#from the shallows

[insomniac-dormouse]

I like Draxum, I do, but like, he’s a scientist, a genocidal biologist/alchemist/magic guy that experiments on turtles to make super soldiers for the destruction of humanity my guy. He’s got such a noble end goal. Look at this shit on paper. Peak villain. You want a magic goat dad, and I get it, I do to. Some of you even want gay dads, and I do not turn up my nose to this at all. But to ignore the ethics that could be thrown out the window? The potential for a goat man to never respect the autonomy of his creations? The wonder of a revolutionary scientist driven to desperate terrorism? That is a fools game and I’m not playing. Let him swing that villainy around. At least for a little bit. Let him have a little attempted genocide. As a treat.

#Advocate of fucked up villain Draxum #Thanks for soft goat dad but I like him as a crime boi extremest with delusions of grandeur actually #no divorced goat only savior complex #also make him sluttier thanks #baron draxum #rottmnt draxum #rise draxum #tmnt #teenage mutant ninja turtles #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rottmnt #fanart #art #digital art #from the shallows #tmnt au #au concept art

[egberts]

fig is obsessed with water, and the sink, and he loves to get in the empty sink and try to figure out where the water goes, especially after the dishes are done. "get off the counter" and "get out of the sink" are phrases said multiple times a day in our house but... this time, instead of removing him from the sink (or rather getting up to remove him and he gets down on his own because he KNOWS BETTER), i filled the sink with water and let them play with their fishies for a little while!!! they're brave enough to touch the water but nobody has tried to steal a fish yet

#it's been a bit since they got to play fish and now we have 2 lol #one day im gonna put them in the second hand turtle sandbox we got from the neighbors #im gonna use it as a shallow fish pool for cats #fig #lou #sonboys allowed

[cemeterything]

much like "whales are really big" doesn't adequately prepare you for how absolutely fuckoff hugemassive whales are, "head wounds bleed a lot" just does not prepare you for how much they actually bleed. it's a lot.

#🐉 #it may be a shallow cut but you would never have guessed from the geyser of blood that erupted from it

[psalidodont]

#sea beasts from the shallows #art #digital art #artists on tumblr #fish #illustration #creature design #speculative zoology

[comradekatara]

ty lee is by far the most underrated atla character imo. as far as minor principal players, it’s easy to disregard her as the least fleshed out fire nation kid, the most underdeveloped. her role as a foil to any of the main characters is vague, and many people just assume she’s there to bring some sort of levity and humor to azula’s plotline. she’s dismissed as the pretty ditzy girl, or even (shudders) “the bimbo.” but when you actually make the effort to consider what we do see of her, to extrapolate from her few yet crucial scenes anything regarding her underlying motivations, you quickly realize that one of the most layered, multifaceted, compelling, intriguing, ambiguous, and perhaps even straight up insane characters in the entire show has been hiding in plain sight all along. and also that that’s the entire point.

#SHE DIDNT JUST FOOL AZULA (& al) SHE ALSO FOOLED US! THE AUDIENCE!!! #or well. most of you. not me tho im different #ty lee #I love you commentary on femininity and power dynamics girl #it feels like only mailee and tyzula shippers actually give a shit abt her #(tysuki shippers too i guess) #but even individually she is just. SO fascinating!!!! #masks & performance & acrobatics & taking you down from the inside!!!!! #I need to write an actual longass character analysis of her someday #I know I already kind of did but it was pretty shallow iirc #I think I can go deeper.

[sakuraluck]

when i said i wanted to understand whatever’s going on in ivan’s head, i didn’t mean like this 😭😭

#alnst ivan #alnst till #ivantill #alien stage #ooooh boy turns out ivan’s self esteem is pretty low in terms of love #makes total sense but it’s not what i expected from someone who looked so in control of what he wanted and was willing to pursue from till #he loves humbly which was my first intepretation of him before we even got round 3 #it’s changed since then with more (mis)information leaked by vivinos to misdirect our understanding of him #so to get this clear dialogue of his final thoughts is really… clarifying #and terribly sad in a way #ivan loves till so much and is entirely aware that he hasn’t been the most gentle of suitors #god i have many thoughts about this #ahhh ivan baby your feelings aren’t shallow at all

[centaurianthropology]

One thing that I think a lot of Disco Elysium meta misses (likely because a lot of it is very clearly written by young Americans writing from an intensely American-centric cultural perspective without even really realizing it) is that one of the singular and central themes of the game is massive-scale generational trauma in a home that is economically collapsing as its resources and people are being drained by an occupation.  People have noted that no one tries to help Harry, despite the fact his mental illness is incredibly obvious to everyone around him.  He tells Kim that he completely lost his memory, and Kim politely asks him to focus on the work.  He tells Gottlieb that he had a heart attack, and Gottlieb tells him that if he’s still alive it couldn’t have been that bad.  That he’ll drop dead sooner or later, but then so does everyone.

