#excuse me being back

[muppetfreak]

Mr. Riordan, it is truly a pleasure getting to experience your second draft.

[dawnofiight]

I offer to the public: Black Sam!

So. Erm. :D

Peep the way I didn't feel like doing plaid

Taglist:

@achios

@angel-shaw (I just felt like you should be @ ed for this particular drawing-)

@ashertickler

@aurorialwolf

@dukecollinsbf

@infinitelovewiithoutfulfilmentt

@moronkyne

@pandoraroid

@plaqying

@porters-fangs

@professionallyyappinabtangst (I literally just showed you this)

@puffin-smoke

@skunkox

@starlogician

@sunsickcrab

@themeridian

@tunacatfishes

@www-dot-why-are-you-here-dot-com

@zimix-whispers

[epicfirestormer]

(holds all three in my hands) I just think they're neat

[sysig]

Two skeletons in a trench lab coat (Patreon)

Bonus:

He’s very careful! Everything was fine before you interrupted!

[gingermintpepper]

Okay, let's finally talk about EPIC's Apollo

I feel very compelled to say, first of all, that I do not dislike Epic. In fact, I am very fond of Epic and have been following its production and status very eagerly! I attend all the launch streams, I watch all of Herrans' update videos; I am, at the end of the day, a fan and I want it to be known that my words are spoken out of love and passion as much as they are spoken from a place of critique.

So really, what my problem with Epic's Apollo?

In the briefest possible terms; the choice to have Apollo be defined by his musical aspect in God Games is thematically strange. And not in the 'oh well in the Odyssey, Apollo was important to Odysseus and his family so it's weird that that wasn't kept in Epic' strange, strange in the sense that Odysseus' character arc since My Goodbye has been getting more and more obviously Apollonian and so it is positively bizarre that when we get to meet Apollo, the god seems entirely disinterested in him and his affairs. So much so that he is not even defined by any station that would indicate that he has been watching over and protecting Odysseus and his family.

What do I mean by 'Odysseus has been following an Apollonian arc'? I'm so glad you asked!

Remember Them is the last song in which Odysseus explicitly uses his sword until Mutiny where he must use it to defend himself against Eurylochus' blade. He uses it to help enact the plan to conquer Polyphemus and, due to Polites dying in that battle, Polites who wished for Odysseus to put the blade down entirely and embrace a post-war life, Odysseus also retires his sword. This is an action that symbolically separates him from Athena - and the image of Odysseus as a traditional warrior set for him in Horse and Infant - as much as My Goodbye physically separates him from the goddess and her war-ways - from this point onwards, Odysseus will no longer be leaning on Athena's wisdom or methods to solve his problems. Likewise, he will no longer be able to rely on her protection.

Odysseus thusly solves most of his upcoming problems through diplomacy and avoidance. He approaches Aeolus - a strange and ambiguous god (both in gender and in motivation) and appeals to them for help. Circe too, he approaches not with wishes to conquer or for revenge, but for the safe returning of his men and an alternate way forward. In all of these scenarios, there is some Apollonian element which is subtly interweaved alongside the influence of other gods; it is with a bow and arrows that Polyphemus' sheep is slain (and thus it is this Apollonian element which is at the root of Odysseus' spat with Poseidon), it is a vision of Penelope that warns Odysseus that his men are about to open Aeolus' wind-bag, Circe's peace offering to Odysseus is to refer him to a prophet of Apollo who has since died.

In this way, Apollo is walking alongside Odysseus for all of his journey after Athena departs - even in the Underworld, he is guiding him. It is Tiresias' proclamation that is the last straw for Odysseus, it is by the power of a mouthpiece of Apollo that Odysseus decides to embrace his ruthlessness. It is with the bow and arrow that Odysseus subdues the siren who sought to trick him, likewise, Odysseus does not attempt to undermine or escape the fate of paying Scylla's passage price - he knows of the doom about to befall the six men and quite unlike the rest of the journey until this point, he does not fight against it. This all comes to a head on Thrinacia where it is a blade which sacrifices the sun god's cow and brings destruction upon the crew once more.

