#i figured it out. mostly. kind of.

[raiiny-bay]

kiddos!

(used this old render as a ref)

[hinamie]

please any atla gojo lore. anything please im begging on my knees hands pressed together like im praying to god

I really wish I could anon :'> we tried to think of non-spoiler-y lore we could share but turns out every aspect of his character is either a. major spoilers or b. a near-direct echo of canon but make it atla flavoured (ie. his relationships w/ geto/shoko/nanami/haibara; him being The Strongest(tm) in-universe, etc). I guess there's technically the satosugu betrothal but that's already Public Knowledge given that there's art, plus the details are (surprise!) more spoilers

so ...yeah.... unfortunately you'll just have to wait to learn more about him in the fic :"> please accept this compensatory art as apology even though i am Not sorry in fact the pleas of the commonfolk make me cackle

jjk atla!au with @philosophiums

[galactic-rhea]

First. || Second

Empire strikes back

Ah yes, finally I made the next part of this awful thing. I lost a lot of energy for it after i lost the work of several pannels and had to start from zero, but hey, here it is.... :]

[bacchuschucklefuck]

species medley ft. gorgug and riz

[shield-and-saber]

what's that? oh yeah, i'm just thinking about how sol and osha's relationship is quite literally every iteration of relationship that anakin has with the people he loves

"if you wish, you will train as my padawan" / "i take anakin as my padawan learner"

"mae is alive" "i believe you" / "anakin, you have to trust me now" "ahsoka, i do trust you"

(and also, "i didn't do it" / "i'm not going to take the fall for something i didn't do")

i mean. do i even need to say it. the master killed at the hands of his apprentice

"i did it because i love-" "stop talking" / "come back, i love you" "liar!"

(also, "it's okay, osha" / "there's good in him")

literally, love that becomes so twisted by attachment, greed, and selfishness that it leads to death

[kit-screams-into-the-future]

please draw werewolf doc when u have the chance

stick to physics, doc

transcript, bc my handwriting is shoddy but i'm too lazy to fix it:

DOC: duhuhhhh- Marty! MARTY: Yeah Doc what's up? DOC: You know that thing I was working on with Einstein? MARTY: Yeah, what about it? DOC: Well, uhhhh. How do I put this- MARTY: Oh my god, Einstein! MARTY: He's not- DOC: No, no, Einstein's perfectly alright, don't worry. It's just- DOC: There's been a... recent development. As you can see. MARTY: MARTY: (the floor calls to him.) DOC: Marty-

bonus doodles:

[flowerakatsuka]

pov : you're the rest of the sextuplets meeting kuroba for the first time.

[4thwallbreakerdraws2]

SHOWSTARS

Working on the asks again, but have this colored piece of SMG16 and RTV!Puzzles for now. Their duo name is SHOWSTARS (or BLUESCREEN if we take the angst path).

Please note that SMG16 belongs to @birdy-four and that these two are meant to be seen as STRICTLY PLATONICAL!

Anyway enough yapping!

[bluuscreen]

working on my own little “the master doesn’t die and joins the doctor after lotl” au so here’s voyage of the damned outfits if i got to do the costume design [plus a couple silly bonus sketches under the cut]

[prolibytherium]

I never touched it but I feel like i only ever hear positive things said about song of achilles.. in (rough strokes at least) what makes it dogshit to you?

Okay it's been a while since I actually read it so some of this might not be spot on accurate. Sorry if at any point I say 'the book never does xyz' and it actually does once or twice but I think my underlying criticisms are accurate

-Patroclus is made into like this soft gentle tender quivering little yaoi boy. In the source text, he's shown as compassionate and moved by the suffering of his own men (and apparently having some medical skill, tending to the wounded in the camp), but very much invested n combat and very, very good at it (pages worth of descriptions of the guys he's killing left and right). In this, the arguably more complex character from this 8th century BC text is flattened into Being A Healer, he doesn't want to go to war he just wants to help people, he only goes because Achilles has to but he doesn't want to fight he's a HEALER he's a gentle lover NOT A FIGHTER who just wants to help he just wants to help everyone around him he HEALS while Achilles is a doomed warrior who is so good at fighting and KILLING its a DICHOTOMY GUYS!!!LIKE THE BEAUTIFUL SUN AND MOON DOOMED LOVERS SO SAD patocluse HEALER . (I Think he's specifically characterized as being BAD at fighting but might be misremembering)

-I don't remember much about Achilles' characterization I think it just makes him less of a jackass while not adding anything of interest and levels out into being mad boring.

