#had to put my thoughts somewhere

[turtleblogatlast]

Leo learns something about himself 🏳️‍⚧️

Based roughly on this old post.

Bonus:

[Leo is taking the fact that he was born biologically female simultaneously very well and also not so well but overall he’s mostly coping with the fact that it was Draxum that just essentially gave him the turtle equivalent of ‘The Talk’.]

[thyinum]

Being Ukrainian in this world is like trying to build a card tower during an earthquake that just doesn't fucking stop. 

Sometimes the earthquake becomes less noticeable, and you manage to build a nice structure from the things you enjoy and keep your mental stability, but then at one moment the earthquake becomes stronger. Your card tower is now ruined, you suddenly feel a lot of rage or grief that's been building up all this time, you can't do anything because you're too overwhelmed and scared. Despite all of that, eventually you pull yourself together and start building the tower again. 

But the earthquake is still there. It is always there. It never ends and it feels like it won't ever end. People start gaslighting you that there's no earthquake or that it's not important compared to other earthquakes.

And it's a cycle I and every Ukrainian have been living in for 2.5 years now. Someone has lived in it since 2014.

I don't like to whine about it, because there are indeed people whose experience is worse than mine. But living like this is still mentally exhausting.

[ingoodjesst]

have you put the pieces together yet, detective

[oshiawaseni]

Gonna write some meta about ch 431

After inferring Izuku could be by his side if he wanted to, and him indirectly telling Izuku he’s the standard he holds everyone to going unnoticed… it seems to me like Kacchan is releasing Izuku… for now. “If everyone is special then no one is special”… this kinda ties into what Shigaraki said to Katsuki for me. I get the impression that Kacchan believes in his core, that Izuku treats everyone special and Shigaraki had mistaken CYH for “extra special treatment” when, in Katsuki’s mind, loving and protective is really just how Izuku is to everyone.

The dig back at Kacchan for not thinking higher of himself or not noticing “obvious things” (Izuku’s feelings) is pretty sussy and very open to interpretation. It feels like they’re both not risking anything to explore the possibility for more. They’re mirroring each other’s hesitation.

This dynamic is basically inferred later, when Katsuki comments “peaceful idiots” at Kaminari and Jirou who are not taking a leap of faith to start a relationship themselves. “Lame losers” doesn’t really capture the nuance of Katsuki’s feelings towards himself and Izuku. Heiwa boke… two idiots not reflecting upon their obvious feelings for one another - all to keep a harmonious relationship describe bkdk to a T.

He’s projecting. Him and Izuku are also peaceful idiots with their dynamic too. So that’s why Katsuki let Izuku go. I’m sure a big part of him yearned for Izuku. Yearned he would turn around and not go to Ochaco. And that he’d realise Katsuki’s deepest feelings he holds tightly to his chest.

But Izuku won’t know who he is unless he fully experiences life and his feelings and what everyone and everything means to him. He needs context to understand who Ochaco and Katsuki really are to him. So Katsuki is showing a great maturity letting Izuku go. Also… Something something, if they come back again, they’re yours forever.

So my take away from all this is “They may be right for each other but that doesn’t mean they’re right for each other now” and these two peaceful idiots will surely get it together someday. Especially if Katsuki goes to those communication classes and they learn to understand each other better. 🤭

(Again, to me that’s Izuku wishing he could understand Kacchan’s subtleties and indirect way of talking better. They both have always sucked at truly understanding each other’s feelings for each other and finding a point of connection to act on those feelings.)

Kacchan is self aware of all of this. He has Izuku on a pedestal and feels he’s in an unrequited love. And since his apology, he has left the ball in Izuku’s court. It has to be Izuku to grow, to decide who he wants and who he wants to be. And Katsuki is okay with the cards falling where they may. And this, my friends… is unconditional love and why I loved this ship so much to begin with. He will always love Izuku and respect his choices and allow Izuku space for his internal growth. He’s a beautiful soul.

And in all that talk of destiny earlier, lies a certain knowing for us, that what is meant to be for them, will be. Bkdk for me is an inevitability and I think sensei did a good job to convey this to those who understand this immeasurable love and string of fate that runs between them. Bkdk have always existed in the realm of the unspoken, one just needs to open their heart to what’s really being said and implied underneath the surface. 🧡💚

[deoidesign]

Thinking about vampires, death, life, and the space they occupy in between

[wingsthephoenix]

hello alternative horror tumblr. do you hear me

[canisalbus]

So i remember an ask mentioning your mortal enemy, Felis Atra and their cats, and i thought it'd be fun to draw what Felis Atra's version of your italian dogs would be.

