#Life is wonderful and complex

[corellianhounds]

Idk why everyone thinks Crosshair was the chaotic misbehaving brother as a cadet. Mr. “Good soldiers follow orders” even without the chip? Mr. “Loyal to the Empire” even after they destroyed all Kaminoan cities and facilities and didn’t care enough to come back and see if there were any survivors? Mr. “Not immediately swayed by emotional convictions” even when they belong to those closest to him who he should trust above unseen authorities?

Even if you think obedience and compliance was hammered into him by those in charge and he had to learn to keep his head down or face the consequences, that doesn’t explain why it takes him so long to eventually accept the truth, despite the mounting empirical evidence he receives after the most dire possible circumstances that should show him that those in charge are wrong. It isn’t until Mayday’s death that Crosshair finally accepts the truth because it’s then that he’s being directly told by the people in charge that he and everyone like him is expendable and unnecessary.

Somebody with a rebellious youth is much more critical of authority figures even if they’re presently obeying them, and they’re much more ready to drop said authorities the second it’s a viable option and they physically can. Crosshair doesn’t behave like a dog that’s been beaten its whole life, he’s constantly making active decisions not only to follow the Empire but to enforce what the Empire dictates, even when he’s the one reaping the direct consequences of pushback on the ground for it. Because that’s what good soldiers do.

This guy was the kid following the rules by choice and getting mad at the others for finding loopholes or accomplishing things the ‘wrong’ way, especially if and when it got all of them in trouble (because they were kids and wouldn’t have always been right). Rules and structure are there for a reason. We’ve been here less than ten years, what on earth makes you think we know more than the people in charge? Why do I have to be punished because you guys couldn’t do as you were told?

To me the four of them (and Echo later) are a sliding scale when it comes to decision-making based on head vs heart. Crosshair and Tech are on one side, using logic and reason over emotion as their basis for decision-making and how they see the world, and Echo and Wrecker are more on the heart/instinct side of reasoning, putting people and ideals ahead of simply accomplishing objectives despite what the odds might be against them. Hunter’s the balance in the middle, being able to see both sides and weigh what the best option is based on the evidence and the context within which it’s being given. All of them have different fluctuating percentages of what’s going to motivate or drive them day by day, just based on the context of their circumstances, but that’s the general scale.

I think Hunter as a kid probably realized if he could get all of them to learn the rules as quickly as they could, then they’d know how to break them effectively with the least amount of repercussions and collateral damage. They were an experimental group for a reason and were likely given a modicum of wiggle room when it came to problem-solving, the Kaminoans not just allowing but pushing them to be more creative, flexible, and adaptable. They all know the hard rules of structure, chain of command, and behavioral compliance, but after that they’re given more freedom of choice. Their personal convictions inform both the why and how of following orders.

Wrecker is easier to figure out because he wears every thought and emotion on his sleeve and sees no reason not to. He’s more of a follower— Thinking is for other people, he’s a busy guy and man of action, give him something concrete with actionable directions and he’ll accomplish it with aplomb.

Tech, as a kid, likely knew both the spirit and letter of the law, which means he could see problems and solutions objectively regardless of his personal feelings/opinions and knew that rules are there to be guidelines: No structure is perfect and always following rules exactly was never going to always be the right decision. He would choose whichever seemed like the most logical, obvious route to success, finding loopholes and workarounds where he could as a means of balancing the consequences or fallout of said decision.

Hunter also knew both the spirit and letter of the law, but he was able to read situations and people better than Tech was, relying more on his gut instinct to tell him what the best course of action would be, even if that choice wasn’t the most logical. He’s a mediator and the best choice of leader because of his ability to get people working together by knowing how to convince each of them in their own way that this plan will accomplish their objective AND lead to the most amount of people being satisfied/happy in the end, them included. Despite the fact Hunter’s more reserved, he’s still a people person. It just happens to come from empathy, observation, and instinct, the latter two being qualities he was designed to specialize in.

Crosshair obeyed the letter of the law because structure exists for a reason and if that structure has yielded the best results and most success for the longest amount of time, then it’s obvious it must be the right one in place. Loopholes can be taken advantage of, but only when there isn’t an explicit wording against it or there is clear and mounting evidence that the rule doesn’t apply to him. To deviate from the majority in matters of how something is achieved is acceptable; to do so in matters of why is not.

[akiacia]

some of the right words

[moonshynecybin]

he really does this alex is his baby lol there’s an interview somewhere where he says that the closest he can get to understanding how his parents must feel seeing him ride is how he feels watching alex…

the way when alex was in moto2 and was racing while marc was doing press stuff he couldn’t even pay attention to the questions bc he was just watching the screen…. hands anxiously climbing all over jose luis’s and alex’s hat… that’s his BABYYYY

[brodyfoxxsmassivetits]

Day three asking you to draw Matt .

