#I'm far too amused by

[jupiter-balls]

So apparently QVC/HSN have started making cheap Christmas romance movies including tie ins with their products and stars the "personalities" of the channels . The latest one is what they call a "cozy thriller" which somehow makes me wish it was about some murderer who used QVC knives dressed in QVC sweaters but alas it seems to be about a missing recipe. Disappointment immeasurable Christmas ruined 😔

[aroaceleovaldez]

updated list of my riordanverse scrys on flight rising. the number just keeps growing. scried like the entire TA just for funsies.

(Guide: Percy, Percy 2, Annabeth, Reyna, Leo, Jason, Thalia, Nico, Hazel, Luke, Kelli, Ethan, Silena, Chris, Alabaster, Lou Ellen, Alex Fierro, CHB, Camp Jupiter)

[pharawee]

And then there's this bit 🤔😏

[mrhowells]

what is your favourite clois scene?

I honestly love all their interactions so much that I couldn't even decide on my top five, so I'll just talk about their opening scene in booster because I keep thinking about it and it really captures one of the main reasons I love them so much.

So they're both in transitional periods of their lives, with Clark trying to create a new persona for himself and Lois working towards a promotion, and they're just so... invested and supportive about it?? Lois is helping Clark with his body language and reassures him because he's feeling insecure but then he's like "forget about ME Lois you're up for that promotion!!!" and you can see on his face how proud and excited about it he is like, he's really her biggest cheerleader and I'm😭😭😭

They're best friends and they're in love and above all else they just genuinely want to see each other thrive and be happy and grow into the best versions of themselves and it makes me want to collapse on the floor in tears.

[airenyah]

so joong tweeted this video:

[transl: "last twilight with the nongs(?*)"]

(*he wrote น้อน [nawn] here, not น้อง [nong], but after a quick google search it seems to me that it really is something like nong? if anyone who knows thai better than me can clear this up for me, i'd be grateful <3)

and can i just say considering his tweet from friday...

[transl: "cry cry cryyy cryyyy tears streaming into my mouth"]

i absolutely wouldn't be surprised to see him covering ภาพสุดท้าย (last twilight) in a concert or event some time soon

[thoughtfullyrainynightmare]

Also, a thought my mind thought was funny yesterday morning:

The Joker is like a fanfic writer. He wants to break, really break Batman. But he doesn't want to kill Batman, because where would be the fun in that! Nothing to play with anymore.

So. Joker is just a fanfic writer and Batman is his poor little meow meow

[eats-the-stars]

Love to torment my sister's do-nothing boyfriend. easiest method is simply doing things to reinforce his belief that my cat is actually my familiar (he is genuinely superstitious to this degree). this is easy for me because my cat is very responsive and easily trained. our recent accomplishment? she is meowing and i say "Cashmere, inside voices" and she pauses and then takes up meowing again...but quieter. Saw my sister's boyfriend struggling really hard not to immediately "call me out" in front of my sister.

[insidi0summoved]

there is something extremely amusing in the way that whenever someone tries to hurt / kill nick, he is just very welcoming to the act. he may ridicule them and be a sarcastic asshole about the whole ordeal but along the way this man truly has lost any sort of sense of self preservation.

[kopivie]

i started an "elf on the shelf" game with my coworkers because i'm tired of being told "you have to ask corporate" whenever i want to do something fun with my friends.. so now i'm just gonna be silly.

