#i'm thinking character study but. idk

[adnrewminyard]

imagine being kevin day, son of exy, born and bred to be a cog in the well-oiled machine that is the edgar allan ravens. all you know being the routine of practice and practice and practice and performance and victory alongside those you call brothers.

-and then one day you wake up in your estranged father's apartment between a bottle of painkillers and a bottle of vodka and there is a knot of bandages where your future used to be. you don't wake up at 4am anymore. you sleep until noon and vomit the remainders of life as you knew it into unfamiliar toilets. you watch orange and white clash against each other from sidelines you haven't touched since you started growing facial hair.

your brother doesn't ask you to come home. you would come if he asked. the days are longer here and the food is too rich. the colors are too harsh, the language barrier is too much. you speak and no one understands.

they feel sorry for you, but not for what you have lost, instead for what you have suffered. you try to show them what belonging means, to sever parts of yourself to fit inside a uniform, but they don't understand the necessity of the blade the way your brothers did. they don't understand that suffering feels religious if you do it right.

the therapist tells you it's survivor's guilt but the only survivors you can see are on the court in black and red and they read your eulogy after the game at a press conference. you are not a survivor in any way that matters anymore. how treacherous your heart is for continuing to beat when you can't even hold your lifeline in your hand without dropping it.

you want to go home but your key doesn't open the same door anymore. you want to sit beside your brother but there is no space on his side of the table. you want to be a raven but you are a fox.

you grieve for connection until there is a knife where your neck guard used to sit. you grieve for your life until a boy offers to show you how it feels to survive. you offer to show him how it feels to live. he tells you he won't sever parts of himself to fit the uniform, but there are telltale bloodstains in the fabric from long before you asked.

you wake up at 4am again. you take turns vomiting in the toilet, you when the alcohol level dips too low and him when his smile runs out. he doesn't speak your language but he understands it. he keeps the car running when you visit the therapist. he keeps an eye on your back to watch the 02 on your jersey turn orange. the colors don't seem as harsh anymore.

he offers you safety. he offers you belonging. he offers you the only thing he knows how to give, the only thing you know how to take.

he offers you a lifeline. you pick it up with your right hand.

[littlelightfish]

This half-foot. Dandan.

Looks preety similar to this lady here (I'll put them together so you see):

Half-lidded eyes, black hair&eyes, small eyebrows, curly hair... Dandan's skin is lighter probably because of low sun exposure (dungeon), and he has tons of freckles because he preety.

This two are clearly relatives if not siblings.

Flertom is a mirror image of the lady up there. She got Chil's eyes. She even has almost the same haircut (a bit longer). She's clearly the mother. We've solved Chilchuck's wife mystery.

But this wasn't what I was going to say.

This implies that Wife and Dandan both knew Chilchuck since their childhood. Because there's no way that Chil was just friend of the sister. They're both close to the same age, and I'll say Dandan is a Younger sibiling (she gives big sis vibes, and he gives young bro vibes). So either she introduced him to her brother or he introduced him to his sister and they became best friends as kids.

Could you imagine how their relationship was after Chil's Wife left him?

He knows he has to say something, but he doesn't want to end his relationships. At the end he takes his sister's side. He distances a bit from Chilchuck, calling him an "aquitance" rather than a friend. It isn't that he hates him, is just that it's complicated. And they both know it. They're in good terms tho, they just aren't best friends anymore and they don't talk about it. Their worry is the guild, not their personal stuff.

That's why Dandan introduces Chilchuck to Laios. If they were in bad terms, he would've suggested any other half-foot. They both priorize the guild and general safety of their own race. That's why Dandan suggests Chil instead of a less experienced hafling. He cares about the union and respects Chil's time and experience in dungeons. They're on good terms, at least good enough. Summing up, I get the feeling Dandan doesn't particularly likes Chil after what happened with his sister, but he respects him at least.

[yoosung-ah]

a brief summary of Mystic Messenger (OG edition) x

[fairmerthefarmer]

I don’t know how I never played any of the Nancy Drew games as a kid, I love point and click and I love Nancy drew and I would have been all over them!! My sister and I are playing through them together now and it is just an absolute joy. (She is however much better at puzzles than me so idk maybe they would have frustrated me as a kid)

Also it’s giving me some inspo to ~actually~ practice drawing and backgrounds etc. so anyway here’s treasure in the royal tower WIPS. I really want to do some actual illustrations from these games.

