#toc : all characters

[userheree]

RAHHH I FINISHED

some of the rendering is a little wonky in my opinion but i hope u love it all the same!!!! and (my) MC's response!!

if u can't read it it says 1. *Giving it a lot of thought* MC: ... 2: System: Who are you going to hane with?

3. MC: .... System: ....

4. MC: No one System: !!!!

5. MC: *throws the letter behind her and leaves* System: WHY?!?! WHAT DO YOU MEAN NO ONE?!?!

6. System: IT'S A VALENTINES DAY SPECIAL!? YOU HAVE TO?! MC: I don't care, and no, I don't.

7. MC: *knocked the fuck out.* System: *bitching at MC for blowing everyone off*

AHHHH YOU FINISHED?? ITS SO CUTE I LOVE IT IM LITWRALLY SCREAMKNG EVERYONE LOOKS SO ADORABLE 🫶🫶🫶

HFHAJFHWHFJKKRBQHAIFJENQLLOCKXNZMZBHSJRJEHAOXOHDWJKXNFJRKFJJFJDJDKD

the comic please 😭😭 it’s so real tho i love it too omg omg

#toc #sweetadonisbutter!!!! #the occult club #toc : art #toc : all characters #i love this sm #so cute!!! #toc : valentines day #LOOK AT THIS!!!!! #it’s so HCHAHCJWJDEJ

[bgezal]

how would any game dev ever think this is a good-feeling mechanic. is this a joke. is it going to play the worst hand instead. id appreciate that it would mean so much to me

#if u recognize the ui im being held at gunpoint to play this its not my fault. #please recommend statbuilder games. alms for hte poor. lltq isnt real. neither is volcano princess #GUYS i dont WANT to play a puzzle game! i want to read a shitty light novel with decent prose and utterly mediocre character building #that is why i am playing a game on my computer #RECOMMEND STATBUILDERS #THAT ARE REAL. PLEASE #HOLY FUCK GUYS. IM PLAYING MY LITTLE PUZZLE CARD LIFESTRATEGY GAME BECAUSE I WANT THE COMPUTER TO PLAY IT FOR ME #EVERY TIME I OPEN THIS GAME AND I SEE THOSE TWO CRACKERS SMILING AT ME IM LIKE LEARN HOW TO PARE DOWN YOUR CHARACTER DESIGNS #i thought punch club 2 would be fun for my brain statbuilder wise and then the writing was too ''like that.'' #this is another kind of ''like that.'' #ok between The Character in this one and The Other Character in game i forgot the name of because i got too tilted at TOC to play for more #han 30 minutes #i wish i could explain to people and make them meaningfully listen about how bigoted it is to act as if all nonbinary people are young #anyway. #recommend games with nonbinary npcs that wont make me want to dangle smoeone off a cliff and laugh like an anime milf.

[ticenchantedtoc]

Gonna be doodling some batb stuff while waiting for laundry to finish. Feel free to send me requests or reblog this post with characters you want to see me draw (ocs included)!

#beauty and the beast #batb 1991 #tic tocs #There are lots of characters I don't draw all that often so I'm using this as an excuse to do that

[skelenby]

average creator: yeah I have a couple OCs

me:

#ok the underlined characters are my friend's #the rest are all mine tho!!! #I've drawn like 90% of them at least once #and i draw/write ab ~20% of them regularly #blorbos from my mind <3 #ToC

[h34vybottom]

I'm now caught up on the Crestoria manga. it's bad.

#wouldn't it be really funny if the manga got cancelled as well? #they introduced three new characters to replace Leon and they're all kind of awful #it also seems like they're going to replace the king w/ a prime minister character which ??? #I'm convinced that ToC is just cursed #Vicious makes a joke that Misera thrusts her knife into his body like she would thrust her penis #just deeply bad

[blindecho6]

Me: I don't have a favourite character

Also me:

#i just like to draw her #that's all #Bliz is still the main character #also ignore my polish pc #time of change #toc #my story #my post

[trikaranos]

TRIKARANOS CHAPTER I: S·T·T·L

TRIKARANOS is a dramatized narrative based on ancient events following Crassus (and Pompey and Caesar) through the years 87-48 BCE. Intended for an adult audience.

