#totally normal human stuff

[transmechanicus]

If we all work together we can make a Venom story where the symbiote makes Eddie transgender

[aiscapades]

wait so like. mc's curse makes them monstrous? not human?

the line between monster and human grows thinner and thinner with every revelation

it's almost like this is a game made by queer folk to express queer experiences of being made to feel othered, like a monster, like your very existence is a threat no matter your outward appearance or your actions

[sysig]

I have an idea for the requesttober, could you make Scriabin like an endermen? I feel that Scriabin would be an endermen if he were in Minecraft's world

Day 11 - No eye contact >:(

[nerosdayinanime]

sabito = dirtbike redneck. you cant convince me otherwise

[voidedjuice]

a life of violence

[ahc-au]

I have a couple of questions about this au : 1. Since Cody has been got that living poison or that good for nothing uncle of his out of his life so he doesnt have to face the "dangers" of this world he has created or keeping him inside the penthouse , how would this affect Cody's perspective ?

2. Did the EPF completely removed the dark turtles' failsafe devices (hypnotic induced precautions) they have implanted within them (possibly near the cerebrum or cerebellum) , or did they also found the other things like explosives within them since they are living weapons after all 3. After the trial , where would Darius be sentenced to , somewhere like maximum prison for terrorists or luxury prison for privileged people . Or his business partners that President Bishop had mentioned at the prologue during the interrogation ?

OOOH FUN QUESTIONS

1. This one's pretty complex! Cody is a victim of abuse, but it was the kind of abuse that fostered co-dependency, and that's really hard to deprogram from. Cody may now understand that his Uncle was a bad person who never actually had his best interests in mind, but the behaviors he was taught are still going to take time to unravel. He compulsively feels the need to placate the people around him, because Dunn raised him to be obedient and expected him to essentially put his entire life on hold just for his uncle's convenience. He was raised to believe that what he could do (or build) for others determined his worth, given that was how Dunn determined his worth. He also becomes deeply invested in his attachments, having been allowed so few close relationships outside of home and work. Feeling lonely is scary, so he feels like he has to please the people he's close to especially so they won't want to leave. This leads to him denying his own needs in favor of those around him, even outright refusing to acknowledge when he's not doing well until it gets overwhelming. Thankfully, the Splintersons have left him with some very good influence, and I think as he goes he'll find the things they taught him to be of invaluable help. I don't want to say too much on that, though, since it's the subject of a few chapters off in the future heheh.

2. The EPF has long-since been dissolved, it doesn't exist anymore! And according to records, the leader died mysteriously in such a way that no body could be recovered, and there aren't any records of his name anywhere. Weird! In any case, yes, the authorities are aware of the Dark Turtles' implants. Again, this comes up later on, so I'm not gonna say too much. But! I can also point out that all their weapons and armor were confiscated. I believe it's mentioned once or twice in the first few chapters, but I try to keep it in mind since it means alterations on their usual designs whenever I draw them.

3. There's an episode of Fast Forward that begins with Jammerhead being broken out of prison, and it shows us an island in the middle of the river is where the facility is located (GREAT design choice NNYC city planners. I'm sure the nearby residents love that.) This is where I've been picturing Dunn is being held, he even gets the same prison uniform in the newspaper drawing! From the glimpse we see in the episode, it looks pretty miserable, and I think Bishop is vindictive enough to ensure he doesn't even have a chance of getting moved anywhere nicer. Because of course, in Bishop's utopia future, the prison system is still horrible. The business partners are a plot thread that is going to stay dormant for now, but it's very fortuitous of you to keep them in mind heheh.

Thank you for the questions, I hope this answers to your satisfaction!

--Adelram

[pepprs]

i wish i’d kept pushing the point (<- vagueposting). im so tired i’m hitting a wall. but why is the answer to feeling bottomlessly lonely just to love myself and be loved by myself? isn’t that only more loneliness?

[demonic-silver-and-gold]

Sometimes I’m impulsive, like ten minute ago when I spent 45+ bucks on two new hobbies I haven’t started yet as well as trinkets and a plushy

[dravidious]

You're seriously very neat

Concept Meant For Fun: Society in which humans being owned be demons is the normal state of things.

