#GET OUT OF HERE <333< /div> Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[littlecrittereli]

Wanted to doodle some comfort bros to balance out the angst of my recent posts lol

Hey pookies! Just wanted to say I really appreciate all the love and support I've been receiving lately for Decoded! I always love your comments/asks/fanart/memes, it genuinely has been bringing me so much joy and I'm so grateful for it <3

I know I said I had a lot of art to post (and then proceeded to post none of it LOL) I'm just a little overwhelmed rn with some life stuff so sorry for the wait! I also have a lot asks that I haven't gotten to and I apologize for that as well!

Trying my best to keep up, but I haven't had a lot of time recently. Art's gonna be a little delayed, but don't worry Chapter 8 is still gonna come out this Saturday as scheduled!

[toastchild]

SOMEONE NEEDS 2 BULLY ME INTO FINISHING THESE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[lefthandarm-man]

Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanoff Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

[p2ii]

bro's shoulders 🗿

[tagarilaghost]

Hiya you three :>

I did a little something :D The short version is that I really like the content you create <3

The long version and me literally pouring my heart out is under the cut :> oopsies my apologies for it even getting so long!

From left to right:

Darcy & Pearl belong to @neferirkarekakai

Just Darkrai & Anne belong to @anirritant

Ark & Twig belong to @sincerely-sofie

So two of you might already know, but I will say it again either way. I had a really rough time around the end of September 2024 with stress that left me almost no free time and meant constant work to do. It was one hell of a month that I had to power through and your content and fanfictions were like the only things that kept me going and powering through it all. I remember the days when I scrolled through Irri‘s blog reading all the silly ramblings and looking at all the cool content and art that you created <333! Then continued to check ao3 and found Sofie‘s fanfic filling the little breaks I could give myself at the beginning of all that stress. Once I finished it all I still remember it giving me such a push to finish one of the many huge things I had to complete in that time. And during the peak and end of it all Nefer‘s fic helped me carry the burden of everything coming together and trying to swallow me whole.

I must say most of these days are just such a blur cause I don’t remember anything else than working and reading, but I know I once laid there on the couch in the middle of the night, pmd music playing in the background and reading Avol. It was one of those moments that happened with all three of your works where I could just drift off and unwind free from the stuff I had to do. So yeah :) I finished everything, am still here and kicking! I think not a lot of people actually speak it out loud when someone encourages them, helps them through a rough time or just in general makes them happy :) I always wanted to let others know when their work is just amazing, so thank you three.

Thank you so much. From the bottom of my heart. Keep being awesome <3

also here's a silly extra:

[gunlicker13]

making her pay >:)

[mala--draws]

''you'll stay?" not forever. maybe not for very long at all. for now though, he will.

melting into a big sad puddle what

(fic excerpt from tiptoes - thirdgleam on ao3 & thedayforgives on tumblr, recommend!)

[revalition]

Happy end of 2024!! I originally put this together as a skilltober summary, but didn't end up finishing the last 3 days. So fuck it, 2024 skill cabinet instead! it's nice having them all together like this

[calamaroo]

What's a scene/scenario that lives rent free inside your head whenever you think of your AU? Or just the Octonauts in general. Is there something that excites you? Or something fun that you'd like to share with the class? A hyperfixation of sorts?

Me reading your ask post: YOOOOOO I'm a moot and I ain't dead (just inside) . . . oki yeah i may have been gone for a few hours but I have a very Octonauts related excuse!!! 😆

(This is @animalsalvationassociation btw, I'm not allowed to change my account name for asks apparently 😋)

Lots of love darling! 💙💙💙

(You better be taking care of yourself!!!)

