#i will rant for HOURS

[romaine-bromaine]

I was on call with my friend and we came up with these memes, enjoy.

one is an in progress cause I thought it was funny

[yourmoodboards-areonfiirree]

CarBastard moodboard with Related stims!

self indulgent!

(All images found on pinterest exept for tony whom I had to google 😡)

[featherlight-system]

DJ: “so if you had to pick one of your wooden roller coasters for that question from earlier, which one would you pick?”

Me, who has a special interest in roller coasters, and a whole pocket dimension in the headspace that is essentially a collection of four distinctly different theme parks with many many MANY roller coasters:

[vampgutzxox]

I rarely hear people talk about 2 of my favorite movies and it's a shame, they're amazing movies with solid plots and a good pace. The little prince and ballerina are absolutely not something people would assume I'd watch but they both hold a special place in my heart. GUYYS WATCH THEM TJEYRE SO GOOD

[catmask]

when u go to write a mentally ill person in ur story you are presented two options. the first option is to write your mental illness realistically as you actually experience it with all the ups and downs and people who are like you will resonate with it and feel seen. except every person who reads instagram infographics on mental health that uses the phrase narcicisst for anyone who does anything that crosses them and unironically call themself a dark empath will call you scary and tell you that youre demonizing mentally ill people

the second option is to lie and write inspiration porn for those people to get hard to

[acorviart]

everyone should attempt an artisan craft at some point in their life because it would cut down the number of comments questioning why handmade goods like ceramics or textile craft or woodworking are so expensive

and this is an unrealistic expectation, but I think the attempt should include seeing through to the end at least one "finished" item, no matter how clumsy or lumpy your first attempts might be. like to me, there's a huge difference in perspective between attempting to learn how to crochet or throw a pot for a few days, acknowledging that it's harder than it looks and giving up, versus committing to finishing that scarf or clay pot you started and working on it for weeks while you painstakingly learn from your mistakes and grow attached to your project while also simultaneously hating it.

once you finish the latter, your perspective changes from "why does this crocheted blanket cost $200" to "holy shit I can't believe they're charging $200 for this crocheted blanket instead of $2000" because you may have known crocheting is hard, you may have easily agreed with the idea that "handmade goods take time and effort" even before attempting a craft, but now you know firsthand the absolute time sink it takes to make things. like yeah dude, that one item took you 2 months to make and probably wasn't even an ultra complex item if it was the first thing you made, now imagine attaching an hourly wage to that time to calculate the cost (and this is ignoring every nuance of the artistic element and master crafters being able to work faster/charge higher because of their years and years of experience)

anyway this rant has been motivated by a comment I saw on someone else's ceramic post asking why a mug was $60 and they understand it's handmade but $60 just seems overpriced, and bro do you know how long ceramics take to make. that mug probably took at minimum 3 weeks between how long it takes to throw the mug, dry partially, trim the mug, dry fully, bisque fire, wait a day for the kiln to cool, sand and paint and glaze, glaze fire, wait a day for the kiln to cool, take product photography of the mug, write description and list the mug online for sale, im not even including the skill needed to complete all these steps without the mug literally exploding or collapsing while also making it an appealing piece of art, aaaaaaaaaaaaa

[marsipain]

Norwegian Mikus :)

Left is Miku as a russ and right is Miku in a bunad!

[boomposhpow]

stanley pines the man you are

a better son/daughter by Rilo Kiley

[gloomybadger4life]

I try to listen to albums in full at least once.

Then i pick out my favorite songs.

Some of my fave albums to listen to:

Queen - Innuendo

Deltron 3030 - Deltron 3030

Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath

Love - Forever Changes

i just discovered that there are people who don't listen to albums in full.

i'm still computing the discovery like,,,, what. 🧍

also, people who put albums on shuffle and people who only have like 2 playlists are in the same category - y'all scare me

[youre-dreaming-302]

You’re Dreaming 302 (ps2) - 2003

[moonstruckdraws]

Wanted to do some art of @circusinarun's swap AU of warrior Penelope (here). I want to do art and so much other stuff for the EPIC musical in general (especially since the last saga is so soon RAH), because it got me back into mythology. But I don't think I'll be doing any until after it's over.

But that doesn't mean I can't do AUs! (Hope you don't mind I used my ver. of Ares for this Kobi; it let me figure out more of his design like changing his helmet)

. . . they are best friends, right? They probably aren't, but Ares isn't that well liked by the other gods, so I think him being best friends with Penelope would be cute! Idk, it's probably me just being a fan of Ares that I don't want him to be friendless lmao.

