#(There are exceptions to this rule obviously

[arosnowflake]

[Image: Tumblr tags reading '#the feeling was friendship but neither of them had ever experienced it before'.]

what is it about the least canon-compliant aromantic headcanons that makes them the best. like when a character shows no romantic attraction okay that is pretty awesome. but when romance is a big part of a character/plot? oh now we're fucking cooking

[chock-and-bates]

roller coaster kinda rush

charles x max, E, 10k, two-shot

In the time they’ve been together, a few rules had always, always been implicitly understood. 1. Their relationship would be kept secret from the general public. 2. They would keep racing each other the same way they always had, on the limit. 3. Max would never fuck Charles before he had to be in the car, especially before a race. Except last night… last night things had been different. --- or: Max and Charles fuck up (literally) and break rule #3. They probably shouldn’t be so into it.

Chapter 2

“God, baby, you know I’m so sorry. Was it bad?”

“Stop Max. I already told you, no more apologies. I could handle it, obviously. Besides,” Charles smirks, “I think you kind of liked it, no? Knowing I did so well after you wrecked me last night?”

Caught out, Max can only gape dumbly, the deer in headlights look returning full force.

-----------

finished!

[lover-of-mine]

Remember how I made the big framing in buddie conversations meta and then another one when the gym stills came out that comes down to how conversations about Buck, Buck is sitting down.

About Eddie, both of them are sitting down.

About Chris, they are sitting on the same surface

But when they are on the same level and standing up, the conversation tends to be about their relationship with each other.

I know it looks pretty obvious that this is them talking about their relationship, but following patterns on the show, this is them talking about their relationship.

And I'm also interested in what camera angles we are going to get on this scene, because the tsunami for instance they are facing each other but they make a point that for parts of the scene we can see both of their faces, not just them speaking and reacting to each other like in the grocery store for example. I am so curious.

[grian-updates]

Scar doxed Grian in a twitter post!

Yep, our guy is still going.

Fish.

[consistantly-changing]

[Image descriptions in order: a twitter thread by

@AlexandraErin "Alexandra Erin" which says "The Shirley Exception is a bit of mental sleight of hand that allows people to support a policy they profess to disagree with. It's called the Shirley Exception because... well, I mean, *surely* there must be exceptions, right?

"Let's imagine that in response to suspicions about overbroad use of service animal rules, a city somewhere decides to just swing the pendulum 100% in the other direction. Restaurants, public accommodations, etc., no longer have to recognize any service animals.

"And in the aftermath of the change, existing rules about where animals may and may not go apply full force.]

["A lot of people would back the change because Obviously Some People Take Advantage. (Positing that someone, somewhere is taking advantage is a great way to get the masses on your side in our politics, sadly.)

"Now if you point out the existence of a blind person or an epileptic person who has a service dog for everyday navigation of life or for life-saving purposes, the Good People who just don't want anyone to take advantage will tell you:

"No one's talking about legitimate cases."

"And if you point out that the rule that they're backing would affect what they call "legitimate cases", the response will be:

"But surely there will be an exception."]

["If you back up an anti-abortion activist to the point where they actually have to grapple with a case where the parent would 100% die delivering a 100% non- viable fetus, you'll get the same answers:

"No one is talking about those cases." and "But surely there will be exceptions."

"All of those studies of people in Trump Country USA who were shocked, shocked, that the kind man next door who is a good father and a great neighbor and a real part of the community was dragged away by ICE?

They all thought that surely he'd be an exception.]

["If you point out that the laws/policies they're talking about *don't* offer such exceptions and in some cases explicitly forbid them, if you say "So let's put those exceptions in writing."... well, then you're back to Surely People Will Take Advantage.

"See, the people who are sure that Surely There Will Be Exceptions are very comfortable with the idea of justice being decided on a case-by-case basis. They've always had teachers, bosses, bureaucrats, even traffic cops giving them some slack for reasons of compassion and logic.]

