#IT WAS SO NEAT I WAS SO SHOCKED

[pastelaspirations]

Hello 😈

i have returned w a question

Have you drank boba

-poke anon

It's y o u. Again. Consider this a... tentative greeting as I am still wading these perplexing conundrums of "friendship" and its cultural markers.

H m m. Y e s, actually. Once. I was really overwhelmed because all I wanted was the normal ass boba. But they had so many options. I just wanted normal boba, man. I HEARD ABOUT IT, I WANTED TO TRY JUST. B O B A. NO, I DON'T KNOW WHAT FLAVOR NORMAL BOBA IS. NO, I DON'T THINK IT HAS CHOCOLATE. IT DEFINITELY ISN'T STRAWBERRY OR LEMON FLAVOR, P L E A SE JUST GIVE ME NORMAL BOBA, THERE ARE PEOPLE LINING UP BEHIND ME, JUST. THROW ME A BONE, MY SOCIAL ANXIETY IS GOING THROUGH THE R O O F RN-

I forget what I ordered, but I'm pretty sure I got as close to what was normal boba as possible. This place didn't even have a "classic" boba option or anything, man. They asked me about... I don't even remember. Caco balls? I don't know, I just went "Y e a h" with a blank smile because all I could think was "The boba balls aren't called boba balls???"

It was good. 10/10, would drink again. I just never have because the place that sold them is a pain to get to because you have to parallel park to get there or walk a long way and like. Screw that, man-

[chloesimaginationthings]

Michael learns of Jeff’s pizza from FNAF Into the pit

[wickmitz]

Do u actually ship rocky and mitzi?

to try and be as simple as possible, i suppose i do ship them ; i’m particularly drawn by their dynamic and have long since grown enamored with it … so, naturally, i enjoy turning them over in my head and shoving them together, seeing all the possible ways they fit and how they function when glued together. rocky’s feelings for mitzi are so intense and metaphorical that there’s a lot of ground to run with, honestly. it’s not a black and white relationship where they fit neatly under one label or another either, hence my constant use of the term ‘a secret third thing’ for them overall. there’s romance, obsession, desperation, platonic associations, and a thousand other factors embedded into what they have. rocky simply ‘seeing mitzi as a mother figure’ or ‘being totally in love with her in a traditional sense’ just doesn’t capture them with the justice they deserve. it’s more �� muddled than that. rocky, at this point in time, is completely incapable of maintaining love anyway, and mitzi certainly isn’t any better either. in a context where i envision them together, that aspect is a big part of things : where they click together due to their inability to sustain a healthy and stereotypical romantic bond, and thus accidentally fuel each other’s unhappy paths. it’s easy to see how mitzi does this to rocky! but rocky is capable of doing it to her as well, what with his all-consuming need to be who she relies on and to restore the lackadaisy to it’s previous glory for himself and her. he enables her and she enables him, even if it’s subconscious and accidental. while there is undeniable fondness and care there, they are also walking down this path hand-in-hand, tugging each other along when one of then falters or pauses. so, to me, it’s not hard imagining things becoming closer and more intimate … who doesn’t want to be smashed together against someone who gives you all the validation you crave and never shuns you, twisting all your awful deeds into something good and believing you righteous at all times. it’s addicting! and natural. while rocky obviously would enjoy such a relationship, so would mitzi at this point in her life. where she’s exhausted and feels particularly ugly within, and is currently all alone.

they also would click in ways that wouldn’t force them to abandon how they currently go about romance. mitzi needs to spend a good portion of her day thinking about her dead husband and nobody else, meanwhile rocky is very enamored with being a knight in shining armor so to speak, only able to express himself through extreme devotion, a thing that ( as said by crew members on stream ) can’t singlehandedly keep a relationship afloat … normally. but mitzi can deal with rocky’s rather eccentric and destructive behavior, can take the only thing he can offer and accept it wholeheartedly, because she couldn’t handle anything more normal or mature right now. and rocky, despite his occasional displays of territorial behavior, never bats an eye at or feels inferior to mitzi’s atlas obsession. this wouldn’t be the case in other relationships, where both of them would have to change or grow in some way in order to keep the love stable and secure. there would be things they’d have to give up, or be vulnerable about, and both of them are too stubborn for that at this point. a random lover would always be a second thought compared to the lackadaisy.

