#which like. me too honestly

[n4rval]

a gentle push and a little bit of patience.

[hotdogmchiggin]

Company Mandated Fancy Fits on the Tulpar 😏

Also had to include the REAL star of the show (and a bonus)

Based off of this and this. Thank you very much joetastic for being inspirational 👍

The REAL reason this is late

[verflares]

(click for higher quality!) draconified link concept ive been chipping away at this past week ..... here's my funny little compendium concept for him:

"A heroic spirit has taken the form of this bestial dragon. Unlike it's kin, this creature exhibits an extremely aggressive disposition. It appears highly territorial, and will relentlessly chase down those who disturb its skywide patrols - of which it seems to be endlessly searching for either a long-time vassal or foe. Unfortunately, it seems the spirit within has long since forgotten exactly who it was looking for…"

[theoldkyokodied]

One wedding and three funerals

Background paintings under the cut

[uncanny-tranny]

It's honestly frustrating that I've seen non-Russian queer people almost bragging about how they would be illegal in Russia, labeled an extremist or terrorist. Russian queers are in danger, their government has made it clear where it stands, and it's made this effort for the better part of a decade (even longer, perhaps). This will kill people, don't mistake this for a quirky little proclamation from a government, akin to somebody saying the sky is pink. Russian queer people were already expressing their fear, and the least we can do now is express our love for them, and advocate with them.

Russian queer people, I love you. I love you all so much. I am so sorry, I cannot begin to express the grief that I feel, and I hope that you are safe. Words cannot encapsulate how I feel as a non-Russian, and I cannot hope to comprehend how it feels to actually be in this situation.

[proselles]

clinging to the sex warning for arcane like an angst with a happy ending tag on ao3

[quicksilversnails]

Took some notes from the Wild Life retrospective episode of the Imp & Skizz podcast featuring Grian because I thought the behind the scenes info was really interesting!

(3:15) The wild cards were all kept totally secret from the players (apart from Grian), with the exception of the superpowers and finale (as they required the players to set keybinds)

(3:45) The players were given files containing the required mods each week, which were named things like "creeper rain" to throw them off

(4:12) Wild cards were a combination of data packs and mods

(4:38) Grian told them not to read the folder name to avoid spoilers (which is kind of impossible), so everyone fully believed there would be creeper rain lol. Grian was saying it in jest but everyone took it seriously and were apologetic about having seen it, to which Grian told them not to worry

(6:58) Grian originally contacted a data pack dev called Brace for help with programming the wild cards. Some, like the shrinking/growing could be achieved with minecraft attributes, but the snails were too janky and unusable. Grian still liked the idea though, so he reached out to mod developers Henkelmax and Breadloaf, who designed the pathfinding/behaviour from scratch

(8:49) They had a debugging mode used to test the pathfinding of the snails, shown in the podcast and in Grian's credits

(10:09) Grian wants most of the credit to go to the development team and artists, as he was mostly in charge of ideas & organization!

(10:39) Grian's only regret with the snails was that they were too fast in session 3, leading to unexpectedly many deaths. They were apparently not so difficult to get away from during testing, but perhaps the testers were more used to them than the players were

(11:44) Grian: "We did develop to the lowest common denominator" ie. prioritizing how players would struggle over how worrying about if players would do too well

(12:56) Oli's voice for the snails was iconic. It cost Impulse a life because he intentionally stayed closer to it to hear the voice lol

(13:42) Danny was in charge of the snail models and animations

(14:11) During testing, the snails just sounded like Oli, which made it feel weird. They pitched up his voice so that it'd be less immediately recognizable

(15:18) The snails' jumping attack was meant to be clearly telegraphed: they would stop, wiggle, make a "ooeee" sound before jumping. Many players had their friendly creatures volume turned very low/off (as cows and other mobs are loud), which made this attack much less obvious for them

(16:57) The growing/shrinking had the least testing done for it, as it was the simplest conceptually and to program. This meant that the falling off of blocks due to the shrinking hitboxes wasn't anticipated

(17:55) Before the 1st session, Grian told them that he didn't think anyone would die to the wild card. Pearl's death made Grian pretty nervous, as he didn't want everyone dying too early in the season

(19:29) 6 lives were given, knowing that many of the death to the wild cards were unexpected/unfair. The intent was for ~3 lives to be allocated for wild cards, and ~3 for PvP.

