#i forgot how much i missed doing these !!

[fantasymuses]

What Shatters you?

Yosuke

betrayal.

you are so tired of giving your trust away, only to have it thrown back in your face... your heart has been broken, again and again, by those you've mistakenly believed in. "perhaps this time will be different", you say. my dear, it won't. your heart is too gullible for the cruel world around you

Kokichi

exhaustion.

you have tried to be Atlas for far too long. your legs tremble and shoulders creak beneath the weight of the world you carry. every step forward is a battle, yet you soldier on... for what? when will you learn that you are allowed to lower your heavy burdens?

Tagged by: @eris-the-phantom-thief

Tagging: Anyone who wants too!

[dragonseeds]

do you think dany knew what she was doing when she hatched her dragons or was it just an accident?

oh yes i think she knew exactly what she was doing. the magic in her blood and the eggs and the fire was speaking to her, coming through in her dragon dreams—especially that last fever dream after her miscarriage. i think she knew it was possible before because she could feel the eggs stirring and the magic waking up (and she was already connecting with drogon and drawing strength from him), but it was mirri maz duur who actually taught her how to do it.

i love that what she’s actually doing is never explicitly stated, yet everything she’s doing saying and thinking gives her away. like she swears to jorah she doesn’t intend to die with drogo, she directly compares herself to aegon, she places the eggs on the pyre and tells mirri maz duur that she’s going to take her life because only death can pay for life, etc., but the closest dany ever comes to directly saying it is when it’s done and the last dragon is about to hatch:

like calling herself mother of dragons and then calling them her children is unequivocal, but before that grrm’s building the suspense and creating this heady wild momentum. it feels very similar to reading her wake the dragon fever dream, and provides such a great insight into her character. the space in the narrative where she doesn’t acknowledge what she’s doing or exactly why she’s doing it is where the magic lives, and it also gives her a place to hide any lingering uncertainty or fear, while still making it clear that she understands what’s happening: that she is in fact making it happen.

but like speaking of accidents, i’m obsessed with the difference between dany’s success and egg’s flop tragedy. she uses her husband’s funeral pyre, the husband whose life she traded her son’s for, to wake the dragons (including herself) and creates life from death. aegon v tried to hatch dragon eggs during rhaegar’s birth (the child he and jaehaerys ii traded rhaella’s happiness and agency for) and instead made a pyre of summerhall and most of his family. rhaegar was the last dragon, born in fire, and now it’s her—but it was always her and he always had to die. “the face within was her own.” crazy. insane.

i’m sure people have pointed this out before, but the magic here always makes me think of this line from the last unicorn: “real magic can never be made by offering up someone else’s liver. you must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back.” grrm’s use of magic is very similar, just as the unicorn and dany are similar, and i think it’s very possible that other attempts to hatch dragons in the past failed in part because whoever was trying didn’t understand this (and also because they were a. men and b. not daenerys lol). magic has a price, and it’s always high. this is one of the hardest lessons dany has to learn, and she thanks mirri maz duur for it in the end, because she understands that it had to be her own child, her womb, her husband, her sun and his fire that’s really hers burning someone’s life away—and this whole time, the entire book up until this point, she’s been cracking open like the moon, like the eggs on the pyre, and then she joins them in the fire.

[dukeofthomas]

"Jason just needs to see things from his family's perspective and understand how much they love him (despite them never actually communicating or showing him through their actions)" is out. "The batfamily putting a single bit of effort into understanding Jason and reconciling with him on his own terms" is in.

[peridots-pixiwolf]

[Start ID. A redraw of the official icons of the ten named slugcats from Rain World, arranged in two rows: Survivor, Monk, Hunter, Nightcat, and Gourmand in the first, Artificer, Rivulet, Spearmaster, Saint and Enot/Inv in the second. Each is drawn in roughly the same pose as in the original art and fitted with speculative interpretations of their biology, and the second image is a “dead” version of this. For example, all ten have slug-like rhinophores in place of ears, cuttlefish-like colorful eyes with strangely-shaped pupils, cephalopod-like beak "teeth", expressive barbels or oral tentacles at the corners of mouths, spiny radulas, and the frilly mantle fringes of sea slugs, though otherwise their faces are squishy, simple and mammalian-shaped.