( now, of course, i ship mitzi and rocky with other people! and i’m very interested in these bonds forming during canon’s events. but it’d either be an unhealthy relationship, due to everything i said above, or a happier sort of take on things : where mitzi and rocky are pulled from their minds’ unraveling edges and are both given the care, patience, and understanding they both need. one where they can set aside the lackadaisy for a moment or two, and can find genuine happiness somewhere else. i never see them as fully moving on from it, nor do i see mitzi fully giving up atlas or rocky fully giving up mitzi, but things can be softened and less insane. sometimes! )

now, is this healthy? no. but is this me saying they should be surgically removed from one another because they make each other ‘worse’? also no! i adore them in every sense of the word and acting like there aren’t positives attached to their dynamic would, frankly, be stupid of me. they are there for each other in their worse moments and approach each other with kindness, something they don’t really get from others anymore. they are genuinely happy to be in each other’s presence and have a habit of lifting each other up, or providing each other some much needed warmth on a bad day. you see it many times in the comic, situations where mitzi is devestated, and rocky rushes in to comfort her ; and he always succeeds in some way, wiggling that severe expression off her face and getting her to smile, even if it’s small and weak. and rocky loves that! it makes him happy to be able to ease her heartache and worries so. it makes him feel useful and needed, and she’s one of the only people in his life to give him even a sliver of praise here or there. here are some examples i can remember off the top of my head :

and while there isn’t many examples of mitzi praising rocky, she is also still one of the few people who shows concern over him and asks after him. there are also two scenes, in the pilot and in the comic, where rocky messes up big time, and mitzi has every right to be frustrated with him. she could yell, she could get mean, like rocky is so used to, but instead … she sucks it in and simply lets it go. this happens with the pig farmers, but also in the pilot most notably! where the second she realizes how hard rocky is taking her words, her reasonable and sympathetic irritation at things not working out, she backtracks. she forces those emotions away and simply says this, earnestly and kindly, and wipes the devestation off rocky’s face :

as much of an accidental negative influence they can have on each other, there’s also a more purposeful positive influence that is inherent in their dynamic. i wouldn’t ever want to dismiss that, nor do i enjoy when other people rush to do so themselves, claiming they’re simply no good for each other. well, they claim mitzi is a manipulative person who only sees rocky as a pawn, but i’ll pretend fans are critical of rocky’s many faults as well. the point is : they’re good for each other and to each other! they just happen to have a great capacity to cling and stay where they are rather than doing anything more beneficial or productive. any dynamic in lackadaisy can become toxic in a sense, given the fact that a majority of the characters are prone to indulging in their flaws and chasing what’s familar, what’s most comfortable, with little regard to anyone else. but i find that aspect interesting, and i love rocky/mitzi all the more for their accidental enabling and vastly obscured views.

