#im having parallel thoughts again

[lizluzz]

Get yourself someone who appreciates your shit

[mortysmith]

In theory i like the idea that rick is growing and developing as a person. In practice it ends up falling short though, because no one balances him out. rick is getting better while no one else is getting worse, and it causes the whole thing to end up feeling a bit stale. The biggest draw, at least for me, has always been rick and morty's shitty dynamic, but it barely exists anymore because rick has been so watered down.

The ideal solution is literally just to make morty into a bigger asshole. Essentially flipping the main characters' personalities would offer a wide variety of conflict into the show, and would also help keep it "fresh".

Instead it feels the writers are pretending that they can't possibly do anything with morty's character, that they have to keep him the same anxious idiot he was in season one. I've said this before, but it's incredibly frustrating to watch the show have no problem with expanding rick's character while struggling with keeping morty's heavily stagnated characterization consistent. Where rick has space to develop between multiple seasons, morty is constantly forced into one of two boxes (smart/stupid) depending on the episode.

[averlym]

some very very quick costume shorthands!

[reunioninn]

Daisuke's Notes on Venom's Concept and Design:

Like Millia, he was raised in the Assassin's Guild from an early age. He adores Zato.

He was set up to be a long-reach character and flier. I wondered what kind of character I should make. Originally, he had a cello. He actually had a fan for a weapon before Anji did. He also had a large cross, which I thought was the best concept, however, we were told that it was OK to have it as a part of his design, but not to hit anyone with it. When I was struggling, I went out to play games as a distraction. One time, as we were playing billiards, we talked about how interesting it would be to have a fighter who fights with a pool cue. But I thought the character would be too boring with just the cue alone, so I made it so that his hair also covered his face and added a mark on it with a bit of paint. Since the head had such a strong personality, I wanted to keep the body simple. However, I wanted to change the overall shape of the body to make it similar to Zato's, so that's why the legs are like that. As for the pants design, if I wanted to keep it simple, I would have made each leg the same color, but that would've made his figure appear more naked. To find a way around this, I made one leg light and the other dark to add more of a mysterious flair.

[craqueluring]

not sure if this is purposeful, but i noticed the way the light around will's head looks like the fire the angel maker hallucinates around the heads of people who have 'bad' in them

and its depicted only after jack leaves him alone in the alleyway — "[jack has abandoned you] in the way gods abandon their creations. jack gave you his word he would protect your head space. yet he leaves you to your mental devices." — will is left alone with both his 'insights into the souls of men' (his parallel to the angel maker, hence his positioning under the angel) and his violent urges (his parallel to the victims/angels, hence the light/fire), and also hannibal's influence/goal to change will into his 'higher self' (somewhat of a parallel to the angel maker's actions, hence the angel)

[enbyblades]

my official rotb review:

okay

[kiddokori]

things i like about totk so far: the depths,

i am going to be so completely honest i thought id be able to think of more. um. this is awkward

[deus-and-the-machina]

I feel like I keep seeing this happening but it frustrates me when a popular show gets hyped up then has some mediocre writing and people act like it's now become to worst thing ever. girl people stuck out for goddamn supernatural this is nothing.

[acerikus]

...wait, penumbra phantasm is hidden in the background hopes and dreams???? and it's during the goddamn flowey portion?!

[currentlyonstandbi]

[canonically-a-genloser]

paislie . ..

[springcatalyst]

🖊 for any milo and/or reiji details they fascinate me ^-^

YES thank u they live in my brain

Let me go on a tangent before I even get to what this ask actually is cause why wouldn’t I- Milo and Reiji are interesting characters to compare to each other, because despite their entwined storylines, I don’t draw a lot of connections between them as they were designed.  Characters that never interact are fun to draw conclusions with because it’s more obscure out-of-universe things:  Julian and Milo are so different but they follow very similar paths and come from very similar places.  Milo and Brooke (actually they do interact but only like, once) both deal with the results of a corrupted worldview that once questioned, can’t be ignored once again.  Reiji and Diana share an inherently wary, bleak outlook on how the world functions as a result of their own experiences.  And characters that do interact but were designed that way are... designed that way.  Julian and Liliana are the same stuff poured into different molds, impossibly similar and impossibly different, and that drives everything about their relationship- they’re foils.  Diana and Julian start at the same place in the same situation, (for different reasons), and end up wildly different people in opposite directions- they are diverging paths evidenced by truth or lies. 

But Milo and Reiji aren’t connected by anything inherent or anything unchangeable.  Their meeting in the first place is mostly chance and a little bit of give and take of compassion.  They stick together because the alternative is being alone in a world that’s so much bigger than both of them, so much older, and just a little bit more broken.  Their relationship is a choice in a way that really isn’t the case for a lot of other characters. 

