#going to do a separate post on you guys !

[wasyago]

the brainrot won

[sforzesco]

some "new" designs for different crassus and pompey, specifically for a side project I've been playing with that's so removed from anything relevant (action/adventure/horror standalone story lmao) that they kind of needed their own thing. this story's pompey has a neck scar from an Incident™, crassus has shorter hair and wears (checks notes) jewelry sometimes.

[pixlatedvampire]

I havent finished anything in a bit so please enjoy my favorite Grima doodles lmao 💗🥰

[the-sunlit-earth]

a lot of clipping to fix, but hey I got it moving at least! I'll get the Telvanni robe properly physic'd if it's the last thing I do >:0

[doodleodds]

Happy Valentines, Akira. Happy Valentines, Asshole.

If you can’t read what Akechi’s secondary inner-dialogue says cause I obscured it too much behind his regular dialogue, here’s a transcription in panel order: Hello, you fucking- Ah- Hello, Akira! Fuck off, why should I tell you- Just a soda- there’s a new flavor.

I don’t want your shitty gift. Oh- haha! You’re so sweet.

I hope I choke. They’re lovely, thank you.

Like hell. Likewise. There’s no way it’s just a coincidence. Still though, it’s a funny coincidence.

[front-facing-pokemon]

[vivitalks]

Last night I saw the Great Gatsby musical. Before I went, I reread the Great Gatsby book (for the first time since 11th grade!) to get a refresher on the source material and the original story. Having the book so fresh in my mind made seeing the musical really interesting, and now I am going to do something I never thought I'd do, which is post some lengthy meta about The Great Gatsby. If you haven't seen the musical, this post may still be interesting to read, but it does contain some mild spoilers, so I leave that up to you. If you also haven't read the book, godspeed lol.

There's a lot I could talk about here when it comes to the way the book was adapted for the stage. But there's one particular thing I want to zero in on in this post, and that's the "unreliable narrator" of it all.

In the book, Nick Carraway is our narrator. He's an unreliable narrator practically by default - the idea is that he's retelling events that occurred two years prior, from memory. But even knowing that Nick is probably not reporting all events and characters with complete accuracy, it's hard to know which parts exactly are wrong, or what might have happened in reality, because even though he's an unreliable narrator, he's still the only narrator and this is the only version of events we know. We're forced to take Nick as our surrogate and take him at his word. Until the musical.

(I wondered how the show was going to deal with the fact that the story of Great Gatsby is not only told by an unreliable narrator but also by an outside perspective - generally speaking the events of the Great Gatsby aren't happening to Nick, they're just kind of happening around him. Yet he's the voice of the story, so in that way he's central to it, and I was curious how they were going to balance that fact with the fact that Gatsby is functionally the main character.

I think they struck a really good balance in the end. Nick's beginning and ending lines, lifted verbatim from his book narration, frame him clearly as the anchor of the story - I think that's the best word for it; the audience jumps from scene to scene, many but not all of which contain Nick, but we know that Nick is always going to be where the action is, or that he will at least know about it. He may not be the main character, but he's an essential character. But I digress a little bit.)

The difference between the way the story is imparted to the audience in the book versus in the musical boils down to this: in the book, Nick "plays" every character, so all their dialogue and actions, their mannerisms and the way they're described and reported, it's all informed by the beliefs Nick holds about them. Whether he means to or not, his biases paint certain characters in certain lights, and because he is our eyes and ears to the story, we have no choice but to absorb those biases.

But in the musical, every character is literally played by a different actor. Nick can only speak for himself. Nick can only tell his own parts as they happened. He may be "telling" the story, but we're watching the story. We have the benefit of an unblemished perspective on things - we can watch the events the way they actually unfold, regardless of how Nick believes or remembers they went down.

This difference - between Nick as the narrator and Nick as merely his own voice - is crucial in how the musical develops each character, some of them fairly different from how Nick described them in the book. And there's one book-to-stage change - a fairly small one, all things considered - that, to me, illustrated this difference perfectly.

There's a line towards the end of the Gatsby book. Something Nick says in narration, after his final conversation with Tom Buchanan, talking about how Tom gave away Gatsby's name and location to George Wilson (which ultimately led to Gatsby's death). Nick writes:

"I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…"

When I read this line in the book, I couldn't help vehemently agreeing. Screw those rich assholes! Money does corrupt! Tom and Daisy ARE careless wealthy people! It was easy to side with Nick, not only because he was the only perspective on the situation that I had, but also because he said this in internal response to a conversation with Tom, who, I think we can all agree, is a major jackass and a deeply unsympathetic character.

