#and messing up along the way

[skeleton-in-a-hoodie]

Ageswap Leo and Yoshi's relationship drives me a insane. Putting this under a readmore cause it's quite long. Some spoilers for ageswap below:

Just, there's so much love there. Leo loves the bones of that kid and would do whatever he had to in order to keep his nephew safe. He'd die if it meant Yoshi had the chance to live. (Yoshi does not want his uncle to sacrifice himself. He'd actually never forgive Leo if he died for him - he wants his uncle to live.)

But that doesn't mean as!Leo didn't mess up and that he didn't hurt Yoshi without meaning to.

From being small, Yoshi knew that he was Leo's heir. It's hard growing up in a warzone knowing that if the slightest thing goes wrong you'll lose one of your parents and suddenly all their responsibility will be left to you (Raph, Donnie and Mikey wouldn't just dump all Leo's baggage on Yoshi, but being the head of the Hamato Clan did not appeal to this kid when he was 8.) That's so much responsibility, and if it's hard for a turtle teen, it's just as hard for a rat teen.

And Leo tries to prepare Yoshi as best he can for the day he takes over. Leo hopes that'll be a long, long time in the future, but there at war and stuff happens. So Yoshi gets extra training, whilst his sisters play and watch tv, he sits with Leo and goes over strategy. There are chess games, which Yoshi enjoyed a lot less when he realised what it was training him for. Leo thought it'd be a nice, child friendly way to introduce Yoshi to important concepts. He won't throw his nephew in at the deep end.

(He's good at chess, and learns to quickly think he way through sticky situations. But he never wants to have to think of Mayday, June or Shadow as being pawns or bishops. They're his sisters. He can't help but wonder if it's possible to change the game.)

He can't mess up. He has to be perfect. Has to know all the rules, how to break them, how to shift the fight into his favour, to know what to lose a battle so he can win the war.

(It's so much.)

(It's too much.)

(Not his sisters. Not his uncles or aunt. Not their friends.)

(Please please not his family.)

Yoshi pours all his free time into training. Leo is both proud and relieved to see Yoshi is a fast learner. Sometimes the turtle will joke to his brothers, April or Casey that they can hardly keep up with him. Lessons that were supposed be last a month are covered in a week. He thinks if they train Yoshi well enough, he'll be able to weather whatever storm the universe throws at him.

(Yoshi's so gifted! He might be a progidy! He'll be safer!)

(He has nothing else.)

(He has to keep them all safe. He's already lost his mother and brother.)

(Not his family, not his family, please not his family.)

There's meditation too. He struggles with that at first - there's so much to think about, so much responsibility and he's still a child - but it's nice to have some quiet time, where he can let go and exist in the space between his thoughts.

And the visions start early. Nightmares, mostly. No one realises what they are until the end of the ageswap space arc, when Raph flips through their then 4 year old nephew's drawing and finds horrible monsters on every page. The drawings a crude, he's only a small child, but Raph recognises the shark, the scorpians, the ice dragons. Yoshi hadn't gone to space with his aunt and uncles. The child has a habit of dating his drawings, and each is from before they got back.

(The one that disturbs Raph the most is all metal and glowing red eyes. At first he thought it might be Tokka, but no, that's not right.)

(The red eyed, armoured monster keeps appearing in Yoshi's worst nightmares.)

Leo can't help Yoshi here. He's trained all his life for a similar sensitivity. Mikey and April both have it, and are both more skilled with it, so they take over Yoshi's training in this department. But he's always open to Yoshi talking to him about it!

(His uncle has so much going on already. Yoshi doesn't want to bother him with imaginary monsters. And as he gets older, he thinks he's too older to tell his family about nightmares anyway.)

And as the war with the Kraang continues to ramp up, more responsibility is given to him. He helps June look after their sisters.

(He's the third child, but he's also their future clan leader, so he feels he has to).

Yoshi even starts helping Shadow with her training, which takes some of the load of his uncles. Leo is so proud of his nephew, barely 12 and already training his own student.

(He's parenting his 6 year old sister. He won't complain. Shadow deserves a proper childhood).

Leo loves Yoshi and does everything he can to prepare him. Leo tried so hard.

And Yoshi adores his uncle! Won't hear a word against him.

But there's also momumental expectations, and resentment, and Yoshi feeling that his childhood was forfeit for his sisters, and knowing his uncle did not know what he was doing with him, and not knowing how to say he needs help and he's scared, so scared.

(The older Yoshi gets, the more the red eyed monster appears in his dreams. And when he's 14, he starts dreaming of fire and a woman screaming and someone dressed in amour that imitates the red eyed monster's. He wakes from each dream clutching his abdomen.)

