leave a message after the noot!

The show you like is telling a slightly different story than what you want? Friction is the same as pain so it is hurting me, AAAA!!! Your expectation of what was going to happen to that character you liked didn't pan out? Friction! Friction hurts! You're hurting me!!

But where the Disney Corporation can run a fucking angle grinder across the rash and barely provoke an "ow," indie creators (especially if they are not men), can get nearly run off the internet for things like factually answering a direct question or stating that the story they are writing has main characters.

There's a lot of misogyny in that, obviously, and in many awful flavors, but I think there's also mixed in there a very peculiar kind of consumer-brained entitlement. We expect that the big corporations will fuck us over every two seconds, and we expect to be utterly powerless to do anything about it because all they give a shit about is Line Go Up, but indie creators (especially if they are not men) are expected to be the balm to that infected rash. Where everything else in the world is painful and mean and uncomfortable, independent queer creators are expected to produce the comfortable swaddling bandage that dulls the pain and soothes the sensitivity. This is supposed to be our happy place, our safe place. It's supposed to be ours and belong to us and serve us.

And so they moment they produce friction, any friction, literally the tiniest amount of friction imaginable, well that's a failure! You are failing to live up to your purpose, and that's not just a creative failure but a moral and personal and spiritual failure too. It's a sin, in fact, it is a kind of evil. Friction hurts, and that means you are hurting me!

Which, to be fair? Yeah. That’s normal. Not all art is for everybody. I try hard to internalize this… there’s a really badly paraphrased Mark Rosewater quote about game design I think about a lot:

“Anything specific enough for a person to fall in love with must, by its very nature, be something that another kind of person doesn’t like.”

That’s not a bad thing. Everyone is different and if you try to make something that perfectly inoffensive to everybody, you end up with something mild and flavorless.

for art that someone has added reblog commentary to (or removed the caption from), reblog from the source

otherwise, avoid adding reblog comments to art (as this will affect the artist's notes/visibility)—utilize tags and replies to provide commentary (which artists will absolutely appreciate)

Request to good i had to do Rook Shar too

Like, the thought process is from that one Alien Force line “I’m one of everybody.” and how the Omnitrix was meant to be a tool to foster peace in the galaxy by making the wearer be able to walk in everybody’s shoes. And how Ben, in the prime universe, excels at putting himself in all those 10,000 some other shoes and understands aliens.

And Gwen would rock too, similar conditioning and Grandpa Max as The Grandpa Ever to help that along, but Ben would’ve had that same Lucky Girl-esque phase of wanting to be his own hero and try and help in the one way he can be exceptional meanwhile his cousin is the current Savior of the Universe multiple times over.

Honestly he probably would take Verdonas off-world tutoring offer simply for the fact that he doesn’t have as much self confidence without the Omnitrix as Gwen does, only to then feel further isolated bc he’s an utter enigma on Anodyne too!

I live for angst and the concept of Ben abandoning his human body/humanity for an undisclosed amount of time so he can find people he can relate to and maybe make himself somewhere near on par with his Super Amazing Cousin whose saved the universe multiple times over, or just actually useful and not having his magic blow up in his face or become more of an obstacle bc he doesn’t take well the the support role Gwen had in a lot of Alien Force confrontations. Only for him to be alienated even worse bc this Amazing Thing his grandma hyped Anodites, and him by proxy, isn’t something he’s good at being and he’s not like any other Anodites.

Yeah that last bit? Ben screwed himself slightly ditching halfway through the heroism bc now he really is not important in the story of Gwen 10.

Grabbing Gwen and Kevin’s issue of Ben taking all the credit, multiplying it by 10 and changing the context, and dumping it on him, lmao.

Ben would probably be like, an additional humanizing factor with Rook and Gwen’s partnership. Like how Rook idolized canon Ben but then saw, “no wait, this dude has issues” and is not the personification of a perfect heroic archetype— but this time it’s the year he spent seeing Gwen stress over balancing hero duties with schoolwork and it draining her there (I do not think she could balance well enough for early college admission in this au, sadly and to her displeasure) and then in comes Ben who is still her annoying ass cousin that’s missed her the last 2-3 (?) years and probably leads to their good ol bickering.

So…

Like, the thought process is from that one Alien Force line “I’m one of everybody.” and how the Omnitrix was meant to be a tool to foster peace in the galaxy by making the wearer be able to walk in everybody’s shoes. And how Ben, in the prime universe, excels at putting himself in all those 10,000 some other shoes and understands aliens.

And Gwen would rock too, similar conditioning and Grandpa Max as The Grandpa Ever to help that along, but Ben would’ve had that same Lucky Girl-esque phase of wanting to be his own hero and try and help in the one way he can be exceptional meanwhile his cousin is the current Savior of the Universe multiple times over.

