i decided to recompile all my creative endeavors for ease of reference and as a quick presentation card to anyone who discovers me and might want to know more of the bullshit i get up to.
in here you’ll find DRAWINGS, VIDEOS, WRITING and even MUSIC!
Well, I spent most of Christmas Day reading @nostalgebraist's newest work of fiction. I experienced the same effect I did with the much shorter The Northern Caves, and which I've found unusual in adult reading though common in childhood: once I started the story, I could not fucking stop.
(I did not experience this effect with Floornight, which took some effort to get through, or with Almost Nowhere, which I still haven't finished.)
There was, unfortunately, an immersion-breaking moment during the long climactic scene when I realized that, in nested layers of indentations, the text was getting too narrow to read on my phone, and I had to switch over to my laptop. I only now realize that AO3 provides a "Hide creator's style" button which would fix that problem, though there's another typographical effect in the same chapter which it would be unfortunate to lose.
I won't make any substantial comments yet. Maybe I'll write more about it after more people have had a chance to read it. For now, recommended!
Hey so that was a great date, yeah, but I don't think it's going to work out. Nono you didn't do anything wrong, and I have indeed had a crush on you since we started high school, it's just... well, I didn't want to bring it up at the time but we kinda got sucked into a portal fantasy midway through. We saved the kingdom over and over, relying on our knowledge of and trust in each other every time, throwing ourselves into the firing line to protect each other and using each others' conviction as a rock. We got married and lived a happy life together until the portal sucked us back mid-battle and you gave up all your memories of our journey in order to save my life right when we ended up back in the coffee shop. Yeah that was when I got a bit weird and went to the bathroom.
Anyway I thought we could push on and make the date work but I have all of these memories of secrets that this you never chose to share, decisions that this you never made, and intimacies that this you never experienced. And it's kind of screwing with the vibe yeah. Also on the date it was really, blatantly clear that you're sixteen whereas I have memories of ruling a fantasy kingdom for thirty years so like... that's a problem all on its own. Anyway this you just feels more like a daughter to me. A daughter with the woman I gave my heart and soul to over and over and received like in return, only to lose her forever on the journey home. On the plus side I can definitely help you with your math homework now.
worth the wait
Alright listen up chucklefucks I'm not gonna say it again:
You know, this is going to sound stupid but i do remember that feeling, in my very earliest of early memories, it did actually feel like that when i was a toddler. Like i wasnt discovering the world but that i was reuniting with it, already familiar with it. meeting people for the first time, feeling like i already knew them some how even if it was the first time i saw them. That i already knew the world, that i had been aware before being born and that i had made choices about the type of person i was going to be once born.
I remember being a toddler and not feeling scared or confused by my supposed lack of knowledge, i wasnt aware of any lack in fact. I didnt feel addled by a baby brain. I was in control of myself. When i was a little kid i felt i had a good handle on things. I understood the logics of life, every "new" place, every discovery was all actually part of the plan. Studied and understood in the training manual.
I always imagined it was some kind of instinctual mechanism early brains have, everything is so new and confusing that the only way to function is to roll with the punches. When in rome do as romans do. I imagined this attitude of "yes! of course! Unexpected surprises! Seen it before! I am actually perfectly acquainted with this!" Is part of the baby instinct to absorb and imitate in order to learn as fast as posible how to be a person.
This book presents another alternative
Now i feel like all the podcasts ive been listening with bart ehrman were preparing me for this, yes, its the apocalypsis not as in the end of tge world of herschell schoen, is the apocalypsis as in revelation, as in one of the books of the bible, is the gospel according to herschell
I see...
Tell me mr herschell, is suffering an aspect of perfection? Would you say that We... are on the side of Damage...?
✨🎄Happy 12th's Perigee's Eve! 🎄✨
young sevika for no reason
I'm gonna lose it
give it up for girls with vaginas and boys with penises
pause i forgot cis people exist this was intended as a celebration of bottom surgery
I’ve been vaguely following TF2 comics (I’ve read 6 and 7 and know a few plot beats and the general storyline) and from the outside it seems like Engineer and Pyro have gotten way less “screen time” than anyone else
Pyro makes sense, there’s only so much you can do with them but Engineer feels way to engaging to be left out like that
so am i wrong or is Engie just not shown to much, and if so why?
