#how i construct things

[bacchuschucklefuck]

class swap design masterpost for convenience (from top to bottom: bard!riz, cleric!gorgug, sorcerer!kristen, barbarian!fig, artificer!adaine, and rogue!fabian)

[the-kipsabian]

saw a take so fucking rancid on twitter i almost deleted the entire app from my phone jesus fucking christ

first of all ao3 is an archive site. this is like going to the library and saying "oh i dont like this" on every piece of media you find that you dislike and thinking they should be stamped with some sort of a marker just cause you didnt like it

you can always click back and leave. fic writers owe you nothing to explain themselves and their creations. if they have mistagged or miscategorized fics, then i understand, however there are report tools for that instead of yelling at the artist tbh

im not saying free works arent necessarily above criticism. but this is just. fucking wild. its common courtesy to just enjoy stuff (or fucking leave if you dont, the back button is free) and if the artist specifically asks for critiques, then give one - constructive that is, shitting all over someones work is not proper criticism, mind you

i just find it fucking wild people are treating art and archive sites as social media these days like this and everything needs to be policed and ~catered to the algorithm~ like. no. ao3 doesnt have an algorithm. you should be able to fucking tell what you like and what you dont like and steer away from that kind of content and let people fucking be with their art. they dont owe you anything (except trigger warnings i'd argue, but i know some people disagree with that as well for some reason), and imagine how much more energy you'd have if you only engaged with things you liked and spent time looking at instead of going to places where you dont enjoy yourself. let alone spending time telling other people you dont enjoy what they enjoy. what a fucking life

[hatchet-boy]

Judging SPN Seasons By How Messy It Would Be If Sam And Dean Started Having Sex

Season 1: freshly reunited. no one else in their world but them. they are obsessed with each other. they would fuck like feral dogs and it would make them so much worse. also dad is there. unspeakably messy. 12/10

Season 2: dad just died. the grief sex would be more tears than come and at least one of them is probably saying johns name mid fuck. dean might have to kill baby brother (TM) and so the obvious reaction to this would be extremely possessive sex. sam would not like that attitude (with the one exception of if it happens when hes drunk in playthings). messy in even grosser but marginally less feral ways than szn one. 13/10

Season 3: milder. still obsessed with each other but more settled into it now. deans turn to maybe die and sams turn to be uber-doober possessive about it. unlike sam, dean would be extremely into that. and his deal is comin due so he might as well. sad and tragic,, but not that messy. probably still more tears than come. 6/10

Season 4: dean just came back from hell to find sam fucking his new demon girlfriend. the angels are there. they're still hunting but Stuff Is Going On and god knows they need to be grounded with each other to make it through. sex would probably help. would do the opposite than make things messier. would be vicious. definite chance dean might try to feed sam his blood. 4/10

Season 5: apocalypse fuck. oh fuck. ruby is dead. angels and death and demons and god and destiny. sam and dean are the most experienced and secure theyve ever been and yet. the whole damn world is about to explode. and yet they are still tortured and annoyed by the goofy everday hunting horrors. fucking would be nice for them, would remind them they belong to each other. they think theyre gonna die so the consequences wouldnt matter a whole lot. less insulated and worried about holy judgment so the incest thing may be a bother now. 2/10

Season 6: you fuck your brother but its not your brother he's different in ways you cant explain but you havent seen him in months and you thought you lost him and hes not quite right but fuck he looks like him and talks like him and knows everything about the two of you and he fucks like a greek god and hes mean as a motherfucker in bed but you can take it its fine its worth it its sam godammit-

15/10

Season 7: stranded up the creek without even a twig for a paddle. both brothers are destroyed and traumatised and forcing each other forward by force of necessity and a brotherly hand on the back of the neck. at least its just them alone together (dean please ignore the hallucination of lucifer sitting in the corner and judging our cock size-). sex would go terribly and be the most unsexy sex ever sexed. but they would probably like the closeness if sam could handle it. messy but wouldnt ruin them long term. there would be a terrible Dick joke. 8/10

Season 8: WHOA BOY WHAT A DOOZY. BOTH BROTHERS HAVE PARAMOURS ON THE SIDE WHOM THE OTHER FUCKIN HATES. DEAN IS PURGATORY FERAL AND HAS ONE EYE ON A VAMP. SAM IS SOFT HAS HIS PINKY FINGER TWINED AROUND SOME RANDOM GIRL. WHY DIDNT YOU LOOK FOR ME?? // YOU TOLD ME NOT TO!! // YOU TRUST A DAMN VAMPIRE OVER YOUR OWN BROTHER?? // YOU HIT A DOG... meanwhile sam is doing the trials losing his mind again and dean is losing his mind about that. letting you down was my biggest sin//there is nothing i would ever put in front of you. messy. 10/10.

Season 9: less than ideal with sam possessed by and angel. dean is rocking with the guilt and confliction. the mark of cain is also making him a bit feral again. theyre safe together in the bunker but thats already claustrophobic enough sex might just suffocate them both. pretty messy. 7/10

Season 10: your big brother is an angry angry man but its not his fault right??? its because of the mark right?? he cant control it and you love him and you want to stay in the safe house/bunker/tomb with him you dont want to leave anymore and you need him. youve both been through enough. you deserve this. there would be minimal messiness caused by sex with your brother rn. exception to those few weeks where he was a demon. 2/10

Season 11: gods sister is here and its the apocalypse again. dean hates what he has with Her. at least his sammy is here. at least theyre together. still crazy about each other. gay incest sex is the most reasonable reaction. god might find out- but then again, he and his sister are pretty wacked out together too, and are we not made in gods image?. 1/10

Season 12: Mom is here and so is lucifer and his kid and also the cunt ass brits. not ideal. minimal messiness so long as no one finds out. and fuck all them anyway its pretty clear sam and dean can only ever really trust each other. sex would be affirming and safe here. they are absolutely fucking in the kitchen to the smell of toast and coffee. dean discovers he has an std because no its not normal that your balls have iched like that for the past four years you need to go to a doctor and dean i swear on the impala if you gave it to me- . 3/10

Season 13 to 15: fellas is it gay to have sex with your brother who you've been functionally married to for over a decade? probably not right ha ha. if they havent already fucked by now theyre not going to. theyre just gonna be intensely platonically married until they die. they both have erectile dysfunction by this point . sex would mean everything to them but change nothing they would still be old and married in their bunker with the devils kid tomorrow regardless. they dont care what people think anymore. fuck all messiness. 1/10

Post Season 15 Finale/Heaven: we deserve a soft epilogue my love sammy. mildly concerned about being kicked out of heaven for incest but with everything else theyve done they still made it there. it would be the least of their sins. lovely soft and nothing hurts. can you make a sex tape in heaven? 0/10

[kaurwreck]

y'all have eventually got to realize that kunikida's temper and attentiveness to his schedule aren't callousness, they're coping mechanisms. right. y'all have to eventually figure out that much over seasons + tens of chapters of him being so tender it would snap him in two if not for the order he's constructed around himself. y'all will inevitably pick up on that with how he approaches dazai and kyouka, especially, right? surely.

[bixels]

I've been making the transition these past few months, but I think I'm gonna just move back to Tumblr. My Twitter's follower-base has reached a point where I can't tweet anything casually opinion-related without it overflowing like a toilet. I post a short thread on my gripes with color design in anime and I'm getting QRT'd with "kill this guy with hammers" reaction gifs. Like, damn, this isn't fun anymore. It's not fun to talk about stuff on Twitter in general anymore. I wanted to post some ship dynamic doodles sometime there, but I know I'm gonna get weirdly aggressive takes and reactions. Monkey's paw curls, but I don't particularly like having that many followers.

[araneapeixes]

Throw down your umbilical noose

So I can climb right back

[nephriteknight]

there is something just so damn compelling about Lonelyeyes as a deeply, deliberately harmful relationship, as a vessel for fear, for feeding.

every time they're together Elias knows Peter can barely stand his company, knows he'll be leaving both soon and abruptly, knows that Peter will never truly give himself away. he knows that his archives are full of letters from friends he left to die or killed himself, knows that his closest companion is an avatar of Forsaken, knows that he truly has no one left but himself.

every time they're together Peter knows Elias can see him, see all of him laid out and plain, all his most private thoughts, all his hopes and his fears. he knows there is always, always a chance that Elias is watching him whenever he is anywhere but the Lonely itself. even on the Tundra, tucked away in his private sanctum, he can never truly escape it, but that fear is so much worse here and now, with Elias' eyes (Jonah's eyes, really) on him. it is undeniable that he is seen, and known, and judged.

