Format Material from TRIGUN artbook
Made time for this. Kevin Conroy was one of my favorite influences. The comic is a reference to the episode Beware the Gray Ghost, in which Batman needs the help of an actor he admired as a child to solve a crime. Batman: “As a kid, I used to watch you with my father. The Gray Ghost was my hero. “
Tumblr has been wonderful to escape to over the past week or so - I think I'll be sticking around more regularly.
Hoi there - I'm Claire, and I make the Hiveworks comic PHANTOMARINE!
When a seafaring, swordfighting princess falls victim to a successful assassination, she comes face-to-face with the devious, many-faced death god who supposedly cursed her archipelagic world. After proving her mettle, Phaedra is sent on a quest to resurrect herself - but unbeknownst to her, she may be resurrecting far more than that.
Good to read if you like:
- Flamboyant Disney Villains
- Spooky Scary Skeletons
- Technicolor Bisexual Lighting
- Cipher Puzzles
- Mysterious Ancient Conspiracies
- Water and Boats
- Dogs, Dinosaurs, and/or Dragons
- Eyeliner
- Flawed heroes and Villains That Have A Point
- The Name Jeff
- EDIT: Not-Annoying Child Characters (a pox upon myself for omitting perfect boy Pavel)
Updates Mondays and Fridays every week!
In the documentary “I Know That Voice”, Kevin Conroy tells the story about being recognized during working at a food relief station in Manhattan in the days after 9/11.
We interrupt this lovely readalong for more HarperCollins union news.
Namely, the union is on strike. HarperCollins, the second largest publishing house in the United States, has made record profits (in the billions) but refuses to pay its employees a living wage or negotiate in good faith. Unlike the one-day strike earlier this year, this will be an open-ended strike, to last until a fair, good-faith contract is agreed upon.
I cannot overstate the implications here. HarperCollins is a 200-year-old behemoth with over 120 imprints, owned by billionaire Rupert Murdoch. You have reads books from this company, I guarantee it. You have enjoyed movies and TV shows spawned by this company. The workers striking at the blood and sweat responsible for launching those properties you love. And as Harper goes, so goes the rest of the industry. If we raise the living standards for one, so the pressure increases on other companies to raise it for all.
The Harper Union need your support. They have a full thread here, but here’s the gist of what they’re asking:
EVERYONE:
- Donate to the strike fund if you can
- Politely email Harper’s HR (peopleteam@harpercollins.com) and the CEO (brian.murphy@harpercollins.com) to express your support for the strike and the union.
- Boost their message on social media and among your social circles (here are some assets you can use to do that)
- If you are in the NY metro area, come join the picket line at 195 Broadway in Manhattan!
BLOGGERS/REVIEWERS/BOOKSTAGRAMMERS/BOOKTOKERS:
- If possible, please hold all reviews of Harper titles until the strike is over. (And I would add, if you feel comfortable doing so, tell Harper why.)
FREELANCERS/INDUSTRY HOPEFULS:
- Don’t be a scab. Don’t take new freelance projects or temporary positions while the strike is ongoing.
BOOKSTORES/BOOKSELLERS:
- Share the “I Stand With” graphic
- Print and distribute the union bookmark at your store
AUTHORS/AGENTS:
- Do not submit or sign new contracts to Harper until the union’s own contract is finalized.
———
Please note they are not asking for a boycott on Harper titles. A boycott would harm the authors, who have nothing to do with this, so the union is explicitly requesting no boycott.
Also, please do not @ Harper social accounts to yell at them. Direct all feedback to that peopleteam email. The majority of folks watching those accounts are out on the picket line anyways, and their managers have already been warned that, as non-union members, they risk termination if voice any public support for the strike.
For more info, check out the union’s accounts on Twitter and Instagram. I also recommend this Twitter thread for some hard facts and figures.
Want something you can share on TikTok? Check out Carmen’s video here.
Hi. *awkwardly waves* I’m back. Missed you guys.
