Hello there, stranger

The name's E-bert. +25, Here for art.

[liibrra]

The beautiful Lucía Dressed in white satin with ribbon and lace.. 🎶

[justthemidnightmanic]

One more piece finished from the WIPs folder tonight - my Lady in Red, Katarina. I'm fond of the headcanon that she was a librarian or scholar of some kind.

[justthemidnightmanic]

The Haruspex is All Alone

[justthemidnightmanic]

My girl Heather <3

[catchymemes]

[butchniqabi]

[theeeveetamer]

One thing I've always enjoyed about Vergil is that the games make you like him and root for him as a character... but not because he's right. It's not because he's noble. It's not even because he's traumatized. It's because he's Dante's brother.

Vergil is kind of terrible. He's done a lot of terrible things. The game doesn't even try to dispute that. You are not supposed to see Vergil as a heroic figure. Yet we still root for him because Dante, our PoV character, roots for him. Dante loves his brother. He wants his brother to succeed. We see how Vergil's absence crushes Dante. He never truly gets over it.

To Dante, Vergil is the person you love even though sometimes you just can't stand them, and maybe despite the fact that they've hurt you, because they're so important to you that you can't imagine life without them. He is the person you watch destroy themselves over and over, knowing there's nothing you can do to stop it, and you feel a piece of yourself break every single time the cycle repeats. Even if we, as players, may not see that or feel that for Vergil (at least, not right away), it's clear that Dante does.

And I can't emphasize enough how relatable and human that experience is. I think we've all been there in one way or another with someone in our lives. If we haven't, then I'm sure we've all watched a friend or family member go through that with someone they've loved.

He really doesn't need to be anything grander than that. He's not secretly right or noble. In fact, he's dead wrong about a lot. Yet we're still on Vergil's side because when he overcomes, when he finds his peace, when he becomes the person Dante hoped he could be, then Dante finds peace as well.

And we all want a world where the people we love can find their peace, and we can find our peace with them.

[justthemidnightmanic]

Date night~!

[justthemidnightmanic]

The last day

[justthemidnightmanic]

[vaguely-concerned]

one thing I have to keep reremembering every time I'm playing a soulslike/similar kind of difficult game -- and that I wish I could internalize elsewhere in my life as well -- is that you always, always have to suffer through the long dark of an inexplicable failcringe era before you can emerge into a fresh new dawn of competence. faceplanting into humiliating failure in ways you hadn't even conceived of before on a loop can sometimes be the herald of great and wondrous things to come soon. don't be so quick to abandon yourself in the early murk of daybreak because you think you just suck!!!

[but-a-humble-goon]

My favorite reading of Arkham from DMC3 and one that instantly makes him a way more fun villain is that his two forms represent hyper exaggerated caricatures of how he views the Sparda brothers. So he sees Vergil as an overly self-serious moody asshole and he sees Dante as an actual fucking clown.

[botwstoriesandsuch]

Pssst

Hey, are you an artist or writer with WIPs?

Come here... I got a secret for you pssst come ‘ere

[kittmoon]

waiting in deep suspense

[botwstoriesandsuch]

Psst you ready here comes the secret

Here it comes

[moinsbienquekaworu]

I am also very curious about this secret

[botwstoriesandsuch]

Your time spent enjoying the creative process is infinitely more valuable that any final project you create. So stop putting yourself down for never finishing or posting those WIPs because every moment you spent creating something you loved is a moment not wasted. Your progress and talent is measured by your passion not your number of posts.

[botwstoriesandsuch]

This post went from 3k to 7k overnight and that just goes to show how many of you need to hear this so make sure you don’t ever forget it

[eerizon]

connection terminated.

i have a feeling that you are right where you want to be.

[grimmgromm]

“Lonely Road”

[justthemidnightmanic]

I swear it.

[charliejaneanders]

Every single craft has been paying “The Passion Tax” for generations. This term (coined by author and organizational psychologist Adam Grant) — and backed by scientific research — simply states that the more someone is passionate about their work, the more acceptable it is to take advantage of them. In short, loving what we do makes us easy to exploit.

Guest Column: If Writers Lose the Standoff With Studios, It Hurts All Filmmakers

[s-leary]

If the phrase “vocational awe” isn’t part of your lexicon yet, stop scrolling and read Fobazi Ettarh:

Vocational awe describes the set of ideas, values, and assumptions librarians have about themselves and the profession that result in notions that libraries as institutions are inherently good, sacred notions, and therefore beyond critique. I argue that the concept of vocational awe directly correlates to problems within librarianship like burnout and low salary. This article aims to describe the phenomenon and its effects on library philosophies and practices so that they may be recognized and deconstructed.

—Vocational Awe and Librarianship: The Lies We Tell Ourselves

I see it in every field I’ve ever worked in: publishing, open source software development, higher education. It describes pretty much every industry that relies on creativity, altruism, or both.

[skelesass]

shadows

—-

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