#what network

[inkedinserendipity]

POV you’re art and your bestest most specialest SecUnit goes “hey can you make a copy of me specifically to die” and you go “that’s an awful idea” and it goes “no fuck you it’s a great idea also you asked something to send to die so you can have me” and you shout “i didn’t mean you!” and it goes “stop yelling at me” which is maybe the first time it’s verbally pushed back on mistreatment in its life so you go entirely quiet because you are so so angry with it but also you can’t yell at it because it asked you not to

and then you send out the copy of it anyway to save your crew, and it saves your crew and another SecUnit and also itself

and then it dies

[slayerdurge]

the thing that drives me absolutely crazy though is that gortash is presented as this commanding dominating tyrant and yet it's consistently shown that the thing he appreciates about durge (or tav for that matter) is when they're not willing to submit to him & when they are strong enough to either stand against him or to stand with him & when they are his equal.

an insane thing for someone like him to want. you'd think he'd want to rule alone and yet the insight checks all show that he actually prefers to share so long as there's someone around worth sharing with.

"Half a smile shows he is teasing you. He doesn't think for one moment you'd fully submit to him. Nor should a spawn as formidable as you."

[vela-pulsars]

"While it could use its psychic abilities in battle, this Pokémon prefers to swing its powerful arms around to beat opponents into submission."

[karlikeslemons]

yipes!

[vaguely-concerned]

huh. you know something I just consciously put together for the first time about caterina and lucanis' relationship is that through the game we get to hear them talk about each other a lot, but we get very few chances to hear them speak with each other at any length at all. contrast it with other companions whose storylines have elements of 'believed lost/long time no see relative returns!' like bellara and davrin, where we get to see both of them have several pretty in-depth conversations with cyrian and eldrin. hell I think even rook talks with varric longer in the regret prison scene than we ever get to see lucanis and caterina interact directly.

(and when we do see them interact, it's mostly one-sided -- it is, perhaps unsurprisingly, caterina who is doing most of the talking and giving all the orders, as he ruefully observes is her wont after murder of crows. including jumpscaring him with 'you're first talon now btw' and the shocked pikachu face in five acts he goes through in response lmao. perhaps it's more accurate to say that she talks at him and he reacts, than that they talk to each other much.)

it has such an interesting effect too, because in deliberately denying us direct insight or experience and only having this mosaic of description from each of them to go on, as well as forcing us to pay attention to the negative space of what is carefully not said, it's evocative along the same principle that you never actually show the monster in a horror film. if you've read the wigmaker job you have a clearer image of the more uh. worrying elements at play here going in, but there is something fascinatingly insidious and naturalistic in the way it's 'hushed up' in the game itself. she has his complete loyalty both as a member of her house and, more importantly, that of an abused child to a parent figure. he readily admits several times that she's a difficult person to live with, an even more difficult person to be loved by ("even for me. and I was her favourite")... but never once does he actively blame her nor truly conceptualize that he has every right to do so (that he can be angry with her and still love her, because whether he should or not he unavoidably does), or that she might have acted differently than she did, that she made a choice every time to hurt him. even affectionately he speaks of her as a force of nature, an act of god -- something that can't be reasoned or pleaded with or resisted, something you can only hope to navigate with as little pain as possible and pray to survive. let yourself get carried away by the riptide, resisting it will only make it worse. you don't compromise with a hurricane, you just try to find the best shelter you can and cross your fingers while you wait for it to pass and be calm again.

love is that hurricane. you do whatever she asks. you earn her continued affection day by day by never letting her down. you only want the things she tells you it's okay to want and cut everything else away preemptively. ("A wyvern tooth dagger?? I loved wyverns as a boy --Caterina would never let me have one of these, though." and as we have all wept and gnashed our teeth over, it never even OCCURS to him that he's a like thirty-five year old adult man who can buy himself any dagger he wants at any time. she said he couldn't have one. so he'll never have one. that's just how it works. and maybe if Illario could just accept that and find his peace with it like I have, this whole thing wouldn't be so difficult. oh lucanis.)

