#he used to care a lot about his looks

[lazitoelgato]

I can feel your kiss of Judas, my lips burn (don’t mind this idk how to translate the feeling)

I put the song bc I can

Metaphorical blood /// shit.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Embrace the truth

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[epicfirestormer]

What I love about Hellboy and Abe Sapien's dynamic in the comics is that, if you came into this blind, you'd expect Abe to be the voice of reason or the straight man to Hellboy's impulsive and hotheaded personality. But no, Abe is more often than not the crazy one. Hellboy would deal with fighting evil monsters and bad guys by just sighing and getting it over with, while Abe is going rabid over tearing the creature apart when he does get into a fight. Hellboy acts like it's a 9-to-5 job and will reasonably talk things out with a guy that had nearly killed him before, Abe acts like a madman in a slaughter house and his first instinct is to shoot first kill second and ask third. They're both insane, but on completely different levels.

[dr-mothman]

I think not a lot of people talk about AM's self-esteem issues and self-destructive tendencies and it makes me sad.

[buwheal]

Hey Spam, not to sound rude or anything, but i think something is stuck in your hair to your left. IDK what it is, but it looks like kinda spiky so please be careful!

[fujii-draws]

OKAY! Chatot rant in tags below! Read at your own discretion.

[kevinsdsy]

I'm genuinely so in love with Kevin like.... conceptually??? as in, I find myself thinking about him so often and so constantly but it isn't in a "i wish he was real so we can date" it's more like "i wish you were real because you're great." if that makes sense?

I'm aware he's lowkey not ideal as a friend (he IS getting better, I'm his lawyer trust.) but I just notice these things that make me love him like how he takes what's given with gratitude, his subtle shows of worry, the trust he has in Jeremy and Jean both, the reliance on Andrew. I love the way that he gained confidence in himself and now is much more comfortable with his life, the way he embraces the title of "Queen" because he knows he's better than R*ko and AUGH I love he's a history nerd, it makes sense for him to enjoy looking at the past and learning from it... even the other day i went shopping for clothes and thought about what he'd look like in them 🧍 I sound crazy as fuck uhm.

oh PLEASE anon if you’re crazy we can be crazy together because i genuinely think about kevin ALL THE TIME!! i surprisingly dont talk as much about him on this blog as i expected i would if i ever became active but TRUST i’m always thinking about him.

like that man has gone through SO MUCH and i feel like people just forget to talk about it— but after all he’s gone through he remains soft (although it’s more hidden in his actions, because his words do not showcase it)

just in general i think he’s so very lovely and i’m quite literally SO obsessed with him it’s insane. like yk how we joke about the everlasting impact kevin has on the people around him?? YEAH I FEEL THAT TOO!!

[puhpandas]

I think the reason beckory works well is that tony has a habit of getting self righteous and in his own head about things but Gregory isnt afraid to tell him off or call him out about things. the point of tony in ggy is that nobody ever told him that how hes treating other people isnt good, so that's why he got so bad. but tony would be close to Gregory and have every rational reason in the world to listen to Gregory so when he would say something like "you're treating ellis badly and that's not what a good friend does, you need to do better" hed actually listen and take it into account and improve himself

[someobscurereference]

ive been rereading your ffxv fic "im trying hard to take it back" for literally four years now. please end my suffering and tell me how gladio feels. please. PLEASE. (but only if u want ofc)

(fic) Short answer: Gladio feels insane guilt and spends a lot of his life trying to make this up to Prompto. In the process, they deepen their connection as friends and do begin a relationship probably around the one-year mark of endless darkness. <3

Longer answer: (implications of abuse/violence tw but no worse than in the fic itself; just what others assume to be true even if it's not in the context of this specific fic)

Gladio is a secret romantic at heart who has always envisioned meeting his soulmate, but he's also duty-bound and duty comes first. So even though he reads romance books (amongst other types of books too) and indulges in his head a bit as many people do, he's often put his duty to the crown first and foremost in his mind. He also didn't imagine his soulmate was anyone on this trip and thought perhaps the person he may have been fated to meet died in the assault of Insomnia. Even if they were a refugee, they can't be a priority to him at this moment. His priority has to be Noctis.

