#we did the same degree

[hoziergifsdaily]

HOZIER + Trinity Orchestra | 2012

[gifti3]

ugh why is he so nice, like honestly my pc didnt deserve this response

[wiremotherofficial]

i often feel bad for like running away across the country and estranging myself from my family on purpose, but then i make the mistake of trying to be open about literally anything and am instantly reminded that i objectively cannot survive in that environment

[sodafrog13]

is it silly of me? to consider beard as objectively one of the most important characters in the whole hotline universe? because i think that he is– on the same level as jacket and richard, i'd argue, and above gf and biker (near and dear as they are to my heart). because without him there simply... wouldn't be a game!

hotline 1 doesn't make this readily apparent (saying that as if hotline in general makes anything regularly apparent; this really is a series you gotta put at least a little bit of work into reading into if you wanna get that full picture). but almost everything you do in these games is because of him.

the majority of jacket's motivation for his actions in 1 is because of beard's death. like that is a nonnegotiable fact– beard died on april 3rd, 1986 and jacket joined 50B exactly 3 years later. that photo he tosses off of the balcony at the end of the game is the only one they have together, the one that must haunt jacket's entire life considering beard had brought it up with him on that final phone call they had together just seconds before his end.

beard is the initial reason for his rampage. girlfriend's death adds to it, yes, and while i would argue that it's her death specifically that gives us the ending we received with him in 1, none of those events would have happened if beard were still alive. jacket wouldn't have signed up for 50B. girlfriend wouldn't have died (and yes, we can equivocate about whether or not this is a good thing considering the environment jacket had taken her out of, but for succinctness we won't here). hell, practically none of the major events of 2 would have occurred past most of richter, jake, and maybe some of evan and pardo's storylines (as well as biker's, but i digress). midnight animal wouldn't have existed and martin never would have gotten shot. the fans wouldn't have held someone with so much hero worship and likely wouldn't have tried to become vigilantes themselves. the henchman and the son wouldn't even have the same development they do in 2 because the father would still be alive and in power– meaning they and the fans would have lived.

hotline miami would not be a fraction of the game that it is without him. i've pointed it out before but in the table sequence when you start a new game after completing 2, it's specifically richard and beard who are sitting at either head of the table. they are the real reason why everyone's here. and the wild thing is that past jacket, richard, and evan, none of these people even know who he is!! the impact of beard's death is so widespread and none of these people even know it!!!! because why would they? he was one soldier in a futile war that killed him when he thought he was finally safe. in his own words, he's expendable!! he's just not that special!

...but isn't he, though? doesn't it say something about his character, about how important he was to jacket, that jacket would do everything he could to avenge him? and isn't that devastating in and of itself, that jacket thought that this was simply the way things had to be?

what did jacket find special about him? the companionship? the fact that he'd saved his life? or the fact that he likely was the only person who had consistently looked upon him with kindness, the only person he was consistently able to keep in his life even after coming home and being thousands of miles apart? i guess we'll never know for sure. but one thing is exceedingly clear to me.

there is no hotline miami without beard. it was literally all about him.

[coolcoolcoolbutwtf]

Don't ask me, honestly don't know either.

This was supposed to be just a simple sketch :(

[mistrias]

ok life really is just a mosaic of all the people you've loved and lost 😍😍😍😍😍

[one-vivid-judgment]

I don't know how to explain this, but these two sit at the same table.

[carnivallsarchive]

.

See the thing is. I know I'm good at writing. Like I have my weak areas or things I need to improve in, but it's not a skill I otherwise spend a lot of time feeling insecure about because a) if I don't believe in my writing literally who will b) if I want to publish my writing I ought to at least feel a resting level of good about it because editors and agents likely will not be cradling my face like a prize cat and telling me how talented I am while asking for their edits c) I've always had an audience for my writing even at its worst– I started sharing my original works online when I was around 16 & that really helped sell to me the idea of 'there will always be someone out there who likes what you do' d) untalented men never think this hard about the quality of their works and they always end up published anyway and e) I don't have many other thoroughly developed skills so why not have one I feel good about. Having said this. Awkward feeling to realize you're one of the authorial weak links in your postgraduate creative writing degree's social circle

[essektheylyss]

I'm not gonna put this on the other post cuz I don't really want it rebloggable but I do want to specify that like, yes I was being dramatic about Essek in terms of affect, but every part of that post is also quite literally a description of my experience with a creative field that is pretty centralized around a few locations and that has made it stringently difficult to enter and stay in the field. There are obviously monumentally different aspects around those circumstances, but like... look I left Los Angeles literally two weeks after the c2 finale with a very clear understanding that once I did, I was not going back, and that because of that, my career would never look like I'd wanted it to in any capacity, and in fact it was likely that it meant I would not work in the field I'd trained for ever again, and also knew it was the only choice that made sense if I wanted to, like, have a life. And I do! And it's great! And it still makes me very upset to think about for many reasons! So you can see why I have a lot of feelings about the whole situation.

