#ask-the-h-bros

[cozylittleartblog]

Just wanted to mention this to someone who does art and get their opinion on it:

Sometimes I see some artists do redraws of their old artworks or characters and think "Wow, uh... their older art looks better." Sometimes it's only mildly better, but other times it's vastly better. Like the Upgrade, Go Back! meme.

I understand that art skills are supposed to develop and change, hopefully for the better, but sometimes it just feels like they got... worse? Somehow? Idk. Maybe it's because they were copying another artist's style while finding their own, and it's their own style that doesn't vibe with me? Just curious what your thoughts are about this.

Also, your art has consistently been great, so this isn't directed at you.

I do see this on occasion yeah! usually (in my experience anyway) its because people take a sharp turn towards a stylization that either isn't to your or most people's tastes, or that they don't understand or are still developing. switching up how you stylize your art is like starting over in a sense, you're changing from what you have practice with and that's always going to cause you to revert some as you have to re-learn things you understood in your previous style. i had a pretty big style shift in 2014 when i took up the basis for how my art looks now, and i remember feeling like some of the stuff i was drawing might have looked better if i was using my older style instead. that's something artists just have to push through and figure out, and they'll likely come out of it a better artist than they were before. constructive critiques are a good way for them to figure out why their art might not be as "good" as it used to be, if they're open for those.

art is not always a linear journey, and i would also say things like passion and motivation have a part in it too. feeling inspired sparks you to make something the best it can be, if you're not feeling it (and esp if that feeling lasts for a long time) it'll leave you making decisions you otherwise would not have let fly, and that can result in worse art. and some of it is just personal preference! it's not that their art is better or worse, it's just different now, and maybe that doesn't vibe with you the same way their old stuff did. and that's fine 👍

(thank you! :3 i admittedly struggle a bit with Not Feeling It sometimes like i just described, so it's nice to know people still enjoy what i make when that feeling hits.)

[businesscasualart]

I’m curious if you have any thoughts or headcanons about Onslaught and alcohol. I imagine being a semi-functioning evil team is stressful and if Psimon is chucking everyone’s vapes then cigs and 420 isn’t an option, then alcohol is the second best thing right? Besides drinking together is team building and leads to this wonderful thing called “actually talking about your trauma instead of bottling it up for once”.

AAAA sorry about taking so long to get around to this.

I need to stop checking my inbox until I’m FULLY ready to yap and ramble. I need that lil blue dot reminding me I have asks so bad.

That IS a good question and I’m so flattered that y’all bother with my content. <3 I think they’d be at least somewhat different about alcohol.

(Sorry for any typos in advance, I wrote this mostly at various doctor’s appointments. ALSO. Last thing to apologize for. I’ve never vaped or smoked when I wrote the last part, but I also have never consumed alcohol and that fact may be more evident in this one)

Cw: Alcohol and some references to alcoholism, uh…references to angst but maybe more comfort than angst, kinda all over the place <\3

Okay so, in the beginning, Onslaught was Mostly teens. Psimon was BARELY even old enough to drink in America at the ripe young age of 21, flat. And I thinnkkkkkk Psimon is American? Even if he’s not, it seems the rest of Onslaught is, so I think  Psimon would probably step up and be all “No, no,” confiscate all the bottles and cans and it’d make the teens so mad and indignant. Literal felons are being BABYSAT. Even when they travel where the drinking age is lower. 

But when the teenagers turn old enough to drink, they have a whole little birthday celebration with what they can get, and of course, offer the first taste of alcohol. Their choice for what it is, as long as the team could afford it. Of course, they laugh and tease if they recoil from the taste. 

Most of the team is pretty fond of drinking, usually together. It’s nice bonding.

Devastation is the only exception to the “Psimon Says no alcohol until you’re 21” rule from the beginning. The team can argue “She is LITERALLY one (1) year old” all they want. She is LITERALLY built different, Psimon is fine with her drinking. 

Idk if she particularly has a preference for any kind. She’s probably one of those who subscribe to the belief of “It ain’t right if it doesn’t burn a bit going down”. Wine is probably somewhat…nostalgic. For some reason. Takes her back to someplace she can’t name, someplace she’s never been, but I think that’d be one of the only reasons she might prefer wine. Her taste may be all over. May be whatever’s strong and good. I’m no alcohol savant, what do I know? 

