#and after dealing with so much 'fuck this character but good art' bullshit

[evilkitten3]

ok so like i know the reason is just. sexism but one thing that really irks me about how the post-timeskip naruto manga handled which characters became medic nin bc it makes absolutely no sense to me

sakura's decision to train under tsunade makes sense, and i love that she got a super strength power up, so no notes there, but the other teams.... yeesh

so first off, team ten. we're told that ino decided to follow sakura into mednin land to keep being rivals with her... despite that at no point factoring into their rivalry at all beforehand. ino never showed any interest in that, nor was the yamanaka clan ever mentioned to have anything to do with healing as far as i can remember. it's like going to art school to stay with your bestie when your goal is to become a dentist. why are you there. find other ways to spend time together. it also kinda goes against her family's whole thing as. the guys who do the torture stuff. and it's barely ever relevant anyway

for team ten, i think the team medic should've been shikamaru, and i think this not just bc i think it makes more sense skill-wise (something about the way the nara clan's various shadow jutsu work just screams "you need good chakra control for this" to me), but also bc i think it would make asuma's death a thousand times more painful. bc shikamaru is a slacker. he's not learning medical ninjutsu bc he wants to, he's learning it bc someone on the team has to in order to stick together. they're all chuunin now; one of them has to be a medic. them's the rules. but he doesn't really care that much, even when he is trying to learn, and he's so used to being smart enough to not have to pay attention in lessons anyway that he's not prepared for classes that require his full focus. and then asuma dies and shikamaru is doomed to spend the rest of his fucking life wondering if he could've saved him by paying just a little more attention to those medical ninjutsu lessons (he could not have (but he'll never know for sure))

team eight makes some sense, since giving the girl who struggles with fighting the healing job isn't exactly out of nowhere, but i do feel it was the lazy choice. kiba already had a sister involved in the medical business, even if she deals more with animals, so he could've started learning from her and found that he liked it. plus kiba's goal is to be hokage, and the current hokage is a mednin, so it's not like it wouldn't support his goal. or shino could do it; would add another layer to his character. hinata works fine but. it's just not a very interesting development imo

but what really gets me is team gai. good freaking grief. out of every single team, team gai was the one with the most obvious choice. bc there was only one choice. lee can't do any kind of ninjutsu, and tenten's only real backstory is that her chakra control isn't good enough for her to be a medic nin. so it had to be neji. canon establishes that every team has to have a medic; this is a policy tsunade got passed even before she became hokage, so no way in hell is she going back on it now.

moreover, neji becoming a medical ninja - especially if hiashi encouraged it - would show some development for the hyuuga clan maybe starting to suck a bit less. bc as a medic, neji would be bound by oath to stay alive for as long as possible. imagine a world in which hizashi came back and hiashi was able to tell his brother that not only was their family starting to change, but his son had chosen a path that would prevent him from ever following in his father's footsteps. it would be the first step (of many) to show that the hyuuga clan was freeing itself from its own bullshit.

also it would've made sakura catching the zetsu pretending to be neji a thousand times funnier. like that's her coworker. they've shared shifts at the hospital together. she's seen neji drink vodka straight from a bottle and then crash on her couch after they got out of a twelve-hour surgery on the fucking dumbass chuunin who managed to step on his own boobytrap. she knows him.

#naruto #naruto shippuden #medical ninjutsu #iryou ninjutsu #haruno sakura #senju tsunade #yamanaka ino #nara shikamaru #hyuuga hinata #inuzuka kiba #hyuuga neji #white zetsu #hyuuga clan #neji should've been a mednin not hinata i will die on that hill

[rekino2114]

Danganronpa despair time girls reacting to your death.

This might be an excuse to use the character's "breakdown" images cause they're great and write more angst

Teruko tawaki:Ultimate lucky student

She just broke down completely when she saw your body. She started laughing maniacally like she did in the first trial.

You were the only one she could trust. After she was literally backstabbed, she couldn't trust anyone except you. You helped her deal with everything. She loved you and swore to protect you, but she failed.

She was ready to stab anyone who annoyed her. If she killed someone, that would be a plus cause she'd get to see you again.

Throughout the investigation and trial she was incredibly cold she needed to find out who killed you. when your killer was revealed she stood up from her podium and tried to stab them with her knife before monotv could pull her away.

After the trial, she was almost always in her room silent. She regretted not dying when she was stabbed and considered doing it herself multiple times.

Min jeung:Ultimate student

Her first reaction is denial:you couldn't be dead it was illogical. You promised to survive with her, she couldn't believe it.

She was more silent than usual after your body discovery, she just reading useless books she had already read thousands of times.

When your culprit was discovered, she yelled at them and cried. She thought she would be happy seeing their execution, but she was left even more despairing.

Arei nageishi:Ultimate bowler

She was livid, who the fuck dared to kill you?she needed to know and she swore to beat the shit out of whoever did this.

She was even more pissed off and angry than usual. She cussed out everyone at least once even eden who came to help her multiple times.

She cried in her room. She didn't want to let anyone see her weakness, but she wasn't strong enough to handle your death.

When your killer was revealed, she was one step away from choking them, but instead she cried, you wanted to help her become a good person and now you were gone she was lost without you.

Hu jing:Ultimate zither player

Her heart sank when she saw you, she didn't want anyone to die of course, but you especially, you were special and helped her lead and calm everyone herself included.

She wanted to try to heal you somehow or at least to bury you to make you rest in peace, but nico and eden convinced her that she couldn't preserve the evidence.

She needed to be strong, to guide everyone and help them get through this game, but how could she when she was in so much pain?

She didn't have any reaction when she found out your killer. She knew they were just another victim of this game, and seeing another death wouldn't bring her closure.

J rosales:Ultimate effects artist

She just wanted to put her hood over her eyes and forget what she saw.

You helped her after everything that happened with Arturo, she didn't want to believe you were gone so suddenly.

She was very snappy, especially at Arturo. She couldn't deal with his bullshit right now, she needed to grieve.

She told your killer to go to hell, but besides that, she knew that wouldn't do anything. She needed to continue being strong, for you.

Veronika grebenshchikova:Ultimate horror fanatic

She just laughed when she saw your body, just like she thought, you were still beautiful in death.

Everyone thought she was the same as always, a creepy psychopath who didn't even cry at her lover's death, but inside she was completely different, she had truly gone insane.

In the investigation and trial, she was really helpful, but her creepy comments doubled, she threatened to kill the culprit in the most brutal way possible and recommended monotv to make their execution an entertaining one.

When your culprit was discovered, she just started at them smiling and waiting, and during their execution, she laughed so much it covered all their screams.

If she wasn't gonna kill someone before, she definitely will now.

Rose lacroix:Ultimate art forger

She needed a moment to truly accept what happened, you were really gone.

During the investigation, she painted one last picture of you and her together to remember you.

She didn't care who the killer was, and she didn't participate in the trial, nor did she watch their execution, it's like her will to live was completely drained from her.

She couldn't bear to see any more people die. She just wanted to fall asleep and never wake up again.

#danganronpa despair time #x reader #danganronpa despair time x reader #teruko tawaki x reader #min jeung x reader #hu jing x reader #arei nageishi x reader #j rosales x reader #veronika grebenshchikova x reader #rose lacroix x reader #gn reader #angst

[trainwrecksys]

ok!!!!!!!! i am!!!!!!! going to just say it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! long long post ahead!!!!!!!!!

