#does compel me

[taxinealkaloids]

horrible children who are. so so mean to each other

#tlt #the locked tomb #my art #precanon griddlehark dynamic is SO funny. the way they are just no-holds-barred absolutely AWFUL to each other. #the fact that harrow made fun of gideon for saying 'i love you' over her dead mother's grave so gideon nearly choked her to death #and then when gideon recalls this story in gtn she's just like 'yeah lol we were wild kids' #also remember when gideon responded to harrow being kind of bossy with 'your parents must have been so relieved to die' like #imagine saying that knowing full well her parents killed themselves in front of her when she was ten!!!! insane!! #there's no sense of going 'too far' between them. they casually hit what would be considered by most ppl to be 'too far' and then keep going #anyway i don't usually go in for characters-being-kids-together stuff but i will admit that childhood gid+harrow #following each other around absolutely terrorizing each other because they're desperate for each other's attention but also full of #hatred and vitriol #does compel me #like...2 very lonely very traumatized children with only each other for company. what will they do? ENDLESSLY TORTURE EACH OTHER!!! #and yet they are each other's emotional support person. its so good.

[raycani]

Stars fading                     

                                          but I linger

                                                                                                 on de a   r

#what does it mean what does it all mean #compels me though #welcome home #welcome home arg #welcome home fanart #wally darling #welcome home puppet show

[thatswhatsushesaid]

psa that the day there are no jgy stans left on tumblr dot com is the day i am dead

but rest assured i'll go to my grave exactly as i lived: obnoxiously proclaiming to everyone within earshot how great lianfang-zun is. narratively, metaphorically, spiritually. sexually, too, like why limit myself. i like to keep my options open

#the spirit of su minshan possessed me for a minute there but like. i'm fine with it #jin guangyao #he did crimes??? good for him 😌 #editing this post to add that while the tone here is clearly joking #i really am fundamentally still engaged with this fandom #and with this book #almost exlcusively because of my enjoyment of jgy #even xiyao is secondary for me like i love it and i'm ride or die for it obvs #but jgy as a character is the main draw for me. and he would have me by the throat even if there was no zewu-jun #(tho i think jgy's life would be more depressing for his absence obviously) #but he is just. /clenches my fists!!! #THE most compelling character in the story and i cannot stop thinking about him!! cannot will not!! #who else in this book has his range? who else can be the doe-eyed idealist AND the spy with blood on his hands who ends a war? #who else is two different greek tragedies and at least two separate shakespearean tragedies rolled into one antagonist #an antagonist who but for the POV of the novel could very easily have been the protagonist #whose moral event horizon is so deeply entwined with his own trauma and abuse that there is no way to meaningfully separate #the violence he does to others from the systemic violence that was done to him for his whole life? #who else in this book manages to get five separate sect leaders utterly obsessed with him no matter how you choose #to interpret that obsession? #no one!!! that's who!! #ain't no one else in the jianghu doing it like lianfang-zun and that's just a goddamn fact

[nancywheeeler]

hopeless time loop. the way out isn’t to save everyone. the way out isn’t to save even one person. the way out isn’t to change anything. the way out is accepting how it happened the first time is how it always will be. that’s how you acted, that’s how they acted, that’s how you would have acted every time if you weren’t given the curse of hindsight. the way out is accepting you can’t fix the past; you can only forgive yourself for it.

#there's this game i love called little hope that plays with these ideas (though not with a time loop) #i do love time loops narratives that explore how a person is confronted with their life and their choices #when forced to live the same day over and over again #and i LOVE time loops that try to reverse mistakes made and lives lost #but to see a character put themselves through loops upon loops upon loops #trying to rectify past mistakes (especially in the case where people died) only to be confronted with the reality it isn't working #and even in a loop where they save everyone the loop just resets #because the universe is essentially saying 'no that isn't how it happened and you know that's not how it happened' #it compels me! #i feel similarly about time travel where time 'fights back' #like this idea that there is a central timeline that time does not like being diverted from #so it will try to course correct itself #you save lincoln from an assassination only for him to die in a train crash #it's a cool way to confront the idea of fate #anyway all tragedies are hopeless time loops thank you for coming to my ted talk #a shout into the void #1k

[greelin]

still so upsetting they gave him abs. This is not my beautiful wife.

