#Luckily this works. Sort of.

[fadedrainbowbookshelves]

Are you really best friends if you can't heckle them about their crush?

[hollowsart]

Guy: So, the Green Lanterns are like a bunch of intergalactic superheroes, yeah?? Siiicckkkk I can dig that. The Guardians: ..Well. Actually. No. Guy: 'No'? Whadda y'mean 'No'?? We got superhero costumes and everything from these rings! Costumes and powers! Some wear masks and at least a few other GL's got capes-- What the heck else COULD this whole thing be?? The Guardians: Guy Gardner.. This is more like an intergalactic police force. Enforcing the laws of the universe for balance and safety. We thought that you, of all people, would be aware and open to this.

Guy:

Guy, who grew up in a horrible police family and ended up a delinquent punk trying to make a living:

[quins-makeshift-menagerie]

I didn’t take into account how much recovery my arm would need when I said I was hoping to return mid June lmao….

[tyranitarkisser]

Nurse Mituna?! Do you trust her....

[majouartings]

PLAYABLE ZELDA PLAYABLE ZELDA PLAYABLE ZELDA PLAYABLE ZELDA PLAYABLE ZELDA PLAYABLE ZELDA PLAYABLE ZELDA *inhale* PLAYABLE ZELDA PLAYABLE Z

[the-halfling-prince]

₳₮ ₮ⱧɆ Ɇ₦Đ Ø₣ ₮ⱧɆ ⱤØ₳Đ

Character info under the cut

This group of six recent high school graduates just wanted to go on a road trip before they all went their separate ways for college. Yeah that didn't work out very well.

1- Vanja Tsui. 18. She/Her. Third generation Chinese American. Planning on majoring in literature. Deaf (wears a cochlear implant). The coolest person you'll ever know.

2- Rebekah Rothschild. 18. She/Her. Jewish. Plays the violin. Probably knows math. Gay disaster.

3- Tristán Serrano. 18. He/Him. The one with a driver's license. Doesn't know how he ended up best friends with five weirdos. Still loves them all.

4- Aleksanteri Rinne. 17. He/Him. Transmasc. Classic loser boy. Soon to be art student. Childhood best friend with Tristán.

5- Eugénie Perreault. 17. She/Her. Has a band where she plays drums. Has ten pairs of tinted sunglasses. Is color blind.

6- Mick Santinera. 19. She/Her. Plays guitar and sings in Eugénie's band. The worst™. Short. No one knows what Mick is short for. Michelle? Mikayla? Whatever.

[robotslenderman]

oh god that's right, you're the horror on the end of the phone now :0

People who want to make appointments via text are the bane of my life now ;_;

[blueofthesun]

seeing people happy about their eu tour tickets is making me 🥹🥹🥹💗💗💗

[comikadraws]

Okay, so I just saw a post about the lack of major character deaths in Naruto and I felt like I had to throw in my own two cents. I agree that the war arc in Naruto was poorly written and did not convey the true brutality and horror it realistically should have. It's not even realistic for the story as the allied shinobi forces had a >50% casualty rate compared to the main cast's ~10%. However, I feel like I need to defend Kishimoto a little (a rare one for me, lol).

There are actually good reasons for the low casualty rate:

The tone of the story. Naruto, being a shonen, is fairly lighthearted in terms of tone, targeting an audience that should not be exposed to the true horrors of war in the first place. There might also be other factors playing into this (including fanservice and stubborn editors).

Death is a narrative device. It has to be handled with care and precision. Too few deaths will trivialize the conflict. Too many deaths will trivialize death itself. It's the "One death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic" quote.

Tying into the previous point, Kishimoto is actually extremely good at crafting death scenes. Major character deaths usually fit into a greater narrative or effectively conclude a character's arc. There is only so much you can do with a death scene and only so many characters whose death would logically have impact on the story.

High death rates for the sake of death rates wouldn't have worked for Kishimoto's story and it is also not necessarily a good argument for a character's death. That's one of the reasons why the fandom became so enraged at Neji's death. That's why there is no "Top 10 anime deaths" list that is complete without Naruto.

