#I HAVE STUFF I JUST CANT COHERENT

[skriblee-ksk]

JacKiyuu relationship dynamic thing i saw someone do on tumblr(i forgor) WAIT NVM i think it was ryllen

ITS MY QPR!! and! fun fact: my first actual oc x canon. that’s crazy. i had some in the past but i was never rlly feeling it. BUT THIS TIME I GET BRAINROT OF THEM which may be bad but it’s summer break so it’s better. maybe.

genuinely struggled w Jack’s color because like. What is it. His hair lighting in chibi form is like. a teal. but within first years it’s yellow-orange. but like. his shirt. is dark pale green. idk man.

anyways headcanon of aroace-spec jack because i love aroace-beaming my favs SORRY. KINDA. IM PRETTY COMFORTABLE W IT BUT LIKE. IDK. SORRY. gender wise i got nothin tbh but also jackiyuu yuri’s kinda cute i think. IDK LIKE AU?? WHO KNOWS. HAPPY PRIDE MONTH. I WILL BE POSTING MORE OF THEM. HOPEFULLY.

tag list (ask to be added!!): @kathxrat-01

[targarrus]

does it look okay? i cant tell anymore

anyway nace jordan

[bacchuschucklefuck]

Can you expand on what you mean by Baron being "too cool" to really fit a horror monster? It's a very interesting concept and I'd love to hear your thoughts. Is it that they're too active/involved/tangible and it detracts from their scariness?

I feel like I should preface this with a wall of disclaimers lmao 1/I am a hardcore, down-to-the-marrow, avid, deeply sincere horror enthusiast, esp. horror creatures. this usually means my mileage is vastly different from the average populace's, and my scaredy bone has been disintegrated by longterm exposure. most things in a piece of horror media won't scare me! so I practically never use that on its own as the scale to talk abt horror experiences, but when something does scare me it's always a special occasion to be treasured. 2/canon d20 is never really meant to be horror horror, and for good reasons: it doesn't fit the company's output, it takes a kind of carelessness in production estimation that is always a huge risk, it's often vulnerable in a way that kinda goes against how TTRPGs usually facilitates vulnerability, and for most people it's just! stressful! d20, even with the "horror-themed" seasons, generally just plays with horror tropes and stays focused in its goal of being a comedy improv tabletop theater show. 3/fantasy high's chosen system is DnD, which as I've mentioned before is before all a combat-based game system, which means the magic circle of play is drawn based on stats that facilitate and prioritize combat. want or not this affects every interaction you have in the game, and given fantasy high's concept from the ground up (everyone's going to school of DnD stuff to get better at DnD) it's doubly relevant. 4/This Is Fine I have no quarrel with this. my meters are internal, I do not ask this show to be anything it doesn't advertise itself to be, and what it is is fucking great! I like it! when I expand on this ask's question it will be like a physicist going insane in a lab. that's the mindset we're going in with.

disclaimers done. my stance on horror as a genre is that it's a utility genre rather than a content genre or a demographic genre; it is the discard of narratives. it's the trash pile. horror, above being scary, is about being ugly and messy, it's the cracks on the ground any story inevitably steps over to stay a genre that isn't horror. the genre's been around long enough to develop a codex and a general language that medias and makers and enthusiasts of the genre can use to talk about and build onto, but if you go into individual pieces there's really no unifying Horror Story. one person's beautiful life can be another's horror story, it's just how it is.

this makes The Monster a deeply intriguing piece of the genre. thing is a monster is in a decent percentage of any story - it's just when the antagonist force steps into something past a certain line traced out in the story's world. monstrousness is in pretty much every western fantasy story, it's in any story with a hero and something to vanquish or win; more than anything it's a proxy of that thing up there. the line in a narrative's world. the monster is the guard of the unknown lands, where heroic, civilized people don't tread.

