#that may not seem like a lot

[rogueonions]

Exarch: "Throw wide the gates!" Vishzahn: "Which gates?!" Exarch: "THE gates! They're closed!"

Been replaying cutscenes, and enjoying ShB content again, which lead me to this new bit of silly headcanon.

Definitely a running joke between the two from here forward. Little Miqo'te demanding the door be opened, for no other reason than it being closed.

Vishzahn: "It took you how many tries to get the SSR Scion?" G'raha: *awkward silence.* Vishzahn: "Did you... Pay to win?" G'raha: "Maaaybe"

Also makes me think of this video

[ruporas]

dragon meat, you, and me

[ninyard]

from: kevin, to: andrew

[idolomantises]

I'm ngl i kinda wish people wouldn't look at a character I create, see that they're mean, and then immediately assume by default they're actually super tragic and a sad woobie. And I'm not even saying this to be like "people need to appreciate 2-dimensional villains!" because I don't agree with those people either.

It's like if a character is a jerk, it either needs to be justified with a sad backstory, or they need to be a saturday morning cartoon villain. it can't just be a part of their personality.

[amygdalae]

fun fact: in the 50s the Kent cigarette brand had a type of cig with micronite filters that literally had crocidolite in them, aka BLUE ASBESTOS, literally THE most lethal type of asbestos by a mile. and you could just buy it at the store and huff it

[shepscapades]

Xisuma, why in the world were trying to fix your helmet with TAPE?? I thought the superglue idea was unhinged but THIS IS A NEW LEVEL

(I know that it's probably not holding itself ONLY on tape, but the image in my head is too funny)

What's next? You tell me he attached Doc's new arm to his body with tape and glue too??

THIS RESPONSE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE COMICAL but I let it get away from me;;

[mossy-paws]

Dopplegänger

Uh oh.

(Og Photo:)

[ssparksflyy]

just thinking about first kiss w/leo and your hands are in his hair except he gets nervy and the tips of his curls accidentally catch fire and burn your hands !!

so then he carries you bridal style to the infirmary, literally crying and begging for forgiveness

and yk the talk with will as of how you acquired these odd shaped burns is awkward as hell

anon ur so right

whats funny about it is that the tips of his hair catching fire is actually one of your favorite things about him, you think its super cute and tease him about it sometimes- calling him names like 'hot head' and telling how adorable you think it is only makes them burn brighter and has him shoving his tomato red face into his hands. you werent lying when you called it adorable, it truly always made your heart flutter and brought a smile to your face.

so when it happens during your first kiss together, you obviously pull away and remove your hands from his hair cause.. well.. they just got burnt ?? but you still cant help but smile a bit.

the burns themselves werent extremely bad, they just stung a bit, and the kiss was great but that didnt stop leo from freaking out and immediately apologizing repeatedly, asking you if you were okay and grabbing your hands to get a better look at them.

you explain to him that youre okay, but this man is literally on the verge of tears, thinking you hate him and never ever want to see him again. you assure him youre ok, and just need to run over the infirmary for a quick treatment.

you try to turn away to the infirmary, but leo is so quick to literally sweep you off your feet and carry you in his arms, bridal style. he says something about making it up to you and calls himself 'your certified knight in shining armor' which only makes you smile more.

he begins scurrying over to the infirmary, pushing past campers so determined to get you there as quickly as possible, making you giggle. he puts you down at the door of the infirmary, quickly grabbing the door and holding it open for you.

you let out a light laugh and a 'thank you', then brush past him and into the infirmary. he follows right behind you, closing the door behind him. you walk up to the counter, asking one of the apollo kids for some assistance with your burns and she leads you over to sit and wait on one of the hospital beds until will can help you.

leo sits in the chair right next to you and even though youve told him a million times that youre ok, his leg cant help from bouncing and he can't stop fidgeting with his fingers. you notice his behaviors and put a hand on top of his busy ones, giving him a soft smile. he looks up and returns the smile, but is snapped out of his la-la-land trance when will walks over with his clipboard, ready to help you.

he asks you whats wrong and takes a look at your hands, but seems to have a puzzled look on his face.

