#i can never escape. never escape

[py6oto]

art challenge i wanted to try !!

ft. the evolution of my gordon design.

one of my favorite artists, sapgoon, came up with this little challenge. i thought it would be super fun to try to imitate my old art styles- not only that, but it was also surprisingly easy. i guess they're still a part of me after all this time.

have you guessed my favorite character to draw yet?

i will go a little in depth about them under the cut !!

2017 (perhaps it should be 2018, but it's the same style for that, so whatever.)

-very dull colors, same face syndrome, completely black lineart, messy black/dark purple shading, extremely shaky fingers and little to no care for consistency. this is quite literally my very first art style, as 2017 is when i first began drawing digital art.

as you may know, however, hlvrai did not exist in 2017, so i never actually drew gordon like this. i just drew what i think i wouldve drawn back then, if hlvrai had existed.

2020

- this is the art style i had when i initially learned about hlvrai's existence! same face syndrome is still there, but i get a little bit better with colors and my hands finally stopped shaking. im not a fan of the design i gave him back then (i really couldnt make sense of the hev suit at all), but every artist has their ups and downs.

2021/22

- i begin to get confident and find my own art style, trying to overcome the same face syndrome and learning a little bit about color theory. its a very messy style, and its the first time i began keeping my hlvrai designs consistent through all my drawings.

2023

-present time !! im... not sure what happened. i definitely improved a lot of aspects, but i don't wanna jinx anything. just look at it! wow.

looking back i realize hlvrai has been very important for my art journey, encouraging me to push myself out of my comfort zone multiple times. and though i just began posting my art again recently, i hope i continue getting better and better in the future !!

2023.08.12

[ionomycin]

[hinamie]

...........slips gege ¥2000

[cloudstuffs]

sumeru in da brain,,

[demigods-posts]

luke fumbling in recruiting percy has to be one of his greatest failures. a beautiful thing the show does regarding luke and percy's relationship is building rapport between them through shared moments like settling into camp, eating meals together, but especially through swordfighting lessons. the swordfighting scene at the beginning of episode 8 not only reveals that percy and luke already share similar beliefs about the fear-based system the gods have cultivated, but it's clear the conversation stays with percy when he fights ares and later calls out zeus on his waning skills as a father and a king. however, luke's plan fell through the moment percy learned that the winged-shoes were meant to drag him to tartarus. not only that, but the shoes nearly killed grover, a friend percy cared for deeply. if nourishing loyalty and trust was the key to ensuring a partnership with percy, then it was luke's faulty planning, arrogance, and impatience that cost him the greatest ally he could ask for.

[bet-on-me-13]

The Fentonworks Mega-Lab.

So! AU where the Fentonworks Labs actually stretch Miles upon Miles below the City of Amity Park.

It started when the Fentons wanted to add a simple addition to the original Lab when they ran out of space to store their more dangerous weapons. They didn't want their (at the time) young children getting their hands on their experimental Weaponry, it could blow up in their faces!

So they built a different Wing of the Lab to hold all those Inventions.

Then they ran out of space and added a few extra Storage Rooms. But then they decided it was a hassle to have to carefully transport their Dangerous Inventions all the way to the Storage Rooms, and built a Lab specifically for Dangerous Experiments near that same Section. Then that Lab was occupied for a while, and Jack wanted to start a different experiment as well, so they built a few more.

In the end they just never stopped building onto their Labs.

There are sections of the Mega-Lab that are entirely walled off because a few of their more unstable Experiments contaminated the area. Walking into them was not recommended, else you could walk out with an extra eye or 5.

In other sections, their Captured Ghosts had taken over a few Labs and created a sort of Mad Max style civilization using their discarded weapons and vehicles.

In another, all Ghosts became Humans and all Humans became Ghosts. That was a weird one, to this day they still didn't understand how they pulled that off.

In another, some type of Eldritch Time Ghost had been born, and now sort of always existed and never existed, and began experimenting with its powers. They nicknamed it Clocky because it liked to carry around a stopwatch.

