#and anyone else interested

[could-they-be-a-pro-wrestler]

Y’all, I have a favor to ask. So for the tag team polls, I’ve really been trying my hardest for some of the previous polls to get an intentional fail sweep going. It seems no matter what I do, tumblr thinks the pairings I come up with would be a good tag team. Examples of teams I came up with that I thought would be fail sweeps:

1) Charlie from IASIP and Lestat from Interview with the Vampire

2) Azula from ATLA and Stormfront from The Boys

3) Aang from ATLA and Eren Jaeger from Attack on Titan (literally a pacifist and a guy who committed genocide).

So I’m at a loss. My favor that I’m asking is that I need y’all to give me suggestions for tag teams that you feel would be a clear failure. Don’t have to give me a reason, just send it as an ask and I’ll post it for the next round of tag team polls. You don’t even need to give me your reason why you feel your tag team would suck, just make sure your ask has the characters and their fandoms listed.

(Rules still apply. No real people submissions allowed)

[eydilily]

break like an artist.

--

a collab between me and @slashmagpie for hermitadaymay's Solstice Social Collaborative Event! make sure to check out magpie's amazing fic for this too :D

(alternate ver under the cut)

[gotchibam]

Clefairy and Furret ko-fi doodle for W! 🌸

[its-not-nothing]

To illustrate this post, this was the buddie energy we got in S7/8A:

... and this is buddie from 8x08 on:

Like, are we feeling the shift??

[wadewhipplemybeloved]

stobotnik/sonic 3 friends of tumblr, I need you to see how they write the crab scene in the official third movie novelization with more below the cut.

[comradekarin]

now, i haven’t had twitter for a hot minute now, but I’m remembering a thread me and oomf had about why the “theoretically, zuko would have taken lightening for anyone” claims are irrelevant, and wanted to just put it up here. this argument kind of treats katara as some interchangeable placeholder for “zuko’s redemption” and undermines how the nature of zuko’s sacrifice impacts katara directly and heavily. i don’t think zuko sacrificing himself for her is supposed to signal, yes, he is fully redeemed now. I think it’s actually supposed to show how he cares very deeply about katara. I mean, sure, zuko would taken that hit for other members of the gang, but the narrative significance wouldn’t weigh as heavily as it does with katara. even the 1st pov shots of them reaching out for each other, the music, the soft looks wouldn’t really make sense for other characters, either.

katara had to watch her mother die in arguably the worst way possible, and a part of her trauma is the fact that she ran away, helpless, and was too late to save kya. kya died protecting katara, and that’s something she has to live with. now we get the finale where zuko—another person possibly going to die for prioritizing her safety over his own, who knows what happened to kya, who was with her when she confronted the man who killed kya—but this time, katara is not only able to stop the present threat, but she’s also able to save zuko’s life. imagine if zuko had died here? what would that mean for katara? it makes me so upset because the nature of kya and zuko’s sacrifice are very similar, but this is something they just never talk about again despite it being so pivotal to both their arcs.

this is all to say that people saying that scene doesn’t matter because zuko would have done it for anyone do not see the importance of katara as a character (and her very unique dynamic with zuko). i think it’s a bad faith argument to make. the question isn’t whether zuko would have done it for anyone else (he would have), the question should be, would that scene look and feel the way it did if you had swapped katara for another character. my short answer is, no. and that’s the point.

[one-chaotic-neautral]

Arcane ships ranked, for fun

The main ships and some rarepairs I've found, I like pretty much everything in the first 4 rows. I probably missed some but idk what they are and I'm too lazy to add more rn.

feel free to add your thoughts or ships but again its just for funsies :)

[marlynnofmany]

Me: "What's this image labeled 'evil swimming pool'?"

The Image:

Me: "Ah yes! Accurately named. Perhaps vampires are involved. Or piranhas."

[mollysunder]

Hindsight is 20/20, but I don't think you needed to be psychic to guess that destroying ALL the shimmer supply was a bad idea.

In Act Three it took three whole doctors to save Vi's life after she gets slashed by a Noxian blade across the chest. Yet in s1 it took a single drop of shimmer to save Vi from the deep stab in the gut Sevika gave her without any other form of medical intervention.

There's just a really gross sense of irony that Caitlyn and Piltover at large took away Zaun's main source of medical care (as controversial as it may be), and then put it's people through a meat grinder battle while withholding such care.

It doesn't help that the meat grinder battle was useless ploy for Jayce to get close to Viktor and so a lot of people, specifically Zaunites, died for nothing.

