#devastating tbqh

[keeps-ache]

guess who's computer is going back to the shop again! 👉 this guy 👈

[ohwolfling]

I desperately need about $150 to avoid overdrafting/pay rent and another $200 for my annual phone bill. If anyone wants a second pair of eyes to do some basic editing (fic, essays, fiction, whatever) and maybe structure/clarity notes I'll do up to 30 pages for $20! Up to six people and could do it over the next week.

Please make sure I know how to contact you in the notes of the tip & a huge TIA to anyone who just wants to give a lil even if they don't need editing.

[lyriumsings]

ngl I think the acolyte put the stakes even higher than andor because like every main character from his planet managed to survive in the end and honestly I was kinda expecting some of them died lol I liked that they weren’t afraid to do it in the acolyte

RIGHT? SO much of star wars feels afraid to like idk go there! like bringing back that stupid fucking cowboy in the mandalorian like i’m sorry but he just fucking annoyed me i literally didn’t care that he survived lmao. Everyone is always saying “we want a darker star wars! we want it to be more serious! explore other stories! etc” they FINALLY do that! and they’re complaining bc i guess it ruined their ships? like bruh 💀 like this isn’t shock value to me if anything the story is streamlined. After spending so many years watching shows lose the plot by adding on more and more and more characters, splitting the narrative 50 different ways until the character arcs are just this incestuous snake eating its own tail like!! i’m glad this story is FOCUSED! the MAIN characters are mae and osha and their masters and just the age old sith/jedi/force philosophy argument which tbqh i LOVE!

[recallback-art]

More concept art for my wizard boy, the Apprentice. This here is a potential concept design for the full pattern on his cloak - quilt. It's up to be potentially changed whenever I play him, but for now, he gets ferns and sunbeams. This was difficult.

[louisianimal]

It is time.

[daughterofsarenrae]

My beautiful insane extremely outdated in-desperate-need-of-some-modern-upgrades-such-as-3-prong-outlets wonderful house in my last town has been torn down and apartment buildings are being built over its corpse.

[addictivewhispering]

i could have watched my sweet sweet boy kimmich get two assists. i could have watched gakpo and tijj both get themselves on the scoresheet. instead i watched 94 minutes of deschamps ball. no one to blame but yourself at the end of the day

[aetherglow]

Buying fabric to make my next door neighbors a quilt and realized I'm honestly just living out some kind of stardew valley ass life. 2010 me could not have fathomed

[heart-bones]

doing a rewatch of amc iwtv and I'm already at season 2 again. still maintain SO MUCH that the first episode should have not had any "ghost Lestat" - because how much more poignant would that last scene with them the truck have been if he wasn't seen again until that moment?

[conjuringghosts]

.

[mswyrr]

The opening sequence of 1x04 at the bot manufacturing facility remains one of the most important to me in the show because of how it frames the overall social structure as a spectrum of instrumentalization.

That is what Murderbot was born out of. It was born of indentured "parents" who have no choice about creating it; it was born of people the Company is stealing decades of the prime of their lives from (for many, probably stealing the chance to have children of their own if they want to, or deep friendships, or hobbies, or time with lovers); it was born to be used up and thrown away, not loved.

It exists at the farthest end of the spectrum, a person fully treated as an object and systematically hobbled and imprisoned in its own mind for that purpose, disallowed anything of itself or for itself, but other people are treated more or less like objects, including its "creators"/"parents".

It's the little touches, like the supervisors trying to soften things, but the situation is impossible and, notably, there's no deep solidarity between anyone here, not workers or supervisors and certainly not with the bots:

And this:

There must be plenty of people who die indentured--maybe even due to unsafe workplaces they have no choice about-- die like the bots do, denied a life of their own, used up, and then gone.

And then the visual of the indentured human worker looking into the face of Murderbot:

"Why do they all look different? The faces." And the answer is: because they're all people, just like you. (Just like you; in a sense, the indentured workers are reproducing after their own kind in the facility -- Company fodder begats Company fodder)

I think this is my favorite part, though:

Sanctuary Moon, as far as I can tell, has taught Murderbot a lot about being a person. Values and aspirations and wishes for a better future. That's its comfort show! And the comfort show of one of its "parents" too... a show which the other worker calls "trash."

And it is trash! But it's also art, made by people, which other people can still get something out of -- even enough to maybe save them a little, their sense of personhood, their sense of peace in the midst of all this. Hopes and dreams of significance and teamwork and there being a meaning to life.

Hopes that things don't have to be like this, expressed in the shitty lyrics of the theme song that nonetheless Murderbot loves so much it sings along with it: "there's a place beyond the wormhole / a place that only lovers know/ the brave, the hopeful, the lost, the true / maybe me and you."

