#just thought it would be fun to compare them

[arthurs-ficz]

Mission Accomplished // Jax x reader oneshot !!

Caine had decided to give you random jobs for you to complete today, due to him having 'too many overstimulating options' from the submission box, according to him...

Despite this, you were about to complete another job when suddenly Jax decided to bother you. Of course.

"Whatcha doing? Looks real boring and tiring to me."

He says as he practically looms over you, watching to see exactly what you are doing. The jobs that Caine had assigned you, particularly, were pretty tame compared to the adventures you all would regularly go on. It did make you question why you were the only one assigned them, though... and why were these tasks so easy? You shrug it off for now and respond to Jax.

"I have to do some things today."

You say as you complete another task from Caine.

Jax quirks an eyebrow and leans closer, arms folded.

“Oh yeah? Like what?”

Suddenly, you get the idea to say something risky. To get back at all the pranks and embarrassing things Jax had done to you. Would you regret it? Proba-

"Like you."

S i l e n c e .

Jax’s eyes widened at that, and a slight pink tinge tinged his cheeks. A slow smirk spreads across his expression and his tone becomes cocky as he looks at you.

“Oh, you’re gonna ‘do me’, eh? Really goin’ for full on cheesy pick up lines here, aren’t ya?”

Your cheeks stung with a flush as you looked away from him, continuing with what you were doing.

"Okay, but seriously, I need to get things done today."

Jax rolls his eyes with an exaggerated sigh, his smirk staying plastered on his face.

“Fine, be a boring workaholic. Go do important stuff'n ‘n all.”

He pauses and glances at you sideling again.

“But can’t you spend like, one minute just hangin’ with me first?”

You sigh. Just to get him away, you agree and look at him, his smug expression not leaving your sight for a moment.

"Well, what do you want to do?"

Jax shrugs as a mischievous glint appears in his eyes.

“Doesn’t matter. I’m easy to entertain.”

He turns in the direction of Ragatha and Pomni playing in the distance, and a sly grin breaks across his features.

“Or I could always take a tease at Pomni. That’s always fun.”

You sigh through your nose, looking at him with an uncertain gaze.

"Just don't go overboard... like you did last time?"

Jax leans against the wall and snickers, recalling the way Pomni had freaked out last time.

“Hey, not my fault she’s got no chill. You have to admit it’s funny.”

He glances sideling at you.

“Besides, you laughed.”

"Okay- but I laughed because I was in shock okaayy? That's completely different."

Jax grins widely and steps closer. His gaze is heavy as he leans in, his voice lowers to a murmur.

“You’re cute when you act all defensive.”

You hold your breath. He did not just say that.

"Shut up. I'm just telling you the truth here, it's different."

Jax snickers and raises an eyebrow, his smirk growing into a cocky grin. He steps closer so that you’re both almost chest to chest and lowers his voice.

“You’re totally cute.”

He glances sideling at Pomni, who’s still happily playing with Ragatha, and grins wickedly. You're about to open your mouth to object to what he'd said, but he interrupts your thought before it can get out.

“Y’know what would really get her to lose it?”

You stay silent for a moment, not knowing if you should even ask.

"..What?"

Jax grins mischievously and whispers into your ear.

“You should kiss me.”

He looks at you with the smuggest face, with no regret for what he had said. Did he really just say that? Seriously, what is he thinking?! You could have nearly dropped what you were doing right there and then.

"What?! Jax, that's literally crazy!"

Jax glances sideling at Pomni, still happily chatting with Ragatha. He smirks smugly.

“But it’d get a reaction.”

He turns to look right at you and leans in, his breath fanning your face. His gaze is intense and his tone is a smug murmur.

“You wouldn’t be too scared to do it, wouldcha?”

You have to blink before responding. This was insane.

"I'm not scared- it's just extreme for a prank! Let alone teasing."

Jax raises an eyebrow and takes a step closer to you. His voice is silky and cocky.

“But you’re tempted, aren’t you?”

His grin is Cheshire Cat wide as he studies your expression.

"Don't put words in my mouth."

You shake your head before looking at him again. Still has that smug cheeky expression on his face.

"Look, we'll just do this really quickly because then I have to go.. Are we seriously going to do this just in front of them? To give them a shock or something? "

Jax’s cocky smirk widens into full mischief.

“Oh absolutely we are.”

He glances sideling at Pomni and laughs out loud.

“This is gonna be sooo funny—“

"Okay!!"

You interupt.

"Let's just get it over and done with quick..."

You say as you try to keep your flush from staining your cheeks.

Jax’s expression softens a fraction, and he cups your face with one hand, the other hand dropping to your waist. He leans in closer still, his voice lowering to a murmur as his cocky smirk fades to a softer smile.

“You know, I can make it real dramatic. Give you like, the whole big kiss thing and all—“

His free hand brushes a strand of hair behind your ear.

“Or I can make it quick and sweet… your choice.”

"Does it really matter if it's just a prank anyway?"

You mumble under your breath.

Jax’s grip on your waist tightens for a moment as he leans in even closer, his face a mere few inches from yours. He keeps his voice low, his expression an intense smolder and his smugness replaced with a softer, more genuine emotion.

“It matters to me.”

His voice grows to almost a whisper, his grip on your face shifting so that he cups your cheek rather than holding your jaw.

“I wanna know what you want.”

You feel your flush completely burning your face off again. Not only that, but it's suddenly so hard to stand up? Your legs wobble and your breathing hitches as you think of a response to give.

"I don't- I don't mind..?"

Jax pauses a moment longer, his hand still cupping your face. He searches your eyes and grins.

“Well, since you can’t decide, I guess I’m taking charge.”

He leans in the rest of the way, and his lips are on yours. The cocky smirk from before is gone now with the kiss he gives you: soft, almost slow, although they are right in front of both Pomni and Ragatha. However, he does make sure to keep it brief. After a few seconds, he breaks the kiss, but he doesn’t pull back. He keeps his face a few inches away from yours, his thumb idly tracing the outline of your cheek. His tone is soft, cocky smirk gone, and the mischief in his expression is replaced with something softer.

“Mm. You taste sweet.”

He leans forward and pecks you on the corner of your mouth for extra measure. Your thoughts are completely gone, almost like they pooled to the bottom of your shoes. The only thing you can feel now is Jax's surprisingly gentle grip on you.

"Did they- Did they see?"

You barely mutter out.

Jax glances sideling at both of them, trying not to break into laughter.

“Yeah and now they're both freaking out. Ha.”

He grins and turns back to look you directly in the eye, his expression still oddly soft.

“I think mission accomplished.”

[olgasaysso]

The apothecary diaries made me realize something very interesting about how women perceive power...

