Growing Up is a Struggle

Fanart, reblogs, ramblings and comics by Webcomic Scrooge and 1st year Prosthetics & Orthotics Tech, Patrick Chin Cheong, the author of Chin Up (http://chinupcomic.com). Kinesiology Grad. Available for Commission.

[fitchinup]

Won’t You Be My Neighbour?

Prior to seeing Bao earlier today I treated myself to the docudrama revolving around Mister (Reverend) Fred Rogers: Won’t You Be My Neighbour?

The movie is profound in the simplest of ways: Fred Rogers was very simply himself in every way, shape, and form, puppet or otherwise, on and off the television screen. There was nothing inherently new, unexpected, or scandalous. I learned more about the man leaving the film than entering, which is expected of a film of this type, and with greater respect for the late reverend.

That title of his was something that I learned from the film, but in retrospect, should not have been unexpected. The fact itself unsurprising in itself, but surprising to learn. His show, from what I had seen and recollect as a young child watching PBS at my babysitter’s house, never revolved around God or mentioned Jesus, and yet, at its very core, Mister Roger’s Neighborhood envelopes the most key of Christian teachings: Love thy neighbour. Agape.

The cast and crew share their own heartwarming experiences of working on the show while also reminiscing on some of the more painful memories that were shared with Fred. Francois Clemmons shares his experience of being a closeted gay man on the show, the pain he shared with Fred about having to be closeted for the sake of the show, Fred’s acceptance for who Francois was, and Francois’s love for Fred. But it wasn’t a sexual love. It was a strong and significant love that was shared between two friends: the kind of love that Fred Rogers wanted to grow between his audience, and that his audience should grow with the world.  Philia.

The movie examines his personas in his puppets, namely Daniel Striped Tiger, and King Friday XIII. It discusses his underlying anxieties and self-doubt and frustrations as a person, all feelings which shouldn’t be unsurprising for any man to have, Mister Rogers included. It might be hard to imagine a man like Mister Rogers feeling those ways at all, and yet it’s not: because he was so open about it on the show in teaching children how to approach these issues and that it’s okay to feel these feelings; he wanted to teach that these feelings are acceptable. That you can love yourself, just the way you are. Philautia.

The film does bring up some of the critiques that this latter kind of love instigates. That each child is special, but if every child is special, no one is special; how a person can be special without doing anything to earn it. But Mister Rogers reaffirms that that kind of love is healthy and good. Why must we break ourselves in the face of heartless meritocracy? Be you. Do what you love. Be love. Be kindness. Be compassion. Do what you need to do to survive, but be good.

We live in a world today that needs so much more love and compassion. It needs empathy. And Fred Rogers by all accounts was the epitome of that.

143.

There’s one letter in "I."

Four in "love." 

And three in "you."

I love you.

1-4-3.

[fitchinup]

“Bao” is Filling

To start things off, I’d like to provide some context for myself: I am a first generation Canadian born to a Chinese mother who had immigrated to Canada at the age of 8 from South America where she was born, and a Chinese father who was born and raised in the Carribean. From both of those sources I have inherited a certain amount of my ethnic heritage, but from both of those sources I have also been unable to absorb enough of my ethnic heritage. At this point in my life, I feel much more like a 2nd generation Canadian than a first.

There has been a fair amount of back and forth on twitter about people who are confused about the ethnic short played ahead of The Incredibles 2, and those who are not. My youngest brother saw the movie ahead of my parents, who saw it together as a date, and then I on my lonesome saw it today in theatres. I had immediately come from Won’t You Be My Neighbour? and was treating myself to a double feature going into this short, and was left gross sobbing by the time the credit sequence for the main film played. Upon getting home from my stint of cinema I proceeded to ask my pure blooded Chinese mother who watched the film and was mildly unsurprised to see she was of the party who didn’t quite get the theme of the short.

For many, the theme is simplistic: a senior mother is lamenting the loss of her grown up son to the sands of time and is coping with it through the symbolic eponymous Bao. My mother understood that, but she didn’t understand why it had to be a bao. 