the more romantic aspects aren’t really something i care too much about, overall. i play around with it and find scenarios where things can bloom in such a way, but them calling each other ‘boyfriend’ or ‘girlfriend’ isn’t something i care for. i do not think mitzi would ever be attracted to rocky in a sappy lovesick way -- she’s above fawning as it is, and is rather methodical about things like passion or adoration nowadays anyway. her eyes can’t exactly sparkle upon seeing rocky spilling syrup all over himself nor can she sigh dreamily at his nonsensical, improv poetry spiels that just burst out of him like water through a broken dam. but they could soften at the corners and she could convince herself of something romantic if it held her the right way. if she felt battered enough to give into it, or was lonely enough to indulge herself in a place she knows she’s wanted. rocky, on the other hand, is a bit easier to imagine here! he would never say no to miss m. and actively wants to ‘keep’ her already … if they were to become an item, an obscure, happenstance item, than he’d embrace it full heartedly! it’s been well established rocky isn’t one to turn down love or affection, so to get it from mitzi of all people? it’d be extremely ooc to even pretend he’d regret it or shy away. he loves her, of course he does, his beautiful dionysus : who unlocks her doors for him to enter, who smiles upon him with her wine soaked lips, who brushes a dainty paw across his shoulder and sings him praises like it doesn’t pain her to say them. she is warm and comforting and soft, and rocky is possessed by a maddening desire to wrap every spaghetti limb he has around her, and never let her go. again, his love is nothing short of all-consuming and obsessive where mitzi is concerned. her devoted acolyte! it would be simple to see how he’d get here in comparison to mitzi’s more wounded and guarded heart. i don’t think rocky fully loves her in only a romantic sense, however! i’m a firm believer that it is a mix of romantic and platonic feelings, an awkward and intensive blend of the two, this sort of combination that isn’t easy to sort through. he does take comfort in the fact she reminds him of a motherly figure, just as much as he genuinely finds her attractive and appealing in a puppy love kind of way. there’s also the fact that rocky is keen on lying to mitzi and wearing masks around her in the name of seeming more amazing in her eyes -- the fact his love for her is metaphorical and personal in equal measure, and the fact mitzi hides herself away from everyone around her. there would be a lot of untangling! a lot of pretending. this is a ship that will always have a multitude of layers and caveats attached to it, so to speak.

but that excites me! i like it! i love a dynamic that i could write endlessly about no matter the context it’s being framed in! how utterly unsurprising it is that the first lackadaisy fic i thought of was one that would focus heavily on these two and what’s happening between them, what could happen. mitzi wallowing in her self-inflicted misery while rocky prowls around her, begging to be useful to her while simultaneously chasing off a suitor of hers that he cannot stand to let near, is quite the image in my mind, and is one i always have looping around in the back of my head. the parallels to atlas/mordecai are an added bonus to this! if rocky is doomed by the narrative then mitzi is the narrative to which he’s bleeding himself upon, you know? that, as well as his own insecure delusions. mitzi, similarly, would easily waste away to nothing or get herself killed while trying to pursue her nostalgic ambitions if it weren’t for rocky being so willing to do the dangerous stuff for her. i think about how mitzi almost got herself killed in skedaddle and how rocky rushed to save her. while zib and ivy care for mitzi, and viktor is obligated to protect her, they are not as quick as rocky is -- nor as recklessly devoted to the point of readily given sacrifice.

anyway! i’m very fond of them, and there are so many scenes and other aspects of their characters that i could spend ages pouring over. this is, genuinely, merely a fraction of my thoughts on them. although i do hope i answered your question, anon! i got a bit carried away and i’m sure a lot of this is hard to parse through by default, but oh well!

[dizzybizz]

Just wanna say thank you for gracing everyone with your Mononoke art. Just finished watching the movie and it's amazing 🙏

im glad to spread the joy of mononoke always

have two kon doodles i didnt do anything w

[milesofstars]

appreciating how much you've developed with your art is arguably one of the most important parts of being an artist (imo) and i love looking through my old art and seeing ways that ive improved

i started looking through my old digital art and i think i kinda shocked myself with how much ive improved since i started digital art in 2020

this is a sidebyside from late 2021 vs early 2025 and AAHHHH it makes me soso happy to know that my art journey really is worth it and all this improvement happened in less than 4 years

if youre ever feeling bad about your art, id recommend comparing an old piece with something recent you've done and just stopping 2 actually appreciate HOW MUCH youve improved because i guarantee you're better at art than you think you are :3

the only artist you should ever compare yourself to is yourself! and you will meet your art goals if you give yourself time!!

[illmoraineakoi]

?????????

