#upwards spiral

[knotty-et-al]

Another surreal soup - WIP [2024/04/07]

There is a melt clock with clock hands that split and somehow stick stickily together. The split hour clock hands turn into the petals of a plant.

From these two petals two tadpoles drop down - one tadpole is older/more evolved than the other tadpole.

The split minute clock hands turn into very thin petals/straws. The tadpoles are falling down the hour-clock-hands- petals onto the minute-clock-hands- straws, sliding down into the melt clock. The melt clock has root-like structures on its dial.

The plant is blossoming with a blossom that is a bit similar to that of an orchid. The orchid-like blossom has a tiny chamber in the shape of half a walnut. A tiny frog is sitting in that tiny chamber, looking out and having large eyes. The frog looks relaxed. The frog's hands slightly hang down from the blossom.

[positiveupwardspiral]

[lesbianelsas]

alicent + (lack of) bodily autonomy

"This felt like a baptism. Stripping the outer layer, and that f-cking collar [laughs]. Her getting into the lake on her own is embryonic, in a way. It’s weirdly a coming-of-age moment for Alicent—the start of the rest of her life, what she’s about to do, and the woman she’s possibly about to become." (x)

[uniquezombiedestiny]

"your other fragments went off to see a new galaxy. i bet they've turned into a big, beautiful comet by now."

"you think so?"

different text placement + no text versions :)

[bestworstcase]

On that recent note about Ruby being at a boiling point when the next confrontation with Salem rolls around, would you mind going into that a bit more? Namely, I have a couple thoughts about a) it’s narratively boring to have the same thing happen twice, and “Ruby’s personal issues get overrun by a bunch of other issues she feels she has to address first” is how we got to V10 in the first place, and b) it really feels like WBY (and maybe Jaune, but he has his own stuff going on, we’ll see) would be much more conscious of the fact that it happened very visibly and the possibility of that happening again, and thus act to help Ruby away from that edge should she stray there again. Just a couple thoughts, really.

what i anticipate—again mostly on the basis of reading rwby x jl pt in context with the events of v9 and the 9.11 animatic—is less round two of ruby pretending to be fine until she explodes and more of an over-correction. a pendulum swing. ruby knows she can’t bury things behind a smile without destroying herself now, but she also… doesn’t… really know how to regulate her emotions in a healthy way, because she’s been viciously repressing those feelings her whole life.

she’s also (as ruby herself notes in B4) not at all comfortable asking for help and in vacuo she is going to be under a lot of pressure as the girl who sent the message—and in B4, we’ve already seen that she is, for example, getting waylaid in the streets for photos with strangers and that yang, despite having every reason to be overprotective at present, doesn’t interfere and actively tries to put a positive spin on it (“personally i think it’s about time everybody knew how cool my sister is”) even as she’s obviously concerned about the harm it might be doing to ruby. they’re both being pragmatic.

so while ruby’s closest friends will be (and do, in the jl film) watching like hawks for the signals they missed in the ever after, they can’t do anything about her celebrity among the vacuan refugees or the material reality of the situation in vacuo: if a major grimm attack coincides with ruby feeling bad, everyone has to prioritize repelling the attack over talking about how ruby feels, them’s the breaks.

ruby knows this. her team knows this. none of them want her to go back to bottling stuff up until it kills her, but it’s going to be really, really hard to carve out the space she needs to rest and recover and learn how to handle her feelings.

what happens?

well, judging by the jl film, ruby gets kind of… manic. she’s reckless. she brushes off their attempts to get her to stop being reckless. at one point she more or less tells clark that she expects to die in the war and she’s decided to try as hard as she can to do as much good as she can in the time she has left, and later when she gets the wind knocked out of her and yang freaks out ruby’s like "don’t worry, i’m not a quitter like mom" about it.

in a way, she’s backslid all the way to where she was at the top of v1—remember how reckless ruby was during the initiation, out of desperation to prove herself? except she’s also, pretty blatantly, pushing her bad feelings outward in the form of this danger-seeking go-go-go attitude. it’ll be okay if she dies as long as she goes down fighting to the end right!!! as long as she’s honest and open about not being able to imagine a future where she is alive after the war, that’s fine!!! because she’s not bottling it up anymore!!!

and (this is evident even just in the jl film) she’s a bit taken aback by how alarming her team finds this new attitude, because to her all that’s changed is she’s not keeping it a secret that she feels this way but to them it’s abruptly seeing, in vivid technicolor, that ruby genuinely does not care whether she lives or dies and in fact is terrifyingly comfortable with the idea that she’ll die fighting salem. so i think ruby is going to experience this as mixed signals; they say they want her to be more open and share what she feels, but when she’s (in her mind) feeling good they get mad at her for not… feeling the way they want her to feel… so what is she supposed to do?

over the longer term, the shape of ruby’s character arc from here on is a journey toward rebuilding her presently non-existent sense of self-worth. but in the immediate term it’s more about clearing the hurdle of believing that one epiphany in the tree did not, in fact, fix her or solve the deeper problem of her suicide ideation. (which is very much what’s going on with ruby in the jl film.)

and i think it’s really interesting and pretty smart for the narrative to juxtapose that with salem battling her own emotional strife, because the heroic cast all believe that salem ultimately just wants to die but i don’t think that’s true, and salem herself certainly seems to be envisioning a future that she is beginning to realize she cannot achieve without making sacrifices; no cost is too great, she says, and she’s lying to herself.

i think ruby’s second boiling point is not “i don’t want to be me anymore” but rather “i don’t want to die anymore” and this dovetails nicely with salem hitting this critical mass, reaching the line she can’t cross because the cost is too great. the hero realizing that she desperately wants to live after all + the villain choosing the life of one person she cares for above everything else. it creates an opening for empathy and understanding in both directions.

if ruby spends nearly all of v10 skating over the deep well of her fear by pushing it outward as glibly nihilistic thrill-seeking, and then gets thrust into a situation where she really might die and feels that abrupt, visceral desperation to survive—that is not too far afield of salem’s desperation to remake the world into one where she’s allowed to live. likewise, if the unstoppable force of salem’s ruthlessness collided with the immovable object of cinder, she knocks herself sideways into a corner she can’t escape—which isn’t dissimilar to how hopeless ruby feels. and then they each have the other’s answer, potentially.

[defiledtomb]

I got so scared of putting myself out there but. Let me tell you, even if you hit a few snags. It is so fucking worth it

[darkmistandodddreams]

Guyyyys, I got approved for partial funding for further education and I will be taking a 42hr basic voice acting class in november.

I am SO so so happy and excited. Working in voice acting/recording audiobooks etc has my absolute dream since forever and now its a big realistic step closer 🥹

[hells-greatestdad]

[arolesbianism]

Slowly chipping at designing the spiraling upwards cast, and by that I mean designing two of them before going damn that sucked and drawing ones I’ve already designed

[pabs-art]

The Pablo Ryza Experience

[ashtonsunshine]

Sarah really said imma fuck you all up, huh?

[isisalchemy]

UPWARD BITCH

[positiveupwardspiral]

[thrivingwhilemultiple]

Healing happens in layers, echoing from the outside in, dripping deeper each time.

The Corkscrew

[confessiononadancefloor]

‧ ⋆ ₊˚｡ 𐙚 ‧₊˚ ⋅ sagittarius 2023 ⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚ 𐙚｡⋆˚ ⋅

[mirchloe]

also, i appreciate the fact that bobby has been out to GET raz since their concept art days. raz's number 1 hater since he was d'art.