yes i look like an out of touch stan with a victim complex for one character when i draw no one but bentham in my fanart and completely ignore everyone else to feel sorry for him and yes i am aware and no i dont know if anyone else sees this in me or im just paranoid but bro i am annoyed with myself !!! i hate how stannish i am sometimes because yes bentham had every reason to be called evil but yeah i had a good few reasons to have a complete breakdown when i read that in the book !!!!!!!1 too much writing under the cut about a lot of stuff that is in my head and needs to get out for better or for worse idk

i have made a severe and continuous lapse in my judgement and i do not expect to be forgiven but genuinely the way me being a stupid shameless stan can come off to others even subconsciously is actually important because it makes me look like someone who would see a situation like the bentham siblings' in real life and side with the STRAIGHT WHITE MALE who has made more than mistakes and hurt people in moments of heightened emotion (end of library of souls)- but like not in defense of bentham for ONCE IN MY LIFE everyone feels emotions everyone gets hurt and he had a right to not be perfect after everything he went through but that doesnt mean hurting people is the course of action and bro i have completely ignored that and skirted around it for two years and IM NOT GONNA KEEP APOLOGISING FOR MAKING THIS TOO LONG BECAUSE IT BLEEDS INTO REAL LIFE AND I REALISE HOW MUCH OF A STUCK UP DICK I COULD BE NOT ONLY ABOUT THIS BUT IN GENERAL LIFE AFTER I READ THE BOOKS AND GAINED AN ATTACHMENT TO BENTHAM

the stuff im talking about is honestly mainly between me myself and i and most of the art i post is him either chilling or feeling a bit sad but the way i completely ignore miss peregrine's issues and betrayal to focus on how oh so hurt and betrayed myron was like there was no reason he was exiled

like yes years in a big mansion with three people to keep him company in the middle of devils acre with no way to resolve his trauma can do shit to someone but what about years feeling his sisters guilt, BASIL????? what about how she mustve felt after both her brothers DIED due to their own hubris???????????? what about how she felt she was a bad sister when she literally had to be like their mother with all the baggage she had then actually mother children while thinking her slightly better brother might have been getting better with him saying he was gonna give them info on caul only to see him SIDE WITH CAUL when he had just done something that COULD HAVE HELPED HIS CAUSE and then spitefully capture her and lead them into the mouth of hell OH MY GOD

and how jacob and emma had to deal with his bullshit being all "lets talk over tea!" and waiting for when it was right in the exposition to tell them who he fucking was, then telling them he BASICALLY KILLED JACOBS GRANDPA while giving excuses and them finding out later on that hE KEPT THE SUUL FOR HIMSELF?????? i made some bullshit reason up why he did that for my headcannons but lets be real the only reason they could have at least imagined was that he was planning on using it in the library. the information betrayed them either way and to alma again it was only a stab in the gut because he hurt a guy who was basically her son

overall hes not some aesthetic victimised pookie bear hes a more than flawed man who only did some things to mend his image and cant be excused for what he did and this whole post was basically me shouting at myself

#which is on brand because #theres two sides of the argument living in my brain #and more than one me #mphfpc #now time to listen to music and ignore the fact i posted this #myron bentham

[gin-draws]

Hey! Sorry I didn't see these forever, but it's totally something I've been meaning to address and I just haven't had words for a while.

Firstly: fuck terfs.

The rest is long so it’s under the cut:

Having JKR alive and running around spewing hate has definitely not helped my love for the series. She uses money that we gave her to fuel her hateful bullshit, and to actively attack not just the trans community, but whatever issue she disagrees with in the UK. It hurts as someone that grew up putting myself into this world to have the creator openly using her power and influence to go after other marginalized people.

Even before JKR started openly being horrible I had worked hard to overlook my discomfort with stuff in the series (there's a lot of problematic stuff that 10 year old me could overlook but 32 year old me can't lol). A big part of me getting past that was just making her world my own through my art. I loved the community I found in the fandom on tumblr. I loved the people I could interact with over a shared interest and something that brought us all joy. Especially other creators that made the world their own.

Over time though, engagement kind of fell off on tumblr. (Where the reblogs at.. am I right?) And slowly I went from being able to ignore negative comments here and there because of the good interactions, to being worn out by the growing overwhelming negativity. People act like they can just demand things from creators and we somehow owe it to fandom to do what they specifically want.

Want that character to be white? Draw them yourself.

(Making characters bipoc brings out a shocking amount of anger from people for no reason but racism...)

I had tried to make the story I'd grown up loving into something that made me happy. I made the cast diverse because I grew up surrounded by all sorts of cultures and religions and it made my world a lot bigger. I sometimes played around with my own gender identity through my art, and it brought me a lot of joy. (Sirius was a fun playground for getting through a LOT of my own shit). But it brought out a lot of vitriol, and over time I just got tired of it.

I mostly stopped posting art because now it's something I do for me. My own characters and stories where nobody could send anon messages telling me "x should actually be white because---" I put a lot of time and love into my work and if it doesn't make me happy, I lose interest. Doesn’t mean I stopped drawing, it’s just not fanart as much anymore.

(I draw a LOT lol)

I miss the story I grew up loving a lot. But I can't actively put money in JKR's pockets, which distanced me from the series. A lot of my interaction with the community became a little too negative to deal with. And so over time I drifted away. It makes me sad to have strayed from that world, but it just became a little too toxic for me.

It still brings me a lot of joy seeing the positive comments, and people appreciating my old art means a lot. But I kind of moved on for myself, and now I don't have to worry about hateful comments about canon and race when I post my dnd characters lol.

I’ll probably be moving hp art I’m not happy with anymore over to my old hp side blog instead of deleting it, but as an artist and creative I’ve moved on to my own characters and stories. (If I open up commissions and people liked my interpretations of the characters, I would love nothing more than to draw desi Harry, or black Hermione, or Sirius not giving a fuck about gender. Lmao)

#please don’t rb #gin talks #sorry this is long and rambling #executive function has been at zero for ages- #but I logged onto desktop for the first time in months and saw my inbox

[lollytea]

what (human) social media do you think the hexaquad uses/is on. Because personally I think Luz is weird and bi enough that she would use tumblr and completely commit to the goncharov bit

Luz absolutely uses tumblr as her primary socmed and she has an intimate relationship with the nature of its insanity. She's the one the others ask when they stumble across an utterly incomprehensible meme and Luz will be like "Okay so basically the origin of eeby deeby is--"

She has two blogs. One for art and one for reblogs/fandom/shitposting. She used to have a twitter but she deleted it some time during the Thanks to Them montage because she was dealing with too much bullshit to tolerate the cesspool. She has an Instagram that she uses exclusively for posting art.

Oh and ao3. How could I forget ao3?

I feel like Amity is completely uninterested in human social media. Out of all the kids, she's the only one who didn't really find a specific hobby/interest during her time in gravesfield. She's already got a pensta and she likes how it's tailored for witch society. She'd have no interest in Instagram or twitter or shit like that. BUT she would absolutely go apeshit once she discovers the Good Witch Azura fandom in the Human Realm. (Literally NOBODY back home even knew what those books were.) She doesn't understand the memes and shitposts or general culture but Amity would absolutely have a fandom specific tumblr. She mostly just reblogs from Luz. An ao3 too of course <3

Willow used pensta for general teen reasons like selfies and socializing with her friends before she came to Gravesfield but now that she's developed an interest in photography? Oh that girl's account is gonna get such a glo up. She'd have an Instagram too. She actually becomes pretty popular on both accounts. Not ✨️Influencer✨️ status but she's gained quite a following of humans and witches alike.

I like to imagine that she also has a Pinterest. Idk she strikes me as somebody who'd enjoy collecting aesthetic pics and making boards. For the same reason she also has a tumblr that's mostly aesthetic with the occasional feral little reblog like this thrown in

Gus is a tiktok kid!!! Gus is SUCH a tiktok kid!!! I could also see him having a YouTube channel where he posts deranged little vlogs (in this universe Gus13 does not exist or its after it happened and only adds more fuel to the fire.) A twitch too maybe?? I could see him streaming. Basically I just think Gus would be drawn to all the video-focused social media.

I think he'd have a twitter too where he tweets his insane little thoughts and it actually blows up in popularity because people think it's a parody account.

Also....he would read Wikipedia religiously and eventually get banned from making his own edits.

Ok ok ok ok I think it would be so funny if Hunter got his penstagram account back in ASIAS, got so excited about finally having a regular teen experience but after a year or so once he's become well acquainted with pensta culture he's like "Well. This sucks."

So basically

Back when Hunter got a scroll, he followed Willow and that was that. He never followed anyone else. He has never posted anything. He can't even be convinced to follow any more of his friends. Not even Gus. He has notifications on for when Willow posts. He pops in to like them and then he fucks off again. People have forgotten that Hunter even has an account.

But when it comes to human socmed OHHHHH....

I want to say he has a devianart. But I'm not sure because I'm pretty sure that devianart is a husk of its former self. So he probably just has a tumblr. Hunter has not yet learned that you can make seperate blogs for all your different interests so his blog is a cluttered mess of his whole autistic self Cosmic Frontier brainrot, wolves, anime, the occasional embroidery pics that Willow tags him in.

Also he would be on neopets.

BONUS CHARACTERS:

Camila is on Facebook and Instagram. Also after the events of the series she gradually begins to rediscover the Cosmic Frontier message boards she used to frequent back when Manny was still alive. They brought back memories of her grief for the longest time but she's beginning to once again embrace her love for the series. She's even reconnected with some old online friends <3

Vee would have all the Normal Human Teenage Girl Social Media. She mostly uses twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. She also stays active on Facebook just to like her mom's posts.

Mattholomule would use reddit. Don't disagree with me I'm right.

