#LITERALLY WHOS IDEA WAS THIS

[the-incredible-auraa]

NATLAN ARCHON QUEST 5.3 SPOILERS!!

Hi yeah okay so i finished natlan archon quest and im going to blow up hoyoverse hq with me still in the building

[deadpoolsmom]

as far as one piece antagonists go Crocodile truly gets absolutely scooby-doo’d at unmatched levels

He immediately falls for a phone scam and from basically little garden to rainbase he doesn’t even know the strawhats are alive (and clowning towards him at incredible speed). As soon as he does, they’re in his house tearing at his walls and bringing marines into his villain lair.

He uses a literal floor trap door over a gator pit to catch them, gets phone scammed again, full scooby-doo chase scenes after Chopper through the streets while still missing him, and suddenly his prisoners have escaped his impossible cage, and his giant bananagators are dead. and Nico Robin saw it all happen.

He then spends rest of the arc complaining about those meddling kids and their dog “strawhat pirates and their weird pet” and at no point does he even know how many strawhats there are.

Like yeah he keeps having plans on top of plans to stop everything Vivi can do but also she keeps coming up with a new thing to do (Tom and Jerry ass dynamic).

Part of it is that he’s underestimating them and keeps grandstanding villain monologuing but also teens keep killing hundreds of his grand line bounty hunters and he straight up does not know what is happening.

Cause he IS trying to kill them he’s sending top assassins after them and ripping out luffy’s organs, the whole time he’s yelling HOW ARE YOU ALIVE?? DIE. as whack-a-mole Luffy keeps inventing new ways to hit him.

[andstuffsketches]

[egophiliac]

So.... what are your thoughts on Ace's UM, if you haven't been asked this already?

sneaky magic for the sneakiest boy

no but really, I think it fits him really well! I had thought his UM would probably involve something kinda sleight-of-handy or pickpockety! and I looooved that it made such a nice loop-around back to episode 1. ❤️ I was. kind of half-expecting him to just run out and punch Riddle in the nose again. but instead this time 'twas he who offed the queen's head! it was great! and he did it while stone-cold terrified out of his mind! because Ace is the only remotely normal or well-adjusted person at NRC and therefore the only one who is like "we're going to literally die, this is super effed up". but he did it anyway!!!! I AM SO PROUD

[blackkatdraws2]

[Toon x Mobster] Only he can make him laugh like that...

Jack Desmond is the silly guy. Gavriel Huffman is the scary guy. They come from different worlds that has contrasting genres, one more cartoonishly comedic and the other much dramatically darker.

It's kind of a running gag that Sir Huffman is unable to laugh without looking absolutely wicked. Both in the cartoon world and his own world.

That doesn't stop Jack from being completely smitten with him though, his voice is the most mind-melting thing he's ever had the pleasure to hear

[AUDIO USED:] Men I Trust - show me how

[mourn-and-watch]

it's so funny how da2 is widely considered to be the disgrace of da games and was also made like in a year or something but it still managed to create one of the most popular characters in the franchise. varric literally became da's in-game official narrator. anders has a wikipedia page with a controversy part highlighted. everyone is talking about solas now and for a good reason but his importance to the lore & plot is literally off the charts and he's also a god. fenris made people go crazy like that while being just a guy from a side optional quest you can accidentally skip

[arinmoss]

he's got half a head

[lenin-it-to-win-it]

[niccolites]

is possessed by an evil spirit for a moment and i can only think abt brother's best friend soap (heavily inspired by @ceilidho's ask here)

Idk man something about soap having always been a little bit weird with u. he's been friends with ur brother for years, back to when you were teenagers. He's only a year older but you felt the gulf of that gap, exaggerated when he shot up, puberty like a tool he used just to tower over u and make u uncomfortable

