#(THEY'RE LITERALLY AGE SAME AGE)

[shakingparadigm]

i think about the fact ivan was originally created to be an encouraging older brother figure ,, and it's really cute how some of that can still be seen when he's with mizi

[silusvesuius]

nnnnnnnnnnnnno maa'am

[jojo-schmo]

The 24 Character Strengths are awesome references when writing characters!!

I've found this website to be extremely helpful and cool while fleshing out my characters' personalities and motivations.

Even if I only have basic personality traits for a character, exploring strengths that I feel fits them and reading their descriptions is fantastic for inspiration!! It really helps narrow down the basic ideals I imagine a character would believe in, and then I can get more specific from there. It's a great guide to springboard off of!

Each strength is sorted into one of six virtues. Starting with a broad virtue, for example "justice," and honing that down into the strengths of "fairness," "leadership," or "teamwork" makes writing them really fun!

Here's an example of the "fairness" strength description! Lots of detail and tangible qualities describing it!

Of course there are infinite ways to interpret a character strength, just like in real life. And people aren't always black and white and follow a strength 100% of the time. But it's been extremely helpful to see specific traits being described in so much detail, and imagining different scenarios that a character would react in. It's like I can understand them a bit more and think a little like them, especially if their trait isn't one of my personal strengths. :3

But I also recommend taking the actual personality test for yourself! I took it years ago and it was really cool to put a name to some of my strengths and see how detailed this descriptions were. And when my friends and I shared our results, I felt like we understood each other just a little more. :)

Just thought I'd share this reference that's been helping me lately :D

[mctwinkdom]

Celebrating with his girlfriend and boyfriend 🫶

[clovenoko]

※ ♣️♦️ fictional children 🏵️🍈

I came up with the idea of "children of love", I guess, my favorite Trey&Cater !! a girl who doesn't want to be "cute" but "cool" and a boy who doesn't want to stand out and isn't used to showing true emotions !!

adult Trey and Cater with their babies 💚🧡💚🧡

[sage-nebula]

It happened, as things so often did, like a bolt from the blue on one of Pacifica's rare days off from work at the diner.

It was the height of summer and so hellaciously hot, even for—no, especially for Oregon. Having lost access to the private pools and yachts after her father's investments into Cipher capital during Weirdmageddon four years prior, Pacifica found herself at the Gravity Falls community pool, lounging on a pool chair after layering SPF 50 on her skin, and silently telling herself over and over that it was always morally correct to block her parents' numbers on her days off, and that her father probably hadn't yet found where Pacifica's pet rescue opposum, Susanna, had hidden the bell yet, so there was no need to worry.

(Pacifica had rescued Susanna from the diner kitchen two summers ago, when she was fourteen. Susanna was technically a male oppossum, but something about him reminded Pacifica of Lazy Susan, so Susanna he was.)

But it was at that moment that deep laughter followed by a higher pitched "shut up!" and even more laughter from both voices broke through Pacifica's inner mantras. She opened her eyes to see that both of the Pines twins, having once again made their yearly visit to Gravity Falls, had also chosen to visit the pool that day.

Pacifica swallowed hard.

For all that she had tried to deny it even to herself in her tween and early teen years, by now Pacifica had long since accepted that she found Dipper Pines attractive. It was impossible not to, with the way he came back taller each summer, his shoulders increasingly more broad as he grew into the physique promised by his great uncles (or his Great Uncle Ford, anyway), a little stubble that he "forgot" to shave always left around his chin, and his sideburns. Oh, his sideburns. Pacifica hated how much she loved Dipper's sideburns. It was beyond cringe, and the only other living soul who would ever know about her crush was Susanna, but Pacifica Northwest did indeed have a crush on Dipper Pines. She knew, and accepted, this about herself.

But then, on that hellaciously hot summer day at the community pool, Mabel Pines took her sweater off right in front of Pacifica's eyes.

