#this is probably the last one I'll do.
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Lanturn :)
#my art#pokemon#Lanturn#this is probably the last one I'll do.#It stopped being fun the moment I rebranded.#People insisting it 'wasn't poorly drawn' has affected me worse than me calling it poorly drawn lmao#[Poorly Drawn Pokedex]
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WAIT when did he get FANGS
#art#twisted wonderland#twisted wonderland spoilers#brushie brushie#i thought i was imagining it but i have compared screenshots and it is true#they gave him a bunch of new animations and just decided to throw some fangs in there too!#unless this is an earlier thing i just missed because i don't pay attention (very possible)#anyway i decided to do one last ten-pull and THERE HE WAS#and his personal story is SO unexpectedly cute oh my gosh#at any given moment crewel is thinking about how much he misses his dog(s)#it is CANON#canon like the fangs (why) (i'm not complaining i just want to KNOW)#get you a fandom where they randomly and with no explanation give a character fangs I GUESS#anyway thank you sensei for validating the mountain of keys i threw into the void for you#i'd assumed he'd duo with grim so it is unfortunate that it turned out to be with a card i don't have and will probably never get 🙃#but it is VERY funny actually that he duos with crowley so i'll forgive him#the only funnier character would be jack#OR NO WAIT actually leona#'which character would be the funniest to --' the answer is always. ALWAYS. leona
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Special Agent Fox "I do not gaze at Scully" Mulder ⤷ [1/13] ✧ Season One
#lol what do we think of this#em.txf#the x files#xfilesedit#txfedit#msr#msredit#dailytxf#userairi#useremsi#singinprincess#usergabriella#useralien#usergeorgette#crimeshowsource#my gifs#msr gaze#it might get redundant but i'll probably put the first gif for each iteration#so that they work as standalone sets too#alsO THE LAST ONE#fox mulder#dana scully#I HAVE MANY MANY THOUGHTS FKJDAKL;FJA;#previously katebeckets
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#was looking for some fics with these two#I imagine this is one of their first interactions and Hunter is already fed up with Darius#but Darius is just trying to get to know the successor of his mentor and check if he's at least a little bit capable of doing his job#he's also a little weirded out by the similarity between these two#basically I imagine Darius gave him a couple of vibe checks that Hunter had failed#and Hunter takes it as questoning his place in the coven#god darius design is so pink and awful#it's so jover uni starts tommorow#it's like the most boring drawing ever but I'm just still in my I have to get better at backgrounds era#and also if I'll draw 100 awful things I get a decent one eventually#it's like inktober but lasts your whole life and devours your soul in the process#no caption just pure tags now I understand those few people who keep reblogging all my tags cuz I give all the fucking context there#there's probably like 10 things I would spot tommorow that would fix the drawing a whole bunch but I just ...don't want to ig#the owl house#sheerak#the golden guard#darius deamonne#hunter toh#toh hunter#hunter deamonne#toh fanart#the owl house fanart#dadrius#not yet but#you guys most fellow toh fanartists moved on and fanart fiona and cake but I keep brainrotting the same stuff over and over#good old toh trashpile
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So.
Act 5, huh?
Oh, and that.
"You can start breakdown now."
Finished the game couple of days ago and had some thoughts I needed to process a little. Like. Yes.
So anyway I actually didn't plan this and just wanted to redraw some sprites to just make sure I understand how to draw Siffrin correctly (still working on that!)
What did I learn from this? How fun it it to draw on a canvas that literally doesn't let you draw with colors without some layer cheating when necessary. Never tried it.
The beans. Sleeping beans.
Basically what happens when you want to sleep AND draw. Draw characters sleeping on your behalf.
Doesn't help, but at least it's cute.
I have no idea what was going on in my mind as I drew this. Feels like a fever dream of 'I want to sleep' at 4 am and 'Hm...' of thinking random things
Also that phone craft sign. Still too funny to imagine. I had to.