Sooo, back to lurking and reblogging everything.
i want to be asked to come over and help put my friend’s kids to bed as casually as they might text their spouse and ask them to pick up milk on the way home
i want to stop and pick up milk for another friend because i know their spouse hates the grocery store
i want to buy fruit that i dont like because it’s on special and i know people who do
i want to pass lemons over the fence and to take my neighbours bins out when the forget
i want group chats instead of rideshare apps, calls in the middle of the night because someone’s at the hospital, lonely or hungry or both
i want to do the dishes in other people’s houses, extra servings wrapped in tinfoil and tea towels so it’s still warm when you drop it off, a basket of other people’s mending by my couch
i want to be surrounded by reminders that ‘imposing’ on each other is what we were born to do
As you may know, Twitter unveiled is new verification today. As such, people are receiving blue checkmarks left and right. However, Twitter has a disclaimer for people verified through them and people who pay
As such, I have a compiled a collection of images to use when you run across someone who pays for Twitter Blue. Use them for good, use them for evil, they are for you. Please add to this of you find more (or make more!)
If you can’t find a place on your blog for Patrick Stewart in a bathtub dressed like a lobster, then your blog probably doesn’t deserve such majesty anyway.
revfrog
It has returned to my dash and I cannot fight the compulsion to reblog…
starshipspirk
the patrick lobster appears only once in a thousand years, reblog for good luck
Oh good, I was worried Tumblr got all normal while I was away.
This is so dumb, so incredibly stupid, I can't help but be super excited about it. Bye, bye $7.99 and hello double blue checkmarks.
You know what is even dumber than paying $7.99 for two blue checkmarks? Paying $10 to tell 2,500 strangers about it. Let's blaze it.
Glad your day has continued to escalate since you Blazed this.
Anonymous asked:
if u think the monetization is bad wait until you hear about the profit cuts (from the verge article): "Tumblr will take a 5 percent fee from subscriptions, which is competitive compared to Substack’s 10 percent cut. If readers subscribe on iOS or Android, though, those platforms’ 30 percent app store fees will come out of what a creator gets to keep."
Patreon only takes 10-15% and they have an almost overwhelming cadre of tools for administration, tiered subs, and managing tax information. You can even use Patreon off Tumblr.
As a creator well aquatinted with the platform, I can't see any reason to use tumblrs monetization service.
I just want to be clear: A platform taking 40% of a sub is akin to highway robbery. Inexperienced creators might not know how bad a deal that is.
someone: the disney little mermaid is a bad adaptation of the original story because she’s meant to die at the end
me: the original story was meant to be an outlet for the male author having unrequited and repressed romantic feelings for another man and the only happy ending he saw for a same sex attracted man was to die and the only reward was being able to earn his soul through the joy of children his stories brought while the Disney adaptation touched upon the same themes with the work of Howard Ashman, another same sex attracted man but instead being able to give the mermaid a happy and loving relationship where she lives out her dreams is just as thematic and truer to the what the story sought to tell instead of having it become a tragedy. in this essay i
Okay so the rest of the essay be here:
I am going to preface this by saying the people involved in these stories did not intend for The Little Mermaid to be a 1:1 replica of their lives but it’s clear how significant their experiences shaped the telling of it.
Hans Christian Andersen’s sexuality isn’t easy to define especially since the society and culture he lived in wouldn’t have the language or the framework to discuss sexuality, and it would do a disservice to say he was gay when he didn’t have a known romantic life. But his love life has been defined by his numerous unrequited loves that ranged from women to men, but also his steadfast refusal to have sex.
Another aspect of Andersen is how heavily religious he was and how that showed through his work. Some of his other stories like “The Ugly Duckling”, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, “Thumbelina”, and “Princess and the Pea”, all have themes around being alienated but that there isn’t a true villain in any of them and their happy endings be something close to divinity and good morality. Though not overtly religious in his stories it’s clear how much faith he had in God doing the right thing in the end.
The Little Mermaid however, is probably one of the most overt in how his religion and his sexuality intersected.
A brief overview of Andersen’s The Little Mermaid is that in his story, Mermaids are creatures born without souls, however they live significantly longer than humans.