I used to dislike Matt but i was wrong

fool! I've baited you into asking for matt MWAHHAHA

I SECRETLY already had the purple doodles drawn yesterday.....needed excuse to post him...and then doodled matt more because I like..him...

Matt's always been a fave of mine! I don't get how people could dislike whole characters but that might just be me finding ways to like them all(not tord) on account of the eternal fixation giving me too much time to think abt em

I almost feel like bad because I don't think my characterization is PARTICULARLY interesting but Idk I like em :3

sillier stuff

[passions-and-pupils]

I’d love to see a book that goes in depth on the idea of a creature that eats humans and when they are told by a human to stop they say “how is me eating human any different than you eating cow,” and the human counters with “but cows don’t have sentience the same way we do,” but the the creature simply laughs and goes

“Awwww little human thinks he has a soul, thinks he can comprehend everything we can, how cute.”

[stupidlittlespirit]

I promise I'm going to answer my asks soon, this fucking chapter is just killing me rn. There's so much work to do on it (I have 28 tabs of research open alone) and it's turned out to be very complex and much more in depth than I had planned for it to be. On top of the scientific research, there's pacing and structure and everything else, so it's taking a lot of my time up.

I am still alive, I'm just slow!

[spaciebabie]

see i absolutely despise jimmy (and curly) as a character(s) but as a literary freak i can appreciate the way hes used as a story device with his relationship to curly. i could type this more eloquently but currently ive had a glass of champagne and i havent drank in like 6 months so my tolerance is low so forgive my writing but. jimmy cannibalizing curly. yeah.

theres multiple messages here, theres the message that jimmy is doing what curly (assumedly) did to get into his position and, employing another metaphor, taking the "dog eat dog world" saying to heart. and literally. devouring his competition. or maybe curly didnt do that. and thats what jimmy thinks curly did and so he aims to do the same. choose whichever one you like more they're both interesting storywise.

theres the message where jimmy "consumes" curly in some twisted expression of love. devouring curly so that he remains a part of him, an expression that he is the gold star captain and something to aspire to. admiration for something he'll never be and so he chooses to consume him in order to potentially absorb some of his skill or become more like him.

and then there is curly sitting there helplessly being devoured. its something he has no say in, not something that he chose to happen to him, its something hes become swept up in. he becomes devoured by jimmy in the literal sense of cannibalism, but also in the sense that he became so absorbed in his friendship w/jimmy he ignored his wrongdoings and ultimately led to anya's assault as well as the death of the whole crew.

curly and jimmy intertwined so that one is always consumed by the other. curly in a literal sense, jimmy in a more psychological one. i mean like its really quite crazy they did the "im consumed with thoughts about this guy and want to be him so i must literally consume him" thing quite well. when examining mouthwashing's narrative you find new things to admire every time. each little story element has a place in creating a wonderfully complex and heartbreaking story. its very well done and honestly something to aspire to from the perspective of someone who enjoys studying/writing literature.

all of this is to say i think that there should be more art of jimmy covered in blood and engaging in this cannibalism like the stupid little leech he is

[wondering-whispers]

Why is it that my urge to write only peaks when I am at my lowest?

[rmbunnie]

I am alone on this barren earth (Jason Todd liker and Mia Dearden liker who honestly thinks issues 69-72 of the 2001 Green Arrow run are fun and good and would really like to talk about them beyond "Jason Todd was ooc and irredeemable there because he was trauma-dumping on Mia but also everything he said was fake and made up and he was manipulating her to become his sidekick and he blew up her school in retaliation because she didn't so really we should ignore the whole comic as bad writing /or agree he should just be read as an sadistic sidekick killer" (None of which is true and over half of which is directly stated to be false in the comic's text) but all people ever have to say about the comic is weird wrong takes about the three pages in which the gym fight happens ripped out of the very interesting and fun surrounding context)

[not-another-robin]

I CANNOT let my father see those stupid arkham files game ads. He has boardgame autism he wouldn't stand a chance

[elainsprophecy]

i'm a ride or die Pricefield girl but also if you take that away from the story, Double Exposure is actually so clever and fun. having the split alive and dead timelines happening simultaneously and bleeding into one another is such a wonderful concept that feels derived from the devisive ending of the first game with deciding to either save or sacrifice chloe. it's like the game is going "we know neither choice is ideal, so what happens if both are existing at once?"

it's very neat and it takes the "multiverse" angle that's been used quite frequently lately and making it its own. i miss Chloe as much as the next person, but you kinda just have to accept that and move on with the game. she was never going to actually be in the game. that negates the entire point of the final choice of the first game.

there are symbols for Chloe and Arcadia Bay everywhere. Victoria Chase grew as a person after what happened to them. Max does not escape what happened those few days ever again. Arcadia Bay is always woven into her life, especially with the memory of Chloe (both alive or dead) in everything she does.

