#‘I say THATS EXACTLY WHAT I NEEDED’

[artificialcaretaker]

Sabal scams Ajay out of his family and steals his dad so that he can finally call himself “Son of Mohan” like he’s dreamed of for years.mp3

[theoldkyokodied]

Uploading all my Tomgreg art at once from the past few week before season 4 hits, who knows in what kind of mental state i'm gonna be once it does :')

[sleepboysummer]

need more insane girl characters in musicals im talking full terrifying horror murderer. i am SICK of 'insane girls' in media just being kind of unhinged. i want to see girls screaming and killing people and covered in blood. i mean guys get jd and sweeney and javert and basically all of assassins and jekyll and hyde and the dentist and judge frollo and etc...

carrie from carrie

margaret from carrie

mrs lovett from sweeney todd

cheryl from evil dead the musical

the narrator from murder ballad (only at the end though)

the leading player from pippin? (gender neutral but played by a girl in the revival. +leading player only kinda fits what im going for but. ive seen it done really well where the insane part is set up and hinted to early on)

but ik there are definitely more... please give me more.......

[luck-of-the-drawings]

OH ARTHUR BENNETT.. such a gorgeous and intriguing character. terribly burdened by a GRUESOME set of crimes, his light suffocated by a HEAVY century of GUILT. so tragic, so dark and broody, and yet PAINFULLY awkward in any social setting ever

[moeblob]

You know, I'm sorry for another story time but my life has been very stressed lately and today I got a huge boost. SO.

As some of you may know, I moved states at the end of July and have been here since August 1st basically. Social anxiety is a struggle but I'm making it. And there's this easy to reach by walking convenience store and almost every time I walk there I walk past a gem store. And I think to myself almost every single time "I love the store has a bouncer". I didn't say anything to him at first! But one day I got brave and proceeded to make an absolute FOOL of myself as I am on my way back from buying some sodas and ask him "are you like the store bouncer?"

The man looks at me and smiles and gives a little chuckle and says pretty much yeah? And then I say more awkward things and then promptly leave feeling very embarrassed. I purposefully AVOID that lil corner for a couple days and then finally feel brave enough to walk by cause it's ... like. Literally right by my destination. Man isn't even outside that day and I think phew! I can't be creepy if I can't talk to him!

BUT THEN I SEE THAT HE IS DIRECTLY INSIDE CHATTING TO A WORKER. And he sees me. And smiles and stops whatever conversation he's having and exits the store to say hi. (I am definitely beaming, like a normal person, because I apparently am NOT creepy enough to this man more than a foot taller than me who could easily kick my ass if he wanted) So we just chat. For maybe ten minutes? It's very nice! We have a Very Normal Conversation! I feel better about the first interaction because I had a second interaction.

So now............ today. I am once again wandering around and on my way to lunch when I pass the gem store and I'm like "hello again!" to the gem store bouncer. We begin to chat again and he mentions a pendant they recently appraised that he likes and I, thinking this entire time that the store was ONLY appointment only and I would never be allowed inside, am casually mentioning "yeah, I was born in June and we have three birthstones and like.... none of them are dark enough for me. I mean there's pearl which I'm not a fan of and then moonstone and another." And so he's saying they have a sheet inside to show birthstones so we walk in together to find out the mysterious third stone.

And the sheet only shows pearls. And I'm like "this is a crime against June babies" and then I somehow start talking to one of the female workers and I'm saying "yeah I just kinda like walking by here and seeing the bouncer" and she looks at him and is like "oh I like that." and I admit I have no other idea what to refer to him as (I don't know his name at this point anyway) and she's like "most often security guard."

Ah. Yes. Like a normal person would think. Security. Yes. Not "gem store bouncer". She then leaves to grab a coffee from across the street and I leave with the bouncer and somehow we get into talking about wearing mostly black and how he's pretty goth and then I mentioned a sweatshirt my aunt sent me once saying "I'm only wearing black until they come out with something darker" and he grins and says it's a life motto. Then the woman returns with her coffee and he tells me to tell her what I said, so I repeat it and she looks me dead in the eye and says "that was made for me. Also I love that you called him a bouncer it's hilarious".

I now observe that he (all black suit black shirt black tie) and her (black sweater with black/white striped pants n black shoes) are indeed somehow the gem store goth club. And then she heads back in and he says he's sorry they don't have any cookies to offer me, they normally have cookies in the back for employees, and I'm like "ah no it's fine thank you".

And then I left feeling like I was somehow allowed to join the Cool Goth Club at the gem store.

Anyway, sup, my new favorite person is the goth bouncer at the gem store and he makes me smile so much when I see him.

