#and i wish i was so sad

[beemintty]

the problem with real monsters is the way they hide amongst the people who are supposed to love you…..

[spiritual-turg]

more of anya being her happy and whimsical self bc twitter seemed to really like this one!!

[unlimitedsupplies]

i love y'all but everyone saying "okami 2" like my boy here suffered for nothing

[demaparbat-hp]

She will (and he'll let her)

[creative-clawmarks]

Just outside the [ANGEL]'s line of sight,

two puppets recognize each other.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Maybe we never had a chance.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[redfirefox-55]

Please guys go read Software Entropy by @clubsheartsspades (I hope you don’t mind the tag!)

It literally destroyed me. I forced my sister to read it and it destroyed her too. I just had to draw something for it because I couldn’t get this quote out of my head, but I couldn’t possibly do the scene justice in the same way as in the fanfiction so you need to go read it yourself

[gongyussy]

forget the horrors and think about this baby achieving everything he wanted and more (first goal, 2005 vs 600th goal, 2024)

[kingghoost]

Quickly analyzing a one-off line from The Optiratch Argument™ because I'm bored

We all know that The Argument™ was mainly about Ratchet's frustrations with Optimus' "cowardice" (BIG quotation marks) but one of Ratchet's lines really stuck with me:

"Oh- and let me guess, I'm just the medic." (TFP S1E22)

Typically when people are angry, they don't vent about just one thing. Though he was talking back to what Optimus said about the Vehicon being a miner and not a warrior, that comment seemed completely irrelevant to the argument's main topic (at least in my point of view)

One big (yet hidden) flaw in Ratchet is his lack of self confidence. His job is to cure the sick and injured, yet he never really seems to realize the value he has on his team. He truly is great at what he does - and he goes above and beyond to be of service (medic, scientist, sort of engineer... that's impressive!) Despite all this, the fact that he is the only non-fighter really seems to eat at him. His main whereabouts most of the time being in the base makes it worse paired with the fact that he seems to be the most eager to jump and "get things done." Their numbers are already small, so he feels that anything he could do isn't enough to overthrow an entire military.

By saying "Just the medic," it implies that he determines his self worth by his rank. In his eyes, he is "just" the medic. Not a great warrior that overpowers the enemy and saves his comrades, but a doctor forced to sit by and wait for his teammates to return with fresh new injuries, dead or alive.

"-Help us, we know. But you nearly caused the loss of something.. Irreplaceable. Our medic, and our most trusted friend." (TFP S1E22)

Now Optimus, on the other hand, does acknowledge what Ratchet has to give to the team, most importantly Ratchet's worth as an individual. He knows what lengths Ratchet goes to save his comrades (and, most of the time, himself) from the brink of death, he knows what a genius his old friend is for being able to conduct such intricate research with limited supplies - Hell, he knows that Ratchet built some of those supplies himself.

Learning about how Ratchet thinks so lowly of himself must've been shocking, to witness the one closest to you feel the need to experiment on himself with untested material in the hopes of being "useful" ... I think it broke Optimus' heart a little, not to mention how he was already hurt by Ratchet's rant.

Though the episode ended with things working out in the end, I really like the idea of The Argument™ making a huge mess out of both of them. At that moment they were fine and made up, but what they said/learned about each other that day will never quite leave them.

[eggdrawsthings]

☀️🐥

[cellyjubes]

raiden from between mgs 2-4 in the patriot facility

this is inspired by the fic haemoglobin!! incredible fic i highly recommend it!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/1086595

also i made a speedpaint of this here

[muxhroom-marx-markiplier]

au where chris is able to actually get to josh in the shed before josh gets dragged into the mines cuz its soooooo mean and rude and bs that he isnt able to in the actual game

[otaku553]

New blorbo :)

Also a silly interaction with this piece

[c-kiddo]

thinking abt this .. the panic :( the way he just holds onto himself :( just tells himself theres work to do : (

also look at the little beetle carapace belle left for him :(((((

[cozylittleartblog]

worst way to start my new year, thanks. i have a lot of things to say about these companies but i'm tired and just keeping it focused to the pin side of things for this one. do not ever buy pins from these companies, literally ALL of them are stolen from small artists like me. if you want to buy enamel pins, check out etsy, and artist's personal websites and shops! (though even Etsy has some bootleg pins that ship straight from china, so tread carefully…)

Every pin I've designed is, thus far, EXCLUSIVE to my etsy. if you find it anywhere else, it's been ripped off! and once these stupid bootlegs pop up, it's basically a never ending game of whack-a-mole trying to get them all taken down...

