#theres a lot i left out

[intotheelliwoods]

Happy to have 2 Arms Left in the comp another year! While this isnt Sprouts first rodeo, its Poptarts first! Everyone give him a welcome :)

@tmntaucompetition

Bonus, featuring Poptarts bestie, because no one can convince me otherwise that Poptart will get overwhelmed with the amount of people- @dianagj-art

[remxedmoon]

isat npc designs!!!!! wahoo!!!!!

greyscale versions below :3

i don’t really have much to say about the colors here?? all of these fellas are vaugardian (i think) so i just kept their palettes Warm. i did give claude stains on her coat because i think she drops Chemicals on it all the time and doesn’t wash it throughly enough to get the stains out. other than that all of these are pretty straightforward!!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

MDZS Disco Elysium AU part 2 - Psyche Skills

Part 1 - Part 3

[puppppppppy]

learning abt friendship decay and "not reaching out to your friends for months at a time unprompted is not neurotypical behaviour" has me feeling a certain way

[hellspawnmotel]

terranigma, a cool game

[pocketramblr]

Absolutely love your writing for all the AU/5 headcanons asks. Can I ask: AU where Rei cheats on Endeavor with All Might? It happens after AM's injury, so she doesn't recognize him, and he ofc doesn't know that she's married in the first place, much less to whom

you make this very difficult for me by giving me a window of 6 and half years for them to have an affair and for every single moment of that window, Rei is institutionalized. how am i supposed to get them to meet, much less take their clothes off. ok. think. there are other fic writers who specialize in this kind of thing, surely. what would they do....

1- ok so. The fire alarm at the hospital goes off. Rei doesn't know if it's a drill or not, but she's been there for seven years and generally does not need a lot of support during something like this like other patients do, so the nurses wave her out and she stands around outside a bit waiting for the fire alarm to stop and them to go back in. (It isn't a drill, they wouldn't have evacuated everyone if it was, but Rei is on the other side of the building and facing away from seeing any smoke) (This smoke is from a villain attack that All Might is taking care of, though he's only got seconds left of his power to use that day. he quickly rushes off, deflating and stumbling out on the other side of the hospital. Where Rei is.)

2- Rei is like "huh that guy doesnt seem to be in good shape" and kinda waves attention at him, and a nurse who's passing out water to patients and keeping an eye on the road gives Toshinori some too, getting more concerned when he dazedly answers that he's All Might and coughs up blood, but the nurse figures he's concussed since he smells of smoke and must have been closer to the fight, and is just reeling from being able to see the number one hero in person. Then they get distracted and wave Toshi to wait nearby, where Rei offers to chill his water and asks if he's alright, if he breathed in any smoke.

3- They chat and then go back into the hospital as it's un-evacuated together, Rei hanging out in the lobby where he sits as the hospital staff focus on getting everyone else back to their rooms. It pays to be low priority sometimes. Eventually she tells him her name is Rei and that she's in room K18, if he ever wants to visit or call. She doesn't get to talk to anyone except doctors, family visitors, or other paitients, and most of them don't stay nearly as long as she does. It's been seven years, and she's very lonely. Toshinori is lonely too, and when he's out of time for a day and feeling useless with nothing to do, he likes to talk to a friend.

4- Rei has been in the hospital for eight years when it gets physical. At that point, Toshinori knows a bit about her family. She has kids, mentions visits from a son and daughter, and then quietly mentioned when her son turned seventeen- her daughter's already twenty. She's been there for so much of their lives. He asks if she's married, and she admits she isn't sure how to file for divorce in a hospital like she is, if she even can, if she wants to because she'd lose custody, if it matters when she's not raising them anyway. He doesn't ask much more, knows there is a dead child and a baby she says isn't safe with her there. Toshinori never called Nana 'mom' to her face while she was alive, and had a reason for it, and has a similar reason for not asking more, not asking for the other names when he gets Fuyumi and Natsuo's. Yes, the doctors and nurses all know Rei has a boyfriend who visits. they don't say anything. who would they even tell, anyway. I debated the humor of reusing the bit from candlelight shoto that Toshi and Rei could have a kid with a fire quirk, but yeah here? Rei ain't getting pregnant, absolutely not.

