#BUT its little things that bother me!!

[theshiningdiamond]

(inhales) im going to beat krita with a stick

[witness2caesar]

Working on it.... I unfortunately can't turn my brain off with the amount of ideas I have for them. My wallet is screaming at me, guys

[puppyeared]

my brothers been playing elden ring recently and he let me draw his character ^_^

[carouselunique]

Cinch had three charges in her care once, Celestia entrusted her with the day-to-day care of Prince Blueblood, the new Princess Cadence and her student Sunset Shimmer - running a kingdom is difficult enough alone without three young ponies to look after - so when Celestia is absent (often) that means Cinch was in charge of these three ponies. And while the matron of the castle was always rigid about rules and wanted her three charges to uphold her reputation and to build their own budding reputations high, she cared about them very much. You'd have to, spending your time with the same three young ponies for so long, guiding and teaching them to be their best...

By the time Ditzy came into the picture, Cinch was down to two charges. She refused to fail them the way she failed...

Well, with one down, there were two left and she cared so much she wouldn't let anyone ruin them, especially not themselves. Surely they would come to realize Cinch was only helping.

[deoidesign]

I've been told my comic feels like it was written by AI.

I suppose I'm not trying to be groundbreaking. I'm not interested in pioneering genres. I'm not writing for the purpose of literary analysis.

But written by AI...?

I'm already someone who has my humanity questioned. My identity erased. My existence disrespected. It could be worse. Anything could be worse.

But AI?

I spend weeks writing single scenes, toiling over the implications of single lines. I have goals. My writing has intent.

If you cared to read deeper, perhaps you'd see the themes. Maybe then you'd see the value. If you tried to analyze it maybe you'd see something there.

Maybe you'd see me.

Someone told me my comic seemed like it was written by AI.

And my humanity was denied one step further in that my voice was not seen in the work I've poured years of my life into.

[yeyinde]

“When your need grows teeth” is so good I literally bite the pillow like a dog while reading it!!! I need to know more about Ghost and the ‘unlucky person was misfortune enough to unleash the muzzle on that particular dog’.!!!!!

haha i really didn't think people would pay much attention to it, tbh! i like adding little things like this into the stuff i write. a little story within a story, i guess. but i would love to flesh it out, since where it was this undertone of "oh, you..." (sort of cheeky, kinda sly when you looked at the bigger picture) with Price, it would more-so be, "oh, no..." with Ghost.

Price's original convo with Ghost would have been acknowledged as gospel and adopted into Ghost's own scripture for the longest time (since it's my weird little hc that Ghost uses Price as a yardstick for normalcy—or, almost like a needle in his morality compass), and then seeing Price give into those needs was sort of like this big moment that caused that compass to go haywire.

essentially, if Price is a starving dog, then Ghost is one on the verge of death, willing to sink his teeth into anything just to survive. and that's sort of the crux of it. in my head, Ghost would have been unleashed by this, but what took the muzzle off is his own MC, who thinks they're taking in this sick, old dog from off the streets, and helping it as much as they can, only to wake up and realise this dog is rabid. and it already bit them. but what really caused this poor person such misfortune was that little tossed in line by Price when he's volleying with Laswell about his status. Or damn near close to it. and that's what sealed their fate lmao. the implication that this baby is somehow more permanent than a ring.

idk! i like the idea of someone sweet, if a little naïve, being bit by him, a man who wakes up most days thinking he's still buried in a grave. or what happens when a living corpse feels heat for the first time in ages after being given a bed and a warm body with a soft touch. quite catastrophic, imo.

[courfee]

yes i used that dean scene as a reference, sue me

[cybertron-smash-or-pass]

TFA Arachnus Prime

[possamble]

do you have any particular thoughts regarding marcille being a half-elf? its interesting to me considering the fact that she seems self-conscious about being a half-elf, but denies it when its brought up

i remember marcille looking visibly uncomfortable over laios simply asking her how old she is, which i think the only reason she might feel nervous about this is because it might reveal her as a half-elf to him.

she's never corrected anybody whose called her an elf either.

never mind the circumstances of the reveal, in which thistle goes on about how half-elves are inferior and accusing her of wanting to become full blooded elf, she seemed particularly upset like he struck a nerve-

i wish the half-elf thing was built upon more. also, underrated marcille line:

okay so i revisited this sequence just to make sure I could back myself up and it's just... man. there's a lot going on.

the first reaction we get from Marcille is this huge panel that takes up half of the page

she is viscerally affected. flushing to the tips of her ears with the intensity of it. and we see it again, a few pages later

so it might seem like she's embarrassed about it and lying to herself, but... I really think it's just that Thistle is accidentally hitting sore spots. If you really look at what he says to get these reactions

"you'll live out your entire life [...] and die that way too"

"a hundred years from now, nobody will be there"

Hear me out. I think, if he stuck to harping on about her inferiority without bringing up how terrifyingly long-lived she is, she wouldn't have been as bothered. But right now, Thistle is accidentally hitting all the marks on Marcille's deepest fears-- and this is after the Winged Lion promised her that her dreams could come true in an extremely vulnerable moment, so it also hits her slightly guilty conscience as well.

I do truly believe that Marcille isn't bothered about being a half-elf the way that people assume she'd be bothered by it. To her, the biggest problem with being a half-elf is that it's isolating.

