#don’t think she wants to be tho

[blitzy-blitzwing]

Listen to that ferocious bark.

[pjs-everyday]

Sylvia Sheerwood, if you want 💖

🥰❤️❤️

[moonshere]

Been thinking a lot about this “the family plays isat” AU and how it might happen

Siffrin would probably refuse for them to play it if he was aware of it (thinking about how they said when learning about the diary in the library that they would hate it if someone read their deepest thoughts) and the rest of the family would also respect that, because it really would be a breach of trust. They’d prefer it if Siffrin talked to them himself, after all.

A situation I could see it happening is if, post-Loop battle, Siffrin’s Craft exhaustion got so severe he gets knocked out for a full week or two, maybe more! And the family would be so worried and desperate to understand what happened so that if the game appeared to them suddenly, they’d be tempted enough to play through it. If only just to figure out how to help Siffrin wake up again

(and probably a mixture of other emotions too, wanting to see the conversations Siffrin had with them that they don’t remember, feeling guilty that they didn’t notice soon enough, terrified that Siffrin is hiding something else. I mean, Siffrin straight up did not mention the Loop battle to them at all, even after they promised to talk! so they’d be worried on what happened there already)

Honestly I think all of them would also be exhausted and on bed rest after the whole quest to defeat the King was over, it took months of constant movement and stress so the whole family would crash hard afterwards. Cuz of that they’d be stuck together on like the infirmary or a private room with strict orders to take it easy, what better time to play the game than that?

[callixton]

i think the thing to understand abt martha jones is that even after she leaves she is five seconds away from dropping everything and traveling with the doctor at any given time. bc that itch to blow everything up and damn her personal duty to hell in search of a higher call never leaves her. but martha is smart. and rational. and has spent a long fucking time needing to keep herself safe. (bc he comes when she calls but never before.) and so she has gotten very good at keeping herself on the right side of those five seconds. but i do think if ten was a different person (if he could acknowledge how much he needed her instead of just how much he liked her) (if he didn’t feel this righteous martyrdom when it comes to being left alone) (if he cared enough about her to beg. if he cared enough about himself.) i think that her answer no would come crumbling down pretty quickly is all.

[blaithnne]

Came across these old drawings where I experimented with an alt outfit Lauren. Still not entirely sure what I want to do with it but it’s definitely staying in rotation.

[ciderjacks]

can’t read any Chilwife fic or read any fanon chilwife stuff at all because I have a very specific interpretation of their marriage & her as a character that no one else understands bc no one else is me… I suffer from success every day

[sainamoonshine]

My unpopular opinion is that in languages with grammatical gender like french, it does make sense for Murderbot to be referred to by whatever pronoun is usually used for robots or constructs. (In french, therefore, grammatical masculine.) Because there are no traditional « it » pronouns in these languages for objects, and while there are neo-pronouns, they are things one must choose for themselves. Do you honestly think MB actually spent time thinking about its pronouns?! No it didn’t. On forms it picks « non-applicable ». When people ask it what pronouns they should use, its honest opinion is « why do you even need to talk about me. Just don’t fucking do that. Don’t think about me either. Just fucking stop perceiving me altogether! »

Thinking about what pronouns to use probably makes it way more uncomfortable than letting people call it what they’ve already been calling it. Making a conscious choice about its identity? And telling other people about it??? No thanks bye, it’s just gonna walk into the ocean now, see you never.

Lbr it probably thinks the only bots that get fancy pronouns are comfort units, and the pronouns are probably shoved into them by humans same as everything else. MB would meet a bot using a neopronoun and it would wish it could barf. Because in a language like french, he/him and she/her, when applied to objects, ARE fulfilling the function of the english « it ». Nobody is saying the table is a woman or related to feminity in any way outside of stand-up comedy; when it comes to objects grammatical gender really has fuckall to do with human gender even if we use the same words. Even animal species names have grammatical gender and everyone gets that there are male and female turtles even if the word « turtle » is a female word, it’s not that confusing.

(I know this is strange when your language has different pronouns for people and for objects, but understand that english uses the same word to indicate if I’m addressing one or many people, and that is confusing to me.)