Mabel pulled her sweater up over her head, and it was as if time slowed down. Mabel's arms were just as toned and strong (if not maybe a little more toned, the way the sunlight hit her muscles) than Dipper's. She had been wearing a bikini under her sweater—a pink one decorated with stars that fit her perfectly—and her thousand watt smile revealed she'd finally gotten her braces off to reveal a set of dazzling teeth. And when she tugged her hair free from her ponytail, it swished around her in a cascade of long, brown waves.

Dipper had thrown his tanktop onto a pool chair, and Mabel followed suit, throwing her sweater and hair tie on top of Dipper's shirt. But as Dipper was in the middle of saying something (they were too far for Pacifica to hear clearly), Mabel whipped back around with devilish speed and shoved him straight in the pool.

Mabel laughed uproariously as Dipper came back up for air, sputtering water and shaking his sopping bangs from his eyes. But he was only off guard for a second, and Mabel's mirth kept her off hers for longer. Dipper grinned wickedly and snapped his fingers around Mabel's wrist, yanking her in headfirst after him. Just as Dipper had before her, Mabel resurfaced immediately, though she had to use both hands to shove her curtains of damp hair out of her face. But her smile was just as impish as Dipper's own, and within seconds they were splashing each other, shrieking and laughing as they caused the biggest ruckus the pool had seen all day.

And as she watched them play, the water making their skin glisten and their smiles making their eyes sparkle, Pacifica felt a swarm of butterflies in her gut and a flash of heat in her face that had nothing at all to do with the summer sun above. She curled in on herself in her pool chair, and tugged her sun hat down over her face.

"Oh no."

[mxtxfanatic]

So I just did some math, and y’all got me fucked up. I’ve seen so much handwringing in this fandom about the age disparity between Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian’s body because “oh, lwj is soooooo much older than Mo Xuanyu, it ‘basically’ counts as a grooming that wwx was given such a young body and lwj is still attracted to him!”

It’s literally not true. Lan Wangji is around 33 at the start of the present-day plotline. Mo Xuanyu is 27. Y’all are so full of shit.

The math:

Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian are around the same age, give or take some months. They are 15/16 at the start of the Cloud Recesses arc, the discussion conference in Qishan happens less than two years later (16), the Wen indoctrination camp happens definitively when they are 17 (madam yu says so) a year later, then the Sunshot Campaign takes place 2 weeks after that with Lotus Pier’s fall. The war lasts for around a year or two, but wwx mentions he is 20 during the Phoenix Mountain hunt. This means he’s still 20 when he breaks the Wen remnants out of the labor camps 2 months later, and they abscond to the Burial Mounds. For Burial Mounds arc timeline, you have to go by A-Yuan/Lan Sizhui’s. A-Yuan is a teething toddler between one and two (jc deduces) in the Burial Mounds. He’s 15 at the start of the story 13 years later. The Burial Mounds settlement, therefore, lasts about a year. By the time of the siege, wwx should be 21 (again, give or take a few months). Thirteen years later, lwj is 33/34.

Mo Xuanyu, on the other hand, is given a definite age start. He is 14 when he is taken by Jin Guangshan back to Koi Tower. This happens after the siege but  before Nie Mingjue dies (Jin Guangyao mentions this in the chapt. 79 flashback during his argument with Nie Mingjue about Xue Yang), and Nie Mingjue dies a year after the first siege takes place. This would mean that Mo Xuanyu is 14 when the siege happens and, 13 years later, he would be 27 when he sacrifices his body to summon Wei Wuxian.

Mo Xuanyu is not some barely-legal young adult at the start of the story, and the age difference, besides, would be 7 years at most. The fact that this is regular discourse is embarrassing.

[milomilesmib]

Piper: I feel like all I do is mess things up.

Shel: then mess up my lipstick by kissing me with all the passion you can manage, mess up my hair by grasping it between breaths, mess up my clothes by tearing them off impatiently, mess up my skin by covering it in obsessive love bites, mess up my bed by—

Piper, blushing: okay I think I get the message

[wonder-worker]

this is a Princes in the Tower and Edward of Lancaster stan account btw

[snackugaki]

...visdev really is my enrichment activity for i am just a bored tiger in my enclosure, looking to figure out how to get this steak out of this metal ball.