[theotherrichardpapen]

Reading List 2023-2024 📚

The Secret History - Donna Tartt

The Song or Achilles - Madeline Miller

The Myth of the Wrong Body - Miquel Missé

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Remainder - Tom McCarthy

If We Were Villains - M. L. Rio

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

Bones and All - Camille DeAngelis

The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt

The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

Beyond Good and Evil - Friedrich Nietzsche

Diaries - Franz Kafka

Frankenstein - Mary Shelly

Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Tales - H. P. Lovecraft

The Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri

1984 - George Orwell

The Iliad and The Odyssey - Homer

Unnatural Causes - Dr Richard Shepherd

Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and Other Misfortunes - Eric LaRocca

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson

The Trial of the Templars - Malcolm Barber

Foucault's Pendulum - Umberto Eco

Demian - Hermann Hesse

Pride & Prejudice - Jane Austen

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

The Atlas Six - Olivie Blake

Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo - Taylor Jenkins Reids

Ninth House - Leigh Bardugo

Vita Nostra - Maryna & Serhiy Dyachenko

Pageboy: A Memoir - Elliot Page

Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut

The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodr Dostoevsky

(updated: 03/01/24)

[myobsession]

Wow this is kinda crazy but I actually really dislike, on the verge of hate, the new villains in COI. It's funny cause I wouldn't even go that far with Lanevus or Ince Zangwill in the first series and I even liked all the antagonists in the last two volumes. The guys in COI though, it's like they're evil for the sake of pure evilness and to a certain point I can understand how they warped but, damn I fucking hate these guys. Waiting to see their downfall at this point cause while Amon's "pranks" are nasty too, somehow these guys feel worse.

[thistransient]

selamat datang, strange love

[wellpresseddaisy]

The Demon Prefect Rides Again

Bertram Harroway put on his evening clothes as if headed to war. In a way, he was. It would be an emotional war, he supposed. He let his valet help him into his coat and glanced down at the letter from Vera Dalrymple that kicked the whole thing off.

Darling Bertie,

That certainly wasn’t what she’d called him when he found her in a compromising position with Hector Grantham in her fifth year. And Eliza Dearborne in her sixth.

As you are possibly the only person on this planet who can make Albus Dumbledore mind you,

He thought, perhaps, one other existed, but it didn’t do to dwell on Gellert Grindelwald. He’d never liked the little wart, no matter how infatuated Albus was with him.

could you please do something about him? I popped into town last weekend and ran into him in Diagon. He looks dreadful. And his robes!

Bertram sighed. He knew precisely what Vera meant.

He’s gone old on us. I know it started creeping up on him in the aftermath of That Man followed on by That Gobby Upstart in the seventies, but something is really, terribly wrong. I suspect a whacking great load of guilt and grief, but really, Bertie, he looks like a stiff wind will carry him off. He looks more like he’s in the middle of his two-hundreds than just past his first century.

Trust Vera to look at a dark lord terrorizing the country and call him a gobby upstart. He’d seen photos of Albus recently and he agreed with Vera. Voluminous robes only his so much and Albus always had been nervy, no matter what he pretended otherwise for the magical public.

Honestly Bertie, I’m worried. He’s always worked much too hard and taken on too much responsibility, but he’s never been so frail before. He wouldn’t even go to tea with me and there is little Albus Dumbledore loves more than a cream tea and a good gossip. He doesn’t go anywhere, either. He used to love the theater and I can’t remember when he last made up part of a theater party. I think he might be punishing himself, in some bizarre way.

That was the part that spurred him into action. A quick note to the Deputy Headmistress and he secured a Saturday evening away for Albus.

He isn’t researching and he won’t meet with friends and it’s as if all he’ll allow himself is duty. It can’t go on. It simply can’t, Bertie. You remember how he got after exams? We’re headed for a crash the likes of which we’ve never seen and I’m so frightened it’ll take him from us. You’re the only one I could think of who might get through to him. Our Vally needs the Demon Prefect to come out of mothballs.

He'd see what he could do. Vally Dumbledore (nicknamed for the way he’d valiantly come to the defense of anyone he thought wronged) was the most infuriatingly stubborn young man he’d ever met.

We’ll plan a little reunion for all of us this summer. Dahlia wants everyone to see her gardens, in any case. She’s doing some interesting things with roses these days. Or perhaps, if you can persuade Vally to take care of himself, we could make up a theater party. I hear the latest from that Carruthers girl is splendid fun.