#makes no damn sense. does NOT compel me.

[katabay]

original thief series basso & garrett :)

ngl, it's about quality over quantity for me. an npc can have a total of three minutes of screen time, but if they have a cool name, they can live rent free in my head and I'll spend several hours trying to decipher drawable features from a blurry screenshot of pixels

there is a vague hint of a story here, and that's because every time I try to play thi4f, I get incredibly frustrated with how Not Fun the game play is. like, is the story good? well. but it has a PLAGUE. that should've given it instant 'I'll replay this once a year' status in my heart, but the game play sucks so bad that I've never finished it. I can't believe Not Fun gameplay beat out my obsession with narrative plagues.

anyway, the idea is basically if the original era had a game with a plague centric narrative and some other stuff I liked out of thi4f thrown into a narrative blender, with a heavy dash of horror thrown in because some parts of the thief games were scarier to me than entire dedicated horror genre games.

⭐ places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app

#if i had a laptop and the skillset i would attempt a story mod because the thief modders who create whole mission stories #are GENIUS and also somewhat terrifying. love them! xoxox #anyway im actually kind of obsessed with parts of thi4f but its also like. not at that sweet spot of almost good enough to be fun #to talk about. which. for the record. has not stopped me from talking about it at length to people #the city itself actually fucking fascinates me. its almost alive and im SO mad that not a single part of that game is actually terrifying #it should be gnarlier and instead it feels a bit like it doesn't quite want to be trapped in the story it has to tell? #but between the level that has the bodies on the meathooks #and the scene with the bodies hanging from the rafters or whatever that was and garrett living in a clock tower #because the game is very much ALMOST about changing times and authoritarian violence and capitalism #(like. by virtue of how the story sort of spins out i think it misses it's mark on a lot of stuff here #in the sense that i dont feel like it actually wants to tell that story. it wants to. go in a different direction. or at least walk on top #of those themes instead of through it) #ANYWAY between all of those things. it does kind of live in my head rent free. they did create a compelling setting #SHAME THEY DIDNT WANT TO ACTUALLY EAT ANY OF IT #unrelated but i would've given thi4f a 10/10 if they kept garrett's fucking nail polish from the concept art. cowards. unforgivable #thief the dark project #i still have no idea how to tag the game series as a whole RIP #sorry for the dedicated dark project fans. if you know what the general series tag is. please let me know #garrett thief #basso thief

[lazycranberrydoodles]

ughhhhh so probably the tgcf scene i think the most about is in the final battle when hua cheng is holding xie lian and backwards gripping eming with his other hand i . god. this is referenced off of The Fallen Angel by Alexandre Cabanel (i’m pretty sure everyone has seen it by this point) which is surprisingly pretty topical for tgcf.

#all the stuff about falling from heaven and losing your humanity and whatnot #has anyone done this before #also #idk if anybody is keeping track of the lazycranberrydoodles lore but in high school we read paradise lost #and i blorbofied satan #girl who was rotating the devil from the bible in her head for a month #for the final project i ended up accidentally writing twice the required word count. lmao #what does this say about me? doesnt matter. more importantly what does it say about how satan was written 🤨 #what do YOU think milton intended by making satan the most complex compelling and competent character in the book #also also #YIPPEEEEE NEW PFP #pride month is over .... #lesbian hua cheng is still real in our hearts #tgcf #hua cheng #tian guan ci fu #heaven official's blessing #sketch #doodle #hualian #mxtx #art #digital art #my art

[samijey]

Jey Uso - Road to Wrestlemania XL

#wwe #wweedit #jey uso #the usos #monday night raw #wwe raw #stuff i made #does this look like sh*t be honest #shaky handheld footage AND natural light?? bruh #cant even remember the last time i giffed a real sky but those shiny eyes compelled me

[carolperkinsexgirlfriend]

Steddie Upside-Down AU Part 77

Part 1 Part 76

He’s growing – Steve can feel it eating away at the pathways in his brain. He can almost feel the way the connections drop, making way from something else, something more. It’s like he wants Steve to be able to see the paths he’s carving out of his brain so he can.

They’re dark, and winding, and there’s nothing in there at all. Steve’s being hollowed out, for a holy purpose he can’t quite grasp, but he can feel it, coiled cold and hard in the back of his skull, waiting to give him his own divine prophecy. When the time’s right. 

