#i'm just so obsessed

[eruhamster]

GOD man I'm so glad Steel Under Silk is back

And I'm so obsessed with the focus being on Hee-ryang. About how Hee-ryang knows what he's doing is stupid and horrible and doesn't get him what he wants, and what he wants will always be out of his reach because of what he did. Way better narratively than what other manhwa authors would do, where they'd just keep on focusing on Yeonjo and just have Yeonjo suddenly decide that he forgives Hee-ryang and that Hee-ryang doesn't have to change a thing about him and that he accepts him fully

I know Batoto will always be Batoto and you'll still get people that won't accept redemption no matter what, but it's so good purely because Hee-ryang knows fully what he's doing is fucked up, and he doesn't like it, but he's in the same trap as Yeonjo is where they're both so obsessed with trying to have control and being strong because of a lifetime of weakness in an uncontrollable situation, that they'll just keep self-sabotaging

But at the same time when he's thinking of Yeonjo and isn't in the room with him, isn't being provoked by him, you can see him slowly starting to connect the dots about the heart of the issue. He's for sure going to eventually get to the point of setting his sights on the person that victimized them both; the king.

We got 2 whole acts for it to happen so it'll be slowburn, and I really trust these two authors because they've proven they're SO good at really thinking about this sort of story realistically (vs the typical 'i'll fuck you till you love me' kind of toxic BL manhwa like painter of the night), but despite the users who keep saying there's no way that Hee-ryang can redeem himself, I really think he can

If it was any other story but this one then no. But this one it'd work.

Yeonjo has hurt him enough (not just emotionally, not just mentally, but physically) that what's going on now can be considered even. He literally nearly killed him. Hee-ryang had done right by him before, so their relationship hadn't always been toxic, and Hee-ryang has formerly made it clear he isn't interested in rape and -did- want to originally make some sort of amends with Yeonjo by freeing him from slavery (and Yeonjo refused, all in the name of the murder-suicide plot).

And Hee-ryang isn't truly evil; he is essentially a slave too, a slave of the king - he literally has no autonomy, no options. Every single thing that has happened in his life before Yeonjo has been the decision of someone else, including being plucked out of the certain death of guarding the kingdom's borders. And for what little control he -did- have, he used that to ensure less bloodshed than necessary; many other people the king could have picked instead of him would have murdered all of Yeonjo's family. Hee-ryang has excelled in avoiding bloodshed because the motherfucker is sick of killing after a whole lifetime of it being the only thing he could do and be praised and rewarded for.

They are very much on equal footing once you crack the story open beyond the very surface level concept. The power dynamic in truth is nearly illusionary, especially since everyone around Hee-ryang disagrees with him on the topic of Yeonjo. No one gets involved other than to continue to persuade Hee-ryang to stop it and to either kill Yeonjo or set him free, other than Hee-ryang's enemies, who work in tandem with Yeonjo. That's why Hee-ryang's throwing the fit he is; he's trying to act like he has power he doesn't, because he's so frustrated by not being in control again.

Yeonjo already truly does love him, but the guilt remains. Hee-ryang, if he truly wants to make amends, does have the chance to do that, because he was truly only the messenger. He had no control over the situation that Yeonjo cannot forgive. But once the worst is over and Yeonjo is set free (since the prologue shows him in peasant clothes and minding his own business and seemingly just existing as a peasant in a simple cottage), things can cool down, and I can feasibly believe in Yeonjo slowly changing his mind when he realizes that revenge against Hee-ryang is useless even in terms of avenging his family because of Hee-ryang's past.

He may not want to love him with that realization (though he already does) and the guilt may remain, but he may fully and entirely abandon caring about wanting him dead. And in that sort of mindset, if Hee-ryang comes to him with the promise to truly avenge his family and to help put the boy his father looked after back on the throne, I think Yeonjo could accept him.

[aestheticitii]

as someone who's been victimized by frieren, i will never get over the thought of robin from the "kill grima" ending coming back when chrom is old and barely remembers anyone—but when he meets her, in a rare moment of lucidity, he mistakes her for a granddaughter (SOMEONE has to get her genes), and tells her that she looks like his wife and how he's grateful that someone takes after her, like he'd always wanted

which leads into a cheesy as hell reincarnation au where she runs into him hundreds of years later and they finally get to be together!!

[captainbee66]

I miss the era of the internet where everyone had an evil alter ego/character that would show up on their channel, just to be silly, that eventually got a lot of lore from the fandom for no reason. It was a simpler time.

[lazylittledragon]

cooked an au while i was sick and i fear it has rotted my brain already

[wlwanakin]

i think possibly my favorite anakinism and one i think about a rather unhealthy amount is his body language and how he almost always looks viscerally uncomfortable and vaguely like a child who is scared of getting slapped. even when he’s being confrontational he looks sooo defensive like wow girl you have never fully processed anything that’s happened to you and you will carry the weight of it forever

[egophiliac]

since Eng is getting 7.5 soon(?), I felt motivated to go back to my Meleanor rig and make her a couple of lesson animations! ...except for alchemy, because the cauldron bubbles proved too hard to photoshop around, whoops.

maybe she just got lost on her way to the classroom...?

(credit: backgrounds are from the game, I just put her on top of 'em)

(aside from the backgrounds, this is not an edit, I drew her from scratch! please do not tag or treat as an edit!)

[theartofangirling]

the world was truly not ready in 2014 for eleanor guthrie as representation for girlfail bisexuals. terrible taste in men, fumbles the most beautiful woman in the world, makes the worst possible decisions at every turn. #progressive

[haydenthewitch]

YALL?? NEW GLITCH 2D ANOMATED SERIES??? PRODUCED BY FUCKING DANA TERRACE??? CREATOR OF THE OWL HOUSE??? AND IT LOOKS TO BE SOMEWHAT OF A HOROR SERIES???

OOOOOOH BOY WE ARE GONNA BE EATING WITH THIS ONE

[fearmeeeee]

Meeting my god

[valkugo]

"You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself." Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

[emziess]

You died, Buck. 9-1-1, S06

[the-mind-of-emma]

Adventures with Astarion: I just think he's neat - Githyanki Creche

Pt 1/?

[benevolenterrancy]

"If the original novel had given this thing more than ten words of description, there was no way he wouldn’t have remembered!"

[fishofthewoods]

I see a lot of people clowning on the people of Pelican Town for not repairing the community center themselves or clowning on Lewis for embezzling and. like. Those criticisms aren't entirely unfair. But I think instead of coming at it from a perspective of "why can't the townspeople do this" we should be asking "why and how can the farmer do this?"

Like. Think about it. The farmer arrives in Stardew Valley on the first day of spring. By the first day they're obviously different. By day five the spirits of the forest who haven't been seen by the townsfolk in years or generations are speaking to them. By the second week they've developed a rapport with the wizard that lives outside town.

In the spring they go foraging and find more than even Linus, who's spent so many years learning the ways of the valley. Maybe he knows, when he sees them walking back home. Maybe he looks at them and understands that they're different, chosen somehow.

In the summer they fish in the lakes and the ocean for hours on end, catching fish that even Willy's only ever heard of, fish that he thought were the stuff of legend. They pull up giants from the deep and mutated monstrosities from the sewers.

In the fall, their crops grow incredibly immense; pumpkins twice as tall as a person, big enough that someone could live inside. The farmer cuts it down with an axe without even batting an eye. Does Lewis wonder, when he checks the collection bin that night and finds it full to the brim with pumpkin flesh? What does he think? Does he even leave the money? Does he have the funds to pay the farmer millions of dollars for the massive amounts of wine they sell? Or is it someone--something--else entirely?

In the winter, the farmer delves into the mines. No one in Pelican Town has been down there in decades. No one in living memory has been to the bottom. The farmer gets there within the season. They return to the surface with stories of dwarven ruins and shadow people, stories they only tell to Vincent and Jas, whose retellings will be dismissed by the adults as flights of fancy. People walking by the entrance to the mines sometimes hear the farmer in there, speaking in a language no one can understand. Something speaks back.

The farmer speaks to the the wizard. They speak to the spirit of a bear inside a centuries-old stone. They speak to the shadow people and the dwarves, ancient enemies, and they try to mend the rift. They speak to the Junimos, ancient spirits of the forest and the river and the mountain. They taste the nectar of the stardrops and speak to the valley itself. They change Pelican Town, and they change the valley. Things are waking up.

And what does Evelyn think? She's the oldest person in the valley; she was here when the farmer's grandfather was young. (How old *is* she, anyway? She never seems to age. She doesn't remember the year she was born.) Does she see the farmer and think of their grandfather? Does she try to remember if he was like this too, strange and wild and given the gifts of the forest?

And does their grandfather haunt the valley? He haunts the farm, still there even after his death; his body died somewhere else, but his spirit could never stay away for long. Does Abigail, using her ouija board on a stormy night, almost drop the planchette when she realizes it's moving on its own? Does Shane, walking to work long before anyone else leaves their house, catch glimpses of a wispy figure floating through the town? Does the farmer know their grandfather came back to the place they both love so much?

Mr. Qi takes interest in the farmer. He's different, too; in a different way, maybe, but the principles are the same. They're both exceptional, and no matter what Qi says about it being hard work and dedication, they both know the truth: the world bends around the both of them, changing to fit their needs. Most people aren't visited by fairies or witches. Most people don't have meteorites crash in their yard. Most people couldn't chop down trees all day without a break or speak to bears and mice and frogs.

The farmer is different. The rules of the world don't work for them the way they work for everyone else. The farmer goes fishing and finds the stuff of fairy tales. The farmer goes mining and fights shadow beasts and flying snakes. The farmer looks at paths the townspeople walk every day and finds buried in the dirt relics of lost civilizations.

The farmer is a violent, irrepressible miracle, chosen by the valley and destined to return to it someday. Even if they'd never received the letter, they would've come home.

They always come home eventually.

[t00thpasteface]

not done messing with their shapes yet actually

[chipthekeeper]

“I was really surprised to be speaking about this big fantasy series and about a character who on both a personal and political level is somewhat at odds with the gender they were born in. That was something, as a nonbinary person, that resonates strongly....I think she’s always living in counterpoint to what her life might look like were she male.”

-Emma D'Arcy, from House of the Dragon: Inside the Creation of a Targaryen Dynasty