#in a meaningful sense

[chestnutroan]

A couple new additions to my sketchbook 🐎🐄

[99thpercentile]

places where the audio distorts

image ids under the cut

tmagp 4:

tmagp 5:

tmagp 7:

tmagp 8:

the audio distorts when people lie.

I imagine this knowledge will come in handy later.

[id: ALICE: This is not something you go poking around in. Not if you want to keep your job… or your neck. SAM: (a little amused) Okay, okay! I get it. Consider me scared straight. "Consider me scared straight" is highlighted. end id]

[id: LENA: Now, while I understand your concerns, you need to understand that Colin has held the IT Manager position for some time without incident, and although he is somewhat… frustrated with his current assignment, he can request help from the central IT team at any time. I am certain that should he find his responsibilities unmanageable, he will request assistance. Or resign, of course. Either way, the problem will resolve itself. "Or resign, of course" is highlighted. end id]

[id: CELIA: Is there any way to look up specific files? ALICE: Like what? CELIA: Oh, I don’t know. Every case about… being buried alive, or meat, or… whatever. ALICE: Well, there’s a search bar, but it doesn’t actually do anything. You’d have to dig through them all manually. (suspicious) – Why do you ask? CELIA: Just figuring it all out. Ah well, I guess I’ll need to find Bigfoot on my own time. "Just figuring it all out" is highlighted. end id]

[id: GERTRUDE: I see. Well, I’m sorry, but I don’t think Gerry can help you – GERRY: (casually) Yeah, I barely remember any of it. "I don’t think Gerry can help you" is highlighted. end id]

[id: GERRY: Oh yeah, but I was pretty young. I remember filling in a bunch of forms and questionnaires, then some old men asking me questions about what books I liked to read, who did I look up to, that kind of thing. And then I left. SAM: (disappointed) That’s all? GERRY: Yeah, afraid so. Other than just sitting around with a bunch of other kids in a room that smelled like old books. "Yeah, afraid so" is highlighted. end id]

[id: CELIA: I’m trying to look into… Weird physics stuff: time travel, other dimensions, teleportation, all that good stuff. Freddy doesn’t really do searches, so you could keep an eye out and let me know if any come up in your cases? SAM: Uh, sounds a bit sci-fi compared to our usuals. What’s this for? (amused breath) You’re not doing research for that podcast you were on, are you? CELIA: (surprised) You know about that? SAM: I might have given you a quick Google. CELIA: Then… yeah. I’m doing a favor for Georgie. "yeah. I’m doing a favor for Georgie" is highlighted. end id]

[lotus-pear]

it actually pisses me off sm when there is a scene where an aggressor shoots at dazai and chuuya takes the bullet and dies trying to save him and has an elaborate death scene where he's bleeding out in dazai's arms and choking out his last words because we all fucking know man would just step in front of dazai and kick the bullets back to the shooter using gravity manipulation before saying smth snarky like "you can kys when we get back from the job."

[inthecarpets]

Kabru is such a character

it's interesting how from i.e. Laios' perspective the story is like fun adventure mixed with drama when his sister is gone.

but from Kabru's perspective it feels like a thriller or a horror story and Laios is one of more terrifying things in it due to the simplicity of how enthusiastic he is around it.

Kabru's there, in the place that terrifies him the most, meeting a person who loves said place and everything involved with it with all his heart. And the longer he knows said person, the more he's terrified of him.