[bluejaybytes]

@snowshinobi Hiiiii :3 I'm responding to your tags on a new post and not the original since the original was already somewhat lengthy, and I plan on being LONG and RAMBLY, but I have sooo many thoughts on what you said and I'm going to say them. Also my browser crashed TWICE (TWO TIMES. 2) when trying to write this post so I'm really fighting for my life out here to get my silly little OC posts done. Also it's under the cut because it's looooong as hell LMAO

Firstly, you're so nice to me forever <3 Secondly, I think you've basically hit the nail on the head. The majority of the issues Maggie has coming back from death and her 9 years gone are really tied almost exclusively to her close family, because she... never really had anyone else. While in-universe it's only 9 years, realistically the jump in technology and culture is around ~20-30 years (Maggie died in the 90s/early 2000s essentially, and wakes up in a just barely futuristic city), but... the most jarring thing to her in terms of what she missed out on is just. Flipphones are no longer popular. Other than her family, she's only close with one other person... who just so happens to be a ghost, and therefore both 1. Wouldn't change much over the timespan due to how long she's been a ghost and 2. Unlike her family, was aware that something happened, since she could see the ghost-of-a-ghost Maggie left behind (The ghosts name is Opal, she positions herself as a sort of "guardian angel" figure, though she's not actually, and serves as just another parental figure for Maggie while also getting after the ghosts that constantly harass her to pass on messages to the living). Maggie has no real relationships outside of her family, and while her relationships with her family are massively impacted by her unknowing death, other than that... the timeskip itself doesn't weigh on her because she had no one regardless. Her struggle to adjust to everything thats happened would've happened regardless of the timeskip for her, because she was such an isolated shut-in that it's the same whether it happened the next day, or nearly a full decade later

So another very interesting thing is that you've actually completely seen where I was going with everything, in spite of everything I said being very surface level and not actually delving into the plot at all. I completely skimmed over Jenna (She's very important to the plot, but she's by in large a regular person as opposed to Maggie's... everything), but for some additional context, Jenna has a horrendously shitty homelife, so her moving in with Maggie is both a gradual process (It goes from spending time there, to spending nights, to eventually just never going back home and moving in fully), and also serves as an escape for her. Part of that is also, so vitally, the food aspect. For some additional additional context, souls essentially serve as a persons lifeforce, practically every bodily function is improved by a soul that's stronger, though the "strength" of a soul is essentially entirely random, and not dependent on the individuals actions of any kind. Maggie had a generally weird soul before (Seeing ghosts inherently means she has to have something going on with her soul), but when she wakes up after her death, her soul is now even weirder, and part of that is that it essentially lets her get away with bad habits she absolutely should be seeing more consequences for. She barely eats, and when she does, it's basically exclusively crackers and whatever other safe foods she has around the house, because actually making food is a level of care and effort she just... doesn't give to herself in the slightest. Part of Jenna staying with her is that Jenna, without really discussing it, entirely takes up the mantle of caretaker of the apartment, with the biggest task being food prep, Jenna sees Maggie's unwillingness to take care of herself and silently steps up and starts making her actual meals so she's eating properly.

The problem is is that this also kinda... just straight up sucks? Jenna doesn't think much of it, it's something that needed to be done so she's doing it, she wants Maggie to be well fed even if she won't do it herself, and she's already been responsible for making all of her own meals for years prior anyways, so it's just another thing she does. Except that's shitty! Maggie's seen firsthand how terrible her homelife is, and it really weighs on her how even in her escape from that, Jenna's still being put in a position where she feels like she must care for her or else she just won't eat properly. So food is such a massively important thing to both of them, it's this symbol of love for both of them, it's love on the part of Jenna, for stepping in and taking care of Maggie when she can't do it herself, and it's love on the part of Maggie, for realizing how her own bad habits impact the people she cares about and wanting to lift that weight by taking care of herself better. It's also very vital for Maggie because she just... doesn't... have hobbies. Learning how to cook becomes really her only hobby and she puts all of her love and care into it, because for the first time in a long while she's actually passionate about something! ...Unfortunately she also is very very bad at it. She's inventing new dishes like "Burnt Salad" and "Please Help I Fucked Up Kraft Mac N Cheese" and still having to have Jenna come in and help her. But it's the thought that counts, and it'll only be a matter of time before she can make something vaguely edible.

