#holy shit i have so many unfinished art and animations of him

[uukipi]

mini higgins art dump + azzy comic

[quietpagan]

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and yes I'm late, so sue me

I wasn't going to watch any of the PiB movies but I heard 'Death' was a character, so

First two minutes: It's GORGEOUS and here's an entire post of me freaking out over the visual mastery of this film

If I'd seen this in theatres today I'd get kicked out for gasping so much

I can't even

The animation style is so beautiful I'm gasping out loud and had to stop three minutes in to begin this post, it's wild. The particles - !

LOOK AT THE TEXTURE OF THE LEATHER HAT. THE ANIMATORS ARE FLEXING AND THEY ARE FLEXING HARD.

Every single frame of this film is a goddamn work of art. Look at the stars on the wooden ceiling. Look at the lighting.

Even the reflection in the glass, holy shit

They need to stop flexing before I have a frickin heart attack here

Also thank you for putting actual blood and not just a reddish cut, actual dripping blood, thank you :)

This is such a love letter to animation and art and I'm here for it

The scene transitions are absolute *chef's kiss*

THEY ACTUALLY *BEEPED* OUT A SWEAR WORD it's a third of the way through and this is my new favorite movie

Each glitter particle glistens in its own moment, I cannot

I feel like a lot of modern movies have some weird fear of putting genuine color into a film. WELL NOT HERE FOLKS. ABSOLUTE PSYCHODELIC COLOR EXPLOSIONS THROUGHOUT.

What the fuck, that escalated quickly

SIR WHAT ARE YOUR QUALIFICATIONS?

THe dog has a potty mouth and every swear word is BEEP'd out and he swore a LOT

I love how all of the characters just rant the fuck off in Spanish when they get mad

I didn't see the other Puss movies but Softpaws?? Was declawed at some point?? That's so mean?? that's literally amputations omg her poor hands

And she left Puss at the altar at the same time that HE left HER at the altar, these assholes deserve each other at this point because absolutely nobody else will put up with either of them on a serious level

except for the dog, who deserves the world. LOOK AT HIM

Kitty wasn't going to wait for a egocentric asshat to put down his ego for her, YOU GO GIRL

somebody put the puppy in a sock and tried to drown him omg

he has the saddest backstory but he's just happy to have his life and his friends, whereas Puss had nine lives and didn't appreciate any of them, okay, I get it now

The dog actually calmed Puss down from a panic attack and you could hear his heartbeat calming and it was really sweet

The framing of this film is fantastic. Also, Death? Actual Death? The thing that Puss wasn't aware he was afraid of or even needed to be afraid of yet was running from his entire life? Such an incredible villain

I can't concentrate on anything else about the movie because everything is just so goddamn pretty.

The movements and the visuals are just a little bit choppy and a little unfinished, making every still look like a painting. It's so stylized and wonderfully so

jesus christ what a visual callback

Okay movie's done and I can talk now

THE CAT LADY i love her <3

I appreciate that Goldilocks finally accepted her family but it's okay to want other things, I think, as long as you're not taking for granted what you currently have. That said, they're definitely going to have to talk it out because stuff like that doesn't just go away with a quip and a new business plan

One that note, the fucking cricket was hilarious. John Mulaney's character was a riot and I appreciate the cricket giving up on him as a bad job.

I was worried about Death's defeat being a bit of a cop-out but it wasn't. Death was angry that Puss was given so many lives and appreciated exactly none of them, thinking himself invincible forever, not understanding consequences because they never really applied to him, so they decided to cheat and take his last one early. But Puss accepted his mortality and began to appreciate his last life properly, so Death let him live it. It was done well.

I don't really like the 'tough girl no trust femme fatale love interest' thing, I think it's tired and overwrought, so Kitty wasn't my favorite, but I liked her anyway. And I liked that she's able to poor-little-meow-meow Puss when he least expects it.

The doctor scene where we went through each of Puss's lives was storyboarded so beautifully, even the title cards were gorgeous

the fight scenes are so pretty

I can't do anything besides gush over how fucking pretty this film was, I'm useless

Anyway watch the film, it's just a masterpiece and the music was fantastic and I loved the whole thing

[ginger-garlic-goodness]

I’m okay with never getting a Christmas present again as long as we get S2.

*Spoilers ahead!*

I’m sure many people have already expressed their disappointment at hoshiai no sora/stars align ending with an incomplete storyline after 12 episodes, but damn. Even if another season never comes out, I hope the second part can be released in some shape or form because the cliffhanger we’re being left on is enormous. Every single character has some sort of plotline that is left unfinished.

Is Maki going to kill his dad?

I don’t remember seeing Toma’s dad... what is he like? Will Toma hate living with him? Why is his brother willing to let go of him? What did he do for his mother to despise him, if anything?

There’s some kind of relationship between Maki and Ryoma that we don’t know much about.

Ameno... I just want to know more about him, he’s a really fun character. I feel like there’s more to his scars... 

Who is Rintaro’s mom? How will Rintaro meeting her affect his relationship with his adoptive parents?

Tsubasa is another one of my faves. I rarely get emotional when consuming fictional media, but when he cried in ep 9, I teared up too. How is he going to deal with living under the same roof as his physically abusive father? How often has his father behaved like that towards him? 

Is Shingo’s step mom going to do smth drastic to separate him from his sister? His dad seems to stick up for him and he really loves his sister so this family dynamic was slightly less painful compared to the rest.

Nao is the character who I relate to the most. My parents also forced me to study instead of allowing me to play with friends and took things way too seriously way too early when it came to school. The result is I now spend all of time time inside and I have poor social skills. I also constantly lie to my parents to avoid upsetting them. I wonder why he has such a fascination with lizards? What drastic measures will his mother take to get him to leave the boy’s soft tennis team?

Taiyo’s parents are kinda smothering/coddling, but otherwise they’re not bad. I think he could be fleshed out more in the next part of the story.

Will Yu continue to hide their gender identity from their parents or will they come out to them?

Kanako said that she didn’t have the money for art school, but she has a pretty sweet setup for digital art. What’s up with that? I def want to see more of her family. 

Other notes:

I’ve noticed that each of the doubles pairs are closest to their partner out of everyone else in the team, even before Maki arranged it that way. 