["I mean, if Officer Smalltown von Cul-De- Sac could give them a warning when they were caught with recreational amounts of pot as kids because it was harmless and they Had Futures, then Surely there must be similar exceptions for everyone?

"That post about "I never thought the leopards would eat my face, sobbed woman who voted for Face-Eating Leopards Party" is very true, and it goes farther than personal immunity to a very generalized and broad Just World Fallacy.

"Surely, they think, surely the leopards will know to only eat the *right* faces, the faces that need eating, and leave alone all the faces that don't deserve that.]

["But if we try to lay out rules to protect faces from being eaten by leopards, people will take advantage. Best to keep it simple and count on decency and reason to rule the day.

"So moderate conservatives, what we might call "everyday conservatives", the ones who don't wear MAGA hats or tea party costumes and think that Mr. Trump fella should maybe stay off of Twitter, they will vote for candidates and policies that they don't actually agree with...

"...because in their mind the exact law being prescribed is just a tool in the chest, an option on the table, which they expect to be wielded fairly and judiciously. Surely no one would do anything so unreasonable as actually enforcing it as written! Not when that would be bad!]

["And then they are confused, shocked, and even insulted when people hold them accountable for their support of the monstrous policy.

"I didn't vote for leopards to eat *your* face! I just thought we needed some face-eating leopards generally. Surely you can't blame me for that!"

"The old "Defense of Marriage" laws are another textbook example of this.

Many of them included language that expressly forbade giving similar benefits (like hospital visitation) to same-sex relationships.]

["Yet the people who voted for them, in many cases, wanted it to be known that No One Is Talking About Stopping You From Visiting Your Loved One In The Hospital. And Surely There Will Be An Exception.

"The Shirley Exception is how people who are only mundanely monstrous, moderately monstrous, wind up supporting policies that are completely monstrous.

And when they do, they always want credit for their good intentions towards those they see as deserving, not the outcomes.]

["I'm describing a phenomenon here and I don't have a solution to its existence. While convincing people that laws that don't specify exceptions functionally *don't have them* might work sometimes on (ironically) a case-by-case basis, what is really needed is a broader shift.

"People need to get used to thinking about the harm policies will do as a real part of the policy, not a hypothetical that Reasonable People of Good Will Can Surely Work Around.

"Maybe the tack of saying, "If it was your life on the line, wouldn't you want that to be in writing?" would work. I don't know. Like I said, I don't have a solution here. This is just a thing that happens."]

The Shirley Exception

[themintman]

N e ways here's Jack's actual design for the au I posted about the other day lmao

Love this sorrowful lizard.

[karotka]

I've been rewatching IWTV and what's clicked for me were Armand's motivations for betraying Louis. On first watch I thought it was such a confusing and irrational thing to do. Now, obviously it was capital B Bad etc., but we all know that, boring question. But was it a logical (≠justified) decision to pick the coven? I'm starting to think it kind of was 🤔

The café scene is so heartbreaking, makes me kick and scream at the screen, Armand on his way to end it all and Madeleine asks why Louis doesn't want him to know how much he loves him, and Louis confidently replies, “he knows.” Reader, did he know? I feel like part of the tragedy is that it didn't really matter at that point.

Press pause on the betrayal of it all and look at the facts from Armand's perspective:

Louis is suicidal. He has an expiry date, the coven vampires don't. Louis is suicidal, the coven is forever 😂😂 To quote Lestat, “There is one thing about being a vampire that I most fear above all else... And that is loneliness. You can't imagine the emptiness, a void stretching out for decades at a time.” Armand asks Madeleine, “What will you do, in a few decades, when she throws herself into the fire?” and then finds Louis in a pool of blood, his wrist slashed. He voices this to Louis much later – when he has no right to demand anything from him, but the sentiment stays true – “You left me for death. Will I be on suicide watch for the next 1,000 years?”

