Dross The Fish

This blog is mainly art and fandom focused and I am always looking for inspiration so feel free to send art requests or suggestions and I might draw you something nice. My ask box is always open.

Fair warning, if you have a blank blog and I'm unable to confirm you are human you run the risk of being blocked.

18+ side blog for sending your more nsfw asks and requests

Feed the fish please!: Ko-fi

Most of them are. Some can hold their liquor better than others. Edward has a very high metabolism so he can hold it the best. Larry is a lightweight.

Here is a quick drabble I wrote on my lunch for you.

.....

The room they’d rented at the bordello was cramped and a little damp, and Adam was certain he’d heard rats in the walls. It bothered him little; he’d hidden in worse places. The worst thing about it was that he couldn’t stand upright without hitting his head on the ceiling, that and the sickly sweet perfume in the air.

Through the thin walls Adam could hear the sound of the women at work and the occasional bangs and crashes. It set him on edge. Hyde was sprawled out on a maroon chaise lounge, taking up the entire thing with his legs stretched out. Theo was sitting at a small table amusing herself with a deck of cards.

This was the worst part of spying on someone. The long hours of boredom, staring out of a window and waiting for them to do something interesting. Adam had no taste for it. A loud pop behind him nearly had him jumping out of his skin.

Edward had found a bottle of whiskey.

“That’s not yours,” said Adam.

“Tis mine if I pay fer the room, which I did, and twice what a hovel like this is worth,” Edward snarled.

“Dr. Watson said you aren’t to drink or have cocaine while you work with us.”

“Come over here then and take it from me!” Teeth were bared, and the bottle was raised. Edward guzzled loudly.

Theo watched longingly as the amber liquid drained from the bottle. “I miss liquor." She folded her cards and stacked them. She could tell it was cheap stuff by the smell. Probably burned like hell going down. It didn’t stop her from feeling envious.

Adam stooped and shuffled over, snatching the bottle from Edward, not caring that some of the contents spilled on him. He pointed a finger at the diminutive fiend.

“No.”

Edward shot to his feet and began to kick Adam in his bent knees, a stream of obscenities falling from his lips with dribbles of liquid.

Fending him off with one hand and holding the bottle out of reach, Adam sighed and called to Theo, “Please help.”

“As long as there’s drink here, he’s going to want it. I’d just give it to him,” Theo replied most unhelpfully.

Adam threw her a sour look, then looked back at Edward. She wasn’t wrong. The only way to stop Edward was to remove the temptation. In a flash of spite he raised the bottle to his own lips, making sure Hyde could see what he was about to do.

Edward stilled, “You wouldn’t! Not the whole bottle!”

Adam grinned. He would. He did. And once he’d finished he coughed and nearly retched. It was vile. His throat felt as if it had caught fire. He suppressed his gagging long enough to give Edward a woozy grin.

“Oh you’re gonnae regret that,” Edward said with grudging admiration.

“We’ll see!” Adam shoved the empty bottle back at him.

Sure!

......

Theo tasted blood. Thick and coppery, mixed with mucus, it coated her mouth until she spat it into her handkerchief.

There wasn’t much time left. The consumption was eating her from the inside. She thought she’d feel despair when the time came. She’d been so afraid at the first sign of red droplets on her pillow. That first taste of blood on her tongue. She had cried, and then she’d screamed all her anger and hot indignation.

She couldn’t have screamed now even if she’d wanted to. The infection in her lungs had crawled up her throat, stealing her voice from her like one of the fair folk from her old Nan’s stories.

“Where’s my faerie gift in exchange, eh, Nan?” she rasped, every word costing her more of her precious little strength.

Theo was too tired to perform anymore these days. With no voice left to sing, she’d been turned out of the music hall. With no place left to go and the damp, cold night air settling in, she knew she wouldn’t see morning.

It was so cold now. The gas lamps were turning on, and the streets were clearing of people, all except the ladies of the night and the ragged workmen who came out at night to light the lamps, sweep the streets, catch the rats, and make the world soft and clean for the creatures who inhabited the day.

She passed a chimney sweep’s apprentice curled up by the stoop of a house he’d either freshly cleaned or was waiting to be let in. A small boy of no more than six, he was sleeping black as workers of his profession often did, with his dirty soot bag clutched to his chest. Theo wouldn’t have minded going to sleep herself. A heavy weight had begun to set in her limbs, and her breath was becoming more labored. She fished into her thin trouser pocket and pulled out a few coins. It had been meant to buy her one more supper, but she wasn’t hungry. Would never be again, she figured. She dropped them next to the child without waking him.

Theo walked on for no reason other than to stay on her feet for as long as she was still able. At length the leaden feeling in her limbs slowed her, and another wave of bloody sputum worked its way out of her aching body. She sank down until her cheek pressed against rough cobblestones. The lamplight overhead flickered against a looming shape over her. As everything began to fade to darkness it looked like an orange halo framing the head of a kneeling figure.

How funny, she thought.

Then she was gone.

…..

it's making me appreciate short kings who smoke cigars

may I possibly request more swan art, if possible no stress

A sex scene is same as a fight scene, a dance scene, or any scene of intense activity characters might do together. How much point it has and how much you get out of it is going to depend on what the genre is and how much attention to character development the writers are giving. There is no inherent lack of purpose to a sex scene that you couldn't argue for any other type of activity scene in a film.