The boys all open up about their problems to other member/s of the team. The members knew the story behind Ameno’s scars and Nao’s insane mother. Relying on each other probably keeps them all from going insane. 

Is it possible that the enormity of the cliffhanger is on purpose? To leave viewers wanting more so badly that they would certainly watch another season? I think they could’ve tried to tie up some ends if they wanted to but they decided instead to leave us hanging which gives me a bit of hope for the future. 

Holy shit, that soundtrack. Every time the piano picked up during the matches, my heart started racing. Top notch.

All the props to the animators and the director/writer Kazuke Akane. He made a thread on twitter in Apr thanking the international fans, but it seems like as of right now there are no plans for a continuation. Life is really unfair like that. Goddammit. This is seriously one of the most amazing shows I have ever watched. I could personally relate to what the characters were feeling. My parents aren’t as intense as Nao’s mother, but they can get pretty bad sometimes. Don’t hesitate to recommend this show to others, despite the open ending. It is worth it. 

[antagonistchan]

i started playing Mass Effect: Andromeda yesterday.

i got a download code for it for christmas like two years ago and just finally redeemed it.

now, for years, i’ve been saying this: “i know that people don’t like Andromeda- it’s very hard to avoid that- but i’ve done my best to avoid looking further into why people don’t like Andromeda because i want to form an opinion for myself. lots of people don’t like Mass Effect 3 either and i fucking adore that game. based on the fact that most people don’t like Andromeda and consider it a total joke but i do see that it has its fans in the Mass Effect tag, i expect that it’s gonna be bad, but i’m gonna like it anyways, though not as much as i like the trilogy.”

and i was absolutely right. so far at least.

it’s definitely not the worst. i mean, unless the question is “the worst Mass Effect game”, in which case, yeah, it is the worst. but that’s not saying much considering the other three are collectively my favorite game of all time.

so, Mass Effect: Andromeda is an extremely flawed game. but it’s not completely worthless like some people say (though i can totally understand why someone would dismiss it as worthless).

it’s pretty ugly (it’s got good lighting, but the animations and textures and human models all look really.... off. and the original version of ME1 was also pretty ugly, but in a charmingly primitive 2007 kinda way; Andromeda’s ugliness lacks that charm, especially since the aforementioned good lighting makes it fail to feel particularly primitive). speaking of the animations, aside from them looking off, a lot of them are extremely stiff and borderline unfinished.

the Angarans as a species are also pretty ugly imo, but 1: that’s extremely subjective, i’ve definitely seen people who are thirsty for Angarans, and 2: that’s also not necessarily a complaint. Angarans just Look Like That. who says these aliens need to conform to our ideals of prettiness. and they’ve got cool stuff going on. Jaal’s neat.

i do like the Remnant. they kinda give off that same precursor vibe as Prothean/Reaper tech without feeling like exactly the same thing again, and it’s pretty interesting that they only disappeared within the last few hundred years rather than 50,000 years ago. and there’s a lot more left of them. they’re somewhat derivative of the Forerunners from Halo, but not too extremely.

now, the aliens i do have an issue with are the Kett. they are so extremely derivative. not only are they derivative of things outside of Mass Effect (i know next to nothing about Warframe and even i can tell that they’re visually a total ripoff of Warframe, and also to an extent Halo), but they’re derivative of things Mass Effect already had, too (gee, an evil race that creates its soldiers by corrupting members of other races? no, that’s not like the Reapers at all).

the game’s writing is mostly fine. nothing’s struck me nearly as hard as anything in the trilogy had this far in (for any of the three games), but the story hasn’t offended me too badly and there’s been stuff i’ve liked. Alec Ryder’s a cool dead mentor character and i did emotionally resonate with him sacrificing himself to save my character’s life, Andromeda manages to bring back a lot of the hard sci-fi elements that ME2 and ME3 both scaled back on from ME1, and i really like the whole disaster scenario that Andromeda inherently presents, and how it makes space feel really big and dangerous in ways the trilogy liked to hint at but never fully explore.

not sure how i feel about the combat yet. largely because of the game’s pacing, and there’s a complaint. the trilogy was pretty good at keeping you on your toes, balancing the combat/exploration gameplay with the downtime gameplay. Andromeda... doesn’t really. it’ll spend way too long on the combat/exploration stuff so i’ll easily start getting bored with it, and then it’ll spend way too long on the downtime stuff so i’ll easily start begging to actually try out the new combat/exploration stuff i’m getting during the downtime, and on top of this, it also means i’m having a really hard time adjusting to the combat. i’m not really having that much fun with the combat yet, but i feel like there’s a very good chance it’s because i just haven’t gotten the hang of it yet (especially coming right off the tail of another playthrough of the original trilogy, a series of games i replay literally every year and have since 2013 so i know them like the back of my hand). the idea of Profiles is interesting, at least.

the Tempest is a cool ship. i had it introduced to me as “a shitty version of the Normandy” and that’s not really fair. yeah, the Normandy’s cooler, but the Tempest is cool too. honestly, i found myself comparing it more to the Normandy SR-1 than the SR-2. It has a much more similar vibe (i mean, hell, you don’t need to go through any loading screens to see the entire ship, and it’s not all centralized around a single elevator). the windows are really really silly from an in-universe perspective but i can forgive that, especially since it’s finally fulfilling the promise that i mistakenly thought some vague blurry ME1 art made years ago- a central ops chamber with a full window view of the top part of the ship. and it’s pretty. Ryder’s bedroom is a lot nicer than Shepard’s, it’s a bedroom that’s much more my speed. i also think it’s funny that they had to rename the Tempest gun so the names didn’t conflict.

and then there’s the characters, and.... i mostly like them.

i’m a little mixed on Cora. she seems a little passive-aggressive. Drack is just store brand Wrex, but that’s not really a bad thing. i mean, could you live up to Urdnot Wrex? no, you couldn’t. so Drack doesn’t offend me, i like him. Tann absolutely sucks but he’s clearly supposed to suck.

but then you’ve got the characters who are on two opposite ends of the spectrum of likability: Vetra and Peebee.

holy shit Peebee sucks and i don’t want anything to do with her. she was one of those things i wasn’t able to avoid hearing about and yeah she sucks just as much as everyone said she does.