I can't be the only one who noticed that in stories written by women power is often compared to a prison or a cage meanwhile in the ones written by men it's mostly fun and freedom.

It is that women tend to see power as more of an responsibility and men think of it as the ability to do whatever they want?

The apothecary diaries made me think of it first. I discovered with surprise that I actually like the emperor, which I almost never do. Any guy that has relationship with more than one woman at once tends to disgust me, especially if he's in a position of power but for some reason not him.

Because the emperor is as much a prisoner as the 2000 women in the rear palace. Maybe even more because as long as he doesn't touch them, they're allowed to leave.

Like on one hand, he's the most powerful man in the empire. He calls the shots, right?

But on the other hand, he can't even properly protect Lishu from being sold to some pedofile by her father. The only way he could protect her was to make her his concubine and how f*cked up is that? She's like a daughter to him and the only way he could protect her was by marrying her? And then he couldn't even spend time with her anymore because that would be read wrong.

It's the fact that 3 of his children died because there was no proper medic to save them due to the fact that they don't allow non eunuchs to treat them and forbid women practicing medicine... when he doesn't even care about that. He hasn't blinked once at Maomao running around the inner palace and being a doctor.

At first when I was watching the story I thought of how horrible it was that he didn't even visit Lady Lihua after their son died. But then it made me think of how he's literally not allowed to get attached because of his position and how hard it is for him? The fact that he couldn't even provide enough support for Lady Ah-Duo so she doesn't lose her uterus? The fact that she switched their baby with his brother and he had to watch his son grow up "away" from him?

There's so much more to this, especially with Jinshis approach to power and I could go on an on but I think I made my point.

And when I started comparing the stories written by women to those by men... Women tend to write power as more of a burden than a gift.

After watching TAD I watched solo leveling.

And for those of you who don't know, it's basically a story about a guy who suddenly "discovers" that he's like a character in a game (not exactly but it's be too long to explain) and basically finds out that he has endless potential and over the course of the story he becomes the most powerful being in the entire universe.

And there's a moment where he's talking to his little sisters friend that gets very misread as something inappropriate by another character.

This other character points out, kindly, to Sung Jinwoo that the girl is a minor.

Sun Jinwoo doesn't understand so he just looks at him and asks "so?".

And so the guy immediately gets scared and never mentions it again despite the two of them being friends.

This moment is kind of played for laughs. Nothing actually happened, Sung Jinwoo is a good guy so he wouldn't.

But he could. Nobody could do anything to stop him.

And when I watched that I laughed too. But then I thought of how terrifying that is. To have someone be so above the law, this untouchable. Who can do anything he pleases because no one will ever stop him.

But that's never actually adressed in the show other than to show us how cool this is.

It this was written by Natsu Hyūga there'd probably be a million different situations to show us how fucked up this is and how it weighs on the main character.

In the apothecary diaries Jinshi doesn't even want to ask anything directly of Maomao because he doesn't want her to interpret it as an order.

[darrellenjoyer]

finalizing key guy design. i feel like something is wonky about this drawing but its just a simple ref so it doesnt matter

this is just going to be a bunch of vague rambling, but ive been percolating on the details of my prince/key guy/green sugar glider darkness adventure oc-iverse that ive been posting scattered art relating to over the past few months, especially key guy and the prince (he's a pink dragon with a crown and a cape if that rings any bells)

as for this key guy, i was thinking his story could be that he was a foot soldier in the king's army who failed a mission or maybe a castle guard who accidentally let someone through or something- like, a low-ranking official of some sort who fell afoul of the king's good graces... so when the time came for this secret key-protecting mission, he had his memory wiped at the age of 20 and was banished to a cave behind a waterfall to protect the key for the rest of eternity and declared dead in combat to his friends and family members. the key in question would be the solution to a simple roadblock in the prince's quest to reach the king's castle, like unlocking a fence gate or something comparatively insignificant in the greater journey

i just thought it would be fun to have a character with a singular purpose that seems so anticlimactic and meaningless, but to them it's their entire existence, the whole point of them still being alive in the first place, and therefore this mundane and unimportant task has been made monumentally significant through one person's life, their suffering... key guy doesn't even have a real name, just a job title. the thing that makes it even worse is that the king was never even particularly interested in torturing him or punishing him in some way - he just needed someone to protect the key.... and so Key Guy was born

maybe when/if he finally gets his memories back he would be overwhelmed by how disappointing and difficult his life was before he became key guy. maybe something about how he didn't have any real friends and hated his job and nothing meaningfully changed when he lost his memories or something i dont know. hes just a very depressing character with a dreadfully boring personality that im beginning to love a lot

[housemdork]

so. i know that fighting on the wilson defense squad is a little taboo around here...but i still want to share the germ of a thought that i've had, which i'll definitely expand on in the future.

does anyone hear me when i say that so much of wilson's work is silent and unseen?

i mean this, first, quite literally regarding his practice. it's a rarity, seeing wilson interact directly with his cancer patients without being called in for a consult. we hear about his patients all the time, just not often by name. but whether because we're in house's POV, or because the show aligns with house's belief that "cancer is boring," we don't see wilson practicing oncology that much in the grand scheme of things, even compared to the snippets of ER and surgery life that cameron and chase move on to, respectively.

house pokes fun at wilson's oncology all the time, and pretty definitively in 2x04 when he makes fun of medical specialists. to house, things are simpler for them; house views them as existing in a box, much smaller than his grand purview over things. wilson's work is relegated away from the main text of the show; he operates in isolation, which hurts in the long run.

wilson's own cancer experience is profoundly impacted by the pain of loss he's endured over the years, watching his patients die. he rattles off their names, their cancers, their ages, and the dates they died to house from memory. we never saw these patients. house probably never did, either, so we can only learn of this pain afterwards. we re-contextualize wilson's emotions and behavior after the fact.

finally, the work wilson puts into his friendship with house is often invisible. i won't ever paint wilson as the ideal friend - that would completely ruin any interpretation of his character - but i find it disingenuous to ignore the strain house puts on him, however self-inflicted. what starts out as trickles of jokes and subtle hints (the loans), evolves into the season 3 medical license debacle, which evolves into wilson's repeated responsibility for house's mental health (which isn't even mandated by house, but by those around wilson and house), which finally evolves into house attempting to control wilson's last wishes. repeatedly, wilson is nominated, especially by dr. nolan in season 6 and foreman in season 8, to be house's steward, and who else would do it, but him?

big example: we never see the decision for house to move into wilson's place, but all the energy in the world is put into wilson asking house to leave. it's first presented as a natural assumption, then a mortal sin.

unlike the other characters surrounding house, the origins of wilson and house are usually only hinted at. their history unfolds across the entire show, and that includes the good and the bad parts that are only heard about in passing and in retrospect. at the start of season 5, wilson, at his most honest, breaks the hardest news to house yet - that he's leaving PPTH because of him.

