#utility cover

[sluggoonthestreet]

Griselda can keep your coffee warm indefinitely, but getting it back will cost you a cruller.

[muzzleroars]

I'm sure you've seen that post about Gabriel finding out how V1 sees him, this post in case you haven't, it's pretty funny.

I was thinking though, what about the opposite of that? What if when V1 and Gabriel were in a safe space together V1 chooses to crank up it's graphics and look around. Partially since it gets a chance to actually look at how things are without having to worry about someone getting the drop on it in such an inefficient state but also so it can look at Gabriel in his entirety. A kind of love language exclusive to machines.

It's most likely that V1 probably wouldn't be able to articulate what it's doing to Gabe or that it's a form of trust/compassion, but what would Gabe think of it anyway?

GOOD POST....and yes i absolutely love this little thought...v1, as a war machine, likely doesn't even consider its capacity to have improved "eyesight" and would never otherwise utilize its higher resolutions. it's set at what it considers to be optimal, not only as it conserves its power properly but also because simplifying its field of vision is actually highly beneficial to the chaotic combat of hell. but being with gabriel makes it consider a whole world of things it never could before, its mind growing rapidly in unexpected trajectories and producing thoughts and feelings of a complexity far beyond what it was ever meant to be. and something like this, though it seems small or simple, is relinquishing its capacity to fight in that moment which should be against every protocol v1 has. yet gabriel takes its priority, overriding such concerns to be deemed more important...to be deemed safe from combat-readiness. it sees him in full clarity with a rush of its vents, hot air blasting through fans as gabriel as he truly is renders in its vision - the radiant gold of heaven, the pearlescent armor highlighted in luminous rainbows, gabriel himself gently lit from the inside in a form so solid yet gently shimmering as though on the edge of being a mirage. his wings and halo are unlike anything it's seen, light made manifest, air and glass melded together into brilliant blue hues that contain an entire spectrum within them when they shift - he is full of light and color, and all it wants is to process every pixel of him when it sees what's it's missed all this time.

gabriel is a bit worried at first, v1 going so still and so hot never being a good sign, but soon it's looking all around him in different angles, taking him in enthusiastically enough it's no longer too concerning just. unsettling lol it's hard for v1 to explain this to him when he demands to know what's gotten into it, but once it's able to offer a basic idea of how its visuals operate...gabriel is quietly stunned. v1 is so different from himself, from anything god had made, and he had never considered how it sees the world. how special it is to see it now, taking up so much of its capacity just to look at him, to know that it cares to see nothing else in its true reality but him. he even asks it if there's anything else they might look at, but v1 just flippantly shakes its head, that nothing else is worth the effort. what does it care about the world? and for gabriel, that's striking...to be the one thing in the world that v1 wants to remember in true detail, that he will stand out in its mind against a backdrop of polygons and textures clearly divorced from their realities. so he lets it take all the pictures it wants, and his wings show how they can change their color with a very true, very unique sense of love.

[tabooiart]

my emo daughter and i are having a great vacation in spain

[empty-movement]

sorry but please... post your akio plastic covered couch tweet here... the world needs to know...

Warning: pics of gross shit happening on the couches

I'll do you one better and include the STORY! So, I, Vanna (note: Yasha mostly does the Tumblr and I mostly do the Twitter,) was smoking enough weed to knock out a large horse or put a very tiny dent in my constant back and shoulder pain, as one does when when they're a middle-aged Registered Nurse in the year 2023. (I'm 39 but it's an old 39, lmao.)

Scrolling through Twitter, I stumble on a fanart of Suletta from Witch of Mercury sitting goofily on a white couch. Now I haven't seen this show yet, but the white couch....looked familiar, and I know the show is very much a descendent of Utena in terms of creative teams. For those that don't know, the series is written by Ichirō Ōkouchi, who also wrote the two Revolutionary Girl Utena novelizations...which if you didn't know about before, you know about now, and can read translated on our site here! (Warning: Touga and Miki uh, in the novels...)

