#but i feel like I would be exaggerating

[swati-art]

Alright I'm back from pride and now I think I'll sleep for 3 days (i had a lot of fun tho)

[watchingwisteria]

listen there really was just something about how in the book, snow’s 3-page descent from hesitant lover boy to deluded mfer happens entirely in his mind. lucy gray gives him no indication whatsoever that she suspects him, that she’s going to leave or betray him. he’s just sitting quietly in the cabin waiting for her to return when that seed of calculated suspicion, which he has needed to survive the capitol, takes a hold of him and chokes the life out of any goodness left inside him. it really drives home your terror as a reader that “oh my god did he kill her? did she escape? what happened to her? why would he even think that?” in a way that when the movie had to adjust for visualization it lost some of that holy shit this guy has lost it emphasis.

[ineed-to-sleep]

Blacked out in front of my tablet and woke up with sketches of my Touchstarved mc + Kuras my beloved. woops

[time-slink]

out here playing dress-up

[many-gay-magpies]

i love how dead boy detectives presents such a diverse mix of the campiest, most over-the-top tv characters of all time, and the best representation of actual real-life human beings i think i have ever seen on television

[canisalbus]

So i remember an ask mentioning your mortal enemy, Felis Atra and their cats, and i thought it'd be fun to draw what Felis Atra's version of your italian dogs would be.

I think they would be called Butter Knife and Flamengo! Butter Knife is not his real name, it's an nickname given by his peers because of how harmless he is. I choose Flamengo because that's the name of Vasco's rival football team here in Brazil, so i thought that was the perfect name :)

Cat Machete was slightly inspired by the Oriental Shorthair cat because of their long noses and thin head shape.

Cat Vasco was inspired by the Scottish Fold cat, because FLOPPY EARS. I gave Flamengo longer ears and orange fur to make him more like his look-alike.

The last doodle is a reference to this ask (https://canisalbus.tumblr.com/post/728923918314946560/me-i-am-machete-ear-fan-number-1-those-ears) and contains the tumblr ask stand-in dog, whose cat version was inspired by the American Curl cat! They have round ears that are slightly floppy outwards.

Final notes: I know cardinal clothes don't come in vibrant blue, but i was ADAMANT on switching Machete's and Vasco's clothing color patterns. I would draw the rest of Butter Knife's and Flamengo's clothes, but i suck at designing cool outfits.

Speaking of outfits, for Machete's iconic void outfit, i figured it would be fun to make it more baggy for Butter Knife, in contrast to Machete's, that looks very tight-fitted. I think it's cute, it kinda looks like a sweater. Also i can't imagine a Machete doppelganger without high heels boots, so those HAD to stay.

Oh, and just to be clear, i'm not like, claiming ownership of these guys or anything. I just thought it would be a fun exercise. Hope you like them!! I love your art and your characters.

.

[antennatoheaven]

i don't care that there's a murderbot tv show in the works. it should have been animated instead

[alacants]

juanki & ferru: the lore

(or, why i am so abnormal about them.)

they've known each other since they were kids in valencia - juanki played youth tennis with ferru's older brother (who was a junior champion) and later ferru spent a year at the academy

"Even when we were little we played together… we have been friends since we were small."

they're self-described best friends + were joined at the hip on the circuit

tennis club unveils a statue of juanki in his hometown? ferru is there. ferru's family throws him a surprise birthday party? juanki is there. holding clinics. going on retreats. traveling to and from tournaments together. coordinating which tournaments they enter so they can travel to and from tournaments together. ← YES, REALLY.

in ferru's own words, "it's always better with him." ok.

they didn't actually play each other that often - their h2h is 7-2 in ferru's favor. they did famously meet in back to back finals in 2010 - appropriately, juanki won one and ferru won the other. :)

in 2009 juanki was called up to the davis cup team for the first time in 4 years. first he was supposed to be a reserve, then he was supposed to play a dead rubber. then fernando verdasco melted down, the fifth rubber became very live, and he ended up single-handedly saving the day and sending them to the sfs.

so when in the final ferru came back from 1-6 2-6 down to beat radek stepanek he immediately raced over to throw himself in juanki's arms, rip alberto costa who got in the way. then of course he dedicated the win to juanki.

the davis cup is just… a whole thing with both of them. so it's appropriate that now etc.

speaking of tournaments that are a whole thing with both of them. after juanki bought the rights to the valencia open, he invited ferru to share them. true love is (checks notes) co-parenting an atp 500 tournament

so when juanki decided to retire he chose valencia as his last tournament 

he went out in the first round. ferru won the entire tournament in his honor. <- they said it, not me.

