#sometimes characters Do A Thing

[ananxiousgenz]

okay now that I've had a night to sleep on it I just wanna take a minute and go absolutely buckwild over john doe in part 26 bc like. I was expecting the "I will not let you drown" line. I've seen the fanarts of it floating around, I knew that was coming. what actually fucking killed me was the second I realized john was reciting a robert frost poem to calm arthur down. and not just any robert frost poem, one that has been quoted over and over again, usually by arthur. that made me start SOBBING bc like.

this inhuman entity, who around 4-5 months prior, wanted arthur and the rest of humanity dead just because he had power and could kill them. learned so much from this broken mess of a man. learned about stories and poetry and music and mysteries and compassion and love and fell in love with all of it so deeply that it permanently changed who he is and how he sees humans and the world they live in. changed him so much that when he saw his friend crumbling under the weight of his own grief and guilt, chose to not only comfort him, but chose to comfort him with a poem. a fucking poem. when john has been so deeply invested in the stories and poems he's heard from arthur. he heard one that he liked enough to memorize and to keep close to his heart. and he chose to give it back again when his friend needed it most. to reach a hand out to arthur with a thing he loved and tell him he's heard. he's not alone. but he needs to keep going. most human action imaginable. do you think arthur ever recited that poem to john? to keep him calm when he got scared and lashed out? and that's how john learned it? and it brought him enough peace and comfort that he figured it would help arthur too??

literally the only equivalent I can come up with for this moment is something I saw once a long time ago. so my mom was sick. like really sick. normally she's a power-through-a-cold kind of person and she was laid out on the couch, so she wasn't doing great. and our dog, who was a lot younger then, knew something was wrong, and clearly wanted to make her feel better but didn't know how. so, she got her favorite toy, and gently shoved it into my mom's mouth. a kind of "I don't know how to make you feel better, so here's something I love and I hope it helps." it was one of the sweetest things I've ever seen. and it wasn't that the bone itself helped, it was the act of giving it that made everyone feel a little bit better. and that is what happened here. it's not the thing that john gave, even though it is significant, it's the fact that he chose to give it.

nobody talk to me for the next 5 business days, I'm going absolutely insane

#the LOVE in my HEART for this character..... #everyone else move out of the way john doe is my new favorite character #I'm sorry for the long post but the more I think about this moment the more crazy I feel #like it's just #he's so human!!! #he's so.....he's so..... #snkfekksmdjed #malevolent #malevolent pod #john doe malevolent #an eldritch being and his wet cat #I'm genuinely sorry about the length of this rant #sometimes characters Do A Thing #and then my inner english major emerges and goes #“QUICKLY. WE MUST ANALYZE. WE MUST UNDERSTAND WHY THEY HAVE DONE THIS (AND MAKE IT WORSE).”

[foundfamilywhump]

the question, you see, is not ‘is it too ooc for this character to cry’ but rather ‘what circumstances would push this character to cry’

this is the whump wisdom, go forth and make that character cry

#gav gab #‘it’s sooooooo ooc to make that character cry’ no you see I think it is ooc #to put this character through absolute unimaginable hell physically and emotionally #and NOT let them cry about it #sometimes canon framing and media format and genre #limit the ability to let a character emotionally Feel all the insanely traumatic shit that’s happened to them #that doesn’t mean that in a different medium or genre exploring these things #it would be ooc for them to do so #send tweet. let those characters feel and emote. it’s not ooc or cringe and anyone who tells you it is is a reductive dick

[clown-owo]

been replaying the Portal series I think this is where its heading

#i haven't drawn in like. half a month. which listen i know i don't post much here but i do draw a lot #i have another blog. but also sometimes i just don't post things. i draw for myself #just got burnt out from working on an animation final 😔 #so anyway. eased myself back in with a silly comic about portal #my irl saw my shitty sketch and thought glados was painting chell which is very funny to me. #chelldos #but like. unrequited. glados is obsessed with chell. chell is not having a good time #portal #chell #GlaDOS #GlaD0S #my art #og post #1k #5k #10k #20k #edit: i made this post almost a year ago and it haunts me. theres a typo. chell is out of character. #because i couldn't come up with a good reason for her to be there in the first place #and this was a shitty ms paint replicating drawing that i did just to get back into drawing #i didn't think it would gain much attention #i was Wrong #anyway someone in the comments said this is what happens when you speedrun thats an infintely better setup for the punchline #EDIT 2: ok i fixed it fuck you

