#but i thought it should be its own post

[skeletood]

Go ahead, put anything.

[lucabyte]

some thoughts on Claude

alt title: diversity win! this Butch Nun is crafting bombs in an unventilated room in her convent while actively courting Mother Superior! Do Not Give Them Access To Unlimited Power No Matter How Nice They Are

+ bonus

[ryssbelle]

Drew a bunch of Marinettes in a bunch of different artists styles it was a lot of fun!!

Artists who's styles I mimicked: @buggachat @hamsternamedmarinette @ladybeug @sabertoothwalrus and @anna-scribbles all epic artists 🤟😎

[dreadfuldevotee]

"The Vampire Chronicles characters are exercises in the cycle of trauma and abuse and how they are capable of complex emotions and receiving and giving love and empathy alongside all the horrible shit they do to one another" and "Anne Rice herself was a bigot and had some shitty personal beliefs and just because the genre is Gothic Horror doesn't mean you ignore the way those ideas bleed into the writing. Not all commentary is good commentary" are two sentiments that can and SHOULD co-exist, what the fuck are we doing.

[lavb-b]

Part-time Roller-dinin'

Sorta a continuation from this post!

Wonder how many plates they've broken in one night

[s0fter-sin]

god the way ghost’s voice drops when he tells soap, “you’ll need to improvise to survive”

before that, everything he says is steady but when he acknowledges that soap’ll have to do something outside his skill set, something he intimately knows to be difficult, his voice wavers. he does the same when he says, “welcome to guerrilla warfare”; it’s sombre and serious in a way he doesn’t act for the rest of the mission. if you read into it enough, he almost sounds apologetic; like he knows exactly what soap’s about to go through and wishes he didn’t have to

he keeps soap going; poking at him and making jokes, giving him tips and asking about his progress. he never lets him stop and take a second to think bc he knows the moment he does is the moment it'll all hit him; the betrayal, the pain, the fear, the deaths, all of it will drown him and if that happens, soap won't make it

he needs him to be a soldier through and through and he knows this is one of the worst kinds of battlefields you could end up on

and the only times he slips is when he acknowledges that fact

it happens again when he says, "tryin' to get you here alive and in one piece". his jovial dark humour facade drops for just a moment when he has to face the potential reality of losing soap. then he tries to pick it back up again with, "one of us has to survive to tell the tale"; completely discounting himself as a survivor to try and rally soap and make him think it’s all down to him

and soap does the same thing

when he's calling out for ghost on the radio, he's tentative, testing the frequency, then when he doesn’t get a response, he grows desperate; "ghost, this is 7-1, do you copy?"

then when ghost answers, he smooths out his voice; he hides the pain, the fear, and no matter what response you give to ghost asking if he’s injured, soap brushes it off (“i’m good”, “what’s the difference?”, “i’m not a medic”). soap decides it’s in ghost’s best interest to hide the extent of his injuries

he doesn’t know where ghost is, if he’s secure, if he has any weapons; he doesn’t even know if he’s in las almas until he says, “there’s a church, i’m headed to it”. for all he knows, he could’ve run in the complete opposite direction. if ghost knows he’s hurt, then his attention would be split between his own survival and soap’s

and soap, who lets himself be poked and prodded towards the church, needs to hide his own doubts. maybe he needs ghost to believe he'll make it so he himself can believe it ("what are my odds?" "don't make me bet against you", "think i'll live that long?" "probably not")

he all but begs ghost to tell him he'll get through it and if he knows just how bad off he is, maybe he'll change his mind. maybe he'll think he won't make it to the church

maybe he'll leave him alone for good

"you injured?"

"i’m good"

"let's find out how good you are"

[flowerbloom-arts]

I think "skill issue" would be that one desperately needed missing puzzle piece in Moominpappa's vocabulary but also Moominpappa would be 30% more insufferable with it.

Anyway, then he started started accusing everyone of having skill issues for things they have no control over-

[ghastlyaffairs]

for something as trivial and simple those feelings sure are hard to get rid of

also made a gif a version for fun + alt version with no tears under the cut

the gif is in very low resolution...this is a feature (i could make it bigger but that would require saving each frame individually and than glueing it all together. also i feel like low resolution suits it better. aesthetically and fits the mood)

[naggingatlas]

'thats not his role in the story!' hm i wonder what the point of it is then. hm i wonder what the dead pixel scene means. hm i wonder what wrong organ are trying to say with the context of 'awesome male friendship' and 'corporate hell where the only woman onboard is constantly under ridicule, abused or forcibly forgotten yet is the catalyst' if not this. hm i wonder how curly's physical agony being a direct parallel to anya's mental agony, stripped of voice, agency, just like her, and being forced to watch what happens while not doing jack shit, just like he used to, plays a part in this. i wonder what the moral of him being the final girl says about living with the consequences of your inaction, because of sentimentality, because of status, career and social. hm i wonder whatever the fuck this game was trying to say. hm i wonder what else is on this person's blog Oh Lord there's yaoi penice.

