#(i needed to make you more special)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

HOT, SINGLE, UNSTUDIED SPONGES. 3000 NAUTICAL MILES AWAY. Come sail the distance and read Tiger Tiger!

[soosoosoup]

Funk branch au

Au and branch design by @bbc-trolls

[turtleblogatlast]

AU where Leo is trapped in the Prison Dimension for months instead of minutes and the only way he gets by with his sanity intact is through recording himself talking to his wrist comm.

When they finally manage to get Leo back and make him rest up to heal, Donnie can’t help but listen to the recordings left behind.

He’s not sure what exactly he’s expecting, only that his subconscious is screaming at him that it has to be heartbreaking, that it has to be torturous.

Instead, what Donnie is subject to is a full thousand hours’ worth of Jupiter Jim and Lou Jitsu crossover fanfiction. More than one part in the series. Spanning well over a million words.

(The worst part is that it’s actually good.)

[territorial-utopia]

Huzzah! It's birthday time! I'm slowly accumulating more and more things I like (latest additions this vest I made and a travel typewriter! Still need to fix the latter one though)

Sure has been a year.

[essektheylyss]

One thing that I feel is really interesting and often forgotten about Essek is that fundamentally, his characterization has been from the start based upon his desperation for external perspectives and connection, which, along with much of his narrative and mechanical positioning, means that he actually has an extraordinary and almost (but not actually, as I'll show) counterintuitive capacity for both growth and trust.

(Buckle in. This is a long one.)

In particular, I would argue, knowing now that many places where the plot touches Ludinus have long been marked for connecting back into the current plot, that he was quite possibly built as a prime candidate for radicalization by the Ruby Vanguard. He felt isolated from his culture, he was desperate for other connection, and he was certainly of the type to believe he was too smart to be drawn into such a thing, given his initial belief that he could control the situation and the fallout. If things had gone any other way, he easily could've been on the other side by now.

As such, he has been hallmarked by being fairly open to suggestion, perhaps for this reason, but the thing about that kind of trait is that it is both how people are radicalized and deradicalized. This is certainly true of Essek, who experienced genuine kindness and quite frankly strangeness from the Nein and was able to move from the isolation the Assembly had engendered to meaningful and genuine connection, largely propelled by his own internal reflection. By the time Nein are aware of his crimes, he's already begun to express regret to an extent and, furthermore, doubt in the Assembly, including explicitly drawing a line against Ludinus, even in a position where he was on his own and probably quite vulnerable.

Similarly, when the Nein reach the Vurmas Outpost some weeks later, he has moved from regret for the position he's ended up carrying a heavy remorse. This makes sense! He's fairly introspective, seems used to spending a lot of time in his own head, and was left with plenty to mull over. It's not some kind of retcon for him to have progressed well past where the Nein left him; it just means he's an active participant in the world who has done his own work in the meantime.

This is another interesting aspect to him. I've talked about this a bit before but I cannot find the post so I'll recap here: antagonists in D&D have significantly more agency than allied NPCs. Antagonists are active forces, against which the party is meant to struggle; allies are meant to support the PCs, which means they tend to be more passive in both their actions and their character growth. Essek was both built as an antagonist, in a position that gives him significant agency, and also was then given significant opportunity to grow specifically to act as a narrative mirror for Caleb's arc. Even when he becomes a more traditional D&D ally, he still retains much of that, though he occupies a supporting role.

I believe that this is especially true because of the nature of Caleb's arc, which I've already written on; the tl;dr of this post is that Caleb is both convinced that he is permanently ruined and also desperate to prove that change is possible. Essek is that proof, because he is simply the character in a position to do so. But this also means that his propensity for introspection and openness is accentuated! He has to do the legwork on his own, for the most part, because that's where he is in the meantime.

But he still ends the campaign necessarily constricted; he is under significant scrutiny, he's at risk from the Assembly, and he goes on the run fairly soon after the story ends. He spends most of the final arc anxious and paranoid, which is valid given the crushing reality of his situation. It would be very easy to extrapolate that seven years into this reality, he would be insular, closed off, and suspicious of strangers, even in spite of the lessons he's learned from the Nein and their long term exposure.

