#this is like 75% of the way there

[dr11ft]

artblock vs trying to get keith's face right for the 193778645th time and failing again

[bedforddanes75]

im not american but some of you guys are just fucking stupid ong what do you MEAN youre not gna vote because you disagree with like one part of what youre voting for. like okay me when im fucking thick

[latinthusiast]

throwback to aug 12 2011 when I first saw american rock band my chemical romance perform live

photo cred: me but a child

[oldvampyaoi]

A slightly belated take on this post by @sburator

[finalgirlsamwinchester]

do i ship wincest. yeah they're an inseparable pair on a narrative and thematic level, can you truly understand one without understanding the other? they're two halves of a dialectic on heroism and sacrifice. they're two points on the family trauma survivor spectrum, sometimes opposing, sometimes intersecting. they're like watching your parents who should've gotten a divorce years ago somehow stay together, against all reason. they're two inheritors of a rugged American masculinity and isolated individualism, internal and external violence springing forth. regressing to the nostalgia of frontier brotherhood as substitute for the nuclear family. they're a set of quintessential outlaw lovers. maybe true love only exists in the kind of freedom you keep when you're always moving, on the road, in your childlike bubble excluded from society, left with nowhere to burrow your roots except into each other's very being. they're the world's loneliest childhood shared between two feral dogs, one biting down on the other, unable to let go. they're the fantasy of an unconditional love so powerful it can survive the apocalyptic enormity of your own self-loathing. they're a set of matryoshka dolls, one consuming the other. journeys end in lovers meeting, but what kind of journey is it really when you've never left home: it's been sitting in the seat next to you this entire time. your haunted house is not a home but a person who'll never let go. they're an erotic fantasy of domestic horror as a sweet, sickening embrace as opposed to an all-consuming fire, a car driving off into heaven's sunset as opposed to one crashing into a tree. (wrong: they're both). so horribly enmeshed and trapped in a magnified love so destructive to the world around them they leave catherine and heathcliff wuthering heights in the dust. they're two brothers trapped in a 15 year long spiral of an abusive codependent pseudo-marriage, in part due to a network unable to let go of a successful show format, thus unable to afford them any growth that might disturb the status quo. but the implications of it all.

[definitelynotshouting]

You have synesthesia?? How does that work for you? Is this how you manage to use the word “meat” in a way that makes me go “holy shit that’s good and cool i need to read that sentence four more times” instead of “ew”?????

I do!!! Letters, numbers, and words all have colours and sometimes visual textures for me-- and while numbers and letters on their own are generally only a single colour (7 is a bright, grassy green!!! while "K" is a pale peachy pink, for example :] ), when i put them into words they often take on entirely new colours, some of which even bleed into each other like watercolour paints. Ironically, its why i use the UK spelling of "colour" in the first place-- the "u" turns what looks like a dull, desaturated blue into a smeared blue-and-purple that i find really pretty to look at :]] so when i say i like to paint with words, i kinda mean that literally 😂😂😂😂😂

But yeah, i'd imagine thats why my writing is Like That™ to some degree-- a lot of what im doing behind the scenes involves matching the colours and visual textures of a given word with all of the others in order to evoke a particular vibe or image in my writing. There are a lot of layers to how i write, but this is probably the one that takes both the most time AND is the one i happen to talk about the least WKDJWKSJEJ

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

He fuckin

SONIC GOING HOME TO TAILS' LAB

Idc if this is the second to last page it drives me crazy

This is bigger than the leadup to #50 where we saw Sonic crashing on Tails' couch

After a long day and a very big event they quite literally went home to rest together

I may very well be sleep deprived but...domestic partners?? For me??👉👈

[marzipanandminutiae]

Marzi's Old House Supply Kit: A Non-Exhaustive List

So you've moved into an old house! Congratulations! No, no, look at me. Look in my eyes. Congratulations. You don't need smart lighting. You don't need paltry things like "showers that don't make ungodly noises if you set the water outside a very specific temperature range" or "logical staircases." Because those people who say They Built Them Sturdier Back Then is survivorship bias are wrong, lead paint is only a problem if you eat it, and your new home is basically a tank

also it might have stained glass. so basically you win

(no but seriously the Survivorship Bias argument is just like. tell me you don't live in a city with large quantities of remaining working-class 110-year-old buildings without telling me. I do. they're sturdier. end of.)

but you might need some things to make it a bit more comfortable. here's what I've found, over eight years of living in houses built 1920 or earlier

Power strips. Depending on the age of your house, it may or may not have had electricity originally. And even if it did, whoever lived there almost certainly had fewer things to plug in than the average denizen of the 2020s. There also may have been gorgeous wall sconces that some asshole heartlessly ripped out at some point, forcing you to use the hideous hateful Overhead LightTM or plug in a bunch of lamps. Either way, you're going to need to turn that single outlet in the room into several more. Hence, power strips.

