#mostly stunned?

[thisisahyperfixationnow]

Hi what the fuck

[time-slink]

painting warmup— grian as the angel of the waters statue in central park :D

[cosmicdreamgrl]

𝘧𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘫𝘬 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬𝘴: (84/?)

[ranger-potato]

My submission for the KOTLC Fanbase art competition: Draw your own KOTLC book cover!

I decided to draw what is arguably one of the most pivotal moments in KOTLC, the scene where Sophie burns down the Neverseen warehouse in Unlocked.

I tried to stay true to the original scene in the book, but, as usual, I took some creative liberties… such as adding the moonlark/black swan symbol in Sophie’s shadow.

This was a really fun piece to draw, but it had its fair share of struggles. I’ve never really drawn fire before (especially not balefire… which is canonically blue), and have always struggled with drawing people. Those on their own would have been hard enough, but adding the fact that it’s a digital drawing (a medium I’m still not comfortable with) to the mix just amplifies the struggle of producing a semi decent artwork. I also have this annoying habit of desaturating my colours when painting them because I’m not a fan of vibrant colours (they scare me).

But I’m still happy with how it turned out in the end :)

Theme: Create your own KOTLC book cover

Scene: Sophie burning down the Neverseen warehouse

Medium: Digital artwork. (Program: Clip Studio Paint Pro. Brush set: Jazza’s Ultimate Digital Brushes)

Time taken: Approximately 18 hours.

[vaguely-concerned]

the fact that they've been blindly deceived

by those who preach, and pray and teach...

A Garashir thing I've been messing around with on and off for a while, featuring lyrics from the song 'Lion's Roar' by First Aid Kit! That song gives me such big post-war Cardassia Garashir feelings, they could trade off singing parts of it to each other and it would fit perfectly.

[just-an-enby-lemon]

I know Wicked is not going to make Dorothy a young kid like in the books but I really like when dark versions of childrem literature do keep them as kids.

Not in "it's more fucked up" light but in this is also a metaphor for kids growing up in a weird scary world while most adults never actually explain anything and either expect them to already know or to be forever oblivious. And so the kids have to figure it out. To make themselfs the decision to remain kind, to learn to love the new world or at least the people in it.

And I do think being a kid is part of the reason Dorothy reacts to Oz so diferently than the Wizard. Yes, it is also because she is a good person. But Dorothy is a kid she is used to things that make no sense. So she goes to an insane new world and her first instinct is to learn. She is quicky to accept that animals talk and scracrows walk and tin man have life. Because she is open minded yes, but also because kids know they don't know everything in a way most adults don't.

But Dorothy also killed (she didn't but you get it) someone and was praised for it. And she is scared and she wants to go home. And everyone keeps teeling her she did the right thing and that all she needs to do to go home is meet this amazing all powerfull guy and kill the horrible mean witch. And every fairy tale has evil witches. So maybe it's okay. And she takes it. Because she is a child and she is new and they are adults.

But she is kind. She befriends all this traumatized adults with backstories and connections she does not know (just like real kids don't know the past of the adults they trust) and she just wants to help them. And she notices that the Tin Man already has a heart and the Scarecrow has a brain (Fiyero was likely lying from the start but Dorothy does not know that) and that the Lion does have courage. And she decides it also means she has to do the right thing so (and I'm going Wicked books here) when she meets Elphie all she wants is to apologize. She knows what is like to lose family and also she knows the witch protects the animals and Toto is her best friend, so anyone that protects animals cannot be that evil specially when the animals here are really just people but different shaped. She doesn't know if she will ever be forgiven but she wants Elphaba to know it was an accident, to know she is sorry, to know someone else is mourning her sister, to know that it is scary and unfair. To give her the shoes back if she can finally just take them off.

She is brave and when she discovers the Wizard is a farse she shows it to everyone. And it's not planned in any way because she is a kid. She doesn't have the maturity, the trauma nor the context Galinda has. Hell she must have noticed Glinda loves the witch and it might be the one reason she does not call Glinda out as well, not any strategy just thinking love can fix all cause she's a young kid.

[I also just think baby Dorothy would make everything funnier. And of course I have the personal fix it that Glinda and Elphie make amends post cannon as them (and Fiyero) find about Tip and raise Ozma as the polycule they should've always been (and also try to fix Oz from very different angles). Only as the Oz books go Dorothy and Toto come back (with Uncle Henry and Aunt Em this time) and she and Ozma fall in love (homoerotic best friends and co-princess wich is the same). And I think Ozma going to present Dorothy to her low key parents only to learn Dorothy has very diferent forms of history with them is golden.]

P.S: This was edited so I will add that in the original I made the point that I consider the three girls that best follow this lost child in a world of horror and wonder having to figure it out by themselfs with a but of an allegory for growing up and the expectations unfairy placed upon them as queer and neurodivergent even if unintented so (it's also accidentaly about gender in my head). The girls being of course Dorothy, Alice and Wendy.

