#the characters and their motivations are STILL so nice

[lucky-clover-gazette]

okay i have THOUGHTS about this line

he didn’t have to say that to make his plan work. i mean yeah, being nice to the player definitely earns their favor and future assistance, but he could have just as easily gone the route of gaslighting them into feeling bad and like they caused the problem, eliciting a more shame-based and desperate and less uplifting and righteous kind of reliance. like if volo really hated the player, and was truly cruel, that’s what he would have done. the player would have still gotten the chain and felt indebted to him for the plate hunt, but they also would be miserable and feel lonely and hurt and confused. but volo doesn’t do that, he grounds the player and validates their feelings, which were hurt by the cruel townspeople more than the event volo caused to prompt that cruelty. like truly, it’s only volo’s fault that the player gets banished through the most like simple calculated logic—yes, if he hadn’t caused the rift, they wouldn’t have been banished, or brought here at all. but kamado CHOSE to banish them based on his own paranoia and disdain for outsiders, and the others enabled it by choice. volo didn’t make that happen, just how he didn’t make or even want arceus to get the player involved in the first place.

i don’t think volo hates the player, personally, at all. or at least, i think that he hates them and cares for them just as much as he hates and cares for himself. i know this isn’t groundbreaking volo theorizing material, but he’s absolutely projecting his disdain for society based on his vague past experiences here. he dislikes the outsider because his plan demands it, but he dislikes everyone else because he personally thinks they’re terrible. it’s kinda neat how he “fake” compliments the player’s loyalty to him as a merchant so often, bc i think loyalty is something he actually takes very seriously. and he probably saw how loyal the player was to the galaxy team, and then the way they kicked them out, and was genuinely pissed and hurt on the player’s behalf.

the things he says at the end of the game are said in extreme distress and defeat, and while they are not NOT reflective of his character and motives, i’m shocked by how many pokemon fans regard volo like he’s a nihilistic and amoral sociopath. passion and compassion are behind nearly everything volo does, for better or for worse. they’re behind moments like this, and moments like his ranting at spear pillar. he is a person who constantly grapples to align his personal moral code and lofty ideals, which live in this weird space between the manmade and divine, with the flawed reality of existence. his entire mentality is full of contradictions, because he is a man who thinks he should be god, but in reality could never be a good god, because he is still very much a man. it’s the emotion, idealism, and intellectual curiosity of humanity that drive him, not the impartiality, absolutism, and complacency of an omnipotent all-knowing deity.

so like, with this line. he specifically mentions that the galaxy team has treated the player poorly. not that the galaxy team’s choice was illogical, not that the player just needs to try harder to get them to accept him. he is emphatically rejecting the premise that the player did anything to deserve blame, even though he has no intention to actually explain why this really happened or volunteer himself to take the blame. because ultimately, volo is not the person to blame for the galaxy team’s cruelty, and he knows it. and he also knows that it’s the cruelty that has hurt the player, more than the sky problem itself, because he has been treated like an outsider too. and he can’t DO anything about that. even if he told the truth, the damage has already been done. the player knows how their supposed allies would react in this situation, regardless of the logic or truth. and volo can’t fix that. he does not believe he can make people kinder or the world a better place, which is exactly why he wants so badly to remake it. for himself, bc clearly he’s been through some shit too, for people like the outsider, and for anyone else whose loyalty and dedication have been met with rejection and apathy. which is so deeply tragic and ironic, because by being the only person to care for the player in this moment, he is making the world a better place for them.

volo is, at his core, a hypocrite. he’s like if you put the ingredients for a hero into a blender, but accidentally used the “tragic hypocrite” setting so he came out a janky villain instead. to volo, concepts like loyalty and self-righteousness are driving forces, much moreso than simple black and white morality or consequentialism. this makes him a hypocrite because he believes a perfect world is possible as long as his moral code is strictly followed, and his evil plan is to prove it. but in his efforts to do so, he proves over and over again that a perfect world isn’t possible, and certainly would not be possible under his control.