"i've enabled it for years. the games, the binges, the middle-of-the-night phone calls...if i've learned anything from amber, it's that i need to take care of myself."

again, we learn of this long-term pain afterwards, once house takes a beat to digest it. we re-contextualize wilson's emotions and behavior after the fact.

say what you like about what wilson asked house to do in 4x16 (it kills me, personally). i cannot completely fault wilson for telling house this ^. as much as house needs to change, wilson does, too. amber was right about that. we can gauge the strain that house has in his relationships based on how many work out long-term: one.

and later, funny as it is in the moment, wilson is the one to go to physically check in on house in 7x01 when it was VERY apparent that he should not have gone home alone (not to dismiss foreman's attempt in 6x22 to be there for him, though). house's fake voicemail message attests to this: "if this is wilson, i'm fine, not suicidal, not on drugs, coping very well with the loss of my last patient, so feel free to go about your day without worry."

i understand why he crawled through that window! after six seasons of this, i would have done the same!

i argue the same about house that i do about wilson - these 2, despite how messed up they are when it comes to human goodness and love - could not do what they do if they did not have the capacity to love. they're both rewarded in their own, twisted ways; house is gratified that, if nothing else, his brain sets him apart and preserves his sense of self, while wilson gets to feel loved in the way he can never quite fulfill elsewhere. does that cancel out the lives they save and soothe along the way?

all of this is to say that it's easy to brand wilson with a red "morally corrupt guy who pretends otherwise" stamp across his forehead because i think that's what house md tempts us to do by mandating how, when, and what we see of wilson's life. trust me - i'm trudging through season 2 right now and fast approaching his rendezvous with grace. but over time, i think the show invites us to treat him with sympathy and nuance in the same way it does house. if we penalize wilson too much for returning to house, and for needing his neediness, that may just imply that house doesn't deserve that sort of love. and we know that isn't the case.

isn't there more poetic irony than the oncologist getting cancer at hand? what about cancer as the silent-killer? what about cancer eating at every part of the body, slowly, over time? unseen and unheard?

[bluejayadler]

Thoughts on this post?

https://www.tumblr.com/do-be-careful-charles/786662921427206144?source=share

I thought it was fascinating and and fun and would love to hear someone else's thoughts on it.

Parallels!

So I received this ask in my inbox from an anonymous human, and it has given me an excuse to talk about parallels!

Now, the OP mentions Edwin being paralleled with Wilfred, the WWI ghost, and Charles being paralleled with Hope Devlin. But someone in the tags also brings up Crystal with Esther and Niko with Mick. So we're gonna look at all the Core 4 and their parallels.

Parallels are used in narrative and storytelling for a few different reasons. Largely its to compare or contrast two points or things - two parallel scenes might show progression along an arc, two parallel characters might show diverging character arcs or converging character arcs - loss of self of one character, reclamation of identity, the fall, the rise! So many things. 

Edwin to WW1 ghost - this was a fate he could've had, but the sad thing is, that even though he escaped this fate, he really didn't. WWI and WWII battlefields, like most warzones, were described as Hell. Edwin died the year the draft was initiated. Sure, he wasn't old enough yet, but he may have still ended up drafted soon enough. Edwin actual death involved him being sacrificed to Hell - figurative or literal hell, no autonomy or agency in ending up there. Edwin's parallel is essentially a reflection. Also consider that there would've been a good chance he died MIA or ended up buried as an unknown soldier. Edwin may have been lost the No Man's Land and Hell just as easily. He didn't really "escape" this parallel fate but rather endured a more twisted version of it.

Charles to Hope - again, this is a fate Charles could've had but still basically did, in a twisted way. Hope tries to leave home and is murdered before she can. Charles does leave home, off to boarding school, but still ends up murdered. You'd have to wonder if Charles saw Hope and thought, just for a second, "even if she left, nothing would've changed" because, that was the truth for him. He escaped and then didn't. The fact is, either fate would've left him murdered by someone meant to care for him and protect him, someone he was meant to trust. And I don't think Charles would've found any more justice if he'd been killed by his own father. Child abuse is grossly under investigated, and even when it is, is very under-punished. Charles's father may not have received any real punishment, if he got caught at all. If anyone even cared.

I think the big thing for me with the boys and their parallels is that they both still essentially had their fated death! But also, them having their parallel in front of them fits so well with the themes of justice and "we didn't matter". Parallels in story telling serve a few different purposes - usually around comparing and contrasting. Often its holding a character up against an older or younger version of themselves (either literal version of themself or just representative/figurative version) and saying "this is what you could become" or "this is what you could've been". With Charles and Edwin, its oddly both or kinda neither. Sorry, I should be asleep. These are what they could've been and, at the same time, what they could become - Charles could become trapped in a loop of his own pain (and he kinda does) and Edwin could be cursed to forever live through that Hell again (which, again, kinda almost happens). Edwin and Charles both "escaped" that parallel outcome, but not really. 

But their parallel is less about comparison to me, and more about the theme of justice. Again, parallels can be used for different things. In the case of Edwin and Charles, I think it helps highlight a core theme of the show.

Going back to the "we didn't matter" scene (amazing scene) - Edwin says "we didn't matter, so these cases matter. They have to matter." And I think this is what their parallels more play towards. Edwin and Charles come face to face with their parallels, but they are able to give those parallel ghosts something they didn't get - some level of justice or closure. And its not perfect by any shot of the imagination. Charles and Edwin don't PREVENT tragedy, just like no one prevented theirs. Given how against taking a living client Edwin is in ep 1, it's easy to imagine they do it VERY rarely, so unless they are hired by a ghost to save someone, they are coming in AFTER the tragedy occurs. That is also the nature of a detective who usually investigates AFTER the tragedy. The boys aren't preventing their parallels but they are allowing the next part of the story to be different. They see the parallel in their cases, some as strong as Hope and Wilfred, and others as not. But they don't leave their parallel in the same place. They step in - something that wasn't done for them.

And its interesting how they interact with these parallels - or rather, with each others parallels. Charles is the one that steps in with Wilfred. He offers him closure in that moment. And this makes sense for his character - Charles is the more positive one, the more social one. It tracks he'd be the one focused on that while Edwin was focused on leaving before the blue light came. But, Charles is also the one that offers Edwin safety too, the way Edwin offered it to him. Charles, in that moment, becomes to Wilfred what Edwin was for him in the attic - paralleling the moment of his own death and the arrival of his own blue light. In the Devlin house, Charles can't act. He tries but gets stuck in the loop. The same way Edwin was stuck in his loop in Hell - unable to escape the Doll House. Edwin pulls Charles from that loop, by destroying the tape and actually, with the help of Crystal, physically pulling Charles up off the floor. This is paralleled when Charles pulls Edwin out of Hell. Because, the Devlin house, seeing his own parallel and being unable to stop it, would've been figurative Hell for Charles. So, their parallel ghosts aren't even JUST about them separate but them together and their entire afterlife purpose. Its not just "what could've been" but "what can we make it", which is not a common use for parallels, least, not that I can think of.