Vetra, meanwhile? i adore Vetra so much. i love her. the moment i met her, i just HAD to look her up on the wiki to see if i could romance her, and i was so elated when i saw she was an available bi romance.

and for that matter, i was soon pretty happy to discover the game’s selection of romances: three exclusively straight romances (Cora, Liam, Avela), two exclusively gay romances (Gil and Suvi), and five bi romances (Jaal, Vetra, the witch, Keri, and someone i haven’t met yet named Reyes). that’s a pretty solid mix! especially when the two straight romances are two humans and an Angaran, the two gay romances are both human, and the bi romances are two Asari, a female Turian, a human, and another Angaran. i think i’d adjust it slightly by making one of the straight romances bi, but aside from that, that’s... kinda perfect! this feels really well thought-out, like they tried to make the mix perfect (hell, making one of the Angarans exclusively straight but another one bi feels like they were trying to provide a serious cultural clue for them- namely, that sexual identity is a concept they have)! it’d also be perfect if everyone was bi, but perfect in a different way (pro: you don’t have to worry about sexuality at all, con: it’s kinda boring).

anyways, back to Vetra. it’s a little early to say, since i’ve barely even explored her romance, but........ while probably not my favorite romance (it’d take a lot to dethrone that current champion, Traynor, let alone the other high scorers Garrus and Tali), she’s probably pretty high up there. sassy Turian lady who plays dirty to get things done? hell, i love the Garrus romance so much despite being a lesbian, so i’m absolutely all for my character romancing a Turian with a dark side, and now we get someone other than Garrus to fill that role, and a lady at that! ME1 and ME2 didn’t have any female Turians and ME3 didn’t have nearly enough, and then ME:A just has so many. the same goes for female Salarians, too, actually, but it’s more understandable in-universe for Salarians considering how Salarian gender works. anyways, there’s more that i love about Vetra besides “she’s Garrus 2 but a girl now”, a lot more actually, but that core idea is really enough to get you on board with her, really.

(speaking of Garrus though, he was also the focal point of one of the game’s stupidest moments: at some point Ryder says “An impatient rookie, frustrated with procedure? That's overdone.” which like..... that’s clearly supposed to be making fun of Garrus?? who’s like, the literal most popular character in the franchise???? i’m sorry??? what??? it’s like they’re trying to piss the fandom off intentionally, and “creators intentionally trying to piss their fandom off” generally don’t earn much respect from me unless they’re indie, and even then it’s a tough sell)

but that Garrus thing is cancelled out by another cool thing: the Nexus. the core idea of the Nexus seems to be “the Andromeda Initiative decided to build their own Citadel”, and that’s really fucking cool. it’s interesting to see the challenges of getting something like the Citadel actually up and running, and the Nexus itself is pretty interesting, especially in comparing and contrasting between it and the Citadel. also it has a room dedicated to teaching any local species about the various Milky Way races, and it’s all technically accurate but also a little overly generous in how positive some things are (“Turian culture is proof that peace will always win out!” “Humans may be diverse, but we choose to celebrate that diversity rather than let it divide us!”). and also i love that they actually let you listen to the info about humans as if you weren’t a human yourself because one of my favorite things about ME worldbuilding is how much it feels like humanity is just another one of the races that exists in this world, and humanity are really only the “protagonists” of the story because Shepard/Ryder is human.

[these-are-the-first-steps]

Hey, come read my shit:

STAR WARS (it’s all reylo)

PREY - “Kylo Ren, recovering, retrained, and bolstered by the Dark Side thanks to Snoke, is still obsessed with his failures and the scavenger that got away. Carving a furious path through the First Order fleet and throwing everything to hell, he hones in almost desperately on her location as she runs from his whispers until there is nothing left but them.” Featuring such stellar tags as “she’s running but he’s coming for her and lets her know it”

Exigence in Force Majuere - “This war has raged for ages and most of the leaders at its helm are long gone. It's left to Kylo Ren, and Rey, his constant opposing force, whose minds have seeped so far into each other as to make planning in secret impossible, to come to some accord or else watch the galaxy burn in their futile efforts at mutual destruction.”*

*This is/was a non-linear story added to via submitted prompts on tumblr and written to a loose storyline already in my head.

Neon Lights - [ONESHOT] Kylo Ren is the highest paid movie star in the world. He's also the number one drug user, number one patron of any whore pretty enough to catch his attention. But her voice never leaves his head. It won't leave him alone. And all he can do is replay their parting over and over and over again.... [[This story has TWO ENDINGS- happy and sad! Because I couldn't make up my mind and the angst was so good. But y'all-- the sad ending is SAD. Read the TAGS. And a reminder that drama is drama and not real life.]]

Solace for the Damned - “Christmas Eve, and a lone priest of a tiny, isolated parish works feverishly in the snow until an old friend drops by. She misses him- what will it take to lure him away? When will he stop hiding behind the cloth?”*

*a story I was real excited for just as a lot of personal drama started for me which botched everything. Sorry ‘bout that.

How Silent Are Your Saints? - [ONESHOT] “Rey's run off, and Kylo's in hot pursuit. When he finally finds her, she's stark naked planted in a tiny metal tub trying to scrub herself clean of the grit of the planet she hates so much. So why did she come back?? Why won't she just come home with him??

Very angry, rough smutty times. Rey is angry, Kylo's angry, and she makes it worse every time that pretty mouth says the 'B' name he hates so much...

This story was inspired by a piece of art done by Hotside on tumblr depicting Rey essentially sponge-bathing in a small, shallow tin back on Jakku with the shadow of Kylo Ren looming out of frame. Link inside!!”

There’s Only So Many Things You Can Steal From A Courtesan - [ONESHOT] ...and bitchin’ moves to catch the ladies ain’t one of them. Long overdue Matt trash, but it’s darker and not your typical fare- for cheesytriangle/picarito on tumblr.

A Lady Should Never Promenade A Ballroom Alone - [ONESHOT] “Rey is undercover at a ball. So is Kylo Ren. Who thought putting Rey in that dress was a good idea? Borderline drama, fluff, crack without actually totally falling into any of those categories, with a generous helping of SMUT. NOT an AU. Written for a "oh hey, what are you doing here?" prompt request.” *

*hilariously this is the most popular oneshot I’ve ever written.