[skitskatdacat63]

Google, play "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails

[sieglinde-freud]

let it be known that i love prince inigo with my whole soul. however sometimes it is SO much fun to think about owain and his two most loyal-est knights you ever seen: worst guy in the world #1 and worst guy in the world #2. i love retainer inigo and severa so much. retainers who bully you and make fun of you and trash on you but they’d leave behind everyone and everything they ever knew to follow you and protect you in a whole new universe. they love you so much that they’d swear allegiance to total strangers but that loyalty pales in comparison to what they’d do for you. and they were all lovers!!!!!!!

[lucabyte]

i feel like people are sleeping on the occam's razor situation of how buckwild it is to outright accuse a guy of being a clone of your friend even if you DO have a lot of circumstantial evidence. there's other options is what im saying. they could just be like. a guy. that's a sensible deduction. you should explore that deduction. ignore my shirt that reads I <3 RED HERRINGS.

i still think odile has the correct theory on lock but she's smart enough to know it needs like... a real smoking gun to be able to bring it up without sounding insane.

anyway. (mirabelle voice) i know its rude to speculate but has anyone else noticed the grieving? they seem to be grieving. does anyone have any thoughts on the grieving? i have some thoughts on the grieving.

[dykealloy]

spoilers up to the end of dressrosa arc here but. I can't stop thinking about how Law takes on Rosinante's will. Corasan freed him from Doflamingo and the marines and the world government and everyone that ever could have touched him at the time, but has Law really felt free? “Everything I do until I die represents what Corasan achieved” is sweet until you recognise that Law is willing (and planned) to go to the grave for that belief. Until Doflamingo dies there is always a part of him stuck in that treasure chest, constrained by what Law felt happened to Corasan due to him that day.

It's crazy how textbook survivors guilt victim Law is (I’m new here so I wouldn’t be surprised if this isn’t the first time this has been brought up), but let’s just quickly go over some symptoms:

Obsessive thoughts about the traumatic event ✅ (will go over this in greater detail below)

A sense of disconnection or detachment/need to isolate oneself from others ✅ (Law doesn't fully isolate himself but he definitely has his walls up at all times, though there are often subtle hints of him enjoying the company of the people he chooses to surround himself with. He is notably more reserved, emotionally unavailable, cold and distant than others around him, and watching closely you'll notice that even physically he has a tendency to situate himself three steps behind the group)

Insomnia, nightmares, flashbacks of the traumatic event ✅ (if we can assume some of his backstory expressed in Dressrosa are flashbacks, and also assuming that the perpetual eyeliner he wears are covering some pretty heavy eyebags. Also mention that the only time we see him resting is against Sunny's mast on the way to Dressrosa - and that was 1. a filler episode, and 2. if he was sleeping, it was very quickly interrupted by an attack by petplay guy - a nightmare in of itself)

Irritability and anger ✅ (though elements of this could just be attributed to Law's personality or a natural response to the straw hat's shenanigans, as well as Luffy's total inability to stick to a reasonable plan)

Feelings of despair and thoughts of suicide ✅ (that's Law's Dressrosa arc babe)

Now, there's many reasons why Law is unable to move past this guilt (an apparent lack of therapists in one piece being one of them) - but his inability to believe in unconditional love is likely the biggest offender.

Law may have started off (initially) with one of the most fortunate, stable beginnings, with a loving family and a big house in a rich country (wealth of which was built off the back of lies and corruption and the murder of innocent future generations - we'll get there). But he had a mother and a father who loved and nurtured Law (and were both highly respected doctors in their own right who citizens trusted and relied on). Law's happy beginnings really juxtapose the unfathomable horror that had been lying in wait in Flevance.

Even when shit started to hit the fan, at a very young age (<10 yrs old), Law was already stepping up and showing love for his little sister (lying to her when she was on her deathbed, knowing full well he would likely face the same fate after reading his charts, putting on a brave face for her so she wouldn't be afraid when the screams began to reach their front door, hiding her away when soldiers sieged their home and rushing to check on his parents). Given everything that happened in Flevance, it's completely understandable that, while Law will likely never forget the love his family gave him, remembering it became twisted in the lasting memories of his home — parents riddled with bullet holes. a closet holding a sick little sister waiting for him in a house engulfed by flames. stumbling through a town of friends, neighbours, just... people he used to pass by on the street, now all dead.

