#back to the roots ig

[arikihalloween]

Appleblossom week Day 1

"Paint !"

Event organised by @darlingofpink !

Those who get the ref in this drawing ily lmao

I'm going back to my wh roots guys

[themyscirah]

Complaining abt Suicide Squad yet again but the fact that they have Waller exposing the alien community to space racist attacks and talking abt how she got to her position through deceit and being a terrible person and stuff is just. Ahsfiwueh JUST SAY YOU DONT KNOW WALLER.

Anyways literally the 3rd mission of the Squad ever (and the first framed as smth Waller picked and not orders from above) was the Squad discrediting and stopping a rogue vigilante who was only arresting POC and funneling white people into white supremacy groups (of which he was the most prominent member) in SUICIDE SQUAD #4. and it's explicitly framed as this mission being personal for Waller that she's hiding from the government bc its illegal like. Guys. Please why are we having her incite (space bc comics) racist attacks now

Also the whole "Amanda got her position through deceit and being a terrible person" NO. she KEPT her position through being shitty and playing complicated political games!!! She wasn't always that way like there is a difference and it is IMPORTANT ppl PLEASEEEE. In Secret Origins #14 we learn Amanda's backstory and she used to be a normal, caring person! Like even after she entered into working in government and politics she wasn't automatically morally bankrupt like please people. She was originally given control of the Squad by Reagan (*sigh* 80s comics...) to distract and get rid of her because she was so successful at pushing progressive social policy in Congress. Acting like she's this static pillar of evil is such a waste of her character and so fucking uninteresting and disrespectful to her arc it drives me MAD.

Like I am NOT saying Waller is all sunshine and rainbows, she fucking SUCKS (said w love <3) but like there's a human being there. It's a progression, she has a character arc like please, DC, please!!! They've fucked up Waller so bad and made her so opaque and uninteresting she can't even be the protagonist of her own story for fucks sake!

Like I don't know how many times I have to scream it until DC hears me or remembers but WALLER IS THE MAIN CHARACTER OF SUICIDE SQUAD. ITS HER BOOK. yet right now she's a cutout to be used as the villain wherever the writers please. Even in her book we get none of her perspective really displayed, no exploration of her thoughts with any kind of understanding of the role she traditionally has played and was made to play in the story.

[grainlord-town]

trying to get a feel for ibis paint lol (it is not going well)

silly au where rocket was adopted by the church of the one true eye rather than zuka :^)

[introspectivememories]

NICO: WE SHARED THE LIFT THIS MORNING! I WAS GOING TO THE POOL TRAMPOLINE WITH MY TWO DAUGHTERS AND HE WAS GOING TO THE RACETRACK. PINKHAM: VERY DIFFERENT LIVES YOU'RE CURRENTLY LEADING.

[digitalxana]

dark link wip

[applestorms]

actually. @moonlarked you wanted someone to talk about near & light as parallels? cuz uh...

ok SO, my big hot take on near is something like this: one of the most common criticisms i see about near is that he is simply too apathetic/bored/uncaring/etc, and that because he is not as emotionally invested as L, his win against light doesn't feel nearly (lol) as satisfying as it could've been. this is a view that often frustrates me, but for a very particular reason— namely, while i think it is somewhat accurate in content, i think it misses a lot of important context (and also misses a lot of the importance of light's character arc, but we'll get to that much later).

one of the most important things to remember about the wammy's kids is that, whether they like it or not, each and every one of them is defined almost entirely through their relationship to L. this is perhaps more obvious in the case of characters like BB and mello, who are very Aware of this shadow being cast upon them and react in very overt, emotional ways (e.g. becoming a literal serial killer out of seemingly pure spite & desire to be noticed, idolizing him but in a very emotionally complicated, kinda detached sorta way, etc), but it is true for Every wammy's kid, purely because of how the house itself functions. these kids are being raised to be L's successor— the greatest (and second greatest, and third greatest) detective on the planet. this is the ultimate goal hanging over every one of their heads, and it places a constant pressure on every kid there.

