#the midway point

[stark-lord]

[Cue Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered as performed by Samuel Barnett]

[hinamie]

doodles

[mispelled]

I drew the guys on brand enough times that I think I deserve a lil bit of self indulgent semi-humanization. for funsies

[aeb-art]

made some sprite edits with loop in @ghostlightfic

there's also another one under the cut that i made yesterday but i did it on my phone and it saved all blurry lmao

i like the ones i made today a lot more, but this one might as well be included

[mocking-the-bird]

This but it's your otp/oc's

[spooky-activity]

Well that’s… unfortunate.

First

Previous

Next

[gavily]

young xavi was so pretty

[notfeelingthyaster]

i'm curious to know what's the timeframe of lestat meeting marius (and therefore akasha), if it's before the trial, after the trial, before louis met him (but i think it's probably after the trial while louis is locked in a coffin, it would explain his appearance and the fact he did not fight armand beforehand, but why would lestat leave paris and come back to paris and be still in magnus tower?)

edit: we had a very nice discussion in the replies about it and lestat went to marius (and akasha) before louis, so hope we'll see it next season 🙂‍↕️

[thesherrinfordfacility]

"life begins after coffee"

props department making it their mission to repeatedly punch me in the throat, thank you

[osarina]

i still think my best fic idea/ability idea is the first fyozai fic idea i had - not the one that ive been putting up for the polls. i wish i had the inspiration for it but </3 alas there is none

[devastatinglygreen]

I really like hearing your opinion on the things the fandom is hung up on and I haven't seen you say anything yet so I wanted to know what you thought of Colin's entrapment comment?

ohhhh interesting (and thank you tho i am sure you will regret it). i am here to provide 24/7 personalized hot takes so don't worry i will bother everyone with my opinion.

why do i, personally, think he said it? aside from being hurt? i sort of have a very nebulous idea of it that i noticed on a rewatch (yes i will rewatch this season consistently, it's now my among my favorite comfort tv shows along with 2005's p&p (which is a movie i know), that one season of friends, that flea market show i hate (don't ask), and the entirety of bob's burgers) but colin has no idea penelope loves him until episode 6 so it's connected to that.

i am very sorry you were brave enough to ask me a question and now have to read all the nonsense below. god speed.

like, he's flying blind and after the carriage (insert pitbull music...and fingers here) he's pretty insecure that's he's moving a lot faster than she is. it's unsettling to be head over ass in love and feel like you're not worthy of it and then not even be sure where the other person is. that penelope doesn't reciprocate when he first says it to her is noticeable but he moves on so quickly you can sort of assume he doesn't want to give her a chance to, like he's scared of the answer if he asks.

colin waxes poetic about love, about penelope, etc all through eps 5 and 6. he's consumed by it and to be fair, they were on different wavelengths in part 1. she was trying to let him go and move past him and he was stumbling and staring and wanting to die with wanting her while she was like, "hey this guy you hate for no reason likes me, isn't that cool?" and it's pretty fresh for him so i would think something like that lingers.

when she tells him she loves him in ep 6, he's happy. and relieved. i also think he's been expecting bad news (which, you know. it, uh, will be later) so it's a relief to hear that they're on the same page but, and this stuck out to me the first time i heard it, she says she loved him while pretending to be his friend. she corrects herself because of course she was actually his friend but she loved him underneath of it all as well but penelope isn't always the best with words when on the spot and it takes her a moment to calm down and gather her thoughts. the relief (and guilt of him not knowing/reciprocating) is very obvious in the moment and i think he was thrilled to hear that she loved him back.

which leads us to the LW fight. which makes him question if he ever knew her at all. he does, of course he does, but she's been this secret second person who has written about him, his family, her best friend, and her own family for years. penelope's intentions are never malicious when it comes to protecting the people she loves but the execution can leave a fair bit to be desired. she doesn't lie but she isn't always kind, either.

so you have this man beyond in love with a woman he doesn't think he can trust who just admitted she'd loved him for years. it's easy to live in that hurt and anger and assume the worst of someone when they've just betrayed your trust so deeply. it would probably be easy to feel manipulated. i don't think him questioning her motives is beyond the realm of possibility but i do think penelope is better than me because if i get accused of something i didn't do i would act up something fierce (see this is why my husband had to marry me, he had to keep me from terrorizing the rest of the population with my dramatics. a hero of our times, really).

