Emotional 💔💔 I Can't Believe Sans' Last Words 💔💔 This Was Just A Really Crappy Doodle At

Anybody care for some little ponies?

Made the sonic one a couple days ago and ended up loving it, so now there's a tails and Amy to match, making an AU I suppose. Enjoy!

Edit: realized an AU needs a name, I've decided on

"MLP: Friendship got Faster"

Yet now, I find I've grown into a tall child 🌼

Demisexual? No, you misheard. I said Dummysexual. I'm attracted to that moron over there. Look at them. They just tripped over nothing and set the house on fire. I'm in love.

Let's introduce Teresa, Bill's personal therapist at Teraprisma (the designs here are the first ones I made, so you'll see a change later, I hope you like my girl, she needs a raise)

Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 (in a week or so)

Start here

39 books to read if you liked ARCANE

CAITVI SHIPPERS –

1. a study in scarlet women by sherry thomas 2. the lady's guide to petticoats and piracy by mackenzi lee 3. plain bad heroines by emily m. danforth 4. the unbroken by c.l. clark 5. iron widow by xiran jay zhao 6. crier's war by nina varela 7. the drowning empire trilogy by andrea stweart 8. the priory of the orange tree by samantha shannon 9. the midnight lie by marie rutkoski 10. the bone shard daughter by andrea stewart

JAYVIK SHIPPERS –

1. vicious by v.e. schwab 2. if we were villains by m.l. rio 3. the secret history by donna tartt 4. the song of achilles by madeline miller 5. the picture of dorian gray by oscar wilde 6. a marvelous light by freya marske 7. the magpie lord by kj charles 8. fever syndrome by angela slatter 9. the gloaming by rory power 10. boys, beasts & men by sam j. miller

TIMEBOMB SHIPPERS –

1. six of crows by leigh bardugo 2. war girls by tochi onyebuchi 3. this savage song by victoria schwab 4. the knife of never letting go by patrick ness

JINX & VI'S RELATIONSHIP –

1. we hunt the flame by hafsah faizal 2. girls of paper and fire by natasha ngan 3. the ones we're meant to find by joan he 4. burn our bodies down by rory power 5. sawkill girls by claire legrand

GENERAL ARCANE VIBES –

1. the aeronaut's windlass by jim butcher 2. foundryside by robert jackson bennett 3. gunmetal gods by zamil akhtar 4. cyberpunk: neuromancer by william gibson 5. frostheart by jamie littler 6. the broken earth trilogy by n.k. jemisin 7. black sun by rebecca roanhorse 8. rebel seoul by axie oh 9. we ride the storm by devin madson 10. the drowned cities by paolo bacigalupi

Mizu, femininity, and fallen sparrows

In my last post about Mizu and Akemi, I feel like I came across as overly critical of Mizu given that Mizu is a woman who - in her own words - has to live as a man in order to go down the path of revenge.

If she is ever discovered to be female by the wrong person, she will not only be unable to complete her quest, but there's a good chance that she'll be arrested or killed.

So it makes complete sense for Mizu to distance herself as much as possible from any behavior that she feels like would make someone question her sex.

I felt so indignant toward Mizu on my first couple watchthroughs for this moment. Why couldn't Mizu bribe the woman and her child's way into the city too? If Mizu is presenting as a man, couldn't she claim to be the woman's escort?

However, this moment makes things pretty clear. Mizu knows all too well the plight of women in her society. She knows it so well that she cannot risk ever finding herself back in their position again. She helps in what little way she can - without drawing attention to herself.

Mizu is not a hero and she is not one to make of herself a martyr - she will not set herself on fire to keep others warm. There's room to argue that Mizu shouldn't prioritize her quest over people's lives, but given the collateral damage Mizu can live with in almost every episode of season 1, Mizu is simply not operating under that kind of morality at this point. ("You don't know what I've done to reach you," Mizu tells Fowler.)

And while I still feel like Mizu has an obvious and established blind spot when it comes to Akemi because of their differences in station, such that Mizu's judgment of Akemi and actions in episode 5 are the result of prejudice rather than the result of Mizu's caution, I also want to establish that Mizu is just as caged as Akemi is, despite her technically having more freedom while living as a man.

Mizu can hide her mixed race identity some of the time, and she can hide her sex almost all of the time, but being able to operate outside of her society's strict rules for women does not mean she cannot see their plight.

It does not mean she doesn't hurt for them.

Back to Mizu and collateral damage, remember that sparrow?

