#but I'll figure it out somehow

[reluctanttrabbit]

they're matching :3

[thesiat]

I think the really important thing that writing Thesiat has really made me pay attention to about Vlad III of House Drăculești is that he was a defensive warlord/king, and that is very different than a conquering one. I think we are so used to colonialism and empire mindset that it's hard to remember not all rulers had it.

As a non-Romanian it's also critical to remember that he is a hero to Romania and considered one of the most important rulers Romania has ever had. He was a real person with a real life.

I include him in my story not just because of the outside-of-Romania connection to him as a vampire, but also because once I started studying him (as much as I could), I was... not surprised, because that would imply I hadn't thought of him as a real person before, and I did; but I was excited in the way I always am when I get a clearer picture of a historical person's humanity. It quickly became clear that he was, actually, genuinely the best person to be the king of the vampires, like that was such a natural and organic choice, not really having anything to do with Stoker's work at all.

I'm actually very pleased that I (almost) wholly ignored Stoker's work and my 'Our Friend Mister Drăculești' is based almost entirely on the idea of 'What if the historical person had become a vampire'.

[egophiliac]

I love how you draw Grim the size of a small cat. It genuinely blows my mind that according to the game he's actually approximately 70 cm tall... Like, Ortho is 148 cm. That's only two Grims! If Grim stands on Ortho's head, they'd be just a bit taller than Malleus (who is 202 cm and I'm not sure that's counting the horns)! The proportions are just so wild to try to imagine realistically... (and I do like the small cat Grim take more, it's very endearing)

every time I remember Grim is actually supposed to be the size of, like, a medium-to-largeish dog, and then I just...draw him cat-sized anyway. I also think it's cuter that way! 🤷 (let's just say he's not allowed to ride the servant unless he takes the shrinking potion first.)

ultimately I figure we all get a little artistic license in our fanart, and mine are:

cat-sized Grim

Lilia with hair spikes up to the heavens

w i d e Silver

[little-pondhead]

Day 15: Field Trip

“It’s good to see you, Mnemosyne.”

[Full comic without text under the cut.]

[kibby-reaper]

disclaimer: mod reaper and i made this when we were only several weeks into the game

- mod kibby

[bonetrousledbones]

update to the Playing Undertale With Roommate Whose Only Social Media is Pinterest situation: we only just got to waterfall and so far it has been a fucking trip

they have No Idea the significance of Flowey yet. not even a hint. they thought the sans echo flower conversation was about echo flowers

during the papyrus date and especially when they got to his room they kept looking at me and saying "THIS is your man????" which they stopped asking after the date. they have read some of my fics. i do not think i am any less insane to them now

they gave papyrus a valley girl voice btw. mostly because i had to beg them not to give him a mickey mouse voice instead

they didn't fucking know what skeletor sounds like

bc i know The Efficient Ways to do Things and they don't they've been reminding me of a buncha details & lines of dialogue I don't actually have embedded in my memory. particularly "PAPYRUS IS HUNGRY, TOO! HUNGRY FOR JUSTICE!"

they got the "Can I speak to G..." phone call. i have never once gotten that in any of my playthroughs, probably because i don't usually go up to that area but still. ik its not REALLY rare but i have never actually seen it Organically before so it was crazy to ME

Dogsong is my morning alarm ok. so when it showed up in the game and they realized they recognized it on a subconscious level they looked physically pained

Undyne's first chase scene scared the shit out of them

[dirty-droid]

So I played through some more dbh last night and woke up thinking, God, there is a good reason Markus and Kara, and their respective companions never got as popular as Connor and Hank. Literally The Bridge is surrounded by the most *do everything for absolutely no reason* chapters, and there's no comparison.

First the Kara chapter wastes your time, she barely gets any small talk in with Luther, then the car breaks down, then you're just doing tiny tasks, doing a shitty sum up of her story so far when Alice asks you to make one up- they could have done something interesting with that story but they chose not to, literally anything specific anything that would function as a parallel to their journey would have actually had some value. Then you barely start a conversation with Luther, where are you maybe get a hint of his personality before we're back to just talking about the plot and Alice, but then it's over again and you meet the Jerries and you learn almost nothing about them.

