#and the direction that took

[rivilu]

In other news I will not be respecting a single Word of God from the da writers and will be actively rewriting shit to suit my whims if I actually play the game after all. Hell- I'll disregard canon text for meta reasons if I damn so feel like it. You condescend longtime fans and dismiss 2 thirds of your franchise as irrelevant? Ok! I will simply ignore the timeskip, not listen to a single word your little writers pet has to say and hopefully murder him instantly if given the option. Nevermind my rook concept i'm this close to just remaking my Hof with a fake mustache, call him Bahariel and treat this whole thing as a fucking joke.

[demi-pixellated]

Shadow's No Good, Very Bad Day

[greghatecrimes]

If Thirteen is "man of the house (firstborn daughter)", then Chase is "eldest daughter (firstborn son)"

[rendevok]

Act I ~ The Prince

A tapestry for Let No One Sleep by @azalawa-scroggs on ao3

[egophiliac]

what do you think malleus has been doing this entire time during his long absence

honestly it's kinda...mushy...how much time has actually passed in-universe, since all the dreams seem to run differently and we've been popping in and out all over the place. so I think chances are it hasn't been that long for him, and he's still getting the run-around from Lilia!

(just let Malleus destroy everything in order to trap you in an eternal dreamworld like a normal person, gosh)

[screambirdscreaming]

Something that peeves me whenever I see another post going around with some variation on "autistic people take things literally which means we are the only people who communicate Clearly and Directly" is that - for any given statement, there is not one singular, agreed on, universal Literal Interpretation. If there was, none of this would be a problem!

The nature of language is that there's always some degree of interpretability. Words have several different meanings, often overlapping, and there's nuance of context, cultural references, and so on.

Faced with a statement, most people will quickly come up with an interpretation that to them makes the most sense. But if you asked a roomful of people to explain in detail their interpretations, everyone's would probably be a little different, even for a pretty simple statement. Regardless of whether those people are autistic! Everyone conceptualizes the world a little differently, and everyone has a unique personal history of all the language they've encountered, and these things effect our interpretations.

In order for communication to be workable, given this slosh in interpretability, there's another couple of processes that go on. As conversation goes on, people reassess if their initial interpretation matches up with additional context. If it doesn't, they revise it, or ask clarifying questions. And on the flipside of this process, the other person in conversation is tracking if your reactions make sense with *their* understanding of what they're trying to convey to you, and offering context or rephrasing things if it seems you're out of alignment.

These processes are social skillsets that are, like most social skillsets, not ever directly articulated or explained. Many people are bad at one or both. Sometimes you encounter someone who is really, notably good at it - the vaunted "good listener", who puts in the effort to really understand what you're trying to say, or that really excellent teacher who engages with you back and forth until you really get it. But a lot of the time, it's a sort of passive social friction - people just not getting each other.

Sometimes, you encounter someone whose brain works so much like yours that talking to them feels almost effortless - you just get each other. But that's a pretty rare occurrence for anyone. More often, as you get to know someone, you start to understand the shape of the way they interpret things and learn to account for it, so over time it's easier to make sense to each other.

It's honestly not uncommon in society for people to aggregate in groups of people who interpret things similarly, and who are thus easier to talk to, rather than actually building the skills of communicating across interpretation gaps. Particularly egregious are those groups of men who talk about Women as an incomprehensible monolith, but it turns up to a greater or lesser degree on a lot of levels.

I suspect this is the root of a lot of parenting problems - people who have never built this communication skillset, and relied on choosing friends who make sense to them without a lot of effort, and who are then totally unprepared to interact with a child who interprets things in ways they don't expect.

Obviously I can't speak to The Universal Typical Experience, not least because it doesn't exist. But in general I would posit that:

Most people, give or take a few assholes, are not trying to say things that are confusing. Most people think they are communicating clearly, because the first interpretation *they* would come up with on hearing one of their own sentences is the correct interpretation.

