#whats with all the mirrors man
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in love with fabians narcissus arc
#whats with all the mirrors man#maybe no more mirrors please#fantasy high#dimension 20#fabian seacaster#riz gukgak#figeroth faeth#gorgug thistlespring#adaine abernant#kristen applebees#just tagging all of them since they're all technically in the drawing#main focus was just fabian flirting with his reflection#ratqu33n4rt#hope ecaf becomes increasingly less receptive to the flirting#riz in the drivers just like
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never change, man !
#phantom of the paradise#potp#swan potp#nightmaretheater#65 layers and about 24 hours . Eeeyyuppp#Look into my beautiful mind boy#Its a bit unusual to what i usually draw#but i had to push a specific look for this piece#hopefully you all are picking up on the corperate look . the advertisment look#Sneeze. Anyways my point is industry destroys creative people. This includes swan#I feel like phrases like these ; how he was put on a pedistalā¦. it lead him to be Like That#as awful as he is he desperately needed help#it might seem like vanity on the surface#but i think itsā¦ more than that#long story short: we need to destroy the beauty industry. the skincare industry. the anti-aging industry#It ruined his psyche forever and he cant let go of the ideal version of himself he will never truly be again#i dont think he can at this point. hes in too deep and hes suffering for it no matter how much he feels hes fixed his problems#he cant accept a version of himself that isnt that perfect young man. because he never confronted his problems. he just ran away#anyways . Hi swath *punches him**kicks him*#i dont care if nobody gets me lalalalla my truths and headcanons are awesome forever and i live in my own reality lallaallal#sorry i think im gonna be posting about swan alot for a few months hes making me sick#i wass gonna post this earlier but my internet was real bad#*lays down in my pile of pillows* eat up boys. haha#sidenote: drawing white blond people is horrifiying. Boy your skin and hair are the same color. Introduce some contrast to yourself. Please#adding on: its inportant to note this focuses on him looking st himself in the mirror alot on purpouse#to remind himself what he āāāāreallyāāāā looks like#the 4 middle pannels all represent that too . u have to be in my brain ri get this#sorry for unleashijg another swan essay in my tags. will happen again lol
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DO NOT BE AFRAID
this is combining Ovid's Heroides and the Excidium Troie because I can't stop thinking of Hermes telling him not to be afraid. what the fuck!! Ares is wearing the crown that Paris gave him.
I have. thoughts. about Paris. he's almost got this Troilos parallel in my mind, that the event that defines him in detail exists in a lost narrative that we don't have (the Cypria), but everyone else knew. the event that defines Troilos is his death (murdered, butchered by Achilles, the violence of which haunts everything after. Achilles, child killer, you can't escape that!), and the event that defines Paris is the Judgement. what's a lost text but a kind of grave!!
idk I don't think that Paris before the Judgement would recognize himself after bc when you become god touched, it rearranges your guts. you become transformed in the worst way possible! how could you recognize yourself! but I also think that all the Parises after the Judgement would recognize each other because that event is so locked into the trauma of war and the scar it leaves on the land, it's like a scar on the narrative too. it exists like this forever, over and over again, so you exist like that forever too. Troy collects grief and despairs.
Troy as trauma: Reflections on intergenerational transmission and the locus of trauma, Andromache Karanika
and Paris is like. a miserable little god/corpse-puppet or something, like a match for the gods to throw onto gasoline.
The Excidium Troie + Ovid's Heroides:
Excidium Troie, trans. Muhammad Syarif Fadhlurrahman
Ovid, Heroides 16 (trans. Harold Isbell)
a collection of things regarding Paris that made me go š¬ but under a cut bc this is getting. very long.
