#if anyone has the answer...let me know...

[thekidsareunstable]

found this gem in one of my google docs from 9th grade

[chalkrub]

Is caracles pronounced ka-ra-cuhls, KA-ra-cleez, or a secret third way?

- @fan-thing

why would i answer this simply when i could roll out my snake and force her to answer for me

[apricustar]

been turning the decision to have this season take place on the 4th of july of all days around in my head. the pitt is not a show that does anything incidentally; it is exacting in its precision. if they wanted summer-specific storylines they could have chosen any other day, but they picked the 4th in particular—and it becomes the lens through which everything else is filtered.

because what is it, exactly, that 4th of july represents as a holiday—what’s really being celebrated?

it’s a celebration of america at its most idealized: freedom, opportunity, the belief that this is a place where you can make something of yourself—where you are given the chance to build and to belong. and that belief matters; it’s one people have taken seriously enough to stake their lives—and their families’ futures—on.

america the brave. america the beautiful. america the free. america the great.

the pitt takes that promise—this myth of america—and holds it up to the light, and refuses to let you look away from all the truths it reveals.

the 4th celebrates the unalienable right to liberty; orlando diaz represents what it costs. brought in following an injury at his construction job, he is ultimately diagnosed with diabetic ketoacidosis. diaz is a working man who provides for his family, who has done everything ‘right.’ it’s revealed that he lost his job during the pandemic, and with it, his insurance; without coverage, he began rationing his insulin—which is what ultimately landed him in the ER this day. 

he and his wife both work—together, they earn just enough to be disqualified from medicaid, and not nearly enough to afford treatment. he is urged to stay until his labs normalize; the hospital works to reduce costs, offers what it can, but it isn't enough. he is already drowning in medical debt, and he has another job to get to, so he leaves against medical advice.

diaz returns later in the season—unconscious, with a severe skull fracture, and brain swelling from an unwitnessed fall at his security job; it is heavily implied he tried to take his own life. diaz does not exist outside the american promise—he exists inside it, at the point where it breaks down. and that is what makes his story so pointed: on a day meant to celebrate liberty, he is forced into decisions shaped entirely by cost, revealing how that liberty is structured in practice.

america has also defined itself as a nation of immigrants—a place of sanctuary, a refuge for those who arrive with nary but a hope for a better life. it is a claim the pitt does not let go unexamined. 

pranita is brought into the hospital by two ICE agents, her shoulder injured and her movement controlled. from the moment she enters the ED, she is not simply a patient but a body under supervision: monitored during examination, denied privacy, and repeatedly refused contact with her family despite her requests. even care comes with conditions—medical attention and surveillance occupying the same space. 

in a similar vein, the augustin siblings show what remains after ICE has already passed through. their parents were deported after a routine immigration hearing, leaving an older sister to care for her younger brother while trying to balance school and work. what is left is a family broken into pieces—life reorganized around absence: a household where a child is forced into adult responsibilities without the space to grieve, and survival has become constant improvisation. the damage doesn't end at the point of enforcement; it extends into every day that follows. what does it mean for a country to celebrate its purported immigrant origins while actively criminalizing its immigrants in the same breath?

the pursuit of happiness is another promise woven into the declaration; in america, it has come to mean something very specific: the protestant work ethic, the american dream, the idea that hard work leads somewhere. that sacrifice, endurance, and consistency will eventually translate into stability, reward—a life that becomes livable. in its modern form, this becomes hustle culture: productivity as virtue, rest as laziness, work as something that should extend beyond the limits of the body itself. the grind never stops.

debbie cohen is what that promise looks like operationalized. an overworked waitress, seen and discharged—sent back to a job that has no room for her absence. rest itself becomes a kind of risk. she returns only when the damage has become irreversible: necrotizing fasciitis spreading from her foot to her leg. even then, the calculus that governs her life does not pause. before she has even been told the full truth of what is happening to her body, her boss calls; the implication is clear: come back or lose your job.

there is something almost too deliberate about the symmetry—the body consumed internally by infection while externally still being claimed by labor. the system cannot afford her humanity, only her output. debbie cohen is not an aberration within this logic. she is its endpoint—and still, the pitt has more to say. 

