Ohhh I’m gonna write it I’m so scared im gonna do it I wanna write it 😭 somebody hype me up lmaooo

motion capture actress 曦曦鱼sakana shows how to move in games

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Roger Dean studied furniture design in college, which equipped him to do this album cover for Walking Circles, by Midnight Sun. Here’s what Dominy Hamilton and Carla Capalbo wrote about the art in the 1975 Roger Dean art book Views:

“Dean decided that after 5,000 years of chair design the only sufficiently different variation as yet unattempted, as far as he knew, was the bio-chemical approach. Dean's proposal was based on a mechanism favoured by lizards for re-growing their tails. Dean finally abandoned this project because of lack of facilities.”

i know we've talked a lot about MCR and their rebellion against the nostalgia circle jerking of WWWY, but i think it's super important to consider it alongside hayley williams' speech, which happened around 20 minutes before MCR's set.

i think it's important because they were both fighting similar wars in the beginning. they were fighting to be respected in a genre that they were helping to catapult into the public consciousness. they were both treated like shit by their peers, villified by the media and disrespected by 'fans' in the scene, and only by prioritising their own creativity and art and by cultivating a fan base that appreciated it, did they manage to shake that shit off.

wwwy is a festival created for the sake of those looking to relive the emo days of yesterdecade. and that's fine. there's nothing wrong with nostalgia, and nostalgia tours - if the years you're reliving are good ones. if they're the best you have to offer.

for paramore and mcr, the best is yet to come. for paramore, the noughties were filled with misogyny and sexism, and now there's less of that. for mcr, the noughties were filled with homophobia and pressure to conform, and now there's less of that too. for them both, the early 2000s was a period of time where they had to work harder than everyone else to get a foot in the door.

and in 2022, you have them headline your nostalgia festival, because guess who kept selling all their tickets and releasing good music while the sexist, homophobic creeps kept falling into obscurity, or put behind bars, or cancelled on twitter? guess who's still big enough to pull those emo crowds?

paramore is. and mcr is.

you mustn't blame yourself

do y'all ever just write dialogue that goes so hard that you gotta get up and devour a baguette

OKAY who wants to hear about why i think nimona challenges amatonormativity? you do! 🫵

one of the main ways this is accomplished is through ballister and ambrosius’s relationship. it’s arguable that it doesn’t necessarily fit the traditional model of romance - not only are they a queer interracial couple, and not only is their relationship ambiguous in the book, but there are certain instances, especially in the movie, that subvert traditional ideas of romance and friendship.

one instance that really stands out to me is when the director asks ambrosius what’s on his mind and he goes on his imagined rant about how arm-chopping isn’t a love language - you know the one. when he mentions ballister, he refers to him as “the man i love, my best friend.” and not just one or the other, but both! the man i love, and my best friend. he places equal emphasis on both the romantic and platonic aspects of the relationship, valuing ballister in both a romantic context and a platonic context without treating either one as more important than the other.

and even moments such as the first “i love you” and the kiss manage to subvert tradition. both of these things are generally seen as a pretty big deal, especially in fiction - if the characters are kissing or saying “i love you,” it’s usually a moment in which everything changes. a line is drawn, dividing the story into after and now. sometimes it’s dramatic and climactic, with fireworks and a swell of music, but even when it isn’t it’s still seen as a turning point of sorts. now it’s official, now it’s real. but this isn’t the case in nimona. both moments are certainly significant - they do a good job of showcasing the character development and where ballister and ambrosius are on their respective journeys, and are certainly important in terms of representation - but neither one follows the path that most fictional romance does.

another way in which nimona challenges amatonormativity would be the emphasis on friendship! in the tavern scene (in the movie) when ambrosius suggests killing nimona, ballister disagrees and says “she’s my friend.” ambrosius replies with “aren’t i more than that?”, implying he’s more important than a friend - thus upholding amatonormative ideas. ballister becomes angry at that and leaves - challenging this idea and prioritizing his platonic relationship with nimona over his romantic one with ambrosius, as nimona is the one he wants to defend.

