#Impossible Tasks

[whump-queen]

“I’m sorry, I’ll do better.”

“I don’t want you better I want you fucking perfect.”

[hislittleraincloud]

OH NO someone fucking help me

I took an XTC pill and she's asking impossible things of me

are you serious right now, Larissa

and what's with the random technicolor scene with the other lady

what is going on

ETA: I actually started doing it but she stopped me at thallium

[outromoony]

Reading actual books when fanfiction exists is one of the hardest things in the world—how am I supposed to enjoy something that doesn't have Remus Lupin in it?

[ravingsofamadsoutherner]

My Throbbing Opposable Thumb

My Throbbing Opposable Thumb #Blog #Blogger #Blogging #InjuredThumb #Humor #OpposableThumb #SmallTasks #ImpossibleTasks #AllThumbs

“Dinosaurs are extinct today because they lacked opposable thumbs and the brainpower to build a space program.” — Neil deGrasse Tyson Like most people, opposable thumbs are not something I tend to think much about…until yesterday. Yesterday I took a dive, forehead planting just outside my home. Luckily, I chose a large patch of un-mowed clover to crash into. I’d like to blame my puppies, but it…

[aethersea]

I do think Blazing Saddles handled its one depiction of native americans very poorly, and the full extent of its representation of chinese workers on the railroad is they were literally just there. not even one single speaking line. unclear if this is worse or better than the redface.

it's fucking phenomenal at lampooning antiblack racism though. extremely blatant, extremely funny satire, which is constantly and loudly saying "racism is the philosophy of the terminally stupid at best and morally depraved at worst, and we should all be pointing and laughing at them 24/7"

plus the main character is a heroic black man who has to navigate a whole lot of bullshit but is constantly smirking at the extraordinarily stupid racists and inviting the audience into the joke. the one heroic white character is a guy who was suicidally depressed until he met the protagonist and they just instantly became buds, and he's firmly in a supporting role the whole time and happy to be there. the protagonist saves the day with the help of his black friends from the railroad, and uses the position of power he was given to uplift not only those friends, but all the railroad workers of other minorities too, in an explicit show of solidarity.

anyone saying "Blazing Saddles is racist" had better be talking about its treatment of non-black minorities. it had better not be such superficial takes as "oh but they say the n-word all the time" or "they have nazis and the kkk in there!" because goddamn if that's the full extent of your critique I very seriously suggest you read up on media analysis. there is too much going over your head, you need to learn to recognize satire.

[goldcleaver]

what in the Yearning is this

[noecoded]

heartbreaking:the worst people you know just started an emo band

[hyunpic]

cant keep my hands to myself… i mean i could but why would i want to 😼 <- skz when they see hyunjin

[divorcedwife]

my little rook

[strqyr]

redid an old vacuo design for ruby that i never actually finished ✌

not so sure about the color scheme of this one but it is what it is, i fought with it enough as is lol

[withclawandvine]

yes, there are more than enough barbarian!bakugou drabbles on this website. no, i do not care !! have another!!!

your father already has his heir and a spare, and therefore, has no real use for you. at least, until an advisor reminded him of the mournful tunes the bards have been singing since you came of age — a tragic face, they claimed. men have waged wars for less sweet a temptation.

soon after the announcement of your eligibility is made, the dining hall bloats with suitors and their emissaries, boasting and bargaining over their chances with wine-sour breath night after night, waiting for your father to make his decision. 

behind closed doors, members of his cabinet pitch the merits of this prince or that noble scion. there is talk of naval dominance and deep treasuries. but from where you listen — with your ear pressed to the door of a forgotten servant’s corridor at the back of the council chamber — nobody mentions that one of them is old enough to be your grandfather, or that one young king has already been widowed twice, under suspicious circumstances.

the contest was your idea, presented during a quiet meal with your father, in such a manner that made him believe it was his plan all along. of course these men should prove themselves. how else can he know which kingdom reared the strongest warrior? which ally would prove the wisest or most cunning? 

as your father expected, there are many challengers. and as time goes on, it becomes less about the honor of your hand than the glory of victory. consequently, the tasks become more and more improbable: piercing steel armor with delicate arrows made of blown glass, navigating rapids with neither sails nor oars, hunting down the fabled great horned beast of the northern mountains. 

as you hoped, months pass without a champion.

but the men chasing honor and acclaim bring riches and secrets, feeding your father’s treasury and arming his spies. you can almost taste the freedom of again being unuseful to him, sweet as the honeyed pear speared on your fork.

the fork falls from your hand when the massive doors to the great hall swing open and an imposing shadow comes into view. backlit by the setting sun, it is impossible to discern its features — beyond its size and the massive horns, curved and sharp as twin sickles. 

the stranger’s approach is slow and measured, and as he gets closer, the shadow becomes more corporeal. turns into a man. although, the ochre glow behind him makes him appear almost as a god. nobody in the hall dares to breathe.

only when he stops at the dias can you make out garnet eyes of a barbarian, peering at you through holes gouged in the pelt cloaking his entire form. he’s wearing the face of a beast you had never truly believed existed like a hood.

wordlessly, he closes a fist around the skin draped over his shoulder, whisking it off and tossing it unceremoniously at your feet. the horns hitting the stone floors crack like thunder, echoing off the cavernous ceiling.

he wears necklaces strung with teeth, but no armor. his bare chest should make him seem vulnerable. instead, it puts every scar and whirl of ink denoting his battlefield victories and royal blood on display.

you have no idea how word of the contests made it all the way into the formidable northern mountains, or why it would entice a chieftain’s son to try at winning your hand.

all you know is that he just did.

