😳

Selfish indeed.

But you don’t understand, Mercy. If he had let you guys do it perfectly, then you might be more powerful than him and you might not need him anymore! He wouldn’t be able to control things! How could you ask him to do something like that, when that might mean he ends up alone again?! Especially when you could just kill your very best friend and stay dependent on Jod instead, thereby guaranteeing him company for eternity? Pretty selfish of you…

And don’t even get me started on the book!

It’s crazy how it takes 20 years to make a Wicked movie and once they do, it comes out just after Trump’s reelection. The stripping of minority rights, rollback of progress, and intentional demonization of activists are such central themes in that story, and here we are, watching queer people/immigrants/women/people of color/etc being slowly stripped of their rights under conservative regimes. Personally, watching Dr. Dillamond’s firing seemed analogous to deportation of immigrants or firing/silencing of queer teachers. And then the fact that another core theme is the way the government constructs propaganda to make a mediocre con man look like a god!! And all this is shown to be horrifyingly and objectively wrong!! Absolutely insane timing.

Best advice I’ve ever found on Tumblr. Thank you friend 🫡

Hey, look at me. Look at me. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: you need to condition yourself to being okay with being inconvenienced by things. The first time I spoke about this I meant it in a mental health way- it is good to go out to the store and see people versus just ordering alone at home- but there is another more pressing societal issue you should be more concerned about as well.

Any service you rely on for convenience can be weaponized against you the moment you begin to rely on it. Streaming used to be a cheap and convenient way to see movies at home. It is now exorbitantly expensive, you need multiple accounts just to get what you want, and any of those movies can be taken from you at any time. And unless you have gotten used to going through the “inconvenience” of owning physical media, you can do nothing about it. Same goes for buying things on Amazon. Same goes for any service like DoorDash etc. These companies WANT you to be reliant on them for convenience so they can do whatever they want to you because, well, what else are you gonna do?

Same thing goes for the uptick in AI. If you train yourself to become reliant on AI for doing basic things, you will be taken advantage of. It is only a matter of a couple years before there are no free AI services. Not only that, but in the usage of AI’s case, it is robbing you of valuable skills that you need to curate that you will be helpless without the moment the AI companies drive in the knife the way they have done with streaming. Delivery. Cable. Internet. Etc. It will happen to AI too. And if you are not practicing skills such as. Writing. You are not only going to be at the mercy of AI companies in the digital world, but you are going to be extremely easy to take advantage of in real life too.

I am begging you to let go of learned helplessness. I am begging you to stop letting these companies TEACH you helplessness. Do something like learn to pirate. It is way more inconvenient at the beginning, but once you know how, it is one less way companies can take advantage of you. Garden. Go to the thrift store (older clothes hold up better anyway). These things take more time and effort, yes, but using time and effort are muscles you need to stretch to keep yourself from being flattened under the weight of our capitalist hellscape.

Inconvenience yourself. Please. Start with only the ways you are able. Do a little bit at a time. But do something.

Oh hey two obscure things I relate to!

is this anything

Saving this for research purposes 🤣

Tamsyn Muir's synopsis of her novel, "Gideon the Ninth"

+ … comb, checkbook, chapstick, spiro, pen, etc.

(Here, pockets refers to a black denim hip bag held together by D-rings and carabiners)

Yes, YES, YEEEESSSSSS!!! 💀

why fortiche should animate the locked tomb like arcane:

incredibly good grasp on "characters not acting like themselves" (e.g. viktor's changed mannerisms after merging with the hexcore, down to microexpressions)

the fight scenes

wide range of female characters that nevertheless all appeal to the sapphics (just. imagine seeing gideon built like sevika)

animating the moments where harrow's memory is "corrupted" along the lines of jinx's hallucinations

the pool scene. like imagine the water effects that the silco scene uses and pair it with the intimacy demonstrated with the caitvi interactions—

Seconding this lol. Cannot blame Cam in the slightest 😅

Seeing something like this in the dark, I don't think anyone can blame Camilla "epically awesome and badass" the Sixth for attacking first and letting her necromancer ask questions later.

Yep, still posting mobile phone photos of my cosplay of Gideon from the Halloween event. Self-indulgent, but gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside!

Transition goals 😈

“It's one of patriarchy's perfect self-perpetuating cycles: the demonisation of older women ensures we do not wish to identify with or learn from them, so cannot gain any knowledge to prepare us for our own experience of ageing. Instead we turn away from our future selves.”

- Hags, Victoria Smith

And then each subsequent book continues to flip expectations of the genre like the cohort flips planets!

By the end of Gideon we’re already reeling, but then Harrow comes along and really shows off the brilliant inner workings of the setting and magic system all while gaslighting us on the very existence of the previous book. 😅💀

The thing that really gets me about the Locked Tomb series is that from a worldbuilding perspective it’s YA catnip. Like any other author would have started it out from someone low ranking in the cohort, maybe falling in love with a rebel or vice versa, introducing parts of the world slowly. There are even houses to sort yourselves into! It’s perfect! That would have been a good story in and of itself! However Tasmyn Muir started in the deepest depths of the equivalent of death cult Amish territory from the POV of someone trying to escape and join the terrible death army, and it works. It’s like if you started explaining the concept of Star Wars with a clone from one of the tanks in Palpatine’s lair. Obsessed with her as an author.