#shes really settling in well

[abirddogmoment]

Rory has been here a week today! Let's do a recap:

I've been trying to do targeted socialization outings to practice neutral behaviour in lots of settings!

Sunday: Hotel lobby

Monday: Vet (wellness exam)

Tuesday: Outdoor light display

Wednesday: Vet (vaccines)

Thursday: Bus stop

Friday: Canadian Tire (dog friendly)

Saturday: Bus stop (post-event)

She's been crushing general good citizen behaviour! She has also been crushing:

House training (no accidents so far!)

Crate training

Offering engagement

Tolerating nail trims (50/50)

Sit/Down/Stand

General bravery in new situations

I'm very proud of her 💜

Areas for improvement include:

Stop bullying Pike

Stop chewing her own ears

Excitement around people/dogs

Demand barking (already improving)

Our biggest victories for the week:

✅ Worked through noise sensitivity from cars driving by, can now ignore them!

✅ First baby "hike" with phenomenal enthusiasm despite the cold and snow!

Big goals for next week:

✴ More polite play with Pike

✴ Staying home alone while the humans work

✴ Reduce demand barking

Overall she is a perfect puppy and I love her very very much 💜

[unpersoniverse]

Skén:nen sá:sewh

as promised, here's Precious boy™ getting kissed by Precious wife™ because he deserves all the love in the world :cc

translation: Get home safe

[starrysharks]

winter assassin outfit

[jacks-the-flower]

can we just talk about how heartbreaking sharon's, alice's, and lilia's deaths are knowing that it's just all billy's illusion. especially lilia- that episode fucking kills you on its own, but then ADD ON the fact that her sacrifice was for so much less than she believes; like she thought she was not only saving their lives, but their grand mission past the desperation of a hopeless situation. the fact that it was all created and perpetuated by the very people she saved just twists the knife doesn't it. like her whole life revolved around a singular day's worth of a magicked-up acid trip.

oh and alice, oh alice. at least the show captured the impact of her abrupt conclusion- to finally break free from your generational curse that destroyed your family for so long, just to be conned into dying not even a few hours later. her life just started and then it was over.

[satans-knitwear]

It's hard work being this cute 😴

[artsekey]

Check it out! These are my grandparents!

My grandpa fought in WWII and stole nazi clock pieces from the streets to hand-build all SIX clocks that still ring out in our house every hour. He was a soldier and a wood-worker who never got his high-school diploma but made an amazing life for himself and his family. He’s in a museum, actually, as one of the few survivors of one of the most dangerous battles in WWII, and he received a purple heart for his service.

My grandma was a typist/secretary who traveled the world with him during his time in the military after getting her Bachelors Degree (!!!!! In the mid 1900’s!!!) . They met on a blind date not long after the war was through, and they were married sixty-seven years. She’s the epitome of etiquette and an amazing hostess! She has two daughters, one born in Austria and one in the U.S., and I’m their only grand-child.

You might be thinking, “Artsekey, what’s this all about? This isn’t the usual content!”

Well, I’ll tell you what it’s all about! My grandmother just celebrated her 100th Birthday! She’s been alive since 1923! The same year the radio became commercially available!!!

She’s amazing, and I’d like everyone to know it!

[feroluce]

Belobog was my fave main quest but a lot of it is so. Contradictory. It's like they had multiple groups doing different shit and none of them checked in with each other for consistency. And you see this so much in Gepard's profile.

So in the main quest, they made him unfailingly, unquestionably loyal to Cocolia. Gepard's character arc is him learning to question authority etc etc. And this isn't even a bad thing; that's a story worth telling! It makes good conflict between him and Serval! And I love that we got Gepard as a boss battle and I get to see him all the time in SU!

But then you look at his character stories and it's like. The complete opposite.

According to his profile, Gepard has already HAD this awakening, long before the Astral Express, and he'd already decided Cocolia sucks. Even outside of his stories, there's a pretty damning readable between him and Pela.

He even disobeyed direct orders right in front of her- he has been disobeying orders for a while now!

