#before I committed to anything

[starry-bi-sky]

danny and officer martinez's relationship in "late at night, when the nightingale sings" in a nutshell:

Martinez: FREAK! GET YOUR FUCKING KID!

Battinson, on the other side of the crime scene: he don't bite

Martinez, with Nightingale firmly attached his arm, visibly biting him: YES HE DO!

*points at them* Danny is the Bugs Bunny to Martinez's Elmer Fudd.

Another Officer: i can't believe you're fighting with an actual twelve year old. Martinez: i swear to god that is not a twelve year old, that is a little hellion that crawled out of batman's shadow one dark and stormy night and decided to dedicate his existence to tormenting me. Officer: Are you really that mad about him putting a sticky note on your back-- Martinez: thats not the point

in danny's defense: the word "freak" is. a mini beserker button for him for.... obvious ghostly reasons, so like, even if its not directed at him, he still very much unappreciates Martinez's insults at Battinson. Danny may or may not be projecting.

he's not going to hurt the guy! not in any serious or permanently disfiguring way at least! But he is going to leave mean sticky notes on the square part of his spine that he can't reach, and stick salt in his 3AM Late Night Crime Scene Coffee, and kick the bottom of his heel while he's walking so he stumbles. And other petty, infuriating things that tally up and boil over, over time.

[deoidesign]

My comic is so pretty...

The hiatus is letting me take a little extra time on these episodes, and I'm definitely putting it to good use!!!

[fisheito]

you know when you're holding a snake but they wanna GO so they keep worming forward but you keep replacing your hands along the length so now you're both on a conveyor belt to nowhere

[0vergrowngraveyard]

i have forces on the mind now so i’m going to discuss something i think WAY too much about

besides tails’ involvement in the game, the biggest thing i’d change is how infinite used the phantom ruby. imagine how much more of a threat he would’ve been if he used it for psychological warfare instead of just making an army

what if in that huge battle scene, instead of just reusing zavok and shadow etc etc, he used clones of resistance members and heroes to stir confusion and fear. to make everyone question who they’re fighting

what if the younger version of sonic that followed tails around was an illusion and a constant presence that reminded tails of his failure? he doesn’t help with anything, he just follows the fox around. kinda like how tails follows sonic around and, in his mind, doesn’t do anything worth while. we all talk about sonic being psychology tortured on the death egg but what if infinite did that to those who were found alone as well?

that does lead back to my wish that forces followed tails instead of the rookie. if infinite used the phantom ruby to stoke fear and confusion, tails being the main character means he would’ve had to push past his fear AND help others push past their own fears in order to help stop infinite which would’ve been a huge character growth moment for him

maybe i’m just pulling shit out of my ass but personally, i would’ve loved to see an infinite that used more mental warfare tactics instead of whatever tf he did in forces

[fist-of-vengeance]

Ben Linus + textposts the sequel

[piningpercussionist]

Sorta dressed up Ramoxie sketch for my fellow doomed yuri enthusiasts

[rainedroptalks]

I am having very normal thoughts about Greta Hayes and her life before she died. Very hinged about the fact she was probably very close with her brother once. And I am definitely not thinking about her reuniting with her mother. Man

[starbuck]

me: wow, being in a relationship could be fun…

also me: if one more person tells me they have a crush on me, i am going to SCREAM

[daisywords]

"just focus on book 1 without mapping out the entire trilogy" I need you to understand how much I cannot do that

[luck-of-the-drawings]

IMAGINE. working at ur stupid uhhh job or whatever. pulling into your drive way and ready to work on some crazy project in your garage. opening the door to the most unfamiliar silence. did your wife and kid leave for something? could you imagine knocking on your kids door, hardly getting an answer, and opening it to find the splattered remains of your wife across his room your child is scared! hes hardly consolable, in a state of shock and terror. you are too, but youre the adult here. you need to take charge. you need to protect him. you need to do something. you need to do something.

[captain-space-kin]

hey not to be That Guy™ but I don’t think Arin is as normal as you guys keep insisting that he is

[astraystayyh]

ISRAEL IS DETAINING STRIPPED CIVILIANS IN A STADIUM, INCLUDING CHILDREN, ELDERLY AND WOMEN. IT IS CONFIRMED THAT ISRAEL CARRIES OUT FIELD EXECUTIONS AGAINST PALESTINIANS. HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE THAT THIS IS A GENOCIDE?

