#same with the guy himself

[silverior968]

It's still just a sketch (admittedly a very detailed one), and it's also technically spoilers, but here's some art related to the TFP/Skulduggery Pleasant AU Fic I've been working on. I really like it when fictional characters come with themes that can be easily turned into visual symbolism of their tragic flaws.

[Image ID: A digital sketch of a person with long hair running with a scythe in their hands, wearing a tailcoat. Their other arm halfway covers their face, mimicking "The Fallen Angel" by Alexandre Cabanel. They're also wearing boots. The background is the front half of a huge great pyrenees dog leaping with the person, teeth bared and covered in blood. The dog has an anti-wolf collar on their neck that is covered in blood from presumably wolves. / End ID]

[my-heart-of-heart]

So normal about Jon being like I don’t remember what you looked like but the man who let you die is going to suffer for what he did to you. If only Sasha coulda seen that.

So normal about Jon being like you died hating me and wanting me dead but I’m still gonna make sure this man knows I’m ending him in your name. Sure wish Tim coulda seen that.

So normal about the fact that everyone believed Jon was losing his humanity but no one got to see the ways his love and compassion for the people he lost or who hurt him drove him to that final moment.

So normal about the fact that even after everything Jonah’s done to Jon, the only person he never thinks to get justice for is himself.

[cracklewink]

Discord redesign idea I had! He has three heads representing the three types of ponies that are constantly bickering.

[liloinkoink]

one thing i think people get wrong about Martyn in the life series is he really isn’t loyal

like yeah, we all know him as the Hand, following the Red King as far as their shared grave, but that is… truly the outlier and not the norm with him

i mean, let’s take a brief look at other seasons. i can’t speak to Secret Life, as it came out when i was incredibly busy and i haven’t yet had time to watch it, but what about the others?

he won Limited Life because he’s a chronic traitor! he betrayed Scott, his ally for the whole season, so that he could win, and said he’d been planning it / wanting to do it the whole session. spent a whole season protecting and helping Scott, and laughed in his face to betray as soon as he saw a shot to do so

Double Life was a whole mess of Martyn and weird loyalties. just one example: he spent all of the first session hanging out with Pearl in favor of even looking for either of their soulmates, with no regard for how he’d been putting his soulmate in danger. when their soulmates dumped them due to being ignored all session and stormed off, he dumped Pearl just because. one session in and he’s betrayed both his soulmate and his day one alliance!

Last Life he teamed with the Southlanders and then made the Shadow Alliance in secret, so he was on two teams and never truly committed to either. he tried to kill Grian basically immediately when he got boogeyman, for example, and in the final fight he tried to lure Ren to himself by offering to team and then tried to blow Ren up

of course, i’m simplifying and ignoring a lot. he doesn’t earn the loyal reputation for nothing. he does a lot of things to help his teammates, like giving a life to Ren in Last Life, trying all season to win Cleo over for all of Double Life, or working to protect Scott for all of Limited Life. it’s not like Martyn doesn’t play the part of a loyal friend well, but, well.

the thing about Martyn is that he’s selfish. he’s basically always going to prioritize his own survival over anything else. he’s never going to roll over and die, especially not for another person. he’s good at looking loyal, because having allies will help you survive, and he knows making outright enemies is a bad idea. he knows he can’t make it obvious he’s a traitor, because then he’ll certainly be killed. but, when it comes down to the wire, he will generally bail at the last minute to save his own skin rather than protecting the people around him. when his loyalty is tested, nine times out of ten, he will not only fail, but do so completely without remorse

it doesnt take a lot to become Martyn’s ally, and once you’ve got a foot in the door, he will take his allegiances seriously (at least, to a point). but it takes effort to really earn Martyn’s trust. and, even when it looks like you have, there’s no guarantee he won’t yank the rug out from under you if he decides having you alive is more detrimental to his survival than seeing you dead

