A small place for things that spark joy

[chimerickarma]

Who am I!

Feel free to call me Lionsong or Lion! (or Karma on this blog)

This is my personal side blog. I don't tag things often, I reblog what I want, and yap often. Probably not the blog you want follow, but I'm fine with reblogs and likes.

My other tumblr blogs are:

lionsong-art (my art)

lionsongfr (Flight Rising)- thetravelersdoor, (Critical Role)

[crowwkui]

𓍊𓋼𓍊 My piece for "Together from Afar: a How to Train Your Dragon" tribute exhibition at Gallery Nucleus! The show runs from April 11-26 and opens tonight from 5-8pm (free + no RSVP needed) 𓍊𓋼𓍊

I love Astrid and Stormfly, so I was really honored and excited to get to draw them🙇 John Powell was on full blast the entire time 🙇🙇🙇

[isa-ghost]

Is it shitty of me to say I had a gut feeling about Avid this whole time? Disappointed but not surprised, I've been deeply suspecting something to this level ever since the weird meltdown about vsmp. :/

Clearer readable screenshots under the cut:

[isa-ghost]

Hey so what the fuck !

[isa-ghost]

Here are the other statements from other SBK members!

Doovid

Nukeri

VikingPilot

NatureOfGaming

JayDraws

Musithical

LeonSBU

VintageApplesauce

Anathra

[starry-blooms]

Another Cleo statement,

[imnotasweetie]

and on a very small note, since this is not what the main point of this situation is about

please everyone, check how your perception of gay men and how "dangerous" they are for other individuals might be affected by the way homophobia is baked into our day to day life and society

there was a very clear thread of one of the narratives avid was trying to pin on the one very openly gay man that was his friend at one point earlier this year. there was a clear narrative he was trying to portray

and when some people tried to point out how many of the things he was saying reflected homophobic talking points and narratives, they were shut down claiming people only cared because "they care more about mlm shipping than misogyny"

people conflated mlm/yaoi shippers with those actually concerned about the fact that there was a dangerous and not unique or new in any way agenda being spread around a gay man, and it was genuinely maddening seeing people turn their eye away from it or just not recognize it

[honesttaffy]

for character duo art requests—bannerfall doomed siblings (bf!katie and bf!nom) perhaps?

love your art style soo much … i think about that bf!hellfire one regularly it’s so freakin awesome ❤️

I hope these are the two characters, also, I drew Nom (?) w darker hair bc I saw that most people did?

Either way, I think it fits him more

[historical-nonfiction]

A beautiful coffee cup and saucer, made to look like a water lily and its lily pad. And a visiting butterfly. Crafted from porcelain, it is hand-painted and hand-gilded.

Made by the Moore Brothers, in England, circa 1880.

[missrossweisse]

GUYS OWAIN FACE REVEALED AS IN CANON . I CAN REST IN PEACE NOW

+ my old predicted design and the comparison with the actual WHICH. GUYS I GOT TWO OF THE DETAILS THAT’S CRAZY .

[orangeocelotmartyn]

Owen: 4c, we could unpack, uh, Parkour Hell, a lot, but in the interest of time— 4c: Unpack? Owen: Can you, uh, just so we have time for Q and A, can you summarize how you were able to push through six hours of parkour? (audience laughs) 4c: Six hours that you put me through. Owen: Uh, who-here, let's not start throwing names into the mix. 4c: Throwing names, you dropped me in it, I thought it was gonna be in a box! Owen: Yeah, no. It got a lot bigger than I anticipated, I'll be honest. Nom: I gotta say, getting the DM from Owen being like, "do you wanna help me make 4c suffer?" And I was like, "yes." Just giving you information about lore, it was like, "yeah, let's go."

