#I don't know where this was going

[lanternliighting]

wait. if nikolai has a card eyepatch thing then. does he have a stupid pirate wink-

like. either nobody knows he's winking or it looks like he js did a very exaggerated blink-

PLS OKAY HEAR ME OUT

[gemini-sensei]

I had an idea. @sensei-venus

Imagine if best friends Reader and Tory were hanging out on the beach, just having a good time, laughing at their own lame jokes. They stand around in the water and splash each other because they can. It's just a chill day.

But as things wind down and the sun starts to set, people leave. They don't wanna go yet because they know once they leave, their carefree day is over and it's back to responsibilities and whatnot. So they sit on their towels and eat snacks as people walk by, leaving the ocean behind.

When things clear up, Reader jumps up and shouts, "Race you to the water!"

She runs off before Tory is even on her feet, and never backing away from a challenge, her friend follows. They're laughing and having a good time. Reader runs into the ocean and kicks and shouts her declaration of winning. She dances and laughs in Tory's face, who throws water at her for it. They get into another water fight, unaware of the eyes watching them from a little further out.

That is until Tory spots two guys over by rocks under the boardwalk nearby. She's kind of curious about them, never seeing them there before or ever for that matter. Maybe they were from out of town, tourists or something. It wasn't unheard of since the beach makes their home a place to be. However, it's their undivided attention that makes her question what they're doing here.

"Hey, check out those guys," she says, making Reader turn to look. Tory frowns as the pair perk up at their attention. "Why are they watching us like that?"

"I have a better question," Reader says and points in their direction. "Why are they on those rocks. Don't they know it's dangerous?"

"Indont know, and quite frankly, I don't care," Tory says, rather protective of her best friend. She grabs Reader's hand and starts walking back to the beach. "Let's get out of here."

"But what if they get hurt? The tide is rising, what if they don't know how dangerous it is? What if they need help? The beach is almost empty," Reader says, and she's right. There's almost no one else around. If something were to happen, there'd be no one to call for help. "We should at least go make sure they're gonna leave soon."

Tory stops and turns to her, a stern look on her face. But she breaks easily at Reader's chubby faced puppy dog eyes. She's never been able to say no to that pouty lip. "Ugh! Fine, but stay close to me when we walk over there."

So they pack up their things and walk over in their sun hats. They guys are still chilling and as they get closer, the girls realize they can't see the guys from the waist down. They're half in the water and part way on the rocks, but seem stable even as the waters rush by and crush into the rocks.

"Hey losers! I don't know if you realize this, but being near those rocks is gonna really mess you up!" Tory shouts at them.

The boys look at each other and laugh, which get the quick tempered Tory to huff.

"Get lost in the ocean for all I care! I wasn't even the one worried about your lousey out of town asses!" she yells and flips them the finger. Reader is quick to pull her arm down and throw and apologetic look at the boys.she smiles. "She didn't mean that! She just means that it's gonna get pretty rough once the sun goes down! There use to be signs all over here about how dangerous it is, but I guess they got swept away!"

One boy turns to the other and laughs. "Oh man! Wait, I think I have one of those things!"

"Dude, shut up," the other boy tells him. "They don't care."

The girls are confused. The guys are a little strange and Tory is ready to get out of there, but Reader is too nice sometimes...

"What's your names?" she calls out to them. She doesn't like to raise her voice much, but with the crashing of waves so close, it's a must.

They smile back and the louder of the two shouts back. "I'm Hawk and this is Robby!"

Just as Reader is about to respond, Tory grabs her arm. She seethes, "What are you doing? We don't know them."

"Uh, yeah, I know, that's why I asked for their names," Reader tells her in a 'duh' sort of tone. She giggles before turning back to the guys. "I'm Reader and this is my friend Tory!"

"Pretty names for pretty gurls!" Robby calls out to them.

Tory throws him a glare before turning to Reader. "Look, they obviously wanna die on the rocks. Let's just get out of here."