And I mean, they do have parallels, but they seem different somehow, because they actually apply in-universe.  They reflect off each other.  They both leave something behind that they wish they could get back: but while Reiji’s was taken from him by circumstance and chance, Milo’s was a culmination of something grown that eventually he had to choose to abandon, though if there was any other way, he would have taken it.  (He tried, before.  It didn’t work.) 

But now they’re both missing something, and with it, their place.  Reiji doesn’t know where he belongs and the truth is that he doesn’t belong anywhere.  He can’t return to the one place he did- (it wasn’t a place, but a people.  They’re long gone, even as they live) -and now he searches aimlessly for someplace he can return to.  He doesn’t find one.  Milo loses everything he’s ever known when he walks away, and even as he makes the decision to, it feels like the admission of some crime (it looks that way to them, and he knows it).  He longs for the community he lost, but even if he gets something close to it, it’s wrong, because it isn’t them, and because the reason he left still follows him. 

They’re both ghosts wandering a vast expanse of unknown.  There is exploration in it- Milo especially does genuinely love the places he passes through, the people he meets briefly, the idiosyncrasies of each town, city, village.  Reiji less so- he’s only ever known the wandering, so it isn’t as special to him.  He’s always looking for something that will change, but even so, traveling with Milo forces him to see things he wouldn’t otherwise. 

The difference between them is that Milo stops being a ghost.  As time goes on, less and less is searching and more and more is exploring.  More is fixed than is broken.  But the opposite is true for Reiji.  As he finds nothing it feels more and more like he is one of very, very few.  That he has found no place to exist because there is no place for him, for those like him.  Reiji is looking for answers in an environment that buried most of them, in a world that hunts the rest.  And it becomes this obsession- a thousand whys. 

Why didn’t his flock look for him?  Why did he even survive?  Why is he hunted?  Why did it start and why won’t it change?  Why is the world sitting on the ashes of an older one?  Why are people broken by something they don’t remember?  Why does every place he goes scream that there used to be more?  Why are his people a part of it?  Why are they here?  Why do they occupy a world that is so clearly not made for them?  Why does he not know where they are made for? 

Reiji asks a thousand whys and they can all be summarized by one what: What happened?

Milo and Reiji cross incomprehensible distances and in the time that takes, a lot changes.  Milo goes from being a ghost of who he was and who he should be to being alive in a way he wasn’t before, genuine in a way he didn’t allow.  Milo looks for an answer in a different way than Reiji, because he is looking for certainty.  He wants someone to tell him, with no room for error, what is true and what is corrupt.  He wants surety and permanence in a way that just doesn’t exist, and so instead must choose which side he’s on- he must decide what to believe, because nobody can tell him black and white.  With that choice becomes an acknowledgement that the world isn’t as simple as good and evil, and the two can very much coexist, that perfect and unredeemable don’t really exist, not here, anyway.  He’s allowed to just be.  Reiji, though, doesn’t get the opportunity to make that choice, to take that answer.  He isn’t looking for the answer to a moral question or a cosmic should.  He is looking for a reason, which is an order of magnitude more impossible to find.  He looks to the past for why and the nature of time is that he keeps getting further and further from it.  He finds very little, which only makes him look harder, which makes it worse when he finds even less.  He starts down an impossible spiral that he can’t get out of until he finds what he wants, but what he wants just doesn’t exist in the way he needs. 

[quasarifxxy]

And then we get to see that same part of her being challenged in the next arc because of how unfair the system is and she feels so helpless about it. Refusing to resort to forbidden magic and trying to find innovative ways to save or help her love ones only to backfire, and all of it is happening behind Qifrey's back 😭

[youareunbearable]

Interacted with a Tolkien blog on Twitter for thr first time, like I left nice little comments about how Tolkien's themes work well with Anishinaabe story telling/culture on their tweet about incorporating other culture interpretations to LotR besides Christianity

And then they wrote a new tweet about that tweet "breaking containment" like 😭😭😭😭 ik i never talk to u guys but im there!!! I like ur tweets!!! I like ur mutuals tweets!!!

[possum-tooth]

being diagnosed some flavour of bipolar sucks actually

[dragonfyre-creations]

I don't think I've ever poured so many of my physical attributes and so much of my heart and soul into a character design before in such a personal way before so fuck it whenever I finish the final design for Faeng and whatever I come up with I'm making her into my sona (dragonsona? Persona? Idk how this works lmfao)

(long dump in the tags and under the cut)

The last time I was even remotely connected this much to a character was when I designed Jaxsu, but honestly never truly made her my sona/main character, she was just the one I used most often in art pieces. I never really actually liked her lore and backstory enough because she was what I wanted to be instead of what I am/was. Jax isnt perfect either, but her parents love her and otherwise has friends and is loved unconditionally. She has a healthy relationship with everyone and everything. This is where the disconnect happened and where I actually started to dislike her despite her being my otherwise favorite character for awhile. Both Faeng and Jaxsu have ADHD and Autism but Jaxsu was able to put that towards a job and becoming a ship captain and winning a colosseum tournament. She's done all of these great things so even if she didn't have a healthy relationship with her parents they'd still love her because she's done something impressive and useful.

