#to be on the other end of those lips

[missmaywemeetagain]

100% just fine about this, btw

[taxinealkaloids]

harrianthe + sewing (variations on a theme)

[lonely-night]

#personal space? they don’t know her.

[michyeosseo]

I am always indebted to you.   – It will cost quite a lot.

Honey Lee and Yoon Sa Bong as JO YEO-HWA & JANG SO-WOON

KNIGHT FLOWER (2024)

[hermesmoly]

Gaia promising Hebe as a wife to Porphyrion (you know, the giant who tried to rape her mom) is not something I'd expect to read but here we are

[theyarebothgunshot]

.

[vampthropologist]

New selfship! I call them HarV (Harvey/Harv/V) - ref img

[bonestrouslingbones]

hm. realizing now that the fluffy hood thing on. fluff. is definitely his defining feature. but the thing is i love a good fur trim so i'm gonna have like at least 3 other characters with the same idea and he's not unique at all. god dammit

[inutaffy]

i almost passed out at school again guys

[7-oh-ta1]

I just went on a buying spreeeee I'm so sorry bank account 😭😭😭😭😭

[rxttenfish]

.......... yaknow, i don’t bring it up enough here but

merfolk are kind of, instinctually, extreme pacifists.

they will avoid physical conflict as much as possible and have an exceedingly high tolerance that makes them slow to show even small signs of anger, and will avoid fighting far beyond the point that any other species would have started swinging. their problem-solving is highly encouraged to be done socially (which is kind of part of why they get labelled as Easy To Sleep With, fucking someone is an easy solution to a quarrel and one that gets encouraged) and to be done within their social systems.

and this is all BECAUSE merfolk are such studded-out apex predators.

there was a point in their evolution where they ended up in a sort of evolutionary arms race against themselves, and there was a lot of existing evolutionary focus on them being deadly predators to large megafauna that hunt together in groups, and the issue that appears when you have all of this going on, is that you totally eliminate any “safe” options for fighting. any fight between merfolk is likely to be lethal to BOTH parties, and to get their social groups and communities involved, and soon it’s spiraled into a MUCH larger issue with a MUCH higher body count. merfolk have big teeth and claws and armored scales and the only thing that’s really especially good at getting past those armored scales is another merfolk, so if they ever use said teeth and claws on another merfolk and mean it, it’s not going to be a small injury. even moreso because then they’ve likewise placed themselves at the mercy of someone else who is just as capable of doing the same damage to them.

merfolk have stories that are shared in their cultures that act as a warning against undue violence, and the only outright aggression that’s okay to show is in defense of their relationships and social structure. sure, pups are absolutely encouraged to wrestle and to play with each other, and even adult merfolk have a huge drive for play, but all of this is in service of teaching them how to control their bodies and how they use their bodies, and providing an outlet for aggression that ISN’T violent in nature in order to keep the peace (alongside more traditional, keeping their senses sharp for hunting and swimming and other mundane activities).

unfortunately, it also tends to slant the statistics in a certain way - merfolk will instinctually look at one person who is picking a fight, with another individual or with a larger group of merfolk, and have a bias towards seeing that one person as the one in the wrong, regardless of the reason why. similarly, they will see a group enacting violence, and have a bias towards seeing that as justified, regardless of the reason why.

this is a major reason behind the conduct of the merkingdom - keep the peace and focus on aggression via diplomacy and other forms of “soft” power to force opposing powers to surrender to them. because they were ambush predators too, there’s an existing idea that the leadup to the violence should be long and they should do everything they can to stack the deck in their favor, with the violence itself being brief and sudden and completely overwhelming. miranda’s merfolk name (and her birth/real name) actually references this, as she’s named for the ideal of “a war won in a single move”, or another overwhelming success that entirely destroys an enemy.

if the land knew more about the merkingdom and were more familiar with their tactics and politics, they would FAR moreso associate the merkingdom with plots and backstabbing and under-the-table deals than anything, because the merkingdom doesn’t necessarily value an “honorable” war in the same way, since ALL violence is both inherently unhonorable and only justified by the fact that it was done to protect or further a group. doing everything they can to sabotauge and ruin and play the social game better is just par for the course for merkingdom politics, part of the accepted course of action that they’ll all follow. it’s effectively the same as the small-town gossip scene, just on a much, much larger scale.

of course, miranda’s temperament is.... a little different. mostly because of the social climate that exists between royals and her trauma and the expectations there are for how royals are to behave — miranda is a LOT more.... fighty and bitey than your average merfolk, and this increased aggression would be VERY obvious if you placed her next to a non-royal merfolk. however, it can actually be rather hard for landfolk to pick up on this, because again - most of it presents socially. miranda is far more likely to come off as mean and rude and bitchy before she’s seen as having anger issues, and it’s because merfolk standards are so different from landfolk standards. even miranda defaulting to having her guards take care of violence for her isn’t unusual - again, leveraging group violence as a justification for what she does. royals in general are far more likely to intimate, bully, torment, and abuse than they are to start actively picking fights, and they are still very much at the far end of the merfolk aggression scale.

ironically, miranda occupies a similar place to aaravi within merfolk culture, but no one besides her knows anything about merfolk culture, so everyone else misses this.

[earanie]

Me souvenir de quoi ? De mon mari, de mes filles ? Je me souviens pas Sandra, c’est pas ça qui me revient… ce qui me revient c’est… c’est l’autre, l’autre Catherine, celle que personne n’a envie de retrouver.

SANDRA WINCKLER & CATHERINE KEEMER in LES TÉMOINS 2.08

[hauntingblue]

So what I am getting at here is that drake is sensitive to semi naked men.....

[pyroinfusedtiger]

I think my token complaint when people draw dark-haired latine characters is that theres not a lot of body hair most of the time.

Growing up as a girl, I've always been extremely aware of a mustache and unibrow I couldnt shave off, thicker sideburns that fade into fuzz on my jawline, and arm and leg hair that was more visible than my female classmates that made me self conscious about wearing anything that exposed it.

Iunno, just wanna see more hairy girl representation outside of fanart of dwarven women (i love you hairy dwarven women)

[cherrysnax]

when I was a kid I was rlly upset that art teachers didn’t like anime-inspired art, and then I realized it wasn’t the anime aspect. jumping into highly stylized art without knowing the fundamentals AND with a refusal to learn them is a bad combo

[ryeonah]

tag dump