#you can ask me questions or whatever

[trashmouth-milkshake]

I'm so sad because I'm getting no interactions on this blog...

[deoidesign]

Thinking about vampires, death, life, and the space they occupy in between

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

character dynamic ask game

qs focusing around how two characters interact with & see each other. any kind of matchup (partners, friends, mortal enemies, etc.) is fair game!

rules: send two characters and a question (or more!)

what were A's first impressions of B? were they mostly correct or have they changed?

if asked to describe B to a stranger, what would A say? are they mostly truthful, or is there anything they omit?

what's something A thinks in their head about B that they would NEVER tell them out loud? alternately, what's something they want to say to them but haven't/can't, and why not?

how does A refer to B (first name/last name/pet name/title/etc) in their head, to them directly, and to others? are they different? why?

A has to get B a [birthday/christmas/whatever] gift. right now. what would they get? how long would they spend thinking about it?

what does A think B thinks of them? or, if asked to describe their relationship, how would they do it? are they right?

are there any habits, mannerisms, practices etc. A does because of B? anything they do because they saw B doing it, or got advice from them about it, or something rubbed off on them? alternately, are there any little things B does that annoy them?

is there anything they really disagree on? what are they most likely to argue about?

what do outsiders think their relationship is? do they consciously or unconsciously act different around others?

how well does A think they know B? are they correct?

what's something A knows about B that most people don't? alternately, what's something most people believe about B that A doesn't?

if B asked A for help, how likely would they be to give it?

if A needed help, how likely would they be to ask B for it?

for two characters that met very recently, how would their dynamic be different (if at all) if they had known each other for much longer? for characters that are childhood/longtime acquaintances, how would it be different if they met for the first time today?

what's A's absolute favorite (or least favorite) thing about B?

free space: what's your favorite thing about their dynamic, as a fan or as a writer?

[paintpanic]

Res AU Joronia drawings. Character rambling and bonus doodles under cut.

This AU takes place a good while after the events of Triple Deluxe happened. Since then, Taranza's mostly recovered mentally from everything. He was able to move on from his grief and (somewhat) forgive himself. Now that Joronia's in his life again, seemingly back to her former self, some of those wounds he'd thought were fully healed have started to ache again. He still feels ultimately guilty for what happened to her.

He's thrilled that Joronia's been given a second chance at life, but is somewhat wary deep down. This feels to good to be true, that she's just back with seemingly no strings attached. The other shoe could drop any day now, and he could lose her all over again. Fearing this, he wants to make the most out of what could be a short time to be together again with his friend.

Joronia senses that there's a distance between the two of them now that wasn't there before. It shouldn't be surprising; he's probably still hurt from what she did. Other people definitely are. She's determined, though, to work hard to make it up to everyone she's hurt, and to prove to them (and herself) that she's not really like that, that she's capable of being better.

The Mirror's influence twisted her mind and her perception of reality. It made her feel like she was inadequate, and that everyone else were enemies to be subjugated. Now, she's supposed to be normal and better, but she still feels like there's something wrong with her head. She still doesn't feel good enough, and it still feels like everyone hates her. It's hard to trust herself. She's not sure if it's some lingering effect of the Mirror, or if there's just something inherently wrong with her now. She's scared.

She's afraid that something will happen, that she'll revert to how she was as Queen, and that she'll hurt Taranza again. Someone who'd always helped her, who'd stuck with her even when she was absolutely horrible to him, and who's kindness she's relying on again now, staying at his home as she worked on getting her life back together. She's a burden on him, and she always has been. She hates it.

Still, her deepest, most selfish wish is that they could be real friends again.

---

These two need to have a long, honest discussion about their feelings toward each other and themselves. Both of them are absolutely terrified about that prospect, though, because they each think that the other secretly resents them to some degree. If they actually talked through it, they'd quickly realize that they both want the same thing.

[basketobread]

How does Lunara feel about... Lolth

not good lol

[the-magpie-archives]

I gotta be honest if some random guy approached me in the street and asked me to tell him my paranormal trauma I'd literally just tell him? Like he wouldn't have to compel me I'd like to share. Free therapy for me, free story for him! Not my problem if it feeds an otherworldly overlord.