Honestly he probably would take Verdonas off-world tutoring offer simply for the fact that he doesn’t have as much self confidence without the Omnitrix as Gwen does, only to then feel further isolated bc he’s an utter enigma on Anodyne too!

Gwen became a strong magic user because of her studiousness, and the Anodite heritage acting as a backup battery. When she came to accept her Anodite origins she adapted from magic rather quickly.

She would be an amazing and powerful omnitrix user, the logic she commands alone would make her dangerously efficient, and I suspect half the watch trouble Ben had wouldn’t happen with her. At her base Gwen is a rule follower and that’s an interesting juxtaposition with Anodite nature who are known to be free spirited.

Who do we know that’s hella free spirited tho? Ben!!!

I feel like he would be incredibly lonely, he would never get the hang of magic, its rules and careful procedures is just too limiting and boring for him to get, his spell would definitely backfire or blowup. However when he becomes an Anodite, then the power flips. He can harness energies to his will, probably much stronger than Gwen would be able to. I imagine it like Hal Jordan, Ben would be able to make amazing constructs or effects with no prep.

What I imagine alienates him from the anodites is his longing for connections, and to help others. At his base he is a hero and my understanding is Anodites are basically loners, who tend to have a superiority complex. Ben certainly has a high option of himself when he has the watch, but he figures out he need to be about other people, and I don’t think Grandma Verdona would understand that. “Strongest Anodite in generations and you want to help that mud ball?”

Ben would leave because he’s lonely, become one of the strongest anodites every known, feel he fits in for a little bit, then get lonely knowing this power he’s gained isn’t being used to its fullest. He would come back, and have missed so much. I like thing where rook just doesn’t know him. It would suck, he would debate leaving again, but then the team runs into trouble, and he helps, and it feels so good to use this power “the right way”.

Also I could see the Michael Morningstar arc, working similar to the Kevin arc in of Ben 10. This cool guy likes Ben and wants to hang with him, they fist bump and hang off each other like buds. Man Ben feels exhausted after hanging with him though. He feels like he has a place he belongs outside of the main team, slowly being exploited for his power. When the team busts Micheal Ben dips into that loneliness.

Ben being a constant magic flop in his childhood definitely messes him up with the Anodite stuff.

We know when anodites can survive in space with no equipment, I can just imagine Ben crashing out and floating in space for like a week trying to figure himself out before he goes back to training.

He locks in for like a month and gets to move on to the next step in training then hits a wall hard again.

These sacred tattoos were banned in Okinawa. A new generation is bringing them back.

Once worn by nearly every Ryukyuan woman, these intricate hand tattoos were outlawed for over a century.

By Haley Harrison

Inside a small tatami room just outside the center of Naha, the capital of Okinawa Prefecture, a quiet rebirth of a once-banned tattoo practice is taking place. Moeko Heshiki, one of the few remaining hajichaas, lays out her stick-and-poke tools with practiced care. My eyes are drawn to the long, dark arrows that trace the length of her fingers—a sacred art now nearly lost.

I tell her that the last woman in my lineage to have hajichi tattoos was my great-great-grandmother, the weight of both pride and loss settling over me.

“People sometimes tell me, ‘Oh, you opened a box,” she says, alluding to the cultural practices Okinawans were forced to lock away. Soon, the tattoos that once marked the hands of generations of Okinawan women will mark my own.

The colonization of Ryukyu

Long before U.S. military bases lined its shores, the islands known today as Okinawa were once the independent Ryukyu Kingdom. In 1879, Japan’s Meiji government annexed the islands, abolishing the kingdom and absorbing the newly named Okinawa Prefecture into its empire.

Ryukyuan sovereignty was dismantled on all fronts: communal lands were seized and redistributed, the indigenous languages were prohibited, and the political and social systems in which women held positions of leadership were overthrown. 

Adriane Tengan-Stoia and Lex McClellan‑Ufugusuku, doctoral students at the University of California, Santa Cruz, explain that women were the spiritual leaders in Ryukyuan society and were believed to possess a divine connection to the spiritual realm. 

“Before Western intervention and Japanese colonization, the chifijing ganashi me, or high priestess, served as the king's counterpart,” says Tengan-Stoia. McClellan‑Ufugusuku adds that the new Meiji government “wanted to put heteropatriarchy firmly in the Ryukyus as it was in Japan” and began persecuting women in positions of power and targeting their cultural traditions.

As a result, hajichi—hand-poked markings that adorned the hands, wrists, and fingers of Ryukyuan women for centuries—was banned.

In the days of Ryukyu, girls as young as six would begin their hajichi journey by receiving two small circles, called tontonmi, between their knuckles. As they grew and reached new milestones, such as getting married, mastering complicated weaving techniques, or turning 60, so did their tattoos.