"how'd you get these burns? theyre really weirdly shaped." he asks.

your face gets hot and your body tenses up, leo having the same reaction.

"uhmmm..uh- i-"

"wel-well you see what had happened was-"

"we ummm.."

"out with it already." will said, giving you a deadpan look.

you and leo glanced at each other in panic, but knew you shouldnt lie. not to will.

"we..wellwekissedandiwastouchinghishairbutthenitcaughtonfireandburntmyhadns" you mumbled quickly, looking down.

"what?" will asked, moving closer in hopes of hearing you better.

"wee.. kissed and i had my hands in his hair but then it caught on fire and burnt my hands" you said, elongating the syllables and feeling your face get hotter with each word.

will tired so hard not to laugh or smile, after all he was in a 'professional environment' ( as chrion called it ) but he really couldn't help it, he smirked and put your hands down, walking away from you and over to the cabinet where all the camp's ointments were kept.

he smothered a glob of the ointment onto your hands then bandaged them up so they could heal properly, and let you go on with your day- but not without a few teases and jokes while leo helped you fill out your paperwork.

after you finished up in the infirmary, you and leo walked out together and immediately plopped onto the bench outside.

"well that was embarrassing" leo said, stating the obvious.

"yep... well, now i know to learn from my mistake the next time i kiss you" you said, a small smirk forming onto your face.

your comment had caught leo by surprise, "what? wait... again? you-you'd wanna do that again?"

you turned to face him with a smile, "i mean why not? youre a good kisser and it's not like ive havent a crush on you for years"

leo had to be on the verge of a heart attack with each surprise he'd faced today, this one only pushing him further off the edge, "you've had a crush on me for years????"

you simply nodded your head and smiled, trying to play it cool when in reality your heart was ready to run out of your chest.

leo ran his fingers through his hair in disbelief, "wait so were you like really good at hiding it or something?? cause ive had a crush on you for years and i feel like its always been painfully obvious."

it was your turn to get nervous, suddenly at a loss for words.

"w-well, maybe you should do something about it then." you said, sounding more confident than you felt.

"well maybe i will."

he cupped your face with his hand and brought you in close for your second kiss that day, holding your hands down with his free one, and moving his lips slowly against yours. this time, the kiss was long and soft, the way your first one should've been. when the two of you finally pulled away for air, you had stupid smiles on your faces that only grew after leo asked you,

"would you do me the honor of being my girlfriend?"

to which you gladly said yes to.

[howlonomy]

Might I pester you for another monster clover?

clover: just happy to be here :)

[emoclowncircus]

tempted to make a dante trauma analysis cause I've seen too many fics water it down to him missing vergil

[bonefall]

Heads up! There is going to be a very long and detailed post about making sausages dropping in a few hours.

It's got a big red content warning and a readmore, so nothing is going to get gruesomely dropped on you, but make sure you add "butchery" or "cw butchery" to your tag filters to be extra safe if the idea of processing animal carcasses is upsetting to you!

It also has an image of sausage casings before they're scraped. I tried to whack the post with as many CWs as I can think of but I'd recommend "cw meat" or "cw organs" if you need them.

[tianhai03]

speaking of sdt dante! i reposted these onto twitter yesterday and i tried to post them here too but tumblr just didnt want to work for some reason smh

i played dmc5 again last night while my bf watched and we ended up talking abt sdt dante and so i got reminded of these :) i still like them a lot

[3142-redgrave-avenue]

Welp its over for ikemen 2007 anime dante. Goodbye. So long, your google image results. I will miss you and cherish every frame i have left before April 2025.

The time has come, my handsome devil.