Max is an adult now! it's so cool to see her grow and develop into this confident, successful photographer. she's still critical about her own talent, but she's lecturing now! how exciting! good for her. whether you choose for Chloe to be alive or dead, Max is doing her best to press forward, no matter how hard she gets hit with the past all the way across the country.

if you play the game, just take a deep breath. accept it for what it is. it doesn't have to be YOUR canon, but it's still a fun adventure that seems promising.

[larrythefloridaman]

I think about Larry (pre-loop) and Home's relationship a lot. How theres a sense of resentment on home's side and a sense of distrust on Larry's. How Larry can puff his ego up easy and yet every time hes given a chance to interact with himself in an externalized fashion theres this. distaste. Its never really strong enough to call 'self-loathing' exactly. Its very... casual. Almost insidiously so.

I think about how FL Man in the nccts expressed his hopes of becoming a champion eventually (although he'd just went 0-2 in his first tournament, and his friend dani would later outpace him easily) and his disappointment at becoming a plain ol' doctor on the sidelines instead (a perceived failure despite how much of an accomplishment he later knows it to be on the other side of that degree- larry shot for the stars and landed on the moon, but fl man is barely past being a dumb kid and kinda doesnt... get that concept, just yet i dont think) and his excitement about the powers hes going to have (which is soured by seeing them in action- clearly a little unnerved by the visceral reality of it.)

I think about how FL Man was 19-20, in that weird transitional phase from being a teenager into being an adult, and doesnt really think of himself as 'grown up' yet. I think of how Home is a boring stick-up-his-ass old man to him (and his shock that home is younger than larry as of current is still funny to me.) I think of how, often, when youre young and dont know much about adult life, before you start to mature, you arent really excited by mundanity. you want something dazzling, you have big hopes, often dictated by what the people and culture around you expect or deem valuable, and how sometimes it feels like a betrayal of your past self or a failure to give up on those hopes once you know more about yourself and what you want and who you are and how things work. I think about how Hamburger Helper shot down Larry's grab for captainship in seemingly as embarrassing a way as possible, because he thought Larry needed to learn patience and respect for his elders.

It seems. likely. to me that Larry got involved in Order's experiments in the interest of attempting to skip the work. hoping to become a better fighter he involves himself in all too many a superhero's origin story, is victimized by painful, unethical science, only to gain a power that, for all he loves it and benefits from it, he has also called a curse, a power that those who arent used to it sometimes look upon the symptoms of with a visceral disgust, a situation he and j0hn were lucky to survive and thrive in spite of together, where others werent so lucky. (For one thing if i recall, juniper's parents certainly weren't.)

I think about Larry and Home, opposed. Sometimes you look at your past self and all you see is a naive idiot, reckless and impatient and clueless, unbaked. It can be hard to give someone responsible for every bad idea you ever had the credit for surviving to become you, especially if youre not that happy to be you. And sometimes, you can't imagine why or how you would ever choose to become something you think you'd hate, make choices you'd regret, before youre standing there in your own shoes. Larry cant trust himself. And sometimes that's for good reason. Home didn't tell himself he'd die, after all. (And his boyfriend kept his future self's secrets- in a way he'd placed the person he'd become over who he was then. Did he think of him as a fixer-upper in the end, like his tech? ...As long as j0hn was happy, and safe, larry didn't mind. He knew he was a bit of a fuckup. J0hn was his whole world. The love of his life. His partner in everything, even this nightmare. And even if he loved the person he could be more than who he was, he was going to become him, so that didnt matter.) (J0hn doesnt care for the mustache.)

And i think about how home was there, a participant and a witness and a victim all at once, unable to alter the course of history but instead forced to watch and enact it and to reflect on how foolish he'd always been as hes forced to be complicit in the suffering of the community he wants nothing more than to protect in the pursuit of his endgoal, forced to trust that if he succeeds it will all turn out for the better. I wonder how much he blames himself. I wonder if he ever apologized to himself the way he apologizes to others he had to rope into all of that.

And he was right. It all worked. The plan worked. He played his role beautifully, so beautifully its part of him now. And he got the happy ending he wanted, he didn't even have to die for it. Turns out, it wasnt really the ending like he thought it might be. And now what? What does he do with himself? Whatever he wants, he has AGENCY now, hes an adult with a degree and a job he (mostly) loves serving his community and useful skills and money and time. He can help people, like hes trained to do, like he did all this to do in the first place, like hes good at. (After a little horrifying revenge. Just a little. If he has to send Dr. Order to a poetically satisfying end to keep her gone for good they can at least drag her errandboy's one winged corpse onstage as a bit for a while. And then that went horribly wrong. And then she wasnt gone for good. And the new susan's too cool and good for it to really be fair to hate her. Cool, cool, awesome doesnt completely fuck up the cathartic closure of that chapter of his life for him at all no sir definitely not hes definitely not having a dissociative episode just seeing Her again, ruining the illusion that he can just move on like all that didnt happen.)

