#but its just staggering

[knxfesck]

It's very interesting to see anti-AI discourse among artists because it really proves that a large subsection of people think that art in any form other than The Noble Anime Fanart And Adjacent Work or The Tortured Suffering is simply not worth making and that artists that dont fit neatly into these categories are lazy, fake, underqualified etc. "AI is bad because it steals labor" and yet you just told someone to lower their commission prices because you don't think their art is good enough for them to be paid minimum wage. Hm.

[kkoct-ik]

finally scratching the skill cabinet itch

[hajihiko]

Fucked up eye club sticks together 💪👁

[trainingdummyrabbit]

thinking more abt dummyrabbit angela, couldnt get this scenario out of my head

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

Hey do you think ya can explain Barnaby and his illusion smoke a bit? It seems really cool and I don't remember if ya talked about it in depth before

sure! this got a bit longer than i expected!

so i was thinking that Barnaby seems like more of a hands-off kinda guy when it comes to altercations. would rather sit back and make funny commentary! so if he Had to get involved, i imagine it would be from a distance and still in an Entertaining Way!

thus - illusion magic! for this au i've been picturing that he got his paws on some illusionary herb in his early teens. for making people laugh, you know! and help out with the farm - illusions could distract animals, convince them to move on to different pastures, calm the chickens for egg-collecting, etc!

Ms. Beagle didn't really approve, since smoking is harmful, but lucky for the both of them this particular plant doesn't deal as much damage when smoked as normal smoking materials would - like tobacco! something to do with the magic properties! so Barnaby mostly used it for chores (when his mama wasn't paying attention, ofc - it's still a bad habit in her eyes) and entertainment purposes.

how it works: on its own, it doesn't do much when burned. it's not like illusions will waft out of the pipe's bowl, or that sniffing it will give someone hallucinations. in order for it to work properly, the user has to inhale properly, form the Intent of what the illusion should be / look like / behave, then purposefully blow the smoke out with that thought firmly in mind. the reach of the smoke depends on the force of Intent, and the intensity depends on the amount inhaled. those that breathe it in / are surrounded by it will see hallucinations of whatever Barnaby - or whoever the user is - wants them to! it can be literally anything! whether or not the target is fooled depends entirely on the individual, but the herb is potent enough that most are convinced that what they "see" is real (auditory hallucinations only occur if the target breathes in the smoke)

upsides: this form of magic is great for distractions, cover, deescalation, and that kind of thing. if needed, Barnaby could stop a fight with one exhale! it's a pretty powerful trick! it also means that Barnaby has built up a tolerance to illusion magic over the years, so where most of the party would be tricked, Barnaby would be unfazed. the only one with total immunity to the form of magic is Wally!

downsides: if Barnaby uses too much in too short of a time, it will get to him. and since he breathes in the largest amount - undiluted at that - it can fuck him up! using it sparingly / using repeated small amounts doesn't do anything. the most it will do is make him feel slightly untethered, but he has an easy time ignoring it / shaking it off.

in mild cases of the magic getting to him, it's like a bad trip. his proprioception is messed with (basically he gets uncharacteristically clumsy & off-balance), he feels like he's falling, anxiety spikes, and his vision is just... off! there are blind spots (im talking actual blind spots, not spots of black), things are moving in ways that they shouldn't, he has mild auditory hallucinations. the others can help ground him by talking to him, touching him, and confirming what's real and what isn't.

in bad cases, it's like that but 10 times worse. on top of all of the previous symptoms being worsened, he gets extremely vivid hallucinations, and they're very often not fun! it's a simultaneous feeling of dying, going insane, and not knowing what the fuck is going on. Barnaby loses sense of where he is, who's where, what's happening. he can get lost in the hallucinations - he has no way to know that they aren't real. in these terrible trips, no one can really help him. they can't get through the hallucinations, and if they do, the magic morphs Barnaby's perception of them and they end up adding to the effects. honestly the best thing for him is to let him rest somewhere with as little sensory input as possible & leave him be until he starts to come down. physical contact does help, since Barnaby understands on an instinctive level that illusions can't touch him, but it doesn't help half as much as it does w/ the mild trips. and again, the presence of someone can make the hallucinations worse.

so! suffice to say! he doesn't like using the herb all that often, and it's why he Stays Out Of It unless absolutely needed. he has two pouches of the herb - one with the strong stuff, reserved for emergencies / one with just a tiny bit of it mixed in with Barnaby's own personal blend for recreational/everyday use. (he also has an emergency tobacco stash in his pack, but that's only for when he's completely out of his usual blend <3)

extra lil scribble that didn't make it into the lil doodle post... i broke his wrist...

