#may ur real for that.

[ofruinations]

"What do you mean w—" He feels the mallet, oversized and painful if he weren't probably made of tungsten against the stop of his head, cut him off and bury him deeper into the concrete floors of the underground. It feels like whack-a-mole. but less enjoyable. Derek all but feels like he gets a little more stuck as she tries to make her point. "What the hell was that for?!" He tries to act indignant and angry, but the slight twinge of fear underpins his voice. Is she dangerous? He should probably leave if she is. "Could we at least exchange names before you try to smack me again?"

oh -- oh ! the meathead ( who wasn't punchable until he was ) just got interesting ! he turned into metal !? oh, now the last thing on her mind was explaining the politics of meatheadism through light violence ! see, this was fun, and was there anything funner than fun !? " wait... " just to test the waters, just to make sure it wasn't a fluke that would actually bring the meathead back to being boring, she offered another bonk.

[onemillionfurries]

fun fact if you want to see videos before a certain year on youtube, you can put "before:[year]" after what you're searching for.

the results are glorious.

[aroaceleovaldez]

apparently pjotv twt was being weird about book!Percy's eyes being green because they don't think the ocean can be green (???) so consider this a sequel to my Grace siblings eye colors post and here is some visual references of green water for all your Percy inspo needs:

And for reference, the water around New York-ish where Percy is usually is somewhere around this color:

or some alternatives:

or here is a nice hazel green if you want his eyes more on the brown side, which is very common in freshwater ponds and streams:

or if you want him to have totally brown eyes - water rich in tannins will appear brown, greenish-brown, or very dark brown - this is sometimes called "blackwater" due to often appearing very dark or having low visibility:

[sigsfigs]

i'm mrs. manhattan

[unriding]

me n moze say good morning to the world !!! ᕙ( •̀ ᗜ •́ )ᕗ

art by @rabbbitseason of course <3

[suntails]

[sharing/rb appreciated 💛]

my silver artbook is FINISHED and will open for preorders on 8/31 at 12pm EST!! it's been almost 3 months of work and i'm so excited to finally be able to share all the art i've worked on, PLUS a small bonus charm!

if u know silver fans,,, tell them

[aalghul]

i don't think anyone cares that much that tim lost his spleen.

[lynxalon]

i've seen a fair bit of... pessimism about dorym lately, esp with the ep107, for example wondering if dorian's opposing views on the gods making orym fall out of love, and i have to say. i very highly doubt it, ur fr talking about the man who has held on to will for so long, holding onto will's family and affectionately calling this *his* family too because that didn't stop when will died. i dont think falling out of love is an option or even a thought to orym.

that said, we know that orym has contingencies for if anyone in bells hells crosses the line into being a version of themselves they would despise, for anyone who jeopardizes their mission. his mission. i think, for the first time since knowing dorian, orym finally has a contingency for him. the longer dorian is back, the more orym sees how scarred he is by what's happened (understandable so) and knows that dorian is with bells hells all the way. but if he isn't...

[indigos-stardust]

their autism clashes so hard (so do their traumas <3)

[stinkybrowndogs]

The only “pet influencers” I respect are the group of little old ladies who take their little yappy terrier dogs to the streets of New York to find rats for them to kill.

🫡

[n9ro]

@crescentpaws somehow your ask disappeared but. happy birthday max crescentpaws ! (2 weeks late. shhh /j)

[cosmitasia]

Honestly my problem with "it's just fiction" and "don't like don't read" as an argument isn't even the subject matter in itself but that mindset just takes away meaning from art.

It's like, the same argument as "it's just a joke" that bigoted comedians use. Okay but how does a joke/fiction reflect our values, shape culture, or reinforce biases? There is value in the fiction and it makes us feel something, otherwise we wouldn't engage with it at all. That's the entire point.

I'm not trying to make a definitive moral statement on how subject matter needs to be handled or depicted, I just think we need to do more thought than "it's not real" because that argument deters analysis and denies art meaning. Subject matter and how it's framed or handled is on a case by case basis.

Not every piece of fiction is made with clear intentions, for gratification, or for a specific emotional response. "It's just fiction" scrubs away the fact that our fiction can say things about us, even by accident. People may reveal their prejudice and biases through their fiction. People can perpetuate and reinforce harmful ideas they sincerely believe through fiction.

"It's just fiction" or "Don't like don't read" is appropriate when addressing harassment, subjective tastes, and boundaries, but it's not appropriate for legitimate criticism. Criticism isn't inherently harassment or censorship, and no artwork should get a free pass to be immune from criticism just because it's for fun and free.

Fandom spaces are full of people who are genuinely misogynistic, ableist, and racist. Treating all art made within these spaces as escapist fun, meaningless porn, or otherwise superficial and easy to understand, does a disservice to the art, but also lets a lot of people get away with uncritically perpetuating genuine harm.