[imclou]

can't believe fnaf brought me out of art hibernation man what a turn of events

[daylighteclipsed]

I didn’t want to add to the og post bc it’s already long and not focused on this. But this post made me realize most of Sora and Riku’s softer/shippy moments do not in fact happen in the Realm of Light. KH1 takes place mostly in the Light, but the boys act as rivals/enemies. Their dynamic starts to shift after this, but CoM takes place in Castle Oblivion, which is the Realm Between. In KH2, Riku aids Sora from the dark until their reunion in the World That Never Was, which is the Realm Between. The Dark Margin talk happens in the Realm of Darkness. DDD is the Realm of Sleep… Compared to Sora and Kairi who share more moments in the Light, this trend is very interesting.

Sora and Riku’s dynamic in DDD carries over to KH3, and arguably, it’s a little more in the Light than before. No big moments (that are acknowledged in-game, at least), but I would say it’s starting to leave the shadows with Sora being teased by Donald and Goofy for finding Riku attractive and always listening to Riku, the reminders that Riku is always at the back of Sora’s mind throughout the game, and Sora’s discomfort when Kairi offers him a paopu fruit (with Riku nearby on the beach… who Sora starts this scene looking at and thinking about). Those are moments that happen in the Light. But the big ones still happen in the Dark… or are forgotten.

Sora saves Riku in the Realm of Darkness. He uses the Power of Waking to do this, which is honestly a huge deal. That’s Sora’s entire goal for most of KH3 — to gain the PoW and regain the strength he lost in DDD. It complements Riku gaining the PoW by wanting to save Sora in DDD, and it parallels Hercules getting his strength back because he wants to save Meg. But the fact that Sora’s goal is achieved here is unacknowledged in the game, to the point where it seems to go over a lot of people’s heads. It even went over my head the first time I played KH3. (Side note: I wonder if it says something that the Combined Keyblade, which symbolizes Sora and Riku’s relationship, has only been summoned in the Realm of Sleep and the Realm of Darkness so far. We’ve never seen it in the Light.)

Riku’s True Love sacrifice for Sora in the Keyblade Graveyard is in the Realm of Light, but it’s ultimately forgotten. This sacrifice saves Sora. It’s the reason light prevails over the dark and our heroes win in the end. And it’s totally unacknowledged in the game. It’s implied Sora sees something in the tunnel of light when he reaches for Riku, but that also seems to be forgotten. Not only is that in the physical dark, but we are left in the dark as to what Sora sees. It’s out of frame, outside the bounds of the story presented to us. The shadows of the shadows. As the audience, we literally and figuratively do not have the full picture.

These parts of KH3 are practically erased, almost like they never happened. Almost like they cannot happen. (The KH3 graphic novel actually does erase Riku’s sacrifice from the story.) And I do think that’s very, very interesting in the context of KH taking place in the Disney fairytale universe. Even in the Realm of Darkness, even in the shadows within this reality, there’s only so far the boundary can be pushed. A queer relationship has to remain subtext (Darkness). It can’t exist on the surface (Light). It can’t significantly impact the story. The story can’t be about that. Not in this world.

I’m sure I’m not the only one that jokes about Sora and Riku getting together in Quadratum because it’s (from their pov) Unreality. But it’s not a joke either, right, because this is a different world, made up of things that don’t exist in Disney fairytale land with all its traditional cishetero relationships and happy endings… This is a world where a queer relationship could happen. Because it’s not “real.”

Let’s take this a step further.

If we’re interpreting Darkness as a metaphor for subtext in a story while Light is what’s on the surface, that makes Reality canon stories and Unreality the opposite. Ideas that never make it past the conceptual stages or drafts, that are never published or coded, for whatever reason (like how Verum Rex seems based on Nomura’s Versus XIII, which was cancelled irl)… or existing stories and ideas that are so forgotten/lost to time that they may as well have never existed (like Strelitzia and the Lost Masters). Unreality is the other side of creation.

On a textual level, Sora and Riku’s relationship in DDD carrying over to KH3, with increasing moments in the Light, is a queer relationship starting to be consciously realized by both characters. On a metatextual level, it’s a queer relationship starting to be made more explicit by a creator… before it’s hit by censors, sentenced to the limbo of what could be. From this perspective, it would be extremely meta for Sora and Riku to get together (or for romantic feelings to be confirmed, at least) in a universe that represents unrealized/lost ideas while their relationship struggled to exist beyond subtext in a universe that represents what’s “real”/canon.

What the Master of Masters says about Light and Darkness is also interesting from this perspective. Light and Dark are not supposed to reach Quadratum, but they do. Reality is not supposed to touch Unreality, but it does. The line between what’s real and what’s not, what’s canon and what’s not, is blurring. Versus XIII lives through Verum Rex. Sora (“real”) meets Nameless Star (“unreal”) in the Final World. Sora and Strelitzia, stuck in Unreality, are characters from a “real” story that haven’t been completely forgotten. Riku (“real”) has dreams about Sora (“unreal” atp), and Riku crosses from Reality into Unreality to find Sora while still remaining “real” (not erased from Reality/canon).