(21:13) The developers were all fans of the Life Series!

(22:43) The shrinking/growing was intentionally pretty simple to ease players/viewers into the concept and build up toward more dramatic wild cards like the snails

(25:38) In the hunger episode, Grian didn't know which foods would be good

(25:58) Grian thinks that "it's unfair that Grian already knows everything" is valid criticism, but that it's important for him to be involved with the ideas. Having someone else do that is like having someone else record his videos: Life Series is his brainchild

(26:35) Well before the season began, while they were still developing the concept, Grian asked the other players for wild card ideas that would meet a few criteria. All of them ended up being unused for one reason or another. Impulse thinks his ideas were very "inside the box" because he was viewing things through what was possible in vanilla Minecraft. His idea was to have a scavenger hunt where the players would search to find a relic. The first person to find it would get a buff. Skizz's idea was for every player to turn into a random passive mob for every given interval of time. They would have to find every other player of the same mob type as them or else the whole group loses a life.

(29:44) The food qualities were weighted by the rarity of the item, so very common blocks like dirt and cobblestone would never give anything good. The other items were randomly selected

(30:23) Regular blocks/items cannot be made edible normally, so they had to circumvent that and custom code a fix for items not stacking correctly

(32:41) While a lot of players do want to win, the main priority is creating entertainment, which prioritizes playing recklessly

(33:20) The food wild card wasn't included in the finale because it would've felt like "too much". There was a higher risk of technical issues since it changed the data values of items, and Grian didn't want someone's last death to be because they ate their sword. In his mind, it was a good and fun wild card, but didn't need to be repeated in the finale. Impulse points out that they all would have collected more rare items by that point, removing the incentive to search for blocks to eat

(33:46) The wild cards in the finale were nerfed from their original sessions. The shrinking/growing had a smaller height range, the snails moved slower, etc.

(36:21) The personalized snail skins were a late addition by Danny, who made 18 skins very quickly

(36:49) Grian did not anticipate the snails becoming as popular with fans as they were. After the session released, they had the idea to release the snail merchandise, which directly funded the rest of the season

(39:20) Grian spent what "felt like every day" testing with the developers. They'd record the sessions on Tuesdays, meet up with the dev team, talk about what need to be done, testing, bugs, etc, edit and upload on Saturday, and would get a few days grace before starting again

(40:01) After the snail session, Grian was worried that the season would be very short due to all the deaths. They were considering toning down the later wild cards but ultimately didn't change them too much

(40:36) The time wild card was carefully balanced. If it had gone even a little faster, many players likely would have died because they wouldn't have time to react to threats like baby zombies or creepers.

(40:57) While sessions normally run for a variable amount of time, session 4 was hardcoded at 2 hours. Grian ended the session ~10 minutes early, just after they hit max speed, because he felt like things were getting dicey

(42:46) When the wild card first activates, it looks a lot like the server had frozen or crashed. Grian told the players before the session started that it would look like the game was broken, but that it isn't broken. Skizz tabbed out anyway and missed the beginning 😔

(43:30) Having the rain start just as the wild card began was a good visual indicator of time slowing down. This was a suggestion from the dev team (probably Brace)

(44:41) Impulse and Grian "cheesed" the end of the session by going branch mining. Grian wanted players to take advantage of the wild cards (eg. mining quickly, helping to kill someone), and not have them just be an annoyance.

(45:30) Keeping the client and server-side time stay in sync was challenging. The sky's motion was changed to be smoother on client-side. The players were also not as fast as the server (around 2x faster), the server was going faster than that, and the time of day was even faster

(46:56) The sounds were pitched up/down based on the speed to add to the effect

(27:46) In testing, if the players were made 7x faster, it would be basically unplayable, which was why it was capped at 2x speed. This made mobs very dangerous, as they were now faster than players and could catch up to you and kill you easily

(49:01) On several occasions, they had to extend the fuse duration of creepers to make them more fair. In the time session, their speed was only increased by ~10%

(49:39) Usually, Grian was the one to test the wild cards and notice when things like creeper speed would be an issue, since he was the one with experience making videos

(50:50) A challenge with balancing wild cards is accounting for the playstyles of so many players: reckless players like Scar and Skizz, "kind and gentle" players like Bigb who would stay off to the sides, and "the sweat squad" (Scott, Impulse) who play very cautiously

(52:48) Trivia Bot was the only wild card that was not planned in advance. Grian was struggling to come up with a wild card for that episode, and wanted to have a wild card available that could give people lives in case many people died to early wild cards without it feeling cheap.

