#the party city of it all

[skydiamonded]

[maeamian]

Part of the reason that Republicans are so desperately acting like they will never lose again is because they are deeply terrified that this is their last real chance to win. The big orange dipshit came in and gutted the party of everyone who wasn't a loyalist, which left it full of nasty little gremlins who have gaping voids where charisma and human decency is supposed to go.

They still hold a lot of power, but if we stop them this year the next presidential election may not be the Most Important One Of Your Life™, that's not a guarantee or anything, but if they don't win here and now their future looks grim, this dipshit is the only guy they have left and he's extremely diminished and has his brains leaking out of his ears at this point. We can beat him into the ground.

So that's what we're gonna fucking do. We're gonna break these fucking fash. They will crash upon us and we're gonna break their fucking necks. When they come for us they will lose because they're fucking losers and we have each other's backs which is something they fundamentally are incapable of comprehending.

[loecassia]

Their nosy asses are ripping your low effort costume to shreds

[the-nothing-maker]

Holy blemishes

(Mel is my main D&D guy from @luposlipaphobya's campaign, Val Cardinal !)

[flufflecat]

[d3molition-lov3rs]

the endless expanse of the zones

in the wake of destruction, the brutality of survival is reintroduced to the dwindling human population of the zones. the endless expanse of the desert stretches on, humming with the imminent threat of death either from the burning rays of the unrelenting sun, the hovering clouds of radiation on the horizon, or the unknown threats hiding behind each new post-nuclear dune piling upon a long-gone civilisation. the eat-or-be-eaten nature of the new world draws out a certain carnal aspect of the human nature, and in the depths of desperation and prayers to forgotten gods, rebellion breeds at last.

[sreppub]

saw many comments about no one ever believing dc superhero girls brucie could be batman :’) and clark is kind of a dick, so. made me think

dw, he’s still clark and im a superbat girlie; he’ll make it right afterwards :’’’’)

[mollysunder]

The funniest thing about Jayce is that while yes, he's juggling other peoples' interests/loyalties, he's only sort of malleable and mostly kind of uncontrollable. People can tell Jayce something and he will in fact listen to it, absorb the new information, but it's a genuine gamble to guess what he does with that information.

Heimerdinger tells him exactly how to avoid punishment for his trial and Jayce DOESN'T do it. Jayce decides to defend himself and the merit of his work. The Medardas want hextech weapons (for varying reasons), Viktor says no, meanwhile Jayce already has blueprints laminated and framed in his room.

Jayce didn't ask to be a Councilor, but he immediately throws himself into rooting out corruption. When Mel tells him he's gonna need to play ball to stay alive politically, Jayce goes, "Ball is life". Then Jayce manages to amass enough political capital to kick off HEIMERDINGER of all people.

Second to Jinx, Jayce is the character that asserts the most agency in the cast. People really try to pull Jayce in this and that direction, but his character, his morals, just who he really is pushes at any supposed binary others try to place him in. The choices he makes always align with his core, and it inevitably puts others in a position to accept the consequences of bringing up the issue to him in the first place.

[notbecauseofvictories]

I know my experience is not universal, but I biked 5+ miles to do my errands today and I genuinely think we'd be much happier as a human collective if we increased residential density and switched to largely alternative modes of transportation.

[anqelbean]

tell me about your wips 👀

thank you thank you thank you nonnie I shall ramble now

One I thought of yesterday I haven't been able to put on paper yet: Shen Yuan is thrust back into the modern world after "waking up from a coma" and just. Cannot move on from Binghe. He doesn't know what would be worse: Binghe having never been real and him imagining all of it, or Binghe having been real and Shen Yuan having lost him. Everything reminds him of Binghe and he feels like he's going insane. His sister's red nail polish. The posters on his wall. Even the goddamn rice in his cupboard.

So he does the unthinkable: He starts dating his sister's gay friend to get over Binghe.

The guy is sweet and caring and funny. Shen Yuan finds himself enjoying his company. His smile looks a little bit sharp, his hair is just the right shade of brown, his eyes are bright and clear. He treats Shen Yuan well.

Time goes on, Shen Yuan thinks to himself "Wow! It worked! I haven't thought about Binghe in so long!" And then.

Well. Then.

He's in the kitchen, arms straining to reach a cup when someone hands it to him, he turns around, smiling, ready to thank—

Thank who?

