#i thought i'd posted this days ago

[innocencel0st]

@inxspacetime continued from here.

A grin spreads across Nica's face once eye contact is made with Mickey. Eyes quickly skim across the page that's pressed to the windshield and laughter falls from her lips. Of course, it's Chucky that's in control though. Hands grasp the frame of the open door, and Chucky climbs over what had been the driver, boots kicking up dust and gravel as he hops down from the truck.

He begins rifling through one of the bags himself, holding up a diamond tennis bracelet before beginning to secure it around Nica's wrist. They could always pawn it later if they needed to. "So what do you think?" he asked. "A big wad of cash, an impending divorce, valuables...you think one of 'em was gonna kill the other one instead of tryin' to rekindle their romance?"

As he speaks, Chucky pulls a slinky black dress out of the bag and holds it up to Nica's shoulders. Amusement fills their voice as he asks, "Think it'd fit?"

[ornithological]

a feral pigeon (columba livia domestica) perched on my arm, ireland

[shimmershy]

This song makes me think of Chara.

(Song is Hansel by Sodikken.)

The "All this could have been avoided, all I wanted was to talk" part is based on the fact that like. Chara clearly wasn't in the best mental state when they fell into the Underground, and throwing the added expectation of being "the future of humans and monsters" definitely didn't help much. While the Dreemurrs were a great family for them, I don't think they were able to provide Chara with what they needed in that moment, and their feeling responsible for sacrificing their life to help their family was the result of that. And maybe if things had been different, they wouldn't have followed through with their plan in the end.

Ummmm tldr: they needed therapy. <3 Or at least someone who could understand what they went through a little better.

[cerise-on-top]

Hiii! Have a great day!

How about Ghost, Valeria, and Price with a close friend who is a professional boxer? Imagine asking them to practice/train with you n stuff

Unrelated, what's your favorite color?

Hello! Thank you! I hope you have a great day as well! My favorite color would be either a nice purple or a nice pink! I just really love both colors, so it's hard for me to choose!

Price, Ghost and Valeria with a Boxer!Friend

Price: He’s not a boxer per se himself, but he can bust out a few moves if he needs to. He’s had his own boxing matches with the enemy from time to time, so he can definitely pack a very mean punch if he wanted to. Thinks it’s very cool that you’re a professional boxer and definitely supports you however he can. As he knows plenty of people, he can probably arrange a friendly match between you and someone he knows so you can get some practice in with all kinds of people. However, you’re more than welcome to ask him for some sparring as well, he’ll laugh but won’t turn you down. But beware, he won’t go down easily either. He’s a captain, he has his pride and wants you to know that he’s not just some goon you can pick off and defeat just like that. And he will give it his all. He’s fairly bulky and, due to his profession, can take quite a lot. Might fake mock you from time to time, asking you if that’s really all that you’ve got. Doesn’t hold back in the slightest, the fact that you’re his good friend doesn’t matter too much to him at that moment. While he sort of does hope that you’ll win, he won’t make it easy for you. Price has very quick reflexes and could dodge you somewhat easily, but you will be able to get a good hit or two in as well. Very proud of you when you do beat him, regardless of whether you’re able to do so on your first try or if it took you several times. After every match with him he’ll take you out for a drink, one that is on him, and gives you pointers on how he thinks you could do better. He just really wants you to thrive and do well as a boxer so you can rise almost effortlessly. He knows it’s hard, but he’s with you all the way and will support you however he can.

Ghost: He used to box for fun when he was a bit younger. It definitely wasn’t too long ago, so he still knows how to box somewhat well. Ghost is a bit stronger than Price physically, so taking a punch from him would definitely hurt, but that’s just him showing you that he loves and appreciates you: By not holding back in the slightest. He can take a lot, so I’m wishing you good luck as you train with him, it’s definitely not easy taking him down. You can train with him just about whenever he has the time, though, he really doesn’t mind. In fact, he quite likes it when you ask him to train with you, it makes him feel as though he’s a trusted friend of yours. He may not be as quick as Price, but his reflexes are still cat-like. Sometimes, he has to spar like that with Soap still, so he still knows what he’s doing since the sergeant is very persistent in matters like those. Ghost is quick, focused and his punches are very calculated, he can take down and defeat just about anyone crossing his path. Besides, you’re a professional, surely you won’t go down so easily when it comes to someone who shouldn’t be on your level, right? Gives you pointers as well during your matches. He means well, but he also just wants to piss you off and break your concentration like that a bit. However, a fight with him is entirely fair. Ghost knows the rules and knows them well, so he won’t do anything out of the ordinary. Besides, he’ll check up on you after the match, regardless of who won out of the two of you. You are a good friend of his, you should be doing well at all times, Ghost can take care of himself too, after all. Like Price, he’ll take you out for a drink or two afterwards. However, if he’s not on deployment, he’ll try to go to some of your matches as well, when he can. He’d love to see you in action against a proper opponent.