[tubbytarchia]

got an urge to design ponies oops

#If people like this I'll do the rest of the life cast... No cutiemarks though cause Im really bad at those #geminitay fanart #pearlescentmoon fanart #jimmy solidarity #martyn inthelittlewood #scott smajor fanart #zombiecleo fanart #bdubs fanart #ethoslab fanart #impulse fanart #joel smallishbeans #he was difficult lol. I tried all sorts of green + brown (sometimes borderline red) colors but none felt quite right #so I just. made both the body and hair both green and brown. I think theres definitely a better design to be had here but I did my best #ldshadowlady fanart #Impulse ofc mostly inspired from that one skin where he has a beard #seeing people do fan designs for lifers is the only thing that gave me the urge to draw this #I wanted to see how much the colors could be played around with without making the ponies unrecognizable #and also like. pleasant to the eye. Again as if they could fit into the show itself #there arent a lot of skin toned ponies walking around equestria for a reason... it's uncanny unfortunately #that often makes fan ponies all follow the exact scame scheme of light body + dark hair #they get really indistinguishable so go wild!!!! mix things up!!! #sorry Im passionate about animal character design and ponies #tubby art

[dkettchen]

she would've told them unlike her canon! version who decided not to be an ally smh

#one piece #trans!sanji #sanji #kiku #yamato #ワンピース #I'm practicing my japanese shhhhhh #（日本語のペラペラ人：俺は文法とか書く方とか間違ったら教えてください😅ありがとうございます） #translation: #Yamato: I'll be able to get as strong as Oden? #Sanji: Probably... 🤔 #[meanwhile Kiku is remembering the time in the hot spring] #(Sanji: Nami-chan!!!) #(Nami: Shut up!! The women's bath is supposed to be a peaceful place!) #Kiku: I am also ⚧️ ... o.o #(y'all english speakers had me all to yourselves for a decade it's about time I start to also sometimes make stuff in my next language lol #notably for media *from* that language #same as it made sense to make fan content in english for [american superhero franchise we don't talk abt anymore] back in the day #(happy seasonal reminder that Ren Is Not A Native English Speaker and This Is My 5th Language hi 😅)) #while looking up reference for this I learnt that the straps to tie back the kimono sleeves are called tasuki #also I decided yamato get big muscles cause he got them kaido genes in im (I also gave him his dad's young-man-facial hair) #the more I do transition projections for one piece characters while tryna adhere to the style the more I learn that sometimes stylisation #uses bones less as literal determinants for where things go and just kinda exaggerates shapes based on vibes alone instead #meaning trans characters' bones wouldn't literally stay looking the same in that stylisation in the way they do irl #they'd get exaggerated differently based on what the surrounding stuff is doing #I still think oda's transition demonstration when we first met iva was unreasonable even with that in mind tho

[lazycranberrydoodles]

english translation book 5 baby we are in the ‘people assuming kid form hua cheng is xie lian’s son’ era 🔥🔥🔥 / follow for more hualian silliness

#so the part of the book where kid hua cheng suddenly sits bolt upright #because he senses something in the room #and this 7 year old is just 👁️👁️ and radiating immense killing intent #hes so fucking funny 😭 #i love him being weird and strange and offputting #‘dianxia why does the high schooler that hangs around your house sometimes have glowing red eyes and know things he definitely shouldnt #and crush things into dust with his bare hands and seem to hate the sun an-‘ mind your own fucking business #drawing baby hc was so much fun i hope i do it again soon #the secret is that xie lian is JUST as deeply weird as his husband but in a less obvious and threatening manner. #guy who has to keep his internal monologue internal because he is thinking things like “wouldnt wanna get choked by those hands!” #out of every god character he is the one who seems to have changed the most from immortality #dying presumably hundreds of times and being alone for hundreds of years does something to your brain #“xiao hua why does your cultivator talk weird and wear the same clothes and eat the same food and-” HE IS AUTISTIC!!!! AND JADED BY THE #PASSAGE OF CENTURIES!!! YOULL NEVER KNOW WHICH IS WHICH!! #my art #tgcf #tian guan ci fu #hualian #hua cheng #xie lian #art #tgcf meme #mxtx #天官赐福 #lmao #hob #heaven official's blessing #the people have spoken...

