#the spoiler tag itself

[quibbs126]

I love how like 90% of the “Sonic 3 spoilers” tag is just stobotnik related

I mean yeah, that is the first thing I looked for when I came back from the movie yesterday, but still

[arcanegifs]

Here's more comparisons of Arcane Gifs before and after I color and sharpen em!

[egophiliac]

Ego this happened and I need to tell another twst fan bc I'm so ahhhhhhh

my Nana (the biggest Disney fan I know) came over for Easter so i show her twst on a whim, bc it's my favorite thing yknow? I show her the characters and the battles, my cards, my guest room, all the good stuff. Then I decide to do a ten pull on mirror bc why not, I have 300 gems and maybe she'll give me luck 🙂

NOT DORM CARD MALLEUS FINALLY COMING HOME AFTER MONTHS OF HEARTBREAK 😭😭

AHHHH congratulations! ...also can your Nana come visit me too, because I have not gotten a SINGLE one of the dorm dias even with rerun pickups. 😭 does Malleus just demand grandma power or something.

[avloki-pal]

To self soothe

Finally finished watching that SAAP stream and got inspired, I am so normal about them

[carrot-junior]

"There's merit in reminding yourself of who helped you become what you are today. But that's a personal matter. Something you may want to keep close at all times, not something to flaunt..."

[khattikeri]

one of my favorite things about mdzs is that for how heavily its plot involves politics of classism and misogyny... even the characters most directly impacted by it can't and don't free themselves from it. literally the closest exception is mianmian.

meng yao being the "son of a whore" wasn't some sort of commie awakening for him that led him to wanting everyone to be socially equal. he played the political game, climbed the ladders, sucked up to and backstabbed and murdered people, including other prostitutes who actually had nothing to do with how he and his mother were treated at the brothel he grew up in.

he put in so much extra excessive effort for even a fraction of the same respect that members of gentry cultivation clans got. and he did deserve to be treated more humanely! but he feeds into the exact same system that created him, leading to his own undoing.

his efforts were for a fragile upward mobility that was never going to hold up. he never surpassed his origins nor did he empower others in similar stations, because the society he lives in is not one that would accept that.

the second he got caught and all those crimes exposed, he was scapegoated to hell and back, replacing wei wuxian as society's terrible one-sidedly evil boogeyman overnight.

speaking of not-quite male gentry, i think it's interesting that wei wuxian explicitly doesn't try to climb the ladders in BOTH lives, knowing full well that anything he does will be punished just for the sheer fact that he is wei wuxian.

wei wuxian is scolded for giving intelligent and correct answers in school. lan wangji does the same and is praised.

wei wuxian occasionally lounges around with fellow disciples and is punished. jiang cheng does the same and mostly escapes.

wei wuxian refuses to carry his sword around in public (after losing his golden core, which nobody knows) and is scorned as an arrogant upstart. nie huaisang has been doing the EXACT SAME THING for YEARS and nobody bats an eye.

unlike jin guangyao, wei wuxian knew subconsciously from the start that his acceptance was superficial and that he could be cast out any time. when he was 10 and recently taken in by the jiangs, he canonically would not eat or use "too much" food and water because he thought they'd find him a nuisance for "wasting their things" and kick him back out.

now away from just the classism, yu ziyuan is a proud and strong noblewoman in a society that belittles and derides women for everything they do. her strong cultivation doesn't matter. she's victim to the vicious rumors of her husband loving another woman who is strong like her but apparently had a more likeable personality.

it doesn't matter even if jiang fengmian didn't cheat or that wei wuxian is wei changze's son with cangse sanren; yu ziyuan can't bear with the humiliation of herself (and by extension her children) not being "good enough". she's ridiculed for "failing" in that one duty as a wife, mother, and woman.

she lashes out and takes out that anger on everyone present for years, giving her children lasting trauma and also being a key element in how the jiang family and yunmeng jiang sect are effectively wiped out at the hands of the wen clan.

madam jin doesn't even have a name outside of the fact that she's married to jin guangshan. i don't even remember reading anything that indicates if she's a strong or weak cultivator, or what, which in itself proves that to most people, it doesn't matter. she's "just" a woman.