[thebibliosphere]

One of the really fun and interesting things about writing a polyamorous romance as someone who is ambiamorous/polyamorous is finding new ways to make sure the narrative hits the expected genre beats without just sort of... mushing it into a pre-existing monogamous romance mold, which is what I'm afraid happens a lot of the time.

Trust me, it was my job in the publishing house to make them fit that mold. I hated it.

Reading other poly-centric romances, I can always somewhat tell when someone is writing polyamory from a sexual fantasy aspect (zero shade; I'm here for all the group sex) without actually considering how it functions as a relationship dynamic, which can often come off as... well.

It's lacking for me as a romance.

Erotica-wise, it's fine. But it misses the romantic beats for me that I want as a polyamorous-leaning person.

There's so much emphasis on the polycule and never the individual dyads within the larger relationship.

For example, in a triad, there are actually four relationships to handle.

The dyad between A + B. The dyad between A + C. The dyad between B + C. And the overarching relationship between A + B + C.

With monogamous-leaning authors or authors that've been pressed into conforming to the pre-existing genre beats, there's a tendency to treat the relationship as a homogenous mass where everything is fair and equal, and you treat all your partners the exact same way.

And I get it. It's easier to write everything as peachy-keen and to have external conflict be resolved with either acceptance or a brave confrontation.

But it doesn't always land for me as someone who wants to see my style of love represented in the genre.

In healthy polyamory, either closed or open, each relationship is unique in its own way. Taking the example of a triad again, the way A acts with C likely differs from how A acts with B.

And that's a good thing!

Because C might not want the same things as B, so trying to treat them both the exact same is a surefire way to make sure someone isn't getting their needs met, and that will lead to conflict.

Polyamory isn't striving for equality between partners but rather equity.

What are your individual needs, and how do I meet them, as well as meet the needs of my other partner(s)? What do you want from the larger relationship as a whole? How do we accommodate everyone without making someone feel neglected or uncomfortable? How do we show this in the narrative? How do we make sure character A isn't just treating B the same as C in every interaction? Do they ever fall into that pitfall? How do they remedy it?

It seems like common sense when you write it out like that, but it's a major pitfall I see time and time again. The characters never alternate their approach between partners, if there's any focus on the individuals at all.

The other major telltale thing I've noticed is that taking time to be with one partner is seen as a step down from the "goal" of the greater polycule.

The narrative is framed in such a way that they might start out with individual dates, but the end goal of the romance is to eventually be together 100% of the time all the time, and wanting individual time alone with any one partner is somehow "lesser."

Which is the goal of romance in monogamy, but it's not the goal of romance in polyamory.

Granted, you do need to end on a Happy Ever After or Happy For Now for it to fit the genre requirement. And a nice way of tying that up is to have everyone together at the end as a happy polycule all together all at once. I'm not disputing that as a narrative tool. I'm just pointing out that there's a tendency to present those moments as the sum total of the relationship when in actuality, there are multiple relationships that need to end happily ever after.

The joy of polyamorous love is the joy of multitudes. It's the joy of experiencing new things, both as individuals and as a polycule. If you're not taking care of the individual dyads, however, your polycule is going to crash and burn. You cannot avoid that. So why, then, is there such avoidance of it in stories meant to appeal to us?

Is it simply inexperience on behalf of the author? Or is it that they're not actually being written for us? Is it continued pressure to meet certain genre beats in a largely monogamous-centric genre? All of the above?

Either way, I'm having fun playing around with it and doing all the things we were warned against in the publishing house.

I'm having fun with Nathan and Vlad enjoying their own private dynamic that is theirs and theirs alone. I'm having fun with Ursula and Nathan being so careful and vulnerable around each other. I'm absolutely 100% here for the chaos of Vlad and Ursula without a chaperone. And I'm here for the chaos of Vlad and Ursula together and Nathan's fond, loving eye roll as he trails after them, too enamored to tell either of them no because where would the fun in that be...

Anyway. Don't mind me. Just getting my thoughts out while everyone else is in bed.