[tabooiart]

i saw london 2024 belle and was IMMEDIATELY in love and i Needed to add her to my canon. i can have 5 coaches thats fine. took some artistic liberties (but dont i always) in order to make her fit in with the rest of my designs better and also. to maybe make her look more like a sleeping car hahahahahaha

i think her and rusty have a sibling-esque relationship. in my canon she would race with rusty in heat 2 (where they lose to electra. whoops!)

[starwarsanthropology]

The tragedy of ur boyfriends not letting u bite them just a little. As a Treat.

A Tup from @trudemaethien’s excellent fic Edeemi, Baby, One More Time that I drew back in May! I didn’t have a Star Wars tumblr at the time and wasnt planning on posting it anywhere so I forgot about it until now, but I had such a fun time playing around with lighting effects and his expression!

I really love their mer universe and I’m especially fond of Tup’s POV in this fic. It’s such a good job of expressing the confusion and frustration of communication barriers and reasonable, best-intent misunderstandings between all of them, while still leaning into the positive aspects of discovering the world and representing it from slightly different perspective than people normally take 10/10 highly recommended

Closeup of the sketch for his expression under the cut because I was super happy with it

[serpentface]

Do psychotropic drugs and/or ritual play a role in any of the blightseed cultures? A pretty broad question, lol

Yeah that’s a very broad question, the answer is about as much as it tends to play roles in real history. Alcohol is pretty ubiquitous (outside of cultures that abstain from intoxicants) and used for a variety of purposes, opioids are commonly used in some parts for pain relief or recreational purposes, stimulants (usually in mild, natural forms) are used to provide extra energy, and hallucinogens are most commonly used as part of a larger religious framework (rather than for recreational purposes). Any more elaborate answer kinda has to be case by case in a certain culture or part of the setting.

I'll just take this as an opportunity to talk about the one established sect that pretty much REVOLVES around psychoactive use. This is the Scholarly Order of the Root, which is a sort of mystery religion + elite community of scholars who currently occupy the Ur-Tree and its forest in the far southern Lowlands (southeast of Imperial Wardin, on the same land mass).

The Ur-Tree is the obligatory Huge Fucking Fantasy Tree (and its surrounding forest). It’s a mass of vegetation about a mile tall and almost as old as Plant Life Itself, its upper branches are primeval plants, which become more modern the nearer they get to the ground (and each 'level' holds tiny ecosystems, some containing descendants of LONG-extinct arthropods/other small animals). Its lowest branches and the surrounding forest are contemporary plant life, and all is connected and protected by an incomparably MASSIVE fungal mycelium network (which is itself a living god).

A lot of the Scholars' more secretive practices revolve around experimentation with substance use with the goal of expanding the Mind and transcending the body to fully connect to the Dreamlands, and they have a supply chain of traders and mercenaries called Rootrunners who traffic substances into the Lowlands. Most of their psychoactive use is in a very intentional capacity and not just like, for fun, but a LOT of them are just straight up addicted to cocaine (in the form of alchemically refined bruljenum, which is used for practical purposes of its stimulant effect during long hours of work).

All known psychoactives are desirable for experimentation (particularly hallucinogens), with each having properties that either allow expansion of the Mind, transcendence of the body, or outright divine communion. Their effects are logged in great detail and interpreted to form the basis of the Scholars' understanding of the natural world and reality itself.

The most important substance is Ur-Root, which is root matter from subterranean levels of the Ur-Tree that have both their own intrinsic psychoactive substances and a very, very high concentration of living god mycelium. The tree root contains DMT and the mycelium has its own wholly unique effects (being an actual living god). They alchemically refine it into a purer, more potent form, and use it to expand beyond the body and directly commune with the Giants, a group of entities they have identified as the only true gods.

An Ur-Root trip starts off with minor visual distortion, which turns into shifting fractals that slowly obscure the vision. Eventually the senses are entirely taken over by a 'tunnel' of rapidly shifting fractals and geometries. In a complete trip, the experiencer gets a sense that they have been pushed through a membrane and entered another realm, finding themselves in a distinct experiential Space.

At this point they may encounter entities which communicate to them in a language impossible to describe but wholly understood. These beings are understood to be the Giants, or at least aspects of the Giants that mortals are capable of comprehending (they often take familiar tutelary forms of the Mantis or the Snake, or appear resembling the same type of sophont that the experiencer is, all composed of ever-shifting geometries). The experiencer often feels a sense of unconditional and endless love from these beings, though the Giants may be more hostile and may appear in the form of the Trickster (usually a cultural figure regarded as malicious, be it an animal or otherwise) in a bad trip.

(^Up until this point, this has mostly just been a DMT 'breakthrough' experience ft. 'machine elves' and the like).

