#i also just remember their designs the best

[steamedlotusroot]

remember when swk tried to take li jing and nezha to court for gross negligence in jttw? good times

[sainteclectic]

what do you think would cause soul to not see whole as a god or deity anymore?

i am interested

ohh very good question...

it's a buildup of things, I think. soul is trying to tuck his pain away because it's all worth it! all of it was worth it to see whole, all the thousands of loops of endless suffering {caused by} for whole, it's all okay because whole is here and everything is alright now. he gets frustrated with his involuntary responses to things- the way he flinches when heart or mind raise their voices too loud, the sound of fireworks sending him into a panic thinking it's happening again - the constant looming dread he's grown so used to, things he could manage before, they get to him because it's supposed to be over. he's supposed to be free. why isn't everything perfect, why isn't he perfect?

and he tries so very hard not to blame whole. in the beginning, he'd never even dare to. the other two do, but soul never would. sure, he put them all through hell and knowingly put soul specifically through an endless loop of suffering whole knew he remembered - but it's fine! whole got him through it too, he's the reason soul kept going, and who is he to question god?

things also become less perfect on whole's end. whole tries his best to impress soul, to not let him down, to live up to all the expectations of divinity. but he's not a god. he's just a man, and a very mentally ill and unstable one at that. so it's inevitable that he does things that aren't godly. he lashes out, he makes mistakes, he does all the things humans do and gods don't.

soul tries not to blame him again. it must be something with soul, somehow. it has to be that their harmony isn't perfect, there's something soul could be doing better, if they just find that perfect synchronicity, then it'll all be perfect. soul is a flawed and broken thing by design. whole is the ideal he's been striving for for... god, how long has it been now? hundreds of years? thousands? the loop number {333,333} is all that he remembers {always 3, never 1}, it's all that matters {not soul's suffering, not all the work that goes to waste, only whole}

the breaking point, like most things, happens gradually. maybe he starts to understand why heart and mind are furious with whole and feels terrified that he can relate to an emotion he'd never dream of having. maybe whole pushes him away and soul feels upset with whole instead of himself for once. maybe he realizes he's been praying to the altar of the god who brought him salvation, not to the man who damned him.

it's slow. and it's unwilling. and it's painful. for the first time, he's the one to pull away. he doesn't want to see whole because he can't bear to see the imperfections instead of the god he reveres. he doesn't want to have his whole life to be meaningless. doesn't want his mirror image to be as flawed as he is. {doesn't want to see whole's heartbroken face when he realizes it's finally happened.}

why is the world so cruel? why couldn't things just be alright? why couldn't soul be satisfied? {why couldn't whole just end this already? why did he put soul through hell if he loves him so damn much?} he's angry, and it hurts that he's angry, he doesn't want to be angry. but he is.

like the fall, the rebuilding takes time. whole is the one to reach out first for once. whole has always been terrified of initiating anything, always letting soul take the first step, but he's willing to try for soul. it's painful. there's a lot of crying. and soul is devastated when whole hugs him and it doesn't feel sacred anymore.

but it's warm. and it's human. and maybe that's enough.

[kathleenkatmary]

I will say it over and over again until I have no voice to say it with... FRAMING. MATTERS.

EDIT: Okay, I'm going to expand on this because I remembered that there have been multiple times when I've said this that someone truly did not know what I'm talking about.

Framing matters. The way a narrative frames a character and their actions matters. In so many different ways. It matters to the message the writers are trying to send. It matter to the message that is actually sent. It matter to what the character and their actions end up meaning or representing with in the narrative. And it matters to how the audience perceives and feels about the character.

Obviously, that last bit is what matters here. The way a character and their actions are framed within the narrative can be consistent with the things they do and say, or it can be inconsistent with the things they do and say. And Spike and Xander actually serve as a really good demonstration of this. As has already been pointed out, when Spike does something bad and toxic and fucked up, more often than not it's framed as such. Yes, from pretty early on he was written to be far more complex than just the unambiguous bad guy, and from season 4 on in particular he's given an arc that gives him more and more chances to do good things and to do the right thing, and for increasingly less selfish reasons. But the narrative never treats those things as some sort of get out of jail free card that frames everything he does as good and not selfish. His toxic bullshit is still framed as toxic bullshit. Are there a few moments here and there where things he does aren't appropriately framed? Sure, probably. But you're going to find that in a pretty much any show, because no show is perfect.

