#he has some really interesting ideas

[hotdogmchiggin]

Aw shit they put the horrors of late stage capitalism into my Pokémon Mystery Dungeon 😔

(Mostly) Based on the mouthwashing dev QnA about each character’s favorite Pokémon. Couldn’t get the idea of throwing them into PMD out of my head.

Typical job at the Poke Express Guild:

Some more bonus drawings below

Jimmy secretly wishes he was a mega rayquaza but he’s just a poser who’s obsessed with pikachu’s popularity and position as the mascot. So. A mimikyu.

Daisuke is a zorua because it’s the closest to weregarurumon and I think it matches his vibes. Just a guy who causes a little bit o mischief here n there :)

I did make Daisukes weregarurumon wishes come true (No mega rayquaza for jim)

I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do with the background so I threw them into the dungeon. WOE upon ye

[flwrkid14]

Buried Beneath The Laughter They Ignored

Tim is totally fine. Ridiculously fine, actually.

It didn’t matter that he woke up feeling this bubbling, manic laughter in his chest, like everything was suddenly so fucking funny. It didn’t matter that he’d woken up from another nightmare last night, crying, calling for his mama—not the mother he lost, but the mother he gained, Harley Quinn. And it didn’t matter that most days, he felt more like Joker Junior than he did Tim Drake.

It didn’t matter that no one else seemed to fucking care.

He shoved down every bit of laughter clawing up his throat, because he knew if he let even one chuckle slip, they’d all give him that look. The one they always did. Disapproval masked as concern. They didn’t like Junior. They didn’t want to believe Junior was still in there, clawing his way up every time Tim breathed.

It didn’t matter that no one ever asked him how he was doing. They didn’t want to talk about it. Because talking about it would make it real, and they preferred pretending it wasn’t. They expected him to be fine, to push it down, to carry on like nothing happened. If he tried to bring it up, they’d say he was being insensitive—insensitive to Jason's trauma. What fucking irony, he thought bitterly. As if it wasn’t insensitive to be stepping all over his by not letting him speak.

It didn’t matter that he caught them glancing at him sometimes, like they were waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for him to snap, waiting for Junior to come out again. But they never asked. No one asked what was going on in his head. No one fucking asked.

It didn’t matter that when he finally snapped, when he finally screamed at them, sick and tired of pretending, they had the nerve to act clueless. As if they didn’t know.

It didn’t matter that Dick, of all people, screamed back. Yelling like he was being unreasonable. Like he was the problem. He screamed at Tim, demanding answers, to ask what the hell he meant by Joker Junior, as if—

As if they didn’t know.

They didn’t fucking know.

This whole time, they hadn’t known.

They didn’t know Tim had been taken. They didn’t know Tim had been missing. They didn’t know Tim had been held prisoner at the hand of the Joker for months, tearing him apart, piece by piece, until Junior was the only thing left of him. They didn’t know he had screamed for them, begged for someone to find him, but no one ever did.

They didn’t know how much he had suffered. Alone. They didn’t know how much he had changed. They didn’t know that every time he woke up now, it felt like he was still Joker Junior, just wearing Tim’s skin.

And they didn’t know how much it hurt—how much it broke him—to realize that they had never known.

Tim wasn’t fucking okay. And it mattered—oh, it mattered—that they didn’t fucking know.

Because if they didn’t know, it meant no one ever bothered to look. It meant no one ever cared enough to notice.

[bonefall]

Hey, what makes a character a 'plot device but not a character'? And how do you not do that? I'm trying to do it on purpose but also I need to still make them interesting because it's on purpose, yknow?

A good skill to pick up is to learn to criticise criticism itself. A "plot device" is simply a thing that moves the plot along, it's a neutral literary analysis term! Usually, when people are angry that "a character has been used as a plot device," it doesn't mean they hate plot devices. It means they're gesturing at something deeper.

Runningwind and Bumble are equally plot devices in their deaths. They are both killed by the antagonist to escalate political tension. Runningwind is rarely "accused" of just being a plot device, and yet, we're talking about Bumble for the same thing.

So, why?

Well, Runningwind is just a background character, but in life, he was a part of the community. He was characterized as impatient but responsible. Yet, he wasn't SO important that he died with a bunch of unresolved plot threads.

He is mostly an extension of the entity of ThunderClan. His killing by Tigerstar, and the fear and paranoia that settles on the group after this, feel like a progression of the story insteas of something forced.

Bumble, on the other hand...