Problem: All of the violation of rights and potential mistreatment makes me feel icky.

Solution: Make being owned by a demon a profitable job done by choice.

Result: The introduction of capitalism somehow made this world more ethical.

[circuitlovespowerplugs]

favorite stuff or something idk

I'm gonna show a list of some of my favorite things because why not ubwhhtjbrfh favorite breakfast: pancakes, especially plain pancakes because I'm boring and plain favorite lunch: macaroni and cheese because yes favorite dinner: stuffed shells favorite fast food: panda express favorite drink: ramune, I have a whole collection of the bottles favorite stuffed animal (that I own): my Bowser plushie and my hello kitty squishmallow favorite gum: juicy fruit favorite chips: salt and vinegar lays favorite color: blue and red, I like both equally favorite Nintendo game: hogwarts legacy and animal crossing favorite animal: cats and owls favorite store: target and hyvee (I get my ramune drinks from there) yayyyyy

[notw1ththatatt1tude]

Saw a post "It's hard to care about a rap war when there's a real one going on," which is totally fair.

But I want y'all to understand the potential impact of what Kendrick is doing. He waited until he got people drawn into the gossip to flip from normal rap battle stuff to an indictment of the entire OVO Sound studio for sex trafficking. He's not baselessly making this shit up, Baka was formally charged with "human trafficking and procuring for prostitution" (trafficking charges were dropped because the victim fled the city before testifying, but he was convicted of assulting her anyway) and then signed by Drake at OVO immediately after getting out of prison.

We all know how this shit goes. Witnesses are intimidated or killed and the whole thing gets brushed under the rug. Drake was summoned to a deposition for the murder of XXXTentacion (who tweeted "if someone kills me, Drake did it" shortly before his assassination) and got away with just not showing up because that's how much fucking money he has.

This is a big deal because Kendrick Lamar is too high-profile a whistleblower to kill.

Edit: It was an Instagram story, not a tweet. Exact words were: "if anyone tries to kill me it was @champagnepapi I'm snitching rn."

[puttingwingsonwords]

I do think the ‘comedy’ of Dracula in this part of the story only adds to the horror. Like we can all go ‘haha lizard fashion’ because it is ridiculous, he’s crawling barefoot on that wall like 🦎

But also fucking imagine a whole ass man skittering down a wall like that, the fact that his cloak is billowing like wings means he must be going fast too bc otherwise it would just fall over his head. (Or idk maybe he is using magic powers to make his cloak look cooler who knows.)

And it’s in his pretending to have servants too, I know, my most popular post rn is calling him a loser for it which he is!! He’s probably really embarrassed about it too bc it’s demeaning for a boyar to do those chores!

But Jonathan doesn’t have the luxury of laughing at this stuff.

One thing that really caught my attention this time is the uncanny valley of it all. From the moment Jonathan meets the Count, he can tell something is off. No matter how thickly he puts on the charm, Dracula can’t hide the fact that he’s not human; he’s something else, a ‘creature in the semblance of a man’, there’s something innately off-putting about his presence. His eyes, his teeth, his hands, his smell: he has the aura of a predator and Jonathan, his prey, can feel it.

From Jonathan’s point of view, every hilarious weird thing the Count does is another sign of him being Not Human, as well as the fact that he’s in total control—as his ruse of normality is slowly falling apart, but there’s still nothing Jonathan can do. The mask is slipping, the Count is revealing his true nature—whether accidentally or on purpose—and Jonathan can only watch and keep pretending in the hope that it will prolong his life.

[tubbytarchia]

Etho doodles in which I let my inner dinosaur nerd take over 😔 and also have no idea how to shade

Get it cause he's old and washed up haha... ok but actual raptor Etho hybrid justification below cut

To be honest the main reason was because I really wanted a hybrid in the mix who wasn't some furry creature and a reptile or amphibian or smth instead. Etho still ended up feathered but whatever it's close enough! But for ACTUAL reasoning:

He does feel damn ancient, like an old deity of the mcyt space that no one can dislike. Dinosaurs are the same!! They're old but still thought of with great fascination and fondness, everyone loves dinosaurs...