They love each other, but that doesn't mean mistakes weren't made

But they love each other, so they're willing to work together to put the broken peices back together again

[evgar]

kiss of death

graphite and watercolors on paper

[haunted-xander]

Well, I guess you didn't have much of a choice either

[maxipad33]

daniel ricciardo color study. it was very fun experimenting with new techniques! some chromatic aberration in this one adds to the dream-like quality, hopefully it comes across

[firstprinced]

in other words: foreplay

[partiallypoison]

sometimes i see flames and sometimes i see the people that i love dying

[shandzii]

got my hands on after effects sdfgh original version under cut

I still think this is pretty

[turtleblogatlast]

No but like every time I think about Splinter and what he had to go through just to keep the boys alive, my heart hurts for him so badly. Is he perfect? No not at all, but none of them are and by god does he love his sons.

The fact that all of them are alive, and grew to thrive despite the circumstances surrounding them is a testament of how much Splinter loves his boys. He raised four babies following the most traumatic time of his life, all alone with nothing but the sewers to house them (to hide them.) I feel like he’s not given the credit he deserves for all he’s done.

And I get that it’s easy to hold up his flaws and faults when it comes to parenting, I myself like looking into them because flawed characters are super interesting and said flaws make them more realistic and engaging, but he tries, and again, so many others would have given up on the boys or failed along the way but Splinter didn’t.

He’s their father, for all his faults he did his damndest to make sure they survived.

[lunaryhues]

Me: "Can I please use all this energy to draw on an actual project"

My brain: "You will draw the same character over and over and you will like it."

Me: "Okay."

[not-with-you-but-of-you]

Forgive me, Jess, please know that I tried To hold on to the days When you were mine

— requested by @emmafallsinlove

[ch1zzie]

The original in the bottom

Plus the picture I mainly drew but decided to draw the rest for funny

[pirateddee]

fish post,,, scream if u love roblox pressure

[daemon-in-my-head]

As much as some of the stuff in Realms lore is messed up or has some very clear very outdated views on shit, the way they wrote evil cults and their motivations is actually pretty nice nd I'll give em that.

Like we've got Shar, lady of loss, who appeals to all those people who experienced something unimaginable and want to forget that experience.

Bane, a self made guy, who appeals to all those who came to resent the status quo nd were made to feel powerless, who's cult establishes the idea that everyone can become the game master and rise as long as they're dedicated enough but also gives excuses to the already powerful for abusing their power.

Myrkul who appeals to people in a similar way Shar does, but he has and grants the ability to reverse the loss. Reunite with those you lost before you arrive in the afterlife yourself. Don't fear death because your life will continue the same way it was before even if you die. Basically my guy offers a solution to the whole being afraid of death bit

But the most fucked up one is arguably Bhaal, who targets a very spefic group of people that deem life to be hopeless and death to be the better choice, and introduces them to the idea that this warped mindset is a fact and by killing someone you show them mercy and you can become their hero.

Like these are definitely not the healthiest claims those cults make, and any 'normal' individual would look at u like u have issues if you presented these ideas to them. Still, for a (not very) small group of people, these thoughts validate them in their feelings and struggles and offer a twisted understanding. And that is why recruitment works, and these definitely not-so-nice cults manage to survive and thrive at times. Because they very purposefully target individuals that could be easily manipulated if offered nothing more than some sort of understanding or recognition, and then they built on that. Very much like real life cults did and do in order to establish themselves and gain following.

Like very much fucked up but I can see very well why these cults work, why people join them and how they manage to manipulate their followers into blind loyalty and going above and beyond. The gods they serve and their lil libraries nd stuff may be dorky at times but the cults themselves are nothing besides absolutely terrifying. 11/10 no notes.

[kizukiti]

hey hi hello!! fun fact I'm actually obsessed with CSD and it gives me so so so much brain rot

he's been plaguing my mind for weeks

Celestial Sundown au by @pillowspace !!! pspsps go check it out if you haven't yet!!!

[solargeist]

they made him study a lot, train, not sleep, and didn’t give him any glasses . It was immediately hell on ice

[flurry-of-beaus-pop-pop]

Listen.

I want that Agathario flashback content, I really do, but I *need* some kind of resolution between them in the present.

Despite recent events, I am still holding out hope that at the end of the day, this story is going to be about Agatha, that it's going to be about accepting Nicholas's death and being able to finally move on and a major part of that is Rio... in order to accept Nicholas's death, she also has to accept that Rio was just doing their job.

These two so clearly still have so much love for each other buried under all that grief and pain and anger and I just really need that to be acknowledged. Even if they have to go their separate ways and go on their own path for a little while, that's okay, as long as there is some sort of resolution that makes it clear they both have someone to come back to, no matter what.