So yeah, the boys' parallels are AMAZING! But the post I was sent included Crystal paralleled with Esther and Niko with Tragic Mick. So, lets look at that.

Cause, DBDa has a LOT of parallels, which I love. They have scenes that parallel each other and characters that parallel each other, and its fascinating. But focus, focus on just the Core 4.

Crystal and Niko fall more into the traditional comparison type parallels - the younger character paralleled against an older version of themself and "what you could become" motif.

Crystal and Esther - I touched on them a little bit during a previous NGL where someone asked if I thought Crystal was getting through to Esther during the final fight. Crystal and Esther parallel amazingly. They both are women who were wronged - betrayed in some way by people they loved who were meant to love them. They both turned to some power to protect themselves, specifically taking the route of power to keep others from hurting them, even if it meant hurting others first. Esther is the most obvious, but Crystal does this - the mean girl mentality hurting her friends emotionally, giving people nightmares, and the whole making someone walk into traffic! Add to this that both Esther and Crystal get their power from a similar place. I mean, Crystal's is her own, but it is strengthened by her ancestors. A female ancestral source. Esther gets her from Lilith, the first woman and goddess of wronged women. They both turn to this source as some point. And this is where they branch and they do it in a way I enjoy. Because, Crystal doesn't go all the way down the same route as Esther, even though she starts down that path. She stops. Her memories are gone. She doesn't remember being hurt. She knows she has the power to get what she wants and do what she wants. And she does - she helps. She finds Becky. She finds connection! Crystal is lost and alone and could use her powers to take, but instead, she uses them to help. And when she fully reconnects with her ancestors, her first act, is to save others. I like how her's is handled, because she never has an explicit "this is who I could become" moment, which, I've seen a lot of. This idea that either the character or the audience needs to parallel to be explicitly written out for them. But the audience doesn't. We can see Crystal struggling with herself, her past actions and current decisions and how to use her power in a way that helps without hurting, including herself. When she calls on Esther's pain and shares her own, she's calling out that parallel. She had a moment like Esther, and she chose to do better. But she isn't explicitly comparing herself or saying "I don't want to become you." The sentiment and arc are there and the show manages to tell it without having to explicitly write it out. I like this, because this is more real to me. Which, yes, I'm saying "more real" while referring to a sow with ghosts and demons and witches. But, DBDa does an amazing job ay making the characters and the arcs very human. If you think about all the big scenes people talk about - they're all human scenes. Like, human connection. The big scenes are huge set pieces or explosion or huge moments of action. They're focused on the humanity of the characters. And, in our life, we will probably see parallels to ourselves, but we often don't get the chance or have the foresight to think "this is what I could become or what I could've been" - not in a moment where that change it possible. Often, its unseen things and small choices that we make that get us there. We may have the idea someone in our mind, like Crystal, but Crystal didn't change because she looked at Esther. She changed because the let herself care and she found support and connection and wanted to be better than who she was before. Crystal does parallel Esther, and we as the audience get to see what Crystal could've become, but she changed for herself and for the people she came to care about. This is why I love her parallel in the show. 

And now, we have Niko. And Niko gets another fun dual parallel, like the boys, but not exactly. Niko, I think, parallels Tragic Mick very well. Tragic Mick is cursed - living an isolated life, unable to return home. Niko, when we meet her, is just the same. And neither of them chose it. Tragic Mick was "sent away" by his mother, a punishment essentially for wonder. He was curious. He wanted to know about people. But his mother was hurt by them, so she cast him out. Niko was sent away by her mother, who was grieving, and for whatever reason, didn't want Niko there. She was sent away from home, just like Mick. And once gone, her wonder led her to a field of dandelions, where she was infested and "cursed" resulting in her own isolation. Both of them didn't deserve their fate. They didn't actively cause. They were essentially punished for their own curiosity/wonder and more so, for things outside their control (Huh, both got impacted by intergenerational trauma) and had to suffer through the results. Mick remains largely isolated - constantly seeking a way back to what was. Niko ahs her moments of doing the same. She obsesses, for one episode, about getting her father back. But, when the Night Nurse says "you don't want him back like that", Niko accepts it. Its where her parallel branches off. Niko is able to embrace the pain and what comes after. Not entirely. She still ahs to endure it and get through it. But she doesn't remain in isolation. She could! After the sprites were gone, she could've remained in her room, constantly focusing on what was and how to get back to a place that's no longer there. But she doesn't! She moves forward. She finds new connection and new joy. Like Crystal, part of Niko's shift from her parallel is her own action and part is the action of others - which again plays so well into the show's themes of humanity and connection. Niko would've ended up in a tragic fate were it not for Crystal and the boys intervening. But even after their intervention, she still had to make the choices to chance. Like Crystal - the agency gave her the opportunity and support so she could make the change.

And this brings me to the second parallel for Niko - the Principal. Who is Niko. So, maybe not a parallel, but I'm counting it. The Principal is great because she is what Niko becomes - keeping part of her parallel from Tragic Mick in the "you never know when the good you do will come back around" but also having her own path. The Principal is the parallel that happened because Niko found connection and now she continued the work of the agency from a different side - still helping, in some way, in her way. Because we have the Principal, which we know is Niko, while also having Tragic Mick who is Niko's parallel, we oddly enough get a complete parallel storyline! Yes, Crystal has turned off the path that Esther went down, but something could push her back. And the boys, well, they already ARE their parallel. But Niko, we get a glimpse at this more tragic potential future and instead we see what she does become - the Principal. We don't know how she got there, but we know she held pieces of her journey - quoting Mick, pausing at the sight of her name, using her "reading comprehension" to help, being brave and wanting to find closure for others. Niko becomes the Principal, in part, due to her parallel arc with Mick.

The parallels in this show do an amazing job of highlighting the individual characters while also bringing out the overarching themes of the show - humanity, connection, justice, "the good you do", etc.  Thank you so much for the ask! I hadn't considered the Core 4 parallels with other characters before!!! So this was a fun analysis to do when I should've been sleeping.

[horlzonline]

Decided to go crazy go stupid today and pump out a sketch page of my Rich Cheese Cookie instead of adulting! Yay! Anyways, I’m finally starting to get used to drawing her, though I just can’t settle on color placement… So you get monochrome artwork for now. One of these sketches in particular is inspired by something @browhyihatethis said—they’ll probably know which one. And of course, as per usual, I’ll include some fun stuff about her on this post to give more context to the drawings, too.