So seeing his openness and lightness now is surprising, but at the same time, given this combination of factors in his position in the narrative over time and his defining traits, it's not by any means unreasonable.

But one thing that I found so delightful is how much trust he exhibits, which is obviously a wild thing to say about Essek in particular, given much of what he learns is both earning and offering trust, which was something he says explicitly in 2x124 that he's never really experienced: "I've never really been trusted and so I did not trust." It makes up much of the progression of his relationship with Caleb, and the trust that he is offered by the Nein in walking off the ship is the impetus he needs to grow.

But I think it's easy to talk about trust when it comes to people who have proven themselves to you or to whom you've ingratiated yourself, and that's really the most we can say about Essek by the time he leaves the Blooming Grove. There is this sense in a lot of discussion of trust (not solely in this fandom) that it is only related to either naivete or love, but there's far more to it. Trust at its best is deliberate—cultivating an openness to the world at large is a great way to combat cynicism and beget connection instead. It allows a person to maintain curiosity and be open to experience, but it can be incredibly difficult to hold onto.

It is clear that the Essek we meet now is a very pointedly and intentionally trusting individual. He trusts Caleb and by extension Caleb's trust in Keyleth, as he shows up and picks up a group of strangers from a foreign military encampment and walks in without issue. He trusts the Hells to follow his lead moving through Zadash and to exhibit enough discretion so as to avoid bringing suspicion upon all of them. He trusts that Astrid will respond well to his entrance, but he also trusts himself and the Hells enough to execute a back-up plan in the case that she doesn't. In the end, he even trusts them enough to give them his name and identity.

He doesn't scan as someone who has spent half a dozen years living like a prey animal, afraid of any shadow he runs across in an alley, withdrawn into himself and an insular family, which would've been an easy route for him to take. He scans as someone who has learned the kind of trust borne of learned confidence and a trained eye for good will and kindness, which are crucial weapons one would need for staving off cynicism in his circumstances—as if he has survived thanks more to connection and kindness than paranoia and isolation. (If we want to be saccharine about it, he scans quite poignantly as a member of the Mighty Nein.)

So it is easy to imagine this trust and openness as a natural progression of his initial search for perspectives external to his own cultural knowledge. Though he makes those first connections with the Assembly to try to vindicate his personal hypotheses, he finds in them exposure to the deepest corruption among Exandrian mortals, which could've—and did, for a time—turned him further down that same dark path.

But it's also this same openness to exposure from the wider world that allows the Nein to influence him for the better, and in spite of the challenges he's certainly faced simply surviving over the past seven years, he seems to have held onto this openness enough to move through the world with self-assurance and a willingness to extend the kinds of trust and good will that he has been shown.

(I would be remiss not to mention that I was reminded about my thoughts on this by this lovely post from sky-scribbles and their use in the tags of 'light' to describe Essek's demeanor this episode, which is really such an apt word for it.)

[gornackeaterofworlds]

Running never works out for you in the end, does it?

Alt below

Obligatory @luckycharms1701 come get ur guy

[radioroxx]

hey guys 🤲 spare nille thoughts? s’il vous plaît???

[toxintouch]

I am headcanoning Mhin's monster transformation as being related to their emotions (as in: transformation can be triggered by very strong emotions) SO HARD lately.

It would add an extra layer to Vere constantly trying to piss them off that just ⋆˗ˋˏ Makes Sense ˎˊ˗⋆ to me.

Vere is intrigued by the MC, describing them as "not quite human, not quite monster".

Is it safe to assume that Vere felt similarly intrigued by Mhin? That he picked up on that, smelled it on Mhin when they first met, only to have Mhin stab him on sight? And now Vere is constantly pushing at their raw nerves to try and get a Monstrous reaction out of Mhin... It would add an extra layer to their dynamic that I love to consider.

Alternate theory: The transformation is more werewolf-esque and it's related to something that can be astronomically observed. & that's how Mhin started up their stargazing hobby?? But it's kinda cuter if they just enjoy that for it's own sake, amiright?

