#things i liked about the revival

[inkskinned]

it just sucks because nothing is ever fucking made for you, and if it is made for you like 75% of the time it gets chopped into little pieces by every person alive because this is the one thing you have, so it has to prove itself to you.

like, a thing can't just be for women. men need to assign it to women. women have to experience "must" or "should" before their hobbies and passions - women are allowed to do silly, passive things like tuck our ankles and titter behind a fan, or something. women are allowed to, they are welcomed to. like the world is a house and we are supposed to be in the kitchen and now we are being given the divine right to enter the living room if we bring chips

because when it becomes for you, or about you, that is when the thing is vile. you should/must wear makeup so you can appear beautiful to men. once you wear makeup for yourself, or because you yourself enjoy putting it on, then you are no longer doing the right thing. there is a reason men hate certain fashion trends. there is a reason men hate things like the pumpkin spice latte - because it's not about them. you are buying it because it is good for you. they degrade your passions and interests. there is a reason women-led fields are largely seen as being "not a real" profession. when you are a good cook, that is because you can provide for him. close your eyes. you're not going to be a chef, be honest. that is a man making food for himself.

bras are made so breasts will be appealing to men. they are rarely about comfort or support. you have given up entirely on the idea of pockets. young girls have to worry about a shorter inseam on their shorts. a girl on instagram gets her septum pierced, and men in the comments are rabid about it - i just want to rip it out of her face. she'd be beautiful without it.

and fucking everything is for them. even the media that is "for you" is for them, eventually. remember "my little pony"? remember how hard it is to convince any executive to believe that little girls are worth selling to? in the media that is for you, you see little ways that you still need to make it accessible for them - the man is always powerful, smart, masculine. he is a man's man. the media usually forgives him. it usually says okay, some men are awful, but hey! gotta love 'em. because if you don't hold their hands and say "this is literally just a story about my lived reality", they shit their pants about it. they demand you put them into the media that's for you.

these are people who are so used to glutting themselves on the world. they are used to having every corner and every dollar and every place of leadership. so you say can i please have one slice of cake, just for myself, please, holy shit. and they fucking weep about it. they say you're being unfair, because some of their one-thousand-slices aren't beautiful, and your singular cake slice doesn't have their name on it. and aren't you being rude by not offering to share?

and honestly. fucking - yeah, man. you were kind of surprised, because the cake is a little basic (you bake at home, you're way past this stuff). but holy shit, it was nice just to be offered cake in the first place. you're used to having to starve. you're used to getting nothing, but going to the party anyway, because you're expected (professionally) to show up. you liked that it is a simple cake, and that it is warm, and mostly: you like that there is, for once, a cake-for-you.

in the real world, outside of metaphor, it feels like fucking being slapped. barbie didn't even say anything particularly unusual; it literally just made factually evident points. there are less women in leadership than men. we can look at that fact objectively. that is a real thing that is happening. and the movie is aware that it has to defend itself! that it has to spend like half an hour just turning to the camera and saying: i know this is hard for you to understand, but this is a real thing that women experience.

it's just - this is that one kid on the playground who thinks its allowed to hog all the toys. he builds this hoard that nobody else is allowed to even look at, or he'll get aggressive. everyone's a little scared of him, so they let it slide, because his daddy gave him the golden touch. he hates when people cry and thinks bullying is cool. he writes boys only! on a big sign and makes all his friends take "alpha male" classes.

and then girls pick up barbies, because there was nothing left for them. and in the void they've been given, with their scraps: they make long, spiraling narratives about how barbie is actually descended from snakes and has given her righteous followers magical (if concerning) powers and can speak 32 languages (2 of which are animal related) and has big plans for infrastructure (beginning with the local interstate). and the boy comes over, and he has a huge fit about how the girls aren't "including" him. he wants to know why the girls aren't making the story about ken.

"we didn't like your story." the girls blink at him. they point to his war stories and the gi joes and the millions of male-led narratives and how still in the modern day men get two-thirds of the speaking roles in movies and they point to men making mediocre shows that don't get lambasted and they point to men encouraging toxic masculinity and they point to men everywhere, men and men and men. and they say: "how is this our fault? you had ken."