The Divine Twins in Early Greek Poetry, Corolla Torontonensis
Iliad 24 and the Judgement of Paris, C.J. Mackie
Elegy and Epic and the Recognition of Paris: Ovid "Heroides" 16, Elizabeth Forbis Mazurek
Ennian Influence in "Heroides" 16 and 17, Howard Jacobson
Paris/Alexandros in the "Iliad", I. J. F. de Jong
#long post#paris of troy#komiks tag#like. DISTANTLY. its#the iliad#drawing tag#listen i know it's fun to dunk on paris. but im a chronic killjoy. i know its cringe. mea culpa etc#i would love. I WOULD LOVE. to draw a comic and not have the commentary notes be longer than the comic itself#unfortunately i like to read and i cannot stop talking about things that i read. so this will not be changing.#ngl i keep hearing the last line 'my brother says you are a just judge' as 'and brutus says he is an honorable man' and that's smth for sur#god i wish this was shorter but then i remember it could've been longer bc i started drawing this while watching#some excellent korean horror but then i looked at myself in the mirror and said 'no. get your shit together.'#but that show is what sparked this. the themes. god i love shows. a round of applause for tv shows.#in a different world theres a version of me that didn't exercise self restraint and there's 30 screen caps from a horror show here too#itās all greek to me
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TAEMIN - 'Eternal' Track List ā„ļø
#shinee#taemin#shinee taemin#lee taemin#taemin eternal#eternal#dailyshinee#kpopccc#malegroupsnet#ksoloists#dailybg#smsource#maleidolsnet#bgnetwork#speakofgifs#kpop#THIS TOOK SO LONG TO MAKE OMG but it was very creatively satisfying :)) i tried a lot of things i've never done before#i'm a little sad i feel like i'm prob a bit late posting this and the MV teasers come out tomorrow lol#but i wanted to grab clips i hadn't seen used much and put emphasis on the way taemin seems to b contrasting his concepts against each othe#there are a lot of parallels so far in everything he's released so i wanted to flip and reverse the clips to mirror each other~ i hope#my intentions/theme is clear in this set!#oh! and of course his handwritten āno matter what taemin is taeminā which again i feel furthers this contrasting of himself against himself#only to turn it around to remind us all sides of himself come together in the end ~eternally~#taemin is endlessly inspiring damn a true muse of a man <33 i'm impossibly excited to see what message he has for us this time :)
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Guys youāll never guess what I started playing
#astarion#baldurs gate astarion#baldurs gate 3#bdg3#this is going to be v bad for my health I can already tell#but I do love this man heās so dramatic and for what#and the fact that he even has a mirror at all makes me cry my eyeballs out#my art
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sometimes all you need is a hug from your big sister
#man.#sketches#sth#i wish there was a tag like ar/k siblings but for shadow and rouge. sigh#Rouge the Bat#Shadow the Hedgehog#rouge not being very touchy feely at all but willing to wrap shadow in her wings if he needs it because comfort. what if I blew up the worl#shes got this mentally ill kid rockin w her unmedicated#I like them mirroring sonic and tails as siblings btw.#theyre not very affectionate but. they love each other still
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instead of nightmare approaching horror to recruit him for the gang i think it would be cooler if he talked to undyne about it. because she would not hesitate TWICE to ship horror off to fuck knows where in the multiverse
like booo booo boring horror would never cooperate and agree to join nightmare without him doing some extra work that he cant be bothered 2 do bc its doesn't benefit him enough 4 the effort put in. AND THAT METHOD DOESN'T EVEN GIVE HIM MORE NEGATIVITY!!!!! nonono the king deserves a show :3 so he goes to undyne who's the craziest of everyone in horrortale and yk yk does some stupid mind manipulation. maybe in exchange for horror he makes up some bullshit lie about how he could save alphys (is she even alive atp) or the rest of the underground and provide them food (like the same deal that nightmare WOULD offer horror) and undynes like 70x more fucked up than horror so of course she's accept in a heartbeat. shes the queen!!!! shes supposed to provide for her subjects (even tho shes kinda. erm. making them all suffer)!!!! and all it would take was a sacrifice of the guy she lowkey doesn't like??? undyne has more reason to accept a deal like that from nm than horror ever would. and it wouldnt be the first time she sacrificed horror anyways lol
idk she sends royal guards out to snatch up horror in the middle of the day (nightmare told her to make it dramatic and tense :3) (all of snowdin would probably follow in concern because OMG WHERE IS SANS GOING????) and then yeah. just like that horrors gone! nightmare probably didn't even give him a chance to say bye to paps. undyne never ends up getting the food nightmare promised because hes a bitchass like that (and papyrus probably ends up taking up the full leader role of food provider for snowdin (if undyne even lets snowdin stay out of her control) good luck for him!)