#fanart#sketch#my art#isat spoilers#isat#siffrin#siffrin isat#isat loop#in stars and time#I also tried to draw the Party too! But that one sketch is too rough yet!#And I'll probably never post it it was fun to draw them tho#Anyway I had /thoughts/ playing Act 5#Not great ones too! I would rather they stayed where I would never even know they exist#But I had to while playing so I did#So it took some time to just sit with everything also I spend a lot of time just doing achievements#One left! The annoying one.#NG+ is fun too#I'm still surprised by how much I enjoyed it#Like 'staying until 6 am playing 10 hours straight' kind of enjoyed#From 'hm I wonder what's it about' to 'yeah I cried multiple times so I think it's allowed to live in my head too'#I got sick multiple times on related and unrelated reasons while playing and planning to play that wasn't fun#Anyway it's cool have some sketches because I couldn't stop drawing last night#I love drawing characters being emotionally in pain but that requires specific mood and music to go with#And not overdoing it#Like when drawing first one 'Aishite' was on loop the whole time#It's b&w too! Red layers are added with 'paste' magic love that
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daechwita
#agust d#min yoongi#bts#suga#bts suga#bangtan#bangtan sonyeondan#bts gifs#my gifs#he's so fucking hot jesus fucking christ#👍👎#accidental reaction gifs lol#last set from this mv i think#i'm ready to move on and this is probably my favorite set from the whole series#i think i'm gonna go back to bs&t#there's some stuff i still wanna do with that one#then i'll probably do haegeum#the probably some fan cams and then probably amygdala#probably do some BU yoonkook stuff at some point too#just as a like tentative schedule lmao
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birthday boy 🎂
#river dipping#theodore doe#matthias evanoff#a burning house to live in#echthroi#ts4#ts4 edit#simblr#ts4 screenshots#theo i hope you're having the most insane birthday sex rn i hope it's ******** and ***** and ***'** **** *** **** ***** :)<3#sorry i put off making your birthday edit for so long that i had to pivot and post this edit instead of the one i wanted </3#...very funny how similar this is to that LAST render i posted... well so WHAT!! if i think matthias looming is sexy!!#this is based on a photo that everyone was drawing their ocs as so really it's not MY fault he's back there clinging and being a freak#actually if y'all want this pose lmk... i'll share it but fyi it's only meant to be seen from the waist up and idk how it'd look#on a sim that doesn't have the same muscle mass and like. bulk. that matthias has......................................#just got rock hard after typing that... anyway.#HAPPY BIRTHDAY THEO <333333333 LOVE YOU SO MUCH I PROMISE I'M GONNA KEEP WORKING ON THE //ACTUAL// BIRTHDAY EDIT!! like .#posted abt this on the sideblog but the real edit i have planned for him is making me lose my fucking gourd#and it'll probably take me :))) a few more days to figure out#expect a depressing theo-as-a-teenager edit eventually tho. with writing!! accompanying it!!#matthias's face has changed again btw 😭 i redid it almost immediately after i posted that first render attempt so he looks DIFFERENT!!#i posted screenshots of him in cas just the other day on my other acc and he looks so good in them i might post them here too#oh and!! this edit looks massively different than my last because this screenshot was taken with a new preset i made specifically for#the real birthday edit i'm working on... it's a hallway scene so i figured out depth and density to get this really cool fog effect#i'm really excited for it!! in my head the way it looks makes me crazy but idk if i can pull it off properly. but like i WAS SAYING!!#new preset is sooo sexy after i post this i'll reblog with the before and after to show you how good it looks even w/o any editing#like. the colors....... literally have always wanted a preset like this i'm so glad i spent yesterday fucking around with it#ALSO!! i've been doing those oc/ship dynamic templates for fun recently so i might post a few of them here soon#realize i'm rambling so much in these tags bc i haven't been here in forever kfjnkfjhn ummmmm. let me stop.#EVERYONE WISH THEO HAPPY BIRTHDAY RIGHT NOW 🫵‼
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So i remember an ask mentioning your mortal enemy, Felis Atra and their cats, and i thought it'd be fun to draw what Felis Atra's version of your italian dogs would be.
I think they would be called Butter Knife and Flamengo! Butter Knife is not his real name, it's an nickname given by his peers because of how harmless he is. I choose Flamengo because that's the name of Vasco's rival football team here in Brazil, so i thought that was the perfect name :)
Cat Machete was slightly inspired by the Oriental Shorthair cat because of their long noses and thin head shape.
Cat Vasco was inspired by the Scottish Fold cat, because FLOPPY EARS. I gave Flamengo longer ears and orange fur to make him more like his look-alike.
The last doodle is a reference to this ask (https://canisalbus.tumblr.com/post/728923918314946560/me-i-am-machete-ear-fan-number-1-those-ears) and contains the tumblr ask stand-in dog, whose cat version was inspired by the American Curl cat! They have round ears that are slightly floppy outwards.
Final notes: I know cardinal clothes don't come in vibrant blue, but i was ADAMANT on switching Machete's and Vasco's clothing color patterns. I would draw the rest of Butter Knife's and Flamengo's clothes, but i suck at designing cool outfits.
Speaking of outfits, for Machete's iconic void outfit, i figured it would be fun to make it more baggy for Butter Knife, in contrast to Machete's, that looks very tight-fitted. I think it's cute, it kinda looks like a sweater. Also i can't imagine a Machete doppelganger without high heels boots, so those HAD to stay.
Oh, and just to be clear, i'm not like, claiming ownership of these guys or anything. I just thought it would be a fun exercise. Hope you like them!! I love your art and your characters.
.
