Reblogged
II FORGOT TO POST THIS ON HERE HI HELLO NEW MEET THE ARTIST 🫶
Reblogged flarysis
changing elves from being assholes with a superiority complex and recharacterising them as just sort of weird guys that have an entirely different set of social behaviours to harken back to the days when people thought autistic people were a kind of fae for having odd behaviours. the entire reason why they dont particularly enjoy gatherings of men or dwarves or whatever is because they tend to be loud and the average elven social gathering is just a bunch of them sitting in a room in silence ignoring each other
like theyre still kind of mean but its more of them being blunt and lacking empathy rather than being condescending or purposefully malicious
my elven ass after spending 45 minutes in the pub with my dwarf friends:
I GROW WEARY OF MIMICKING YOUR OBNOXIOUS MANNERISMS TO ACCOMMODATE FOR THIS ENVIRONMENT. I WISH TO RETURN TO MY CHAMBERS TO REST AND SO I MAY PLAY SPLATOON 3 ON THE NINTENDO SWITCH. WE SHALL GATHER AGAIN NEXT HALF MOON AND I SHALL TELL YOU OF MY VICTORIES.
them:
okay man take care
you understand my vision
Reblogged teaboot
Hamlet as a D&D paladin.
some gems of insight from the reblogs (@aspiring-protagonist and @moderndayathena):
xxfanenbyanonymousxx
Weren’t you listening? He’s praying. GOES HARD AS FUCK
THIS!! THIS SCENE!!
Everyday I come across people who say ‘oh he was a procrastinator, oh he could have killed his uncle at anytime why didn’t he’
And everyone who says that is Missing. The. Point.
Reblogged greenycartoon
There’s also a large grey area between an Offensive Stereotype and “thing that can be misconstrued as a stereotype if one uses a particularly reductive lens of interpretation that the text itself is not endorsing”, and while I believe that creators should hold some level of responsibility to look out for potential unfortunate optics on their work, intentional or not, I also do think that placing the entire onus of trying to anticipate every single bad angle someone somewhere might take when reading the text upon the shoulders of the writers – instead of giving in that there should be also a level of responsibility on the part of the audience not to project whatever biases they might carry onto the text – is the kind of thing that will only end up reducing the range of stories that can be told about marginalized people.
A japanese-american Beth Harmon would be pidgeonholed as another nerdy asian stock character. Baby Driver with a black lead would be accused of perpetuating stereotypes about black youth and crime. Phantom Of The Opera with a female Phantom would be accused of playing into the predatory lesbian stereotype. Romeo & Juliet with a gay couple would be accused of pulling the bury your gays trope – and no, you can’t just rewrite it into having a happy ending, the final tragedy of the tale is the rock onto which the entire central thesis statement of the play stands on. Remove that one element and you change the whole point of the story from a “look at what senseless hatred does to our youth” cautionary tale to a “love conquers all” inspiration piece, and it may not be the story the author wants to tell.
Sometimes, in order for a given story to function (and keep in mind, by function I don’t mean just logistically, but also thematically) it is necessary that your protagonist has specific personality traits that will play out in significant ways in the story. Or that they come from a specific background that will be an important element to the narrative. Or that they go through a particular experience that will consist on crucial plot point. All those narrative tools and building blocks are considered to be completely harmless and neutral when telling stories about straight/white people but, when applied to marginalized characters, it can be difficult to navigate them as, depending on the type of story you might want to tell, you may be steering dangerously close to falling into Unfortunate Implications™. And trying to find alternatives as to avoid falling into potentially iffy subtext is not always easy, as, depending on how central the “problematic” element to your plot, it could alter the very foundation of the story you’re trying to tell beyond recognition. See the point above about Romeo & Juliet.
Like, I once saw a woman a gringa obviously accuse the movie Knives Out of racism because the one latina character in the otherwise consistently white and wealthy cast is the nurse, when everyone who watched the movie with their eyes and not their ass can see that the entire tension of the plot hinges upon not only the power imbalance between Martha and the Thrombeys, but also on her isolation as the one latina immigrant navigating a world of white rich people. I’ve seen people paint Rosa Diaz as an example of the Hothead Latina stereotype, when Rosa was originally written as a white woman (named Megan) and only turned latina later when Stephanie Beatriz was cast – and it’s not like they could write out Rosa’s anger issues to avoid bad optics when it is such a defining trait of her character. I’ve seen people say Mulholland Drive is a lesbophobic movie when its story couldn’t even exist in first place if the fatally toxic lesbian relationship that moves the plot was healthy, or if it was straight.