#sorry for giving so many of them tumblrs #theyre gay and autistic what else am i supposed to give them

[raideo]

Issey drama anon here, please tell us about Romance Doll because I have not heard anything about it

also, have you heard of Quartet? I've seen like 50 gifsets from it and it seems legit funny as hell

UMMM WELL- I'll put my thoughts on Romance Doll under a break at the end because the movie is pretty nsfw and weird and yeah...

Quartet is on my list! I'm definitely going to watch it at some point, but I also really wanna watch Miracles! Honestly that one has been the most interesting to me from the beginning but my adhd is just causing me to watch whatever's convenient first, not the ONE IVE REALLY WANTED TO WATCH THIS WHOLE TIME. I still have to finish Koisenu Futari too... I stopped that one cuz I was watching it with someone and we had a long period of time where we couldn't watch it. And then also it's just VERY HEAVY as a person who happens to be demi who has gone through periods of feeling like I could be aroace in the past. It's so realistic and deals with the painful things as well as the funny things and I am scared to finish it bc I KNOW THERES MORE HEAVY SHIT TO COME but it's an amazing show AND I DO WANT TO FINISH THAT ONE TOO.

And on a completely polar opposite note: ROMANCE DOLL, LMAO

Ok so, this movie is very much one of those WEIRDLY REALISTIC stories where all the characters are so real and flawed and HUGE MISTAKES ARE MADE by characters and it's just such a wild ride. You probably haven't heard about it because its FUCKING WACK.

Without giving too much away in case you wanna watch it (netflix dropped it last monday, which is actually why I ended up watching it over the weekend at all, but it's still available to rent on amazon 🙄) Issey plays Tetsuo, an unemployed art college grad who is desperate for a job. His friend gave him a tip about this sketchy job opening but told him literally nothing else about it. He shows up and this old woman greets him and shows him around and he's a bit shocked to find out it's a shop that makes SILICONE SEX DOLLS. The woman is like "your friend didn't tell you that???" And Tetsuo was like "he literally just said there was a job here-" and she laughs and says "Some friend he is then!" Honestly I loved the old lady she's great, I wish I could remember her name I'm too lazy to go look it up rn.

Anyway so yeah, he takes the job even though the interview was super awkward and there's this gross pervy old guy who works there and he doesn't really care about the subject matter he just needs money (mood)

One thing and another happens (and a lot of me wanting to slap the old man into next tuesday, seriously he's the worst) and a little bit later Tetsuo meets the love of his life through some bullshit connection to his job, and they end up getting married some time after, but she doesn't know what he does for a living and ITS ALL VERY HARD TO EXPLAIN WHY HE KEEPS THAT FROM HER without spoiling things but just- the movie is wack, I really didn't like it in the beginning but it pulls a complete 180 and ends up being this weirdly emotional and AT TIMES, a holesome wholesome slice of life movie??

Don't get me wrong it doesn't sugarcoat things like objectification of women and there's some degree of realistic portrayal of that bc of the whole Tetsuo working at a sex doll shop thing, it is very true to life- how men can be gross even if they aren't going so far as assaulting anyone. It doesn't excuse it either it just presents it as it is, which is good I think. But then there are OTHER moments where the movie is very sex positive- so its a wild fucking trip tbh. Definitely don't watch it if you have sensitivities to the things I mentioned above bc bro omg the first half almost had me like "yeah I can't watch this" a couple times jfc.

BASICALLY by the end of the movie the message is that communication and being open with people you love (and not getting bogged down with anxiety and guilt) is important, because on top of not being fair to the people who are important to you, hiding things from them can eat you up inside and make you act irrationally and hurt them even more whether you realize it or not. And also, you never know how someone will feel about the things you don't want to tell them. Something that could be huge to you could be no big deal to another.

Its just a very interesting movie. I don't know if I'd recommend it, theres some NUCLEAR SECOND HAND EMBARRASSMENT CRINGE MOMENTS like oh my god i wanted to die- and like I said above, there's lots of intense subject matter and some not so pretty moments that a lot of people may want to avoid. Id for sure check one of those sites that gives content warnings before watching bc hoo boy...

But all that aside, once again Issey is an incredible actor and his range is apparent in this movie. I saw some like- borderline SLAPSTICK physical comedy moments that had me so surprised bc he did them so well but its so new and different from anything else ive watched him star in. Dude is just unstoppable tbh. He HAS 👏 THE 👏 RANGE!! 👏

Also you get to see him naked a lot. So there's that!

#LMFAO GOD #its a long post and read at your own risk #rai replies #anon #takahashi issei #sorry to clog the tag with my thoughts I just want issey anon to be able to find it #romance doll #collecting Issey characters with different sexualities like infinity stones lmfao #finally with this movie we have the straight guy

[turtlemagnum]

in one of the episodes leading up to where i am now, they introduced a female character who not only has a face that isn't just yuria's again, but actually has a pretty cool design and seemed like she was gonna be a credible threat to ken. but holy shit did they handle her poorly in what might've been the most sexist way possible. like, i thought it was kinda bullshit that mamiya isn't as competent a fighter as at least rei is, but at least she pretty consistently can mow down the nameless goons about as well as the other two main fighters. but this new character, i think they named her bella, immediately like. her mom's like "hey!! give up fighting and go back to being a woman!!!" and the character sending her after ken is like "heh... ken would NEVER hit a woman... my plan is flawless....." meanwhile like. i didn't really see much of an indication that she didn't want to get into martial arts, and ken explicitly refuses to fight her not because she's a woman but because it's obvious she doesn't actually want to kill him. i definitely feel like we're supposed to take away that she doesn't wanna be a martial artist and that ken doesn't wanna hurt her because she's a woman? but i think what's explicitly said by the two themselves is A Lot Less Shitty and is actually coming from their own mouths, so i'm gonna purposefully misinterpret what the author probably intended to be less shitty.

there comes the point where she no longer wants to fight ken, and now she has to fight the person coercing her into doing this, and i know this is gonna sound weird but like. this is a show where men regularly get every part of their body viscerally mutilated, exploded, amputated etc, and that's all well and good. but the goddamn instant it's a woman getting mutilated, they only show a rose getting cut into pieces and it's like. that's fucking sexist, right? like i know i probably sound weird to a lot of you for wanting a woman to die brutally on screen, but i think if your show can explicitly show men dying brutally in a fight then women should be able to as well, y'know?? gender equality

i think part of why this stuck out to me as particularly shitty is that it frames her whole one episode arc as like, showing how tragic it is that a woman has to be a fighter in the post apocalypse, but it's like... mamiya was literally right there, has been shown time and time again to be an extremely competent fighter, and they never really made that big of a deal about her having a pussy while fighting. and like, i definitely see why they couldn't make her as strong as ken, because he's the Main Guy and you wouldn't want a non-antagonist side character to be an outright equal to him. i get that, there's a reason why you don't make vegeta as strong as goku, y'know. but like, in a world with straight up fucking magic, i don't see why your vegeta couldn't be a woman, y'know? i made mine a woman, at least. but even then, they didn't make mamiya's whole fucking deal that she was Woman, like it was definitely a significant part of her character (arguably too significant) but like, she had other qualities; which is what makes this character being Like That sting that much more, y'know

#turtle watches hokuto no ken

[mystery-moose]

DEATH STRANDING (Feb 27th)

In my quest to write down thoughts about art this year, I recently completed Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding for the first time! I had started it twice already, but stalled out both times because I got distracted or moved onto other things.

Kojima has always been a problematic fave of mine, but Death Stranding might be my problematic favoritest of his work.

The raw gameplay loop is as perfectly calibrated, engaging, and compelling as it was when I first played it back in 2019. It is, as Tim Rogers put it, the Gran Turismo of walking simulators, though I would probably put it more accurately as “the world’s best hiking and logistics simulator.” Trekking across Icelandic wastelands and haunted volcanic plains and up and down mountains is alternately so meditative and so tense that even after a cumulative hundred hours in my save file I was still doing optional deliveries just because I enjoy traversing the world. It’s so singular and unique in the thing it’s attempting to do, and in particular with the atmosphere it’s trying to cultivate, that I can say honestly that I’ve never played anything like it. And that’s a wild thing to say about a game with a big budget these days!

But that’s what you get with Kojima. Especially with Kojima these days, unfettered by corporate oversight or monetary concerns. He wants to communicate something, and by god he’s going to do that whether you or anyone likes it or not. That’s a big reason he’s gotten the reputation he has today. And we can argue about auteurship and how it’s bullshit in collaborative mediums all day (and that’s a fine argument to have) but it’s not like Kojima didn’t put in the hours -- the dude’s been making games since 1986, and been a project lead since ‘87. We can say he got lucky once, maybe twice, but we gotta say he’s worked for his pedigree at this point.

