#Very fond of this little guy

[mnemonicdrew]

Hands you a Ralsei.

[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

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

King the silly guys, Lupin III!

(for @dying-suffering-french-stalkers)

[majorasnightmare]

the tadpole/brain damage thing. its like. chekovs gun to me. obviously theres very little mechanical support ingame for having a disabling injury, aside from maybe an optional voluntary decision to drop the INT score, but similarly to choosing to write intention into the lack of dark urge Lore responses from the party, i just like to make mountains out of molehills and force game mechanics into In Universe Character Problems

like when dirge repeatedly mentions that he thinks the tadpole is doing something beneficial for him, that its helping him, it isnt JUST the power-hungry psionic ambition in him. its a parasite, that needs a host. it needs a LIVING host, or its own chances of survival plummet. and dirge gets tadpoled right after a life threatening injury to the tadpoles preferred habitat. neither of them want to die!! dirges body tries to recover, but cant in part BECAUSE of the tadpole (the netherese stasis magic rejecting outside influence and binding it to its host, having an unejectable foreign object in the injury site, etc), but its not like the tadpole WANTS its host to have a life altering injury

its not like its malicious (except when it comes to Hive Activity, and then it can be a right bastard), it just cant live any other way. it cant help what it is. halsin calls the illithid life cycle abberant and unnatural, but brood parasitism exists throughout the natural kingdom. is the wasp egg evil for having been laid in a caterpillar?

its first moments of life outside the brine pool, and its new home, its new life, its host, its caregiver, its food supply, is bleeding and dying and falling apart and trying to fix itself but cant and its trying to heal around you but it cant but if it doesnt do anything youll both die, so this larva, this tiny worm of psionic potential and instinct, does what it can. holds its host together with whatever force it can muster, soft gelatinous body (perfect for compreesing flat and squeezing through small orifice openings) keratinizing outside the acidic environment of the brine, its four oral tentacles (its only source of motion and movement when so young and soft, dragging itself along as best it can) made for interweaving with dense synapse clusters to passively absorb the psionic imprint of its host, now desperately intwined with bleeding meat just to try and hold it all together. driven by survival instict and a vessel of psychic potential, forced into passivity by the commands of the Elder, further forced by circumstance to leverage all its great gifts to keep its host standing long enough to eventually eat

my thought is that the reason why dirge still gets the cutscene of the emperor tadpoling him at the beginning of the game, is that the original tadpole orin forced on him is just so weakened and exhausted by months of effort trying to keep him alive through kressas experiments and meddling, that the emperor, currently in thrall to the absolute, feels the need to replace it with a fresher healthier specimen, which then cannibalizes and absorbs the previous one, and then just has to go back to doing the same shit as the last one.

i think that dirges tadpole isnt as twitchy or squirmy as the others because of it. that when omeluum gives him a psychic MRI, the tadpole is just burrowed down and its tendrils stretched like a dense net throughout dirges brain tissue, only moving or writhing occasionally but definitely not as mobile as usual, its web of tendrils especially twisted near dense scar tissue at the back of his head. this worm is already so fucking weird and the circumstances for this mind flayer MRI have already introduced a bajillion different variables that need accounting for, that i dont think omeluum immediately groks the specifics of whats going on but CAN peg the "you have brain damage and your worm is fucking Weird" situation fairly easily. but i dont think it gets enough time in dirges head to get a full understanding of what the tadpole is doing FOR him

cuz like. imo its definitely objectively helping. its a psychic information bank specifically designed to interface with a human brain. the reason why dirge isnt experiencing too many of the side effects of brain damage is because the parasite is doing its best to mitigate them. memory issues, brain fog, disorientation and balancing issues, theyd all be significantly worse without the parasite. when he brings up how he feels its helping him, objectively hes right and its not even the kickass psychic powers hes right about.

like it doesnt cure EVERYTHING, he has chronic migraines that are sensitive to light, and before he asks halsin to make medicine, he starts every morning puking his guts out when the morning sun makes him so nauseous he cant hold dinner down. even without the Urge Nightmares, he has insomnia and just cant meaningfully sleep. but keeping track of what day it is, remembering what happened a few hours ago or the other day, standing up from a sitting position and not immediately wobbling and/or collapsing, retaining his old muscle memory. all shit the parasite is helping with

which is why i cant help but fixate on those moments immediately after defeating the absolute. like oh thats juicy

[if-you-heart]

what the cluck

erm what does blird think he’s doing

[chiricat]

who is this guy

[fisherrprince]

coroner voice the short stories got her

(I have received... several invitations. I do not think they're seriously expecting us, but it would be rude not to attend, right?)

[gingermintpepper]

I saw it in your tag game post that you're also fond of the Apollo-Heracles conflict 👀 for a myth that appears in only a couple of sources, it sure has a lot of presence in the vase paintings (no seriously, everytime I think I've seen the last of it, I find ten more)

SO do you have any favorites among the paintings that represent this story??

OMG OMG THIS ASK IS A GIFT. IT IS A GIFT THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR LETTING ME TALK ABOUT THIS

I also think it's extremely interesting that it's a story so popularly portrayed by vase paintings and in such a variety of ways!! It's certainly one of the stories that gets left out of written compilation of Heracles' legend a bit (which is a shame, I think it's a fantastic story) but Apollo had a very peculiar relationship with Heracles in general that I just kind of find amazing (and very, very funny).