[puppyeared]

Its really freeing when “gender is just a construct” really sinks in and you dont see yourself identifying with any pre-existing gender that the answer is “wait I can just make my own gender lol.” So. Hello everyone. Im pupgender now

[kineticallyanywhere]

Trying to piece together the miscommunication between Link and Normal where they both think the other doesn't know what they want and I think it's that the level of results they're each looking for is different. Link wants to know what to do from moment to moment and every decision in each moment is backed by "which option gets fewer people hurt or killed." Whereas Normal isn't looking for a moment-to-moment goal, he's looking for a long term goal of helping the Doodler, and so what that looks like from moment to moment isn't always going to look the same.

So like, the moment with the pick. To Link, Normal is the one who doesn't know what to do because Normal doesn't know what to do in that moment to resolve the anchor, while Link takes a quick action. But from Normal's point of view it looks like Link has no idea what he's doing because his actions had no thought towards the ongoing Doodler problem.

[rhiannons-bird]

I’ve said this before but I keep thinking about it every time someone mentions the TWP characters. We somehow got into a situation, again, with 3 traumatised sad boy teenagers who are going to be absolute drama queens and have really interesting relationships. While Dru & Thais are our only source for girl on girl content and that kinda saddens me, and while I’m looking forward to TWP it sort of dampens my excitement and makes me a little nervous.

[septembermonologues]

there's been a lot of back and forth handwringing about the morals of team issylra with a kind of weight that would make you think they're real people in a real world. and, imo, at the end of the day they are fictional characters in a dnd show and laudna and orym both deserve to snap. laudna has had 30+ years of being exhausted and hurt and orym has had 6 before the solstice shit even started. of course there are dark character arcs that could happen but right now they don't have evil intentions, they're just hurt and have been made moving parts in a conflict that even the gods are scared of. you don't have to agree to understand and have sympathy. we can let loose a little.

[carnation-damnation]

I have sooo many thoughts about Rouge. Of all the main Sonic cast we know the least about her. She's a stealthy spy. She worked for the president despite being a thief and probably a double agent in that case?? She's extremely cunning. She's capable of detecting the emeralds despite not having that innate connection with them like Knuckles can.

In her theme there's a persistent sense that she doesn't like to be helped or controlled, possibly. She's searching for something she can call her own and that can only be hers. Nobody else can take it from her.

There's this sense in sa2 that she doesn't trust who she's working with, exactly. She doesn't show it by being cold like Shadow would, for instance, but she puts on this air of professionalism despite sometimes not thinking ahead (Giving herself 5 minutes to find 3 chaos emeralds despite it originally being fifteen and getting her locked in a vault as a result.) And this shows in her empathy and compassion. She doesn't show it as openly as somebody like Amy but she clearly cares and finds herself affected by the relationships she's gained since her introduction. She's probably told herself that she doesn't need anybody, that she can do everything by herself, she doesn't need to lean on anybody for help but she forms Team Dark herself.

[birdmenmanga]

@raventhekittycat

hi okay so I've been mulling this one over for the past day or two and I think I have the answer. not to be using hamburger to explain anything to an american but you're my detco mutual so I'm going to try and explain it in detco terms

There's a post going around recently about how if you've read detco and only detco, the first time hakuba shows up you're going to be totally flummoxed, because damn this guy is clearly important, he gets to be even cooler than Shinichi, he's got a half-page shot of him (in such a panel-dense series such as Detective Conan, no less!!) and he's got a fucking hawk. he's CLEARLY important. everything about the narrative is indicating that you need to PAY ATTENTION to hakuba and that he's the coolest guy and he's important!!!! and then he dies in the case lol (not for real. but still.)!! and you're like huh??? what was that. why did aoyama do that.

But with the context of magic kaito this totally makes sense. He's a beloved character that people have been waiting decades to see again. Of course Aoyama is going to hype him up!! It's his big moment after years of being locked in the backrooms!!!

Anyways reading birdmen for me was kind of like that. The author's previous series, Kekkaishi, was pretty one-dimensional at the beginning, and even after the main plot started picking up at around volume 6, it still felt quite understandable. I knew what she was trying to get at, and the spectacular job she did with the anthropocene and climate change metaphor towards the end of that series really made me interested in the rest of her works. That and the way she writes familial relationships is absolutely DEVASTATING. (I mean this with the highest of praise)

But when I read BIRDMEN for the first time, I was probably in... middle school, maybe? And I read it, sure, but I didn't get it. I could see what was literally happening on the page but the narrative choices were absolutely baffling at times. Why skip over the entire part of the plot where they figure out who the birdman that saved them was? She blatantly doesn't care about that. What does she care about then?? I knew I didn't get it, I knew there were parts of it that were important and I couldn't figure out why and THAT'S how it dug its pretty little claws into me. Even after I finished catching up it nagged at me a little bit, not often at all, but enough that every once in a while I go, huh, right, that was a thing, let me go read it again.