It is a chapter where you do nothing interesting, and you learn almost nothing about the main characters, for a downtime chapter, I expect character development and get barely a sneeze of it. There is so much room and so much time for you to really push and question your main characters but it just doesn't get used.

Honestly I think the protagonists all could have probably really benefited from the audience getting to hear their internal monologues if they weren't actually going to talk to their companion characters, but even that would just be a substitute for decent writing.

Either way, after that, we come back to Connor and Hank, who do almost no tasks in this chapter, *but spend the entire time TALKING.* They talk to each other in a constant volley back and forth for the entire length of the chapter and it's probably one of the best chapters in the game, it's certainly one of the most important in their story. You spend the entire bridge scene learning more about Hank and Connor's inner worlds, and how they think, and how they feel, you spend the whole chapter learning so much about their perspectives, this chapter is all about asking the hard questions about both of their individual characters, and the tension is high, it's a straightforward chapter to play, and it really fucking feels like your choices matter here, there will be immediate consequences, not just walking through your environment trying to find the right answer, or being dragged through an interaction. It's just plain good.

And then Markus infiltrates the Stratford Tower, and you get the most boring and useless and frustrating chapter in the game that doesn't seem to serve any purpose beyond looking cool. If Kara's last chapter was only to gain sympathy and create some soft and fuzzy feelings, this chapter is only about looking cinematic. This is probably my least favorite chapter in the game, honestly I've just gotten lost on that yellow ass office floor building too many times, even though I'm very familiar with the game now I still managed to get lost again last night.

I will admit that eventually it does become an opportunity to decide between pacifism and violence but that seems to be the only real development for Markus, and it wouldn't have been hard to make that kind of opportunity in another setting. Because we get next to nothing watching him get past the front desk, or from walking around that floor, just some outfit changes and pretending to be a machine and a little more Android hate in the background, Markus is almost completely silent yet again, there is almost no talking with North once she appears. We actually get more about North's personality here than Markus', she just feels like she has more lines somehow, because sometimes she just talks without it being connected to the plot and Markus never does.

This bit is more speculative, but my fiance and I were going off last night about whyyyy did they have to break into the tower? We're never given any reason for what the steps are and why they are important, just usually pretty important in these mission impossible type scenes, they're usually explaining in a voice-over why they are taking the steps that they are taking. But we get no explanation for why he needs to go to the 47th floor or whatever, No explanation for why he needs to change into a maintenance Android uniform, why North was in the stairwell, how Josh and Simon got in, it's all just handwaved, and whyyyyyy they couldn't have just?? Made a recording and then hacked the station's broadcast remotely and basically just posted the speech? I don't know, it's just a particularly frustrating chapter to play, personally, but it isn't strong.

Either way, you've got two chapters with next to no character development, that just have a lot of empty space and time where the characters could have been talking or could have been doing something else, but didn't because the vibes were more important, sandwiching a simple scene with ten pounds of character development and it just feels weird. And once I noticed it, it just made the Kara and Markus chapters look incredibly weak and poorly written... And conversely, make the Connor and Hank chapter look much, much stronger in comparison.

It's like Detroit become human almost needs it's own type of Bechdel Test, just to show how much they fail Markus and Kara. "Do they talk about something that isn't the plot?"

"Do Kara and Luther talk about something that isn't Alice or getting to Canada?" "Does Markus talk about anything besides his speech for this chapter?" "Does Alice talk at all beyond basic communication with Kara?" "Does Markus or his buddies talk about anything that's not the revolution or just Markus himself?"

... They don't pass a lot.

It's just hard to take these characters above simply *likeable* when they just, don't, ever, talk. There's little to no development for Markus or Kara, and because they've just become deviants, there's hardly any character establishment in the first place, they barely even get the chance to just be flat, because if they don't really know who they are, we don't really know who they are.

Connor and Hank's friendship is more functionally the main plot, more so than the deviant investigation, and for Markus and the team, and Kara with Alice, that's simply just not the case, there is hardly any relationship, they're just in the same boat. This is why Connor got astronomically more popular, and why he and Hank have the staying power that they do.

