Pink Apples

My blog. Artist/30+

[aurelion-solar]

Arcane Season 2 Episode 7 Colorkeys by Robin Lagarde

[vaenire]

I think more people need to be invested in historic preservation issues

[vaenire]

Architecture is vital to how people imagine history and community. Without efforts to preserve historic ethnic communities, there are whole subsets of people erased. Highways were often built through marginalized communities, resulting in their dismantlinguu, disruption, and long lasting health effects due to the proximity to highway pollutants. At the same time, sometimes memorializing certain groups can further pigeonhole them.

Example: by designating the International District (historic Chinatown, Japan town and Filipino and Vietnamese community areas) in Seattle, connections that those communities had beyond “International District” were erased, leading to the rest of Seattle’s history being whitewashed and marginalized groups to be boxed away in their “own area.”

Not to mention urban renewal and the push to “rejuvenate” cities by designating areas as slums in order to use eminent domain to claim properties and utilize Federal funding to demolish neighborhoods in the name of progress in the mid century. Often, completely normal marginalized communities were labeled as slums because they were in prime real estate. Historic preservation has been used as a tool both to prevent these displacements, but also to facilitate them.

It’s a complex issue!!! People should understand their local historic preservation, who has benefited from it and who has been further marginalized!! Imagine your neighborhoods history!! What was there before the development, who lived there!? Where’d they go!?

Historic preservation is a tool that can be used to shape the character of a city or town, preserve or erase particulars of history, and be a powerful tool for communities willing to learn how to wield it, and more people should care about it.

Otero, Lydia. Storied Property: María Cordova's Casa. 2025. ISBN 9781734118049. Planet Earth Press.

Wong, Maria Rose. Building Tradition: Pan-Asian Seattle and Life in the Residential Hotels. 2018. ISBN 9781634059671. Chin Music.

[northstareclipse]

A lot of criticism of delivery apps focuses on the fact that they offer convenience and variety, which I find much less compelling than criticizing the fact that the apps often send their contractors on fetch quests from Hell.

There are real labor problems here. Base pay is often insulting. Customer tips carry too much of the burden. Workers need better protections, more transparent algorithms, protection from arbitrary deactivation, and actual recourse when the app or a customer screws them over. Car-dependent delivery is also an environmental and infrastructural problem, though in a denser city I’d still be doing this work; I’d just be doing it by bike.

But when people talk about delivery work, I rarely see them talk to actual delivery workers. I see a lot of abstract arguments about convenience, consumer decadence, “hustle culture,” and internalized neoliberalism. Meanwhile, when I’m out working and waiting in restaurants for orders, the other Dashers I meet are usually people who only speak Spanish, people who read as neurodivergent, visibly physically disabled people, or some combination of the above.

I have not met this mythical Disco Elysium poor ultraliberal hustlegrinder-wannabe people seem to be arguing with. Maybe that archetype exists somewhere. If it exists among any kind of gig worker, it would probably be rideshare drivers. But most of what I see looks less like “rise and grind” and more like “this is one of the few forms of work available to people who need flexibility, low barriers to entry, limited managerial surveillance, or a way to work around language barriers, disability, burnout, chronic illnesses and injuries with symptoms that come and go unpredictably, caregiving, résumé gaps, or discrimination.”

That does not make the current system good. It means the current system is filling a real gap that a lot of supposedly better systems do not even acknowledge.

As a disabled person who is burnout-prone and demand-sensitive, contracting as a delivery driver has given me an unprecedented level of financial flexibility. I can work when I have capacity. I can stop when I’m deteriorating. I can build my day around my actual body instead of being trapped under a manager who thinks “reliable” means “able to perform the same way every day no matter what.” That matters. It does not cancel out the exploitation, but it is also not fake just because it is politically inconvenient.

And delivery itself is not some inherently decadent evil. Sometimes people live alone. Sometimes they are sick. Sometimes they are disabled, exhausted, overwhelmed, grieving, overloaded, or recovering from something else - perhaps the stress and fatigue induced by their own job. Sometimes they need medicine, groceries, or a meal that will actually unplug their sinuses instead of whatever generic community-care slop someone thinks they should be grateful for. Humans are allowed to need specificity. “Food” is not the same as “the food I can actually eat right now.”

