Dreamer and the Darkhalf

it's been so miserable all week and some of that is the triple digit temperatures, but the unit is blowing a lot more air now, so some of it was just that it was fighting for its life through dust and cat hair. I gotta be better about it.

It's perfectly reasonable that I have decided, based on ambient cultural information, that Ready Player One will not be my jam and I'm not going to read it. What that means, though, is that I have very little information about Ready Player One. I am not an authority on Ready Player One. If there's a discussion of the character development or worldbuilding or plot structure in Ready Player One, I can listen, but I can't really contribute, because I have not read it and thus am missing quite a lot of information about it.

They don't like our rainbows, they don't like cosplay or costumes, they don't like cultural festivals.

Like... fun for them has very strict rules. Like it can't be too outlandish, it has to be about the country or have religion attached to it somehow, there's an itinerary. Like... the Freedom 250 thing has a baptism pool. The fun has to be a specific way or its out of line.

I'm in a picture with my friends, having fun at a parade in our dance costumes (which no one seems to complain about when they're on a stage) and they're like... "freak show," "lunatics," etc... and its like... yes? And?

Its a parade, youre supposed to provide a spectacle or you end up like the Christmas parade we were too queer to be in. (It was a requirement by the organizers to have the float themed around the birth of christ somehow. It was the saddest parade ever and I dont know why i wanted to be in it so bad.)

I bring my colorful flow props to everything. People spit on me, tell me im going to hell, preach at me while im just vibing. Like they see all the fun im having and have a visceral reaction to it. Like... how dare I make my lifestyle look fun and carefree in front of the impressionable youths? (My lifestyle is fun and carefree! I have a life that I love outside of my sexuality, but I also love being out and queer.)

A comment thats going to stick with me for awhile was 'i don't care if they're gay, but why do they have to be weird?'

And like... i am weird, yeah. For sure! But children's media for most of my young years was about embracing weirdness, so i figured it was okay. Plus, performers are often weird.

Im having fun in a way that doesn't fall into the three acceptable categories of fun: faith, country, or family.

I can't tell if this specific image is from an ICE protest or No Kings rally, but just fucking look at the sheer absurdity of what's happening here. There is a single person wearing an inflatable frog costume, standing quietly but confidently, hands on its fat little hips, in the middle of a dark street. And there's countless uniformed militia who are armed to the teeth standing around the lone frog - and the armed militia are the ones clearly on the back foot. They are unsettled, discomfitted, unsure what to do.

This strategy has been called tactical frivolity. It's a great way to puncture and deflate (pun intended) the overblown sense of gravitas and self-important victimhood that authoritarianism requires to survive.

Here's some excerpts of an interview of L.M. Bogard, who first coined the term:

"...authoritarians don't like to be laughed at," Prof Bogad says. This kind of symbolism works because "without even giving a speech, you are undermining the authoritarian script".

As protesters take on a powerful opposition, a silly costume takes control of the optics. "It makes it look worse if you respond with violence," he says.

Authoritarianism is based on the perception that you are both superior to everyone else and under attack from everyone else. This is, of course, Very Serious. So you've built your very serious army with your very serious uniforms and your very serious slogans and tattoos, waving your very serious flag. Because this is, again, Very Very Serious. Everyone Else needs to take this as seriously as you do.

And if the rest of us don't, it completely destroys the illusion. If we respond to all their puffing and posturing by poking fun at them in a silly and harmless way - or, far worse, if we're just having our own fun and living our own lives and it's not about them at all - it feels like an attack.

But when someone's doing the macarena dressed as an inflatable frog, there's really no way to beat the shit out of them without looking like an asshole.

Since the dawn of time, bigots have deflected any appeals for better behavior with "it's just a joke bro", but they get absolutely furious when anyone else does the same.

People with authoritarian beliefs get uncomfortable when they watch people they consider inferior outsiders having a blast without hurting anybody - people they can only vilify by calling them monsters and perverts who are spending every waking second attacking the one true religion and stuff - because our joy just doesn't fit into their paradigm.

"how dare you say we piss on the poor" in response to someone misinterpreting your post

"_ isnt gonna fuck you" for suck up behavior

"woah. should we tell everyone? should we throw a party?" for who the fuck cares

"and what if the world was made of pudding" for when would this ever matter.

