I think I’ve never EVER spent that much time on a drawing before. Who ever designed Lokis clothing, they really didn’t make it easy for people to create fanart. 😉 I thought the armor was complicated, but this outfit was almost harder to do.
Made in GIMP, 94 layers, about 20 hours work, original resolution 4200 x 3100 px.
Feel free to share, but please post a link to the original.
This one is from July 2013. Wow, time flies. Look how bad my art was.
Even back in season 3, I really like Anya. I wonder if it’s like the autistic kids you read about who love Drax because he doesn’t understand metaphors. Anya seems quite Asperger’s-like.
Wait, Faith had a cat? Or is the cat a metaphor?
Why must The Gentlemen be on the season 4 DVD box?
I still don’t hate Riley. It’s probably the grad student thing.
Holy shit, Xander just said “Avengers assemble.”
I love the way Anya propositions Xander. It’s so logical. Now I’m almost certain I like her because of the Asperger’s thing.
It’s “arse,” Spike (James), not “ass.” You’re British, FFS!!
Did I mention that I went to a concert for the band that James Marsters sang in, Ghost of the Robot? The drummer was in my sister’s elementary and high school classes. (Alex Honnold, the climber who was the subject of the documentary “Free Solo,” was also in my sister’s elementary school class. She got all the semi-famous people.)
Holy fuck, Kal Penn played one of the obnoxious college boys in “Beer Bad.”
Have I already liveblogged that? I’m having a sense of déjà vu.
Oddly, I find myself feeling sadder about Oz leaving Willow than I did about Angel leaving Buffy. Maybe it’s because I know what Angel gets up to afterward but Oz never comes back. Or maybe it’s because I never really understood Angel’s attraction to Buffy, while Willow and Oz made more sense to me. They’re roughly the same age, they’re both smart, and they have similarly quirky senses of humor.
I’m also a little weirded out by grad student Riley going for freshman Buffy. But he’s probably 24 while she’s 18, not 26 when turned 200 years previously while she’s 16 or 17.
Love being brutally called out by the British Library
Oh my gosh I went here a few days ago do you guys want to see the whole sign
I’m covered with “Librarians from Everywhere” but as a former museums professional “Tourists who think we’re the British Museum” really speaks to me on a personal level.
Tag yourself, I’m “All ten people who think they’ve got the most niche interest in the building”
I think people really underestimate how fucking evil a large chunk of American Christianity is, when they try to say to antichoicers “well if you’re against abortion, at least you should support things like WIC and SNAP, so that women facing an unplanned pregnancy can still feed their future kid”
I’ll be blunt, to American Christians like this, “but single mothers and their kids will starve!” is the entire fucking point. Being ostracized by your family and community and left for you and your bastard child to starve alone in abject misery and deprivation is what they believe the Godly punishment should be for being “unchaste,” and that things like food benefits and contraception are destroying moral society because they let women have unapproved sex without being as controlled by the fear of being cast out to starve with an unwanted kid (this also heavily ties into misogynist racism against woc, especially black women, who are accused of being “welfare queens,” draining good, properly chaste white Christians with kids born from their supposedly mindlessly lustful and irresponsible behavior, that can only be kept in check with threats of starvation or violence).
“Women (especially woc) cannot overcome their base urges and live virtuous lives without being heavily trained and coerced by threats of deprivation, isolation, and violence” is one of the most important unspoken ground rules of reactionary movements, both religious and secular
Evangelicals have no long-standing theological problem with abortion. My parents have been married for longer than evangelicals have been against abortion. Evangelicals in the 1970s didn’t care about abortion. Being against abortion was a Catholic thing. Evangelicals thought abortion is unfortunate, but not evil.
What changed?
Bob Jones v. US (1983).
Bob Jones University, an evangelical school, had a segregationist dating policy. It means what you think it does – they wouldn’t allow white students to date black students. They also wouldn’t admit black students who supported interracial marriage. This was in the mid-70s. Loving v Virginia was nearly a decade in the rearview mirror. The government threatened to revoke their tax-exempt status as a university unless this Jim Crow shit stopped. The school sued, and this eventually went to the Supreme Court. The Court, unsurprisingly, agreed with the government.
