#I feel completely hollow

[manic-pixie-dream-cock]

There is an idea of a manic pixie dream cock—some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me—only an entity: something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shape my hand and feel flesh gripping yours—and maybe you can even sense that our lifestyles are probably comparable—I simply….am not….there.

[the-great-kraken]

if you see a male character kiss a male character, you assume they are gay.

if you see a female character kiss a female character, you assume they are a lesbian.

if you hear a character say they don't feel like their gender, you assume they are trans.

so why do a-spec characters have to jump through so many loops?

a character saying they've never had a crush or don't want a relationship or that they don't understand romantic love is so often ignored or used as fodder for other queer or autistic headcanons (reinforcing stereotypes that aroace people are secretly gay or always autistic)

why is it that our stories are always "up to interpretation"? why do we have to wait for the words aromantic or asexual to be said to be taken seriously? why is it that even when characters say they don't want relationships, fans will scream and cry about sex/romance favourable aspecs and qprs?

when it comes to gay and trans characters, even the likes of bisexual lighting is often treated as though it canonises their sexuality. for aroace characters, even the most explicit coding possible is swept under the rug in favour of other "interpretations"

i'm so tired of fighting for representation just to have it ignored and minimised by fans. let characters be aroace. please.

[o-sunny-day]

CAINE DOODLE DUMP!!!

Plus some depression from “Willard!” by Will Wood. That song is so Caine oh my god-

Im obsessed with the idea that The Digital Circus was supposed to be this grand game that just ended up falling through because of creative differences, and Caine was basically left to rot- like yeah that’d explain…*vaguely gestures* everything about him

They didn’t know what they had made

Also Bubble isn’t in the posters because I fully am committed to the theory that Caine made him himself after going crazy over being alone for forever

[pali-and-proud]

ok, I am relatively new to this little fandom but I binged Cinderella boy and I'm just wondering... did everyone forget about that one part where buddy has this dream and he's in ragged clothes in a fancy manor house? Like, no wonder the man likes looking fancy. if that's Ex Libris and that's how they keep him, of course he likes looking good. maybe it's because he doesn't have the chance to otherwise?

also did everyone just forget that bit existed because I'm scrolling through and I'm seeing nothing on buddy seeing chase in the mirror, shattering the mirror, and jumping through. That was deeply impactful and yet I can't figure out what and i've been hyperfixtaing on that for a while now. Can you give me a rant about that bit because I know there's something up there I just cant figure out what, am I the only one who read that part?

This is so funny to me. I'm so happy you got into CB! And I'm so happy you enjoy it! But LMAO I think the Dreams episode broke tumblr--there were so many speculations and it's the basis for like 80% of our Buddy theories! (People analyzing the episode is what caused me to make a tumblr account in the first place, actually!)

(Which! Since you're new to the fandom, I can understand how it might look like we missed it, but I promise--this fandom soaks up Buddy content like it's water and we're in the Sahara)

So since it's a dream, we have to assume a lot of symbolism--we know the outfit Chase wore in his dream was a representation of himself (likely a nod to his repeated selfless, angellic actions, like trying to save Buddy or trying to save his mom), so we can assume the same for Buddy.

He's likely not actually dressed in rags--although we don't have that confirmed, but based off of Chase's fit--but it's possible that he ISNT dressed in the fancier outfit we saw him wear earlier. It's really likely, actually, although we shouldn't discount the possibility that Punko wanted him dressed so simply to reflect how dim/bare his situation is.

Someone (I cant remember who, but if anyone does know, PLEASE @ them bc this was life-changing) pointed out that if that's the case, then Violet would have been making outfits for Buddy the whole time, which would cement Buddy having a good relationship with his key well before Chase. We can assume Buddy has a good relationship with Violet anyway, since she makes him outfits he likes, but still.

The rags also serve another purpose: it reminds us that Buddy is ALSO a protag. That's what Chase realizes, in his dream, and it's what we have to keep in mind when we read the chapters. Buddy's not a side character, nor an antagonist. This is his story, too, and he's trying to secure his own happy ending, just like Chase.

(The title of the Webtoons is Cinderella Boy--and in that episode, between Chase and Buddy, only Buddy looks like Cinderella. Another nod to his true role as a protag, and another reason why we need to treat his attire with caution.)

What the dream DEFINITELY confirms is that Buddy has a bad relationship with Ex Libris. There's really no plausible alternative--from how frantic he is to escape, and how afraid he is of being caught. Beach Boys set the question of whether or not Buddy's in a bad spot with Ex Libris, but we didn't know how truthful he was.

