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#i'm not taking them out. sorry not sorry
ilovedthestars · 11 months
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Mal, aspec icon, and also reasons why I love Widdershins in general
So, as a birthday present to myself I recently bought physical copies of all ten currently available volumes of the webcomic Widdershins, and I’m currently rereading all of them from the beginning, and I’m just. Having emotions about it!! This post is part Widdershins propaganda (go read it) and part rambley thought dump on the parts I'm excited about on my reread. (I’ll try to stay away from major spoilers, but read at your own risk.)
A vague bit of context for anyone who knows nothing about Widdershins: Historical fantasy, set mostly in Victorian* England, centered on the fictional English town of Widdershins, which is the location of a magical “anchor” which is a source/amplifier of magic. Magical practitioners are called wizards (regardless of gender—witches also exist but are a very different thing) and the magic system revolves around summoning “spirits” of various emotions, and using/making deals with said spirits to imbue objects with magical properties. The tone is pretty light and adventure-y, and very fun. Every arc jumps back and forth between a few different sets of characters, but their paths all eventually cross.
(*technically slightly pre-Victorian. The ongoing and final installment is set during/around Victoria’s coronation. There’s also flashbacks, visits to other locales, and a Time Travel Episode)
The character I remember getting most attached to when I first read Widdershins, and the one I’m currently having the most emotions about on my reread, is Mal (aka O’Malley). First of all, I completely forgot that he’s canonically ace (and maybe aro)??** His significant relationships throughout his arcs are all close friends with found family vibes—when we first meet them, he and his longtime friend Wolfe have been traveling around Europe together for years, on what money they can earn from Wolfe’s busking (he plays violin) and Mal’s somewhat cheating at cards. Wolfe is an optimistic, calm and gentle person, and he clearly brings out the best in the very grumpy and abrasive Mal. They rely on each other, make sacrifices for each other, and generally have just such a lovely relationship--one thing I find particularly sweet is that it’s shown multiple times that listening to Wolfe’s violin playing helps Mal relax and makes him happy.
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Pictured: Mal suggesting that Wolfe pacify a huge spirit of sadness by playing his violin, because "It works for me" 🥺 (In case my image turns out bad, here's a link to the actual comic page--I'm just excited about my physical copies!)
I’ve rambled before about “love as in significance” and how my favorite fictional relationships are ones where two characters are deeply important to each other, in a non-romantic and/or ambiguous way. To me Wolfe and Mal are a perfect example of that kind of deep friendship, effectively a life partnership, with no romance.
(**Widdershins also has multiple gay/lesbian characters, some of whom get romance arcs, and at least one canonically trans person. In Victorian England. There’s also a fair amount of non-white characters. I cannot stress enough how much this is just Not A Thing within the story. I believe the in-universe justification is that random magic ability evened the scales, and things like oppression and colonialism never got as bad as they did in our world. What it works out to is fun escapist adventures where homophobia and racism aren’t obstacles to the diverse cast, which is exactly my type of story. It’s definitely not trying to be historically accurate, but doesn’t get bogged down in modern labels, either.)
Mal also has a really satisfying character arc going on. He can see magical spirits, including the ones around people, and read their emotions—this is not a normal thing within this magical universe, and he mostly considers it a burden/annoyance, as it makes people (especially crowds) overwhelming. It turns out to be a whole thing, which I won’t spoil, but in my reread I just finished book 7, curtain call, which is the conclusion to the first big arc of Widdershins and includes a really cool flashback scene into Mal’s past. He’s got a whole thing going on where he makes some new friends, and eventually decides to stop running away from things. It’s really hard to talk about without spoiling, so I’ll just say that he’s still my favorite character and his arc is very strong.
