#context-> i been thinking

[rivilu]

Ooo...

[setaflow]

The dichotomy of Brennan helping with ability score rolls for newer players:

Titan Takedown: Preps high-level base stats for the cast, with everyone having a 20 in their two most relevant ability scores and no one really having a genuine dump stat (no one's character has below a 14/+2 modifier in any ability), which allows the players to play to their class strengths and not have to worry about fucking up as much in a shorter, tighter campaign.

Fantasy High: Ally Beardsley rolls a 4 for Kristen's Dex and has to live with with the consequences of that for 6+ years

[chloesimaginationthings]

Cassidy loves to scare the FNAF night guards..

[itsbasicallycanon]

was reading little kid with a big death wish (@remedyturtles) and wanted to play around with visualizing leo and sensei's headspace and putting it alongside the outside world and i'm mostly happy with it so i'm posting it

[egophiliac]

crossing my fingers and wishing upon every star that chapter 10 finally brings us the tweel cards 🤞🤞

[yhwcomeback]

Decided to test out Krita for the first time, still getting used to so many brushes but I like how this one turned out

[vigilskept]

this whole idea in both the fandom and the games themselves that being a people attached to their past & a lost civilization is a failing whereas a celebration of the present is something to strive for wrt elven & dwarven culture is something that reads as fundamentally western & liberal to me.

[lazylittledragon]

i'm in one of those phases where i really wish i believed in manifesting and spellcasting and things like that bc you know when you want something so bad you're literally praying for the universe to let it happen

[bixels]

tarpit site.

[starry-bi-sky]

im dedicating this to @detectivedarling. i felt inspired after seeing their little ficlet yesterday sadhjfl 🫶

-

Danny's grip on his cane tightens.

"What—"

His voice cracks. He stops, clears it, then tries again in spite of the nausea twisting in his gut. "What are — you, uh, watching, Bruce?" He sounds horribly far away.

Bruce doesn't look at him, his attention laser-focused on the screen. Which is— fine. It's usually not a problem, Bruce gets like that when he hyper-focuses on a case, and unless it's urgent — or he's been at it for hours — Danny sees no need to pull him away from it. He likes the quiet camaraderie they have, it's companionable and unique to the two of them.

He wishes he was right now though. Looking at him, that is.

That way he wasn't watching what was clearly one of Danny's ghost fights. One of the nastier ones, if the collateral damage and rubble on the street is of any indication.

Danny tries to remember which one that is. He shuffles a little closer to the desk, ignoring the rock in his stomach or the ugly weightlessness in his arms. It's not the blood blossoms, that much he knows. He just recently had an injection so it shouldn't be bothering him this soon—

So it's just nerves. Perfect.

Most footage of his fights are— messy, at best. Unusable at worst. Amity Park was obsessed with appearing 'normal' when they first started happening, and typical news stations censor the worst of the fights anyways for publishing, since they can get pretty gory at times. And ghosts move too fast to be caught on regular standard cameras, not including distance and light and—

That is to say— finding usable ghost fight videos is hard.

Danny wonders how Bruce got his hands on this one, and then stops wondering.

The audio is muted, which is - good. Good, because the fight is ugly and chaotic and clearly this was taken on someone's phone. Fuck, he can't remember if he ever saw that before — clearly not. They're hiding behind an overturned car, and Danny grits his teeth so he doesn't tell that idiot to run.

The camera turns up, and focuses on two figures in the air. It takes a few seconds, but when it does, Danny gets hit with a wave of vertigo. His grip tightens and he leans heavily on his cane, he waits for the black dots to disappear.

He- uh, he remembers this fight now. Uh, sort of.

He remembers being twelve at the time, and he remembers some of the injuries he got out of it. His eyelid spasms abruptly. This ghost wasn't one of his regulars, so he doesn't remember whatever name they had, barely remembered what they looked like up until- uh. Now.

Was he always that small? Well— Phantom's never been particularly big, perks of being a dead kid, but— it's - different. Seeing it from an outsider perspective. Was he that small? Or is it just because he's wearing a jumpsuit clearly too big for him that casts the illusion of being small?

Doesn't really - matter. Now. He can't access his ghost form, and he already knows the answers to his appearance.

Phantom is clearly bleeding, viscous and violently green like the bubbles of a lava lamp, clutching onto a limp shoulder that's missing an arm from the elbow down. Half his face is drenched in similar blood, the eye on the drenched side is closed — not because he can't see through the ectoplasm.

Danny's memories of that fight slowly come in a bit clearer. Right. He took a pole to the eye in that one. That had - hurt. A lot. Getting an eye gouged out usually does. It and the missing arm took hours to grow back.

He rubs his eye with his palm for no other reason than it itches.

The other ghost isn't untouched of any injury either, but he's not in a state of dismemberment like Phantom is.

Danny drops his gaze down at Bruce, whose sitting in his chair with his hands threaded together, looking so tense that Danny half expects to meet solid steel if he were to touch his back. His face is - blank. Terribly blank, with an intensity in his eyes that Danny doesn't see often.

He looks terribly distressed.

He opens his mouth, and finds that nothing comes out. His throat is thick with an ugly, tar-like feeling that makes his eyes sting. Kinda reminds him of when someone wraps their hands around your throat and presses. He closes his mouth, then tries again.

"B—" hhhhhh, "Buzz."

Finally Bruce looks at him, one hand slaps the space button on the keyboard, and the video pauses. His expression doesn't shift, but there's a weight in the lines of his face that reminds Danny of a set of weights sagging.

He looks quite like he's grieving something.

Bruce opens his mouth, his voice comes out terribly soft and heartbroken: "He looks like you."

Which is— a terrifying sentence in and of itself. One that makes Danny's legs shake and ignite his ragged, poison-chewed nerves alight with the need to run. An instinctive urge to deny, deny, deny.

How could he? He could say, that's a ghost, Bruce. I'm not a ghost. He could crack a joke, and ask, 'do I look dead to you?' or say something about how he knows that his parents studied ghosts, but that didn't make him one.

He could say that, and he could say it knowing full well that Bruce would see right through it. He'd probably let Danny too.

Danny closes his eyes. They sting, you see? So does his nose, right in the back like someone popped him in the face. And his throat is thick and gross and like someone stuck a spider, the big fat tarantula kind, right down into his esophagus.

He breathes in — through his mouth, because his nose stings and so it'd be best not to irritate it further with air — and it's terribly shaky and uneven. But it clears a pathway to his lungs big enough for him to say — whisper, really:

"You know, I think you're the first person to notice that."

[akkivee]

they've been potentially changing a lot with the shadow manga, but since maria's final words to shadow were how she loves him and amy's conversation with shadow in the joypolis collab was about how he is loved, i like to think sonic team is still hinting at amy's ability to touch his heart lol

[lucabyte]

stray thoughts

[egophiliac]

listen. people have always debated which character is the most normal guy but what if it has in fact been crowley the whole time. no string pulling no master plan just a guy who wants to keep his school running and is cursed with problematic students and incidents

honestly I think the funniest possible reveal would be one of two options:

ONE: Crowley has no plot relevance whatsoever. he wears the mask to cover his receding hairline. his darkest secret is the bottle of "medicinal" whiskey under his desk. this man can barely plan a PTA function with six months' advance notice, he doesn't have the time or patience for any kind of overarching master plot involving mutating students or whatever. the only thing wrong with him is that he's been running this school for (mumblemumble) years and, quite frankly, if you'd been putting up with NRC students for a couple of centuries, you'd have totally checked out by this point too.

OR

TWO: Crowley IS actually Raverne and HAS been slowly enacting a master gambit...to embezzle school funds. the overblots are still completely incidental. he has somehow less idea of what's going on than we do. we confront him about it and he's just like

[fridayednoon]

playing with my touys again

[shutupineedtothink]

Siuan & Moiraine and some 3x08 thoughts (positive)

Hoo boy I don’t know if I should be saying shit but I’m gonna!

I get being angry about Siuan, and tbh yeah idk if showing us her severed head was necessary.

But as for this being kill your gays? Y’all, at least half the people in this show are queer, and this is a world where people die, often violently. I would imagine this is a world where a lot more people, queer and otherwise, are going to start dying a lot more frequently if we get subsequent seasons. And even the most powerful people are not immune to that. To quote another witch, Death comes for us all.