But the time’s not right, and he’s lost in the tunnels of his mind, winding fast, fast, fast through corridors he doesn’t recognize. 

It’s like, double vision. He’s looking at Eddie sitting beside him, twirling his frizzy hair in front of his mouth, but it’s dark, too, and the tunnels are winding. Winding, and empty until they’re not.

It’s not until he sees the man that Steve wonders if he’s looking at something internal at all. Because there’s a man he doesn’t recognize walking inside them. He watches him stumble, he watches him fall. 

Steve doesn’t recognize the man. But, still. Something twists inside as he watches him collapse, He’s supposed to collapse. Steve knows, he can feel it.

But there’s still something pulling in his sternum. He can feel it, sometimes, when Eddie’s looking at him with big, sad eyes. He wants to wring the sadness straight out of him but can’t – he doesn’t know what’s wrong. 

“Something’s wrong.” he says, but he’s not sure if he means the man or the look in Eddie’s eyes, or the way he’s not sure where he is right now.

“What is it, honey?” 

The woman who says it looks frazzled from where she’s kneeling in front of him. He doesn’t know her, but she’s holding Will’s hand. He looks at Will, and his eyes match hers – both wide and worried and trained on him.

“There’s a man,” he says. There are vines circling the man’s wrists, legs, trailing up his neck. Steve rubs his own throat, esophagus convulsing in sympathy pain. And just for a second, there’s a flicker of that same man smiling down at him, settling something over his face, letting him breathe. 

“Where?” the woman asks, at the same moment Eddie asks, “who?” and reaches out his burning palm to clutch Steve’s knee. 

He turns back to Eddie. Eddie who’s touch burns straight through him, who he can feel pulling pulling pulling him in like he wants to incinerate him whole. Steve would let him. 

So, he ignores the woman’s question and focuses on the man. “I don’t know him,” Steve whispers. He’s not sure it’s true, he can still feel the way his warm hand had cradled Steve’s jaw as he breathed life back into him.

Eddie’s boring his gaze into him, like maybe he can scoop out the images and muddle through them on his own. “But he’s in trouble?” 

Steve nods.

The woman stands up with a grunt, hands braced on knees as hauls herself up. “I’ll try Hop again.”

The name twinges. “Hop, Hop, Hopper,” Steve murmurs, looking back down at Eddie’s hand on his knee like it’ll tell him what he’s thinking. Like it’ll make his brain work better.

“What about him?” Will asks quietly. He’s watching the woman pick up the phone, turning the numbers by rote. 

Steve doesn’t know Hopper, but there’s a man with a dirty name plate attached to his dirty chest that reads the same name. “The vines,” he starts, before stalling out, unsure of what to say. “They’ve– they’ve got him.”

Eddie sits up, squeezing Steve’s knee tight, the bite of his fingernails into burnt flesh aching. “Hopper’s who’s in trouble?”

He nods, and sits, watching Hopper struggle, watching Will and Eddie trade looks around him, watching the woman hang up the phone with a sigh.

“Where?” Eddie asks.

Steve doesn’t know. He doesn’t know, but it’s Eddie who’s asking, so he closes his eyes. He closes his eyes and focuses. “There’s dirt,” he says, “and vines, and—” 

There’s nothing else. No discernable features of the landscape he both can and cannot see, but he’s squinting into his own mind hard enough that the back of his skull starts aching like it’s splitting open and that’s when he feels it: a pull.

It’s coming from the back of his head, like a migraine, aching at the join between his neck and skull. He lets his head sway with it, then points with the sway.

He closes his eyes, focuses on the man, and lets the pull take him. 

It’s like walking through purgatory – following the lines in his mind. He’s going the right way, can feel it just as surely as he can feel Eddie’s burning hand on his elbow and Will’s burning fingers on his ankles.  

He doesn’t open his eyes, just walks, and walks, until there’s nowhere to walk anymore.

It’s not until he stops that the implications of the pull yanking him down sink in. He wants to drop to his knees and scrabble at the ground with his nails. But he’s down too deep, and time’s running out. 

He opens his eyes and looks down. There’s a rotten pumpkin under his shoe, foot turning it to mush. Beneath that, there’s dirt. Dirt and vines. Steve points down to it, and looks up to meet Eddie’s worried eyes.