P.S2: I know in the books they just die and in the musical they run for our world but it's my fix it and let's be honest Oz is in shambles and a very traumatized Glinda will not fix it all by herself and she deserves some support.

[barksbog]

foggy morning at the Danube river

[genshins1mpact]

I am going feral for this fanart of Tighnari papa ,,

(fan design for baby Tighnari and his father)

[ultfashionista]

𝐌𝐃𝐀: 𝐑𝐀𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐎𝐃𝐄 (𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟑) + 𝐤𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐢 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐲

[clownsuu]

Holy cow there’re a lot and I really do mean A LOT of Welcome Home AUs, and more coming too. Not saying it’s a bad thing, but it makes sense considering WH doesn’t have a lot to work with so it leaves tons of room for fans to play around with. I just hope it doesn’t get outta hand like what happened to Undertale with its AUs.

People are free to have creative liberty on what aus they wanna make- like you said there is very little canon content to munch on so people will pull a “fine I’ll do it myself” JCHFHDHU-

I personally don’t mind it as well, but I do enjoy the aus where they purposely change Wally’s height just to make him more simp-able LMAOO

[iamabigbox]

Arcane season 2 spoiler

Honestly if this was a solo season from a disconnect story I think it would have worked better at this point

Since a MAIN season 1 theme was the classism to have it not tie into the ending at all makes it fall flat

Not to mention that it’s also very much tied with Caitvi which is why imo their relationship didn’t really feel fulfilling. We didn’t get a proper apology from Cait or have her show any proper sympathy for Zaun after what she did in act1 it’s makes it come across that she hasn’t learned anything other than being nicer to Vi (forgetting about the bigger picture of the show)

Maybe they had bigger plan for it and it had to be cut but at the very least their should’ve been a scene where we see Zaunites debate joining the fight or negotiate with Piltover

Even Jayvik (which was honestly the highlight of the ending along with Ekko) could have been improved by incorporating Jayce coming back and showing some sort of sympathy/remorse for Zaun or show disapproval to how Cait handled things since he kinda kinda lived through a similar experience as Vik when he was in the wild rune (hurt leg, things he needs to survive being corrupted, having to climb his way out of the bottom to the top)

Honestly I think Ekko was damn near perfect (I am biased tho lol) but I do wish we saw him with the fireflies. It presents the idea he’s completely alone at the end but he’s not we know he built a community so what happened to it??? If anything I think it wouldn’t been nicer to leave him of with the firelights and adding Jinx to their memorial

I would say more about it busy honestly I need to rewatching it all together cuz everything is kinda disconnected in my mind but whatever this is just thoughts on act 4

[cent-scratchnsniff]

Day 50

[batsplat]

ive rlly enjoyed reading ur aliens x tennis + vale x tennis posts and i was wondering if u wld be interested in describing what u think the tennis styles/career for some of the other riders on the grid? obvs im partial to all things pecco (and i think he has the neuroses a lot of tennis players also seem to have) buuttt i think something abt fabio evokes the inherent tragedy of the average men's tennis player, and bez for whatever reason feel tennis player-y to me sometimes (mayhaps its the mopey-ness because i can 11/10 picture him sitting at his bench w/ a towel over his head after flopping a match lol) or how luca's tennis is like in relation to vale, also because he plays tennis recreationally i think (motogp riders superior to f1 drivers solely for the fact that they play real tennis its factual) and he's kinda one of the few ppl on the grid who's height doesn't have to be edited in a tennis au lol. Jorge M idk how to describe it but he also kinda tennis player-y to me sometimes, maybe its the chip on the shoulder (he wld be a racket smasher wldnt he lol) or just anyone else on the current grid you wld be interesting in imagining a tennis!alt of.

had a vision

valentino whenever he's watching a current men's match

anyway. yeah this is another fun one! I've vaguely had thoughts about SOME of these before but not all the names you mention so. another neat mental exercise, let's go through them. adding pedro as my one bonus pick but cutting myself off there because this is long enough.... the ones I was thinking of after that ended up being too mean anyway

pecco: realised that pecco's career timeline actually maps onto pretty well onto a certain single slam player currently active on the atp tour, which isn't going to serve as inspiration as far as playstyle is concerned (lol) - or indeed level of success - but is useful orientation in terms of career progression. by atp star standards, pecco is a 'late bloomer'. he makes nextgen finals and has a reasonably promising if not spectacular early career, then spends a couple years in the wilderness - partly due to injury, partly just struggling to make his game work at tour level. the forehand is very much the standout shot, but it is also the most fragile and prone to collapse, to leaking errors. the backhand is underrated, a very compact shot that like... the aesthetes won't go crazy about, but crucially it's solid and he can pick quite big targets with it to consistently go after. dispositionally, he's a baseliner who would prefer to finish points from there - though valentino does not allow a single kid to pass through his academy without insisting they reach a level of 'competent' at minimum at the soft skills. pecco CAN slice, even though he doesn't do a lot of it. he's also capable of finishing points off at the net, though he'd prefer to do so really just when he's already very much on top of the point