And, truly, as much as I love them, this story does not center around Siuan and Moiraine and their relationship, and it has never promised a positive outcome for them. In fact, the show has been telling us from the beginning that their love will not save them. It’s kind of their whole thing.

It’s always been very obvious to me that they were never going to get a happy ending or make it til the end of the show. Now, I’m someone who thrives on those stories. I live for the bittersweet, the sad song that somehow also expands you and makes you grateful to be alive, and that’s what they’ve always been. “In this life or the next.” “I thought we’d have more time.” “We always think that.” “Then I’ll find you, in the next life and the next, until we get it right.” “And I will wait for you, every time.”

To me, THAT is a far more powerful, far more human, far more romantic and beautiful story than a happy ending. Not that happy endings aren’t good too, in some cases and as we know it’s not cool to have every queer love story end in tragedy. But we do have those happy queer stories now too. We do live in a world where they exist more prominently, and different kinds of people are making more different kinds of stories than ever. This particular one just isn’t meant to be happily ever after. And it never was, it never pretended to be. If you got your hopes up and now you’re angry and sad that this was the ending for them, I get it. Feel those feelings, they are valid. But I don’t think the show is wrong for this choice. I think their story was always heading in this direction, and it was always going to break our hearts. And it’s no less beautiful for it.

So basically what I’m saying is yes the kill your gays trope exists. But there is also nuance to be had here. In a world where we have so much more diversity in stories and representation than we ever have, its no longer that one way is right (happy endings for the gays) and another is wrong (tragic endings for the gays). There’s more to it than that. And when the writers have been telegraphing a bittersweet story for Siuan and Moiraine for as long as they have (and pressing hard on that throughout this season particularly), I can’t be mad about it.

Now I’m a show only and I can’t speak to what happened in the books vs. the show re: Siuan’s plot line. But if I die on one pop culture hill, it will always be “do not judge the adaptation by how closely it adheres to every single bit of the source material.” This adaptation, more than just about any other, simply cannot afford that with the constraints of adapting a 14 book series into an 8 season tv show, with 8 episodes a season. And yet incredibly, the source material itself gives us the in-canon solution: this is a universe with multiple versions of the same story, multiple turns of the Wheel. When you start seeing it as that, as a variation on the book series, which itself is implied to have multiple versions in other timelines (if I’m understanding correctly), then here we are. The show is not the books. It must stand on its own, it must make its own choices.

You may disagree with the choices the show makes, but don’t disagree on the basis that it’s different from the books. It has to be different from the books, full stop. That’s what adaptation literally means. It means change. I would go on to say that the best adaptations make choices/changes based on the constraints and opportunities of its medium, which is also happening here (actors having to leave the show and move on to other opportunities, so do we let them go out with a bang or not). But I digress.

Now as far as the race politics at play here. Oof. I get it, I see it. And this might be where I shoot myself in the foot. But again… there has to be nuance, right? To me, Siuan stood in her power until the end, even as her sisters turned on her and the Dark closed in. (The sort of reverse parallel bookend of this to Liandrin’s trial in 3x01 is crazyyyy.) She declared herself for the Light and she did not back down even as everything was taken away from her. She shook Elaida to her core, I have no doubt about that. And she said I am the daughter of the river. I am the water itself. You cannot break me. Death is not the end. It is only the door to the next turning of the Wheel.

Also, we had another black woman in this episode who was literally chained up by a white woman and thrown into the sea to drown (talk about making a Choice), who finally found her power by calling on her own advice as a mother to her daughter (aka her inner child?), freed herself from those chains, biblically parted the damn sea and walked out claiming her space and strength as the most powerful channeller in a thousand years. I’m not saying Nynaeve cancels out Siuan. I’m saying they both exist in the same episode, in the same world. Nuance.

If you think I’m wrong, you can tell me so. I would prefer you did so nicely. I’m always open to changing my mind. But there’s what I think for now.

[queeniehostapasta]

Anyone remember that at one point Veggie had some really badass looking scars? R.I.P😔 getting rid of his gremlin size is one thing, but this! Too far…

Not particularly from canon but Bulma has one to show off too! (iykyk)