Is hated immediately by Gray Wing, when she's established as Turtle Tail's friend. Bumble's abuse at Tom the Wifebeater's hands invites even MORE investment. The rejection is shocking and upsetting. There's a story there about our main characters being imperfect; jealous, bigoted, and judgemental.

But, she is simply killed off. Everything they set up for this character is gone with little personalized fanfare. It's not a tragedy with a lesson about cruelty, or something anyone regrets.

It's just... plot. Gray Wing whinging that no one will like his shitty brother now that his body count is 2.

More than that, in the discussion of women in particular, "Fridging" was coined to give a name to the way women characters often don't get their stories told at all. There is a CULTURAL trend of female characters facing disproportionate violence, for the sake of advancing male plots.

Bumble has a lot going for her. Petal had a lot going for her. Turtle Tail had a lot going for her. Bright Stream had a lot going for her. When they died, they took their potential with them.

It's not always wrong to kill off a character of high potential, mind you. In Gurren Lagann, Kamina's death is sudden and shocking, leaving a massive hole in the hearts of the cast that never heals. Grappling with that loss, but also letting his memory fuel them, is a major theme of that story.

All that to say... there's no formula for avoiding it. You've gotta identify what the deeper issue is, in your specific narrative.

I can't say for certain what that will look like for your story, but here's some things I keep in mind;

When you make characters who exist to die, make sure they're people before you axe them.

Ask yourself; what about them does the cast miss?

If they just miss them because they were (pre-existing relationship), go back to the drawing board.

Fluttering Bird as an example. Who was she? Dead sister. Why do they miss her? Dead sister. No traits until after her death.

Runningwind was short-tempered and helpful. Kamina was a valuable leader who made people believe in a brighter future. Swiftpaw was fiesty and desperate to prove himself. The better characterized, the more profound the loss usually is.

If this is a female character who is dying just to serve the plot, be aware of cultural bias and tropes. How is the gender ratio looking in your cast? Is this happening disproportionately with your girls?

Note how Quiet Rain's litter had both a boy and a girl, but the girl was chosen to be "weaker" and wither away.

And how most of the time in DOTC, whenever a man had to be upset, a girl would get killed for it.

If you ever feel like the character on the chopping block is NOT a full character, ask yourself why it needs to be a character at all. You don't need to spend narrative time building out someone when a literal object of high value might suffice.

"My sister died when I swore to protect her and I can't face my family" = Old. Tired. Ive seen this.

"I lost my heirloom sword when I swore to protect it and I can't face my family." = Fascinating. Why was the sword so valuable? Will they really not take you back? How did you lose it?

When you do kill off "high value" characters, try to make sure you're not leaving too many plot threads hanging. Or at least make a point of how they will never get closure.

[fairuzfan]

For Liefer to pull up a Camus quote like this is quite laughable because of how the dynamics mirror each other. In the modern day, we have a status quo where Palestinians continue to be imprisoned and murdered and raped and segregated, denied basic medical care for years on end, all on their own land — while Jewish Israelis (to make distinction from Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, as many liberal zionists love to point out) suffer no consequences for anything, even if they play a direct role in the continued erasure and genocide of Palestinians. So if given a choice between suffering no consequences while benefiting from the status quo (that will not change unless the oppressed take it upon themselves to change their circumstance) and suffering consequences in the form of direct personal loss (with the strategy of forcing things to change by ennacting the same type of violence that the occupied experience on a daily basis onto the occupiers), of course someone who stands to lose nothing from the continuation of the status quo would rather the status quo continue if he has something to lose otherwise. Camus, when he said this quote, was not being righteous or overly sensitive. If anything, it shows how little he understood at the time of saying this quote. Because he didn't understand that an Algerian will suffer in both scenarios even if he (Camus) is safe, and for him to say something like this when people lived generations worth of violence for his and his family's (social) benefit is annoying and just plain offensive. Who is he, as a Frenchman born in occupied Algeria, to say what is worth justice when he only stands to lose anything in one scenario but not the other? He did not experience life as an Algerian native in French occupation. He might have observed it, growing up poor, yes, but he never LIVED it. Liefer might have observed the horror of settler colonialism, but that's nothing like experiencing it firsthand. To be the object of hatred to people who have higher status and more rights than you. It's just not his place as a person with nothing to lose if the status quo continues to comment on anything like this. What's the underlying meaning of this quote? "I'd rather others continue to suffer than myself experiencing suffering once."