#imagine if Vaschete but CATS and REVERSED -> Butter knife ;_; and Flamengo <3#this ask is from last year and I'm sorry I've allowed it sit in my inbox for so long ´m`#but I've been thinking about it intermittedly#the context was that someone said that somewhere out there existed my mortal enemy (felis atra = black/dark cat)#and they had frenzied cat ocs instead of melancholic dogs#first of all they both look so darling I'm getting radiation poisoning just from looking at them aaaaaa#and the fact you put so much thought and effort into this concept is making me go absolutely rabid#extremely strange seeing Machete with big pupils and Vasco with tiny pinpoints#Butter knife purring like a fluffy jackhammer is instant serotonin I love him#and yes if you turned Machete to a cat he'd probably be something resembling an oriental shorthair#especially one of those really exaggerated ones with giant bat ears and roman nose#and I keep visualizing Vasco as a scottish fold as well but it's kind of giving me sad bad feels personally#I can't look past their painful and debilitating health issues#the same mutation that causes the floppy ears also destroys the cartilage in their joints#it's such a shame because they're a terribly cute and charming breed#and in this case they really do have those similar rounded friendly shapes that Vasco does#if I ever draw them as cats myself I'll probably have to think of some other breed for him even though it would be such a perfect fit#also I think it's funny how you can swap everything else but Machete's heels have to stay :'> don't separate the crinkle and his boots#thank you so much! this was such a cool ask to receive I love how you designed their cat forms#gift art#dingergum#Machete#Vasco#own characters#Vaschete scenarios
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children are like cats
#bg3#bg3 spoilers#baldur's gate 3#the dark urge#dark urge#durge#dragonborn#orin#orin the red#bhaal#///first time drawing the fucko gfjhsdg#his outfit is silly#also orin's silly crab suit is hell actually#ANYWAY this is the last one for tonight hfjksdh#my wrist is DYING#hope nya'll enjoyed these silly durge doodles I'll probably do more jdgsdh#they're fun XD
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I've been with [Joe] for a long time now and I ain't never seen him fall off, feel sluggish about himself you know? I don't know if he does but I always pick him up too, doesn't matter if he's seeing it or not, I'm picking him up, he's picking me up...
x
#FASCINATED by the 'doesn't matter if he's seeing it or not' statement here#does he mean it doesn't matter if joe is actually feeling down on himself or not?#ja'marr will always be around to pick him up just in case he does?#(which goes back to a lovely conversation i had with annie about how much ja'marr may or may not really understand joe!)#like ja'marr is always observing joe and trying to take care of him. and there are moments where he's like#'yeah he probably needs picking up now! but who knows! i'll do it anyway!'#(and he's probably right!)#OR does he mean 'doesn't matter if he is noticing my efforts of trying to take care of him'#'i'm taking care of him for his sake and i don't care if he notices'#which also makes me feel MANY things#and then of course stating that joe is always picking him up too <3 <3#joe may not be the easiest to read but he's reading everyone else#especially ja'marr#and he knows ja'marr's been struggling and he's been there for him too!#(which is why he was the FIRST to get to ja'marr last sunday during the Incident. no one else even tried!)#anyway! boy oh boy lot's of feelings about this#also the automatic agreement of 'he's an interestingly intense cat' lmao#ja'marr chase#joe burrow#joe'marr
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I’m literally drooling over the thought of sensitive Bucky whimpering and whining while fucking your tits and thighs he’s so pathetic and needy all he wants is to make you feel good and to fill you with his cum even if it overstimulates him
Okay, tit fucking is great and all but thigh fucking is SO underrated in my humble opinion. Could just be the fact I've got a small chest though lmao
It's so fun when you're already really into it and the insides of your thighs are all slick. I feel like Bucky would lose it, getting to see your face and look in your eyes and enjoy your body.
It's a nice one to do while laid on your side, facing each other. Although the angle isn't quite right for him to slip inside you, it's fun to explore the other ways your bodies can steal pleasure from one another.
"This isn't going to work, sweetheart." You can't help but laugh, having already tried everything you can think of to make the height difference work. There's no way to keep this romantic and intimate in that position because there's just no chance of aligning your bodies properly to allow him to press inside you.
"Maybe not. But it feels nice anyway." His eyes flutter shut, gliding his dick over the smooth, soft, warm insides of your thighs, encouraged by how slick and easy your arousal makes the movement.
You adjust yourself to bring your other thigh on top of his length, closing him in on both sides.
You're wet enough that friction doesn't impede his movement too much and there's something oddly romantic about it. Maybe it's his hand smoothing the back of your head or his other hand up your back, pulling your body closer to his.
It's so intimate, watching his face as he whines your name, rutting senselessly against your thighs. The little flush to his cheeks is beautiful and you can't resist kissing the thin sheen of sweat on his forehead. The thick duvet on top of you both, coupled with your combined body heat means the room is far hotter than you'd planned.
You take a second to reach between your bodies, spreading your wet folds and readjusting his length, letting him drag his cock against your neglected clit with each stroke and oh, that's pretty mind-blowing.
"O-oh my God." He whines, desperately fucking himself against your wet cunt, rather than into it. It's a different kind of pleasure to being inside you and while they're not comparable sensations, it doesn't stop this from feeling fantastic.
"Fuck, that's good." You groan, rolling your hips to meet his. Your fingers dip between you once more, gathering some of your slick arousal, using it to glide your fingertips over the underside of his shaft and over his balls.