[luck-of-the-drawings]

"I think this is the most inhuman; and human, that I've ever felt.." MUCH CAN HAPPEN IN A YEAR. IN FIVE YEARS. A DECADE. imagine how much can happen in a century. just ONE (1). How will you grow? what phases do you find? even in 5 years, you will find patterns.

[vynnyal]

Turns out Sunlit Trail isn't quite done just yet, so after all that they just send you to a dead end 😂

[d8tl55c]

oh boy !! ! ! ! !!! ! thANK y0u all for the kind words on my last art posts. you all get it and i was/still am so happy about it

as promised, here's some close-ups of the comic for image quality's sake, and other screenshots i rescued from the community whiteboard (and something else)

first up another sketch of mystery gender-ambiguous being. (please send me more name ideas for them if you got one- i like to hear em! (reminder it's the side character that appeared for <10 seconds in AvM Ep. 30))

a few fav scenes

emotional support cwab

they weren't meant for this purpose exactly, but i do have countless "fluffy sticks" loose in my notes and homework sheets from the school years.

papery critter.

even when i wasn't confident in fur or feathers, they helped me practice posing and create some satisfying gradients/flowing poses. (im a sucker for good tail poses) (oh yay! i found a good pic...)

and finally, little sneak peak for you for reading so far ;3

i realized that whiteboardfox is pretty great for my working needs. simple and to the point and all. feels nice with the mouse and the tablet.

so i started hashing out a big project idea just to see if it holds up and

[

several hours later ...

]

oh

oh man

it's a little bigger than i expected

<next>

[gnabnahcsworld]

On my final note of the night cuz I’m sure yall are tired of watching me lose my mind on here…let’s talk about our man mister Song Mingi. I always forget just how LARGE this man is.. @whatudowhennooneseesyou says he half man and half horse (save a horse and ride song mingi, I mean shit you’d be half way there) and she’s right in more ways than one cuz I do believe that man definitely has a third leg. There is NEVER day of peace around here all I do is get on here and cry, cry that I’ll be able to give him or Chris the head of their lives..the head no guillotine could ever take away.

[gaywizardzone]

love this guy happy birthday to him (not a birthday post but it is his birthday). some jokes about trivia from one of hoshino's instagram livestreams that made me laugh and made my environmental scientist friend who wants to eat poisonous things without dying simply for the joy of studying the experience want to kill him

[heal-the-ashes]

I feel like Hershel and Desmond would both be afraid of themselves.

If they stop and look at themselves. If they realize what they're doing came from years of pain. Would it all lead to a question of "Who else am I going to hurt?" "How many people have I unintentionally hurt because I never realized what I was really doing?" "How many things of my life have I missed because of this?" "How many things do I—or will I—regret?"

I feel like Layton self-sacrifices to a fault. That others get hurt trying to protect him. That he unknowingly drags other people through pain to get to where he thinks he needs to go. To solve every mystery there is. To get rid of his pain from outside sources, he needs to make as much of it himself under the titles "Determination" and "Amazing at solving things" and "Helping others" because then, how could those things ever hurt him? How could they ever be seen as pain? They're not like his (other) traumas. They don't cause pain at all. Not to mention what he thinks about danger. Danger? What danger? There's no danger here. Just people who are willing to hurt others to get what they want—Which is very sad and shows their pain and he'd very much like to help them in any way possible, if possible. If they show that they don't want to be helped, then it's better to leave them be.

But then again, nothing can ever be someone's fault other than his around him. I think he goes over betrayals thinking, "There must have been something I could have done." or "There must've been something I did." or "If I learn from this, I can make sure it never happens again." or... ... I think he has a hard time accepting that things really aren't his fault / there's really nothing he can do about some situations. Actually, when it comes time for Unwound Future and the whole Evil Layton arc... The only time in which he actually raises his voice is at himself. Is at the version of him that betrayed all of the morals in which he's held onto for so long. But a part of me thinks that, if he knew things were actually his fault, he'd have a problem with that, too... I mean, look at how he reacts to him getting puzzle answers incorrect in CV. In CV. In the 4th game of experience that he's had with puzzles. And a movie. With all that experience and he gets something wrong... he's disappointed in himself. Going back to the UF/LF thing... "I demand an explanation!!" I don't think I'll ever forget that line. I think, from his journal... We know he was trying to think of reasons why he would do something like this. Idk. I'm. Thoughts are not thinking anymore. Um. Wow I really lost my thought process. I was also gonna talk about Desmond. But I guess that's not happening at the moment.