in one of the final scenes, some of the hospital staff gather on the roof as fireworks begin over the city. chairs are pulled out and beers are opened—for many, it’s likely one of the first times they’ve been able to breathe fresh air, a moment of stillness after a day structured entirely by urgency. 

earlier grief remains present without resolution—patients like louie, whose presence is folded into memory through something as simple as his love of fireworks. the roof does not function as escape from the system; it is simply another vantage point within it.

when perlah begins to cry and dana holds her, the gesture doesn’t resolve anything. it is recognition—of what was lost today, and of what will be waiting again tomorrow. for them, this day is not exceptional. it is just another shift. 

but here is the celebration anyway! the fireworks, the music, america staging itself—watched by people who know, criminally well, exactly how much its systems fail the ones who need them most. all that noise, all that color, the spectacle of 'greatness' america is known for—and still, none of it loud enough to drown out the hollowness underneath.

a holiday about freedom placed directly above systems where freedom is conditional—on insurance, on documentation, on whether you can afford to be sick, on whether your body can afford to stop.

the pitt doesn't need to explicitly reject the holiday; it simply places the conditions of care alongside the language of celebration and leaves them there, unreconciled. what the season makes visible is not simply that america's promise is broken—but that it continues to be performed in full view of its own failures.

our nation's contradictions, laid bare.

[sunlight-shunlight]

i feel like the entire premise of veilguard is such a... flop in comparison to the setup of trespasser, haha

like ok. you end trespasser with either:

high approval solas is grimly going "ough. i must destroy your world, but i would treasure the chance to be wrong again :/" and seems to at least somewhat hope the inquisitor can find another way to do [whatever magic bullshit he's doing] that's less destructive. so you get the sense that the solution to this will involve finding something solas doesn't know. he gives you a decent amount of information on his plans, and genuinely seems to regret what he sees as the necessity of them.

OR

solas is pretty cold and unflinching, and fucks off with only a vague hint of his plans that he's going to destroy the world. and now you know that he has very little sympathy for mortal people, and he's got his huge pervasive spy network, and massive magical power. so he's a threat! a huge, scary threat, bc he has all these fingers in every organization, and clearly has very few moral compunctions beyond a kind of bare minimum "eh, i don't want this world to suffer unnecessarily before i have to destroy and rebuild it :/" type of mindset.

but then they don't... deliver on either of these?

like the opening showdown at solas' ritual is such a "we tried nothing, and we're all out of ideas!" type of situation lmao. after 10 Whole Years, nobody in the inquisition learned anything new about solas' plans or motives? the entire double blight thing and the purpose of his ritual is a complete surprise to them bc they never... managed to find ANY information on this? if "archdemons are sealing the black city and it opens after the blights" was a common fan theory and implied in previous games even before being confirmed, and the entire premise of the inquisition post-trespasser was "we're going to turn over every stone and figure out what this guy is planning" then how did they not find anything actually useful to bring to bear against him, besides varric's somewhat unconvincing ted talk?

and i don't think this is a "well, solas is just SO secretive and SO great at hiding info, that no one ever guessed what was going on😌" type of thing, bc... the entire point of inquisition was showing that "divinity" is a construct, and everyone is fallible? so it's actually counterproductive to that theme to show him as having this infallible knowledge that no one else in the world has? no one else in thedas ever thought "hm, there are 7 gates to the black city, in the well known chant of light that i read every day, and there are 7 archdemons! why do these numbers match?" even as a conspiracy theory? no one in the inquisition went "hm, weird that solas got so upset about the archdemons when he was with us! what was he thinking about?" to investigate as a lead? the grey wardens have never looked into "hey, what does happen after we run out of blights?" as a question? obviously blackwall would not know if they had, but they're not stupid, they should have been curious? the elves and the dwarves know absolutely nothing useful about their own divine/historical figures that are locked in the black city/generating blight?

