Latest Posts by manosuavez - Page 2
Plein air from yesterday
[image id: a four-page comic. it is titled “immortality” after the poem by clare harner (more popularly known as “do not stand at my grave and weep”). the first page shows paleontologists digging up fossils at a dig. it reads, “do not stand at my grave and weep. i am not there. i do not sleep.” page two features several prehistoric creatures living in the wild. not featured but notable, each have modern descendants: horses, cetaceans, horsetail plants, and crocodilians. it reads, “i am a thousand winds that blow. i am the diamond glints on snow. i am the sunlight on ripened grain. i am the gentle autumn rain.” the third page shows archaeopteryx in the treetops and the skies, then a modern museum-goer reading the placard on a fossil display. it reads, “when you awaken in the morning’s hush, i am the swift uplifting rush, of quiet birds in circled flight. i am the soft stars that shine at night. do not stand at my grave and cry.” the fourth page shows a chicken in a field. it reads, “i am not there. i did not die” / end id]
a comic i made in about 15 hours for my school’s comic anthology. the theme was “evolution”
waiting so patiently for the School Spirits fandom to come to life so I can talk about it and absorb all the content like a plant soaking up water
im laughing so hard because no matter what song you listen to
spiderman dances to the beat
no matter what song ive been testing it and lauing my ass off for an hour
an open fly walking
i didnt like this one but i thought id finally air it out since its been sat in my folders for months now
TG: hey karkat
CG: YEAH?
===
TG: you ever noticed you like
TG: walk weird
CG: WOW, OKAY.
CG: HAVE *YOU* EVER NOTICED THAT I DON'T GIVE A SHIT?
TG: pff
===
TG: no listen because i got my ears scoping that shit im like a scouter for dude activity
TG: ok maybe me mentioning it to you is gonna fuck up your ecosystem or something but
TG: you have the heaviest feet of the century man
CG: I DO???
TG: just thrust them straight down into the ground like youre trying to homebrew a san andreas fault
TG: viciously tamping on tectonic plates hoping for top score on the richter scale
TG: waging war against solid particles and the basic flow of gravity
TG: i could ID those footfalls out of a million i mean it
CG: SERIOUSLY?
===
TG: i mean theres nothing wrong with it but
TG: yeah
CG: I SWEAR TO GOD IF YOU'RE FUCKING WITH ME RIGHT NOW.
TG: im not fucking with you striders honor
TG: when have i ever lied to anybody about anything
CG: NOT UNPACKING THAT QUESTION WITH YOU TODAY.
CG: BUT SHIT, HOLD ON. LET ME SEE.
TG: yeah take the umbrella go over there and just walk to me
CG: ON IT.
===
===
TG: see you just kinda slam em straight down dude
CG: THIS IS THE WORST DAY OF MY RIOTOUS FUCKING JOKE OF A LIFE.
TG: dont your feet ache
===
CG: MOOT POINT. THIS MIGHT SOUND INSANE BUT I'VE ACTUALLY HAD MY STRUT PODS FOR A WHILE. ANY KIND OF PAIN THIS WOULD'VE BEEN CAUSING WOULD BE TOTALLY FILTERED OUT OF MY SPONGE BY NOW AS BACKGROUND NOISE.
TG: damn i didnt think that through
TG: my shades
CG: ALRIGHT, GET BACK UNDER THE SHITTING UMBRELLA AND THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU'VE DONE TO ME.
TG: look ive fucked myself over here too i dont have shit to clean these with
TG: ugh
===
TG: guess its karma
CG: HOLY FUCK. HOW DID I NEVER NOTICE THIS BEFORE?
TG: i dunno but im gonna assume having a dad thats a literal crab monster is probably a contributing factor
TG: im guessing thats not a great role model for this kinda thing
TG: just conjecture i mean
CG: YOUR ENVY IS OVERWHELMINGLY OBVIOUS DAVE. AS A DISCLAIMER, HE WOULD'VE ABSOLUTELY KICKED YOUR ASS.
TG: yeah probably
CG: THAT'S PRETTY MUCH ALL THERE IS TO SAY ON THE MATTER.
===
TG: but see bro had me stringent on feather feets
TG: i bet i could slip across a bike horn warehouse with nary a fucking toot
CG: HAHA. ASSUMING YOU DON'T MAKE A TOTAL ASS OF YOURSELF, AS PER USUAL.
