#maybe i'm thinking too hard about this

[sorrinslays]

Do yall ever think about how painful Betty's fusion with Golb must've been? And I don't mean that in the emotional/phycological/mental sense. I mean physically. The room that was disgesting her was slowly but surely growing smaller and smaller, do you think that she was crushed to death in there, forced to hear her bones crack and break as she sat there with only one goal in mind: keeping Simon safe. Because to her, he was worth it. To her, his well being and sanity was worth any pain

[dracoroma]

Is it just me, or are "credits" as currency in scifi kimda distopian

On one level, sure, what else are we supposed to call currency when it's all digital

But depending on the setting, what does it say about the economy that literally everything is on credit?

[bixels]

behold, my character design process.

[wardingshout]

Zelda goes mushroom girl

[canisalbus]

May I offer a little drawing of your dogs?

.

[whenthelightisrunninglow]

how's the other guy holding up

[waterfallofspace]

Feeling sad and lonely? Like you don't have a purpose in life, and no one cares about you?

No more! Starting today, instead of sitting around feeling sad, try Thinking About Your Favourite Fictional Characters Sneezing!

Not sure what to do with your life? Your blorbo stifling an allergy fit!

Lonely and craving human connection? Your lil guy getting induced by a kink!partner!

The days and nights seem to move by in an ever-flowing passage of time that you're just swept along in? They have a sneezy cold and need to be taken care of!

Instead of Sad, try Sneeze instead!

[Available wherever your brain will be merciful and let you dissociate, results may vary, use with caution, side effects may include: h*rny thoughts, snz headcanons, craving more canon snz, and the eventual & inevitable loneliness returning as you realize they are still fictional]

[cecoeur]

How do you sleep at night? No one to hide behind Betrayed every alibi you had You had every chance to make amends instead you got drunk on bitterness And you still claim that you're innocent, it's sad

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Been thinking about the X-Files recently. A show I have a hazy, but fond memory of.

[mlobsters]

severance s1e8 what's for dinner?

man, what is going on at waffle house these days

[mintjeru]

companionship and understanding happy pride from my beloveds!!

open for better quality | no reposts

[dazzelmethat]

Some messy Mushishi fanart. Ginko could be a microbiologist.

I'm still sad that 'journey to the microcosmos' the youtube channel is ending. If you are a mushishi fan of the surreal mushi I recommend watching their hd videos on microbes.

[airenyah]

i need to talk about this line here for a second, because it's an attack on me personally. but not the english translation of it, no, it's the og thai line that really gets to me. because he says:

มันโอเค​นะเว้ย ที่จะมีความรักอ่ะ [man - oh-keh - ná wóiie • thêe - jà - mee kwaam rák - àh] it - okay - [particle] • that - will - be in love - [particle]

he specifically uses the term มีความรัก which is more like "to be in love". which means rather than "it's okay to love", this line is more accurately translated as:

It's okay to be in love.

and as someone who really really really struggles with self-acceptance for my own romantic feelings for others, this distinction is really important to me. i can deal with loving others. i love my family. i love my best friend (you really don't go here but hiiii @magsimags i love youuuu 😘 (i know you're rolling your eyes reading this as usual)(i don't care)(i love you)). i love my other close friend. i love my summer camp gang. i love my friend that style reminds me of. i love each and every single one of the friends i've made in this fandom over the past few years (you know who you are 💖). i KNOW it's okay to love. i do it all the time. loudly. as evidenced by the fact that i just HAD to tag my best friend in this post to publically tell her i love her even though she really doesn't care about my thai blorbos, just because i really couldn't NOT tag her to tell her i love her. anyway. i can love. loving is fine.

but to be in love??? that's a whole different story. having (in my case romantic) feelings for someone feels like a heavy burden. it feels humiliating. i hate it. i don't want it. it stresses me out. and the person i have feelings for especially can't ever know about it. see, i will talk about my crushes/romantic feelings, but mostly to family and friends (the better they know the person i have feelings for, the harder it gets for me to admit to it), and even then the word "be in love" won't ever come out of my mouth in my native language. in english it's easier, but in my native language i just can't say it. it feels heavy. it makes me cringe. being in love is horrible.

so when style said "it's okay to be in love" specifically? that was a punch to my gut. because this is a truth i have not yet managed to accept for myself. and if the person i had feelings for specifically told me "it's okay to be in love" so firmly and so earnestly? yeah, i would crumble too

[instantpansies]

STRANGE NOISES FROM THE HOLE IN THE WALL HEADCANONS/INTERPRETATIONS UHHH OBVIOUS SPOILERS. CLARISSA CENTRIC CAUSE. HOLY SHIT

clarissa is to locomotion as clara is to the nutcracker. she's the kid who dreamed him into existence hundreds of years ago. i know he says he's older than the devil - i think that's still plausible, he's existed since thought but wasn't attached to the Silver Line or brought into physical existence until clarissa, lonely or in danger or just bored, imagined a world where she could escape from her everyday life and live as a grown-up(? maybe? since benjamin/timothy/billy seemed to age up as soon as he went through the portal?), with freedom and whimsy and eventually a relationship with the friendly driver.

why do i say this? because otherwise im really fucking confused lmao, that first scene where clarissa and loco are introduced is strange in the context of the end of the play. they seem to have known each other for a good while before they get on the train. they act like a young couple who's stumbled upon the silver line as an escape from danger and now they're excited for their new life in a new, safe world. except that loco also says he's been driving the train for years.

