#i love combing my interests

[valariecomet]

So, it's this is my last piece for Zutara month! It's been real. So I've fallen back into my Uzumaki obsession again and when I was reading the prompts I saw the prompt time loop for day 30, and when I thought loop I thought spiral, when I thought spiral I thought Uzumaki so I thought that this sorta redraw of that one Uzumaki artwork would be cool. Anyways, have a nice day. Hope you enjoy the rest of your zutara month!

(Also! Just as a general warning, if you haven't read Uzumaki, while I highly recommend it, the manga does contain many different types of horror, such as body horror, psychological horror and gore, so please don't look it up if that stuff is triggering to you.)

[grapedemon]

HMS as Splatoon characters anyone?

….

Just me? Alrighty

[lavampira]

what if I make a list of d’alia’s favorite things. like classic icebreaker style. for funsies

[icewindandboringhorror]

Recent images I suppose ~

[jay-brooks-hugger]

Dropping these PicMixes here. My goofy ah didn't even do the edit I was too drained LOLL. Sorry for disappearing really just been focusing on my mental health!! I have a Dinosaur Bob drawing planned I'll see how it turns out

[waxworkdaughter]

sometimes, mid equinox rewatch, it occurs to me that it's super ironic that chakotay was willing to semi mutiny against going after ransom and seven and then he and seven were the endgame couple. like, janway was willing to do warcrimes to get seven back and contain the rogue ship and she was also off the rails, but chakotay was like 'we should sacrifice the borg girl and let the rogue starfleet mass murderers go for our safety and expediency' and then 2 years later was like 'oh, so i'm in love with seven now' and also 5+ years before that he was willing to hold starfleet accountable for the cardassian treaty and join the maquis when it wasn't even starfleet people doing the crimes directly vs allowing the cardassian crimes. so.

what even was that string of writing choices? what were they trying to do?? 🫠

(anyway. titus welliver is hot and various degrees of evil in everything he's been in, apparently.)

[silverhalla]

torn every moment of ever day between playing an ingellvar rook because it’s new + cool and playing a warden rook because my warden concepts are 100000% more fleshed out and SO doomed by the narrative

[creampuffqueen]

watching conservatives have a category 5 crash out because a famous country artist said he voted blue has got to be one of the funniest fucking things i’ve seen in a hot second

sorry babes, you don’t get to have a monopoly on country music <3

[goldentigerfestival]

Yuri's dialogue (JP) is so fascinating to study, like... the repetitive use of certain words/phrases that others use sparingly but he uses constantly. the way it feels like his vocabulary is more expansive than what he uses, but he defaults to a "comfort" level of speech. the way it mixes in with his sort of "street talk" words and the sheer level of informality. the way his "street talk" phrasing is contrasted by the tone of his voice (on that note, people I know who also know JP are also very endeared by these aspects of him so I KNOW IT'S NOT JUST ME!!!).

'cause the thing is, he uses phrases that yeah, other people do use, but he uses a handful over and over and over (contrast to other characters' sparing use of repetition). it's actually... really refreshing? it sounds more relatable and less "video game/anime/JRPG/RPG" writing or something, idk. like closer to how a real person would speak.

I do my best in my translations not to make things sound too stiff across the board, but Yuri makes it so easy. it's why I'm so interested in translating all his lines in Vesperia, like... the actual, original tone for him with his original wording because it's smth Eng only players don't get to experience ('cause even if you listen with JP audio, if you don't know the language, ofc you're gonna miss out on context. it's nobody's fault for not knowing, just... they unfortunately miss out). the thing is, there are a lot of times when the lines in and of themselves are not contextually incorrect in the English ver (usually the situation for smaller scenes, because they altered the text outright for more important stuff which was the stuff that originally set me off, but there were also plenty of cases of just vocal tone shifting with the correct context that still gave off the wrong impression), but Yuri's tone is shifted away from the original in Eng even though it's completely and perfectly translatable.

I am by no means about to translate the entire game because let's face it, I really don't care that much for Vesperia on the whole. I'm kinda stuck with it because Yuri's there lo and behold I actually am WAY more engaged in his stories in Rays, Link and Asteria because it's an amazing character put into circumstances where he actually gets to shine and feels more alive, which Vesperia did not provide nearly as well with its very disjointed story. also, Tales gachas have banger stories that are arguably better than the mainline games, and they regularly make Yuri a very central character to the gachas. Crestoria was also about to do it until they pulled the plug on that game and I'm pretty confident something interesting has been lost to the world. also I just generally don't have the energy or motivation to do that, so... I'll only be focusing on Yuri's lines, especially because his stuff is where the bulk of the messing around was. he's just insanely fun to translate for and I love burying myself head first into his speech.

will I actually finish this project? dunno. will I get around to posting it? whatever I get done (so all of it if I complete it), and if I decide to call it quits then I'll post what I have at the time I decide that. will it take a long time? probably, but I can always mention stuff along the way...

[coneheadseekers]

omg a conehead-focused account, am I dreaming??

I was STARVING through Tumblr searching for content of my fav little conical blue guy who can't catch a break and then, out of nowhere, I see this account, and I'm dazzled- Are you even real? Please tell me you are and confirm the existence of conehead enjoyers.

Believe it or not, fellow conefan, you're not dreaming. You've simply left behind the unconely transformer rabble and entered into...

✈🍧The Cone Zone 🍧✈

Please enjoy your stay.