________

my tmnt au (where everyone made it past their 20s, splinter’s alive just old, venus is here, and they deserve some goddamn respite and shenanigans)

tmnt au part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4

tmnt au omake 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

lny visit 1 | 2

also uhhh... i guess still idw, next mutation, and like 1 mirage spoiler? mostly for the kids who haven’t but were planning to read/watch

you’re about to perceive so much

p r e p a r e

so close to getting this AU looking as crunchy as i want it, almosttttt tttthhhhhere...!

just somewhere tasty between Mignola’s use of deep black shadow, what MTV Liquid Television woulda greenlit re: The Maxx, a dash of 2007, 1 part Next Mutation, 2 parts funny proportions

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh str ugglingggg

Leo’s shortest because haha (family baby gang, get rekt)

this is so much thought for something I’m just doing to give these turtle ninjas some softness and the genx/millenial pop culture references gag comics

Splinter is full of ghosts

(specifically the onryo borne from the murdered Yoshi Hamato and Tang Shen [because oroku saki a bitch])

[ redacted ] and Tang Shen’s ghost gained control and guided Splinter to raise the boys in love and not [ redacted ] to [ redacted ] in [ redacted ]

Splinter was just a regular little rat... who on his 1000th birthday witnessed the death of his friend/unwitting master and his wife, and thus transformed into a wrathful kyūso (minus the kitten eating) and chased Shredder until losing his trail in New York

Shredder’s fuck around and Splinter’s rampaging as the find out caused the tengu to repo some of the mysticism from ninjutsu

now all the (remaining) ninja clans debuffed and mad about it

The tengu bestowed the ninja the ability to summon shit (kuchiyose), enact mystical effects upon people and objects (kuji kiri), going invisible, minor flight (actually just qinggong/light body technique), and manipulation of the 5 elements, and creating doubles (bunshin)

but again, Shredder fucked up so now ninja can like barely control anything bigger than a lit torch or a 16 oz bottle of liquid and that’s if you got in enough hours to do even that

I mentioned elsewhere but for me in any AU I make, Venus is a cultivator and the more I think about it the more I will die on this hill, not only does it fit better than her being a “shaman” or “shinobi” it’s sick as fuck

Jennika’s origin was pretty fkkn metal, she still falls in with the Foot, gets shanked, Leo gives blood-- bam, turtle time

Jennika goes to hang with Venus in China and get a better understanding of her new turtle body

Keno’s here, still tried to infiltrate the Foot (with Jennika) but bugged out when she couldn’t stay without being made (Jennika refused to leave womp)

teaches Leo some arnis techniques for Leo’s dual wielding; Donnie also just in case his bo is shattered... again. :)

Irma has made all the boys blush at least twice

Irma is also soap opera buddies with Splinter

they meet up at least twice a month to gab, gush, and groan over what’s currently going on in their stories, when Venus visits she also joins in, Irma also has a conversational grasp on Japanese and Venus’ regional dialect because of these visits

April has a full out shoujo manga romance with Chu Hsi

and he’s a hot dragon prince uhuhuhuhuhu

Irma is privy to all the steamy details

keeping Leo and Karai as character foils

both received scars from one another

both released each other from sealing wards from [ redacted ]

now they just meet every so often to eat the greasiest fast food and unclench of an hour

Raph still gets his ass worked by Ninjara, folded like an omelette sat on a lawn chair

Vam Mi is also here, she’s fought first (because honestly she should’ve been either brought in earlier in the season or had a few more episodes because that shit coulda resolved better)

Venus is brought to NYC for this antagonist instead of Dragonlord escaping (and murdering her father figure forcing her to seek out his friend Splinter for aid)

Donnie doesn’t take the news of real vampires or real magic well

Donnie and Venus have a knock down drag out fight over it (because they’re 17 at this point and being li’l shits to each other about their respective fields of expertise)