[3416]

1634 make me genuinely ill because there are just.... so few bonds in this sport where you look at them and go. that was 100% meant to happen like that and no one else could've slotted in. like yea, so many of players across the league form close bonds and friendships bc that's the nature of spending a whole part of your life sharing a common goal and space when you're like.. doing this team activity... and guys are constantly befriending ppl and moving on... but auston and mitch it's like. it's almost like THEY feel that they were supposed to have that bond... and go out of their way to reaffirm it at every turn... like they met and got along and loved each other immediately and were so excited to get to play hockey together only to NOT get to for a long while and while they waited, they ??? developed all these rituals. and these things together... their personal routines, things to communicate to each other that they have each other's backs and are building each other into their visions and superstitions and dreams, some of which we'll never know about (unless they'd so kindly like to tell us a la mitch's interview with cabbie where he says maybe some day he'll share the gifts auston's gotten him w the world. tell all book when mitch).. but their gloves and their handshakes and their warmups and even the way they walk into road games and it's jsut. like it's friendship, for sure, obviously. they get along off the ice and make each other laugh the most and have a good time, but it's also the inextricable linking of their own careers. BY THEIR OWN DOING. like they want their names jotted next to each other and that's PART of the chase for this greater goal. yes, they would have been talked about in tandem anyway bc they're out here being the best leafs ever and hitting milestones like 500 points.... 600 points... just weeks apart from each other season to season. but also it's their commitment to each other that makes them talked about too. it's commentators saying they love to play together bc they can see it. they've heard them talk about it. they watch it. "marner to matthews" "matthews to marner". they're always gonna know where each other are.... it makes me . feel. violent with love, lol. makes me feel like some things are definitely meant to be.

[wowitsverycool]

please i don't want my video games to be toys. if the point of your game is to frustrate me by god please do that.... i feel sometimes that games are held back as an artform by their need to be. like. Products. in the sense that they're expected to be entertainment first and art second, yknow? a game will get praised for its wonderful story, but only if that story supports a Fun gimmick. it's like the art in games is seen as a vehicle through which gameplay is delivered, and when gameplay exists in service of artistic intent, it makes that game a Failed Product.

[mandatory-blog-stop-asking]

I feel like the worst thing they ever did to Xavier's character was putting a mild version of him on a pretty popular cartoon and then a movie where Patrick Stewart played him, cuz it made people think the man never goes full-on "the salvations begins and ends with me" pretty early on in his character biography. So when they go to the comics and he's like, a pretty complex character doing bad shit to good people with a straight face on the regular since the 80s, they go "what is this character assassination???"

Like yeah there's been stories where he was the kind voice of reason who could do no wrong, but damn man, that guy's been canonically a "in my house it's clean mutants only" kinda white savior ever since like... the Morlocks popped up. It's a cool exploration of activism from a place of privilege that shouldn't be stifled by people being used to Captain Picard being above those things. That's an adaptation cleaning up messy aspects of the source material, but the source engages with that shit for a reason.

The guy just does what's on his mind as "the kindest thing to do" so often without caring what it does to others that the X-Men didn't even notice he had been replaced by Cassandra as he was monumentally altering their lifestyles by bringing the entire X-Mansion out of the closet on national television without a heads-up or accounting for their opinions, cuz at the end of the day, that's still something he'd do to them, without really minding what it does to their lives. Because in his head, it *is* his X-Men. He means it when he calls them.

People praise Magneto's 40-year-strong character arc from genocidal maniac to symbol of hope on the same breath they basically go "hey I wish Xavier was nicer", yeah that's the point of the character! I wish he was nicer too! Don't implicitly trust your heroes just because you admire them! They're people and people are fucked! Adapt to them or they might take you down a bad path while their idealism turns cynical and their unrealistic dreams turn into realistic replacements for oppression!

It's just a bit frustrating to talk about X-Men as it comes back into the limelight and having people go "I wish the messy character with complicated opinions and too-real politics was simpler like when I was younger." Like... yeah, I get it, but you can't talk about the traps of white people putting themselves above visible minorities as the example to be followed like that. You can't talk about people being thrown in and out of conflict due to imperfect leaders who they slowly stop agreeing with like that. You can't talk about how starting a movement shouldn't elevate you to godhead status like that.

Morrison knew about it and left us clues in their works, I guess is what I'm saying. Even if that story pretty much ruins Magneto, it does bring this side of Xavier to light pretty well. The adaptations making Xavier a perfect activist and a fair and reasonable leader who's always right and only loses when he's tricked doesn't quite have that PROFESSOR XAVIER IS A JERK energy that I find vital to the character.

[bleaksqueak]

I haven't been online most all day, and now I log in to see AI generated junk on the promotion radar. Ew.

[iamnmbr3]

the moment when you realize an ai would've written a better larry show than mike waldron bc an ai would've been trained on previous loki content and thus, unlike mike, would've actually watched the films

[jekyll-doodles]

mean to me 😑

[gameringgungke]

i haven't checked up on staggering winds in a bit, so i decided to do that real quick

i'm sure others have noticed by now, but the pfp changes depending on what video you watch. i even opened the channel up incognito so the cookies wouldn't be there. cute lmao

weirdly, most of the older content also has the altered PFP, although there's one that's the 'normal' pfp. so i'm guessing it's an indicator of who's posting or playing the game? i decided to make a bad chart in mspaint to show what i mean

e: looks like they've all been changed back to normal now. glad i posted this when i did

[voltrons]

i know that a majority of the characters in aftg with visible scars and injuries don’t necessarily have permanent or chronic injuries but it’s a nice change of pace to see fan art depict injuries and scars across the board. comics really shy away from characters being visibly hurt for longer than the story “requires” or showing past physical trauma outside of one off moments and it’s especially wild that characters so reliant on physical fitness aren’t regularly depicted with tools to aid in the upkeep of that. both in canon and in fanon??? for something with a plot as outlandish as cape comics it’s so refreshing to see scars and kt tape and braces be a mainstay in aftg fanwork. love u recovery devices. love u body maintenance tools. love u sports medicine

[rpfisfine]

i will literally never wrap my mind around the fact that i used to have a swiftie mutual who genuinely had some of the most sensible & informed & reasonable & interesting political takes ive ever read in my life but was such a diehard swiftie to the point that whenever a post criticizing her for being silent abt palestine or exposing her insane private jet use would blow up she would just be like "everyone underestimates the political influence she actually has" (wrong) or "it's not like anyone actually cares abt the environment anyway, you guys are just trying to find whatever reason to tear her down" (????????) like. it's so bizarre to me that you can be a seemingly all around normal logical person that's aware of the horrible state of the us and the world in general but whenever taylor swift is brought up your political beliefs suddenly go straight down the toilet and you will just excuse anything that she does for feminist reasons i guess it's legitimately terrifying like there's no self-awareness at all

[suffarustuffaru]

Reading your tags about how people miss the very obvious "there's some fucked up shit boiling underneath" regarding Otto, just gave me a sudden realization. Otto is the only character I know in fiction where they act all innocent and drive up the "clumsy", "just in the side-lines" and "straight-man (heh)" persona. When. Like no one's in the EMT camp is buying it. They know he's way more capable than he let's on. Meanwhile, the tomfoolery is completely brought on by the Western audience.

Like Otto is failing miserably to make other characters believe that he's not up to mischief, Roswaal even thinks it can bring his downfall. But the audience, who even sometimes *sees* his fucked up thought process, is buying it.

*head in hands*

no u bring up so many good points bc ive been really thinking about this for a while T^T its such an interesting phenomenon in the difference in perception otto has between the japanese speaking half of the fandom vs the english speaking half which can be explained by—yeah. media illiteracy mainly. im also putting my head in my hands anon T^T

because—okay sorry wkdndn im gonna get into meta again but hear me out bc this pattern of the fandom underestimating otto is interesting bc i kind of sort of i cracked the code maybe??? o.o i think the nature of otto is a character is that youre SUPPOSED to underestimate him at first, just like what happens sometimes in universe. i mean wayyy back then i definitely wasnt expecting him to get more depth added to him in arc 4–which was a pleasant surprise—which is also the reaction the vast majority of people have to reading/watching arc 4, along with the other vast majority reaction which is being a bit endeared to ottosubas friendship and respecting otto for being a good friend. and then its easy to underestimate otto bc of 1. all the chaos going on in rezero at any given moment and 2. hes almost always overshadowed by other characters doing worse shit or being more insane than he is and 3. otto of course damn well knows hes easy to underestimate and counts on that. thats what he did against roswaal in arc 4. plus—i mean even aesthetics-wise hes 100% DESIGNED to be easy to underestimate. his outfit and physical features make him look either friendly or frazzled or soft. so i think that the point is that we were supposed to be kind of fooled—at first.

because yeah, we’re endeared to otto. we respect him for helping subaru the way he did. we think that hes a nice person and we now support his actions especially after feeling sympathetic towards him after learning his backstory. (or at least the average audience member will think this wjdndn.) but like—you dont even NEED to look at any side content at all for it to dawn on you that theres something Wrong. with him. like all you need is main route arcs 3-8 aka ottos entire screentime thus far, because at arc 4 its so easy to overlook otto unless youre thinking a bit deeper (for example—he gets violent with subaru. like yeah its entertaining, its played for laughs a bit, yeah subaru needed to be snapped out of his own head, but was it 100% necessary??? why did otto have this response??? bc if you just look at the main timeline otto really decided to beat up subaru first. and bc this tendency is now Less Funny in arc 8).

but even if youre just looking at rezero face value, when you get to arc 5 its starting to get even more clear that ottos weird in the head. like we already saw him being very good at scheming and planning in arc 4–in arc 5, we find out about otto hiding the tome for a year. we find out WHY hes been hiding the tome for a year. the tome then leads the witch cult into priestella, so like—in the sense, otto is RESPONSIBLE for arc 5. but theres STILL a tendency sometimes for the audience to continue underestimating him even though by this point we’re getting more clues and many characters around otto, like you said anon, KNOW hes very capable. i keep wondering why this is, but arc 5 is, again, FULL of chaos and different storylines happening at once, so its so easy to almost kind of forget otto there in the background until he occasionally pops up again. plus otto serves an additional role as comedic relief sometimes—he spends all of arc 5 being bitchy and whiny (i say this affectionately HAH) about his camp being full of disasters, for example, so i think the natural response from the audience tends to be “aw otto!! what a silly guy!!” sometimes. you know? so its like. i think at this point some people tend to be like “yeah fair that otto was wary of roswaal and thats why he saved the tome…. anyway ooooh whats going on with these other plot points” wobsbss. its so fascinating bc—ok this might be my own personal experience but anyone reading this pls tell me if you agree or not—i dont think ive seen a lot of people actually even MENTION otto bringing the tome into priestella attracting witch cultists. and the english speaking fandom LOVES to go into certain characters’ wrongdoings so why gloss over otto????

the only explanation i have for this is that from arcs 3-4 underestimating otto is. kind of the point of his character UNTIL you get to arc 5 and the clues in the main story start seeping in even more. and also the western audience DOES have media illiteracy a lot. theres that too. just look at rezero content on youtube or reddit or fanfic sites or other things of that sort T^T but no yeah i think ottos nature as a character exacerbates it. youre supposed to start asking questions about him. youre supposed to start connecting the dots and then SUDDENLY its now EXTREMELY obvious in arc 7-8 and even while theres so much chaos going on its basically shoved in your face. arc 7-8 is just delivering on all the leadup that was arcs 3-5.

and i think that youve gotta be media illiterate for sure to NOT get that otto is not squeaky clean and innocent BY ARC 8. i think that ottos the deconstruction of the loyal best friend trope, and also a mirror into what subaru couldve been like if he decided to be more ruthless instead of jumping right to forgiveness and saving everyone, except sometimes that flies right over the audience’s head wkdndnd. it confuses me bc ive seen some people completely miss the point or completely agree with otto and overlook the Bad Parts of it or, you know, STILL think ottos perfectly sane—like T^T please.

and yeah so back to what you said about otto Not being underestimated In Universe—its such an interesting detail bc hes ALWAYS been simultaneously pathetic and Very Competent wjdndnd. but yeah no all of his friends have seen various hints and clues and evidence of what hes capable of. like even though he hid the tome from them successfully and even though hes hiding info now its INEVITABLE that its gonna blow up in his face one day. like you got characters like garfiel who literally saw otto punch the wall and break his hand in an unhinged fit of rage, julius who got snapped at by otto and while julius is a Bit naive definitely knows somethings off there, anastasia whos smart as hell and definitely knows not to underestimate otto, and roswaal who, like you said anon, literally went out of his way to stop otto from breaking his hand in another unhinged fit of rage and warned otto that he will literally be destroying himself if he keeps going on like this. its this fascinating dichotomy bc otto is NOT fooling anyone around him but at the same time his current schemes are mostly unnoticed—for now—which yeah i havent seen that in a lot of media!!! its an interesting balancing act bc people around him realistically know hes competent after seeing the Proof of that for the past couple arcs, but otto is still finding ways to try and Win…

which—again, the anger and violence is an extension of arc 4 otto!! this is the same guy!! hes always been like this!! ottos kind of stayed the same, deep down, this whole time and as an audience its ONLY shoved in our face with a big gigantic spotlight on it FOUR ARCS LATER, but it was hinted to all this time. and like you said anon—we LITERALLY see ottos fucked up thought processes. literally what sane person thinks any of that shit. its spelled right out for the reader HAH T^T which—yeah. media illiteracy…. and also this whole ask was a longer way of just saying that otto is VERY easy to see at surface level if youre media illiterate. but at the same time it should be very easy to figure out otto is A Bit Fucked Up bc tappei underlines it in bright red print!!! i think people sometimes just hang onto soft awkward silly otto and forget about the rest T^T either that or they dont think he cares about subaru at all. which. that phenomenon of thinking characters that do care about subaru Dont Care is also interesting to me bc why????? we’re at arc 8 and you STILL dont get it??? o.ooooo

but yeah apart from that….. i said this earlier but yeah sometimes some people agree with ottos realism in arc 8 which is. understandable, but the whole point is that he is EXTREME. with it. hes Not in the right here, but the same crowd that wants wanton revenge in rezero is gonna agree with that kind of stuff T^T ottos been lurking in the background so much so that tappei made it meta by doing the whole “walking in darkness” part of his character, so i guess people just. dont see ottos ACTUAL worst traits and instead think he would ditch subaru at the first opportunity or something. but at the point we are now, arc 8 ottos problem isnt that hed ditch subaru. his problem is that he would sacrifice the world for subaru. his problem is that he gets extremely angry at subaru for trying to do good. his problem is that hes trying to micromanage everything around him and is willing to sacrifice anything necessary to get what he wants. but sometimes people dont get that bc otto doesnt look sound or seem like a character thatd do that. the Underestimation part of his character is doing too well on. certain audiences. please T^T the soft and awkward and silly parts ARE part of his character just like all the Darker parts are!!!

additionally im also wondering if western audience perception of otto is also clouded by the fact that otto looks and sounds more feminine / androgynous and he doesnt have the appeal of Overt Power either……. he cant Really be waifu-ified… and he cant be used as a weird self insert like subaru…. and you Have to look at him closer to understand him…. and for some reason people dont tend to hate on him so aggressively, if anything people cant even see his actual canonical flaws half the time wkdndn so if youre not paying attention otto CANT be aggressively hated on bc theres nothing there if ur not looking at it….. and if youre not paying attention otto seems more “boring” compared to the others…… (not that people arent allowed to not have otto as a favorite character bc thats totally fair but im talking about the tendency to think hes Saner than he actually is.) but yeah these are just my guesses. i have no clue the western fandom is a little T^T some people unfortunately cannot read.

anyway. big thank you to the japanese fanbase for understanding ottos character more and making so much wonderful fancontent for him T^T also i think that we as a collective fanbase should stop underestimating otto in general bc its exactly what he wouldnt want and i think itd be really hilarious. <3333 make him explode with rage please

[shitpostingkats]

There are two, possibly three oneshots planned in the yugioh gc au for the sole reason of making sure the Arc V bois and girlies get adopted and happy endings.