"and sharks are smooth both ways" for a group of people heatedly arguing with 1 guy who is fucking with them all

“30-50 wild hogs” for someone making ABSURD excuses for violence.

“what were YOU doing at the devils sacrament” for how do you know that without being a part of it.

“anyone in this thread smoke weed” for the shit you people are saying is so off topic this might as well be a general discussion forum

“dogs are boys and cats are girls” for ooh ur mindset did not grow past 4th grade, huh

“color theory in a childrens hospital” for bending over backwards to not agree that YEA, that thing Came Off Weird

“you are a tar pit” for someone finding any reason to respond with outrage.

“is the __ in the room with us right now?” for I Don’t Think That’s Real.

“bean soup? im allergic to beans!” for ik this doesn’t work for you, but that’s not a flaw. not everything can be for you.

Whoever's the 'hero', the other one loses. That's just how it has to work for both of them.

If Bugs has genuinely earned Miss Piggy's ire, she whoops him. If Miss Piggy is trying to cook Hare Surprise for dinner, he's gonna run her ragged. But there's no automatic winner, here.

However, I think the actual funniest outcome (and the funniest outcome wins in scenarios like this) is a real duck season rabbit season elmer season kind of moment, if you catch my drift. Like we gotta see them both go back and forth and it's gotta be clear that nobody has the clear advantage. Very unstoppable force meets immovable object type situation. Nobody's coming out the winner, there's a close calls on all sides.

A little less than 10 years ago i was a teenager on the internet who watched cringe compilations on youtube. Literally every single person in those clips were either feminists, trans, autistic, furries, fat, mentally ill in some form, or LITERAL CHILDREN, etc.

It was QUITE LITERALLY an alt right pipeline. We were laughing at feminists protesting for gender equality, for fucks sake. My youtube recommendations were plagued with right wing videos and debates from watching these.

You are 100% allowed to dislike certain media and fandoms and whatnot but publicly shaming them is not only low-brow, but close minded and gullible behaviour, to say the least. Is that person with a Sonic self insert really hurting you at the end of the day? When you think other peoples harmless behaviour needs to be policed, you are already slipping.

Screenshot of tags :

"#incredibly relevant for academic work too!! #apparently a friend of a friend almost didn't graduate because she ran her thesis through an ai/plagiarism checker #which then scraped her entire paper and added it to its 'database' #so when she submitted it and they ran it through an ai/plagiarism checker #it marked as 100% AI #i can't imagine how devastating that would be"

they weren't calling it "AI" back then, but even in the early days it was clear the corporation was stealing student work to build its database - plus stealing published work, else how would that sort of plagiarism-detection tool work?

I originally planned to mix it up more on the vibes between the two editions (partly so I myself could keep them straight and didn't gift the couples copies with the wrong names), but.... these marble print fabrics are just too powerful, I couldn't say no. I did enough differentiating with the titling and endpapers, it all worked out!

And, naturally, they both needed some edge illustration to take it to the next level!!

So, the green set. I found this gorgeous black and white paper a couple weeks ago at my local art store, and it was SO striking that I grabbed a couple sheets. I was worried at first that it was going to be too busy with the marbled fabric on the cover, but couldn't find anything else that sparked joy, and... i shouldn't have stressed so much, the combo is fantastic. I should trust the maximalist voices in my head! For this one I drew the scene from osgiliath, looking out at minas tirith

After THAT, i was looking to draw something that specifically wasn't More Buildings 😂 I had a pretty magenta paper I've been sitting on that harmonized surprisingly well with the minor colors in the blue fabric. I originally had my eye on a matching leather, but backed away to the same warm navy hide I used for the guestbook, which really gave the whole thing some nice dignity. And the opposite of drawing buildings is drawing CREATURES, so i went absolutely ham on balrog cross-hatching

Both these sets were a ton of fun and came out deliciously! And finished drying two whole days before the wedding! I got PLANY of time 🤣 But truly, I'm not very good at repeating myself, so it means a lot to me that I can be this many lords of the rings deep and still be finding new ways to delight myself. I had a lot of fun with these sets!!

A short comic I made about my experiences as a seasonal worker, and the way places change you.