"Holy shit, that's - fuck." Bucky's hardly got a coherent thought left in his head. He's closed in on both sides by your wet, soft thighs and now your fingers are giving him a different sensation underneath while pressing him against your soaked sex.
"I know, baby. Feels good, doesn't it?" Your fingertips trail lightly back and forth over the underside of his shaft, focusing on the inch or so beneath the tip.
"I can't... I need to cum." He groans, thrusting frantically, clinging to your body to keep you close. Within a few seconds, you feel his dick pulse under your fingertips, his cum coating the inside of your thighs in hot, thick, messy spurts.
He doesn't waste a second, kissing your forehead before kissing your neck and whispering "Good girl. Now let me watch you get yourself off with my cum on your fingertips."
#asks answered <3#becca writes spice#anon#needy!bucky#Bucky Barnes x reader smut#bucky barnes smut#sub!bucky#was this one something I've been fortunate enough to try? Absolutely.#and has it bounced around in my head ever since?? yep#I've got so many 💦sports asks#and I've been really hesitant to answer them bc I have people I know irl on here now#but honestly if my interests so far haven't freaked you out#those probably won't either#I made the best overnight oats last night I've been thinking about them all day#white chocolate chunks with raspberries and peanut butter#with oat milk#and I'm using that to distract me from the fact I'm locked out of my work emails and I can't do my Sunday evening email clear up#it's freaking me out that I can't get into them#that'll mean I have so much to do tomorrow morning#I'll probably lose my hour home on the train tomorrow trying to catch up#I love my hour to work and my hour home from work on the train#that's my me time#where I read my silly little book and chill
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I think I'm going to make a temperature blanket this year
#generally people would plan for this earlier. but. I only JUST thought of it last night#I'm considering like a mood blanket / mental health blanket or whatev instead. one of those alternate concepts#but I FEEL LIKE categorizing my mood / mental health day by day would do something to me#and I don't really want to tell on myself that hard. showing off the finished blanket and ppl going oohh... there's a lot of this color!#what mood are these two colors for!#and i'm gonna have to crumple up my color key chart and eat it before they can find out#idk maybe I'll still try that way. but temperature just feels more like. yeaahahhhhh go with the flow buddy#I bought a ton of yarn recently bc there was a black friday sale and I was grabbin skeins for $2 so I shouldn't really need to do shopping#maybe pick up another color or two. but I can probably just bust out my own stash I already have#sergle.txt#crochetposting
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Digging Graves for your Morals; Or, The Ethical Problem of Outlawry
Hello, yes, I am here again. This one is shorter, I swear (it’s under four thousand words, even). If this is the first post from me you’re seeing, this is a follow-up to my prior essay posted here on the game The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, although it should be able to mostly stand alone.
At the end of my last essay, I touched on both the game’s nearly uncompromising moral scepticism and relativity, but I didn’t really dig into it. I outlined that the game only textually frames actions as ‘morally bad’ in the context of a morality set by the society and the world that has treated them as no better than farm animals raised for the slaughter. Well, I have a lot to say on the topic of ethics on the topic of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, so buckle in, this one’s going to talk about the social contract, moral scepticism and everyone’s favourite topic: Mrs. Graves.
As usual, this was originally posted and formatted for on Sufficient Velocity and you can perhaps more easily read it there. Spoilers abound, and my content warning from last time still applies.
She’s not too hot on either ethics or her mother
The Meat of the Matter
Since a lot of this is optional or otherwise missable information, let’s review the premise the game gives us. If you’re already aware of all of this, I apologise, it won’t take long.
First off the bat, the quarantine at the start of the game was a hoax-driven money-making scheme of which you can pick up more-or-less all the relevant details of. This is entirely missable and by the time it’s possible to discover, our protagonists have better things to dwell on and have dialogue about, so I’ll give you a summary of what you can deduce from reading the notes and thinking about it.
The quarantine is an organ harvesting operation, as per some documents you can discover in the wardens’ office. They entrap the residents, test their blood types and starve to death those they deem surplus to requirements — alternatively the starvation itself could be their method of ‘preparing the harvest’, there’s evidence in both directions and it hardly matters — harvesting the organs of the others for sale. As our protagonists are AB-typed, the ‘universal recipient’ or ‘most selfish blood type’, they’re some of the first on the chopping block.
If you read through the newspapers and the documents in Mr. Washing Machine’s car, you can discover that ultimately ToxiSoda are responsible, and a similar thing is happening in a different city under the guise of a ‘chemical leak’. Should you further investigate matters, you will find mentions of the ‘man behind it all’, the doctor, or the Surgeon, as the fandom have been referring to him — you may recall Mrs. Graves mentioned someone similar! Yeah, he’s the guy who runs ToxiSoda, who are themselves partners with the water company that faked the parasite outbreak in the first place.