if horror had a nickel for everytime he got forced to be a sacrifice he'd have 2 nickels. which is actually 2 too much in his eye HES PISSED!!!!!! rightfully so become man ā¹ļø taken away from his world without even a choice or a reason (to his knowledge) or anything to benefit him??? and now hes STUCK in this disney movie castle with two freaks who look like him (what the FUCK) and then the most annoying THING he's ever had the misfortune of getting kidnapped by. he is in misery. it sucks. he IS infact bitter. if he ever came back to horrortale (which he literally would never get to without dying or losing his stolen eye) he would 500% commit anarchy and finally get rid of undynes annoying ass ā¼ļøā¼ļø
#horror gets to join killer in the forcefully kidnapped into the gang group#would horror lose hope of ever getting back to horrortale???? yeah probably :3#unlike dust he doesn't have dt so he would NAUGHT be that persistent#dust would die trying getting back to dusttale. horror would just want to die after not being able to get back#unlike dust (debatable) or killer (he's done all he can do to help his world and wants to move on) horror still has attatchments in his au#i KNOW the constant thought that snowdin is starving without him HAUNTS him like a plaugue#im like 80% sure horrortale would not survive without horror. it would implode without horror to keep undyne somewhat in check#NOOOO because like what if it was after Aliza manages to help all of horrortale???? like undyne#like she manages to get through the undyne somehow and everything seems to be going up slowly#horror FOR ONCE has hope for everyone again and then nightmare comes in and undoes ALLLL of aliza's progress!!!!!!#THE HOPE GETTING RIPPED AWAY FROM HORROR AFTER SEEING THINGS RECOVERING WOULD DESTROY HIM (maybe idk)#can just imagine killer having to be on suicide watch for horror bc nm can tell he's in a bad mood bc of that hope#killer doesnt have to be on suicide watch for dust bc he wont let himself die if his human still exists but horror?????#horror would not have the same will that dust and killer do. he tries to jump off buildings every mission#horror leaning off a ledge and killer's just holding onto his hood like man stop it this is wasteful and pointless#why does he keep trying to kill himself and have to make killer deal with this. cant horror just like get the fuck over it and do his job#anyways dust and horror exchanging stories about their aus and reminiscing about things before it all went bad#horror gets pissy anytime dust makes an offhand comment tying his story about the genos#dust completely ignores him when horror mentions something about the famine and how it fucked everything up#they rather just take this moment to pretend everything is alright in their memories#in that moment its almost like looking into a mirror. ok triglycercule getting a bit TOO poetic there#horrordust seeing sans in eachother only when they talk about their pasts and making it a way to deal with all thats changed#tricule hc#killer sans#dust sans#horror sans#nightmare sans#murder time trio#bad sanses#nightmare's gang
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seeing myself in the mirror and im like . whos that babe? that smokeshow? and then 2 minutes later seein gmyself in a photo someone took of me and its just some cryptid. some bridge troll captured on film
#i think this is what they call 'the duality of man'#talky cherub#me in the mirror: handsome squidward#me in candids: that one frame of squidward where hes all scowling and veiny
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following on from this. not to always bring marc into everything (sorry marc) but if assen 2015 had happened against jorge, valentino would have very likely pulled something similar again imo. rather than what he actually did, which is approach marc almost immediately for a nice normal friendly handshake and backing off during the podium celebrations. should be noted that during laguna seca '08, valentino was very much committed to yapping at casey on the podium with the world's biggest smuggest grin on his face
partly that disparity is because jorge not marc was the direct title rival, partly it's because valentino was treating marc with kid gloves right until the second that he wasn't, which marc was seemingly entirely oblivious to. if anyone other than marc had said what he said in that presser, had then continued on with similar rhetoric during sachsenring, valentino would quite likely have gone nuclear. he's done it over less than that. his fondness for marc made him continue to exhibit uncharacteristic restraint... except that fondness unfortunately is what left valentino feeling so very betrayed when (to his eyes) marc could not leave well enough alone
