#anyway here they are. take them. enjoy

[cypric-rat-hyperfixation]

2y/o art I never posted lmao

✨Reblogs✨ > likes > murder > reposting w/out credit

I do not consent to having my work fed to machine learning programs!

[lucabyte]

On autonomy, and what it means to be Obliged to Help.

Bonus:

[hootyhoowoo]

A little 15 min doodle but first post of the year has to be Bingqiu!

[acornered]

I've never really self-identifed as butch because my style sensibility leans more toward effeminate gay man/eccentric grandparent but while my girlfriend was visiting, the clasps that held the shoulder strap of her handbag kept breaking (thanks temu), and finally I got fed up and fixed it by

a) wrenching off the old clasps with a pair of plyers and

b) replacing them with the only clasps I had on hand, which were 2 giant carabiners

and yeah, now that I think about it, that is incredibly butch lesbian behavior.

[disposal-blueeee]

VARGASTOBER - day 1 : memories

[kelocitta]

There is currently a rather large discussion ongoing about the RW fandom behavior, drama, etc. I am not going to talk about the specifics of whats happened for a number of reasons. But what I do want to say is that if at any point you've harassed people over it, whether that be through anon asks or public posts- you did nothing but damage the ability for people to correctly process what is happening. You contributed nothing but harm to an already delicate situation. It does not matter what "side" you were on and I will not tolerate further interaction with me or my work if I found out you did such. If you let your personal hate for anyone boil over into threats, wishes for long term harm and petty comments meant to contribute nothing but slander or mental distress for the individuals involved who were already distressed (or acting irrationally) you did nothing but make it harder for people to process their emotions, thoughts and behaviors constructively. Regardless of who you think was in the right, who fucked up, whatever. It doesn't matter if they deserved it, or earned it, or if its an eye for an eye. Its difficult enough as it is to think clearly when presented with any kind of stressful situation and heckling people does nothing but make it worse and harder for them to explain themself in any capacity. I don't want you anywhere near me if you think that is an acceptable way to act.

[shannonsketches]

Why is the anime so weird, it's not even the same series dude?? It's like,

Anime:

GOKU: I have a great idea to bring peace to the universe, and my leadership and compassion alone will unite us all. I have No Flaws and am A True Relatable Everyman :)

VEGETA: NO! I AM THE BEST AND I WILL CAUSE PROBLEMS UNTIL I AM RECOGNIZED AS SUCH!!!!

Manga:

GOKU: Vegeta what's cornmeal made of? I know it's what the corn eats, but what's it made of? VEGETA: Hey Kakarot let's play the quiet game until one of us dies.

[justablah56]

they're just silly to me ok guys

click for better quality bcs tumblr hates when I use normal sized canvases <3

[quins-makeshift-menagerie]

Cursed Chimera

[cyclogenesis]

Every Single Other Universe. Logan/Wade, post-Deadpool & Wolverine, Explicit. 12,470 words.

In which Wade and Logan and their variants are being hunted down by a hater from the Void and are thus tasked with hunting the hater back. Weirdly, all of their other variants are dating each other in their respective timelines. Does that seem meaningful to anybody else?

Read it on AO3!

[see-arcane]

Oh bitter bitter irony

Bile below

I started out afraid that Eggers would over-Coppola his Nosferatu--he didn't! :D--only to run into a growing dual tide of fans who are either

A) actively trying to Coppola his Orlok and Ellen into lash-batting forbidden romance bodice ripper cliches ("He backhanded Knock for daring to suggest he steal Ellen! uwu He brought a plague and attacked her loved ones just to be with her! uwu She clearly wanted to be with Orlok all along, fuck Jonathan Thomas, the useless stuffy loser! uwu Orlok just doesn't want her to deny herself! uwu Every word he says should be 100% taken at face value, he would never use the Classic Abuser Playbook to victim-blame his target into compliance, just do murders and choke slam her for saying she doesn't like him, ignore the long-distance repeated psychic rape since she hit puberty, it's fine it's fine uwu")

or

B) going full pearl-clutch about the very concept of Orlok being an icky evil unpretty mustached corpse monster (with all the abuse and assaults being tacked on in the aftermath to Prove~ this is Not a Proper Ken Doll Dracula)

like

guys. we're sinking into the deep ends of two very different nuance-free pools here

Yes, there is a disturbing fucked up but Actually There connection between Ellen and Orlok. There is attraction, there is a core spiritual likeness that led Orlok to her as a girl. But that does not obliterate the fact that he is monstrous to her and to everyone she cares about. He is a rapist. He is a manipulator. He abuses her and the covenant connection--which he point blank tricked her into without any warnings to what she was agreeing to as a teenager--for years. And then, when she dares to fall in love with and wed someone else, he throws a murder-tantrum until she agrees by her own will* (*under duress) to be his. Not his equal in anything but suggestion, but his property. His owed Affliction. And it is meant to be horribly fucked up that Ellen has even a thread of positive feeling for him, regardless of what supposed matching darkness she has in her. Just like many victims in her position will feel for their own sexual and romantic abusers.