Too Late - [ONESHOT] “He has to watch as she leaves, watch as she goes into the arms of someone else. But it began before he ever arrived. He's simply too late.” —hi. This is not a happy story. But it’s short.

Can’t Keep Them Down - “I made a post last week saying I'd only reply to ants with explicit porn or cute fluffy animals. While I think the fandom may have taken more advantage of that than actual ants, it's still been a lot of fun. This is a collection of the short drabbles I wrote up- chapters will be added as they happen on tumblr (and maybe I’ll occasionally post something here that I don’t post there so subscribing might be a good idea- who knows!). There is no sequence unless specified. Every single chapter is rather explicit porn. ENJOY, SINNERS.”

Let It In - [ONESHOT] Kylo's control over himself is wearing thin- not like it was gridiron to begin with. He lapses more and more into daydreams, fantasies, of her. Of them. He sees her everywhere. He hates himself for it. But the more they consume him, the more he can't help but indulge, and as he abandons his duties once more to sequester himself in an effort to not rip The Finalizer into two, he finds, to his anguish, that maybe his traitorous thoughts aren't just his alone... [[Art inspired, ILLUSTRATED fic attached to a work produced by Arriku/Spacefugue/solarfugue/cherryfury on tumblr]]”*

*I lose points for this fic because I was told later that they were sitting down in the art so I got it wrong. Sorry, arriku- I still feel bad. :/

The Choice - [ONESHOT] “At the end of the world, he made his offer. The planet cracked like an egg beneath their feet, ready to give birth to a brand new star, and still he couldn't bring himself to say it- couldn't bring himself to say he needed her. Instead it came out as "You need a teacher!!" Anything- *anything*- to keep her close to him. But would she understand? Choices, choices...”

Control - “They pound at her head, the Darkness, her demons, she lashes out, but no one can understand. They can't see what she sees, feel what she feels, they're closing in, and she can't escape, but when she finally flees to the outside..... [[This is a *former* one-shot based on a song that I swear will be Rey's theme for episode 8. PREPARE FOR THE ANGST INSANITY TRAIN!!]]”*

*officially unfinished. Ah well. Dunno if anyone really missws it anyway....

All Good Things - [ONESHOT] “Trapped in a cave after a First Order attack causes a massive collapse, Rey is left with a mangled leg with no rescue for days. Just as she starts to fret that no one will ever come, a familiar voice brushes against her mind and offers her aid. But at what price? As her injuries worsen, she may not have much of a choice.” —hi. This is the most lighthearted reylo fic I’ve probably ever written.

——————

FARSCAPE

Everything - [ONESHOT] “Moments after the skreeth attack in 'Terra Firma', in the dizzying whirl of sirens and emergency workers and special agents rushing into the ruin of his father's home, John is brought bad news from D'Argo and Chiana and, faced with the reality that his best friend since childhood is dead, finally must tell his family everything.”

——————

XENA

Mandatory Refusal - [ONESHOT] “Countless times he'd watched her calmly walk into the arms of Death. And countless times he'd watched her thwart it all the same. She always came back- she always found a way. Even when she chose to take her own life, he'd respected her, respected her decision enough, to let her go through with it. But not this time- not after everything they'd been through since then. She wasn't getting a choice this time.

Takes place during Xena's final battle in AFIN:2. Ares wasn't so conspicuously absent as he seemed...”

You Can’t Run Away - [ONESHOT] “What happened after Xena left Hercules in "Unchained Heart"? What led her to bury her armor in the dirt? As soon as she turned for good, Ares hounded both Xena and Hercules by raising Darphus from the dead and filling the killer's mind with no thought other than to feed them both to Graegus- no one gets to simply walk away. Set in the space between UH and Sins of the Past.”

——————

METALOCALYPSE

....yea I wrote a metalocalypse fic, you wanna fight about it? comedy is hard and it was a fun challenge, especially that flavor of comedy.

Succession - [ONESHOT] “Story takes place at the tail end of 'The Doomstar Requiem'. Charles takes his place as the High Holy Priest of the Church of the Black Klok and the band is left without a manager. In an attempt to find a new one, they hold 'manager auditions', but old grudges interfere and one of the band members takes a turn for the worse. cannon ONE SHOT!”

[bladekindeyewear]

Boots reads Homestuck Epilogue part... one..??

Alright, let’s do this.  As I’ve said, the page after this one is all I’ve seen, I’m diving in unspoiled.  Also I gather from some of the non-spoilery chatter I’ve heard from my friends -- one of which warned me this sort of thing was coming a couple weeks ago, and I believed them (but didn’t want to) -- that this first epilogue-upd8 may not be the only epilogue-upd8, which isn’t surprising either given how Andrew works.

Alright, let’s go.  Hope my stomach can take it!

So, Page 1, the mock-AO3 page that’s the only thing I’ve seen before posting this.  The content warning is EXCELLENT, and gives me hope that this will be the usual Hussie-caliber and more humorous than heartwrenching.  :)

It also makes some serious sense that there would be multiple epilogues; from the sound of the summary, this one might focus more on John and then leave ample opportunity to discuss the others.

Let’s click page 2 -- oh, or contents: “Prologue”, this being a chapter list for this is another way to do it.  Clicking Prologue.......

Okay wow, this is novel format for the moment.  Good chance it won’t stay that way.

These first two paragraphs are well-written and ominous, sure -- describing stuff we pretty much already knew was happening, in different words -- but even though the writing isn’t really pretentious, there’s still a good chance Andrew *views* it as pretentious enough to find cutting away to art-style instead hilarious.  Onto the third paragraph...

Music and Calliopes the other Calliope is conducting, yeah... Oh, there’s a garbage disposal reference.  In regards to a black hole.  Like the one I kind of pointed to during Dave’s intro sequence in the Third Scratch theory and stuff in all those big theories.  The ones I was, er, wrong about... ahem.  Moving on.

“Your name is John Egbert, and you have just had a terrible, deeply pretentious nightmare.”

Pfffffffff  :D

I love you Andrew Hussie.  Reading on...

YES I see chat colors. Chat colors!!! I need chat colors.  Reading reading reading let me get down to them let me

Absolutely nothing of note has ever happened here in the entire history of the planet, which you would know, because you created it.