#it's so delightfully tragic isn't it. a lot of 2015 played out the way it did because valentino genuinely wasn't looking for beef#but then felt backed into a corner and decided he had no other option than to blow this shit up#if casey says 'what I think is that we won the race' valentino would've torn him a new one then and there like...#if sete had called assen his best race of the season valentino would've reached for the chalk and incense even sooner#though fwiw I do think the relationship was basically doomed from that point. something would have happened sooner or later#2015 is so funny conceptually because there was already something *off* about it most of the way through. you have the familiar beats#but they shouldn't be HAPPENING with marc. they should be happening with the actual title rival - who vale never properly fought all season#assen 2015 should've been laguna should've been catalunya hell it should've been assen 2004 but it couldn't be#valentino kept accidentally inflicting the psychological blows on the wrong guy because jorge just refused to end up in a straight fight#assen SHOULD have been a pivotal race. but of course it couldn't be because what psychological blow was jorge lorenzo being dealt?#btw the unwillingness to beef doesn't just extend to marc. valentino makes a concerted effort to be uncharacteristically friendly to jorge#still think he would've rubbed assen in his face but. overall! he was trying! which again. very ironic#funhouse mirror ass season i love it dearly#//#brr brr#slowly dipping my toes into dropping 2015 hot takes on tumblr dot com... for so long these have been between me god and my google doc#i love jorge i think he's been involved in a lot of iconic battles i think it's funny not a single one of them happened in 2015#minus kinda phillip island but even there it did feel like the other three were Doing More than him#also just a different vibe to a proper one-on-one. a WEIRD title run where the third man that whole year walks away with the trophy#idol tag
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So I just read all 914 pages of Foolās Fate in one day. I donāt think Iāve ever read that much in one day ever. These books are so good holy snickerdoodles I love the politics and the amazing worldbuilding (robin writes matriarchies and different societal structures SO GOOD) and the realistic characters and Fitzās unreliable narration and also the gay ass āfriendshipā between him and the fool (fitz āno homo but also my bond with you is deeper than my love for anyone else including my other half bonded wolf and my wife and also sexā farseer)
So uh. Yeah. Excuse me while I go cry in the corner. Again.
#aint no way youāre convincing me fitz is less than bi heās just got internal homophobia so he canāt recognize it#lowkey canon if u disagree Iļæ½ļæ½m sorry but ur just wrong š¤·āāļø#the way some of his lines with beloved mirror lines heās had with the women heās slept with is just#robin#robin hobb#why must you torture me so exquisitely#I love these books so goddamn much aaaaaaaaaaaaaa#donāt even get me started on the ābelovedā thing#fools fate#fitzchivalry farseer#farseer trilogy#tawny man trilogy#fitz x fool#fitzloved#the way literally everyone else was like ātheyāre fuckingā and fitz over here like āuh uh no way nope love you but no homo broā#meanwhile beloved over there just dying inside#also when he died I almost laughed bc I couldnāt believe robin was going to kill off the only canon gay character after torturing him#SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE OF HIS GAYNESS#glad she didnāt bury that gay after all#these books are so aggressively straight with all this talk about men and women and how different they are she couldnāt handle beloved#and his genderfluidity#jk Iām glad they even exist at all their bond is very compelling both platonically and romantically and I fear what may have been written#if they got together canonically#I love them so much#really excited to read the fitz and the fool trilogy hopefully itās just as compelling with their relationship#might do fanart at some point if I feel it
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You know, while we have no idea what the story of The Missing comic is actually gonna be yet, what we can gather from just reading the blurbs, Varric having to search half of northern Thedas to no avail just because Solas keeps popping up all over the flippin map like a never ending cat-and-mouse game, I think this sums up the plot pretty well
#dragon age the missing spoilers#the missing#solas#varric#honestly though varric this man has magical mirrors scattered all over the world what were you thinking? lol#I spent way too much time on this goddamn gif lmao
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*lovingly tackles Aine*
Read my Yandere! Pierro longfics first āŖ( Ā“ā½ļ½)
Last week, my beloved mutual @ainescribe surprised me with Savior! Darling fan art and AHAI9232@2-!/! CRYING SCREAMING I WANT TO LOOK AT THIS ART AND WORSHIP YOUR VERSION OF SAVIOR THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR BLESSING ME WITH YOUR ARTā
*clears throat* Anyway, now that I finally have the time to properly sit down and comment on the fan art, Iāll do just that. Feedback will be in the tags and it will be unhinged. Once again, thank you so much to Aine for drawing this <3