Many people are not very good at accounting for different ways people could interpret things they're saying. However, it is normal and polite social behavior to be somewhat flexible about this and forgiving of misunderstandings. If people are being shitty to you about not understanding them, they are assholes. And I wouldn't assume that the rest of the communication they have with everyone else they know goes totally smoothly for them.

I suspect there is a bit of an unfortunate feedback loop, where people have bad experiences when someone gets mad at them for not getting something, and learn to hide when they're confused. Which then leads to larger, more complicated misunderstandings, which other different people get upset at them about, because those people think they should have asked for clarification in the first place.

Truly you can't win with everyone. No one can win with everyone. There is no monolith of "neurotypical communication" which resolves all these contradictions - all those people you're lumping in together under "neurotypical" have just as much trouble with each other.

[nionom-art]

Do you have an ideas for a Shadybug and Claw noir version of Coccinelle and Lady noir?

It’s finally here!

They absolutely loath each other and refuse to work together. Ever.

[ruvigapo]

Run boy run!! The sex monsters eat salmon!!

In which i arrive Fashionably Late to the fishssek party

[macdenlover]

gender bent always sunny gang because i can’t get them out of my head

(heavily inspired by @bananabirch’s designs <3 major credz to them)

[harmonysanreads]

Thinking of that bath fic and I feel like Phainon would be the type to also touch you with cold feet or hands when you’re trying to sleep in order to tease you, and not let you move when you want to flinch away because he’s either being a little shit or cause he’s too clingy

Previously.

You were but a step away from melting into the curtain of darkness behind your eyes, a duvetyne cradle that reached out to embrace you — yanked away from it's grasp with a touch that made your whole soul flinch.

You were nowhere near a water source, but the breath you found yourself inhaling felt as if you've been drowning. There's a heat in your cheeks, you realize as the skin comes into the presence of a cool palm, easing you back to reality with its firm grip.

From beyond the veil of blur, you hear something like a chuckle. You turn your head towards the right, eyes getting acquainted with the shadows to realize the source of the smile.

It doesn't even take more than a second for your sleep stricken mind to connect the dots, brows pinching together and a wave of exasperation washing by your face to form a grave frown — Phainon's amusement vanishes quicker than you're capable of blinking.

“Whoa— hold on hold on!” you don't even get to swing one leg out of the side of the bed before he's got a grasp on you, instinct trained by a paranoia you are no stranger to.

“Phainon! Let me go!” you feel his flinch travel to your skin from the insistent grip around your waist. You know that he knows he's screwed up severely by now. He should abide by your order and a part of you gets coated in confusion by the way he ignores it instead, dragging you towards him till you're all but enveloped by him him him.

“I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry...” his mumbles sink into your shoulder, both arms clasped tight around your waist.

You crane your neck behind in an attempt to see his face, futile it turns out to be in front of him getting comfortable in the crook of your neck. “You of all people should know how much I hate being disturbed in my sleep. Do you think you deserve to be forgiven?”

There's a shiver in his nerves, you may not be able to see what expression he's making, but you know you've temporarily robbed him off his breath. Just as you need not see it to understand what goes through his head, he also requires not his sense of sight to picture what look you're giving him.

“I'm sorry, I couldn't see your face clearly and thought you were still awake. The curtains are closed so —” a sharp pinch to his arm shuts down his vagaries. You know it actually didn't hurt at all, he's simply memorized all your non-verbal cues by heart.

You try to twist out of his grasp and this time he clamps down with enough force to knock you out — almost. You blink, stilling in place meeting this desperation again. It was simply a feeling moments ago, but now you're certain there is more to this.

“Phainon...” you call out, careful to only sound stern and not venomous. A whimper rattles your ribcage, convincing you to abandon all anger altogether.

Using what little leverage you have, you try to turn around to face the Hero — understanding that you were not trying to run this time, he lets you. He clings to stubbornness for a bit longer though, keeping his head bowed. You gather his face in your hands, nudging him up.

