Something Like That - Blog Posts

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Living his best life honestly. Just some slime n cod n vibes & why is Fwhip upside down- there's cod in the slime--? Sausage he has no idea what words your saying stop that--

Inktober Day 9: Bounce

What's with the fish and just

Attracting people

What kinda pretty privileged does fish fuckery fall under?

Anywho, sketches under cut, you know the deal

I have such a love hate relationship with my Codfather design.

I can't decide my thoughts on it.

There is something about the idea of sharing a health bar - sharing pain - that I can't stop thinking about. Because obviously, there's the big things that they share, like deaths, or near death experiences, or attacks, but there's also the mundane, mild occurences of pain too.

Grian can feel the strike of an axe that hits Scar way too hard, but he can also feel the way Scar's muscles ache when he overexerts himself.

Bdubs can feel it when a skeleton gets a lucky shot past Impulse's shield, but he can also feel the thrum of Impulse's headache when the others keep blowing those horns.

Cleo can feel the fire eating away at Martyn when he abandons her for the Nether, but she can also feel it when he accidentally stubs his toe when stepping out of the portal.

Ren can feel the burn of poison through BigB's veins, but he can also feel the sparks that bite his skin when he stokes the flames in the furnace.

Scott can feel it when Pearl is sharply headbutted by a charging hoglin, but he can also feel the dig of her nails when she hugs herself, muted by her sleeves.

Joel can feel himself choking when Etho starts drowning, but he can also feel the gentle hunger pangs when Etho forgets to eat, even though Joel himself had just eaten.

Jimmy can feel the flash of heat from a creeper explosion when Tango dies and takes him with him, but he can also feel the sharp pecks at Tango's hand when he goes to feed the chickens.

They know when their other is exhausted, because they can feel the sting in their eyes. They know when their other is building, because they can feel the pinch of splinters. They know when their other is sewing, because they can feel the prick of the needle along their fingertips.

Even if they aren't physically with their soulmate, they are never alone, because they can feel their presence through their day-to-day activities. Some are more present than others, clumsy as they are, but none can ever truly be ignored. It's to be expected - the whole concept of soulmates is that they are intrinsically tied, after all - but they really are two halves of one whole.

They don't just share their lives, they share a life, and their skin, and their bones, and their breaths, and their hearts, even if they deny it. They know their soulmate deeper than anything else, they know without words how they are on a physical level and can care for them without asking, because their pain is shared.

And that is beautiful, and fascinating, and surreal, and terrifying.

Two more bugs! Bean and Cecilia, Bean owns the only diner in town and Cecilia works there as a waitress, she's not exactly good at it but she is trying and Bean knows it.

Hi mutuals

cool mutual that i'm scared to death that i'll annoy (literally all my mutuals)

Gonna get into the habit of reblogging more as I get more comfortable with tumblr

Their parents are said to work overseas and send money back to them. So whether or not if the Orihara kids ever met such financial trouble is debatable. I don't think they would, but I'm certain they would have found it difficult to treat themselves on occasion or go do outings that most kids their age should be able to do. Like I doubt they would be getting the biggest of birthday presents.

So yeah, Izaya may have gotten into the informant job to help out with that.

I can't remember the specifics of when Izaya started getting access to the underground but I'm guessing it was pretty young for normal standards...actually given the common trend of gang warfare maybe not. But I feel like he got a little more deep into it than any of the colour gang leaders did. Like didn't he get recruited by Kine?

Anyway, given that and his apparent brilliantness its no wonder so little was done about his delinquency. Even his fights with Shizuo. Like imagine being a teacher for him, and trying to inforce the rules, only to have the knowledge that some yakuza guy has got this kids back for whatever reason. "Oil barrels? I don't see no oil barrels?"

On one hand, no wonder he comes off as a little bratty, but can you blame him? You try being a teenage guardian to two younger sisters. I can see why he might have signed up for an easy route too. I know his parents might have sent him money, but how much of that would really help him? He's a student, if something else came along that allowed him to afford a babysitter I wouldn't blame him for taking the deal.

And imagine growing up where some of the only adults in your life were criminals.

There are so many things that tie into how fucked up he is.