Louis straight up murdered his previous lover. Now, we know it wasn't all that, but Armand didn't. Major red flag, anyone? “I killed him and he fucking had it coming.” And he DID, but that's beside the point, isn't it? Especially since we know Armand is just as capable of domestic abuse :') He knew that Louis wasn't the kind of person who would just take his shit forever. If you want somebody to trust you, don't let them know you took part in the murder of your ex, heartfelt advice from both of them.

Speaking of exes, Louis is SO not over Lestat. I mean, neither is Armand, they're such a train wreck of a relationship :D But yeah, Louis is not fully committed to Armand, denying publicly that they're companions, hallucinating his ex in the bedroom or while Armand is sharing his traumatic past and, most damning of all, refusing to join the coven.

From Armand's perspective, he's risking it all for Louis and Louis a) doesn't appreciate it at all, and b) refuses to do the bare minimum of getting along with his family. (If someone treated my daughter-sister the way Armand treated Claudia, I'd kill them with my bare hands, but Louis acts like he doesn't mind. Can you imagine me without the burden of her? :/) (and yeah, he could just leave his shitty cult, the same way they could have left each other during those 70 years. Shitty stability > loneliness, I guess.)

A minor point maybe, but the moment you know that Lestat is out there and wants revenge, that only adds to the expiry date part. Especially once Lestat is cooperating with the coven, because I imagine that while Armand is OP enough to fight the coven, all of them + Lestat might be a bit too much. Maybe Armand even hoped once Louis is out of the picture they could get back together? We don't really know what exactly was going on behind the scenes but Lestat's sheer existence is bad for loumand... It is what it is.

And Louis just... repeatedly ignores Armand's warnings. I mean, they both knew Armand was going to execute him that one time. They tried to make it work but Louis was living on borrowed time from that point. Add Armand's apparent MO of “everything I love must eventually burn down so I will take control of the situation by orchestrating the downfall myself” et voilà. He was given a choice and he chose.

And THEN he betrayed the coven for Louis at his most unwell. Iconic!

[cauchesque]

it started out innocently. one of the very few interesting results of the rules of the game is that you need a monopoly to improve properties. but at the beginning of the game, before you really have a sense where things are going, you'll pick up properties at random. so at first, you start solving this with very lucrative exchanges- the final property in your monopoly for the final property in theirs. but this is clunky- what if one property is obviously much better than another? we would solve this by trading more than one, or by having some cash alongside, but eventually i was having a hard time arranging such a trade with one of the other players, and it hit me that we could just trade properties, but swap the rents. so you'd both have a monopoly, but you could keep the same effective rent composition

once you have the idea there are lots of places to take it. it effectively totally decouples portfolios from monopolies- with the suitable agreements (tracked in a notebook, by convention, by the banker) it becomes possible to effectively own individual properties without the rest of their monopolies. this is especially helpful when falling like vultures on a nearly fallen player. rather than allowing them to fall to 0 and get their properties auctioned off, possibly breaking valuable monopolies, they can just conduct the auction while still in the game, except handing out rent rights rather than the properties themselves

but now you often wind up in a situation where a player is still "in the game" but owns effectively 0 properties. this is an undesirable state to be in, but to me a wonderful state for my fellow players to be in, because i love playing the heel. so id do this for it's own sake, paying premiums to buy the rent rights off everyone else to completely monopolize a player. we quickly started trading fractional rent rights (often in exchange for giving up house rights) and i enjoyed trying to get a web of contracts with everyone such that all of someones rent would go to me, but from as many sources as possible. basically just to maximize how difficult it was to figure out that something like 80% of all the rent was going to me. i achieved this once, with 4 rent payments in a row getting split and passed around various ways before eventually winding up entirely in my pocket, before they stopped playing monopoly with me. which, fair

my friends don't play monopoly with me anymore because i invented swaps and used them to technically keep people in the game as long as possible while i effectively owned all their properties