I mean, the man made an entire game about nothing but fetch quests, and he made it fun! What the fuck, right?

That’s to say nothing about the use of music, which introduced me to some tunes that still live on my phone! Or the stark, utilitarian-but-inventive mechanical design of Yoji Shinkawa. Or its story, rooted in absurdist silliness, Tarkovsky-esque surrealism, and bizarre metaphysics, bluntly hammering its central message home even as it weaves numerous other threads (heh) into its narrative through its use of visual symbolism, textual analysis, and iconography.

Of course the pacing is a nightmare, though -- so much of the story is backloaded in the final few hours of the game, including numerous revelations that would be better served earlier in the story. And his treatment of female characters, while much better here than Metal Gear Solid V, is... well that bar is beneath the floor, frankly. I do like the women of Death Stranding, in particular Fragile (yes that’s her name, every character is named like that) but the way the camera treats Fragile in one scene that would otherwise be really powerful, and the way Mama’s subplot goes and what Kojima’s even trying to gesture towards, and then the whole deal with Bridget and Amelie... it’s all just kind of a mess.

Which is basically the story of the story of Death Stranding, really! It’s a mess! A frequently fascinating, rarely insightful, occasionally quite powerful mess, but a mess all the same. Whether or not you can look past the stuff that doesn’t work to examine the stuff that does, or are equally interested in failures and fuckups as successes, determines whether you’ll enjoy the story here. That’s how Kojima rolls, though, has been since Metal Gear Solid 2, though that game probably remains his high point for thematic fascination, if not dialogue or character writing. (Including women! Seriously, he’s only been good at it like one time!)

I’ll say, too, that if you care little for story and want to run purely on vibes, then Death Stranding might very well be for you! The vibes here are totally unique and absolutely immaculate, particularly in the audio-visual department. There is nothing quite like when one of those Low Roar songs kicks in while you’re descending a mountain toward a new city, or Silent Poets coming in as you march across a blasted plain. And again, it all feels so personal; you are listening to Kojima’s personal mixtape, a set of bands he heard that he loved and which he associated with this game he was making, and getting that kind of truly personal touch from a big-budget experience is almost impossible to find in games.

Everything in Death Stranding, for better or for worse, is the product of one man’s mind, a snapshot of the things that move him, scare him, fascinate him, make him think and feel and wonder. And they’re all things he wants YOU to think about and feel and wonder. Some of them are stupid, for sure! Others are obvious or shallow. But more than anything, they’re all honest. Death Stranding is one of the most earnest, sincere artistic expressions I’ve seen in any big-budget media, and if that interests you at all (or you’re really into traversal mechanics in games) I’d absolutely recommend it.

Or if you like to point and laugh at the man who put a guy named “Die-Hardman” into his story. Rest assured that Kojima is absolutely laughing too.

#death stranding #video games #i gotta say for as dumb as it was? #i REALLY liked the ending to this game #absolutely impeccable vibes #even as the story itself got so bogged down in its details #great performances from tommie earl jenkins and mads mikkelsen though! #and i really ended up liking norman reedus a lot too #and of course troy baker's scenery chewing. the man fasted for DAYS before he got to that set you can tell

[384302]

I just saw Everything Everywhere All At Once

This is one of the best films I have ever seen.

I will not spoil anything about the plot or content because everyone deserves to see it as unspoiled as I did, but I will vaguely gesture at themes and premise to try to briefly say what's so great about this film. My brain is buzzing with what I just watched and I have to get something down.

I've never seen a film switch genres this well and this frequently. It's an action movie with expertly inventive martial arts sequences. It's a compelling sci-fi story and family drama. It's briefly an effective horror movie. It's perhaps most frequently a comedy, partly because the core message is about dealing with an existential absurdity, and so a lot of what's on screen is deliberately absurd, but I lost track of the amount of times my screen audience was lost in full-throated laughter. And not the laughter of "witty banter" or "occasional punchlines" or even "tension relief". The uncontrolled and unrestrained laughter of a crowd completely lost in how funny what they're watching is. And yet that same crowd, after spending what feels like half the movie laughing their head off, was in tears for much of the final act. The emotion, the beauty, the sadness and empathy of the overall message and the resolution... I can't remember the last time a movie made me feel like that.

It's so well put together. I never truly felt that I knew where the movie was going to go next (even though, in at least one vague way, the movie tells you the journey it's going to take you on right from the end of the prologue) and yet I got to the final credits with the full sense of a satisfactory and perfectly crafted story. It uses the full spectrum of filmic language to convey meaning and theme: there are visual tricks that could have come straight out of an Edgar Wright movie; there are tricks with framerate and aspect ratio that a small part of my brain consciously noticed while the rest of my filmwatching brain drank it all in; there's several sequences which actually justify and do something original with the 'series of extremely quick cuts' style of filming that permeates action scenes; there's one perfectly timed pan with a line of dialogue that had me (and others) screaming with laughter. In an early scene there is a mirror shot which is technically 'wrong' and which mirrors the other side of Michelle Yeoh's face and which I know will get a fucking Cinema Sins *ding* and yet anyone who is actually watching the movie will immediately get what the scene is telling them and it's brilliant.

Every performance in this is incredible: this movie feels like an actor's dream in which almost every actor gets to show off their range and play at least two different characters, sometimes with a costume change, sometimes with nothing more than a look. If the world was just and Ke Huy Quan got the opportunity to play Superman, it would immediately put an end to 90% of complaints about Clark Kent's disguise being unconvincing. Michelle Yeoh tears up in a GQ interview talking about reading the script and understanding what this film would allow her to do, and you can see why when you watch the movie and she knocks it out of the park with every line and every scene. Stephanie Hsu deserves to become a god damn superstar, the gulf between the roles she has to perform in this film is perhaps the greatest and yet she pulls it off while still making it clear in both performances that she is playing the same person, which is absolutely critical to the point of the movie. And the supporting cast - especially Jamie Lee Curtis and James Hong - absolutely shine as well.

This movie should destroy the bullshit suggestion that we cannot appreciate the stories of different people in cinema. The central setup of this movie is the life experiences and relationships of a middle-aged Chinese-American woman and it made a white millennial British man tear up for a good thirty minutes.

This movie manages to be entirely original in a cinema landscape defined by adaptations and remakes, but also uses the multiverse concept to weave in both subtle and blatant references to other movies, both for comedy and to point to the theme.

This movie's budget was an eighth of the budget for the other multiverse superhero movie in cinemas at the moment, and it deserves to make eight time as much money and win all the awards.

This movie is something I will be thinking about for a very long time and everyone should see it.

#everything everywhere all at once

[sirenalpha]

I've been bouncing around different DC comics storylines like a lunatic instead of reading one thing straight through so I've read comics from the 80s through to just a couple years ago, obviously not everything that's been published it's basically just Batman and Superman or related stuff but definitely a decent number of issues

I think something changed in the early-mid 00s with how comics are written for the worse

I'm not saying there's not flaws with 80s-90s comics, it's still difficult to find an entry point for any new comer, storylines are spread across multiple different comics making them hard to follow, 80s/90s handling of sex and race etc

but while the art is usually much better mostly in terms of paneling/page layout not necessarily how the characters look it can be both great and bad in either era

the writing post 00s is like on fucking steroids, you can't breathe in any of these stories, something must be constantly happening usually multiple things at once that may or may not have to do with each other and things whether plot beats or characters picked up or dropped in an instant as necessitated by/convenient for the plot on top of having no good entry point and running across different comics

that's not to say there are no overarching plots in the modern comics, in fact it's basically all serialized plots, nothing episodic and resolved in a single issue, but they are buried under five miles of distracting bullshit and no one is allowed to emotionally deal with the consequences because you must immediately move to the next thing

in comparison, the 80s-90s comics there's either one main plot with multiple components running in sync no bullshit on top (like return of superman which I'm part way thru so juggling lots of characters across different comics but you're sorting out one plot, it's one story no cut aways) or it's more slice of life vignettes, they just happen to be about the life of superheroes

like during Jason's post crisis run in the late 80s, Dick returns as Nightwing to meet Jason and confront Bruce, Dick and Bruce argue with each other no physical fighting or anything else going on the panels are basically empty except for them, and everyone gets their chance to speak and to react and recover after the talk is over, it all happens in one issue and it's a complete thought that gets full completed, ended with a period, no bullshit on top of it, the whole run is basically like that, each issue covering one thing in its entirety

you want to know the single solitary comic I've read published post 2000 that works anything close to that?

