#( you're actually such a sweetie )

[heybiji]

revisiting an ancient OC. his name's orion.

[kindahoping4forever]

LukeHemmings: I personally love the yellow but I used purple conditioner after this, okay 🙄

[casualavocados]

for zero dollars i am going to talk about the boys’ individual singing talents now because im stuck on their performances at prom night ok here we go

to start, let me clarify by saying that i myself am a singer. i come from a family (multiple generations) of singers and musicians. my mom taught voice, violin, piano, and guitar in my home growing up. it’s just ingrained in my dna, ok, but this aint about me. just know that I know what im talking about as i get into this

im really only gonna touch on the four main singers (fourth, gem, ford, and satang) but all of them have their own unique qualities and im super impressed by their live performances. singing live is HARD. singing while dancing??? HARDER. and they held up for four hours, two nights in a row. i don’t. i cant - WOW ok

so of the main four, satang, ford, and fourth lean tenor, and gemini has a bass voice (more later). let me start with satang.

THIS BOY SINGS. RIGHT. IN. HIS CRACKING RANGE. HALF THE TIME. listen, okay, there is a difference between singing in full voice and switching to falsetto sometimes than singing in your cracking range. satang has to switch between full voice and falsetto almost every other note. that is HARD. it takes serious work and practice, and slip-ups are near impossible to avoid. he also has a soft voice, and in his case, when in this cracking range he does his best when he sings low and quiet, and is more likely to crack or slide the louder he gets (fourth is exactly the opposite of this and it makes me nuts in a good way. more later). satang also has very good vibrato, and the way he uses it helps him keep control of his voice and can even disguise the cracks and slides he does have. all this being said, you have to seriously appreciate the work he has done to sing so well at the concert. please watch his part in “healing” and go insane with me. when satang is in his full voice range he does his best singing loud, but this is what i wanted to focus on bc i am so proud of him because of how tough it is. 

ford also has a soft voice, but his control comes when he sings loudly. lower pitches are more difficult for him because he has to sing softer in order to hit them, and sometimes, when singing live, that means he can get too quiet to hear. but when he’s in his range and singing full voice? ohhhh my god he kills it. he rarely misses a note. just watch his performance of “come closer”, that’s all you need to know. his vibrato isn’t as good as satang’s but he has a good ear and that makes him so fucking good at harmonizing!! ford also has a very strong and clear tone when singing in falsetto (this line in “stand” showcases it perfectly) - whereas gemini’s falsetto is softer (but just as strong). 

GEMINI. first of all, this guy has so much control over his voice it actually pisses me off. i hate him (i LOVE him and im DELIGHTED by the way this live show was able to give his voice the spotlight it deserves). okay so earlier i said gemini has a bass voice, and that’s true - while talking. he has a stellar tenor singing voice, and his voice is very soft, but very clear and strong on those lower notes (thank you “you’re blushing”). and because he has that low range, his falsetto actually becomes better, bc it means when he sings high notes, he is far far away from his cracking range. it's barely noticeable when he switches between full voice and falsetto. his vibrato aint the best live when it’s unpracticed, but he rarely slides (unless it’s on purpose). he can blend with anyone, he’s very good at harmonizing, and damn he just has a sweet sweet falsetto (featured here and in. basically every song he sings. note that gem sings "hook" mostly in falsetto and fourth does it in his full voice, alongside each other; linked below)

FOURTH. let me start by saying i am the most impressed by his live performance. i am now obsessed with his voice in a lot more ways than i was before. so i mentioned earlier that he’s the opposite of satang, in the sense that he is more likely to crack, slide, or miss hitting a pitch when he’s singing quietly. but he’s also the opposite to all three of them, because where satang, ford, and gemini all have soft voices, fourth’s voice has a very clear tone right off the bat. this makes his approach to singing vastly different from the others. his falsetto is good, but when fourth sings loud? HE DOES NOT MISS A SINGLE NOTE. this boy can BELT it out in his full voice, and that includes both high and low notes. oh my god it is insane. LISTEN. TO. THESE. RIGHT. NOW. OK? please drink some water boy ilysm. 

