#what else could i have done?

[cozylittleartblog]

Columbo and the Knight (1984)

put me in the universe where Columbo ran through the 1980s and had a crossover episode with Knight Rider. I think they deserved it, and I am not just saying that because they're my two favorite Old Shows. @telebeast wrote a little fanfic blurb about it and I HAD to visualize it into a comic (which is also the longest comic I have finished thus far at five pages...), so writing credit goes to them.

Autism W!

[tommygotwrittenoff]

i literally do not care about big emergencies on abc's 911. i want to see my characters talk to each other and have stories that are parallels to small, everyday (everyday for first responders) emergencies

[inkedinserendipity]

here’s something that surprised me on my all systems red reread: secunit sits down like halfway through the book! page 104, murderbot sits on one of the hopper’s benches.

and the first time i read this book i paid that line no mind! it’s just sitting down. i didn’t have the context to be like :O secunits don’t do that. secunits aren’t supposed to sit while on duty!

and now i’m thinking about the crew, who also have no idea what this means. and about mensah, who just minutes ago told it that she sees it as a person who’s trying to help (this is the first time its insides “go melty!”) and i simply do not think it is a coincidence that murderbot sits down next to its humans for the first time probably ever right after being told by a human for the first time probably ever that they see it as a person.

and it’s so satisfying on a narrative and rereading level, right, because the first time you read the book you’re with the crew—you have no idea what this means. but then you read it again, knowing more about secunits, and then the full emotional weight of that one line hits. because now you have context!

anyway this line was such a lovely example of why the murderbot diaries in particular is such a good reread. the context makes everything hit afresh the second time around, just as hard if not harder than the first!

[chimerafeathers]

i love that isafrin can be the most straightforwardly romancey, wholesome pairing on a surface level and then you go one (1) level deeper and run into siffrin’s seething guilt and convoluted feelings around touch and intimacy and the extent to which they want or don’t want those things in a specifically romantic way or if he was trying to seek connection and love in any way he could once he knew that Isabeau wanted those things from him in that context, and the combined power trip/self disgust at “manipulating” Isabeau’s desires without his knowledge to make themself feel wanted and in control. and then you keep going and there’s also Isabeau’s own warped self image (still, in spite of all his changes, fearing that he’s someone that would be shameful to know), his “emotionally stable pillar” role and self-taught therapy talk masking his deep fears of real confrontation (struggling loop after loop to confess, not wanting Odile to confront Siffrin about their weird behavior in the sus quest bathroom talk) and how Siffrin’s fear of vulnerability and Isabeau’s fear of Pushing Too Hard allow both of their issues to fester unspoken long after it’s clear that the problems exist.

all this to say. duality of isafrin. makes my heart full and warm and happy to see the sweet, fluffy, silly love and connection between them (mutually romantic or otherwise). and then also. the delicious, delicious complications. gnawing on them like a dog with a beloved bone

[crossdressingdeath]

Varric: But being a leader isn't about having all the answers yourself: It's about knowing who does.

See, this is why I really don't understand those posts whining about how Rook isn't the coolest member of the Veilguard and everyone else has much more useful skills and whatnot. Rook may not necessarily be the fastest or strongest or smartest member of the team, but what they do have is the ability to make plans, improvise when those plans go wrong, inspire their allies, earn their trust and love, encourage them to work together and put aside their differences, and use each one of them to the fullest extent of their abilities to further the team's goals. A leader doesn't have to have all the answers or be the best fighter or have the most interesting and detailed backstory (hell, you really don't want that last point for the PC of an RPG), they have to be able to lead. The best fighter or cleverest trickster in the world is useless in a position of authority if they can't use that authority effectively without alienating their allies. And Rook ultimately is able to lead, probably better than anyone else on the team could, because that's where their skillset lies. People really need to get rid of this idea that the role of The Leader automatically goes to whoever's "coolest". It's not a reward, it's an incredibly demanding job that for best results has to go to whoever is best suited to carry it out. Rook doesn't have the flashiest skills, but they do have the skills required to lead well and win loyalty, and for the leader of a team like this that is infinitely more important.

[voidedtea]

[ID in alt]

my pieces for @strawberrij's thespius fashion zine!! quite the endeavour and adventure that turned out pretty neat i think :]

special thanks go to @ratchetclankarecute for posing/cloth references + the bulk of the image descriptions! that first image would Not have happened without them <3

[uncanny-tranny]

I think it would really benefit people to internalize that mental illnesses are often chronic and not acute. Some of us will never be able to jump the hurdle of managing illness, much less sustaining a sense of normalcy. Many of us will never "recover," will never manage symptoms, will never even come close to appearing normal - and this is for any condition, even the ones labeled as "simple" disorders or "easy-to-manage" disorders.

