#bc i was gonna abandon it lol

[edsbacktattoo]

I bet there’s some insane foliage.

[twobitzz]

calliope and morpheus

link to the wonderful artwork by joe bowler which i heavily referenced

[hobbithoes]

felt inspired af when I woke up and rlly thought I was gonna do a whole page of expressions today 😹😹😹

[skrunksthatwunk]

idk if i've discussed it before (i have certainly THOUGHT about it) but someone on my kuwa suffering ep 89 comp mentioned it and i just had to go off about it like. ok. sensui tells yusuke something along the lines of "you heard itsuki" when itsuki's inside the uraotoko, implying that not only can sensui hear those inside the uraotoko, but that he expects yusuke to be able to as well. which means that yusuke Almost Certainly Heard And Kind Of Ignored kuwabara's prolonged mental breakdown and wailing about how much he needs yusuke to live etc. which. guHHH i hate him yusuke you ass but also listen.

the only acknowledgement yusuke gives to this (if any) is when he says something like "sensui you're sooo fucking cooked this plan's going perfectly (my friends are going to get strong and kill you when i die)." he's trash talking to sensui, ignoring the others because, i think, he doesn't want to acknowledge what he's doing to them.

yusuke is explicitly recreating the experience he had with kuwabara's "death" at the hands of toguro, complete with the announcement of intent (and power) to kill, the inability to impede the threat in any way (barring a power-breakthrough), and the target in some way racing towards/volunteering for their death. yusuke learns through doing, and through tough love-style approaches. it's only effective if it hurts. watching kuwabara die like that was devastating to yusuke, but it sure as hell fucking worked. he beat toguro because of that maneuver. so even if he has to (re-)traumatize his friends in the process, this method will make his friends stronger, and he feels confident in that. but he never had to live with the consequences of kuwabara's death, not really. that's something hiei makes clear before they enter the cave as well, that there are no fake-outs ready to make him or anyone else stronger. the only deaths here will be real. the only power gained will come at a high, permanent cost. hiei's warning is an attempt to keep everyone alive, to keep yusuke from being stupid. and then yusuke decides to take that fatality into his own hands, but it's kind of his friends who would pay the price. he's going to make them live through the days, months, years without him, the actual permanency of loss (assuming they survive for that long), something he never experienced with kuwabara (a new facet of that traumatic scenario), AND he's escaping the emotional fallout of this choice through death. he doesn't have to see them mourn, won't get yelled at, won't watch them fail to move on. he's tapping out and choosing to believe they'll be fine.

but i think he feels guilty. just a little. i mean, yusuke couldn't even believe that people cared about him enough to want him alive in episode one. he's staked everything on his friends, which means he still kind of... doesn't value his own life, at least not compared to theirs. but he believes his friends love him and want him around, and we know that because he has to, or else he wouldn't make a plan that depends entirely on that love. he is actively leveraging the care he doesn't think he deserves, trying to hurt them in a way he is intimately familiar with (only worse), for.... what, exactly?

this is kind of my sticking point tbh. i don't think the answer is... super clear, but let's start with what it's not.

yusuke is not doing this because it is the most practical way to save all of humanity; that would be the mafukan, which he stopped. it could be a gamble to save all of his friends? the mafukan strategy would guarantee koenma's death/eternal imprisonment, whereas this strategy gambles all of humanity on the chance that his friends come out of the Easy Break Oven strong enough to avert the end of the world. if the sacrifice of even one friend is completely intolerable, perhaps he'd accept those slim odds and their steep consequences. yusuke tends to take risks like that, especially when he's got fight-induced tunnel vision. he doesn't think things through too much; his schemes are usually dependent on surprising his enemy enough to oneshot them. truthfully, i think this is the closest we'll get to an answer, and it's a more conventional one for this kind of story. but there is another layer i haven't been able to get from my mind.

i think yusuke is gifting each of his friends an honorable warrior's death.