- As an adult, Rich Cheese Cookie typically goes by Gilded Gouda Cookie. This is primarily because where she lives (somewhere in or near the land of spice perhaps) is rampant with thievery and all negative forms of greed—that is, no one with ‘rich’ in their name is going to be wandering around out there unbothered. The implication of ‘gilded’ as opposed to ‘rich’ is that all of her shine (or what little is left of it) is simply for show; there’s nothing of true value present to steal for oneself. Though initially a pseudonym, she eventually grows into the name and ends up keeping it.

- In a meta sense, the name is deliberately parallel to Golden Cheese Cookie (Gilded = Golden, Gouda = Cheese), and can be considered symbolic of her relationship with both her mother and her own sense of identity over time. Items that are gilded only have a surface-level shine, being veiled by a very thin layer of gold leaf that is virtually worthless if stripped away. Things that are gilded often do not have much of any inherent material value when compared to something made of solid gold. To discover that what was thought to be a golden treasure was so only on the outside… Why, that would undoubtedly be a little more than disappointing, wouldn’t it? However, the process of gilding itself is extremely intricate and time-consuming, making the true value of a gilded treasure not what it’s made out of, but the time, effort, and skill that went into creating it. Gilded items are often unique pieces—works of art in their own right. The paper-thin gold adorning them, on its own, isn’t worth much; the gilded piece itself, however, can nonetheless be priceless. Take that as you will.

- As a child, Rich Cheese Cookie very much made an effort to channel her mother’s bold, confident energy in effort to imitate her. Though the confidence wasn’t actually her own, she hadn’t really encountered any true threats before, so borrowing her mother’s attitude without any actual skill or power to back it up wasn’t an issue. This illusion of confidence shattered, however, when Dark Enchantress’s forces invaded the Golden Cheese Kingdom. Though she was frightened, Rich Cheese Cookie actually did attempt to fight for the kingdom, as her mother would have—an act of childish foolishness that got her tossed roughly into one of the palace’s pillars within moments. Frightened and disoriented, she had lost hold of her weapon, facing down horde of beasts many times her size. Her body was shaking; her breath quickened; something warm and wet crept sluggishly down her face. Her only choice was to run further into the palace. She never stopped running.

- Gilded Gouda Cookie can be fairly standoffish at times and slow to trust anyone—if that wasn’t already obvious. This can lead to her coming off as stern or aggressive if you catch her at the wrong moment, even though what she’s actually feeling internally is closer to anxiety or extreme wariness. Some may even believe that she actively dislikes them for an extended period of time, only to find out later that she never actually had any negative opinions about them to begin with. She simply didn’t know them well enough to feel safe being friendly.

- The emotions she feels when encountering her mother again after so long are incredibly complex. After all, at this point, she’s been without her mother longer than she’s had her around. On the one hand, she is of course very glad to see her, though the shame and sense of inferiority she carries, alongside the imaginary, childlike vision of Golden Cheese Cookie that she held onto for so long to comfort herself, makes almost her wish that her mother had remained only a fond memory—at least initially. It doesn’t help that the golden sovereign has not seen her daughter since childhood and, as a result, still sees and treats her like a child when she is very much a grown adult. Personally, I imagine that Golden Cheese Cookie is the kind of parent to give what she views as advice, only for it to come off as demeaning or critical to an adult child, which is extremely frustrating to Rich Cheese Cookie, now Gilded Gouda Cookie (a name that her mother frequently forgets to use, or even ignores at first). On top of this, Golden Cheese Cookie appears to operate on the assumption that her daughter will merely return to the kingdom now as if nothing happened… but she’s built her own life in her mother’s absence and fears returning to the place she couldn’t protect. There’s a whole lot to unpack there.

- It takes some serious misunderstandings and conflict before Golden Cheese Cookie realizes what her daughter wants and needs from her: acceptance of who she is now, and acknowledgement of what happened to her all those years ago. The latter is something Gilded Gouda Cookie does her best to forget and push away, but in doing so she neglects the scared little kid that’s still inside of her—the same little kid who cried day and night for her mother after losing everything, only to receive no answer. For so many years, all she wanted was for Golden Cheese Cookie to be there; now she can be, even if it’s seriously overdue. Gilded Gouda Cookie may be grown, but she nonetheless needs permission to be her mother’s child again. Understanding, at least for the two of them, starts with, “You must have been so scared…”

- Golden Cheese Cookie eventually has to make the tough decision to let her daughter go yet again, allowing her to live her own life and choose to return to the kingdom if, and only if, she is ever ready to. She ultimately does, of course, bringing a lot of people she’s met (who are at this point sick of hardship) to the land of abundance with her—though until that happens, Golden Cheese Cookie makes sure to send frequent letters and gifts by cheesebird… The poor things end up progressively carrying heavier and heavier gifts until her daughter literally has to ask her to please, PLEASE reconsider what she’s sending. More food and fewer precious metals is always preferable.

- On a more positive note, Gilded Gouda Cookie’s favorite food is a bit of an ironic one. Despite being a royal and having access to the finest cuisine during her childhood, she came to enjoy the street food found at small stands throughout the city more than the finest cheese dishes her mother favored so. One particular stand always made the snack she loved most perfectly—a golden-brown pastry filled with delicious cheese and drizzled with natural honey for a sweet and savory combo that couldn’t be beat! Given her current position, as well as the state of the kingdom itself, she hasn’t had one in many years… but all it takes is one bite to bring her back home.

- Golden Cheese Cookie absolutely sent photos of her daughter as a dough ball baby to her friends and colleagues. She unfortunately lost a lot of baby pictures in the Dark Flour War, but if you ask her, she might still have some digitized…

___________

Was gonna write more, but ran out of steam. Gah. Maybe I’ll get into the key differences between the mentalities of Gilded Gouda Cookie and Golden Cheese Cookie eventually… In short: Golden Cheese Cookie fights because she sees what there is to gain, while Gilded Gouda Cookie fights because she sees what there is to lose. Tune in next time (if there is one)! ✌️

[fiepige]

Hobie intro animation concept to final scene

[lara635kookie]

[hellofastudysession]

am i rlly going to write a death note literary analysis when i could be doing other things

about the discourse going on in the tag abt "death note is acab and thats why the characters couldnt better the world with the note (/written in somewhat jokey matter)" vs "death note is trying to say we all have potential for evil, especially if you get a chance to insta-hurt ppl without repercussions, and it doesnt matter if youre a cop or not", i personally feel like it ignores the things that i like abt death note, which is "both of these things are true", and simultaneously "both of these things do not matter". the first part of this is dedicated to the first point, the latter to the last.