-Not getting into the literal millenias old debate whether the mythological characters Achilles and Patroclus were being characterized as some type of lover by the original oral sources of the Iliad or its Homeric writers. We will never know. We don't even know what (if any) culturally accepted conventions of male homosexuality existed in bronze age Greece (we know much more about their descendants). But there are some interesting elements of their characterization in this direction, with how unconventional their relationship is WITHIN the text itself- Patroclus is described as cooking for Achilles and his guests (very specifically a woman/wife's job), Achilles chides Patroclus like a father, but there's also scene where Achilles' mourning of him directly echoes a passage of Hector's wife mourning her husband, Patroclus is explicitly stated to Achilles' elder, and is overall treated as his equal or near-equal, closest confidant and most beloved friend (to the point that pederastic classical Greeks would debate over who was erastes (older authority figure lover) and who was eromenos (adolescent 'beloved')- many took it as a given that this text depicted their present-day cultural norms of homosexual behavior but it existed so Outside of these norms that it had to be debated who was who). Their relationship is non-standard both within the text and to the descendants of the civilization that wrote them.

Basically what I'm saying is this book had opportunities to like, explore the unconventionality of the relationship (being presented here as explicitly lovers), explore the dynamics of why Patroclus wants to do 'women's work' (besides being a tenderhearted softboy), the weird dynamics where they take on paternal roles to each other but also roles of wives, how they feel about being this way, and just kind of Doesn't. Which I guess isn't an intrinsic fault (because it omits much of what I just talked about to begin with). it's just like.... Lame. This book takes jsut abandons everything interesting about the source text in favor of flattening it into bland Doomed Yaoi.

-The conflict that sets off the core story of the Iliad is Achilles and Agamemnon fighting over Briseis, an enslaved Trojan woman taken by Achilles as a war-trophy, Achilles spends most of the story moping because he was dishonored by his 'trophy' being taken. Achilles and Patroclus and everyone else are raping their captives, all the women in the story are either captured Trojans (or in the case of the free women within the walls of Troy, soon to be enslaved, and are slave owners themselves). Slavery as an institution and extreme patriarchal conventions are innate to the text and reflective of the context in which it was developed. You cannot avoid it.

But obviously you can't have your soft yaoi boys doing this, so the author has them capturing women to Protect Them from the other men. Their slaves are UNDER THEIR PROTECTION and VERY SAFE (and they might even Like And Befriend Them but I might be misremembering that. Briseis does though). Our heroes have apparently absorbed none of the ideals of the culture they exist in and the author seems to think "they're gay and aren't sexually attracted to their captives" would translate to them being outright benevolent (also as if wartime sexual violence is just about attraction and not part of a wider spectrum of violent acts to dehumanize and brutalize an accepted 'enemy')

In the source text, Briseis mourns Patroclus as being the kindest to her of her captors, who tried to get her a slightly better outcome by getting her married to Achilles (which probably would be the Least Bad of all possible outcomes for a woman in that situation, becoming a legal wife instead of a slave), and wonders what will happen to her now that he's gone. This is a really really sad, horrible, and compelling dynamic which could be fleshed out in very interesting ways but is instead is tossed entirely aside in favor of them being Besties. Like brother and sister.

All of the above pisses me off so much. If you don't want to engage in the icky parts of ancient/bronze age Greece then don't write a retelling of a story taking place in bronze age Greece. I'm not gonna get mad at children's adaptations of Greek myths or silly fun stories loosely based on them for omitting the rape and slavery but it is SO fundamental to the Iliad. If you're not willing to handle it, either fully omit it or better yet set your Iliad inspired yaoi in an invented swords-and-sandals setting where you can have all your heartbreaking tragic doomed lovers plot beats and not have to clumsily write around the women they're brutalizing.

-The author didn't seem to know what to do with Thetis and she made her just like, Achilles bitch mother who spends most of the story trying to separate our Yaoi Boys (iirc her disguising Achilles as a girl and hiding him on Scyros is made to be more about getting him away from Patroclus than trying to save her son from his prophesied doom in the Trojan War) until she sees how much they loooove each other and I think helps Patroclus' spirit get to the afterlife or something in the end?

-This is more of a personal taste gripe but it has that writing style I loathe where the prose feels less like a story and more like an attempt to string together Deep Beautiful Hard Hitting Poetic Lines that will look great as excerpts on booktok (might predate booktok but same vibe). It's all very Pretty and Haunting and Deep but feels devoid of real substance.

I really like The Iliad and The Odyssey in of themselves. They're fascinating historical texts that give a window into how 8th century BC Greeks told their stories, saw their world, interpreted their ancestors, etc. And genuinely I think these texts have 'good' characters, there's a lot of complexity and humanity to it.

WRT the Iliad- all of the main Achaeans are pretty fascinating, the one singular part where Briseis Gets To Talk and laments her situation is great, Achilles fantasizing that all of the Trojans AND the Achaeans die so he and Patroclus alone can have the glory of conquering Troy (wild), Achilles asking to embrace Patroclus' shade and reaching out for him but it's immaterial (and the shade being sucked back underground with a 'squeak' (the squeak kinda gets me it's disturbing and sad)), Hecuba talking about wanting to tear out Achilles' liver and eat it in a (taboo, exceptioally pointed) expression of rage and grief for his mutilation of her son's corpse, just one tiny line where the enslaved women performing ritual wailing for their dead captors are described as using it as an outlet to 'grieve for their own troubles' is heartrending, etc. A lot of grappling with anger and grief and the inevitability of death, a lot of groundwork laid for characters that could be very interesting when expanded upon in the framework of a conventional novel.