Seeing hell, knowing why and how it transpired, who were responsible (spoilers, the World Government; the same body that most citizens believe exist to protect them — yeah, sister "a merciful hand of salvation waiting to help" were perhaps the worst possible combination of words you could have left Law with here. Likely instrumental in having him lose his faith "I don't believe in anything anymore."), knowing he is the only survivor, and fated to die anyway due to the terminal illness that is slowly killing him because some figureheads years back were greedy and the governing powers above the figureheads were willing to cover up everything if it meant garnering a portion of wealth and maintaining influence and control. It's beyond grief, beyond rage. And there's absolutely nowhere Law can put it. No one he can retaliate against. Who could come out of hell knowing this and not want to see the world burn?

So, smart little Law escapes under a pile of bodies and goes to the one person infamously revered for being in the business of that kind of thing. And boy oh boy I can only begin to imagine how a young and impressionable Law - fresh from a genocide, with a hole in his heart and a hatred for everything still alive - had his concept of love warped whilst surviving those two years around Doflamingo and his family. A family where members are only welcome so far as they are useful to Doflamingo and his aspirations. Of course Law's going to pick up some fucked up ideas about how love works outside this little white fence he grew up and watched burn down.

Then. Enter Corazon.

Their relationship may begin on shaky legs (near-juvenicide via defenestration in a failed attempt to ward Law away from sticking around) but Corazon quickly becomes the one person in the world Law can trust and rely on again. And Rosinante can only do so much in terms of healing and guiding this broken kid (yes, his position both as Doffy's brother and as a double agent made things difficult, but need I mention he was only 26! 26 when he died!) but he showed Law kindness and compassion when he was at his lowest. He had faith in the existence of a cure that Law was long past believing. Was determined to help him, even against Law's wishes, even if it meant having Law relive his trauma over and over again. Corasan becomes incredibly important to Law, giving him a reason to live beyond just destruction and revenge.

After the rest of the world had long turned his back on him, when he had been nothing but a dying puddle of rage and self-destructive nihilism, Corasan saved Law. He told Law "Aishiteru" - a very rare way of saying "I love you", never used casually due to the depth of its meaning and the massive connotations behind it - in essence translating to "I love you so much I cannot possibly imagine life without you". There's a high likelihood that at his age, Law had never heard these words before, and probably didn't quite understand the weight of Rosinante saying it at the time.

Corasan frees Law, then he dies at the hand of Doflamingo, Rosinante's own brother.

All Rosinante wanted was for this poor kid to go on and live his life unburdened by his more than turbulent history and his connection to Doffy, but I think for all his planning, Rosinante's one critical error was well and truly underestimating how much him loving Law, and loving Law to the extent he did, would mean to that kid. Law really went from that ten year old hollow void sentiment of "why does anyone or anything at all get to exist when everything that was important to me is dead, burned to ashes and wiped off the map" to "I should have died at age thirteen and every second I've lived since then, I've only lived as a result of Corasan's efforts and as a personal affront to Doflamingo." This time, Law has a tangible, heinous 10 foot monster of a target to direct 1. his grief and anger and 2. justice for Cora towards, and this time he has the power and will to follow through. More than that, he believes Corasan sacrificed himself for him because he's a D. (someone destined to rain down destruction on the gods - Doflamingo, in this case). Corazon becomes a saint that Law dedicates the rest of his life to. Which is something that Law is not vocal about to just anyone he comes across, but is so unbelievably obvious once you know what you're looking at — his tattoos, his jolly roger, his crew, his ship, his ambitions, his beliefs, his fucking. custom-made Corazon jacket. all of it for this man that showed Law - at a time when he hated the world and everything in it - love. For all of six months. max.

And his whole life and personality and behaviour CONTINUES to be guided by this trauma — the way he's reckless with himself, his borderline self-destructive actions, the way he keeps telling himself that none of it would've been worth it unless Corasan's last wishes are fulfilled, the way he surrounds himself with bright people and soft things, the way it doesn't register that his crew genuinely loves and cares about him, the way he's terrified of losing anyone important to him again (and I would say this is one of his biggest downfalls as a Captain compared to someone like Luffy - who is just as reckless as Law is but trusts his crew, doesn't try to send them away, isn't afraid to let them grow and risk their lives for him like Law is with the heart crew), his inability to take a damn compliment. The way he doesn't understand Luffy AT ALL.