Engineer is noticeably out of focus in the comics, and there are two important throughlines in his characterization contributing to this.
The first is that out of the nine mercenaries he's always been the most plugged in to the backstory- the comic where we learned his real name is the one that introduced the backstory, he's the only one of the mercenaries to have actually canonically met one the Mann brothers, the only one who for sure knows what the gravel wars are ostensibly being fought over- and that level of involvement with the background plot, coupled with his genius, level-headedness and comparatively high empathy, makes him difficult to position front-and-center as a protagonist without breaking a bunch of things.
The second thing setting him apart from the rest of the mercenaries is that while he's enough of an eccentric to rise to the challenge of the setting's gonzo insanity, he's almost never the instigator of any of it. His Meet the Team video consists of him sitting and relaxing while his sentry guns mow down waves of assailants, monologuing about the measured practicality of his escalating response. His response to the teleporter tumor problem in Expiration Date is a grounded and practical approach to a ridiculous situation (that's exacerbated by Soldier.) He's minding his own business when a rocket full of space guns lands on his back acre on Christmas Eve, he spends the entirety of Loose Canon flummoxed by Blutarch's amoral insanity (though importantly, he's nonetheless willing to take the man's money for services rendered.) He's a fantastic straight man when the narrative needs such a figure, but his isn't a flashy insanity. He's not Soldier, he's not Medic, he's not even Heavy as far as out-of-pocket gag behavior goes. Almost all humor involving the Engineer has to do with his reaction (or lack thereof) to the bizarre carnage around him.
These factors are reflected in the role he ends up playing in TF comics 6 and 7. He's kept in the background of the plot in a reactive role, doing his professional best as an Engineer to maintain the Administrator's life extender- a frustated care-provider to a deeply unwell patient who doesn't always take his advice, a grounded, practical facilitator of what ultimately turns out to be the most deranged behavior of the entire story, seeing his contract out to the bitter end. And this is the way in which his apparent groundedness wraps back around into a distinct brand of crazy, no better than anyone else. The Administrator's real plan is something he's a reasonable enough person to disapprove of in the abstract. He's clearly aware something is rotten at the core of all this- he describes Miss Pauling actually managing to recover more Australium as her having created a problem rather than having solved one, he was on some level relieved to realize this was all drawing to a close. But none of this was something he was willing to break his professional obligations over and thus something he (and two generations of his family before him) deliberately kept themselves in the dark about so that they wouldn't have to reckon with it or make that call.
This passivity and level-headedness allow him to play an extremely important narrative role once everything is out in the open- he's the only member of the main cast who can present Miss Pauling with her Road-to-Damascus moment over what to do with the remaining Australium with any credible gravity. He's the only character left in the main cast besides Pauling herself who's plugged in enough that his analysis of her situation carries any weight. He's the only one of the Mercenaries from whom "If you keep it, I won't help you" means anything at all or is even a believable ultimatum- the rest of the mercs might have been freaked out by The Administrator specifically, but do you really think they wouldn't have just kept following their friend Miss Pauling if she kept signing their checks? He does what he's always done- he examines the situation, lays out the available options, and leaves the final call up to others. The only thing that changes- and, to some extent, a sign of his off-screen character development- is this time is that he finally draws a line in the sand as to what course of action he'll lend his expertise to. He threatens to finally, finally remove himself from the situation unless Pauling decides that she wants him to help her finally, finally solve the problem once and for all.
There's a line of ludonarrative harmony there, too—every class, even the other "defensive" ones like Pyro and Heavy, are by nature ones which get into trouble. If things are going well, you're supposed to be pushing or killing or checking for spies somewhere else.
A good Engineer game* is one where you've set up your structures and upgraded them to level three and then nothing is changing. You have successfully choked the point and whatever is going on somewhere else is the other 8 mercs responsibility. Unless you're doing some wacky mini-sentry/Frontier Justice aggro shit, you don't go poking your head into trouble.
Money's rolling in? Things going ok? Then it's not my responsibility to look at what's going on up ahead.