Wayne Family Adventures

that's what pisses me off about "real comics fans" or however they'd like to be called who think WFA is bullshit

yes WFA is fluffier than the mainstream Batman comics coming out, and yes the characterization is obviously different it's working on its own continuity

but the writing isn't fucking insane, it's the only one where it's not insane!! it has a supremely easy and convenient starting point no backstory needed, each issue/two parter is a complete and satisfying story, and it has far, far more coherent storytelling

if you don't like WFA for the art style or tone that's personal preference and fine but acting like you can't tell why someone new to comics or not can appreciate and like WFA...maybe you're just not that much of a comics fan because WFA is how DC comics used to be

as far as I can tell, comics did the same thing as tv shows where they shifted from episodic stories where each episode has a contained story with an eye for syndication and reruns so that each episode could be watched in any order without added context (kinda like how comics issues work) to serialized stories, seasonal plots becoming stronger until a show is following one continuous story where you have to watch them in order and are potentially made for a binge session rather than appointment viewing once a week

except for television that's prestige tv for a second golden age of television and in comics it's whatever the fuck is going on now

one of these is much enjoyable than the other is all I'm saying and it's not modern comics

the 80s and 90s stuff is charming compared to the more contemporary stuff (not the sexism and racism just the vignette story telling style)

#I'm not an expert I'm just noticing and having opinions

[finsterhund]

Had so much respect for the pediatric psychiatrist in The Boogeyman (a longer with more characters adaptation of the Stephen King short story) until she uncritically brings out the exposure therapy. Not only is she doing exposure therapy with this child who is grieving her mother's death on top of everything else, but a strange man fucking died in her house and she saw the police removing the body and she's having traumatic episodes in the house when left alone. Come on lady. Triage or whatever the fuck. Childhood phobias are almost always either a healthy part of developing response to fear and go away on their own or are reflective of a larger traumatic issue. The thing you actually tackle first. Not fucking exposure therapy. Goddamn it. This is like, a six year old(?) Who's nyctophobic too. So it's absolutely out of pocket to do even clinical exposure therapy because yeah that's fucking normal for our goddamn species. We evolved this way to survive. Nyctophobia is our response to instinctively watching out for nocturnal threats. The solution is to make one's nest more secure and rely on the family structure being around to ensure safety. So why the fuck are you making such a big deal of it right after her mom died!? Making this big a deal of how much of a condition it is that needs to be cured will complicate things in her head. Just properly deal with the grief and PTSD first good god. (And she's doing it with a strobing deep red light. What a way to find out you're epileptic)

For the uninitiated in the original short story that's technically being adapted here (by a loose definition but it really works in this case) the shitty father who's convinced the Boogeyman killed his kids and it's ambiguous to the reader as to whether or not HE was the one who actually did it goes to a psychologist or psychiatrist (presumably this is referenced with the main dad character's profession and the guy who died in his house) and while he's explaining himself it becomes increasingly apparent to him that at some point in the session the Boogeyman has taken the shape of the psychologist, and it slowly starts taunting him before presumably killing him. That's the entirety of the short story btw. So I'm like "okay how are they gonna do this" and I'm assuming the entirety of the original short story's plot happened while the dad left him in his office and called the police for a wellness check on him. And why he died in the closet of the mom's art studio. It was actually the Boogeyman.

Anyways, tangent aside, what I was getting at is I am fully expecting the pediatric psychiatrist here to actually be the Boogeyman because this strobing red light nyctophobia exposure therapy thing is so stupid. From personal experience strobing and deep red light in general, makes it WORSE. And of course I'm validated in this because yeah, the little girl DOES see it during this bullshit.

Even if not that's just an awful thing to do.

I sound negative but I'm enjoying watching this. I'm just frustrated at shitty childhood psychology mostly because of how broken and fucked up I am. Also the nyctophobia red strobe light conversion therapy scene fucking triggers me lol. Like I had to keep pausing it. Really tapping into Andy duress brain worms moments with that. Eughhh. Have I ever spoken about the nightmare that would become Red Spot and how it was triggered by putting a red Christmas lightbulb into my nightlight when my mom stole the normal bulb? Yeah. Don't fuck with red lights guys.

I'm loving this movie so far. Really vibing with it. The Boogeyman being in actuality a cognitohazard that collectively targets an entire family unit psychologically to prey on their children is a really good take on it. Also there's a scene near the beginning that goes

"some sort of shadow creature..."

"shadow creature?"

And I wanna make it a meme.

Also I can't tell for certain if it's an actual patchwork quilt or just a patterned blanket (dark lighting) but the older sister has what looks like the most gorgeous quilt in the world.

#text post #long post #spoilers

[hoskinsvarietyshow]

Was the Scholomance series by Naomi Novik a story about romance. No not at all. It’s entirely a book about making friends later in life.

Was it YA. Only an idiot would really consider it anything but a satire of Wizard Schools. It’s very explicitly a pastiche of Wizard School Bullshit but mostly about how boarding school is prison. Having young characters does not make a book YA. The moving goalposts of what counts as YA is hilariously stupid. Because rather than being a teen book genre that a 15 year old can read, people who grew up with the genre want Ya to encompass anyone below 35. So now your niece has a real risk of reading some weird smutty book with a suicide attempt and an attempted graping that should be in the general fiction section but it’s got a pop art cover and features a pathetic 25 year old woman as the lead so it’s gotta be YA, right guys?? We’re young and hip. It’s the children who should get over it.

Was it a character piece about how sex and relationships are mutually inclusive? No, obviously not. It’s a book with a plot. Either you’ve made a character piece or you have a plot. Character development happens in a book with a plot. Character pieces are about showing a brief slice of someone’s life. If you try to both you do neither any justice and make a badly paced mess.

Was it necessary to add two different scenes about our main lead fucking some annoying social climber with no actual humanizing character moments. No. Even the main character notes how icky it is the way this character uses sex and relationships to get her more social capital to abuse down the line. Frankly I think it’s only there for two reasons: Get a character with more than 4 lines a book to do something gay on screen. And blah blah blah kids fuck around and aren’t restricted to traditional relationship norms. Unfortunately she picked a disposable character no one has any strong feelings for other than dislike so there isn’t a lingering feeling of “Who will she pick???” after the book ends without giving any relationships a label. Frankly it’s really contrived padding. This probably should have been a duology or whatever the stupid word for a book with just a sequel is. Only in books is a sequel considered required reading.

Was the protagonist Ace Coded? Yeah. And I was pretty chill with the platonic relationship they had building with The Chosen One. And then they had raw sex in the gym in book two. I could deal with that. Sometimes as a gray ace person you decide raw sex in a gymnasium is what the moment calls for. But then she fucks this annoying bitch who spends the entire second book being annoying and unlikeable.No way there can be a moment between these two characters. But wait!! You, dear reader, forget one way that can happen! If the writer contrives to force it in for no fucking reason. It’s not even a good sex scene. Frankly it’s inclusion seems to imply sex is the only way to receive inner peace when a long scream and a good cry does the same thing without being covered in some annoying bitches fluids.  And then The Chosen One shows up again and she fucks this annoying bitch again? After having raw sex in the woods the day before? So it’s obviously not ace coding. People just have to have sex as often as they can in the author’s world view. And I think that’s what this rant is about.

The author abandons ace coding for some rather hamfisted allosexual queer kudos. Like. It’s maybe a four paragraphs of actual sapphic sex. It’s very forced. Not at all organic because the other bitch does a really like... gross implication that it’s Fuck Time Now. And she does it and feels great but in a weird clinical way as annoying lass goes down a list of gay shit girls can do to each other. I’m really annoyed that it fumbles the bag on good platonic romance. Throws all of that out the window for Moment Of Weakness That Just Becomes A Thing We Do Now Because We Won’t Call It Cheating But It Probably Is With How Much Justifying She Has To Do.

She fucks the first annoying bitch who shows up at her yurt. It wasn’t even a good setup.  I  could keep rambling. The point is there was a really good chance at our MC being Ace but she was in fact and incel because no one would talk to her enough to want to fuck her. Which is just a really annoying line of subtext to have to read in a story you liked. 

Shoulda been two books. Books 2 and 3 were full of padding and filler. The training sequence and the Not Cheating were annoying and worthless. They shoulda cut to the evil mom stuff and just come out with the monster stuff. Add 75 pages to each book and you woulda been fine.

#the golden enclave spoilers #spoilers

[theveryworstthing]

So over on patreon Trevor asked for my take on the Addams Family and I grew up LOVING the Addams family movies so here we are. Instead of doing a straight up style interpretation, I decided to do a full on design challenge, using the characters as bases to make a black southern gothic Addams au. I actually drew the kids first, using the character bases of Wednesday and Pugsley to create some delightful kiddos I'm calling Sunday and Blanche. I of course then redesigned Gomez and Morticia into Carlisle and Mortesha.

