"We call it vff," said the alien. "It's - it's hard to describe to a species without vffsense. Imagine trying to describe light to a species that never evolved eyes. But there are forms of life that are only perceptible with vffsense, and they've visited Earth and fed on life as long as it's existed here."

There was a pause.

Then the human said, "That's the worst thing you've ever said."

"Don't worry about it."

"I think I have to, now."

"No, because - well - you have a species of spider which pretends to be an ant, correct? It's not capable of understanding the fact that it's mimicking an ant, but it instinctually mimics an ant in order to deter predators."

"Sure?"

"Humans produce a vff to mimic varths, predators only perceptible through vffsense. The organisms that would like to feed on you are terrified of varths, and so they leave you alone. You aren't aware you do it, you don't have the capacity to understand you're doing it, but you evolved to instinctually do it to deter predators you can't see."

There was a pause.

Then the human said in a very soft and thoughtful voice, "And are there varths on Earth?"

"Yes," said the alien. "Everywhere. But don't worry about it."

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.

Have you heard of the "Crowley is Malleus' dad" theory going around? Where Prince Levan (or whatever his name is) didn't actually die and just went out to get some milk and is now known as Dire Crowley, the silly man? The implications of that theory is absolutely hilarious when you think about it

hold on, we can figure this out, we just need LISTS

PROS THAT CROWLEY IS SECRETLY REVAAN/LEVAN/LAVERNE/WHATEVER:

unspecified fae of some kind, with similar coloring to Mal

the animal masks are apparently a Briar Valley thing

has some kind of big blackmailable secret that was alluded to in episode 4, and then as far as I know never brought up again

(unless this was just Azul bullshitting, which is extremely possible)

based on Diablo, which...maybe means something?

has canonically worn Dad Shorts

CONS:

(gestures to Crowley's entire personality)

NO LISTEN Revaan was the guy they sent off on diplomatic missions and to take care of delicate political situations, and...look, I love this dweeb, but would you trust Crowley to be in charge of negotiating your war treaties

despite my brain insisting on reading his name as "Raven", Revaan's title does imply that he was also a dragon (or super into longan berries, I'm not ruling that out)

currently unclear why Lilia "my closest friend Revaan...he is no longer with us...I used to make fun of him for being kind of a priss about eating jerky..." Vanrouge has somehow not noticed or said anything

Malleus' Aloof Anime ~Aristocrat~ vibe had to come from somewhere, and by all accounts it was NOT his mom's side of the family

???:

turns into a bird in the opening, I don't know if that means anything but it's kinda cool, I guess

all that aside, if Malleus and Yuu are any indication, then the Draconias have...questionable taste in their social choices. so anything is possible!

(Not sure if this idea has been floated already, I'm relatively new to tumblr)

I'm convinced the finale is going to have plenty of callbacks to the Bad Batch's intro story in TCW (I mean, we've already gotten a few callbacks).

So...

Since Tech was the one who directly helped Rex find and retrieve Echo, and then carried Echo through the shafts...

What if Echo is the one to find Tech and carry him out of Tantiss???

if i just told you i love you would this world change

Really fucked up that two ppl can care about each other and make their best efforts to communicate and still end up hurting each other so badly they cannot stand to be in the same room.

qpr jean and neil. that's all i'm gonna say.

do you see my vision?

thank you for being #1 lancer fan the world needs more lancer fans

Ho ho ho, of course!! Lancer is CRIMINALLY underrated I tell you, kid deserves WAY more attention than he currently gets

Glad to see another Lancer fan pop in <3!

I can’t believe I have to say this again.

But like.

Do not leave comments that bash on the actual show whilst ‘complimenting’ my fanworks. It does not make me happy at all IN FACT I really HATE it when people do that. 

I create stuff for this fandom because I adore the show with all its flaws and everything. I grew up with the show and I adore the characters so much. So when I receive comments or tags saying stuff like “Ugh if only the writers knew how to write like that” or “You should be in charge of canon cos canon is shit lol”, it just fucks up my mood and it makes me feel grossed out. 

There are millions of things out there to write or say to other people about their work without having to bring down canon and what the actual professionals have worked on.

Keep your gripes about the show off my work.

Hantengu: As Bad As You Can Get Without Being Muzan

I've touched on this in old meta entries and I'm just going to wind up linking them here, but a friend got me going on this again today, so I'll state it again: Hantengu is one of the most insidious characters in this whole series, if you're going by sweeping themes of self-mastery which Gotouge may or may not have consciously intended.

For starters, I'm going to compare Hantengu to his polar opposite, Rengoku Kyojuro, mostly by referring you this post where I already explained how Kyojuro displays samurai-style idealized virtues of self-mastery, stoicism, and inner peace about death or aging. A common theme in oni lore is how letting one's passions run amok is what brings out the demon any person has potential to become, whether these passions are greed or worry or even joy. Kyojuro is very clearly a passionate person, but he's self-aware enough to know that his passions must be kept in check in order to benefit from them, and that means putting effort into maintaining them. He's seen how that can lead to burn out as in the case of his father, so he maintains his own balance by recognizing and accepting the harsh truths of any situation with as much grace as he can muster, recognizing and taking steps to overcome his own shortcomings, and recognizing and making a choice to "set his heart ablaze" instead of getting lost in frenzy.

