#at least its finally here

[irl-ichi]

of course my skin looks terrible for like 8 straight months then starts looking drastically better 2 days before my dermatologist appointment

[ghostorbz]

My September

yt link

[lumi-cherries]

shu and mika booba comparison plsplsplsplsplspls (<- on hands and knees)

SHUMIKA BOOBA COMPARISON!!!!!!!

[surreal-duck]

Tuesday is chuu day! (x)

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 239

Y'know what I think would be hilarious for a DP and PJO crossover? Percy & co finally getting to Kronos, straight up ready for anything after they pass through magic and portal of green and-

There's the smell of cookies. Freshly baked cookies, a warm oven, something about it reminding them of home in this strange place of floating gears and ticking clocks.

And there's a long, serpentine tail twisting through the gears, twisting up and down and across in a size that could hides yet reveals just how large this entity is. There's power soaking into every inch of this place, every centimeter nearly sending lightning up their legs with each step.

The ticking is getting stronger, a distant gonging of the hour echoing through a place that should feel cold and empty like the ringing of bells in the end of times.

And suddenly there's a kid- a teen like them, human yet not- with a cookie half in their mouth and hair flickering like the cosmos as they peer down from above them with a frown, eyes brighter than the sun yet darker than the moon.

"Oh great, what did my half-siblings do this Time?"

[xxplastic-cubexx]

ive been snickering at this for the past like five minutes it aint even that funny ..

[The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Beats Up the Marvel Universe!]

[maggotmoment]

me when there's bugs in the bayou:

[beaulesbian]

Rings of Power 2.06 || Where is He?

└ "Did you not hear that? Outside. Sounded like a siege alarm."

(+ bonus: when the manipulation was successful)

[presiding]

While browsing Vogue magazine, Sébastien Mitton found a photograph of Ruby Aldridge from the Céline Fall 2011 fashion show. He said, “Boom! We have the direction!” Her beauty and her unsettling gaze drove the first concept art for Emily.

[cherrirui-official]

Friendlocke Violet Gijinkas (Part 4/7)

Hell yeah we're over halfway done! Isn't that crazy? I don't have too much to say here sooooooo onto the usual stuff

I plan on posting them in order by groups of three, so there's gonna be seven parts in total, all of which I'll be linking here when done vvv

(Part One) (Part Two) (Part Three) (Part Five) (Part Six) (Part Seven)

!! These will contain personal headcanons I have for the cast, little fun facts, and also spoilers for Friendlocke Violet (for both the edited vids and the streams) !!

@saltydkart-reblogs

Designs under the cut!

VRISKA:

Vriska has an extra set of arms that they can retract and extract whenever they please. However, they usually keep those arms hidden.

The long needle she's holding is her trusty sword that she's used since her pirate days. She doesn't use it as much as she used too, but it's good to keep it on her for self defense in case of an emergency.

The marks on thier neck and shoulders aren't tattoos, they're birthmarks.

Good at sewing, as she often would have to fix her coat after getting into epic pirate sword fights. Sara and Vriska are sewing buddies!

It is unknown why they're unable to sleep, but while the rest of the team sleeps they often find themselves wandering around and doing whatever they want.

Artist's note: I based Vriska's design off the fact that I wanted to make her look like a bootleg version of the og Vriska. As in "Hey that's Vriska" but also "That's not VRISKA" if you get what I mean

MALL BINGO:

Trained herself to become resistant to poison (and by "trained" I mean she just ate a bunch of poison until her body became almost immune to it... please don't try this at home.)

Often goes scavenging for items when she's doesn't feel like robbing someone. If she's lucky enough she'll find some good items scattered around because "stupid trainers often leave good shit on the ground for some reason" (due to all the items you can pick up from the ground ingame lmao)

Mal lost her leg in one of her first heists, after she and another pawmi tried stealing from the wrong person at the worst possible time.

The gun she keeps with her wasn't originally hers, it belongs to someone else.

On a more positive note, Mal has plenty of stories and tall tales to share. She learned them from the eldest in her little pawmi group, as they would often tell her stories before going to sleep. Mal will often share those same stories with Peppy Jr and Mykyie Jr.

Can and will bite you. You won't be expecting it. Be warned.

GRUNPILO:

Due to his abundantly long hair, Grunpilo often lets Mal play around with it and style it however she wants.

It is unknown how or why he picked up on puppetry specifically, but it makes him happy so who are we to judge?

