#the expressions are rly interesting

[nightowlfury]

▸ “But what's the... occasion?” ▹ “...Nothing in particular.”

[hinamie]

*catboys ur shounen protag*

[artgletic]

case study of the self-identified god

[felassan]

.

[whitehartlane]

seeing the bentancur news (in case you’re out of the loop) and both the comment and the response from people has me thinking… it’s so insane to me how anti asian racism is normalised and swept under the rug in football (and otherwise) because you’ve got people making excuses like “oh he didn’t mean it like that i’m sure sonny doesn’t mind” and trying not to draw any attention to it but at the same time that’s the exact kind of mindset that leads to comments like he’s made. these kinds of ideas stay unchallenged in the mainstream and therefore get internalised by players and fans alike because nobody actually does anything about the casual anti asian racism prevalent in footy (social) media simply because of how invisible asian ppl are in the sport. all this to say that people will either grab their pitchforks or sweep this under the rug entirely and neither are conducive to actually battling anti asian racism in football

[idontmindifuforgetme]

is eye-raq white boy the same one ur friends were saying don't catch feelings for??? habibti whaaaaat are you doing

I can’t even remember which guy you’re referring to but can I just say this has the same energy as me telling my guy best friend I have a study date w a guy today and him going “which one”

[ph7soy]

[IBHWS] warren & nathan’s dorm ~ chapter 11

Warren is hit by a sudden wave of sobering realization as the cold, hard reality of the situation dawns on him. He’s in a very compromising position right now and if Nathan found him like this–well, to put things as simply as possible: Warren would be colossally, supremely fucked.

warren finally (& possibly very irrationally) returns to his dorm room for the first time since that cursed™ frat party, where he may or may not run into nathan, his angry roommate who’s on a ragefueled rampage?!

guess whose side of the dorm is which (difficulty level: impossible) :P

[creatively-cosmic]

missing numbers lore

[the-hot-zone]

the imagery and audio of the opening scene of s1e1 of arcane is just insanely well done for the set-up of the show’s themes and central conflicts. this is just a quick analysis (that spiraled) of what i notice as i’m re-watching, but—

a) the POV of “jinx” with the scribbles overlaying the aftermath of destruction and devastation lay the groundwork for not only what represents her POV to us, the audience, but also to where it originates. this is one of the first things we see in e1: the scribbled faces appear on the enforcers and on the dead bodies even as powder herself has her eyes covered. the echoes of violence reach her even as she tries not to look. retrospectively, we are meant to notice how "jinx" was already forming years before she started “jinxing” jobs with vi and the gang—the violence of her circumstances and the impact they have on her as a child played a key role in what the show calls her "instability," in what we understand as her development. her scribbled vision is first associated with violence done to her and those around her before it is associated with her later choices, which arguably can be rooted in her circumstances (more on this later). this is central to what arcane as a show wants to establish wrt their commentary on violence as a cycle and consequences that cannot be undone regardless of one's actions.

b) the most striking imagery to me: blood running down the faces of the statues on the bridge between piltover and the undercity, being made to look as though they are crying. the bridge is a key piece of imagery introduced in this opening sequence that arcane returns to throughout later eps. the expression of these statues is still, solemn, and silent. they are guardians of the bridge between piltover and the rest of the city. the tears of blood, however, have moved the unmovable. this can be interpreted in a couple ways, but here's mine. the blood as tears represents the ongoing mourning for those lost to violence. vander's resistance failed in multiple ways in that it did not end piltover's rule over the undercity, nor did it save those who fought in the resistance. moreover, this bridge is revisited in e2, and we see the bloodstains never left. they cannot be washed away; the memorial to those who were lost—vi’s parents—remain, and we see vander ask vi if she’s willing to lose powder to a war, just like she lost her parents. later on in the ep when vi approaches deckard, a drop of blood runs down her face like a tear. she, too, steps into the role (or tries to), as a stone-faced guardian, but violence moves her. particularly, it moves her out of powder's life, contributing to jinx's development.

c) when vi is about to cry, it looks like she’s holding herself back before she breaks down, and only then does powder also cry. there are a couple subtle moments throughout this first scene that express the extent to which powder revolves around vi, and this is one of them. powder takes her cues from vi: just minutes ago in the scene, powder only looks at the bodies because vi stopped. so we have this interpersonal level of reliance between these two, but the show doesn't want us to forget where the cues for vi come from. powder looked because vi stopped. vi stopped because the devastation around her made her stop.

d) throughout this scene, music is the dominant auditory experience. however, there is one sound that breaks through the music: the weight of vander’s gauntlets dropping to the ground. the break in the music is meant to express the weight of this decision. it's the only sound of an action that reaches the viewer as he throws the gauntlets down in favor of picking up the responsibility of vi and powder. with this action, he attempts to abandon his cause in hopes to protect vi and powder,

e) but vi looks back. we see her glare back across the bridge towards piltover, her eyes narrowed, and we understand that a key part of her character will be resistance. and to cross that bridge, she must put on vander’s gauntlets. we see her try to embrace this legacy throughout the first ep and beyond—“this is the exact job vander would’ve pulled when he was our age” is what vi says to her friends when on that first job to steal from jayce's workshop. and throughout the first few eps we see vander’s legacy called into question, with a focus on his legacy of resistance against piltover. that's the legacy those around him prefer, including vi herself. but it’s also a legacy he’s rejected in favor of another: his work to protect the lanes through non-violent means. silco’s later criticism of “you’re willing to die for a cause but not fight for it” towards vander perfectly encapsulates vander’s decision to put the gauntlets down, and why he still fails to prevent violence, particularly against vi and powder.

overall: the opening sequence is vital for establishing the link between vi's and powder's relationship and the violence enacted against the underground by piltover. the show's theme expresses that the former would not exist without the latter. the tragedy of jinx isn't just an interpersonal tragedy. it's a circumstantial one. it's an environmental one. it's a societal one. remember: mylo first drops the name jinx when he says powder jinxes every job. but there wouldn’t be any jobs to do--the coins coming into the lanes wouldn't be "only from crime"--without the violence piltover has enacted against the undercity.

there’s a lot of pain in asking ourselves the “if only’s” of these first few episodes. but if the alternative for powder killing claggor and mylo was for her to come on the mission to save vander anyways, to fight anyways, then there was never a choice. when powder says, “I’m not a fighter,” and vi responds, “you don’t have to be,” vi fails to understand the consequences violence has already had on her sister. in powder's mind, you don't have to fight translates as you don't belong here. the only way powder knows how to help is to fight--it's what vi (and everyone around her) taught her, even inadvertently. the show tells us that there was never a real choice in any part of this sequence. the real legacy was the violence topside enacted and continues to enact against the underground. what prevents vi from coming back to powder is ultimately marcus, regardless of his motivations.

what the opening sequence, and those first three eps, tell us about the show’s defining conflict is this. in a system built on inequity, its defining characteristic will always be violence, and whether those subjected to that violence try to fight it, live within it, or take advantage of it, the consequences cannot be undone. there is no going back.

[luck-of-the-drawings]

DOODLEPAGE COMMISSION CREATED FOR THE WONDERFUL @reallybelt do YOU want me to draw you a doodlepage of your blorbo? im still doing commissions!! more information here. cmon down!! get em before the 15th when they put me down witha really big hammer

[deficiencies]

i think buffy is different than other female superheroes before and contemporary to her bc her femininity is something she works at rather than smth thts a given

[charlie-artlie]

i wrote out a rly long post about ‘why do people need to make convoluted theories that monty didnt actually kill bonnie, just so they can keep liking monty’ and i listed out every reason why their theories were wrong or didnt make sense, and after writing all that i sat back and had this epiphany: some people genuinely wouldn’t be able to keep liking their fav if they turned out to be a murderer, and for some people, person A killing person B would ruin a ship for them. wild……

[scottie-draws-sometimes]

Did you guys know i have a Guardians of the Galaxy Boatem au? And it constantly takes up a corner of my brain? Well. Now you do

I don’t know what compelled me to, but I drew the beloveds with a bunch of iconic movie quotes. Yippee!!!

[daffodil--lament]

i like being alive so much i'm gonna pass out and die. every other sentence in my astronomy textbook makes me feel insane. "perhaps the most striking feature of our solar system is its emptiness" and i'm just supposed to be okay about that? NO! IT'S CRAZY. this course might kill me. if you could hie to kolob in the twinkling of an eye and then continue onwards with that same speed to fly you could NOT ever through all eternity find out the generation where gods began to be ok. this stuff is crazy are you guys kidding me i can't do this. what do you mean we can't see beyond 14 billion lightyears away because the universe just straight up did not exist then. oh my god. i'm not okay

[goldentigerfestival]

Yuri's dialogue (JP) is so fascinating to study, like... the repetitive use of certain words/phrases that others use sparingly but he uses constantly. the way it feels like his vocabulary is more expansive than what he uses, but he defaults to a "comfort" level of speech. the way it mixes in with his sort of "street talk" words and the sheer level of informality. the way his "street talk" phrasing is contrasted by the tone of his voice (on that note, people I know who also know JP are also very endeared by these aspects of him so I KNOW IT'S NOT JUST ME!!!).

'cause the thing is, he uses phrases that yeah, other people do use, but he uses a handful over and over and over (contrast to other characters' sparing use of repetition). it's actually... really refreshing? it sounds more relatable and less "video game/anime/JRPG/RPG" writing or something, idk. like closer to how a real person would speak.

I do my best in my translations not to make things sound too stiff across the board, but Yuri makes it so easy. it's why I'm so interested in translating all his lines in Vesperia, like... the actual, original tone for him with his original wording because it's smth Eng only players don't get to experience ('cause even if you listen with JP audio, if you don't know the language, ofc you're gonna miss out on context. it's nobody's fault for not knowing, just... they unfortunately miss out). the thing is, there are a lot of times when the lines in and of themselves are not contextually incorrect in the English ver (usually the situation for smaller scenes, because they altered the text outright for more important stuff which was the stuff that originally set me off, but there were also plenty of cases of just vocal tone shifting with the correct context that still gave off the wrong impression), but Yuri's tone is shifted away from the original in Eng even though it's completely and perfectly translatable.

I am by no means about to translate the entire game because let's face it, I really don't care that much for Vesperia on the whole. I'm kinda stuck with it because Yuri's there lo and behold I actually am WAY more engaged in his stories in Rays, Link and Asteria because it's an amazing character put into circumstances where he actually gets to shine and feels more alive, which Vesperia did not provide nearly as well with its very disjointed story. also, Tales gachas have banger stories that are arguably better than the mainline games, and they regularly make Yuri a very central character to the gachas. Crestoria was also about to do it until they pulled the plug on that game and I'm pretty confident something interesting has been lost to the world. also I just generally don't have the energy or motivation to do that, so... I'll only be focusing on Yuri's lines, especially because his stuff is where the bulk of the messing around was. he's just insanely fun to translate for and I love burying myself head first into his speech.

will I actually finish this project? dunno. will I get around to posting it? whatever I get done (so all of it if I complete it), and if I decide to call it quits then I'll post what I have at the time I decide that. will it take a long time? probably, but I can always mention stuff along the way...

[catsconflictscopicsandchamomile]

I was just watching a video on men playing women in Shakespeare performances and it said "remember, Ophelia was written to be played by a man" and my IMMEDIATE FIRST THOUGHT WAS

"Oh, so like, Dean Winchester"