In the varying dialects and scripts of China, bao, depending on how it is written and inflected, can refer to the dumpling; the wrapper; it can mean treasure; it can mean to embrace; or to be satisfied; I had been taught that it meant “full.”

For the Chinese and many other ethnicities, food and cooking is synonymous with love. It’s why mother’s food always tastes so good: because it is made with love. It’s nourishment both physically and emotionally. Bao is the metaphor for that love.

My mother claims that most of her Chinese cooking had been taught to her by her older sister, and I myself have learned very little ethnic cooking from my mother. As a First Generation Canadian child growing up in a small Canadian towne of one of three Chinese families in the entire school, I had no care to be Chinese. It has not been until of late with the uprising of ethnic focused media that I have begun to lament the discarding of the cultural identity that was inherent to me. My mother, very obviously, related more to the mother in the short, and while I empathized with the mother to the point of tears, related myself to her dumpling headed son.

I have lost touch with my ethnicity. I have lost touch with the cultural identity that is for all intents and purposes, my birthright. I, like Bao, wanted nothing to do with Mother’s Love; her identity; I wanted so much to play with the other boys and like the other boys. I’m dating a white girl (which is not inherently a bad thing, but I will get to that cultural sensitivity in a moment) who I love. I have wanted my entire life, so badly, to not be Chinese. And now, like Bao, I come seeking my mother bringing with me the buns we once shared, and I had rejected.

This short is more than about being an Empty Nester, which is why, in my opinion, so many “white people” aren’t understanding it. To give it solely that description is merely base: it’s easy. It’s about growing up and growing apart, but it’s also about culture and identity. How can you relate to a film about those thematics, when your cultural identity has always been something that is firmly secured? As a Canadian born Chinese, to borrow Gene Luen Yang’s terminology, I never truly fit in in either ethnicity despite being generally accepted by either. To the other white kids, I was always, would always, and will always be Chinese; not even “Chinese” specifically, just “Asian” to make it even worse and even further blur the lines of my cultural identity. To my grandparents and other Chinese folks, I will never be truly one of them until I learn our history, our traditions, and most importantly: our language. It was a privilege that had been presented to me at a young age but one that I resented and rejected. Now I live each day with regret being unable to communicate with my sole remaining grandmother. And when she is gone I won’t be able to learn the rest.

To touch on the “cultural sensitivity” I mentioned earlier, Bao’s bringing home of specifically a blonde-haired blue eyed *white* girl as his fiance, it’s the last straw for Mom and many other old generation Chinese. I had been brought up, not necessarily by my parents, to think that not marrying Chinese would be diluting the bloodline. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this. Some of my cousins are half-white, and I myself am of mixed blood if I go far enough up my father’s side of the tree. The issue with this once again revolves around the idea of a loss of cultural identity. When you marry someone who is not of the same ethnicity as you, it can be seen, quite frankly, as assimilation. No longer identifying with your culture. Marrying into a different one. Being a different one. You have discarded your heritage in exchange for a foreign one. In this day and age I want to say that that ideology is outdated, however I believe it is one that should not be so easily forgotten. It’s exactly what the “White Devils” did to the aboriginal populations. If they could not be exterminated by means of violence, they would be culturally exterminated by ways of breeding. My grandmother on my father’s side was known for saying, “marry lighter than yourself.” It’s pervasive. And it works.

However, in today’s society, it doesn’t have to be this incredibly awful thing. As presented in Bao, we have the opportunity to maintain our ethnic roots and to share our ethnic roots as presented by both the Son and his white Fiance learning from Mom how to makes the baos. We don’t have to lose sight of who we are. We are allowed to be a part of that which we are inheritors of, if we want to. And if others want to learn about us, we can teach them.

[mainlypoon]

Pegasus summer camp BFFs! 

Sumia’s phone is her most valuable possession; she has over 100 fanfics bookmarked and even more e-books saved on it. She’s also subscribed to at least three daily horoscope services. 

Cordelia always wears an oversized scarf no matter the weather to hide her chest. 

