#enough for people to be suspicious

[tanglepelt]

Dc x dp idea 86

Tim drake has been blackmailed. Told to investigate Amity Parks four supposed missing (dead according to police report) teens, and a man in a picture. A guy in all white to be specific. Or else have his identity outed as Red Robin.

Wes Weston was willing to do whatever it takes to help Danny. After revealing him as phantom to some guy in white the Fenton siblings and Danny’s friends had all but vanished.

If anyone asked the Foley/Manson/Fenton family where they were. The only response was that they all had passed on. Some tragic accident nobody else witnessed.

Wes knew it was the guy in white.

If it took blackmailing a bat to find them. So be it.

[utilitycaster]

I feel like a lot of people mistake comic relief or goofiness for lack of effort or caring by the creator, and that belies a real lack of understanding of like, writing and humor and art in general.

[khaire-traveler]

I reiterate that if you're going to ask people for donations, you will come across as extremely suspicious if you spam their inbox. People are likely to report and/or block you, thinking you're a bot. If you need donations, I do not recommend going about like this. I really, REALLY do not recommend it.

[darlingofdots]

PSA: I will not reblog/post fundraisers or calls for donations on my blog. Tumblr has always had a problem with fake and spam fundraisers (dying cats show up in my inbox on a regular basis!) and I don't have the time nor the resources to investigate each link and story to make sure it's legit. This is a choice I make deliberately about my own tumblr experience and which has nothing to do with my thoughts or beliefs about anything other than "I don't want to expose people who follow me to potential scams." There are plenty of blogs sharing and boosting fundraisers regularly, as well as NGOs and similar aid organisations whose donation portals are easily accessible. I encourage everyone to do their research before donating to any cause, person, or organisation to make sure your money goes where you want it to be, and don't get your information from a random tumblr account like mine!

[canyoureallycallthisablog]

Oh yes my favorite duo, 'AAWEHEHEGWGWV 🥺🥺' and 'I'm barely tolerating your ass'

[kinokoshoujoart]

scribbles based on my Another Wonderful Life file where i discovered Rock and Nami showing up together at Vesta’s farmhouse late at night on multiple occasions to cause various types of chaos and disturbance and havoc until Marlin and Vesta’s bedtime (which they both announce in unison to kick everyone out) this included

Rock levitating and attempting to rizz up vesta

Nami making a beeline for Celia’s room where she stands around making very subtle remarks (celia isn’t even in her room)

Marlin Enduring

haunting crime scene photos of the shenanigans:

[sacchiri]

Hellsing 2002 calendar illustration.

Ein wunderliche und erschröckliche Hystori von einem großen Wüttrich genant Dracole wayda Der do so ganz unkristenliche marrter hat angelegt die mensche, als mit spissen als auch die leut zu Tod geslyffen

A wondrous and frightening story about a great berserk called Dracula the voivode who inflicted such unchristian tortures such as with stakes and also dragged people to death

[crunchchute]

on his silly little puter, sending silly little emails

[greenerteacups]

oooh please someday tell us what you think of GOT

oh, no, it's my fatal weakness! it's [checks notes] literally just the bare modicum of temptation! okay you got me.

SO. in order to tell what's wrong with game of thrones you kind of have to have read the books, because the books are the reason the show goes off the rails. i actually blame the showrunners relatively little in proportion to GRRM for how bad the show was (which I'm not gonna rehash here because if you're interested in GOT in any capacity you've already seen that horse flogged to death). people debate when GOT "got bad" in terms of writing, but regardless of when you think it dropped off, everyone agrees the quality declined sharply in season 8, and to a certain extent, season 7. these are the seasons that are more or less entirely spun from whole cloth, because season 7 marks the beginning of what will, if we ever see it, be the Winds of Winter storyline. it's the first part that isn't based on a book by George R.R. Martin. it's said that he gave the showrunners plot outlines, but we don't know how detailed they were, or how much the writers diverged from the blueprint — and honestly, considering the cumulative changes made to the story by that point, some stark divergence would have been required. (there's a reason for this. i'll get there in a sec.)