Thank Binghe.

The cup in his hands shatters as it hits the floor. The boyfriend is in a frenzy, asking Shen Yuan if he's okay. There's blood, Shen Yuan was barefoot and his foot is cut pretty deeply. But Shen Yuan cannot hear anything over the buzzing in his ears.

Binghe, Binghe, Binghe,

Had he ever even stopped thinking about Binghe? How many times had he compared his boyfriend and Binghe in his mind? He looked at his boyfriend's worried expression now, his face overlapping with Binghe's in his mind. Had he ever felt anything for him, even? Had all these months together been just a distraction for Shen Yuan?

Would he ever even be able to love anyone that isn't Luo Binghe?

No, he didn't think he could.

[t00muchheart]

Something about the fact that both Dean and Cas think they’ve fucked up too many times to be redeemed, that they aren’t worth saving, and yet they forgive each other.

Something about the fact that both of them, faced with an outside force compelling them to kill the other, pushed past that to save each other’s lives.

Something about Cas dying to save Dean time after time because he can’t stand the thought of seeing Dean dead, not knowing what it does to Dean to see Cas dead, and to feel like the blood is on his hands; about Cas trying to restructure the universe for Dean and Dean just wanting him to stay.

Something about Dean teaching Cas to be more human and then, when he is human, failing to help him and having to live with the regret of that.

Just…something about Cas and Dean and the way that they’re simultaneously doomed and inevitable, always circling around something but never able to land

[xamaxenta]

Freak city gc went fuckin crazy today over Silk’s Ace lives au and subsequently his timeskip design and alias bc he’s technically considered dead by the marines and i wish i could tag everyone involved except i actually dont know anyones @ other than @niko-rion

Not my greatest hit bc im slogging thru the low point of the art improvement graph so i worked on vibes alone despite the sketch being madly sloppy

[supermaks]

the f1 fan to police officer pipeline whenever verstappen does anything needs to be studied

[somewhatidealname]

i feel like based on his only environment (the fazbear frights attraction), springtrap would just 'think' someone placed horror/halloween decorations in him when he saw himself without his mask/head. like the only place he knows is decorated to hell, he cant remember anything about his person (or that he was/is one) or past, all he knows is that this is his place, there's tacky horror decor everywhere and he's somehow part of it- he knows nothing more, so the only dots he could potentially connect are these. bro thinks he is party city.

oh my fucking god you're a genius

[serpentface]

What’s the Janeys/Brakul death scenario?

So like upon review I mostly just was going to kill them off for Couya + Faiza + Hibrides’ character development (#FEMINIST WIN!!!!!!!).

The background situation of their death scenario is something that will happen either way:

Throughout the story, the pilgrimage requests tribute from the towns it passes through (mainly food and other supplies). This is a common practice for pilgrimages and the travels of royalty, and Imperial Wardi civilians are used to the concept (just not so much during a famine). Some people give fully willingly (a lot of people believe in the pilgrimage's goals/and or the necessity to keep its high status participants fed), most are at least partly coerced (usually not via direct threats, but the pilgrimage contains a couple hundred soldiers, the Usoma, and Odonii leadership. The threat is implied), some are Fully coerced via threats.

In the latter third of the story things are not going well. There’s been a lot of internal struggles among the soldiers and dissatisfaction with pilgrimage leadership (mostly Stavis), men are starting to defect and a large body are getting outright mutinous. The group has also lost much of their food supplies and things are getting desperate (they've been starting to eat their own pack khait and oxen)

With this going on, the pilgrimage sends three soldiers to exact tribute from a farming village in the province Lobera. They meet a group of men acting as representatives for the village, who flat out refuse to give tribute. Things escalate into an outright fight, the soldiers are better armed but few in number and are killed.

One of the village elders finds out that this happens and panics, knowing that the men who killed three of the Usoma’s soldiers (one of which is her son) have signed their own death sentences, and possibly that of others. She attempts to persuade the families to preemptively flee, and then takes the village's one remaining skinny old plow ox to carry the bodies of the dead soldiers back to where the pilgrimage is camped. She supplicates herself before Stavis Amanti and begs for mercy, saying they don't even have enough food stored to feed themselves, much less to give, and that the men thus considered the killings righteous self defense. She shows that she’s returned the bodies for rites as an act of goodwill, and offers the ox in tribute, the most valuable thing she can provide. She begs that the Usoma accepts this as tribute and spares the men's lives, and that the pilgrimage moves on without taking anything else.

