Achan Biong By Bartek Szmigulski For Wonderland Magazine Spring 2022

Achan Biong by Bartek Szmigulski for Wonderland Magazine Spring 2022

what's wrong with the arcane ship?

The ask was asking for the sapphic equivalent of the "fandom ships the only two white guys in the room."

That's the ship dynamic that has no actual content for it. It's usually two guys who barely interact at all, and if they do it's usually in the same quasi-sarcastic way and outside of that have little in common.

The sapphic equivalent to that is the two girls who are usually the only two girls in the main cast and who predominately dislike each other once they start being shipped together and outside of "I hate that bitch" they have nothing in common.

Korra and Asami were shipped from the start of TLOK, but were largely disconnected from each other until the last minute of Season 3, and then in Season 4 we're told that they have a deeper connection out of nowhere and in the last episode they held hands to pander to an audience that was increasingly dwindling.

Supercorp: Shipped from the start, very little material actually showing those two actually liked each other at all, and the writers remained indifferent to it.

CaitVi: Two girls whose only claim to having anything in common is existing in the same room.

WidowTracer: The first two female characters ever seen in an Overwatch cinematic, and given this is Overwatch it's just Sylvanas/Valeera with extra steps and even worse characterization, especially because Widowmaker is under brainwashing the entire time and the entire audience just casually forgot that part.

The only reason I didn't add Sylvanas/Jaina is because despite never interacting in canon, both characters have a great deal in common that could be interesting to explore, even if most of the people who write for it are largely just fixated on "Jaina is the purest goodest girl and the bad girl will make her mean/get fixed by her/become forcibly attached to her in an abusive political marriage"

This isn't necessarily a comment on any of their relationships. Largely because they barely have any. It's a comment on the way fandom often finds the most sterile possible pairing imaginable because it's the one they can superimpose all their dynamics and/or fetishes onto with little pushback.

Just like the "only two white guys in the cast to glance at each other" it's basically a fandom that wants to make OC's, but has internalized some kind of embarrassment about OC's.

I had an argument with some friends a while back about where evil comes from and what makes someone a villain. They believed in the "power corrupts" theory, but I disagreed because a world where nobody has power is a terrible place. My theory was that evil comes from a delusion of superiority, where someone believes themselves too be better than they actually are. In that sense, power doesn't corrupt, it's the belief in one's own hype and the illusion of being powerful that corrupts. Do you, at all, agree with this theory? I'm just asking out of curiosity.

Power doesn't corrupt. It reveals. The reason people think it corrupts is because the power a horrible has, the more damage they can do.

My visdev paintings for an early version of Luck (2019)

This early version of the film prior to the major studio rewrite was meant to be a heartfelt spy comedy. (Character drawings are based off of some beautiful storyboards by Louie del Carmen!)