so far, i'm not saying anything all that original. a lot of people recognized how bad the show got as soon as they ran out of Book to adapt. (I think it's kind of weird that they agreed to make a show about an unfinished series in the first place — did GRRM figure that this was his one shot at a really good HBO adaptation, and forego misgivings about his ability to write two full books in however many years it took to adapt? did he think they would wait for him? did he not care that the series would eventually spoil his magnum opus, which he's spent the last three decades of his life writing? perplexing.) but the more interesting question is why the show got bad once it ran out of Book, because in my mind, that's not a given. a lot of great shows depart from the books they were based on. fanfiction does exactly that, all the time! if you have good writers who understand the characters they're working with, departure means a different story, not a worse one. now, the natural reply would be to say that the writers of GOT just aren't good, or at least aren't good at the things that make for great television, and that's why they needed the books as a structure, but I don't think that's true or fair, either. books and television are very different things. the pacing of a book is totally different from the pacing of a television show, and even an episodic book like ASOIAF is going to need a lot of work before it's remotely watchable as a series. bad writers cannot make great series of television, regardless of how good their source material is. sure, they didn't invent the characters of tyrion lannister and daenerys targaryen, but they sure as hell understood story structure well enough to write a damn compelling season of TV about them!

so but then: what gives? i actually do think it's a problem with the books! the show starts out as very faithful to the early books (namely, A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings) to the point that most plotlines are copied beat-for-beat. the story is constructed a little differently, and it's definitely condensed, but the meat is still there. and not surprisingly, the early books in ASOIAF are very tightly written. for how long they are, you wouldn't expect it, but on every page of those books, the plot is racing. you can practically watch george trying to beat the fucking clock. and he does! useful context here is that he originally thought GOT was going to be a trilogy, and so the scope of most threads in the first book or two would have been much smaller. it also helps that the first three books are in some respects self-contained stories. the first book is a mystery, the second and third are espionage and war dramas — and they're kept tight in order to serve those respective plots.

the trouble begins with A Feast for Crows, and arguably A Storm of Swords, because GRRM starts multiplying plotlines and treating the series as a story, rather than each individual book. he also massively underestimated the number of pages it would take him to get through certain plot beats — an assumption whose foundation is unclear, because from a reader's standpoint, there is a fucke tonne of shit in Feast and Dance that's spurious. I'm not talking about Brienne's Riverlands storyline (which I adore thematically but speaking honestly should have been its own novella, not a part of Feast proper). I'm talking about whole chapters where Tyrion is sitting on his ass in the river, just talking to people. (will I eat crow about this if these pay off in hugely satisfying ways in Winds or Dream? oh, totally. my brothers, i will gorge myself on sweet sweet corvid. i will wear a dunce cap in the square, and gleefully, if these turn out to not have been wastes of time. the fact that i am writing this means i am willing to stake a non-negligible amount of pride on the prediction that that will not happen). I'm talking about scenes where the characters stare at each other and talk idly about things that have already happened while the author describes things we already have seen in excruciating detail. i'm talking about threads that, while forgivable in a different novel, are unforgivable in this one, because you are neglecting your main characters and their story. and don't tell me you think that a day-by-day account tyrion's river cruise is necessary to telling his story, because in the count of monte cristo, the main guy disappears for nine years and comes hurtling back into the story as a vengeful aristocrat! and while time jumps like that don't work for everything, they certainly do work if what you're talking about isn't a major story thread!