and solas is SUCH a dick to grey wardens and dwarves and dalish and tons of other people! and the entire point of his character is to show that his wisdom is limited by his prejudices and ego and isolation! and it is likely for the wardens and dwarves and dalish to have actually useful information that he never had access to, but the inquisition could get to, if it looked. bc these factions are far more layered and important than what solas sees them as. but now the conclusion is... well.... no one but solas knew jack shit about these topics. so, was he technically correct in dismissing everyone else from the start(?) low approval and xenophobia win(?) never listen to anybody if you think they're lesser than you, bc they don't actually know anything useful(?) 😭

and the entire premise of the high approval inquisitor/solas relationship is them proving a lot of his biases wrong! they're not intentionally setting out on a mission of "i am going to force this 10 000 year old sunk cost fallacy immortal to reckon with the fact that i'm a person with equal rights to him", but they do so regardless! varric nearly wins the whole "what if you were a lone survivor on a desert island" argument, without even understanding what they were arguing about! so, if they're actually setting out with the goal to change his mind, and with knowledge of who he actually is besides "weird hermit with bad opinions on every race including his own," then... they should continue that thread and have the inquisition make a genuinely compelling attempt to show him information he doesn't have?

and also, i don't think this necessarily has to work! if they need to keep him as a villain, it would be interesting if solas, even if given some new info - still tragically refused, became as prideful in his own ideology as the evanuris, and continued on his same antagonistic course, and then had to be stopped by force. and it would be EXTREMELY heartwrenching if he killed varric after that genuine attempt! but the fact that it's never even tried is such a ???. why even dangle the option in previous games, then?

but ok! let's say they wanted to get rid of the high approval "prove me wrong" vibe entirely, and just make solas a straight out villain.

he has no agents! no schemes! no terrifying dream sequences! his only crime onscreen is... accidentally killing varric in a somewhat dumb way that makes both of them look bad? tfw varric, an extremely charming, eloquent guy from the most mugging-prone city in thedas, decides to do a "your plans are bad, bc even the ones that were successful and objectively decent, sucked. stop doing anything" ted talk, to his friend that he otherwise has good success in arguing with. and then wanders into melee range. and then solas, 10 000 year old magical being who doesn't even want to exist in a physical form, while holding a priceless mystical artifact, decides to stab him with the artifact. instead of casting Any Spell. i would totally buy it if solas blasted varric into a wall and broke his neck, or turned him into a statue, but knife fighting each other like level 2 rogues is.... cringe for both of them 😔

and then the only scheme solas has is luring rook into a prison that... they escape within weeks? he doesn't even give them fucked up nightmares or anything? for some reason, despite making them hallucinate varric while he's trying to foment regret in them, he has varric be... fairly nice to them? why? make fake varric guilt trip them constantly instead to intensify their regrets, if that's his angle? guilt trip them about releasing the blights, and then he could even parallel their regret about that, with his regret for destroying arlathan? if he's supposed to be cold-bloodedly manipulating rook to escape, then commit to it! he's SO useless in general!

i was expecting some horrible, galaxy brain schemes of making the tevinter and qunari armies fight each other to cover for his agents. assassinations, blackmail, court intrigue, idk. stuff that really makes you think about how brutal he must have been during his rebellion, and how easy it is for him to slip from "arguing with iron bull that people shouldn't relish in killing bc it's wrong to devalue anyone's life" to "welp. time to get my hands bloody again to do the job :/" dread wolf mode. but instead he's just in a shitty fade terrarium for most of the game? what was the point of hyping him up as this ruthless mastermind with tons of hidden followers, then?

and at the end, rook can... punch him out? the guy who was turning people to stone by looking at them, before? this is just boring fjdhdjdjsf. my boy should at least get a boss battle 😭

[melioristicbeast]

Hello, I am such a big fan of yours!

In particular, I really admire the expressive tenderness of the way you draw hands.

I vaguely remember you mentioning studying Schiele at some point for hands, and I wondered if you might talk a little bit about how you got So Good™ ️ and your process for drawing hands.

Thank you so much for sharing your art with us, it's incredibly inspiring! ♡

Hi!! Thank you so much for the kind words, I’m incredibly flattered!! 😭❤️❤️

I’ll do my best, I’m not used to talking about my art so I hope what I’ve listed makes sense! Unsurprisingly I have a lot to say about hands lol get ready for a long post under the cut.