pecco has another thing going for him - he's fast. raw foot speed is obviously a great asset to have at your disposal, and it's probably the single quality he's most similar to his mentor to. while his second serve can be a bit too easy to attack and is occasionally liable to confidence issues (not yips-level double faulting, more that it gets pushed in too much), he improves his serve a lot early in his career to become an increasingly adept spot server. it's not the biggest serve, but it's unfailingly precise and helps him execute his preferred point patterns on serve. paired with the high foot speed, he can generally find a good plus one shot after the serve. he generally favours quite a deep return position - and while his game on the whole is offence-oriented, his return strategy is quite conservative, with an emphasis on a high percentage of balls made to help him reset the point to neutral. the basic potential of his offensive game paired with an ability to move well anywhere make him a relatively surface agnostic player, even by modern standards. his ideal court speed is probably in the medium range, so perhaps a bit less suited to your monte carlo's or your wimbledon's (though the former is a way more pronounced weakness than the latter given grass plays slower these days) - but on his day, he can be successful anywhere

generally speaking, while he absolutely has favourite tournaments he performs particularly well at, he's very much a confidence player who can go on hot runs and long winning streaks. more in the positive sense than the negative one - he has a good floor level and doesn't generally suffer from massive absence in confidence, it's just that when it's on it's REALLY on. during those periods, a lot of his wins are crushingly dominant... he's an excellent frontrunner, and even when he encounters resistance from his opponents he can usually dismantle it. that being said, he is also prone to unexpected and rather spectacular collapses from winning positions, as well as the semi-regular shock early upset in a draw. it's just generally a bit of a mixed bag with him... he's perfectly capable of the sort of gritty exercise in perseverance five set win that does his mentor proud, but then he's also got the other stuff. a common fan joke is that you trust pecco more when he's down two sets to love than when he's leading by two sets and a break. the collapses tend to most commonly be linked to confidence in the forehand going away, plus a certain stubbornness over certain strategic components like return position - again, he's a perfectly capable tactician and usually a very cerebral player, but when his head goes it sure does go. valentino spends a lot of time espousing the virtues of winning ugly in his direction, hoping something will stick. absolutely got the neuroticism to be a tennis player, pecco does. definitely needs a good support system, otherwise tennis will very much drive him insane

fabio: hm. well. fabio. my working process with these is that I usually like to have an idea in my head about career progression and like,, how that would work in this fictional tennis context, because I don't really think style of play can be separated out well from that. usually my starting point for that is, unsurprisingly, the riders' actual careers. the problem with fabio is that for all I agree that he is dispositionally very tennis-y, there's two major inflection points of his career - 2019 and 2022 - that make said career so interesting, but also make no sense whatsoever outside of a motogp context. so to some extent he does lose some of that narrative juice in tennis,, but that doesn't mean he can't still make a plenty fun player. very tennis-y

the thing about fabio is that I reckon he would bring back racquet smashing in a big way. of the aliens, my sense is you can broadly divide them into two camps on the racquet-smashing axis - very unlikely to bin a racquet where cameras can see them (valentino, dani, marc) and definitely worked their way through a fair few on court (casey, jorge). given that dovi probably belongs to the first camp, at the very highest level racquet smashing has been a bit underrepresented for a few years. but fabio? oh yeah, he knows how to throw a good tantrum. he's an emotional player! he wears his heart on his sleeve and you can see pretty much every emotion known to man on his face over the course of your average tennis match. has probably yelled at his team a fair bit during matches!! fabio's career is catnip for tennis discourse. the fans who hate him when he has 'feelings' (dangerous thing in tennis circles), the hoards who absolutely adore him and are waiting for him to fulfil his potential way before he wins his first slam... the choking allegations, the mentally fragile allegations. but also the genuine outpouring of joy on his behalf in a lot of quarters when he finally clinches his first slam!! ('finally' in this context does still mean '21'.) the natural talent is obvious from the outset, but the epic highs and lows TM keep people coming back more more

in terms of playstyle, I reckon it's a lot of linear power. he has very smooth, flowing technique, very easy on the eye. one of those swings where it looks like all the body parts are working perfectly with each other. he's from that school of two-handed backhand players who are so adept at taking the ball from low to the ground that they don't really have much use for the slice as a defensive shot. his style incorporates a lot of high margin aggression - it's a power game but one that chooses big targets and doesn't involve a lot of mistakes. his ball has enough spin and height to make sense for clay - which, given where he's from, you'd imagine could get a lot of french people very excited indeed. maybe he chokes away the first covid roland garros but then returns for glory. plays pecco at some point and they have to cancel the curfew because the frenchies refuse to leave. while he does throw in some error-strewn performances early in his career, it's key for him to have confidence in his game; he can't get away with retreating into passivity, and that's what a lot of his coaching focuses on. he gets better at finding that balance. at his best, fabio has no major weaknesses and is both solid and dangerous off both wings, making him a bit of a nightmare to put away. the playbook against him increasingly involves getting him off the baseline, which can work - he's sometimes a little stiff getting forwards - but also has to be executed very well to be effective. he also becomes increasingly tough to unsettle within matches... forces opponents to become increasingly creative in their tactics to throw him off-balance. fun puzzle to try and figure out