And finally, the stuff about names! I didn't post it here, but while idly talking about her in a Discord server I'm in, I definitely think that had I made Maggie like even a few months later than I would've done she would've been nonbinary. As it stands right now though, I'm saying she's probably some form of genderweird but too busy trying not to die to think about it <3 Growing up knowing that ghosts are real and routinely being shut down by authority figures in her life about it has made her very aware of how bullshit a lot of things are and how the people who claim to be knowledgeable tend to not know what they're talking about (Beyond just the "people don't think ghosts are real", she's also got ghosts willing to tell her when people are lying because they've got nothing better to do than just gossip) , so if she spent even just a moment thinking about gender as a social construct she'd instantly recognize that and probably take up some form of genderweird label, but as it stands she's just too stressed with Being The Protagonist to think about that

Now, the thing with Margaret. I'm not even going to lie to you, I think you made a better connection to how a name connects with community in terms of the narrative themes than I did. The thing with Margaret denying the name "Maggie" existed for two reasons, the in-universe explanation is that, with the little scrap of soul Margaret has leftover from Maggie, it's essentially working overtime just to keep her vitals working, it can't dedicate time and energy to making her an individual with preferences and a personality, so part of that is that she doesn't respond to "Maggie" because ultimately, that is not her name. Her name is Margaret and she's not going to respond to "Maggie" because "Maggie" isn't her name. Of course, out of universe the reasoning is that I wanted an easy way to distinguish between Maggie as she is the protagonist, and the version of her that lived in the years she was gone, so different names makes the most sense.

I think your connection to how name relates to community genuinely works on a level I hadn't fully pieced together myself yet and I really love that because I think that absolutely works with everything. One of the main conflicts of the plot is how Maggie is entirely disconnected from her family thanks to the years she was gone, with Margaret having no priorities beyond "survive", she basically never spoke with her parents or brother for years. While her family tried to reach out to her repeatedly (Especially given that, while they're unaware the truth of what happened the night Maggie was murdered, they do know something happened, and they believe that whatever it was severely traumatized her, and that's where the sudden and drastic shift in personality came from), there's a point where they just... gave up. She wasn't trying to talk with them or contact them in the slightest, so around a year or two after Margaret moved out, her parents gave up on her. Her brother would still be there a bit, but he also didn't really... try... anymore.

When Maggie wakes up, she tries to call her parents... and they don't pick up. They'd grown resentful over the years, and now that Maggie wants to talk to them, they don't forgive her for the years of not speaking to them, and aren't interested in whatever she has to say after nearly a decade of trying to reconnect with her and being met with nothing. It's her insistence that she wants to be called Maggie that actually gets her brother to realize she's telling the truth and that something happened. She shows up at his door, already something that Margaret wouldn't have done, and that combined with her being visibly upset when he calls her Margaret and tells him that's not her and that she's Maggie, it signals to him that whatever's going on is real (...though he would've figured this out eventually, given that she also literally 17 again and not in her mid-20s, and has a giant glowing stab wound in her chest). I think it works absolutely perfectly as being a symbol of community, her disconnect from her community is what led to her being called Margaret, and her desperation to be returned to that community is when she's Maggie again. So uh. Congrats on getting the themes of my OCs better than I did <3

And uhhhh closing thoughts! I honestly did still skim over the majority of the plot (Literally never even mentioned Eli or what's going on with her stab wound </3), but I think you reeeeally hit the nail on the head with everything I'm kinda getting at with these OCs, which is... frankly wild given how little main plot I actually got at. Basically everything I mentioned in my original post was the setup, not the main plot. But waaaaugh thank you for being so niceys to me and also giving me another excuse to ramble endlessly <3

[darkwood-sleddog]

how is your friday going because with me a five minute nip to the store to get lunch turned into an hour and a half + of struggle because i had a completely flat tire that was somehow still drivable until i was all the way away from home. fun.

[binders-and-beanies]

I once again can’t McFreaking Walk

[goowarlock]

Ough I ordered blorbo merch I'm so excited

[manebioniclegali]

Egotober, Day 21: Iris

So, I realize this prompt is bc of IRIS the organization.....but I wanted to draw/paint this so badly. Love the idea of Dark having heterochromia at certain times, and I enjoy drawing eyes, so this was perfect. My challenge for this month has been to use traditional/physical media and outline all my pencil drawings in ink (something I typically don't do), but I absolutely had to do this one digitally. Some other time, I'll paint the rest of the face that'd be visible and fix a few things.

Close-ups bc I'm very happy with this:

[gatheryepens]

When you make an impulsive decision and ultimately regret it.

[smilepebble]

*STUMBLES OUT OF PHOTOSHOP COVERED IN BLOOD*