#you've got to believe me guys

[just-creature-things]

they so sillyy

[buwheal]

alright gang what we thinkin Ive been doing this without a reference this entire damn time and its KILLING my consistency.... sigh... me when i have to follow the properties of a character to draw them correctly.... (bwomp)... /j

is he fucked up enough

[canisalbus]

How do you find pose references for all those gorgeous and cute and aaaaaaa drawings. H o w. Where. (<-from someone struggling to draw characters interacting)

(if you don't use references, take it as a compliment to your godly anatomy and posing skills)

I don't really use references for poses that much. I'm not sure how to explain this without sounding weird but when I'm about to draw something, I visualize it in my mind, and when it's character art I sort of see them as 3D models that can be posed and rotated. And I just sort of try to replicate that on paper, sometimes it's easy and sometimes it doesn't work out at all (a good reminder that when you browse someone's art, you usually only see the pieces that the artist is at least passably proud of, not the piles of failed projects that went nowhere).

[i-spilled-my-soup]

post ttc nico thinking bianca might have lived if he was only smarter and stronger and better, and bianca being the only role model he'd had for all the life he'd remembered he absolutely overcompensates becoming a caricature of distrust and seclusion. but he isnt used to it like bianca was and his desire to help (to prove his worth? to prove that he has a right to live when his sister didn't?) manifests in clinging to any opportunity of progress, anything that could earn him graditute or at the very least repentance

[moe-broey]

6/09 • Day 1 • Past or Future

A Glimpse into the Past

Also quick edit!!! These kid designs are of Alfonse, Triandra, Peony (Sharena) and Sharena (Peony)! Unsure on ages, just. Ambiguously small LMFAO (sorry if I wasn't clear enough! I forgor.)

Well, I may not have been able to make time on my big piece, but I do have these concepts/roughs I made for it! Only focusing on the most important parts of each design, which is why the clothes are left blank lmfao

Something I've been headcanoning for a looong time is that the girls who'd become fairies had slightly different appearances, as humans/children. The biggest reason behind it is to make the changeling shenanigans more believable -- I can accept mistaking a blonde/orange for a blonde/pink, especially if there's no reason to think otherwise. Maybe it's a trick of the light. But I draw the line at your sister inexplicably having lavender eyes every now and again when they're supposed to be green LMFAOOO

If Lif can have red eyes, Totally Not Sharena Peony, as we know her, can have lavender eyes. After becoming something not quite human. Before then she gets blueish-green eyes. Which has the same effect as the orange being juuuust slightly off but like why would you ever think about that!!!!!

Some other thoughts:

> I like to think that Triandra and Peony/Sharena are half sisters, which is why she stands out a bit.

> I also like the idea that Triandra and Alfonse have some visual similarities, too. Mostly in the hair, both having somewhat androgynous styles, with a waviness to it. There's a sense of familiarity, in foggy memories.

@sharenaweek

[front-facing-pokemon]

[jacksope-lives]

Still on my Gravity Falls bullshit! Here's a bunch of One-Shots I wrote over the last few months!

[batsplat]

reading your post about vale and marc mind games bc it came up on my dash and thinking about your point about how athletes like vale must convince themselves of certain things but also know the truth. and i guess with vale’s insistence that marc was never a fan of his, that he tricked him, that everything was a lie, when there are videos from marc at age seven naming vale as his hero, videos from him at age nineteen talking about collecting vale’s bikes, etc, things that would appear as “proof” i wonder if there’s some difference between what vale has convinced himself of and the (apparent) reality/truth that exists. obviously there is no way of knowing and it’s imo harder to figure out the “truth” of an emotional and personal situation that both parties were deeply hurt by than a sporting one. but it’s interesting because in 2015 the personal and sport elements were intertwined too

(x) hm yeah, I love the subjectivity of the whole thing, how it's all founded so much around these 'emotional' truths... there's this kind of fun tension where in late 2015/early 2016 both 'sides' are attempting to prove they're right with data, hrc is promising press conferences to present conclusive evidence, everyone's waving around sheets of paper with telemetry and obsessing around helicopter shots... but you won't actually be able to prove anything one way or the other, because this isn't something that can actually be 'proven'. this is about minds and it's about hearts - you can't find conclusive evidence for what's in either of them. that doesn't mean studying the events is pointless... but it can only ever tell you so much. valentino's initial allegation was couched in the language of facts, he wanted his audience to believe that you could read marc's intentions in a few numbers. but even if marc had wanted to sabotage him, you never would have found that in those numbers... and at the end of the day, valentino was using those numbers to tell a much bigger story