This is not Count Gary Oldmanacula and Winonmina Harkryder. This is not star-crossed tragique kissy kissy Francis fanfiction. It does not call for mental gymnastics to take the fangs and blood and violation out, to excuse the monstrosity Eggers harvested from the actual source story or--and I am putting my head through the wall about this--taking anything Count Orlok says at face value when his entire MO, from the first assault on Teen Ellen to the trick document he makes Thomas sign to sell her away to the full spread of mind game horseshit he says to Ellen's face or puts in her mouth to puppeteer a fight between the Hutters, IS TO MANIPULATE AND ABUSE EVERYONE AROUND HIM

Fuck, even Knock got ripped off via Orlok's bullshitting and he made a literal full Faustian willing contract with him

And on the flip side:

Stop stop stop stop STOP wringing your hands over the presence of gothic horror monstrosity being in the gothic horror monstrosity film.

Bela Lugosi and Gary Oldman? They looked impressive. They looked charming and elegant and polished and, obviously, iconic. The legion of pressed and bleached and chiseled Dracula Lites after them, less so. But they are pretty!

And none of them have looked like the Count who Bram Stoker made or what his inspirations would ever have recognized as a vampire or a boyar. Robert 'If I do not personally graft the actual time period of this movie into place with my own two hands I Will Die' Eggers actually did his research in putting his Orlok together and, being a Horror Film Writer and Director, actually remembered to put the horror into the famous vampire horror story.

Attraction, sensuality, romance, and assault all have their place in it too--it is Nosferatu: "Dracula, But the Focus is On a Dracula Trying to Make the World's Worst Nightmare Threesome Happen"

And, shock of shocks, in Murnau's film, as in Stoker's book, the main couple--Harkers, Hutters--have the loving couple intimately preyed on by the same monster. While Mina/Ellen ostensibly 'allow' themselves to be preyed on, in both scenes it's done out of a desire to protect Jonathan/Thomas from the Count.

Mina keeps silent and allows Dracula to feed on her and force-feed her his blood to kick off a magical enslavement-undeath, lest Dracula follow through on his threat to bash Jonathan's skull in

Ellen sends Thomas away and offers herself as bloodbag and bride to Orlok specifically to keep him from killing Thomas and finishing off all of Wisborg

Would these magically have become 'better' setups if only Count Dracula/Orlok were hunky clean-shaven bishounen sexyboi doms there to ~liberate xoxo~ the already-married already-fucking already-skirting the lines of propriety gender role-bending young woman?

Because if that's the case in your eyes, click here. Scroll on through almost 130 years' worth of film and TV and plays and books and a thousand other spinoffs where Dracula is perpetually sandblasted into your cape-swishing hickey-nibbling knockoffs of choice. All yours.

But for fuck's sake.

Let the gothic horror be gothic horror. Up to and including the monster being monstrous. Up to and including, yes, a deranged connection and magnetism between Pretty Girl and Actually Freaky-looking Undead Rat Man. Up to and including, yes, the Human Lover not being the starched and stuffy blandman there to be thrown in a ditch to let Girl and Sexy Monsterman who truly understands her~*~* get together, and instead be a genuine romantic partner who is as adamant in endangering himself to protect his beloved as she is for him.

tl;dr:

Stop trying to retroactively Coppola this movie and using 'haha but I'm a monsterfucker' to side step the fact that the villain here is a villain and is using the rule book of actual abusive relationships to gaslight his victim(s) in a very human, very gruesome way

Stop wailing that your personal diet vampire fetish is being sullied via the presence of a mustache, maggoty corpse pecs and the horror of the Count not being a GQ model

Just stop

[alongtidesoflight]

so here's my honest thoughts on dragon age: the veilguard, after ~40 hours of playing. i finished the main quest after having finished all companion quests and major faction quests. just to clear up what content i saw, i played as an elven transmasc rook who is a member of the lords of fortune. he romanced lucanis (although after finishing the game i'm now leaning towards taash). i don't know what's happening in playthroughs that have a different race, gender identity, romance or faction going on.

full spoilers ahead, i mean it. don't read further if you want to avoid them. i don't want complaining about it in my asks.

oh and also, if you're worried because of a few negative reviews online i can comfort you by saying don't give a fuck about a certain big name youtuber who is very much tied to bethesda franchises giving this a negative review. i'll explain why.