It’s all a life insurance scam, apparently
How much the details of the operation matter is something open to interpretation — it might just be something for players to figure out and Episode 3 will not cover the Surgeon at all, or he might play a major part; it's not particularly relevant to this essay. What matters is that it happened at all — indeed, it’s fairly easy to justify Ashley and Andrew in everything they did in Episode 1 (flashbacks aside), arguing that if they’d made any other decisions they’d have died — an argument that the victims dug their own graves, even if the Graves siblings put them in them. How correct that is is a matter of debate, but that you can make the argument at all matters, and we’ll be returning to this later. In my last essay (and again in the introduction here), I made an analogy to farm animals, raised without love and for slaughter. Let’s put a pin in the ‘for slaughter’ part for now and take a look at the ‘without love’ part.
That’s right, it’s time to meet the parents.
As Andrew notes, there are significantly more compelling reasons for you to say that
They Fuck You Up, Your Mum & Dad
They really do.
Our charming protagonists are, as with many things depicted in this game, an exaggerated, almost farcical example of this phenomenon — one that’s just grounded enough to still feel very real, just like the siblings themselves.
The late and lamentable Mrs. Graves is just the same: originally a teen mother, hopelessly out of depth with two difficult children — even if one was good at masking it — and an unreliable, emotionally unavailable (at least to their children) partner who can’t hold down a job, ends up foisting them off on each other and doing a Parental Negligence because she simply Cannot Cope. That’s the real part. The part where she gets paid off by an organ harvesting operation to leave them to die, that’s the borderline-farcical exaggeration that throws all the nooks and crannies of her character into sharp relief.
Mrs. Graves does not have a good relationship with either of her kids. Having self-admittedly fobbed the job of raising Ashley off on her son, to the degree that they did not even celebrate her birthday as kids, both of them hold differing degrees and types of resentment for her.
For Ashley, it’s hate — perhaps not quite so clear cut as that, as it’s her that calls for the eulogy and she shows some potential signs of discomfort while cleaning up her parents’ corpses, but by and large, it’s fairly simple and straightforward, as usual for Ashley. The sentiment is not exactly unreturned, either.
This brings Ashley’s heart great delight!
The most clear incident raising her from everyday ‘neglectful’ to ‘wow she wanted nothing to do with this kid’ is the optional ‘birthday cake’ scene, obtained by finding the present in Ashley’s first ‘transitory world’ dream, in which we see Ashley’s birthday and the founding of a lemon cupcake tradition between Leyley and Andy. She has received nothing from her family, notes that her ‘friends’ would say they were busy before she even told them the schedule and Andy takes her out to buy cupcakes with his pocket money.
This scene gets a callback in Andrew’s dream later. Just remember to Ask Nicely, rather than Kill Her.
Parents of the year, everyone.
So with Ashley it’s as straightforward and obvious as she herself is — she hates her mother, her mother hates her. With Andrew, as with Andrew himself, it’s a fair bit more complicated. His mother is a much more nuanced figure, who is believable in her role as an unfortunate teen parent who was trying her best. He has a degree of trust in her against, seemingly, his own good judgment In her conversation with Andrew, she acknowledges her fault in raising him and seemingly sincerely tries to offer him a ‘way out’, an olive branch.
I think many people have had relationships where they might say this
This scene in particular intrigues me, because she is acknowledging fault in a way that Andrew strictly avoids doing — and well, there’s nothing Andrew likes more than a good way to avoid acknowledging any fault of his own. With her dominant relationship over their father as a model for Andrew to draw comparisons to his own relationship with Ashley with, it’s no surprise that the narrative resonates with him to the point of ‘Accept’ being many people’s first completion.
Of course, that’s not all there is to it. There is a fascinating contrast with her later conversation with Ashley, where she — despite accusing Ashley of brainwashing Andrew — refers to Leyley and Andy as ‘two psychos’ and states that she always knew they were responsible for Nina’s death and that, implicitly, they owe her for not turning them in.
There's something about mother-daughter relationships here that I just do not have the time or reading to dig into, unfortunately.
Meanwhile, when Andrew interrogates her on her possession of their death certificates, she has… an interesting, plausible story about a life insurance scam and claims that she really did think they died in the fire, implicitly denying the claim that she sold them. It’s entirely possible that she’s describing the details of the ‘scam’ correctly — you can even buy that she genuinely does care for Andrew in some way, if not Ashley, but her claim about being an honest, grieving parent shocked at their deaths… doesn’t add up?
This is a very normal reaction to your supposedly dead children showing up in your house.
As Andrew himself notes after hearing her story, she’s full of shit. This gets into speculation, because there are a few ways to read this, but the most plausible ‘gist’ is that she and her partner were paid off in money and jobs to not raise a fuss — the surgeon she mentioned is almost certainly the founder of ToxiSoda, remember?
The overwhelming difference in presentation between how she speaks to Andrew and Ashley invites investigation — and when Andrew turns down her offer and tells her he isn’t interested in her offer in Decline, her reaction isn’t… despair, it’s shock — and well, there’s a good reason for that.
