Phrases I unfollow for include: TME/TMA, transandrophobia, and any strong moral opinion about Rocky Horror. I have no patience for trans discourse whatsoever.
I don’t do chain/copy paste ask games, but thanks for thinking of me!
I won’t post fundraisers sent in my asks or submissions. Being responsible for someone's life like that is harrowing, and I just don’t have the energy to vet them besides.
I love being tagged in posts about chickens, spiders, and evil women, if you're so inclined.
I only accept anon hate in the form of limerick. Please be aware of this before sending or your message will be blocked & deleted without comment. My blog MUST remain a silly space.
Karibu karibu, enjoy your stay!
Blacklist and Personal Tags:
#important - catch-all politics & current events tag.
#this is cassandra - talks tag. From the song by Talis Kimberley.
#sadismposting, #the intersection where the bodies meet - horny violence babyyyy! Largely defunct as I work through some stuff.
#something rotten in the house - incest, haunted houses, and greek tragedy.
#torture - Torture, trauma theory, and solitary confinement.
#echo's book club - books I've been reading!
#echoes of the past - don't worry about this one.
I can be rather inconsistent when tagging!
Interests:
Opera - #opera tag
Fashion and textile arts, focused historical techniques & materials. I’ve knitted hand warmers from yarn I cleaned, carded, and spun myself! - #textile, #move the sheep and the fences around, #clothing
Sub-Saharan African mythology & cultures, for nostalgia reasons. May rarely post in Kiswahili. - #africa
Farming, homesteading, animal husbandry, etc. No tag. Lots of chickens.
Feminism and transfeminism! No tag. Re: above, I use transfem/not-transfem.
Spiders - #spiders
World mythology, media analysis, meta narrative. Enemies to lovers, too; if the Epic of Gilgamesh did it, I can put it here. #can’t argue with a monomyth, #enemies with benefits, #stories
Character tags: #gawainposting, #gearposting, #ishtarposting, #xipe totec posting, #zoraposting
Misc: #heave ho bitches, #knightposting, #labyrinth, #minotaur, #the mask, #the body, #unified tag for posts like this, #unicorn, #angels
Fandoms & medias & sideblogs & such
No Evil (@f-yeah-no-evil)
Abzu, Journey, Sky cotl (@starsfallhome)
Hollow Knight (@bobbinbugs)
Kiwi Blitz (@normalkiwiblitz)
Project Hail Mary (@shitty-eridians)
Books: House of Leaves, The Left Hand Of Darkness, Piranesi, [quite literally everything by Borges], The Last Unicorn
Animations & Animes: Revolutionary Girl Utena, Dungeon Meshi, Blue Eye Samurai, Arcane (loved s1, s2 critical), Epithet Erased, Witch Hat Atelier, Princess Tutu + princess tutu abridged (what I initially started this blog for!), Lego Monkie Kid
Video Games: Death Palette, Outer Wilds, Portal 1 & 2, Ultrakill, Hatoful Boyfriend, Hades, Blue Prince
Podcasts: Mabel, The Silt Verses
Paul Shapera (no longer following but soft spot for older works)
Medieval literature
The Epic of Gilgamesh, Inanna's Descent Into the Underworld, various mesopotamian stone tablets (Agushaya Hymn my beloved)
Original Stories and Characters
Desiree: Horror. A woman escapes to an abandoned lighthouse after killing and eating the woman she lusts after, to her considerable psychological detriment. There are no rats on Bishop's Point, but the ghost is very real. Short story, final draft
Taffeta/The Perfect Machine: Mecha, adventure. Hobbyist mecha battler breaks into a private military org, trying to steal back a peer's design... and gets more than she bargained for when she runs into Taffeta, the nation's only biomecha unit. Planned as 50-page comic/may have a novelization, first draft
Starving Season/Crow & Kipepeo: Urban fantasy. During an unusually brutal dry season, a shapeshifting crow-woman 'seduces' a young man into transitioning. Now a young woman, Namirembe must navigate a new identity, sexual & magical awakenings, and her own self-loathing in a country that's Actively Trying To Kill Her. Nagawonyi, goddess of hunger, is also there. Illustrated novella, concept stage
Narcissus and No One: Mystery. A man escapes to a lovely chateau the countryside, but starts hearing a voice that repeats the last word or syllable he spoke. To get to the bottom of this, he must face three reflections (entry room, bathroom, bedroom/id, ego, superego). Video game, concept stage
Outsides-In: Horror. After failing in her performance as a 'living statue,' a girl who gave up her name, memory, and literal heart crawls through the tunnels of the underground, trying to find her way back to herself. Features autocannibalism. Originally a "human-in-Hallownest but played for horror" concept, hence the name. Needs reworking, concept stage
Eremai: Girl with a generational curse, passed down from mother to daughter, is destined to burn down everything she loves at random intervals. She is a constant runaway who tries on new personalities like hats. Originally an Aurora (Webcomic) OC, but I've cut ties with the fandom. No rework planned, but I tag for her sometimes.