Is Mitsi's creator - Grace - English or Irish???

[pynkhues]

https://x.com/lestatdelioncat/status/1858608673855336516?t=KsAra9iHb3aUiMDx21TF2w&s=19 I dont understand what Jacob meant by this and I definitely would argue that Louis isn't the most vampire but that Claudia is

Mmm, yeah. My interpretation of what Jacob’s saying there is that Louis has an enormous capacity for self-indulgence, and its because he has that, that he has to restrain himself so fully. That makes sense to me, I think we see that in 2.05 in particular between all the boys and the drugs, but I think we also see it in how he bottles things up until they explode out of him and he does things like murder the Alderman Fenwick in a pretty gory and performative way, and, y’know, swims the Mississippi to get at Lestat (in more ways than one!)

Does that make him more vampiric? I don’t know if I think that does, but it begs the question of what you think determines a vampire’s core characteristics? It’s an ever-evolving archetype, and has definitely gone through a lot of iterations in the last twenty years in particular, but I think if you’re looking at the origins in traditional gothic literature, Louis is in many ways the quintessential vampire.

So! Let's have a look at that.

The origins of the vampire

The concept of a vampire in literature was actually created in the same summer retreat that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in, which is a delightful little slice of history. You can read more about it here if you’re interested, but the nuts and bolts of it is that a freshly-divorced Lord Byron, his doctor, Dr. Polidori, as well as Percy and Mary Shelly, and Mary’s stepsister, Claire Clairmont (who was pregnant with Byron’s child, a child he really didn’t want), went on a summer retreat to Switzerland together, and basically just spent months reading each other ghost stories which ultimately culminated in Byron suggesting they have a competition to see who could write the best one.

Hilariously, none of them really wrote a ghost story – Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, and Byron actually wrote two things, although he only finished one – a poem called The Darkness which is effectively a dystopian poem about the end of the world – and his unfinished project was a novel about a dying man who swears he’ll be resurrected to visit his friend after he dies.

It's this that’s actually taken up by Byron’s doctor, Dr. Polidori, who turns it into the 1819 short story, The Vampyre, with the lead character being heavily based on Byron himself.

In Polidori’s story, it features a man, Aubrey, observing his rich, sexy male friend, Lord Ruthven, who has superhuman strength and can’t be killed by bullets, and who seems to keep seducing women important to Aubrey right before they mysteriously die. Basically Aubrey slowly realizes through mounting dread that Lord Ruthven survives by drinking the blood of innocent women.

I’ve talked a lot about the Byronic Hero (and how I think Louis embodies the trope), so I won’t go too much into it here, but my point is that the original concept of a vampire is inherently built on those romantic ideas of class and wealth (which is important for reasons I’ll get into shortly), sophistication and intelligence, hiding in plain sight and seduction, and is generally understood to have queer subtext which many read into the relationship between Aubrey and Lord Ruthven (Ruthven literally seduces and murders Aubrey’s lover and his sister, isolating him to his companionship). He’s also inherently Byronic, being first started by him, and later based on him – Byron truly isthe I-don’t-know-if-I-want-to-be-him-or-be-with-him guy of literary history, haha.

Building on the origins and evolving the metaphor

It was the late 1800s though when some of the most genre-defining stories were published. The two biggest being Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1871) and, of course, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). The genre had evolved already at this point, but the archetype actually didn’t change all that much. In fact, the vampire as someone who is rich, predatory and seductive became character traits that became metaphors in and of themselves, namely as a class metaphor. This was started with Lord Ruthven in The Vampyre, but it’s really expanded here, particularly in Dracula, who’s understood in the context of the 1890s to represent the solitary nature of monopoly capital that sucks the life from the labouring classes. He hoards his wealth through land and gold, and preys on the working class.

There’s been a lot written on this, so I won’t labour the point, but the understanding of vampires as symbols of aristocracy and capitalism has always existed, and I know that we joke about Louis being the first vampire capitalist, but it’s actually not true. Capitalism has always been a vital part of the genre, because class has always been a central tenet of classic gothic fiction, for better and for worse.

