#The crucial three

[vaguely-concerned]

lucanis' last question when interrogating zara's corpse -- whether illario also asked her to kill caterina -- is so telling. because if illario had done that, I actually do think lucanis would have killed him. (his standards are predictably wild and hilarious in a dark sort of way. listen I can forgive you for killing me that's fine understandable even but there's a limit to everything illario.) which is why he saves that question for last: it's the one thing he really does not want to know the answer to. because if the answer is yes, it's going to need action from him that would be so psychologically catastrophic that nothing the ossuary could do to him would compare, that would have been the end of him too, I feel, even with rook and the team there to try to catch him or pick up the pieces. I love how if you pay attention you can trace out the underlying hurt/logic already here, before it gets spelled out in inner demons. the logic lucanis' brain operates on is very sad and very consistent the whole way throughout the game.

[columboscreens]

[harrowharkwife]

i'm so used to there just being random unidentified bones laying around everywhere in these damn books that it finally occurred to me, just now, to wonder where the bones on new rho came from. y'know, the bones palamedes always tried to teach nona necromancy on.

they're his.

palamedes, who always loved teaching, living on borrowed time in a body that's not his own. palamedes, mentoring, teaching- parenting, by sixth standards, mind you. and that boy is sixth, through and through.

and the entire point of teaching nona necromancy in the first place was to try and determine if nona is, well, nonagesimus, right? so it has to be bones, it can't not be bones. bones are, like, her whole thing.

but they're not in the nine houses, anymore. things are different, on new rho.

they burn bones here. dig up the cemeteries. a society terrified of zombies will evolve to dispose of its dead differently.

the only bones he has access to now are his own. (camilla wouldn't let anyone take them- skull or hand, doesn't matter. they're still him, and she doesn't let go, remember? it's her one thing.)

palamedes woke up every morning wearing someone else's body to then gently place the shrapnel of his own in the cupped palms of a girl who's the closest thing he'll ever have to a daughter and try to teach her- how did the angel put it, again? normal school, as much as possible, for as long as possible.

(but hey, in a roundabout way, at least it's a chance for him to touch camilla again, right? nevermind that she's not there to feel any of it because he's in the driver's seat, that he can only stay for fifteen minutes at a time. it's atoms that belong to camilla touching atoms that used to belong to him, and that's close enough. he'll take what he can get, these days- if she can be their flesh, he can be the end. so what if holding his own bones is a mindfuck? so what if looking at them makes him nauseous? surely he can suck it up and deal with it for fifteen minutes. it's the least he can do— his poor camilla was the one who had to scrape the bloody pulp of them off the floors of canaan house.)

(speaking of, here's a fun fact: we actually only see nona practicing with the bones one time, on-page. camilla's final line in that scene, before palamedes takes over, is none other than: 'keep going. there are some bones left.' ow!)

remember, too, that the only part of dulcinea, the real dulcinea, that palamedes ever physically touched, was her tooth- the one that ianthe gave him, pulled from the ashes cytherea burnt her down to. he only ever touched dulcie once, and it wasn't until after she was already gone, but that doesn't matter- it still happened, and you can't take loved away.

in this same roundabout, bittersweet, by-proxy sort of way, palamedes has been physically touched by nona, too: the atoms she currently occupies, touching atoms that he used to occupy, and never will again.

the main interaction we've seen between palamedes and his mother took place back on the sixth, with her acting as mentor and him as pupil: the two of them studying a set of hand bones, juno encouraging him every step of the way.

we know that harrowhark's "most vivid memory of her mother was of her hands guiding harrow's over an inexpertly rendered portion of skull, her fingers encircling the fat baby bracelets of harrow's wrists, tightening this cuff to indicate correct technique."

they're still small for a nineteen year old, but the wrists are bigger, in this new set of memories nona's making. and it's not an inexpertly rendered portion of skull anymore- it's a hand, now, albeit one crafted from [a piece of skull reassembled (painstakingly—passionately—laboriously reassembled) from fragments, manually, and not by a bone magician, from the skull of someone who, soon after death or symptomatically during, had exploded.] and the identity and origin of these bones is no mystery at all. they belong to palamedes, and he's consented to their use for this purpose, and that matters.

but the details are just set dressing, really. the foundation of the memory is the same.

palamedes and his mother, juno and her son.

harrow and her mother; pelleamena and her daughter.

nona and her father-mother-teacher; palamedes and his daughter.