Speaking of which, he creates his own puppets by hand, from simple sock puppets to marionettes on strings. The two hand puppets shown are his favorite ones though.

Sometimes he'll be found speaking to them as if they're real.

Not good in social situations or confrontation, so Mal will sometimes have to speak for him. ("EXCUSE ME! He asked for no pickles!" /ref)

EXTREMELY light, very easy to pick up.

And that's all! Only three more batches left woo, hopefully I can finish them by the end of the year lol.

[intotheelliwoods]

Heehoo.. update tomorrow when I am awake enough o7

[ender1821]

so. uh. Wild Life finale huh

[maythedreadwolftakeyou]

perhaps my most #cancelable videogame take i can post on this website is i think that the kind of people who say that anyone who picks the "morally wrong" or "mean" options in video game dialogue should, as a player, feel bad about their own choices/morals in real life. is that those people are just another flavor of the kind of dudes who play Disco Elysium and get mad for not being rewarded for picking the facist options. both of these groups are reducing games to "a thing I want to agree with me and everyone else who doesn't either suffers or does not have the option to play a character who behaves otherwise" rather than "a medium where you get to (or even Have to) explore different kinds of characters in order to experience the full depth of the story and characters in it."

When I want to pick options in a game that are mean, negative, arrogant, or ignorant, it's because I want to explore what would push a character into becoming that kind of person. Sometimes I want to see how the NPC characters who I-The-Player like/agree with react to someone who is fundamentally different from them. I think it's GOOD actually when the narrative allows you to push limits and especially when it has the option to then punish you for it in some way, such as losing options/routes later on, or companions straight up abandoning you for your choices. It DOES often make me deeply, viscerally uncomfortable to make choices in a game that are so counter to my own, but it means I get to experience that discomfort in an isolated environment and also think about what it means, what would push the character or even yes a real person into actually feeling those things. And I get to play with what ways the narrative could challenge them/make them grow over the course of the game--or on the other side, it can let me make a character who does start off more open/accepting but let the events of the narrative push them into being more reactively closed-minded instead.

I like that we have invented a medium where you can play a game multiple times and experience it differently depending on the character you play as. Books and TV and movies are all static--the greatest draw of games to me is the ones that are responsive, that can tell a slightly different story every time--when other characters in the game respond differently to you because of it, or some paths open up and others don't. And so yes it did disappointment me when a franchise that previously had these elements, Dragon Age, did not include them in the most recent installment. I don't think games should have options where you get to just hit a button to say something racist with no consequences or exploration into why a character would do that. but like, if i can only ever play a game as an upstanding person who is morally right all the time in basically the same flavor for every dialogue. I only get to truly play that game Once, you know? And I only get to see the way the companions react to someone they like and trust. And never really go deeper than that.

So like... I just sit and think about the scenes you can get in Inquisition. with Cassandra breaking down, because she fears she placed a would-be tyrant at the head of a powerful organization--that she searched and searched and chose wrong. Of Varric who is desperate to convince you not to become a monster, like the last person he feels betrayed him. Vivienne intentionally pissing you off because she wants to see how far you'll go when angered, how much she has to worry about your reactions. They say so much about the companions, what they fear most, and where they will draw the line. And especially in Inquisition, at these crisis points--you don't have to double down. Your character can have a come-to-Andraste moment where they go "woah... is that really how people see me? is this what i want?" and I think that kind of option can do way more for encouraging actual players to examine the choices they make in stories, more than locking the player into supportive, non-aggressive options does.

now. do i think all games execute these flavors well? no. writers and devs will have their own biases and blind spots, even if they are otherwise well-intentioned. and I don't think the ends of the scale need to extend from "absolute angel" to "horrible bigot", because the real complexity of course lies in the middle. I am not asking for games to let me be bigoted at every turn, what I want is games that let me make the protagonist deeply flawed in one or more ways--fearfully closed-minded to things outside their upbringing, or afraid of change to the status quo, or who want to advance their own aims regardless of consequences to others. I actually agree that the game was correct not to include any options for disrespecting Taash and their personal journey for example, but I do wish... idk maybe that we could have had a scene where if for instance the player character avoided outside-world missions relating to clearing away blight, they could confront us on how this might devastate the natural world and its creatures like dragons, and push us into trying to resolve it. Or in the other direction, if you spend the (currently meaningless) time giving money to background NPCs begging in the cities, Neve could could have a special cutscene thanking you for your attention to people otherwise beneath notice. You know?