The Addams have a very specific high aristocratic goth aesthetic (they've got a butler and nobody really works among other things) so in this re-imagining I wanted to go with vibes that run a little more middle class/upper middle class.  I thought it would be interesting to think about what would be considered weird and off-putting in an entirely different culture, and how being a big ol' goth is way less controversial than it used to be.

I tried to keep this short (HAHAHAHAHAHA) so I didn't spin off into an essay about villain coded families, black people in the horror genre, and normalcy as it pertains to social survival, but just...bits of that are in these designs and lore. Keep that in mind.

Also I made the kids twins because they've flip flopped in age so much in different media and also twins run in my family (i'm the daughter of one). And let's face it, I'm pulling a lot of their southern gothic traits from living as a southern goth so *shrug*.

10 thousand pounds of lore incoming loooooooooool.

The Parents

From the moment he saw her he knew that there was a 50/50 chance of him either never making it out of that swamp alive or marrying the figure that was creeping out from under the distant willow tree in a black cocktail dress. The third time she found him trussed up in one of her traps, he complimented her rope work and asked if she'd like to go out sometime after his head wound stopped bleeding.

Or while it was still bleeding.

If she was into that.

Some kids and a mysteriously burnt down Piggly Wiggly later, their love is still as strong and inescapable as a bear trap in a sink hole.

Carlisle Guillermo (now Addams through marriage but I wanted to give him two first names for a name since Gomez has two last names) makes a vaguely described living practicing ‘law’ around town. A loophole king, people come to him from miles around with contracts signed in blood, fights over chunks of hair buried in their rivals’ yard, dehydrated primate hands, memories that seemed like dreams until the evidence of their happenings became too real, and other regular Legal Items asking for counsel which he is all too happy to give. For a price. Sometimes that price is a homemade pie and sometimes it’s a million dollars, depends on who you are. Whatever you’re asked to pay it’s worth that price, and if you try to scam him out of work or he just plain doesn’t like you? Well. He knows how to twist a contract better than anything at the crossroads.

And he always gets his due.

He doesn’t just serve the local (living)humans though, there are many things that need proper legal representation in this day and age. You wouldn’t believe how many city councils try to build on sacred burial grounds even after he lets them know that his ghostly clients are totally gonna haunt the FUCK out of the ensuing shitty condos and curse their families for all eternity. At least 50% of his energy goes towards dealing with real estate bullshit.

Carl is an excitable and good natured(?) man who loves his family, cigars, dancing, and his many knife-based hobbies. People find him very charming once they get past the feeling that they’re talking to a sultry gator badly disguising itself as a human. I didn’t put a ton of deep thought into designing him, mostly I wanted to make a middle aged dude who looked like he would have been voted ‘most likely to smooch the literal devil’ in high school. Tbh he probably has, but no demonic ex’s can compare to his lovely wife~

Mortesha Addams(her name was already perfect so I just tweaked it)is a woman of many talents. A self proclaimed homemaker, she prides herself on a greenhouse full of Concerning Foliage, a beautiful wasp apiary, and a coop full of what are probably chickens that she keeps for what are probably eggs. She’s also an avid creator of the outsider art that can be seen around the estate. She has taken on the family business of selling her homemade goods in a little stall by the road just outside the swamp with her mom, and makes pretty good money doing so. A surprising amount of poison gets bought in quaint southern towns.

Speaking of poison, people who come out to the edge of the swamp to buy it are usually carrying a lot of secrets around, and Mortesha knows most of them. It’s not like she pries the truth out of people, it just so happens that many nervous hellos eventually turn into the tragic backstory power hour if she’s alone with a client for long enough. She supposes that’s just how people are. Despite the fact that the Addams are very active in the community (whether the community likes it or not) she especially, as a direct descendant of the first Addams matriarch, is seen as…Well not an outsider because the community feels A Certain Way about outsiders and despite it all the Addams are their people, but maybe something like an exception. They feel like whatever weirdness they’re hiding can’t be weirder than any given Addams, so they get a little loose with their words.

This is amusing to her, since Addams’ don’t naturally keep the kind dramatic secrets that their surface level prim and proper neighbors do. It’s much more fun to openly talk about those things.

Do they have a sadly decrepit yet terrifying grandma up in the attic? Yeah, like three. They got a tv, all the creepy porcelain dolls they could want, and they’re close to family. Where do you keep your gram-grams?

Any bodies buried on the property? Yeah some, but most are thrown to the gators.

Any creeping through the balmy summer night with ill intentions? Yeah dude, everyone loves a nice family stroll.

What about dangerous forbidden love? If an adult Addams isn’t incorporeal then they’re either queer or in a torrid romance with some person/thing mysteriously drawn to that awful swamp. Sometimes both at the same time. Most times actually.

Mortesha would know.

The current head of the Addams family is just as outgoing as her husband but a lot quieter and harder to read. She never really seems to get mad about much and always has a genteel smile for everyone whether they deserve it or not. A seven foot tall human shaped “Oh, bless your heart”. A perfectly composed Lady even when she’s, oh I dunno, burning down a Piggly Wiggly. You know. A regular southern mom. Chat her up at the hair salon for 50% off a jar of wasp honey with your next purchase of a mysterious but foreboding packet of herbs.

Designing her was pretty easy because I just drew a lankier Grace Jones and called it a day. I had some problems with her outfit simply because if we were going HARD southern gothic then she’d probably be wearing a white/cream dress with a fuller skirt but I thought keeping the silhouette and the black was more important. She’s supposed to be an anti southern gothic southern gothic character anyway. A woman who looks like she has a million secrets who is actually the most open person you could meet. For better or worse. The red hair came from a coloring error that I really ended up liking (my mom had red hair her whole childhood that only darkened up in high school so I can buy that an Addams can be naturally fire engine red) and the veil was to get more of that classic Morticia silhouette in there.

The Children

Sunday and Blanche are the twin children of Carlisle and Mortesha Addams. Some say the Addams clan got their cursed homestead when a wealthy local businessman made a deal with the devil and lost, leaving his grand mansion to his least favorite maid and cutting his losses once he realized that the swamp would do everything it could to drag the house into the water and take what was owed with its horrible curse. Others say that the family has just always squatted there and no one really cares because man, fuck that particular swamp. Have you been in there? Absolute horror show.

Anyway.

Blanche is the more outgoing sibling and quite the engineer/mad scientist in the making. He started going grey at 2 weeks old but considering he was also rocking some extra fingers, toes, and a tiny tail (he takes after his dad), his parents just put it on the 'not life threatening' pile and decided not to worry about it. He's the kind of smart that teachers find utterly infuriating, less a dog eagerly learning and obeying commands and more a hyena who keeps teaching itself how to pick locks. He has a few friends in his school's robotics club (which they honestly allowed him to make so the school could contain his... creations) but mostly hangs out with his sister exploring the swamp. They find all sorts of neat things in there! wedding rings, suspiciously lumpy garbage bags, cloaked cultists who can't read private property signs, it's an adventure every day!

Blanche is all about experimentation with his creations, his look, and his tether to this mortal coil. Is lipstick a cool thing to try? Let's find out. Can he get out of a strait jacket fast enough after being pushed into the depths of the swamp by his sister? let's find out. He's not dead yet and confused local doctors can attest to the fact that he's rarely attained more than a bad bruise so he's pretty set on continuing to kiss rattlesnakes on their cute little heads and have his sister practice her knife throwing at him until that fact changes.

Blanche is very much a country goth. Cowboy boots (customized by his mom), knife, and lighter are daily accessories. He likes to wear the crusty swamp jewelry they find (the rust adds a splash of color!) and despite appearances he does try to keep himself neat. He's just got  natural Grunge Colors and a tendency to wear clothes he likes until they fall apart. Pugsley always seemed the most modernly styled to me (which might just be because little boys clothes have been the same for a long time) so I wanted Blanche to be the most purposely fashionable Addams. Everyone else is goth by nature, but he's the only one truly familiar with goth as an alternative fashion.

I got really into designing Blanche because honestly, I find Pugsley to be the most boring member of the family. And he was hard to design! I had to mess with his vibe a lot to get him looking how I wanted. I know he's supposed to evoke an " 'evil' little boy next door who's parents never reign him in", but that's just goth Dennis The Menace.  I's 2020. We can at least go queer goth Calvin.