oftentimes, i think (perhaps both out of story and in it, as well?) people get so caught up in comparing near to L that they forget he also falls under this umbrella— only, for near, his position is slightly different because he actually somewhat succeeds at the task? like, yeah, L never gets the chance to officially call near his successor, but between the fact that he's constantly called the #1 kid at wammy's and that he. literally does actually end up becoming the new L after kira, i think it's always been pretty clear what his path was going to be.

going back to my starting point, this is one of the main ways that near makes a really good parallel to light in my mind, specifically the light that we see right at the start of the series. in both cases, near and pre-DN light, we see a kid who has succeeded at everything they've been handed, and more notably, we see a kid who is bored out of his fucking mind looking at the prospects of what he's got.

in the case of light, this is maybe a little more realistic/easy to understand— light does well in academics, he does well in sports, he does well with people. he is likely to follow in his father's footsteps with something criminal justice/police/law related, but even if he diverges from that path it likely won't be too big of a deal, as he has shown himself to be capable in enough areas that he's likely to succeed no matter what. by all measurable standards, light's doing pretty good at the start of the series. and yet— there is something so distinctly and inherently Bland about his life before he gets the DN. i've said before that light wouldn't call the DN a curse even if he wanted to, but i think in that moment when he's telling ryuk he disagrees w/ his father after visiting him in the hospital, when he says, "I've never once considered finding that notebook and gaining this power a misfortune. In fact, it's made me happier than I've ever been." (ch.22) he's still getting at something real and truthful.

again, going back to my equating of boredom with depression in this series— light's life is pretty good by all measurable standards. he has a family who loves him, presumably more than enough money to get by with a pretty cushy lifestyle, and does well, honestly better than well, in every single system he is presented with. but even so, he's still unhappy. there is something in his soul that has not yet been satisfied. he's bored of the world, bored of his place in it, how easy it all is. what the DN really offers him is a challenge, entertainment— just the same as L, and just the same as ryuk.

near similarly suffers from this kind of boredom, though it is perhaps less overtly stated than in the case of light, L, and ryuk, and less easy to catch as it is not as realistic/common. again: near basically ends up the winner of wammy's house. he is the one to take the title of L, he's declared the smartest, bestest kid at wammy's, and he gets all the power and privilege that comes with such a title. but still— he's so. fucking. bored. much to the embarrassment of mello, this shit was never really a challenge to him. it's pretty obvious that near isn't really even all that attached to the title of L— don't forget that his first real introduction to the story involves him explicitly saying that he'd be just fine working with mello as essentially co-L successors. and this is a viewpoint that he holds onto until the very end of the series, actually, claiming that he was only able to best light due to mello's sacrifice. near doesn't really give a fuck about the rat race he's been slotted into, though it's perhaps for that exact reason that he ends up winning it anyway, and getting all the responsibility that comes along.

that being said, i think there are still two main differences between light and near:

light fucks up.

near never gets past his boredom.

in the case of this first point, i do not mean to say that near never ever makes any move/judgement that could be considered a mistake— mello killing the entire SPK is the first thing that comes to mind, which i see as blood on near's hands for the same reason that L takes at least some responsibility for lind l. tailor. rather, i mean that near never makes a such a monumental fuck-up that he has to overturn his entire worldview just to account for it in the same way that light does when he accidentally kills two people w/ the DN the first time.

it's like, if you've ever known (or been) the kind of kid who always got perfect grades in school, straights A's for K-12, only to reach college and suddenly bomb their first test and have an existential crisis as their only real achievement in life is crushed into dust, then you know light yagami. only for light, it's on a whole 'nother scale, because not only does he fucking oopsie daisy kill two people, but he kills in such a context that he can mentally manipulate it back into seeming heroic. i hate to say that suffering causes character development because that's terrible advice (it's how you react to terrible circumstances that matters, imho) but to some degree, yeah, having conflicts/hard times in life is just necessary to figure shit out sometimes. near (and L, oh goddd i need to write about L properly sometime) has so many things smoothed over and handed to him, and on top of that, he's a super genius very rarely fucks anything up, at least according to base logic. he doesn't even really consider the morality of anything he's doing until light straight up asks him in a desperate bid to keep talking at the end, it's all just logic and factors to consider.

