Why bother? (Why bother?) It's gonna hurt me. (It's gonna hurt me.) It's gonna kill when- (Why bother!) -You desert me! (Gonna hurt me!)

Set after Nightmare. Laios is reminiscing and contemplating.

TotK DLC idea!

The screen is black. You don’t hear anything for a long time. Then, faintly, in the distance, you can hear it.

Link. Link. Open your eyes.

While the line echoes familiarity, the voice does not.

Or. Well. It does. Because while it isn’t Zelda, it’s a familiar man’s voice speaking gently, so gently you almost don’t recognize it because there’s no way he ever spoke like this in the main game.

But he is now. And instead of a golden light being the first image you see before the screen shows Link awakening… you see gloom floating in the air. The image cuts to a Hylian waking up who… doesn’t look like Link from TotK?? He’s different, still small in stature, with slightly tanner skin, platinum light blonde hair, and red eyes. But… something’s wrong with his forehead. There’s a weird line on it.

This new character you apparently are gonna be playing in the DLC blearily blinks his eyes open, clearly groggy and too weak to really move. But then that line on his forehead moves a hair, it splits apart, and you realize it’s a freaking eye, red and yellow and it’s like the ones on gloom hands and oh gosh what the hell is it doing on his forehead—

Link realizes something is off and his eyes blow wide, his hands reach for his forehead and he screams in agony and terror, only for someone to scoop him into a hug to soothe him.

And suddenly you realize why that voice was eerily familiar.

It’s Ganondorf. He resurrected you from the era of the Imprisoning War. You, who have a history with him and his family. You, who he wants to protect, who he views as his kid, who he calls a prince and says he’ll keep you safe by controlling your body with his dark magic if he has to.

Welcome to Tears of the Kingdom: Hero’s Shadow.

You have to play a long gone Hero who was resurrected. Ganondorf, who is still recovering his strength in preparation for killing the current Hero, tasks you with finding your betrothed, his daughter, as well as his wife. They’re buried somewhere in the Depths like you were. He wants you to find their burial sites so he can use his secret stone to resurrect them like he did you, and control them as well. Which is doubly bad when you realize his wife was the original Sage of Lightning. He gives you free reign to wander once you go through a tutorial (he tests you to see if you’ve recovered enough strength), because he knows you love wandering and collecting things. Your own personal objective, however, is trying to help Hyrule from the Depths, to break free from Ganondorf’s control, because Link would rather set himself on fire than let Ganondorf resurrect and control the love of his life and his mother-in-law. Your best hope is to find shards of the shattered Master Sword to try and stab the eye on Dark Link’s forehead and break the control Ganondorf has on you. Until you can, though, the monsters are your allies, you can teleport across the Depths by manifesting out of the gloom created by gloom hands (just like what Phantom Ganon does), and the world below is your oyster. If you get too close to sword shards when gloom hands are nearby, Ganondorf can see your attempt and immediately takes control of your body, and no matter what button you press Link just walks back to Ganondorf’s location and stays there until you get a chance to try again.

You start with three hearts, all empty looking like when gloom hurts you, and if you get injured they just shatter. Whenever they all shatter, you respawn at Ganondorf’s location because his gloom hands came and rescued you from dying. The only way you can get more hearts is by collecting poes and offering them to the statues in the Depths. You can communicate with the spirits of soldiers, who may give you combat tips or info about the area. If you gain enough of Ganondorf’s trust, he’ll let you command monsters, and he might even let you wander the Surface (under his supervision) during a blood moon.

You learn of Link’s and Ganondorf’s history through discovering ancient relics/texts that trigger memories. This connection between you and Ganondorf stems back to time before the war, well over ten thousand years ago. Link was engaged to Ganondorf’s daughter, but during the Imprisoning War the family fought against the demon king. Ganondorf did love his family, but he loved power more. Link sacrificed himself, letting himself get mortally wounded to save Rauru from a killing blow. Gan held him as he died, and it allowed Link to both beg him to stop and stab him in the heart with a light shard. The shard didn’t kill him, but it was what Rauru connected with when he hit him in the chest, allowing him to seal Ganondorf away. Ganondorf still wants the world, but his love for his family is still present, though now twisted, so he thinks he can control Link and everyone else with his dark magic in order to keep them safe and in line. Once the threat of the current Hero is eliminated, the world will be his, and his family will be safe. As such, he treats you, Link, the player, like a stubborn child, reeling you in, but does so in a horrific way, torturing Link by controlling him.

You have to break free of this and stop him, and the only hope you have is the distant call of a sword spirit…

ok alien stage fans dont hate me for what im about to say im just throwing the IDEA out there okay. but just listen

you know how we have these two promo images of ivan and till?

("observation" and "decision" by vivinos)

paralleling their young selves and their current selves. young ivan sits with till and happily watches him sing, older ivan stares more seriously at till as they're about to enter the contest, having just made some sort of decision (we don't know what exactly that means yet. to lose? to not compete? to tie? to... win? given his convo with sua that might be the "nicer" option in his mind)

and now the promo art for round 6 dropped, "cure"

its OBVIOUSLY playing on paralleling these shots again. this time it seems to be after till got punished and is asleep or unconscious (or maybe he just has his eyes closed, but i dont think hes awake- he's not the type to be so chill about the face touching)

what if... its also meant to parallel a "future" shot? just like the previous two?

if till ends up dying this round (SAD!) we could end up seeing the second half of it. with ivan's hand on till's corpse. but this is pure conjecture, not super likely. im just saying is all.

wah i looove their designs and animation...