5- When Natsuo turns eighteen, Rei does actually file for divorce, or at least tries to get the ball rolling on that. Toshinori's trusted her that her marriage is over in all but name, but he's more at ease with it ended fully. Fuyumi is crushed but burying it all deep inside. Natsuo is like 'what are you talking about. divorce is the most normal possible outcome here.' But anyway, Rei also begins to bring up being discharged- something she never bothered with earlier, when it seemed like she'd never be able to go home while Shoto was there, and never would want to go back anyway. (Her parents are absolutely not an option either so where would she go once discharged? the hospital was her only security.) Toshinori then tells her at this point about his diagnosis, that he's supposed to be terminal, in a way. He doesn't have a lot of time he can give her. Rei says that's ok, she'll take what she can get. She moves in. Fuyumi still goes out to eat with her once a week, though Rei doesn't say she's moved in with a boyfriend, just says she's in a safe place and it's not Fuyumi's job to worry about it, please, let her do that, relax, be her daughter instead of a mother. Natsuo adds her to his cellphone plan and gets her one. Rei doesn't tell Toshinori her ex's identity. Toshinori doesn't tell her about OfA, though she does know he's mentoring a student for heroics and is very proud of him. (Toshinori is a secretary at Might Tower, he's a great mentor. Oh huh, he got a job position at UA at the same time as All Might, she wonders if they carpool.)

+1- OK THE REVEAL so the reveal is. Toshinori gets home from the SF. And Rei almost knocks him out by the door, eyes wide and panicked, asking if he's ok, if Shoto's ok. Toshinori is like "... young todoroki? yeah he's alright? i know his fight with young bakugo looked bad but- Rei???" And that's when it all clicks for him, he's having dozens of horrible realizations at once, all while Rei weeps over her youngest. Toshinori's been a hero for a very, very long time. He's felt hopeless, before. But even then, he's known what needs to be done, he just isn't able to do it. But now? he's at a complete loss with no idea what he should do.

[rat-rosemary]

Okay so, I know some people are happy that we got this litte look at he future (because I don't think the nuke end was really retconned) but like. If it was, wouldn't it make it 100 times sadder?

The world is empty. Most people have left, most to just die somewhere else. Tommy is a ghost haunting a server long abandoned. Its dead but he just can't let go

Not even Dream is here anymore, Sapnap and George chasing after him like they always do, gone the second they woke up from their long dreams. If you were to look into their eyes they wouldn't recognize you

Wilbur and Quackity have both left to decay and explode somewhere else, and with them took a good handful of Tommy's friends. Bad always had a home-base to return to, and the original members rest there peacefully

And Tommy just. Stays. Hopes for a visit. Never grows, never changes, isolated from anyone. This is a worse ending then forgiveness and understanding and fire and brimstone.

He's just alone collecting dust

*JUST AS AN ASIDE THIS IS NOT HOW THE STREAM WENT BUT I SAW SOME PEOPLE CELEBRATING IT JUST BECAUSE IT DIDN'T GO WITH THE SECOND SEASON THING

Please what you're describing isn't a happy ending is just a second worse bad ending. Healing comes from community and connection, not from defeating the big evil

In the corpse of your biggest enemy you will find no peace, only more blood

[ponyboyssophie]

Love iconography in Sorry We're Closed (2024)

As the Angel of Love in this game is represented by a horse-chimera, there was a lot of care put into using horses to symbolize love & relationships. There's the obvious theme of Dream Eater plastering his realm with paintings, statues, and artifacts about Chamuel and other random places like the crypt using his visage too, but I'm mostly gonna talk about something a bit more abstract.

Sorry We're Closed uses hearts as its primary symbolism for love; but it also uses a less mainstream visual motif to show us how it matters to the characters. Horse. :)

To start with, each episode of Dying Petals starts out with a shot of a horse painting, before zooming out to bring in the characters.

Shots of the characters talking will usually be accompanied by one or two paintings. This is where we first see horses associated with relationships.

[There are TWO SEPERATE paintings behind them, yknow, just in case you don't notice the first.]

You might know that the story represents Michelle's love life, (quite literally as Epiphany is played by her actual ex; the story mimics their conflict and break up) but this room also becomes the place where Michelle solidifies her destiny, whether she chooses new love, her ex, or something else.

Also, notice how the painting behind Canary is much bigger than the one behind Epiphany. This is still true when accounting for perspective.

Although the biggest (and brightest) horse painting is off-screen.

You can see it behind Chamuel on the final day, next to his door that allows you to choose love.

The Carousel.