this all leads to my second point, which is that near never really gets the chance to overcome his boredom in the same way as the others. ryuk at least gets his entertainment for a couple years, and light and L (and mello) get so invested in each other and their game that it literally kills them, but near just kinda. keeps going. he keeps being L, he keeps solving cases, he does the duty he was given and enjoys his toys... and that's it. he lies around, the only one left to live, never even taking credit for the end of KIRA, never gets another haircut, and keeps the title going. what a life, for a kid who dragged a god back down to earth.

sidenote1: toys

am i reading too into things? maybe. near's toys hold a lot of significance throughout the story in more specific ways, most notably the finger puppets he uses at the very end of the story while tracking different people's/kira's actions, though you could probably read some kind of meaning into every toy he has and the ways in which he plays with them. what i want to look at here though is more the general reasoning behind playing with them in the first place— a desire for a childhood he didn't get to have? a love of games more generally? (could track with him seeing the KIRA case, or really all detective work, as just another game.) you could also read into his toys as another source for near's apathy/detachment from reality, literally breaking every notable person around him down into a doll by the end of the story, speaking a lot to how alienated he is from the world (again, very similar to both L and light, there). i don't have much more of a point to make here, just wanted to add this in somewhere since it's one of his most striking visual character traits.

sidenote2: light's arc

going back to my point at the start of this post... light's character arc.

uhh. near winning is a good thing, actually. and i don't just mean that as a moral claim— DN itself as a story isn't really concerned with trying to answer any moral questions about good or evil or the justice system, so it makes sense & is fair to me that it doesn't try all that hard to answer anything along those lines by the very end of the story. what i mean to say here is that near winning is a good thing on the level of the character arc, specifically as an end to light's arc.

i made a post a while back while mid-manga reread talking through some of the reasons why L's death can feel kind of unsatisfying/paint the second half of the story in a less interesting light (hah) for a lot of viewers, with the main point i ended up on being that L wasn't really able to win because he never really had all that clear of a win state in the first place. i still kiiind of agree with this point, though i think there's a lot more i could add to that post... anyways. point is, i bring up that post because it touches on a similar thing to what i want to talk about here: light's character arc being a tragedy.

this is more speculation on my part, but i think another part of the reason why people get turned off to DN post-L death is not just the fact that L isn't really a playable character in the game anymore, but the fact that light's character arc takes such a dramatic twist after the timeskip. i talked about this a little bit in my little ramble on light & titles (which a lot of you liked, apparently!! ty for all the lovely comments on there, i love reading what you guys have to say ^w^), but light's character arc in DN is a tragedy to me, full-stop.

tragedies to me are cyclical— revolutionary, if you will. since all stories necessitate some kind of something to take place, a tragedy to me is all about a character beginning in one point, then continually getting hit by Event, after Thing, after Event, only to end up in essentially the exact same place that they started. any character changes or development that seem to happen throughout the story are ultimately nullified by the end— the main subject does not truly grow, does not truly reflect on their actions or traumas, does not move on. two steps forward is two steps back. even ending up in a position worse than they started is sometimes better than a true tragedy, in my mind, as at least then there is some chance they may still reflect or change or grow in the future, leaving the hope that they may still overcome this new circumstance later on. a true tragedy ends in nothing meaningful ever getting the chance to truly change, at least in the case of the main subject of the story.

light's character arc in the first half of the story is an upward, underdog kind of story. yes, light has the power of a shinigami, of a supernatural force that the rest of the world doesn't even know exists— but part of the real appeal of his conflict with L is how powerful L feels in comparison, having the wealth and respect and title to command a world's worth of forces against him. fuck, even taking down naomi misora feels like an incredible hurdle overcome, a teenager managing to charm and yap and flutter his eyelashes out of a shitty situation he was only just lucky enough to stumble across in the first place, to stop someone who could've ruined his entire plan with a few words. killing L was always going to be light's greatest accomplishment when it comes to his rise to godhood, not only because of L's great power but the comparative position of light at the time that he did so— not yet an adult, not even really out of school, perhaps barely out of his parents' house.

