#like. @ myself IT'S NOT THAT HARD LOL

[inkskinned]

the thing is that they're so fascinated by sex, they love sex, they can't imagine a world without sex - they need sex to sell things, they need sex to be part of their personality, they need sex to prove their power - but they hate sex. they are disgusted by it.

sex is the only thing that holds their attention, and it is also the thing that can never be discussed directly.

you can't tell a child the normal names for parts of their body, that's sexual in nature, because the body isn't a body, it's a vessel of sex. it doesn't matter that it's been proven in studies (over and over) that kids need to know the names of their genitals; that they internalize sexual shame at a very young age and know it's 'dirty' to have a body; that it overwhelmingly protects children for them to have the correct words to communicate with. what matters is that they're sexual organs. what matters is that it freaks them out to think about kids having body parts - which only exist in the context of sex.

it's gross to talk about a period or how to check for cancer in a testicle or breast. that is nasty, illicit. there will be no pain meds for harsh medical procedures, just because they feature a cervix.

but they will put out an ad of you scantily-clad. you will sell their cars for them, because you have abs, a body. you will drip sex. you will ooze it, like a goo. like you were put on this planet to secrete wealth into their open palms.

they will hit you with that same palm. it will be disgusting that you like leather or leashes, but they will put their movie characters in leather and latex. it will be wrong of you to want sexual freedom, but they will mark their success in the number of people they bed.

they will crow that it's inappropriate for children so there will be no lessons on how to properly apply a condom, even to teens. it's teaching them the wrong things. no lessons on the diversity of sexual organ growth, none on how to obtain consent properly, none on how to recognize when you feel unsafe in your body. if you are a teenager, you have probably already been sexualized at some point in your life. you will have seen someone also-your-age who is splashed across a tv screen or a magazine or married to someone three times your age. you will watch people pull their hair into pigtails so they look like you. so that they can be sexy because of youth. one of the most common pornography searches involves newly-18 young women. girls. the words "barely legal," a hiss of glass sand over your skin.

barely legal. there are bills in place that will not allow people to feel safe in their own bodies. there are people working so hard to punish any person for having sex in a way that isn't god-fearing and submissive. heteronormative. the sex has to be at their feet, on your knees, your eyes wet. when was the first time you saw another person crying in pornography and thought - okay but for real. she looks super unhappy. later, when you are unhappy, you will close your eyes and ignore the feeling and act the role you have been taught to keep playing. they will punish the sex workers, remove the places they can practice their trade safely. they will then make casual jokes about how they sexually harass their nanny.

and they love sex but they hate that you're having sex. you need to have their ornamental, perfunctory, dispassionate sex. so you can't kiss your girlfriend in the bible belt because it is gross to have sex with someone of the same gender. so you can't get your tubes tied in new england because you might change your mind. so you can't admit you were sexually assaulted because real men don't get hurt, you should be grateful. you cannot handle your own body, you cannot handle the risks involved, let other people decide that for you. you aren't ready yet.

but they need you to have sex because you need to have kids. at 15, you are old enough to parent. you are not old enough to hear the word fuck too many times on television.

they are horrified by sex and they never stop talking about it, thinking about it, making everything unnecessarily preverted. the saying - a thief thinks everyone steals. they stand up at their podiums and they look out at the crowd and they sign a bill into place that makes sexwork even more unsafe and they stand up and smile and sign a bill that makes gender-affirming care illegal and they get up and they shrug their shoulders and write don't say gay and they get up, and they make the world about sex, but this horrible, plastic vision of it that they have. this wretched, emotionless thing that holds so much weight it's staggering. they put their whole spine behind it and they push and they say it's normal!

this horrible world they live in. disgusted and also obsessed.

[theoldkyokodied]

Guess who has been rewatching iasip...

[idontmindifuforgetme]

friend wanted to see my tumblr, and when i told him i can’t show it to him bc it’s basically my personal diary he went “oh so I can’t see it but a bunch of strangers on tumblr can??” he literally does not get me. no one will get me like the people in my phone get me

[off-mozzarella]

(From the body swap AU)

Hii! I'm very happy to see that my body swap comic was so well received, so here's a little something as a thanks for all the support <3

I'm excited to keep sharing my drawings, I hope you like what I make!