P.S. if ur wondering how Vere knows about the emotions trigger he knows bc he can Do That Thing

[greg-montgomery]

Texts from Aaron or Greg (or both if you want) when you wake up and they're working on Valentine's Day 🥹🥰😭

our loves 🥹

[ganondoodle]

one of the things in my totk rewrite that im most confident about is removing the building gimmick (to put it in another game truly build around it, its such a waste here imo) to add the hookshot instead

everyone loves the hookshot, i have never heard anyone say they didnt like it

in a world like botw it would be a perfect fit- it adds a unique and different movement option while-

it does not destroy the world design (like the building aspect does, though the towers also need a different function, letting you fly anywhere and skip everything everywhere all the time, including puzzles in both shrines and dungeons, something like that in a world thats build around climbing and gliding WILL end up destructive to the world design without really careful changes and balances .. that absolutely werent done in the game)

opens up a whole new way to think and do puzzles in a way that wasnt there in botw

preserves the feeling of dread when high up or in the sky, since falling is still a danger even with the parasail ( bc removing almost all warp points up there makes the danger being loss of progress rather than the fall itself- removing the parasail as a whole for the entire game is not an option and it will always be a security to not die by fall damage, so there should be a different danger even if im usually not a fan of loss of progress pressure, the bird mechanic i mentioned in other post would also help you not lose everything even if you make a mistake)

it makes climbing easier WITHOUT making it obsolete or skippable, especially with adding the main way to get up to sky islands as islands to climb up via the hookshot, its just adds another way to interact with the terrain instead of .. not interactign with it at all, the range is still limited and you still have to cling to the wall and get down to shoot it again

it being built into links prosthetic shiekah arm makes it more unique both in looks and mechanic/narrative aspects so i dont think it would be boring to have an old 'item' reused in a new way, especially together with the rest of the abilities- like it being not an instant 'pulls you to the thing' but a reactivatable one instead (so you can grab things to move them if lightweight enough similar to ultrahand)

bosses can benefit from it too, imo one of the coolest things in twilight princess was grabbing onto a boss to pull yourself to and onto them, being able to do that even to smaller ones shadow of the colossus style would be so neat

grabbing onto something moving and not pulling yourself immediately to it opens up not just fun but also funny scenarios aka you being flung around by whatever you grabbed (grab on a dragon ...weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee- on a lynel ...'ragdoll chaos')

(with the removal of building and thus the majority of all the puzzles being fly thing from point A to point B not being a thing it also makes way for cool kinds of ways to get to the next sky island for example- a thought i had was making the reason they fly and are practically invisible from most angles being that they are swimming in a special kind of cloud that hides them due to breaking of light in certain ways withing them- thus hiding it from below most of the time, eliminating the problem of 'sky too full' which was apprently a reason why they removed alot of them too, and it would be incredibly fun to be able to poof into little clouds (they look a certain way so you know which ones you can swim in) also! lil cloud bridges between islands! a boat to surf on them high up in the sky! mario galaxy vibes!

probably more im forgetting

anytime i think about the hookshot mechanic i get so sad bc i just keep imagining how much you could have done with in totk and desperately want to play that :U

[triglycercule]

"killer. what is this supposed to be?"

"oh, i commissioned one of my fans to draw art of us! isn't it totally cute??"

"well, it's definitely... something."

"... no, it's cute. but how'd you pay for it? last i heard, your balance was..."

"..."

💜/💙/❤️

[rheakira]

Today, May 23rd, is Robin's birthday!

Happy birthday, Robin!

[arcanegifs]

[seaquestions]

blake lets him keep it. this is a dire lapse in judgement on his part but they're just gonna have to live with it. (ids in alts)

[cluescorner]

I cannot imagine being a Damian stan right now. You've got both Zdarsky's bullshit (where he clearly doesn't give a shit about your boy) and The Boy Wonder (where Juni Ba clearly gives so many shits about your boy) coming out on the same day. The whiplash must be insane. I hope y'all get some nice warm soup for your efforts jfc

[luna-the-bard]

Am I cooking with this or

Bonus magma doodles featuring my friend’s oc Kala: