#i don't see him whining

[carlossainzwho]

i lost a lot of respect for charles leclerc today.

we went car racing, charles. car racing.

[ladyinthebluebox]

wE wAnT cOmPaNiOnS tO bE mEaN aGaIn!!!!!!!!!!

my siblings in the maker, you can't handle Taash calling Emmrich a death mage couple times or [checks notes] ...asking Neve about her clothes [?????????????]

[thelovers-thedreamers-and-me]

whining

love that i cried for the first time this year (the year that not only did my father die and i haven't been able to even take time off to grieve, but i had two breakups, neither of which has really yet included an acknowledgement of the concrete ways my exes actually hurt me because i've been so fucked up all year i can't trust myself to take any actions in case i'm being irrational and mean) not because of any of that or anything else objectively bad that's happened, but because my birthday fucking sucked

[altocat]

As a fellow fan of ATLA and also heard how the comics kinda fucked up some characters but never read myself, what was wrong with Ursa?

Beware, LOTS of infodumping/rambling below.

Basically, Ursa is kind of the worst. And the writers aren't even aware of it.

You're probably familiar with Ursa as she's portrayed on the show. She was a kind, supportive mother to Zuko and she disappears suddenly in the night without warning. Absolutely no complaints there. She was a pretty mysterious character and was central to Zuko keeping his kind nature.

IN THE COMICS we find out that she was betrothed to Ozai against her will, but already had another love interest before him. Okay. No big deal, right? We then see that she played favorites just as much as Ozai did, with her neglecting Azula and Azula feeling increasingly obligated to lash out in order to get her mother's attention, even negative. There's some dramatic bullshit about Ursa forging the idea that Zuko is not really Ozai's son, and Ozai subsequently treating Zuko like he never was, even though he knows it's a ruse. Anyway, to make a long story short, Ursa poisoned Firelord Azulon and fled in the night in order to protect Zuko. Still no big deal, right? Okay, she was a neglectful mother towards Azula and probably contributed to a LOT of issues there later. But whatever.

So Ursa is out on her own, a fugitive. Does she bide her time and wait for the opportunity to sneak in to save her kids from what she KNOWS is an abusive madman? Does she use her political power as the Firelord's former wife and the granddaughter of Avatar Roku to slowly build allies for her cause? Does she do everything in her power to get a message out to her kids to come find her for whenever Ozai's reign of terror is over?

NO. Because she goes and finds her ex bf and hooks up with him. And then goes to a Face-changing spirit to alter her appearance so that she's never discovered. The catch? In order to change her face, she has to willingly give up all her memories and basically become a completely different person. So Ursa, mother of the year, decides SURE. THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT SHE'LL DO. She willingly chooses to abandon her kids and FORGET them so that she can change her identity and hook up with her bae for real. Oh, and they have another kid together. Because of course.

Years later, Zuko and go out to find her and are somehow able to solve the mystery that this random mom they've been talking to is actually his mother with no memories and a different face. Azula, btw, is fresh out of the asylum and is NOT having a good time, constantly hallucinating her mother, having manic border-suicidal episodes, and generally in pretty bad shape. If you recall in the show finale, Azula reveals via hallucination that she believes that Ursa always loved Zuko more than her and that Ursa perceives her to be a monster. Turns out, she was pretty validated in feeling this way, since even amnesia-Ursa herself seems to come to the conclusion that she didn't love Azula "enough" when Azula goes to confront her. Equally tragic is that Ursa now has a NEW and BETTER daughter who Zuko gets along with, making it all the more painful for Azula to process.

Azula eventually runs off just before the face-changing spirit comes to return Ursa's face and memories to her. Does Ursa spend subsequent comics looking for her seriously messed up daughter? Does Zuko struggle with the very real conflict that she willingly CHOSE to forget about her kids so she could have her happy little family without them? Of course not. No one calls her out on her selfishness. And she never looks for or mentions Azula ever again in pretty much every other issue that follows. Ursa constantly goes on and on about her trauma at the hands of Ozai, but the comics never take into account that she LEFT her kids to DEAL with that trauma WITHOUT her and probably was never coming back to get them.

So basically the moral of the story is that it's perfectly fine to leave your kids with your abusive partner as long as you're getting what YOU want. Oh, and that if you have a problematic child with mental health issues, you're right to ignore and replace them. Azula doesn't deserve anyone looking for her because she's "bad". Okay. Great.

