#(i consider this very ironic actually)

[rowynri]

IZUTSUMI!!! :DD

[itsamenickname]

Cute Bowuigi headcanon idea where Luigi is a heavy sleeper but Bowser, despite what everyone believes, is actually a super light sleeper.

[longagoitwastuesday]

I am liking Jujutsu Kaisen, way more than I imagined I would, but I foresee it will let me down and it's keeping me from enjoying this as much as I could haha

I think the characters and dynamics are well set, and I think many of them have an incredibly good and deep potential, but I would be willing to bet they'll not get a proper development, enough for them to really hit. A well assembled set of gears is not enough to make the movement go, you have to wind the clockwork.

I think Gojo and Megumi have a fascinating and very complex dynamic, but I doubt it will be given the time and care that imo it needs to actually work. And it is going well enough for now! One could see the intimacy between them was deeper than the one Gojo had with, say, Yuji and Nobara ever since the very first few episodes despite the fact Fushiguro too was a first year. But the pieces forming what they have are extremely complex, and it just wouldn't be realistic if it doesn't show, even if in a not showing way, or if it doesn't have consequences or implications.

It's one of those dynamics that shape one's life, the way one regards the world, the way one establishes or not relationships with other people. It's one of those dynamics that could be full of fondness, gratitude, resentment, admiration, trust, and that imply intimacy, the good kind or the bad, even if in just the knowledge of someone who's been a constant through your life. It could, and would, imply a myriad of feelings, and probably in such a mix it could imply contradictory feelings too. Even the nothingness would weight, even the nothingness would be significant and meaningful.

Gojo took Megumi and his sister under his wing, the son of a man who murdered him, because of both selfish and selfless reasons. Megumi looks like Toji. What does Gojo feel about this? How does Gojo deal with this? How does Gojo go about taking care of Megumi? Would he walk him to school? Make him breakfast? Celebrate his birthdays making him blow candles? Did he take him to the zoo? Does the relationship between them feel professional or is it something more? Gojo appreciates his students, but is Megumi to him just another student? When Gojo faces Sukuna in Megumi's body, did he see the kid he raised, or does he just see Sukuna in one of his students' body? Did he have one faint wavering instant? And how does Megumi feel about this? Is he resentful of him? Resentful of the situation? Of the selfishness behind his actions? Does he feel like a pawn? Is he grateful? Does he resent feeling grateful? Would he rather not? Does he love Gojo? Does he feel nothing about him other than what he could feel about a teacher that sort of annoys him but knows he's reliable in his strength? Does he think it unfair, cruel or unfeeling that Gojo is close, closer perhaps, with Yuuji or Yuta, considering their story? When Sukuna slices Gojo in two, does the remnants of Megumi's soul tremble?

And not just Megumi and Gojo. Yuuji and Nanami, Gojo and Nanami, Yuuji and Fushiguro, Nobara and the boys, or Nobara and Maki, Todo and Yuuji or Yuta, Gojo and Yuta, Megumi and his sister. Gojo and Geto, even! If the pieces are well set, the dynamics are intriguing, interesting, and have potential to be deep, but then the characters have like two plot relevant scenes that punch you hard, but little more, it's not nearly enough. Especially not nearly enough for the enormity that is shonen dynamics and situations. And the potential existing at all, and then not delivering, makes it all the more frustrating when you're left with something mediocre that could have been so good.

The development of dynamics through not only a few plot relevant gut wrenching moving scenes, but also the smallness of life, is important. The friend who recommended this to me said that those things were just unnecessary filler, but I disagree. I think there's a big difference between a large amount of anime-only filler episodes whose existence is based on the fact they had run out of manga chapters to animate, and moments of quietness. The low stakes character-driven moments of quietness can be so telling and so insightful, and they are so satisfactory when brought back later in higher stakes situations. My friend teased me there was no scene of Gojo making breakfast to Megumi, that it would be an idiotic idea, but it would be so telling. How he makes breakfast, what they eat, if he tries hard or if it's all mechanised, if they have personal bowls or if they use whatever, if he just buys them some pastry on the way to school, if the way they have breakfast changes through the years, or if he doesn't make them breakfast at all! All that would be very insightful on their dynamic and its evolution. All that would give a glimpse on how they regard each other and why, even in the present. All that could become meaningful in tense situations and high stakes scenes.

These moments also let the plot breath; if a lot is happening all the time, if every character is always experiencing trauma after trauma, the entire story is so emotionally draining that at some point you don't even care all that much. Besides, these nothing moments or low stakes plot arcs, besides deepening and developing dynamics, also let some in-world time pass, which would make the intimacy and bond between characters more believable imo; between Yuuji eating Sukuna's finger and their last confrontation in December how much time has passed? A few months? Am I truly to believe these characters are so everything to each other in only a few months?