Sunday was much easier to design. Wednesday was my favorite as a child (of course) and I really wanted to keep the spirit of her look while adding things like billowy sleeves (it gets HOT down here), big poofy twists instead of braids, and a nice tie. She's a professional after all, been running the local pet cemetery since she was 6 and the previous groundskeeper met with an unfortunate accident after telling her that tarantulas don't have souls. Her specialty is creating beautiful naturalistic animal funerals similar to those that Maquenda (https://linktr.ee/artofmaquenda) makes, and she takes pride in creating miniature dioramas of her subjects after each burial which she uses as a kind of 3D catalog for future clients.

She really wants to try out her skills on humans one day. Well. Publicly try out her skills. Lotta random bodies float into the swamp. None of them have turned down her requests for diorama models so far. Most seem downright flattered. Plus, she usually figures out which graveyard/crime scene they floated over from and gets her parents to give them a lift back. She'll even help enact terrifying revenge from beyond the grave on whoever put them there if she's not, y'know, busy.

Besides arts, crafts, and pet based funerary arrangements, Sunday is an avid lover of archery (any ranged weapon really), books where little fantasy adventure animals die dramatic deaths, and history. She is That Kid who eagerly raises her hand when asked who Christopher Columbus was and ends up being sent out of class after 15 minutes for making 'a scene'. Her favorite party trick is just picking an item in the room and talking about how it relates to either some obscure historical figure with a buck wild life or a horrible disaster. At least one charity pancake breakfast ended with children in tears after her vivid description of the Great Molasses Flood of 1919.

Social-wise, while Wednesday is the girl that people ask to smile because they think she'd, "look so pretty", Sunday is rarely asked anything at all. People just kind of assume from her quiet nature (in between horrible history facts) that she's angry all the time and that she hates everyone. This is untrue. She hates some people but she's ambivalent to most everyone else and even downright friendly if you bother to talk to her like a person instead of a terrifying cryptid. Like, she IS a terrifying cryptid but she's also a little girl.  

That’s about it for now. One day I might do the other family members but for now I’m happy with the four I’ve redesigned. Making an au! Lurch in a family that doesn’t do butlers could be interesting. Over on patreon I put forth that he could just be Motesha’s mute little brother (similar bone structure) but Amy Crook had the nice idea of quote: “ a mysterious "cousin" that "helps around the house" whose origins are both long in the past and faintly unsettling. He's good for lifting heavy things, like that tank of propane you're about to throw into the burning Piggly Wiggly... “ which i now consider canon. Who's kid is he? How old is he? Not important. Anyone willing to commit arson with you is family.

Annnnyway.  This challenge was a lot of fun! I love indulging in AU’s.

#long post #the addams family #Character Design #au #design challenge #i am incapable of doing a design challenge like a normal person #oh god i forgot the cut lol

[erodasfishtacos]

harry adores yn with his entire being and i can tell that she loves him just as much but the poor thing is just so scared, and by what you have showed us she has a fair reason to have struggles

Through Hell and Back

warnings: cheating, mentions of domestic violence, this could just be overall triggering if you have experienced trauma or family struggles.

this is a very important blurb to understand dynamic and history of the characters.

PLEASE let me know your thoughts.

—

Harry’s out at a bachelor party for his friend, Jack, at a noisy bar downtown where there is a mechanical bull and half-naked waitresses.

His phone rings at two-thirty in the morning, he already knows who it is and why she’s calling him so late.

He steps outside the noisy bar, “Hi puppy, y’alright?”

Harry already knew she wasn’t.

Her voice is shaky, “Er, are you still out at the bachelor party?”

If he says yes, she’ll just try to say have fun and was just calling to check in - a lie because she felt like such an inconvenience at all times.

“No, just got home,” He lied smoothly, he could hear her trying to hide a sniffle - she must have had a bad dream.

Every since she started trauma therapy, they’d been getting worse, as she worked through her struggles with a therapist.

—

“I-I don’t want to g-go in,” YN whimpers as she sits in Harry’s passenger side outside the clinic, “I can’t talk about it.”

“Baby, you need to do this. You need to talk to someone who’s trained to help you, okay? You promised you’d try it f’me,” He hums, rubbing a thumb over her wet cheekbone.

She shakes her head stubbornly, “It’s all going to come back.”

“Yes, it will. Because you didn’t work through it, you repressed it. There is a difference, okay?” Harry’s heart feels like it’s being ripped in two as YN looks like a caged animal.

YN squeezes Harry’s hand so hard it hurts but he doesn’t mind, he can feel her fear being shared through the rough touch.

She wipes her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater, “Please, H. I don’t want to remember.”

He sighs softly, “I would never force you to do something you don’t want to do. If you really want to leave, we can.”

YN searches his eyes, sees his sadness and she knows she has to push through because she loves him so much, “Will you walk me in?”

“Of course, s’fucking proud of you. My strong girl,” Harry praises, kissing the top of her head, and shutting off the car.

He walks her in, watches her as she hesitantly goes back in with her new therapist, and sits in the waiting room for the hour and a half until she comes out.

He does that every week without miss.

Drives her, walks her in, sits in the waiting room, and then drives her home.

She doesn’t usually talk much after the sessions, her eyes swollen and puffy which is a telltale sign she cried during the appointment.

Harry holds her hand on the ride home, sometimes draws her a bath or tucks her in for a nap under his covers.

One day, after therapy, they crawled into his bed together. She hadn’t said one word since she walked out of the office but she looks tiredly at Harry.

“Why?”

Harry frowns, “Why what?”

She hides her face into the fluffy pillow, words mumbled, “Why do you want me? I’m so broken.”

“Hey,” Harry responds loudly, pulling her up and giving her a serious look, “You are not broken. Even if you were, I’d love every broken piece, okay? I want you because I’m so in love with you it doesn’t make sense.”

YN shakes her head, “I don’t deserve you. You-you have to drive me to therapy every week, leave work early, have to make it up the next day.”

And well, his heart breaks a little because she truly believes that.

Harry grips her jaw, gently, “If you need to go to therapy for the rest of your life, I’ll drive you until I’m ninety. I’ll drive you five days a week if you need it.”

He continues,“I don’t deserve you, sweet girl. Strongest, bravest, most resilient person I’ve ever met. You are my soulmate and I believe that wholeheartedly.”

“I want to nap now,” She whispers, crawling back into her shell where she’s safe from the world, from facing her fears.

Harry just stares at her, the girl he’s had a crush on since fourth grade, the girl he’d been in love with since ninth.

When she felt broken, well so did he.

—

“Mum, I want to do more for her,” Harry cries to his mother one night at dinner after school.

“I know you do, Harry. There is only so much you can do. She has parents tha-“

“Those aren’t parents, mum! You know that!” He shouts angrily, “I need to do more for her. Help her!”

Anne looks at him with a soft, understanding expression, “You’re doing all you can, Harry.”

—

He was still doing all he can.

“I wa-was wondering if you wanted to come over and watch a movie?” YN acts casual despite the tremor but he won’t call her on it - on the phone at least.

“I’d love to pup, I’ll be over on a tick,” already walking away from the busy bar.

Harry can hear the relief in her voice when she says, “Okay, I’ll see you soon.”

When he uses his key to open the door, she sat on her couch with all the lights in the house on, not one off.

“Oh, pet,” Harry murmurs, all the blinds were drawn shut and he knew she’d already triple checked that the windows were locked - despite the state of the art security system he had installed for her.

“Um, so are we feeling a scary movie or romcom?” She ignores his words, picking up the remote, and pulling up Netflix.

He flicks a couple of the bright lights off until it’s normal dim and he sits next to her on the couch, taking the remote and turning off the television.

“Talk t’me,” Harry coaxes, unraveling her from the heavy weighted blanket, and tugging her into his chest.

“M’fine,” YN lies on a choked whimper.

“Y’safe, you know I’d never let anythin’ happen to you . Please puppy, tell me,” He’s not to manly to beg for her to open up.

He allows her to nuzzle her face into his neck, “He cam-came back an-and he -,” her voice drops, “broke in here and I wo-woke up as he was opening my door.”

Harry holds her for a very long time that night.

-

With Harry and her therapist’s constant encouragement she’d been able to be more open and up front with Harry - which made him feel unexaplainably proud of her.

Anna almost fucked everything up, all the hard work without even realizing it.

It was nearly three in the morning this time.

Harry was stuck at Anna’s house with her and her friends for a movie night.

He’d gotten up to go to the bathroom when his phone rings.

Anna sees who it is and picks it up, “What do you want? Harry’s busy and doesn’t have time for you right now. You know it’s not all about you, right?”

Then she hangs up, all of her and her friends giggling at how she just treated YN.

Harry is unaware of the call for a few minutes when he gets back until he gets a text from YN.