@starscall 30 Days Infinity Nikki Styling Challenge Day 2 - Fave ability piece

... Limited ability pieces don't count, or all 30 of my outfits will be oujicore 😔

But it's the hair, in the recolour of the gliding outfit! It's such a Well-Proportioned ponytail, bangs and all, puts one in mind of the girl next door. Looks close enough to my actual hair, too.

I love my dog. If ever I cry, he collects up dirty socks and brings them to me. They’re his favourite thing in the world and they make him happy, so they’ll make me happy too. He’s a good boy.

Orange man when he has to respect people pronouns

❓️ in English classes do you prefer writing fiction or non fiction (like research projects vs creative writing basically)

Of Witchers and Children

As I really like to snoop in on the conversations the NPCs have in The Witcher, I realised a good part of the NPCs that are nice to you (without you doing something like a contract to win their favor) are kids. Even then, they just run up to you and ask you a question, which even if some of them are not really positive (Like “do Witchers really eat little kids with their stew” or something like that), it’s a step forward from their adult counterpart, who want you out their sight as quickly as possible.

To mention as well, me realising the statement above made me grow a soft spot for the kid NPCs. As in, they’re the only NPCs I purposefully don’t knock over, and if I have a chance to help one I drop everything and go do whatever it is they need (It almost got me killed once lmao).

So, inspired by all of that, I have a few thoughts where Witchers must have realized this diffrence in treatment and made an unwritten rule to be nice to kids as much as possible. Witchers who don’t are considered assholes and untrustworthy. and just them being more open to interacting with kids because of it would be so cute! 

Going back to the kid who asks you if you eat children, some Witcher would just say: “No, I don’t eat children. I only eat mean adults who are not nice to them.”

The children NPCs also compliment your medallion a bunch, and I would expect Witchers would take kindly to that. I assume their medallion to be a prized possession of theirs, so maybe they would mutter a little thank you (You have no idea how much I wish I could do that in-game) with a small smile. To add, wouldn’t it be so cute if the big “scary” Witcher would kneel on the ground to be on the same level as the kid and ask, “You wanna see it?”. The Witcher would show off his medallion and say “Yes it’s a (insert animal of his school). My school likes them. When I’m near monsters and magic, it hums.” And little things like that. (also, a joust like “wow it’s humming right now! Are you magic??” with a theatrical gasp would make itself in the conversation somewhere.)

When you go to a school in Novigrad, one of the little girl NPC exclaim she would be a witcheress when she grows up as they are playing in the courtyard. a little boy makes fun of her because “girls can’t be witchers”.

Now being a Witcher is probably not all fun and the road to become one really isn’t, by any extent. So Witchers themselves would not approve of someone else aspiring to be one, I would assume. Nevertheless, I do not think someone like Geralt, who raised Ciri, would take happily to some little girl being made fun of and told she cannot do something just because she is a girl, especially when it’s his own trade. So, he goes to see the kids and he tells the girl; “You can’t be a witcheress. If you’re a girl in my trade, you’re a _Witcher _and that’s that,” matter-of-factly. Then, maybe he would tell the girl some plant facts (for example, “did you know Witchers use little flowers, like Celandine and Honeysuckle in their potions?” and would tell her some things about the flowers).

Something else for thought; A Witcher would sit on a bench and pull his bestiary from his bag and immediately, the kids playing in the puddles down the street flock to him and ask what he’s reading. The witcher tells them “this is my book about monsters.” To which the kids nod, ask for him to read some to them. They’re given a toned-down lecture about some common monster, alongside how to properly run away from them (with promises they do not try to seek them out or attempt to fight them). To mention, this kind of interaction is really beneficial for the kids. I’d think maybe some Witchers made it a tradition to sit out in the open with their bestiary whenever they arrive at a village, in hopes some kids would flock to them and a short lecture could be given to help keep them safe. (They never just ask. I’d assume parents wouldn’t be keen on being asked if the big scary witcher could tell the kids about monsters, of all things. I’m certain they would get the wrong idea, as in, witcher’s trying to snatch a kid to make more Witchers.)

And last of my running thought, some kid meets Aiden and Lambert while they travel and tells lambert he has eyes like a kitty cat. To which Lambert corrects the kid saying he is a wolf. So he has eyes like a wolf. Aiden is the kitty cat here. Aiden just nods along as if the difference really is that important.