I found Cordelia’s in-game outfit sort of bland so sorry to Cordelia fans for this lackluster design

Other Modern AU outfits

FMU - Lon’qu - Henry - Lissa - Maribelle - Miriel - Sumia - 

Cordelia - Olivia - Tharja - Panne - Gaius 

[art-is-ptriky]

Day 43: Dying

I haven’t drawn Fire Emblem in a long time and this is what happens.

[fitchinup]

“I didn’t want this.”

[silentstep]

therobotmonster:

moniquill:

siderealsandman:

friendlytroll:

prokopetz:

mikhailvladimirovich:

bogleech:

It’s funny how science fiction universes so often treat humans as a boring, default everyman species or even the weakest and dumbest.

I want to see a sci fi universe where we’re actually considered one of the more hideous and terrifying species.

How do we know our saliva and skin oils wouldn’t be ultra-corrosive to most other sapient races? What if we actually have the strongest vocal chords and can paralyze or kill the inhabitants of other worlds just by screaming at them? What if most sentient life in the universe turns out to be vegetable-like and lives in fear of us rare “animal” races who can move so quickly and chew shit up with our teeth?

Like that old story “they’re made of meat,” only we’re scarier.

HOLY SHIT THEY EAT CAPSAICIN FOR FUN

YOU GUYS I HEARD A HUMAN ONCE ATE AN AIRPLANE.

A HUMAN CAN KEEP FIGHTING FOR HOURS EVEN AFTER YOU SHOOT IT

humans are a proud warrior race with a pantheon of bloody gods: Ram-Bo, Schwarzenegger, etc.

REMOVING A LIMB WILL NOT FATALLY INCAPACITATE HUMANS: ALWAYS DESTROY THE HEAD.

WARNING: HUMANS CAN DETECT YOU EVEN AT NIGHT BY TRACKING VIBRATIONS THROUGH THE ATMOSPHERE

WARNING: HUMANS CAN REPRODUCE AT A RATE OF 1 PER SPACEYEAR. DESTROY INFESTATIONS IMMEDIATELY

THE HUMAN MOUTH HAS OVER THIRTY OUTCROPS OF BONE AND POWERFUL JAW MUSCLES.

HUMAN BITES CAN BE FATALLY INFECTIOUS EVEN TO OTHER HUMANS

WARNING: HUMANS CAN AND WILL USE IMPROVISED WEAPONS. SEE CLASSIFIED DATA LABELED J. CHAN.

HUMANS CAN PROJECT BIOWEAPONS FROM ALMOST EVERY ORIFICE ON THEIR BODY. DO NOT INHALE

OH GOD THE HUMANS FIGURED OUT DOOR HANDLES OH GOD OH GOD

More seriously, humans do have a number of advantages even among Terrestrial life. Our endurance, shock resistance, and ability to recover from injury is absurdly high compared to almost any other animal. We often use the phrase “healthy as a horse” to connote heartiness - but compared to a human, a horse is as fragile as spun glass. There’s mounting evidence that our primitive ancestors would hunt large prey simply by following it at a walking pace, without sleep or rest, until it died of exhaustion; it’s called pursuit predation. Basically, we’re the Terminator.

(The only other animal that can sort of keep up with us? Dogs. That’s why we use them for hunting. And even then, it’s only “sort of”.)

Now extrapolate that to a galaxy in which most sapient life did not evolve from hyper-specialised pursuit predators:

Our strength and speed is nothing to write home about, but we don’t need to overpower or outrun you. We just need to outlast you - and by any other species’ standards, we just plain don’t get tired.

Where a simple broken leg will cause most species to go into shock and die, we can recover from virtually any injury that’s not immediately fatal. Even traumatic dismemberment isn’t necessarily a career-ending injury for a human.

We heal from injuries with extreme rapidity, recovering in weeks from wounds that would take others months or years to heal. The results aren’t pretty - humans have hyperactive scar tissue, among our other survival-oriented traits - but they’re highly functional.

Speaking of scarring, look at our medical science. We developed surgery centuries before developing even the most rudimentary anesthetics or life support. In extermis, humans have been known to perform surgery on themselves - and survive. Thanks to our extreme heartiness, we regard as routine medical procedures what most other species would regard as inventive forms of murder. We even perform radical surgery on ourselves for purely cosmetic reasons.