TL;DR; stop harassing international fans for not getting the correct MB pronoun in english right off the bat. Yes in english calling it « he » or « her » or « them » is upsetting because it’s projecting an identity unto it. But same goes for trying to get a foreign language translation to use a pronoun intended to express or showcase an identity (or even a lack of one!). Murderbot has not thought about it this hard, refuses to think about it this hard -> and that is its only canon accurate gender identity.

[narugen-moved]

alright buckle up it’s time for me to spread my hoshina/mina agenda

1. mina being unserious as hell with the most serious face when it comes to hoshina (taking a picture of him being upset over losing kaiju #8)

2. “could you be the one to carve the path for me?” she specifically asked him because of his swordsmanship that every elder/senior in his life had dismissed him for citing it was an end of an era. she’s the only one who believed in him after years of being put down by everybody (even his own family)

3. devotion & loyalty & trust - do i even need to say anything they make me go crazy

i can’t add anymore pics so i’ll word dump properly in another post but wow i’m bonkers abt them 😭 something something thank you for choosing me / thank you for being someone i can rely on

[fumifooms]

Makima, devils and self-fulfillment

Dumping some Makima and CSM thoughts after a part 1 binge bc I think about her forever and ever. I’m sure I’m forgetting some devil lore, feel free to correct what i get wrong/what’s been confirmed. On the table of contents there’s why & how Makima got fixated on Chainsaw, her revealing liking for the country mouse and discussion of her nature & emotions & desires. Was the scorpion doomed to be a scorpion?

The most of this post was thought of during a conversation with @saccharineomens and I don’t think it makes sense to jump into the spiral it sent me on without first laying down the interesting groundwork theorizing she did:

"Thinking about how makima herself wants to be deified. I wonder whether she recognizes the difference between Love As Worship and the love that Aki, Power, and Denji had. She says she wants to help humanity by having Chainsawman eat the “bad” devils, but why does she want to help humans? Because she was ordered to by the Prime Minister? No, her drive seems much more personal than that, it seems like she teamed up with the PM for contractual reasons. (In the most recent chapters we see governmental members wanting certain devils to be eaten, too. What was Makima’s relationship with them? She’s too independent to just follow THEIR orders, she’s Control.)

So is she wanting to better humanity for the accolades, or out of the goodness of her heart? She sees the big picture. She sees any small sacrifice as worth it for the end result, and she’s ruthless. Perhaps she thinks that a more sedate human race would be easier to control? But Makima doesn’t loathe humanity. She never acts like she sees all humans as lesser. She loves humanity’s creations, like good food and movies. She just wants Good Things all the time

She says she prefers the country mouse BUT adds a story where she helps exterminate country mice like vermin. She likes the simplicity yet rejects the idea of being simple. Makima the complex individual you are"

~

The story itself seems to prefr the country mouse. Well- it strikes a balance, shows that a risk to live good & fully can be very worth it, but still that stability over ambition is preferable, proning having a simple happy life over fame, a simple job instead of a dangerous one, etc etc. And I do find Makima’s answer on this so so interesting, she prefers the country mouse, but this preference isn’t out of affection or sympathy but because of how relaxing it feels to exterminate them when they cause problems.

Order satisfies her. Her order satisfies her. She likes the action of rooting out disorder. Maybe this is the devil part, like how Power especially wants blood and drinking it, I feel there’s an itch to every devil, and for Makima it’s a very rigid world view/morality/standards & making things follow her rules and submit to her order.

And maybe this is why she’s attached to humans too, why she felt it was worth it to stick with the government- because devils are chaotic by nature (it’s a whole plot point that hell is essentially a free-for-all battleground for example), meanwhile humans are the species that universally rule Earth with systems they invented and instilled. They made then enforced rules, complex and intricate webs of them. She feels alienated amongst devils but she understands the humans’ need for an orderly organised society, and now she wants to be part of it. Control and conquest require social dynamics after all, requires civilizations or groups. War is chaotic while peace is, well, peaceful— Makima resents her sisters for being death, famine and war, things that throw the world in such chaos. She wants a world of perfect order, no matter how much collateral damage there will be if the end result is control.

