Inkopolis News, Live For The Last Time

ogerpon's design kinda reminded me of something and i finally placed it

Quilla Bung - a folk tale turned into learning lesson for two sapphics to not fuck with geese.

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assignment for my comics class, might redo this but without the constraints we had sometime

i really really love vee's character development

when we see vee and camilla again in s3, we can see how much vee has adjusted to the human realm, and just like luz in the boiling isles, has found a place where she belongs in gravesfield. she's formed her own identity as a human member of the noceda family instead of being a doppelganger of luz, but is still comfortable in her basilisk form at home. she helps hunter, gus, willow, and amity adjust to the human realm. we can see that she's put the stuff back in luz's room that she had been planning to throw out while under luz's identity, and she's left a loving note to luz welcoming her back and saying she missed her. we can see framed photos of her and camilla, showing that camilla lovingly views vee as her adoptive daughter. she's made her own friends in gravesfield and developed a crush on her friend masha. and she was prepared to confront jacob hopkins, who kidnapped her and attempted to murder and dissect her, and even takes on belos, the man who ordered the revival of her species for experimentation, who essentially ordered a genocide of basilisks, while belos is possessing her friend and future adoptive brother hunter, while yelling to hunter to hang in there.

all this parallels luz's development, and shows that like luz found a place where she belongs in the boiling isles, vee found a place where she belongs in gravesfield. she's become less pessimistic and shy, and more optimistic, brave, and comfortable both as a basilisk and as a human without impersonating luz.

even though i wish we could have seen more of vee in s3 (curse disney for cutting toh short), she's still by far one of my favorite characters in toh and it's really wonderful how she developed as a character in the show. hoping we see more of her soon :)

anyway, i'm probably going to do some fanart of vee. loved her and her design since she was introduced, but especially once i first watched thanks to them :)

whatever... go my dj (with a phd)

KAIMANS!

Help me out by Reblogging this, so I can Ratio Nintendo for abandoning their Official Tumblr Account! I'm almost at 3k Followers🦑

I share news as it is posted on the Official NA Splatoon Twitter. I DO NOT make fake news posts, so you don't have to worry about that!

I am happy to do this for y'all and appreciate the amount of support i've gotten since I made this account in August. Twitter is a hellsite and i'm happy to help for those who rather not set foot there again.

So I've seen a few too many people on twitter talking about The Kiss Scene from the new Scott Pilgrim anime. People saying it's fetishistic and indulgent, people calling it male gazey, etc. And while the kiss itself is certainly a bit exaggerated, I felt like writing a bit about why I disagree, and why context is important, like it always is. But it basically turned into an extended analysis on the metatextual treatment of Roxie Richter. So bear with me. It's a long post.

What really matters about this scene is not the kiss itself, but what precedes it. Not even just the fight scene just before it, but what precedes the whole anime series, really. And that's the Scott Pilgrim comic book, and the live action movie. Because in both, Roxie is a punchline.

She's a joke. Her character starts and ends with "one of the exes is actually a girl, I bet you didn't expect that." Jokes are made about Ramona's latent bisexuality, the movie especially treating it as funny and absurd, and her validity as a romantic interest is entirely written off by Ramona as being "just a phase." There's a fight scene, she's defeated by a man giving her an orgasm which implicitly calls her sexuality into question (come on), and the movie just moves on. It sucks. It really, really sucks.

The comic fares a little better. It never veers into outright homophobia like the movie does, and while the line about Ramona having gone through a phase remains, Roxie actually gets one over on Scott when Ramona briefly gets back with Roxie. But Roxie is still only barely a character. Like all the other evil exes, she's just a stepping stone towards the male protagonist's development. She barely even gets any screentime before she's defeated by Scott's "power of love." But Roxie stands out, since she's the only villain who is queer, or at least had been confirmed queer at that point (hi Todd). In a series that champions multiple gay men in the supporting cast, the single undeniable lesbian in the story is a villain. She's labeled as evil, made fun of, pushed aside in favor of the men, and then discarded. Her screentime was never about her, or her feelings for Ramona. It was about the straight, male protagonist needing to overcome her. And that was Roxie Richter. An unfortunate victim of the 2010s.

Fast forward to current year, and the new anime series is announced. Everybody sits down to watch the new series expecting another retelling of the same story, and.... hang on, that straight male protagonist I mentioned just died in the first episode. And now it's humanizing the villains from the original story. And there's Roxie, introduced alongside the other evil exes in the second episode, and she's being played entirely straight, without a punchline in sight. No jokes are made about her gender, no questions are made of her validity as one of Ramona's romantic interests. The narrative considers her important. In one episode, she already gets more respect than she did in either of the previous iterations of Scott Pilgrim. And this isn't even her focus episode yet... which happens to be the very next one.

The anime series goes to great lengths to flesh out the original story's villains and to have Ramona reconcile with them. And I don't think it's a coincidence that Roxie gets to go first. While Matthew Patel gets his development in episode 2, Roxie is the first to directly confront Ramona, now our main protagonist. This is notable too because it's the only time the exes are encountered out of order. Roxie is supposed to be number 4, but she's first in line, and later on you realize that she's the only one who's out of sequence. She's the one who sets the precedent for the villains being redeemed. She's the most important character for Ramona to reconcile with.

What follows is probably the most extensive, elaborate 1 on 1 fight scene in the whole show. Roxie fights like a wounded animal, her motions are desperate and pained. Ramona can only barely fight back against her onslaught. Different set-pieces fly by at breakneck speed as Roxie relentlessly lays her feelings at Ramona's feet through her attacks and her distraught shouts. And unlike the comic or the movie, Ramona acknowledges them, and sincerely apologizes. And the two end up just laying there, exhausted, reminiscing about when they were together.

Only after this, after all of this, does the kiss scene happen. Roxie has been vindicated, she has reconciled with the person who hurt her, the narrative has deemed that her anger is justified and has redeemed her character. And she gets her victory lap by making the nearest other hot girl question her heterosexuality, sharing a sloppy kiss with her as the music triumphantly crescendos.

It's... a little self-congratulatory, honestly. But it's good. It's redemption for a character who had been mistreated for over a decade. And she punctuates the moment by being very, very gay where everyone can see it, no men anywhere in sight. Because this is her moment. And then she leaves the plot, on her own accord this time, while humming the hampster dance. What a legend. How could anything be wrong with this.

A simple gesture that means a lot  <3

(A bit late to share it but it’s never too late to to spread love)

CONTENT WARNING: STALKING

A lot of brewskis have noticed my slow down these last few months and this is the major reason for it. Yes, a person at my work has been following me at the beginnings of my shifts and has not gotten any repercussion. I don't feel safe anymore. My partner and I are moving, but even still we don't feel comfortable with me working at that place, however it's difficult as I don't have a college degree and this place pays more than most jobs around here.

We have some plans in place, but I'm financially struggling. I hate to do this, but I created a ko-fi to help with relocation and to help stifle some of the burden of quitting this job. All the money would go towards things like rent, groceries, and car payments. I do have a Patreon, but it isn't bringing in enough to help with this issue and I'm debating about deleting it due to me not being able to keep up with things over there.

Anything helps, but don't donate if you can't---reading this and sharing it will be a massive help still <3