My point with all of this is that when I heard the teasers for God Games years ago, it made perfect sense to me that Apollo would be Round One - he is not Odysseus' adversary and has no reason to oppose Athena's wish to free him. From other teasers about what will happen in the climax of Epic, Apollo will still be walking alongside Odysseus - it is Apollo's bow that Penelope will give the suitors to string. Likewise, it is Apollo's bow that will prove Odysseus' legitimacy and identity. That bow will be the power by which Odysseus hunts his adversaries and cleans out his palace - it is Apollo who is the avatar of Odysseus' ruthlessness, not Athena.

So tell me, truly, what was the point of having Apollo raise a non-argument in God Games? Why have him appear unconcerned, aloof and slightly oblivious? Why have him appear in his capacity as the Lord of Music at all?? And if the intention was never to make Apollo an active player in Odysseus' life like he was in the Odyssey, why keep Odysseus as a primary archer?

The answer of course is that Apollo is inextricable from the fabric of the Odyssey - his influence and favour exudes from Odysseus just as much as Athena's. In Athena's ten year sulk, it would have been Apollo who kept Telemachus and Penelope safe. It would have been Apollo protecting Odysseus from Poseidon's gaze as he travelled the seas (according to the Odyssey anyway)

Forgive me for not being excited about something that I thought was being purposefully set up. I was extremely ecstatic about all of the little Apollonian details that litter the sagas because I know where this story ends up (loosely) but all God Games did was reveal that maybe those Apollonian details were not intentional at all, but merely the ghost of the Apollo who persistently haunts those he favours, even if he cannot explicitly come to their aide in an adaptation.

[gods-favorite-autistic]

Happy lesbian visibility week and autism acceptance month to Ayda Aguefort by the way

[starrspice]

Some things never change

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

most of you will not understand the agony of this outfit. but hey here's fantasy au Howdy!

rambles:

yes. i know. he looks like a gunslinger. but I think it'd be funny if Howdy shows up and he minorly tweaks the genre simply by Existing! plus, he has to make himself useful beyond being a traveling salesman - he doesn't have a scrap of magic in him! so! alchemist gunslinger!

due to much of this "final" outfit design being Miguel's (@indigopoptart <3 thanks for your help homeslice <3) influence, i have less to say than usual! i'll talk about the things i Kept from the first terrible, terrible draft!

i wanted him to have full-coverage gloves because One, gloves fuck, & Two, shooting gloves! plus, he regularly works with dangerous materials! gotta keep his hands as safe as possible! speaking of his guns, they were a Ton of fun to draw. i wanted to make them ornate... Howdy seems like he'd enjoy nice things? fancy stuff perhaps? anyway the guns have his tavern "logo" on them!

the "second safety" mentioned triggers a magic-oriented mechanism that allows him to piece the guns together! they "unfold" into a big ol clusterfuck of a powerhouse weapon! unfortunately, using this immediately breaks the guns and they have to be repaired, so it's a "break glass in case of emergency" ace up the Neighborhood's sleeve!

i like to imagine that his bandolier, while cool, stresses everyone out a little bit. each bullet is full of pressurized weaponized magic. If they break while on the bandolier, well! Howdy would probably be very much Royally Fucked! i also drew the bullets too large here, so imagine that there's a lot more than shown and they're a lot smaller. I didn't realize this mistake until right now! oopsies!

i want to keep elements of the canon outfits in these fantasy ones. hence why his vest is striped and blue, he's still got the reddish brown pants, and! why his cloak clasp is shaped like a tie! and why the inside of his cloak resembles his apron!

i like to think that Howdy got his magic pack by swindling some poor soul out of it! when the buckles are undone, it unfolds into a vendor stand that looks Much different than the tiny scribble provided! said scribble is there to ah... what's the word. Demonstrate? get the point across? it's actually quite a nice stall! he has space to sell, and a workbench to tinker on! the pockets on the bag actually do function as pockets, though.

[casualavocados]

#he doesn't want to fight with you ai di, he wants to Kiss🙄💘🥺

Nat Chen as CHEN YI KISEKI: DEAR TO ME (2023)

[frankenbuggee]

The salute of good luck🍀

Inspired by this chat.