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts 3 - Monstropolis

[maerhiya]

in regards to the constant dismissal of his aroace identity, i hate it when alastor 'fans' say and use the excuse: "he's fictional, he won't get offended."

like, you're right, but it can and will offend us.

when you see yourself being represented on screen, of course you'd feel enthusiastic about it — representation allows individuals to see themselves reflected in the media they consume, validating their identities and experiences. but when so many people take that representation and decide to disregard and discard it, it is so fucking frustrating. we finally have another character to be part of the tiny amount of representation we have, but then people don't even care about how much it means to us? like yeah, alastor won't get offended because he's not real, but it frustrates and annoys us. do you realize that it's also technically invalidating the aroace community? that you're invalidating our feelings? imagine feeling like you're finally being seen because your orientation is finally being represented in media, and people just decide to blatantly ignore, discard, and invalidate it.

media has such a powerful influence on real life, representation being a prevalent factor of it. there are numerous posts that dictate how people went to watch a movie/show or read a book just because a character depicts their identity in it — obviously, being represented is an incredibly uplifting and validating experience.

which is why seeing an aroace character in a popular show is so meaningful to us because we live in a world where romance and sex are literally everywhere and prioritized above all else. (and it's pretty obvious that alastor's on the repulsed end of the spectrum, but even if he wasn't, at least make an effort to acknowledge his sexuality instead of continuing to portray him as allo; aroace folks can be in relationships but it's not going to be the same thing with allos' experiences.)

any and every representation matters, but why does that seem to stop at people under the aroace spectrum? like y'all can't even let us appreciate the scraps of representation we have. we barely have any, so are we really that dramatic for being upset at how people easily disregard and dismiss our identities that are being depicted on screen just like that? is it truly wrong of us to want to defend and maintain the little representation we have?

[ganondoodle]

okay i typed this in a reply but i need to say this more detailed here too, the way totk dealt with horses (and stables) is bad and worse than botw imo (yes i can rant about that too, these weird choices are in every little spot in totk, its almost impressive)

in a game that lets you build cars and stupid flying maschines, towers that shoot you into the stratosphere AND teleporting points all over the place, the chance is already low that you use a horse- though i would be one of them bc i love horses and hate building and didnt find it fun at all-

(also i almost never used any parts i had with me bc you cant put them back and your dumb vehicles despawn as soon as you dont look at them- also a negative thing about that system that reinforces the feeling of actually using it being more punishing than rewarding with the added bonus of the good ol saving your health potions forever problem)

-and something i DID like was that you can have more horses and the ... one.. new color (the lil spots but only AFTER you do that one quest in the spy post)

the stable points seemed like a neat idea, but like so many things, are utterly cheatable, imo the system should have only given you a point when you visit a new stable, so you actually have to go around and visit them all

(also .. add new stables, like mini ones or sth that dont offer beds- you dont need that anyway- so you have more places in which you can get them ... why did they remove some of them anyway, shouldn there be MORE now that the land is supposedly healing/being repaired? especially the one next to the big canyon, its so empty there it would have the perfect place for sth like a new settlement or a big boss arena but no its more empty than it was before, why?? and then putting yet another repeating annoying quest there in that weirld empty place?? i just dont get it)

letting you farm points by sleeping at a stable or bringing in a horse gives you LESS incentive to actually go around the world bc you can just farm it there

(and if that was done so youd 'discover' the malanya talks to you in your sleep 'secret' ... that is literally told to you, and if its bc you dont want to force players to go around and find every stable to get all those rewards ... why do you have 140 or whatver caves then with the majority of them being the literal same thing over and over ... to make people actually use the sleeping thing there? .. why, who uses that anyway, and farming points by sleeping there .. what the hell does that add? AND THEN the stupid sleep over tickets, probably the most nothign reward ever, dont count?? i dont think i ever used one- it just all doesnt make any sense, everything plays against each other)

the upgrading system for your horse is .. once again, a neat idea horribly executed, you have to go find malanya to upgrade them, and similarly stupidly like the fairies, they only tell you what food you need for what upgrade when you are there .. or when you are sleeping in the special tm bed at a stable, randomly, one food, bc the quantity changes too