So I've decided I'm marrying the two different sides of this into a 1.5k fic-ish thingy, because I think there's some fun potential there with Gepard not trusting Cocolia, but still having to pretend to be a good obedient little soldier.

Anyway. I love to think of it as like. Gepard knows Cocolia has sunk into her apathy. He can see it in her eyes every time he looks at her. She doesn't care. Not about him, not about Pela, not about all his soldiers on the frontlines giving their lives to protect the citizens. And that's... It makes him bristle a bit, but ok. Gepard can deal with this. Even if Cocolia no longer cares, as long as she does her job then it's fine. Having compassion behind an action doesn't matter as much as the action itself. If Cocolia's heart is no longer swayed, then he'll just have to care twice as hard to pick up the slack. He considers it part of his duty as a captain of the guard anyway. It's fine. Gepard can deal with it.

And then, Cocolia starts coming down to the restricted zone. Issuing direct orders.

And Gepard realizes he is in way over his head.

Because Cocolia orders him to stay back and issue commands from the ramparts, away from all his comrades, away from where he can protect them.

Gepard had thought nothing could be as bad as watching a fellow guard die right next to him. But the first time he watches someone struck by a killing blow, so far away, it hurts. Every defensive scar across his arms itches, his fingers curl in want of a weapon, the cold cannot numb his hands enough as they desperately ache for his shield. It hurts.

Gepard tries to find any reason to stay. Because surely... He knows Cocolia has lost her love for her people, but surely... She wouldn't...

One day, Cocolia orders for their gunners to advance 20 yards. There are no survivors. She almost looks like she smiles.

Gepard doesn't sleep that night.

Pela brings him the report at the end of the first month; and then the month after that, and the month after that. A significant uptick in losses, and all of it started on that first day Cocolia started overriding his authority and issuing her own orders. The ends of Gepard's pens have all been nearly chewed off. Pela outright calls Cocolia an idiot, and Gepard corrects her. Cocolia isn't an idiot. Gepard had known her through Serval, knew her through all her college years and then some, and he knows how intelligent she is. It's not that she's stupid, and it's not that she's inexperienced, it's nothing of the sort.

Cocolia knows exactly what she's doing.

She must, there's no way she could make such a horrible mess of things so badly by accident. And Pela, quick as a whip, sharp as a tack, always too smart for her own good, catches onto the meaning behind Gepard's correction without any further prompting. The tent goes deathly quiet, nothing but the wind howling outside.

"...She's trying to kill us," Pela whispers, her voice swiftly suffocated by the silence.

Gepard swallows. He can't bring himself to correct her this time. There is nothing he could say that he would actually mean.

His gaze drops, back down to his desk and the reports on it. The names aren't listed, just the numbers, but Gepard knows them, knew them, and there must be something wrong, something he's missing, because why, why would she-? What could this possibly accomplish-?

“Gepard! Focus!” Something snaps right under his nose, and Gepard startles, eyes instantly honing in on Pela's irritated face as she leans over his desk. She holds his gaze for a moment before she huffs and begins to pace, wedges a knuckle between her teeth and bites like Gepard hasn't seen her do since cadet school.

Pela angrily strides from one end of his tent to the other, words hissed between her grit teeth. “What are we going to do?” In the dim lighting, Gepard can just barely see the damp spot of blood weeping under her gloves. “We need a plan.”

“A plan?”

“Wh- Yes, a plan! Unless you want more people to die!” Pela rounds on him then, all the wrath of a blizzard, winds roaring and snow sharp enough to cut.

“We don't even know-”

“What does it matter?! She killed-!!” Pela cuts off with a garbled noise when Gepard leaps up from his desk, hastily shoves his hand over her mouth. The prosthetic, not the flesh one, because he knows better than to assume Pela won't seize the opportunity to leave teeth marks in his skin.

“You're right. I'm sorry, I'm sorry; you're right. But you need to keep quiet.” Pela quirks an eyebrow at him and Gepard can read the question in her face. “Because we both saw what she did to Serval,” he hisses.