They are then removed from this space and returned to something that feels like the real world, but is nearly unrecognizable. They have a sense of rapidly moving through time, and will usually see 'the spires' towards the beginning, which just so happen to look like this:

(source + some context via Implication- the spires are exactly what this art is depicting)

The experiencer continues to move across an unfathomable amount of time, occasionally 'seeing' other such flashes of unfamiliar landscapes and creatures, and yet also being devoid of all their senses, the 'seeing' is pure, unfiltered experience. There is a sense of interconnectedness with all life, and that one has become the forest (or even Life) itself. The sense of time is wildly distorted, the trip lasts only about 5 minutes but feels like an eternity and is understood as literal hundreds of millions of years.

The experiencer has usually lost any remaining sense of Self and individual consciousness during this phase (in which case this time distortion is usually a neutral or even peaceful experience), but some retain a fraction of their identity, and find themselves trapped and conscious while experiencing what feels like eternity (which can be LIFE-CHANGINGLY distressing, even after the fact).

(^This latter part of the trip is the effects of the Ur-Tree fungus).

The trip ends with a sense of rushing through the ground and back up into one's body, at which point they will abruptly return to their senses and consciousness. The details are then immediately retrieved via interview and recorded in immense detail. The whole experience is understood as having been full comprehension of the Dreamlands, communion with the Giants, and then a tour through the act of creation.

This is done as part of the initiatory practice into the inner mystery-religion of the scholars, and as needed for study by high scholar-priests. It is not taken lightly, both as it is absolute communion with the gods and reality, and in that it can be a very, very difficult experience. People who have gone through this often walk away with a permanently shifted perspective, often in a positive and/or comforting way- a sense of interconnectedness with all life, a peace with the concept of death, seeing less of a point in individual ego and the concept of Self, and comfort in the sense of divine love they (may have) experienced. This heavily influences the philosophy of the Scholars and has had effects by proxy in the religious worldviews of the region.

Details of this experience are closely guarded, and initiates are given absolutely no prior knowledge and expectations for their trip. This is seen as a necessity- their naivety will allow for a true, unfiltered experience, and can be used to gauge whether they should or should not be accepted. Those that have a distinctly bad trip upon initiation may be assumed to have been 'rejected' by the giants and thus denied full priesthood, though this largely depends on How they interpret their distressing trip- those who identify this as a test and harsh lesson in a journey to enlightenment may be accepted (as this is how fully initiated scholar-priests interpret and handle their bad trips).

This inner priesthood is only a small fraction of the Scholarly Order, and its greater function is as a hub of education and repository of knowledge, and Scholar-trained doctors can provide some of the best medical care available in the setting ('best medical care in this setting' only means so much but it's pretty solid, relatively speaking). Only a chosen few Scholars ever get to commune with the Ur-Root, and most of the divine secrets revealed in the process are kept hidden (though they indirectly influence the politics and worldview of the entire order).

[vigilskept]

seeing a take that “the veil would’ve come down anyway, solas was just too impatient/prideful to wait” but…. i don’t think that’s true actually?

he’s extremely prideful that’s beyond question, but based on the conversations in veilguard & trespasser (albeit both conversations where you’re in an adversarial role and can only get limited information from him!) my impression was always that the veil is already in piss poor condition & that it was never meant to function as it does. it was meant to contain the blight & the evanuris who were exploiting it.

it failed to do both of those things and had innumerable unintended consequences (hence the regrets, hence the inescapable guilt as he bears witness to all of this)

“2 more blights and it would’ve been fine” to me is an odd take given the sheer amount of devastation that a blight causes. ferelden still hasn’t recovered 2 decades later, whole swathes of the thedosian continent were irrevocably transformed by the earlier blights (which…. lasted anywhere from over a decade to over a century)

even in a best case scenario, a blight would entail significant devastation across the continent followed by more devastation as the veil weakened AGAIN after the death of 1 archdemon, followed by another blight & the total collapse of the veil before anyone could begin to recover from that second blight.

trying to avoid two more blights is an understandable goal surely?

we don’t get much out of solas, but if he’s taken until 9:52 to tear down the veil when he’s had that ritual dagger since 9:45……. i feel like there’s some merit at least to the idea that he was planning to tear down the veil AND contain the evanuris + the blight by some other mechanism. so that there would be no more blights, ever.

would it have worked? maybe. maybe not.

i genuinely can’t see how sitting back and waiting it out is in any way a preferable alternative to trying to do something unless you’re just making the argument that witnessing a catastrophe you could prevent makes you less culpable than acting in a way that might cause some other (seen or unforeseen) harm.

all this to say it’s an insane trolley problem regardless — and it’s absolutely solas’ pride that makes him believe he has to be the one pulling that lever! — but it’s critical that the side of the tracks solas is trying to swing the trolley over to does not involve those 2 more blights. he’s trying to AVOID those blights. he’s trying to avoid the veil coming down in a way that will release ALL of the contained blight into thedas.