Anyway, the Avatar comics are the worst. Like...the absolute worst.

[spectascopes]

draw ONE short and fat character from a piece of media as a skinny miss thing and I'm side eyeing. do it to TWO and I know you're just a bitch

[arashi-no-saxlphone]

I made the mistake of watching an Ant vod post nerfs and he is, of course, like "Nah it's my fault I lost I played poorly and covered the wrong options and I still habitually charge" as if that last complaint isn't literally like... fucking absurd to have to do at all LMAO. My brother in christ... I WATCHED the "new" Rainwater fail to pick up like the patch said it does like... 3 fucking times in the set.

I'm going to be so real: people whined and never learned the Axl matchup for 4 fucking years and are STILL PLAYING LIKE SHIT AGAINST HIM! It's so fucking absurd. I'm watching supposedly good players just ram their face into Axl not even TRYING to analyze the Axl and the way they're zoning or even do the most basic fucking counternavigation when an Axl is just spamming rensen. Over and over. I AM WATCHING PEOPLE GET HIT BY THE RENSEN AFTER OTG 2H! IN WHAT FUCKING UNIVERSE ARE YOU NOT BLOCKING A FUCKING MEATY 4 YEARS INTO THE FUCKING GAME?!

I'm so fucking sick dude. I'm fucking ill. My own fucking fault for caving and watching Axl vods on the new patch. Fuck me. Not a single one of you are seeing heaven. I will point out that there are at least some people who are saying they're not happy with the Axl changes either cause it just gutted his "sauce" so at least I have that. Not everyone has been lobotomized. Yet.

[xhanisai]

why miraculous should have been aimed for teens and older:

so that we get to see gabriel agreste brutally die on our screens with all the pain and suffering he deserves

[trans-xianxian]

I showed my housemate a picture of all of the available babies together and he was like that's a lot of babies and I was like well I'm not getting All of them that would be too many and he was like "honestly if you were getting all of them I would tell you no" and I know he was probably mostly joking but I'm still like. excuse me

[docmerlin]

sk8 fandom complaining abt adam existing in promotional art for the new stuff is like if one piece fans got mad every time we found out the next season has luffy in it

[pondslime]

I should be given an award every single time I successfully resist the urge to tag other ppl's gifsets w/the nastiest most vile horny bullshit. I should be an olympic gold medalist @ this point

[inamindfarfaraway]

Perhaps the funniest League of Legends character interaction that's also highly plausible in-universe, thematically appropriate and emotionally charged is Rell and Veigar teaming up.

They’re both extremely magically strong and skilled. Rell controls metal, a product of the earth from which she can directly rip ore. Veigar draws his celestial magic from the stars.

They both have dark, tragic backstories: because of their magical talent, they were taken into custody by powerful, corrupt Noxian authorities, isolated, abused and forced to use their magic harmfully for a long time, at least relative to their respective lives. This traumatized and broke them so much that they now see inflicting pain as the only thing they’re good at, even capable of. They have no friends. They've never known or have forgotten what it feels like to be loved, joyful or carefree. All they were left with once free was so much guilt and grief and so much power. From that, they have forged new identities - roles to play - built around singular, combative ambitions that they cannot imagine lives or futures beyond. Rell identifies as a gritty, edgy antihero, having noble intentions but using brutal, destructive and downright gruesome methods. Veigar identifies as a villain, but is good at heart despite not comprehending this himself.

They’re both currently roaming around the Noxian countryside in order to find and defeat as many powerful, corrupt Noxian authorities who mistreat people as they can. Rell does this to make the guilty pay for their crimes and liberate and protect the oppressed. Veigar does it to replace the authority and prove that his evil is greater and cooler than theirs, but in practice doesn’t really bother hurting anyone innocent and just ends up making the guilty pay for their crimes and liberating and protecting the oppressed.

They’re both connected to Mordekaiser, and would be primary enemies of him holding personal grudges if his plot about trying to dominate Runeterra is ever developed. Rell was such an important project for the Black Rose because they hoped that she would be able to defeat Mordekaiser. He embodies everything she stands against. Mordekaiser was Veigar’s captor and abuser, responsible for who he is today. Rell can manipulate metal; Veigar wields incredible cosmic magic; and Mordekaiser is a magical suit of armour, so if anyone can finish him off, it’s these two working together.

