#feel free to send me some more! ^_^

[avoidmint]

One of my New Years Resolutions to myself was to draw more cute couples. And more characters in general tbh. So here we have Whispangle! This is my first time drawing them, sorry if they look wonky.

[snackugaki]

[robo-dino-puppies]

some prettied-up screencaps of my new favorite trio

+ a bonus

[morangoowada]

I re-watched Dungeon Meshi and felt like drawing some characters

[xagave]

Spent longer on the rant than I did on the drawings 💀

[hulloitsdani]

Nothing like motiving myself to practice drawing kisses from reference by making the final results feature my FEH girlies.

[eurekq]

VETTED FUNDRAISERS

Here are the requests for aid that I received in my inbox. I checked the vetted status of all of them and to the best of my knowledge all of them are legitimate. Please consider donating if you can!! I apologize for the long post, but I wanted to share the families' messages. Highlighted in red are campaigns that are particularly low on donations.

@samerpal

kr92,549 SEK raised of kr450,000 target

@mohammedalanqer

€46,164 raised of €58,000 target

@salem-baker

€27 raised of €38,000 goal

@ahmedabuomar

€243 raised of €30,000 goal

@ahmedharara

$50,000 goal <- NO DONATIONS AS OF YET

@mahaibrahim12

kr44,867 NOK raised of kr1,067,200 goal

@alhabil

€16,005 raised of €50,000 goal

@ranensblog

€1,386 raised of €80,000 goal

[wizardsix]

ok... so I have finally finished veilguard after about 90 painful hours (two playthroughs). im not gonna write an actual review about all of my detailed thoughts bc it'll actually take days, this is just to at least get my general thoughts out and see if anyone else feels the same or if ive actually lost it.

overall it is the weakest dragon age game story-wise, and I'd give it a nice lukewarm 4/10.

(i wrote this post right after I finished the game on the weekend so maybe I sound a bit harsh, I tried to edit it to be more reasonable lol but I didn't really want to delete this since I do still stand by a lot of this)

I really tried to go in with an open mind, bc I always want to experience media in full before making any kind of judgement, but about a few hours in I had this horrible feeling that once again this was another soulless, rushed game, and I still don't feel any different after finishing the game.

what stuck out to me was that there's no sense of urgency despite what the plot is, serious topics are not treated with care as the writing overall is shallow, and the gods as well as any other enemy you encounter are just cartoon villains (and apparently the lore retconning, but I'm not well-versed enough to dissect that so I won't).

I can't take this plot seriously when it feels so disjointed and forced and lazy. and I see no point in caring about anything when choices literally don't matter. no say in who you recruit, no say in the relationships with them and they have almost no awareness of rook, definitely doesn't matter if you have allies or not bc they show up anyway, and only four companions are locked into unavoidable decisions where one of them bites the dust no matter what (which is strange bc why are harding and davrin forced to die no matter if they're at hero status while bellara and neve can literally survive blight if they're at hero status), so it's impossible to try to strategize for better (or worse) outcomes with all the people you've gathered when there's only one right answer that the game pretty much tells you instead of letting you think for yourself (and side note this game does an incredible amount of hand holding). the game actively tries to trick you into thinking your choices matter with the onscreen notifications, but nothing matters bc the devs clearly had only one story in mind and for some reason lied that it had "complex choices".

also rook in general wasn't interesting as a protagonist bc they were written to be perfect. they always know what to say and are so supportive of everyone. they never struggle with anything. not even with leadership beyond "man leading a team is hard :/" but it doesn't actually show how hard it is by having actual volatile conflict between the companions* or showing how their plans sometimes fail. which, if we actually had choices that mattered, would have helped develop that struggle. also? what's with everyone being so friendly? I'm not gonna get into that but everyone is so eerily nice and it's been said a lot but yeah, the world is extremely sanitized and devoid of any real conflict aside from the gods I guess.