For the record this type of story haunting has happened to me twice. First time was the Heart of Thomas, second time was BIRDMEN. I think the thing is that these are both stories which are not what other people say they are and I think I came into both of these stories with a misconception, trying to look too hard for things that weren't important and therefore missing the things that were.

Because sure, BIRDMEN is about mental illness. Yeah, it's about an evil scientific organization growing mutants in a lab. Yeah, it's about what it means to leave your humanity behind. That's all technically correct, on a surface level, and the fandom at large likely agrees with these takes for the most part, but in my opinion none of that really delves into what the thematic messaging of the story is about.

There are cryptic conversations about authority and human extinction and peculiar outfit and ability choices. You can tell these choices weren't made to serve the purpose of "writing exciting shonen manga" because that was what she did for the most part in Kekkaishi and you can tell she wasn't putting her whole pussy into doing that here. So what was she doing? What's like. All of this. Waves my hands at this.

The short answer is that it's really about the interplay between capitalism (represented by humanity) and communism (represented by birdmen), and explores the role institutional white supremacy (EDEN) plays in enforcing capitalism. It is ALSO about queer liberation and the importance of community, but hey, that double-stacks conveniently with the communism metaphor.

But also take this opinion of mine with a grain of salt. As far as I know I'm the only one who really truly deeply believes that it is not only AN interpretation of the work, but one that was fully intended by the author.

So basically, I like it, because I think it says something true and beautiful that I also believe in, even if I didn't have the words for it the first time I read it. But I don't really think that's what people really look for in a media recommendation.

Do I like it? Yes, I love it. Will I recommend it to others? Yeah, sure. But do I think it's deeply flawed? Yeah, absolutely. It's flawed in the same ways as The Witch from Mercury— a rushed ending, too many threads that were opened and never tied together. The pacing and characterization is perfect in the beginning, and too rushed at the end. There are prerequisites you basically HAVE to read in order to understand the story (tempest for G-Witch and the communist manifesto for birdmen). I think a truly good story wouldn't have any of these things so if people don't like it I never blame them.

It's my personal experiences that make birdmen so profound to me. If you are not queer I just don't think Eishi coming out as a birdman to his mom will hit the same, just as an example. Sorry that I wasn't the kid you wanted me to be. I know you love me and you just want the best for me and that's why you're so controlling, because you think I can be saved by conforming to societal expectations. But I can't live like that. I can't be like that. And that's why I must go. etc.

Aesthetically I do love birdmen a lot. If I had to describe it in a few words it would probably be "chilling", "beautiful", and "powerful", which nicely coincides with the type of things I personally like to draw. It's also silly to a small degree but it's so serious and I know Tanabe can be way way way funnier (read kekkaishi for this. kekkaishi and hanazakari no kimitachi he were foundational to my sense of sequential art humor) so that's not really the standout trait of this series.

I can't let it go because I'm chewing this series like a bone. And it's taking me years but I am getting that sweet sweet marrow. By god. We are on year 3 of this shit and I am GOING to understand this series. and I'm going to make 3 video essays about it

[bylertruther]

the crazy thing abt will and mike is that we mostly learn will is gay because other people tell us he is, but we learn that mike is gay (despite him telling us he's not, begging us to pls see tht he's not gay) because literally everything that he does is so fucking gay. because in him trying to not be gay he is just being so unbelievably extra fucking gay without realizing. like. el is literally his red herring idc i'll say it stone me if u must but the truth must be said !!!!

[feymarche]

gotta get all my LINCOLN thoughts DOWN while im relistening to this godforsaken podcast. here's just some stupid observations that i wrote a whole thesis about for no reason

here's two things we know:

- lincoln was raised to always be honest about his feelings

-- despite this, we consistently see lincoln distracting himself whenever big, hard feelings come up

after the grant sauce scene outside the classroom in episode 7, lincoln doesn't take the time to process anything that his father has said to him. he asks normal if HES doing okay after the conversation with Sparrow, and then immediately changes the subject and tells everyone that they should ditch school and go to Sonics so that he wouldn't have to think about it.

and hey, that's all fair; that was some heavy shit to lay on a teenager, and he'd need a lot of time to process it, but we see Linc consistently choosing not to process it.

later, during the grant arc on earth, linc chooses to drive specifically because it's easier not to think when he's driving. when he leaves a voicemail to Marco telling him that he might never talk to him again, a really hard conversation for linc to have, linc ends the phonecall saying, 'no, this was a bad idea, everything's fine-- prank!'