⭐ Trikaranos will always be free to read. In the near future, you’ll have the option to support this comic & my ability to spend time making it (I Am Extremely Fucking Broke And Have Bills To Pay etc etc) through Patreon! currently, I have a tip jar!

⭐ There is no set update schedule (chapters vary in length and will be posted as I finish working on them)

⭐ alternative places to read it (coming soon!)

CREDITS all additional art used are in the public domain, and the specific images used are open access, etc

🍊the first collage panel is combination of: Plate 113: Greeks Battling the Trojans (from Ovid's Metamorphoses), Antonio Tempesta / The Trojans pulling the wooden horse into the city, Giulio Bonasone (after Francesco Primaticcio) / Terracotta hydria displaying Achilles waiting to ambush Triolos and Polyxena 🍊the second collage panel is: The Lictors bringing Brutus the bodies of his Sons, Jacques Louis David / the paint over of Brutus executing is own sons is my own work based on the composition of this relief of Brutus and condemning his sons to death. 🍊I also used my own art: a panel from the Prologue, and my own illustration of Brutus with the bodies of his sons

📖 PREVIOUS CHAPTER | START HERE | ToC (under construction!)

UNDER THE CUT creator’s commentary, ancient citations, whatever else seems relevant. ideally, this is optional! you shouldn’t need the citations for it to make sense as it unfolds since it’s a comic and a story first and foremost, but it’s here if you’re curious about something or want to see where the inspiration is coming from!

I'm so fucking normal about Crassus and his family (<<< this is a lie)

Marcus Crassus was the son of a man who had been censor and had enjoyed a triumph; but he was reared in a small house with two brothers. His brothers were married while their parents were still alive, and all shared the same table, which seems to have been the chief reason why Crassus was temperate and moderate in his manner of life. When one of his brothers died, Crassus took the widow to wife, and had his children by her, and in these relations also he lived as well-ordered a life as any Roman.

Plutarch, Crassus

like, it actively fucks me up that this is something that's survived about him for over 2,000 years. they all ate together at the same table. Jesus Christ.

so! Crassus' dad! Publius Licinius Crassus (consul 97) fought on the side of Cn. Octavius (consul 87) in the Bellum Octavianum, and it didn't go great for him.

Crassus: A Political Biography, B.A. Marshall

also. currently, if you look Publius Licinius Crassus up on wikipedia for an overview, his page lists his son (and also my main character for this comic) with the cognomen Dives, which is in-fucking-correct.

Marcus Crassus and the Late Roman Republic, Allen Mason Ward

and to circle back to houses and meals shared with family, some citations that made me feel some kind of way when I read them

Marcus Crassus and the Late Roman Republic, Allen Mason Ward

finally, there is discourse or whatever on the placement of the sons of Publius Licinius Crassus. Crassus is the baby brother here simply because I'm writing this story and I get to pick the themes, but also because no one has provided a solid enough argument for him being the second eldest son that I'm willing to buy into with enthusiasm, and I'm more inclined towards G. Sampson's conclusion on the matter.

Defeat of Rome: Crassus, Carrhae, and the Invasion of the East, Gareth C. Sampson

and while I'm just kind of talking about stuff that I read that I enjoyed, this article by Martin Stone lives in my head rent free

A Year of One's Own: Dating the Praetorship of Marcus Crassus, Martin Stone

#trikaranos the komik #hehghghh HELLO i'm back. oof. hgh #if i think too much about them as a family i take critical damage to my hit points

[mythrilthread]

My magnum opus, the jewel of my Binderary round-up, the result of four months of hard work (that is to say, a lot of force applied over distance), the project affectionately known as The Motherfuckers (because it was rather unclear if I was going to finish these books or if they were going to be the end of me).

Force over Distance by cleanwhiteroom. It is currently also on AO3.

I was first introduced to this incredible story by a dear friend, who first sold me on actually watching SGU, and then said that they remember this fic since like 2011, which is always a promising sign. I went digging and found out I was in luck - the story was being rewritten and reuploaded on the author's blog. The next two weeks are described by the same friend as "one of the scariest moments in our cohabitation" as I'd spent literally every waking moment injecting the story directly into my eyeballs, and let me tell you, I'd not been doing a lot of sleeping at that time.

