#goodnight it's 1 am love that for me :)

[lovesickeros]

popping in randomly after almost an entire month just to talk non stop about the tsaritsa again everyone sit down.

specifically just thinking about the implications of tsaritsa's ideals originally being about love + the abandonment of those ideals to complete her goal of, presumably, destroying Celestia or whatever she's cooking up. to the point even her people don't love her and I probably don't even remember a time her ideals were of love. now it's all just ice and snow and cold.

which makes romantic fics w her even funnier because she's purposely removed this part of herself and suddenly reader walks into teyvat like they own the place (they do) and I can only imagine her reaction. angry, probably. because why you? what are you doing to her that's caused her hundreds of years of strict adherence to rejecting "love" both from others and to others to just. collapse. absolute shattering of her world and you probably don't even know it bc if nothing else she's good at hiding it. a lot of denial. tries to pick you apart and see what's makes you so different.

and oh she just hates it. she loathes it.

basically one sided enemies to lover trope because she can't stand you for a while but if you stick around she starts warming up to you and it makes it WORSE. so much worse. tries to distance herself but your just everywhere and it gets on her nerves because why does she love you? she isn't capable of love, not anymore. she thought she was.

g-d forbid one of the harbingers or PIERRO notices she'd never live it down. might even consider the implications of just killing you (she doesnt). worse if you know about it and act like a brat she will lose her damn mind

just the tsaritsa being an absolutely horrible mess internally.

[neolxzr]

i knew you'd come back (i never had any doubt)

[willowser]

the crown prince returns to his chambers late, late into the night.

at the sound of the handle knocking against wood, you're pulled from the thin veil of sleep you'd fallen under, wiping salt from your cheeks as you struggle to find touya in the dark. your husband is only a shadow, lithe and wavering, but an audible sigh of frustration leaves him, one you've become well accustomed to during the short period of your marriage.

perhaps you shouldn't be a bother—but it's been a long night without him. "my lord?"

his figure stops, and moonlight streams through the windows and tangles within his hair. ever closer, you can smell him, reeking of honey-wine and earth, as if he's been rolling around in the dirt. it feels as though the silence that follows your voice stretches on, unending, and you're waiting for him to say something to pardon himself, conjure up a feeble excuse as to why he's avoided you— again.

but instead the crown prince says nothing. slumps down onto the edge of the bed, keeping his back to you as he always has.

of course you'd have been a fool to believe an arranged marriage such as this would have brought you any happiness—but you're so angry. all the effort you've put into being perfect, just as your mother taught you; reserved and well-mannered and patient and forgiving and ready to serve and—

"'s'true?"

you look away from the window, and the kingdom you've been chained to. away from the prisoner that's been chained to you.

"yes," you murmur, eyes on the hands you have resting atop the slight swell of your belly. the bedframe creaks as touya turns, breath halting at your admission; you hate to speak any further and strangle him—but you won't further the fracture between you by keeping secrets. "though the midwife believes it will be a girl."

the words hardly make it out before your tears are returning, throat thickening. already it seems you've disappointed him in more ways than one, and now you fear your ability to produce him an heir: your one and only purpose in this marriage.

your emotions run wild, and though he is drunk and most likely furious, you can't stop your blubbering. "i'm so sorry, my lord. i will pray to every god there is that he give me a son so that i will have been some use to you—"

"stop."

startled, you gasp, looking up as he worms his way further up the mattress. as soon as he's close enough, his hands are finding you, however they can: running along your hands and up your arms, one slipping behind your neck and the other covering yours, over the growing child in your belly.

"stop, stop," the sway of his head is slow but firm, and when words fail him, touya lays his forehead against yours, as he does when he is over you in bed, spent and sweating and vulnerable. his tenderness is few and far between, but not completely unknown; perhaps such a spark is what gives you motivation to try for more, again and again, with him. "no, you'll not."

"my lord, what—"

"stop," touya's jaw flexes in the candlelight as he steadies his voice, hand flexing in your hair. "will you stop fuckin'—can't you be my wife, just for once?"

a hot strike of anger has you rearing from him, mouth falling open as his eyes go wide with—amusement? "i have been trying—"

"my wife!" your husband interrupts, slouching forward until his head rests against your shoulder. breathing you in, tenderly, before speaking softly. "not my slave or my keeper or a doll i'm meant to leave on the shelf."

a gentle kiss to your throat has you softening and you turn just slightly, allowing your cheek to press into him. it earns you a quiet hum, a murmured, "there y'go," and you think he might be falling asleep until he straightens himself, gazing down at you with bright eyes.

