#of which the answer is always yes

[ao3-crack]

(x)

[vaguely-concerned]

the strength it must have taken for illario to not immediately go full 'lmao since when have you even had a kiss hello lucanis' sibling violence mode during the café talk. inspirational. rook and lucanis really were doing all that right in front of his salad huh

[uncanny-tranny]

Please intentionally attempt to see the magic in everything. Everything is magic, even if you understand the "boring" reasons why things happen. Look at the magic in growing plants, the magic of your muscles flexing and retracting, the magic of your eyes and skull, the magic of a cat's purr.

It's all magic. Understanding the "why" is just understanding what makes things magical, it doesn't change that it's all significant and magic.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Bonus 9: So that's where the turtle came from!

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[rooolt]

have yet to stop thinking about the plane ride to Barcelona, aka the worlds most awkward plane ride in the world. Like who do we think sat together? Did Devon talk to any of them, like is she’s friends with any of the other teens? Did Eli and demetri drag other people into their drama, was demetri very obviously trying to avoid Eli, messing up the assumed plane seating arrangements? Was Robby brooding over his missing girlfriend and her dead mom the whole time? Were Daniel and Johnny still beefing or do we think they tried to save face for the kids? Is there any chance that Miguel and Sam were able to just have a nice time hanging out with each other on the flight or did they get dragged into everyone else’s drama? I’m so obsessed with the logistics of the Barcelona trip, not to mention the flight is like 11 hours long if it’s non-stop. it sounds like the trip from hell

[matteoberrettini]

inspired by a conversation i had with mars the other day, i ask tennisblr:

*significant can mean a 1000, the wta/atp finals, the billie jean king/davis cup finals or something else i'm forgetting that's particularly important during the tennis season. some of these have dates that have varied more than others over the years but regardless since every tournament obviously happens on different dates every year i'm asking usually, so if most years your birthday is during, for example, indian wells or the davis cup finals pick the 2nd option even if sometimes it isn't, you know

[jessicas-pi]

If you're still accepting snippet asks, I believe you had an idea for a sequel to Phantom of the Chimera at some point?

Why, yes I did!! In fact I have some of it written, too. And now I'm going to write MORE

---

"Not that it matters," Sabine said, crossing her arms. "But weren't you the one to tell me that we couldn't just steal random children?"

Ezra's expression was resigned. "I admit the irony of this situation, but—"

"And yet here you are, telling me you've stolen a random child."

"I didn't steal her, I saved her! Besides, I think Tidge needs a sister."

Sabine looked over her shoulder to the eight-year-old boy carefully applying dark powder under his eyes—part of their standard "ghost makeup."

"Hey, kid. You need a sister?"

Tidge shrugged. "I dunno. Probably. Was her dad a General, too?"

"I don't know who her dad was, actually," Ezra said. "She doesn't speak Basic. But she was in a holding cell and she was scared, so I broke her out."

"A prisoner, huh?" Sabine mused aloud. "I wonder why they were holding a kid in a cell. Where is she, anyway?"

Ezra gestured with his thumb behind him. "Back at the last vent junction. I wanted to explain to you first. I thought she might feel bad if you acted weird about how she looks, and she's... I don't even know what she is. She's, like, a baby Thrawn."

"What?" Sabine asked, confused.

"Like if Thrawn was a seven-year-old girl. She's a baby Thrawn. Blue, glowy red eyes..."

"Uh-huhhh..." Sabine said slowly, taking that information in.

"It's okay that I brought her here, though, right?" Ezra asked. "We're keeping her? If we can't find her family, I mean."

Sabine scoffed. "Don't be ridiculous. Of course we're keeping her! What kind of question even is that? She's a lost kid! I'm never going to not take care of lost kids!"

"Oh, good." He laughed nervously. "Uh, hypothetically... would that still apply if there were nine of them?"

"...Ezra."

"Not saying that there are! Just—"

"Ezra."

"—hypothetically, if there were nine—"

"You did not just steal nine children from the Empire."

"I didn't!"

She crossed her arms at him, and he squirmed under her gaze.

"But... if I did, theoretically, would you—"

Sabine turned away from him and looked to Tidge, who was staring at her with wide eyes, apparently a little terrified at the idea of nine sisters. No wonder. Kid had been an only child his whole life.

"He just quadrupled the size of our family in a day," Sabine remarked dryly—and then broke into a grin. "You know, I think we'll make a Mandalorian of him yet."