Did a quick sketch of my current process / some things I focus on, in no particular order:

a) This is how I usually sketch hands when I start a drawing: I simplify it to the palm, a line for the knuckles if visible, the thumb- and forefingers and a glovelike section for the rest, focusing more on the gesture than correct proportions b) A general tip: when you bend your fingers, they curve in towards each other! c) I like to exaggerate these curves of the fingers, distinguishing the bony top from the more fleshy underside d) My go-to shape for the palm, thinking of the thenar and hypothenar eminences - it's a nice quick way to establish the angle of a hand and draw the fingers as an extension of that e) The location of the knuckles - the reason there’s a square shape of space between your fingers is because the skin ‘webs’ further out than the joints, and from the back of the hand you can see the ‘groove’ of the fingers while from the palm it’s just flat (i hope that makes sense (‘: ) - it also creates this cute little triangular space i’ve tried to draw on the top lol

More long-form thoughts and examples under the cut:

I think the main components of why hands are such a prominent feature in my art and the reasons I’ve gotten good at drawing them are both on the technicality of it and the reasons I’m so fond of including them:

On technicality:

References: I use references a lot! Both looking at my own hands but also taking photos and tracing over them to figure out what makes a gesture read well, or just exploring the sometimes strange shapes the hands take as they bend (especially the fingers and the wrists)

Detailed anatomical knowledge: as part of my education I did the same anatomy labs, dissections etc as the medical students - and having that detailed knowledge of the anatomy of the hands (knowing why the fingers bend inwards the way they do when you make a fist, the location and planes of moment of each of the hands joints, as well as the internal structures that make up the topography of the hands) has definitely made a huge difference in how I’m able to explore and understand new angles or poses I haven’t drawn before.

On reasons I draw them a lot:

I love drawing them! I am almost always thinking about, or admiring hands in real life or in art - and when thinking up poses i usually try to include them in some way :) I’m much more comfortable drawing hands than faces as a result lol. I guess what I'm trying to say is that a lot of it is simply due to a looong process of slowly adding small observations (fx I only recently really figured out how to draw the webbing between the thumb and forefinger 😆)

The Artist Yearns(™) : I spent a lot of my teenage and young adult years being reluctant of other people touching me, and to a lesser degree touching others - but longing for the comfort of it. I eventually got over it, but I think there's definitely a yearning feeling to how I draw characters touching each other that stems from that (This is also why one of my favorite tropes ever is Touch Starved hehe)

I use them to enhance the emotions of a piece: showing if a character is startled (fingers spread out, hands starting to raise), nervous (fidgeting), hands relaxed and curled inwards in sleep etc. I love exploring non-verbal communication through body language in general! There’s the general tip in drawing figures to think of how to make the pose ‘more’ - and I use hands for this purpose a lot :)

Some art vs reference examples for those who might find that interesting:

For this one I wanted the contrast of Derek’s tight grasp and Stiles’ very light touch - I wasn’t sure how I wanted to angle the hands so I took a bunch of photos (with my 3D replica of the moon bc hey, you use what you got right?) :

Incidentally, this was where I had a Eureka moment about how the web of skin between the 1st and 2nd fingers fold haha

As for the references for Stiles’ hands, DOB tends to move his 2nd and 3rd fingers together which is a fun little detail to include, I think! I wanted his hands to almost hover, with a tentative touch of the fingertips so i explored different angles and degrees of the palm being cupped:

(I actually ended up breaking anatomy to include the thumb on the right hand because otherwise it just looked weird)

And finally, just a collection of instances where the hand gestures were tricky / something I hadn’t done before where I closely followed my reference photos:

(whenever you see a hand near a face/skull i just want you to know there's probably a reference photo featuring this skull replica behind it 😂)

Particularly needed reference to figure out the the angle of derek's hand grabbing stiles' wrist as well as the fingers curving around the torso :)

Basically I use real-life a lot and tweak to my liking! If I'm using my own hands as direct reference for stiles' I elongate the fingers and shorten the palm - for derek's I keep things pretty much as-is (other than increasing the size of the hands relative to the wrists bc I do not have Man Hands haha). Getting into archetypes of hands is a whole other rant (there are so many!!! i just really like how mine look so that's all i draw lol)

After typing up this whole thing i re-read your question and realized I totally forgot the part about studying Schiele - I adore his stylization of hands, particularly how bony he draws fingers! One of my very early artist crushes was Kishimoto, the artist who drew Naruto (whatever your opinion on the series, the man draws phenomenal hands!). I usually like finding my own way of stylizing real life, but those two are probably the main artists whose way of drawing hands had a big influence on how I draw them :)

[tainebot01]

You know the bozos who are making the unfunny jokes about punishing Susie with side b for the “Kris flirts with everyone” line or whatever (despite the fact that A. they also flirt with a toothy heart monster and an actual watercooler meaning it’s only a problem for them when it’s a cute anime girl and 2. said anime girl is of college age minimum and they met her literally right now) are the same guys that quoted “proceed” whenever Berdly did anything that could even slightly be read in bad faith to say he’s definitely a redditor niceguy incel who deserves Snowgrave because of it.