With love and thanks,

Vera

PS It probably isn’t my place to say so, but I’m going to anyway. He always had. G.P. for you and you ought to have swept him off his feet, all Oxford-polished, before That Man had a chance to get his hooks in. You helped create this problem by being as obtuse as a box turtle, so you can fix it.

Bertie sighed and went down to the Floo room. He knew he bore some responsibility in never acknowledging his own feelings. He simply hadn’t thought it appropriate since he was a perfect and then Head Boy. He could easily have picked up their acquaintance once Albus left Hogwarts. Although…there came a point where Albus pushed everyone away after his mother died, when all those lovely plans he’d made fell through so he could care for his sister. He never really let any of them back in after.

He wondered if he could have made a difference there, kept Albus from ending up so cut off from the academia he loved that he clung to the only person able to keep up with him. They would never know, he supposed.

He checked his pocket watch and collected coat and hat from his hovering valet.

“Thank you, Deverell. Don’t feel the need to wait up if I’m late returning.”

“Of course, sir.” If he didn’t know better, he’d think his valet quietly judging him.

Most likely the man judged his early departure. If he knew Vally as well as he once did, it would take quite a bit of persuasion to rout him out of his office and make him dress properly, especially if Vera was right and he was somehow punishing himself for his failures, perceived or otherwise.

Vera, irksomely, was usually right.

As he stepped to the Floo and gave the direction, he wondered if he should bring his old slipper. It always made an impact on a  recalcitrant Vally.

-----------

Hogwarts hadn’t changed in the decades since his leaving. Like Oxford, she endured, only she housed grubby schoolchildren instead of grubby undergrads. Professor McGonagall sending him through the internal Floo system came as a surprise. He’d never really thought about the professors needing to get somewhere quickly before.

He stepped out into the Headmaster’s office and brushed the slight traces of soot from his clothes.

“Good evening, Vally.” He began.

Albus looked up sharply from a thick book propped on his desk.

“Bertram Harroway? What are…how…”

He ended by staring as if he couldn’t quite believe his eyes. Thankfully, he looked a good bit better than Vera described. Still too thin, of course, but he’d always forgotten meals or spent an hour just moving his dinner about his plate when in the grip of An Idea (or nerves). He looked as if he'd let go of some of the guilt and grief weighing him down. His hair, which had turned white practically overnight, had regained its more youthful ginger hue. The deep lines carved into his face by decades of worry seemed to have filled in. He looked more like he ought to look, like a non-magical of fifty or sixty instead of a man nearing the end of his life.

“Vera sent me, Vally. She said you’re getting old and could do with a bit of livening up. I thought you might like a night out. I have a box at the Savoy. They’re doing Pinafore at the moment and I know how you feel about well done G and S.” He moved into Albus’ office, helping himself to a chair when Albus continued to stare.

“Vera Dalrymple said she’d rather be boiled in Frederica Morningside’s failed potions projects than ever communicate with you again via any medium.” Albus finally spoke.

“I had just gated her for the rest of term. You can’t blame her for being distraught.”

“I couldn’t possibly go out on such short notice. This whole idea is patently ridiculous.” Albus nodded firmly, as if he’d made up his mind.

“You can go and get dressed right now is what you can do.” Bertram insisted. “The show starts at eight and I booked a table for supper after, at the Palace.”

“India Palace?” He at least looked interested at that. “It’s been quite some time since I’ve been there.”

The wistful note in his voice belied his firm refusal.

“It was the day you got Greta Saatchi’s autograph after standing in pouring rain for two hours and we spent a further two getting you properly warm again when you returned.” He chuckled at the memory.

How had they been that carefree?

Well, he hadn’t. He’d had to play the heavy when the miscreants tried to slip back into the castle with the Hogsmeade crowd, as if they hadn’t slipped off to London for a matinee and a curry. Albus shifted slightly, as if remembering Bertram’s method for warming him up.

“We were thrilled when you finally left to terrorize Oxford, did you know?”

“I’m sure you were. I’ve returned just to terrorize you, Vally, you know?”

