#i wanted to give this a kinda magical look

[electraslight]

heyo, its been a long time since i did an analysis!! this time on a more controversial subject: Rook Blonko. And how I think he was robbed.

When you actually look at the way Rook is written in omniverse, they dont give him very much to work with. like revvonaganders and their culture are cool, but rook feels so underdeveloped as a person outside of his culture. hes kind of a gwen in a way; hes got bare minimum flaws but he's treated like hes in the right when hes doing something actually flawed. hes never condemned for treating ben the way he does and he doesnt even have a consistent arc. he doesnt feel like a teenager, he doesnt feel like he has any sort of character progression, hes just kinda there, and his lack of depth in character-to-character situations is only amplified by the lack of holding him accountable for negative traits he possesses, instead punishing ben or ignoring the behavior. Instead of writing a scenario where Rook is in the right and ben is in the wrong, or showing rook behaving poorly and have him learn from his actions, i can hardly think of a time where rook was shown to be wrong for his treatment of ben.

For example in a scenario where Ben is keeping personal information from Ben, and rook wants to know it for the sake of their partnership, instead of portraying Ben in the wrong properly by showing his keeping of said information being harmful to the public or his friendship to rook, or have the information be personally important to rook making Ben's keeping of it harmful, instead rook has scoured Ben's file for all information and is asking about something that is of no matter to him entirely because he doesn't know it. He pesters Ben incessantly even when Ben has told him firmly no. Tjis is a recurring issue, where it seems like the story wants rook to be right but is ignoring context and the way he goes about it.

This would be an aggravating issue but ignorable if rook had anything resembling a consistent arc, but he doesn't. the conflict of rook idolizing ben and meeting him and realizing hes not what rook thought he was is interesting, but its always treated as if bens in the wrong for not living up to rooks expectations. rook overstepping his boundaries with ben due to being a huge fan and maybe cultural differences is interesting, but its never portrayed as a flaw on rooks end, more like bens fault for keeping the information. his struggle with his culture and staying connected with it, his conflict with his father about his career path, his relationships to his siblings, him slowly watching revvonah be plundered for its resources as the series goes on, i love that, thats genuinely interesting. but they never talk about it outside of those episodes. rook is in the wrong often and it brings up a lot of interesting questions about him as a person, but they dont talk about that in favor of treating him as bens babysitter, or setting up a joke where ben is the punchline.

It's disappointing to me that rook was never given the attention he deserved. Like i said, there's a lot of good stuff in his framework that's just begging to be explored, but his lack of an arc makes him feel so one note after a while and really dampens his relationship with ben. Since rook is not a character on the same level as ben, he feels less like an equal like they tried to illustrate and more of a plot device. They even threw away the most interesting conflict between ben and rook; rook being book smart and ben being street smart, experience over training. Ben and Rook hardly ever have issues based on this other than rook misunderstanding a joke. This is why rook and ben feel like such a flat relationship to me.

all of this to say: rook fans. Please, for the love of god, work your magic. He's got all the pieces there, and i am certain you can do something special in fanworks about him. Don't let the show being lackluster hold you down.

[koreplus]

babe wake up 11 years of ib

[ottogatto]

look at him

looks so frail

and short

🥺

[wildflowercryptid]

i've been wanting to redesign the old mlp gijinkas i had as a teenager for forever so i did some sketches of our beloved earth pony besties!

[theygender]

I've got too many games I want to play and not enough free time 😭 I still need to finish my BG3 playthrough but since Endless Ocean: Luminous came out I've been playing a lot of that instead. Also just got back into Wizard101 last night. Started playing House Flipper again last weekend. Still need to finish BOTW so I can start a TOTK playthrough and finish Pokemon Shield so I can start on Pokemon Violet. I've been fighting off the urge to start up a new Skyrim playthrough for weeks. My brother just told me that Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is getting ported to the Switch. And now I'm suddenly feeling inspired to replay DAI... And throughout all of this I'm also playing the hell out of DragonVale on my phone. Someone just pay me to play video games all day please

[its-ezraaa]

Reworked character sheets for my Dungeons and Dragons AU! The Kings Row boys are playing "Swords and Serpents" with Seiji as the long-suffering Dungeon Master. Who do you want to see next?

[storytellerofuntoldlegends]

jimmy’s new wings being called “gift of the fae” and the fact that there are fae popping up and demanding favors is making my fae folklore brain go brrrr

[waywardsalt]

tbh i might go ahead and put dungeons in as a part of the bellum x linebeck fic's plot since like. 1) struggling to actually figure out a main plot and having dungeons as sort of bit points to hit and be little bits of fitting exploration and bonding and 2) i do kinda want to do dungeons. i like thinking of them and again i do think its fitting.

[steakout-05]

(DISCLAIMER: as of the 17th of August 2024, it was revealed that Craig is directly related to Barry, which obviously makes my Crarry art very awkward. this is here to say this was made before any of that was revealed and obviously wasn't intended to be a ship about... that.)

drew some ponays yesterday :)

[skeletalheartattack]

@ those tf2 server related tags: the lazypurple silly servers still exist. and if you want a silly-adjacent server that still has killing/pvp enabled then they also have a "TDM" server where objectives are disabled so you really just get to dick around

i figured his servers would still be around, although i don't think i ever had personally played on his servers before. i think i've seen some videos of them in the past though.

the two servers i use to hang around in through 2012-2016 were mostly just... hang-out servers? the term i refer to them as is "hub servers", similar to like... hub levels in platformers. one was a big city server where i met a good ammount of my friends on, the other was a server with maps the server owner created, which is also the server that hosted one of my maps. they had some sourcemods in common like the jetpack plugin.

im not sure if i could personally experience the vibes of those servers in the same way these days. granted anytime i play tf2 these days, it's usually to play casual, haven't touched any community servers in a long time.