CG: IF YOU WEREN'T CONSTANTLY RUNNING YOUR GASH ABOUT EVERYTHING AND BEING AN INIMITABLE CLOWN I SERIOUSLY THINK YOU COULD BE ON PAR WITH YOUR CUSTODIAN.
CG: THAT IS A MONUMENTAL "IF".
TG: well look at it this way
TG: im basically doing you all a favor by being a dumbass
TG: never gonna get caught off guard by the bozo patrol
CG: WOW. GOOD POINT.
===
TG: also screw this can i use your shirt
TG: this stupid hoodie is just smudging my lenses up
TG: i cant see dick
CG: UH
CG: SURE, I GUESS.
TG: cool
===
TG: so yeah i could be prowling around like a goddamn verbal assassin sniping convos left and right
TG: but no ive got the decency to go bunp in the night
CG: YEAH.
CG: IT'S DEFINITELY COMPOUNDED BY THE CONSTANT INANE RAMBLINGS.
CG: BUT
CG: IT'S ACTUALLY PRETTY RELAXING, Y'KNOW? IT HAS ITS OWN RHYTHM.
TG: see yeah i sound it off and
===
TG: wait really?
CG: YEAH
CG: I DON'T KNOW
CG: FUCK. HOW DO I EXPLAIN THIS WITHOUT WANTING TO CRAM MY FROND DOWN MY PROTEIN CHUTE.
===
CG: IT'S LIKE
CG: A SALVE FOR MY AGGRAVATION SPONGE.
CG: YOUR VOICE IS THE HUMAN EQUIVALENT OF ASPIRIN.
TG: uh damn karkat hold your hoofbeasts i was talking about the rhythm thing
CG: ALRIGHT, THAT'S IT. I'M TAKING US BOTH THE FUCK OUT RIGHT NOW. YOU HAVE REACHED THE BAD END OF THIS CONVERSATION.
TG: you think thatd be heroic or just
CG: IF I WAS STILL GHOSTING AROUND THE RUINS OF SGRUB'S ARCANE FRIGGIN GAME SYSTEMS, THE COMPLETE LACK OF SHIT AFOOT NOWADAYS WOULD BORE ME TO DEATH.
CG: LIKE. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME OUR THERMAL HULL LEVELLED UP, DAVE?
TG: hah
===
TG: but uh
TG: i mean we had aspirin on earth
CG: NO, NUMBNUBS.
CG: I'M SAYING YOU ARE MY ASPIRIN.
TG: oh
CG: YEAH, TAKE THAT TO THE BANK AND SHOVE IT UP YOUR 20-KARAT ASS.
===
TG: heh
TG: well get this
TG: i will literally talk at you forever for free
TG: you got lifetime priority seating for the davealogues
TG: never gotta go to the drugstore again you can just get doped up on my dulcet tones for the rest of time
TG: take that and some of this
TG: im packin punches
CG: OW, FUCK! NO! MY MIGRAINES!
CG: SWEEPS OF VEINCLOTTING AND NERVEFRAYING DOWN THE FUCKING GAPER. BECAUSE OF YOU.
CG: YOU ASSHOLE, THIS IS THE WORST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED TO ME.
CG: AND YOU'RE LAUGHING.
TG: chuckle up it only gets worse from here
===
CG: BE HONEST WITH ME. DID FONDLING MY SHIRT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET EVEN DO ANYTHING?
TG: barely but yknow sometimes you just gotta deal the cards youre given
TG: ill just be astigmatic for a while its cool
CG: PFF… OKAY MAN.
.
had a bad dream ?
So I just rewatched HH for the second time and I want to ramble a bit about my favorite character: Cash!!!
Even apart from the gay ace rep, Cash is such a unique character. As the designated "bad boy" of the show, I really didn’t pay him no attention at all at the beginning, thinking he’d be a full stereotype: either the homophobic gay dealer or the asocial loner who can’t connect to people. His appearance led me to believe he’d be the typical repressed tough guy who can’t express his emotions and be soft because of toxic masculinity, and I thought at first glance that his arc would be to learn how to do that… Boy was I wrong. He’s the sweetest EVER.
His character feels so human. So multifaceted. Funny, sarcastic, tender, awkward, vulnerable, hurt, lost, he does it all without once being unbelievable as a character. Every time he was on screen in a new situation, I felt surprised cause I had not at all predicted in which direction it would go. For example, when Darren brought the bag back to him, I expected him to be angry ??? He wasn’t !!! Or when he and Darren got close, I thought he’d be super closed off and guarded about his romantic orientation, but instead he was obviously flirting with Darren and he took the lead to kiss them!!!!