I'm so curious on how this AU would flow, you know? Like, is Calypso a human in this AU that replaces Antinous in Little Wolf; and if so, who's on Antinous Island (don’t mind this question I can’t read)? Does Calypso trap Penelope there, if she is a goddess (ignore this too I still can’t read)? Who would Ares argue with in place of Aphrodite, or would she be in the challenge of God Games anyway? I'm assuming Eurylochus is replaced by his wife Ctimene, but is Polites in the same role?

It's a lot of questions that aren't that serious, it's just a fun AU, but I'm a curious person who loves details. I especially like thinking about how God Games would go, since no one really likes Ares other than his family, lover, and those who associate with him like Eris. It'd be on hard mode for him and it makes me sad to think about, yet so intrigued on how he'd convince them all; especially Hephaestus and Athena, but I feel like she wouldn't be so hard to convince... just stubborn against her brother to agree.

[rubikor]

would you hold my face softly and tell me it will be alright?

[bixels]

I think 90% of my gripes with how modern anime looks comes down to flat color design/palettes.

Non-cohesive, washed-out color palettes can destroy lineart quality. I see this all the time when comparing an anime's lineart/layout to its colored/post-processed final product and it's heartbreaking. Compare this pre-color vs. final frame from Dungeon Meshi's OP.

So much sharpness and detail and weight gets washed out and flattened by 'meh' color design. I LOVE the flow and thickness and shadows in the fabrics on the left. The white against pastel really brings it out. Check out all the detail in their hair, the highlights in Rin's, the different hues to denote hair color, the blue tint in the clothes' shadows, and how all of that just gets... lost. It works, but it's not particularly good and does a disservice to the line-artist.

I'm using Dungeon Meshi as an example not because it's bad, I'm just especially disappointed because this is Studio Trigger we're talking about. The character animation is fantastic, but the color design is usually much more exciting. We're not seeing Trigger at their full potential, so I'm focusing on them.

Here's a very quick and messy color correct. Not meant to be taken seriously, just to provide comparison to see why colors can feel "washed out." Top is edit, bottom is original.

You can really see how desaturated and "white fluorescent lighting" the original color palettes are.

[Remember: the easiest way to make your colors more lively is to choose a warm or cool tint. From there, you can play around with bringing out complementary colors for a cohesive palette (I warmed Marcille's skintone and hair but made sure to bring out her deep blue clothes). Avoid using too many blend mode layers; hand-picking colors will really help you build your innate color sense and find a color style. Try using saturated colors in unexpected places! If you're coloring a night scene, try using deep blues or greens or magentas. You see these deep colors used all the time in older anime because they couldn't rely on a lightness scale to make colors darker, they had to use darker paints with specific hues. Don't overthink it, simpler is better!]

[hawkinsunderground]

-crack me open and all that's left inside is what's been done to me-

[barszcz-czerwony-i-biali]

What's funny about this four hour rant video about Jews is that I instantly recognized the photo in the right hand corner

It's a picture of Jews who were recently liberated from Buchenwald arriving in Haifa

Which is a really weird picture to choose especially since I don't know how you would choose that picture and not think hmm perhaps things like Buchenwald explains why Israel is important to Jews.

[beargregor]

wait i'm curious, what makes you say that gregor doesn't like everyone else (if i read that post right)? just curious since i've never seen anyone else say that

i don't necessarily think gregor dislikes everyone else at lcb but i do think that gregor is an incredibly petty person that isn't nearly as close to the rest of the sinners and even outright dislikes some of them cough cough rodya cough cough which a lot of people just Refuse to see because he's as much of a doormat as he is. there's several examples i could get into to try and prove my point however i'll just focus on what i personally think to be the biggest ones.

additionally, this is going to be kind of long, so i'm adding a read more. read more! read it. sorry for being so wordy. i have several diseases.

Pt1. gregor is the type to try and get along at least decently with everyone, especially if he gets a good first impression from them.

this is less a point in favor of gregor's distance w/ the rest of the sinners and more just a contributing factor to it. once again there's several examples i could point to here but i think the most in your face one happened in canto I with yuri, as several people have pointed out. even before gregor comes clean about growing attached to her as quickly as he did because she reminds him of his sister, we get this interaction.

i'll go ahead and make the disclaimer now that i don't necessarily think gregor is the most reliable of narrators, especially when it comes to his feelings and interactions with most people, but from the way he acts when the topic of yuri comes up (and the way we still see him act even all the way up to c7, nearly a whole year after yuri's death) i don't see reason to question his sentiment here. gregor immediately got that aya and yuri were close, potentially even taking note of their traded belts, and went out of his way to get something nice for yuri despite hardly knowing her.