first point. i think its an important part of the message and themes (unintentional or not, and i lean on the former because... come on, can you really say the author intended you to not think of the cops as good people, at least compared to light and l) that light is a cops son, and that almost everyone who gets the death note is cop adjacent/thinks like a cop and is already corrupt/powerful when they get it (mello raised to think hed be just like l, yotsuba group is self explanatory; you cannot look me in the eyes and tell me teru "churchill" mikami, who was hand selected by light out of a bunch of rabid kira supporters, is a normal citizen). i appreciated the cop post bc its rlly important to not gloss over that aspect.

all of this would be an argument for "only someone like them would do something like this, and i am not like them, so im above them and immune to thinking about what id do with it", but... misa is the MOST important outlier in all of this bc her murders are solely selfish in nature and shes not doing any of this for "the greater good"!!! her nature of being an exception and still a very very bad person is really really important...

or it would be if death note gave a shit about her character at all!!! im not talking about her tragic side, im talking about exploring the ramifications of her killing people the way lights murders are (somewhat) explored. that would strengthen the message greatly! but shes dismissed and that weakens it overall. firstly, she's dismissed by the characters when l only sees her as a way to get to kira and basically shelves her the rest of the time. secondly, shes dismissed by the narrative when her character is gradually ground down to a stump and (not to sound perilously close to the bad takes ppl meme about) she never faces repercussions for her actions. every other character using the death note is treated relatively seriously, but misa just dies bc her love is dead. im not saying this isnt a... fitting punishment or that it isnt in character, but it doesnt fit snugly into the theme other people are talking about of "you reap what you sow" at all.

we do have something of an equivalent to misa's grayscale motives. surprise surprise, its light yagami. first is light's characterization in the musical (i will also note that misa never kills anyone in the musical). light's thinking is coplike, yes — he literally starts his first song by talking about "throw[ing] away the key" — but also, oddly enough, could be read as progressive and therefore sympathetic to tumblr ("let the corporations make the regulations / and hold no one accountable when everything gets wrong / let the rich and famous get away with murder / every time a high-priced mouthpiece starts to talk, his client gets to walk"). compare to the anime and manga, where his bigotry and pride and disgust come from a place of lukewarm dissatisfaction and boredom. the musical has much less time to play around with lights character, so it gives the audience something to immediately hook on. more on how that actually plays out later.

in the animanga, none of this is justified from the start. animanga light could say he was just killing people to make humanity way, way worse, and that wouldnt matter, because at the root of it, it was always his boredom that made him pick up the note. of course he actually believes in justice and believes hes doing the right thing (no, he believes he's doing the wrong thing, for the sake of the world... the right thing, because he is god...), but it was boredom at the start. all animanga light says about justice and righteousness and the law is a front in the end, bc he is exactly like l and misa — amoral. selfish. searching for entertainment. hedonistic. we know this. he kills naomi misora*. he kills lind l. turner. everything hes saying deserves to be dismissed from the beginning.

"but doesnt that mean you agree with the discourse post you wrote this post to argue against?" like i said, i agree with both of them! but i... still think its not right to reduce death note to the message of "the power to kill people is bad". because that is not exactly what the story is saying, even though that's literally its whole plot and therefore reaching that conclusion is self explanatory (lmao). let's look at the concept of mu. nothingness. "there's no heaven or hell". The Real Slay The Princess (Death Note Essay) Starts Here.

in light's final moments in the death note manga, while screaming about not wanting to die, he remembers that the first day they met, ryuk told light that "there's no heaven or hell. no matter what they do in life, all people go to the same place. all humans are equal in death". it is retroactively revealed that light knew this the whole time, operated under this knowledge for all the years we watched him — the knowledge that nothing he does is actually bad, that nothing any human does is actually bad, that shinigami are not "evil", that the universe does not care. that no one cares except humans. this oblivion absolutely terrifies him more than anything anyone could ever do to him. its what he thinks of before anything else as he flails there, screaming, dying. one could say everything he does after that day is him trying to escape that fact, or wrest control over it. but it doesnt work.

here are the lyrics of requiem, the musical's final song, sung over the bodies of l and musical light, a light who was at least somewhat good-intentioned at first: "sleep now, here among your choices / then fade away / hear how the world rejoices / shades of gray / gone who was right or wrong / who was weak or strong / nothing left to learn". this is the final message the death note musical and the manga chose to leave us with. there is no judgement. even after all that acknowledged hurt, after all the damage done, there is no judgement.

in the manga and anime alike, the world is just as fucked when light picks up the death note as when he dies. sure, we as readers can guess otherwise logically (and be optimistic, believing the world was never fucked regardless), but that's not what death note wants you to think. it ends with matsuda and another member of the task force noting how the world is worse again even though they killed kira (matsuda is clearly much worse for wear, but still determined), we see the shitty motorcycle band again, it ends with misa and a whole kira cult on a mountain even though kira died a long time ago...

its extremely important that light is never killed by any human or any aspect of the law. he is always killed by ryuk: a chaotic force completely detached from human sensibilities, one that does not care about good and evil. same with l; in the anime, manga, and musical, he is always killed by rems senseless, morally gray love (and you could argue in the kdrama that hes killed by love there too lol). justice is just a set dressing.

this is not just because death note is a tragedy, because good and evil can still matter in a tragedy. the theme of "nothingness" and "good and evil doesnt matter here" is also shown in a situation relatively unrelated to light winning or losing, or being good or bad. and its in fucking lawlight of all things. we all know ls not a good person. we know lights not a good person. this is tip of the iceberg death note knowledge. but the moment they start to interact, none of that starts to matter. textually, their relationship becomes more important than the people theyve killed and hurt. and the thing is? the thing is? THAT WORKS STORY-WISE. THAT'S ENTERTAINING. AND IT'S NEVER TEXTUALLY CALLED OUT IN A LASTING WAY. l and lights relationship, no matter how much i meme it, is genuinely important to the themes and "mu" because it makes it clear that despite all the pretensions, despite everything, this was never about good and evil. and it still works in the story. this is why death note is simultaneously a comedy — isn't the battle of good and evil supposed to matter more? well, fine, i'll keep watching this anyway. that suspension of disbelief comes crashing down the moment l dies, though, and a relationship built on nothingness (the "mu" sort, meaninglessness, not "character development" nothingness, theres plenty of character development) gives way to just nothingness (again, "mu", not light's post-l depression nothingness), forever.

