Offbeat perspective

My name is Thorn, they/them, here for writing, ffxiv, and general nerdery. May contain NSFW, browse at your own risk.

[ecosystem-administrator]

Reintroduction

Timeline: 2.0 beginning

Mayhem Moondrop returns to Gridania for the first time in a decade, looking for a fresh start as a registered adventurer.

(I'm posting this during FFXIV Write, but it's not an entry; instead, I'm going to pin it as an introduction to my Warrior of Light.)

Luckily, they were too surprised by the sight of the Moogle, so soon after waking from another dizzy spell, to react to it out loud. As they watched it bob in the air and steal the wine of the merchant who’d joined them at an earlier stop, it became clear that they were the only one on the cart who was seeing it, and they didn’t want to start the process of returning home by convincing onlookers that they were prone to conversing with thin air.

“Have you chanced to witness anything suspicious, kupo?” The little creature hovered and dipped anxiously in the air, and after a moment’s consideration Mayhem shook their head, hoping their fellow travelers would think they were still clearing away the cobwebs. They knew what Moogles were, of course, having grown up in Gridania as a child and heard plenty of stories about them, but they’d never glimpsed one up close, and certainly never before been able to see through the glamours that concealed them when they didn’t want to be found. Maybe that, too, was related to the strange dreams and dizzy spells they’d begun having after the Calamity a few years ago? The fits had only grown more frequent when they’d returned to the Shroud’s denser aether, enough so that they’d decided to take this carriage for the final leg of their journey back to their childhood home.

The Moogle seemed disappointed but not surprised by this response, and flitted off into the woods after a bit more chatter: Mayhem watched them go, hoping that they’d have a better opportunity to converse in the future without looking like they were losing touch with reality.

The gregarious merchant who sat across from them had by this point moved past the sudden inexplicable emptiness of his wine bottle, and resumed engaging them in conversation. Bremondt, as his name turned out to be, seemed a pleasant enough fellow to pass the time with, and as the two young Elezen tucked into a corner of the cart didn’t seem eager to join in with any stories of their own, Mayhem was soon caught up in laying out their pre-adventuring background for him. They explained about the theater troupe they’d traveled with before the Calamity, first as a guard, then as a stagehand, and eventually taking small parts onstage as well. “Unfortunately, the Calamity made things too difficult for us to keep on as a group,” they sighed. “I admit I’ve been a bit at loose ends ever since; coming here to register as a guild adventurer seems like the best idea I have for a fresh start.”

“Plenty of folks lookin’ for just that, these days,” Bremondt agreed. “Did your traveling theater band ever come by Gridania, or is this your first time down this way?”

Now, Mayhem hesitated. The players had been on their way back to Gridania for the first time in a few years when the Calamity had struck, having picked Mayhem up on their previous pass through the region, before they’d hit their full growth and back when they were still going under their childhood name. So they hadn’t traveled here with the troupe, but it was far from their first time being here among the trees. Not that they felt they owed a near-stranger like Bremondt the entire truth of their story, but was it really worth coming up with a lie over something so minor?

Luckily, the man seemed to have taken their pause as a response in and of itself. “Ah, don’t mind old Bremondt,” he answered, waving off his own question. “Everyone’s got a couple dozen things they want to keep to themselves, don’t they? I don’t need to pry into what your history with the place is or isn’t, but let me update you on the latest developments, as someone who runs these roads pretty regular-like.”

Mayhem let him go on a bit about the state of the roads and the forest, the beast tribes and the merchant guilds. It had been almost a decade since they’d left the city - maybe more than that, with how hazy time had gotten for a little while in the immediate wake of the Calamity. Most of the guilds had been handed over from the masters they remembered growing up to one apprentice or another; everyone had known Beatin was the only real candidate to take over the Carpenters’ Guild, but there had been a bit of rivalry among the leatherworkers, and it was interesting to learn that the haughty and exacting Geva had been the one to come out on top in the end.