And that’s the most important thing: so does everyone.  Look at Martinaise.  Look at the world in which Harry lives.  It is not our own, but it is adjacent to ours.  More specifically, it is clearly adjacent to the states of the Eastern Bloc: overtaken and occupied by a faraway government that clearly doesn’t care about Revachol or its people.  And that is obvious in every tired face, every defeated citizen, everyone trying to eke out a little happiness or meaning in spite of the overwhelming trauma and damage around them.  The buildings are still half-destroyed.  The bullet holes are still in the walls.  The revolution was decades before, but it still feels to the people there like a fresh wound.  The number of men of Harry’s generation who are not alcoholic or otherwise deeply fucked up are very few.  Some, like Kim, hide it better, but the deeper you dig into his history, the more you realize how damaged Kim is.  He’s more than a little trigger happy, and hates that about himself, but he is a product of his environment: Kim’s entire life is seeing people he cared about shot and killed, so his instinct now is to shoot first himself, to protect those few people left who still matter to him.

Harry is not unique in his trauma.  He is a distillation of an entire culture of people who tried to rise up and make something beautiful, and were instead routed and occupied.  He is trapped between the occupation and the people on the ground, along with all the rest of the RCM.  Their authority comes from the occupying government, but it is implied that they were formed out of the remnants of the citizens militia which sprung up from Revachol itself as a way to try to mitigate some of the horrors being committed on its streets.  The Moralintern sure as hell wasn’t going to get their hands dirty, so they happily conscripted (and therefore could better control) this group, who are only recognized in certain places, and whose authority mostly amounts to giving out fines.  The RCM is corrupt, but it is corrupt in the same way its culture is.  Bribes are considered standard with them, not a moral failing, but a necessity, so long as those bribes are correctly logged as ‘donations’.  It’s how the RCM stays afloat, and the rest of Revachol completely understands that.  Everyone would take a bribe if it meant they kept eating.  Everyone would take a little under-the-table money if it meant keeping a roof over their heads.  The officersof the RCM certainly don’t make enough to see a doctor.  They have an in-house lazarus, and if he can’t fix them they just die.  Mental health care?  What mental health care?  Harry doesn’t get it for the same reason no one else does: it doesn’t really seem to exist.  There are no counselors, no psychologists, no psychiatrists.  How would they even start?  If the world is what is broken, if everyone is suffering a similar catastrophic amount, it makes sense that Harry’s trauma would simply get rolled up with all the rest.  Kim asks him to get on with the job because Harry’s suffering is not remarkable in Revachol.  He is one of an entire generation who have an astronomical number of orphans from the revolution, and so many younger people are left more or less orphans as their parents drink themselves into oblivion like Cuno’s father.  So Harry’s truly unique attribute is embodying all that trauma, having it all inside of him, filling him to bursting.

To really engage with the themes of the game, engaging first and foremost with the reality of Revachol is imperative.  Imposing our own reality onto Revachol, particularly if coming from an American perspective (which tend to have the habit of both viewing the world through an American lens and not realizing they’re doing it because they’ve never experienced a different lens), will always feel shallow to me because of this.

All that is to say, I would love to hear some more explicitly European meta about this game, and especially Eastern European meta.  If anyone can point me to some good, juicy essays from that perspective, I would be grateful!

#Disco Elysium #is such a good game #but I found a lot of the meta around it frustratingly shallow #and very VERY American #which is also frustrating #given how clearly Eastern European the roots of this game are #I have no problem with people using a game or other work of fiction to inform their own lives and experiences #but I find it strange when people engage with the game #as though it was coming from an American perspective #asking why certain things happen or didn't #based on how they would play out or have played out in America #anyway this a rambly way to request some meta from other cultural perspectives #I am very interested in reading it! #Disco Elysium meta

[hellspawnmotel]

“caroline, please kill me” by coma cinema

#i hope this is readable lol #deltarune #susie #noelle holiday #suselle #art tag #man i had a whole thing to type up here and now i forget most of it. ummm #basically ive been thinkin about suselle with the new info we got from the sweepstakes #specifically from noelle's perspective. because up until chapter 2 she wants susie but she doesnt KNOW susie #its an extremely shallow crush which is normal for teenagers but what makes it interesting to me is #how noelle sort of seems more attracted to the danger susie poses than susie herself #and she doesnt really make an attempt to get to know susie personally until ch 2? iirc? #and before that almost seems to hope that susie will treat her as badly as she treats kris #and you could argue whether its bc of noelle's psychological problems or if its just. yknow. a fantasy #either way my point is shes not really thinking about susies feelings. shes not trying to reform the bully or something #so consider this little lyric comic as taking place in noelle's fantasies pre-ch1 #BUT #all that said it doesnt mean noelle isnt open to getting to know susie. obviously #when she sees an opportunity noelle does reach out and not in a way where shes trying to provoke susie to hurt or threaten her #she gives susie a gift and invites her to study together. not to mention the whole ferris wheel thing #i actually think noelle didnt even consider that as an option until susie and kris became friends #and even after chapter 2 noelle doesnt really know susie all that well. and to her susie still exists mostly in the realm of fantasy #but its a start. and they have so much more room to grow and understand each other better #plus susie clearly already cares a lot about noelle #moral of the story is suselle is more compelling than just 'shy girl plus mean girl' #and i like it #good night