and yes, you can especially see all of this in Third Life. Martyn was absolutely not instantly ride or die for Ren—for a lot of the earlier episodes, he won’t say he’s on Ren’s team or that he lives at Ren’s base, and often tells other players he’s simply Ren’s employee rather than teammate and that he’s wandering or homeless. he trusts Ren so little due to Ren’s inability to keep a secret or stand up for himself that even Ren acknowledges in the third session that Martyn is probably going to leave him and find someone else. Martyn’s loyalty had to be earned, and it very nearly wasn’t. if Ren had taken a session more to grow a spine, Martyn probably would have left

but Ren became an ally that Martyn could rely on, who could stand up for himself and keep secrets. it became more beneficial to Martyn’s survival to have Ren around, so he stayed with Ren for the rest of the season, and committed hard to their kingdom. Ren earns Martyn’s trust by becoming a more dependable ally, and because of that, Ren earns Martyn’s loyalty…. probably

(half related, bc i want it in the post and i don’t know where to put it: after the execution, two sessions after Ren officially earns Martyn’s loyalty, Ren admits to being genuinely convinced Martyn was going to take him out of the series as soon as Ren gave him the chance!)

because yes, even here, even after Ren earns his trust and Ren trusts Martyn to execute him and they become King and Hand, Martyn was okay with killing Ren to save himself. Martyn has said he was going to betray Ren in the final session of Third Life. his entire plan was that when he and Ren hit the final 5, he was going to kill Ren. end Red Winter, usher in Red Spring. even the most loyal version of Martyn was a traitor!

now, you can decide for yourself if you believe he could have actually gone through with this—he and Ren were 6th and 7th out of the game, after all. maybe he wouldn’t have been able to steel himself. maybe his loyalty would have, for once, been too strong to kill Ren.

but it’s very possible that even the most loyal version of Martyn—the version of Martyn who has created this “loyal” image of Martyn in fanon—was only loyal because he died too soon to show his true colors

[huginsmemory]

Been thinking about how Bill legitimately had a horrifying reason (the literal progressive disintegration of the nightmare realm that erases whatever it disintegrates from existence completely) to move himself and his crew into a new dimension. Like that's terrifying. And yet he never utilizes this to his favour. He could have been honest about this with Ford, and you KNOW as long as Bill didn't mention plans of overtaking the earth, Ford would've made the portal for him, both out of Ford's own interest and because Ford when faced with these big moral questions will pull through. But this is a card Bill NEVER plays because although he needs to leave the dimension, he cannot lose face. He can't put aside his pride and admit to the humility that he needs to flee from his dimension, that he's not actually all powerful. And so instead he pretends to be a muse and when Ford figures out something else is going on, instead of being open and humble and saying that his dimension is unravelling, Bill focuses on that he's going to over take earth, that he's actually been a monster all along, surprise Ford!

And part of it is definitely because Bill's built himself up on power and violence and to grovel and earnestly ask for help, to admit that he cannot stop the unraveling of his dimension completely invalidates that; showing vulnerability? Can't do that, even under the guise of lying to get his way. And part of it makes you wonder if it's also a form of self-sabotage, because underneath his deep denial Bill is guilty over what he occurred; he sees himself as a monster and so he'll be that monster, and having people recognize that feels good in the same way that pressing a bruise feels good. But it makes you wonder what would've happened if Bill even just was open about his dimension unravelling and had lied about overtaking the earth.

It's also interesting because although Bill has SOME charisma and can manipulate people decently well (as evidenced by his cult, and pandering to people's desires with Ford, Mabel and Blendin), he refuses to be vulnerable, refuses to not be true to his off-putting self, even when if he was just vulnerable of pretended to not be himself, to put aside the (false) pride he has in himself he would've gotten a portal by now. and part of me wonders if it's because it's this false pride that built on insecurity and denial on who he is he cannot drop that mask.

Further thoughts on this!