In the scene where we watch the duchess execute a woman for lying about her 'love' for the Duchess to save her life, there is a carousel-style horse in the background.

This is, I believe, the first time we see this horse carousel, and it appears with a bleeding heart. An empty spot where there used to be something. Love is not here.

The Duchesses room.

On the outside, you see paintings of Dream Eater and Chamuel.

I used to think a lot of the paintings around the game were random - like maybe they were just filler. There's a lot of repetition of the same images over and over again, but I've come to understand it is its own visual language.

The Duchess seems to place a big focus on these two around the hotel - who are "quite infamous" in the supernatural community. There's the obvious connection to taboo love here, but I think it's also an example of a demon being able to resist the change of love. Which might explain the hierarchy here of Dream Eater being on the top/larger. More value is placed on Dream Eater, who holds onto the past.

[Spoilers for inside the Duchesses room]

Straight off the bat, you start to notice a trend in this room. This is where I started picking up on the meanings behind certain pieces and noticing the emphasis on horses throughout the game, especially in regards to the Duchess. It might feel like maybe they just like horses - having a picture book with horses or framed paintings all over their room seems like more of an interest, but it continues to entwine them in the language of love.

Also - I won't go into this too deeply but the repetitive paintings of the Duchess, especially the close ups of their eye/features, is a parallel to the fractured, disjointed images of Chamuels face that represent his 'mortalisation' and get more and more frequent (and also, violent) the further he gets into his struggle with love. It implies to me that the Duchess has already begun this process, or at least reflects how they've been fractured by love as well.

Ironically, the picture of the lead singer of Michelle's favourite band, who they brought to the hotel to make her feel more at home is right next to it. It's not mentioned if the Duchess was already a fan, or if they checked it out because of Michelle/how much they love her outfit (fish fight shirt included!) :)

Here we see the horse with the bleeding heart again.

Over their clean, neat bed which is kind of a mix between elegant hotel opulence and rusty torture chamber imagery (the case on the left side of the bed..... if you know you know). Their room itself is a beautiful illusion that seeks to cover up for their one weakness, but it still shows through.

You also find some assorted Duchess-themed artifacts.

Notably, the missing heart fragment. T.A.D says this is "said to be what remains of the Duchesses heart after the incident."

(There's also the presence of Dying Petals in the Duchesses room, but that's a topic for another post.)

I also find it interesting that she has these on her shelf. A visual reference to Dream Eater fighting himself, maybe?

[Also, Bonus A La Mode games reference. Or, the Duchesses version of the warriors that I've just now realised is a reference to the devs logo]

Hotel Ascent is when things start to get more... surreal.

There's a repeated trial throughout this area where, to pass to the next room, you have to charge your heartbreaker before shooting the heart of the horse statue. The first instance of this is also accompanied by a literal anatomical heart you have to shoot to charge it up.

Usually, it's aggressively defended by giant roller-spikes and/or enemy hordes. The Duchess doesn't want you to break past their barriers and into their heart, that's for sure.

This is the opening scene for the final boss fight.

The statues stay in the background for the whole fight. Notice how these ones no longer have arrows jutting from their chests.

(We also see these weird abstract horses from the start of hotel ascent again - even they have a true form which can only be seen with the third eye.)

Other uses in the game.

I think Dream Eater's Palace would take up wayy too much, so I'll skip it. It's already something that is canonically brought to attention in-game so Iif you've played it of course you'll already know how obsessed this guy is with, uh, horses, and what that says about him. :)

There is also a picture of Dream Eater (a.k.a "a forlorn being") in the church where Benedict and Robyn (the OTHER angel/demon relationship) spend most of their time together. You can imagine it's not on the side Beloved chooses to hang around haha.

Oakley doesn't have anything in his diner as far as I know, but Darrel does have two paintings of the earlier picture of Duchess riding a horse in his bar.

He has other Duchess paintings also, likely because they're his boss, but this feels very in-place in the bar for a reason.

It does mean that all three relationships in the game have some connection to Dream Eater/Chamuel imagery. Some of it may be coincidence, but I thought I'd mention this anyway as it solidifies the connection to love.

Okay fine I'll talk about the crypt.

The examples/relationships I've used here are romantic in nature, but it's worth noting there are excessive amount of Chamuel statues in the crypt as well. A crypt that belonged to a broken family, that has mostly covered up it's traces of said family after Gabriella took revenge on her parents. Traces of angels are systematically replaced with demonic imagery, as though Gabriella was insulted by the appearance of love being featured so heavily throughout her families tomb. You might see love in the past (using your third eye), but it's disappeared/fractured.

