#a man shaped like a monster

[qquokkari]

"Nothing in this world can fill that lonely hole you have. You will wander the darkness for eternity."

Mimmo Paladino, for James Joyce's Ulysses / Kafka Asagiri and Sango Harukawa, various panels from Bungou Stray Dogs / Eugene Thacker, Infinite Resignation / Ruth Madievsky, All-Night Pharmacy / Gillian Flynn, Dark Places / R. N. Sandberg, Frankenstein / Sophocles, Electra / Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness / Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense / Euripides, Electra / I. Hymn: The Forest, from Octet by Dave Malloy / Succession 3x09, All the Bells Say / The Dresden Dolls, My Alcoholic Friends / Richard Siken, War of the Foxes / Ocean Vuong, Thanksgiving 2006 / Fall Out Boy, West Coast Smoker / Jason Webley, Icarus / The Crane Wives, Tongues & Teeth / Vincent van Gogh, letter to Theo van Gogh / Wallows, Treacherous Doctor

[sylusbitch]

bro how do i tell people...that im reading fanfiction about odysseus and penelope

i used to tease my friends for reading hamilton fanfiction because those are real people and it's goofy

but this feel just as goofy like im taking mythology and ancient texts and being like...but what if odysseus and penelope had a meet cute in a coffee shop near their college campus like stfu

[varilien]

given that i've ran this blog for as many years now i think i should get much credit for this being what, only the third dick joke i've ever made here hdfkhkj

anyways. there's this point in the story where vash and wolfwood have to go their separate ways for a while, but neither of them are dealing with it particularly well

(image id below the cut since it's a longer one)

[image ID: a rough, doodley 5 panel digital comic of vash and meryl from trigun, but from my leaden skies au where they've both been lightly redesigned to fit into the setting of monster hunter. vash is a wyverian with long pointed ears, wearing a red coat with gold trim and buttons. meryl is a human wearing a beret as seen on other guild girls, but her all-white outfit is a practical two-piece blouse and shorts set. the whole comic is comprised of warm colors, orange and yellow and dark purple

panel 1: vash sitting in the foreground at a brown desk covered in candles and books, with a book opened in front of him that he flips through with a bored expression and his cheek resting against his hand. he appears to be in a library, lit by candles on dark grey chandeliers hung from the ceiling. meryl is in the background stretching up to reach a book high on a shelf, and beside her is a table which is also covered in candles and several tall stacks of books

panel 2: a closeup of vash's face as his eyes widen and his ears prick up. something in the book has apparently caught his attention

panel 3: a closeup of the page vash was looking at, an illustrated info sheet about the flying wyvern, khezu. a candle in the table brightly illuminates the colored page

panel 4: meryl has come around by vash's shoulders with a stack of books held in her arms. she quirks a brow as she looks over vash's shoulder at the book. vash has a neutral, hard to read look on his face, but his ears are still up and his eyes are still shiny and wide as he seems to consider the page for a while

panel 5: a yellow word bubble comes from vash, who huffs a long sigh and says, "maybe i should call him...". his head has tipped to the side as he rubs his neck and frowns, blushing a little with his ears drooping. meryl physically recoils from him and her face scrunches up in disgust, saying, "eww" and, "there's something wrong with you"

end ID.]

[citrine-elephant]

what little i still know about re and what fun little facts i've seen about leon made me wanna do a "what if leon, but b.o.w"

[catherine-sketches]

Me: God I love Valentino’s design but he is such a pice of shit

My brain: don’t worry we have Good Valentino at home

The Good Valentino at home:

So I gave Valentino a nice twin! Meet Fabio everyone!!!

In hell because he did the straightest thing you can do: kill a man (several men actually), Fabio is also involved in the sex work industry but in the “small brothel that has medical insurance and strict consent rules where he keeps all of his workers hidden from the exterminations and Valentino and his bullshit”

He meets the Hazbin gang after the battle with the angels when the writing on the wall tells him the Val and his weird stalker tv boyfriend and their lesbian mean friend will start a power grab and turf war and he feels that his small safe brothel will not remain as such for long. So off to the hotel he goes with his 20 or so girls, guys and non-binary pals.

Angel nearly has a heart attack when he sees him at the door for obvious reasons

[longagoitwastuesday]

I am liking Jujutsu Kaisen, way more than I imagined I would, but I foresee it will let me down and it's keeping me from enjoying this as much as I could haha

I think the characters and dynamics are well set, and I think many of them have an incredibly good and deep potential, but I would be willing to bet they'll not get a proper development, enough for them to really hit. A well assembled set of gears is not enough to make the movement go, you have to wind the clockwork.