Prompto has obviously grown on him over the course of their road trip, but there are aspects of them that don't 100% mesh (as is true with every realistic relationship). That said, Gladio never in a hundred years would want this moment of (understandable but out of line) frustration and anger in the wake of Luna and Altissa to be a permanent mark on Prompto's face. He's genuinely horrified and disgusted with himself for a long time after this and spends most of his life trying to make it up. He feels like a dirtbag about it.

That said, Prompto runs away from him in this moment and they need time to calm down, just as the fic shows. Noctis goes after Prompto, just like in canon. Prompto falls off the train and has his Despair Arc just like in the DLC, now with the added despair of "well, in addition to being a clone, my soulmate hates me. And in addition to the mark of inhumanity on my wrist (barcode), I have a giant hand print of him literally Shoving Me Away on my face. Forever."

Aranea: Well, do you want to die about it. Or do you want to live.

Prompto, eventually like in canon: Live, I guess. But it will be excruciating.

Aranea: That's what living is. We do it anyway. Your friends love you. Get off the floor.

He fights his way through his issues and gets rescued like in canon. Gladio probably tries to talk to him when they all catch up again, trying to apologize, and Prompto tells him to hold off on that for later.

Then, of course, Noctis is eaten by the crystal and "later" becomes much, much later as they evacuate and try to survive in eternal darkness. (Though they also can't Not think about it because it's a giant hand print. On Prompto's face. And every person they meet has Something To Say about it, for better or worse, whether they knew Prompto before or not. Prompto cannot escape it, and when Gladio is not doing Crown Duties he feels he must do in Noct's absence, he's with Prompto, so he also Cannot Escape It either. Even when the person speaking is unaware that Gladio left that mark. It's almost worse when they don't know, but when they see it's Gladio, who is such a big guy who seemingly hit Prompto and left that permanent mark there, some of them get nasty to him and some back off out of fear. Both are horrible. The guilt is eating him alive.)

Eventually, enough time passes as the dust settles that they do Talk About It. Gladio apologizes sincerely, for the 500th time. Prompto's like, "Well. It's not like you could have known that this would be The One Time it happened." And then cracks a joke about their soulmate mark being a Prompto's hand print on Gladio's ass from a butt slap in another life, which does help the tension somewhat. (The more Gladio tries to apologize, the more Prompto grows sick of hearing it, so they just have to move on and keep going, as he's learned to do.)

They grow closer over time, especially because there's not a lot of people who have survived to this point and even less later on. They do get together romantically, both because they do like the idea of soulmates (for different reasons) and also because they're living out of each others pockets for years, so there's an affection and dependency that develops there. Also, teenage Prompto always thought Gladio was really handsome and teen Gladio thought Prompto was cute and sincere for a pipsqueak.

When they are out together on dates in normal settings surrounded by strangers after the light returns, Gladio will receive dirty looks for the rest of his life from strangers who see the hand print on Prompto's face and immediately (correctly) assumes it was out of anger rather than a funny accident or something. (Edit: Some people will assume there is a funny story attached. Gladio will not know what to say to this. Prompto will play along.) He will learn to live with this. Prompto is really grateful Gladio is with him despite everything.

[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

favourite twdg villain?

I'm a fond enjoyer of the St. John's as villains. I don't know if they're my favorite just because they're only in one episode, but I love the concept of this family almost immediately jumping into cannibalism toward the start of the outbreak, dealing in human flesh to bandits, and casually feeding this group their friend's legs.

Like... what the hell was this family like before the outbreak that all three of them were like, "Hey now listen... nothing should go to waste, the dead are eating people so why shouldn't we? We gotta survive and in our defense, we only target those who were gonna die anyway... like y'all."

Dude, Mark was shot in this shoulder with an arrow. He wasn't going to die from that injury. It's so fucked that these seemingly friendly people took the group into their home and then fed them Mark's legs.

If we take the idea that everyone is infected and have the capacity within themselves to become walkers, to become monsters, then the St. John's were infected long before the outbreak, y'know? Not literally, but something was wrong with them and the outbreak just further spread that infection and changed them.

But again, are they my favorite? I dunno if I can say that since I have a lot more appreciation for Lily now. Yeah, some of her writing gets a little wonky in ep3 of TFS when she goes on her monologues and shit, but y'know what? I'm into it.

