#I fuckin love this band

[13xiii13-13]

Cannibal Corpse Budapest 2023.03.26.

pictures not mine:

[gatoburr0]

Splatoon AU with Deep Cut except their band name actually fits their songs (because metal)

[tainted-sweet-meats]

still alive : P HI HI LOVELIES! I'm just busy with life, working on a medical career, and going to concerts. So life has been pretty busy. Drew my sona in a DIY hoodie with a tool patch on it while listening to Sober and The Pot on repeat.

[autisticarachnid]

spider-punk is officially the best cinematic character. the rest of y’all can go home you can’t touch him

[owlghuleh]

That angle though…

[duffyduffles]

I'M NOT EVEN JOKING WHEN I SAY I SCREAMED WHEN I FOUND THIS

[screamsinsilver]

via noah's instagram

jesse cash and joakim karlsson performing their rendition of forget your name by chief

[amethyst-halo]

decided i want to work on everything stays au so post time stop oh my god why is this so LONG

when the bros start fighting after failing the family harmony, grandma rosiepuff steps in and stops john from leaving. when they try to point blame, she puts her foot down and tells them to stop and apologize to each other. all of the older boys are too stubborn to, but baby branch feels guilty and takes the blame for everything going wrong. floyd, spruce, and clay all go to comfort him, and john realizes what he's doing is ruining the band for them. he apologizes to all of them, recognizing he'd pushed too hard and set too high a bar.

they decide to take a break from the band and focus on just being brothers instead. everything is okay for a while; they goof off and mess with each other, help their grandma with chores, etc. as brothers will do. branch is a happy little thing, though pretty anxious, and while his brothers still fight with each other, things are good. but rosiepuff gets taken the next trollstice, leaving the boys on their own.

the boys are devastated, of course, and things are pretty rough for a while. john and spruce share the brunt of rosiepuff's role as the parental figures, doing their best to comfort the youngest three and keep the pod running. branch is struggling the most with comprehending what happened, as he hadn't lost anyone before, and doesn't fully grasp for a while that rosiepuff isn't coming back. things are okay eventually, but it's a hard time for a while.

john is still keeping everyone on track of their chores and such, but mostly likes to let them goof around. he still writes music in his off time, and likes to help branch plan his bunker hideout. he prefers being outside most of the time, and likes to find weird bugs and plants to show his brothers and teach them about them.

spruce leans way back, no longer feeling pressured to keep up his heartthrob persona. he takes up the cooking and gets super good at it, and overall is very relaxed. he likes to climb high into the tree to bergen-watch at the top of the cage, and sometimes talks one of his younger brothers into going up with him.

clay indulges in his interest in learning and graduates super early; he's the first to graduate troll school (which im just basing on the us school system bc thats what i know aksjdhjk), with john having dropped out when rosiepuff was taken and spruce still in his last couple of years. while he still likes to goof off with his brothers, he takes on a more serious persona with other trolls and likes to keep up with his sad book club. he becomes pretty good friends with the older princess, viva.

floyd still wants to go solo, and ends up doing little gigs and such around the tree in his spare time. he doesn't want to leave his brothers, so he never gets huge, but he manages to set himself a name. he's fairly quiet and struggling a bit with the always-happy-ness of pop trolls, but he does his best to keep it to himself, at least around branch.

branch himself is a fairly happy kid. he's got a paranoid streak, though, and struggles a lot with being alone, so he's usually stuck to one of his brothers. he's fairly shy with other kids and doesn't seem keen on making friends, but he gets coaxed out of his shell sometimes. he loves to plan his hideout and share his ideas with his brothers, who are all getting a little concerned about how much he wants to hide.

a couple of years after the band's hiatus, branch and spruce are doing laundry up on one of the higher branches of the tree. branch is enjoying himself, singing a song john had taught him while spruce works. he doesn't notice the approach of a bergen until spruce shouts, and the next thing he knows, he's falling out of the tree as spruce is grabbed in his place.

branch is sure if he hadn't been singing, this wouldn't have happened. he had brought the bergen to them by singing, and now his brother was gone.

clay and floyd find him at the base of the tree, and they know something is wrong. branch blurts that it's all his fault and spruce is gone, and they try to tell him it isn't his fault. they take him back up to the pod to john, who won't believe that spruce is gone. john goes to look for him and clay has to follow, leaving floyd to comfort an increasingly distraught branch. john initially thinks its a bad prank by spruce and clay, but clay gets through to him that spruce was really taken.

when they get back to the pod, floyd is all but freaking out, and branch is silent and gray.