So I found myself extremely drawn to him because of how easily my expectations based on his appearance and demeanour were turned down, and how surprising he was every step of the way. He’s sweet from the start, comfortable in his sexuality, knows what’s good and what isn’t, is super goofy and nervous when it comes to love, but also takes the lead and flirts when he wants to, is caring and dedicated to those he loves, and he knows how to express his emotions and needs!!!! I just- I love him.
Im so excited to live in an era where men in fiction and especially in teen dramas are beginning to be depicted outside of the restraints of toxic masculinity. I expected him to be one way because of the dozens of characters looking and acting like him in the past who did. But characters in Heartbreak High are more than just tropes and cliches and I love that. I hope to see more characters like him in the future. Props to William McDonald who did an amazing job and to the whole cast
At least Spider’s honest about being a dickhead. Dusty’s just the fucking worst
people commenting on darren and ca$h’s relationship and completely pinning the blame on darren is fucked. darren clearly isint being pushy out of purely selfish reasons it’s because they literally cannot conceptualize someone valuing them in a partnership outside of sex. To them, they are hard to love and as a consequence they feel as though sex is the only thing they have to offer and value. Thats why they are so pushy towards ca$h about it. Yes, some of their behaviour is aphobic but it’s not coming from a place of willful ignorance it’s coming from a deep rooted fear that without sexual connection they are worthless. Acting as if ca$h is the only one hurt by this is so near sighted and quite frankly just shitty, one sided analysis that pins anger on a character that doesn’t deserve it.
Seriously this show would be fucking perfect for a Tumblr week why is nobody talking about the asexual eshay with a non-binary partner and that non-binary partner having a lesbian autistic friend played by an autistic actor
DAVE: dude were kind of giving ketchup and mustard rn
KARKAT: WHAT?
DAVE: yknow like the condiments
KARKAT: CONDOM… MEANT…?
DAVE: oh man dont tell me you guys are rawdogging your roasted tubular barkbeastflesh or whatever the fuck you would call them in trollsylvania
DAVE: just imagining the vantas extended family standing around at a cookout
DAVE: hurling obscenities at one another whilst horking down dry meat nestled betwixt even drier buns made of pulverized wriggler pupa molt
DAVE: roll footage of that over a troll sarah mclaughlin track and the caegars come pouring in
DAVE: anyway back to the first thing
DAVE: it kinda fits our vibe too
DAVE: me being the sweet sexy tangy coulis that every flag waving american wants slathered on their hog this summer
DAVE: shit lets be honest every other season too
DAVE: you being the grainy pungent explosively spicy heterogeneous gunk whose delicate honeylike undertones can only be unlocked by individuals with an acquired taste
DAVE: and lucky for you ive procured the shit outta your sapor
DAVE: theres a poupon joke to be made here somewhere gimme a sec
KARKAT: SOMETIMES I WONDER IF EDUCATING MYSELF MORE ABOUT YOUR FRIVOLOUS, SOFT-BELLIED HUMAN CUSTOMS WOULD SPARE ME AT LEAST AN HOUR PER DAY OF NONSENSISMS SPEWING FORTH FROM YOUR WASTECHUTE DIRECTLY INTO MY NOW CONSTANTLY-OVERSATURATED AURICULAR SPONGE CLOTS.
DAVE: not a chance babe
DAVE: you present me with a delectable little seedling of a talking point and ill nurture the bastard regardless of how much background knowledge you possess
DAVE: cultivating entire cropfields worth of witticisms
DAVE: at least fifty seven varieties
(a sort-of redraw of this old post!)
"I think Homer outwits most writers who have written on the War [fantasy archetype], by not taking sides.
The Trojan war is not and you cannot make it be the War of Good vs. Evil. It’s just a war, a wasteful, useless, needless, stupid, protracted, cruel mess full of individual acts of courage, cowardice, nobility, betrayal, limb-hacking-off, and disembowelment. Homer was a Greek and might have been partial to the Greek side, but he had a sense of justice or balance that seems characteristically Greek — maybe his people learned a good deal of it from him? His impartiality is far from dispassionate; the story is a torrent of passionate actions, generous, despicable, magnificent, trivial. But it is unprejudiced. It isn’t Satan vs. Angels. It isn’t Holy Warriors vs. Infidels. It isn’t hobbits vs. orcs. It’s just people vs. people.