[bordonfreeman]

Finally made an updated/official reference for my owl house oc for Art Fight! [Linked in my pinned post]

I've been meaning to do this for a while but never got around to it

[piichivii]

âm dương sư // a wizard for an eastern fantasy

[sysig]

Hm ok what's your favorite or a really cool worlbuilding thing you've done? For any fandom or original or even an unimplemented idea

Hmm well at least in the past decade, my big worldbuilding projects have mostly come down to three-ish stories: Other Side of the Gun, Adventures of Gæilo and Ethon, and Just Desserts

OSG was an Invader ZiM fancomic concept I started around 2013 to justify every single Irken headcanon I ever came up with lol - I never finished it, or even really started it, but I put a lot of time and energy into its roughs back in the day :)

^A stick figure recap of Ch. 1, inspired by - what else - the Vargas stick figure recaps lol

One that you can see over here is all the work I did for my DnD campaign, AGE! (Though its sideblog hasn't been updated in a while haha - the AGE tag over here works just as well) I basically homebrewed a pantheon and had an absolute blast designing all the gods and their forms before they became gods and even things like architectural differences in their churches and the BBEG and his motivations and just ah <3 Such a fun project :D

It also laid the groundwork for things like Pokemon Homestyle, specifically all my papercrafts! You can really see how I leveled up haha

And my latest has been Just Desserts! Even with less time under its belt, it's still pretty expansive, as evidenced by my icon and theme and the backlog lol, and it's the one I have the most AUs of! (Though OSG does come close actually haha) There are still some thorny details I'm trying to iron out, especially to do with the magic system, but all the characters and creatures and the fact that I made my own fighting minigame, ah, pleased! I've never been so happy with a sona before Charm! ♥ From the very beginning it's been so fun to work on and I still want to improve!

[nexus-nebulae]

milk bread milk bread

[axewchao]

"Oh, child… please don't despair. We'll find the pipe that brought you here. I promise…"

Ever read the Super Brothers comic? Well after both reading the whole thing and watching a dub of the first three chapters, I drew this. The power of inspiration, ladies and gentlemen!!

I guess you could say that this pic is connected to the Dal vs Lud pic I drew back in October, wherein Dalex is a Real Worlder who found his way into the Mushroom World… somehow, and allied himself with the Mario Bros. and Peach instead of Bowser and the Koopalings.

Here, Dal's ended up in the Mushroom World the same way pretty much every Real Worlder does: by complete accident. Dal's walking home from school one day, only to come across a weird green pipe just… sticking out of the ground. And he's certain it wasn't there when he was walking to school that morning. He hears noises coming from inside, and like any eight-year-old would, decides to lean in to hear better… and falls right in.

He wanders around for a bit, taking in all the sights (and wishing he had a camera because man mom would flip over this!), but it isn't until he turns to see the gaping jaws of a Piranha Plant that he realizes that this place miiiight be a bit dangerous.

The crisis is averted thanks to a character that I doubt many of you remember: Koukai the Magikoopa. Back in the day I saw him as basically that old guy that literally lives in the library and has definitely read every damn book in said library, and can therefore provide advice when needed. Also provides magic, obviously. He might play the same role in this AU, or just be like… the Mushroom Kingdom's own version of Kamek/Kammy. Not to the point where he tends to Peach; she's already got Toadsworth for that, but you get the idea.

They talk for a bit, Koukai explains what he is and where Dal is and asks the million coin question: where are the boy's parents? It's only then that it clicks in Dal's head: he doesn't know where the magic pipe is! Not wanting the boy to wander off and become Piranha Plant food a second time, Koukai offers (insists) to help Dal search for the Warp Pipe.

Unfortunately, the search proves to be fruitless, even after several days' worth. This is when Dal finally cracks, fearing that the Warp Pipe will never be found, that he'll never see his parents again. Koukai tries his best to comfort the poor boy, but it does little to stop his tears. He just wants his mom and dad…

Unfortunately the brain dump's gotta stop here; I don't know how Dal gets back to Earth, just that he eventually does, carries on with his life for a few more years, then at age 15 he's back in the Mushroom Kingdom again. Why? Who knows; maybe something pulled him there or someone he knew ended up there by mistake, just like he did.

It's during his second visit that he has his first encounter with the Koopa Royal Family, including Ludwig. They have their very first showdown, it ends in either a draw or the Bros. come to back Dal up, and Lud vows to defeat him one day ;3c

[chaosgenasi]

thinking about the creation of ruidus as we understand it so far, (i.e. an act of unification between the primordials and the gods), compared to aabria saying: “you see the blurred edges between what many know as the magic of nature and the magic of the divine. and you see they’re not distinct and separate entities. there is overlap. there is a blend, a mix.”