cant believe i havent seen anyone do this yet but. riptide pokemon au. heres my fucking thoughts
gillion's team is a solid mixture of electric, ice and water types. probably something built for competitive play but i aint that kinda smart so idk. BUT i do know his ace is a gyarados
gil's team was given to him by the elders over the years, and he was trained to be the best pokemon battler of the undersea
despite being told not to, gil is very close with his pokemon. he has a soft spot for all of them and can't Not be empathetic for them. theyre his babies :)
pretzel is a clobbopus. i know theyre not pink but listen. its literally a punching octopus. its also the cutest octopus pokemon LOL
pre-character arc gillion has a one track mind for competition Only. he loves his pokemon but they are also his weapons, in a way
as he spends more time in the oversea he adopts a more relaxed team. theyre still extremely strong and he still has his competitive pokemon but he stops caring about their stats and movepool and starts caring more about their personalities and bonding with them
chip didnt have any pokemon until he joined the black rose, where arlin gifts him an eevee
after the hole in the sea, it's just him and eevee against the world
his eevee refuses to evolve - especially during his time with price's gang, but even afterwards when theyre by themselves on the ocean eevee won't evolve
chip had his heart set on being a water type trainer, like arlin was, so he tries to convince eevee to evolve into a vaporeon. this is a running bit
its also a running bit that the team chip builds are all different types and use different strategies. members of the crew are pokemon btw i think gryffon is a pangoro LOL
his eevee is a little SHIT just in general. has cute privilege and knows it.
when gil is trapped in the dunjon, instead of taking his sword chip starts using his pokemon. he discovers that water types never really were his thing, after all.
its here, where chips at his lowest in a long time, demotivated and thinking of leaving his crew behind, that eevee evolves. into an umbreon - a dark type, but also a friendship evolution.
it evolves to show him that someone does care, that someone does want him around - his oldest friend, his pokemon.
chip learns to use all his pokemon to their greatest ability. i think he would have a bias for fire and dark types, but he becomes a well rounded and skilled pokemon trainer
jayjay! the ferins have a tradition where they breed their corviknights and pass the rookidees down to their kids. family pokemon :)
ava happens to get a shiny rookidee! she gets her rookidee right when she joins the navy and starts working under her father
this rookidee is...very nervous. greyhound energy. it's a shy little thing that has trouble battling and is very attached to ava and her little sister jay
ava takes the time to work through rookidee's issues and try and build it's confidence, jay acting as babysitter when ava is away at sea
at some point, after rookidee evolves into corvisquire, ava never comes home.
this ofc fucks with both jay and corvisquire. it puts corvisquire's training back by a lot and leaves jay grieving and angry
once she leaves with chip, she takes corvisquire with her. its too scared to battle and needs to be on or near her at all times, but it's a piece of her sister jay can't bring herself to leave behind.
jay ends up building a flying/steel type team, with corviknight growing and gaining its confidence as a pirate pokemon rather than a navy pokemon
its still got mega separation anxiety tho. it wears a nervous dog vest LOL
if anyone has anything to add i am all ears i fuckignlove my sillies and i love pokemon so. woe
Listen, you should never film strangers in public without their consent, but I swear there need to be fines or something for people who do that shit in some spaces. For example: I had to go to the ER last night, and some jerk filmed a woman who just came in and was clearly having an asthma attack. She immediately got to go back, and he was unhappy about that. Believe me, I get that it sucks having to wait when you're in pain, but you don't get to pick who deserves care when. The medical system in the US is a nightmare, and the ER could be the worst moment of someone's life. No one deserves to be recorded because some jack ass believes someone doesn't look like they need care.
This is fine to reblog. People who film strangers should be shamed if nothing else.
There’s something horrifyingly beautiful about Tess’s final moments. In the midst of the most dire chaos, as she waits for her death to come rushing past so she can blow it sky high and give cordyceps a big fuck you one last time, one of the infected stops. It looks at her, really looks. Her own mortality is personified in this infected. It’s death that’s looking at her, and it sees her. She looks her own death in the eye, and the suspense is so high as it approaches. But then, it doesn’t bite her throat out like we all expect it to.