[governmentmandatedryujinstan420]

I FORGOT TO THROW OUT AFTER THE EPISODE RELEASED NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[aerialworms-art]

Spocktober + Trektober Day 10 - Diplomacy

Jim is the only one with a braincell today :)

(ID under cut)

[Image ID: A black and white three-panel comic with characters from Star Trek: The Original Series.

Panel one: Bones and Spock are standing side by side, facing forward, in their dress uniforms. Bones is glaring down at the collar of his dress shirt as he tugs at it. He says "Screw diplomacy. I hate wearing this thing." Spock replies "Then perhaps you should remove it."

Panel two: Bones is frozen in surprise, his eyes wide, still looking down. Spock's expression hasn't changed. Offscreen, Captain Kirk says, a little way away, "And here are my two finest officers, Ambassador-"

Panel three: Bones turns to yell at Spock, "IS THAT YOUR IDEA OF FLIRTING!?". Spock is smirking slightly. Offscreen, Kirk says, despairingly, "Gentlemen..."

Above the drawing is written "Trektober" and "Day 10 - Diplomacy" Below it is written "@aerialworms" and "Spocktober"./End ID]

[commsroom]

other than eiffel, minkowski is easily the person hera likes and trusts most, as well as her biggest advocate, so it's kind of a travesty how little they get to just be friends (in a way that does not also include eiffel.) hera shows more interest in minkowski's love of musical theater than anyone else! multiple times! they could bond over it. hera agrees it "was a pretty great week" when minkowski drugged eiffel and hilbert, and they didn't even get along at that point. surely hera could have enabled her more. at the very least, in a better world, minkowski would've called hera as her funzo partner in time.

[monstrsball]

butchfemme fraphne. send post

[batsplat]

“og 4 aliens very particular vibe in being ‘three distinct flavours of socially awkward loner and also valentino rossi’” LMAO I WAS JUST THINKING THIS!!!!!! That he has the funniest possible 3 foils in that era bc like…those three guys could not be less his vibe ~personality wise if they tried. And actually tbf I do think they WERE trying a lot of the time. Feeling very curious if you think there’s anything to the idea of how Marc was the first alien-era rival he had who was more on his level all around? Like early days Marc was kind of just 😀😀😀 all the time but I do think he can be v charming and is clearly extroverted as hell (tho like…notably also a loner but like…not by choice??). Like idk where im going w this but the contrast is interesting to me. IDK

to some extent! I'm not sure I'd necessarily call marc an extrovert, you can be charismatic and cheerful without being an extrovert - but also this is splitting hairs. the og four aliens are one guy who's on the 'roughly as extroverted as you can possibly get as a professional athlete' end of the spectrum and three guys who are on the 'roughly as introverted as you can possibly get as a professional athlete' end. now, tbh, I don't think valentino massively minded this. he's extroverted but crucially he's also got enough charm going for him that he could get his rivals to chat with him if he was so inclined. he had an increasingly friendly relationship with dani, there's real genuine warmth in how both of them talk about each other - ultimately dani might have been quite sullen and withdrawn in general, especially in his early years, but he got on well with valentino. casey and valentino had perfectly decent interpersonal chemistry, they got on well, and tbh they were still warm with each in-person long past the point where that relationship had rhetorically soured. with jorge... I mean, okay, no chemistry there, but that was also very much valentino's choice. I do not fundamentally doubt valentino's ability to charm twenty year old jorge lorenzo. I think just because they were DIFFERENT characters, that doesn't necessarily mean they weren't valentino's *type* personality-wise, like he does seem to be happy enough to be the chatty one who draws them out of their shells in that scenario. unless competitive necessity requires otherwise!! but as marc discovered, somewhat higher levels of extroversion does not protect you if that's the case

