Ok ngl the absurdity of 2025 already is genuinely comical if you look at it through a TV show lense.
My explanation below the cut
We opened up in 2016 where the generic villain (and I'm not even making this up, Donald was so hated and mocked that movies DID base their evil ceos off of him) rules over the country before the people prevailed in 2020 at the start of a plague plot. (🎶I sent the pestilence and plague into your house into your bed🎶), and it became a show about surviving that.
About 3/4ths into the 2024 season we get the a beacon of hope to step in and start rallying the people together, things look absolutely fantastic as we get closer and closer to election day.
And then, ✨️ plot twist ✨️, the big bad wins! We don't know why or how, but he wins!
Aaand immediately starts breaking promises btw. Like things started going downhill FAST. People get violent, the world's on fire (literally, my heart goes out to those affected by the fires /gen), it's like hell itself opened up.
TikTok goes down, the one media the united states didn't regulate, indicating that by this point the government is already silencing the people because the big bad evil guy signed the order for it to happen before his first defeat. Then it's back up in 12 HOURS thanking the man who took it down in the first place before he's even president. Like??? Okay so Tiktok's ban was politically motivated, plot twist 2. I mean big whoop really, roses are red the sky is blue and I sincerely hope people remain Xiaohongshu cause the memes are funny and it's great seeing two cultures create community with each other.
BUT IT GETS BETTER/MORE ABSURD.
DONALD DORK STARTS MONOLOGING IN HIS VICTORY RALLY JANUARY 19TH. I watched Luke Beasley's video on it and 5 minutes in, this dude admits the evil plan and says (I'm paraphrasing), "..2026 2028 I'm not gonna be your president anymore, and then they rigged it. And we won." LIKE??? DUDE??? He also went on to comment how good with the evil tech bro (who we were ALL clowning on) is with computers and how due to that fact, they won Pennsylvania by a landslide.
AND THERE WAS FORESHADOWING
•Trump alluding to a secret with Mike johnson
•billionaires dumping so much money into his campaign (they don't just do that unless they know the winning horse)
•"I don't need your votes"
•Elon Musks starlinks were attached to the voting booths
•People reporting their votes never got counted
•Ballots being tossed in the woods
•How the count came in so quickly
•calls from Russia that they tried sweeping under the rug
•Russian bomb threats in major polling locations
AND MORE
I'm cackling. You cannot make this shit up-- EXCEPT YOU CAN. I AND MANY OTHER WRITERS HAVE LITERALLY WRITTEN THIS. THIS IS HOW I'D FORESHADOW A TWIST LIKE THIS ONE.
I am just.
I am that. I am that guy. I was that guy after the election results came in the next morning, I was that guy as people also got started getting suspicious and I began to rub my braincells together in hopes a thought would occur.
So we fast forward to inauguration day, and my god did the directors do ARCANE levels of symbolism. Flags half-staffed at his crowning because we lost a great man (and of course he bitched about it online), it's the coldest day of the year, his wife wearing a god damn funeral outfit, things are still on fire and NOBODY is happy. He didn't even put his hand on the Bible, like you couldn't even do that? If this was in a show, I'd be analyzing every frame, every line of dialog, every episode because this would be a MASTERPIECE if it was just fiction.
But oh, my friends, does this recent episode get delicious.
Because the god damn tech bro boyfriend henchman, threw up the Nazi salute. THE WRITERS ARE BRINGING BACK THAT OLD PLOTLINE. ONE OF THE MOST INFAMOUS MEN IN HISTORY IS COMING BACK IN CULT FORM, BABY! I feel like we're living through castlevania's season 2 here!
But, craziness aside, you know what I will give the writers a good handshake for?
Community.
Throughout this entire mess, there's always been community. When Donvict got elected governors rallied against him and began putting protections in place, they're not afraid to stand up to him. When the fires were raging, while he was making fun of it, Mexico sent firefighters for us, and I cannot thank them enough.
Leaders around the world rallied against us and continued standing up to him, when Donald toyed with the idea of buying Greenland the Prime Minister declined, but said something along the lines of; "we'll happily take some states off your hands and give your people what they need though.", and so much more. World Leaders have our backs, and even the people within. I've seen countless comments from other countries talking about how they weep with us, but are by our side. There's love, community, and we aren't left completely alone.
Even within the United States, there is love and community. The people are not afraid of this man, going as far as to protest outside at the Lincoln Memorial.
Not to mention, when we thought TikTok would be banned people moved to Xiaohongshu. You know what happened? Community. From what I heard, Chinese and American folks are striving to learn each other's languages to talk to each other easier, they ask questions about culture, make jokes, etc. Community.
Jokes, memes, we're all making those aren't we? "If I don't laugh I will cry" you know. Songs and other forms of art just to put a smile on someone's face in this harrowing time. We hadn't stopped creating, stopped sharing, stopped loving. We're afraid, very afraid. But we're together.
We can't forget that, and if this tale goes as I hope it does, that togetherness will ultimately be what saves us all.
So, yeah. The absurdity of 2024 and 2025, looking at it through a writer's lense, it's already one hell of a ride.
Need some art assistance btw, not sure if this is the place to ask or if anyone's gonna see this but 👏
I have a race of scaled people that look pretty human, problem is I.. don't know how to add the scales 💀 I don't know what they'd look like or how I'd doodle them. I know that their shoulders and thighs may have thicker scales, that I figured out, but I struggle with what the scales would look like on their backs, faces and fronts. I know that /most/ races inspired off of reptiles would usually have those long scales on the bellies, and given that they're based on snakes that would probably make sense, except from what I can remember snakes have those scales so that sliding on the ground is much easier, these guys walk upright so there's no need for those long scales.
Anyway if anyone's got advice/suggestions, that'd be appreciated :]
Something to note is they don't have breasts if that plays into how scales would be shaped. My main atvath (the species in question) /does/ but that's only because she was a mammal before becoming a reptile and a lot of her tjou traits carried over.