Pretty much everything I write is about women because I am a gay lesbian.
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was at a bar and a 50+ year old drunk white woman complimented me and my friend's outfits, told us there was a campsite up in northern maryland where a lot of gay bears go to have sex in the woods. we asked her how she knew about this and she very aggressively said "because i'm a FAG HAG!!! but i'm not allowed to say that anymore I GUESS!!!"
I really don't think Lace gave us enough as a character.
There's two types of character stories, and those are character arcs and character reveals. A character arc means your character reacts to events and has to become a different person to solve their narrative's problem. A character reveal means you, well, reveal something about their character that puts them in a new context.
Lace leans heavily on her character reveal (IE: a seemingly shallow, spoiled brat is actually abused and negelected by her mother) but has almost no character arc to speak of. She... gets worse, I suppose? Lost Lace and all? But she doesn't really change, in either her philosophy on being her mother's captive or in reaction to Hornet.
Disregarding Lacenet entirely, that she barely has any relationship with Hornet -- you know, the character that becomes a queendom-wide symbol of hope and drastic change for the better -- starts to feel like a serious narrative flaw, rather than shipping goggle disappointment. This comes to a head in their final dialogue. The obvious subtext of Lost Lace is "I have fallen into deep depression because even after attempted murder-suicide, I am my mother's pet daughter and toy captive. I will never be free, independent, or truly loved." Subsequently, the subtext of Hornet coming to save her is convincing Lace she's wrong about this belief. The game understands this, and the updated title screen implies Hornet and Lace escape together into the wastes. But the pre-fight dialogue is Hornet talking about herself! I was so confused and remain confused. I genuinely wonder if this dialogue was written out early in development and not updated, because Lace's overall presence feels HK-sized, not SS-sized.
I relate to Lace a lot and I really want to like her. But I just... don't, that much, because her story didn't quite give me enough to work with. She feels more like a side character than a main character. For the alleged deuteragonist of the game, I do find this storytelling inadequate, and I'm quite sorry to say it.
TLDR, the subtext and the actual text surrounding Lace are completely different things. The (mostly visual and musical, if you look closely) subtext implies this is a RGU-style story about convincing an abused bug of her self-worth and saving her at all costs. The actual text is Lace disrespecting Hornet a few times and Hornet thinking she's annoying, and not in a cute way. What happened in the writer's room to accomplish this.
Transcript, taken from the cut content/text page on the silksong wiki:
Look at you, sleeping down there like you've only just hatched! Silly little spider.
And think! I could have pinned you to the stone to rest forever beside the shells of your ancestors.
Hornet: Yet you let me live while I lay defenceless. Your words feign more cruelty than your actions suggest.
Hornet: What is your role here, pale child? Do you abide the silk sickness that strikes this land? Do you aid it? Or would you fight against it?
What dull questions, little spider! I care nothing for this lands wasting. Only curiosity brought me here, deep under the Kingdom, where the songs are but a whisper.
To delight in your pathetic plight is enough! You are a rare treat, entertainment this decaying kingdom rarely grants.
So one of the earliest planned dialogues between Lace and Hornet is Hornet sussing out Lace might care more than she lets on? The overall tone is much gentler as well. Granted, there is a lot of oddity, considering "deep beneath... where all songs are but a whisper" implies a late-game interaction, for what sounds like a second meeting, considering Hornet is still figuring out Lace's whole deal here. Either way: There seem to have been plans for some kind of alliance, or at least a proper dynamic relationship, that... didn't make it into the game, for reasons I don't understand.
Once again: Lace is a character you have to fight three times! (Fine: at minimum twice for true ending). Beating Lace is required for both the basic and true ending, and she's the true final boss of the game. If anyone should have a dynamic relationship with Hornet, it's her. (touches scorched earth of silksong) What happened...