in contrast, light's arc for the second half of the story is a downward spiral. we see all of the consequences light has been miraculously avoiding smack into him like meteors in this half, his ever-growing ego torn to shreds as he's yanked back down to earth. and in comparison to the anime, the manga really beats this point into you, dedicating the entire second half of the story to light's fall from grace as he loses his mind and loses his humanity. like, while i do kind of prefer the manga ending to the anime, i have to admit that light's death there is fucking brutal. light goes through pages, chapters, purely dedicated to near tearing him a new asshole, only end the story bloody and delirious and crawling on his knees begging a god of death to fix everything— all just to die the exact same death as everyone else he's killed. i mean, look at these fucking pages (ch.107):

(that last fucking picture of him. clawing at the sky. it always fucking gets to me.)

it hurts to read this shit!! we spend the entire first half of the story watching this dude's rise to glory, the entire time stuck inside of his head, emotionally connecting with him even if we don't really mean to or disagree with his actions or question his morality. watching his fall back down, especially after all of that, is fucking painful— an in no way does near make the process any easier. if anything, his blunt, snarky bitchery, saying all the quiet parts out loud, calling light out for being a terrible replacement L and pointing and laughing at his failures to his face, only shoves more salt in the wound, only proves just how human he has been all this time, how meaningless any of his supposed "rise to power" ever really was. light got his fifteen seconds of fame, sure— but near is armed and ready to make sure that's all he'd ever get, that the name Light Yagami would never even be associated with the position he held for so long. six years was all he got— and it was all he was ever going to get, because light yagami did not do this for humanity, he did it for himself. all near did was collect the debt that L prescribed. he fulfilled his duty as told— nothing more, and nothing less.

i just have to wonder... is this why people hate him? because he has no sympathy for the fall? maybe. i don't know.

either way, i don't think i could ever really hate him. it's a big responsibility, being the only one left behind. but near has always been the one to hold such weights on his shoulders.

[remvamp]

office yuri is real guys…

[murmurmurl]

mlem mlem ruikasa sketches wile I'm working on smth

[kisekiii25]

Tiny Pixl and his beloved Deepslate Emerald Ore <3

(aka: a small chibi practice where i managed to somewhat replicate genshin's chibi artstyle and went wild with it)

[mangoisgay]

Someone on TikTok made like a Hamilton au but they were so wrong about Aletyler that I had to make this instead

[knifebaby3000]

fear fun fear love

[ibetittering]

WHY CAN'T HE EVER BE HAPPY 😭😭😭

[wolpchen]

I hate these two so much (affectionate)

[wrensog]

back to my roots,.,.,

[yayforocs]

👉👈 so @silverskye13 i saw this and..............

had to make an aron helsmet!!!!!! this was really hecking fun to think about actually like what she'd be like n design (which. is a poke at the rp server she was from actually) and also made me sit down and think more on my other minecraft ocs i have sittin around and why they ended up getting redesigns lkdsfh BUT YEAH i!!!!!!!! aron!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[hillerskaroyals]

i don’t condone cheating or ghosting but what else was simon supposed to do? he tried to break up with marcus and was manipulated into staying in a relationship he didn’t want and wasn’t ready for

as lovesick and selfish as wille was this season/end of last season he accepted the end of their relationship. when simon broke up with him he was obviously sad but he accepted it and (although it took him some time) eventually moved on in s2. hell even before he moved on he didn’t do any of the guilt tripping marcus does. as selfish as wille was he was always honest with his intentions and that’s more than i can say for marcus

i truly went into this season ready to defy the odds and not hate marcus but even when wille was selfish and hurting people with his actions he still showed how much he cared even if he was being petty. like when simon rebuffed his attempts at touching him and rekindling their old relationship without solving anything wille backed off. was he petty about it and made snide comments (‘is it okay if i sit here? i know how much you value your space’) but he still respected the touch boundary simon had set. he tried to let simon go after he realized he was happy with marcus. hell he even made polite small talk with marcus to show simon that he accepted their relationship because he’s learned that actions speak louder than words. as much as it was killing him he thought letting simon go was what was best for both of them so he was willing to do it

unlike marcus who preyed on simons insecurities and told him what he wanted to hear to keep him in the relationship. the way he blanked simon’s attempt to break up with him will never sit right with me

wille might have been selfish for not wanting to let simon go but marcus was more selfish for actively preventing simon from leaving