In essence, we’d be Space Orcs.

Our jaws have too many TEETH in them, so we developed a way to WELD METAL TO OUR TEETH and FORCE THE BONES IN OUR JAW to restructure over the course of years to fit them back into shape, and then we continue to wear metal in out mouths to keep them in place. 

We formed cohabitative relationships with tiny mammals and insects we keep at bay from bothering us by death, often using little analouge traps. 

And by god, we will eat anything. 

We use borderline toxic peppers to season our food. 

We expose ourselves to potentially lethal solar radiation in the pursuit of darkening our skin. 

We risk hearing loss for the opportunity to see our favorite musicians live. 

We have a game where two people get into an enclosed area and hit each other until time runs out/one of them pass out

We willingly jump out of planes with only a flimsy piece of cloth to prevent us from splattering against the ground. 

Our response to natural disasters is to just rebuild our buildings in the exact same places. 

We climb mountains and risk freezing to death for bragging rights

We invented dogs. We took our one time predators and completely domesticated them. 

On a planet full of lions, tigers and bears, we managed to advance further and faster than any other species on the planet. 

Klingons and Krogan and Orcs ain’t got shit on us

We drink ethanol (in concentrations high enough to be used as an effective as microbicide or a solvent!) for the express purpose of achieving blood toxicity and disrupting normal brain function… AS A RECREATIONAL ACTIVITY!

On the same subject, we also deliberately incinerate assorted substances and then inhale the particulate-heavy smoke and vapor resulting for the same effect. EVEN IN THE FACE OF SAID SUBSTANCES BEING CARCINOGENIC, BECAUSE WE JUST DON’T GIVE A FUCK.

Humans do not have biological castes. Kill their commander and another will take its place. Soldiers left alone on a planet will start farming and manufacturing to survive. Farmers and manufacturers will take up arms and kill you if pressed. Just because two humans look different doesn’t mean they cannot do each other’s jobs.

Breeding does not kill them. A single human can mate dozens or hundreds of times in a lifetime. They often do so as recreation. Xenobiology team six believes they do not have a mating season but this is too strange to be true.

Their appendages are not designed for hitting, so they developed special training to make them very good at hitting anyhow. 

The proteins making up their bodies are toxic and cause prion disease. Do not touch anything humans have touched. Do not consume earth foods. Fire does not adequately remove this contamination.

Humans perceive sixteen times the colors we do. Do not hide in bushes or vines from humans. They can distinguish your pelt from the foliage with ease.

We tried venting waste gas into the tunnels to kill the humans when they attacked. Turns out they breathe it. 

Everything on their planet came from a single biological strain. They developed comprehensive genetics BEFORE they developed space travel. 

They lack radio receptors and cannot be brought into compliance with right-thought simply by broadcasting to them. Even after we learned how to translate it into sound-waves one of their hatchlings drove the Great Authority mad by responding to every demand with a single question: “Why?”

#an individual human being is actually a microbiome in its own right—you are dealing with a legion each time you approach them     #they carry pathological agents inside their deep tissues and this is advantageous to their health     #one of the most widespread and resilient viruses on their planet is treated as mildly hazardous—even though it causes     #massive disruption to the body’s homeostasis     #(their young offspring endure multiple rhinovirus infections EACH YEAR yet they seem unperturbed by this)     #they have developed such long lifespans that now their primary threat is their own body’s degeneration     #humanity has literally figured out how to survive so long that their body gives out under them     #and they are not satisfied with that     #stupid willful vengeful survivalists who treat mortality like a challenge    

[sorcyress]

I love every single variation on this post, whenever it scrolls across my dash. 

[artifactrix]

Although bipedal and nominally terrestrial, humans are also capable of highly efficient climbing, brachiation, and swimming without mechanical or technological assistance.

In times of plenty, humans will ingest surplus food and metabolize it into a form of stored nutrition which permeates their tissues and forms a protective, thermally insulating layer under their skin.  Even a human with minimal ‘fat’ reserves can go for several Terran days without appreciable food intake.

