#touching nothing

[shotmrmiller]

simon who is the town's executioner. he's accustomed to the weight of justice— or vengeance— delivered by his own hand. when he hangs your husband, it's just another day's work, flesh made rent. but then there's you. you stand there, hands folded neatly even as your world crumbles, posture straight, collected despite the grief that must be clawing at your insides. you don't plead, don't beg for clemency and that, to simon, is curious. interesting.

he vaguely remembers the bailiff muttering about the prisoner not having any next of kin, blood wanting nothing to do with an ignominious wretch like him, and by the way you stand there alone, the crowd having long dispersed, enduring—

you've no one either. so he makes his decision.

simon leads you away, his grip just shy of painful around your wrist, toward his horse, and you don't resist, which is good. patience isn't in his nature. he doesn't pause before helping you up, his large hands sure and efficient, and then swings up behind you.

his home has been in dire need of a goodwife.

(the blood on his hands doesn't bother him; it never has. he'll make sure it won't bother you for long.)

[malinaa]

if i think about the hunger games in peeta's perspective i WILL start sobbing

[clumsypuppy]

who is your favorite AA character? 👁️👁️

ziska… I hope capcom brings her back someday

[daiwild]

a little comic doodle abt the experience i had while watching The Great Gatsby musical

[plesiosaurys]

getting emotional over footage of an amateur scuba diver interacting with a coelacanth. they are hunted by large deepwater predators, and here comes a large creature bearing the brightest lights it's ever seen, making strange noises, but it does not shy away. it hovers, calmly, as the diver reaches out and trails a hand down its back. im strongly against the anthropomorphizing of real life animals but the stupid emotional part of me loudly insists this is because it recognizes us, the alternating movements of its four paired limbs matching the diver's four paired limbs, & it is thinking, "hello, cousins, we missed you these 66 million years, it's so good to see you again. welcome back, welcome home."

[hansoeii]

boring paperwork.

[rednightmare18]

Mentally in shambles over the fact Warhorse wrote Hans Capon to be wildly obsessed with the wordplay and melodramatic gesticulation, the performance, of romance. So much so, in fact, that Hans -- a character soon revealed to be a profoundly and chronically lonely person -- attempts multiple times (in KCD1) to force himself to fall in love through gesture. He goes about this by throwing himself into overblown and meticulously executed courtship steps, insisting to himself this talking and gifting and formulaic flirtation (including sex) is what romance is, and that it will lead him to storybook feelings of love, to resolve his loneliness. Of course, it never does. It goes awry or fizzles out, and when he doesn't fall madly in love, Hans immediately loses interest and discards these former "loves of his life." Of course it does not resolve anything. It can't; that isn't how love works.

[KCD2 MAJOR ROMANCE SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT.]

Warhorse set this up with such diligence, skill, and care...

Only to knock it the fuck out of the park by delivering a transformational romance with Henry in KCD2 that is deliberately and utterly stripped of wordplay, courtship, and artifice. So much so that all Henry & Hans's flirting is done in the normal conversations, and the explicitly romantic lines deliver only plainspoken affirmations of truth, devotion, kindness, and loyalty.

I know some people feel this is not romantically satisfying, that it does not scratch the Romance Genre itch. I get that some players would have preferred more courtship, more I am dazzled by your beauty moments, and more sexiness to the sex. I understand; those rollicking moments are fun, and we had more of them in KCD1, when we we did not have the option to allow the characters in question to act on them. But I also disagree, deeply, with the takeaway that this approach cheapens the romance of Hans & Henry's story. On the contrary, I think this differentiates the temporary chase of romance (flirtation, pursuit, gesture, courting) from the everyday perpetual action of romance (being the Person of the one you love above all, constantly).