Doesn't understand that this alliance that he's brokered means nothing to Luffy because he sees him as FRIEND. No transactions or mutually beneficial pacts necessary. Doesn't get that he's the one that inadvertently asked Luffy to be his friend, thus breaking a long chain of people (mostly parental figures and siblings) abandoning or leaving Luffy behind/no one taking the first initiative to ask to be around him. Law is complete and utterly in the dark as to why someone would ever bat for him when the stakes are this high for no other reason than because they like them and care about them as a person.

Luffy, with his playground rules where he loves unconditionally and will take on the world for a friend he made five minutes ago, perplexes Law with his sheer simplicity.

When Sengoku tells Law, "Don't try to find a reason for someone's love", I do NOT think he takes it well. Because there must be a reason. There has to be. Between the two options of Corasan saving Law's life and freeing him because he believed in the will of D., or Rosinante saving him for no other reason than because Law was a kid that was loveable, and because he loved him unconditionally... everything we've learned about how Law functions up until this point suggests the former will always make more sense to him, and after everything he's been through, is most likely less painful for him to accept.

[songofsaraneth]

i will say the one thing about my New Year's Resolutions post going viral is that lots of people have done my own resolutions so much better than me now lmao. blogger who made a whole website with ratings for their Fruit Adventures i love you. i barely remembered to take photos of all my fruits which are now just randomly scattered through my camera roll. tumblr user who managed THIRTY FOUR different pasta shapes in a year where did you find them it took me all year just to hit 20 and then i ran out of shapes available in the 2 cities i checked. showing up to your home with a bowl so i can get a little of each

[puppppppppy]

i feel like im not making any sense but does anyone else feel like there are stories that let u run with them and ones that spell everything out for you

[dfastback68]

Here’s some more post-canon Mihawk’s Home for Displaced Pirates, which continues to be very funny to me, except this time not from the POV of a Displaced Pirate. Now that I’ve got a boyfriend for King, I can throw in Katakuri. If I write more of this (as in, King and Katakuri actually interacting lmao) maybe I can consider it a whole fic and post it on AO3. Until then, please enjoy Katakuri getting flustered by the most beautiful man he’s ever seen under the cut 😊

—

Having been born and raised in the New World, Katakuri hasn’t spent much time in Paradise, or any of the other four seas. He’s certainly made it his business to understand the geography of the rest of the world, and this has served him well in the years since he took stewardship of Totto Land. What the now-defunct World Government once considered a lawless operation is now the largest global exporter of flour and grain. They’d had the infrastructure; once Mama’s appetite was out of the equation, they were well primed to fill a considerable vacuum in world trade.

Not that it had been an entirely seamless transition. Their territories had suffered not just attacks from other pirates and the Navy, but significant flooding as well. Komugi had come out unscathed, but the smaller, low lying islands were not as lucky. Cacao Island took near catastrophic damage, and they lost almost all of their cocoa crop. What survived continues to struggle, and a number of rare strains are lost to them. They may be able to recover or replicate some of them, but the fruition of that process won’t happen in his lifetime.

Still, laying down the groundwork for full recovery is half of his job, and he takes it seriously. Despite the losses, there is some hope thanks to the meticulous record keeping of his brother, Mont-d’Or. Because of that, he’s been able to track down numerous exports and trades over the decades. There’s a particular type of cocoa tree they lost to the flooding, and their records show six of them were purchased and transported out of their territory within the last decade.

The actual receipt was harder to find, but ultimately he found the customer: Dracule Mihawk, located on Kuraigana Island. It’s lucky enough that Hawkeyes still lives there, moreso that he confirmed the trees are intact, and a mercy that he’s agreed to let Katakuri even come look at them. He hadn’t sounded thrilled about the entire affair, but Katakuri thinks that’s just how he normally sounds.

Kuraigana is a gloomy, dark island that fits the general aesthetic and demeanor of Hawkeyes. Katakuri understands the original kingdom here fell to ruin, and Hawkeyes had simply taken up roost. Now the castle grounds are meticulously kept, and the surrounding land is dense pine forests and freshwater lakes. The rest is sprawling farmland, both food and botanicals, tended by a curious army of monkeys.

He’s impressed. It takes a lot of work to achieve this sort of operation. Given the misty, cloudy nature of the island, there’s a lot to take into consideration to get anything to bloom around here.