This is even more interesting if you consider that yes, Makima is untouchable of her own design, she deifies herself with her omnipresent amount of control and the sway over others that she seeks and encourages— There is this urge to dehumanize her for it, that yes, she is the devil of control and that means she was never going to be any different, have any more feeling be any less uncanny. And I love part 2 so much for this, because it shows us the war devil and the famine devil and we see how frankly uncharismatic with poor self-discipline they are, Nayuta too, and it helps us realize just how much Makima’s success was self-made.

She admires Chainsaw Devil, the Hero of Hell, because he had his own code and his own rules and he made Hell, the chaos pit, submit to them unfailingly. Wherever he goes he decides what he does and what happens to the people he encounters but does so consistently, he has his mechanism and his rules that he always obeys, and he fulfills them every time. It’s still a mystery the why of Chainsaw Devil’s behavior back then and how it works exactly, maybe Pochita left hell because he was tired of these rules he lived by like chains, but still, he was a servant to his code. Makima would have been glad being killed and eaten by Chainsaw Devil because it’d have been becoming part of his design, his conquest, his domination, she’d have been part of that —his— order. Through her death she would be shaping his world and be part of a conqueror’s making history. Like how she appreciates the country mice that die for the sake of order. Like how sacrifices must be made to herself, like listing the name of every person whose life was lost to the Gun Devil— All for the ~greater good~, for her vision for the world. Conquest always thinks its reasons are justified.

And she does mention with the country mice thing that she goes out to a friend’s farm every year! She has a human friend?? That she visits yearly and she genuinely likes it?? Ultimately she lives a busy city life because of her goal and drive and her urge & satisfaction with overseeing shaping the world herself, but part of her, like so many characters including Angel and Aki and Reze, wishes she could live a slow peaceful country life. Moviegoing and dogs and mice in a farm- Wouldn’t it be so much simpler if Makima could find fulfillment and happiness in being a farmer, in keeping control of her own farm, getting satisfaction from exterminating vermin and expertly getting everything right, the right crops grown at the right time on the right soil? Here, too, in a way it’s trying to have full control of an ecosystem, but her goals would be easier to achieve and better, without ceaseless sacrifice or much pressure. But Makima wants grandiosity and her goal does matter to her on a fundamental and moral level, she does think she knows what’s best for the world, and with the power to change it why wouldn’t she strive to? Visiting the farm is just a break, just something she does in fall to help out and just in time to see the vermin extermination. It calms her, then it’s back to actual work.

In capitalism, even the one at the very top of the ladder is ultimately alienated from others and often unsatisfied by their lifestyle, always wanting more and more power because surely that’s the extra edge they must be missing to be content— like how Makima thinks she wants to dominate Chainsaw Devil instead of being his equal. And she says it herself too, she likes humans the way humans like dogs…….. And she keeps so many dogs :( Makima prefers the country mice because they’re calming to root out, maybe because she usually mainly deals with city mice. It’s very easy to equate humans to the mice in this allegory because it’s pretty direct and she’s already likened humans to lesser animals compared to her. She’s self-isolating by design for her design but she still craves relationships and contentment, and the dogs are the embodiment or her want for bonds and occasional simplicity because there is no possible ulterior motive, no way they tie back into her wider plan. They’re her personal life— something that feels so alien when speaking about Makima. Personality and individuality and likes and preferences and friends they visit every year. She likes how easily she can train a dog and how they become putty in her hands, at her beck and call, how much they love her and how much she enjoys their love. How simple and straightforward and easy it is. She keeps them because she likes being loved by them and loving them, and she’s gotten and raised so many. A conqueror always wants more and more and more, is never satisfied.