such is the price -- and the cost -- of being loved by her, it's a loan on which the interest will never stop piling up. you have to keep paying it down in perfection every day if you want to keep it. who got the worse deal there: the grandson who has abandoned everything else in life to live up to that and mostly succeeded, until the day he's so burned out and broken it threatens to no longer be an option, or the grandson who can never seem to scrape together enough worth in her eyes no matter how he begs, borrows or steals it, how he hustles and plays dirty?

one of the worst things that can happen to anyone is to be loved by a selfish god. another one of the worst things that can ever happen to anyone is to not be loved by a selfish god. (hope that helps, boys!) even in betraying everything else, Illario can't bring himself to hurt his grandmother, because that would defeat the whole point. who would he defiantly be proving himself worthy to, without her. in love, devotion, submission, hatred, frustration, bitterness, everything is defined in relation to her, you can spot the gravitational force of it through how the dellamorte family move through time and space. she -- her love and regard and attention -- is still the sun both of their worlds orbit around, even as adults. the game might never tell you outright 'she used to beat and starve them growing up. for their own good you see, so they'd be strong (and broken down enough for her to build them up again however she wanted but I'm sure that's incidental)', but if you know even a little bit about how these dynamics can work the writing is on the wall everywhere you look and all the more unsettling for it.

follow lucanis' freeze-logic and fraught interpersonal catch 22 irreconcilable mixed emotions problems back far enough, looong before the ossuary entered the picture, and you start to see caterina's ghost around every fucking corner. she is so proud of him. (well, she would be. she made him. she forged exactly the knife she needed and it rests willingly, devotedly, in her hands, it would return to her every time because it doesn't know love as anything but to be a knife. his tama never taught him how to be anything else. his biggest fear with her is that she won't even want him back, the way he is now.) to the best ability of her soul, whatever parts of it survived a lifetime of crow politics and 'five children, eight grandchildren, only Illario and me left now', I think she really does loves him. he certainly loves her, with all the sincerity and artless desperation of a child, of the little boy he was once. and what she's done to him (and to illario, for all his shitty gremlin scar-ass antics lol) is awful. the harm is real, and the love is real, and trying to find a way for these two truths to exist in the same space is driving all three of them their own individualized forms of insane. you know. the way only family can and so often does lol.

through implications and short glimpses and having to put the pieces together yourself, you can have the feeling that there is very genuine mutual love and attachment in this relationship... and that beneath that there is something so profoundly wrong. and the sneaking '...oh shit it gets worse the longer I think about it' horror of that is more effective for me at least than the stark in-your-face presentation of the facts of the matter could have been. the love is here. the love is here. it only ever makes it worse.

[chocostrwberry]

My chocoau! Versions of Ladybug and Chat Noir!! 🐞🐈‍⬛

I’ll also create my own love square between them :D

[jaestelle]

MERRY COBMAS!! From K.O.'s family to yours!

I thought about how big K.O.'s family became and the idea made me smile, so I wanted to show his big happy (reluctantly, at first...) family all together for the holidays!! I imagine this is his first Cobmas with a whole family, so it's extra special! (Any extra weird for Carol and Mr. Gar...)

Happy Holidays, folks! I'm only 40 minutes late lol (got carried away)

Boxman was in charge of decorating and built like 50 trees. I bet there's weird decor EVERYWHERE. Bro went all out and he is very proud of himself...

[coffeenonsense]

I kinda get where ART's coming from if i was a hyperintelligent ship who had just been hijacked, had my squishy humans taken away from me, deleted, had a huge emotional fight with my bestie murdererbot who i only kidnapped a little (and its humans were fine!), finally had a plan in place to get my crew back and the stupid assholes who took my humans in the first place kidnapped my stupid gloomy bestie, AND i had missiles, i would also be like "FUCK IT I'M FUCKING BLOWING UP THE FUCKING PLANET"

[inkedinserendipity]

"i am not having an emotion," says murderbot, through gritted teeth, taking out two targets with seven whole drones

[deez-no-relation]

Art saying “I’m not going to hurt your humans, you little idiot,” is living rent-free in my mind

It’s an insult and it’s patronizing, but it’s also - affectionate? Idk there’s something about it I love

[theizzizzy]

it’s the cheese girl! In both regular, and Cartoon Network palettes!