Of course you can take sides, and almost everybody does. I try not to, but it’s no use; I just like the Trojans better than the Greeks. But Homer truly doesn’t take sides, and so he permits the story to be tragic. By tragedy, mind and soul are grieved, enlarged, and exalted.
Whether war itself can rise to tragedy, can enlarge and exalt the soul, I leave to those who have been more immediately part of a war than I have. I think some believe that it can, and might say that the opportunity for heroism and tragedy justifies war. I don’t know; all I know is what a poem about a war can do. In any case, war is something human beings do and show no signs of stopping doing, and so it may be less important to condemn it or to justify it than to be able to perceive it as tragic.
But once you take sides, you have lost that ability.
Is it our dominant religion that makes us want war to be between the good guys and the bad guys?
In the War of Good vs. Evil there can be divine or supernal justice but not human tragedy. It is by definition, technically, comic (as in The Divine Comedy): the good guys win. It has a happy ending. If the bad guys beat the good guys, unhappy ending, that’s mere reversal, flip side of the same coin. The author is not impartial. Dystopia is not tragedy.
Milton, a Christian, had to take sides, and couldn’t avoid comedy. He could approach tragedy only by making Evil, in the person of Lucifer, grand, heroic, and even sympathetic — which is faking it. He faked it very well.
Maybe it’s not only Christian habits of thought but the difficulty we all have in growing up that makes us insist justice must favor the good.
After all, 'Let the best man win' doesn’t mean the good man will win. It means, 'This will be a fair fight, no prejudice, no interference — so the best fighter will win it.' If the treacherous bully fairly defeats the nice guy, the treacherous bully is declared champion. This is justice. But it’s the kind of justice that children can’t bear. They rage against it. It’s not fair!
But if children never learn to bear it, they can’t go on to learn that a victory or a defeat in battle, or in any competition other than a purely moral one (whatever that might be), has nothing to do with who is morally better.
Might does not make right — right?
Therefore right does not make might. Right?
But we want it to. 'My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure.'
If we insist that in the real world the ultimate victor must be the good guy, we’ve sacrificed right to might. (That’s what History does after most wars, when it applauds the victors for their superior virtue as well as their superior firepower.) If we falsify the terms of the competition, handicapping it, so that the good guys may lose the battle but always win the war, we’ve left the real world, we’re in fantasy land — wishful thinking country.
Homer didn’t do wishful thinking.
Homer’s Achilles is a disobedient officer, a sulky, self-pitying teenager who gets his nose out of joint and won’t fight for his own side. A sign that Achilles might grow up someday, if given time, is his love for his friend Patroclus. But his big snit is over a girl he was given to rape but has to give back to his superior officer, which to me rather dims the love story. To me Achilles is not a good guy. But he is a good warrior, a great fighter — even better than the Trojan prime warrior, Hector. Hector is a good guy on any terms — kind husband, kind father, responsible on all counts — a mensch. But right does not make might. Achilles kills him.
The famous Helen plays a quite small part in The Iliad. Because I know that she’ll come through the whole war with not a hair in her blond blow-dry out of place, I see her as opportunistic, immoral, emotionally about as deep as a cookie sheet. But if I believed that the good guys win, that the reward goes to the virtuous, I’d have to see her as an innocent beauty wronged by Fate and saved by the Greeks.
And people do see her that way. Homer lets us each make our own Helen; and so she is immortal.
I don’t know if such nobility of mind (in the sense of the impartial 'noble' gases) is possible to a modern writer of fantasy. Since we have worked so hard to separate History from Fiction, our fantasies are dire warnings, or mere nightmares, or else they are wish fulfillments."
- Ursula K. Le Guin, from No Time to Spare, 2013.
in middle school during my Intense Greek Mythology Phase, Artemis was, as you can likely guess, my best girl. Iphigenia was my OTHER best girl. Yes at the same time.
The story of Iphigenia always gets to me when it's not presented as a story of Artemis being capricious and having arbitrary rules about where you can and can't hunt, but instead, making a point about war.
Artemis was, among other things--patron of hunting, wild places, the moon, singlehood--the protector of young girls. That's a really important aspect she was worshipped as: she protected girls and young women. But she was the one who demanded Agamemnon sacrifice his daughter in order for his fleet to be able to sail on for Troy.
There's no contradiction, though, when it's framed as, Artemis making Agamemnon face what he’s doing to the women and children of Troy. His children are not in danger. His son will not be thrown off the ramparts, his daughters will not be taken captive as sex slaves and dragged off to foreign lands, his wife will not have to watch her husband and brothers and children killed. Yet this is what he’s sailing off to Troy to inevitably do. That’s what happens in war. He’s going to go kill other people’s daughters; can he stand to do that to his own? As long as the answer is no—he can kill other people’s children, but not his own—he can’t sail off to war.
