#They're eloquence...

[thelostgirl21]

Malec v.s. Radskier exhibit #2

Awkwardable first introductions (complete with a full fledge gay/pan panic episode!)...

Full video

[canisalbus]

Machete and Vasco are so pomegranate-and-the-hand-that-slices coded. To me.

Pomegranates are seen as messy, bloody, inconvenient fruits. You slice or tear or bite and in return for your effort you come away underwhelmed, disgusted, and stained too deep to wash. The consumption of a pomegranate is a violent act of defilement, for both the fruit and the eater.

But that is because most do not understand how to open a pomegranate. They have little patience for the precise carving. They see no point in coreing the fruit gently, no reason to be reverent as they pull the quarters apart. When done correctly, opening a pomegranate leaves little mess. Your fingers will still stain, your knife will still slick, but there will be no pool of crimson drowning both you and the fruit.

The seeds are only sweet to those who understand the merit of a light hand and intricate slicing. Why put in so much effort for a food so bitter and clearly armored against consumption? Surely it must not yearn to be eaten.

(^insane about silly catholic dogs)

.

[deconstructthesoup]

So, I've been perusing the Good Society rules as written, and there's a very interesting thing regarding the roles of the player characters---what informs their situation, what explains their actions, what society sees them as. And while it's understandable that A Court of Fey and Flowers didn't include this, since it does kind of butt up against the fact that they're doing a hack of Good Society and regular D&D, I figured I'd try to pin down the roles that the PCs would've chosen had it just been a played-straight game...

Andhera: Without question, he is the Heir. He's a prince, he's eligible due to both his title and his wealth, but he's also bogged down by insane familial expectations. Pretty simple designation.

Hob: The Careerist is the one that fits him the most, what with him being both a military man and someone who actively works. This is a role that's very much inspired by Colonel Brandon, and seeing as Brennan absolutely put a lot of him into Hob (which we're all grateful for), I think this one is a safe bet.

Binx: Undoubtedly, she's the New Arrival---the mysterious individual who might have come back to society after a long time away or might very well be brand new, but they're clearly here to shake things up. Not very much is known about her, and she's going to use that to her advantage.

Rue: Honestly, they're the trickiest to pin down, but I think the Socialite is a decent fit---they do socialize with a goal in mind, and they do have quite a bit of secrets hidden under that shiny exterior. You could also argue that they're the Dependent, specifically of the Court of Wonder, but Socialite works better.

The Lords of the Wing: I'm grouping them together because, let's be real, they both kind of fulfill the same role of "I am the character who has a BAD REPUTATION and is STIRRING UP SHIT and EVERYONE EITHER HATES ME OR LOVES ME" (which is, of course, a joy and a delight to watch, and the season wouldn't have been the same without their antics). However, they're definitely different kinds of troublesome characters, and I'd argue that Chirp is the one who has the smarts, schemes, and follow-through to earn her the role of the Meddler (very Emma-Woodhouse coded!), while Squak's slutty, impulsive chaos is very much Hedonist behavior. And really, those are two roles you need to have some good old-fashioned Regency hijinks.

[skruttet]

omg they're gonna be making a blog post about moomintroll and snufkin's relationship 👁️👄👁️

[nocturnalazure]

[sealrock]

febhyurary, day 3: reborn

17th sun of the 6th umbral moon, 1577

it seems to me the main attraction of eastern thanalan is the so-called 'burning wall', riddled with corrupted crystals left behind by the calamity five years ago. but what drew me here was the lonely carcass of this goobbue, its insides naught but dust, but the flesh seared leather-tight by the sun, almost as if preserved. little animals, plants, and fungi have made a home within the giant, no doubt having lost theirs in the wake of the calamity. this was a relatively peaceful biome, an exchange of services. life dies, life is reborn. that is the cycle. the people of eorzea have gone through a rebirth as well, they have begun anew despite having lost everything. I can't help but envy them. within the confines of sharalyan, my home wasn't buried in ash, for it still stands, but not as a symbol of hope, but a shade of once was. it stands rotting like this corpse, its body in rigor and its insides empty of the lifeblood that once flowed inside it—that lifeblood being us. my siblings and I have not been fortunate to begin again, for we carry the dead on our backs. our home is our prison.

[cannibalismyuri]

The styling of these is so sleek, and they've straightened his hair for it too!

There's also a glossy/shiny element, with the lighting falling on his hair in the second picture and his shirt being a mesh/ribbed stretchy material that draws attention to the parts where it bunches up and serves as a stark contrast from a very no-makeup look, which is such an interesting choice for an editorial shoot. His lines are also very sharp here, and the pose is designed to call attention to his face, rather than the outfit. It is a kind of look-back photo, where at first glance, you're drawn to his face due to the structure of the shot, and then the shirt and lighting further intrigues you.