Xander, on the other hand, is pretty regularly (as the poster above says, at least 50% of the time) framed in a way that is not consistent with the way he behaves. Not only is he framed as the loveable loser harmless best friend, he's also more than once framed in ways that treat him doing the literal bare minimum of not being a horrible person as though he's some kind of ultimate good guy hero (him not taking advantage of Buffy when she was under the love spell and the way he's treated for that is a great example) or that treat his really gross and toxic ideas and attitudes as being completely correct (the bullshit he spouted when Riley gave Buffy the ultimatum). Even when his attitudes or behavior is framed appropriately, it's usually stuff that's brushed off pretty easily, even when it has dire consequences (like him not telling Buffy that Willow was going to do the spell to give Angel his soul back).

Now, of course, framing isn't the only thing that determines how an audience will react to characters. For one thing, there are plenty of instances of fans just going crazy over characters who are framed as being heroes or desirable romantic leads even though that framing is inconsistent with how they actually behave and the things they actually do. And there are plenty of other things that go into how an audience reacts to a character. There are certain character traits, from aspects of their personality to just bits of their design, that will make a character more appealing. Especially when it comes to online audiences.

So yeah, Spike as a character hitting a lot of those "fandom favorite" boxes almost certainly contributes to people favoring him to at least some extent. But I think the framing really is the big thing here that makes people so much more likely to favor Spike, and so much more likely to call out Xander. The narrative is pretty regularly calling out Spike. His behavior is weird and creepy and the narrative points that out regularly. So it's not really something the fandom needs to do. Going online and being like "so, Spike kidnapping Buffy, tying her up, and telling her he's going to kill his ex girlfriend in front of her to prove his love is so creepy and toxic, right?" isn't really necessary because... yeah. The narrative knows it, and therefor so does the vast majority of the audience. But with Xander that is not something the narrative usually does. When he, for example, condescendingly corrects Anya, the narrative doesn't treat that critically, it treats it as a funny thing that Xander is probably right to do. When he agrees with everything Riley said when he gave Buffy that ultimatum and treats Buffy like she's the problem in that relationship, it doesn't frame him as wrong, or as projecting so many of his own issues with women and with Buffy in particular onto the situation. He's framed as the man talking sense into Buffy. So it does fall on the audience to call it out, and to call the show out for not doing it.

Like I said, inconsistent framing isn't something that an audience always notices, but with a show like Buffy, where a lot of - really, I would even say most of - the characters are usually appropriately framed, and where you do have an instance of a guy's creepy, toxic behavior appropriately framed, I think that makes it easier for viewers to clock it when there's a character that isn't being appropriately framed. Even if viewers doing consciously realize it's why they're reacting negatively to a character. Personally, I think that's also at least part of the reason a lot of people don't react well to Riley. It's not because he's 'boring' or because they ship Buffy with someone else and he 'gets in the way', or whatever. At least, not completely. I really think the way his character was framed, especially in season 5, was often not really in line with what was actually happening with the character, and people could feel that.

Are there Spike fans who just completely ignore it all, ignore the framing and all the shitty, creepy, toxic shit Spike has done so that they can feel like they're allowed to like him 'guilt free', or so they can engage with the character completely uncritically? Sure. Of course. Any character with any amount of fanbase is going to have people who do that. It's just a part of fandom. And I'm not going to act like Spike doesn't check a lot of boxes of typical "fandom favorite" types, and that is going to make people more likely to be drawn to him as a character. But there's a lot of critical analysis of Buffy that happens, even just in online fandom spaces, analysis that goes far deeper than just that kind of more surface level fandom engagement. And even then, so much of what you see is incredibly critical of Xander and the way he's written while being much more favorable to Spike and the way he's written. That's not just fangirls ignoring the bad stuff their fav does while dogpiling on another character. That's people recognizing the problems with Xander's writing and the very stark difference in the framing between Xander and Spike.

At the end of the day, fictional characters are not real people. The way they're written and how audiences react to them is about a lot more than just the way a character behaves and the things they say and do. There's a lot more that goes into it, and framing is a big part of it.

ok I’m only on season 5 but can someone explain to me how Xander is the universally hated one for, from what I can tell, some bad choices and worse jokes, while Spike, the fandom’s babygirl and beloved heartthrob, literally stalks Buffy, holds her captive, and then commissions a robot version of her when it’s made clear he’ll never have her. like someone please explain it because the math is not mathing.

[mikawwolf]

Hehe gay robots

1st time drawing mechs, so be nice pls 😔

They were difficult at first, until I remembered they're just dudes in helmets. I based OP off the Transformers One movie, and Megatron off the G1 version because I like that design the best

I also wrote a story on A03 about these bozos that I'll link!!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/61920424

[earlymorningfoxhunt]

I discovered your soul eater/malevolent au last night and my brain literally will not shut up about it. I haven’t thought about Soul Eater for a solid 5 or so years but this just reinvigorated it for me. I’m especially having thoughts about Witch Charlie! Keep in mind that this is me trying to remember information from many years ago and a quick skim through the wiki. So give me a bit of grace if anything is wrong-

I’m thinking that Charlie probably gained his connection with humans and demon weapons through Noel Finley. Both of them were young and Noel wasn’t scared of him. His family welcomed Charlie in, they grew up together, and eventually went to the Academy with one another! I’m thinking that Noel probably got killed in an altercation the two got in with a witch which is what fully turned Charlie over against them.