Wealth and class is also central to Carmilla. It’s set in the 1800s in Austria while the wealth gap between the rich and poor is increasing, and Carmilla comes from an aristocratic, old money family. She benefits from being rich, and she uses her social power as a rich aristocrat in order to seduce and prey on people in the lower classes. Again, the entwining of wealth and class is really prevalent, but interestingly too, Carmilla’s the most explicitly queer of all of these early vampire stories, with the lesbian relationship woven through it effectively textual, but Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu also posits two means of being turned into a vampire, which is kind of uniquely interesting to me.

One is the way we know – vampires turn vampires, but the second is that vampires are people who’ve been rejected by God, whether due to suicide, as explicitly stated in the book, or excommunication from the church for a sinful life. While this hasn’t literally carried forward much in the genre, I do actually think its still there. The elements of sin and quote-unquote ‘corruption’ are still threaded through most vampire fiction even today, and while hedonism is more common in modern vampires, there are elements of misery that feel pervasive. The idea that vampires are born either through being turned, corrupted or dying by their own hand is just one that I find really interesting, and I think also speaks a bit to elements of the Byronic Hero that the vampire is inherently steeped in as an archetype.

…And evolving some more

It was actually Anne’s books in the 70s that relaunched vampires into the stratosphere popularity-wise, and they did evolve in theme and metaphor as a result. Vampires are understood to be manifestations of current anxieties, which yes, in the 1800s was the rise of monopolistic capitalism, female sexuality and homosexuality, and in the 70s through 80s became metaphors for anxieties around STIs, the AIDS crisis, and addiction in particular, but these themes of class and misery never left the genre.

That said, the Vampire as an archetype in and of itself was also informed in this period really by the Milton’s Satan archetype which has gone on to form the modern concept of the anti-hero. I talked a lot about the Milton’s Satan archetype here in terms of Lestat, but the important thing to note is that it holds to the idea of a protagonist as a fallen angel who becomes a hero-villain, hedonistic, vain, proud and horribly, terribly human.

So, do I think Louis’ the most vampiric of the vampires?

Yeah, actually. In a lot of ways, Louis marries all the foundations of the traditional vampire. He’s as wealthy, intelligent, and seductive as Lord Ruthven was, but he really feeds into the late 1800s vampire as a symbol of the parasitic nature of monopolistic capitalism and landed wealth. He chooses to be solitary and rejects community, he’s using women’s bodies to keep his family in wealth, he’s hoarding and commodifying art and wishing death on artists to increase profit, he’s gentrifying San Francisco, he’s turned in a church on a night he likely would’ve commit suicide, tying back into Le Fanu’s idea of alternate ways of vampires being turned, hell, he’s even doing drugs with addicts in the sprawl of the seventies, using his social power over Daniel by flaunting his wealth to get him into a room with him.

And he’s a Byronic Hero. So he’s miserable while he does it, haha.

That joy in the hunt that Claudia has to me is more like Lestat’s, which I do think as I said in the Milton’s Satan / Fallen Angel archetype post is more tied up in the demonic than the vampiric, traditionally speaking. There’s definitely crossover though, especially as Milton’s Satan has informed the modern anti hero, and vampires are generally always anti heroes in modern fiction. I don’t think Claudia necessarily is a Milton’s Satan either – I’ve said it before, but I think she’s a true Gothic Heroine – but she definitely has some of those attributes of a fallen angel, particularly in the sense of hedonism and perversion of form and family.

In a lot of ways, it’s part of the fun with Claudia – she gets these elements of both Louis and Lestat, and gets to be her own thing too. Her vampirism is its own unique monstrousness, but I don’t think she plays as cleanly into the traditional vampire as Louis does.

I'll leave it there, because this is way more than you asked for, anon, haha, sorry. Hopefully it's interesting.