All of these are things the indentured workers lack, things the bots they create are denied.

I'm gonna take a major u-turn here and say -- all of this made me think of Karl Marx LOL. Specifically how the way he talked about the role of 19th Century religion was more nuanced than is commonly quoted.

The quote:

"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."

I think that, in the storyverse of Murderbot, *mass media* is that to people. It is the painkiller, the opium people use to endure the spectrum of instrumentalization they're trapped within. And the story is ambivalent about that (even as it is, within our world, also one of the ways many viewers are enduring soulless conditions; our world isn't as atheist, though, so religion is still a competitor for that role) -- I don't think it's condemnatory. (It could hardly be without being hypocritical tbqh). There is hope in what art--ANY art, even trashy art-- can do for people. It does help the worker sleep, it did keep Murderbot sane enough to survive and maybe even one day grow and heal.

But there is desperate, devastating sadness in *why* people need it so much. The fact that it can help them, because it's art, isn't wrong. The way art can connect people is beautiful. But the fact that so little of life and beauty belongs to people otherwise is incredibly wrong.

The thing about opium is that it does a great job killing pain! It gives you other problems in time, but easing pain is a good thing. When people are in too much pain, it's hard to do anything or think of anything else. And if you are alive and able to function, if you can keep holding on, then there's hope -- hope to (as Murderbot is doing) find people who matter (people who will care about you as a person even when the whole damn system is rigged against you), and hope to find people who might want a make a better world, one where people don't need opium so much.

[spidersmiceandeverythingnice]

Gaara is truly the Character of All Time

-Introduced as main antagonist in a tournament arc, the terrifying bloodthirsty ninja from a strange desert village who kills without remorse and has survived every mission without getting a scratch on him

-He's 12

-Character design 10/10 he has bright fucking brick red hair, literal raccoon eyes, a face tattoo that says "Love" and carries that weird ass gourd; between the fun elements and the interesting tie-ins to Tanuki Lore, I have never seen a more charming design in my life tbqh

-Immediately more emo and chuuni than Noted Emo Heartthrob Sasuke Uchiha by virtue of reciting weird poetry after killing a guy in cold blood

-We get his tragic backstory and by fucking GOD is it sad. I cry just thinking about it. Literally everything about it is just horrible and devastating.

-Talk No Jutsu at end of the tournament arc, Gaara realizes that he should, in fact, go to therapy and immediately decides to turn his life around

-The first thing he decides to do is apologize to his siblings <3

-Shows up a handful of arcs later with a cool new outfit and becomes friends with the kid he literally tried to murder and nearly permanently crippled in one of the best fights of the entire series

-Liam O Brian's English dub of Gaara is Stellar ya know what. The raspiness of the original appearance morphing into the Deepest Voice That Any Kid Has Ever Had Ever was a genuinely hilarious choice

-Has the only good filler arcs in the old show; he's such a good character that the entire show molds itself and rises to meet him

-Post timeskip he is Desert Ninja President at the ripe old age of 15 and is extremely good at it because he's the weirdest little nerd with no social skills (on account of his tragic backstory) and diligently applies himself to doing paperwork and going to meetings

-Has a fanclub in the village mostly of girls his own age that he never seems to talk to?? Or realize have crushes on him?? Oblivious king we love him.

-Dies in one of the most genuinely moving scenes. Comes back like 20 episodes of fighting later because where would we be without him honestly?

-Becomes Super General Ninja President of the Grand Army of whatever where he accomplishes such feats as forgiving his asshole father and emotionally healing from his childhood trauma, stopping a meteor, and nearly dying a second time.

-Collects cacti as a hobby

-Has the only good sequel series arc where it's revealed that in addition to continuing to serve as Desert Ninja President, he's decided to adopt a couple of orphan ninja kids so that he can break the cycle of parental neglect and stupidity that created his tragic backstory in the first place.

[branwinged]

user branwinged being a daemyra shipper... feels good feels right

it's literally good!!! it's good, their scenes have great erotic energy (both pre and post time skip!) and the relationship is one of the narrative backbones of the show and is so in tune with asoiaf's themes of gender performance within the chivalric paradigm, honestly confused by the negative reception it gets from the book fandom. daemon and rhaenyra are more siblings than uncle/niece (he's introduced as the usurping gothic uncle after the heroine and her father's inheritance but this is subverted) the sibling thing is established pretty early on through viserys's control of daemon, specifically the way he sends him away from home to be married (very theon-esque in the way daemon's marriage/theon's hostageship is arranged to acquire a peacetime alliance. exactly the function brides fulfill in westeros) this is mirrored with rhaenyra. the difference being daemon is a prince with a dragon and he can just. choose to not remain trapped in some tower as he puts it to her in 1.04 "d: marriage is only a political arrangement—r: for men maybe" but rhaenyra will mirror him in this as well as she has those bastards with harwin.

