Hey artists, C. Spike Trotman, founder of Iron Circus Comics, just posted an invaluable thread on depicting different types of black hair. I’d do the thing where you screencap the whole thread and post it but it’s just too long (which is great because it’s a whole lot of useful information!) Give her a follow while you’re there.
Anyway, go check it out. I just wanted to save it and share it because I didn’t know how much I didn’t know!
This is an amazing resource, not only for artists, but for writers too! I love this!
{ID - tweet from @/Iron_Spike that reads, “Black Hair for Non-Black Artists: a Cheat Sheet Thread. Hi, folks! Just spur-of-the-moment decided to put together some reference for folks who want to draw/model black characters in their work, but arent confident they won’t make simple, obvious mistakes w/r/t black hair. END ID}
Summary: You are a Healer. There are few with your Destiny and even fewer with your track record of coming back from the dead.
Part of the Destiny universe which includes Being Villagers
------.
You are a Healer.
The battlefield roars around you. Mud-stained armor, soot-cloaked faces, blood-soaked flashes of metal. The colors of war are a kaleidoscope that you desperately try to track, pushing your gold-rimmed glasses up your nose with the back of your wrist as you drop to your knees by the next patient. Over the waves of violence there is the canopy of a white tent slowly being eaten by flames.
Well. Looks like you won’t be taking this wounded soldier to the infirmary. Not that you could lift them anyway. Your arms are truly spent from carrying patient after patient out of the melee.
Your heart is spent when you see the soldier you’re working on now is the same from a quarter of an hour ago.
“I told you not to run back out,” you say. Your voice is level. Calm. Tears push behind your eyes and stubbornly stick there, a hot pressure that is starting to make your nose run. You sniffle and stubbornly grit your teeth against your wobbling chin. “Healing takes an hour to set.”
This soldier is already living dead. The wound you healed – a puncture to the upper right chest – is mottled purple and red. Infection. Your power speeds healing which is why it’s imperative that your patients don’t go rolling around in ooze for at least thirty minutes. The infection isn’t why he’s dying though.
The laceration that cuts jagged through his fleshy stomach and into his wet bowels is what makes him living dead.
“No,” the soldier says. His brown eyes are amber in the dying light. Such a waste of a beautiful clear day. He reaches up to grab your forearm, fingers spasming. He coughs. “No, I—I’m not supposed to be here. I’m not. I’m a Baker.”
You know. He told you this less than an hour ago when you first dragged him from the hungry maw of death. His name is Jer and his mother wanted him to take over the restaurant. She didn’t see the difference between a Cook and a Baker. He did and his need for capital is what led him to sign up for the Lord Neid’s army. One hundred gold pieces for just one year of service. Too good to be true.
Not enough is what you would have told him if he’d asked. One hundred gold for a life? It wasn’t nearly enough.
A shield comes flying, wheeling through the air like a blade. You fling up your arm a moment before it would have hit your face and have the pleasure of feeling your forearm break instead of your cheekbone. You grab at the break with an anguished hiss. The pain blinds you.
By the time you remember your patient, he’s dead.
You stagger up. A steady green glow emanates from under your palm, chasing the pain from your broken bone. Healing yourself has always been easier, months of trial and error on your own body creating a muscle memory you’ve never developed for others. Your gaze darts. The backline is quickly dissolving into the frontline. The enemy – whoever the fuck it is, the one wearing red capes instead of blue – is hacking at your side like lumberjacks at trees. Your white healing robes are nearly black with mud. It’s not a stretch to imagine one of the desperate combatants from either side striking you down without ever noticing the concentric circles on either side of your lapels marking you as a Healer.
At last, at last, you feel the spell around your throat loosen. A sharp ding! trills in your head. A new compulsion settles into your bones.
Retreat. Find the Lord. Now.
The relief of being free to flee is short-lived. The Lord will be furious at the results of today’s battle. Never mind that his advisors all cautioned him against directly attacking another Lord on their land. Never mind that his Knights told him that an untrained force – no matter the size – wouldn’t win against a Duke’s forces. Never mind the hundreds of reasons that Lord Neid lost. It will be your fault. For not being fast enough or cunning enough or strong enough—
The fear of the Lord is costly. This whole time you’ve managed to not falter in your duty, to plunge into chaos and rescue patient after patient, to march forward even as your legs began to shake. But now you stumble as you turn to obey your commands. Fall to one knee.
There’s a whistling, deeper and meaner than the whistling of an arrow. Something collides with the back of your head and the sound is so loud that the compulsion is shaken right out of your bones.
You fall forward into the cold mud. Your vision is bleary though from the blow or the mud, you don’t know. You don’t know a lot, actually.
Blackness consumes you.