You have to remember who we're talking about and the fact that she's the antagonist; Lily isn't some anti-hero in TFS who secretly has a heart of gold that's brought to light because she reunited with Clementine... she's a fucked up woman who did fucked up things in the name of survival. She's full of rot now. She sees kidnapping children and turning them into soldiers to protect her home as a means to an end, but she doesn't actually give a shit about the people she's taking. They aren't people to her, they're as the episode title suggests, toys in her game. The only one she sees as a person is Clementine, and while that makes her hesitate at first, she sees Clementine's a prize to bring back.

She remembers what happened in S1; her father had a heart attack and as she tried to save him, Kenny smashed his face in with a saltlick and then expected Lily to just stand up and help him get back to his family because "he did what he had to, he made the hard choice." Yes, Larry was a piece of shit. No one liked him, and you can even question Lily on him and she'll tell you that he has a lot of pain. Yes, it makes him an asshole, but he's still her dad and he's all she has. I mean... the simplification is daddy issues, but in all seriousness, I don't doubt for a second that many of Lily's issues stem from Larry being a shitty father to her.

Then everyone thought she was losing it when she insisted there was a traitor in the group, which she was right about, but she was unstable. She was unwell, but how do you help someone like that when you don't have training to go about it? Then Lily ends up killing either Carley or Doug and the group turns on her, and either she's left behind or she steals the van and runs away.

Then we don't know what the hell happened to her until we see her again in TFS, but like... a lone woman with decay festering inside of her joining the delta? Exposing her to their methods? I mean, what else did she have to lose? She had nothing, she lost everything, and she has a lot of issues. Survival is easy when you're numb, when you don't care about the individual; they're all just cogs churning to make the system run, and if a piece doesn't cooperate, you get rid of it and find a new one.

Plus I think there's something to say about Lily not wanting to be perceived as weak again. That whole display she put on in the cells? Telling the story of what happened to Minerva and Sophie? I get the criticism that it feels like Lily did a 180 between episodes but like... yeah dude, because it's a performance. It's not just her and Clementine anymore. It's a display of power and authority. She's playing the part and thriving in it as she ensures everyone else is terrified of her.

But then when Clementine and AJ get the upper hand? Again, she's not afraid to play up the pleading to earn enough sympathy to spare her- hell, just to let their guard down enough to strike and get the upper hand again. I mean, she's got nothing else to lose, right? If she doesn't go for it, she'll be killed and sure, you can kill her anyway but at least she tried.

Honestly, I look at Lily in TFS and still see that scared little girl playing the tough bitch, just like Carley said in S1. It's just now escalated from "tough bitch" to a downright vile person. She's so... lost? I suppose? Lost within herself and the monstrous means she's taken to survive.

I get the criticisms of how she was used in TFS, but for me, it's like when people complain about Minerva not getting the redemption arc she supposedly should've gotten, y'know? There's no saving her. Lily was never on our side, and there was no getting her on our side. She wasn't ever going to redeem herself. Even if you spare her and she drifts away on her raft, can someone like her actually find redemption? Or will she just find another group that'll feed into her rot?

Truly, I say let her be horrid. Let her be the piece of shit villain with a few fleeting moments of humanity. Let her drown in the blood she's spilled.

[hephaestuscrew]

I'm still thinking about that scene in Victoriocity S3E7 where Fleet runs back towards the Beast so as to lure it into the path of the train...

Clara's exclamation of 'Teamwork, Fleet!' after Fleet says he's got a plan reflects her conviction that any plan that Fleet has will be a shared plan, something they do together.

This conviction is a kind of trust, and that trust is part of the reason Clara takes a moment to realise Fleet has headed back towards the Beast. She trusts that he's following behind her. She keeps talking to him, her words full of optimism.

When she realises Fleet isn't there, she immediately realises what that must mean he's done, and her voice sounds more small and scared than I think we've ever heard it before.

Fleet's attempt at self-sacrifice is a kind of betrayal of Clara's trust, but when he echoes her celebration of their teamwork in a more somber tone, I think it suggests that he understands the weight of that betrayal.

If Fleet's plan is that Clara won't realise he's gone until it's already too late, then he thinks "Teamwork, Clara" will be the last words he'll ever speak to her. In what he imagines will be their final conversation, Fleet affirms Clara's understanding of them as a team who work well together, even as he is making a choice that rejects the possibility of their teamwork in this scenario. It's a recognition of what their dynamic has meant. It's a goodbye and an apology, even if Clara doesn't understand it as such at first.

