#they had a lot of suggestions

[seventeendeer]

ppl are too quick to point to laios' disability as the reason his friends think he's a freak sometimes. so many instances of laios getting yelled at are, in my eyes, a case of "this guy had to emotionally mature very early in order to be there for his little sister" combined with "much older friends who never had to learn to manage their own emotions to the same degree"

a lot of the time he's right about needing to be more direct/deal with things in a way that may seem scary/needing to put your gut reaction aside. he tries not to make his friends uncomfortable and he puts up with a lot because he's trying to keep the peace, but he also pushes the others out of their comfort zones purposefully to try to get them to think more constructively. everyone else in the party is prone to acting on their gut instincts and avoiding uncomfortable situations even when facing them head-on is very much necessary. part of what makes laios such a great leader is the fact that he knows from experience how to put his own feelings aside to help someone else grow.

yes, he does make a lot of social blunders by accident and he does struggle to connect with others, but not all of his positive influence on others is accidental or "despite" making people uncomfortable. a lot of the time, I think it's clear he knows exactly what he's doing and he's trying to help the people around him process emotions in a healthy way as they all go through some truly harrowing shit. all the main characters support each other as well as they can with their unique emotional skillsets. laios' skillset just happens to be "gently talk child into eating her vegetables"

[frejs-froggy-artblog]

Here's my take on the dragons zonai forms! As I've been playing Tears of the kingdom it has become more and more clear to me that the three dragons flying around were probably people at some point. So I tried to guess what they might have looked like based on the matching outfits you can find throughout the game!

[keebokuun]

Don’t push your luck, N!

[fridgrave2-0]

hehe ghost-turbo haunting felix au

turbo is connected to the last piece of his code in the whole arcade - a trophy he gifted to felix in mid 80s as a symbol of him genuinely caring about their relationships on par with being the best racer. felix also gave him one of his medals and both kept their gifts next to other rewards, but when roadblasters and turbotime were unplugged, the medal was gone with everything else

now, after burning in cola-lava turbo is basically dead, but scraps of his code still were intertwined with the trophy (after all, it was his first winner's cup, but felix never knew about it), giving turbo an opportunity to exist as a shadow incapable of interacting with anything and anyone besides felix, who kept the trophy even after the roadblasters incident

also I went crazy in tags, feel free to check them out

[divorcedfiddleford]

leave the door ajar

[chimeride]

A hydra, but each head has jaws and teeth specialized for different food like a one-creature set of the Galapagos Finches

[poisned]

I've been reading Faith for the Second Run by @senblades/senblades on AO3 and absolutely loving it. I had to sketch a few of the scenes I found funny.

[pickedyou]

The slightly spicy final to the Wano outfit series. ✨

Law Version

Luffy Version

[ato-dato]

Dream blunt rotation

[taffywabbit]

"why not just make your own website?"

with the announcement of cohost's death and amidst all the other tumultuous shit currently going on with social media as a concept (i am AMAZED twitter has survived this long given the circumstances), one suggestion that i've been hearing a lot is "we should just go back to the good old days of personal websites. let's all just make neocities pages!!"

(this is gonna be a long one sorry)

and like. idk! it's certainly something i've considered, i think it would be a fun thing to have, but it also feels like the equivalent of "capitalism sucks so let's all just run off into the woods and live in a cabin outside of society" to me. like it would be nice, it would be fun, but it doesn't ultimately solve the actual problems that are present with the modern internet, it just evades them. more importantly in my case and many others, it does not really help people who rely on the modern internet and the connections they're able to make there for their income. sure i can make a website and host my art and blog posts there, but who's going to see it? i can't build a consistent audience and make a living off of random passersby who peek at my website once, say "huh, neat!" and MAYBE add it to an RSS feed or whatever if they really like it. there's minimal potential for meeting and impressing new people outside my existing circles if i don't ALSO still have some manner of social media platform to promote the website on.

