Nº. 1 of  441

Variety Show

Pleased to meet you. You can call me Variety. This tumblr is a miscellaneous jumble of things, including lots of art and fandom ramblings. For more about me and what you can expect me to post, see this post
I also have a fanfic tag and a TF2 side-blog.
And, of course, feel free to ask me anything.
AIM: ladygyr (All lowercase.) Steam: VarietyShow
Timezone: GMT
Currently likely to include spoilers for the game OFF. Lots of them.

kdavisillustration:

.:*・°☆special promotion + giveaway ☆°・*:.

in celebration of graduation, finishing my thesis, and launching my webcomic, black magic, i’m doing a very cool, extra neat giveaway!

°・*:.:*° °・*:.:*°

☆1st

  • 1 print of “black moons” two-plate photo-lithograph (edition of 13)
  • 1 print of “evil sprits” two-color lithograph (edition of 12)
  • 1 hand-bound, hand-transfered copy of the prologue (edition of 3)
  • 1 original graphite drawing of the main character, agda (wow!!)
  • 2 glossy digital prints of pieces from the ghost series (your choice)
  • 2 silkscreened muslin patches (your choice of featured designs)
  • 1 package of secret goodies
  • 1 extra cute handwritten note

☆2nd

  • 1 print of “black moons” two-plate photo-lithograph (edition of 13)
  • 1 original graphite drawing of the main character, agda (hot damn!)
  • 1 glossy digital print of a piece from the ghost series (your choice)
  • 2 silkscreened muslin patches (your choice of featured designs)
  • 1 package of secret goodies
  • 1 pretty cute handwritten note

☆3rd

  • 1 original sketch of the main character, agda (holy cow!)
  • 1 glossy digital print of a piece from the ghost series (your choice)
  • 2 silkscreened muslin patches (your choice of featured designs)
  • 1 package of secret goodies
  • 1 cute handwritten note
☆4th
  • 1 glossy print of a piece from the ghost series (your choice)
  • 2 silkscreened muslin patches (your choice of featured designs)
  • 1 package of secret goodies
  • 1 cute handwritten note

°・*:.:*° °・*:.:*°

guidelines

  1. i will consider both likes and reblogging 
  2. open to followers of my illustration and personal blogs
  3. you may follow either blog retroactively, but only those following me before the promotion post will win the 1st and 2nd place packages, and further, i have several especially kind and loyal followers and only they will be able to win the 1st place package (let me spoil you)
  4. the promotion will end in ten days on friday, may 31st at 12:00AM EST
  5. i will choose the winners through a series of random number generators and i’ll contact you via tumblr, so keep your asks open. if you don’t respond in forty-eight hours, you’ll forfeit the package.
  6. please either have permission to give me your address or be 18+; i will ship internationally.
  7. no giveaway blogs will be considered.

good luck, everyone!

▽`)” 

‘We Have Always Fought’: Challenging the ‘Women, Cattle and Slaves’ Narrative

costumecommunityservice:

eschergirls:

“‘We Have Always Fought’: Challenging the ‘Women, Cattle and Slaves’ Narrative” by Kameron Hurley — A Dribble of Ink

I often tell people that I’m the biggest self-aware misogynist I know.

I was writing a scene last night between a woman general and the man she helped put on the throne. I started writing in some romantic tension, and realized how lazy that was. There are other kinds of tension.

I made a passing reference to sexual slavery, which I had to cut.  I nearly had him use a gendered slur against her. I growled at the screen. He wanted to help save her child… no. Her brother? Ok.  She was going to betray him. OK. He had some wives who died… ug. No. Close advisors? Friends? Maybe somebody  just… left him?

Even writing about societies where there is very little sexual violence, or no sexual violence against women, I find myself writing in the same tired tropes and motivations. “Well, this is a bad guy, and I need something traumatic to happen to this heroine, so I’ll have him rape her.” That was an actual thing I did in the first draft of my first book, which features a violent society where women outnumber men 25-1.  Because, of course, it’s What You Do.

I actually watched a TV show recently that was supposedly about this traumatic experience a young girl went through, but was, in fact, simply tossed in so that the two male characters in the show could fight over it, and argue about which of them was at fault because of what happened to her. It was the most flagrant erasure of a female character and her experiences that I’d seen in some time. She’s literally in the room with them while they fight about it, revealing all these character things about them while she sort of fades into the background.

We forget what the story’s about. We erase women in our stories who, in our own lives, are powerful, forthright, intelligent, terrifying people. Women stab and maim and kill and lead and manage and own and run. We know that. We experience it every day. We see it.

But this is our narrative: two men fighting loudly in a room, and a woman snuffling in a corner.

This is a really interesting article about the way media, fiction and narratives repeated in society shape the way we see and assume reality to be, specifically (in this case) about how narratives about women being victims, or supporting men, but not being fighters or soldiers create the idea that women never did that, and it’s only a modern new thing that we think they could, when in fact that’s not true at all.