what does this mean in the context of horror? the genre is about that perceived lawlessness, that "unknown land" so to say. we're in the monster's home. that's the literary context that we often walk into a horror piece with; the monster knows more than you about where you are. it may not understand you, but it holds more information than you, and with that it moves swifter than you, has more covered than you, and is more assured in its existence in this context than you. it's a struggle to catch up to it, it's nigh impossible to get one over it, and you're never sure it'll 100% work, because you just don't have the information necessary to.

with that framing you can kinda see where I'm coming from here: horror's often about the breaking of rules. I always think a monster's most effective when it breaks well-established rules of both existence and visual storytelling. think Possum (2018) or Undertale's Omega Flowey or the Xenomorph Queen - unique change in medium, unique change in graphic, unique change in design language, etc. in that sense I actually really like how canon baron plays out: they don't really function like anything else in the fantasy high universe, the bad kids have not managed to kill them when they've felled literal gods, their domain in fhjy literally introduces new mechanics to encompass their existence! from an experience design standpoint they slap mad shit. BUT! I can't help finding their character, like as a character riz (and the other bad kids, eventually) interact with, to be very... coherent? in design. this is kinda hard for me to articulate in words, it's more often a sense you get once you've looked at enough of these scrumptious fuckers, their general design and the way they show up is just kinda too clean, so to say. always kinda newly made? fresh unboxed. it, once again, makes sense for their lore - they are looking for more about themself from riz - and their function - they're an antagonist in a game experience, they're meant to be interacted with in a way that produces results and meshes with the existing magic circle - but that shininess takes away from the implied history they should have dominion over and the person they're haunting doesn't.

from another angle there is kinda something there about how put-together canon baron is as a concept; the domain they call home is riz's deep-seeded fears, extremely vulnerable things he's drawn borders around to quarantine and refused to walk into. things that from his perspective would irreversibly shatter certain pleasant fictions his world is built on top of. canon baron, While Extremely Cool, I feel is kinda too neat to connect with and signify the apocalyticized mess that'd result from this paradigm shift. the part where they're in riz's briefcase and looking through every mirror is Very Cool And Fucked Up! but ultimately the show draws a line around them as well, by making game-physical, tangible spaces they're in (the mirrors and the haunted mordred manor) and put riz and the bad kids there only when they need to confront stuff. riz is meaningfully narratively away from baron's unknown land for most of fantasy high.

with that and all of my disclaimers in mind my conclusion here is if canon baron wants to be a Horror Monster they'd have to cross way more lines. be a Lot more invasive. hence (holds up my class swap baron like a long cat)

[phagodyke]

the masculine urge to take a saucepan off thr draining board and bash myself repeatedly over the head with it until I pass out and no longer have to experience feeling Bad 😍

[skitskatdacat63]

Boy King Seb :D

[bitegore]

getting mental healthcare is really cool, its like asking someone to take a sledgehammer to your self-interest and then saying thank you after because it makes your life moderately easier even though you have to deal with this shit now

[kiddokori]

things i like about totk so far: the depths,

i am going to be so completely honest i thought id be able to think of more. um. this is awkward

[currently-becoming-potatoes]

I think I've decided my gender is willful Shakespeare men

[spiderziege]

also speaking of die drei ???, heres an obligatory ask so you can spend us some more details on the shadow game (opens hands)

aaaahhh so the thing with tsg is. i think about them a lot and i have so many unfinished sketches, but i never really post about my ocs cause 1) there is no actual coherent story and there probably never will be, and 2) i kinda forget that sometimes people are actually interested in oc stuff :')

heres two things from a while ago, which actually you mightve seen those already cause i think i posted them on my priv twitter? but yeah. and if you want a completely random and contextless snippet then theres this horse here. Maurice starts collecting a bunch of trash and scrap metal that people leave lying around local yards and gardening plots (allotments? is that the right word here? kleingärtenanlagen is what i mean) and out of boredom he starts building new things out of that, starts out with small random structures until he gets to building these life-sized horse statues. and then SOMETHING happens i just dont know what. i assume they become sentient at some point. also Louis is somewhat haunted by a horse but i think thats mostly unrelated. its just if i come up with any story then a horse is gonna show up at some point

[kiisaes]

I so desperately wish to be excited about the new spiderverse movie but I'll be honest, jds working on it automatically strikes fear in my trembling heart

[always-a-joyful-note]

Okay okay. I've recovered a little from hearing Arcane s2 in 2024 (ARCANE S2 IN 2024!!!!) and I just want to take a moment to remember why Arcane is actually the animated show of the 2020s.