a lot of the "solutions" i see people proposing for the slow, painful decline of social media as a user experience keep coming back to old-fashioned, more isolated/insular systems. we miss forums, we miss personal webpages, we miss newsletters, etc etc. but like... those things were ideal in the "old web" because the old web was more about sharing hobbies and interests with whoever happened to pass by and check them out, and even just USING the internet was a niche hobby in and of itself for a lot of people. if you wanna be kinda cynical about it (and not unjustifiably so), web 2.0 is much more blatantly business-oriented, and its algorithms and carefully crafted UX's are primarily meant to funnel you towards viewing ads and spending money on products. looking at it that way, it sure does suck and Everything Was Better Before! but the modern web is ALSO more powerful than anything before it for just like. connecting people. spreading information and news. showing your art/music/writing/thoughts/etc to strangers who never knew you existed an hour ago. putting the tools to reach out to someone and tell them you think they're cool right there on the same website where their art is hosted, just a comment or a message away.

if you're able to avoid patterns of engagement-bait and obsessing over follower counts as a measure of self-worth (a big "if", i realize, but i view it like installing an adblocker - it's just kind of a basic prerequisite for modern internet safety and survival), a lot of these systems can genuinely be really positive and life-changing in ways that were simply not possible 20 years ago! almost all of my current closest friends are people I met through sharing our art on platforms like Twitter who were complete strangers at the time. all of the art clients that regularly pay my bills and support my work came from places like that too! the "social" part of "social media" is really what makes it ultimately worth keeping around in any form, and makes the pursuit of a Good social media platform still valuable.

there's a lot to love about the old web - its aesthetics, simplicity and freedom for personal expression - but every time someone says "just delete your socials and make a personal website" i am forced to confront the fact that i could never do what i currently do or be the person i am on the old web. if i was stuck hanging out in my own little space and only ever interacting with people who openly and loudly share my interests, i couldn't support myself with art full-time, i probably would never have met the kind and quiet strangers who are now my best friends and have made me who i am, and i'd just generally get a lot less insight into the vast range of experiences and perspectives that exist outside of my own. my life would be on a fundamentally different trajectory in countless ways without the advent of web 2.0.

and that's not to say "well twitter and facebook and tumblr all suck but you kinda still have to hand it to them" cuz you don't, obviously. they're corporations, and their job is to take the personalities and thoughts and art of the people who use their products and try to scrunch it all into something uninform and marketable that generates profit and pleases their shareholders. but like, you CAN still make a good thing out of them! these websites are tools just as much as geocities or myspace or IRC used to be. and the one thing these newer tools are pretty much all REALLY good at is discoverability. if you're just a hobbyist at the things you wanna share on the internet, then you likely don't have a lot of use for those tools, and perhaps you WOULD genuinely be happier just keeping a personal blog site or hanging out in private groupchats or sticking to specialized federated Mastodon instances or whatever. it just isn't feasible for me, and there are a LOT of people in my same situation. my entire industry of online freelance artists barely existed 20 years ago, and the web culture of that era is largely incompatible with my continued survival in the mid-2020s. i would LOVE to run off and live in the woods in concept, but all my survival skills are adapted for city living and i would just eat the wrong berry and die out there. i want- i NEED people to try and improve the spaces we're in, and support better forms of social media (like what cohost was trying and largely succeeding to do!) instead of just complaining that it all sucks, everything was better when we were kids, and digging ourselves little holes to hide in. much like all the other problems and frustrations and systemic issues of the world we live in, the modern web isn't going to go away if you just ignore it, so we may as well try to make it better for everyone.

anyways tl;dr i probably WILL make a neocities at some point. it could be fun, even if it doesn't help my career stability or whatever. but i do also need ALL THE SOCIAL PLATFORMS I USE FOR MY JOB TO STOP EXPLODING PRETTY PLEASE, and failing that, some actual half-decent alternatives that aren't going to fizzle out in a month would also be great thanks ✌

[fuzzybirdie]

Hero of Changing Faces

Warning, 'tis a bit sweary. Enjoy!

Ch.2 The MOTHERFUCKER Of All Time

The GODDAMN Joker was attacking the GODDAMN ammusement park in the middle of the GODDAMN school holidays! So Duke was a teensy bit pissed.

Today was supposed to be fun! Everyone, including Tim and Alfred, had made sure to clean up their scheduals enough for a family outing, and they managed to pull steph along as well!

