#commentary for the dead

[metaphor-for-the-dead]

Naruto rereading post 4 - naruto really needs to learn more jutsu

[sherlock-is-ace]

[nepenthean-sleep]

the dance card scene from htn is so funny because magnus is like "you have to move on, harrow. it's what gideon would want you to do 🥺" and it's like. gideon would not fucking say that. girl is on the other side of the river completely incensed that harrow chose to lobotomize herself and forget about gideon completely instead of grovelling and sobbing over gideon's sacrifice every waking moment for the rest of her infinite immortal life. gideon wanted harrow's fucking life ruined forever by the sheer agony of missing her. gideon wanted harrow to be miserable over her death until the universe un-big banged itself. "she would want you to move on" no she fucking would not and that's kind of the whole point LMFAO

[ronanlynchbf]

tshirt that says NO LIVE ORGANISM CAN CONTINUE FOR LONG TO EXIST SANELY UNDER CONDITIONS OF ABSOLUTE REALITY

[asidian]

So, everyone's seen the theory that the dolls in the Doll House are Edwin's old bodies, right? But if you want to break your heart a little more, take a look at the doll placement.

They line the corridors, but there are noticeably more of them in two particular spots.

First up: by the exit door.

This one makes a lot of sense. In disasters, people in a panic find it hard to get through doorways, especially inward-pulling doors, in a rush. It's a dangerous chokepoint for people who are panicking, which Edwin definitely would have been, being chased.

Add that to the fact that there isn't an actual door here. This is a hole in the wall; who's to say if it was even open when Edwin first found it? He might have had to break his way through, initially, which takes time, and time means getting caught.

But that leads us to the second spot, which isn't so obvious.

It's this spot by the window.

There's no cover here. There's nowhere to hide, to make it appealing for a boy seeking safety. There's no door or anything else to slow Edwin down. So why did he die here so often?

If the window was breakable, Edwin would have figured that out early on, so it wasn't that. But he kept coming back here anyway, over and over.

There's only one thing that makes this spot unique.

It has more light than anywhere else in the Doll House.

I propose that he died here, again and again, over seventy long years, doing exactly what he's doing when Charles finds him: seeking what comfort he can in whatever little light is available to him in the depths of hell.

And then Charles comes to get him, and he brings a lantern.

[many-gay-magpies]

sunflower girls 🌻

i found niko's outfit on pinterest and immediately knew i had to draw her in it, then i wanted to draw her with crystal to match and found those overalls! and thus this drawing was born <3

[queijac]

show goes on

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

MDZS X Disco Elysium = Disco Guidao (Grandmaster of Detective Cultivation).

[seafoamsol]

The best years of my life...

... what I wouldn't give to have them back.

I had the great pleasure of working with @spiderscribe on a DeadCeptor work for the @tf-bigbang, which you can (and should!) read [ HERE ]!

Details and artist commentary under the cut!

Okay, first off, I just wanna say, thank you so much to @spiderscribe for picking up my very loose scribble and taking the jump. She's an absolute champ, and I IMPLORE you to read her writing. She did a knockout job on the fic, and guaranteed, these two pieces wouldn't have been so elaborate without her. If you're a fan of deadceptor, parallels, lovers to enemies to apocalyptic teammates to ???s, I'm sure you'll find that and more in there.

[ HERE ] is the link to that, if you missed it the first time around.

The background for the supermarket was a MASSIVE undertaking. I ended up blurring it in the final to keep the dream-like quality, but there is a lot happening there! Most of the time I spent on the background was (jokingly) complaining though.

Anyone who works retail will know the agony of customer-misplaced stock. The little canisters of energon additives seem like prime candidates to be placed willy-nilly.

The little warning sign... My favorite soda, apple sidra, has a carcinogen warning, so I'm familiar with it. It was slightly surprising to me that those warnings are not countrywide, despite the fact that they very clearly say "California Proposition 65", and well. Not something else, like "Federal" or whatever.

The bags of nuts and bolts below, I asked several people what flavor they would be, and I suppose I failed in my job, because I wanted the purple to be the "regular" flavor, and the green to be the "sour". But grape and lemon-lime work as well!

The tub is full of rust-sticks. I have no idea if that came across. My friends kept calling the individually wrapped ones slim jims, which I mean, I guess!

The car batteries... My idea was that they were similar to shots, in a way? So that's how I ended up with a battery with enough terminals to rival an international airport. It's also sunset-coloured, because, I don't know, that's what Party Flavor is to me.

Okay. The second illustration. This one was a headache, mostly due to my own lack of planning, and the fact that I lost the file for... basically everything I did, including the above illustration. So it was a bit of a rush job.

The background bots started off as these very vague silhouettes, which I'm a little proud of. Look at how nice and somewhat readable they are! Okay, now what if I ruined it? What? You don't like that? That's rather unfortunate, because that's what I proceeded to do. In fact, if I take off all.. 10 or something adjustment layers, they look like this:

My process went: Shadow block> Fill rest of form> Color randomiser> Copy and skew (to populate background)> Hue adjustment> Gradient map> Fill Light> Chromatic aberration> Vignette> Levels> Curves.

The.... Magenta cube is there because due to the nature of the color randomiser, the foot had a high value, and stuck out like nobody's business in the end.

Here's what it would look like without the cube. Begone, distracting white blob! (I didn't have to worry about the lava arm because Percy happened to cover it up. What a save! But if he didn't then... there would have been a second cube.)

Basically, it was a mess. But... at least it came out fine in the end! I hope!

I'd love to have speedpaints on hand, but I was switching between CSP and PS for a good majority of the work.

I'd say that's it for these two pieces! I actually have more, but those demand more time. I'm much slower at doing inks than I am at painting, but I hope you'll get to see them soon.