“Oh how lucky am I.” Albus replied acidly. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ve decided.”

How well he remembered that rather sulky tone. He certainly heard it often enough.

“I suppose I could go and fetch my slipper if you need convincing? I don’t care to see Vera so distressed, you know.”

It wasn’t often that anyone shocked Albus Dumbledore into complete silence.

“You still have that…that thing?” It always entertained Bertram to see shades of their youth in his friends.

“Of course I do. It’s an exceedingly motivating piece of footwear. Now, be a good chap and go get dressed. Theater waits for no man and Professor McGonagall assured me you were overdue for a night out. Something about you working all hours?” He put a bit of the old Demon Prefect in that one, the same tone he’d used countless times when locating an Albus who quite forgot about such mundanities as curfews.

Albus was out of his chair and halfway to the door to his quarters when he stopped.

“What do you mean Professor McGonagall assured you?” he asked waspishly.

“Of course I wrote her first to ensure you could have a nice evening with an old friend. It’s no use organizing a surprise one can’t pull off in the end.”

Albus gaped at him. “You cannot just go about organizing the world as you please.”

“It’s worked for me thus far.” Bertram answered mildly. “Do go and get dressed, Vally.”

“I can go as I am.” Albus insisted.

“Oh no you are not. I know you own perfectly nice evening clothes. Go and put them on.” He cared very much for Albus, but he’d rather chew his own arm off than attend a public event with Albus wearing golden yellow robes patterned with swirling suns. “We aren’t leaving until you are attired to my satisfaction.”

Albus stared at him for a moment before turning, very clearly not stomping to the door, and entering his quarters. He shut the door just shy of a bang.

Bertram settled down, quite pleased with his evening’s work. They’d make the theater in a timely manner now, and he could treat Albus to a lovely meal after. He’d have to suggest Dahlia and Hitty invite a little party for dinner one evening. And perhaps Albus would join him for the theater more frequently now. Albus, now more than ever, needed the people who cared for him to pull together.

The feelings he once thought faded raised their heads again, like a parched garden in the rain.

[peridots-pixiwolf]

playing stray again for the first time in eight months and upon reaching midtown I naturally went to trip the peacemaker as many times as I could before I got bored of it but uh?? it isn't getting back up???

[resurrection-of-soul]

Flashback | BIOHAZARD 2

Writer: Akira (日日日)

Characters: Rei, Kaoru, Koga, Adonis

Rei: Hm. The secrecy makes it all quite unclear, but is this “AIIE” affair meant to create idol versions of those AIs which are adept at artistry? I fear this old man finds it quite difficult to keep up with these newfangled technologies.

[ For the best viewing experience, please read directly on my blog! ♪ ]

Koga: Could ya quit lecturin' me on the basics like I'm some newbie? Even I know that that's how it is, alright! That's why I just grinned and bore it, appearin' on those stupid shows even though I hated it!

Rei: Indeed. Consequently, we've become a unit which half-heartedly partakes in everything. Unable to wholly embrace either a hard rock image or a casual, playful one, we have, over time, yielded ground to more specialized units. The current economic recession bears its own share of the blame. When one must be frugal in the management of their modest household budgets and dine out only in moderation, the natural inclination is to favor an establishment of expertise which serves but a select few exquisite dishes over a more casual eatery boasting a profusion of ordinary fare. The true palate shall inevitably be laid bare, for if the price is the same, one will naturally gravitate towards that which is most delicious — 'tis simply human nature. As it stands, we undeniably find ourselves trailing in the wake of those "specialty" units. The difference in both effort and experience is clear as day.

Koga: Hmph. While the bats were flittin' around wonderin' which side they should choose, both the beasts n' the birds lost interest n' ditched 'em.

Rei: Aye, you speak true. Though the situation hath yet to deteriorate to the point where our very foundation is rattled, if left unaddressed, we will someday find ourselves with no place to belong. 'Tis the inevitable fate of those who fail to make it in this industry to be forsaken, and consequently sink to the depths in solitude.

