#< is trying to be so brave about it

[contagious-addiction]

Shout out to anxiety making me dislike myself today weeeeeee

[inkskinned]

this is just my opinion but i think any good media needs obsession behind it. it needs passion, the kind of passion that's no longer "gentle scented candle" and is now "oh shit the house caught on fire". it needs a creator that's biting the floorboards and gnawing the story off their skin. creators are supposed to be wild animals. they are supposed to want to tell a story with the ferocity of eating a good stone fruit while standing over the sink. the same protective, strange instinct as being 7 and making mud potions in pink teacups: you gotta get weird with it.

good media needs unhinged, googling-at-midnight kind of energy. it needs "what kind of seams are invented on this planet" energy and "im just gonna trust the audience to roll with me about this" energy. it needs one person (at least) screaming into the void with so much drive and energy that it forces the story to be real.

sometimes people are baffled when fanfic has some stunning jaw-dropping tattoo-it-on-you lines. and i'm like - well, i don't go here, but that makes sense to me. of fucking course people who have this amount of passion are going to create something good. they moved from a place of genuine love and enjoyment.

so yeah, duh! saturday cartoons have banger lines. random street art is sometimes the most precious heart-wrenching shit you've ever seen. someone singing on tiktok ends up creating your next favorite song. youtubers are giving us 5 hours of carefully researched content. all of this is the impossible equation to latestage capitalism. like, you can't force something to be good. AI cannot make it good. no amount of focus-group testing or market research. what makes a story worth listening to is that someone cares so much about telling it - through dance, art, music, whatever it takes - that they are just a little unhinged about it.

one time my friend told me he stayed up all night researching how many ways there are to peel an orange. he wrote me a poem that made me cry on public transportation. the love came through it like pith, you know? the words all came apart in my hands. it tasted like breakfast.

[christadeguchi]

you think YOU had a bad day at work?

bonus: sid shrieking "no!!!! NO!!!!!" loud enough to be heard in the stands and on camera

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Bare skin, bare feelings.

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[salthien]

[clonking isafrin together like dolls for my enrichment]

[norringtondeservestheworld]

Obsessed with Simon sacrificing his life every chance he gets to save Markus but when it's Markus risking his life to save him Simon tells him every fucking time he shouldn't have done that

[revvethasmythh]

Reminded again, as I periodically am, that there's a fair number of people in the fandom that think of Nott the Brave and Veth Brenatto as two different characters, and not fundamentally the same woman. In the absolute literal sense, this is false: Nott the Brave, returned to the body of her choice and using her real name once again, is absolutely precisely the same person she was before Caleb cast Transmogrification on her. This is, incidentally, one of her main sources of angst towards the end of the campaign! A part of Nott must have both feared (and, in some ways, hoped) that when she was changed back into a halfling, she would also be a different person. That the person she became traveling with the Nein would be an easy identity to shed, which she may have hoped for because it would be easier to fit herself back into her home life with Yeza and Luc--and because it would be easier to say goodbye to the Nein if that were the case. And she feared it because she liked this person she became, no matter how transgressive society would label her for it. And she loved the Nein and didn't want those feelings to be altered.

But she didn't change. Veth Brenatto is Nott the Brave and Nott the Brave is Veth Brenatto. This was always the point. That's why it's an anagram. It's just that when she's Veth Brenatto again, she is much more focused on the why of what she's doing. Why am I still with the Nein? Why am I still adventuring? Why do I have this reticence to return home to my family? Why don't I long for that quiet, domestic life the way I once did? Her emotional journey becomes intensely personal, sometimes subtly/quietly told, and wholly about what kind of future she wants for herself and how her choice could affect those around her. Her two families become anchor points pulling her in different directions and she has to deal with that. Which is a different story than what she was telling when she was still Nott the Brave. Nott's story was much simpler--I am a goblin and I hate it and I would like to be a halfling again. I would like to be able to be with my family again. It's straightforward and it's achieved! But that's not where it ends, because she still needs to figure out a real, functional future for herself once her goal has been achieved.

All this to say, I think when people say they prefer Nott over Veth, it's important to remember that you are reacting to a certain story arc for the character, not an entirely different character. It may also pay to ask yourselves why you think they're so different. Was "Nott" funnier than "Veth" to you? Does her ability to serve as comic relief fundamentally change whether you like her or not? Did you appreciate "Nott's" themes more than "Veth's"? Or did you even notice the themes being explored in Veth's later game at all?

[decktech-vis]

homesick

remember who you're fighting for

BONUS: paula dont need no phone

[jellyfishfem]

grooming is when *checks notes* we talk about the dangers of the sex industry

[latenightsundayblues]

I want to see little Billy with Braces.

Because I have a feeling he had braces

One lil billy comin up

That tooth was NOT missing last time they saw each other

Also a slightly-bigger billy as a treat

[helimir]

Some top tier Caduceus quotes I've been thinking about in these Downfall times. Something about how so much of Ludinus' position seems to rest on revenge. Showing Bells Hells the squabbling of the gods as they debate what to do about Aeor, and asking 'You can just watch bad people get away with it?'

It doesn't matter if the gods were wrong for their choices. Killing them won't bring back Aeor and it won't stop the violence that Ludinus and the Ruby Vanguard have visited on the world. I just don't see what it's for.

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

ouagh Wallee.... so so happy he's a seventies boy. peak fashion

bonus:

[oscargender]

Heartbreaking: “problematic” danmei everyone told you to avoid is actually pretty decent and has mildly interesting things to say about poverty and class

[cakeyouareoh]

FRINGE

4.22 - “Brave New World: Part 2”

[dykephan]

if phil said the december i mean october thing because he had a migraine and forgot his line i'm going to ceremonially kill myself as penance for talking about it so much. i'm so sick at the thought of him accidentally revealing personal information before he was ready. MANY SUCH CASES :(

[too-many-rooks]

In a world of heavy footprints, be untraceable. Wage wars! Get rich! Die handsome!

- The Mountain Goats