So what's up with the horses?

I already kind of mentioned this at the start, but in this fictional world the concept of love and horses are pretty much inherently linked through Chamuel, so I appreciate how they leaned into this by making it sort of a cultural concept of love.

Horses can be seen as a symbol of love historically, but generally the cultural zeitgeist uses something a bit more fragile and delicate, like doves or rabbits.

It reminds me of Disco Elysium, where love is understood through the lungs rather than the heart due to it's association with Dolores Dei; a pseudo-religious symbol who was just a deified historical figure. Changing what love 'looks' like in a way that serves the story. It shows how well-intergrated Dream Eater and Chamuel are in the world-building and story. They represent the fear of change, and the consequent leap of faith you need to embrace that change. Something the Duchess needs.

Why not use horses? It still feels childlike and nostalgic. They're strong, lively creatures who still exist as prey animals to be hunted - the Duchess doesn't want to be hunted. She wants to hunt.

And, life didn't really go that way for her.

By the way I lied earlier, not every episode of Dying Petals has a horse painting. In the Duchess route, during the final episode when Epiphany and Canary break up, they are cramped into the only corner of the room that doesn't have horses. I guess Michelle really did move on from Leslie. :)

[qoldenskies]

I was reading back through caged lungs and I realized just how many times Donnie got hit in the head during the last fight and how hard, no wonder Leo is concerned about brain damage.

Also, when Donnie goes to see April at the end of chapter 2, is he just dissociating really hard or is that an actual physical symptom from the…everything really!

not to mention the oxygen deprivation with raph throttling him! the last fight is so visceral and nasty and it was the final nail in the coffin when it came to donnie's issues physically and mentally, because although he would have been terrified of them regardless i dont think it wouldve been "inconsolable screaming heap at the sound of raph's voice" like it was in the early bit of CW.

and id mark that as dissociation personally. the second he registered as being in relative safety he kind of shut down because he wasn't able to process it, which had kind of been a running coping mechanism through the last month or so of CL. MIND YOU: IT IS NOT HELPED ALONG BY THE BRAIN FOG CAUSED BY HIS TIME IN ISOLATION, its a nasty concoction of problems. and also yeah physical exhaustion definitely doesnt help! he ran all the way to april's apartment while actively starving, after all.

although itll get better after [REDACTED PLOT THREAD] is handled, i think dissociation is gonna be something donnie will be dealing with for years, because spending four days in a quiet, enclosed dark space has some extremely messed up consequences for your brain and body. it was also in general something he used to cope under the abuse, so i could see him having issues with it when he's not in his right mind (sick or sleep-deprived, for example), i could see him regressing back to that old mindset when something like that happens. his perception of reality is permanently a little fucked :(

[frobby]

one of my favorite senarios to imagine to put yukio in is sending him 10 years into the future (with the exwires usually) and everyone from their class are like chill adults including himself working their boring ass exorcist job and hes trying to assert dominance over them as the teacher™ but they're all like bro why so serious?

[mugentakeda]

iroh azula antagonism is sooo important to me guys i cant ever read azula redemption fics cus none of them include their insane beef. its such a lonely world out here. can u even imagine how nuts it wouldve been if she found out abt the white lotus. i need to talk ab them dude

i like to imagine the trip back to the fn after ba sing se zuko didnt talk to iroh at all while he was in the brig because he was so in shock and still reeling that iroh outright betrayed him and his family and nation for the avatar. those three years iroh spent with zuko on the ship encouraging him meant what now? "why would he banish you if he didnt care" meant what now that you helped what would undo the banishment evade me?

and azula has never been above gloating, even over the most pathetic scum. so she makes sure to head to the brig the night they depart, her exhausted brother conked out in his quarters none the wiser, mai and ty lee flanking her. and even though the mission had been to capture the avatar dead or alive, theres something about looking down at her restrained uncle whod been working the whole time to get zuko (who has an unending list of faults but is loyal above all else and had been trying his hardest to fulfill the terms of his banishment even while being a wanted criminal to their nation- something she will not overlook) to betray their nation is somehow more satisfying by tenfold than looking down at a restrained avatar.