"no!" he is already back to screaming and stomping his feet and tearing at his hair and intentionally reminding them that men are holding back thinly concealed violence and he says: "if it's not for me, it's actually sexism."

[rookeryyy]

REINVENT

YOURSELF

tumblr HATES my 44.1mb image swag so it has SO MUCH COMPRESSION and downsizing here. :') peep the actual intended size & quality (or as good as i could get it exported)

post-return Q!Tubbo :] Tee hee.

un hamburgesa para tubbo (he lookied ungry)

[noxious-fennec]

Hands are too shaky these days

[catsnakes]

Some of the posts I’m seeing about the new fantasy high junior year episode makes me think that some people don’t get that it’s a comedy d&d series.

“They shouldn’t have killed the rat grinders”

The rat grinders were literally helping end the world, what else were they suppose to do? Like d&d is a combat based system, when you’re fighting the big bad you usually also kill their minions, because the big bad having a bunch of little guys around can be really bad for you.

“They shouldn’t have been so vindictive with how they killed them”

Comedy show

[zarla-s]

I was cleaning up some broken links on my old silly Pokemon fansite, the Neglected Pokemon Lovers Unite (NPLU), and I realized that it has now been open for 25 years. TWENTY. FIVE. YEARS. That is an ASTONISHING amount of time for a site to stay open! Even if the last substantial update was like back in 2009 lol. The world around it has changed so much, but I think it's still valuable as a time capsule of a certain time on the internet. I wrote up a new essay about it on the site and did some general clean-up here and there.

Anyway to that end, since so much of the fic and art there is so old, I decided to compare Radic's oldest form to his newest! Radic was always a human boy but I just couldn't draw humans at the time so I made him a furry lol. Eventually I figured it out.

I also thought it'd be a neat challenge to mimic my own style back when it was really wonky and bad. And it was! It was kind of fun actually. I don't have too many shots of Radic from back then (it was hard to get art on the internet in the late 90's-early 00's), but I do have a few - hugging Kitsune, two old kiribans if you want to compare. I had a lot more old shots of Parasects though to reference unsurprisingly, they were very triangular lol. I think I did a pretty good job of matching what my art used to look like. I had a clear see-through Gameboy back in the day if you can't tell what Radic is holding lol.

("Isn't Radic the faceless avatar of your gamer self as depicted in Handplates-" yes, but Pokemon!Radic is the only one that actually became his own character, all the rest are shells)

If you do go poking around the NPLU, please keep in mind that almost everything there is very old and most of the fic and art is pretty bad (and shockingly violent). Plz do not judge me! My younger self was a cringey weeb but she was trying very hard. :<

[patreon]

[marshmallowgoop]

ShinRan Week 2023: Day 4 | Black Knight and Princess

[sun-marie]

"Long Rest"

A redraw of this piece I drew during EA, now including my lovely Tav Zephyr 💙

[princessdarth-vader]

genuinely forgive me for spiralling abt this thing i just made up but the concept of rolling on the relationship track potentially giving people a stress token is making me want to see riz snap all the more. i think it would be so appropriate to the whole like "the moment he slows down he will break" thing for him to finish these huge challenges and successfully pass all of his classes for the year with flying colours and have a chance to take a breath and use that to try and, for the first time in months, reach out to his mother.

and then it just all comes crashing down and he takes a rage token and fights with sklonda and logically he knows that this rage isn't helping but he's so angry at this system that forces him to work himself to death and sklonda is just. there in the moment; a face for him to yell at. and even if it's not fair he can't control his anger. in the moment he suddenly feels much closer to kipperlilly than he ever has. who sees what she considers an unfair system, and is pissed at the people who enforce it and benefit from it.

idk obviously there are larger plans for the rage tokens as a whole (tying into ankarna, probably pushing them closer to like, being this corrupted being) but it would make so much sense for riz, after everything else has fizzled down, to just crash into a wall and break.