of course she's angry at her husband's affairs and all the bastard children they bring in. but she also can't do anything about them, so she lashes out at the few people she can: servants. non-cultivators, probably. those very same bastard children.

shoutout to meng yao getting shoved down a flight of stairs at age fourteen, because if madam jin tried that move against her husband instead, it would make her lose even more face, which as a noblewoman she'd never do.

and that's not getting into how jiang yanli is consistently sidelined for being physically weak.

that's not getting into how mianmian was actually a good cultivator, but was mocked by everyone around her for trying to stand up for wei wuxian when everyone was turning on him. how everyone scoffed at luo qingyang's words as "just some lovesick woman" who "obviously wants to marry or bed him since he saved her".

luo qingyang is the only one of these characters who HASN'T died. she didn't play society's games like jin guangyao. she didn't dig her heels in confidence of her own abilities like wei wuxian.

she didn't bitterly lash out like yu ziyuan and madam jin. she didn't gently accept it like jiang yanli.

she just LEFT.

she married an ordinary merchant and cultivates separately from mainstream cultivation society, and therein found her own peace and happiness.

mxtx doesn't bother with particularly class conscious or feminist vocabulary to hand-hold readers into understanding these disparities, but that choice highlights them & the deeply entrenched politics of their society even more. i really love it.

[lucabyte]

Comfortable in New Skin

[tarraxahum]

(SPOILERS FOR LIFE IS STRANGE COMICS which are old at this point what are you doing AND SOME DOUBLE EXPOSURE SPOILERS)

Got that warning out of the way. Yeah. So. If you know The Spoiler then you know.

With FULL disclaimer that I know the comics are officially "only one possible version of reality", and are in no way binding canon. Nevertheless, they are official still.

Here's Chloe freelancing as a designer for a rock band. She also travels with them later.

Here's Chloe taking an internship at an auto repairs shop, 'cause she's good with cars.

Here's Chloe some years later taking an active part in rebuilding Arcadia Bay and her mother's diner. Taking a responsible leader role and shit.

Here's Chloe opening her own auto repairs shop she's now the boss of. And evidently designing it herself. Y'know. 'Cause she's good at stuff

Here's Chloe also buying an apartment for Max and her. Together. On her initiative.

Here's Chloe being willing to wait for her superpowered ass girlfriend for the aforementioned years because plot happened to Max, as it does, and she's her "partner in time".

Here they both are after another timeskip, fully consistent with LiS 2 photo

Y'know. This one.

In a recovering town. Where Chloe rebuilt a diner and established her own auto shop with her own hard work and skill. And bought them an apartment. TO SETTLE DOWN TOGETHER.

Note: Full disclosure, they had an apartment in Seattle together before "plot happened" and also traveled around with a rock band for years so it's not like Chloe ultimately ends up confined to Arcadia Bay again. Don't worry.

BONUS: Them being normal with Victoria:

So yeah. "Chloe is a free spirit who didn't wanna be tied down or take life seriously and fucked off to flirt with Victoria Chase" MY ASS.

Granted, both this and DE are about equal in being "canon" but. In terms of Chloe's characterization and what we know from previous games. I can see her do all this. Even if you take the relationship out of the equation, fine, the rest of it. I do NOT see her doing ALL THAT.

Bite me, for all their faults the comics understood Chloe's character much better than whatever DE has got so far.

Anyway this is not a "GOTCHA" post, this is a "If you're pissed like me take this and run"

[eruptedinlight]

STAR TREK: DISCOVERY | The Wedding <3

[drakkonyan]

The future never forgets the events that shaped it The past awaits for better times to come

[electrozeistyking]

i think you guys might be underestimating how long this fella is? i mean, it’s okay if you struggle with characters like this and i’ll be totally understanding if need to draw them a bit shorter to fit your style. but i am still giving you a proper reference of how long i’m aiming for when i draw this fella.

here’s some additional notes “under the cut” or what have you. they can also contain spoilers, depending on where you are in the game and whether you’ve bumped into this instance (it’s not a major one story wise since you can miss it, but i still feel like i should warn you about that regardless :3).

