters: the novelty of their misfortune and the realization that it is shared lost its luster quickly enough, and when he crosses them in the field or upon the relays, he himself tends to keep his distance.

Here, they are impossible to avoid. It is a far cry from the clinical cleanliness of the relays, with their broad bulkheads and pristine corridors. Here, the ocean itself is drowned out by more chatter than the Tenno can remember hearing in his life; here, the narrow passages between tables and stalls and craftsmen hunkered down on small, rough-spun rugs are teeming with Warframes and people alike. Someone cries out about knives and dashes of viridian, cerulean, the colors to make the eyes of a lover shine bright and brilliant. Another hoists a sliver of some sort of flesh for the Tenno to presumably appreciate, though the color of it is immediately off putting. People in bloodied aprons cry over people with sharp blades, and then the people with pottery and stoneware and small jeweled keepsakes join in the cacophony, loud as seabirds, louder than the sea itself.

It is alive in a way the Tenno cannot immediately parse. This small settlement persists at the very edge of a world that, for all the galaxy knows, no longer welcomes them. Yet still they smile and laugh and raise their hands to greet the metal-and-curse beings that mill amongst them, weapons of war with weapons of war strapped to their spines. Yet still they live.

It is unlike anything he can remember. It is too noisy and too wet and there is a smell, he realizes, of salt and animal blood and sweat and strange fruits and hearth-fire, a bouquet so strong compared to the sanitized and recycled nothing of his vessel that he genuinely fears it will imprint upon and stain his senses permanently, that anything and everything forever more shall be overpowered by the smell of Cetus.

Another Tenno, cloaked in the form of a Rhino, gently buffets him aside. He tracks their form to a narrow stall near the center of the thickest part of the markets, where a young human is masked in the crude but unmistakable affectation of a Trinity. Behind them, rows of other masks are loosely hung upon a rack, where the Tenno can recognize Volts and Mags and something else, bulbous about the brow like some deep sea fish. The Rhino gestures, says something the Tenno cannot hear, something that makes the young stall-keeper laugh bright and loud and shameless.

There are worse smells, the Tenno decides then, watching small, delicate things pass between hands both living and false. The Rhino holds a Volt mask with care, as though it were still a living thing and not just carved from formerly living things. There are worse smells, the Tenno decides, than salt and sea and life.

Arcane x Barbie Selfie Generator

I understand a lot of Arcane fans expect Viktor to go down a proper "villain" arc to become the Machine Herald, but in my humble opinion Jayce is barrelling down that particular slippery slope way faster and harder than Viktor ever does in Season 1.

Viktor is elbows deep in an isolation-arc, that's true, and he does and will feel understandably abandoned by his friends top-side. But his intentions are good, his methods are entirely self-destructive, which isn't good to him but also explicitely not bad for anyone else, and I think there's still a huge step needed for Viktor to reach the point where he'd willingly hurt others for his goals (I mean, I'm sure we'll get there, I just think it needs more time).

And no, Sky doesn't count. Sky died in a freak lab accident that would have never occurred had she not violated all the most basic lab-safety protocols. Viktor could only be to blame if there aren't any lab safety protocols and he failed to implement any, but that's just as much on Jayce and Heimerdinger and Sky herself.

The only thing Viktor can be blamed for here is covering up her death, but that does not hold a candle to... everything Jayce is up to in the later episodes.

I also fully expect Jayce to fall back into full warmonger mindset.

And wouldn't that be nifty. Jayce and Powder as the ultimate parallel, driven to destruction as the only way out they see, both having influenced each other's tragedies without knowing. Both having their (former?) loved ones trying to stop and or reach them, with varying degrees of stopping and reaching and all the ugly fighting inbetween.

I maintain Jayce and Jinx have too much in common. It's going to be desastrous.