which is just so ??????????? let me go and do a quest that rewards you with a lil booklet in which you can look up what an upgrade costs, or let the stables have that, either as a list or in the menu when selecting a horse or something?? (also why the hell is malanya in a different spot anyway, like, it feels like a modder just plopped them over there, their og spot is just empty now - except for yet again a stupid filler quest for .. another big horse and a yaaaaaaaaays crystal shrine quest- ... the spot is even still called spring of the horse god .... its so stupid, just like the fairy shuffling around, like you really couldnt think of a better way to reuse that concept other than to ... move it to a different spot in the same map and map level???? and not change anything in their og spot except idk, put a hole in the map ... for one of them like .. its like they moved them around last minute just to have the semblance of things being 'changed' with no regard what makes a change actually feel like one and what just feels like, pick up thing, click on random spot on map, drop thing- its like that for the fairies and shrines too, its so dumb and .. feels disrepectful to botw and how much thought seemed to have went into these spots that were clearly built about those things)

and like it couldnt get WORSE, they cut off the paths that horses follow automatically with one of those miasma buttholes (sorry its just a hole cut into the map, it doesnt even look like miasma burst through, it just .. cut out) a monster camp (that RESPAWNS, i thought those camps you clear with a quest would stay clear, but that would make sense, so of course it respawns and you can do the frame rate killer quest over and over yippieee) or otherwise like, with a big rock or a broken bridge-

and there is NO WAY to create a new path or fix or move anything in a game ABOUT BUILDING supposedly, like you needed more reasons to never use a horse????? i liked jsut hopping on and letting them follow a path and chill looking at the landscape, you cant do this here, and you cant even excuse it with 'its bc of the theme' as in, stuff is destroyed bc calamity 1.5 or whatever bc nothing in the game makes it feel like theres anything actually at stake, but the real crime is to make it not be fixable. WHY??? link moves entire buildings with ease but cant move one freaking rock that fell into a river?????? you swing around logs like a club but cant fix a bridge so your horse can get over it??????????????????????????????

[animentality]

I know everyone wants stories with happy endings, and they all hate when the main characters die, and insist well what's the point of the story then, it didn't matter at all! they died!

but.

I don't know. do the stories of those who die at the end not matter at all?

because if that's the case, I have news about the stories told by everyone who has ever lived in this world.

we all die at the end. we are all doomed by the narrative.

but our stories still matter.

[t1sunfortunate]

I truly do think one of the largest pitfalls among the "media consumption is my passion" crowd is the tendency to treat characters as human beings with agency rather than narrative tools manipulated by the author

[commsroom]

as an extension of how hera reads as trans to me, hera/eiffel resonates with me specifically as a relationship between a trans woman and a cis man. loving hera requires eiffel to decentralize his own perspective in a way that ties into both his overall character arc and the themes of the show.

pop culture is baked into the dna of wolf 359, into eiffel’s worldview, and in how it builds off of a sci-fi savvy audience’s assumptions: common character types, plot beats, or dynamics, why would a real person behave this way? how would a real person react to that? eiffel is the “everyman” who assumes himself to be the default. hera is the “AI who is more human than a lot of humans,” but it doesn’t feel patronizing because it isn’t a learned or moral quality; she is a fundamentally human person who is routinely dehumanized and internalizes that.

eiffel/hera as a romance is compelling to me because there is a narrative precedent for some guy/AI or robot woman relationships in a way i think mirrors some attitudes about trans women: it’s a male power fantasy about a subclass of women, or it’s a cautionary tale, or it’s a deconstruction of a power fantasy that criticizes the way men treat women as subservient, as property. but what does that pop culture landscape mean in the context of desire? If you are a regular person, attracted to a regular person, who really does care for you and wants to do right by you, but is deeply saturated in these expectations? how do you navigate that?