“He’s running out of time,” Steve says, watching both Eddie’s eyebrows furrow, and the way the man’s fingers are still flexing on the vine around his throat, keeping it at bay. 

“He’s down there?” the woman asks, unhelpful in her hysteria. 

Steve watches the reality unfurl in Eddie’s eyes and then looks down at the dirt beneath his feet and watches the man struggle.

People flit around him like ants. He doesn’t pay it any mind. Will and Eddie are here, and everything else is just killing time.

Part 78

Taglist: @deany-baby @estrellami-1 @altocumulustranslucidus @evillittleguy @carlprocastinator1000 @1-8oo-wtfbro @hallucinatedjosten @goodolefashionedloverboi @newtstabber @lunabyrd @cinnamon-mushroomabomination @manda-panda-monium @disrespectedgoatman @finntheehumaneater @ive-been-bamboozled @harringrieve @grimmfitzz @is-emily-real @dontstealmycake @angeldreamsoffanfic @a-couchpotato @5ammi90 @mac-attack19 @genderless-spoon @kas-eddie-munson @louismeds @imhereforthelolzdontyellatme @pansexuality-activated @ellietheasexylibrarian @nebulainajar @mightbeasleep @neonfruitbowl @beth--b @silenzioperso @best-selling-show @v3lv3tf0x @bookworm0690 @paintsplatteredandimperfect @wonderland-girl143-blog @nerdsconquerall @sharingisntkaren

#steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #my fic #steddie upsidedown au #will byers #i waffled over this for a WHILE! like will does the whole drawing thing but steve doesn't draw!!! he comminicates with his body!!! ' #“so in his body that hes out of it” #and i know i condenced what happens in the show here but it doesnt compell me and i feel like the suspense has been ratcheted up by showing #a lot of missed scenes between s1 and s2 in this fic

[brother-emperors]

Cato the Younger, early days.

he is. a weird guy. I've always read about him in association to brutus, but ever since kicking it back a generation, I've been reading more about him and I gotta say: eerie! usually I'd go, oh necromancy. but this is more like sticking your tongue into the intercostal space of a thing that should've decayed a long time ago and wearing it's death mask. arguably worse, because doing that is like tapping open an entombed space that will never be closed.

eventually he'll look less like an old design I had for brutus (or. hghg. lucius junius brutus, because I realized after I finished this that this is a parallel composition to when I drew lucius, only no dead sons) as I draw him more, but. ehguh. had some thoughts! wanted to excise them from my mind so I can go to sleep!! what a guy!

Cato the Younger: Life and Death at the end of the Roman Republic, Fred K. Drogula

bsky ⭐ pixiv ⭐ pillowfort ⭐ cohost

#i dont trust him #cato the younger #that said. he's compelling #anyway everything he does has me going: oh no #its like watching a tomb robbing show and the main characters are in a room and discussing things and im like. fellas you're going to #Wake Up The Dead. FELLAS. #drawing tag #roman republic tag #gotta readjust my dmbj au. it would not be caesar waking up the dead. cato would beat him to it

[mari-monsta]

It honestly really baffles me when people say adrien is a boring or simple character, I don’t understand where that comes from at all. Because I think the main reason he’s so compelling are his complexities, but in the same vein those complexities I think make him someone very easy to relate to. Like it’s fine if he’s not likable or relatable to everyone but saying he’s not complex is really just ???? To me. Just looking at how DIFFERENTLY he acts around different people and situations is so fascinating to me. Of course everyone takes different personas and highlights different aspects of their personality around different people but adrien is the king of doing it around the same people to the extent of which having his two personalities be the same is laughable to those who know him personally in his everyday life.

But it’s not out of no where, seeing his home life and the kind of person he’s made out to be by his situation it’s not hard at all to understand that he’s a person who is immensely self conscious. He’s constantly gauging others perception of him and whether or not he is “safe”. What’s more fascinating is the entirely different way this comes out in chat noir. Because adriens personality as chat noir is also deliberate to a certain extent but it’s deliberate in the way that that’s how he wants others to see him. He wants to see self assured and larger than life because in his everyday life he feels small and self conscious. The fact that this dichotomy is so easy to follow in his character but creates such a black and white image in his two personalities is so interesting!