the fact that fourth spent those four hours, two nights in a row, singing in mainly his full voice, and absolutely kill. ing. it. the whole time is THE most impressive thing to me. do you know how much energy it takes to sing in your full voice for a long time? can you imagine how much MORE energy it must take to do that WHILE DANCING? do you know how much control over his breaths he has to have for that??!?!?! AND TO STILL SOUND THAT STRONG AT THE END OF THE SECOND NIGHT. i dont care. he’s everything to me.

honestly they all are. this is getting long so im gonna wrap it up but i have never enjoyed a live performance more in my life. these boys are so talented it's insane and gmmtv is lucky to have them.

[tei-to-tei]

i thought it was just me, but no they had to put her down again, they shot her right in the head how many times am i gonna have to offer my nonexistent firstborn child today

[bnnywngs]

thinking about this again and thinking about wei wuxian in gusu while his grandpa is finally having some (stress) free days

wei wuxian is very charismatic, friendly and his smile is bright like the sun, so naturally the classes turn into a kind of a otome game for him, but wei wuxian for all his genius, is very dumb when we talk about someone having a crush on him so he doesn't realize this

wen ruohan when he found this out from one of the disciples who went to gusu with his sweet, innocent grandson, almost had a qi deviation (for the amusement of wen xu) and wanted to kill them all, but his son reasoned with him, so he decided to give a notice together with the invitations to the discussion conference

the archery competition would also be a competition for wei wuxian's hand

(cue to lan wangji with fire in his eyes)

[felixcosm]

I love Aubrey Wood, she's so cool

[addhellandcurse]

terms of endearment include old serpent

[utilitycaster]

Something that’s struck me lately is how the fanbase for Marisha specifically seems to have shrunk dramatically as of late, and so I wanted to talk through it. Noting this up front but: I’m making this rebloggable to start, but will not hesitate to lock it down if people can’t behave. It's an observation, not an accusation per se and definitely not any judgment on Marisha herself; in fact, I think it really sucks for her that this is what's happened.

I can expand on any of this but in the briefest of terms: the intense misogyny in the fandom in Campaign 1 and particular hatred towards Keyleth, culminating in death threats, led, among other things, to a fanbase that was extremely protective. However, by the time I joined the fandom with Campaign 2, the misogyny, while never gone, had significantly reduced (and in general the dudebro portion of the fanbase, while again never fully gone, has been on a decline as the cast became more open about their politics and the world of Exandria became more diverse.) This protectiveness became extreme - completely reasonable in-game conflict between Beau and other characters were perceived as acts of hostility, neutral remarks about Beau in comparison to other characters were interpreted as criticism, and so on. A party line solidified as time went on, of Marisha's characters being tough leaders and hard to kill.

Throughout all of this, something that was true is that Marisha had a fanbase that followed her - obviously to the various cast one shots, but also to the G&S content during Campaign 1 (Dread, Signal Boost, etc) and scattered other things (GM-ing for the Descent Into Avernus D&D live). Her role as creative director was rightfully discussed and lauded.

Things started to shift first with the return from hiatus, and then, not quite a year later, the end of Campaign 2. People who had shipped Beau with Jester quit either when the relationships of C2 began to solidify, or following the finale. This did a pretty significant number on her fanbase, but there were a decent number of people still there; largely people who were more invested in "tough leaders, hard to kill" than her character necessarily being shipped with Laura's characters.

Enter Laudna: zero interest in leadership; extremely killable. Now, people hung on for a while; they had her back during the gnarlrock fight. But as the Bassuras arc wore on and the clear central woman of the campaign was Imogen, they grew quieter, and by the time Laudna died (extremely killable), she was little more than ship fodder. Two things ten happened: The original crowd began to fade away, but a fairly significant influx of new people came in, intrigued by the potential for a relationship...and if she'd been little more than ship fodder to start, she was, more than ever, half of a whole now.

