#just for bragging rights

[sarah0687]

Last day of Range Camp today. We're going to have a test at the end...the person with the highest score gets a bedazzled belt buckle. I really want to take it home.

I won't though because I absolutely suck at plant identification. I only know plants as "the one that Nick tried to get me to eat" and "the one with the name that sounds like European royalty"

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The Yiling Band Tour!

[ghostly-bat]

Do u think dick and jon share cute photos they took of damian and they have cutest dami photo of the week contest and Jon crying to damian begging him to send that one photo he took of damian sleeping to dick so he could win because dick pulled out a photo of damian at 10 years old dressed as a starfish

I like to think that they meet up in person every week in secret and are just like:

Jon, sledding his phone across the table: Taking exactly two weeks ago, my apartment

And it's a picture of Damian wearing one of Jon's hoodies that are far too big on him and fuzzy socks, watching a random fish documentary with stars in his eyes

Dick: Not bad, but I counter with this– Damian, 10 years old, Halloween

And it's 10-year-old Damian dressed as a starfish with a pout on his face cus he really just wants to go trick or treating and doesn't understand why photos of him are being taken and why it's necessary

Jon: OK now that's just not fair! I don't have any pictures of him when he was 10!

Jason: Damian, ages two to six

And it's Jason pulling out polaroid photos of Damian he took himself from his time in the league

And yes I do believe that Damian does allow Jon to send that photo because in all honesty does Damian think this whole situation is absolutely ridiculous? Yes, but does he also still want to win via Jon? Yes

[iamnmbr3]

Everyone: omg Harry is the heir of Slytherin. He just spoke Parseltongue which is a super rare hereditary skill in the Slytherin line and it looks like he set a snake on someone in front of witnesses.

Draco: nah he wouldn’t do that I know him

[bet-on-me-13]

Demon Twins AU but Damian meets Ellie first

So! We have the classic Demon Twins AU, where Danny is the Twin brother of Damian. He was left for dead after a mission gone wrong in a snowy wasteland, with lethal wounds that would kill him within an hour. Damian rightfully assumed that he was dead.

Then one day, at a Gala his father was hosting, he seems somebody who looks exactly like Danyal. They have the same eyes, bone structure, many of the same Mannerisms, and all signs point to this being Danyal. He even takes some DNA and runs a test on it after the Gala. It comes up as a 50% Match to his own, the perfect percentage for a Fraternal Twin (which Danny was, they weren't identical)

He realizes that Danyal must have somehow survived his injuries and found his way to a new family, as improbableas it sounds. But there is one small deviation from the Danyal he knew.

The person at the Gala was a Girl.

In Public Record, she is listed as Danielle "Ellie" Masters, the daughter of reclusive Millionare Vladimir Masters. Which was confusing since Vlad claimed to have had a Son before her first Public appearance.

So he comes to the conclusion that Danyal must be Trans, and went through a Transition. He fully supports his new sister, but he does kind of need to contact her to see if she is safe from the League.

Unbeknownst to him, Ellie is a Clone of Danny made by Vlad back during his whole "Supervillain Phase". After he chilled out and became a good guy, she finally accepted him as a parent and let him claim her as a daughter. (They went to a frankly absurd amount of family therapy to reconcile)

Danny is just living his best life back in Amity Park, when Vlad tells him that some Heroes have been sniffing around his Estate and looking into Ellie's past. He just hopes the Fake Identity he made for her will hold up to scrutiny, it's been years since he made one.

[syntheticdreamscapes]

this is all 100% accurate and I fucking love it

Crafting and Gathering is annoyingly weird. Like once you uncover another fucking layer of it you discover another headache. Like you could get the best script gear but after getting it you'll also wants to pick up these random certificates so you can buy a book to let you know about an endgame material you can harvest but you are better off crafting gear that will give you better chances of getting the stuff you need to craft better standard gear and then there's overmelding and expensive squid dishes to make it so you can perceive the material you'll need to even begin the process and for that you need a 12 - 15 step process program, which you can only find on the sixth tuesday of every month that ends on the 26th days under Haley's Comet. I've been leveling crafting and gathering over a year now and it still the rabbit hole goes fucking deeper.