[orangeocelotmartyn]

Nom: Uh, I feel like the mace is a cop-out answer, but, besides the mace, um, definitely the red he had on his armor. As a Blue Kingdom member it was weird having that red on the armor, but the reason for it was his mother was actually from Red Kingdom. Katie: Aw. Nom: So, his mother gave him that armor before their parents had to leave, um, to remind him that he can be both. Um, it do-the-the kingdoms don't matter. He didn't learn that lesson very well, um. Katie: Hmmm. Nom: But that plays into my character's thing of-he values family more than the kingdoms as well. Which, then, whenever he did turn into the—Creaking—it turned white, because then he was the kingdom of Bannerfall, and less so a kingdom in particular.

[smoog]

The Vampires SMP animated music video is out!!!

I’ve been working on this for the past 7 months, I have done my best to include the entire cast for this video and I hope you enjoy!

PS: if you could share your favourite moment/ shot from this I’d be very happy!

[vicprobably]

from the Bannerfall panel (spoilers ahead):

Owen: "Katie, what led up to your character answering the final question from the Creaking King?"

Katie: "I think it was a really nice way to sum up my character... me and Kitty, we had a really good conversation beforehand... it was something along the lines of 'but I want to protect you, I want to make sure you're okay,' and Kitty goes, 'then you'd be just as bad as your brother for not choosing yourself.' so that was in her monologue going through the decisions in the end... it was a great way to wrap up my character, and the fact that she chose herself. it was also a saving grace, I think, for Nom, because if she were to switch it around and take on the curse, I think Nom's character would forever blame himself-

Nom: "he would have been pissed."

Katie: "because it was his fault, inevitably, that he ate the resin."

Nom: "oh yeah, completely."

Katie: "she knew that the best thing to do was to choose herself. she has a found family, she found people who truly saw her for her and believed in her, and she didn't want to give that up for anything. but that doesn't take away from the fact that she did love her brother."

[kingcholerarefs]

300 FREE SCULPTURE REFERENCES FOR ARTISTS

10 poses at multiple angles! Reference sheets included

Download the pack on my Patreon

[rainydaydecaf]

I really genuinely love the clip in Legundo’s episode 4 where he used the fall and (noncanon) death into one of the tombs and edited it like v!Legs was walking around with a concussion for the rest of the day (ringing ears, bad vision, short term memory loss, confusion severe enough to make him wander into the woods, not able to be oriented to the present day) and then we ease that into the scene with Owen where we can maybe imagine Owen finding the Doctor in that state and getting him to sit down and rest until Legs recovers enough to know where he is (and maybe in that confused state, Legs started talking to Owen like one of his old comrades or officers, which leads to Owen being curious and asking about his past once he fully comes back to himself)

It’s just SUCH a cool bit of editing and story-telling that I love to geek out over ❤️

[flareyn]

Dont mind those two in the middle, they're still jetlagged from getting revived

[buttercupbonfire]

Shelby Is Not Naive, Or: Everyone Cares Too Much About Scott Goldsmith

Shelby fully expects the people of Oakhurst to kill her at the first opportunity. Shelby is so invested in the coven and so willing to excuse the flaws of other vampires because she has bought into the idea that the humans can and will hurt her at the first opportunity. There are many reasons for this, but Scott Goldsmith is not one of them.

Scott is her bestie because he stands still and says nice things while everyone else is running around introducing her to new and exciting forms of torment nexus. It is a “luigi wins by doing nothing” ass situation.

Once Shelby is turned, it becomes nearly impossible for her to talk to a human without being threatened. Many social interactions from the very instant she walks back into town after the fishing trip are shadowed by someone openly planning to hurt or kill vampires. 

Avid tries to test if she’s repelled by silver and then starts building a jail cell in front of her. Apo isn’t directly threatening, but basically comes to Shelby with the hypothetical “what if there was an evil vampire”. And then they emphasize the importance of keeping a stake at hand. 

Shelby asks Ren if they’ll really have to fight each other, and Ren says that it’s just the way of the world. Sausage emphasizes the point by yelling “stab them all until they’re dead!”, which isn’t really a great thing to hear when you are one of the “them” in question.