(53:33) Trivia seemed a little boring on its face, so presentation was essential

(54:34) This one made Grian the most stressed due to all the moving parts involved in making it (coding and pathfinding mostly by Henkelmax, visuals by Hoffen, audio/music, questions)

(55:08) Trivia Bot's design was based on Grumbot and Mettaton from Undertale. Hoffen drew concept art shown in the video

(58:32) They show Trivia Bot's custom animation for becoming a snail and it's really cool

(59:12) The music was the most stressful part of the project. Grian spent 2-3 days looking through Epidemic Sounds for a Trivia Bot theme song and couldn't find anything good. He commissioned Zera @hopepetal for a theme song, which is played in the podcast. However, Grian realized he needed a full audio package, so he commissioned Oli late in development, who created the final soundtrack and many audio variations

(1:01:38) Grian wants to send appreciation for everyone who worked on the project, even if their work ultimately went unused

(1:02:58) Skizz was happy to give back however he could by staying on standby in the final episode as a zombie, as the players were able to "reap all the benefits" of the hard work of the development team

(1:05:21) Grian didn't know any of the trivia questions beforehand, which were done by fans of the series. The goal was for ~50% of the questions to be answered correctly, which was approximately met

(1:07:11) Players couldn't get questions about themselves because it would be too easy. This would encourage players to leave their bot, allowing other players to mess with them

(1:07:57) Grian felt a little left out from the discovery element of the wild cards, and decided to mess with Scar by hiding his bot. He wasn't expecting Scar to die from it, and could tell that he was genuinely a little upset by it. Grian felt bad about it, which led to a genuine in-game alliance between them

(1:12:32) Grian was very close to letting Trivia Bot give lives as rewards, but decided it would feel too cheap

(1:14:38) Mob swap was slightly toned down, with more camels and sniffers spawning

(1:15:07) Evokers didn't drop totems anymore. Instead, there was a minuscule chance a warden or wither would spawn, which would drop a totem if killed. Grian was a little disappointed that the warden got cheesed in the end

(1:17:45) Having the mobs start passive and turn hostile was mostly for the presentation, building anticipation, and so players could predict where mobs would spawn and react accordingly, making things feel less unfair

(1:20:32) There was no superpower made for Skizz (or Mumbo presumably)

(1:20:38) The superpowers were another late addition. There was a large design doc where Grian created all the powers, which were handed over to Henkelmax and completed over 4 days

(1:21:42) Grian avoided superpowers involving strength, that could cause someone to die easily. Most of the powers were social or movement-based, which couldn't be used for offence as easily

(1:22:25) Some powers were randomly assigned, others weren't. Impulse's was random. Cleo's, Bigb's, Lizzie's, Grian's were assigned.

(1:24:25) Grian gave himself the mimic because it could easily backfire (like in Grian's fall damage death), and because it would've been confusing for a player who wasn't aware of the other powers. They likely would've spent the episode just figuring out how everything worked and not actually using the power to its best ability

Lots of discussion about the superpowers and how they interacted in the episode itself, go watch if you're interested :)

(1:33:38) Talk on how the series "standard" rules evolved since 3rd Life. There was no keep inventory, and no restrictions on enchanting levels or potions, which created slow or unbalanced fights

(1:36:23) 3rd Life was designed to be an experimental series, which made Grian eager to improve it. For example, some people just weren't dying in 3L, leading to the boogeyman in LL, and so on

(1:37:17) The goal with the seasons isn't to one-up the previous one, but to create a different experience every time, which keeps things engaging for the creators

(1:38:31) At the end of each session, Grian would ask the group if they had fun and how they felt about the wild cards. According the Skizz, the answer was "a resounding yes"