Then I gathered up my courage and reached out to CWR re: my burning desire to bind this story. And the rest, well. Let's dig into it, shall we?

This was my first time typesetting 540k words. Considering I tend to prefer larger font sizes for increased legibility, it was immediately obvious that this was going to be a multivolume project. I settled on three, as it's the relationship between three individuals that forms the core of the story.

I also knew I wanted to keep the typeset in black and white, but play around with light and dark a lot. So I did. One of the first design idea I actually had was the way I wanted to handle projected speech. Mental link between Young, Rush and Destiny is THE most vital part of the story, and I wanted to make it immediatly obvious. I also wanted to be able to take one glance at the page and tell how much of the action is actually just two guys staring each other down :) Hence the blackout effect of thoughts being represented as light over darkness.

I also wanted to preserve as much of my reading experience as possible. So I saved all the chapter quotes/summaries in the TOC, and hid the chapter content warnings in the frame of the gate that marks the beginning of each chapter. For most of the chapter the warnings stay the same, so after a while you stop really noticing them, but then you open a new chapter and see that the familiar shape of the words has changed, and get this UH-OH feeling. Which, I think is very much how it works in my design, because when the warnings change there's usually another line of text added.

For flashbacks and dream sequences I switched from italics to a lighter shade of gray. I woudn't say it's more legible per say, but it's in keeping with the overall light/dark theme.

There are instances of people using handwritten notes in the story. I collected more than a dozen of assorted handwriting fonts, with each character having their own "handwriting". So when, for example, someone begins writing in someone else's hand, you immediately know it.

The most insane, labor-intensive part of the typeset, however, was the way I decided to handle the Ancient translations. CWR's gone through the trouble of setting up hover-to-discover for it, which gives you a very different reading experience than, say, having the translations in the endnotes. So, naturally, I said to myself that I want to replicate that, and footnotes just won't do the trick. So. Every instance of Ancient in the text has an underlay of light gray Ancient script. And an OVERLAY of paper vellum with the translation printed in blue. Now, not to toot my own horn too much, but if looks SICK AS FUCK. You also MAYBE SHOULD NOT LIVE LIKE THIS. For the two copies of this work I had to cut up 10 sheets of vellum into strips, and then spent from 20 minutes to an hour per volume tipping the strips in their proper places. I then had to wear kinetic tape on both my hands to help with the joint pain. (It was worth it.)

Now for the title spread. It is also paper vellum that you see as soon as you turn the first page (the half-title), and see it covering the title of the book and author's name. And then you turn it. And the shields sing the matter wave of Destiny through the black. And yeah, I think that's very, very clever of me, actually.

Then, of course, were the endpapers. All 12 of them are unique abstract paintings done on black cardstock by hand with brush pens and correction tape, I scanned a sample of each set for posterity. All of them are my interpretations of characters' midscapes. For volume 1 I went with the fire wind of Rush's thoughts. Volume 2 was for Young, and I went for the reverse blackout poetry effect (because for all the mental talking they do, the unprojected thoughts are opaque to their counterparts) and all the loops, hairpins and blocks he does. Volume 3 is for the combination - Rush's fire wind, changing its color to match the circuitry pattern of Destiny's AI.

The rest, in comparison, is easy. All volumes are stitched with 3 strands of embroidery floss, a combination of black, blue and silvery-gray. The French double-core endbands are sewn in the same color scheme (though with a different shade of blue and gray switched for white for added contrast). The edges are painted and splattered to look like space.

The covers feature my (signature at this point, I guess) half-cloth river pattern, with the base being dark blue linen and the printed parts being Spitzer telescope images of the W51 star forge, Jack-O'-Lantern Nebula and the Eagle Nebula (courtesy of NASA), waxed by hand for added sheen. The spines are foiled in silver with a foil quill.

Each set is 5 pound of solid hand-crafted book, with one set being my personal copy, and the other sent as a gift to the author.

And that's it, folks! This has been an incredible project to work on, and I'm very proud of what I achieved with it.

