#hanging thieves

[humblegrub]

hanging-thieves 😳

[ichneumoniid]

Let me in

LET ME IN

(Diogmites sp, 7/12/2024)

[inamindfarfaraway]

The Exorcists’ Masks of Virtue

The vast majority of Exorcists in Hazbin Hotel have a notable design element that other angels don’t: their masks are missing an eye. Specifically, the right eye.

I believe this is a reference to the Bible, Matthew 5:29. Jesus says, “If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.”

He’s being hyperbolic. Mr Free Healthcare was not pro-mutilation. What he means is that you have to be willing to make sacrifices to prevent sin. The context of the eye metaphor is him condemning adultery and warning that even something as easy, casual and small as a look full of lustful intent can lead to further, worse sin if you don’t notice your sin, hold yourself accountable for it and do the work to not let it influence your decisions. This will probably be hard. It could be very, very painful. Changing your perspective can feel as horrible as plucking out your eye, so many people can’t bring themselves to do it. But although it won’t feel that way in the moment, it’s healthier for our general wellbeing in the long run to abandon traits and behaviours that damage ourselves and/or others.

(You may notice that Jesus’s teaching that you can have sinned, redeem yourself by giving up sin and thus escape damnation is the founding principle of the Hazbin Hotel. You may also notice that it contradicts everything the Exorcists believe.)

The Exorcists seem to follow this idea of painfully excising badness for the sake of the greater good devoutly to the point of placing it above teachings like ‘Thou shalt not kill’, with their job being to remove sin, in the form of sinners, to protect Heaven. Hence the missing right eyes. They’re a declaration of moral righteousness and inability to stumble.

But the truth is that the Exorcists all have their right eyes. Their flawlessness is a facade. Underneath, they are untouched, think themselves morally untouchable and, as shown by their horror and outrage when even one of them is killed, would much rather be physically untouchable too. This perfectly represents their complete unwillingness to acknowledge their own faults, let alone improve. They are never the ones who sacrifice. They force the sinners to sacrifice and don’t compensate it with any salvation. They metaphorically rip out the sinners’ eyes, but still condemn their entire bodies as inherently, permanently sinful. So they’ll just have to do another Extermination to get the other eyes! And another one to cut off their right hands! And so on until there’s nothing left.

The only exception to the rule is Vaggie, both in appearance and character. Her mask has the left eye crossed out instead. Even before her expulsion, she’s set apart to the audience as an Exorcist who has the capacity to, shall we say, see a different side of things. Her mask having its ‘sinful’ right eye reflects her understanding that the Exorcist worldview is wrong.

When she almost kills a demon child, her hateful vision clears. She discards the part of herself that’s an unquestioning, merciless agent of death, terror and grief… and as punishment for what Lute perceives as treacherous weakness, gets her eye plucked out.

Of course Lute leaves her with only the ‘sinful’ eye. It brands Vaggie forever as the inversion, a perversion, of what the Exorcists are meant to be.

You know, all this talk of eye removal in the Bible reminds me of another line - ‘an eye for an eye’. Adam directly quotes it in “Hell is Forever”. He uses it to frame the Exterminations as Old Testament-style punitive justice; the sinners did harm and so they receive it. But putting aside the debate about how ethical the concept of revenge is, the entire point of taking an eye for an eye is that it’s proportional. The punishment fits the crime. If someone cuts your eye out, you shouldn’t murder their whole family in front of them and then slowly disembowel them to death. That would be the sin of wrath. You should just make them pay without excessive pain or collateral damage. This is the fairest form of revenge.

The Exorcists don’t do that! The Exterminations aren’t proportional to the wrongs of all they hurt, nor was Vaggie’s brutal punishment equivalent to her extremely mild insubordination. Lute literally takes Vaggie’s eye, and more, after Vaggie does nothing to her! That’s the opposite of the phrase! Adam and his soldiers are wrathful and cruel, deriving satisfaction from others’ suffering. But they just can’t stop going on and on about how disgustingly evil the sinners are, in total hypocrisy… despite some of the sinners being far better people than the genocidal Exorcists are… it’s like they’re obsessed with specks of dust in the sinners’ eyes when they have massive logs stuck in their own. Oh hey, that’s in the Bible too!

[sialiasnest]

re: honor among thieves D&D MOVIE:

cannot stop thinking about Themberchaud

i love him

next movie should be entirely from his pov

yes

and Jack Black should do his voice and narrate the whole backstory

yes

yes

Themberchaud is free . . .

[what-eats-owls]

Today is A Certain Broomstick's birthday, and so I have put together a playlist accordingly. You can find it here!

[veinsfullofstars]

🛸 Unidentified friend-shaped object🛸 

(ID: Kirby series fanart of Shadow Kirby interacting with Doc. Top left - SK wearing the Spark hat, giving off arcs of electricity and running for his life as Doc chases after him in his UFO, a metal claw grabber extended from the front, a thought bubble over his head showing a Charge Tank. Top right - SK flying away in Doc’s UFO, sticking his tongue out and waving cheekily down at the bespectacled rat, who hops up and down in steaming anger. Bottom right - Doc hovering in his UFO, a flexible metal arm with a gloved hand at the end extending from the underside and reaching for SK, in his own gold-and-gray UFO form, who looks up at the hand in surprise. Bottom left - Doc standing professorially in front of a projection screen covered in scribbles and simplified images of his UFO, blabbering on while SK, sitting in front of him, rubs his head in clear confusion. END ID.)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 (you’re here!) | Part 6 | Part 7 | Compilation

Sketch started btw 12/23 - 05/24, render started 05/28/24, finished 05/31/24.