like, okay—if someone suggested that the means of pain and suffering in the world justified the ends (the world), volo would disagree and claim that arceus is responsible for the pain and suffering, and therefore does not deserve the power to create/rule worlds. but then, following that very same logic, if volo needed to get a random person banished and betrayed in order to create his better world, then those means wouldn’t justify his ends either. which is WHY we see him subconsciously draw a line here, between the things he’s not responsible for (other people being cruel, arceus transporting the player) and the things he is directly responsible for (the way he treats the player in these circumstances, either with derision or support). and wouldn’t you know, in this instance where it truly is up to him what the means are to his ends, he chooses kindness where he could have been cruel. because while arceus sending the hero and the town banishing them weren’t really Volo’s means to Volo’s ends, this conversation sure as hell could be. And he doesn’t want his better world built on a foundation of suffering and pain.

by saying this one line and treating the player as he does here, i think volo accidentally exposes something deeply true and good about himself. this man could say “i’m a villain and i don’t care about the player” and fully believe it, but at the same time demonstrably possess the morals and compassion of a hero, which he uses to actively care for the player. he is a delusional hypocrite, but he’s definitely not heartless. and i just think that’s neat.

alternatively, volo is completely heartless, knows that people are endeared to people who want to protect them, and methodically uses that knowledge here for his convenience. that very well could have been the intention, and it makes sense too—but i personally enjoy entertaining the notion of depth where i see potential for it. so yeah.

[sevenines]

i saw this tweet and found it interesting for two reasons. one is that some people base how good cartoon network would be to toh by how it treated su, and despite the fact that su’s treatment by the network was considered poor at the time, now its thought to be exceptionally good in comparison to modern shows.

two is how exactly su got impacted by a limited budget. a common criticism is how characters like connie, peridot, and lapis are left out of missions. but balancing a lot of characters is not only hard but also costly (extra animation, extra voices—it’s been revealed that the show is limited to a set number of characters per episode otherwise they’re over budget). animation mistakes are not uncommon since retakes cost extra. the entire reason the original show got cut short was due to loss of funding!

[aardvaark]

i think it’s noteworthy that parker finds a way, multiple times, to pretend to be with hardison in a con. she kisses him in the first david job, she pretends she’s meeting him to have sex in the wedding job, they pretend they’re getting a marriage visa in the zanzibar marketplace job, and they act like they’ve been making out in the jailhouse job. and i can’t think of a time that she’s done that with any of the others?? tell me if im wrong but i don’t think she’s fake-made-out with anyone else, at least.

i mean, parker stabs or breaks the fingers of guys who flirt with her or touch her. yet in the first david job she kisses hardison. in season one, when she’s still so resistant to touch and her heart is so guarded. its just for the con, of course. but a fake kiss, something she can easily write off - that’s all she can do at that stage. she can’t offer her heart, she won’t let herself get attached, and really it takes until the long way down job (ie season 4) for her to start accepting that she is capable of loving and being loved. in season 1, when she was entirely closed off, a fake kiss is all she can do with her feelings for hardison pretzels. she keeps taking the opportunity to kiss him or be together, without the consequence of Having To Talk About It and all the problems she knows would come with that. her method of coping with Emotions is to let herself get into a bunch of mini fake dating AUs with him lol.

i think its worth bringing up because ive mentioned how sweet hardison is with her, and we all talk about how much he cares for her and shows patience and understanding, but its certainly not one-sided! parker’s enamoured with him since pretty early on. her way of showing it is just different and somehow both far less and way more direct lol. they both put effort into figuring each other out and learning to be in a relationship, not to mention that trying to be capable of a healthy relationship with hardison is one of the biggest driving forces behind parker’s character growth. he’s so important to her (and they’re so important to me <3).

[laugtherhyena]

Everytime i rewatch that segment in Dra chapter 6 where we see the events leading to class 79's capture i get a whiplash seeing how Mitch acts in that.

[threewaysdivided]

Hobson Heckled into Historical Haute-Couture

Continuing the Dan Jones & Dragons gala parade with Hobson, the Flower Crowns' oft-harried Halfling Warlock (played by the ever-wholesome Dan Floyd). Is he trying to massage away the realisation that letting his literally-half-brained patron choose his gala attire might have been a mistake? Is Valse giving him a headache over something else entirely? Did he use Detect Magic in a room full of powerful items and accidentally flash-bang himself? Yes.