additionally, a big part of this scene is the way ballister deliberately rejects institute values while ambrosius unintentionally upholds them. and because the story challenges homophobia and transphobia (and other forms of bigotry) through the lens of the institute, it would make sense for it to challenge amatonormativity too! it’s something that’s become incredibly normalized, to the point that lots of people don’t even know it exists, and this is reminiscent of the institute brainwashing, especially when it comes to ambrosius - he’s been manipulated his whole life and probably genuinely doesn’t understand the level to which he’s internalized institute beliefs.

ballister prioritizes nimona many times, actually. when he tells ambrosius she’s “smart, kind, and quite sophisticated,” when he’s overjoyed to see her again at the end, when he refuses to kill her and saves her instead. over and over, he proves how much he cares about her, even when this involves directly going against what ambrosius wants - which, of course, is really what the institute wants. a core tenant of amatonormativity is the false notion that romantic relationships are more important or valuable than other types of relationships, but ballister actively goes against this!

to conclude, as a story that at its core is about identity and challenging societal beliefs, nimona defies expectations and traditional ideas of what it should or shouldn’t be. it’s possible that amatonormativity wasn’t what the creators had in mind, but the story still manages to challenge it with grace and elegance. just like its main character, nimona refuses to conform to what others want it to be.

This is like the second coming of christ to me

the besties

Fanart for @sugarpasteltmnt ‘s fanfic The Neon Void

Sugarpastels if you’re reading this- I LOVE YOUR WRITING. When I read the entire fic in one sitting I had to physically stand up and take a walk and hold my inevitable tears back. My heart was thrown into a blender in the most beautiful way.

if you aren’t Sugarpastels reading this, however, GO READ it when you have time. It is amazing.

still working plotting for my main fic and yknow. i see a lot of posts laughing at cassandra/the inq/justinia/whoever for wanting to recruit hawke as the inquisitor but like there's actually a lot of really disturbing tones to it, when i thought it through.

cassandra recruits cullen into the inquisition. and yeah, he comes in as a military commander, despite the fact that he has no military experience, but i think that's more related to like. the roots of the first inquisition. they later became the templars and the seekers -- cullen is military commander not because they expected to have to fight anyone but because justinia was going to use the writ to build the chantry's military strength if the bloody conclave didn't work out. cullen was hired because he's the fucking knight-commander of kirkwall, and justinia wants him to rebuild the templars. i know people like to laugh about it because it makes "no sense" but the military commander was never meant to do the kind of fighting they ended up having to do in the game -- it was intended to remake the templars. cullen trained hundreds of templar recruits in kirkwall and he's one of the only few that hasn't broken away from the chantry despite the dissolution of the nevarran accord. he's the most obvious pick for commander, when you consider what the inquisition wants.

bw canon hawke is a mage hawke who sided w the mages in kirkwall. they recruited a templar that knows him personally, that has had an antagonistic relationship with him in the later years, that knows how he works and thinks. if they had gotten their hands on hawke, do you actually think they wouldve politely asked him to lead the inquisition?

You know maybe the horseshoe theory would've been abandoned long ago if certain self-proclaimed "leftists"* weren't so hell-bent to prove it right every five seconds.

(* they're about as much "leftists" as terfs are "feminists")

and another thing about sanji that no one talks about is that his attempted sacrifice at the end of thriller bark was different from zoros and thats why zoro stopped him. zoro and luffy have a unique perspective on their own mortality we've been shown where theyre both totally unbothered by the prospect of dying for what they believe in, but also they are never planning to die. Blackleg "tell Luffy he'll have to find a new chef" Sanji was planning to die. That's why Zoro wouldn't let him do it.

RIP to Elphaba and her water allergy I know she would've loved to walk barefoot around a creek