I think they would be called Butter Knife and Flamengo! Butter Knife is not his real name, it's an nickname given by his peers because of how harmless he is. I choose Flamengo because that's the name of Vasco's rival football team here in Brazil, so i thought that was the perfect name :)

Cat Machete was slightly inspired by the Oriental Shorthair cat because of their long noses and thin head shape.

Cat Vasco was inspired by the Scottish Fold cat, because FLOPPY EARS. I gave Flamengo longer ears and orange fur to make him more like his look-alike.

The last doodle is a reference to this ask (https://canisalbus.tumblr.com/post/728923918314946560/me-i-am-machete-ear-fan-number-1-those-ears) and contains the tumblr ask stand-in dog, whose cat version was inspired by the American Curl cat! They have round ears that are slightly floppy outwards.

Final notes: I know cardinal clothes don't come in vibrant blue, but i was ADAMANT on switching Machete's and Vasco's clothing color patterns. I would draw the rest of Butter Knife's and Flamengo's clothes, but i suck at designing cool outfits.

Speaking of outfits, for Machete's iconic void outfit, i figured it would be fun to make it more baggy for Butter Knife, in contrast to Machete's, that looks very tight-fitted. I think it's cute, it kinda looks like a sweater. Also i can't imagine a Machete doppelganger without high heels boots, so those HAD to stay.

Oh, and just to be clear, i'm not like, claiming ownership of these guys or anything. I just thought it would be a fun exercise. Hope you like them!! I love your art and your characters.

.

[taffywabbit]

"why not just make your own website?"

with the announcement of cohost's death and amidst all the other tumultuous shit currently going on with social media as a concept (i am AMAZED twitter has survived this long given the circumstances), one suggestion that i've been hearing a lot is "we should just go back to the good old days of personal websites. let's all just make neocities pages!!"

(this is gonna be a long one sorry)

and like. idk! it's certainly something i've considered, i think it would be a fun thing to have, but it also feels like the equivalent of "capitalism sucks so let's all just run off into the woods and live in a cabin outside of society" to me. like it would be nice, it would be fun, but it doesn't ultimately solve the actual problems that are present with the modern internet, it just evades them. more importantly in my case and many others, it does not really help people who rely on the modern internet and the connections they're able to make there for their income. sure i can make a website and host my art and blog posts there, but who's going to see it? i can't build a consistent audience and make a living off of random passersby who peek at my website once, say "huh, neat!" and MAYBE add it to an RSS feed or whatever if they really like it. there's minimal potential for meeting and impressing new people outside my existing circles if i don't ALSO still have some manner of social media platform to promote the website on.

a lot of the "solutions" i see people proposing for the slow, painful decline of social media as a user experience keep coming back to old-fashioned, more isolated/insular systems. we miss forums, we miss personal webpages, we miss newsletters, etc etc. but like... those things were ideal in the "old web" because the old web was more about sharing hobbies and interests with whoever happened to pass by and check them out, and even just USING the internet was a niche hobby in and of itself for a lot of people. if you wanna be kinda cynical about it (and not unjustifiably so), web 2.0 is much more blatantly business-oriented, and its algorithms and carefully crafted UX's are primarily meant to funnel you towards viewing ads and spending money on products. looking at it that way, it sure does suck and Everything Was Better Before! but the modern web is ALSO more powerful than anything before it for just like. connecting people. spreading information and news. showing your art/music/writing/thoughts/etc to strangers who never knew you existed an hour ago. putting the tools to reach out to someone and tell them you think they're cool right there on the same website where their art is hosted, just a comment or a message away.

if you're able to avoid patterns of engagement-bait and obsessing over follower counts as a measure of self-worth (a big "if", i realize, but i view it like installing an adblocker - it's just kind of a basic prerequisite for modern internet safety and survival), a lot of these systems can genuinely be really positive and life-changing in ways that were simply not possible 20 years ago! almost all of my current closest friends are people I met through sharing our art on platforms like Twitter who were complete strangers at the time. all of the art clients that regularly pay my bills and support my work came from places like that too! the "social" part of "social media" is really what makes it ultimately worth keeping around in any form, and makes the pursuit of a Good social media platform still valuable.