I actually think Strelitzia kinda represents when a beta/draft character is replaced by the final one. Ultimately, Ventus takes her role in the canon story, and she is erased from it. But that beta/draft character was still created, so it still “exists” even though it’s not in the story. And the bonds you, as the creator, imagined them forming with other characters if they were in the story still exist (Strelitzia is remembered by Laurium, Elrena, and Ventus). It’s also not lost on me that Strelitzia is, technically, a queer character because she’s in love with the UX Player regardless of gender. So it feels like she is erased and replaced specifically due to censorship/executive meddling in this allegory for the creative process. But I digress.

I do think it’s significant that the Final World rests on the edge of Sleep and Death, and that Riku reaches Sora in Unreality through the Realm of Sleep. Dreams and Unreality are pretty similar. Both are made of what you hope, imagine, wish, want to be real. The biggest difference is dreams are subconscious and Unreality, I think, represents conscious ideas that are never made real or are forgotten. A world of lost dreams and desires, brimming with possibility and potential… Moving from the allegorical subconscious to the conscious-but-not-acted-upon reflects the evolution of Riku’s feelings in particular. He knows how he feels about Sora, but he does not believe his feelings could ever be reciprocated. So he’s in the world where dreams remain fantasy. For now.

If Sora and Riku represent a censored queer relationship, then I think them getting together in Unreality (and presumably making it back to their own world/Reality in the Light) would be like saying you can’t erase what’s already in the story, what’s already real. You can try. You can downplay, ignore, dismiss, censor, try to forget, but those moments still happened. Those feelings still exist. That bond still exists. Nothing can change that. KH3 sure dropped some big Sora/Riku moments that require follow up to make narrative sense. There’s no taking those back.

KH is also really big on the idea that reality is subjective. Nomura said in an interview about KH4 that Yozora’s world is fictional to Sora, but Sora’s world is fictional to Yozora. What’s real to one person is fantasy to another. And in the end, it doesn’t really matter who’s right, because if you believe something is real, that makes it real. So I think you can also see “soriku canon in Unreality” as like meta commentary on fanfiction too, from this perspective. It’s not “canon,” but it’s still “real.” Obviously, it would be canon because all of KH is canon, but in this allegorical take, as long as the boys are in Unreality, it wouldn’t represent “canon.” Does that make sense? My head kind of hurts.

Of course I’m not claiming this reading (Darkness is subtext, Reality is canon, etc.) is intentional. It could be, but either way I think it’s really fun to view KH through a meta lens like this.

[itsbatman-butpoor-andmurderous]

i don’t know if anyone has had this thought yet, but i was rewatching the new episode, and had a thought when maxwell fails his save after coming in contact with the “straka” energy.

when his mind became a machine for a moment, and he became extremely meticulous before having that flash of pure joy, it seemed to me that his body was becoming robotic/mechanical while his mind was stuck in that happy memory. like his body became a soldier to the energy while his mind stayed in that happy place, kinda like a matrix situation.

it hit me right when brennan said “this is the joy”. joy with no thought to what may come before or after, just pure, present happiness. mind blank. no need to think

then it got me thinking about how the picture of ludmila was an “energy dead zone”. what if the bodies of the victims of straka become sort of shells/robots/mechanical while their minds are stuck in whatever happy memory, which is why she registered as a dead zone?

[cup-o-stars]

Last part for old GF sketches

(Actually, most of these aren't old at all, but their average is brought down by the last picture, which I drew back in August and kept forgetting to post)

[keferon]

May I ask what were the best transformers media you ever saw/read?

Well Transformers Prime, Transformers 1986 and IDW comics are having the first place that’s for sure

And then the second place is kind of shared by Fall of Cybertron, Exodus, Prime wars trilogy, Robots in disguise(2001) and Transformers One.

The third place goes to G1, Animated, Earthspark, Armada, War for Cybertron Netflix series, Aligned Robots in disguise, Bumblebee, Rise of the Beasts and Cyberverse because I only liked some little parts of them.

And then I also saw some of the Bay movies, Victory and Headmasters and didn’t like them at all.

Separate first place for J-Decker. It is not exactly Transformers but it is a show about giant robots and I loved it

[cosmicredcadet]

Ppl will say being AroAce is boring but personally I think the fact that I'm not like a majority of people and have a different experience of the world than them makes me rather unique and interesting.

[legolambi]

really pleased with how this turned out! frame 735 for time to frame it 🌟