“Goodness...” you thumb away a tear rolling down, mind blanking in the face of this predicament.

“I'm sorry...” it rings in your head, “I... I was actually checking... if you were still breathing...”

You catch his fall just in time, holding his head steady. Your eyes flit over the streams of pain cascading down his cheeks, his unsteady breaths, the way his fingers still cling to your clothes and you can't even remember why you were angry before.

You free him from your grip and gather him close. Phainon seizes the invitation, practically falling in your arms. You can already feel the fabric around chest dampening from his waterworks, but you can't bring yourself to mind. With some maneuvering, you manage to free one hand to tangle it in his snow white tresses, soothing down the stress in their roots. For a man that usually towers over most, he appeared so... tiny in that moment that it ached in your heart.

He pushed closer still, as if envying even the air that managed to sneak in between you two and you knew, that was just the beginning.

[vantavarmint]

I think part of what makes the Netflix show so frustrating is the fact that there's definitely blind spots in the original lore that could allow for a deeper discussion on a demon's capability for love and goodness, but the show itself just did not seem interested in actually exploring those ideas.

I've seen some posts going around about how demons not being inherently evil was already established in the games, and I think that is true. The gameverse has a bit of a strange philosophy when it comes to demons and their capacity for good. On one hand, the original two games act as though the only way for a demon to be good is to actively distance themselves from their demonic heritage.

Dante telling Trish and Lucia that "devil's never cry" actually feeds into the idea that demons are inherently evil and that they aren't actually demons because they are capable of goodness. In those games, this is played straight. However, in later entries, they seem to recognise this for what it actually is - the rhetoric of a man who is projecting his own self loathing in regard to his demonic half onto the people in his life who are dealing with similar problems.

Vergil and his core beliefs around demonic power being the only thing to keep him safe when human fragility failed him is the first time Dante is forced to confront a flaw in his worldview. Vergil is technically correct in that their heritage is what has kept the two of them alive up until that point and that in order for Dante to stop his brother and Arkham, he'd need to embrace that power too. Dante seems to internalise this as the idea that his power needs to be used as a force for good - "with great power comes great responsibility," style, but still retains that he is good in spite of his demonic power.

Power in DMC is not inherently evil, the folly of the villains in the series is that they seek it to fill a hole that should have been filled with love instead. On some level, Dante recognises this, but is often too burdened by his self loathing that he has a hard time excepting and seeking out love himself.

In contrast, Nero is able to acknowledge what is truly important to him, allowing himself to be vulnerable when he gives and receives love, while also fully embracing his demonic side and the power it gives him. V also has a similar revelation, although his is just as much about learning to love life itself and rediscovering passions so he can have a better coping mechanism that isn't more power.

These core character arcs clearly indicate that the reason humanity is seen as morally superior in the games is their willingness to love and willingly give. To gain more out of life than just power (it's also what makes the power hungry human villains so evil, they want to throw away what makes them human for the chance at being powerful). Whereas demonic power means that demons live in a perpetually dog-eat-dog world where there is no incentive to love or create, you can only ever take. But when demons like Trish are given the chance to grow from that, they are just as capable of love as any human.

This then opens up for the line of questioning, well, if environmental factors are what's making demons so power hungry, then wouldn't exploring how being shut off from the opportunity to grow in the human world be a valid idea for the Netflix adaptation to explore? It could have been! Genuinely!

However, the writers were not interested in exploring that concept, not really. The need to fit established DMC lore into the shape of a narrative about the War on Terror and the otherization of Arabic people means that those ideas couldn't be expanded upon. Making your fantasy race an analogue to a real minority group severely limits what kind of narratives you can tell.

This is often the problem central to the fantasy racism trope. Because it's a direct reference to a real group of people who's only actual differences from anyone else is appearance and culture, any discussion of how physiological differences may impact the way they live and experience the world very quickly become a minefield.