More Flower Crowns Gala Outfits: Morenthal | Gelnek

As always, design talk under the cut:

But before that, a short story: I've been following Dan's content on Youtube for... oh jeez, that sure is almost a decade now, both on his current New Frame Plus/Playframe channels and back when he was the primary founder and narrator for EC. His old games education videos helped me get one of my earliest jobs in project work and introduced me to a bunch of media production concepts (like scope management) that would go on to inform some of my own storytelling analysis posts. It was a startling little moment of artistic ouroboros to realise I was mentally running through key points from Dan's own Pose Design 101 video as I was drawing his DnD character. Never expected things to come full-circle like that, but if you're seeing this, Dan: here's to you 🫡 If you're not Dan and haven't already, do go check out his stuff - it's all super well-produced, informative, funny and he's just an overall stand-up guy.

Now: onto the tiny little nerd and his passé party attire

This was a really fun costuming challenge, with a bunch of interesting curveballs thrown in the mix. Unlike the rest of the Flower Crowns, Hobson didn't choose his own party outfit: it was picked out by his patron after Valse kibbitzed him into giving up and letting a heroism-obsessed Fey call the shots. Dan cited Valse as having the fashion sense of Stede Bonnet-as-depicted-in-OFMD, briefing a vaguely 19th century-style outfit that had frilled sleeves and 'would have looked gaudy even when it was in fashion a century earlier'.

Actually dating his outfit was the first challenge. D&D settings are kind of an anachronistic uchronia, with classic swords-and-sorcery fantasy campaigns potentially pulling inspiration points from anywhere across the Arthurian era up to pre-war modernity. Which leads to the question: how do you make something seem dated in a setting where most everything looks vaguely ye-olde-fantasy? The other challenge was that, IRL, the 19th century (i.e Victorian era) was when menswear started taking on a lot of the shapes that would eventually become modern suit and top-'n'-tails fashion. Since Trilby was already going to be wearing classic top-'n'-tails formalwear, I decided to set Hobson's style earlier in the 1800s-1820s and pull in some 18th century Stede Bonnet flourishes to visually set them apart. This article provided some great reference images, and once I hit on the figured silk waistcoat I knew I had a potential starting point.

Colour-wise, I stuck with the burgundy-and-gold palette the Dans gave Hobson in his official gala stream art, since those looked good together and matched up with Dan J's tendency to draw Hobson wearing greens/earth-tones and Valse in reds/jewel-tones. The combination is a lot more colourful and richly saturated than is typical for this style of Victorian-adjacent clothes, which felt appropriate for Valse's gaudy tastes.

Fabric-wise, I figured a fun way to gaudy things up even further would be to lean into the silks and satins that were fashionable at the time, but make all of his outfit shimmery rather than just a single feature piece. As a bonus, silk and satin clothes tend be hot, inelastic and have horribly itchy seams if worn unlined, which felt like exactly the kind of thing Valse's all-form-no-function sensibilities would inflict upon the small, long-suffering fellow. Both these fabrics also have a habit of behaving hideously and ripping themselves apart when worn wet, which makes this a great outfit to, say, accidentally fight an Aboleth in. Poor Hobson.

Some other details, just for fun: 1. Hobson's sketch layers include a drawing of his un-removable cursed left bracer. He's pulled the frilly, puffy sleeve over it but you might spot hints of the shape and the gem if you squint. 2. The reference waistcoat I used had floral embroidery on it. Had this actually been a Hobson outfit, I would have converted them to his garland flower (Forget-Me-Nots), but since it was a Valse pick I decided to make them Senaliesse chrysanthemums; a flower given out to friends of the Feywild's Summer Court as a sign of protection and favour. (It also adds extra layers to Pocket mistaking Hobson for a denizen of the Fey, which is fun).

Close crop on the details because I'm very happy with how they turned out:

[dreamsy990]

kh2 au where everythings exactly the same except roxas is hanging around sora chara style. hes not particularly a vengeful spirit but hes not very nice either. also nobody but sora can see him. hijinks ensue.