Baahahahahah.  :D

Okay yes I’m at the phone-sterlog.

Uh oh.

I am reading elevated levels of angst compared to usual pesterlogs in this log.  Which is to say, virtually any at all, really.  THAT doesn’t bode well for the outcome/overall tone of this epilogue.  :X  --Not to say it isn’t *appropriate*, given they still haven’t fixed/resewn Paradox Space together, but... yeah, *future feels* are popping up on the radar, that’s what I’m worried about.  I loved the tone of the snapchats and the feeling that everything was going to be fine, especially given how the ending “not being what I expected” shook me a fair bit, but to look forward to when that may end... D:

Yeah, Rose having some serious visions about some unfinished business they need to get around to instead of just fucking around and living their lives makes sense.  :X  --or at least some timeline version of them.  I’m imagining they’re living varied, excellent lives in a whole TON of timelines of promise that commit our imaginings of their potential futures to virtual canon, really, with the main thread that ties off Caliborn’s stage play almost irrelevant in comparison... that was kind of the whole point of the Ending of homestuck earlier, of that final anime flash, the fact that the victory and planet and *lives* they won meant a whole lot more than whatever Lord English’s irrelevant machinations were.

So... returning to the tail end of that main thread and seeing how *serious* it might be....... yeah. Kinda mildly panic-inducing. :XXX

You move the phone away from your ear and assume an expression you haven’t practiced in years. It is the look of a man who actually has something to do.

Okay that was good.

Ah, he’s twenty-three now!

Let’s click the next link. ==>

Fuck let’s not recount Rose’s substance abuse.

Oh, cool. Er, “cool”. Rose is getting some of Rosejaspersprite^2′s awareness of all her alternate-timeline doomed selves and their lives.  No wonder she’s worried about the substance abuse she technically mostly *avoided* in this timeline.

Light explicitly relating to knowledge, good.  That’s a nice aspect tidbit to have reiterated.

ROSE: There’s a different scale I’ve come to understand. Another dichotomy that’s less... emotional, I guess? ROSE: Consider, instead of the word “good,” using the word “essential.” ROSE: And what exists at the opposite polarity from essential is... ROSE: Something that is best not to contemplate.

ooh.  oooooh. holy shit.

okay NO, BOOTS/BKEW.  DON’T GET FUCKING EXCITED.

DON’T get excited.

It only SOUNDS like she’s learned to recontextualize the whole adventure in the rich context of the classpect system, that’s just your wild fanfic-y theoryimagination talking.  Shoosh.  (Even though she IS very, very, *very* clearly referencing the Light/Void dichotomy with the above quote.)  Just... tamp down your hopes, Boots.  Leave it at MILD hope.  Like cool porridge.

Reading on.

Alright, yeah, this universe exists beyond the timespan of the Green Sun’s influence.  Unsurprising, since it was heavily implied.  And she doesn’t have access to her expanded Green Sun powerset while *in* such a universe, which was also heavily implied by alt!Calliope or her denizen or I forget the exact conversation where it said she’d have to make the final journey without Green Sun powers or whatever.  That’s cool.  (Though having it spelled out more explicitly than usual does make it more awkward to have her use her powers for humorous purposes on MXRP in the future.)

OOOH DAVE KARKAT AND JADE ARE IN A PERPLEXING SOCIAL ARRANGEMENT YESSSSS  :D

Best news.  Okay reading on.

ROSE: You will need to travel back into canon and defeat Lord English.

Yeah I guess.

Again, the way the ending sort of put it was that..... our heroes did have to defeat Lord English eventually?  Or set right some prior stuff like doing the stage play?  But that part of the point of this whole story -- the Ultimate Reward -- was that it didn’t really matter, because they had earned nigh-infinite branching timelines of promise in a brand new universe where they could go YEARS AND YEARS living their lives in many of the ways they wished, richly enjoying themselves and starting civilizations that would last billions of years, loving and living and experiencing, only “needing” to go finally check off these other responsibilities in a single timeline of promise at the end of an extended period of vacation they chose with no particular urgency.  Branching years-and-years of essentially heaven as long as they EVENTUALLY fulfilled that particular endpoint, and they knew it.  More or less.

Rose phrases it pretty explicitly, though.  John’s powers are the only thing that can warp people through canon like that without restriction, so he was always to be involved, but... *he* needs to defeat him?  Does that mean alone?

JOHN: yeah, i had a feeling that was going to come up again someday. ROSE: I’m sure we all did. That is, even those of us without visions. JOHN: i was doing my best not to think about it. i guess we can’t put it off any longer then? ROSE: Now is the time. We are rapidly approaching a point of no return. If the decision isn’t made soon, it will be too late. The issue will no longer matter. JOHN: when exactly is the point of no return? ROSE: Today. JOHN: wow. JOHN: ok then.

Ouch.

That’s slightly more abrupt than the picture of branching bliss I just painted.

JOHN: fine? ROSE: Of course everything is fine here. ROSE: We’re outside of canon now. JOHN: yeah, i know. what does that actually MEAN though? JOHN: are you saying this isn’t really happening? ROSE: Of course it’s happening. ROSE: Just because certain events take place outside of canon, it doesn’t mean those events are non-canon. JOHN: oh. ROSE: In other words, there is an important distinction between events which can be considered to occur inside canon, outside canon, and those which are not canon at all. ROSE: The day we went through that door and claimed our reward, we passed a threshold between continua marked by differing degrees of relevance, truth, and essentiality.

Well okay then.  I was wondering why she used the word “canon”.  They literally DID escape the narrative literally as *well* as figuratively with that Juju, then, Neverending Story style.

Also, Light being highly tied to canon and Rose having spent so much time outside of it... yeah, I can understand the headaches more, too.

Alright, reading on, it seems Andrew is using Rose to more explicitly explain how he intends all the non-canon stuff he’s presented to us to “matter”, for those who didn’t quite get or fully believe the implied explanation from context towards the end of the story.

Heh, so the idea is that the urgency comes from “it’s been too fucking long since the story ended, and this epilogue needs to come out when an epilogue would still matter to anyone”.  That’s kind of brilliant.

ROSE: As long as we live outside canon, everything that happens will technically be “real,” but only conditionally. ROSE: There are certain crucial events inside canon which must happen in order to continue to prop up the legitimacy of events here on Earth C. ROSE: And you specifically, John, have a responsibility to make sure those events take place.

