#and vanishing acts

[fairytalesofforever]

hey have you ever thought about how inej describes kaz's hands as being for making things vanish? how one of his classic magic tricks is making things disappear? how she describes her trauma response/dissociation as vanishing? how she is the Wraith and it is her greatest skill to disappear?

how we can imply from this that she feels like a) kaz's touch will trigger her and make her vanish and b) he only values her for that skill?

but how, the one thing he does, every time, is see her? is not let her disappear? is ask her, multiple times, to stay? is tell her, "don't slip away from me?"

"but it's what I do best."

[thebrainrotsreal]

Was pondering how Mark’s rigid ass mask/lens is prob a Budget Thing (since squishy, bendy lens are pretty much a mandate for all hero animated series, like JL, BTAS, TNBA, Spider-Man, etc), and then I was slapped with a vision of Mark in a more JL/BTAS-ish style and I had to see it through. I am a genius btw.

[egophiliac]

Hi it's just to let you know that the official romanization of Revaan's name is Raverne ! Also they have romanized Baul's name to Baur !

Twst coming back at us again with the least expected romanization! thank you everybody (oh god my inbox) (no it's great, I literally asked for this and the reactions have been INCREDIBLE, thank you all!)

I do like Raverne though, I think it's got a nice fancy sound to it! (I had kinda suspected it was going to be an R instead of an L, so the fact that it's SO close to Laverne except for that is hilarious to me personally.) and Dragoneye Duke is honestly probably the best translation for his title, I wasn't envying the localizers that one. :') Baur instead of Baul I was NOT expecting, but in retrospect I think his name's supposed to be a reference to the Bauru crocodile, so that actually makes way more sense!

someone else also said Meleanor has become Maleanor, which is the REALLY weird one to me, because I was so surprised it was written as Mel instead of Mal in the first place?! oh god no I can't decide which one I like better. 😭 (I wonder if they might change it to Mal...they have made romanization changes before) (like I remember House of Distraction being corrected to House of Destruction in Playful Land) (I did check and she's still Mel for now, but I dunno, they might Mal her up and some point and save me from having to make a decision about which one to use) (HECK I CAN'T DECIDE)

uhhhh thank you for letting me ramble about anime names, let's just say MONOGRAMMED SWEATERS FOR EVERYONE

[arte-na-box]

I beseech your forgiveness through the goobers (clear version below)

[homosexualworkaccount]

Someone get Christian Linke off the mic please im begging

[woundgallery]

Ana Mendieta

[ultaiswrong]

Gift for @sharkylass :)

[discordiansamba]

au in which azula's captain doesn't let it slip that zuko and iroh are prisoners and they make it all the way back to the fire nation- where ozai promptly arrests them both for treason and imprisons them separately. iroh is sent to the capital prison, while zuko gets sent to the boiling rock.

or: zuko's already been there for awhile when suki shows up. plenty of time to cool his heels and start a redemption arc. things are tense between them at first, given the fact that the last time they met, zuko set suki's village on fire but eventually, they wind up as both friends and partners in crime.

also: mai returns to the fire nation upon hearing that zuko's been arrested for treason and uses her connection to the warden to frequently visit him in prison, and together they both realize some things about zuko's family and the fire nation as a whole.

but also: sokka sneaks into boiling rock in hopes that he'll find his father there. instead he finds suki and... wait. is that prince zuko?

[brown-bear-64]

Honestly the best way I can describe the 2nd season of Arcane is written by extremely competend writers who bit off way more than they could chew. Especially in that short of a timeframe.

It's possible that it was a higher up decision for future League shows, but the focus on the Black Rose & magic worldbuilding took away focus from the core cast and the narrative of 2 cities/sisters opposed to one another. They desperately needed at least 3 more episodes

The writers are competent, but they made some deliberate choices I don't like and pulled focus from things I believe they should've left in focus. It feels like the entire narrative of the show got changed between seasons, and maybe it was always the intention and I should rewatch the entire show front-to-back without a massive hiatus in-between them for me to get it, but from my current standing... It could've been more, and the things that they did focus on and give time to were really good. It's just that the show lost its priorities and primary narrative along the way

[geisterzeit-art]

Who else up losing their minds about this “reunion”

[pensivespacepirate]

penumbra pod has NO RIGHT making me feel 10 million layers of heartbreak in a goddamn tesco

[mohntilyet]

i’m having illario dellamorte thoughts. what if instead of knowingly betraying lucanis he did it like, unknowingly. idk how this would work but i’m intrigued by what it gives us. illario ‘i accidentally caused my cousin’s death & can never tell anyone’ dellamorte. genuinely grieving. blaming himself. does he take advantage of the year before lucanis comes back?? does caterina still ignore him the whole time?? how different is the canon plotline once rook shows up with lucanis post-rescue…..

anyways i would love your thoughts!!