I think Gojo and Megumi have a fascinating and very complex dynamic, but I doubt it will be given the time and care that imo it needs to actually work. And it is going well enough for now! One could see the intimacy between them was deeper than the one Gojo had with, say, Yuji and Nobara ever since the very first few episodes despite the fact Fushiguro too was a first year. But the pieces forming what they have are extremely complex, and it just wouldn't be realistic if it doesn't show, even if in a not showing way, or if it doesn't have consequences or implications.

It's one of those dynamics that shape one's life, the way one regards the world, the way one establishes or not relationships with other people. It's one of those dynamics that could be full of fondness, gratitude, resentment, admiration, trust, and that imply intimacy, the good kind or the bad, even if in just the knowledge of someone who's been a constant through your life. It could, and would, imply a myriad of feelings, and probably in such a mix it could imply contradictory feelings too. Even the nothingness would weight, even the nothingness would be significant and meaningful.

Gojo took Megumi and his sister under his wing, the son of a man who murdered him, because of both selfish and selfless reasons. Megumi looks like Toji. What does Gojo feel about this? How does Gojo deal with this? How does Gojo go about taking care of Megumi? Would he walk him to school? Make him breakfast? Celebrate his birthdays making him blow candles? Did he take him to the zoo? Does the relationship between them feel professional or is it something more? Gojo appreciates his students, but is Megumi to him just another student? When Gojo faces Sukuna in Megumi's body, did he see the kid he raised, or does he just see Sukuna in one of his students' body? Did he have one faint wavering instant? And how does Megumi feel about this? Is he resentful of him? Resentful of the situation? Of the selfishness behind his actions? Does he feel like a pawn? Is he grateful? Does he resent feeling grateful? Would he rather not? Does he love Gojo? Does he feel nothing about him other than what he could feel about a teacher that sort of annoys him but knows he's reliable in his strength? Does he think it unfair, cruel or unfeeling that Gojo is close, closer perhaps, with Yuuji or Yuta, considering their story? When Sukuna slices Gojo in two, does the remnants of Megumi's soul tremble?

And not just Megumi and Gojo. Yuuji and Nanami, Gojo and Nanami, Yuuji and Fushiguro, Nobara and the boys, or Nobara and Maki, Todo and Yuuji or Yuta, Gojo and Yuta, Megumi and his sister. Gojo and Geto, even! If the pieces are well set, the dynamics are intriguing, interesting, and have potential to be deep, but then the characters have like two plot relevant scenes that punch you hard, but little more, it's not nearly enough. Especially not nearly enough for the enormity that is shonen dynamics and situations. And the potential existing at all, and then not delivering, makes it all the more frustrating when you're left with something mediocre that could have been so good.

The development of dynamics through not only a few plot relevant gut wrenching moving scenes, but also the smallness of life, is important. The friend who recommended this to me said that those things were just unnecessary filler, but I disagree. I think there's a big difference between a large amount of anime-only filler episodes whose existence is based on the fact they had run out of manga chapters to animate, and moments of quietness. The low stakes character-driven moments of quietness can be so telling and so insightful, and they are so satisfactory when brought back later in higher stakes situations. My friend teased me there was no scene of Gojo making breakfast to Megumi, that it would be an idiotic idea, but it would be so telling. How he makes breakfast, what they eat, if he tries hard or if it's all mechanised, if they have personal bowls or if they use whatever, if he just buys them some pastry on the way to school, if the way they have breakfast changes through the years, or if he doesn't make them breakfast at all! All that would be very insightful on their dynamic and its evolution. All that would give a glimpse on how they regard each other and why, even in the present. All that could become meaningful in tense situations and high stakes scenes.

These moments also let the plot breath; if a lot is happening all the time, if every character is always experiencing trauma after trauma, the entire story is so emotionally draining that at some point you don't even care all that much. Besides, these nothing moments or low stakes plot arcs, besides deepening and developing dynamics, also let some in-world time pass, which would make the intimacy and bond between characters more believable imo; between Yuuji eating Sukuna's finger and their last confrontation in December how much time has passed? A few months? Am I truly to believe these characters are so everything to each other in only a few months?

Without some smallness, some repetition, some daily life, some low stakes not plot-centric development, the dynamics don't hit, they don't truly feel fleshed out, and dynamics as complex as the ones Megumi and Gojo have, or as supposedly meaningful as the one Megumi has with Yuuji or his sister, should be fleshed out if they're going to exist at all. Otherwise they'd risk making the writing feel awkward and fake. Besides, if the dynamics felt well fleshed out and realistic, they would shape the way the characters interact and act, and how they deal with situations, thus being plot relevant.