#mythril thread books #bookbinding #ficbinding #fanbinding #binderary2024 #stargate universe #sgu #force over distance #stargate

[empty-movement]

April 1, 1997

OMG OMG OMG

You are eagerly tearing open the copy of Newtype Magazine you camped outside of a convenience store for. You need more Utena content. The show is starting tomorrow, and you need a fix!! Newtype's got you:

And so do we! Thanks to forum member xenofem, there's already a rough translation of this spread! :D I have every Newtype magazine published during Utena's run (and then some), and will be uploading on the release schedule that coincided with the show! Convenient way to pace myself, I guess. ;D

But the ain't all! Newtype also included some character design sheets this month, and the beginning of the monthly release episode summaries is also in this issue! For more, check out where I've uploaded the Utena pages, along with the cover and ToC!

Join us for our weekly watch of the series, starting here!

#revolutionary girl utena #shoujo kakumei utena #utena #utena watch #empty movement #newtype #classic anime

[liu-anhuaming]

Reading Chinese Ebooks on 讀墨 ReadMoo

For the past few years, I've labored under the assumption that I can't read Chinese ebooks because I just can't focus on them. However, I recently saw someone on insta mention the app 讀墨. I was intrigued, and decided to give it a try. And wow, what a shock, I can in fact read Chinese ebooks! I just have to change it to vertical text and make the font very large.

So the past couple weeks I've been trying to read more consistently using 讀墨. The book I started with was slow going at first, which almost made me give up; it was the Chinese translation of The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera. This book really wasn't for me, and I didn't want to keep reading it. So instead of just giving up, I bought one more book and tried again: 《你的孩子不是你的孩子》 by 吳曉樂 (yes, it is the basis for the Netflix show of the same name).

I devoured the book in under a week. So yeah, I think Chinese ebooks work for me if I like the book.

Below is gonna be an overview of the app, and my thoughts on it so far. It's not comprehensive though, since there's a lot of things on this app I haven't explored yet (like the audiobooks).

***Please note that 讀墨 is a Taiwanese app, and as such it mainly offers books written in traditional characters. There are apparently books written in simplified available, but I haven't explored those since I'm fine reading traditional.***

Buying Books

Buying books is fairly simple. You make an in-app purchase of coins, which you then use to buy books. Note: As of writing this, I have recently recently received a notification from the app that their book purchasing system will be changing soon. Instead of being able to buy the books in the app, you'll have to log in to your account in a browser and buy the books there. The books will apparently then appear on the app for you to read.

As it stands, 210 coins costs $10.99, and the books I've bought have ranged in price from 210 to about 300 coins. That means the books cost ~$11-$16, just like a regular book. This could be pricey, but since I'd otherwise be paying for international shipping if I were buying a physical copy, this feels like a bargain to me. (For me, shipping books from Taiwan/China to the US typically doubles the price of the purchase rip)

Once you buy the book, it's in your library for you to start whenever you please.

As for browsing for books, I haven't gone too in-depth yet. I went in to 讀墨 with a TBR and went for books off that list exclusively. When it comes to buying books online, I almost always go on whatever site I'm buying from with a list of the books I'm thinking of buying. I get recommendations elsewhere (e.g., Goodreads or insta).

Reading Books

The 讀墨 reading interface is pretty typical for an e-reader app. What makes me like it way better than other apps I've used is that it has a lot more customization options.

For starters, you've got 6 options for page/text color. There's the typical black, white, and sepia, but there's also blue and green! I use the 奶綠 option, since I don't like having such a stark contrast between the text and the background when reading on my phone for long periods.

Then there's the options for changing the text size and spacing. You can make it bigger or smaller as you please, and put more or less space between each line of text.

You can also change the font. There's 8 different fonts you can choose from, including the default. There's even a font that puts 注音 next to each character! You can see a preview of that one in the photo below.

And then, there's the option to switch between horizontal and vertical text. The default is horizontal text, but I've come to prefer vertical when reading Chinese novels. If you go to your settings on your profile, you can make vertical text your default, which is what I ended up doing.

Like any good e-reader, there's options to highlight text. There's four different colors you can use (pink, yellow, purple, and blue). If you go the ToC, you can find all of your highlights and filter by color of highlight. Super convenient, since I've been using pink to highlight words/phrases I don't know or find interesting and yellow to highlight key sentences/paragraphs.