Faeng on the other hand, has to fight for everything. Her parents are important and have important jobs, and place all of these unreachable and unrealistic expectations on her and expect her to reach them with minimal effort and be perfect, but she can't no matter how hard she tries. She needs someone to explain it and break it down for her in steps so she understands what do to and how to do it so she doesn't mess it up. She's both strong and smart but it's not in practical "normal" ways or subjects. It's convoluted, It's not in the ways everyone wants her to be, she has no teachers to help her understand how to channel that strength and intelligence into something "useful" so she puts it towards the things she likes and wants to do, and thus struggles in a world that would otherwise be easy to navigate and conquer if she were "normal". Those that do understand her and try to help her are alienated by other people in an attempt to either punish both of them or force her to adapt to be somewhat passing as normal, if not then at least listen to what she's told to do. She does eventually make acquaintances but find that her twisted speech and weird explanations aren't worth trying to decipher and understand so they leave, they don't put in the effort to meet her halfway even though she's struggling and doing her best to speak in a way they'll understand.

Her parents acknowledge her differences but in a way that frames it as flawed and wrong, something that needs to be corrected, and push her to figure out her problems by herself, tearing down any support network she tries to build. She tries her damned hardest but it's not enough, it never is and never will be for them because she's not the perfect child they wanted. She showed promise in her younger years being a "gifted child" so she knows what love and acceptance lies in wait and what could be if she could just be normal and perfect. Her achievements and promise come and show in waves. She burns and fizzles out in one of the most virulent, painful ways possible after getting hurt trying to prove her worth yet again. She holds nothing but criticism, vitriol and contempt for herself because she can't claw her way back to where she was before, this time something happened and something is terribly, horribly wrong this time but she doesn't know that it is and can't figure it out, nor will anyone tell her. Whatever it is, left a mental and several physical injuries and it does nothing but deepen her self hatred and her parent's waning belief in her. She listens to false promises and praise of other people who do nothing but wish to manipulate and harm her but she stays because any form of praise is deemed good, she hungers for more and does worsening things.

She ignores the people who tell her that what she's doing is dangerous and will only end in disaster, because she doesn't believe them. If the people who are saying they're her friends are telling her that the people she hurts deserve it and that what she's doing is good, then surely she needs to believe them over strangers, right? Everything comes to a breaking point and shatters around her leaving her with quite literally nothing but her own self hatred, newfound rage and overbearing mental issues she needs to navigate once again to find out what hell it is and what's wrong with her now. She's scared of everyone and everything with the added bonus of now being hyper-aware and perceptive of people's mannerisms and behaviors, especially those who want to manipulate or harm her again. She wraps every vulnerable part of herself in metaphorical thorns and teeth to bite and maim whoever pries and digs into what she truly is, even people who want to understand her. She suffers at more than her own hand, forcing herself to deal with everything alone, until she finally meets someone that could be considered a true friend. She slowly opens up and helps them as much as they help her before everything comes crashing back down once again upon the reveal that they've been lying to her the entire time about very serious issues, and she's been used as nothing more than an attack dog once again. She burns every bridge and everyone around her in one final breakdown of rage before shutting down completely. One of the groups of friends she's shoved stay comes back and asks if she's ok. She doesn't understand why they're being kind, why they're concerned it why they care and tries to shove them away again. Every single day they still ask, talking even if there's no response from her, until she finally relents and breaks.

She's finally loved and accepted despite every fault and every flaw she has, and every time she tries to pull away out of fear of being an inconvenience they pull back twice as hard and remind her that she's able to just exist, she doesn't need to constantly be useful and that they care. She finally, finally is comfortable enough to let herself be accepted and then becomes the most clingy little shit, just as they do with her. But yeah, my own life has been very much of the same, especially the last part. Every time I go on another self-hatred spiral and drop off the face of the earth my MonHun bros give me a metaphorical slap to the face and remind me that I don't need to constantly prove my worth to everyone and prove that I'm useful, and that existing every once in awhile is more than enough. If that doesn't work then it's "you need to get your ass back over here because we're failing the Safi siege without the absolutely ridiculous amount of DPS your build Switchaxe does". I was not intending for her to be so much like me but goddamnit she's wormed her way into being my favorite now and I guess Mirage is no longer my impromptu sona