#I kind of like his face a little better

[heyclickadee]

Crosshair sketch, because I wasn’t super happy with how I drew him in those expression challenges:

[bandtrees]

they would get divorced in one universe just to find eachother in another one

alternatively titled: sometimes you're the level-headed token flesh-head impulse-control-and-polycule-member of a stubborn, eccentric, and hearty telephone-headed drug addict, and there's cruelty in the world you deem fit to suicidally fight, and that either goes about as well as you'd expect it to, or you learn about love and the value of your life and junk along the way

[bonefall]

Did Brambleclaw actually disown the Three when the secret is revealed? I don't remember this happening (then again, it's been a while) but it does bug me how all three go "Poor brambleclaw :(( He was such a good dad to us and he has to learn we're not even his biokits :(((( poor guy" while simultaneously shitting on Leafpool and Squirrelflight despite them showing them more care and affection before AND after the reveal. If he does disown them, then.... WOW is the double standard real here.

In-canon? It's something you have to approximate. They don't seem to have a concept of ""disowning"" because blood relation is taken as such an insurmountable, FUNDAMENTAL fact of life. He doesn't write them out of his little kitty will and testament, but his actions ARE disowning.

It's as if the fact he is not their biological father is an automatic disowning. From the reveal onwards, he is immediately cold, distant, and the "betrayal" is mentioned often. The Three also explicitly don't blame him for his behavior, like it's just to be expected that he's Not Their Dad anymore.

Lionblaze in particular stares longingly at him several times, really missing him. And like... that's kinda what gets my goat so much

I do believe Brambleclaw is entitled to his feelings of betrayal. I believe Squilf was ultimately in the right to lie, actually, but he's still allowed to be upset and angry that she didn't trust him enough to tell him something so important. THAT SAID, YOU ARE NEVER ENTITLED TO TREAT OTHERS POORLY.

And that's what GETS me. He isn't upset that it was all revealed in such a painful and embarassing way when this could have been avoided, or that his lover struggled with this lie for so long without him, or that he feels he's lost his children. Squilf points it out in The Last Hope-- He's so ANGRY at Squilf that he will THROW HIS FAMILY AWAY

Lionblaze seems desperate to be his son again. Hollyleaf is gone for months, and Brambleclaw is still huffing about the secret when she comes back from the dead. Squilf is fawning in the hopes it makes him talk to her again. Doesn't matter. Brambleclaw Is Upsetti Spaghetti so the narrative will never examine his role in hurting this family he apparently loved so much.

(Narrative seems to understand full well that when Squilf lies for a good reason, that doesn't invalidate the hurt Brambleclaw felt... but when Brambleclaw is upset for a good reason, it actually DOES validate what he put her and his kids through)

In BB it is explicitly a disowning. He cuts them off as his children, and they reciprocate. BB!Lionblaze does so in a ball of fury, vowing that he has ONLY a mother.

[layalu]

so i uhhhh. started PoE

[deus-ex-mona]

when the slowburn makes the ship extra cute~~~

[leatherbookmark]

our flag means death S2E3: the innkeeper

[aces-to-apples]

Frankly I think Alistair being mildly shitty to that mage in Ostagar seems pretty in-character for the guy he is before the massive, life-altering trauma that is the Ostagar massacre wherein he sees all of his Grey Warden comrades, his beloved mentor/father figure, and his beloathed half-brother/convenient-target-of-projection absolutely torn to shreds by literal Thedas boogeymen. IIRC Morrigan and Flemeth both comment on his wack behavior after Ostagar and then by the time we get to Lothering Alistair just fully surrenders any and all responsibility (and, frankly, agency) to the player's Warden for the foreseeable future. It can then take anywhere from a couple IRL hours to the entire second act of the game for him to retake almost any amount of it back. And depending on the player's choices in dialogue, and especially whether or not they choose to romance him, we may only see flashes of that guy we met at Ostagar before he potentially morphs into almost someone else entirely (hardened!King!Alistair). All that to say, I don't actually think it's a useful criticism of "characterization" to bring up Alistair's glibness as compared to his behavior in the majority of the game because from where I'm standing (looking directly at his snottiness about Cailan, his complaints about being assigned to the Tower of Ishal, his Templar-esque focusing on Morrigan and Flemeth being apostates, his generally pretty brusque manner with the Warden recruits) it seems fairly in-line with the rest of his behavior at Ostagar.

[spearxwind]

I've been thinking about how you've made Talas' physique even MORE powerful lately. And now I'm just imagining him, one-armed, chucking Graves like the world's angriest javelin at their common enemies.

That's genuinely so in character that I had to draw it. Average hunting tactic... and Graves would be all too excited for it, honestly

[obstinatecondolement]

I have a lot of fondness for clunky Hallmark Christmas romance movies with rock bottom production values, vaguely established and extremely contrived plots, dodgy dialgoue, often questionable line readings, and child actors playing a kid who seems either three years younger or older than themselves. Hallmark have not undermined themselves with glib, self aware irony or attempted to "elevate" the delightful low artform that they excel in. Refreshing, honestly.

[resssistance]

mea tormenta

[cxpperhead]

Due to the nature of his work, Copperhead isn't active every night. He may spend a week hunting somebody down before delivering the coup de grâce, leaving him with a little free time before picking up his next contract. Copperhead often spends his free time caring for the various snakes and other reptile species that come into his care; sometimes these are animals belonging to former victims but often they are creatures which have been neglected or improperly cared for in some way, the serpent metahuman carefully nursing them back to health before making sure they end up in good hands.