I don't think Fleet sounds scared as he initially faces down the train. When he shouts "Yeah, this way, you stupid machine! Come on then!", he sounds defiant and grimly determined.

In fact, I don't think he sounds afraid until Clara appears, until she might be at risk of being in the path of the Beast or the train as well. It's when he shouts "Clara, stay back for God's sake!" and "Please, get back!" that there's real fear and desperation in his voice. He can confront the idea of giving his own life, but not the idea that doing so might put Clara in danger.

Another thing about these lines is that the move from 'stay back' to 'get back' suggests that Clara didn't obey his first instruction but got closer to him (and therefore to the path of the Beast and the train) between those two lines.

Then Fleet gives what might be another attempt at his last words: "I'm sorry! I'm sorry."  A repeated apology before an attempted self-sacrifice is an implicit acknowledgement of how much losing him would hurt Clara. He regrets causing her pain.

Even so, he's accepted that he is about to die and that it'd be worth it to destroy the Beast. But Clara very much hasn't accepted either those things. She's still trying to yell over the noise of the train; she's pulling off her ring to throw at him.

I think it's a good illustration of how Clara's optimism is a kind of strength. She always believes that they can "make a new plan" and that it'll be one in which no one has to die. I think Archibald Fleet needs someone like that, someone who'll tell him to drop to the ground when his death advances from both sides, someone who - even in a dark tunnel with an murderous metal monster and a speeding train - won't stop shouting that there's hope.

[lupins-hehim-pussy]

I wanna know ur Fontaine msq criticisms 👁️👁️👂I’m all ears

I'm not sure if you wanted me to talk about this secretly or publicly but! Here I go!

The TLDR: Fontaine MSQ aestheticised prison, poverty, child abuse, the justice system/court and didn't properly address any of it.

More:

Focalors/Furina has way too much of a sympathetic angle for a dictator who's lets people drown with her inaction.

Neuvillette feels Bad for sentencing some people to death/prison, but that's it. He's one of the most powerful people in Fontaine. If he felt like there are systemic injustices, I.E sending an abused Child to prison, he should be the first person to DO something about it, not just cry and be sad so the audience can be like aw, that's complex character writing isn't it? No it's not! And guilt doesn't absolve you!!!!!!! (These are stuff we deal with in OTCOJ read my fic now /j)

Meropide has children in it, both Sentenced there (Wriothesley) and BORN THERE (Lanoire), and this is just a quirk of the place. Not only that, Meropide accepts prisoners of all genders and crimes. There are abusers and abuse victims in one place. Do you know how bad that is? How much potential for crimes to happen in a place like that— oh wait, Meropide isn't under Fontaine's jurisdiction. If you are assaulted as an inmate it literally means nothing to the court.

Wriothesley had no qualifications when he took over. Depending on how long he lived on the streets, how old he was when he killed his parents, how old he was when he was first taken in by the orphanage, etc, the man might never have more than 4–5 years of formal education. Sigewinne probably had to teach him how to write reports. And do Meropide's spreadsheets. Edit because I forgot to elaborate on this one: This isn't a point brought up anywhere, which is bad, because when poverty and incarceration robs you of a proper education (and the rights to vote in many places too, too, by the way), it reduces your prospects for jobs, reduces many people's ability to get a home etc etc. Wriothesley was just, narratively, Given his position.

Meropide is an industrialized prison, and they portray this as a good thing. Prisoners are paid in coupons for their labour, and this is also portrayed as a good thing.

The One-Meal-A-Day reform was something Paimon gushed about being so great of a perk, that people might want to go to jail for food (could be interesting and reflective of systemic poverty if MHY had brains, but they don't, so I was just Pissed because essentially all Paimon wanted to say was "Prison isn't so bad, but still don't go to prison guys! Prison labour is really hard!"). By the way, in most real-world prisons they are obligated to feed you three meals a day. Because that's how much food a human needs. MHY went with one meal just so they can say "if you want to eat more, you have to work." And then the welfare meal is a goddamn gacha. So imagine you're a starving child who's too weak to work in the fucking robot assembly line, and you wander up for your first meal in 24 hours, only to luck in with a shit one. I'd kill myself.