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Pictured: What it looks like when Mal sees spirits, and also another example of him being comforted by his friend's music. (Here's a link to the actual comic page)
Mal (and Wolfe) star in chapters 2 and 5, and feature prominently among a larger rotation of characters in chapters 7 and 9. The various chapters/books rotate through different sets of characters, but they're all lovable and you'll get attached to new characters quickly. Some other really fun characters from various Widdershins stories include:
Harriet “Harry” Barber, a bounty hunter who tracks down magical artifacts with the help of her magic-sniffing dog Gren (who she may or may not have stolen from the police)
Sidney Malik, who is cursed with accidental kleptomania (other people’s things just appear in his pockets, and he feels very bad about it). He got kicked out of wizard university for said kleptomania and is now pursuing his true passion of being a stage magician
Verity Cunningham, inventor slash bounty hunter slash Harry’s former-partner-turned-rival, and the greatest bounty hunter who ever lived, if she says so herself (which she will, loudly)
Lei Feng, who I can’t actually say anything about because all the coolest things about her are spoilers, but trust me she goes through some fun twists (she’s a magician’s assistant/inventor)
Alexa King, a baker with green hair who is going to Widdershins to win a baking competition in the year 2013, and if you’re wondering what this has to do with Victorian England and if it involves time travel shenanigans, yes, yes it does
Harry and Sid are the stars of the first chapter, and they're very close seconds to Mal in terms of my favorite cast members. If I have made this webcomic sound cool enough that you want to try it, please go check out their super fun story.
(P.S. A note about romance, since this post is partially about aspec things and i'm addressing it to my very aro corner of tumblr. Some of the chapters/characters in Widdershins have romance subplots, which never take up too much space in the story and are very well written in my opinion. I am someone who is super picky about romance in books, and I've rooted for every single romantic relationship in the comic--they're very sweet, and all built around two people who get along and are important to each other, as the friendships are. No forced romance or painful amatonormativity here.)
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howlsnteeth · 24 days
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24/05/2022
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poorly-drawn-mdzs · 5 months
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WAKE UP!
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naturecalls111 · 7 months
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Me, consuming any other media ever: how can I make this about zosan
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buglaur-cc · 1 year
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cillian set
harrington jacket: 3 swatches, 4.1k polys
sweater vest: 3 swatches, 4k polys
vest and jacket: 5 swatches, 4.6k polys
flat cap: 16 swatches (credit to fableroot), 2.6k polys
tou: no paywalls or ads, do whatever you want :) if you find issues shoot me an ask on my main blog @buglaur, not this one!!
download simsfileshare (merged or separated) 
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emdotcom · 2 years
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The Mario movie thing is so funny to me. Here, look at this:
Sonic movies (1, 2, & w/ 3 on the way) come out, does INCREDIBLE in box office, decimates Marvel films, who previously had a stranglehold
Nintendo sees this, wants a piece of that pie, buckles down to make a Mario movie Incorrect order of events, as pointed out here! Mario movie announced before the public knew about Sonic movie.
(Potentially because the previous Mario movie was so out there, did poorly, & was disliked by fans & then promptly forgotten,) they pair with Illumination, a studio that is largely known for making very sterile films
Btw, is it just me that finds it weird that there is no mention from Nintendo or online of the previous movie, in all this? Maybe I'm the only one who remembers this film idk
They announce casting. Everyone immediately boos because they cast Chris Pratt as Mario.
Immediate outrage, as Charles Martinet, the voice of Mario for DECADES, was not cast in his claim to fame roll
There is a (unsourced) rumor that a test screening for the film was met with disappointment, making Nintendo unhappy
Slightly corroborating this, Nintendo buys Dynamo Pictures, to make Nintendo Pictures, with the intent to make future movies in-house
Anticipation for the movie likens it to other sterile animated movies of the last 10 years, like the Minions movies
Trailer comes out.
People continue to boo Chris Pratt, a bad cast for a beloved character who is putting 0 effort into his voice, in comparison to all other VAs putting in 110%
Chris Pratt goes to bed "depressed," at seeing the response I was incorrect, that is an older article, about when he was thanking his wife for providing a healthy child, to which people drew immediate parallels to his ex-wife's son, who has many health complications & needed many surgeries.
