Luzu: Yeah, you know, I told people that I would happily make some dictionaries so that you guys have expressions to use, like you can have a book in your inventory that you open to have like basic Spanish stuff, I'm gonna mess his one, like his -
Phil: Oh yes, please.
Luzu: - book up, and I'm gonna make all like, have no meaning.
Phil: Please give him like, a - a silly book, a - give him a silly one.
Luzu: Yeah. How do I pronounce his name, Wilbur, or Wilb? Or Wil?
Phil: You got it right the first time! Yup, it's Wilbur.
Luzu: Oh yeah? Alright.
Phil: Yup yup! Or just Wil. Either - either works.
Luzu: I wanna have to find a way to, yeah, have a cold revenge. Like, he - he may be laughing today, and, "heehee, haha!" we did like this small joke, and in 20 days I'm gonna destroy everything that he loves in this server.
there are a lot of bad takes in the atla fandom (like, atla fandom may as well be a bad take generator) but something that has really been pissing me off lately is the assumption that you can categorize the fire nation royal family into good guys and bad guys. first of all, obviously, they're all bad guys. they are imperialists. but the idea that "sozin ozai azula bad" and "iroh lu ten ursa zuko azulon(?!) good" is actually insane.
lu ten died attempting to conquer the earth kingdom. lu ten was there because his father, iroh, was leading the siege. ursa laughed when iroh joked about burning ba sing se to the ground. zuko laughed too, mirroring his dear mother who taught him about the wonders of imperialism. and the fact that some people think that azulon was a good guy because he favored iroh is crazy. he favored iroh because iroh was the better imperialist, was more charming and tactically savvy as he bent the world to his will. people who think that azulon didn't like ozai because ozai was cruel literally have it backwards. ozai was cruel because azulon didn't like him. sozin shaped azulon, and azulon shaped iroh and ozai. azulon reigned for most of the war, and he was responsible for decimating the southern water tribe and colonizing the earth kingdom.
iroh only realizes the error of his ways well into middle age, after spending a majority of his life colonizing the world. he only stops to reconsider once he experiences the adverse effects of war for himself through the loss of his son. likewise, zuko can only gain empathy for the victims of the war by being one himself, as a refugee in the earth kingdom, and bonding with people who have been hurt by the fire nation. azula doesn't get that chance. ozai doesn't get that chance. azulon, lu ten, and ursa are dead, so they will never get that chance. but it's not like there is some ontological moral divide separating azula from zuko. zuko was a sensitive child whereas azula was better at embodying fire nation values of power and cunning. zuko was punished for his outbursts whereas azula knew how to keep her mouth shut. therefore, zuko experienced circumstances that led him to disavow fire nation imperialism.
but that doesn't mean that azula is ontologically evil. azula was the iroh of her generation to zuko's ozai, and iroh (eventually) disavowed conquest as well. there is no inherent divide between good and bad, monster and human. ursa was a warm and loving mother to zuko, just as iroh was a warm and loving father to lu ten, but they both laughed at others' suffering. their values were shaped by their circumstances and experiences. their ideologies do not make them less human, or less capable of change, just as their interpersonal behaviors do not negate their abhorrent ideologies.
do you have any particular thoughts regarding marcille being a half-elf? its interesting to me considering the fact that she seems self-conscious about being a half-elf, but denies it when its brought up
i remember marcille looking visibly uncomfortable over laios simply asking her how old she is, which i think the only reason she might feel nervous about this is because it might reveal her as a half-elf to him.
she's never corrected anybody whose called her an elf either.
never mind the circumstances of the reveal, in which thistle goes on about how half-elves are inferior and accusing her of wanting to become full blooded elf, she seemed particularly upset like he struck a nerve-
i wish the half-elf thing was built upon more. also, underrated marcille line:
okay so i revisited this sequence just to make sure I could back myself up and it's just... man. there's a lot going on.
the first reaction we get from Marcille is this huge panel that takes up half of the page
she is viscerally affected. flushing to the tips of her ears with the intensity of it. and we see it again, a few pages later
so it might seem like she's embarrassed about it and lying to herself, but... I really think it's just that Thistle is accidentally hitting sore spots. If you really look at what he says to get these reactions
"you'll live out your entire life [...] and die that way too"
"a hundred years from now, nobody will be there"
Hear me out. I think, if he stuck to harping on about her inferiority without bringing up how terrifyingly long-lived she is, she wouldn't have been as bothered. But right now, Thistle is accidentally hitting all the marks on Marcille's deepest fears-- and this is after the Winged Lion promised her that her dreams could come true in an extremely vulnerable moment, so it also hits her slightly guilty conscience as well.
I do truly believe that Marcille isn't bothered about being a half-elf the way that people assume she'd be bothered by it. To her, the biggest problem with being a half-elf is that it's isolating.
On one hand, it's not hard to imagine why she'd distance herself from elves in the west. A lot of them can clock her as a half-elf on sight, unlike other races, and therefore she's always branded with this weird stigma of being Othered -- I would even say that she considers herself lucky for being born outside of elven culture instead of having to grow up in it. I mean, just... look at the way elves talk about her.
