#survival patterns

[unwelcome-ozian]

[awareness-and-healing]

.💗

.

[vaguely-concerned]

I really really like that lucanis reaches the 'there must be some way through this' realization 'off camera', so to speak, while presumably looking at rook explaining the situation to spite. it just. hits right. he gets that moment to himself after 'this place is a nightmare, why would I want to stay here' to come back into focus, to gather himself and think it through in peace, outside of the demands of anyone’s gaze (including the player’s!), while rook takes care of spite’s confusion and urgency and distress as he can’t himself in this shattered state. they're inside his soul, but he still gets that moment of privacy, with rook and spite there and supporting but not intruding. idk there's just something so good and right-feeling about it. rook's presence in lucanis' mind at its most vulnerable and frozen could have felt SO invasive if the quest wasn't written as skillfully as it is, and I get skeeved out by that kind of thing incredibly easily so it's a testament to how well it's done that it always feels safe and supportive. lucanis has had both his bodily and psychological (slash spiritual/existential) integrity and autonomy violated so brutally and repeatedly, and having even the way the camera perceives him here grant him the dignity and respect and privacy of soul he hasn’t experienced in a long time… it’s a whole thing huh. No wonder it’s taken me a while to put it into words lol 

(also what a contrast to what solas and rook have got going on, and what a sly way to slide the point of comparison in there to build to the thematic whole. the solas version of this IS of course wildly invasive and skeeves me out but in the intended delighted horror movie way. solas, too, was let into someone’s soul through the cracks in the wake of a traumatic event, and he IMMEDIATELY sought to turn it to his own benefit and use that trauma as a weapon against them fhdsja I’m sorry but it’s just such a character-revealing instinct for him to act on without hesitation and I love how terrible he is, it’s all so unforgivably premeditated and consistent.

rook acting out of the desire to make sure lucanis is ok vs. solas going ‘well. When life gives you oops killed my friend, make dead friend poisoned lemonade and make his loved ones drink it. this sunk cost fallacy isn’t going to perpetuate itself’ is such a neat contrast and it’s not in your face about it but it’s still there, deep and solid down in the thematic narrative. rook doesn’t do anything to or in lucanis’ mind, really — they negotiate their way through the layers of defense and are let through, and they help him make the whole thing more explicable, but they never exert any force or go rooting around for anything that doesn’t present itself to them first. solas goes about gathering ammo for when he's going to nothing personel kid this person from like the first moment fhdskh doesn't waste a second before he's on that gaslight gatekeep girlboss grind. the fact that the game goes out of its way to show there IS a respectful, non-selfish and kind version of this process makes what solas is doing even more deliciously awful (glee) and rook and lucanis’ relationship (platonic, romantic, whatever it might be in any given playthrough) all the more moving to me)

[paperzest]

ORIGAMI NORIAKI KAKYOIN, designed+folded by me. One uncut square of roughly 60 cm home-prepared double tissue. Natural color changes (green for one side of the paper, peach on the other). Long post incoming!!

This project began a bit over a week ago, when the inspiration struck me, and I simply had to create him. My starting paper was super wrinkly! It got warped when I left it to dry overnight!! So it was very uneven. But! I took inspiration from a post I once saw about a tissue foil Ryujin that said “See this post as a reason to create something stupid, because it might actually turn out great.” So despite the flaws, I decided “I am going to fold this paper anyway”. And I’m glad I did. Shaping the face especially took a lot of trusting in the process. While I believe there is still room for future improvement, I also think it’s the best origamiyoin I’ve created so far. 

Much of this folding process was spent shaping him. I spent an evening impulsively drafting the structure in Box Pleating Studio and then getting paper prepared. Precreasing and collapse was spread out over 2 days, and everything else was shaping. 

Including image with side by side comparison of the first Kakyoin vs the latest below. While the old fold absolutely does not meet my standard now, it was an important part of this journey as well. Other miscellaneous process images included. (I do not claim the crease pattern to be perfect)

ALSO EDIT: NEW FOLD OF KAKYOIN HERE

[foreverunraveling]

Is it just me, or does Young Royals really love to scare us, lull us into a false sense of security, and then pull the rug out from underneath us (in a way that's much worse than the original threat)?

For example, you see August clocking Wille leaving the movie before Simon in episode 2.

You (if you weren't too distracted by the scene itself) might have worried that he might show up when they were having their first kiss there. But he didn't. The show consciously created that tension and then relieved it as a foreshadowing of the much worse version of that to come later.

That tension is recreated at the end of episode 4 when August is shown outside a window at Forest Ridge.

There's a brief moment of relief--he's at Alex's window, not Wille's. While you know deep down where this has to be going, you still have a kernel of hope. And then even when he does make it to Wille's room, you can't tell it's a boy (let alone Simon) for five full seconds. Hope tries to stay alive. We all know how it ends, though--that tension snaps right back into our faces when August spots Wille and Simon moments later.

This happens on a different scale with Wille and Simon's planned weekend together in episode 3. When Wilhelm tells Simon that August will be staying at Forest Ridge, that introduces a tension of "will they get their weekend together?"