----.The start.---
You become a Healer a quarter mile underground, deep in the mines where only the adults are allowed to go. It’s been a long time since the collapse, and the air is thick and borderline unbreathable. You would consider it fully unbreathable if you weren’t still conscious. You sit with your back against the wall, head tilted so you can gaze sightlessly at the stone above. Salvation is a quarter mile above you at most. Or, in the best case scenario, a few meters in the next tunnel over. Your lip curls. It hardly mattered. A mile of rock and a few feet of it are all the same when you don’t have the tools to dig it.
Sisi coughs again, her chest seizing so hard that her head nearly lifts from your lap. You press your cold hand against her burning forehead, shushing her as best you can through dry, cracking lips.
“Some b-birthday,” she whispers.
You can’t see her face, but your mind has gotten quite good at conjuring in the darkness. You take a moment to paint her red hair sweeping back in big, loose curls, her constellation of freckles darting across her high-bridged nose, the sweet twinkle of firelight in her grey eyes. Of course there probably isn’t really a twinkle in her eyes now or the healthy flush that you remember from last week’s horseback riding adventure. You clear your throat. “Not yet.”
Sisi swallows, the sound loud. The tunnel collapse has only left you with a cage about seven feet in any direction. When both of you are silent, you can hear your blood moving through your veins. Sisi gathers her strength and asks, “How long…?”
You don’t know how long the two of you have been trapped. Neither do you know how long until you’re rescued or how long until your birthday. The blood at your hairline is dry and flaky, no longer tacky. “Two days, probably.”
“Then soon,” Sisi says. There’s a light pressure on your left arm. Sisi has wasted the strength to touch the spot your Destiny is supposed to appear. “I’ll be the f-first to know.”
There’s no humor in her voice. She doesn’t have the energy for it. Still, a bubble of mirth fizzles up your throat. She’d begged you to let her be the first to read your Destiny, even before your parents. She said that, as your best friend, it was her right. You hadn’t promised her, even when she pointed out that you’d been the first to know she’d gotten Villager. “You always have to have your way.”
Her hand falls away from your arm and hits the ground with a dull thud. You panic until you realize you can still hear her thready breath. She’s fallen asleep. Please let it only be sleep.
You stroke her hair. Sisi is hurt worse than you. When the support gave, she grabbed your hand and forced you to run long before your brain realized what was happening. And when the rock above you groaned, she slung you forward, throwing herself on top of you as the world collapsed. Now the only thing you can do for her is cushion her head and answer when she speaks and listen for the sound of her breath in the endless quiet of the underground.
It might not be a bad idea for you to sleep too.
---Now---
Waking is boring. You have the sick taste of healing at the back of your mouth. Your head is clear. If another Healer had tended you, you’d still be foggy. Mildly concussed. The clarity tells you that once again your muscle memory has saved you. Even knocked out, your self-healing is top tier.
Your glasses are gone, but you can guess where you are. You smell underground and there’s torchlight flickering through your eyelids. You’re not wearing your glasses so you don’t bother opening your eyes yet. You won’t be able to see anything without them.
Not that you need to.
You’re in a cell. That’s also boring. The inside of Lord Neid’s cells are like a second home to you. It’s where he stores his pet Healer when his pet Witch spends too long on missions and the spells wear off. You reach out to the nail wedged between the stones above the head of your cot. With any luck, whoever retrieved you from the battlefield also retrieved your glasses. If they did, they’ll have hung them up in the usual spot—
There is no nail. There is no stone. Wood meets the pads of your fingers. The smell of underground – you haven’t mistaken that. However there is no accompanying smell of damp or mildew. Instead, there’s the scent of a wood-burning stove, laundry soap and…perfume?
You jolt upright. Your robes are gone. You’re wearing a nightgown that’s nearly as soft as the blanket that crumples into your lap. You blink quickly, squinting through the torchlight. There are bars surrounding you, but that’s where the similarity ends. Wherever you are is paneled in oak, the bed you’re lying on a four-poster rather than a cot, and there is a fire crackling in a hearth across the room from your cell. You can just make out someone sitting next to it, on a stool next to a small table.
The person shifts. There comes the sound of paper rustling and then the rounded puff of air that comes from a heavy book being closed. “You’re awake.” The woman doesn’t sound upset. In fact, she sounds pleased and a little surprised. “My doctors assured me it would be another day yet.”
She’s little more than a dark figure even when she stands and walks closer to your cell. Her clothes could be a black cape or a black dress and her head is either topped with a truly impressive amount of thick, black hair or a wide hood. There is a glimmer of silver at her throat and on her hands when she gestures to the bars. “I am sorry for the cell, Healer. It’s only until the spells wear off.”
Healer. Your hand flies to your upper arm, covering the letters instinctively. You can feel the spells at your throat circling like a snake. You don’t need to ask what will happen when Lord Neid’s spells wear off. New ones will assuredly be put on. “Where am I?”
“Behind enemy lines,” the woman says dryly. “I told Neid not to test me.”