There's also the fact that, while I don't think we ever see them, I'm fairly certain he has a family. One he'd be very scared to lose to retaliation from higher powers, like what might occur if his nose gets in the wrong place.
About half of the other mercs do too, of course, and they all are clearly protective of them. But most of them, if they imagine their families in danger, would likely have a plan along the lines of "Run in screaming bloody murder while beating them to death with a fish". That is not how the engineer works. He finds a place to protect and puts up a bunch of protections.
He does not, cannot, bring force to bear—at best he can make it cheaper for other to do so. And in any situation where he's gotten bad attention from Mann Co or RED/BLU he might not only not have the other mercs to rely on, he may literally be facing them, and that's not a fight he wins alone on unfriendly ground.
'* I have not played a ton in the last several years
I’ve been vaguely following TF2 comics (I’ve read 6 and 7 and know a few plot beats and the general storyline) and from the outside it seems like Engineer and Pyro have gotten way less “screen time” than anyone else
Pyro makes sense, there’s only so much you can do with them but Engineer feels way to engaging to be left out like that
so am i wrong or is Engie just not shown to much, and if so why?
Engineer is noticeably out of focus in the comics, and there are two important throughlines in his characterization contributing to this.
The first is that out of the nine mercenaries he's always been the most plugged in to the backstory- the comic where we learned his real name is the one that introduced the backstory, he's the only one of the mercenaries to have actually canonically met one the Mann brothers, the only one who for sure knows what the gravel wars are ostensibly being fought over- and that level of involvement with the background plot, coupled with his genius, level-headedness and comparatively high empathy, makes him difficult to position front-and-center as a protagonist without breaking a bunch of things.
The second thing setting him apart from the rest of the mercenaries is that while he's enough of an eccentric to rise to the challenge of the setting's gonzo insanity, he's almost never the instigator of any of it. His Meet the Team video consists of him sitting and relaxing while his sentry guns mow down waves of assailants, monologuing about the measured practicality of his escalating response. His response to the teleporter tumor problem in Expiration Date is a grounded and practical approach to a ridiculous situation (that's exacerbated by Soldier.) He's minding his own business when a rocket full of space guns lands on his back acre on Christmas Eve, he spends the entirety of Loose Canon flummoxed by Blutarch's amoral insanity (though importantly, he's nonetheless willing to take the man's money for services rendered.) He's a fantastic straight man when the narrative needs such a figure, but his isn't a flashy insanity. He's not Soldier, he's not Medic, he's not even Heavy as far as out-of-pocket gag behavior goes. Almost all humor involving the Engineer has to do with his reaction (or lack thereof) to the bizarre carnage around him.
These factors are reflected in the role he ends up playing in TF comics 6 and 7. He's kept in the background of the plot in a reactive role, doing his professional best as an Engineer to maintain the Administrator's life extender- a frustated care-provider to a deeply unwell patient who doesn't always take his advice, a grounded, practical facilitator of what ultimately turns out to be the most deranged behavior of the entire story, seeing his contract out to the bitter end. And this is the way in which his apparent groundedness wraps back around into a distinct brand of crazy, no better than anyone else. The Administrator's real plan is something he's a reasonable enough person to disapprove of in the abstract. He's clearly aware something is rotten at the core of all this- he describes Miss Pauling actually managing to recover more Australium as her having created a problem rather than having solved one, he was on some level relieved to realize this was all drawing to a close. But none of this was something he was willing to break his professional obligations over and thus something he (and two generations of his family before him) deliberately kept themselves in the dark about so that they wouldn't have to reckon with it or make that call.
This passivity and level-headedness allow him to play an extremely important narrative role once everything is out in the open- he's the only member of the main cast who can present Miss Pauling with her Road-to-Damascus moment over what to do with the remaining Australium with any credible gravity. He's the only character left in the main cast besides Pauling herself who's plugged in enough that his analysis of her situation carries any weight. He's the only one of the Mercenaries from whom "If you keep it, I won't help you" means anything at all or is even a believable ultimatum- the rest of the mercs might have been freaked out by The Administrator specifically, but do you really think they wouldn't have just kept following their friend Miss Pauling if she kept signing their checks? He does what he's always done- he examines the situation, lays out the available options, and leaves the final call up to others. The only thing that changes- and, to some extent, a sign of his off-screen character development- is this time is that he finally draws a line in the sand as to what course of action he'll lend his expertise to. He threatens to finally, finally remove himself from the situation unless Pauling decides that she wants him to help her finally, finally solve the problem once and for all.