Not that they were going to let on to anyone just how well they knew these people. They’d changed enough in both name and appearance that they didn’t expect to be recognized as anything but a newcomer, and so a newcomer was what they would pretend to be. Instead they chimed in politely just enough to encourage Bremondt to keep carrying on as the carriage wound its way up toward the gates of the city, until at last they rolled to a stop.

“And here we are, lad,” Bremondt said, dismounting from the cart with a grin. “Didn’t mean to talk your ear off quite so much, but I hope some of it helped you get settled. I’ll be headed for the markets and then back on the road once I’m done there. If you don’t mind, what’s the name I should be listening for the next time I come? There’s something about you, I don’t doubt you’ll be the talk of the town soon enough.”

Mayhem grinned back at him and jumped down as well, then bowed with a flourish. “Neither lad nor lass, actually, but always a performer to the core. My name is Mayhem Moondrop, and I do indeed mean to be memorable.”

[decompose1]

what if we stopped making Ambiguously Brown Character and started actually thinking about the race and ethnic features of the characters we made? what if instead of drawing a character that looks like you painted a white character brown, we started varying noses, lips, eyes, and hair? just a thought

[gender-trash]

are you nerds ready to see TOP SURGERY KIRK??

[roach-works]

this is one of the more expensive cosplays i've seen but you really can't argue with the results

[mortimermcmirestinks]

hey OP? this is the best cosplay I've ever seen

[bookshelfdreams]

yk, there are of course problems with sex work as an industry, many of them due to it being so heavily stigmatized. Yes, there is a large grey/black area of it, yes, it can often be traumatic for the workers, yes, can be extremely dangerous, and yes it's often exploitative.

However. Criminalizing sex work would likely solve none of these problems, only exacerbate them, and add a whole list of new problems on top. First of all.

And second of all, none of these problems are unique to sex work. Agriculture, delivery, home care, so many more: all these industries rely heavily on criminally underpaid migrant workers. The food we eat, the clothes we wear, the cheap plastic shit we buy, all was brought to us by exploitation. I'm speaking from a western European perspective when I say, all of this is happening right here. At home. On our farms, in our streets.

And yet! Delivering amazon parcels or working 3 shifts in a slaughterhouse is not constantly on the verge of being criminalized. Is it. No one is publicly shamed and called a pervert for hiring a 24hr care assistant to come live with their grandma.

It is only sex work that has supposed "feminists" rallying against it and why is that? Not because of exploitation, and not because of the danger (plenty of exploitative and dangerous jobs with a largely female workforce to go around). Because they see sex as inherently degrading. Sex work is The Worst because sex is uniquely damaging. It is the madonna/whore complex but call it feminism.

I'm not saying the sector isn't riddled with problems. It absolutely is. But the barely disguised moral outrage, not at the problems, but at the fact that sex work exists at all - that's very, very transparent. And it's honestly astonishing that none of these clowns are self-aware enough to realize that.

[yujateaandpi]

Was driving with my grandmother and in broken English she says “no eyes… no nose… no face. Don’t trust.” To which I looked around wildly in search of this omen of ill portend.

Cybertruck. It was a cybertruck.

[iamwizzzzz]

[ecargmura]

The Nintendo Direct for the Tales series in a nutshell.

(Tales of Eternia remastered confirmed)

[crushed-sugar]

Special shoutout to all the queer, intersex, and trans het folks. Sorry for all the “it’s illegal to be straight this month” jokes you’ll have to endure. Y’all are still very much part of the community.

[indouscurse]

you have to consciously unlearn racism and continue to watch for it because it will come out without realizing. because so much of society is structured around it. shrugging and going "i dont care" or "i dont know how else to say it" means you are okay with being racist and hurting other people with how much you dont give a shit about them.