Because you have excellent, unique animation with a killer artstyle, incredible action sequences, incredible movement, just...AGH. The THEMES about two different parts of one country at war, the way it affects the innocent, the way neither Piltover or Zaun are overly romanticised or vilified. Like they understand that no one class or race or whatever is better than the other, and they portrayed that so well with the heroes and villains coming from BOTH places and having complicated motivations for their actions but also being good and hurt and broken and SO, SO human. And the way they meet and relate to each other and bond and make friendships and connections and feel affection and love and attraction that shows us that in these Big Happenings and the emergence of Technology That Will Change things life still goes on. The way they treat Jinx's breakdown with so much love for the character, not romanticising her madness and breakdown but showing how in spite of the way she spirals she can STILL be loved (by us, the audience! and also by her sister!). And the father and daughter relationships shown, the way that just because you love someone doesn't make you a good person but loving someone will inevitably make you better or show others that there was something in you that COULD have gone well.

And I could ramble on about representations of mental health, diverse people groups, yordles (love how they were randomly thrown in with no explanation except the fact that they hold Lore), disability, and on and on. Except really, what made me fall in love with Arcane was just that it understood it was a story, and it wanted to tell a story about characters that people had loved throughout years of gameplay and make people just getting into LoL fall in love with them too.

[phantastragoria]

Not sure if it's okay to send you this ask but I actually feel the same way you do about the end of vol 3 and I've been feeling pretty alone about it. I haven't said much because I don't want to seem like I'm being mean about the movie. I think my issue is the team hasn't spent years and years together. Most of them were snapped for 5 years. When they came back Gamora was dead and then Peter was clearly left suffering and dealing with the trauma for a while. I can live with the idea of "we've all grown to need time apart and want to do our own things" but I don't think the build up and execution was there. Not just for those on the team but also 2014 Gamora who was literally just coming back to the story and finally getting to see who these people were and what her life was once about. Then it's over and it doesn't feel like enough of a resolution. I also don't love how Gamora was treated which is a whole other topic but I disliked how it seems like there hasn't been any issue with her death for anyone but Peter. There doesn't even seem to be any memories of her lingering with the team. I have so many thoughts around this that I'll be thinking about it for a while but man, she was murdered by her abuser and most of her family are victims of abuse and I dont think the aftermath has been handled very well at all. Mostly I think there needed to be another movie In between Endgame and vol 3 to hash out what happened in Infinity War/Endgame and to progress some of the characters more and build up to the more Rocket focused ending where they all part ways. Or vol 3 needed to not be quite as focused on Rocket. Not saying he shouldn't have the most focus, just scale it back a little because other things desperately needed attention.

Oh it's absolutely fine to send an ask about this!!! I'm always up for a discussion, and honestly, it makes me feel better that I'm not the only person not completely happy with the ending, solidarity my friend.

I want to preface this all with I DON'T hate the film, and I thought it was way better on a 2nd viewing, but I really don't think it's a crime to criticize it because nothing is perfect (Vol. 1 + 2 aren't either) But Vol. 3 really has some deeply ingrained issues that should've been dealt with, or at the very least acknowledged, because as it is they really stand out, especially on a second viewing or if you've marathoned all the films together, and they literally drag the film down.

Gunn said on Twitter in response to something that he wanted Vol. 3 to be able to stand on its own without the viewer needing to have seen the other films (and by extension IW+EG) but that is so unhinged when it's literally titled as the third in the series at this point lol. Like it's extremely weird to have let IW+EG affect the Guardians as much as they did and then not even try and deal with the aftermath of it all in the last film featuring (almost) everyone together... ???