Why do you think she did it in the first place?
This is the happiest we see her
Well — it’s so she can finally fit into society. That white picket fence, that idyllic 1950s life — hell you can call it the American Dream. She wants that, or as close to it as she can get — the working-class teen mother, living in poverty, aspiring to the middle-class. It’s a very common, very real and very grounded motivation.
And to that end, she effectively sold off her children. It’s no wonder she can’t fathom why Andrew wouldn’t choose the same.
That’s the part that makes you think — just like the deaths in Episode 1, well- maybe the siblings are justified here, too. It’s a weaker argument, but it’s still one you can make under many common moral paradigms today — what goes around comes around, all that jazz. Just look at how awful she was to Ashley.
She’s finally found what she’s been striving for.
Here’s the thing, here’s the thing though — what, reasonably, could she have done? Andrew and Ashley briefly highlight this in conversation about Ashley’s ‘friends’ in Episode 1 — was she supposed to fight gunmen to try and break them out? Throw food to the balcony from four stories?
Moreover, as she herself says to Andrew… would anyone really have been able to do better than her in her position? She was seventeen when Ashley was born, living in poverty with a partner who couldn’t even remember Andrew’s name when he was a kid. Anyone would have had difficulty, let alone with these kids.
Her evils are — they’re not any deliberate action, but rather… prompted inaction. She didn’t have the emotional energy, resources or plain capability to properly parent her children, she didn’t have any solutions to their murder of Nina in a state so blatantly hostile to its underclass, she didn’t have a way to connect with Ashley and she took the money rather than fight a futile and likely suicidal battle against a corporation and its armed goons in a dystopian setting.
Ashley, notably, does not deny this.
Her sin is the one we’re all, I think, guilty of — that of not trying hard enough, that of inaction in the face of difficult tasks, of not standing up on principle because it’s just too much that day and you don’t have the spoons, you’ll do it tomorrow (no you won’t). It’s a petty, everyday kind of evil — that of not doing enough.
Is that enough to condemn her? Certainly, there’s a pretty manipulative read of her that likely has some truth to it — in the locked door in Ashley’s dream in ‘Decay’ you can discover that she has a ‘not-hatched’ tar soul — but consider that lens — the game won’t make up your mind for you, so you’ll need to choose that for yourself.
The dad is interesting in terms of negative space — but he’s mostly important in that he doesn’t matter, so I decided to not fit him in here. He has art, though — just no sprite, because, well, he’s never mattered to either sibling.
The Contract We Call Society
Right, it’s time to get a little bit Theoretical in here. Not much, but a little. Social contract theory is a complex topic with a lot of nuance, much of which I will be eliding in the name of not writing a twenty thousand word paper on semiotics, law, and anthropology, but the short analogy is… the idea that as long as you play by society’s rules, as long as you are a good citizen, a good person, the state, or the community, will take care of you.
In a number of ways, the harshest penalty levied by many historical states and legal codes was not death, but rather the criminal status of outlawry, a practice that’s cropped up a number of times in history — the practice of no longer being protected by the law. This meant one could be killed or worse with impunity — you were no longer protected by mob justice and, while overexaggerated as a term of reference, certain texts from Medieval England refer to outlaws as bearing a wolfshead, ‘for the wolf is a beast hated by all folk’. Never minding that wolves are actually delightful, this was a time when wolves were actively hunted and sold by people — and the same was intended to happen to outlaws. They were ‘fair targets’ as far as society was concerned, no longer to be treated as your fellow citizens.
This was the gravest punishment on the books, for most of these legal codes — something saved for those who had broken the social contract so completely that there could be no turning back (civil outlawry is… a bit different, that’s not the topic here). Among others, a modern critique of the concept is that it offers no incentive for improvement, no incentive to change or to cease harming society — if an outlaw has none of the social contract’s protections, what reason do they have to obey… any of the social contract? If that seems familiar, well, let me ask you this:
What if the state or community fails its end first? What responsibility does the innocent outlaw have to that contract?
It’s an interesting phrasing, that the world is better off.
It’s time to talk about the incest, and part of why it’s there. The cannibalism too, but that’s less impactful here. If you’ve seen me elsewhere, you might have seen me say that the incest is a load-bearing narrative pillar — in large part due to it being a critical facet of the siblings’ relationship, but in another large part due to it being an equally critical part of how the game uses taboo.
A taboo is in this context something that is considered repulsive and to be avoided by society. It’s a more complex term than that — you can also use it for certain sacred actions or utterances that are only permitted to certain people, for example — but that’s what it is here. Swearing, premarital sex, BDSM and murder are, approximately from weak to strong, some example taboos held in modern Anglospheric society.
Strong taboos are a staple of horror — they shock, they disgust, they draw people’s attention and it’s that last one that’s critical here. Incest is a very strong taboo — while I am absolutely not segueing into its historical context, the very well-established Westermarck effect gives it a certain timelessness and immunity to desensitisation that most other taboos don’t have — murder, to contrast, is a taboo we’re largely desensitised to in modern media and works of modern media have to put in actual work to make a murder seem horrifying — through atmosphere, cinematography, evocative prose etc.
