#oooh space

[yaaboi-jay]

The sparkles in the sky and lines of frosting in the stars make me feel like a cupcake :O

[vaguely-concerned]

huh. you know something I just consciously put together for the first time about caterina and lucanis' relationship is that through the game we get to hear them talk about each other a lot, but we get very few chances to hear them speak with each other at any length at all. contrast it with other companions whose storylines have elements of 'believed lost/long time no see relative returns!' like bellara and davrin, where we get to see both of them have several pretty in-depth conversations with cyrian and eldrin. hell I think even rook talks with varric longer in the regret prison scene than we ever get to see lucanis and caterina interact directly.

(and when we do see them interact, it's mostly one-sided -- it is, perhaps unsurprisingly, caterina who is doing most of the talking and giving all the orders, as he ruefully observes is her wont after murder of crows. including jumpscaring him with 'you're first talon now btw' and the shocked pikachu face in five acts he goes through in response lmao. perhaps it's more accurate to say that she talks at him and he reacts, than that they talk to each other much.)

it has such an interesting effect too, because in deliberately denying us direct insight or experience and only having this mosaic of description from each of them to go on, as well as forcing us to pay attention to the negative space of what is carefully not said, it's evocative along the same principle that you never actually show the monster in a horror film. if you've read the wigmaker job you have a clearer image of the more uh. worrying elements at play here going in, but there is something fascinatingly insidious and naturalistic in the way it's 'hushed up' in the game itself. she has his complete loyalty both as a member of her house and, more importantly, that of an abused child to a parent figure. he readily admits several times that she's a difficult person to live with, an even more difficult person to be loved by ("even for me. and I was her favourite")... but never once does he actively blame her nor truly conceptualize that he has every right to do so (that he can be angry with her and still love her, because whether he should or not he unavoidably does), or that she might have acted differently than she did, that she made a choice every time to hurt him. even affectionately he speaks of her as a force of nature, an act of god -- something that can't be reasoned or pleaded with or resisted, something you can only hope to navigate with as little pain as possible and pray to survive. let yourself get carried away by the riptide, resisting it will only make it worse. you don't compromise with a hurricane, you just try to find the best shelter you can and cross your fingers while you wait for it to pass and be calm again.

love is that hurricane. you do whatever she asks. you earn her continued affection day by day by never letting her down. you only want the things she tells you it's okay to want and cut everything else away preemptively. ("A wyvern tooth dagger?? I loved wyverns as a boy --Caterina would never let me have one of these, though." and as we have all wept and gnashed our teeth over, it never even OCCURS to him that he's a like thirty-five year old adult man who can buy himself any dagger he wants at any time. she said he couldn't have one. so he'll never have one. that's just how it works. and maybe if Illario could just accept that and find his peace with it like I have, this whole thing wouldn't be so difficult. oh lucanis.)

such is the price -- and the cost -- of being loved by her, it's a loan on which the interest will never stop piling up. you have to keep paying it down in perfection every day if you want to keep it. who got the worse deal there: the grandson who has abandoned everything else in life to live up to that and mostly succeeded, until the day he's so burned out and broken it threatens to no longer be an option, or the grandson who can never seem to scrape together enough worth in her eyes no matter how he begs, borrows or steals it, how he hustles and plays dirty?

one of the worst things that can happen to anyone is to be loved by a selfish god. another one of the worst things that can ever happen to anyone is to not be loved by a selfish god. (hope that helps, boys!) even in betraying everything else, Illario can't bring himself to hurt his grandmother, because that would defeat the whole point. who would he defiantly be proving himself worthy to, without her. in love, devotion, submission, hatred, frustration, bitterness, everything is defined in relation to her, you can spot the gravitational force of it through how the dellamorte family move through time and space. she -- her love and regard and attention -- is still the sun both of their worlds orbit around, even as adults. the game might never tell you outright 'she used to beat and starve them growing up. for their own good you see, so they'd be strong (and broken down enough for her to build them up again however she wanted but I'm sure that's incidental)', but if you know even a little bit about how these dynamics can work the writing is on the wall everywhere you look and all the more unsettling for it.

follow lucanis' freeze-logic and fraught interpersonal catch 22 irreconcilable mixed emotions problems back far enough, looong before the ossuary entered the picture, and you start to see caterina's ghost around every fucking corner. she is so proud of him. (well, she would be. she made him. she forged exactly the knife she needed and it rests willingly, devotedly, in her hands, it would return to her every time because it doesn't know love as anything but to be a knife. his tama never taught him how to be anything else. his biggest fear with her is that she won't even want him back, the way he is now.) to the best ability of her soul, whatever parts of it survived a lifetime of crow politics and 'five children, eight grandchildren, only Illario and me left now', I think she really does loves him. he certainly loves her, with all the sincerity and artless desperation of a child, of the little boy he was once. and what she's done to him (and to illario, for all his shitty gremlin scar-ass antics lol) is awful. the harm is real, and the love is real, and trying to find a way for these two truths to exist in the same space is driving all three of them their own individualized forms of insane. you know. the way only family can and so often does lol.

through implications and short glimpses and having to put the pieces together yourself, you can have the feeling that there is very genuine mutual love and attachment in this relationship... and that beneath that there is something so profoundly wrong. and the sneaking '...oh shit it gets worse the longer I think about it' horror of that is more effective for me at least than the stark in-your-face presentation of the facts of the matter could have been. the love is here. the love is here. it only ever makes it worse.

[itsjuliak5]

“The sky is beautiful and I’m flying with my friends.”

“I love you guys,” *Dog Days Are Over by Florence and the Machine starts playing*

[keysmashing-bees]

Space baby.

[spit8]

little star

[karizipan]

orv dump 5(?)