Elias knows that Peter understands exactly what he's thinking when they're together, that he knows all the sentimental weaknesses he's tried to cut away. Peter knows that Elias will never truly care for him, that at the end of the day he will always be another piece on Elias' chess board, practical and expendable.

they both know what this is for. they need fear, and they do, at the end of the day, want each other (in certain ways, in painful ways, always too much or too little), and they are under no illusions about what this means to the other (Elias knows what it means to Peter, of course, and while Peter doesn't have any supernatural insight he's no fool), and it hurts, and it's meant to hurt. it hurts, and it sustains them, and when they go their separate ways they can't help but wait for the next visit with longing and fear alike.

[turtleblogatlast]

[ cw: violence mention / death mention / ]

Will never stop thinking about how Leo, all alone in an endless void and being beaten again and again and again by the only other living thing around, still finds comfort in that space. The situation he was in was completely hopeless, and in any other circumstances he would not have escaped, at least not fast enough to save him from permanent (or even fatal) damage, be it physical or mental.

And yet, despite the bleakness of his situation, despite the agony and helplessness, all he needs is one glance at a crumbled photograph, one glance to remember his family, and that’s enough of a reason for him to smile.

Maybe that’s why his powers center around manipulating space - because no matter how much space is between them, no matter how dire his own situation may be, just the thought of his family, alive and okay, is enough to give Leo hope.

[smovs]

CSP Buckle Tip

My standard approach to those wee lil buckles on Sora's KH2 costume. I been drawing the little shits for 15 years and this way's by far the best looking for the least effort.

As usual this is drawn in Clip Studio Paint, but oughta work in any software that can add outlines to a layer (or hey, maybe you paint without lines).

Long live the KH2 outfit!

[fumifooms]

do you happen to have that page that talks about the beauty standards of each race?

Yeah sure. While scavenging pics for this I found this neat reddit compilation & chart & theory talk too. I had um, way more to say than I anticipated (I know you only wanted the one page. I have nothing to say for myself. Like most topics in Dunmeshi things snowball because they’re so interconnected. Mercy…) so, many races and observations are only mentioned near the bottom.

Beauty standards and race in Dungeon Meshi

Not pictured there’s also how elven society is harsh on visibly disabled people, and how the demon took away Mithrun’s silver eyes and ears to take away his pride. There’s also how Senshi might have fit in with the orcs more easily because of the dwarven wide body shape, and how they tend to have more body hair too I suppose. In the extra on orcs we see Senshi living with the orcs and he gets judged because of the hierarchy rather than his looks.

What is fashionable also differs from culture to culture, and there’s how tattoos only seem common with elves, though dwarves and others do also sometimes have some. They seem to not raise much brows, which makes sense since for many essentially they’re for professional (magical) purposes especially with elves. Gender roles also differ in type and importance, but generally they are similar to irl ones for the races we see. Elven society seems to be the least gendered, which would be an unsurprising logical outcome of having lesser sexual dimorphism aka they look more androgynous. Comparing fashions and gender roles and how they affect beauty standards would be a whole other compilation and conversation. Kui has great worldbuilding partially because she’s got such a good grasp on sociopolitics and geopolitics. History affects cultures and beauty standards greatly. Kui’s oneshot Distant Utopia was very eye opening on her way to worldbuild and the consideration she gives these things, I do really recommend reading it.

Out of the big 5, we know the least about gnomes, but their sheet does say both culture and region are similar to dwarves’ and they end up being confused together often, so we can imagine the beauty standards are similar to dwarves’ as well.