so, in case it needs saying, yusuke, kuwabara, kurama, and hiei all (at least once, if not several times) exhibit a desire to die in combat in a way they deem noble to give their lives purpose (usually by self-sacrifice, but sometimes by another metric of honor, like hiei's duel with shigure and his desire to die in mutual defeat against an evenly matched opponent; or even kurama's decision to fight shigure in his human form, displaying a sort of passive suicidality via placing being true to himself in this (somewhat symbolic/inconsequential) way over survival). they need to make their lives count for something, because they feel guilty for being alive (kurama and hiei feel guilty for their past actions (hiei's is most evident in his distance from yukina, though that's not its primary reason), hiei, kuwabara, and yusuke have all been ostracized and made to feel like burdens on/unwanted by their caregivers and general society; all four of them have felt profound isolation even from their loved ones (yusuke and hiei are rather obvious; kurama can never tell his mother about the majority of his life nor what she truly means to him in the context of it; and kuwabara is separated from his peers for his spiritual awareness and his "stupidity" (plus his parents aren't around? and he is Desperate to define manhood/manliness through a broader pop cultural one which includes the warrior sacrifice thing bc he has no male role models BUT that's for another post) (i will admit kuwa's the most tenuous one here irt isolation)). they want to die for a cause so badly it's actually physically painful to me. it is passive suicidality, and they define their lives and identities by their relation to, engagement with, and skill at doing violence, etc. they live to die by the sword. anyway. nobody talks about it but i think it's very important to understanding what yusuke's doing here.

because i think he knows that about himself and his friends. they're kindred spirits. at the very least he knows this about kuwabara, who literally made a speech about this before diving into toguro's fingers In The Event That He Is Recreating Explicitly. he is dying nobly like they all want to on the chance that they'll get to break out and fight sensui rather than dying without even getting to take a swing. it's about his pride and theirs. but i don't think yusuke necessarily believes they'll win. he knows better than anyone how strong sensui is, and how wide the gap is between sensui and team urameshi. his stated position that humanity is doomed and that he doesn't care about its fate is, i think, not completely genuine, but if we take it at face value, he's not killing himself so that his friends can survive the end of the world. something's going to come around and kill them eventually. he's doing it so they can survive long enough to fight sensui. he needs them (specifically kuwabara) to be strong enough to free themselves to begin round two. but he's given up on their side winning, on humanity surviving, on his own victory---why should he think his friends are capable of winning? this could be another case of yusuke's fight-blinders. it could be another gamble, more blind faith put in his friends. but honestly it reads more to me that yusuke's giving them a chance to die together on the battlefield. them winning would be great, but it's not his goal. it's a pipe dream.

he knows he's going to be killed. they're probably going to be killed, too. but to make it so they last a little longer against sensui, to make the odds a little more even, so they are killed not like livestock, but like worthy fighters, he'd die a little faster. it's the best kind of death someone like them can have; and he'll deprive himself of it just to make their ends a little sweeter. even if the road to that is far more bitter.

but it's not like yusuke's friends know what he's thinking or agree to it, and he can't exactly make his case for it in the moment. he's making that choice for them. whatever his intentions, whatever odds he thinks they have of beating sensui, he's kind of sealing all of their fates. so how the hell is he supposed to acknowledge kuwabara screaming at him not to die, trying desperately to express what yusuke means to him in what could be their final moments together? this plan is going to hurt his friends terribly. it is already doing so, and he can hear it. his choices to stop koenma from using the mafukan and to die for his friends' strength are both selfish in some way, no matter how you read the scene. if yusuke comforts kuwabara, he might not get strong enough. if he twists the knife, well... how could he forgive himself? and either way by responding he would have to face them all and say yes, i'm doing this regardless of your feelings (with the intention of hurting you). so i think he does what he often does. he avoids it. he lets that emotion glance off him and his bravado and his one-liners so he doesn't have to deal with the fact that he's hurting people, that he's scared and guilty and unsure of himself. that he's about to die again, about to put kuwabara through the grief he saw at his wake again, only worse; about to put his quieter friends through something similar.

yusuke is confronted with the responsibility one has to the people who care for them, and he runs from it in an attempt to give them some small peace. just like when he died before and thought hey, at least my mom and keiko won't be burdened by me anymore. because the only thing he can really do for them is die.

[ianthesmells]

like ooouuuughhh the sadness n grief makes me nauseous and then i cant eat anything because im nauseous which in turn makes me more nauseous

[jordanswitches]

.

[ganondoodle]

okay, i know im really bad at answering asks (shame on me! shame on me!)

but .....since its what im currently able to focus on; are there any questions about my OCs you'd like to ask? (the more precise the better, the vaguer the more i would just ramble out their entire history out of context or not know how to answer) i know i havent drawn alot of them, maybe it could get me to (re)design some even ... but i still wanted to put this out there o-o

[padfootastic]

a seldom unrealised joy of fics updating after a long time (by which i mean many months or perhaps even years) is being able to go back and reread the previous chapter or heck, the entire fic again to catch up. it’s almost as good as reading it for the first time🥰

[guinevereslancelot]

oh shit it's getting real

[hismourningflower]

i didn’t think i’d ever need reassurances from people who only know my online persona but mooties do yall actually like me

[jrueships]

momma cat teaching baby cat how to walk is so jaren and gg coded

[yeehawbvby]

My ACNH island is VERY slowly coming together (been working on it since.. I think July? Maybe august?)