Even as an ace person I don't get NOTHING out of a sex scene if it's well written and I am invested in how the characters interact with each other. There is a lot of trust, vulnerability, tenderness or violence that can go on in an intimate scene that you can't really get with the same magnitude in a different context. It's not just about being horny. I may not ever feel horny but I can feel other things in scenes of intimacy that are cathartic, intriguing, or even relatable.

The point of art, any art, is to evoke emotions in the audience. That doesn't mean you're going to feel everything that an artist or writer is trying to convey. It's not even required that you be horny to be able to enjoy or contemplate a sex scene.

The only time a sex scene exists with no purpose other than to sexually stimulate you as a viewer is in porn and I could make an argument that porn isn't even without merit as an artform or that we cannot have academic or philosophical conversations about it and what the kind of porn we consume says about our culture and society. I can also make an argument that we don't HAVE to have academic or philosophical conversations because it's perfectly ok just to want to feel horny just like it's ok to want to feel sad or scared. There is a catharsis and a relief to be found in the intensity of certain genres.

This doesn't mean every sex scene works or does something important for the plot. It doesn't mean a movie or book isn't handling it badly. There are plenty of bad or poorly written scenes that are just the director putting his fetish on the screen to the detriment of their characters and story. But that isn't a ubiquitous truth and it's no worse than when any other type of scene fails. I've seen pointless sports montages, dumb fight scenes that went on way to long, and unsatisfying slasher kills across plenty of genres but no one is getting their panties in a twist over those.

I think it would benefit more people to take a neutral perspective on sex and its place in art because, whether we participate in it ourselves or not, it is a fundamental part of the human condition and it can be provocative, insightful and even beautiful in the hands of a strong writer.

I can't really say which episode was my favorite as a kid. I had a handful that I really liked but I can say that there was one episode that hit me really hard and stuck with me even into adulthood.

The episode was from Season 1. It was called "Marooned in Fraggle Rock." It went somewhere really unexpected but did so well with the writing that I don't think they ever topped it in future episodes.

You have two Fraggles, Red and Boober. Red is outgoing, reckless, a bit of a try hard and kind of full of herself. Boober is a neurotic mess who has a lot of phobias and is kind of depressed most of the time, which is weird for his species. They end up trapped in a collapsing tunnel and we see how the main 5 characters all react in an emergency situation. The three fraggles outside of the tunnel cope in different ways.

One tries to psychically connect to her friends through a discarded scarf and I think it's really sweet that the other fraggles don't really demean her for that even if they think it's silly or pointless. They understand it's something she's clinging to as a way to comfort herself.

Within the collapsed tunnel Red and Boober start to confess things, their insecurities, their anxieties. It's very somber and as the episode progresses the tone only gets darker. At one point Red and Boober realize that they're beginning to run out of air and Red asks "What do you think it's like to die?"

It wasn't the first time I'd seen death on screen and I'd already been to at least one funeral so I wasn't ignorant to what mortality was at that point but it was the first time I'd seen a character discuss it. The fear of it, the acknowledgement that life is temporary. It's handled so well for a children's show.

Boober tells Red a poignant metaphor about a soap bubble he saw. How it was beautiful and full of colors and then it was simply gone. He remarks that he thinks life is like that. In a weird way the most neurotic character in the show is the most calm and accepting about his impending death. Red replies that the metaphor makes her feels sad. Boober comforts her.

And that she feels sad is completely ok, that's acceptable. The show doesn't try to tell you it's not sad, just that it's inevitable. A weaker show might have undercut it with humor or decided this was the lesson and this is when the other characters should come in to save their friends but it doesn't. It lets you sit with that for awhile. Right up until Red tells Boober she's starting to feel giddy and he says "We're almost out of air" then begs her in this trembling and timid voice not to go to sleep.

I remember as child feeling so much anxiety in that moment but I was glued to the show. Of course they don't kill of these characters. It's still a show for 6 year olds. But they pushed it a lot farther than I would have thought a show aimed at 6 year olds would.

And it didn't feel gratuitous. It wasn't overwhelming or difficult to process. It struck a near perfect balance of being safe enough for children and heavy enough to actually feel like there were real stakes. To illustrate that fragility and mortality with more than just dialogue.

It's mostly just the music and if you get a really good actor to play Jekyll/Hyde the performance for that specific character can be a lot of fun. The plot doesn't bother me too much because I do like the 1931 Jekyll and Hyde even if it's completely different from the book and this is clearly an adaptation of that version. I don't think I'll ever be ok with how that adaptation it handles the character of Ivy/Lucy, because it is just killing a woman to create pathos for a shitty male character but it's not really any more egregious about it than other versions of Jekyll and Hyde so I don't feel like I can single it out.

Quincey-very seldomly unless he's very angry or the situation is dire. Watson- a little more likely than Quincey, he's not much bothered by foul language given his days in the army. He tries to curb it in respectable company and wouldn't say anything crass but will drop a "damn" or "bloody hell" or the like when pressed. Selma-Depends on who she's with. With close friends she may loosen up a bit and swear but it's never extreme. Theo- used to be quite the potty mouth. Picked up some colorful turns of phrase from hanging around the docks. Was so bad about swearing that Dorian Gray told her to clean up her language. Generally polite these days but if she looses her temper and goes off on someone she'll pull out the nastiest most rancid obscenities in her artillery. Edward is very impressed and taking notes. Edward-Not nearly as bad as people might think but still pretty bad.

Larry-was more likely to do it when he was younger and it felt taboo. Now he generally doesn't because his mother hated swearing.