[sanjarka]

no because when you take away katniss and peeta's love story katniss's choices make no sense or are transformed into something they're not. everything starts for prim but she didn't almost kill herself with the berries for prim. it was for peeta. how do you make sense of the quell, and everyone protecting peeta if you don't get that yes, katniss does love him and will not cooperate if his protection is not guaranteed. there is no consistency in their story. and then there's the fact that the main motivator in katniss accepting the role of the "mockingjay" is, again, peeta's rescue and safety. a movie is a movie and it's different tool for storytelling but a good adaptations works with the book not against it.

#peeta's love for katniss was also shallow there is no way you can even begin to understand it's depth and roots from the movies #it's bland and completely uninteresting #thg #thg: movie criticism #everlark

[evie-doesnt-write]

Watching Dungeon Meshi

#just to be clear i fucking love this about dunmeshi #often media are too scared and depict themes of racism and classism as bad(tm) (which it is ofc but they portray in a very shallow way) #and only allow bad guys to be racist #or if a good character is racist then they have a quick arc of ‘oh no racism is bad(tm)’ and then everything is better #ryoko kui is excellent at world building and this allows us to understand the nuance of these characters and where prejudice stems from #and it’s not excused or diminished it’s very much portrayed as an issue that only breeds more prejudice #and thus things need to be changed both on an individual and societal level #marcille donato #dungeon meshi #falin touden #ryoko kui #dunmeshi #laios touden #chilchuk tims #kabru of utaya #izutsumi #literally every character #they are all racist af and i love them and ryoko kui for it

[insomniac-dormouse]

Just discovered turtles don’t have teeth.

#fucking wild #this works really well for my purposes #from the shallows

[gunsatthaphan]

🔥🚬.

#only friends #only friends series #only friends ep2 #ofts #firstkhao #sanray #sand x ray #first kanaphan #khaotung thanawat #gmmtv #thai bl #bl drama #🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠 #typing this from my shallow grave #cjhgjkdf #i just.... the passion from khao's side is unmatched like what---

[psalidodont]

#fish #illustration #art #digital art #artwork #artists on tumblr #animal art #speculative zoology #worldbuilding #marine life #sea beasts from the shallows

[post-cal]

this isnt related to the blog i just am thinking abt your drawing of Hal-If-He-Looked-Like-Bro. i think about it every day. i love it to death. i humbly request a redraw

Fun fact about the name for Hal Ambro it is just FULL of references.

#i just realized you said redraw #whoops #how about new draw? #:'D #so Hal for Lil Hal. Hal9000. Shallow Hal #Ambro for Ambrose a popular name ppl call Bro but also AM from IHNMAIMS #but also also its basically saying (I) Am Bro #get it get it? #Hal Ambro is Bro's biggest hater #which is to say he is his own biggest hater #Bro Strider #Beta Dirk Strider #blood tw #they're being nasty #hal ambro acts like fanon bro around everyone else #the cooler older brother #but when bro is alone it is ON SIGHT #birb art #i got so busy today i only just now finished this #even though i've been working on it all day #;; #petition to allow birb (me) to have a real day off

[basketobread]

I feel like lunara if she could would just... take knocked out minthara with them. She would come back to the group just dragging this unconscious drow woman behind her and the group would be like" ??????" And she's like " I just think she's neat "

THIS MADE ME LAUGH SM CUZ YOU'RE TOTALLY RIGHT DSFIUHFDSISD but also: lunara, you may want to fix her, but i can accept her as she is...

#random lunara lore but: #lunara has not been around other drow in so long that being around minthara would probably be a weird comfort to her #despite her fleeing the underdark and all DISFUHFSIU #esp considering minthara is from menzo too #not that she liked it nor does she want to be around evil aligned drow but i guess its that sense of familiarity to her #a very shallow sense of community too #lunara this cannot be healthy for you honey put the hot drow lady down and lets go back to adventuring #bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #tav #bg3 tav #bg3 oc #baldur's gate oc #lunara posting #minthara #ask bob

[vicktoon]

wednesday is bi on the aroace spectrum meanwhile enid is a lesbian in THEE deepest trenches of comphet imaginable together they are an ATROCIOUSLY confused bundle of baby gay angst

#wednesday straight up has no interest in romance either she fakes it for her own gain or it's shoved onto her #kissing tyler was morbid curiosity if anything #but enid has unlocked something sentimental inside her #she doesn't understand what it is yet but she craves it and doesn't wanna lose her #enid's boy moments are incredibly shallow she wants a relationship more than the guy #it's giving “we made eye contact so i must be in love with him” #plus enid saving wednesday from an evil suitor like morticia saved gomez from her stalker #tim burton i am in your walls #wednesday #wenclair #vick thots