immediately after ferru's match winner he ran over to find juanki in the stands for a hug so long i had to split it into two gifs

then he dedicated the title to juanki. ("Este triunfo forma parte de ti, te lo dedico exclusivamente para ti.")

they also entered for doubles and made it all the way to the semifinals despite the fact that they had never played a doubles match together before

after their first doubles match (and surprise win) there was a big farewell ceremony during which ferru gave a speech about how juanki was destined by the stars to play tennis and visibly fought back tears as juanki stared soulfully into his eyes.

they got married three months apart, which could mean nothing

when ferru retired in 2019 juanki wrote him a lengthy open letter about his feelings

and threw him a personal tribute celebration. you know, in addition to his actual retirement ceremony.

specifically he held a day long festival of ferru at the jcf academy that included, in decreasing order of normality:

exhibition match feat. some 16 year old kid named carlos alcaraz

juanki/ferru match

unveiling of Pista David Ferrer, aka the new name of center court (and the start of an academy tradition…)

presentation of a PORTRAIT PAINTING juanki SPECIALLY COMMISSIONED of their valencia 2012 embrace

i can actually barely look at it without getting severe secondhand embarrassment but the academy uploaded like a hundred photos to facebook

to this day when they play each other in legends events ferru is out there saying things like I JUST HOPE I CAN PLAY AS WELL AS YOU <3 never mind the aforementioned 7-2 h2h. this man is down just as bad as carlitos and it's been TWENTY YEARS

meanwhile ferru is constantly dropping by the academy for funsies. and in carlos' box. and at his practice. and that's BEFORE you get to the davis cup. 

in summary: what if the royal spanish tennis federation paid you to co-parent a grand slam winner with your boyfriend <3 that's what we call a happy ending!

[arktic-blocks]

shroomp

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

hi! i saw on your shipping chart you had meenah and cronus as moirails and noted 'would have prevented all problems' and ive never really seen that take before. id love to hear your thoughts on that if you wanted to talk about them, your analysis in general is always amazing

Sure! I know this one's going to be controversial, but TBH I'm kind of fascinated by their dynamic. So please bear with me here and come into it with an open mind; I was also really surprised when I noticed what was going on.

Also, standard disclaimer that nobody has to agree with me or ship my ships, I literally don't care, HCs are valid, death of the author, etc. etc. This is just a canon discussion blog, and there's kind of a weird amount to read into in the canon between these two.

Okay, so, first of all, quick refresher on moirallegiance: it's not necessarily about being BFFs, it's very specifically about pacifying each other, keeping each other calm and stable, and preventing each other from causing harm to oneself or to others.

Ergo, the marker of moirallegiance rests not on "do these two get along as BFFs?" and instead on "do these two keep each other calm and/or mitigate each others' harm".

So with that out of the way, Cronus and Meenah. We know that Cronus has a redcrush on her, echoing Eridan's redcrush on Feferi, and that Meenah is not interested at all. Cronus shoots his shot with her, she's like ick, no & leaves, and that's that on that. Cronus then rounds on Mituna and says some unbelievably cruel and shitty stuff, but here's Point #1 - Meenah shows up again, and Cronus stops immediately, and then is noticeably calmer and friendlier to Mituna. Compare:

CRONUS: you are a brain damaged reject on a team full of rejects. a rejects reject. i vwould havwe culled you myself if that vword meant vwhat it should havwe on our planet.

-

CRONUS: vwell, this is clearly absurd, but nyeh, vwhat the heck. CRONUS: mituna, i just cant take it anymore. i think my ghost is going to kill itself. MITUNA: WH0W4H L375 FUCK!!!!! CRONUS: vwait... CRONUS: really? MITUNA: N0 0Y0 P135H3 0FF 1ND107 FUGG1NG G4R484G3  #FUCKY0UFUCKY0UFUCKY0UFUCKY0UFUCKY0U CRONUS: oh.

So at the very least, SOMETHING conciliatory seems to be happening here, whether that's pale or ashen. But I'm going with pale, because it continues.

Their second conversation together is really interesting - not only has Cronus stopped redflirting with her, but he no longer even seems interested. Compare this to the section with Mituna above:

CRONUS: oh sure. no grub sauce on your hands! MEENAH: wow you did it MEENAH: ampora you totally changed my mind about you lets start makin out immediately  #not CRONUS: just admit it. you havwe it vwithin you to be just as harsh to our behelmeted buddy as i am, if not more

Like, he doesn't even ACKNOWLEDGE the "let's make out #not". Not even in an indignant "see, you keep playing with my collapsing and expanding bladder based vwascular system" kind of way. Literally just breezes right by it, which says to me that he isn't even really that into her concupiscently.

