#some form of sentimentality

[meamiki]

worn and cherished all the same

[serpentface]

Faiza performing the Kagnoma Odo (pretty literally 'lion dance'), a weapons dance and one of the more important ritual duties of Odonii priestesses. A relatively new addition to this traditional dance involves the musket as the primary weapon, which is fired mid-twirl into the ground at the climax of the dance. Faiza is experiencing an 'oh fuck' moment because her shot is more than ideally diagonal, but she’s being so cool with it.

This is a wholly ceremonial performance at the onset of the pilgrimage, performed in full regalia and lion skin (of the small, semi-domesticated strain) but no armor. It’s also distinctly a display of political allegiance between the powerful and beloved Odonii priesthood (and its loyal military) with the increasingly reviled and destabilized imperial family, with Faiza prominently wearing a bracelet of the royal serpent, which was gifted (along with the musket) by the usoma Stavis Amanti himself (Usoma is the Wardi word for king, which has been retained in the context of emperors).

The Kagnoma Odo is the ultimate demonstration of the Odonii as an embodiment of the Lion Face of God and living vessel of military might and sovereignty, demonstrating her fitness and proficiency with weapons and as a spiritual unifier for soldiers. It is accompanied by drumming and occurs in stages, running through the three keymost weapons used in war- the spear, the sword, and the musket. The musket is of the most significance, given the weapon has developed a particular esteem as the ultimate embodiment of might and superiority. Assistants (almost always other priestesses, occasionally high ranking soldiers) load and prime the musket to be fired at the climax of the dance, where it is shot into the ground as the priestess leaps out of range of the shot. The firing signals the end of the dance and the rite itself.

While not the utmost exemplar of trigger discipline, only fully inducted and senior (and therefore very thoroughly trained) Odonii are permitted to perform the dance, and injuries during actual performances are quite rare (though are known to occur during training, more than a few Odonii have burns and wounds on their feet).

The most important renditions of this dance are performed upon declarations of war and before battles (in this case, generally done in full armor along with the lion pelt). It is also done during some trainings (while a dance, it is carefully choreographed to include naturalistic maneuvers of the weapons involved and helps soldiers limber up and learn to move their weapons). It is regarded as an impressive and motivating sight and a morale booster, and, seen at a distance, potentially intimidating to enemies.

A special variant of this dance is performed as means of fully incarnating the Odomache, which is done in full nudity with the body covered in the blood of the freshly sacrificed lion and cloaked in its raw pelt (the lion has become the corpse of Odomache in the moment of death, as part of its recreation of God's sacrifice). Her public, full nude appearance once (and only once) in this act is what allows the Lion Face of God to incarnate within her. Those in attendance see the spiritually vulnerable, naked human body obscured with the sanctified and deified blood and cloaked in the sanctified and deified skin. It is a merger of the contradictions of mortality and divinity, the boundaries between the two indistinct in flickering firelight and the flash of musketfire. She is witnessed by her people, dangling in between humanity and divinity and leading them in dance, and and is thus transformed.

[pant--eater]

rewatching a gameplay of Bioshock Infinite reminded me that I had once a goofy ahh steampunk/fantasy au for Aardman universe. I posted earlier about it here on my old blog -> https://www.tumblr.com/trouser-consumer/741733919149473793?source=share

basically an AU where everyone is either a steampunky human or a supernatural immortal creature. The Super Smash Bros rosters being these:

Mrs Tweedy = ice queen, her heart is frozen and she drains life from living creatures cuz it helps her Feel(TM). Does not care how many innocent people she hurts in the process yippee. Also Ginger once defeated her and banished her for years, and her ego is hurt because she let a mere human destroy her

Mr Tweedy = fire king (they are divorced lol and he has retreated deep underground to dwell in loneliness)

Dr. Fry = The Sandman, currently allied with the ice queen in destroying the world simply because it's funny

Reginald Smith = a rancid capitalist human businessman who ended up accidentally allying with the Sandman and Ice Queen (doesn't even remember how it happened but there's no way out)

Lady Tottington = Mother Nature, she does her best in keeping the land and its creatures alive during these trying times </3 also trying to ward off Lord Quartermaine (who is either just a stinky ass human nobleman or Lord Death himself, havent decided yet)

the chickens = A peaceful farmer village that is also not afraid to fight literal gods :)

Wallace and Gromit = a couple of steampunky inventors just tryina make a living and help people with their goofy ahh inventions

[diamantdog]

people who write these posts and then tag them under the squid game and/or the 457 tags:

- "i'm smarter than everyone in the squid game tag because i don't ship 457" - "reasons why the 457 ship sucks actually, and you suck for shipping it!" - "people who ship 457 are gross"

(x)

[bacchuschucklefuck]

Riz has counted four casseroles this week alone. Five, if one goes by the method of cooking, but Yelen's scary when she's crossed, and calling her burek by its proper name is important to her, so Riz does her the courtesy and doesn't include it in his mental tally.