And so many more. At one point a failed Portal Experiment messed with the internal Space of the entire thing. Now there was literally no way of Mapping it. The Fentons still somehow managed to navigate it perfectly.

When Jazz and Danny grew up, they too learned how to navigate the Labs, which is how Danny managed to show his friends the Portal Experimentation Wing in the first place.

Unfortunately, it wasn't safe for anyone aside from the Fentons to enter the Mega-Labs, so one day when the Fenton Family+friends left town on a Week Long Camping/Road Trip, they put up a few Ghost Shields to keep both Humans out and the Ghosts in.

This drew some unwanted attention after some tourists saw the giant Glowng Green Building in the middle of an Illinois Town, and rightfully called the Justice League.

Now, the Justice League had tried to call the owners of the house, but nobody picked up the phone. (An incident with Jack and a Canoe had knocked most of their phones into the lake. They weren't even at the lake yet.)

When nobody picked up, they decided to investigate personally.

After getting into the House, they quickly found a door labeled "Labs: Do Not Enter (unless it we are late for Dinner)" and went into ignoring all the warnings.

They quickly regretted it.

[k1tty5]

the simplest words

[katydoodles]

I was looking through my unfinished stacks and I thought I should finish this one.

I’m glad I did finish it, I really did like the background and sketch.

[finehs]

It's difficult for you to say aloud, I know, so I won't ask you to. Rather, I would ask you to consider a proposal. Stay on permanently. 

[dukeofthomas]

I find the fact that the confrontation at the end of UTRH is often summarized as Jason asking Bruce to kill the Joker for him fascinating.

Because that's not what happened.

Jason holds a gun up to Joker's head, gives Bruce another, and tells him that if Bruce doesn't do something (shoot Jason), he will kill Joker.

Jason doesn't give the gun to Bruce so that he would shoot Joker. He isn't expecting Bruce to pull the trigger on the clown. He's asking Bruce to do nothing. To be inactive. Because that will still be a choice, and despite having done nothing, everybody clearly agrees that Bruce would still, at least in part, be responsible for Joker's death.

...And to me, this moment is a kind of- microcosm, of the rest of Jason's point. Because after being captured and carted off to Arkham, the villain will escape again, and will kill more people. The only way to truly prevent that from happening would be to kill them; Bruce refuses to do so, and I respect his right to choose such a thing for himself, but it is still a choice, and if we agree that Bruce's inaction during the confrontation would leave him at least partly responsible for the Joker's death, then we must also agree that his inaction in permanently preventing the Rogues from killing more people means he is also, partly, responsible for all of those deaths.

[slavhew]

charmed, i'm sure

[littler0b1n]

I am so normal about them

[ionomycin]

fishbone corset

[astronomodome]

I think it’s kind of crazy how Skizz’s arc in the life series is so integrally defined by his being a loyal soldier of the Red Army in third life, a position in which he felt comfortable and confident in his value to the server. The archetype he sees as the ideal team, one that not only protects each other but works for the wellbeing of the server, that template that he follows is the Red Army. Every season since, he falls into a leadership role whether he intends to or not, and every time he tries to recreate that formula with the team he leads. And here’s the thing: it never works.

In Last Life, team BEST’s first objective is to not only secure the enchanting table, but to make it free to use for everyone. Their goal here is to become the “heroes of the server” through this, and Skizz openly says that. However, any victories they achieve are plagued by the fact that… well… there never really was a team BEST. There’s a team BE and a team ST and they work together in theory, but as soon as there’s cracks in the foundation- a boogeyman here, an accidental death there, it falls apart (never all the way while Skizz is alive, but still). Skizz dies a lonely failure of a red life, wearing the initials of his team on his head and haunting them after he dies.

In Limited Life, he gets a chance to try again. Bdubs was the most obvious point of failure for BEST, so why not replace him with sweet and reliable Impulse? And yes, as a group, TIES works much better. Unfortunately, this season doesn’t go well for Skizz, and he’s in the weeds so to speak pretty much the whole time. But one of their crowning achievements- blowing up Bread Bridge- is rationalized by Skizz to his team as a heroic and charitable act. Another set of heroes. But not the strongest players out there. Skizz dies to keep it going just a little longer.

