#is that you just can't compare

[bixels]

In the past, people in the Animal Crossing community would make fun of Tom Nook as a sleazy landlord. Since then, he's really rehabilitated his image as this 'heart of gold' businessman (he's the one who puts bells and furniture in trees for you to find! he adopted orphans! he donates to charity!), but New Horizons genuinely paints the most devious version of him.

He's successfully privatized settler colonialism: you pay HIM to move to a "deserted island" (which apparently the oceans in the AC world are just full of) and start a colony that he is directly invested in. At best he's running a weird vacation package scam (you arrive on the island with no money and in debt for "using his services"). At worst, he's using you to set up company towns. For god's sake, he literally has his own fake currency that he forces you to use to pay off your debt. But don't worry, he's repackaged it in a way that definitely doesn't sound like an MLM scam: the Nook Mileage Program!

You're no longer just his tenant or his temporary part-timer, you're his business lackey. The entire tutorial section of the game has you spending actual weeks running around completing tasks and doing hard labor to set up his colony. You're even tasked with preparing his properties and finding buyers for them. No, you aren't a tenant anymore. You work for the landlord. You are directly responsible for finding tenants for him. And he doesn't even fucking pay you. Not for setting up town hall and museum, or his nephew's shop –– which is the ONLY store on the entire island that sells necessities –– or bringing KK Slider to town, or helping populate his town. Not a single cent. No, actually, you have to pay HIM to BUY infrastructure like bridges and stairs and park benches. And all the while, he's telling you're the "resident representative"; you get to call the shots! That the reward is the community's progress. That what you're doing is in everyone's best interest (but most importantly, his).

Since NH's release, people have done a lot of legwork to say that Tom Nook isn't a capitalist while the game shows him at his very worst. He owns the only general store in town. You're forced to use a phone that he modified and branded as his own. Buy Nook-branded furniture and merchandise at the self-serve kiosk in the town hall, a governmental building! There's no conflict of interest here!

But hey, if you're tired of being the landlord/business mogul's goon, you can also find work as a deluxe resort home designer for a company that also pays you in their special company currency that can only be used to buy their products instead of a real salary! Because that's what the Animal Crossing franchise needs! More vacation homes!!!

[bietrofastimoff23]

i know these two cripples were fighting outside the door who would visit the cripple king first. “your feet look so much like your mother's in certain lights”. “our sister's dream. she called it "the song of maelor the missed”. aegon just wants those freaks to leave him ALONE.

[foxstens]

kevin day

watched a man be cut into pieces when he was 12 so he would understand what happens to those who defy the moriyamas

was raised in a cult, subjected to extreme labour and pressure and expectations from a young age, running on 16 hour days with no privacy and little to no autonomy

was raised in an environment where everything hinged on his ability to play. was deprived of food and rest if his performance wasn't satisfactory

was abused physically, emotionally, psychologically by his coaches, his godfather, his 'brother'. was forced to watch said brother inflict unimaginable torture on his friend for years

was forced to hide all of that due to also being a celebrity and growing up in the public eye

unexpectedly had to remove himself from that toxic but familiar environment, leaving his friend behind, in order to survive

had to learn how to function outside of that environment while adapting to a new team and using his non-dominant hand for everything in mere months

so yes i think he deserves some respect

[sparrowlucero]

do you actually dislike the bird abode or just the creature designs? not saying the name directly so your ass doesn't get blasted by the tag

I like a lot of the creatures in it; the showrunner is a really fantastic horror artist and it really comes through in the aesthetics of the show. I especially like this hand dragon, though there's a lot of other great designs:

As for the show on the whole, it's not bad but not really for me? Early on it really feels like it's schtick will be that it's a subversion of harry potter-esque stories, where the protagonist wants to go on an adventure similar to her favorite fantasy book but instead ends up hanging out with the "villain" (who's actually just othered)/the magic school turns out to be secretly oppressive/the world is kind of gross and spooky instead of clean and approachable... but as it goes along I think it ends up being a pretty by the books YA fantasy thing played mostly straight, and it isn't super interesting or funny or scary or anything besides that. Which admittedly was probably to its benefit, I think a lot of its popularity comes from it being this very tropeish and not-uncomfortable magic school/found family story that's actually queer, like I genuinely think this is hugely appealing to the average cartoon fan on twitter, but I'm just not personally into it in comparison to a lot of it's contemporaries

[blazeball]

it is genuinely the most stupid thing that kids are taught from a young age to be scared of and devalue the lives of bugs like. i am 100% sure that if kids were taught instead that insects + other crawly little things are just smaller animals that are deserving of respect and admiration as much as, like, deer or birds or squirrels, the world would be so much better. none of them are out to get you. none of them will seek you out to hurt you. that's a precious waste of resources for such a tiny creature. they're concerned with finding food and a place to rest. BUG IS ANIMAL. JUST CHILLLLLLLLLLLL

[hyperblue]

one thing that I've been constantly thinking about is timkon clone baby looking like kon's little copy until they become older and slowly start to look more and more like tim. and tim is not sure if he loves or absolutely hates it

[ofswordsandpens]

"the Gabe and Sally dynamic in the show is abusive" and "the way they've portrayed Gabe in the show is distinctly different from his book counterpart and fans can criticize that" are two discussions that can coexist

[fromtheseventhhell]

Referring to Arya's development in Braavos as "brief descriptions" when her AFfC/ADwD chapters are almost entirely dedicated to showing us her training is...certainly a choice. Doing so to claim that Sansa has the more detailed learning arc? Pure clownery. You'd never guess from this response that the original post was about detailing Arya's training with the FM (using quotes from the book!) and makes no mention of Sansa anywhere. Notably this response provides no evidence from the books and makes objectively false claims; nowhere across five books is Sansa mentioned to have a grasp of High Valyrian but, of course, Sansa has to be handed every skill that Arya has without any page space dedicated to learning it. I know this is a wild concept, but Arya exists as her own character and not everything about her story can be applied to Sansa.

[starry-bi-sky]

how do you clone a fey? that's trick question; and fey love those!

@the-navistar-carol (<333) brought up a good point while I was talking about my changeling danny au with her -- Dani! How would she exist in this au? Danny's a changeling - a fae. How would Dani, a clone of him, be created? How do you make a fey? Not through any means that Vlad is doing; you can't make a fey through unnatural means, considering the Fair Folk are nature. And Vlad's not a fey himself -- he's a halfa, even if he could make a fey, it's not in his best interest too. He's a powerful ghost, but even the weakest fae can overpower the strongest ghost. He won't want a clone of Daniel to be more powerful than him.

(In a three tier hierarchy it goes Ancients -> Fae/Mythos -> Ghosts. They all live in the Infinite Realms, but on different Planes. The fae live above the Ghost Zone in the Fey Wild, while the Mythos live beside the Wilds or down in the ghost zone depending on where they are. Places like the Frozone, the Athens Acropolis, and other such large islands climb throughout all three Planes.)

(While Ghosts can travel into the Fey Wild, its generally advised against as the ectoplasm tends to manifest differently there due to close contact magic. It can make it rather disorientating for a ghost, and as human spirits, the Fae living there would jump them faster than they could blink. So unless you're willing to play mind games with 'steal thy name eat thy face' fae, most ghosts keep out of the way of the Wilds. Fey can travel down into the Ghost Zone, they just don't bother.)

That's of course, not taking into account if Vlad even knows Danny's a fae himself. Vlad doesn't ring me as someone who really cares much about ghost culture or the going ons of the GZ. He might be aware that fae exist, but the moment he realizes he can't use them for personal gain he just doesn't bother with them. The risk is greater than the reward, and he'd rather not get eaten. But lets assume he's aware by now that Danny is fey, and has to take that into account while cloning him.