[marmeow]

mine and a friend’s dnd characters from a year ago who did not get to fulfil their true potential :(( but i’m brainrotting rn sooo they’re my ocs and i’m officially making their story in my head 24/7 now (´⊙ω⊙`)

can’t remember if i posted leité’s character sheet but here she officially iiissss <33 she’s an elf druid who lives in her little cottage a small walk away from the village where she sells her crafts.

i know she kinda looks like freckled zelda pls dont say 😬

her and her party encounter an abandoned suit of armour which isn’t entirely abandoned and using her magic (it’s been a while since i’ve played lol), she brings him back to partial life but oh, what a twist! he has no memories (and idk if he should be mute and just be an entity or not so it’s easier to learn more about him as he does i like both ideas)

oh look, where her hands are hovering/touching, little flowers grow :))) they’re kinda like a hot n cold for where she is. think about irredessa in the pirate fairy when her talent was swapped ;)

-adjustments to his character a year later are partially inspired by @/patchworkpaladdin on tiktok(the pinned vid!!!!)

alt versions+sketch below!

no moss to admire the semi detail lol… and with rust versions

sketch from a year ago when they were first made! oh the babies blesssss ofc with hoizer like real people do <3

[freak1demon69]

This is what it feels like being a hex fan sometimes, like its not even a twitter issue (and in a sense its not necessarily an issue, sometimes ppl just wanna have fun n not spout theories n discussion 24/7! I get that!) but i feel like a lot of people r quick to write off aspects of the game and characters and insist that, despite it being a mullinsverse title, it's not that deep/things are surface level

[enden-k]

congrats on ur abyss run! i didnt even know they gave u a little message at the end lol (perpetualy 27 star-er here)

im rlly curious tho, if u dont mind me asking how long did it take?

oh ye it always gives this message when you went through all floors and continue

uhh not too long, first floors are always very fast to do if youre putting effort into doing it quick. i was streaming and fooling around a little, redid one floor twice and enjoyed free haitham whump three times so it was like an hour-ish doing all.

(in the first years i was always very try hard with abyss but rn i just feel tired and old LMFAO so im very chill with it and rlly just mess around and do the barest minimum. basically how i live my life ig)

[triglycercule]

am i allowed to post headcanons for jk fashion au. will people riot and scream at me not to post because its a waste. this is my own au this would be considered canon (i still have to get used to that. i'm a CREATOR now!). triglycercule this is literally your account why do you worry about if what you post bothers people. idk man i just worry like that,,,, anyways i have so many fucking hcs for jk fashion au that i cant draw without taking an obscenely long time on it so i guess i'm just gonna make this into one big stupid little reblog thread or edit and add onto this when i can (because if i keep making seperate posts about it and then lose track of the hcs i think i'm gonna kill myself) starting with these one :3

jk!nightmare often dances to audios she finds "cool" and stuff like that. i dont know an example of this but just imagine the coolest anime ending or opening soundtrack you could think of. anyways she's not very quiet about this. she sings loudly. and not all that well (NOT THAT SHE HAS A BAD VOICE JUST THAT,,,,, its not the best!) and the dreamtale residence has thin walls. so jk!dream often has to tell her to quiet down because their parents dont wanna hear the noise or whatever. and it turns into a very awkward stareoff between dream and nightmare when dream catches her in the middle of dancing and singing. very awkward. nightmare's eye goes all staremare mode because it would be funny. she's in her "corrupted form" for this so she can get into the right vibes. ans dream just smiles and sighs and offers to dance and sing with her until she gets it right as long as sh lowers the volume. and nightmare is absolutely touched by this because goddamn i would too like,,,,, and then they have a silly dance practice session and sing together sillily and its sweet and cute and amazing and dream is a great dancer ans nightmare isn't sll that good but dream helps her and doesn't judge and thats all nightmare wants (aside from being able to actually get the damn dance move right DAMN IT MOVE FEET!!!! stop dragging around,,,,,)

jk nightmare likes to think she's nocturnal or some bullshit like that. or like she stays up at abyssmal times because the moon is out and the negative energy at night is impeccably high or some cringe shit like that (LMAO) so when she goes to the book club i mean her gang she regularly takes naps there. except she also has a high enough ego not to just sleep on some lousy desk so the jk mtt brought in a beanbag into the clubroom and killer bought their stupid fucking sleeping mask for nightmare to wear. the design on it is up to interpretation but i like to think its like two giant googly eyes looking in opposite directions but like totally bedazzled because jk nightmare wants nothing less

like this! except i totally just fucking stole this from honkai impact but it fits okay it fits

anyways naptime for jk nightmare :3 and then when she wakes up the clubroom is in like total disarray with horror chasing killer for some bullshit she pulled and dust trying to flip over all the flipped over desks and shes just like what the fuck happened while she was asleep. cant do NOTHING with these damn goons of hers she should've hired others (theyre yiur friends silly dont be like that,,,,)