In Secret Life, he has the Heart Foundation, which differs a lot from what Skizz claimed it to be. On paper it’s three people, but in practice it’s just him and Tango (I love BigB but he really was not the most engaged with the group here). On paper Tango’s the leader, but Skizz can’t really keep from taking charge. Again, we get a charitable motive: using the heart-giving system for good (and profit, of course). And Skizz even has plans for when it goes south: they turn the heart’s smile upside-down and start killing. But even this plan fails; as in Last Life, people take advantage of the team’s kindness, and then the heart itself burns down before they get a chance to change it. Skizz dies trying and failing to right this wrong, even by proxy.

What makes this so so interesting is how formulaic it is. I don’t even mean that in a bad way. It’s fascinating how Skizz always, always falls into this pattern. Icarus reaches for the sun and, for his hubris, falls the same way every time. And Tango is there

[jonsnowunemploymentera]

Rhaegar Targaryen is easily one of GRRM’s best deconstructions of the genre and we don’t talk about it enough. He’s prince living in a world full of magic and wonder that has dwindled over time. His own family had a great monopoly on one of the most magical phenomena (dragons) to ever exist, but they lost this control over time and it was due to their own faults. But there’s an all encompassing hope that this magic, these dragons, will come back. They all live within the promise that it will all be back and with a huge bang. It’s all so romantic. Magical forces of ice and fire battling it out in a song.

Then there’s Rhaegar, a prince born for the sole purpose of being this song’s romantic hero. He already has his destiny mapped out and it will be a great one, greater than any other man who ever lived. It’s a song of ice and fire, and Rhaegar is its bard. You’d expect this to give him joy. Yet by all accounts, he was depressed as fuck. I think he’s unfairly earned the reputation of having an ego so big to think that he will be the hero….but that’s quite literally the point of his existence. He was born to be the hero. He paid the price at birth to be the hero. How can he revel and glory in this destiny when he has no say in it?

So it’s genuinely funny that when given the chance, Rhaegar immediately pivots to someone else taking on this burden. But how tragic for him that he cannot escape it too far. Because it will be none other than his own son who, under a “bleeding star”, is marked at conception for this great destiny without a say. More than his ego, Rhaegar is marked by the inability to escape this duty. His whole life is dedicated to fulfilling a duty he can never escape. He isn’t just a future king, prophecy dictates that the world’s survival is placed squarely on his shoulders. Even when he isn’t the hero, he’s now responsible for raising him…

…but then he makes one decision and it all comes crumbling like a pack of biscuits. He escapes this burden…but dies. And his successor dies too. And now the ones who will inherit his legacy are two people who never knew him. They never knew of his burdens, of this prophecy. But they too cannot escape its jaws. I think this does bring up some interesting questions about the nature of fate and destiny in the world of ice and fire. Can you really escape it? Rhaegar tried to, and paid the price for his defiance, but he never truly made it out because the burden instead jumped to the son (and sister) he never knew. Funny thing is that in a bizarre (and tragic, in its own way) twist of fate, this son was brought up entirely without the trappings of power that depressed Rhaegar. Rhaegar was a dazzling prince, Jon is a bastard. Rhaegar was marked by his great inheritance, Jon is marked by the lack thereof. Does fate say “well the first one got too depressed by having too much so let’s give the next one nothing?” Even Dany, who grows up a princess does not have the privileges that Rhaegar did. So how does upbringing craft a hero and the choices they make? Welll, GRRM had given us two versions of Rhaegar’s tragedy in Jon and Dany for us to see.

Rhaegar’s impact on the meta-narrative is honestly so massive. Like I’d put him right up there with Quentyn, Sansa, and Bran as one of the best genre deconstructions in the series and no one can tell me otherwise.

[prommytheus]

im going insane. heres the cyclical hell that i think apollo justice is caught in