[celtrist]

I just vented out a whole rant about how aromantisim is treated within Hazbin/helluva. I'm not really sure if I should post it for multiple reasons, one of which being I don't want anyone to feel targeted about it or take it the wrong way (like I honestly dont have beef with Al shippers. Gripes, but no beef as I also ship him on occasion).

There was just a sudden burst of frustration I had with it that I think was in part just came from built up frustration from other things. There's things I'd like to have out there, but I don't really think it'd get far or, again, be just taken the wrong way. I don't see a point in posting if people are gonna ignore it, plus it wouldn't change how things are now. If anyone has any thoughts or are curious let me know, but I don't wanna make anyone feel like shit or put a pointless rant out there no one wanted to see. I also wanna keep rants to a minimum as I know people aren't always into that sort of stuff, especially if you don't follow someone for that and you just get an influx of posts of them complaining. And I still want to keep things relatively light hearted around here, at best maybe just some critiques on things here and there.

It's late, I'm on my phone when I should probably just sleep it off, so sleep it off I will.

[demonslayedher]

I finished posting the unabashedly educational Sword Fic.

It includes a detailed (but hopefully beginner-friendly) explanation of all the steps of making a Nichirin blade from a sunny mountain like Mt. Youkou, a touch of swordsmith and metalworker folk lore (including demons), meta about what must make Kimetsu no Yaiba's swordsmithing methods different from real life methods, some character exploration for Haganezuka and his polishing method, vocabulary and additional resources in the chapter notes, and hopefully, an endearing, silly POV character to learn this all through.

[thunderboltfire]

I have a lot of complicated feelings when it comes to what Neflix has done with the Witcher, but my probably least favourite is the line of argumentation that originated during shitstorms related to the first and second season that I was unlucky to witness.

It boils down to "Netflix's reinterpretation and vision is valid, because the Witcher books are not written to be slavic. The overwhelming Slavic aestetic is CDPR's interpretation, and the setting in the original books is universally European, as there are references to Arthurian mythos and celtic languages" And I'm not sure where this argument originated and whether it's parroting Sapkowski's own words or a common stance of people who haven't considered the underlying themes of the books series. Because while it's true that there are a lot of western european influences in the Witcher, it's still Central/Eastern European to the bone, and at its core, the lack of understanding of this topic is what makes the Netflix series inauthentic in my eyes.

The slavicness of the Witcher goes deeper than the aestetics, mannerisms, vodka and sour cucumbers. Deeper than Zoltan wrapping his sword with leopard pelt, like he was a hussar. Deeper than the Redanian queen Hedvig and her white eagle on the red field.

What Witcher is actually about? It's a story about destiny, sure. It's a sword-and-sorcery style, antiheroic deconstruction of a fairy tale, too, and it's a weird mix of many culture's influences.

But it's also a story about mundane evil and mundane good. If You think about most dark, gritty problems the world of Witcher faces, it's xenophobia and discrimination, insularism and superstition. Deep-seated fear of the unknown, the powerlessness of common people in the face of danger, war, poverty and hunger. It's what makes people spit over their left shoulder when they see a witcher, it's what makes them distrust their neighbor, clinging to anything they deem safe and known. It's their misfortune and pent-up anger that make them seek scapegoats and be mindlessly, mundanely cruel to the ones weaker than themselves.

There are of course evil wizards, complicated conspiracies and crowned heads, yes. But much of the destruction and depravity is rooted in everyday mundane cycle of violence and misery. The worst monsters in the series are not those killed with a silver sword, but with steel. it's hard to explain but it's the same sort of motiveless, mundane evil that still persist in our poorer regions, born out of generations-long poverty and misery. The behaviour of peasants in Witcher, and the distrust towards authority including kings and monarchs didn't come from nowhere.

On the other hand, among those same, desperately poor people, there is always someone who will share their meal with a traveller, who will risk their safety pulling a wounded stranger off the road into safety. Inconditional kindness among inconditional hate. Most of Geralt's friends try to be decent people in the horrible world. This sort of contrasting mentalities in the recently war-ridden world is intimately familiar to Eastern and Cetral Europe.