Aside from highlighting, when you select text you have the option to look the characters up in a dictionary or online. I've been getting a lot of errors with this recently, but I'm wondering if that's just my phone acting weird? It worked perfectly fine when I first started using the app. Anyways, the dictionary it takes you to is 夢典 MoeDict and it opens in a browser. This personally is a bit annoying bc I actually have this dictionary app installed on my phone, but this is a minor complaint. The dictionary opening in a new browser tab is a non-issue.

Reading Stats

Now, I'm a big dork and love to track my reading stats. To my great satisfaction, 讀墨 keeps track of some stats. The main one is time spent reading. You can set a daily goal (the minimum is 20 minutes), and if you reach it you get a nice checkmark on the calendar. The calendar doesn't update until the very end of each day, so if you've reached your goal for the day it won't show on the calendar until the next day.

Also, keep in mind time differences between where you live and Taiwan. I'm ~12 hours behind Taiwan, so the app doesn't start a new day until around noon for me.

Below the calendar, there's a chart that shows your total reading times for a week, month, or year. I normally can't be bothered to time my reading (especially not when I'm reading physical books) so this is cool to see. I think when it comes to reading in Chinese, being timed is more interesting because I'm able to more clearly gauge progress.

And below all that, there's a breakdown of the genres you read. I don't pay much attention to genre when choosing books, so I don't find this one quite as interesting.

(tfw you're reading a non-fiction book about a tutor so your main genre becomes 教育)

Overall Thoughts

So yeah, I've enjoyed myself so far. Aside from the reading interface, I find the app pretty easy to navigate. I spent a bit of time just clicking around and was able to figure out what's what pretty quick.

Like I said, this isn't a comprehensive review, but I'd recommend giving the app a try if you're willing/able to put down money for ebooks and are able to read traditional. It feels worth the money for me, since the interface is pretty customizable and easy to use.

If you're wondering where to find simplified ebooks, idk. This is my first real foray into Chinese ebooks, so I don't really know where to find them for simplified or traditional. I have heard that it is a little easier to pirate Chinese ebooks since their copyright laws are a little different than ours in the US?

#langblr #mandarin chinese #mandarin langblr #chinese langblr #learn mandarin chinese #learn mandarin #learn chinese #mine #books

[userheree]

OK SO I JUST FINISHED im so sleepy and think imma passed out but i have things and and

so so so sorry if the art looks lazy as it goes on 😭😭😭 also the middle one (of the school uniforms) just explains my thinking and what I think i would use my expirence with school unforms (and how terrible they are) my favs r all of them also resubmitting my mc and kiana just for the colored uniforms lol hope u like how i drew everyone esle GNNNN!!!

OMG YAYYY!! (go sleep pookie)

I LOVE EVERYTHING HERE!? WDYM LAZY HAVE U SEEN THE ART ITS SO CUTE!! ITS LIKE rfhbvufbUERGRYURV AHHHHHHHH. honestly the uniforms r so cool, i didnt even plan them yet but I might steal it anyways lmao. im ngl eve looks cute. like i hate her but she's so pretty hello?? THE FULLY COLOURED VERSIONS OF MC AND KIANA LOOK MUCH BETTER THEY'RE SUCH CUTIES AHHHH

Theo looks so good, hello?? AND MYLO LMAO HE'S SO CUTE BUT HE GOT BEAT UP BY EVE 😭😭

NICOLAS OMGGGG He's so wbcifwbvcufwgruf like i love the descriptions too, he's just arfkurcurb so so pretty but so so mean LMAO

ALSO BLAISE? Your honour you should free him.

The way you draw is so BEFIRBFUOBRUFHU ITS ADORABLE I LOVE IT AHHHHHHH

im gonna use them all for the covers of my next chapters (if you're okay w that lol)

#sweetadonisbutter!!!! #toc : art #toc : all characters #AHHHHHH ITS SO CUTE!!!! #take care tho get sm sleep

[patchwork-crow-writes]

Thoughts on Kris x Ralsei

This is so long I had to split it up into parts - this is Part 1, which looks into how the roles that Kris and Ralsei are given contributes to the idea of their romance. As more parts are written, they'll be linked below in this handy-dandy TOC!