things are more subdued after that; john and clay get more serious with their younger two brothers, floyd loses a lot of his energy for things and mostly just tries to make sure branch is sleeping and fed, and branch... he's a shell of his former self. he refuses to speak, let alone sing, convinced he'd only get his other brothers taken. he pours all of his focus on planning his hideout bunker, refusing to try and play with other kids or go along with his brothers' activities.

it gets a little better over time, as the initial grief fades. branch is still gray and refusing to speak, but he is slowly talked into acting like a kid every once in a while. his brothers also get better over time, john and clay's fun sides and floyd's energy slowly returning. john pushes himself to be better faster, determined to be there for his brothers, but it does lead to clay and him getting into more arguments, and floyd sees right through his facade most of the time. but it gets better, and branch's old colors even begin to return, albeit slightly.

with spruce, he gets taken to the bergen castle, where he manages to escape the bergen's hold. he has a little cat and mouse chase, but he squeezes into a hole in the walls and gets away. in the chase, though, he lost his pathway out, and all of the bergens are looking for him, so he can't escape right away. he's forced to hunker down and wait, so he starts exploring to find a way out.

his main hiding space ends up down in the basement, close to bridget's room. he doesn't dare let her know about him, but he does listen in on her struggles with her work and emotions.

he makes a few attempts to escape over the next while, but each time ends up with him being chased back into the wall. he manages to figure out his escape path, at least, but all of his attempts are squashed one way or another. one of his attempts to escape nearly goes wrong as chef catches him and almost kills him with her knife, but he manages to move away so all she catches is his tail, causing him to lose most of it.

a couple of years after spruce is taken, the escape tunnels are finished. john does his best to keep all of them together, but when they get out on the other side, clay is missing. john tries to go back in to find him, but the tunnels start to collapse and he's pulled out of there without clay. they wait, and wait, until king peppy begins to leave, meaning there aren't any more trolls to save.

the brothers are devastated; john blames himself for losing track of clay and basically shuts off, and branch loses any color he'd gotten back. with john near unresponsive, floyd takes charge of keeping them with the group and such, distracting himself from his grief.

spruce hears about the trolls disappearing from his place in the wall, and while he's glad they seem to have escaped, it seriously deters him from trying to escape himself, as he's not sure he could find them. he loses hope, which means he loses his colors.

clay, meanwhile, managed to escape the tunnels with viva. he wants to go back to find his brothers, unsure of if they made it out, but viva stops him. he's forced to hope for the best, as he and viva find the other trolls who were separated, forming the group that becomes the putt-putt trolls.

everything is... hard, for the first few years. branch's anxiety and paranoia only gets worse, and john dory is zoned out most of the time, so floyd is forced to be the one in charge, making sure his brothers are taken care of and doing whatever he can to help with setting up the new village. floyd eventually gets sick of it and encourages john and branch to build branch's bunker, figuring it'll keep them busy. it works, and john slowly comes back to himself while helping branch dig and plan.

spruce is pretty lost back in the castle; he knows the place like the back of his hand now, but he kind of resents it because he just wants to be back with his brothers. he's spent a lot of time near bridget by proxy, and one night when she's despairing over her feelings and workload, he accidentally gives himself away. to his surprise, she isn't as eager to catch him as every other bergen, and is more curious about how he'd escaped for so long. the two end up talking more; spruce finds himself worrying about her like an older brother, and she makes a point of sneaking him more food and other things he needs where she can in return for his company.

at some point, spruce nearly gets caught again, getting cornered by one of the cooks- the chef is exiled by this point- who nearly kills him again. the side of his face and his ear get caught and injured pretty badly before he can get away, and he manages to get to bridget's room before collapsing. bridget is wildly alarmed and does her best to patch him up, but the injury scars and his hearing is damaged on the one side. still, he's incredibly touched by her care for him, and while he's not as bright as he used to be, his colors do come back.

back in the village, john and branch build most of the bunker together, floyd pitching in where he can while also working on his music and running errands and such. when branch is older and more independent, john decides to start making trips back to the tunnels in an attempt to find clay. floyd isn't thrilled, worried that john is still stuck in the past and not letting himself heal, but he can't really stop him. john doesn't have much luck anyways.

floyd himself is struggling a lot of the time under the pressure of taking care of branch and john while also maintaining a social status and dealing with his own grief, and his colors dull slowly over the next several years. it's gradual, to the point it's hard to notice, so john isn't super perceptive to it. eventually, though, floyd gets sick of john ditching them all the time to dig in the tunnels and they argue, and floyd finally blurts all of his struggles in the heat of the argument. he crumbles, the last of his color fading, and john feels awful. he does his best to apologize and comfort him, and promises he's going to take care of them properly and stop going back to the tunnels, stop being stuck in the past when the present needs him.