Eventually, Apo gets turned, and most of the vampires convene at the beacon, where Martyn burns her alive.

Let me repeat that: she burns alive. 

The video editing emphasizes this as a big deal.  Shelby’s narration in the aftermath concludes that “if i asked for a chance to talk, they would have just killed me without a second thought.” From Shelby’s perspective, they did just kill her without a second thought. It is the climax of their episode 3, and one of the first things Shelby mentions in episode 4. It is a major turning point for the character, with good reason.

As far as Shelby is concerned, the vampire vs human conflict began with her experiencing a horrific death for the grand crime of crouching next to a beacon. 

From this point forward, non threatening interactions with humans vanish almost entirely. 

The only conversation Shelby has with a human is episode 4 is her face to face with Avid, which has high points and low points. The low points include Avid telling her about staking his partner because she attacked him.

Shelby, does, however, visit the town later, where she finds Avid burning her house down.

And then Legundo reads the cure book in front of the house’s ashes. 

Legundo also scolds Avid for burning down the house, but Shelby misses that part. In fact, Shelby missed all of the pro Shelby comments made in the town around that time. 

According to the post series creator’s commentary, (which i can’t link because twitch deletes old vods so it probably no longer exists aajfas;llllldg) this isn’t even a matter of clever editing- Shubble was legitimately out of range for all of the parts of the story where people agreed that they wanted to help Shelby. 

In episode 5, she is approached by a group of Drift, Cleo, and Pearl. Shelby is surrounded, and asks them to put their swords away. Pearl takes a minute to do so, and when she does she switches to a bottle of holy water. Shelby backs away and Pearl moves forward. 

The start of this conversation very much has shades of an interrogation: “why do you look so different? Did you eat truffle?” 

Shelby tells them about being burnt alive, and the response she gets from Cleo is “but you got better”. Which sucks, and serves as an ironic mirror for the way that Scott and Owen are dismissive about the trauma involved with turning people. Both factions are expecting Shelby to just walk off the wrongs done to them, but the Oakhurst faction is openly threatening future harm to Shelby.  

Of the three of them, Drift is the most supportive. The conversation improves from there, and some nice things are said, but Shelby was still threatened. It was still the preamble to the nice and productive part of the talks. 

Then she has the meeting with Avid where he asks to be turned, which goes fairly well but ends with Avid being decidedly non human. Also Owen replaced one of Avid’s messages to Shelby with a death threat, so Shelby was still threatened over it. 

Episode 6 has the Oakhurst invasion where all of the vampires visit Oakhurst and Pearl gets chased around. Shelby doesn’t really talk to anyone here, but she sure does get to hear Pearl make a generalized threat. Because Shelby can never catch a break.

We also see another instance of Shelby assuming that the townies are after her: her narration says “i thought Pearl was chasing me”

Then there’s a conversation with Sausage. Sausage pulls out a stake because of course he does. 

Then Drift pulls Shelby aside, and they have a lovely chat where there are no threats of bodily harm. However, Drift is a vampire, so it doesn’t count. Rip. 

When Avid starts talking about the cure, Shelby’s immediate assumption is that if Avid asks to be cured, the humans will stake her without a second thought. She also is the one to suggest sabotaging the cure for the sake of protecting herself and the other vampires. 

Episode 7 sees Shelby dealing with humans twice, and both of them are decidedly hostile interactions

The first bit of human contact comes when the vampires burn down the walls of Oakhurst. This is, naturally, open combat. Shelby makes a point of targeting Martyn.

Her second human interaction in episode 7 is running into Abolish, who promptly introduces her to the Veylocke murder box. In other words, Shelby is stunned, rendered immobile and helpless, and executed in cold blood. It is not an easy death.

Abolish even acknowledges that she didn’t do anything, and then kills her anyway. 

episode 8 is the finale, where she fights some humans, hides from humans, eventually has a truce with humans for the first time ever, and then wanders off into the sunset with Drift and Scott.