[getvalentined]

Every time someone says two Asian-coded characters with dramatically different character designs "look like siblings" or are "basically identical" my vision gets blurry and my heart rate spikes and I experience literal hot flashes.

Y'all are so racist and you don't even know. You don't know. You think you're being funny and cute and quirky and you're going along with everyone else around you, but you're so fucking racist. And it doesn't matter if someone points it out, because you don't actually care.

Sometimes I really hate this fandom.

[taraxippos]

Absolutely death gripped clenched trying not to comment on reductive posts on ancient greek homosexual relationships

[pampel-mousse]

Maybe controversial to say but i still don't fully believe snow killing white was a 100% accident thing

[normiematsu]

READING TAGS AND SCREAMING!!!!!!! HUHHHH THANKS........ BUT MY AGGIE SECRET SAUCE.... is....................

idk i didnt think it was secret sauce but here's my brain's setup when im working there. for linework it's just the pixel pen at 1 px size and then im just slapping down my lines quickly and by believing in my line confidence putting that arm to WERKKK. when im doing lineart my goal is always to express everything i need with as few intentional strokes as possible

colors im just eyeballing if i'm being real even if im referencing another photo, no eyedropper tool to start with. if things look good together it works for me. vibes first and understanding of color theory second. except for this thing i learned in college and never stopped thinking about, i think this technique is genuine secret sauce. this pic is from andrew loomis' book creative illustration but in general u can find more examples similar to this by looking up subsurface scattering

i use the basic round brush @ different softness levels for coloring everything bc i am too boomer brained to figure out where that one fun textured brush is that a couple of u guys use. posing isn't aggie specific i do this everywhere but keeping it loosey goosey and gestural 24/7 bc im not anatomy's bitch when it comes to drawing cartoons online. thinking abt my little barbie dolls having so much energy in their line of action it's like they drank a case of red bull before i started. do u guys want to call next time or smth for realtime "words" of "wisdom" its hard to explain over text☝️🤓

[grandmagbignaturals]

Aunty came over for dinner because my brother is leaving soon and the air got fucking sucked out of my parents real quick when the 3 people with liberal arts degrees started talking politics

[invinciblerodent]

an issue i'm finding myself (or, my elf, eeyyyy) running into is that as their relationship progresses, Astarion and Iona become progressively harder to write together, because I'm kind of finding that the closer they are, the less they express themselves verbally.

like, for the earlier scenes, there is a lot of semi-clever back-and-forth which I enjoy writing, I love silly banter and teasing/flirting/bonding, and since they don't touch much early on, most of the relationship development happens in dialogue. but act 3?????? a lot of the emotional sludge that is between them feels most natural to, idk, leave unsaid, and have them rely on the understanding that they had been kind of hesitantly fostering since early act 2.

i know this is a stupid fucking thing to be gnawing on, especially considering that nobody has ever read a word of this damn fic, it's just.

it's a lot easier to write fun dialogue, than to somehow communicate, clearly and without headhopping or getting overly flowery/sanctimonious about it,

"aight chucklefucks, in this scene, he's climbing wordlessly under the covers with her both by way of an unwarranted apology that wasn't actually his to give (y'know, for the whole 'attacked in the middle of the night, bit to shit by his sibling while he stood by uselessly' deal that happened the previous night and is making him feel rotten and guilty for some reason), and as an acknowledgement that he's rattled, scared, and feeling vulnerable, which is why him actively seeking comfort in her instead of slinking off to lick his wounds alone is a big fuckin' deal."

"on the flipside, her not saying anything or asking why he's standing at the foot of her bed but just opening her arms to receive that silent request, invite him in (like one would a vampire, geddit), and giving him the affection with no preamble or caveat, is simultaneously an acceptance of that apology, a confirmation that despite all that's been going on during the daytime she still purposefully elects to trust him, and a reassurance that she is there, she's alive, unhurt, and her feelings haven't changed because of all this either."

"this cuddle is emotionally significant, it intentionally mirrors the one from which they were spurned by the vampire attack as a way to show that regardless of what happens, this undercurrent of tenderness still exists, but nobody is going to say a goddamn word about it, because not only would putting any of this into words be far, far beyond both of them in terms of emotional intelligence, acknowledging that he views her as a point of security and that her anxiety is eased by easing his would also feel wrong and like whoever mentions it is speaking fluent therapese. plus, breaking the silence with lengthy internal monologues would also fucking ruin the simplicity and the impact of the whole goddamn thing, even though all that actually bloody happens is 1.) she flips the covers back, 2.) he climbs in and nuzzles her chest, and 3.) she pulls the covers over his shoulder."

meanwhile i'm just looking at the maybe two actual paragraphs that i've written like

[throes-of-warm-tornadoes]

nosy as helll i had to put on my glasses bc i was super curious on whether the girl sitting at another table was crocheting or knitting