But it’s precisely because of this, the titular Mermaid longs to become human in hopes she too will gain a soul. She chooses to trade her tongue to get a pair of legs to woo a human she rescued, and on these legs all she feels is pain and suffering, and she must do so in silence. If she cannot gain the love of her prince, she will die without a soul, and never get to heaven. All the while, the prince loves her only as a brother would in the time they spend together and eventually chooses to marry another girl.
The mermaid is then given a chance to return to her life as a mermaid if she kills the prince before she dies but in doing so she will never have a soul. She loves him too much to do so and chooses death over living as a creature with no soul.
But when she dies, she finds herself amongst the daughters of the air, and is told because of her love and her suffering she has the chance to gain a soul unlike any other mermaid. She can work for 200 years making sure children are happy and be granted a soul thereafter.
So, looking at this, you can draw clear parallels with this story and Andersen’s personal life.
Like the mermaid, Andersen saw himself as a creature without a soul. He too was in love with a man who only saw himself as a brother to Andersen. Andersen saw himself doomed to be silent, doomed to constantly feel like he was walking on knives and doomed to be alone.
But his idea of a joyous ending is that his suffering wasn’t all for naught, that his stories that he wrote for children and the joy they brought WOULD eventually grant his greatest desire to be granted a soul and accepted into heaven.
Of course there isn’t a villain, Andersen accepted that his culture that cruelly casted him out was correct in doing so, and that he had to work within the system to exist.
The Little Mermaid’s themes of suffering and love were tied to Andersen’s life and his sexuality intersecting with his religion.
The 1989 Disney version has consistently gone on record that despite have Musker and Clements being directors, Howard Ashman, a gay man with AIDS in the 80s, was the creative force in character writing, music and the creative direction the movie eventually went in.
In the movie, all of the religious aspects have been stripped away, and the motivations have been changed.
Ariel no longer wants to gain a soul, her desire to become human instead is tied with feeling alienated with her home life and wanting acceptance elsewhere. Her hobby of collecting human stuff HEAVILY echoes the experiences of many LGBT+ people who had interests outside of their gender roles, and being unable to to see eye to eye with bigoted parents. People often mistake her attempts at asserting her own identity as “being in love” when the narrative is about her wanting agency and respect for who she is.
Ursula being a villain in this version is tied to how LGBT+ people of the 1980s understanding at least part of their oppression was due to predatory and unscrupulous people, as well as being systematic. This contrasts with Andersen’s work because Andersen, despite suffering, always put faith in the systems surrounding him and only striving to work within them, while Ashman understood that to work with society you don’t do business with morally neutral people.
While Andersen sees the only option for people, or to him, creatures, like him to gain any morally good ending, they need to remain passive and work within the system to get what they want.
But the 1989’s response to that is, no, to get a happy ending, you NEED to question the system, you need to fight against it because it is a system that only uses you to get what it needs and it needs to be destroyed to get a happy ending. Like, you CAN NOT separate how this change in the story occurred with Howard Ashman being a gay man with AIDS during 1980s America.
In the end, Ariel reconciling with her bigoted father to be able to live her life as a human with another man thematically ties in to how Andersen saw his own happy ending.
The Little Mermaid is a story that can not be separated from two men who dealt with complex relationships with their own identities, and it’s disingenuous to say the 1989 film is a bad adaptation for not religiously following the plot points of the original.
The Little Mermaid is at its best when it explores how a person’s sexuality and identity is alienated from the culture around them, and how they navigate the system that oppresses them.
Andersen saw the system to be just and his idea of a happy ending clashes with Howard Ashman’s own experiences of a system that needed to be defied to have earned a happy ending.
All in all, the 1989 movie is a good adaptation, not for slavishly keeping every detail, but for reflecting where society is, and for keeping the themes of unrequited love, identity and coming of age relevant to their audience.
so, if I understood all that:
1) The core issues are identity, alienation from society, and unrequited passion;
2) To get The Prize, you must be willing to suffer and learn an entire new way of life,
3) You must further, even in this new life, be willing to reject instructions of What You Must Do when you know that’s wrong,
4) The Prize is *not* romantic happy-ever-after love, but lasting impact on your community and culture, and helping remove barriers that made your life difficult, so future generations will have a freedom and opportunity for joy that you did not.