Humans are highly neuroplastic, and retain the ability to learn throughout their life cycle.  Indeed, geriatric humans rely increasingly on the synthesis and application of their accumulated knowledge as their physical condition declines.

The human olfactory system is notoriously insensitive, and scents which may incapacitate other species have no appreciable effect on them.

Humans are effectively psy-null.  They possess no psionic abilities of their own, and attempts at one-way psionic contact have resulted in severe trauma to researchers due to the alien structure of human minds.

The human skeleton is composed of a hard, resilient mineral-biological composite.  This renders them capable of withstanding heavy loads and impacts, and of delivering devastating blows with all extremities.  Although somewhat brittle, the stone-based tissue of human bone retains the ability to heal when injured.

[textsfromtheemblem]

[amazingspidey16]

[eroscestlavie]

okay but why is that kylo cosplayer so good omfg

[kemonos]

that isnt cosplay this is real movie footage

[art-is-ptriky]

Scrambled to get that last piece done in time to close off the year; I keep thinking I didn’t do a lot of art this year, but it seems that I actually did a fair amount.

[art-is-ptriky]

So close, yet so far away.

[maiqtells-deactivated20201202]

tbh

[oceandiagonale]

Why Guzma isn’t in Team Rainbow Rocket, probably

BONUS:

[bismuth7716]

[ardenpowell]

My first story, Reset to Zero, comes out Dec 11th from @ninestarpress!

Agent Azzerare and the black market criminal known as Vulpe meet once a year every holiday season to collaborate on certain secret missions. Azzerare is less than enthusiastic when Management first suggests it; Vulpe is amoral, self-serving, and criminally inclined—everything Azzerare stands against.

But as the years pass and the missions continue, Azzerare sees a new side of Vulpe: someone loyal, clever, and willing to risk his life to save Azzerare’s. Azzerare must decide how he feels about his partner—and if it’s love, he has to ask himself whether he’s willing to risk his career to pursue it, because an emotionally compromised agent is a dead one in Management’s eyes.

Genre: Contemporary/Action

Word count: 16,400

Amazon / Ninestar Press

[sharkdraws]

Hey everyone! I’ve got an author blog now, so if you want to follow along with my non-comic writing, @ardenpowell is the place to do it! My first story comes out tomorrow, and I’m unreasonably excited about it. It’s got secret agents, car chases, gun fights, and a lot of festive spirit. You can read the opening on the publisher’s site, linked above!

[fitchinup]

Kimi no na wa (Your Name) broke my heart.

[fitchinup]

It’s scary to stop working toward your dream. But it’s even scarier to have a dream yet not work toward it and lie to yourself for the rest of your life, telling yourself that was for the best.

- Mikage Aki, Silver Spoon (via fitchinup)

[onion-ring-93]

[frakfraco]

#helpful

[fitchinup]

The Guardian Brothers/Little Door Guardians: A review

I watched The Guardian Brothers (originally titled Little Door Gods in Chinese) on Netflix. The animation is fluid and beautiful, but the voice acting is goddamn awful. I had to watch it in Polish in order to get through it. The story is intriguing, but heavily cliche and predictable.

I want to know more about my ethnic history and culture.

This movie seems to be a direct appeal to that where in a world that has forgotten its past, few still to cling to it. There's some pretty obvious political overtones in the film, but I'm having a bit of trouble deciphering the message. It may be that I’m reading too much into it, but I could also guarantee that a political science major could pick apart bits of it and put together a compelling essay on the political history of China.

Some parts of this movie are genuinely charming and entertaining and does its best to interweave what little there is remaining of ancient Chinese mythos. We've lost so much. So much has been confused and discarded in time.

The contrast of the unwillingness to change juxtaposed with the overzealous need for development is compromised by the end of the film. I feel like it could have been so much stronger by reaffirming the realization of significance of cultural and historical roots, with the ideology that change isn't a bad thing and can be helpful and useful, but we shouldn't ever forget about where we came from and what helped to shape us as a people.

The movie also suffers the flaws of some untied strings and unresolved issues that are instead masked by conveniences. I'm not sure if that's budget or time or storyline constrained. 

Overall, an unfortunate 5 out of 10. I wanted to like this movie, I really did.