While Mizu is breaking into Boss Hamata's manse, she gets startled by a bird and kills it on reflex. She then cradles it in her hands - much more tenderly than we've seen Mizu treat almost anything up to this point in the season:

She then puts it in its nest, with its unhatched eggs. Almost like she's trying to make the death look natural. Or like an accident.

You see where I'm going with this.

When Mizu kills Kinuyo, Mizu lingers in the moment, holding the body tenderly:

And btw a lot of stuff about this show hit me hard, but this remains the biggest gut punch of them all for me, Mizu holding that poor girl's body close, GOD

When Mizu arranges the "scene of the crime," Kinuyo's body is delicate, birdlike. And Mizu is so shaken afterward that she gets sloppy. She's horrified at this kill to the point that she can't bring herself to take another innocent life - the boy who rats her out.

MIZU'S ONE MOMENT OF SOFTNESS AND MERCY, COMING ON THE HEELS OF HER NEEDING TO KILL A GIRL TO SPARE HER THE WORST FATE THAT THIS RIGID SOCIETY HAS TO OFFER WOMEN, AND TO SPARE A BROTHEL FULL OF INNOCENT WOMEN WHO ARE THE CASTOFFS OF SOCIETY, NEARLY RESULTS IN ALL OF THEIR DEATHS

No wonder Mizu is as stoic and cold as she is.

And no wonder Mizu has no patience for Akemi whatsoever right before the terrible reveal and the fight breaks out:

Speaking of Akemi - guess who else is compared to a bird!

The plumage is more colorful, a bit flashier. But a bird is a bird.

And, uh

Yeah.

I like to think that Mizu killing the sparrow is not only foreshadowing for what she must do to Kinuyo, but is also a representation of the choice she makes on Akemi's behalf. She decides to cage the bird because she believes the bird is "better off." Better off caged than... dead.

But because Mizu doesn't know Akemi or her situation, she of course doesn't realize that the bird is fated to die if it is caged and sent back home.

Mizu is clearly not happy, or pleased, or satisfied by allowing Akemi to be dragged back to her father:

But softness and mercy haven't gotten Mizu anywhere good, recently.

There is so much tragedy layered into Mizu's character, and it includes the things she has to witness and the choices she makes - or believes she has to make - involving women, when she herself can skirt around a lot of what her society throws at women. Although, I do believe that it comes at the cost of a part of Mizu's soul.

After all, I'm gonna be haunted for the rest of this show by Mizu's very first prayer in episode 1:

"LET" her die. Because as Ringo points out, she doesn't "know how" to die.

Kind of like another bird in this show:

Need more fics about timebomb raising Isha.

Like the first time Isha isn’t trying to mimic Jinx is to paint a hourglass across the bridge of her nose. Ekko freezes when he sees it, unsure what the gesture means and how to react.

Sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night suffocating in blue hair. He can’t quite tell who it’s from. Jinx is spread out like a starfish, compared to Ekko who sleeps very still. Yet their feet are tangled and her elbow is jabbing him in the face. Between them, he can feel Isha breathing, curled into a little ball.

One time he finds a little kids drawing of a family: two girls with blue hair and a boy with white. He stops breathing for a second.

For a while, Ekko doesn’t understand the relationship between Isha and Jinx, until the kid gets hurt alone. She cradles her broken thumb and cries out the word “mama.”

Once Jinx and Ekko have to run an errand, leaving poor Isha behind. Something disastrous happens and Ekko has to drag an unconscious Jinx back to the firelights hideout. Isha is a worried, sobbing mess. (Ekko is too but he hides it better). He tries to leave the room, to go help more of his people, but Isha is violently shaking her head, trying to get him to stay. He’s bargaining saying he’ll come back later. He makes it all the way to the door, hand pressed against the handle until Isha sobs out the words “dada.” He’s faced in this one moment with the decision to accept the weight of this burden or to leave the kid. (Of course he stays).

When Jinx wakes up, Isha spends a few hours where she won’t let either of them out of her sight.

One time Isha is causing trouble for some other firelights and someone finds Ekko, “control your kid.” Suddenly that phrasing is everywhere “your kid” “your kid” “yours”.

Overall, Ekko is so overwhelmed with feelings he can’t explain. He’s still in awe at the fact that Jinx, the girl he has been hopelessly in love with since childhood, is finally back in his life. Now they’re awkward and falling in love again. On top of that, he was gifted a family he never thought possible.

and they were lab mates