Devils and agency

Like Power the blood devil wanting blood and having a fixation on drinking it like with Denji’s, or how it was shocking that the violence devil was pretty tame and nice and how he himself theorized it was because he was a fiend and possessing a human body… There’s something to be said about nature vs nurture with the devils. The way they reincarnate and always embody their fear makes it seem categorically like nature, that they always always end up fulfilling the role they were named after and born to fill… Outside influence they’re helpless but to conform with. Like the humans accepting their spot in the social ladder and the shittiness of their living conditions and job under capitalism. Makima craved being equals with someone despite being the control/conquest devil, Angel Devil despite claiming to be a devil who likes to see humans dying was haunted by their deaths and wanted to avoid ones like Aki’s. The Ghost Devil being ironically haunted by Himeno, seemingly helping Aki in her memory out of… Lasting affection? Or maybe it was less about being haunted itself and more about it recognizing how Himeno haunted Aki, and acknowledging that, with the memento, paying her respect to the ghost of her. It’s Angel Devil’s devil nature that makes him like human suffering, so then is it his angel nature too to still care about their deaths? Is there truth to this or is that just personality, just our confirmation bias haunting every part of their identity like it might in their own view of themselves too? We do know different reincarnations of devils do have different personalities after all.

Yoru, war devil, is the most interesting one when talking about the nature vs nurture debate with devils. There is how through her we see the perhaps the most the consequences of a devil stopping being feared— we see a horseman for a concept as universal and horrifying as war be reduced to some bird who needs a contract with a human to have any power even just on the situation when meeting Asa. And through the story we get to know her better, and it becomes clear that her goal is fueled in good part by simply wanting to be remembered and respected through fear. Liked, validated, seen a powerful. But what is more isolating than war? Or control? We also see Nayuta accepting others’ house rules. If part 1 shows perhaps the futility of running away from the truth, with Denji’s memory, with escapist coping mechanisms, with passivity and denial under a corrupt system and with abusive relationships- running away from your own feelings and from the reality of things and from all that you are, more complex than simply human or devil or both or neither— part 2 builds upon the theme of cult of personalities, the chainsaw church, etc. The apocalypse is coming, but this celebrity superhero might save us all, or doom us all uh, dunno. The hero of hell reliving the cycle of pressure from responsibilities and expectations, maybe the part will end with Denji running away like Pochita did~

But yes, on the reverse, I think Famine is a very interesting example of how a devil’s namesake may be more innate than coerced by circumstances. One would think that a famine devil would only like inflicting famine upon others, not being famished itself, but Famine has a bottomless stomach that can never, ever be satisfied, sated. I struggle to find a psychological explanation for this, except that maybe instead of her being hungry it’s her feeling empty when she’s not eating, tasting and having that high sensory experience that releases serotonin in humans, sort of like drugs? But I do take this as a step towards the compulsion theory overall, feels like a reach in the consistency otherwise. And compulsion does not mean it’s something that they like nor that it’s something that they fight against, pretty neutral, just a nature that nudges you towards one path. Maybe it’s even just their go-to for entertainment. Maybe it’s the only thing that makes them feel right and whole. But still the debate remains, what is it, a compulsion or an urge or an itch or an active desire or a conscious chosen want? Does it change anything in practice?

And because of all of this earlier, devils being self-fulfilling prophecies with their role is not in unsignificant part nurture, because doing their atrocities is how they stay remembered— feared, powerful, known— hell and devils are a very isolating place and breed after all, and we do see devils can want companionship. Existentially, it’s their purpose and how they justify their place in the world, in the terrifyingly vast and unknowable cosmos.

We still know so little of what makes Chainsaw Devil so special, why his carnage is so self-controlled. Despite a chainsaw maybe being possibly one of the most "nature" thing you can be— a tool to cut things, a human tool that can be helpful for many things, something to be wielding by another at their judgement on what they decide, but mainly something to cut, a tool suited for carnage, to hurt and to destroy. A blade with a toothed chain, spinning around and around and around endlessly on the same road at the same pace. Such a…. Innately circular concept. And yet the Chainsaw Devil is his own, not driven by an urge or by chaos but his very own brand of order, his own unique assigned purpose, a "if you call i’ll come running to help" policy equalizing everyone. He chooses to withhold his destruction and interference otherwise, and then he chooses to be used. If it’s a choice, of course.