I’m really happy with the progress I’ve made except I’m now one of those people whose island lags because of the amount of stuff in some spots lmao 🧎🏻‍♀️ it’s a worthy sacrifice though imo because my orchard is the culprit and it looks banging!!

Either way. BEHOLD

[mo-ondial]

hm. this may be too many windows

[swordmaid]

i FINALLY finished my tactician run with shri’iia and saw the epilogue ‼️ for this run she was full Oathbreaker paladin.. I would’ve multi-classes to fighter but I wanted this to be a rp run which is kind of a bad choice for my first tactician playthrough but we didn’t need action surge by the end when we’re doing like 90 dmg smites lmfao.

anyway. THE EPILOGUE !! it was sooo cute 😭 kind of reminds me of a way shorter citadel dlc but it was def more satisfying than the previous ending.

these are my favourite dialogues though and it’s such a satisfying ending to Shri’iia’s character arc -

Shri’iia starting out as a paladin of Lolth (who worshipped her to the point of zealotry) gets forsaken by said goddess, her Oath - which is an extension of her persons and soul atp - gets broken - goes through a crisis of faith and identity, like she devoted her entire life to the spider queen how could she be abandoned so easily?, decides to pursue this strange freedom she’s been left with or else she will really have nothing, learns what that strange freedom means - she’s not bound to any tenets or dogma and every choice is hers to make for better or for worse. there is no outside approval or validation to seek, and every consequences are hers alone … accepts that newfound freedom and vows to never be bound by anything again - and if there are others who are bound against their will she will help them be free but only if they make that decision first. she will not make a decision for anyone’s path just as she won’t be following anyone’s will without question. she’s forging her own path ! going her own direction ! now she spends the rest of the journey learning more about the world because there is so much to it than what the spider queen tells you, and learning that there is more to life than living with fear and paranoia, and there is more to herself than she would’ve known and her worth is more than what she can offer to a fickle goddess who will abandon her when the mood strikes.

Like it’s SO satisfying to me watching how her character turns from someone who is so needlessly mean and cruel to someone who’s relatively decent by the end. I still think that she has a mean streak about her, and sometimes she can be kind of deranged lmfao but there is purpose and principle behind every decision she makes. Like these dialogues describes her to a T tbh like Shri’iia is not nice but she can be kind -

And before all this, Menzoberranzan was the only home she ever known. Lolth is the only thing she’s ever known. Leaving it all behind was a decision she didn’t make lightly because where else would she go when the world that you’ve known has thrown you away? And will probably hunt you down and kill you if you ever go back to it… and this new world that you’ve been thrown into is unpredictable, you don’t have that certainty or security that comes with following what is expected, but nevertheless she moves forward… she spends those days exploring this strange new world with her strange new freedom. She’s grown accustomed to the vastness of the sky, she falls in love with the stars in the night since they remind her of the glowing faerie fire in the city of spiders. She learns what home means for her, and she eventually makes it for herself bc no one can take it away if it’s hers !! She learns to love someone without the fear of betrayal and more importantly she learns to trust them !!! this line makes me saur 😭😭 because it’s like the TWO biggest fucking liars of the group who will most likely betray everyone if the need rises fall for each other then learns how to trust and eventually sees home in each other -

like they both used the other for their own gain (shri’iia to distract from the fact that her oath is broken since she’s still in denial/astarion bc he wanted to manipulate her for protection) what they failed to take in account is that they’re both clowns lmfao and not used to sincerity so when the affections actually started to become genuine and sincere, and the casual fucking turns into not so casual, and you start to overthink the smallest gestures you weren’t even paying attention to before they’re like 🧍‍♀️🤡🤡 ‼️ cue act 2 confession scene. then they start actually falling in love….. and learning what being in love means for them…. then they both learn how they want to be loved and how to live freely … making a home in each other … what started out as a fleeting fancy turning into something more genuine and sturdy- something they would’ve never thought of having before.

this is so long but I’m so happy with her journey she is so asos jaime writing in the white book [ he could write whatever he chose, henceforth. whatever he chose… ] coded to ME ‼️‼️‼️🫶🫶

[axreliono]

trying to add a scene into an old chap bc a specific plot thread has been bothering me for a while now but ITS SO HARD TO CHANGE SOMETHING THATS ALREADY PUBLISHED WITHOUT ENTIRELY REWRITING. my editing style is quite literally "if sucks, rewrite from scratch" which isnt useful rn. pain and suffering for ten thousand years

[neige-leblanche]

if i ever seriously got into doll collecting/figurines i would simply never stop😩