He's made it clear Rocket is his favorite and that he only came back to do Vol. 3 because he wanted to finish his story, I don't doubt that's true even if I think having a single character be more important than the others is the wrong choice and leaves the whole story as a trilogy a bit lopsided. But even so, if that's the case then it's crazy to not even have Rocket's thoughts on all of these things that've happened in the last decade as if it wouldn't be traumatic to lose your loved ones for years, and how hard it would be to readjust to life after it all. I kind of can't see him letting everyone leave so easily at the very end, especially after he almost died, so I'm just left feeling confused at the choice at best and vaguely unsatisfied at worst.

Maybe Gunn didn't have as much control over their appearances in IW+EG as he says he did. Maybe they really did completely derail the road to Vol. 3 and he just won't admit it, but the film as it is doesn't help in any way by pretending nothing there happened at all. I don't see any logical reason for the audience to just go along with "For some reason Gamora left, she might've died but also maybe not, who knows. Peter is sad and the rest of the team want to move onto something else. " and then the only hint at that last part is... Mantis telling Peter to go see his grandpa, so that leads to everyone else having a change in goals too, huh. I know it's not meant to be forever, and we're to assume everyone keeps in contact with each other, but the ending really makes it feel like no, we'll never all be together again, so bah.

And concerning Gamora, I agree with what you've said. I could write an entire book with my issues of her overall treatment in the narrative and the implications of her character from the comics getting adapted like this, but I'll spare you the speech and just say the TLDR is everything starting from IW onwards concerning her (the specific framing around her murder and then time travel bringing in 2014-Gamora, and the complete lack of acknowledgement about either version of her from the rest of the team) never should've happened. It's all such a mind-boggling choice, I can't get over how much of an afterthought Gunn made her at the very last minute.

It's funny you mention the need for another film to deal with the emotional fallout of everything post-Vol. 2, because absolutely, but they kind of had the chance??? I realize the Holiday Special isn't film length and is meant to be the calm before the storm of everything that's to come, but in a post-Vol. 3 world I can't stop thinking about how it was SUCH a missed opportunity to not have that be the sobering moment for the characters to talk about everything that happened in the years everyone was snapped. It could've even been the perfect time to plant the metaphorical plot seeds of everyone wanting to go and do their own things after what happened because they just can't make life feel the exact same as it was before, and understanding things can never be the same after something like that.

Even the last lines of the song used in the Holiday Special feels more appropriate for the Guardians as a family struggling to keep it all together (and trying to deal with the sudden loss of Gamora) than it relates to Peter and Yondu, in my opinion.

I would have preferred a more out-there story in general, something to give everyone equal stakes in the plot, but I do think Vol. 3 could have stayed overall the same if any of this was addressed or even mentioned in one or two lines of dialogue somewhere. Because as it is, it really feels like we missed something important between it all, but we didn't from what we we've been shown. I don't think it would have killed Gunn to include a quick moment where someone just says to Peter "I miss her too and I get everything's been way harder lately, but you can't let it grind your life to a complete halt like this." or something!! ANYTHING!!!

And if we absolutely had to stick with the time displaced Gamora plot... When she was snooping around on the Bowie by herself i dont get why she didn't get to see some old photos or something of the team during happier times (including 2018-Gamora specifically) and realizing that they really are going so far to save Rocket because they genuinely love him, and once upon a time they loved her too. 2014-Gamora getting to see the life she very nearly COULD have had within mere hours in her own timeline (without the threat of Thanos ever taking that away, mind you) but having to come to terms with the life she's made with the Ravagers in the present day. That would've been a more appropriate arc for her, I think, then her presence in the story wouldn't have had to only center around what Peter lost and nothing else and we'd at least get the idea that the others still had her on their minds even if they outwardly "moved on."

