practicing self care isn't enough i want to collapse a building with my mind
AnasAbdin

if i look back, i am lost
todays bird

Origami Around
Acquired Stardust

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Discoholic 🪩
art blog(derogatory)

shark vs the universe

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tumblr dot com
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
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he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
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@nigenaide
practicing self care isn't enough i want to collapse a building with my mind
my body, tearfully: when sleep???
me: my dude we just woke up!! It’s time for wakefulness and doing things and Productivity
my body, weeping: but???? when sleep?????
me: okay, finally now is sleep
my body: no. wrong.
by Comicname
👍
To all y'all.
fanfic alignments
Lawful Good: lurked for a month before posting to consume all fan content in their area of interest, internalise tagging conventions, and learn what content is already well-represented and what is lacking. fills in gaps in the fandom oeuvre out of a sense of community responsibility. alerts people who were like “why isn’t there fic of this” that there is now fic of this and includes author’s notes acknowledging those people by name for inspiring said fic.
Neutral Good: writes fic in response to prompts or community discussion. beloved by those who follow and interact with them. potential ouroboros relationship with fanon, where they both contribute to the development of fanon conventions and perpetuate them.
Chaotic Good: “I know no one asked for this but the idea wouldn’t leave me alone so HERE, HAVE THIS THING THAT I POURED AN UNREASONABLE AMOUNT OF MY LIFEFORCE INTO. FREE ME FROM THE GRIP OF THIS FEVERED MUSE”
Lawful Neutral: scrupulously researched, impeccably canon-compliant fic. author may go out of their way to mimic the canon narrative style as closely as possible. readers’ comments are likely to include “wow, this feels like it could have been an actual episode of [source media]!” high proportion of missing scenes, alternate POV scenes, and character interactions that should have been given screentime in canon but were tragically underutilised.
True Neutral: had an idea, wrote it, and posted it. may not be aware of the fandom zeitgeist or may simply not care. doing their own thing and feeling the fulfillment of an idea properly manifested. lower average hitcount than many other alignments due to lack of engagement with fandom or fanon and potential redundancy to already-existing fanwork. may be dabbling in a fandom they have no specific intention to revisit.
Chaotic Neutral: AUs, expies, self-inserts, reader-inserts, reader-directed/choose-your-own-adventure fic, crack, etc. We’re all mad here! Mad and having so much fun.
Lawful Evil: “I have no justification and no excuse, but enjoy this exhaustively-tagged, morally unconscionable character torture! I sure did :)”
Neutral Evil: fic would not have existed if not for the motivating power of spite and frustration with the fandom (or, in certain end-of-the-bellcurve cases, the source media, but in general spite/frustration toward the source media is common in any alignment). whatever other motivations there may be, the fic is an express Take That of greater or lesser subtlety. this author is so mad. why is everyone doing this wrong? WHY MUST THEY BE THE ONE TO RIGHT THIS WRONG? THEY’LL SHOW YOU WHAT THIS CONTENT SHOULD BE. THEY’LL SHOW YOU ALL!!!
Chaotic Evil: wants someone to suffer. is it the cause of their spite, whom they are using Take That fic to call out? is it their readers, whom they are trolling, whether with badfic or with a poisoned-apple plot that seems to be all the reader desires before it takes a horrible twist? is it the creator(s) of the source media? it doesn’t matter, as long as someone experiences regret as a result of the fic’s existence.
me, piling more blankets on top of my already weighted one in bed: if i am not crushed by the weight of my own comfort i will Die
ok but if bruce wayne somehow came upon zuko fresh out of banishment he would lose his mind.
black hair? check. bad parent(s)? check. trauma? double check.
bruce: how’d you get your scar?
zuko: my dad got mad at me for saying that killing people is wrong so he lit my face on fire and banished me.
bruce, vibrating with excitement, already pulling adoption papers from his utilility: that’s terrible. how do you feel about capes.
Zuko: Do you mind if I wear this blue demon mask?
Bruce: *sniff, tear in his eye* Not at all.
*Zuko fighting the Joker*
J: "wan na kno w h ow i go t thes e sc ar s"
Z: *rips off mask* i don't give a fuck
I’m still stuck at the “batman has adoption papers in his utility belt”.
“Quick, it’s time to use the Bat-adoption papers!”
Bat-option papers
Okay, but you’re missing the best part of this.
Alfred and Iroh complimenting each other on tea while they discuss their overly dramatic children.
iroh: once, i told zuko that he needs to work on his inter turmoil. he screamed at me that he had no such inner turmoil, and then proceeded to go to a cliff during a thunderstorm to scream at God to strike him with lightning
alfred: master bruce and i have that interaction at least three times per week.
@absentlyabbie
I see your "Alfred and Iroh as tea bros" and raise you "Alfred and Iroh as tea rivals"
Consider
Iroh: you too must learn patience. Boiling the water ruins the delicate flavor of the white jade
Alfred: oh I'm dreadfully sorry - for some reason I expected this tea to have TEA in it