(1:39:08) Grian had moments throughout the season where he personally felt like things didn't go well for him, and was anxious for the rest of the group's episodes. Things worked out while editing the raw footage, though. His issues were never with the wild cards themselves, but his own actions (traps not working, spending too long branch mining), but would always find funny moments in his footage

(1:43:41) Everyone in the Life Series cast genuinely likes and genuinely respects everybody else in the group. This allows them to make the show and get mad at each other, because they know it's all just in-character

(1:44:50) It'd be hard to top Wild Life in spectacle, and Grian doesn't want to start an arms race with himself. The next season could potentially be closer to 3rd Life, but Grian's not sure yet. For Grian, Wild Life was the most enjoyable

(1:45:20) Grian: "As long as people keep enjoying [the Life Series] then I'd love to keep doing it"

(1:49:35) With the finale, Grian knew how the wild cards played out the previous sessions and was able to adjust them

(1:49:56) Grian's goal was to create safe chaos where everyone knew what was happening and wouldn't die to them, which didn't go entirely to plan. The snails were 60% of their original speed and people still died

(1:51:03) Grian made a precise timeline of when each wild card would start/stop, it wasn't randomized.

(1:54:16) All the superpowers were randomized, with Bdubs' power being removed from circulation because it didn't have much use in a finale setting

(1:56:10) It was important for Grian that in the final moments, the wild cards were removed, so there were no interruptions. The timing worked out well because there were a few people left and it ended within ~10 minutes (this implies that the change wasn't based on # of players alive, as people had speculated based on Gem's death)

(1:58:48) The players all randomly switched to zombie skins throughout the session to mess with people on NameMC. Well-played :)

[avpdpossum]

can we talk more about avpd being a (proposed) schizospec disorder? because i almost never see that theory talked about but i wish it was. like…

avpd makes me censor my thoughts because i think someone might hear what i’m thinking and see what a horrible person i am on the inside or judge me for thinking embarrassing things.

avpd makes me so afraid of someone walking in on me doing something i Shouldn’t Be Doing that my brain twists background noise into the sounds of whispers and footsteps behind me.

avpd makes me so worried about people staring at me that in my peripheral vision, anyone near me looks like they’re already staring at me, and it’s only when i look at them directly that i realize they’ve been looking in a totally different direction the whole time.

avpd makes me so convinced of how much everyone must secretly hate me that i often start thinking everyone secretly wants to hurt me too, to the point where i’ve had panic attacks from a person walking too close behind me because i feel like they’re getting ready to attack me (when i haven’t had any kind of trauma that would create that fear), and the paranoia just serves to reinforce my need to avoid people.

avpd makes me lose my ability to speak or reduces it to nothing more than one word answers only when spoken to, turning the thoughts i wanted to express into a jumble that’s impossible to turn into words or just throwing them away completely and making my mind go blank, so i end up just staring at people silently or even acting like i don’t see them standing there at all (not on purpose but because my brain won’t let me engage with them).

avpd makes me look damn near emotionless around everyone but my safe person (and sometimes even around my safe person) because showing my emotions would be far too vulnerable for its liking, so it completely takes away my ability to express them.

and i could keep going! there are so many things i experience because of avpd that i’ve seen really closely reflected in the experiences of schizospec people. i don’t know how common these kinds of things are in avpd overall, but they’re a really prominent part of my experience with it, so when i found out that some research suggested it could be considered a schizospec disorder itself, that made so much sense to me! and i’d be so curious to see how many other avoidants have dealt with this stuff but haven’t talked about it because it’s never mentioned as being part of avpd.

[abrahamvanhelsings]

the terror (2018) requires a rewatch not only bc it is so good it will settle in the core of your brain and grow and spread there like a fungus until you die but also bc it is a show about a hundred something bearded victorian white men on a ship in the same clothes and by the time you start figuring out what name is attached to which guy half of them are already dead

[sleepy-grav3]

We Became Heroes Because You Didn't

The Justice League don't specialize in much. If you ask them, they'd say otherwise. Unless they're one of the Bats, because they acknowledge that, especially with magic. They hate it, but they have connections and will at least ask for more details to deal with the situation at hand. Though they'll need proof.