It kisses her. What’s more, it kisses her gently. And I think it was a brilliant choice on the writers part, because it reminded me that the infected aren’t supposed to be evil. Sure, they’re scary as hell, but really, they’re just trying to survive. They’re connected to one another, they can feel each other from miles away. They seek out and want to be close to their own kind, just like the human survivors do. And when they do find each other, they kiss hello.
And after so long apart from a loved one, someone you know and trust with every instinct in your body, wouldn’t you want to kiss them too?
One of the most tragic and compelling aspects of Dunmeshi, to me, is that we’ll probably never know (unless Kui tells us lol) how Delgal actually felt about Thistle. I’ve seen people say that he genuinely cared for him as a brother and his journey to the surface was to save him from his madness as much as it was his people. I’ve seen people say that he saw Thistle as nothing more than a fancy accessory or tool that ended up going astray. Others I’ve seen (and personally agree with) say that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. But honestly, I think any one of these interpretations has the potential to be correct… and that’s just heartbreaking.
After all, Delgal is dead. Like, dead-dead. The very first chapter of the manga starts with his spirit leaving this mortal coil, taking that answer with him. And…
How he talks about Thistle here… it’s interesting. He does not ask for him to be talked down, or captured or imprisoned, but instead “defeated”. Which Mithrun interprets as asking for his death… which is reasonable, because that’s likely how the vast majority of adventurers interpreted his words, too. Obviously as he was crumbling to dust he probably didn’t have the capacity to be particularly verbose or explain the complex backstory to how the kingdom ended up this way, but the effect is the same no matter how he may have felt with it. He asked for Thistle to be killed.
But… even in situations where he wasn’t under any such time limit to explain what was going on, he still seemed not to. Most glaringly:
Yaad seemingly has no idea that it was Delgal’s fault that Thistle sought the demon’s power. Obviously he couldn’t talk to him about it because Thistle was, uh, a little out there by that point, but why didn’t Delgal explain? Was he embarrassed? Mournful? Couldn’t find the words?
Delgal was scared of dying. He wanted prosperity at any cost, and how could Thistle possibly refuse? Did he even realize that what he was the one who pushed his own brother— One who basically helped raise him despite being a child himself, and in many ways is still a child— down this path? Or was it like watching an overzealous employee misinterpret directions?
The way Yaad describes things here makes it sound like Thistle simply dug too deep in his studies and fell into madness, but we know that’s not true. Delgal didn’t “suggest” he learn magic, he wanted a mage who could help himself and his people defy death, which he admits to Thistle openly:
So, why? Why not tell his grandson, at least, the truth of the matter? Did he worry it might make the remaining residents more likely to upset Thistle, and therefore suffer the consequences? Did he just not care? For what it’s worth though, Yaad does suspect the truth from Delgal’s behavior.
He “always blamed himself” for his descent into the dark arts. This is just Yaad’s observation, and that’s without knowing that it was quite literally Delgal’s fault Thistle went down this path. So, why? Why was it all kept a secret?
Of course, this made things ripe for the winged lion to manipulate to its advantage. Clearly despite knowing he’d pushed him into using it, Delgal still thought the lion was a force of good that was misused by Thistle as a result of his madness. His face in that last panel is particularly haunting. He looks terrible, gaunt and pale with overgrown hair and missing teeth. Had he gone mad, with grief and sorrow, as well?
Could he no longer see Thistle the way he did when they were younger? No one can ask him, because he died long before the story even began.
To go back to the original question, well, how did Delgal see Thistle? None of the previous points make a definitive answer any clearer, and I think that’s just brilliant. And so, so tragic.
some splat doodles in between doing a bigger project for an irl thing
[IMG ID: Three images of various Splatoon characters. Image 1 features Shiver and Frye in alternative detailed outfits reminiscent of their in-game outfits. Shiver is holding her fan and Frye is grabbing her own arm.
Image 2 is a few various drawings of Frye. Top left is her as the 'sitting cutely' reaction image. Top right is tiny Frye dressed as a 'portly little sailor boy' with a lollipop. Bottom left is a tiny Frye doing a peace sign and bottom right is Frye when she sits down in her splatfest performance doing the finger gun pose.
Image 3 is a page full of Marinas plus one Pearl. Left is a fullbody of Marina in coveralls and a tanktop with gloves and a wrench in her pocket. Upper right is a drawing of Marina welding on the ground and kicking her legs. Below that is Pearl and Marina doing the tongue out hands on head anime pose with the label on Marina saying 'built a pipe bomb.' Pearl's label says 'funded it.' /END ID]
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!
Took the bus to the big city yesterday and it only stops near where I live in the early morning and late at night, so I left a bowl for Pandolf with enough food for his 2 meals of the day. He didn’t start eating because it was too early for breakfast and he’s punctilious about mealtimes, but I told him “Bon appétit” to Authorise The Kibble, then left. When I came home at night it was long past his normal dinner time yet I found the bowl half-full—he had eaten the breakfast portion but since he only got 1 bon appétit he didn’t dare to eat the rest for dinner. I don’t think if I had said it twice in a row he would have understood that one of them was a Bon Appétit voucher for his next meal unfortunately. But I’m always amazed by his scruples, he is the most principled animal I know. When he was a puppy he would try to stick his head in his bowl while I poured the food so I taught him to wait until he heard ‘bon appétit’ before going anywhere near it—and very quickly in his mind the words became an incantation that turns the contents of his bowl from a miasma of forbidden unthinkableness into edible food that belongs to him.
This is Pandolf waiting for me to cast the Legal Food spell:
Being with an ooman brought forth a good number of oddities, most of which they adored.
You were different from them, in terms of looks, yes, but also in terms of culture. And as they whiped away the liquid streaming from your eyes they realized once again how different you were in terms of morals as well.
"I'm a monster!" you sobbed, your voice frantic and shaky, and they took you into their arms on instinct at the sound.
"You're overreacting." They attempted to console you, which didn't quite work as intended they came to realize as you slapped their chest.
"I killed it! The poor little fella... they already have such a short lifespan..."
Seeing you in so much pain over the death of a being that didn't even have a conscience, they wondered how you managed to think of them as anything other than a monster. With their walls of proudly displayed trophies.
Some of them had only half your life expectancy, some lived longer than them. Some even had family.
"Fella?" they instead focused on consoling you through your strange breakdown "what makes you so sure it was male?"
You gasped, your eyes suddenly wide in horror "I didnt even think of that! What if it was female? What if it was expecting? What if I just killed an entire bloodline??!"
Though they were apparently not very good at it.
Unsure on what to do or say, they simply continued to hold you, the purring that they've subconsciously started to do getting louder.
"If it brings you any comfort", they began quietly as they heard your sobbing come to a slow stop "its unlikely it felt any pain, being the size that it was."
"It does," you mumbled, only parting from them shortly to whipe at your face "thank you."
They simply nodded.
How your species managed to become your planets apex predators remained a mystery to them.
Hmmm just gonna spit this headcanon out in text post form since A. I don't think I could exposit it well enough in image form and B. It's not actually textually/thematically substantiated and I don't like actually staking my stuff on just vibes alone*
But anyway. I'd say it's pretty evident that all the islanders forgot their names, right? King obviously. Because why the hell else would he do that, but also Siffrin No Middle Names No Last Name.
They're 'pretty sure' they've 'always' been 'Just Siffrin' 'as long as they can remember'. It's a pretty cruel twist of the knife to say that they don't even get to keep their birth name as a memento, which is why I'm saying as such.
My utterly unsubstantiated claim is I think it'd be cute to say that Sisyphus *is* the name Siffrin initially picked, assuming the myth of King Sisyphus is recontextualised as idk, just a play or something in the setting. But I like the idea of Siffrin going 'oh shit 🫵 he's just like me fr' at a tortured fictional character long before the irony kicks in.
As for how Sisyphus -> Siffrin. I think that chronic mumbler and emotional doormat Sif just did not correct people who misheard the name during their time travelling, and went through enough places with incompatible phonologies (pronounceable sounds in the language) without ever really writing it down that it just got kinda. Changed until it was unrecognisable, and Siffrin just went with it until the earlier pronunciations slipped out of their swiss-cheese brain. And they just kinda don't remember any of that.
Also, something something the horrid realisation that Siffrin also named themselves after a King. Just not as blatantly.
*(though I think there's something here about Siffrin, a guy from a belief system that seems to thoroughly disincentivise autonomy and self-motivated choice continuously having their hand forced to make changes/choices they don't want but have no choice but to... It's not solid enough to really back this up tbh, but it informs it.)