[kabutots]

I'm not gonna say anything about the Rhaenyra/Mysaria relationship other than if they wanted to make Rhaenyra bi, they could've at least included the actual bisexual relationship she had in the book

BUT it's kinda fucked that Mysaria just unloaded incredibly traumatic sexual abuse memories, and then the writers thought "Yeah, let's put the make-out session in the same scene."

[amanedachi]

zirconium / adaptive

Part of LoL Esports Elemental Series.

[shreksstepfather]

You tore me into a million pieces, but none of them know how to feel.

An homage to Squirrelflight's mixed emotions surrounding Ashfur's death and how different people interpret these feelings.

(Alternate versions under the cut!)

[queervegancryptid]

I realized recently that my partner is basically the only person who hears my voice as it naturally is, especially since being on testosterone. I had a slightly low voice for a woman before that, and I've been on T for most of the last ten years. (COVID and other things caused supply chain issues and issues with accessing care in general for me, so there were times when I'd be off it for a while.)

In the last few months, though, my voice suddenly dropped significantly and got a lot more bass-y. I started noticing it around the inauguration, maybe a few weeks prior.

I sound more like my dad or my brother than I ever thought I would. It's neat! And I feel like I have to hide it in most places.

I have to hide a lot. And I resent it, but I don't think I realized how much it's been hurting me, to carry the weight of hiding. My binder crapped out several months ago, and I haven't been able to replace it. My tits are small, but there's no passing without binding for me. When I trip up and use my real voice, if I'm particularly tired or too angry or overwhelmed to care, people look at me like I'm a monster. You can see the shift in their faces. So I do what I learned to do when I was younger: I pitch my voice higher and speak with "feminine" inflection. I hide in plain sight.

It sucks. I feel like I've all but gone back in the closet.

Shaving is something else I resent. I do it, and I would do it regardless, because I like how I look without facial and body hair, and because it's thick and coarse and doesn't feel good. Especially with the weather warming up. I live in Florida and was already a sweaty person before T, and I was also already a hairy person. T increased all that and added facial hair.

It did so much more than that, though. I'm not complaining.

So it's been a rough time. I feel like life is kicking me in the ass several times a day. So last night, for the first time in too long, my partner and I got shitfaced and listened to music and cried about shit.

And I belted out "Hallelujah" along with Leonard Cohen. Was it perfect? Fuck no. I hadn't heard it in a while, and I don't know when I last heard the live version my partner put on. But I let my actual voice do the work, and I started just feeling myself. For the first time in... I don't even know how long. My range has shifted to being close to his. I didn't even know I could do that.

Now, I'm a little bit hungover, because I don't do this regularly and because I didn't eat much yesterday. That's what I get. But it was oddly satisfying.

Sing out. Even if you're not a gifted singer. Even if you stumble over the words or can't hit all the notes you want to.

Now, I'm gonna go get ready to work a local Democratic club event while singing along to Hozier and Bastille. Because I can.

I wish I wasn't hungover. But last night needed to happen. I didn't know how much it needed to happen.

When you're trans, especially now, you have to walk around being aware of transphobia all the time. You can't shut it off. You can often find spaces and people that make you feel safer than others, but you're never not aware. With all the hiding I have to do just to get through the day, I now understand that I need to find gender euphoria where I can, and if I can't, I have to go out of my way to create it. This is my home, and even if I have to pretend out there, I can be real here. And hopefully that will be enough.

I can't continue to carry this weight otherwise. I can't do it.

[rosykims]

who do i have to seduce at bioware to guarantee a moment in veilguard where lavellan gets to tell solas to grow up. just point me in their general direction and i'll take it from there

[statementlou]

.

[redwayfarers]

Interrupting ur fandom scrolling with some pretty nature pictures

[secondlastk]

POV: you have fucked up big time

[cornsarts]

Some backgrounds I made circa 2020 for an animation I never made. May try and finish this one day.