That tension of "will they get their weekend together" is relieved when Wille asks if he can come to Simon's in Bjarstad, only to AGAIN snap right back into our faces when a much bigger problem surfaces--Erik dies. So, they don't get their weekend anyways.

Hell, there's even a hint of this in episode 2 when August walks in on Wilhelm looking at Simon's Instagram before rowing practice. He doesn't actually see what Wille was doing, though--so it's okay--and he ends up taking a call from Erik.

In another way, this happens with Wilhelm and Felice's relationship from season 1 to season 2. She initially kisses him in episode 3, and we worry that he might just go with it. He doesn't, though. What a relief. In the next episode, though, once he's crown prince, Wilhelm is publicly flirting with Felice (despite her relationship with August) over how "cute" she looks in a video. But our worries about this fade with the release of the video and Felice's support into season 2...

Until they actually almost hook up in the third episode, that is.

And it's definitely not limited to Simon and Wille and their relationships. It comes up with Sara and August too. When he initially kisses her in episode 4 of season 1, you might worry that maybe Sara will respond in a less-than-healthy manner, or that she'll keep what happened to herself instead of telling Felice. Sara rebuffs him, though, and tells Felice about what happened in the stables later that episode.

Tension introduced and relieved, so we move on. But then in the final episode of season 1, Sara goes to August's room to confront him about the video. And she ends up kissing him. In season 2, they end up being in AN ENTIRE SECRET RELATIONSHIP that Sara keeps from Felice. The original fear that you might have had about August twisting his way into Sara's heart was well-founded, it seems.

There are also smaller examples. Like when you see Erik driving incredibly fast in episode 1, or when you see Wilhelm riding on the scooters with Simon, Rosh, and Ayub in episode 2, some people worried there might be some kind of accident. (He was going hands-free, for fuck's sake.)

Well, in both of those instances, everything turned out okay, while Erik's actual offscreen accident in episode 3 obviously did not.

The anxiety about Marcus catching Wilhelm and Simon kissing at the Valentine's party is momentarily alleviated when it looks like him and Simon are going inside, but then Marcus turns around and sees Wille (not to mention he sees Simon eyeing Wille throughout the entire song and during the applause).

Let's not even get started on the drugs. We thought that storyline was resolved, gone, done away with after Alexander was seemingly expelled during season 1.

But then he's back in season 2, and the question of whether anyone will tell Alex that Wilhelm was the one to pin the blame on him arises. It seems a minor issue--given that Alexander wasn't actually expelled, and he seems to like Wille, we don't necessarily expect it to matter all too much. In episode 6, though, the "drug thing" is back at the top of our list of problems. We thought that this had been dealt with! That we'd gotten past it!

But it's worse than before--there's a pill bottle with Simon's father's name on it, and August has it! August has a potential witness behind him (Alex) and is threatening to tell not just the school, but the cops!

Don't worry, though, the tension is relieved when Simon tells Wille he's not going to report August to the police... for approximately six seconds until we see that Sara is reporting August instead.

Anyways, following this pattern, you can draw some really interesting potential conclusions about season 3 based on some of the big tension reliefs that have occurred over the past two seasons. Not saying that any of these will happen, but I'm preparing myself for anything:

Wilhelm has some sort of drug OD—like Simon (and some of the audience, probably) worried on the night of the Society party. This is one I'm really hoping doesn't come up.

Wilhelm actually kills August—when Wilhelm puts that gun down, it's a massive relief for most of us (also the characters present). This would just be... wild. And would explain Omar's tweets about how crazy the season is, I guess.

Sara outs Stella's crush on Fredricka, like she was threatening to do when Felice was moving out of their room at the Manor House. Istg if she does this I might lose it.

Wilhelm's mother dies. This was definitely one idea on some people's minds when Wilhelm takes that call that turns out to be about Erik in episode 3.

Wilhelm actually abdicates. This is definitely a threat made in season 2 that was later assuaged. I'm pulling for Wilhelm taking the throne only to abolish the monarchy. That might be a bit too optimistic on my part, though.

ALTERNATIVELY, August gets the throne. They teased us with this when Wilhelm almost didn't give the speech. August was literally walking up to the podium when Wille leapt up to take his place and momentarily rescued us from the notion that August was going to be ascending the throne.

Wilhelm and/or Simon and/or Sara get pulled from Hillerska. After the video, both Simon and Sara were potentially not going to return to the school. Simon was even late for the first day back, when he missed the choir performance. And Wille was almost physically removed from the school in episode 2 of season 2. Given the statement in the trailer about the school potentially shutting down... this one doesn't seem like too much of a long shot.