Part 1: And They Lived Happily Ever After <- (You Are Here!) Part 1.5: I Believe Your Choices DO Matter Part 2: A Pair of Star-Cross'd Lovers Part 2.5: In Another World, We Could Have Been (Just) Friends

Okay, so.

Wanted to elaborate a bit on my viewpoint of this ship, because I don't think it's something I've ever really discussed before and I think it's actually a very interesting dynamic (or at least has the potential to be, depending on where the rest of Deltarune goes).

So, Kralsei is cute, isn't it? It's fun to hug the fluffy boy and watch him melt into incomprehensible stuttering and blushing. All the little signs he's really, really into Kris, all the cute little snippets of dialogue you can initiate with him, all the alone time they spend together, in both chapters... honestly, the game makes it hard not to root for this pairing.

And yeah, it's cute... in a very surface-level, don't-think-about-it-too-hard kind of way. But once you start thinking about it... hoo boy. There is. A LOT to unpack here. So much more is going on just under the surface, and once you see it, it's difficult to un-see it. And in my opinion, it makes the Kralsei dynamic so much more nuanced, more compelling, and potentially quite tragic.

Now, a disclaimer: it's fine to like this ship on a surface level. No real harm is being done, these are fictional characters and it doesn't matter what reason you enjoy it for - if it provides comfort to you and gets you through, then more power to you! This is more me sorting through my thoughts on the subject and is not a judgment on how others approach it. With that said, and in the spirit of full disclosure, this will go into slightly uncomfortable territory - picking apart the idea of destined love, the deconstruction of common romance tropes, how outside manipulation might play a part, and even the potentially incest-adjacent nature of the relationship. If you don't want to deal with any of that, you can stop reading right now, and that's okay. Please continue to enjoy Deltarune in the manner that is best for you, and thank you for your attention thus far :)

If you're still with me, then please click the read more and we'll get started.

Part 1: And They Lived Happily Ever After

The first thing you have to understand is that Deltarune is utterly determined to cram the notion of Kralsei down the player's throat. The game is not subtle about this in any way, shape or form. Everything from the narration, to the dialogue, to major game events, to item interactions, and even the roles that Kris and Ralsei play both in the story and the party, serves to reinforce the notion that these two are very likely to end up romantically involved with each other in some way.

Let's look at the characters first. Kris is portrayed as the noble knight - stoic, unwavering, courageous, a natural leader - clad in medieval-inspired plate armour and wielding a sword and shield. And Ralsei is the archetypal princess - demure, dainty, kindhearted, nurturing - who uses magic to heal his allies and pacify enemies.

I did not mistype there - Ralsei is a prince, but the characteristics associated with him are more commonly found amongst female healers in JRPGs. Think Fina from Skies of Arcadia, or Marle from Chrono Trigger (minus the temperment), and you might have an idea of what I'm on about.

Think of knights and princesses for a moment. Imagine St. George slaying the dragon to save a helpless damsel. Imagine Lancelot and Gwenevere. Robin Hood and Maid Marion. Link and Zelda. Squall and Rinoa. Every single fairy tale involving an imperilled princess and a knightly rescuer. For a more modern take, imagine The Bodyguard. Ness and Paula. I could go on, but then we'd be here all day.

Suffice it to say that there is a pretty entrenched tradition surrounding these archetypes - a male-coded, phsyically-adept, courageous, stoic, action-oriented figure, is paired with a female-coded, magically-adept (depending on the medium of course), less-physically-capable by comparison, emotional, and more passive foil. The (male-coded) knight protects and rescues, the (female-coded) princess nurtures and soothes.

It is a very, VERY emotionally-charged dynamic, by its very nature. Through their acts of service to their protectee, the Knight displays their devotion and care for the Princess, and is in turn emotionally-enriched and cared-for. There is a great deal of physical and emotional vulnerability between them, and it is therefore ideal for romance stories.

Look at Kris and Ralsei again, through this lens. Kris is immediately put into the role of Knight, and Ralsei quickly establishes himself as a classic Princess. Almost instantly, before you've even become aware of it, you've made the connection - they're going to fall in love, because that's what ALWAYS happens in these stories. Ralsei supports and encourages Kris, both in dialogue and in battle, and Kris...