I'm not saying Liefer doesn't have a right to mourn whoever. Im not even saying he has a duty to accept the consequences he experiences. But to say something so heartless as "I prefer the safety of my own rather than justice" within the larger, nearly century worth of context, is just insensitive and really belies his true opinions of the liberation of Palestine if he's so comfortable saying this outloud with moral authority in the middle of what is an outright bloodbath of Palestinians across Palestine. It's the timing of saying something like this because to say it now of all times when the entire world ignores or even encourages the violence in Gaza but mourns the death of Israelis? An Algerian born Frenchman and Israeli are going to be mourned on an international scale... but Palestinian and Algerian natives? Their deaths are regarded as facts of life by the rest of the world.

This makes it seem like I hate Camus, but I honestly don't, but I think the way Leifer is holding this quote up at face value and as the height of reason really is annoying. People like to mention Camus' "if" in this case as proof that he's actually saying "this is not real justice so therefore I do not have to accept it," but who is he to say what is or is not justice? The point I'm getting at is the people who benefit from occupation, in this case, Camus and Liefer have no right to determine what is or is not justice, despite their personal beliefs. The occupier has no right to tell the occupied what they should do to get freed. That alone is an arrogance in assertion that is so offending — the assertion that the occupier knows how to free the occupied in what *he* considers justice and the occupied just need to do whatever the occupier tells them to do. Because whether they both like it or not, they still benefit from and are part of the occupying force, and therefore have no real reason to fight the occupation at their own expense — the occupation is a violence that they are alright with inflicting if it means they cannot lose anything or anyone.

Also the idea that liefer indirectly compares himself to Camus is a little funny to me.

[gen4grl]

a nap in the sun

[ricky-mortis]

I drew Ted from the wonderful @nabwastaken ‘s Time Bastard Au! The original design is by the talented @midnightnautilus , and was so very fun to draw!

[joshuamj]

Linktober Day 8. Tunic

[lesbianslovenamari]

I was reading DunMeshi and was so confused by this phrase that I decided to look it up

(Do correct me if you think this isn’t accurate cuz I just used google)

But I find it frankly hilarious that Chilchuck is using slang from various parts of the British Isles out of nowhere in the last volume??

(I’ve now had someone explain to me that apparently it’s not uncommon for certain uncommon types of informal Japanese to be translated as slang from specific areas, typically around Britain, in English)

First of all I’d alr seen people jokingly headcanoning him as Irish on here (which was an idea I absolutely love)

ALSO I come from a part of the UK where I’m very familiar with the term ‘git’ but had never heard of a version with an e and I also had no idea it meant the same as ‘bastard’

(I have considered that this could just be the regular meaning of the word ‘get’ but I thought it wouldn’t grammatically make sense here so I assumed it was slang esp cuz he would totally call someone a git)

Anyways I’ve checked other translations and it’s not the same so I find it so funny that this one (which I’m pretty sure is the official English translation) included it

(^ another version I found online)

Anyways this is the translation I have and used as an example for this post, which I’m pretty sure is the official English translation:

Edit: Btw also check tags I kinda wrote this when I was drunk on sleep deprivation

[basil--and--sage]

Bifur headcanons, as requested by @ashyjingles :)

(read the Bombur ones for some background)

(Uncle Thorin, part 1, part 2), (Dwalin), (Óin), (trans Dwarves)

Bifur is already nearly an adult, when his little cousins are born and so, he babysits them all the time and takes them on little adventures

before the axe head, he's an outgoing, well-spoken and charming Dwarrow, who comes up with songs and is very well-liked by his community

he is dedicated to his craft (=asexual), which is a tragedy according to some, due to his charm and fine beard

in his youth he is a toymaker in training, but he has to work as a miner instead, to help to provide for the family

he's ambitious. For decades he doesn't just work as a miner during the day, he also goes through extensive training in the evening, until he finally manages to join the City Guard of Thorin's Hall. His family is incredible proud of him. He also receives a much higher wage than as a miner

after a few decades an Orc raid hits the city. They manage to break through the city wall. Bifur fights bravely side by side with his fellow guards, until he is hit by an axe. He somehow survives

the years after the raid are very fuzzy. He barely remembers them. He only knows what his cousins tell him. Most of it is tragic, like the fact that nearly all of his friends turned away from him

he might look severe most of the time, but he isn't. He has issues to control his face and also a chronic headache due to the axe

because of his injury he lost a lot of his fine motor skills and can't really craft toys anymore. He doesn't like to speak about it, since it's breaking his heart, even after decades

he loves his cousins very much and doesn't know what he would do without them

he receives a small pension, since he was injured on duty, but it's barely enough, and so he starts to work in the mines again, though he mostly works in the higher levels as a carrier, due to his ailments

he keeps his focus on the little things in life, like sunshine on his face, laughing with his cousins, picking flowers and collecting pretty stones and such