On one hand, it's not hard to imagine why she'd distance herself from elves in the west. A lot of them can clock her as a half-elf on sight, unlike other races, and therefore she's always branded with this weird stigma of being Othered -- I would even say that she considers herself lucky for being born outside of elven culture instead of having to grow up in it. I mean, just... look at the way elves talk about her.

Skipping past the uncomfortable implication of what 'not tolerating the existence' of half-elves would actually entail, this is incredibly fucking annoying. You can see why she wouldn't want to be around elves much. You see a lot of Marcille reacting badly here, but honestly, almost all of it can be attributed to her freaking out that her bluff completely failed. She's honestly more paying attention to Izutsumi's footsteps and trying to coordinate an opportunity to escape.

And in the end, you see her built-up frustration at being asked if she wants to be a full-blooded elf like 2-3 times in a row.

Yeah, yeah, "the lady doth protest too much," and all. But we know Marcille. We know that she's a lot more embarrassed and horrendously unconvincing when she's being prodded about something she's actually self-conscious about.

Moving onto the flipside of things, it might seem weird that she "pretends" to be a full elf around other races, but it's not really that strange if you think about it. Again, people are weird about her being infertile or whatever, and a lots of them don't even know much about what sets half-elves apart from everyone else. I mean, look at how uncomfortable Laios is just asking her about it

and look at how exasperated and resigned she looks

And like... she's right. Where would that come up in normal conversation? Why would she go out of her way to tell them? She's functionally a normal elf to other races anyway -- got the ears, the abnormally long "childhood", and the huge mana capacity. Unless it's directly relevant or important for people to know, I don't think it's all that strange or indicative of insecurity that she prefers not to bother with it.

(This combined with her sense of being an "outsider" to elf culture also explains why she thinks elf superiority is embarrassing. She sees the way elves treat short-lived races from the "outsider" perspective nonetheless, and thinks it's obnoxious; especially more so because she usually has to play the elf around short-lived races and deal with the reputation of arrogance that elves have built up.)

The sad thing is, this all means that... she doesn't actually fit in anywhere. She doesn't like going out West much because of how elves treat her. But she's also an outsider in the continents she was born in, treated like this exotic long-lived alien choosing to live among short-lived races for some reason. She is always an outsider, the Other, no matter where she goes. Add in the fact that she'll live longer than literally anyone she knows, and it's honestly kind of heartbreaking.

And I think that's the crux of it. Marcille really doesn't act like she's at all self-conscious about being a half-elf because of any feelings of inferiority or being half-made or whatever. She considers herself a perfectly legitimate being and might even, in some ways, consider herself superior to normal elves because she's not blind with elf supremacy or whatever. (And whatever "elven biases" she displays, all of them are born more out of the fact that she's kind of bad at conceptualizing how other races age and mature compared to herself, not that she actually considers herself better or more mature simply for being an elf.)

I think that whatever self-consciousness Marcille has about being a half-elf is, instead, related to terror and loneliness. The reminder that it ensures she'll never truly belong anywhere for the rest of her very long life. The reminder that, in truth, even she's not actually sure how old she is by other races' standards (hence the discomfort when asked how old she is). She doesn't want to not be a half elf, or be a full elf or full tall-man-- in her ideal world, she's still a half-elf. She just gets to live out her life at the same pace with the people she loves and doesn't have to say goodbye again and again and again until she dies.

and one last very important panel, right after Mithrun tells her that all her desires would be devoured

In her ideal world, she's still a half-elf and reality magically starts marching at her pace. But failing that, the second best thing is that she's still a half-elf-- but one who is able to accept reality and let go of her fear.

(But the rest of the story pans out the way it does because, to Marcille, taking reality apart and reshaping it was less scary than simply and fully reconciling with it.)

[dragon-subway]

acolyte has me updating some design things that have been bothering me for a while yippee

[skitskatdacat63]

2023 Las Vegas Grand Prix - Qualifiying - Fernando Alonso

[humanmorph]

"This is a message to you, who listens. You must trust me, because we are friends. You just don't know it yet. "

(The Road to PARTIZAN 05 : Ech0 & dusk to midnight)

currently halfway through PARTIZAN (making my way towards palisade extremely slowly. see u guys there in a month or two) & this is to date my favourite intro Austin has done. what an great introduction to an extremely cool character

[fuckingstupidbracket]

like a regular bin, not even recycled or anything

[puppyeared]

learning abt friendship decay and "not reaching out to your friends for months at a time unprompted is not neurotypical behaviour" has me feeling a certain way

[silvesi]

✨️MESMER PROPAGANDA!!✨️

Daily enrichment for Fedsy (On his way to flirt with and manipulate the workers of New Kaineng so they will let him try a sip of the tasty green liquid in the power plant core 😫)

[screechingfromthevoid]

*clenches teeth and fists* it's fine no one comments on how Dorian is more "lithe" than before. It's fine that he's not "nearly as bulky". It's fine that he doesn't sleep well then has to wake up just to be the sunny optimist the next day. It's fine that his strings are wound so tight that he's ready to snap.

It's fine that Dorian's health is being ignored. He's the new guy, right? Fresh faced? Not burdened by the trauma of the last few months, right?