hello- your order of memes part 18 -goodbye

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it can hard to stop comparing your own art to everyone else’s and appreciate the value that’s already there, instead of only wishing for more. it’s important to remind yourself that at the end of the day you’re creating, and that’s something amazing all on its own.

RUN AWAY AND HIDE INDOORS LIVE YOUR LIVES AND DO YOUR CHORES YEAH, WELL, I’M GONNA HOWL LORD I’M GONNA HAUNT

everyone knows you watch community the first time for the comedy and witty social commentary, and then a second time to watch troy slowly fall in love with his best friend and confront his internalized homophobia to develop a healthier relationship with his masculinity

I gotta say, as someone who really, deeply gets the appeal of revenge-horror fantasies, and of the siren song of vigilantism in general, there was something deeply, deeply satisfying about how thoroughly The Magnus Archives went “No, fuck you” in regards to that “ethical murder” post going around about how vampires should target billionaires or whatever, Santa Clarita style.

I’m deeply leery of flippant attempts to brush off the moral consequences of a vampiric lifestyle with “Oh, I’ll just target bad people! UwU.” That wouldn’t be sustainable! People go to school to try and figure out who’s deserving of punishment and death on a moral, legal and philosophical level, and we all know how that fucking goes!  What, are you gonna start working your way down the twitter callout list? Kill customers who’re rude to you in the hopes that that was the extent of their whole fucking personality? What happens when eight vampires show up at the house of the same convicted sex offender? How many corrupt politicians can you kill before people notice a pattern? For that matter, do you, personally, actually pay enough attention to politicians to tell the genuinely corrupt and abhorrent from the faintly slimy, or the decent ones targeted by the media?

Broadly speaking I’m deeply leery of most media that tries to pawn off vampires and werewolves and the like as misunderstood outcasts while also having them have to eat people to sustain themselves- if X-Men aren’t an ideal metaphor for marginalized groups because they have an inherent potential to be a threat, monsters suck when the narrative shows us that they really are just going to keep killing people, again and again and again, and the best we can hope for is that all the people that they’re shown killing are set up in advance as unpleasant or evil, so it’s all fine. 

It’s a copout. If there’s anything resembling a society of these bastards- or even a small community of them, a la The Magnus Archives- then all those charming supporting characters have almost certainly done something to earn themselves the death penalty a hundred times over.

And that’s what I love about TMA- there’s no ethical way to do it, and most of the avatars don’t bother pretending that there is, or pretending that they care enough to go out of their way to find one. The handful that do either wind up repudiating their power with mixed success (Melanie, Daisy, Martin) or spending all their time working damage control (Jon) and mostly failing anyway. The vigilante monsters (Daisy, Trevor) are arguably the worst, in that they explicitly get the wrong people quite often and then just brush it off as the cost of doing business. Adelard Dekker is the only vigilante in the setting who manages to walk that line without falling off, in that he only ever targets avatars who are actively, patently engaged in killing sprees or mass murder (Throne of melted corpses, anyone?) and he, himself doesn’t have any powers.

(Compare to settings like Worm, where the superpower system is inherently rooted in a person’s trauma and damage, and the “Avatars” thus tend to circle back to it in a way that’s unhealthy, but there are still paths to be productive and ethical within the confines of the system- they’re just really hard to find, and frequently beaten down by conventional human bureaucracy. Compare to The Boys, whose major saving grace was its near complete unwillingness to play ball with the “MCU Superheroes as a marginalized group“ dynamic.)

Okay but imagine if Merlin’s instinctual magic was also triggered just by like high levels of gay panic. Like Merlin doesn’t even get past the meet cute without getting caught because he makes eye contact with Arthur and the second his mind is like “mmm, pretty blue” his magic just like orgasms out a plague-worthy swarm of his signature blue butterflies in the exact shade.

Of course Arthur proposes on the spot. He also now carries around a satchel of rose petals to lovingly yeet at Merlin every time they make eye contact to properly reciprocate.