Bifur doesn't really expect the quest to be successful, but he still joins, since his cousins want to go, and also he hears that Thorin takes young lads like his nephews and Ori with him and as a former guard, he wants to try and protect them

since most people are put off by the axe head and his issues with speaking, he keeps to himself and his cousins. To his surprise, Fíli joins him one day, when he's collecting stones during some downtime. Turns out, Fíli is a gem cutter by trade, who loves to collect quartz and such in his freetime. They become fast friends and since Fíli deems him alright, Kíli (who was spooked in the beginning) warms up to him. Bifur spends a lot of time with the two lads and enjoys their youthful energy

after losing the axe head during the Battle of Five Armies, his headaches get a lot better, though his other ailments don't change much

after the quest (in an "Everybody survives"-AU), Bifur wishes to rejoin the Guard. At Fíli's request, Bifur becomes the personal guard of the Crown Prince of Erebor (and keeps sneaking him snacks and such)

he also keeps working on his motor skills, and even if he can't craft the same toys as before the injury, it is still balm for his soul to sit in his workshop

(there are also rumors that he and Óin are sometimes seen holding hands. But that's nobody's business, isn't it?)

(feel free to send requests)

[sesamestreep]

“requiem for methuselah” crazy ass episode for many reasons. Kirk is being fully insane, like I don’t actually think, even controlling for how quickly and easily and readily he seems to fall in love with anybody at the slightest encouragement, that he’d go that bonkers for that android woman he just met while everyone on the ship was this close to dying, but that’s neither here nor there, because in the background you’ve got an equally but much more subtly insane episode for Spock, who extremely uncharacteristically admits to experiencing an emotion (or nearly experiencing, whatever) and that emotion is ENVY of all things. And then spends the rest of the episode warning Kirk away from this new love interest (something that doesn’t usually happen, even when Kirk has very inadvisable love interests) and is, in the end, the person who accurately identifies that Rayna’s competing love for Kirk and Flint is ultimately what overwhelms and destroys her with the most killer line in maybe history???

And then to wrap it up we get an equally uncharacteristic sort of denouement scene (TOS loooves to cut an episode off right after the actual climax, leaving little time for falling action or character reflection, or to stick a sitcom-y button on the end where the gang all smiles and laughs at their misadventures and everything resets to zero, which is not a criticism, it’s just the style of that era of tv, honestly) where Kirk is literally miserable over Rayna’s death (again, kind of unusual for a lot of his love interests, he tends to be able to move on pretty quickly) and Spock goes to see him and he falls asleep right in front of Spock (also odd) and then when Bones comes in to give the final word on Flint, Spock waves him off from waking the Captain (tender) and Bones gives him that awful speech about how it’s sadder that Spock can’t even imagine the love Kirk felt for this random android woman than it is that Kirk lost her in the first place (debatable but also rude) and how his great tragedy is that he can’t love at all like they can and how all he wishes is that Kirk could forget about all of this and move on. AND THEN, to have Bones leave and Spock go over to Kirk and very gently, tenderly, reluctantly touch him and put his hand to his forehead and tell him to forget and HAVE THAT BE THE END OF THE EPISODE??? What am I supposed to do with that??

[kacievvbbbb]

But like hypothetically if I decided to make a series of YouTube video breaking down and rambling about how I think the first year trio encompass the full gradient scale of what it means to be “morally good” and how by the end of the series they have grown exponentially but their moral inner workings are so entrenched in who they are they never needed to change they just became more of who they already were.

Because initially Yuuji wants to save the world in that abstract way all heroes do, Megumi is only interested in saving those he can save and Nobara is only interested in those she wants to save. And all these are treated as morally valid by the narrative and not really flaws in need of changing but instead philosophies in need of refining and understanding.

Because Jujutsu Society as a whole encourages and thrives off a moral apathy or superiority, they are in the business of killing curses not saving lives and that ultimately raises the question of if you’re going out there everyday killing curses and inadvertently saving lives does it really matter the reason why? Or the morality behind it? Maybe not to you but to the society, maybe.

So anyway, hypothetically ….would you be hypothetically interested👀

[padfootastic]

hohoho i am writing a remus & sirius confrontation that is ending up a little too mean and it’s verging on the edge of not fitting into FoD but by god, is it satisfying 😈😈😈

“Oh, stop pretending, Remus.” There’s a part of Sirius, not insignificant, that tells him to shut the fuck up. To bite back the words as he’d always done. They don’t expect it of him but he is perfectly capable of maintaining a civil tongue when needed. He just doesn’t want to, today. “You’ve always resented us, haven’t you?”