That’s basically all of Shelby’s major human interactions post episode 3. There is never an instance where speaking to a human is not linked with being threatened by a human after that point. 

For the most part, this is entirely the result of the people of Oakhurst’s own priorities and character choices, but there is one vampire that tries to make sure that Shelby can’t talk to the humans. Someone that tries to isolate her, someone that uses threats, someone that is willing to lie to keep Shelby in the castle and away from town. 

That person is Owen. 

Owen interferes with Shelby speaking to townsfolk three times, to mixed results: he joins the conversation with Apo and successfully diverts them from trying to convince Shelby she’s wanted in town; he replaces Avid’s letter with a threatening message, but Avid manages to set up a meeting with Shelby and clear the air with her anyway; and he appears in the Pearl-Drift-Cleo meeting with Shelby in episode 5, which arguably improves the situation because he took the conversation in a useful direction and Shelby had already felt threatened anyway.

…actually, all three of these things happen in episode 5. Owen has a very brief window of being invested in the coven in this particular way. He does some pretty nasty lying in that window, though. 

While this could be an interesting plot thread, Owen’s contributions are something of a cigarette in a burning warehouse. Shelby got killed twice as collateral damage, and both deaths were exceptionally traumatic. No amount of intercession on Owen’s part is going to speak louder than the wrongs done to Shelby by the humans themselves. No amount of lying on Oakhurst’s behalf is more damning then Oakhurst’s own failure to address the damage they’ve done in any way. He’s burying a relationship so far underground it is already in hell. 

Even seemingly minor things like Pearl’s tendency to casually arm herself do more to damage Oakhurst’s reputation then Owen is really capable of- there is a direct line of cause and effect between Pearl saying she has a stake and Shelby assuming that Pearl is chasing her down. Shelby is rightfully skeptical of the claims Owen makes about other people, but when someone else is making those kinds of statements, she tends to believe them. 

And then there’s Shelby’s backstory. 

Shelby’s backstory, where she is isolated from her entire community growing up. Where people she considered friends and neighbors didn’t care about her in turn. Where nobody had even done something as basic as telling her that she’s fun to be around. 

 Of course Shelby thinks that Oakhurst is willing to write her off at the drop of a hat. That’s what her hometown did. 

In conclusion

1: the town is not blameless in the Oakhurst vs Castle conflict. They have done real harm to the Coven, and most of it has fallen on their friendliest and least aggressive member.

2: Shelby is indeed afraid and isolated, but the bulk of that fear and isolation is generated and maintained by the people of Oakhurst themselves. The one time Scott had an opportunity to sabotage one of Shelby’s outside relationships, he chooses not to.

3: Scott is Shelby’s first friend, ever, and the feeling is mutual. This is a key component of why Shelby is Like That. 

4: The answer to most gripes regarding vsmp’s story arc and ending is Shelby. Why did Scott live and Pyro die? Shelby. Why did Scott suddenly pivot to pacifism? Shelby. Why can’t the humans just wipe out the coven and call it a day? Shelby. Why was the coven a legitimate social structure in the first place? That’s also Shelby. It’s Shelby all the way down.

In Shelby’s story, Scott is the prize she wins for her kindness and Pyro becomes the avatar of all of the senseless violence she has suffered. 

Shelby’s character arc is one of being the collateral damage of other people’s agendas so frequently that she becomes convinced that she must use violence herself. This culminates in her killing the most direct and personal threat to her physical safety, which is Pyro. Shelby’s other character arc is about seeking peace and companionship despite the bloodshed around her. This culminates in her turning her closest companion from the path of violence, and that companion happens to be Scott. Scott and Pyro’s conclusions are mirrored halves of Shelby’s finale, and reflect Shelby’s greatest triumph and lowest low.

The outcomes they get make sense if you position Shelby as the central character, and her choices were the ones that decided their fates. 

[pooblet]

dog astronaut mug by makeshiftpottery

omg the little squirrel 💖😭