They wrote Wriothesley, who's a victim of the system, into a guy who's say shit like "I'm the Duke I can do whatever I want" for a cool moment where he choke-slams an inmate (I know he was a bad guy. But also, in copaganda when cops are violent/disregarding protocols, they are always only portrayed to do that against bad guys, so what does our critical thinking tells us about this one?) They wrote Wriothesley, who was an inmate of a prison so bad, so notorious that it is the literal boogeyman of Fontaine, that has a legal (???) fighting pit, with an administrator who abuses his position to be unreasonable, to willingly stay in the place and become an Administrator who would choke-slam an inmate while saying a cool line about how he has the power to do whatever he wants. They wrote him, the guy who had to be fed on the streets by melusines, to think one-meal-a-day was a good enough reform (while he spends god-knows how much on his boat). This wasn't a victim-turns-into-abuser narrative either, they want all this to be seen as positive character growth.

And then, the final kicker is, they gloss over his entire abuse. You can only read about these shit in his profile, which most people don't because they don't Have Him or doesn't care to unlock it/read it online, and they jammed his entire backstory into a flaccid info-dump at the end of his character story quest. This man isn't Allowed to feel abused and neglected and show any reaction to it within the narrative of Fontaine itself, because if they actually Gave Weight to what happened to him, they'd have to confront THE FUCKING JUSTICE SYSTEM they had NO PLANS on criticising. I don't think they ever explicitly said the fucking Crime-Theatre nonsense was Bad either.

I could go on, but this is already so long. But yeah, I hope this gave you an idea.

[boarprinceofdelusion]

Recognizing Early Signs of Mental Illness

[fiapple]

i'm getting towards the end of the skypeia arc, & i'd like to say just how much i adore the way the female strawhats have been treated.

just... every aspect of how the way their characters have been previously contextualized influences the story-line is treated with a masterful amount of consideration. we're given so many layers to both of them that enrich not only their characters specifically, but the arc, and the one piece world as a whole. without nami & robin having their specific skills, and their specific values, without those being built upon, the story would have come to a halt.

you could not have skypeia without nami & robin being who they are as individuals. not just because they never would've gotten there without nami, but also because the way these women think is itself foundational to the machinations of the arc as a whole.

to be totally upfront, if you think any other strawhats were more central to the skypeia arc than nami & robin were you are full-on fucking lying to yourself.

[sqlmn]

Art I did during my break but don't wanna post on main but you know what. I like Levi and Richard (and Arienne the redhead).

Basically, Levi and Richard go to school together, Richard decides to go by the name Richard and the only person to without question go along with "I'm a boy now" is Levi who calls him Dick. And then gets into fist fights with boys that don't call him Richard. So Richard falls pretty much in love in school then his parents divorce and he moves away.

Many years later (10+) Richard meets Levi again and it's very much nothing grand. Levi overhears Richard introducing himself to someone and is like "lmao Dick? You work here now? Sucks to be you" and Richard is immediately 'I love him so much I hate myself for how easily I give up all dignity for him' but yeah. They work in different departments so Levi does more behind the scenes stuff while Richard talks to clients and is very social.

And their coworkers in both departments love Richard because he's such a nice guy and Levi's department hates Levi a lot cause he's an asshole. (then stuff happens that would require a tw blah blah blah) So after a month of Levi not being at work he returns and Richard immediately goes over to the department to check on him and he's just. Incredibly mellow. No cussing and no cockiness and worst of all, he's being called Richard which is very much not correct from Levi. So he points it out that no one else calls him Dick and if he had a problem with it he would have said something by now so hey, maybe don't suddenly change the entire friendship on your own. (So Levi texts him later to say "sorry for being a dick, Dick" and Richard is v happy and content with that turn out)

Richard is honestly tragically created out of spite for the fact I saw a name IRL and I know that the state that I live in would in fact NOT have someone that intentionally funny and trans so I have to make my own funny trans guy to fill the void.

[lil-artist-blog-fandoms-ocs]

I absolutely love the idea of desktop buddies. Like, imagine little digital folks just hanging out with you while you're doing something on your PC.

And I love love LOVE Aster ukagaka by @logicpng (if you like ukagakas, PLEASE give this one a look). Rigel and Vega are absolutely precious guys and I love them dearly. Wish there was an option to give them a kiss and a hug, but oh well! Gonna pet them instead

They're babies, your honor. I'm so normal about them...(not)