95% of what i do with illario operates on the idea that he is frighteningly competent so you can see why the way the crows plotline plays out in the game might frustrate me. it’s also this reason why i don’t actually think too much about “illario got lucanis killed, but didn’t mean to do it”, because i like the idea that everything illario does in his life is planned to the second and that he’s too well trained to mess up this badly, if that makes sense. with that being said. 5% of my brain power does sometimes go towards “and what if he just sucked actually” and it was a theory i enjoyed before the game even released. so i have in fact been thinking about this anyway LOL . maybe he tries to honeypot zara, accidentally actually reveals lucanis’ next assassination job, and zara gets rid of him as a ‘gift’. illario is horrified and that gets even worse when lucanis’ body shows up, and he assumes this must be because he spurned zara by leaving her and not having the guts to seize power.

i think we could make his inferiority complex worse. illario’s worst fear confirmed: he is as worthless as his grandmother believes he is, botching something so badly that he accidentally sentences his cousin to death when what he wanted was lucanis just… out of the way for a bit (maybe while he kills caterina. LOL. i still think his resentment of caterina trumps his jealousy for lucanis though those two things are very intertwined its hard for him to differentiate them). so incapable that he got the only person who actually supports him killed, and now he’s dreading the idea of becoming first talon. he doesn’t want first talon without lucanis backing him, and now the only person left is caterina which is suffocating and makes him even unhappier. at least he hadn’t lived through her alone, and now through consequences of his own decisions, illario has no choice but to.

i think that would affect his plans for talon because of how horribly he’d fucked up, and tries to mask it because if he suddenly actually doesn’t want to be talon that would be a red flag for everyone. lucanis coming back would delight him (talon is within his sights again if lucanis comes back!) and freak him out. i think the plotline would actually be pretty similar because of this freak out, so he still shows up to zara’s fight to cover his tracks. lucanis can never know, caterina can never know, because what little faith they have in him will be lost. like he committed fratricide and didn’t even MEAN to😭 ...corpse whispering still happens, and zara is like “ohhh that coward. he can never finish what he started, can he?” + “elaborate.” + “i gave him what he most wanted in the world and instead of being grateful, he ran away.” so lucanis finds out about what happened but feels a mix of “illario, you idiot” + pity because turns out he didn’t even mean for it to happen, and keeps his secret for now, otherwise he’d probably have to kill him.

i also think not meaning to kill lucanis would sour his feelings towards the venatori, who are a reminder of how badly he failed, so the alliance wouldn’t happen. this does mean if the story goes on as it does in canon, he has to take desperate measures another way and kidnap caterina for some other reason but i can’t think of why….. maybe a thing where illario is like “ok. lucanis is distracted by the elven gods. this time i just have to kill nonna for real and then nothing is in my way” and recruits disgraced houses or houses that don’t like caterina to do so? not sure tbh but i don’t believe caterina made it so far without making enemies lol. this would happen post bloodbath + corpse whispering— lucanis leaves his cousin unchecked because while he knows illario didn’t mean for him to die, he has no idea how far he would go to have caterina dead. teia could find out about this and send word to foil the kidnapping and assassination attempt

so ‘murder of crows’ is still about saving caterina, the illario-lucanis fight still happens, but it’s a little more hesitant and lots of “why won’t you just let me kill her? i’m doing this for the both of us”. he’s had to live with being the un-favorite, but never would have thought lucanis would actually pick caterina if it came down to it. with all of his missteps here, i think the final decision (and i think it should be like this in canon anyway) would be to imprison illario or kill him. imprisoning him is just a lot of “i can’t kill illario as much as he couldn’t kill me”, vs killing him as is expected from him as talon, and what he knew he would have to do after finding out about illario's failures. unlike canon, where illario is actually meaning to kill him and can be seen as a 'good crow' despite the sloppiness, here he's like. just bad at everything. the allied traitor houses that went against caterina would also have to be imprisoned or killed. no happy ending at all here, and lucanis still becomes first talon. now that i’ve written it out this is actually probably the worst ending LOL

the above sticks a lot to what is canon to the game (plot points, choices, etc) and i didn’t go very far away from it so it's like canon 3 inches to the left. tho my thoughts on this are not fleshed out* because i think illario works better as an antagonist character that sets things in motion !! not necessarily the villain in a cain-abel story, but a character who opposes lucanis while still not wanting to hurt him. that kind of discipline where he finds a way to get what he wants (first talon) without compromising what he also cares for (family) is so much more fun for me than a man who apparently just loses it and decides to enact a bad plan to get rid of his cousin. if he waited 20+ years to become talon i think he’d be more careful when it came down to it. if i had my way illario would be playing insane 5d chess to rival solas (insert black sails “i once thought that to lead, to be liked was just as good as feared. and that may very well be true. but to be both liked and feared all at once, is an entirely different state of being.”)

[boombox-fuckboy]

Don't know anyone here? Pick one and go listen!

Am I missing your favourite? Are they from a comedy? Let me know!

Am I worried Rudyard might skew the results? A bit, yeah, he's well-known. But I don't know enough comedy podcasts to exclude him, so he's getting listed twice instead.

[lost-daughter]

[woundgallery]

Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Untitled, 1966, gelatin silver print on paper

[tabloidweather]

28 January 2025

Forecast!!!! WINTER HAS VANISHED FROM THE SOUTH