I think that, in itself, is an aspect of communication worth exploring. sometimes you won’t get it. sometimes you can’t. and that’s not irreconcilable, either. it’s something wolf 359 is keenly aware of, and, crucially, always sides with hera on. eiffel screws up. he says insensitive things without meaning to. often, hera will call him out on it, and he will defer to her. in the one case where he notably doesn’t, the show calls attention to it and makes him reflect. it’s not a coincidence that the opening of shut up and listen has eiffel being particularly dismissive of hera - the microaggression of separating her from “men and women” and the insistence on using his preferred title over hers. there are things eiffel has just never considered before, and caring for hera the way he does means he has to consider them. he's never met someone like hera, but media has given him a lot of preconceptions about what people like her might be like.

there’s a whole other discussion to be had about the gender dynamics of wolf 359, even in the ways the show tries to avoid directly addressing them, and how sexual autonomy in particular can’t fully be disentangled from explorations of AI women. i don’t think eiffel fully recognizes what comments like “wind-up girl” imply, and the show is not prepared to reconcile with it, but it’s interesting to me. in the context of transness (and also considering hera’s disability, two things i think need to be discussed together), i think it’s worth discussing how hera’s self image is at odds with the way people perceive her, her disconnect from physicality, how she can’t be touched by conventional means, and the ways in which eiffel and hera manage to bridge that gap.

even the desire for embodiment, and the autonomy and type of intimacy that comes with it, means something different when it’s something she has to fight for, to acquire, to become accustomed to, rather than a circumstance of her birth. i suppose the reason i don’t care for half measures in discussions re: hera and embodiment is also because, to me, it is in many ways symbolically a discussion about medical transition, and the social fear of what’s “lost” in transition, whether or not those things were even desired in the first place.

hera’s relationship with eiffel is unquestionably the most supportive and equal one she has, but there are still privileges, freedoms, and abilities he has that she doesn’t, and he forgets that sometimes. he will never share her experiences, but he can choose to defer to her, to unlearn his pop culture biases and instead recognize the real person in front of him, and to use his own privilege as a shield to advocate for her. the point, to me - what’s meaningful about it - is that love isn’t about inherent understanding, it’s about willingness to listen, and to communicate. and that’s very much at the heart of the show.

[hkpika07]

Edward watching as Gordon goes from naive young greenhorn who always fell for his pranks to the meanest egotistical asshole he's ever met. Watching as his friend's insecurity and inferiority complex get so bad it warps him into the worst person he can be. Watching him drift away and distance himself from him because that's what his fears told him to do. That's what every other engine on the mainland would do. Watching Henry follow him, becoming snobbish and catty so he can stay close to him. Their little trio that he thought was unbreakable bend and almost snap at the seams

And despite everything, still being kind and friendly and affectionately bullying him like he used to because he knows somewhere deep down that young greenhorn is still in there. His friend is still there he just changed. And no amount of change will stop him from being his friend. And holding out hope that one day Gordon will remember that. He and Henry always held out hope that Gordon would change for the better. They still stuck by him even when he was cruel to them because he was their friend and like hell they're leaving him behind. How inherently tragic yet hopeful that is.

And it worked. And he changed, this time for the better. And no doubt the big blue felt awful about it later in life, hiding that shame and guilt under his arrogant bravado. Because he thinks it's too late to give an apology, and he's too scared of what might happen if he does. He will never know that they already forgave him. And he will never understand why they would in the first place.

They are the golden trio because, despite the years of harshness and turmoil they all went through. They never rusted and still shine to this day. No amount of change will ever erode their friendship.

[child-of-hurin]

Part of what charms and compels me in Jeyne Poole's arc is her reaction to her predicament. All the female POVs in this book are dealing with a lot of gendered violence, and they all deal in different but dignified forms... Jeyne is not a POV character and she is absolutely not dignified lol. She cries and begs, she is utterly helpless. But unlike most women in this book who are utterly helpless, she survives. It's frustrating how fans refuse to celebrate that, simply because there is no glory in it.

[starflungwaddledee]

🐾📺👻

Just in case if I didn't put in the right ones, it's "if your character had a copy ability in KAFTL what would it look like" "If your OC was in the anime, how would they work" and "has your oc been possessed before?"