Growing up with him as a perpetual shadow, always a little bit too close, always a little bit too intense. Your parents shrug it off when u complain about it, telling u that he just likes u and u could be nicer to him about it, poor guy. Ur brother calls u stuck up when u snub soap, hissing at u to stop embarrassing him when ur rude when johnny tries to give u his seat on the couch where they're playing on their console

only you know that he's only offering u a seat so that he can press in close, a hulking mass in the corner of your eye as hot breath hits the side of ur face while he tries to look down ur shirt. constantly trying to dodge his grabby hands that grip ur exposed thighs or smooth over ur hips - pupils blown out when his hands swallow up the expanse of your skin

u snap at one point and tell him that he disgusts u, that ur not into him at all. he goes red in the face, growling that you've been leading him on, that ur playing games with his head (he is assuming u wearing a blue bra after he yanked ur turtleneck up was to match his eyes, even tho he shouldn't have seen it in the first place)

u end up with ur panties around ur knees as he forces u to stroke his cock, panting into ur throat as u 'make apologies' to him. he forgives u btw, he knows that u have to act this way, that ur brother would kill him if he knew. makes it seem like ur partners in crime, in this together even with his hand manacled around ur wrist to stroke him off

it gets worse after he enlists, and u don't see him for weeks or months. he gets pent up, barely putting a show on for everyone before he's dragging u off slick mouth on urs until there's spittle dribbling down ur chin, whining for u to please let him see his pretty girl (he's talking abt ur pussy), already 2 knuckles deep so ur wondering why he's even asking in the first place

and now he's a hero to everyone else. stuck in the bind of him being the in-love teenager to the kind-hearted man that is risking his life for everyone, do you have to be so cruel to him?

u wonder why, face pressed into the pillows of ur childhood bedroom as he hikes ur ass into the air to rut into u hard and fast

u do what u always do, hissing and spitting at him until he finally gets his way and ur back bows as he barely pauses through ur orgasm as he chases his own. he knows that u have to put the show on, lovey, but he's waiting in the backwing for u. partners in crime right?

[a-scary-lack-of-common-sense]

I cannot wait for this Stan to reconnect with his Ford.

I still haven't figured out HOW exactly they'll meet yet, but I do think that Ford would ATTACH himself to Stanley and talk his ears off forever when they eventually get comfortable :] and Stanley would listen because HOLY SHIT, THAT'S HIS BRO HE HASN'T SEEN FOR 40-ISH YEARS, HE MISSED HIS VOICE. Nonstop certified Yapper & Listener relationship <3

Stanley looks dead faced because of his ingrained poker face, but he's thouroughly enjoying it, even if sometimes he has no idea what the fuck Ford is saying. He never interrupts him though, since he knows people usually ignore or interrupt him mid-talk already. So sometimes Stan gets stuck in awkward situations where he has to leave or do stuff, but also doesn't have it in his heart to stop Ford and extract himself out of a (one-sided) conversation.

[silvermoon424]

It just occurred to me that, in every timeline, Madoka always believes Homura. Even when no one else does, even when what Homura is saying doesn't seem to make sense.

The two biggest examples I can think of happen in the main series. In one of the timelines in episode 10, we see Sayaka brushing off Homura's warnings about Kyubey and the true nature of Witches. She even accuses Homura of trying to sow discord in the group because she's in cahoots with Kyoko.

But later on in that same timeline, Madoka uses her last remaining Grief Seed on Homura because she is aware that Homura is a time traveler. We don't know when that happened because it's not shown, but it's very possible she learned Homura's backstory in that same conversation with Sayaka. And unlike Sayaka, she wholeheartedly believes Homura's story, to the point of using her one and only lifeline on Homura and explicitly asking her to prevent this tragedy from happening.

Also, in the main series timeline, Homura tearfully reveals her past to Madoka in episode 11. She offers no concrete proof and acknowledges that what she's saying is crazy, but all she asks is that Madoka allow Homura to protect her. In the next episode, before finally making her wish, Madoka acknowledges that Homura has always been watching over and protecting her. Madoka sincerely thanks Homura, promising that she won't allow Homura's hard work to go to waste. And again, this is before she becomes a goddess and remembers all the other timelines. All she has is Homura's word, and she believes it.

Multiple times throughout the series, Homura expresses her frustration and despondence over the fact that nobody believes her or heeds her warnings. But someone does. It's just that that "someone" happens to be the person she's trying to keep away from everything.