Cream-colored Survivor and yellow Monk both share triangular, bicolored spots matching their eyes (which are tan and brown, and two shades of blue, respectively), small, bumpy fringes, and relatively neutral looks on their faces. Defensive-looking Hunter is mostly a dull orange-pink, though their blobby fringe is a more violent red and their back is purple and marred with lumps. Nightcat is navy blue and flecked with dots of yellow and teal, their rolled rhinophores are a lighter blue, and their shading fractures into stars in some places. Gourmand is almost uniformly tan, their wide, very ruffly white mantle fringe bordered by a spray of white spots, and their beak sticks out from either corner of their smile. Primarily red Artificer, snarling, has yellow markings of multiple sorts, a prominent yellow dewlap and their characteristic dark scar taking out a chunk of its face. Rivulet is a darker blue than usual, with long barbels, red gills and rings, countershading, and a cheerful expression, sticking out their radula. Spearmaster is purple with orange accents, eyes and spots, a large fringe and spines down their back. Saint’s green caryophyllidia are marked by small, yellow diamonds, and their long, thin radula extends far below them. Enot is decorated with mottled red stripes, blue patches, yellow stars, and an uneven and almost cartoonish imitation of blush, though generally the same deep blue as Nightcat, a passive or almost slightly smug look on their face and their rolled rhinophores out to either side.

In the second image, nine of the slugcats’ eyes are crossed out, indicating that these are death icons. They look fairly the same, with mostly expression differences. Survivor is caught in the beginning of a threat display, a karma flower sprouts from Monk’s side, Hunter is burdened with overgrowing, purple and blue rot, Nightcat’s rhinophores are pinned back, and Gourmand looks mildly disheartened. For the final row, Artificer bites its radula between small plumes of smoke, Rivulet drops their expression, Spearmaster looks very startled, Saint looks almost entirely the same besides half-open eyes and their markings greater in number, and Enot grins confusedly. End ID]

If you'll excuse the unusually lengthy ID: the arena meme introduced by @pansear-doodles at long last after a nearly year-long wip status (or, rather, finished a month ago today to honor my own first time playing it!)

Design notes and shout-outs under cut! :]

The following people are some of those who’ve inspired my designs most since I started this eight months ago (or just inspired me to get a little weirder with slugcat biology), among many others for sure, and I thank them for it–but this is simply to bring attention to artists I find cool, and in no way an obligation to interact or anything :]

> @saturncoyote , @carpsoup , @charseraph , @gallusgalluss , @bitsbug , @dopscratch , and @0hmanit (and a special mention to dddeerbo and hunterlonglegs, who’ve since deactivated)!

Survivor: Surprisingly the hardest to pin down the colors for, since nothing with its sibling's palette seemed to match up right (I did have to add in a little blue somewhere for Monk, the beginning of making it clear how much I’m simply going based off of vibes for the colors of scug innards). I consider them, Monk and Gourmand to be part of the same gene pool of slugcats, and even possibly the same colony even if the latter isn't really related, so took a bit of Gourmand's coloring and fit them in with their inspiration: Goniobranchus verrieri. They serve as a bit of an introduction to my ideas of scug traits (i find it really fun how many people have thought to add so many silly sluglike fixtures of biology completely independent of me, buuut here I’m mostly talking about species variation), and like in-game they’re pretty average! They, Monk and Hunter have a couple scars sourced from a piece of Joar's concept art that I'm failing to find, those across the bridge of the nose, under the eyes, and across the rhinophores, respectively, and my Survivor interpretation features many on the back of the neck, as a result of survived lizard bites.

Monk: Their coloring is primarily based off the fact that I associate them with blue fruits, honestly, a bit because I was compelled to establish a familiarity with Rivulet, and lastly inspired by the spots of Goniobranchus kuniei (and geminus, less important to me as one of my characters is a kuniei instead, but more fitting). Between the yellow + blue and the circular marking in the center of their face, they’re meant to bear a little resemblance to an iterator that shares similarities with the characterization I’ve given them, and similar coding of her sibling can be seen on Survivor’s markings around the eyes. As both a “default” slugcat and one whose campaign I haven’t played, though, I can’t say I have much more to point out about em.