now put aside whether or not all these meandering, unconcluded threads are enjoyable to read (as, in fairness, they often are!). think about them as if you're a tv showrunner. these bad boys are your worst nightmare. because while you know the author put them in for a reason, you haven't read the conclusion to the arc, so you don't know what that reason is. and even if the author tells you in broad strokes how things are going to end for any particular character (and this is a big "if," because GRRM's whole style is that he lets plots "develop as he goes," so I'm not actually convinced that he does have endings written out for most major characters), that still doesn't help you get them from point A (meandering storyline) to point B (actual conclusion). oh, and by the way, you have under a year to write this full season of television, while GRRM has been thinking about how to end the books for at least 10. all of this means you have to basically call an audible on whether or not certain arcs are going to pay off, and, if they are, whether they make for good television, and hence are worth writing. and you have to do that for every. single. unfinished. story. in the books.

here's an example: in the books, Quentin Martell goes on a quest to marry Daenerys and gain a dragon. many chapters are spent detailing this quest. spoiler alert: he fails, and he gets charbroiled by dragons. GRRM includes this plot to set up the actions of House Martell in Winds, but the problem is that we don't know what House Martell does in Winds, because (see above) the book DNE. So, although we can reliably bet that the showrunners understand (1) Daenerys is coming to Westeros with her 3 fantasy nukes, and (2) at some point they're gonna have to deal with the invasion of frozombies from Canada, that DOESN'T mean they necessarily know exactly what's going to happen to Dorne, or House Martell. i mean, fuck! we don't even know if Martin knows what's going to happen to Dorne or House Martell, because he's said he's the kind of writer who doesn't set shit out beforehand! so for every "Cersei defaults on millions of dragons in loans from the notorious Bank of Nobody Fucks With Us, assumes this will have no repercussions for her reign or Westerosi politics in general" plotline — which might as well have a big glaring THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT stamp on top of the chapter heading — you have Arianne Martell trying to do a coup/parent trap switcheroo with Myrcella, or Euron the Goffick Antichrist, or Faegon Targaryen and JonCon preparing a Blackfyre restoration, or anything else that might pan out — but might not! And while that uncertainty about what's important to the "overall story" might be a realistic way of depicting human beings in a world ruled by chance and not Destiny, it makes for much better reading than viewing, because Game of Thrones as a fantasy television series was based on the first three books, which are much more traditional "there is a plot and main characters and you can generally tell who they are" kind of book. I see Feast and Dance as a kind of soft reboot for the series in this respect, because they recenter the story around a much larger cast and cast a much broader net in terms of which characters "deserve" narrative attention.

but if you're making a season of television, you can't do that, because you've already set up the basic premise and pacing of your story, and you can't suddenly pivot into a long-form tone poem about the horrors of war. so you have to cut something. but what are you gonna cut? bear in mind that you can't just Forget About Dorne, or the Iron Islands, or the Vale, or the North, or pretty much any region of the story, because it's all interconnected, but to fit in everything from the books would require pacing of the sort that no reasonable audience would ever tolerate. and bear in mind that the later books sprout a lot more of these baby-plots that could go somewhere, but also might end up being secondary or tertiary to the "main story," which, at the end of the day, is about dragons and ice zombies and the rot at the heart of the feudal power system glorified in classical fantasy. that's the story that you as the showrunner absolutely must give them an end to, and that's the story that should be your priority 1.

so you do a hack and slash job, and you mortar over whatever you cut out with storylines that you cook up yourself, but you can't go too far afield, because you still need all the characters more or less in place for the final showdown. so you pinch here and push credulity there, and you do your best to put the characters in more or less the same place they would have been if you kept the original, but on a shorter timeframe. and is it as good as the first seasons? of course not! because the material that you have is not suited to TV like the first seasons are. and not only that, but you are now working with source material that is actively fighting your attempt to constrain a linear and well-paced narrative on it. the text that you're working with changed structure when you weren't looking, and now you have to find some way to shanghai this new sprawling behemoth of a Thing into a television show. oh, and by the way, don't think that the (living) author of the source material will be any help with this, because even though he's got years of experience working in television writing, he doesn't actually know how all of these threads will tie together, which is possibly the reason that the next book has taken over 8 years (now 13 and counting) to write. oh and also, your showrunners are sick of this (in fairness, very difficult) job and they want to go write for star wars instead, so they've refused the extra time the studio offered them for pre-production and pushed through a bunch of first-draft scripts, creating a crunch culture of the type that spawns entirely avoidable mistakes, like, say, some poor set designer leaving a starbucks cup in frame.

anyway, that's what I think went wrong with game of thrones.