she knows just how hard iroh takes losing. he lost ba sing se and a son years ago, and here he has lost ba sing se and a son once more. or a boy his senile, trauma-riddled mind has convinced him is his son. her uncle bet against her father by trying to turn his son against him for whatever traitorous and foolish reasons he has and frankly shes just overjoyed to have him out of the way once and for all, because azula is a dragon just as much as iroh and she will always strive to protect her blood, because irohs the one who let zuko into that war room in the first place, because what right does he have to allow her foolish brother that couldnt keep his trap shut to save his life in a situation like that and then have the audacity to try and turn him against them when zuko even being in ba sing se (instead of working under azula along with mai and ty lee like he shouldve been) was all his fault in the first place? she hopes freeing zuko of him stings unlike anything else. she hopes if that sting manifested in reality it would take the shape of an ugly stamp right across his face and haunt him for the rest of his days in his self made prison.

and then iroh can say that zuko had no choice BUT to be loyal above all else because if he wasnt thats a death sentence from ozai. and then azula can say that thats wise of her father then because if that wasnt how it was then their whole family would be an infested nest of lying cowards like iroh. mustve been something her dad learned from his dear old brother. and what can iroh even say to that

[tea-cat-arts]

"Madam Yu would be a Karen/ treat minimum wage employees like shit-" literally the only servant she's shown abusing is Wei Wuxian (and that's because he's the victim of a proxy war between her and Jiang Fengmian around the idea of him being adopted into the family, not because of his class). Madam Yu's two handmaid's love and respect her, and Madam Yu actually defends them when Wang Lingjiao tries being a Karen to them. She also tells Wang Lingjiao to fuck off when she demands the Jiang servants bring her tea.

Also, Karens are unpleasant women, but not all unpleasant women are Karens. That term is about entitlement and being unreasonable (and often times, racist). Madam Yu is mean and unpleasant to talk to, but she keeps most of her interactions brief and probably doesn't have the time or mental energy to be a Karen or hold a grudge that long. If you want an actual example of a Karen in mdzs, Wang Lingjiao is right there

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

hey so uh about your boyfriend. yeah i accidentally whumped him too hard and he regenerated. sorry

[sofiaruelle]

So....our Dressmaking Batch 97 got to participate in a pagent, Mr & Ms Technowear 2024 for TIIC (Technical Institute of Iloilo City)'s 30th Foundation day.

✨And we got to do 2 lewks, Streetwear and Technowear.✨

While trying to figure out what we were going to do, we raided the fitting room (stockroom) and found a whole bunch of Retazo (hiliganon for scrapped fabric) from previous projects of batches before us. And it just so happens we were asigned the color 💚Green💚 for our team. Green = Nature = lots of fabric flowers. And to make it easier for us, we raided our closets and a few thrift stores for garments to upcycle and ofc every crafter has a few knickknacks to embellish with!!!!

[fadetouchedsilk]

i don't have any real negative opinions on the decision to cut the party size from 4 to 3, but i will say that something i've noticed after completing the game & watching other people go through it is that a lot of the companion's character development seems to be tied to the party banters in a way it wasn't necessarily done before?

which is, in theory, fine--i think we're being encouraged to try as many party combinations as possible since worrying about balance isn't inherently as much of a thing. plus, we've always had some information that could only be uncovered via banters, so it's not entirely a new thing either.

but then we run into this interesting situation where it's really easy to miss information about them if we don't do that. previously, i didn't feel like i was potentially missing out on character information if i didn't constantly switch up my party & you would also just naturally get more variety by having 3 of them out with you instead of 2 anyway.

like i didn't realize i had never taken bellara & davrin out at the same time, but because of that i missed their entire exchange about his past and his clan. previously i feel like we could at least uncover some of this information via dialogue wheels at our home base (the ones at skyhold were pretty comprehensive & would give you more branches after completing main story quests or companion quests), but now that mechanic just doesn't seem to exist anymore.

it's like an extension of the way we get to eavesdrop of their conversations between each other at the lighthouse, but we're not allowed to participate. like yes, i do enjoy that they get to speak with each other & aren't locked in one location just waiting for us to engage with them, but i don't love the fact that my character--who is supposed to be the leader & forming bonds with everyone--effectively has to learn about people through the metaphorical grapevine (for lack of a better phrase)

the cutscenes we get are nice, but idk. it would be nice to feel like i'm allowed to participate with the social aspects of the team beyond seeing the occasional '!' over their icon on the map.

[skunkes]