we don’t talk enough about how great a job parisa fakhri is doing playing marwa, especially considering the restraints of the role. the way her mannerisms and tone of voice get more and more “cutesy” as the episodes go by and her true personality is altered by the djinn’s magic is honestly horror movie material, and she does it really subtly and gradually. i didn’t even notice at first but if you compare her speech in 4x02 to when she asks nandor about the flowers or her parents in 4x06, the change is noticeable, her voice is much more high-pitched. even in the wedding itself, her voice only lowers in register when she mentions she has had doubts about the wedding - the only moment where her real thoughts are coming through. as soon as she starts talking about how a feeling came over her and now she wants what nandor wants, her voice gets higher again. i may be wrong but i get the feeling that’s an acting choice on her part, and it really adds a new layer of depth to her moments on the show

doodles of my fav sillies

anton belongs to @poicyss

We interrupt this program to bring you...

Echo

Happy to report I have finally started listening to Malevolent and to no one's surprise I am already obsessed (I'm almost done with s2 atm please don't send me spoilers yet sdlkfj)

I'll skip over my usual formality of having one normal art post before diving into shitposts let's not waste anyone's time here

FOREWARNING FOR GROSS-OUT SKIN CLOSEUP SHIT DON'T YELL AT ME FOR SHOWING YOU has anyone else gotten this really weird phenomenon on youtube. I swear every algorithm on every website is actively and purposely worse now. Where you'll be scrolling through vids after searching for something (I was looking at crochet stuff) and SANDWICHED IN THE MIDDLE OF ACTUAL SEARCH RESULTS... YOU KNOW. LIKE THINGS RELEVANT TO THE KEYWORDS I TYPED

are a couple of completely out of left field SHOCK VALUE VIDS. like to intentionally be alarming. drama vids and things you're enticed to click on bc they're upsetting, and deep deep closeups on zits. what the fuck is going on. Sandwiched between videos about GRANNY SQUARES. crack? is it crack we're smoking????

"I think this is the most inhuman; and human, that I've ever felt.." MUCH CAN HAPPEN IN A YEAR. IN FIVE YEARS. A DECADE. imagine how much can happen in a century. just ONE (1). How will you grow? what phases do you find? even in 5 years, you will find patterns.

An eye for a life, unquestionably worth it (Patreon)

Not to keep harping on it but Death Note has plenty of fridge horror to go along with the unintentional humor and romance.

Like,,,the ENTIRETY of Wammy's House is such a fucked up concept. An orphanage where they crank out genius kids into the world by...what? What are they doing with those kids? What do you mean one of them died in there? Wait—and the second one is a serial killer? And one joined the mafia? What—WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO THOSE KIDS—

Not to mention the intricacies of L and Watari's relationship. He's seen as a butler/father figure until you find out that he's an inventor/war vet who took in an orphan with the express purpose of making him useful. No wonder Wammy's runs the way it does when the og, the man it is named after sees children as tools and means to an end. And, given that L has already made them so much money playing stocks that it doesn't even matter anymore (Mr. Builds A Skyscraper To House Five People), why is Quillish still with him? To keep an eye on him? To make sure L doesn't forget where he came from? Out of some sort of guilt for never teaching him how to take care of himself because those weren't the skills that Quillish thought it important to cultivate? Or maybe even to keep him dependent on Quillish to keep functioning properly.

And then there's the horror of L himself. Not even the implications of him, but the proof of who he is and what he can do. The thought of a man with so much money and power and influence that if he wanted to make you disappear, if he wanted to torture you or hold your loved ones hostage or kill you and everyone that's ever shaken your hand he could and no one would fucking bat an eye—that's fucking terrifying. (Where the fuck is Beyond—) And, not only does he have the power to do all that; no one would question it because he's part of Law™. His every action can be excused as being part of the Greater Good, despite the fact that L himself has admitted that everything he does is for his own benefit and/or entertainment.

Light, of course, is an obvious horror—but one of the most horrific things about him is glossed over. I'm not someone who personally believes in the Death Note's corruptive powers or aura or whatever, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the fact that, once you give up the Death Note, your memories of it are erased. All the people you've killed, all the things that you've seen, you've still seen and done all those things, you just don't remember it. There's a hole in your mind, and all that prickly, thorny mess that grew in you when you were a killer is still there, choking you—you just don't know why. Why are you so unfazed by death? Why don't you cry when your mother dies? Why are you so afraid of being something that looks like you? Will you ever be certain of anything again? Will you ever, truly, know yourself when you can't remember all the atrocities you've committed? Can you ever change and grow again if your roots are gone? Or are you stuck in stasis forever now, your mind stalling in one place in order to keep you from remembering the people you've killed?

How does seeing me like this make you feel? Does it upset you?

another rainworld mo4 crossover but the rot and maidonium are swapped

MARIKINONLINE4 is really cool go play it!! but uh only if you have the patience for it since its all in japanese..its still worth to check out though

The majority of sejanus analysis I see falls into this trap of simply critizing characters for not being completely rational actors which happens a lot with media analysis. Think "they both could have fit on the door!" brand of almost cinema sins-esq story analysis.

Which I could get into how I absolutely hate that style of media critique because it so often boils to asking "why is this story happening at all!?"

"Why does gothel keep Rapunzel so close to her kingdom why not run away to a different country" because then this story wouldn't be happening at all, man. I don't know what to tell you.

