Looks like I'm gonna be on strike next week (wed-fri) for the first time in my life!
(We're protesting our current right wing government that's attempting to worsen things for workers and unemployed people, and basically everyone who isn't rich or a big company)
Technically I'm not a member of the striking union, and thus won't get paid for my strike days (I belong to a different unemployment fund that isn't part of this strike) but most of the people here including our department managers are all walking out, plus I also want to put up a middle finger at the current government so I'm going too.
Looks like a great excuse to go visit my family for an extended weekend!
[After they talk about Pac's debt to the Pancake Mafia, and Pac warns her about Sir Reaper]
Bagi: I think you're the one that needs to be careful, because soon you might lose your other leg.
Pac: N-no! NO! Please don't! Stop- stop! STOP TALKING LIKE YOUR BROTHER!
Bagi: [Laughs]
Pac: I'll pay you– I'm going to pay you!
I want to give a MASSIVE thank you to @wasabi-ribs, who was kind enough to check my translations and help me with the parts I missed (and also reviewed the final subtitled video)!
[ Transcript continued ↓ ]
-
Bagi: Pac, pay the rent!
Pac: I'm going to pay! Hey- I'm going to pay right this second, the money that I owe you, and... and I'm- I'm serious! And look, if you want- if you have more money... If I pay your 4,500, will you lend me 4,500? No, then I'll actually drown in fees. [Laughs]
Bagi: [Laughs] I'll lend you, I'll lend you
Pac: No, not really Bagi. You've got those red eyes– I'm scared, Bagi. I don't know– I don't know what happened, actually it's an eye infection, I know– But something tells me it's not just an eye infection, that it's also some other things, you know? Like, um... y'know, right? [He fumbles again] Oh God wait, your brother– when he had those red eyes he would also turn evil. Nonononono– I'll pay you, ok? Where's the waystone? It's here, it's here, it's here– I'll pay you, ok? I'll pay the 4,500- we're gonna–
Bagi: I'll be waiting.
Pac: No no, oh- just– Just let me walk, my God, I love walking– OH, WALKING IS SO GOOD – [Pac teleports] I'll pay her.
[Bagi follows him moments after]
Pac: [Pac mumbles to himself as he begins transferring money to Bagi] 4,500... I need to pay her 4,500...
I have finally finished 2.4 and oh my GOD watching Dan Heng be so protective of his friends nearly killed me, MY HEART.
And yes, the cutscene where he pushes the trailblazer out of the way and even cushions their fall with his own body, but I mean even before that! When he was already trying to protect them and March 7th from Feixiao and Lingsha!!
Because if you watch the dango trio throughout the main quest, you'll notice that they often position themselves in the same way, which is a detail that makes me super happy that Hoyo thought to include- when the three of them aren't evenly spaced, March 7th and the trailblazer tend to gravitate towards each other and stand very close together, frequently side-by-side. And by comparison, Dan Heng usually stands slightly away, and often even slightly behind them, where he can pull on their leashes to wrangle them keep an eye on them.
This is probably a habit learned through experience, since March 7th said during Belobog she is the "queen of unannounced disappearances" fjdksajfkldjsak
And of course at least a little bit of it is just done for like, aesthetic purposes. It's a video game. Things have to look nice for the player. The trailblazer and Dan Heng are the same height, March 7th is a bit shorter, and Yanqing is even smaller. It makes sense to have the trailblazer and Dan Heng stand on the ends, with March 7th and Yanqing in the middle, it just looks nicer and more balanced that way. But still! Even when they're accommodating for Yanqing in this quest, they still all arrange themselves the same way, almost every time!
But this changes after Dan Heng and Yanqing become suspicious of the visitors from the Yaoqing.
The dango trio still stand around relaxed and in their usual manner when they go to the artisanship delve and meet Skott,
but Dan Heng takes notice of Lingsha when she arrives, and he and Yanqing mentioned her specifically when discussing their worries.
Yanqing worrying so much about Jing Yuan got me right in the heart, he's such a good boy WEH
And when the four of them go out to the alchemy delve to meet Lingsha for tea, the pattern breaks. Suddenly Dan Heng is standing right up front, and even walks in and enters the scene before March 7th and the trailblazer to get to Lingsha before them. He stays a step in front of them the whole time, too.
And then when Dan Heng and the trailblazer have to go be interrogated by Feixiao! The same deal! Dan Heng walks in ahead of them and stays in front of them! Noticeably so! Enough that even Feixiao takes note and voices it!
Dan Heng is so so fiercely protective of his companions, and I love it, I adore hyper vigilance in the wake of trauma like this, I'm so excited to see what else he does in 2.5, I hope we either get to see him get fucked up or the trailblazer gets fucked up in his place, I wanna see them run through the meat grinder!!!
HoO is so funny to me when you actually think about the ages of all the characters. Octavian is 18. Percy and Annabeth are 16, almost 17. Reyna is presumably 16. Frank just turned 16, Jason’s about to turn 16. Leo and Piper are like 15. Hazel’s like 14 and a half, and Nico is 13.
The Death Sibs are both the youngest and oldest on the Argo II. Octavian is a college freshman getting into petty drama with a bunch of high schoolers. He gets told to shut up at one point by a random 8th grader. Everyone is scared of the 8th grader. We Sent A 13 Year Old To Superhell and he came back weirder, Just Like Middle School. TLH was just three high school sophomores being sent to do a task and it going Exactly Like You’d Expect. Percy’s the only demigod on the ship who can legally drive (though Reyna gets her drivers license at some point before TOA). What Is Happening.
You are reading a Bat comic. There is a splash page at the end of the issue showing the surprise villain behind this story. Which of these options annoys you the most?
Joker has been specifically excluded to get a more interesting spread. Pick someone else who irritates you to your back teeth.
Hey here's an angle on the Jiang family dynamic and its impact on Wei Wuxian that I haven't seen discussed:
Wei Wuxian grew up seeing Jiang Yanli routinely having her agency cut off and denied in both large (betrothal) and small ways. That were largely tied up in her gender, sure, but this was also a family containing Yu Ziyuan. A daughter in this household had every chance of having her gender treated as of secondary importance.
She just had to earn it.
The way Jiang Yanli was hemmed in and her potential as an independent actor dismissed was at least as strongly correlated with her failure to be a powerful sword cultivator.
So Wei Wuxian's total refusal to let anyone know that he'd lost access to his cultivation and his violent reactivity against being diminished or condescended to during his Sunshot-to-death period, when before he was pretty immune to being looked down on, could have a lot to do with having been presented with this clearly labeled diagram of how your personhood gets stripped away when you are, by the standards of your society, disabled.
I haven’t been posting a lot for the last couple of months. March through May tend to be struggle months for me in general and I was all set to embrace that this year and try not to feel guilty but - on top of that - there have been a lot of real world factors playing into the fact I hadn’t been motivated to draw. My job went through a lot of changes and as someone who struggles with abrupt changes, every day I got home I just wanted to decompress and not even think about drawing.
But I’m trying to get back into the swing of things. These are all sketches I started either at the end of March or during the last three weeks of craziness. I haven’t been happy with how I keep trying to advance them into full art pieces but I don’t want them to be on my ‘art shelf’ and potentially forgotten about so this is why I am posting here!
I’m hoping life feels a little more stable and balanced starting in May! The good news is this year my allergies aren’t that bad [thanks Flonase and stinging nettle] so I can at least look at my iPad and draw and not have it hurt my head haha.
I know this time of year can be wildly up and down for everyone so I’m hugging you if you need a hug and holding your hand if you need a hand to hold! We’ll get through it!