Another thing I find completely fascinating about him are his high empathy and how that actually fucks him up more often than not. He’s acutely aware of how other people might be feeling and can easily sympathize. At the same time though he has a hard time understanding certain social cues and situations and seems very out of his element. I don’t think these things conflict at all. Adrien is someone who easily puts himself in other peoples shoes and can imagine and have sympathy for their situation, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to pick up on the social complexities of every interaction every time. Emotions aren’t the same as communication and when it comes to the later adrien works best with simple and straight forward interactions.

In the same vein because of his aforementioned situations he’s also a character who has a lot of repressed anger and frustration that has been building up for a very long time. In his everyday life, he feels powerless, small, and insignificant. He doesn’t have faith that anyone would listen to his thoughts and feelings and actually take them into account, because by all of his experiences no one really has. This creates a defense mechanism where he shuts himself out before he even gets to the point of sharing how he really feels. We see this really easily in his relationship with Nino. He loves Nino DEARLY, but there is something that we have seen in him constantly putting up walls emotionally. He won’t tell him when he doesn’t find something funny, he won’t tell him if he’s unhappy to do something even when it greatly affects his life because he is at his core afraid Nino will not validate those emotions.

As a result, all the frustration he’s built up from feeling powerless in his everyday life we see just. Randomly bursting out of him in inopportune moments as chat noir. It’s not that adrien is such a violent or angry person normally. But he’s so used to repressing and modulating his emotions regularly that when he feels somewhat safe to express any frustration ALL of the anger he feels constantly bubbling under the surface all of the time just suddenly rushes out, like a dam holding back hundreds of gallons of water. This happens repeatedly, and then as soon as he’s realized he’s let himself get out of control he immediately feels immense guilt and he stops the dam up even tighter. This is obviously not a healthy feedback loop but it’s fucking FASCINATING!!!!

A common thing that I feel like I see fans often misinterpret about his character in my own opinion is just how PRIVATE of a person adrien is. Adrien loves sharing his love and appreciation for those around him because he knows how it feels not to know, not to be sure of that affection. But in the same token, Adrien rarely if ever actually shares his real feelings with those he’s close to. He doesn’t like people prying into his life or his feelings and he is very private about most things. We don’t see him talking about what he likes, we don’t see him sharing with his friends his anger or frustration. And in the end Adrien is the one character who has kept his secrets most closely held to his vest. This is all despite being so grandiose and loud mouthed as chat noir. Even as chat noir, adrien rarely is entirely open about things going on in his life.

To me Adrien as a character isn’t interesting or compelling because he is shy or cute or sweet, but because there are a number of different facets to his personality that I can easily see reasons for and understand where his feelings come from. He IS sweet, but not without misplaced anger, not without repression, not without mistakes and messy emotions. Not without pain that we can both easily see the roots of but also have a wide spread variety of consequences from. We see how his formative experiences affect every aspect of his life even in ways he audience wouldn’t necessarily expect, but make complete sense. That’s so fun and interesting to me!!!! Let characters be messy but try their best anyways!!! Let characters hurt each other and try to put the pieces back together one shard at a time. People have complicated emotions that come out in ways we can’t always foresee or help, people make mistakes because of that. But despite everything adrien is a character who cares deeply for those around him and tries to do right by them despite all the rest of it, and despite sometimes not really knowing how.

It’s things like that that keep miraculous being an extremely engaging and compelling story to me. Most of the general things about adriens character are also things that I find interesting about marinettes as well! Of course the intricacies of her character are completely different, but the general hows and whys and complex motivations for her actions while maintaining the best of intentions are what make them both so interesting to me. So this is just a little love letter to adriens character because I wanted to talk about that and why I find him so engaging!

#I feel like I see people act like #oh adrien is just a white male character what is so interesting about him #when it’s. like. just a characters baseline identity does not . dictate if they are interesting #I’d also argue that adrien as a white male character that falls into so many feminine females character tropes is also FACINATING #BECAUSE he is a white male character #being a white male character doesn’t make a character interesting by default either tho obviously #any character should always have the depth and work behind their story to make them compelling no matter what #adrien is particularly interesting to me because of his dichotomy #but the same could be said about marinette #she deserves praise for being an engaging and compelling character just as much #ANYWAY. IDK WHY IVE BEEN RANTING SO MUCH LATELY. #THIS JS MY SECOND MIRACULOUS INSPIRED RANT IN THE LAST 24 HOURS

[grayintogreen]

Now that Otohan is dead and her fans who had to suffer as I suffered with Lucien are truly getting kicked in the head by Fandom Rage that cares not for the scattershot shotgun blast of righteous fury because fans of lame bad evil characters deserve it, I have this to say.