jk killer does those "today's mission" tiktoks. i've had this on my mind but it clicked for me that jk killer would do this when the mission for the day (i think this was yesterday) was to casually mention in conversation that you shit yourself. THIS ONE https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTNoDfpJt/ its such a funny fucking idea i can just imagine the absolute DISGUST EVERYONE would show on their faces. even dream frowns at killer and shes supposed to be perfect 😭😭😭

jk killer forces horror and dust to be in her selfies or videos or whatever the hell she wants to post but neither of them want to be shown online but she also wants to show off her fun moments with her totally cool best friends so she spends a lot of time manually editing emojis over their faces. even the videos. all of them

when jk dream comes to visit the gang and the clubroom usually the gang is in the middle of some sort of chaos and nightmare want to appear calm and collected and cool infront of her little sister so she immediately tries to get the trio to settle down. jk mtt still crack jokes at her expense though

jk dust and jk dream exchange letters with eachother. why? idk i just think that dream would collect those wax seal things (nightmare uses them too but dream's the main collector) and she needs to use them and dust has an interest in stationary so wax sealed letters,,,, stationary,,,, PEN PALS!!! they both have pen pal nicknames for eachother although i cant come up with them rn so whatever its up to interpretation

jk horror often just like. spots jk dream. like out in the wild for no reason its kind just like encountering a pokemon except ive never interacted with any pokemon content so i dont know much about how wild interactions like that go. anyways usually dreams doing some sort of vollunteer work and horror just comes up to her to causally chat. usually when horror's around others that aren't dust or killer she has to force herself to act nice but with dream she's just so naturally nice that it kinda rubs off on horror and she doesn't really act fake nice,,,, its cute. after dreams doing what they go out for ice cream together because theyre friends ans its cute and horror usually pays because dream does a shitton of work for no pay and she doesn't need more money stolen from her. this one is so cute :3

ok thats all i can think of for now. will be updating soon when i come up with more

average jk nm's gang conversation (nightmare doesn't know how to continue the sentence she just spoke in her fake fancy talk and the jk mtt are dogging her for it)

[calamity-unlocked]

Written for @babacontainsmultitudes <3

You fold your hands together, let them rest on your lap, and inhale and exhale deeply. You can do this. You can do this. It’s a mantra you repeat to yourself, as surely and studiously as you once told yourself everything was going to be O-A-K, as fervently as you once begged yourself to believe your childhood wasn’t slipping away from you and turning into an adult didn’t make everything so complicated. Today, you will try to set aside the burden of adulthood and channel your youthful dreams and wishes again, hoping they will be the key to unlocking a particular kind of magic you’ve struggled with for too long a time. Today, you will become a wolf.

Or, Sparrow reflects on his magic, his family, and himself, and why none of it seems to be working out.

Cute bonus thing under the cut ;)

Here is a little sad love wolf doodle from my amazing wonderful precious girlfriend <3 They made this while I was being dramatic over making a summary for this

(@themissakat ily <333)

[arolesbianism]

Eternal gales isat au except Bloom is the one looping and she never fucking escapes due to the curse of being 9 years old. Oh and also the middle aged woman actively sabotaging her at every step of the way ig

[zombieostrich]

behold, (most of) my WIPs! Only one of which I'm actually working on

Some of these are over a year old. One of these is about two years old. Is that the one I'm working on? No. No it is not. Because despite my brain wanting me to organize, organize, organize, it's also a bastard who wants nothing but pure, utter chaos.

[frobby]

boy son and girl daughter are the only characters who matter in kaiju no.8

[starsmuserainbow]

I wrote one reply and a little bit of another one today. (Not posted yet bc I grew the habit of always posting once I have two to post) I think I'm just very slightly being on replies before they wait a month, which is really nice to see because I hate how slow I've gotten with these things!

[fnafawoundleftbleedingau]

Gonna be a while before I think I'll be drawing much beyond some planned doodles I said I'd do to a couple close friends, but... I'm curious, what FNaF AU drawings types from me sound more interesting..?

A random poll yes, but I'm curious, and ngl, I think I'm approaching one of those not so great "Spells" where I'm losing confidence in the things I'm well, supposed to be doing for fun. ^^;