[vaguely-concerned]

thinking about not only the specific people lucanis pulls in to represent the 'locks' in his psyche, but the storytelling that happens in the structure/order of them. the underlying ideas are presented something like:

the lucanis who went into the ossuary never came back out again; he died down there (the boy caterina raised is gone forever) -> you're putting yourself in danger doing this (by being close to me), you should leave because I can't bear it if you get hurt because of me -> it doesn't matter even if we do try this, it won't work anyway (again because of me) ('you know what he's like, you can open the door but he won't walk through it' :'( oofie doofie) -> what if the real secret is that there was never anything but the monster in here from the beginning. you should leave, there was never anything here worth saving in the first place. (implicitly: what if I deserved what happened, all along.)

it runs pretty cleanly from outward-oriented attachment anxiety ('caterina won't even want me back like this, she won't recognize me (the same way I no longer recognize myself)) and gradually deeper inwards until we reach self-image and self worth. or you know, the harrowing basic lack of it lol.

"careful -- they'll know we're not right," spite says in one of their first scenes... but clearly, some very deep part of lucanis has feared or suspected for much longer than that that there's something inherently not right at the core of him, way before any demon entered the picture. and the voice he gives those lines to is the person who should know him better than anyone in the world, who he has loved more than anyone in the world -- and who deliberately chose to hurt him so horrifically anyway. 'It's better if I'm just a monster and deserved what happened than it is to allow for the idea that the brother I love doesn't really exist and maybe never did'. it's better if he's fundamentally flawed in some way that needed fixing to help him survive, and that's why caterina chose to hurt him again and again -- out of love. (this one I think he might have a very sad wakeup call on one day if he ever ends up with the responsibility and care of a child of his own in some way and realizes just how alien the idea of ever intentionally hurting them for any reason is to him. oh buddy. also interesting that he keeps caterina as the outermost lock -- there IS a distance he keeps there that he hasn't with illario. he doesn't resent her 'anymore' he says, but he also keeps her carefully further away from his deepest self.)

as far as I could tell the only note in the mind prison that's fully hidden and needs to be uncovered is the sad painful helpless stupid little truth that even after all this, even knowing what happened... he still loves his brother. is there anything illario could ever do that would make lucanis completely stop loving him, do you think? sometimes the trouble with unconditional love is that it is, well. unconditional, even when some terms and conditions probably would have been in order haha.

that's the pattern you see there again and again; he would rather destroy and abandon and imprison himself at every turn than let go of love, even when it's just scraps, even when there's only ever enough of it to hurt him. it's only when rook shows up and as it were takes his hand and walks along with him that he can entertain the idea of changing the story of what walking out the door might mean in the end.

[slavhew]

thinking about how dean's hair got darker and he got paler from skipping missions + how probably the most he smiled was when hank was telling him abt those

[itsaceokay]

I feel like people don't often fully appreciate how hard dating can be for demisexuals.

It just hit me the other day when I found out that most people are kissing by the first date and having sex by the third and to me that is just wild. And apparently, some people wait up to three months before having sex and that's seen as like a really long time and I'm sorry but is everyone okay???

After three dates a person is still a stranger and after three months they're at most an acquaintance - and people are not willing to wait longer and you'll be seen as unreasonable if you want to wait for a year or more??

[panthermouthh]

And I said, “Hello, Satan

I believe it’s time to go.”

[lotus-pear]

got like five asks requesting aku or chuuya so i just drew them together🗿

[squeakadeeks]

im gonna. yartz. my sewing machine finally broke. honestly it was a pretty bad machine, one of the models that was super flimsy like the ez-bake oven equivalent of a sewing machine. one of the plastic parts warped and wont fit with the other cogs anymore.

so uuuhhhhhhhh hope you guys have been liking. my weird bad art cause thats literally all i will be able to do for a w h i l e

[romanticatheartt]

Why people don't like 3rd person pov? Genuinely asking because as a non native I prefer 3rd person. And tbh it doesn't matter to me anyways, sometimes I read books till the middle and realise they're 3rd pov (maybe I shouldn't say that💀) but my point is both are easy for me to understand and doesn't matter to me.

[gotchibam]

Heyo! I'm still currently working on my backlog but I also have upcoming rent to pay this week so I'm opening another batch of comms!