A serious labor critique would ask how to make delivery work safer, better-paid, less tip-dependent, less car-dependent, less algorithmically punitive, and less precarious. It would ask what kinds of flexible, accessible work should exist for people who cannot thrive in conventional employment. It would ask how cities could support bike delivery, worker cooperatives, public infrastructure, and real protections without simply replacing one bad system with a moral sermon about how nobody should ever want takeout.

But a lot of the discourse does not do that. It treats convenience itself as suspicious. It treats wanting flexible work as false consciousness. It treats the needs of disabled people, immigrants, and other people who can't fit into traditional employment structures as details to be swept aside in favor of a cleaner political image.

I guess the opinions of delivery workers only count when they are politically convenient.

[sivsii]

I’ve faced a lot of nasty art blocks over my years as an artist but none so detrimental as Going To Work

[oakssincave]

thank you for putting in words what i have been unable to articulate for the last years haha

[sivsii]

and the PROBLEM IS. the PROBLEM is that with other art blocks I can tell myself. oh it’s hard now but time will pass and I will heal from whatever mental or emotional block that’s causing this eventually. but WORK? A Forever Problem. There is no waiting-out Job. Having Job is eternal. Time does not heal Being At Work. Sand is always in our eyes forever

[katestewartt]

#GOOD LIFE ADVICE ACTUALLY

[bluedalahorse]

Take a cupcake! 🧁

yellow cupcake, vanilla frosting

yellow cupcake, chocolate frosting

chocolate cupcake, vanilla frosting

chocolate cupcake, chocolate frosting

Voting ended onMar 20, 2025

Then reblog to make sure everyone gets a cupcake. 🩷

[mothsprout]

✷ Pileated Woodpecker ✷

[jaijeijayjei]

In Defense of Mel Medarda

TLDR; Many viewers accuse Mel of hating or having disdain for Viktor. However, Mel has consistently shown she respects and cares about him as a person.

1. The Lab Scene

“Mel looked at Viktor with disdain and ignored him”

- Mel focused on Jayce because he was more likely to be persuaded. She was being pragmatic and defending her stance. She isn’t making a personal dig against Viktor.

- Making sweeping assumptions about Mel’s perception of Vik based on ONE scene is crazy. More on this later.

2. Hextech Weapons

“Mel wanted to turn Viktor’s invention into a weapon”

-Jayce used hextech to attack a factory and outfit a kill squad. Viktor used hextech to make super soldiers for a warlord. Yet Mel gets so much hate for suggesting weapons ONCE? And, for the rest of the show she is strictly against Hextech as a weapon.

- In S2E1 Mel tells Jayce, “I won’t let them corrupt your dream,” then the shot pointedly draws attention to her grasping Viktor’s cane. She’s most likely referring to both of them. In any case, Mel ultimately respected Viktor’s wishes (looking at you Jayce).

3. Mel’s perception of Viktor

- Mel respects Viktor’s skills and abilities. In S2E8 Mel describes Jayce and Viktor as “two brilliant young inventors…rallying the hope and hearts of a nation.” She sponsored hextech for years because she believed in the two of them.

- Mel has empathy for Viktor. You can see it in her expression when she learns he’s dying. She encourages Jayce to spend time with Vik so he won’t be alone. She goes to check on him after the explosion and is visibly concerned. “He’ll come back to us”

4. Other Thoughts

- Mel doesn’t hate Zaunites. She’s the first to vote for their independence. After the attack she and Caitlyn argue it was caused one person, not all of Zaun, and advocate against invasion. When Caitlyn reveals her plan she’s clearly disturbed. (Might make a separate post on this)

- One conversation doesn’t indicate the whole scope of a relationship. Here’s an example, Jayce told Viktor, to his face, that Zaunites are dangerous and scolded him like a child. Does that mean Jayce hated Vik? No, was a lapse in judgement, not an indication he secretly looked down on Viktor. Why does Mel get so much more hate?

- Mel, at her core, is a good hearted person who values peace and mercy. Yes she has many flaws but characterizing her as a cold, self-serving person is incredibly unfair.

- If Jayce could see how two of the most important people to him are pitted against each other he’d be disappointed.

Thanks to @magalimoons, @starglossie, @bichletmepickaname, @mercutio-the-velaryon and nayabayybe on TikTok for inspiring some of these points.