Hunter: The whole rot thing made for a really fun time drawing them, and while the color change on their back is a result of this, it’s also an excuse to relate them to Babakina festiva, arguably my favorite sea slug (mostly for sentimental purposes). And to Spearmaster, a fellow messenger slugcat, and it serves as a gradient between Hunter’s pink and the “traditional” color of Rot seen in the DLLs. Aside from their affliction, they’d actually be the plainest in terms of design, as they don’t have any patterns or quirks of body type, just the red + purple and strange lumps + possible malnutrition. I can’t remember if NSH had created them in particular or just...caught + released or something, but it probably wouldn’t be strange for a lab-grown slugcat to be simple like that.

Gourmand: Like the two above, they’re rather plain in terms of coloring and adaptation, and like the two above, I find that fun. I decided it would be nice to avert the “all slugcats being of the same body type, and Gourmand’s out of place as the exception” thing by just...adding more fat to all of them, really. I did want to emphasize their sheer bulk even so, both fat and muscular (not like I couldn’t have still gone further with it, of course, but slugcat anatomy can be a little obfuscating sometimes, and they were intended to look rather plush considering personal size headcanons and therefore the lack of proper gravity), and the thick and flounced mantle looked like a good addition, as per their sea slug Glossodoris hikuerensis. Unlike Survivor and Monk, I didn’t attempt to hold their resemblance to any particular other character (which means a little less to balance out the “default gene pool” thing), so those are all the design notes I have for em.

Artificer: The second slugcat I’ve ever played, or finished the campaign of, my favorite for at least a long time, and the first thing I did was give them yellow accents, the shape of which have troubled me slightly (not quite like the spots or stripes of the others). They’re both a little more appealing and more explosive-looking to me, and considering how early on I played Arti, actually present in some of my older art. It does give them a little resemblance to Saint (completely intentional, two slugcats with strange relations to karma), as well as the fact that its radula is green for familiarity with one of its children (at some point it was going to have all-green markings, even!). I’m generous with their scars, partly because it was fun to overemphasize the one on their face and partly because it does seem like a reckless slugcat, on top of the dangers of its explosive abilities–I’ll probably just keep adding more forever. Mostly-red sea slugs aren’t too common, but Hexabranchus sanguineus works for sure. The ridged, yellow dewlap can expand for combustion purposes, or something along those lines. Arti’s where I began experimenting with a lot of the mildly-offkilter features seen in my interpretation of slugcats, as they’ve once again been a favorite from the start.

Rivulet: I've obviously given other slugcats spots, deeply enjoy the bubbly-soda markings of other peoples' slugcats, and thought seal riv would be cute. Despite not too closely resembling it, they've been government-assigned Hypselodoris bennetti, for color reasons and for a couple sentimental ones. Originally, the colors of every scug were meant to match up with the custom colors I gave them at the beginning of their campaigns, (though Arti, Gourm and Spearmy are the only three who actually apply here, since I've only played through half the slugcats: I gave arti the yellow as mentioned above, gourm brown eyes and spearmy light pink spears, furthered by the outskirts pearl accompanying me and that palette all the way to moon. Tolerance training for eternity in hell cause I already knew about the maroon pearl quest). I initially gave them the colors of the bi flag for fun... but with the limited palette of this image, I was left without pink for a while and decided to see how they'd look in red. I then realized how they now wonderfully matched Moon, and besides, red's a sort of camouflage in deep water! As a side-note, the difference between their eyes and those of others always bothered me a little for anatomical purposes, and the cephalopod eyes were probably influenced by this!