[rapidhighway]

I can't believe people give advice that's basically "be less stressed". How can I explain to you that I've been scared of walking down the stairs since I learned to walk and I get an intrusive thought every time I cross a road. And then I have a lot more, actually real and important stuff to be anxious about!!

[winteriron-trash]

rdj the (whitewashed) electric boogaloo

This is a reminder to everyone who's excited about RDJ's casting as Doctor Doom that this casting is whitewashing. Victor Von Doom is a Romani character and has been a Romani character since his introduction in the 1960s. (Fantastic Four Annual #2 [1964]) Not only that, but his Roma identity and the persecution he and his family faced due to it is integral to his character, it is what forms his identity. (Books of Doom by Ed Brubaker) Even if on the off chance this casting is meant to not be Victor but instead be some variant of Tony or whomever else becoming Doctor Doom, it is damaging to the character to rob him of that important cultural background. Doctor Doom does not exist without that history. Fans have been pushing hard to cast Doom as a Romani actor for years, especially since the MCU has whitewashed other Romani characters. (Wanda, Pietro, etc) This casting is not a celebration moment, it's fucking heartbreaking that the MCU repeatedly ignores the important and nuanced cultural backstories of characters.

I know I can't change anybody's mind on whether or not you want to be excited about RDJ's return to the MCU. But I do think at the very least you should be mad that the MCU is baiting us all and destroying nuanced and interesting characters for the sake of self-referential easter eggs and nostalgia bait. Because that's what it is. Feel how you'd like to feel about RDJ's return, but personally, this is soul-sucking. I had such a deep love for the MCU as a teenager, it was obviously something incredibly formative to me, especially Tony Stark. This isn't recreating what I fell in love with the MCU for. This is turning a well-planned and artistic storyline of adaptations into cheap cash grabs and fan service. Because, I think we're past the point of being able to call the MCU an adaptation of anything. They can use existing characters' names and powers, but to say they're being properly adapted is laughable.

This is not an adaptation of Doctor Doom. This is RDJ the Electric Boogaloo because Marvel's fear of losing the interest of dedicated MCU fans overrides their willingness to tell stories that are genuine to the characters. I don't know what there is to be excited about that. The MCU has lost its authenticity and aside from a few projects, feels heartless. Every movie is a copy of a copy. This announcement isn't something celebratory, it feels like a death knell of a cinematic universe that's so desperate to cling to relevancy it's resorting to nostalgia for a character/actor who hasn't even been dead for a decade. We're not getting anything new, we're just rinsing and repeating the same song and dance.

I get it. I love Tony Stark, his death destroyed me and I to this day, rue the ending he got in Endgame. It misunderstood his arc and it robbed him of a satisfying conclusion. But the solution to that isn't dragging the corpse out of the grave five years later to whitewash an existing character with rich and interesting nuance, just to forcibly tie his existence in the MCU to Tony. Whether he is a variant or not. Why would you want someone else's fave's legacy to be destroyed simply so your fave's legacy can go on? Hell, if we were really all so hellbent on the return of RDJ and/or Tony to the MCU, we have the multiverse for a reason. There were other ways to do it that didn't whitewash and ruin someone else. This just. Isn't something to be happy about.

[dailydegurechaff]

I wanted to know how do you interpret Tanya's gender. After reading chapter 58 of the manga i got the impression that she is definitely trans coded, but maybe thats just me

Very good question.

To be honest, when I think too hard about Tanya’s gender (and sexuality, for that matter) it gives me brain worms. Fun brain worms, but brain worms nonetheless. I can’t explain it. Everything she’s got going on is complicated as shit there’s way too much to think about.

Like, she was a man, but now she's a girl. But at some points she says she still sees herself as a man internally so is this MtFtM? How does that work. And if she accepts she's a woman now, is that just MtF or do we add more letters. More importantly: Was Being X being Transphobic or being the Greatest Trans Ally of All Time with the free divinely issued sex change.