But in the musical, this line is spoken aloud by Nick. And he says it to Daisy, in her house, as she's packing up to skip town after Gatsby's death. In fact, he doesn't just say it; he shouts it, visibly and audibly outraged at her audacity to lead Gatsby on, ghost him, skip his funeral, and then move away to avoid the fallout. Nick is angry and highly critical of Daisy. But because we're no longer confined to his shoes, we also get to see Daisy's reaction - not as Nick remembers it, but as Daisy actually reacts. And because of that, we're able to really see, and confirm, that "Daisy is rich and careless" is not the full story.

I have to credit Eva Noblezada for a phenomenal performance (duh). Daisy in this scene is emotional, grieving, and it's clear she has been trying to contain these feelings for the sake of her husband and her own sanity. She's remorseful, not that Gatsby is gone necessarily, but that she allowed herself to entertain the fantasy of running away with him, only for it to be torn from her. She is trying to make the best of her unavoidable reality. And then Nick tears her a new one, calling her careless, accusing her of destroying things and being too rich to care.

And as I watched that scene, I was no longer wholly on Nick's side. I understood that this situation was so much more complex than Nick's chastisement acknowledged. Sure, Daisy wasn't innocent, but she also wasn't the callous rich girl Nick made her out to be. She did love Gatsby. And she also had a whole life with Tom. She had a daughter. She was a woman in the 1920s! That's a kind of life sentence even wealth can't erase.

The way Daisy responded may not quite have landed with Nick (if we consider the kind of fun possibility that the musical is the events as they happened and the book is Nick retelling those events as he remembers them two years later, then clearly Nick's disdain for Daisy's actions overtook whatever sympathy he felt for her), but the musical gave Daisy the opportunity to appeal to us. The audience. Having this omniscient perspective of things allowed us to draw our own conclusions, and I found myself a lot more sympathetic towards Daisy when I could both see and hear how she responded to Nick's verbal castigation.

In the book, Nick is the narrator. In the musical, Nick is a narrator. But he's no longer the sole arbiter of the story. The audience got to make our own judgements on the events as we witnessed them. Every one of us was a Nick - beholden to our own biases, maybe, but at least not beholden to his.

[quadrantadvisor]

Your name is DAVEPETA… Strider-Leijon? Leijon-Strider? Leider? Strijon? You’ll HAVE TO THINK ABOUT THAT. You are the combination of a SICKNASTY COOLGUY, an ADORABLE CATGIRL, and some kind of BRAINLESS FEATHERY ASSHOLE. You were created as a BULLSHIT GAME ABSTRACTION that gave you ULTIMATE KNOWLEDGE OF PARADOX SPACE in a manner that could even be called EXPONENTIAL. But you have trouble remembering all of that stuff now. You dabble in a great many CREATIVE PURRSUITS, because to deny the world your delightfully earnest yet self aware visionary stylings would be a MOTHERFUCKING CRIME. You are an infamous user on several ROLEPLAYING FORUMS. You record videos of yourself doing CUTE THINGS, which people believe are COSPLAY of your FURSONA. You have also recently started a brand new WEBCOMIC. Basically, you post a lot of shit online that is NOT VERY GOOD but that you pretend to believe is GOD'S GIFT TO MANKIND, because it is incredibly fun and also hilarious. Sometimes you miss the THRILL OF THE HUNT, but other times the idea makes you KIND OF UNCOMFORTABLE, so mostly you hunt stuff that’s ALREADY DEAD, which is fun too! You use the sanitized and preserved remains to create totally rad CORPSE ART, which is actually not ironic at all and is honestly KIND OF PERSONAL, so you mostly keep it to yourself. B33 < *you precede your sp33ch with a double mouthed kitty face in loving memory of your purrecious lusus but also she is wearing cool sunglasses because that would be pawsitively fucking radical*

-

You live with your BROSUS, which is sort of like a lusus except he is actually a human guardian. He is basically the COOLEST GUY TO EXIST IN ANY UNIVERSE EVER, and you’re really happy he’s alive again, even though things can be COMPLICATED. You no longer live with THAT FUCKING PUPPET, which seems like it helps? Yeah, he’s still cagey and inscrutable and he leaves his SMUPPETS all over the apartment, which you hate because even though they are soft they are NOT CUTE, just WEIRD AND GROSS. But whatever. It’s BRO. You CAN’T STAY MAD AT BRO.