And this is important because the use of taboo I’m covering in this essay is that the incest is used to invite judgment — it is so ingrained as a ‘wrong thing’ in people’s brains almost regardless of background that it forces the player to engage with the work morally. And that’s where the fun starts.
I’ve mentioned before, very briefly, about the juxtaposition of tone between the Burial & Decay endings, contrasting with the very monstrous difference in morality. Burial is remarkably light-hearted — they play around with the drain blockage, they joke about their mother’s personality and this is further exaggerated on the Love path, where Andrew is much more comfortable with casual contact and the two make a game out of how far they can throw their parents’ skulls, the humour is directly contrasted against their abhorrent actions.
I’ll be real Ashley is far more merciful than I, I’m shuddering at the thought of that gunk in my hair
In comparison, Decay is… bleak. I’ve seen it being referred to as being ‘emotionally sandblasted’ and, yeah I think that’s fair — it’s uncomfortable, it’s heavy and it’s just not fun. And this is the route in which, if you chose Trust into Accept, Andrew has bought into the narrative that his mother’s offered — that he can fit just fine into society if he wasn’t stuck, if not for Ashley — the route that ‘fits’ most closely to the social contract, to Andrew feeling the guilt that we think he should and hating the monsters that they’ve become, as the social contract deems them. Given the pains the game takes to attach the player to the protagonists, this normative moral ending is very easily interpreted as the bad ending.
And well, isn’t it?
Thing is, as mentioned above, the social contract has never held up its end for them. The game takes careful pains to point out to a viewer that they’ve never had the life that society promises people, so why do its moral standards apply?
The game invites you to judge the characters, and in the same motion, asks you from what principles you judge them, making a pretty good guess in that, like most people who haven’t spent a large amount of time navel-gazing and reading some very boring books by very dusty old men, they come from the society around you.
Love even has Ashley express this sentiment directly after the incestuous dream — she asks you — well, Andrew, but this is also something for the player to mull over — why this is what’s engaged your morality or sense of revulsion, rather than the desecration, cannibalism or murder.
Andrew and Ashley are both very funny and very fascinating in this scene.
And that’s the framing that it casts all of its own moral judgement in — even the ‘tar-soul’ aspect is… well, it’s unclear what it even means. Mrs. Graves was a ‘not-hatched’ tar soul, after all. Other than that, it’s society and the world being better off without them, rather than any kind of assertion of objective morality. Due to the present of ‘soul colour’, we’ll presumably see the game make some moral statements in Episode 3, but as it stands?
It’s nearly completely morally sceptical, in and of itself — it’s not interested in moral assertions or education, it’s interested in making you question your own morals. Deconstructive (not that kind), rather than dialectic, to be mildly pretentious.
It uses taboo and shock to invite moral judgement, but then uses tone, charm and our instinct to look for the happiest end for our blorbos to get you to recognise that these are principles you yourself brought into the game, rather than any it’s handed you.
To summarise: you’ve brought these principles in from society, but what do the siblings, the protagonists, the villains to the world, owe society? Enough that they should follow them? It failed them first, after all.
Closing Thoughts
This one is a bit less energetic than the last, tragically — my sleeping schedule is the stuff of nightmares recently, I love windy weather. Wait, no the opposite. Huge thank you to everyone who commented on the last one, you are the wind beneath my wings and the main reason I managed to get this out this week.
This essay is a bit more interpretative than my last one — certainly, there are alternative readings and I’ve been toying with the idea of deliberately taking a reading I don’t like very much and writing from that perspective as a demonstrative exercise recently — mostly that you shouldn’t just take my word for things!
Otherwise, if the last bit at the end seemed murky, I apologise — I did try to write a more detailed version, but firstly, it was three thousand words and secondly, I re-read it the next day and I could not understand what the fuck I was talking about. Personally, I blame Derrida — suffice to say that I strongly recommend playing through it with an eye towards considering culpability, morality and why you think certain characters are more or less forgivable than others, and for what deeds. See what you get out of it.
I managed to keep one particular thread open to wrap up with here — I try to keep speculation on Episode 3 content to a minimum in the main essays, but it should be fine here — you might have noticed that I refer to Episode 1 and Episode 2 being on something of a spectrum of justifiability, with the siblings’ actions being ‘more’ justifiable in Episode 1 and ‘less’ justifiable — but still justifiable if you try — in Episode 2.
To continue the thought of the happiest ending being the one in which they step the furthest away from common morality and to further jar the viewers’ sense of morality by contrasting societal morality and blorbo-oriented morality, Episode 3: Burial could continue this trend in having a major victim be someone who, well, has done nothing wrong and isn’t even guilty of bystander syndrome.