What was clear to evangelical leaders, then, in 1983, was that out-and-out racism was no longer going to be tolerated. What could they focus on that would have the same effect? What could rally the base without openly espousing racist views?
Reagan, with his “welfare queens” dog-whistle politicking gave them a like-minded politician glad of their support. And Surgeon General C. Everett Koop was only to happy to tell people what he thought of abortion.
So here we are, thirty-five years later, with every evangelical doing their damnedest to pretend that evangelicals have always been against abortion. They’ve lied themselves into believing it, and now they claim they’re against birth control too. That’s even more spurious – If they actually thought life begins at conception, then birth control would be a necessity, because fertilized eggs being rejected is the norm. Most of what they want to call human life never even gets implanted in the womb, or lasts very long if it does. And if they cared about life, welfare programs ought to be the most important, to ensure everyone has a good standard of living worthy of human beings.
But they don’t care about those things, so the only conclusion is that they are not pro-life. They just don’t want to see family planning and health care go to women, people of color, LGBTQ folks, etc.
It was never about being pro-life.
(and incidentally – Bob Jones v US was an 8-1 decision. Who was the dissenting voice? None other than William Rehnquist. Who was elevated to Chief Justice by Reagan when Warren Burger retired a few years later. None of what has happened has happened by accident)
And it’s worth noting that Bob Jones University defended their policy exclusively on religious freedom grounds, but Rehnquist’s dissent was based entirely on procedural grounds. Even the one justice who was “on their side” didn’t buy their argument and had to justify it on other grounds. It’s been a long road from BJU v. US to the Hobby Lobby case.
My favorite bit of trivia: the extras didn’t speak much English and missed their cue. They were supposed to start cheering immediately. Mark Addy (Roland) shouting “Yeah!” to get the crowd going was not in the script, but it was so funny they kept it.
The next person who tries to correct me when I say “Happy Holidays” is going to be told Happy Hanukkah instead. Very tired of hearing, “No, it’s MERRY CHRISTMAS.” I’m pretty sure Judaism was around a lot longer than your Buckstar’s boycotting butt, Karen.
My boss once shared a great story about that. This happened when he was in a layover in North Carolina back when the “War on Christmas” bullshit was first becoming prominent. He had gone to get a pack of cigarettes, and after he paid for it:
“Merry Christmas.” “Happy holidays.” “No. I said Merry Christmas.” “Do you know what Hanukkah is about?” “No, what?” “Some people tried to make us worship their ways, so we rose up andkilled them. Happy Hanukkah.”
Many people throw the word “trickster” around like candy, never really understanding the full implications of the word. Some think that anyone who uses pranks and witty rapport to accent their magical or combat skills deserves the label of “Trickster,” but the truth is that there’s more to it than that.
What follows are the criteria that your resident adventurer here at We-Are-Trickster uses to separate a true Trickster from your average mischief-maker.
1. The Trickster is an Other
Tricksters, for whatever reason, are always a societal other. They are an outside viewpoint that looks inwards, which gives them a unique perspective and allows them to make more poignant commentary on the society they have been “adopted” into.
2. The Trickster is a Teacher
Trickster pranks are rarely played without reason. All of the best Tricksters teach some sort of lesson; sometimes the lesson is overt, sometimes the lesson is subtle. But very rarely do Tricksters have no motive or act completely randomly. There’s a method in the madness.
3. The Trickster is a Border-Crosser
Tricksters, thanks to their outsider status, have the unique ability to cross borders both mundane and magical. These borders can include things like race and class as well as planar or country-borders. Sometimes they are the only being that can cross these borders, making them unique and powerful go-betweens.
4. The Trickster Reshapes the World
One way or another, in one aspect or another, the Trickster affects some form of change on the world, literally to the point they must be acknowledged as the catalyst or designer for the change.
Hermes re-orders the Gods of Olympus through song.
Loki causes the world to die and then be reborn anew.
Raven steals the sun for humanity.
In some cases, life itself is impossible if it were not for the Trickster. The term is a badge of honor and should be treated as such. Our methods may seem odd, but without us the world is a darker, more dreary place.
Loki is the Philosopher King 