(later)
Alfred: *aggressively laying out full tea service with milk, lemon, sugar, and, just to drive his point in, jam*
Iroh: *dying inside*
excellent addition
hey bruce spent a lot of his bat-study abroad in the far east and has kind of a weeb weapon collection so proposal, what if Bruce appreciates Iroh’s tea
while Zuko is enthusiastic about cream and sugar
further fueling their dad-figures’ passive-aggressive rivalry?
You had me at Zuko vs. Joker, I was crying by the Eastern vs. Western tea service
Wait a minute. Batman and Zuko have the same arch-nemesis.
Mark Hamill
Saw the last comment and my brain would not rest until it happened
this post has everything
this was an enjoyable ride. i liked the scenery very much. smooth suspension, nice height, several fascinating loops. 10/10 would go again.
2021/十三機兵
Umitober Day 30 - Thanks for all people
Wishing my goth followers a very pleasant double xp event
Not all venom fans are monster fuckers 😞 some of us are just aroace disasters who like the idea of a platonic soulmate who likes to murder annoying people for you, is that so bad?
Guys I’m part of the club 🥺
monsterqueerplatonic
Hordak to the rescue 📵🙌
Thesis: you can tell which people have a lousy sense of spatial relationships based on how intensely they hate water levels in Legend of Zelda games.
if there’s one self-care skill I really wish fans would develop – especially fans of continuing media, where you get into a thing before it’s finished – it’s the ability to say “this is no longer the story I wanted it to be” and walk away
(and I am not exempting myself from this! there are definitely periods in my past media engagement which would have been less negative for my mental health if I’d been able to do this, rather than banging my head in increasing frustration as the story veered further and further away from what I had always thought its arc was supposed to be.)
you gotta marie kondo this shit. if the story no longer sparks joy for you, then let it go. and you can grieve for that! that loss of potential, that happiness you might once have had with it. you can be frustrated and sad and bitch about it in your group chat. but you have to let it go.
because the alternative is trying to force the creator to change course to comply with your vision and historically? the success rate of that is very, very low, and far more statistically likely to result in the destruction of the thing entirely. which might sound tempting and satisfying in those moments of frustration but in the end, honestly, is not going to make you any happier. (and is definitely going to make other people unhappier.)
what will make you happier is finding some other story that is more like what you wanted. because it’s a vast vast world out there, and people are creating stories and media faster than ever. yes, even queer media, yes, even PoC driven/led media. no one person will ever be able to consume them all. find something out there that brings you joy, that is the story you wanted. and the rest? let go.
Linktober day 3 - doorway
someone, reading my writing: wow great story!
me, sticking my hands in the plotholes: thanks it has pockets :)
Plot holes are merely the pockets in which your audience keeps their fanfiction ideas.
One thing I really like about how Murderbot relates to gender is how like--no wait, two things, in order.
So first how it is emphatically devoted to eschewing human gender categories. Like, it's not a default thing; there are shown to be multiple nonbinary pronouns in routine use, and life would be simpler for picking one or even making a new one up, just as it would be for picking a name that it is willing to use in public.
But that's a human thing, those are human categories, and it has that deep determination not to naturalize into humanity just because that would be simpler, would smooth the ugly edges between the categories of person and non-person and make an easier, more convenient story for other people.
But then also there's the part where the two construct genders are, effectively, 'cop' and 'prostitute,' as distinguished at construction per Murderbot's own account by genital configuration, in this case 'having' or 'not having' 'sex parts.'
Leaving aside how easily that analogizes to human gender categories for the average reader, which I'm sure was an intentional writing move--Murderbot's assigned gender is, in a meaningful sense, 'SecUnit.'
And what's neat, and what I was going for to begin with only I had to set out my thoughts first for context, is how Murderbot actually performs its assigned gender pretty emphatically!
But in a deeply queer way, that only gains a sense of meaning as it's able to detach the performance from service to the oppressive power structures that created it, and redefine the identity on its own terms.
Being a SecUnit, being security, providing security to others, is very important to Murderbot, is absolutely in competition with the conceptually-entwined 'fiction' and 'freedom' for what it's most passionate about.
But that passion only comes out as it's able to choose to 'do its job.' As long as security was defined on Company terms, within the Company's shitty boundaries and for the Company's shittier goals, when it meant being a blunt instrument and surveillance device and living bullet sponge for and against shitty people with no say in the matter, Murderbot hated it, didn't care about it, narrated detachment from it and performed whenever possible to the absolute minimum standard. And rightly so.
It performs SecUnit-ness half-heartedly and under a mixture of implicit and overt coercion.
