#but now after doing fundamentals

[cherrysnax]

actually one last thing. when I was like 16-20 I thought I was soooo cool for being able to draw faces without guidelines and it’s like. Bud. Buddy. Broski. the characters eyes are so far apart you couldn’t even tell they’re on the same face

[novelconcepts]

One of the most fundamentally interesting things to me about YJ and writing fic, specifically, is how the blame changes hands depending on the story. On whose perspective you're writing from. On whose story it is at a given moment. The very thing I dislike about viewers missing the point becomes so fascinating to me from within the narrative. Who are these characters when seen through the eyes of their peers?

Who does Jackie become? If you're Shauna, she's the love of your life, and your greatest rival, and the other half of your soul, and the person you blame for your dead dreams. If you're Van, she's the respected captain who earns none of your respect in the woods, the one who left you to die without blinking, the easiest target for teenage malice. If you're Natalie, she's competition for affection, the blabbermouth who can't leave well enough alone, the hands putting themselves to no good use. If you're Jackie? You're just a girl. You're so tired. You're so scared. You're losing face a little more every day, and you're made of despair, and you can't even trust your best friend. It's not your fault. It's not your fault. It's not your fault.

Who does Lottie become? If you're Natalie, she's your direct foil, the splinter under the edge of your thumbnail, the smart mouth to match your own, the confusing amalgamation of normal friend and mad ritual. If you're Misty, she's the first shred of obvious power in months, a leader who might need to be nudged back into line, a fascinating exercise in hitching your wagon to the right star early on. If you're Taissa, she's flat-nuts and endlessly frustrating, she's got your girlfriend's full attention, she's incredibly dangerous. If you're Lottie? You're just a girl. You're so tired. You're so scared. You've built a pedestal you can't keep your balance on, and you're not sure if you're right or going crazy, and you didn't want this. It's not your fault. It's not your fault. It's not your fault.

From outside the narrative, there is no bad guy. There is no blame. It is no one's fault. It is Man v. Nature, they are doing the best they can with an impossible situation. They're all trying to contribute what they can to the story, for better or worse.

From inside the narrative, you are a teenager trapped in a society constructed entirely of bare-bones-survival with the wildest assortment of girls. From inside the narrative, to stay human, you have to love and fight, respect and judge. Every story changes the game. Every story shifts the blame. A hero in one has the bloodiest hands in the next. And that, to me, is such a thrilling sandbox to play in.

[hawberries]

update: i got him!!!!!!!

[image is a digital drawing of Gorou holding his fish box and gesturing authoritatively as if giving orders, his expression serious. He is wearing a black t-shirt that reads “WORKING: service dog; do not pet; I’m at work!”]

[butterflysnowflake]

man can I just say how adorable Wolf's interaction with Delia in the wedding scene is? When she's explaining her situation he gives her the most understanding looks and it's because they both effectively had the same cause of death. Delia turned her mourning of Charles into part of her performance art, and died from being scammed with asps who were NOT defanged. Wolf wanted to deliver the most authentic performance possible and died from presumably a negligent armorer who didn't bother to check if the grenade was live or not before shooting. both of them were quite literally killed by their art (not by their own faults to be fair but from someone else's irresponsibility). and it's kind of lovely Delia got such a sympathetic escort back to the netherworld who knows her situation firsthand probably better than anyone else

it's weirdly wholesome and empathetic even as their situations were both played for morbid laughs, and if Delia didn't have eyes only for Charles (what's left of him) and Wolf wasn't in a committed relationship with Janet I'd even say I could have seen things going somewhere between them

[black-queen-rising]

Me desperately trying to find this so-called "bias" it often feels like a solid two thirds of this fandom claim that the HotD producers/writers have towards Rhaenyra when literally every single change to other characters has fundamentally come from minimizing/obfuscating/or otherwise reducing her narrative and overall characterization and character.

Yes, I'm sure this woman who they have invented continual bad decisions, internalized misogyny, blatant disregard for the people closest to her, ineptitude, blindspots, and blatant, borderline unbelievable public disdain for in their adaptation of her character; who's background as a victim of child abuse, of continual misogynistic psychological and eventual physical violence, who's love of both other women and her own womanhood, infamy in her charm and popularity and continual attempts (and yes, often failures) to rise above the positions she was forced into they have also ERASED...is actually someone they're going out of their way to portray sympathetically?

Oh, but they favor her because...idk they haven't shown her being violently raped or repeatedly physically abused? Because you believe they actually think that making her seem like an idiot who never knows or thinks about what she's doing is somehow favorable?? Because it seems like ANY of these changes have actually endeared her to the fandom much less the show's general audience??? I literally cannot explain it most of the time, it baffles me.

