#go off babygirl!!

[mndvx]

tannerbuchananofficial Just here to prove you don’t need a black belt to rock an all white fit.

[icantdothistodaybruh]

[princesspottypantss]

uhms uhms uhmsss.... heres some piccies i took before i changed ><

[sermna]

the dark urge

[brother-emperors]

lmao so I was working on a comic about Geta and Caracalla before the Gladiator II trailer dropped and immediately went into some kind of frenzy over it, but we’re back!

sort of— honestly the weather has been too hot to work on personal art, and what time I do have for drawing is going to commissions and work because I have bills to pay etc, but I did finish up this illustration of (my versions) of Geta and Caracalla 😌

⭐ places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app / tip jar!

[respectthepetty]

You see that outfit Yak's wearing?

It's made out of the finest boyfriend material.

His eyes?

Send out an emergency alert now because they are meant to get lost in.

And those lips?

KISSABLE.

I'm gonna babygirl the hell out of this man.

He deserves it.

[valhallavalgrace]

How have your interactions with your floormates been? Do any of them seem particularly friendly?

I think this might be your guy to talk to, Leo, just a hunch...

prev ask

[gophergal]

Life on the farm

[hishoukoku]

Remember when Hua Cheng pretended he was unconscious on that island to see what Xie Lian would do..

I LOVE this scene with all my heart!

Xie Lian: damn, what this FINE BODY do xD

cause this was his ONLY conclusion?? so VALID. better make sure to pet everywhere for water injuries ~

"beyond stunning"...yeah..so true.

RIGHT IN FRONT OF HE XUAN'S FISHES?

"Silent prayer",,,, oh I know what he was prayin for ~ it's for something else not to awaken in him.

Hua Cheng for sure didn't wanna ruin the moment but even HE couldn't keep his eyes closed anymore. It was so sudden and perfect.

I love imagining them just... staring at each other like that. Unable to process what just happened.

Cause Hua Cheng must've expected ANYTHING but that. But there's something the All Knowing Ghost King doesn't know.

It's that the one he Simps for SIMPS BACK hard. And he's just as dangerous to his own poor heart.

they are simp4simp your honor!

+THEY ARE SUCH A MESS I ADORE THEM WITH ALL MY HEART.

XIE LIAN can't find an excuse for it, HUA CHENG can barely hold it together. Why don't you both calm down~ and make out properly~.

Sure they kiss a lot later on but, this... this is just so sudden and Xie Lian's own initiative so early on, that he can't even fathom what just happened. He's also trying (and succeeding in the next pages) to give Xie Lian an easy way out and explain himself. Although Hua Cheng much rather wished he faked being asleep for a while longer cause who can blame him.

[poisxninthewater]

its so funny bc we see them sharing a bed, going to a pride parade and looking at each others with the most love struck gaze and then you remember that their last interaction was “no, not now”

[just-null]

HES. HES RECOVERING FROM THE CULLING GAMES..... THATS WHY WE HAVENT SEEN HIM IN RECENT LEAKS <- COPING

[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.

[brother-emperors]

‘It’s not so bad,’ says Crassus, tracing a finger over some embroidery on a pillow while Lucullus laughs. Gold thread. ‘Your wine tastes like shit, though.’

just some kind of scene, I’ve been thinking some thoughts about Lucullus and Crassus recently, and I’ve. cracked the code, I think.

The last panel is Gustave Boulanger’s painting, A Summer Repast at the House of Lucullus

⭐ places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app / tip jar!

[ghstslut]

soft...