He holds the tupperware over his head to keep it out if the way as he takes careful steps over the piles of notes in his path. The dockman case just closed, relevant documentations handed over to relevant personnels, evidences dealt with as needed; all he has lying around now is just record of the process and traces of himself thinking through it. Unsurprisingly they still haven't invented a surface more convenient for people under five feet who like to pace to put pieces of paper on than the ground.

Actual records go into the case folder with the other documents. Anything else with at least one side still blank is going to the school kids in the block - they chew through an astounding amount of paper just learning arithmetic. The rest is for the recycling basket.

Later. It's his mandated lunch break right now.

Riz sits down in front of the corner file cabinet. In an office often overrun with papers and strings and sometimes even thumbtacks, he's never really managed to clutter up this exact square of surface like every other ones. Ever since the bottom drawer rattled for no discernible reason a day long past, his eyes have always just kinda decided to slide across the space without acknowledging it.

It's years out, now. Riz doesn't know why he thought it such a big deal anymore, back then. He wasn't scared, he doesn't think. Not anymore. Maybe just uncomfortable with the idea that certain things persist despite all efforts to change.

He opens the tupperware. Dame Carabelle's experiment greets him with enough spice in the aroma alone to knock out a small mammal. When he chopped the vegetables for this casserole he couldn't really imagine the eventual heft of it, evident even through just these few ladles' worth, maybe weighing heavier for being still warm. His folk eat more through the smell and the textures and the aftertastes than the taste itself. His folk's meal is really the cooking rather than the eating. The eating is the meal's end.

"Hey," he tells the file cabinet's bottom drawer. "Um."

It's the anniversary. Riz doesn't know the exact date of his dad's death; nobody currently alive does. He and Mom both use the date of the funeral, though as he moved out to Bastion and then got more directly involved with Interplanar he hasn't really been going to Dad's grave as much. Doesn't seem like very efficient use of his time, catching a train or borrowing a car or spending a whole spell slot on going somewhere he knows Dad isn't at. They're sorta coworkers now. They talk on and off every other week between missions. When he goes now, it's just to clean up the place, keeping the landmark tidy and respectable.

Without that work to mark the date he doesn't really know what it serves anymore. But he still remembers it. Still takes note, absently or not, when it comes around.

There's not really a good way to tell the drawer that. Riz looks for another way to start the... conversation, hopefully. The question at play, he'd guess, is why he's doing this. He's been pretty content ignoring all the rattlings and the knocks from inside and the times it sits slightly ajar without him ever opening it himself; hell, he still uses the three drawers on top of it. Space is fucking precious in Bastion.

Precious enough to finally fix this damn drawer so he gets his turn to use it? Riz asks himself. Is that what we're getting to? Then he dismisses the thought - he didn't manage to fix it the times he actually tried, let alone-- now. When he doesn't really care that much to.

That's probably a good place to start. "'s fine if you keep being in there, turns out," Riz says.

The lunch hours are quiet in the block, sleepy and bright with the brief window of sunlight that manages to break through roof overhangs and extended balconies and laundry lines and climbing vines. Riz's work isn't loud here (the loud parts happen away from his office, if everything goes right), but the fragment of early summer heat reflected in the steady warmth his meal still carries compels him to lower his voice even more. It makes the words feel intimate, in a way he's never been familiar with - if he says something he just says it. He doesn't whisper. If he gives his friends something, he gives it open-palm. He's found out, along the way, that people usually don't think of rituals and courtesies the way he does.

Small voice for a diminished monster. "You know why I think so?" Riz asks. "Because almost two decades ago you kidnapped me and almost killed me, and now you rattle a drawer in my office."