That's the thing really. Proof. Because how are you going to get proof of something if everything gets repaired by the end? Or maybe you're the villain here according to the public. Or maybe everything you say is just plain crazy that nobody even knows what's going on from the start!

It was only when another group was formed when everything became clear. They were frowned upon, unknown, spoke nonsense, and never asked for help. They were the survivors that played hero. They were the shadowed version of the Justice League.

They were Justice League: Dark

A fanfic (or multiple small ones grouped together?) that isn't really about them joining forces, but more about the discovery of more dangerous territory that's being handled by kids/teens. Lift some weight for these kids. They really want a safe net by now in their hero careers.

Like- maybe a few of these wouldn't be the JL's fault. Maybe it was the government (at least for the US). Like Danny Phantom and Gravity Falls mentions the government, maybe they blocked off those regions from outside connections.

I feel like it would be funny if maybe Constantine just ends up collecting kids like Batman with his.

They're just kids! Itty bitty toddlers. It's supposed to be our job to take care o' that shit, ain't it?

And JLD now has a bunch of young professionals cause what the fuck, kid. Why do you know this??? Ya know? Maybe the JL just randomly finds these things, calls Constantine after Zatanna fails to know wtf is going on, and he just calls over a kid. Or a group of them.

JL: We need a professional, why is there a child here?

Constantine: Cause even when you fuckers ignored their calls for help, they still at least try to help where they can

JL: We never-

Constantine: Shut your traps! School's in session

*Child tries to explain*

JL: You have to be kidding me. ___ doesn't exist.

Constantine: Oh bloody hell-

Child: And they wonder why they get more attention than us.

idk, I just like the idea of Constantine being a father for OP characters and desperately want a Young Justice League: Dark. I read a couple of Danny and/or Billy being adopted by him, but the cravings... And if it's a whole big crossover thing, that would be great. Tag me if you see or write about something like this. I wanna read too :)

Don't put too much hope in me writing it though, I'm seriously bad at continuing/finishing stuff. But if I do, I'll edit this post with links to whatever I write.

[cometblaster2070]

ranting for a bit because the entire scene where elphaba tells glinda her secret makes me go rabid and actually makes me want to chew concrete because not only is it actually absolutely heartbreaking to see just how deeply elphaba believes all the horrible things her father reinforces; how she thinks she's responsible for her mother's death and is the reason for nessarose's disability even when it's literally not her fault in any way and is actually DIRECTLY her father's fault.

and just the fact that elphaba tells glinda all this and tells glinda her father hates her and that everything's her fault and glinda looks at her and she's absolutely heartbroken to hear elphaba saying all these things and she becomes the first person in elphaba's life to look her in the eyes and tell her that none of that is true and that it is NOT her fault, it was NEVER her fault despite whatever anyone said.

ik a lot of ppl see glinda's "it was the milkflower's fault" line as a very sort of shallow take by glinda (I'm explaining it poorly but ik some ppl wonder why she didn't just call out governor thropp directly) but I've got to disagree with that take because personally I think glinda heard elphaba talking, heard her describe her secret and heard how her father forced her mother to chew milkflowers constantly during her pregnancy all because he was afraid the baby would come out green like elphaba and she heard all this and she hears how elphaba thinks this is all her fault.

and yk they're roommates. glinda sees the way elphaba talks about her father and how even though she says that he hates her in an almost casual manner despite how she says he's justified for hating her, elphaba still loves her father and she still wants to do right by him and she still wants him to love her.

so glinda knows that elphaba will not listen to her if she straight up tells her that her father's fucking mental and completely wrong and that it was all his fault and that she's probably going to bludgeon him to death. she knows that elphaba will never accept this and she knows that right now it won't do any good for anyone.

so instead she tells elphaba it was the milkflower's fault. and she looks her in the eyes and she tells her this was never your fault you shouldn't think this was ever your fault and anyone who ever told you that it was your fault was completely and totally wrong and I need you to know this.

because the primary concern isn't about telling elphaba she's got a shitty dad the primary concern is telling elphaba that it is not her fault for simply existing. and to let her know that there is nothing wrong with her and that there is someone here, right now, who loves and cares for her so so much and wants her to know that. that there is someone who will hold her hand and who will tell her that they are there for her and that she is fine the way she is. that she is loved.