Spearmaster: Inspired as much as possible by @notyourfunnyman ’s wonderful spearmy: designed in a way that helps it fit in with scavengers, at least between the long sensory tentacles, big ruff, back spines and slightly thin/distended anatomy, a form of defensive mimicry. I always had annulate rhinophores in mind, for a little diversity sure, but mostly because the shape reminds me of radio antennae and communication towers (seems fitting for the comms array and being a messenger slugcat)! I started searching for a real-life slug to give them just by looking up their rhinophore shape...and was met immediately and coincidentally with annulate-topped nudibranchs that fit them more perfectly than I could've imagined: Flabellina and surrounding clades, I think Paraflabellina ischitana works very nicely. The orange was completely unplanned, but there wasn’t a place for light pink among the other slugcats’ palettes, and importantly it likens them to both Hunter and Seven Red Suns a little more.

Saint: I am very much a non-furred slugcat enjoyer, with respect to those who aren’t, so figuring out the only visibly furred slugcat was an interesting challenge. I’ve decided that they likely have other, milder adaptations for help in the cold, mainly just more efficient fat storage, and what looks vaguely like fur is instead a bunch of tubercles (called caryophillia, for the second reminder out of three). Their inspiration doesn’t have these, however, Miamira sinuata’s numerous yellow and blue spots (not to mention...whatever’s going on with that shape) and general effect of being the only really green nudibranch I could find were probably perfect for a strange green echo. Not pictured, but their beak-teeth are tiny and flat to make a surface for grinding soft food against with the lack of a functioning radula, which is tipped with a specialized spiny “grapple-hook” for better traction/grip (not to mention the numerous little teeth running down the whole thing).

(Best part of hiding this under a readmore means edits will be seen by all reblogs, I'm mostly sure, because I completely forgot to mention! The spots on their forehead are simple eyes. Their camera eyes appear closed in-game, I like to believe their complex eyesight is rather poor anyways or otherwise reason that they aren't seeing out of those, and while this was far from her REASON for attunement with the world, it does help compensate for mainly viewing it through a canvas of simple light and dark. This, and the fact that their swapped-out "fur" is not only to commit to a lack of hairs but contributes to sensory input!)

Nightcat/Enot: I guess you could say I found the “these two are technically the same person” compelling. (E.g. similar colors, both very strange and enigmatic, and Enot/Inv/Sofanthiel’s remark during the dating sim about getting removed from Arena Mode.) I doubt they’re the only two slugcats in their body, considering humans with DID tend to have more than a few (and I find it very funny that a slugcat bearing resemblance to Nightcat appears in Gourmand’s ending. They’re allowed in the colony and Enot isn’t </3), and I have to credit @faelingdraws ’s art for being what convinced me on it! Their design inspirations come down to trying to balance a few different ideas: making the patterns and palettes of both look oddly similar (special mention to the stars, since those are fun to draw), basing them off of Felimare sechurana and juliae respectively, using blocks of color with the same placement as in Enot’s official art, and specifically making Enot look...biologically reasonable and imperfect, whilst also clearly trying to imitate human displays of emotion (what with...the eyes and blush on that one piece of official art).

Lastly, here’s just a lineup with notes on body shape and size. Most of the nicknames (existing to give a little more space, that’s all) are obvious, and while I can’t remember why I shortened Nightcat to Nox, it is in honor of my friend by the same nickname :]

[mangotelevision]

phoenix drop guard redesigns :)

[veinsfullofstars]

✨ The wizard and the jester ✨

(ID: Kirby series fanart sketches of Marx and Magolor in humanized form, with some Marxolor shenanigans tossed in for funsies, plus one guest appearance by Kirby. More detailed descriptions in Alt Text. END ID)

Sketches started some time in 2021, finished 10/28/24.

[bixels]

What did/do you like about Pharah?

Uh, gameplay-wise, I really love characters in shooters who rely on three-dimensional movement techs. Chaining together hover and jump to stay in the air for as long as possible and keep momentum is so satisfying, and picking enemies off from the sky made me feel like a bird of prey. I was a good Pharah main.

Story-wise, there unfortunately isn't much to canonically go off because Pharah is so underutilized and neglected. Her personality's pretty boilerplate "heroic hero" (she's literally inspired by Captain America).