[aarghone]

He's just a gunky goopy lil guy

[raepliica]

one of these nights

[inkskinned]

there's a video on instagram of a man kicking his partner's door in. the top comment is (with over 4 thousand likes): "how about you tell us what you did to make him that angry?"

barring emergency, nobody should be kicking anybody's door in. many of us lived in houses where it was always, somehow, an emergency. there is a strange, almost hysterical calm that comes over you in that moment - everything feels muted, and you almost feel, however incongruently, like you should be laughing. you are living inside of "the emergency." oh my god, you think. i am now a fucking statistic.

there is another comment with 2.8 thousand likes: "if this was a woman doing it to a man, nobody would give a shit."

do people give a shit now, though?

barring emergency, the door should remain standing. the emergency should be panicked, desperate - "i'm coming in there to protect you." many of us know what it feels like when the emergency is instead "i'm coming in there to get you."

1.5k likes: "and yet you post this for notes. glad to see being the victim has become your whole personality."

hysteria is a word connected to womb, from greek. what you're experiencing is so senseless and inhumane that you (a rational creature) try to find any ground within what is irrational and cannot be explained. one of the most frustrating things about staying in bad situations is that we also lie to ourselves. we also ask ourselves - wow. what did i do?

women can be, and often are, also abusers. abuse is not gendered. abuse is not just a "straight person" problem. abuse does not have a face or figure or sexuality. you cannot pick an abuser out of a crowd. an abuser could be actually anybody.

and then so many people rally behind the man kicking the door in. here is something nobody should be doing, right? you want to ask every person that liked that first comment: do you ask this because you side with him? do you ask this because it helps you feel safe from this ever happening?

in some ways, you're weirdly sympathetic to the top comment, because it is the same logic you see frequently. the idea is that the average, normal, sane person doesn't just break down a door. doesn't just shoot up a school. doesn't stalk and kill women. doesn't threaten sexual assault. doesn't run over protesters. doesn't shoot an unarmed black person. doesn't scream at underpaid walmart employees. doesn't just "lose it". something had to have happened, right? because the default (white. straight. cis.) - that is someone who is always, you know. "sane."

(right?)

on a podcast, you hear a sane, normal, rational person. "if you piss me off, i'm going to need to hit something. sorry but i'm not apologizing. that's just who i am that's how it is." his voice almost sounds like he's laughing.

you think of the door, and how you were almost laughing behind it, too. ironically, every real emergency in your life has almost felt peaceful in comparison. fire, car accident, flash flooding - these felt quiet, covenant to you. you'd stood in all of them, feeling them pass over and up to your chin, never actually overwhelming.

but when the door was coming down, you had felt - is there a word for that? there has to be, a word, right.

surely one of us has figured out the word for that, i mean. it's such a large fucking statistic.

[australet789]

"Alastor is a villain because he chained poor Husk 🥺"

I think you all forget THIS is the Husk that made the deal with Alastor:

The Husk that was so careless and selfish that was gambling SOULS, to the point he gambled his own soul away to save his powers.

[glow-worms-are-believers]

Concept thingie for fic (dp x dc)

Danny wakes up in a hospital bed with a stranger at his bedside that calls his name as soon as Danny wakes up and hugs him. The stranger then proceeds to talk to Danny like they know each other and tells them Danny’s been in a coma for 3 months. When Danny says he has no idea who the stranger is, he looks heartbroken. Eventually, the doctor comes in and tells them that Danny has amnesia due to “the accident”, and that he’s lost years (years!) of memory. The stranger, his name is Bruce and he is also apparently his fiancé tries his best to hide how hard he’s taking the news. He’s trying not to be overly familiar, but it’s clearly painful to him, and Danny feels bad about forgetting about him. It really seems like Danny has forgotten years of his life. Except, then he gets a look at the date, and it all comes crashing down. Because, according to the date, it was Jazz’s 25rd birthday yesterday. Ant the thing with that is, he remembers attending that very party himself. Yesterday.

Something is very wrong.

[giddlygoat]

i’ve seen people draw guck with a scar on his temple from the memory gun. i wanted to adopt that hc asap

[milkbreadtoast]

Prince Jesse Venetiaan, the Moon of the Divine Kingdom🌙✨

[rocketbirdie]

deranged picnic

[the-apocalypse-is-upon-us]

are you guys seeing this shit

[artgletic]

case study of the self-identified god

[deadlyspikelover]

the miserable Snake again.. love is in the air? WRONG!!!!! ABYSSAL SERPENT