HHHHRHRHHHDHSNWKSMDNKAAK OMG, I DIDN'T KNOW THAT WAS YOU 😳😅

I think I'm taking care of myself 😅 just lonely af 😔 (crippling friendless loser syndrome)

As for a scenario that lives rent in my head :

Hrbskwndjsksn literally just imagining Barnacles being creepy or acting like the animal that he is; it is my literal favorite thing to daydream about! I'll be trying to do school work and just sitting there staring at computer going --

"Hmmmm, yessssss, Barnacles ripping someone apart 🤤🤤🤤🤭🤭🤭 ooooh maybe even mauling themmmm 🤭🤭🤭😳😳"

I think it has to do with my fear of bears, lol

Something that excites me :

Them getting into precarious situations... and Barnacles saving the day, it makes me so genuinely giddy :]

Hyperfixation :

Octonauts overall (been consuming my brain for literal months, like half of the year probably), but a specific character changes every couple of days, OR each time I see something that reminds me of them and gives me ideas lol

Also :

(Me every time @animalsalvationassociation / @cookiecrumbles52palace calls me "darling")

It's like a reward 🥹💙 its so flattering 😭

🗣🗣🗣 TAKE IT 👹 👹‼️‼️‼️

[presiding]

a doctor turned serial killer turned doctor again, an actor who paints, a gang leader, a mining baron, and a vice overseer walk into the room.

oh yeah and they lead karnaca now.

dishonored 2 is my fav game but i think it's mid, story-wise. here's why dh1 works and why dh2's overarching story sorta misses

tl;dr: story integration is critical for gameplay that offers audience payoff, but emily's personal arc from dishonor to honor is inconsistently demonstrated in the story, and is not an interactive part of the gameplay.

essay/long version under cut >

recap: what's dishonored's deal

[skip if you want] dh1 is an underdog story: corvo is an honorable man swept up in the machinations of a callous city, so his canonical ending being 'this child will rule over an empire' isn't about the child's rule but rather about corvo's reputation being restored in a more hopeful city, due to his & the player's rejection of the violent connotations of the tagline 'revenge solves everything.'

similarly, in dh1 DLCs, daud's story arc is that of an anti-hero: a dishonorable man who realises too late he has done irreparable harm. he sees the error of his ways after a single monumental death, and eventually a single life redeems him when he/the player stepped in to circumvent a terrible fate for a child, enabling her to rule unfettered.

daud & corvo come to a satisfying conclusion within the extent of their narrative arcs. it doesn't matter that a child on a throne isn't really a fix for a decaying empire - the player's actions throughout the city of dunwall was what mattered - and these stories could be framed as parables. in that sense, young emily as a ruler is a metaphor for a hopeful future for the city & empire.

dishonored 1 & its DLCs are also great examples of storytelling with perfectly integrated gameplay - you, the player, worked towards the outcome that redeemed the protagonists.

in your efforts to save young emily, you either achieved a good outcome (corvo) or prevented a worse outcome (daud).

bringing us to dh2 -

what's emily's arc

emily's arc is a coming of age: we're introduced to a reigning empress who questions her role & skillset ("am i the empress my mother wanted me to be?"), then her titular fall from grace occurs. from there, she learns to reject the violent, selfish connotations in 'take back whats yours' tagline (a la daud & corvo!) while rediscovering why her rule is critical to the empire.

emily's rule is no longer metaphorical, but:

a literal thing for audience assessment (is emily a good ruler?) AND

the crux of her storyline.

at the beginning of dh2, emily is introduced as a disengaged leader ("i wish i could just run away from all this;" "i dont know if whether i should sail to the opposite side of the world, or have everyone around me executed"). the antihero has a precedent for the dishonored series in daud, so it's not at first glance an issue*, however, the fact that emily has ruled poorly reframes corvo & daud's endings as being less than ideal (a moralistic retcon) *we could talk here about how ready an audience was in 2016 for a flawed women as a protagonist, hell, even in 2023,,,

throwback to the beginning of this essay when i said:

'this child will rule over an empire' isn't about the child's rule but rather about corvo's reputation

emily's story arc, unlike for daud & corvo, is literally about the quality of her rule. we're no longer in metaphor territory (ironic phrase): a parable-style ending doesn't work.

does emily become a good ruler

we know she becomes a good ruler because the game says so. it is narrated to the audience via a (literal) word of god in the space of 30 seconds, after the final boss. the outsider tells us that emily becomes known as Just & Clever.

drawing a distinction here - this narration is not the same as the player actively being involved.

the player does not throughout the game become aware that emily has made political allies. during the game, she doesn't talk to these characters about saving karnaca or being a better ruler to the empire (there's a few lines might imply it, but you need to be actively looking and being careful to wait for every voice line. it's a far cry from daud & corvo's fight to save emily being unmissable - even though daud doesn't know at the beginning that's the goal).