[somecunttookmyurl]

i'm not reblogging the whole post again but @zorilleerrant you are so real for this

[anna-scribbles]

they should've been at the club(infertility treatment centers)

[drusill-a]

[WWDitS finale spoilers]

Aside from the obvious – the gross shipbaiting and mocking naive viewers who dared to believe an m/m dynamic could be treated as anything other than the butt of the joke – my biggest issue with the WWDitS finale is that it’s an ending that could have made sense… but at most after s2. Back then, we were still watching a story about characters who didn’t share any particular bonds (except for Nadja/Laszlo) and who were entirely static, unaffected by the things they experienced.

The thing is, the creators themselves realized you can’t build a long-running story on that formula – eventually, the characters had to evolve at least a little, and their relationships had to deepen so viewers would have any reason to root for them. And so Guillermo’s position in the group began to change – first, he earned their minimal respect, then a very solid place, until finally, in season 5, all the other characters had reached a point where they didn’t even hide that they genuinely cared about him a lot. The same happened with Colin, who at first was completely left out by the other housemates but gradually earned an equal spot in the group and developed that stupid yet sweet bond with Laszlo (erasing those memories was, imo, one of the writers’ biggest mistakes). Laszlo showed himself capable of empathy, which he proved again in s5 by helping Guillermo, and even Nadja, who used to completely disregard everyone’s feelings, had several moments in later seasons where she openly cared – at least in her own way –  about the others.

And of course, that’s how we got the romantic subtext between Guillermo and Nandor. Over all those seasons – from s3 up until s6 – I was certain it was a classic will they, won’t they dynamic that would end with them getting together. I just couldn’t believe the writers would spend the last 4 seasons making their relationship more equal and showing Nandor’s journey to realizing Guillermo genuinely mattered to him, only to do nothing with it – or worse, regress them back by three seasons. But the late s6 Nandor’s “no homo” attitude has very little in common with the Nandor from seasons 4 and 5, who was openly pining and lusting after Guillermo.

From Guillermo’s perspective, this ending is an absolute tragedy – even the end of the previous episode gave him much more hope. Maybe he’d lost his lifelong dream and still hadn’t found a new purpose, but he had found a family and a place in the world, with a potential chance to build something meaningful with Nandor in the future. I don’t understand why this episode had to undo all of that – to show us that none of his friends really listen to him, that the power dynamic with Nandor will always be uneven, and that ultimately he wasted 16 years, and no one would really care that much if he left. Considering how great Guillermo’s development was, especially in gaining confidence from s4 onward, this ending feels so unfair and insulting to his character.

I feel like the writers’ biggest mistakes have been forcing a return to the status quo after every season. After the breakup in s3, the characters should have stayed apart for at least an episode or two. Colin should have remembered that Laszlo raised him, and they should’ve kept their funny, fucked-up father-son relationship until the end of the show. Guillermo should’ve been a real vampire for at least a full season—or, in my opinion, permanently—because, as it turns out, the writers had absolutely no idea what to do with his character once he lost that goal. Relationships that had evolved shouldn’t be randomly reset by a couple of seasons just because the writers couldn’t be bothered to put in the effort to write anything new for them.

You can’t have your cake and eat it too – if the writers were so dead-set on giving us an  ending that says “nothing in these characters’ lives matters, and nothing will ever change,” they should have made the show half as long and spared viewers the trouble of getting invested in character and relationship arcs that ultimately went nowhere.

This is a comedy show that was supposed to make people feel better. After this finale, I feel mocked by the creators for believing that the queer ship they sold me for 4 seasons had a chance of being treated equally to an m/f ship. I’m also sad because the characters were regressed and left stuck in eternal limbo, and generally I feel ridiculed because the writers openly made fun of us for getting emotionally invested in the story they wrote for us.

And maybe the biggest crime of these last few episodes was that they weren’t even remotely funny—so you can’t even say they prioritized comedy over character development, because it failed on that front too.

[ajitomiel]

jon kent and transfem damian bc i saw some posts about her and it got into my brain for WEEKS so i had to draw her for my peace of mind... also nika would have those knee high converse shoes and damian would wear them thats it thats the post

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The girls are plottinggggg

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