Ya’ll are fake fans.

[shines-with-you]

HelloI'm really struck by the phrase I've read here several times about Liam and Noel: "They're like boyfriend and girlfriend, not brothers. Brothers don't behave like that." I'd love to know how they actually behaved when they were together! Does anyone know any other true quotes about them?

hello! ugh god yeah, me too. oh to be a fly on the wall when they're alone... we've seen glimpse of it throughout the years, though, like when they fought over things siblings normally wouldn't be that bothered by, their jealous spats, the way they speak about each other, the way they look at/kiss/touch each other (well, mainly the way liam touches noel, but noel gladly lets himself be touched, so.)

but yeah, the outsider POV is fascinating to me too! i think that quote you mention is an interesting one, because noel and liam famously hate the kaiser chiefs, so in part i always figured that quote could be seen as a sort of dig or retaliation of some kind. a sort of "whatever you say, brotherfuckers." but i've also seen two versions of that quote: one of them also includes the sentence "it's bigger than love", while in the other one, the kaiser chiefs guys call oasis "a great bunch of lads", so maybe it wasn't a dig? unfortunately i don't know the source, so i can't say for certain.

either way, the "they're not brothers, they're boyfriend and girlfriend" bit still stands, and whether it was meant to be a dig or not, that remark is obviously based on something. it's clear to a lot of people that there is something up between noel and liam that transcends a normal brotherly relationship, i think.

here are some quotes about them that ring very true (and there are many more i'm sure, but i've only got these handy right now):

 Tim Abbot quote:

and then there's the media that's always loved to portray them as a couple (screenshots taken from this long and awesome post):

i'm sure there are many more examples, so if anyone has any more, feel free to add them or something! hope this helps, anon! <3

[birdwizardfandom]

What I want from Dispatch: MORE WORLDBUILDING!! I have so many questions about how superheroing is handled in this world. I can infer that SDN is like a private security service. It looks like if they stop a criminal they're allowed to perform an arrest but processing is still done through law enforcement. Here's what I want to know: what happens if a hero witnesses a crime but the victim isn't a subscriber? Are they allowed to step in or will they be reprimanded for rendering services that aren't being paid for? It sounds like subscribers are allowed to request aid for non subscribers; In the tutorial there's a mission involving a call from someone reporting suspicious activity at a movie theater. Is SDN permitting a hero be sent because the movie theater management is subscribed, or is it because a subscriber is just asking them to go? It's a simulation so I'm assuming every mission is within the approved parameters set by SDN since they didn't state otherwise.

I want to know how the Dispatch setting handles vigilantes! All of the SDN heroes appear to be sanctioned by law and they can be held accountable by both their employer and the government. What happens if someone puts on a mask and starts superheroing on their own? Are they arrested? Will SDN attempt to recruit them or stop them? Imagine this: a hero is dispatched to a call but by the time they arrive there's nothing for them to do because a vigilante handled the situation. This means they took work from SDN, if it keeps happening it makes them look unnecessary, which means a drop in subscribers. Maybe this is why they recruited Robert as Mechaman. What was the status of Mechaman as a hero to Los Angeles? Were the Robertsons sanctioned by the government to do hero work? Or were they too rich and untouchable for them to care? How long has SDN existed? Did they try to recruit Robert before, or even his father?

What's up with supervillains? They mentioned villains operating under crime bosses in the tutorial and we've had loose references to the "Red Ring" but so far we haven't seen any organized crime- I guess they're saving that for Shroud. Some people are supervillains out of necessity and some do it because if you have the power to shoot laser beams through people's skulls then you want to do more of that, I guess. What happens if the heroes succeed and there are less supervillains? SDN needs villains to make money.

The game's tone so far is lighthearted, but I hope they find a way to address some of this. It would make the world feel more real and it would let the writers flex their skills on more than funny quips and inspiring exchanges.