She turns to walk away, but Reader grabs her arm to stop her. "Don't say that," she whines before turning to the guys again. "What are you guys doing over there!"

Hawk grins. "Oh nothing! Just hanging out!"

"Being creeps," Tory grumbles under her breath. She crosses her arms over her chest as she stands there, waiting for Reader to finish up there. However, she was ill prepared for what her friends said next.

"Well why don't you join us? We're going to the pizza parlor down the road," she told them with a smile. She caught the weird look Hawk and Robby gave each other, but neither said anything to the other. She laughed it off. "What, you don't like pizza?"

Robby spoke as Hawk opened his mouth, seemingly not wanting him to say something. "We can't, we've already... got plans."

The words come out a little stilted and weird. Tory doesn't like it and makes sure they know that by glaring them down.

---I'm stopping this here because I don't know where it was going, but I liked the idea so I don't want to straight up delete it. So here, have this unfinished nonsense that I have zero motivation to rework or finish rn---

[inkskinned]

this is just my opinion but i think any good media needs obsession behind it. it needs passion, the kind of passion that's no longer "gentle scented candle" and is now "oh shit the house caught on fire". it needs a creator that's biting the floorboards and gnawing the story off their skin. creators are supposed to be wild animals. they are supposed to want to tell a story with the ferocity of eating a good stone fruit while standing over the sink. the same protective, strange instinct as being 7 and making mud potions in pink teacups: you gotta get weird with it.

good media needs unhinged, googling-at-midnight kind of energy. it needs "what kind of seams are invented on this planet" energy and "im just gonna trust the audience to roll with me about this" energy. it needs one person (at least) screaming into the void with so much drive and energy that it forces the story to be real.

sometimes people are baffled when fanfic has some stunning jaw-dropping tattoo-it-on-you lines. and i'm like - well, i don't go here, but that makes sense to me. of fucking course people who have this amount of passion are going to create something good. they moved from a place of genuine love and enjoyment.

so yeah, duh! saturday cartoons have banger lines. random street art is sometimes the most precious heart-wrenching shit you've ever seen. someone singing on tiktok ends up creating your next favorite song. youtubers are giving us 5 hours of carefully researched content. all of this is the impossible equation to latestage capitalism. like, you can't force something to be good. AI cannot make it good. no amount of focus-group testing or market research. what makes a story worth listening to is that someone cares so much about telling it - through dance, art, music, whatever it takes - that they are just a little unhinged about it.

one time my friend told me he stayed up all night researching how many ways there are to peel an orange. he wrote me a poem that made me cry on public transportation. the love came through it like pith, you know? the words all came apart in my hands. it tasted like breakfast.

[aintlovingthiscreek]

Charlotte drabble [Loveless Creek]

Absolutely tearing my hair out rn cause I apparently forgot how to write a continuing story. So drabbles it is

Charlotte is a beautiful woman and she absolutely knows that and uses that to her advantage until you came along. Her charm simply didn't work the way that she expected it to. She's so used to people exchanging things for favors but you didn't want anything in return. Not a kiss or even dinner. You just wanted to help and help is what you did.

She wasn't one to believe in genuine kindness without the want for a reward so one day after you bought her a gift unprompted she broke down and asked you why were you doing this. Why didn't you want anything? Just why. And you looked at her tear stained face and all you could say is "Because I want to. There's no ulterior motive. I just want to bought you nice things and do things for you. That's all. Nothing else." And for the first time in a very long time Charlotte was reminded that she wasn't a prize to be won. That people just want to do things for her and not want anything back.

It was a strange feeling.

[virune]

shadow but he's a literal shadow

[egophiliac]

can't believe that skeleman has turned on us, and Halloween Prom is tomorrow.

(what a top-tier UM...we are about to be just totally obliterated in the absolute silliest way. what possible use could this power have outside of bringing us to the brink of utter holiday disaster.)

[what-am-i-doing-in-this-fandom]

Yeah, I don't know about you, Fidds, but I'd fold at this 🙏

Previous!!