IMO, Hans and Henry got to build their puppy-love-affection in KCD1 through flirtations they did not treat with much seriousness, because flirtation is not serious expression of love. You can have these flirtations on top of and alongside the rest, sure. But it's just dressing and the opening of a door to something more truthful, more adult and much more consequential, a stage that is broken wide open in KCD2 when they face the possibility of losing each other over and over. And that, I would argue, is why Warhorse (and Henry/Hans) needed to pull back on the flirtation and push it to the sidelines in KCD2, to now treat the romantic performance like the dressing it always was, as just one component to romantic love and not its entirety or its essence. Because when we begin to understand the difference, when we reach the maturity of deep-seated love that only rarely runs beneath flirtation, we reach the kind of love that provides deep constancy. And it changes your entire life by changing the way you understand the world.

That, I argue, is why the Hans romance in KCD2 takes the shape and tone it does, and why focusing more on the old KCD1 fun-flirts they used to have would have diminished its potency. KCD2 is that ultimate stage in which Henry has shown Hans what it means to genuinely love someone, beneath and beyond the performance, perhaps for the first time in his life. And when the immensity of this love hits you, the enormity of its happiness and of the pending grief inherent to being living things who love each other, no language is sufficient.

And it's such an appropriate ending - even Hans Capon comes to rest with the understanding that there are no gifts or gestures or words to tie a pretty little bow on what it means.

What a fucking fantastic conclusion and what a grown-up take on love.

[xxplastic-cubexx]

beautiful woman gets another beautiful skin more at 4

[demaparbat-hp]

How would Spirit Touched Zuko from For the Spirits AU and Nonbeliever Zuko from Dandadan AU react to each other?

DDD Zuko did not sign up for this.

[ryllen]

" Then—laughter. "

(( FAHDADSHDDASD NOT PART OF THE STORY. N O . ))

[nadjasnandor]

1.01 - "Pilot" | 6.11 - "The Finale"

[mortalfortaxpurposes]

so let's fade away together, one dream at a time 📼

fob vhs series

[littlenastieswewhispered]

“buffy ended the show single :)” ok but only because her current love interest just DIED!! (he near quite literally died in her arms! in sacrifice for her!) her last words of the entire series were telling him she loves him and then saying his name in admiration. she isn’t single; she’s a widow.

[bigskyandthecoldgun]

steve having a cat that refuses to be touched by anyone but him (it tolerates robin by extension ofc bc it has accepted the reality that they’re a package deal), and eddie gets warned by the entire party that steve’s cat hates people who aren’t steve or robin. eddie’s fully prepared to get scratched the fuck up, but the cat’s almost as friendly with him as it is with steve. huh. weird.

meanwhile, steve’s poor cat is trying to figure out a way to get its owner to stop being so sad all the time, and when one of the strange people he spends time with makes steve smile, the cat is determined to keep him around at all costs.

[coochiequeens]

"My son pulled a prank on teen girls now I'm stuck with him at home while the girls get to go on the next trip"

[artilite]

exploding dog of true love 🧨🌌

my part of an art trade with @drabdoodler!! HI!!!! check out their art here

creds. words: richard siken inspiration: riotbones (it's sooo genuinely gorgeous. please check it out!!!)

thoughts and sketch under the cut!

first page:

i imagine the setting is pre-game, camping outside somewhere for the night. mira/odile/bonnie probably took their only tent or something idk.. suspension of disbelief!!

when thinking about love in any capacity, isa looks to the stars!! take that as you will :)

i decided not to connect the dots of the canis major constellation as a nod to the fact that neither isa nor siffrin would recognize it. it's simply naturally there in the sky, apart from the dog-shaped sky for viewing purposes !

originally the red/blue color palette was a faint nod to t4t isafrin but evidently i deviated away from that a lot,, HELP

second page:

each 4 point star in the background was meant to be another version of them? something something.. in every universe trope !

siffrin's supposed to resemble a supernova somewhat???

originally i figured siffrin would take off their eyepatch to sleep. i vetod this because drawing two eyes is hard, okay? thanks for reading my scattered ramblings... isafrin makes the brain spin 'round <3