"i don' really give a fuck about duty or havin' an heir," on top of your tummy, he squeezes your hand, soft smile growing on his face. "i just want my wife to be happy i squirted a baby in'er."

"t-touya!" heat rushes to your face as he laughs, dragging you back with him as he falls into the pillows. the hand he keeps on yours is warm and the smile he presses into your skin is wide, full of something you have only seen in bits and pieces.

free and untethered, for maybe the first time.

[torchickentacos]

Catching feelings? WRONG. catching bugs 🐞🐛🐜🦟🪲🪳🦋

[goombasinastack]

splatoon 3 hot take turned impromptu essay

was stuck offline in splatoon 3 because internet was actin up and i realized how pretty the photomode splatoon 3 filters are compared to the actual game

i was taking photos on brinewater and thought. damn. this game looks fine but i miss how VIBRANT splatoon 1 was! i wish i could play sploon 3 with this photomode filter on all the time. and brinewater is the best map for this because of the sunset lighting! so i went to one of the worst offenders mapwise for general color—undertow spillway. it is a warm gray mess:

for someplace underground, it’s WAY too warm of a tone—even if there are skylights, they aren’t very well defined, as they’re off in the background—they’d be better with some light shafts to pop out more, imo.

so here’s undertow with photomode filter #6 (this would’ve been a video but tumblr limits to 1 video per post):

and i think this looks a lot nicer, colorwise! the icky warm gray is shifted to a soft pink—and while that’s still not in keeping with the lack of obvious skylights, it works better than warm gray.

so then i opened ibis x paint and got to work on a filter that would hopefully help elevate the entire game’s look:

on top is photomode filter #6, in the middle is the original screenshot, and on the bottom is my proposed filter.

i upped the contrast, brightness, and saturation a bit, then added a 5% pure magenta (#FF00FF) overlay layer on top of that. then i added a slight gaussian blur to emulate antialiasing, which nintendo refuses to do for some reason!

and i wanna play splatoon like that! i miss the vibrancy and intricacy of splatoon 1…

incoming splatoon 1 essay‼️

not only were the colors eye-bleachingly bright, but the overall game feel was much more immersive—especially in ink physics. you could paint trees, and the ink would drip down through leaves as if it were rain… ink splatter would respond to the movements of platforms, keeping its intertia as it dripped! you could see the textures of surfaces through the ink, as if it were an actual liquid instead of a layer of thick oil. 3 doesn’t have any of those special touches.

there’s also the music… 1’s ost feels so much more WEIRD and experimental than the later games, and that really helps cement that this is not human society—this is a new thing—which tracks for splatoon 1, as it was so zany nobody had ever seen anything quite like it before! splatoon 2 follows this sheer melting-pot of brashness and creativity with evolving and varied styles—where once was punk and weird samples in Squid Squad is now groovy rock in Wet Floor, jazz in Ink Theory, and also whatever Sashi-Mori was. also i <3 chirpy chips. splatoon 3’s music goes back to that punk, but i feel that it loses some of the charm and creativity of the first two games. C-side is pure metal, and hardly uses any weird instruments. there have sparsely been other splatbands involved with regular battle music—Yoko&tgb call back to the jazz of Ink Theory which i love! Off the Hook’s new tracks delve into a new style in piano rock. but the main band kind of falls flat to me. :(

let’s talk stages. in splatoon 1, stages were wildly different from each other, including skateparks, construction sites, underpasses, malls, sewage plants, and other locals that are culturally underground. the rest of the trilogy moves away from this in a story standpoint, as ink battles evolve from punky, diy competitions into full-fledged championships in 2 and 3, with advancing battle infrastructure as time progresses. that’s fine, and honestly it’s cool to see that kind of worldbuilding! but in 1, each stage was designed about and influenced by the area it represented. Arowana Mall is a straight line with high vantage points on the second/third story because it’s a mall. Pirahna Pit features convenyor belts that shuffle refuse around because it’s a trash plant. Blackbelly Skatepark has so many hills and valleys because it’s a skatepark, for goodness sake. splatoon 3’s original stages have some of this charm, but it feels lost in ambiguity. why doesn’t Mincemeat Metalworks have small moving platforms on cranes or other heavy machinery? Idk, have some grates and one-way drops, and a car on a post. why isn’t there any water incorporated into the stage design of Brinewater Springs? Idk, have 2 paintable walls and a tetris piece. 3’s original stages have little to no connection between their locals and the geometry, which make it feel same-y compared to previous games.

