#also sorry about the length

[denverneumann]

Alpha and Omega was Denver's immediate thought when she saw the establishing shots of the Arena on the monitor. First and last. If Denver were to have designed an Arena, the final Hunger Games Arena, she would have done exactly this. Weak-kneed, she fell backward from the shock, the edge of a chair she just missed scraping her back as she slid to the floor.

"Holy shit," was all she could get out. Her ears rang as she stared at the screen in front of her, unable to make out the words of the countdown. Two cannons sounded before the buzzer even went off.

This was her Arena. It had been her second home for two years. She'd spent more time in those tunnels than in her own apartment. She'd stood in that very amphitheater when the Vox came, and faced Enna Lydonsbee with a knife she could never have used. Those ruins on which the tributes would inevitably fight and die were the same she'd insisted children not climb until parents yelled at her for ruining their child's visit.

Another cannon was fired, another fallen tribute in the uniform of the fallen soldiers she'd reported each day for months. A figure appeared next to Denver, and she instinctively reached out, grasping for a hand, for something, anything to hold her, to ground her to the here and now.

@cain-gunn

[sweetmapple]

Mostly Hiring manager, but HR manager and PR manager too

[egophiliac]

Okay so I've been wanting to tell you that you're literally my favourite twst artist 😭🩷

So my question is, how do you manage to come up with these funny comics? CUZ I LOVE THEM SO MUCH

(P.s: Lovin' the art style ✨)

oh geeze, thanks! 💚💚💚 I'm really glad people enjoy my stupid sense of humor; mostly I just draw things to make myself laugh, and if it makes other people laugh too, then bonus points! usually it's just one joke or mental image that gets stuck in my head (every time I saw Fellow spin his cane, all I could think about was him go-go-gadgeting away on it...) and in my quest to justify it, it picks up other jokes and bits along the way and usually doesn't even end up as the main focus anymore. entire narrative arcs have spun out just so I could use a single bad pun in a throwaway line. this is a terrible way to explain it but I'm not sure how else to put it into words!

and sometimes it's just "weird things my sister has said that I make fun of her for"

[pngheavy]

[limeshade]

What’s the matter with them? Why are they acting that way? Why, don’t you know? They’re “twitterpated.” Twitterpated? Yes. Nearly everybody gets twitterpated in the springtime. For example—

BAMBI (1942) Directed by David D. Hand et al. Written by Perce Pearce, Larry Morey et al.

[gailynovelry]

I don’t like getting intense over petty things, but why are people calling large paragraphs “bad formatting” now. It’s just formatting. Sometimes, a larger paragraph serves its text well, and sometimes it doesn’t, and there is a LOT more that goes into making a text block readable than length alone.

Please please please fucking please stop inventing all-encompassing arbitrary rules about what features define “good” art and “bad” art.

[god-of-this-new-blog]

What if the two worst guys in the whole world were madly in love with each other?

[devotion-disorder]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/3dFHa31qxQ8?feature=share

10/10 would smash Yuri buuuuut this vid lived rent free in my head, I don't wanna skip to my next life just yet-

no because i can vouch that she is 100% correct. of course everyone's built different but i have almost the exact same opinions as her...they dont call it rearranging your guts for no reason yall.

BUT you can also make a lot work with a bit of time and patience :D and when you're sequestered in the deepest part of the woods, trapped in a village that most people that don't even know exists, there is definitely more than plenty of time :) though Yuri also tends to be impatient, so......................... good luck? ^^;

[essektheylyss]

One thing that I feel is really interesting and often forgotten about Essek is that fundamentally, his characterization has been from the start based upon his desperation for external perspectives and connection, which, along with much of his narrative and mechanical positioning, means that he actually has an extraordinary and almost (but not actually, as I'll show) counterintuitive capacity for both growth and trust.

(Buckle in. This is a long one.)

In particular, I would argue, knowing now that many places where the plot touches Ludinus have long been marked for connecting back into the current plot, that he was quite possibly built as a prime candidate for radicalization by the Ruby Vanguard. He felt isolated from his culture, he was desperate for other connection, and he was certainly of the type to believe he was too smart to be drawn into such a thing, given his initial belief that he could control the situation and the fallout. If things had gone any other way, he easily could've been on the other side by now.