I know I shouldn't be because why should any of us ever be shocked by misogyny in media anymore? By the portrayal of a woman for a mass-media (and heavily desired male) audience that's reductive and hollow?? But it's simply unreal to see how so many people somehow believe that this was done out of some sort of benevolence or favoritism. That so many people believe any of the changes made in the opposite direction of, and often active opposition to Rhaenyra's portrayal in Fire and Blood, were made out of some sort of desire to make her a tangibly more sympathetic or broadly understandable character, is something I'm not sure I'll ever be able to fully understand.

Except, of course, in the view that I really hope not everyone who says this sort of thing actually believes; that a self-confident woman who exercises her own agency is such an affront that even an unsympathetic, inconsistent, reductive, and idiotic cardboard cutout of a character is still a more respectable alternative.

[spaghett-onaplate]

depression is really weird actually wdym i spent 2.5 years of my life in bed

[techno-rat]

Im always thinking about the tubbo execution t.b.h.

coz like it sucked for EVERYONE but schlatt and wilbur, who orchestrated it. Techno realized his allies didn’t give a shit about him. Tubbo was killed traumatically. Tommy watched his best friend be murdered by a man who he thought was his ally. The crowd is various levels of shocked depending on their allegiance

[camgoloud]

you ever just. become overwhelmed by a sudden out-of-nowhere wave of tenderness and affection and longing for reconnection directed towards someone to whom you no longer speak for Very Good Reasons

[funnyscienceman]

so far it feels like all of the praise, or at least hype, for arcane is about playing around with the facts of the champions and not the actual meaning to their stories

im pretty sure this applies to other champs too but like theone foremost in my mind rn is everything to do with Orianna. people are going like oh, viktor will make her a machine! or singed won't be able to bring her back. Orianna's just dead or asleep in stasis and this is not at all the clockwork girl who tried to befriend an amusement park automaton because she was so lonely

it feels like this with warwick, with viktor, jayce even ekko and kinda jinx — season 2 has been nothing but. playground toys. make-believe in the sandbox. action figures are being mashed together but nothing of what made these characters Themselves is actually. Here.

idk it's 2 in the morning. this endless stream of praise is just bewildering. how haven't anyone else's brains been turned to mush by the rapidfire bullshit going on in each episode? shit just happens and there's no emotional weight to any of it. there's no time. off to mark the next thing on the checklist

ugh

[joyridingmp3]

my father called me his son when talking to my mother. she told him to tell me and he was like "hmmm....maybe one day later" but still nice to know

[heireign]

WHAT TAROT CARD ARE YOU ?

JUSTICE — what would you do to ensure justice? you know full well i don’t speak of lofty ideals and courts and magistrates, dearest. what would you do to those that hurt you? if I dropped them in your lap, what would you do? what kind of pain could you possibly inflict upon them? you are right to do so. you are right to want to do so. ignore the screaming, dearest, you are the hand of justice now, and they hurt you. do not look too closely at their faces, dearest. you are within your rights. you spell out your own rights, now. are you happy about it? are you certain that this is the right person you hold by the hair? does your anger hurt less now?

tagged by: @nonpareil

tagging: @lenfear , @wulfmaed , @oflorien , @belayadeath , @sanctamater , @lcerys , and @zalarys

[qoldenskies]

Something about how Raph would have the most to return to when it comes to being helpful—there’s only so much Donnie can eat, and there’s only so much Leo can physically heal before having to face the fact that most of the wounds are emotional. Raph can keep going though, the way he always has, he can keep going, he can be better this time, he can be the big brother he was supposed to be for all of them and this will never happen again never never never never

[aceofwands]

idk man I just think of all the franchises you could try to make the Next Big Thing by creating a bunch of new shows and movies, maybe don't pick the one with the notoriously nitpicky obsessed with canon fandom ?? if you don't plan on applying any sort of consistency to the world, characters, alien cultures, entire ethical and moral framework of the universe, etc etc ????

[silentreigns]

Checo being right about RedBull's car for over a year but the team did next to nothing to support him + defend him from backlash. Now that Max is having problems they're like "oh we were aware of the problem but because Max was winning everything we didn't do enough to address it". That Austrian giraffe said that, "Checo has been saying the car is fucked" and it turns out he was right all along. It's almost as if experience drivers know what they're talking about and can give out valuable feedback. But it's up to the powers that be to implement said feedback for the improvement for everyone. Also, this is not to discredit the thousands of people working in f1 factories to produce these cars. I have a lot of respect for the people who work in F1. RedBull got very cocky and arrogant and now it's blowing up in their face

[kuromi-hoemie]

i am once again thinking about The Boy

not the movie lol

[batsplat]

casey also talks about sepang 2015 what do you think of that

oh in that podcast? uh... lemme listen again...