It isn't a failure if you cannot manage your symptoms. It isn't a moral failure, and you aren't an awful person. You are human. There's only so much you can do before recognizing that you cannot lift the world. Give yourself the space to be ill because, functionally, you are.

[keymintt]

some style studies with grimm n yarrow for funsies

[in order: persona 5, disco elysium (aleksander rostov), witch hat atelier (kamome shirahama), the tea dragon society (k o'neill), alphonse mucha, hades (jen zee), in stars and time (insertdisc5), and promare]

[tordoise-x3]

Just my drawigs from today cuz I haven’t been finishing anything 😞

[jackattack20writes]

Also as a more serious post I keep seeing claims that Gquuuuuux is telling a story about Gundam or is doing “uc slop” or sudden rebuild bullshit in the last five eps but no it’s not. It’s telling a story about two possibly three teenagers proving that they have the right to decide their own destinies and not be bound by what the older generations have decided for them. It’s just that it’s achieving that by using the most iconic parts of Gundam to represent the older generations.

The UC “bullshit” is the culmination of the shows thesis about how the newer generations need to be left free to chart their own paths. Nyaan and Machu represent two ways in which younger people live with this. Nyaan aimlessly floats through life without convictions or passion for what she’s doing, her only wants restricted to her needs while she pines for what she truly wants but is unwilling to grab it until her hand is forced, and Machu is raging against the bonds holding her with no regards to what happens if she breaks free, she just knows she needs to be free becuase that’s worth whatever she’ll lose in the process. And then if I’m right about Shuji (and even if I’m not the earlier stuff with the red Gundam still fits) he’s the total loss of identity outside of the older generations wants and needs he no longer has his own id or ego he’s subsumed by the older generation and mirrors them (like those kids whose parents never made it in sports or whatever but they “totally could’ve” so the kids are forced to push themselves to the brink no matter what they actually want to enable their parents need to vicariously live through them.)

The fight against RX-78 isn’t just them fighting to prove their universe’s inherent right to exist but also the younger generations right to chart their own paths. This is why Challia and Kycilia’s treatment of Nyaan and Machu are so contrasting, Kycilia impose her own values and beliefs on Nyaan and Nyaan fights against them, she used the gun she was given to protect her self to protect someone else finally choosing what she wants rather than floating along. While Challia gave Machu the freedom to do what she felt was necessary and her gun was used to free herself and the Gquuuuuux to not only achieve what they wanted but to reach their full potential with the omega psycommu. It’s the same reason Challia doesn’t want to kill Xavier. he let Xavier go the way he wanted to and do what he felt was necessary and even though they’ve ended up on opposite sides he doesn’t want to take that freedom away from him in death. Whereas Kycilia was fully willing to kill Nyaan as soon as she didn’t align with her beliefs. And I think this is partly why Challia was chosen and written the way he is. He’s not an icon of Gundam like Char, Lalah, Kycilia, Amuro or even the titans. He’s of the og series but isn’t bound by it, it’s why he can straddle the line of being of the older generation but not trying to bind the newer generation to what they decide and be the only one willing to let them have the freedom they deserve.

The RX-78’s appearance is the manifestation and climax of this, the gquuuuuux timeline isn’t doing what it’s supposed to so it must be destroyed. This isn’t a show about Gundam, its not a meta story about Gundam needing to move past the UC timeline, it’s a show using the most iconic example of the old generation that Gundam will ever have to be the final boss in Nyaan and Machu’s journey to prove that they have a right to decide their own destinies. It’s why Beyond the Time works so well at the end of ep 11, it’s not only a callback but a call to arms for Nyaan and Machu to change their destiny and futures and share the happiness that’ll come from being finally, truly free.

[doodlingwren]

I'd love to have something witty to say here, but I think this one post speaks for himself in a way no words could.

Originally, I wanted to do a "simple" redraw of a silly meme, I have no idea HOW it eneded up being a four pages comic. And WHY there's also a JOJO reference within of all things. So uhm, anyway...