(looking back, that very much feels like a scenario from a child's imagination - or perhaps a dream - where of course he's been doing this for years, that's his job, but of course they're glad they've found the train together, this is a new experience for her so it's just an extension of her perspective)

but clara is, she says, a child when she gets on the train. idk how old "little girl" is, but if we run with this headcanon and also assume that the timeline is both linear and literal, she's imagining herself in some form of a sexual relationship with loco at a pretty young age.

i posit that this can be reconciled in several ways (some more disturbing or inappropriate than others), but one thing that could be considered is that the first scene where loco and clarissa are introduced is symbolic of their relationship over the course of the train's history. depending on how old clarissa was when she first dreamt the world into existence, she might not have even been very aware of loco, and spent her time just enjoying the escapism or whatever. after a few years or however long, she starts to get older and decides to learn how she's actually done this, maybe spends a long time trying to understand exactly what's going on. maybe her research leads her to a relationship with loco, i don't know. they do get on the train together, maybe, when they're both young (or, well, relatively speaking) and new to the world, and loco eventually has been driving the train for years and years and clarissa makes it a bit more tolerable with some companionship after a long lonely time. but those things don't happen simultaneously, because i think those things don't really work simultaneously. that scene is a sort of speedrun/amalgamation of how the two of them have interacted over the years. and yeah i guess that means they fucked at one point in there

(im going to be transparent, some of that is a bit of cope/rationalization. i think loco and the conductor are very exes/begrudging coworkers vibes, but i do like clarissa and loco together as well - unsettlingly powerful girl x eldritch being with a soft spot is a very good trope. and im trying to make it work out okay? give me a break lol. you don't have to agree with me on this, but once i see a luke and tom couple with a fun and compelling dynamic i will not let them go even if the ethics get a bit hard to explain later on. sorry, anyways moving on)

additionally, and i probably should have said this earlier, a reason i think this whole nutcracker theory holds up is because clarissa holds a sort of unique power in the world. she's been on the silver line for hundreds of real-years, who knows how many train-years, and still remembers her name and something of her old life. loco isn't hostile to her, even confirming her memory of her name and reminding her of her birthdate. with everyone else (ex. benjamin), he actively discourages them from remembering their lives. despite seemingly being one of the oldest passengers, she doesn't transform for hundreds of years. she obviously has some significance.

you know how that ties in? if this is clarissa's world, if her mind is what created the whole thing, then i think it makes sense to assume it's tied to her. as she begins to question her surroundings, then panic as she realizes she can't leave, her emotional and/or mental state becomes less stable, less utopic, less perfect. the dream begins to turn into a nightmare. and it becomes. well. an ouroboros. the snake eats its own tail and the train goes in circles and the escapist fantasy clarissa once loved becomes a prison of her own design. trapped in the very thing that was supposed to save her.

maybe that's why anthony and benjamin can get out when they do - as clarissa's world decays, as she finally begins to become part of the nightmare, as she melds with the train, the world has to shift a bit. it's reaching the point of no return - once clarissa has been fully sucked in, the train will never stop again. falling into an infinite nothing. but in that moment, there's one final chance for the conductor to stall locomotion, one final leap that could at last pull benjamin and anthony and everyone who's been sucked in by clarissa's black hole of a nightmare out of the portal and back into the real world.

and now, clarissa has lost three hundred years of a life that should never have lasted so long. gained perhaps thousands of years of memories of joy and connection and despair and panic and forever forever forever. and she is once again trapped in a vessel of her own making - her body is that of the child she has not been for lifetimes. her world is dead and gone - not just the world she created, but the world she escaped from as well. what of locomotion, that brief flash of connection? does he even exist anymore? who is she, now? who was she? where can she possibly go from here?

shoutout delirium_undead on discord for going along with the nutcracker theory and helping me flesh this out. your ideas are so galaxy brained and i am forever in your debt

[pidgydraws]

heheh~ yeah @kotikaleo i do have unnecessarily specific thoughts about the ring designs i did for this piece! lol firstly, these are ABSOLUTELY fidget rings. cuz i'd have done a more mechanical/gear specific design but any human who's worn a ring on the reg knows that having a bunch of little notches in it is HELL, so cute spinny rings it is. secondly, Viktor's has "in all timeliness" engraved inside of his and Jayce's has "in all possibilities". and thirdly, they HAD to have to round blue sapphires in them because every time i rewatch Arcane i get this gut wrenching feeling during episode 4 where i - very viscerally - feel like maybe the last beautiful thing they accomplished together, before anyone or anything truly started tearing their world apart, was fortifying the hex gems. in that moment, it must have felt like they were about to finally take the next big step towards everything they dreamed about~ but... we all know how that turned out. so! YEAH~! (O W O) those are my thoughts on my, Science Husbands, ring designs heheh~