Which casts Artemis is a fascinating light, compared to the other gods of the Trojan War. The Trojan War is really a squabble of pride and insults within the Olympian family; Eris decided to cause problems on purpose, leaving Aphrodite smug and Hera and Athena snubbed, and all of this was kinda Zeus’s fault in the first place for not being able to keep it in his pants. And out of this fight mortal men were their game pieces and mortal cities their prizes in restoring their pride. And if hundreds of people die and hundred more lives are ruined, well, that’s what happens when gods fight. Mortals pay the price for gods’ whims and the gods move on in time and the mortals don’t and that’s how it is.
And women especially—Zeus wanted Leda, so he took her. Paris wanted Helen, so he took her. There’s a reason “the Trojan women” even since ancient times were the emblems of victims of a war they never wanted, never asked for, and never had a say in choosing, but was brought down on their heads anyway.
Artemis, in the way of gods, is still acting through human proxies. But it seems notable to me to cast her as the one god to look at the destruction the war is about to wreak on people, and challenge Agamemnon: are you ready to kill innocents? Kill children? Destroy families, leave grieving wives and mothers? Are you? Prove it.
It reminds me of that idea about nuclear codes, the concept of implanting the key in the heart of one of the Oval Office staffers who holds the briefcase, so the president would have to stab a man with a knife to get the key to launch the nukes. “That’s horrible!,” it’s said the response was. “If he had to do that, he might never press the button!” And it’s interesting to see Artemis offering Agamemnon the same choice. You want to burn Troy? Kill your own daughter first. Show me you understand what it means that you’re about to do.
I can always hear you sing, I wanna hear you speak to me
Some Song of Achilles page overlays that I made for The Reading Portal a while back 🕊️
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“Patrochilles is real,” I say into the mic, the crowd boos. I begin to walk off the stage in shame. “No, she’s right!” I hear a voice in the back say. The lights come on. It's Alexander the Great.
gift comm for @johaerys-writes' fic, You're a Walking Disaster and Yet-
Hector and Helenus' potential dynamic is so funny to me
yall wanna smoke / now your careers in a roll, thats blunt force trauma
if no one else got me I know I can’t stop the loneliness by anri got me
swiftmurderstuck number four
swiftmurderstuck number four
dave meets the queen
more of these two being human and stuck
the Heir is a hero who reviles what he reveres. an Heir in fairy tales is one who wants nothing more than to attain his father’s station, but hates his father for not giving it to him; or one who loves the privileges of his rank but hates its responsibilities, wishing for the freedom of a commoner.
Equius wants to be dominated by what he hates, and loves what is beneath him when he should be exercising dominance over it. he hates meat - implying to Nepeta that he doesn’t eat it - but values his own “meat” or flesh over his spirit. Alternia’s indigo caste - its Heir class - is entirely a caste of walking contradictions. they treat the planet’s musclebeasts as creatures “meant to be 100ked upon with adoration“, but treat another race of man-beasts as inferior, fit only for the role of being part of a “butler genus”. though they exist to serve those above them, they reject the sea dwellers for being “EVEN PURPLIER“ than the subjugglators, in fact considering themselves “obligated to be at odds”. it’s only fitting that Equius is the one to discuss the difference between friends and enemies with his superior only a page after we’re told that “in troll language, the word for friend is exactly the same as the word for enemy.”
naturally this makes the Heir a class closely tied with the concept of masculinity, because the complex dual nature of masculinity is such a strong theme in Homestuck. the indigoblood’s power comes not just from his position on the hemospectrum but his position in a patriarchal society, and when Equius starts to lose his grip on the saddle of his high horse it’s not only for a lowblood, but for a lowblooded woman.
the successful Heir is a hero who successfully overcomes masculinity’s trappings and, like all heroes ultimately must, reconciles the contradicting aspects of the masculine and the feminine. John matures as an Heir by overcoming the side effects of being brought up in an all male household, under a father who valued his strength of the flesh above all else, and mastering the spirit and the feminine - represented by spirit arms and the feminine blue slime of his ghostly mentor. Equius’ fate is instead to succumb to masculinity altogether, allowing the male superior in his life to cut off his connection to breath entirely.
Say hello to Riveer everyone!!!!!