[francesderwent]

more great things about the lying in the grass metaphor:

applies equally to all of us who, for various reasons, are lacking the stability of previous generations. single when your mom was married with three kids at your age? sounds like you can’t get in the house. renting your sixth apartment and wondering whether you’ll ever own property? yeah, we definitely can’t get in the house. working a series of dead-end underpaying jobs? my brother in Christ it seems to me like you’re not in the house. join me on the grass.

when somebody well-meaning comes along and says “but this is such a great phase of life you’re in and you’ll miss it when you’re married/have kids/whatever!” or “you should be content, maybe this is your vocation!” you can take that with a massive grain of salt because you know, for sure, in your heart, that you are not in a house, you are on a patch of grass. there are nice things about a patch of grass. and God can be found in a patch of grass. but it does not have the stability or homey-ness of a house. you are not imagining the inconvenience and suffering of trying to live on a patch of grass. you can both flourish and complain.

[caeslxys]

Your tags...you're right and you should say it, honestly. Saying C3 deserved a few more episodes could sound like your average "I wish my show never ended" take, except...what was everything for, if BH don't get to exist in the aftermath? Their endgame choice, everything they've been working towards, was informed by them having been on the moon and met its people. Final episodes aside, if the Ruidus plot is The BH Thing, I really wish the first trip could've had them less in a rush to report back. I wish they had the opportunity to connect even more with Ruidians and, yeah, I wish they had fought the Weavemind. I'm also rambling, sorry! I just can't believe it's controversial or made to sound like hate to say we shouldn't be begging for Moon x BH crumbs in the Moon x BH campaign.

Prefacing this with reinforcing that I truly, deeply adore those final bells hells episodes and what they contain. They’re fantastic critical role episodes in general but more importantly to me they are fantastic bells hells episodes. In a vacuum, i’m extremely happy with what we got.

That said, yeah, c3’s ending on the grander scale of its narrative structure in totality was unbelievably (and, frankly, unnecessarily) rushed. Everything since episode 91 has been in a spiral towards a finish they simply could have chosen not to spiral into so quickly. And this is seen in several things: from how Delilah was “handled” with next to no actual processing or difficulty, to the nein’s inclusion not bearing any narrative weight beyond the vague feeling of having some “avengers assemble” moment i simply did not care for and think ultimately took from bells hell’s story rather than added to it (which, were it not all rushed, is something it could have been given to them and their inclusion in the way that vox machina’s inclusion did), to the hells not even actually being able to participate in what their own campaign was ultimately about beyond quick epilogue scenes and one political discussion that they didn’t even all need to participate in.

I think the decision to have c3 be “the end of an era” irt to critical role’s ten years deeply hurt both its structure and its narrative intent. I still remember them marketing this campaign as a good jumping in point for new critters, and yet the finale doesn’t even end with bells hells. It ends on vox machina. That, to me—and in addition to the vox machina and mighty nein solo episodes—showcases a clear shift in intent that happened way, way too late to feel at all fulfilling as an audience member looking in. I’m sure as players it rocked, which I point out because obviously the fun factor matters substantially as well, but that has no bearing on criticism of the narrative it produces.

All that said: it’s truly incredible to me how much of this would have been fixed very simply by just…having more episodes. You could say this of anything but I feel it’s extremely noticeable in this story—the one thing it needed to make the constant rushing pace of its forward plot land was a denouement that allowed the characters and story to breathe for more than one eight hour episode. Bells Hells needed to learn about the culture on Ruidus. They needed to spend more time with the volition—more time even with Liliana, I would argue. They should have had their story structured in such a way that they fought the weavemind and ludinus both (especially if matt knew ludinus would ultimately make it out). They should have actually had to delve into what the story had set them up to delve into.

I adore, to pieces, campaign 3 and bells hells. I think much of the ire thrown towards it is unwarranted at best and often misplaced. But I will likely also always be at least a little mad that their final act was so clearly rushed.

[antleredweirdo]

A Blue man and a Ghost meet in a church…

((Just an idea as I’m having brainrott))

Danny, with his horrific injuries from being ‘caught’, somehow escapes to his friends before retreating into his core. His friends take his core into the ghost zone, trying to get to Frostbite, but are stopped by (either Fenton parents or GIW agents) flooding into the ghost zone after them.

Tuck and Sam are panicking and so they wrap Danny’s core into Tuck’s beanie and Sam’s jacket before tossing him onto one of the flouting platforms and leading the ghost hunters away…they didn’t expect Danny to be sucked into one of the natural portals along the way down…

Danny wakes up in Germany of all places, alone, with pieces of his best friend’s clothing splayed over him… He takes this with surprising grace (not) and deals with his newfound homelessness in a foreign country as well as he can. At least his King status allows him to be a polyglot…

Meanwhile, Kurt Wagner had returned church that had raised him, planing on pay respects (again) to the Priest that had sheltered him. It wasn’t the same church, as that one has burned down far long ago, but there had been a new church built in its place. This new church had been abandoned soon after its construction, too many people saying that it was haunted with angry ghosts and feeling too anxious to worship within such a building.