The defensiveness about Marisha's characters shifted now to Laura's character, and while Laudna was vocally beloved, she wasn't defended in the same way. It's started up again, slightly, but notably only after she entered a relationship, and compared to C2? It's incredibly lazy and sluggish, often appearing days or weeks after the criticism, and the appeals to stop all critical analysis based on misogynist hate, never a valid argument to begin with (and rarely accompanied by one either), are even weaker 6+ years down the line.

But the most notable thing I've noticed is that people don't follow Marisha to things outside the main campaign anymore. I noticed it first with Candela Chapter 2, and then this week with the Mortal Kombat one-shot. It used to be that if Marisha GM-ed something, particularly in a cool wig and a crop top, her fans showed up in force. Even with Calamity, while the numbers weren't what they once were, there was something, but Aunt Beatrix isn't young and hot and shippable and so there's no one watching for her.

I've seen virtually no conversation other than my posts about the Candela SDCC panel, which very much showcases her creative direction; while I get that Midst is a whole other thing to get into and podcasts aren't everyone's thing, it is very much her and Sam's involvement, and her discussion during that panel was great, and there's nothing. It feels both ironic and deeply sad that someone who was dismissed both as no more than the DM's girlfriend out of game and Vax's annoying love interest in it, and who's talked about the pressure towards youth and beauty as likely informing her D&D characters, is reduced to "can we ship it"; it makes a lot of sense there's little discussion of that creative direction, because, well, you cannot ship it.

Because the hard "no criticism allowed stance" present specifically within Marisha's fanbase at least as early as the beginning of Campaign 2, it meant that a single unpopular choice from her has cost her large swathes of her fans. And for what it's worth, I don't think she necessarily knows, or cares, but it does make me wonder: if Laudna hadn't said yes to Imogen...would there be anyone left watching who would name her as their favorite cast member?

[shikai-the-storyteller]

Love, understanding, and tenderness

Roier wasn't sure how long he'd been sitting in the pool, letting water wash over him until his limbs were numb from the cold. There were a lot of things Roier wasn't sure about lately. The only certainty was the fact that Bobby was dead, and there was no way to bring him back. — Already struggling in the wake of Bobby's death, Roier suffers the consequences of not taking proper care of himself. Help comes from an unexpected source.

At long last, here's the Cucurucho & Roier fic I promised! If you've enjoyed my past posts talking about Cucurucho and Roier's relationships, you'll enjoy this story. In this fic, I delve into Roier's grieving process after Bobby's death, and how that experience influenced his interactions / perspective of Cucurucho. (I also touch upon his relationship with Cellbit and his partnership with Jaiden).

[ Read it here on Ao3 ]

A special thank you to n_ideah_flan, who was my illustrator for this story! (Full illustration is in the story). They're a lovely person to work with, and they do great art. Go show them some love!

[julibernardo]

Gotta say that I love Macron's character development lately.

[gus-dix]

one of my friend is really into arthurian legends so we watch a lot of those type movies together and so far ‘the kid who would be king’ is the best of the lot! also has the funniest merlin

do not erase the caption, use or rePOST my art (reblog ok)

[eggmeralda]

is it weird to go through the tags of people you completely disagree with. out of curiosity

[torchickentacos]

Re: prev post- WHERE ARE ALL 282 OF YOU GUYS? GENUINELY I swear yall are welcome in the pokemon tags, please!

[tev-the-random]

I love them both

[ancientdreamkdj]

I'm trying to watch dead boy detectives but I get so much second hand embarrasment from the characters actions, it makes me manifest physical symptoms of anxiety

[skrunksthatwunk]

coming to the realization that the list of characters i'm unfortunately very very very enthralled by who:

are awful horrible terrible people but really wonderfully written dad/dad-flavored villains

canonically know what piss tastes like for reasons very blatantly kept from the audience

who i don't hate/dislike because of point 2 (piss drinker rights) but defo hate for point 1

has expanded to two. something something 2 nickels not a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice. banking on a third one coming my way in 2024 fingers crossed but we'll see. this post is about sagawa tsukasa and clay puppington by the way.