[noctilu-uca]

i doodle a lot in spanish class so here are my guys

[kaeyachi]

oh. paimon said it.

"The end is close once we get back to where we started."

-From the last paired photo spot of Mementos of Teyvat event-

[thatonebipotato]

Bernard definitely "knows a guy"

idk what situation he would need a guy for, but i feel like it wouldn't really matter. His life is just such a collection of weird situations, and he always just happens to know a guy because of it

Did he meet them through some weird online conspiracy boards? Did he meet them through the cult? Did he just extrovert really close to the sun and get away with it? Has this exact situation just happened so many times that he just knows the person he needs at this point? Honestly, he doesn't even know anymore

You know what he DOES know? A guy

[seirindono]

Just found out about Missing Scarf yesterday and I have to say I am already in love with this comic. I also feel like Mel has very easily become my favourite character in all Undertale's multiverse, which actually feels refreshing because I have been a huge fan of Gaster's variations for a few years now lol (consedering she seems to be related to him in someway, that might explain how I ended up liking her so much, haha). I was wondering, what was your inspiration to create Mel? Could you tell us more about her? Obviously we will learn more about her in future updates, but what about her personality, for example? I'm really loving your work, it's amazing! Keep it up, but make sure you don't overdo yourself. (english is my second language, so excuse me if something may have sounded off)

Welcome! And thank you so much for the kind words, it's never less than an honor to see readers get attached to Mel and her story, especially when she's surrounded by some of the fandom's all-time favorites (uf, us, og cast, …)

And the Gaster part...Well, yeah, I totally understand ( ´ ▿ ` )

Regarding her personality, hm there's a lot to say, and much I'd like to compile in a single post (hence this poll, but Mel can't go first for reasons).

What I can say, however, is that one thing that's important to consider when discussing Mel is her moral compass. Notion of Good and Evil, what's wrong what's right, responsibility and zeal, loyalty and instinct. Guilt.

The Mel who is excited to receive reader's gifts, banters with Blue and gives advice bc she feels bad for Axe is the same one who threatened to ruthlessly dust Rus and talks about “stalking” soul-broken fellow Monsters for duty sake all the while hiding things from everyone.

Most of Mel's actions, words and reactions can be understood or anticipated if your start considering this and where she gets her values from. You might gain a whole new perspective of her character as well while doing so.

(As for concrete inspirations, you could say she's loosely inspired by various fictional works with ambiguous/grey characters, knights, and a smidgen of irl observation.. Anyhow, Mel was initially writen to give the impression of a undertale secret mini-boss. Optional too)

[galaxythreads]

Made cake at 11pm today to celebrate my engagement because my parents refused to be happy about it.There is perhaps a small amount of bitterness in me. Cake was good though. Even if it's kind of gray for some reason.

[tullecake]

please for the love of god if I get one more weird or suspicious drawing request I will cry and scream- -- anyways here's some lazy doodles of the twins of my sonadow fankids being angry and confused because me too :|

girlie on the left is pertinax, dude on the right is ferox here's my post of their siblings too because why not

(rambling in tags probably don't mind me)

[apotelesmaa]

Norma is objectively one of the funniest psychonauts characters though. she immediately assumes this 10 year old is the mole taking down the psychonauts from the inside and decides the best way to gather information is to stalk his dad. Ruins ford and raz’s plan to defeat maligula by being a snitch. Helped save the day by fixing the problem she caused. Is now in hell because she was wrong and all the other kids make her fortnite dance and shout go snitch girl go. Her sister got all the cool genes and now she’s stuck being an insufferable nerd. Probably says “well actually” at least ten times a day. Beefing with a 10 year old. Let’s give it up for pathetic & annoying female characters (fond).