As such, he has been hallmarked by being fairly open to suggestion, perhaps for this reason, but the thing about that kind of trait is that it is both how people are radicalized and deradicalized. This is certainly true of Essek, who experienced genuine kindness and quite frankly strangeness from the Nein and was able to move from the isolation the Assembly had engendered to meaningful and genuine connection, largely propelled by his own internal reflection. By the time Nein are aware of his crimes, he's already begun to express regret to an extent and, furthermore, doubt in the Assembly, including explicitly drawing a line against Ludinus, even in a position where he was on his own and probably quite vulnerable.

Similarly, when the Nein reach the Vurmas Outpost some weeks later, he has moved from regret for the position he's ended up carrying a heavy remorse. This makes sense! He's fairly introspective, seems used to spending a lot of time in his own head, and was left with plenty to mull over. It's not some kind of retcon for him to have progressed well past where the Nein left him; it just means he's an active participant in the world who has done his own work in the meantime.

This is another interesting aspect to him. I've talked about this a bit before but I cannot find the post so I'll recap here: antagonists in D&D have significantly more agency than allied NPCs. Antagonists are active forces, against which the party is meant to struggle; allies are meant to support the PCs, which means they tend to be more passive in both their actions and their character growth. Essek was both built as an antagonist, in a position that gives him significant agency, and also was then given significant opportunity to grow specifically to act as a narrative mirror for Caleb's arc. Even when he becomes a more traditional D&D ally, he still retains much of that, though he occupies a supporting role.

I believe that this is especially true because of the nature of Caleb's arc, which I've already written on; the tl;dr of this post is that Caleb is both convinced that he is permanently ruined and also desperate to prove that change is possible. Essek is that proof, because he is simply the character in a position to do so. But this also means that his propensity for introspection and openness is accentuated! He has to do the legwork on his own, for the most part, because that's where he is in the meantime.

But he still ends the campaign necessarily constricted; he is under significant scrutiny, he's at risk from the Assembly, and he goes on the run fairly soon after the story ends. He spends most of the final arc anxious and paranoid, which is valid given the crushing reality of his situation. It would be very easy to extrapolate that seven years into this reality, he would be insular, closed off, and suspicious of strangers, even in spite of the lessons he's learned from the Nein and their long term exposure.

So seeing his openness and lightness now is surprising, but at the same time, given this combination of factors in his position in the narrative over time and his defining traits, it's not by any means unreasonable.

But one thing that I found so delightful is how much trust he exhibits, which is obviously a wild thing to say about Essek in particular, given much of what he learns is both earning and offering trust, which was something he says explicitly in 2x124 that he's never really experienced: "I've never really been trusted and so I did not trust." It makes up much of the progression of his relationship with Caleb, and the trust that he is offered by the Nein in walking off the ship is the impetus he needs to grow.

But I think it's easy to talk about trust when it comes to people who have proven themselves to you or to whom you've ingratiated yourself, and that's really the most we can say about Essek by the time he leaves the Blooming Grove. There is this sense in a lot of discussion of trust (not solely in this fandom) that it is only related to either naivete or love, but there's far more to it. Trust at its best is deliberate—cultivating an openness to the world at large is a great way to combat cynicism and beget connection instead. It allows a person to maintain curiosity and be open to experience, but it can be incredibly difficult to hold onto.

It is clear that the Essek we meet now is a very pointedly and intentionally trusting individual. He trusts Caleb and by extension Caleb's trust in Keyleth, as he shows up and picks up a group of strangers from a foreign military encampment and walks in without issue. He trusts the Hells to follow his lead moving through Zadash and to exhibit enough discretion so as to avoid bringing suspicion upon all of them. He trusts that Astrid will respond well to his entrance, but he also trusts himself and the Hells enough to execute a back-up plan in the case that she doesn't. In the end, he even trusts them enough to give them his name and identity.

He doesn't scan as someone who has spent half a dozen years living like a prey animal, afraid of any shadow he runs across in an alley, withdrawn into himself and an insular family, which would've been an easy route for him to take. He scans as someone who has learned the kind of trust borne of learned confidence and a trained eye for good will and kindness, which are crucial weapons one would need for staving off cynicism in his circumstances—as if he has survived thanks more to connection and kindness than paranoia and isolation. (If we want to be saccharine about it, he scans quite poignantly as a member of the Mighty Nein.)

So it is easy to imagine this trust and openness as a natural progression of his initial search for perspectives external to his own cultural knowledge. Though he makes those first connections with the Assembly to try to vindicate his personal hypotheses, he finds in them exposure to the deepest corruption among Exandrian mortals, which could've—and did, for a time—turned him further down that same dark path.