I will say I know you do put alien-era as a caveat, but it is still important to point out that marc is very much not the first valentino rival who doesn't fall in the introverted loner camp. valentino had a rival who matched his vibe!! who he had a real proper off-track friendship with, who he went on holidays with, who he had a warm relationship with for substantially longer than the marc/valentino honeymoon lasted. I think you can see the early marc era as a bit of a return to the friendlier vibes of the early noughties, but crucially it is a return. the early noughties was the last gasp before the sport came to be completely dominated by a bunch of young prodigies who had been moulded into perfect athletes and had less chance to grow into people outside of the sport - valentino is already part of that camp in everything but temperament, cf the contrast with biaggi. in the early noughties, he was surrounded by a bunch of older riders who varied dramatically in disposition... biaggi was the guy everyone had issues with, capirossi was always fond of valentino, kr jr he got on well with, he played a mentoring role for in hayden's rookie season... and of course, most importantly, the friendship with sete - now there's an obscenely friendly rivalry right until the very moment when it isn't. 2013-14 is a bit of a return to that more congenial climate, but at the end of the day that lot were still less likely to socialise than riders were back in the day. they just didn't have the time lol

so yeah, I mean. valentino clearly did take to marc on a personal level, and marc is definitely closer to valentino on the introversion/extroversion spectrum than the three other aliens are. though that is also... not difficult. there is something quite funny about how 2006-07 went from valentino's pov. the engine regs changed, valentino literally blinked and suddenly all his opps were toddlers. went from goofing off with capirossi on the sepang 2006 podium to running a daycare centre overnight. and marc is part of that! it's also a massive change in that suddenly, valentino was surrounded by rivals who had been influenced by watching him ride as they grew up and were all really, really, really weird about him. marc with his little bike collection, jorge with his dabbling in pseudoscientific schools of psychology, casey and his championship-winning shirt, dani... well, tbf, I do actually think dani was pretty normal about valentino - probably because he'd known him the longest. had gotten drunk with valentino in the days when the bloke was just an idol and not a god. which is an underrated reason why the dani/valentino relationship never got so weird imo, one that goes beyond competitive calculus - dani was the most capable of interacting with valentino as just another guy. with all three of marc/jorge/casey, that idolisation dynamic does contribute significantly to the interpersonal turmoil

but that's a topic for another day! in conclusion, marc defo the dispositionally cheeriest foil of the alien lot, albeit somewhat by default, and WAS part of the reason why motogp got a bit of a mood lift in that 2013-14 period after what had just been a dire few years vibes-wise. mediocre racing, devastation caused by the financial crisis, tragedy... motogp was feeling quite lifeless in 2011-12 in particular, and those years do have a bit of a drab energy to them. in that sense, what followed was a bit of a reversion to the mean until the vibes completely went off the cliff. have they ever recovered? who can say

[friendsinsolitude]

ultimately i think i could live if i were banned from ever thinking about romantic mizurui cause what i like about them is the pre-existing strong platonic base they have in canon. i do think it’s cute when they hold hands or whatever, but what it’s really about is that i love the ambiguity of their relationship, and adding in romantic overtones gives a whole new dimension for them to be ambiguous about. it’s just fun!

[familyagrestefanblog]

Chat Noir in THAT moment of "Revolution"

May I say with every inch of my heart: fucking THANK YOU Adrien for speaking up to give the governmental and systemically oppressed civilans who think themselves the helpless victims of a normal but highly corrupted, extremely dangerous and selfish person in their mayor’s position an actual VOICE.

And he even did it in probably the savest and most orderly way as well, which ensured that Chloé can neither use the citizens’ reaction against the people themselves nor dismiss it overall because every other approach but EXACTLY what Adrien did here would have resulted in some variation of a chaotic sea of voices and opinions contradicting and clashing each other in various degrees of intensity, favoritism, audibility and spoken CONTENT, in an environment where people could have then freely spoken against and FOR Chloè too.