*(like off the top of my head cassandra fighting with varric and accusing him of not being on their side or how the inquisitor can literally punch dorian and solas if approval is low enough or fenris and anders bordering on killing each other is not the same as lucanis and davrin distrusting each other or people being uncomfortable with emmrich's necromancy. it just scratches the surface of conflict and never goes anywhere)

and let me say real quick again, there's nothing wrong if they wanted to make a more rigid story about being a hero. it's been done a million times and it can be executed well, but if you do that you need to make sure you 1) don't lie to people and 2) actually flesh out your (especially main) characters and plot to give people a reason to care. look at dragon age 2. hawke is a fixed protagonist with their own life front and center. they ultimately only have two choices (siding with mages or templars), but it works bc the game took time to build up the conflict straight from act 1 so by the time chaos happens in act 2 and 3 you understand why bc it's Been brewing the whole time. it just makes sense. the villains as well have sound reasons and feel real instead of being evil just bc. the story is more grounded, yet you have choices. you decide if hawke ends up alone or not. you decide how they approach situations with force or diplomacy. there's none of that in veilguard. a game that supposedly took 10 years to make. when dragon age 2 took almost 16 months (yes I know da2 also has problems like the fact that the templars are always proven right but this isn't the place to dissect that).

I want to be fair though and I do want to restate what I enjoyed about the game. the cc (though would it kill them to have more variety in face textures like age and body types beyond average.. also no colour wheel... especially since they claimed their cc was so good), the map progression/visuals/exploration (how certain places become more blighted overtime), the factions (though I feel there should have been more content for your faction, and helping them or not should have mattered more), the combat (did not feel like a slog, pretty fun and mindless), the companions (bellara, davrin, emmrich, harding, and lucanis had solid personalities and stories despite my complaints. neve was not memorable and I just feel sad for taash's bad writing), certain parts of the story were good, the intro and the point of no return sequences were solid, and the ending didn't feel rushed or boring compared to inquisition. and yes, I do appreciate that rook can be trans, I just think a little more subtly and care would've been nice.

another thing I did like and predicted was that varric died at the beginning of veilguard, and for a second I actually enjoyed that because i thought we were finally (a bit too late tho) getting some depth to rook and their own struggles of accepting his death and carrying this weight without him. and while I do think maybe they should've taken more time to establish the mentor/mentee relationship so we really feel rooks regret, I still think it was at least the right direction where in their grief they still see him, giving advice and narrating their journey.....but then it turned out to just be solas manipulating them the whole time, immediately destroying any emotional weight this reveal had.

whenever bioware has good ideas they shoot themselves in the foot and make it about solas. it's like nothing in the world exists without solas being involved somehow, and that is just incredibly boring and uninspired to me. not to mention solas just being an insufferable ass the whole time, which is fine, but it's not even in a compelling way like he used to be. he became so ugly by the end and the fact that the devs consider redeeming him the "good ending" and not giving him what he deserves is very telling and once again shows their own bias is king over good storytelling (solas' feelings should not come into play here, whether you/your companions live or die should determine good/bad ending since solas is trapped no matter what, only difference is who is trapped with him. idk but I personally think different endings actually means different outcomes). i will not go into the bs of the secret post credit scene, bc frankly I'm fed up with bioware's shitty writing and I won't be playing their next world ending space aliens game (unless they miraculously pull a good story out of their ass but lbr).

overall the bad outweighs the good for me. it's fun to play as a game, it's a decent fantasy game, but the story just doesn't do anything for me. sometimes I wonder if dreadwolf was a completely different game and was scrapped for veilguard last minute. maybe this was yet another inevitable industry fuck up and maybe there was a good story planned at one point. idk. all I know is bioware lied. respect and credit to the poor devs and writers who actually cared and to those who were kicked from the project, but in the end bioware promised too much and delivered too little.

[tag-if]

Progress Report;

FEB 2024 - MARCH 2024;

Hello all!

Took a sort of accidental hiatus for the month (I was still on tumblr, I just wasn't posting), just to make sure my busy schedule didn't overwhelm me.

However! That does mean I've got quite a bit of work done, both for university and tag :)

You won't be getting a 'done' and 'to-do' list this time, since it's mostly been admin and editing, but I will say that the chapter one update for tag will be coming out this month.

I'm hesitant to give a more specific date this early on, but I'll reblog this post with something more specific once I know.

[vanilla-phantoms]

nsfw kepler hcs?