...Kris, uh...

...they...

...hug Ralsei sometimes...?

...they... they give him a ribbon...?

...no, that can't be right.

But it is right, for two reasons. One, Kris doesn't have to do anything. The roles are already established, and Ralsei is playing his part like a pro. And two, Kris doesn't do any of those things in the first place - you do. It's the player who hugs Ralsei, who gives him the ribbon, who picks the dialogue options, who makes the connections. You're the Knight in this scenario, not Kris.

Because Kris doesn't get to make that choice. Kris has to do what you tell them to do. And many of us have already jumped to the conlusion that this romance is happening, becuase that's what always happens. The Knight and the Princess fall in love. They get married. They live happily ever after.

So we ship them, because hey, it's cute, and it's easy. I can't stress enough how easy the game makes this. I'm fairly convinced that Ralsei was designed by comittee, like the Funzo toy in that one episode of the Simpsons. Like he was created with the sole purpose of being the most disgustingly adorable, lovable, awkward little cinnamon bun that ever existed. Like he was created to generate the maximum emotional response in players. It's the cuteness response dialled up to 11, and we are almost hard-wired to want to protect this little bundle of fluff from any and all danger, because lookit how sweet and adorable he is! The glasses make his eyes look all big, his fluffiness is reminscent of that of baby animals, he stutters and fumbles his way through dialogue, and you just want to scoop him up and put him in your pocket or something.

And so, we're more than happy to fulfil the role of the Knight to Ralsei's Princess. Whether Kris actually wants to or not. Because it does become increasingly obvious that outside of our influence, Kris is still their own person, with their own goals and desires, but no real agency with which to pursue them. Would that we could know what they truly want, but we are never presented with an opportunity to find out.

The thing is, Kris is not particularly... knightly. They play pranks on their friends, they swipe sweet treats from their mother, they seem to enjoy getting a rise out of people, and particularly from Asriel, if the story about "dropping the lizard into the pit to jump higher" is any indication. They sleep through class, yet by Berdly's grudging admission they are the "third smartest in the class". The only reason they go to church is so they can drink the "sick fruit juice". They don't seem to have any issue with prank-calling their mom, while she's taking about them with their tutor, while they're standing just out of sight, while they're balancing a trash orb on their head.

Nothing about this behaviour screams "Knight." If anything, it would make more sense for Kris to have become a Rogue-type character upon entering the dark world. So the question remains - why is Kris forced into that role? And to what extent is the seemingly "fated" romance between Kris and Ralsei part of that role?

Folks, we have barely scratched the surface here. If I keep writing here this will become a novel, so I have to stop for everyone's sanity. But I will follow up soon, looking into the ideas of Purpose and Destiny and how they relate to Kralsei in-game. If you've stuck with me up to this point, let me just say thanks, because wow I wrote a lot here, and it's probably a bit rambly and says the same things two or three times, but I just. Had to get this onto the page in some way or another, so... here it is.

Thanks for reading, and see you in the next one :)

#essay #thoughts #rambling #deltarune #kris dreemurr #Ralsei #Kralsei #Krisei #shipping #romance #character archetypes #Knights and Princesses #long post #Part one of several #oh my god there's so much ground to go over here I didn't even know #and we're only TWO CHAPTERS in #no wonder I'm obsessed #theory

[ticenchantedtoc]

Some oc headshots from an exercise about shape language! Maybe I'll post a reblog with the full shape breakdown if anyone would be interested in that.

#tic tocs #tic enchanted art #paccello region #pokemon paccello #I can't remember what tag I used for this universe lol #my ocs #Kotobuki Hisakawa #Cedric Atterberry #Champion Rin #they need a last name still... #I rarely post oc stuff but I really liked these for all the longer they took to make #I'm planning to do a part two of characters with sharper features rather than round ones #pokemon fan region

[skelenby]

Summer Solstice Soirée!