Dinosaurs are ever so mysterious, as many advancements as we make there's still so much we don't know. Just as we know jackshit about mister Kakashi skin man. Also, there are so many incomplete skeletons out there. I didn't have a particular species in mind for Etho, because where's the mystery in that? He can be one of those 5% skeleton 95% speculation dinosaurs like this guy!! Missing jaw and all

"I'm a runner, not a protector" - so, a raptor, or more specifically the Dromaeosauridae family, which literally has "running/runner" in its name

But! I'm always a fan of stuff going against its nature, especially in this case! Etho states he's not a runner yet protects his allies rather fiercely even in total silence. Eg refusing to kill Cleo in SL or to give away Tango's location during the LimL manhunt, same for Grian in SL. He was a bit flaky in 3L I think? And he only started to have genuine care for allies in LL with Bdubs? Though he is still very much a runner in many cases like during the LL Wither fight. Research also strongly suggests that most if not all raptors were solitary hunters, and the way I see Etho (through my shamefully limited watchtime of his POVs...) he feels a lot like someone who ultimately only trusts himself at the start even if he's pleasant and allying with others, and doesn't seem to think he can carry his weight in groups though he doesn't voice this a lot. That's just how Etho is, very composed, but it feels like there's an insecurity there, showcased especially in SL but again I haven't seen almost any of his POVs in full so maybe I'm talking out of my ass!! Sorry ethogirls I'm only a sidegig ethogirl myself... But yeah tldr to me he gives off the vibe of an otherwise solitary animal struggling to find 100% sure footing in a pack. In whichever ways he does go against his nature, its not usually made a show of

At the mention of a raptor, a lot of people will probably think of the glamourized Jurassic Park Velociraptors. But those awesome guys from the movies are actually the size of chickens. In general though, dinosaurs tend to be a bit.. exaggerated in media, despite how inherently fascinating they already are. And I think it fits Etho because we all know how the Lifers seem to fear and mancrush on him when he's just some dork with perfect capability to become pathetic at a moment's notice. Still, he's a clearly skilled player and still respected without question Etho's not some killer machine like some people make dinosaurs out to be. He's just a fellow creature fulfilling his role in the ecosystem 👍

dinosaurs are cool

The hook-like sickle claws on the feet... something something fishing rod

I swear I'm not turning all my Lifers into hybrids I'm not!! Still plenty normal humans in the mix I swear....... But Etho is such a radical dude, I really wanted to do something more for him. The whole Kitsune thing that I often see associated with him is really cool. I don't actually know the reasoning for it but I assume something something naruto, but also, him being this ancient mythical cryptid who people know so little about, you know? It makes SO much sense. So anyway I turned him into a dinosaur instead rawr

As a herbivore advocate I also considered stuff like the triceratops (known for how they protect themselves and their own) but nah the raptor symbolism...

[catsvrsdogscatswin]

Underutilized bit in LOTR, I feel, is how deeply out of his depth Boromir is within the Fellowship.

And by that I don't mean that he's the weakest or the stupidest or any of that, but rather that –against all appearances– he is the sole member of the Fellowship who is a Regular Normal Human, and he would have such a shocker slowly figuring all that out over the course of their journey. I mean:

Age. Legolas and Gimli wouldn't surprise him, since the lifespan of elves and dwarves seems commonly known to be way longer than humans, but Gandalf? The hobbits? None of these ages work as advertised and when he goes down to sit and commiserate with Aragorn about being the only Men in the company and how weird this all must be for them both Aragorn has to cough into his fist and mutter "Eighty-seven." "WHAT?!" (Yes, I know that Gondor keeps records of their Númenórean ancestors and said ancestors' extended lifespans, but consider this: the blood has thinned so much in Gondor that practically nobody lives longer than regular humans nowadays, and Boromir is canonically the jock in a family of scholars. He had to look up what/where Rivendell was after he got Faramir's Prophecy Dream, for god's sake.)

Bilbo. The entire Fellowship except Boromir has a personal relationship with Bilbo, and Boromir has neither seen nor heard of this creature in his life. Everyone else is starting off this quest with significant background knowledge of Bilbo's life and The Hobbit, whether having been told by Bilbo himself or having had family members personally involved at the time it occurred, and Boromir, again, has no clue what they're all on about.