She likes to drink to celebrate and to bond, sometimes to ebb at stress. It takes a LOT to get her drunk, but that’s not gonna stop her from getting drunk when she has the time and money burn on it. She gets drunk and gets even more jovial and warm and open, though she’s usually relatively open. Also, haphazard. She becomes a big fan of violating people’s personal space. Hugs, patting backs, throwing her arm around them, leaning on people shorter than her, etc.

It can annoy a lot of people if she does it too much, Psimon strangely doesn’t seem to mind too much tho…aheem…

Besides that, Psimon’s generally against the team drinking to the point of drunkenness, but there’s little to actually do about it; he struggles to track all of their limits, and when he’s focusing on one, that leaves all the others alone. He tries to avoid getting drunk himself instead. Someone has to stay sober, and his psionic powers don’t mix well with too much alcohol. And he’s the leader. It makes the most sense that it’d be him to keep his wits about him.

The Terror Twins are hearty drinkers; they also can drink a lot and get very warm and jovial when drinking, like Devastation. Any outing to a bar feels celebratory with them. They decided they don’t like to get fully drunk though, not too regularly. First Tuppence decided this, then Tommy when she pointed it out to him. They don’t want to open up more quickly than they intend. Psimon can relate to that, so he defends them when they drop out. That doesn’t stop them from having fun with everyone else though, or helping when things get bad. They’re usually decent at opening up on their own time anyway. 

Shimmer and Mammoth like to follow Psimon’s lead and keep excess drinking to a minimum. A couple of shots, a glass or maybe two, it really depends on what it is, but that’s it. Mammoth can take more than his sister, just by merit of him being so much larger, but he doesn’t like the taste of alcohol at all while his sister does. However, the second either of them get any kind of buzz ebbing at their senses is the second they quit. 

If they’re found sitting down and downing drinks, something is wrong. They’d only let go so much if they’re trying to drown their problems. Then, they can use some company. Someone lending an ear to their sorrows doesn’t sound half bad. 

If another team member is in a similar situation and needs someone to simply sit next to them and just be, or listen, Baran and Selinda are quick to be there for them.

Junior drinks for fun, he’ll seize any opportunity to drink. That man is getting “Krunk” as the kids say. He doesn’t know his limits and if he did, there’s no telling if he’d actually adhere to them. He WILL blackout if no one keeps an eye on him. He will be puking in the trashcan. The rest of the team has to steer him away from opportunities to drink lest he develop alcoholism at the tender age of 5-minutes-into-being-able-to-legally-drink. 

His mood becomes turbulent and fragile. He’ll typically be happy, loud, reckless, aggressive; but at the mention of the wrong thing or at the sight of something that takes him way back, he can breakdown rather easily. It’s actually pretty common for his drunken stints, when they get out of hand, to end in tears. Junior has to be one of the least repressed members of Onslaught, due in no small part to moments like these; where he lets his emotions run rampant and they go down a bad path. 

He’d expect ridicule, but Onslaught is actually very sympathetic to his struggles and complaints, whatever they may be. He can air his dirty laundry as much as he wants with little to no judgement, something he’s not used to. Once he starts, it’s hard to stop, but the team will listen until the end and it’s something he’s really grateful for. Despite being a troublemaker and general criminal, he tries to pay the team’s kindness towards him forward as much as he can.

If Psimon does end up drinking to lose his troubles, he usually does it alone, when everyone else is asleep. Or at least when he thinks everyone else is asleep. Sometimes someone will wander about looking for a late night snack or a glass of water, or even search for him himself. He dislikes being caught like that, dislikes not being so impervious and put-together for the team. 

Without fail, they’ll sit with him awhile. They’ll ask, they’ll listen, they’ll joke or comfort or sit in silence. Psimon will wither in place or try to get them to leave him be, but they’re a stubborn lot. They’re far from the most “upstanding” of company, but they treat him with the same care, empathy, and concern he tries to treats them with; and Psimon finds afterwards that, despite not enjoying being caught in a state of weakness or forced to open up, he wouldn’t have rather it have gone any other way.

[badlydrawn-brostrider]

Would you mind elaborating on how exactly bro fought back against cal/ removed him? Unless that’s already been shown and I have yet to find it

In which case sleep is for the weak and tumbr digging is for the strong

/ / It's technically already been shown but I don't mind explaining!!