“rotfrin” is currently at stage three of pourrir disease, as shown in the notes talking about it and its stages. rotfrin is much taller than everyone else in the party at this stage, though they do appear shorter due to being unable to stand straight up most of the time.

on account of being stuck in a time loop, siffrin finds themself fighting pourrir disease for clarity and getting much better at that. unfortunately, he never avoids succumbing to it; he can only hold out against it for as long as he possibly can, though it steadily becomes a even more of an uphill battle as the loops go on.

as siffrin grows stronger, the sickness seems to as well. as they becomes less clumsy and more coordinated, the sickness starts progressing faster and harder. fighting it for clarity becomes easier and easier over time, yet siffrin will always find be overpowered one way or another. unless they loop back to the start, of course.

this reference displays rotfrin during their earliest loops, before they’re able to properly fight against pourrir for clarity or stay lucid for long successfully. they’re unnaturally happy, full of unending love towards their party, and feeling incredibly cold; if odile hadn’t taken action the first few times siffrin reached this stage, he could’ve spread the sickness to the others without realizing it.

seeing as siffrin’s cloak was made to grow with him, it will continue to grow with rotfrin and hide a vast majority of their body. however, as they’re a being capable of movement, their body is never perfectly covered at all times; you’d have to lift their cloak up or take it off them in order to see their body (like in this reference).

strangely enough, siffrin doesn’t progress to any stages of pourrir disease every loop. both he and loop theorize that the sickness doesn’t always have time to progress very far, on account of how short some of the loops can be, but it doesn’t explain any of the other ones where he makes it to the end without it happening.

they only figure it out during later loops.

[strawberry-smog]

I find it interesting that regardless of whether a Fidd/Ford meta post is trying to argue that they’re healthy or toxic or in between or whatever they all still tend to take the stance of “Fiddleford is such a saint for putting up with and forgiving Ford!” when the more canon stuff I see about him the more I’m convinced he’s a fucking maniac. I don’t mean this is a “wow McGucket is so problematic, I guess he’s the REAL toxic friend” way, but I do mean this in a way where I don’t find how he acts around Ford very admirable at all.

Like, this is a guy who cannot have a serious argument or disagreement with Ford, not just to the point where he hides his own feelings around him and then snaps, but to the point where he hides his own feelings around him and then snaps and then secretly uses his memory gun to erase it out of both their heads so it’s like the argument never even happened. This is a guy who moved to and stayed in a town full of dangerous monsters that gave him panic attacks because Ford asked him to. This is a guy who moved ten hours away from his wife and small child for a year, visited them once on Christmas, and then immediately flew back to work because he got into a fight with his wife over not buying her a present while he was busy hand-making Ford, a man who doesn’t celebrate Christmas, two presents. This is a guy who started a cult to cope with all of this rather than telling Ford something was wrong. This is a guy who stood by Ford even after receiving a really mean and disrespectful ultimatum from him and only left when he got irrefutable proof that Ford was about to unleash a demon that would devour the earth, and even then he just ran off to forget everything with his cult rather than try to, you know, stop Ford from doing that.

This is him bending over backwards for Ford, yes, but this is fucking insane. Yeah sure he’s pretty put upon by Ford, but he’s also putting quite a lot of this upon himself, because he can’t just have an important discussion with him and will instead martyr himself upon Ford’s disregard endlessly, to the detriment of himself, everyone who knows these two, and, tbh, Ford.

[pseudophan]

nora I am at tit on intermission they touch each other so much???

going by what i've heard about each show i swear they've only gotten touchier as the tour has progressed... i'm suddenly really scared for iceland

[emberglowfox]

sketch blast 2

[lakesbian]

Although that Discord excerpt is often cited as the original "Coil is black WoG", my secondhand understanding is that the actual original moment is a fair bit older, took place in IRC instead, and sadly wasn't recorded as far as I know. Basically, someone floated the hypothetical possibility that Coil was black. Another user insisted that he couldn't be black, apparently for racist reasons, and Wildbow decided to do a little trolling by decreeing on the spot that Coil was canonically black, to dunk on the racist in the chat. And because of Wildbow's whole personality, he then became very attached to the idea that this had always been his intent, even though it was clearly an impulsive decision and he clearly hadn't actually thought through the implications for the race politics of Worm as a whole.