Your head throbs. Whatever luck you might have had has run out. “You’re the Lord.”
“Lady,” the woman corrects. She moves back to the table. There’s scraping as she drags her stool to the front of your cell. “Duchess, actually. Duchess Genevieve Axelon, though you can call me Lady Gen.”
Lord Neid attacked the Duchess? You press the heel of your hand to your eye. “Am I being charged with treason then, Duchess?” Any act against the Duchess, the King’s cousin, would surely be seen as an attack on the royal family.
“You were going to be,” Lady Gen agrees. “Until my Knight recognized those spell markings. Now we have options.” She settles on her stool and considers you. “There have been many tales about you, Healer. Your existence has given Lord Neid’s household a reputation. They say you can heal any wound, even those afflicted by demon beasts. They say you can bring people back from the dead.”
“Nobody can be brought back from the dead,” you say. “Not in their entirety.” A body is a simple thing to order around. The compulsion around your throat squeezes as if just realizing you’ve woken. You hiss, eyes falling shut and your hand moves from your arm to your throat. Come back. Find Lord Neid. NOW. The words pulse through your bones louder and louder until your teeth chatter.
“The next few days will be painful,” Lady Gen observes. You hear her from a long way off. Is she pitying you? “I’m sorry. I have no Witch to offer a counterspell. I also cannot allow you to return to Lord Neid.”
You gasp through the next wave of pain. Like the tides, it laps at you hungrily, building its momentum. “I do not want to go back.”
“Not now,” Lady Gen says. She rises in a rustling of skirts. “I’m told that that compulsion won’t kill you, but it will feel like it’s trying to. You must remember to eat and drink when you can. If you can bear with it, through it, we can talk of freedom, Healer.”
The word lands like a blow more surely aimed than the thorns beginning to poke down your spine. “F-freedom?” Suspicion worms through you. “Whose?”
“Yours,” Lady Gen says.
---The start—
Sisi doesn’t answer when you call anymore. Your legs are numb under her head, and you’d be worried about paralysis if you weren’t still able to wiggle your toes. You won’t move her. Her breathing went funny when you tried to shift her last time, like water got stuck in the back of her throat, and you don’t ever want to hear that sound again.
When the two of you first set out to explore the tunnels, there’d only been four days left before your birthday. You’ve wracked your memory repeatedly to be sure. It feels as if you’ve been buried for weeks, but that can’t be. Everyone says getting your Destiny burns and your arm is as cold as the rest of you. That means it hasn’t even been four days.
Nobody is coming. There’s the possibility that more than this tunnel was affected in the collapse. They could be digging in the wrong place or not able to reach this section of the mine. There was a reason this section was marked for the adults only. Maybe they stopped looking days ago and thought well they should have known better.
No. No, you know that last thought isn’t true. Sisi’s parents are miners. They know that miracles can happen down in the shafts and they won’t give up until they’re sure their daughter isn’t one of them. And your parents may be older and frailer, but they’re also former adventurers. You’re sure that they’ll fight until the end to find you.
It’s this thought that finally spurs you into action. You’ve always been told by the village Chief – a Miner – to never dig if you’re in a collapse. Any movement could cause more instability and cause another cave in; one you wouldn’t survive. But it’s been at least three days and there hasn’t been even a whisper of rescue. Sisi is just getting worse and worse and you have to do something. If you’re going to die down here, you want it to be in a way your parents can be proud of.
You want to fight until the very end.
You ease Sisi off your lap, carefully arrange a pile of debris under her head so her neck stays at the same angle. It can’t be comfortable, but Sisi doesn’t wake.
“I’m going to get us out of here,” you whisper to her. Your legs shake as you stand. You feel the top of the tunnel. The spot where you and Sisi were sitting is under a support that feels mostly intact. With any luck, Sisi will be protected if your digging triggers another collapse.
You shove your fingers under the first stone and yank. With a quick chatter of disapproval, it jumps. You yank again. It falls. A river of dirt and gravel drops from the ceiling to fill the space like sand in an hourglass. You scoop it behind you. Find the next rock. Yank. Gravel and dust falls. You choke on the dust. Scoop it away. Push and pull and yank.
The rhythm of digging becomes your heartbeat. Your fingers bend backwards and your nails wear down to nothing. Your arms burn. Each time the rock scrapes and the pebbles clatter, that’s victory. Every time your muscles scream and rocks bark their protest, that’s fighting. If your parents find your body with you hands worn to nubs, at least they’ll know you tried.
When a gentle green glow begins to light your way, you barely notice through the treacherous tears.
You dig.
-----. Now---
Witchcraft is a mean practice. The Witch’s compulsion hooks under your skin and spears into your bones when you least expect it. Move. Go. Find Lord Neid. When you’re able to resist, you lie in bed, scarred fingers fisted in the bed sheets and eyes fixed sightlessly on the wood paneling above you. The magic hates when you’re inactive and does its best to motivate you. The soles of your feet burn and your lungs ache for air as the spell twines around your throat. The only thing that relieves the pressure is to stand and take a faltering step in the direction you know Lord Neid to be. But that’s all you have room for. A single step.