anyways, what i mean is, i think it's easy to ignore the lead up to that betrayal as an audience since we know penelope's anguish and hurt over what she's done but colin has no idea and it's very fresh for him so it's easy to lash out and think everything had a motive. penelope as LW is very calculating and pointed. i think it's smart of her, actually, to continually tell him she loves him and not constantly poke at the argument. she's not giving him anything else to hold up and use against her after the fact. she's very frank and open even when they have their argument in the street.

this idea he has of LW is this hurtful, manipulative person playing with people's lives. like, LW would entrap him but penelope wouldn't so it's easy to hate one and love the other and i think his inability to bring them together as one person could play into that dynamic of feeling insecure of what her intentions were. you can sort of see each time he breaks because he knows penelope loves him but he steps back each time he's reminded of LW and how it comes between them.

something i also think plays out in his inability to communicate effectively and how deeply his self-loathing goes into his jealousy of her success and how he's incapable of being intimate with penelope until he's in a better headspace. he loves penelope. he wants to marry her and be with her and live a life with her but there's a 3rd person in his marriage in his mind and what does one do with all of that when you're so firmly penelope-sexual you're staring at the walls in a brothel when you're still single? idk man.

just remember if you're sorry for having read this, i am sorrier for having written it. except for the penelope-sexual part. that's still funny to me.

[obstinaterixatrix]

Amelie, a dreamy and romantic young Belgian woman, arrives in Japan to being work as a translator for the giant Yumimoto Corporation. For Amelie, who spent her childhood in Japan, this is a dream come true. It is her chance to become a "real Japanese." Eager to please her bosses and co-workers, she diligently accomplishes her daily tasks with invention and enthusiasm. But unfamiliar with the customs of the Japanese workplace, Amelie commits a series of cultural missteps and is singled out as a deviant within the company hierarchy, suffering a string of demotions. The harder she tries, the more wrathful her superiors seem to become, the more unreasonable and humiliating their demands. Unable to stop her downfall, Amelie suddenly stumbles upon her own extraordinary means of liberation.

happy femslash february, here’s a 2003 french-japanese movie about miserable office workers.

so. the thing is. this movie makes me insane. it’s deranged normal office drama. it’s mundane absurdism. it’s psychological warfare and power harrassment. it’s not romantic. it’s extremely homoerotic. and it is very french. I’m putting it in my femslash feb recs because. well.

these women are Not Normal about each other. with amélie it’s much more obvious since it’s from her perspective, but there’s a lot about miss mori you pick up from context and extrapolation and she is also extremely Not Normal about amélie.

since it’s about culture clash, I’m sure it’ll be very hit or miss with some folks in terms of how much it leans into stereotypical(/satirical) depictions of japanese office culture, but I felt like 1) there was a wide enough variety of characters to offset completely flattening the conflict, 2) it’s clear to me that amélie is supposed to be shown as having A Very Biased (and sometimes cringe) Perspective.

if you have any interest in toxic office yuri. I Highly Recommend This Movie. it’s available to buy/rent on some streaming services, there are some dvds floating around, and there are other ways to find it if you really want to

[perlukafarinn]

at it yet again, writing an incredibly detailed outline for a fic i will never actually write

[originalaccountname]

POTENTIAL SPOILERS AT THE END OF THIS ASK FOR THE NEW CHAPTER IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IT YET

Okay, so like, how far can Dazai’s nullification ability extend? I know it’s through touch, and that for the most part if he touches the ability user/object affected by an ability that can nullify it. Though that’s not always the case (like how he can be affected by Gogol’s warps because there’s technically nothing to touch though I suspect Gogol wouldn’t be able to touch him - or how he has to touch what Kunikida makes not Kunikida himself to nullify his ability and can’t nullify the victims of Q’s curse).

But I’ve seen debate on how his ability affects things through other things. Because I’ve seen people say touching his clothes (which touch him) also nullifies abilities but that he needs to touch people skin to skin (not through their clothes) to nullify those types of abilities. And it mostly doesn’t necessarily seem to work through cloth or whatever else he may be touching (that an ability user may or may not be touching) but then I recall that part of the way they beat Rimbaud in the LN — if I recall correctly — was by having Chuuya wrapped in cloth that Dazai touched in order to nullify the effects of Rimbaud’s ability through it.