Skipping past the uncomfortable implication of what 'not tolerating the existence' of half-elves would actually entail, this is incredibly fucking annoying. You can see why she wouldn't want to be around elves much. You see a lot of Marcille reacting badly here, but honestly, almost all of it can be attributed to her freaking out that her bluff completely failed. She's honestly more paying attention to Izutsumi's footsteps and trying to coordinate an opportunity to escape.
And in the end, you see her built-up frustration at being asked if she wants to be a full-blooded elf like 2-3 times in a row.
Yeah, yeah, "the lady doth protest too much," and all. But we know Marcille. We know that she's a lot more embarrassed and horrendously unconvincing when she's being prodded about something she's actually self-conscious about.
Moving onto the flipside of things, it might seem weird that she "pretends" to be a full elf around other races, but it's not really that strange if you think about it. Again, people are weird about her being infertile or whatever, and a lots of them don't even know much about what sets half-elves apart from everyone else. I mean, look at how uncomfortable Laios is just asking her about it
and look at how exasperated and resigned she looks
And like... she's right. Where would that come up in normal conversation? Why would she go out of her way to tell them? She's functionally a normal elf to other races anyway -- got the ears, the abnormally long "childhood", and the huge mana capacity. Unless it's directly relevant or important for people to know, I don't think it's all that strange or indicative of insecurity that she prefers not to bother with it.
(This combined with her sense of being an "outsider" to elf culture also explains why she thinks elf superiority is embarrassing. She sees the way elves treat short-lived races from the "outsider" perspective nonetheless, and thinks it's obnoxious; especially more so because she usually has to play the elf around short-lived races and deal with the reputation of arrogance that elves have built up.)
The sad thing is, this all means that... she doesn't actually fit in anywhere. She doesn't like going out West much because of how elves treat her. But she's also an outsider in the continents she was born in, treated like this exotic long-lived alien choosing to live among short-lived races for some reason. She is always an outsider, the Other, no matter where she goes. Add in the fact that she'll live longer than literally anyone she knows, and it's honestly kind of heartbreaking.
And I think that's the crux of it. Marcille really doesn't act like she's at all self-conscious about being a half-elf because of any feelings of inferiority or being half-made or whatever. She considers herself a perfectly legitimate being and might even, in some ways, consider herself superior to normal elves because she's not blind with elf supremacy or whatever. (And whatever "elven biases" she displays, all of them are born more out of the fact that she's kind of bad at conceptualizing how other races age and mature compared to herself, not that she actually considers herself better or more mature simply for being an elf.)
I think that whatever self-consciousness Marcille has about being a half-elf is, instead, related to terror and loneliness. The reminder that it ensures she'll never truly belong anywhere for the rest of her very long life. The reminder that, in truth, even she's not actually sure how old she is by other races' standards (hence the discomfort when asked how old she is). She doesn't want to not be a half elf, or be a full elf or full tall-man-- in her ideal world, she's still a half-elf. She just gets to live out her life at the same pace with the people she loves and doesn't have to say goodbye again and again and again until she dies.
and one last very important panel, right after Mithrun tells her that all her desires would be devoured
In her ideal world, she's still a half-elf and reality magically starts marching at her pace. But failing that, the second best thing is that she's still a half-elf-- but one who is able to accept reality and let go of her fear.
(But the rest of the story pans out the way it does because, to Marcille, taking reality apart and reshaping it was less scary than simply and fully reconciling with it.)
@tmnt-tychou 's Mona and my iteration Venus just being cool, hot and couture
the problem is I thought it'd be so fun and cute to draw them in couture looks I think captures their spirits/character from the years and seasons their debut episodes aired.
.......tl;dr it was a pain in the ass finding full body reference of any one outfit and I fucking had to figure out wha the shoes were in Mona's look by looking at the photo of a different look coming after it on the runway.... so anyway.
Mona's debut episode aired mid September 1990, didn't see any A/W 1990 looks that seemed like her so I went into the next year with something from Yves Saint Laurent's couture a/w 1991 show.
Venus' debut episode aired .....uhhh... her whole introduction spanned 5 episodes. whatever that's A/W, hence putting her in Valentino A/W 1997
How tall is Bay OP compared to the TFP bots & cons?
I just imagine TFP Megs having to look up at Bay OP, scared shitless as Bay OP glares down at him like he just insulted his carrier. Bay OP bitch-slapped a Dinobot (Grimlock) over twice/three times his size like it was nothing, he would destroy TFP Megs.
"In my universe, I ripped your head clean off your shoulders. And that was when I was missing an arm."
Imagine if they met Bay Megs too... :0
I was going to sit here and make a joke about how Bay! Optimus was so much shorter than his Counterpart and Megatron in TFP! Because I when I was first researching it I saw he was about 22 feet tall compared to their enormous 30’ and 32’ feet… but then I found sources saying Bay! Was 28’ or that TFP OP was 35…. DOES ANYONE KNOW THEIR CANNONICAL ACTUAL HEIGHTS???? Am I just blind???? Do I not know how to research??? Does anyone have an official chart???