i'm starting off with the things i liked

the game looks really pretty. i was worried it wouldn't feel like thedas anymore (with them trying to "focus on northern thedas only" i thought they'd make a clear cut in environmental design. they do and they don't. it's complicated. i'll elaborate on it when talking about the negative stuff). anyway it does. minrathous feels like kirkwall. treviso enchanted me like the winter palace did. the hossberg wetlands reminded me of the hinterlands and a couple other inquisition maps. arlathan looked like... arlathan. the crossroads were different, but familiar. overall i like the way it looks and feels. it's thedas, with a twist. it's a good one, and gives everything a solid but unique feel.

combat is top tier. if you're a hardcore dragon age player you WILL miss the tactical aspect of it for a bit, but i promise you, once you're used to the way the combat works, you will be lapping that shit up. and once you get to ability combos you'll mourn the control you used to have over your companions in battle a bit less

the MAIN quest and its story. i expected worse, way worse. and for a while the game even had me tricked (harr harr you'll get it in a second) it is Really That Much Worse. but holy shit was it good. i walked away satisfied ngl.

your choices have SOLID weight. there's consequences, good AND bad. i got minrathous blighted, ruled over by venatori, and the leader of the shadow dragons ultimately died because of my decisions. i made those at the beginning and throughout the game. he died at the end. DAVRIN died because i didn't expect what i was saying to have that much weight. i thought i was in the clear. he had hero status. well turns out, your choices can still get your companions killed even if you do everything right. i fucking love him. he shouldn't have made that sacrifice just because i told him to do everything it takes once.

the inquisitor, morrigan and dorian being there, surprisingly. there's also negatives to this though, see below.

speaking of companions dying and the inquisitor playing a bigger role: the final quest feels like me2's suicide mission. i was blown away by it and the fact that i got to see the results of all my efforts playing out in front of me.

bioware are NOT trying to redeem solas. they love him as a character yes, but i wasn't forced to see any good in him. he betrays you. he fucked my rook over twice. he fucked him over right back, for good this time (the veil wasn't torn down, i anchored it by binding him to it, he's doomed to uphold it). but solas really lives up to his name as the trickster elven god. rip to all the people who grew really attached to him over the years.

varric died. if you like him that's probably as hard reading it as it was watching it. varric died and the game lies about it until the very end. when the realisation hits, it hurts. but in the very best way.

the amount of care they put into gender expression and trans identities this time around. (i'll add onto this with negative points as well too).

rook feels very much ingrained in the world of thedas. he doesn't ask questions that expose the player to lore through dialogue as if he's stepped foot into thedas for the first time. those conversations feel very solid and good. i hope other faction players got as much joy out of this as i did.

and the things i didn't like and boy there's a lot unfortunately

the music. let's just get that out of the way holy shit. it doesn't feel like it belongs in this universe. it gets so incredibly sci-fi-y at times you'd think it's taken straight from mass effect andromeda. there's not a single song unique to veilguard that i really enjoyed. it broke my immersion, real bad. hearing a busker play the tavern songs from inquisition on a lute right after i killed some venatori with wobbly bass songs playing in the background is just odd. weird tonal shift. don't like it. it's made for people who like flashy light-weight cinema.

tevinter nights is required reading. the podcasts are required listening exercises. the game is so fast paced, especially at the start, that there's no time to introduce you to characters and how much weight their names carry in-game. i would not have known who half these people are if i hadn't skimmed over tevinter nights. i'd care even less about them than i already did. there is no time to get properly attached to them. people will act as if you're talking to a legend personified and you'll be thinking man goddamn which chapter of tevinter night were they in again and what did they do???

there's a weird mismatch with the animations. you'll have beautifully fluid ones, like emmrich casting spells. and then you'll have rook's face animating in the most unnatural manner that's sorta reminiscent of mass effect andromeda's "my face is tired" addison, when their emotions SHOULD be landing with the player rn instead.

i'm not vibing with the art style. sometimes it works. most of the time it doesn't. at points i felt like i was watching tangled.

that also brings me to some of the dialogue. same issue. i am watching frozen. i am watching tangled. someone on the writer's team really likes the adorkable trope. bellara is its victim.

for all the talk about identity, bioware sure doesn't like theirs. the grey warden armor got a redesign again and it just makes them look like a generic army. i hate it lol

in general, i don't like the armor design. the wardrobe/appearances system is fine, but it's just not helping if all the armors are just... kinda bland or downight bad looking? and don't get me started on the lords of fortune armor. that is orientalism personified.

the world states should have been carried over, full stop. i know they said they didn't because they want to separate what happens in the north from what happens in the south, which... i could have lived with that. but the inquisitor sends you letters that keep you up to date on... the south of thedas. you learn that there's a blight again, that people are standing strong but it's difficult, denerim's fallen, the rulers are taking care of it, orlais is fighting and they're successful for a while, etc etc. what's good bioware. i thought we don't care about the south this time around. why are you feeding me so much boring generic information. if you're not gonna show any of it and just write letters, then carrying the world state over should not have been an issue. i have a game dev background. those few lines of code would not have broken your budget or pushed your engine's limits. fuck right off.