(hey, I never said this list was free of my design biases. deal)

A Good Fan. You may live in a place where retrofitting with air conditioning was commonplace in the last several decades. I do not. So a good pedestal fan can make the difference between comfort and just not sleeping at all from late June to mid-September. Weirdly, I did once look at a place that was from the 1850s and had been retrofitted with central A/C, which is vanishingly rare in even urban Massachusetts. But I digress.

A stud-finder. "Marzi, you spent years of your life explaining to tourists that picture rails existed because trying to hammer nails directly into horsehair plaster and then putting weight on them did Bad Things." Yes I did. "What did you attempt to do the second week of living in your first house with horsehair plaster?" ...shut up. I used the Poltergeist Method to find solid wood- I don't know if it's actually studs or the lath or what; I'm not a builder -to hang my Lady and the Unicorn tapestry from, namely knocking on the wall until it doesn't sound hollow. You might want to go a bit quieter and more advanced. Or, if you have a picture rail, embrace the "long visible hanging wires" look. It is in fact there for a reason!

Window screens. You are actually required by Massachusetts state law to provide these to your tenants. Doesn't mean my last landlady did. And if you own your place, live in another state, or have a similarly laissez-faire building owner, you might end up needing to Bring Your Own Insect-Blocking Shield. Just make sure you've got them, one way or the other. Because see above re: fan vs. air conditioning in old houses.

WD-40. When's the last time those hinges were oiled? Potentially before television. And they WILL squeak. UPDATE I HAVE BEEN INFORMED THAT WD-40 IS NOT A GOOD LONGTERM SOLUTION. Find "actual oil." Not sure what the more specific name is. Good to know!

That's just what I've found needful so far, but I'm happy to update the list as required!

And you'd better believe, if I owned my own place, this would include "the name of a preservation contractor to undo all the unnecessary ~*MoDeRnIzInG*~ aesthetic bullshit the past owners did since the End of Mainstream Western House Beauty AKA 1920 (That Brief Rococo Revival In the 1930s Can Maybe Sit With Us)"

[bookishjules]

keefe on the dunes

"the proof that the little prince existed is that he was charming, that he laughed..."

[lunarteory]

KiLLKiSS ✩ Ave Mujica 4th LIVE 「Adventus」

[biasomnia]

The Accursed Sacred Heart Of The Herald

Wife can fit so much religious art into him

~Ref and initial sketch below cut!~

Btw when you Google “the sacred heart of Jesus” multiple different paintings show up. Artists need to get more creative with their naming /j

[plasma-packin-mama]

I was actually already drawing harry on skates when I got this comment from @its-a-humanriot …so I went and threw in Kim Judit and Jean. Precinct 41 Team Building Night at the roller disco!!

Bonus sketchbook page:

I think Judit would be most enthusiastic to participate, she’d dress accordingly (if only to humor Harry). Jean is still in his work clothes. Kim… Kim if you can hear me I’m sorry I drew you in hot pants and a crop top…….. the spirit of scantily clad 70s athletes compelled me…. I considered redoing it to give him a regular undershirt bc it felt marginally more in character but then I remembered I don’t care and also look at him belly.

[izloveshorses]

on va voir. if you even care.

[ranticore]

allow me to lay out the rest of the dog knight story in bulletpoint form, following directly on from the wip i posted yesterday

so basically my man penfrey realises he has to somehow kill his bastard brother hugo before they get back to their capital city and the king legitimises hugo

he tries this and gets caught instead, making for a very awkward journey home

meanwhile holly got to the village and managed to see baby matriarch with the dog in the stable but before he can grab her, the dragonslaying party breaks camp and they set off, again leaving holly behind in the dust because he can't keep up with it

after a few weeks of travel, the dog gets so aggressive around penfrey that she becomes a danger to him and he orders her killed (baby is starting to accept cow's milk and solid food by now)

poltim, the squire who sucks at everything, takes the dog out back behind their camp one night and tries to take her over the rainbow bridge so to speak, but she's so scary that he doesn't wanna get close so instead he throws rocks at her until she finally runs away and then he goes and tells penfrey he killed her

she stays back for a few hours but starts following eventually looking for Her Baby and Holly meets her on the road, recognises her, and realises that she's going to follow the knights too and he can make use of that. they become friends :)

eventually near the end of the journey back, holly catches up to the slayers and tries to sneak into the encampment to get his baby. but he's captured instead. and the only way this story can possibly work is if they can all talk to each other at this point so i guess they can and there's no language barrier (???? man who fucking knows?)

penfrey almost kills holly but holly manages to express, just in time, that he recognises the helm of Seibold as well, because he was the one who took it from the guy's almost-corpse. he manages to convey to Penfrey the truth, almost as an aside, not realising it's actually VERY important that Seibold was not killed by the dragon. Seibold killed himself, and suicide is a sin.