The demons in the games are often one of a kind or a species with entirely alien biological incentives, trying to make them seem like their way of life would be no different from the average human is actively contradictory and just plain boring. It's part of why the demons that were taken from the game look so out of place compared to their more human shaped counterparts.

There is the potential in examining a demon's ability to love in the gameverse version of the lore, and it wouldn't have been a problem for the anime to explore that. That sort of exploration would have had to focus on how love can come in many forms, how a fundamentally different way of perceiving the world around you doesn't mean your perspective isn't valid. However, because demons are an exact reference to a real minority groups now, making them out to be more than superficially different to any other human is risking a lot.

So that's the crux of the issue for me. I think trying to force the demons from the game lore into a human shaped hole is a terrible idea. Hell, if they were desperate to make the US government into the big bad then there would have been precedent for it. DMC2 and DMC4 both concern powerful groups in society abusing demonic power for personal gain, the idea that a government would do the same isn't too dissimilar in my opinion.

To be honest, I feel a lot of the criticism of the anime has only been scratching at the surface of the actual problems so far. I'd appreciate it if the pre-existing fandom could recognise where problems existed in the source material before jumping to complaining about the adaptation, even if there is a lot to complain about...

[so0ppa]

some deep space discounts fanart. becaus . the hype. got to me. EP 1 IN LIKE 5 HOURS UAGH >_< :3c

[jmr-observingfromafar]

ngl Matangi in Moana 2 was kinda gay. like just a little gay. i mean my girl is a "crazy cat bat lady", calls Moana "babe" twice in her song (the way i audibly gasped in the theater when i heard it lol), and is like sooooo queer coded i love it sm. she just gives off the vibes of sapphic-coded older woman who's played as suave and confident and makes the mc just go "haguphuk" and we all know if this was old disney they would've leaned so hard into that. but i could not have been the only one to keep catching Matangi poking her buttons, the hand on her chin in one scene, just being a total fucking vibe like please i know what you are. that whole scene felt real gay and don't think im leaving Moana out of this one. she is gay, i don't make the rules. i'm stickin with this hc no one can stop me from making Matangi the cool lesbian aunt and NO ONE will stop me from turning Moana gay (Auli'i Cravalho knows what she's doing)

ok im gonna be so real for a second i was simping HARD over Moana's character design in this movie.... like even more than baby me was dying during the first one... like this girl is just- oh my gosh. baby-gay me from 8 years ago would have actually DIED if she'd seen this Moana. it's almost embarrassing how down bad i was during that movie like she's so fucking pretty i wasn't ready for her design. like girls are just too much sometimes, i cant cope .

also side tangent but the lazy ass rewrite of Moana 2 from its planned version as a Disney+ series into a freaking MOVIE was just- so painfully obvious. like they didn't even try reworking it. the structure of the whole movie is painfully episodic and it was just so blatantly shoved into movie format without any care for the integrity of basic movie versus tv structure, so the char dev and pacing was just so rough. like what were the writers even thinkingggg. pretty disappointing but that's ok i have the fandom to make me feel better (moana fan art save me....)

[nothingbizzare]

Look at yourself

[mellosdrawings]

Love your wingau out of curiosity if Leona and vil was in this au what kind of wings would they have?

Vil is the Black Swan to Neige's White Swan. I know I could've gone for peacock since Pomefiore has a lot of peacock details, but I thought the Black/White Swan story was better. (Though the Black Swan would've fit Neige best for the intuitive facet of it while the White Swan would've fit Vil better for the hard working version of it, buuuuut... anyway.)

Leona is an Andean Condor. They are birds of prey with one of the biggest wingspan on earth (even bigger than Jamil's white tailed eagle by a whole meter)

[lesbianralzarek]

wyll's #1 sexual fantasy: being loved for who he is and assured that hes enough, even without his blade of frontiers persona

wyll's #2 sexual fantasy: being choked out by a minotaur