Thinking about how one of the (many) reasons why Alma Madrigal probably pushed her family so hard to be helpful with their gifts is because she wants so much for the town of fellow refugees uprooted by violence to feel comforted and protected by them, instead of fearing that the power would be wielded over them like the people who drove them from their homes

She knew what they’d all been through and the insecurity that could come with that, and here she had children who could control the weather or and grandchildren who could throw houses, and she wanted that to be a reason to feel *safe* rather than a reason to be afraid.  They’d already faced so much fear.

The pressure the family put on themselves and each other is painful, but man the history of the entire town’s existence adds so much context to that pressure.  Alma loved her family and loved the entire town.  She never wanted to act like she was better than them and wanted to use all the blessings she had to help others.  She just wanted them to be safe and happy.

(That’s also probably one of the reasons why Bruno’s gift jarred so much--it’s useful, but caused fear and distress and warned of bad things rather than preventing the bad things.)

i think people Really overestimate joshua's "cool, unflappable, composed (ha), non human, above-it-all" demeanor when they portray him because to be honest with you hes gotta be the least cool most flappable least composed most human FAKE above-it-all dude ever. he wants to be above it all so bad. he wants to badly to not be just a guy but he is. hes just a guy and he really thought becoming god would make him not just a guy and then he became god and still had like depression and was just lonelier but now with updated excuses (such as the oh-so-very wide gap between him and other people, which he already believed was there in life, but now even more believed in death, when he is not truly so different) to justify himself in his fresh new coat of misery, until some catboy startlingly similar to himself got character development in front of his eyes and it knocked some sense into him. (a fellow teenage dirtbag™, exactly like himself, learning to reach out and be happier, even reaching out to joshua himself, putting him as a person and a friend before shibuya when no one else had done so. suddenly he had no excuses to continue as he was.) and like. he gets pissed off. not in a godly, scary, intimidating Wrath way, but in a very normal, petty and human way. not scary at all, like when he wanted to go somewhere and neku wanted to go somewhere else and he was all, hm.... I suppose. fine. (crossed arms sprite). he makes little jokes, the ratty mc ratterson line. the spicy tuna roll line. Oh Well I Just Hate Negative People, Don't You?. he is not stoic. he has his fake, above it all sense of finding everything "amusing" which I 100% see as part of his facade, but at his most honest moments he laughs at the small, genuinely funny things. he is also not impossible to read, or impossible to upset. in several instances when talking about his backstory he falls into a visibly Different and cold state. he does the same when he offhandedly mentions that regardless of the brutality, his life in the UG (which, is referring to far more then we and neku know at the time of this line) "beats staying in the RG." He also uses that sprite upon seeing Sota and Nao erased, and becomes serious in the next few moments. He has ISSUES. He emotes. a LOT. so much that I really don't get at all why everyone seems to think hes just like, perpetual unending indifference. like....... respect to everyones interpretations but hes a thinly veiled fireball of a little dude. not only smug but like, typical youthful mischeif. he wanted to be what everyone thinks he is and he just isn't. hes not that divine concept of judgement. he's just joshua okay?

quick doodle

"Nice argument, unfortunately..." but with guilty gear strive characters

knowledge is knowing what type of clothing was considered the height of fashion in the different historical periods the old guard lived through. wisdom is knowing that nicky would have worn none of it unless absolutely forced to

This was meant to be a quick sketch, but then I spent too long colouring it lol.

I didn’t end up doing proper line art….

It’s Wilbur from the PMD crossover that @metfell made the other day!

I enjoyed reading through their ideas for how the plot would be altered (and were generally hyped to see an au based off my favourite Pokémon game-) so I wanted to do some drawings of it. This was based on the scene where grovyle is first introduced, cause I remembered it being a really cool scene.