[topperflop]

whenever i think about prowlbee confessing i legit cannot picture either of them going to the other and admitting their feelings. prowl sees bumblebee as an obnoxious, impulsive, and aggravating bot he’d be embarrassed to spend time with in public. bumblebee thinks prowl has a stick up his ass with how often he’s nagging bee for some sort of “incorrect behavior.” if either of them had to choose between confessing to each other or going a month without energon they’d choose the latter

however. both of them are very close to bulkhead. bee and bulk went to boot camp together and bee made it clear he appreciates bulk’s friendship more than anything else. prowl decided to train bulkhead of his own volition and trusted him enough to request his help to secretly bringing the dinobots to their island, which he trusted nobody else with

so i can absolutely prowl and/or bumblebee going to bulkhead, rambling about how much they dislike the other and yet cannot get them out of their heads, and they need help. i just picture bulk in the morning listening to prowl rant about bee’s flaws and how he always has the urge to get up close to him for some unknown reason, and in the afternoon listening to bee complain about how uptight prowl is and how he enjoys poking fun at him because then he gets angry and up in his space, which is a normal thing to want

and bulkhead is just like. okay. and he has to listen to them so much that he can’t take it anymore and sets up a trap where they have to confess and be honest. which neither of them expected purely bc they didn’t think bulkhead was capable of pulling a trick like that

anyways that’s prowlbee confession to me and it takes them at least 4 months or longer for all of this to happen

[uniiiquehecrt]

Voice actors are NOT the same as actors.

It takes a specific kind of skill-set and training to be able to warp and meld the voice. It takes a certain kind of talent and dedication to hone that talent into the ability to meld the voice and invoke emotion with one's voice alone. Actors are used to using their voice secondarily to their body language and their facial expressions. It's all mirrored back on camera. They do have nuance. But it's a different kind of nuance and a different kind of training to produce that nuance.

Voice actors might get their likeness transposed on their character's design, and maybe their mannerisms might seep into the character's animation. But when it's all said and done: their presence is in their voice. They are bringing a character to life, showing that emotion in their voice, trying to keep a specific accent, drawl, pitch, tone in that voice and keep it consistent for their recording sessions.

The voice actor is like a classically trained musician who can play first chair in a competitive, world-renown orchestra. The actor (who fills the voice actor's role) is like a moot who played violin in beginner and intermediate high school orchestra and thinks they can get into Juilliard with that 2-4 years of experience.

This doesn't mean that the HS orchestra moot can't play. They can even be really good at it. Maybe they won competitions and sat first chair. But they are not in the same league as the person who's been training their whole lives and lives and breathes to hone their craft using the instrument and all of the training they've ever acquired to perfect it. They are not meant for the same roles. They are not in the same caliber. You do not hire the HS equivalent when you want to play complex music in a competitive orchestra.

Actors are not the same as voice actors.

And furthermore, actors - especially big name actors - taking the roles of animated characters for big budget films or TV pilots makes no sense anyways when - at least in the case of TV pilots - there's not a point to hiring a big budget actors anyways. That money could be used elsewhere (like paying your animators), and the talent that is brought onto the screen for X character could then be hired on to voice said character no recasting required.

I wouldn't say voice acting as a profession is in danger exactly, but it's certainly being disrespected and overlooked for celebrity clout, and this has ALWAYS been an issue. Shoot, even Robin Williams knew that much - which is why he tried so hard not to be used as a marketing chess piece for Aladdin and got royally pissed off when it happened anyways. People shouldn't go to any movie (but especially not animated films) because "oh famous actor is in it". People should go because it's a good movie and the voice acting is good.

People who honest to god think that voice actors are replaceable because "oh well anyone can voice act" or "I like xyz celebrity so naturally it'll be good" ... Honestly I just wish you'd reassess your priorities because you're missing the point and are part of the problem.

Voice Actors ≠ Actors.

[styxxsyringe]

pirate duo (i haven't decided on the third member's appearance yet...)

[alicelufenia]

From Long Prices to Long Odds - yep, I'm starting Pale Lights

While chipping away at my re-read of A Practical Guide to Evil, and with patch 8 of Baldur's Gate 3 STILL a ways out, I've started reading ErraticErrata's next big project - Pale Lights.

Right away I can tell how much the author's improved since book 1 of the Guide. We've got two point of view characters for our journey through the subterranean, post-apocalypse world of Vesper. Tristan Abrascal - orphan, street rat, and thief, with a vendetta to settle against the nobles who've wronged him; and Lady Angharad Tredegar, a noble in exile with nothing to her name save her sword arm and unshakable sense of honor, who has sworn vengeance against her family's killers, even as she's dogged by assassins at every step.