I wanted to touch on this in a post eventually, but how one daydream hour page said half-foots tended to be curvaceous like in the artwork below puzzled me for a long time, all the half-foot characters we see during canon are rather slender and lanky after all, Chil’s succubi also being more curvy than plump. Economics are for sure a factor in that I imagine, the half-foots characters we see are all implied to be some flavor of poor or malnourished, as are half-foots depicted as empoverished oppressed minorities in general. Even comparing the artwork with the half-foot sheet’s depicted average half-foot, the ones on the left seem bigger. Wouldn’t it make sense though, if unlike dwarves half-foots don’t have similar naturally wide bodies, yet due to idolizing dwarves they work towards having a similar body shape/type to emulate them?

It’s said half-foots tend to stick to pretty ethnically homogeneous regions (aka half-foots-only communities) unless they move to the big city with ambition to try and make it big (like Chilchuck and his wife & kids did), and that’s interesting imo because then that would mean that in a ton of half-foot communities, they rarely see or interact with dwarves whom they try to emulate. Of course, one thing about beauty standards is that when they get adopted, at one point it stops being "this is how dwarves look and so this is how half-foots should look" and just becomes "this is how half-foots should look", most people feel as though beauty standards aren’t learned but innate, so I figure the half-foots wouldn’t have any problem still seeking dwarvish traits when there are no dwarves around.

There’s also stuff you can glean here and there if you want to extrapolate more. Like how in the race swap artworks, Mickbell is only smiling in the dwarf portrait, and Rin’s elven portrait looks very close to her elven one- Rin who is stated to be beautiful in her profile blurb. Benichidori’s extra does teach us tallmen can definitely have harsh beauty standards, but also since the text portrays her as very dysmorphic that’s likely reflected in her thoughts to a much more intense degree than is common, not an accurate strict baseline to go off. Ah, Kabru’s blue eyes are also why he and his mother lived a rough life in Kabru’s hometown, but that seems to be regional. Good post here on the topic of Kabru’s blue eyes and ties to irl history. There’s a lot to be said about Kabru being a man that in many ways is close to elven beauty standards, and how that might have affected or been affected by his upbringing with elves + his persona as someone that can effortlessly charm most people. Marcille’s section here in this essay also goes into Marcille’s struggles to fit in with the ideal image of an elf.

Looking human

Also notable are beastkins and demihumans: Demihumans are all dehumanized which makes people treat them worse. So if you differ from the visual idea of "human" (an in-world subjective categorizatiom just as much as demihuman is) most people do judge you negatively. Elves and dwarves get to fight about which type of human is considered the prettiest, but demihumans are below tallmen and half-foots, they are considered as simply below the beauty contest, incompatible with it.

Onis are perhaps the demihuman people we know of with the least cultural influence on the dunmeshi world, and with less intensely different appearances than other demihumans, but even them are treated as lesser than human, treated as beasts to slain for reputation points or useful strength to have around and command. It’s said their "magnificient horns" and fangs are often shaven off when the oni lives in tallman towns, so you could easily make the argument that onis are denied the right to have their own beauty standards, having to conform to other people’s and going through mutilation to take away features they might otherwise have taken pride in. Inutade was bought by the Nakamotos from a dangerous sumo fighting ring that got one of Inutade’s tooth broken on her first and only fight. Remember when I said different fashions existed in dunmeshi and how those could also affect beauty standatds? Like the elves, if you look at the portraits pages that include a lot of characters that aren’t in the story you can see distinct cultures within the same races, for example one young elf is bald which is in sharp contrast with usual elven long luscious hairstyles, and that’s especially true for onis I think. Maybe not only from different regions but different eras as well… They have a bit of population in the very north of the western continent, so I like to think some of the ogres live in very cold, maybe even subarctic conditions. The point I’m getting at here is that within a race, culture/ethnicity like with Kabru as well will also influence them, different communities will have differing beauty standards. The oni history blurb and third row first collumn portrait remind me of Mongolia (which historically was a lot of different nomadic communities with different cultural identities as well. Something something, the oni empire experienced a decline and then tallmen overpowered them, and now they’re governed and split apart by stronger social classes & slavers and the richness of culture was hurt for it), but obviously many of them are dressed and look rather japanese, makes sense considering living in/close to Wa, and first row second collumn portrait reminds me of ainus which again would be logical considering geographical placement, though I’m far from an expert. Interestingly, ainus are indigenous people both in Japan and Russia- Perhaps the northern western continent ogres are meant to be closer to Russia than Canada like I imagined? Ok tangent over.