bez: yeah, he makes sense as a tennis player. super confidence-dependent. needs a very good support group and coaching team to stave off the loneliness of tour life. I mean,, actually idk if he DOES make sense as a tennis player, I could easily imagine him being MISERABLE in that lifestyle. but well, when's that ever stopped anyone in the sport. hm... I'm about to give another player on this list a one-handed backhand, and I'm trying to figure out whether I feel like I'm exaggerating the ratio of 1hbh's at the top of men's tennis. but no,, I think I'm good. two out of the top twenty two doesn't sound unreasonable, and there's maybe... one other guy I'd consider giving a 1hbh, so hardly egregious. the thought process here is casey's whole schtick about how great bez would've been if they'd simply get rid of all those pesky electronics. given I'd previously already assigned casey a single hander (one that's actually good, tbc), 'outdated elements of the game' do unfortunately make me think of that specific shot. bez has an extreme eastern grip on his backhand, where the racquet face is more closed and tends to involve a higher spin load on the ball. he avoids the most obvious pitfalls like a tendency to struggle with higher balls or a tendency to produce a lot of mishits - but it comes at the expense of power at that wing. he's also not particularly good at flattening the ball out or redirecting. which actually makes it a very strong rally ball, albeit one that still has a propensity to get bullied by serves - it's just as a complete package, it's not the ideal shot for the modern game

the forehand is also a bit of a throwback, but in a good way. it's not a noisy motion, the wrist is extended and the racquet face held high at takeback, allowing for a clean swing that generates power quite nicely. given the eastern grip on this wing, it makes bez one of the rare players who has more spin on his backhand than forehand. the serve, like that of bez's hero for most of his career, has a platform stance - far from unusual, though a little more uncommon than pinpoint. taken together, it gives bez quite a distinctive style on court... one that is also immediately very appealing to journalists and tennis commentators, who are taken by both the distinctive appearance and a game that reminds them of players they grew up watching. nostalgia-core. it is also theoretically a game that has all the basic building blocks to be very successful. bez has plenty of natural ability and a sort of instinctive grasp for the game that is tough to teach. he has the hand skills that for a while there make him look like the most likely heir to valentino's throne of the academy kids - though he has always been more aggressively minded and wants to dictate points with his forehand. it's a very liberated, fun type of play. throwing himself into balls with his whole body, lovely reactive brakes both in his footwork and in his groundstrokes. there are weaknesses to be exploited - especially in his capacity to generate offence and redirect off the backhand, allowing the most skilled players to pin him in that corner and prevent him from using his preferred pattern of running around the backhand to hit an inside out forehand. but the potential is all there, plenty obvious to see

there's plenty of talk in sports about athletes going to 'dark places' - a point that exists beyond natural limits and a certain pain threshold (whether physical or solely psychological), to allow oneself to fully sink into the suffering if that's what it takes to win. the basic idea is that to compete at the very highest level, you need to relinquish various defence mechanisms. to try to the fullest extent and fail nevertheless is inherently humiliating - but if you're too worried about what it'd be like to surrender yourself so completely to the effort and still come up short, then inevitably you cannot push past that limit. again, this is not a concept unique to tennis, but it sure is one relevant to this sport. and it's pretty obvious, even from the outside, that some athletes are more capable of accessing those dark places within themselves than others. some can even revel in the pain (again, physical or psychological), to a certain extent anyway. the most obvious example of that kind of character from the blokes featured in this post is... I mean. it's pecco. obviously it's pecco. I suspect bez exists a little bit too far on the other end of the spectrum, where he doesn't have the same level of comfort with his own suffering. tennis matches when everything is flowing smoothly are lots of fun, but champions need to find a way to win even on their bad days. for a while, bez is flying high, a mixture of glorious runs and valiant defeats that could certainly propel him to a few masters titles. but if the confidence in his game is ever seriously shaken... it could stay shaken. pecco may have choked a few leads away in his time, but he also possesses a near-unrivalled ability to pick himself up immediately afterwards and go again. bez is far more susceptible to downward spirals, which can be lethal in tennis. still needs to prove if he can adapt his game enough to break himself out of that kind of a spiral