Hantengu, on the other hand, lets his passions run so amok that they take their own physical forms, and even then no single one of them is ever consistently powerful enough to be sustained for long before he's spawned something new based on whatever new frenzy he's in. It's his reckless abandon of self-control that made him so demonically powerful.

There are other characters who lack self-control, though--Inosuke and Zenitsu are who they are because they are the perfect agents to introduce chaos to any scene. They gradually take steps to learn self-mastery, however--Zenitsu is hyperaware of his own failings, to the point of rumination, and Inosuke is hypoaware. However, at their core, their desire to do better by other people leads them down paths of self-improvement, a path which keeps them aligned with humanity as opposed to the allure of powerful demons.

Demons in this series display similarly admirable traits, though--Kokushibo and Akaza have striven as hard as any Corp member to improve themselves, for instance. Gyutaro and Daki might have had blatant disregard for others due to a lingering jealousy and hatred for how much better everyone else always had things than they did, but they have always taken active roles in standing up for themselves and trying to improve their circumstances.

If we dive into more loathsome, demented demons, we still see that they know themselves enough to own their faults, whether they see them as faults are not. Douma is quick to recognize his own lack of passion, Enma is unashamed as about what gives him pleasure and uses his underhanded, self-protecting tactics in order to play the long game in his strategy, Gyokko is an artist, and Muzan is perfectly clear and at peace with who he is and what he wants. Muzan's desires are so plain to him that it even opened up a believable opportunity for Tanjiro to feel sympathy for him in their final encounter, though Tanjiro made the choice not to.

Tanjiro never even entertained the notion of pitying Hantengu, though.

I'll come back to Tanjiro, but to borrow from this post about themes in KnY as they relate to oni lore: In many philosophies, even an excess of positive emotions can be detrimental, and people who follow those philosophies are instead encouraged to not given into any emotion too strongly. Likewise, the lack of a virtue can be bad, but an excess of it becomes a vice.

While the Ki-Do-Ai-Raku fearsome foursome represent the danger of unchecked, excessive emotions, Zouhakuten represents an excess of virtue, which turns it into a vice. From an outside perspective, of course Tanjiro was doing the right thing attacking a tiny oni, because this oni will go on killing people if he doesn't, but Zouhakuten focuses so intensely on the injustice of attacking the small and weak that he is ignorantly convinced of his own self-righteousness.

The other demons don't do this, particularly--they justify what they do, like Daki saying how this is just the way the world works that beautiful and powerful oni can do whatever they want because that is how the world works, but she doesn't claim her actions are righteous. Muzan also makes rational points--which Zouhakuten echos--about how the demon slayers drive a lot of the violence due to their own inability to make peace with their lot in life, and going out of their way to attack demons. However, as much as Muzan believes he is superior, he doesn't belief he is a god who can cast moral judgement on others, nor is he interested.

Zouhakuten, taking the form of a deity that fiercely protects the precepts of Buddhism and threatens those who defy it, makes the daring claim that he is just.

The Demon Slayers Corp members, at least those like Tanjiro, are guilty of the same thing. The difference, however, comes back to self-awareness. For example, Tanjiro is confronted with the question of whether Zouhakuten/Hantengu has ever eaten anyone in Tanjiro's life, and as he has not, Tanjiro must at least question if justice is on his side anyway in attacking Zouhakuten. It was an easy answer, but being mortal and easily killed for sticking his neck out by picking fights with demons, it's something Tanjiro continually has to question and reaffirm.

Yes, the answer is always easy for Tanjiro, and yes, there are Corp members who are only in it for the glory or the money (and these characters are not treated as heroes). However, Tanjiro must also continually self-reflect on his own weaknesses and failings. Taisho Secrets tell us he's even reviewing his training and battles in his sleep to analyze and learn from them, and we see his continual efforts to improve no matter how beaten down he's gotten. In the heat of battle he has to keep himself confident and focused. He's got to keep from beating himself up unfairly, and he's got to keep from getting over-confident, it's a balance to maintain and it takes practice to read oneself with clarity.

He's constantly having to practice self-mastery, which means Total Concentration of whatever strength he needs to pull from, including passions like righteous anger that make it feel like his heart and/or forehead are ablaze. It takes him practice to be able to keep rebounding, but he's got humility to be able to learn from others, take criticism, and analyze himself with clarity.

These are the virtues which Kimetsu no Yaiba extols, and which most separates the paths of righteous from the paths of those who who gave into their passions.

As a few other examples: --Nezuko retains her virtues by recognizing her own weakness and focusing on self-mastery --Rui lost himself in a feeling of entitlement, conviction in his own sense of justice, and disappointment in his parents. Or so he thought! That was all the result of running away from a truth about himself he didn't want to face; the fact that he was the one responsible for breaking his family bonds. --The Pillars, with all their human faults, remain righteous because they could easily succumb to their own sorrows, angers, and self-loathing. The fact that they do not--however much these things have messed them up--and they keep striving to better themselves, for the sake of a conviction in something difficult to achieve otherwise.