The kobold sheet says they’re especially sought after as slaves because they’re "adorable", but locally in the western continent they’re repeatedly said to be seen more as ferocious and dangerous. The dehumanization is most apparent in the first comic below. The language barrier and conflicts no doubt worsen this by a lot, but I think it’d be hard to deny that their canine appearance makes the dehumanization worse. "They’re ferocious beasts, they’re demihumans, they can’t be communicated with". Most characters in Dungeon Meshi’s world are desensitized to slavery and most characters are prejudiced one way or another. Point being, kobolds are fully removed from human beauty standards, but no doubt for kobolds, other kobolds are more beautiful than humans are. They’re assumed to be an uncivilized bunch, but just like any other people they like to aforn themselves with nice clothes and jewelry and keep themselves clean and groomed; they too take care of their appearance and take pride in it.

And the orcs! This one we have the most contact with in canon, with not only there being foreigner characters from the ethnicity or hearsay of their homelands and culture but full on contact with a community. We get to see up close what they’re like and what they think, and of course in turn they’re our introduction to how demihumans are harshly looked down upon and seen as inferior, less human and thus less worth valuing and less dignified. It’s text that orcs are ugly to most humans and humans are ugly to most orcs. Since I judged they didn’t need accompanying explanation the pictures showing this are in the pictures dump at the top.

God forbid you sell vegetables to orcs my god- but then again they do basically mandate adventurers to kill any orcs they come across so yeah the world isn’t above that even a bit.

So yes, my main point here is simply that orcs are yet another evidence of the physical ideal of "human" being an important beauty standard for human societies globally.

Izutsumi is our glimpse at how beastkins are treated in the world, and in Wa at least that’s ending up being caged and mistreated as part of a freak show. Izutsumi hates her appearance and wishes she could leave the feline part of herself behind to only be human. Interestingly, not that we have a lot of info on them so this is very much a take with a grain of salt situation, but there seems to be less stigma around artificial beastmen, those who can shapeshift at will. The main difference is of course appearance, that most of the time they simply look like average tattooed humans. Artificially creating humans is an illegal practice, and no doubt it’s not well regarded, but being able to hide that makes them less likely to be discriminated at any moment, or even just discriminated less intensely. Again, looking human is important, not only for belonging but for safety’s sake. Beauty standards rule the world with harsh hands.

Mermaids and fishmen

Ok we’re done now right? Right-! But wait… Wait…! Mermaids and fishmen are said to be demihumans too, special separate cases to the main three demihuman species however, which is also represented by how mermaids and fishmen both are in the Adventurer’s Bible chapter Monsters meanwhile ogres, kobolds and orcs are in the chapter World. They’re an interesting topic because they directly tackle this topic, not only in a meta way for the readers but also making characters themselves struggle to quantify their humanity with the goal of knowing wether they should be eaten or not, especially Chilchuck. Chilchuck’s "is it really just a matter of feelings?" mini arc.

The party asking themselves "Should we eat this?" is very common, and often they end up playing a little loose on morality, like eating the red dragon’s meat despite it having digested Falin. Not unsimilarly Marcille freaks out a little over the vegetables they harvested having been grown with fertilizer, aka largely human poo. Half of the motivation of "should we eat this perhaps sentient creature" is out of consideration and compassion, but more strongly and more often, the characters struggle with a sense of taboo at eating something too closely related to humans. Even, feel uncomfortable because of the deepseated impression that eating it would dirty them in some way. Cannibalism is an interesting and relevant topic in many ways, but what I want to mention is how there’s the more or less universal belief that committing cannibalism inherently taints you as a person and turns you more monstrous, morally but also literally depending on some myths such as w*ndigos and onis in some cases, like in Touge Oni. Marcille and Izutsumi both express a fear of eating monsters turning them monstrous. Maybe this is part of what Laios was hoping for, honestly. There are two fears here, if eating a demihuman monster constitutes as cannibalism or not, and so, will eating it taint you because it’s a human, or will eating it taint you because it’s a monster? You are what you eat, until it’s a little too literal. You morally are the means by which you get your food, and you physically are the result of your nutrition. Dungeon meshi manages to mix an exploration of humanity with the theme of food because our relationship to food is very deep and complex, psychological as much as physiological.