But given something to protect, something it both wants to and is free to, Murderbot vastly exceeds all expectations in its design function. Murderbot is a fantastic SecUnit precisely when it gets to decide what that means.
Security work wasn't something it chose for itself, it was built for it and forced to it, but reclaiming that and remaking it into something better, something it believes in, is a fundamental part of its growth and healing process. And I think that's really cool. And just as much part of the 'gender' elements of the story as it is of like, the 'labor' and 'liberation' parts.
In fact the 'social control of labor' and 'assigned identity categories' always have heavily overlapped, being related forms of structuring the utility of persons, so of course this is both.
‘Murderbot actually performs its assigned gender pretty emphatically... but in a deeply queer way.’
Wow- this approach to the text resonates so strongly with my understanding of both the character and of the queerness of gender that my breath is absolutely taken away. It puts this passage, where Murderbot reworks its rescue plan in Fugitive Telemetry, into stunning context:
That plan was easier plus 100 percent less murdery. And I liked it better.
Huh. I liked it better because it wasn’t a CombatUnit plan, or actually a plan that humans would come up with for CombatUnits. Sneaking the endangered humans off the ship to safety and then leaving the hostiles for someone else to deal with, that was a SecUnit plan, that was what we were really designed for, despite how the company and every other corporate used us. The point was to retrieve the clients alive and fuck everything else.
This passage has always been about redefining itself and its function, of course, but looking at it solely from an in-universe perspective, it almost seems self-delusional. What a machine intelligence is designed for and used for, how its body is designed, is in literal terms a matter of its creators’ intentions, and cannot be changed post facto. But applying the lens of queering gender to the passage gives the passage a powerful resonance.
"Function” (i.e. what a bot is “for”) is a matter of narrative as much as gender is, after all. It’s not only a matter of physical traits- A machine may be made to help with the retail process at a bakery, but turn out to be wildly well-suited to the medical field looking for cancer, for instance; superglue originally failed in its design as a gun sight; bubble wrap was intended as wallpaper; and of course, when you have a nail that needs hammering, a lot of things look like hammers. If you have a lot of workers to suppress, your construct built for security looks like a tool for suppressing labor. And that is to say nothing of the ways that a design might be so deeply flawed despite its creators’ best intentions that it can’t do what it’s supposed to do. Intention, use, and the reality of a machine’s form are not the same!
In the same way, gender as “intended” or conceptualized by society, the oft-contradictory ways in which even the least queer of us express it, and the reality of our physical existence when our narrative of gender is stripped from the facts are often totally different. Murderbot is talking about a kind of denial of reality, yes... but in the same way that a feminine person might find self-actualization in their identity when she is free to decide which parts of femininity to opt into, to say I don’t want to shave but getting to wear a dress is part of my self-expression or My softness and compassion are a choice separate from my identity, or the ways in which a masc person might say Being gentle doesn’t make me less of a man or My masculinity is about being strong enough to protect others- I’m less of myself if I use that strength to hurt. By denying the intentions of its creators and the ways in which it has been used to to hurt people, Murderbot denies, changes, rewrites the narrative imposed upon it and thus its reality; it redefines itself as a class of being whose primary purpose is to protect, whose function is security. In the same way that we queer our relationship to gender, Murderbot queers the definition of ‘SecUnit’- in order to make it something it can be proud to identify itself as.
That is, of course, also why it’s such a tragedy that Human One shoots it despite its best intentions to save her and her fellow refugees, despite everything it has done to redefine itself. A SecUnit’s function as an oppressor’s tool is not a physical mandate upon reality, in the same way that gender is a rough categorization of identity and not a physical mandate, but they are both real in the ways that social constructs are dangerously real, have powerful impacts upon our lives through the way we view and interact with each other.
And yet despite everything, with all the freedom to self-actualize that it has in its power, Murderbot chooses to continue to perform its function and redefine it/itself as “keeping others safe.” It continues to try to be a SecUnit in a way that it can be proud to be, and I think that that’s a deeply inspiring narrative of queerness for us as queer readers, trans or cis, binary and nonbinary.
(Also, shoutout to Iztarshi and her construct gender meta, which inspired blessphemy’s gender meta, and also to Iztarshi’s OC MedUnit, who is essentially trans nonbinary in terms of construct gender: it decided it didn’t want to be a SecUnit anymore, doesn’t want to be a ComfortUnit, but still liked the parts where it was saving people, and decides to change its function to “medic”)