Zouhakuten, instead of rising above his own shortcomings, is a deeper concentration of, a wallowing in those unbridled passions. Being so convinced of his own righteousness, he does not have any clear self-understanding, and therefore, has no inclination toward self-mastery.

He is, after all, Hantengu.

Hantengu made himself into what he is because he convinced himself of his own lies about his own helplessness, and this utter lack of self-awareness and his unchecked passions are what make him a demon. By doing nothing to improve himself, he grew out of control. And, ultimately, Hantengu is selfish. Everything must revolve around him and how he is the most wretched creature, the most powerless thing to ever have the harshness of the world thrust upon it. Among a cast of relatable demons, made victims of their own poor luck or circumstance or a desire to amend some wrong done to them, Hantengu is the worst because he got himself there for nothing but his own self-centered lie.

While all the demons have relatable traits which have flown out of control, he's the most realistically like someone we all know or have met. He's the most benign and hardest to catch, one whom many philosophical, religious, or therapeutic texts try to warn against for how his insidious fleeing from truth grows into something monstrous.

The scariest part is that the wallowing Hantengu might be closer than we think.

He was a human pirate, which you wouldn’t think you’d have to specify and yet (Patreon)

some men are textbook villains fr

Consider, if you will, AU (either with canon post-s1 pre-s2 events but D.A.D.D.I.E.S. solves things before season 2 would start, or no Doodler/betrayal but Nicky still has to leave because FBI or other reasons) in which Terry Jr is the full time drama teacher for Teen High. Nicky returns from wherever he's been and is like "Well I want to be an active part of my kid's life and try and make up for lost time. I should go to his parents' evening, find out how he's doing in school, and meet his teachers. Especially this Mr Marlowe guy, Taylor seems to think he's awesome." And walking right into that classroom/hall to find his ex-boyfriend best friend sitting there in a dorky sweater and tie combo

Cue Terry, without missing a beat, greeting them as if nothing is wrong

Internal: when the FUCK did he come back and oh my god this is so awkward fuck I have to be professional how do I tell this guy that his kid is a loveable little shit after everything that's happened oh god oh fuck

Externally: "Hello Taylor and Mr Close-Foster-Freeman. I'm Taylor's drama teacher" *shakes hand* "Would you like to take a seat?"

becoming a magdalyne and nicholas fleit stan immediately. jesus CHRIST man.

Danny proclaims that he hates circus freaks, and Dick jingles away miserably.

Dick organizes a surprise circus outing and falls bubble ass-first into Danny's highly specific circus PTSD.

What kills Dick is that Danny didn't even try to enjoy himself—he saw the circus tents from the road, dove out of the moving vehicle with a tuck and roll, and vanished into the wilderness

This meant that Dick didn't even get to enjoy the circus, because he's searching for his wayward foster brother, only to get a call from Alfred 2 hours later, telling him that Danny

Hitchhiked home

Through Gotham

Now I’m curious, what breeds are on your list?

✨Golden Retrievers✨ Pomeranians Samoyeds Rottweilers Irish red setters German Shepherd (I like the black ones) Rough Collies and Shelties Great Pyrenees Bernese Mountain Dogs Cocker Spaniels St. Bernards Borzois and probably more that I forgot to list!! These are all dogs that I Especially want to cry when I see them, and that I could see myself loving / being able to meet the particular needs of their breed. I've expanded my Range a little in the two years since I brought Hugo home, since he's taught me a lot about dogs, and I could potentially take care of a baby with very different needs from the ones that he had. I'm still by no means a dog expert but. Yanno. You learn small things over time! In the end, when I was searching for a dog a few years ago, I had a few qualifications I didn't want to budge on. I needed a dog that's trainable, but not stubborn, a dog that's gentle and considerate with my cats and my niblings, a dog that's not too reactive, a dog with soft fur, and a dog that is affectionate. So... Hugo is all of those things!!! He picks up skills quickly and listens (I gotta work on his Recall though), he takes extreme care around the cats and is so careful that he can be left alone with kittens and baby chicks, so being sat on / bothered / tugged on by small kids isn't even a challenge. He has never growled at anyone or anything in Irritation in his life. He's never bared his teeth. He doesn't bark at strangers or at odd noises, he doesn't snap as a response to being surprised. He's extremely pillowy soft, and his fur doesn't irritate my skin or pierce my clothes. He is extremely, extremely sweet and loving, frankly to the point that he would easily fall in love with a new owner if he was kidnapped lmao. You can maybe see why I like goldens so much. I got REALLY close to adopting a Pomeranian, which I'll continue to Think About, basically forever... but as someone with a predisposition for migraines, I don't want to set the dog up for failure if I'm not ready to hear bark bark bark bark bark bark bark all day. That's the ONLY downside. Maybe I invest in some noise cancelling headphones? They're beautiful dogs though, I love an animal that looks like a little rat. You ever see one of them after a bath? My god.