Throughout the arc Cal hijacks the narrative which are basically Bro's thoughts (Big big example that gave Milo brainrot: "You won't give him up without a fight." Who's narrating this? You (Bro) won't give him (Cal) up without a fight or is it You (Cal) don't give him (Bro) up without a fight?). Pre sburb their thoughts align near perfectly because Bro knows nothing else and there's no point in questioning him, post sburb he's become his own person with his own thoughts that instantly clash with Cal and he KNOWS that what's going on is Not Good. He falls back into the routine because its familiar and he's tired and he doesn't want to keep going through the difficulties of being an actual human- he doesn't actually WANT to become the way he used to be, its a trauma response.

The fighting back is more about mental strength like... What he didn't know/closed his eyes to back then vs what he knows now. He's actively questioning Cal's control and trying to take back little bits and pieces of the narrative, fighting back for full control of his body against Cal's strings. He Wants to be his own person and keep his family safe, he doesn't want to be a puppet, and that affects Cal's control on him

[bestworstcase]

i do think the key to how things will fall out regarding death on remnant is the jabberwalker, bc like

the brothers created death by creating him

the god of light, fearing they had disrupted the balance, tried to get rid of him. the god of darkness refused to countenance this, and they fought about it.

they leave the ever after. jabber remains, implying one of three possibilities: 1. dark ‘won’ the argument and both brothers agreed to let jabber live, 2. dark recreated jabber one last time in secret before they left, or 3. jabber came back later a la modern humans. given light’s general inflexibility my inclination is 2 or 3.

in any case the tree seems to accept jabber as part of the ever after and the presence of his figurine on the blacksmith’s worktable implies that he will continue to exist in some form.

during the creation of remnant, the brothers agree that death will be permanent. their reasons are not yet fully clear, but light was the only one concerned about enforcing this rule; i think it is almost certainly a rule that originated with the god of light.

“but balance cannot be restored by force or calculation; true balance finds its own equilibrium”

force = destroying jabber. calculation = creating a new world with permadeath.

—

the god of light conceives of balance as a fragile order that must be meticulously maintained or else fall apart: his purpose, as he sees it, is to maintain order. everything he does comes from this. he cannot tolerate change because he lives in abject fear of ‘disrupting the balance’ again—as he believes they have already done once, by creating jabber.

so there is a certain narrative equivalency being drawn here between removing jabber and making death permanent for remnant. both decisions are predicated on a fundamental misunderstanding of what balance is.

thus the problem of death is not that it exists, per se. the problem is that death is the locus of light’s anxiety about change.

he first attempts to fix the ‘problem’ by getting rid of jabber, eliminating death. but he can’t, because dark won’t let him. so plan b is to leave the ever after and create a new world where death is part of the design—which isn’t contradictory at all if the intention is to prevent disruption of the existing order.

and something to keep in mind here is that 1. the cat and the jabberwalker were both deathless and unable to ascend, and 2. the brothers created death by mistake. for light these are crucial factors that must be accounted for in the new design. the only way to ensure that the disruptive introduction of death can never happen again is to include death from the start, transforming the accident into a deliberate choice.

which is all well and good except for one teeny, tiny wrinkle: for humans, death is not actually annihilative. they don’t simply cease to exist when they die.

i think it’s extremely likely that wasn’t supposed to happen. in a system where death is final and forever, spiritually immortal humans pose an obvious risk of disruption—and the ‘afterlife’ is evidently just permanent unconscious stasis, so it doesn’t seem like human souls were preserved for any purpose.

if your aim is to design an orderly system that can be maintained exactly as-is forever, and one of your core building blocks is that death is permanent, no exceptions, then why would you ever create beings capable of rising from the dead? you wouldn’t!

but once humans with immortal souls exist you’re sort of stuck with them, aren’t you? and i think that dilemma makes the most sense of why light’s afterlife is… like that. the souls of the dead ‘resting’ in everlasting oblivion in another realm that living humans cannot enter is the same in practice as annihilative death as long as every being capable of reaching the afterlife follows the stated rules.

the instant dark decides to make an exception, the whole system collapses. it reveals to salem that death isn’t inherently final or forever—that this is an arbitrary rule that the brothers decided, and one of them is open to the idea of changing those rules. then the gods make her immortal and light reprimands her for failing to understand how important his rules are (rules his brother just broke with no consequence except that light got mad), but ultimately what she learns is that the brothers are fallible and their rules can be changed. her rebellion is underpinned by this revelation.