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

I'm a doctor, not a miracle worker.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

#poorly drawn mdzs #mdzs #wen ning #wei wuxian #wen qing #jiang cheng #Truly Massive disclaimer here: I am a Jiang Cheng enjoyer. I like his character. I enjoy that he is very flawed and volatile. #This episode of the audio drama has a lot of great breakdown scenes featuring JC - and they all deserve a feature. #But underlying this comic is a small meta comment of 'ah man I have too many comics of JC just wailing sadly' #My goal is to draw 6-8 comics per episode - I sometimes have to truncate and cut good scenes out. #Especially when a large majority is just different flavours of trauma and toxic relationships to your self-worth. #I would also like to make a note here that just because you lose the ability to do something that is very tied to your core identity- #-does not mean your life is over. It will feel like the end of the world. It will send you into a spiral of grief. It will hurt so badly. #Sometimes we do not realize how tied up our identities can be in certain things until we are cut loose. #You don't lose yourself. I promise the pain will fade in time. I promise you will find other things to tether you. I promise you will be ok #Life moves forwards. Time moves forwards. You move forwards. #Ego death just means an opportunity for ego rebirth. You are never committed to being the same person forever. #To wrap this around to JC: Yeah I love the twist with the core transfer but man I would have loved to see JC accept the loss. #Obviously it happens for a reason (story) but I can have my AUs. I can have these 'what-ifs'. #described in alt text #I'm trying it out! *please* give me feedback - I want to eventually Add image ID to all of these comics one day

[hydrachea]

#sometimes i see a post on my dash and have to drop everything and slap a character on it because the post belongs to them now #honkai star rail #hsr #sampo koski #hsr sampo #shoutout to every single character story sampo has being about him crossdressing very convincingly to scam people #must be a masked fool thing now that we've seen sparkle doing sparkle things #there you go rinn #ray's records

[fortheloveofexy]

it's a pet peeve of mine when ppl frame Andrew as hating Aaron and being needlessly cruel to him... bc while yes, their relationship is fractured and strained, Andrew genuinely cares about his brother and wants the best for him, he just doesn't know how to show that in a normal way.

like he might not know how to express it in a healthy manner but Andrew LOVES Aaron, like he truly just wants Aaron to be healthy and safe. It's like, his whole Thing. Aaron is one of the most important people in his life. Andrew wants him around. He'd do anything to protect him.

I guarantee Andrew wants to be emotionally close to Aaron too, he just doesn't have the tools to do that and the thought of letting someone in terrifies him. He also has no concept of what a healthy sibling relationship looks like, so he has no frame of reference to work from.

#i love bickering twinyards as much as the next guy but sometimes ppl write andrew has if he thinks aaron is a waste of space #and that just isn't true #andrew values his brother #he wouldn't insist on keeping aaron close if he didn't #when ppl do this is just so obvious to me that they're using andrew as a mouthpiece for their own dislike of aaron #and like ok yeah you're entitled to not like a character i guess #but it's just so wildly out of character to me for andrew to treat aaron like shit for no reason beyond Being Cruel #like yeah andrew can be mean when he's feeling defensive or trying to make a point #and yeah he can treat people like shit if he's got a reason to justify it like Keeping People Safe #but he's not needlessly cruel to the people closest to him without cause #like neil says #everything andrew does #he does For A Reason #even neil isn't needlessly mean to aaron tbh #like he doesn't like aaron much at certain points but if he picks a fight with aaron it's never without cause #and he's genuinely happy for aaron when things work out with katelyn in the end #and he wants aaron to have a relationship with andrew as well! like it's important to neil that the twins have a healthy bond!! #anyway im getting off my soapbox now this is just something i was thinking about today a Lot #aftg #all for the game #the foxhole court

[deafening-radio-silence]

I think that Dr. Christina "I was an excellent soldier" Raynor needs to deal with some personal things before she's anyone's therapist, because she strong-armed more of Bucky's autonomy away from him than Zemo did within the series.