The first picture is also so sharp and clean with a clear silhouette and a very texture and contrast centred look. While the pants and blazer look like a more workplace outfit, his shirt is partly translucent and shows a little midriff, the material also being different from the rest of the clothing. His hair is also tousled in the first picture; which again serves to showcase texture (hair + shirt) and contrast (very sharp focus to face and midriff + differing materials of outfit elements). Due to the outfit being all black, it immediately draws the eye to the midriff due to the contrast of his skin to the color, and serves as a striking element of provocative styling.

Does anyone have any thoughts about how the styling for this, along with lighting and background is creating an atmosphere and portraying him?

[jasontoddenthusiastt]

The recent influx of “Jason is obviously a bad person. Look at how many people he’s killed” posts is 2x more idiotic because it runs on the same premise as “Jason is a cop symbol”. There’s an infinitely more famous example right next to him that people ignore entirely.

In the real world killing people is a felony, just as vigilantism as a whole is too. The same way Batman is a fictional character in a fake world, Jason is not part of the real world either. I think if you’re above age 10 you should’ve moved past the stage of trying to point fingers to try to determine a right vs wrong way to do illegal vigilantism in a world like the dcu while pretending it’s a perfect model of a real society lol.

Batman enjoys maiming and crippling people (bad things). Why is he working with cops and throwing drug addicts into prison after beating the tar out of them (bad things). It’s proven in the real world that that does not do anything to rehabilitate them and in fact costs the government billions of dollars and actually worsens the war on drugs (higher mortality & crime rates, and increased spread of infectious diseases). Yet since the authors constantly spoon feed you lines about how heroic he is people just eat that shit up, disregarding the fact that it might be utter horseshit irl and his morals wouldn’t make much sense either.

If ‘character doing bad thing’ is synonymous with ‘character can’t possibly be a good person’, then that should negate the idea that Batman’s biggest trait is compassion (although I think it already does for other in-story reasons lol, re: he tends to be classist and discriminatory towards people who commit petty crimes, calling them degrading names like “trash” and “bottom-feeders”. No amount of donating to charity makes you a good person if at your core you see poor/homeless people as lesser and you get a kick out of mocking them).

There’s far more evidence of Jason possessing all the good traits the authors keep begging you to believe Batman has. He patiently fed and cared for his dying mother all alone as a small baby/child. He literally fed groups of homeless people like a mother hen everyday while he himself was homeless, brain dead, and running on basic survival instincts. After finally regaining higher functioning in his brain and discovering the joker was still alive, one of the first things he cried about was the countless number of other innocent people dead at the hands of his own killer. If the only justification you have for why Jason’s a bad person is that he kills, that’s a weak and baseless argument for obvious reasons.

[radioactive-yuri]

i am on the verge of falling asleep so don't blame me if i'm onto nothing but if you think about it val and carson are both nameless characters. but she had her name stolen from her and replaced with her purpose ("valuable") whereas he willingly gave his away in order to replace it with something that granted him more power ("press secretary"). and we never get to find out their real first names because the people those first names actually belonged to died way before either character was even introduced

[walkthegale]

Shetland, 8x03

[lovelywingsart]

So I made a joke about this in discord And suddenly it wasn't a joke anymore

So I have a Reaper OC now I guess ALSLALDKAL-

Loosely based off of an Orb Weaver spider instead of the louse-squid thing Reapers usually look like because fuck that, I wanted a bit of variety, and also I love spiders. It's a bit smaller that the others but I mean. A small Reaper is still fucking huge.

Basically, It grew tired of its existence and the whole destruction cycle, and had initially taken interest with the destruction of Sovereign. It was smart enough to know Cam sure as fuck wouldn't join the cause, so made a 'deal/dare' for them to basically prove the organics willingness to go on given it's sheer curiosity on it (it would be easier to give in, after all) , and it would assist with the attack on the others. They manage to do it somehow, and now they have a Reaper... not exactly 'on their side', but close enough to where there's one less to worry about.

It does in fact die at the end of 3 with the Destroy ending, though it does so willingly and there's a good chance it sticks close to the Citadel in order to be one of the first to do so- i.e. proving that it actually worked.