i feel like a lot of people have forgotten as much, especially since it's been so long since c1, but gregor actually spent a good bit of season 1 doing the exact same thing with the other sinners! gregor reads a connection between him and ishmael pretty quickly despite getting off to a rocky start

mostly because gregor can tell that ishmael is pretty sardonic in a very similar way to him. there's been multiple instances where ishmael and gregor have essentially expressed the same sentiment at different moments, most notably gregor's little argument after ishmael got shot with a decay ampule in c4

and ishmael's response to pilot talking about self-sacrifice in c5

i could go ahead and pull up more examples, but in general pm has gone out of their way to show us that gregor and ishmael are pretty similar, so it makes sense for gregor to assume that they're friends, right?

this will be pushpin 1. keep note of this for Later.

ishmael's only the first sinner we see gregor trying to do this with in s1, we also see him try it out with heathcliff, sinclair, and ryoushuu

he's tried to get along with charon, being one of very few sinners that we've seen actually try to establish a connection with her at all

even rodya, despite my insistence that gregor doesn't like her nearly as much as the fandom thinks he does

all of these seem pretty fine and dandy, right? sure it frequently leans towards self-degradation, micromanaging, and commiseration, but gregor can at least be pretty chummy with most of the sinners, can't he?

Pt2. hell's chicken was more than just comic relief guys please

i'm fully aware that this is quite the hot take, but i think hell's chicken deserves a lot more credit for character writing than the fandom gives it. hell's chicken gave us foreshadowing for several events, such as the donqui bloodfiend reveal

heathcliff's distortion in c6 (as well as hong lu's highly speculated distortion at some point in the future)

and ryoushuu and sinclair's continued connection by making him the odd one out on her team

which, hey! that implies something about gregor's odd one out, don quixote, too, doesn't it? yes. yes it does. that's pushpin 2. keep note of that for later.

speaking of pushpins, hey! that's pushpin 1!

splitting into teams is one of the major events in hell's chicken, and most of the sinner's choices are either motivated by very little, backhanded, or motivated primarily by not wanting to be on the opposite leader's side. i didn't include all of the picks, just because i feel like including most of them already gets this across, but i think gregor took one major thing from this: most of the sinners, when push comes to shove, will only side with gregor when they refuse to or can't take his opponent's side.

now, don't get me wrong, i'm fully aware that this is primarily intended to be comedic relief, but when gregor is being described as having his trust broken by ishmael or nearly crying because no one on his team properly sided with him for him, i feel like it's pretty fair to read into this.

something that i think is pretty important to remember in conjunction with this is that we know that gregor is the type to hold a grudge, both from his general attitude towards the G corp soldiers in c1 as well as his continued distaste for vergilius

even beyond the splitting into teams of hell's chicken, the sinners have given gregor plenty of reasons to feel bitter. i feel like this is something people have noticed but haven't really put a finger on, but it's kind of wild just how often the rest of the sinners make gregor the butt of the joke

and sure, we could argue that a fair few of these aren't really made with any ill intent. quite a bit of it could have been meant as harmless teasing, but with gregor being more sensitive than most, it coming from nearly all sides, and as often as it does? yeah, i think he's prone to taking it a bit personally.

Pt3. yes i do still think gregor was the third most important character in canto VII you guys gotta hear me out okay

of course, all of this leads up to the bit of the story i highlighted, doesn't it? c7? i totally get why people haven't really picked up on all the gregor things i did in it, seeing as they were mostly not *directly* said about him or by him.

personally, i think that gregor's distaste for talking about himself on any serious level and thus leading to him getting sort of "sidelined" narratively (which i take issue with that claim, but still. it's effective for getting what i mean across atm) is supposed to lead players to take a deeper look at the times gregor gets held up to other characters and compare and contrast what's being said about them by the matchup. as i showed earlier with his immediate latching onto ishmael, i think this is something gregor himself is at least partially aware of too.

so, that begs the question, who was gregor compared to in canto VII that makes me think it's one of the most critical pieces in understanding his character?

really, i'd like to avoid getting too lost in the analysis of this canto specifically, since i'd like to do a proper post about this later, but i figure i can bury the lede a little before doing it properly.

c7 features several characters being made to perform in sansón's play, acting out the relevant backstory for this segment of the plot. a lot of these characters have rather direct, degrading reasons for playing the roles they do.

outis, a character with an inflated ego who wants her journey to have a purpose, is made to play an aimlessly wandering villager with a single line.