[unexpectedbrickattack]

I don't know how to properly word this, but. Peppino stole my heart and the way you draw him gives the impression of "If he hugged or held me I would feel so so safe and happy past the fact he would be very clammy". Thank you.

This is so CUTE thank YOU

[unproduciblesmackdown]

omgg lol [guy who won't stop going "more like scapeGOATED" voice] now hold! on!! lmao [same guy just saw encanto voice] Hold on!!!

[tls123]

Oh my god HOW DID YOU LIKE SVSSS!!!!!

i liked it more than i thought i would but overall less than i might have given the potential of the story, i think in general i really enjoyed the characters (mxtx never goes wrong with characters, she creates them in a way that makes me feel unhinged) and the world building but the pay off to the set up—which i really liked!—felt a bit........ i mean, just alright.

the dynamics too are pure mxtx, personally the bin/gqiu dynamic specifically really was the least interesting part of the whole story. to me!! but individually i loved both characters. my interest was just elsewhere because """elsewhere""" felt way more fascinating idk how to explain it

was very, very happy about the extra with airplane and the yue qingyuan / shen jiu one because that's exactly what i wanted more of in the story itself as well as just more shen yuan/qingqiu interacting with cang qiong mountain

maybe it's my orv brain but like i told jana a while back i think i would have enjoyed svsss way more if it was more about shen yuan (loner; hater; etc) suddenly finding himself among all of these people (disciples looking up to him; sect siblings relying on him one way or another; common folk admiring him; etc etc) and starting to.... live? again?

Shen Qingqiu hadn't noticed that, unconsciously, he no longer considered the disciples around him (...) to be mob characters the novel had described in a scant number of words.

^from volume one, he starts seeing them almost immediately because he's not actually that separate and he genuinely cares. all the time. about everything. even before that we get:

This was only a book, and all the people were constructs, imaginary characters. Logically, Shen Qingqiu was very clear on this fact...but when a character was actually being taunted and bullied right before his eyes, it was just flat-out unrealistic to expect him to be completely unmoved.

like why are you lying, shen yuan (<- svsss tagline if there ever was one)

just the idea of this really lonely detached guy finding a community, i know it's not the story mxtx was trying to tell but again, with the set up i really wanted to see it go in that direction.

there's one line from vol two where liu qingge goes "you fear becoming a burden to cang qiong mountain (...) but cang qiong mountain fears not your burden"

and basically what i'm saying is that i wish the story had been about THAT

(and also ning yingying's lines in that same chapter about shizun always taking on everything himself and why is it always you like that whole moment with the cang qiong mountain almost begging him to see that they care. idek what i'm saying but you know)

(also foaming at the mouth that we only got tiny tiny glimpses of shen yuan's life from before, those handful of times he mentioned his siblings i wanted to take a bite out of my kindle. tell me more!! dear fucking lord tell me more!! keep talking! elaborate!! he really felt very "kim dokja and his fourth wall" at times, sorry once more about the orv brain)

tldr: i guess i wanted a story about shen yuan/qingqiu but mxtx created svsss to be a story about bin/gqiu. and i just have to be okay with that.

[monkee-mobile]

Do you think Davybaby ever regressed before meeting/joining the Monkees? Either in England or after moving to America

And if so how do you think he dealt with it?

I feel like he did but to a different level. he probably never really OFFICIALLY regressed and was really of seen as a little one during it until he came to the states, but when he was particularly stressed out while still in england he’d often go into a kind of weak state if his defenses were really down, he just didn’t process it through really regressing like he would later on. in england, he’d try his absolute hardest not to have that happen. he’d just feel really small and vulnerable and had no one there to protect him or help him through it except his sisters, but they didn’t jump right to babying him, they’d more just help him through the panic attack part of it all. usually he’d just lock himself in his room if he couldn’t brave through it and curl in on himself and sob until he fell asleep (poor thing). he’d often start sucking his thumb, but he just took that as a “weak” behavior that was just coming back from his childhood. He’d also often go pretty nonverbal for a while afterwards but he’d push through it all and move on (which definitely wasn’t the best for him, but it got him through that time. poor little guy didn’t face his own emotions at all). this kind of shutdown didn’t happen all that often cause davy worked hard to build a tough shell and braved it through all the way to when he moved to america and got out of the pressures of his family.

the move really did break him down because suddenly he was alone in a strange country so when the boys first met him he was definitely flighty and not the suave kind of guy he got to be once he became more comfortable, but they were all new to each other so davy didn’t really have a chance to feel super safe to just let himself feel things so he kept up the hard exterior he had built at first. but of course the monkees became very comfortable with each other and basically climb all over each other at all moments so davy started going “feral toddler mode” a lot where he would just go all silly and giggly and playful, so his comfort came through in a relatively childlike way, but he didn’t panic regress until a while after the guys were a group.

but eventually it happens and davy breaks down really hard at some point. it’s the boys who really start babying him when it happens. in the past he didn’t have anyone to really take care of him but things kind of clicked when he was held and talked to softly and he just sunk into the love that was given to him and it helped him process everything anew.

[blackwaxidol]

Concepts for Ru'thûn and La'zaar's wings, both viewed from the inside.

Ru'thûn's wings are only chiropteran as far as appearances go. She folds them at her back in the same way a moth does, rather than wrapping them around her body like Oryx did.

Atrophied flight muscles make La'zaar's wings too fragile to support his armoured weight, so he'll not use them for anything more than helping him leap towards or away from a threat.