Rell is practical, pragmatic, cynical and consumed by bloodthirsty, vengeful rage. Veigar clings to and imitates an immature ideal of Villainy, fashioning his outfit after Mordekaiser’s stereotypical fantasy evil overlord aesthetic, his behaviour after all the most theatrical tropes that archetype can be associated with and having very dramatic and flashy magic, but inwardly lacks the cruelty (not to mention dignity) to back that presentation up.

They both want the Noxian people to respect them as a threat. Rell has wanted posters and become widely feared by the elite army less than a year since her escape. Veigar has been ‘conquering’ for centuries and is still not taken seriously.

Their respective magic colours are yellow and purple, and the rest of both of their colour palettes is grey, silver and black.

Everything about Rell is played completely straight. Almost everything about Veigar is played for comedy.

Rell could come across a village that Veigar has seized and accidentally benefitted, like Boleham in his story on the website, and try to challenge him. Or they could both arrive to kill the same tyrannical warlord at the same time. She realizes that he is a) really bad at being bad, b) just a silly little guy and c) an extremely useful asset to her quest.

So she directs him at the Black Rose and they go and utterly fuck Noxis up while helping the downtrodden. There's so much comedy to get out of their contrasting personalities and perspectives. Rell always acts like the protagonist of a grim, action-packed young adult dystopian series and Veigar is standing right next to her emanating campy children's cartoon villain energy; they both think the story is a different genre and the acting and tone should reflect that. This premise is hysterical with the proper execution.

But it isn't just funny! They can genuinely bond and learn, or in Veigar's case remember, what loving and being loved is, and begin to process their trauma and help each other cope with their C-PTSD and be kinder to themselves and have fun and become fulfilled. And then kill Mordekaiser, whose return is one of the subplots. And then live happy, safe, peaceful lives together, because they were never meant for all this violence.

Other subplots besides Mordekaiser include LeBlanc, Rell's mother and the Black Rose's operations; the wider Noxian politics they tie into; Samirah hunting Rell; Annie also wandering around Noxis causing trouble and eventually getting adopted by Rell as a little sister (they deserve it); maybe the story of a Yordle who knew Veigar before and thus can supply some of his backstory that he's forgotten, a 'normal Yordle' foil to him; and generally lots of Noxian and Yordle worldbuilding and lore.

While I'm talking about Veigar, here are my ideas for a redesign of him, because his design is... not that great:

As yordles are generally animalistic or at least furry, he strongly resembles a black cat, with gold eyes with slit pupils and a dark purple nose. Black cats are associated with the supernatural, magical arts and misfortune, they're bad omens to some, but they're also fluffy little babies. He is covered in fur. You want to scratch his checks. You want to kiss his little forehead. He's so adorable and he hates it. His large pointy ears, visible under the brim of his hat, move to signal his emotions for more expressive animation. They both have notches, which help him look pitiable and allude to his past as a prisoner and victim of abuse. He has big 'weathered street cat hissing and growling at you when you try to pet it because it's reflexively afraid of people and shows that through aggression' energy.

@ohnoitstbskyen's idea in his "What's the deal with Veigar?" video that Veigar's face (his cute kitty face!) is never fully in the shadow of his hat despite him trying to look mysterious and ominous is brilliant. He’s very lively, since he acts like a classic cartoon villain who’s so excited and gleeful about being evil, so he has a habit of jostling his hat or lifting his head to reveal his whole face and then hastily pulling the hat back down.