Without some smallness, some repetition, some daily life, some low stakes not plot-centric development, the dynamics don't hit, they don't truly feel fleshed out, and dynamics as complex as the ones Megumi and Gojo have, or as supposedly meaningful as the one Megumi has with Yuuji or his sister, should be fleshed out if they're going to exist at all. Otherwise they'd risk making the writing feel awkward and fake. Besides, if the dynamics felt well fleshed out and realistic, they would shape the way the characters interact and act, and how they deal with situations, thus being plot relevant.

The shonen genre has so much happening all the time, the stakes are so high, the dynamics are so rooted in big events and the relationships carry enormous weight and implications. Yet they barely get developed, and it feels so stupid, so plain, the absence of something so important noticeable like a constant void, a shapeless nothingness present in every scene. It makes the characters feel like cardboard figures. Jujutsu Kaisen is already getting a better job than many, but I doubt it will do enough for what I've heard, and I fear I am bound to feel let down, and bound to feel unmoved.

After all, if not enough time and care has been given to develop a dynamic, I am not going to feel pressured by the high stakes; if not enough time and care has been given to develop the dynamic between Megumi and Yuuji, as good potential as it has I am bound to feel little for this last confrontation between Sukuna and Itadori, and his effort in getting Megumi back.

[theokusgallery]

The woes and misery of wanting to open commissions but knowing that my art style is way too inconsistent for that

[grimm-the-tiger]

My FL main went through some really weird, organic development over the...oh god, I think it's been five years since I started playing now.

So my main is named Skadi Larkin. They are a little bastard. They started out extremely 2D; I named them after my favorite Norse goddess and the protagonist of the book I was reading at the time. I originally wanted to make them female like both of their namesakes, but the second I saw the third-gender option, I thought it was too good to pass up. This is where they got their primary base characterization as a mad scientist who wanted to Cause Problems.

Then I started the Nemesis ambition and forgot which option I'd chosen for who I was trying to avenge, so they lost both their lover and their older brother under tragic circumstances (only the lover was killed by Nemesis's antagonist, though).

Then I got an Exceptional Friendship and had to give my tragic backstory in order to gain entry to the House of Chimes. Skadi pulled said tragic backstory (orphaned in a hansom accident) more or less out of their ass, but it did establish that their parents are dead.

Somewhere down the line, I realized that technically Skadi is a linguist, since the Correspondence is a language, and I made that their profession on the Surface as well.

Around this time, I started working on character designs for my fan comic. I got really into messing around with skin tone, and somewhere along the line thought it would be fun to draw Skadi (who was originally white) with darker skin, and it stuck.

Then I abruptly realized I was taking a lot of options that increased my Melancholy, and almost all of them were based on the Surface. So now Skadi has a longing for the Surface.

I left the game for a few years, but somewhere during this stretch of time, and I don't know how this happened, but I decided Skadi was now Native American; specifically, Metis. I changed their design to incorporate a sash woven in a style characteristic of the Metis, which also added a bit of color to their design (which was mostly black or grey at this point).

During this time, I started incorporating Skadi into my fan comic. This would eventually lead me to actually flesh out their backstory in greater detail. When I started playing the game again, I also created my first alt by total accident (long story), and I decided to weave her backstory with Skadi's.

So Skadi is in the interesting position of being an Indigenous person who is what we'd probably consider Two-Spirit today but they'd just call "Bollocks to that gender crap". They never belonged on the Surface, since the Metis are in a bit of a liminal space compared to other tribes due to their interesting background (the Metis are the descendants of French settlers and Indigenous inhabitants, mostly Cree), and Skadi exists in a liminal space within that liminal space due to only being half-Metis and raised primarily in white culture, although they still maintained a connection to it through their late mother. They also never belonged because no one else on the Surface outside of the communities they already felt isolated from would ever accept them for their gender. London gave them a chance to express one of those, but not both, and despite knowing that the Surface hates them just for existing, they still long to return.

[lesbianralzarek]

i have a question. i'm making a deck based around hard choices. rakdos, patron of chaos as the commander, with cards like browbeat, vexing devil, choice of damnations, etc. do you think that playing against a deck like that would be completely miserable or would it be fine?

for me personally: i think that sounds like a really engaging and fun deck. as a red lover, magic is most fun when im playing on a knifes edge and carefully managing resources, so id love to sit across from this deck. those key cards you named are p low power tho, esp browbeat, so the only real concern is making sure you can close games

if you have a pod: nothing here feels like something you would have to ask "permission" for, but if youre really worried you would have to ask them directly

if youre just playing at your lgs: its legal, isnt it? youre all showing up to play a format that you each know and accept the rules of, and thats literally all you need to agree on. you cant please everyone, and you shouldnt try to at the expense of your fun. you made your deck with your money with the intent of having fun. if someone lets vexing devil stop them from having fun, thats not on you. magic is way too expensive to build a deck around someone else's fun

[wonder-worker]

In the end, politics was an accretion of personal decisions, and that means that the personality of the protagonists cannot be left out of the discussion. It determined not only how they reacted to the situations in which they found themselves, but how others reacted to them. The growing support for Edward IV in 1461 must have owed something to the realisation that he would make an effective king - whereas his father never seems to have been regarded in that light.