this is the difference to, say, qatar 2004, right? because if you're concerning yourself with what 'really' happened at qatar, then you can find a 'truth' of sorts - it should be possible in theory to know whether sete gibernau was involved in valentino's penalty or not. how that penalty came to exist is knowable. you can still do with this information what you want, argue about what sete was attempting to achieve with his actions, argue about what valentino knew or did not know and what he chose to do with that information - but the central 'conspiracy' is one that is based on real events. what marc wanted of valentino that year, the full spectrum of possibilities from completely innocuous to ragingly malicious, is not knowable in a similar way. even marc and valentino themselves won't completely understand their own intentions that year... nobody is knowable even to themselves, right? they've narrativised this to death and back in their own heads, including what happened in the races themselves... marc and valentino both going over the events again and again, in argentina, in assen, in phillip island, in sepang, in valencia... thinking about what they did, what the other did - the level of reflection that can obscure as much as it reveals. even isolated racing events that should be relatively straightforward are still essentially ambiguous, and continue to be enthusiastically debated to this day. the protagonists hold diametrically opposed views, and even there we can only guess at what they really believe

I'll include the autobiography bit again because it really is a bit of a banger

obviously, the context itself is a different one (and if you want to read more about 2003-05 then. well here you go). but it's such a good description... especially this bit

But then again, we riders always say all sorts of things. Sometimes we believe what we say, even when it sounds crazy, other times we’re just being hopeful and, still at other times, it’s all an exercise in self-delusion. We try to convince ourselves of something, because ultimately, every time you step on the track, words don’t matter, and it’s just you, the bike and your opponents.

"at other times, it's all an exercise in self-delusion". you don't say! "we try to convince ourselves of something"... valentino does have a reasonable understanding of his own working process, I think. it's very true what you say about the intertwining of the personal and the sporting processes, and this post contains some speculation about how valentino may have also changed in how he approached interpersonal relationships to his rivals over time. if you buy into this theory, you have a shift to the purely 'professional' rivalries with casey and jorge, where he was fairly conscious and deliberate in manipulating both that dynamic and how he felt within that dynamic. giving himself a target was all well and good, but it's all part of the game, all about attempting to get a competitive edge over his new challengers... it took a bit of a perfect storm for that friendship with marc to even be possible in the first place. maybe marc and valentino would have always ended up enemies - but not in every universe do they start out as friends

of course, the main story valentino ended up telling himself was that marc was out to destroy him. now, this is very much the topic for another post, but it is broadly reasonable to argue that marc approached his rivalry with valentino differently than he did any of his others. it's also not stretching things too far to suggest that marc was perhaps a little more focused on valentino than was competitively reasonable, that he seemed to take defeats to valentino particularly poorly... further into grey areas, was marc deliberately messing with valentino specifically? did he want to beat valentino at all costs, knowing he was pushing things, knowing it might cost valentino the title? where we get into even murkier territory is the question of what marc's preferred outcome for the title that year was, and whether he was really as disinterested as he said he was. it is just around up until this area where you can still more or less get to in a reasonable way, without too much delusion required - where the theory jumps off the cliff edge is by proposing that marc was deliberately orchestrating the phillip island race in order to hand jorge the title. that bit does not work. in a way, though, it's just the conspiratorial scaffolding for an emotional truth. this 'truth' that valentino felt very strongly is that marc had it out for him. once he was convinced of that, he basically just... arranged the facts to suit this narrative, but really the phillip island thing was a lot about having something a bit more 'solid' to grasp onto. it is where he makes the leap from 'malice' to 'conspiracy'. then, he blows shit up at sepang, and obviously from then on you do have marc essentially strengthening this narrative within valentino's mind. that's where we make the step to self-delusion, right...

that being said - the childhood hero thing. "is it true that he’s been my fan? is it true that he had a poster with me in his bedroom? I would like to check." now, in all honesty, I do think valentino knows marc was a fan. this is just my personal read, but to me that line was meant to twist the knife in, rather than being completely literal. the contentious bit, right, isn't that marc at one stage was a valentino fan, it's what this means. what valentino is asserting here is that this stance of marc's, where marc still claims a particular fondness for valentino as a result of how he's always been a fan of valentino, is fundamentally dishonest. valentino knows for a fact that just having a poster of someone in their room isn't enough to stop a rivalry from eventually going sour. let's bring in another autobiography excerpt:

The funny thing is that a few years earlier, when I was fourteen I had had a poster of Biaggi in my room. It was one of many posters on my bedroom wall and it showed Biaggi on the Honda 250. Nothing strange in that: he was Italian and I supported all the Italian riders. Besides, he was an aggressive rider and I always had a lot of respect for those riders who went on the attack. But, back then, I did not know him personally. It was only when I started to listen to his interviews and read what he said in the papers that my opinion changed. With Biaggi, no matter what happened, it never seemed to be his fault, there was always something wrong with the bike or the tyres. I thought he said a lot of things that I believed simply couldn't be true.

the thing is, almost all of these riders are going to have someone on their bedroom wall - and if you're marc's age, there's a pretty good chance that someone is going to be valentino rossi. it's not even valentino's first experience with a feud starting up with someone who had once been his fan... look at casey, who repeatedly said he was a fan of his, had admired him - yes, obviously, completely different degree to marc, but the point is he still publicly said it before that rivalry turned ugly. and jorge who was both a valentino anti-fan and a fan and was kinda actively weird about the whole thing. valentino made reference to this himself in 2010 when those two and him started sniping at each other when he was out with the leg break, saying that at least they were being honest now. like... in blunt terms, if you're valentino rossi, you do kinda expect most people to be a fan of you. so many of these younger riders have some childhood photo of themselves with valentino floating around. marc wasn't particularly special in that regard. the fact that he was a valentino fan isn't why valentino felt so warmly towards him. it wouldn't have been enough in itself for valentino to treat him in any way differently from his other rivals. valentino's been in this game for too long to get sentimental over that - at the end of the day, you need to ensure you're thinking about your rivals in whatever way you need to in order to give yourself the best possible chance to win. the posters weren't the reason why valentino lowered his guard around marc. so, keeping all that in mind, would it really be thar=t hard for valentino to believe that marc was at one stage a fan of his? seriously?

there's also this from uccio in that infamous 2016 interview:

if even uccio implicitly acknowledges the poster bit isn't fake, is valentino really not going to believe that marc had a poster of him at some stage?

now, this isn't the same thing as arguing that valentino had an accurate understanding of how marc felt towards him. it's entirely plausible to say that, yes, he wasn't being entirely literal about the childhood bedroom stuff... but he also didn't get what that hero worship actually meant to marc. you can be a fan of someone and you can be A Fan, and marc was A Fan. this wasn't just a reference point for marc... this was someone he deeply admired. someone he very much idolised. it's not just 'a poster', right - showing valentino marc's childhood bedroom probably doesn't achieve that much. it's something that valentino just interprets differently... to him, this doesn't mean anything in and of itself. which he's broadly right about - except he wasn't entirely aware of what level of fandom marc was actually operating on

so, why does he say it if he's not literally doubting the existence of any posters? first of all, he's just trying to be cruel here. he knows why it stings, right - he's calling the very foundation of their relationship a lie. marc had this pretence up the whole time, and now valentino is finally forcing him to drop it. marc's being dishonest - and how better to argue his case than by saying not even the posters were real? the second reason is that it's an act of erasure. I talk in the sete post about how he does this with that rivalry... most noticeably by excluding sete almost entirely from his autobiography. here, valentino takes a slightly different approach over the years, but as the other feud with deep interpersonal repercussions it's broadly coming from the same playbook. this is the most radical way you can cut ties, right... you can argue the bond never existed in the first place. if it was all just a lie, then the relationship isn't just over - it was never really there. it's the most brutal and complete way you can burn your bridges. marc isn't just denied valentino's friendship... valentino isn't allowing him to be his fan. he's attempting to erase the continuity between them entirely, how marc isn't just his successor in literal terms of his results but also in the more abstract sense of how he modelled himself after valentino. it's this bit that indicates the finality in valentino's decision perhaps better than anything else. this is the end, in all the ways that matter most

[stromer]

[maxdurden]

Lhokta Lore

The Lhokta Star Cluster holds three solar systems together: The Mordician System, the home of humans who over the years have explored, colonized and categorized the Cluster, was eventually abandoned after its resources had been exhausted. The Oneira System, lush with life and magic, successfully expelled Mordician influence but not before years of war brought its previously isolated planets together in a bid for survival. Finally, the Pyrrhic system, rich with resources but sparsely populated, became a refuge for Mordicians fleeing the collapse of their empire. 