We still don't, really, since he still hasn't told us, 'cause he's a paranoid asshole that we tragically love. But this episode laid some facts: Buddy is definitely in a bad situation, regardless of the specifics.

Plus, the final scene of him throwing the clock at the mirror, effectively destroying the reflection of Chase--clocks are often a representation of time. He's running out of time. There's a time limit, somewhere, but we don't know anything except that the clock's ticking.

(Someone else pointed out the clocks/time thing before me. I swear, I will hunt these @s and give proper citations.)

His escape via the mirror likely refers to his real motive: Buddy wants to escape, and he's aware his escape is going to involve, to some extent, harming Chase. From here, it's pure speculation: does Buddy need the keys to escape, thus betraying Chase? Does Buddy know something important? Is the mirror, or Buddy's escape, in any way tied to how he finds Chase in the books?

It's VERY likely that the keys are critical to Buddy's escape, due to the lock with 12 keyholes. This would also ensure the plotline of Buddy's strive for the keys remains intact, and would give us another reason for why Buddy was so desperate for Chase's key. HOWEVER, this isn't the only theory, and we know Punko's always two steps ahead.

The episode feels symbolic and important because it IS, but until we know more about Buddy's actual situation, it's hard to really break down what the episode means. I promise, though: the more we learn about Buddy's backstory, the more people (including myself, because i cannot shut up) will refer to that episode to swoon over the foreshadowing Punko brilliantly laid out.

[1singulargrape]

@luminescent-cow (frantic) I love the way you worded this because it reminds me of 2 of my favorite art pieces that I think fits sukuita in a way (it's probably the brainrot but wtv)

"The anatomy of a hug" by Luna Lu

"this is what love feels like I think" by sardineslayer_ on twt

sharing one heart and one mind in addition to one soul... it makes me a bit insane and I want to grab these two and smash them together until they're indistinguishable from one another <3

[kayawolfhorse]

In my heart of hearts, at the end of the session the snails seemed to disappear inside their shells with a little pop, and after curiosity got the better of the lifers, they lifted the shells up to reveal a pocket-sized, completely harmless version of their snails they could keep as friends

[littlebittyhollowbugs]

Me who is obsessed with Hollow and the Pale king and has been crying over the Ithica saga (from Epic the musical) this past week listening to "I cant help but wonder" and piecing together a Hollow reuniting with (spirit) pk sequence in my mind and going insane:

[rainyreyn9]

My (very bad) take on gijinka Hornet and Lace!!

Don't know how to feel about Hornet's design though cuz I feel like she resembles Marggri's too much :/

Might change some stuff later on idk, I'm tired so I need a break rn o(-(

Edit: crap I just noticed a design mistake on one Hornet's glove AA-- it's not a fingerless glove btw it's closer to how Reva's gloves are 🥲

[thegreatyin]

i am legitimately tempted to let the scoundrel lose her soul. not permanently, but just as like. An Incident™, y'know. a one-off goof. a gag, if you will

[dammit-neal]

bucktommy fans I'm opening the floor for a discussion: I'm confused.

I've been a buddie shipper ever since I saw them for the first time. And season after season I have WAITED for movement to happen on that front.

Then in comes Tommy, he's cool. I get it. But the hype train? I don't get it. I don't understand the feral excitement over him. I feel the same emptiness watching buck with him as I felt with Lucy tbh. He's cool, but he's not Eddie. Like, yay, a guy, but he's just as random as Buck's other relationships. It's just as rushed, Buck sees them, at some random non-sequitur moment Buck decides "this is it" and jumps in. Three seconds later they're kissing. It ain't it for me. There's no buildup, there's no nothing.

And then I come here, and all I see is folks frothing at the mouth over Bucktommy. Credit where it's due, he helped Buck out of the closet, but aside from that? Thank goodness he has a personality worth a damn, and he's funny, unlike Buck's other love interests, but he still isn't Eddie, and that puts him in a long line of love interests that I don't much care about.

I literally don't understand the people who are so excited with this utter left turn. Putting Buck together with anyone who isn't Eddie still feels like crumbs. I still feel cheated, It's like if I was in a restaurant with the fandom and there are pictures of lasagna everywhere and it smells like lasagna, and so we all sit down and wait for lasagna for YEARS and the restaurant keeps offering us all breadsticks, and we're all firm on this: "breadsticks aren't lasagna, we're holding out for lasagna." And 7 years later the restaurant puts a Caesar salad down before us and everyone around me is like "Oh great this Caesar salad this is perfect I'm starving so I'll eat this and forget lasagna" And I'm like "this isn't lasagna its clearly a salad, I didn't wait years for some random salad, where's my lasagna." And they're all like "Shame on you salad is perfect"

So I guess the question is, what am I missing? And outside of the thrill of the coming out story, how do you find this relationship any more satisfying than any of Buck's other last minute loves?