And of course not every game can do this, I can write those sentences up there that represent hundreds of hours of dev time, of course they can't do it all. But the prior games usually did have at least a little of this, and that was enough to make me really fall in love. I KNOW the tumultuous development cycle, restarts from scratch, interference from higher-ups all contributed to why Veilguard was unable to hit those same marks this time. And we probably won't ever know how much of the loss of options/reactivity was intention vs a side effect of these things. But I wish people wouldn't frame players who miss these aspects as insane/morally corrupt. When for most of us it's because we genuinely enjoy challenging and exploring these aspects of reality in fiction in a way entirely unlike what we actually support in real life. i fully acknowledge not everyone desires to play this way. and that's fine!!! i am glad people can enjoy doing a "good" run each time that brings them joy. but for me it really limits the potential bounds of my enjoyment i guess. I like media that is complicated and messy and makes me think, and extra so when I get to see how playing that way impacts the greater story around it.

[aqueousammonia-art]

i don't have much to say because school but I am really enjoying watching trigun (98 anime)

originally I was going to cut off my adventures at episode 13 (which I found out was just a rehash of previous adventures + some new scenes) and pick up the other half during my June holidays

*then I found out the 'next day' that netflix was pulling the show in about 9 days from this post.(hhh)

*that was in march

so I'm trying to slowly finish the show now and draw out all my thoughts at the end instead of splitting my review into two like I intended (which was stupid now that I think about it.)

legato's interesting to me - I don't eat sweet stuff often but I would be down with this guy

he'd recommend the meanest cakes. he'd know the wackiest spots for heavenly delicacies.

for anyone who's read this far, take this legato doodle with you as thanks ♡⁠˖⁠꒰⁠ᵕ⁠༚⁠ᵕ⁠⑅⁠꒱

I'll be back with my thoughts when I finish the 98 anime!

[magistralucis]

(hbomberguy voice) oh I think he might be a bad guy

[seaofreverie]

Sparkstember Day 11: Angst In My Pants (The Decline And Fall Of Me)

Album two of two in the series of Sparks' immaculate new wave releases! Iconic in every way imaginable from the music to the artwork to ONE music video. I think it's more musically (and lyrically!) varied and mature in tone (besides... a couple exceptions. Yes, an album called Angst In My Pants) than its predecessor, which is a very good development. These songs will leave you chuckling and bopping along and also pondering the intricacies of human existence. Ok, maybe that's a bit of a stretch, but it can't be denied that behind much of the earnestness and theatricality here, there's lots of quite emotional, introspective and thought-provoking stuff to be found.

Thematically, this album goes everywhere. One moment we are in Sextown U.S.A, the next we're visiting Disneyland, California where we make friends among people and animals. On a more serious note though, I think the biggest emotional whiplash one could experience between different songs on an album is between Mickey Mouse and Sherlock Holmes. And yet there's still a very prominent element of humour, even in those songs that are on the more serious or dramatic end of the scale.

I said a few days ago that I'd try to return to the topic of Sparks' brand of humour and how it works, but I don't feel intelligent enough to analyse that today. And I'm pretty sure that from what I've seen, Other People And The Maels Themselves (Said It Better Than Me). So instead, as a little send-off, please remember: if a mouse can be special, well, SO CAN YOU!!! 🫵

Favourite songs (and other highlights):

Angst In My Pants: literally no other song like this one in this world. I can't tell why that is but it's just. So great

I Predict: I had a weird kind of effect where I heard this song in my early days of Sparking and it felt VEEERY familiar to me. I think it was due to the genre / style here, it reminded me of something specific, at first I thought it was very glam rock but I'm pretty sure that this is not it but something else (and I don't know what to call it in that case!). Anyway, banger song

Tarzan And Jane: whoa wait, am I already skipping to the third-to-last song on the tracklist?? I guess I am. This one's great and one of my early favs too (I wonder how long it will take until I run out of things to say about my fav songs and it all just becomes this list of 'it's very good and I like it a lot. next.')

The Decline And Fall Of Me: it's great!! I like it!! And, of course, "check out my pizzas"

Eaten By The Monster Of Love: personal reasons that lead to a printed and framed mini-comic of my making appearing on my desk, which features some of the lyrics of this song, which caused me to have it permanently stuck in my head for a pretty long period of time. And this way I ended up liking it much much more than I did in the beginning, when it still seemed somehow pretty unremarkable to me