yeah idk it's not really anything new I'd say? he's said basically all the same stuff in more interesting and extensive ways elsewhere. I think casey inevitably has a very 'well feuding is bad and helps nobody' point of view, has expressed that before in the past, does it here again, and he's also drawn a parallel between himself and marc on several occasions. which... well, of course there's similarities in terms of public discourse or whatever, but the parallel really falls apart whenever casey argues the feuds cost valentino. like, I do think it's sometimes important to just. keep in mind. it's interesting that casey draws this comparison in his mind but that doesn't necessarily means he's right about this. I'm not sure how you'd argue that starting a feud with casey cost valentino anything competitively? you can argue it didn't help him I guess, and then we can have a debate about the ins and outs of the 2008 season. we can also have an argument that in a hypothetical world where casey isn't ill in 2009, valentino doesn't break his leg and casey isn't on a piece of junk in 2010, and valentino isn't on a piece of junk in 2011-12, then actually maybe valentino sparking open animosity with casey COULD have cost him. but we don't know that! didn't happen! I wish we could have found out, but we never got the chance! as it stands, the tally on this is pretty straightforward: casey won the title when things were reasonably civil between them in 2007, and valentino took control of the following season at the exact moment he worsened the relationship between the pair of them in 2008. obviously, it's all more complicated than that and casey would of course argue laguna didn't negatively affect his subsequent performances... but it certainly didn't help them. like, at the very worst valentino escalating tensions in 2008 is a complete net neutral. after 2009, them being bitchy to each other every other tuesday was completely competitively irrelevant beyond maybe affecting how they approached occasionally fighting for a podium position. hey, maybe casey used that feud to fire himself up through sheer spite throughout the later stages of his career, but that doesn't actually support his anti-feud stance - it's basically the exact same thing as what valentino does. they're both quite similar in that regard! always so hungry to prove a point, to show how someone else is wrong. kinda half the point with this feuding business is to get yourself going, get yourself motivated, yeah. he straight up openly admits to using yamaha's repeat rejection of him as a way of giving himself motivation, and at the end of the day that's really not all that different?

anyway, what else does casey say... oh yeah, that him and the other aliens were already kinda prepared for this and had learned vale's tricks. that valentino had only been able to get into the minds of the previous generation. welllllll *wiggles hand* sure, I mean, he did clearly have to change his approach... he couldn't just use the exact same playbook to get to them, either on-track or off-track. but that's why he did change up the playbook... again, whether you want to believe valentino won his final two titles 'in the head' rather than just through pure pace kinda depends on how you assess the evidence, but it is at the very least a debate. and, y'know, it's always worth remembering that valentino's most important mind games with casey didn't happen in a press conference... it was on the track. and the on-track stuff really is just embedded in how valentino approaches winning. speaking of aliens, this is what dani and jorge have said:

like, valentino's entire approach to his riding, even to the way he's setting his bike up, is deliberately about directly fucking with you... he's not actually always trying to be faster than you as much as he's trying to give himself the tools to make your life miserable, to pressure you into mistakes, etc etc... and again, especially with casey (if anything because he was so mentally sturdy), the off-track stuff was really just window dressing. (I know they bicker a lot after 2009 but it's just so fundamentally irrelevant to actual on-track competition.) so you can be aware of those tricks, but it also doesn't necessarily help you when someone's being nasty to you on-track in a way you just fully do not enjoy. which is what it was like for casey! for casey, a lot of this comes back to the truly unpleasant context of how he was perceived by the public, how he was treated as mentally weak or 'broken' or whatever partly because he had the misfortune of coming up against a bloke who had the reputation for breaking rivals. I think it's quite natural to end up with a bit of a hardliner 'actually I've never been mentally affected by a result in my life' stance - and of course casey is a lot tougher than a lot of people give him credit for. that being said. sometimes your rivals affect you, shit happens, it's part of the game. it's fundamentally a nice idea to think that valentino's tactics weren't just morally wrong but also ineffective, which is kind of the appeal of this narrative, right? you want to believe you're above that, you want to believe you were adequately prepared and wise to valentino's tactic. it's unsurprising and understandable that casey does tend to tell the story that way, but again it's *wiggles hand* also hard to describe it as completely factual

uh. what else. oh I'm thrilled casey does canonically know valentino and marc were friends, he has said he wasn't following motogp too much during that time period so you couldn't be sure of that. does this mean anything? does it tell you anything? well, no, but it's just a pleasing thought to me. I like that. oh also 'provoking particularly aggressive riders isn't a good idea' is kinda a funny take from casey? like, he of all people would hate the idea of being cowed by someone's reputation like that... casey's right that provoking fast riders can potentially be dangerous, but y'know I do think that's probably not news to anyone almost nine years later. um. that's all I've got I think