This time I'll be doing pokemon / pkmn OCs in the style of Pokemon Cafe Mix :)

So it would look something like this:

Only opening 10 slots for now! I'll try streaming the process for them as well if I can ^^

Slots are available thru ko-fi here: https://ko-fi.com/c/0451254ff4

Thank you sm!! 💛💛💛

[choccy-milky]

now that i have it in person i tried cloras hairclip and I LOVE IT SO MUCHHH💖💖💖 ill probably never actually wear it in my hair BAHAHA but i love having it regardless🙏😭 now i just need to commission myself a seb to go along with it😇😇 (also one of my readers got this commissioned too and AAA??🥹SO COOL!!! I HOPE YOU ALSO LIKE IT WHEN IT ARRIVES/IF IT ALREADY DID💖💖 and thank u again to joinhas/marcia on etsy!!🧎‍♀️)

[tadc-harlequin-au]

If this was a game, I think a fun gameplay mechanic would be like a friendship meter. The friendship meter is affected by how you interacted with others. And if you have a higher friendship meter with people, they'd be more willing to help you. For example, companions with higher friendship do more damage when pomni takes them with her. Or another example is because ragathas kinda like the shopkeeper if she has a higher friendship her prices will be cheaper but if her friendship level is low they'll be really expensive. You can raise the friendship meter by going on side quests with the others or using positive dialog, and negative dialog makes the meter go down. Idk I just thought that it might be fun.

I like this idea. And you know what, FUCK IT.

AN AU OF AN AU!!!!!!! WHICH IS ALSO CANON-DIVERGENT FROM THE HARLEQUIN AU LMAO I TRULY AM AMAZING /j

THE AMAZING DIGITAL SOULS-LIKE!

I CAN"T seem to avoid the concept of "What if the Harlequin AU was a game instead", THE UNIVERSE KEEPS PUSHING IT TO MY FACE LIKE MY YOUNGER SIBLINGS WHEN THEY SEE A COLORFUL THUMBNAIL sighs....... back to my Shadow of the Colossus boss osts bullshit..... (affectionate)

The Amazing Digital Souls-like is a Non-canon compliant Alternate Universe (that's also a game rather than an actual fantasy world) of the Harlequin AU, where a stylized souls-like VR game called "The Marvelous Mechanical Harlequin" came out at some point during the rise of souls-like gaming.

Waking up in a well-lit main lounge of a manor, the new, amnesiac Harlequin player is met by "Bubble", a Butler Blimp, and "Caine" The Puppetmaster (whom is VERY VERY LOUD btw), claiming to be the only one who can "help her" in her current predicament.

As to be expected, she's very much on the verge of a mental breakdown, barely keeping it together while attempting to make sense of the world around her. (seriously, who thought pitching this game who sucks people inside of it to the public was a good idea??)

The Puppetmaster then proceeds to infodump everything the Harlequin player should know:

That this is a souls-like game;

she is a Harlequin Puppet in the middle of a TERRIFYING ROBOT apocalypse!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SCARYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and that she has to go on a boss-rush type of playthrough IF she EVER wanted to have a chance at getting out!

He'll also be the game's official guide, to which the player is having trouble digesting all this information (not surprising at all.)

When asked what's her name, she can't remember and begins crying onto the floor again (lmao skill issue). The Puppetmaster then picks one at the top of his head; "Pomni", which she reluctantly takes because it's better than having nothing.

From there on out, Pomni undergoes through a series of hardships as she dies (in a video game!!!!!!!!!!!!! MIND YOU, SHE DOES NOT DIE IN REAL LIFE!!!!) over and over again, attempting to defeat various bosses, who are the NPCs. She gains more and more confidence in the battles, but she's still quite the nervous wreck otherwise.

But hey, at least she's getting quite close to Caine, right? He's so nice, and sweet, and very caring of her, careful to reassure her that she's doing a great job with the tasks. There's also a deja vu in her head that's telling her this is somehow familiar, and his presence is a comfort to her.

Surely, everything's all fine and dandy, right?

... right?

Little did this Harlequin know, there is a DARK secret to all this.

And that is the fact that the late bosses aren't just regular boss AIs, they're OTHER PLAYERS trapped in a boss's body, for some goddamn reason. She finds this out when she accidentally does a good chunk of damage to a boss's heart, making them able to speak to her for a bit before going back to being hostile.

With that in mind, Pomni has to DELIBERATELY hit their very durable hearts, if she wants them to be reform as normal players as the hearts imprisoned the ACTUAL avatars of the players.

The Puppetmaster is taken aback, but seems to let Pomni do her way reluctantly.

Once they are freed however, they become Pomni's allies, but they seem... unnerved by the Puppetmaster and tend to avoid him. Every time Pomni asks them why, they're just quiet and looking away. Otherwise, they seem to be grateful and helpful to Pomni about anything else.

This of course, raises Pomni's suspicions of the game's advisor, but she still needs to comply with the rules of this world and thus, has to keep throwing herself to the wolves over and over again.

By the time Pomni frees the Maddened Princess of the Theater, The Puppetmaster declares her ready to face with THE FINAL BIG BAD HIMSELF, The Patriarch of Puppets, an "evil entity who transformed everyone into horrible Puppet monsters". Everyone scoffs silently.