#feedback#fan art#ainescribe#AIIINE ;-; once again. thank you so much!! it rlly means a lot to me that you enjoyed my writing and felt inspired to draw this :'>#and as someone who loves fashion and character design. it's so so interesting to analyze your version of savior#there's so much symbolism and visual storytelling in each sketch/ outfit and i shall now proceed to pick apart each detail as best as i can#her snezhnayan fit.....god i love it. it's regal. distinctively snezhnayan. and draws attention to her--and you just know that was pierro's#intention when he dressed her in those garments. IT'S JUST SO...!! savior's wardrobe scrubbed clean of her original culture and preferences#replaced with the foreign garments of her captor's nations.....in line with this. i love how her kokoshnik and khaenri'ahn earrings are big#and attention-grabbing. you can't look at her without taking note of those accessories. it begs the question:: how many times has savior#looked at the mirror after being dressed up in snezhnaya and was unable to recognize her own reflection?? :'>#also shoutout to some details aine shared with me: 1) the face marks are inspired by weeping angels 2) the kokoshnik was traditionally worn#by married noblewomen BUT the veil was normally for unmarried women so savior's outfit can be seen as a form of compliance + rebellion#(though later on in history it became accepted for married women to also wear that veil. also my apologies if what i said is inaccurate)#lastly shoutout to savior's expression!! very poised and mysterious....due to her emotional state or pierro's rules on how to act as his#spouse in public?? we'll never know~ the first drawing hits even harder when you compare it to the next one!! such an interesting contrast~#savior in her plain attire. casual and domestic with a smile on her face....i'm guessing this is her pre-fatui version?? she looks so warm#and friendly. and i can definitely understand why pierro fell for her smile <3#also i fucking love the caption. sorry pierro but you are cursed to be a loser/ simp/ pathetic man in all of my fics and AUs xD#NOW ONTO GODDESS! SAVIOR AAAHHHH!! i love the greek goddess motifs. she looks so regal and awe-inspiring but in a different way from her#snezhnayan attire--archaic. divine. and more suited to her personal style.....yet both versions of her look so painfully isolated :'>#her blank eyes. emotionless face. and veil give me the vibes of a spooky victorian ghost...or would a statue/ portrait be more fitting??#the lack of a necklace is also an interesting design choice given what happens in the fic. and now i realized i forgot to comment on your#version of her snezhnayan necklace oops. similar to the kokoshnik and earrings. the size + grandeur makes it impossible to ignore#that and big jewels = expensive af. ohhh and i love the sparkles on her veil!! pierro rlly spared no expense in dressing up his wifey <3#it's also funny how all of these outfits are similar to my own version in terms of 'savior wore grand clothing during her glory days as a#goddess -> wore simple attire after her decline for practicality and to blend in with humans/ disassociate from her old identity -> is now#dressed in even grander clothing as the harbinger's spouse. but it's used to reinforce her new identity and pierro's control over her'#tldr:: your design is so creative and i can see the effort you put in analyzing her character and depicting her based on your interpretatio#thank you for being my mutual + reader and i hope we can share even more harbinger/darling brainrot in the future :>
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iām aware iām 100% alone in this, but i genuinely adore ascended astarion (especially when romanced) because of howāfranklyāhorrific it is. itās simultaneously so cathartic in its brutality but so unsatisfying personally while managing to be narratively satisfying (just as his other outcome is, of course).
#ophelia.txt#bg3 spoilers#the way he still has the shell of his old feelings for tav mirrored in his possessiveness of them. that alone does suggest that heād#probably not subject them to the same overt cruelty that he suffered which makes it all far more dangerous and insidious. because what#humanityāin as much as it can be called thusāremained to him is gone. what made him HIM is gone and all that remains is an incredibly#powerful being who (if you got his scene after moonrise) hates them for letting him go through with it. he has no love left in him now.#only want and resentment and possessiveness. if he loves tav itās the possessive and selfish love a child has for a toy. but he doesnāt#even respect them. heās too paranoid now. too drunk on the power he has from his failure to break the cycle (which he. again. resents tav#for allowing). he said right out the gates that true vampires are never created. thereās only ever a sire and a spawn. and he views tav#letting him bite them as them degrading themselves. placing themselves as lesser than him and itās the new baseline for how heās going to#treat them because the man they loved is effectively gone. it makes me feel so unwell. i love ascended astarion like okay king of not#breaking the cycle ššš
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s. something wicked this way rides
[more versions under cut!]
been strugglin' with art block, so have a little pearl sketch!