“The nerds are fightingggggg!” cries Mikey, Leo and Raph don’t believe it so imagine their surprise when they get a demo in real time on how scary competent staff fighters are

Leo gets Splinter when one of Donnie’s missed strikes cracks the concrete

Splinter breaks them up like talking a walk in the park and it’d be comical if they both weren’t bleeding from the mouth and peppered with swelling contusions

Venus begins accepting Donnie when his tech prevents her from becoming a thrall of Vam-Mi

Donnie begins accepting Venus when she uses a massive amount of chi to manipulate gravity just before he becomes street pizza when Vam-Mi throws him off a bridge

they also combine skill sets to save Mikey so there’s that

Venus goes from calling Donnie, “Horatio (derogatory)” to “Horatio (affectionate)”

they now have a dumbass long-as-fuck handshake that’s unforgivably nerdy 

April is still a magic drawing-brought-to-life baby, Venus puts her in a painted scroll when she starts phasing in and out of existence (she and Chu Hsi have a great time in the scroll... while everyone is shitting bricks until Venus and her sect stabilize her and get her made real, Pinocchio style)

April’s grandmothers gifted Venus 2 pieces of jade jewelry, and her family’s recipe for sweet potato pudding respectively for saving April

the boss fight against Dragonlord is dope as fuckkkkk, Chu Hsi is being cool as fuck, fiddled with some concepts* that has Leo and Karai being a champion of Genbu, Raph for Byakko, Mikey for Suzaku, Chu Hsi’s retainer (a good dragon, wink wonk) steps in for Seiryu because Donnie and Venus are siphoning and redirecting an enormous amount and variety of mystical power

*i’m just pulling from fushigi yugi honestly

splinter, the boys, and venus (and others) mutating from mutagen laced toxic waste was a pure accident

Splinter was investigating a lead on Shredder’s movements concerning the Foot the same night an animal liberation sleeper cell ‘freed’ some animals from the back of a pet store (that was a front for black market domestic and exotic animal trafficking) that is also the same night a stolen truck driven by some corporate spies filled with a competitor’s chemical waste, which then collides with said liberation sleeper cell’s truck and... ooze happens

Leatherhead, the Mutanimals, Mondo, Mona Lisa, Slash also get mutated from the events of that night, either leading up to or following the aftermath

plus some others etc etc

Venus still washes down the gutter, gets rube goldberg pinballed onto a crate of plums where Chung I finds her and still gets named Mei and taken to live in China and eventually learns to cultivate

Tokka and Rahzar get made, and unmade ala TMNT II; the mutagen made them a little silly tho, April adopts Rahzar and passes him off as a low content wolfdog, Leatherhead takes in Tokka

April went through a couple of major changes so now she’s a journalist with a computer programming background who now does a podcast as an informal neighborhood news reporter with a segment for chatting with people from around the street

Mikey’s the most frequent guest and co-hosts sometimes; Donnie troubleshoots free of charge

Venus brings her province’s regional delicacies when she comes to visit, Splinter and Leo both get pu er tea cakes (she managed to get one the same age as him; Splinter is too old so she got the oldest she could find, Leo has so many tea pets and a nice yixing collection); Raph, Keno, and Casey fight over the pickles, meat jerkies, and chili oil; Mikey has an artillery of cool shirts and a lifetime supply of haw flakes, Donnie has a mountain of doodads with increasingly specific uses, April gets neat accessories and the occasional care package sent with Venus from her grandparents, uncles, and aunties; Irma gets neat frames and coats that never fail to get a “Where did you get that??”

Raph rides a Kawasaki Ninja because it’s funny

A lot of bodegas give Mikey free snacks because the bodega cats love him, and he’s also saved some from being run over or ripped apart by stray dogs or the few large angry raccoons

Donnie’s the only one of his brothers to wear both a top and bottom with shoes because once he figured out how to integrate a motherboard and miscellany wiring onto clothing... he’s been a walking computing menace ever since

Splinter does his best to enjoy his time with his sons (because as a kyūso, he knows the chances of outliving his precious sons is very high (ᴗ‿ᴗ✿)  ...give or take one of the many opponents and obstacles his sons take on takes him out first ( ◕ᴗ◕✿ ) )

god whathefuck, I was just going to make silly comics for them. how did it come to this.