So, how does Dani exist? Good question! Honestly; i'm not sure. She might not exist at all, or if she does, she's more halfa than fey. Vlad would need a lot of human dna and ectoplasm to balance out all that fae magic. He manages to steal DNA from Jack and Maddie to do it, and since Jack's fey ancestry is very dormant its much easier to use alongside Danny's DNA.

In turn, it results in a little girl whose more human-ghost hybrid than clone. With that little extra boost in fey magic making her not a fey, but still relatively powerful. Dani is less of a clone and more of a lab-grown little sister. It's a rather tedious, complex process that has Vlad tearing his hair out trying to figure out. But he does eventually figure it out.

[gingersnapsstars]

crazy how star wars rebels has the best character work in all of star wars canon

[bsptourist]

gm_liminal_commercial

created by RileySV

[pocketramblr]

I would do anything to save her.

This was supposed to just be drawing the Taoden siblings hugging a bunch but ah guess that Falin as the tower/princess/dragon post got into my head too much

[zivazivc]

guess who

I've seen a few artists I like making human art and I got inspired to make my own.

First version was based just on their character designs and personality, and what inspired their look in the first place. Second version happened when I took into account their backstory and what I imagine human versions of their parents' would look like. I don't consider either of these "canon", because to me they're just trolls but it was a fun experiment to try.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming of me drawing little colorful dolls

[sskk-manifesto]

Bungou Stray Dogs: Dead Apple and how “ability users” (opposite to “normal people”) learning to accept themselves through the acceptance of their own abilities is a queer metaphor of acceptance of own's sexual orientation and gender: an essay by me

[hannigramislife]

"Oh, the abuse cycle in bsd–"

Yes, let's talk about the abuse cycle in Bsd. Let's talk about what people don't seem to mention, ever.

Mori. Dazai. Akutagawa. Kyouka.

Though nothing is certain about what the relationship between Mori and Dazai was really like, there is a clear difference between these relationships.

Mori is appreciative of Dazai. Much as he is scared of him, Mori would take Dazai back to the Mafia in a heartbeat. From the flashbacks, we could see that Dazai and Mori had relatively easy talks, Mori confided in him, was always honest, and 15 year old Dazai seemed to talk freely with him. The abuse is, far as we know, emotional manipulation on a great scale.

Akutagawa was probably violent with Kyouka, just as Dazai was with him, though I suppose at a lesser scale (i don't think he ever shot bullets at her, for example). One thing that we do notice, though, is that Akutagawa never talks down to her? He acknowledged her strength and gave her the same reason to live that he believed in himself. Then, he also acknowledges her growth, is actually happy for her happiness, and in Dead Apple, even suggests for her to kill him when he's at his weakest. There's also a lack of emotional dependence— unlike his own case, Akutagawa did not mold her to depend on his approval. And when she sees him, she has a less severe reaction than she did when she saw Mori, for example.

And then, you have Akutagawa and Dazai. And this is what really pisses me off. Because not only is Dazai both emotionally and physically abusive to Akutagawa, he continues to keep his hold on Akutagawa even after he has become a "good guy." He keeps Akutagawa tethered to him, manipulates him in dangerous situations Akutagawa has no business being in, and purposely plays into the boy's trauma bond to him to use him. All while giving everything to a random orphan he met on the streets that - objectively speaking - is no better than Akutagawa?

This is my personal view on their relationships, and I haven't read any light novels but Beast, so there might be information I'm missing.

But no amount of context can change the fact - and I mean fact - that Dazai had absolutely zero excuse to do what he did to Akutagawa. While in the Mafia or after it. Because the guy with an IQ of a billion, who was himself saved and shown kindness by another in his darkest times should have fucking known better.

[musical-chick-13]

This is the only thing I'm going to say about the election until it's over:

Anyone who did not vote for Harris or who attempted to dissuade people from voting for Harris, you are indirectly responsible for whatever shit Donald Trump does if he gets elected. That blood is primarily on his hands, yes. But it is also on yours. I hope you can live with that because I sure as hell wouldn't be able to.