The cocoa trees are in good company, though, growing in the dappled shade of towering oak trees. They’re mature, but Kakakuri still has to bend to one knee to inspect them. The leaves are vibrant and healthy, and the earth is rich and loomy, perfect for their roots. Hawkeyes, who barely comes up to his knees when he’s standing, is next to him.

“I can pay,” Katakuri says. “Extraction, transport and delivery.”

Mihawk frowns. “I was unaware you wanted the entire tree.”

Katakuri sighs. “We’re not going to get a lot of production out of just six trees. Back home, we can clone and reproduce them. Replenish the strain.”

“I understand that,” Mihawk says. “But they’re not mine to trade away. You’ll have to speak with Perona.”

This surprises Katakuri. He’d assumed everything here was under the purview of Mihawk himself. He’s not familiar with Perona’s name.

They walk back towards the castle. He keeps his pace slow to match Mihawk’s, which gives him time to admire the scenery. Everything about this place has been restored beautifully; cobblestone walkways, brick archways and wrought iron gates and trellises heavy with blooming vines. In the context of the island’s inherent gloom and mist, it makes for a very serene, peaceful landscape.

His pace slows when they pass an adjacent courtyard. Through the stone moon gate is a garden full of every color and variety of hydrangea, every one of them in full bloom. The enormous blossoms create a riot of pastels and whites and greens, woven around statuary and a bubbling water feature. Katakuri stops dead in his tracks when among all that beauty sits an angel.

He isn’t an angel, of course, but Katakuri knows who it is: King the Wildfire, once right hand man to Kaido and a rival to his own position among pirate crews. Katakuri has never seen him unmasked in person. After Kaido’s fall and King’s escape from the World Government, his bounty had been reissued and doubled, if only because the thought of a lunarian on the loose has been an affront to the Navy. His new bounty had been blurry, poorly angled, but obvious enough.

The picture didn’t do him justice at all. He’s stunningly handsome, the picture of masculine beauty even while he just sits there, head bent slightly as he reads from the book in his lap. He’s traded in the studded and spiked leather for jeans and breezy, cream colored shirt that’s open down nearly to his navel. It’s a perfect contrast against his dark skin, same as his white hair, which falls in a long braid over one shoulder. His wings are tucked close, black feathers glossy, nearly iridescent, though the right one is half gone.

King pauses halfway through turning the page of his book and looks up, red eyes landing directly on Katakuri, who immediately loses his nerve. Face blazing as he ducks his chin deeper into his scarf, he hurries to leave, catching up to Mihawk in only a few long strides. He can feel King’s piercing gaze on him until he’s out of his line of sight. His heart is pounding.

Mihawk doesn’t appear to have noticed anything amiss, but he does say: “I assume you recall the rules about fighting here?”

“I have no quarrel with him,” Katakuri says, a little too quickly. Mihawk has misunderstood his staring, which is a relief.

“Perona will be back later tonight. In time for dinner, at least,” Mihawk continues. “You’re welcome to join us.”

He hadn’t wanted to spend more than a day here, but he also hadn’t planned on needing to negotiate with anyone except Mihawk himself.

When he hesitates, Mihawk arches one brow, and says: “Alber will be there.”

Alber. Of course King isn’t his real name. And if that’s his given name, given so freely by Mihawk, what else can be learned about such an enigmatic figure? It’s likely the only chance he’ll ever get. He’s not even thinking about the cocoa trees anymore.

A bit belatedly, he also realizes Mihawk had not misunderstood his staring at all. He feels his face burn hot again. He should have known. Their mastery of Observation Haki might manifest differently, but they weren’t considered the best for nothing.

“If it’s no trouble,” he says, regretting it almost immediately. Agreeing to dinner is the same as eating in front of strangers, something he’s spent most of his life carefully avoiding. He’s not sure how he’ll pull it off without offending the host.

”None whatsoever,” Mihawk says. They stop at the doors. “Feel free to explore the grounds. Don’t mind the ghosts.”

Hawkeyes disappears inside before Katakuri can ask: what ghosts? Then he decides it’s probably a joke, judging by the look of this place. Given free reign, he looks back towards where the courtyard is, frozen to the spot with indecision. Eventually, he heads back towards the docks, to let the crew know they’ll be staying the night, at the very least.

He has no idea if he’ll leave with the trees by this time tomorrow, or any kind of agreement. It should be the first and only thing on his mind.

Instead, as he walks the path down to the docks, shiny cobblestone bordered by blooming rows of lavender, his thoughts circle back to a lunarian surrounded by hydrangeas.