Koga: So the hell're we gonna do about it? If I'm understandin' correctly, you're sayin' our backs're to the wall now. But'cha ain't just gonna tell us to give up n' go with the flow, right?

Rei: Nay, assuredly not. Failing to mount a resistance will surely usher us into the abyss of ruin. We mustn't sit idly by.

Kaoru: I mean, yeah. It's, like, a given that we've gotta do something about it.

Rei: Even our esteemed agency harbors apprehension regarding our current state of affairs. Unsurprisingly, such concern hath prompted the higher ups to interfere in their customary heavy-handed fashion.

Koga: Ugh, they're actin' as high n' mighty as always, huh... This is what I can't stand about bein' in a well-established agency. It's like they think we can't do anythin' without 'em. We're gonna get treated like a buncha helpless newborn chicks forever.

Rei: In the past, they scarcely would have bothered themselves with "newbies" such as us. Yet at the biggest event of the year, the illustrious SS, the industry veterans whom Rhythm Link boasts of with such pride found themselves utterly bereft of any noteworthy achievements. Consequently, the value of we youngsters has risen. As we hath become the foremost earners beneath our agency's banner, 'twould pose quite the quandary for the management if we were to falter. Thus, in the interests of helping us surmount this hurdle, Rhythm Link hath requested our participation in "a certain experiment" devised by ES.

Adonis: An experiment...? Doesn't that sound a bit unsettling?

Koga: Haah? What kinda experiment does our oh-so-great, well-established agency want to turn us into guinea pigs for?

Rei: 'Tis a matter shrouded in utmost secrecy, and the particulars shall not be laid bare unless we deign to accept. However, we hath been told the title of this clandestine experiment — it is the Artificial Intelligence Idol Experiment, or "AIIE" for short.

Koga: Huh? Artificial intelligence...?

Kaoru: Ah, yeah, I hear that kinda thing — AI, or whatever — is like, super popular these days.

Adonis: Yes, it can be used to skillfully create pictures and sentences for you. I am still not very good at writing sentences in Japanese. Yuuki is good with technology, so when he heard about my concerns, he showed me how to use AI to help.

Adonis: It is also very good at drawing pictures, but when I gave the smartphone a pat and told it, "you are very skilled," Yuuki gave me a strange look.

Koga: Oh yeah, that four-eyed beansprout likes this kinda stuff. Hmph, he's seriously such a nerd.

Adonis: Yuuki's skills are at a level where they can even be useful for his work, so it is not something to make light of. In fact, when I gave it a try, AI turned out to be very convenient. My awkward sentences were quickly transformed into beautiful Japanese. It's so convenient that it might even make me lose motivation to learn how to draw or write on my own. Instead of struggling against my own clumsiness, it might be better to leave it all to AI.

Kaoru: I've heard that AI programs sometimes use images or whatever from the internet without permission, causing, like, copyright issues and stuff, though? Don't you think it'd be better not to rely on it too much~? It's like everyone crossing at a red light together — it's not scary, but it's totally still a crime, y'know?

Adonis: I understand. Even a kitchen knife can be used to kill. Like any other tool, it ultimately all depends on the ethics of the user.

Rei: Hm. The secrecy makes it all quite unclear, but is this "AIIE" affair meant to create idol versions of those AIs which are adept at artistry? I fear this old man finds it quite difficult to keep up with these newfangled technologies.

Koga: Are ya seriously still pullin' that old man act… Anyway, it's real annoyin' bein' told what to do, but I'm not gonna act out against direct orders. Do we have to participate in this AIIE thing or what?

Rei: Though declining the offer 'twould be within our power, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say. As we find ourselves bereft of any other solutions to the problem, a little taste-test might not be amiss, wouldst you not agree?

[ ☆ ]

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[julie-su]

Somebody draw Julie-Su in a wheelchair (self propelled, not push) I'm going back to sleep