[sangled]

I'm a little confused. If it's racist to depict characters with noticeable epicanthal folds, then doesn't that imply that the epicanthal fold is considered an ugly feature by the person making the criticism? Seeing as it's a normal feature that many asians have...I can understand not wanting it to be exaggerated into a racist caricature, but leaving it out entirely? That doesn't rub you as being a little "Look, I left the East Asian features out so they'd be pretty!"? Which is racist in itself?

i’m assuming you’re referring to my we bare bears example. first of all, drop the ‘gasp you’re actually being racist against yourself??’ tone. i’m fine with dialogue but i have asian perspective and experience. be respectful.

no one said it’s racist to draw epicanthal folds. if your art is more realistic and detail-focused, it makes sense to include different kinds of eye folds. but in a cartoon, non-epicanthal folds aren’t translated. it’s not like you see little lines above a white person’s eyes. they’re just the typical round style. so it makes sense that the element of eye folds are left out entirely when it comes to all depicted races.

i used we bare bears as a good example because it’s the rare time asian characters’ eyes actually fit in with the style. they don’t need to squint, or be abnormally small, because no one else’s eyes do that. i don’t care that chloe has big eyes, because she’s a kid and everyone else, regardless of race, is similar. it matters more to me that her heritage is shown and celebrated rather than her having token asian traits.

sometimes cartoons can give asian eyes a lil difference and that’s fine too! candy from gravity falls has wider eyes, but they’re still round and cartoony. it’s a noticeable aberration from the style but it’s a small and harmless detail.

total drama, while not the uh, best example for a lot of things, has a great angular style. a lot of characters (gwen, izzy, duncan) have smaller eyes while not being asian. so it makes sense that heather, a polynesian character, has a bit of a half-circle shape to her eyes. it shows a diversity of eye shapes and sizes without focusing on racial stereotypes. 

but ‘everyone has big eyes except the squinty asians’ happens. a lot. take trixie from the fairly odd parents. everyone’s eyes are round and big. hers are half circles, like 40% the average size. if her eyes are ‘accurately’ shaped, why does everyone else get identical cartoonish circles?

disclaimer: i grew up idolizing any representation i found, and i liked trixie a lot. and for children, it’s not the end of the world if exclusively asian characters are given small eyes. but it’s clear that she was designed by non-asian people, and there is always room for improvement.

onto more realistic art! when it comes to stereotypically limiting asian design vs. respectfully showing asian diversity, _ket2 put it best.

in conclusion, if you’re going to draw asian characters, don’t make them all have the same ridiculously small eyes compared to everyone else. asian people, especially artists, have been saying this forever.unlearn limiting racial preconceptions. learn from references and how diverse people look in real life. 

[keresacheron]

Dinosaur cartoon.

[cryoverkiltmilk]

Important reminder

[geeky-fuckery]

This reminds me of the fact that "Ancient Egypt" goes back so many thousands of years, that the most recent "Ancient Egyptians" were already studying (even more) Ancient Egypt.

[charlesoberonn]

Not even the most recent ones. It was an Egyptian prince from the 13th century BCE studying and restoring artifacts from the 26th century BCE.

[charlesoberonn]

For context, the last Pharaoh, Cleopatra VII, lived in the 1st century BCE. Prince Khaemweset, known as "the first egyptologist", was as ancient to her as the pyramids and tombs he was studying were ancient to him.

[theaudientvoid]

I remember having me mind completely blown when I learned that the "New Kingdom" was pre-Bronze Age Collapse.

[oxeanic]

This has totally be mentioned in another fork of this post, but it reminds me quite a bit of Ennigaldi-Nanna's museum, a museum in Ur, c. 530 BC, which housed mesopotamian artifacts dating back in some cases to the 20th century BC

[bideogaymes]

if yall want more original Black films being made, unfortunately you do have to go see them in theaters and not wait for them to get on streaming. that’s only way these nonblack movie execs will find Black art to be worthwhile funding and distributing.