There's a line of ludonarrative harmony there, too—every class, even the other "defensive" ones like Pyro and Heavy, are by nature ones which get into trouble. If things are going well, you're supposed to be pushing or killing or checking for spies somewhere else.
A good Engineer game* is one where you've set up your structures and upgraded them to level three and then nothing is changing. You have successfully choked the point and whatever is going on somewhere else is the other 8 mercs responsibility. Unless you're doing some wacky mini-sentry/Frontier Justice aggro shit, you don't go poking your head into trouble.
Money's rolling in? Things going ok? Then it's not my responsibility to look at what's going on up ahead.
There's also the fact that, while I don't think we ever see them, I'm fairly certain he has a family. One he'd be very scared to lose to retaliation from higher powers, like what might occur if his nose gets in the wrong place.
About half of the other mercs do too, of course, and they all are clearly protective of them. But most of them, if they imagine their families in danger, would likely have a plan along the lines of "Run in screaming bloody murder while beating them to death with a fish". That is not how the engineer works. He finds a place to protect and puts up a bunch of protections.
He does not, cannot, bring force to bear—at best he can make it cheaper for other to do so. And in any situation where he's gotten bad attention from Mann Co or RED/BLU he might not only not have the other mercs to rely on, he may literally be facing them, and that's not a fight he wins alone on unfriendly ground.
'* I have not played a ton in the last several years
Is it weird that, the more posts you make about how being a genre fiction protagonist would suck and ruin your life (posts I love and think are great), the more I want to go full "No, suck eggs, Alan Moore, being a superhero is cool and good, actually?" I can't tell if it's mindless contraiantism or an actual point.
I think it's an understandable impulse, because there are absolutely strains of very-online genre-fic and cape-fic critique that, if taken super seriously as a blueprint for how fiction ought to be written, would basically amount to the Wertham Scare with a social justice gloss, and we don't need a second one of those. If a person bins the entire superhero genre as "irredeemably fascist" or anything similar, for example, I start paying extremely close attention to the implicit back half of that proclamation, the part where they lay out what part of that condemnation they consider actionable. The censorious should be made to eat their own black markers. You can do whatever you want forever.
On the other hand, you really can't get around what happens to a lot of escapist genre-fic- cape-fic in particular- if you apply any kind of scrutiny or big-boy grown up emotional or moral logic to it whatsoever. It wasn't built to survive that level of scrutiny, it wasn't built to still see publication 80 years after the fact- and indeed, stuff in that space that isn't seeing active mass-market success, John Carter and the like, that tends to get judged basically as harshly as I think it deserves. There really isn't any way around the fact that we're all playing Frankenstein with the innards of mass-market children's stories. And moreover I feel like there's an offputting mealy-mouthedness to a lot of the contemporary big-two output that notices the cracks in the foundation and tries to have their cake and eat it too, having capes that beat bad guys up but in a markedly progressive way. A certain level of pessimism and cynicism is often the only believable way to get those wires to connect if you're trying to make your spandex crowd interface with real-world cynicism. (Superman is ironically one of the Big-two properties that I think most consistently threads this needle. Batman has a harder time due to the billionaire thing. The X-Men are turbofucked and have been for a while.)
Astro City is one of the capethings that I think hits the best balance on all of this, and nonetheless one of the worldbuilding beats that does a lot of the heavy lifting on believability for me is that the Nixon Admin executed the setting's Captain American analogue on trumped-up charges as a show of force and as a distraction from Watergate. Because he would! He would do that! "What about Nixon" is a fantastic litmus test for this kind of thing IMO- even if the answer is that he was the head of a cult that built a mutant-powered flying saucer to take over the world with, that's still better than dodging the question entirely, or having Superman suck off Reagan like Byrne did.
im still hung up on the alan moore bit, is sad that the persistent image the world has of the guy is as this morose "all superheroes are degenerate fascist junkies" idea, as if his work on ABC doesnt exist. what about tom strong! promethea! top 10! supreme! and is not like these works dont actually examine some genuine ammount of real world implications or real life groundedness. the guy understood why superheroes could be fun and indeed he had a lot of fun with them
AI-dvent Calendar, Day 25!