[hiding-under-the-willow]

Okay so I need someone who's better at landscapes and art style replication than I am to hop on this idea. because this man and his alien planet biome and storyline were made for the scavengers reign art style fr

[thevioletcaptain]

i genuinely don't care how good a piece of ai generated art or writing looks on the surface. i don't care if it emulates brush strokes and metaphor in a way indistinguishable from those created by a person.

it is not the product of thoughtful creation. it offers no insights into the creator's life or viewpoint. it has no connection to a moment in time or a place or an attitude. it has no perspective. it has no value.

it's empty, it's hollow, and it exists only to generate clicks (and by extension, ad revenue.)

it's just another revolting symptom of the disease that is late stage capitalism, and it fucking sucks.

[andstuffsketches]

finally watched Reign of the Supermen

[pineappical]

cooking lessons

[anghraine]

It's interesting (if often frustrating) to see the renewed Orc Discourse after the last few episodes of ROP. I've seen arguments that orcs have to be personifications of evil rather than people as such or else the ethics of our heroes' approach to them becomes much more fraught. Tolkien's work, as written, seems an odd choice to me for not wrangling with difficult questions, and of course, more diehard fans are going to immediately bring up Shagrat and Gorbag.

If you haven't read LOTR recently, Shagrat and Gorbag are two orcs who briefly have a conversation about how they're being screwed over by Sauron but have no other real options, about their opinions of mistakes that have been made, that they think Sauron himself has made one, but it's not safe to discuss because Sauron has spies in their own ranks. They reminisce about better times when they had more freedom and fantasize about a future when they can go elsewhere and set up a small-scale banditry operation rather than being involved in this huge-scale war. Eventually, however, they end up turning on each other.

Basically any time that someone brings up the "humanity" of this conversation, someone else will point out that they're still bad people. They're not at all guilty about what they're part of. They just resent the dangers to themselves, the pressure from above, failures of competence, the surveillance they're under, and their lack of realistic alternative options. The dream of another life mentioned in the conversation is still one of preying on innocent people, just on a much smaller and more immediate scale, etc.

I think this misses the reason it keeps getting brought up, though. The point is not that Shagrat and Gorbag are good people. The point is that they are people.

There's something very normal and recognizable about their resentment of their superiors, their fears of reprisal and betrayal that ultimately are realized, their dislike of this kind of industrial war machine that erases their individual work and contributions, the tinge of wistfulness in their hope of escape into a different kind of life. Their dialect is deliberately "common"—and there's a lot more to say about that and the fact that it's another commoner, Sam, who outwits them—but one of the main effects is to make them sound familiar and ordinary. And it's interesting that one of the points they specifically raise is that they're not going to get better treatment from "the good guys" so they can't defect, either.

This is self-interested, yes, but it's not the self-interest of some mystical being or spirit or whatnot, but of people.

Tolkien's later remarks tend to back this up. He said that female orcs do exist, but are rarely seen in the story because the characters only interact with the all-male warrior class of orcs. Whatever female orcs "do," it isn't going to war. Maybe they do a lot of the agricultural work that is apparently happening in distant parts of Mordor, maybe they are chiefly responsible for young orcs, maybe both and/or something else, we don't know. But we know they're out there and we know that they reproduce sexually and we know that they're not part of the orcish warrior class.

Regardless of all the problems with this, the idea that orcs have a gender-restricted warrior class at all and we're just not seeing any of their other classes because of where the story is set doesn't sound like automatons of evil. It sounds like an actual culture of people that we only see along the fringes.

And this whole matter of "but if they're people, we have to think about ethics, so they can't be people" is a weird circular argument that cannot account for what's in LOTR or for much of what Tolkien said afterwards. Yes, he struggled with The Problem of Orcs and how to reconcile it with his world building and his ethical system, but "maybe they're not people" is ultimately not a workable solution as far as LOTR goes and can't even account for much of the later evolution of his ideas, including explicit statements in his letters.

And in the end, the real response that comes to mind to that circular argument is "maybe you should think about ethics more."