Ladybug and Chat Noir showing up in a political situation like THIS to get the people on their side to rise up against the corrupted mayor by taking full control of the whole situation should have been an almost IMPOSSIBLE feat to accomplish this quickly and smoothly in execution because a political scenario like this is a literal MINEFIELD as we saw at the end of the last episode. One wrong word and everything could have ended up in total madness that would have either taken a serious amout of time and effort to get back under control or outright through FORCE (or both)

But Adrien was just out here and did it in 5 seconds FLAT.

Thank you Adrien for taking the massive value of your status as Chat Noir into your own hands and acting as the politically most competent and most effective fucker in this entire mess of a situation (besides Lila but that’s a given) as Chloè’s true foil in this entire episode.

You know I would never use the word “perfect” to describe Adrien as a person but I’ve gotta be honest, the way so many massive delicate factors of how to approach not only a political conflict but a full on governmental escalation like this - were a whole sea of angered people have to be lead to speak as a unit - were immediately NAILED with this ONE perfectly timed and worded sentence and this ONE striking hand gesture was pretty fucking close to perfection. Ladybug and Mayor Chloé were having a hero-villain akuma pissing contest of moralities and Chat Noir just pulled all of that back into harsh reality with one swift action to actually give the power back to the people. Let’s fucking GO!

That was the most effective, competent, responsible and situation-appropriate (and that in corrupted POLITICS) leadership action being taken in the entire episode and it was done in 5 seconds flat by Chat Noir who eagerly wanted to intervene since right the beginning of the episode. No wasting time holding a speech, no unnecessary hero smack talk, no showmanship and no personal verbal morality battles. Just using his status to act as a leader for the civilian people so they can join him to act as one strong unit no matter their age, voice volume, body height, strength etc, 👏it 👏did👏 not👏 matter. 👏

(only people without arms would have been excluded, if you really wanna nit-pick)

He did everything so fucking RIGHT in that moment. Through providing them with a clear-cut language and morality standpoint from his part - without making it about himself-, an easy and situation-specific & very fast, universal and practical but also very impactful way to communicate their game-changing opinion for this ONE specific point he names very forthright and that calls the problem right out on it’s core, so Chloè and the people who support her have no wiggle room to shut it down or dismiss it through pocking holes by claiming people could have misinterpreted what he meant.

5 fucking seconds. PLEASE make it entire episodes!

[otome-dissection]

man i miss kazumaji *holds head in hands*

[djevelbl]

Hiiiiiiii um. was I supposed to learn that Whitepine episode 3 came out yesterday bECAUSE OF THE WHITEPINE!CLOWNPIERCE WIKI ENTRY????? HELLOOOO???!?!!!!!!?!?!??!???? or who tf didn't TELL ME

[astarlightmonbebe]

the whole point being that taeoh, for all his intelligence and strategies, might still have made it to kangoh, but he would never have a chance to actually grab power without using inha’s ‘insider’ status, which inha seems to be ‘realizing’ these episodes. because at the end of the day, taeoh is still kangoh’s tool. he has no authority. he’s something for the chairman to use, never more than that.

[floatingxendlessly]

Something ever happen to you that it throws off your whole day? We're good tho, we're good 👍 (OvO')

I think I've only ever envisioned Kaz being the one to smooch Fuyuhiko so I had to change that!

[stardestroyer81]

⭐ Strike a taunt, Star! ⭐

As promised in my previous Star Tower post, here is a handful of taunt frames I've drawn of yours truly! The second one in particular is a completely original pose I came up with myself, though here are the references for the first, third and fourth ones! 💙✨

[rexbalistidae]

Let’s Try This Again

(Completely robbing the title of ep 1 s2 LMAOOOOO)

This takes place after another drawing (hell knows if I remember the title). Theyre not drunk anymore but good god that hair doesn’t fix itself. Both of these are supposed to be in the timeframe of ep 6 s2

Bonus doodles. The ride home and the lizard doing his very best to describe the events of that weekend.

@lesbiansupavillain how does it feel to be trapped in the permanent “I can draw any of ur candide cosplays” contract?? Hmmmm??? Not so funny now is it??

@autistic-haven obligatory tag. Look at it. Look. Look. LOOK.