asillylittledude

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Have I ever shown you guys these very early Laudna sketches?

My instinct was very angular and sculptural with Laudna (code name Noir). Marisha moved more towards a broken doll kind of look, with wide eyes and a broken neck. Then again- I didn’t know about the broken neck! I figured it out when the fandom figured it out.

I also remember Marisha asking for a break in her skirt with crochet panes and I was legitimately worried that I wouldn’t be able to draw crochet lol. I concentrated hard at leveling up on fabrics and materials in my time with the Bells Hells. I think that effort paid off- it’s one of my favorite elements of character design, now.

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cute lil imodna commish🥲

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to pretend that horrible people cannot make good art is another way to conflate beauty and talent with integrity and morality. the works of monsters are best examined with knowledge of the author in mind but art is not inherently reflective. human beings are creative, and habitual liars- it'd be stupid to pretend art must always be a portrait of its creator

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i love u greg but he is not even vaccinated 

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lolololol fine, twist my arm why don't you, here are my Gabrielle and Imogen thoughts.

Ok, so, one thing I like to turn around in my mind and talk a lot about is how Gabrielle’s moral confidence was shaken after the Rift (for non-Xena-fan followers, this was a series of events that put Xena and Gabrielle at odds and culminated in Gabrielle’s demon-spawn daughter killing Xena’s son, and Gabrielle having to kill her daughter like, twice (neither one stuck)(lol)). She went from having a very strong concept of her own internal moral framework to being unsure and casting about for something she could adhere to in order to regain some sense of knowing The Right Thing To Do. She became even more vulnerable to culty people like Najara and Aiden and Eli, because she was desperately seeking an external scaffolding to hang her morals on because she no longer trusted herself. This lead directly into her misguided pacifism arc, and then into her decision to ultimately put aside that search for her own path in order to follow Xena’s full warrior path, which is really the great tragedy of her character.

Imogen does not reach that point through the same means, of course, but she likewise struggles quite a bit with trusting her own moral sense. She is constantly asking others whether people or actions are good or bad, and second guessing her own actions and worth and motivations. She desperately wants the answers to be easy because they never have been and she is exhausted. She thinks she might be tainted; how can she trust herself to make the right calls? And I think that makes her more likely to both want to believe in authority figures and to be particularly let down by them not being all they’re cracked up to be. Had the Vanguard found her before Laudna, it’s very possible they would have been able to recruit her against her better instincts. I don’t think she would be a true believer and would ultimately rebel against the human cost of the project but without the Hells and Laudna in particular she too would be very much vulnerable to cults.

In both cases, they do actually have strong beliefs and a core desire to help rather than hurt people. But they don’t trust themselves to do it correctly and that gets them in trouble. In both cases, too, the strength of their love is also seeded in this weakness. Gabrielle refused to believe that Hope could be intrinsically evil. Imogen wants so badly for her mother’s actions to come from a place of care. But that lack of self-trust means that when they lean too far into their ability to understand the motives of and have compassion for others, it becomes paralytic instead of balancing.

I hope that Imogen’s arc takes her on a different path than Gabrielle’s; as I said, I think Gabrielle’s ultimate decision to model herself on Xena more fully is a very tragic one. I don’t think she ever quite manages to regain full trust in herself. However, since Imogen’s arc started from a place of self doubt and since that lack of self-worth is the core problem in the Hells generally, I am hopeful that she will develop in the opposite way and ultimately gain a firmer trust in her own ability to do the right thing as best she can.

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I’ve only had Misty & Idyl for a day but if anything happens to them–

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mighty nein memes part 2

mighty nein memes | vox machina memes

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bells hells chaos, volume 5: witchy bitch edition

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realistically, me if i existed in the dungeons and dragons universe

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The sixth and the ninth

Currently reading Harrow the ninth and I’m hooked! Be careful with spoilers in the tags please🧎

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my agonised facial expressions and nauseated pallor are prompting a lot of concerned questions answered by my "I ❤️ MEDIA THAT CAUSES ME PHYSICAL PAIN" tshirt

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also

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Jackie Sabbagh, “Having a Great Time Being Transgender in America Lately”

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I have no grander ambitions in life I simply want to live with people I love, play videod Game, and sink my teeth into all the kinds of eatery on this earth

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i wish you could download mods for movies. i want to watch the thing (1982) but with kurt russel in a baby slut t shirt and camo capris