Next!!

First!!

[lovenliterature]

little moments of light shine through the dark

every once in a while i can crack a smile

always shocked when the smile doesn't lift the fog

smiles don't erase the tears

life is not a zero sum game

and that is okay

the good does not erase the bad

i wish that laugh pulled the need to cry from my heart

but it won't

it will pass

you will laugh again, for real

[coddda]

I wish we could have met in some other way.

Lawlight Week Day 2: Soulmates

If you saw me repost and re-edit this several times uh No you didn't </3

Still frames/Individual gifs:

If you know what every frame is from you get a free cookie. by the way

[artkaninchenbau]

People keep on asking for more Baby Robin and Papadile so here is more Baby Robin and Papadile. Now never ask anything from me ever again

[muppetfreak]

Mr. Riordan, it is truly a pleasure getting to experience your second draft.

[acnologias-ass]

This isn't a race, Natsu 😒

This is OOC, Gajeel would never admit to being worse at anything in front of Natsu

[kedreeva]

These little fuckers are round gobies. They are a freshwater goby that's invasive in Michigan, and they're in the nearby lake. They're distinct from the four native species due to their fused pelvic fins (middle pic) and a big black dot at the rear of their front dorsal fin. Though some other gobies have spots on their fins, NO Michigan-native species has a fused pelvic fin. These guys are very aggressive feeders and are very good at outcompeting native gobies.

They're also extremely good at stealing bait off big hooks as people on the docks reel in their lines. In particular, the bastard in the bottom photo stole my bait two days ago, so I caught him and filleted him for Bug.

Today, after acquiring smaller hooks, I went back and got 16 more, and educated several other fishers about their invasive nature. I got two turned over to me by others, and caught 14 more myself.

One man wandered over and asked why I was catching them on purpose. It was too much trouble to explain my feelings about invasive species, so I just told him, one of them stole my bait two days ago. He stopped watching my bobber and boggled at me and goes:

"You're doing this for revenge?"

So now there's some guy in town that thinks I am exacting revenge upon fish kind for a single stolen worm.

[deathricedrawn]

i'm ready to try

[yes-asil]

My take on the ever popular Detective Conan AU where Shinichi and Conan are seperate people.

[inkskinned]

love when men cry about body hair bc "it's hygiene" and yet 15% of cis men leave the bathroom without washing their hands at all and an additional 35% only just wet their hands without using soap. that is nearly half of all men. that means statistically you have probably shaken hands with or been in direct contact with one of these people.

love when men say that women "only want money" when it turns out that even in equal-earning homes, women are actually adding caregiver burdens and housework from previous years, whereas men have been expanding leisure time and hobbies. in equal-earning households, men spend an average of 3.5 hours extra in leisure time per week, which is 182 hours per year - a little over a week of paid vacation time that the other partner does not receive. kinda sounds like he wants her money.

love that men have decided women are frail and weak and annoying when we scream in surprise but it turns out it's actually women who are more reliable in an emergency because men need to be convinced to actually take action and respond to the threat. like, actually, for-real: men experience such a strong sense of pride about their pre-supposed abilities that it gets them and their families killed. they are so used to dismissing women that it literally kills them.

love it. told my father this and he said there's lies, damned lies, and statistics. a year ago i tried to get him to evacuate the house during a flash flood. he ignored me and got injured. he has told me, laughing, that he never washes his hands. he has said in the last week that women are just happier when we're cooking or cleaning.

maybe i'm overly nostalgic. but it didn't used to feel so fucking bleak. it used to feel like at least a little shameful to consider women to be sheep. it just feels like the earth is round and we are still having conversations about it being flat - except these conversations are about the most obvious forms of patriarchy. like, we know about this stuff. we've known since well before the 50's.

recently andrew tate tried to justify cheating on his partner as being the "male prerogative." i don't know what the prerogative for the rest of us would be. just sitting at home, watching the slow erosion of our humanity.