But with your help, we can make him being depressed after media backlash reality!
Lol, &, may I say, lmao.
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aq2003 · 5 months
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really love how throughout a lot of smith and jones martha is really skeptical and apprehensive towards ten (+ one of my favorite exchanges between them - "what, people call you 'the doctor'?" "yeah?" "well, i'm not. far as i'm concerned, you've got to earn that title."), not taking everything he says at face value, even doubting the fact he's an alien until over halfway through the episode.. And like. i really truly think the thing that wins her over isn't him kissing her or any of the other insane mixed messages he manages to send, it's this scene here, where he /earns that title/ in her eyes:
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(+ david's bit in the commentary, where he says: "[the doctor] has actually sacrificed himself, and - i would say, that that final act of selflessness is what finally, eventually, welds martha to him. [...] and she now returns it. she returns that act of selflessness.")
this is what their relationship is built on. it isn't about martha being the second-best replacement to rose or a rebound or whatever. bc it isn't really about rose. it's about doctor-in-training martha meeting someone (quite literally, "the doctor") whose ideals she aspires to, and doing her best to be the same person to him as he is to everyone else. it's about ten in return admiring her intelligence and inquisitiveness and how she cares for human life, recovering his compassion, letting himself lean on her for support - and then remembering at the most inopportune moments that he's supposed to not need anyone and be on his own forever. And around in their little nightmare loop they go where they save each other over and over until one of them breaks
i've seen ppl look at martha and go "why she does she admire/why is she so in love with ten if he acts like that to her?" or something along those lines and like. it's not just the fact she's in love with him (in fact i'd argue she actively tries to push it aside post-gridlock). it's the fact that she knows he's the kind of person to put everyone else's lives/well-being over his own. she trusts him to save her when she's in trouble even though it's been like two days at most that they've known one another bc she recognizes that same "deep all-encompassing drive to help others" in him. and she also recognizes, much much earlier than him, that he needs someone to save him, especially when he's unwilling to save himself. and yeah for a bit she thinks he returns her feelings and is just playing hard-to-get, but she realizes pretty early on that this probably isn't the case, and i think that realization fully solidifies here:
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(this is when she's listening to ten talk abt gallifrey). And idk it might just be me but i think this expression isn't just her empathizing with his loss. it's also guilt, for wanting something from him that he's clearly unable to give when he's wracked with so much grief. (and you see it in the next episode, where tallulah asks if they're together and martha says for certain that they're not, and that he doesn't know about her feelings for him. she keeps everything to herself bc she now knows that when he shut her flirting down at the end of 3x01 it was the genuine reaction of someone who a) isn't interested and b) is scared of getting close with someone else again)
freema described their dynamic as "she's keener than him" and i think about this all the time. martha doesn't really take what ten throws at her. what she does instead is constantly poke holes in his already-failing front of "i will show someone the wonders of the universe so i can ignore what is wrong with me". what she does is stand up and fight him when he tries to go off on his own. what she does is put aside her well-being in favor of helping someone - just like what she saw him do for the people in the hospital when they first met. tldr, that's the doctor and his doctor and rip martha you would've loved who's gonna save u now by rina sawayama
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canisalbus · 4 months
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About the accents: if someone has a very "proper" Italian they are either foreigners or politicians/dignitaries/etc. So that fits perfectly for Machete, but I think it would be so funny if he sometimes slipped up and used a Nepalese word bc he forgot one in "proper" Italian lol
(Funny to me cause Naples has its own language in addition to accent, and most people don't actually know those words)
.