(and it's not fair to say that linc telling scary that they should look for her stepdad first is also evidence that linc does this when part of it was a structural thing to mimic season 1's anchor order, but it IS consistent with linc avoiding hard emotions)

and all of this isn't even inconsistent with him being raised to always be honest! linc never had to deal with big, hard emotions like this, he's only ever been super sheltered and homeschooled and safe. if linc ever felt lonely or bad, his dads would find a way to accommodate him through some form of enrichment, and if the enrichment didn't help, matts made it clear that lincoln's favorite time of the day is when he can just be alone in his room in the space under his bed where it's calm and peaceful and he doesn't have to think about anything. linc is honest about his feelings up until they become so complicated or painful that he doesn't know how to be honest about them. linc is extremely blunt up until he doesn't know how to think about his feelings without getting hurt

grant talks about how he worries linc's relationship with soccer is an emotional distraction. he worries that linc is using soccer the way grant used violence to shut down his thoughts. and sure, linc genuinely loves soccer, it's a harmless interest to have (especially when you don't have the opportunity to have many other hobbies), but Grant recognizes that linc is using it as an emotional crutch-- or at the very least worries that that's what he's doing.

and thats the one thing that grant cant really explain to linc as a parent! if grant stops him from playing soccer JUST because he's worried, he'd have to explain WHY he's worried, and grant cant really do that. he can't talk about how much he likes killing people around his son if he isnt sauced.

and with the main big, scary emotion that lincoln faced in his backstory being mr. kicks, i'd bet lincoln dealt with that feeling by doing a lot of the same. distracting himself with soccer or zoning out entirely. i'd bet grant watched linc avoid any and all discussion about mr. kicks and instead focus on getting better at soccer. there's no way to prove that, but it's consistent with matt's character choices.

so here linc is, going through puberty, spiraling into apathy and avoidance and being like WHATEVER and WHO CARES to everything. this most recent episode was the biggest change in his character yet; he gave up soccer, said it was a waste of time, and broke that goddamn pick.

he doesn't really NEED soccer anymore now that he's learned that he doesn't need an excuse to be dismissive or avoidant anymore; he can just do it. he can just say whatever now. he can just brush people off. he can be abrasive and distant, just like scary.

and it's sad because man, he did really love soccer, even when he was using it for the wrong reasons. he really did love his family and friends. he had the strongest values and the strongest moral compass and he really, really believed in being a good person. but now he's having to deal with big, scary emotions for the first time, and he has no way to know how to deal with them, even with all the therapy his dads gave him. agughghhghghg lincoln li wilson

[walmart-miku]

I think way too much about the weight that the title angel of death holds. Like Yosano spends about a year keeping these men away from death which makes the name angel of death kind of odd because it implies that she is the one leading them to their death. But its also super fitting because she is the one "causing" them to "die"/come close to dying repeatedly by preventing their deaths. Does that make sense?

Also while none of the men died in the war (except for tachihara's older brother who committed suicide) yosano killed plenty of them by driving them mad from the ptsd of getting blown to bits and then being put back together with absolutely nothing to prove that they were hurt in the first place. So while not physically dead, most of these men will probably never really live life again.

And the word angel is so terribly cruel for this title because that's what they used to call her when the soldiers still loved yosano and thought of her presence as a blessing and now it's used as a reminder of what she couldn't give them. Also they would call her a mistress of healing when they still loved her compared to angel of death. Complete opposites.

And angel of death is another way of saying the grim reaper

[juni-ravenhall]

if ur loudly anti ai bc u support artists, but then u think artists should do commissions for less than $100 a piece.... which is including hourly wage, the cost of their skill level (years of training), the tools (tablet etc if not trad materials), and even giving you rights to use the art..... then do you actually support artists right to earn a living wage or not?

[saintadeline]

Bloodborne is seriously the most beautiful game of all time i think about this every single time i replay it but genuinely. Just exploring yharnam and staring in awe at how gorgeous everything is, its never about graphics, bloodborne has a noticeable stylization i think in a way even stronger than other fromsoft games, and the use of lighting and color palettes is just so good it makes me want to Be there. The game is already so stunning as it is ingame but i think having access to the map viewer on my own to the side made me appreciate it even more i love seeing the way everything is constructed and put together with just the flat textures before applying any engines and even as flat surfaces you can just feel the cohesion in the backgrounds, even textureless stripped of everything that makes it "beautiful" it still feels so unique and already gets the vibe across and that explains how the game feels the way it does visually, which is something i think a lot of current gen "high fidelity" games struggle with. Hard to explain what I mean but I feel it. Also i love the slight like chromatic aberration effect bb has on the edges of the screen it adds such a nice touch to the atmosphere honestly. Sighs dreamily