[zebratimw]

Spirit animal SQH

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

ah yes! the joys of executive dysfunction and something being Fundamentally Broken In Your Braincase!

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2024: A HALF-BUILT GARDEN by Ruthanna Emrys.

[rawliverandgoronspice]

behold: my second least favorite string of words in the entirety of Tears of the Kingdom.

(it's a little less transparent why this time so I'll explain my thoughts under the cut)

So why do I not like this?

In so many words: because if you remove it, the scene still works, but you lose the moral certainty of what is going on.

This single sentence does so much legwork for the entire game (the kind I dislike), to the point where I'm about 60% sure it's the product of a rework that realized how ambiguous Rauru's position was as the Good Rightful King and needed to nervously reassure the players that Ganondorf Is and Always Was the Invader, Actually.

(no matter that it leaves the gerudos in this awkward in-between state of both invaders and victims, while never dwelling in the specifics of their history and their own agency in the entire thing; brushed off as a sin they have to expiate through loyalty to the winners of that particular strife, but without explicitely blaming them either to avoid the implications of what that would have looked like)

If you remove it, not only do you lose a pretty clunky line that detracts from Ganondorf's intimidating presence (who is he even speaking to? who needs to hear this right now?) that honestly speaks for itself when it comes to his experience with warfare, but also you lose any tension and any mystery regarding why he is attacking in the first place.

You also... kind of rob Ganondorf's motivations of their meaning. "Hyrule will bow down before me" leads to asking... why? What does he want? What does he see in those lands? And what little we get with Rauru and then Link during the final fight begs more questions; why do you prefer hardship to peace? Why do you value strength? What leads you to want to rule a land devoid of survivors, become a king without a kingdom? I don't think we ever get satisfactory answers. If you remove this sentence, on the other hand... Subtextually, it becomes pretty clear that his motivations is that he felt threatened by Rauru's power, which is ripe with subtext and questions about whether this is a legitimate reaction, whether his "no survivor" stance is due to a feeling of betrayal when his own people turned against him post the Demon King shenanigans... I'm not saying it would fix the entire game's writing, far from it, but it would already do *so much more*.

(genuinely, I think he could have stayed completely silent during the Molduga Assault, speaking only in the Show of Fealty before going completely nuts after Sonia's murder, and it would have worked MUCH better in terms of characterization but anyway anyway

EDIT: ALSO!!! that way he wouldn't speak hylian to fellow gerudos, which is weird inherently)

Without this line, the core of the tension between the gerudos and Hyrule comes front in his conversation with Rauru; it allows the cause of his hostility to be Rauru's invitations, that he would have taken as a threat, and would have still made him warlike and domineering without making him cartoonishly flat, because, once again, Rauru is not acting in a particularly more legitimate way when Zelda arrives in Ancient Hyrule; and it would have been... fair to point that out. And make for better characterization for Rauru, and Sonia, and Mineru, and everybody. But the priority was for Hyrule to be pictured as unquestionably holy; always legitimate, always truthful, always beautiful, always just.

Also, and this is more of a nitpick but: why would Ganondorf want Hyrule, specifically, to bow down before him also? Was he at war with the rest of the disparate tribes before, and just carried on his ambitions to the very very newly-founded kingdom as they allied under a new banner? (though it seems to be implies the lands were crawling under monsters in a generic sense, and not Ganondorf's attacks in particular) Why would he even consider Hyrule a legitimate entity worth taking over then, if it is so new, born from the will of a powerful rival, founded by what is basically a stranger to these lands? Why would he covet something so young instead of destroying it and just calling the lands Gerudo Lands II or Grooseland or something?

I don't think any of that was even accounted for, because, beyond everything else: to me, this sentence is so clearly and painfully crammed in here to shield Hyrule from any potential blame and immediately characterize Ganondorf as Bad without having to remove any of the causes that could lead one to side-eye Rauru's little pet project as equally questionable.

Beyond the clumsiness, it is cowardly --and, I think, a little damning.