[applestorms]

trying to break down beyond more so here's some random thoughts:

he's very particular about the ways in which he's unhinged/insane, and oddly conscious about every weird thing he does. everything is meant to one-up L: excess sugar (jam + coffee sludge), uncomfortable body movements, presenting as a Genius Detective to hide his own crimes, etc. his weirdness is unnatural and, at least in the ways he specifically tries to replicate L, not innate to him specifically. there's a version of beyond, perhaps pre-L, who is weird in his own unique way.

for a serial killer, he has very little interest in the killings themselves. despite executing all these violent murders, even one of a 13 year old girl, every one of his victims is killed only after they're drugged to unconscious and the mutilation of their bodies is all post-death, for the sake of his puzzles alone. seemingly the only reason why he bothers with murder is because that is what L focuses on, and because his eyes make him so intimate w/ death.

his motives are clearly focused around L, perhaps both as a reaction to L and as an attempt at initiating some kind of interaction? iirc mello claims near the end of the story that his sole purpose is to give L some kind of unsolvable case, but clearly some of his behaviors must be done to antagonize L specifically, since almost nobody else (other than the meta audience) knows who he's presenting himself as/clowning on.

ultimately, it's his ego that gets him. he underestimates naomi's abilities often throughout the story, feeding her clues to ensure that his own puzzles get solved-- perhaps out of a lack of respect for her intelligence, but also to present himself as even more capable? to brag as much as he can?

the congenital shinigami eyes is honestly one of the most fascinating ideas any death note side story has ever presented. there are so so so many questions you can ask here-- is beyond genetically part shinigami? is he or his birth family somehow connected to a death note? how can he read the lifespans? mello describes beyond's shinigami eyes as follows:

Killing people was, for him, normal. Killing people who were fated to die anyway was no effort at all. Mmm, I guess I should explain the idea of the eyes of a shinigami. The phrase is only too familiar to me, but if I don't explain it, some of you will cry foul. The eyes of a shinigami. These eyes could be given out by any shinigami in return for half the recipient's remaining life. Normally contact with a shinigami was a prerequisite for acquisition, but Beyond Birthday had traded nothing--he had seen the world through those eyes since before he could remember. He knew your name before you said it. He knew the time of death of every person he met. ...I hardly need to explain just what effect this would have one his personality. You might think they would hardly be useful without a Death Note, but that is simply not the case. The ability to see someone's remaining life is the ability to see death. Death, death, death. Beyond Birthday lived his life unceasingly reminded that all humans would eventually die. From the time he was born he knew the day his father would be attacked by a thug and die, knew the day his mother would die in a train crash. He had these eyes before he was born, which is why he called himself Beyond Birthday. Which is why a child as strange as him was taking in by our home, sweet home--Wammy's House. (pg. 94-95)

it's unclear exactly how much of this story mello heard from L and how much is him interpreting/theorizing w/ his own ideas. the potentially biased narration is a fantastic layer in this story.

he is the second known wammy's kid to overtly attempt suicide, though his attempt is of course incomplete. we have no idea about the circumstances surrounding A's suicide, though i find it notable that A is mentioned at all as their presence makes this a pattern. this also seems important in conjunction w/ mello's infamous opening line: "I am your narrator, your navigator, your storyteller. For anyone else but [Near and Kira], my identity may be of no interest, but I am the old world's runner-up, the best dresser that died like a dog, Mihael Keehl. I once called myself Mello and was addressed by that name, but that was a long time ago. Good memories and nightmares." (pg. 12)

sidenote: love his use of "the old world," in that quote, i wonder what the original japanese is... fits well w/ the whole idea of L as the god of the old world. anyway,

his relationship with naomi is also Fascinating to me, particularly since it really doesn't seem like either of them have a speck of respect for the other. lmfao. i should really fic write for those two sometime... i really just need to do a proper character study on both of those bitches. lol.

edit: almost immediately upon posting this i open back the damn book back up to this quote:

If he attacked her with intent to kill, he would absolutely fail. He knew that he would. Ensuring his path of escape was far more critical. Naomi Misora was nothing more than L's servant, and if she died there would be dozens of replacements-- from the FBI, the CIA, and the NSA-- even Secret Service. So he had only been testing her. Seeing if Naomi Misora was capable of being L's substitute. "Hmmm...mmmm...hmmm...Huh huh huh huh...no, hee hee hee? I could go with ho ho ho ho, but that's a little too jolly...anyway. Oh, Naomi Misora-- you are pretty good. A shame to waste someone like you in the FBI." She had passed the test, so far. (pg. 95-96)

so. shit, idk. i guess he does still have some respect for her, albeit tempered by that classic death note sexism. shrug.

the beyond vs. KIRA comparison has a lot to consider, particularly when it comes to their egos and how they choose to cover up their crimes. L's reaction to either of them is also intriguing-- as much as i like to point out L's lack of respect for beyond he does admittedly take on the case even when it doesn't quite fit his usual standards (10+ deaths and/or 1 million dollars). he's at least somewhat aware of what his legacy is setting up, though how much he actually gives a shit about any of those kids is somewhat debatable...