Markus and Kara just don't ever talk, and Connor does. And I'm fucking mad about it. The amount of time that was just wasted in their stories, I could probably take a damn stopwatch to all the moments where there could have been a little something-something, and nothing was put there. It's not to say Connor doesn't get some quiet moments too but he always gets the chance to make up for it.

Even at the beginning of the Stratford Tower chapter, I noticed that they could have had Simon and North talking about something maybe unrelated when Markus walks up, but there's nothing, only silence until Markus comes in with a plan. And of course we know about every time Luther tries to bring up the fact that Alice is an android, only to be shut down and walked away from. It fucking kills me how much time Mark is has the focus of the camera but it's only so he could look cool for a minute, and share no thoughts of his own, none of his new feelings, everything is only implied and then followed by the action where he is only allowed to be the leader of the revolution and never just Markus. There's a tragedy in that, but they could have driven it home harder by *pointing that out.*

[viperwhispered]

I have acquired some supremely cute eepy lil guys from @kamapon

I mean just look at them (they're lucky I can't be pinching their cheeks rn tho I promise I'd be very gentle tucking them in)

[velociheroviridi]

I'm not fixated on Danny Phantom right now, what could you possibly be talking about?

After like 6 years of having the software, DP is the motivation I needed to finally understood the youtube tutorials on how to animate in csp I guess, so here's my first ever little animation! I know it's super rough but now that I actually know what I'm doing, I'll probably try again when it's not past midnight

[yvehattan]

Demons is a novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Some might say it possesses you.

[koka-mi]

Oh my gosh whyyyy am I so obsessed with numbers I don't like it at all this is driving me INSANEEEE😭😭IT'S GETTING WORSE AND WORSE AS THE DAYS GO BY AAAA

[martyrbat]

perpetual mourning – batman black and white (1996) #1

[ID: a black and white panel sequence of Bruce Wayne as Batman investigating a murder. He performed an examination of the victim's body and found DNA evidence to convict her killer and then performed an autopsy to examine her stomach contents — which led him to a little 24/7 diner. He walks in, disrupting the cozy scene with his presence.

Bruce internally reflects, ‘People think i'm a knight. A savior. But in truth, I'm only a vessel to hold the memories of those who've passed on. Those who've no shell left to store them. They must think I revel in my victories. It must seem like I never lose a fight. I lose plenty. The ones I couldn't get to. The ones I couldn't save in time. Those are the ones I carry around inside of me. Those are the ones I'll mourn forever.’

He shows the only waitress a photo of the victim's face and asks, “Excuse me. Do any of you know this woman?” The waitress gasps and holds her hand to her head in shocked distress. She stammers, “That's Chelsea, she comes in here all the time. Sits in the same booth, the same time, reads the same book... um, what was the title...? She, uh, left here only a couple of... Why do you... Oh, god. No. Dear girl...”

Back at the morgue, Bruce solemnly gazes down at the woman as she lays in an unzipped body bag. He thinks, ‘Luckily, you hadn't digested your last meal, Chelsea. There're only a few places in the neighborhood where you were found that serve blueberry pie at this hour of the morning.’ He carefully zips the body bag entirely. The identification label states she was a thirty year old caucasian female. The name ‘Jane Doe’ has been scribbled out to now be replaced with ‘Chelsea Rain’. Bruce continues to ruminate, ‘You only have your thoughts and dreams ahead of you. You're someone. You mean something. I'll remember. You're within me now. Forever.’ END ID]

[grubus]

*sleepy stare into void* i don't think there are any ships in svsss I can't work with. Some I would struggle with but I would figure it out eventually.

[cleverreports]

We report: early evening, and we think we somehow lost the sunset in the rain. Our expert confided that they were excited for autumn to come, and we said something along the lines of "Come on, it is the middle of summer still!". Secretly, we very much agree. The rain is lukewarm.

[astranauticus]

shoutout to my friend who introduced me, lover of angst and tragic gays, to omniscient reader, a webtoon with angst and tragic gays, and then was somehow surprised at how fast i fell ass first into the orv hole. real dead dove do not eat situation if you ask me

[xx-j4nu5-c4t5-xx]

The feminine urge to redecorate the Smith house like it's 1980-something and all four of the Curious siblings still live in there