But it's the crumbs/bits and pieces that I really latched onto. Pharah's a confirmed lesbian; her short story with Baptiste implies she harbors a crush on Mercy (fucking thank you.). She's biracial Egyptian/First Nations. She has major mommy issues, having grown up both admiring and resenting Ana. She's the bridge between Old Overwatch, inspired by the idealized heroes who surrounded her childhood, and New Overwatch. She's one of the only inter-generational characters in the cast; someone whose experiences span the gap, which is why I seriously believe Pharah would make a great main character.

There isn't much to go off of, though; she's a very uncomplicated character (she's a soldier for a private military corporation, lol.). But that just means she's a blank slate character, so I've seen fanfic writers run wild and create some really interesting takes on her. My favorite interpretation of her's a dense, herbo gym-bro type (a lot of her liens are about work outs, exercising, and playing sports) who's easily excitable under her seemingly self-serious, armored visage. We see how she tends to gloat and hype herself up when she's on a streak too, so Pharah definitely has a competitive and boastful side under her more professional and militant performance.

Now Mercy? Mercy is a real complex character.

[skunkes]

[animangalover-writes]

Yk it really bothers me when I see people talking about eurylochus and the crew like they were the problem. It just feels like everyone is just missing the point. Yes they stopped listening to ody, yes eurylochus opened the wind bag, but that's what makes them so human.

Picture this, you leave your home to fight in a war. It takes literal years for this war to be over. You've lost friends, you miss your family, you've been through hell. You're starving and your captain tells you they found food on this island.

And then the cyclops happens. More friends die, you barely escape with your life, and your captain gives his name to the creature that killed your friends.

And everything after that is a direct cause of that decision.

So you hesitate to trust him. Yes he's smart, he's capable, he always has a plan. But he would do anything to get home, and you know that. So when he comes back to the ship claiming to have a bag full of wind, and when he refuses to let anyone near, refuses to trust his own crew, you get suspicious.

Its been about a decade by this point, and your captain seems to get more and more desperate to get home. A god is after you. Odysseus is forcing himself to stay away, all to make sure nobody touches that bag.

Its human, it's realistic, it makes sense that someone would open the bag. Because odysseus stopped trusting you, and so you stop trusting him. So you open the bag.

I just find it frustrating that people look at the crew/eurylochus as bad guys because of this, as pawns for ody to get home and thats it. The point of the show is that ody has become a monster, has dealt with and left behind his humanity. We, as listeners, root for him. We give him grace because of his circumstances. Because he's the main character.

But for some reason, people don't give that same grace to the crew. They're human, their circumstances are awful too. They have no idea if they will get home, they aren't sure then can trust their captain anymore. They question things. They make mistakes. They cause the deaths of others. It's human, its that feeling you get when you think that maybe hope is lost after all, it's what this story is about. Mistakes and loss and blame.

People dislike Eurylochus because he opened the bag. But odysseus gave the cyclops his name. And polites trusted the lotus eaters. And Athena told odysseus to be cruel to a fault. Nobody here is innocent, not really. And none of them knew better either. They were working with what they had, with the terrible circumstances at hand. It's no wonder they made mistakes. It's no wonder people died.

Why are we ignoring the humanity of the crew? Why are we arguing that they, or that eurylochus, deserved it? If the story was about them, odysseus would be seen as the bad guy. But he's the main character, so the others are stupid and wrong, right? All that matters is that odysseus gets home, right? Even if it costs the lives of his crew. His crew who stopped trusting him when he stopped trusting them. His crew who he sacrificed to get home.

I think we're missing the point here. Odysseus did become a monster, and although we cheer for him getting home and Penelope and Telemachus forgive him, we have to acknowledge that he did do terrible things. Those men will never see their families again. Why are we erasing that humanity in them?

Humans do bad things for the sake of saving themselves or the ones they love. That includes Odysseus. That includes Eurylochus. That includes the crew. And that includes every other character in this musical.

[puppppppppy]

OWWWWWW

[decaffeinatedpartymuggoop]

I love how on the normal, non racist side of the fandom the general consensus has been book! Percy x TV! Annabeth cause that’s just really neat.