Wasn't tagged but.....

Checks out, I do be guiding youngins.

Got tagged by @phoomwhoosh

To do this quiz and picrew

if you wanna do it go wild say I tagged you!

One thing that I feel is really interesting and often forgotten about Essek is that fundamentally, his characterization has been from the start based upon his desperation for external perspectives and connection, which, along with much of his narrative and mechanical positioning, means that he actually has an extraordinary and almost (but not actually, as I'll show) counterintuitive capacity for both growth and trust.

(Buckle in. This is a long one.)

In particular, I would argue, knowing now that many places where the plot touches Ludinus have long been marked for connecting back into the current plot, that he was quite possibly built as a prime candidate for radicalization by the Ruby Vanguard. He felt isolated from his culture, he was desperate for other connection, and he was certainly of the type to believe he was too smart to be drawn into such a thing, given his initial belief that he could control the situation and the fallout. If things had gone any other way, he easily could've been on the other side by now.

As such, he has been hallmarked by being fairly open to suggestion, perhaps for this reason, but the thing about that kind of trait is that it is both how people are radicalized and deradicalized. This is certainly true of Essek, who experienced genuine kindness and quite frankly strangeness from the Nein and was able to move from the isolation the Assembly had engendered to meaningful and genuine connection, largely propelled by his own internal reflection. By the time Nein are aware of his crimes, he's already begun to express regret to an extent and, furthermore, doubt in the Assembly, including explicitly drawing a line against Ludinus, even in a position where he was on his own and probably quite vulnerable.

Similarly, when the Nein reach the Vurmas Outpost some weeks later, he has moved from regret for the position he's ended up carrying a heavy remorse. This makes sense! He's fairly introspective, seems used to spending a lot of time in his own head, and was left with plenty to mull over. It's not some kind of retcon for him to have progressed well past where the Nein left him; it just means he's an active participant in the world who has done his own work in the meantime.

This is another interesting aspect to him. I've talked about this a bit before but I cannot find the post so I'll recap here: antagonists in D&D have significantly more agency than allied NPCs. Antagonists are active forces, against which the party is meant to struggle; allies are meant to support the PCs, which means they tend to be more passive in both their actions and their character growth. Essek was both built as an antagonist, in a position that gives him significant agency, and also was then given significant opportunity to grow specifically to act as a narrative mirror for Caleb's arc. Even when he becomes a more traditional D&D ally, he still retains much of that, though he occupies a supporting role.

I believe that this is especially true because of the nature of Caleb's arc, which I've already written on; the tl;dr of this post is that Caleb is both convinced that he is permanently ruined and also desperate to prove that change is possible. Essek is that proof, because he is simply the character in a position to do so. But this also means that his propensity for introspection and openness is accentuated! He has to do the legwork on his own, for the most part, because that's where he is in the meantime.

But he still ends the campaign necessarily constricted; he is under significant scrutiny, he's at risk from the Assembly, and he goes on the run fairly soon after the story ends. He spends most of the final arc anxious and paranoid, which is valid given the crushing reality of his situation. It would be very easy to extrapolate that seven years into this reality, he would be insular, closed off, and suspicious of strangers, even in spite of the lessons he's learned from the Nein and their long term exposure.

So seeing his openness and lightness now is surprising, but at the same time, given this combination of factors in his position in the narrative over time and his defining traits, it's not by any means unreasonable.

But one thing that I found so delightful is how much trust he exhibits, which is obviously a wild thing to say about Essek in particular, given much of what he learns is both earning and offering trust, which was something he says explicitly in 2x124 that he's never really experienced: "I've never really been trusted and so I did not trust." It makes up much of the progression of his relationship with Caleb, and the trust that he is offered by the Nein in walking off the ship is the impetus he needs to grow.

But I think it's easy to talk about trust when it comes to people who have proven themselves to you or to whom you've ingratiated yourself, and that's really the most we can say about Essek by the time he leaves the Blooming Grove. There is this sense in a lot of discussion of trust (not solely in this fandom) that it is only related to either naivete or love, but there's far more to it. Trust at its best is deliberate—cultivating an openness to the world at large is a great way to combat cynicism and beget connection instead. It allows a person to maintain curiosity and be open to experience, but it can be incredibly difficult to hold onto.