[owleics-fr]

Do just wanna say bc i checked the notes of that post about the gilded crown, while its wild that devs made the choice to add the item to the account and then lock it, like its understandable why they check the accounts of people who've won sought after/valuable items. If a person who is multiaccounting wins its a very bad look for devs because it seems like theyre rewarding a rule breaker who has an advantage in situations like roundseys raffle (not that that was what was happening this time to be very clear!!!). All this to say maybe if you have broken the rules in the past, maybe be careful moving forward when entering big item roundsey weeks. Theyre investigating past account activity of the winners of these highly valuable items now

[moderndaypandora]

Got tagged by @notallsandmen for a WIP paragraph game, and I’m incredibly flattered, considering ... this doesn’t feel on the level of fic, this is fun little sketches of dialogue at most. But this is what I had, so here’s more of the mortal dreamling silliness (previous bits: modern day mortal dreamling and newlyweds with ravens)

How Hob asked Johanna to be his witness for his wedding:

He texted her asking if she was free that afternoon, because he needed her for something.  Historically "something" has meant anything from "taste-testing 3 different scone recipe variations to figure out the best one" to "hustling drunk pricks at darts". Likewise, Hob has done her favors ranging from picking up tampons to providing an alibi. In theory there is a ledger of favors owed, but in reality there will never be a balancing of books (because they're best friends, even if Johanna is too prickly to admit it and Hob is too smart to).

Johanna texted back "yeah, what's up?", and practically broke a land speed record pressing "Call" when she got the response.

Johanna: what the fuck kind of text exchange is confirming I'm around and then sending "getting married today, hello, witness!" and a selfie of you and some goth twink?

Hob: it felt pretty self-explanatory

Johanna: last I'd checked, you weren't even seeing anybody!

Hob: things change?

Johanna: I got dinner with you 5 weeks ago, you bastard, and you were single then.

Hob: ... things change fast?

Johanna: how the fuck did you even meet him?

Hob: I was running back from class during that awful rainstorm last month, and he was just outside my tube station.

Johanna: Hob.

Hob: His umbrella'd broken and he was soaking wet, and he looked absolutely miserable, poor darling.

Johanna: ...

Hob: So I offered him towels and dry clothes, since my flat was just up the road. And by the time the rain stopped I knew I wanted to marry him, and he said yes.

Johanna: what lunatic just follows strange men home?

Hob: he was pretty suspicious until I gave him my phone so he could text my address to his sister.

Johanna: and she was somehow fine with it, like 'yeah, go on'?


Hob:

Hob: he got a bit distracted by my phone background and never actually texted her.

Johanna: the fuck

Hob: you know Julian of Norwich is gorgeous

Johanna: your cat is a lesser demon escaped from hell. I'm going to exorcise your cat someday

Hob: Jules is a sweetheart. She doesn't even hunt birds!

Johanna: That thing won't kill any of the bloody birds in your neighborhood because she's saving all her energy to someday murder me and you know it.

Hob: ... undeserved paranoia about my extremely photogenic cat aside --

Johanna: WELL-deserved!

Hob: --will you be my witness?

Johanna: Left it a bit late, if you're asking me today. Did everybody else say no?

Hob: Didn't ask anybody else. Been planning to ask you since Dream said yes, but I figured if I gave you too much notice you'd flee the country.

Johanna: [tearing up, because even if you're an independent badass, it's nice to hear you're somebody's person] you're fucking right I would.

(Johanna's custom ringtone on Hob's phone is from Sweeney Todd, the final verse in Johanna where you can hear the body drop ("Wake up, Johanna, another bright red day"), because Hob and Johanna are black-hearted bastards/absolutely in cahoots with each other and think it’s funny. Hob's ringtone is Being Alive from Company ("Somebody need me too much...").  Sondheim all the way, motherfuckers)

[fjordfolk]

Talking about culture in dog breeding with fellow norwegians lately and figuring I don't mind 4 being a maximum litter number on a bitch, granted she's an easy birther of reasonably sized (not too big) litters and bounces back well. And that is a highly individual thing. And obvs I come from a breed where the litter average is 3.5 and complications are relatively rare.

