#[ meta ]

[rqbossman]

after a long debate with my friends, we have come to two conclusions.

1. martin has never smoked weed

2. martin was a big stoner as a teen

which is more accurate in your opinion?

(btw i say he was a stoner)

I suspect he tried it once, convinced himself he was having a "bad trip" then accidentally triggered a real anxiety attack then threw the joint out of the window in a panic at which point the people sharing it with him gave him 'a look' but he wasn't listening because he saw a small dog outside had gone up to the joint, sniffed it and then ate it rendering him inconsoleable for at least an hour bekieving he had accidentally killed a saudage dog.

Or not. What do I know?

[probablybadrpgideas]

When you have to make a knowledge check, roll 3d10. The numbers that come up correspond to the Dewey Decimal number of the book that contains whatever information you learn (so, for example, if you roll a 139, the knowledge you gain can only be information that would make sense to find in a book about phrenology)

[artbyblastweave]

No, what's really fascinating about the end of TF comics is that in the absence of Helen, Zephaniah Mann would be the Capitalist villain, he's a cartoonish embodiment of corporate upper-class 19th century industrial evil, and if the camera was pointed at a different section of the timeline this would be a triumphant story of a girlboss pulling a Count of Monte Cristo on one of the worst people alive. But instead we only catch hints of the very beginning and the tail end, we watch the sharp edges as they wreck havok on the entire world and the main cast for over 150 years. Whole coal mines full of bodies and the entire principal cast realizing that every stupid and demeaning thing that's happened to them for the past four+ years was the third-degree fallout of this woman digging up a corpse to piss on it.

[glorious-spoon]

the thing about buck climbing the crane in 'survivors' is that, like, i do think he was telling bobby the truth when he said that he did it because he couldn't live with watching someone else get hurt. and a lot of that is because he weighs his own life more lightly than everyone else's, absolutely. everyone else has families to go home to; he's just buck. that's the thing eddie is addressing with the will conversation: he's telling buck, in the only way he'll believe, that he does have a family. see, it's there. i did the paperwork. you matter to us. you think that you're expendable, but you're wrong.

(the fact that eddie did it without asking and kept it to himself for a year is because he's in love with buck. that's the question buck asked, the one he so neatly dodged by answering 'why are you telling me now' instead of 'why didn't you tell me then'. but the will, in the moment, is not a love confession in that way. it's for buck, so he knows that he has a family too)

so, like, he was telling the truth, yeah. the idea of watching another person he loved get shot was worse than the idea of getting shot himself.

but also, he was fucking pissed. i don't actually think he was passively suicidal at all; i think he was angry. because fuck this guy. fuck him for putting buck's family in danger, fuck him for making it impossible to do their jobs, fuck him for forcing them to debate whether they can save that guy who's up there bleeding out. fuck him.

and buck did what he always does when he's angry: he painted a big target on himself and dared the universe to take the shot.

[rqbossman]

What would the more normal animal fears be labeled as in tma? My sister used to be afraid of ducks and me and my friends have been trying to figure out what fear entity it would go under

The Extinction.

The ducks are "those that will rise after the end"

[faewrenbird]

Nah, I get it. On the surface, the joke is nonsensical. How could a description of depression possibly relate to an image of sunlight, bright colors, rainbows, and happy dolphins?

Perhaps the absurdist humor is the point. It’s got a touch of nihilism, some irony, some sense of 90’s color-saturated nostalgia. The combination of words and image is meaningless, which itself has meaning because depression is the state of finding everything meaningless. It’s the Alice in Wonderland effect of highlighting the meaningless to inversely highlight what we define as meaningful.

Or perhaps the chosen image is intentional. The still-frame but pixelated image of manufactured happiness. Perhaps it represents the face that those struggling with chronic depression often wear to convince themselves and others that they’re fine.

Whatever it is, intentional or not, meaningless or not, it touches us. The reblogs are full of people using tags that express being able to relate to the image. There’s solidarity found here.

[probablybadrpgideas]

normal campaign except the DM only speaks in rhymes and riddles

if you would open up that door

roll strength above a ten and four

[bruciemilf]

Anyway. Frustrated reminder that if artists pour time, energy, passion, thought, and skill into their piece, it’s their right to do whatever the fuck they want with it. Fandom is a playground and you can do what you want always

[demon-country]

Blitz thinks of Stolas as his heart, and Stolas has heart imagery on his body. Heart-shaped pupils and a heart-shaped faceplate, both pure white to stand out in stark contrast to the red, black, and greys that make up the rest of him.

Stolas thinks of Blitz as his light, and Blitz has light imagery on his body, as well. His eyes glow yellow like the sun, and his burn scars look like the kind of pale dappling moonlight makes as it filters between tree leaves.

Bright white hands, bright white hearts... I'm not sure where I'm going with this, I just think it's interesting.

[detritusanddross]

The reframing of this moment post finale has still got me in a chokehold.

When we first saw Rio’s reaction in this scene, the resulting meta was glorious and on point; here is a woman who intimately knows the harm done to her former partner by her mother’s cruelty, who can see the instant destabilising effect of Evanora’s words on Agatha and knows it will take a lot of work to undo this most recent emotional harm.

All of this is still true.

But knowing now that Rio was also Nicky’s mother? And that she herself had stood at a crossroads to decide whether or not he would die the moment he left Agatha’s body?

The depth of it all kills me.

Taking the dead from this plane is not just Rio’s job, but the very reason for her existence. When Agatha was in labour, Rio knew Nicky’s time was up and that she had no choice but to do the job she was made for. She appeared before Agatha at the last possible moment, reluctance written in every line of her face and body. Despite not wanting to hurt Agatha—or to take the son they made together away before he could take his first breath—in all her eons I don’t think she had ever once considered the possibility of not doing her job. After all, the river flows in a single direction.