Also Evelyn/gabsmolders streams are just prime content for background comfort noise when pain flares or fatigue keep me in bed.

[cornertheculprit]

sometimes i hate my tendency to try to puzzle out how exactly a fictional mechanic would function irl because i just wanted to make a post about how i think the terrifyingly good gramarye eyesight (that works in tandem with the tension sensing and the focus to let them Perceive—"Their 'power' relies on eyesight combined with exceptional focus.") would affect apollo being abruptly moved from a quiet mountainous area to a metropolitan city with a bajillion people in it as a child (it would suck at first. Badly) but then i started trying to explain WHY it would suck so badly and now i'm knee-deep in articles about neuroscience and psychology and shit like "Variability in human cone topography assessed by adaptive optics scanning laser ophthalmoscopy" in an attempt to somewhat explain a possible way the gramarye power could work. and you know what. fuck it. rough potential explanation of my original point with no elaboration behind it. exceptional visual acuity is where the ability to subconsciously "sense" tension comes from (they See it but they don't consciously register it because of selective filtering—"She wouldn't realize that she was subconsciously detecting this tension...") -> the other known gramaryes in the games were raised in and/or very accustomed to loud chaotic environments (we know jack shit about magnifi's childhood) so they were desensitized to all the visual noise (habituation) in a way that apollo wouldn't have been since he was raised in relative isolation in the mountains -> apollo might not have known how to employ the "focus" part of the power at that point but he had to have been absolutely miserable at first (until he also grew desensitized to it) when you consider his eyesight combined with being thrust into a giant city. his bracelet was probably clamped onto his wrist until he got used to it and was able to tune all the visual noise (People, especially. Everywhere) out. Or something. WHATEVERRRRR

[cangrellesteponme]

the options are: - very stupid fembastian AU but it's mostly just humour - sonboy is NOT doing well and the hungry demon isn't helping... until he is for some reason???? (dadbastian but in the fucked-up way i enjoy writing dadbastian) - grelle character study that's kind of cute but depressing - weird sebagni "fix-it" except agni still dies - finny-centric early days of phantomfam fic because i need to learn how to write finny at some point

now the real question is which writing wip do I want to work on

[dootznbootz]

I think some folks MAY have gotten the wrong idea about how I feel about Circe with some of my posts. So, to clear the air...

Homies, I love that fucked up sorceress.

I love how we're never given a reason why she turns people into animals. That's so funny and so awful. And another potion-making magic gal?!?! I love that she's just basically vibing on an island doing whatever she wants. I even love the fact that she scares Odysseus shitless! She's morally gray and that's why she's FUN.

I just sincerely hate when people try to girlboss her or have her be a victim of SA when she never was Looking at you, Miller. Especially when she was actually the one who coerced Odysseus in exchange for his men being transformed back into humans. And even then, while he was clearly afraid of her, (it's in the language of the Odyssey) she likely meant him no harm after a certain point. He just didn't know that.

Why does she need a reason to do awful things? Why can't she just be a goddess who does whatever she wants? That's the reason why I love her!!! She's fucked up!!! :D

I hate what the Telegony did to her as well! >:( You're telling me, this sorceress goddess, who makes potions (!!!) wouldn't have magic contraceptives??? Would WANT CHILDREN?!?! WITH THE PATHETIC WIFEMAN?! No. Fuck no. Eugammon of Cyrene, I have beef with you 🤬

Anyways!!! Understand all the "#anti circe" I have is simply Anti "Girlboss Circe" or the book. I genuinely think she's neat af as her morally gray, fucked up sorceress self and just get frustrated with...everything :'D

[protagonist-art]

"Uh- I'm Arnold. Bennett. It's profoundly difficult to get your lifes works and studies accepted if your name isn't... yes, oh! Are you a fan of moths, sir?"