[gebo4482]

Arcane

Artist: Geoffroy Thoorens / Naïm Bonnot

[gebo4482]

Arcane

Artist: Charlotte O'Neill / Thibaud Delaperche

[gebo4482]

Arcane by Sébastien Flores #1

[gebo4482]

Arcane by Sébastien Flores #2

[ghostlysleuth]

was supposed to post this before feb ended oops lol

[plastidecor]

so true

[sixquarksinatrenchcoat]

please! Save me! 😃😃😃

the cage is locked! .... 😃 with a key!💃

..... the drægun keeps it around his neck!🥴

... to slayyy the drægun 😏😏 use the magic sword! 💁🗡️

[bogleech]

I never saw all of the Dragon's Lair cutscenes until years later but I'd seen snippets as a kid and I was 100% positive she was supposed to be the dragon in disguise, just fucking with him. Like I thought that was a canon reveal somehow and it remained a false memory well into my adulthood. Would it not have made sense??? That or she's just completely on the dragon's side. This is not how you talk and act when you want to be "rescued" from the dragon. This is when you look forward to cooking knight burgers for your dragon husband.

[homebrewandhypotheticals]

The in-universe reason for her behavior is somehow way weirder than that, actually! This takes a bit of explaining, but I'll try my best to keep it concise.

So, originally, Princess Daphne was meant to be an homage/parody of traditional damsels in distress from classic sword and sorcery stories, in the same way the rest of the game is a parody of those elements (the lair is hyperlethal to a cartoonish degree, Dirk is a overconfident bumbling oaf that acts all stoic until he's actually in danger, most of the monster designs are meant to be evocative of classic Conan or Tarzan foes, etc.)

That's all pretty self evident, Daphne is a giggling ditz that doesn't do anything because the cultural idea of a sword and sorcery damsel in distress is that they're vapid arm candy that only exist to be trophies acquired at the end by dashing protagonists for doing something heroic.

However, when the time came to expand Dragon's Lair into a full franchise with its own TV show (done because the arcade industry was on the brink of collapse, and Don Bluth's video game division needed to scrounge up as much money from the IP as possible to keep itself going) they naturally realized that Daphne had to be an important character in it, and having her original characterization of "being the hot lady that Dirk saves at the end" from the games wouldn't really work for any form of extensive storytelling as a member of an action-comedy cartoon cast (even for a low budget tie-in one in the 80s.) So, they went for a different stock character archetype popular around that time: the put-upon clever female lead that has to wrangle in the stupid men in her life. Basically, the Dragon 's Lair cartoon is just the old Legend of Zelda cartoon, but with the serial numbers filed off and Ganon is a dragon instead of a pig.

Anyways, the show didn't do very well, only getting a single season of thirteen 30 minute episodes, but fans of the franchise DID like elements of it, and it's still treated as a canon prequel. Here's the problem, though: Daphne in the cartoon is a smart, no-nonsense adventurer who's often just as competent as Dirk. So... how does she go from that to the classic Princess Daphne characterization?

The answer is given to us by the Dragon's Lair comics that released to commemorate the series's 20th anniversary back in 2003, and it is...

The Author's Barely Disguised Fetish!

In the comic, Daphne starts out with her cartoon characterization as a spunky tomboy, even repelling an attack by Singe's minions by herself in a prologue story, but eventually does get captured. When she does, they finally explain what that weird-ass bubble prison actually is:

it fucking bimbofies you.

Literally, they describe it as it sapping your intelligence and making you more "frivolous", and make a point to state and show that Singe had used it on plenty of other princesses in the past, keeping them as his private slave harem in his treasure room.

Admittedly, it's a decently clever way to explain why a character would have two different characterizations between their major depictions, it does come off a little weird and tasteless? I'll leave that for the jury to decide, though.

I apologize for this not being as brief as I promised, but I think knowing why an initial characterization happened and then what the later justification for that characterization is was important to discussing it. But for anybody not wanting to sit through the whole blather...

Tl;Dr: Daphne is a weird ditz either because she's just another parody of sword and sorcery tropes OR she's basically a Mid-Bimbofication Princess Zelda, depending if you prefer your explanations Doyleist or Watsonian.

Use this knowledge as you wish, and thank you for reading!

[movie-gifs]

The Bad Guys (2022) dir. Pierre Perifel

[inzergue]

[romehbo]

a misogynistic society is so threatened by the concept of trans women - women that "had the opportunity" to be privileged men and chose not to - that they start making up privileges women have in order to explain why trans women exist. going into womens restrooms isnt a privilege, playing womens sports isnt a privilege, lesbianism isnt a privilege, yet they present them as such to try and explain why trans women are women for nefarious reasons. a misogynistic society will never understand that trans women have no ulterior motive for being women