luca: sometimes you look at a man and just go 'one-handed backhand'. idk if he has a single hander irl, I don't really care, his tennis pro version would. if luca had been born a decade later, this is probably something his brother would have discouraged, but in the noughties... nah. also, I've given two of valentino's five major rivals (sete and casey) one handed backhands, and for casey at least it's a major weapon. so. a lot of luca's formative memories are watching his older brother win slams and masters and atp finals, sometimes in-person, often on tv. but... idk, it feels right somehow that he ends up with a noticeably different style than his brother. a case of being inspired by valentino but not copying everything about him, also wanting to set himself apart a bit. the backhand is obviously the most easily visible expression of that, but it extends beyond that. luca's whole game is geared towards offence, to figuring out how to use his weapons to finish points off quickly. the forehand is flat and penetrating, the serve designed to create easy plus one putaways. luca's favourite surface to watch growing up is grass, so he does take valentino's slice and volley lessons very seriously. my general rule when trying to imagine a rider's game is to like... add about 15 cm to their height to keep them in similar proportions to each other - except with valentino, who doesn't play like someone that tall. if you did that with luca, you'd be taking him right into servebot territory, which... well... 199 cm by today's standards isn't CRAZY so... yeah sure, why not. it kinda naturally pushes him to a serve-oriented game that prioritises power over movement. (ofc not to the extent of tall men in the past, obviously by now there are several prominent examples of men of that height who are excellent movers.) make serve and volley happen again

given luca's age and because it'd be pleasing to me personally, I imagine a fair bit of valentino's input in helping luca develop his backhand boils down to 'go copy what stoner is doing'. this means luca ends up with a perfectly good backhand - not an extreme grip, compact takeback, heavy on hip rotation and doesn't really use the non-dominant arm as a counterweight. straight arm. it produces quite flat tennis on both wings, and for all that luca was also raised on clay and is perfectly competent at moving on the surface, grass is clearly his best surface. which is a bit of a shame because there's really not much going on with that surface beyond wimbledon. luca's style is a relatively extreme form of first strike tennis, played by somebody completely cognisant of that style's limitations but is attempting to maximise his chances with what he has at his disposal. he's a real student of the game, a proper tennis nerd, the type to make journalists want to propose to him in every other presser. (gets asked to oddly many pressers given his ranking.) for all that he's a top 20-30 staple, I imagine he'd also be invited to do some commentary work... analysis on tennis channel or italian broadcasts, that kind of thing - which he'd be wary of doing too much of, but essentially he'd be welcome any time. not always easy to escape his brother's considerable shadow, and he does get tired of being asked about him, but after a certain point he's mostly allowed to be his own guy. for all that he has his own ambitions and really is incredibly diligent in working on his own game, everybody already agrees he'll make a fantastic coach/commentator/coach + commentator when he retires

jorge m: oh hey, another racquet smasher! jorge probably smashes racquets when he WINS. very fired up type of guy, basically never needs time to work his way into matches. his tennis is THERE from the very first point. sometimes it's there in a very baseball-y aim-for-the-back-fence type of way, but it sure is there. in terms of sheer pace, jorge has the biggest forehand of anyone on this list. it also has a lethal amount of spin. just a lovely, loose explosive shot, a lot of work with that wrist. even by motogp standards, he's on the shorter side - which we're keeping for his tennis version (just plus 15 cm), making him naturally more suited to returning over serving. I'm pro emphasising his similarities with pecco, so I think he should also be particularly high on raw foot speed. looks quite different from pecco doing it, despite his height really goes in for big lunging steps and makes use of his considerable flexibility - he's really fun to watch with his athleticism and dogged determination to hunt down balls. compact backhand good at digging out balls, also not much use for slices. his ability to hit acute angles off both wings while moving is a particular strength and compliments his ability to generate pace from the centre of the court to make him an all-round offensive powerhouse. his volleys are... okay, but also don't necessarily go beyond that, and his transition game can be a bit lacking when it goes beyond 'big forehand go boom into the corner'. in general, he's the type of player who doesn't philosophically agree with the concept of 'defending', and would prefer to attack pretty much every ball from every position. sometimes, it's to his advantage - when he's chasing after balls and just instinctively using the opponent's pace and angle against them, there's less opportunity for the kind of over-exuberance that acquaints balls with the back fence

given his high proficiency at returning and his relative serving weakness (not super pronounced, it's just not the biggest weapon you'll find on tour), a lot of his offence is taking place from relatively neutral positions. this diminishes the margin in his matches - he's perfectly capable of involving himself in matches with lopsided scorelines in either direction. if the weapons are firing, great, if they're misfiring, he doesn't really have free points on serve to bail him out. it gets him a reputation for being a temperamental hot-and-cold player that is... true to some extent, but also maybe not entirely fair. early in his time on the main tour, he gets some big breakout results, before he sustains a career-threatening injury that he does well to bounce back from. it takes him a while to figure out how to reliably win with his game, to maybe get a slightly better sense of risk management within points and within matches. how to manage the rhythms of a match. gets better at learning to extend a rally and actually make better use of that speed - both him and pecco are at times susceptible to a sort of 'they bash you bash harder' mindset, but he has learned to reign it back a bit. maybe even learns how to integrate a teensy bit more variety into his game, gets better at taking out pace from his shots to construct rallies better. work up to his finishing shot rather than bashing until he gets one past his opponent. still a hothead!! and, yup, chip on the shoulder. the type of guy who gets het up about court assignments. bad line calls. his team not giving him adequate support. shitty balls. the weather. the roof. sometimes it's better for him to let out his emotions and have a little tantrum, rather than bottle it all up and stew on it - can be preferable to get it out of his system so he can then move on and keep playing well. for all that he has a temper, he also has a real capacity to deal with adversity. a work in progress, but he sure does keep working