I also did a few ink sketches before drawing this

the way Pure Heroine starts with ‘don’t you think that it’s boring how people talk‘ and ends with ‘let them talk’ literally fucks me up every time, like that’s some god tier song writing right there

I like to imagine the twins Also have baby photos they're less-than-fond of. Ft me once again Refusing to finish things properly

so bobby goes to luke alex and reggie’s shared funeral and sees the boys in their caskets. which is already hard on him but then he starts noticing how unlike themselves they appear because their parents got so many details wrong trying have the boys look how they wanted them to be instead of having them be who they are. at first it’s small things that can’t really be helped. but it still hurts to see them like that. completely unlike what and who they are were.

like how reggie isn’t smiling, there’s no color to his cheeks and it’s upsetting and weird because reggie was never so still and vacante. he’s bouncy and always smiling and his cheeks are always rosy but now he’s… stiff and it looks so off and wrong but he’s dead so of course he’ll look pale and still (not mention they didn’t bury him with his leather jacket on like he would’ve wanted) reggie looks too serious and it sits uneasily in bobby’s stomach but he doesn’t say anything. it’s not like the peters had much money to spend on the finer details. even the suit they picked for him didn’t seem to fit him right. a size too small. everything is just a bit off (like the whole world shifted to the left and bobby still struggling to adjust) he doesn’t mention anything to the peters. they wouldnt notice the difference anyways. bobby stays silent and distant and cold with most of the people there because what can be done? what could he or anyone else do? it’s always going feel wrong.

still it doesn’t help when he sees alex’s hair isn’t done anywhere near how he likes it. it’s too neat and pushed back like he’s going to sunday school and bobby knows alex hated when he had to part his hair that way. it lacks any of his personality and carefull reckless and the frustration of they don’t look like themselves builds, the anger and sadness and hurt that they’re gone gone gone gone keeps setting deeper into bobby’s bones and then it all collapses on top of him. the weight of the reality falling hard when he sees luke. something snaps and bobby can’t help himself but ball his fists and sob, though he wants to scream to, at the patterson’s for never caring for their son in the way he needed them to and at himself for not being there when he should’ve and at the world for taking away his friends and maybe at the boys for leaving him, because he walks to the final coffin and sees they put luke in some stuffy outfit with long sleeves. hair combed back and face a slack strict set expression replacing any trace of his once wild grin. even staring right at luke it doesn’t look right. not anything like him. not like the luke bobby knew. the real actual luke who would’ve never touched that outfit with a ten foot pole.

‘he’s in too many layers. the collars too high and he doesn’t like long sleeves. he can’t wear them for too long. he won’t be comfortable,’ bobby mutters and eventually repeats loudly in tears reaching towards the body only stopped short by emily’s hand. ‘why is he in sleeves?’ ‘he looks fine, son. he’ll be alright now’ ‘ no -no his sensory problems. he won’t be comfortable- he won’t… he wouldn’t want be in sleeves’ he’s gripping the edge of the coffin and pushing too close. he wants rip the sleeves off because he knows luke would’ve done it himself. none of this is right. none of them look right.

bobby has never seen a dead body before. let alone three with faces identical to his best friends (because whatever was in those caskets couldn’t possibly be the same people he grew up with and loved so deeply it felt he was dying just looking at them. it made his chest so tight he thought his heart might squeeze out of him because surely they couldn’t be the same. they couldn’t be his boys. not really. not when they looked nothing like themselves. it had be a sick joke. a bad fever dream. something so unreal it couldn’t really be happening, could it?).

mr. patterson pulls him away from the set of caskets. or maybe it had been his own father. bobby isn’t sure. the memory is fuzzy. even while it was happening it wasn’t all that clear. he was still too focused on his boys with faces grim and stiff instead of usual lively grins, and neatly tucked hair that had once been always tossed and messy, and arms suffocated in thick fancy fabric knowing that even in death they’d never wear something like that. but there isn’t anything bobby can do. their bodies may have been laid to rest but bobby would never know peace seeing them buried like that

idk how to describe this experience but like. i will be so confident in something. i will believe it 100%. & then something will happen that casts some amount of doubt on it. someone i admire disagrees with it. or i find out part of it was wrong, even a minor detail that doesn’t actually negate the validity of the belief as a whole. & then i just totally collapse. i don’t know what to believe anymore. i feel devastated. my whole identity has been destroyed. i no longer understand anything. & it fucking sucks