[glittergoldie]

not to be toxic but bully!mc calling mammon pretty boy all mockingly/teasingly and he blushes and turns his face away from them and says “I ain’t pretty!! shaddup!”

[inkydoc]

random outfits for the best girl and her too cute to poot bestie, mostly because I wanted to doodle soft colours and bright highlights :3

feel like i'm starting to figure out how i wanna draw them, with lots of sparkles and happy colours :D

[elodee]

Doc was putting the M in DocM77 today on stream

[rebornofstars]

hi everyone i need advice. cursebreaker chapter 22 is about 1/3rd done in terms of wordcount but progress has slowed to a halt because the tone is too lighthearted for the emotions people are supposed to be feeling and its like 90% banter. and banter is good and fun and i love it and i dont want to get rid of it BUT WE'RE SUPPOSED TO BE FIGHTING DINK AND NONE OF MY PLOT POINTS ARE HAPPENING. WHAT DO I DO. SHOULD I CUT IT. SHOULD I TRY TO MAKE IT SAD. SHOULD I INTERSPERSE THE FIGHT BETWEEEN IT. TETRA PLEASE I'M BLAMING THIS ON YOU. also i have the flu and i think i'm losing my mind a little. its funny

[dahtwitchi]

I was gonna continue one or another of my sketchbook scribbly tobiruka comics. But.

I cannot for the life of me find the sketchbook t.t <.> >.<

Anyone got a bright clue for me where it might be?? >.>

EDIT found it in the shipping box of the fantasy zine, where I temp tidied away everything I had used when trying my new art supplies. 'I'll just tidy up real quick to make presentable room' way too often leads to time-consuming having 0 clue where stuff was put later on <.> It ain't worth it. Ppl visiting for casual time can damn well deal with the piles of 'I know where it is when it's all over my space and I haven't really got a quick space for it where I'll actually know for later'.

Brain.

Try to remeber that ppl gotta conform when they visit your house culture, they only there for minutes to some hours, u gotta live for days and weeks and months and years on end and not spend an hour or two a day to try find things again x'D

(If they complain, especially relatives, the day I learned to say yeah no, if it makes it so uncomfortable to visit my home u rather complain or comment on it than spend that time with me and whatever housemates I got, then maybe for my sake and for your own mental health that clearly can't handle it u shouldn't step by.

Once the clean-shaming lessened, and I felt less anxiety over my messes. I. Actually had more time caring for my home instead of lamenting my householding skills. It wasn't as daunting. After a while I even was able to (within clear limits don't ducking touch my piles!! That has grown fewer over the years, too) accept help, from those who had unlearned their pattern of _ducking commenting on my home at every thing they came across while helping_.

Stop the household skill shaming! It just makes it worse! Shaming doesn't help overwhelmed people! I learn that from a psychology radio program where a group who specialisred in ppl unable to keep up with their home and hoarders, and encouraged u to set boundaries and realise how RUDE it is to comment on ppls homes, and anyone out there wanting to help messy home frienda and family to stop commenting if u actually had good intentions.

Changed my life, that randomly was on the radio program i listened to because it was on.)

[shoot-i-messed-up]

One of the hardest things about writing superlantern is figuring out what’s the deal with clois in this universe…they’re literally soulmates….why is clark with hal and not lois….

[spacebubblehomebase]

Hello! Do you like Trigun??? Well, have I got the news for YOU! You see, yours truly have fallen for this fandom HARD and the owner of this account is now doomed by the narrative! HEY! Just like every other character here, you noticed? Haha =D Indeed! Thus I invite you, one and all to- PLEASE, suffer with me... Please. Did I already say please? Pleeease, I need someone to validate this new obsession. I am very late to the party. Anyone still there for my doodles??? ( ；∀；) -Bubbly💙

[cyb00gie]

funny guys (htf ocs belong 2 @herebecritters and @ickyguts!!!!)

[comicbookhyperfixationtime]

Guys, I am not Liking Captain Britain

I'm sorry, the man's a complete ass. I was cutting him some slack at first because of the whole "grieving dead sister" thing but the man is such a mysogynist! I've already shown the panel where he decides that, after a creep harasses Rachel he decides that perhaps she should change her outfit. I've also mentioned that, in Excalibur: The Sword is Drawn, he verbally berates and almost hits Meggan in a rage. Well, in Excalibur #3 the same shit happens again after the team moves into his lighthouse in a less than smooth manner.

So Brian goes off to sulk in a huff whilst leaving Meggan in a breakdown and emotionally cheats on her with an ex-girlfriend.

Oh, by the way, do you know the backstory to Meggan and Brian's relationship. She's a mutant shapeshifter and a minor empath. Her parents had told he she was a monster and kept her locked away, so she took the physical form of a monster. At some point she went on superhero adventures with Brian and fell in love with him. However, he only fell in love with her when somebody else told her she was beautiful on the inside and she took a form to match. So, basically, he sucks and she's unhealthily codependent on him and he knows this (as evidenced by the panels below) and doesn't seem to be doing anything to help her.

"Weh weh weh woe is me I'm rich, talented and conventionally attractive and I have the most amazing girlfriend in the world and I save people but my new roommates are kind of annoying. I never wanted to help people with my life I was forced to because of my responsibility." He lost his sister yeah but Kurt lost his whole ass found-family and he's not being a dick about it!

I just can't think of a decent quality this man has. He's selfish and whiny and a bossy know-it-all on missions. Like, sure he's a superhero but, as shown above, he's not even enthusiastic about helping people! He's rich, I guess, and he gave the Excalibur member's banking accounts. That was nice of him, I suppose. Money won't fill the void left by your awful personality, Brian.