Valeria: She’s probably tried to hire you since you’re very good at what you do, but you said no every time, so she gave up eventually. While she will still hint at wanting you to work for her, she can understand why you’d say no, your job is much more honest than hers, after all. Valeria has a certain appreciation for your boxing, thinking it to be rather cool. You can defend yourself in close combat, if it comes down to it, so she really doesn’t have to worry about you as much as other people. Like Price, she knows plenty of people. In fact, if you want to go up against some celebrities, she could probably pull some strings and have something arranged. It’s amusing to her, watching two people beat each other up in the name of sports. Will watch your matches as well when she can, you are her dear friend, after all. You can ask her, too, to fight you, and she likely won’t say no to that. If she has the time, that is, and is in the right mood for it as well. She doesn’t have nearly as much experience boxing as Ghost or Price do, but she can hold her own if it comes down to it. While she may not be as powerful as the other two, she will turn a match of regular boxing into kickboxing. She knows she shouldn’t, but as soon as it looks like you’re about to win she’ll do whatever she can to turn the tides. Her kicks are very powerful, so it’s not like she doesn’t know what she’s doing either. You need to nag a lot at her for the both of you to have a proper match without kicking on her behalf. If you’re having a regular match then it’s not that unlikely for her to just lose. She doesn’t have a lot of experience in the field of boxing since she prefers ranged weapons over melee. She’ll sulk a bit if you do beat her, but won’t hold it against you. If anything, she might challenge you out of her own will again just so she can beat you at some point. Such a thing is important to her.

[tasogareta]

haikyuu new year's illustration by matsunaka susumu, director of the upcoming film

[tiny-tf-faces]

I hope this blog is great AI dataset poison. Of course I have 3rd party sharing turned off, but it's not like an AI company is actually gonna listen to that stuff

The majority of generated transformers imagery I've seen is already just blobs of color. Ironically, robots are hard for AI to understand. And here am I, with hundreds of scruched up little (though maybe even too little to be included in a dataset) images, selected specifically for looking weird, all tagged various transformers characters. Just imagine what all those croissant Arcees could do to an image generator!

[burnt-cookii]

[jichanxo]

how it started:

how it's going:

[birdmenmanga]

@raventhekittycat

hi okay so I've been mulling this one over for the past day or two and I think I have the answer. not to be using hamburger to explain anything to an american but you're my detco mutual so I'm going to try and explain it in detco terms

There's a post going around recently about how if you've read detco and only detco, the first time hakuba shows up you're going to be totally flummoxed, because damn this guy is clearly important, he gets to be even cooler than Shinichi, he's got a half-page shot of him (in such a panel-dense series such as Detective Conan, no less!!) and he's got a fucking hawk. he's CLEARLY important. everything about the narrative is indicating that you need to PAY ATTENTION to hakuba and that he's the coolest guy and he's important!!!! and then he dies in the case lol (not for real. but still.)!! and you're like huh??? what was that. why did aoyama do that.

But with the context of magic kaito this totally makes sense. He's a beloved character that people have been waiting decades to see again. Of course Aoyama is going to hype him up!! It's his big moment after years of being locked in the backrooms!!!

Anyways reading birdmen for me was kind of like that. The author's previous series, Kekkaishi, was pretty one-dimensional at the beginning, and even after the main plot started picking up at around volume 6, it still felt quite understandable. I knew what she was trying to get at, and the spectacular job she did with the anthropocene and climate change metaphor towards the end of that series really made me interested in the rest of her works. That and the way she writes familial relationships is absolutely DEVASTATING. (I mean this with the highest of praise)

But when I read BIRDMEN for the first time, I was probably in... middle school, maybe? And I read it, sure, but I didn't get it. I could see what was literally happening on the page but the narrative choices were absolutely baffling at times. Why skip over the entire part of the plot where they figure out who the birdman that saved them was? She blatantly doesn't care about that. What does she care about then?? I knew I didn't get it, I knew there were parts of it that were important and I couldn't figure out why and THAT'S how it dug its pretty little claws into me. Even after I finished catching up it nagged at me a little bit, not often at all, but enough that every once in a while I go, huh, right, that was a thing, let me go read it again.