Anyways, so I hop onto my own website and start downloading the images that will constitute receipts, before realizing 1. these images are all on multiple computers feet away from me, 2. the couch isn't an identical match, 3. that'd have been weird anyway, and most importantly, 4:

AKIO'S COUCHES DON'T LOOK RIGHT. OBSERVE:

The edges of the armrests have sloppier upholstery than the blanket I have covering my computer desk. I took the time to tuck seams at least. What is this??

Now it could absolutely be leather, I thought. It would absolutely track. But leather upholstery doesn't look like this. It doesn't wrinkle quite this way. It would have cleaner seams.

No. No that's too shiny for leather. So here I am, presented with this strangeness I'd never really considered in how Akio's couch is drawn, and having spent the last few months learning about my Italian-American family history, my chemically altered ass came to the only reasonable conclusion:

Akio Ohtori has plastic coverings on his white couches, like he's a depression era American in poverty.

Fuck yeah, I though, A HIT TWEET, there, at the end of all Tweeting things. (Yeah I'm working on that, stay tuned, lmao. I of all people know when to bail on stupid men with stupid power.) Because I am me, I framed it as semi serious by pulling a context to explain it out of my ass:

I was joking.

But the replies? They were not. And then I thought about it some more. And I've kept thinking about it. Do I seriously think Ikuhara and Co literally are intentionally drawing a plastic covered couch? Doesn't that feel, Vanna, like a bit of a stretch, even for Utena meta?

Listen to that CRONCH when Akio sits down in episode 31, before Anthy is seen by Nanami. Look, the buttons on the back rest don't quite fit, but the rest? Yeah it kinda does. I was high, but not wrong!?

Akio *does* surround himself with a bizarre hodgepodge of Americana as an aesthetic. The arm garters. The piping and cut of his cowboy-ass shirt. His American car. His mullet. His miniature fucking golf. Why not the plastic covered couch? It's a trope of American poverty that would absolutely have fallen neatly into the diet of American pop culture that influenced Ikuhara. (He makes references to E.T. and The Godfather and Suspiria and all kinds of things in his other work, Utena itself is a little less obvious with individual references but inherits HUGE amounts of vibes from the same content--Ikuhara and Co watched Lost Highway in theaters during the production of the Akio Arc and I will not be convinced otherwise.)

So yeah. That's the story, and that's the theory. Do I seriously believe it was deliberate? Maybe. Probably. Possibly. But it fits so well it's headcanon for me, and in the Utena fandom, pretty much all canon is kind of headcanon so enjoy this one.

What an asshole.

[kirby-the-gorb]

[donnyclaws]

🎂 TRADITIONAL ART ADOPTS ON TOYHOUS.E 🎂 

Posting cause I love how these guys lookkk. I’m gonna be moving into a new place next month so if u feel like tossing anything my way, I’ve got plenty of adopts on toyhous.e, as well as stickers, prints and zines on my other platforms <3 https://donnyclaws.squarespace.com/. This isn’t an urgent donation post or anything, just self advertising haha.

[namari-hime-moved]

Listen To My Vocaloid Cover Boy.

[sluggoonthestreet]

Ingrid faces each new day with eyes wide open and a skedaddle pre-loaded.

[jackdaw-and-hattrick]

Reasons people believe Bruce Wayne is a vampire and his explanations why he’s not (condensed):

- Has to use a parasol and sunglasses whenever he leaves Gotham, claims nocturnal lifestyle caused him to develop highly sensitive eyes and skin intolerant of sunlight.

- Extraordinary ability to slip away unseen, this claim was entirely shrugged off.

-Seems to have an entirely liquid diet, says texture issues make eating solid food not prepared by his butler intolerable.

-Was reported dead only to reappear no less than twice, claims he’s simply very bad at remembering to contact loved ones when he’s leaving for a bit.

- Keeps acquiring children who all exhibit the same bizarre patterns of behavior, simply said quote “like finds like”

- Seemingly superhuman beauty; says that this is due to him, quote, “not being an insecure baby when it comes to wearing makeup” and that, “the standards for men are ridiculously low.”

The public and this reporter remain unconvinced.