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as someone who wants to make Every Art And Craft, Ever, All The Time it's actually suuuuuuch a relief when I come across a technique that I don't vibe with aesthetically. my pile of Things To Learn is endless and ever-growing and normally every time I see a new thing it's like well. there it goes. on the infinite pile. so on the rare occasions i see something i DON'T have a fervent and immediate desire to learn I'm just oh wow I don't like this. thank fucking god.
[completely misunderstood the story] I always interpreted it as a sort of found family narrative myself. Like the frog is the scorpion's baby and she loves him very much :)
Scorpions are very cool looking also so I bet the frog really digs the arrangement they have going. Like he drives basically and decides where they go and she just sits there looking pretty which is awesome because he loves her. And he's probably very popular because having a scorpion on your back is very cool and he goes around town like Hey everyone check out my scorpion! #myscorpion. And it makes a lot of people very jealous.
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rlly fascinating phenomenon to me is when a character is extremely popular, and that popularity seems understandable enough because they've got something interesting going on, and then you look at the fandom and realize 99% of their fans don't actually care about engaging with any of the things that make them interesting and instead seem to be fans of an imaginary milquetoast version that exists solely for ship and/or angst content and is so far removed from the canon character they might as well be an unrelated OC at this point
reading this as someone who does cross stitch but is scared of the other kinds of embroidery is like overhearing an incredibly tall and buff person say they have beef with Mr. Tom, the kitten that chills at the bookstore
there's this weird trend rn where people seem to think that because they hate misogyny and racism and colonialism or whatever and don't want to address these things inadequately it's "safer" to not tackle these things at all. i only like writing fanfiction about men because then i don't have to think about misogyny. i only write white characters because i'm white and if i write characters of color i might mess up and do something racist. my historical fiction will be constructed in such a way that my reader will never have to think about the slavery and colonial extraction that provides the cotton my characters wear and the sugar they eat and the gold in their jewelry. the presence of the oppressed would introduce oppression, would rupture the fantasy, would make my characters, my readers, myself as the author, unclean. better not to let them be seen at all.
tbh even with historical fiction and colorblind casting there's something similar to this. we want to imagine a regency britain without racism. it will look exactly the same as a regency britain maintained by slavery colonialism and white supremacy, but anyone of any race can wear those nice dresses. we want to make a show about pirates without making you root for or sympathize with slavers, so let's forget about all that unpleasantness, blackbeard is a man of color now. we want an american revolution that looks like america does today. let's erase hercules mulligan's slave cato and his important spywork completely and instead cast his owner as a black man and call him an abolitionist. doesn't that go down a bit easier.
It's still crazy that Anita Sarkeesian did some pretty basic Feminism 101 videos about things like "It's bad when a woman only exists in a narrative so her death can serve as a man's motivation" yet gamers act like she's some sort of Radical Feminist Satan.
And to be clear, me calling it Feminism 101 isn't a dig against her. Her videos were meant to be introductory pieces to feminist analysis and that's perfectly fine. That's what makes it crazier that people act like she killed their grandma or something.
If I made a video about how I wish Princess Peach had more agency and this made people declare me a permanent harassment target I would become the Joker. She's way stronger than me and she deserves way better.
Despite an air of general despair, I've gotten a lot better at responding to emails and have started working out. Become employable! Get fat and strong as fuck!
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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the situation with harry potter is kind of unprecedented in some ways imo because it is maybe the largest media franchise in history to be created & owned by a single person who still has direct creative control over it. who is also a billionaire with significant cultural/political influence. like the usual "no ethical consumption under capitalism" type excuses shatter on impact when the bigoted author in question is logging onto twitter every day saying explicitly that when you buy the tim hortons ravenclaw donut she is using your donut money to fund the genocide of trans people. like with big franchises usually there's at least a little more diffusion of responsibility than this
According to Know Your Meme, on August 18th, 2005, Erwin Beekveld brought forth this work into the world. HAPPY TEN YEAR ANNIVERSARY, THEY’RE TAKING THE HOBBITS TO ISENGARD.
every august 18th my notifications break and i go, fuck, tumblr has failed me once again, but it hasn’t. it hasn’t failed me. it’s just the taking the hobbits to isengard-iversary. happy 12 years
