Do you guys ever think about Rana?
How she was only in Minecraft for about a month, and still to this day is remembered fondly in the hearts of many.
How one of the very first documented fanarts for the game featured her and (Indev) Steve together.
How she is such an integral part of the history of the game, and yet is still seldomly known.
How she's been so wiped away by official sources, the only way we still remember her existence is through internet archival and word of mouth.
How she was the frog mob in Minecraft many, many years before frogs were truly implemented. That she carried apples and roses with her, back when roses sprouted one by one out of the ground. That you would have to slay her to even know such a thing.
There was once a brief point in time where we could play with her character model. She did not move the way she was supposed to, as her animations never properly displayed, but she moved anyway. She had maxed out stats that meant nothing and could not properly equip anything, but that was okay. We loved her anyway.
Do you think if Steve could talk, he would tell us about his first friend in green? Of the very short lived adventures they had together in a newly forming world? Do you think he would even remember after all this time, the same way many of us don't?
Do you think she remembers the short time we could play together?
Do you think she remembers us too?
thinking abt luffy, and how he grew up so poor that if he wanted to have a decent meal he had to go into the forest and fight big, dangerous animals. but at least he was strong enough to be able to fight, while there were people that lived close to him that had to live amongst the trash, hoping to find scraps they could sell so they could eat once during the day.
thinking abt how luffy values food so much, how he always eats as much as he physically can. how he values the people that feed him, that eat with him. whether its a luxurious meal or just an apple they share.
thinking abt how pretty much everytime he saved/liberated a place/island/nation was bc someone from the place had fed him.
how when he actived gear 5 he was fighting to save a nation that its main problem was starvation. and not only that but the food there had also been weaponized to mock them and make them suffer more. and it was fighting for them that he fully reached the form of nika, the form that will allow him to bring down the current government and its system which creates these areas where people starve
also! how in zoros introduction we see him eat something that was on the dirt, partly bc he hadnt eaten in a long time and partly bc someone made it and risked themselves to bring it to him. and how sanji is always happy to cook for anyone whos hungry and absolutely hates food waste. and how these two are luffys wings
excuse me i need to Muse on something for a moment
so in Wally's secret 'vinyl' audios, specifically the last few (if we're listening to em in chronological order), obviously he starts to sound more strained/distressed. his breathing is more labored, like it's taking all of his energy to make contact.
but the audio that really caught my attention was the "But i still can't see" one. cause he just said he has more eyes than he did before. he knows We draw them a lot, and it's thanks to that that he can see. but he still can't see?
so my question is: where is Wally physically? cause although he can (assumedly) see the WHRP goings on, he can see through the eyes We draw, that could all be on a, uh... more Intangible level of sight. like the spiral pit is forming an eye, and then there's the eye on the ceiling in the secret Staff Only section - could Wally be in the pit, that space between his reality and Ours, "watching" through the eyes? but unable to actually see with due to the pit being pitch black nothingness? is he somewhere else? is he stuck? he can see, but he can't... see.
(or is he trying to explain an abstract concept - he's not actually viewing anything, but he can sense it. like how he knows We're there, even if he can't see or hear Us. but he just doesn't have the words to describe it other than using physical senses - see, hear, look.)
and him saying "...that I can see. But it is still... I can't..." but it's still what, Wally? dark? something else that he doesn't have the words to describe, so he just says that he can't see?
i know that in the Livestream Trivia Document (compiled by @/the neighborhoodwatch) there was something said about Wally being in a box. my first thought reading that was "oh, so he's in storage? the physical puppet, i mean?" which would make sense - show's over, there's no more use for him. pack 'em up and put him away. but that paired with the "can't see" audio makes both seem a lil... connected.
Wally can't see > he's likely somewhere dark > the inside of closed boxes are dark > Wally's in a box. (or maybe the Neighborhood is the box? it's a stretch, i know, but the map is a box. television sets are often set up in "boxes". maybe it's less of a physical storage box and more of a 'boxed in' sort of thing...)
one question i've had since the Start of my interest in this incredible project is: how is Wally communicating? how has he connected to the site? how does he connect to our reality? the pit almost definitely has something to do with it - most likely acting as a bridge, or the deteriorating of the barrier between our two 'worlds' - but if Wally is in a box and Not the pit or even just in the puppet's reality... how is he reaching us beyond just seeing through the eyes he's given?
or is he in their reality, and he can contact through the pit or something, but he can't actually see the other side? Our side? he knows it's there - that We're there - but none of it is visible to him. maybe his apparent disassociation in the 14 bug audios is a demonstration of him contacting Us. we can see through him, but it's a one way street.
and speaking of the pit - i just had a thought. his whole thing with Us letting him in, opening... the pit on the neighborhood map is getting bigger and clearer. but the presumed Other Side, the one on the Staff Only ceiling, is small. it's the size of a ceiling panel. it seems to me that Wally is chipping away at his side of the pit or 'portal', trying to reach Our reality, but he needs Us to do the same thing on the other side. the QA can hear him calling, but there's no phone on their (Our) side of the pit. how do We call back???