[howtodisappearcompletelyand]

20/10 stars little guy

[rafyki]

It's so incredibly funny to me that by ep 12 Peem and Phum have kissed like a hundred times already and done and said the sweetest things to each other, yet they're not together yet

Phum finally confesses and Peem has the guts to play hard to get asdfghkljkkll "no I will not tell you I like you too, but I'll let you kiss me and kiss you back tenderly and lovingly, I'll be your safe place, I'll book a trip to the beach for just the two of us, and I'll even get a room with only bed so we have to sleep together" lmao they've been hitting on each other since day one, pleaseeeee

"try and win my heart", BRO YOUR HEART HAS BEEN HIS SINCE EP 5 WHO ARE YOU KIDDING

[vaguely-concerned]

fnsdkfnsjkdfaskdjfaskjdl taash' level 1 bond description (the 'associate'/'contract killer'/'fellow necromancer' sort of blurb under their level on the companion screen) is just 'Here'. taash. you have to understand. I know you don't give a fuck, but to me, you are perfect

[mikesbasementbeets]

to be real for a second, i think there is a moment in the show where mike has a ~realization~ of sorts about his feelings but hasn't quite put two and two together yet.... and it's this:

this realization of "hey my feelings for will are actually maybe different than my feelings for my other friends, but i'm not sure why" happens at the end of season two. and then mike spends the entirety of season three acting sort of strange and different around will while having his relationship with him constantly juxtaposed with his relationship with el. reaching the end of that season which, despite all the supernatural shit going on, took the time to focus so heavily on those two relationships (and how fundamentally different they are), and having mike have the same realization he had at the end of season two makes no sense because it would mean he accomplished absolutely nothing in his emotional arc during the course season three

especially to claim that he still believes he has feelings for el going into season 4. especially to claim he still believes he has feelings for el by the end of season 4. it's to claim that he has not made any emotional progress in his relationships for at least two full seasons, that he's been going through all of this for it to not have made any conscious impact on him, and the changes in the way he acts from s2-3 and from s3-4 aren't a product of his character developing (growing, changing, to quote hopper's letter) but rather..... ? i don't know actually. just him feeling weird but not understanding himself at all. still. it just doesn't make sense to me. he's one of the main characters of the show, and to keep him emotionally stagnant for 4 out of 5 seasons (especially when we can see that his behavior is changing, that he has not been stagnant at all but rather deeply affected by everything) would be a disservice to his character, first of all, but also a disservice to the narrative which has been showing us his (as well as the other characters') struggle with growing up and growing into himself every season. and it simply doesn't align with what we're being shown

mike is already having realizations by the end of season two. but by the end of season three, he's starting to be really honest with himself about what they mean

[reanimatedgh0ul]

this is LITERALLY their dynamic in a nutshell

[burningfaith]

next month me and my grandma are going to visit my godfather who lives in Spain, but instead of being excited (it's gonna be my second time abroad in my life) I'm anxious af, because even though I'm an adult I live with my parents and I need to tell my father about it. normal parents would - y'know - be happy that their children have opportunity to visit another country, but instead he's gonna be insufferable about it, because it's my mom's side of family and he despises my uncle. but what is he gonna do? kick me out of the house even though he promised that as long as I'm studying or working I don't need to worry about such thing, humiliate me as usual, tell me that I'm childish and spoiled or make my mom's life a living hell again? I'm aware of the fact that the longer I'm putting it off the worse his reaction is gonna be, but I'm just not mentally able to tell him that, because I don't know how he will react. I don't need any money from him, I don't have to use my phone during this trip (I dunno how the roaming and stuff work), I just want to be sure he's gonna behave like a proper human being towards my mom and my siblings when I won't be at home and not act like a total asshole while talking with me about it.