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

I do kind of want to briefly ramble about Akechi’s rank 4 scene though because it kind of pleasantly surprised me?

So Akechi takes Joker to the jazz bar, which is his place to get away from it all, kind of his safe spot. His best options are when you give responses that show excitement and enthusiasm about the place, which is… aw.

Then the conversation segues into Akechi asking if Joker has a place like that, where he feels at ease, and all of the responses obviously reference Leblanc. First of all, that’s really sweet to have a kind of confirmation of that - Joker and Sojiro had a rocky start to their dynamic, but now he’s feeling like it’s a safe spot for him, and with Morgana there too, and the Thieves having come to visit a few times, maybe even more of a home than the one he left (though perhaps that’s pushing it?).

Secondly though, alarm bells were going through my head, because nowhere in all of this business does it seem a good idea to tell the detective investigating me where I live and am now operating my heists from. (Even though he probably could find that out easily… but still.)

So I picked the vaguest option, to be on the safe side, but little did I know that it doesn’t matter.

Because Joker tells Akechi about Leblanc anyways. Completely without player input. And at first I was a bit taken aback, but then it made a lot of sense.

For one thing, it confirms that Akechi is being genuine about this being his place to feel at ease. Not that I doubted that, but Akechi often says one thing and means multiple; he’s quite good at controlling the flow and direction of a conversation to get the info he wants. But that’s not the vibe I got here at all. He’s just… sharing it. Wants Joker to enjoy it the way he does. It’s actually a fair amount of openness, especially in that he’s never shared that place with anyone else before. And so Joker returns that openness with an honest answer and his own place of comfort - prioritizing returning Akechi’s honesty with his own instead of potential repercussions. Wild. I love it. And it tracks from their previous interactions.

Akechi downplays his skills by using his non-dominant hand, which Joker notices. Joker returns that (whether intentionally or inadvertently, I can’t actually say) when he puts his glasses on Akechi - the fake glasses that he wears, ostensibly, so as not to draw attention to himself. There’s a sense of honesty for honesty here, openness for openness, particularly from Joker. It’s just interesting.

[inflammatory]

like going to church. Except better. because theres drugs

[little-peril-stories]

sipofsnips 4/7: hanging

The girl tucked a stray curl of dark brown hair behind her ear. Beneath her sleeve, the ghost of a dark-lined tattoo peeked out. “That was quite a bold move you made there.” “Maybe you shouldn’t wear your purse hanging off your ass if you don’t want people reaching in,” I shot at her. I remember wondering how horrified my parents would be if they could hear me spewing such language. The girl tossed her knife in the air, watching it spin gracefully, then tucked it away and winked. “Gosh! If you wanted to cop a feel, kid, all you had to do was ask.”

The Prince of Thieves

[sunsetno4]

8 14 26 for Ven! :3

:D! Thank you kindly! Let's go! Questions are from this list too, since I took a break answering last night. I wanted to doodle more, oops.

8. Do complex puzzles intrigue or frustrate them?

Answered here! <3 But, mhm. Have a bonus headcanon? Anathema used to keep a lot of those silly nail puzzles around for Vendetta to play with during like hang-outs and parties. Ne loved fiddling with them and figuring them out, and it was easier to talk with people while ne was semi-distracted too. c:

Ven misses them, but kinda refuses to touch them anymore. The guilt is a bit too heavy. Speaking of!!

14. Would they agree with the term ‘guilty pleasure’? Do they have any?

Ohhhhh. Mhm. No, ne wouldn't agree with the idea of a 'guilty pleasure'. It feels very stupid to be guilty over liking something? Like who fuckin' cares, go read your stupid book (something Ven just undoubtedly said to some poor soul on the bus who was fretting too much and too loudly in their head and Ne Had Enough).

But most of their pleasures do feel guilty nevertheless, so what the hell does Vendetta know??? It's hard to untangle the typical notion of 'guilty pleasure' versus Vendetta taking nir ...let's just say workaholic nature too seriously. I think the closest thing would be nir visits to the Rangers HQ. Because there's a relentless background track of 'this is stupid this is pointless this is dangerous why are we doing this???????' every time Ven swings by, but Ven can't deny it does make nem happy, even if it's hard to untangle if just seeing Ortega (and Chen and Argent and Spoon) makes nem happy or if it's seeing the Rangers in shambles.

(It's the former, but the latter is easier to swallow.)

26. Talent or effort?

Effort, 100%. Any time anyone talks about natural talent, you can bet Vendetta is not so subtly rolling nir eyes as hard as ne can. Effort is always more attractive, and don't dismiss all the effort it took to get where you are.

[greendalmatian]

i lied abt not drawing anything today actually i wanted to draw them together for their shared birthday ;w; this was super quick so sorry for how messy it is orz

[eggs-can-draw]

Breath of the Wilds your Naegamigiri

[forgetriestowrite]

You are haunted by the narrative. I am haunting the narrative. We are not the same.

[dnangelic]

yeah, idk daisuke out of context this sounds kinda crazy

[mumblelard]

bobabo or gladys remembered

[mxrmaid-poet]

I love interlude!