Both from worlds like night and day (or I guess that would be Gloam and Glare in this world), they could not be more different, but fate has set them on the same path; to survive to see their enemies punished, they must first survive the trials on the island - the Dominion of Lost Things - alongside other competitors from all walks of life, in order to escape their past and join the Watch, that special band of elite god-killers that toe the line between civilization and the monsters who lurk in the endless dark beyond the points of light.

And it really isn't any big spoiler or anything to mention contracts, basically pacts with supernatural beings for power and guidance. Both our main characters have them—Tristan with a minor god of luck (he's literally her only follower) called Fortuna, the Lady of Long Odds, who only he can interact with, and is constantly snarking at him; while Angharad's contract is with a mysterious entity of few words known only as the Fisher. Many other characters possess contracts that are detailed to varying degrees, but we get the closest look at them through our main characters, both patrons being just as different from each other as their human charges.

It's only a few chapters in that the supporting cast expands immensely, with over a dozen other competitors shipped off to the same destination. Some are paid for by a sponsor, like our protagonist duo, others are here by their own expense, mainly a group of Sacromontan nobles for whom getting even partway through the trials will gain them status with their families. And some are here because they have no other choice, forced in by debtors and legbreakers to pay with their lives or their eventual service in the Watch. Think Man in the Iron Mask meets And Then There Were None.

Keeping track of so many characters early on has been a challenge, but luckily the extremely prolific @gwennafran has created visual guides per chapter of the entire cast, their origins, abilities, affiliations, and status of living or dead or mia. It also serves as a handy reference to visualize what everyone looks like, the cast being just as diverse and multicultural as in the Guide, except everyone's human this time around.

Where the Guide draws from Mediterranean Europe and North Africa for its naming conventions and cultural touchstones, Pale Lights starts us off with a very Central and South America-inspired setting. Place names like Izcalli and Sacromonte, the nobles of the latter being referred to constantly as infanzones (literally minor nobles in Spanish), are just a few early examples. Right now the scope is very limited, starting in one city before moving to a "deserted" island, which is actually totally occupied by hollows, or "darklings", the extremely indigenous-coded pale-skinned people who have completely adapted to living in the total dark of Vesper, away from any pits of Glare (the perpetual light shining through cracks in firmament above, where most civilization gathers). Especially given we're already exploring class dynamics of nobles and non-nobles, I expect we'll also find the "Red Eye cultists" to be more than they appear at first.

I'm only 16 chapters in, and already am very much hooked. Both Tristan and Angharad serve as excellent foils for each other; pragmatist vs idealist, street smarts vs noble scion, untrusting to a fault vs too honorable for her own good. It's all very delicious, and I have reasons to root for both of them even as their beliefs and methods remain anathema to each other. One of the coolest things about a primarily single-perspective narrative are those times when you can see that character from an outsider's view, and because each chapter or two flips between protagonists, we get an impression of how both of them come across to other people, giving us a chance to be out of their heads for a bit.

Dunno how often I'll post live reading thoughts on this one, but I'll certainly try, including anytime I finish a book; which right now is just the two. But hey, at least with this one I'll be catching up to current releases, which is a nice change of pace.

[mediumgayitalian]

anyone who’s ever had to talk to me over text i am so sorry

[greennoobartist]

*walks in from the void*

*looks at the clock: 9pm*

...

Sup chat ✌

[lichqueenlibrarian]

Bones you’re a doctor, quit torturing Kirk.

[noctupede]

Might I trouble you for some Iceson and Dadmark content in these trying times? :)

hi paiko!!!!!!(๑>؂•̀๑)

We can all appreciate Toddler Ice in these trying times. I have had this idea of Denmark being the biggest hypeman for Iceland ever. I love the idea of him telling other nations that his kid is totally better, smarter, and overall amazing just to say he has a better kid than them. Denmark is a proud dad every day.

Toddler Ice can do anything mundane or general toddler things and Denmark will always talk about him like he's doing amazing, tiny ice could bite him and he would talk about how "strong his kid is"

[raddestrose]

I unfortunately AM Shen Qingqiu/ Yuan, cause I am OBLIVIOUS to when people like me

[georgefuckinharrison]

False John Lennon accusations blow my mind bc people aren’t ever just satisfied with the bad things he already did. They have to say shit like he killed Brian Epstein or smth