It's hard to say what any of this could mean for Simon/Wilhelm's relationship—I mean, in season 1, we had about six instances where we thought we'd get Simon and Wilhelm together and originally didn't (the first music room scene, the conversation after Erik's memorial, the second music room scene/drug situation, the video leak, Wilhelm LYING about the video leak).... the reasons kept getting worse and worse, until there's a release of tension when Wille says he won't deny the video—only for it to be far more crushing when he does deny it having promised otherwise. It seems like there's a new, bigger problem every time they turn around. So far, they've overcome all of the obstacles they've faced (honestly, I don't know how)... but I can't imagine that they're about to be facing an easy course based on that trailer.

Anyways, these are my meandering thoughts about some ways that we can try to guess at what we might have coming based on the show's patterns and its use of foreshadowing. Like I said, I'm just trying to mentally prepare myself for some of the wild-ass shit that might go down. So these are some crazy scenarios based on a few fake-outs that we've had so far. I'm still hoping that they don't take the smallest, most hopeful bits of seasons 1 and 2 and crush them in season 3....

[quailxcrossing]

i just had to spend a moment with them outside of the story, like i used to.....

[ariavar]

Jon Snow's Perpetual Princehood

Promise me, she had cried, in a room that smelled of blood and roses. Promise me, Ned. The fever had taken her strength and her voice had been faint as a whisper, but when he gave her his word, the fear had gone out of his sister's eyes. 

"Mother." There was a sharpness in Robb's tone. "You forget. My father had four sons."

"The Night's Watch will make for Hardhome. I ride to Winterfell alone, unless…" Jon paused. "… is there any man here who will come stand with me?" The roar was all he could have hoped for, the tumult so loud that the two old shields tumbled from the walls. 

[tadc-survival-isles]

Been playing around with Zoobles design and this is basically me drawing what I have of them so far. Their design has a lot of neat little features that I think are cool! They are basically the hunter of the group so thats why they have a bow.

They have silly funky design aspects I'd have to showcase at another time, but for future reference they do pop off their claw hand and change it out for something else sometimes. :]

[artforsis]

Check out this great Gig I've got from #fiverr https://www.fiverr.com/s/zWoe8Ro

Cute digimon pattern for my sister

[foggyinphx]

Now that I've spent a little time licking my wounds in a corner, I'm gonna present two groups.

SPOILERS FOR SEASON 2!

Group A

-Multiple officers at Josie's bar

-White Tiger

-Luca

-Adam

-Dex's prison guard and doctor

-Many AVTF officers who faced Frank

-Commissioner Gallo

Group B

-Foggy Nelson

-Benjamin Poindexter

-Angela Del Toro

-Muse

-Cole North

Group A is everyone who died due to extreme injury to the head. Most by bullet, two by scissors, and one by rage squeezing.

Group B are people who seemingly suffered deadly injuries. One self-revived in front of our eyes, one was saved by medical intervention, and the other 3 are all appearing in season 2 (somehow someway). All of their heads are fully intact. Yet, only one of these is being presented by some fans as irreversible and incontravertible. Considering he's in group B... clearly they wanted to keep the option open.

[sillymillipede]

wuzhui

[confusioncorvid]

>be me

>be girl

>be redhead

>have five lettered name

>have name starting with the letter M

>some guy named Link pulls up

>befriend him

>mfw

[chewyhanniebug]

ah. i knew this felt familiar

[daughterofsarenrae]

me: hi i like your plushie can i buy your pattern :)

etsy seller: yes of course here you go! :)

the plushie pattern:

[i-cast-zone-of-truth]

fangs of fortune was fun, then it was concerningly endearing, and now it's getting dangerously close to transcendent

[chadlesbianjasontodd]

Closely connected to the act of name signing was the act of writing poems on walls. As scholars have already pointed out, with beginnings traceable to the Six Dynasties, wall poems (tibishi) were already very widespread during the Tang. By Christopher Nugent's count, well over one thousand entries in the Complete Tang Poems had titles indicating that they began as inscriptions on some surface other than paper or scrolls. These surfaces included walls at places of gathering and transit, such as post stations, scenic sites, inns, and increasingly in the latter part of the Tang, Buddhist temples, which also served public roles for lay gatherings and performances. (100)

In one anecdote, a latecomer casts aspersions on a first writer's literary skills, comparing him to the general Xiang Yu (232-202 BCE), who was infamous for having learned just enough writing to manage his name: "Li Tang signed his name on a pavilion in Zhaoying County. When Wei Zhan [jinshi degree 865] saw it, he took a brush and dashed off a taunt: 'The rivers of Wei and Qin brighten the eyes, / but why is Xiren short on poetic spirit? / Perhaps he mastered only what Beauty Yu's husband could / learning to write just enough to put down his name.' " ... It would not be a stretch to imagine the sniggering of those who read this inscription in a frequented pavilion. (102)

For a degree seeker in Chang'an, these circuits of information and judgment received more discussion than the actual examination itself. Tang literati wrote copiously about activities such as name signing, public exposure, and triumph. It would not be an exaggeration to say that in ninth-century temples and popular recreation areas, the vertical spaces were teeming with verses that clamored for attention. (104)

selections on poetic graffiti from linda rui feng's city of marvel and transformation: chang'an and narratives of experience in tang dynasty china (university of hawaii press, 2015)