bonus - pedro: counterpunching is back baby. it's good again. awoouuu (wolf howl). all the non-valentino aliens are way more offensively-minded than valentino was - so with the exception of dovi, the pusher-representation on the tour has been a bit lacking. pedro is not a pusher and he does have a fair bit loose, natural power... but his main strengths are explosive lateral movement and a backhand to die for. he also has more... bits to his game, layers, than some of the other players who have come through in recent years. he's quite natural with the slice and can hit a dropshot and takes a pro-volleying stance to his tennis. AND he's very amenable to flexible tactics. the kind of kid who will play one game as a pusher, realise it's not working, and then suddenly switch to bashing. he's got an ability to... play feasible rally shots from any position, like if he's sliding or if he's just reaching for a ball, he has this ability to flick his wrists and twist his hips to somehow dig the ball out. he's clever, very much a student of the game, and WANTS to use the full toolkit to dismantle his opponents. to take them on at their own game and beat them. however, he is still in the 'too many options' stage of development where he has all this Stuff at his disposal and needs to figure out what to do with it. an ability to both grind it out and be offensive will do him good in the long run, but he still needs to figure out when to do what and how to switch from one to the other within rallies

energetic on court, very much a Character who wants to involve the crowd. not necessarily in a nasty way, though he's not opposed to a bit of needle. tends to come across as quite cool and composed in the face of pressure, though it shows when he wants to do too much. another bloke who's more of a natural returner than server. maybe partly because the serve is..... temperamental right now. he can mix up the spins quite nicely, just the reliability and precision that's all over the place. the return strategy can also get a bit questionable, but the basic technical elements are all there. and a chipped return!! it exists!! very high rally tolerance, excellent balance that allows him to slide into balls and consistently recover well. a real deft touch for deceleration, both in terms of his literal movement and the shots he plays, how he's able to both absorb and inject pace at will. and, crucially, he brings with him a real willingness to grind it out. to win by gradually working the ball out of the opponent's range, or by waiting until they make a mistake. problem solve. again, it's the point construction where things are a bit wonky... the building blocks are all there, so. he'll get there

[oneluckydragon]

got hit with the echo+sora brainrot so i am once more rambling in your askbox about it. because reasons.

anywho i think there is something truly saddening about echo's struggles to make peace within herself and how she truly finds it hard to find that peace when she is so certain that if the truth about her origins were to be revealed to the world, much less to *sora*, everything she achieved, everything she worked for, all of which matters to her most, will crumble away in a moment's notice.

but the fear of losing all your life's work is none compared to the fear of losing sora. the feeling of poison that settled itself within themselves and between each other out of fear and tragedy of what had happened to them is familiar. echo's resemblance to dusknoir was already enough to set the two off because of how much it had all hurt to see someone you love and yourself turn into a mockery and a splitting image of someone who had pretended to care yet showed he never did at all, but this poison is louder. it hurts to bare, to carry, and to have none but yourself to be its sole holder.

but this poison, this feeling of heartache is different. because whereas the previous pain was something both of them felt, sora was lucky enough to not have known the truth about the person who she cares for so dearly.

echo knows that she used to be darkrai. and it haunts her to have known that her previous incarnation was so *cruel*, all for the sake of it just feeling right. wishing to engulf an entire world in darkness, solely for whatever desire she used to have.

and for how much she knows, how much she will hammer it into her own head that she is *not* like that anymore, that she looks at her past with sneer and disgust and that she will not be the barer of evil anymore, it will not matter in the slightest when she will have to look at sora if she were to ever find out.

how afraid, angry and dejected she would look when finding out, and how she will go on the defense/offense because of how much this will overwhelm her.

because when echo looks at her own shadow, she sees herself for what she is. she knows what she is, be it out of shame or guilt.

but when sora will look at it, she will see a tall, contorting and menacing shadow, towering over with a bright cyan eye doing nothing but looking at her, as if tempting her to make the next move.

and she defends herself. from someone she knows will not harm her. she raises her arms up in self defense from a hand that would never hurt her more than the world has already did.

she knows echo will not hurt her. and thats why she is afraid.

Oh my oh my OH MY, Sinnoh!!! YES YES YES!

HOW!!! IN THE WORLD!!! Are you so good at crawling into my head and creating these vivid analysis/snippets on my OCs??? I've barely shared ANY information about Echo and Sora because I've been wanting to hoard most of my stuff for when my fic is finally finished... but... I think you've broken my resolve a bit, if I'm entirely honest.

