Designislaw:

"The best thing we can do with power is give it away" - On the leftist critique of superhero narratives as authoritarian power fantasies:

The ongoing "Jason Todd is a cop" debate has reminded me of a brilliant brief image essay by Joey deVilla. So here it is, images first and the full essay text below:

"A common leftist critique of superhero comics is that they are inherently anti-collectivist, being about small groups of individuals who hold all the power, and the wisdom to wield that power. I don’t disagree with this reading. I don’t think it’s inaccurate. Superheroes are their own ruling class, the concept of the übermensch writ large. But it’s a sterile reading. It examines superhero comics as a cold text, and ignores something that I believe in fundamental, especially to superhero storytelling: the way people engage with text. Not what it says, but how it is read. The average comic reader doesn’t fantasize about being a civilian in a world of superheroes, they fantasize about being a superhero. One could charitably chalk this up to a lust for power, except for one fact… The fantasy is almost always the act of helping people. Helping the vulnerable, with no reward promised in return. Being a century into the genre, we’ve seen countless subversions and deconstructions of the story. But at its core, the superhero myth is about using the gifts you’ve been given to enrich the people around you, never asking for payment, never advancing an ulterior motive. We should (and do) spend time nitpicking these fantasies, examining their unintended consequences, their hypocrisies. But it’s worth acknowledging that the most eduring childhood fantasy of the last hundred years hasn’t been to become rich. Superheroes come from every class (don’t let the MCU fool you). The most enduring fantasy is to become powerful enough to take the weak under your own wing. To give, without needing to take. So yes, the superhero myth, as a text, isn’t collectivist. But that’s not why we keep coming back to it. That’s not why children read it. We keep coming back to it to learn one simple lesson… The best thing we can do with power IS GIVE IT AWAY." - Joey deVilla, 2021 https://www.joeydevilla.com/2021/07/04/happy-independence-day-superhero-style/

so apparently the illustrator for the sword art online novels, abec, *also* has interviews you can find online about his design choices

and ive got to say

this^ is fucking hilarious

there was a point in time when the official sao light novel artist, abec himself, had in front of him a drawing of kirito with boobs that he then retroactively had to flatten out again

for a brief shining moment my girl was not flat anymore

what do i do with this information

this is the cover in question btw

that suspicious featureless chestplate has a story behind it

ill never be able to look at this cover and not think of this situation now

rpg setting with multiple competing units of damage/resilience used in different regions. you gotta worry about the conversion between hp celsius and hp fahrenheit

I am never entirely sure if the reason Rubber Duck works is "it forces me to structure my thoughts and cover all the details one by one" or if it's something funkier, like "the brain structures for written and spoken language are different, and the subtle differences between visual and auditory processing mean different things stand out". Probably the former. But still, it could be!

Oh god, this may be why I keep persuading people to get into Good Media and then wondering why they're all three books/games/etc ahead of me suddenly...

"any time is a good time for mid, but quality deserves the perfect environment" really does explain my habits lmao

The people who police your gender will police your gender even if you're cis.

Eat them.

lahore pigeons are some of the most visually appealing birds out there. like in terms of visual design. very minimalist, good contrast.

I think my first fandom fandom exposure was arguably livejournal, but before that I was in a university RPG society, and before that I was making a weekly pilgrimage to Games Workshop to play games and talk about games, so I think "local club" is an honest answer, also this sentence is too long and must end soon.

Reblog and talk about your experience in the tags!

i still can't get over the fact that Warframe had a bunch of continuity problems and timeline plotholes and they fixed all of them by just. decanonizing linear time