But it is Agatha’s nature to fight inevitability; to bargain and to beg. And Agatha, despite or because of her upbringing amongst such hatred, well, Agatha loves.

And Rio learned to love her back as she has no other being in the history of time. Rio bends the rules to her will like Agatha taught her. All rivers have eddies and she weaves a safe space out of her own love to give their son time.

Agatha is the first person Rio has ever loved and Nicky was quite possibly the first person she ever fought for. And in this scene, Evanora’s ghost is saying she should have destroyed both of them before Rio had a chance to know either? Had Evanora murdered Agatha when she was a baby, Rio would have unknowingly been forced to carry her only chance at happiness into the realms of the dead.

“I ought to have killed you the moment you left my body.” Death would spit at her feet but that would make her think she has power here.

One day that ghost will die and I smile at the thought of what Rio is going to do to her.

In that last gif: Rio’s averted gaze full of so much hurt and that little head shake—the way it looks as if she’s breathing down against the rising bile of what-ifs and maybes—yeah, this right here is what great stories are made of. Layers upon layers of history between characters that we are lucky enough to have a chance to expericence.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank @ngatwa and all the other gifmakers who allow us to continue exploring scenes like this after a show is over. Fandom owes gifmakers everything.

Mom? Why do you hate me still?

[artbyblastweave]

One of my favorite elements in the TF2 comics are the recurring beats implying that all things being equal Heavy would much rather be a morally righteous action hero in the tradition of Dolph or Arnie- rejoining Team Fortress to crush "evil men," implicitly doing so extensively as part of his tragic backstory, going in guns blazing to rescue a buddy from the Korean Mob, rallying everyone to go fight Merasmus's monster army during the Halloween party, getting the big climactic set piece fight with the deranged supervillain on an island base. But he's held back from the role he was born to play by his association with the Mann Family clusterfuck. He wasted the prime of his Rambo years shooting people in the desert for no reason.

Which ends up being sort a recurring beat, for many of the characters who aren't life-outcome agnostic in the manner of Pyro or Medic. Scout instantly finds extensive romantic success the second he lets go of Ms. Pauling and detaches himself from the badlands. Spy coming to terms with, and making up for lost time with, the family he was out in the Badlands to avoid. Engineer trundles along in his support capacity until his contract is up, smart enough to warn Helen's potential successor away from the same path but never able to break away from it himself until her death forced his hand- never exposing himself to the true pointlessness of the practical problem he was on retainer to solve. Demo implicitly realizing that for all his vaunted family pride in mercenary work he's spent the last several years on the second-string relief team that none of his peers took seriously. Saxton realizing that the joke of an ultramasculine adventure hero with a desk job has worn kind of thin and he's removed himself from his native genre for no real reason, to no personal fulfilment. Soldier.... is actually in the exact same general life situation but with a wife and kids along for the ride, good for him.

Ultimately it turned into a story about how the characters have outgrown the excuse plot- a story about how all of these people have much more interesting stories to be involved in, more compelling things to be doing than what we've spent the last seventeen years watching them do. And now they're free and clear and on their way.

[loosescrewslefty]

This interaction explains a LOT about Aira's character, and why her feelings for Okarun feel so unserious when compared to the likes of Jiji. Aira didn't enjoy playing piano, but she cannot STAND losing to someone else, leading to her obsessively working to win. But after winning, she lost interest in piano altogether because she 'won,' and no longer had the drive to play.

For a long time now, Aira's place in the story feels way more like she is invested in Momo. Momo is the one who inspires character growth in Aira on at least two different occasions I remember (confessing to spreading rumors after the fight with Nessie, and becoming more serious about fighting when she accidentally caused the Evil Eye to attack Momo), but while Jiji is slowly moving into a position where his feelings for Momo can no longer be ignored by the other characters, Aira's interest in Okarun is basically a hamster wheel. It spins and spins, but it doesn't go anywhere. But Aira clings to it out of stubbornness because she doesn't want to admit defeat, while at the same time never making serious effort to get Okarun to see her as a viable romantic partner.

From the start, the majority of Aira's focus has been on Momo. First by convincing herself Momo was a demon that needed to be defeated. Then trying to insist that she needed to save Okarun from Momo. And now she has fallen into a comfortable pattern of throwing herself at Okarun any time Momo is around to incite Momo into arguing with her. But she ONLY does that when Momo is around, and then loses interest in Okarun the moment she and Momo start throwing hands. I suspect that's the real reason she isn't doing anything to either try and seriously progress her relationship with Okarun or bowing out the way Rin and Vamola did once they realized that they were better as friends rather than trying to get between Momo and Okarun. Because she is afraid that if she doesn't push the idea of liking Okarun or makes a serious effort and either 'wins' or gets turned down and can't justify pushing herself on him any longer, she'll lose the frienemy relationship she developed with Momo.

And in the end, what keeps Aira going is the competition, not the trophy she earns when she wins.

[xxnghtclls]

Sukuna‘s appearance

There are moments that always stuck with me since we know that Sukuna said he was a „cursed and unwanted little wretch“. I think we can definitely assume what he was born with a deformed face and the four arms, causing him to be treated like shit in his youth.

Him going at Haruta „what‘re you lookin at?“ or saying „don‘t look at me without permission“ strikes to me as if it‘s a natural reaction to how ppl must have perceived and reacted to him.

Adding to those moments are the ones where he’s constantly fixing his hair or mocking Yuji’s appearance or preferring Megumi’s face. I think it’s safe to assume that Sukuna‘s OG appearance definitely was something he had to deal with back in the day.

[edsrosetattoo]

This is the best idea in the history of film.