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hopeswriting · 6 months
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was thinking about takeshi and how he's my favorite brand of unconditional devotion btw. the utter and absolute and all-consuming kind that runs so deep to the very core and is so intrinsic and fundamental to it, it can only express itself in the most casual and natural and certain way. without second thoughts, without any room for doubts or for any moral dilemma to be had over it, because of course he ought to always be breathing and living for his chosen person first and foremost. of course he ought to hang on their every word and make them true no matter what, no matter what he has to do to make it happen, no matter what he has to do to other people to make it happen, and no matter what it might turn him into in the process. because it's obviously the way the world should be for his chosen person. at their feet, ready to bend over backwards and break and build itself again to better answer to all their needs even if they don't ask it for it. it's the only right way it should be for them, and of course takeshi's going to do his utmost at all times to make it a reality as much as possible.
and his devotion comes out as naturally as breathing, comes out lighthearted and nonchalant like he might as well be talking about the weather, but it's not unaware of itself. it's not that takeshi doesn't know it's unhealthy and wrong and that he's willing to go entirely too far in its name for anyone's good. it's not that he wouldn't hear you out if you were to sit him down and explain to him just why he needs to tone it down a little (a lot). logically, he'd agree with you and know you're right. and then he'd tell you he's still not going to do anything whatsoever about it. that he's not bothered by it and doesn't feel the need to change anything to his attitude. makes it a point to never let anyone or anything sway him even an inch in the stand he took when it comes to that, no matter how many thousand of times you might go over the subject with him.
because the morality of his devotion isn't the point at all. is entirely irrelevant to it and doesn't affect the way he expresses it all. it's not the metric with which he draws a line in the sand to hold it accountable to. because the thing is, takeshi's entire world revolves around tsuna--tsuna is his entire world altogether, and it's just a matter of fact, that simple. to him it's a truth as unchanging as the sky being blue, and so being the way he is according to that truth is the only way he can imagine being that'd feel right to him. and so the actual and only metric that matters here is "would tsuna be happier if i were to do this?" and/or "is this something tsuna needs me to do?"
and like. i don't think takeshi ever stops being a kind person capable of compassion and understanding and mercy and forgiveness even ten years later once they became mafia through and through. and i don't think either he grows up to be feared and called a monster per se despite the things they inevitably had to do during those ten years (and the things they'll inevitably keep having to do as long as they keep being mafia), at least not in the way, for example, they'll never stop fearing and calling mukuro one. but i do think that among the tenth gen, he ends up being the one with the most ruthless, merciless and horrific blood on his hands of that particular and distinct loving kind. you know the one i mean, right? he comes to be the one most expected and the one first expected to be willing and to take it upon himself to go through with it when the need arises. and to think little of it after, if anything at all. all in the name of making tsuna's reign as easy on him as possible.
and it's to the point where it's the kind of blood that makes even mukuro pause at times. or, when takeshi is the one coming up with solutions himself during meetings, makes even reborn blink. not because it's unjustified or wouldn't be safe or efficient or anything of the sort, but because it is unwarrantedly thorough in its retaliation. and sometimes, at times like this, he's the one tsuna needs to step in for the most, because he's the only one who can reason with him that "yes, this would work in getting rid of our problem" but "no, please, don't do that takeshi". because if tsuna is the only thing that infers on just how much and in what ways he'll let himself be devoted to him, then of course, he's also the only one takeshi's willing to reign himself in for without second thoughts. because he'd hate to ever do something tsuna would disapprove of or wouldn't want him to do. or do something that'd make tsuna see him differently or love him back less even in the slightest.
and it's also like. his devotion isn't an undisciplined one. it's not one he doesn't have control over, the very opposite. it's a very purposeful and conscious choice he chooses to keep making over and over again every step of the way, and he taught himself to have control over it, to know when it's needed and/or wanted, and how much and in which ways it is when it happens, and to keep it down otherwise. and, yes, to also reign it back in at tsuna's request at times when it still slips past his control. because it's all about making tsuna's happiness easier and secure and long-lasting, and never about burdening him with just how committed he is to do that.