Anyway, Bay! Op IS the goat when it comes to violence no matter what size, but I had such a funny image of him being a smidge taller than bumble and looking UP at Megatron saying those same things and still getting that same reaction. AND THEN Megatron- if he ever found out about his Bay! Counterpart would have to deal with the fact that he had a stint where he went mad in the middle of Africa with transformer organic babies (????) and ended up stranded on earth with little to nothing anyway being hunted down by three different organizations so Dude is pressed to say the least. I feel like Bay! Megatron doesn’t have that same dog in him like TFP Megatron does tbh.
Now, if Bay! Op was taller….. It would be like facing a dark ronin of death leaving a path of destruction in his wake. Yikes.
Oh yeah, i just realized that I actually have some more Mind stuff from like, forever ago. A doodle page sort of deficated to my headcanons. (Don't mind that these are all uncropped for some reason?? I'm not fixing it. Too many screenshots.)
One aspect of this I do want to delve into are his wings, or moreso his lackthereof. In my other post you can see he does have wings but they're broken and totally nonfunctional, and really either way it works, i just changed to the latter when drawing him because it looked cooler.
abut overall, I've not really seen the idea bounced around too often to play with angel/fallen angel imagery between heart and mind, and I thought it would be really fun to play into fallen angel imagery for mund since a lot of demons represent knowledge and science, which is very applicable to him, and since Heart is already angel themed. Much like the headcanon that heart's eyes were taken as a punishment by Soul for the fighting, I like to think that at some point, Mind's wings were shredded by either soul or Heart — Soul, as a punishment just the same, or Heart, in a different attempt to let out his anger and violent tendencies on Mind.
The Halo is more straightforward. But there is the one where Mind seems to be crying, which I don't necessarily think he Feels sadness because his emotional network isn't very complex (for ... obvious reasons.) But no less, being in a manifeststion of a body gives him tear ducts, and under stress he just cries oil or something akin to it, a dark black sludge. He doesn't understand why it happens even when they're not whole, because he thinks he shouldn't be able to cry at all. He doesn't like it.
those 2011 pics remind me of hard the McLaren race suits used to fuck, I loved the vodafone era suits so much 🥹
YES AGREED!!! I love the Vodafone McLaren livery, literally peak!!!!!
Thank you for sending this ask bcs now I get to talk about 2011 in particular. There were these special Saturday race suits and they're all so pretty!!! Hugo Boss did a design competition to celebrate their partnership with McLaren and different artists made different designs for the Quali days. They're so beautiful 🥹🥹 Why can't they do anything fun like that now???? I digress, I went through all the Qualis and compiled pics of all of them!!
I cannot believe that Vanitas is a "I'm not a bigot because I hate everyone equally" guy and Noé is a "I see people not categories" guy, but they're both being 100% correct and sincere about it
What do you think about Skyward Sword? I'm playing it for the first time now and it's really enjoyable
Long story short, skyward sword is the game that got me into this fandom! in 2011 when I was but a 10 yo, I watched a let's play that released weekly (or was it daily?) and I was OBSESSED. It was kind of the first time I really got into a game with a proper narrative, and it blew my little mind. It's easily in my top 3 just because of that.
I can admit that now that I'm older it does have its flaws. The story pacing can be frustrating, and to some revisiting old areas isn't as charming as it is to me. Demise's design is racist garbage and I can see why the massive shift in the lore felt like a betrayal to some older fans.
The fact is that to me it is an utterly whimsical and unique experience full of characters I adore so very deeply. Every segment of the game reminds me of another morning I woke up excited to watch another episode. Like a bottle of sunshine!!!! And as I've grown I've found myself marveling how each element of the game comes together in such a solid way. Sure it isn't a masterpiece but the game will always hold a magical place in my heart.
I also own a copy of the original wii version myself, and feel the gameplay is wonderful. There's a lot that can be said about the motion controls, especially discussions of accessibility are important, but I feel it is far from the game ruin-er people make it seem like it is. (Or maybe I just got lucky.) I hear the switch version is great too.
I guess the conclusion is that it's a game that holds a very special place in my heart and without it this webcomic would likely not exist.
I think there's something special in the fact that, for the bnha character animal spread, an animal like a cat or smthg wasn't chosen for Tomura (which still would have fit him) but instead a less commonly known animal and it actually completely fits his character
It's funny looking at that spread and it's like "Shouto and Ochako cats! Toga lizard! Dabi snake! Baku dog! Deku sheep! Endeavor gorilla! All Might goat! *grabs you by the shoulders* Aye Aye lemur that is endangered and known for its supposed omen even though they are misunderstood creatures with long hands and only use them for foraging they do NOT cause curses and omens it is not a part of their being or dna they were not born to kill. are you listening do you HEAR what I am SAYING about Tomura Shigaraki"
Not that the others don't have some sort of meaning to them but it's just funny to me, the contrast