It doesn't sound as much like a taunt as Riz wanted it to; the drawer has made a lot of noises again this morning when he checked the calendar, and he was definitely annoyed at it. Now, though, facing it like this after cooking the whole morning with more grandparents and peers from the block than he can count on both hands to cater for a tenant union meeting, he thinks the annoyance has morphed. Changed shape.

It has the shades of something like pity. Riz is not prone to pity, and especially not at these kinda matters. It's slightly maddening that he coheres perfectly outside of this one spot. That he commands his spaces, except for a drawer.

He puts the tupperware onto the floor between himself and the cabinet. "I know we're aware it's the anniversary," he says at the drawer. "You do this every year. You make a ruckus every time I decide to go do my job instead of mooching off my friends' aircon, and every time I get an invitation to some stupid social thing I want to turn down, and every time one of the old people tries to introduce me to a child or a nibling, because being a bachelor over thirty is weird," he pinches the bridge of his nose. "I have three fucking jobs. I love doing my fucking jobs. I'm forcing funds into infrastructures. You're never leaving, are you."

The drawer vibrates lightly. It's a very, very mild acknowledgement, considering the history of reactions Riz has gotten from this thing. Riz thinks it's emanating joyous agreement, or satisfaction.

It only sharpens the pity. Riz doesn't like that, but it's how it is. That's, ultimately, the lesson he's been taught over and over and over again, just by existing as himself, turned every which way by space after space that don't see him eye-to-eye: it's not like he'd quit living over any of it. It's not like any of it can sand off these fundamental pieces of him.

He's outgrown a lot of things, he's found out. Again, and again, and again. A childhood home, a yearly trip, a monster.

"'s probably scary for you, huh?" He asks. "Because I left."

He thinks he hears joints creak that sound like you did. Probably the way a scorned lover would say it, in a movie or a yellowback. He has no more connection to the idea than he did as a kid. Less, because it doesn't even scare him.

"That's what it is, right? That it's the anniversary, and I'll never be like Dad." He raises a knee from the floor, pulls it back closer to him. Slings an arm over it. "You love to remind me. The thing is, Dad also left. He loved Mom and he loved me, and none of us wanted it to happen, but it still did. Because love does fuckall to make anyone stay on its own."

He's long past being bitter about it. It's just the facts. Once upon a time he looked into the future and the specter of his friends' happily-ever-after casted lightless, fathomless shadow over him. Love, marriage, that kind of devotion, to a fifteen-year-old with more solved cases than friends seemed so eternal. Final.

But you can only watch your friends build up apps' worth of jilted lovers for so long before getting over it.

"You know what I learned?" Riz tells the drawer. "Love doesn't make anyone stay. Project management does."

He stands up, and picks up the tupperware of Dame Carabelle's casserole, that he helped make, that he helped share with a block's worth of neighbors and members of a community he's at home with, and goes sit at his desk to eat. "Last chance to get any," he drops an offer over his shoulder as he walks away.

He doesn't eat all of his share in one go. What he's spared he leaves on the desk when going outside for a smoke break. Baron looks the exact same as when he saw them last, when he catches a glimpse; they haven't grown at all. They aren't there when he comes back inside, but the leftover has gone days-old cold, like someone's sucked the future out of it.

[zo1nkss]

SHIELDING MY EYES FROM ALL THE PIT BABE POSTS BUT YOU GUYS WE'RE GETTING TOP FORM SEASON 2!!! BOOM SAID THEY'LL BE WORKING ON IT WHEN THEY'RE DONE FOCUSING ON S1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WE FUCKING WON QUEERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[sieglinde-freud]

tharja!inigo but now he’s laslow and yall know this guy, at his core hes a pacifist, he hates death, he loathes violence, he only does all of this because he has to and these are the cards he was dealth, but if he could pack it up and leave it all behind, you know what, he might just do it! but he’s also the most patient person when it comes to dealing with peri, who should be his moral opposite on every level. but he hugs her, he jokes with her, he comforts her, he supports her, he makes her smile, he reins her in but knows exactly when and how to do it without coming off as overbearing. he accompanies her to store, to her therapy gang (my fav canon fact about them btw?), he cooks with her and tells her all of her dishes are absolutely divine. maybe she doesnt deserve any of this, not after all that she’s done and all she continues to do. but whenever he looks at her and her pastel pink hair tips, and whenever she talks about how she grew up, he can’t help but remember the innocent, darling baby sister he left behind at home. his baby sister who he couldnt save from his mom or the evils of the world, who had to learn how to protect herself because he couldnt. his baby sister who acts more and more like their mom everyday out of fear and abandonment, who he left behind at “home.” he couldn’t save her, but maybe this is the universe’s sick way of letting him try again.