i don't have much planned between that and the start of the first movie tbh. branch stays gray and silent, john does his best to care for his brothers, floyd does gain dull colors again at some point and keeps up with his solo career and is probably the most social of the three of them. spruce is kinda just surviving in the castle walls. clay's doing hot girl putt putt shit. etc

movie 1 is fairly the same to start. the party lures the chef in and trolls are captured, but it includes floyd, who attended the party to be polite, and john, who tried to go save him. branch and poppy go after them and branch is even less inclined to put up with her shenanigans along the way. im not gonna lie i haven't managed to figure out much of any of the movies from there.

i know that spruce reunites with his bros while they're trying to rescue the snack pack and such, and is a major advocate for trolls and bergens not being as different as they think.

between movies 1 and 2, about a month before 2 starts, floyd sets off for a gig at mount rageous for his solo career stuff, which :) is fine :)

i don't have much else figured out yet for some reason it is eluding me way more than any other au has so. i'll figure it out aksdjhjkhdjfh

[applestorms]

actually. @moonlarked you wanted someone to talk about near & light as parallels? cuz uh...

ok SO, my big hot take on near is something like this: one of the most common criticisms i see about near is that he is simply too apathetic/bored/uncaring/etc, and that because he is not as emotionally invested as L, his win against light doesn't feel nearly (lol) as satisfying as it could've been. this is a view that often frustrates me, but for a very particular reason— namely, while i think it is somewhat accurate in content, i think it misses a lot of important context (and also misses a lot of the importance of light's character arc, but we'll get to that much later).

one of the most important things to remember about the wammy's kids is that, whether they like it or not, each and every one of them is defined almost entirely through their relationship to L. this is perhaps more obvious in the case of characters like BB and mello, who are very Aware of this shadow being cast upon them and react in very overt, emotional ways (e.g. becoming a literal serial killer out of seemingly pure spite & desire to be noticed, idolizing him but in a very emotionally complicated, kinda detached sorta way, etc), but it is true for Every wammy's kid, purely because of how the house itself functions. these kids are being raised to be L's successor— the greatest (and second greatest, and third greatest) detective on the planet. this is the ultimate goal hanging over every one of their heads, and it places a constant pressure on every kid there.

oftentimes, i think (perhaps both out of story and in it, as well?) people get so caught up in comparing near to L that they forget he also falls under this umbrella— only, for near, his position is slightly different because he actually somewhat succeeds at the task? like, yeah, L never gets the chance to officially call near his successor, but between the fact that he's constantly called the #1 kid at wammy's and that he. literally does actually end up becoming the new L after kira, i think it's always been pretty clear what his path was going to be.

going back to my starting point, this is one of the main ways that near makes a really good parallel to light in my mind, specifically the light that we see right at the start of the series. in both cases, near and pre-DN light, we see a kid who has succeeded at everything they've been handed, and more notably, we see a kid who is bored out of his fucking mind looking at the prospects of what he's got.

in the case of light, this is maybe a little more realistic/easy to understand— light does well in academics, he does well in sports, he does well with people. he is likely to follow in his father's footsteps with something criminal justice/police/law related, but even if he diverges from that path it likely won't be too big of a deal, as he has shown himself to be capable in enough areas that he's likely to succeed no matter what. by all measurable standards, light's doing pretty good at the start of the series. and yet— there is something so distinctly and inherently Bland about his life before he gets the DN. i've said before that light wouldn't call the DN a curse even if he wanted to, but i think in that moment when he's telling ryuk he disagrees w/ his father after visiting him in the hospital, when he says, "I've never once considered finding that notebook and gaining this power a misfortune. In fact, it's made me happier than I've ever been." (ch.22) he's still getting at something real and truthful.

again, going back to my equating of boredom with depression in this series— light's life is pretty good by all measurable standards. he has a family who loves him, presumably more than enough money to get by with a pretty cushy lifestyle, and does well, honestly better than well, in every single system he is presented with. but even so, he's still unhappy. there is something in his soul that has not yet been satisfied. he's bored of the world, bored of his place in it, how easy it all is. what the DN really offers him is a challenge, entertainment— just the same as L, and just the same as ryuk.