NEW RDR2 OC!! a reclusive, clumsy entomologist and bug collector; cooped up in his study of uniformed clutter

[slightlytoastedbagel]

my brain can't make sense of it rn but please take my hand and ponder the differences between the family structure of the Shiraishi household compared to the rest of vbs.

[sceebybeeby]

there's something to be said about nickels and having two of them

[averlym]

miscellany (again),, tags in the last image by @pyrotechnicarus

[hecatesbroom]

did I finally manage to write a brand new fic? I sure did!! with many, many thanks to the lovely @eeblouissant for inspiring me with these beautiful drawings of Blanche dipping Dorothy (and the incredibly sweet follow-up with Rose playing the piano, after our chat about this scene!!) I hope I managed to do it justice ;)

Summary

When Dorothy mentions she’s never been dipped before, Blanche and Rose decide to take matters in their own hands.

[sskk-manifesto]

--

[agapestricken]

hello, hello, you all — so... i hope you all are having a great thursday thus far, and i thought i'd bring this up now since i hadn't before; but with ana's zombification comes some noticeable differences to his behavior as well as appearance. because, and don't get me wrong, he was already pale before... but now anastasiy's skin now has this pallor that takes on a sickly look. and it has become necessary for ana to have to apply some concealer to his skin daily to hide the fact that his lips are, indeed, sort of tinged blue + some veins (particularly around his eyes and mouth) can clearly be seen and it definitely isn't the most uhh. natural look, to say the least JSJSJ

now, i'll probably cover more about his behavioral differences later, but one thing is that this man does have these SICK and TWISTED urges to consume human flesh as a zombie would in typical fiction would... so that's lovely / j LMAO nahhh, i'm totally being sarcastic with y'all right now as that is actually horrifying. but anastasiy does try his darndest to resist giving into this temptation because cannibalism is a BIG no-no in society for a reason (because its absolutely terrible and extremely gross) + with... slightly mixed results 😬

[petrichorade]

Local loser yapping about ratiomei again

Related to this reading material and Ruan Mei's annotations towards it

[talentforlying]

priest: i don't, ah, quite know what to say to you. if you are in such terrible danger, why are you taking it all so calmly? constantine: hmh! i dunno, father. i had a bloke beaten to a pulp earlier this evening. that sound calm to you? priest: you did what...? constantine: i must've been off me bleedin' rocker. i've never done anything like it before in me life, y'know?

constantine: but there's header gets his guts blown out, and george is stickin' his head in the noose, and helen gets ... jesus, then friggin' sarah bites me head off — ! everything's coming to bits in me hands and it's so easy to just see red and now, shit, they could've killed the tosser for all i know! and now i'm just like the bastards i've hated all me life! kill him! fire him! close them down! piss all over him! screw you, i can do whatever i want! i so much as blink and you're dead, pal! i'm in charge!! ...

constantine: 'scuse me, father. i'm always like this when i don't get me own way. — hellblazer #81, "rake at the gates of hell pt. 4"

babygirl you are just....so, sooooo offputting. (and grieving, and guilty, and terrified, but yeah: offputting.)

anyway, it's issues like this one that remind me why i kind of hesitate over some of the retcons in the recent spurrier runs, like the one with him now having opened dream's pouch of sand and stolen some before they even met. because like, it's easy enough to look at john constantine now — with 70 years of worst possible choices and unresolved trauma crystallizing underneath his skin to cover up all the soft, hopeful bits where he's used to getting hit — and assign him arbiter of ill intentions, magus of wasted potential, saint of shit choices, but man . . . he was new to this, once. he was still new to this 80 issues in.

80 issues in, and he's not used to losing friends yet; he even has time enough between catastrophes to grieve each individual one. still has enough left to live for at this stage to necessitate running and hiding, instead of bodily throwing himself at the problem like he learns to later, or sitting apathetically by to do nothing except smoke and watch the world fall apart when he finally gives up. fuck, he still apologizes.

and you're telling me this guy, this soppy wet cat motherfucker hiding from the devil in a church basement, so guilty over not knowing what happened to the guy that he paid people (paid chas, so chas could pay people) to attack that the bottle he's holding in this scene isn't even his second or third........this guy's past, more innocent self lied right to the face of DREAM OF THE ENDLESS and got away with it?

hm. i just don't know about all that.