You know what? I'm so inspired by your accuracy and eagerness to talk about my girls that I'm gonna forgo my crippling anxiety regarding my writing skills and instead post a snippet of my WIP fic here as a treat for you. A teaser, if you will. Since I have no idea when the fic in question will actually be done and ready (or when I will be satisfied with it, cause the thing is currently 36,000 words and still slowly climbing). And now you've got me eager to share SOMETHING of my fic with you and anyone that might want to take a peek at it.

Please enjoy this conversation between Dusknoir and Echo. The topic deals a lot with what you'd described up above!! c:

[Note: this is an unedited part of my fic because I am still in the process of writing and it may change in the future, so please be gentle w/ me but I'd love to read any thoughts/comments that pop up while reading!! pls send asks or replies or anything really cause I love you guys]

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“I’m going to tell you something now, and you are going to listen.” Echo commands with a sharp bite in her voice that Dusknoir cannot fathom ignoring. He pauses and then offers a slow nod, waiting, wondering what she could possibly desire to tell him at a time like this, of all things.

Minutes pass as Echo remains rooted in place, still as her own shadow, and her eyes dart around as she stares at the patches of dry grass and sand beneath her paws. Her claws clench and unclench, digging into the earth like daggers as the wind of the forest (it’s trees so close, just behind them, a looming sort of presence that could engulf them whole) whistles through the surrounding branches, carrying stray leaves of many bright greens through the chilling breeze. Dusknoir watches them dance around Echo, twirling, floating down, down, down… but it’s quiet, too quiet, and Dusknoir feels a shiver pass through him when Echo’s voice finally rings out through the silence.

"When I evolved, Sora was petrified," She says, nearly a whisper, an admission that melts away her confidence and appears to bring her a flood of both shame and regret. Her face twists up then, strangely, like she’d felt a twinge of pain from somewhere deep inside the very fabric of her own soul and was unable to quell it. "She couldn’t even bring herself to look at me most days. At first, my appearance… well, it reminded her too much of you. And eventually of someone I used to be.”

Someone I used to be. At that, Dusknoir’s immediate reaction is to recall Echo’s previous life as a human, as the miserable shell of a creature surviving alongside Grovyle that he’d relentlessly hunted in the dark future. A human made of contempt and anger and apathy, who never smiled or laughed or cried or screamed like the old legends said humans would-- an entity that simply existed rather than lived. An echo of a life long dead and buried. But, judging by her tone, by her voice, by some uneasy intuition itching in the back of his mind like a swarm of pestilent Ninjask… he knows that she means something else entirely. Something that she isn’t willing to share. And frankly, that concept utterly terrifies him.

Someone I used to be. Dusknoir wants to speak, to break his own silence, wants to ask the myriad of questions bubbling up in his throat because this isn't the first time she's hinted at another life beyond being human, but those questions die at the source like a flame doused in water. And always the coward, coward, coward, instead he takes the easy way out by doing nothing at all. Whether Echo notices his surge of inner conflict or not-- the nervous wring of his hands and the tremble in his spine that he cannot control under her gaze-- she does not react.

“I’d take a step and Sora would flinch away.” Echo confesses, her markings flickering with light before going dark and dead, as if her body wished to snuff them out entirely, a deep seated rejection, a self-loathing so strong that Dusknoir cannot help but recognize it and empathize, and his heart aches, “It took ages for her to stop shaking when I’d speak. To stop looking at me like-- like I was going to…” 

Echo grimaces like she’s enduring waves of grueling torture and doesn’t finish that string of thought, but it’s not hard to make an educated guess on what went unsaid. Like I was going to betray her. Hurt her. Break her heart. She’s been through so much already and I couldn’t bear to be another influence in the history of her suffering. I hate myself because of how I made her feel. When her eyes went wide in fear and through them I could see myself staring back like some sort of burden, some sort of curse.

“I am not my past.” Proud and true, Echo straightens up and holds her head high, a spark igniting in her eyes, a glint of determination, a will to keep going and going despite such circumstances and strife, despite this horrid, unspeakable past that haunts her so, “And I am definitely not you. It’s taken a while, but I know that much now. I’ve accepted it.”

I am not my past. And I am definitely not you.

A sigh, a breath, and Echo glances at him with a certain sorrow that cannot be described, a sorrow that lingers even through the veil of her tenacity, "But no matter how I feel, no matter my conviction, my shadows still find ways through the cracks. Every time I think I'm getting a grip and that I might finally understand myself… I change all over again." She admits, sounding more angry and tired than defeated now-- like a mirror of her old self, her human self that had clawed and damned and cursed him, despised him more than anything. "I hate it. I hate that I never truly know who I am. That I have to learn about my past through stories others tell me, or through fragments of twisted, broken memories that I wouldn't wish on anyone. Through conflict and pain and… and..."

"Echo," Dusknoir murmurs her name softly, an offering, a potential escape if only she would wish to drop the subject and forget this conversation had ever happened-- if she'd overstepped and needed an excuse to back out, a diversion, an understanding. And briefly, Dusknoir wonders why she is opening up about this particular information, why she would delve into something so vulnerable, so personal. Why she would bring up this hurtful history when it obviously brings her great discomfort.