this gripe of mine carries over to all the cameos. as a lord of fortune you have to deal with isabela a lot. it's fun. i missed her. you get to go drinking with her and taash and bellara! also my hawke romanced her. she's not mentioned once. they had the opportunity to put a sentence or two about her in there with not a lot of effort, trust me.

when varric dies, all she has is a single line about it. for gold, for fortune, for varric. she only says it if you interact with her on your way to the final push. that's not mandatory.

morrigan is there. kieran isn't. the old god soul that mythal and then solas absorbed? who cares at this point, the gods are dead now and solas is locked away for eternity. i suppose? why is morrigan there. she feels unneeded. i wish they'd just left her down south, at least that way i wouldn't have had to witness her god awful redesign.

dorian at least feels as if he belongs in this story. the shadow dragons are a crucial part to protecting minrathous. he's also weirdly underutilised. isabela and morrigan had more lines than him in my playthrough.

on the topic of romance: bro that was underwhelming. no, genuinely. you know when romance picked up a bit? after the point of no return. i heard maybe two lines of companion banter about it before that. maybe i missed something which i honestly doubt, but romance did not play much of a role in lucanis's storyline. i saved his grandmother as he wished me to (and if you read tevinter nights you know she was rather abusive and their relationship not the healthiest) and told him to focus on his family. a reunified family my rook wasn't even introduced to as a partner at the end of all that.

really, do not buy this game if you're only in it for the romances. others might be better, lucanis's basically gave me nothing. except for an outing (the second coffee date i had with him, it was getting repetitive) all of it played out once i committed to the final quest. the sex scene was a fade to black. annoyingly right after davrin died. if you're looking for well paced and good spice, pick up something else. the sweet talk and the final goodbye were nice though.

for all the good the ever-presence of gender identity does, it is brought up in such a disruptive manner too. it doesn't even play out naturally if you CHOOSE the lines that are meant to be said. hearing the words trans and non-binary in this setting doesn't feel right, and i'm saying this as a trans guy. i think it could have been handled more gracefully. the amount of times my rook went "i'm a MAN" as if he's about to start drumming on his chest and roaring any second now got super nerve-grating. "i'm so glad you're into me... the me who is trans. remember?" just. tell me one trans person who'd talk like that to a person they've grown close with and are trying to romance. this game doesn't handle sexuality well, so all this hey my body might not look like the way you're expecting it to look talk amounts to nothing anyway. i feel about this the way i feel about krem: this is partial exposition to trans experiences... packaged up for cis consumption. the ONLY exception to that is interacting with taash. holy shit was all of that heartwarming and bro did it feel good and natural to talk to them about theirs and rook's gender.

rivain and nevarra are new locations added by veilguard. they're also incredibly underwhelming, small and constricted maps. rivain is a coastline with a few ruins. the hall of valor is a partial ruin nestled into a cave on a beach, with a fighting pit. isabela is there in her skimpy outfit commentating your pit fights. that's it. i'm sorry if you were looking for a bustling pirate cove or whatever. you're not gonna get it. the nevarran crypts btw are a long ass dungeon crawl. that's it.

speaking of maps. i thought people were being dramatic when they said you're gonna be fighting the same enemies on them again and again. i thought they were figure of speeching it. they're not. you WILL fight the same amount of enemies. in the same spot. every time you reload the map. best to stay on a map and clear out the enemies and do as much questing on that map as you can before leaving, because you WILL have to do it all over again once you return.

the three choices i made for my inquisitor didn't matter lol she didn't have to face solas and therefore couldn't stop him at any cost as she had sworn (maybe because my rook tricked solas into binding himself to the veil, there was also an option to fight him. would she have stepped in? who knows). blackwall wasn't mentioned. and either her using a small amount of her forces in the final fight was the reason the civilians of minrathous fared so well..... or it just didn't matter. ultimately i think she had very little impact on anything

[thevoiceofdesertbluffs]

The other day I bought a pink elephant beanie boo from the store. So;

I decided to turn him into Elijah CHnT.

(more images under the cut)

[mist-lightning-snap]

Super scribbly plane doodles

[mustasekittens]

congratulations christopher!

self indulgent near-future in which when christopher graduates high school buck n eddie take hiim to hawaii to celebrate and they all have a nice vacation over here. friend n i were brainrotting it a bit and we decided buck definitely hyperfixated on hawaii and stuff (history, nature, geography, mythology, etc)

[kanerallels]

(rant incoming)