The shonen genre has so much happening all the time, the stakes are so high, the dynamics are so rooted in big events and the relationships carry enormous weight and implications. Yet they barely get developed, and it feels so stupid, so plain, the absence of something so important noticeable like a constant void, a shapeless nothingness present in every scene. It makes the characters feel like cardboard figures. Jujutsu Kaisen is already getting a better job than many, but I doubt it will do enough for what I've heard, and I fear I am bound to feel let down, and bound to feel unmoved.

After all, if not enough time and care has been given to develop a dynamic, I am not going to feel pressured by the high stakes; if not enough time and care has been given to develop the dynamic between Megumi and Yuuji, as good potential as it has I am bound to feel little for this last confrontation between Sukuna and Itadori, and his effort in getting Megumi back.

[anxiously-sidequesting]

Okay Girlies I need you all to answer this one question for me. I haven't played through Karamelle or Novus yet and I've only seen and heard snippets of Dasein so I don't know all that much ahout him. Reblog/tag why y'all want to fuck him- I mean marry him (or just something you really like about him)

[winepresswrath]

please ms midorikawa drop the extra anecdote please please please. also yes the contrast is interesting! it's impossible not to feel for Matoba when he's out there making his little overtures even if he is a real dick about yokai and defaults to presenting as self-interested and calculating (different problems). it is so fun and juicy to me that as Natori became more of a friend/ally/person-who-sometimes-needs-protection midorikawa was like ok we need a new shady older man trying to lure natsume onto team terrible exorcist. for the narrative. and he should be somewhere in the neighborhood of the natori to natori's natsume and the darcy to natori's elizabeth. also for the narrative.

[baronafanas002]

(Doug) monsters smash or pass edition.

[theboarsbride]

*taps mic*

'shape of water au' featuring bear wife and sir john

*runs away*

[lazygyodza]

Brother Lun

I realized that I've only been posting pictures of him with his lovestruck face expression. But IRL, when his precious GF is not present in one space with him - he has a btch, ahem, serious face 24/7. He's not very approachable. He can change the color of his hair and horns according to his mood.

And he works two jobs as a handyman and as an employee of the forest park.

[monsterfuckerbracket]

[mosstrades]

im someone who stuggles not to let his curiosity and drive sometimes (often) cross over into an overwhelming and maladaptive need for answers, for explanation, for certainty. someone who, historically, sees making art as a primarily intellectual exercise. this is not inherently a bad thing, we all have our temperaments and this kind of attention can be a strength. but, you know that artist who makes a painting, and then only wants to show it while explaining it to you? thats me, sometimes, more often than i like. every story i used to write had another hundred page document behind it, explicating every single choice -- often i would simply read that, instead of ever actually write the story itself. the explanation precedes everything. the answers alone are the experience.

david lynch's work and philosphy has been and is a vital foothold in my efforts to learn to love the questions as our breath. learn to appreciate intuition and dreams, trust them instead of fear them. learn to see that the world has so much confusing, uncertain, strange beauty, that can be terrifying but turns sublime when you cease rejecting it from fear. when you embrace the unknown and dont try to immediately & anxiously explicate it all away, a whole new world opens up to you. that you need the darkness in order to dream, and you need dreams in order to live fully immersed in what the world has to offer. a foothold in learning to be okay with abstraction, with imperfect subjectivity, with uncertainty. to know it is not anthitetical to truth and meaning. know that to skillfully make ideas come alive into a work *is* to rationally pin them down, but that you cannot lose sight of the intuition they were born as.

his artistic intuition reminds me of what i need to have -- the trust and humility for experiencing the inexplicable and understanding that to be enough. a devotion to ideas and their realisation. a balancing force, for my endless inquiry -- to not forget to live the question in my the search for an answer. to allow some thing to go without clear or universal explanation, allow for some things to remain unresolved, allow for others to have that be their resolution. it's why his work equal parts captivates me and disturbs me -- i am very bad at this. but feel in my heart a need to get better at it. to be a better artist, a better thinker, a better searcher, a better person. you need to feel it, intuitively, quiet your endless noisy need for an answer and simply let it fill you up, let it resonate intuitively, and find in that how life makes sense to you and you alone. mediation, mindfulness, humility to sit with abstraction without trying to pin it down. more and more i try to understand this. some things don't need to make perfect sense. some things dont need answers, or their answers are not the point. some things dont need anything but to be experienced as they enter you -- like dreams do. that can lead you to the answer, and that can also be enough in itself. that can be just an intrinsic value in being alive to experience it. and so often, it is all in conversation with the search for joy. it's why he feels so captivating, so unique, so tremendously alive. why people use the word "visionary" when talking about him. because he knew how to use his medium in all the potential he could see, so that it let you live in the strangeness and questions. he understood them as sublime, he understood them as enough, he understood them as a joy. he understood them as beautiful. and his memory will remind me to do the same; always to seek the space to dream.