But more interesting are the actual contents of the conversation. Cronus is the only person on the entire team who's able to make Meenah have misgivings about how awesome the Condy is.

MEENAH: man MEENAH: a girls gotta have fuel for her pimp ride know what im sayin MEENAH: like MEENAH: i probably took care of him good MEENAH: you know how it is someones gotta take care of the guy anyways MEENAH: and... yeah #38(

This is the first and only time that Meenah even acknowledges that the Condy - herself at her worst - is kind of shitty. This is the first and only time she's ever expressed any emotion for the Condy other than fangirlish admiration or rage against Caluborn for enslaving her. For whatever reason, she actually listens to Cronus when Cronus takes her to task, and he's actually able to make her genuinely reflect on her worst tendencies.

But maybe more damning is the fact that in their first real conversation together for nearly an eon, she almost fixes him:

MEENAH: i heard a rumor you think youre a human now MEENAH: that true CRONUS: its a privwate matter. i dont see vwhy i should havwe to talk about it vwith you, and open myself up to more of your judgmental scorn. MEENAH: sounds like another desperate cry for attention imo

[...]

CRONUS: to be honest, she might be right. sometimes i think i might only be saying im a human to get attention. maybe i should givwe it up.

Cronus's fundamental emotional problem is a sense of purposelesness and ennui. Born into a caste of high privilege, with his identity overshadowed by said position, he's been handed an unpleasant cocktail of entitlement, lack of true emotional support or connection, and lack of a real, authentic personal identity - especially because the thing he DID seem to derive a sense of identity and purpose from - his little Harry Potter wizard backstory - was driven out of him. In other words, he's kind of a shitty rich kid that doesn't really know who he is outside of that, and his humankin stuff is an attempt to fill the wizard hole without addressing his real underlying issues. It's a Bad Thing for him to be doing, and something he should drop in order to start addressing his genuine insecurities, feelings of emptiness, and lack of identity or purpose. In other words, it's harm he's performing on himself, and a single conversation with Meenah being enough to make him reconsider it? Hmmmmmm.

In fact, I'm not the only one picking up on the pale vibes. The specific way that Kankri interrupts the two reads as incredibly pick-me in pale:

KANKRI: Listen, I was d9ing y9u a fav9r. Y9u d9n't need t9 6e dating any9ne wh9 can't appreciate y9u f9r wh9 y9u really are, 9r m9re imp9rtantly, which fantasy versi9n 9f y9urself y9u m9st str9ngly identify with.

[...]

I just wanted y9u t9 kn9w that I'm here f9r y9u, and am prepared t9 lecture t9 y9u extensively, I mean, listen t9 y9u extensively, a69ut y9ur ultra-imp9rtant pr96lem.

"Don't take Meenah's advice about your problems! Take mine instead, I care about you sooo much more than she does!" lol. I have a whole essay on how Kankri and Cronus are actually super toxic for each other, in an interesting foil to Karkat and Eridan, which I'll link here in a bit (I'm on mobile RN and it's hard enough C/Ping my sources).

In any case, Kankri slides in at exactly the moment where Meenah's about to fix Cronus, and proceeds to make Cronus worse. The details are in the Cronus and Kankri essay, but TL;DR it's kind of implied that Kankri is the one who talked Cronus out of the wizard stuff in the first place, which pretty much disqualifies the two's relationship from pale, given how harmful that was. This whole thing is pretty reminiscent of Gamzee coming between Karkat and Eridan when Eridan is trying to comfort Karkat about Sollux dying, because it's implied Gamzee has a palecrush on the guy. That might be subjective, though.

What isn't subjective is the fact that Meenah unironically defends Cronus's wizard beliefs when Aranea starts shitting on them.

ARANEA: Whatever the case, it was pro8a8ly for the 8est, since pretty much everyone who had half a think pan thought [Cronus's wizard beliefs were] all a 8unch of ridiculous nonsense. MEENAH: serket why do you got to hate on other peoples religions MEENAH: dont you kno they just as much a load of crackpotty bunk as all your spiritual bullfuck ARANEA: 8ut I........ ARANEA: Yes, I guess I was out of line.