near similarly suffers from this kind of boredom, though it is perhaps less overtly stated than in the case of light, L, and ryuk, and less easy to catch as it is not as realistic/common. again: near basically ends up the winner of wammy's house. he is the one to take the title of L, he's declared the smartest, bestest kid at wammy's, and he gets all the power and privilege that comes with such a title. but still— he's so. fucking. bored. much to the embarrassment of mello, this shit was never really a challenge to him. it's pretty obvious that near isn't really even all that attached to the title of L— don't forget that his first real introduction to the story involves him explicitly saying that he'd be just fine working with mello as essentially co-L successors. and this is a viewpoint that he holds onto until the very end of the series, actually, claiming that he was only able to best light due to mello's sacrifice. near doesn't really give a fuck about the rat race he's been slotted into, though it's perhaps for that exact reason that he ends up winning it anyway, and getting all the responsibility that comes along.

that being said, i think there are still two main differences between light and near:

light fucks up.

near never gets past his boredom.

in the case of this first point, i do not mean to say that near never ever makes any move/judgement that could be considered a mistake— mello killing the entire SPK is the first thing that comes to mind, which i see as blood on near's hands for the same reason that L takes at least some responsibility for lind l. tailor. rather, i mean that near never makes a such a monumental fuck-up that he has to overturn his entire worldview just to account for it in the same way that light does when he accidentally kills two people w/ the DN the first time.

it's like, if you've ever known (or been) the kind of kid who always got perfect grades in school, straights A's for K-12, only to reach college and suddenly bomb their first test and have an existential crisis as their only real achievement in life is crushed into dust, then you know light yagami. only for light, it's on a whole 'nother scale, because not only does he fucking oopsie daisy kill two people, but he kills in such a context that he can mentally manipulate it back into seeming heroic. i hate to say that suffering causes character development because that's terrible advice (it's how you react to terrible circumstances that matters, imho) but to some degree, yeah, having conflicts/hard times in life is just necessary to figure shit out sometimes. near (and L, oh goddd i need to write about L properly sometime) has so many things smoothed over and handed to him, and on top of that, he's a super genius very rarely fucks anything up, at least according to base logic. he doesn't even really consider the morality of anything he's doing until light straight up asks him in a desperate bid to keep talking at the end, it's all just logic and factors to consider.

this all leads to my second point, which is that near never really gets the chance to overcome his boredom in the same way as the others. ryuk at least gets his entertainment for a couple years, and light and L (and mello) get so invested in each other and their game that it literally kills them, but near just kinda. keeps going. he keeps being L, he keeps solving cases, he does the duty he was given and enjoys his toys... and that's it. he lies around, the only one left to live, never even taking credit for the end of KIRA, never gets another haircut, and keeps the title going. what a life, for a kid who dragged a god back down to earth.

sidenote1: toys

am i reading too into things? maybe. near's toys hold a lot of significance throughout the story in more specific ways, most notably the finger puppets he uses at the very end of the story while tracking different people's/kira's actions, though you could probably read some kind of meaning into every toy he has and the ways in which he plays with them. what i want to look at here though is more the general reasoning behind playing with them in the first place— a desire for a childhood he didn't get to have? a love of games more generally? (could track with him seeing the KIRA case, or really all detective work, as just another game.) you could also read into his toys as another source for near's apathy/detachment from reality, literally breaking every notable person around him down into a doll by the end of the story, speaking a lot to how alienated he is from the world (again, very similar to both L and light, there). i don't have much more of a point to make here, just wanted to add this in somewhere since it's one of his most striking visual character traits.

sidenote2: light's arc

going back to my point at the start of this post... light's character arc.

uhh. near winning is a good thing, actually. and i don't just mean that as a moral claim— DN itself as a story isn't really concerned with trying to answer any moral questions about good or evil or the justice system, so it makes sense & is fair to me that it doesn't try all that hard to answer anything along those lines by the very end of the story. what i mean to say here is that near winning is a good thing on the level of the character arc, specifically as an end to light's arc.

i made a post a while back while mid-manga reread talking through some of the reasons why L's death can feel kind of unsatisfying/paint the second half of the story in a less interesting light (hah) for a lot of viewers, with the main point i ended up on being that L wasn't really able to win because he never really had all that clear of a win state in the first place. i still kiiind of agree with this point, though i think there's a lot more i could add to that post... anyways. point is, i bring up that post because it touches on a similar thing to what i want to talk about here: light's character arc being a tragedy.

this is more speculation on my part, but i think another part of the reason why people get turned off to DN post-L death is not just the fact that L isn't really a playable character in the game anymore, but the fact that light's character arc takes such a dramatic twist after the timeskip. i talked about this a little bit in my little ramble on light & titles (which a lot of you liked, apparently!! ty for all the lovely comments on there, i love reading what you guys have to say ^w^), but light's character arc in DN is a tragedy to me, full-stop.