Then the burning starts again.
When you aren’t able to resist, you find yourself scratching at the bars of your cell as if your nails are strong enough to chip metal. Your fingers break and bleed, but your healing needs only a moment to fix it. Your cell glows green as you break and repair, break and repair, break and repair under the weight of your compulsions. You know you beg in these moments. There’s always a guard posted by the fireplace and you promise them any number of healings to free you, promise them years of your servitude, promise them every bit of gold that you don’t have. If the guards answer you, you don’t know. The compulsion screams in your mind and drowns out even the sound of your own breaking bones.
Then there are the moments your leash rests. The spell retreats like a hungry tiger, circling and looking for a new angle of attack. When this happens, you try to sleep. Then, eventually, these moments occur more often. The teeth of the spell are wiggling, bleeding at the gums, starting to fall out.
In one of these peaceful times, Lady Gen comes to visit again.
“I’ve had my Rogue look into you,” Lady Gen says. She drops the Destiny as if it’s the most normal thing in the world and not one of the ten outlawed. Well, former outlawed. This King doesn't hold the same biases as his predecessor. She continues. “I’d like to confirm a few things.”
You expect her to ask questions about Lord Neid or the master you had before him. It’s not hard to find information on your past. As a Healer, you’re coveted. When the underground put you up for sale, people from all over rushed to put in a bid before the Crown had a chance to shut it down. You stand, feeling wrong to sit in front of a Lady now that you’re feeling better, and croak, “Alright.”
Lady Gen flips through some paper. “You’ve been in Lord Neid’s hands for two years?”
“Three. It took him half a year to find a Witch.” You’d refused to perform any sort of healing for the first year he had you. You fought the entire way through the ritual and, even with the Witch’s spell tattooed across your throat, you still dared to heal Lord Neid wrong the first time he asked. Your lip curls. The scar cutting across his cheek and dragging at the corner of his eye is the best gift you’ve ever given. You rock on your heels. “It took another six months to get the compulsions right.”
“You’re twenty-two years old?”
“Probably.” You’re not sure how long the Underground kept you before the auction.
“There’s a report you once regrew another captured person’s arm.”
You shake your head. “Reattached.”
You can feel her eyes on you. “There’s no record of any other Healer being able to perform the same feat.”
“I haven’t met any other Healer,” you say. “I’m sure they could if given the right incentive.”
Lady Gen is curious. “What was the right incentive for you?”
“I wanted the kid to have an arm,” you say. You pause and admit, “Her dad also helped convince me.”
Another flip of a page. “Hero Bern.”
A name you haven’t heard in a long time. For a moment the scent of underground is joined by clove and spice. The face that swims to the front of your memory is mostly patched salt-and-pepper bear and kind brown eyes. You remember the wide, calloused hand that never let go of the thin, frail one by his side.
“We called him the Big B,” you say. “Didn’t know he was a Hero until the jailbreak.”
“You were assumed dead during said jailbreak.”
You shrug. “They jumped to conclusions.”
“The castle came down on your head. And the two levels of dungeons above you.” When you don’t answer, Lady Gen sighs. “You must have felt so abandoned. Hero Bern did try to save you. He was devastated to hear you were still alive.”
You raise an eyebrow. The spell is rousing itself, sliding its scales against your jugular.
“Alive and recaptured,” Lady Gen corrects. “He failed to uphold his end of the deal.” Her voice softens. “He and his daughter paid their respects in your hometown. They begged your parents for forgiveness.”
“My hometown?” Your heart jumps. Even to Big B, you never gave your name. Never told them where you came from. You were captured on the road to the Capital after being foolish enough to display your power to the wrong, demon-wounded merchant. Your tongue feels thick and heavy. You shake your head. “No. No, I—” Don’t have a hometown. The denial is stuck in your throat.
“My Rogue was impressed by how many times you’ve been assumed dead,” Lady Gen says. Her voice softens. “Even when they assumed you dead, your parents never stopped looking for you, Elodie.”
The sound of your name is a lightning bolt. Your heart pounds. “I—They—” Your knees shake. She knows your name. That’s your name. You fall back onto your bed. Instinctively, green light fills your palm, and you clasp it over your chest. There’s nothing to heal. Your heart pounds against your ribs. “I’m—”
Lady Gen sets her notes down. “Elodie?”
Grey tugs at the corners of your vision. Hope and terror and pain claw at each other. You suck in breath after breath. A ghost whispers in your ear.
“Elodie?”
---the start---
“Elodie?”
Sisi’s thin voice shocks you. Your hands buzz as they still for the first time in hours. The aftershock of your digging feels like bees in your bones. You’re more shocked as you turn and see her for the first time in days, cast in a simmering green glow that emphasizes the sick hollows of her cheek and the blackness of the blood caked in her red hair. “Sisi!”
You fall to her side. The power that courses through you – you’re an idiot. The same power that’s healed your nailbeds into durable scars should have been used on her first. You grasp her hand and wrestle with the energy inside of you. The green shine is reluctant to leave you, but you brute force it from your chest, down your arms and under her skin. It’s not easy and the hiss that slips from both of you tells you it’s not pleasant either.
But it works.
Sisi’s breath evens and eases. Her long lashes cast deep shadows across her face. “Elodie…are you…?”
Your Destiny burns on your arm. “Healer.” You’re dehydrated and tired and hurt and scared, but you can’t help but grin. “You’re the first to know.”
“As I should be,” Sisi says. She tries to sit up and gasps. “Ow.”
“Stay still.” You make yourself go back to the hole you’ve been working on. You don’t think it’s your imagination that the air is easier to breathe or that there is a faint flow coming through the cracks in the stones. You don’t want to get her hopes up. “I’ll work on this.”
Sisi cocks her head as you grasp the first rock. “Wait. Do you hear that?”
From a very long way off, metal strikes stones.
---Now---
It is another day before the spell breaks. It’s a strange feeling when it does. You wake at dawn to the feeling of open spaces, as if you went to bed in a cave only to find yourself in the center of a glade the next morning, dew misting your face and the sweet sound of a creek singing in your ear.
You suck in a breath deeper than any before. Your ribs flare and your eyes open at the force of your exhalation. Free. You’re free.
Well. The walls of your cell press closer as you rub sleep from the corners of your eyes and sit up. You massage the bridge of your nose, wishing for your glasses. You are freer than before.
Now, with your mind clear and your body light, it’s time to find out what the Lady will do with your name and past in her hands.
From the day you were first captured on the road to see Sisi’s graduation, you’ve never told anyone your name. You’ve never wanted your family to be used against you. When your parents pulled you from the mine and learned your Destiny, they did your best to prepare you for what the world would want from you. They had told you to rely on them, to trust them to protect you, but you’d never wanted to put them in that position. Your elderly parents, beaten by years as adventurers, were not as strong as they pretended. The threats they hinted at during your lessons were too big. Too bloodthirsty. You’d been determined to bear your Destiny alone.
The door to the dungeon creaks open. You know the sound well by now, used to your rotation of guards and doctors. You get out of bed, smoothing the bed sheets the best you can. The stairs are winding and tedious. You have a moment to prepare yourself for whatever new leash is put around your neck.
You reach out for the water glass on the small meal table. You drink greedily and pause when you go to set the glass back. There’s a glimmer of gold on the table. Your glasses. Your scarred fingers would know the feel of them in complete darkness. A bubble of relief pops in your throat. At last you’ll be able to see clearly. Lady Gen’s voice may sound kind, but her face will reveal the truth.
You put them on and turn to face the rapidly approaching footsteps. You raise an eyebrow and fold your arms, tracking them through the stone wall as they approach the door to your dungeon room. Lady Gen isn’t alone today. Perhaps she’s bringing an advisor or Knight with her. Maybe she’s found her own Witch to tie you to her servitude. You aren’t opposed to serving the woman who saved you from Lord Neid. You prepare your stipulations. You definitely need to get paid this time, for one, and she shouldn’t touch your family—
The door flies open and pale, freckled face with a riot of red curls flies in. Grey eyes like the ocean glimmer. The young woman stops and covers her mouth with both hands. “Oh! Oh, Elodie.”
“Sisi,” you gasp. You stumble to the bars of your cell and somehow she is right there and her fingers are entwined with yours, palm to palm. The heat of her skin tells you this is real. You blink very quickly. It takes you several tries to speak without sobbing. “I missed your graduation.”
“Yeah,” she agrees. Sisi isn’t so reserved. Tears slip down her cheeks and her laugh is choked by tears. “You kind of owe me one.”
Behind her an older woman and a man come in. Their hair is grey (what they have left of it) and the woman has your wide nose and thin mouth. The man has your blindness, hidden behind thick glasses.
You look over Sisi’s shoulder at them, unable to let her go, feeling the barrier of your cell all the more keenly as a natural compulsion settles into your bones, begging you to run to them. Your breathing stutters. “You looked for me.”
Your dad’s chin trembles. “Every day.”
“We knew you wouldn’t give up,” your mother says. She pushes up next to Sisi, drags your father with her so that all three are pressed against the bars of your cell. “So neither did we.”
And you’re fifteen again, the gaps in the stone growing wider and wider to reveal your village on the other side, covered in dust and sweat. Hands grab at your arms, your shoulders, your back, pulling you into an embrace that feels like home. Your mother is telling you how proud she is, your father is shaking with the force of his tears, and Sisi is pressing kisses to your cheeks and to your forehead and thanking you for being alive.
An aggrieved sigh comes from behind your family. “If you’d waited, I could have unlocked the cell first.” Lady Gen slips efficiently past your mother to twist the key in the lock. “You make me feel like Neid, hugging through the bars like that.”
Arms and hands release you, step back, throw the door open. And then your family is all around you, burying you between their bodies in a way that should feel suffocating but instead feels even better than waking up without a compulsion around your neck.
You gawk at Lady Gen. Look to the open cell doors. Then back to Lady Gen, standing alone and unprotected in the dungeon. “You’re…releasing me?”
“The spell is gone,” Lady Gen says. She moves to her usual spot by the fireplace, settling onto the stool. She tilts her head and her thick, black hair falls like a waterfall over her shoulder. She’s more stunning that you could have guessed and, now that you can see her clearly, you’re mesmerized. She’s like a painting come to life. “You’re free. Like I said, now is the time to discuss your options.”
Sisi whispers in your ear. “When the pretty Lady offers you a job, take it, okay?”
“I offer quite the compensation package,” Lady Gen agrees. She gestures to the four of you. “Family relocation, for example.”
You are starting to like the sound of options.
------.
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Next week's story is already up.
Summary: Heroes are unique employees. When great power doesn't come with great responsibility, they don't send another hero. They send you.
Ok but like. What the fuck is there to do on the internet anymore?
Idk when I was younger, you could just go and go and find exciting new websites full of whatever cool things you wanted to explore. An overabundance of ways to occupy your time online.
Now, it's just... Social media. That's it. Social media and news sites. And I'm tired of social media and I'm tired of the news.
Am I just like completely inept at finding new things or has the internet just fallen apart that much with the problems of SEO and web 3.0 turning everything into a same-site prison?
You're right that the internet is smaller than it used to be, but there's still some cool stuff left in the corners. I'd recommend checking checking out Neocities if you haven't--it's an independent web hosting platform like Geocities of the old web, and there are hundreds of interesting and active pages discoverable both through their search function and through web buttons (links attached to small pictures with the title of a website) within the websites themselves. Here are three examples of web buttons you may find in link pages:
Most Neocities websites have link pages or button collections with anywhere from tens to hundreds of these. Don't be afraid to explore!
If you're looking for something more like a search engine, I can point you towards Marginalia. It's not a particularly smart engine, but it's perfectly usable if you've ever been taught to use search engines back when they were mostly run through keywords instead of full sentence comprehension. There's also an "about" and "tips" section on the front page with more information. The algorithm of Marginalia can be filtered by the user to allow, disallow, or require JavaScript depending on your needs, plus there are filters designed specifically to prioritize web 1.0 sites or mostly text-based ones. It is possible to search for modern websites with it, but it can return websites from just about any decade (since the invention of the web, obviously) so long as they contain the information you're looking for. For example, here are some random interesting sites I've found using Marginalia:
Native Languages of the Americas: Native American Cultures
BASIC HTML COMPETENCY IS THE NEW PUNK FOLK EXPLOSION!
Earthbound Text Labs by Bill Eager
The possibilities for discovery are truly endless.
Now you might want to know about directories. These make browsing for websites easier, but require you to read through and judge which ones to visit, as there aren't algorithms ranking the sites besides the whim of whoever coded the directory. Some of them have themes, others don't. Here are two that I've used:
Yesterlinks Directory
Ichigo Directory
Directories can be harder to come by just by surfing the net, but they aren't impossible to find. Many personal websites have their own directories of interesting sites hidden within them.
Webrings are similar to directories, but are actually more community-based. You have to register your website to be a part of a webring, usually by sending an email to whoever runs it and meeting some kind of entry criteria. For example, my personal website used to be a part of a webring called Sweet Dreams, which was for websites that heavily utilize color palettes and images of cute things, particularly sweets. Webrings will give you access to a widget upon entry that allow visitors and other members to browse between the registered websites in a massive ring, ergo, where the term gets its name. Webrings can have any theme or criteria for entry. If you can make a website about it, you can find a webring for it.
Now, you might be wondering about social media alternatives. I can't offer much, but I can nudge you towards the idea of forums. Here's one I found that could really use some traffic. I also browse a bit on MelonLand forum, which is actually closed right now--it's currently closed on Mondays--but on any other day of the week, you can find a fun community there dedicated to web revival. You can find it through MelonLand's main page. I'd also recommend checking out SpaceHey, which is a MySpace clone that's customizable and easy to use.
I hope this is of some help to you. The internet may feel less magical than it used to be, but that doesn't mean that the spark has completely died out. These types of indie websites need more attention if we ever hope to reverse the damage done to the internet by centralization and corporate interest. People are trying to make the web a cooler place to be, but we're going to have to do the work of finding and interacting with these projects in order to get them off the ground someday.