That’s not to say we can’t ever question the larger patterns in stories about certain demographics, or not draw lines between artistic liberty and social responsibility, and much less that I know where such lines should be drawn. I made this post precisely to raise a discussion, not to silence people. But one thing I think it’s important to keep in mind in such discussions is that stereotypes, after all, are all about oversimplification. It is more productive, I believe, to evaluate the quality of the representation in any given piece of fiction by looking first into how much its minority characters are a) deep, complex, well-rounded, b) treated with care by the narrative, with plenty of focus and insight into their inner life, and c) a character in their own right that can carry their own storyline and doesn’t just exist to prop up other character’s stories. And only then, yes, look into their particular characterization, but without ever overlooking aspects such as the context and how nuanced such characterization is handled. Much like we’ve moved on from the simplistic mindset that a good female character is necessarily one that punches good otherwise she’s useless, I really do believe that it is time for us to move on from the the idea that there’s a one-size-fits-all model of good representation and start looking into the core of representation issues (meaning: how painfully flat it is, not to mention scarce) rather than the window dressing.
I know I am starting to sound like a broken record here, but it feels that being a latina author writing about latine characters is a losing game, when there’s extra pressure on minority authors to avoid ~problematic~ optics in their work on the basis of the “you should know better” argument. And this “lower common denominator” approach to representation, that bars people from exploring otherwise interesting and meaningful concepts in stories because the most narrow minded people in the audience will get their biases confirmed, in many ways, sounds like a new form of respectability politics. Why, if it was gringos that created and imposed those stereotypes onto my ethnicity, why it should be my responsibility as a latina creator to dispel such stereotypes by curbing my artistic expression? Instead of asking of them to take responsibility for the lenses and biases they bring onto the text? Why is it too much to ask from people to wrap their minds about the ridiculously basic concept that no story they consume about a marginalized person should be taken as a blanket representation of their entire community?
It’s ridiculous. Gringos at some point came up with the idea that latinos are all naturally inclined to crime, so now I, a latina who loves heist movies, can’t write a latino character who’s a cool car thief. Gentiles created antisemitic propaganda claiming that the jews are all blood drinking monsters, so now jewish authors who love vampires can’t write jewish vampires. Straights made up the idea that lesbian relationships tend to be unhealthy, so now sapphics who are into Brontë-ish gothic romance don’t get to read this type of story with lesbian protagonists. I want to scream.
And at the end of the day it all boils down to how people see marginalized characters as Representation™ first and narrative tools created to tell good stories later, if at all. White/straight characters get to be evaluated on how entertaining and tridimensional they are, whereas minority characters get to be evaluated on how well they’d fit into an after school special. Fuck this shit.
Reblogged teaboot
love this !! unfortunately for me tho i took the mulder route and became insane and deranged
Reblogged teaboot
i taught a baking class for 12 year olds today and we made your garden variety chocolate chip cookies, but i’m a big believer in Questioning Everything and the who/what/where/why/when/how behind things, so the first part of the class was purposely letting the kids do things the wrong way, to show and explain why we do things the way we do.
“why do we bake cookies at 180 for 9 minutes when we could do 400 for 2 minutes?” -enter the godawful lump of coal with a still gross wet and uncooked inside
“why do we have to scoop out little cookies instead of doing the whole tray?” -ok well that one you can technically do if the spread is even. you just end up with one giant, structurally unsound cookie. “PLEASE CAN WE MAKE GIANT COOKIES” (we did make 1 giant tray cookie)
we talked a lot about why consistency is important, but i don’t think it really hammered home until i said “okay everyone gets ONE cookie, that’s fair, right?” and then handed out cookies of hugely varying sizes. + baked one fat lump of a cookie that still wasn’t done at the 9 minutes, vs the regular one i put in that came out charred by the time the first was actually done.
we also made a row of cookies where each one had one single differing ingredient omitted, like a cookie with no flour, or a cookie with no butter, and laid them all out on a single tray to bake together to see how each ingredient affects the outcome.