the divine order suffers one small disruption and almost immediately, catastrophically fails, just as the god of light feared.

but that failure did not happen because of the disruption; the system failed because it was artificial. the brothers designed it a certain way and then light focused all of his efforts to keeping it that way, unchanging, forever—because their world wasn’t an ecosystem so much as it was a lawn in arizona. that lawn can only exist for as long as someone is doing the work to keep it on life support.

anyway the point i’m getting to is that remnant still isn’t in stable equilibrium, largely because of salem’s immortality and ozma’s reincarnations but also in the more general sense: the people of remnant are spiritually immortal but made to spend the vast majority of their existence essentially comatose because One God is afraid of change.

you can’t bring remnant into equilibrium by eliminating death: killing the jabberwalker isn’t the right answer. and you can’t restore balance by restoring the old system of divine rule and rigid adherence to the original design, because that system was a spindly papier-mâché machine that imploded the second somebody breathed on it wrong. and you can’t just yank the dead back to ameliorate your grief because that isn’t your choice to make, that’s an ethical position the narrative has made very clear.

which… really leaves changing the nature of the afterlife as the likeliest direction. death isn’t the problem, the afterlife of eternal stasis is. death isn’t the problem, light’s refusal to allow beings with immortal souls to keep going after their first life ends because the rules say death is final is the problem. because that finality is just… not reality. a person’s soul persists after death, ipso facto death isn’t the end.

but the reverse idea that death shouldn’t happen at all is not reality either. salem can’t die and her immortality is isolating and endlessly painful. ozma can’t stay dead and it’s eroded him down to a miserable shell of who he used to be. afterans choose to leave their memories behind when they ascend—nothing can happen to you in the tree except what you want to happen. without destruction, creation stagnates. death is part of life, not its enemy.

i doubt very much that the endgame here is for afteran ascension to be directly ported over into remnant—these are different worlds, different peoples, different systems, and while people from remnant can spiritually connect with the tree they are still fundamentally not part of it. afterans are emanations of the tree; humans and faunus are not. when afterans ascend they return to the roots of the tree and flow upward to blossom again from its crown, and that is, to put it mildly, not a system of reincarnation that physically makes sense for remnant, where things reproduce and have babies instead of new lives budding from the cosmic tree. if reincarnation brings equilibrium to remnant then it will presumably happen in a manner more natural to remnant’s people, and may not even involve passage through the tree at all.

it’s also not the only possibility: for example, there’s no reason that remnant’s afterlife has to be eternal sleep. it could just be… a new realm, a new world to live in after your life on remnant is ended. the brothers’ departure from the ever after into the boundless potential of the unknown is as likely a model as ascension. maybe remnant’s dead can’t return except by an act of god, but “gone from remnant forever” can coexist with the afterlife being… alive, as opposed to cold storage for inconveniently immortal souls.

basically the narrative setup isn’t toward rejecting death, it’s toward rejecting the state of affairs where you die and then millions of years later a god wakes you up and you have no awareness or memory of your existence since the moment of your death because you were kept unconscious until that god needed a servant. the point is that death isn’t the natural end of existence (because souls are immortal, on remnant as in the ever after) and remnant’s dead shouldn’t be held in stillness by light’s futile effort to make the facts of reality conform to his intended design.

the jabberwalker has existed for eons without bringing the ever after to ruin; the balance shifted, things changed a little, and life went on. remnant is existentially threatened by the factual reality of life-after-death only because light is so convinced of this danger that he is determined to prohibit it by any means necessary, including “demolish everything and start over from scratch.”

even a god can tilt at windmills.