Apollo is not a god with any legitimate grudge against Heracles, but he does argue with the mortal a bit like he argues with his favourite brothers 😂Part of why I love the story of Apollo and Heracles fighting over the tripod so much is that it is such a little brother thing for Heracles to be upset with the proclamation his elder brother has given him and so, he throws a great fit, taking up the chair and declaring that he'll just give himself a better prophecy! And Apollo, instead of being a marginally professional big brother, decides to fight him for it until their father has to break up their cat-fight. Like was that not just the plot of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes? Is this not exactly how Apollo treated Hermes when he was a child and now those two are inseparable? 💀

Because of this, my favourite vase paintings tend to be the ones that highlight the personal squabbling between Apollo and Heracles the most. There are some very elaborate ones that have the full host of them - Athena, Heracles, Apollo, Artemis, usually a dog and a doe, I've even seen a couple that had birds and plants etched on them, but the simplest ones that show Heracles about to bonk Apollo with his club out of frustration or depict Heracles nyooming away from Apollo while Apollo (presumably) yells curses about how he's going to fling Heracles head first into Tartarus for daring to take his things? Yeah, those are the premium big brother/little brother things I'm looking for.

(Photo. Marie-Lan Ngyuen)

(Photo. Museo Claudio Faina)

Also the one in the Theoi.com archives is a real classic - perfect energy.

[skrunksthatwunk]

save me ladyklok save me

[skitskatdacat63]

I don't think I can ever emotionally recover from these

[obessivedork]

The thing that draws me to Digimon above Pokemon, I think, is the idea that a Digimon is uniquely your special little guy (genderless) who is your best friend forever. I undestand that Pokemon have to chose the trainer too, but with Digmon this friend exists JUST for you, absolutely NO one else could share your bond with them! Your special little guy (genderless) is a friend who can TALK with you! You can go on an adventure together to save both of your worlds and better yourselves together during the process!

Also: In the shows they go back to their cute and cuddly rookie forms after fights and that was definitely a factor when I was a kid- I've always liked how fluid digivolution is!

[helpmyinterestsareverywhere]

A recent development

[springypaws]

Some midnight speedy sketches as I try to materialize how I imagine the Wolf 359 characters in digital form (I am not succeeding and Hilbert and Hera look nothing like how I imagine them)

Anyways

[falderaletcetera]

listen. I don't just love father brown because I first saw it while ill with the flu or because it's consistently kind to the outcast in a way that has reviewers calling it Too Woke, obviously a vote in its favour. or because the recurring thief character is very pretty to watch. though those are significant parts of it.

I love it because after eight seasons father brown sits down with the village drunk (a munitions expert in the war, has a soft spot for the parish secretary, name of harold or blind harry) to find out why he gave a murder suspect a false alibi and harry explains to him, calm as you like, that seeing the life leave someone's eyes changes a person, that it's what he reckons brought father brown to his faith, that it's what drove him to drink, and he didn't see that shadow in the guy the police are chasing this time. and father brown, rather than justifying or correcting or dodging or doubting him, says he knows how unjust the situation is. that he got something good out of the horrors of the war. that harry really didn't.

it is not a perfect show and yes I have problems with it but gosh, this is a character who's largely used for comedic beats, albeit kindly, and a scene like this isn't out of place at all but it still takes my breath away. we could've been left with this as subtext, y'know? I hadn't even put together that his alcoholism must have been trauma. but instead harry tells us this directly, tells us it's about guilt, that that's something he shares with father brown, who is competent and so often cheerful and I can't even imagine when he was younger, and it's a moment of such unexpected humanity and respect. and it's such a strange thing to see these characters side by side like that.

the scene ends with father brown calling harry a good man, and harry denying it ("they was only young lads" "so were we, harold. so were we.") and the two them sharing a drink as father brown gets a bit watery-eyed and I'm crying too over my nice cosy 'this is a concerning number of murders for a sleepy english village' show and just. hi. what. ow.

I also haven't recovered from the episode that turned into a heist halfway through but frankly I'm only mentioning that because I don't know how to wrap up a post like this. (it was good though. there were two separate honeypots, three if you count the impromptu replacement, one character terrible at grifting and one unexpectedly great at it, and, somehow, a con within a con. it was really very fun. get a show that can do both, I guess?)

[pttucker]

Despite the lack of time, Yoo Joonghyuk hesitated. He hesitated while holding tightly to my collar. "…We don't have to hold another funeral, right?" I smiled because of Yoo Joonghyuk's question. "Even if I die, I will rise again." "That isn't what I mean." Yoo Joonghyuk's expression was serious. A high wind blew between me and Yoo Joonghyuk. I looked at him for a moment before asking, "Do you remember the second scenario?" The subway of Oksu Station. It was where Yoo Joonghyuk first appeared after smashing everything. He was a cold-blooded regressor who would use whatever means necessary for the results. Yoo Joonghyuk's calm eyes shook at my words. Who would've known at the time? Me and this guy, we would actually end up as companions. I hadn't wanted to admit it but now I had to. The things that hadn't seemed possible became reality. I was actually going through the scenarios with him. That's why I could now say it. Just like I did when I first met him on Han River Bridge. This was the way that suited us best. "Release your hand and get lost, you damn son of a bitch."

*Screaming*

Hey guys, remember when Heewon and Dokja had that totally random conversation about dating right in the middle of the arc about figuring out who the person Dokja loves most is?

Remember how Heewon said that Dokja's the type of person to want a "fateful meeting"?

[seagull-scribbles]

Cool teens doin’ ninja things