Closing threads closing threads CLOSING THREADS :D !!!!!!

FUCK is this epilogue going to be mostly devoted to TYING UP LOOSE ENDS and clarifying stuff??? :D  Like the HUNDREDS OF LOOSE ENDS that were left unanswered because the ending tried to paint it all as sidelined/irrelevant regardless of the fact that they hadn’t been answered/fulfilled, which had previously pretty much traumatized me around Homestuck’s end because I was (1) so used to Andrew expertly tying up almost every loose end eventually and (2) was a theorycrafter with explicit investment in the idea that Classes, Aspects, and most of these loose ends actually DID matter???  :D

Sign me the fuck up!!!  :DDDD

...I know it’s doubtfully going to be anything close to all I hoped for, but still.  Answers, contextualization, and John tying up loose threads.  Like that final frog warped in front of Jade as a child.  That’s good, that’s VERY good.  I’m excited instead of nauseous.  :D

--and yeah, reading on, Rose makes more explicit what I said earlier that the justification Andrew’s painting for this is “we have to wrap up all these loose ends before everyone forgets about Homestuck.”  That is hilarious.

Okay, so the juju is a big plothole. Heheh.  We’ve heard it called that earlier.

...Oh.  Oh huh.

Rose is pretty much explicitly talking about the stage play consisting of a bunch of non-canon ALTERNATE VERSIONS of themselves that mean the original versions of them living happily in the new universe won’t actually die.  Holy shit.  I mean we theorized that for a TIME with some of them but THOSE loose ends (like Roxy still having her mask on) were closed up toward the end...  So instead, having it put THIS way (preserving our ideas of them living full lives post-victory), and not only that but having John DO all this stuff RIGHT NOW to fix things retroactively with some really well-written contextual clarification we’re bound to get to help with the closure... god DAMN.  This is really good.  This is going to make a LOT of people feel a whole lot better about Homestuck.  Like me.  :D

...Pff, some other girl is getting punched by John in the face again.  :D  Don’t worry, Rose isn’t saying that this is the Vriska punch at the beginning of the whole Retcon arc and that this epilogue somehow happened in the middle.  (I hope.)

...Yeah Rose implies heavily that John is gonna die his heroic death if he does this?  Or it’s meant to make us THINK she’s implying that.  Yeah.  And she feels pretty fucking horrible about what she’s asking John to go through regardless, so.  (Yeah, everyone looked pretty genuinely dead but a few at the end of the stage play, but it was pretty uncertain.)  Either way, she’s acting like John isn’t going to “come back”, even if he lives through this.

Stupid feels.

Clicking the next link.  ==>

Hiiii roxy and callie!!! :D

Yes how polite of them.

“Ultimate self”?  Yeah, a sort of synthesizing of all the offshoots of her Heart and Mind, pulling it all together and realizing the full person she is and sum of her whole experience across all timelines, pasts and futures.  Yeesh.  Pretty uncomfortable for someone who ain’t a hypersprite.

...Roxy and Rose aren’t as close?  Is it because of the substance abuse, because of the Light/Void dichotomy literally-or-metaphorically distancing them (with how disparaging Rose just was about anything that isn’t relevant), or something else?

Ah, Kanaya hogged her until she got “sick”, that explains some of it too.

A bell tower? (DOOONNNNGGG)

Fffff interpersonal relationship mildangst.  Fuck

You and all your friends have dispositions affected by your classes and aspects. You think you know what that means in your case. But what about her? You can only speculate. Void is a place where things sink and disappear. Where they linger forever, but cease to exist. You aren’t actually sure if your feelings for Roxy ever really faded, or if they just grew numb with time and distance. Is it the same for her?

Holy fucking shit.  What a big middle finger to everyone who told me aspects didn’t matter to their personalities.  :D

...Though, I think he has it kind of backwards, since he still doesn’t totally understand all this business.  It’s easy for those in canon, introduced to this subject, to think that the classes and aspects affect their dispositions, to an extent where the reality (at least I contend) is that it was their natural dispositions in the first place that the classes and aspects were actually describing.  The power that was latent in their very personalities and tendencies to action all along.

Reading... Ah, yeah, a choice.  Was pretty sure this terminology would be important earlier.  It depends on what SORT of choice this is though... see, so far, Rose hasn’t given John a lot of really EXPLICIT motivation to go through with this, other than some mumbo-jumbo that would supposedly be “bad”.  And it doesn’t even address the black hole in his nightmares.  And here, we have Roxy and others explicitly encouraging him with regard to the fact that he can choose NOT to do this if he wants to.

The main question it brings up (to the future of this epilogue, how it’s going to be considered afterward, etc) is if this is the sort of Choice that John would always say yes to -- in which case it’s more canon than anything else -- or if he will end up being on the fence enough for a Terezi-style Mind-split.  Because this would be the PERFECT out to have him “die” in canon.  See, if he’s on the fence ENOUGH about going, then he creates two timelines that even both potentially have promise within the confines of this universe (since universes hold more than one timeline of promise, according to one of the Calliopes I think)--  One where he lives here, happily ever after with everyone, and another where he completes his Heroic death in canon to fix everything.  It would let Andrew kill John in this epilogue while still letting him live out eternity with everyone else outside “canon”.

He’d get to have his John-death and keep him too!  Seems plausible enough.

Anyway. Reading... it looks like they know more about this decision that Rose has told them, including the consequences Rose might have been dreading.  And likely know that IF John might die doing this, that it won’t be in a way that he regrets.

Oh wow, that whole Meat or Candy sequence is GREAT.  Silly to the core, and yet perfectly emphasizing the debate that... well, I mean, think about what Andrew’s been telling us all along.