[thatonecrookedsmile]

I would say that, considering his history, he's not that wrong, but even I have doubts as to whether that would be right. But at the end of the day, this is just a joke that's been in my head for a while, sooooo…eh.

Oh hey, an attempt at a comic? Made by me? That I didn't give up during the process or lost all motivation? What was my only attempt at this, 2019? Damn, it's been a long time.

I thought about leaving this here without editing or any colors, just the natural ones from the paper and pencil. But something in my head said "HAHAHA, no" so I went back to work. I had to put this idea down on paper this time (literally). If another year passes without me being able to execute this idea, I would lose my mind.

This scenario was inspired by this video by Jehtt, inspired by the original meme by Windii. Credits to both of them.

For a long time I wanted to joke - especially on the anniversary - that I wanted Sammy to only have less than 5 seconds in the next game (or in other words, take his screen time in DR, and shorten it even more). You know, just for the funnies (unless..?) But,thanks to the news released at the beginning of January this year about The Cage, I legally can't do this joke anymore…this year. Don't worry, after that comes out (and finally gives Sam the screen time he wants,hopefully) and we start to crawl into the Bendy 3 production era, I'll make this joke when I can.

Anyway, happy birthday Sammy Lawrence. You may not be my favorite character in this franchise, but there are some things I can actually appreciate about you. Plus, you made me laugh a few moments before (you know what I'm talking about) so there's that.

And happy 7 years to Chapter 2, and by extension, Susie, Norman, Alice, the Searchers, (Johnny????), and Beta Ink Bendy. (I would mention Jack too, but he was only introduced with the release of CH4, so technically it's not his birthday yet, but I'll consider him here).

And now? May I be able to do something for CH4's anniversary. Wish me luck,cus I'll need it.

(it might be really late now, but it's still the 18th where I live, so it's still his birthday, so I still won)

[silverskye13]

I love how the church kinda treats tanguish like the community cat that just vibes and get really worried when he vanishes they love their gargoyle

To use a cut quote from a cut chapter: "It's a church. They keep track of their regular visitors, especially the ones that never come inside.”

They worry! I feel like the Order or Remembrance would, even more so than others, just because it's their job to remember. I imagine there was a bit of panic when the anonymous Gargoyle vanished, and everyone collectively realized they'd never asked his name, or managed to corner him long enough to invite him inside.

Honestly the next chapter or so is really scratching an itch for me, as far as church communities go. It's been a hot minute since I was last at a church that I really connected with a church [I live in a very conservative area and the churches here aren't very friendly to my current views] but when I was a kid, the sense of community that came with church was very nice. People genuinely cared if members of the congregation, even ones who didn't come often, disappeared for prolonged periods of time. I haven't been to my childhood church in over 10 years, but sometimes when members see me around town, they still run up and talk to me and ask me how I've been.

[yellowocaballero]

So fucking glad to see someone talk about SSS Class revival hunter 😭 I lived it so much and I feel like no one ever mentions it against more popular titles like ORV or even The Lout of the counts family, so I'm so glad to come here and see your amazing takes :>

Thank you for the ask which lets me talk about SSSCRH (the version I read was titled 'Suicide Hunter', which tbh I like more - no beating around the bush).

It's hard to draw an accurate comparison since I'm going off just the webtoon for SSSCRH, while I'm going off both the webtoon and the webnovel for ORV. And I love ORV, ORV is my media blorbo right now, it hydraulic presses my brain, I am writing ORV fanfic - it's, like, funner to enjoy. But SSSRH is just better. In the vast majority of ways it is is better. It's better than the holy trinity by a wide margin. TW talk of suicide obviously.