“Padfoot, do you even hear yourself—?” Remus’ amber eyes are bright, almost feverish, and Sirius knew that all he had to do was push.

So he did.

- brought to u by ‘i’ve been thinking about remus and i also recently read a fic that blindsided me w commentary on james’ and sirius’ social positions intimidating remus into compliance as an excuse for his cowardice and general temperament and got incredibly annoyed at how he is, yet again, victimised so i shall now endeavour to turn that idea around on its head using the ‘ol ‘u cannot help someone who does not want to be helped’ adage so help me god’

[knockknockitsnickels]

Thinking about how the Tower & the Adversary routes are connected through the Fury, and how you kind of get there by turning one into the other, and how horrified they are by what they become. Tower is about subjugation - she outright says she does not believe the two of you are on equal footing. You get the Fury from her when you assert your independence and fight back, forcing her to take you seriously as a threat and defend herself. Adversary is all about an equal fight - she prides herself on her strength, but also admires yours. You access the Fury through her by refusing to fight, watching her beat you to a pulp and become disgusted by what she does to you. IDK it is interesting how the Tower & Adversary parallel one another, and how you end up with the Fury in each route by doing what their sister route would have wanted you to do.

[astralleywright]

Marisha's comment about how Relvin is one of those parents who ended up with a child they didn't know what to do with really gets to the heart of it, i think, and is such a good way to tie the fantasy element of Imogen's powers into things more tangible. because there are really a lot of parents like Relvin in real life, who have a child with the person they're happily married to and never expect to be left alone with the kid. or who expect a ""normal"" (read: cisgender and heterosexual, able-bodied, relatively neurotypical and obedient, etc.) child and end up with one who's ""difficult"", who demands more or different of them than what they believe they signed up for. and that's not entirely entitlement on a parent's part- many cultures' common frameworks of parenthood and child-rearing do not include space for these children. it makes sense that Relvin was unprepared. raising any child is difficult, and raising a child whose needs you were never taught how to accommodate, who the world is so cruel to, is even more challenging.

and yet. and yet, the person who bears the brunt of the harm in these situations will always be the child. they're the ones who have to live every moment of how the world treats them, without the support that their parent is supposed to provide them. and when asked to care for his child even when she turned out to be ""difficult"", Relvin couldn't. for entirely sympathetic reasons, of course. he tried, in his own way. i don't think he's a bad guy. but he's let his own broken heart bleed onto his daughter. he hasn't been able to give her much else.

[lgbtlunaverse]

I have been thinking on the nature of mdzs as a deliberately vague text that leaves many things up to interpretation, and how i've slowly come to understand "up for interpretation" less as "there is One True version of this story i must find" and not even as " Everyone has a different One True Version of this story inside their head be based on their interpretations and the differences don't make one wrong and the other right" but as "There is no One True Version. Even in my own subjective interpretation of the text multiple things can be true at once" specifically, in regard to Jin Guangyao and the many things which are left up in the air as to whether he did them or not, most notably killing his son.

There's evidence for this, but it's non conclusuve (jgy saying he killed him while also saying he killed Qin Su, who very much killed herself. The speculations on how he'd have killed him being sect leader yao just saying shit. ) it is, esentially, just up in the air enough that if you decisively fall on one side of the debate is probably says more about you and your general opinion of jgy than it does about the "true" events of canon.

I have, as a proud apologist, always fallen on the "he didn't kill him but felt in some way responsible for his death." Side but recently have become more okay with the interpretation that maybe he DID kill him, and that at the very least, that when he tells Qin Su their son "needed to die" he is being genuine. Which, once you look at it beyond. "Is jgy a poor lil meow meow who it is Okay to Like or an irredeemable baby murderer" becomes both INCREDIBLY tragic and deeply interesting. Because here is a man condemned for who his parents were and who wants nothing more than to live, saying that it is possible to be so cursed by your heritage that you need to die. There is no existence for you. The exact same thing that has been said to him.

Of course being born out of wedlock to a sex worker and being a product of incest are different things, but that begs the question: where is the line? What crimes of the father can mean death for the son? How cursed can you be until your existence is so incompatible with society it is you who needs to give? And if there is... where is it? Qin su clearly thought she was past it. Was his son really past it? Is he?

[bmpmp3]

give him to me NOW!!!!!!!!!!! or i'll settle for a release date pwetty pwease