I wonder if there’s any good candidates, someone who’s sweet, harmless and will indisputably be an innocent victim…
…I’m sure she’ll be fine
#the coffin of andy and leyley#tcoaal#analysis#essay#ashley graves#andrew graves#mrs graves#nnnnot sure what the next topic will be#might do a deranged take on purpose#this one and the last one have been very grounded#I'll get to my asks tomorrow#probably#I've been busy sorry
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hhheyyyy so !!!!!! ( it's probably SO late already but my brain just didn't want to cooperate i'm sorry
thank you sssssoooo much to @metamorphmigus and @cherry-207 for helping with the list ! the prompts you guys suggested were SSSOOO HELPFUL !
vargas belongs to @zarla-s
#vargastober#vargastober 2024#vargas#vargas zarla#zarla s#HOLY SHIT I FINISHED THIS THING . I CAN AND WILL DIE#i'm not doing anything rn . in general . I SHOULD BE ABLE TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS UNLIKE LAST YEAR#i'll make a huuuge post talking about this on my side acc#( the side account is @scyphosunny btw#i'm so late to this . i know i am and i'm SORRY#still i'll probably be the only one participating anyway
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CHARLIE MAGNE from HAZBIN HOTEL (2019): Pilot - "That's Entertainment" ↳ "So, I've been thinking: Isn't there a more humane way to hinder overpopulation here in Hell? Perhaps we can create an alternative way to change souls through... redemption?"
#hazbin hotel#hazbin hotel edit#hazbin charlie#charlie magne#hazbin edit#requested#hazbin hotel pilot#that's entertainment#charlie#my gifs#god ain't she the cutest little thing!#not gonna lie i get a bit emotional seeing her do The Pose during ''wonderful fantastic new hotel''#it's the same pose she does in the S1 poster :')#okay actually im back here to say some things in the tags:#holy almighty LORD these gave me so much grief to color in a way i thought looked nice#specifically the one of her in the news chair. sorry i was NOT gonna let that hideous highlighter green color assault all your eyeballs.#did i lose nearly two hours of sleep getting it right because i still have no idea what i'm doing? yes. worth it? YES. ohh yes.#i liked the seafoam look so i made the cloud sequence match :] or at least tried to#there WAS supposed to be another one of her in the news room but i just hated how it kept turning out so i scrapped it.#coloring the main series was one thing to learn but the PILOT? never has it been so obvious to me just how much more bright and vibrant#the colors got during the progression of the world design. also. if by any chance one of those cool and experienced#gif makers happens to see these tags and wants a good laugh: i've been doing this for how many months now? and just last NIGHT figured out#how to use the fucking eraser in photoshop....... thing is... i also draw. i KNOW what program tools look like. i KNOW ppl draw in PS.#i'm just a really silly fuckin goose!! TEEHEE FUCKING HEE I GUESS!#so for months i've been like ''god i wish i could just erase this part from the layer'' and looking at the eraser tool and just being like#''nah it's probably different and weird i'll just stick to what i know'' -> said boo boo the FOOL#see i could be in the club but i'd rather be aggressively neurodivergent about the silly queer demon cartoon that altered my brain chemical
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shirahama-sensei reminded me she has a thing for the teacher from pokemon s/v so i randomly went off on an au where qifrey is the professor. etc
#witch hat tag#orufrey#the first image is qifrey dressed as that guy. i'm glad she has an inexplicable attachment to some dorky pokemon man like i do#someone was like 'wouldn't it make more sense for deanreldea to be the champion' .... well no. not in my world .#it maps onto magic skill. champions aren't like the Rulers of the land they're just the most skilled at this thing#oru as a burnt out champion who's gently encouraging a kid like coco to reach him one day means a lot to me. i like pokemon narratives#agott went shiny hunting for the same thing coco had but cooler - just to impress her. she really is a pokemon rival type girl#pushing myself to the limit to prove my worth to you - to get to the summit first so i'm waiting for you..#and then realising it wasn't just to be strong - i realised i started wanting to see your smile. i wanted you to have fun.#i think coco would defeat agott at the end of victory road and then defeat oru & i'll probably draw one last thing abt that at least..#the image is very cinematic..the dialogue and music in my mind..I WANT TO FACE ORU!!!!!!!!!!#the super cool insanely powerful awesome champion is the spouse of my professor and he gave me advice at the beginning...no way....#btw the elite four would be the sages which is perfect (and maybe easthies as the first guy?) evil Team Brimhats#coustas as their renegade gladion-type figure. the gym leaders would be like sun/moon and s/v combined#travelling around facing the best students from different classes - so jujy and eunie etc.#i've barely thought about 'teams' or anything bc i care amore about the narrative side of things always lol#but idk. tetia with a swirlix - eunie would be ghost type boy - riche with small things but also a ceruledge or a steelix something massiv#and brushbug would have a final form which is really long like an eastern dragon- fluffy and with wings like a fairy. It's beautiful to me#well anyway *tries to move on to the rest of life now the brief obsession has passed*#obviously oru would be fire-type tho and qifrey would be water-type and they set off together and traded their starters etc.....it goes on
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