In the end, the characters sort of shrug and accept that they’ll never quite understand the world of mermaids and fishmen and how they operate, and what that means about them. Laios is the one always challenging these notions other characters take for granted, it’s not obvious to Laios why people are softer on mammals than other animals and plants, it’s not obvious to Laios why people would be afraid of eating a monster just because it’s a monster, it’s not obvious to Laios why some food is gross to Marcille but not fish testicles, it’s not obvious to Laios why you should immediately regard orcs and kobolds badly.

"Cows are probably closer to humans [aka closer to being human] than fishmen, though they’re clearly intelligent", dehumanization to lessen empathy towards them to be able to eat them. Meanwhile, mermaids seemingly have a less noticeable "civilization" or intelligence, they hunt in groups like fishmen, but they don’t use tools and such, they feel more primal and similarly instinct driven, and yet… Do they attract sympathy more? Mammals, humans, is it because of their nature or because of their appearance?

Both the nature and appearance of fish are ones people don’t typically sympathize with. "Fish don’t feel pain", "goldfish only have 5 seconds of memory", "it’s okay to keep in bowls too small and empty for them until they die", so many lies and misconceptions exist that make people less considerate of them. The average lifespan of a goldfish is 10-15 years, the record is 43, but they’re not seen as lives that really matter, so a lot of goldfish die in a few weeks of bad aquarium conditions. There’s a lot of research on animals evolving to look cute and appealing to make some predators want to kill them less and parents want to care for them more, including humans. First good google research result gave me this credible short article on the topic. In Chilchuck’s weighing wether a fishman is far enough from being human or not, "face is 100% fish" is his biggest argument for it being more acceptable. The face, the most important thing for empathy and recognition. The face, the decapitated fishman one that falls into his hands next chapter.

To quote @room-surprise: "Chilchuck can't explain why it's wrong to eat the merpeople, even though it's NOT complicated. But the problem is Chilchuck would have to accept and acknowledge that the merpeople might be people? And that's outside of the worldview he passively believes, so he can't just say that, because he doesn't think that's true. But that IS why he "feels" it's wrong. And it's all you'd need to say for Laios to understand! But it would require acknowledging that maybe the way they're treating and talking about the merpeople is wrong."

The idea of Chil not being able to grapple with how maybe some monsters are more humans than they seem, him who had been an advocate of half-foots rights, half-foots who get undermined and treated as inconsequential sacrifices… Grappling with how he could relate to the merpeople’s situation almost, and pulling away because it’s so existentially horrifying. I do not want to see myself into an hostile fish-faced warrior I can’t communicate with. In a way this also relates to Chilchuck being the only party member who doesn’t see Izutsumi as a cat in the relationshio chart, the only one to treat her with full human dignity. He knows the struggle to be taken seriously, he knows being infantilized and he knows what it’s like to be treated as less than human.

Below, you will see Chilchuck draws the line of where they become not okay to eat as when "they already look like mermaids". Above, there’s speculation that the algae hair is partly to mimic "the mermaids’ beautiful female form". Is it because mermaids are their enemies and the ambiguity might give them extra seconds to attack or flee? Is it to trick adventurers instead? It’s striking to me that this is what works, with the adventurers. Sure the fishmen are intelligent, but explicitly here, what makes them no longer acceptable prey to Chilchuck is that they look close enough to a mermaid, close enough to human. Mermaids who of course themselves have this form to entice and seduce and charm the adventurers they prey on. Chilchuck considers the intelligence due to the tridents, but most of his internal debate centers around their appearance, and the image of a fishman skewered sickens him. The power of mimicry… Mimic being a beautiful human woman. Mimic being cute, babies being wired to make us feel protective and softened. Half-foots, sometimes pretending to be children for scams or help or avoiding trouble.

The mermaids are only concerned by their differences and not their similarities, and have no trouble treating the fishmen as food rather than peers. To an outside perspective like us, the audience, all these categorization of "more human" and "less human" between onis and orcs and elves and tallmen etc seem stupid and unfounded, but to the people living in Dungeon Meshi’s world, elves may as well be mermaids while onis are fishmen, not alike at all, unworthy of empathy and thus fine to eat.