Matt created a character with a rich elaborate backstory that could never be explored because no one would have cared and being interested in that potential and what led her to becoming just another Big Scary Mook a la Lorenzo and “Otohan’s entire personality as we see them in canon is scary backpack bitch who kills everything you love” are not mutually exclusive concepts. So Otohan junkies fascinated with the progression of War Hero to Zealot Murder Machine who want to talk that up underneath all the LOL UNINTERESTING CHARACTER DIED AS SHE LIVED chatter, I got you.

#listen I make fun of her and they’re not my blorbo at all #but I do think there was a compelling character that DOES NOT EXIST ANYMORE buried under layers of zealotry #and that’s the same series of emotions that made me adore Lucien #critical role #cr spoilers #otohan thull

[chiropteracupola]

girl-shaped thing and thing-shaped girl...

#em draws stuff #team fortress 2 #miss pauling #pyro tf2 #missfire #pyropauling #<- this concept Compels me actually. as it turns out. so. image and I'll tag it. #hilda coloring style again sort of! which was tricky as pyro has gradients and that style does Not. but we got there! #really I ought to draw pyro more often. fond of the mask's little snoot situation now that I've had more practice with it :] #regarding the caption both of them are both of those things. By The Way.

[nancywheeeler]

#i'm curious given how inescapable that film was on here when it first came out #i personally didn't get around to watching it until a few years ago and alas i am in the it does not do it for me camp #i see the vision! i wish it compelled me :( #poll

[f1-birb]

so padel is just their thing now huh?

#lando norris #george russell #pierre gasly #ben thorne #lando and george compel me sm rn #at this point does anyone on the grid NOT play padel??? #literally though every other post is padel #DO OTHER THINGS

[secretmellowblog]

It’s odd how lots of writers basically turn Inspector Javert into Claude Frollo?

In the original novel Javert is not obsessed with Jean Valjean. It is not his life’s goal to capture him. He is a police officer who is bad because he is a police officer; he’s bad because he’s just doing his job, and his job is to enforce cruel violent bigoted inhumane laws. He reunites with Jean Valjean by coincidence and just seems mildly annoyed by it. He doesn’t care at all about Jean Valjean any more than he would care about literally any other criminal in the world (until the barricades, which is the first moment when he does develop complicated emotions for him.) Javert isn’t bad because he is obsessed with Valjean— he is bad because he is a cop, and as a cop it is his duty to be mindlessly cruel. He is indifferent to Jean Valjean on a personal level. He is not obsessed, he’s an authoritarian.

But Frollo!

Frollo is a character who has a deep personal obsession with someone, pursues them relentlessly out of that personal obsession, and then uses the law as an tool to abuse them. Frollo is the one who makes it his life’s mission to capture some random person who did nothing wrong and use the full power of the law to torture them for his own gratification.

I kinda don’t understand why it’s so common for Les Mis adaptations and stuff to turn Javert into Frollo by making him ~personally obsessed with Valjean~ and ~making it his life goal to catch him.~ It severely undercuts the novel’s political message about the evils of the prison system, and also just makes Javert a far shallower and less compelling character. It makes him evil in a way that isn’t even interesting to read and has nothing very valuable to say.

#Les mis #bbc Les mis vague post #i feel like im a fandom old because I get so easily tired by ‘javert was obsessed with Valjean’ stuff XD #Because like! #because like Javert is Bad. but he’s bad in a really weird compelling way #and people always make him bad in a boring way #I do think Javert gets obsessed with Valjean #after the barricades #but it’s only after the barricades #I think people are so drawn to the really explosive vulnerability he has after the barricades #that they try to like . force it into all the scenes that happen beforehand #but like #the reason Derailed has the impact it does #is because it is such a massive contrast from the way Javert usually thinks and feels #anyway #me and my discord server get it 😂