✨ Sources and references ✨

The "Dilf Detected Comic" [original unedited comic, meme format, meme format if you want the rebloggable tumblr version]

The "Oh? You're Approaching Me?" panel from the manga JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders (chapter 143)

Hope you've liked the Aries™ Rizz©�� ok bye

[wishchip106]

thinking for the millionth time about how a cherik edit saved the world

(the single gay tear and everything ☝️)

it’s so silly like instead of thinking about all the bittersweet and tender moments he might’ve had over the last ten years with his wife and daughter Erik makes a whole edit in his head about CHARLES HIS EX HUSBAND!!

what are you trying to me here Erik? that all you really care about is the safety and wellbeing of the man who you abandoned on that beach in cuba 20 years ago? that the only person who could guide you back to light is Charles Francis fucking Xavier??

who he hasn’t even gotten in contact with (that we know of) FOR TEN YEARS!!!

okay man you do you totally not like your wife and kid didn’t die like a few days ago lmao

why are gay people like this 🧍‍♂️

[invariant-ice]

for our purposes the creature is a hound and/or fox

[wildstar25]

MiqoMarch Day 11 - Loss

[ifieabouteverything]

Brennan REALLY wanted the “your whole worlds shaken because you’re no longer sure if your Dad was a good person” narrative but didn’t realize how loyally stubborn Riz Gukgak is in his beliefs

[windcarvedlyre]

I've been following @druidposting's DR2 playthrough on discord and we just had a really good discussion about DR's Closing Arguments. Specifically the way the murderer is depicted as grey and featureless, which until now I found a bit annoying.

In Danganronpa it's repeatedly the case that we don't have the full picture until the talking actually stops- which always goes beyond the end of the trial. We generally vote first and come to understand what the murderer's actual motive was, sometimes filling in important pieces of the timeline in the process, afterwards.

But none of that matters for the killing game because characters' emotions aren't directly relevant to who was the 'blackened'- the only thing that matters to Monokuma- so it comes out afterwards and does nothing to change their execution. It doesn't matter how sympathetic they are (basically everyone) or whether other people share responsibility for the situation (eg. Hanamura, Pekoyama, Momota) or whether they intended to murder at all (Nanami). They objectively pulled the trigger and nothing else matters. Nothing about them as a person matters.

The Closing Argument mechanic might illustrate that problem- literally. They're a dramatic, conclusive summary of the entire case... constructed before the vote even happens, before we know if we're actually right, and they're missing something really important:

The actual perpetrator.

We quite literally don't even begin to see the real person behind the crime, any real exploration of their mental state, anything besides the cold, hard facts of the murder that are necessary to convict them, until the comic finishes and the protagonist makes their final accusation- replacing the grey figure with their real appearance in a shot that's often intensely emotional.

And these comics lack crucial parts of the case's timeline and sometimes important parts of the very scenes they depict that we only find out about afterwards. And those are what we know; characters may die with some pieces of the truth and prevent us from ever learning them. These aren't objective depictions of the murder, they're the protagonist's subjective attempt to connect the facts they have. A join-the-dots portrait of someone with missing dots and no colour.

Even characters' expressions may not match how they truly feel, with the grey placeholder potentially looking way more confident and sinister than they were in reality. Pasting Falter's commentary here since they put it well.

For obvious reasons this could especially be a problem for characters that die before the trial- the ones we never get a post-vote testimony from. DR1 chapter 4 really highlighted that in the way Asahina's huge misinterpretation of Oogami's feelings took up a lot of the post-trial discussion, only for Monokuma to reveal Oogami's real suicide note and recontextualise everything.

It might really be a problem for how Komaeda's depicted in DR2 chapter 5. While he isn't greyed out, we get panel after panel where he's either level-headed or maniacally evil, and even the depictions of his self-torture and death don't humanise him:

But we know that his real feelings were more complicated than that. We have his actual corpse to compare the last page to.

He died afraid.

If we approach the comic as Hinata's mental image of him instead of reality, he died without anyone truly understanding him. He was alarming, very hard to relate to, actively fought against people doing so, ensured even the killer didn't watch him die, and the survivors couldn't begin to understand his motive until a chapter later. The Closing Argument reflects that.

Early in DR1 Togami calls out the rest of his class for judging others by their own standards. However, he, too, is doing this, maybe more so than many other characters; his inability to view other people through anything but the cold, brutal logic of the killing game bites him in the ass in chapter 4. In DR2 chapter 2 voting without a good understanding of Pekoyama's motive or Kuzuryuu's involvement nearly got everyone killed. Komaeda's a walking embodiment of the problems with flattening people into caricatures and not empathising with them, suffered from people doing that back to him, and his case- the Closing Argument for which turned everyone else into grey placeholders- was impossible to solve with objective facts. It was only survivable because the survivors cooperated and one person tried to analyse things the way he would.

The games have always been a critique of the justice system and Japanese society and push us to care about others as individuals, not reduce them to- and judge their right to exist by- something they've done or their net impact on society. There are always consequences when someone neglects to do that, and the above might be yet another way the games explore that theme.