[chanbig]

Big Kinnporsche and his uniform

i know the costume design dept gave the theerapanyakul bodyguards different versions of their uniform to make it easier to distinguish between them and make it visually more interesting (even though the point of a uniform is homogeneity) but i think it's interesting how they make big and porsche outliers

Porsche is out here in his slutty little vest and tie (the only one in his shirtsleeves because he is freewheeling, he is bucking the rules, we gotta show off that shoulder-to-waist ratio). he is new, he is special, he doesn't give a fuck. he is the Main Character.

pete, ken, arm and pol are in the usual blazer, no tie, shirt with a couple of buttons undone combo, with varying levels of undone-ness. (pete has the most buttons done up, intriguingly!!!! he typically only has the top button undone. what does this Mean. what could he possibly be hiding under there 🤫). this is what the typical bodyguard wears—most of the bodyguard extras are wearing a black suit and white shirt (one or two have ties, but most don't). they are integrated into the system. they are a team.

chan gets distinguished as head bodyguard by being allowed to wear all black, which gives him a very intense, no nonsense look. he stands out from the crowd when he first walks into frame—without words, you can tell THAT is a man with authority (😳 <- live me reaction)

AND THEN you have big over here in his closed blazer, shirt buttoned to the neck, perfectly knotted tie, and suspenders (!!) outfit. the whole getup. no one else on the main cast is doing it like him—literally. he is on the opposite end of the spectrum from porsche, even though they wear almost the same number of pieces. with the blazer on, big's outfit gives him the most buttoned up/rigid/follows the rules look, like he will wear the fullest version of the uniform because It Is The Correct Way. he has been at this job for years and he is still so strict about this. he is so strict about this BECAUSE he has been at this job for years. even with his ponytail and edgy eyebrow cut, he comes across as 'I am 100% on the job all the time'. he is All Business.

spot the suspenders 🧐

even when he's wearing the standard tracksuit, it's zipped completely up to the neck, sleeves all the way down.

we never see him in the pool. we don't see him in casual clothes. he is always SO closed off. he takes his uniform blazer off ONCE (making porsche crawl across the floor is hard work 😏).

spot the blazer thrown over the chair in the back 🔍

the only time we see him wearing a shirt with the buttons undone is when they're at the casino and he's being forced to 'blend in'. looking closer, though, even that outfit looks like the shirt and trousers he normally wears, just without the blazer, tie, and suspenders.

same slim-cut black trousers, same type of stiffened spread collar, same big pocket. his trousers fit him well—clearly the suspenders are just for the Look.

hmmm ive seen this shirt before.

the only time we see him in a short sleeved shirt is when they're on a SWAT-style rescue mission and everyone else is ALSO wearing that.

field trip time. everyone put on their outside clothes.

so arguably even both 'more casual' outfits are literally part of his uniform

where am i going with this... we see the others in their casual clothes. we see them disheveled, drunk, unbound from their jobs. they are allowed to be something other than just a bodyguard, even if just for a minute, even if they're still with tankhun at the bar—they are allowed that measure of freedom and personality. they drink, they laugh, they have fun. they have desires outside of their jobs (notably, we see ken in a hawaiian shirt when he is revealed to be the mole, i.e. have desires outside of the main theerapanyakul house)

we do not see big outside of his role as a bodyguard. he is this role and this role is him. there's something there about him scrubbing away all of his personal wants and needs to fit into this role as kinn's Head Bodyguard. giving up everything else so he can do this job, be of use to the theerapanyakul family—to kinn. not allowing himself to think about or want things outside of the compound because those things will distract him. no faltering from his role, or any vision of him as a person is allowed to come through. all he has is just a single minded pursuit of his goal and his focus (protecting kinn). he has dedicated himself and he is proud of that. he still gets up and puts on the whole uniform every day, suspenders on, shirt buttoned up, tie tight. he follows the rules and his orders even though he hates them sometimes, even though he might protest at first—one word or gesture from kinn or korn or kim and he falls silent. he will push down everything else he might have wanted under the role he has chosen for himself, that he has now become. he has already given up everything else for the theerapanyakuls—so, in the end, why not his life? what else does he have to offer? what else is left?

[im-fucking-baalin]

crusade clothes! if i keep drawing them constantly at some point their design will get some consistency at my hand i know. i also offer miscellaneous doodles from a little expressions practice i did a while back :P

oh wdym image limit-

^plus toww fleece concept!