Pomni, according to him, must defeat the Patriarch as the final step to video game freedom.

But by the time Pomni arrives to the final arena, The Patriarch attempts to have a conversation, and seems to be struggling with himself.

The Patriarch explains that his boss body contains "Able", someone who was close to Pomni in real life, who entered in the hopes of making his brother leave the confines of the game. He was able to remember details due to his admin access. Caine only agreed to leave IF he was capable of defeating all the bosses without using his admin abilities, "just like old times".

It was only until his late game run when he figured out (after a heated argument) that the original AI gamemaster, the very heart piece on Caine's chest, took over Caine and was making him act like a manipulative monster. When he tried to pry the heart piece away, he got sealed in the Patriarch's body as punishment.

The Puppetmaster may be unable to revoke his admin access, but it can be sealed off.

Able's been stuck ever since, but still secretly had a bit of access to the game codes if he did it on the low, an oversight by The Puppetmaster, and thus, managed to gain some semblance of control over the Patriarch's otherwise very hostile and bloodthirsty AI just in time for him to talk to Pomni.

The Puppetmaster denies these accusations, and advises Pomni not to believe the boss's manipulative words.

Pomni now has two choices.

>Kill The Patriarch of Puppets, or >face The Puppetmaster.

"Kill the Patriarch of Puppets" ending:

if Pomni decided to not believe Able, he loses his control over The Patriarch and the final boss fight begins. Once Pomni is victorious, The Puppetmaster then congratulates Pomni, but reveals a secret: That there was never an exit.

Pomni simply passed the final test, and now, she's ready to become a boss herself. Try as she might, she cannot escape this and she becomes "The Mechanical Jester of the Circus", the new final boss of the game. All her movesets are reconfigured to become the boss' attacks.

Able resets to normal, now forever trapped to be The Patriarch as The Puppetmaster corrects the previous oversight. The others are reset to become bosses again.

A new player joins, unaware of the horrors that awaits them.

Sad ending :((( How very tragic....

"Face the Puppetmaster" ending:

if Pomni decided to believe Able, a boss fight still ensues but this time, The Patriarch of Puppets is only the Penultimate boss instead of the final stretch. Pomni frees Able, who reforms into his original 'card deck' avatar and regains administrative access to the game.

The Puppetmaster accuses Pomni of breaking his heart and breaking game rules, and thus, has to battle with him IN ONE GO. There is no more reset button for her.

But Able comes in clutch and ensures her that HE will be the one to make sure Pomni can come back as many times as possible to finish the fight and free Caine.

Once Pomni is victorious, The gamemaster heart piece breaks, and Caine is knocked out. All the blocked out memories return to the players.

(Able's design belongs to sm-baby btw!!!!)

Apparently, the VR game was revolutionary. Players could physically enter the world and be immersed in the game's astounding graphics, creative boss rushes and open world exploration aspect. It did VERY well initially, but not well enough to stand the test of time.

Player numbers eventually dissipated when the brothers moved on to greener pastures (so the game didn't have updates), and the AI gamemaster was heartbroken for essentially being abandoned. As a result, any new players that entered the game could not escape, simply because they all forgot they had access to the menu from the very beginning. lmfao

When Caine rediscovered the game and wanted to replay it for old time's sake, the same fate befell him. The gamemaster recognized one of his creators, and took over his entirety, becoming The Puppetmaster.

Able followed suit, wanting to let Caine out but he was sealed into the Patriarch's body before he could succeed.

Pomni, who's actual name is "Penelope", was Caine's significant other in real life and got worried that Caine wasn't responding to her calls while she was on a business trip. She tried contacting Able, no response either.

When she finally arrived to their apartment, The Marvelous Mechanical Harlequin game was on, and recognizing it to be the brothers' old souls-like game, she put on the headset. And from there on out, the story begins.

The other players are able to forgive Caine's actions, and not pass lawsuits once they are able to go back to the real world. Now, with the gamemaster gone, the game has become somewhat active again, though this time, it was the others (and additional new people) hopping in back into the game just to hang out and maybe do some DLC boss rushes implemented by the brothers.

It's pretty epic, y'all. Happy ending yippie!!!!!!!!!

Now if you'll all excuse me... OWIEEEEEEEEEEEEE MY ARM AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-

[skywerse]

gilly turnaround sheet

[bunnieswithknives]

AGHHhhh I swore off Inanimate Insanity after the Cabby disrespect but then I heard they were KILLING PEOPLE IN THE FINALLE???? I want to rewatch the season before I draw anything serious but Oh my god the plot twist makes me feral