[deus-ex-mona]

s. s ave me, meoto…

[narratorstragedy]

me vs my inability to know whether any interaction i have is implying romantic interest

[solstheimtxt]

Ok so on Wednesday I usually work 12pm to 8pm. It's been this way for weeks, bc the mid shift manager before me kept having issues getting to work/waking up etc

Tell me why I just got a text, 20 min before my shift of them going 😍✨️ teehee check your schedules

I close, which is fine. Im the main closing manager. But telling me on my way to work??? And then they took me off Tuesday, which is weekly inventory night. Which I HAVE to be there for since I'm one of TWO people who know how to count weekly inventory, so I have to go in ON MY DAY OFF to count the fucking inventory (which takes me abt 30 min tops), to barely make enough to cover the gas for the trip over & back (abt 50 miles round) like

[chiistarri]

bro hasnt been on since noon

[beauzos]

fellow BN employee, i also judge other stores when i go LOL i think we all have the sense of “damn bitch u live like this??” bc i personally love being a hater <3

LMAO i love that it's not just me. i mean, we definitely all do it now that i think about it. sometimes when the keyholders have to help at other stores they always let us know how fucked the other stores are and i live for the drama. i love knowing they're doing worse than us. i'm sure the same would apply to anyone coming to this store. we'd get humbled by our awful libros, art/photography, and religion sections 😭

[ofprincessesandqueens]

Do you still think she faked her illness for publicity or begrudge her for requesting privacy and time now that she has cancer?

Nah, I thought she had an hysterectomy from the moment that statement dropped. The announcement didn't shock me at all, sadly. I was convinced this was it after they said they didn't know if she would be back by june. It's also what most people expected, I think.

I won't ask you to point out where I said she was faking her illness or where I begrudged her for asking for privacy because you, apparently, can't read and I know you are trying to guilt trip me. That's something that may work with somebody with less personality, but not with me. I know what I said and I mantain it line for line and word for word. KP coms did a horrid job and they didn't protect her. If they had done things properly, they would have earned time until she was ready to share the news, if she wanted to do so. Instead, she was on the news for weeks, the cheating rumours got a lot of talk and she ended up in TMZ.

You sent me +10 asks already, mostly went unanswered. I can ignore you for 10 more and I promise you that I won't change my mind or feel guilty. Case closed.

[civetcider]

I feel like I’m looking at a really hard page in one of those I Spy books - which one is the strawberry plush?

oh sorry yeah it's hidden in one of the corners! here it is

just a lil strawberry baby guy i had for as long as i can remember! witch isnt much cuz my memory is bad, im gonna feel silly if it's somehow a popular brand or something but i have been looking on and off around online for like 2 years and asked a ToyID reddit and got no replies, as you can see mine is in really ruff shape and i wanted to find a new one somewhere but i DON'T KNOW THE BRAND!!!!!!!! HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHAT ARE YOU???

i think we also had one i found in a goodwill once when i was small too that looked just like this one but it was a green apple, idk where that one went cuz i haven't seen it in a long ass time

[hearvex]

If nothing happened, then??? What are we on about??? And you don’t have a source???? Wtf are we doing anymore 😭 they’re fucking eating it up and for what???

source was allegedly a third party that wasn't even involved in this situation What

[stupidscav]

ok uhm yeah ig if I'm venting on main🔥

heavy s/h warning (i am ok)

just had my psychiatrist appointment and my psychiatrist is really nice but wh. why did they have to check my blood pressure lol

so the nurse saw my arm yayayayys/sarc and then I told my psychiatrist about my s/h since she asked and I managed to convince her not to tell my family but the requirement is that I tell my therapist who. is obligated to tell my family. uh

I also had to show her my arm bc she wanted to check if it was infected or anything. yippee/sarc

and then like a couple days ago my math teacher most likely saw my arms and didn't say anything ^^/sarc did. did bro not care or🔥

LIKE I feel bad for making a big deal out of it I just thought it was weird. hey if you care about your students what about the clearly visible cuts. like im not trying to just make it about myself "oh I feel like shit I deserve pity" no I'm pretty sure I deserve this lol but like does. does she even care lol. about any student. do you see what I mean?/rh/nm

syshsgagd dyayya yippee yahoo I relapesd yyayssg/sarc!!!!!!!

help I can't take this seriously my pfp is so silly🔥

[deus-ex-mona]

bribery may or may not have been involved in the pursuit of said discovery

[stevebabey]

Thank you for touch starved steve!!!!!! The whole thing was delicious! You're lovely and I greatly enjoy your writing!

you are so welcome 🥹 touch-starved steve is my beloved and i’m very happy to hear i did it well & you enjoyed it!!!! many mwahs for u !!!!

[jrueships]

Pg asking alpey what he thinks about dillon's 'antics' before very quickly making sure everyone and their mama (jaren jackson jr) knows that he, THE paul clifton anthony george, 'disapproves of The dillon's antics'