Maybe this is what inspired Makima so much, that Chainsaw Devil could decide what to make of himself despite expectations or innate role. Because even Hell he decided & managed to subjugate under his will and whim, with a precise vision and process. When Chainsaw Devil acts like Denji or is defeated, Makima clicks her tongue and loses her admiration and respect. Makima admired and liked Chainsaw Devil, but only as long as he matched her great image of him in her mind, as long as he followed he rules for what she thinks he should be like. She admired him for his unrivaled self-made success, but once he stepped out of that to truly embody self-fulfillment and agency, disappearing from hell to live on his own road at the beat of his own drum… Well. Surely that was a mistake she has to correct. However their second battle ends, the better conqueror will have prevailed and she’s happy about that, all in the spirit of domination and subjugation.

Imo Makima’s biggest tool, similarly capitalism’s most helpful effect for its own purposes, is complacency. Resignation and passivity helps uphold the system and go along the flow of the will of the people in power. Aki and Reze go along with orders even when knowing their job is trash, etc. In Angel Devil especially we see him go along with the flow uncaring about anyhing, and we discover it was in part due to Makima taking away memories that motivated him. If every devil decides this is just how things are and how things should be that’s what they’ll continue to be and do mindlessly, not pursuing a better life like Chainsaw Devil and Denj and not seeking to change the world like Makima. I think even Makima veils herself to a lot of things, she doesn’t like to think deeply about some things, like her desire for connection, or how making bad movies disappear is strenuous and unsustainable and requiring sacrifices at best— how her judgement is as subjective as anyone else. How liking the country mouse and her friend back at the farm and her dogs could be not devoid of sentimality. Wanting bad movies erased is her one biggest show of selfishness, of pettiness and individuality, it’s about her tastes, simple as. About how she can have tastes, and cry seeing a scene of people hug, and want things that aren’t logical, her ideology and mind twisted into a pretzel to avoid acknowledging that she doesn’t live and breathe purely for the mission she’s made a single-minded robot out of herself to accomplish. Nayuta is assertive and selfish and loud, Makima is manipulative and strategically both for her goals and for coping hollow.

Everything in her plans and goals she says is for the greater good, necessary evil, manufactured happiness the way she’ll have decided for people— and that’s the thing isn’t it, like with War, it’s the crack that shows it was all truly about herself after all. Her self-made deification still had the flaw that a self made it. Makima is not omniscient, and it’s not Chainsaw Devil the not-so-fellow-kindred-soul conqueror who gets the best of her, but a city mouse, a dog, someone she would have never thought to respect, Denji.

[trevisos]

i think some of the trouble i’m having with figuring magpie out is that i initially planned them to live in a world where elves are oppressed and the crows are an organization that trains children to kill so rigorously that many die before becoming proper assassins and until ~10 years ago the majority of mages lived locked in towers because the general population found them too frightening to live freely and bioware kind of smoothed out many of these edges in veilguard and now i don’t have like. any of those hooks i expected to have to anchor magpie as a Person In The World. i mean granted the mage thing was always going to be less of a big deal bc ik the culture around mages in antiva was different even when the circles Did exist but the other stuff i like… idk i guess i didn’t Expect the whole elven oppression thing to be so smoothed over and sanitized. but it’s barely mentioned?? bellara straight up was like “will people dislike elves after this?” as if they don’t already? the shadow dragons are fighting slavery in tevinter, a thing that has historically happened Mostly To Elves, and yet that’s never mentioned directly. as an elf rook i never get to have an opinion on being an elf in minrathous. i don’t Get to tell bellara that they already hate us. i recognize it was prob wishful thinking but i had hoped we could play a smidge more with the dynamic of being a city elf contending not only with the fact that the elven gods you’ve never worshipped are real but also that they’re Evil. instead every other character talks to magpie as if these are her gods too and they’re not!! they never were! but there’s never really an option to outright say that! the only chance i’ve had so far to say they’re not my gods was worded as if i rejected them for being tyrants with no option to acknowledge that i’ve NEVER worshipped them?? as if city elves no longer exist to bioware when like. to Me that was the most interesting part of elves!