there's a lot to love about the old web - its aesthetics, simplicity and freedom for personal expression - but every time someone says "just delete your socials and make a personal website" i am forced to confront the fact that i could never do what i currently do or be the person i am on the old web. if i was stuck hanging out in my own little space and only ever interacting with people who openly and loudly share my interests, i couldn't support myself with art full-time, i probably would never have met the kind and quiet strangers who are now my best friends and have made me who i am, and i'd just generally get a lot less insight into the vast range of experiences and perspectives that exist outside of my own. my life would be on a fundamentally different trajectory in countless ways without the advent of web 2.0.

and that's not to say "well twitter and facebook and tumblr all suck but you kinda still have to hand it to them" cuz you don't, obviously. they're corporations, and their job is to take the personalities and thoughts and art of the people who use their products and try to scrunch it all into something uninform and marketable that generates profit and pleases their shareholders. but like, you CAN still make a good thing out of them! these websites are tools just as much as geocities or myspace or IRC used to be. and the one thing these newer tools are pretty much all REALLY good at is discoverability. if you're just a hobbyist at the things you wanna share on the internet, then you likely don't have a lot of use for those tools, and perhaps you WOULD genuinely be happier just keeping a personal blog site or hanging out in private groupchats or sticking to specialized federated Mastodon instances or whatever. it just isn't feasible for me, and there are a LOT of people in my same situation. my entire industry of online freelance artists barely existed 20 years ago, and the web culture of that era is largely incompatible with my continued survival in the mid-2020s. i would LOVE to run off and live in the woods in concept, but all my survival skills are adapted for city living and i would just eat the wrong berry and die out there. i want- i NEED people to try and improve the spaces we're in, and support better forms of social media (like what cohost was trying and largely succeeding to do!) instead of just complaining that it all sucks, everything was better when we were kids, and digging ourselves little holes to hide in. much like all the other problems and frustrations and systemic issues of the world we live in, the modern web isn't going to go away if you just ignore it, so we may as well try to make it better for everyone.

anyways tl;dr i probably WILL make a neocities at some point. it could be fun, even if it doesn't help my career stability or whatever. but i do also need ALL THE SOCIAL PLATFORMS I USE FOR MY JOB TO STOP EXPLODING PRETTY PLEASE, and failing that, some actual half-decent alternatives that aren't going to fizzle out in a month would also be great thanks ✌

[lover-of-mine]

[goodobservationshirley]

[fictionadventurer]

I keep thinking about Lewis' review of The Hobbit, because he claimed that the main thing contemporary reviewers compared it to was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Was fantasy in that poor of a state that Alice was the closest thing they could think of? Comparing that chaotic fever dream to Tolkien's intricately crafted world? Lewis does specify that the comparison is that both books are by an "Oxford professor at play", but they're otherwise so different that putting the two in the same category baffles me.

[wyvernity]

sss day my favorite national holiday WOOOOHHHH

bonus

[rustyelias]

Louis and photography

“Oh wrestling time to the ground, staring it into submission. Holding it your hand. I was there. This occurred.” - Louis

Louis uses two cameras during season two a rolleiflex and a lecia both were the go-to cameras for photographers of the time! Speaking of the time period! post-war Paris is my personal speciality when it comes to film photography!!!

I think it's pretty clear that Louis's photos are based on brassaï works, night photography in Paris was brassaï thing! Both his and Louis's photos show us things the night reveals to us whilst feeling mysterious and intimate. The photos of the young men who armand fed on afterwards feels very brassaï other then the vampire thing (another really cool post by someone on brassai and iwtv)

“Night does not show things, it suggests them. It disturbes and surprises us with its strangeness. It liberates forces within us which are dominated by our reason during the daytime” - brassaï

”Then you can get mindful about it. Ask yourself what brought them here. What brought you here. Is it coming together random?” - Louis

okay so in ep4 when Louis is talking with the art dealer the guy makes a big deal of Louis always shooting at night! and yeah as a night photographer myself it's hard to get right which I think we see in Louis photos!

“Do you know how many great shots I've taken, only to find out the lighting was insufficient” - Louis ep4. big mood!!!

night photography is very alluring in nature and takes so much time. Film make you slow down and think before clicking the shutter release but doing it at night takes even more time!! a vampire who literally has forever is taking night photos will always be incredible to me

Okay, I think I need to mention the humanist movement and how it links with Louis! Post war there was a massive increase in street photography which focused on more positive themes. Louis speaks very positively of the idea of Paris rebuilding itself at the beginning of the series and the progression to him taking street at night is super interesting to me! Because he really does sound like a humanist photographer like Willy Ronis or Robert Doisneau when he speaks to Claudia about Paris

“I don't know a suprise maybe. Something off. Like a hat that's to small for a head or someone realising they forgot to do something and they stop” - Louis

“To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event.” – Henri Cartier-Bresson

“It says paris is on the way back. give here a little time” -Louis

The vampire is watching humanity from close up, close enough to capture it but far enough away to always feel on the edge of it all. I also really like how Louis is clearly annoyed in ep4 about the fact he has to shoot at night! he doesn't want to sit around waiting for the decisive moment or meter the lighting which is so relatable!!!