I’m thinking it would be fun if Charlie dual wielded Roland and Delphine Cummings as two guns. They’re not exactly alike but Charlie makes do. It also might be fun if somehow the Cummings family as a whole is able to connect together into some larger gun. Not sure how that would work but it’s an idea.

I’m still thinking about what the equivalent of Charlie in the Dreamlands with The King in Yellow would be but I figured I would start with these thoughts! Bless ya for giving such intense brainrot-

RAAAAAAAA yes yes yes yes!!!! Charlie leaving his coven and finding Noel uuug perfect! and the kickass Cummings family aaaaaaaa I had to draw!!

Delphines a crossbow that folds down to be a throwable rope spear and she's all movement based while Rolland is small and versatile which is perfect for stealth missions. Charlie isn't the best with magic cause he didn't really get a safe space to practice it after Noel got killed but he does a lot of support magic(defensive shields and adding a put more oomf to a weapons fire power). when they soul resonance they turn into a harpoon like sniper rifle

aaaaa dude this got me so excited for weapon Sarah too! I want to design her and meister Anna next

[kerizaret]

I'm lacking in time a bit to draw rn so instead here's a collection of some doodles from class I collected over a while that I forgot to share

And some glasses Rui because I've been educated on this fantastic hc

[marcusrobertobaq]

Public Opinion can be changed again, especially if u free the androids from CyberLife Tower. Why would a "peaceful" movement have such demonstration of power by a Connor invading the most powerful megacorporation in the world HQ, killing guards and "hacking" thousands of androids?

U also can't trust Cristina and her gang, since public opinion is exactly what's between her axe and your head. One bad move and u got this same people that "supported" u (but couldn't fight for your ass) against u again.

In the revolution path we got a way of showing we're a real deal, that we ain't to be fucked with. And the CyberLife Tower section is exactly for that: shift the balance of power and scare the soldiers away - and if I'm honest Cristina won't want to push a war against androids if we got the AP army, simply cuz it's too much for them to handle. More than half of 'em troops is gone after deactivating the android soldiers and the human ones fighting are suffering losses. Not to mention the civilians that could get caught in the middle of fire just cuz Cristina decided putting NG on the streets to hunt androids. The logistics becomes messy and just not worthy, they already got a bunch of problems to solve - they just lost basically 80% of the entire crew for almost everything in the country, US was totally dependent on android labor.

Another issue is the fact this game is lame in representing the revolution ending. We all know there's a heavy pacifist push, even in how Josh dies and the PO doesn't serve of anything in this route (even the way the "violent" route is supposed to be unjustified savageness). In a realistic scenario a positive PO would make people understand why these camps are being attacked, and it's something THEY'RE AWARE that "wake up dark memories".

The only route where Cristina declares war is if u ain't got the AP army. Since we're in low numbers it's easy for her to send troops to hunt androids down again after regroup. But if we got the AP army? It'll force Cristina to sit down and try talking, and PO won't be the only thing holding her axe from hitting the androids.

U need to remember we're dealing with a corrupt government and a megacorporation that manipulates media. They sure hope androids don't fight back and by being peaceful they'll try anything to fuck with your image. I ain't saying demonstration is a bad ending - it's actually what the game wants u to believe it's the best one, even with how they ignore how the CLT infiltration can totally fuck with Markus peaceful approaches -, I'm just saying that is naivety thinking it's all sunshine and flowers. So I prefer the attack on the camps one + AP army, it's more advantageous for the androids imo.

And remember: Markus true peaceful ending doesn't include the AP army, and that's where things can go to shit ... The low numbers and relying on a public that just need the right reason to be against u again. And this time u gonna be fucked by the gov too, fully in the palm of Cristina's hands.

It's just a big joke to me how attacking the camps ain't supposed to show how androids have "emotions" when... look around u, pal. But it certainly shows they ain't human - I guess that's the problem. But it's ironic how getting your pals killed in front of cameras without doing anything is supposed to show "humanity", since the first action humans took was exactly violence. While you're making a demonstration, people are rioting for your death, lunching u and hanging u by the neck around.

In the end is just game's bad design. I know they wanna push a anti-violence rhetoric but it's so stupid how everyone's stupid in this game.

Is a revolution or a peaceful ending better in a post-canon perspective?