maybe this is because of the inflexible philosophy of the designers—or their corporate oversight, maybe. for stages, you need to make a straight line or tetris piece with few routes to push, in an effort to promote the game’s main premise of Chaos. for music, you need to make punk songs that aren’t too weird so they don’t drive away the parents. maybe the little ink touches could have been missing because development was rushed?

i honestly dont know why it happened out this way—perhaps the splatoon team just needed more time to cook, in order to squeeze out that extra 20% of game feel? or maybe it was that speculated corporate oversight, i dunno. things WERE missing on launch—notable exceptions being X rank, online tableturf lobbies, and no more than three salmon run maps. i know we’ve yet to even get the DLC but for being about 75% of the way through the game’s content lifespan, but splatoon 3 feels incomplete. there have been improvements, yeah! i just wish there could’ve been more. i would rather have waited another year for splatoon 3 if it were polished that much better, y’know?

i honestly feel like splatoon 1 captured that creative, no-holds-barred mantle of Chaos better than 3 does. 3 feels… flanderized, in a way. the curse of trilogies, perhaps? writing about it more, it feels like not only have the in-game sports of turf war been ripped out of its seedy home and thrust into the spotlight, and gone “mainstream” (see: massive squidsport companies investing in multimillion battle lobbies with holograms and lockers [sunken scroll about that!], flying coffee machines that grant you brief invincibility, new rules and techniques that allow squid surges and rolls, etc.), but also the Real Life Physical Video Game Cartridge of Splatoon has been popularized massively with the sequels on the Switch. maybe i’m not missing the “vibrancy” of splatoon 1 when i look at the colors and photomode filters of splatoon 3, but instead the inherent punkiness and counterculture inspiration that i see in the original.

fuck capitalism, i guess!

[cashweasel]

They were created in a lab to be friends. They were petri dish neighbors

[svampira]

doodling elias' sire😌

[cautiously0ptimistic]

𝕄𝕪, 𝕞𝕪, 𝕥𝕙𝕠𝕤𝕖 𝕖𝕪𝕖𝕤 𝕝𝕚𝕜𝕖 𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕖;                                          𝕀'𝕞 𝕒 𝕨𝕚𝕟𝕘𝕖𝕕 𝕚𝕟𝕤𝕖𝕔𝕥—                                                                            𝕐𝕠𝕦'𝕣𝕖 𝕒 𝕗𝕦𝕟𝕖𝕣𝕒𝕝 𝕡𝕪𝕣𝕖.

[plexippusangel]

About to hand weave this man a potion carrying pouch in his character colors. I was already thinking about it. And then was like no. It's too early. I'll just give him a bit of the yarn my pouch is woven out of that I hypothetically would use as one of the components as a favor to wear for the tournament. I will be normal. So normal.

AND THEN HE GAVE ME A HANDMADE POTION CARRYING POUCH IN HIS BLUE THIS MAN MATCHED MY FREAK AND I TEMPORARILY SCALED BACK

gonna stay at 100% freak going forward

[caffeiiine]

one more thing thats been rotating around my head:

my school anime club hosts an anime con in the spring and i am genuinely so excited bc club members are staff amnd we are hsoting it! and i can host a panel!!!

[meekswillinherittheearth]

guys i promise im working hard on that masterpost about what all the poets are like in my dr! i was working on it and only had one of them left but it glitched and made me lose everything i had written for 3 of them T-T

[astrxealis]

me rn having the biggest hots for leon kennedy and astarion sorry LMFAOOO <3

[e77y]

Completely almost forgot to apply for that internship I was interested in.... Applications close TODAY BTW. Like. It said "no later than May 1" and I am typing this at 12:01 am on May 1 lmao. I emailed it at like 11:59 on April 30 😭😭😭 Unfortunately the one I really wanted already closed, but the same company has dozens of internships with different departments, so I picked the easiest looking one lol. It's also the one where I would get to post on their Tumblr blog yippee!!! Fingers crossed 🤞

[kellystar321]

.

[its-actually-minicika]

Me, as I reread my draft for THW and go over Aemond's inner thoughts, even though I was the one who literally wrote them in the first place:

What the hell is wrong with him - how can he be so obsessed with a woman but still remain borderline misogynistic??

[itadore-you]

ARE YOU, LIKE ME, ALSO VERY MUCH SLEEP DEPRIVED?

here are the main mistakes that YOU probably make DAILY and should AVOID at all costs:

"I'll just read the first chapter! who knows if ill even like this story! how interesting could (insert AU) really be?"