But it's also this same openness to exposure from the wider world that allows the Nein to influence him for the better, and in spite of the challenges he's certainly faced simply surviving over the past seven years, he seems to have held onto this openness enough to move through the world with self-assurance and a willingness to extend the kinds of trust and good will that he has been shown.

(I would be remiss not to mention that I was reminded about my thoughts on this by this lovely post from sky-scribbles and their use in the tags of 'light' to describe Essek's demeanor this episode, which is really such an apt word for it.)

[katabay]

original thief series basso & garrett :)

ngl, it's about quality over quantity for me. an npc can have a total of three minutes of screen time, but if they have a cool name, they can live rent free in my head and I'll spend several hours trying to decipher drawable features from a blurry screenshot of pixels

there is a vague hint of a story here, and that's because every time I try to play thi4f, I get incredibly frustrated with how Not Fun the game play is. like, is the story good? well. but it has a PLAGUE. that should've given it instant 'I'll replay this once a year' status in my heart, but the game play sucks so bad that I've never finished it. I can't believe Not Fun gameplay beat out my obsession with narrative plagues.

anyway, the idea is basically if the original era had a game with a plague centric narrative and some other stuff I liked out of thi4f thrown into a narrative blender, with a heavy dash of horror thrown in because some parts of the thief games were scarier to me than entire dedicated horror genre games.

⭐ places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app

[gunpowder-gemini]

My heart goes out to everyone finally figuring out that we aren't getting the death worm this season, I am really excited to see it animated too. But tbh there was never any way it would fit

Like think about everything that happens in the cursed house arc. There is SO MUCH there that I personally think just the death worm stuff is going to be 5-6 episodes on it's own to get through it. They didn't have enough episodes left even if they completely skipped the serpo arc.

Personally I've always figured the episodes are gonna shake out like this:

Ep 8 - shenanigans with Okarun/Aira and getting in to empty space (I was right! though I wasn't sure we'd get to Acro Aira but in hindsight that's a perfect cliffhanger cut point)

Ep 9 - the fight, probably ending with the big final blow

Ep 10 - public humiliation and mr. shrimp joins the team, Jiji appears at the end!

Ep 11 - Jiji is actually introduced and goes to school with them, ending with Taro appearing "chasing" Okarun

Ep 12 - anatomical dummies shenanigans and a sort of cliffhanger teasing the cursed house arc next season

I think people forget that it takes seconds to read a fight scene when it's just a few sequential images but several MINUTES to show that same fight scene animated. The Serpo arc is largely action, so it's no suprise it's taking a couple episodes. Also dialogue! Dialogue takes longer to voice act than it does to read. There's only so much you can fit into like, 25 mins

[certifiedlibraryposts]

Any of you who feel bad about having overdue materials, just know that I, Library Enthusiast Nerdass Blog Runner, just realized i have accidentally kept the first two Dungeon Meshi books hostage for a week.

[midnightrings]

SIENA ROSSO and ANTHONY BRIDGERTON

-> Bridgerton 1.08: After the Rain (1/3)

[rings-of-power-realm]

Thank you Robert Aramayo for being a better person than the entire internet. It was a beautiful scene and you and Morfydd handled it perfectly 💚

[tunastime]

hiccuping tears into the shoulder + ranchers by chance?

hiccuping tears into their shoulder (1087 words) (x)

For the first time in a good, long portion of his life, Tango despises how silent the night gets. It's not without its natural noise—the balmy, sticky humidity and breeze in the grass, or the crickets, the cicadas quieting down, the sounds of animals rearranging themselves to a comfier sleeping arrangement. He should be doing the same, but he's sitting on the edge of the bed, his spine a rigid line. He can feel the blood in his body, he can feel the spaces where his muscles connect to each other, with every breath he can feel his lungs separate out the oxygen. It's at the very least startling, and at the very most, he feels like he might dissolve on the spot if touched. 

Tango knows how death feels—painless respawn and a few seasons of a life game behind him, but to feel someone else die, too. The echo of death alongside your own. He didn't like that! Not good at all. All his blood and heartbeat-y things are rushing around in his ears. He doesn't even hear Jimmy the first time he speaks up from the other side of the bed, with how his voice scrapes out.

"I didn't know they were aiming for us," Jimmy says.

"Of course not," Tango says, furrowing his eyebrows. "I know you didn't."

He's still looking at his hands, running his thumb over the lines in his palm and pushing into the tiny bones and muscle there. Jimmy flexes his hands like he can feel the pressure and bones moving around. He watches him fold his hand tight around each other and slump, pulling his shoulders to his chest. His breath squeezes in his chest as Jimmy deflates tiredly.