[tackykachowch]

hello! this may sound stupid but do you think we’ll get a prequel or a book or ANYTHING related to young silco? and vander and the others? because he gained sooo many fans with those concept arts and flashbacks (he had so many fans but he’s kinda going viral) and we know netflix milks everything so what do you think?^^

Uuhhhh it's a tricky question tbh. He is popular with the fans, especially after s2, but the creators themselves tried to remove him from the events/character stories as much as possible, so I don't know if we're gonna get much content with him unless Riot requests it. Yeah, it's an important detail that Netflix doesn't really have to do anything with Arcane except providing the platform iirc.

Personally I don't want any future content with him, Vander and others if it's gonna be written like s2. They already ruined almost everything they could about him and I'd want to salvage the little bits that were untouched.

Don't get me wrong, I would love to see more Silco more than anything, he is my favorite character of all time after all, but I'm the kind of person that would rather don't get anything than get something mediocre/bad. If they want to include Silco in something it better be good, or I'll dismiss it and perceive it as a non-canon like I did with the entirety of s2.

[cak3iscake]

Henna not being back in any capacity in the second Mariposa movie gives me two impressions:

1). untapped potential for a 3rd movie where we get Henna reformation or some such.

2).

Mariposa: I wonder how Henna's doing out there.

Willa: ..... what if she's dead 😧

Mariposa: 😨

Honestly it's entirely possible that she IS dead; a lot of her control over the Skeezites hinged on the promise of invading Flutterfield, and we can see their patience wearing thin throughout the movie. It's possible her failure to follow through would be the final straw, and that her lights would only be able to carry her so far when her entire army is against her. I do like the potential for another sequel to tie up that loose end though, in no small part because "dramatic revenge declaration followed by offscreen death that's never mentioned" is just kind of anticlimactic. Even if it's been a decade and that ship has sailed at this point. We could've had it all. Two fairy trilogies. Also consider: The Skeezites don't seem to be a threat--or even present at all-- in Fairy Princess. They're not once brought up unless in past tense. Regellius brings up Flutterfield defeating them when that's not necessarily how it happens in the first movie(which she does point out but focuses more on the method than the outcome so it's still unclear). Yeah they succeed in driving them off, but if Mariposa's quest or the fact that they've been terrorizing the kingdom for centuries says anything, it's that there are probably way more hanging around than Henna's immediate army. I'm imagining a midquel where she manages to get the Skeezites to hold out for a little longer so she can get her Revenge Plan in, and Flutterfield deals with them for good.

[revvethasmythh]

had a great night gaming yesterday. got to do the two most important things you can do during quests (skipped stones with neve and fed halla with davrin). then I did blood of arlathan which FUCKED, and talked to solas after which FUCKED and then talked to harding about solas after that and it FUCKED. incredibly great series of events for me. blood of arlathan EASILY my favorite main story quest so far, it was genuinely so great

[uhohmichio]

Just finished infinite wealth

[born-to-lose]

So that was my 13th concert?

[waytooinvested]

Me: I've decided to be the kind of person who doesn't over think my fandom participation and just comments on/replies to/generally engages with content and creators. I LOVE it when people do that with my stuff! There are hundreds of posts out there about how much everyone else also loves it when people do that on their stuff! I'll be spreading the joy!

Also me: ohnowhatifI'mbeingreallyannoyingisitweirdthatIjustdidthatmaybethatpersonthinksI'mcreepynowarghistworepliestoomuchit'stoomuchisn'titIshouldprobablybackoffnow

... What the hell brain? 🙄

[stratostella]

my opinions on translation : i wish the average person who gets into smth translated/localized could have tl theory beamed into their head . bcause i know it'd be ridiculous of me to expect everyone to understand and i don't want everyone to HAVE to spend that time but man. if it were inherent,

[sunlight-shunlight]

every time i think about wyll ravengard baldursgate i feel a little sad. my boy, who lacks content so badly, for what could've been an incredibly heartfelt arc if his writers liked him enough to put it in 😔

[abimee]

ruyan is literally so beautiful that i get ill looking at her