(This is a promised lore dump for an OC universe of mine that has,,, wayyy too much worldbuilding going on for its own good. The rest is under a read more because! It’s long! Also fair warning before you proceed further, it’s by no means a finished product, so be gentle. But also! I would love to discuss it with folks if they find it interesting because it’s definitely a constantly growing thing and having people to bounce ideas off of is fun and the info here is honestly only the tip of the iceberg, i fear)

Timeline:

Magic: 

The Elsewhither is a plane of existence which sits atop and weaves through the world of the Lhokta Cluster. Gods make their home here, carving out parts of the wild realm of pure magic to create domains which they rule. All magic hails from the Elsewhither. Most commonly, magic is drawn from the Elsewhither through devotion to a god. Druids gain power from deities to whom they pledge fealty, or make a deal. Gods, whose existence is dependent on the belief of their followers, are often eager to strike such deals to ensure their continued survival. Some magic is drawn from the Elsewhither by nature of proximity. There are places where the plane bleeds into the material world of Lhokta, and there are demigods who pull it closer by merely existing. Those who have this kind of special relationship with the Elsewhither are rare, but possess an innate ability to see the Veil—the partition between the material plane and the Elsewhither—and manipulate it to cast magic. Lastly, there is the study of the language of the gods. When known to and studied by mortals, this language can allow them access to some level of magical ability.

Key Planets

The Oneira System:

⁽ᵗʰᶦˢ ˢʸˢᵗᵉᵐ, ᶦⁿ ᵖᵃʳᵗᶦᶜᵘˡᵃʳ, ᶦˢ ᵐʸ ᵇᵃᵇʸ ˢᵒ ᶦᶠ ʸᵒᵘ ᵗʰᶦⁿᵏ ʸᵒᵘ ˢᵉᵉ ᶠᵃᵛᵒʳᶦᵗᶦˢᵐ ᵇᵉᶦⁿᵍ ᵉˣʰᶦᵇᶦᵗᵉᵈ,,, ʸᵒᵘ’ʳᵉ ʳᶦᵍʰᵗ⁾

Menaea: The largest surviving human colony in the Oneira System, Menaea is also the seat of power for the Oneiran Delegation. Its development has been closely watched, and shepherded by the neighboring planet of Faerie. This is where the Delegation meets, as well as the Council of Seven, which seats a Septenary from each of the six Menaean provinces, as well as one representative from the neighboring planet of Halou. The Menaean Septenaries are also sovereign leaders of their respective province and aren’t elected. Most Delegate positions have also lapsed into a kind of lazy inheritance, but a few delegates are still elected. This includes the Septenary from Halou, who serves a seven year term before an election is held on their homeworld. Menaea is seen as a hub of culture and the academic study of magic. 

Faerie: No other planet is so closely interwoven with the Elsewhither. Its inhabitants include the fey, split roughly into the Seelie and Unseelie Courts; the dragons, which exist both as wild dragons and those domesticated by the Seelie Court; and the giants, which live in tentative peace with the fey every since they collaborated to defeat Mordician colonists. Aside from the giants, all creatures living on Faerie are deeply magical and immortal. Fey come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, from the Sylphs to pixies to Red Caps. Sylphs make up the majority of the actual Seelie Court, though other kinds of fey are aligned with the court, and the Fey Queen herself is a Sylph. Fey have an innate connection with the Elsewhither, the Veil and magic. Sylphs also traditionally take a bondmate in a dragon, which grows with them and acts as a magical conduit. They hold an event called the Wild Hunt where a contender is chosen to hunt a stag through the feywild. The Snarl denotes parts of the feywild where the Elsewhither practically breaks through onto the material plane, leaving the feywild even wilder and thriving with unpredictable magic.

Halou: The third planet in the ‘Central Ring,’ Halou holds more power than most other planets in the Oneira system. It is a heavily forested planet, populated by Audaxians (spider folks), Alethians (snake folks), and Therons (bird folks). 

Nochta: A planet of balance, Nochta has always been ruled by two god-brothers, one of order and fate and the other of chaos and free will. Aisa, the god of fate, had consolidated power and killed his brother bringing a suffocating stasis to the planet. He saw in the future one opportunity to once again bring his world glory, or else destroy it, and had a child with a mortal queen. Unfortunately, balance could not be restored before colonization by Mordis turned the planet into a husk of its former self. (This planet is mostly notable for being the homeworld of Maire, the child of Aisa, another OC)

Tarsus: The birthplace of vampires. Tarsus is a rocky, mountainous and inhospitable planet. A cult to the goddess Malochre was cursed with vampirism and then subsequently drained the planet of all life aside from themselves. While the curse—or disease, depending on who you ask—has long since spread from its planetary confines, those who live there and are still devoted to their goddess consider themselves to be the only true vampires, while all the rest are lowly parasites. They call themselves the Children of Malochre.