Anon I don’t know whether you’re still interested in this or not seeing as it has been [checks watch] two years since you sent this and for that I apologize, but if you aren’t, I hope someone will be

I mention this in a previous post, but I’m more willing to get into the details now that it’s actually come up in my fic:

basically, my hc is that kepler started flirting with and later sleeping with jacobi specifically as manipulation. This was not ordered but it was Suggested by cutter with plausible deniability

The goal was to make Jacobi have a more personal incentive to make Kepler happy and also to distract him if he ever had any moral complaints

But, well, kepler fell in love with him. But he can’t let himself admit that, which leads me to…

My bottom!kepler agenda:

My headcanon is that Kepler’s general preference is to bottom. He just likes it; it works for his body and he knows how to have a good time. He’s not weird about it ACCEPT for with Jacobi

Pre canon, he has never bottomed with Jacobi. Jacobi doesn’t even know he likes it, even though they sleep with each other for years

This is partially because 1) he’s trying to keep up a very specific image with Jacobi for maximum control, but it’s mostly because 2) he KNOWS he likes it. And he can’t admit to himself that he’s sleeping with Jacobi for his own satisfaction, for his own pleasure. He needs to keep it separate, keep reminding himself that there’s a reason he started this relationship in the first place and it’s NOT because he likes Jacobi and wants to be with him

Over time he sort of starts to build up the longing and the idea that if he ever did bottom for Jacobi, it would be because what they have is finally real

Because he can’t be normal about anything ever

This is mainly just my hc for my own fic, but I also do love playing around with ideas where he has gotten a chance to bottom for jacobi pre canon (see I Let Love In by @nammikisulora )

As always, I’m a lover of Kepler lives AU’s so here’s some general preference headcanons for post canon too:

I’ll be writing a fic about this hopefully but let’s say after they reconcile post-canon, they can work through Kepler’s weird hang ups about it all and then when he’s more comfortable…

Pillow princess Kepler rights. He deserves to be annoying and bossy and demanding about it. He doesn’t have to sub just because he’s bottoming, he’s perfectly capable of still bossing Jacobi around

I do think he likes to sub sometimes though. He seems to me like someone who needs both in his life and feels most comfortable when he’s got people he’s in control of and people telling him what to do and that what he’s doing is right

So in all the aimlessness of post canon, it’s certainly one way to make him feel like he has a purpose… like he’s serving something bigger than himself… there’s gotta be comfort in that

ANYWAY he also likes fingers in his mouth. Jacobi has very talented hands. He likes appreciating them

He has a praise kink. Just look at him

And there you go that’s my very long answer to a very short ask! I aim to be exploring these ideas more in a fic soon enough but in the meantime, @nammikisulora is bringing some of them to life in I Let Love In already and it’s wonderful. Sorry this took so long!

[starflungwaddledee]

[mercutio]

ok heres that rv post i was saying i should make because im avoiding the thing im writing about them for today and dont want to think about it. this is stream of consciousness writing so its long and annoying. i like to yap. sue me. The non-exhaustive list of things about rv that's been driving me like pepe silvia levels of delusional the past few days (weeks):

1) the xfiles thing that everyone has taken to basically be a Whole Thing about rv and that mulder and scully are THE "will they wont they" (this is reaching ill give you that)

2) warren and gordon literally run away together, and acknowledge having done that

3) the last of what little there is before The Whole Red Valley Thing is devoted to them going on a tiny roadtrip in which they are running away together and that roadtrips are -- like running away together -- *also* a romcom setup trope and you can deny me this all you want but clive DOES reinforce that they went on a roadtrip by referring to a roadtrip movie

4) the buried like lovers thing

5) the similarity with which warren going back into hypersleep (its own kind of death) upon gordon getting shot kiiiiiinnddddd offff resembles the whole romeo and juliet thing. Does It Not?

6) gordon is canonically gay and his Choice of Favorite Nerd Media is lotr. that "will they wont they" thing? um. how many decades have people been discussing frodo and sam's relationship

7) one character reacting negatively to the other mentioning a friend they have offscreen the first character has never met is also a romcom trope

8) gordon literally gets teased about having a brokeback mountain moment with warren in the first season

9) can i mention the part where bryony is baaaaaasically warrens Total Recall Wife and gordon is his Total Recall Freedom Fighter? Please? Can I Talk About That?

anyway either im losing chess to a dog or ive seen the fucking matrix my media literacy is so good and Brother, let's take a look at who posted that qrt of gay red valley fanart with the sonnet thats all about how beautiful growing old with somebody and seeing the last embers of the youth you shared together is.

[emailsicansend]

jackienat texts pt. 1

[ratsinspats]

alright. it’s been seven years, but it’s finally time to explain a bit of the Paisley Lore™ now that i’ve made a comic about him, aka infodumping about this guy that used to be a one-note “what if i was a rat from hazbined hotel :D” self insert and now is. pretty much just an oc i project onto in some ways that vaguely resembles a sona i’d make.

there’s a lot, so i’ll break it into sections. if you’re just interested in the context of the comic rather than the entire full-length backstory, you can skip the first section. tl;dr for it, he hosted a game show in hell that got picked up by voxtek, and vox hired him to work for the company when it got cancelled under the condition that he wouldn’t appear on television again. the second part is probably worth reading for context regardless, but the third part explains the actual comic itself.