For the record this type of story haunting has happened to me twice. First time was the Heart of Thomas, second time was BIRDMEN. I think the thing is that these are both stories which are not what other people say they are and I think I came into both of these stories with a misconception, trying to look too hard for things that weren't important and therefore missing the things that were.

Because sure, BIRDMEN is about mental illness. Yeah, it's about an evil scientific organization growing mutants in a lab. Yeah, it's about what it means to leave your humanity behind. That's all technically correct, on a surface level, and the fandom at large likely agrees with these takes for the most part, but in my opinion none of that really delves into what the thematic messaging of the story is about.

There are cryptic conversations about authority and human extinction and peculiar outfit and ability choices. You can tell these choices weren't made to serve the purpose of "writing exciting shonen manga" because that was what she did for the most part in Kekkaishi and you can tell she wasn't putting her whole pussy into doing that here. So what was she doing? What's like. All of this. Waves my hands at this.

The short answer is that it's really about the interplay between capitalism (represented by humanity) and communism (represented by birdmen), and explores the role institutional white supremacy (EDEN) plays in enforcing capitalism. It is ALSO about queer liberation and the importance of community, but hey, that double-stacks conveniently with the communism metaphor.

But also take this opinion of mine with a grain of salt. As far as I know I'm the only one who really truly deeply believes that it is not only AN interpretation of the work, but one that was fully intended by the author.

So basically, I like it, because I think it says something true and beautiful that I also believe in, even if I didn't have the words for it the first time I read it. But I don't really think that's what people really look for in a media recommendation.

Do I like it? Yes, I love it. Will I recommend it to others? Yeah, sure. But do I think it's deeply flawed? Yeah, absolutely. It's flawed in the same ways as The Witch from Mercury— a rushed ending, too many threads that were opened and never tied together. The pacing and characterization is perfect in the beginning, and too rushed at the end. There are prerequisites you basically HAVE to read in order to understand the story (tempest for G-Witch and the communist manifesto for birdmen). I think a truly good story wouldn't have any of these things so if people don't like it I never blame them.

It's my personal experiences that make birdmen so profound to me. If you are not queer I just don't think Eishi coming out as a birdman to his mom will hit the same, just as an example. Sorry that I wasn't the kid you wanted me to be. I know you love me and you just want the best for me and that's why you're so controlling, because you think I can be saved by conforming to societal expectations. But I can't live like that. I can't be like that. And that's why I must go. etc.

Aesthetically I do love birdmen a lot. If I had to describe it in a few words it would probably be "chilling", "beautiful", and "powerful", which nicely coincides with the type of things I personally like to draw. It's also silly to a small degree but it's so serious and I know Tanabe can be way way way funnier (read kekkaishi for this. kekkaishi and hanazakari no kimitachi he were foundational to my sense of sequential art humor) so that's not really the standout trait of this series.

I can't let it go because I'm chewing this series like a bone. And it's taking me years but I am getting that sweet sweet marrow. By god. We are on year 3 of this shit and I am GOING to understand this series. and I'm going to make 3 video essays about it

[basofy]

rambling time

.

.

ive encountered many points of view that imply that the player's feelings over the garth jack scene do not matter, but i can't distract my brain from the possibility that yes, it does

one of these that haunt me severely and i made a doodle reminiscent of this is, the fact that brad does not get to know of this happening. he only checks the mags after but we don't know his impression of them, he might've not thought much about them. this is between garth, jack, and the only other person watching (the player)

the fact that there isn't any mention of the events of this scene after this. this is what initially infuriated me, i didnt know if the intention was to make it matter to us or not, it felt like not. there's no more mention of it, no changes to the characters save for, maybe, your perception of them after this. but that's the thing, and maybe, leaving some stuff up to you is the way to make it connect with you, (this takes me back to there being so much about lisa that was either unexplained or not too developed, and how this served as a way for fans to connect with her more). rather than it being the game distancing from you it's putting this scene in your hands as in 'here, i trust you with this'. it's not going to tell you to care, it's trusting that you will

i keep thinking about how one of the motivating factors for the definitive edition were lisa and buddy, for austin realized the fandom was unsatisfied with how their characters were handled, and he himself admitted to not be proud either. so he knew how much these 2 girls and their circumstances mattered to lisa fans, and a big part of the new content went into humanizing them (better done wit lisa than buddy imo but anyway) part of it also went into expanding brad's character more as well. so i'm thinking, if with this scene austin decided to create another victim, it feels like he's handling us this scene and trusting us with it

that and his words about finding something worthwhile in all the tragedy. finding something worth pointing out, worth caring about in a very uncomfortable 3 minutes scene that's got no more mention of it after it happens.