[unexpectedgeese]

I love you infodumping I love you random fun facts I love you personal anecdotes I love you Hyperfixations I love you rambling I love you ‘wanna know something weird’ I love you people who never stop talking I love you people who add paragraphs of random shit in the tags I love you learning I love you discovery

[roobylavender]

if i really scratch my head i think maybe the one thing all of this could stem from is mere discussion of the fact that talia and selina's histories with bruce sort of operate in the reverse and inevitably that factors into any contention with either relationship. like it can't really be helped that bruce and talia were married very early on into the latter's history and that this is integral to analyzing talia's entire dynamic with bruce, her evolving perception of her own place in the world, and her eventual decision to break free of bruce entirely. the constraints of a marriage with bruce as desired by her father are foundational lore to the early aughts of her character in a way that selina's settled domestic life with bruce is not. if we're talking about the golden age what was foundational to selina's dynamic with bruce was his ability to recognize above everyone else her consistent capacity for mercy despite her villainous goals on the surface. in post-crisis that was translated along the lines of a class struggle specifically. the villainous goals were interpreted to represent a defiance of men and the state and their collective violence, and they also formed a means of survival. what was initially merely a recognition of selina's capacity for mercy now became a potential recognition of bruce's own hypocrisies. selina acted as a symbol for petty criminals in gotham whom bruce would otherwise have written off as immoral wholesale bc to him the law was the law. and the remarkable thing about it was that none of it required selina giving even an inch to bruce. she was who she was and that was what made her utterly compelling to him. it's not a slight against selina that neither marriage nor a close civilian relationship formed the basis of her relationship with bruce and i don't understand why anyone would take it as one. marriage and domestic life for talia was a mark of the utter tragedy of her relationship with bruce. it was a fantasy and a delusion and it could never have given her what she wanted nor lent her any kind of agency in the long term. and i think when we meander into the realm of comparing the relationships we really start to diminish why certain aspects are important to either. why are the various patriarchal restrictions on talia's agency so integral to her character arc and its exploration of freedom? why is selina's existence in a sphere of life entirely distinct of bruce so integral to her character arc and its exploration of class? the constant back and forth between shippers on either end trying to equalize in terms of what either relationship has gone through in canon like it's a checklist to romantic validity is a bit absurd and i wish we would move away from it when analyzing the relationships or the characters

[autistic-shaiapouf]

I am so autistic about music

[jay-brooks-hugger]

Tryna fight back the urge to do a Dinosaur Bob edit AHHHHHH

[aeipathism]

I feel somewhere in the middle on this - the individual quests and direct interactions felt really good and genuine to me. I came out of it feeling like my Rook was very genuinely friends with and had unique/close relationships with all the companions.

Also, i really loved the work they put into making the companions have relationships among themselves. Banter around the Lighthouse and codexes showing they all interact was awesome and sparked SO much joy

That being said, what did fall a bit flat for me was the inability to just talk to your companions around the Lighthouse etc. Which has been a staple across DA and ME games, so it felt like a weird gap to just... not have that. I can expand on the quests we have, but that structure also gives you a very narrow window for that relationship. Generally, you've always been able to go up to characters in your party and ask inane questions or have an exchange about the current plot. Not scripted events, just a bit of dialogue back and forth. Or even options to insert a comment to some of the banter you can walk into.

The other thing that felt missing were group scenes outside of main plot. In 2 and Inquisition you can have little scenes that cut off pretty early playing cards with companions etc. I'd love a snippet of a dinner Bellara and Lucanis put together. Or arguing over cards because the companions all coming from entirely different factions and cultures is a recipe for no one plays games with the exact same rules. And tbh, the lack of these was disappointing to me Because they really improved on the interparty relationships in terms of banter and environment. Which, with those being another staple in other games, I kept waiting for and was sad not to see it. Let us drop in on a book club meeting! Put Rook in the middle of the discussion voting on cooking duties! We had these snippets and set ups for simple group scenes that we never actually get to see.

Even on just a romance level, you can only interact with your LI in any meaningful way in carefully placed quests and scenes. I kept waiting for when I could go to Emmrich's room and trigger the same scene 5 times in a row like inquisition and just have Rook smooch him on his balcony. Or be able to say you want to chat and have a little no dialogue cut scene of them sitting together with Manfred to serve them tea.

So while I 100% agree that the relationships did feel genuine to me, I did find it a bit jarring to offload so much of that building into Quests or into codexes. Mostly since historically, you've always been able to go chat with your companions, or have 1 or 2 simple group events. It wouldn't surprise me if that's the sort of thing that got cut by EA since voice and animation means more work and those are technically not integral. But I suppose what I'm getting at here is that I do see where some of that feeling/criticism is coming from. And in some cases, it isn't necessarily an issue of catering to specific desires, but just base patterns established by previous games both in DA but also ME.

I can see where it feels a little jarring to have these intimate friendship moments with companions, when you're used to being able to walk up and establish more casual rapport with them. We lost a lot of connectors and middle parts of things that way. It helps the player establish a baseline of what casual conversation looks like, and that makes a bridge to the (brilliantly done!) personal quests where a deeper relationship is indicated.

tl;dr is mostly that I think that all of the points about the companions feeling like they truly care about rook are spot on. but I can also see why that feels disconnected without more build up in casual settings like in previous games. going from met this guy - little personal quest - overhearing some banter and reading codexes - this companion will now Die For You is a jump that can make relationships feel less genuine because the player isn't given a role in that development.

"The Veil Guard didn't actually care about Rook" the Veil Guard was so desperate to get Rook back from the prison they tried to make a ritual dagger of their own to rip the Veil apart and look for them

Rook wasn't their boss, Rook was their home

[diamndkarma-vn]

can't wait for my hours to double when the demo gets updated