And Song Of Achilles really doesn't do much with all that. I know a lot of my gripes here are kind of just "It's different from the Iliad", I would have thought of it as mostly mediocre and forgettable rather than infuriating if it wasn't a retelling (and I DEFINITELY have strong biases here). But I think the ways in which it is different are less just a product of a retelling (of course there's going to be omissions and differences) and more a complete and utter disinterest in vast majority of its own subject matter, to the book's detriment. I think a retelling has a point when it EXPANDS on the source, or provides a NEW ANGLE to the source. This book doesn't Really do either, it just shaves off the complexity of its source material, renders the characters into a really boring archetype of a gay relationship, and gives very little else. Its content boils down to a middling tragic romance that has been inserted into the hollowed out defleshed skeleton of the Iliad.

Bottom line: I definitely would not be as mad about it if I wasn't familiar with the source material but I think it's fair to expect a retelling to Engage with/expand on its source, and I also think it's weak purely on its own merits. This book was set up to disappoint Me specifically.

[thedreadvampy]

sometimes I forget that my experience has been. um. not 'your experiences are not universal' vibes but more like 'your experiences are EXTREMELY atypical'

[uzukali]

Hello roshambo

[viridianv0id]

fuck it its 11:34pm when i started writing this u fuckers get the Gabriel post

and oh boy. the word infatuated - fuck even obsessed - cant describe what he feels towards v1

because how the fuck to you describe the feeling of - whatever happened in 6-2 - to anyone else when you can't even describe it to yourself??

Gabriel sure can't. i dont think he'll ever be able to fully wrap his mind around how he exactly feels for V1 and surely after some time - if he lives that is - and more encounters with it would only send him deeper into his obsession

he doesn't understand how a machine of all things can grasp so tightly at his attention without it even knowing it does - or maybe it does v1 surely isnt letting that on its got its own shit to work out - even after gluttony Gabriel hasn't been able to stop thinking about V1 and their fights

and after 6-2 when he goes off to think and realizes the whole issue with the council he found a new faith almost - someone else to put his devotion into - would it save him from losing the fathers light? no one knows. does he still worship V1 in any way he can? absolutely

he hates the machine. he admires it. he wants it dead. he wants to hold it. he wants to watch it writhe in pain while he tears it limb from limb yet he cannot bring himself to want to hurt it.

his devotion is strange - but powerful and strong.

[trevisos]

i think some of the trouble i’m having with figuring magpie out is that i initially planned them to live in a world where elves are oppressed and the crows are an organization that trains children to kill so rigorously that many die before becoming proper assassins and until ~10 years ago the majority of mages lived locked in towers because the general population found them too frightening to live freely and bioware kind of smoothed out many of these edges in veilguard and now i don’t have like. any of those hooks i expected to have to anchor magpie as a Person In The World. i mean granted the mage thing was always going to be less of a big deal bc ik the culture around mages in antiva was different even when the circles Did exist but the other stuff i like… idk i guess i didn’t Expect the whole elven oppression thing to be so smoothed over and sanitized. but it’s barely mentioned?? bellara straight up was like “will people dislike elves after this?” as if they don’t already? the shadow dragons are fighting slavery in tevinter, a thing that has historically happened Mostly To Elves, and yet that’s never mentioned directly. as an elf rook i never get to have an opinion on being an elf in minrathous. i don’t Get to tell bellara that they already hate us. i recognize it was prob wishful thinking but i had hoped we could play a smidge more with the dynamic of being a city elf contending not only with the fact that the elven gods you’ve never worshipped are real but also that they’re Evil. instead every other character talks to magpie as if these are her gods too and they’re not!! they never were! but there’s never really an option to outright say that! the only chance i’ve had so far to say they’re not my gods was worded as if i rejected them for being tyrants with no option to acknowledge that i’ve NEVER worshipped them?? as if city elves no longer exist to bioware when like. to Me that was the most interesting part of elves!

and obvs i figured the crows would be humanized a little more but it really does feel like everyone there has Chosen to be an assassin and could leave if they wanted. the fledgling jacobus is treated with like. kid gloves by both heir And the two talons present which is not exactly consistent with Training So Grueling It Kills Children? this is a much less big deal for many reasons (including that there is definitely a certain Lens the crows are allowing you to see them through as an outsider (and/or because you have outsiders with you for a crow rook) that may easily conceal many of the realities of the org. and also bc it’s just not a big deal) but it is still kind of baffling to come up against when i came into the game as zevranlover69

[kit-screams-into-the-future]

help i can't stop drawing this guy

[elfsyellowflowerzart]

take two of yesterdays little doodle, using the ref this time