Kurt had thought they had been silly, thinking like that and leaving the building to rot. Through, that was before he, himself, had caught sight of a ghost dwelling inside inside. Wait, no. This was still a living child. A boy sat in one of the pews and stared at him with wary curiosity. Through he was so washed out and in such a sorry state that…Well, Kurt believes he could be forgiven for mistaking the boy for the dead.

In the dim morning glow flooding through the stained glass, his eyes reflected and glowed in the shadows. Which was…huh. Seems Kurt has stumbled upon not just a squatter, but a mutant squatter at that.

[bixels]

Why do you answer questions out of order?

Most asks I receive are repeats that I've already answered. I'm not really keen on clogging my blog with repeat ask posts. Some of them I do wanna answer but require more social energy so it takes time. It's like answering an email sometimes.

[necrotic-nephilim]

Before reading the comics, thanks to sladixk fics, i genuinely thought that dick always lost to slade, now I know that most times when he's and adult he beats slade no problem but it got me wondering how you feel about this canon-fanon difference

OHH this is a good question!!

i think sometimes fanon makes Slade a little... too badass. i think something some fanon fans don't understand about Slade in the 80s/90s is that he was like... kind of a loser? like don't get me wrong he was a main villain of the Titans for a while and he was certainly meant to be a formidable villain but this reputation he has in fanon almost supersedes him. (for example with specific plots: the fandom interpretation of the Judas Contract is Slade as the mastermind, but the writers have said that Terra was supposed to be the big villain manipulating everything. which is a ridiculous thing to put on a teenage girl getting groomed but, it does depict the intention of who was supposed to be "at fault" in that story) and don't get me wrong, i definitely love playing up the reputation and aura Slade has, but he really is a general contract killer on the level of like, Deadshot. personally, i wouldn't even put him on Lady Shiva's level, i think she far outranks him.

and to be fair to some fanon, recent comics have... tried to badass-ify Slade. some of his more recent Deathstroke runs are really trying to put him as this guy with legions of men underneath him who's this *deadly* killer who can take on Batman and Superman and all the like. and i just find that... boring? like, do i enjoy him being a smarter-than-average villain with a lot of connections? yes. but i don't think anything in his backstory really lends him to being as formidable as he appears in some fanfiction that puts him on this untouchable level. i would personally go as far to say i think *most* of the Batfamily could beat him in a fight under the right circumstances. bc Slade really is just Some Guy who got a serum from the military and went AWOL. (there's certainly more to his backstory than that, but at a glance, he's really not a trained fighter from birth like other characters are) and whilst i do enjoy Slade being formidable i have to admit, it was sort of fun when he was a loser? and i've gotten a kick out of certain comics that point out he's only a terrifying villain when he's up against teenagers. (Ghost-Maker calling him out on that is one of the funniest things, to me) like could Slade give Batman a serious fight? sure, but i don't see him ever winning unless you *really* nerf Bruce. and i really don't see him ever winning against most of the Batkids once they've got some years under their belt. Slade's scare factor was always tapered by who he was against, and he was a *Teen Titans* villain. so he's a little ridiculous and sometimes just sort of a weird loser. and i say that affectionately.

furthermore, on the flipside, i think... sometimes, we woobify Dick a bit too much to my tastes. or, really any Robin who gets shipped with Slade but of course Dick is the standout in popularity and i find it's more prominent with him. it's really a general slash problem, in which one man must be the Strong Top and then other must be the Weak Bottom. and that manifests in Slade being physically larger than Dick (which in canon, ehhh i think the size difference would be largely negligible) and him being able to beat Dick. bc it makes for more fanfic scenarios where you can put Dick at Slade's mercy for porn, for angst, for whatever you'd like. Slade is a good pick if you want to really put Dick on the weaker side, bc you can play with healing factors and strength enhancements. so on a physical level, Slade will be stronger than Dick. does that mean Slade can beat Dick in a fight? historically, no. i mean, Slade trusted Dick to train his own daughter in the Renegade storyline, so i think this is a fact even Slade is aware of.

i don't think it's a bad thing fanfiction likes its big top/small bottom tropes. if you want to make Dick a submissive, pliant bottom who is going to lose in a fight to Slade for your dead dove porn, get it. i've probably written or will write the same. it's appealing and it's a very common trope for Dick. but it becoming the fandom norm does sort of nerf Dick, occasionally. i think some fans don't fully comprehend the actual level Dick is on, where he's very close to being an equal to Bruce, if not already Bruce's equal. in fandom Dick is sort of trapped in this "post-adolescence but not full adulthood" state that does not acknowledge he has been an adult running superhero teams for years. he was filling in for Bruce in the Batman mantle all the way back in the 90s. he can defeat villains like Slade, and usually without a lot of difficulty. to me the only time you can realistically make Dick lose and it be "in character" is either 1, to have Dick *very* early on in his Robin years (i think if he's past 16, he can beat Slade) or 2, very deeply wound Dick/have him in a psychologically altered state via drugs or something. otherwise yeah, i think Dick wins 99% of the time.

