this is not a dash

O-okay, let’s get into this, shall we?

*grumbling* Would you rather work for Lex Luthor or the Joker- *shouting* Lex Luthor, by like, a fucking mile!

Yes, yes, working for Lex Luthor is basically like being an Amazon employee that makes weapons of mass destruction, which is bad. Lex is like Donald Trump mixed with Mark Zuckerberg mixed with Jeffrey fucking Bezos, it’s not a great mix. He does not treat his henchmen well. Their lives still suck, and they are probably monitored on how long they take piss breaks for.

But let’s analyze what working for Lex Luthor is like versus the fucking Joker. With Lex you probably get a dental plan, a health plan, a paycheck, and the guy that you’re fighting really cares about human life. Superman will hit you just long enough to knock you out, so you’re not a treat, so he can stop the problem.

If you work for the Joker, your payment is you’re not fucking dead. You say one wrong thing? Bang. You don’t laugh at his jokes? Bang! You do laugh at his jokes? Bang! You think Joker gives a fuck about a henchman?

Who’s Lex Luthor’s right-hand-man? It’s a woman, you sexist, her name is Mercy, she’s awesome. Who’s Joker’s right-hand-man? Bob? Nah, he’s dead. Harley? Tried to kill her multiple times. Slappy? Who the fuck is Slappy?

The best case scenario of working for the Joker is that you fight the fucking Batman! And that presents its own fucking list of problems. If you stop Superman as a Lex Luthor henchman, Lex’ll be pissed, but he’ll be at least happy that Superman was caught. If you stop Batman as a Joker henchman, you better have a fucking coffin picked out yesterday.

This isn’t a fun hypothetical question, this is a screening technique that the doctors at Arkham use to determine your mental health! There is a right and a wrong answer to this question, and the correct one is Lex fucking Luthor. Thank you for coming to my fucking Ted Talk, have a nice day.

This is not metaphorical. I mean actual, literal pieces of paper/plastic/metal/whatever explicitly erected to inform the public.

“How did you know this was the right trail?” I read the sign.

“Wow, how did you know what that flower is?” There’s a SIGN.

“How did you know we needed to use the side door?” THERE IS A SIGN POSTED ON THE FRONT DOOR.

Just…why are we having such different experiences of the world? People can read. I KNOW they can read. There’s nothing wrong with their vision.

Just. READ. THE. GOD. DAMN. SIGN.

This also applies to:

Syllabi

ok brief context first for any readers not aware: in the Odyssey, the unfaithful maids are a group of enslaved women in the house of Odysseus who are hanged for 'betraying' Odysseus by having sex with Penelope's suitors. In the Penelopiad they are instead Penelope's most faithful and trusted maids who she enlisted to spy on the suitors.

my issue w the Penelopiad on this subject is just that I think making it so the maids weren't actually 'unfaithful' carries the implication that if they had done all the things the Odyssey says they did then in some sense they would have had it coming.

yeah I haven't seen the Nolan film but i read the summary bcos i was interested to see if they kept in the Unfaithful Maids and not only are they out but the film also seems to have really played down the massacre of the suitors?

which is another thing where like, even in the original context, we are not supposed to 100% agree with that!! its followed by a sequence where the suitors' families are all like 'dude what the fuck'

part of the emotional impact, to me, of the Odyssey is that we spent the whole epic being encouraged to sympathise w Odysseus as this almost everyman-type main character who just wants to go home and then at the end of the poem he murders a bunch of people. yikes!!

blackkittycrew

Are you going to come out of it with a Klein-level work? No. Dude was bonkers skilled. But I am here to tell you that if you've ever gone to Home Depot and shuffled through paint chips and been like "God, this is such a gorgeous color, I fucking love this color" and then immediately been like "...but I can't imagine painting a wall with it." and bought a can of soul-killing eggshell off-white or what the fuck ever, you absolutely can go pick up a $10 canvas from a craftstore and a $5 sample of that color and just hang 6 square feet of it on a wall and enjoy the fuck out of it.

I had dropped out of college for the second time, was profoundly depressed, and not sure what I was going to do with my life. My mom took me to an exhibition of the Denver Botanical Gardens' Botanical Illustration program.

It was a color-pencil-on-acrylic drawing of a Witches Broom plant, and I remember suddenly realizing that wait. I know how to do that. I know how to make those marks, how to layer those colors. I could do this.

I could make something good enough to hang in a gallery.

-And that changed things for me. Yeah, actually, I wasn't a total failure, I COULD do that and in fact I think I will. I signed up for the program, got my accreditation as a scientific illustrator, and my fucking dignity back. I even got to take classes from the woman who drew that Witches Broom.

All this is to say: Actually, go in to galleries and see if there is something you think you could do.

Then go do it.

You might find out that the threshold to getting your work shown/published is entirely within your skill level, or (like me) it's something you will get to learn so much more about, or you will wander into a completely different art form but literally whatever happens your life will be richer for it.

Imagine how kickass if the lady in the original post decided to do what Klein actually said did, and we all got a brand new pigment and painting technique out of it. You think you can do that? Good! Go do it! It'll kick ass!!