#yeah man make amends for the shit that happened when you didn't even have control over your own thoughts #so she was giving him a way to “fix things” but that wasn't on him to do so #all she did was doubly reinforce what he already thinks - which is a justified but false and guilt-laden perception - about the situation #idk much about therapy but i don't think that they're sposed to do that. correct me if i'm wrong and then i'll go fight all therapists #bucky barnes #tfaws #alpine #my art #thank you for putting up with my drawings of a comic book character and his asshole cat lol #i had to put my dog down recently in a bad way and i can't rightfully get another house dog with my current work schedule #so i got a cat since they can handle being inside for the day and the shelter lady said she's super antisocial towards other cats #she's super antisocial towards me sometimes too but she sleeps on me at night and my house has never been cleaner #now that i have to vacuum cat fur and mind what i leave lying on the counter #i've never liked cats before but she's special i guess idk ain't everyone's cat special lol #anyway i'll stop using my tumblr blog as a blog now lol

[cracklewink]

redrawing my sunny starscout redesign again? its more likely than you think

#mlp #mlpg5 #my little pony #sunny starscout #mlpart #i actually really really like the fact that the main character of g5 is an earth pony because im a huge earth pony truther #i just thought shed look badass as like a regular alicorn #i do like her glowing thing in the show #also redesigning her cutie mark again to look like the unity crystals and the 3 colors in the stripe in her hair represent the 3 types of p #ponies #i wish sunny got a bit more screentime in the new gen sometimes it feels like shes not really the mc but g5 has really grown on me alot

[radioactive-earthshine]

NGL I have STRONG opinions about digital releases omitting the letters to the editor section of older comics. I feel like the letters are a part of comic history and should be aggressively preserved.

#look i was a weirdo and loved the letters so much #so much #so fucking damn much #i still to this day mourn that we don't have them #sometimes the editors would publish blatant aggressive criticism and promise to do better on some things #it was rare but it did happen in a handful of things involving stereotypes #also there is queer history in them such as in superboy and the ravers where people wrote in about hero #asking WHY he was not interested in women and this editor had to so professionally explain that he was GAY and where they stood on it #you also got to read queer readers writing in about these queer characters and the JOY in their words is priceless #also sorry but geoff's letters are fun and stupid at the same time and are a huge insight to what his hcs were #he LOVED tiny krypto so much it likely inspired him making dex starr bc he loved the idea of a small overly powered animal #not saying that was the main reason why ofc but it is interesting that he created dex after praising that mean little mutt #i say with the most love #my venting #my rambles

[chalkrub]

return of mendel

#my art #oc #mendel #anthro #furry #dragon #kisses them. luv u mendel #i toiled away on the headshot for ages and couldn't get it to look right so i just cheated and decided i no longer cared #and also just made him close his eyes cause i could NOT make the eyes look good. art is sometimes just giving up - trust me on this #things i'll be posting soon: cool fun design trade i did. svanhildr/mockley/coltarch character pages. maybe heidi/mika too #i'm gonna do some prints and woodburning and traditional inking. i'm gonna have FUN. and also try and move towards doing art full time #much to look forward to. yippeeeee #also shout out to soft play for releasing new music i love it i love mirror muscles. thumbs up. the pump