but fanfiction is fanfiction, and it doesn't *have* to be canon. esp if Dick losing to Slade is just a sexy prerequisite to porn. do i wish more fanon explored Slade as kind of a loser? absolutely. do i think Slade is *too* cool in most fanon? also absolutely. but those are my tastes and i don't begrudge anyone who just wants a strong, mean man to whump the shit out of their blorbos, which usually, is the purpose of Slade. i find most fanfic with Slade tends not to be exploring Slade's character. they're simply using him as an easy stand-in for a metahuman who's morally grey and very mean but has a nuanced history with Dick, or whoever else. which, very valid. not all fanfic needs to be a character study, but i do think it'd be cool to see more Slade-centric fics that *do* want to be character studies.

[dadmareau]

What does Dream call Nightmare?-

For Dadmare: At the last stage, "Daddy" (preferred) or "Dad" (quicker and more 'mature'-sounding), though at some point it was "Father" and before that, "Mister Mare." Nightmare constantly protests being called "dad" but Dream will never stop.

For Moonbeam: "Nighty" and "Big brother."

[gomzdrawfr]

Not going to lie, I’m very curious about when did you get the idea to call Konig “some guy 2.0”? I have only followed you recently (by the way I love your art especially the way you draw Simon, he reminds me so much of a squishy bread to hold for some odd reason) so I don’t know if this came from awhile back or only recently now. And I have been so confused recently on why Konig is called some guy 2.0 but I do have find it funny.

Its funnier that way

[benevolenterrancy]

I've been looking at your art with Jin Guangyao like million times and noticed that his face features kinda fluctuate on different non-chibi drawings. Curious if you just like trying different designs or does this just reflect changing with age (he's almost a teenager as Meng Yao and a fully grown adult after the timeskip after all), and generally if you have any particular headcanons on his appereance?

Sorry, I'm just a little (or not a little) obsessed with character design XD

ha ha ha man I wish I could give a cool answer about how yeah, you totally saw through me, I am definitely intentionally making little fluctuations to mark the passage of time etc etc, except I'm tragically not 😅 The closest is that while he's Deputy Meng Yao I do try to make him a little more... optimistic? Give him a bit more youthful pride and confidence that he's finally succeeding and might have a chance to get what he wants? So I guess that ages him a bit between Meng Yao and Jin Guangyao, in theory... but when I'm not drawing silly comics, things just tend fluctuate and I'm not always very good at sticking to one look (I like trying different things!) All I can do is hope my art continues to improve... they're certainly never hiring me for animation or anything that requires consistency!

My headcanons about his appearance that I do try to keep in mind but might not come across in my art:

I almost always try to give him a somewhat round face, or at least rounded cheeks, I'm not sure why but I imagine him with quite a soft looking face... youthful, even as he gets older, and I think he'd be willing to play into that

I usually draw him smiling (because if something has made him show a distinctly different emotion he's probably alone or shit's popping off) and I'll often add dimples as part of my JGY Visual Shorthand (along with critical things like Goofy Hat)

WWX was able to see the goddess statue carved to look like Meng Shi and assume it was a statue of JGY, so I assume he has fairly delicate, almost feminine features -- she was supposed to be beautiful and he looks like her, ergo he must be pretty!

I imagine him with very straight hair, and I think he found this mildly frustrating with the Nie who I usually give more of a wave to -- his hair doesn't hold braids as easily as the Nie brothers! Frustrating when he's trying to fit in!

(listen I know the braids are a show thing not a book canon thing but I will die on this hill) I subscribe to him keeping his Nie braids under his hat you can't take this from me

This doesn't come across in my art because I just do whichever is more fun or fits the comic requirements at the time, but I imagine while Meng Yao / new to the Jin, he wore cuffs at his wrists, anything to keep his sleeves back, for pure practicality's sake. As sect leader I like to imagine he doesn't, and goes for the long, billowing sleeves and more layers as something of a status symbol: he doesn't need to worry about dragging them through dirt or blood or ink anymore!

[bananonbinary]

god i miss when the internet wasn't garbage. you can't google anything these days without whatever answer you're looking for getting lost under a deluge of seo ai bullshit. cannot wait until the bubble pops and we might get useable search engines again.