[lunar-years]

Now why would she…

[aroaceleovaldez]

HoO is so funny to me when you actually think about the ages of all the characters. Octavian is 18. Percy and Annabeth are 16, almost 17. Reyna is presumably 16. Frank just turned 16, Jason’s about to turn 16. Leo and Piper are like 15. Hazel’s like 14 and a half, and Nico is 13.

The Death Sibs are both the youngest and oldest on the Argo II. Octavian is a college freshman getting into petty drama with a bunch of high schoolers. He gets told to shut up at one point by a random 8th grader. Everyone is scared of the 8th grader. We Sent A 13 Year Old To Superhell and he came back weirder, Just Like Middle School. TLH was just three high school sophomores being sent to do a task and it going Exactly Like You’d Expect. Percy’s the only demigod on the ship who can legally drive (though Reyna gets her drivers license at some point before TOA). What Is Happening.

[fulcrum-art-fox]

I do adore the detail that Aniseya didn’t even like the idea of Osha going off to be a Jedi and was still gonna let her do it anyway. She literally butts heads with the whole entire coven down to seemingly every last member including her wife and other daughter about it and then is still saltily like “you want to know if I’m going to let Osha be raised by an institution instead of a family” when the Jedi come for her. But she was still going to do it, even so; she was going to let her go, because it was what she wanted

[cottonfeltgembira]

Souyo Week 2024, Day 2 : I wanna ruin our [Friendship] We should be lovers instead

There's like. Two cute headcanons going on here... 1) Yosuke wears glasses cause he's a little blind.. he wears contacts outside cause he thinks glasses makes him dorky so he only wears them out if he's hanging with Yu in his room (and Yu thinks he's cuter with glasses...)

2) Yu likes to steal wear Yosuke's headphones, when Yosuke said Yu is good with his hands that actually meant he's stupidly good at nabbing the headphones away (with the mp3 player too????)

@souyoweek2020

[zrllosyn-art]

A naru sketch page. Because he is surprisingly fun to draw.

Inspired by a VERY GOOD TRANS NARU HC FROM @jelliefeesh (who also draws VERY good narus n also jus has super good art in general go check his stuff out)

The stickers are available for free download in both English and the original Japanese. If youd like.

[ragnarssons]

so... i wanted to be done with this watcher stuff. but then i saw on reddit that one of their eXCluSivE nEw CoNtEnT got leaked, you know "road files" which is basically a behind the scenes video for ghost files. which is a nice idea. ...................... but the video lasts 8 minutes. you pay, 6 dollars a month, the first video you get is an 8 minutes video. opening with ryan saying "well this could be the only time we do that". so. huh, not new exclusive content, then? - since they want to be compared to tv, let's compare that to a behind the scenes video/film some tv shows make, for example the star wars ones, on disney+, that are minimum at least 20 minutes long if not more, way more, like 45+ minutes. and then you have the bts elements of a ghost files. so now, i can truly say: i do not get how their ghost files' seasons cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars. like there's nothing in the video that warrants this video not costing them... like 20k at most. (and i mean that without counting paying the employees/crew, because i'd argue they do that with their general revenues, and not just their revenues out of the ghost files seasons). and that's without even delving into everything that's weird about how much money they're spending by making dumb shit like sending a "scouting crew" (of no less than 5 or 6 people, I don't remember, cuz that ain't too much at all) before them... you're ghost hunting, like what's the point of that?? and as i suspected when they switched to watcher, this video just proved how scripted, over-prepared the whole concept of "ghost hunting" became when they switched from buzzfeed unsolved to watcher. so you gotta tell me that the "unscripted, 100% natural" episode of ghost files, is actually made with like 10 other people in the room, behind the camera, the guys having entered and toured the "haunted building" like 10 times before the cameras start rolling, producers, crews and all and all having scouted the building (here, a small house) dozens of times already. legit. h u h ????? then they went to see dune 2, hung around in their hotel rooms, ate burgers, and the whole thing lasted two days out of their schedule... and then credits roll with no less than like 20 people credited for a behind the scenes video, where most of the footage is from ryan's phone. huh??? and that costs y'all hundreds of thousands of dollars??? and this is the "tv quality" exclusive new content we get if we pay the 6 dollars a month?? 🙃