But to keep this focused on Sejanus and how so much criticism is just "he's too irrational" I think miss completely miss the mark. Obviously I think there's a lot of misinterpretation of characters (their motivations, emotions, intent and so on) due to Coriolanus beings an incredibly unreliable narrator, and people tend to just skim over how young and vulnerable Sejanus is. (He is 17-18 and actively suicidal to say the least.)

But Sejanus isn't irrational, or well, he is, but no more than anyone else in the story. I often see "he should have changed the system from within" as a critique for his character, and sure you can absolutely think that. But the issue wasn't he wasn't thinking ahead or that he was just too emotional and irrational to see the merit in that. Thinking he couldn't understand the value of playing along fundamentally misses what asking to play the long con is asking Sejanus to do.

He would have to stomach going along with the games, staying silent, working in a city with slaves, and watching every year as children get massacred. Asking him to wait it out until he has enough power is asking him to not just stomach capitol cruelty but actively participate within it. Sejanus doesn't make choices out of just pure emotion but a sense of right and wrong. He is a character completely guided by his morals, and one that is constantly punished because of it. People say "He should have used his money to change things" He tried to, in the story, explicitly. And Coriolanus killed him for it.

Yes, using only his morals as a guiding light resulted in his death. Yes, if he played along he might have been able to change things for the better. But what it really comes down to is this, Sejanus refused to play the capitol's game, refused to let them make him something he's not. And he died for it. Kind of reminds you of another character in the franchise huh.

i watched the entirety of the silence of the lambs for this comparison. and the answer is i think i was insane for seeing hannibal lecter's mask design in mahiru's but THE HOLES ARE THERE. AND IT SEEMS LIKE FUUTA MIGHT HAVE ACTUALLY BEEN THE ONE TO GET THE "MOUTH PART BEING OPEN" BIT OF IT WHICH IS INTERESTING. SINCE HANNIBAL'S MASK IS A REPURPOSED GOALTENDER MASK,,,LIKE THE ONES IN SPORTS,,,plus to add to mahiru sharing the mask theres another species of goaltender mask called

yamanaka not put cannibalism motifs in every character challenge (IMPOSSIBLE). no but seriously i go hog wild for how every character in milgram somehow has a cannibalism motif in one way or another. i fuckign LOVE cannibalism motifs

compilation from an opthalmology manual by C.E. May, translated and printed in Italy in 1906 (Manuale delle Malattie dell'Occhio)

I've been thinking about eldritch horror, and how it pertains to Sunless Skies and its universe at large.

You see, a lot of eldritch horror focuses on a realisation of incomprehensibility. The realisation that there is something out there, much larger than you, a being so vast and clever and different from you, with goals and hopes and desires that you could never hope to understand, that it drives you to despair and madness.

But in Sunless Skies, and the universe it represents, well...the beings aren't really incomprehensible. Yes, they speak a language that burns, but personality wise? They're positively ordinary. They fall in love, they have preferences, they betray or are betrayed. They have siblings and children. Sometimes, they come off as petty and petulant rather than mighty and powerful.

And yet, there's still that classic eldritch horror mind-shattering realisation in the world. It's just not about the incomprehensibility of the universe, and the struggle to understand the universe as a tiny human.

No, it's the realisation of authority. It's the realisation that so many of the world's rules are not some quirk of mathematics, but put in place by someone who sees you as not worth considering. Gravity or death are not the natural state of the world, they are there because someone decided they should be. Someone who, when you really get down to it, doesn't seem that different to you. None of the rules, or the cruelty and suffering that you've experienced because of the rules, actually have to exist. I can only imagine that to live in this world and to realise this fact could drive you just as mad as any other eldritch horror.

I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this. After all, one of the true horrors of this game isn't the giant monsters or the cannibalism or the devils. It's the Victorian-era exploitation of labour and the suffering of the working class, turned up to a hundred through the magic of this world. When you first enter Albion, the place that you are told is the beating heart of your people's community and the place that connects to the last games, the first place you are likely to find is Brabazon.

Nowhere is this horror more manifest than Brabazon, the place where you can help countless people escape and yet never see any changes. And all of this suffering, the rules and regulations that say this workworld has to be here and that it is right and good, don't have to exist. The rules were put in place by a queen rather than a sun but still here, again, the rules are not immutable facts of nature, but put deliberately in place. Put in place by someone who is in many ways so normal, so like yourself, but also so difficult to defeat. It seems so impossible, to resist authority and change the system that you live under, to make a world without unjust laws. To overthrow not just the monarchy, but all authoritarians who rule unfairly, and to create a world that is truly equal is so difficult. Sometimes it feels like its own eldritch horror, that though it's no tentacled monster or sun shining darkness it still causes that same madness and despair.

But there is hope. After all, what was the tagline for Sunless Skies? Sail the stars. Betray your Queen.

Murder a sun.

A compilation of my recent Blue Beetle sketches, including:

Jaime, through a decade (more or less)

Throwing my hat in the ring for a Green Lantern Milagro, complete with a costume that has some nods to her brothers

Two minor variations of a sketch of @wazzappp 's Mantis Blades au, because it's so fun and I had to

and a couple of other potential ideas for 'upgrades' (<he cannot emphasize how much he doesn't ask for these) for Jaime, the first being some type of biological way to emit electricity based on a) that one panel from early on in the 2006 run where he says he can always feel electricity like it has a smell, and b) his glowing finger-pads in his costume, and the second being a pair of antennae, because you can fit so much buggification into this boy

Finally got around to them Re-Animator flicks all the kiddos have been goin’ on about