I can't believe I'm saying this but you need a basic understanding of Buddhism in order to understand SSSCRH. It's not about Gongja's suicides - he doesn't suicide from depression or lack of self-esteem. SSSCRH is about suffering in the Buddhist sense - dukkha. I don't want to make this an essay, so I might reblog this with more information, but extremely shortly:

The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism is the truth of suffering, the truth of the cause of suffering, the truth of the end of suffering, and the truth of the path that leads to the end of suffering. You've heard that Buddhists say 'life is suffering'. To put it one way that doesn't require defining a lot of words: the cause of suffering is experiencing the world as we percieve it instead of how it truly is. Suffering isn't just being miserable and in pain, and life isn't suffering because life sucks and global warming exists and people voted for Trump. Life is suffering because we can experience beautiful and joyful moments in this world, but we do not exist in the moment of that happiness or place our ego/'self' between us and that happiness. Living in that moment, accepting the moment as it is unconditionally, is freedom from suffering. The Buddha tries to free people from suffering through teaching Buddhism.

"What does this have to do with the webnovel and manwha about a guy murdering himself thousands of times" it has everything to do with it. Because SSSCRH is about suffering, and it is about using suffering as a tool in order to experience a world unfiltered by ego and break down the artificial boundaries between human beings. Suffering in SSSCRH is not a bad thing. Gongja has the unique capability to (reincarnate.) experience a person's suffering in unity with them, which dissolves the delusion of separation between people and puts us in touch with the reality of oneness.

The Murim arc was fucking insane because Gongja pulls a Big Bodhisattva Move and walks through the suffering of the world in order to achieve full understanding of the human experience. He takes all of the suffering of the world into himself and is liberated. You can tell it's Buddhist because death was not presented as a bad thing - death was an aspect of a happy ending for the Heavenly Demon lady, because she was finishing her life according to her own joy, and because her teachings were passed on she did not truly die.

But the purpose of embracing suffering is to discover the ability to fully embrace life, and that's where Heavenly Demon's teachings were incomplete - as the ghost dude said, Gongja hasn't even experienced his own full life and the infinite capability for his own happiness. You can only feel the depths of sadness when you've felt the depths of happiness. Sadness deserves its place in the world and it can strengthen you, but so does happiness.

Gongja is attention-seeking, envious, and unbelievably petty. When he drills down into his own desires and why he wants the things he wants, you see that he has a very strong sense of justice and right and wrong - he realizes he doesn't want to be famous, he wants to be acknowledged, but on an even deeper level he is desperate for love and to be loved. Everything he does is to experience love, and as such he learns to love others. His love for the Flamey Asshole was purely parasocial and ego-filled, with no concern for who he was as a human. Throughout the manwha, he grows to care for people as they truly are and pierce through any delusions or misleading outward appearances. He has released all attachment to life and death, and as such does not fear death, and as such has taken a step on the road towards becoming a Boddhisatva who frees others from the cycle of samsara, and as a result has learned sick sword techniques and is sooo good at beating people up.

I think the only other thing I want to mention here because otherwise this is an essay: in almost every time loop/regression story, only the final regression matters. In stories with dungeon monsters and NPCs, only the humans matter. The regressor exists in a space where there are no consequences for their actions, so they act terribly and do whatever because none of it matters. In Groundhog Day Bill Murray acts like an asshole because he can. That's not the case here. Everything Gongja does matters. The NPCs are fake, but Gongja never treats them as anything less than real people who deserve life. Once he understands a person's life he never treats them as unimportant. No loop is thrown away and no person or life is disregarded. His choices matter, the way he treats others matters, and Gongja never treats anybody as if they don't matter except for himself.

That was not short. There is a lot more. The female characters are so good and so rich. From a craft perspective it is excellently paced and has a wonderful sense of set-up/payoff and balances tone and maintains a lot of momentum, which is really hard in a time loop story. You have to do a few very specific things to write OP characters well and SSSCRH does it very well. There's more to say from a craft perspective and it's hard to judge accurately from a webtoon but it's good. I was so strangely struck the entire time about how sincere and genuine it was, how it said what it said with no trace of irony of confusion, and I think that's what stuck with me the most.

TL;DR: SSS Class Revival Hunter is good for a lot of very normal reasons, such as excellent pacing and set-up/pay off and characters, but it's also so sincerely and genuinely Buddhist that it blew my tits clean off.