I’ve been vaguely following TF2 comics (I’ve read 6 and 7 and know a few plot beats and the general storyline) and from the outside it seems like Engineer and Pyro have gotten way less “screen time” than anyone else
Pyro makes sense, there’s only so much you can do with them but Engineer feels way to engaging to be left out like that
so am i wrong or is Engie just not shown to much, and if so why?
Engineer is noticeably out of focus in the comics, and there are two important throughlines in his characterization contributing to this.
The first is that out of the nine mercenaries he's always been the most plugged in to the backstory- the comic where we learned his real name is the one that introduced the backstory, he's the only one of the mercenaries to have actually canonically met one the Mann brothers, the only one who for sure knows what the gravel wars are ostensibly being fought over- and that level of involvement with the background plot, coupled with his genius, level-headedness and comparatively high empathy, makes him difficult to position front-and-center as a protagonist without breaking a bunch of things.
The second thing setting him apart from the rest of the mercenaries is that while he's enough of an eccentric to rise to the challenge of the setting's gonzo insanity, he's almost never the instigator of any of it. His Meet the Team video consists of him sitting and relaxing while his sentry guns mow down waves of assailants, monologuing about the measured practicality of his escalating response. His response to the teleporter tumor problem in Expiration Date is a grounded and practical approach to a ridiculous situation (that's exacerbated by Soldier.) He's minding his own business when a rocket full of space guns lands on his back acre on Christmas Eve, he spends the entirety of Loose Canon flummoxed by Blutarch's amoral insanity (though importantly, he's nonetheless willing to take the man's money for services rendered.) He's a fantastic straight man when the narrative needs such a figure, but his isn't a flashy insanity. He's not Soldier, he's not Medic, he's not even Heavy as far as out-of-pocket gag behavior goes. Almost all humor involving the Engineer has to do with his reaction (or lack thereof) to the bizarre carnage around him.
These factors are reflected in the role he ends up playing in TF comics 6 and 7. He's kept in the background of the plot in a reactive role, doing his professional best as an Engineer to maintain the Administrator's life extender- a frustated care-provider to a deeply unwell patient who doesn't always take his advice, a grounded, practical facilitator of what ultimately turns out to be the most deranged behavior of the entire story, seeing his contract out to the bitter end. And this is the way in which his apparent groundedness wraps back around into a distinct brand of crazy, no better than anyone else. The Administrator's real plan is something he's a reasonable enough person to disapprove of in the abstract. He's clearly aware something is rotten at the core of all this- he describes Miss Pauling actually managing to recover more Australium as her having created a problem rather than having solved one, he was on some level relieved to realize this was all drawing to a close. But none of this was something he was willing to break his professional obligations over and thus something he (and two generations of his family before him) deliberately kept themselves in the dark about so that they wouldn't have to reckon with it or make that call.
This passivity and level-headedness allow him to play an extremely important narrative role once everything is out in the open- he's the only member of the main cast who can present Miss Pauling with her Road-to-Damascus moment over what to do with the remaining Australium with any credible gravity. He's the only character left in the main cast besides Pauling herself who's plugged in enough that his analysis of her situation carries any weight. He's the only one of the Mercenaries from whom "If you keep it, I won't help you" means anything at all or is even a believable ultimatum- the rest of the mercs might have been freaked out by The Administrator specifically, but do you really think they wouldn't have just kept following their friend Miss Pauling if she kept signing their checks? He does what he's always done- he examines the situation, lays out the available options, and leaves the final call up to others. The only thing that changes- and, to some extent, a sign of his off-screen character development- is this time is that he finally draws a line in the sand as to what course of action he'll lend his expertise to. He threatens to finally, finally remove himself from the situation unless Pauling decides that she wants him to help her finally, finally solve the problem once and for all.