And In his heart, he's always going to be making up for the fact that he couldnt do more. That he couldnt bear it all by himself. That he didn't do more when he could. That he failed to avoid this being necessary in the first place. That it was all rigged from the start, and that to an extent that could be understood as his own fault, and he did all this to himself and thats true in too many ways. Hes making up for being a low-class beat-down fool that doesnt really belong with the stars, but is among them anyway. He's making up for the fact he always was, always is, and always will be. Hes making up for it. He martyrs himself to pay back some intangibly infinite cosmic debt for surviving and thriving at others' expense- survivors guilt has always been something he and folk seem to have in common. Its his apology, for doing what hes done and being who he is. He owes everyone that much, for putting up with him all this time, doesn't he? He'll take advantage of the thick skin hes developed to protect others from the consequences of his and others decisions, draw the attention off of his collaborators, he'll always take the hit to take care of someone else.

But all that doesnt account for the fact his loved ones... yknow. Love him. And want him to be safe and comfortable and live for them as much as hes willing to suffer and die for them.

[lettucedloophole]

lov and peace on planat earth... ✌️

[kinokoshoujoart]

god i think of this image i saved a year ago (crap machine translation of a thumbnail for taison’s playthrough of AnWL) multiple times a day but i don’t think i’ve ever posted it. so here

[crimeronan]

thinking about the canon selves meeting their princess AU selves again. the current thought is canon hunter talking to princess/empress luz which i don't think i've ever properly considered before but it's very funny and sweet and just a little awful. canon hunter like "listen.... if he grew up protecting and guarding YOU then i'm POSITIVE his life was better than mine. sorry it came at the cost of yours sucking shit though" and empress luz is like "BELOS ABUSED HIM??? FOR OUR ENTIRE LIVES???" while hunter's like ".....SO??? HE DOES THAT IN EVERY TIMELINE??"

[dragontamer05]

Look I like Beastars but I will admit for a series that like explores dynamics of Carnivores and Herbivores, coexisting excetera especially in the later arc - especially with Melon- like I see what they were going for and its cool but at the same time like Yahya's whole thing of wanting things clear cut and like what would you call something that has traits of both or whatever,

like Buddy. That is called an Omnivore.

Also just trying to make such a clean line of Herbivore v Carnivore ends up leaving a strange spot of how to categorize animals.

Anteaters may not hunt or need like full on meat but technically they still be eating other animals with insects so lumping them in with herbivores is a strange choice.

More confusing is this choice I noticed of Hippos being put with the carnivores??? Yeah they dangerous mf with bad tempers but they are full on herbivores their stomachs ain't made for meat.

I'm not saying I expect or even some giant societal deep dive on how it works just idk throw in an off hand comment.

An Omniverous animal complaining they are seen the same as Carnivores.

A small carnivore voicing some kind of concern for their own safety. Because you know if one is hungry and the desperate enough a larger Carnivore/Predatore will for sure attack a smaller one

Imagine just a quick side scene of Gohin treating like a Deer, some herbivore who idk maybe they'd been living on the streets/otherwise not eating well so in an act of desperation attacked and killed a small animal (because altho not designed for in worse case scenario and need be some herbivores can and will eat meat when lacking like protein/ something in their diet)

Doesn't need to be a focus just another of his patients you happen to see during one of Legoshi's visits or something.

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Still think it's weird the choice of making Venom seem like it's some kind of idk acid/ dangerous chemical that even just touching your skin is bad.

Personally I think it would have been interesting if, what if other animals fear of reptiles especially those who are venomous was based on like misinformation.

Every animal of course knows that venom is dangerous and can cause serious damage even kill you but beyond that a lot of animals/ everyday folk perhaps don't understand exactly how it works / assuming it's basically the same as Poison where in sometimes all you have to do is touch it and let it absorb in your skin or ingest it to be harmed. Instead of needing to be injected- and also the fact that Reptiles CAN control their venom (dry bites are a thing)

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I'd say a flaw with both Beastars and Zootopia (or anything else with like X animals can't get along or whatever) Is the idea that animals are always fighting, eating each other and can never just live together??? Cause like yah sure obviously predators gotta eat, prey gonna get eaten but the vast majority of the time animals just be chilling. As long as everyone keeps to their own space / doesn't do anything to set the other animal(s) off they cool that's just how nature IS.