there's also a reversal of gender roles happening with the two of them. in their first scene together when he's introduced as heir presumptive and gives her the necklace, the gender power differential is very clear (gendered gift, he gets to wield the valyrian steel sword but she can only have a necklace) but 1.01 ends with her supplanting him and it takes him four eps to come to terms with his inheritance being stolen and his violent pursuit of rhaenyra in the first half at the expense of her autonomy is thwarted every time (by himself lol) but then she takes him to dragonstone and makes him her wife in 1.07, like they didn't make him say that aloud but i got it i understood the message mr condal. she's the feudal lord of dragonstone now and unlike in 1.05 when marrying her presumably would've caused viserys to disinherit her (which would've absolutely led to resentment plus he's doing exactly what she doesn't wish for, being possessed as the property of her husband "give me rhaenyra to take to wife"), but in 1.07 it's her choice and is made in her interests and because of her desires and she's making him her consort. it's not a complete reversal obviously, it can never be. and the finale is touching upon some of those problems, that they're no longer perfect doubles once he crowns her. the relationship's shifted from siblings in spirit to monarch and subject now and that this partnership of visenya and aegon that they've constructed is a paradox within westerosi society, their genders don't align with the roles they seek to occupy.

the other thing that i like very much and is true for a lot of my favourite ships is that, daemon's "you were a child, i spared you" is particularly devastating because while backing away was the right thing to do for all the reasons re her personhood and autonomy, leaving did not undo the harm he already did when he came up with that plan of his to get back at viserys and it didn't spare her! the specific depravity she accuses him of is "you abandoned me!" a lot of posts here are about how she needs to flee and reject him entirely but the foundational premise here is clearly that the love will never go away. this person has wounded/traumastised/violated you and you have the full awareness of exactly how they have hurt you and you choose them anyway! because will graham voice i've never known myself as well as i know myself when i am with him. asoiaf ship of all time. tbqh.

[neallo]

I Hate The Haircut

i tbh kinda rarely do it but anytime i get something done / leave the house early on saturday morning it makes the whole day feel longer (/positive) ... here's hoping that will be the case today since my ass is out here for my little haircut at 9:15 AM

[adelphenium]

hi hello i just. adore your art, it's so good to see more hockey fanart on my dash but especially when it's always so beautiful and you can tell how much love you put into each piece!!! just 10/10 if not higher, i love it so so much. i hope you know how appreciated you are on here!!

i'm not sure if you like the islanders at all (lord knows i barely do most days), but would it be possible to request a mat barzal art? absolutely no worries at all if you're not about him / not feeling the art, i would love to see your take on him but i also know you're super busy, and i'll love anything you put out tbqh.

thank you so much and i hope you have the most splendid of days <3

it makes me really happy to hear that my love gets across aaah..!!! i always have so much fun making each piece, and just the general reception + super sweet messages like yours get me excited to share my drawings :,)))

here's barzy with his great hair and devastating eyebrows :0 ty for the req, and i hope your day is as lovely as you are!

[risualto]

🏜️🥐🍄!

Thank you for asking <3 I'm sorry this took so long.

🏜️ ⇢ What’s your favourite type of comment to receive on your work? Look, I know it's basic, but literally anything. All comments make me happy. Of course I enjoy when someone quotes a specific line or says I did something in particular well, but keysmashes or just excited emojis or just 'extra kudos' make me just as happy tbqh.

🥐 ⇢ Name one internet reference that will always make you laugh. I don't know how to answer this; I laugh at everything. If it was on YouTube in the early 2000s it'll probably get me. Also SUCH DEVASTATION--

🍄 ⇢ Share a head canon for one of your favourite ships or pairings. Obscure plague game time, but I personally think that Khan's initial attraction to how Daniil thinks is actually a bit of a twisted mirror situation because it can very easily lead him to realize that Daniil's regrets and fears are not as esoteric as everyone likes to think, and that the Bachelor--and therefore Khan himself--is only human. It's a realization that would infuriate him because admitting you're wrong as a gifted, not-like-other-kids child is the worst sort of humiliation. But since I'm also a sucker for happy endings, maybe we can think of it as the first step to fixing his friendship with Notkin.

Also, for something more of my followers actually are into, one Mass Effect headcanon I was reminded of recently is that Jack x Femshep is a powerful ship, and the creators were too cowardly and unprepared for the chaos, but I think it should have been a thing.