[bikiniarmorbattledamage]

This is truly stiff competition for the worst case of willful false equivalence we've ever seen.

So, for those not aware: Ongoing embarrassment to gamers and the gaming industry, Mark Kern (former lead on FireFall), has been desperately trying to get Gamergate 2 going on X/Twitter... well after others have given up. If you need to get caught up on Mark, I recommend this video by documentary maker and experienced game developer, Dead Domain:

One of the latest fiascos in this mix has been the comparison of responses to character designs from Hades 2 (Aphrodite, left) and Stellar Blade (protagonist Eve, right). The post isn't by Mark, but is part of the general harassment campaign he's trying to lead.

If you're somehow not familiar with Aphrodite, she's the Ancient Greek goddess of love, lust and hot girl shit. It is absolutely perfect characterization for her to show up to a battle (or anything else) nude but for her hair teasingly covering the intimate parts of her body. But the buried lede here is, you don't fight her in Hades and nothing about Hades 2 indicates she'll fight there either, she just likes the aesthetic and has no reason not to indulge.

Stellar Blade will release on 26 April 2024, so we can't really give an informed discussion of her character. But what we do know is the studio head is the illustrator from Blade & Soul, Eve is described as being a member of "the 7th Airborne Squad" engaged in an "operation to reclaim the planet from the Naytiba", and the promotion material promises "an enthralling narrative filled with mature themes, mystery and revelation. Embrace the relentless pace, with no time to pause between moments where critical, story-changing decisions are made."

It's to be compared to games like Nier: Automata, Devil May Cry 5, Jedi: Fallen Order and Sekiro. And the screenshots look like this:

And yeah, unlike Bayonetta she's not supposed to be an unstoppable force of nature (and fashion) who is immune to self-doubt, she's supposed to be the scrappy underdog last survivor of her team.

Weird they gave her a costume that conveys... the opposite of literally everything they're supposed to be trying to tell you about her.

-wincenworks

[metaphor-for-the-dead]

NARUTO post 3,

Sai sucks. That is all

[cozymochi]

🐱

[redsray]

Red Robin Au where after Battle for the Cowl, Jason (instead of donning that ridiculous pill helmet) goes back to visit Talia and blow off some steam with the LOA; it's an effective way to do so at first, as long as he keeps Ra's at arms length and has all the Bats away from him. Except is that Timothy fucking Drake working with Ra's al Ghul.

So now Jason's like oh my god are you kidding me why is Tim here working with Ra's of all people??? Last he checked, Dick was Batman now and Tim was part of that gaggle of Robins in Gotham. Not here, in Nanda Parbat.

Tim, fresh from a splenectomy: Jason?!

Jason: What the fuck are you doing here?

Tim: ??? I could ask you the same question??

Jason: No the fuck you couldn't?? I trained with Talia and now I'm back here for a bit, and I'm not the one missing an organ right now?! Why aren't you back with Dickbat in Gotham??

Tim: Well. Let's say I'm not Robin anymore

Jason: ... Not... Robin?

Tim, scowling: Dick gave it to Damian.

Jason: Dick is Batman for like a month and already gave the traffic light leggings to a mini assassin? Nice.

Tim: Ugh

Jason: And... this was enough reason to run away and get impaled by assassins in Iraq? While working with Ra's al Ghul?

Tim: Well, not really. I need to find Bruce, and Ra's is the only one who will help me. Even if he's a freak of nature.

Jason: Bruce... are we talkin' about another Bruce or did I miss a memo? Bruce is dead, Timbo.

Tim: He's not. He's trapped in the timestream and trying to get back. And don't- don't tell me I'm going insane with grief or in denial. Laugh all you want, then leave. I don't need this shit again.

Jason: Trapped in time? Damn motherfucker can't even stay dead?

Tim: ... You believe me?

Jason: Sure. Not the craziest shit we've seen. I have a feeling you wouldn't go as far as Ra's if you were actually going off nothing. (mumbling) stealing my schtick. What a bastard.

Tim, blinking: Wow. That... just wow. That was easy. Dick thought I was losing it with grief and so has everyone else.

Jason, shrugging: B is definitely stubborn enough to get lost in time instead of dying and, frankly, I know what being off yer rocker looks like, and this ain't it. I climbed out of my grave, for god's sake, is time shit really off the table? Wouldn't hurt t'look if the old man's still kickin'.

Tim: Uh-

Jason: First stop: away from Ra's, preferably. Talia's not bad, but Ra's is a whole other can of worms. Get up or I drag you.

[tjudi]

the evil dead (and within the woods) but it's only scenes of ashley/bruce fighting with bookshelves

[asidian]

This scene destroys me every time, but one incredible detail that I haven't seen anybody mention is the position of the bedding.

In the first shot, when Edwin arrives, we can see that Charles has taken one mattress and one blanket to huddle in the corner with them.

In the final shot, all of the bedding has been rearranged on the floor to make Charles' little blanket nest as Edwin reads to him.

But Charles spends the entirety of these scenes growing weaker with each passing shot. He's sitting upright and shivering, then leaning against the shelves and shivering, then leaning hard on a table and coughing as the internal damage starts to catch up to him, then leaning much harder on the shelves after the shivering has stopped (a bad sign when someone is hypothermic), then leaning so far down he's near reclined, then finally lying flat on the floor amidst the bedding.

My point is, by the time that final scene comes around, Charles doesn't have the strength left to have moved the bedding for himself anymore.

That was Edwin. Edwin sat with this dying boy, and brought him light, and made him laugh. And when the end was near, he made him a blanket nest on the floor, so that he could die in comfort while someone read him off to sleep.

[florida3exclamationpoints]

Grey's text posts pt. 20