She doesn't do this for anybody else. Not long after, it turns out she's absolutely joking about defending Kurloz:

MEENAH: wow serket MEENAH: just wow so rude MEENAH: poor clown ARANEA: Don't give me that! I seem to remem8er you having more than a few unkind words for him 8ehind his 8ack. MEENAH: yeah im messin witchu he sux

And even proceeds to shit on HIS spiritual bullfuck:

MEENAH: )(ONK ARANEA: Honk honk! ::::) MEENAH: lol im glad we can both agree that clowny fuckin soda cult is the dumbest shit ever

So... weird, huh? Seems like she gives Cronus special treatment for some reason.

That's it for the diegetic stuff to go over, which, yes, means that there's a bit of non-diegetic stuff to discuss. It's not much, but here's Hussie's commentary from the Act 5 Act 2 book, on Mindfang's journal entries about Dualscar leading up to the 3x showdown (emphasis mine):

In the end, even though violets are the ruling class, she doesn't care much about them either. All she cares about is keeping her stranglehold on power with this complex, staggered, oppression-based sort of pyramid scheme. Note how it says the Condesce doesn't even know who Dualscar is. That's how insignificant he is, ultimately. Similarly, all Eridan was to Feferi after a while was a tiresome pest. The way that situation played out could also be seen as long-delayed karmic backlash for Dualscar's irrelevance to her, at least from a very Amporan point of view.

Now, while the specific context here is about how, from the point of view of a shitty entitled guy, Eridan killing Feferi is kind of a retribution for the Condy not giving a shit about Dualscar, all of Hussie's commentary is meant to be interrogated just as much as the base text, and it just makes me wonder. The dancestors very much treat their Alternian counterparts as alternate versions of themselves, consistent throughout their interactions, meaning we ought to consider Duascar and the Condesce to be versions of Cronus and Meenah.

If it is, in fact, the case that Cronus and Meenah would've made for excellent, harm-reducing moirails for each other, then murderstuck being a karmic backlash for their ultimate irrelevance to each other takes on a much greater implication - one that traces back to Cronus's classpect.

Bards start off massive karmic chain reactions, resulting in improbable victory or abject defeat, sometimes both; Hope is an aspect whose main application is making fake things real.

So I'm not saying that Cronus believing that an evil wizard attacked him when he was younger but was inadvertently sealed away and that Cronus was therefore karmically destined to defeat this wizard, but then having his beliefs shattered halfway through, led to him karmically contributing to the eventual creation of LE via his Hope abilities "inviting destruction" by making only the first half of his fake prophecy true, but - oh, no, wait, I am saying that. Man, that really sucks for everybody. If only Cronus had a friend who was, for whatever reason, willing to stick up for his dumbass wizard faith.

If only.

[a-star-that-burns-brightly]

I feel like my main sticking point with a lot of Post-CH2-12 Hu!Culprit theories / Hu lied about her alibi theories is that in all honesty, I simply cannot imagine Nico just... letting that slide. Especially if everyone's lives were on the line. If any Hu!Culprit people can sorta explain that thought process to me I'd appreciate it a lot

[stormyoceans]

can't believe i looked at this shit at the tender age of eleven and thought ROMANCE????????!!!!!!!??????!!!!!!???!!!?!!!???

[cuntyfieddemon]

I wanna know so bad with who agatha crossed the road the first timeeee and whooo was the witch that survived at the end!!! was it rio??? im not ready to say it was her for sure bc she asked a few questions that made me think she never crossed it... and also i feel like they would have alluded to it while talking together... so who could it have been? i rly want it to be rio but i just dont know!!!

[rowanisawriter]

going through all the stages of grief today lmao!! whatever im gonna play video game now!!

[grizzly-bear-official]

fuck it. elementary school book fair "nightmares of nature" grizzly bear fact page

reblog this post if you're also "one of the scariest sights in nature"

[ncfan-1]

God, the things Osha and Mae must be thinking about each other before they discover what their sister knows/was led to believe could probably end me.

Osha: Are you seriously telling me that you think I should be cool with you killing our entire family just because you didn’t manage to get me or yourself killed after all? Do you seriously think I could be cool with you after you tried to kill me? You can’t seriously expect me to just get over that. You really were a budding psychopath when we were kids! What the hell is wrong with you?!

Mae: Are you seriously telling me that you are so selfish that you could excuse the Jedi killing our entire family just because they gave you what you wanted? That you cared so little for our family that you were fine with living with the people who killed them if it meant you didn’t have to be with us anymore? Not everything is about what you want. I love you, but what the hell is wrong with you?!