So I’m kinda confused.

(Mostly this was brought up by the debates over whether Chuuya’s gravity could affect the elevator Dazai’s in since he can’t really avoid touching it which would nullify if. Though if it doesn’t necessarily transfer through what he touches, I don’t see why Chuuya couldn’t just grab the elevator and control the gravity of his own body to slow it down or stop it.)

To be transparent I had to scrap the first version of this answer because while looking up arguments to say how Dazai's ability does affect objects he directly touches, I found some new things and now the answer to that is a big I don't know, maybe not???

EXHIBIT A

In Fifteen, Dazai touches a long cloth wrapped around Chuuya to nullify Rimbaud's attacks. I thought it was because he was making the cloth immune to abilities like himself, but after discussing it with @videogamelover99, I changed my mind. Remember that part about how being in and out of Rimbaud's subspace is akin to two characters from different novels trying to interact, which is impossible? The new interpretation is that Dazai, being immune to abilities, was outside of Rimbaud's subspace, while everything else was inside that subspace. By grabbing the cloth, he forced it to exit the subspace to join his reality outside the subspace, which made it so Rimbaud's attacks couldn't touch the cloth anymore and couldn't reach Chuuya.

EXHIBIT B

Also in Fifteen, Dazai went out of his way to grab Chuuya's neck when Hirotsu and him first fought Chuuya to nullify his ability (direct contact). Meanwhile, Hirotsu's hand was on his shoulder/chest, and he fully intended to use his ability on Chuuya while Dazai was holding him. It doesn't seem like Dazai touching Chuuya would have protected him from Hirotsu's ability (no transfer).

EXHIBIT C

The new stuff I hadn't noticed! Taking you all the way back to chapters 9-10-11, when Dazai is in the mafia dungeon. So far, Dazai's bandages were consistently drawn going high up on his neck, well above his Adam's apple.

In the dungeon, Akutagawa uses Rashoumon to attack him and "attempts" to cut his throat

and afterwards, his bandages come loose, exposing his Adam's apple

His neck is unharmed, because no ability can touch him, however his BANDAGES, which touch his skin directly, were cut and damaged by Rashoumon. Which would mean that 1. his ability does NOT transfer to his own clothes and 2. touching his clothes does NOT nullify an ability.

EXHIBIT D

I cannot find an instance of Dazai nullifying someone's ability and not either touching them directly (Atsushi's face/neck, Chuuya's neck/arm/face, Ranpo's hair, unnamed blond guy's face...) or touching their ability manifestation (Q's doll, Kunikida's things, Rashoumon...). Steinbeck's situation, I would like to mention, is rather ambiguous in the manga and could easily be skin on skin contact. If you have a counter example (NOT from the anime), please share it!

CONCLUSION

It seems like Dazai's ability works in very simple terms: no ability can touch him. That means if he touches the source of an ability (a person or a manifestation), that ability gets nullified, and no ability can affect him. It only works through direct contact with him (hair/skin) and does not transfer through material/surfaces/people.

So the elevator? Probably fine actually. If he's not affecting the bandages and the new Rimbaud interpretation is right, his ability can't affect random objects, so in theory it wouldn't prevent Chuuya from manipulating its gravity, so long as Dazai isn't touching him directly.

(there's also the very real chance Asagiri changed the lore along the years, but until further notice I'll assume everything still works the same way)

[fluffypotatey]