And then, he gets an answer.

“You’re lucky, Dusknoir." There it is, that wildfire burning in her eyes again. A spark that’s new and bold and startling. But lucky? No, never. He'd have to disagree, accounting the mountain of evidence that was his life and regrettable deeds.

"You already know exactly who you are and what you’ve done, and most importantly why. You have more than a tattered picture of yourself that reflects broken answers. And you can change with that knowledge. I see you trying.” She tells him, searching, looking for something so deeply and Dusknoir wishes he knew what it could be so that he could give it to her, because he would, he would gladly give it to her without a second thought if it meant they could be close again. But he isn’t a fool, and he’s wise enough to know they’ll never be like they were before. “And if somehow I could change, even as half-assed as I have. Well, then what’s your excuse?”

You can do it, say her unspoken words, I believe in you.

[whatudottu]

Regarding your cerebrocrustacean headcanons mentioned in the previous ask: they very well could be somewhat canon given how, when asked if Albedo and Dr. Psychobos would be willing to work together, Derrick J. Wyatt responded with "Psychobos seems like a total team up slut, he'll team up with any villain any time" (his words, not mine).

Which he likely meant in the sense of "Psychobos is so power-hungry he'll team up with anyone in order to get ahead", but with your headcanons and the fact he never talks much about his personal life in mind, you could alternatively interpret it as "Psychobos is so desperately lonely he'll accept anyone he has even the slightest similarity with into his clique, even members of a species he's violently xenophobic towards" (probably to cope with/serve as a rebound for his mancrush Azmuth friendzoning him /lh /hj).

Now all of this is making me realize that it was a massive missed opportunity in Omniverse to not have Psychobos' demeanor do a complete 180 around the people he works with compared to everyone else (whether sincere or a thinly-veiled manipulation tactic) if not solely for a few jokes. Especially him acting like an affectionate father figure towards Malware (whether he likes it or not) solely so he can rub it in Azmuth's face that "I'm a FAR more attentive and caring parental figure towards your creation than YOU ever were, and I use the term loosely".

WHAT DO YOU MEAN DJW SAID 'TEAM UP SLUT' HAHAH WHAT!? dear god it's true it's on the wiki what the fuck what the fuck assdfjhghsdlfkgfkl-!

I mean, look at his already canon group; Khyber, allegedly the greatest huntsman in the galaxy, teaming up with Dr Psychobos to make a little watch that can sample (specifically predatory) animals; and Malware, a technology absorbing mutant mechamorph, working with the cybernetically enhanced (also listed as a mutant???) cerebrocrustacean in order to make said watch- if liking the concept of animals and incorporating machines as part of oneself is enough to get into Dr Psychobos' clique well, he's certainly stretched what that means far enough to at least snag two others into his initial team up. Same can't be said for Attea and the incurseans which seems to be more of a sponsor type relationship, and Maltruant commissioned him to repair his body but violated the trade agreement so whether or not Psychobos would do business with the incurseans again, he's already squarely sequestered Maltruant in the outest of out-groups :P

Hah, the 'Dr Psychobos adopting Malware specifically to stick it to Azmuth' bit reminded me of a signing-the-adoption-papers version of the 'I throw my used car batteries in the ocean' thing- something along the lines of; [psychobos voice] "You are the most calamitous individual I have had the pleasure of meeting, and I use the term loosely." [malware voice, threateningly] "I have devoured and absorbed the specs of the Omnitrix." [psychobos signing adoption papers] [malware, experiencing the affects of cerebrocrustacean in-grouping and having no frame of reference on how to deal with it] "What the fuck is happening-"

[nyaskitten]

Y'know what? I'm done! I'm done with all the hate, negativity, and all the other generally bad things we as artists, writers, music composers, etc say about ourselves!

This post is an us appreciation post because FUCK what the back of our heads is telling us!!

It doesn't matter if what you draw or write or compose or edit or ANYTHING isn't "as good" as someone else's, or you feel you're not skilled enough! ALL that matters is you're having FUN and enjoying yourself and that YOU take pride in what you make!

It doesn't matter if your anatomy is a bit wonky or the way you write feels a bit odd or the music you make isn't 100% or whatever you edit is a bit lackluster! What matters is having fun, and enjoying what you make! Your art should be for yourself first and foremost, and for others if you feel like sharing!

Keep those drawings and fics you want to yourself for however long you desire! You owe no one on the internet literally ANYTHING! (unless you're doing commissions and were paid, in which case you do owe them something there's no debating this</3)

AGAIN, all that matters is you have fun making whatever it is you're making! No one else's opinions matter! You are good enough! I am good enough! WE are good enough with what we make, and you should never forget it!

Make what you want, not what others want! Write what makes you happy! Improve however you want, but stop comparing yourself to others! What they have, they practiced and worked hard for, and what you have, you've ALSO practiced and worked hard for!!!

Please, never forget to have faith in yourself! Love yourself, and love your creations! Stay creative and proud of yourself forever and always!