and obvs i figured the crows would be humanized a little more but it really does feel like everyone there has Chosen to be an assassin and could leave if they wanted. the fledgling jacobus is treated with like. kid gloves by both heir And the two talons present which is not exactly consistent with Training So Grueling It Kills Children? this is a much less big deal for many reasons (including that there is definitely a certain Lens the crows are allowing you to see them through as an outsider (and/or because you have outsiders with you for a crow rook) that may easily conceal many of the realities of the org. and also bc it’s just not a big deal) but it is still kind of baffling to come up against when i came into the game as zevranlover69

[cryptiduni]

“white mourning.”

[lynxfrost13]

Thinking about my Penrose prototype mynah and Elster again bc I wanna flesh them out more..

I think I at least have names for them right now!

MHNR 001 is called Kosmos! As a prototype mynah variant built for the Penrose mission the technicians that worked on her affectionately gave her the name. She’s your typical mynah persona but in a smaller frame (still bulky by other replika standards!) and also has some additional ship piloting knowledge uploaded into her memory. Her three primary tasks are to pilot the ship, to mark planets/asteroids/etc that have valuable resources for the nation, and to extract some of those resources.

Btw Her favorite plush (they let her bring some for stabilization! They don’t take up too much space!) is a dinosaur with a grumpy expression. It reminds her of her new Elster friend :]

LSTR 001 was dubbed “Dorredt” by Kosmos because according to the mynah calling her 001 was boring, and while trying to think of a name she misread a package and came up with Dorredt. Elster doesn’t care if it means Kosmos will stop bugging her about potential names. She’s your typical elster, quiet, serious, and maybe a little awkward! Her duties involve anything involving ship repair/maintenance and land survey. Her and Kosmos both tend to the Penrose ship’s garden but Dorredt is better at handling the plants due to her less clunky build.

Her favorite spot to be alone is the storage area, sometimes she just sits there and reads the labels on items for fun. There’s other things she could do too but not a lot was provided for her specifically..

[erotetica]

Akasha, still mortal. Designing her was challenging given the lack of extant reference, but this is what I came up with:

Apparently she was turned in 4000 bce, so I based my research in the Uruk Period of Mesopotamia (which was named for the Sumerian city of Uruk, now Iraq, where Rice said Akasha is from). In 4000, Kaunakes we’re not yet in style for Sumerians, instead wearing more straight-fitting kilts/net-dresses. I believe those also conformed to the rule of higher status =ankle length, lower class = knee length, so that’s what I did

On the fabric color—I read a paper that posited the ‘net’ of the net dress shown on the cylinder seal linked above/attached below, was actually a dyed pattern. The cylinder seal is dated @ ~3000 bce, BUT there is evidence of ochre-dyed cloth from Çatalhöyük, in Anatolia, from at least 5700 bce, so I think fabric dyeing in a less complicated pattern sounds feasible for 4000 bce.

Given 4000 was also the Chalcolithic Age/Copper Age in Mesopotamia, I wanted to include something copper. While I couldn’t find extant copper jewelry-jewelry, I did find these pins, and iirc Sumerian wrap-clothing was held with pins anyway

Re: necklaces, Akasha’s is based on this one.

I went with Iraqi-Lebanese actress Zahraa Ghandour as (partial) facial reference

Some assorted refs I don’t think are included in the links:

[pepperpixel]

More powerpunk girls art!!!! Cuz they are just. Fun to draw ghgh- this time trying to get a better design for brat! Cuz even tho I liked the old one I had.. I wanted to try and give her a lil bit more edge… so! Here were some experiments w that! I didn’t succeed in. Solidifying anything, as u can probably notice. Considering her outfit is slightly different in every picture ghgh- but! Idk! Maybe that’s ok lol. She’s the sorta character who would have a bunch of different outfits it’s fine lol

[blaithnne]

Anders has inordinate amounts of annoying little brother energy, which is ironic considering the main person you see that dynamic unfold with is his ex-wife.

[turkeyinnovember]

thinking abt how he spent his birthday in the inbetween