--Rosemary Horrox, "Personalities and Politics", The Wars of the Roses (Problems in Focus), edited by A.J Pollard

...When the worst had happened, and civil war was a reality, the overwhelming imperative was to find some way of restoring order. At the level of high politics, what this entailed in practice was a rallying around the de facto king. The Wars of the Roses, far from weakening the monarchy, actually strengthened it, since the king was the only man able to surmount faction. In spite of (Henry VI’s) manifest failings, Richard, duke of York's criticism of the regime commanded little high-level support - and would have commanded even less but for the crown's alienation of the junior branch of the Nevilles, headed by York's brother-in-law the earl of Salisbury. York in fact never did attain the political viability to break the vicious circle of temporary ascendancy and political exclusion. It was his son, Edward, earl of March, who finally mustered enough support to take the throne. He was able to do so in part because the situation had been transformed by the country's descent into open war, which reduced the compulsion to uphold the king as the embodiment of stability. Once it was no longer a matter of averting war, but of stopping it, political opinion began to divide more evenly between Henry VI and his rival. However, the crucial change may well have been York's own death at the Battle of Wakefield late in 1460. In the ensuing months Edward of York was able to present himself as the man who could mend the shattered political community. That self-identification with unity proved immensely potent, and it was not a role which could plausibly have been filled by his father. In the eyes of contemporaries, York had been the begetter of faction: a man tainted by his willingness to go to extremes.

[avoidmint]

Wasn't having the best art day but I did manage to do some OC art at the end of it. Needed to practice drawing armor so who better than my Knight Aesthetic Forces OC, Glaive the Dog! He's kind of an ass.

This armor concept is probably not what I'm sticking with in the long term just a first attempt.

Fun fact; His wispon is actually a greatsword I will probably never draw because designing it how it works in my head has proven... difficult to say the least! Also he's got two prosthetics, his left arm and right leg.

And yes he does bite.

[calliettes-posts]

Can't believe swifties harassed Billie so much in her ig post over an audio taken completely out of context that she deleted her latest post

[batsplat]

A sentence in Casey’s book impressed me, even though he didn't name anyone explicitly

“Maybe someone who could put on the charm when they need it regardless of sincerity could have turned the situation around but I don’t have that skill.”

He totally gets that Valentino has endless charm, lol. I’m sure he felt it too when they hung out

yes!! this was about casey and his relationship to the fans wasn't it, and in a section of the book where he was talking about his rivalry with valentino, so hardly a stretch to say it was deliberately alluding to him. and of course casey talking about valentino's charm is not unrelated to how casey did seem to like valentino perfectly fine back in the day... how he said back in 2007 that he liked talking to valentino, that they generally talked about stuff other than racing, how valentino gets on with most guys in the paddock... though it's interesting (if not particularly surprising) how by the time the autobiography is written, casey portrays the early dynamic between the pair of them pretty dispassionately. just from the book you'd get the sense of someone who was coolly respectful of valentino until valentino started pissing him off, rather than someone who was... y'know, also a bit of a fan. somebody who got the valentino rossi appeal, shall we say. we all have our crosses to bear

which, I don't even think it was just about the racing. I doubt he ever wanted to emulate valentino in the same way jorge or marc might have wanted to do off the track, but stuff like calling him a "great competitor and a great sportsman"... that for years he'd been "dreaming to be like him"... that valentino and doohan were "the sort of people I wanted to become like"... I reckon that's a little more than simply respect for him as a rider, and I don't think casey back then would have said that stuff just because he knew it'll play well with the public. he found valentino exciting, like so many before and since have done - and still did so for the entirety of 2006 (he said more recently that he was even more impressed by valentino after that season, which is kinda noteworthy given that's the year valentino did, you know, lose the title). but then they became direct rivals, and. well

of course the "regardless of sincerity" in the quote is pretty pointed lol, like he does clearly see valentino as very two-faced and willing to spin a line regardless of whether it's true or not and also as someone happy to deceive others for his own gains. and his rhetoric has also changed just a wee bit since he published the autobiography on that count, where he more recently does stress how... well, he did learn from how valentino played the media! he learned how to get friendly with journalists! he learned how to play that game, of trying to win the public discourse! he might never have liked it, and he still probably would say like in the autobiography that this "charm" "regardless of sincerity" isn't something that he'll ever be as good at as valentino was. but he did dabble in the dark arts just a touch... I think one of the most interesting tensions of that rivalry is to what extent valentino forced casey out of his comfort zone both on- and off-track and ended up making casey adopt behaviours and attitudes he continued to find reprehensible. casey considers valentino 'selfish' both on- and off-track but to fight him both on- and off-track he became more selfish in turn... very dramatically compelling

anyway, here's casey chatting to fellow aussie jb when he's come to watch the podium celebrations after one of valentino's 2005 wins:

[pochapal]

"the study ceases to be a locked room mystery if you go crazy go stupid with it"

[talesofwhimsy]

WHY?, “Sin Imperial" // Car Sear Headrest, “I Can Play the Piano”

[brother-emperors]

I'm so sorry if you get tired of answering asks about Pompey and Crassus BUT your response to the anon asking if Crassus let Pompey get away with things really got me thinking! Specifically about the way that Plutarch (I think?) says that Crassus didn't hold ill-will against Pompey for "stealing" his triumph. And how it feels like Crassus just kind of decided to shrug it off and instead asked Pompey for help for the consulship elections. Crassus seems so ruthless and direct while on the field, and I have so many questions about how he and Pompey worked together in Spoletium which will never be answered 😭 But then when it comes to politics I really can't see the pattern!

oh, I love talking about Crassus (and Pompey too, by extension), literally I can't stop. you can ask several people. I'll be talking about one thing, and all of a sudden: Crassus has entered the conversation. it's terrible, I can't stop. mostly, it takes me a thousand years to articulate my thoughts in any kind of way that makes sense.

I actually think that there are two times that Crassus subtextually calls Pompey a bitch, and the triumph incident is one of them!

specifically in that Crassus's comment about it:

Crassus, for all his self-approval, did not venture to ask for the major triumph, and it was thought ignoble and mean in him to celebrate even the minor triumph on foot, called the ovation, for a servile war.

Crassus is also not the first person to hold this sentiment.

Crassus' Ovation in 71 B.C., B.A. Marshall

I think it's important to remember that for Rome as a whole, the Third Servile War was terrifying because of the scale of the threat it posed to how an imperial wheelhouse running on a slave economy functions, but also because it's really fucking embarrassing for Rome's identity.

Crassus is also not the first person who commands the leading role against Spartacus. Spartacus goes through two other commanders before Rome asks Crassus to enter the scene. Crassus specifically is a private citizen when he is asked to step into this role: up until now, Rome's own praetors and consuls have failed to rise to the occasion.

Crassus' Ovation in 71 B.C., B.A. Marshall

Marcus Crassus and the Late Roman Republic, Allen Mason Ward

this is a deeply humiliating moment for the Roman reputation and identity. Pompey taking credit for Crassus' victory is an expected power grab, but it's also kind of cringe that he did it. Crassus was doing Roman's Duty To The State (or, if you like a spicier take on it, may have pulled strings for it. after all, you can't consider a man rich unless he can fund his own army. and the army Crassus brought with him for this was is own)

and so taking credit for that is like. man. this was NOT a "glorious war" that was fought. (Lucullus cites this as a blemish on Pompey's character during his vulture speech, it's very fun!)

so while Crassus may have realized that writing back to Rome and requesting back up was a mistake because whoever showed up would have the world's easiest time taking credit and accepted that it would happen, I do think that he took alternative measures to even the playing field in a 'okay sure, have your triumph, but don't think you're going to have it all,' kind of way because he also does this

Marcus Crassus and the Late Roman Republic, Allen Mason Ward

Pliny, Natural History 15.125

Gell. NA 5.6.23

Cic. Pis. 58

which does not strike me as the behavior of someone who is letting Pompey just run away with it without any kind of pushback.

and now to throw out literally everything I just said about the Triumph Incident, B.A. Marshall (whose article I've cited several times already in this) has an incredibly compelling case to make that there wasn't really as much conflict between the two over this as ancient narratives might indicate (which. seems to be a recurring theme with them)

Crassus' Ovation in 71 B.C., B.A. Marshall

I will stick to my narrative speculation that some of their respective peers probably thought it was at least embarrassing behavior on Pompey's part, because Lucullus has a lot of vitriol to direct at Pompey, and he does cite this incident as something negative to Pompey's overall character) someone who steals credit and glory from other people). so. hm. I think the assumed personal and periodically biting rivalry (in addition to the usual political rivalry) between the two is extremely fun, but so is. this. thoughts! much to think about.

[cosmicheartz]

Yknow I wasn’t expecting to get kinda attached to the idea of Phoebe x Quentin

[dazzle-art]

Juniper from my scribbles page because I've been thinking about her a lot recently (from memory and half a hair reference)

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