Moria. Dwarves presumably have some built-in sensory adaptions for living underground, elf eye physics are bullshit, hobbits are stated to be far more comfortable/better navigating underground than most races, Gandalf is an Istar, and Aragorn has been hunting and tracking in various ungodly locations for most of his eighty-seven years. This means that, once again, Boromir is the only Normal Person trying to Normally Navigate a mostly-pitch-black cave system while everyone else side-eyes him for bumping into walls all the time.

Elves can sleep with their eyes open. This is admittedly not the most common thing among the Fellowship, but please imagine Boromir, still struggling to understand the fact that he's surrounded by nonhuman beings who have no shared concept of the passing of time, rolling over at 2AM to see Legolas bluescreening contentedly up at the sky, and then everyone acts like he's the weird one when he starts freaking out about it because all of them are used to traveling with/know more about elves than he does.

Even just remembering stuff off the top of my head, Boromir must have had such a weird time adjusting to being the only normal human being among the Fellowship before he, y'know. Died.

(Plus I can totally imagine Merry and Pippin giving him shit for "Well, if you're the only normal one amongst nearly a dozen people, then that's not very 'normal', is it? Maybe Men are the odd ones out and everybody else is normal.")

[mlarty]

A couple of ppl asked us about Astarion and Marrow's relationship, so here is some text to the last illustration with them. Or.. more precisely about the best part of it. For them

So... they're like two cats. Two gremlins. A beautiful elf and a bedside monster. The chemistry between them is passionate, chaotic and in many ways weird, and it's hard to call their relationship any kind of healthy thing — they're both traumatized and not perfect people. They argue, they fight, and then BAM!, they are in love again. They are freaks with questionable morals and views on life that unexpectedly resonate with each other, although everyone else thinks they're the normal ones here. Marrow absolutely accepts the vampire nature and pesonality of Astarion, and he calmly understands her durge side and wildness. Another murder, another body, another nightmare — it's okay, as long as he's not involved. And it can even be used. And Marrow uses him too

This leads to a deeper bond — they’re monsters who share a deep mutual passion and the ability to see humanity in each other, even when it seems there is nothing human left. And monsters don't always mean something bad, it's just their love is a bit, well, twisted: their relationship isn't about typical romance stuff, but filled with almost animal adoration and desire. Kind of a dark magnetism that would freak out (and for good reason) the average people. But here's the thing, they're totally okay with that. Neither Marrow nor Astarion are about to change themselves or pretend to be these so-called "normal people" — they're not relearning how to love the "right" way, they're learning to love in their own style

And of course none of them planned to really love each other. And no one thought about "true love". True love is hard stuff when one is a vampire ex-slave and the other — a Bhaal's daughter and a murderer. It all started with manipulation: Astarion was looking for someone who would save him from Cazador, while Marrow wanted someone to save her from herself (or should we say she didn't dare admitted it openly, but needed). Then something happened and they fell in love because they finally found someone who accepted them just as they are. Because the scars on their lives are so similar. And because baby, let's live in darkness and sin together because that's what we want, not because someone told us to

[headspace-hotel]

What's up with "humans are weird/human are space orcs" being considered cringe? Any collective body of non-serious work created by writers with varying skill levels including total beginners is gonna have stuff that seems shallow or immature that's just the way it is.

Maybe it's gotten away from the core concept I remember? It's not "what if aliens think humans are badass and cool and special" it's a response to a trope in SFF. Most sci-fi and fantasy uses humans as the frame of reference for what is ""normal."" Either humans are the axis on which the range of variation swings, or humans are default and every other sapient species is cooler, more powerful humans with something added, or an amplification of human traits

But comparing humans with the rest of organisms, we are in some ways really bizarre, doing things waaaaaay out to the left of every other organism. For example, humans can eat just about anything, including many things that are toxic to other animals. We form mutualistic symbiosis like crazy. Compared with the vast majority of animals that exist, we are giant megafauna.

There is a tendency in sci fi to imagine that aliens capable of space travel would have similar traits to us because the things unique about us somehow equip us to become a species capable of interstellar travel and communication, but I think it's more fun to imagine that aliens developed their technologies with a whole different set of adaptations and the human characteristics that we think made us develop technologically are just kinda there