Sending this ask actually sent me down a whole rabbit hole, because the main piece of evidence that gets cited that Wildbow totally actually did intend Coil to be black all along is that at one point, in 16.10, when Taylor is blind, she describes his hair as "coarse". I was going to bring that up, but it suddenly occurred to me that Wildbow has gone back and edited Worm several times, especially over this kind of internet discourse bullshit, and it's entirely possible that this was one of those times. So I decided to do some investigating on the Internet Archive, and it turns out that I was right! The word "coarse" was added to the description of Coil's hair in 16.10 sometime between September 19, 2015 and May 27, 2016. Which I guess narrows down when that incident in the IRC must have happened.

damn you should have made this your own post this is good detective work. didn't know that was a mystery that needed solving but the more you know. i was rather baffled as to how the book that's infamously racist about derogatory descriptions of Evil Gross Black People managed to have a black child predator villain without ever including gratuitous racism in the description of coil, and "it's because coil wasn't initially intended to be black and wildbow retconned it in an ill-advised attempt to own a racist + maintained it as true henceforth" would actually make perfect sense as an explanation

[faislittlewhiteraven]

Fais fanfic rambles: Introduction to my 'Selkies by Starlight' ISaT AU

Note: Not to be confused with @looped-140-and-counting / Soren_793's wonderful Selkie AU oneshot series 'The Northern Islanders are Selkies' which was hugely inspiring for this if potentially VERY different in vibe (we got very into talking about cloaks! XD)

Basic premise/summary:

In an alternate version of the precanon adventure, the party lead by Mirabelle to stop the King freezing Vaugarde in time, recruit Siffrin as per usual.

Thing is, Siffrin is a Selkie.

A very skittish selkie without a cloak of their own, who openly wears the cloak of another, and due to Reasons is under the impression that the party know all both of those things and the Implications about them, and for whatever reason have decided to welcome him into their group anyway.

Which er, he's completely wrong about as the party know absolutely nothing.

Mira and Isa like most Vaugardian humans think 'shifters' are just fairytales, Odile knows shapeshifters are real but is only really familiar with how foxes like her father work, and Bonnie is actually able to sense some pretty major things but is a preteen dealing with a lot and hasn't even joined the party yet, so this pretty major misunderstanding is sustained for quite a while...

Cue the AUs' main focus being on the resulting party dynamic shifts as more and more canon divergence due to Sif's 'selkie stuff' (both cute and serious) comes into play, the party slowly realising something is up, and all of it hitting an eruption point right around the time of the 4th Orb/the loss of Siffrin's eye...

Some key world building notes: (Note: very summarised from my docs. I have like 20k+ words on this stuff XD)

The Island - Probably the most drastically different thing from canon here, the Island was not forgotten or erased here. Rather it is hidden away and permanently shrouded in Wish Craft generated fog from 'those without cloaks'. Side note: Sif is still unable to return home and continues to have some very plot critical memory problems but those are due to unrelated issues, which means yay I get to have Sif talk 'home culture' with the others in this =D Also idk why the King is freezing Vaugarde still. I've got a few ideas I'm not sure about and he's not in focus enough for it to even matter really, but random suggestions -especially those with possible selkie motivations- would be very much appreciated.

Selkie powers in my setting - Went into something of a deep dive regarding selkie folklore for this and did you know they have an absolute ton of seer/oracle based stuff going on?

From selkie being summoned by their human lovers shedding seven tears into the ocean, to a selkie man telling a former lover that he and their child will die at the hands by her genuinely good and loving future husband, to a selkie woman forseeing her fisherman husband about to die out in a storm just in time for her to swim over there and rescue him, etc.

So... Yeah. This AU has a lot of plot relevant sensory/seer stuff going on as well as the standard seal shapeshifter stuff (Islander selkie traditionally believe it to be the Universe talking with them, in the same way Wish Craft is talking to the Universe), and going off all the stuff I read decided it'd be most fitting if the general rule for how it all works is: - Selkie always passively have a bit of it going on (aka Sif's canon 'you sense someone nearby' stuff) which like most things can be enhanced with Craft use a bit. - Near perfect understanding of all 'connected' bodies of water (aka they know EXACTLY where the tasty fish are/will be and can probably get a general sense of location for most people on a boat) - Potentially get strong 'visions of the future' and/or instincts on what they need to do to avert an outcome when it comes to loved ones being in danger/distress.