(an aside: there is no one to root for in death note, and the only things to root for are either interesting character relationships, convoluted plots, or complete and total destruction: for everything to end so no more damage is done.)

not to say that death note does not encourage its readers to consider what damage they might do with the death note (obviously.), or that its characters never do. look at matsuda, a much easier heroic figure to latch on to than soichiro because of his unique place in the cast dynamic and because he's willing to consider both sides of the situation and kill light instantly for all he's done. its just that the story's own stance on the subject is... complicated by the existence of shinigami worldviews and by its own insistence that the world cannot change for the better.

also, this is not to say that this is executed well by the death note manga at all. it is a very strong tool, artistically, to establish and then violently remove any emotional connections between characters and make your story only about the exceedingly convoluted lengths characters go to to survive and catch each other so the reader can realize how ultimately pointless all of this is, but like... is that a good story choice if that's all you do? i would say not really. add in a good dollop of misogyny that destroys the second-to-last character who might actually be an interesting contrast to the rest of the cast's dull one-track focus on winning and justice, and youve got yourself a shitty story that... honestly still achieves what it went out to do, just not in a way id ever want to replicate.

anyway, back to the parts death note's actually trying to say. no matter what any human does in their life, no matter how they try to hurt or help the world, they all die in the end. hey, light, they all die in the end. once dead, they can never come back to life. and the seasons turn. and the world rejoices. and you say "goodbye"...

that's all.

no analysis of death notes overarching theme would be complete without nears final monologue, the definitive roast of light, the "you're just a murderer" speech: "what is right from wrong? what is good from evil? nobody can truly distinguish between them. even if there is a god." if we take this as talking about the actual god in the room (ryuk) as well as light, then near admits that humans will never be able to withstand these overwhelming forces and that, using justice and happiness and selfishness, they are just scrabbling to find meaning in things they ultimately have no control over.

but of course, near does not stop there. "[...] even then i'd stop and think for myself. i'd decide for myself whether his teachings are right and wrong." nears alright with not having control over everything, because near can still control nears own actions. these forces can and do exist, but they have no sway over nears own humanity — unlike light, who caved.

one of the creators of death note said they believe its message is "life is short, so everyone should do their best". the first time i learned this, i was like, thats... nice and optimistic, but an awful reading of the story! "life is short, so everyone should be desperate and striving like light yagami", who literally cut off other ppls lives for his own life? what character in death note are we supposed to strive towards when we "do our best"? they all do awful things with their lives! honestly, maybe they shouldnt have tried their best, if this is what their best is!

but with the view of "mu"... it makes a bit more sense. just a little. maybe.

there is no good and evil. there is only what humans think, and no matter what we do, we all die in the end. it is easy to be crushed and terrified by this in the same way light is, but what is more important than justice and righteousness and finding meaning is... doing your best. not being a person that hurts others too much. not letting yourself get swallowed up by an ideal. not going too far. and simultaneously, trusting yourself.

it leaves a few questions, though... was the currently dead l even a little bit right about his blatantly amoral approach, then? was there a point to this pain, and me slogging through this dumbass manga, and all the people that have lost their lives to a selfish teenage cop's son and the whims of everyone chasing after him? was there a point to any of this...?

the manga** never answers this. it stays clinically impartial until the very end. the musical is anything but clinically impartial (and i love it so much for that), and its ryuk that has the last word.

"there's no point at all."

of course theres no point. none of this was ever supposed to happen. that is what matters more than all the hurt and the crimes and the pain.

and that's... actually okay, because it's over now.

yes, death note has many really important themes present in its story, but its viewpoint is nihilism first and foremost. thats why its so fun and easy to play around with all the other messages, because no matter what fun or torment or awful things or righteous justice or absolute nothingness or sentimentality happens in between, there is always an end.

there is always the end.

[floorpancakes]

ok but im rly into the idea of till having a new era that brings the light back to his eyes and drives him forward if he gets to escape the arena. idk where he'd go from there but i want to see ivans sacrifice both haunt him and drive him to actually live his damn life after being the captured bird refusing freedom cause of mizi. once he knows she's alive with the resistance he might be able to actually experience other things and widen his world and if that happens and he puts his personal sense of rebellion towards the human cause OR settles into finding some other way to feel fulfilment that isn't a single person that could be deeply fascinating to me i think

[vaniliens]

Im not even sticking around for the drama that stuff gives me heart diseases im just here to see where this guys gonna lead us and to make fun of him if it ends up bad and ignore it if it was good

[whiteboardartstudios]

Goodbye, Gendaen

fan art for @mtqcomic

Thoughts and LONG ramble under the cut! (includes spoilers!!!)

A while ago (like last week maybe?) I realized that I've been following this comic for almost a year, and I still haven't drawn Mysta yet! I figured that with the recent end of Chapter 3 and that *huge* lore drop (I was NOT expecting that oh my goodness the theory wheels are turning in the void that is my brain) now would be a pretty good time to draw her! So that's where this came from! :D

I thought that it would be fun to draw Mysta looking sort of like a knight? Partially because it makes for cool posing and composition but also because I think that if she was in D&D she would be a paladin due to the whole "Hero sent by Destiny" thing (I considered sorcerer or warlock as well, but her moveset is mostly melee at the moment so I thought that paladin fits better. Plus this opens up the possibility of Gendaen being an Oathbreaker paladin, depending on how that whole situation with the Crimson went. (also now I kind of want to put the main cast of mtq in D&D even though I don't actually know a lot about D&D ToT. I think Eth would be a ranger maybe multiclassed into something magic-related, because rangers have a favored enemy mechanic that gives them advantages on fighting a certain type of enemy, which could be Crimson enemies for D&D Eth. Yele is (kind of obviously) a druid because of the whole dryad thing, and Zaïl is definitely giving rogue energy to me.)) Anyways, D&D-related sidetrack aside – hello??? End-of-chapter-3 lore drop? (/positive) I have SO many questions. First of all, what happened to convince Gendaen to switch sides? For someone who allegedly spent his entire life trying to cleanse the Crimson, it would've taken one heck of a worldview-upending revelation to get him to join it. With the information we currently have, it seems pretty clear that Gendaen isn't mind-controlled or corrupted or anything – not just because of the reasons Eth gave in page #169, but also because from all the interactions we've had with Nelun Soma'o/Gendaen, he seemed to be pretty chill? I pointed out in my first fan art post that it doesn't seem as if Nelun Soma'o is being built up to be a villain character and is instead more of an antagonist with a slight mentor role, and I think that still kind of holds up now. Gendaen definitely wants Mysta to help him and/or the Crimson with something, and as Yele said in that recent comic, things aren't really adding up. I'm still slightly suspicious of the Order of Learning as well (insert person pointing at conspiracy theory board meme here lol), since you would think that if Gendaen and Eth are really close then Gendaen might have told Eth about the whole Crimson situation, right? On Page #250 (which is marked as 150??? probably a typo but idk) Gendaen says that he didn't want Eth to be roped into this whole situation, which could be a reason for keeping him in the dark – though if he knew Eth really well then he might have suspected that Eth wouldn't just let him disappear and would go searching for him. Another possible reason (in my theory) if the Order is evil or something and Gendaen learned something that he shouldn't have learned, maybe he knew that Eth wouldn't believe him because of his loyalty to the Order? I may just be connecting random dots and calling it a picture here but *something* is going on and until we get more clues on what that may be, I'm sticking with this theory lol :P EDIT, I was rereading Gendaen's character sheet and it says there that he has a strong code of honor and fights for the underdogs (not the exact phrasing but it's close). 👀 does that mean the Crimson is in some sort of underdog position? 👀