two of the little girls added cocoa to their cookie doughs until it matched the colour of each others skin to make best friend cookies, and that almost made me tear up a bit 🥺
got briefly distracted (…for over half an hour…) talking about how eggs form when someone cracked an egg and it had 2 yolks
expertly tolerated being asked how old i am (just turned 31 the other day) which was immediately followed by asking if i watched the moon landing live on tv
was so focused on keeping track of all the kids that in the end i forgot to make a cookie for myself, but it’s ok because one of the girls gave me this
tiny……….
the class went well and they asked if i wanted to do another one in a couple weeks and i said yeah, and they’re taking uh… fuck, what’s the word for inventory when it’s people?? attendance?? whatever, they’re trying to see who’s interested to get a feel of if it’d be 1 three hour class again or if there’s too many kids so we’d do a couple classes. anyways, i love the emails from Concerned Parents.
“will there be knives involved?” we are baking cookies.
“what temperatures does the oven get to/will it be hot enough to burn?” we are baking cookies.
“will there be [insert ingredient used in cookies]?” we are baking cookies.
“are you using fahrenheit or celsius?” ??????? d-does it matter?? it’s going to get Hot. (also celsius; this is ontario)
“are the ovens childproof?” no?? i’m assuming you’re asking if i’m going to let your kids reach into the ovens while i’m staring out a window in another room. i will not be allowing your children to use the ovens. they will not be left unattended.
“why is the library baking class taking place at the high school?” the library does not have 10 ovens. the library does not even have 1 oven. the high school has many ovens.
“what if i don’t want my child to have cookies? can you let her make muffins instead?” this is a baking class for cookies. we are baking cookies.
“cookies aren’t healthy. why don’t you make [insert whatever]” do you know how many cookies i can make with a $40 budget and a trip to the bulk store? we are making cookies.
“who needs a class to bake a cookie, why not teach something more valuable?” IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT THE COOKIES, KAREN, IT’S ABOUT FAMILIARIZING CHILDREN WITH THE ART AND SCIENCE OF BAKING/COOKING/FOOD, ABOUT TRYING NEW THINGS, MAKING MISTAKES AND REALIZING THAT THE MISTAKES ARE NOT ONLY OKAY TO MAKE BUT VALUABLE IN AND OF THEMSELVES, FAMILIARIZING THEM WITH INDEPENDENCE, THE UNDERSTANDING OF HOW THINGS CAN COME TOGETHER TO FORM A NEW AND BETTER WHOLE, ALL WHILE HAVING TRYING TO INJECT A MODICUM OF JOY INTO THEIR LITTLE LIVES. SORRY THAT THERE ARE CONCEPTS AT PLAY YOU CAN’T SEEN TO UNDERSTAND HERE. MAYBE YOU SHOULD COME JOIN AND I’LL LET YOU MAKE A FUCKING COOKIE.
Reblogged wowowhy
fuck it homebrew boop button. reblog this post to boop the person you reblogged from.
Reblogged wowowhy
This is the guy who made the first genetically-engineered babies (a horrific ethics violation that landed him 3 years in prison) and his tweets are so unhinged that I genuinely can't tell if he's trying to be funny or is 100% serious
Reblogged wowowhy
Why are there like 5 daily chores where if you skip them for 2 days your life becomes a time based psychological thriller after
Reblogged flarysis
Anonymous asked:
Frankie, you are a beautiful cat. What’s your skincare routine like?
APPLY TONGUE
Reblogged greenycartoon
jan smit looking at jan smit looking at rocks
fyi, Jan Smit is the paleontologist who originally noticed high levels of iridium in the Cretaceous-Paleogene Boundary sediments (now known as the K-Pg Boundary) and hypothesized the Giant Asteroid Impact Theory as the reason dinosaurs went extinct!
and as far as I know he's still out there, looking at rocks.
Reblogged flarysis
Gonna be so real if a 12 year old traced my art and put it on their school binder I would be so fucking honored
despin-convert-deactivated20250
i would levy a lawsuit against them that would leave their family in ruins
Reblogged evilwizard
Right click -> save as -> ancient curse
Reblogged teaboot
If you know you know.
... Extrapolating from incomplete data be like...
This reply deserves to be in its own reblog lmao
I own a shirt that says exactly what the comment above says. And you would not -believe- the number of truly awkward interactions I've had that start with someone saying "so what's the second type?"