Quoah: A mining colony of Menaea and Faerie in the Outskirts, the people of Quoah are overworked, disadvantaged and poor. This particular colony is notable mostly for being the birth place of Erastos Arsinoe (an OC of mine who becomes their delegate and then gets up to a lot of mischief and mess)

The Mordician System:

Mordis: The human homeworld, once a marvel of scientific progress, eventually turns to a hollow shell of itself. It was the hub of human colonization efforts, stretching itself in all directions as colonists were sent to both of its neighboring systems. In the reckless pursuit of progress, the planet became completely inhospitable to life and its sprawling empire collapsed, retreating to Pyrrhus in the Pyrrhic System. 

The Pyrrhic System:

Pyrrhus: Rising from the ashes of Mordis’ failure, Pyrrhus is a hub for human civilization that appears destined to make all the same mistakes again. It exists as a cyberpunk dystopia, with layers of undercity accumulating in the dark as those with power ceaselessly build upwards. Eventually, the expansion spills from the containment of their planet.

Torr: A mining colony and high security prison, this planet has been commandeered by the Pyrrhic government as a way to handle the vampirism problem that ravages all of the systems. A tidally locked planet, the mines are built on the half of the planet trapped in eternal daylight, making it (nearly) impossible for its prisoners and workforce to escape.

[cave-monkey]

It dawns on me that the journey to the west took 5,040 days exactly, right, and while the book goes from tribulation to tribulation, there were still only 81 of those. And they were missing one when they got there. And some of the tribulations Tripitaka went through happened before the journey even started.

So, even being generous and saying that most of the tribulations that occurred during the actual journey could be said to have taken a few days to handle each, that's still only about 10% of the journey. A tribulation was anything that happened that put Tripitaka in danger or presented any sort of obstacle to him. Anything even remotely exciting would have fallen into that ~10%, and nothing else could have happened, because otherwise they wouldn't have gotten west one moderate inconvenience and/or major trauma short of the prize. (I mean, unless the thing that happened managed to not involve Tripitaka at all in any way, but that's very hard to do when you are all attached at the hip.)

Holy cow they really were just walking. ALL THAT TIME. No wonder Zhu Bajie was stirring the pot at any given opportunity. It was literally the only thing to do.

[skrunksthatwunk]

"i'm not disabled" followed immediately by "i've got bad knees and a bad back" is certainly something to read 🤨 you know it doesn't have to be cripling for it to count, right...? it's not normal to be in pain after 15 minutes of standing. ableds can stand for, like, an hour at a time before they need to sit.

i know! i appreciate the concern, but i uh. dunno lol. genuinely i don't know. but i included the afaik ("i'm not disabled afaik" was the original phrase, though i'm not like mad at you for excluding it or anything) because i'm well aware that it's a possibility. it's hard to explain but there's a lot of little things that don't add up to much but are like. noticeable. like i would prefer to do most things sitting, if i could, as a matter of comfort. it would be easier for me. and walking isn't as bad as just standing. i've never been great at taking care of my body, and this has only gotten worse with time. it's hard for me to know what i should read as necessity and what i should read as preference, and how much weight to put on said preferences. like you said, i know it doesn't need to be "if i don't sit down i'm going to collapse" or anything, but where to draw that line between Definitely A Medical Thing That Affects Me More Than Other People and.. not that, i'm not sure. i kinda just thought i was a persistently slightly tired and low energy person, but it doesn't seem bad enough to be chronic fatigue, so...? is it related to the half-diagnosed. idk it's complicated depression (and yes in hindsight i probably should've counted that as disabling but whatever)? idk it's not a rabbit hole i've explored much at all is my point. but i know it's there and uh i guess this was sort of validating in a way anon so.. yeah? yeah👍

[gortthe1rst]

guys my head cannon is real guys you've got to believe me look at this

[sysig]

Step off loser (Patreon)

[frozenambiguity]

Fontaine hype — REAL!

[fionnaskyborn]

one day when i am not busy dying on the inside and out i will write an honest-to-god essay about how people are, for the lack of a better descriptor but simultaneously for the lack of a more perfect one, too edgy about five.