It's amazing the snow plains haven't thawed out yet, the amount of heat Pela can put behind a glare. The mere mention of Serval, and the smoking ruins Cocolia had made of her life and career, have her bristling up like a riled cat. The sudden hot breath she takes fans fog across his metal skin, and Gepard wisely keeps it in place until Pela finally sighs and reaches up, taps her fingertips against the back of his hand.

The second she's free, Pela bats him away and then her knuckle is right back between her teeth again, Gepard leaning back against his desk with his arms crossed to watch her resume her pacing. “If we spread the word, she'll have us discharged and make sure we can't even touch the frontlines,” Pela's voice seethes like an open sore. Gepard nods but keeps his silence. He knows better than to get in her way.

“And if you and I are both out of the picture, Belobog is fucked.” A little harsher than how he would have put it, but there's no denying that they're both important to the city's survival. Pela has the restricted zone running as efficiently as ever, and Gepard had become the youngest captain on record for a reason. “We need to keep this tight under wraps, at least for now… It can't leak to anyone higher up the chain.” Another nod. “Serval might know other discontents…” Another n-

Gepard's head snaps up. “No.”

“No what?”

“No. We're not involving Serval in this.”

Somehow, even the same tone that leaves entire squadrons shaking in their boots has never worked on her. “You're not deciding that for her, Gepard.”

Pela hadn't seen the worst of it, though, back when his sister had just been banned from the Architects. Serval's pride hadn't allowed it. Pela wasn't the one to find her passed out bottle still in hand, hadn't been the one to wash the sick out of her hair or carry her to bed. 

Serval still has trouble thinking clearly when it comes to Cocolia, still can't quite bring herself to be objective. And Gepard maybe doesn't want her to be purely objective- but he would worry a lot less if she thought twice before she acted more often.

“At least let me be the one to bring it up to her.”

“Whatever, fine,” Pela gestures affirmatively at him as she paces past, and Gepard sighs. Good, at least that's one thing he can help.

From there, it's a lot of hemming and hawing and frustration. Cocolia has them under her boot, and Gepard and Pela both know it. Even with the way she's been cracking down on freedoms lately, Cocolia is still, overall, liked by the people. It's unlikely anyone would believe them. They don't even have solid proof, because most people don't know Cocolia as well as they do and won't see the clues in the same light. 

The Fragmentum has been ramping up in recent years, too. Everyone is struggling just to survive as is, they can't afford a fight on two fronts. Gepard is a damn good captain, one of the best for that matter. But they're at a massive disadvantage, his experience is narrowed to fighting a defensive battle against monsters, that's all he's ever done. That's all anyone there has ever done. He has no way of finding first-hand knowledge for taking the offensive against a human opponent, and if he goes at this blind, there's no way he'll get everyone out unscathed. He's going to lose people. He's going to lose a lot of people.

He'd never thought before that Cocolia would have it in her to have someone killed. And with this new knowledge, he has no guarantee she won't go after Serval or Lynx if she decides to retaliate.

Gepard has to remind himself to breathe when he realizes this.

Pela writes down every name the two of them can come up with. Lists and lists of names and groups and anyone they can think of who might be an ally in all of this. They memorize every bit of it, make their plans of who to talk to and when. Gepard watches the sparks reflect off Pela's glasses as they burn the evidence together.

Pela finally leaves, far too late to make it home, but says she wants to stay in the restricted zone anyway to investigate. Gepard watches her make her way in the direction of Dunn's tent, watches her back until she's out of his sight and squashes down the urge to follow and keep an eye on her. His tent feels empty.

In the morning, Gepard is up before the wake up bells. He drags himself out of bed, leads his soldiers through their morning training. The same people gravitate to each other everyday. Friend groups and training partners. There's an ongoing rivalry between a few squadrons that everyone bets on. Some of them have lockets around their necks, keepsakes, mementos. Some of them wear wedding rings.

Gepard is suddenly, painfully aware of something acidic clawing at the inside of his throat, of a heavy weight low in his chest that blooms, takes up room until it threatens to spread his ribs. His mouth tastes of bile and blood.