Anyways back to the drawing a little, I gave both Gendaen and Mysta a sort of braid-like element in their designs to sort of tie them together a bit visually (Mysta's is on the sides of her head, which is kind of hard to see so I added a little ribbon to show that parts of her hair is tied back, and Gendaen's is in his golden hair accessory thingy). I think that there's definitely some sort of correlation between Gendaen's disappearance/switching to the Crimson and Mysta being sent to Sol Ybberia, and I also think that both of them are going to play an important role in whatever happens in the future, hence the braids (to show that their destinies are kind of intertwined, as the two Heroes of Sol Ybberia). I also thought that it would be fun to put Gendaen in a stained glass window instead of actually physically being present, because up until the Nelun Soma'o reveal, all the things we know about Gendaen are basically all from Eth's recollections of him, which for me definitely paints a bit of a "Character haunting the narrative" kind of vibe. I also think that with the Nelun Soma'o reveal, the somewhat glorified (for a lack of a better word – I think Eth might be a little biased when it comes to Gendaen, considering that Gendaen has been missing for about 5 years, if my math is correct? 5 years feels like a long time to me and I think that if a person important to me has been missing for that long then my impression of them would definitely start warping to how I want to remember them/who I wanted them to be and I might start unintentionally ignoring the things that doesn't quite match that image in my head. Speaking of/case in point, Eth's reaction to the Nelun Soma'o reveal!) image of Gendaen that we had got thrown in a metaphorical blender with our idea of the Crimson at the time, and it just makes things a whole lot more complicated in a very interesting way. (If you look at the bottom right of the image you can see Nelun Soma'o's cloak coming out of stained-glass Gendaen's cloak, which I thought would be a fun little detail to include). Hence, the stained glass is kind of the "perfect Hero who disappeared to advance the plot" Gendaen and we can see Mysta kind of splitting the glass with her Rotted Fork from a composition point of view, referencing that huge lore bomb she dropped a couple of pages ago and how that changes our (or at least my) perception of Gendaen as a character entirely. I really do like the plot twist, as I think it makes Gendaen a more 3-dimensional character with more complicated motivations and narrative significance, as before I mainly knew him as "predecessor to Mysta" and "one of Eth's sources of motivation", but now he my understanding of Gendaen also extends to things about Gendaen himself and not just about his role in relation to other characters (for example, "Gendaen is helping the Crimson for reasons currently unknown" or "Gendaen is planning something that involves Mysta??? and he's in the Void??? And apparently Mysta is supposed to jailbreak him out at some point in the future?" He definitely has something planned behind the scenes, I don't know what it is and I want to find out).

MORE THINGS about Gendaen (can you tell that he's my favorite character at the moment ToT), what's up with those last words? If I'm correct (and I think I am, I scrolled all the way back to the page where the gods were introduced just to check this ToT), Nomù is Compassion? How is compassion related to Gendaen's alliance with the Crimson? I mean, when you think of the Crimson, compassion definitely is NOT the first value that comes to mind. Right now it seems that to me, Gendaen's plan with Mysta and the Crimson and the Void is connected to Nomù somehow? (the "I won't disappoint you" is definitely interesting). I don't have a lot of thoughts or theories on where this might be going, I just thought that it was something interesting to metaphorically chew on for the next while. It definitely seems like it has some sort of narrative significance, at least.

There might be more things that I wanted to talk about, but I can't really think of them off the top of my head right now (it might be due to the fact that it's currently quite late in my time zone ToT I am sleepy) so that's all from me for now :D (Also dropping the version of the drawing with just the lineart here because I think it looks really cool)

I hope you have a really nice day and/or night! :D

*a starry rift in space opens up in front of me and I faceplant into it like it is a mattress* (gotta make that dramatic exit!) [Image ID: The first image is a colored and rendered image of Mysta from the Mysta's Terrarian Quest webcomic standing in front of a stained glass window of Gendaen. She is holding the Rotted Fork spear from Terraria, and she has a determined expression on her face. The stained glass shows Gendaen with his back turned to the audience, and one closed eye is visible. His cloak is flowing to the right of the image, where it emerges out of the stained glass as it fades from green to dark grey. Crimson vines, green trees, and white clouds surrounds Gendaen in the stained glass. Outside of the glass portrait, real crimson vines are creeping along the stone walls that the portrait is on, framing the portrait and Mysta in the middle. A red light source is shining down from the upper right corner of the drawing. End ID.] [Image ID: The second image is a work-in-progress version of the first image without any color and only some minimal shading, with all shades being in monochrome. Mysta's lineart is noticeably darker compared to the line art of the background. End ID.]

EDIT: Forgot to add image ids, they're here now TwT

[forcedhesitation]

man people REALLY can't tell when larian is full on joking in their patch notes, huh? the gale thing was a legitimate bug and people are crying that they changed him as they did lae'zel. reading comprehension these days is abysmal.

I can't be surprised, though, because back when astarion's kiss animation was bugged, I saw discussions that it was "suspicious" that his kiss animation wasn't bugged for the default guy body, but was bugged for the default gal body. you know, as if larian somehow fucked up their own game's code on purpose, specifically to slight women who want to romance a canonically bisexual man that has flirtatious dialogue with the lady companions regardless of your tav's interest in him. totally checks out.

the complaints about changing lae'zel are entirely valid and I agree that her personality should not be toned down to appeal to the delicate sensibilities of the heterosexual man. I'm fairly certain that lae'zel's change was actually the only one that intentionally altered a companion's dialogue to be less abrasive. the alleged change to shart was also a bug fix, not an attempt to alter her character, if I remember correctly.

but by all means, let's accuse the devs of "ruining the game" every time they improve it. even better, let's all campaign for the addition of another romance! solely so that we can have sex with a popular NPC! rather than, oh I don't know, putting more pressure on them to add more material to the stories of wyll & karlach!

I swear, some people really do NOT know what it feels like to play a game where the devs truly and honestly are not listening to the playerbase...or where it takes literal YEARS for them to respond to even a fraction of the players' reasonable concerns & feedback.

[isacksteban]

mňau 🤨

[skitskatdacat63]

Boy King Seb :D

[pinoruno]

😁