#turns out i am!

[gjdraws]

plein air city/town landscape or plein air nature/country/ocean landscape

oh wow Lauren this is such a great question. I'm bad at drawing buildings but I also love the color blotches of scenery..It's funny bc I would have thought I'd pick scenery but I think I love the odd colours you pick up in urban sketching!!

Insane colours right out there on the street for me to work with!

[razzafrazzle]

Just Checking In! (aka Something About Red Triangles)

[katsinspats]

I think my copy of the game is broken they've been doing this for 30 minutes

Crop of the Biolizard edit I did bc it makes me laugh:

[rennybu]

something unknown but very powerful came over me. retro spirk kyaa❣️❣️❣️

[inkskinned]

having good & true friends will literally save and protect you in a million unfathomable ways. like okay we have written so many times about lovers. but the way a platonic friend laughs and cries with you. the way they hold your hand at 14 years old and at 34. the way they keep a little silver tie to you, touching base over and over and over. how you can go years without talking, only to re-meet and discover: oh shit! you're still cool!

there are people who have been in my life for more than half of it, and i have loved every version of them. do you know how fucking beautiful that is. yeah love will save the world. but the way friends love you is gonna save the you.

[notsolonedesert]

Odypen oh odypen

This picture from pinterest inspired me :D

[gatorgrumbles]

For all my fellow Mr Gap simps

[anessthetic]

reference by @/searingcircuits on X! thanks to off. pressure artist for providing such a good composition :D

[teaboot]

Cannot overstate how much that spongebob scene that went

Somsone: "spongebob you look like a girl"

Spongebob: "am I a pretty girl?"

Like was such a legit game changer for me as a kid

I remember that family and grownups and other kids at school would tell me in a sort of mean-spirited way "you look/sound/act/dress/talk like a boy" and I'd just be like

"Am I a pretty boy?"

There were other unexpected things that came from that long-term I think but that'sprobably where it started being fun

[wanderingibon]

" I noticed that you've been smiling more, Lucanis. "

" ...Have I? ...Si, I suppose I have been. "

[secondbeatsongs]

for anyone too young to know this: watching The Truman Show is a vastly different experience now, compared to how it was before youtube and social media influencers became normal

before it was like, "what a horrifying thing to do to a human being! to take away their autonomy and privacy, all for the sake of profits! to create fake scenarios for them to react to, just to retain viewership! to ruin their happiness just so some corporate entity could harvest money from their very humanity! how could anyone do something so evil?"

and now it's like, "ah, yeah. this is still deeply fucked up, but it's pretty much what every influencer has been doing to their kids for a decade now. probably bad that we've normalized this experience"

[shushmal]

"Dude," Steve says, pressing on his eyes because he feels like he's about to cry. "What the fuck."

"What?" Dustin squeaks, alarmed. "What? Steve, you're freaking me out!"

"Good!" Because Steve just worked eighteen hours and it's past midnight and he got thrown up on twice and there was a bed pan incident and even though he showered at the hospital he probably smells awful and it rained and he lost his keys so he had to take the bus and he's sweaty and tired and wet and cold and Dustin's DnD friend is hot. "I can't believe you'd do this to me!" Okay, maybe Steve's feeling a little delirious.

"Do what??" Dustin is full on shrieking right now. His hot friend is standing in their apartment looking more and more worried and hot.

"You didn't tell me he was hot!"

The expressions that go across Dustin's face is impressive, before they stop and he settles on a flat glare. "Seriously??"

Hot guy is now blushing and Steve will collapse if he doesn't keep with the righteous fury.

"I've been TRYING to get you two to meet for months now!"

"You didn't tell me he was hot, though! Dustin!!"

"I don't know what guys are hot, Steve!" Dustin says indignantly. "I thought you didn't like nerds!"

"Dustin!"

"Um," says hot guy. He looks like he's panicking.

Dustin's face changes again. "Oh, no. Oh, no, you're right."

"All this time!" Steve says and he really is close to tears. "You've been nagging on me all this time to find my soulmate, and you had the perfect guy right here?? You had him in my home??? Dustin!"

"Whoa," whispers hot guy.

"I'm sorry," Dustin wails now, just as distraught. "You love nerds, all your favorite people are nerds, I don't know what I was thinking, oh my god!" He whirls on hot guy. "Eddie, give Steve your number right now!"

"Okay," says hot guy Eddie, immediately. His face is super red and his eyes are wide, and he looks scared out of his mind as he fumbles his pocket for his phone. "Yeah-Yep-Absolutely. This is a thing that's happening."

Steve, tears burning in his eyes, watches as Dustin punches his number into Eddie's phone. "Okay," he says a little nasally, wiping quickly at his face. "Okay, I'm going to shower and then sleep for two days, and then pretend like this never happened so I can look hot guy in the eye when he asks me on a date. Sound good?"