there's a fundamental barrier & lack of understanding between Wally and the QA/Us. he's trying. he wants to be let in, but what does that mean, really? let him in where? open what? he's desperate. he wants us to understand. he's trying so so hard Without the right tools to clearly communicate what he wants. he can't see Us, We can see him, both know the other is there, but there's no way to connect. and the attempts are hurting all parties involved, however unintentionally
You can't convince me that after a particularly bad day, Gil, Chip, and Jay wouldn't all climb into one bed and just hold each other close
That after a day of either intense fighting of other crews or just a Bad Emotions™ day, that the AlbaTrio wouldn't hold close the two people that they couldn't bare to lose?
That their Co-Captains aren't as much as parts of themselves as they are?
That them being such fixtures in each others lives wouldn't carry over into soft domestic moments?
It absolutely would.
This of course goes for all of the crew, but those three have a bond beyond words themselves.
Hitting you with my new design for Qi Rong. Here's the design things and changes I made:
I loved how stupidly the colors clashed on his Donghua fit but I wanted it to look a little different.
I also always pictured him with shorter scrappy hair but I really liked the braid in the Donghua so now he has both. I mean look how terrible his bangs are. He is the embodiment of perfection.
I gave him a bunch of skulls and bone themes stuff because it's cool and fits his vibe. I have no idea what the skull around his neck came from though. I'm gonna say it's the skull of an infant.
His teeth are really effed up too. I want him to just look really gross and disturbing and the teeth just gave that image to me. The toothgap is so fat you could fit a pencil, maybe even two pencils in it. And when his mouth is closed his bottom flat teeth are so short that in addition to the tooth gap, theres just this gaping hole which he probably sticks his tongue out of to be a chaotic little shit.
The scar on his neck was something I came up with based on my own headcannons. We don't really know for sure how he died as a mortal, just that it was probably in a massacre of the Xianle royalty. So if he was executed, I'd like to imagine he was beheaded as thats typically how exucutions would go. I also wanted the scar to mirror Xie Lian's cursed shackle because these two parralel to each other so hard it's not even funny.
The thumbless glove stayed because thats funny as shit. My boy really is just telling everyone to fuck off.
I kind of liked doing this and so I might go after Hua Cheng or He Xuan next.... it depends on how people react to feral goblin Qi Rong and his fucked up teeth.
tom king is such a weird writer because it's like… calling him a "bad" writer doesn't even rly feel right. he's wrote some real dogshit for sure, but every writer has, and 9 times out of 10, his actual writing is… fine? like on a technical level, it's fine--good, even, a lot of the time. hate all you want, but there's a reason he's as popular as he is, and even the most virulent tk haters will usually have one or two comics of his that they have to admit they don't mind or even actually like
as much as i do dislike the majority of what i've read from him, putting him in the same category of someone like (more recent) bendis, whose comics are so technically bad that they're like.. genuinely difficult to read at times lol, doesn't really feel right?
i don't think he's "bad" in the usual sense you picture when you think of a "bad writer" so much as just fucking bizarre. if he were writing original stuff, he'd probably be fine, but i think the main problem (or one of them, anyway) he has is that he wants to explore the mindsets & motivations of the characters he's writing... but the characters he's writing in comic books are already established characters with already established mindsets & motivations, and he either has no interest in or just straight up fucking sucks at adhering/staying true to established characterizations
and then on top of that, he for some godforsaken reason just steadfastly fucking REFUSES to actually get into the head of the character whose heads he's trying to... get into--no internal dialogue of any kind, like, EVER. i seriously think a good 70% of his issues would vanish instantly if he'd just use a goddamn thought bubble every now and again
the best way i can describe his writing is just… "vague?" it's this weirdass thing where the characters aren't necessarily acting ooc so much as just… not acting at all. there are things that feel like they were meant to be these deep, meaningful, reflective character moments, but it only ever relates to the most surface-level traits and/or interprets them & their history in a way that's either literally incorrect or, more commonly, just off in a way that feels like it's being misremembered
reading characters in tk comics reflecting on their pasts feels like listening to a politician answering a question. so many words, very little actually said, and what little of substance there actually is feels strangely misconstrued and maybe deliberately obfuscated. it's just... so fucking weird
i need you to know that your jonah magnus art has changed me on a fundamental level. i come back to your blog every now and then and search "jonah" and i simply Look at the most evil trans man to exist
tbh im really liking this duel so far, and its a shame because i've heard that ryuji and yugi's rivalry gets ironed out and the story moves on at some point but man he is such a good rival set up for yugi, they make a good parallel to yami and kaiba
not to put a big ass target on my back but the one thing about the good omens fandom compared to spn is that it really doesn't have the novel length absolutely gut wrenching fanfics that are a million times better than the source material and make you feel a bit insane