4 things to include in your content notes/summary to make your explicit gender neutral reader insert fic more accessible to trans readers

As a trans person, I've found it difficult to interact with reader-insert fic because the intimacy of 2nd person POV ("you" pronouns) means my gender dysphoria is much more easily triggered than if a third person POV is used. This isn't anyone's fault; my dysphoria is not your responsibility to manage. However, if you want to take steps to make your trans readers more comfortable, I put together a little list of suggestions that can make a major difference.

In the past, I've made frustrated posts about being triggered by reader insert fic. I let my own upset get the better of me and hurt folks, and for that I apologize. I've since deleted those posts since they were unhelpful and unfair. I hope that this post comes across as helpful, rather than judgmental or belittling.

Note: None of these suggestions limit what you can write; write whatever content you want to make! All suggestions are restricted to what kind of warnings/content notes you can include to help trans folks navigate reader fic more comfortably.

If you have a certain biology in mind for your reader, be specific. If you're writing reader as having a vagina/front hole, instead of tagging the fic as "AFAB Reader," say, "reader has a vagina/vulva." Not all AFAB people have vaginas, and many AMAB trans & intersex people do have vaginas. By saying "reader is AFAB," trans women, trans femmes, and other AMAB trans & intersex people are tacitly excluded from a fic, and the implied assumption is that AFAB people all have the same genitals.

Include a content note about what terms are used for the reader's body, and, again, be specific. In particular, avoid things like "feminine terms are used for reader." A lot of trans masculine people use the words cunt, clit, breasts, etc. for themselves; these terms are not inherently feminine. Referring to biological terms as “masculine” or “feminine” can come across as misgendering trans audiences. Instead, take note of which terms you're using, and list them. For example, "The terms hole, folds, lips, clit, and chest are used for reader,” or, “The terms length, cock, and tits are used for reader.”

Include a content note about the type of sex depicted or referenced. Lots of folks already use tags saying what type of sex is included, such as bottom reader or vagina fingering, which is great! It's also helpful to review what passing references are made. If the fic is mostly about oral but reference is made to reader bottoming during vaginal sex, include a note about that in the summary/CNs. If reference is made to a reader topping, same thing. Many trans folks have lots of dysphoria (and potentially euphoria!) around sex & sexual activities, and giving them a heads-up about what to expect is kind & compassionate.

Review your fic for other traditionally gendered language you might be using. You don't have to change such language/imagery; just include a content note for things that are common dysphoria triggers, which include references to hair, body type, clothing, etc. for example, descriptions of reader’s long hair*, curves, skirts/dresses*, or use of traditionally gendered language like "minx" or "bitch" might be deeply uncomfortable for a trans masculine or neutral person. (*Note: Obviously long hair and skirts/dresses are not inherently feminine; these are Western cultural norms, but most English-speaking fandom is Western/abides by Western cultural gender roles. They're also common [though obviously not ubiquitous] dysphoria triggers for transgender folks.) It's useful to include in your content notes what language/appearance markers are used for your reader. For example, "Reader has long hair and wears a dress in one scene."

These content notes don't have to be long, at all. An example that includes all 4 bullet points: "Reader has a vulva, and terms used for them are chest, cunt, and clit. Passing reference is made to reader bottoming vaginally in the past. In one scene, reader is described as curvy."

The TL;DR here is give your audience a heads-up about what they can expect from the fic so that your trans audience can read comfortably. Adding these content notes should only take a couple of minutes, and can make a tremendous difference that makes trans folks feel included and respected.

You don’t have to do anything with your fic you don’t want to. But if you do want to be inclusive to trans readers, I hope you find this post a helpful place to start. And if you have any questions or need clarification, feel free to reach out; I’m happy to talk or point you in the direction of helpful resources.

Hollow VA characters as meme songs

@emenens hi hi. loved this this idea

What violyn cinematic were you speaking of in your last text post ?

Hey!! This one! It's so badass! It's actually a league cinematic that includes Caitlyn and Vi, not just caitvi but it's just!!! They're so perfect

Caitvi exude pure badassery and the general vibe is toptier