so it comes down to this: takeshi willing to go above and beyond and more for tsuna unless tsuna explicitly asks him not to. and to tsuna needing to ask him not to every now and then. and to other people pointing out to him how too many times tsuna's already needed to stop him, and that maybe there's a hint for him to take there. and to takeshi seeing the hint, looking it straight in the eye and recognizing it for what it is and just. deciding it doesn't apply to him because it's all perfectly normal behavior to him. because it's the only kind of behavior that makes sense to him and feels right.
and so—to circle back to my first point—he can only express his devotion as naturally as breathing, so casually, almost like it's something inconsequential and not worth talking about despite how unmistakably it couldn't be further away from being the truth. it's the only way he could have always known how to express it, because, after all, who has ever taken time to ponder about the details and the hows of the way they breathe?
and i, for one, absolutely eat that shit up every time, thanks for coming to my ted talk <3
#katekyo hitman reborn#khr#khr meta#can i even call this one?? well i'm going to anyway lol#yamamoto takeshi#sawada tsunayoshi#i've never been normal about devotion in stories and characters and won't ever be so sorry if this doesn't make sense#also this is not to say the 10th gen loves tsuna any less unconditionally this isn't a competition#it's just me saying the particularities and specificities of the way takeshi specifically does it appeal to me the most#which is one of the reasons why i have such a big soft spot for 8027#and it's not a problem in their relationship either btw that's also not what i'm saying#like tsuna doesn't mind it and absolutely /does/ reciprocate it 100%#he's just careful to keep an eye out so none of them will lose themselves along the way#also this is within the context of me shifting canon slightly to the left in the way where the 10th gen loves tsuna /so much/#they could just as well actually and properly worship him as a god and it still wouldn't make a single difference#and me liking to lean into that fully and taking it to extremes and it inevitably becoming some extent of dark#because considering the environment canon makes them express it (the mafia) it's like. well how else are they meant to keep it alive#and make sure it survives through it without giving it sharp teeth and claws and jagged edges of its own you know?#so if you feel like this is some kind of ooc-ness you're not wrong#but also consider: i'm not wrong either <3#anyway consider also: unconditional devotion running /so/ deep down to your marrow and to your very essence#even in the face of the whole world telling you how wrong it is and how insane and unhinged you are for it and condemning you for it#it still wouldn't so much as make you consider the thought they might have a point#and i genuinely EAT that shit up every time i love to see it <3
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fisheito · 2 months
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"I'm a healer but--" duo
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quickhacked · 24 days
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hanan at age 24 vs hanan at age 35 :] becoming a test subject at arasaka special programs really changes people huh
taglist (opt in/out): @shellibisshe, @florbelles, @ncytiri, @hibernationsuit, @stars-of-the-heart, @vvanessaives, @katsigian, @radioactiveshitstorm, @estevnys, @adelaidedrubman, @celticwoman, @rindemption, @carlosoliveiraa, @noirapocalypto, @dickytwister, @killerspinal, @euryalex, @ri-a-rose, @velocitic, @thedeadthree
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golyadkin · 1 month
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Long road to Colorado
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lavenoon · 1 year
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It's not like they dislike getting their teeth brushed, the opposite, really! Having their little hunter get so close without being scared, being cared for - that's why they drag it all out, and get more time with their hunter! <3
@naffeclipse and I were talking about brushing the cryptid boys' teeth after @themeeplord's jaw anatomy, and turns out I can draw non spoilery fluff!
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"anakin would've never turned to the dark side had qui gon lived." utter. bullshit. not only is this particular hot take an insult to obi-wan it completely robs anakin of his agency, because at the end of the day it was anakin's decision to pledge his loyalty to palpatine and to destroy everything that the people he loved held dear. that's what makes anakin skywalker such a compelling character, and as darth vader a tragic and iconic villian... because he did this to himself.
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I’m so happy with this gradient it’s soooooo smooth. This shawl is a real challenge to knit both because of the structure of this yarn and the actual pattern itself is written in a way that’s really frustrating, but at least it’s beautiful enough to only be slightly extremely annoying.
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persy-r-bozo · 2 months
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