[odetojupiter]

so, we know that abuse and victim responses to abuse are very central to aftg, but what i find interesting is how other characters respond to the victim’s reactions, especially when it comes to mourning their abuser. there’s something about kevin mourning riko, aaron mourning tilda, neil mourning mary, andrew mourning cass, thats so important to me because it really truly highlights how even when people are united through similar traumas, the differences in their situations makes it impossible to fully understand the relationship a person has to their abuser. neil, aaron, and andrew are united through the abuse, neglect, or - what the fuck is the word i’m thinking of? permit? condone? i mean, knowingly allowing it to happen and not intervening - stemming from a maternal figure. but neil can’t understand why andrew would hold on to cass for so long - he refused to let her go until aaron came into the picture. and andrew can’t understand why aaron would mourn for tilda, potentially viewing aaron’s grief as a betrayal of their promise. and they all ridicule kevin for his reactions to riko. of course, neil and andrew are also abused by riko, but they still can’t understand the complicated relationship between kevin and riko because, at the end of the day, they just weren’t there.

i mean this is primarily an observation but i really love how trauma and trauma response is depicted as nuanced, complex and overall just difficult to understand from an outsider perspective in the books. it reads as really real, and though it can be frustrating when a character doesn’t understand a different character’s response, you have to understand that their perception of said character’s response is warped by their own experience of abuse.

andrew bounced from home to home, never had stability, so obviously he held tight on to the first mother-figure that didn’t outright hurt him. his self-worth was probably low enough that he thought living with drake was a fine price to pay to keep cass.

neil only ever had his mother, and he’d willingly accept her harsh hands because he believed she was just keeping him safe from the very real dangers that were closing in on them.

aaron was dealing with an addiction, and so was his mother; he was equally dependent on her to avoid withdrawal as he was scared of her anger.

i don’t really have a point anymore but you get what i’m saying

#or maybe this doesn’t make sense at all #idk i am struggling with words today #but genuinely i love how there’s no perfect ‘therapy friend’ in the series because it’s so unrealistic when someone is dealing with trauma #and somehow someone with a completely different upbringing understands them perfectly and always says exactly what the character needs #to hear #it’s something you see in fiction too much #the way these characters share certain experiences but aren’t 100% united in their responses to trauma #makes them feel so real #even if it means they say the wrong things sometimes #aftg #all for the game #neil josten #andrew minyard #kevin day #aaron minyard #i do indeed ramble on too much ik what ur thinking

[faragonart]

We interrupt this program to bring you...

Echo

#doodles #Echo #echo project #furry #horror #Leo #Chase #visual novel #been playing this and god I absolutely love it #it is NOT for the feint of heart #it is pretty intesnse in its material so proceed with extreme caution if you intend to check it out... #there's a lot I wanna doodle from this VN... so many well described visuals... #I can't wait to get further in the story... #just chef's kiss #sorry sometimes I draw stuff from other things hahah... #I really wanna draw all of the main cast at some point... for fun and me time. #I just love me some messed up spooky scaries... #with amazingly well written character study~ #this game sure do be hitting home real hard sometimes I tell ya... #Echo vn #leo alvarez #chase hunter

[anistarrose]

The thing about the "fridged" trope is that obviously you can't have a female love interest dying as a defining moment for a male character because that's not feminist, but you also can't have a male love interest dying as a defining moment for a female character because then she's just going to have an arc revolving around her relationship with a man and that's also not feminist, and you also can't kill off a love interest from a gay relationship or a relationship involving a nonbinary person because that's burying your queers, which is at least as bad as misogyny if not even worse, and now suddenly you can't kill off romantic partners at all in stories because no matter the demographics, it's going to be problematic somehow, which is... a pretty ridiculous limitation to impose on storytelling.

And, like, it would be satisfying to have a solution other than "it depends on context if not straight-up vibes, and it's usually very reasonable for audience members to have a range of opinions on the execution of one specific instance," but. Yeah, you do kind of have to just vibe check it in a deeply subjective manner sometimes.

#thinking about a few things and characters here... but especially about amelia infinity train #when i watched book 1 the first time i was like “...hey wait her motivation all revolves around this One Man? idk about this” #but then watching book 3 and noticing the whole unwanted child allegory #plus a very good video essay about the historical feminist context #i've come around on it completely now. sometimes men do die and it fucks women up #and amelia's story is handled with care that gives her agency; plus traits outside her husband-centric trauma. #it works in my personal subjective and constantly evolving opinion is what i'm saying