ALSO you should consider browsing Virtual Pet List and seeing if there are any pet sites you might be interested in playing. There is a whole genre of browser games right under your nose
Slay the Princess was actually really good for my mental health, surprisingly!
I wonder if In Stars And Time will be the same or the complete opposite for me. It's a coin flip at this rate. It's either gonna make me feel seen and loved like nothing else OR it'll drop an anvil on my head. The criteria for comfort vs anvil are really strange, though, so I literally can't tell until I've finished the game. We just gotta wait and see.
Finishing isat actually really reframed how I see a lot of my own issues and general self image. It puts things into a perspective that I really appreciated (also hehe there is a coin you can flip in game)
Bodily autonomy (like abortion, anti draft, etc) -> “The government shouldn’t be able to force anything on my body I don’t want.”
Anti surveillance -> “I don’t trust big government/big tech (big brother if you’re feeling frisky) with the ability to spy on me and my family.”
Immigration -> “Next to all of us immigrated at some point, I don’t see why the elites get to decide who’s allowed to be where. What’s to stop them coming for me?”
Climate Change -> “Big oil shouldn’t get to determine whether or not I get to go places. I don’t want to be dependent on some big business to survive.”
State Violence -> “I don’t want the goddamn secret police breathing down my neck! I trust my community a whole hell of a lot more to help me than I do the state!”
The vast majority of conservatives think of themselves as underdogs being repressed by the government/the elite, and they value personal freedom (specifically their personal freedom, they don’t care about other people). The will almost always agree with leftist points if you can find a way to blame the problem on their vague enemies (useful, since rich people are the root of most problems), and tie it back to their ability to say fuck everyone else. NEVER appeal to science, theory, logic, or human goodness. Make it seem as if you are a paranoid lunatic who trusts no one. They love it.
I always love coming across this post because it truly is evergreen. You get to study how long a ‘Considerable Delay’ is from any given mutual’s point of view.
And because every single posting of this cat is delayed, and staggered, there will always be at least one in circulation: it doesn’t spread fast and die out like it’s immediate cousin.
ok I said I was going to do a Nolan Odyssey review so here goes, although Emily Wilson's review that dropped today covers a lot of similar ground:
First, a few words about what I am not going to do here. I'm not going to catalogue all of the ways that Nolan diverges from the source material and make a case why that's a bad thing. As I mentioned in the post I made on this blog a few days ago, I think it's essential when dealing with adaptations of ancient texts and especially the Homeric epics to keep in mind that the text in the form we have it, as well as the cultural meaning that it carries, is itself a construction of a ~2700 year reception tradition, and does not inherently have some sacred primacy. An adaptation is not necessarily "bad" and does not necessarily "misunderstand" the source material simply because it diverges from it. Neither O Brother, Where Art Thou? nor Derek Walcott's Omeros (both of which are much better Odyssey adaptations than this one) is especially faithful to the source text, and a lot of their power comes from the willingness to engage in a conversation with the source material rather than follow it to the letter.
Now that's out of the way, let me say that on every level but technical this is a terrible film. It's terrible not just as an Odyssey adaptation - although it certainly is that - but because of its own failings.
I'll start with what I believe the film is about, which is a white male American Christian war veteran on a long journey home haunted by guilt for the war crimes he committed overseas against a populace that mostly remains faceless. This is not a joke - it's my best attempt to make sense of the moral universe of the film, in which Homeric/archaic Greek religious concepts like xenia have been replaced with "Zeus's law" (Christianized as the Golden Rule) but also in which Odysseus fears that by devising the Trojan Horse, he has essentially caused the Fall of Man via the breakdown of "Zeus's law." Alissa Wilkinson writing for the NY Times and plenty of others have noted that the film is thematically a companion piece to Oppenheimer, but that might actually be underselling the extent to which Damon-as-Odysseus might as well be Oppenheimer. It's ancient Greek dressing on a story that makes no real sense outside of a 20th-21st century American Christian framework, a point that is uncomfortably driven home in a scene in which Odysseus' comrades tell an elderly man who does not speak their language that "we're Greeks. from Ithaca" in the film's koine of burly American-accented English as his village burns. Of course, the elderly man who has just lost everything is speaking Modern Greek - a hell of a metaphor for the way in which this film is so deeply assured in its rewriting of the Achaeans as Americans and its claiming of the ancient Mediterranean world as terra nullius for an American-war-veteran-going-home story, an ethos that also seems to have pervaded the filming process.
There are, of course, other consequences to the portrayal of Odysseus as a proto-Christian war veteran haunted by guilt and PTSD. My lovely mutual Mal ( @gaius-sempronius-grackle) points out in this review that Nolan clearly wants to be adapting the Aeneid, an observation I completely agree with, and the Odysseus we get is far more pius than polytropos. But there's also not a single character in the entire film that is polytropos or even seems to show much hint of complexity. Excellent actors like Lupita Nyong'o and Elliot Page are wasted in poorly-scripted roles that give them nothing to work with, and Penelope is not the complex, tactically-minded woman of the Odyssey but an utterly one note character. Tom Holland's Telemachus likewise doesn't really do much of anything, because no one in this film does except for Matt Damon.