[yeahivegotanaccount]

[roboticutie]

It's a side-mission that I don't think many end up doing, at least from the lack of talking about it I see, but still. The figurines. If you succeed a check in the pawn shop, you can take a figurine of a headless soldier on a horse. If you've done that, when you inspect the stained glass Dolores Dei you can get the task to give her any and all figurines you can find. Perhaps you can one day. Even when you get this task, though, it feels odd- it confuses your Logic because Dei has long since passed, but... Maybe you can give her these gifts somehow? You can find another figurine in the unplayable Wirral expansion pack (I only found it bc I didn't know you couldn't play Wirral w Kim). There are only these 2, according to the wiki, and I have not found more.

This task is another moment where the writers really manage to emulate that feeling of not only loss, but lost-ness that you get a few times in the game. When I did this task I thought it would be something extraordinary, maybe vaguely supernatural as there are a few things confirmed to be unexplainable happening with and around Harry, y'know? I had hope and intrigue and didn't even realize how strange and rare it must be to get this task on accident bc after typing it out I realized the starting parameters were VERY specific and easy to miss, actually. And I was so excited to find who to give it to, maybe a lost shrine, or someone reaching through a spot of pale and time, maybe when I found 3 or 5 I could lay them at her shattered feet and look behind the glass, something odd and unexplainable.

Then I met her in the dream. And just before it ended I was reminded that I'm supposed to give Dei the figurines. And that's when it dawned on me what Harry had forgotten, and I knew what he'd done to his memory of Dora by combining the two, and... It was so sobering and desolate. It felt the same way the end of a party feels, when you're the last to leave. The balloons are still up, but there's streamers on the floor, crumbs on the plates, bowls of snacks emptied, walls that held and echoed laughter are silent. The after image of something amazing, left only with the memory and the knowledge that that moment will never, ever happen the same way again.

You fulfill this task by giving all found figurines to Dora in the final dream.

And it does nothing. It doesn't work. Nothing will work. She would have liked them once, but like Dei, that Dora is dead. She died years ago and the Dora that remains is far, far away now.

Just like when I had no idea the carriage was Harry's until Kim spelled it out for us 2 hours later after chatting and whistling and relaxing; the figurines made what Harry was feeling and going through dawn on me so personally. I can't explain it in words well enough. I was so disappointed the figurines weren't some greater purpose, I was sad this was all we were holding onto them for, I was disappointed in Harry for trying to use trinkets to win her back, I was upset that they didn't do anything good, she didn't even want them; and I knew that's what Harry felt in that moment, too.

It's a level of "Show, don't tell," that not many writers set themselves up to be able to achieve. Even in this game there are only a handful of moments that are able to put you into Harry's headspace so precisely, and all of them are very specific and rely heavily on context given or lost on the player. It's impressive. I think about those figurines a lot.

[alfhildr-the-word-weaver]

I got thinking too much about Marwa from What We Do in the Shadows again and how she was canonically making observations of Jupiter and Saturn in the 1200s. Then I thought about how Elena took Damon to go watch a meteor shower, and I decided that Marwa and Elena should get away from all the vampire drama B.S. in their lives and go nerd out about astronomy together, and this moodboard sort of happened. I also thought about how Elena becomes a doctor and went ah, they are both women in STEM! So I ran with that as a theme too.

But yeah, Marwa needs a friend who will actually support her interests and engage with her intellectually (no shade to Nadja and the Guide, I'm glad they had a fun weekend watching Mamma Mia together which was literally the only time we got to actually see Marwa happy onscreen, but they have never demonstrated much interest in science that I can recall and I want Marwa to have an astronomy buddy), and I think Elena would be fascinated by her and her perspectives on astronomy from centuries ago, and they could learn about modern astronomical advances together. If I find the time and energy I might even write fic about it, but for now, here is a moodboard so that we can all bask in the vibes of my beautiful crossover vision together.

Image sources: x x x / x (the first frame of x gif + a screenshot from x) x / x + x x x

[blue-thief]

the order doesn't matter that much also the "not for me" tier can range from "man idgaf" to "WHAT THE FUCK"

[meownotgood]

rewatched arcane s2 and a) I cannot believe I never noticed the reverb on viktor's voice until now his voice is actually rumbling and it's kinda. very hot. b) he's also literally GLOWING???? like he has this glowy pretty aura around him what the fuucckkkjhjk

[ebbpettier]

me when i just finished wolfsong