Me: Aw, Silver is turning out to be a sweet guy to and with Suvi and I hope we get to see more of hi-

Brennan: He's leaving for the front kudos see you next week 🫰🏻

Vergil Loving The Shit Out of His Wife

Even though she childish and bothers him to no end.

Loves getting a rise out of him at every opportunity.

Randomly kisses him but violently cringes whenever he gets back at her with sappy poetry or terms of endearment.

Also he’ll kill anyone who thinks of touching a hair on her head or re-directing their wrath onto her.

That raven that keeps messing with her potted peppers on the front porch though?

Vergil’s cool with them.

Jamiegender scholars should we discuss the recurrant emasculation by older men

Thing about Rescue Team DX I don’t like is that it’ll tweak small visual things about the original and it’ll take away some really neat little things about the original

Luke Arnold did not put his entire psyche and pussy into John Silver to the detriment of his own health for yall to say Silver is a mastermind liar and not a fucking repressed bisexual MESS

We all know that it wouldn't be until 5 years later that Richter would fall into Shaft's control, so that's why I drew that moment after his hair had grown. But out of curiosity, I thought to myself how this may have looked when he was younger-- mainly just the expression.

(How did you even get to this idea...?) Well, I was actually thinking about Richter's headband at first, and how it's quite literally an extension of his person. I don't often draw it so still, or even when it is the ends may gently curl. But here, they're totally drooped.

roxas offering to bring ven to get some ice cream every once in a while to destress from searching for sora. keeping up with each other in this way, sharing stories about life in twilight town, what they've found in the realm of darkness. just two boys being friends and trying to get by while finding their missing friend

question: who is your favourite scooby doo character and why?

in a similar vein to my how did you get into scooby doo post from last month, i'm now interested in hearing who your favourite character from the franchise is! are they a member of the core gang or a side character? which iteration/version of theirs do you like best? do you have any specific memories associated with them? do they mean a lot to you personally, or do you just think they're neat? it's time to gush about them in the tags/replies!!

there's a guy who i dont work with but who works from my building as a consultant for a job-center type organization, and whenever he comes in he like. sets such a good example of patience, compassion, good manners, and...i dont know, gentleness that it makes me try harder not to be irritable or impatient with patrons. two totally different jobs, we never even speak unless he's asking for the stapler or we're saying hi and bye on his way in and out of the building, but every thursday good old boring average chris shows up to set up his laptop at one of our public tables and meet clients, and he's so goddamn nice i'm like okay i have to be nice too . so thanks chris

Say what you will about the Cyrano movie (and one day I'll be able to in a halfway articulate manner), but I am still mildly obsessed with "Every Letter", and I think about this ending couplet all the time...

Your letters are drawings on me from above I know who you are and I know you are loved

Just... the idea of Cyrano and Christian receiving a letter in return from Roxanne and feeling their breath catch both with ecstasy and with bitter regret.

I know who you are...

But she can't. But she mustn't. But it would break her heart--she would never trust them again. But it wouldn't be fair to Christian. But Cyrano could never show his face again. But they already feel themselves burn under her gaze, and to meet it honestly without the armor of a soldier, of these letters, would scorch them until nothing remains. But the only true honor is to hide, even if they know it's really the coward's way out. But the only safety (if they were being brutally honest with themselves) is to hide.

... and I know you are loved.

But God, they wish they didn't have to.

do you think andrew could have been nominated for an oscar?

I honestly think he had a solid chance before award season started. His name was top five of everyone's lists, and he even did some of the pre-award show press gigs like the roundtable discussion and the actors on actors series. Then as the award season progressed after the Golden Globes and he didn't make the Emmys or the Critic's Choice awards, that's when he went from definite top five to a strong alternate to the top five with Barry Keoghan and Leonardo DiCaprio thrown in the mix with him.

The nail in the coffin was the lack of a BAFTA nomination, though. If the market (British) his movie should ideally do the best in didn't stand up for him and go "Listen - we know the movie is limited run and even that's not officially out everywhere yet - but he is that good and one of the best we have to offer", then who else was? I was telling some other people on here the day the nominations dropped that was the one award I wasn't even worried about because I thought that was a no brainer. Like, the night before the announcement I actually checked the website because they're a few hours ahead of me to see if the names were listed yet. Instead I found some pictures, posted those, and went to bed saying I'd just reblog the news when I woke up. So imagine my confusion in the morning when I saw the ENTIRE internet was scratching its head about what happened.

After that, there was a slight chance the academy would do a 'passion pick' of sorts since his performance was so universally adored from fans and critics alike. But the best actor race was tight this year, and the little extra nugget of Oscar bait he carried with him (being the first gay person to win best actor for playing a gay person) wasn't going to be enough to push him across the line. It felt very much like all the voting bodies said "we enjoyed your performance immensely, buuuut we already have who we want (and truth be told had since the start of the season)", and he was kept in the conversation that long because it would have been dubious not to have him in it to begin with.

I wasn't deluding myself to think he could have won (this was always gonna be Cillian's to lose), I just wanted him nominated. He deserved at least that. But this will not be the last time he's in the running - trust and believe.

Something that struck me.

In the new/hidden/joke ending, Lily can't go down the well because she’s thrown out all her materials.

"Does this mean this run was a success?" 

"Nah, she still got dressed and left the house."

Lily will always make the choice to help before the player starts to control her.

Lily is dressed and ready when the player begins the game. There is no other option. There is no way to call for help, no way to leave unless she's tried at least every length of rope, failed the test at least 10 times..

No matter what images of the gruesome deaths (that the player leads her into) remain in the back of her mind, the choice she makes will always be the same. A choice the player doesn’t get to make: get up, get dressed, and try to help the person in the well.