I actually really fuckin love this thing please help

[maskedteatime]

sources tell me it is supposedly "Yaoi Day" so there is no better time than now to introduce these fellas...

the space dancer is atlas, run of the mill space dancer with a shorter temper but great vibes, and the cosmo dancer is orion, who is greatly fascinated with non-cosmo dancers and their behaviors

yapping below

that ends up being the reason orion falls in love with atlas, because his attitude and mannerisms end up standing out from the other space dancers, and orion being from somewhere deep in space both wants to know why atlas is special and also thinks he's absolutely beautiful (he needs to get his eyes checked seriously) so he always hangs around and bugs him specifically when the cosmo dancers go to their layer of space

for atlas on the other hand it took him a while to realise orion's intentions because he thought he was just being a nuisance (what with the space and cosmo dancers being rivals) but with orion being so chummy and having extreme cosmic swag he first knew something was up with atlas, and some time after that something was up with himself (😈)

could probably expand on this some time later. i wish i was a good writer so i could give them the romance they deserve

[teathattast]

Perfume came naturally from Paris

For cars she couldn't care less

Fastidious and precise

They're a Killer Queen

Gunpowder, gelatine

Dynamite with a laser beam

Guaranteed to blow your mind

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2024: June Wrap-Up.

Okay, y'all have Convinced Me--I'm going to start doing little wrap up posts! Behold: a shelf of what I read in June (not pictured: the bookmark at page 466 of ORDINARY MONSTERS, because despite having read two (2) books worth of book so far, I'm still not quite done with that one).

June was kind of a slow reading month for me (I did a LOT of writing, looking back--nice). I wanted to take OTHER TERRORS and THE ELEMENTS OF ELOQUENCE a bite at a time so the horrors and figures of rhetoric (respectively) didn't all run together. Both of those, much like A SHINING, turned out to be pleasantly leisurely wanders, whereas MONSTERS is kind of a plod.

I already did bigger write-ups for TERRORS and SHINING, linked in the bullets below.

OTHER TERRORS - ★★★★ Great bite-sized horror anthology with a really inclusive mix, as promised! I enjoyed most of these (always nice in an anthology!)

A SHINING - ★★★★ Weird fucked up heavy little book in translation, lit-fic flavored, but very approachable, I thought. Tiny enough to swallow in a sitting, but also kind of exhausting to do it that way? I'll definitely reread this one in the future.

THE ELEMENTS OF ELOQUENCE - ★★★ Fun romp through rhetoric! The examples were fun, and I appreciated the humor, but I also find myself still uncertain what a bunch of the figures actually ARE, definitions-wise, despite having read a book full of so many of them (I did just buy his recommended A HANDLIST OF RHETORICAL TERMS to help with that, at least, which is. almost entirely. definitions by volume). Neat thing to have on my references shelf, but it wasn't as excellent as I was hoping it'd be.

ORDINARY MONSTERS - 466/658 pages read; will report back later (but it's not looking good, folks).

[billpottsismygf]

Episode 3 of Dead Boy Detectives is the best one yet. The murder is absolutely brutal, but it's tightly plotted and has so many great character moments throughout.

This is the most attached to Charles I've felt so far. He's currently furthest down my list of favourites out of the main cast, but his performance was really moving this episode. I also loved how it highlighted his relationships both with Crystal and Edwin, and the jealousy that Edwin feels there. Interesting that that jealousy seems to go both ways, too, with Charles being the last to leave Edwin and Monty alone at the end.

Edwin and Charles are unlikely friends in a lot of ways, but I do buy it, especially when he occasionally makes Edwin smile. Here, Edwin is confronted with the fact that he actually doesn't know many of the deeper parts of Charles' life, and that he maybe hasn't shared all of his own. Really nicely done.

Edwin's sexuality crisis continues to be really compelling. I actually adore his dynamic with Monty. I know he's literally a plant by Esther, but their tiny interactions so far have so much chemistry. I also have Thoughts on why Edwin is more open to him than the Cat King, and it's the plausible deniability of it all. The Cat King was extremely upfront about what he wanted from Edwin, and Edwin could not quite bring himself to admit he even understood what that was. Whereas with Monty he's able to retreat behind his protests that "he is a boy and I am a boy, if anything he just enjoys ghosts".

Also! Crsytal and Edwin are becoming friends!!! Crystal's my second favourite character and I'm so happy they're warming up to each other. Edwin is such a spiky character but I love him and want everyone else to love him. On that note, him being understanding to Niko about her trauma also made me very happy. Edwin is not budging as my favourite character!

Small things:

Esther continues to have the best, most over the top performance. Perfect, no notes.

Niko yaoi enjoyer and general weirdo, I love her so much <3

[blackboxwarriorsbiggestfan]

...

Winnie and Angelica look like siblings

And I remember an ask blog where Coworker

was Winnie's uncle, so... now I believe they're all related-