[rgr-pop]

march is always my hardest month. i will secular dave ramsay tiktok girlie suffer through it and dump my paycheck into paying off my utilities debt so i don’t have to drag it into summer

[queen-scribbles]

add this to the list of things that annoy me about Lana*

[mymarifae]

i don’t think i’m ever recovering from this one. like guys i don’t think you’re ever going to hear from me again this is it i have to go get hit by a car. again. i feel like this

[thefirstknife]

Following up on the ask about the Titan supers, going for the fantasy expectation question specifically- Titans are, thematically, front-line tacticians. People throw around Spartan, Paladin, Soldier, titles like that. What bungie seems to see them as is a big gorilla, or the Hulk, and I feel that does a disservice to the actual characterization of the class. Even if it does different things in gameplay, debuffing for example, running around punching is creatively boring. I'd like a utility supe

The problem is, how do you translate "front-line tactician" into a playable ability? A tactician is someone who makes plans to execute a strategy. Titans are well known to be able to make plans, both ahead of time and on the go, as well as improvise in the heat of battle, but that is simply incredibly metaphysical to make first person shooter gameplay out of.

As an example, would I like if, as a Titan, I could use destructible environment to quickly create a throwing melee or super? Sure. A game where a piece of concrete can be destroyed and then you can pick it up and use it to throw it at enemies or create a temporary barricade or do whatever else you might come up with to simulate a front-line tactician would be unfathomably cool. And also impossible to do in Destiny as it exists right now.

We can extend that to other classes as well. Warlocks are scholars and students of the arcane space magics and should be able to specialise in specific fields and then weave them as they see fit in millions of different ways, but instead their supers are; throw void orb, throw void orb but it tracks, you are void orb, solar sword on fire, solar sword on fire in the ground, electric fingers, electric beam and stick.

Hunters are supposed to be agile scouts and explorers who trek the wilderness and map the unknown, but I'm forced into known missions with fireteams instead of having an open world to map out alone for others. My supers are gun with three bullets, gun with six bullets, knives, bow with one shot, bow with three shots, knives, spin stick, throw stick and tornado.

There's very obviously a limit to what the class is in lore and setting and what it can be in gameplay. I totally understand the disappointment about the new super being seemingly "the same" as the last one ("element on fists, punch"), but I feel like a lot of the complaints and demands are quite literally impossible and unreasonable. And some of the complaints can be applied to other two classes as well.

I think it's good to tell Bungie that we would like more variety in supers, especially as it pertains to their viability in various content. I would 100% love for an additional super for stasis and strand and for Titans to have more ranged options because in a lot of cases you can't really get close range to enemies. Stomps, pushback, environmental hazards and other issues limit what we can use melee abilities for.

Obviously I've not played the strand stuff so I'm working with what we've been told and shown, but I think it's fairly obvious that strand IS a utility super. It's the most utility since void and overshield; strand not only gives you and your teammates damage reduction, but also controls the battlefield by suspending enemies. Like, by all accounts strand is a utility subclass with a lot of debuffing and buffing options and movement utilities.

I also think it's reductive to say that the new strand super is just "gorilla." It really isn't. I am not aware of gorillas being able to control the battlefield by suspending enemies in the air and locking down a whole section while empowering allies with damage reduction utilities. And being able to control the battlefield and empower your allies while you plan out your attack and dish out damage is, quite literally, a tactician move.

I think both Behemoth and Berserker are much closer to the front-line tactician fantasy since void. If anything is "gorilla" it's Fists of Havoc. A lot of people shit on Behemoth but if you really want utility and being able to perform multiple tasks at once with your super, Behemoth is one of the things to pick. Need to kill enemies? Got it. Need to freeze them while you deal with something else? Got it. Need to block off an area? Got it. Need to create barricades for your team? Got it. Your team needs overshield which you can give them by making stasis shards with your super? Got it. The problems with Behemoth not being used much are with a completely different section of issues, which is activity, encounter and enemy designs.

If Berserker is truly similar in any way, then it's in this this way imo, as it gives you options to use your super in different ways for different purposes depending on what you need. Like a tactician. I think people are way too focused on the idea that you use your fists and not at all focusing on the actual utility and options of the super. Though obviously if someone just isn't vibing with it, it's not something that people can change.