[pinkd3mon]

I can respect the hater mentality

[reel-fear]

Genuinely so curious who Mike thinks is gonna be buying The Cage or the new DCTL GN bc with the way he tweets as far as he's concerned, it's not gonna be:

The queer people he has actively admitted he will never show any representation of in the games.

2. The POC he has actively fought against representing in his franchise. [Who he also mocked for thinking they would be represented in his franchise]

3. The Bendy fandom which has always been concerned with topics of diversity esp in the sense of queer people since its creation. Who he has responded to really poorly esp in regards to the GN.

4. The fans who critique him. [He blocked me for doing so lol]

5. His fans in general who he tweets about like this currently. [He's being vague about why people were mad at him or sent him 'nasty messages' because if you actually looked into why you'd see he was in the wrong. Either way, a very hateful way to speak abt ur own fanbase.]

Reminder while Mike is trash talking his fans he has always treated them rather poorly. The fans who won the fanart contest for Chapter 5 never got their posters actually in game due to it being rushed. Not only was chapter 5 a big slap to the face story wise, but it was literally so rushed he couldn't be bothered to add in the art his fans gave him for his game FOR FREE. [Meatly blames this on a crazy timeline, reminder him and Mike are the literal ceos of this company. The proposal of future updates here is also pretty cruel considering Mike nowadays happily admits he corrupted Chapter 5's source code and therefore literally can't update it At All currently. Because he is a moron]

At least they got to be in Boris and the dark survival, and by that I mean that was the Only game they got to be in so far, isn't that just treating your fans like you love them? Shoving their hard work into a spin off game almost nobody has played or addresses much. [Hell, who knows if with the Lone Wolf rebrand they'll even stay there. In which case they'll be in None of the games, only in the credits of BATIM]

6. The Bendy fans who just generally disagree with him on stuff. Like the new ink demon design where there is literally a public poll showing people generally prefer the old one.

7. The Bendy fans who can see he is actively lying to them. To their fucking faces.

He says this has always been the case, but screenshots and links to tweets regarding the books being canon prove it was not. Does he really think bendy fans are stupid or something? [Unless he's admitting here he lied to Kress when he told her the books were canon which sounds worse!]

8. Anyone who doesn't like the idea of giving money to a guy who laid off tons of employees then afterwards thought it was a great idea to express his anti-union views! Also brag about how good of an employer he was, according to his employees, he was not!

So in summary; Mike is an awful person who has not learned anything from the awful things he did. I will not be purchasing The Cage because, combined with this and his absolute refusal to take any kind of critique or see any differing interpretation of his franchise, I have no reason to think my problems with the franchise will ever be addressed or fixed. I probably will pirate The Cage along with any future Bendy Products [Including the movie] and will do my best to avoid giving it any kind of monetary support. Unless this changes any time soon, I can't see myself making anymore positive Bendy posts soon.

Mike has just managed to make it so hard to speak positively or optimistically of this franchise when he's so willing to broadcast how little he cares about it or its fans. I'm at the point where I refuse to pull any of my punches with my problems with it. What's the point of trying to play nice with my critique when either way the people creating it don't care?

So with this post, I want to invite anyone who feels similarly about the franchise to tell me, make a post or send an ask talking about how all of this makes you feel. It may not change how things are, but genuinely seeing other people share my feelings of anger makes me feel better. It feels nice to see when other people share our same concerns and worries. I'd also love to know if anyone else thinks they'll be avoiding purchasing Bendy products over this.

I'm not forcing anyone to participate in it nor trying to say anyone who doesn't supports mike but genuinely maybe if we can collectively decide to boycott things like the movie, graphic novel and The Cage... It might at least make the bendy devs acknowledge how much they have destroyed their own fandom's faith and trust in them.