They also maybe get to pull very fast, high power Wish Craft 'curses'/miracles' at idk, the cost of something major like their cloak or lives (mostly based off of the The Legend of Kópakonan where the whole island of Kalsoy was cursed with death by a selkie in retaliation for her husband and children being murdered) but not super attached to this idea past it being in 'seal shifter' stories in-setting.

Other non humans in setting and regional differences in shifters - Pretty much only selkie and selkie issues are in focus here, but just as a general thing, all non humans in setting are shapeshifters and originated from human ancestors who went crazy with the the Body Craft and/or used Wish Craft in some way.

Ka Bue in particular has a ton of them since yokai, with their origins being various sects/clans back in the warring eras going so nuts with trying to weaponize Body Craft (super soldiers, enhanced life spans, infiltration, exploiting attraction to furries, etc), that after some particularly high profile incidents (for an idea plz see: Kiyohime, Tamamo no Mae, Kachi-kachi Yama) and 'Body Craft misuse leading to shut down of the brain/vital organs' being the most common cause of death for 10+ years once peace time was established, eventually Ka Bue's authorities set their foot down and banned Body Craft altogether.

Currently the shifter population in Ka Bue is around 30% of the population, shifters are required to have ID regarding their forms (or potential forms if they're merely 'half'), and it's considered distasteful for a shifter to be in non human form outside of private settings/necessity and even ruder to ask a shifter about their non human forms if they haven't brought the topic up yet first (kinda like seeing/asking about someone's underwear or something XD).

In contrast the Vaugarde, Mwudu and Porteria region is extremely shifter sparce, with most of its original shifter population being the result of various Universe worshipping peoples (mostly small groups, like greek mystery cults) deciding to use a big Wish Craft ritual as some sort of religious rite and becoming shifters as a side effect of their primary Wish (usually stuff like 'we wish for us and our descendants to be one with You and the sea/air' or 'may we Change with the phases of the holy moon' etc) which granted them some pretty neat skills but also tended to come with some 'potentially nasty' drawbacks attached (see: selkie and swan maidens with their cloaks, werewolves Changing in both body and mind etc) Which er, lead to some issues born of lack of knowledge about this stuff, later some very nasty anti shifter sentiment in the region, and then around... IDK 200 to 300 years ago or so ended up exploding into violence and other very nasty things, with most shifters able to do so fleeing the region, and those that couldn't either enduring horrible conditions until they could escape/died or went deep into hiding, with the Island's Country being founded by the two later groups who used Wish Craft to hide their new home, erase awareness of their existence from their enemies (a short term, fully intentionally 'forgetting' blast centered specifically around shifters), and developed a LOT of culture and traditions regarding when, who and what can be told to 'outsiders' about themselves, Wish Craft, etc in order to keep their people safe.

There are shifters living in present in Vaugarde of course (anti shifter sentiment died back a LOT after most people stopped thinking they were real, and most modern day Change Believers are more likely to view these 'totally fictional/allegorical' beings as children/messengers of the Change God rather than 'evil demons who stole power by tearing apart the Change God's cloak for themselves and thus have to be hunted down and made to repent' propaganda take that was everywhere back then) but numbers actually living outside the Island as opposed to merely visiting remain low, since either the shifters know their history and stick firmly to their 'stay secret' traditions or quickly pick up on how oddly unknown shifters are around these parts and decide to err on the side of caution... Also 'trust worthy' humans who do learn about them (usually northern coastal folk, gee wonder why) tend to help cover them up so... Yeah =D

---

And... Yeah!

This is hella long as is, so will stop here and ramble about the actual 'how this all affects our beloved Sif and Co plot and culture wise' stuff that is the actual meat of the AU in another post later, but hope this made for an interesting/idea provoking read, know that I have no issue with anyone using any of this for their own works (just please, don't use the 'Selkies under starlight' same story name unless it's actually a fanfic/fanart of my 'hopefully soon has a chapter/one shot up' fic/Ao3 series of the same name so people don't get confused), and I would love to chatter with you about any thoughts/questions you might have so...

Wishing you a good day =D

(sighes in relief finally getting this post finished after literal months. Pheeeeww~)