"I just don't want you to think—"

"I'm not gonna think this is your fault, alright?" Tango says, frowning at him. "Why would I?"

Jimmy sighs. His jaw works.

"Cause it usually is," he grits. Tango scrunches his nose on instinct, recoiling out of habit before he manages:

"That's not fair, man."

"This whole game isn't far!" Jimmy huffs, waving a hand about.

"Sure but—"

"But nothing, Tango. I just—I can't lose and drag you with me. That's more than not fair."

"I don't care."

"I care."

Before Tango can argue, though, he tastes the faintest hints of anger and frustration at the back of his mouth fade. He watches Jimmy's face contort as he tries to come up with a better sentence, something he probably thinks Tango deserves. Maybe an apology. 

Tango just looks at him. He kind of feels bad, that little bit of gut wrenching cold that trickles in, but mostly he's just confused. Jimmy's words bat around in his brain like dust particles. Dust bunnies. He definitely assumed they were done with this. That maybe Jimmy made peace like he did—though really he hadn't had that much time to make peace, if he's being honest. He's still bitter. He's sure a lot of people are still bitter. But in terms of Jimmy's whole situation? It's not like it could be helped. They just had to be careful. So Tango was being careful, and Jimmy was taking what Tango thought was a calculated risk, so he was mad, sure, but he couldn't really stay mad for a long time. So he takes a long breath and sighs it out his nose. It still tastes surprisingly reminiscent of smoke.

"So what are we going to do?" he asks softly. Jimmy inhales.

"I don't know," he says. "Go to bed? Wake up and start planning?"

Tango hums plainly. He likes that idea. The small spool of feeling in his chest that must belong to Jimmy gives a little tug, like it wanted to take him down with it. 

"Yeah," Tango says, voice coming hoarse. "Yeah, I think so."

For a moment, Tango runs his tongue over his teeth, runs his thumbs over the seams of his knees. He sighs, and then he leans into Jimmy's shoulder with a definitive huff. He's tired. From the ache in his bones, to the breathlessness of dying, to just taking in Jimmy's stress. Man. He's exhausted. Jimmy snorts quietly. He feels him press his cheek against Tango's head. The hand Jimmy had been fiddling with in his lap ends up at the base of his spine, splayed over the fabric. Tango squeezes his eyes shut.

"Thanks Tango," Jimmy says shakily. He sounds like he's on the knife's edge of crying, so Tango fumbles out a hand and lands it solidly on his knee. It's not a terribly comfortable thing to stretch one of his achy shoulders or biceps that far but he does anyway, and Jimmy huffs out a damp laugh. "Guess I'm just... pissed off."

Tango snorts.

"If you think you're pissed, just wait until they rile me up," he says into the fabric of Jimmy's shirt. Jimmy laughs. Tango tries to hold in a grin that he also smothers into his shoulder, but fails. Jimmy's hand skips over his knuckles and squeezes the hand on his knee.

"Sure thing, Rancher," he teases. Tango makes a half-suppressed noise of indignation, squeaking as he bolts upright. He nearly knocks into Jimmy's jaw as he untangles himself with all the grace of a cat trying to weasel out of someone's arms. 

"I'm just sayin'," he grumbles, crinkling his nose. "You seem like you're in a better mood though."

Jimmy sighs, rounding out his shoulders. 

"Think so," he says, working his cheek between his teeth. Tango feels the sensation of prodding in his mouth. Bleh. "Think so."

"Probably a good idea to make good on that sleeping... thing,” he says, reaching up to scrub at his eyes. He barely stifles a yawn as Jimmy stretches, twisting his tall body around in a way that feels surprisingly pleasant to Tango’s stiff muscles. He can’t imagine, especially with the way Jimmy holds all his emotions in his shoulders, that his upper back is doing him any favors. Jimmy makes a little noise in confirmation as Tango turns, attempting to make ample space for him in the small bed. He knows they’ll end up back to back at some point, but as he lies down, shoulder to shoulder, an easy comfort rolls over him. Sure there’s all the red blood rushing around in his ears, and sure he feels it right up on his skin like a bad rash, but for now, next to Jimmy, he shuts his eyes.

They’ll make this time count for something, at least.

[tyttetardis]

Macbeth Donmar Supporter's Zoom Conversation

On the 9th of May 2023 Donmar Warehouse held a Zoom "meeting" for supporters where Michael Longhurst talked about their two newly announced productions - Clyde's and Macbeth. This was a week before tickets went on general sale and before they announced that Cush Jumbo would be playing Lady Macbeth.