tragedies to me are cyclical— revolutionary, if you will. since all stories necessitate some kind of something to take place, a tragedy to me is all about a character beginning in one point, then continually getting hit by Event, after Thing, after Event, only to end up in essentially the exact same place that they started. any character changes or development that seem to happen throughout the story are ultimately nullified by the end— the main subject does not truly grow, does not truly reflect on their actions or traumas, does not move on. two steps forward is two steps back. even ending up in a position worse than they started is sometimes better than a true tragedy, in my mind, as at least then there is some chance they may still reflect or change or grow in the future, leaving the hope that they may still overcome this new circumstance later on. a true tragedy ends in nothing meaningful ever getting the chance to truly change, at least in the case of the main subject of the story.

light's character arc in the first half of the story is an upward, underdog kind of story. yes, light has the power of a shinigami, of a supernatural force that the rest of the world doesn't even know exists— but part of the real appeal of his conflict with L is how powerful L feels in comparison, having the wealth and respect and title to command a world's worth of forces against him. fuck, even taking down naomi misora feels like an incredible hurdle overcome, a teenager managing to charm and yap and flutter his eyelashes out of a shitty situation he was only just lucky enough to stumble across in the first place, to stop someone who could've ruined his entire plan with a few words. killing L was always going to be light's greatest accomplishment when it comes to his rise to godhood, not only because of L's great power but the comparative position of light at the time that he did so— not yet an adult, not even really out of school, perhaps barely out of his parents' house.

in contrast, light's arc for the second half of the story is a downward spiral. we see all of the consequences light has been miraculously avoiding smack into him like meteors in this half, his ever-growing ego torn to shreds as he's yanked back down to earth. and in comparison to the anime, the manga really beats this point into you, dedicating the entire second half of the story to light's fall from grace as he loses his mind and loses his humanity. like, while i do kind of prefer the manga ending to the anime, i have to admit that light's death there is fucking brutal. light goes through pages, chapters, purely dedicated to near tearing him a new asshole, only end the story bloody and delirious and crawling on his knees begging a god of death to fix everything— all just to die the exact same death as everyone else he's killed. i mean, look at these fucking pages (ch.107):

(that last fucking picture of him. clawing at the sky. it always fucking gets to me.)

it hurts to read this shit!! we spend the entire first half of the story watching this dude's rise to glory, the entire time stuck inside of his head, emotionally connecting with him even if we don't really mean to or disagree with his actions or question his morality. watching his fall back down, especially after all of that, is fucking painful— an in no way does near make the process any easier. if anything, his blunt, snarky bitchery, saying all the quiet parts out loud, calling light out for being a terrible replacement L and pointing and laughing at his failures to his face, only shoves more salt in the wound, only proves just how human he has been all this time, how meaningless any of his supposed "rise to power" ever really was. light got his fifteen seconds of fame, sure— but near is armed and ready to make sure that's all he'd ever get, that the name Light Yagami would never even be associated with the position he held for so long. six years was all he got— and it was all he was ever going to get, because light yagami did not do this for humanity, he did it for himself. all near did was collect the debt that L prescribed. he fulfilled his duty as told— nothing more, and nothing less.

i just have to wonder... is this why people hate him? because he has no sympathy for the fall? maybe. i don't know.

either way, i don't think i could ever really hate him. it's a big responsibility, being the only one left behind. but near has always been the one to hold such weights on his shoulders.

[lilspacewolfie]

Something something son of one below

[doodlboy]

Woah! All of Heart Failure in the same image?!💔

[Raoul, bottom left, and Riven, top right, belong 2 the very cool @raouls-inferno !!!]

[srorgana1]

The perfect way to start off Festival Season...

A huge thank you to Kyloremuss on Twitter for her amazing work and talent ❤️❤️

Come check out Rockstar Kylo in Into The Reverb at the link below 🤘❤️

[ourfatherwhoartinhell]

I had this idea that Phantom’s favourite breakfast is Dino Eggs???

(for those who may not know what these are, it’s a kids oatmeal that has little ‘eggs’ that dissolve when you mix the packet in hot water and reveal little colourful dinosaurs inside)

[owlghuleh]

The Iconic duo

[duffyduffles]

PUNK MCKAGAN SAVE ME

[kickedin17]

This feels obvious but maybe it's not so. The silence in Paladin Strait is. The strait. That's the crossing. He can't sing because he's schwimming. Right