Stavis bids her safe passage away from the camp (without confirming or denying that he's accepted her plea), and the heads of pilgrimage confer on what to do. The killing of the soldiers is a violation punishable by death, but this would be like, a notably bad PR move. Meanwhile a contingent of soldiers (including some major side characters I haven’t introduced) break off and lead a raid on the village to avenge their fallen brothers and loot supplies. Others get drawn into the fighting, and it devolves into a full on massacre.

A couple families had fled at the elder’s suggestion, but most refused to leave their homes. Some of the villagers believed they would be left unharmed if the killers were given up, others had been preparing for a reprisal and armed themselves with everything available. But they have few actual weapons and none are trained combatants. All of the remaining men and adolescent boys get killed, one woman manages to take out a soldier using a shovel but is killed, most of the other women and girls are spared murder but several are assaulted. The village is looted for supplies and kindling for funeral pyres.

Stavis Amanti has no fucking idea what to do. The soldiers defied orders and killed Imperial Wardi civilians, but the current climate amid the pilgrimage would make it EXTREMELY Bad for him if he demanded their punishment (but also potentially very bad if he didn't- not all the soldiers participated in the massacre and many were horrified). Faiza encourages him to exert authority in a measured response by having the ringleader of the mutineers killed but sparing the rest, and offers to publicly back him in hopes of avoiding full on mutiny.

The raid reveals that the villagers had been hiding more grain than they claimed they had (as in like, enough to feed their people on starvation level rations for a few weeks). Stavis takes this as an opportunity to justify not punishing the mutineers (as the villagers DID technically have something to give, and execution IS technically the punishment for refusing the order of tribute (though not execution of the entire community)), but insists that their Galenii bless the village dead and their men build pyres for the civilians as is honorable conduct. (This attempt to make amends is not particularly appreciated by the survivors.)

The pilgrimage holds a funeral for their own dead soldiers. The village ox that was given in tribute is killed and butchered for the funerary feast.

----

In the Bury Your Gays route, Brakul is one of the three that gets killed during the tribute extraction. Janeys loses his fucking mind when his body is brought back, and tries to slit his own throat on the spot. Couya stops him by wrestling him to the ground while Janeys screams threats at her and the old woman in a very pathetic public spectacle. He is deprived of all sharp objects.

While the pilgrimage leaders are conferring, he hovers miserably around Hibrides (who is also not feeling so great about all this). He's suddenly very interested in her pregnancy for the first time ever, asks to feel the baby (which has been just starting to kick). She's like "fuck off", but he strongly implies he's planning to commit suicide asap and she concedes and then is like Okay I Let You Feel The Goddamn Baby Now Leave Me Alone Holy FUCK.

Janeys turns his attention to fucking murdering anyone tangentially involved in this happening. He’s among the initial raid party, plays a major hand in it turning from its ostensible 'find and execute the ones responsible, subdue the rest, steal their food' directive to a full massacre by directing his men to immediately attack the first man he sees. He and his group capture three young men as prisoners and demand that they be slain at the soldier's funerals as is wartime custom (this isn't wartime). Janeys additionally demands that he should get to do it, as the only kin of any of the dead men. Once that's done he immediately cuts his own throat and bleeds out. They wind up getting cremated at the same time so things work out how Janeys wanted it.

At one point I realized that this is kind of just The Iliad?

----

So like obviously whether they die here or not has little impact on THESE events, but a lot of the endgame revolves around Couya Faiza and Hibrides and these deaths would be very significant to THEM in varying capacities. It affects the trajectory of the final stretch of their arcs and adds a lot of layers to the ultimate Couya/Faiza conflict. I also liked their deaths being kind of random and shitty and meaningless because that in of itself is kinda ~thematically resonant~ with the story. (A lot of tension between the lack of intrinsic meaning to events and the profound levels of meaning ascribed to them).

I'm almost definitely not going with this version of events though. Janeys and Brakul don't have much active involvement in the endgame and don't Really need to be alive for it as it stands, but I think the version where every main character (except Faiza she's doomed) survives to see What Has Been Wrought and living to experience the fallout ultimately works better.

[theboyatthebustop]

Would you believe me if I said all of these graphic novel adaptations (except for the whatever after one) came out in 2022?