Ultimately, Dungeon Meshi promotes unity. It’s about seeking to understand the unknown and the misunderstood, the dehumanized and the inhuman. It shows the good that comes from seeking to understand what you do not, even when that’s one another.

[mistfallengw2]

Feel free to be more specific in comments/notes if you want! If you want to elaborate further, how do you organize them? By role, species, age, alphabetical order, vibes or something else?

[delicatepointofview]

gonna have to deal with people missing the point of louis singing 1d songs in festivals... don't get me started on the other covers

[coquelicoq]

we get a lot of really great stuff in system collapse about murderbot's relationships with ART and ratthi, which makes sense, because it spends almost the entire book with them. but i also love how even though mensah isn't there for most of the story, other people keep reminding mb of her:

chapter 2, page 25: “From ART’s personnel file, she [Karime] was older than Mensah and she didn’t look like an intrepid space explorer, either, even in the protective environmental suit.”

2, 27: “It took Karime three seconds to process the abrupt statement. (She was almost as good at not looking annoyed as Mensah was.) She kept her expression neutral and patient.”

2, 28: “In the underground colony room, Karime lifted her brows. ‘Another occupied site?’ I thought she was being careful not to show too much reaction. It was the way Mensah would have played it.”

4, 70: “Iris looked at me and I saw her hesitate, because her hesitation looked a lot like Dr. Mensah’s hesitation. And I realized I really didn’t want to go down there.”

5, 104: "Iris has that same thing as Dr. Mensah, the thing where she’s able to look and sound calm under circumstances where shit is possibly about to go down.”

it's spent so much time with her and it knows her so well and respects her so much that she's the model against which it compares all other humans. it thinks about her when they're not together. it's protective of her. it has such total faith in her competence. it (non-romantically) loves her and doesn't want to not see her again. idk man, it just gets to me! and they were teammates (oh my god they were teammates!!)

bonus:

I said, aloud, "You have to be kidding me." (ch. 2, p. 28)

seven pages later, in reaction to the same thing:

Mensah had had time to review the feed video. She muttered, "Oh, you have to be kidding me." Yeah.

twinsies 🥰

[salt-n-salt]

Words can't explain how much I love your Shane's big ol' eyebrows

u know what IM GLAD U LIKE THEM bc sometimes i remember what his sprite actually looks like and realize that i really have no good explanation for why i make his eyebrows so big. but when i draw him without them does it not make his forehead look ginormous. one of life’s mysteries i suppose

[r0b0t1me]

resistance base floor plan/layout! i do not know what i'm doing nor am i shooting for total realism, but all of these ideas have been rotating in my head for ages and im having issues creating concept art for the setting without some kind of baseline to work off of so tada

[quixoticanarchy]

my dad gave me a book to read about the Dust Bowl so that, in his words, i would stop missing oklahoma, and jfc is it grim. like i did know it was an environmental catastrophe of almost unimaginable magnitude but all the policies that led up to it are so strikingly and blatantly stupid and also just a blisteringly clear indictment of imperialist and capitalist views of land coming home to roost in spectacularly awful fashion. the way that grasslands were framed as empty desert needing to be civilized through farming - the last gasp of the frontier, and a "make the desert bloom" narrative par excellence - and the urgency of the federal government to get settlers into every conceivable area, and the eagerness of the railroads and land speculators to invent promises to lure people out there, and the delight in the wholesale destruction of an ecosystem and the absolute confidence that people could conquer and remake a landscape as they wished, and that land would forever be an inexhaustible resource... i remember watching the ken burns documentary and being struck by the horror of the dust bowl back then too, but it really needs to be put into context as fallout specifically generated by imperialism and by capitalist & extractivist & white supremacist views of land that were not at all unique to this one catastrophe, and while it was a perfect storm of several terrible courses colliding, it can't be seen as a one-off fluke horror. it's just the extreme end result of the same kinds of reckless rolls of the dice that we're still doing ecologically on a massive scale, with industrial agriculture and with extractivism as a whole