how does the game show it

you can coincidentally not kill most of your subjects and never be aware that emily is looking to restore karnaca by means of instating a council - it's never brought up. it *couldn't* be brought up, because that council serves under the fake duke (armando), who is the last person she speaks to before she leaves for dunwall. its her suggestion that he rules karnaca, but armando's condition is that he will rule as he sees fit.

to back up a bit, emily's canonical method of restoring karnaca is by banding together key allies - hypatia, stilton, [byrne &or paolo], pastor, under a council beneath the duke's body double. they are passionate people who would each individually make worthwhile advisors, but if you think about those characters sitting at a table trying to reach an agreement, it feels like an assortment of people that emily didn't kill along the way and doesn't feel organic (up to interpretation). it's not stated if emily herself banded this council together, but logically she must have (worth a mention these are mostly characters that you as the player had reasonable rationale to kill during a high chaos run, except pastor). the underlying concept may be that karnaca's power is returned to its people - which is interesting given that the monarchy remains and armando's decision is final.

this overarching solution could also be taken as a critique to dh1's 'put your kid on the throne,' which is another reason its worthwhile looking at how emily was shown to be a better leader. obviously my point isn't that her solution was bad given the circumstance, but i mean she has very little agency here in all. if emily was shown to be more controlling as a leader, this could be interpreted as character growth, but that's not the case.

coming of age

how do you learn & grow when you can't specify your failings? emily doesn't really touch on her shortcomings as an empress. she non-specifically worries delilah makes a better empress than her. it's hard to argue her worries are meaningful when someone good at their job will still worry when lives are in the balance.

emily's best 'aha' moments (eg. crack in the slab comment about gaining perspective) are consistently undercut by a conversation with sokolov or meagan afterwards in which she demonstrates she hasn't learned anything (before the grand palace, emily condemns 'toadies sucking up to me' and is reminded by meagan that she's part of the problem). the story is confused about what it's trying to say about emily's progress, and when she's meant to show progress, if she was meant to show any progress at all. it could be argued that emily was never even a bad ruler, she had just been fed misinformation about the problems in karnaca and been the victim of slander by her political enemies. the game doesn't make this clear - it's easier to argue that the opposite is true given that her allies only have criticism.

worth a mention here that the heart quotes about armando - a fake ruler - interestingly mirror emily's character concerns. "see how he sighs? his life is a gilded cage." but this essay is already long.

while corvo & daud spend their games (and through the gameplay) 'earning' their redemption, emily is being led by the NPCs around her to a conclusion and a fix for the political mess in karnaca: meagan & sokolov guide emily to her missions, and there's no recurring quest for emily to investigate possible allies. she is able to gather the people she hasn't killed to herself by manner of... post-game narration. during the game, she's primarily concerned with getting her throne back.

an easy fix: if there had been less dialogue & narrative focus on emily's failings perhaps the ending would have felt more satisfying. it has the feel of cut content, but i don't know what was cut to be able to comment on it.

so what went wrong?

i can't help but wonder if arkane were worried they would lose a certain demographic if corvo wasn't playable (may have been deemed too much of a risk - 2013 was a different time), and so they had to take out story elements that were unique to emily's growth as a character/empress, because the usual storyline/gameplay integration had to work for both characters - in other words, gameplay that made sense for both corvo & emily was prioritised before emily's story & character development. which is a silly problem to have in a game that added character voices for the sake of improving characterisation - maybe emily's tale would have felt more akin to a parable if she had less lines that betrayed her ignorance (to the disdain of those around her).

i wish more care had been taken with emily's story. most players will never really notice the large variety of different endings - they're not particularly satisfying in and of themselves.

it's ironic that one of Emily's complaints is about her father/protector being overbearing, when his (parallel universe) presence in the gameplay may be one of the reasons her own narrative arc falls flat.

what are the upsides here

changing tune from what didn't work - don't you think the concept is fantastic? it's a great idea overall - can you imagine if the coming of age storyline was better integrated into the game?

it's valuable to talk about the integration of story and gameplay and characterisation from a craft perspective. dh2 genuinely is my favourite game - it's beautiful, the imm-sim design philosophy makes the world a delight to explore, the combat gives endless creative options for tackling any fight, there is a far greater diversity of cast in an in-text canonical way. there's loads to love!