But it doesn't end here. Nilfgaard is also a uniquely Central/Eastern European threat. It's a combination of the Third Reich in its aestetics and its sense of superiority and the Stalinist USSR with its personality cult, vast territory and huge army, and as such it's instantly recognisable by anybody whose country was unlucky enough to be caught in-between those two forces. Nilfgaard implements total war and looks upon the northerners with contempt, conscripts the conquered people forcibly, denying them the right of their own identity. It may seem familiar and relevant to many opressed people, but it's in its essence the processing of the trauma of the WW2 and subsequent occupation.

My favourite case are the nonhumans, because their treatment is in a sense a reminder of our worst traits and the worst sins in our history - the regional antisemitism and/or xenophobia, violence, local pogroms. But at the very same time, the dilemma of Scoia'Tael, their impossible choice between maintaining their identity, a small semblance of freedom and their survival, them hiding in the forests, even the fact that they are generally deemed bandits, it all touches the very traumatic parts of specifically Polish history, such as January Uprising, Warsaw Uprising, Ghetto Uprising, the underground resistance in WW2 and the subsequent complicated problem of the Cursed Soldiers all at once. They are the 'other' to the general population, but their underlying struggle is also intimately known to us.

The slavic monsters are an aestetic choice, yes, but I think they are also a reflection of our local, private sins. These are our own, insular boogeymen, fears made flesh. They reproduce due to horrors of the war or they are an unprovoked misfortune that descends from nowhere and whose appearance amplifies the local injustices.

I'm not talking about many, many tiny references that exist in the books, these are just the most blatant examples that come to mind. Anyway, the thing is, whether Sapkowski has intended it or not, Witcher is slavic and it's Polish because it contains social commentary. Many aspects of its worldbuilding reflect our traumas and our national sins. It's not exclusively Polish in its influences and philosophical motifs of course, but it's obvious it doesn't exist in a vacuum.

And it seems to me that the inherently Eastern European aspects of Witcher are what was immediately rewritten in the series. It seems to me that the subtler underlying conflicts were reshaped to be centered around servitude, class and gender disparity, and Nilfgaard is more of a fanatic terrorist state than an imposing, totalitarian empire. A lot of complexity seems to be abandoned in lieu of usual high-fantasy wordbuilding. It's especially weird to me because it was completely unnecessary. The Witcher books didn't need to be adjusted to speak about relevant problems - they already did it! The problem of acceptance and discrimination is a very prevalent theme throughout the story! They are many strong female characters too, and they are well written. Honestly I don't know if I should find it insulting towards their viewers that they thought it won't be understood as it was and has to be somehow reshaped to fit the american perpective, because the current problems are very much discussed in there and Sapkowski is not subtle in showing that genocide and discrimination is evil. Heck, anyone who has read the ending knows how tragic it makes the whole story.

It also seems quite disrespectful, because they've basically taken a well-established piece of our domestic literature and popular culture and decided that the social commentary in it is not relevant. It is as if all it referenced was just not important enough and they decided to use it as an opportunity to talk about the problems they consider important. And don't get me wrong, I'm not forcing anyone to write about Central European problems and traumas, I'm just confused that they've taken the piece of art already containing such a perspective on the popular and relevant problem and they just... disregarded it, because it wasn't their exact perspective on said problem.

And I think this homogenisation, maybe even from a certain point of view you could say it's worldview sanitisation is a problem, because it's really ironic, isn't it? To talk about inclusivity in a story which among other problems is about being different, and in the same time to get rid of motifs, themes and references because they are foreign? Because if something presents a different perspective it suddenly is less desirable?

There was a lot of talking about the showrunners travelling to Poland to understand the Witcher's slavic spirit and how to convey it. I don't think they really meant it beyond the most superficial, paper-thin facade.