[velvetwyrme]

ah this is fun!! 🥲 and 😏? most vs least conveniently attractive? I am courious about the side-by side 👀

ask game

oh god. okay. uhhhh most conventionally attractive... how do you define conventionally attractive.......

wait nvm i know one.

Daniel the vampire hunter!!!!! from Shall We Date? Blood in Roses+ which was the first dating sim I ever played! Crucially, he's also a werewolf, so hes got cute lil ears.... !!

i still have a fond place in my heart for him... i'll forever be sad that the game got discontinued and is unplayable now... alas.

anyway, for least conventionally attractive i GOTTA go with Yaridovich from Super Mario RPG Remastered

(plus a bonus of my friends reaction when i told her ehfkfbdkfbekrbtbfkbf)

this is another case of me seeing him and just going "OH NOOOO, I LOVE HIM." he literally shows up as a buncha weird toads at the beginning and is revealed to be... that thing. IT'S HIS FUNNY LITTLE INTRO CG AT THE START OF THE BATTLE. HIS DIALOGUE...

[badolmen]

Soldiers kill sheep in the streets and I see bison skulls piled high, the bullets are made in the United States.

Trees are set ablaze by tanks and I see Moses kneeling in fear and reverence, God does not speak from these flames.

The people starve and I see seaweed gathered in baskets on Irish shores, Dutch tulip bulbs boiled with rabbit bones.

When they said ‘never again’ it was never for love of the hundreds of millions murdered, nor fear of the systems that allowed such evil to rise. They said ‘never again’ to shipping lane inconveniences, to stock market woes, and to being seen for cowards.

At least a coward would sit in quiet fear, content in inaction. Now they sign over billions, condemning millions to the total destruction. Where is the shame? Where is the apathy? At least in that I can call them mere cowards. What else am I to call them but the evil they so long taught me to revile?

God have mercy on their souls. God have mercy on ours. For the body is doomed - the bombs will still fall, the blood will still spill, the graves of thousands will fill.

(How long is the queue to the pearly gates? Is St. Peter agrieved to see so many young faces? Are wives rejoicing or grieving the reunion with their husbands? Does the brother laugh or cry when he finds his sister among the crowd?)

From Carthage to Auschwitz we were warned. From Roman roads to shipping lanes we watched the weapons trade hands. And when we cry out to the powers that be, they turn away - unseeing, unhearing, unfeeling. Machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts.

But the horror is in knowing they are not machines. This is not their nature. They are men. Born with a love for humanity in their hearts, a desire for community and companionship and art. How did they lose such a fundamental part of their being? Was it beaten out of them by bitter men before them or did they discard it themselves, as though it were a cancer to be excised? Does it matter when they so zealously jump knee deep in blood and bone among bomb shattered homes?

And while it is troubling to consider that, being human, we too can have our hearts hardened, it is far more uncomfortable to consider that, being human, they may one day revert to natural compassion. And what does one do when the machine becomes man again? When he proves it was a choice all along? A choice he refused and snubbed until the bodies cooled and the graves grew grassy with age?

God forgive what I cannot.

[theheadlessgroom]

@beatingheart-bride

"I admit, I, uh...I couldn't really sleep at all today," Randall confessed with a shy smile, as he dug into his slice: Though part of that was him still getting used to the switch from diurnal to nocturnal, he was sure, his excitement over his impending wedding kept him up like a kid on Christmas Eve. More than once did he roll over and stare at the clock, hoping it would be nightfall; more than once did he eye the curtains, wishing the sun's rays would vanish, and leave the skies dark.

"All good things to those who wait," June smiled lightly, a remark that Randall couldn't help but think to himself wryly, Ma, you have no idea...!

"Mmm, good cake, Junie!" Wilhelm complimented, as he licked the frosting from his fork: June had been doing a lot of experimenting with cooking with blood (something she never thought she'd do, but nevertheless was willing to try), working out the best ratios of it to the ingredients she used, with her crowning achievement thus far being the wedding cake. At her husband's praise, June's cheeks flared pink, saying, "Thank you, Wil. Mixing it with the wet ingredients before adding it all to the dry seems to work the best-even if it does turn the batter a dark pink."

A lot of foods she'd been making as of late had turned dark pink, bordering on red when she added the necessary secret ingredient and mixed it all together: Soup stocks, rice dishes, stews, they all came out in varying different shades, very different from what they'd been before.

Ah, but she accepted that change and, for what it was worth, her cooking ventures had been paying off: She and her family were able to get what they needed to live, while still being able to enjoy the old foods they loved. It was a nice compromise they'd made, and she was happy to see it'd paid off well for her son and daughter-in-law's wedding cake.