hong lu and ryoushuu, two characters for whom families and the expectations placed upon them are likely going to play a major role, are made to play bloodfiends.

rodya, a character who resents her lot in life and is constantly shown to be eager to leave her destitution behind her and become someone special, is made to play a helpless villager that's too poor to even offer any money to the hero that saves her.

heathcliff, a character that has spent most of his life getting dehumanized by comparing him to beastly animals, is made to play a literal bear whose sole purpose in the plot is to get beat up and then quickly left by the wayside.

sinclair, a character that has two opposed parties essentially treating him as a macguffin to procure for their side, is made to play the character who was arguably the catalyst for this entire canto, not to mention playing a decently major role in ruina.

our star don quixote is made to play her father, the first kindred, but there's someone by their side the entire time, isn't there? don quixote's dear, steadfastly loyal companion. a character which don quixote has tasked themself with getting to come out of their shell?

hello again, pushpin 2.

gregor has been made to play our unreachable star, sancho. someone had to, of course. you can't really tell a story without it's main character, now can you?

now, i should once again give a disclaimer. i am not trying to say that i think adapting what happens to donqui/sancho in c7 to gregor is the road pm is going to take here, not only would that toe a bit past the line of foreshadowing, but it'd also just amount to rehashing that plotline again, which i don't think would make for a particularly exciting story.

what i DO think is that we can take a lot of the things that are said to either directly be the case for sancho and use them to inform how we see gregor.

and god, does playing sancho have some fucking implications for our favorite ossan archetype.

starting off, the earliest moment we get to see of sancho is quite literally her just waiting for death to take her in a pile of ashes.

which, i should remind everyone, is actually pretty damn close to what happens to gregor's literary counterpart at the end of the metamorphosis. gregor samsa experiences one final breaking point that pushes him over the edge and makes him decide to just wait for starvation to take him.

gregor and sancho both consider themselves to no longer be human, something which sancho goes out of her way to highlight repeatedly throughout the canto and gregor is quick to get defensive on her behalf for when outis starts really tearing into her

sancho spends quite a lot of this story denying herself the joys of community and friendship, despite knowing that, even with the rest of the sinners frequently making jokes at her expense and outright insulting her, they were things that she desperately craved.

and, while this is getting into my "outis is a red herring meant to distract us from gregor's eventual betrayal" theorizing, i also think it's worth noting for this discussion that sancho's fellow kindreds, her family, all seem to be under the impression that she dislikes them and ultimately her departure was an act of betrayal

and that, despite gregor being one of LCB's resident mood makers and attempted conflict de-escalators, one of the sinners that's most prone to making appeals to the bonds they've all forged together, only him and faust remained silent during everyone's speech

so yeah, i think there's quite a lot of little details and hints building up to the reveal that gregor's not quite as fond of everyone as he presents himself to be. i do think a lot of this ultimately comes down to gregor getting in the way of his own happiness, similarly to donqui, particularly because he's been frequently portrayed as something of a self fulfilling prophecy, especially by giving him as many christ allegories as they have by way of priest and garden of thorns. gregor is convinced that the rest of the sinners don't like him because he's not convinced anyone could like him, so he convinces himself that he hates them because why should he care if someone that he hates hates him too?

a lot of this ultimately ties back to my personal interpretation of what happens in the metamorphosis as well as my own theories regarding all the times gregor has made weird callbacks and references to lobcorp and ruina, but yeah. i think about this guy and his deeper characterization a fairly normal amount, i think.

to end this off i'll highlight one of my favorite little "gregor is fucking seething and trying so hard to keep it cool" moments, in the credits CG for c7 we see rodya teasing him by drawing a little horse on his window and actively pointing and laughing at it, which gregor really doesn't seem all too pleased about.

i personally think this ties into the other cruel part of sansón forcing gregor to play rocinante, which is the more literal "he's actually just straight up playing rocinante" side of things. gregor was quite literally made to play something less than human, less than even animal really, as he was reduced to nothing more than the shoes don quixote wore as she got to play the leading role. sansón directly makes jokes about gregor being nothing more than shoes in the play twice, which adds to this reading, i think.

this, imo, really plays into the adaptation of the metamorphosis! i've seen a lot of readings for the book that posit that, despite being the protagonist, gregor samsa can't really be considered the main character due to nearly everything he experiences in it being used to further his family's character development at his expense, which i think fits nicely with limbus gregor seemingly having the most said about him through indirect means by holding him up to other characters. also it's rodya carelessly making fun of His Big Major Insecurities™ again like she did in c1 which i always find fun. rodya i love you but god you're the worst.