*puts on my Professor glasses* Macky really knows EXACTLY how to talk to Wukong, let's dissect it! M: Looks like things are going smoothly. W: I say, you've been here the whole time, haven't you? M: FFM is your home, but it's also mine. W: Did you find anything? M: Still nothing, however. Now the Jade Emperor is no longer present. The Celestial Realm already gives me an unsettling feeling. M: Wukong...that kid. W: I understand. M: You have to go and talk to him. W: I know! But...he still isn't ready. M: I see. You're the one who isn't ready, yet. How did you even become a teacher! M: He has to be. We all have to be realistic. W: He's just a kid. We can't let him... M: Who says he's just a kid! Why is it him? When you chose him, did you know? W: I didn't know, I really didn't know! I just followed...a feeling. M: Are you not the least bit worried?! This child has all of your special powers, and he always runs into trouble. Have you never questioned this before? Not a single person knows where he came from. Is it not strange?! M: We still have no clue as to whoever let out Azure Lion. All your old foes returned in one swoop. Are you not even a little- W: Then what about you? You also suddenly came back. M: Argh- M: I say, someone must be manipulating us behind our backs. Especially Xiaotian. But they still haven't succeeded. W: Then tell me. What about you? M: Tell me do you want my help or not?! / W: Not long ago you were still against me! / M: I see, you're just a- / W: ...after I assume you'll teach me how to train my own disciples? ~ Xiaotian Interupts ~ M: Look. That kid has made you his idol. You're his one true hero, but you... W: But I what? M: He has to understand, he doesn't need to carry these burdens. You have to do better. You can really tell whose the chatty one in this relationship XD Wukong might be a lil annoyed, but he's tolerant. And Macky is a little playful turd as always. Where Wukong gets gloomy and concerned, Mac swaps between teasing and serious in a blink. Then things get a lot more strained and tense, but unlike their previous fights, it never escalates into violence. Never a growl, never a raised fist. They're right at the edge, and they drop it. I'm very much interested in the psychology of arguments and when it comes to people latching onto (1) thing a person says and relating it slightly off topic to avoid talking about that other thing, like Wukong is doing here. It's so cool seeing how physical they are in trying to visibly control their emotions around each other, and how they keep trying to hold themselves back from tearing in further, always pausing and halting, and switching to another thing. They're TRYING. Ugh. I think Mac was trying to give a comforting smile at the end, but it's kinda warped by the whole ~ everything else. ~ Anyhow, I like how this starts with Wukong establishing, or rather cementing to Macaque that he believes MK is a kid. And while Macaque argues against that, he did also say before that Wukong should talk to him. And they have their squabble, with Mac pushing Wukong's buttons to get him to say something, BUT the fact this gets resolved with he needs to understand he doesn't need to carry these burdens. YOU HAVE TO DO BETTER. Like of all things Mac could have chosen. He's playing right into what Wukong himself believes, that will overwrite the "MK isn't ready" thing. Because let's face it. Mac is right when he says Wukong also isn't ready for that talk yet. He's so down throughout all this, Wukong probably feels himself that he needs to be better. AND by appealing to the fact MK is a kid, without explicitly stating that, just a statement that cannot be denied, BUT is a subject that undoubtedly, even Wukong cannot avoid. Because he wants better for MK. For him to not walk down the same path as him. Macaque has basically nudged Wukong into having that talk he wanted with MK by reframing it differently from what Wukong wasn't ready for. Thoughts? Critique?

*squishes you* anon…anon, you’re telling me..that this was the actual dialogue between SWK and Macky in 5x01. that what i just read is the translated version of the Mandarin dub. correct?

ok ok cool. i’m cool. gucci. feeling fantastic lemme just

WHAT THE FUCK LMK

ok so i ranted in the tags but realized i forgot to say more things (also i was worried i’d exceed the tag limit bc that is a real thing what do you know!)

so, anon, you said Macky knows how to talk to Wukong and yeah agreed but for me it’s for of the sense of “Macky knows how to get his words under Wukong’s skin”

he knows how to let his words sink in and fester in Wukong’s mind, making him reconsider things or another to help speed up certain decisions or choices Wukong is hesitating on. and ain’t it fascinating how despite how long it’s been since either character have talked or interacted with each other, they still know the ins and outs of their behavior and thoughts.

Macky knows Wukong needs to talk to MK but is holding back. Macky after one answer from Wukong realizes that it’s Wukong who isn’t ready for that conversation and switches tactics to try and breach that mental block

Wukong, in a need to avoid the conversation, brings up the questions surrounding Macky’s reason for even being alive again because that is information neither have talked about and oh hey! Macky is avoiding that conversation too! and it’s an important one to have so he pushes for it, but Macky knows it’s being pushed to avoid their original discussion and is annoyed bc “classic Wukong, never wanting to delve too deep into topics where he’ll need to be vulnerable for” (especially when said vulnerability is with his newly re-allied ex friend Macaroni himself)

god i love them

[samanthamulder]

and what is director rob bowman doing these days