1. Sometime after Paisley arrived in Hell, he befriended a ring-tailed lemur demon named Bev (short for Beverly, but she barely goes by that in casual settings). I’ll spare the details of their entire friendship for now, but Bev ended up encouraging him to make something of himself, which he initially kind of dismissed, but he ended up realizing he did always want to host his own game show, and with his affinity for public-access television, he decided he would just secure a spot there. Little did he know at the time, Beverly (who was initially heavily involved in more technical aspects of the show having more experience with film and media but was also sometimes a contestant) had certain connections and partially led to the show taking off more than he anticipated, which he ended up embracing because he enjoyed the idea of being a source of entertainment in Hell.

Eventually, Bev was able to get the show picked up by VoxTek’s networks through some of her Mysterious Beverly Methods™, which was pretty much an absolute dream for Paisley as he enjoyed a lot of the company’s shows and Vox’s own entertaining presence (though it’s unclear how much of it is him simply not being immune to propaganda). However, their relationship on a personal level wasn’t ideal at this point, but by the time they ended up falling out, the show was out of Bev’s control and she couldn’t and didn’t really want do much to hinder Paisley’s success, as both of them wanted her pretty much out of the picture and she wasn’t obligated to stay on the show by any binding contracts, having primarily presented anything related to work contracts or creative rights or anything along those lines as something Paisley needed to figure out with the company without her rather than a package deal, taking a back seat when she felt so inclined before drifting away entirely.

At that point, a lot of Bev’s previous obligations could go to Paisley’s diffident hummingbird assistant Cedilla, but Paisley found that he missed some of the similar writing enthusiasm and connection he used to have while working with Bev, wanting nothing to do with her herself at that point but finding himself wishing he could just have that energy back, especially as things seemed to only ever get worse and more pressure was put on him to be consistently on top of things and he began to wonder just how much Bev was actually responsible for taking care of. All of these factors were a huge blow to his confidence and ability to function, and the show ended up being cancelled entirely after The Incident, the less-than-ideal final episode that finally showed just how vulnerable and shaky Paisley actually was at this point...

2. By what felt like yet another miracle and something out of a weird grandiose fantasy, Vox offered Paisley a job at VoxTek! Of course, it made sense at this point; the game show was successful for what it was, Paisley clearly seemed to have some creative talent outside of that performance, and he still had a name to himself to slap onto things, even if at this point he felt like sometimes it slapped him back. The only condition was that he couldn’t actually act or perform in anything he worked on in the future. It was devastating for Paisley (after all, the performance aspect was the main reason why he enjoyed working on the game show and wanted to start it in the first place), but he agreed that it was for the best, as the longer he was off the air and disillusioned with the show and its fans, the more he started to question whether anyone actually liked it genuinely or whether they saw Paisley himself as the joke the entire time with no real respect for him.

The evidence that piled up now only seemed to support the idea that, at least now, his reputation from the show was more of the latter. That, and even outside of Bev, he had his fair share of enemies in Hell, even if some them were over petty things. This combined with his paranoia made him feel as if he was constantly being targeted, and every time the idea that he is was enforced by someone following him or antagonizing him or seeming way too interested in him or any other...trolling, for lack of a better term, his fear only increased and he felt the constant urge to have SOMETHING going on for him or somehow protecting him so he wasn’t just openly targeted.

3. Unfortunately, it also made him feel like he couldn’t ever escape or leave his current job. This part’s a little more open-ended because I have a few different routes I’m interested in going down from that point, especially as I consider the possibility of writing/roleplaying Paisley with other characters from the show and not having much more after that be ‘canon’ to how I consistently write him.

However, one of the ways I like exploring writing Paisley IS through getting a job at VoxTek. Vox’s entire brand revolves around selling the idea of trust and safety, something Paisley is absolutely desperate for the promise of, and he finds it in the worst way possible, mentally treating the job as if it’s the only thing keeping his life from falling apart more than it already has and boldly assuming that somewhere very deep down Vox and his company do have some sort of personal affinity for him. Probably not a wise assumption, but he’s not exactly in a wise state of mind, so he clings to the job like it can actually somehow save him from everything...not really being able to be as consistent as he wanted to with his work due to his shattered confidence, fluctuating mental health, skillset not transferring as well as he’d want it to, issues with being social at all after everything that’s happened and loneliness, a seemingly endless list of factors that made him painfully aware he’s not an ideal employee for his own merits.