#pearlescentmoon#pearlescentmoon fanart#double life fanart#mcyt#mcyt fanart#double life#double life smp#..man i never know what to put here kjgfds#please excuse the copious use of the krita mirror tool . sobbinf#dl!pearl#5am pearl#has#my entire heart#thats me. all the time always#that's just what it's like to live in australia skjgfds#doodles
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i realised i never did post anything for triage 1 mil....well, heres thumbnail redraw!
#milgram#milgram fanart#shidou kirisaki#milgram project#sand speaks#i put EFFORT into that expression....anyways triages thumbnail makes me so sad. warning btw i go insane in the rest of the tags#a reminder of what was and can never again be. esp juxtaposed with the more raggard shidou. looking into a fucked up mirror except YOURE th#fucked up one not the mirror image#also it amazes me how like. happy he looks in triage's thumbnail. that + how the other him never smiles once in the mv#man makes me so very sad. imagine having lost everything and yet needing to live for the sake of others. not even for yourself because ther#is nothing left of the old you to live for. ouggghghgh. sorry the tags turned into me being all sad about triage#look at man. he go :D#was debating posting this but i think i like how it looks actually so
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Can you expand on what you mean by Baron being "too cool" to really fit a horror monster? It's a very interesting concept and I'd love to hear your thoughts. Is it that they're too active/involved/tangible and it detracts from their scariness?
I feel like I should preface this with a wall of disclaimers lmao 1/I am a hardcore, down-to-the-marrow, avid, deeply sincere horror enthusiast, esp. horror creatures. this usually means my mileage is vastly different from the average populace's, and my scaredy bone has been disintegrated by longterm exposure. most things in a piece of horror media won't scare me! so I practically never use that on its own as the scale to talk abt horror experiences, but when something does scare me it's always a special occasion to be treasured. 2/canon d20 is never really meant to be horror horror, and for good reasons: it doesn't fit the company's output, it takes a kind of carelessness in production estimation that is always a huge risk, it's often vulnerable in a way that kinda goes against how TTRPGs usually facilitates vulnerability, and for most people it's just! stressful! d20, even with the "horror-themed" seasons, generally just plays with horror tropes and stays focused in its goal of being a comedy improv tabletop theater show. 3/fantasy high's chosen system is DnD, which as I've mentioned before is before all a combat-based game system, which means the magic circle of play is drawn based on stats that facilitate and prioritize combat. want or not this affects every interaction you have in the game, and given fantasy high's concept from the ground up (everyone's going to school of DnD stuff to get better at DnD) it's doubly relevant. 4/This Is Fine I have no quarrel with this. my meters are internal, I do not ask this show to be anything it doesn't advertise itself to be, and what it is is fucking great! I like it! when I expand on this ask's question it will be like a physicist going insane in a lab. that's the mindset we're going in with.
disclaimers done. my stance on horror as a genre is that it's a utility genre rather than a content genre or a demographic genre; it is the discard of narratives. it's the trash pile. horror, above being scary, is about being ugly and messy, it's the cracks on the ground any story inevitably steps over to stay a genre that isn't horror. the genre's been around long enough to develop a codex and a general language that medias and makers and enthusiasts of the genre can use to talk about and build onto, but if you go into individual pieces there's really no unifying Horror Story. one person's beautiful life can be another's horror story, it's just how it is.
this makes The Monster a deeply intriguing piece of the genre. thing is a monster is in a decent percentage of any story - it's just when the antagonist force steps into something past a certain line traced out in the story's world. monstrousness is in pretty much every western fantasy story, it's in any story with a hero and something to vanquish or win; more than anything it's a proxy of that thing up there. the line in a narrative's world. the monster is the guard of the unknown lands, where heroic, civilized people don't tread.
what does this mean in the context of horror? the genre is about that perceived lawlessness, that "unknown land" so to say. we're in the monster's home. that's the literary context that we often walk into a horror piece with; the monster knows more than you about where you are. it may not understand you, but it holds more information than you, and with that it moves swifter than you, has more covered than you, and is more assured in its existence in this context than you. it's a struggle to catch up to it, it's nigh impossible to get one over it, and you're never sure it'll 100% work, because you just don't have the information necessary to.