I read somewhere that the demonstration is the worst post-canon conclusion after the nuclear one for the androids, but wouldn't the androids theoretically have public opinion on their side? The support of the people after Markus and the androids has in a way demonstrated that they "have" emotions, that they are "human" unlike the revolution of the type, with Connor's army there would be negotiations I think, but would they still be seen in a positive light by the public? I don't know, it's a question more than a statement because I honestly admit that I know nothing about Dbh, so if I seem ignorant you know why.

[yogurtlid10000]

sss deceptitrio

[mintjeru]

a bite-sized everelle comic for pocky day!!

open for better quality | no reposts

[skrs-cats]

designing warrior cats whatever way u want outside of canon descriptions is awesome bc u have the creative freedom to do so ❌

designing warrior cats whatever way u want outside of canon descriptions is awesome bc u will mistake a word as a color of Something Else and no one will bat an eye bc they will think it is ur creative freedom when ur actually just stupid ✅

[dubia-015]

GAH ITS SO GOOD ALREADY SAILPLANE MANTIS AAAAAAA

also an invitation? to talk about MY bug ocs? with the cool art person that I follow? someone pinch me

Allow me to take this prime opportunity to yap about my oc's hehehe Technically the first two aren't transformers but they are mech pilots soooooooo close enough right?

BEHOLD: Swift, my pink thing that I love

As you can see by the name and theme of this blog, Swift is quite near and dear to my heart. 💖

They are the pilot of a Dubia class mech, which means most of their job is excavating survivors out of buildings and getting them to safety after an incident (they live on a space colony that regularly gets attacked by giant space monsters called bone worms, its a whole thing).

Their design is inspired by two different species of cockroach: the Dubia Roach and the Madagascar Hissing Cockroach! The little horn nubs on Swift's helmet and mech come from the Madagascar hissing roach, and name and shape comes from the dubia roach.

I've always had a soft spot for these two roaches (fun fact! I've held the hissing cockroach before, they are very sticky lolol) and its great to have them integrated into a design like this.

Alright up next we have: Megan, the butterfly mech pilot!

Butterfly mechs are the satellites of space colonies mech rosters. They float around and collect copious amounts of information about anything in their range, from valuable minerals, to hoards of bone worms. The tech that allows them to hover around weightlessly makes them pretty flimsy in a fight, so they definitely take a supporting role in battles.

Butterfly mech pilots are highly intelligent and meticulous, and Megan is no exception. She was Swift's best friend, that was until she went out on an observation shift and got attacked by a bone worm. The mech was never found, but its pretty clear what happened, at least to Swift (I miss my wife tails moment).

Obviously her design is inspired by butterflies, though not a specific one. Her initial design had swallow tail butterfly wings, but they just made the silhouette to hard to read so I just went with default butterfly design instead. She is actually an old design that i recycled for this little story of mine. All the mechs in this world are bug themed, and i'm very excited to share more designs in the future (wait till you see the scorpion mech hehehe)!

Last but certainly not least, my Transformers Earthspark oc, Lemondrop!!

He is a food truck that serves humans, cybertronians, and terrans free beverages, and is exceptionally passionate about proper hydration. He wants to know everything and anything that can assist him in his quest to adequately hydrate the public, from cybertronian medical literature to human cookbooks.

Lemondrop is what happens whenever a strawberry lemonaid slushie and a rosy maple moth fuse into a robot! I love the pink and yellow of the rosy maple so so so so so much, and Lemondrop also gets the wedges on his helm from the moth's antennae.

To truly demonstrate the depths of my obsession with the lemonaid robot man, i have begun construction of a plushie! Still a WIP but i figured i should share anyway (i am running out of cream help).

Alright that's all the bug robots I have for now, this was a long post so thank you for reading!

And remember:

*skitters away*

everybody loves my Bug Swag

[mossypidder]

I have more reasons but I don’t have the energy to write them right now.

But yeah, I’ve been thinking about what I’d be if I were in Faas and Enya’s universe and I thought I’d be a changeling as well for a while for many reasons, but upon further consideration I think I was wrong. So here’s the first concept art for a my avian persona.

As for the songs (which was one of the main influences on why I started thinking about avians because I realized that over the last six months the majority of songs I’ve been obsessed with have bird centric undertones at the very least) you can find them here

[todayisafridaynight]

sometimes i think about daigo interacting with the mundane and thinking about mine and i throw up a little bit ngl

[my-thoughts-and-junk]

finished hazbin hotel and what the fuck it's actually kind of??? good???

[arolesbianism]

Despite how much I suffered making my last isat au Aris sprite redraw, I decided to do it again and once again went through hell doing it. There’s like a billion mistakes in this (such as her having the wrong arm rip) but at the end of the day I’m still happy with how it turned out :]

[smittyw]

fred turnaround! hahaa bazinga