Emily Wilson's review also points out another crucial issue with the film - its complete sexlessness. The removal of any material from Books 23 and 24 from the film means that we don't get any real emotional resolution to Odysseus and Penelope's arc - much has been said about whether and when sex scenes are "necessary" (a framing I mostly reject), but it's hard to argue that there's a more necessary sex scene in all of ancient literature than the one in Odyssey 23. But we also have no sex between Odysseus and Calypso (who, because she's not a goddess, puzzlingly just seems to be a woman living alone on an island who feeds lotus to passers-by) or Odysseus and Circe. At the same time, for a movie that seems to be extraordinarily keyed into a certain aesthetic of male homosociality, we don't even get any spark of eroticism or emotional connection between men, either. In fact, from this blogger's perspective as a bisexual man, it's striking that a movie with this many sweaty men manages to feel this utterly sterile, sexless, and uninterested in the human body and embodied experience.
This all brings me to one of the few moments that bizarrely enough does work, which is the Circe scene. Mostly this is because of Samantha Morton's performance, but the actual portrayal of the transformation of Odysseus' men into pigs is notable both as one of the most unnerving things I've seen in a recent film (and most of the cinema I watch is horror!) and as a bizarrely erotic scene. It's one of very few moments where you actually feel the uncannyness of the Odyssey's apologue, and one of few moments where the lack of faithfulness to the source material actually seems generative (side note: if you are at all sensitive to emetophobic triggers or body horror, I would recommend fully walking out of the theater for this scene). The Polyphemus scene is similarly unnerving, with creature design that reminded me quite a bit of the Pale Man from Pan's Labyrinth, although it's held back by its refusal to sit with the implications of Odysseus and his companions' violation of xenia and (ok, I said I wouldn't list infidelities as flaws but just this once) its decision to make Polyphemus incoherent rather than allowing one of the most famous exchanges in the poem to play out.
I could go on about some of my other least favorite aspects of this film, including the complete removal of Achilles, whose conversation with Odysseus is one of my favorite moments in the entire Odyssey, and the refusal to let any of the recognition scenes but especially those involving Eurykleia and Argos breathe. But all of these things are relatively minor compared with the film's biggest issue and the true reason I think it cannot be taken seriously, which is the "civilizational" framing of the story. Much has been made of the absurdity of the film's characters being aware of their own existence in the Bronze Age, but ultimately the obsession with the end of the Bronze Age and the constant references to the Sea Peoples etc. are all symptomatic of the fact that it's a film that is both deeply American and utterly obsessed with imperial decline. And while it's one thing for an adaptation to speak to its own era and its own audience - something that all adaptations do - the film's utter lack of curiosity about the Homeric world at anything more than a surface level turns it into a giant, bombastic, and deeply boring mess.
I hate how a woman having body hair is immediately seen as this like political statement or that she’s gnc or whatever like girl wtf it’s just the natural state of her being
on the topic of disabled characters, though, i think a LOT of artists give characters mobility aids that their character wouldn't actually benefit from using.
i'm sort of having a mild brain fog moment rn so i can't fully articulate what i'm on about, but i think a lot of able-bodied artists view things like canes and crutches as interchangeable. and they often don't know enough about the wide range of mobility aids to make an informed decision about what their character might actually use based on their disability
i also think that aids like walkers and rollators are sort of viewed as "cringe" on some level, and many people view them to be "just for old people," so many artists will opt for giving a character who has full-body pain and fatigue a cane (which, in many cases, can potentially WORSEN full-body pain) instead. and a lot of people don't realize that most wheelchair users are able to walk, so they don't consider it an option for characters with chronic pain
idk it's kind of frustrating. i've genuinely never, ever seen a character that uses a rollator before. not once. i cannot name a single one. i know of multiple ocs who are described to have full-body pain, dizziness, and fatigue that are drawn as cane users and are never shown with wheelchairs or walkers, though
it's also sort of sad? i've been diagnosed since i was twelve years old, and i only heard of rollators LAST YEAR. and that was only because i saw one irl and immediately asked what it was. i wonder how many disabled people out there don't even know it's an option solely because they're completely underrepresented online and in media
if you're a creative with a disabled oc, PLEASEEE check out this link. it's a very nice and detailed guide for telling which mobility aids suit someone's needs best. it's incredibly important to make the right choice for your character! mobility aids tell you a LOT about someone's lived experience. picking the right one will communicate to your audience #1 what your character goes through #2 that you UNDERSTAND what your character goes through!
dailybridgerton
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