[cookiesonfire]

telling him to count how many hickies i give him then shoving my fingers into his mouth, playing with his tongue. when he's unable to count, teasing him with "aww am i making you feel so good and stupid that you forgot how to count? such a cute thing unable to do something so easy" shoving my fingers even deeper into his mouth bc his muffled sounds are music to my ears. using my other hand to pull his head back so i can give even more hickies and mark him as mine and only mine.

[jamesheathridge]

sigh....

[crystallizsch]

This is Halloween, this is Halloween Pumpkins scream in the dead of night

PASSES AWAY. i am blaming this post by @anbaisai 😔💪 i am simply not immune to dancing prompts

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

A-Qing, the little fox.

[gcballet]

Just saw someone complaining about the Newhart ending from 0611 being mockery of people who ship Nandermo and frankly I can only imagine that account is someone who's under 20 bc that is not what mockery/rejection of queer ship fans looks like. You were in preschool when BBC's Merlin came out, you don't know. S6 and finale spoilers below.

The point of the Newhart parody ending was to provide an ending for fans who just wanted WWDITS to stay a goofy status quo sitcom. It's answering the black and white footage of the vampires in the 1950s. The sitcom status quo is a famously really hard trope to work with. The Simpsons is literally still struggling with it - decades of skilled comedy writers have never defeated it. It's a commentary on being satisified by the media we consume. The vampire can never fully be satisfied, no matter how many lives she consumes. The status quo can never be broken no matter how many episodes it attempts.

The 1980s trope of 'it was all a dream' happens in The Bob Newhart Show, it happens in St. Elsewhere, it happens in Dallas. They aren't mocking a queer ship, they're mocking sitcoms and how they've been hamstrung by format in terms of the story they can tell. Assume they did pursue Nandermo unambiguously, onscreen. It would be legitimately too dark for a sitcom. Or conversely, too hopeful for a documentary.

The other generic format choice restricting them is the documentary, because everything the characters do in the show is them being watched by a group of strangers with film equipment. None of their behaviour is wholly real. The entirety of the finale is Guillermo realising his behaviour will change when the crew leave. His behaviour has been influenced by the presence of cameras, and it will happen again. For the first time in six years, he's going to experience actual privacy, and there will be scope for him to express things he has deliberately suppressed with the cameras on. In the first episodes of S5, we saw him get increasingly frustrated with the crew, calling them vultures, as they tried to get the story on what happened with Derek. He's ready for his privacy back, and space to change, but the vampires live by sitcom rules. They aren't prepared to change, or at least, he isn't confident about it.

What We Do In The Shadows (2019-2024) is restricted by two specific genres and their conventions, and the first two 'endings' - the dream sequence and the switching off the cameras - represent exiting both of those genres before any significant radical moves can be implied for Nandermo.

It's a sitcom, therefore the central couple must be in perpetual will-they-won't-they (Friends), the gays must be physically chaste (Modern Family), and the status quo must be maintained (The Simpsons). Once the sitcom is ended via the Newhart ending (which positions Guillermo and Nandor as a married couple, that's not a small thing at all), the documentary tropes can close out.

Documentary tropes are a little harder to pin down, but generally the story should end with Guillermo truly moving on and leaving in a poignant and somewhat tragic way.

Guillermo's narrative thread throughout the documentary version of the show is about his identity and relationship with Nandor. He gives the cameras a big show of finally saying goodbye to Nandor, going on to be a new version of himself, and waits until the crew begin to derig before acknowledging again that a documentary is performative, and he intends to continue their relationship. The documentary format means intimate moments must be captured. When the documentary ends, the intimacy may be private. That's why we don't get a Nandermo kiss. It's allowed to be private now.

Guillermo is sad throughout the finale, yes, but I would argue he's actually mostly stressed, because on one level he understands that the show must commit to one of two trope endings. The sitcom, the repeating lives of the vampires where nothing matters and you can be hypnotised to believe there was nothing deep about it. Or the documentary, where he is forced to tragically leave forever, having learnt a valuable 16 year lesson, perhaps meeting again for a 'where are they now?' Twenty years later.

He thinks he has to choose in under an hour, between the endless sitcom cycle the vampires find natural, or walking away with the humans who made the documentary to capture something ephemeral and temporary.

They do both, and then Nandor and Guillermo get what is clearly the ultimate ending. It's not formatted in such a way that you choose between endings. They're not alternate endings, they're subsequent endings. It doesn't have multiple endings like Clue, it has multiple endings like The Return of the King.

And maybe Guillermo and Nandor don't kiss on the mouth and declare their love for one another, but the camera crew is still leaving the room. What they do do is agree to stay together and work together on something to make themselves and/or the world better. Then Nandor invites Guillermo to share his pseudo-bed and disappear into a private space he has created in secret for the two of them. Even phrased matter of factly that's romantic. Someone flippantly called it 'the gays getting sent to super hell' and wow way to deliberately miss the point. Nandor never follows through on big projects, but he built a miles deep tunnel under the earth so he and Guillermo could at last be alone away from a huge documentary crew and roommates with super hearing. That's beautiful. They don't owe you an onscreen kiss to prove they're in love. They (Nandermo and the show producers) don't even owe you representation, and if you think otherwise, you've not bought into the premise of the show. You are the voyeur watching the documentary, the fan watching the Ross and Rachel (Nandor and Guillermo have been compared to them by the cast).

The whole point of the endings is that they moved Nandermo outside the unreality of TV genres. Not a sitcom will-they-wont-they, not a tragedy within a documentary, just two weird guys in a coffin in a hole in the ground, doing whatever they want because nobody is watching and judging.

They didn't make Nandermo canon, they made Nandermo real.