with that framing you can kinda see where I'm coming from here: horror's often about the breaking of rules. I always think a monster's most effective when it breaks well-established rules of both existence and visual storytelling. think Possum (2018) or Undertale's Omega Flowey or the Xenomorph Queen - unique change in medium, unique change in graphic, unique change in design language, etc. in that sense I actually really like how canon baron plays out: they don't really function like anything else in the fantasy high universe, the bad kids have not managed to kill them when they've felled literal gods, their domain in fhjy literally introduces new mechanics to encompass their existence! from an experience design standpoint they slap mad shit. BUT! I can't help finding their character, like as a character riz (and the other bad kids, eventually) interact with, to be very... coherent? in design. this is kinda hard for me to articulate in words, it's more often a sense you get once you've looked at enough of these scrumptious fuckers, their general design and the way they show up is just kinda too clean, so to say. always kinda newly made? fresh unboxed. it, once again, makes sense for their lore - they are looking for more about themself from riz - and their function - they're an antagonist in a game experience, they're meant to be interacted with in a way that produces results and meshes with the existing magic circle - but that shininess takes away from the implied history they should have dominion over and the person they're haunting doesn't.
from another angle there is kinda something there about how put-together canon baron is as a concept; the domain they call home is riz's deep-seeded fears, extremely vulnerable things he's drawn borders around to quarantine and refused to walk into. things that from his perspective would irreversibly shatter certain pleasant fictions his world is built on top of. canon baron, While Extremely Cool, I feel is kinda too neat to connect with and signify the apocalyticized mess that'd result from this paradigm shift. the part where they're in riz's briefcase and looking through every mirror is Very Cool And Fucked Up! but ultimately the show draws a line around them as well, by making game-physical, tangible spaces they're in (the mirrors and the haunted mordred manor) and put riz and the bad kids there only when they need to confront stuff. riz is meaningfully narratively away from baron's unknown land for most of fantasy high.
with that and all of my disclaimers in mind my conclusion here is if canon baron wants to be a Horror Monster they'd have to cross way more lines. be a Lot more invasive. hence (holds up my class swap baron like a long cat)
#ask#not art#tldr a lot of fantasy high's and d20's nature plays against having a Horror horror piece in it. there's no space for emptiness or dread#that's one of the most attractive things to me about horror. the monster signifying a new world you don't understand#you see something on the deserted streets and you realize: oh. the world doesn't work how I've been thinking it does#if u've noticed how much this has in common with queer experiences haha. yeag#man. actually I should also put the I Am Not White disclaimer in there too lmao a lot of the notion of The Monstrous is! traditionally#about maintaining and upkeeping a ''social order'' (read: the powers that be)#and a Lot of Wilderness Fiction is deeply and maliciously colonialist#so when I say ''the unknown land'' and ''the monster'' I am pretty much speaking From one of those unknown lands#and from the position of one of those monsters#the fear of the monstrous is so very often the fear of being consumed by - or becoming - the monstrous yourself#and well. when you're already there in the eye of the zeitgeist. You Can Do What You Want Forever#all that to say it Is important to me that baron is made of riz's lies. even more so in this funny class swap thing I make for fun#like as a horror protag he makes me insane. he loves lines! he loves lines he drew himself. he replicates these borders in himself#that mirror the world he lives in that's so hostile to him. that kid Loves rules. he bows to even the ones that hurt him#like. u get where I'm getting to right I did make a whole comic kinda near this subject he's Already The Other#baron is a monster's monster. baron is a mirror image. GODs I cant help but wish they were messier#it's kinda why I make class swap baron to be like. an ever nearing realization. like I warble abt all this but I genuinely do also find#canon baron to be just as visually coherent and thematically perfect as riz if not more. it's hard to beat how cool the mirror stuff is#it's hard to beat that doll face in iconic visuals! I have to strike according to my strength rather than trying to beat canon#so instead of reflection it's captured moments. instead of a blank face it's the lack of one. mmm. maybe I'm just kinda breaking things#for fun also but that's My prerogative in my house awooga <3#well. thats kinda my thoughts on the general subject. thank u for listening. I will bake something soon dyou want some
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