"Sounds great!" Dustin says, all cheery now. Behind him, still looking vaguely scared for his life, hot guy gives him a shaky thumbs up.

[eveningrainstorm]

take responsibility.

[hinamie]

spiraling

[stromblessed]

Mizu, femininity, and fallen sparrows

In my last post about Mizu and Akemi, I feel like I came across as overly critical of Mizu given that Mizu is a woman who - in her own words - has to live as a man in order to go down the path of revenge.

If she is ever discovered to be female by the wrong person, she will not only be unable to complete her quest, but there's a good chance that she'll be arrested or killed.

So it makes complete sense for Mizu to distance herself as much as possible from any behavior that she feels like would make someone question her sex.

I felt so indignant toward Mizu on my first couple watchthroughs for this moment. Why couldn't Mizu bribe the woman and her child's way into the city too? If Mizu is presenting as a man, couldn't she claim to be the woman's escort?

However, this moment makes things pretty clear. Mizu knows all too well the plight of women in her society. She knows it so well that she cannot risk ever finding herself back in their position again. She helps in what little way she can - without drawing attention to herself.

Mizu is not a hero and she is not one to make of herself a martyr - she will not set herself on fire to keep others warm. There's room to argue that Mizu shouldn't prioritize her quest over people's lives, but given the collateral damage Mizu can live with in almost every episode of season 1, Mizu is simply not operating under that kind of morality at this point. ("You don't know what I've done to reach you," Mizu tells Fowler.)

And while I still feel like Mizu has an obvious and established blind spot when it comes to Akemi because of their differences in station, such that Mizu's judgment of Akemi and actions in episode 5 are the result of prejudice rather than the result of Mizu's caution, I also want to establish that Mizu is just as caged as Akemi is, despite her technically having more freedom while living as a man.

Mizu can hide her mixed race identity some of the time, and she can hide her sex almost all of the time, but being able to operate outside of her society's strict rules for women does not mean she cannot see their plight.

It does not mean she doesn't hurt for them.

Back to Mizu and collateral damage, remember that sparrow?

While Mizu is breaking into Boss Hamata's manse, she gets startled by a bird and kills it on reflex. She then cradles it in her hands - much more tenderly than we've seen Mizu treat almost anything up to this point in the season:

She then puts it in its nest, with its unhatched eggs. Almost like she's trying to make the death look natural. Or like an accident.

You see where I'm going with this.

When Mizu kills Kinuyo, Mizu lingers in the moment, holding the body tenderly:

And btw a lot of stuff about this show hit me hard, but this remains the biggest gut punch of them all for me, Mizu holding that poor girl's body close, GOD

When Mizu arranges the "scene of the crime," Kinuyo's body is delicate, birdlike. And Mizu is so shaken afterward that she gets sloppy. She's horrified at this kill to the point that she can't bring herself to take another innocent life - the boy who rats her out.

MIZU'S ONE MOMENT OF SOFTNESS AND MERCY, COMING ON THE HEELS OF HER NEEDING TO KILL A GIRL TO SPARE HER THE WORST FATE THAT THIS RIGID SOCIETY HAS TO OFFER WOMEN, AND TO SPARE A BROTHEL FULL OF INNOCENT WOMEN WHO ARE THE CASTOFFS OF SOCIETY, NEARLY RESULTS IN ALL OF THEIR DEATHS

No wonder Mizu is as stoic and cold as she is.

And no wonder Mizu has no patience for Akemi whatsoever right before the terrible reveal and the fight breaks out:

Speaking of Akemi - guess who else is compared to a bird!

The plumage is more colorful, a bit flashier. But a bird is a bird.

And, uh

Yeah.

I like to think that Mizu killing the sparrow is not only foreshadowing for what she must do to Kinuyo, but is also a representation of the choice she makes on Akemi's behalf. She decides to cage the bird because she believes the bird is "better off." Better off caged than... dead.

But because Mizu doesn't know Akemi or her situation, she of course doesn't realize that the bird is fated to die if it is caged and sent back home.

Mizu is clearly not happy, or pleased, or satisfied by allowing Akemi to be dragged back to her father:

But softness and mercy haven't gotten Mizu anywhere good, recently.

There is so much tragedy layered into Mizu's character, and it includes the things she has to witness and the choices she makes - or believes she has to make - involving women, when she herself can skirt around a lot of what her society throws at women. Although, I do believe that it comes at the cost of a part of Mizu's soul.

After all, I'm gonna be haunted for the rest of this show by Mizu's very first prayer in episode 1:

"LET" her die. Because as Ringo points out, she doesn't "know how" to die.

Kind of like another bird in this show:

[secretly-a-trekkie]

who let the child near the bombs