[forestgreenlesbian]

went to see gladiator ii and we were almost 40 minutes late but we didnt even miss the start like are they seriously playing 40 mins of adverts & trailers before the movie now that feels. insane

[jangmi-latte]

hey, trickster! happy birthday! as you can see, i've been waiting for you. i knew you would be alone at this time and place. how? let's just say it was instinct. now, please accept my birthday greetings!

FOR FUCK'S SAKE WHAT ARE YOU IMPLYINGIUSJHNUFIJHNUISHNLUISCFHNUISBHNFUISBHNSFE "i've been waiting for you i knew you'd be alone at this time and place" WHAT DO YOU WANTIULHNIUSEHNDUHAHAHSAHJJKDSKJ ROOK MY LOVE I MISS YOU SO MUCH BUT WHAT ARE YOU PLANNINGIUHSNEDUICLNSCDSEICFNUSEJHCFNSCLNFSIHSUNULSJFHN

[sillyabtmusic]

♡ Keonhee in Oneus MVs ♡

[guillemelgat]

I just started a new semester, and I'm finally getting the chance to take Malayalam, which I've been trying to do since my undergrad. This is obviously a very exciting development, and it's so delightful to be in a language class again for the first time in ages, but it's also been a very unique experience as far as language classes go. First of all, for me, who is generally used to having very odd personal connections to a language and being the overachieving linguist of the class. And second of all because it's just a very different experience to be in a class largely oriented towards heritage learners and people with some cultural familiarity.

There are five people in the class. Of those five, four have Malayalee family and have had some exposure to Malayalam throughout our lives; the last person is a native speaker of another non-Dravidian South Asian language. Of the four of us who are Malayalee, I'm basically the only one who didn't have a significant amount of Malayalam at home growing up. What this means is that we've spent very little time on the phonetics of the language, because everyone roughly knows how to pronounce it - something which wouldn't be true if there were non-South Asian in the class! (It was a bit comforting to hear all the other Malayalees struggling with aspirated consonants, which have constantly been the bane of my existence, and then to hear the instructor say that few people pronounce them right in spoken Malayalam anyways.) The instructor could ask us to say things on the first day, and the more fluent speakers could say them. There is already Malayalam being mixed in with the instruction. I'm sure by the end of the semester we'll be having extended conversations - especially since the two of us who don't speak have very concrete communicative desires for our outside lives.

It's also a very scary experience for me, personally. Or maybe scary isn't quite the right word, but I've always felt out of my depth in claiming Malayalee heritage - I've always felt that there were so many things which I didn't know which any normal Malayalee would. There is no evidence that this is true, at least insofar as that my cousins with two Malayalee parents have wildly varying experiences and I'm not actually that far outside the norm. In most American spaces, I will never be clocked as white, and most people usually immediately identify me as South Asian. Nonetheless, I know that when I visited Kerala this past December, I was decidedly foreign - to the two guys speaking in rapid-fire Malayalam on the flight from Qatar, to the person at the immigration counter in Trivandrum, even to my own relatives. Part of it is a mental block on my part, of feeling myself foreign and therefore never letting myself belong. Part of it is that I am, ultimately, American. But either way, in this class, I can feel that I'm the American in the room, even when I'm not, even when my pronunciation is just as good as the other Malayalees and there's nothing that's telling me I can't belong. I keep freezing up when asked to say real things, or when people speak to me, because there's some unreachable standard in my brain of Not A Real Malayalee, and everything feels fraught and fragile. So maybe this semester will be about overcoming that.

It's still strange being in a language class where the instructor, on the first day, can look at you all and say, "You know why you're here, you want to be here, we all have a shared experience." But it's also a beautiful thing in its own way, and I'm really looking forward to taking on a language in this way. I love the structure and the logic of language, the puzzle of putting it together, the beauty of making friends in it and watching shows in it and listening to songs in it - but as I get older I find myself really reflecting on what it means to learn and to know a language. And sometimes those barriers to learning and to knowing are only in our minds, not in our worlds. Language is communication and connection, and I hope that Malayalam serves me to these two ends, even as it sometimes feels like a trial by fire at each word.

[afaroffsong]

I read a book in two days which is a record for me, and I have like 20 more books stacked on my bed that I want to read before I have to go back to work. But I know I’ll only manage 2 or 3.