Thank you and keep up the amazing work!

hey there hyperz0ne!! these are really fun ones, thank you! i went a little overboard for the copy ability upgrade one, so i'll answer the anime one in another post; but it's coming up soon! from this ask meme!

11. 🐾: If there was a Forgotten Land copy ability upgrade themed after your OC, which ability would it be for? What would the hat for it look like and how would it upgrade the base ability?

this is SUCH a cool question!! i LOVE hypothetical game mechanics, especially forgotten land copy ability upgrades and designs. took my time to think through this one good and proper! i've previously hinted that if starstruck gave an ability it would probably be crash, so continuing off that i think she would give a third evolution to the crash ability, following on from Time Crash, called Supernovic Crash. it would be unlocked at the end of the game, when starstruck shows up in waddle dee town to hang out with her friends.

i've also previously described a moveset she might have as a dream friend, and i think this one would have some similar caveats. > in each new stage in order to power-up the ability kirby must find four collectables. prior to this he can inhale and use star-bullets as usual, but cannot discard the ability except by going back to town, or dying. > once he's collected the items, the Supernovic Crash ability gains its silly little hat. after that it has unlimited uses of its first attack, "star shower", which summons a rain of starspears across the entire screen which will 1hKO most enemies.

> after powering up the ability, kirby can get rid of it by activating its second attack, "north star guide". opening a portal, kirby pulls through a massive star-shaped meteor, which he can run behind. so long as he keeps up, it'll clear the path for him until the end of the area. once the star explodes, the ability vanishes like normal crash

> lastly, if kirby reaches 0hp while the upgrade is active, a third secret ability called "dark gravity" activates. the dark sphere on top of his crown explodes outward, filling the screen with black. when it clears, all on screen enemies are gone, and kirby is left alive with 1hp and no copy ability

22. 👻: Has your OC ever been possessed or mind controlled? If yes, how did it happen?

i know this was an extremely popular theory early on, but she has never been possessed. and i'm not even sure she ever could be.

[mmm-eta]

if it makes you happy, then it will make happy someone else.

A strip about my latest toxic thoughts. Maybe somebody also needed to hear it.

[imavikingo]

I said this in tags on another post, but it’s relevant and deserves its own post (I should be reading my usual pre- sleeping fic selection, BUT! I had this revelation -being sleepy is useful once again! -)

They NEEDED Steve to disappear, to be gone. To never care about Bucky anymore. That way they could treat Bucky as they see fit, and that means treating him like shit.

Steve would NEVER accept or allow Bucky to make amends, he would NEVER let the government take care of Bucky or be part of his “rehabilitation” in any way shape or form. That’s why he became Nomad, that’s why Bucky stayed in Wakanda. He would had fight with teeth and nails for Bucky.

“He died already more than once! He was a victim! A prisoner of war. He saved the fucking universe. What the fuck do you mean with amends!”

He became a wanted criminal for that same reason, to not let them have Bucky (nor other people in a fucking watchlist)

They needed Steves relationship with Bucky to become bitter, to be nothing more than a memory.

Steve being in retirement wouldn’t have cut it and…

Bucky was always going to follow Steve, no matter what.

So they needed him to stay alone (or with a companion that didn’t really care as much as Steve, enter Sam)

This way they killed two birds with one stone in Endgame: Reinforcing Steves “love” for Peggy, because “he’s NOT gay, you guys!”, and the partial isolation of Bucky.

[canisalbus]

For how much Machete is described by others as off-putting, he really is a beautiful dog. Does Vasco ever tell him so? That his eyes make him look earnest, his fur the most comforting shade of white like cream, the way his ears catch light like stained glass? If someone doesn't tell him so, he'd forever think he was ugliest duckling

I think Vasco definitely tries, sincerely and often, but Machete is very reluctant to accept compliments and positive feedback. Especially if it's about something as personal and innate as his looks.