-

After all, he gave his life for you once.

[dietmimo]

Daily life: YHK edition

[grimark]

flying perilously close to spoilerposting here but one thing that's SO fun about garashir is how they have such complementary daddy issues and yet neither of them really fully grasp what the other one's problem is

[lemongogo]

why do i love the conflict more than anything else . the misery . the incompatibility that spreads like oil slick . wanting so desperately for resolution that never comes . hmmm

[batsplat]

Sepang 2006: After an exhausting race, Valentino Rossi brings a chair to the podium and sits down. Loris Capirossi joins him to sit on his lap.

[chainsawl]

[ ID: A tumblr post by @/fox-guardian reading "he's a sweetheart he's a bitch he's just a little guy he's so very powerful he's the kindest of souls he's SO rude he means everything to me". Below it there is a transparent png of bmo adventure time with multiple red arrows pointing at them. End ID ]

[eijiroukiriot]

it's been a sec since i've done a translation! but i think this comic is really sweet so translation under the cut!! the title on the comic is "kiribaku and tododeku who aren't public about their relationship (having mild heart attacks)", and the caption on the tweet is "i wanna read 10000 stories about people finding out about kiribaku and tododeku's relationships"

Hero Radio OFFTiME! On our program, you can hear top heroes spill a little bit about their private lives. Today's hosts are Deku and Red Riot! What kinds of things will they talk about? Let's see!

Midoriya: Man, you must be tired! You came here straight after a night shift, right? Are you feeling alright?

Kirishima: All good! Besides, you've been working ten days in a row, right? Good on you!

(word bubbles - Very, Very Tired)

M: Alright then, our first letter of the night...this one comes to us from BlueMackerel-san, who asks, "How did you spend your last day off?"

K: Uhh...oh yeah! Hiked 'n camped! And ate a ton of campfire food!

M: Oh, with Kacchan?

K: Yep!

M: He sure does like hiking.

Flashback Kirishima: WHOOPIE!!

Flashback Bakugou: Just eat it

M: What'd you two eat?

K: The works! Spare ribs, and homemade sausage, and meat, and more meat! Bakugou always packs a ton of meat to barbecue, it's crazy good! What about you?

M: Mmm...I slept in until around noon...and I think that day, Todoroki's family invited me over for dinner. His sister is a great cook!

Flashback Fuyumi: Welcome, welcome!

K: Coooool. So we both ended up just spending the day with our boyfriends, huh-

M: UH- um-

K: Huh? OH-! Cut! Cut!! Can you guys pretend you didn't hear that last...

M: Ohhhh my goddddddd

Narration: Our next letter comes to us from DieYouScum-san, who writes, "I'm killing you when you get home"

[ancientgoddessofegypt]

Love your blog. Can you please talk about Jupiter in the 8th house?

Yes I can :)

Jupiter in the 8th house individuals have a deep understand of the world around them. Generous souls, can give too much of their time and energy to others and this can cause their finances to go down the drain. Can be big spenders or big hoarders. However if they have a business they want to formulate this can get a lot of dough. Your finances depend highly on your belief system so if your wealth consciousness is not up to par neither will your finances. This is the house of other people, so at some point in life you may get sponsors who want to put in a lot of money into your business, loans bigger you could imagine. Planets like this one (along side venus) give me big sugar baby energy. Not saying you guys would ever do it, but people would want to spend their money on you. You may have went out a couple of times and people wanted to be mister Splenda daddy/ sugar mommy with you guys. Its just in your aura. You guys dont have to beg for money, it can just come to you. With Jupiter in your 8th house, this connects to your sexual organs. So your sexual energy is very magnetizing and abundant. You can create out of thin air most of the time and you are capable of making more ideas work for you and thus creating more financial income.

Planets in the 8th house gives you a stronger calling to the occult, so you may have uncovered some hidden secrets from time to time. In this life time however, you are to be called to teach the world what you've learned in these practices as the way you teach gives a lot of insight and wisdom. So we need yall out here teaching everyone the spiritual cards to life.

Also good at teaching finances! Your consciousness is able to expand on it and you'll uncover hidden knowledge around those topics as well. Some of it will be for you and you alone, not everyone can have this top of the line tycoon energy such as yourself. Because youre the only one that can handle this big boss energy, cause its not for the faint of heart.

[deus-ex-mona]

such is the tale of a ✨chronically online hypocrite✨