He keeps TRYING to tell us that non-canon stuff is fine.  Trying to use that huge ending sequence of Homestuck to try and tell us that the fact that everyone is FREE from this story and its confines, free for everyone to imagine COUNTLESS ways things played out afterward for ALL these lovable characters in carefree futures, is almost MORE important than any of these stupid loose ends.  But some of us were really cut by that ending, the insistence that the actual final battle “didn’t matter” and that this escaped-from-canon existence was the true victory.  But if Andrew just upped and drew a bunch of bonus pages to start explaining more story, THAT would cheapen the escape-from-canon ending he wanted even as it satisfied those of us who wanted ends tied up, who wanted questions answered.  He had to find a very careful, very well done way to give us BOTH.  To write out the real “ending” of “canon” for those of us who needed it, without compromising the ESCAPE from the very necessity of it that was the essential point he WANTED to make with Homestuck’s story from the very beginning.  To carefully keep the endless branches of post-victory possibility and play intact while still, separately and with explicit hedging and qualifications, give us the potential results of one last canon thread to tie up the lingering questions that he so dearly wants us to recognize still “don’t matter” as much in the vast scheme of things.

And he’s doing it.  And it’s WORKING.

Holy SHIT.

I am excited for Homestuck.  I am excited for Homestuck for the first time in years, and my nausea is gone.

I’m not going to start theorizing again; that’s over.  But I’m definitely going to keep reading as the new Epilogue chapters come out, and do so with a spring in my step.

To Be Continued.  :D

[uniformbravo]

i have too many thoughts bouncing around in my head so uhhhh im gonna talk abt shit

welcome 2 episode 43647 of my shitty slice-of-life text post series

school tomorrow i dont wanna go!!!!! !!!!!!!!!! depressions been hitting me tf up like some kind of MotherFucker n im so tired i h8 both of my classes i just want 2 lie down & turn into the floor -______________-

read 12 chapters of fma yesterday its good............. i dont love it yet but im definitely entertained so far & looking forward to getting further into it

also started reading silver spoon & it turns out the things i hated in the 1st ep of the anime didnt even happen in the manga who fuckin knew (im sorry i doubted u arakawa) so im actually enjoying the series a lot more this second time around! though that’s probably partly because i got rly attached to the protag halfway through s2 & now i get to dig out all the little signs of his low sense of self-worth on the reread so like. im having fun lol (watching him react to being told about livestock being offed for under-performing just the smallest bit again is..... so good.......)

watched all of aggretsuko today, like the original 100 shorts & the new series, it was p good! i honestly never planned to watch it bc like. i hate death metal / screaming bc it gives me anxiety & i knew this show would aggravate that but idk i heard good things about it from literally everywhere so i was like w/e im in the mood today i’ll just try it out & i blasted through it and enjoyed it v much

i think i like the shorts better than the show but that might be bc i watched the shorts first & got used to their rhythm? but at the same time i feel like the concept generally works better as little 1-minute tidbits. the show is a bit awkward sometimes in comparison but it’s a v good adaption regardless. it was interesting to see the concept executed 2 different ways at least. v fun show!

mmmmm still working on my silan portrait kind of!! i took a break for 2 days because 1. depression and 2. i was a fucking fool and played a Lot of piano on thursday so that put me out of physical commission for 2 days (honestly i was still feeling it today but i rly wanted to get back to work before it started to fade into yet another unfinished project). so yeah i got back to work on it today, and made some decent progress i think!

i mentioned in my other post that im working in clip studio paint, a program im not used to painting in, and i’ve definitely been struggling trying to get used to all these weird brushes but i think im slowly coming to an understanding and finding a technique that works for me? there’s an “oil paint” brush that’s good for blending & previously i was trying to use only that, since in photoshop i never switched to other brushes, i only used the one (hard round). the oil paint brush being a blending brush though, it’s basically impossible to lay down any new color on top of the old ones because the new color automatically blends with the old ones instead of coming out pure, so as a result all of my shading was coming out super soft and light which is not the effect i’m going for

so i found that using a different brush to lay down color first and then going in with the oil to blend made a huge difference & i was finally able to get in the darker shadows i wanted, but there was still the problem of details because like. the oil brush blends rly soft and it makes everything look kind of fuzzy, and it’s especially hard to deal with small areas for details

so today i started experimenting with a “watercolor” brush, which is basically just a normal brush with low opacity, and i’ve found it’s a good kind of middle ground between blending and carving in details, so that gave me a lot more control and is probably the closest i’ve gotten to my old painting style when i was working in photoshop

this whole process has just been rly confusing & im sure there are easier ways to go about this but i know i’ll get the hang of it eventually & get some good use out of this program, & it’s good to experiment with new tools i guess so?? it’s all good?? i’ll be honest im getting tired & this topic is kind of getting away from me uhhhh in conclusion im still working on the thing & i dont know when i’ll be done but i’m gonna fuckin. Keep at it

back to aggretsuko for a sec, something i rly noticed was the ost is?? really good????? i wanted to listen to it while i drew but i couldnt find it on yt & that’s like the extent of my music search capabilities on the internet so im p sad abt that bc that was like my fave part of the show rip

instead i listened to houseki no kuni’s ost which is fuckin beautiful ugh i finished that show a few weeks ago & it was very very gorgeous, like. weird and disjointed and a little tangential but fuck if it’s not put together in such an artful way that i can forgive all of that like what a way to create an atmosphere what a way to adapt a fuckin manga?? i tried reading the manga a bit bc lets be honest that anime ending was super unsatisfying but it just?? wasnt the same??? theres something abt the show being a 3d show and having the music to accompany its visuals & the way they did the lunarians especially holy fuck, it’s a completely different experience watching the show vs reading the manga & now im sad bc i want a s2 rly rly bad,,,;;;

anyway i didnt mean to talk abt hnk so much lol uh. i ended up listening to the op a thousand times bc god when i say the music for this show is rly good i mean it, both the op & ed are fuckin great (speaking of the ed that gorgeous animation holy shit,) along with its super atmospheric bgm just. god

as a reward for anyone who read through all this shit lmao here listen to hnk’s op it’s super good i promise

also watch the ed lmfao trust me it was a gift benevolently bestowed upon my eyeballs and now so too shall it be upon thine

anyway im fuckin tired & i think that’s all i wanted to say so like. peace

[equalstrashflavoredtrash]

movies i like

so @beautifulramblingbrains tagged me in this thing saying ‘what are your 6 favorite films?’ and i love movies so i got carried away and made this list of a lot more than six films...