He rearranges the schedules. Puts himself down for every open patrol into the Fragmentum, makes sure he'll be on the frontlines every single time Cocolia visits.

He only hopes that it's enough.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

.

[meganechan05]

*gets King-Ohger Official Perfect Book*

*decides to read what design choices were made first bc I like that kinda stuff*

*goes backwards from monsters to Kings*

"We didn't want [PapillonOhger] to be either male or female..."

Huh.

*flicks back to Cast Interviews*

Yuzuyan:

"Rita's gender was never specified"

HUH.

[fireboos99]

the current art trend but I cheat by picking characters from the same series (and then add a third because my sibling is an enabler)

Anyway, instead of spending forever trying to pick one fav from two separate series, I just draw the blorbos because I cannot be stopped

(the addition of Rain (RCG) in the alternate image was @moonwhing's idea. well, sorta, she gave me an alternative version of Six saying the line, Rain readying a bat (something Moon decided she has, haha) and Mono being the one to say "damn", but I decided to just merge her idea with my initial one (I thought it'd be funnier/more fitting for Mono to say the line and Six to be the second character there (I headcanon Six to be very quiet/doesn't talk much)))

[sammygender]

years ago i remember someone saying about dave strider that either he’s gay or he’s bisexual but deep down too misogynistic to actually have a fulfilling romantic relationship with a woman. anyway. this is how i see dean winchester

[myreia]

— iv. broken | trust

Trust. It isn’t easily given, nor is it easily accepted. He was the first person she trusted in Eorzea. She doesn’t know how or why, but she did. She took that risk. In the years that followed, there was a time when their friendship had disintegrated to such a degree that it was a stab to the gut, and all they knew was how to twist the knife deeper. Even then—even through that—she trusted him. Trusted him when they were both broken and stupid and fuelled by spite and hate and grief. The faith she has in him is a different kind now. Stronger, implicit, as natural as drawing breath. When they are in the thick of it, he is her guardian and she his shield. She trusts him. Even when he is being impetuous and stubborn and a fool. Even when he has no regard for his own well-being. When sacrifice is a word that comes terrifyingly easily to his mind.   She knows he will do the right thing. And she will be there, to pick him up when he is broken, just as he has done for her. Come what may, she will be there.

[moeblob]

So uh. Eventually I'll stop drawing these guys so obsessively but not today I guess.

(DND AU where it's just these two, Brent, and Paul on a life mission to annoy Chris the GM by having the pact of "we're only here for Karen's benefit")

Karen is a warlock, Right is a cleric, Paul is a paladin, and Brent is a bard (so he can use bardic inspiration on Karen).

[skrunksthatwunk]

"we all know kuwabara would leave yukina for yusuke in a heartbeat" - my mom

[sonknuxadow]

related to the last reblog its honestly kind of mind boggling to me that theres so many sonic future/next gen aus where knuckles and rouge are married with kids. top 10 things that would never happen in a million years

[funkle420]

i love how so much of the stuff in delicious in dungeon that's not central to the main plot is left up to the reader/viewer's interpretations. it leaves a lot of space for fans to imagine what else happens outside of the plot, especially with how good the world building is. a sentiment ive seen more than a few times is that any character in dungeon meshi can be shipped with almost any other character, and because of how it ends you can even imagine characters who didn't interact much or at all eventually becoming friends and/or lovers, and there's so many ways for fans to imagine what else happens in this world after the story ends. there's little bits of interaction between characters that could easily be interpreted one way or another, but there's no malicious baiting or anything that's intentionally implied without being explicit.

That said, it is a little sad that there's no canon romance between Falin and Marcille, as far as I can tell, cause this type of thing happens so often in stories, where two characters of the same gender have romantic vibes but the writer didn't have the slightest intention of it being romantic. Also a little sad that, as far as I can tell, she didn't intend for Laios to be autistic either...

(to be clear, im NOT mad at ryoko kui here! this is JUST me being sad about the lack of good, intentional representation for queer and autistic people in media and how that conflicts with my appreciation for Kui's writing)