At the time it was all, of course, quite exciting since everything they revealed during the talk was brand new info! Most of which wouldn't be known at large until the play was being perfomed (or later). I think only about 80 people participated, most of which I think either worked for the Donmar or were members at much higher levels.

Today it's no longer new information as such, but I thought it might still be interesting to make a post about what was said during this talk :)

Michael first spoke about Clyde's (which I didn't actually listen much too) and then introduced Macbeth as their Christmas show (using the word Christmas "incredibly tenuously") saying the cast was yet to be revealed, but called it a beautiful ensamble piece, and that they were in the process of casting with the cast to be revealed "shortly".

He then went on to say that the casting that was revealed the week before made a bit of a spark - David Tennant coming to the Donmar to play Macbeth :) He mentioned it being directed by Max Webster since Michael was so impressed with how he did Henry V the year before. He said they had a joyful process of going to their favourite actors trying to match slots and titles to the actors that they love - and that they were thrilled that Mr. Tennant was stepping up to the Scottish play - "we felt it was time!"

"He [David] has obviousley given amazing Shakespearean performances - Hamlet, Richard II at the RSC - I, yeah, I think his verse speaking is frankly unparalleled, it's a thing of beauty. He's quicksilver, but he can push himself into the most extraordinary characterisations."

He went on to say that David and Max were deep into discussions about what this production should be. He said there's always Macbeths, but he thought what they would do so spectacularly would be to allow it to be a deeply psychological take on the play (facilitated/inspired by the Donmar's space).

He said they had a very exciting Lady Macbeth who would be announced in a week. He said she was a Donmar alumni who had a great Shakespearean set of works under her belt. He was thrilled to reunite her with David, saying that they had just done a TV series together. "So you can go do some subtle googling, but please don't share it" :P "It's amazing, they are gonna be a fierce combination!"

Someone then asked about whether the show would be streamed to which Michael said they were having conversations about it since there was a LOT of interest and they knew demand for this show with David would be incredibly high. So they would be doing everything they could to get the show streamed, it was their absolute ambition. Not least since it would be amazing to be able to share it with students. So they were in those conversations "as we speak". He later talks about it again - saying that streaming is a way of mass sharing, even if it can't recreate the experience of closeness at the Donmar. That they would try to secure screenings of it since they were aware it would be very popular "It's almost a curse of having such an intimate theatre - that when you program a star like that, it becomes huge".

Choosing to stage Macbeth was down to Michael and Max having a conversation about a short list of Shakespeare plays Max was keen to have a go at and them talking about various leading actors (later he expands on this as Max having had conversations with potential leading actors on which titles they were inspired with/ to perform - sorta like an Actors dating spree, 6 months ago) to decide which one would be the best one for this moment - "David's availibity created this window between two massive screen projects and it felt like the one to grab". Macbeth hadn't been staged at the "Donmar" since 1976 - with the legendary Dench and McKellen version. Michael said he thinks that the Donmar stage is the perfect space for Macbeth since "it allows the director and the lead actor to utterly hold a room of people in a way that'd be thrilling and terrifying, that you can't necessarily do in other spaces". He then said that he didn't think Max was interested in the witches and the supernatural as real entities but rather looking at psychological, trauma related reasons to explore those devices within the play. He also said Max was very passionate about making it very Scottish and that he had already been meeting with Scottish folk musicians to create his ensemble team. Also that he was very interested in Lady M being from outside the Scottish hiearchy - that she's be unafraid to challenge that Scottish status quo.

For Michael it's about "the synergy of an actor who should be playing that character - and that is Mr. David Tennant because he is one of our greatest verse speakers, let alone the greatest Scottish verse speaker".

He said that the production would definitely be a contemporary set. A modern dress Macbeth.

He then said that the reason he wanted to back Max as a director is that he thinks he offers a brand of total theatre that is really exceptional. There was a question about the music used in Henry V, and Michael said he just knew about the Scottish folk music and that music would be a part of the show, and that music is always a big part of Max's shows.

Someone then asked if they consult with scools on what plays they are studying in order to choose what they put on. Michael says they were obviously very aware of Macbeth being part of the curriculum and that being one of the reasons they thought this was "the text. And obviousley with David and his DW background, he brings a huge appeal and accesibility for young people who might find Shakespeare challenging - and you know, being brought into that story by someone they know and love so well is...you know we saw the effect happen on Henry V, 40% of people coming to the Donmar were coming for the first time when we had Henry V on - and it's thrilling to expand that connection, and we know David will do the same".