[delusionalbitchinthehouse]

Swiss hurt/comfort because I love him. So, so much. Featuring Dew being the absolute best.

It's a peculiar feeling, being the only multi ghoul in the Ministry. Sure, there are some who come close, like three-elemental hybrid Aurora, but Swiss remains, to this day, the only ghoul to detain control of all five elements. Well. "Control" might be a strong word.

He is good with fire, has always been drawn to this element specifically. Quickly started hanging out with the fire ghoul bunch after his summoning, feeling like he might fit in best with them. He is good, yes, but no more than that. Good. Average good. Nothing like the effortless and precise mastery of the element displayed by the fire ghouls.

Air comes relatively easily to Swiss. He has Cumulus and Cirrus to thank for that. Summoned at the same time as them, he remains very close to the girls, and spent countless afternoon practicing with them, learning how to weave breezes and gusts of wind, earning countless praises and kisses whenever he made progress. Still, Swiss has none of the girls' grace or range when it comes to manipulating their common element.

Surprisingly, he is quite good with quintessence as well. Quintessence, this mysterious, elusive element that's known to be so hard to control, somehow doesn't give Swiss as much troubles as he'd expected. In Aether's opinion, it might be that Swiss is so very curious of people, his mind craving connection, which would encourage the spark of quintessence within his grasp. But of course, because there always is a "but", Swiss is far from fully in control of it. He would never try what Aether successfully does to calm pain, soothe nerves or various other things.

When it comes to water...well. Swiss can, with a lot of focus, fuck around with weak currents, direct some droplets to splash someone in the face, or even, thanks to Rain's patient efforts, developpe small gills which allow him to breath semi-decently underneath the surface of the lake, but that's about it. Swiss, as much as he sometimes wishes he could, will never slink through the currents with the water ghouls' elegancy, silent and blending in so very well with their element.

Which leaves earth. Ah, earth. Swiss can feel it, the thrumming under his skin whenever he's surrounded by the element, in the forest guarding the Ministry's grounds or even Primo's beautiful rose garden. Yet Swiss can barely access to that power keeping itself just out of grasp, almost as if it was taunting him. No amount of time spent in the greenhouses helping Mountain, listening to his advice or copying his careful gestures can change that. But Swiss knows it's there, can feel it, and, on rare occasions, has his suspicions confirmed when flowers sprouts around his horns after being subjected to especially intense emotions.

So that is what Swiss is. Jack of all trades, master of none. And it gets to him, sometimes. He knows, realistically speaking, that people like him. That the Clergy sees him as a blessing, the Siblings are irresistibly drawn to him, that the ghouls are all over him. And yet, sometimes, he cannot help but feel like an outsider, a freak, something that shouldn't be, or at least shouldn't be that way.

It's often Dew who notices first when Swiss starts spiralling that way. Everyone always underestimates how perceptive and attentive to others the fire ghoul is, but Swiss has been on the receiving end of his quiet comfort enough times to know Dew cares, a lot. And somehow, when Swiss is overwhelmed by the objectively speaking irrationnal feeling of not belonging, Dew always manages to reassure him.

Maybe it's because the fire ghoul remembers his water days, when he struggled to connect with his element and felt like a disappointment, even with Mist always fiercely supporting him and expressing her pride in what Dew grew to become. In any case, he always find the words to appease Swiss, or, when words aren't what he needs, what to do to make him feel better.

A hand slipping in Swiss', an arm slung around his shoulders. A press of forehead against his, a cheeky kiss at the corner of his mouth. Sometimes, understanding that all Swiss needs is to be smothered with affection, Dew simply throws himself at the multi ghoul and wrestles him onto his back with surprising strenght before calling for a cuddle pile.

It's harder to feel like an outsider when your packmates are all purring and making happy noises on top of you.

[box-dwelling]

The line where 15 says he doesn't have a boyfriend and the way Ncuti delivers it makes him sound like the world's biggest liar

[biscuitscheesebiscuits]

Reading physical copies of The Queen's Thief series for the first time and realizing that the maps in them are inconsistent???