So, of course, when he can find a way to feel completely relevant to the company again, he’ll use it to his advantage at the very first hint of danger or job insecurity. This comic takes place in a scenario where he’s found a way to gain access to sensitive company information he probably shouldn’t have access to and decides to exploit that fact when Vox confronts him about his role at the company and declining work quality. It’s a perfect way to buy time in his mind. Until Vox can figure out what exactly he’s done with this information, the best option is to keep him safe and essentially leave him alone about work; with the unhinged ‘fans’ he has that can and will go digging through his stuff even if he’s out of the picture and keeping his current job being enough to make him functionally cooperative…and in the meantime, he’ll come up with something to actually prove that he’s actually worth keeping around and not causing more problems than he’s worth and jumping from one ridiculous reason he should be there to the next, right? …Right?

He knows the more he presents himself as more clever and capable than he feels like he can consistently keep up, the deeper he’s digging himself into a hole, but he feels like he can’t stop. He feels like, at this point, it’s the only other choice he has. Like he’ll either face the job he hates and barely manages his way through with the constant fear of being found out and doubt that he’s actually capable of anything he tries to do, or he’ll throw himself to the wolves and go back to the constant fear that they’ll finally completely tear him apart completely and erase that doubt in the worst way possible.

Rat race indeed.

also, ‘normal’ speech bubbles (black text, white font) under the cut. i can never tell how hard to read funky speech bubble colors are because my eyes are a little weird about needing certain levels of brightness. i should probably also transcribe the text at some point but i am very sleepy and have never done it before and don’t want to try to figure it out now and be very wrong about it

[fictionfolk-safehaven]

hi !! so ehh we have an alastor fictive ( hazbin hotel ) who's mentioned offhandedly a couple times that she's uncomfortable w being so source connected ?? as in, her source character is obviously Not Great but he has a lot of Canon mannerisms and sometimes thought processes. And she's really sweet, genuinely, but is also very much Alastor and has no intentions to become less source connected. But he js feels uncomfortable with what his source did and how alike she is too source ?? kinda like a " how different am I really from this Not Good Person " I guess .. and we wanna help her !! but really aren't sure how .. we have 2 other fictives from a commonly considered problematic source but both of them are barely anything like source, so we don't have much to go off ??

- 🕛🌫️

Post Author: Techno

CW's: None as far as I can tell.

Sorry this one took so long! We feel like there's a couple different ways to look at this, and so it took a bit of debating, but I think I'm gonna just say this.

For me, a fictive sourced from a violent person whose actions were debatable at best and sometimes just objectively cruel, I think the best thing I could've done was just acknowledge that I don't have to be different from my source. I don't owe that to anyone. The difference, the one that matters, is that I'm living a mundane life with people I love and I'm not hurting anyone anymore. I'm making the choice to live this life and do my best in it. I think that's the only difference that matters. I'm actively source connected; I get what can only be described as identity euphoria from being acknowledged as my source, being similar to my source including in ways that are seen as "bad." I'm an anger holder, particularly a holder of our anger around social justice. And my system acknowledges me as needed, and respected, and I fucking love that my role is to hold anger around our core values, even if my source is known for lashing out and causing utter destruction because of those ideals and that anger. What matters isn't the mannerisms, or that personality, or the feelings- it's what you do with it. I'm the exact same person as my source; I'm just doing something different with it. Choices are what make you you, or whatever, right? I'm making a different fuckin' choice.

And while I don't know your system, or your fictive (hello to her btw), I think that's the only advice we can give in this situation. It sounds like he's source connected and wants to stay that way, so separation is a no-go, so I think our advice is that it's not always as simple as "Fictive does not equal source." Sometimes we are our source, just in a different life, and doing different things. I'm not gonna be committing arson and destroying lives anytime soon, even though I'm still very much the person who did a lot of that in canon. What's that one screenshot everyone quotes? "In another life, I really would have enjoyed just doing laundry and taxes with you."

Yeah that. That's what I am. I'm just me, but doing laundry and taxes. She's allowed to be just Alastor, if she doesn't want to change himself, but doing laundry and taxes.

[beescake]

you invented solkat I think

ACK i am goop. i am merely a student trained by the og solkats of the past decade