His robe no longer has the spiked metal hem and is of a soft, loose, flowing fabric. It’s dark indigo with silver sparkles all over it like he’s wearing the night sky, in homage to the stars he draws his power from. Except the beautiful pattern is interrupted and partly obscured by a leather belt - not spiked and black, a bolder and more ‘evil’ colour than brown and a Noxian colour - with a tasteless spiky silver buckle that clashes with the stars. I love what TB Skyen said about the armour and spikes working best as a parody of Mordekaiser’s aesthetic, so I want those aspects to look tacked on and out of place. To feel wrong. Inadvertently on Veigar’s part, but deliberately in a meta sense. Between the robe, his big purple wizard hat matching his nose that also makes his body look smaller and cuter and the black cat associations, you’ve got a perfectly good yordle celestial mage design; but the influence of Mordekaiser is intruding on it, corrupting it, even. That is the clear conflict of this design. While the robe is comfortable, the armour doesn’t appear to be. This impression is helped by it all being at least a little oversized, because Noxian armour doesn’t come in yordle size and therefore Veigar has cobbled his together out of scraps he scavenged (I mean, he STOLE, how wicked) and he isn’t really a great blacksmith. His boots aren’t clown shoes or anything, but they’re big enough that his attempt at an imposing villainous stride is awkwardly clunky. They could have black leather straps on them to hold them tighter than their metal fasteners will allow. His spiked pauldrons were cut out of human ones and still jut out too much, one of them having an irregular shape that gives him a dash of Noxian asymmetry and marks him further as a flawed imitation of a fantasy supervillain. The message that he’s incompetent at something and did it anyway out of passion, perhaps not even realizing his mistakes or at least too proud to acknowledge them, makes him come across as comedic and yet an endearingly earnest, hardworking underdog, and adds to the surprise of his genuine incredible cosmic power - he couldn’t learn to smith properly before forging his own armour, but he can command the energy of the stars to smite you? Yeah. That’s Veigar. There’s one silver ring around the base of his hat that has five spikes on it, thick, long and evenly positioned so that from above, they form a star shape. Specifically, an inverted star with one spike pointing directly forward. Symbolism! His belt buckle could also be an inverted star to establish that as a motif of his; it’s spiky, but more personal and iconic than just spikes themselves.

Moving onto Rell... she has her sigils. I don't know why she doesn't in her model or artwork, they're such a crucial part of her character design! Her biography and short story both bring them up. There are even bare sections of her arms, which would only make sense if her sigils were visible in them because it's impractical and she's so averse to vulnerability, but the sigils are missing? What? Why, Riot? So yeah, in my redesign she has sigils right down both her arms. A few more recent ones are on her back (symbolic of her betrayal by her family, the Black Rose and the government). They're always hidden, even in her lighter armour on horseback, as she's deeply uncomfortable around the concept of being exposed and seeing them herself. We and Veigar only see them in dramatic character exploration scenes when a) she feels safe enough to take her armour off, b) she needs to due to injury or to hide her identity or c) someone else damages or removes her armour. Taking TB Skyen's advice again, her outer armour and therefore horse are spikier and less polished and regular, products of her undiluted heartbroken rage in the moment she destroyed the academy. They're highly distinctive, almost organic-feeling and definitely don't look like the work of a smith.

[rosecoloredknight]

these last three days have been extremely overwhelmingly suffocating and depressing. I haven't been able to go for a jog/walk and I started stress eating as well. Despite that, I'm trying my best, but I just want to cry or disappear in my bed for a while but I can't, I won't. I don't want to fail. sigh. I gotta find a way to end my week on a.. optimistic or happy note.

I might not do a "selfie of the week" since I feel super duper ugly and unmotivated, but who cares. Here's to next week.

I hope y'all are having a better week than me. Keep looking up 😊😊

[monstrsball]

i log onto instagram. i see people talking about how oikawa is sooooo sensitive. i log off instagram.

[plexippusangel]

I either need to accept that I am just a way stronger person than this friend and can handle way more while still being able to engage with the world as a person, or recognize excuses as excuses, accept that I am not valued and be done or. Maybe both. Idk. It might be somewhere between the two. I am just sick of regular life stuff rendering him unable to spend any time with me, and of him being unable to bear any of the details of my life, when I would move mountains to rekindle our friendship. Though I'm starting to wonder if I still would.

[kingspuppet]

It irks me when people shit on Goro and the argument on why they're doing so makes it feel as if we didn't play the same game at all. It's even worse when people shit on him just to start drama because they know he's a relatively popular character.

I honestly don't care if you dislike Goro. It's entirely valid to feel that way towards him. He's an antagonist and it's natural that it'll happen, and even if he wasn't sometimes people just don't vibe with a character and that's completely okay. I have characters I feel that way towards, and some of them are main characters depicted as the "good guys." You're not going to like every character you come across no matter what their status is in the plot.

But here's the thing: you don't have to be an ass about it. There's respectful ways to dislike the character even as you talk about them in public spaces. You can be critical of the character without actively hating on people that do like/enjoy them. Post a thoughtful discussion!! Or better yet if you really hate the character and have nothing to say but you just wanna piss people off? Keep your mouth shut!! Complain in private!! Just don't be an ass by targeting or attacking the people that like the character. It serves no purpose and it doesn't make you look cool.

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

we all clear on that point now? yeah? yeah??? good.