What I've come to be a little more bothered about is having litters on bitches that are 2yo (and younger - but thats a full dealbreaker for me) - I don't feel like either of our dogs have seemed like full adults until ~3? Troj is 3 now and shes really come into herself in the past year, I can't imagine her with puppies at 2.

[sapphic-luthor]

Watching Glee after Supergirl I can't tell if the backwards appreciation of Barry and Kara's actors will be cute or not. Either way it sounds like a ton of fun for y'all!

apparently gf only likes the first seasons and thought it all went downhill by the season melissa was in but i’m nothing if not a completionist so we will be watching the whole damn thing against both of our willa

[quillkiller]

why do you think the marauders fandom is like so afraid of making women be masculine

no joke i just think people hate masculine women ! the only people ive ever met who are into butch women are either other lesbians or queer people who genuinely have put in the work to distance themselves from male validation

butch/masculine women or dykes are seen are disgusting for their hairy bodies and no make-up whereas a mans lean body and androgony will simply make him ’hot’ and ’daring’ and ’omg he’s crushing the gender norms!!!!’ <- which is honestly almost never true lmao

anyway. women who don’t shave or don’t wear makeup or are masculine are seen as lazy or ugly ! and women are terrfied of being ugly. im butch and im terrified of being ugly. there’s almost no space for butch women outside of lesbian circles, but feminine men are still relatable and seen as accessible and can still fit in with all genders! people will always love femininity, and honestly almost even more when it’s men doing it because there’s only one thing a patriarchal society loves more than a feminine woman….. men…

[elftwink]

you guys know that "landlords are leeches get a real job" is a haha funny bit you say to illustrate the hypocrisy of the rhetoric surrounding work and what qualifies as 'contributing' to capitalist society and not a coherent leftist belief right? you guys are saying that because it's funny to watch landlords sputter to come up with a response to the kind of attitude they have always subjected tenants and renters to and not because you genuinely believe your worth is determined by the money you earn under capitalism, right? you understand that once you believe it is possible for someone (even landlords) to be a 'leech' on society if they arent working (or aren't working enough, or aren't doing the right kind of work, etc), this will bleed into the way you think of everyone else too, right? you guys know that legitimate and meaningful critiques of landlords are not and can never be based on whether or not they are working because that is irrelevant to the fact that they own property for the express purpose of charging other people for access to shelter, which is a basic human need and shouldnt be controlled by the whims of Some Guy just because its his name on the deed... right???

[oifaaa]

Have you ever read the knightfall arc? I’m kinda assuming not because it’s one of Tim’s and honestly not really in the fandom’s consciousness. But honestly if anyone deserves to be bullied more than Tim it’s Jean Paul Valley. Aka azrael. Aka the first “Batman who kills”.

Just please look at his Batman suit and tell me it’s not funny. The helmet! The pointy shoulder spikes! He’s emo and evilly good!!

When he gets pissed off at Robin he just bricks off his entrance to the bat cave!!!!! I’m not saying that Bruce and dick could have tried harder to stop Tim in a lonely place of dying but uhh… maybe masonry was the answer?

I have read the knightfall arc actually I got into comics way before I got into fandom but also the knightfall arc isn't in fandom consciousness?? Are you sure it's literally the iconic arc were Bruce gets folded like a ironing board and then decides that this random catholic dude hes just met would make a way better batman then literally anyone else - but yeah i guess i just don't really care about jean-paul enough to bully him

[reactor-tech-ermine]

I'm glad there's someone else in this company who plays Little Wars: 0U, Marten was this close to forcing me to print my own army and spending our next date night learning how to play.