Cus I cant do shit halfway when it comes to moves, i took some time thinking abt this and ending up choosing my fave 6 genres/tropes and the choosing the best movie that it applies to, with honorable mentions. ***this list is NOT an exclusive list of my favorite films, i eventually cut myself off because i kept adding titles... there are hundreds more i’d mention if i had time, but this is what i wrote down***  (I have lots of very personal opinions about all the films i listed, both favorites and honorable mentions, if you want to know more about any of them please ask)

(all of the film titles link to a trailer of the film, if available. A few of these films can be watched in full for free, those links have been include as an ‘x’ after the title)

THIS IS IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER, IT’S MORE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

1. BOTTLE STORIES. Fuck, if i dont love sticking a bunch of characters in a room together, or a short window of time, and seeing what happens. Honorable mentions: Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, Key Largo, Green Room, 12 Angry Men, Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb and The Man From Earth. Favorite choice: MURDER PARTY!! What happens when a guy responds to a Halloween invitation to a murder party? Well, mostly it’s a bunch of pretentious artist doing drugs and debating how to kill him. I dont know what I love more about the film, the subtle dialog and perfect build up of plot, or the fact that i actually know people like the stuck up artist in it. I just think this was deffo written by someone who went to art school

2. WHERE DOES REALITY STOP AND THE DREAM BEGINS? Come on, i mean, seriously how can you really know when it’s not a dream? Honorable mentions: Perfect Blue, Jakob’s Ladder1, Brazil1, Dark City, Waking Life, Science of Sleep, Alice, and La Jetee. Favorite choice: PAPRIKA!! Shatoshi Kon made so, SO many amazing films in his life and this is one of the best, imo. If you like Inception, know that it was directly influenced by Paprika. And Inception is like a boiled down version; it makes more sense and is less fantastic. Real facts though, i have watched Paprika over a dozen times, and still when i go back to watch it now i notice details i missed before that are subtle but pertain to the over-all ideas and story. Also the soundtrack is fuckin sick.

3. BLACK AND WHITE THRILLERS! Like yeah, self explanatory, and I could go on about The Third Man or M, but what i really love is stories that make you grip the edge of your seat when you weren’t expecting to. Honorable Mentions: Arsenic and Old Lace, The Virgin Spring x, All About Eve1, Cabinet of Dr. Caligari x, Metropolis x, The Bad Seed and Sunset Boulevard (i want to say Chinatown2 tho i know that was shot in color but to look like noir b&w). Favorite choice: EYES WITHOUT A FACE!! x I have a soft spot for french horror, but what makes this film stand out is the way they danced around taboo subjects like gore, animal abuse, and mad scientists to avoid censors and get a wide release in Europe, while still having those be major subjects in the film.

4. CRAZY SLOW PACED AND BASED IN CONVERSATION! Ok i worried for a moment that this was too similar to the first, but no it’s different. Like man, if the dialogs good, then i'm fucking dooownn, and these are more about the conversation than anything else. Also this is my list so i can do what i want. Honorable Mentions: Royal Tenenbaums, Stagecoach1x, Yojimbo, Fire, Coco and Igor, and Days of Heaven. Favorite choice: STALKER!! x Like hell yeah, i'm so here for a soviet film abt people debating what they’d wish for while hiking to the wishing well. Also i think this film used the b&w to color transition better than Wizard of Oz because you barely even notice the change, like they hypnotize you first then make the switch.

5. ANIMATION! I fuckin love animation. I’ve always prefered cartoons. If you didn't know this, then idk if you know me. Honorable Mentions: Secret of Kells, Triplets of Belleville, Spirited Away, Mind Game, World of Tomorrow, Belladonna of Sadness, Millennium Actress, My Life as a Zuccini, The Hedgehog in the Fog x, The Cat in Paris. Favorite choice: THE THIEF AND THE COBBLER!! (the recobbled cut, specifically) After the production hell this flick went through, it needs all the love it can get. Started in the late 70s, it wasn't released until 1993, and was quickly overshadowed by Aladdin (which is probably directly influenced by the Thief and the Cobbler, but Disney’s not gunna say that). After 30s years of bouncing between animation studios only to get this slap-dash finishing to push it out on VHS, which the final final scenes not only feels disjointed from the story, but the scenes have an fps (frames per second) rate that’s half of the original animation so you can literally see the images slow down in some scenes. The recobbled cut is the best because even though it has a few unfinished scenes (some of which are still just animatics) it is the closest we may ever get to the original, intended version of the film. It’s still trippy as fuck though, and it doesn't have the god awful internal monologue for the thief.

6. MOVIES I FIRST SAW WHEN I WAS YOUNG AND IMPRESSIONABLE AND ABSOLUTELY ADORE! So these are movies which i saw when i was young BUT would be happy to watch again and have lots of opinions about (so this rules out Requiem for a Dream and Risky Business, both i saw too young and i'm cool with only having ever seen them once) Honorable Mentions: Spirited Away, Muppet Treasure Island, Young Frankenstein, Nightmare Before Christmas, Monsoon Wedding,The Dreamers, Airplane! and Fight Club. Favorite choice: DUCK SOUP!! Omg, i dont know if i can adequately express how much i fucking love the Marx bros. I own most of their films and when I was little, i used to just watch them endlessly (and I will still do so while drunk if no one stops me) I know all the jokes and songs even tho i learned half of them before I was old enough to get the jokes.

7. *Bonus round* TRIPPY AF MOVIES!! Like flicks i walked out of thinking ‘the fuck did i just watch??’ Honorable mentions: 2001: A Space Odyssey, Enter the Void, Videodrome, Holy Mountain, Meshes of the Afternoon x. Favorite choice: DOG STAR MAN!! x Sometimes, you need to just lay back and watch undulating colors in silence for a few hours.

Like, i just want to say, that while editing this list i thought of like ten films I couldn't shoehorn into any of these categories, and was very upset i couldn't find a way to mention them, so if you like this and want me to make another movie list, PLEASE SAY SO!!

1 I have included the link to the trailer, but the trailer is shit. The movie is much better.

2 while this film is only brought up saying that it doesn't fit on the list, i do really love the film, but i feel like i should mention that both the director, Roman Polanski and main actor, Jack Nicholson have been directly accused of sexual assault/statutory rape/domestic assault. I, personally, have a cognitive dissonance with this film because I saw it before I learned about both of them and their actions. But as much as I enjoy the story and movie, i cannot in good faith, bring up the film without mentioning this.