Also, specifically relevant to this blog are the parts about how that affects us when we create stories ourselves, and can end up adding to this narrative consciously and subconsciously.  It’s the same with how women are depicted in illustrated fiction.  I honestly don’t think a lot of the boobs and butt poses, or women in bikini armor, are drawn by people consciously thinking sexist thoughts, I think they’re just doing What You Do.  This is a female character, this is just the pose we’re used to seeing women in.  We don’t think twice about drawing her like that, because it’s just how we’ve become conditioned to seeing women pose in the medium.  Same with stuff like this.  It’s how we’re used to seeing female armor, and when we think “female warrior”, our imagination just instinctively runs in the direction of what we’re used to seeing.  It’s just What You Do with female armor, and female characters, and female poses.

Since starting Escher Girls, I’ve gotten quite a lot of mail from people telling me that they never realized just how often they put their female characters in boobs and butt poses, or gave them bikini armor, just because that’s how they saw women drawn in video games and comics and never thought twice about it.  It’s just what seemed “right” to them, and that they’re now a lot more conscious of it and try to have more variety in the way they depict women, and often in ways that make more sense to the story. :)

I think it’s just important to catch ourselves sometimes and think are we creating something because this fits what we’re doing, and this makes sense, or are we just doing What You Do?  (This applies to all sorts of tropes and stereotypes too.)

Ah good. I was going to post this article but someone got there first, with commentary! Thanks. :)

Not a strictly costume design related read, but definitely an exploration of factors that might contribute to some of our least favorite costume designs for female characters.

psdo:

Recently, SFF author Tansy Rayner Roberts wrote an excellent post debunking the idea that women did nothing interesting or useful throughout history, and that trying to write fictional stories based on this premise of feminine insignificance is therefore both inaccurate and offensive. To quote:

“History is not a long series of centuries in which men did all the interesting/important things and women stayed home and twiddled their thumbs in between pushing out babies, making soup and dying in childbirth.

History is actually a long series of centuries of men writing down what they thought was important and interesting, and FORGETTING TO WRITE ABOUT WOMEN. It’s also a long series of centuries of women’s work and women’s writing being actively denigrated by men. Writings were destroyed, contributions were downplayed, and women were actively oppressed against, absolutely.

But the forgetting part is vitally important. Most historians and other writers of what we now consider “primary sources” simply didn’t think about women and their contribution to society. They took it for granted, except when that contribution or its lack directly affected men.

This does not in any way mean that the female contribution to society was in fact less interesting or important, or complicated, simply that history—the process of writing down and preserving of the facts, not the facts/events themselves—was looking the other way.”

The relevance of this statement to the creation of SFF stories cannot be understated. Time and again, we see fans and creators alike defending the primacy of homogeneous – which is to say, overwhelmingly white, straight and male – stories on the grounds that anything else would be intrinsically unrealistic.


—————————


Another awesome article, full of good references for people who are fighting the Black People Existed In Medieval Europe TYVM fight or similar.

(via missingrache)

Push-ups: 25
Sit-ups: 22

Someday I will be able to do a single one-armed push-up. (Also I knew those sit-ups were an anomaly yesterday.)

I don’t know whoever conceived of letting anonymous viewers interact with tumblr roleplay blogs via ask, but it was a terrible idea. Considering that it enables me to leave characters incisive comments about their own hypocritical behaviour, and all.

amp9ra:

aussie-osbourne:

owligator:


iM GONNA SCREAM



oH MY GOd

amp9ra:

aussie-osbourne:

owligator:

iM GONNA SCREAM

oH MY GOd

giantalbinowalrus:

varietyshow:

giantalbinowalrus:

varietyshow replied to your post: I did it. It’s over. I turned in my last project…

YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

image

image

(Was the least I could do, really. Glad you’ve got through it!)

#Also are you available for HIGHLY SPOILERY PLOT TALKINGS

oh, which kind???? ovo

For the OFF fanfic I’m writing. You know the one~

giantalbinowalrus:

varietyshow replied to your post: I did it. It’s over. I turned in my last project…

YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

image

image

(Was the least I could do, really. Glad you’ve got through it!)

Quick plot structure query.

I have: prologue, beginning, moment 1 (The Judge), moment 2 (Zacharie), moment 3 (the last Elsen), end. However, moment 3 isn’t likely to stand out as much as the previous two, because (spoilers). I’m thinking that might be okay because by that stage the turning point of the plot has already taken place - so it’s in the ‘falling action’ stage? The end should be an adequate resolution.

I’m a bit :| because 3 or 5 acts are preferable in a plot, nicht wahr? But the prologue and beginning are a bit different, so I don’t feel like it’s accurate to roll them up into one. There’s always the option of adding a scene involving Sugar in either before or after moment 2.


His Dark Materials: Lyra Belacqua, by Rory Phillips

His Dark Materials: Lyra Belacqua, by Rory Phillips

(Source: birdstump, via unseeliebeasties)

Nº. 1 of  441