Penfrey realises he has a new opportunity to stop Hugo now but it won't be easy. He believes Holly because Holly can explain enough about what he saw that the facts can be corroborated, but also because he wants to believe Holly. Nobody else will.

>mfw i need to convince the entire kingdom that a kobold is an honourable person whose testimony would be respected in court

holly would rather take baby matriarch and go but Penfrey submits a counter-offer - if Holly can pull this off for him, he will be the next king and he will give both Holly and baby matriarch his personal protection for the rest of their lives

holly agrees to this

they make it home. holly is hidden in penfrey's entourage but the baby matriarch is given as a pet to emaline as promised. holly is not happy with this arrangement because it's very disrespectful but penfry is like don't worry man it needs to be this way

hugo prepares to present the helm of Seibold to the king and give testimony about Seibold dying valiantly fighting a dragon and Hugo killing the dragon in revenge etc all very dramatic and designed to flatter Hugo as much as possible. Hugo is not a very good person and would be a shite king but tbh to be honest it's not like Penfrey is any better

behind the scenes Penfrey is My Fair Lady-ing Holly as hard as possible. the cover story is that Holly is a distinguished, well-spoken, christian knight who just happens to be a kobold but really aren't they all like that? perhaps we shouldn't see them as vermin after all. Holly is allowed at court as Penfrey's guest and it's a unilaterally bewildering experience to him but he has to say and do everything right and without much help either (Penfrey sucks) and he's very conscious of the whole. massacre thing. but he has to stay polite

nothing matters to Holly but baby matriarch's safety and he's out of his mind with worry because a 6 year old child is not a good caretaker for an infant and he feels that Penfrey is not doing enough to address this (he isn't because pleasing Emaline's family is still his Plan B and he can't take that cute pet away just yet)

time to testify in court, and it works!!! um. we successfully convinced the grieving king that his brother is burning in hell forever. hugo leaves mad as fuck, and Holly makes an unsanctioned demand for baby matriarch to be released from captivity because that's fucked up and for her to be returned to him as his ward. the king is like sure fine whatever and you want to be a knight? there ya go. who give a fuck. now let me grieve in peace

in this manner, holly gets one over on hugo AND penfrey so Penfrey Will Remember This

time skip like fifteen years. it's time to learn more about baby matriarch. She has grown up at court and knows nothing else; she's a sweet lil princess who is completely human-socialised and wants for nothing, with Holly as her protector (and the dog too). she's good company and happy (he can't help but see her as a daughter) but he's desperately lonely and unfulfilled because she's all he has and she has no context for the culture he grew up in.

there ARE other kobolds around but they grew up in the town and don't know what he's talking about when he tries to relate to them. except for One, the Poisoner, who arrives to the court to sell his products. the Poisoner was also raised in a dragon lair and he's this connection to the past that Holly was looking for (grizzled older knight x cute young thing let's gooo). he represents an opportunity to indulge in nonhuman behaviours again but when baby matriarch is introduced (Holly hopes the Poisoner might be a mate for her), she finds these behaviours offputting and embarrassing and also like that's her dad's new bestie so it's weird

she and Holly have several falling-out moments because they want different things for one another; she wants a fairytale prince and a castle of her own and he seems to want to stuff her underground into a cave with a dragon in it?? ew? yeah it's all pretty heartbreaking for him to learn her true opinions of him & his culture

anyway someone kills the king! or maybe the queen idk?? blah blah blah it's all court intrigue but this is as far as i actually got in the plot outline. i wanted it to end with holly betraying the king in some way after finally being fed up of the many many humiliations he's endured at court and also maybe? being betrayed in turn by baby matriarch seeking some kind of independence from her guardian. his arc is all about the erosion of oneself to nothing at all in pursuit of Duty. he's a tragic character he's grieving all the time. baby matriarch's permanent freedom and safety would be a happy ending for him i guess

[that-starlight-prince]

I don't know what the best system for selecting judges is and I don't think the current system in the US is very good but given how the general public usually tends to take a very draconian view of crime and punishment I think that direct election of judges by voters is undoubtedly the worst way of doing it.

[stayatsam]

"Varric used to be mean and a centrist" the first time we meet Varric is roughly 20 years prior to Veilguard, and the Varric in Inquisition, who we see become a responsible father figure to Cole, is from 10 years prior to Veilguard

i think its' actually very fortunate that we got to see Varric grow from being a carefree, kind of jerky guy running a spy network in Kirkwall to someone who learns that he has the power to change the world for the better to make a safer place for him and his friends to live in, and also that he feels good when he knows he can be responsible for other people

just a thought idk. i see so many complaints about missing DA2 Varric as though he didnt see Kirkwall's destruction firsthand. he's really shaken by it in Inqusition dialogue and banter, he developed as a character. this isn't a new sudden change brought on by veilguard