[xiaohongshu-for-you-two]

The Zhuang Brocade Fashion Uncles ❤️

[kazieka]

issue: the kittens are still trying to learn words. gus knows his name and daisy knows hers, but they don’t seem to quite grasp that when I say “babies!” im referring to both of them.

hypothesis: “babies” is too similar to “daisy” and they’re getting confused

test: start saying “gamers” instead

Outcome: they’re understanding it and it’s hysterically funny

[kazieka]

me, calling down the hall from stirring a can of cat food: LET’S GO, GAMERS

the kittens:

[stu-pidity-deactivated20220206]

Yes please show us the gamers

[kazieka]

here’s the gamers! Daisy is on the left and August is on the right! i spent 45 minutes trying to get this shot

[someoctober]

I love drawing cats

[kazieka]

OH MY GODDDDD

[bizarrelittlemew]

but above all, one must not concern oneself with the opinions of people who censor the word fuck

[slyandthefamilybook]

I can't remember who said it but I saw a comment or tweet talking about hypocrisy that essentially said The Hypocrisy Is The Point. hypocrisy is power. it's the ability to set rules for everyone else except you. and if power is a virtue then hypocrisy is a virtue. it's why you never really get anywhere with "by your logic..." or "then wouldn't that mean...". it's not that they don't realize they're being hypocritical. they do it on purpose to prove that you have to listen to them and they don't have to listen to you

[closet-keys]

when I was a kid I really enjoyed Suzy Eddie Izzard's comedy routines. I remember she had this one joke that went something like

(fatherly voice): yes little johnny. you must learn to play the clarinet, because I never got the chance when I was a boy. (little johnny voice): well you got the chance now. why don't you learn it now?

I was talking with another trans person earlier, and we were talking about relationships with our respective moms. they were talking about how their transition was being viewed by their mom as something being done to her.

I was talking about a similar thing with my mom's feelings about my surgeries. I was jokingly saying, as if to my mom, "the things I do to my own body actually don't affect yours at all, because we have two different bodies. that one is yours, and you can do whatever you want with it. but this one is mine."

this is honestly something I think is really pervasive with parents, even outside of the context of being trans.

with my own mom, I know she deeply resented the patriarchal way she was raised. I know (because she's told me such) that part of the reason she wanted kids was to prove that she could raise a boy and a girl equitably. It was very important to her to "have one of each."

what she never said explicitly, but I've sort of come to realize must be the case, is that on some level her desire was to re-parent herself. she wanted the experience of getting to raise herself the way she wished her parents had raised her. she wanted to see what kind of life she would have had if she had gotten the same opportunities as her brothers.

on some level, this feels almost progressive. a laudable goal. but the thing is, it's an impossible desire. you can't raise yourself. you are always going to be raising an entirely separate person.

I am not my mom. her raising me was not her raising herself; it was her raising someone who had never existed before. every effort to preemptively treat me as she wished she was treated, to make predictions about my life based on her own, or to encourage her own interests far past when I communicated not liking them, was often a kind of a replacement for asking how I wanted to be treated, asking what I wanted from my life, or asking what I was interested in. Instead of learning about me, she wanted to shape me.

I think this is so common. This desire to give a child all the things that the parent wanted as a kid seems so generous and heartfelt from the point of view of the parent. But for the kid, it often ends up in continuous signals that everything they might want, enjoy, or become needs to be justified through the lens of fulfilling this parental fantasy.

there is a sense of duty to live the life the parent wants, because the parent couldn't. then this child doesn't get to live their life either, and might grow up and have their own child and parent with the same approach. sometimes there's generations upon generations of everyone living their parent's life instead of their own.

eventually I think parents all do need to take stock of what they really want out of being a parent.

as a parent, you cannot raise yourself. you can only raise a new person in the world. if you are grieving the lack of support you had to be yourself growing up, you are not going to successfully recreate yourself through forcing a child to pretend to be you. if you really wished you learned to play the clarinet as a kid, you need to stop displacing that wish onto your child and recenter it. this grief that drives the desire to create oneself through one's child relies on the belief in one's own life somehow already being over. it relies on a profound sense that it's "too late" (to ask to be treated differently, to pursue certain interests, or to become someone new). but unless you're dying, this belief is not accurate. there is still time. learn the clarinet now. you've got the chance now.

let your kid figure out what they want to do with their own free time and body. don't try to shape their life into the best version of what yours could have been. if you want to do right by your kid, then be a source of support so this entirely new human being gets the chance to live their own life.