The way Mike tweets about his actions like he had no control over why people were mad at him at least proves to me he takes NONE of it back nor regrets it. If you didn't know about his actions and only went off his tweets, you would be led to believe Mike has been needlessly picked apart by fans over things he couldn't control [or in his own words, had his words twisted and taken out of context]. That is not how you speak about your actions if you have actually learned better from them.

anyway, that has been my bendy dev callout post. This is an open invitation to anyone feeling similarly upset about the way the franchise is going to talk about it. It's genuinely nice to see how people feel about this and the more we talk about the more it's likely the bendy devs are forced to address our concerns. I don't think they will but hey, that's why I'm not gonna support them with my money anymore nor am I gonna be nice to them in any content I make critiquing Bendy. I mean I'm also basically making this post just in case anyone asks me Why I feel this way towards to bendy devs/as a way to respond to anyone who thinks I am too harsh in my critique in the future.

As always, it seems the best part of Bendy isn't actually anything about canon but about what the fan's are creating with the ideas Bendy failed to do anything interesting with.

Also the books, the books slap.

[no-light-left-on]

Jessamine's design has always intrigued me. the stark, full black suit and tall collar are pretty obvious status symbols. black was for the longest time an incredibly expensive colour of fabric due to how difficult it was to achieve proper rich blackness during the dyeing process and the collar, while most likely just a trend in Dunwall fashion inspired by the 1890s high collars can be read as lace, especially in some concept art, which is hard to care for and needs to be starched to hell and back to keep nice and stiff for a collar like that

but what I find a lot more curious about this is that the clothes appear very much inspired by Spanish renaissance fashion

which, honestly, would make sense with the real world inspiration. 19th century was obsessed with the past, with the romanticized medieval and renaissance times, and it was quite common to see fashion inspired by times long past (I mean, just look at Worth. the man invented haute couture and there is so much influence of medieval and Elisabethan fashion in his designs). it was also a thing for rich families to just kinda... invest in recreations of historical pieces of clothing and LARP in them.

Jessamine's clothes, in particular, reminded me of Spanish court dresses. especially of the portraits of Anne of Austria and Elisabeth of Valois

obsessed with those slit sleeves. too bad Jessamine didn't go the extra mile to have the sleeves hang long and heavy around her arms but they were more form fitting

there is also something to be said about the tall white (possibly starched lace) collar and the style of clasps used on her clothes

the mini cape thing she has on top is more similar to the style of capes worn by men in renaissance, but yeah, of course she reminded me of a Spanish princess when this is one of the most given example portraits for this style

I wonder if this was an intentional choice on the designer's side or if they were just inspired by the revivalism present in 19th century fashion. what really makes me consider that though is that one of her earlier designs has those sleeves much, Much more pronounced and obvious

oh the things that could have been...

still, it makes me wonder: if this was intentional, what does this tell us about Jessamine, and the history of the Isles themselves?

[beeduoo]

originnssssss who remembers origins i Loved origins

[moeblob]

Amazing, take some of the side character demons from Evil Bound.

Vincie is a menace to Chuck and Chuck alone so in Hell, Chuck hexes his hand behind his back so that he isn't grabbed as much (and it's harder to pet him). Chuck is like the most irresponsible older sibling ever to demons though so Kelvin recruits him (as an older sibling vibe) to go help him get his ACTUAL older sibling from Earth. Chuck agrees. And then drags Vincie from Hell with them because no one else wants to babysit him and he refuses to unbind the hex just to re-hex when he returns to Hell.

In Hell, Kelvin actually doesn't appear much different than his human form! Like Kronos, the lines under his eyes are red in Hell but black on earth. Chuck however? In Hell he has wolf-ish ears and has a fur lining his neck (note the neck scars in human form). In addition to that he has four eyes in Hell (note the scars under his eyes in human form). Vincie just has horns in Hell. And! In Hell the hex doesn't have a silly looking "tied up" look, it's invisible unless Vincie strains it with movement and then its red text. But it shifts on earth to be visible.

Vincie's biggest agony for the entirety on earth is "dude it's colder here than in Hell I want a jacket to slip my arms into BUT I CANT BECAUSE IM BOUND".