Everything was going well so far too! Sure, Damian couldn't stop scoffing at this couple yelling 'Ghost!' All the time, and Tim and Jason were trying to one-up eachother at all the carnival games, (before being absoloutley demolished by cass), but it was fun! They Were having fun.

And then the motherfucker of all time hijacked the roller coaster.

Alfred had managed to sneak everyone's costumes into their day packs, probably foreseeing something going wrong. Either way, this meant that everyone could sneak away and change to fight the Joker.

After getting changed, Signal charged towards the announcer's booth, running into Nightwing on the way. Nightwing who looked pale and terrified. "B went ahead to the roller coaster!" Nightwing called. Ah, Signal's question must've been obvious.

"Isn't that a good thing?" Signal called back,

"Not as a civillian! He went in before it got hijacked!"

"Fuck!"

"Red, Orphan, and I are en route to the rollercoaster" Red Hood interupted "Robin's on his way to the announcer booth, and Spoiler is on evac duty,"

"Roger," Nightwing grappeled past a group escaping one of the rides, "Signal and I will randevous with robin. B is among the civillians on the roller coaster."

"Understood. We'll be in touch once the civvies are safe. Over and Out."

The announcer booth was surrounded by goons, who were taken care of easily enough. (Thank you, pepper spray bottles of sleeping gas!) Leaving the door wide open. Nightwing and Signal crept in, the only hint of their (re: Signal's) presence was the lights dimming and the shadows growing.

The Joker had set himself in the middle of the moniter room. He'd somehow found the time to inflate an air matress and was now lying down, eating popcorn, and kicking his legs like a schoolchild.

"Oh boo!" The Joker cried as the rollercoaster judded to a stop "they didn't even get halfway up! This show sucks!"

Robin took this moment to reveal himself both to his brothers and the Joker by attempting to skewer the latter through the arm. "Oh hi, little Robin!" Joker cackled as Robin missed "Come to watch the show? Though," he looked at where Robin's sword had punctured his matress "That was really rude. Guess I can kill you now!"

As Joker pulled out a gun to shoot at Robin, Signal manipulated the light of the moniters to blind him. Nightwing's escrima crackled into his exposed back, and he was down.

Something clattered out of the Joker's hands along with the gun. Signal had a closer look at it while Nightwing cuffed Joker and Robin shut down all the rides.

"Joker had a deadman trigger!" He practically shrieked into the comms "Get everyone out of there now!" Looking closer at the moniters, it was easy to see the bombs at the bottom of every other support. Thankfully, with Robin having turned off the rides, the safety bar had let go, and the other bats had gotten all the civillians off the ride. Unfortunately, they were still in the blast zone.

Red Robin turned to say something to the civillians. Then this white haired kid practically threw Red Hood into Orphan, who was checking someone for injuries. With everyone behind him, the kid threw out his hands, as a sheet of ice grew from them. The ice seemed to thin to stop anything, but it covered everyone quickly. Once a dome had formed the ice began to thicken.

Then the bombs detonated.

~~~~~~

first / prev / next

It was under the word limit!

So, how many of you got the cameo last chapter? :)

As always, this was inspired by @freedomanddisorder's art and the following prompt chain. Please check out both, they are So cool,

[saturnvs]

ink sketch of an appaloosa horse

[marley-manson]

Hawkeye not being emotionally repressed as a person, but still being emotionally repressed because he's in a situation that causes him to feel impossibly intense emotions that can't be fully expressed without ruining his or others' lives.

Because to really express his true feelings he'd have to scream until his voice gave out, desert, kill a general, etc. Constantly feeling like he's barely holding himself back, keeping himself from exploding through the relatively minor shows of rebellion and antagonism towards people like Frank, and his humour. "Joking is the only way I can open my mouth without screaming."

Hawkeye's breakdown in GFA is a fitting cap for his character for many reasons, and I think this is also one of them. It just makes narrative sense, as someone who does need to express his feelings and who is trapped in a war zone, that at some point he had to fully snap and drive a jeep through a wall.

[charcarts]

babifies your bacon feathers

[scarymonsters-andsupercreeps]

Yet another installment in the tan line saga…I saw this trend going around and I knew what I had to do

(I promise I’ll draw someone clothed soon)