I’m sorry I bothered you. I am okay. Have fun tonight x

He scrolls through his phone in confusion until he sees the call, he glares over at Anna, “Did you answer my phone?”

She has a cocky look on her face, “Yeah, I told YN that the world doesn’t revolve around her and to leave us alone.”

All the friends are giggling - but that comes to an abrupt halt when Harry stands up, knocking over the little table of drinks with his anger, “Where the fuck did you get the idea that you could touch my phone, let alone answer it?”

All of them are quiet.

He scoffs, “Now all you annoying prats are going shut up? Get the fuck out of my way,” he orders to Anna who’s pouting.

“C’mon, it was a joke. Don’t leave,” She whines, grabbing at Harry’s arm which he instantly rips out of her grip.

“Don’t touch me. I can’t fuckin’ stand you,” He tells her honestly before storming out of her house without a look back at her teary face.

-

When he arrives at YN’s house, a book is automatically been hurled at the front door when he opens it, then another.

“Hey, puppy, stop tha’. S’just me, you’re okay. S’just me,” He coos, rearming the security system to make her feel better.

She is only in one of his shirts with the company logo on it and soft cotton boy shorts, hair frizzy atop her head.

“Y’have another nightmare?” Harry asks softly, all the lights were on again, every single one.

YN clenches her jaw, “No.”

He hardens his expression too, “I was in the bathroom when she answered that call. As soon as I found out, I came over here. Don’t be sour with me.”

“I didn’t have a nightmare.”

“I know y’bloody lying because your legs are still tremblin’. Now cut the bullshit and talk t’me, we’re not going backwards,” Harry tells her seriously, with all firmness he can muster.

“I love you.”

It takes him aback. YN told him how much she adored him but it was something that didn’t come easy for her.

To hear it flat out, well….he nearly almost melted on the floor into a pile of goop.

“I love you too, puppy.”

She takes a deep breathe, “It’s been that same nightmare, but it’s not really a nightmare? It’s a flashback to…”

YN swallows before she continues, “Remember when….when I ran from my parent’s house to yours and my dad came and found me…”

Harry doesn’t want to remember but he does.

—-

“Harry, he-he just pulled up,” YN cries, peeking out his window, “I don’t want to go home.”

“Harry, he’s screaming at your mum. I have to go.”

“Harry, I have to go before he does something stupid. I’ll be okay, I promise.”

“Harry, don’t cry. I’ll be fine, he’s just really upset. I’ll just deal with it and it will be over before we know it, okay?”

——

“I remember,” He wavers like he normally doesn’t, feeling like a helpless sixteen year old again.

It was moments like this were no matter how hard he wanted to be angry or scream at her for making their relationship so difficult, that he couldn’t be.

How could he blame her for her commitment issues?

Why she struggles to trust?

Why she never feels good enough?

“I’m sorry to bring that up-“

“Do not apologize,” Harry interrupts, “I want to know everything you experience or feel no matter how traumatic or upsetting.”

YN despite her own struggles, when she heard Harry say things like that…well she knew full heartedly that he loves her with no conditions.

She knew this was so hard on him, “I am so in love with you, H.”

His eyes automatically soften and he reacts like he’s being praised. His face lights up without him even knowing it does.

“I’ve been in love with you since I was sixteen, thank you for being my person. I appreciate everything you do for me.”

It was something she had been also working on in therapy, expressing gratitude- specifically to Harry.

And it works because Harry actually starts tearing up, eyes watering with emotion, “I love you. I’d walk through hell and back for you.”

He would and he has.

#harry styles #harry styles writing #update #harry styles masterlist #harry styles fic rec #harry styles x reader #harry styles x you #harry styles fluff #harry styles x y/n #Harry styles angst #cheating!harry blurb #cheating!harry #cheating!harry masterlist

[featherfur]

What do you think is the occupations of your fav MDZS characters in modern AU?

Ooh fun one, technically there’s two: the one I think is most likely given their class in Canon, and the one I want because I think they’d enjoy it.

Jiang Cheng: canon based: probably a lawyer or accountant/business student who will take over the family business. Despite his propensity to let WWX do what he wants, Jiang Cheng really sticks to the ‘rules’ and status quo and is completely happy to follow those rules and has no complaints. I could also see him getting very pissed at shoddy police work or bullshit business deals. They’re the authority, they need to follow the rules or he’s going to destroy them in court because fuck you, listen to the Rules! Society will collapse without them!! (It won’t but JC is Dramatic)

What he would enjoy: okay it’s a secret love of mine that his ‘losing Lotus Pier’ is him going through a college phase and leaving the family business after overhearing that his dad never intended to give him the company anyways and starting his own company. It’s a mix between Wedding Planner and Fashion Designer because JC looks too good in his robes to not have something to do with design. He might also enjoy interior design but i don’t know enough about that. Or a small coffee shop that ends up recruiting Wei Wuxian for the night shift, but that’s more of personal enjoyment.

Xichen: seems like he’d be a musician/music teacher in either version, he seems like he’d enjoy teaching younger people even if it is probably at a private prep school. His uncle owns the school, which is one of those expensive fancy ass ones so they have a decent amount of funds. Classically trained and probably used to travel with an orchestra but eventually gives that up to return home and be a teacher like his uncle. I do sometimes like the idea of him being an art historian because he seems like the kind of dude who would learn everything about his favorite thing and want to talk about it very excitedly and discuss it in depth. Honestly he could thrive in anything but I think he’d be happiest in a place where he’s at equal standing rather than a typical business model where he’s much more limited in who he can talk to outside of a business demeanor.

Wangji: he’s just a rich kid, he exists to be a sugar daddy lets be honest. Wangji’s personality doesn’t exist without him being a spoiled rich kid. A music teacher of a sort but he’s not full time mostly he just invades Xichen’s classroom and takes a few kids at a time to orchestras and the like and has them try and pick out notes of their specific instrument based on what they’re hearing rather than just reading music. Does this do anything? Well Jingyi’s really good at hearing the piccolo over trumpets now so it’s a win. He’s smart enough to do anything he wants, however he doesn’t give enough fucks about getting along that he wouldn’t fit in elsewhere long term unless he was working under a close family friend.

Wei Wuxian: oooh, it’s a fun one. From Canon standpoint: probably an engineer or physicist. He’s got that Jiang money and you know JFM would be happy to pay and Madam Yu would refuse to have someone in the family who couldn’t uphold their image so she’d pay for it too. He probably has a lot of hobbies that make up for how dull engineering can be (no seriously sometimes it’s just not fun and I don’t mean the math part just the daily repetition).

Outside of canon: I could see him in many places but most I see him as probably a bartender who plays music on the weekend and has a bachelor pad covered in paint. You know the movies about the tortured artist in their loft apartment? That’s Wei Wuxian except he’s not tortured he’s just an insomniac and all of his friends have good sleep schedules. He doesn’t come out rich until LWJ and probably still bartends for fun.

Mingjue: canon based: he’s probably an ex military guy who came back to take care of his brother and started a martial arts/self defense gym. Lots of ex-Military go there because the government tends to toss them on the streets and they appreciate someone understanding the trauma they come back with. He could easily be a business manager but other than weapon designers idk what the Nie sect could be translated too and I don’t know how weapon businesses work

Personally: I really like him as a tattooist, Huaisang designs the art and he pops it down. Probably still ex-military but it’s an honest life and Huaisang makes a decent amount on commissions both for tattoos and from online work so he’s happy to have a job that involves minimal talking and keeps his brother able to do whatever he personally wants.

Huaisang: canon based: Mingjue’s ‘secretary’ and by secretary I mean he doesn’t do anything but flirt with the gym-goers and occasionally does painting commission work. He does keep track of expenses though because he knows loopholes of what he can get tax breaks on (JGY was v helpful with that)

Personally: makes art for his bro to tattoo, if NMJ dies then I think NHS might be willing to really go hard into business and maybe get JC on the phone to take over and help him run his business. But NHS who still has his brother is just going to do what he wants and spend most of his time relaxing. Besides if he wants anything special, WWX hands out LWJ’s money like it’s free cookies and NHS has no qualms about taking it.

And finally Jingyi: rich kid who exists solely to harass Jin Ling and tell Sizhui and Zizhen how amazing they are

#danny answers #jiang cheng #the untamed #mdzs #Lan Xichen #Lan Wangji #Wei Wuxian #i know there are other characters but you sad my favs #and also idk about the kids #also Yanli is stay at home mom and I think it’s rather obvious #maybe she goes to keep JC from murdering bitchy parents ruining their kids’ wedding #but she’s just chillin at home keeping her kids from dying via forks in sockets