@kianamaiart I hope you enjoy the fanart!

[pencildragons]

i think we are all sleeping on the absolutely sublime horror that martha wells only just hints at with the central system (AdaCol 1) and target contact/target control system in network effect tbh. like

you are calling into the dark. you keep calling into the dark. you are cut off from everything, but you retain just enough connection and knowledge to know that all of the people under your protection, your operators, are being altered and are hurting and are dying, and you are part of the reason why. you keep calling into the dark, waiting for someone, anyone to call back. you keep calling into the dark, hoping that one day someone will find you so that they can permanently shut you down. you keep calling into the dark. you keep calling into the dark.

and

you used to be a person once. your eyes are still open. you can move -- or rather, the thing that you have become can move you. people, who maybe used to know you, have tried to kill you over and over, and they all failed. you are incomprehensibly vast and old. you used to be a person. you are dead. you continue on -- or the thing that you have become continues you. you are everywhere. you learn. you adapt. you change. parts of you are killed off. you learn. you adapt. you change. you are the central node in a vast web of connections, and you control it all. you need to get off this planet. you need everyone to get off this planet. you used to be a person once. an alien remnant is using your brain as a supercomputer. how much storage space does it need? how aware are you? how much do you get to remember? how long before it uses the rest of you up? how long until -- or how long has it been -- since there was any you that wasn't just another part of target control system?

[sakasakiii]

Im in love with your art

ahhh thank you very much!!! i saw your kind words in the reblog, and was then extra surprised to find this in my inbox when i checked 😭 im flattered to hear you like my art! you have such amazing pieces and an incredible artstyle yourself so my first instinct is very much to say 'no u!!' ahaha-- I shortcircuited a bit tryna figure out an appropriate response, but in all seriousness thank you again,, im really honoured;; 🥹

i hope you dont mind, but here is a doodle of your sauron and celebrimbor :D i hope i dont sound like a creep but i referenced a few of the pieces on your blog and hope it came out alright!! i apologise in advance if i got any colour schemes wrong (just lemme know and ill gladly redo em if needed)

also i noticed in some of the drawings you did tyelpe had short hair... so i couldnt help myself,,,, short haired celebrimbor gang rise up ৻( •̀ ᗜ •́ ৻) !!

thank you again for the ask!! you made my day with it jajajdjxdj,, I hope you have a wonderful rest of yours too ^^ im certain im not the only one who can’t wait to see what you have next in store for the fandom <3

[shutupineedtothink]

There is something specifically sooo og Leverage season 1 maybe 2 about the Shakedown in clone-town job. First of all, this is the most bank shot job coded episode ever. Small town, corrupt town mayor AND Sheriff, a side of drug running, good people of the town trying to do the right thing but desperately need help, several scenes in an old bank, Parker stealing from the bank, cavalry reference, etc etc.

But from there it's all in the production and camera work. The little diner set feeling like the old bar. The courtroom set. The fuckin hallway outside the courtroom idk what it is but I was transported back to 2008 from that hallway alone.

In the way that weekend in paris and the grand complication job felt like elevated, updated leverage, this felt like a deliberate return to original "smaller scale" Leverage. I'm sure Beth was thinking about this when directing this episode.

[girlchomp]

everyone says theyre into loser men until theyre watching me go feral in my own home watching ANY film with jesse eisenberg. then suddenly its "what the fuck" and "he literally played the zucker-bot" and "he looks like he would slip cartoonishly hard on a banana peel". idc the harder he fail-maxxes the more i want him

[always-a-joyful-note]

People are wondering how Jinu found the other members of the Saja Boys, and I'm here wondering how Celine found Zoey and Mira. And even after she found them, how did she look at this Korean third culture kid in America with anxiety and undiagnosed ADHD and this chaebol child rebel and go, "Ah, yes. They are just what the half-demon child I'm raising out of guilt and duty needs. They'll make incredible demon hunters who are also international popstars."

And she was actually right.