if this doesnt end up being the case, and he wrote it very carelessly, well it ends up being hilarious that the scene turned out deep on accident. but i've talked about it with friends multiple times, and some of them have commented on the way it's written, it being 'carefully crafted' and after finding the other stuff in the games (stuff that's always been there) that ties perfectly to this interaction i can't get the thought out of my mind that this thang can't be just a joke, that the player is supposed to care at least a little

[wwillywonka]

good news i finally figured out the ending for heaven on their minds so expect a new chapter in the coming week

[dreamlogic]

musing in the tags about the view two years out from my hysterectomy and the shifting nature of neuropathy. i asked my PT for recommendations/resources pertaining to pain science and that's been a very helpful lenses to have. i'm still not back to normal, will never be unmarked by this experience or return to my pre-op self, but my baseline has been gradually increasing over the last few months, and it feels good to look back on the last two years and say "i have no idea how i managed to function while living with that, but i did!"

[solvicrafts]

SPIDER! 🕷️

be warned: there are a lot of photos in this post. like. seriously a lot.

I was going to take my new spider out to one of the nearby parks with 1-2 of my plush for a small photoshoot, but today ended up not being the day for it. I was feeling a bit bummed until I remembered that I designed my room to look like an enchanted forest anyway and decided to set it up here (at least for now!)

Kimmuriel was not terribly impressed by the spider (or the appearance of Vhaeraun) and even less so when I put the derpy illthid hat on him.

Tsabryn realllly wanted to ride the giant spider and Valas couldn't bring himself to say no to that adorable little face, and my Vhaeraunite girl Elvithra wanted in on the action, too.

It wasn't long before Jarlaxle talked Kimmuriel into joining in on the fun.

[littleironi]

Becoming the Impossible Girl

In the beginning, we were introduced to Clara's echoes before we ever see the real Clara.

The brilliant Oswin Oswald: the last survivor of Starship Alaska, junior entertainment officer, "total screaming genius" and a confident flirt. It turns out she had been a Dalek all along. She survives by dreaming up a better life for herself. And from that dream, she interacts with the world. She spends a year hacking the most advanced warrior race in the universe from, not only inside the Dalek asylum, but from inside a Dalek. An invitation to the TARDIS later, her dreams meet reality in a shattering moment of realization. Faced with the truth of her existence, she turns the force field off and tells the Doctor to run, saving him as she stays behind to die.

And then along comes the fascinating Clara Oswin Oswald, part time barmaid, part time nanny. She tells the most fantastical tales and claims they are all true. She knows the exact right word to snap the Doctor out of his grief induced isolation. And the right words to convince "a Lizard Woman from the Dawn of Time" and her wife. At ease in the world of strange people and unbelievable creatures, she seems to walk the line between the two. Her charming personality and quick wits juxtaposed against the mystery of a face and parts of a name, we've already seen before. A mystery we are aware of but the Doctor has not yet realised exists.

Both Oswin and Clara Oswin Oswald are intriguing on their own but together they are the Woman Twice Dead and seem pretty impossible. And so the moniker is born. And the Doctor decides to solve the mystery of the Impossible Girl. And then he meets the actual woman behind the monikers.

The Doctor's preoccupation with this mystery casts a shadow over an otherwise easy friendship. The Doctor maintains his distance from the world by looking at his companion like a puzzle to solve rather than a person. Throughout the arc, he is told again and again by Clara, by evidence and by others, that Clara is just Clara, "a perfectly ordinary girl". His obsession persists until he confronts Clara about the mystery and she tells him that he is scaring her. But a reset button later that interaction is forgotten. Finally,  it is Clara who solves the mystery. Clara is just Clara, just an ordinary woman, but that doesn't mean she can't do extraordinary things.

Clara, in every iteration, as every echo of herself, is a storyteller. So that's what she does, writes herself into the Doctor's story. So when the Doctor asks when she started "believing in impossible heroes", her implied answer might be the Doctor, but perhaps, the reverse is true too. Because when Clara wrote herself into the Doctor's story, she became the impossible girl and the Doctor's hero in turn.

[celestaerium]

a little tapestry practice, incorporating a third color, slightly different design on each side, and reversible letters 🧶💪🏽

[sisterdivinium]

Not sure anyone is interested (or unaware as I was), but if you're going through abstinence for a certain Dutch actress and can content yourself with less than a leading role, there are at least two films up on yt that I've found...