It is clear that the Essek we meet now is a very pointedly and intentionally trusting individual. He trusts Caleb and by extension Caleb's trust in Keyleth, as he shows up and picks up a group of strangers from a foreign military encampment and walks in without issue. He trusts the Hells to follow his lead moving through Zadash and to exhibit enough discretion so as to avoid bringing suspicion upon all of them. He trusts that Astrid will respond well to his entrance, but he also trusts himself and the Hells enough to execute a back-up plan in the case that she doesn't. In the end, he even trusts them enough to give them his name and identity.

He doesn't scan as someone who has spent half a dozen years living like a prey animal, afraid of any shadow he runs across in an alley, withdrawn into himself and an insular family, which would've been an easy route for him to take. He scans as someone who has learned the kind of trust borne of learned confidence and a trained eye for good will and kindness, which are crucial weapons one would need for staving off cynicism in his circumstances—as if he has survived thanks more to connection and kindness than paranoia and isolation. (If we want to be saccharine about it, he scans quite poignantly as a member of the Mighty Nein.)

So it is easy to imagine this trust and openness as a natural progression of his initial search for perspectives external to his own cultural knowledge. Though he makes those first connections with the Assembly to try to vindicate his personal hypotheses, he finds in them exposure to the deepest corruption among Exandrian mortals, which could've—and did, for a time—turned him further down that same dark path.

But it's also this same openness to exposure from the wider world that allows the Nein to influence him for the better, and in spite of the challenges he's certainly faced simply surviving over the past seven years, he seems to have held onto this openness enough to move through the world with self-assurance and a willingness to extend the kinds of trust and good will that he has been shown.

(I would be remiss not to mention that I was reminded about my thoughts on this by this lovely post from sky-scribbles and their use in the tags of 'light' to describe Essek's demeanor this episode, which is really such an apt word for it.)

And again, on the eve of opening night for A Year with Frog and Toad, I find a second Frog and Toad related post, which, yet again, corresponds directly with a song from this show I’m in. 

Either the number of Frog and Toad things I’m running across on tumblr tonight is a sign, or this is some kind of Baader-Meinhof phenomenon specific to being in a certain show... Is there a theatrical version of that? Or maybe Baader-Meinhof isn’t the right term because I didn’t just learn about Frog and Toad, but it’s like that thing where one suddenly sees a thing everywhere just when it’s relevant. Is it a different type of cognitive bias, perhaps? Does anyone know the correct term for being in a play and then seeing things relevant to that play just before the show opens?

Like, I haven’t noticed any Frog and Toad-related content since I joined tumblr in November and the night before we open, I see two things. It’s crazy. Well, I guess I’ll call it good luck? 

But yeah, this one’s Frog’s solo. A very sweet little song. 

i just think this is so important and i think this is the greatest life lesson you could learn in your childhood, or at any age (from Frog and Toad by Arnold Lobel)

Lol i'm back :)

Greetings and salutations!

Sorry y'all for spontaneously disappeared for a couple of months, it was a hard time focusing on studying, preparing for high school entrance exams since i was a ninth-grader (in my country grade 9 is still in middle school and high schools only last 3 years). Long short story, it was pretty rough but i did it, i got in my dream high school :) It is a top-ranked school in my city so i will be very busy but i hope i will have a great time at this school and continue to run this little blog! (as well as my study account on instagram, which is empty and maybe start a small youtube channel). Some relationship stuff also happened, it turns out that my crush and his friends are a bunch of misogynistic, disrespectful 15 years old teenagers. Tbh i'm not surprised but very disappointed but again what did i expect? I don't wan't to rant too much about this because everytime i think about it, it's just plain cringe :)) All that aside, i'm so grateful and happy to be here, in this tumblr community, shitposting about things i obsess or overthink about and sharing my thoughts, opinions about random things ever with you guys. Thanks for supporting me and interacting my posts, i really appreciate it ;-; Well if you make it to the end, thank you for reading this! Wishing you guys all the best <3

Your truly,

Anne A messy blogger✨