Ok ok, jokes aside. Confession: I actually do not keep up with the manga, so I had to go find the chapter and read it first. Having read it now though, I see what you mean.

The conversation she has with the Salaryman/herself in that chapter really does read as essentially saying “I’ve accepted who I am now.” It’s a far cry from a much earlier part of the manga I remember where she has a breakdown about being a man/people seeing her as a girl.

A friend of mine was actually showing me stuff from more recent chapters of the manga (don’t know which chapter tragically, but I know it’s not currently translated to English) and from what I gathered of it, Being X was showing Tanya a dream of being back in her past life and in response she basically demanded to go back to being Tanya immediately. It is definitely not just you, I 100% see the trans-coding you’re talking about.

As for my personal interpretation of her gender, I touched very briefly on it once before, but I honestly think she wouldn’t want to label herself as anything. At first, this is out of hesitance and not wanting to acknowledge that anything might be ““wrong”” or ““different”” about her. Later on it turns into character growth, more along the lines of, “I don’t need the label to define me, I just am what I am/like what I like. I don’t care about it any more than that.” Yes this is 100% projection on my part. No, I won’t apologize for it lmao.

Of course, that's entirely my own headcanon. I definitely am not saying it’s the only way to interpret her, it’s just my personal thoughts. Especially since my opinion is subject to change on a dime depending on what I’m reading/working on myself. The Tanya gender is, in fact, transient, shifting like water.

Like. A transfem Tanya fic that focuses on her adapting to life in her new world and coming to discover she doesn’t actually hate her new body? I’d totally read that. I’ve seen a few fics that include that as a part of the narrative and those scenes of acceptance were among my favorite parts.

I get the feeling this is the route that the manga is going as well. It’s a bit of a shame that we don't have those aforementioned scenes in the light novel (or at least, I don't remember them), but I don’t think that Carlo Zen really intended that to be the focus/narrative in the first place. And honestly, I also think that’s a good thing because it allows for so much more room for interpretation and headcanon around Tanya’s character.

Anyway, the other direction is also compelling to me. A transmasc Tanya fic where, after feeling uncomfortable and hating how feminine he looks for years and years, he finally goes ‘Fuck this, I’m gonna go back to being a man’? I would read the fuck out of that too.

Could also be paired with him finally choosing to defect, where they think about it like, ‘Well there’s nothing to hold me back now, right? I don’t have to maintain appearances anymore. Also, since I’m defecting this would be a great way to hide myself. They’d all be looking for the wrong person. Two birds with one stone, how efficient.’ …Now we’re getting to fic ideas I won’t ever get to so it’s time to move on I think.

Semi-related to the Trans Tanya Concept, this actually brings me to a bit of a lore/headcanon/idea/question I want to present to the public for opinions. In Norden, during the inciting battle of the war, Tanya uses magic to “dope up” so she could enhance her strength and reaction time and kill pain. I took this to mean she used a formula to synthesize the narcotics/adrenaline hormone/whatever else directly into herself, right?

Can you see where I’m going with this? As long as you know which hormones to make, how they’re made up, and what quantities you need… Well, don’t you think magic HRT is completely possible? Of course, as I'm not sure it makes sense for Salaryman to have known the detailed specifics about it from the modern world, it would require a lot of in-universe research/science advancement for someone to actually do that, but theoretically...

The magic system in this universe has so much potential to be explored, I’m fascinated by what you can theoretically do with it. Although, this is long and off-topic already I think this should be the end, lol.

I think I talked too much? I’m sorry, you were probably not expecting such an answer. I told you, Tanya gives me brain worms (mental illness).

I guess the TL;DR is this: that kid definitely ain’t cishet.

[cathodic-clairvoyant]

Oh hi there transfem discussing her experience in the trans community i just had a quick question about your post

What does tme mean?

Oh okay i see i understand, thank you.

What does transmisogyny mean?

Ah I see, I get it.

What's a trans woman?

Oof scary. One last question.

What's a woman?

Thank you for being my own personal google (not like you had anything better to do right?) and derailing the point of your post for my own personal education. I will now add nothing of value to this post in return. Bye bye!