i love emily as a dodgy leader, to me it adds interesting dimensionality to the outsider's narrations - of course in dunwall there's never a neat happily ever after! emily, like the outsider, both work well as characters who hold ultimate power but aren't necessarily worthy of it - and this makes perfect sense for the dishonored universe's morality & critiques of power. however, within this grey area there's still plenty of room for a satisfying ending, which isn't what we ended up with, whatever the true reason for that was. and also, damn, emily's a marked assassin empress, if she can't lead well then who can?

while dh1 was criticised for its narrative simplicity, dh2 in contrast and in hindsight shows us that simplicity isn't so bad - there's satisfaction in gameplay achieves a clear, simple narrative goal.

[residentialsinyomakai]

Yokai to Human Form Tidbit

Ok so there's human designs/ forms for Caspian's yokai friends 1, for fun, and 2, cause there's some situations where it's convenient/just better to have some in human forms (EX: Whisper coming to Caspian's choir concerts and conferences bc his parents are. fairly absent). Everyone has their own opinions on it and stuff and in this post I'ma talk about Baddinyan's!!

So fun little fact he does Not Like being human. This is mostly for body dysphoria adjacent feelings, like all of a sudden he has different hair, no fur, different ear placement, etc. The 'phantom limb' thing tends to happen with his tails, too, which is trippy and kinda uncomfortable. He also hates that a lot of his senses are dulled. smell, hearing, sight (especially in the dark), it makes everything feel kinda hazy and causes him to be a lot more stressed about everything.

Idk maybe I just think it's kinda funny to see a character thrown into a whole new form and reasonably be like. what. the hell this sucks. His easygoing (nice way of me saying his lazy ahh) and usually pretty chill/surprisingly level-headed mood is def worsened when he's constantly feeling skin that doesn't technically belong to him. A form he shouldn't really have.

As a result, he's oftentimes irritable and anxious in this form, with some days being better than others. He typically avoids having to use it unless he needs to though, and refuses to take his glasses off for anything. Has to be bribed with a Chocobar to enma forbid go out in public. He's also less used to it than most due to his extreme aversion to it. He just hates it and everything is physically gross and cloudy and nothing's in the right place and he can't explain why.

Badude, on the other hand, doesn't mind being human! It feels more similar to his body than it does for Baddinyan, and is kind of a fun change of pace every now and then. He's Baddinyan's like. closest friend besides Caspian in this AU, so he's typically who's convincing him to not kill everyone in the room and/or take off the stupid leaf in public lol. Their convos can sometimes go like

"C'mon, it's just until we get outta the store. Don't get your non-existent tails in a twist-"

"Shut up and do nyot remind me right nyeow."

"(Oh it's like. that kind of day whoopsies) Mbmb, we can ditch these nerds and go look at the candy isle or somethin' for a bit..?"

He stinks at comforting people or anything like that but tries. Sometimes. idiots

I'm working on references, but all I have to say about their designs for now is vitiligo Black-Mexican Baddinyan and Mexican-Japanese Badude CANON!!! See you for now! :) Have a radtastical day out there, don't implode or get rocks thrown into your inbox!! (again for some of you...)

[redhotarsenic]

ACID PUNK PHANTASY

[bizlybebo]

for someone who usually calls myself Not A Gorefreak But I Support Their Beliefs i am. strangely good at writing it

[crispycreambacon]

H. Hi everyone. Uh. You know what I don’t need to explain myself. Who needs to watermark your art when you can just draw your sona thristing over the art amirite-

The last two people featured next to me are @madamegemknight (bless her poor soul she had no idea what introducing me to Fraggle Rock would do to me) and @couchpotato1206 (aka my bULLYYYYY /lh)

Bonus images below. Fair warning: Extremely self-indulgent. Coughs.

Note: while I’m a minor as of making this post, my sona here is an adult. Please don’t be weird about this thank you!!!

[solaestial]

SOOOO i wrote a chrissell fanfic!!

it is... a very self-indulgent little one shot and my first attempt on a fic ever.... :> 

they kiss kiss 👨‍❤️‍💋‍👨

[a-dotrivenitupontop]

had a dream the other night that i got stuck in the needle pit and had an ice cream afterwards as a reward. figured mandy deserved the ice cream too <3