But also? Another missed opportunity to not have a moment when 2014-Gamora is in a battle with the other Ravager leaders mirroring the hallway scene with the Guardians that could have been when Peter (and the audience) "get" who she's currently more comfortable with in a basic sense, but... you know... it is what it is or whatever.

[bi-demon-ium]

listen. listen. take me up, cast me away. this phrase already drives me insane but in the context of this gifset? im spinning and spinning and spinning and sp

so like. okay. back to the basics. this is the phrase that's inscribed on either side of the blade of excalibur. yes, that excalibur, arthurian legend excalibur, the one from the lady of the lake (no, not the sword in the stone, they're different swords, yes i know it's confusing).

i'm not sure where this inscription first came into use, as most articles/information i can find just say "in multiple versions" the inscription or similar words to it are mentioned, although the only specific example i've found is tennyson's idylls of the king.

"[...] on one side, Graven in the oldest tongue of all this world, 'Take me,' but turn the blade and ye shall see, And written in the speech ye speak yourself, 'Cast me away!' And sad was Arthur's face Taking it, but old Merlin counselled him, 'Take thou and strike! the time to cast away Is yet far-off.' So this great brand the king Took, and by this will beat his foemen down." -- (Forgive me, I don't want to count all the lines and there are no line numbers, but I got the full text on Project Gutenberg.)

i also looked at Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur which is a pretty major text for popular/well-known Arthurian canon, and while there is an interesting exchange between Merlin and Arthur about swords and scabbards when Arthur takes up Excalibur that could certainly be relevant, there is no mention of the inscription on the blade.

but like, here's the thing. take me up, cast me away. it's about being willing to take up the mighty sword, to wear the heavy crown--take responsibility, take action, wield power and make hard choices. but it's also about knowing when to stop. not just when to take up the burden of power but when to let go of the joys of power. it's about knowing you can't fight fate: one day, the sword must be cast back into the lake. one day you will lose your power. one day camelot must fall, and arthur must die on the fields of camlann. in many ways, camelot was doomed from the start, from the very first time arthur drew the sword from the stone: because of the blood his father spilt, because of the fate that had been sealed long ago. it won't be for a long time, of course--galahad is unborn, the grail unfound, the heralds uncalled. guinevere is still loyal, if they're married at all, and lancelot might not have even arrived yet (i'm really not sure on the timeline, and even i were an expert i would doubt that there was anything consistent given all the different versions and contradicting tales that have been told over the years). but nonetheless, camelot will fall. take me up, cast me away: take power, but give it up, when it is time. take action, fight, but be willing to stop, too. stand up but know one day you must stand down, one day you will fall. take power. give it up. take responsibility. give it up. fight. surrender.

that may sound bleak, but you must remember: happy endings don't exist. it's about where you end the story--camelot lives many prosperous years before it inevitably crumbles. happy endings are just time. and if you stand up and fight--take up the sword--you can buy that time. the time to cast away is yet far off.

(as a quick digression, it's also very interesting to me that in tennyson's text, take me up is written in the oldest tongue known to this world, while cast me away is written in the common tongue arthur knows. i don't think i have the energy to get into this in depth but like. wow, right?)

now you might be thinking hey gert? gert? what the FUCK does this have to do with kate and martina. and i admit. i got a little side tracked because this shit makes me emo. i haven't even gotten into galahad and i won't for the sake of time and relativity to the main topic here. and like, sure, the themes of fate less important/prevalent here i think. but like. listen.

take responsibility. fight, when no one else will. stand even when you're alone. be independent. but also know when to stand down. know when you need help. take up the sword, even though you're so young, too young to be a soldier. but cast it away when you must, when you can. be a kid, too.

and then there's the double meaning: two abandoned children. take me up. cast me away.

ough.

[tsukidrama]

the 180 that everyone has taken with Izzy Hands when they realize how abused he is sooo important to me and i will forever be emotional about it

[cmdonovann]

oc time (it is atlas and laika)

[spacejammie-eimmajecaps]

I just had the weirdest dream