#OH LADS IVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS ONE #Hosting a party with all the marie sues #lets see what happends #ToC #tales of cornelio #traditional #doodles #character design #oc #sketch #concept art #ok wanted to get all them visibility tags shootin my shot ok time for character tags #harwell #moxie #snip #vinciel #abigail #maestro #vanexa #wave #leveyeten #vicky (cherub)

[housepilled]

i love imagining my favorite characters on jeopardy and i have very specific headcanons for each. i feel like spencer reid would be banned from competing because it would be unfair to the other contestants. i feel like house would be banned because the FCC would have a vendetta against him (rightfully). i'd say he'd probably be matt amodio level of smarts but would be really abrasive and probably make his anecdotes all about his and wilson's gay sex or something clinically insane like that so no one in their right mind would let him go on. speaking of which (wilson, clinical insanity, or gay sex? you can never figure out which) i think wilson would love jeopardy and be great at it and probably be a multi-day, TOC champion who charms everyone and has 50 year old women thirstposting on their facebook about him. foggy nelson would also probably sweep although i think he'd have more gay people rooting for him, like a mattea roach type fanbase.

#jeopardy #house md #criminal minds #daredevil #spencer reid #greg house #james wilson #foggy nelson #headcanons

[orangerosebush]

What tickles me about the first book in the AF series emphasizing Artemis' vampiric appearance is that you could argue that he is one, in a sense. Here is an excerpt from Nina Auerbach's Our Vampires, Ourselves:

Auerbach's musing that "[vampires] are disturbingly close to the morals they prey on [...] vampires are neither inhuman nor nonhuman nor all-too-human" is what strikes me here. In many ways, vampires are monsters that lurk within human bodies and under human faces -- which reflects how although Artemis may appear human (and is, uncontestably, human at the start of the series), his nature puts him at the most remote border of the category. The reaction that many human background characters have to Artemis (until ~TOC) is to shudder!

For example, in AF, you have the following:

“Nguyen had heard the name Fowl before—who hadn’t in the international underworld?—but he’d assumed he’d be dealing with Artemis senior, not this boy. Though the word “boy” hardly seemed to do this gaunt individual justice.”

Then, in TEC:

“The waitress scurried to the kitchen, relieved to escape from the pale youth [Artemis] at table six. She’d seen a vampire movie once. The undead creature had the very same hypnotic stare. ”

Artemis is equally ill-fitted to human society as he is to fairy society. It's true that in the first book, Artemis plays up what makes him unsettling to give off that impression of having something powerful and monstrous barely contained beneath a feeble human exterior. The only way for him to command respect as the current heir to the Fowl name is to imply through behavior that appearances are not what they seem; to imply that despite his age, he is of equal importance and power to his (presumed) late father. But Artemis' strangeness transcends performance. He is, by nature, uncanny to those who receive him.

This is what Sigmund Freud says of this quality in his essay The Uncanny (trans. David McLintock)

But Artemis' vampirism goes beyond character, it is also behavioral. If he is a vampire, what does he vampirize? Artemis is, to put it bluntly, skilled at being the heir to a criminal empire. The Fowls have sustained themselves by draining the world around them of wealth the second they came into existence. And how did they come into existence? By stepping onto the shores of Ireland during the Anglo-Norman invasion! We aren't given much in the way of lore for the Fowls, but they are implied to be old money. That historical power, in turn, implies at least some sort of relationship to British colonial activity in Ireland.

Further, the Fowls have maintained their power over the years by leeching off of the physical power and protection offered by the Butlers. Until Colfer starts allowing Butler's character to grow beyond his employment, his dynamic with Artemis is weirdly reminiscent of a vampire and familiar; the world that Butler gives Artemis access to isn't the day, but rather the adult world. When Artemis' parents are out of the picture in the first book, the only reason Artemis is able to "prey" upon the People is because Butler acts where and when Artemis cannot.

Not to mention -- and I say this with love -- Artemis can be a bit of an energy vampire. He delights in antagonizing, he relishes in drawing out a triumph over an enemy. For example, by the second book, Artemis has driven a handful of school-provided therapists to quit from how drained their interactions with Artemis left them; Artemis is remarkably good at teasing out what would get under one's skin the most.

There's also the matter of Artemis draining some of Holly's/No1's/Hybras' magic in TLC. Although there isn't a scene in the series of Artemis drinking blood, I think that theft of magic can invoke a similar effect in Auerbach's framework.

#artemis fowl